Ridiculous alcohol story number 1

I suspect nearly everyone has a few ridiculous alcohol fuelled stories. Well I have several. I think I will share some of them over time. I'm not sure whether they will make me think more finely of alcohol or help me see the warm, enticing, health-giving light of sobriety.

I suspect few people can attribute two house fires to their drinking. I have already written about these on my old blog.

House fire number 1

and

House fire number 2

Another story that recently came to mind was this one....

When I was twenty years old I went inter-railing around Europe with my boyfriend of that time. He was a lovely person but we were not very well suited. He was sensible and tidy, I was reckless and messy - except for when we both drank because then we were both pretty chaotic - probably our only common ground. Our tour of Europe was amazing and a whistlestop one.

Cherbourg - Paris - Cologne - Munich - Zurich - Lucerne - Venice - Innsbruck - Salzburg - Vienna - 40 hour train ride to Athens - Naplion (in the Peloponnese) - Patras - ferry to Brindisi - Bari - Rome - Pisa - Florence - Milan - Bologna - Nice - Biot for a shower - Nice - and home.

However, we nearly gave Venice a miss. Venice - one of the most amazingly unique and beautiful places: an absolutely-must-not-be-missed gem. And we nearly missed it because of - you guessed - alcohol. And the story went like this.....

Our guidebook informed us that we needed to camp on the mainland as the 'island' of Venice certainly does not have any campsites. We found one such campsite. It was pleasant enough. Once settled in with our tiny two person ridge tent pitched, we discovered that the campsite shop sold bottles of wine at 50p for a litre and a half. Our student mentality went 'BINGO' and proceeded to imbibe the fizzy pale liquid in the volume we saw fit for the value we were getting. I think we spent £1.50. We met some fellow Brits - public school boys who we didn't overly get on with but our altered state smoothed things along nicely.

And then we went to bed.

I can still feel the all-over head, body and soul pain I felt that morning as my boyfriend (clearly also suffering to the same extent) said to me something like, 'uuu ot a uj on ur fas.' I murmured 'wha?' and he continued to repeat whatever it was he was trying to communicate until eventually my penny dropped. He was actually saying, 'you've got a slug on your face.' Now in almost every other circumstance other than the one I was in then, being told I had a slug on my face would have resulted in extreme panic, expletives, movement that would mean I looked blurry to any onlooker and every possible expression of disgust a person could muster. But it is an indication of the state I was in that I simply and quite slowly, brushed the slug off my cheek so that it landed next to my head on whatever I was using as a pillow and fell back to sleep.

Hours went by. At one point I remember unzipping the tent to flop my head down on the mud to vomit next to my head and then drew back into the tent like a tortoise going into its shell. Further hours went by. It took until about 2 p.m. before we could move in any way, shape or form. I chose to use my newfound mobility to throw up in a more dignified manner. I rushed to the toilet and flew into the cubicle but despite my state, I could not throw up in that toilet for coiled around the bowl was an extremely long poo that ended - I kid you not - with a little point that just popped over the edge of the toilet rim. I made it to the next toilet - also not in a great state but managed my discerning barfing quite well.

There was more resting and I remember the words, 'I think we'll have to give Venice a miss.' We both agreed as energetically as we could which might have amounted to a miniscule nod limited by pain. The injury we had inflicted upon ourselves was just too great. It can only be down to the fact that we were so young that at about 3. p.m. I suddenly decided we HAD to do Venice. And we did. I was glad we did. We wandered round the alleys, saw St Mark's, the Bridge of Sighs and lapped up that wonderful city. But had we learnt a lesson? Of course we hadn't.