Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Shop 'til you drop

Mrs Pofydd and the delectable Nia have been to visit for the ostensible reason to see him but the rather truer reason that they needed to go shopping for the upcoming nuptials of Chris and Christine.

His promise to show them around the shopping haunts of Birmingham lasted all of 5 minutes in a heinously crowded TK Max before he rang away screaming something about the foul touch of hoi polloi. Some 5 hours later they appeared back at the flat to find him relatively restored to health and ready for a night on the tiles.

As is usual with two girls who's apparent motto is "every conversation is an intervention" (they both work in the social services side of life) a robust evening of difficult personal questioning followed over some great dim sum at Must followed by some fine cocktails at HdV.

Towards the end of the evening the barman approached them to take their final orders (as they were not resident) and to describe the look on his face as shock when our subject turned to Mrs Pofydd and asked, "shall we get a room then" would be a major understatement.

Plenty more alcohol flowed back at the flat before the evening ended in the early hours.

The girls were up and lively very early on Sunday night and keen to return to the shopping fray. Suitably steeled he managed to last the trip second time round although as they were shopping in House of Fraser and its ilk rather than Primark et al this is not such a surprise.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

A killer in our midst?

With the nephew providing the draw he headed to London for another weekend and, to avoid the horror of too much time with the kids, he had managed to fit in a night on the pop with Naughty Nigel and GG (NAG).

A night in the West End is rarely dull and this one did not disappoint possibly due to NN and his rather odd decisions to pace their session drinking Peroni Gran Reserva (6.5%). Having failed to book anywhere for supper (thank you Nigel) they had to settle for a bite to eat at Zizzis...in the basement...with a hen party.

The mind boggles as to how tragic it must be to aspire to a night out at Zizzis as one's last hurrah before the doom and gloom that is matrimony but to find that the only males in sight are those three must really be depressing.

When one of the vaguely non-ugly ones wandered over and complemented him on his shirt there were bemused looks all round, these swiftly turned to outrage when she revealed that she had been dared to go up to the nearest attractive man and complement him on his shirt - outrage from GG (NAG) and Nigel for coming second and third and from our subject for his best feature being his shirt.

Being street and down with the kids they headed off for a rather "urban" nightclub where they rather stuck out like (white) sore thumbs. A quick couple of beers later and the sight of a young lady collapsing to the floor and being rapidly surrounded by a growing pool of red fluid was enough to send them on their way. Suspiciously she collapsed just as GG (NAG) walked past her, we do wonder about that kid.

A taxi ride home from a very illegal taxi should have topped off the night but finding the lovely TCO back at Nigel's the scotch was dragged out for a nightcap, ouch.

A much calmer Sunday with the kids
was the restorative including a splendid (and very long) game of pooh sticks. Having to carry the oldest two home from the park was, however, a killer.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

The latest cast member

After three botched efforts (Thea, Phoebe and Evie) his sister has finally produced an heir and first grandson for the Mother. We are of course very excited here at Bogun Towers about the news and look forward to the Nephew's future appearances (although we may have to wait 12 years or so before the stories about him involve drink).

Monday, April 14, 2008

Kayaking horrors, again

Our longer term readers will recall the disaster that was his last kayaking trip with Glenn. For our shorter term readers who cannot be bothered to track back the basic details are he nearly drowned.

The joy of being a writer for this missive is our subject's total inability to learn the lessons of life and so we find ourselves writing about another kayaking disaster.

The splendid Glen has been agitating for some time that they should get a group together and go kayaking on some river near the Pofydd's place in West Wales and he finally got his wish this past weekend and Naughty Nigel, our subject, Glen and his very lovely girlfriend Hila all pitching up at Pofydd's for the weekend.

Saturday was a relatively calm day on Nant y Mawch (the local resevoir) and some gentle paddling was had and there was scarcely an indication of the fun that was to come.

A night out in Aberystwyth at a turkish BYO restaurant was their self-appointed reward for surviving the first day. We are not sure however that Naughty Nigel quite got the idea of a BYO as he turned up with a bottle of port, just a touch cheeky.

