Women don't understand 'romance'

A female companion objected the other night that The Pool Bar, though a fine drinking establishment, was missing a certain 'romance'.

That sound you hear (or can imagine, at least, since you know me well enough now) is my flabber gasting.

The Pool Bar is a classic dive dive. How can someone be blind to the romance of that?

The romance of being on first name terms with the owner (and getting an advance warning if he's planning to open up late); the romance of knowing that you will almost always run into a few old friends there, or make some new ones around the pool table; the romance of staying up talking shit with anyone who'll listen until 3 or 4 in the morning; the romance of sending out for food to the Xinjiang restaurant a couple of doors down; the romance of drinking yourself back sober after 5 or 6 hours and recovering your pool-playing mojo.

There are some bars which can tick off most of the individual elements I identified a while back for Great Bar-ness and yet still they somehow don't quite work. And then there are other bars which seem pretty unremarkable, and yet stuff happens there all the time.

The Pool Bar is one such. For me - incorrigible old soak that I am - it is one of the most romantic places in Beijing; romantic in the older, truer sense of being full of stories.

Old Speckled Hen

One gets used to the nearly flavourless, fizzy, lager-y crap that passes for beer in China. One even starts to like it. But occasionally, a stray memory from the past crops up.... to revive the yearning for decent beer.

Imported beers are still relatively rarely found here (at least, they are in the bog-standard local bars I tend to favour); and when they are, they're prohibitively expensive.

But they have for some time been carrying this old favourite of mine at one of my occasional hang-outs down on Nanluoguxiang, the trendy bar strip that's sprung up in my own backyard over the past couple of years. I fell in love with the Hen during my student days in Oxford (Morland's was a local brewery, based in nearby Abingdon - although I understand it has recently been bought out by Greene King and been moved to Bury St. Edmonds)..... but it's probably a good 10 or 15 years since I last tasted it. Last night I decided to treat myself and The Choirboy to a bottle each, to 'celebrate' my abrupt dismissal from my job.

I had been a little concerned that it might not have travelled, might not have been kept well, might be very old stock...... and would probably cost me an arm and a leg. But I was delighted to discover that it was in fine condition, and a relatively affordable 40 kuai for a half-litre bottle.

And it tasted divine.

That could easily become a habit. After I get myself a new job, perhaps......

Anniversary

Anniversaries never seem to be good for me any more - especially around this time of the year.

Today sees the 2nd anniversary of the break-up which wrought the most devastation ever on my fragile head and heart - an experience which, at the time, I feared I might not survive.

To mark the event, I offer you another of the little jottings of mine that were inspired by the affair (though this one, as you will see, comes from some time afterward). Yes, quite some weeks, or maybe even months later, when she challenged me as to whether I was still in love with her.... well, I wasn't entirely sure. I didn't want to be, but felt that I probably was; recognised that this would not be a welcome response to her, as she was suspicious and resentful of my unresolved feelings, feared they would be an obstacle to our continuing friendship. So, I mumbled an unconvincing denial. And then went home to scribble down this - as a way of analysing those pesky feelings, and starting to exorcise them....

It's another of my list-y experiments (I like the subconscious patterning, the logical drive that this approach so often produces). I'm not sure that it really counts as a poem, as such - but hey, we've got to call it something.

After this, I won't mention this damn business any more. I promise. Well, not too often.....

Stating the Obvious

Have I lost my eyes? Can I no longer see you?
Have I lost my memory? Can I no longer recall what passed between us?
Have I lost my imagination? Can I not picture what might yet pass between us?
Have I lost my judgement? Do I no longer appreciate how extraordinary you are?
Have I lost my artistic sensibility? Am I no longer thrilled by your talent?
Have I lost my passion? Can I perceive all this, and remain unmoved?

No, no, dear girl – of course I am still in love with you. And probably always will be.

Have I lost my mind? Possibly......

Highlight of the Week

In these grim times, it's good to have something to look forward to.

The excellent MAO Live House is staging a show this Friday with the intriguingly mangled title:

"Let's Girl With Rocks."

Hmmm, yes, well.... The concept behind this Chinglish obscurity is, however, delightfully simple: let's put together a bill of top bands led by super-sexy female singers. I think we can all relate to that!

And so we have SUBS, Ziyo, Queen Sea Big Shark - and a new band I've never heard of before, called 24-hr Party People.

