CONCERNING THE EVENTS OF MONDAY THE 18TH AND OF TUESDAY THE 19TH OF FEBRUARY 2002
Being Events That Took Place 3 or 4 Days Ago From Time of Writing.
On Monday the 18th of February 2002, I woke up, or was woken up, at approx. 8am, by loud noises such as elevators, music, and shouting. I lay in bed for a considerable period of time, ignorant as to what I would be doing with my day, lightly daydreaming, until hunger forced me to rise.
I believe I strolled down to attend a philosophy lecture. When that ended I wandered in a relaxed manner towards the Student Union and booked table three in the snooker club for one hour at seven o’clock. I returned home.
My afternoon was spent in earnest scholarly activity, reading either about Hegel or Kant or about strands of Liberalism. Mr Emmett interrupted this at about three or three-thirty. He phoned me and invited me to binge on Simpsons videos – videos which I had in my possession. Furthermore we were to stay up all night drinking caffeine and so forth. I regretfully informed him that I was playing snooker tonight, and having booked the table, could not devote myself to such activities. I cordially invited the young sir to join me in the sport, and he agreed. I also demanded he drag the other young McCochall down with him. He agreed again. We determined to meet at ten to seven outside the Bot.
I resumed my scholarly activities until I grew hungry and decided to pay my canteen a visit and eat their food. I cannot remember if the food was of great quality or not but I suspect it probably wasn’t. Nevertheless, I ate all of it, probably, and probably returned to my room with an apple. What I did then I don’t know – probably just dithered about watching TV or reading.
At six-thirty or thereabouts Mr Emmett phoned once more. He informed me that he was too lazy to get off his ass and leave the livingroom (which was warm) and come and play snooker. I said, fuck you, is Levin coming? He said, no. I said, who am I going to play with then? I booked it with you or Levin in mind. He said something and I said just get off your ass and come, and we decided that I would pop down with the Simpsons videos and we would go and play snooker.
I headed down soon enough and reached their house at ten-to. I said hurry up and let’s go, and so we went. We walked and talked - mostly about life without electricity. We arrived at the union and proceeded to the snooker room, where we played snooker and drank beer. When the hour was up we dandered back to the house.
When we got to the top of Eglantine Avenue we ran for some reason all the way down to the house. I was wrecked, and so was everyone else. We slumped inside and had a joint and gasped for air and realised how completely unfit we all were. We had another joint and decided to start watching the videos.
Levin went off and made us some coffee, and we watched a couple of episodes and then stopped to watch Rodge and Podge, and Banzai, I think. We had more joints and more coffee and watched The Simpsons.
It wasn’t even midnight and we were all wrecked. I was determined, though, to stay up all night, and so was Emmett. Levin made some noncommittal noises and we called him a loser and other abusive terms and so we all decided to stay up all night. We drank more coffee and started to feel really shite. My stomach made a few weird grumbly noises which neither sounded nor felt particularly pleasing.
I think at about two or three, or maybe four, in the morning, we paused for a break and ate a pizza. We drank more coffee and I played Levin a game of sleepy chess – or maybe I played Emmett. I think I probably played both. We lay about, smoked another joint and drank tea to keep us awake. We listened to Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon, played more chess, and talked. Levin was making motions about going to bed, like a loser, and we told him so. At maybe half five he got up and went to Meabh’s house - whilst we screamed “loser” as loud as we could after him. We made him agree a) not to go to sleep, and b) to meet us at the main gates of the botanic gardens at about eight. He agreed.
We watched a few more Simpsons. At 7.15am I found myself desirous of a dufflecoat. I keep a dufflecoat at the Halls in that room I sometimes sleep in. So we miserably marched towards said Halls. Having arrived and staggered in I stretched and yawned and felt shite, and I think Emmett did too. At seven in the morning the world is an unamusing grey colour with nothing occurring either inside or outside one’s head. We were going to drink more coffee but I was sickened by the stuff at this point (as was Emmett) so we didn’t bother. I phoned Levin, but just got the goddam BT “blah blah blah leave a message” stupid fuck, which meant that Levin had probably turned his phone off goddamm and had probably gone to sleep and probably wouldn’t meet us at the botanic gardens on time.
At this point I shall inform you that before we had ventured upon this quest we had considered deciding to do a few things. Thing number one was go to Stormont and protest against student loans and fees and crap like that. The coach to Stormont was due to leave at 1.00pm which was about five and a half hours away. We three and possibly Hamish were going to start the revolution.
Thing number two was go to the Limelight that night, the Limelight being a drinking establishment where people go and drink. The possibility of us still being awake to go there was very very small. We recognised this and were willing to concede that it probably wouldn’t happen.
So Emmett and I left my room at about ten to eight. We walked up Malone Road and cut through Chlorine Gardens and up and round Stranmillis Road and to the gates of the Botanic Gardens. We were not surprised to find Levin not there.
We wanted to visit the tropical ravine but it didn’t open until ten so we just wandered about. It was lightly drizzling and was slightly cold. We went up past the greenhouse and around to the rose gardens. On the way I showed Emmett where Narnia was.
“Narnia, Mr Emmett,” I said, fuzzed
“Ohright,” Emmett said, likewise fuzzed
“Can’t go in it. Right state of mind. Should be in,” I said
“Yes. I’m very tired,” said Mr Emmett tiredly.
