It's been a while since I last posted, I know, but I've got a good excuse this time, as my girlfriend and I were in Italy for a good part of my hiatus. This was my first proper holiday in God knows how long, my girlfriend and I were going to celebrate our Birthdays in Rome (yep, our birthdays are in the same week. Weird, huh?) and I was looking forward to it immensely, but the main problem about Rome is the fact that it's abroad and you have to get on an aeroplane to get there. And you can't get there directly from Birmingham International Airport, either, you have to go to Heathrow, which is nearly a hundred miles away.
I'm not a big fan of flying. Don't get me wrong, I'm not afraid of it; I quite like the bit when you're actually up in the sky. I love looking down at the world from above, seeing coastlines and the tops of mountains and the topside of clouds. It's just a pity I can't sit in a window seat because I'm poor and can only afford to travel economy and therefore end up with my knees around my earholes because I have the audacity to be taller than six feet. Anyway, as I said, I enjoy the actual flying. What I don't enjoy is all the rigmarole you have to go through before you can actually get on the plane. All the checking in and security checks and putting all your bottles in plastic bags and all the general fucking about really gives me a cob-on. (That's a Brummie phrase meaning 'in a bit of a mood')
When you get on a bus or a train, do they ask you to take off your belt first? No. And recent events tell us that buses and trains are just as likely to get blown up by terrorists as planes are. The stuff they won't let people take on, either; Tweezers, for example. If anyone ever mounted a successful hijack armed with just a pair of tweezers, then they deserve the fucking plane, if you ask me. (Not that I had a pair of tweezers, by the way. Anyone who knows me well enough to inspect my eyebrows can testify to the fact that I don't use them!) Don't get me wrong, I know we need security, but there's a difference between security and paranoid hysteria.
So, anyway, we flew from the new Terminal Five, which looks like something out of Flash Gordon, but unfortunately without a bellowing Brian Blessed. Actually, it'd be cool to have him do the Tannoy announcements. You certainly wouldn't ignore them. Typically, as this is England, our flight was delayed for an hour and a bit, but after we got on, it was all fairly plain sailing. Or Plane-flying, if you will.
Two and a half hours later, we land at Fiumicino Airport, and I knew for sure we were in Rome as the woman who checked my passport looked like a Vogue model and I was surrounded by loads of nuns.(Sounds like a dream I once had.) These nuns weren't your normal, boring, black-and-white penguin types, these ones were all in white, except for their wimples, which were navy blue. I suspect these nuns were Tottenham supporters. (if they were indeed Spurs fans, I bet their faith has been sorely tested lately!) Anyway, I get through passport control with a minimum of fuss as I'm from the EU. My girlfriend, however, with her American passport, had to queue for ages with the rest of non-EU undesirables. However, this just meant I had to go and get our luggage, which, as is usual for me, were the penultimate bags to come out onto the belt.
We were picked up by an elderly taxi driver and taken on a half-hour walk to where his car was parked. We were staying in a hotel which was on the other side of Rome, in a town called Ciampino. The taxi driver couldn't find it, and spent a lot of the journey talking and swearing to himself in Italian. Now, I don't know if you've ever been to Rome, but one of the things about the place is that everyone there drives like an absolute nutcase. The speed limit is seen as just a rough guide and stuff like traffic lights and roadsigns are just there to make the roadside look a bit more interesting. It's like Death Race 2000. (RIP David Carradine, by the way. Surely, he should've learned from Kill Bill that the palm technique was dangerous?) The village we were staying in didn't have the big roads Rome does, it just had single-lane roads and dirt tracks and roads that share space with train tracks and no pavements, so sitting in the back of a taxi with a swearing taxi driver who's lost whilst everyone else is doing their level best to collide with you was a bit worrying.
Anyway, after a while, and probably more through luck than judgment, we got to where we were staying, and it was a lovely-looking place. It was an old farmhouse which had been converted into a few apartments. We checked in, dumped our bags and went for a night-time al-fresco dinner. I normally struggle to make any kind of decision, especially when picking from a menu, but the hotel's menu helped me on this score as it only had three dishes to choose from on it. Chicken, beef, or a plate of cheeses. A vegan would be fucked, basically. Anyway, I had the beef, Heather had the chicken and afterwards we drank and looked out over the lights of Rome in the distance. It wasn't the best meal we've ever had, but it was just what we needed.
(Right. I seem to have been typing for ages, and we've only just got there! Serves me right for going off on one about air travel. There's another five days of this shit yet, so I've decided to do it in episodes. Next one soon!)
Showing posts with label Hotels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hotels. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
Monday, May 12, 2008
My trip to Bristol part one: Friday.
