I See Dead Poodles

So I wandered into my flat-mate’s room at 4am last Friday morning. I walked up to his bed, patted him on the head and said "Good night Bubbles, I love you", and then left his room. Naturally the exchange terrified the shit out of my confused flat-mate, who found it a little hard to get back to sleep afterwards. But I’m getting ahead of myself here, let me wind the clock back a bit.

It was 2pm Thursday and I was sitting in my lounge room drinking cans of Guinness with Toby. We both had the day off, and this was the best activity we could come up with.

By about 3pm we were feeling restless, and decided to get out and about on the streets of London. While rummaging through the Rubbish Dump that is my bedroom for my house keys, I happened across a booklet of vouchers.

The Vouchers were in conjuncture with Revolution, a Vodka Bar down the road from my house. The Vouchers were for free vodka shots. But most importantly, the Vouchers had an expiry date of the following day.

If we were going to use them, we had to use them NOW.

Before you could say "This probably isn’t a very good idea", we were at the Vodka Bar downing shots at a rate that would make Amy Winehouse bow down in awe.
Once the Vouchers run out, so did our interest in the bar. It was only 4pm on a Thursday and we were about the only ones in there, so we departed for greener pastures. "Greener pastures" of course meaning the Elk Bar in Fulham, which had a happy hour on Cocktails from 5 – 7pm.

From there it was onto the Slug and Lettuce for cheap Snake Bite jugs, and our onslaught of "frugal drinking" continued. At some point at around about 10:30pm, Chuck and his girlfriend Louise arrived at Fulham keen to catch up for a few bevies. They couldn’t get into the Slug because it was about to close, so the four of us made a bee-line for the Havana night Club around the corner.

Did I mention I was completely shit-carted by this point?

No?

Well I was kids. I was drunk as a Father in Law’s fingers.

I could feel the full effects of the day’s drinking as I stumbled out onto the street, and when I left the Slug my memory recollection skills kind of left as well.

Apparently I sang a song on the walk to Havana, a little ditty abut a family of Unicorns to the tune of Pearl Jam’s Don’t Call Me Daughter. I don’t remember doing this, but apparently it was a groovy song.

We spent two hours at Havana, of which I can’t recall roughly 120 minutes of. Chuck reckons I was bouncing around with limitless energy. Louise reckons I bit her. They didn’t elaborate any further, which was just as well.

We left Havana at 1am, I caught a cab with Chuck and Lou, and they dropped me off at the main intersection in Clapham Junction. I have lived in and around that intersection for over three years, and my current house is only a block up the road. Naturally Chuck was concerned when I stumbled out into the middle of the road, completely confused by my surroundings. I rambled up the road wide eyed like I was the last man alive.

I don’t remember the walk home, but I do recall arriving at my front door – as it spent a good 20 minutes trying to unlock it. For the life of me I could not operate the whole "key, lock and door handle" system. I felt like Michael J Fox trying to play the board game Operation, so I eventually gave up.

I sat on my front door step dejected at my lousy door opening skills. I went back through the day’s drinking regime in my head, trying to work out how I ended up so Goddamn smashed. The list included cherry flavoured vodka shots, sugary cocktails, cider based concoctions. It was the least heterosexual drinking schedule I’d ever been on, and I was surprised I didn’t top the night off with a bit of line dancing. To take my mind off it I, I focused my attention on my Welcome mat, and eventually came to the conclusion that this is what toast must look like on Chewbacca’s home planet.

At this point the door opened, and Toby beckoned me inside. Turns out he got home half an hour before I did.

I explained my Wookie Toast concept to him, and he is not impressed. He tells me that he has just cooked a massive pot of curry, I am impressed.

I was hungry in a way that only fellow drunkards and possibly Vampires could understand. Curry would go down a treat.

While Toby went back to the lounge room to continue watching TV, I went to the kitchen to get myself some Curry. I got back to the lounge room to find I no longer had the Curry. Obviously I had left it in the kitchen, but it was nowhere to be seen on my return there. I searched the whole flat for it, but could not find it. I was drunk, tired and starving – and this was proving to be the most frustrating experience of my life. My flat is tiny, where the hell did I put that damn Curry? I eventually accepted defeat, and decided to go to bed.

This is where I found the curry, on top of my pillow in my bed. I mean, of course it was there. Why didn’t I search my bed to begin with? I’m such a fool.

I ate half the curry, then fell asleep fully dressed with the light on.

I got up at various points in the night to use the toilet (including one trip where I fell down the stairs). At some point I wandered into my flat-mate’s room (who had wisely stayed home during Toby and my Deadly Cocktail Expedition), which brings us back to the opening paragraph:

I walked up to his bed, patted him on the head and said "Good night Bubbles, I love you", and then left his room.

For those of you who don’t know, Bubbles was the name of our family dog, a toy poodle to be exact. What makes the story even more worrisome, is the fact that Bubbles is on the other side of the world to my London flat. Oh, and she died about three years ago.

I’m no stranger to the world of late night drunken mishaps. I’ve tackled my own mother when I mistook her for a burglar, broken two ribs in a shopping trolley incident, Christ I’ve even woken up inside a suit case (Muel can back me up on that one).

But this was the first time I’d mistaken a flatmate for a dead poodle.

I’m kind of hoping it was also the last.