Mudmeet 2001 Part 1

Blackpool, Saturday 24th-26th February

It's been almost a year since I last attended a mudmeet in Birmingham last year, and was looking forward to attending this one. The fact that Gehenna had basically given me no choice but to come along due to the fact that she thinks I can book train tickets no problem. <g>

Anyway ...

Day 1, Friday 23rd February

After sprinting half a mile from work to the centre of Falkirk then to Falkirk High train station (it's not called Falkirk HIGH for nothing), I met up with Gehenna and Aileen laughing at me in my exhausted state clinching a half-bottle of Lucozade splurging out half completed sentences and talking complete gibberish.

Glasgow Central has a lot to answer for. Mainly the fact for having a half-wit of a Virgin Train Assistant watching everyone who entered the "exclusive" Virgin Customer Lounge. She questioned on my trespass to which I replied that I was merely requesting to purchase a soft drink from one's soft drink vending machine. She told me that it was 50p for a can after which I pointed out sarcastically that I noticed the price on the side of the machine. Scowling a lot whilst trying to stay professional she advised me that only people with Virgin Train tickets could use this area. I looked at my bag and chuckled on my way out to meet up with Gehenna again.

The train journey wasn't that eventful, the only thing worth pointing out was the fact I had to think of how to have Gehenna, Aileen, Coolio and myself sitting at the same bank of seats. Fortunately, a nice woman on her way to Birmingham happily changed seats with Gehenna and all 4 of us had a nice chat on our way down south. Gehenna found her favourite pastime of kicking people not stopping on her way down. After I made a comment of saying "kick me" then advising "but don't take up on that offer", Gehenna's short term goldfish memory was selective and missed this reading getting into her cerebral cortex, and obliged by giving me a stiff kick to the shin. I then blackmailed Gehenna by waving a return ticket in her face showing that I had her only way home (I'm an evil git really <g>).

During the train journey, Gehenna received a few calls from Reverence and Pippin who were wondering why we were taking our time showing up in Blackpool and Preston respectively. Poor Reverence had been waiting for the best part of 3 hours at a guess and Pippin was left standing at Preston for an hour whilst our train showed up over an hour late. Pippin joked that every time he looked at the notice board, our train from Glasgow's ETA went up 5 minutes. (It's OK Pippin, we are blaming Richard Branson for the delay). We (all of the above including Pippin) met up with Reverence at Blackpool North and while Gehenna got excited after spotting a tattoo and piercing parlour, we hopped into a cab and headed off to The Greenmount Hotel which would be keeping us hooligans and mortal killers in for the whole weekend.

The hotel was nice and cosy, but the rooms were freezing the first night. The proprietor was very courteous and despite her age (approx 40+), she advised us of the differences to the club scene out there. Apparently she knows what a dive is as well which made myself and Coolio chuckle immensely. Astral had called the hotel as well and advised that she would be arriving at about "lunchtime" tomorrow (24/02/01).

After we left our belongings in the rooms, we headed up the town and wandered into Coral Island for a quick bite to eat and then Gehenna, Coolio and I attempted to kick some zombie ass at Night of the Dead II which ended with me being scoffed up by evil nasty piranha fish zombies and left me feeling rather fished off. The gang of us then headed up the Front towards the Blackpool Tower where we wandered into a Pool Bar and for the rest of the evening, Coolio, Pippin and myself shot some pool whilst Gehenna, Reverence and Aileen played a "spot the difference" porn game for the majority of the night. Of course we drank our shandy we ordered, I mean booze!!!! And I celebrated Blackburn hammering Bolton live on Sky TV with some more drinks, winning some pool games and singing my rendition of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. The bar then closed at midnight and the 6 of us headed for home via trying to throw Pippin into the sea and being hassled by some late night club peepsies who wouldn't let me in because of my trainers (looks like it has to be a dive for me then). We then scoffed some food at a take away just around the corner from the hotel. Reverence was gutted no chicken was being sold for him to eat because he was very hungry so he had a cheeseburger instead. We then chatted for a couple of hours in Pippin and Reverence's room about everything and nothing before we settled down for the evening in semi-comatose states.

