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Pete and Hugh's Party

Pete and Hugh were getting pretty old. So they decided to tell everyone about it by having a big garden party at Chateau Orange. Highlights include midnight swimming (including Chuckles nobbling Hicks by some homoerotic dunking at the start of the front crawl race), Capoeira tutelage (Alex was Chuckles' able pupil - the match lasted for around half an hour, according to observers), several rounds of brutal bundling of both Pete and Hugs, Hugs surrounding himself with a coterie of ladies in the outhouse known affectionately as the "fcuk-shed", Kelly and Henry being literally incapable of erecting a basic tent, MANT bowling a cricket ball directly at Sarah's husband's head, Osako's insanely delicious salmon, and Jimmy's insanely delicious pork.

CKGT Christmas Dinner

MANT and Charlie hosted the latest in the series of crazily hedonistically excessive dinners. Breaking all previous records with a combined total of twenty nine people eating a 12kg turkey, a 5kg ham, 1kg of smoked salmon, and more mulled wine and mulled cider than anybody could possibly drink, the dinner was a typically unrestrained affair.

Notable awards go to:
Chris for sprout throwing (for picture click here)
Alberto for starting up the "Elephant C0ck" game

CKGT goes to America for Spring Break

Well it wasn't quite their spring break, but it was our spring break. The idea was to visit La Cece in New England. Constituents of the party were: MANT, Kenny, Chuckles, Kate, Nish. Highlights are recounted herewith:

Thursday -

We all met at the airport. The boys bickered over whether to order Chablis or the cheaper Pinot. Chuckles munched on smoked salmon. MANT and Kenny munched on Pret a Manger smoked salmon sandwiches. The girls bought make-up ready to impress the frat boys we were destined to encounter.
Flight to Boston was uneventful, punctuated mainly by MANT repeatedly pressing the "lean back" button on Chuckles' chair, to the weary amusement of those seated behind Chuckles. Strangely enough, although MANT actually found the prank increasingly funny as the seven hour flight wore on, those behind tired of the joke fairly quickly. Of course, MANT the Indefatigable did not let this stand in the way of a good gag.
Landed in Boston and Nish began talking gibberish for the entertainment of her fellow queuers. For her punishment a stern faced Immigration official separated her from the group. After being allowed into the country the hire car was found, or rather MPV, and the boys could then only just resist the temptation to upgrade the enormous car to a car the size of a house. The girls vetoed this stupid plan, which was a good thing. We then set off to Providence, with only a map in MANT's Lonely Planet to guide us, and after driving up and down each and every road in Providence we eventually found Cece stood by the side of the road. We were assured that this was not her usual practice for 1am on a Thursday night. After being assured all the bars were closed, we inflated our beds and turned in for the night.

Friday -

Friday morning gave us our first taste of home town America, in the shape of a friendly little diner next to the cop-shop. Nish ordered Grits to the amused consternation of our of our fellow American diners who laughed and said they were disgusting. He proved to be the first in a very long line of nice Yanks that we met when he brought us some tasty berry pancakes. Charlie tipped the waitress $5.
We then set off for Newport, a coastal town about an hour away. Once there we parked up and went for a long walk along the cliff path, until the path became blocked at which point we climbed over a fence into the grounds of some strange university building, before wandering back to the centre of town in search of Lobsters. After being unimpressed with the service in a first restaurant we decamped to the place next door to try their better lobster instead. Kate ordered her first bottle of American Chardonnay, and was very pleased when it turned out to be quite literally twice the sixe of a standard French bottle. MANT & Kenny both ordered 2 lobsters each, preceeded by a little bowl of clam chowder. Much waving of legs and scalding water later, the lobsters were gone and our bellies were full.
We then bought some fudge for the journey home, ate one piece, and felt sick.
Once back in Provincetown we bought the entire contents of the liquer store and also some snacks. Chuckles made some damned fine Mai-Thais whilst we all sat about Cece's flat trying to decide what the hell we were going to do for the next few days. After eventually deciding to go to Martha's Vinyard the following day it was left to the girls to book a hotel. It was at this point that Kate first demostrated her eagerness to nab a bargain, which would prove to be diametrically opposed to Charlie's 'share his wealth ideals' as the trip progressed. Anyway the girsl spent so long looking for a bargain that the hotel closed and they didn't book anywhere.
After drinking a litre of vodka the gang set out to rock Providence. We went to a student bar and debated on how much to tip the barmen. Chuckles settled on $3 for his opening gambit, despite the guy at the bar advising on a buck. After arriving a bit drunk we proceeded to get more drunk, and Kenny and MANT cleverly decided to talk about the Iraq war and teach some nice lady the facts of the conflict. She probably needed some teaching as she was halfway through her PhD on the Iraq war. Kenny and MANT got caught staring at an American Chuckles who came over and snarled "Say something" at them both. They remained mute. Chuckles attempted to get MANT to leave a $26 tip on a drinks order of $24. Cece said she was so drunk she had gone blind.
At closing time we left before trying to get some burgers in the college canteen, however we then heard some pumpin' tunes coming from a window so followed the sound...
We found ourselves in a Frat party, or rather a party split between a couple of rooms in the student digs. The girls disappeared to look for boys. The boys found a fridge full of free beer which was being guarded by an Ork sized Jock. Kate did a bit of dancing. Then the college police arrived and began emptying the party, we were never quite sure whether this was because we were there or not, but we grabbed a few more free beers and lingered in the corridor waiting for the girls. At this point some dude started screaming at Chuckles to get the Fuck out of his flat and that we weren't invited. Maybe he took offence to the pink scarf Chuckles had liberated from Kate and was wearing.
After that we stumbled home, with Kate nearly pulling down the Stars & Stripes from one very proud home owner.

Saturday -

After consuming our bodyweight in Cheerios we set off to Martha's Vinyard, with Chuckles driving. After a slightly late start, and Charlies slow driving and extra braking, we eventually made it to the ferry port for Martha's. We had 10 minutes to spare before the ferry departed, because of Chuckles' slow driving. We were then informed that parking was 4 miles away but MANT spotted a "parking" sign so we slowly zipped over to a small car park where we met with some man who said we couldn't park there as we had to stay for 24 hours. As we were only going over for the day MANT charmed the parking man whilst Chuckles flashed his cash and got us a good deal by paying $35 for the $15 parking ticket. MANT & Chuckles then started bickering over who had been the smarmiest whilst the girls bought us all ferry tickets and we made it onto the boat with just a few minutes to spare.
As we left the harbour it was incredibly foggy, so foggy that Kate was almost unable to see the bottle of Chardonnay pressed to her lips. This meant that the fog horn was going off every few minutes, in fact it was going off at just the point when we'd relaxed from the last one and forgoteen the next one was coming. Chuckles nearly jumped overboard at each occasion whilst Kenny, MANT, Kate, Nish and Cece just got more jumpy as the journey progressed. We also ate some insanely salty pretzels.
After an hour we reached Martha's Vinyard and promptly hired some speedy bicycles from a friendly American chap. We cycled down the coast a few miles of very pretty coastline, taking in where they filmed Jaws. We then stopped for lunch and Kate got shouted at for stopping her bike in the middle of the raod and then we all got shouted at for cycling up a Main Street. So we tied up our bikes and headed for lunch. Everyone ordered clam chowder and the mixed grilled fish, which was delicious, except Chuckles who wanted to be different so he ordered all his food deep-fried and got a plate of tasty batter instead.
After lunch we continued our cycling round the island, got a bit lost, and then took the rather foolish decision to cycle back through the centre of the island, up the equivelant of the M4. Nish constantly tried to outpace everyone, but her little legs wouldn't take her that fast.
We arrived back at the port in time to give our bikes back, sink some juice in a restaurant with the most picturesque toilet in the world before heading off back to the mainland.
We then scoped out our Motel, found it looked rough and in the middle of nowhere so we found somewhere else to stay with enormous beds. After a quick rest we went and had Mexican. Everyone was a little sun-kissed after the days events but Chuckles insisted on going drinking and Kate's eyes lit up at the prospect. A charming watering hole was found and we began to play the name game. Rob fell asleep, Cece took Rob home, but perhaps a little too far as they walked miles past the Motel. We stayed in the bar playing the name game till it closed, however MANT absolutley sucked at miming, so much so that Chuckles was crying with laughter and MANT let a little bit of wee out he was laughing so much. Michael J Fox was the impossible mime.

Sunday -

Charlie and MANT awoke early after a night of lovin' in their big Motel bed, and went to buy the gang some breakfast They returned with gallons of coffee and some tasty muffins. With Mant driving they set off for a drive round Cape Cod. First stop was along the Cape Cod National Sea Shore, for a walk along the massive beach, the gang tried to play frisbee, but it was too windy, Chuckles tried to go for a paddle, but the water was far, far too cold. Eventually the gang settled on two satisfactory activities: digging an enormous hole, and playing petanque. Kenny was buried in the enormous hole, and it was a no score draw all around on the petanque front. After that, it was time for a quick jaunt south again to find some tasty lunch. The gang stopped for lunch in Harwich, and after bickering between the poncy hotel giant lunch, and the more homely family restaurant, they eventually settled on the family restaurant. The waitress was very friendly indeed. In fact, she was so friendly that it wasn't long that the group began to suspect that she suffered from a monomania of some description. To illustrate this point, a brief outline of one of the main strands of the conversation is outlined:
WAITRESS: So, did anyone get anything from the Easter Bunny today? I'm SO disappointed, as I woke up this morning, and I didn't find anything.
[CKGT mumbles "no, nothing for us"]
WAITRESS: Well, I think maybe we should have a shot out in the street, and then we can all play "hunt the shot".
CHUCKLES: You mean...you mean, like a shotgun?
WAITRESS: Oh no, not a shotgun, like a drink! A tasty drink! Mind you, some of those guys back in the kitchen seem pretty wasted already, I think it'd probably be pretty dangerous to give them any more alcohol. I'll get your menus shall I?
[ CKGT murmurs assent, and look at each other nervously. Waitress leaves and returns with menus.]
WAITRESS: Now, what would you like to drink? I tell you what you'd like to drink, the two nicest wines on the menu are the Californian Chardonnay, and Merlot they're just PERFECT. Would you like them? Sure you would, seriously, they are absolutely DELICIOUS.
[CKGT nods a little, mutters "that sounds nice". Waitress leaves and returns with wine...Time passes, CKGT orders food (waitress becomes ever more animated at the array of delicacies soon to be placed in front of the crowd, repeatedly says "PERFECT", "DELICIOUS", and "YOU'RE FUNNY!". Food arrives]
CHUCKLES (To group): I heard somebody at work was allergic to new world wine, but not old world wine. Is that even possible?
WAITRESS (overhearing): Why sure it is, it's the sulphides, that's exactly what I have. If I drink even a drop of New World wine, all my eyes all swell right up and I can't see.
[Pause while this sinks in. Kate expresses what everyone's thinking]
KATE: Would you call a Californian wine a new world wine then?
WAITRESS: Why, sure, of course!
KATE: So...those wines that you told us were delicious...
WAITRESS: Yes! They make my eyes swell right up, and I get a horrible searing pain not long after drinking them.
KENNY: But you said you liked them so much.
WAITRESS: Absolutely, I love them! I always look forward to the opening of a new barrel, as I can have just a sip, and it's like heaven, but then my eyes swell right up!
MANT: So that's quite sad, if you love something so much, but it makes your eyes swell up?
WAITRESS (screaming with laughter): Well, hey, I still love my second husband, but you don't see me crying do you?

Our conversation with the Crazy Waitress continued in this slightly disturbing vein for the rest of the meal. Dubious facts we were given were, in no particular order:
- The fish and chips here is much better, as they only use dogfish for fish and chips in Britain
- I used to be a commercial fisherman, harpooning giant tunny for the fish market.
- The whaling museum on Nantucket has the some of the best items in the world. Particularly the scrimshaw. (She was delighted when Kenny expressed enthusiasm about this, Kenny saying "that's good, we wouldn't want any of that second-rate scrimshaw", it was only later that Kenny quenched the last vestige of light in her eyes by coldly saying "you know, none of us know what scrimshaw is, don't you?").

