Goldschlager - goodbye forever ™
One night our tour bus pulled into a hotel complex where we had stayed a few times before on our regular crossings through the state (you drive back and fucking forth continually on tour in America ...East to West ... West to East ... Repeat until insanity) and on this night it so happened the bar attached to the complex was closing down - and therefore having it’s final 'Goodbye forever!' sale.
The phone rang in my hotel room almost the minute I stepped in, and I could tell by the unusually urgent tone in Ritchys brummie voice on the other end this was BIG news - and Ritch rarely gets worked up over anything -
“Ehh up mate!! – They’re only selling all the spirits in the fookin bar for a dollar a fucking go ay’nt they?.. Best fooking get down there”
It was as if the giant finger of the gods of the ruined Liver had pointed directly at us both.
We couldn’t get our crumpled bills out onto the bar quick enough, and before long had acquired a vast and nonsensical array of spirits that no right minded human would ever want to mix in a bin, let alone their body.
We drank and drank until walking became near impossible and the continual giggles threatened the equilibrium of my bladder.
Finally the bar had to shut its doors in the early hours and still wanting to party, we decided to board the bus rather than go to our rooms.
Clinking and giggling we stumbled on board like two pissed up village idiot milkmen making some kind of retarded delivery in the dawn light.
It was at this point I had started swigging from a bottle of ‘Goldschlager’
‘Goldschlager’ is an 80% proof liquor with little flakes of actual gold in apparently.. the sort of thing middle class couples break out for small dram at Christmas to impress their posh mates ..
I’d never even heard of the stuff, but at a dollar a bottle who gives a fuck? - I was glugging it down like water.
We cranked the stereo up as loud as it would go and were doing a sort of swaying drunk dancing in the centre aisle , bottles in hands –fags drooping from our slack mouths as we rocked unsteadily, the windows shaking from the booming bass of the Motorhead anthology CD blasting out.
“Fooking hell mate ... you ok? ” Ritchy slurred.
“I don't know? am I?” I replied, eyelids at low half mast
“Yeah ... You’ve gone a funny colour?” he continued, squinting with lolling inebriated concern.
“I don’t think I can breathe” I replied.
I had noticed since we got back on the bus that it was becoming quite hard to catch my breath, but as with all things when pissed it just didn’t seem to matter.
My chest felt hot and my face felt numb .
I pulled the front of my T shirt up to peek and saw I was covered in big red blotches and little hives on my torso.
“Aww fuck” I said through increasingly wheezing shallow gasps “I think I’m allergic to this stuff?”
I remember Ritchy burst into another fit of red faced hysterics.
And then we passed out.
When I woke some hours later Ritchy was sprawled unconscious opposite me on the bench seat , uncomfortably arranged between the empties and ashtrays.
The stereo was still blaring Motorhead on repeat .
By the amount of liquid on my t shirt it would appear, rather disgustingly, that I had spewed in my sleep - and exceptionally luckily for me that I then hadn't choked on it .
As I very ruefully thought of all the great and unfortunate who had succumbed to that exact fate of stupidity ( Bon Scott, Hendrix, John Bonham etc.) I felt even more embarrassed of myself - and kept hearing the words of the great Monty Python in my banging head -
"You're not the Messiah - you're a very naughty boy"
I think it was at that point I decided it may be an idea to fucking take all the pretending to be the poor mans guns & roses down a notch.
I was from Essex for fucks sake -
they have excellent cricket facilities -
It's just not the done thing.
and besides -
my mum would have been awfully upset as I 100% wouldn't have been wearing clean underwear.
I mean come on - imagine that?
what would the neighbours think?
