Posts by tag
drinking
A Better Type of Buzz
Frank Sonderborg receives a phone call from an old work colleague who is currently in jail for robbing a string of post offices alongside a group of French thieves. Drink, drugs, and Euro-hijinks galore. Some buzz…
Cocktail Night
From friendship to growing up, Esther Hope Arthurson gives us a snippet on life on cocktail night.
Losing It: Four Cautionary Tales of Travel
In a series of ill goings-on across a life spent travelling the length and breadth of the world, Frank Sonderborg recounts a few cautionary travellers tales.
Talking Soup Talks: #1 The University Experience
In a new series of interviews and reviews, the editorial team at Talking Soup kick off a new series of podcasts. In this pilot episode our digital editor, John Smith, takes a look at the issues surrounding students in a time of the Covid-19 pandemic. Should they stay or should they go? If you want to take part in the podcast, then please get in touch.
Broken Saturday Night
Wet, half-sober, tired and bored. The meaninglessness of Saturday night for a disillusioned thirty-something.
Stupidly, I Knowingly Broke Quarantine in Spain and was Instantly Apprehended by Police
Robert Locke, a temporarily unemployed travel company representative, woefully disregards government quarantine regulations and takes to the streets in his adopted home of Malaga, only to be arrested almost immediately.
In Search of 53 German Student Girls
The dance that night was in a converted cinema. We sat in the front row seats and watched the natives giving it, like it was 1919. Country and western was big in the hinterlands back in the day. Sugary sweet songs of the poor emigrant Paddy in his bed-sit in London, pining for his golden haired girlfriend and his silver haired mother while he drank himself into a stupor.
The Stabbing Factory
He slashed at me a few times – I can’t say for certain how close he got, but when you can feel the air move because of the swipe, the blade is too close – but mostly he stood in place making these hesitant jerking jabs. He kept saying, “Come on, I’ll stab you. Come on”, as if it were somehow my responsibility to move closer to him. Perhaps that’s the way things work, I don’t know, this was my first knife fight, and frankly it was a bit unfair, I didn’t have a knife.
Talking Soup book reviews ‘Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises’ Ernest Hemingway
So far, complex titles ranging from the heart wrenching narratives of Baldwin to the mind-expanding prose of LeGuin have been met with such turns of phrase as ‘it was alright’ or ‘it was good’. Now, given that the English language is prone to the kind of linguistic flare afforded to it by an unequalled vocabulary and system of expressions, I feel I could do more justice to these totemic works of literature than my long-suffering missus has hitherto been privy. Clear? Then on with the show.
The Hangover
I sit up in bed with my hand over my eyes. The shards of sunlight, shining through the open window and the scream of a scooter from the street below make me wince. Through my fingers the black and white poster of the singer Morrissey looks down on me with pity from the bedroom wall. I return the look with remorse and regret.
Greece: There and Back on the Magic Bus. Part 1
Lesson learned. When dealing with the Island Greeks, they’re lovely people, but they’ll take you to the cleaners given half a chance. This deflated our egos for a few nanoseconds. We saw a family out back refilling plastic water bottles from a well. If the silly tourists want bottled water, we’ll sell them bottled water. This was the Greek idea of keeping the tourists happy.
Searching for Thrills
It’s a typical Saturday night at the Java Jive. The bar is a Tacoma institution, a one-time home to two pet monkeys appropriately named Java and Jive. The monkeys are dead now, and so is your marriage. You’re singing karaoke because you’re trying to forget everything. You’re a lonely 41-year old single mom with two kids and a decaying house on the north end of town, and you know what it feels like to have your thrills vanish. So you’re singing your lungs out, and some guy bites your foot.
Do You Remember Friday?
Do you remember Fridays? The indescribable feeling of utter joy that signified that thankfully school was over for another two days. The misery of sitting in a classroom against your will was to be alleviated and replaced with the respite of resentment from parents who didn’t know what to do with you. Yes, Friday was a fine time. Friday represented hope a brief, fleeting window in which anything was possible and the misery of school, with its press-gang style education was exposed for what it was, finite.
Vegan food fair
One of the stringent facets of Mexican life surrounds the imbibing of the local tap water. I’m sure it’s bad for you or something, but on a base level it…
An evening among the condos
Pursuing potential sexual relations in the vast suburban sprawl of middle America is far from easy as our hero gets lost amongst the condos.
Whiff of a knacker’s armpit
Euro Championships invariably throws my mind down the years, to a holiday I spent with my Danish in-laws in Mayo. Back before the Celtic Tiger and two house mortgage repayments on…
Boys, Booze and Bathrooms
Laura Smith documents the “living for the weekend” lifestyle in middle America in a tale of boys, booze and bathrooms.
Giving up Alcohol
I stand for a while with the glass in my hand, and then I throw it against the wall. Giving up alcohol is tough but I’m one day off four months sober.