MY NOSE
There was no time to be sick. I couldnt find the bloody uber
It has been a year since the first time I was sick on a tube. I would like to happily acknowledge that I wasn’t sick this time round after the work Christmas party, not because I wasn’t drunk, but mainly because I didn’t have time to, on my way home, which was the most stressful experience of my life. As I’ll explain, breaking my tradition, if you can call a one‑time event that, it was the start of a bad tradition. At least I can say that I’ve ended that chain of events. No bad burgers or Babybel. Here we go.
The evening ended near Tower Bridge. I left later than expected due to karaoke, which is a fair reason to ignore the fact that I would miss the last train home. But anyway, after I had belted out my rendition of Man I Feel Like a Woman, I had to dash. I jumped into a lift and ended up on a street, slightly pissed. I had sobered up enough to operate a phone but not enough to drive a bus. The aim was to find a bus stop which, if you have ever been to central London, you’ll know there’s one every 200 yards. In this instance, Google Maps was fucking with me, and I was standing around for a good half an hour waiting for this bus to turn up. Surprisingly, it didn’t. So I made the executive choice, instead of getting in a taxi or just jumping on a random bus, to run to London Bridge from Tower Bridge whilst somewhat hammered. I may be in denial about how drunk I was.
I sprinted full belt down the Thames to Monument and then sprinted across London Bridge, watching people staring at me whilst I was galloping over this bridge. I was dizzy and possibly unconscious at points and miraculously not sick. I got to the station and had missed the last train by a good 50 minutes. I wasn’t even close. The run was pointless. I couldn’t even post it on Strava as the route didn’t save. So I then had to make a choice, and you would know how I am with decisions if you’ve read any other post.
If not, then I’m not great. I lack common sense.
So my two options were to either phone a friend and ask to stay the night or jump on this slow train, as it was at least heading in my direction. I chose option C, to try to book an Uber home, which would have cost £100 and would definitely have been a slow journey home filled with sickness. I placed the order and then went on the hunt for the pick‑up location. I then gave up and got on the slow train, and then got off the slow train and booked another Uber. I then couldn’t find that pick‑up location. So what did I do? I got back on the train, and it set off on the slow, gruelling journey to East Croydon. It took around an hour. When I got to East Croydon, I sprinted off that train, hoping to catch a connecting train to Purley. That train wasn’t running, so I was fucked.
I then wandered outside to think and ended up signalling down a black cab. Here is where the night took a turn. I often forget that with my height comes great height, and I forgot how tall I was. As I got into this black cab, I whacked my brain and mainly my nose on the door frame, giving myself a nosebleed. Now I was sitting in this cab just bleeding out, trying to act very nonchalant. It wasn’t working. I thought, based on the time, this early on, the driver wasn’t looking for a chat, but he was, and as it turns out, I’m a chatty person. So whilst trying not to choke on the blood pouring out of my nose, we started talking about our days. I was trying not to draw any attention to this pool of blood emerging in the footwell. Around 30 minutes in, the blood stopped, and I could just wipe my hands on my clothes.
Remember this was in the dark, so as soon as I got out of the cab and stood under a lamppost, I looked like, well, a shit ton of blood. There was no hiding it or sugar‑coating it. I looked like a cow being dragged through a wood chipper. See, there was no time to be sick. An end to a fantastic tradition.