London Firewater Brigade
When I lived in a poky flat with carpets the same orange colour as chorizo grease in the leafy suburb of Clapton, I once had one of those days where you just want to crush the bollocks of random passers-by for not looking oppressed enough by the system. My boss had given me some immensely thankless admin task to do that ended up taking me until after 20:00 to finish, and by the time I'd wrapped up everything in the office and headed home it was well after 23:00. The Tube ride home was hot, sweaty and angry, and by the time I got in the door I was positively foaming at the mouth with pent-up White Protestant frustration and English rage.

This was an emergency: I needed a drink.

The off-licences were all closed, and in the six months I spent in that flat I didn't see a single corner shop that might have a few cans under the counter, so in desperation I unsheathed my mobile phone and called an anonymous mobile number dredged Matrix-like from the internet. A voice on the other end of the line said that someone would be round with two bottles of vodka (I ordered two because the callout fee was almost the price of a bottle in itself, so might as well make the investment worth it) within twenty minutes. I expressed my thanks and rang off.

As I sat in my Fuzzy Felt Gentlemen's Club armchair to await my delivery, disturbing thoughts began to seep through my head. Thoughts and memories of people in news reports who had paid good money for a laptop, to find they had bought two bottles of lemonade in a box, or a couple of kilos of potatoes. Would this man turn up with two sealed bottles of tap water for my £40?

Twenty minutes later my phone rang, and announced that my delivery had arrived. I stepped out into the oleaginous neon of the June night and handed over two twenties to a shadowy man at the driving seat of an Escort, in consideration for a carrier bag containing two clear glass bottles. Words of no importance were exchanged.

Once I had returned to the relative privacy of my flat, I withdrew a bottle and cracked the cap apprehensively. Sniffed. Hints of turpentine, tannin, wet dachshunds and petrol; the man had indeed sold me vodka.

The remainder of the evening passed without incident. I refrained from calling the number again and proferring my thanks via a voucher for half an hour's javelin-waxing followed by first-class tickets for the Vaseline Express, but my gratitude was no less heartfelt for all that.
( .Yeti. El amor en los tiempos del cólera, Thu 16 May 2013, 13:21, 2 replies)

Telephone call for Al!
Al?
Is there an Al Coholic here?
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Thu 16 May 2013, 13:26, closed)

Ennui overload
Your pitiful existence is compensated for with a most excellent word smithery.

Well told.
(justin(e), Fri 17 May 2013, 6:28, closed)