Dave & I
It was just a simple drinking game to go with watching an old favourite: Withnail & I. Keep up with Withnail, in essence, the bare essentials being: Your wine of choice for the wine, your lager of choice for cider and other beer-ish stuff, your whiskey for whiskey and sherry, and actual lighter fluid for the lighter fluid scene. A certain friend of mine, who we shall call Dave, is the only person I've ever known to have kept up with all of the drinking without filling a pint glass with regurgitated alcohol. Dave was an old mate, hung around with me during the drug days, we'd spent a month in a Class D prison together after being arrested buying coke (Class D is essentially a youth prison, it's open ground. Imagine Butlins, but even less fun). He's never denied me a penny when I was short rent or was a couple days short of my wages and was invited on a big night out. Golden hearted bloke, if a little, well, dim. This is his story.

It began. Knock on the door in the middle of the night - Dave grinning outside.
"Come in, good sir."
"Stick on Withnail & I."
"Certainly."
My flat was cold, and the first couple of minutes are spent with us sat on my shanty couch shivering and waiting for the booze to kick in. As the alcohol begins to influence our systems, we find ourselves teetering between the edge of anarchic mirth and a pit of empathy - caught between laughing at the indignance of our struggling compatriots and going beyond an appreciation of their pain, but sharing in it, believing in it, knowing even, that this film was the story of our pale and wet existence. Somehow we were topless, wearing only underwear and our shoes. Really shivering, I thought the alcohol would have been exacerbating my sensitivity to the cold, and so I missed a couple of drinks. We put the film on pause and set a small fire in the ashtray to warm our numbing hands. Rizlas and toilet paper do not make for good burning material, and the decision to share a joint was a bad one as all that light-paper ash glittered in the air like some postapocalyptic wasteland's rain, dry grit falling from the heavens, seeping into my flat under the evil wills of a God that no longer cared for a species that failed to cheer His work. We turned it on again.

A note, on lighter fluid. I knew from my youthful indulgences that Butane was pretty dangerous, and held no alcoholic content. I also knew that it could kill you if you didn't let it warm up a bit, so we poured half a shotglass of it each and decided to warm it up by settling it in the still smouldering ashes of our small fire. It didn't catch alight, though, which looking back on was probably less of a miracle than it might seem to you, dear reader, at the moment. The scene came and we both took a tentative drop of that disgusting substance into our mouths, barely an eigth of the half shots we had poured.

Imagine Satan, all nuclear and evil, ejaculating his chemical spawn onto your tongue. It the foulest taste of death you can imagine, not an old woman slipping away in the night, but some six year old child getting swept away in the radioactive winds of Hiroshima, uranium blisters burning his skin, condemning him to two weeks of torment before an agonising hour in which he'd beg to be put out of his misery if only he had a throat to it with. That's the fucking aftertaste.

We drank whiskey in moutfuls so vile was this stuff, we sucked icecubes and still this taste had just become an undercurrent, nothing but a provocation to keep drinking and smoking. So we did. And we did. And we did.

No plot points here, but the last scene involves a certain character drinking from a bottle of wine and shuffling into the distance. Thus did Dave, and I curled up under my coat on the sofa to sleep, telling him to get home safely, that there was nought but wolves out there. Packs upon packs, baying to taste his flesh. He left me his cigarettes and went out to meet the world. I fell asleep pretty much instantly.


Woke up Memento like. What happened? Where am I? This is my flat? Where are my clothes? Is this... ash? I tidied up as memories came back with no respect for the chronology of modern man's reminscing method, as they do, and then the phone rang.

"Hello?"
"Not Quite... oh God."
"Trish?"
"It's Dave..."
She was fond of her trailing silences. A dramatic woman to say the least.
"Did he get home alright?" I asked.
"No. He's been arrested."
"Drunk and disorderly? Do you need me to pick him up?"
"Turn on the news."

And so I did.

"No fucking way."

I can only thank the BBC for cluing me in on the second half of this story, so I'll let them do the same for you - well worth the click:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/coventry_warwickshire/7404582.stm

I haven't been to see him inside. Not too fond of prisons, which he understands. His girlfriend still doesn't know - she isn't the b3ta type, I don't reckon - that I got him drunk. She gave birth a week or two ago. Haven't been to see the baby. He should be out this time next year, thanks to overcrowding.

Length? 108 minutes. Download a torrent. Save your money for the booze.
(sorry., Sun 20 Jul 2008, 10:32, 8 replies)

Holy shit!
Your rather unfortunate story is nicely descriptive and fucking hilarious. Your mate is a legend.
(lost, Sun 20 Jul 2008, 11:42, closed)

Best post so far!
Laughed so hard I nearly did a tiny wee... all hail Withnail and what a great vid.
(merlin the happy piglet fancies some brie, Sun 20 Jul 2008, 11:44, closed)

Oh mate...
That's, just- well, I don't have the words! For once...
( jim_bob can herd cats., Sun 20 Jul 2008, 12:27, closed)

Dave...
What a legend.

Can we suggest a B3TA free-the-Ugg-Boot-one campaign?

Admittedly not necessarily Free Nelson Mandela, but you get the idea...
(Eds Meds Mathskillz=1,Socialskillz=0, Sun 20 Jul 2008, 13:32, closed)

hahaha
he indicated for the ramming.

also: news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/north_west/7360871.stm
( willenium Fist bump for verification, Sun 20 Jul 2008, 15:46, closed)

Utter magnificence!
I have snot on my monitor now. Have a click.
(all my scars face forward possesses 2.5% of a hyperalloy combat chassis, Sun 20 Jul 2008, 21:49, closed)

good. fucking. GOD.
When the poor sod gets out, buy him a scotch from me!
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Tue 22 Jul 2008, 2:55, closed)