
It was a clear and balmy evening in the early summer, school was about to finish and the days were getting ever longer, and there I sat, amongst the ruins of an abandoned water mill with the broken stone walls stretching no further than two feet into the darkening sky. I wasn’t there alone, for I was surrounded by a noisy, hormonal, horde of inebriated fifteen year-olds, getting ever drunker and ever louder by the minute. The air was thick with the scent of smoke and cheap alcohol with a distant hint of vomit. People were having fun and the atmosphere was pleasant.
Perched a top of one of these walls was I and a good friend George, as he sipped on his two litre bottle of White Star cider and I my bottle of Becks lager we discussed the depravity of the situation, wondering why we were taking part in such a ritual when we could be at home, clean and smelling fresh, sat in front of the television. We kept drinking. He talked of a girl who at this point in time he had eyes for, I didn't care, but listened anyway and offered some advice "You're drunk, she is too, why don't you just talk to her?". To which he responds with some sloppy slurred crap about why she'd never reciprocate his feelings, it was time for me to leave him on his own for a few minutes, to stew in his stupor while I talked to other people.
I walked towards a group of people, who in school, I only ever had the occasional conversation with and somehow got talking with them on the topic of space, I explained how the speed of light meant that the stars they were seeing now were actually the stars of many years ago, but this was far too much for them to comprehend. My beer was empty, the conversation was waning, so I used this as a good excuse to venture back to my fallen comrade and make sure he wasn’t dead, and also to grab another beer from my bag which I had left him to defend.
He was there, now slumped up against the wall with my bag under his left arm, groaning about that damn girl, I reached into the bag and grabbed another beer, opened it, flicked the cap towards him, and told him that he looked as if he was having loads of fun.
Back at the group consisting entirely of people of which I only ever had occasional conversations with I was greeted with the exclamation from below that "He's our Stephen Fry!" to which I quickly and neurotically responded "A tall, fat, well spoken, homosexual?". I was told that that wasn't what they meant and that one of them would marry me. This was a signal that it was time for me to make like a tree.
I decided that it was a good idea at this point to urinate, so started my short wander towards the bushes, and who should I see on the way there? Cross legged and hunched over, but George! I said hello and asked him how he was doing, to which he answered with "I feel like cra- auooogh" before he could finish the sentence he threw up all over the ground, narrowly missing my shoes and leaving a thick coating on himself, he raised his head to say "Crap! I feel like Crap!" and then vomited again. Another person, maybe even a better person would sit there with him and comfort him, but at this point, I really needed to go, and wasn't fancying adding myself to the growing list of people soaked in their own bodily fluids. So. I used my infinite wisdom to help him.
"Hey, George."
"What!"
“Got a word for you.”
"Moderation."
From this event onwards, the word “Moderation” has lodged itself firmly in our shared lexicon, now with an added meaning, when one says it, it implies that the subject hearing it has gone too far, and that it’s probably time to stop, creating a memorable point which you will be able to recall later as when it started to go down hill...