Past out

I was driving through Ealing (a London suburb) last night and it reminded me of what I was like nearly five years ago.

When I look back, I don't even know who that person was. Who was I?

I was in the worst job with a satellite broadcaster who're based in Isleworth. Think dishes on outside walls, yeah?

I was living with friends but it was a long way from my new job so I moved to be closer to work as it was shift-work and public transport was a problem.

Stupidly, I took the first flatshare I looked at because - god knows why. What the fuck was I thinking?

I have drawn a picture of my bedroom which was allegedly a double room...

All of the red crash marks indicate just what it was like. The blue thing is the window.

You couldn't open the cupboard doors because they bashed against the bed. The door bashed against the bed and you could barely fit between the chest of drawers and the door.

It was tiny.

I moved in on October 15th 2003 and moved out again in February 2004 so I was there during the winter.

Dark, cold rainy nights stuck in that prison cell-sized bedroom.

I was sharing with a 30-something guy called Paul (that was his real name). He was a Caffè Nero branch manager at Heathrow.

He was my height, orange-haired and overweight. His boyfriend was this young, reed-thin and spotty Romanian who worked in a noddle bar in Soho.

Paul was one of these gays whose idea of high culture was a Kylie boxset. We had absolutely nothing in common.

On evenings when I wasn't working, I would be lying on my bed listening to music on my Walkman and reading magazines.

This while Paul and his Romanian would be watching endless trashy soaps on TV.

I had only been in the UK for about 9 months so I had few friends. It meant I was lonely, depressed and bored and the one emotion just fed the other.

There is only one thing that cures an evening like that and it's alcohol.

If I wasn't working I would usually buy a bottle of Jacob's Creek Shiraz and four tins of Strongbow cider.

I would then sit in my bedroom and proceed to polish off the lot - usually to help me pass out.

It was the same most nights, a bottle of red then four tins of cider.

In the morning I would get up feeling like shit, stumble to Northfields Tube station in the rain / sleet / snow and get to work where I would get shouted it (everyone did).

There wasn't a day where I didn't either cry in the toilet or, at least, wandered what the fuck I was doing.

Come the weekend me, Paul and the Romanian would go to West 5, a tiny gay club in Ealing. I would drink far too much, fall around and then stumble home.

It was dark, cold, horrible, lonely and depressing.

Because I was paid shit money, towards the end of the month I would have to scrape together coins. It was always booze that won the battle.

Food makes you full but alcohol makes you drunk. I remember so well, walking to the same off-licence every night with a bunch of coins to buy the wine or Strongbow.

Then, back in my bedroom, I would polish off the lot until I blacked out for the evening.

All those memories came back to me, while driving through Ealing.

If you had stopped me then, stumbling on my way with my pocket of coins to buy booze, and said "Bobby, in five years' time you will be driving down this road in your black Audi convertible, going home to your flat in a rather posh area of North London where protein shakes have replaced alcohol and there are no longer empty wine bottles in the sock drawer" I dunno what I would have thought.

I don't think I wouldn't have not believed you - I just think I couldn't comprehend how low I'd sunk. I knew I was in a shit place, I just didn't realise how bad it was.

Thank God and all the others who helped me.

I could get all philosophical about life and changing and shit but you know if you've been in that situation yourself. You just look back on it and think "who the fuck was I and what the fuck was I thinking."

It made me into who I am now so I don't regret it at all. I guess I should, in a perverse way, be thankful for it.

But thank fuck it's past, never to return.