I know what I can write about (or, more specifically, how I can make a blog post by recycling a story I’ve had lying around in my home directory for several years).

Isvara (not his real name, obviously) is a friend of mine, from back at University. These days, he no longer lives in Manchester, and I’d not seen him for ages. Anyway, he deigned to visit his presence upon a few Mancunians and fellow coursemates the other day, and by way of tribute, here is a short story about why you should never spend all night drinking vodka and red wine:

Act 1 – The Phonecall

[8am, a flat in a hall of residence, somewhere in Manchester]

[A phone rings. No-one answers. The phone keeps ringing. Eventually, a large, hairy and very obviously Scottish guy emerges from the depths of his room, and answers it]

Gareth (slighty pissed off): Hello?
Isvara (slurring): Hi, er, is, er, Chris there please?
Gareth (weary): I’ll get him
[Gareth goes downstairs and knocks on Chris’ door]
Me (from behind door, obviously still in bed): Mmmm..?
Gareth: There’s a very drunk person on the phone for you
Me: Oh good. Hold on.

[Chris emerges and goes to the phone]
Chris: Yes dan?
Isvara: Hi Chris! We’ve been up drinking *all* night!
Chris: Well done
Isvara: and we’re, yeah, a bit pissed.
Chris: That’s nice.
Isvara: You should have come out with us! We’ve been drinking red wine and black vodka!
Chris: Why are you telling me this?
Isvara: Are you going to your C lecture later?
Chris: Uh, yeah.
Isvara: Oh good. We’ll have to come and get you, like, with swords and stuff.
Chris: That’s nice, Dan.
Isvara: See you later, then?
Chris: Yes, Dan.
[Chris hangs up phone, goes back to bed]

Act 2 – The Lecture

[10:07am, Lecture Theater 1.1, CS building. A C lecture is in progress. Close to 200 people are in attendence. Most people are not paying attention. Suddenly, a figure enters through the front left door. It’s Isvara, looking a little worse for wear, but very determined.]

Lecturer: Can I help you?
Isvara: I’m jus… I’m looking for someone! Yeah.
[Isvara continues to walk across the front of the lecture theatre, scanning the seated masses in attempt to determine the location of Chris. Chris disappears under desk, giving instructions to all people around him to say he’s not there]
Lecturer: Okaay.
[Isvara then performs an act which will go down in legend amongst Manchester CS students for all of time: he gets out a large plastic sword – a large pink plastic sword – which he proceeds to wave around whilst striding up and down the front of the lecture theater, shouting:]
Isvara: It’s my weapon! Do you see? Do you see?!

[Isvara starts of his way up the lecture theatre, looking for Chris. He eventually sits down on the end of the row Chris is hiding underneath the
desks of]

Isvara: So, do you guys know where Chris is?
People: No.
Isvara: Well, good. Maybe I’ll just wait outside for him.
[Isvara leaves the lecture theatre, and goes to sit in the seating area just outside, where, employing the tenacity of the truly mindbogglingly inebriated, he waits for the next 2 hours; Chris remains inside the lecture theater, fearing for his life. Eventually, Chris leaves and a humourous chase around the CS department ensues, involving more sword wielding and running across desks in lecture theatres]

Act 3 – The Finale

[The reader imagines something really exciting and hilarious happens here so the story doesn’t end on such a damp squib, being, as it is, one of those stories that seemed so much funnier when you were (a) there and (b) retelling it to the main protagonist the next day, who remembered none of it]

The End

Hmmm. In retrospect, that worked a lot less well than I’d hoped. Maybe I should have told the story about the time Isvara blew the end of his thumb off after filling a Stella can with lighter fuel and setting fire to it, forgetting his basic physics lessons, and therefore being quite surprised when a large jet of flame erupted from the hole in the top of the can and burned his eyebrows off. Or the time he set fire to his beard in the pub. Or one of the many other “hilarious” incidents from our time as students which, looking back, aren’t quite so funny any more.

This post seemed like such a good idea about half an hour ago.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 4th, 2004 at 10:08 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.