Mahinda’s Little World

Last weekend was Paul’s stag weekend, which took the shape of a lads’ trip to Tallinn, Estonia. Now, this is a city I last (and first) visited back in 2000, as part of Dave, Nick, Tim and my road trip around Finland (and bits of Norway) - the Tallinn leg came at the end of the trip, after we’d returned the hire car and set up base in Helsinki.

I was a bit nervous that the advent of cheap flights had turned it, like Riga, into Stag Do Hell. Fortunately, this really wasn’t the case - despite there being a huge increase in the number of tourists wandering the streets, the place’s charm and character remain intact. Which is nice.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. We were due to fly out on Friday morning and return early on Sunday afternoon. Pretty much two full days there. What could possibly happen in two days? Quite a lot, really. Enough for me to divvy this post up into sub-posts for each day, anyway.

But first, I should probably introduce you to the participants. We had:

• Paul aka Pablo* aka KitKat
  The groom. I went to (secondary) school with him.
• Phil aka Donkey* aka Omelette
  The best man. Another schoolmate, who’s been best mates with Paul since time immemorial - they went to the same infant school, junior school and secondary school before going to Manchester together for university…where they were put in rooms above one another in the Owen’s Park tower!
• Steve aka Skeletor
  Paul’s brother-in-law. I’d only met him once or twice beforehand.
• Paul aka Shortarse* aka Mini-Me
  Little Paul. Old friend of the groom’s, who also went to Manchester Uni, albeit in the year below the rest of us. Spent a year living with Mike.
• Mike aka Big Gay Bear
  Friend from our uni days - me, Paul, Myles, Nick (not on the trip) and Mike lived together in 2nd year.
• Myles aka Badger
  Uni friend and ex-housemate. Going distinctly grey in his old age, hence the nickname.
• Ian aka Wacko
  Another old friend of Paul’s…they lived really close to each other, and I think their parents were friends.
• Iraklis aka Iri* aka Basil
  Schoolmate. Has a somewhat unique dancing style.
• James aka Wilko* aka Ronaldinho
  Schoolmate. The nickname’s to do with a previous pulling encounter rather than any footballing prowess.
• Adam aka Perfect 10
  Schoolmate.
• Mark aka Hello Wisconsin
  Schoolmate.
• Lawrence aka Muffin Top
  Schoolmate.

* Popular nicknames rather than the ones that got put on the stag weekend commemorative T-shirts.

With the exception of Steve and Ian (whom I’d met about twice each), I knew most of the group pretty well. Mind you, with a lot of the gang, it’s an association that started at school and hasn’t been kept up all that much since - I see a lot of them about once a year, if that. I realised that, apart from on Phil’s stag do, I’d never been out on the town with James, Adam, Mark, Lawrence and Iri.

Anyway, that’s enough intro. I’ll start with Thursday…

Thursday

Head home after work, later than planned - I had a web conference with our Philadelphia office that I just couldn’t miss. I packed frantically, and hit the road towards Bury St. Edmunds.

A5103…M56…A556…M6…and traffic. The M6 between Manc and Stafford was just painful, with Birmingham just as bad. Cleared Brum, and eventually hit the A14, which was thankfully crystal clear. Got to Mike’s place at something like 10.30pm, said hello to him and Debs, and it was pretty much straight to bed. We had a plane to catch at 6.45am, and increased security measures meant that we should turn up three hours early. Ouch!

But that’s another day. One that I’ll write up later.