I'm extremely exhausted and trying to rehydrate furiously after the fantastic weekend I've just had at this year's comics convention in Bristol. As there's loads to tell, I'm going to split this up into fairly easy-to-digest bits. So here's what happened on the Friday:
Weirdly enough, my train was on time, and my reserved seat was unoccupied! I was sat amidst a group of French students who were extremely annoying. I'd forgotten to pack anything to read on the train journey, but luckily enough, the passenger who had occupied my seat before me had left a copy of The Times behind for me to have a read of. There wasn't a lot of interest in there, but I read the sports pages, and an interesting article about Bob Dylan and put the paper back down. As soon as I did, the French guy opposite me (I was sat in those seats that have a table, so you end up trying to spend the journey avoiding eye contact with the passenger opposite, and also trying to avoid kicking them, probably accidentally, under the table) asked me in broken English if he could read the paper. He took the paper and started laughing at the first story he was looking at, which was about Josef Fritzl. Then, he turned the page and saw a picture of a dying Burmese baby. He thought this was hilarious and held up the paper so all his mates could see it, shouted something out in French and all his mates had a good old laugh at the picture. How sweet.
Not long after, it was time for me to get up and wrestle my (very heavy indeed) bag out of the rack, which was not an easy task as my new Gallic friends had dumped all of their luggage on top of mine, and they all sat there watching me, smirking, as I struggled to get my bag out. In the end I just dumped one student's ridiculously large rucksack (it was virtually a bergen) on the floor to get to mine. He got up out of his seat then.
Bristol Temple Meads station is a fantastic-looking place, and it's how I think all railway stations should look. Especially when you consider that I'd just travelled from Birmingham New Street, a place not suffering from 'sick building syndrome', more like 'terminally ill building syndrome'. My girlfriend's train arrived about a quarter of an hour after mine did, so I hung around outside the station in the glorious sunshine topping up my nicotine levels rather than my tan. She duly arrived (bringing far too much stuff in her suitcase, as usual. It was one of them things with wheels that you can drag along like a tartan shopping trolley, which is a lot easier usually, but the area around the convention and the station has its fair share of cobbled and uneven pavements so you end up with vibration white finger after pulling it along for just five minutes!) and we went along to our hotel and checked in.
Now, for the last few comic-cons I always get there a day early so I can spend some time with two of my oldest friends, Mark and his wife Dawn, who don't live far from Bristol. Dawn came to meet us outside our hotel after she finished work and we all got on a bus to Keynsham, which is where she parks her car (it seems a convoluted way of getting to and from work to me, but apparently this saves her a hell of a lot of money in travel costs) and from there we went to a supermarket to get food and beer, survived a minor anti-freeze incident and then we went on to their lovely home in Saltford where Mark and Dawn cooked me and Heather (that's my lovely girlfriend) a fantastic Mexican meal which we ate in their garden, as the weather was glorious (but the clouds were looking ominous). Although they'd been in the house a while now, it was the first time I'd seen it, and Mark proudly showed us around his garden and the variety of crops he was growing. Ah, bless him.
After dinner, the plan was to head into Bath, where Mark was meeting up with some ex-colleagues of his, so we all piled into Dawn's car (she pulled the short straw and was the designated driver) and headed into Aquae Sulis. On the way the heavens opened; a torrential thunderstorm started to batter the south west. There was sheet lightning, heavy rain, and hailstones, and we couldn't park that close to the pub. Romans might've been shit-hot at building roads, but they're shit at providing parking spaces. This meant that we had to leg it to the pub in what seemed to be a monsoon. We turned up looking like drowned rats. However, after I had tried some fucking disgusting strawberry-based beer, we found out that Mark's ex-colleagues weren't coming as they had problems with their car or something, so we decided to head to Mark's local, a charming little tavern, and it was a lot drier there. In fact, they hadn't had any rain at all yet, so we sat outside with the smokers under an awning and watched the lightning from a distance. It all looked very Wuthering Heights. Then it started to rain again. A lot. The awning under which we all huddled started to fill up with water dramatically. We all looked up at the pregnant bulges above us and decided to make our way inside quickly. One of the other smokers wasn't quick enough and didn't make it in time; the awning collapsed and gave the straggler an almighty shower. Not only did it extinguish his cigarette, it also soaked him completely! Everyone who had made it in time was standing in the doorway of the pub pointed at him and laughed loudly. Then we all laughed at the inappropriately dressed teenage girls who were trudging past drenched. Then later, we saw two other young girls wrestling with each other in a big puddle. Strange.
When the rain died off a bit, the four of us headed back into Brizzle and had a few in the Hatchet. This is apparently Bristol's oldest pub and reputedly has a door covered in human skin. Nice. It's now a rock pub, and when I went there last year Mark and I were accosted by a woman obsessed with the SS and her very tall, very-manly looking transsexual mate. Nothing as weird as that happened this time, we had a few drinks, talked a lot of shite as usual and sang along to Flash by Queen whilst thumping the tables in time with the music. Heather, as usual, got invited to have dinner with my friends at some point in the future. (I think I might've been invited, too. It's one of the things I've noticed about Heather is that she gets invited to dinner by a lot of the people I've introduced her to. They ask her, not me!) Anyway, it was a great night, we headed back to our hotel slightly merry and happy and tired and all set for the Comics Convention the next day.