After leaving the restaurant somewhat dumbfounded by our experience we drove in stilted disbelief to the port where we were to catch the ferry to Nantucket. We abandoned our car in a car park expecting never to see it again and were whisked over to the ferry. Our cunning plan to get the cheaper ferry was scuppered when it was pointed out to us that it didn't have a bar on it. Kate refused to go on any boat without a bar. So we took the quicker ferry. We played cards all the way over, and Kate drank Chardonnay.

We arrived in sleepy old Nantucket at about 6pm and checked into our quaint little hotel with Chuckles and MANT getting the best room after pushing past the girls. The proprietor of the hotel was a very friendly man with a big cuddly dog. (He'll be back in the story later...) After brief washing after our sandy day on the beach we all set off to wander round the quaint little island. We looked at old houses, a war memorial, and most interestingly the house at which the whaler that Captain Ahab from Moby Dick was based on, lived. Narishta got asked on a date by the town crazy-man-streetcleaner. She declined his offer of driving her round the isalnd to look at things. After observing that most of the town was shut, being that it was closed season, we went to the bustling restaurant right next door to our hotel for some cocktails.

The bar sold Whale's Tale Pale Ale, so a few jugs of that were downed. Kate drank some more Chardonnay. Then we took up our table in the fancy restaurant and MANT ordered a started, nobody else did so everyone moaned at him whilst he picked over his manky squid. From then on in most of the evening is a blur. Here are some highlights, almost in order (I think):

- Our waitress in the restaurant was utterly useless / possibly brain dead, but thought we were kooky.
- We were so loud that another table of old Americans came up to us to tell us that they loved England but London was a bit expensive. Bearing in mind this was on an island where a 4 bed house is about $10m, we didn't quite know how to respond.
- Kate made a promise that she could drink 2 bottle of red wine and never get drunk.
- We did a lot of staring at the bargirls breasts in order to ascertain if she was preganant or not .We also talked loudly about it. (She wasn't pregnant, by the way)
- We all spent the rest of the evening trying to get Kate to drink 2 bottles of red wine.
- The owner of our hotel came to talk to us about how much he wanted to Kill President Bush. He offered us use of his car which MANT rejected as it wasn't big enough. We also established that his wife was out of town, he had no idea how to run his hotel, and the bargirl was a bit "kinky".

After leaving the restaurant as it closed, we went to a bar, which we couldn't find, so we asked some guy where it was and we happended to be stood outsdie it. By this point we were all blind drunk. We drank more gin, and MANT apparently knocked over some glasses. Rob built a giant straw. We don't have any other memories of that though. Charlie tipped the barman $16.

Then we tried to go to a club, but it was closed. So we ended up in a sleepy little bar next door. We ordered more gin. And we began dancing on a wooden box in the corner of the room. We sang very loudly, Chuckles videoed most of the evening. There was a man wearing a lobster outfit. MANT put his lobster head on. Nish & Kate sang very loudly indeed. The waitress from earlier was there too and she told us she wanted to be a hairdresser. Nish said she was already a hairdresser and became her best friend, until Rob told the waitress Nish was lying. Charlie tipped the barman $18.

Once this bar closed I think the drunk gang headed back to the hotel, via a taxi which Kate fell out of. Chuckles insisted on tipping the taxi man about $20 over the $10 fare.

Once back in the hotel Rob was trying to shush everyone up, and at the very same time Kate walked into the grandfather clock at the top of the stairs. We all passed out.

Monday -

The gang eventually got up at about 11 a.m. and were all so hungover that the first port of call was a diner for Bacon & eggs. By the time we had emerged full of grease and milk it was lunchtime, and we really were making the most of our 24 hours in Nantucket. The plan was to hire bicycles to cycle round the island again, however we were too hungover to consider anything physical. So we tried to hirer a car, but they only accommodated 5 of us. So we were going to hire one car and one moped with Rob on the moped, but we then figured we'd probably run him over.

Whilst all this was going on the girls bumped into a crazy woman called Ava walking her dog along the road, and for $20 she agreed to give us a tour of the island in her big white van. As were were incapable of doing anything apart from sitting, we went for this option.

Ava proved to be a strong rival to the Waitress the day before for the "Craziest American We Met Award", and when all the votes were counted I think she won. We set off around the island, and began to enquire as to the value of the houses. On being told that a small wooden house was sold for over $10m we became fairly obsessed with the house prices. Luckily there was someone else in the van more obsessed with house prices, and that was Ava. She reeled off the prices and history of each house, who lived where and what they did. We learnt that Mr.Google had paid $20m for a house the size of a modest semi in Britain, and very quickly the tour was like an odd version of the Star Tours in Beverly Hills, minus the Stars. Also, and it's hard to convey here quite how this sounded, Ava would suddenly begin speaking as if she was a recording. Quite literally she would turn a corner and it was like switching over to some radio commentary from the 1950's. Kate and Nish could not stop laughing. MANT leaned out of the window to try and not be sick. Rob & Cecilia & Charlie all kept trying to ask even weirder questions. And her dog was in the car too.

We then stopped at a Brewery, which was just what we needed in our hungover state. Chuckles and Rob both bravely tasted the beer, and we bought some t-shirts there. Nish left her jumper there so after a quick stop in a supermarket where we bought some crisps, we then returned to the brewery. Ava began to tell us a story, prompted by Rob reading an interview with the Nantucket Police Chief earlier that morning discussing a murder case. The story took about 30 minutes to tell and at one point she stopped the van and jumped out just when we were about to find out how she was killed. We followed her onto the beach and crowded around her to hear. the dog tied MANT's legs up with his lead. The story was that some woman started going out with a weirdo, he kidnapped her and stabbed her. Rob raced the dog along the beach, and fell over in the sand. We then went to look at more big houses before being returned to the town. We had some burgers, served by a grumpy waiter, then we wandered back to the hotel where we saw the bargirl with the big/non-pregnant boobs. She said hi. Some old woman also told us about the Cape Cod Mall.

We got the ferry back to the mainland and played the name-game all the way back. After picking up the car we set off on the road to Plymouth and as were were recounting our story of the woman and the Mall and saying how it might be nice to go there to buy some stuff, we realised we were sat at some traffic lights right next to it. So in we went for 2 hours of later night exhausted shopping. Chuckles sulked and read his book. The others shopped like Demons. MANT bought a baseball bat and ball.

We eventually made it to Plymouth, found a hotel and went to our rooms. Chuckles cleverly filled a sack of ice so Kate could have some chilled Chardonnay before bed. Kate was happy.

Tuesday -

Our final day. We awoke quite early, Chuckles went for a swim in the pool.
Rob drove us all to see The Famous Plymouth Rock, which as i'm sure you'll all remember, is where the founding fathers or pilgrims or someone landed a few centuries ago. It was actually patriots day that we were there. The rock was shit. It was a little rock. So we drove to Boston.

Once in Boston we drove right into the centre and parked. Youv'e gotta love the Americans love of the motor car. Kate and Nish and Cecilia then led us to the start of the old historic Boston trail. We observed some American students protesting against the tardiness of the bus system. Weird. We then caught up with Soral, who was at Bristol University. We walked around the dock area looking for a classy restaurant for lunch. Everywhere classy was full, so we went for a Chinese instead.

We then left Sonal and headed in the general direction of the airport, and we got hopelessly lost. Eventually we found the airport, dropped the girls off to try and get upgraded (they didn't) and boarded our plane. On the plane we were surrounded by a group of teenagers off to Spain for a week which provided us with much amusement. Chuckles was a bit drunk when he got on the plane, and ordered 2 bottles of wine and 2 gins and got even more drunk.

We landed the following morning, squeezed into a small Skoda taxi and went home. Trip over.

Christmas with the Gang

The flaked remnants of the partially reformed Towers crowd had reconvened in Stockwell, and held a Christmas house party to honour themselves. It was very much an open house policy party, with Huggeee's brother sending over some friends to the party, but not actually coming himself, and Kenny's friend of a friend bringing along what were, quite literally, a group of gangsters.

Notable events:
- A new series of CKGT comics were proposed by The Mighty Reptile, and Seffers. These may eventually be found at Jesus Comics
- The gangsters alternately terrified and attracted various people. Huggie was of the opinion that they were all very nice people. Chuckles, although basically quite intimidated by them, appeared to have a shine taken to him by the head honcho, who showed Chuckles all his tattoos. Kenny first professed mild surprise at their presence, and then later expressed his undying gratitude to them for turning up.

Mitamfa's Half Marathon

MANT, Al, Kate and Charlie travelled to Jersey to witness Mitamfa jogging a half marathon for the Colin Javens Spinal Injury Trust. Mitamfa seemed very much focussed on the run itself, and so was only popping over for little more than the duration of the run itself. Mitamfa's fan-club, however, decided the smart thing to do would be to make a real weekend of it, get completely loaded and eat a lot of food. This they did with reckless gusto.

So, starting from the beginning, MANT and Al met Charlie at Gatwick, whence they found the seafood bar, and the world of whisky. MANT bought a three bottle "taster" set of Laphroaig. Charlie got to work on some Gravadlax and Chablis while Al went to Boot's. The group was slightly worried about Kate, who had been delayed by work, and was running late. However, the timing was to prove ironic, as, so immersed in whisky and Chablis were the boys, that they failed to notice their flight was being called, and the whole exercise ended in a slightly flustered shotgunning of the remaining wine, and an undignified quick-step to the gate, where Kate was waiting, slightly mystified at their previous instructions to her that she needed to hurry if she was to catch them up. Nevertheless, the short flight provided gin and tonic, and soon they were deposited in Jersey's bustling hub, St. Helier. Having quickly surveyed the delights of the town, the group settled on a nearby Portuguese restaurant for sustenance. Once again, Chuckles was delighted to show off his command of the Portuguese language (Beng obrigado!), and soon had the manager eating out of the palm of his hand. Of course, MANT was quick to hypothesise that the relationship was more than just platonic, but given that MANT is a paranoid homophobe, that's not particularly surprising. Key facts learnt from this restaurant: chorizo isn't always tasty and great. Beef kebab can be incredibly tasty if it's cooked right. The details that Kate asks for prior to her ordering of food are almost always tortuous and difficult to understand. In fact, Kate easily takes the award for "Most Serving Staff Confused" in the course of her two night stay in Jersey. The group returned to the hotel bar, bickered about global trade laws while Al ostentatiously went to sleep in her armchair. The development economics debate was a potentially fruitful one, but it never really kicked off, so Kate, MANT and Charlie reluctantly admit that very few of the world's inequity problems were solved that night.

The next morning began with an enormous breakfast, and a long mission to enter the famed Castle on Jersey. After several hours wandering, the group was told that the castle was closed for the winter and so went to have milkshakes in a cafe by a tower. The owner of the cafe then offered the group the attractive option of returning on the following day for a "Take-away Roast Dinner". The group giggled and politely declined. Soon it was time to meet up with Mitamfa and watch the rugby. This task was accomplished in a slightly vague manner, with Chuckles sleeping, and Kate shopping, throughout the rugby. Also we didn't meet up with Miranda until the evening when we were ready for our evening constitutional swim in the pool park underneath a night sky. Romantic as this may sound, it was disappointing that the giant fun slide wasn't working. Miranda had a lovely time watching us wallow in the pool whilst she and her friends sipped lattes. Bar drinks followed, and an urgent desire from Kate to watch X-Factor meant the group retired to her room, and played poker for peanuts (literally) while Kate sat glued to the unfolding events on telly. For those of you who may be tempted to try out playing poker with peanuts as chips, it should be mentioned that the temptation, when drunk, to eat your money is pretty much overwhelming. What's more, the temptation to eat the entire pot of money when you lose a hand proved too much for Al and MANT, and a climactic ending was spoilt slightly by the sight of two protagonists shovelling fistfuls of each other's peanuts into their mouths, before a slightly sulky draw was called.

The food for the evening was, if anything, even more gluttonous than the night before, and was certainly more rowdy. After our 5 bottles of wine, lots of scallops and steak all cooked and covered in butter, Chuckles' attempted to wangle free drinks using his Portuguese tongue was stymied by an early taxi, and the lion's share of the drinking had to be conducted back in the hotel bar. No-one can quite remember what happened in the bar, but some cards might have been played. The end result of all this was that MANT was operatically sick at five o' clock in the morning, which provided a cheery soundtrack to Chuckles' awakening.

