It’s
your chance to let your hair down. You can become the ultimate ‘man’s man’ by immersing yourself in beer, strippers, football, cigarettes, more beer and illegal substances.

You’re
let off the leash. All the grief at work and chores at home disappear in a top beer buzz.

During
the early to mid-nineties, a number of my mates decided to take the plunge into wedded bliss.

For
the couple concerned this was a major commitment and a huge outlay of cash, involving loads of planning for the big day, the honeymoon, the dress and all that good stuff. To the lads this meant just one thing…..STAG DO!!!

The
wedding day holds no interest to real men, not even the groom. Getting togged up in a dodgy looking hired morning suit that reeks of piss, being on your best behaviour, paying out for yet another new outfit for the Mrs (even though her wardrobe is already full to bursting point with kit) it’s all dull, dull, dull.

The
first question on hearing that another sucker is being dragged down the aisle is ‘Where we going for the staggie then lad?’ These weekend jaunts were where legends were made, crap was talked, gallons of alcohol drunk and drugs were smoked, snorted and slipped into people’s drinks. Not the sort of behaviour to condone really, but as my Old Man says, ‘if they can’t take a joke, fuck ‘em!’

The
main stag attendees were guys I’d known since school. We were in our early twenties, had cash on hip and were well up for abusing our bodies in the name of a good time. We’d all grown up together and knew all there was to know about each other: our dating failures, the states we got ourselves into, the jobs we did, the fact that most of us still lived at home with our parents.…all the embarrassing stories that would have us howling with laughter whenever we got together. Obviously more and more exaggerated since the last time the tale was told.

There’s
no point describing these guys, you know what a group of blokes being blokey are like, you’ve been round the block yourself I’m sure. There’s the cool one, the thick one, the permanently-drunk one, the loud one, the good-looking one, the slightly-creepy-looking one, the border-line-serial-murderer… the list goes on.

In
addition to the core stags were various family members, workmates, flatmates and anyone else who fancied it. As long as you were male, could drink your own body weight in Stella Artois and smoke hard you were welcome to be part of the weekend.

In
this book, characters are going to be known as Kid A, Kid B, Kid C etc until they do something truly spectacularly daft and then will gain the nickname that has followed them around for the last twenty odd years.

Yeah
that’s pretty lazy writing but if you want a love story, you’re in the wrong place my friend. This is a book about a group of immature lads on ‘the hit and miss’. If lavatory language and bodily fluids being spilt is not your bag, look away now.

Also
by giving nicknames to the characters this will protect the guilty from getting the old ‘broken television set’ routine from their other half. You know what I mean, a couple of weeks of no sound and no pictures from ‘her indoors’ as punishment for your drunken crimes.

You’ve
heard all the old clichés…what goes on tour stays on tour…you’re not cheating on your girlfriend if you’re in a different time zone and all that old nonsense. Well this book shows you what really goes on when the lads disappear for the weekend. Most people think stags just want to fight, flirt and fuck. Well we do, but we do other things as well, like talk utter horseshit and laugh at other peoples’ misfortunes.

This
book is real stag stories, almost 100% truthful, OK maybe 90% truthful, though embellished for maximum levels of embarrassment and laughter.

Some
may well find these tales of debauchery highly offensive and sexist. I honestly do not want to upset any sensitive souls out there. This book is no more sexist than your average ‘chick lit’ paperback dribbling on about shoes, shopping and shagging. In fact this book may be the first in an all-new genre called ‘dick lit’ as it is about a load of dickheads just dicking around. The only shops you will find these stags in are beer shops!

The
‘Cigarettes Smoked Countdown’ at the end of each chapter is simply a plot device giving the book some sort of framework to connect all the incredible tales of idiots being inebriated. I’m certainly not telling people to go out there and smoke 200 cigarettes in one weekend because that will properly ruin your lungs your health and your looks. Same with ‘The Booze Binged Counter’ featured in each chapter, this book is a work of fiction not an instruction manual for the easily led!

Also
for those civilians who do not speak Cockney/Mockney/Estuary English/Man of Kent/Kentish Man-speak as well as I do, there is a ‘Glossary of Tossary’ at the back of the book. Here you will find translations and explanations of some of the phrases used within this book that you may not understand.

The
action takes place across three days of one mad weekender on two stag do’s in Amsterdam and Edinburgh from way back in the early 1990’s and then one in Brighton in the present day, so do try to stay with the programme. We flit about across time and space like some demented drunken Dr Who.

