Waking to be greeted by a beautiful Saturday morning, my emerging consciousness was hurried along by the urgency of the little dog’s pacing around the bedroom. When he wakes up, he WAKES UP. Like any of us, his first thought, other than where the hell am I? is I NEED A WEE! I’m not as agile as him so I never reach the kitchen before he starts shouting at the back door. He knows this, he knows I’m coming to let him out, yet still he throws an epi until I finally get to let him out.

It was 9am.

I’d normally just open the curtains, go straight back to bed and snooze for another hour before starting to wake up properly, but today was special, today was burrito and beer day!

Despite my best efforts to wash out my sinuses the previous evening, I woke with a headache. I’m certain that this had absolutely nothing to do with the bottle of strong red wine that I’d consumed the previous night. Nonetheless, there was only one thing for it, actually, five things for it: three cups of strong coffee, ibuprofen and Sinutab. My system revived, I got my arse into gear and left the house… on foot. Ahead of me was the twenty minute walk uphill to the main road followed by a bus journey, on actual public transport, into Manchester.

Don’t buses stop an awful lot? Every 200 yards, some fucker wants to get off or on. If I have to walk twenty minutes UPHILL to my bus stop, why can’t these buggers walk a bit further to a stop and save the rest of us the whip lash induced by the constant acceleration and braking? Seriously, when I’m in charge, there’ll be lots of changes.

Eventually, I arrived in the city where I had to run the gauntlet of the idiots on Market Street as I fought my way up to the shithole that is Piccadilly. There, I was met by crowds of my two least favourite types of people: trades unionists and police. The former were getting shouty against racists. The latter were allowing their horses to poo all over the pavements. My friend rescued me before my frown lines caused my entire head to fold in on itself. And then our day began in earnest.

Burrito. Beer. Put the world to rights. Laugh like idiots. Move on. More beer. More laughter, a bit of gossip, put the world to rights in a slightly more surreal fashion. Move on. More beer.

And so that’s how it went, in a descending spiral of ever so polite drunkenness. We finally found ourselves in a bar sat opposite some “le’bians” drinking half pints of real ale, who I actually sort of knew, but my disdain wouldn’t allow me to acknowledge them. They’re the sort who are humourless, overly serious and offensively just fucking serious and humourless and sour faced and humourless. And they look like lesbians. You know, it’s fine being gay, I’m fine being gay, it’s nice, it’s who I am, just the same as it’s fine being straight or asexual or whatever the hell. But why the fuck do some women need to wear a uniform to display their sexuality like a bloody badge? I just don’t get it. I wanted to grab these women by the shoulders and shake them up. YOU GIVE LESBIANS A BAD NAME!!!!

I was fairly drunk at this stage, my friend asked if I’d ever been to Cologne. “Have I ever been to Clone Zone?”, I responded at the top of my voice. I could feel the Guardian-reading disapproval stabbing me in the side of my head from the other side of the table.

We left shortly afterwards and by some miracle I made it to my bus without getting run over. Retrieved my ticket in an almost dignified manner, and found a seat without falling over and burping beer and fag breath on undeserving MOPs. With some foresight, I’d taken my earphones with me so I listened along quite merrily on the bizarrely convoluted journey, tapping my feat and concentrating very hard on not bursting out into song as I’d normally do in the car. And thus I made it home.

So, afternoon drinking. Do it. It’s great in moderation when you’re with excellent company. Know when to stop and know how to get home. But just don’t even think about making any plans for the evening. Twelve hours after waking, Tina is back in bed and lights out is fast approaching.

Most days can be beautiful if you do them right. I’d be wise to remember this.