Cigarettes and Alcohol: Confessions of a Stag Weekend
Page 7
Hangovers dealt with, we get back on the sauce with a vengeance. This pub just rules. Some great tunes are being played, smokes are being smoked and we are having a top time. The weekender is rocking on in a big style.
I know that now we have bedded down in this public house, there is no way we are leaving until closing time. Why we bother to leave our own postcodes to go on a stag do and sit in the same juicer all day is a total mystery. What about seeing all the sights that Edinburgh has to offer?
We have the castle just a minute’s walk away, it’s not getting a look see. What about the thriving theatre scene, the restaurants with award winning food, the gift shops and all that?
Blow the lot of it, this is a stag do. It is time for us real men to smoke hard and drink tough. We have decided to nominate Kid G as the stag this afternoon instead of me. Again this is the ultimate double, double bluff as Kid G does not even have a girlfriend and is a long way away from any form of a wedding.
Kid G takes the abuse in good spirit agreeing to wear the clothes we provide, no questions asked, pretending to be the ‘stag’ for the day. He looks like he wants to be centre of attention, so I just sit back and let him take the shit.
Then the carnage really starts - a hen party of twenty tipsy tasty women turns up.
These hens are all totally teacup. The woman getting married is in her mid-twenties and has the full hen uniform on that you see everywhere. Long white wedding veil covered in unravelled condoms, inflatable penises and L plates. From the look of her, she has not got anything to learn but I bet she’s a bloody good teacher. She’s wearing a low cut top and a pink short skirt with stockings and garters on show. This may well be the get up she is planning on getting wed in, as she is a right classy broad.
All the other hens are wearing silly tee shirts, printed with various pictures of the bride to be in dodgy poses and various drunken states. Well judging her by my own low standards, I just assume that she was well inebriated when the photographs were taken.
The girls march up to the bar and order several vats of wine, some pints and a load of tequila which they start slamming back with salt and a lemon. This is not going to be a quiet afternoon, that’s a racing cert!
We all start chatting. Where you from? Where you staying? What club did you end up in last night? Who did you end up in last night? Who’s the stag they ask?
As if they couldn’t tell Kid G is the only fella in the place wearing a dress and has the word TWAT written on his forehead in permanent ink. Good luck getting that off before work on Monday, boss man is not going to be best pleased with you Kid G.
We then decide to cable tie the hen and stag together wrist to wrist and are then made to ‘down’ cocktails packed with brain damage amounts of alcohol. These two are inseparable all afternoon. Wherever she goes, he goes and vice versa.
It’s all good clean fun until substitute stag boy (Kid G) feels the urgent need to go and off load the scran he ate last night. All the booze and the breakfast he has shoved down his throat, has pushed down on his full to bursting point, bag of guts and tommy turd is very definitely in the departure lounge.
The poor hen is not happy when he explains that he has to very urgently go and turn his bike around. They are tied together so she has no choice in the matter and is visiting the men’s toilets as well.
Kid G gets his dress and pants down with one hand and mounts the porcelain throne.
The hen is trying to get as far out of the cubicle as she can and is pulling on Kid G’s arm in desperation to escape the danger zone. Then the stag let’s go and the stench is incredible. There are local sewer farms that smell better. Kid G’s arm is nearly yanked from his socket as the green-faced hen tries to get away, but they are tightly secured.
The noise of his brown snake hitting the pan sounds like a cruise liner being launched off the coast of Portsmouth and it probably displaces as much water as well. Finally he finishes seeing an old friend off to the coast with the words ‘That was a belter!’
The hen is gagging by now, she is definitely not impressed, particularly when the stag asks if she would not mind helping him wipe up round the back, as he only has one hand available and this is definitely a job for two!
She does see the funny side and starts laughing, even cops a sneaky peek at his meat and two veg as well. This makes her laugh even more, probably glad that she is not getting wed to something that small and hairy. She then feels even sorrier for his poor intended bride to be. Just imagine having to clean out the loo after this fella has been through it, leaving more skid marks than are found on the outside lane of the M25.
The girls are a great laugh and the afternoon disappears in a sea of booze and a cloud of tobacco smoke.
All the ladies seem to have husbands and/or boyfriends. Some have boyfriends and other people’s husbands. Others have regular ‘fuck buddies’ they call when they get the urge, which seems to be most nights of the week and why not? All is fair in love and war or some such.
