The easy way to stop drinking

I’ve been wanting to give the drink up for a bit now but I can’t stop going to the pub. I’ve tried before but it never lasts long so I knew what to expect this time round. I should have been beaten up unrecognisable some of the things I say to twats, not that you can say fuck all without offending people these days. They just can’t take a joke anymore, not that they do anything about it. They’ve been stuck up their own arses so long their brains have turned to shit. Listening to the crap on the news I don’t blame them. If you can’t beat them etc. Twats. 

Anyway, back to important things, the pull of the pub’s just too tempting and I’m especially drawn to them at times when very few people are there. 

That Monday I’d only been out a few hours, fucking about on machines, slapping cheap pints back at the beehive. 

Funnily enough that cunt Tim whatever that owns them all was sat at the back talking to his manager. I clocked him from when I’d seen him on the telly when I went for a piss. That unkempt thatch of hair. 

Back at the front with the losers, one a table, staring into space like they were dead, I mentioned to one of them that Tim whatever was there. They all knew anyway but just as I said that we all watched as the cunt got up and walked towards the men’s. 

‘He’s gone in,’ I said. ‘The cunt’s actually gone in’. (It’s one of the worst toilets in Brixton, which is going it some.)

I heard someone splutter over his pint. ‘I’ll give him four seconds to come back out. One, two, three...’

And there he was, right on time, out of there like a rat out of an aqueduct. 

‘Cunt,’ someone muttered. 

Old Tim must have finished his business with the manager because he was coming towards us now with his briefcase. Everyone started to wriggle about in their seats as he got closer. 

‘Nice to see you,’ the guy who’d just called him a cunt said. 

‘Thanks. Everything alright fellas?’ said Tim.

Everyone murmured various versions of yes apart from me. 

‘Toilet could do with a bit of a clean.’

‘Oh OK, he said, ‘I’ll look into that.’

‘A little longer than you did just then then.’

Someone spluttered again, probably Jerry who everyone’s waiting to die. 

‘Well, best be going,’ said Tim. 

‘Not gonna buy us a drink?’

He was out that door quicker than the toilet the cunt. 

‘Typical,’ said Tone, who’s only just been allowed back in after putting an out of towner in hospital this time last year.

I didn’t stop much longer but I had to go to another pub because this loneliness won’t leave me alone and I hate being at home with it. 

The next pub I quite like but the toilet’s a proper minger, a real health hazard. The beehive’s might be bad but this one’s next level shit. 

What happened was, another painter with the gift of the gab had managed to convince the daft landlady in between lockdowns that the beautiful old Victorian urinal block needed to be painted with seven coats of gloss. He’d done it during the next lockdown and now, a year on, after poor cleaning and the piss of a thousand twats, it had started to take on a life of its own. Rothko would have been proud and I’d taken various shots of it (I’m doing a photo album of pub and bookies bogs).

I told the manager I could put it right a few months back but it went clean over his head.

This time, though, he was on me like a mouse on cheese. 

‘I lost your number, mate.’ All that crap. What a plonker. 

I milked it for a bit of fun, told him I’d sort it with nitromors and elbow grease. 

‘When?’ he wanted to know. ‘Someone took a picture of it and put it on social media.’

‘Cheeky git,’ I said, before blagging a quick pint off the cunt. They’re all cunts these days. Utter dick fucks of the highest order. Purveyors of the bottom of the barrel and no better than Tim, the biggest booze retailer in the land. At least he knew he was a cunt. Probably enjoyed it as well. He reminds me of Scrooge actually, in that vulnerable way. 

On the way home I scored some skunk from the doorman at Sainsbury’s local and when I got back I hatched a plan on the effects. 

I hate myself big time already but I hate myself the most when I get home from the pub and this time was particularly bad. 

If I was to stop being a monster, I thought, I needed to stop going to the pub. Trouble was, nobody seemed to want to kick me out any more, whatever I did, which meant drastic action was required. 

The very simple plan was to make them kick me out through low level verbal abuse. I reckoned I could be barred from the lion’s share of pubs around here (all of which I hate) within the week. 

Next day, bright and early (midday) I got up and went out. At the first pub, one of those corporate shitholes, I went up to the bar and waited for the young git to get off his phone. 

Once he’d finished orchestrating another move towards the death of his soul he looked up, said oh sorry and then bumbled over to me, asking what I wanted. 

‘I just came in to say I hate this place and I don’t want to ever be served here again. To make this clear I’m going to call you a fucking stupid cunt and you’re going to act as if I’ve offended the crap out of you. So, you’re a stupid fucking cunt.’

‘You said you were going to call me a fucking stupid cunt, not a stupid fucking cunt.’

‘It sounded better the other way round.’

‘Get out.’ 

‘And don’t come back?’

‘If that’s what you want.’

‘Do I have to say it again?’

I didn’t. It had worked. 

I went to the next shithole and it worked again, same schpeel, an absolute treat. 

The barmaid laughed all playful as I walked out and I almost asked her out for a drink but where would we go when I was on a roll like this? 

The third place wasn’t so good. It’s lucky I’m quick on my feet because the guy took it very badly, the ‘stupid fucking cunt’ bit. 

I creased up when he slipped on his dirty old floor, screaming like a pig smelling blood in the abattoir as he fell. 

Going in the easy hours to divulge my mission’s words when no one else was there made things quite streamlined and I was getting a real buzz from the adrenaline rush. 

Next few days I did three or four a piece and it worked a treat every time. My schpeel was getting more and more challenging but nobody had tried to chase me since the cut pig. Most just said fuck off and got back on their phones. 

I got really brazen after a time. It’s incredible the liberties you can take when you put your mind to it. Look at those bastard tories. They know how to abuse people. 

Like those wankers I was beginning to really enjoy my new license. For drink I’d get a bottle of red from the shops and drink with the telly, swearing at the cunts on the screen. Some days I didn’t even drink so something was definitely getting through to the old grey stuff. 

It all ended when I changed the schpeel a little bit too much. 

The thistle was the last proper local shithole pub I needed to bar myself from. The landlord was one of those quiet ones, just went about his business and didn’t get into idle chit chat with punters, an ordinary type of bloke. 

‘Hi,’ I said, a bit too blithely. Maybe I knew my time was up, you usually do. ‘I’ve always hated this place and I don’t want you to serve me ever again so I’d like you to tell you to go fuck your mum in the mouth at the earliest opp...’

That was it. One swing of that long arm of his and I was laid out on the floor. I’d got lazy, underestimated him. I hadn’t heard that his mum had only just passed on the month before, probably because no one talks to me much these days. God knows why. Anyway he must have been well sore because he knocked seven shades of shit and six teeth out of me after that first punch. 

I loved every second of it until I woke up in the ambulance all groggy. Must have been the drugs they gave me but the plan worked a treat.