The Bad & The Ugly

I’m not sure where to begin. It all started with my mother telling me that I had turned suddenly into a ‘bad boy’ when I was about four years old. I was profoundly shocked by this news because I hadn’t worked out before then that good boys could become bad, simply overnight. I’ve been conscious of being bad ever since.

It was my birthday yesterday, but because we’d been celebrating on a massive scale the day before, I made yesterday a fairly quiet occasion. Friday night had been one of those sprawling, expansive, out-of-control events on the Broadway terrace, and yet it had ended most oddly with me drinking coffee until 3:00 a.m. trying to end a friend’s desperate unhappiness. On Saturday the whole of the Broadway crowd de-camped to Nottingham Pride where we sat on a huge parachute under a tree and had a picnic. There were dogs and children and dancing bears and men in drag a-plenty. The sun shone and the bands played and we all had enormous fun. Strangely (for I know not how this happened) I became heavily intoxicated.

After a birthday lunch with my parents yesterday, I then delivered my father to the hospital where he is due to undergo major surgery today. While we were waiting for him to be admitted, it was stiflingly hot and all I could think of was that a cool birthday beer might be waiting for me somewhere. Eventually I returned home, only to face all kinds of hassle in the car park which took ages to sort out – all the time I was getting hotter and hotter. The cool beer seemed an elusive enticement at the time.

However, I had a pleasant evening with a group of foreigners (where are all the English people in this city?) but it ended – after I came home – with me getting depressed and angry. Not a good way to end a birthday at all.

I have woken this morning feeling bewildered and lost. And bad. And ugly to boot. My mother, of course, was right.