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Great Writing - Home > Non-Fiction > Diary of a Bacchanal Part 4
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Non-Fiction
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| Diary of a Bacchanal Part 4 | |
| By Talisker | ||||||||||
| 09 November 2006 | ||||||||||
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The battle continues... Diary of a Bacchanal Part 4 First of all, on this fourth day let me thank all those who have sent supportive PMs, or posted supportive reviews. You all deserve to feel some of the pride I feel, in what has been a joint achievement. I know it sounds clichéd, trite and insincere, but I promise you all, I could not have gotten this far without GW, and in particular without you. Now, first the retrospective view. You can learn something of my third night by reading the last instalment, part 3a – some more from reading Snodlander’s great short story, Klaatu Barada Nikto http://www.greatwriting.co.uk/content/view/5505/ and my 4 a.m. review thereof. It was rough night, but dawn brought a happiness that bordered on ecstasy, a beautiful clear dawn, with every imaginable shade of blue, orange and yellow. If I wasn’t the atheist I am – I would have said that God was giving my efforts a seal of approval. Absurd I know, but it was a spiritual time. Perhaps the lack of alcohol is allowing the 300 mgs of Venlafaxine to do their thing at last, to pump a few endorphins to the correct areas of the brain. Hopefully one day I will be able to do without that crutch as well. One battle at a time though. I lay watching the light grow on the bedroom ceiling and tried to give my thoughts free rein. The first person who sprang to mind was old Fred. Fred was a member of my amateur radio club, back when I used to go, he was about eighty years of age, wore a full length, salt and pepper beard, and told a yarn like only aged uncles and granddads can. Recalling a few of Fred’s finest got me through another hour or two; there was the one where he showed me one square of toilet paper. “Oli”, he said, “when we were in Korea that was all you had to wipe your arse, one little square, and then you had to bury it, so that the enemy trackers couldn’t see it”. He took the square and thrust his right index finger through the middle, pushing the paper down to the base of the finger. “See! You’d stick your finger up your arse, and clean it as best you could”. So what was the paper for? I enquired. Gleefully before my face, he pulled the pierced square of paper up and to his finger tip, and used it to “clean” beneath his nail, laughing at my disgusted countenance. He loved my gullibility. Everyone else had heard the tales. Then there was the story of his time in Singapore and the cockroach problem. Another soldier told Fred that if he poured paraffin down the drain and set it alight, he could wipe out an army of the pests at a stroke. Fatally, the pal gave Fred a gallon of paraffin in an old petrol can. The treatment worked fine. Fred could here all the roaches in the drains beneath his digs popping like popcorn. Unfortunately, his next door neighbour, a little Singaporean man witnessed events and assumed that it was petrol that Fred was pouring down the drain. Fred swears that half the street went up. One woman had her arse scalded, metal drain caps went flying a hundred feet into the air, and Fred’s house was destroyed. But sometimes it was just Fred’s mature wisdom that was funny. During a quieter moment at a Christmas meal, when we’d both had a fair few and were sitting mellowed in the pub, Fred began; “you know what Oli?” “What Fred?” “I bet you sometimes sit down to piss these days”. Somewhat taken aback by the bizarre comment, but in the spirit of honesty imbued by the season, and by the beers, I answered; “Yes Fred, you’re right mate. Sometimes I do. Weasel complains, because sometimes I get piss under the front of the seat, you know?” “Oh yes, Oli. I know only too well mate. You know what though, Oli?” “Yeh?” “When you get to my age Oli. You don’t care very much where you sit down” Silence. Oli (09/11/06)
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