Is this the way to Birmingham?

My family are noted for their sobriety and abstemiousness

The recent office party was no exception, and I'm proud to have upheld the reputation of the family.

The plan was that we would take the afternoon of Friday the 22nd off and start our Christmas celebrations. We had chosen the Bull, mainly because they sell bottles of wine for a fiver

I arrived at the Bull early, so had a cider to start with, together with a rather interesting Steak and Ale pie. It wasn't so much the pie that was interesting, more the gravy, which was the consistency of custard and had a skin on it that a rhinocerous would be jealous of.

But I ate it.

Eventually the others arrived, and we ordered our wine. The wine turned out to worth every penny of the £5 that we'd spent, and Tammy was grateful when the Sales Director turned up and bought us another (better) bottle. In a chivalrous mood, I finished off the first bottle so that Tammy could have the good stuff.

1 bottle down

Tammy was going a bit slow on the second bottle, so I helped her out. It was a bit hot in the pub, so I was drinking faster than she was.

1 and a half bottles down.

By this time everyone had arrived, we put our money into the kitty and this then turned into a number of bottles of wine (amongst other things). We moved on to the pool table, played a few games, and every so often someone would replenish my glass.

By the time we left the pub I was probably 2 and a half bottles full

We made our way to the Merchants pub, where I had my usual pint of Stowford Press Cider (6% proof). At 8.00pm I realised I had to catch my train, downed the rest of the pint and made my way (staggered?) to the station.

2 and a half bottles plus a pint of cider full

Now. I remember catching the train. A bit of detective work proves that I caught the train. The 8.20 train. To Birmingham.

I woke up at 11.00 in Northampton.

There are some of you that don't know what this means. Central trains runs a shuttle service between Northampton and Birmingham, a journey of about 1 hour 15 minutes, calling at about 9 stations in between, including Rugby.

To arrive at Northampton I must have slept through the 6 station stops to Birmingham, slept through the turn around at Birmingham and slept through the 9 stops back to Northampton.

Wow. The thing is, when I woke up I didn't feel plastered. I was quite capable of planning the return journey (interesting in its own right, given that the last train from Rugby is 10:20). I had a mild headache but that was it.

I must drink wine more often.

Up the Pyg, down the Miners - Pt3 - the descent

Just to finish off the account of the stag weekend (although I've delayed this a bit, mainly because it touches on a subject that is not normally found in the annals of great literature - namely - 'What Do You Do When You're Caught Short On A Mountain?')

In my previous missive I had mentioned the fish and chips of the previous night. We had called in about 6.00pm to check what time he'd be open "Until 10:45" he said. "OK", we said, "We'll be back at 9.00". We said this clearly and in English (which may have been a mistake, seeing as we were in Wales). At 9.00 we duly turned up. "Fish and chips", I said. "You want it now?", the bloke said, obviously taken by surprise by this unusual request. On hearing the affirmative, he shrugged and poured the bucket of chips into the lukewarm fat. The fish was unusual (basically Southern Fried rubber) and the chips were - well - greasy. I ate the fish and 5 chips.

So; We have (rather slowly) ascended the heights of Snowdon, along with what appeared to be the rest of the UK. We have sat down for our lunch. We have admired the view

After a well earned lunch we set off for the bottom. At this point the kentucky fried fish woke my intestines up and said "I want to get out NOW!". Oh dear. It's very hard to clamber down a mountain realising that what you really want is a nice sit down toilet. Besides which, the soles of my boots started to come off (they are pretty old) so I was adopting the rather interesting walking gait of someone descending a steep slope, buttocks clenched and attempting not to trip over my boots.

The problem was that Snowdon seems a bit short on toilets. What's more, it's a bit short on privacy. And there were a lot of people on the mountain. In addition (given the nature of Snowdon), there weren't any rocks that I could hide behind without some small kid somewhere asking "Daddy, why's that man sitting down?".

So I slowly made my way down the Miner's track. I regard this descent as one of the major achievements of my life. The Miner's track is not so much a track as a series of small cliffs. Every so often you launch yourself off a small ledge onto the bit below. If you couple this with some rather attentive intestines and a pair of flapping boot soles a clown would be proud of you can imagine that every stage of the descent required concentration and willpower worthy of a seventh level Karma acolyte.

Eventually I reached the lake at the bottom of the descent. I won't go into great detail here; suffice to say that there were old mine workings here that provided some shelter, in spite of the curiosity of some of the walkers: "Daddy, why is that man running into that building in such a funny fashion?"

The next paragraph is not for the faint hearted, but is necessary to dispel vicious and unfounded rumours spread around. We had had cheese sandwiches for lunch. I still had some left over. I have to point out to those who doubt that cheese sandwiches are completely unnecessary when there is a lot of long, fine grass around. And grass is a lot more eco friendly. I even have the sandwiches, still in their plastic bag, to prove this.

Ok, glad to clear that up. In a manner of speaking

I enjoyed the rest of the walk. The soles on my boots still flapped, but I was as light as a feather, able to take in the sights around me and not worry if the next step would bring social disaster.

If only I could get rid of that rumour about the use I put the cheese sandwiches to I would be really happy.