Karma in a Large Bottle of Volvic Water – PART THREE

I’m stranded over fifteen miles away from my house with no food, water or phone battery charge. But that’s not the full extent of my predicament; I’m also stuck with a lethal hangover and haven’t eaten since the night before. What do I do? I just keep on walking. But then the most embarrassing event unfolds…

At around three hours into my journey, about halfway down the main road leading to the bridge that would eventually take me across to my home county, Fife, I pass a school. I hate schools, and I always try my absolute best to avoid them at those awkward times when teenagers flood out. However, with no phone battery or watch to check the time, walking from the capital back to my house was a dangerous game because to put it frankly (gaha!), I had a more solid idea of what type of cement they used for the pavements than what time it was.

By this point in my journey, it would be a terrible understatement to say that I wasn’t in a bad state – my nose was running inexorably, my legs shaking like maracas and my entire body dripping with sweat – so when a blood-curdling bell sounded and around one hundred premature teenagers began pouring out of the exit of the school as I approached its passing, you can probably imagine the trembling shudder that ricocheted down my spine.

As much as I tried to avoid the army of students charging in my direction from the main exit of the school attempting to force my tired legs into turbo mode, it didn’t seem likely that I would be able to escape. Before I knew it, I was surrounded, scraping my legs along a pavement next to a bustling road with a battalion of prepubescent teenagers, all screaming and giggling their way down the the road as they headed to their normal semi-suburban houses. I would have died to have been able to cross the road in order to avoid the agony of looking like I was one of them, but I saw no opportunity as vehicles flew past at startling speeds.

I was trapped – a pack of what looked like thirteen-year-old girls blocked the front while a company of other loud male teenagers blocked my retreat from the rear. I was just waiting for a bottle of anything to slap me on the back of the head followed by a roar of laughter from behind. As embarrassing as it would have been to have been bullied by a group of young teenagers, it probably would have been worth it for a sip of whatever was in the bottle they might throw at me. Instead however, they all just stared at me as if I was some kind of giant hobo. I suppose I sort of was to them. After three prolonged minutes of running sweat, snot and pure embarrassment, I eventually shook myself free from the cluster as one by one they disappeared into unknown streets. Thank…FUCK.

With the relief of no longer looking like a child stalker, my levels of thirst seemed to sky-rocket as I stepped into the final two-hour push towards the bridge that would take me back to Fife. I could only hope that there was just ONE shop that had a bathroom with a water-running tap on the way. I’d already scouted four different shops, including one of the UK’s largest supermarkets, but to no avail. Even a mirage would have been nice as I walked like a lost idiot in the blazing sun. Well, I was a lost idiot.

Prior to thirty minutes of wiping an endless stream of snot from my nose, traffic lights and a lot more pavement, I reached the one thing I really did not want to see: a fucking motorway.

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.

Six Things that Make Me an Investment to Girls

I really don’t want anyone to read that title and assume that I’m some sort of sex-trafficked whore that’s been imported to Central Asia on a barge run by a group of bearded women – although that does sound a lot more exciting than what my actual life entails. The title stems from a thought I had while walking in the woods a few weeks ago with my dog; the best time to unravel my eccentric thoughts. It began with the familiar thought that I’m not very attractive. However, to perk myself up from the demoralising thought of not being attractive, I began to comfort myself with the thought that I CAN and WILL be more attractive in the future. Megan Fox wasn’t a supermodel in her teenage years, was she?

I’ve got a number of attractivity-enhancing items attached to my body and ego that will help me with my quest to become the next Brad Pitt:

1. Braces

I’ll be wearing these until I’m at least twenty, but the investment of straight teeth is a valuable one in my pursuit of global woman domination.

tumblr_mhlx9ojTJN1r18qwuo1_500

2. Facial Hair

I need some of this, but it’s difficult when you have a face that resembles the softness of a baby’s arse. With the way things are going, I should have at least one patch of bum-fluff to shave off with pride by the time I’m twenty.

beardedman_00

3. Money

Hopefully I won’t still be asking my mum for cigarettes by the time I reach my twenties. Money makes the world go round, and it prevents the embarrassment of asking a girl to buy you a drink because you spent all of your money on getting to the pub.

Rich-man

4. Career

I want to be an astronaut, but I’ll settle for coffee boy for junior customer service advisor’s assistant’s apprentice if the money is right.

