The Alcohol Story | Bristol
Not all tales of travel are glamorous. Sometimes you come across a situation that makes you wish to be anywhere else but there. This was one such instance.
Date: 01 Oct 2023
Location: Bristol
Approximately 20:00: something rather unusual
I was walking back to my Voi scooter after spending time by the harbour. Pausing the ride turned out to be a good decision as all other scooters had been taken. I proceeded to unlock my scooter to head to the train station for my 20:45 train.
Looking back, this moment makes me want to believe in divine interventions. I turned 270 degrees towards my right instead of 90 degrees towards my left to enter Prince St.
Had I turned left, I wouldāve completely missed the man who was lying face down on the road behind me. He seemed to be in his late 20s or early 30s and didnāt seem to be a rough sleeper. I say this because he didnāt seem to have anything to insulate himself from the ground.
A day prior, as I was walking from Broadmead to Broad Quay, I walked past a rough sleeper. They had a quilt covering their body and some cardboard and sheets acting as a bed. Therefore the lack of covers struck me as peculiar. It suggested that he had ended up there unintentionally.
By the time all this ran through my head, I was about 200m away from the man. I couldāve pretended I saw nothing but my conscious didnāt let me. If that were me, Iād want someone to alert emergency services.
And so I did, I called 999 and explained what Iād seen to them. The calmly speaking woman on the phone asked me if the man was breathing. I didnāt have an answer as all I had was my reasoning from earlier. She asked me if I could go back to check.
And so I did. I scootered my way back to the man to check if he was breathing. The 200m scooter ride back felt quite tense. Although thankfully the road was fairly quiet as it was a bus lane.
I got back to where I last saw the man to find him still lying there. I parked my scooter next to him and tried to jolt him awake while having emergency services on the phone.
āI need an appulā said the man as I shook him awake. Although very much disoriented, the man was okay. Turns out he had had one too many drinks and had passed out on the side of the street.
It didnāt take a masterās degree in psychology to realise that the man was a danger to himself if left on his own. He could barely walk three steps without unintentionally stepping onto the road and was lying on the floor every chance he could get. He was also severely incapable of understanding what was going on around him.
Despite that, he knew who he was, where he lived and how he would get there. He revealed his address to me and told me he needed to take a specific bus to get there. After quizzing him and verifying what he said, I concluded that he was telling the truth.
I went to a nearby grocery shop to get him the apple that he kept requesting. I also got him a bottle of water and an orange.
Initially, I was hoping to get him on the bus to where he lived. But this turned out to be impractical as he wasnāt able to look for the bus to arrive nor to stand up straight, as moments after arriving at the bus stop, he proceeded to have a little lie-down.
So I called an Uber instead. I proceeded to head to the pick-up location hand in hand (as he would veer off into the road if I let go of his hand) and arrived at the location. The estimated arrival was 5 minutes.
By this time, I had about 15 minutes left to catch my scheduled inflexible train. And so I hoped to get a lift to the train station with the man. Now I was also worried that the taxi driver wouldnāt pick us up as the man was already lying on the floor.
āGET IT TOGETHER MAN!! IF YOU LOOK TO BE DRUNK, THE TAXI DRIVER MIGHT NOT GIVE US A LIFT!!ā I said sternly to the man lying on the floor as I helped him up.
The taxi arrived and to my relief agreed to drop me off at the station and take the man to where he lived. He was nice enough to maintain a conversation with the man and me.
As I reached the station, I received an alert on my phone stating that my scheduled train had departed. And so, I had to buy a new ticket to take a later train back to my home.
The man kept thanking me profusely. I said to him, āThe best way to thank me is by not ending up in a situation like this ever again.ā
I hope you can call upon this story when you are contemplating another drink when you are already sloshed.
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