The 4 year anniversary of "that night"

Cast your mind way back to February 13th 2002. It was the week before our mocks started and half term. My parents and brother had gone away for the week to give me plenty of quiet time to study for the mocks. Now don't get me wrong, I did get plenty enough study done that week. However I thought it only right that I have a little get together at mine to celebrate the first time having the house totally to myself for a week. The gathering consisted of myself, Ali, Wigs, Danny, Nik, Fi and Shoz. Wig being on antibiotics at the time managed to stay sober for the entire night but had the benefit of being able to completely dedicate his time to filming the show! Between the alochol that night and the time passed since, my memory has become corrupt and I can't quite remember all the sordid details. However it did involve sitting around and playing a game that involved forfeits. It wasn't long before the girls were down to their bras and knickers with the lads just in their boxers. Wigs, despite being sober, was strangely naked. Another forfeit consisted of Wigs using his teeth to protect a banana from STIs. Again slightly disturbing given his level of drunkeness - or lack thereof. Fi somehow ended up having a penis drawn on each cheek. The first, drawn by Ali was miniscule. The other, by Danny, was a 6 inch sausage! This, unfortunately for Ali, earned him the embarrassing reputation of having a small member, a reputation that would haunt him at every subsequent visit to the pub for years to come. There are several other good memories from that night which I won't share here for various reasons. Mainly because this blog entry is not about that night but about the 4 year anniversary of that night.

When we first heard Shoz was visiting from London for 2 nights and one of them was the 13th of February we couldn't believe our luck at the opportunity for an anniversary celebration. We began by drinking a few of the old reliable 6 for €7 in Fi's before heading into town to meet the others in Dakota. Unfortunately the atmosphere was close to nil there and so we moved on swiftly to Flannery's of Camden St. This was much better and the craic was mighty and Alard was doing his Gordon Darcy impersonation again. Upstairs with a booth we felt the need to dance on the seats to certain patriotic songs such as Crazy World by Aslan and Saints and Sinners by Paddy Casey. The bouncers were not amused and we got off the seats pretty sharpish. So we continued dancing on the floor. As we were leaving the place, Col in his usual drunken thievery mode managed to swipe a feathery scarf and an umbrella! When confronted he claimed he found them but chances are he found them on a seat beside a group of people who owned them! He was wearing the scarf but the umbrella was cleverly concealed in his sleeve. He kept insisting that his arm was made out of umbrella and wanted people to touch it. He then went off into the night singing about how he was the motherfucking shit with his tinsil. It was then onto the Berkley Court hotel where Shoz was staying. There we were 7 drunk students all piling into the residence bar of this 5 star hotel and demanding guinness and other assorted alcoholic beverages. Despite our well formed arguments we were not allowed to play the piano. At this stage Ali was suffering and so myself and Fi decided to put him to bed. We bid Shoz farewell and took a taxi back to Fi's. Ali went straight to bed and Fi and I were up for drinking a while longer in her kitchen. Fi told me she was going to the toilet and to wait for her in the kitchen and she would be back in a few minutes. I was quite content to sit there revelling in my own toughts when I soon realised that 30 minutes had passed. Where the fuck was Fi?!! Thinking she had gone to bed without telling me I went upstairs to check. Alard was fast asleep in the spare room but no sign of Fi in her room. I went back downstairs and noticed a rectangular glow of light around the downstairs toilet door. Ah. She ws still in there. I waited another 10 minutes before giving up and going to bed myself. Unfortunately Fi's memory was in no state to fill me in on what actually happened to her in the morning but my theory is she fell asleep on the toilet. And as she woke up in her bed still wearing her jacket God knows what actually happened! The next day was spent recovering and watching the previous night's recorded epsiode of Lost. (It was deadly!) Farewell Shoz. See you again in another 4 years!

Now away with ye...