Poor_woman_in_Parambikkulam,_India

5. Maturity

This is a key investment for any girl that attaches themself emotionally to a guy. I still laugh at the planet Uranus and I don’t think I’ll be able to accept it as just another planet in our solar system until I’m at least twenty-one.

3285

6. Fitness

By the time I reach twenty-one, I want to be at least eighty-five kilograms of muscle steel and sex appeal.

Fotolia_32316114_S-570x378

I seem to magentise the odd attractive girl from time to time and I’m convinced that it can’t be because of my current affairs or appearance. Girls must surely see me as some sort of manly investment. I may not hard to get in with right now, but by the time I hit twenty-one, I should be a mature, wealthy, enterprising philanthropist with a dainty beard and an uncanny smile that only Zac Efron will be able to compete with. Walking in the woods is dangerous thinking time…

Karma in a Large Bottle of Volvic Water – PART ONE

The balance of life on this planet is so unbelievably toxic and frustrating. It seems far too easy for one to get themselves into a shitty situation than it is for one to get out of a shitty situation and this is something I’ve certainly learned the hard way. One moment I was blissfully snogging the face off this girl I’d recently met on Tinder outside one of the most beautifully decorated flats I’d ever set foot in, and just four hours later, I found myself trudging along a closed off pavement next to a bustling motorway while pitifully swigging from a half-empty (it definitely wasn’t half full) bottle of lukewarm Volvic water. I’m undecided whether or not I believe in karma but if it does exist then it definitely doesn’t work in the same way for me as it does for the rest of the human race. For me, it’s been a sort of spontaneous canon that spurts out pleasure and pain in unpredictable sequences at any random time. I digress, but the fact that I ended up trekking sixteen miles from Edinburgh to my house last week definitely helps my case: that life’s a bitch.

It all sparked from the origins of what I believed was going to be an immaculately superb weekend – and it sort of was in many aspects. I set off on the train to the capital to meet up with this girl I’d been flanting (flirtatious banter) with on Tinder for the previous few weeks and we went out into the city for more than a few drinks and a banterful time. The whole night seemed to flow astoundingly smooth and I even ended up staying at the girl’s flat for the night which on its own certainly breached my pessimistic expectations of me stumbling drunk to the train station at midnight with my trousers down at my ankles in a hopeless attempt to catch a train. As fantastic as my time with the girl had been, I still awoke from a deep slumber at her house and somewhat knew that the day ahead of me was going to be tough. A splitting headache accompanied by an unstoppable temptation to throw up all over her beautifully white cotton bed sheets was quite an explicit sign of what was to come – hell on earth.

The most painful thing about a hangover is not necessarily the piercing headache or agonising stomach pains, but the feeling you acquire when you dive into your pockets and find nothing but a measly collection of bronze coins and an empty cigarette packet. Unfortunately for me and my legs, I’d blasted all of my money at the pub the night before and to my own demise, train stations in Scotland don’t accept crumpled cigarette doubts as a valid form of currency to purchase train tickets. My only option: to ask the girl snoring to my left for a fiver so I could catch a train home. I could easily have done this, but I seriously didn’t want to strip myself of the title of ‘cute stud’ she had coined me as the night before and replace it with something of an annoying leech for her cash. So to avoid the shame and embarrassment of asking her for cash for my train, I decided not to – and left her house an hour later having only taken a few sips of water from her bathroom tap. I had eaten nothing.

It was around twelve o’clock in the afternoon and the last blip of joy from the day came from an intensely passionate kiss with the girl who knew little of the impending disaster of which I was about to embark on. Oh, and my phone had also died – not that it was useful anyway given that I had no texts or calls to use. The only useful commodity I had at my disposal was my unrelenting motivation to make it home alive. Edinburgh is sixteen miles away from my house and there are many obstacles in the way inclusive of one of the busiest motorways in Scotland and a gargantuan bridge known as the Forth Road Bridge which connects the capital of Scotland to my home county, Fife.

Upon beginning my trek in the vague direction of which I believed would lead me back to my house, I was only slightly parched and barely hungry; but after a quint half an hour of walking, the thought of H2O and homemade macaroni cheese became torturous in my head. The alcohol in my system had drained every drop of water from my body and the glaring sun overhead seemed to fry my sweaty forehead unforgivingly. It became quite obvious that if I was to make it home alive, I would need to find some source of water; whether it be through the cunning act of theft in the sketchiest corner shop I could find, or through the less than graceful deed of gargling water from the tap of the men’s bathroom in Morrisons or Tesco. You know your life has taken a turn for the worse when these are the only two options of salvation on offer in the inferno of tragicness that I found myself in. I travelled on through the craggy streets of Edinburgh, winding off into unknown lanes and alleys in search of water and the distant house that probably didn’t give a shit about my horrendous ordeal.