Sunday was the day of the big race. Once everyone was up, a wrily amused taxi driver was summoned, who drove the team to a spot on the run where they could giggle and cheer to entertain the runners. Fortuitously the spectating team managed to arrive just in time to watch most of the runners we knew. Brownie points were awarded to all apart from Charlie who forced Mitamfa to stop and drink some lucozade. The grumpy taxi driver was again summoned to pick up the "four idiots" he had dropped off 30 minutes before on a crossroad, and he began to mimick Charlie's incredibly posh and put-on accent, and then told Charlie to have a mint as his breath reeked. The team then proceeded to the finish for the race in order to share in Miranda's glory. After the rigours of support had worn the group down, they found a pub to provide them with an enormous lunch of roast beef, and spectacularly failed in their attempts to phone-prank both their hotel, and Kate.

All in all a successfully gluttonous holiday.

Hat's Party

Hat's birthday party was held in what was described by The Mighty Reptile as "an electrically nineties bar" in Oxford Circus.
Things that happened:
- Some discussion was had about the treatment of Kate in this gossip column. Without pointing the finger too much, I'd like to remind readers that it's basically only in MANT's entries that Kate is treated badly. We note that Kate was the very soul of wit and sophistication at the party. She really was.
- The Mighty Reptile gave his opinion that "all Hungarians are a bunch of racists" in his infuriatingly paradoxical way. This was after Chuckles tried out his Italian joke, and his Russian joke, both to a slightly lacklustre reception. Chuckles will gladly tell anyone these jokes if asked, especially when drunk.

At midnight we had to move on to another bar. Garlic and Shots was the final choice. Our more trendy London readers will know what this place is like, for those not blessed with working in Soho, it is noted that this is basically a goth bar. The Mighty Reptile provided "Blood Shots" for the people. The blood tasted aniseedy. Also, when Chuckles was attempting to micturate in the toilets, a friendly Brazilian goth stepped in and vomited copiously, and noisily, into the dustbin next door the urinal. Chuckles, ever a nervous pisser, was put off and couldn't actually piss. So he engaged the Brazilian in conversation in a mixture of Chuckles' atrocious Portuguese (Beng Obrigado!) and the gentleman's drunken English. It turns out he was vomiting because some girl was yapping on at him about utterly uninteresting stuff. This is important to note: the man was so bored in conversation that he involuntarily started throwing up. Does anybody else have that? It's a bit like that bit in Se7en in fact. Also since the guy was a goth, he did look a bit like a serial killer, although quite a friendly eloquent one.

It turned out that the karaoke bar was only booked for ten, so the CKGTers bravely volunteered to go elsewhere for entertainment, shattering Chuckles' dreams of singing "Wuthering Heights". They found another bar, and spent most of the rest of the evening bullying Huggie.

Ed and Lucy's Hat Party

It was dark, but the air in Crouch End seemed braced, tensed even, as if great things were still left to come, as already half-cut CKGTers Ross, Kenny, Peteee, Lil and Chuckles (note: Huggie remained at home because he was ill, this information is important for the later end of the evening) stepped up the party plate that had been generously laid upon their metaphorical dinner table by Ed and Lucy.
Things that happened:
- The possibility of a new drug was discussed.
- Chuckles' position as the "key" was once again threatened by a looky-likey.
Note: My memory's pretty hazy, can anyone else add events of note? Cheers

When Kenny, Petee, Chuckles and Lil left (in order to try to make the last tube home) they got all Good Samaritany when they found a guy who'd been bottled. Police and ambulance were called, and the policeman turned out to be far from CKGT's mental image of Dixon of Dock Green. In fact, he was quite aggressive and squared up to Kenny like a bouncer in a nightclub. Once the invalid was dealt with, a taxi took the children home, where Kenny and Chuckles stripped and climbed into bed with an irate Huggie while Lil took pictures. Petee tried to strangle Chuckles, and Chuckles and Kenny briefly went to a bar near the new CKGT quarters before returning and going to sleep. Chuckles was quartered in the spare room at the fourth floor of the house and so was quite mystified when he woke up in the morning, naked on the sofa in the cellar with a broken tailbone. To this day, an explanation has not been found.

MANT's Giant Animal Roast

As you may know, MANT is a keen chef. His speciality, if he has one, is probably the "meat-in-enormous-quantities" genre, and as a result of this, he likes to think big every year and cook a whole animal or two over an open fire at his parents' house. This year, MANT invited everyone he knew down, and arranged to pick up the meat near the house on Saturday and the fish at Billingsgate Fish Market on Friday morning before work. Mitamfa kindly agreed to accompany MANT in the morning so she stayed the previous night with MANT and Emily, leaving her pal Lara over at Mitamfa's and Chuckles' house so Lara didn't have to drive home that night (this is Thursday night). Thursday being Chuckles' birthday, Chuckles stumbled in incoherent at about one o'clock, covered in blood and kebab juice; the blood from an earlier sustained head wound from a lamppost, and the kebab as his magic drunken "medicine" to heal the gash in his forehead. This is only mentioned as background so the reader understands the horror that Lara experienced when she awoke in the morning, and left her bedroom, only to confront a nude and still partly bleeding Chuckles standing in the corridor wondering whether to have a bath or go to hospital. Obviously Mitamfa was summoned from the fish delivery, and soon returned, smelling strongly of fish, and proceeded to pack Chuckles off to hospital for bandaging etc.

On the friday night MANT, Emily, Jon and Rose set off to Bristol followed closely by Rob, Cecilia, Mitamfa and the one-eyed Charlie. Arriving late at night they proceeded to eat some luminous, but cheap, curry from the local takeaway, which was quite dodgy. Everyone was extremely tired and so after wandering around the garden and admiring the pit MANT senior had dug they watched in amazement at Charlie's magic tent grew out of nowhere, and then they all went to bed after a few drinks, expectant of the fun to come in the morning.

They awoke to grey and heavy skies on saturday, and the realisation of quite how much stuff Mr. & Mrs. MANT had bought and prepared for the weekend. Charlie and MANT were first up so lined the pit with foil before heading off to Asda for some last minute shopping where they bought lots of chilli and garlic. They also popped to the butcher where they procured a 7kg piece of beef and a few chickens, and 5 lamb kidneys for Charlie's breakfast. Upon returning home they were greeted by the smell of cooking bacon, the first meat of the day.

Soon after everyone go to work. Well, except the girls who all went to B&Q to buy lights and pretty sparkles whilst the boys were in the kitchen chopping stuff up, gutting and scaling fish, and starting to drink cider. (Which may allude to a few other stories of the evening). Jon and MANT gutted the fish, which was pretty disgusting as despite Jon having a degree in Biology, he was none the wiser than Pete usually is on his degree. Still, the salmon and snapper were marinaded, the chickens were spatchcocked, the beef prepared, the lamb marinaded and more cider was drunk. It was at this point that it began to rain very heavily, coinciding with other guests arriving.

The crowd then all went outside and sheltered under the gazebo, by the fire-pit, out of the torrential rain and everybody stated arriving. As soon as they arrived a mug of cider was pressed to their palm, whether they liked it or not. MANT was drunk by about 5pm, as was Jon. Emily boiled lots of potatoes, and made lots of salads. Including a very tasty cucumber one which she dropped on the floor as she carried it up to the table. Luckily nobody was looking so MANT scooped it up with his meaty hands off the floor and put it back in the bowl. We cooked the lamb which Jon then overenthusiastically chopped up with Charlie's cleaver, denting it and making Charlie mad. The fish cooked very slowly, possibly because MANT was so drunk he forgot to keep putting charcoal on the fire. The beef was nice and rare. MMmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Then we all ate, it got dark, we got more drunk. At exactly the officially sanctioned level of drunkenness MANT and father let off the expensive and dangerous display of fireworks that had been brought down from London. Most of the watchers said that they had never stood that close to exploding fireworks before, and that the whole experience was precisely the right side of terrifying. I think at this point some of the old people left and some of the kids. Then we all regressed to childhood and ran around the garden playing British Bulldog and 40-40, however Jonathan misdialed his time-travel device and found himself in infancy, puking and without the power of speech. We also played dodgeball with Harry getting smacked in the face. At about midnight MANT passed out. The small hours were marked by the game of twenty one that was being played growing exponentially more complex (to Mitamfa's chagrin), mainly courtesy of Kenny and Chris.

Charlie and Kate's Birthday

Kate and Charlie celebrate their birthdays at roughly the same time, so as last year, they held a joint party. This year, Charlie hosted. Kate went to town on making salads, and Charlie bought an enormous amount of sausages, as well as making some nutty pork satay kebabs, and curry-in-a-pepper barbecue snacks. Notable events were:
- Monkey Chris and Grinning Andy being far, far drunker than anyone else, with Grinning Andy incoherently asking everyone about how much meat they could get in a pint glass (surely precisely a pint of meat, the editorial staff thinks?), before succumbing to a nut allergy hyperventilation attack. Charlie is pretty sure that this had absolutely nothing to do with the nutty Pork Satay kebabs he'd been getting everyone to eat.
- Rob resisting temptation for all of a very heroic five seconds before planting a cream pie in Monkey Chris's great big drunk simian face.
- Charlie getting fractious at well-meaning guests wandering up to him at the barbecue and handing him plastic bags of meat to cook that they'd just bought from Tesco, without, you know, offering to help cook or anything, no, just handing over the meat and expecting it to magically get cooked for them without them having to do anything save drink Pinot Grigio and yap about house prices.
- A very mild Spanish young chap called Paco who was still learning English being taught English swear-words by most of the party as part of the London experience.

Charlie and MANT Make Poverty History

MANT and Chuckles, as people who know them can attest, are always up for insane plans for weekends, particularly if they involve cooked flesh. When Tom told Chuckles about the Make Poverty History rally in Edinburgh, Chuckles immediately spotted an opportunity for some celtic meat consumption. Although a lot of people expressed initial interest, (GypsyBoy, Kenny, Seffers, Peteee, Mitamfa), ultimately most decided that they were quite happy with the current global inequity in trade rules, and generally wanted poverty to stay for as long as possible. Not MANT and Chuckles though: their commitment to relieving global poverty goes back as far as the last pit roast, where they decided to help out a poverty-stricken Bristol butcher, by generously buying all of his meat, cooking it, and then not being able to eat it all.

Anyway, in the end, MANT wanted to go to the cricket on the Friday night, which pretty much ruled out any form of public transport under £250, so they decided to drive. Matt and Steve were late joiners to the party, as they hadn't arranged transport either. So the four of them set off from London at nine o' clock on Friday evening, having stocked the car up with snacks and CDs. The car instantly started bickering about the music, and this carried on for a good few hours. Eventually, four hours into the journey, Chuckles realised he was hallucinating wildly, and decided it would be best to switch driver. MANT had been asleep for the previous hour so was probably the most rested. The car stopped in a place called "Lancaster" which is apparently one of those little northern villages full of crofters and subsistence farmers. Luckily the service station sold coffee, so MANT and Chuckles chugged as much coffee and Pro-Plus as they could manage, and stumbled, quivering and twitching, back to the car, with a sleepy Steve, and a comatose Matt in tow. MANT decided that he should drive as fast as he could, as he was very tired, and wanted to go to bed. As a result, he pelted through the northern, and then Scottish night, and the sun was rising as we screeched into Edinburgh. Steve owns a flat in Edinburgh for nebulous "tax reasons" (he tried to explain it to the rest of the group, but they didn't really understand, and were left with nothing but a mental picture of Reggie Kray for some reason) and his tenant was just lurching back from the pubs and the clubs as we turned up on his street. We collapsed inside at the impressive time of 4:30 in the morning, which gave us a few hours sleep until we had to be up for the Rugby at 7. Conveniently, there was a pub near the flat showing the rugby, so MANT and Chuckles forced a vaguely reluctant but obliging Steve to go to the pub, drink lager and watch rugby. The ever-cheerful Chris turned up halfway through to watch the Lions continue to get slaughtered, and after a quick stop at the greasy spoon for some greasy meat (where we met Harry and Ian), and a stop at the flat to pick up the Gins and Tonic, we wandered over to the meadows where the carnival was just beginning. We all wore white, (Chuckles wore his "Usher" T-shirt from Dave's stag, which might have provoked some bemusement), and once we'd met up with the whole of Tom's crowd, we milled around a bit before joining the queue to march. It took quite a while to get going, but by about one o' clock we were happily ambling along the path marked out for us. We happened to be among a particularly enthusiastic student set who chanted "Make Poverty History" in a "Dum dum dum" rhythm by rolling the syllables in each word into one (something like "Make Poorty Hstry). Matt suggested the alternative "Fair Trade Now", but no-one took it up. Chuckles' smart-asred "Liberalised trading markets when the developing economy can afford it, intelligent protectionism otherwise" didn't elicit much of a response either. Later on in the march, we ended up next to a bouncy African drum band, which gave a carnival feel to the march, except during the minute of silence, which was misinterpreted as a minute of carnival drums for the first twenty seconds, before shamefacedly lapsing into silence after realising the gaffe. On returning to the meadows, we saw Billy Bragg and Baaba Maal on stage, who both impressed us (Billy Bragg did his political awakening speech, and Baaba Maal sang a cappella because the techies couldn't get his guitar connected to the PA). MANT, Harry and Matt started whinging that they wanted to go to the pub, so, dragging some others with them, they found a pub called the "Blue Blazer", where, as it turned out, the rest of the group were. So the remainder of the afternoon was taken up mainly with drinking cider, arguing about politics and economics, and watching the ladies final at Wimbledon.

