It's such a waste to get wasted in the first place?

More often than I'd like to admit, I'll walk past a pub and smell that beautiful and distinctive pub smell, and a little voice in my head will whisper, "We could go in you know. You'd like a drink. There's nothing you've really got to do today. You won't be missed. Go in and we'll drink until we taste delicious oblivion." Occasionally I'll even pause in the doorway, mentally count my change, but then I walk on. I've got quite good at slapping that voice upside the head these days. Just as well really, given I walk past a pub on my way to college every morning. Gone are the days of endless empty bottles of Asda value whisky strewn around my room, of panicking at closing time, of not knowing what it's like to wake up without a hangover. And I'm fine with that. I'm more productive when I'm not drinking every day. I act like a complete knob when I'm wasted. But some days I still wake up with a strong desire to get really fucked up. Today is one of those days. So, in an attempt to dissuade myself from getting drunk (I've got a dentist appointment tomorrow to prod at my recalcitrant wisdom tooth which is going to be unpleasant enough without having to constantly supress the urge to vomit) I'm going to run down my top three worst drinking injuries.

In at number three is my most recent drinking disaster. I'd been out with my cinema colleagues to a fairly horrific student night in terms of clientele and music but it was pretty fantastic in terms of drink deals, so a plan of action formed quickly in my head. The plan of action involved a lot of the £1 shots. Stumbling back home, the tiniest slope caused me to lose my footing and skid along the pavement on my forearm. When I got home I was more concerned with the fact that I'd managed to rip a pair of stockings, however, when I woke up I was in some discomfort due to the fact that I appeared to have managed to remove most of the skin from my right forearm, leaving a weeping, painful mess. When I turned up for my shift my boss took one look at it and went pale. "That's- that's- oh my god. Can we get that covered up? Get a first aider! We can't have that near the food." I was duly bandaged and packed off to consessions. Salt with your popcorn?

I spent a lot of my time at Cambridge in various states of extreme inebriation. On this particular occasion I'd been out at a club and invited various friends back at closing time to continue drinking. Someone rang me to let me know they were at the college gates and I hurried to let them in, pulling on the nearest pair of shoes, heels of course. As I ran across the court to the gate, I lost my footing and fell over, landing with my weight almost entirely on the fingers of my right hand. They were already starting to swell when I got back to my room. Luckily, I took my rings off as by the morning they were so swollen and painful that they were barely recognisable as fingers, never mind flexible. I put off going to the doctor as I didn't want to waste valuable time with my drunken idiocy but when I still couldn't move them two days later a friend bundled me onto a bus to A&E. In the Xray room the woman was very kind and gentle when I said I couldn't straighten my fingers. Until she found out how I'd hurt them, when she pushed my hand flat against the table, splaying my soon-to-be-discovered-broken fingers painfully. I may have let out a manly exclamation of surprise but I suppose I deserved it. I went back out drinking that evening and managed to singe my bandage when trying to light my cigarette. There's no helping some people.


And finally, my piece de resistance. It was my first year and I'd had a rather jolly night at the Cambridge goth night and was leaving, staggering slightly, in my six inch heels. It was just as I arrived at the chip van, in front of a large queue of people, that I lost my footing and plummeted onto the cobbles. Only I was so utterly trashed that I forgot to put my hands out to save myself and landed directly on my face. My shocked boyfriend pulled me to my feet, asking if I was okay. "Absolutely fine!" I slurred with the numbness of the truly bollocksed, "I just want to get my chips." When I reached the front of the queue I was greeted by a look of horror from the chip man, "What happened?! You're bleeding!" he cried, stuffing napkins into my hand. "I'm fine," I protested as boyfriend-of-the-time dabbed at the blood running down my face, "I'd just like some chips please." Poor, long-suffering Boyfriend shepherded me home where I finally had a chance to survey the damage. I had a large graze running the length of my cheek and another on my chin. I stared for a couple of seconds before breaking down into noisy sobs of, "I'm scarred for life! My face is ruined!" Boyfriend managed to get me to shut up and go to bed, just as well as I had to get up bright and early to give a presentation on Luke's Gospel. I tried to hide my disfigurement behind my hair but no one said anything to me. "Couldn't you have put some concealer on?" asked Boyfriend, "They were probably too scared to say anything to you because they thought I was beating you up!"

