Taking a leaf out of Alex’s book, I’ve decided to be less candid with people’s names.
So, a couple of hours after I left Arthur, Benny, and Charlie, in the pub on Thursday, I received a call from Arthur inviting me down to the Walpole to join them for a swift half. Sensing danger I politely refused..and besides, by that time I was all settled in with Michele, Humph and the laptop. On reflection, this was probably the most sensible thing I have ever done.
In a nutshell, Arthur and Charlie performed their magic trick – walking down to the station and then turning into a pub. Strapped for cash, Charlie was forced to use his credit card and therefore opted for double measures to achieve the minimum purchase price. An hour later, they had downed 11 vodkas. Each. No-one knows what happenned next, but we do know several small pieces of information that may help them reconstruct the events. Arthur fell asleep on the tube, and woke up at Heathrow. Twice. Feeling beaten, he alighted, fell asleep on a bench and puked all over the place.
Charlie regained consciousness in a strange land with which he was unfamiliar. In this land, something was preventing his mouth from working properly. Broke and bewildered, he phoned home: his mum and dad. Unfortunately, in his highly refreshed state, he found considerable difficulty in conveying items of information essential to being picked up: where he was, who he was, when he was etc etc. Fortunately, a friendly native cleverly deduced his predicament and shouted “New Eltham” down the phone. His mum, dad and a set of very heavy vibes, drove from their home in Petts Wood and collected him from the pub bench on which he was now sleeping. Charlie has given up drinking. Which means he missed the Music Department do on Friday after work… Well done that man. Sorry – I shouldn’t complain, I knew what to expect. And they had wine. And I ended up waffling on for hours to the HoD about some rubbish or other.
Saturday was great. Watched 2 episodes of Quincy (excellent) and then went up to the HobGoblin to investigate a claim I found on the web that it had an open wireless access point. This turned out to be a lie but I spent a very agreeable afternoon in the sunny garden with Benny, Jez, Col, Welsh Mike, Adele at al. Even had a nice argument with Jez about copyright and piracy (a separate blog entry on this one I think). Even better, Jez gave Michele the recipe for the cider and mustard sauce he does the pork chops in and she made it for tea! Superb. Later that night Benny dropped in, he’d stayed at the pub until the evening. No vodkas tho’.