So
please come with me, in this time travelling DeLorean, like in Back to the Future.

Buckle
up, set the dials to 1993, hit 88 miles an hour and bada bing here we are in an airport lounge…..it’s time to Laugh, Joke, Drink, Smoke!!!!!!!

PART ONE: AMSTERDAM

Chapter
Two: The Airport Jellyfish Tank

Another single man falls into the matrimonial chasm and the usual gang assemble at the local airport early on a Friday morning for a weekend on the pop. There are fourteen of us in all, overnight bags, passports and loads of local currency in hand. Remember stagging isn’t cheap!

It’s
six a.m. and we’re already on pint number two sitting in a bar next door to a huge duty free shop full of toot that people swarm around and buy before they fly. Wallets and purses are being opened and all sorts of expensive crap is now being bought by the great unwashed.

What
good is a king sized bar of Toblerone going to be when the plane crashes into the North Sea? It’s not a flotation device, pal.

Why
buy all that overpriced perfume and aftershave? That bad boy jumbo comes down from 37,000 feet, all you are is a nice smelling corpse.

If
people really buy stuff at airports to overcompensate for a fear of flying and possible impending death, why don’t the shops flog parachutes? They’d make a bleeding fortune.

This
is why I drink heavily before boarding a flight because I don’t intend dying sober if I can help it.

Two
of the lads have wandered off to a table away from the rest of the herd. The conversation looks serious and we all know that Kid A is not getting on with his girlfriend.

They’ve
only bought a house together six months ago but there’s trouble in paradise already. Nobody’s going to be surprised when their gaff is back on the market. The only person coming out a winner in this scenario is the local estate agent, odds on another juicy bonus coming his way soon.

Kid
A and Kid B are yakking away so we let them get on with it. The following was overheard by a nosey fly on the wall:

Kid
A ‘Things ain’t going too well at home at the moment, so I am well happy to have a damn good excuse to be away this weekend. Am getting a bad case of the cold shoulder and the girlfriend seems to have a terminal case of Siamese knees!’

Kid
B ‘What you done now then bro? Surely it can’t be any worse than turning up at ten o’clock, totally off your head, when you were meant to be home at seven, to have dinner with her folks.’

Kid
A ‘Not my finest hour I’ll grant you, feel it’s all going to end in tears very soon. There’s a huge difference of opinion in my household. I think I’m a top fella, unfortunately she thinks I’m an arsehole.’

Kid
B ‘But you are, she’s got you well sussed. You can’t blame her for wanting out really.’

Kid
A ‘Good point well made. I’ve got to tell you a top story though, but keep it to yourself. The other night I got in from work & dived straight into the bath for a chill out. Grabbed a bottle of Bud and was having a good soak when I thought….right, time for a wank. So I pull a cheeky quick one off the wrist, rinse myself off and my spunk looks like a load of albino jellyfish floating in the water. Swim my pretties, swim! I shout with glee.

‘
I get out the bath and the very soon to be Ex-Mrs comes bowling into the bathroom and says mind if I use that water I’m going out in 5 minutes and can’t be bothered running another one? No knock yourself out I say with a wry grin. I can’t really fess up to having a toss, can I, so she jumps in.’

Kid
B ‘So are you now scared that you’ve somehow made her pregnant with your floating man fat?’

Kid
A ‘No chance of that, she’s got a bush like a scouring pad, my Harry Monk will just get caught up in that. Maybe it got stuck in between her toes giving her webbed feet like The Man from Atlantis or some such.’

Kid
B ‘You really are one sick puppy my boy. You could have just told her the water had gone cold and got her to run another bath. In fact it’s not too harsh to call you Deviant Boy.’

And
so, two things happened that day. Kid A was given his nickname of Deviant, that follows him around for the next two decades and a bath is henceforth known as The Jelly Fish Tank or JFT for short.

I
did ask my doctor once if a woman could get ‘in the family way’ by getting into a bath full of floating spunk. He just gave me a very strange look and politely asked me to leave the surgery before he called the police.

CIGARETTES
SMOKED IN THIS CHAPTER
:
0

BOOZE
BINGED IN THIS CHAPTER: 2 PINTS OF LAGER & A SOUTHERN COMFORT AND LEMONADE

BOOK: Cigarettes and Alcohol: Confessions of a Stag Weekend

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