A weekend at Tom's

This is very long so if you're not in the mood, read it when you are, 2380 words :s.

Got back last night from Tom's, slightly constipated, very tired and looking forward to a nice sleep.

Friday night, I set my phone's alarm for 7am but then forgot to enable it and so I woke up at 8am and panicked because the ferry was at 9 and I still needed to jump in the bath and get ready and get out the house by 8:30. We cut it close but I managed to get there just with my small bungalow sized bag on my back. I boarded the ferry and spent a semi nice journey on the ferry despite their being loud northern people and a ton of people with small children on board, one of which could walk but had no hair on it's head, do babies learn to walk before the grow hair? It disturbed me somewhat.

I got off the ferry and was soon greeted by Dale, PJ and Darren. We went and had a coffee/tea/milkshake in the café near the redjet and then went off to find somewhere to park, we spent a ton of money on Saturday just paying for parking. So. Our main objective was to look for a nice new camcorder for PJ. We went to Jessops and there was nothing there, but I acted like a proper grown up and asked questions to the man in the shop about if there was any other camera shops, I felt rock hard.

We ended up at the West Quay shopping centre and went into Curry's not holding much hope, apart from seeing a gorgeous 60" LCD TV, we also found the Sony SR12, which we had kinda decided PJ should get before we came to Southampton and it was £699 which was £40 cheaper than we'd found it online,this was because it was the last one in store. We played about with it for a bit and I asked whether she could hold the camera for an hour or so and we would come back, I also bartered on price, which made me feel rock hard! Didn't work though.

So, we went back to the car and sat naved our way to a bigger Jessops, 20 minutes drive from Southampton. From the outside, it looked amazing, big and brand new, but inside it was shit, they had nothing, although they did have the canon XH-A1 on display which we all jizzed over before leaving. It was a complete waste of 30-40 minutes petrol and I got well car sick and ended up feeling ill until I got home so that was a mistake.

So we came back to Southampton and after much negotiation, PJ managed to get permission to buy the camera, so we did and everyone was happy, but I felt ill and also happy. By this time we went to Toys R' Us to look for a toilet before I pissed my pants, there was no toilet, we parked up and it was 20p for and hour and a half, which suited us because any more was extortionate. We were gonna go to Ikea but instead we found a Tesco Home, so we went and found a toilet in there, I also found out that West Ham were losing to Bolton 2-0, so I was momentarily pissed off.

At this point, we wanted to go back to Tom's house because the others were all initially in Winchester at Ian's, but then went to Basingstoke for some reason, I didn't wanna go because I felt travel sick still from the Jessops trip, we had wanted to get a key from Tom because we were fed up of Southampton and wanted to relax with tea in a comfortable setting, but Tom's mum was at the house so we couldn't, so we were stuck in Southampton with nothing to do.

Then we were phoning about, trying to find out what was happening because we didn't know whether to get stuff to eat or if people would wanna eat when they got to Southampton, so we got a McDonald's in a drive through near by and came back to Toys R' Us to eat. PJ and Darren both got a happy meal and we then realised how dodgy it was that four grown up men were sat in the car park of a children's shop holding happy meals and filming with cameras, despite this, we thought it was funny.

So finally, we found out that the rest of the gang were in the Furniture Village car park which was exactly opposite where we were but they didn't tell us that. So we drove round the corner, parked up and went to meet everyone, I wanted to hold hands with PJ to make Pav jealous but PJ was worried people would find out that he is gay so we linked arms instead, then Dale and Darren linked arms and we formed a chain. Then we realised walking through a car park in a four man link was actually difficult because of the threat of getting run over. Despite this, we got to the rest of the guys who had formed a 8 person odd link and beat us, however what it did achieve was me avoiding the awkward hello hugs.

So, we all went off to Asda to buy alcohol and I bought milk because I wanted nothing more than a cuppa. We, then travelled back to Tom's house in a four car convoy. We arrived back and all came to the horrible realisation that Tom had no lock on his bathroom door, so we had to be very careful that we didn't walk in on anybody.

The night wasn't so much of a party because everybody was shattered, so we mainly lounged about being hungry, we thought about ordering pizza but nobody did so we ended up snacking on a few sausages and hoola hoops, it didn't fill me up. I watched Drop Dead Fred with, Dale, Jade, Hatti and Ian while most other people were upstairs getting drunk. Although at one point I went upstairs and everybody filmed a Four Guys and Mhazz video where Tom and Dave were having a go at Todd in jest I think. Ginger Chris has since pointed out that he's never seen anybody look as awkward as I did in that video. Funny enough, I wasn't awkward, maybe the edit made me appear that way although having said that, I was conscious that I'd become one of those people who hang around in the background of other people's videos at gatherings so maybe subconsciously I was awkward.

After Drop Dead Fred, pretty much everyone but Pav and I watched 'The Dark Knight', I went upstairs because it was very packed in the lounge and I laid on Tom's bed which by the way is extremely comfortable for all the ladies out there. I had a very gay cuddle with Pav while I was on Tom's Mac. Pav sort of made a cheek to cheek cuddle as I was sitting trying to work Tom's mouse. It was okay though, I enjoyed it. Then Darren came upstairs because he'd seen the film loads of times. Tom, Hatti and Ian also drifted in and out during the film. And then Pav seemed to go from Sober one second to uber drunk the next.

