Ruin Nation Read Free

have the potential to make a major embarrassment of yourself, worldwide, and not remember until you have to pick up the pieces the next day. Believe me, I’ve reaped the whirlwind on that one. So, to my mind, it’s best to keep things under wraps. (Or to confine your drinking to the tops of mountains, in countries where no one speaks your language.)
    But the more you lose, the more you cling to what you have. I had a donkey. He was called Bongo, and I clung to him like mad. I remember my father telling me:
    “Young man, you need a stable and a calming influence. And there’s not much that’s more stable and calming than a mule.”
    Dad was right. That smelly, floppy-eared bastard was a part of me. He was stubborn and lazy and all the things I would become. But whilst the bond between man and donkey is pretty much the strongest of all interspecies platonic love – I’m just one man and no match for a van full of council heavies.  And now, as I look down into my clenched fist, I see a requisition form and a receipt. Not much to show for a twenty year friendship and the last link to my childhood. So to Hell with the council and to Hell with Elton. I’ve had enough. I signal Freddy.
    “Absinthes,” I say, “three of the sods.” And then I think better of it. “In fact, you better double that...and add another two!”
    So I shimmy back to the table with a kaleidoscopic display of shot glasses. Elton’s face is a picture – something nasty and German Expressionist, by the looks of it.
    “For you,” I say. “Because you’ve suffered so very much.” And I smile, like a lizard. “Down in one. Every one.”
    “But… fack,” he says, “there’s millions of ‘em!”
    “Because you’ve suffered so very , very much,” I continue in my pungent croon.
    He doesn’t pause to think, just grabs the first glass and throws it down his tubby neck. The next two disappear in quick succession. There’s three gone before he realises I haven’t sugared them and his eyes take on a frogspawn cast. But he still bangs back two more. His last shot has an ominous air to it but, misery leading to consumption, he throws that in after.
    With eyes like jellyfish flesh, he staggers and sways. I picture his internals in my mind’s eye: all that wormwood coursing through his bloodstream; six shots of unsweetened rotgut dancing the Macarena in an already queasy stomach. I stand back because I’ve seen this before and it’s not pretty. 
    “Just going to the toiloooo…” he starts. But the absinthe’s ready for a repeat performance, erupting into a mouth which, despite its Cockney origins, hasn’t the capacity to contain it. There he is, retching into a pint glass, then there he isn’t – nowhere to be seen. But a blind man could tell his location from the Wagnerian roar of projectile vomiting. I write ‘Result’ on my sheet of paper with an arrow pointing to a smiling skull. You see, I’m not big on sympathy either.
    Now I’ve got two absinthes left, I’m no great drinker and Freddy doesn’t do refunds – so I neck one, dip my finger in the other and start cleaning my watch with it. It stops ticking. That’s karma.
    Well, there’s a wailing wall in Jerusalem and I like to think there’s one in every pub. It’s called a urinal, and I know that as long as Elton’s wailing at it, I’ve got some peace and quiet. So I take advantage of the dim lighting and the isolation and sink back into the memories of my recently departed friend (the donkey, that is). I picture his heavy head lolling over the back of the horse truck and the heartrending look of betrayal in his eyes. And I feel afraid for him because, of the two domestic animal species left in this starving nation, he’s one of them.
    But God doesn’t like his playthings having time to themselves. In fact, he can’t like me at all because in comes Elton, wobbling all over the place and spouting sentences already – all inappropriate honesty and embarrassing