Even though we’d experienced something pretty awful, Alex was still chipper for the majority of Wednesday. He kept talking about Strawberry Blonde as we soaked the carpets with cleaning fluid and washed some of the upholstery. They had a date that night, him and Strawberry Blonde, and I kind of got the feeling that this was the first one in a while. He was a bit like a teenager to be honest, all nervous and exited. I on the other hand was going to spend the night chatting with some poker buddies on Skype, partially because I hadn’t seen them in a long time, but mostly because I didn’t want to be alone in the house, and also I guess, to some extent, so there’d be a chance I was awake if Alex came home and he could tell me how it went.   Well I was awake when he came home, but instead of the floaty, smiling, Alex I had expected, I got a sullen, internally angry Alex, who came inside and barely nodded at me before heading upstairs to the spare bedroom.   Thursday morning he wasn’t very communicative, he ate his Coco Pops with a sullen methodically, as though he was just trying to get through them. We sat in silence, punctuated only by the gentle sip of my orange juice, until Alex suddenly spoke, like a knife in the fog: “I’m getting very drunk tonight.”   He wasn’t lying either, at five o’ clock he burst through the wooden doors and took a seat at the bar and began ordering drinks. By the time Jasper arrived he was already well on his way, and by the time I had finished work and sat down to write this, they were reaching missing memory drunkenness.   I’ve decided I’m going to ask my mum and dad for more stories, mum had thousands of them, and dad has this habit of just chatting to strangers, so he’s bound to have picked some up. regards, Andy Dufraine.