Dirty Weekend

Once again, the whirlwind that is my pitiful life has overtaken me and prevented a single moment occuring in which to compose even the slightest note. You'll already have realised that "the slightest note" from me can run to a thousand words, so forgive me. You probably needed the break, anyway. Before I continue with the tense, action-filled thriller that is "trying to bring a speedboat back from Spain", I must bring you up to date with the events that have prevented me from doing so thus far:

On Friday, my good lady took a half-day holiday so that we could leave early from Birmingham for Leeds, and avoid some of the weekend traffic. She was out of work at 1pm, having her hair cut and styled (very nice too, I am obliged to insert here. Quite Farrah Fawcetty. Bangs and parting. Phwoar), before meeting me back at mine for 2pm. We intended to leave by 3. We were away finally at 340pm. Not that the 40 minutes would have made any difference. The journey to Leeds was hellish in every sense of the word. The whole episode lurched from heavy traffic to contraflow to accident (rubbernecking) to moment of movement before snarling up all over again. We arrived in Leeds at 715pm. Both myself and the missus were hot and bothered.

Quickly checking in at the Headingley Lodge Hotel at - yes - Headingley Cricket Ground in Leeds, we changed rapidly. Our rooms double as executive suites - the "back end" of corporate boxes for Test Matches and so on. So, there's this great big door onto the upper terraces - which you cannot open. Very frustrating. The temperature in the room was upwards of 30 degrees, and with an 8-inch fan gasping in the face of its insurmountable task. The good lady tried to play the diabetic card with regard to body temperature, but Little Miss YTS at the front desk, together with her cohort from Fatty Slobby Stupid Lazy Security Ltd, conspired to prevent any such "breaking with protocol". Tsk. Wasters.

My sister's 30th birthday party was being held in the Taverner's Pavilion. She used to work at the Hilton in Leeds, in Food and Beverage. She knows a few people in the trade, and one of them works at the cricket ground now, hence the location. It must be the third family event we've had there - definitely my youngest nephew's post-christening business... maybe it's only the second, but it's certainly become the venue of choice for any northern family business. Anyway, it's roughly L-shaped, with a bar at one end, coming through seating areas and the dancefloor at the elbow, into sat dining tables at the other end. Stretching outwards from the elbow of the L are the steps up and out onto the terraces, which is where scum like me can smoke. Not indoors, unfortunately.

There were a collection of faces from my sister's past - ranging from mates-since-nine to more recent additions to the fold. Many of the later friends are only slightly-known to me, but those that she had at school and early university days are a good bunch, and always good fun. They all are, really, even the ones I don't know. A few iffy ones, but that's life, eh? I got into some food early on - my sister had decided that a one-size fits all meat-or-veggie lasagne, chips and salad, plus bread rolls and butter was all that was needed, and seemingly it did the trick, too. My stomach suitably lined, I began to drink at what was a steady pace, playing it safe for the inevitable karaoke later on.

The DJ for hire was of good quality family event stock, complete with cheery, encouraging patter for all wannabe dancers and - more importantly - singers for his karaoke machine. Once that booze threshold had been reached, which was around 9pm, the machine was almost permanently occupied with singers of all hues and creeds massacring well-known tracks. It was bliss. There are few things in life as glorious as the utter disharmony and caterwauling that is the party karaoke machine. My sister had worried in the run-up to the party that no-one would use it, that everyone would be too shy, that I had to start it off. She needn't have had a single concern: once enough Carlsberg, Tetley and Vins Blancs and Rouges had been drunk, everyone was a million-selling number-one act. Karaoke. God love the Japanese.

A slightly uncomfortable incident ensued, not noticed by anyone, of course, but one that - now I come to write about it - still pisses me off. I have to tell you a bit more about my childhood now. Get on your couches. When my family lived in Birmingham - we moved there when I was eleven in 1985, with me rejoining the family permanently in the city once I'd reached thirteen and finished boarding school down in Sussex - my sister and her friends obviously got a bit of a head-start on me. As it turned out, my sister's earliest non-school friend turned out to be the daughter of the parents who would become my parents' best-friends. And so the die was cast. My friends' parents never really had a look-in, really. Sure, there was maybe one or two parents of my friends that my own might say hello to, but never invite round for dinner. Or go on holiday with. Or share Christmas with. I didn't realise it until right now, but I think that hurts me slightly.

