THE LOLA BOYS ABROAD !

Since the age of ten Paul had lived his life as if he were in Dallas. 

Or rather – On Dallas! 

And he ‘d still never even been anywhere near the darn place. 

Except on BBC 1. in the early 80s.

His childhood ‘dream’ was wishing ‘Jim’ would fix it for him to be on the Southfork patio, munching on eggs as over easy as america felt to a British kid back then. Grazing with the Ewings like entitled livestock. Brunching pool-side on the seemingly ever-breezy set – blown away by the starry cast. 

He’d be perched proudly between Sue Ellen and Bobby. 

Obviously for quite different reasons. 

His deep, or so he felt then, affection for Patrick Duffy, the ‘Man From Atlantis’, had had Paul’s fin’s flapping when still a member of ‘The Duckling Club’. 

And the compulsive obsession he had with Sue Ellen and her battle with the booze, lips quivering more violently than the glass in her hand, attempting to resist a decanter of something in tan, was positively worrisome. 

He’d literally based his life on her! 

In the his youth it had screwed him right up. He became a homosexual and an alcoholic in just eight epidoses!

Or maybe only two!

Paul was almost sure it was not as black and white as that. But having an unhealthy admiration for a tragic and glamorous woman knocking back Bourbon to cope with life’s ups and downs was only ever gonna send him in the latter direction. 

Eventually.

Watching Sue Ellen go glamorously unconscious had snaked its way like a tequila worm into Paul’s subconscious, poisoning the spirited relationship he was to have with the broth in which the wriggly git lurked. 

It had all ended in one great hangover.  Half way up a volcano in East Bali!

But there was nothing duller than therapising  under cover of ‘entertaining’ prose and getting others blogged down in one’s mire of self-indulgent sludge, so he decided immediately to drop it and return to Linda Gray. 

After all,  it had been her fault entirely that his existence had taken a wrong turn at every pub doorway. 

Nothing to do with a father who was sectioned more regularly than a Terry’s chocolate orange! Or the eclectic living arrangements at the family guest house they managed in sunny Bournemouth. Teenage life for an artistically virile youth, playing a manic game of Happy Families alongside paying guests, was definitely borderline for his personality. 

But it was Sue Ellen Paul really blamed.

Every time he encountered a decanter his lips were still a quiver!

‘Warn the kids’ he thought, dry as a vodka martini.

’T.V. can really fuck you up!’