Laminated

It’s said that the language of a country is affected by the culture of the country. Regional dialects, if you will. Ireland, for example, speaks English in a way that’s reflected by…being in Ireland. It rains a lot in Ireland, so we have lots of words for different kinds of rain. There’s pissing, drizzling, spitting, thundering, lashing, bucketing, teeming and…er…raining. I imagine the Spanish have lots of different words for “sunny” and the Norwegians have lots of different words for snow.

Ireland does another thing quite a lot; drinking. And by the same logic, we have many words for the state of drunkenness we invariably find ourselves in. In no particular order, there’s locked, bolloxed, ossified, pissed, out me bleedin tree, gee-eyed, tanked, shit-faced, rat-arsed, in bits, fuck-faced, hammered, jarred, arseholed and to this proud national list, may I add another term:

Laminated.

Admittedly, it doesn’t make sense. To laminate is to seal a piece of paper in bendy, transparent plastic, an activity that bears no resemblance to the state of inebriation. But think about it. Shouldn’t it mean being drunk? Doesn’t it have that ring to it. “I went out and got completely laminated.” Upon hearing that, you’re not likely to go scratching your head with a confused look on your face wondering why someone would go out and get themselves sealed in bendy, transparent plastic. You know, just by being an English speaker, that to be laminated is to be drunk.

I didn’t make up this, indeed some of you may have heard of it. But when my cousin’s husband mentioned that last night, I broke down laughing. Especially the way he said it, in an animated Dublin drawl that really savoured the sound of the word. “Laaaaminaded”. Unfortunately, I took it as my goal for the evening; complete and utter lamination.

I got home from work yesterday at 5.30pm. The cousins had finished St. Stephen’s Day dinner and were in that long intermission between dinner and dessert. I lashed into my helping; free food was being passed around all day in work and I had to say no because I wanted to savour the Christmas dinner a day later. It always tastes a bit better, doesn’t it? During this, I had a bottle or three of Premium Pils, this wonderful and extremely cheap beer from Lidl (a giant German supermarket chain who’ve invaded most of Europe as fast as…. um…. anyway) 4.9% of which was alcohol. Add to that around six cans of 4.3% Heineken and I was in a rather jolly mood. However, I didn’t stop there. Wanting to show the cousins my home town’s hostelries, we walked down into the thick of the Stephen’s Day booze rush. For some reason, this place goes mad on drink the night after the pubs close and last night was no exception. Someone else was paying, so I proceeded to get hammered. We left there, and for some unknown reason we didn’t go home. No. I brought them to another pub. The decision I perished on.

It started off ok. Or maybe it didn’t. I remember talking to people, but I could well have being yelling at them and getting no reply. I get rowdy, loud-mouthed and flirty when drunk. Due to my loved-up state, flirty didn’t happen. But I was pretty much up for anything else; only I fell asleep. My cousin’s husband waked me at some later stage. He really is such a trooper, what a great guy. I had my arm on the table, my head on my arm with my facing pointing to the ground. I turned slightly to the left, yawned, but instead of (stale) air rushing out, an entirely different substance came gushing out in Exorcist-style portions.

I vomited everywhere. Left to right, like some sort of demented lawn sprayer. I hardly ever get sick from drink, and when I do it’s usually because I drank something out of keeping with my usual Heineken/generic reliable beer. I have quite a stomach for drinking large amounts of Dutch grain juice. But no, this time it was one simple problem. Sheer, mindlessly huge volume. I drank WAY too much, and something’s got to give. I gave. All over my “thin” jumper; the one that made me look a bit less chubby and a bit cuddlier. In my wisdom, I put in the wash. It was handwash only, and according to my mother it’s now the size of a child’s bib. One cousin slipped on the way home and wrecked her brand new coat and another cousin was rightly pissed off by the whole night. So was I.

I thought all this shit was behind me. My teetering towards the brink of complete alcoholism had ended and I was on the path to sobriety/less drunkenness. But no; the lessons I had learned from last June weren’t learned after all. I’m still a drunken fool.

And then I thought “would I be like this if Catherine was here?” Would I get steamed in front of the girl I love? And I don’t think I would. Of course, this all may come back to haunt me, but right now I really don’t think I’d get like that with her here. And my gut answer, if you like, to “why not?” is “what’s the point?” Why would I? She’d be there. So it must be all about me having more pride in myself in her presence. I’m thrilled, over the moon happy to think of her sitting beside me as my girlfriend. And while I still can’t believe I’m worthy, I’d do my best to at least seem that way. I’d have more respect for myself because I respect her so much.

Or something, I’m not sure what I’m thinking. I got laminated last night.

j