Family Guy

With apologies to our regular readers but after the hectic schedule that was keeping up with him and Gay George (Not Actually Gay) skiing the editorial team here at Bogun towers have been having a quiet few days enjoying mince pies etc.

This leaves us with two weekends to report on which unusually we have decided to fold into one report.

The weekend following his return from skiing was scheduled to be one of heavy drinking with his Uncle Dick and Lindsey (his lovely wife) descending along with his (i.e. our hero's not Uncle Dick's) sister and her family on his (i.e. our hero's not Uncle Dick's) mother's house. For the benefit of social services the heavy drinking was only scheduled for the adults.



Once the little people were safely tucked up in bed an evening of fine food, fine wine, not so fine wine and ribaldry followed. Enlivened (if that is the right word) with the use of Uncle Dick's comedy glasses. In the cold light of day it is difficult to discern how they found them as amusing as they did but we long gave up trying to understand his mind.



After such an evening astonishingly he was up early and in the car back to Bristol before noon. He was pretty weary that night though.

A pretty regulation week followed and he spent this weekend with the family again, this time at his sister's place, being entertained by his little nieces.




Meanwhile he has been claiming to be on his sick bed with manflu. A week of avoiding his Christmas shopping beckons.

Skiing Part 6

Having concluded their skiing adventures and enjoyed some limited but good early season fun they decided to go out for an enourmous one before getting their flight back.

A few beers in Jam bar, followed by beers, pool and fussball in the Angel, followed by more beers in Jam bar, followed by beers and shooting games and bowling in the bowling alley (he shot 28, if any of our readers are unaware of the scoring system then he has asked us to say that this is very good, intergrity requires us to record that it is abject bilge), followed by more beers in the Angel bar was mission accomplished.



The 0600 wake up call was a spot challenging for them as a resuly. The real treat was then finding that the side door of the mini-bus had froxen shut and so they had to clamber over the front seats to get in which with raging hangovers was fun. The fun quotient took a dramatic turn for the worse when they got the airport to discover their new best friends Sleazy Jet had delayed their flight by over 4 hours. He had a quick work with the girl on check-in and stressed his importance and they agreed to fly in a new plane for them to use and they managed to take off on time. Astonishing.

Skiing Part 5

Finally the snow has stopped and the sun has come out and they were up very early all excited like kids at Christmas ready to enjoy the slopes.

Quite selfishly everyone else in the Alps decided this would be a good idea too and descended on Tignes en masse to block the slopes and ruin their fun. Fortunatly the lift queues were enormous so they didn't suffer too badly on the slopes as they spent most of their time queuing.

The views were however fantastic.

Skiing Part 4

Tignes is just across the mountains from Val d'Isere (aka Val d'Sloane Square) and so quite cool (or at least it likes to think it is). Of course our hero has similar pretentions and so likes to dress up to cut the dash on the slopes. Sadly his sense of style rather lets him down.

Skiing Part 3

Having survived the blizzard yesterday they awoke to another day of rather "challenging" light conditions. It's fair to say that Gay George (Not Actually Gay) was not exactly looking forward to a long day on the slopes trying to ski using the force.



As things turned out Gay George (Not Actually Gay)'s worries were misplaced and our hero's optimism was located in a similar place and he duly carved a new valley in his right ski.



Excitingly this caused that ski to go roughly half the speed of the undamaged one so he just went round in circles all day.

Skiing Part 2

Despite their impressive efforts to lose their ski passes they still woke up this morning convinced that they could get up the slopes and impress the natives with their skills.

Having struggled to the top of the hill they set off down the rather challenging black run as a "gentle warm up" for the day. Suffice to say that our hero stacked it and did his best superman flying impression across the slopes before breaking his fall with his nose. Well we say nose but actually we mean his goggles and glasses which are now proper buggered.

Some people would have left it there in terms of ruining their goggles but of course our subject has an ability to take things too far that is very rare seen. He found himself in a toilet in mid-morning gently relieving himself slightly bemused that there was no sound of urine against porcelain, as he looked down he noticed the reason for the same being that he was urinating into the pair of goggles he was holding in his hand. Nice.

The snow gods clearly recognised a pair of disasters waiting to happen and were good enough to the pair of them to start hurling down a blizzard just after lunch leading to the mountain being shut.
Somehow Gay George (Not Actually Gay) ended up being forced to get the train down whilst our hero ended up having to ski down. Suffice to say that they both think they got down first.