This is perhaps too much wonderfulness all at one time: I fear it may induce the gig-goers' (and sexy-lead-singer idolaters') equivalent of an ice-cream headache! But no, it should be a good night. A very good night. And I think I will most definitely be there.

My Theme Song

Or one of them, anyway.

I was complaining just the other day that I had never heard the Tom Waits original of Long Way Home, knew it only from Norah Jones's cover of it on her 'Feels Like Home' album. Well, now, thanks to the wonders of YouTube, I have heard the Tom Waits version, and can share it with all of you. Odd little video - very low-tech, but kind of charming. I wonder if it's an 'official' one or just something put together by a fan.

And then, for comparison's sake, here is the lovely Norah singing it her way on French TV.

Why we drink (??)

"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom."

William Blake (1757-1827)

I think I may have taken a wrong turn somewhere.....

Kiss & Go

I finally caught up with the lovely leaving lady at around 3 in the morning - in Bed (not as exciting as it sounds; the deliberately innuendo-laden name of a trendy local nightspot). The police had closed down her house party shortly after I had tried and failed to get in touch with any of the people I was supposed to have gone with.... so I hadn't really missed out on anything.

A five-second dance, a hug and a cheek-kiss, and I was on my way again. I hope she wasn't too disappointed at the tokenism of this...... but I was completely wrecked by that point.

I was already well-oiled from a beer-lubricated late supper - and then a ridiculously over-generous slug of malt Scotch at the new Andingmen music bar. Then I stopped in at the Pool Bar on the way home. My sometime pool-playing buddy, DS, was in there, so we exchanged a few drinks. Then another guy I know slightly wandered in off the street (editor of one of the expat listings mags); he bought a bottle of JD, poured me a huge one from it, and promptly disappeared again.....

So, by the time I finally caught up with the gorgeous departing one, I was in the floaty zone, and thought it prudent to continue on my way home before I did anything to seriously embarrass myself. (Such as making a pass at an utterly gorgeous woman who I barely know and is far too young for me and is so far out of my league and is leaving the country the next day anyway...... you know the kind of thing.)

The Long Way Home

Amongst the many wonderful things about the Pool Bar, its location is probably the key factor that has made it such an essential feature of my life this year. (It was brought home to me just how much of a regular I have become when Luke, the owner, took me aside last weekend to apologise for the fact that he would be opening late on Monday [he was taking his mum out to dinner for her birthday, probably wouldn't be unlocking the doors till 8 or 9]. I don't go in on Mondays, honestly. Not often. Still, it's nice to know these things....)

Location - yes. It is just so dangerously perfect in its location. It is on the way home for me. From almost anywhere I might happen to be.

It's at the top of Nanluoguxiang, the coolest little bar street in the city, and the main place I go to chill out these days. It's less than 5 minutes away from The Yacht Club (which is my other, older favourite bar..... but doesn't have quite the same party vibe). It's 10 or 15 minutes away from Jianghu (which is my other contender for Bar Of The Year..... although I really only go there for the music, whereas I go to the Pool Bar whenever......). It's directly opposite MAO Live House, these days the best music bar in Beijing. It's mid-way between my home and Gui Jie ("Ghost Street"), the city's famous 24-hour restaurant strip, which is the likeliest venue for dinner party engagements (nobody cooks at home over here - eating out is so much easier and cheaper). Even on those rare occasions when I have been out further afield, in the city centre, I will sometimes choose to walk home - or direct the taxi to go along that street...... and then not resist the temptation to stop off at the Pool Bar for "just the one", and leave myself with the now oh-so-familiar 25-minute stagger home.

Last night I was checking out a new bar on Andingmen Neidajie - half a block east, half a block north. If I had been seriously interested in getting to bed promptly, I would have gone north and then west. But it's such a boring walk along the 2nd Ringroad. No, I decided to walk south, half a mile out of my way.... just to have some more pleasant scenery along the way home, and a little more exercise, you understand. I really wasn't planning to go to the Pool Bar..... and get stuck there till 2 or 3 in the morning again.

[By the way, I loved that song as soon as I heard the Norah Jones cover of it. When I learned that it was a Tom Waits composition - well, I wasn't surprised; but I've never heard his version. If anyone is thinking of sending me a Christmas present this year (hint, hint), I don't have his Orphans triple album yet. I believe it's included in there somewhere. "Head full of lightning, hat full rain...."]

