Practically all the events described below are almost completely accurate in nearly every detail. Only some of the names have been changed to protect the innocuous.
The Flood
Well, what a week it has certainly been in the life of good old Bobby Giraffe. Really America is proving to be quite an eventful and dare I say expensive old place. Spending and drunken guilt have gone through the roof whilst sleep, tea drinking and ceilings have fallen through the bloody floor.
The most noteworthy event of the week took place last Wednesday in what some people are now describing as the Great Flood of Brooklyn. In an effort to make friends, and dare I say influence people, I invited a couple of American chaps along with me to watch the Champions League final between Chelsea and Manchester United. Obviously, as everybody knows, you can’t (and probably shouldn’t) watch football, or soccer as these buggers call it, without drinking vast quantities of beer. Unfortunately due to the rather inconvenient time difference between here and blightly this meant the game kicked off at 2.45 in the afternoon. Subsequently the booze started flowing not long after 1pm. Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear. Well anyone who knows old Bobby Giraffe (AA member since 2001) knows he can hold his own in a drinking pit for as long as the next man. Sadly this was a seething pit of swarthy looking British ex-pats, so the competition was, pretty bleeding stiff. So it was as the afternoon turned hazily to evening, with the red hordes celebrating their second rather fortunate Euro Cup win in living memory, that I found myself softly swaying on my stool. Well to cut a long story short, following a minor ‘sweeping’ from an old Irish Gent, we found our way via various bars to the early hours of the morning.
I would love to be able to say that I remembered the taxi journey back to Brookie, but that would be a, pointless, cowardly and outrageous lie. In fact the next thing I can remember is room-mate number two rushing past my sleeping carcass shouting there’s a flood downstairs, a fucking flood. Quick as bloody whippet I was out of bed and pulling on the first pair of crackers I could find and stumbling through the hall to the bathroom where I found myself paddling in about 4 inches of finest New York bog water. Aghast I began feebly mopping away, a process involving me sloshing the water about from one side of the closet to the other, while the big angry downstairs neighbor stood fiercely watching and enquiring into the status of my tenancy agreement.
Who are you? (with more than a touch of menace)
A friend of Brian’s (drunkenly)
Are you fucking subletting? (menace levels rising)
No, I am just staying for a bit… (slurred)
Well what a sight I must have been, drunk as a skunk, dressed only in yesterdays undies, mop in hand and muttering that I was just staying for a week or so and DEFINITELY NOT sub-letting. Staggering back to bed a few minutes later I put the whole sorry episode behind me and dropped straight back into a blissful sleep. There I stayed until three hours later I was awoken by the lady on the ground floor complaining that her ceiling had also fallen in. Oh my life.
Happily the flood wasn’t my fault after all, merely an example of dodgy New York property and plumbing. So in the end no real harm was done, although that didn’t stop my Thursday being eaten away by guilt, more drink and plenty of what might have beens.