Skiing Part 1

Despite Sleazy Jet's best efforts to ruin their holiday in the snow they have managed to head off up into the hills for a spot of skiing. We say a spot because they managed to enjoy a quick ski up at the top of the mountain before heading back down to the base station for luncheon and there finding that a) Gay George (Not Actually Gay) had lost his ski pass and b) our hero has managed to invalidate his by sweating all over his.





What an impressive start to a skiing holiday.

Sleazy Jet

Well we are glad to report that our hero has decided to head off on his travels again and has made his way to the French Alps with Gay George (Not Actually Gay).

They have made their way with everyone's favourite airline - Easy Jet - who have as usual outperformed themselves by managing to lose your correspondent's notepad and pencils much to the editorial team's amusement. Much less to the general amusement of our hero and Gay George (Not Actually Gay) they managed to lose their skis and snowboard as well.



Fortunately no harm done as they have arrived in resort to find no snow anyway.

Bond, James Bond

Due to popular demand (well his mother at least) the editorial team has persuaded your correspondent to regale our gentle readers with more tales of his weekend derring do. Gosh what fun.

Before turning to his weekend we should just tie up some loose ends from last week. On Wednesday he hooked up with the lovely Old Speckled for supper, now she has a new flat mate who is seriously lovely and faster than a rat up a drainpipe he had her number and managed to follow that up with lunch with the seriously lovely Carly on Thursday. A seriously good looker.

Friday night was back with the lovely Old Speckled who rustled up a fine feast for him despite being under the weather with a dose of the sniffles (and a does of the freshly singles having just dumped her fellow) which was much appreciated.

On Saturday he was planning to meet up with Rib Robs and Dafydd (and the lovely Polly and lovely Helen their irrespective wives) to slump in front of the rugger before heading to see the new Bond. By strange co-incidence the lovely Dennis had to be in Buckinghamshire as well (where Rib Robs lives) and so she came along for the ride before joining up with him again for the movie. His cuddly dragon Ieuan Quinnell also came along for the trip. As a good Welsh dragon he likes a good game of rugger as much as the next cuddly dragon.

The less said about the rugger the better (for the record Wales came a distant second to the All Blacks) save to record that he had quite a lot to drink and was frankly shambolic by the time Helen’s fine repast of Fish Pie was brought to the table but he somehow managed to stumble through supper without embarrassing himself too much. Although the sharing of stories between the lovely Dennis and the others did the job pretty well for him.

They had taken the very sensible decision to dress up for the Bond movie. Now if one is going to a showing on, say, opening night then one can see the sense of this but if one is going to the High Wycombe Odeon on a wet Saturday 10 days after opening night it is a somewhat less justifiable decision and as James, Q, Jaws, Pussy Galore, Onatop and random Bond girl (FN1) arrived they got some very strange looks from Hoi Polloi.

The girls reported themselves very pleased at the new Bond, although Dennis did seem a little too excited at the torture scene, but Rib Robs and our hero described it as utter bilge. He does however concede that as he was a bit battered and can’t actually remember much of it that may be a little harsh and so he is going to go and see it again and confirm his view.

A very late night followed and he eventually made it to bed at 0430. Imagine his joy at staying the night in a house full of early risers in those circumstances.

A fine meal at the Hit or Miss pub (where the food is somewhat hit and miss (ho bloody ho)) was had for lunch enlivened with a demonstration by Polly of the “Joey Deacon” school of working with young offenders before they meandered back to their pad in Brum. Yet another first class weekend.


FN1: Him, Rib Robs, Dafydd, Helen, Polly and Dennis

A poacher's goal

Another game of hockey to report on.

After the heroics of last week the team were quietly optimistic that they had turned the corner and might be heading towards better times. Their hopes were crushed on the rugged rocks of reality that was a game against Bristol Medics.

As again the goalie played brillantly but could not hope to keep out all the shots flying in at him and at half-time the score was a rather lop-sided 5 nil affair and our hero was looking rather forlorn and alone up front with BGB.

In an effort to get more into the game he dropped back in second half into the defence. His efforts appeared to assist...the opposition although he did manage to score a cracking goal...in his own net.

The team are greatly relieved that he can't make the next game as he is skiing.