At about six o' clock, Chuckles received a text message from Chris telling him of the "Ceilidh for Poverty" on the meadow, that was aiming to be the largest simultaneous Ceilidh in history, so Tom, Chuckles and Alex sprinted out of the pub to get to the meadows on time. They made it with a few seconds to spare, found a couple of ladies, and reeled for all they were worth.

Flushed with the joy of having reeled poverty into oblivion, Chuckles, Tom, and Alex found the rest of the group who'd either stayed at the pub or wandered back to the meadows to see Daniel Bedingfield, and the group as a whole came up with the plan of getting curry and booze, going back to Steve's flat and watching the Live 8 concert. This they did, although no-one finished their curry, and so guiltily threw it away while the TV displayed pictures of starving African children. At the end of the evening MANT and Chuckles departed from the main group with Harry and went back to Harry's flat to fall asleep there.

The next morning saw another greasy fry up at the same cafe, and a sorrowful departing. Harry wasn't quite as sorrowful as he might have been, as MANT had left all the excess booze and food at Harry's flat before leaving. Either way, the journey back down to London was a bit calmer and more controlled.

Huggie's Apocalyptic Giant House Party

Pretty much most of the Towers' residents and guests were at what is now being referred to as the archetypal destructive party of the season. It's early summer, but a very high bar has now been set on house parties, so it's going to be interesting to see what the competition can field.

As should be well-known, the Huggie family have a simply enormous Home Counties house, that the Huggie parents generously allowed their children to use for an open air party on the condition that none of their grubby little friends were let in the house. Accordingly the house was locked up, and guests were restricted to the enormous marquee, and the swimming pool. Mitamfa, Chuckles and Kenny headed down early, so that they could pick up supplies (the most significant of the supplies were ginger beer, vodka, gin, mince, chillies, garlic, and blue tortilla chips), and then visit the recently filled Huggie swimming pool. Unsurprisingly, they all jumped in, and then ran out screaming and gibbering, but it cleaned them, and prepared them for the party. The later crowd led by Peteeee (Seffers, Leel, Shrimpy, Henry) decided to remain unprepared, and so didn't have the hardening effect of the freezing swim, which probably explains why they all flaked out like quitters early on in the night (save Seffers, but then, Seffers gains his regenerative powers from murderous dark arts into which we are all too fearful to pry). Other important personages to arrive were GypsyBoy and Jess, then The Reptile, Mrs. Reptile, and James. The theme was "hillbilly", although no CKGTers (bar Huggie) wore an outfit to match, they were all impressed with the generous interpretation on hillbilly used by the various lithe ladies at the party.

One point worth mentioning here is that Chuckles had special dispensation to experiment with his recipe for explosive garlic 'n' chilli burgers. The full recipe is available in the recipe section, but the important thing to note is that the burger can involve very large chunks of garlic, and of chilli. These were prepared beforehand, and saved "for a special moment in the party".

So, the highlights of the evening were:
- Shrimpy and Kenny having a knockover match over the course of the evening with Shrimpy finishing 4-2 ahead.
- Kenny punching Chuckles in the face twice.
- Seffers rugby tackling Shrimpy whilst Shrimpy was chatting to someone. That someone was bemused when, after brushing himself down, Shrimpy carried on as if nothing had happened.
- Kenny patiently explaining to a girl that she looked like a heroin addict.
- Shrimpy, Kenny, and Chuckles mooning Huggie through the plastic windows of the marquee in an effort to prevent his coupling with a lady.
- Chuckles, Jimmy, and Kenny pranking a random with the spiked burgers, and practically giggling themselves sick while the watched the random's growing horror, fear and finally agony at the realisation of what he had eaten.
- Huggie's boyhood chum telling the object of Huggie's affections surprisingly inventive lies about Huggie being thrown out of university for being a drug addict.
- GypsyBoy attempting to impress everyone by jumping over the bonfire but landing on a twig, and therefore crippling his foot so badly that he has to wear a cast for five weeks.
- Seffers and Chuckles being forced, though lack of alternatives, late in the evening, to drink the jerry can of cider.

The late ones were forced to retire to bed, as the sun arose, and then, bathetically, it started raining. In the morning, Peteee tried to climb into Huggie's bedroom via the ladder that the elder Huggie had used as he couldn't get in to the locked house. Sadly Huggie awoke in time, but the plan was good. Seffers and Chuckles amused themselves greatly by letting down Henry and Shrimpy's tent, to Henry's consternation: Henry repeatedly, and courteously saying "Erm, sorry guys, but I think you've got the wrong tent", until Shrimpy pointed out that they were probably doing it on purpose.

Dave's Wedding

Our friend Dave got married on the weekend. As a result, Kenny, Peteee, Huggy, Charlie and Mitamfa went down to Wales to see what all the fuss was about. They squeezed into Peteee's Happy Fart-Mobile and tootled down the M4. Their target was the Cardiff suburbs. The suburbs themselves were a little disappointing, but after a few jugs of beer, their scepticism evaporated, and after a quick curry, they met up with Dave and family the night before the wedding. The main notable events of the evening were Kenny's bursting into tears with Dave, and Huggie's knee suffering total internal failure on being confronted with a hill. After some drunken running around the suburbs, Kenny and Charlie returned to the spot where Peteee and Huggie waited in a taxi, and managed to cart the invalid home. This is important, as the knee was to feature heavily the next two days.

Unsurprisingly, Huggie took the opportunity for some non-stop whinging about his knee. He stretched this opportunity out for the next two days, and as of the time of writing, still hasn't shut the hell up. Either way, against a background of continual rain, we smartened up and went to the wedding. To the boys' utter astonishment, despite Dave assuring them that he was completely oversubscribed with ushers, the service was woefully under-ushered, with the result that the CKGT contingent sat on the wrong side of the church and sang all the hymns wrong. We are at a loss to explain this enormous clerical error on Dave's part, and await a full explanation when his lovely wife and he return from honeymoon. Following the wedding was the reception, where the CKGT crowd adopted various strategies to keep them good and drunk. Kenny and Charlie chose a single malt / Smirnoff Ice double whammy to keep them noisy. Huggy and Peteee chose straight Carling, and Mitamfa chose Strongbow. The various combinations seemed to be effective, as the dancing was up to its usual standard, and Kenny particularly is to be commended for his judicious description of the current conversation as being about "sex in the nostrils" just as an elderly relative was about to engage him in conversation. The elderly relative did not, in the end, engage him in conversation, so we have to assume that line of conversation was not one in which he was particularly interested. In fact, this was to prove a theme, as following this, Kenny's joke about all children wanting crack pipe's spectacularly failed to fly at his wedding "breakfast" table, and at the end of the evening, Huggie's eccentric chat-up line of "your mother is a slut" also failed to pay dividends. The traditional CKGT dancing (now partly one-legged) also made a show, and the crowd was very disappointed in the DJ's lack of either "Jump Around" or "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". It was a shame about the rain, but the wedding was definitely a success, and gave the crowd all an excuse for a day off work.

MANT's Birthday

MANT celebrated his birthday in style: by quitting his job to focus on making sausages. In the end, after what must, presumably, have been a week's solid cranking, MANT had made 25kg of assorted sausages. To celebrate this, and the fact that he had been born (and not hatched in a colony as some maintain) him and Emily held a house party. Aside from the hideous quantity of sausages, highlights included:
- Huggie screaming at GypsyBoy for monopolising a certain blonde "IT'S NOT AS IF YOU CAN DO ANYTHING ANYWAY. LET THE REST OF US HAVE A GO!" as if Roland was hogging the XBox controller for Halo or something.
- Wendy (this is disputed by Wendy, incidentally) battling with GypsyBoy and Huggie for the blonde's affections, followed by some bizarre rapier-work with a skewer, followed by The Burragator pouring wine on Wendy's shoes, at which Wendy tried to wipe his shoes on The Burragator's trousers, and The Burragator breaking a glass defending herself.
- Chuckles using Wendy's hand to slap a drunk and aggressive person (now nicknamed "Wormtail" by MANT and The Burragator) around the back of the head. Once Chuckles had poured Wendy's pint over the guy, he eventually turned round and lamped Chuckles. Chuckles now admits that the provocation was pretty extreme, and so has magnanimously chosen to forgive the chap.
- Rather than the traditional screeching contest, a new version known as the "squawking contest" was debuted.
- Petee unnaccountably almost soiling himself when offered a strawberry.
- Charlie announcing to the whole party that no-one was to give mitamfa any more booze when she collapsed on a bag of peat.
- GypsyBoy being asked whether he was gay. Unsurprisingly, this pleased GypsyBoy a lot. He's now telling everyone that he dances as if he was gay. Our current working assumption is that "you dance like you're gay" is basically straight-talk for "you're a good dancer", so GypsyBoy is pleased as punch basically.
- Narishta proclaiming that the aforementioned blonde had turned her gay.
- Mitamfa being face-painted with a fetching moustachio and monocle, and then drunkenly getting the night bus home, to the amusement of all on board the vehicle.

Dave's Stag Party

Many of you will know our friend Northern Dave, who, is the second one of our number to get engaged. As is customary, we went down to Gloucestershire to help him on his stag weekend. On the Friday, we broke our journey in Bristol, and so headed into town for some drinking. Kenny went into banker mode, and ordered champagne tequila slammers for everyone at the swish bar on Park Street, which was probably the classiest thing the group was involved with all evening. We very quickly got thrown out, of course, as Kenny wanted to go to a club, and screeched until the manager told us to leave. Chuckles weaselled out of any club shenanigans, and sulked off home. This left Kenny, Huggy and Petee in Kickers nightclub, bartering with the management for a reduced entry fee given the enormous prospective amount of booze they were going to buy. As it was they were thrown out before much booze could be bought, and managed to elicit the ire of a gentleman who may, or may not, have been in some way involved with the bouncers. Kenny obviously took most of the initiative of talking up a fight himself, but received sterling support from Huggy (who had just given up smoking, and so had irritability to spare), and Petee, who had been solidly trying to drink himself into a coma, and had now lost his normally peacable air. Alas, no jousting was to transpire that evening, as one of the members of the gang (and it is not clear who) flagged down a passing public carriage, with which they were able to make their audacious retreat, with the aforesaid gentleman sprinting to keep up with the cab for the first 200m or so.