Weirdly enough, my train was on time, and my reserved seat was unoccupied! I was sat amidst a group of French students who were extremely annoying. I'd forgotten to pack anything to read on the train journey, but luckily enough, the passenger who had occupied my seat before me had left a copy of The Times behind for me to have a read of. There wasn't a lot of interest in there, but I read the sports pages, and an interesting article about Bob Dylan and put the paper back down. As soon as I did, the French guy opposite me (I was sat in those seats that have a table, so you end up trying to spend the journey avoiding eye contact with the passenger opposite, and also trying to avoid kicking them, probably accidentally, under the table) asked me in broken English if he could read the paper. He took the paper and started laughing at the first story he was looking at, which was about Josef Fritzl. Then, he turned the page and saw a picture of a dying Burmese baby. He thought this was hilarious and held up the paper so all his mates could see it, shouted something out in French and all his mates had a good old laugh at the picture. How sweet.
Not long after, it was time for me to get up and wrestle my (very heavy indeed) bag out of the rack, which was not an easy task as my new Gallic friends had dumped all of their luggage on top of mine, and they all sat there watching me, smirking, as I struggled to get my bag out. In the end I just dumped one student's ridiculously large rucksack (it was virtually a bergen) on the floor to get to mine. He got up out of his seat then.
Bristol Temple Meads station is a fantastic-looking place, and it's how I think all railway stations should look. Especially when you consider that I'd just travelled from Birmingham New Street, a place not suffering from 'sick building syndrome', more like 'terminally ill building syndrome'. My girlfriend's train arrived about a quarter of an hour after mine did, so I hung around outside the station in the glorious sunshine topping up my nicotine levels rather than my tan. She duly arrived (bringing far too much stuff in her suitcase, as usual. It was one of them things with wheels that you can drag along like a tartan shopping trolley, which is a lot easier usually, but the area around the convention and the station has its fair share of cobbled and uneven pavements so you end up with vibration white finger after pulling it along for just five minutes!) and we went along to our hotel and checked in.
Now, for the last few comic-cons I always get there a day early so I can spend some time with two of my oldest friends, Mark and his wife Dawn, who don't live far from Bristol. Dawn came to meet us outside our hotel after she finished work and we all got on a bus to Keynsham, which is where she parks her car (it seems a convoluted way of getting to and from work to me, but apparently this saves her a hell of a lot of money in travel costs) and from there we went to a supermarket to get food and beer, survived a minor anti-freeze incident and then we went on to their lovely home in Saltford where Mark and Dawn cooked me and Heather (that's my lovely girlfriend) a fantastic Mexican meal which we ate in their garden, as the weather was glorious (but the clouds were looking ominous). Although they'd been in the house a while now, it was the first time I'd seen it, and Mark proudly showed us around his garden and the variety of crops he was growing. Ah, bless him.
After dinner, the plan was to head into Bath, where Mark was meeting up with some ex-colleagues of his, so we all piled into Dawn's car (she pulled the short straw and was the designated driver) and headed into Aquae Sulis. On the way the heavens opened; a torrential thunderstorm started to batter the south west. There was sheet lightning, heavy rain, and hailstones, and we couldn't park that close to the pub. Romans might've been shit-hot at building roads, but they're shit at providing parking spaces. This meant that we had to leg it to the pub in what seemed to be a monsoon. We turned up looking like drowned rats. However, after I had tried some fucking disgusting strawberry-based beer, we found out that Mark's ex-colleagues weren't coming as they had problems with their car or something, so we decided to head to Mark's local, a charming little tavern, and it was a lot drier there. In fact, they hadn't had any rain at all yet, so we sat outside with the smokers under an awning and watched the lightning from a distance. It all looked very Wuthering Heights. Then it started to rain again. A lot. The awning under which we all huddled started to fill up with water dramatically. We all looked up at the pregnant bulges above us and decided to make our way inside quickly. One of the other smokers wasn't quick enough and didn't make it in time; the awning collapsed and gave the straggler an almighty shower. Not only did it extinguish his cigarette, it also soaked him completely! Everyone who had made it in time was standing in the doorway of the pub pointed at him and laughed loudly. Then we all laughed at the inappropriately dressed teenage girls who were trudging past drenched. Then later, we saw two other young girls wrestling with each other in a big puddle. Strange.