They all go on about sex more than us lads do. You would think there is some sort of National Cock Shortage on, the way they speak about it. They certainly seem to be working their way through the EU man member mountain.
One of the hens is all over one of the stags like a rash, her knickers must be wetter than a Trawlerman’s boot and soon the pair of them go off on the missing list. They return half an hour later looking rather sheepish and dishevelled. You can bet they haven’t been around Edinburgh Castle looking at the sights, but wager he has been scaling her battlements! To be frank the smell of fuck is all over the pair of them.
Kid N has fallen asleep on a big overstuffed comfy sofa at the back of the pub. He is really giving it some heavy duty Z’s. The hens silently descend on him with make-up bags.
As he sleeps his lips get sticked, his lashes get mascara-ed and his nails polished until he looks like the most crap transvestite in all of Scotland. The girls do a cracking job on him and he doesn’t realise for hours after waking that he has a full face of make-up on.
He just wondered why everyone was giving him the skunk eye and laughing openly at him.
The bar staff love it because we are filling up their tills at a frightening rate. They are giving out more free shots than a couple of doctors handing out TB jabs at a primary school.
Music is pumping out of the pubs hi-fi system at full blast and now the party is going full tilt. It’s not long until Village jumps up on a table and starts stripping his shirt off while trying to down Tequila through his eye. He’s overjoyed when one of the hens joins him and does the same. The stripping I meant not the whole drinking through the eye socket thing which is just bloody stupid and not to be encouraged.
It does get you well pissed though.
The hen’s top comes off to a massive cheer that finally wakes Kid N the new king of cosmetics. This afternoon we are getting more flashes of tit than an avid bird watcher sitting alone up on the local moors with just his binoculars for company.
It’s all going like some mad absinthe-induced dream until someone starts chanting one word over and over that totally ruins the pretend stag’s day.
PYRAMID!
PYRAMID!
PYRAMID!
CIGARETTES SMOKED IN THIS CHAPTER: 17…..124 TO GO.
BOOZE BINGED IN THIS CHAPTER: 1 PINT, 3 BOTTLES OF LAGER, AN ARCHERS AND LEMONADE & A MALIBU AND PINEAPPLE
Chapter Fourteen: The Edinburgh Pyramid Catastrophe
According to the all-knowing internet world wide web thingy ‘The Great Pyramid of Giza’ took over twenty years to build and is over 470 feet tall. This height is approximately eight months of hard cock labour for our working girl earlier in this book (See chapter five. I cannot guarantee that all figures included there are correct. They probably aren’t but what’s your problem? Maths was never my strong point. Besides this is not some sort of dissertation for university, it’s just a book packed full of filth and nonsense).
The pyramid is an amazing feat of human
ingenuity. Millions of stones, each weighing tons in weight were somehow lifted into position, hundreds of feet off the ground. There were no massive cranes or petrol driven machines to help out. Just hundreds of thousands of slaves who were worked/flogged into early graves to erect (snigger) a huge tomb in memory of Pharaoh Khufu.
It is an enormous structure and takes your breath away when you think that this pyramid has been on Earth for over four and a half thousand years. It is totally incredible and almost worth an actual trip to Egypt to see it. I’ve only ever seen it on the telly, but honestly feel that is the better option.
They say travel broadens the mind. By travelling on multiple stag dos, the only thing you are going to broaden is the waist band of your jeans that support your ever increasing beer belly AKA your ‘bay window’.
Anyway ‘Great Pyramid of Giza’ I SHIT YOU!
Give me ten able bodied men and within five minutes I can build for you ‘The Shite Pyramid of Geezers!’
Back in the Edinburgh bar on Saturday afternoon, the chant is getting louder and louder. It is now broken into three syllables being howled at the top of our voices:
PY-RA-MID!!!!!!
PY-RA-MID!!!!!!
PY-RA-MID!!!!!!
So let’s get building. The first four lads get down on their hands & knees in a row next to each other. Then the next three climb onto their backs on all fours as well, supported by the chaps below. Are you getting the picture?