Day 2, Saturday 24th February

After spending the first night in shivering circumstances trying to get sleep in my cold bed, any sort of exposure to any other part of my covers would have left me with frostbite, myself and Coolio were awake at approx 9.30 - 10am and we got ourselves ready by chatting about the night before and who we were looking forward to meeting during the day. We then headed down to the breakfast area where we had French toast, sausage, egg, bacon and beans for breakfast and some normal toast for those who fancied it. Reverence was last down to the table but by jings he can down his breakfast if he's hungry. Tea was guzzled down and then Gehenna had an urge to go and get some vodka. We ignored this query for the time being and instead, got our keys and headed into the town centre to find out where our meet was going to take place (Scruffy Murphy's incidentally).

Gehenna supplied us with the bad news that Eric had changed his mind in turning up to the meet (apparently it was something to do with getting his backside whooped at pool <g>) and that was making us wonder whether it would be a meet of just 7 people. We got to the pub about 11.30am then headed back to the B&B to await Astral's appearance. We were told she had called into the B&B on Friday night and would arrive at some point in the afternoon. It's by now 12pm so it could be between now and 3pm. Well, in the meantime Pippin played his portable card game and Aileen waved at a little boy who found 6 people crowded round a B&B door rather entertaining. Then I waved and he ran off <g>.

It was now 12.30pm and after Pippin had been beat up several times by Aileen and Gehenna, everyone went back to their rooms to await Astral arriving and Gehenna decided to go for that bottle of vodka she was waiting for. Myself and Coolio channel flicked through the TV and stopped at the Italian football and laughed whilst we watched grown girls dive on the floor and pretend they got dirt under their fingernails (it's a bit like Rangers just now).

Gehenna turned up at 1.30pm with a lighter she obtained from a tattoo parlour and then was getting rather worried about Astral not arriving so had a chat with Zordell (nice lassie) over her mobile. We made a decision that if Astral hadn't arrived by 2pm then we would head off to the pub without her. Sod's law applied again. 2pm arrived and as we were leaving a message for Astral, who turned up in a taxi? The Welsh wonder woman of course. So eventually the drinking session began at 3pm. On arriving at Scruffy Murphy's, 3 old men who were huddled in a corner, 1 Irish and 2 local men, were arguing over which Scottish club played their games at Irbox Stadium. On hearing my accent, the Irish man called me over and asked me who played and I was met by a response from one of the local men as follows: "F*** ***, I don't want to hear you talk that way. P*** ***." Gee, thanks for your courteous time, I'll remember not to send you Christmas card this year.

Anyway, we were starting to have a chat, I was avoiding Gehenna's shin kicks and the booze was flowing and then this little chap, about 17/18 years old, about 5'10" tall came up to our table and muttered "Is this the mudmeet?" There's not a lot you can reply to that apart from "Yeah matey, pull up a chair and get slaughtered with us!!". So we said hello to Olazabal and his brother Andi who were the nicest people you could ever meet. But no Joey. Reverence was still looking for a cheap way home and if he didn't go home in a fluffing ambulance then he would have to pay for a train ticket. So instead Olazabal, Andi and Coolio spent some of the meet trying to break Rev's wrists. Not by hammering him with bottles of empty booze, but by arm wrestling.

More booze flowed and Syl and Jesstar arrived and after I forced Syl to leave the table because my jokes were THAT bad, it was really because Syl was starving and needed to have a full stomach to fully appreciate the comedian that I am (Well, I assume so anyway ). So it was the lasagne and chips for me and some cola this time as I felt that booze might spoil the flavour of the lasagne when it arrived. It did arrive 20 minutes later after a little confusion on whether it was mine or Syl's that was being served, but hey, it was good in any case. Syl must have enjoyed his as he wolfed his down quicker than Vanessa Feltz at a buffet. More booze was guzzled and then it started to snow.

We were then privileged to see Foddy and Karya arrive, snow and all, and join us on this wonderful weekend. So the rundown of people at the meet (in alphabetical order): Aileen, Andi, Astral, Coolio, Foddy, Gehenna, Jesstar, Karya, Olazabal, Pippin, Reverence, Seamus and Syl.

Foddy then proceeded to take everyone's photograph for whatever purposes he feels (as long as it ain't blackmail ) with Coolio refusing to have his taken. Any picture which has myself with red eyes is not a bad photograph, that's how out of it I felt but I am not evil in any way at all .

