Getting a taxi back home the other night. Despite the fact that it was three o’clock in the morning, and the roads were empty, a half-hour journey took well over an hour. Why? A combination of a sat-nav, and a taxi driver who would only listen to his sat-nav. Never mind that I’ve been living in this neck of the woods for, blimey, seven years, and I must have jogged, cycled, ambled, bussed or car-ed up and down every road in SE London some time or other. I’m not saying I never get lost, but whenever I do get lost, I know exactly how lost I am.
But no use saying to a taxi driver, ‘it’s up here’, or ‘take the next left’ or ‘I’m pretty sure this is Dartford’, all to no avail, because a computer voice keeps telling him to go up roads that are closed off for road-works.
Tis the Christmas party season. In the past, I have occasionally got very, very drunk one or two nights, each December, to celebrate Jesus who either was born or died around this time of year, I forget which. I remember one evening, where I think Hat Trick had a chocolate waterfall like out of Willy Wonka, and I was so overcome with fear I was drinking without ever getting drunk, simply in order to speak to people, because I am not a media party person, and anyway I came home and SUDDENLY that’s when I got drunk ALL AT ONCE. And my flatmate the next morning said hello to me in the kitchen, and asked, ‘Has somebody been cleaning the bathroom? Only every single surface has been cleaned, the carpet’s been washed, even the walls have been scrubbed’.
Moral of this story. Stay away from the chocolate waterfalls.