Anyway: the parents of this girl friend of my sister's. The Dad is great. He's like my Dad. Clever. A businessman. Sharp. Spots opportunities. Knows what's going on. Well read in history, politics, religion. A fun bloke to be around. Then there's his wife. Vain. Shallow. Not really very clever at all. Critical. Skin like a saddlebag. The same daft fucking haircut since I first met her 20 years ago, I kid you not. Makeup that would render Morticia Addams "fit". She speaks very highly of me, too. I suspect - though don't know - that this lady, when she has the chance, spouts evil gibberish about me to my Mum, about how I'm no good, that I'm a risk-taker, a drug-taker, can't be depended upon. That I'm a scumbag. That I will go to hell for the way I treat her. And, even if she hasn't, I loathe her for it.

There is a point coming. I go outside for a fag, and end up next to this lady. I had said Hello and kissed her at the beginning of the evening, when she's all smiles and creases. Now - and I think this might be the root problem - this lady likes a drink. She doesn't get drunk. She just becomes mean, I've seen it a million times at a million occasions. Once her gaze has focussed on me - her lifeless, fucked-through eyes need a second to readjust from the middle distance - her venom begins. You should give those up, you know, she begins, referring to the cigarette I am smoking. Yes, I know I should, I offer. But I've tried to give up before. Four, maybe five, times. I've tried patches, gum, willpower. My doctor says there's only acupuncture and hypnosis left. Well, you remember (my husband)? Yes, of course I do, thinking what a daft question it was, given I'd met them 21 years ago. Well, he was told to stop. He was told, you're on a motorway, and you are walking through the traffic, and one day, you're going to get run over. The doctor told him that, and he gave up. Yes, I wish someone else we both know had been as good as (your husband) at following doctors' advice to stop smoking. Her next question stunned me.

Who's that, then? she dumbly fucking enquired. Ahem. Well, my own father. You do remember him? The man who came back and forth between Mallorca and the UK for over a year to have doses of chemotherapy in hospital? The man who, every two Thursdays, skip a week, next two Thursdays, skip a week, and so on... the man who I sat next to for three hours a day on each of those days, watching him wince as the heavy armaments of chemo marched into his arteries, filling him with poison, burning every weak part of the human anatomy away until all it can do is recover, recover, keep on recovering. The man who fought so hard and won the battle against The Big C, the man who - and here's the fucking point, you dumb, moronic slag - despite his success in the face of the World's Biggest Killer (TM), could not give up smoking. The man who, even when his left lung had been removed, continued to pump money into the coffers of British American Tobacco. The man who, one night in May 2004, took his last drag on a cigarette, was unable to reinflate his only surviving lung, and died of a massive heart attack on the floor of his Spanish home, in front of his wife of 18 months.

Oh, Gerald! she squawked, her shrill Hyacinth Bouquet-meets-Mariella Frostrup tones scything through the chilling evening air like cold throwing stars. Yes, Gerald, I agreed. Anyway, as you can imagine, it's pretty hard to walk around these days without being aware that smoking is very bad for you. And so I've been to the doctor to see what advice and help he can give me or strategies I can look into. What's the doctor got to do with it? she screeches. Erm, well, they can give smokers - especially relatively heavy smokers, like me - good advice and pointers towards giving up. You don't need doctors, she scoffed. I asked what she would suggest instead. Well, if you don't know, you'll never know, she dismissed.