The third level is two lads on the backs of the three below with one space at the very top reserved for the stag. As we are constructing our very poor excuse of a geezer pyramid (at about eight feet tall in total, it’s not really that impressive) the bar staff put on The Bangles tune ‘Walk like an Egyptian.’ We stop working and strut around to the song, doing crazy Egyptian poses with the hens, who are absolutely loving it.
Top eighties pop tune over and it is construction time again. Levels one, two and three are complete, so now it’s time for the pretend stag to climb up to the top.
Obviously he is still attached to the chief hen so we cut him free of the cable ties before he is able to scale the man pyramid. We have plenty more cable ties so we’ll just tie him up again later, as and when the mood takes us.
The stag (Kid G) is well wobbly on his feet by now as he has consumed the best part of a small brewery over the afternoon, but he finally gets to the top on his hands & knees supported by the nine other dudes below him.
The pub goes wild. People are cheering and rush over to take photographs with those cheap disposable cameras that get taken away on weekenders. The stag is enjoying all of the attention and tries to stand up on the backs of the two lads below him. Big mistake! He is not the lightest of guys, although after his recent mammoth dump, he must be at least half a stone lighter than when he woke up. The pyramid starts to look a bit shaky. ‘BAD STACK! BAD STACK!’ one of the crew screams.
Suddenly one of the lads at the bottom of the pile, Kid J can’t take all the weight from above and his knees give way, causing the whole pyramid to collapse down on top of him.
Poor old Kid G falls at least eight feet from the top and lands face first on the wooden floor. There is a huge sound ‘SPANG!’ like something out of a cartoon, as his gob comes smashing down on to the floor. He has come down massively hard on to the hard wood surface and the noise sounds like his jaw has definitely been broken.
As Kid G gets up from the floor we can all see that his lips are now a massive bloody mess and as he opens his mouth, we clock that he has lost his two front teeth in the dreadful accident. Claret is pissing out all over the place. His face looks like a really badly made up zombie from some cruddy VHS horror movie from 1986.
Kid G is trying to say something but his jaw is definitely FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition). The hens start cooing about him, mopping up the blood and the bar staff call up an ambulance.
Because of his dental deficiency Kid G is instantly renamed GAP by one of the gang. However, he is not the only pyramid casualty. Kid J has busted two of his fingers which are now hanging at a very odd angle on his hand. He is so drunk he didn’t even feel it and only noticed what had happened when he tried to lift his pint pot.
GAP is in a terrible mess and has started to cry. He has an interview at work on Monday and he was sure that he was finally going to get a well-paid promotion to management level. Now he has no chance as it looks like he has been trying to nosh off a chainsaw.
His gob is in a right state, it looks like he has gone ten rounds with a heavyweight boxer.
With the lack of two front teeth, a sensible conversation with a potential new boss is well out of the question. Finally the ambulance turns up to cart blubbing GAP and Kid J off to the local A&E. That’s two of the herd lost in the last five minutes. At this rate there will be none of us left to get the plane home down south tomorrow night.
The collapse of ‘The Shite Pyramid of Geezers’ kind of ruins the party atmosphere and the group of hens decide to chip off and get ready for their big night out. They vaguely promise to meet us in some nightclub later that evening.
We get another round of drinks in and have a seat to reflect on the afternoon’s mayhem. Deviant has found one of GAP’s front teeth embedded in the wooden floor. The sick puppy is absolutely overjoyed.
‘This is going to make a fucking brilliant lucky charm to attach to my gold belcher chain!’ he crows.
Not so lucky for GAP though, I guess.
CIGARETTES SMOKED IN THIS CHAPTER: 13…..111 TO GO
BOOZE BINGED IN THIS CHAPTER: 2 PINTS, 3 BOTLES, A PINA COLADA, A DRY MARTINI WITH DIET LEMONADE, 1 BLUE CURACAO
Chapter Fifteen: A Short History of Stagging
The first recorded example of the traditional stag do was seen in Sparta in the fifth century. Those who have seen the movie 300 will know that the men of Sparta were load of double hard bastards with a mega short life expectancy.
Before a lad was sent off to his almost certain death with the Spartan army his comrades threw him a huge party. This was a big night out of drinking hard with all of your mates before you were sent off to the front line, probably never to return.
So there was no need to worry about chronic liver disease from the boozing, heart problems from the smokes or even some nasty rash that appears on your ‘little soldier’ after a ride on the local bike (don’t forget those STD’s hunt in packs!) because all those parts of your body were very soon to be hacked into tiny pieces on the battlefield.