When the rain died off a bit, the four of us headed back into Brizzle and had a few in the Hatchet. This is apparently Bristol's oldest pub and reputedly has a door covered in human skin. Nice. It's now a rock pub, and when I went there last year Mark and I were accosted by a woman obsessed with the SS and her very tall, very-manly looking transsexual mate. Nothing as weird as that happened this time, we had a few drinks, talked a lot of shite as usual and sang along to Flash by Queen whilst thumping the tables in time with the music. Heather, as usual, got invited to have dinner with my friends at some point in the future. (I think I might've been invited, too. It's one of the things I've noticed about Heather is that she gets invited to dinner by a lot of the people I've introduced her to. They ask her, not me!) Anyway, it was a great night, we headed back to our hotel slightly merry and happy and tired and all set for the Comics Convention the next day.
Mark and I (possibly in a refreshed state) in post-'Flash' celebratory huddle.
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Connections, Carlisle, Conventions and Celebrity Chefs.
Hiya! I know it's been a long time, but I've been a busy lad just lately.
This is my first post from my new computer in my (fairly) new flat, I've just this minute plugged myself back into the 21st century, and I've missed it. My ex is probably very glad that I don't have to usurp her computer throne any longer to make various emails , delete the hundreds of spam emails I've received since I last logged on, use it for various comicky/arty reasons, or generally take up space in her living room; space that she fought hard for by fucking me off in the first place!
I've just come back from a trip to Carlisle, which is a great looking city (old fashioned stone built houses, twisty streets and a castle) but of a night, filled up with the same pissed-up wankers you get in any town centre, and there were rather a lot of coppers about. I thought Cardiff had Plod-overload the other week, but Carlisle was like Mega-City One in comparison. (I think the impending visit of Millwall F.C. to the local footie stadium might've had something to do with it, though.) Weirdest sight of the weekend was four Policemen interrogating a dwarf on the Carlisle Road, outside the hotel I was sleeping in. Although I wasn't actually sleeping at the time, I was outside, staring at four burly coppers questioning a PORG.
Ah, the hotel! Wasn't it lovely? Well, no, actually. The toilet made this noise whenever you flushed it that put me in mind of the noise a Harrier VTOL might make whenever it takes off. It was this loud 'BOOOOM!!!' which I was certain was waking everyone else up in the city of Carlisle, never mind the next room!
As I was going out with a nice young lady, I thought I'd make an effort and actually iron my shirt. I know! Crazy behaviour!! As this hotel was shit, there was no iron or ironing board in my room, but there was a leaflet in my room telling me about the special 'ironing room' which was on the second floor. I walk up the stairs, clutching my crumpled shirt, towards the ironing room, imagining a pressing paradise, rows and rows of ironing boards, hundreds of young professionals, like me (okay, not like me, then!) ironing their garments with a beatific smile plastered all over their boatraces, the combined outpourings of steam turning the second floor of the hotel into a sauna...
Let's say the reality didn't match up. the ironing room was a windowless room about the same size as the bedrooms, with a smattering of litter on the floor, unheated (it was bloody cold) with one ironing board and battered-looking iron in it. It has to be the most soul-destroying room in the whole world .(Actually, Birmingham City's trophy room is probably worse, but seeing as no-one has ever needed to go in there, we'll never know.) I quickly ironed my shirt and got out of there before the Devil realised I was trespassing on his property and try to claim my eternal soul as compensation. It worked, anyway, as the afore-mentioned evening with the young lady was a great success.
The weekend was nearly ruined by the British Rail network returning to form after lulling me into a false sense of security with a hassle-free journey up, with a return journey that took twice as long, and an enforced connection because they decided not to stop at Birmingham New Street anymore. I can't really blame them for this, it is a shithole, but I've got no choice, I have to disembark there! So, I had to get off at Stafford and wait half-an-hour to catch a train that did stop at my station. While waiting, I went outside the station for a cigarette (it had been at least five hours since my last one) and noticed that the bloke smoking a fag next to me was none other than celebrity chef Paul Rankin (the longish-haired Irish one who sometimes has a goatee). He got on the next train as well, and got off in Wolverhampton. The lady in the seat behind me asked her friend "Isn't that that chef? Irish one off of Ready, Steady, Cook? Thought so. You'd think he'd travel First Class, money he's got!" He was only going one stop!! He wouldn't have had enough time for a cup of tea, let alone any of the other treats First Class has to offer! Silly woman! Then I remembered we were in Wolverhampton, and there's more brains in a butcher's sink than there is in the whole town (sorry, it's a city, now, isn't it?) of Wolvo.
Anyway, I'm home now.
