Surprise! Dummy

If my hangover is anything to go by then the wife`s surprise birthday party last night went very well. I had told her that we were going out for a quiet dinner. But in actual fact I had arranged a surprise party in the Münz Bar, inviting the coolest and most interesting people we know. Sadly they were all too busy to come.

In the end it wasn`t too bad and after eight beers I stopped yearning for a swift and merciful death and the assembled motely crew of drunks and deadbeats, many of whom must be kept away from matches and are not allowed scissors, became strangely interesting. Granted, it was interesting in a wild life documentary sort of way rather than a why dont you come over for dinner sometime kind of way.

This morning I slithered out of bed and oozed my way like a toxic spillage down stairs, every movement and sound an ecstacy of nausea inducing agony, muttering "I will never ever touch alcohol ever ever again". I know full well that if I had a pound for every time I have said this I would have been able to buy my own brewery by now.

After I had packed the daughter off to school I decided to go for a walk to try and clear my head. Down in the town I had a look around in Tony Broccoli`s Clothing Emporium. I think I must have dozed off while standing next to the window display because when I came to a woman screamed. She apologised and said she had thought I was a shop display dummy. How we laughed. Bitch.

But this is not the first time this has happened to me. I remember in London, trailing after my then girlfriend around yet another boutique, I found a nice quiet corner and went into catatonic shut down just to dull the numbing boredom. When I moved to scratch my nose I startled a woman who screamed. She also informed me that she had thought I was a window display unit. This is now troubling me. Am I really so hard to distinguish from a mannequin? Do I have the skin complexion, personality and presence of a shop dummy? If I stood starkers in the window of H&M with a SALE sign around my neck would anyone notice? and do I want to know the answers to any of those questions?.