The Old Haunts
Bonus Substack for all (free/paid) subscribers… Here’s a memory…
Right near the end of Courtney Place, there’s a place I always look, it was one of the takeaway joints, I think, or next to one. Might be a restaurant now. I never take it in, exactly, never clock precisely what it is. Probably don’t want to. But I know the exact point. The place. The scene of the crime…
It was many years ago, when I was stumbling home from a pub or two, playing tag with either side of the footpath and then a friend of a friend saw me. He took a comedy-swing, laughing as he mock sucker-punched me. I grabbed his fist, shielding the blow and, lost inside our shared drunk buzz we laughed insanely as I swung him around by his arm.
Straight through the window he went. It was a computer shop. Back then, I mean. The alarm went off. Midnight or 1am or 2am on a Friday night/Saturday morning. And the other guys with him instantly yelled, “Run”. And then did. He got up and ran too. He was laughing, he wasn’t hurt.
They ran in different directions, left me standing there — frozen for a second in the madness and the laughter, and then in the realisation…
I started hoofing it up the middle of the road. Then I reached the taxi-stand. So, I jumped in the first one that would have me. I ordered it to drop me off a few houses up the road. (Some of my best drunk-thinking I thought then – and now). The cab driver asked me for an address, specifically an address. So I pointed up ahead and said just by the corner would do. He waited. So I started walking up the steps of a house about 100m or so up the road from my flat. The security light went on and I panicked – and stumbled and fell down the stairs. I looked around, firstly out of embarrassment, secondly to see if the cab was still there. (It had gone).
I hobbled down the road, sore ankle instantly. Made it down the alley-way to my flat.
I slept like a baby, which is not to say that I woke every two hours screaming and in my own shit, but that I shut down right away, like, erm, a computer. No conscience. Just log off. Done.
Next morning there was a loud knock at the door, and I almost filled my nappy. The fix was in: The cops had found me!
No. It was the flatmate of a friend. To put it bluntly, he won’t ever read this, a guy I never quite liked. He had chosen this day to stop by on his way down the hill from the library. I’d never been so pleased to see him. (And if he does read this, I hope, at the least, he stayed for that part).
Later that day, we smoked a few cones, laughed as we pieced together the shards of the previous evening. It was all just a goof — right? It was weird how it played out…
We were young. And dumb. No real harm done, apart from the window…
I’ve got the one excuse now.
