Weon

Well, it would appear that three parties in seven days is too many for my 29.5 year old body. Read on…

BATGRAT VII - 10th/11th Dec

BATGRAT is the name given to the annual reunion of many of the friends I knew at college. The name comes from the names of the two roads that most of us lived on, Bath Road and Gratton Road. This year it was time to hit Cheltenham again (previous venues include London and, er, Cheltenham). Anyways, on Saturday morning Jim, Dion, Clare and Jason all troll up to stay at Chez Clay and Olly comes round too because he heard there was a free lunch. We eat and then head off to watch the 'Nam play Macclesfield. It wasn't a great game and it looked like the home team were going to lose 2-0 but in the last 5 minutes, with the introduction of crowd favourite Spenno, the 'Nam managed to pull a draw out of the hat. Special mention also goes to Alice Deejay who played well.

We wandered back home and had some tea and biscuits before heading off to Café Rouge for our meal. The food was great, the banter was funny and the evening went far too quickly. Tracey brought along the elusive Chris and Brett brought along new squeeze Helen. It was great to have everyone together even if TJ, Becky and Mark weren't there. After the meal we all headed back to ours again for some more beer/whiskey/gin and tonic/wine/squash/water and some more banter. Highlights included the invention of a snail with the face of a kitten called the Pussmollusc (Pusscus Molluscii) and Jesus Jones the Steam. The hardcore four of Olly, Clare, Jason and I stayed up until 4:15am playing on the PS2 and then decided that over-laughing had worn us out and it was time to sleep.

The next morning we all emerged bleary eyed to find that Dion and Jim had left at 8am when no-one else was up. We slowly got showered and dressed then had a quick Scalextric session. Brett and Helen joined us for lunch and we were all able to witness the Fat One (Brett) eat a plateful, proclaim he could eat another thing and then eat the same amount over. Followed by profiterroles. He R jabba. Throughout the course of the afternoon, we all went our different ways and the BATGRAT was over for another year. Photos can be found in the gallery section.

WDDT Christmas Meal - 14th Dec

The WDDT is what used to be the Web Design and Development Team at Assureweb. I left just under a year ago and in the space of about three months the other three members of the team had left too (I guess they couldn't cope without me). One of the last things we did as a team was to go to Olé Tapas for our Christmas meal and we all agreed that it was one of the most fun nights we'd had. So much so that we decided to do it again this year. With that in mind Olly, Pete, Raj and I all met in the Beehive pub for a swift pint or two and then headed on to the restaurant. Being a Wednesday night it was not exactly busy but this meant we could sit at the bar and simply devour the food and drink as it was bought to us.

If you've never had tapas I recommend you try it, particularly the chorizo sausage. We washed it down with copious amounts of sangria and then Pete ordered some sherry (because he is secretly 60 years old). We had a great time and took the obligatory photos in the bathroom mirror (nothing dirty, well, except for Pete's which was slightly unsettling).

After we'd eaten our fill we wandered down to O'Neils where we enjoyed a few pints of the black stuff and then Mrs Weon played taxi driver for the night. Another great night that came complete with a nice hangover the next day. Photos can be found in the gallery section.

IM Christmas Meal - 16th Dec

Finally I joined the boys at Industrial Machines for their Christmas shindig. I was scared about this as I have heard stories of the amount these guys can drink and the antics they get up to. I have to say thought that it was a thoroughly refined affair and possibly the least booze-ridden of the three! I have to say a big Thank You to the IM boys who paid for everything, even a hotel for me to stay in. They are a good bunch and I enjoy working with them and to be a freelancer and invited to to a Christmas party is something of a rarity!

After a day in the office with them, discussing their new site design, Matt, Lorna and I follow Ben to the Premier Travel Inn where we are staying. I was a little apprehensive about staying in such an establishment but needn't have been as it was one of the nicest rooms I have stayed in in the UK. The three of us showered (not together though, that would be weird) and headed of in a taxi to the Boot Inn.

I think Ben has a fixation with Camembert as he ordered three baked ones with toasted bread and baked garlic. This suited me fine though as I love cheese (which is why I am friendly with Pete). No one seemed terribly interested in eating much which was lucky because the portions were tiny. I even had to order extra veg so that my main course was more substantial that your average starter! Size aside, the food was lovely. We adjourned to the bar and had a few more bevvies. Time came to leave and so we headed out into the cold to meet our taxi. Which was late. By 45 minutes. And my coat zip broke. So I got colder. Bah. By the time we got back to the PTI we were all surprisingly sober and so sat sipping tea and chatting for about half an hour before retiring.

All in all it has been a great week but I am so knackered. As usually happened when I get this tired I have now developed fully-blown Man-Flu and therefore am struggling to even type this. In fact, I think it's time to have a Lemsip and retire to bed for a kip.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 20th, 2005 at 12:33 pm and is filed under Friends/Family, Free Time. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.