Lauren: "Lets forget about this. I'll get my foil out, we could just do some smack. I'm a bit wary about setting light to drinks - I set light to a friend in a bar once drinking flaming sambuccas. I accidentally spilled alcohol up his arm and it all caught fire. it was horrible."
Marie: "It's like speed. I think your supposed to breath in the fumes."
Emmy-Kate: "Yeeugh! It's disgusting. It gives you a warm glow though."
L: "I shouldn't drink to much. I've got problems with my kidneys. the only thing I regret about the band is that every story is about us getting drunk. It's the postscript to all our stories - 'Oh, we were very, very drunk."
M: "That's why teetotallers are so boring - they've got nothing to talk about."
L: "I went for a medical, and the nurse told me it was actually good for you to have a moderate amount of alcohol."
M: "She meant red wine, rather than absinthe though."
L: "No she didn't! She meant alcohol - that's a catch-all term. She would have said wine if she meant wine."
M: "Have you been to see Godzilla [Does monster impression] Aargh! Smash! Bang!"
L: "I've heard it's shit - there's no story to it. All that happens is that Godzilla smashes some stuff up..."
M: "...which is great. What more do you want? You can't have a plot and Godzilla. That's too much sensory mind-kill - you'd just die."
[The talk, with terrible inevitability, turns to monkeys]
L: "Do you remember when we had our outing to Monkey World? We saw that monkey eating it's own shit."
E-K: "I scraped the poo out of its arse, threw it against the glass and licked it up, five times in a row. That was one disturbed little chimp."
L: "It was a drug-addict monkey. It had been drugged to be affectionate so it would hug children on Spanish beaches. It's been suffering withdrawal symptoms since it was rescued by Monkey World."
E-K: "Listen, just because you're on downers, would you eat your own shit?"
L: "They've also got loads of monkeys with no feet - they had to amputate them because their original owners surgically attached roller-skates to their feet. you can just imagine them rolling up to you with a tray of drinks and a little buttoned-up jacket saying 'Drinks, signor?'"
M: "Monkeys are my obsession, really. I'm about to launch a solo project called 'Monkey See, Monkey Do'. Lauren likes her magazines..."
L: "Yeah, I'm obsessed by mags like Best. They just don't bear any relation to reality - they use words like 'youngsters', which no one ever says."
E-K: "Take A Break is the worst, with its 'tree of life'. You send in a photo of a loved one who's died, and they stick it to a cartoon tree. The idea is that they live on through the tree."
L: "And the best thing is that it's next to 'Boot Sale Tales', where people write in about picking up gnomes and such like for 5p. Very tasteful."
SCORES ON THE DOORS
Absinthe residue: zero.
State of band: Oddly healthy. Lauren (kidney problems notwithstanding) and Emmy-Kate disappear off to get ready for more boozing. Marie seems content to sit in and play with her extensive collection of monkeys, including her treasured 'Ape In A Cape'.
JOHN MULLEN
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