Grat's 30th Birthday (21.10.05 - 23.10.05)

on the 21.10.05 we hired a 8-seater van and headed up to oxford for a boy's weekend for grat's 30th birthday. i can't remember much at all. but i do recall loads of boozing (that cheap champagne was a bad idea), syncronised snoring (target and dopey), losing my phone (this is a given), grant throwing furniture around our room (why?), target sounding the siren on his megaphone everytime he didn't like the music being played in the van (dude... "chill out" and "tolerance" are the name of the game), grant buying some dodgy cd on dopey's (false) recommendation... and then getting super upset about it... errr... i'm sure other things happened, but i don't really care... and nor does anyone else.



by far the most important event of the weekend however was the clay pigeon shooting. it was a very serious and tense affair... the losing team was sure to lose face big-time and forever be ridiculed... the teams were as follows:

the A team:

spanky
dopey
hobson
myself

the B team:

grat
pedro
target
buffy

the A team started off splendidly... spanky nailing an awesome 9 out of 10. we were soon brought down to earth though when hobson scored 0 out of 10... the instructor dude walking away shaking his head and muttering "i've never seen anything like it" under his breath. it was an embarrasing performance. and myself, dopey and spanky have never laughed so hard as the instructor got more and more frustrated... making hobson shoot left-handed, then at a stationary clay pigeon on the ground 50cm away, then at the instructor himself, then making hobson close his left eye, then his right eye... it carried on and on... and hobson didn't get one direct hit...

anyway... the competition went on, and despite being handicapped by the hapless hobson, the A team managed to stay in touch... just. it all came down to the last set... yours truely needing 7/10 for the draw, 8/10 for the win. i strided forward confidently, and despite the whistles and catcalls from the B team (blatant bad-sportsmanship in my view), i blasted 7 pigeons out of the sky to claim the draw. the B team were miffed... bleating on about cheating and match-fixing and corrupt officials... it sounded like a typical arsene wenger news conference after arsenal lose... pathetic.

but all in all the wend was awesome... thanks to buffy for organising it. and thanks to grat for turning 30... we couldn't have done it without you... hope you had a good one.