Modern Life

Last night I'd been to a concert and dinner with a gaggle of girly mates ("The Coven"). They were going on to a leaving party at the apartment of a rather gorgeous American girl. (Why do I only meet these people when they're about to leave?! Oh, the torments of expat life!) I was going to tag along, but had promised to look in at a nearby bar first to hear my guitar buddies, Dan & Nico, playing some '50s rock'n'roll (I've been one of their prime groupies for a couple of years now, but I've never heard them play electric before).

My plan had been to catch a few songs, maybe one set, and then trot along to the party (which was, as I gathered, only just around the corner). Timing was good - the band were starting up just as I arrived at 10.45. While I was enjoying their show, I fired off a few text messages to Coven members, asking how the party was going, begging address details or directions. No reply. At 11.30pm the first set came to a close, and I began making calls to seek guidance to the party. No reply from any of them.

A-ha....... we'd been to a performance of Handel's Messiah earlier. We'd all dutifully put our phones on 'mute'. And then forgotten to un-mute them (me too!).

Such are the hazards of modern life.

Serendipity

Last night, I finally got around to checking out a new bar on the fringes of my 'hood that has been producing some good word-of-mouth since it opened a month or two back. It's the place that the Man In Black keeps trying to persuade me to go to at 4 o'clock in the morning for one of its eccentrically timed 'happy hours' (it aims to keep going 24-hours-a-day, and I believe it has 4 or 5 of these just-when-you-least-expected-it discount hours..... but no-one ever seems to be quite sure when).

A fuller write-up will follow after second and third visits - but the initial impressions are mostly good.

Drinking alone there last night, I was moved to send the following SMS to certain of my regular drinking companions, including The Choirboy and MIB:

"They free-pour their spirits here! I just got a treble Glenfiddich for 40 kuai!! So long, been nice knowing you......."

Wound salting

Staggering clear from the flaming wreckage of a miserably failed pass last night.... I really did not need to run into my ex's best friend and have him tell me how unhappily single she is and how she could so do with finding a nice boyfriend. No, that's just Fate taking the piss.....

In fact, it happened twice in quick succession. Although 'ex' is not really the right term: well, one was an ex, The Ex Who Would Still Be Current Girlfriend If There Were A Just God; the other was my Rebound Fixation (who might/could/should have become a girlfriend if she weren't too busy ever to go out on dates).

Yes, Fate, I feel, is trying to tell me something. Something no doubt prefixed by a taunting Nelson Muntz ha-haaa. Probably something like, "You couldn't get laid at a porn star convention!"

(Hat tip to The British Cowboy for that last reference, of course.)

Return of The Man In Black

I was out till 4.30am again last night. This is becoming a habit.

Not at all an unpleasant habit..... Well, not if I were 10 years younger, 10lbs lighter, substantially more wealthy, and didn't have to work all week.... As it is, I am thinking it is really not the way I wanted to start the weekend.

Dammit, Froog, snap out of it! You just need to get back in practice.

I remember my first time in New Orleans, calling my mum in England from a payphone after my first 2 or 3 days there, and saying, when asked how I was enjoying it, "Oh, it's great - but I'm getting a little tired. I think there's only so much of 24-hour-opening bars and a live jazz club on every street corner that a man can stand."

And she said, sadly, teasingly, "Oh, Froog - you sound as if you're getting old."

Me? Old?? Never!

Next week, MIB, next week...... I'll send you home first.

HBH 56

A room full of women
(All gorgeous, tipsy, willing)
- Empty but for you.

A wintry affair

I've mentioned before (long ago, over on Froogville) that one of the first things my Great Lost Love, The Poet, ever said to me was that she had a line that was nagging at her and she was trying to work something up around it: "Who am I to say what gleams?"

I was powerfully struck by it too, though not so much, perhaps, for the line itself, or the allusions it was pregnant with, but for the unexpected suggestion of self-deprecation in it. It wasn't something I could ever conceive of saying 'in my own voice', because it's so out of tune with my robust self-image. However, it did set my mind running, and I knocked off a few little pieces of my own around the idea of 'gleaming' in the following days (one of the best I already included in that early post I just mentioned).