So there we have it. Drinking is bad for my health. And I don't want a drink at all now.
Absolutely not.

Learning Resource Centre

At my college the library isn't called the library, it's called the Learning Resource Centre. It's an amusing contrast with the libraries in Cambridge. Unlike the University Library's austere corridors, it's open plan and I keep getting caught up in the graphic novel section on my way to Social Policy. The Divinity Faculty Library thought itself terribly forward thinking and liberal because it allowed you to whisper "excuse me" or "have you finished with that?" without the head librarian belting you round the head with Cruden's Concordance. The other day I was sitting in the Learning Resource Centre and two young gentlemen began playing the rap music of a popular beat combo very loudly on YouTube. This would be a sending down offence in the UL but in the Learning Resource Centre, after about five minutes, a librarian scurried over and said, with the utmost politeness, "Boys, this is a library, could you turn that down a bit please."

I like that it's practically the polar opposite of the Cambridge libraries. It means that even if it's never quiet due to ESOL lessons going on in cordened off areas ("Used to is pronounced useter. Repeat after me 'useter, useter, useter'") or teenagers much cooler than me shrieking with laughter, I can spend time there getting work done without the panicked and tearful feelings that the DivFac and the UL useter inspire in me. I've noticed over the past few weeks, however, that the relaxed atmosphere has lead to something I've found common in public libraries: nutters distracting you when you're busy.


My favourite nutter of the past term has to be Christine the Christian. I first met Christine when she asked a friend from my class to help her understand a sociology question. It transpired that she had the same teacher for Sociology as us. Later that afternoon, as I was diligently working away, I felt a tap on the shoulder. It was Christine. She asked if I could help her with something and, naively believing that that something would be to do with sociology, I agreed.

Christine the Christian: I wonder if you could help me understand this, "I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take your crown. Him who overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of my God."
OGH: Erm...
CtC: What do you think it means by crown?
OGH: Um, which book is it from?
CtC: Revelation.
OGH: Well, I'm not too sure that anything from Revelation should be taken literally given that it's most probably an allegory for the fall of the Roman Emp...
CtC: [louder] What does it mean "so that no one will take your crown"? What crown?
OGH: [wearily] Er, I expect it means your belief in God. That people will try to persuade you away from your faith.
CtC: [with a big smile and wide eyes] Yes! That's a very good interpretation! You know your scriptures! Thank you!

At that point I should have pointed out that although I'd spent a good few years studying Theology, I was in fact an atheist and not interested in joining her God club. However she was already walking across the library with a beatific grin on her face so I left it. Big mistake. Now whenever Christine sees me in the library I'm greeted with a cheery smile and a bible verse. Or worse.

OGH is sitting working. ENTER CtC.
CtC: Hello!
OGH: Oh, er, hello.
CtC: You are working hard as usual.
OGH: [Nods while trying not to look up and make eye contact]
CtC: Do you like my hat? [Brandishes a hideous woollen pink and purple number] I got it from Fat Face, you know Fat Face?
OGH: [Looks up, resigned to the inevitable conversation] Yes, yes, very nice.
CtC: [Grins maniacally] I love it, it's a present from Jesus.
OGH: [Looks away very quickly to avoid a laughter incident]
CtC: What are you studying?
OGH: Sociology.
CtC: Ah, yes. I gave that up.
OGH: Really? Why?
CtC: I found it too difficult to think about. And the scriptures say that you shall call no one father except God but we were being taught about the founding fathers of sociology. It was confusing.
OGH: I can imagine. But that's just a figure of speech, surely.
CtC: What do you mean, a figure of speech?
OGH: Right, erm, you know in the Bible, when Jesus talks about the sower of the seed?
CtC: [nods enthusiastically]
OGH: Well, he's not talking about an actual person sowing actual seed is he? He's talking about the different ways of coming to belief in God. So when we say 'founding fathers' we're not saying that they are physical fathers, just that they were the first people with certain ideas.
CtC: Oh. Well I spend so much time studying the scriptures that I don't have time for it.
OGH: [looks at CtC's notepad and sees that it is full of painstakingly written out bible verses in a carefully constructed chart, rather than college work.]

