The Birthday Drink

Take a large pot; pour in a litre of cranberry, mixed summer fruit and blackcurrant juice mixing it all up. Add a bottle of cheap vodka, slices of fresh lemon, orange, lime and finally leave in the fridge to chill and marinate overnight. Next evening, before serving, throw in a bottle of strong medium or dry (not sweet – the juice has made it sweet enough) white wine, pour with plenty of ice. This was the recipe for my ‘punch’ drink, inspired by morning TV last week (I was off from work). It tastes pleasant, quickly inebriates and ensures your sick is a dark shade of purple. Tonight I have guests to accompany and celebrate with me, for this week it’s my birthday and tonight is ‘Bar Med’ night. The cast consists of regular and new faces. Amongst the regular faces are Tim, Neil, Dave, a girl called Nicki (aka Noo) and later Charlie (aka Choo) joins us. Two new faces are with us, both with the name Rebecca, which means one less name to remember, one is Noo’s flatmate (we will christen her ‘Boo’) and the other is the flat mate of an old friend who is sadly absent this evening. Two glasses of my punch later (three for me) and we head into town. As the birthday boy I get a lift in with Dave while the others part with a ‘bluey’ on the price of a cab. Instead of just me and Tim a throng of people congregate in our usual spot, changing the dynamics of the whole evening. We make polite chat and spend less time looking for potential women to unbalance with our charm. The bottles of Corona still go down with the same haste, coupled with the effects of my earlier punch and making me very drunk in a relatively short space of time. Soon my memories are a blur, if this was a screenplay there would be a close up of everyone’s laughing face with lots of tilting camera effects as beer bottle after bottle slowly floats across the main screen along with a round of glowing blue shots of something (they did actually glow like toxic waste). I do remember a couple of events; I remember Choo joining us and I remember slamming my bottle down hard onto the top of Noo’s beer bottle. Noo looked down at her bottle expecting the worst and she wasn’t disappointed, a fountain of white froth erupted and gushed forth forcing me and Tim to step back and thus avoid a soaking. Once it had stopped only a small fraction of the beer remained at the bottom of the bottle. I look down at it smiling like an idiot, somewhere in the back of my drunken mind I’m thinking how pretty the spectacle was; like a firework fountain or a Grand Prix winner with a bottle of spraying champagne. Because it’s my birthday no one reprimands my actions or berates me. Tim looks down at the puddle by our feet and silently shakes his head, stopping a glass collector he asks if someone could come along and mop it up. A few moments later a man with a mop does indeed appear to clean up the mess, “The mop man cometh” announces Tim.

I get to pick a track to play with a promised announcement from the DJ, telling all the inhabitants of Bar Med of my birthday, “Come on and choose a track” young Dave yells at me over the music, I look at him but I’m lost for any idea of what I want to hear. In the background I can hear the Black Eyed Peas belting out, then a track comes to me, something I’ve not heard for a while, that reminds me of my youth and brings a smile to my face; “Shakademis and Pliers, a track called ‘Tease Me’” I tell him. He looks at me blankly, “Who?” he asks and suddenly I feel every one of my thirty four years. I repeat it and he attempts to say it back to me with little success, he disappears and soon comes back with a pen and paper, forcing me to write it down. He looks at my hastily scribbled words and shrugs his shoulders, he isn’t sure if it’s something I’ve made up. But again he disappears and soon I hear the DJ announce “and this one is for Wayne, happy birthday Wayne” and then the track begins to plays. Relying on a mixture of ‘doing the twist’ while ‘grinding up and down’ I dance along to it, soon so does everyone else, except Tim. The track ends and smoothly mixes into another. Neil is talking to Choo a little away from the group, while I approach the girls and ask for a birthday favour. “Your challenge, if you decide to accept, is to get Tim dancing, I reckon you can’t pull it off” I tell the girls in the group while keeping my eyebrows raised with my best doubtful look. All heads turn to Tim as Choo walks back and rounds up the girls for the same challenge, because coincidently Neil had just been planting the same idea in Choo’s head (great minds and all that). Four girls grab Tim, who pulls away and raises his arm and hand in the universal ‘STOP’ sign, a little like a lollipop-man without a lollipop. They do not give up so easily and tentatively if not belligerently Tim moves near the dance floor and then a strange thing happens; in time to the music he puts his left leg out, then his left leg in, in, out, in, out and yes, indeed he does, shake it all about, thankfully he goes no further. Remembering the lollipops I reach into my breast pocket where a small stash has now accumulated from last week and tonight’s toilet trips (I always wash my hands), allowing me to hand each of the four girls a ‘Chupa’, sadly they never did have the promised effect.

