Note – This hasn’t been ‘edited’ yet by Loz, please excuse any spelling and grammatical errors, they’ll be gone soon! 🙂
So Friday was a ‘Wetting the Babies Head 2.1’ if you will, Paul was there for the head wetting of G all those years ago, but he was busy the night we did the head wetting for J. So largely as another excuse for a night out, Paul had his permission slip signed and he was available for ‘The boys night out’. Loz kindly made us some dinner before we went out, it was probably be a good idea to have some ‘stomach lining’, she also drove us to our adopted ‘local’ The Two Brewers to meet Dan.
Dan had been drinking since 5pm, and was 3 pints and two JD’s ahead of us. This was pretty clear, Dan was fairly lucid and sociable. Introductions were made, drinks were drunk, and the evening seemed to get going. The Brewers is usually fairly quiet, you will often have whole areas of the pub to yourself. Not tonight, it was very busy! We only stopped here for a couple of drinks and enough time for Dan to have his dinner, our next destination was to be The Hot House.
The Hot House is a funny old bar, it’s very quirky, they are famed for their vast range of ‘flavoured’ vodka – in all sorts of unusual flavours, every time I’ve been recently it’s been pretty quiet, tonight was no exception, there were a handful of other groups, but nothing too annoying. In here we met up with Paul’s friend Ben, I’ve been out with Ben a few times, he’s a lovely guy, but when he’s had a couple, his internal volume control is shot to pieces, and the cheeky comments about people nearby, aren’t hushed whispers, but full on high volume jibes. He will end up getting punch one day, bless him.
When Dan’s round came up he bought us a Vodka shot of our choice – I went for ‘Skittles’, Dan had ‘Bubblegum’, Paul and Ben had ‘Worthers Original’. Shots are never really a good idea, especially this early on, but they seemed to go down well. Ben was a bit too pissed to want his, someone else downed it. I had a pint of Fruili to wash it down, I do love the Strawberry Beer, although the last time I had it to excess it was being vomited out of my nose at 3am! Nice.
Chris arrived soon after and our little ‘Band of Brothers’ for the night was complete. The conversation quickly turned a bit philosophical as Ben was at ‘that’ stage of his drunken journey.
Sadly we weren’t quite feeling as philosophical, so Dan, Chris and I pulled faces at the camera..
It was Ben’s round and he took orders, he ignored my request for another Fruli and instead gave me something that looked like a JD and Coke, fair enough. It wasn’t JD and Coke, I actually thought it was Sambuca and Coke, no.. not that either – it was bloody Absinthe and Coke! *Rolls Eyes* It certainly wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever drunk, but it was pretty awful.. Regardless, I drank it.
The next part is a bit vague, I seem to remember Ben saying that he was going to the toilet, and then a few minutes later he quickly flew past and went up the stairs and outside. We waited for a few minutes, and he didn’t come back.. Our glasses were empty and we were feeling a bit restless so we went outside to see if we could see him and to move on to the next bar. Ben had gone back to his office to find his cycle helmet so he could take his bike home, I didn’t really think about how dangerous that was at the time, riding home that drunk, and to be honest I didn’t really care then, I wanted to go to the next bar!
Note – he did get home safe and sound thankfully!
Our next destination was ‘The Wine Cellar’ – I’ve never been in here before, it was actually really nice, very chilled atmosphere, no loud music, or shouty drunk people, just lots of people having quiet(ish) conversations. My recollections start to get hazy at this point, I think I got my first round. I was back on the lager again, well that’s what the photo on my phone suggested..
I do remember the idea of having wine crossing my mind.. It’s probably a good idea I didn’t, that would have sent me home sooner! Our boorish conversation continued, the regular banter you get when four drunk men sit together. We all noticed a rather sozzled looking older lady listening in to our conversation, rather than tell her to stop earwigging, we invited her to join in and offer her opinion on the topic of the moment. It transpired her name was Heidi, she was a counsellor and she had an American accent (that grated on me after a while), she was friendly enough and pitched in. We were joined soon after by a girl called Jennifer, she was with Heidi, I did think to start with they were mother and daughter but apparently not. Jennifer was very nice, but a little intense. She’d take the conversation off on annoying tangents, and talk too loudly, she said she used to be a primary school teacher, I can quite imagine her doing that. She frequently shushed us down to focus the attention back on her. I admired her confidence / arrogance.
Paul stupidly cut his knuckles somehow and Jen came to the rescue with some plasters (why do women always seem to carry plasters?!), she patched him up nicely.
The bar staff came and moved us out of the back of the bar and we had to sit nearer the front, all squashed round one table, the time seemed to fly past, by the time I realised it was 1am. It was time to leave for.. you’ve guessed it – THE CAVE! We had to stop on the way to get some cash out. For some reason I had a really violent case of the hiccups, that Jen insisted she could cure me of if I listened to her instructions. These were basically ‘Hold your breath’. Brilliant. Whilst I was doing this Danny (the cunt) took this horrific image.
It didn’t work! It was nearly 1.30am before we got to The Cave, only 30 mins before closing. It was pretty much empty. I got a round of drinks in, and we sat on some of the squishy sofas. Â Almost immediately we were leapt on by a group of girls, trying to persuade us to do some group deal, none of us were really interested, to be honest we all looked a bit tired. Chris sis his usual trick of picking a girl for me and handing her the money for the dance. It’s very generous of him, but honestly, I can’t remember a thing about it, I was too drunk and tired to care.
When the dance was over I returned to the group and supped my JD, Paul (the eldest) seemed to spring to life and decided the night shouldn’t be over, and we should go clubbing, Dan and Chris didn’t look convinced, but my drunken brain immediately thought this could be a winner! I think the last time I went clubbing with Paul was on his Stag Do, and that was great fun! With the flashback of having fun clubbing at the front of my mind, we all departed  The Cave, left Dan and Chris, and wandered to Evoke, Chelmsford’s new ‘Super Club’.
It’s not far really between The Cave and Evoke, but I think the cold night air was helping us come to our senses, it probably wasn’t a good idea to continue drinking AND starting clubbing at 2am, we’re old (well Paul is!). By the time we got to Evoke, we decided to go and get something to eat and head home. We wandered back the way we came, and bumped into Dan, Chris and Jen again, they were loaded up with food and heading back! We exchanged our final goodbyes and headed off to the ‘Shit in a tray’ merchants opposite the Bus Station.
The night ended in stereotypical fashion, staggering home, dropping bits of kebab and putting the world to rights one drunken footstep at a time!
Thanks chaps for a fab night! 🙂