There was more booze being swallowed and then Olazabal's brother Andi got to a point where he couldn't stand and the poor lad was struggling to drink the water he had been given. However, I may point out that Gehenna was not short on hugs that night. Olazabal advised that Andi has a paper-round he regularly does on a Sunday. For some reason I didn't fancy his chances the next day. So as Olazabal and Andi's lift came for them, we waved them goodbye and we'd see them at some point the next day.

At about 8.30pm - 9pm-ish, we headed off to the Route 9 pool bar for some pool and booze and more porn video games. After accidentally realising I led people in the wrong direction (sorry folks ) we finally got to the place only to notice it was only about 100 yards from the pub (oops!). That was the tone for the rest of the evening and Syl and Jesstar left about 10pm with Foddy and Karya leaving just before that and that we would meet them again the next morning. Coolio and myself then took part in a porn memory quiz that involved following a pattern of coloured rings around the screen and repeating the order. It was basically a computer version of Simon Says but inside the rings were rather scantily clad ladies to put us off . The high score for the game was about 160k. Coolio and myself played 2 games and doubled the high score for each getting to about pattern number 25/26. At midnight when the bar was about to close, the gang headed back to the guesthouse and as Gehenna tucked into a sandwich in her bag from Friday, the boyz headed back round to the take away and Reverence tucked into his chicken burger and myself and Pippin gulped down a cheeseburger whilst Coolio went one better and scooped an entire kebab to himself. We then chatted for about an hour before heading back into our rooms for some rest before our final day in Blackpool. As I put my head down, my mobile phone went off:

"Is <muffled> there please?"

"Sorry? I think you have a wrong number."

"Is that Seamus?"

"Yes?"

"It's Zedar here mate, how's the meet going?"

"It's 1.30am mate but the meet's going great and I'm just tired and slightly merry but I suppose that's a good start."

"I thought you would probably still be out that's why I called - I'm really sorry."

Poor Zedar caught me in one of my "Please don't talk to me anymore because I'm crabby and will bite your head off" moods. But he wasn't to know bless him <gg>. Coolio thought I was talking in my sleep which was just as spooky but hey I wouldn't know if I was talking in my sleep would I? :-) I just hope I never scared Zedar off from calling me again.

Day 3, Sunday 25th February

The final day began really slowly and as we all packed our bags and left the B&B, we were arranging where we were to go. We arranged to find a 10-pin bowling arena and have a go of that. I then proceeded to walk into a nearby arcade place to get directions but no one knew where Megabowl was. Are the staff all tourists as much as we were? <gg>

On our travels we tried to hail a taxi to get Reverence to the train station so he could begin his long trip back to Cornwall (I think) and when we hailed one, everyone got all emotional and Rev was probably thinking which one he could maybe FOD first when we arrived back home again. (I must be top of that list surely <g>).

Anyway, we found the place and Foddy and Karya were already there, playing a racing game whilst Coolio and myself decided to shoot some bad terrorist guys with Virtua Cop. The game was dodgy because the big screen didn't recognise our shots at the bottom when bad guys appeared then so then we played some ten pin.

Astral was showing off her crown bowls skills and finished with a nice score of about 120pts. Gehenna came form a slow start to obtain 3 strikes and finish top scorer on about 130pts. Pippin had a rather unusual bowling technique (think of someone throwing out a pail of water) and finished with 38 points. Ahead of him was Foddy with 58 points who came from a very slow start to overtake myself when I required 4 pins to finish 7th but only struck 2 and finished 8th. Apart from that, Olazabal and Andi both bowled very good games as they finished strong in both their lanes. Foddy and Karya got a final few photos and then we wished them a good trip home and the trip home began.

This left Astral, Pippin, Gehenna, Aileen, Coolio and myself jumping into a taxi to head back to Blackpool North Station for our respectable trains home. We found out why Astral hugs so many people in the tearoom. We then headed off to Preston giving our farewells to Astral as she waited for her train.

Apart from jumping on board a heavily packed Virgin train with no seats left to sit on, our tickets were upgraded to 1st class for nothing and it was one of the best smooth trips home I have had on a train. Coolio started to confuse us with some riddles and puzzles that got my head to the point of explosion but in the end, we wished one and other good health (after that weekend??) and we would see them online at some point.

For those not aware, the next meet is in Manchester in April. See http://mudmeet.mud2.co.uk/ for more details.