See? Nutters. I feel slightly sullied by engaging on her level but I honestly don't think she's all there. Her course? Access to Teaching. Next week on Lizzie's Loons: the African plumber that keeps asking me to go out with him, despite the fact that I'm a snorting, wheezing snot-monster at the moment.

And I'll be happy to see those nice young men in their clean white coats

Carol had short brown hair and "ethnic" dangly earrings. She was wearing elastic waisted trousers, probably made from fair trade cotton, and had the sort of gold cross around her neck that is supposed to be discreet yet managed to be the first thing I noticed about her. Her smile dripped with so much pity that I wanted to punch her. Instead I sat down opposite her, next to an ailing spider plant probably being slowly choked to death with fake empathy, and waited for her to start. "So," she sighed, "how are you today?" I was in the Cambridge counselling service beginning my second (and last) session.

The previous week I'd sat in the waiting room staring at a poster proclaiming, "Depression feels the same in any language!" with a picture of several people of various creeds and colours standing united in an act of multicultural misery and wondering what I was doing there. This feeling only increased throughout my session and reached a peak during the second session where I was subjected to a barrage of sub-Freudian techniques. Regard:

THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX
Carol: Now last week you said you don't get on with your father...
OGH: No, I said we weren't close. That's not the same.
Carol: You see him as a distant figure?
OGH: I see him as someone who is busy working hard for his family.
Carol: [disappointed] Oh.


FREE ASSOCIATION
Carol: [Stares at me with a gormless expression mirroring that of the Jesus in the icon of the crucifixion on her wall]
OGH: [Stares back]
Carol: [Sighs]
OGH: [Stares]
Carol: Why all the silence?
OGH: Er, you haven't asked me a question yet.
Carol: [sighs with what sounds like the tiniest bit of irritation]

THE ELECTRA COMPLEX
Carol: How about your mother?
OGH: Really, my parents aren't to blame for the fact that I'm a miserable cow.
Carol: You're being rather obstructive to the therapy process.

LAST DITCH ATTEMPT AT ANALYSIS
Carol: You're all dressed in black, with black hair and black make up. It's as if you're in mourning and I wonder what you're in mourning for?
OGH: The lost minutes of my life spent with you dear.

The other day I was watching Bad Girls with the wife (shh, I only watch it for the lesbians). The story line was tackling a particularly gritty subject with its usual rigour when I interjected, "For god's sake, they'd have got a social worker in by now," and then a smile crept accross my face. It finally hit home that I'm going to be a social worker. (Well, in about four years' time if I can find the money to fund another go at university.) And I've got Carol to thank for that. I walked out of her room in 2004 and have spent a fair part of the years since then in the throes of drooling mentalism. After that bad experience it was a year before I sought help again and by that point it was too late for me to remain at Cambridge, but that help was good. I was diagnosed bipolar and have CBTed myself back to functionality and along the way I decided that I wanted to make sure people got the same help I had. That sounds vomitously trite and I do apologise but I could tell you horror stories, there's a lot worse than Carol.


So I've just done the first half term of an access to social care course, with a view to becoming a mental health social worker, and it seems to be going well. Leaving Cambridge was hard, it was so mentally shattering that until quite recently the mere sight of an academic book had me reaching for the whiskey but now I'm actively enjoying using my brain for more than counting out change. I appear to be living up to the potential that I thought I'd comprehensibly pissed up against a wall. It's nice. And it will be even nicer not to be on the receiving end of the social care for once.