Next weekend is the Birmingham International Comics Show (BICS) at Millennium Point, Curzon Street, funnily enough, here in Birmingham. I'll be there at the MC2 table, trying to flog our new comic Ghosts , which I didn't contribute to, as I'm busy with Septic Isle, still (I'll post some more images from that as soon as I get this sodding new computer to recognise my old scanner. Don't want to buy a new one as it's an A3 one, and them are dear!) If you can come along, please do, as the guests include Mike Mignola, Kevin Nowlan and one of my all time faves Mick McMahon, who I reckon draws the definitive Dredd, and doesn't do many conventions, so it's worth checking out. We need this convention to be a success! Not least because I know how much work the organisers are putting in! Come and meet me-I'll be the four-eyed one sweating out a hangover at the Midlands Comics Collective table (found out today that there exists a Manchester Comix Collective! First they pinch our big wheel, and now this!) and buy one of our books. You could purchase the ones I'm in!! See you there!
It's amazing how quickly sitting here typing gets boring. Not missing it anymore!)
This is my first post from my new computer in my (fairly) new flat, I've just this minute plugged myself back into the 21st century, and I've missed it. My ex is probably very glad that I don't have to usurp her computer throne any longer to make various emails , delete the hundreds of spam emails I've received since I last logged on, use it for various comicky/arty reasons, or generally take up space in her living room; space that she fought hard for by fucking me off in the first place!
I've just come back from a trip to Carlisle, which is a great looking city (old fashioned stone built houses, twisty streets and a castle) but of a night, filled up with the same pissed-up wankers you get in any town centre, and there were rather a lot of coppers about. I thought Cardiff had Plod-overload the other week, but Carlisle was like Mega-City One in comparison. (I think the impending visit of Millwall F.C. to the local footie stadium might've had something to do with it, though.) Weirdest sight of the weekend was four Policemen interrogating a dwarf on the Carlisle Road, outside the hotel I was sleeping in. Although I wasn't actually sleeping at the time, I was outside, staring at four burly coppers questioning a PORG.
Ah, the hotel! Wasn't it lovely? Well, no, actually. The toilet made this noise whenever you flushed it that put me in mind of the noise a Harrier VTOL might make whenever it takes off. It was this loud 'BOOOOM!!!' which I was certain was waking everyone else up in the city of Carlisle, never mind the next room!
As I was going out with a nice young lady, I thought I'd make an effort and actually iron my shirt. I know! Crazy behaviour!! As this hotel was shit, there was no iron or ironing board in my room, but there was a leaflet in my room telling me about the special 'ironing room' which was on the second floor. I walk up the stairs, clutching my crumpled shirt, towards the ironing room, imagining a pressing paradise, rows and rows of ironing boards, hundreds of young professionals, like me (okay, not like me, then!) ironing their garments with a beatific smile plastered all over their boatraces, the combined outpourings of steam turning the second floor of the hotel into a sauna...
Let's say the reality didn't match up. the ironing room was a windowless room about the same size as the bedrooms, with a smattering of litter on the floor, unheated (it was bloody cold) with one ironing board and battered-looking iron in it. It has to be the most soul-destroying room in the whole world .(Actually, Birmingham City's trophy room is probably worse, but seeing as no-one has ever needed to go in there, we'll never know.) I quickly ironed my shirt and got out of there before the Devil realised I was trespassing on his property and try to claim my eternal soul as compensation. It worked, anyway, as the afore-mentioned evening with the young lady was a great success.
The weekend was nearly ruined by the British Rail network returning to form after lulling me into a false sense of security with a hassle-free journey up, with a return journey that took twice as long, and an enforced connection because they decided not to stop at Birmingham New Street anymore. I can't really blame them for this, it is a shithole, but I've got no choice, I have to disembark there! So, I had to get off at Stafford and wait half-an-hour to catch a train that did stop at my station. While waiting, I went outside the station for a cigarette (it had been at least five hours since my last one) and noticed that the bloke smoking a fag next to me was none other than celebrity chef Paul Rankin (the longish-haired Irish one who sometimes has a goatee). He got on the next train as well, and got off in Wolverhampton. The lady in the seat behind me asked her friend "Isn't that that chef? Irish one off of Ready, Steady, Cook? Thought so. You'd think he'd travel First Class, money he's got!" He was only going one stop!! He wouldn't have had enough time for a cup of tea, let alone any of the other treats First Class has to offer! Silly woman! Then I remembered we were in Wolverhampton, and there's more brains in a butcher's sink than there is in the whole town (sorry, it's a city, now, isn't it?) of Wolvo.
Anyway, I'm home now.
Next weekend is the Birmingham International Comics Show (BICS) at Millennium Point, Curzon Street, funnily enough, here in Birmingham. I'll be there at the MC2 table, trying to flog our new comic Ghosts , which I didn't contribute to, as I'm busy with Septic Isle, still (I'll post some more images from that as soon as I get this sodding new computer to recognise my old scanner. Don't want to buy a new one as it's an A3 one, and them are dear!) If you can come along, please do, as the guests include Mike Mignola, Kevin Nowlan and one of my all time faves Mick McMahon, who I reckon draws the definitive Dredd, and doesn't do many conventions, so it's worth checking out. We need this convention to be a success! Not least because I know how much work the organisers are putting in! Come and meet me-I'll be the four-eyed one sweating out a hangover at the Midlands Comics Collective table (found out today that there exists a Manchester Comix Collective! First they pinch our big wheel, and now this!) and buy one of our books. You could purchase the ones I'm in!! See you there!