Her eyes were glazing over. Not for the first time, I thought how much I disliked the woman, how I always had. How I'd always realised that she was an alcohol-sodden, sun-raddled, hairspray-addicted, half-witted, fucking eejit. The feeling I am sure is mutual, and I don't care one jot (oh no, you've only written about five hundred words about it now, for public consumption on the grandest scale available to you). Mahalo. And so I walked away. I had thought how best to leave, whether I should do what I really want to and tell her to her face what a witch she is, or whether I can just walk off. I took the latter option, interestingly for me. As I walked away, I shook my head from side to side and exhaled the bad air we'd shared.

The rest of the evening was great. I had been, ahem, practising one or two favourites prior to the event, and pretty much knew that Stealer's Wheel with Stuck In The Middle would be my selection, providing no-one went for it earlier. However, given this fact, I thought it best not to go up too early, as I might "take the fun out of it" by being so fabulous. I did spend some time actually looking through the options in the Karaoke songlist/book - I had thought that perhaps I should go for George Michael's Careless Whisper (too slow for now), or maybe Bryan Adams' Summer Of '69 (not a good choice, that's when my parents got married), what about Robbie Williams' Angel (might not make those high notes)? But eventually I settled on my first thought and submitted the relevant paperwork to Dave Dee Double Decks. I set to drinking steadily, and generally cruising from person to person, speaking in turn to Matt, to Michael, to Steve, to Andrew, to Jeff, to Suzi, to Annabel, to all and sundry. Finally, I was called and I made my way to the stage and threw myself into an ebulliently confident rendering of the aforementioned tune, much to the delight of my male counterparts and the now-swooning ladies, who just love a man who can sing.

One lady did come up to me later and tell me that the karaoke was the best. I agreed, everyone should do karaoke, it's such good fun and a great laugh. No, I mean YOU'RE karaoke was the best. You can really sing. Oh, me, I... I stumbled. Don't give me that humble crap, Simon, you know you're good. The bizarre thing about this incident - and all I could think about while she was near me - was that I'd been told a few interesting tales earlier in the evening: the woman involved is married with two kids, to a lovely bloke. He dotes on them, but being a working father, he is around late in the evening and at weekends. He gives his kids what time he can. His wife, on the other hand, and this is second-hand information, does "fuck all except drink". Apparently she's a terrible mother. Apparently, he wants to do one, leave her, and take the kids away. So, as you can imagine, any apparent come-on from a woman such as this is going to leave me pretty cold. Anyway, the night rolled on. The karaoke and disco was dismantled and in the back of a Vauxhall Cavalier by 1230am. We were all out by 1am. A few of us headed back to my sister's room for a "nightcap", whereupon she collapsed and passed out immediately on the bed. We lasted about ten minutes before following suit. A really great party, superb. Loved it.

We were woken on Saturday morning by the sound of our in-room phone, indicating that we should be at reception checking out. We threw clothes on and legged it, getting out by 1130am with about 20 helium balloons in tow. These were duly stuffed into the back of my 3-door hatchback and escorted - anchored to my good lady in the back seat - to my sister's house, where I put them in her bedroom. A quick chat and we left for our next destination, the Malmaison Hotel in Leeds, from where we would conduct stages two and three of the operation.

Being just up and unshowered, we checked in to our beautiful corner room, complete with curved full-height windows overlooking the River Aire. A rapid shower made us presentable again, and we headed down to the bar for one of the hotel's legendary Eggs Benedict. Duly satiated, we headed into town, where unfortunately the Harvey Nicholls sale was on. It's funny, sales. You don't spend any money on clothes all year, and then you spunk half-a-grand on knock-down, last-season stock. Very odd. Strange behaviour. But the rush of getting five high-end items for that money? Incomparable.

A return to the hotel room for going-out showering, before heading back to the hotel bar to meet our evening's entertainment. Both are male, one is very young, and one is not-so-very-young. However, he's not over the hill, not by any stretch. In fact, sometime, the elder of the pair gives us young'uns a run for our collective monies. I used to work with one at a radio station in Leeds, and the other was on my Journalism degree course at university. Both live in or near Leeds. Both are sterling gentlemen. Both have the art of conversation down to a tee. Both are very good gentlemen to spend quality time with.