Bar Med is still busy when we leave, prompting me to make a mental note that the first Friday of each month is probably the busiest. With the exception of Dave and Rebecca (not Boo) who have work in the morning, we all head over to Ikon\Diva. Boo was once a local lass but moved away to a better life, she keeps muttering her disbelief that she’s actually paying and entering Ikon\Diva on a Friday night, going back after many years, but sadly tonight ‘Jenny From The Block’ was going back to the block. I’m a little bit apprehensive that the bouncer from last week will prevent me from going in, Tim shares my concerns, but they prove to be unfounded and we manage to get in easily. We are in the older downstairs part of the club which happily seems to be a hit with Choo and Noo, and dare I say even seems to be winning Boo slowly round. Boo is a hit with the men and as the third one begins to pester her at our table I feel partially responsible, after all she didn’t want to come here. “I’m sorry if these guys are pestering you” I tell her “I could try and stop them” I continue. “And how would you do that?” she smiles. “Well I could pat you on the stomach and say aloud – I felt it kick, that should put them off” I laugh but she looks at me uncertain. Shit I’ve broken a cardinal rule, committed the worst of sins; I’ve inferred she may be fat. “Not that you have a stomach or anything, not at all, you have a great body” I try to reassure her, but now I sound like I’m coming on to her or something “Er, well, I’m just going over there…” pointing to a random area in the club I quickly run away.
The rest of the night is an uneventful blur; I’m drunk so don’t remember too much, the next thing I know, as if by magic, I’m home.

Me, Noo and Tim are the only ones going back to my place. Once home we decide a snack is in order, so I rustle up a little food. Firstly a toasted cheese sandwich each, followed by pasta with a spicy tomato sauce, with a finishing dessert of ‘Ben and Jerry’s Cookie Dough Ice Cream’ all washed down with coke and the punch from earlier. With our bellies full we retire to bed, but my stomach can’t take the pounding it’s had tonight and I soon run for the toilet. There is a knot in my stomach, a snake pressing from the inside causing a nagging cramp that needs to be released. Gripping the toilet I’m sick. My body goes through the usual changes, shakes and temperature increase, but the cold of the floor feels inviting and slowly everything fades. What feels like a few minutes pass and I awake in the foetal position on my bathroom floor, almost naked like a time travel from the future (as portrayed in the ‘Terminator’ films). Grabbing the closest thing at hand I try to pull myself up using the toilet roll holder, it promptly comes away in my grip along with a chunk of wall plaster, I curse. My legs manage to raise me with a wobble while the inside of my head thumps and pounds with a hangover, I curse again. Walking into my bedroom the daylight at the window confuses me, it can’t be daylight yet, but the clock tells me the time is 10:30am! I’ve slept the whole night on my bathroom floor, I can hardly believe it but my thirty four year old back is beginning to confirm this. Soon Noo and Tim awake and we share a coffee and tea in relative silence as we nurse sore heads before leaving and continuing our weekends. I'd booked that Friday off as a days holiday, I'd have called in sick on the Monday but I didn't want to do a neifion.

(Noo and Choo now refer to me as Woo, OK so it's a little girly, but I prefer to think that it makes me sound like a Chinese maffia Triad leader)