The first, though, and perhaps in some ways the best (the most raw, the most immediate, the most heartfelt), was in my head when I woke up (after a night of troubled sleep) the morning after my first proper date with her. I met her late in October, pursued her with varied success throughout the following month, and then finally consummated the affair for two mad, glorious weeks at the beginning of December..... and then spent the next 3 or 4 months getting over it. It was a chilly autumn that year, and an early, brutal onset of winter. I remember a lot of drab, foggy days; and a lot of bright but fiercely cold ones.

Beijing can be a particularly bleak city, especially in that kind of weather. And such was the inspiration behind this - it is as much a Beijing poem (one of my only ones, oddly enough) as it is a poem about her. Context is all, I suppose: I couldn't help but view her as part of Beijing.

I think that I sensed a sadness in her when she spoke this line, a fragility of self-image - and that produced a powerful, overwhelming urge in me to try to reassure her, to make her feel appreciated, to help her feel stronger about who she was. It was amazing to me that she could pose such a self-doubting question. Surely, I wanted to tell her, you must realise that you are the gleamingest thing in this whole damn city?!

It only recently occurred to me that I am now navigating the anniversary for the second time. It still resonates powerfully in my soul. I suspect this is the reason why I have been so cranky and depressed over the last couple of weeks, despite the blue skies and comparatively mild weather, quite different from what it was in most of those crazy weeks I was with her - or after her, anyway. (I remember it snowed on about the 2nd or 3rd of December that year, and she commented - rather unexpectedly, somewhat out of character! - on how romantic it was to be walking home hand-in-hand with me through the snow. That was about the high point of the whole relationship. The snow didn't last long, and soon turned to slush..... Yes, that's another metaphor taking me over, there. Stop it!)

Anyway, the poem:


Know that you gleam

Amid the dross of this our daily life
In the blank hugeness of the city
Among the expat flotsam & jetsam
You gleam

Down a million grubby alleys
In a thousand smoky bars
Amongst the half-arsed conversations
You gleam

In the drear of autumn,
In dusty parks, on gridlocked streets
Among the billion soulless souls
You gleam

Amid the dullness everywhere
Dull brains, dull minds, dull hearts
Against the greyness everywhere
In a grey city, grey world
The one bright thing

The Great Kissing Debate....

.... comes at a particularly inopportune time for me.

And in case you wonder what I'm rambling about now - the utterly fabulous Moonrat (yes, what can I say? It's a 'blog-crush'!) happened upon this article a day or two ago on (alleged) gender differences in attitudes to kissing, which in turn provoked this discussion on her blog, to which I have felt moved to make a number of contributions.

And it's bad timing because? Because, just as I am poised on the brink of possible decisive action with Madame X, it reminded me that just about every English girl I've ever kissed has been somewhere in the Poor-to-Terrible range as a kisser. And Madame X, despite being utterly lovely in so many, many ways..... is very English.

After all these months of frustrated yearning and wistful anticipation, I am now in a quivering funk that it may all fizzle embarrassingly with the first kiss. I know that's always a danger with a first kiss, but in this case it seems like more than just your justifiable 5-1, Russian Roulette-style gamble. Statistics would seem to indicate that it is a racing certainty. Then again, the sample I'm basing this prejudice on isn't exactly huge. Maybe I've just been freakishly unlucky on those half dozen or so previous occasions. Maybe....

"In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions
That a minute will reverse."

The elements come together

The elements being:

A huge pig-out of a Xinjiang meal (all you can eat and drink for about $3!!)

A secluded booth on the balcony of a cosy bar

Some congenial company

A friendly game of poker

Lots of beer

A few free hits of dope

La Belle Quebecoise singing with her groovy French jazz band (swooooon)

A quick look in at the Pool Bar on the way home (and finding no-one else there!)

Another run of decent form on the table

Being given a free run of the music playlist on the computer by old laoban

Yup, pretty nearly the perfect evening......

Fatalist paranoia (again)

When I met up with The Chairman mid-evening yesterday, we were both pretty darned hungry after a long day with hardly any food.

We rendezvoused in The Worm, but I've mentioned before that the food there is a tad pricey and rather variable in quality. The Den seemed like a good option - standard pub grub at reasonable prices, and 75 minutes left to run on their very generous Happy Hour (till 10pm). The Den, we found, had closed - "for refurbishments" - that very evening. Damn.

