Stagz and Bad Temperance

Disclaimer: describing something or somebody as different from yourself does not mean you are having a go at them.

I met quite a few people on this stag do I went on today; people I didn’t have any preconception of. Well, that’s a lie. I knew they would have a strong interest in either comic books or video games, quite likely both. Now I have read a few comics (every Roy of The Rovers from April 1986 until it ceased being a weekly comic in 1993;  Watchmen and Superman: The Red Son) and played enough video games for it to be a boring chore to list them all – but not enough for it to be an impossible task. So, i don’t look on either group as something I am above/radically different from.

Then I met these lads and they were perfectly nice, decent, funny lads. And they played a game with 12-sided and 20-sided dice all day. In pubs and bars. If there was a flat surface they played this dice game. At first I as a bit lost for words. That’s a lie, I had words and they were ‘fucking’ and ‘losers’. Which makes me a dick. I know this. I AM THE DICK IN THIS SITUATION ok?

As I reflected on this I thought what the view of me and my mates would be to someone who didn’t like what we liked (that’s not liked – not disliked). These people wouldn’t think much of sport and think it was a bit of a waste of time and not worth that much consideration. Then they would meet us and we’d think nothing of sit watching sport all day whilst talking about sport (either the sport we are watching or some other sport). How fucking boring would we be to those people who don’t like sport? Not boring at all: sport is well better than rolling some dice and I am fucking brilliant. BUT..the point that I have the self-awareness to consider how we might seem odd to other people says a lot more about how amazing I am than any 60-foot statue of me could say.

I did manage to see a bit of the Olympics. We are doing quite well. Admittedly my version of Mo Farah’s win is a man called John looking at his phone and saying “Mo Farah has won” and me going “that’s fucking brilliant”. (The dice game continued without pause.) By this point I had been drinking about nine hours and had just eaten an Indian (meal) and we were in a quiet room in quite a quiet York pub; enthusiasm was not a natural instinct.

I tried to counteract my lethargy and inebriance in the only way I know how (and have sworn not to repeat on many a day lay with aching insides) and that was to order a double vodka while I am waiting for my other drinks at the bar. It’s a sensible attitude to alcohol if you ask me. I would love to say I could blame the alcohol for calling a woman a bit of a cunt later but it was nothing to do with it. She asked me about 45 times how many children I have. I answered none or zero 45 times but it didn’t seem to get the message across. When she did accept that I didn’t have any children it seemed to bewilder here and she said there was something wrong with me. So I said she probably thought that because she was a bit of a cunt. I think I have done nothing wrong there. Yes, calling a stranger a bit of a cunt isn’t the nicest thing in the world but I only reached that stage because she was…well a bit of a cunt.

I am completely aware that I am a lot of a cunt all the time so don’t go pointing out my hypocrisy.