By mid-1999, I was a wreck. An alcoholic and coke fiend who'd hit bottom. My low point was not as bad as it is for some, but I think I can safely say that it was harsher than it was for the person I once heard in an NA meeting who described reaching desperation when she had to sell one of her polo ponies.
I started going to NA meetings. Whatever I feel about the 12 Steps, I'm pretty sure those meetings saved my life. I got clean, made friends and got some structure back into my life. Come December, I was ready to party with my new pals in the Fellowship. So I decided to go to the NA New Year party.
Me on 31 December 1999, before the stuff happened.
On NYE, I went to an evening NA meeting at Notting Hill in London. A bunch of us were heading straight from there to the party. As we turned onto the main road at Notting Hill Gate, an ambulance blue-lighted past us, sirens blaring. "Wouldn't want to be in one of those tonight", I said. How we laughed! (You can probably now guess where this is going.)
We arrived at Conway Hall to find the party already in full swing. And there, sitting at the side of the dance floor, was a girl I'd met before and found rather alluring. At the time, I was 28. She was…well, let's just say MUCH younger. Legal in my country, illegal in others. I found myself dancing with her. I had been dancing gingerly, due to an old skiing injury that sometimes made my right knee click out of place. But, eager to impress this youth, I began throwing some wilder shapes. It wasn't long before I felt the familiar crunch in my knee. I blanched and receded to the side of the hall, dragging my useless leg behind me. She carried on dancing.
"No worries," I thought. "I'll just do what I always do – click it back in and carry on." But would it click back in? Hahaha! No it would not. Eventually, I decided there was nothing else for it – I'd have to call an ambulance.
The friends I'd arrived with were nowhere to be found as I sat outside the main party area to wait for the ambulance. Two chaps I'd never met before sat either side of me with their legs out, to prevent anyone from bashing into me as they hurried past.
The ambulance came and took me away. I was on my own in the ambulance, and then on my own in a cubicle in A&E. I was thoroughly miserable. The staff at A&E took a shine to me (no doubt because I was the only sober patient they had) and decided to cheer me up at midnight, by bringing me a cup of tea and putting some party popper streamers round my neck. It helped a bit.
On 1 January 2000 I had surgery.
The moral of this story is: don't laugh at people in ambulances and/or try to get off with jailbait. Karma is a pitiless bastard.
On the other hand, I have a more memorable Millennium Eve story than most people. So I win. SCREW YOU, KARMA!