Grapevine

With thanks to Grapevine (the magazine of the York Alumni Association) we publish the following extract:

"DAFYDD JONES (English and Related Literature, Langwith) and POLLY SILLS (Biology, Alcuin, 1996) We were married in a wonderfully musical and happy ceremony at St Matthew’s Church, Ealing, on 10 September, 2005. This followed a four year courtship born at Owen Williams’ (Mathematics, Alcuin, 1994) wedding in 2001. We have much to thank Owen for, as we first kissed back in 1993 when Owen was supposedly Polly’s date to an Alcuin Christmas dinner at York Racecourse. Ah, happy days!"

Journalistic integrity

Here at Bogun towers we are getting rather bored reporting on his drunken weekends. Frankly its not very interesting "he went out with X, he got battered, he disgraced himself, repeat" as a journalistic endeavour.

So this week we are not going to bother. Which might be considered a shame in light of the naughtiness that was Saturday night/Sunday morning (indeed Gay George (Not Actually Gay) was so bad he has had to send flowers to our hero's mother this morning to make amends) and the shenanigans that was Sunday lunch with his University chums in Vinopolis and lasted until very late but a rule is a rule so we shall not write further on the subject.

Rock of Ages

His firm has somehow been persuaded to put out a team for a charity tug of war tournament. Unsurprisingly he was first on the team-sheet at anchorman.

The team looked extremely strong on paper. Unfortunately about 60 stone worth of the team cried off before the tournament even started and so turned out to be somewhat less strong on the rope.

After a stuffing in their first two contests they managed to pick themselves off the floor and pull off a stunning victory in their last, and consolation, contest. At least some pride was restored. Not much mind.

Great, more hockey

Astute readers will have noticed a shortage of hockey reports over the last few weeks and no doubt will be filled with ennui at the prospect of another one; well worry no more for here is another one.

After a 4 week break the skipper had managed to recruit some well needed new blood to the side. This new blood had a worrying look of youth and pace about it. Now of course there is no substitute for gas and youth is its own quality and so why, you may ask, was this a worrying development? In terms of the team and hockey quality it was not and, in truth, it was only worrying for the old man of the piece who, having, let’s be honest, not impressed in goal last time round, was back to his usual position at centre forward and was therefore horrified at the prospect of having his pace (well lack thereof) shown up.

As the match kicked off it appeared that these worries were not to be realised as their midfield was horribly over-run and his replacement in goal was forced into some fantastic saves to keep them in it. Despite his valiant efforts they were quite rapidly trailing by 2.

Astonishingly the side started to gel after that and whilst it would be overly diplomatic to claim that they started to control the middle of the park it would be fair to record that they at least stopped being over-run and slowly started to develop some decent moves down the left wing.

These eventually led to a well snaffled goal. Not by the centre-forward of course.

The match really started to come to life after that with some first class hockey all round and whilst there was no more scores it was one of the best games this correspondent has watched in some time. We sense some green shoots of recovery. No doubt they will be treated to a healthy dose of weed-killer by this time next week.

A tale of three cities

On Friday night he sent the following e-mail "I am staying in Birmingham tonight for the first time on a Friday. Now I am really very shy and can't face going to the pub on my own so come and join me and make me feel at home. Anyway I will be in Bushwackers from 1731 come and make it a night to remember." (anyone spot the deliberate error)

Suffice to record that he then was persuaded to join a few of the troops for a drink in the office to welcome some new starters. His chin nearly hit the floor when the lovely Charlotte (a wonderfully pretty blonde from his University days) walked in. She starts working with him next week. He is somewhat nervous of the stories she can tell.

He then ended up with her, the lovely Dennis, the lovely Vorders and the lovely Naylah in the bar of Hotel du Vin. After several bottles of bubbly he went to settle up his tab. Unfortunately the young girl behind the bar and tried to use his card to settle someone else's bill and having cocked up his PIN 3 times locked up his card. He suffered a sense of humour failure. The finest quote we can print is "With respect young lady, blondie over there has ballsed up my card. I have no way of paying and so I'm not". Remarkably this worked and they let him off the bill.

A further few drinks followed back at the lovely Dennis's new flat.

Saturday was somewhat turgid as a result however he managed the energy to get out to his good friend Roger's leaving party (he's moving to Australia) where he got blathered on the usual cocktail of strong cider and sambuca ("the Usual").

