Books
Last summer, I went to a house-party for a beverage or two. This was not an inconsiderable beverage or two. Some wine, punch, and rum may have been consumed with gay abandon, followed by some gin, supped lovingly from the bottle. The night disintegrated rapidly from there, setting the scene for a mind-blowing hangover.

Morning duly arrives, and my breath and head are both heavy with gin-and-kebab fumes. A couple of hours of chatting with other house-party survivors, and some water, gave me the sense that I had escaped major hangover. I really did feel great. Really great. So great, in fact, that as I strode out into the street my inner monologue went roughly like this.

"wow, what a nice day"
"I feel great, almost like a normal person out for the day shopping. not a drunk rolling his way home"
"I AM a normal person just out shopping, this is fine"
"wow, a second-hand-bookshop, I'll have a look. That's what normal people do when they are out on a sunny day"
"I'll get these three books, they are only a pound for the three of them"
"this is a great decision"

With the benefit of sobriety and hindsight, those three books were not the wisest of purchases. They were too big for my bag, and had to be clutched all the way back on the bus, like some treasure I was guarding.

Worse, once sober, they were about the 3 most boring books I had read. On one, the most exciting passage was the ISBN number. None of the three I managed to finish, despite heroic effort on each one, and they were consigned to the dustbin of stupidity.

Length... about 7 or 8 hundred pages altogether.
(Serotonicity was a naughty boy on..., Thu 21 May 2009, 22:11, Reply)