Go on, have a top night out with the posse. No responsibility tonight and the odds of you actually seeing another night are so remote anyhow, that you may as well party hard Spartan dude.
Celebrate your last night of freedom before you take a massive plunge into an early grave. So the tradition of giving your compatriot a superb sending off with a sore head is probably where the tradition of a lad’s night out before the wedding came from.
Over in pre Christian England, people worshipped a god known as The Horned One, whose antlers made him be seen as a virile male form. This possibly is where the ‘stag’ bit comes from.
The change from an immature child entering into matrimony and becoming a man with great responsibility (well that’s the theory anyway) is a perfect excuse to celebrate by having your eyebrows shaved off and having to wear a gorilla costume for the entire weekend.
Ladies and Gentlemen, let me introduce you to the modern stag do!
In France this rite of passage is known as the ‘enterrement de vie de garcon’ which translates as ‘the burial of the life of a boy.’
The wedding cynic among you may say that the real meaning is ‘the end of your life, mate!’ Game Over. Do not pass go and do not collect £200. I do not want to live a life full of compromises and curtail my activities of excess gambling, drinking, shagging & smoking, they say.
Mr Cynical may not be happy selling his soul for a three bed semi in the suburbs and a load of sauce pan lids (kids).
However I am not a cynic at
all. Marriage may well be the end of certain things (well most things) that your new bread knife will not approve of, but just think of all the new hobbies you can then take up instead.
Like decorating or hanging about in your new potting shed (everyone knows this is where your porn was stashed in pre-lap top days) and changing nappies full of runny green shite after nights without any sleep. But hey-ho, marriage makes a man of you they say.
The stag do has been around for centuries so it is your duty, as a man, to carry on this tradition if you are daft enough to get wed. There is nothing like getting totally shit faced and walking around with a traffic cone on your head to compensate for a wedding you will still be paying off for at least the next decade. Single gentlemen out there in the real world, please feel free to join this exclusive party whenever you want.
Here are a few historical highlights of stag nights throughout the ages:
1] Henry VIII suffered from a very rare condition that was known as ‘I-love-a-stag-do-i-tis.’ He was totally nuts for a big night out with the knights and hence his marrying of six wives. He could ‘take or leave’ the actual wedding day, he proposed simply to have royal permission to have the six stag parties. These events were legendary with a 15 course meal followed by as much jousting, sword fighting and public executions as you could shake a shitty stick at. All the Lords from across England were expected to attend, bringing with them untouched maidens for the post banquet entertainment and some local peasants who had various bits of them removed, just for laughs. Henry just loved some eye gouging or finger breaking before indulging in a bit of ‘in & out’ with a bit of Tudor grumble. Old Henry was in the midst of getting rid of wife number six and preparing for stag do number seven when the gout finally got him, the poor randy old soak.
2] In Victorian times, the wearing of real antlers while on a stag night became the very height of fashion. The more ornate and sharp they were, the more respect you would receive from your drinking chums. I have a theory that the murders of prostitutes in the East End of London back in 1888 that have always been blamed on Jack the Ripper were in fact caused by gentlemen out for a beery night on the tiles. Stag parties would descend on Whitechapel after pub closing time, for a quick knee trembler down some fog strewn alleyway with a cut price brass. Unfortunately as the stag approached our ‘tart with a heart’ he tripped and fell on the cobblestones and accidently sliced the unfortunate woman of the night to pieces with the razor sharp antlers on his head. The stag party had to be on their toes quickly to avoid certain arrest after leaving a sliced up lady lying bleeding in the street. There was no Peeler in London who would believe this was an accident and the fact that this sad mishap happened five times in the same area in quick succession would never be believed. The murders all ceased on the very day that a law to stop antlers being worn on stag do’s was passed. That was no coincidence, believe me. It’s my conspiracy theory and I am sticking to it. Five terrible stag do disasters and the deaths of five young women were all blamed on the one shadowy figure, our Jack, who never got caught. The fact that in modern cockney rhyming slang ‘Jack the Ripper’ means ‘stripper’, is further proof that this is all true and was covered up for over a hundred and twenty years, until now. (This is all utter toss I’m afraid. Or is it?)