Bipolar Life and Facebook – PART ONE

It’s funny how life has been treating me recently. At around seven o’clock last night I was squeezed up in the corner of my room on my laptop in a fruitful attempt to surpass round 92 on Bloons Tower Defense on hard mode, and ten minutes later, by some miraculous sequence of events involving Facebook and an ex-stripper girl I’d befriended while working in the capital in the summer, I found myself galloping down the stairs in the hopes that my mum would gift me with five pounds so I could embark on another wild night out in the freezing cold of the city. I literally went from being deeply engrossed in a child’s strategy game in the corner of my room, to ostentatiously sipping away at an expensive cocktail while in the presence of a painfully attractive ex-stripper in a bar in Edinburgh in a matter of an hour – I love you, life, even if you are chronically bipolar.

For many, Facebook is a volatile invention that has merely served as a catalyst for fiery arguments, heated altercations and a place for low-esteemed teenagers to vent their petty issues and post limitless pictures of mirrors. But for me, it’s a life-changing innovation that continues to shape my life in surprising ways. Without the invention of Facebook, many of the most memorable in my life would not have occurred (as tragic as that may sound) and last night was no exception.

I received a message from the ex-stripper for no reason that I can think of except that she must have been achingly bored. Why else would anyone message me? I hadn’t spoken to her on this beacon of communication for months nor had I seen her since the summer, but sure enough, I found myself immersed in the conversation for at least ten minutes before she invited me out into the city for a drink. As much as it would have been a dream for me to have grabbed my designer Emporio Armani jacket, hop into my new Bugatti and blaze off towards the city to meet her, I shamefully had to inform her of the significant financial turbulence I was currently enduring and that it would be impossible for me to meet her that night. But to my surprise, she offered not only to pay for my train-fare on the way back from the city, but also for all of my drinks.

Free drinks and train fare courtesy of a sexy ex-stripper girl in the city – a dream!

I could hardly contemplate what had just happened – I had to concentrate my eyes on the screen for at least ten seconds while a hard object simultaneously grew large in my pants before realising the glory of the situation. I fearlessly accepted her invitation and within a matter of seconds the dream of overcoming round 92 on Bloons Tower Defense was quickly thrown to the back of my mind and I found myself cajoling my mum into giving me a fiver before dashing towards the train station at rapid speeds to catch the next train. Although I remained pessimistic about accomplishing anything other than a hug from the girl, the thought of bathroom blowjobs and riveting sex was certainly a prominent one throughout the entirety of the thirty minute train journey to the city. I had absolutely no idea what I was in for – there was no plan as to what bar we were going to drink alcohol in, what alcohol we were going to drink or for how long we were going to drink it for – but due to the fact that there was indefinitely going to be alcohol involved, and a very attractive woman, this didn’t bother me in the slightest.

The only thing we had actually planned was for her to meet at the train station upon my arrival. I stepped off the train in a notion of sheer confidence, knowing that if I portrayed myself as a man of pride and self-reliance, my chances of possibly achieving as little as a snog would naturally increase as she saw me step onto the concrete platform.

When meeting up with a girl, I’ve always found that the mood and mindset I’m in ten seconds before meeting her is usually the one that persists throughout – whether it be painful awkwardness or upbeat confidence, it sticks like napalm in a Vietnamese jungle. For this night, I was in luck and the fear that I’d say something stupid or racist was non-existent. I was an emblem of confidence, and nothing was going to change that. Well, except for when I realised I’d just left my ten packet of cigarettes on the train and fell into a state of minor depression for a few moments.

However, hastily sweeping that under my carpet of sanguine, she informed me that we were going to go to T.G.I Friday’s for a few drinks – the exact location where I had met her and worked in the summer. I had no problem with this, except that I’d sort of left the place on bad terms. Losing my head on the busiest night the restaraunt had ever seen, storming out of the kitchen and then breaking into a ferocious flood of tears on the stairs is more or less how it went; so to enter into the place definitely seemed ominious; but being me, I did so anyway, and quite shamelessly at that. Free alcohol seems to beat down anything.