Three Weeks in ’98: Up The Wooden Hill

As I mentioned in the closing of my last post, David had disappeared from the second party of the three weeks for several hours after leaving to get something at the Westwood Square. Hard as it might be to believe if you know Dave, we didn’t actually notice his absence from the party for a good few hours. Maybe he was quieter in his youth than I remember, but I doubt it given that the first time Sparkie and I met him he threatened us with the handle of a brush, swinging it wildly in our direction. He was four years old then and we were five.

Given that he had went to the shops I can only assume that he left between nine and ten and did not return for roughly three hours. I can’t remember the exact time frame of course, not only because it was just shy of seven years ago, but also due to the fact that Dave didn’t exactly return in a normal kind of way.

A few hours after Titch had emptied his stomach and filled everybody’s boots, those guests who hadn’t taken to living with me during those weeks were leaving for the night. It was when we stepped out to the hall that I found David passed out and slouching precariously between two stairs quarter of the way up.

I have to admit I planned just to leave him like that, knowing that I would be unable to wake him and would have to carry him away. However a girl I went to school with and who lived beside David’s Gran, and therefore had known him since childhood, Insisted that we could not leave him like that if we were any kind of friends.

I took his head, Jim took his legs, and we started to carry him to my parent’s bed. As soon as his body left the ground he opened his eyes in a fleeting return of consciousness which seemed to last only seconds before his eyelids forced themselves closed again. We had put him down for a second to check whether we could get him to stand up, when this proved fruitless we began to lift again. Jim was hit in the stomach as Dave kicked his legs out at him. We put him down again and realised that he wasn’t really conscious at that the kicking had been some kind of defence mechanism. We told him it was alright, we told him we were taking him to bed, and we managed to get what sounded like ‘okay’ out of him. Up we went again and again he quickly went back down as he started kicking.

Jim was fed up by this time and asked if we could switch sides, reasoning that I was a lot bigger than he was and would not be as easy to kick downstairs. So up Dave went again this time with me at the legs and Jim at his head. To my relive he did not kick me, he head butted Jim instead.

Jim was hit on the chest and wasn’t really hurt, but with the revelation that Dave was conscious enough to target him for no good reason he gave up on trying to help him. Eventually it was Titch, nicely sobered up after clearing his system, that helped me get him into a bed without any more problems.

Wow… didn’t think this was such a long story. I haven’t even got to part where Dave tells us where he was…