The plan for yesterday was to meet up with my friend Lee who I hadn’t see in a few weeks and go for a coffee together to catch up. We decided to go to the Marina for that coffee which sounded like a good idea. However, neither of us knew where any cafe’s at the Marina were so we just sat at the first one we found. Besides, it didn’t matter where we had our coffee, all we wanted was to be able to have a chat. After a coffee and a slice of chocolate cake we decided to make a move.

We couldn’t think of where to go, and since we are sick of going to the same places over and over again we looked for somewhere original to go. Lee suggested we went to Devil’s Dyke and after I said that I hadn’t managed to go there all these years the decision was made. We sat at the nice pub at the top of Devil’s Dyke where we enjoyed a pint of beer and a nice lunch while ogling the cute waiter and making plans for next summer (Pandora, I found who’s coming with me to America next year). After a couple of hours we drove back down to Brighton, parked Lee’s car at my place and went for another drink to kill some time as he was going to meet another friend of his in a few minutes. After that I went back home to do some cleaning and tidying up around the flat until we could meet up again for more alcohol consumption.

The time passed and as I went out to meet him again I saw something stuck on the car window. Fearing the worst I went to look only to find out the car had been clamped. It was mostly my fault for not knowing that he should have a special permit to park there (as I do live there and I should know this) but it was also bad luck because if we had parked it a 2 metres away or if he had come back 10 minutes earlier this wouldn’t have happened. It took £130 (yes, £130!) and half an hour to have it unclamped. After all this instead of going out again we drove back to his to watch a DVD which we accompanied with wine.

Since we only had lunch and too much alcohol we both got hideously drunk while watching The Producers (I love this film, it’s so funny!). At some point we realised we wanted to smoke but he had run out of cigarettes (I don’t carry cigarettes on me any more as I quit on the 1st of July - I know I never mentioned it before but that’s because I didn’t want to jinx it, I, now, only smoke at home and have two or three cigarettes a day at the most). Being drunk and too lazy to get dressed again with what we were wearing earlier we went out dressed like chavs (I borrowed a tracksuit from Lee which was very similar to the one he was wearing and we ended up looking like twins which added to the ridiculousness of the idea). On the way we were greeted by other chavs in a very nonchalant way and a very drunk guy who told us how he had just argued with some black guy who said had gone off to fetch his gun to shoot him. Many innit’s, geezer’s and no-whah-i-mean’s later we were back home watching the rest of the film. After even more glasses of wine I ended up crashing there as I was too drunk to even keep my eyes open, let alone walk back home.

We woke up at 9 in the morning as Lee had to travel to see his family but I still have a headache. I hate being hangover but it was a great day even though it cost us £130 more than it should have.

I feel so guilty about what happened and he won’t accept my paying him back the ticket so since it is his birthday next week I have decided to get him a present, only I want to spend more money on it than I would normally spend; not only because he deserves it but also to make up for my ignorance which cost him £130. Any ideas on what I could get him?

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Written by Colin Brooks on 22.07.07 at 10:14 am.