That then resulted in awkward skype chats between Rosie, Leah and Tom and then later Hatti in which nobody seemed to speak apart from Tom saying how drunk Pav was, I seem to remember him losing his phone, headbutting his phone, falling over a lot and coming close to vomiting at one point.

So later, we all found our sleeping positions and I bought out my new self inflating mat and pillow, which by the way, didn't self inflate and were extremely uncomfortable. We watched a few episodes of 'Garth Mareghi's Darkplace' which people talked over and I had to act as if I was OK with it despite being annoyed that they were missing out on some really funny moments. People need to watch it on their own to get a true picture of what's happening, the crap continuity and dubbing and the awful dialogue, I advise you buy it because it's well worth it and the in character commentary is as funny as the episodes. At this point most people were trying to sleep so I turned the TV off and attempted to sleep which was difficult and I needed a piss, it came to the point where I thought, either I go for a piss or I risk wetting myself in the night and embarrassing myself completely. I chose to piss, which meant trying to get through an assault course of people sleeping and then walking upstairs which made a ton of noise. I had my piss and then when I turned the toilet light off and then realised that it was pitch black and my eyes had no time to adjust, so I attempted to get back down the stairs without dying and went back to the uncomfortable mat that I called a bed and spent another 40 minutes trying to sleep.

I woke up probably 3 hours later and it was light so I went to the kitchen, Darren was up briefly for a piss but he went back to sleep, I had a cup of tea and felt fine until suddenly I got hit with fatigue and felt ill so I went and got my bed and slept of the kitchen floor for another hour or so, which I definitely needed. I woke up and had another cup of tea and then Doug woke up and we started making muffins or rather he did and I agreed that he should.

I think around this time, everyone was up and showering (not all together) and we were watching old skool Gladiators and Crystal Maze. Lex had to go slightly earlier to catch her bus so Tom drove her to Southampton and when he got back, I had to go to get my ferry so Dale, PJ and Dave came with. I said bye bye to everyone who were all very nice and had hugs and the formalities. Forgot to say bye to Tom :( but had actually enjoyed some real conversations with him Sunday morning about his job and university. I've never really had a proper conversation with Tom before so that was all nice. Outside by the car, I realised that I had taken no photos of the weekend and so I tried to rectify this by taking some with, me, Dale, Dave and PJ and we even got a couple of Sophie and Ian before we drove off, Maybe I can find some screen shots in video and make some nice photos.

Dale programmed in the postcode to the Ferry Terminal in his sat nav and commented at one point that 'Ooooh, this is a different route', we then realised why, because we'd driven to completely the wrong place. A place called Hythe and at this point I felt very car sick and needed a piss. We found a Waitrose and I went in but they had no toilets WTF? I got back in the car and have to grin and bear it for another 15 minutes or so while we drove back to Southampton, I made such an effort not to puke all over Dale's car. On this journey, we sang to Spice Girls as we had done on Saturday night on the way to Tom's and PJ played around a lot with his new camcorder.

We arrived at the Ferry terminal just before I wet myself, about ten to four and I had a piss and then found out that the ferry was at 4:30 rather than 4:00, which was nice because I had time to sit in the café with the guys before I had to leave. Afterwards, I hugged the lads goodbye and they went off in the car and I went off to get the ferry. I then realised that the gate was locked and I was in fact too late for the ferry which was confirmed to me by the girl in the ticket office. I said "I was here before 4:30" to which she replied "It leaves at 4:30 precisely", it didn't though because it hung around for like 5 minutes after she told me this.

The guys had already gone so I called them and told them I'd missed it, but I said not to come back because I knew they had a long drive back up north. So I went back to the café, bought a newspaper and two Creme eggs which melted. I sat texting Beth for 40 minutes or so and pretending to read the paper so I looked like I was doing something. Then Dave called and said they had come to keep me company, so he along with Sophie, Jade and Ian came back and we sat while Ian took ages doing god only knows in the toilet and then we walked up and down the pier watching the sunset over the docks. It was lovely of them to come back and stay with me and I really appreciate it. So then I got on the 6pm ferry and went and sat on top, outside the ferry, watching the sunset and seeing the illuminated city in the dark, It was very beautiful.

I got back home about 7:20 and sat in my pants eating a nice jacket potato. I then had a poo and made a cuppa tea and went straight to bed with my laptop. I didn't bring my adapter because I knew I'd stay up all night otherwise. I checked my emails, read 4-5 pages of twitter posts I'd missed and had a chat with Sean and JC before my battery died and I went to sleep for the next fourteen hours, I awoke and felt great and decided that the weekend had been a success.

Nice to meet you all, if anybody has read this blog from start to finish, then I applaud you. It's taken ages to write it, If you do get through it, leave me a comment and let me know :)

THE END