The next morning Chuckles roused the crew bright and early, and Petee was almost instantly sick, a pattern that was to repeat itself for pretty much the entire day. Sadly the car stereo had been stolen, so the crew amused themselves by rehearsing a close harmony extended insult to Northern Dave, for debuting in the evening. As events turned out, the song was never to meet Dave's ear in its originally expected version, so much of this effort was fruitless. Before fully leaving Bristol, we all bought T-Shirts and scrawled the word "USHER" on them, as Dave had consistently refused to make us all ushers for his wedding, and our strategy would be to try to muscle our way in, or else just convince most of the party that we were ushers. We finished our journey at a place in Gloucestershire known as Symonds Yat, a calm stretch of the River Wye. Once there, we repaired to the pub for rehydration (and for Pete to be sick some more). The crowd for the stag party arrived in patches, and we were sorely disappointed that, far from being Dave's only friends as we had previously believed, we were very much in the minority. A vast flotilla of canoes and kayaks were assembled. The CKGTers were split as follows: Kenny and Huggy in one canoe, Chuckles and vomiting Petee in another, slightly unevenly balanced one. Once afloat Petey and Chuckles quickly discovered Huggy and Kenny's splashing technique to be far superior to their own, with the result that Petee was very quickly drenched, freezing cold, and nauseous. We all laughed at his discomfort, but things were to get fruitier for him as the day wore on, as halfway through the trip, his and Chuckles' canoe capsized, and the rescue operation took quite a while, during which Petee looked pretty much the spit and image of a drowning, vomiting, rat. Chuckles has been controversially claiming himself as Petee's life saviour following this episode, it should be noted, however, that it was pretty much Chuckles' fault that they fell in, and that Chuckles had his mobile in his pocket at the time and so is pretty much a complete idiot. Huggy still refuses to accept any responsibility for the situation, as it is claimed that Petee's already drenched condition caused him to vomit more, and hence the craft to be less stable. Eventually, however the end of the journey was reached, Pete changed, shivering convulsively, and vomiting, into slightly drier clothes, and once in the car, lay down in the back seat and sobbed, and vomited, himself to sleep. Chuckles, Huggy and Kenny all went to Little Chef to get All Day Breakfast while Petee attempted to recover. The journey to Cardiff was uneventful, and we met up with the rest of the crowd in Central Cardiff, once we had dropped off bags (and Peteee, who was still vomiting copiously, and hence had to be put to bed to watch Doctor Who in the comfort of his own, vomit-soaked, hotel bed).

The actual evening of the Cardiff was drinking was mainly notable for the last minute attempts, mid-journey home, by Kenny to persuade the crowd to enter a strip club, Dave bursting into tears, and Chuckles poking Dave in the eye. No-one is clear in which order these things happened. Highlight of the evening was probably when Kenny asked a passing tramp what we should do to Dave, seeing as it was his stag night, and the tramp replied that perhaps we should violate him, and, if necessary, he, the tramp, was quite prepared to do the job for us if we preferred.

Miranda Takes us all to Somerset

Huge convoys of cars began flocking to Somerset early Friday evening following Miranda's call to the land of cider. MANT picked up Trina and Dan and found Sidse outside the station, Alice set off with Seffers and Miranda, Lara began from Windsor, Owen from North Wales, Jenny and Dan from somewhere else unknown. Sidse decided to play a particularly humourous joke on Miranda, seeing as it was April Fool's Day, and pretended she was wandering around Clapham Junction when she was in fact trying to play the pub legs game (which MANT triumphed at). Sadly Miranda didn’t fall for the joke and carried on eating fig rolls.

MANT's car was the first to arrive at the house after excellent directions from Sidse in her first foray to the country. Luckily there was nobody at the house so we headed straight to the pub and ordered our first pint of cloudy cider and some food, the pub was having its opening night and was very happy to see us. Alice arrived next and ate some mussels, Seffers was forced to drink cloudy cider by MANT. Lara's car broke down near Windsor and so she arrived later with Owen and then Jenny and tall Dan arrived too. We drank until they refused to serve us any more cider, although there is some suspicion that Seffers asked them to stop serving us so he wasn't forced to drink more cider. We wandered back to the house and drank more cider, made fire and chatted until about 4am when the scramble for beds began. MANT curled up in front of the fire to escape the snoring people.

We all awoke on Saturday knowing Miranda was going to make us walk around Somerset, but there was little dissent as it was a lovely sunny day and cider was promised at every pub. After some bacon butties we set off up a hill and past a digger rental place to a pub we had visited before. We all drank cider and watched some yokels build a dry stone wall. Seffers and MANT build their own little wall too. We had a few pints there whilst Petey, Rob, Cecilia, Hugh and Jo all arrived from London. We carried on walking up to some monument thingy and then ran down the other side, notable credits go to Sidse who kept climbing up the hills like a mountain goat and running down again. Others could smell the cider in the next pub so wheezed off down the hill. On reaching the pub we found it was closed and so we bought some ice creams and a flagon of cider for the journey home, which was lucky as it was miles away. There was a distinct lack of enthusiasm initially for the cider but it gradually went as Miranda led us over some rambling hills and eventually to a cemetary. Trina nearly had a heart attack along the way but just about made it.

Miranda had promised the cemetry was full of "Villains" but we met some old coffin dodger there who corrected her scurrilous rumours and informed us that it was a normal Baptist cemetry. We then all went back to the house for refuelling before heading to the playing field for a game of touch rugby and a game of football, notable for Kiwinkey's lethal rugby tackle on MANT during the football and Cecilia proving she is a much better football player than Rob. Also Lara and Owen became the Posh & Becks of football as they ran a lot more than anyone else and scored more goals. Alice, Trina and Miranda watched and gossiped by the sidelines.

Seffers, MANT and Kiwinkey then retreated to the house to make fire whilst everyone else went to the pub, unfortunately the fire starters were locked in the house and so they had to rub sticks together, but a massive fire they did create. Everyone came back from the pub and we ate lots of chicken and some very rare beef. It got very cold and so the sensible people retreated indoors to play Killer (Wink Murder) with Sidse and Cecilia excelling at looking constantly guilty, so much so that at one point Cecilia's guilt got the better of her and she confessed. Hugh noticed that Kiwinkey, Rob and Seffers had all gone to bed and so he moaned incessantly that people were stealing beds. MANT announed that the Pope was dead with a reassuring 'thumbs-up' to the crowd. All the crazy people outdoors eventually came in and went to bed, Lara and Owen to their van. Pete and MANT played darts and tried to go to bed but Alice kept going to bed and then coming back again and ended up talking to a very drunk Miranda who was telling some rambling story and then managed to down a glass of Rose wine before finally passing out. MANT threatened Miranda with violence if she snored, Pete put Mirandas bra on and danced around her, Pete and MANT farted all over Miranda for ages until MANT nearly shat himself and had to go and have a shit.

It transpired on Sunday that Hugh's snoring has shaken the upper ramparts of the house and kept everyone awake, as had his frolicking with Jo which everyone heard, especially Sidse who was on the top bunk and spent a long 2 minutes cursing bad Hugh in Danish as he banged against the wall. We ate a lot of bacon and eggs and tidied up the house and drank tea. Then we went to the pub for lunch where we all ate even though we weren't hungry because we felt too guilty to cancel the table. We then all left to go back to London, with MANT's car going via Yeovil because MANT has no sense of direction and Sidse was traumatised by Hugh.

Kiwinkey's Birthday in Paris

Most of the contingent went to Paris for a weekend. We boarded the Eurostar like excited kittens and started playing poker and sinking tinned Gin & Tonic and Stella cocktails like the international jet-setters we truly are. When all that ran out, we went to the on-board bar, and made friends with the bar-staff by practising our flawless French on them (this was one of the themes of the weekend). We also played poker there. A misguided pair of English girls had the audacity to criticise our accents and therefore received a torrent of abuse from all and sundry (but mostly Charlie).

Once in Paris, our leader Emily led us to the hotel where we quickly got ready for drinks on the town, and Kenny and Charlie prepared themselves by punching each other in the face on the street. The game stopped when Kenny's face started bleeding. Emily directed us to a bar called the Motown Bar, which was directly next to a Sex Shop. Obviously the smart plan was to visit the Sex Shop first, so Kenny and Charlie ran in and loudly argued (in French, obviously) about the size of the various Butt Plugs on display. Kiwi Dave ran in after them and removed them to the bar, where we ordered snails and wine. The lavatories, it should be mentioned, resembled the "mirror room" featured in the last scene of Enter The Dragon, with the result that many of our number became lost within the labyrinthine passages.

We also spotted a lady on the next table who was a dead ringer for Matt Lucas of George Dawes / Little Britain fame. We took photographs of her, and according to differing stories, she either
A) Became annoyed and stormed off
B) Was flattered, and posed, simpering, for us.
Charlie and Kenny became obsessed by this group on the adjacent table, and quickly set to work on chatting them up. Denis, who they spoke to, sadly turned out not to be gay, but was a very nice chap nonetheless, who even knows Hubert from La Haine. A two hour long conversation about the nature of cinema was conducted in French with him. Kudos to the boys for that one! The others had left by the time that Kenny and Charlie had to leave. But by this time, Kenny and Charlie had absolutely no idea where they were, so the kind Denis put them both in a taxi, and they informed the driver that they wished to be transported to L'Hotel Est, which was, it transpired in the morning, directly opposite them. The enterprising driver, however, took the opportunity to charge them 10 Euros for the 30 second journey. Kudos to him, or possibly her, as well.

Once Rob and Charlie got back to the hotel, Charlie remembered that his bag was in Seffers' room, and that Seffers room was almost definitely on floor number four. As a result the two spent a fruitless hour running around the floor, knocking on potential doors, screaming for Seffers, and then having fights. Seffers slept through the affair apparently.

The next morning was activity day, so Charlie and Rob left early in order to find cornichons and Yop. These having been found, the whole group, once again led by Emily, went to the Arc de Triomphe. Standing underneath it, Seffers came up with the superb idea of posing for photos by staring vacantly into space with the tongue slightly protuding. This evoked such wild hilarity that soon all the group were trying to imitate him. After we had stood in the wind for long enough, Emily marched us all off to the Eiffel Tower, with all those at the back making each other guffaw with stupid faces. It took a long time to reach the Eiffel Tower, and once we were there, we ate Crepes au Jambon, and walked up the Eiffel Tower. Damn near killed us. When we came down again, Emily instituted what has now become known affectionately (and offensively) as "The Paris Death March". The first leg, in comparison to what followed afterwards, was comparatively light. We marched until we were out of the traditional cachment area of the Eiffel Tower tourists. Eventually we found a restaurant that was deemed not to be too touristy. In fact, so untouristy was it that the waitress failed to be amused by our amusing behaviour, and steamed with rage like an angry hot brioche. She warmed to us eventually though. From there, it didn't take long for us to get to L'Hotel Des Invalides, and Napoleon's Tomb. Seffers was still entertaining us with his spack-face, and although we feel that he won the "Best Face" competition in the end, MANT's offering was highly lauded, and genuinely terrifying. There were some other touristy items on the way (St Sulpice, Shakespeare and Co., Notre Dame), but they all ran along similar lines. Once we were done with all of that, we met Wendy (who was meant to meet us the night before, but never mysteriously never turned up) in a cafe.

With some wine within us to warm us, we went to what we have been told is the best steak restaurant in Paris (poor Charlie Thingummy was slightly distraught as she's something of a veggie, nonetheless she ate frites). It was while the crowd was at this restaurant that Wendy let slip that he had bought gak off some guy the night before, and it wasn't for at least five minutes following this pronouncement that Kenny and Charlie started pestering Wendy for some of it. It was about eight o'clock, and the pestering carried on until three o'clock in the morning. It is somewhat to Wendy's credit that he didn't give in to their strong-arming. Emily's friend Stephanie then took us to a bar. At this bar, we found some more wine, and noisily played new drinking games introduced to us by Kiwi-Dave. Several times we were told to quiet down by our neighbours in the bar, and several times we ignored them. This proved to be a winning strategy, as eventually one of the groups decided that it was better to build bridges than to burn them, and having got to know us, we think they found us witty and urbane. The other group was less easy to please, after a particularly noisy display by Charlie, they started doing rather pointed impressions of him. However, we are thick-skinned at CKGT, and took it in the spirit it was meant. They were later amused by Kenny's victory dance, which involved grinding his crotch into Charlie's shoulder whilst exposing his nipple. All this time, don't forget, the entertainments were regularly punctuated by Kenny and Charlie's interrogations along the lines of "give us your gak, you cunt, Wendy". The group who we made friends with were female, and were three, and apparently single. Beside Kenny and Charlie, we were, by this time, three and single (Kenny and Charlie not counting). The others had left, possibly in disgust, possibly in admiration, we may never know. So, Kenny and Charlie were highly aware of the other boys intentions with the ladies, and chivalrously decided to help them along the way, by charming all the girls with their sophistication. The sophistication continued along earlier lines, culminating in the queue for a club where Kenny pushed the conflict to Defcon 2 by saying "Wendy, if you don't give us your gak, we're going." Wendy, always the calculating strategist called their bluff, and therefore Charlie and Kenny left, to the chagrin of the girls, but the elation of the boys. They caught a taxi back to the Motown Bar where they drank some more wine and went home. The others, meanwhile, eventually made it into the club, after horrific queueing conditions, and eventually had to rush the bouncers in order to get in. However, slightly bizarrely, once in, they did not set about partying like it was the second coming, quite the reverse, in fact. Wendy and Chris sat soberly in the corner, staring at the floor. Kiwi Dave made a token effort at dancing with the ladies, but ultimately felt them to be toying with his affections, and so left. Wendy and Chris stayed. We don't know what they did, as Wendy is reknowned for his coyness, but it's certain he didn't get lucky, as he was curled up with Seffers the next morning.

