The absinthe burned my throat on the way down. Breathing in through my nose I contemplated how it was getting easier every time and when I felt it was safe I let out a high pitched roar. It was 11.30pm and there was me and Scooby and Corco and Masterson-Nolan and we were in our flat in Prague performing our nightly ritual before making our way into the Old Town. I was wearing a tie, sandals, shorts, a shirt I had won in a Malibu promotion, and an apron, which was funny because I don’t usually wear ties, and we were out to have fun because, after all, fun and Love are what life is all about.

We walked down through Letinsky Park and across Stefanov Most and were heading towards the Square when Corco noticed that a bar, called Snack Bar, which wasn’t usually open this late was indeed open. Feeling there was no other option we called in for a quick shot. To get us going, like.

The first thing that struck me about the place was how empty it was, in that it was completely empty. The second was the size of the whiskey glasses the lone barman placed in front of us. Had I been fully sober the first thing I would have noticed was that the lone barman was out of his biscuit tin. Gone a bit sideways. Out of his trumpet. Needing a bit of a shake. He had, to put it mildly, had a bit to drink.

The whiskey glasses were refilled with Becherovka as quickly as we could drain them, and it soon became clear that the bill was not an object. Which was fortunate, considering that if you were counting the shots poured into each glass each time it was unlikely we had enough on us to match the tab.

Now we were drunk, and we were talking away at the barman although he hadn’t a word of English.

“Cesky?”, asked Masterson-Nolan, inquiring as to whether he spoke Czech. He misunderstood, thinking we were asking his nationality, and he shook his head vehemently.
“Serbska!” he declared, sticking his chest out proudly.
“Milosevic”, cried Scooby. Worried I was for a moment when I thought that he might not want Slobadon’s name shouted with such acclaim, but the man couldn’t have been more on Scooby’s wavelength and he never thought past Savo. The universal language of Football. We continued to shout players’ names across the bar at him for a few minutes, most of whom probably weren’t Serbian at all, but he echoed our shouts with added bravado and glided around behind the bar refilling our glasses.

Now we were locked, and the barman reached across and grabbed Scooby’s Man Utd. jersey. I misunderstood, and took off my shirt. He looked at me curiously for a few seconds and then followed suit, releasing his belly and huge man breasts. This really got us going and we were up on our stools pointing our fingers and singing “Who eat all the pies” at him. He was dancing around the place lapping up every profanity we could think of. He waved his hands quickly and diagonally in front of his flabby chest: “Ziggy Zaggy”, he roared. “Ziggy Zaggy” we roared, and we all imitated his curious gesture badly.

Now we were ossified, and recollection becomes all blurry. Certain memories, distinct moments, stand out clearly. Outside for some fresh air after a shot went down wrong with Masterson-Nolan. “This”, I said to him, “this is the weirdest yet”, because some weird things had happened to us in ten and a half weeks, and we jumped up and down hugging for three hundred and sixty degrees and went back inside. Seeing Corco behind the bar. Serbian traditional music. Seeing a new face sitting at the end of the bar and wondering when he had come in. Me being behind the bar and pulling myself a pint. Going through his CD collection. Finding a Ricky Martin album, and passing it around and laughing. Breaking his Ricky Martin album in front of his face…

Snap went the plastic case and snap went the laughing expression on Ziggy’s face and snap returns my memory nice and clear. His new expression scared me sober. I looked around and my brain worked surprisingly fast as it evaluated my situation and didn’t like what it found. Corco was sitting at the bar staring at his feet after obviously having a few whiskey glasses more than was good for him. Scooby was standing staring at the wall, probably in the middle of an acid flashback induced by the copious amounts of grass we had smoked earlier in the day. Masterson-Nolan was nowhere to be seen. Ziggy was aiming a punch.

I was never renowned for my chin and collapsed like a ton of feathers under his first blow. The sixth man was obviously a friend of Ziggy’s and he copped what was happening quick and Corco had raised his head from his daze just in time to see a stool heading for his face. He hit the ground before his blood and he wasn’t getting up any time soon. Ziggy had lost his balance himself after his exertion and it was me and him in a race to regain our footing. The sixth man was lining up Scooby with his stool but was interrupted by the timely arrival of the Policie, in the form of a nineteen year old cop with a baton and a gun that made a bar stool look very small. He exchanged words in Czech with the sixth man.

After almost three months in Prague I had heard enough stories about the Czech police to fear that we weren’t out of the woods just yet. Scooby was looking around him but all he was seeing was snakes and swinging monkeys and a man with a huge platypus growing out of his left arm. I wasn’t happy to see the cop laugh at a crack made by the sixth man and enjoyed even less seeing him prepare to skull Corco with the huge baton in his left arm. He brought it down with his full weight behind it and Corco was lucky to get his arm up in time to deflect the blow with his elbow, resulting in a sound that was painful for me to hear…

Snap went Corco’s arm and snap went the realisation inside Scooby’s head that something terrible was happening and snap went Scooby. He pure panicked and began launching the liquor bottles lined up beside him in all directions, screaming horribly as he went. He was soon joined in his screams by the sixth man and the cop who were both caught square with flying bottles. Ziggy went to stop him and slipped and cracked his head against the bar. Masterson-Nolan arrived back from his wanderings and he grabbed Corco and I grabbed Scooby and we made as fast an exit as we possibly could.

But we had to go anyway, I’d left the chocolate spread in the fridge.