THE hangover from HELL this morning! And I was at work by 8.30am on a Sunday.

Nev, Alan, Vicky, Parminder and Jim came down to London yesterday and went out to celebrate Jim’s birthday. We started by heading into town to the O’Neils on Waldorf Street near Leicester Square for some beers and a pie and chips. Had a bit of trouble getting in apparently 6 people was too many but once two of them are girls its OK! Jim’s ex from Uni Vik and her new man were there, was nice to see them, I don’t think I’ve seen her since Maths at Uni.

We were sitting next to the live three-piece Irish band which was a bit annoying at first cos they were playing their own songs, they weren’t bad just not brilliant. After a short break they came back out to drown out “Sweet Chariot” with the classic selection of favourites. Starting with “Whiskey in the Jar” was the best idea all night and that got the bunch of us all singing. Sure enough we were the only ones singing and the only ones clapping!! After a couple more classics of Wiild Rover and Dirty Old Town we managed to encourage the rest to sign along. The band finished by giving us a quick mention and thanking us for our “wailing”.

Mark (Finlay) and his sister turned up and to give us a hand with the signing and the drinking!

As planned we moved through the pouring rain on to the Porters House Bar in Covent Garden and starting chatting to a bunch of Ozzies and drinking Carlton Cold’s like they were Irn-Bru. Thankfully the dancing hadn’t quite taken hold but the singing was definately in the blood. The 8 of us drowned out a bar-full of English with “O Flower of Scotland”, “Waltzing Matilda” (with Ozzy support) and finally “You can stick your £**king chariot up you arrr$e”. A couple of hugs from huge comical giants dressed in White and Red we made a sharp exit!

Elbowed Nev in the face while pretending to miss, don’t think I gave him a shiner but I did give him a good clout! Some might say he deserves it and they’d be right but didn’t mean to. Honest??

Somewhere between walking out of the bar and going home we took leave of our senses and ended up going to possibly the worst and most expensive club in London coming out with a shortage of pounds and pennies. We even payed £10 for the privelidge of entering the establishment – Las Locus!!!

Danced like an loon!! Sang like a loon!!

Byrney, Alan and Nicky headed home early leaving the happy hardcore lot to soldier on till half 2. Managed to get a minicab back to Stratford pretty quickly which was nice considering its been raining for 4 days non-stop (hence the London-wide flood warning).

Back at the house I took one for the team and sacrificed my bed for Parminder. Slept on the Byrney’s floor and managed to ignore the snoring for most of the night. Up at 7.30 and managed to get in the shower after tripping over several bodies in the lounge and blinding some moles by turning on the lights. OUt of the house by 8 leaving loads of drunken idiots behind to cook themselves breakfast.

Managed to be in work for 8.30, which is close to being the earliest I’ve ever been in. Stinking hangoer but after a Benjy’s fry-up and two cans of bru I was functioning enought to realise that the deployment I was in to work on was now 13 hours behind schedule and slipping further and further behind. Nice start to the day.

There’s only so much stuff on the web to surf and so many paper-clips to count before you get bored enough to do some work! just found out Byrney has bough the extended Two Towers so that’ll be getting watched tonight,

Jp

James – http://www.dancingwithloons.com