I’ve spent the day looking for some samples and songs I need for The Young’uns In The Mix. I knew I had them on a CD somewhere, which I was convinced would be housed in the shoe box full of old CDs that resided underneath my bed. So I got the old shoe box out and began to search through the cDs. Hours later, and I still haven’t finished my rifle through the shoe box, because I got distracted by the contents of each CD.
On one of the CDs was a load of diary entries from when I was at University. Even though these were personal diaries, I still wrote them in proper sentences, and used some rather flowery language and big words at times. I also included jokes and even gave each entry a title. I’ve wasted an entire day looking through these old entries, and as it’s getting late and I’ve still not finished today’s Dollop or done anything else, I thought I’d share one of the entries with you.
7th April 2006. When The Chips Are down
We went out this evening. We started in Wetherspoons. We all wanted food and so were intending to take advantage of Wetherspoons’ beer and burger deal for £3,99, which as well as comprising a beer and a burger, also comes with chips. However, not today, because they had ran out of chips! So we attempted to haggle with the man at the bar and asked if he would supplement the chips for onion rings, but he refused to acquiesce. Perhaps we should have punished this man’s unjust intractability by going elsewhere, but we’d already bought drinks and were very hungry, and so, despite our collective disinclination, we paid an additional sixty pence on top of the £3,99 in order to get onion rings. So Wetherspoons were well up on the deal, given that they’d got more money out of us and didn’t have to provide chips. And to add salt to our wounds, the obstinate barman will probably get rewarded for his unscrupulousness. His seniors will likely see this as a job well done.
But there was further insult to be added to injury. When our meals arrived, we had each been given a mere three and a half tiny onion rings. This was hardly a worthy substitute for a portion of chips. This meant that one onion ring cost about 18 pence. And a half?! A bloody half?! They actually had the cheek to snap the fourth onion ring in half. Tick tick woof woof, I hear the sound of watchdog!
After our night out, we were feeling hungry, due to our miserly meal earlier. While many of the less street-smart students were no doubt concluding their nights out with a takeaway, we craftily took advantage of the newly opened casino deal, where, in a bid to seduce you into gambling, they furnish you with complimentary sandwiches and chips. As long as you don’t actually gamble, but look as if you might gamble at any minute now, then a plentiful prevision of sandwiches and chips will be yours, for free. And all you have to do to avail yourself of this deal, is to be a member. And it costs nothing to become a member. So it’s completely free. But, you can get even more food for free out of the casino, as long as you are shrewd. If you order sandwiches and chips together, then you get just that, but if you order sandwiches first, and then once they have arrived, get chips, you get crisps with the sandwiches as well. Sandwiches, crisps, and chips! All for free!
Sadly, it seems as if this isn’t a very good week for chips, as the casino had also run out. We considered asking for onion rings as a substitute, but we thought it might be prudent to avoid bringing too much attention to us, lest they cotton onto our scam.
There was a group of girls on the next table who got chatting to us. I think they were impressed by our rebellious ways, noting how one of us would periodically sidle over to one of the machines, pretend to gamble for a minute and then come back, protesting loudly about how the casino had won again and taken more of our money, and saying things like, “Oh well, I guess there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” This was designed to convince the casino staff that we kept coming back here time and time again, and keep getting seduced by the free food into gambling and losing. This meant that we’d be heartily welcomed back next time.
A few of my friends were getting on really well with some of the girls, and a number of them left together. It was now just me and my flatmate, who is in a relationship, sitting at the table. Everyone else had left with the girls. I might have gone into a deep brooding depression that, yet again, I had been completely ignored and dismissed by the girls, while my friends had been successful. I might have felt sad, unattractive and lonely, were it not for the fact that they had all, in their haste to leave and have sex with each other, left most of their sandwiches on their plates, the idiots. I ate my way through them, imagining how pissed off and jealous my friends will be when I tell them about all the free sandwiches I ate last night, which they could have enjoyed if they hadn’t been so foolish as to leave with those girls. How they will rue their reckless decision. And so, I left the casino, in the knowledge that, in the great game of life, I am clearly a winner!
Baring in mind that this is a diary entry, I am very much writing as if to someone else, as if I have an audience. After all, why did I bother to explain the whole casino scam in great detail, given that I’d already knew about it, because I was the person writing about it? Perhaps a subconscious psychic part of me knew that one day I’d be embroiled in a challenge to write a blog everyday for a year, and that some days I’d be stuck for ideas or waste the day looking for things on old CDs, and so I wrote the diary entries as if I was addressing an audience, so that I could paste it straight into my blog years later. Well done me. I’m sure that I also had the foresight to realise that failing with those girls would be funnier than if I succeeded, and so deliberately sabotaged my success with them. It is a little bit disconcerting to note that, just like in these Dollops, I spent quite a lot of my diary making jokes about being unpopular with women. Maybe nothing much has really changed in those years. Maybe I’ll discover other similar subjects cropping up in my diaries that I’ve talked about regularly in these Dollops. Perhaps I wrote an entry about kettles. I’ll keep you posted as I continue reading.
I also like the pertinance of this diary entry’s title: When the chips are down. It works on a number of levels. Wetherspoons doesn’t have any chips, and neither does the casino. Also there is the subject of gambling, which gives another meaning to the word chips. And then there is the fact that I fail to get with any of the girls, and so the chips are down in that respect too. I’m amazed at how much thought went into these diary entries, baring in mind that they weren’t intended for anyone else to read. I probably put more effort into writing them than I do these Dollops. Maybe from now on I should simply release a university diary entry for these daily Dollops. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this excursion into my uni years
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I kept a diary sporadically over the years, so I went and looked back for 2006. My entry for 6 April holds some resonances with yours! Check this out:
Friday 6 April 2006. Didn’t get the guy – again! Never mind, at least I can eat what I want, play music half the night and then sleep like a starfish. Haha 😟
Yes, that’s both a Haha and a sad face at the end.
Well it was his loss. And I’m sure if he realised that one day you would be crowned Dollop commenter of the year so far, as of May 12, then he would be kicking himself for turning you down. But yes, our attitudes to rejection seem to take a similar tone in our diary entries.