Having met in the bar, we had a drink before moving to the restaurant for - going round the table - a burger and Long Island Iced Tea for both me and the missus; a Prawn Cocktail (Simple, according to the menu, but anything but in presentation terms) for the younger of our two compatriots; and a pair of £12.95 cocktails for both of our guests. The elder of the two staunchly refused food, as he does not do so beyond 6pm of an evening, ever. We had a good chat, got up to speed with all our lives and jobs and holidays. We wolfed down the food and paid the bill, before repairing to the hotel room for a quick snifter from the in-room bar, a cheeky spliff and off into the night.

Our first destination was the Across The Tracks festival in Leeds that weekend. We entered for free, courtesy of the younger chap's spanky new media job in the city, and duly attached our wristbands. We headed for the first stage, where some quite dubby-plinky-plonky-acid-head music was playing, all rather nice and harmless but not exactly "get on up and get on down" material. We moved to the beer tent, where a lack of beer created clear existential angst among the fretting bar staff. One of them, a bloke, looked like he was about to explode. He was a thin, reedy guy with geeky, spikey hair and a very thin face. He was clearly on the edge already. All it would take would be one, little push...

We finally negotiated our drinks - spirits and mixers, natch - and headed out and around to the main stage. The lights had come up while we'd been at LSD Central, I had noticed, and the lineups had looked pretty good. By the time we'd negotiated the crowd, The Magic Numbers were on stage and were getting on with their sunshiney, balladey, lost-in-love lethargia. We'd finished our first drinks and noticed that this side of the bar did have beer, so ordered some. I was congratulated on "being the first person all evening to order drinks without slurring" by a cute lass in regulation green event t-shirt. I didn't dare tell her why I was so alert.

Rain had begun to appear in spits and spats, so we decided to move on. A quick detour via the hotel to spruce up from the dusty, sweaty outdoor moshing put us back on the straight and narrow, before we headed to Mook, tucked away in a cobbled side alley in the city centre. We'd by now been joined by our younger friend's sister, who lives with her girlfriend in Manchester. Both of them are absolutely charming, and injected that much-needed weekend energy of gay indignance and righteous indignation. All forms of stupidity were attacked - indeed, one of them directly via my own strange experience that evening.

Despite clearly being with my good lady and the rest of our team, I was chatted up by a bloke. Our eyes had met across the dancefloor - mine with no intent other than "alright, having a good time, mate"; his with "ooh, I think I might like to fuck you, sir". He introduced himself, before announcing that I was clearly a Tiger. I was confused. Chinese birthsign apparently, and he was right, actually. He told me he wasn't gay, but he'd been to Birmingham and ended up in the Gay Quarter near to New Street Station. I asked him where he'd been. Thought it all a bit odd. Then made my excuses and rejoined my group. All asked what that had been about, and I told them. In the middle of the telling, our chap returns to me. He puts his pint down on the table, and puts his hand on my shoulder, and leans in. You know what you are, he accuses, you know as well as I know. The only thing is, you don't know it yet. What is it with gay blokes telling straight blokes that "they don't know it yet"? Apparently, it's OK for a 36-year-old gay bloke to have a clear idea of his sexuality by that time in his life... but us 32-year-old heteros, we've got no idea, we're just waiting for the Sexual Revelation, for the cataracts to be burned from our eyes and for it all to become queer. I handed him his pint, and pointed away from our group. He got the message, and was gone. Just another freak, in the freak kingdom.

We moved on from Mook when they turned the lights on and started barking orders. This is fair enough, it's closing time. We parry against the rain, but decide that a trip to Back To Basics was what's needed, and so we head away from the city centre to the industrial outskirts. Our media friend negotiated 3 for free, 3 full price, and so we hit up at four quid each. We entered and walked across the dancefloor, where the young, beautiful and wired of Leeds - not to mention much of the north of England - were gurning, dancing, moving, shaking, grunting, groaning. We found we had no money, and a rapid investigation was turning up no other options. After 3o minutes of people-watching - really good-quality people-watching, as these people are elegantly wasted - we left and headed back to the hotel for a nightcap. The lesbian couple - our younger friend's sister and her lover - were left to their own devices in the clutches of the evil scourge of the nation, clubland; it's drugs, perverts and ne'er-do-wells. Squeezing our guests in past security, we killed another two hours with the minibar, conversation and room service, before gently suggesting that perhaps we called it a night. And so, into the hazy, early morning light they staggered, both with homes, wives and families to go to. And tomorrow - well, later today - I must be Uncle Fun at my youngest nephew's third birthday.