Obviously a quiet Sunday was called for. It wasn't delivered as his very good friends Bill and Amy (from New York, passim)
were in the smoke to visit so he headed up to meet them. Several very expensive cocktails were polished off before he resorted to the Usual just in time to miss the last train home. A black cab performed the beer scooter role admirably.

A Wonderful Life

The poor boy has been suffering mightily this weekend with the pangs of regret at the end of his rugby career but has had plenty to take his mind of it. Saturday was spent moving the lovely Dennis into her new flat in Birmingham and Sunday has been a real treat.

He woke up first thing and headed for his usual early morning ablutions and was delighted to discover that the drains were blocked up and rapidly backing up. He was able to discern this from the stacks of shit bubbling up the toilet and the bath.

A quick dash to Wilkinsons to stock up on sink and drain cleaners and plungers and marigolds and other accoutrements of drain cleaning and he found himself up to his elbows in the u-bend with shit liberally spilling over the top of his marigolds.

He then woke the lovely Dennis up with his retching. Lucky girl.

Sadly for the potential humour of the situation those people from Dyno-Rod were out quick as a flash and sorted it out. Fortunately during the course of fixing it both the Dyno-Rod man and he got sprayed with a somewhat unpleasant mixture of toilet-paper, water and, well yes, shit.

Rugby Legend

Reproduced by the kind permission of Planet Rugby [FN1].

The world of rugby was literally rocked to its foundations [FN2] yesterday when news broke of the shock retirement from competitive rugby of Owen Williams.

Williams had performed at the highest [FN3] level for 25 seasons playing both codes, the last 10 of them in Bristol, and many rugby experts are confounded that he never achieved international recognition [FN4].

Williams began his career at scrum-half for his house before transferring from union to league whilst at University switching to hooker in the process but keeping his interest in union and captaining his College (Alcuin) throughout his time at York.

His captaincy inspired Alcuin to new heights of achievement and they broke Wentworth’s traditional hegemony over College rugby and won the Grand Slam 4 times out of 6.

His talents were not going unnoticed and he was invited to an international trial (league). Sadly due to injury he was unable to attend [FN5]. He broke his leg in the final year at university but fought his way back to full fitness.

After university he finally chose to concentrate on union, to the eternal detriment of league – some say his decision marked the start of league’s decline relative to union in this country [FN6].

Two successful seasons playing in York followed before he decided to head down South to pursue his rugby fortune in Bristol.

The last 10 years saw him plying his trade at hooker and prop as one of the stalwarts of Bristol rugby until he suffered a career threatening shoulder injury earlier this season. Unfortunately despite his best efforts he has not been able to recover and the debilitating effect of the injury has forced him to hang up his boots to the great relief of opponents across the land.

And so the sun sets on the career of yet another great stalwart of the game. When asked to comment Ieuan Evans said “Owen was one of the greatest players of the game not to be capped by Wales. Considering some of the right numptys that have pulled on the Welsh shirt over the last few years it is a travesty.” [FN7]

FN1 Not necessarily true.
FN2 ditto
FN3 ditto
FN4 ditto
FN5 ditto – he got pissed instead of going
FN6 well he would
FN7 It actually sounded more like “Who?”

The open road

When heading to a stag do in Liverpool it is always sensible to arrange your diary so that your working day ends somewhere approaching the North-West. Somewhere such as Maidstone is not the most sensible.

We wish we could record that his drive up to Liverpool was marked more by its duration then anything else and indeed a hugely tedious 7 hours in stop start traffic would ordinarily be due that description. Disturbingly as he made his way up the M6 his equilibrium was disturbed by a blonde in the car next to his coming up for air after, as the Daily Mail would describe it, having performed a lewd sex act on the driver.

This all had him ready to kill by the time he got to the rather odd hotel they were staying in (the Britannia Adelphi) which can best be described as being stuck in a Edwardian time-warp.

We should just record that the stag was Johnners a very solid old chum of his and he is marrying the lovely Mimi. Sadly he cannot make their wedding because he is off skiing with Gay George (Not Actually Gay).

Liverpool provided a solid first night out before the boys headed off for a day of paint-balling. The directions were less than good and he promptly got lost in the wilds of Merseyside…not a wise course of action.

