Simon's Stag Do

Posted on 2008/06/22 23:38:17 (June 2008).

[Friday 20th June]
My friend (and esteemed former colleague) Simon is getting married in August, and this weekend was the obligatory stag do. Our mutual friend David (also an esteemed former colleague) has a sort of family hoilday home down near Padstow, which I'd been to once before (just before I went off to Japan, in April 2005), and that had been chosen as the venue.

So I left work at lunchtime today, with the intention of working from the train during the afternoon. This plan was moderately successful, thanks to the 3G dongle thingy I got from work, but as the train got further into the depths of the West country reception became increasingly patchy, and so eventually I gave up.

I arrived in Bodmin Parkway just before 6:30, and from there took a bus in the direction of Padstow. David's house is actually a little way out of Padstow, so I got off the bus in some little village in the middle of nowhere. I then had a mile or so's walk down a country lane, which was actually surprisingly pleasant, despite there being a spot of drizzle. It was very tranquil - not another living soul to be seen or heard - a huge contrast to the bustling streets of London I had left behind earlier that afternoon.

I got to David's house just before 8. Most of the attendees were already present, and it was a fairly large turn-out - probably around 15. From then on it was, not unpredictably, a fairly boozy affair. David had bought a couple of boxes of Doom Bar, and I'd also contributed a bottle of Laphroaig Cask Strength. Food was laid on in the form of a barbecue (which gave the collected blokey blokes a further opportunity to make tedious remarks about me being vegetarian), and there was of course the inevitable "entertainment" which appears to be unavoidable at stag parties. I was surprised that you could find that sort of, errr, service in such a rural area. Ahem. Thankfully that didn't last too long, as the "artist" was blocking the way to the beer.

Other highlights of the evening included my conviction that we were going to be featured on a future episode of 999, as some of the chaps (not me, I hasten to add) were rather ill-advisedly having a swim in the pool after a large number of beers. Including typical blokey horseplay, dive bombing etc.

It also turned out that one of the chaps was a mobile disco DJ, and had a car full of disco lights, etc. It was pretty much unavoidable that these were all set up in the lounge, although the actual sound system remained a rather un-discoey iPod based setup. David has one of those Bose iPod docking station things, which gave surprisingly good sound, and as it turned out a number of us had iPods with us, we managed similar functionality to dual turntables simply by swapping which iPod was plugged in at the end of each track.

The frivolities continued into the wee hours, well, until about 2AM. Given that I was one of the later arrivals, it transpired my only option for sleeping was to share a bed with another former colleague - Rich - who, were snoring an Olympic sport, would soon be packing his bags and heading for Beijing.

I have to organize a stag do for Simone, and I am quite inclined of going "on the filth" as you once described the stag do business... :D

Posted by Lox at 2008/06/24 02:45:16.

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