The next morning, Yop, cornichons, and biscuits were bought. The first item on the agenda was to go to a street of Pet Shops and stare open mouthed at the hideous cuteness of the animals within. Some discussion of the possibility of buying Kiwinkey a sack of rats for his birthday, but no actual action was agreed upon. The group then went to the Louvre, and once in the central open air area, through gherkins in the air in an attempt to catch them in their mouths. They also tried to sidle into other people's photos using the patented "spac-face" expression. After this we found a cafe that only had a limited amount of pains aux chocolats, and ate them all. After this there was time to go on a boat trip on the Seine. It was cold, and we made spack-faces. That was about it. Then back in time for some moules or steak, and back on the train in time for the evening. On the way back, we (Charlie) managed to send Trina into a frothing rage by breaking her camera.

Awards:
Spac face: Seffers (Honorable mention - MANT)
Gherkin Toss: Kiwi Dave
The Nelson Mandela Award for Gratuitious injury, Toilet Stinking and Lapdance: Kenny

Charlie and Mitamfa's Housewarming

Charlie and Mitamfa's brand new Tooting pad was thrown open for all comers so that destruction could be meted out appropriately. Highlights included a large proportion of invitees lasciviously ogling Mitamfa's blonde friend. Huggie was noticeably vocal in his praise. MANT stepped in and cooked up Charlie's soon-to-be-famous "Extra-Dry sausages". Alice and MANT had a garlic fight in the kitchen, meaning that the kitchen had to be evacuated as it stank of crushed garlic. Charlie passed out early, unsurprisingly. Mitamfa caused Jess to collapse in paroxysms by telling her about a pubic lice scare. MANT managed to get some time to ogle without Emily nagging him, as he made her drink so much that she kept spewing everywhere. Charlie drunkenly kept introducing Julia to everyone, and making her Nesquik. The assumption is that he felt sorry for her, as she wasn't drinking. MANT was characteristically destructive by trying to break macademia nuts with the use of a can opener and the table. Charlie's debonair hat was worn a lot, mainly by Ru, Alice and MANT. Huggie made an offer to "be your pillow" to Mitamfa's blonde friend. The friend was slightly bemused by this, and told him that she would prefer just a regular pillow that didn't talk inanely and dribble. Charlie broke his own banister in a fit of Nureyevian balletic grace whilst hurtling up the stairs. Charlie's "Ukulele Heaven" CD was located, and the masses frantically Charlestoned their hearts out. There is also a story circulating about a sausage skin being used as replacement contraception, but details are sketchy at the time of writing.

The Christmas Dinner, Again

After the success of 2003's Christmas parties at MANT's house and at Tunley road it was decided we should do it all again. The only problem was we couldn't afford it and couldn't be bothered to slave away for two days cooking and cleaning (and Emily didn't buy a big enough house), so we decamped to a fairly good bar/restaurant called Circus, in Soho, for our 2004 Christmas Party.

The evening began with us all meeting up in the underground bar for some pre-dinner gin. Many people were flagging by the Friday night due to compulsory Christmas drinking appointments during the week but everyone arrived on time and started ploughing into the booze. Two useless people arrived having not bought secret Santa presents (Ed & Hugh) with the whiney excuse that "They didn't get the e-mail...". They were duly despatched to darkest Soho and returned with appropriately sordid gifts.

We were seated in the smart restaurant on a big round table and a long thin table, and soon began drinking some damned fine wines. The jollities continued, and dark whispering of "When can we do the secret Santa presents?" were heard. Santa Manta decreed this must be after our main courses had been consumed.

We all troffed our food and soon it was present time, with Santa Peteey and Santa Manta giving away all the presents. Notable presents were the leather spanking paddle and handcuffs given to Lil; MANT receiving a boxing toy and a large stick; Renee was given two guns that fired plastic disks; Hugh was given a remote controlled car (details to follow...); and almost all the girls got make-up.

Rob and Charlie put the girls make-up on, and boy did they look pretty. Rob managed to pour oil onto his crotch, so Seffers poured a glass of water over him making him the most dapper man in the restaurant. MANT carried his stick everywhere, Hugh got his car working and began driving it around the restaurant. The waitresses were very nice and viewed us as rather puerile schoolboys, however one particularly scrawny and annoying wench of a girl, accompanied by two, rather self-consciously camp, boys, took offence at our harmless fun and threw the car across the restaurant. We were all a bit shocked but couldn't really be bothered to do much about it, and the waitress returned the car to us. We then left it at least 10 minutes before we started running the car round and round the scrawny girl's table. Sadly she didn't think it was that funny and picked up the car, took the battery out and threw that across the restaurant. What a cunt. She then called Emily a bitch, Alice hugged her for some reason, and Rob towered above her and ranted at her with his sodden crotch and the very campest of the guys shouting "He's a beast darhhling, just leave it". (Like a cross between Phil from Eastenders and Graham Norton). The girl and her escorts then left, we got told off by the waitress for shouting, and that was the end of the Christmas fight.

After that we drank some more and played with our Christmas presents. Some people drifted home and the hard core people went downstairs to drink some more. We spun Alice and then Heather around on a chair, annoyed the barman by ordering drinks very slowly, and questioned Kate on whether she was an alcoholic. She denied it but couldn't make her point as she was clutching two glasses of wine at the time. At around 2.30 a.m. we drifted off into Soho in search of taxis to take us home, shouting "Happy Christmas" at everyone.

Happy Christmas to you all.

The Burragator's Second Coming of the Fireworks

Devon was host to the Second Fireworks party. MANT and Kiwinkey entertained everyone with a surprisingly incident-free fireworks display. Seffers drank some toxic cider that made his mouth numb for hours. The boys destroyed the girls at Articulate and Pictionary. MANT talked Chuckles into diving into a rainwater butt in the middle of the night to fetch a ten pence piece.

Wendy's First House Party

Wendy played host to his and Kiwinkey's first house party. It turns out that Wendy lives in what, during daytime, would be referred to as a "vibrant and colourful area, full of character", and which by nightfall, becomes one of the shadiest areas of London. It's broadly on a par with where The Mighty Reptile used to live before he got all posh. Anyway, having braved the streets of Camberwell, we arrived at Wendy's in time for mulled wine and beer.

Notable events:
Seffers threw a strop and stormed home early after someone criticised Kate Hudson's hair.
Kenny and Chuckles attempted to dog Huggie's footsteps in order to ruin his chances of pulling. Mission accomplished, but at some cost to Kenny's dignity, for, when a girl had wandered away, and Huggie wasn't present, Kenny remarked to Chuckles that he wanted to tell "that girl that Huggie has an STD". It was only later that it became clear to him that he was standing in front of the girl's boyfriend.
Huggie later entertained the residents of the area by singing "In the Ghetto" at the top of his voice while walking the streets. Amazingly, and somewhat disappointingly, he didn't get beaten up. Except marginally by Kenny.

Tunley Roma Birthday

Tunley Road played host to another astonishing festival of happiness and light to celebrate GypsyBoy's birthday. The boys had lovingly prepared a bucket of Snakebite and Black, true to Kenny's Recipe. This was swiftly mopped up by all invitees.

GypsyBoy had invited several "actor" friends, of whom the residents were naturally suspicious, and regularly prodded gingerly with twigs and cutlery in order to elicit some kind of animalistic reaction. Luckily the "actors" took the proceedings in the Kafkaesque spirit in which they were meant, and laughed maniacally.

Other notable events:
Chuckles' surreptitious Charlestoning turned out to be surprisingly unsurreptitious, and fooled no-one.
Chuckles got wildly panicked when he couldn't find Mitamfa, searching all the rooms in the house save Huggie's, as no-one in their right mind would sleep in there. Much to his consternation, Mitamfa was later located snugly ensconced in the damp folds of Huggie's bedclothes.
Kenny challenged everyone to a boxing match, and managed to beat everyone by kicking them in the chest. This has been put forward to the committee, and we may not hear of a ruling on this for some time.
Peteee continued his uncharacteristic "just given up smoking" drunken aggression by shouting abuse at people.
We met Kiwinkey's new flame, who was slightly bemused by our behaviour. But we note with some contentment that she vomited in the taxi on the way home. You see? You see the way? You have now seen the way. You are one of us.

Ed and Lucy's New Place

Ed and Lucy, the observant reader will know, have moved out of London to the dark, windswept northern wastes of Muswell Hill. In order to reacquaint themselves with community and technology, they held a housewarming party, to which all known CKGTers were invited. Highlights of the evening were: Rob and Charlie's fracas over the exact method of drinking vodka, Russian-style. The argument arose over the exact purpose of the pickle in the whole equation, although all parties were agreed that bread was involved. Seffers wildly mixed and matched the ingredients, almost inducing vomiting in the process, however, no-one was harmed by the time the bottle was finished. Earlier on, Charlie had been informed that he was "key" to the party, with the result that this intelligence went to his head somewhat, and so he started heckling a possible pretender to the throne of key. Eventually the pretender was coaxed into the kitchen whence Rob involved him in a detailed discussion of the exact physics of smashing someone's face in. Other events: Seffers lost an arm-wrestle to Hugh, meaning that Charlie had to pay both Rob and Hugh a fiver. Ed denied the existence of duvets in conversation with Magical Trevor. Rob magicked up some Campari, which was eagerly, but painfully, drunk by those present. Ross had a less than complimentary "director's commentary" style thing to the evening's playlist. In fact it wouldn't be going too far to suggest that Ross reeeeeeeeeeally didn't like the music. Ross was not alone in this preference. Lovelips amazed all present by drinking lager on the tube on the way to the venue, and then belching the national anthem at the end of the evening. Katie was thrilled to be back in her hood and has passed on some local secrets to the new Felix posse. CKGT were mainly hidden in the darknesss of the kitchen, while the birds of brighter plumage (Lucy, Matt et al) cut a rug in the lights of the front room. Presumably this continued until dawn...

ROSS interjects: I honestly don't remember whinging about the music. I remember me and Matt doing a Kate Bush 'impersonation' at Alexia that we amused ourselves with beyond its natural lifespan. And there was a Toots and the Maytals singalong! And environmental health getting a nark on! And a random guy turning up with a fucked up accent that sounded like someone pretending to be Danish! And my post-housewarming hangover is a risible effort, so I'm gonna have a beer. Jah love.

The Annual Tennis Tournament

We're a pretty posh bunch at CKGT, and every so often we like to play tennis with ridiculous people from Sussex. So this year, we got togged up in sparkling white shorts and shirts and drove down to Rye to smash some balls at the sky. After being duly juiced up by a Springsteen / Diamond combo, Miranda, Seffers, Alice and Charlie arrived in Rye with drunkeness to spare, as everyone save the driver had been drinking gin and tonics in the car on the way down. We carried on the experience with some wine at the house, and ate chilli.

