Let me explain.
When I was a student living on good old Dale Street in Lancaster I had a job. A job that allowed me to continue to attend uni and live on Dale Street. This job was at an after-school and holiday club forcing children to play dodgeball and make plasticine animals. And because I was one of only two males, when it got to Christmas time and the annual kids party, someone had to be Father Christmas. That somebody in 2001 was me (mainly because the other male who worked there was the boss).
This particular kids party was to be on the Saturday a week before Christmas. Everything was planned, presents wrapped and Santa suit sorted out. All it needed was for the day to arrive.... unfortunately for me that day never existed.
Now, as well as attending uni and holding down a job i was also Publicity Officer in the Students' Union. This involved largely trying to convince people to buy tickets to events so that I could attend them for free. One particular event in question was the Christmas Ball which, incidentally this particular year, happened to fall the day before my Santa duties.
A word of advice. If you know that you have an important engagement the day after a planned night out. Don't drink too much. even if the important engagement happens to be at 5pm the following day. I went to the ball with every intention of following this advice. Not too many drinks. Easier said then done of course. I started off pretty well. By 1:30am I was still pretty sober and was enjoying a good old dance. It was about this time however some bright spark had the idea of buying a couple of tequila slammers.
I had heard about tequila but had never actually drunk it before in my life. But as i stood at the bar with a thumb covered in salt, a slice of lemon and a tiny glass of golden liquid i thought to myself "what's the worse that could happen?, It's tiny!" (which is incidentally what my first girlfriend said to me the first time she say me naked).
So i went for it. And as i threw that golden poison down my gullet I knew right then that I had made a mistake. A realisation that was backed up with the fact another glass of the stuff had appeared in front of me....
....fast forward to my eyes opening in a dark room in Dale Street.
The clock read 17:10 and I felt awful. My mouth tasted like someone had done their washing up in it and my head ached. Even in the dark room. I knew I was late. I had to get up. i had to get dressed and I had to run. So that's what i did. I threw a gallon of mouth wash down my throat, had a quick wash. Threw on some clothes and ran...ran like the wind.... to the taxi that was waiting for me outside cause i was far too lazy to run across Lancaster.
I arrived at the kids club at 17:30. The place was locked up. Deserted. I was stood there in the middle of Lancaster on a Saturday evening in the dark, alone and confused. I took my mobile out to find out what had gone wrong. My screen told me i had 8 missed calls and 15 text messages. It also told me something even more important....
.....it was Sunday.
I did eventually get to play Father Christmas. But that's a story for another time.
No comments:
Post a Comment