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     Shopping was the main task of the morning, since we suddenly realised that we had no food. We had cupboards full of stuff, but nothing that we could actually make into a full meal. I decided to go and work in the library, since I find the presence of my computer very distracting, plus we're still in the 'talking to each other' phase of the flat sharing thing. The weather is joyous - real English early autumn downpour. Mark and Chris have both lived in England for over 19 years and yet they still came out without coats because it 'seemed to have cleared up'. After drying off in the JCR, we headed towards Sainsbury's. This is not a good idea on a Saturday. While Mark and Chris queued to pay, I decided to reprise my quest for a duvet cover. With no sucess. The first Saturday night of the year is generally Parenting Dinner, where students who have 'married' each other and obtained fresher 'children' cook a meal and attempt to pull their offspring, on the principle of 'keeping it in the family'. None of Flat Five are parents, since we are all sociopaths, or drunkards. Or both. As such, we got into the role of freeloading bachelor uncles, and headed of to Dave, Claire, Christine and Matt's parenting dinner. We arrived after the food had been consumed, but had come prepared with beers and pint glasses. One of the children was semi-concious in a chair. After the conversational topics of Dave's dark past, Chris' dark past and the educational merits of some of Barnsley's schools, we tracked down a party in a random flat and joined in. I decided, in my wisdom, that 'morose' would be a good thing, so I sat in the corner and watch the replay of the England-Italy match. I don't like football, and knew the final score anyway. While I sat in the corner and observed the drunken antics of the rest of the revellers, Mark was in a corner getting drunk. He had obtained some citrus vodka from someone. This is a Bad Thing at any time, but on top of the cans he'd already drunk, it was a Very Bad Thing indeed. Some time later, Iuean and Dave came up to and said 'You've got a drunk flatmate. Go and sort him out.' After about half an hour of holding the bucket for him, Mark began to become more communicative. For some reason he felt it necessary to address me in what might have passed for a Geordie accent. 'Whayaye man' was probably the least profane of his comments, in between large sneezes (not, in my experience, a normal reaction to alcohol). Chris had already retired for the night, but Mark's groans must have roused him. Thankfully he came and held the bucket. I returned to the party, thinking Chris would put him to bed. An hour or so later I returned to find Chris with aching arm, since Mark had contrived to lean his full weight on the bucket. Since both of us really wanted to go to bed, but didn't want a corpse to deal with the next morning, we decided to empty his stomach by means of large glass of water (kindness not being a forthcoming from two pissed off, pissed up gentlemen). This foolproof plan was only hampered by the fact that Mark was now dead to the world. Since this plan was doomed to failure, we moved on to plan B, namely the old Recovery Position on the floor. After we had manhandled Mark's dead weight off a chair and onto the floor, he decided to (a) wake up, (b) protest loudly that the recovery position hurt and (c) sit back up and start snoring. We left him sitting cross legged next to his bucket, snoring loudly. Our compassion had run out. It was 3 am. We went to bed. |
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