Ibiza History Culture

Established 1982
Ibiza Artists Anthropology Bibliomania Ecology History Features

Features


Sober Life
by Sinclair Newton

UP


 
Sober Life

You know how drink addicts are counselled and encouraged to reveal their innermost secrets? Actually, perhaps you don't. Well, I thought I'd let you read an email I've just sent to a friend. Personally I think it says a lot about how sometimes you probably are justified in saying "I think I deserve a drink."

Hello Jammypops. What a day! What a guy! That's the most upbeat bestest email I've ever had from anybody anywhere in the world ever. I wish I'd had a great day too.

My day stank.

It was awful.

I wrote my Ibiza History Culture column and then LOST it trying to make it into a .doc.

So I wrote it AGAIN and strangely it turned into a completely different column.

And then I LOST that one. So I got in the car and FUCKED OFF to Doncaster.

I was now an hour late and CROSS. I forgot my sandwiches and a Melton Mowbray pork pie which I left in the fridge. I was, of course, unable to stop at any of the Derbyshire hostelries en route and so was parched as a bear's bum, though I've never understood why a bear's bum should be thus.

Then I realised I had no petrol and had to turn back from the SNAKE PASS in search of a garage.

The one in TINTWHISTLE was closed and I finished up back in MEADOW LANE GOING ROUND IN CIRCLES AND I REMEMBERED I HADN'T FED SIDNEY THE CAT WHICH WAS JUST AS WELL BECAUSE AT THE END OF THE DAY I'D HAVE HAD AN EARFUL OF HIM WHILE I WAS TRYING TO WRITE THIS.

OH, AND GARY HAS BEEN ON AT LEAST TEN TIMES AND I KNOW THAT BECAUSE I'VE GOT A STUPID LITTLE BOX WHICH RECORDS EVERYONE WHO RINGS UNLESS IT'S HIM DEMANDING HIS COLUMN IN WHICH CASE IT SAYS: "No number left".

Thank goodness.

I set off again about an hour after I had first set off (so I was now TWO HOURS LATE) and immediately got stuck behind a GREAT BIG TRUCK, WHICH CREAKED ITS WAY TO BARNSLEY WITH ME PERSPIRING BEHIND FOR TWO HOURS TRYING AND FAILING TO OVERTAKE ON EVERY HAIRPIN BEND.

I'm sorry you couldn't come to Doncaster, too.

The most interesting thing was that I learned Ken Livingstone has devised an alcohol strategy for London. I'll get a copy next week and take it to Roy Oldham. He could make his name by being the first Labour council leader outside London to adopt a similar strategy, which is basically creating a think tank (which we could be on) and getting the funding. I believe Livingstone's argument is based on the simple economics of how much money will be saved.

So I got back from sunny Donny in time to feed Sidney and go to deepest Whalley Range for dinner with the blonde who once tied me to a bed and then left me stripped bollock naked for the cleaner to find the next morning.

There was a toy boy present throughout (I don't believe he's giving her one, but just enjoys being tied up). Then I got to Denton Labour Club in time to miss the tributes, but hug the widow and extremely huggable and very friendly thirty-something-year-old daughter (with obligatory big tits) at a memorial piss up for a good friend of mine called Harold Hope. What a name. Fancy somebody called that dying before me. He used to play the Jew's Harp at CND meetings, did our Harold. He and his young wife Joan once painted "Ban The BOMB" across Stockport railway station and Joan nearly fell off a lamp-post with the paint pot in her hand...

As someone once remarked, if you joined together all the dicks the daughter's had you could make a handrail to go all the way from Uppermill, where she has a very nice house, to Ashton. I've never seen her sober and no exception was made for her father's memorial evening, of which, had he been there, he would most certainly have approved as he played his Jew's harp in the corner.

Goodnight you jammy bastard.

Sinclair Newton

sinclairnewton@ibizahistoryculture.com