Pie-eyed

[H]ere I've been roosting all day long, with nothing to do but gaze at this bunch of would-be scribes grinding out jazz copy, and now, at half-past four, that pie-eyed zebra of a Sunday editor has to hand me an assignment about as concrete as a hunk of Hudson River mist; and I've got a date with Vita for supper at six.

Of all the blockheads in the world, I have the finest collection working for me. Terence Tadpole is a dolt, Sidney Squirrel is a sentimental idiot, Freddie Fox is a pie-eyed fool, Felix Frog is a perfect imbecile.

When the pie-eyed teens in the school hall, where I, decades before, had grasped the tendril with which I would swing out of Essex, like a tubby Tarzan, look to me full of X Factor ambition and Xbox distraction and tell me that they "want to be famous too," I wince, but I want to tell them they've been swindled. That they are being horribly misled by the dominant cultural narratives.

"He's just pie-eyed," said Dart quietly. "God knows how much straight alcohol he's had. Better come over here, Andy."

I sat there, getting more and more pie-eyed, without anyone noticing, as far as I could judge, since the sole manifestation of my drunkenness was that my tongue was looser than usual.

No, nothing happened. You were so pie-eyed drunk you were incapable of doing anything whatsoever.

It is Boxing Day in a football ground, and all we can do is sprawl over the plastic, hurling instructions and vague encouragement. The seat is an extension of the sofa, the match another Pick of the Day in the Radio Times. Some are wearing Santa hats, some have been drinking only six or seven hours after last stopping, guzzling away, topping up their levels to reach pie-eyed delirium.