It's amazing how quickly sitting here typing gets boring. Not missing it anymore!)
Monday, August 20, 2007
Stags.
I remember, a few years back, stag nights just consisted of going out with your mates, getting pissed up, maybe getting a stripper involved and then possibly rounding it off with some enforced nudity and lamp-post bondage for the unfortunate groom-to-be. These days, the stag night has evolved into the stag weekend and this involves going away to a strange town for two days just to do the things I mentioned above. Is this progress?
My brother (our Marc, the middle one) is getting married on Friday, and I've just got back from his stag weekend down in Cardiff. It seems everyone else getting married this week had the same idea. Cardiff has stag and hen parties coming out of its ears. Whoever said all brides are beautiful obviously didn't see some of the brides-to-be I witnessed. Bloody hell. In one bar, there was one extremely rough-looking obese woman wearing L-plates and a veil (so I assume she was the bride to be) carrying a giant inflatable penis, 'dancing' and singing 'Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me?'. The irony was obviously lost on her. Unless she was genuinely too warm.
The plan was to get there on Friday, have a few drinks, but take it steady, as the seven of us in the party had paintballing to do on Saturday. That plan went AWOL. We got wrecked. Some members of the party got told off by the hotel's management for making too much noise when we rolled in at about 4.30 in the morning. (not me, I'm a good lad, and anyway, I was too busy being passed out on my hotel room's bathroom floor!) So our Marc diplomatically sorted the situation by taking off his belt and hitting the transgressor with it while saying "Shut the fuck up, or they'll chuck us out, you daft cunt!" Henry Kissinger has nothing on my brother.
Saturday morning, we all get up feeling as rough as a badger's ballbag, so we decide to get a fry-up in a local greasy spoon on the way to the paintball. I didn't feel like the full English, as I was still feeling the effects of spewing my ring up the night (morning?) before, so I had a bacon butty and about four cups of tea. It seemed to work, as I felt okay afterwards, and the rest of the lads seemed to enjoy their fry-ups, and we all went on to the paintball site. Now, on Saturday morning, the weather was bad. It had been raining continuously since we got to Cardiff, so the paintball site was now one big quagmire, if your feet didn't sink in all the way up to your knees, you just slipped and fell on your arse instead. I didn't have any sturdy footwear, I just had a pair of Converse Chuck Taylors which gradually got destroyed as the day went on. I've not done any paintballing for years, not since I was a teenager, and I was a lot fitter in those days! I've discovered something else I'm rubbish at. The whole day I got shot to fuck. I looked like a plasterer's radio by the end of the day. The crappy weather didn't help visibility, as the masks we had to wear were either steamed up, covered in water or splattered with mud and paint. Also not helping the day, was another stag party from Scotland, who took it all a bit seriously and tried to give us tactics. We decided to take their tactics and stick them where the sun doesn't shine (which was Cardiff, that weekend!) and just basically run like fuck and shoot everyone you saw. It seemed to work as our team won quite handsomely at the end of the day.
Like I said, my shoes were destroyed, so I decided to bin them. We all drove back to the hotel, and we decided we couldn't walk in with our muddy feet (none of us were sober enough to think of bringing a change of shoes) so all seven of us walked through the hotel lobby in our sopping wet socks, and we all got admiring glances from the other guests because of our Brummie sartorial elegance. When I got back to my room, I took of my shirt and surveyed the damage. I looked like ED-209 had had a go at me for not complying within 30 seconds. I had livid red circular welts all over my body. Arms, chest, stomach, back, arse, legs were all covered in bruises. I looked like Superted's best mate.
After we all had our afternoon shushes (shit, shower, shave) we went to the Walkabout bar around the corner and watched the Villa play Newcastle on the telly. How Welsh was that? Standing in an Australian bar watching the Villa on the telly. We could never do stuff like that back in Brum. Hang on, that's EXACTLY how I spent the previous Saturday afternoon here in Birmingham! The whole weekend was like that-we had drinks in O'Neill's, Rococo, Edwards, Walkabout and The Prince Of Wales- and they all look the same as their Brummie counterparts on the inside, why the hell did we come to Cardiff?! Still, the Villa played well and should've won, but it was nil-nil and a point at St. James's Park is always a good one. Also, Wales were playing Argentina in the rugby at the Millennium Stadium, so Cardiff was full of drunk Welsh rugby supporters. I had on a T-shirt that said Empire Strikes Back on it, and was told by a drunk Welshwoman , while I was outside having a cigarette that she'd never seen a Star Wars film. She told me this about six times. "I've never seen a Star Trek movie either", she added as a little epilogue. How interesting!
