The Party's Over

We all went to parties as kids and as we got that little bit older and into our teens drink reared it’s sweet perfumed head, not loads of the stuff, a bottle of cider here and a bottle of cider there, we had a riotous time some good some bad mainly good I hasten to add, we never caused trouble thankfully the same circle of friends and we all got on well, ok for most of the time we did.

We started in our early teens and it was small window of time for a small group of friends between eight and never anymore than fourteen and over the years we had some great times, the best of the times and although they are not in my life now we never parted on bad terms we just drifted like the great seas do.

Ath was my best friend for years (and in some ways I still think of him as he still is, although that ship definitely sailed but that’s another story) we were inseparable we did everything together, we were similar, but oh so different and we sort of balanced each other out, he had more patter than ten days worth of rain, wasn’t interested in sports and wanted to be an international rock star he even wrote it on his careers form! that didn’t go down well, we had each other’s back, and for a long time his family were my surrogate family, his mum and dad brought me up as one of their own.

Ath had a natural patter with girls, something I didn’t but I was cute enough to have girls ask me out (thank you lord thank you) I was also more of a gentleman, you ladies do like bad boys, so there was an opposites type of thing going on, consequently lots of girls spoke to me trying to figure him out (hahahaha) and we got on with our lives, and parties were definitely our scene, so much so that our older brothers both started hanging out with us all of a sudden hahahaha but thats another story.

We both liked Brown Ale, it was strong and got you drunk, and it was a drink kids didn’t drink, I have had my beard since I was thirteen, so you can guess whose job it was to go and buy the beer and we didn’t make the mistake of trying to buy cider that just got you caught!  I would buy four bottles of brown ale then turn up at one of our parties and then hide it and drink everybody else’s drink recover ours and finish the night walking home with a bottle in hand, damn they were indeed good times.

Now why am I telling you all this well simply because we found a perfect hiding place, we used to hide our drink in the oven, trust me kids never ever look in the oven so consequently we never ever lost any beer well apart from once which I intend to tell you all about now.

We had left school and did what we did, I went in the army came out of the army and basically had the same group of friends, but as I said generally one by one we drifted, after the army if you have read the previous books and blogs you may remember that I was a major pain in the arse a long haired drunk but again not a malicious bone in my body, so Ath invited me to a party of a girl he was mad keen to get to know and me being the good friend I was the backup we hit the local pub and I met all of Ath’s new friends a canny bunch and the night progressed (we were 19 by the way not old has beens not yet anyway) we headed to the party not before buying our usual four bottles of brown ale, now at this juncture I have to admit that my motives weren’t exactly innocent, my former girlfriend was going to be there and I wished to appear contrite (pissed more likely) and when we headed  down the path we found out that the party was to celebrate this girls younger sisters birthday (freaky they were both born two years apart on the same day) so we go there and a whole lot of 17 year olds were having fun and we go in and play nice (I may have been a drunk but I wasn’t a stupid drunk) the girl’s parents turned up at the same time as we did and good times were had (well ok for just a wee while longer) as usual we had hid our drink in our usual place, then went off in search of other peoples drink, we were like blood hounds an a fugitives trail and we usually always found the mother lode, we had been there about an hour (remember this is when pubs closed at ten thirty) the mother decided the children needed some food to sober the kiddies up(oops) my former girlfriend turned up with her new boyfriend, who in actual fact turned out to be ok we had a laugh and knew that the world had turned, when all of a sudden we thought the I R A had turned up in Castleside, there was a massive explosion from the kitchen (oh shit) thankfully there wasn’t anybody in the kitchen, it turns out some fuck nuggets had hidden some beer in the oven and mum in her infinite wisdom was going to warm some pies for the party guests and hadn’t checked the oven before turning it on (double oops!) well that was the party over. Me and Ath as the oldest and (ahem) most responsible helped put the world to rights, I certainly sobered up quickly and we even went back the next day to see if there was anything we could do to sort out the mess, Talk about guilty conscience we even gave the father £60 and said we had had a whip round making sure that people had put in (in reality just the two buck nuts who had hide their beer there).

As I said we weren’t bad people and we weren’t about causing grief or desolation for people who would gladly put us up for a party, not like now somebody has a quiet party it’s all over farcebook and a thousand shit heads turn up and destroy the place. The next party we went to and actually the last one, we actually left the house cleaner than when we got there we were good kids from the right side of the tracks we were brought up to play nice!