Mahinda’s Little World

On Saturday morning, I awoke fairly early, shook the grogginess out of my head (no, that is NOT a euphemism), and eventually headed over to Pete and Rosy’s to pick them up prior to a jolly jaunt down to Cheltenham.

The plan was to meet up at Linden’s at about midday…unfortunately, Pete and Rosy were running a bit late, and we needed to get alcohol. Ended up at Linden’s just after 1pm, having stopped off at Sainsbury’s.

The plan was for Pete, Rosy and Si to get into my car, with Linden driving Ed and Sarah down. Once he got wind of our plans to listen to Liverpool-Wigan on Radio 5 Live, however, Si decided that he didn’t need legroom after all, and jumped in with Linden.

The Journey

I issued t’other car with their radio (Oregon Scientific PMR jobbies, with a nominal range of 3 miles!) and we headed off.

The long motorway journey was definitely made more palatable by being in radio contact…unfortunately, the fact that my little Honda has a fist-sized hole in its silencer meant that it was just a tad loud.

Pete and I were highly miffed when the other car didn’t get the “smokey on your tail” reference - we’d been waiting all journey to pull off that one!

While approaching Birmingham, Ed radioed through that they wanted to stop off. “Roger that, 10-4, over and out”…or something like that. The other car followed that up by driving straight past the next service station. We stopped at the next one, and the girls expressed a desire for Little Chef. I think it was just Rosy and I who didn’t partake. In my case, my hangover was playing with my hunger, to the extent that I wasn’t…and the prospect of overpriced not-particularly-tasty grub just wasn’t tempting enough. I was proved correct, as the others received their meals, which were overpriced and, indeed, not particularly tasty.

The Ginsters Peppered Slice I had half an hour later, on the other hand, was still slightly overpriced, but fairly tasty.

It being a small world, whom should I meet in the service station foyer but Dave, who’d been the dame for two out of the three Altrincham Garrick pantomimes for which I’d been chorus! He’d gotten a part in a touring (professional) ADULT panto, Aladdin! Unfortunately, I can’t find anything only online about it, save that the company’s called “AdultAntics”. They were heading to Cardiff. I wonder how it went?

The Flat of Glittering Delights

We drove through Cheltenham and, unfortunately, had to pull over as we couldn’t quite find the flat. Fortunately, when pulling over, we found that we’d parked up almost directly in front of said flat!

Mike and Pam’s flat is bloody fantastic! The basement floor of an old Victorian (?) town house, i.e. the old servants’ quarters. Basically, acres of room…and a toyroom out back. The toyroom rocked, literally, with guitars and Mike’s shiny new drum kit. Pete and I had a go - it’s A LOT harder than it looks! I think you have to be some sort of gangle spider with mutant limbs to master it all.

Still, one day, I want to be a drummer.

we waited for various people to arrive, and drank tea (most people) or beer (Rosy). It was one of those slightly awkward “I want to start drinking but I don’t think anyone else does” things. I don’t think Rosy noticed

I’m not even going to contemplate drawing up a relationship diagram for that party - it’s quite possibly the most incestuous party I’ve ever been at!

However, I should at least list the folks there:

(grouped by couple or, failing that, geography)

• Mike and Pam
• Linden and Ed
• Mark and Jenn
• Cattac (aka Chris) and Sarah
• Colin and Nicola
• Pete, Rosy, Sarah, Si(mon), Dr.Kate, me
• Shifty (aka Nick), Jonesy, Matt, Emily

A fair proportion of people there had gone out with two (or more!) of the others. Or at least drunkenly snogged them at some point in the past.

So, once everyone had arrived (and stuff), we headed over
to a pool hall for, well, pool.

Then we headed, en masse, to one of the most genius things I’ve ever seen - a pizza parlour that sells everything one could possibly want, e.g. chicken, burgers, kebabs (albeit the rubbish southern variety) and ALCOHOL!

The pizzas weren’t cheap, mind. Tasty, though.

Went back to the flat, and that’s where the real drinking began.

The Sofa of Wrongness - Finally!

‘Twas pretty much your standard matey house party, where most people knew most other people. The conversation flowed, and we were joined by some of Mike’s workmates, one of whom told me about a sport that’s basically paintball for your calculating non-macho type. More realistic guns, firing soft plastic pellets that, while they don’t leave a mark, are much more accurate than paintballs - it’s more about the tactical stuff, and relies on people being honest when they’re hit…so there’s absolutely no chance of it working with the stag party paintball crew.

Wish I could remember what it’s called, though.

So, The Sofa of Wrongness. Much alluded to but, until now, not described.

It was just an ordinary 3-seater sofa, in Mike and Pam’s living room. And then Si and I ended up on either end, with Sarah in the middle. At one point, both of us had an arm round her.

And that, as is clear to anyone who knows us all, is why it was The Sofa of Wrongness.

Admittedly, it was more slight-awkwardness-wrong than multiple-people-fondling-wrong (see “Party, Tarts”), but it was wrong nonetheless!

Think the party went on until something like 4am, as all good parties should. Might even have been later. We all crashed out on the floor, with much bedding brought down with us.

The Alka-Seltzer fairy (i.e. Mike) even brought some donations round as we settled down for the night.

The Morning After

I was woken up by Emily running through the hallway, screaming, as she ran to open the door for some of the others (who’d booked into a hotel). It was quite Pythonesque, seeing a foot come down just inches from your nose.

I was sharing the hallway with Shifty, who proceeded to sit there in his pants for a while. Nice. Fortunately, he decided that the Alka-Seltzer jobbies weren’t suppositories, after all.

So that’s about all I’ve got time to write - we drove back up, this time with Sarah in my car, and I pretty much spent the day in bed afterwards.

Sleeeeeeeeep…