We had a debate about whether to try a good Thai place nearby (too expensive), or the recently-opened Hooters (too tacky), or the new pizza joint at Gongti Beimen (portions too ridiculously large); eventually we decided upon the new Nanjie (5 minutes walk back the way we had come, but still...), which offers standard, no-fuss bar fare. When we got to Nanjie on the stroke of 9pm, their nightly DJ was already warming up - eardrum-bludgeoning house music: brain-squelchingly intolerable downstairs, still loud enough to be very, very annoying upstairs. We turned on our heels and left. (The new Nanjie, alas, is not going to make it on to my 'fave bars' list; and, on this showing, it could well wind up on the 'hate list'.)

There were no other decent options in the neighbourhood (The Rickshaw does decent grub, but is otherwise an execrable bar - and too bloody expensive once 'happy hour' is over), so we decided to head back towards my 'hood. Hailing a cab immediately outside Nanjie (and noting a driver number around the 100000 mark - usually a good sign), we thought we'd soon be on our way. But no - the driver resisted all attempts to persuade him to pull a U-turn and head out of the parking lot area back past The Worm (which I'm sure he's allowed to do, since the traffic through the barrier in front of the Worm is two-way), instead obstinately steering towards the north exit on to Gongti Beilu - which would require him to turn right (the wrong way - there being a barrier down the middle of the road preventing you from immediately turning left on to the opposite carriageway), and go half a mile out of our way, all the way down to the junction with the 3rd Ringroad, before being able to pull the necessary U-ey. At least, that was what we hungrily hoped would happen..... but, for some reason, traffic eastbound on Beilu was completely gridlocked, and 10 minutes later we were still queueing to get out of the carpark. We abandoned our shithead driver, and crossed the road in search of another cab to take us west (no traffic problems at all in that direction).

From there on, things went pretty smoothly, and by 9.45 we were happily chowing down on Nanluoguxiang. But when you're that hungry, an hour's delay can seem like 3 hours. And it was a particularly strange and vexing combination of thwarting circumstance we had suffered. We had really, really wanted to go to The Den.

[An aside. I presume there must have been some big event enticing taxi drivers over towards Chaoyang Park last night, because almost all the vehicles in the gridlocked line creeping east along Gongti Beilu at 9pm were taxis - without any fares aboard. Strange....]

Traffic Report - blog stats for November '07

Well, we have at least scaled back a bit from the 'monster month' that was October - though still, perhaps, just a little too prolific for our good or yours.

54 posts and 15,000 words here on Froogville.

34 posts and 9,000 words over on the Barstool.

I haven't examined the detailed site traffic breakdown for quite a while. The number of daily hits seems to be fairly stable (though most of those are probably from Tulsa and myself), but there have been several much-commented-upon posts on both blogs over the last month, which is rather satisfying. We also had a first-time commenter at the weekend (Rachel, from Arkansas, whose blog has the excellent name: "Is it reflection or just plain bitchin?"), which was nice.

However, my attempts to entice more of my overseas friends from my former e-bulletin mailing list to join us here on a more regular basis are still bearing woefully little fruit. I shall keep trying - for a little while longer, at least.

December - holiday season - could be another bumper month! Then again, I may just succumb to SAD, and become a recluse again....

Recommended Posts, July-September 2007

Guided Tour - recommended posts from the 3rd quarter of '07



1) Two bon mots for the price of one - 10th September

I always try to give value!


2) A bon mot on drinking & gambling - 3rd September

An interesting observation on nights of drunken excess from Jim Morrison of The Doors.


3) Lingering enmity - 1st September

A brief comment on my least favourite bar in Beijing.


4) PWG - 31st August

I create a new acronym: convenient shorthand for the late-afternoon rallying call to gather for restorative drinks - let's go for a Post-Work Gargle!


5) HBH 43: A sidewalk barbecue stall in west China - 31st August

One of the most popular of my recent haiku - inspired by a work trip to Szechuan.


6) More Chinglish fun - 30th August

Some amusing, disturbing manglings of English observed on a recent business trip.


7) "Jello Biafra cut my hair" - 22nd August

My favourite line from this year's trip to the Edinburgh Festival.


8) All-night cellar bar - 19th August

The highlight of this year's Edinburgh experience occurs in a bar I don't even know the name of! (Also celebrated in this haiku.)


9) Edinburgh Fringe reviews - 12th August

My round-up of the best shows I saw on The Fringe this summer.


