Song 17: How You Remind Me

How You Remind Me - Nickelback

Hell.

You ever been there?

I remember hell. Let me tell you a little about it.

Summer of 2002. Moderate times for me. I'd been working at Blackwell's bookshop, Charing Cross, for about a year, my first job after university, and it was very pleasant with nice intelligent colleagues, but of course it wasn't a job that went anywhere, and at this stage I'd forced myself to realise that, so was beginning to get itchy.

Furthermore, I had to work 2 out of 3 Saturdays and 1 out of 3 Sundays so it was rare to get a good weekend. This was particularly a drag for me because I played cricket. Believe it or not, dear reader, I was a pretty reasonable cricketer in my day. That summer, though, things really didn't click for me on the cricket pitch, probably in part because of the disruption of having to work on Saturdays quite often (I began taking holiday to get my Saturdays off, which caused an on-shop-floor argument with my direct superior, but that's another story, I could be a feisty little chump back then).

I was playing at a pretty good level for Old Paulines (pronounced Poor-lines, not leens, so no jokes, right, i've heard'em all) First Eleven in the Surrey League but I was not pulling my weight with either ball or bat. Up until that point I'd always been an extremely tidy and successful left-arm spinner, but that summer, I was struggling, and not having anything else of any worth in my life, it was getting me down, down, down.

So I must have thought I'd mix it up a little preparation-wise. I think I'd been at a party at my friend Alex's house the night before, not entirely sure whether I slept in bathroom or kitchen floor, either way, holding down water was not a certainty. I remember I dropped in briefly at home (still living with my mum at this stage -ah, such salad days) and was next to toilet taking in deep breaths when the doorbell went and the chap who was giving me a lift to the game (our home matches were in Thames Ditton, Surrey) arrived. I feared for his car's upholstery at this stage. However, you'd be proud of me, I lasted the journey. Just.

Now, I've played a lot of team sports in my time - me and my brother were both blessed with pretty good athletic and sporting ability -and so I was in the teams, all the teams. But I was never really, how you say, "in" "the" "teams". "One" "of" "the" "boys". Not that I have a bad word to say about my cricketing companions of 2002 (my rugby rotters of 1992 - that is a different matter, plenty of bad words there), they were good boys, but I was precious, self-absorbed and a little miserable back then, so if i wasn't contributing in terms of actual sporting performance, I was not contributing much in the way of team spirit either. Nor was it contributing to me.

Needless to say, the policy of drinking so much the night before that I couldn't see straight didn't really assist my cricketing skills. Don't get me wrong, my cricketing buddies were carousers and hoodlums (indeed I was shocked another time that summer at being forced to do shots of tequila by the captain the night before a game), but, nevertheless, there was something very much 'not on' about having one's performance incapacitated by booze. Weak and unteamly. So, it was a bleak, overcast summer's day and I spent the whole day in dark glasses and wandering around like a zombie (including when I was batting) and made regular trips to a personal dark place.

My contribution? Zero. My sense of self-worth? Zero. Did we win? No. Did we lose? Maybe, more likely a dull draw. Still, time for a bit of team bonding, and I was insufficiently wilful and also just about sufficiently recovered not to say no to a Saturday night at some fun pub of someone else's choosing. Often, this would be a nice little pub by the river, but this Saturday, it meant the Slug and Lettuce in Fulham Broadway, my one and only visit there.

And, here, mes amis, after all that preamble, is hell. Right here.

What made it hell? The fact it only served generic lager and no decent bitters? The fact my splitting headache and cold sweat returned? The fact that I could tell anyone I talked to could make out the distant vomit on my breath? The fact I was caught in the toilets by a bemused team mate doing my frankly bizarre 'losing hiccups' routine which involves repeated sharp breaths and various pep talks to self? The feeling, at 23, of being old, too old for a place like this? The heaving pit of testosterone? The barmaid who suddenly got up on the bar and started dancing, badly, to the leering delight of this heaving pit? The loneliness? The feeling of being trapped, doomed to eternal social misery?

No, sirree, none of these things made it hell. "Never made it as wise man ..." made it hell. "Couldn't cut it as a poor man stealing" pumping over the stereo and being sung along to, moved along to, air guitared along to by a packed West London pub full of, and i choose my words carefully, soulless goons, that is what made it hell, that is when I understood what hell was. Hell.

Nickelback, you are the sound of my hell. I am confident you are the sound of millions of other people's hell too. I don't hold it against you. In a way, Nickelback, and I dread to say it, but you know what, you remind me, perhaps you've heard this phrase before, but you remind me of who I really am ...