From start to finish it was an ugly scene.

I was drunk, had pissed down my leg earlier, was hungover, sweaty, half-mad and began to attack the Popular Music lecturer and a classmate I had never spoken to. I had come in to warm up from December park drinking. 

The new topic appeared to be ”Music to catch around town gang!!!” and was being helmed by the arsehole Phillip Tagg. Yes, I name and shame. A doctor of Popular Music. A fucking virus. A cunt. A cunt in tweeds. A small and pretty English girl with a nice voice had made a mistake. When asked to speak about her love of Gaelic folk music – particularly fiddle – she was sneered at by both class and lecturer. Tagg made a comment regarding Flanagan’s Apple bar and its traditional Irish music scene. Something about catching ”some good auld kill-the-Brits music, ho ho ho.”
This was met by a stinking tide of laughter. 

The girl was dismayed. I had never spoken in there, never listened to that music, seldom came in here and couldn’t give a fuck if Ireland sank.

”There’s a whiff of the Cromwells about you Phillipe,” I barked.
A few semi-literate heads with bad hairdo’s turned. The enemy was in the room.
”I’m sorry, what was that?”
My whole back was running raw sherry, the drink ran down my forehead and I was about to make bad noise.
”You have an odd sense of humour Philippe.” The accent had broken through.
”Oh, I’m sorry, yes that was a little crass.”
”Don’t worry about it, Philippe, it’s inherent in your tweeds.”
”Sorry? Tagg’s disciples blushed.
”You should be, someone was speaking who doesn’t buy NME and you all but shat in her fiddle case.”

His haggard bastard face wanted to leave and have coffee.
”I’m sorry, I did not mean to cause offence, it was just some light banter.”
”Look around, Phillipe – there’s enough light heads in here, why add to the sense of space?”
A creature near the front sporting an alarming collection of hairstyles on one head said ”yeah lighten up mate.”
I turned a new corner.
”I dont believe I was addressing the taxidermy disaster at the front. I was speaking directly to Phillipe.”
”I wish you would stop calling me that.”
”Look, Phillipe – I’ll make this easy for you and the cast of Grease and get back to the park for a drink.” I rose and went to leave, my sherry-addled insides were failing me.
”Again, I’m sorry if I offended you.”
I made it to the door and couldn’t hold it any longer. I retched once and flung my routine over the radiator and a poster of Alabama 3.
”It’s alright, Phillipe. I’m leaving the class for good and this part of my stereotype on your floor.”

I felt really good and made for The Augustus. There was a moment of panic about my financial situation. Would my routine money be stopped? I still had English to cover that, and if called on to explain, I would blame Taggs bigotry and the horror I experienced at his hands.

A small chorus of soft shoes caught me at the corner. It was the small, pretty English girl with the nice voice. Misjudged embraces. ”Thank you for standing up for me” and a load of other guff a hungover man does not need. I didn’t like the contact either. It was odd, I stank and was tired from walking.
”This can all be accounted for if you get me two drinks at The Augustus. A bad mistake. Gallantry for the damned.

She was of upper-crust standing and I was a crust. I was grabbed by the arm and marched. We sat in there with the man who believed he was Bowie and she talked on about Gaelic Folk Music and vomit heroics. I felt that deathly breeze of loneliness again. This moment would be seized by an indie-type. He would feign interest and make a conquest after a nice dinner. Her wallet was all I wanted to violate. The dread questions surfaced. Where was I from? Did I read Yeats? I lived in a bog and had never heard of him, I croaked. No reprieve. ”You’re funny.” Jesus Christ, what was wrong with her. The evening lurched around awkwardly till off-licence time. The routine was ruined.

She had horses, she told me. Dirty, smelly, subservient horses, I told her; oat-fed dung and poetry. That was her deal. She had now worked herself into a vodka frenzy and names dear to her rattled out. People with horses. Or horses?. I made my guts a promise to say something awful if it wouldn’t stop.
”I would love to visit Ireland!”
”You can’t, they’ve knocked it down… there’s only a multi-storey carpark there now. Go visit that!”

My oncoming madness was by now obvious to Bowie but not to her. I had to go outside. She followed. A terrible trait in anyone. The café was closed. No sandwich today. Maybe a squalid liaison would make me feel different. I resolved to try it and put my badly shaking arm around her. There were soft contented noises and something like that thing cats do with their heads to invade peoples space. I did not feel invaded anymore. She smelled of oranges and good air, and I ached and hoped she would have a hundred horses. The familiar street would never let us down, and Bargain Booze and her wallet afforded four bottles of blessed VP.

I said nothing much in the rooms. I listened. It was not her fault she was happy, young and wanted to share it. The room launched itself in all directions and her face stayed eager and the same. It glowed. She was good. The terrible knowledge had left her alone so far. I drank a bottle in one and did a dance. I was applauded for that show of mental unrest and I lived through the act when it came with some sense of real joy. Only one eye stayed on the bottles on the floor. That was a new thing.

She went to sleep. I sat on the stool at the window and opened the blinds to keep my night-time street vigil. The next night I was alone, and when I looked back at her, she was untouched by my shit-tinted spectacles. I poured it down with a very real violence and hummed the theme from Black Beauty.