10) Midnight - 25th July

Remembering Beijing's best - sadly short-lived - cocktail bar, and one particular evening I spent there with a Great Lost Love.


11) The Wasteland - 24th July

A tearful farewell (with pictures) to Beijing's most characterful trio of bars (written up in more detail here) - all marked for demolition to make way for a disgusting new mega-mall.


12) & 13) How not to run a bar & How not to run a bar (2) - 23rd July

Two astounding examples of rudeness and shoddy management from foreign-owned bars in Beijing.


14) The Devil's Triangle - 22nd July

Remembering my favourite trio of Beijing bars.


15) Unique Selling Point - 19th July

Adding formaldehyde to beer is so common in China that its absence can become a focus of advertising - alarming, but true!


16) Unhelpful - 10th July

Two more micro-anecdotes about my Oxford student days, featuring the unlikely hero of my blog - The Bookseller.


17) Bar Crazy - 8th July

On a business trip to Xi'an, I discover a street with 27 bars in the space of a quarter of a mile. Ah, China....


18) Unlucky 13 - 7th July

An unfortunate altercation relegates one of my former favourite bars to the 'Hate List'.

A (poetic) bon mot on relationships

"I drink because she nags," he thinks.
She says, "I nag because he drinks."
But if the truth be known to you,
He's a lush and she's a shrew.


Ogden Nash (1902-1971)

Return of the Mojo

Maybe it's the new set of balls. (The old set were cratered like the surface of the Moon, and gave a lot of bad 'kicks'.)

Maybe it's the suddenly much-improved music selection. (There used to be a pretty narrow playlist on the boss's computer - with a long sequence of early Bob Marley recordings being the only real pool-playing music.... and sudden random outbreaks of crappy boy-band schmaltz anthems or droningly repetitive techno trance dance offal likely to completely spoil the mood at any moment. But last night, we had a superb run of heavy rock I'd never heard in there before: Guns'n'Roses, Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, Black Sabbath. And AC/DC. Superb! Now, that is pool-playing music!!)

Maybe it was the rare evening of alcoholic moderation which had preceded the session.

Or maybe it's just the fact that I have had so many late nights recently that I have re-programmed my body-clock such that my brain is now at its most alert and focused between 12 midnight and 1.30am.

Whatever it was, suddenly my pool mojo is back!

Much as I love The Pool Bar as a drinking den, it has not been kind to my game. The table has deteriorated rapidly over the past few months (although Luke, the owner, promises that he is finally going to get it refurbished some time later this week): it's now behaving so eccentrically that it undermines your judgement of the angles, and makes it almost completely impossible to play anything slow. My confidence has taken a pounding from a long losing record. There are too many players who are just too good for me in there. And I simply haven't been playing well: my technique's been getting shaky - I haven't even managed to give many people a good game in weeks, and victories have been very, very few.

Last night, I really was planning on a much-needed 'early' night. But I was walking home after dinner, and The Pool Bar was on the way. I couldn't resist putting my head around the door, just to say 'hi', just to see who might be in there. As it happened, two English buddies, MA and DS, were in there. Both very tough opponents. I think MA is, in fact, on his day, the best pool player I've seen in China..... probably a little better even than The Chairman (he certainly has a stronger technique and greater consistency; but may perhaps lack the uncanny, seemingly unconsidered positional genius of Chairman Tony, the notorious Chairmanizing 'luck'). I have still to set up a 'challenge match' between them to determine the issue.

In such company, I was hesitant about putting my name up on the board, but..... heck, I'm never one to duck a challenge. And the night was still young (well, not yet quite midnight!!).

MA was not quite at his best. He gave me a few chances that he does not normally give. But I played well. I won. I beat his mate DS as well. Then I beat MA again. Unbelievable! OK, then they both beat me. But I was still playing well. I was beginning to think the magic might be fading, though. I was well after 1am now. They both decided they ought to call it quits for the night. I thought I'd stay just a little bit longer, to offer a game to one of the best Chinese players in there. Now, he had looked to be on white-hot form. But, somehow or other, I managed to beat him too. Twice.

Last night, it all just started coming together for me. I was relaxed and confident, striking the balls smoothly, judging the angles well, raising my game when under pressure. In all the games I won, I had been substantially behind, and fought my way back into contention. In most of them I had to pull off a 3- or 4-ball clearance (on one occasion, I think, a 5-ball clearance) to win.

Good times.

