Neil’s Stag Weekend

I’m back from the stag weekend, just about in one piece. Photos still to come… in the meantime, here are the gory details.

Fiona and Seymour were driving up from King’s Cross on the Friday evening, and kindly made room for me in their car. As we travelled North, we watched with dread as the car’s external temperature gauge dropped rapidly, soft Southern-types that we are. Sure enough, shortly before arriving in Sheffield it started snowing — not a nice little flurry of flakes, more a swirling blizzard. One minute wall of snow, the next minute fine. It is weird “oop North”.

Anyway, in the end we didn’t need to put snow chains on the car, and arrived at Neil & Nichie’s house at about 8.30pm. The happy couple were there, plus Paul and another guy I didn’t know called Simon. After getting the “God, how long has it been?”-type greetings out of the way and having a quick Stella, the seven of us wandered down to the local for several pints. After the pub, we did the obligatory curry, which gave me the chance to do a lot of catching up with Paul, whom I hadn’t seen for years.

We woke up on Saturday to find that snow had settled during the night. Tea was drunk. Papers were read. More tea was drunk. Clearly an über fry-up was called for, at which point Brendan and Kev arrived. Fiona and Nicola left us chaps to get on with our stag partying, and we set off for the Go-Karting at about 11.30am. Of course, no one knew where the the centre was, and we ended up driving around in circles for nearly an hour before we found it. And then we realised we’d forgotten Tom, and had to wait about twenty minutes as he drove over in his car. But anyway, we suited up and, after a dozen practice laps, we began our 60-lap Go-Kart Grand Prix. Sadly, despite my Dukes of Hazzard driving style, I was unable to prevent Brendan from taking the chequered flag (if you ever go karting near Rotherham, avoid kart number 10 — it’s clearly got some sort of defect which prevents it going as fast as the rest).

After the karting, we made our way back to Neil’s to don our drinking boots. The plans for paintballing had gone a bit pear-shaped, which we were all quite happy about considering the wind, snow and general Greenland-like conditions. Off to the pub, where we were joined by Brian, all chucked our dosh into the booze kitty and commenced drinking. Little did we know, but Neil had already scuppered our ‘What time will Neil puke?’ sweepstake by chucking up at his house before touching a drop! (for the record, my money was on 12.08am).

Four hours and many drinks/games of pool later, we shuffled back to Neil’s to change into our 70s gear. Unfortunately we couldn’t get any taxis, so had to pop down the road for a bus into the city centre. Even more unfortunately, Neil lives on top of a fucking great big mountain (well, so it seemed) and it was blowing an absolute gale whilst we waited at the bus stop. When we eventually got a bus and began to thaw our genitals, passengers at subsequent stops seemed highly amused/surprised/bewildered/horrified by the sea of Afros at the back of the bus. The reaction was pretty similar when we arrived at the Mexican restaurant for our meal. Once seated and drinking, Paul (Neil’s Best Man) made a short speech, and produced a very slinky sleeveless dress (think Farrah Fawcett circa 1978) and long, blonde wig, which he insisted Neil change into. It has to be said, Neil looked fantastic, and made several of the party reconsider their stances on Ladyboys. We were soon joined at the restaurant by Marcus, who arrived wearing the loudest trousers ever created. It was around then I realised that I had put on my moustache (Exhibit 1, above) a little too early — it turned out to be the hairiest chimichanga I’ve ever eaten, and I’m still coughing up furballs over a week later.

Next stop was a busy pub where we were joined by some more late-commers. Neil (or Nellie, as he became known) proved to be a big hit with the ladies there, a group of whom decided to do his makeup for him (tastefully of course — s/he’s no tramp). At closing time, we staggered down to the City Hall, the venue for Hot Pants.

The club was absolutely massive and, as the name implies, really rather ornate, with lots of big rooms with columns etc. The main room had one of those dancefloors with the flashing coloured lights underneath, for that extra Saturday Night Fever touch. The atmosphere was great, and being a 70s night, for the first time that eveing we didn’t actually look out of place. Well, until I started dancing anyway.

The next few hours are a bit hazy, but went something like this: drink, dance, try to attract women, fail to attract women… repeat until very sweaty and drunk. Great fun.

When the club closed, there were no taxis to be had anywhere, so we joined about 100 other people waiting for a night bus (business opportunity for any car owners reading this: there’s a real gap in the market in Sheffield). Nellie, Paul, Marcus and I were lucky enough to get seats, and found ourselves at just the right level to enjoy some of the best female arses in the North of England for the next half-hour. We also discovered that having a friend in drag is a great ice-breaker: “Hello, this is my friend – he’s a ladyboy. We’re having a party, do you want to come?”. Okay, so we weren’t exactly overwhelmed with takers, but we did meet some very friendly girls.

Back at Neil’s, we cracked open the Stella and whiskey, and all piled into the living room to watch a ‘nature’ video that someone had thoughtfully brought along. Quite an eye-opener. Sadly I had to retire fairly soon as I was feeling a light-headed — I suspect it was a combination of the vigorous bouncing on the TV, and having consumed half of my moustache earlier in the evening.

Everyone got up at about 10 the next morning, and a few people staggered off to their homes. It was at this point that the weekend of fun came to a premature end, and we had to shelve our plans for a pub-based recovery session. Neil received a phone call to tell him that one of his sister’s three-week old twins had just been rushed to hospital, critically ill. Naturally Neil was really upset, and left immediately for his sister’s. Those of us left at his house decided the best thing would be for us to tidy up the house (no mean feat), then head off home. As I had originally meant to be getting a lift back to London with Fiona (Neil’s other sister), Paul kindly offered to make a massive detour and drop me off at Heathrow, as Fiona obviously wanted to be with her sister. Paul and I waited for Nicola to get back so we could fill her in on what was happening, then set off for the warmth of the South.

Aside from this horrible ending, the weekend was absolutely great, and hopefully I’ll soon put up the photos to prove it. As well as ones from the wedding, which is on the 23rd March.

As I type this, over a week later, the baby is still in intensive care. My thoughts are with Neil and his family at this sad and trying time.

Leave a Reply