mike[space] dot net

This weekend was Nick's stag do down in Bournemouth. On Friday, I was buzzing from a successful week's writing, and feeling a little grumpy about taking the weekend out just when things were starting to go so well. But I headed out on the bus at lunchtime to begin the schlep down to Bournemouth. I had my first journey in a hybrid car as Dave currently has a Prius (after his continual problems with getting his car fixed, he just seems to get bounced around the various cars that come available at work). It's a little weird when it's so silent as the electric motor glides it around the car park, and the animations to tell you where the power is going seems a little over the top, but overall I was pretty impressed - the mileage is awesome.

Friday night was a very gentle evening, with many beers, a wagama, and more beer and gin. Back at the hotel bar at 1 in the morning, we very kindly came up with the game of filling the straws with little sticks - I am sure the staff must've hated us when they found that. Waking up at 8 in the morning on Saturday revealed that actually it hadn't been that gentle after all - my head felt bloody awful. I forced down the hotel breakfast, but it was very little help. We then had to get ourselves to the sea for some dingy sailing, which when you are feeling as bad as I was, is not welcome news. Fighting the wetsuit on was pretty bad, but capsizing within the first 5 minutes of getting out on the water bloody awful. But in spite of my complaining, it was actually a shed load of fun. Jeremy and I managed to capsize 3 times, and we had a great time trying to work out if there was a way I could board one of the other guys' dingys. Sadly we didn't quite manage it, but I was glad to see that Nick went in just as often as we did. Sadly, I was the only guy who managed to get hit on the head by the boom, which was unfortunate as I had just begiun to feel a little better!

We then went paintballing, which initially sucked (I got shot on the leg within the first couple of minutes of the first game), but picked up by the end with a great game of speedball (two teams face off in a small arena and charge at each other to get the flag). I managed to get quite far up using a good smoke grenade, and had the unusual satisfaction (for me) of watching my paintballs hit on several people to take them out of the game. I then got drilled in the back by several balls, which really bloody hurt, and I left the game. Annoyingly some idiot in my team took the flag to the wrong end and lost us the game afterward; I suspect his mates will have sorted him out by now though ;-)

Then it was a night of comedy and dancing (which was also pretty comic) We got everyone dancing, and managed to adopt a hen party whilst we were about it. Loads of fun, and marks my second night of dancing in recent times, which has been fab! Sunday we rounded it off with a bloody great pub lunch - I was on the two day rule, so I had no hangover, a very welcome relief after the pain of the previous day.

A really good weekend all in all, kudos to Jeremy for organising, and well done to Nick for not being too grumpy about it all!