Merson: The apres McConaughey years

In 1997, after his fifth stint in rehab, Paul ‘Mers’ Merson stepped out of the, now familiar clinic into the leafy Surrey air. He was carrying his black and red Head, faux-leather holdall, wearing his white reebok classics and dressed head to toe in his Arsenal Tracksuit from the previous season (95-96.) Mers knew what he had to do; he headed straight to the nearest pub. It was only 10am so he waited outside and made a quick call to his drug dealer to score some Charles.

He noticed that the Londis across the road was open for business so he went in and bought a four-pack of special brew which he duly knocked back in the car park whilst sitting on a concrete bollard. At 10.55 a black BMW 3 series pulled up, the Charles was handed over and Mers banged on the frosted glass until the tired looking landlady unlocked the double doors. “Right, get me a f***ing pint of Stella”, said Mers as he pushed past the confused looking woman, stuffing a five pound note into her bra. Before he knew it, Mers found himself in his familiar surroundings of a graffiti-covered cubicle. He had been here so many times he felt like he was on auto-pilot as he poured his Charles from the folded paper, assembled a large line with his Barclays connect, rolled up a ten pound note and inhaled up his nose the white powder which had become both his friends and family over the last few years.

The Wedding

In 1998, Paul ‘Mers’ Merson was controversially the first man ever to be officially married to a Class A drug. Below are the vows he used at the uncivil partnership:

I used to be afraid of falling in love, of giving my heart away.
How could I trust someone to love me,
to give to me all that I wanted to give to them?
Charles, when I met you, I realized how much we could share together.
You have renewed my life:
Today I join that life with yours.

The Final Years:

Mers woke up with a start and looked at his chipped Tag Heur timepiece, it had got broken when Ian Wright found him taking photos of his overweight wife whilst she was changing in the Hotel swimming pool cubicles. Through the smashed glass front he saw that it was 9.45am. He had training in fifteen minutes.

He knew he had to rush. From the light fittings and beige wallpaper he knew that he was back in the Arsenal team hotel on the edge of North London, as he ambled to the bathroom he wondered why there were no sheets on his bed, it didn’t matter. He needed to get to London Colney by 10 or he wouldn’t play on Saturday and get his badly needed match bonus, the amount of Charles that he had run up on credit was scary and he and Ray Parlour had been to the races the previous weekend and lost a ton of money. He scraped the crusted Charles from his nose, swilled some Listerine, threw on his Cup-Winners Cup runners up tracksuit and sprinted out of the room barefoot, grabbing the keys to his, now badly dented Audi TT on his way out. It wasn’t until Mers pulled onto the M25 that he realised the year was 2007, he had left Arsenal ten years before.