Mortal.

A term that may mean different things to many of you. Up north, here in that somewhat forgotten land, where it rains almost on a loop and if there's three consecutive days that you don't have to wear a jacket, it's considered a heatwave. Well, up here, it means this. The following:

"To be extremely intoxicated, under the influence of alcohol."

Drunk, pissed, smashed, tipsy, wasted, ruined, wrecked, buckled, fucked, inebriated, tanked-up, sloshed, plastered, shit-faced, trashed, hammered, bladdered, blottoed, rat-arsed, trollied. Plain old drunk.

Whatever. We call it mortal. Getting so comfortably spaced out on a nice amount of alcohol that the edges of everything go fuzzy and fluffy and your speech slurs and your eyelids begin to weigh a tonne. You sit down and suddenly become all too aware of your legs feeling like jelly. Your movements seem to lag behind. Your mouth isn't functioning the way it should be. Words become harder to form, reactions slow and judgements are skewed. Tequila seems like a good idea. Singing at the top of your lungs really, REALLY badly seems like an even better idea. You suddenly latch on to strangers and loudly proclaim your immediate attachment to them. Awkward. Sometimes, it's horrific, it ends badly with lost property, lots of retching, no money and a stinking post-alcohol hangover. While other times, it's amazing. The photos and video document the constant hilarity of the nigt before. An empty purse and a sore head are a small price to pay for the blurred happy memories of 12 hours earlier. Your feet hurt from dancing too much and your throat is sore from singing to Mr Brightside at two am. 

Everyone experiences both kinds of drunk. Both kinds of mortal. But I'm varying towards the latter lately. Uni is done with. It's time to let my hair down, watch the sambuca get poured and get totally and utterly, and completely celebratorily MORTAL. 

Blah.

I'm hopeless beyond doubt, stroppy beyond reason and lost without hope. It's Saturday, closing in to 6pm and I'm in bed, hanging, and totally exhausted. The very famous "few drinks" last night went out of control, and my ill advised, and yet, note: ignored, taking of antibiotics with copious amounts of alcohol turned out as well as it possible could have. Messy nights are my life lately, oops. I'm lost behind my uni work and I'm just so uninterested in what I should be inspired by. I feel a bit out of touch, with eveything. I've recently just had a catch up with some good friends and discussed booking a holiday, and yet, I don't know why, but my heart isn't in it. Don't get me wrong, I love them, and holidays are one of my favourite things ever, but at the minute, excitement about sunny times seems so far over the horizon. Winter is thoroughly depressing me. I want to hide under my winter-weight quilt and wait for it all to blow over. Uninspired, uncoordinated, unorganised, unhealthy, under-the-influence. Blah. I don't care. It's Saturday night and I'd rather spend it in bed gorging on greasy food than leave the warm and drown myself in more alcohol, but who are we kidding, we all know I will. Exhaustion has set in and it's not great, admittedly. I'm unhappily yet happily mulling everything over. I want to change but I'm not sure what it is that I want to change, if that's even English speaking. As you can tell, I'm still on a drug-and-alcohol-and-caffeine comedown and it's horrific. I can hear Patricia Hodge's voice echoing "SUCH FUN!" repeatedly as I clumsily get ready and get paraded off to the pub rather than turn boring at a mere twenty and stay in on a Saturday night. Now that, my friends, would be sacrilege. 

Bank Holiday banter.

No matter what you're drinking, raise your glass.

It's well known, I consider drinking one of my hobbies. Yes. Seriously. My little 5"2 self always fancies having a couple of drinks. Translation: getting absolutely, painfully, stupidly, hysterically, blind drunk. It's not advisable, but hey, I've got a reason this time. If you haven't guessed, or known already, it is officially BHW or in English, Bank Holiday Weekend. One of my favourite times of year. There's been far too many bank holidays for my liver to handle or my body to cope with this year, but I have to give credit where it's due. Silly as it sounds, but my local watering holes have actually served other purposes, minus exchanging my crumpled notes for poisonous, amazing liquids.


Yes, I spend a great deal of my time between one or two pubs in particular. Anyone who knows me is now thinking of the names in their heads. I'm a local. A regular. The bouncers know my name. It's serious. But for me, it's a lot more than that. Since turning the legal age of 18, but especially the big 1-9, these places have been significant for me. If those walls could talk, the stories they'd whisper would probably ruin my life, but that's another story. These places have witnessed friendships broken and made, relationships starting and ferociously ending and drunken antics in full-swing. They've seen me at my best, looking sober, happy, and other times, in tears, in pieces. They've heard some home truths and some of the biggest lies I've ever told. They've glimpsed at stolen kisses, raging fights and full-blown arguments, and not judged. There's been tequila and sambuca and jagerbombs and lots and lots of vodka flowing. The discovery of Desperados, "two for £5, thank you very much." Pints of absolutely anything, pitchers of whatever we could lay our hands on, absolutely anything that provides for partying fuel. Our poisons, our refreshments, our liquid energy. The good times, the bad times, and the downright unspeakable times. I've had some brilliant laughs there, occasional heartache and made far too many legal mistakes.

Despite this, I truly think there probably isn't a time that I'm happier than when I'm all glammed up, heels in tow, crisp £20 notes stowed-away in my purse, fresh from the cashpoint just ten minutes previously. A drink in my hand, meeting my friends at the bar. A catch-up, a social gathering, a few laughs, or a total binge. Whatever the occasion, we're there. This weekend, will be bank holiday. I've never missed going out on a bank hol since I turned eighteen, and I'm not about to now, even if I have to be up early on Monday morning. (reason: I'm going to Leeds.) I'm excited, and happy, and actually starting to think my life is surrounded by positivity.

