The Great Big Hen - Part 1

At last, we hear you cry, the tale of the oddest hen weekend arrives. We at Bogun Towers have been literally inundated with excited requests for news of the trip and can only apologise that due to our strict editorial controls it has taken quite so long to bring to print but fear not gentle readers we now present to you the tale of the Great Big Hen.

As many of our readers will now the lovely Christine is getting married to the incomparable Chris this year and so in traditional fashion hen and stag weekends were of course required.

Much as our subject had been hoping for an invite on the stag do (skiing in St Anton) much to his irritation Christine got it into her head that a non-traditional hen do was her kind of thing and she wanted men there and in particular him. Indeed so impressed was she by his skills as a raconteur at Churchy's wedding (passim) she insisted that he had to organise the blasted thing and perform Chief Hen responsibilities.

As one can imagine the opportunity to be the centre of attention on someone else's special weekend was far too tempting for him and so he agreed.

Keen to drag the party away from the London roots of the majority of the likely guests he decided to arrange it in Ludlow. For the record he has asked us to make clear that he did not realise this was essentially next door to his home until much later but on the basis that this must be lies we refuse.

The eventual party that made it to the beautiful Feathers Hotel in Ludlow were him, Christine, Naughty Nigel, TCO, Polly, Nia, Jarman, Dogs, Olwen and Sarah (plus Sarah brought her baby, Ellen and, just as importantly, her bloke, Chris, to babysit).

The festivities kicked off on Friday night with the gradual arrival in the bar of the various members of the group following a succession of extremely long and no doubt tedious journeys (bar one obviously).

Polly had made the rather foolish decision to visit a tanning salon for this special occasion and had clearly fallen asleep under the lamp.

However despite some mirth at Polly's pain the realisation that, this being a hen weekend, they all had to wear fairy wings did rather knock the gloss off.



With most of them arrived, bar Dogs who for some reason had decided to go to Crewe, they settled down for a splendid supper at their hotel and a hefty slice of alcohol. As all our readers will know an evening enlivened with one of our subject's "stories" is an evening rarely forgotten (despite one's best efforts) and with the group suitably lubricated and dressed up in a tiara for the hen (with thanks for Dafydd), wings for them all and T-shirts for two of them
this was certainly not one of them.