Soldiering

Firstly, of no value to the context of this post, I'd like to note that I'm in a corner of the new library - opened last summer - here in Birmingham. Specifically the only corner where you can glimpse on the backstage access to the International Convention Centre, and simultaneously spy on those lolling around a little patch of green - hidden amongst our concrete "central business district" - known as the Flapper Gardens, named for it's proximity to the Flapper, one of the cities finest public houses. There, one might catch a shoddily engineered musical performance; smoke a joint in one of it's many dark corners; even test your hand on two different Star Trek-themed pinball machines (who would you rather fling your balls at, Patrick Stewart or Zachary Quinto?). There have been some good times there, but the gardens carry more sentiment for me; as before you could get into the pub, teen-age and baby-faced, you could get your oldest looking friend to buy booze and take it to the gardens and so it is that this is where I first got drunk. The ICC makes me smile at my own childishness as, on that same day, I would also be found attempting to urinate (apparently, I wasn't there, only my body was) in the foyer there. And this, here and now, in a library that was not here or there, then, is sobering. Ba-dum-tschhhh!

The gardens were also the setting for my first toke, and my first brush with the law, for toking.

(T'internet only saved this much before t'internet died last night, erasing two pages worth of babble about cheats and cheaters and at least three well constructed sentences among them. I could have cried. Instead I took my anger out on a fundraiser who wanted me to give a shit about children, I asked why they're allowed to beg, but the police usher along buskers and bums from the same busy walkway that often serves as a dodge-the-canvasser gauntlet. Anyway.. I'll try and recall what was typed on Friday.)