After the match, we decided to get some din-dins because we all agreed that going out with a virtually empty stomach was what done us in on Friday. The noisy fuckers who nearly got us all chucked out all had McDonald's, but me, my brothers, and my brothers' mate Liam decided we'd have some proper food, so we went to an Italian restaurant and filled up on chicken and pasta. Our stomachs properly lined, we went back to our hotel, got changed and went out on the town.
The bit of Cardiff we were in was full of hen and stag parties. They stood out because most of them were in fancy dress. We couldn't be arsed with all that shite, as it makes you a target for other arseholes, and you also look like a prick. The stag parties tended to dress up in afro wigs, for some reason, whereas the hens tended to go with a theme, I saw women dressed up as pretend policewomen, sailors, gangsters, pyjama parties, and in one case, Quasimodo (though I'm beginning to think now that wasn't a costume!) my favourite group of hens, nerd that I am, were the group dressed up as Superheroines- Batgirl, Wonder Woman, Supergirl and Generic Superhero Woman whose costume I didn't recognise. I was willing to try and get Batgirl to slide down my Batpole, but the party told me to hurry the fuck up as we were going to a titty bar. It's a stag night, there HAS to be naked ladies, apparently.
Typical Brummies, we haggled to get a fiver knocked off the entrance fee to the lapdancing bar, and eventually, they let us in at a fiver off. This seemed a bit stupid in hindsight as we spent shitloads of money in there. Apparently, we bought thirteen bottles of Champagne in there, at over thirty quid a go. The ladies in there seemed to like us (besides the fact we were spending lots of money) as we were just in there to have a laugh and take the piss and not take it seriously as some of the other blokes in there, who think the girls really want to dance for them, and they joined in with our piss-taking of each other. Apparently, we spent more in there than Robbie Fowler (now a striker for Cardiff City) did, when he went in the other week. At the end of the night, when they let us out, it was through another nightclub, and could we fuck find our way out. It took us about half an hour to find an exit, but we managed it. While me and my youngest brother were finding the way out, my other brother, the groom-to-be, managed to stop one of our party getting glassed because the twat said something he shouldn't have. This rounded the night off superbly, because Marc was fuming and told his mate exactly what he thought of his behaviour. This nearly led to another punch up, but it was all settled fairly amicably, and we all went to bed for about three hours.
We left at about Twelve on Sunday, and the trip home was fairly uneventful, except for when our car hit the kerb the moment we got back into the Brum. We swerved into the other side of the road, and if anything was coming the other way it would have been extremely serious, but nothing was, so we were okay. The reason for the driver's collision with the kerb? "I was looking at that field over there." That's okay then. Worth dying for, that.
So anyway, I'm back now, covered in bruises and stiff as a board and dehydrated, but at least I'm still alive!
My brother (our Marc, the middle one) is getting married on Friday, and I've just got back from his stag weekend down in Cardiff. It seems everyone else getting married this week had the same idea. Cardiff has stag and hen parties coming out of its ears. Whoever said all brides are beautiful obviously didn't see some of the brides-to-be I witnessed. Bloody hell. In one bar, there was one extremely rough-looking obese woman wearing L-plates and a veil (so I assume she was the bride to be) carrying a giant inflatable penis, 'dancing' and singing 'Don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me?'. The irony was obviously lost on her. Unless she was genuinely too warm.
The plan was to get there on Friday, have a few drinks, but take it steady, as the seven of us in the party had paintballing to do on Saturday. That plan went AWOL. We got wrecked. Some members of the party got told off by the hotel's management for making too much noise when we rolled in at about 4.30 in the morning. (not me, I'm a good lad, and anyway, I was too busy being passed out on my hotel room's bathroom floor!) So our Marc diplomatically sorted the situation by taking off his belt and hitting the transgressor with it while saying "Shut the fuck up, or they'll chuck us out, you daft cunt!" Henry Kissinger has nothing on my brother.
Saturday morning, we all get up feeling as rough as a badger's ballbag, so we decide to get a fry-up in a local greasy spoon on the way to the paintball. I didn't feel like the full English, as I was still feeling the effects of spewing my ring up the night (morning?) before, so I had a bacon butty and about four cups of tea. It seemed to work, as I felt okay afterwards, and the rest of the lads seemed to enjoy their fry-ups, and we all went on to the paintball site. Now, on Saturday morning, the weather was bad. It had been raining continuously since we got to Cardiff, so the paintball site was now one big quagmire, if your feet didn't sink in all the way up to your knees, you just slipped and fell on your arse instead. I didn't have any sturdy footwear, I just had a pair of Converse Chuck Taylors which gradually got destroyed as the day went on. I've not done any paintballing for years, not since I was a teenager, and I was a lot fitter in those days! I've discovered something else I'm rubbish at. The whole day I got shot to fuck. I looked like a plasterer's radio by the end of the day. The crappy weather didn't help visibility, as the masks we had to wear were either steamed up, covered in water or splattered with mud and paint. Also not helping the day, was another stag party from Scotland, who took it all a bit seriously and tried to give us tactics. We decided to take their tactics and stick them where the sun doesn't shine (which was Cardiff, that weekend!) and just basically run like fuck and shoot everyone you saw. It seemed to work as our team won quite handsomely at the end of the day.
