It reminds me of a time in Thailand. Somehow either myself or M, or someone else or no-one else had organised tickets for us, front seats, to watch the final of the Thai international Snooker competition between Mark Williams and Alan McManus. We’ed been out for the last 14 nights, staying up far later than we should have done, seeing the sun rise most days, sleeping in until sun down, back to the “Suzie Bar” Jenga, cigarettes, food and Beer Chang. When the witching hour arrived we’ed get a bucket of ice fill it with a bottle of Mekong whisky and several bottles of Turbo Red Bull and drink it through straws with whoever was hanging around, there was always the same hardcore of massive idiots (us included). Ringleaders of fun and bad behaviour; Indestructible.

One evening we were sat on our balcony overlooking some awful back street, guys hosing the food waste and shit down the drains, to then do it all again the next day. We were steaming drunk and had run out of drink, not a good situation, we had a few packs of cigarettes and realised we were due at the snooker in about an hour. 

Deciding to put on our most respectable flip flops we gathered ourselves and tried getting our shit together. Everything was everywhere, a 2 week roomquake had been continually rumbling in room 15, the house keeper had lost possession of it. Possession was 9/10’s of the law as far as we were concerned, this was our mess and we knew every crevice. M couldn’t find his glasses, spectacles and with the night drawing in (as much as the light fades in Bangkok of an evening) they were very much needed by my partner in crime. We looked everywhere and they were nowhere to be found. UP, down, on or underneath. M had to make do with sunglasses, and were it not for the fact we were the worst dressed people at that world final, we may well have looked pretty damn good, like rock stars. I think we were probably on telly somewhere in the world as the Thai Des Lynam was stood right in front of us as he talked to the TV cameras.

Today I had my eyes looked at because i’ve got a dent on the inside of my left eye, it can’t be seen by the naked eye, one must look through the pupil, otherwise known as the window to the soul, which is another way of saying the window to the inside of the eye. To look through the dirty black window he had to dilate my pupils by pouring some sort of evil liquid into my eyes. 15 minutes later and it was like I was tripping my nuts off without any LSD in my system. Basically I couldn’t see properly, walking through town was all just lights and sounds, and I felt like a deep sea dwelling creature coming up to have a walk around on the dry land. Thank god I had my sunglasses with me.

Walking into shops with sunglasses on made me very self conscious and felt I had to take them off to disarm myself, to make myself less threatening or less rude to the assistants or other customers.

“I’m not being cool, look at the rest of me, I’m an amorphous styleless 48 year old man wearing kooky sunglasses in Iceland (the shop) buying a pair of pot noodles using lots of loose change which isn’t a good look.”

So I sit here, being cool, on my own, as I write this in my little music annexe, with the sun behind me, bright and low in the sky about to pass behind the massive bamboo bush I wish i’d never planted. It’ll grow under the house and destroy the foundations and the house will fall down and we’ll all be homeless, etc etc.