We make about six hours racked up on the sleeping front. Feeling slightly spangled from the excesses of the night before, we dress, pack and check-out. But we grab a quick Eggs Benedict for the road, they can't be beaten. Finally at the car, we dump everything in and head for my sister's place. Thankfully, the party hasn't started. As I arrive - with presents needing wrapping still in their obvious Lego bag - my nephew calls out to me. Hello, Uncle Simon! Are those my presents? Bless the directness of the child. No, I said. I haven't got any presents for you. These are just things I need with me. Some newspapers. Books. Why, is it your birthday? Yes, I'm three today. Are you? I said, teasing him. I hurried inside to get the job done. Five minutes later, his Lego moneybox and Lego fireman's backpack are wrapped, ready to be taken outside and unwrapped. We head downstairs.

First he gets the moneybox, which is like his brother's one of Darth Vader, but only shaped like a Lego brick. I think he's kinda nonplussed with it. Then comes the money. He opens the fireman's pack and his little eyes widen. He realises it shoots water. He is very excited. Once the industrial-strength packing ties have been severed using a powertool, before pulling them between two cars, the damn thing is released. The backpack is filled with water and all hoses connected. Only problem, no water. I start to worry that it's broken. His father - my brother-in-law - heads off for a screwdriver, and we begin to dismantle it. I soon notice that the nozzle swivels, opening the spray holes. Before it's too late, I also realise that the two handles, when pulled apart from each other, take up one gunfull of water. And that when you push them together, it squirts. Joy. There's nothing more frustrating than not being able to work out a toy meant for age 6 upwards.

I had worried that the little lad might not be sturdy enough for a 6-year-olds toy, but I needn't have. He's a chunky little monster, very boisterous and quite rough-and-tumble. He soon had water shooting from the end, with a wild-eyed joy plastered across his grinning mug. This became the Toy Of Choice for his party friends later on - the unit was rarely off someone's back, constantly squirting someone or other, usually a Dad or me.

The party went on beyond our departure, around 430pm. Despite assurances from my sister that pizza for the grown-ups was on its way, they never materialised and so I had to forage over the children's food. Chicken dippers and chips with tomato sauce are the way forward, I believe. Slightly peckish, we made for Wakefield to visit my good lady's sister, her boyfriend, and their new house together.

They've done very well. The house is an excellent house, with wonderful period features blended with state-of-the-art modern installations. They have a large conservatory, leading into a dining room. A large front living room. A massive kitchen, leading into a corridor-based utility towards a downstairs loo. Up the stair, there's a small but very useful storage area off the stairwell, before getting to two very healthily-sized bedrooms, one smaller being used as an office, and the bathroom - complete with free-standing bathtub and overhead, oversized shower head in cubicle. What a gaff. The story continues outside, with their block-paved driveway for two cars (matching green 3-door hatchbacks), side passage, massive - and utility-supplied - garden shed, brick store, decking at house end and bottom of garden, with lawn surrounded by gravel pathway. They've pulled off a blinder.

We chatted for about an hour before heading off. It wasn't long back on the M1 that hunger hit me like a brick in the face: I was feeling sleepy, my eyelids were heavy, I needed fuel. We stopped, and to my two poached eggs and bacon slice and half-muffin with hollandaise, I added a chicken sandwich, fries, onion rings and Coke to the equation. And it did the trick, reet proper. We got home about 830pm, and just chilled and watched telly and caught up with post and various other sundry homebased activity until sleep overtook us at midnight.