Street Cleaning

All the animals come out at night. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets. - Travis Bickle, Taxi Driver (1976)

I had the weekend off. Quite a novelty for me, usually I'm working - after all, Saturday and Sunday are the busiest days in the world of sport. But not this week. This week I was free to amuse myself, weather and money permitting.

Well sadly, both of those elements had a major contributing factor to my actions this weekend. Nevermind. There was a pile of laundry the size of K2 to do, a case of beer that was in danger of going past it's sell-by date, and a whole shelf unit packed with DVDs just aching to be watched.

I got an early night on the Friday, with the intention of starting my weekend with a well deserved lie-in. Guess which idiot forgot to turn his alarm off and was woken up at 6am?

By midday I was onto my 2nd load of washing, my 4th film, and my 5th beer. By early evening the flat smelt like a laundrette, I had become the world's leading expert on Hitchcock movies and I was singing the theme tune to 'Cheers' to myself.

I went to bed at about midnight. Surprisingly I'd had a really enjoyable day. For Sunday I planned on having the lie-in I'd missed out on that morning, and if the weather held up, I'd go for a walk to finally explore the surrounding area. Typically, I was kept awake by the usual Saturday sounds. It starts of with boistrous shouting as large groups head into town for a night out. A few hours later the city is filled with a deafening orchestra of police and ambulance sirens. The night is rounded off by the boistrous voices coming home, usually attempting to sing, kicking tin cans and talking to random lamp-posts at the top of their voices.

...but the next day started off beautifully. I woke early again (must be a sub-conscience thing). I went into the lounge and looked out of the window. The street was deserted but the rain was bucketing down. I stepped out onto the balcony, and just watched the downpour. It felt so fresh and cleansing. (It was at this point that I decided pyjama shorts and a t-shirt were inappropriate attire, so I nipped back in, got changed and went back out again)

The overhang of the roof was just enough to keep my dry, but if I stretched out my arm I could feel the water, so refreshing. The hum of traffic from the duel carriage way in the background almost sounded like a flowing river. I think I stayed there for about 15 minutes. When I went back inside I kept the french windows open so I could carry on listening to the water.

Sadly the rest of the day couldn't match that. I couldn't go out because I'd get soaked, so it was back to the sofa, back to the DVDs and a lot of texting. I did make an attempt to clean the bathroom at one point, and ran a vacuum cleaner over the lounge floor, but other than that I was a sofa slob.

Towards the end of the night I had two bizarre text momemts at almost the same time. Sarah-Jayne suggested I'd been having a fling with Leah from the Isle of Man (chance would be a fine thing... Leah is gorgeous!!) and Jackie suggested I was flirting with her when she told me her divorce had come through. I read the text back, and I still can't work out where the flirt is. I must be good. I can flirt subconsciously now :o) I'm glad I'm hundreds of miles away - I'd be getting slaps from a whole army of women otherwise, and I haven't even done anything (for once!)

So there you go. An uneventful weekend off, but a thoroughly enjoyable one. I'm off again on Tuesday and Wednesday and I get to see French and Saunders Live then. Life isn't always crap.

....sub note. If you want to make structures out of empty cans, don't drink a prime number of beers. When I had 11 empties there was always one left over or I was one short for whatever construction I tried to make. Stupidly I tried again after I'd had two more. 13 was worse than 11 !! Maybe that's why they sell them in multiples of 4.