Cigarettes and Alcohol: Confessions of a Stag Weekend by Phil Sloan Read Free Book Online

‘You English are crazy’ they keep saying.
    They just can’t believe that we are all still standing after having drunk and smoked hard all day. In The Dam the more sensible cool people go out late in the evening and make a real night of it. Most of us will be lucky to make it past eleven without collapsing.
    We sink the drinks, leave the bar and walk about fifteen minutes to the restaurant that Kristall has been raving on about. It’s a small family run place that we completely take over as there are twenty four of us in total in this Anglo-Dutch posse. The owner is well chuffed to have a full house and he really fusses over the lot if us making us feel really welcome.
    It is like being in someone’s house and amazingly the lads all are on their best behaviour and are on top form. The laughter and the mickey taking is what a stag weekend is all about and I feel genuinely moved to have such close mates around me. This ‘booze camaraderie’ is a great feeling or it could just be caused by all the illegal chemicals flowing through my blood stream.
    The waiter brings over the menu’s which are written in Dutch but on the following line are very helpfully translated into English, so it should be a breeze to order your scoff.
    Not for Village. He’s so far out of his head that when he reads the menu all he can see is a total nonsensical jumble of Dutch and English words. He stares long and hard at the menu trying to work it out but he has no chance. He cries out ‘Help I’ve caught dyslexia, I can’t read the menu at all.’
    ‘For dogs sake,’ replies Kid B ‘you can’t catch dyslexia you are born with it.’
    ‘Well maybe you can fuckwit,’ Village spits back ‘cos you just said for dogs sake so stick your dyslexia theory up your hole!’
    The wind ups go on and on. Old stories get wheeled out and aired for an all new audience who lap them up.
    Kid G is unimpressed when the old tale of him smoking a joint we had rolled for him that was made from an Oxo cube instead of real gear, gets trundled out. He puffed his way through it and we then asked him if he had had a meaty high?
    He announced it was a great spliff, weak but sweet. Trying not to wet ourselves we then went on telling him that the puff had mind-altering effects that really helped you to take stock of your life. This type of marijuana enabled higher thinking, thus giving new ideas to make some real money by boarding the business gravy train.
    We didn’t tell him for months that he had been inhaling Oxo granules. Everyone howls with laughter. The Dutch contingent, haven’t got a clue what is funny as they probably don’t even have Oxo over here, but they laugh along politely.
    The food turns up and it is amazing. I had always thought that the Dutch national dish was chips smothered in Mayonnaise but I was way wrong. The tucker is right tasty and hits the spot. After a day on the pop dining on burgers, kebabs, crisps, chips and space cakes (every one of your ‘five a day’ food groups there!) it is brilliant to consume something delicious to soak up the alcohol. Three courses, vino and coffee later and we are done.
    Talking of food the full English Sunday roast dinner with gravy and red rocking horse is the apex in International Cuisine for my money. You just cannot beat it. Way better than sushi. My opinion on that raw fish old tosh is that if they can’t be arsed to cook it then I can’t be arsed to eat it. It is as simple as that!
    We have had a top night with some top people but it’s time for us all to move on. We pay up and then we hit a place called The Melkweg and from here things start to become all a bit of a blur. The place was a superb music venue, club and bar all in one hip spot. I remember that a ‘lower league’ Brit Pop band were playing a gig there so we all went to see them and had a mad jump about. Pills get dropped, powder is snorted and predictably the local brewery will have to do an extra shift next week to replace all