Of course, I worry that it is a bad omen for the Madame X situation.....

Rude Awakening

Yesterday I was kept out drinking till around 4.30, didn't get home till nearly 5, crashed out sitting bolt upright on a sofa as soon as I got through the door.... and thus didn't actually get myself into bed until about 7.30am.

I had proposed that my landlord come round to collect the next quarter's rent at 10am, but my Chinese go-between hadn't confirmed for me that he was OK with this..... so I had been optimistically assuming that he would come back to me with an alternate rendezvous time a day or two later.

But no - at about two minutes past 10am I got a phone call from my Chinese friend telling me that the landlord was outside my door and annoyed that I wasn't answering (I really don't think he can have been knocking very loud..... but I was very deeply asleep.....). It was lucky that I'd left my phone ringer on (most of the time I just set it to 'vibrate'). It was lucky that I'd left it in the pocket of my trousers beside my bed (although it did take me a good minute or so to locate and retrieve it). It was lucky that I had slept in my clothes (except for the trousers, that is), and was thus able to let the landlord in within seconds. It was lucky that I had taken the precaution of completing the preparatory tidying-up-and-mopping-the-floor ritual before I went out on Friday.

Very lucky indeed. The guy would have been livid if I'd stood him up on rent day.

Not a good start to the weekend....

Shore Leave

I'm not sure if this is a common expression, perhaps even a standardized 'system' in some parts of America, or whether it is a unique invention of The Man In Black, with whom I went out on Friday night - but he began our evening with an exuberant elaboration of his meaning of the term, over several beers in Huxley's. He's obviously fond of a lads' night out once in a while, and, although his recent marriage may perhaps have inhibited such activity slightly, it appears that his lovely wife is prepared to allow him quite a bit of latitude to continue such occasional indulgences - but, in the interests of compromise and peaceful co-existence, he and his lady have, during their years of dating, evolved a set of rules for such nights, gradations of 'shore leave' that govern what he can get up to and how late he can stay out.

That night, he informed me, he had to observe a 1.30am curfew. Which is why he had wanted to start drinking at 5pm prompt.

I was a little late in joining him - but soon made up for lost time.

Then we went for an Indian meal. Then we went to a gig. Then we went to the Pool Bar. Then we went back to Huxley's.

The curfew had long since come and gone. Noticing its approach, I had become a little anxious on his behalf (and on my own: his wife is gorgeous but formidable.... and I don't want to find myself painted as the bad influence), and said: "Hey, man, I'm not saying you have to go home now. But I am saying you gotta promise me you will tell your good lady that I suggested that you did."

At this point, The Man In Black was 'on tilt' - there was no stopping him. Three hours later, he was eagerly suggesting we try out a new bar he'd heard about near Andingmen which apparently has a happy hour from 4am-5am. Or maybe we could head across town to Sammie's, which usually goes all night, he suggested.

I'm afraid I wussed out. I had long since passed my limit - both for alcohol consumption, and for being able to stay awake. And I didn't want to completely write off a Saturday for which I had had such high hopes.

It is most unlike me to quit first. But last night, I was already reeling from three successive days of late-night excess, was utterly physically and emotionally exhausted, fretting about my distended liver (actually, today, I swear I am conscious of most of my internal organs - it's not nice), probably suffering from soju poisoning..... I had been planning on a quiet little cultural and social evening, without excessive drinking. The concert at Jiangjinjiu was unlikely to go on much after 11.30 or 12.00, and I had really thought I might make it home to bed shortly thereafter. But no..... oh dear god, NO.

Next time, MIB, I need a little more warning, a little more mental preparation.

The best planned lays

My schemes to make a move on Madame X have miscarried spectacularly this week.

This has largely been due to the fact that I have been extravagantly drunk for the last 3 days.

My drunkenness has no doubt largely been due to the fact that I am terrified of pressing the issue.

Equally terrified of rejection and acceptance.

50 sit-ups and a cold shower and a couple of strong cups of coffee...... and I may think about trying again.

Secret of Success

One of the Chinese regulars (a co-owner?) at Jianghu caught my female companion's attention the other night for his apparent suavity with the ladies.

"He's very charming," she remarked.

Daniel the resident guitar maestro, who knows the guy rather better, scoffed and responded, "No, he's not 'charming'. Just 'persistent'."

There is a lesson for all of us in that observation.