I've always had a substantial nose. You wouldn't necessarily go so far as to call it a massive hooter but it has a definite presence in the central region of the old face. Grandad (Dad’s dad) had what he liked to call a Roman nose as it was roamin’ all over his face (ba-dum tish). Mine's not that bad… yet. It does seem to still be growing as it’s definitely larger than it used to be. If that continues, it may well take up most of the facial real estate in years to come. Anyway, I digress a little bit…
This particular nasal fable takes place in the heady days of the Nineties. Oasis were just becoming a thing, alcopops were all the rage (bottle of Hooch or Two Dogs anyone?) and I was a trained fitter of children’s shoes at a Famous London Department Store* (it’s true - I wrote about it before). This for me was the heady time post-school and pre-university when I was working to save up a bit of cash to then run through at an alarming rate when I reached university**. This was when I really discovered the concept of mid-week drinking. Sure, I’d been a Friday and Saturday night drinker for few years previously at school (like any self-respecting British schoolboy) but I was always (relatively) conscientious about school work so never drank during the week.
Now though, well, I was still living at home but technically (and really only technically) I was an adult with a job and his own money and that. If I wanted to go out after work for drinks, well, then I could.
In the dim mists of time, I’m not a hundred percent sure whether it was a birthday or a leaving drinks (birthday, I think) but with the traditional drinky foolishness of the office worker, we went straight from work to the pub and I managed to sink a surprising number of pints in a very short space of time. This was the beginning. We moved on and many and varied spirits were next on the menu. This is where memory fades and the remainder of the story is composed not of memories (of which there are none) but of the testimony of others.
At the second venue, I apparently commenced dancing on the table at some point. This was a warning sign as there was no music playing. It was decided that enough drinking had been done and I was in a state which required the moving homewards, a journey that for me would require me to navigate both tube and train; risky business. It would turn out not to be a journey that required navigation from me as, upon reaching the tube barrier, I took out my ticket and passed out face down. Don’t worry, though - my nose broke my fall.
As I’m propped up off to the side of the barrier (covered in blood from my profusely bleeding nose), an off-duty, passing paramedic checked me out (yep, there was an off-duty passing paramedic) and decided that it was ambulance time for me. He suggested that I might need my stomach pumped; fortunately, I managed to empty it all over myself during the journey to the hospital at which point the parents are summoned and respond with the appropriate level of concern and storing-this-up-for-future-amusement.
Being a dreadful burden on the good people of the National Health Service through my own stupidity and recklessness, the nurses on duty decided that I needed some payback and, after ascertaining that it’s been some time since I had a tetanus shot, roll me over, drop the trousers and stick the needle where the sun don’t shine. Unfortunately for them, I was so out of it that my only response is a sort of drunken smile.
I returned to work with a nose that takes up much of the centre of my face (the fractured nose of the title), glasses that were bent out of shape to fit around it and a neck brace from the whiplash I sustained upon hitting the floor. Quite rightly, I was ruthlessly mocked until someone else made a drunken spectacle of themselves and the mantle was passed.
I feel like there should be a moral about learning my lesson and knowing my limits but sadly that definitely isn’t the case. I have never been hospitalised through alcohol again but that’s probably more luck than judgement. There was some minor karmic repercussion as I did eventually have the old hooter operated on to remove the twisted bit of bone in there and help me breathe more easily but that’s about it (and I'm not convinced it's made that much difference in the end). I’m afraid if you’re looking for tidy moral resolutions, you’re definitely barking up the wrong blog.
*No, not that one, it was on Oxford Street.
** OK, so the plan wasn’t to run through it at an alarming rate when I reached university but that was the reality
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