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Blog: STAG!

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I got back on the train on Saturday afternoon and zipped up to Leicester for the STAG night of my good friend Mr C M Lawson which, technically at least, I was supposed to be organising. I've only walked in company to his house so wasn't entirely sure how to get there from the station, but the taxi driver refused to believe this - he kept trying to catch me out by saying "Is it left here?" and even though I said "I don't know - I've only ever walked there" he STILL said, at the end of the trip "How much do they usually charge you to get here?" I was not to be trapped - where is my MI5 application?

We began with a tasteful glass of the whisky, then Mr Simon Wilkinson arrived and we headed off to The Pump & Tap. This is pretty much the ONLY pub LEFT in Leicester from our twenties - almost ALL of the others have been closed, changed to flats, or in alarmingly numerous occasions, DEMOLISHED. It's as if pub landlords would rather SCUPPER their own businesses than risk having VOON reform and come and play at them. For LO! it was a bit of a VOON TASTIC NIGHT - we were soon joined by Mr Jamieson Sutcliffe, who served time in the group many years ago and also Founder Member Dr Neil Brown. I'd expected much of the evening to be a nostalgic look back over those days, but rather wonderfully it wasn't like that at all. We discussed house prices and TAXES for ten minutes at the start of the evening and then settled into talking UTTER BOLLOCKS for the rest of the night. It was GRATE.

Discussion moved to where we should go and eat - "we don't HAVE to have curry..." i said, but as soon as the words left my mouth i realised this was a FIB. Of COURSE we HAD to have curry - we were STAG! And more than that, we were on TRADITIONAL STAG - none of this rubbish about go-karting or camping or any of that, we were out for BEER! CURRY! BEER! DANCING! PROPER STAG! We wandered up Narborough Road and ended up at a place called Barcode, which was a bar AND a curry house, one of those places where the waitress comes and sits at your table to take your order, which I thought was rather nice. We NOTED that we'd arrived in UNIFORM - all of us (except for Sorted Supremo Dave Dixey who'd been delayed by watching Dr Who and so possibly hadn't recieved the stylists memo) were in Dad On A Saturday Night GARB - nice jeans, sensible shoes and a shirt with a SLIMMING STRIPE, not tucked in. We looked like a boy band reunion or, less kindly and more accurately, a line-up from Never Mind the Buzzcocks. We were SPLENDID!

Curry done we wandered back into town for some more BEER before the culmination of the night - THE NIGHTCLUB! Oh yeah! We decided to go to THE FAN CLUB, scene of SO VERY MANY nights of our younger years. In those days we'd turn up, drink loads of beer, try to look at girls, not dance, and then go home depressed. This time it was very different - we had FUN. The whole night, in fact, was like this - we weren't re-living our youth, we were re-DOING it, and this time doing it PROPERLY. Bouyed up by the general jollity so far we all THREW ourselves into the dancing THRONG. The Arctic Monkeys came on pretty early, which we being Dads On A Saturday Night LOVED, and we spent the next couple of hours LEAPING AROUND and having a RIGHT GOOD LARF. Simon and Jamie got a packet of cigarrettes which only ADDED to the air of X-TREME KRAZINESS, and when they played "This Charming Man" young people SCATTERED as our arms came out wide and we SHOWED THESE YOUNG PEOPLE A THING OR TWO ABOUT DANCING. HA!

It was a brilliant and lovely night, topped off by getting a taxi back to Chris's where a select few of us completed the stag experience by watching a Very Special Video. Oh yes! David Tennant's going to be GRATE isn't he?

posted 17/4/2006 by MJ Hibbett

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