The next morning, we all arose in time to greet MANT and Emily, and later Andy who'd driven down in order to be there for tennis. It would be fair to say that we erupted on to the courts like some kind of white massed tornado or earthquake. Strangely, though, Rye took us in its stride. Bizarrely, Andy became absurdly competitive as soon as he was introduced to sport, and promptly proceeded to tick his partner, Emily, off in no uncertain terms every time she lost a point. Given that the match lasted all day, Emily felt quite drained at the end of the day, and we were all glad for the healing power of yet another absurdly gluttonous barbecue, featuring the smokey delights of the tuna salad, the japanese beef, lamb chops, and Charlie's special Chicken Super Garlic dish. The highlights of the weekend, though, were very definitely after supper, when the drinking proper began, and the longest game of the name game in history (fuelled by MANT's prodigious ability to write down names) claimed Andy and Harry as victims of Morpheus. The hardcore, however, stayed on to play the first line game (although no-one can remember any highlights), and a particularly eventful game of Round the World, which involved MANT merrily climbing over Charlie's mother's furniture whilst a crazy Miranda shouted at him. The piece de resistance was MANT's halfway point, when a leap from sofa to sofa caused him to toe punt a glass of red wine out of Miranda's hand. Miranda obviously went nuts, driven especially nuts when MANT blamed Miranda for the event, and Charlie took MANT's side. Anyway, we scrubbed the floor and washed the sofa covers, and everything was as good as new, if a little smaller. The next day, only Charlie could face Andy's bitter sense of competition, and so everyone went to the beach and then the pub, leaving Charlie to get destroyed in the tournament with the background of Andy's virulent hissy fits every time they lost a point. The others tried interesting varieties of fish during the day, and generally relaxed.

Pit Roast II

Due to the success of the inaugural pig roast in June it was decided to have another one, with more people and more meat. Mr & Mrs. MANT were also quite sad they missed it so this time they were also present.

We set off on a hazy Friday night to Bristol, with Charlie, Kiwinkey, Kate, Alice, MANT & Emily. Mrs. MANT cooked us all roast chicken to start off the meat feast. We all got a bit drunk on some tasty wine, Kate got more dunk than most as she was topping up her alcohol level from the night before. Some of us discussed the possibility that perhaps she drinks a little bit too much...?

Saturday morning it was all hands to the pump. Kiwinkey and Mr. MANT set to re-digging the hole and making the frames for the pig and the lamb. Everyone else went to Asda where Emily and Alice bought some lovely clothes. MANT and Emily then went to the butchers to pick up the pig, which was much bigger than last time. We also got the lamb which was far from the little fluffy thing expected, rather it was the same size as the pig.

We returned home and set to work. MANT & Kiwinkey finishing off the hole that had to be bigger because the animals were so large, Emily finding stones in the hedge, Mr. MANT making the frames, Kate avoiding everything and watching The O.C., Alice making some drinks.

Anyway, the hole was dug, the frames were made, the fires lit, the animals set to cook, and the cider opened in celebration. Pete, Seffers, Wendy and Ed then turned up, closely followed by Cecilia and Rob. Emily was already drunk by then and asleep on the grass. We drank more cider.

Then the lamb was ready so we hacked it up and ate almost all of it, closely followed by the pig although we were only able to make a very small dent in it really as we were all full off lamb, so we chopped the pig into huge bits and saved it for the following day.

By this point we were all pretty drunk, including Mr & Mrs. MANT who were having a jolly old time. A few other things also happened, in no particular order: Alice got in a teary strop and wandered around the garden; Pete and Alice argued over the choice of the music; we all sang "Cecilia" to Cecilia, who loved us for it; Pete performed his famous "Rape" dance over a prostrate Seffers; fire walking and pit of fire dares were tried; the Petrol Station opposite my house burned to the ground in an arson attack; Kate stumbled off in a drunken haze, yet again.

The following morning we sat around eating bacon and sausages and clearing up. We decided that Pete was the prime suspect for the "Great Willsbridge Petrol Station Arson Attack of 2004", but he denied it. There was also denials from Alice over reports of a temporary sexual relationship with Seffers. Wendy disappeared to visit his 17 brothers. We all went to see "The Bourne Supremacy" which we all liked apart from Kiwinkey as Steven Seagal wasn't in it. Then we raced back to London along the motorway, with MANT winning and both cars throwing things at each other.

We all can't wait for next year.

MANT's Saturday night BBQ for no reason

MANT accidentally invited people round to his house for a BBQ and then spent the entire week trying to get everyone not to come.

On the day of the party MANT and Alice played tennis which made them very tired, so they watched some Olympics whilst drinking pureed raspberries with Vodka and gin. After a while they got quite hungry so started cooking some food for themselves, all the while hoping that no-one would turn up. Sadly they did. When they arrived MANT and Alice were already a bit pissed.

A lot of fruit and vodka was blended and drunk. Food was provided by MANT & Charlie in the form of some great burgers and a pile of sausages. Charlie made some steak too. The drinking and joviality continued at which point we began singing "Cecilia" to Cecilia, which she greatly appreciated. We also camped it up with Elton John's Greatest Hits. Laaaaaa, la la la la la, la la la la la, la la la la laaaaaaaaaaaa........

By midnight whiney Hugh was wanting to go home but too scared to leave on his own. We'd started on Charlie's Mai Tai's and special vodka and orange. Then MANT remembered his flaggon of cider he had purchased earlier, this was passed round the group who all tried to avoid getting cold sores and AIDS. Immediately we all got a headache and then at 3am everyone decided to leave, which was about 6 hours too late.

MANT passed out straight away whilst Charlie groped some woman on the bus and Seffers made her cry, Pete got embarrassed so got off the bus early.

Kate's Birthday Barbecue Bang

Placed neatly between Chuckles' birthday and Kate's birthday lies the 7th August, which is when Kate, Rach and Hat played host to the big birthday barbecue. Food was prepared by CKGT, so the effort was split across the two houses. Highlights of the evening were, aside from the duck salad and the fish salad:
Wendy's appeal to Chuckles' and Gypsy's sympathy over his treatment of his recent, ursine, lady. Neither Chuckles' nor Gypsy's sympathies were forthcoming.
MANT's run-in with a drunk and violent Huggie. MANT's unedited transcript is recorded herein:
"I was sat on the sofa and he wandered over a kicked me in the chest for no reason whatso ever, so I went to kick him in the bollox as hard as possible, although he moved and instead I kicked the bottom of his pint glass thus covering the ceiling and everyone in the room with some brown liquid. Someone then cleaned the ceiling up with a mop, which wendy then stoon on and bent, I was going to then get up and attack hugh, but was too drunk to move. I got some disapproving looks from everyone though. More importantly though, why is hugh such a fcuking d1ck?"

Why indeed, asks the editorial staff?

Members of the audience were particularly impressed by Kelly's eager lady affections seeking. Gypsy particularly proposed Kelly's strategy and persistence as being of such high quality that it merited an award of some kind. This is a proposal that is still under consideration.

Ed and Lucy turned up dressed in the pinnacle of sartorial elegance, having just been at a wedding, drinking themselves under the table.

Kiwinkey went on a mission to reclaim nipples for New Zealand, tweaking a seriously drunk Chuckles' nipple very hard. Chuckles was soon outside vomiting, just after threatening Kiwinkey with untold violence.

The First House Party of the Summer

The middle of June was witness to another epic barbecue affair. All stops were pulled out on the food front, and as a result the kitchen table groaned under the weight of most of the meat in Balham. In brief, the menu featured: moroccan rice salad, indian rice salad, beans aux curry, chicken tikka, chicken satay, Oriental sugar beef, Seffers Burgers, baked potato wedges, coleslaw, sag aloo, and a leg of lamb. Thankfully for the towers, although the marinading and preparation were done with pointlike accuracy, the process of actually grilling the meat was beyond even the normally practical Pete, and Ren had to step in with her native South African understanding of fire and meat. No sooner had the meat been consumed than Huggie challenged Chuckles to a rake fight. Using a combination of science and art, Chuckles beat Hugh to the ground and jumped on his ribcage. Chris' delightful girlfriend Kim turned out to be from Boston, which encouraged Chuckles to put on the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and jump around screaming. Seffers was not impressed, or even mildly aroused. Pete danced like a maniac. Rol seemed somewhat deflated that there weren't any potential targets of acquisition on the horizon, and therefore moved from greasily obsequious to oilily supercilious, putting him in the perfect position to be phone-pranked by a now swaying and incoherent Chuckles. Eventually most people passed out face down on the lawn, and the party drew to a close.
Here are some photos to prove it actually happened.






So there you go.

Rob's Peppery Hague Visit

Six Towers representatives (Seffers, Pete, MANT, Kiwinkey, Mitamfa and Chuckles) took the train over to the Hague to see Rob.

Broad-brush themes of the weekend: waffles, indonesian food.

Notable events in rough chronological order. MANT showed Kiwinkey and Chuckles how he spent most of his lunchtimes at work by taking them to the Oxo tower, and having the three of them sit crapulently drinking and watching the river. Rob's carefully orchestrated plan of giving us no information on where to arrive in the Hague did not, against all odds, leave us dead and beaten in the "rough" area of The Hague (we've been to Ed's house, you know, so we know the streets). We managed to convince a barman to give us beer, and, to Chuckles' chagrin, cheese. Everyone slept comfortably on Rob's floor, and were lulled into unconciousness by the scarcely audible tooting of five male asses, and the overly audible army-on-a-tin-bridge snoring of Kiwinkey and Mitamfa.

The next day was beach day, and was typified by the two main seaside activities: swimming and playing frisbee, which were hampered somewhat by a lack of commitment to "see the thing through", which meant that very little time was spent in the sea before skipping and gibbering back to base camp, and that two key members of the frisbee squad (MANT and Chuckles) didn't really run fast enough to be competitive, and were essentially carried to victory by Reiner. Anyway, our victory over the Dutch was cemented by MANT getting a daguerrotype of someone's boobs. Next stop was food-town, where the now famished Towers players ordered the Full Indonesian Banquet, which turned out to be all of the food in the restaurant. Honourable mention to Seffers, who ate approximately two and a half times as much as Rob, who himself ate himself over the edge into boundaries of torturous physical pain. The owner was so impressed by our sophisticated chatter and agonised groans that he came over to our table to thank us and offer us a round of drinks on the house. Chuckles ordered a neat double gin for everyone, under the impression that he was ordering a tasty liqueur. Some more barring was done, and then back to fart-filled paradise with five eager neighbours!

Owing to a miscalculation on MANT's part, it was raining the next day, and prospective plans for a trip to the Rotterdam Music Festival were shelved. After about four hours of bickering and backbiting, it was decided that we should watch a movie, just as soon as MANT had finished kicking everyone's ass at darts. In the evening, we played Death Charades: honourable mention to Cecilia for her impersonation of being shot with an alien space ray, and Seffers for continuing the eating binge a further day without respite. The bar that night was shared with a group of Georgians, who all seemed very charming; MANT and Kiwinkey were just about proof to the offers of accompaniment at salsaing by a statuesque beauty. We were somewhat bemused by the behaviour of the one that looked like Woody Allen in Civil Servant Role, until we were informed that the man was out of his mind on Mushrooms, and had been since 1999.

The next day was sunnier, and we went to Delft to eat waffles, where MANT bravely tried to outeat Seffers on the sugar front, but the jury returned a unanimous reaffirmation of Seffers preeminence on the eating front. On the train home, Kiwinkey and Miranda boycotted the bar, luckily Seffers, Pete and Charlie made up for their stubborness by drinking as much as they could.

Artist's impression of the weekend:

MANT's Birthday Barbecue

A regression to form again at MANT and Em's celebration of their connubial bliss ensconced in Em's new house. A barbecue was held, and naturally the Towers felt obliged to make an appearance. All the usual dignitaries were there and the scene was set for a blow-out of more than usually epic proportions.

Highlights of the evening, in rough chronological order are as follows. Hugs made his now customary attempt to worm his way into the affections of the first girl who didn't spray him with mace when he introduced himself. However, as well as the usual (and formidable) competition from Wendy over the favours of young maidens, a showing was put in by Sam. Hugs seemed slightly surprised that his Adonis-like form, accentuated by drooped shoulders, spittle-covered chin, half-closed (and red-rimmed, courtesy of Kiwinkey) eyes, and a stutter now well out of control, did not endear him to his target. From then on, neither he nor Kiwinkey took much part in the proceedings.

MANT, by this time, had effectively drugged the entire party by spiking everyone's Pimm's with gin (Lil proved to be the worst casualty to this brand of mental warfare, being very merry in the evening, but spending the whole of Sunday vomiting copiously). MANT also brewed up one of the foulest drinks ever, involving Grand Marnier, Rum, Bananas, and possibly the freshly spilt bile of a recently garotted goat.

It was at roughly this time, that Peteee, Ed and Chuckles spoke to a "Des" who turned out not only to consider himself a canny investor in property, but also to have some undefined but apparently impressive trick with postcodes (a bet was offered to demonstrate the powers, but the actual wager was finally called off owing to a dispute over the rules). Anyway, Des wins the prestigious "CKGT Cunt of the Month". Many congratulations Des!

