This weekend had been in the planning for a while - mainly on a diary synchronisation front - the idea was that my friend group from school would meet in Nottingham and we'd have fun and games.
It all began on Friday at Sarah and John's house for a little house party and the burning of things which John has come to love. Everyone arrived a little later than expected but that could have been a good thing 'cause it meant that less alcohol was drunk... that said there was still rather a lot of consumage.
Another little interlude for me was going with Sarah to pick up Dave and Lucy who were flying in from Dublin for the meetup - their plane had been delayed and arrived at just after 11(or was it 10, I forget)... I went 'cause I'd made them a silly big (A2) sign so they could find us in the crowd and nobody else was silly enough to hold it up!
We arrived back at about 4.30am ish...
On the Saturday after much debate and delibation (mainly to do with the rain prospects - and the indiscion factor amongst 11 people) we went bowling. It was quite fun, especially as I won (well joint won with my high for me score of 113).
In the evening we went to the Red Hot Buffet Shack for an all you can eat buffet. I managed to remind myself why I didn't like all you can eat buffets, not ones costing over a tenner anyway. I never feel to get my money's worth and and up feeling full up and ill for no good reason in a mad effort to try and get my money's worth. The place was also too cramped and it felt over crowded. All in all I think it could be said I didn't enjoy it - I've probably had more enjoyable meals in hall.
Then we went to Muse which was ok, but felt too cramped again with eleven sat around a small table. The music was too loud so if you're partly deaf like me (no it's not confirmed, it's like you know when you can't see well in one eye) in one ear and find it hard (impossible) to do the cocktail party effect hearing thing then you're pretty much fucked - not the fault of the bar granted, it's my fault for being broken! Hmmm... maybe I'm not deaf and have an Auditory processing disorder - looking at the wiki page I have 11 of the 14 "Behavioral manifestations" - crumbs, god-damn hypochondria. Anyways...
Then we went on a crazy mystery tour around Nottingham, involving going to a bar that had closed down, a place were we didn't want go because it would cost us 3 quid to get in and then getting rejected from Wetherspoon's for not having ID (well some of us anyway!)
The IDing us all was a tad frustating but it turned out being obvious why it had occured - that being that we'd stood outside the place across the road and made it look like we were being rejected by pratting around discussing the pros and cons of spending money to go in... and not understanding the bouncer who was trying to tell us that it was 3 quid in with NUS and a whole load of other things... including the woman on the desk coming out after realising that we were in a big group and that we could go in for 3 quid each regardless. Hell, if I was the bouncer across the otherside of the road I'd have probably ID'd and tried everything in a vain attempt to try and stop the big crowd coming into my pub!
The funny side was the halfbrainded bouncer looking at Dave's Irish driving licence... he spent ages over it - we weren't sure if he was trying to work out if it was a fake or if 2006 - 1977 was greater than 18...
We finailly managed another pint in The Castle and then went home... well some of us didn't go home we went to the pub at the end of my road :-)
Upon leaving the pub we sat around in the living room talking about old times at school... I thought it'd be a good idea to see if we could name the people in our respective forms as they stood in the first year at secondry school (1993), we did quite well. I managed 27 out of 30 which I thought was quite good. Apologies to Daggers, McIver and Maria for forgetting about your existance but I had had quite a lot to drink!
On the Sunday we went for lunch at a pub and then everybody went home back to far flung places across the isles!
It was fun seeing everyone again and good to catch up, it's a pity the Saturday night frustrated me so!