I'm not saying I only have a good time when I'm drunk, because that's really daft. I'm just saying, alcohol may be the foundation of some of my greatest friendships ever. For example, as I'm writing this, my friend Sarah and I are contemplating sobriety until Sunday. We wonder, via text, whether we can stay teetotal for necessity, rather than preference. So I'm ready to go crazy, have the time of my life and languish in knowing that this Sunday will be the last of the year. I'm slightly saddened by this. Bank Holidays bring everyone at home together. We usually all flock back from uni, everyone urgently attempts to get time off work, and all other non-alcohol-fuelled plans are abandoned. This is a time to celebrate everything that's good in our lives, and forget, even just for one night, what isn't going so well. In my book it is, anyway.

So, cheers everyone! I hope you all have an amazing weekend. I hope you're all happy and drunk and smiling on Sunday. I know I will be. Surrounded by some of my favourite people, there's nothing better. I'll know then, with a drink in my grasp, that at least for then, V-O-D-K-A really does spell happiness.  Not for what it is, but for what it represents.

I don't like today much.

It's Saturday, and I've done it again. Spent the night before pouring alcohol down my neck like I was getting paid to, and yet coming home with 25p. Yes. And managed to upset someone I really didn't want to. Arguments, tears and tantrums. Last night's themes. I've got a post-Friday night hangover and such an awful cough I sound like I'm a 40-a-day smoker, and I've never touched a cigarette. I'm feeling so guilty, so bitchy, so...nasty. I don't feel like me today. I feel like someone else. Sitting in my room, blasting party-ish music as some sort of motivational attempt to convince myself, and my liver, that I can actually hack hitting Sunderland tonight for Betty's birthday celebrations. I drink too much. I feel hideous. I don't look much better. This is all stupid and disjointed, because I'm half-hungover, half genuinely ill, although no one in my house seems to fathom the 'genuine' part. I wonder why.
 
I'm drowning out the bad stuff. Or attempting it anyway. Life, I guess, goes on, whether you're happy or unhappy, upset or angry. I guess the bad times make the good times even better. I wish I was an optimist. I wish I was a glass-half-full kind of person, but I'm really not. I don't even get the concept. I love everyone in my life right now. Why is it that the nice people get screwed over and I end up trusting the ones I shouldn't?

My head is well-and-truly battered. I smell like a brewery and I feel like I'm still slurring my words. I've only had like three and a half hours sleep and I don't know how much longer I can last before I drift into a deep, deep sleep mid-sentence. I'm feeling the 'horrible person' vibe today. I don't know what to do with it. Advice is being thrown at me left, right and centre, but I guess I have to, and do make my own decisions. Whether they're good or bad, will remain to be seen. I'm forgetting everything for now. I'm going to slap some make up on, to make myself look less like an extra from a zombie film and more like a human being, albeit a very unwell one. Things get better in time. Apologies wear thin, but they don't lose their sentiment. Well, mine don't anyway. I'm just saying.

I'm going for a Nando's. I need comfort food.
#bingeeaterandbingedrinker

The good things in life: #2

The people who are always by your side, no matter how hard you push them away or how much your drunken slurs hurt them. The ones who wait up all night to make sure you get home safely. The days that are spent in bed, because there's no reason why not. Hot nights you end up at the pub. Spending too much time entertaining a slightly demonic puppy. Knowing who matters and who never will. Overloading on caffeine and spending countless hours talking about unimportant rubbish. Laughing until you're in physical pain. Appreciating the good times, so that the bad times don't seem so bad.

It's not quite Cider With Rosie.

It's a Saturday night and I'm singing to Don McLean's American Pie, burnt to a crisp, dangerously hungover and I have no plans, and I couldn't be happier. The simple things are sometimes what matter most.

My drinking escapades never to fail to amuse, embarrass and surprise me. Sometimes for the best, sometimes not so much. Last night was no different. A few drinks with food turned into a few of us heading home, involving a quick shower, an even quicker outfit change and by the stupidly early time of half six, one of my friends and I were out resuming our drinking. Lovely weather, a couple of cold refreshments and you're sorted, yes? Well, not quite. Eventful, as all my nights out are. Cue an unhealthy amount of trebles, shots of tequila at seven and jagerbombs at eight. Our "few drinks" rapidly turned into an all-nighter, rolling in at half 3, with messy make up and even messier hair. Today I smell like a brewery. Kind of gladly, kind of not. A good night? A bad night? Who cares, my state speaks for itself I think. A photo would be painful to take, and even more painful to upload. Just picture me as a very hungover, rough girly (with exceptionally burnt shoulders!) So, is it worth it? The banging headache, the nauseating feeling that makes you wish you'd never been introduced to a vodka mixer, never mind five, the soul-destroying feeling of "What did I do last night?" until you piece together the night before. The arguments, the tears, the confrontations, the spilled drinks, the sticky shoes and sore feet. Yes. It's worth it, because sometimes, it's not all screams and nasty words being spat left, right and centre. It's not always arguments and fights and petty disagreements and wrong decisions and bad timing. Just sometimes. And even then, we're young enough to accept that mistakes aren't worth dwelling on. The bad nights make the good nights even better, and a night out isn't complete without one bad decision. After all, the only thing that should be neat, is the vodka.