Before I sober up

Here's two hours of your life back...

Before I sober up

I watched the clock tick slowly, agonizingly forward, no longer even finding each tick straining my heart with boredom as they aligned with its beating. I was at one with my own boredom, the near stillness of my own daily inspiration and excitement.

Just after work, but I’d read online of the severe delays so spent another two hours behind my desk. If I checked my email enough times, one would surely quench my thirst for interest. Double check some old reports from the morning..if they’d had the audacity to be wrong past a deadline, would anger be better than the boredom? Boredom, a lump of iron in the centre of my brain, resting heavily. The anger might be worse.

7:05

There are no new emails. Delays ‘til 8. There’s one more guy here. Do I talk to him? I can already feel the small talk peeling my fingernails back in my mind. Good God. Asking Mr Shirt about his wife and kids could make one hour feel like five, easy. Well, what’s the time now?

5:07

What? Damn machine. Google the time in London...5:07.

“Fred, what’s the time?”

“Just gone 5.”

“Uh...well I’m gonna call it. I’m pretty much all done.”

“See ya tomorrow.”

Getting my coat and whisking past the others saying their formal office goodbyes, with formal polite office laughter, I pushed through the door outside. Free from my windowless office, I saw that it was still light. I chose to just accept whatever my mind was doing to me. Two free hours! What to do?

No really, I thought, what should I do?

The slight elation of a little extra time gave way to the panic and pressure of having to actually use it. What could I do in two hours that could possibly not feel like a wasted opportunity? I wanted to read, paint, get drunk, catch a flight, talk to everyone and no-one, watch a film, go dancing, get laid, all of it in 2 hours.

Picking what I could, I popped to the pub across the street and challenged myself to get f*****g hammered. Beer and tequila, reading whatever depressing or inane tat was in the paper and yelling at strangers about it, stopping to dance to whatever came on the pub stereo until I can see the word ‘C**T’ in everyone eyes.

Looking over the barman's shoulder, it had become 7:08 in just ten minutes, it felt like. 

“F**k you” I said to nobody and stumbled outside to vomit profusely on my tie and shoes. F**k my tie and shoes. I threw them off.

In fact...I criss crossed my drunk a*s back across the street, soaking in the blare of every pissed off car in the city. I barged through the door to my now nearly empty office, and scrawled what I thought to be ‘I QUIT AND I’M BORED’ on the nearest old fax. Or important document. I didn’t care.

My last sight, before turning on my heels, was Fred, Mr Shirt, looking over one shoulder disapprovingly. He’d been given something to tell his wife when he got home.

Right, more time! More time than ever! If I could just get a taxi home to my passport before I sober up..