Friday Night’s Blue Plastic Bag Bastard

As the Scottish songwriter Malcolm Middleton put it, in customary bleak and downbeat tones, “staying in is the new going out.”  The track “Blue Plastic Bags” refers to what you carry your booze home in after an early Friday evening jaunt to your local shop.  Being something of a miserable bastard, this initially appealed to me as recognition of the sad realisation that you’ve reached that point in your life when you can’t afford nights out on a regular basis.  But recently the song reflects for me the much stronger, middle-aged-and-past-it ambivalence I have towards EVER going out.  I wouldn’t claim to have shackled myself fully to the harness of misanthropy, but I am finding myself increasingly in a position of jogging alongside that grim cart.

I look forward to Friday nights relishing the absence of any commitment to leaving the house.  I’m happy to sit alongside the family, fuck about on Twitter while they watch some crap on telly, pay more attention during a post-watershed comedy and finally polish off the final glass of wine and packet of Cheese and Onion Disco crisps to the accompaniment of BBC4’s music night.  Once the kids are in bed and I have started snoring, Mrs Bastard kicks me and I drag myself upstairs and pass out.

Mrs B sometimes indulges in a futile fantasy-world in which she believes she can tempt me to take her to a nice pub for a drink.  By “nice” pub, I refer to one which is decorated more pleasingly than our lounge.  The problem is, the décor alone fails to outweigh the burden of sharing my space with STRANGERS and the added burden of paying prices for alcohol that feel like financial rape.  My lounge contains no strangers and the booze that comes in blue plastic bags means I don’t resent drinking it.

So.  Sorry Mrs B, but a night in it is.

But if you want to socialise with FRIENDS?  (And yes, I do have some.  I knew what you were thinking there.)  Well, they can come round here and share the wonderful AMBIENCE of our lounge, our affordable booze, our choice of music on the home juke box, our bar snacks, our absence of strangers, our laughter filling the room and not some other fucking CACKLING WITCH or GUFFAWING BLOKEY BLOKE… (easy, settle down, breathe in, 1…2…3…4…5… and breathe out) …and a carpeted toilet to boot.

One day perhaps going out will be the new staying in.  But for now, to the sofa I go, to make arse-moulds in a sedate non-frenzy of Pinot Grigio and Discos.