Automaton

10 April 2010

If I am an automaton, then I am – sadly – one which malfunctions very easily. A friend of mine came back from a holiday in Prague and admitted to losing 4 hours of her life after drinking absinthe. She knows she didn’t just collapse in bed, because her camera had over 400 pictures of her continuing to carouse around the Czech capital long after her final memory of the night. The pictures show that she is clearly with it and function – more or less – as a human being.

I, on the other hand, can mostly remember what I do when I’m drunk. This is because I don’t do anything. I sit while the room spins and complain that I’m drunk. I spend large portions of my life turning down a 4th pint because I know I won’t be able to handle it, and facing the humiliation of being out-drunk by a load of 20-something girls. It’s pathetic.

In my latest adventure, the son of a famous French Chef desperately tried to to persuade me to accompany him to Stringfellow’s. I’d had six pints. While I like to imagine that I would have made moral objections anyway, my principle reason for finally refusing an all-expenses paid trip to Soho’s most respectable tittie-bar was mostly because I knew I just wanted to go to sleep under a table, an act frankly more achievable in places with fewer bouncers and breast-wielding dancers.
So I bought him a curry instead. Looking back I’m not sure *why* I bought a curry for the son of one of Britain’s foremost imported restaurateurs, but I did. I think he had a chicken tikka. Everything is vague.

Being an automaton would clearly have its advantages. Your pants would probably be made of metal, you wouldn’t need to watch Snog, Marry, Avoid and best of all you could presumably drink whatever you liked. Unless it made you rusty. You might be a fibre-glass automaton, I suppose. Or one made entirely of fire-baked banana puree. Lego. Ant-carcasses. Anything.

Sorry. Clearly still drunk. I’ll leave you alone.