THE VAMPIRE ROOMS

Exclusivity is the name of the game for any aspiring young socialite and for Andrew it seemed as if he'd well and truly arrived as he found his way onto the guest-list at the Vampire Rooms in Liverpool. What started out as a good night however ended in disarray as Andrew quickly hit the bag and grew out of control. He was banned from the Dancefloor (akin to banning Elton john from Interflora) and before he knew what hit him Andrew was alone, out of his gourd and penniless three stories underground. At 2:30AM he surfaced finally, but now Andrew had a real problem for there was seemingly no way for him to get home. Andrew plucked up his energy and did the only thing he could think of, he decided to WALK the 25 miles home. 

Minutes turned into hours as the cityscape gave way to outlying slums and then middle surburbia, but still he had gotten nowhere and now there was a further problem...Andrew needed a shit. With nowhere to go and on a main road Andrew held on for as long as he could before nature got the better of him and he raced around the back of a pub to well and truly "drop the bomb" so to speak. relieved, but dehydrated, sober and exhausted Andrew sat down on the curb to contemplate his next move.

It was at this time that Andrew made a friend. A guardian angel he may not have been but the pimp that andrew befriended (after he ascertained that Andrew was in no physical or financial state to rent a prostitute) offered him a slice of Pizza and some words of encouragement that spurred Andrew on for another few miles.

Eventualy beaten and exhausted he called his mother at around 5:30AM on the sunday morning and had her wake his little sister up and drive down to get him. The next day Andrew was assigned the task of cleaning the inside of the car which had been smeared in excrement. 

EVERYBODY LOVES ANDREW

Ever keen to make a good impression Andrew ventured down to Brighton beach one sunny summer's day, cheeky bottle of Rose in tow, to rendezvous with some American Express employees. Viticulturalist Andrew settled down with his bottle only to find that he had clumsily left his trusty corkscrew at home. Fortunately resourcefulness is one of Andrew's many virtues and he proceeded to use his front door key as a makeshift bottle opener, pressing the pointed tip against the cork and attempting to drive it through the top into the pink liquid below...The fact that wine is bottled in a vacuum and any attempt to condense the contents therein will result i the build up of great pressure alluded Andrew who put his back into the task at hand. Sure enough he was illprepared for the impending release of the pressure that had built up and when the bottle exploded in his hand's he was at once covered in sweet Zinfandel and blood. After a quick rinse in the sea Andrew decided that he was fit to continue with the evening's festivities and put his mangled fingers out of his mind. That night the deep gash in one of his fingers hadn't stopped bleeding, so quick thinking Andrew (who's father is a hand surgeon) decided that he would sleep with his hand upside down in a pint glass so as to limit the mess his spewing blood was causing.

When the morning came around a gaunt and nausseated Andrew looked down at the glass to see a blackened finger hovering above three inches of deep red blood. Conceding he needed help Andrew called the office and advised them he wouldn't be in until mid-morning.

With noway to get to the hospital however after the 999 operator refused to send two paramedics and an ambulance to get a man with a (in Andrew's parlance) "cut finger" Andrew sat down on his bed in somewhat of a quandary. In the end Andrew opted out of seeking medical assistance, deciding instead that he could catch two episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond and a Just Shoot Me re-run before he was due in work!

At 5PM after nearly collapsing through blood loss in his office Andrew finally made it to the emergency room where he was seen almost instantly so medical staff could clean his hand and fit a cast that would enable him to keep his finger which was on he brink of dying.

A MOVEABLE FEAST

Ever the rambler Andrew had become tired with living with strippers and drug addicts and decided a change was in order. Recently bouyed with a stable job and decent income things were finally looking up for our luckless hero.

Casting all problems out of his mind Andrew decided to sink a few jars in the local public house after a hard weeks work. These jars turned into shots, the shots turned into lines, the lines turned into Mandy and before he knew it Sunday morning was upon him. Looking at his bank balance Andrew was stunned to discover he'd spend an extreme amount of money and the only thing he had to show for it was two tickets to a Star Wars expo in Birmingham the following week. Still groggy Andrew sat up and purveyed his surroundings...this wasn't his room...where the hell was he! looking around however Andrew was surprised to see all of his belongings in boxes next to what was unmistakably his bed...Andrew left the room, now worried he was dreaming and looked around this foreign house attempting to piece together what exactly he was doing here. The house was empty but he recognized some people from pictures in the lounge as girls from the London office and slowly and surely he remembered talking to them about needing a change of scenery and a new place...And that's when it hit him... in his drunken state he'd moved house!

Running outside to check he hadn't move cities Andrew was releived to see that at least he was in the same town...foolishly though he had taken his old housekeys outside with him rather than the new ones and he was left waiting outside in his quilt for his new housemates to return.

THE FUTURES BRIGHT...

The victim of a hainus hate crime in which his Birkenstocks were stolen and thrown onto a bar roof Andrrew found himself with no footwear outside of a pair of Italian style ankle boots that wear completely unwearable with the tropical style shorts Andrew was favouring at the time. The local wallgreens had a pair of women's orange neon flip flops on sale for $5...which was $5 more than Andrew had until the next payday in 4 days time!!!

Desperate times call for desperate measures and Andrew took a bet that he couldn't swim across a swampy lake at 2AM in order to raise the funds. The lake was right outside his housing complexes security building, who had been told to be on the lookout for any anti-social behaviour and evict the culprits. Nevertheless Andrew threw off his clothes and dove headfirst into the lake. Breaking the surface he was covered in slimy pond weed, but continued to plow his way through the water towards the otherside 50 meter's away. Alarmed the thrashing caused by Andrew forcing his way through the marine vegetation he was tangled in the security guards raced over to see the commotion was, only to see a white figure emerge from the other side of the lake and scamper frantically off behind a cluster of buildings. The hunt was on as Andrew was leaving a trail of great, wet footprints in his wake, so he had no choice but to flee security (who travelled in golf buggys) until his feet dried.

10 minutes later Andrew returned home, still clotheless feet cut to ribbons from the street, covered in pond weed and thoroughly out of breath. The now legendary flip-flops he purchased, designed as a makeshift short term solution to his footwear problem, lasted him for 3 months.