The longer he sat by himself, the harder he tried to recall the events of the evening previous – it did little good and as Nick slipped in and out of his manic operatic, he began to recall basic, if disjointed events. He had come to the following conclusion:-

• Some girl was involved.
• He had asked his sort-of-girlfriend to marry him, albeit in a drunken stupor, proceeding an argument and after having asked her what the fuck she was on about, several times.
• He had managed all this on £4.86, given the amount he went out with and the 14 solitary pence in his pocket.
• None of this had seen especially out of the ordinary of the people who had been buying him drinks.
• Neither Matt nor Ben had bought him a drink, or even seen him, since storming out of the party.

If his relationship with Rachel wasn’t in tatters, he’d be rather pleased with himself – an evening without Matt or Ben in which he’d got beyond-blind drunk, using his own charm and persuasion and managed to talk to a girl, presumably for quite some time, without a) already knowing her 2) her being a friend of the girl he had drunken asked to marry him in his own inevitable way and d) being Ben in a wig.
Another flashback – this time, he was lying on his back in the Cathedral Green, pointing at a statue and laughing his head off. Whatever had happened, you had to admit he appeared to have pulled it off brilliantly. With all the grace, finesse and artistry that comes with practice, Nick had managed to get the most drunk ever on the least money ever, and all from having an argument with his girlfriend.
Girlfriend. “Fuck” – he *had* proposed to her. Maybe he ought to try and say something, anything, but something to her. He imagined how she must have felt, in her estimation, he was a wanker and to be avoided, yet he had performed brilliantly, convincing a girl who had actually gotten to know him, that he wasn’t some kind of physical or mental inadequate – a task in itself.
He leant over and flipped on the TV. That stupid show that Matt was always raving about. On it, two men were arguing about whether all films had a dog in them. “Cocks” muttered Nick and turned the TV off. Speaking of cocks, Nick remembered another incident from the previous night. He could now vividly recall taking a piss against the statue from earlier. In the vision, he was merrily pissing against cold granite. Also in the vision, he had forgotten to do anything of the things a chap needed to do before pissing against cold granite and was now happily pissing himself. Back on the sofa, he looked down and realised what the smell was. Smelling like a granddad, Nick decided a walk might help him recall more. Lifting himself off the sofa, stopping mid lift to neck the rest of the gin, Nick heaved himself off and toward the door. Maybe a walk wouldn’t help him wake up, the cold air might help him stop smelling like the fettered corpse of a month-dead tramp that had just been lifted, by helicopter, from a sewage farm, and a sewage farm where all the sewage was specially treated to make it smell more like urine than regular sewage.