Karma in a Large Bottle of Volvic Water – PART TWO

Subsequent to waking up at girl’s house on a harrowing Sunday morning with a lethal hangover and an empty wallet, I embarked on a journey that even Bear Grylls would have been proud of. With no food, water or phone battery charge, I trudged along the bleak pavements of Edinburgh in the vague direction of which I believed to be my house – merely sixteen miles away. Not only was I forced to walk through the capital and beyond, but the burden of crossing the Firth of Forth (a one and a half mile wide river connected to the sea) was also glued to my mind as I almost slipped of the side of the kerb while crossing yet another gloomy street. My odyssey was one of many obstacles, and I would have died for a McDonald’s cheese burger.

My first dilemma came only thirty minutes into the seven hour journey – unrelenting thirst. The drunk version of myself had spent every penny I had at the pub the night before with the girl so the convenient option of strolling into a shop and buying a bottle wasn’t available. This left me with two really quite shit options – to either find the nearest public bathroom and drink shamefully from one of the germ-ridden taps, or to steal a bottle of water from anywhere and everywhere in the ultimate heist of thirst – I did say both were quite shit.

As the sun blasted its rays onto my dripping forehead, I began to scout for any shop, supermarket or building that I suspected may be in possession of a cold-water tap. Surprisingly enough, I found one after a mere ten minutes of walking. Giant yellow letters spelling out Morrison’s, one of the leading supermarket brands in the United Kingdom, began to emerge from the trees obstructing my view and my face lit up in a way that it never had before – the sort of face you’d pull if you had just found your dog after it had been missing for a week. I stepped inside Morrison’s with a heavy ambition on my shoulders, but turned away just a few seconds later when I read the sign on the men’s bathroom door reading: “Cleaning in progress”.

What are the chances of that?

The woman’s bathroom was more open and free than Gandhi, and I was tempted for a brief moment, but my morals declined the opportunity.

The search continued for the next three hours of the journey, but to no avail. I scoured corner shops, mini-supermarkets, anonymous buildings, restaurants and I even pondered a few houses, but the sight of a tap never came into my dizzy vision for as much as I wanted it to. It got to the stage where when I entered a shop in search of a bathroom, I would actually stop by the cold-water bottle section just to stare in awe at the water for a brief moment before leaving. Sad, I know – I’m sure I could easily have scrounged fifty pence off a generous customer for a small bottle, but my confidence that day was virtually non-existent and I had no courage to speak to anyone, barely even myself after what I’d done to myself. Three hours of walking with no food, water or phone and I honestly felt like I was going to die, but I kept going.

I hate schools and I’m not sure why. There’s probably a high chance that it has something to do with the fact that I was mercilessly bullied from the first year to the last, but I’m still open to other reasons. I tend to avoid schools at all costs, and whenever I’m about to pass one, I glance at the time in order to determine whether or not it’s lunch time and I will get ambushed by a group of studious teenagers. I think there’s around the region of around three schools of different varieties on the path that I led home on my journey. I glided past one with ease, the second with only the sight of a few senior students, and the third, well; it was probably one of the most outrageously humiliating experiences of my life.