26 November - Howard

Well, sometimes you’re sensible and you think all you’re going to do on a Friday is read aloud a few hymns to your friend who’s going to get married – she’s having her trial make up session and you’re sitting on the edge of her bed reciting poetry and stuff, so she can hear how it will sound and make a choice. Then you’re going to see a movie with a new date and you get annoyed because it portrays some older guy who’s a version of the several ones you’ve met in the last ten years or so. You get annoyed because you know that even if you made them watch this several times over, they still wouldn’t get it that this is how they’re going to wake up age 55 and will have missed it, love, life, whatever it is. Ok enough of the cryptic stuff, it was Broken Flowers with Bill Murray. The good thing was that date seem to think it was not his goal in life to be depressed and visiting ex girlfriends in his 50's. Nice man.

Then you go for a drink at a still fashionable private club where your friend Polly has texted you that the name of the guest to use there is Howard Marks but you think it’s just a joke on her part. But you walk in and there she is, sat with the very same patron saint of students activities around the world. The thing about using a full page close up of yourself on your book cover is that… you can never say ‘no it’s not me’ when fans come and say something to you. And it’s amazing how many fans a former drug smuggler can have, but if he’s as nice as Howard then it’s easy. I wanted to take the guy home and not for any other reason than feed him, give him somewhere to sleep and just listen to his accent – Yorkshire by way of many, many other places. He didn’t need any of that, he paid for our drinks and food in fact and he had a nice hotel room in the club thank you very much. So later, we were in the not so surreal situation of being in a room with Howard and I had a chuckle at the following exchange ‘How long are you going to take making that?’ asks Howard. The woman could hardly answer this question as she was so gurning and busy starting yet another sentence to tell me a story, but never finishing said sentences. Don’t you hate cocaine? Like the mug that I am, I kept hoping there would be a punchline somewhere, but it never came and I kept smiling encouragingly at her. A few minutes go by and Howard decides to take charge of making it. So he takes it from the woman and asks ‘Did you put enough in?’. She gives him a lovely smile and says ‘Well I did, but you know, you’re Howard Marks, I don’t know if that’s enough for you.’ Given that at nearly 4am nothing much seemed to have happened since we went up there at 2am, myself and Toph left Howard in charge of 8 women (some were his next room neighbours), good disco mummies all of them. They had wasted no time, the moment our collective bodies sprawled on Howard’s bed, to try and establish if Toph and I were there ‘together’. Much as I’m not sure about it either, it felt slightly stark to hear his even replies, that no, we were not. I nearly said ‘Why not, dontcha want to?’
I don’t think much happened after we left, except for Polly dropping her phone in the loo.