The paint-balling itself was the usual display of testosterone fuelled charging around through mud and stagnant water and self-congratulatory debriefs. His head seemed to make an overly attractive target and for a worrying moment it appeared that he had dyed his hair ginger again. He meanwhile did not quite appreciate what a sight he was and he blithely wandered into Tesco’s afterwards (to pick up some biscuits) and promptly drew a great deal of attention from security.



Another night on the pop was planned and this time they kicked off by heading to Aphrodite’s - a “gentlemen’s club”. This was, to say the least, a very odd location. Upstairs it was a real old man’s pub full of retired old couples nursing a half of stout and a port and lemon whilst downstairs was a collection of ladies of extremely negotiable affection and, it must be recorded, a rather unusual range of skills. Charlotte in particular caught his attention mainly through the size of her décolletage.

Now the size was due to the surgeon’s art and whilst she gyrated for him all he could do was try and spot the scars, tragic.

With that nonsense out the way they hit a super-club. He did his usual trick of getting totally lost and confused in the enormous warehouse and losing the rest of the boys.

A somewhat less tedious drive back to Bristol (less then 3 hours this time) capped off an excellent weekend.

In the pink

Last Thursday saw his friend Tails’ birthday celebrations at The Vine Tree in Norton. This was planned to coincide with their charity night for the benefit of breast cancer charities. This of course required people to come in pink.

He of course forgot.

Tails did not and was resplendent in an enormous pink wig (sadly no photos have survived the night). The culmination of the fundraising was a charity raffle. He ended up winning some pink flowers.



After the evening he had to get up to Surrey (he was in court in Kent on Friday) to stay at his mother’s. Shamelessly he gave her the prize pretending it was some spontaneous gift. What a bad son he is, fortunately she will never find out. Unless she reads this of course.

The Greater Gunnersbury Open

Last year he competed in the Greater Gunnersbury Open. Technically he competed in several years of the tournament at once. The rather confusing report of the tournament is re-produced (with the kind permisson of Mr Sills-Jones) below

"Whilst the rest of the world looked on aghast at the tragic events in New York, the Greater Gunnersbury open took place in a time warp. With the alignment of the planets clearly out of kilter, the 2001 Greater Gunnersbury Open took place on 11 September 2005. I know a combination of lawyers and Americans is always likely to delay matters, but this was going a little far. The rules of this competition were also clearly drafted by lawyers and Americans (did Dubya have a hand in this?) as they made no sense to any vaguely normal, or British, person. A fine, sunny Sunday was taken up with a whirlwind of missed putts and expletives, Ben Hogan replaced Bin Laden as the topic of conversation.

"The winner of the 2001 event was Mr Robert Morgan (above right, ginger), playing in a threeball with Mr Dafydd Jones, winner in 2006 (naturally only a year later than Mr Morgan's victory), and Mr Owen 'Bogun' Williams. These twin towers to the eventual winner (in Mr Williams case, more of a squatter's residence than a tower) played some fine shots on the way, not least Mr Jones' excellent opening drive which nearly claimed a hole in one. The ability of Mr Williams to stand, let alone play golf, was a testament to stamina and powers of recuperation of this resilient competitor. Vertical drinking may be a concern in the pubs and restaurants of Ealing; vertical sleeping would appear a worrying development and undoubtedly played a part in Mr Williams' somewhat erratic round which left him some way out of contention.

"Mr Morgan played with an arrogance rarely seen in West London and wholly inappropriate given the date and number of missed greens in regulation. The competition was nip-and-tuck, and would surely have gone the way of one of our cousins from over the pond had it not been for a curtailment as Mr Jones had to catch a flight for his honeymoon. Professional journalism prohibits your correspondent from commenting about Mr Jones needing to play around, "Fore" play, sinking a long one, plenty of shouts of "Get in the Hole" and worrying about the stiffness of the shaft. The curtailment of the round due to the impending flight of Mr Jones (unaffected by the tragic events of 9/11) led to a scrambled last hole - a Texas Scramble replaced by a San Diego Scramble. The final holeshoot out was played to par by Mr Morgan and this proved sufficient for victory in the 2001 tournament. Dr Emmett Brown (Who?) allowed the competitors to rush four years forward and allow the presentation to take place a mere couple of hours before Mr & Mrs Jones departed for Heathrow."