At the rose gardens, or near to them, we took up shelter under a podium somesuchthing. I was tired and all fuzzed up. We stayed there for a while and there was a man with a dog and then we left again and then headed towards the PEC. We passed it and went towards the playing field, then turned round, and walked back towards where we had been. On the way we met Levin.
“Hello Levin what the hell are you doing here.” He had arrived before us at eight. We had been a little bit late. Also, his phone apparently wasn’t working which was why I couldn’t phone him. I apologised for having sent a rather discourteous text message which I had done in my sleepy rage.
He had had half an hour’s sleep, however. This annoyed us greatly, or as greatly as was possible in our fuckedup state. We tiredly called him a “loser” again and wandered about some more. We needed caffeine. We decided to go to the museum cafe. As we walked towards the museum a uniformwoman ran towards us and said “Sorry, the museum’s not open yet.” She looked frightened. We were offended by this.
We trekked up back homewards, shortcutting through the Ashby building, and popped into the shop to get food and milk. Milk was got, and so were sausages. Then we went to the house.
In the house we ate the sausages and drank some milk, and maybe we had some tea or coffee too. People were starting to get up now, and looked unimpressed when we told them we'd been up all night. We were by now very tired.
We needed more caffeine, so we had some tea. It made my stomach growl and twist - I felt no good at all. We watched shitey morning TV and had a few joints, and then … Emmett went to get some videos. But we didn’t watch them. Instead, I went to get Withnail and I. We put it on.
We watched the drink and shooting fish and raving homosexuals and the finest wines known to humanity, in a state of mind which was tired, and I played some more chess against someone. One of the Levins. We smoked more joints.
Withnail and I ended. We took the blackboards out. We scribbled a few formulae on them and then Levin and Neil became immersed in deriving an equation for somethingorother to do with Tescos and the ??
?Cohop”. This took a while but I really wasn’t paying much attention anyway because I was playing a game of chess with the other Levin.
Neil went out to a lecture. We had long ago decided that Stormont wasn’t for us. It was now two o’clock. I was playing some more chess (with some weird made-up rules this time) with Levin MacHill, and Emmett and the McCochallLevin were meanwhile having a wee doodle and the blackboard. They became very enthusiastic and I, glancing at it, was well impressed with their efforts. At about twenty past I started work on it too for I could not resist. Other people gradually dispersed from the room. Just we three tired wrecks enthusiastically stayed creating a blackboard masterpiece until Hamish strolled in and looked bemusedly at our inspired creation.
By twenty-to I think it was finished. Maybe it was later. I don’t know. We mounted it on top of the sofa and drank it all in. Soon an art discussion started. It was a plant, and a cliff, and many things besides. Neil, when he returned, was not impressed; we had drawn over the tesco/cohop equation. He perhaps thought not much of our picture either, the philistine.
We all got back to the equation, using the other blackboard. I was engaged in a futile attempt to derive a way of expressing the cohop equation in terms of mass and energy, whereas Levin was exploring something else - involving the terms “snoochems” (That’s what it sounded like to me) and “horizontality”. By the end he had an equation. It gave Levin two numbers – 364 and 42 – which meant that he didn’t really want to go to either shop, but didn’t want to go the one that was further away most of all. We were all satisfied.
Emmett understandably crawled upstairs and went to bed. The time was about half three. Everyone else buggered off too. Me and Hamish and Levin were left.
We sat on the sofa and laughed out the window at passersby. Levin and me debated going to the Limelight, or maybe taking tea (special tea), or maybe both. We decided that I would go home for dinner and then come back. On my way I would buy us a can of red bull each.
As always happens at about hour 32, the adrenalin kicked in. I was no longer tired. I felt just like I had had a good night’s sleep. I walked up home. I ate my dinner. Foul horrible stuff. I scooted back up to Levin’s. The time was about six o’clock.
I didn’t buy any red bull, which is just as well for Levin had gone to bed like a loser. Everyone else was still there though so I stayed about. A lot of people were going to the Limelight at about half nine. I decided I would go with them.
We smoked some joints and watched TV. At seven the Simpsons came on. There was going to be four in a row tonight.
After a while I decided the Limelight wasn’t for me. We sat watching the Simpsons. At about eight o’clock (during the third Simpson) another joint was rolled and Hamish drank his cider. James said he probably wouldn’t go to the Limelight either. Most people agreed. Hamish was very upset and called us all losers. I said I’d be up for the union or something. This was considered. Me and Hamish decided to go to the union.
The forth Simpson was very odd. It involved Homer giving a hobo a spongebath again and again. Very strange.
Myself and James decided to pay Mr Emmett a wee visit with a joint. He’d been in bed for far too long and it was time he got up, or else he’d be totally wrecked for the rest of the week with a screwed-up biological clock. Emmett was pissed off to see us. He looked bleary eyed and tried to fathom why we were such bastards that would wake him up. We fed the joint into him. He got better. So we sat for a while listening to Nine Inch Nails. Just before ten we went downstairs and we turned the TV to Channel 4 to watch an Aliester Crowley programme. Half way through Levin appeared and he looked tired. The programme ended. I had been awake for 39 hours now and felt fuzzy and fragmented but also ok. Hamish was seen leaving the house. We watched a programme about police killing people in America. Then we smoked another joint. I decided to go home. It was midnight. We had another joint. I had a lecture at ten so I thought it probably wise to go home now and sleep. This I did.