Like I said, my shoes were destroyed, so I decided to bin them. We all drove back to the hotel, and we decided we couldn't walk in with our muddy feet (none of us were sober enough to think of bringing a change of shoes) so all seven of us walked through the hotel lobby in our sopping wet socks, and we all got admiring glances from the other guests because of our Brummie sartorial elegance. When I got back to my room, I took of my shirt and surveyed the damage. I looked like ED-209 had had a go at me for not complying within 30 seconds. I had livid red circular welts all over my body. Arms, chest, stomach, back, arse, legs were all covered in bruises. I looked like Superted's best mate.
After we all had our afternoon shushes (shit, shower, shave) we went to the Walkabout bar around the corner and watched the Villa play Newcastle on the telly. How Welsh was that? Standing in an Australian bar watching the Villa on the telly. We could never do stuff like that back in Brum. Hang on, that's EXACTLY how I spent the previous Saturday afternoon here in Birmingham! The whole weekend was like that-we had drinks in O'Neill's, Rococo, Edwards, Walkabout and The Prince Of Wales- and they all look the same as their Brummie counterparts on the inside, why the hell did we come to Cardiff?! Still, the Villa played well and should've won, but it was nil-nil and a point at St. James's Park is always a good one. Also, Wales were playing Argentina in the rugby at the Millennium Stadium, so Cardiff was full of drunk Welsh rugby supporters. I had on a T-shirt that said Empire Strikes Back on it, and was told by a drunk Welshwoman , while I was outside having a cigarette that she'd never seen a Star Wars film. She told me this about six times. "I've never seen a Star Trek movie either", she added as a little epilogue. How interesting!
After the match, we decided to get some din-dins because we all agreed that going out with a virtually empty stomach was what done us in on Friday. The noisy fuckers who nearly got us all chucked out all had McDonald's, but me, my brothers, and my brothers' mate Liam decided we'd have some proper food, so we went to an Italian restaurant and filled up on chicken and pasta. Our stomachs properly lined, we went back to our hotel, got changed and went out on the town.
The bit of Cardiff we were in was full of hen and stag parties. They stood out because most of them were in fancy dress. We couldn't be arsed with all that shite, as it makes you a target for other arseholes, and you also look like a prick. The stag parties tended to dress up in afro wigs, for some reason, whereas the hens tended to go with a theme, I saw women dressed up as pretend policewomen, sailors, gangsters, pyjama parties, and in one case, Quasimodo (though I'm beginning to think now that wasn't a costume!) my favourite group of hens, nerd that I am, were the group dressed up as Superheroines- Batgirl, Wonder Woman, Supergirl and Generic Superhero Woman whose costume I didn't recognise. I was willing to try and get Batgirl to slide down my Batpole, but the party told me to hurry the fuck up as we were going to a titty bar. It's a stag night, there HAS to be naked ladies, apparently.
Typical Brummies, we haggled to get a fiver knocked off the entrance fee to the lapdancing bar, and eventually, they let us in at a fiver off. This seemed a bit stupid in hindsight as we spent shitloads of money in there. Apparently, we bought thirteen bottles of Champagne in there, at over thirty quid a go. The ladies in there seemed to like us (besides the fact we were spending lots of money) as we were just in there to have a laugh and take the piss and not take it seriously as some of the other blokes in there, who think the girls really want to dance for them, and they joined in with our piss-taking of each other. Apparently, we spent more in there than Robbie Fowler (now a striker for Cardiff City) did, when he went in the other week. At the end of the night, when they let us out, it was through another nightclub, and could we fuck find our way out. It took us about half an hour to find an exit, but we managed it. While me and my youngest brother were finding the way out, my other brother, the groom-to-be, managed to stop one of our party getting glassed because the twat said something he shouldn't have. This rounded the night off superbly, because Marc was fuming and told his mate exactly what he thought of his behaviour. This nearly led to another punch up, but it was all settled fairly amicably, and we all went to bed for about three hours.
We left at about Twelve on Sunday, and the trip home was fairly uneventful, except for when our car hit the kerb the moment we got back into the Brum. We swerved into the other side of the road, and if anything was coming the other way it would have been extremely serious, but nothing was, so we were okay. The reason for the driver's collision with the kerb? "I was looking at that field over there." That's okay then. Worth dying for, that.
So anyway, I'm back now, covered in bruises and stiff as a board and dehydrated, but at least I'm still alive!
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