The Orangery as usual proved a thumping disappointment and the pub after was just full of sad fat old men on the pull (and that was even before our subject and Naughty Nigel got there).

Sunday dawned bright and fair and off they set to shoot the rapids on a stream in the shadow of Cader Idris.

Things started relatively safely and he managed at least 100 yards before taking his first tumble in and frankly that would be the motif of the day, 100 yards paddled, 100 yards swum (well desperately trying to get out of an upside down Kayak and then being swept down the river until he hit a bank) and then 10 minutes of pulling the blasted boat out of the water, emptying it and starting all over again.

After 3 odd hours of this he was properly bored and indeed pissed off. The fact they had gone less than third distance was not helping his mood. And so like a complete wuss he gave up. The others carried on and he lugged his boat up to the nearest road and set in to wait for them to come and pick them up.

2 and a half hours it took them to do so. He was beginning to get close to being properly cold and miserable but like an angel a very lovely local lady stopped to check up on him (it should be observed that this road sees about 3 cars an hour) and seeing his state popped home and came back with bananas, plenty of hot tea and biscuits. This splending samaritan was a real life saver and the look of jealous rage on Naughty Nigel's face when they finally pitched up to discover him drinking hot tea was priceless.

The samaritan asked only one favour in return and we are happy on his behalf to grant it. Anyone considering a holiday in Snowdonia should visit her website - www.caderidrisholiday.co.uk. He has also asked us to apologise to her for lying - he claimed that he had put a hole in the boat rather than 'fessing up to a stranger that he is a chicken.

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Baldy

GG (NAG)'s bathroom has a set of paired mirrors allowing him to see the back of his head for the first time in a long time and so he has finally been forced to accept that Dennis's jokes about his bald spot are in fact not humourous but merely factual observation.

He now finds himself disturbingly conscious of it and has been taking a keen interest in the trichologist adverts on the TV.

A syrup beckons we think.

Monday, April 07, 2008

Asleep on duty

Barely rcovered from the port surfeit the only sensible solution seemed to be a litre of pinot grigio and a bottle of pudding wine with GG (NAG). Some might suggest this would not be the most prudent way to end a weekend but, hey, hang caution is, fortunately for us, his watchword.

An early rise to get down to Bristol for a night on the pop with Hoots and Aqua Ben (the earliness of the rise due to work not the drinking).

He made the usual error of trying to keep pace with the young 'uns and ended up in his usual state.

Thursday, April 03, 2008

The Higgs Boson

His mother will be most unhappy with us revealing that she has had yet another birthday and to mark this happy event he treated her to a weekend of his presence.

Fortunately her daughter, son-in-law, three nieces, brother and sister-in-law were there as well which must have mitigated the worst of it.

As the evening wore on we rather suspect that the discussions about various elementary particles and whether super string theory requires 10 or 11 dimensions to work may have had something to do with the half-gallon of beer, bottle of Rioja and half-bottle of port they had each thrown down. We fear the nerdy aspects of such a conversation can only be attributable to underlying nerdiness.

He claims that his thick head the next day was due to the very serious debates and rigourous intellectual dexterity. We can think of another explanation, see above.

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

A Young Professionals Booze Cruise

After a sad absence of too many months from these pages we are delighted to announce the return of Hoots to the cast of current characters. After many failed attempts at arranging a night out on the sauce at last they managed to fix things up for an evening out in Brum.

We are told that most women have a recurring nightmare of turning up at an event to find someone else wearing the same dress, fortunately neither of them are women or things could have got messy as they both opted for exactly the same cloths. Only the slightly darker colour of Hoots's geography teacher jacket enabled them to be distinguished (well and Hoots's more unkempt hair).

With so many bars to chose from they played it rather safe with All Bar One, Pitcher & Piano and then a different All Bar One. A little middle of the road young professional we think.

A good skinful inside you always puts one in the mood for the munchies and with all the curry houses empty and his cupboards nearly as bare they had to settle for a "feast" of pasta, a tin of chopped tomatoes and some frankfurters. We did not know that sort of meal could be cooked other than in student Halls of Residences.