Opinions are divided as to the actual course of events later on, but broadly speaking, Chuckles started dancing, to much hilarity, at which he appears to have grown piqued, and challenged one of the ladies present to a dance-off. Chuckles naturally partnered MANT, but fatally (in retrospect) chose to lead (they were tangoing). Their opponents were Georgie and Sam. MANT and Charlie's tactics were as follows: they would charge directly into Georgie, knocking her over, then, after a bit of improvised dance, they'd operate the famous "Jazz Hands, aaaaand, TURN!" move that they had practised for so long outside. The audience was unswayed, however, and awarded the prize to Georgie and Sam, causing Chuckles to run outside into a table piled high with bottles. Chuckles also attempted to teach Alice how to waltz. Chuckles can not, nor ever could, waltz, so CKGT's advice to those who took either his tango or waltzing lessons is to try to forget everything you learnt.

Soon enough, everyone else besides the CKGT contingent had left, and Em became fretful of the possibility of us never leaving, and possibly moving in as well. Her trump card was to ostentatiously retire to bed with the parting words that there would be hell to pay if she woke up to find a bunch of worthless drunken buffoons still mixing Gin & Tonics and giggling like morons. I think it was Seffers who first picked up that there was more to Em's words than just the noise they made. We eventually found our way out into the cold night, and boarded a passing night bus. The evening was finally set off by the departure from the night bus: it must be remembered that Chuckles was wearing a policeman's helmet (MANT's) and was singing Danny Boy, so presumably the other passengers on board were relieved to see him leave the bus beside the All-Night Tesco. Hugh popped in to buy a cheese sandwich, while Seffers went home. Chuckles eagerly followed Huggies like a keen spaniel, sprinting his hardest to get into the Tesco. There was a slight miscalculation with the two foot high wall marking the border of the forecourt, and Chuckles was left sprawling on the concrete, with only the hysterical laughter of Seffers and Hugh to remind him of where he was.

The Orange Wedding

Three Towers Representatives (Huggie, Mitamfa, Chuckles), were invited to an Orange-themed wedding in Hampshire. Mitamfa had cruelly arranged to go sailing early the next morning, and was insistent that she wouldn't get drunk, and that Chuckles would get up on time to ferry her to the marina. Points of interest: speeches were fulsome, and George fell asleep during them. Chuckles was ebulliently drunk until he sat next to Huggie's Wodehousian Aunt, after which he was subdued, fractious, and frightened. Things perked up later, as Chuckles, Hugh, Peter, George, Richard cooked up a plan to shoot Miranda full of horse tranquilisers that could be stolen from nearby stables. For some reason, this devilish plan never came to fruition, and Miranda remained sober for most of the evening. Richard was somewhat dismayed to learn that his aunt thought him unreliable. George danced maniacally, and returned bathed in a healthy sheen of fresh sweat, as did Richard, with the result that Huggie looked quite the most debonair of the three brothers. Surprisingly, Huggie failed to secure any amorous liaisons, as the bookies had been previously predicting Huggie sweeping the competition off the board. As it was, there was no romantic gossip at all, unless you count the crazy scouser outside the marquee who repeatedly simulated stroking Chuckles' balls. Chuckles only a vague memory of this, and so is quite prepared to accept that he (Chuckles) could have easily been the instigator of this rather than Mr. Curly-Haired-Scouser. Miranda rose at the appointed hour, and beat Chuckles into consciousness, then forced him at gunpoint to drive her down to the coast. Huggie got a lie-in, the bastard.

No Smelly Girls Night

Amidst great wailing and gnashing of teeth the Towers' inhabitants informed the various girls associated with either of the two Towers that Saturday would be "No Smelly Girls" night. Everyone enthusiastically scrimped together twenty pounds and then gave most of it to Huggie through the medium of poker. MANT pocketed the remainder. Between chunks of poker, the Towers visited a local house party. The highlight of the evening was probably Huggie's shallow incompetence at both pool and kissing girls, both of which he failed to do properly, and both of which he was thoroughly outclassed by the generally more relaxed Wendy, who stole the object of Huggie's affection without cashing in his chips: Wendy, we salute you. The second highlight of the evening was MANT's caring attitude to Chuckles' and later Peteee's bladders: whenever MANT saw anyone looking like they might disappear into the garden for a slash, MANT opened the French windows, produced a spotlight with which he highlighted the individual, and loudly proclaimed "HE'S GOING FOR A PISS EVERYONE! EVERYONE STOP THE PARTY AND LOOK AT THE CUNT PISSING IN THE GARDEN!". Needless to say, the rest of the party were utterly charmed by MANT's delightful Cowardian witticisms. Third highlight was the wildly caned Chuckles being told about someone's habit of actually conversing and physically interacting with the personification of paranoia, the conversation made Chuckles so paranoid that he had to go and sit down for an hour. This was not, apparently, the speaker's original intention.

The Christmas Dinner Two Day Marathon

The weekend before Christmas was witness to an astonishing double bill from the "Two Towers" (Jedburgh Towers, where MANT, Kiwinkey, and Wendy live, and the Gaywad Towers). On Saturday night, Jedburgh Towers was host to an enormous spread of Christmas offering. With around thirty people crammed into their smallish living room, around two home made tables. MANT, Kiwinkey, and Wendy made their usual scarcely human effort at ensuring that the Gaywad Towers wouldn't be able to compete in terms of lavishness: menu cards were printed up, and despite the number of people there was more food than anyone could possibly eat. Highlights included Kiwinkey informing Hat and Rach (both veggies) that "yes of course the soup contains chicken stock, it's much nicer" (Hat was very ill the whole of the next day, and had to cancel her planned appearance at the Gaywad Towers' Venture). Gypsy threw a breadstick as hard as he possibly could at Seffers, but missed and caused a cut on Seffers' very nice Kiwi neighbour's temple. MANT's vodka jelly went down extremely well, and was involved in drinking games. Kiwinkey's secret santa present of two issues of "Jocks Quarterly" went down particularly well with the girls, all save The Burragator, who assured us that buff men with large willies didn't turn her on at all. Kiwinkey decided to split the party in two after supper, by introducing a "Stoner's Room", which destroyed Kiwinkey, Seffers and Gypsy. Chuckles used up most of Kiwinkey's camera film on his patented "nose close-up" method of photography. Eventually the Gaywad Towers contingent left, but peculiarly, not long after, Mitamfa turned up with Anna. Mitamfa and Anna drank some leftover port, Anna cuddled up to the, by now wildly caned and unhygienic Kiwinkey, before Mitamfa uncharacteristically took the initiative of leaving, and hauled Anna out of there.

The following day was an interesting one for the Towers. The planned rising at eight was something of a failure, so the plans were delayed slightly. Chuckles' promises of doing all the cooking proved to be lies, as the Murder Mystery writing was not finished, and took the entire day, leaving Peteeee and Huggie to do all the tidying and cooking. Eventually everyone arrived, most of them the worse for wear following the Jedburgh Towers event (particularly Wendy and Emily). Notable events: Gypsy's casting as an Evil Genius proved wise, as the evening was pleasantly punctuated with the sound of crazed laughter. MANT, Emily and Wendy were both lacking in energy, which was something of a shame, as they had each been provided with key information regarding the murderer. Kiwinkey got very into the spirit of things, and interrogated everyone at gunpoint (gun thoughtfully provided by Mitamfa who looked resplendent in her Colonial Explorer outfit). Honourable mentions for costume go to Mikey for his superhero outfit (although Mikey's evasiveness in his answers meant that he was a poor source of information for the others), Ed for his eccentric Avant-Garde artist's clothing, Lucy, as a spicy Mrs. Santa, MANT as a South African Circus Ringmaster, and Kiwinkey as a militant elf (i.e. dressed in green camouflage). The evening went very well, although Lucy might be said to have been marginally offended by our casting of her as a lady of loose morals. No-one pinned down the real reason for the murderer, but Petee and Kate came very close.

Gypsy's Last Barbecue of the Reason

A barbecue was held at the Towers on the day of the England Rugby Victory. MANT and Kiwinkey arrived early. Gypsy arrived back in a big actor's tizzy because he'd pranged a van with his brother. Drunk Kiwinkey and angry Gypsy bickered over how to arrange the tarpaulin shelter, to the amusement of everyone else. Eventually the barbecue was lit, and the food preparation began. Everyone who was anyone arrived, and fun was enjoyed. Notable events were that MANT quickly sobered up after arrival, but Kiwinkey tumbled into incapable intoxication, and quickly set about annoying every single attendee at the party. Even the normally placid Kate swore she would split his nostrils open with a boathook if she ever saw him again. In order to pacify our neighbours, we instituted a rule of "swearing outside is a slappable offence" which Hicksy leapt into policing with abandon. The rules, however, never seemed to be comprehensible to Huggie or Kiwinkey. Kiwinkey ended up being thrown into a fence by Chuckles as a result of Kiwinkey's continuing non-adherence to the rules. Gypsy's friend "Tass" arrived and threatened Kiwinkey with unnecessary violence. Kiwinkey threw a glass of wine at Seffers, who uncharacteristically went mental and pulled out some kung fu ninja shit on Kiwinkey while Hicksy laid in with dead legs and dead arms until Kiwinkey couldn't walk. Later on, when Kiwinkey regained the ability to walk, he systematically went through every staircase in the house and fell down them, breaking the Towers' cellar door in the process. Eventually Hicksy and Chuckles bound Kiwinkey's arms behind his back with duct tape, however, Kiwinkey made such a gollum-like noise on contact with the tape that in the interests of common decency, we decided to remove the shackles. Later on, one of our more friendly neighbours dropped in for a chat, it turns out she is a cancer nurse, and so was quickly buttonholed by Hicksy into a discussion over why cancer research funding should be cut in favour of tropical disease funding. Chuckles also had a animated conversation with a Theatrical Director over the joys and benefits of anal rape. Chuckles finished off the evening memorably, by putting "Hey Ya" by the Outkast on repeat, consecrating the kitchen floor with Crunchy Nut Cornflakes and Maltesers, and Charlestoning for all he was worth. Kiwinkey slept in Seffers bed, until Seffers came in after sleeping in an undisclosed location and threw Kiwinkey out into the Six O'Clock Balham cold.

The Burragator's Devon Firework Frolics

Our spies have just returned from The Burragator's Devonshire pyro bash. Explosives were thoughtfully provided and detonated by MANT and Kiwinkey. Notable events: A spitting cobra firework lit by MANT fell over, and spat fire at him, no matter where he ran. All previous records on sausage quantities were destroyed. Kiwinkey's weed totally destroyed everyone, save Wendy, who appeared impervious. A young debutante eagerly sought Wendy's company, however, Wendy was following the Seffers' patent pending method for successful relationships with women, and ignored her bluntly. Chuckles started a fight with Seffers that resulted in them both (but mostly Chuckles) getting some Tango on them. Emily charlestoned with Chuckles who was stylishly festooned in a mini-witches hat, a Tango-stained and burnt jumper, and wellies. Huggie and The Burragator GOT IT OOONNNNN and gigglingly shared a bed together with Gypsy and Chuckles lining the two exposed perpendicular vertices of the beds like faithful dogs. Emily had to get up several times to kick Gypsy into not snoring. She also kicked Chuckles for unrelated reasons.

Ed's Hallowe'en Cracktown Rhythms

As those in the know will probably already be aware of, it was Classics Ed's Hallowe'en party, and true to Ed's perverse sense of humour, the "scary" theme was provided by the earthy location. Notable events: The Mikey P, Seffers, and Chuckles trio commandeered the sofa and refused to budge all evening. Peteeee has a friend who is, in fact, a living trompe d'oeil, since he looks seven feet tall, and is really the same height as Peteeee. Mitamfa socialised artfully all evening before hitting her traditional "sudden death" alcohol saturation point, and passing out on Seffers' shoulder while demanding sick buckets. There was a diplomatic battle of wills over the affections of an actress who may, or may not, have been Canadian. Gypsy, Chuckles and Mitamfa waited in Home James for a cab, causing Chuckles to suffer weed-fuelled waves of paranoia, paralysing him until the Towers were in sight from the taxi.