IkoStar

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This is the last one of these I think. It’s an engraving by Hogarth - it lives on the back wall of the Lamb and Flag pub near the Garrick Club (which once banned Jeremy Paxman who goes Nyeesss and who is my hero etc. “Did you threaten to overrule him” he says. Genius).

Anyway, I’ve been going to see this picture for about the last 20 years or so. It is the most repulsive depiction of drunkenness I have ever seen, and I recognise myself in each and every character. It’s too ugly to look at for long… but it keeps luring me back. I have this phobia about accidentally being transported back in time… and this is an era for which I have a particular horror… but the scary thing is, perhaps, something that I can’t quite catch, but there are fleeting glimpses etc… the essence of what I find frightening about it, I’m gradually pulling towards myself. I am become gout, destroyer of limbs.

It would be funny but it’s not funny. You try to laugh it off or weave stories around it to make it ok… and sometimes it is ok, but if you can’t remember, how do you know? And sometimes it’s definitely, definitely not ok.

So I’m sitting in this restaurant in Brighton using the free wifi and trying to eat this dippy thing with bread that is not fit for purpose, and I feel weak and broken and paranoid. Last night I got drunk (and not even that drunk) for the forty thousandth time and shot my mouth off on various internet things, ranting etc… and although nothing was aimed at anyone in particular I feel awful. I’m sorry.

Back down the years… the first time was like being born again. Now… I don’t know. Something like the opposite, repeated in endlessly in hideous caricature.

Still, tomorrow is tomorrow. I shall be on a plane. Away, away.