Can't go home yet, I'm not drunk...

This one's going to sound like a grumpy old gits rant at the world - and it is.

Drunk people are fuckwits.
And I've seen lots of them this weekend.

But before we get onto the evidence, a partially related topic which struck me hard between the eyes on Radio Leeds this morning.

An exhibition of road crash victims opens in Leeds this week and in an emotional interview on the radio one of the members for Brake, the road safety campaigners described how her son, brother, cousin and father had all been victims of road crashes, she used the word "crash" in preference to "accident" as crashes are almost always avoidable and hence not accidental.

Take a look at the Brake web site in the link above , read some of the victims stories, then try and justify your decision to step on the gas by an extra 5mph on the way home tonight.
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So back to fuckwit drunks.
Its not that I don't like a drink myself, I do.
But I've got a "tilt" switch in my head that makes me puke when I've had too much, and by too much I mean three pints of beer, certainly no more than four.

Thats not much is it ?
It used to be more, much more.
But the "tilt switch" reformatted itself around ten years ago and four is absolute maximum now, and if I get away with four then a hangover will certainly ensue, sometimes it won't even wait until the next morning and the hangover will start before I've finished the last pint.

This weekend I've been amongst thousands of people for whom a tilt switch was an optional extra that they couldn't afford when they were made.

Newcastle is no different to Leeds or any other city or town in the UK on a weekend - the city centres fill with drunks who refuse to go home until they are totally incapable of getting themselves home.

While waiting for my companions to stuff kebabs down their faces in a takeaway shop in Dean Street on Friday night (I wasn't drunk enough to eat the shit that they carved off the revolving column of shit) I partook of my favourite occupation of people watching.

Within one minute of leaning in the shop doorway I was shoved out of the way by a well dressed woman in stilleto heels who bore an uncanny resemblence to Beryl Reid - she was pissed, so pissed that as she exited the doorway she fell off one of her heels and spilt the contents of her kebab all over the pavement without noticing, with a "oooh dear" she regained her balance and staggered up the steep hill that is Dean Street, not noticing the distinct lack of kebab in the polystyrene carton that she held at arms length as if it were an olympic torch.

Seconds later two extremely fat young Scottish girls, linking arms, tottering on their own high heels, came charging down the hill unable to stop, the clatter of their stilletos getting faster and faster along with their screams, shrieks of laughter and drunken obscenities. They came to a sudden halt just opposite me when one of them grabbed a lamp post and they both spun round as a pair and fell into a shop doorway three doors down where they lay spread eagled on the pavement laughing and swearing at passers-by until a foreign photographer asked if they'd mind if he took their photograph, he sounded eastern european and took several photgraphs while they lay there on the pavement incapable of getting up to lamp him one although their curses and threats mentioned that they'd like to do so - I'd love to see the Warsaw edition of Hello! magazine next week with "Scottish slappers in traditional night out stylee" headlines.

saturday night was even worse, the streets of Newcastle were filled, and I mean teaming with mainly young people, huge swathes, football crowd quantities of drunk male and females, I doubt very much whether I could have found one single sober person on thsoe streets by 10pm - after midnight on my walk back to the hotel I could, had I been so inclined, have had my pick of any young female to ravish or murder being as there were so many of them unconcious in doorways or simply laying across the pavement, christ knows how they all get home again and how fortunate for them that most taxi drivers are honest enough to take them home without robbing them or worse, if Peter sutcliffe the Yorkshire Ripper is ever released or escapes from prison then he certainly won't have to limit his activities to prostitutes on murky streets, there are rich pickings on the streets of all our cities after midnight every weekend amongst the drunk and incapable females.

Sound like a miserable old bas'tad yet ?
I said I would.

Just try doing the same though in any UK city - stay relatively sober and take a walk after midnight - you'll be suprised and amazed at what you see and what passes for normal behaviour among the pissheads.