The festivites began (for some of us) on Tuesday evening in DCU. Myself, Duffman and Micheal hung out in Tinsley's and drank beer, then Micheal and I went to the bar where we met such undesirables as Gary (who was wearing clothes for a change) and went speed dating. Speed dating is not as much fun as you would assume from the title, so Micheal and I decided to go together and have threesomes.
But I digress... After an evening of speed dating and recruiting for DCU we went to Robert Macken's house were we ordered pizza, drank beer and composed songs about absent friends. One night of singing and drinking later, we got early morning taxis to the airport and freedom.
The plane ride was uneventful except for the emergence of some motherfucking snakes which I had prepared earlier, Blue Peter style (incidentally, Blue Peter is named after the blue-and-white flag hoisted by ships in port when they are ready to sail).
We arrived in Milano morningish and rather smoothly got a bus to the train station. Like the idiots we are, we spent the next half hour trying to buy train tickets from a machine that wouldn't accept cash and from a queue that was clearly not selling tickets. Micheal and somebody else sprinted to the shop and lowered my two-beers record significantly by supplying most of us with one beer and a couple of bottles of coke. These bottles of coke would later cause us to be assholes to one another because we're all idiots.
The train journey was modelled on last year's. There are those who lost faith in this writer's leadership ability after he insisted on seating people in the designated carriage. Slagging ensued.
The traditional drinking and dancing took place on the train to Burla, with the addition of the tunnel game. This is a game for the hard of thinking which involves shouting the word tunnel repeatedly as fast as you can from the time a tunnel is entered until the point of emergence. Variations on the tunnel song included "Dónall" and "Dónall (is gay)". Hilarious.
Upon arrival in Viareggio (after a change of trains, a couple of naps, the first accusation of the weekend (for the purposes of this tale, "the weekend" refers to the period of time spent in foreign) that I'm boring and the coke unpleasantness), we re-enacted the great photo of '05 and grabbed some taxis. Grabbing a taxi proved particularly difficult as the driver insisted on giving us directions to the bus stop instead of opening the boot of his motherfucking plane. I mean car.
Arrival at the campsite was followed by an excursion by Dónall and Michéal to the trampolines (where Michéal immediately flipped the path again) and the swimming pool, where I learned the art of penguin diving from a post-flip-exhilarated Michéal.We eventually met the rest of the Binge and several jesters (who would soon wish they hadn't). There was much rejoicing and consuming of beers. An abortive attempt was made at playing Pirate Cove, I won the second round of the Dónall-Adriano wrestling series (which I think a lot of people took seriously!) and the rock-paper-scissors drinking game was masterminded.
I don't really remember much of this night, or the next, so allow me to gloss over. We got very drunk and woke up the next morning.
The following day involved some swimming and synchronised penguin diving. The entire camp site was well impressed and we all got medals for it. We listened to "Opiate" by Tool.
After ruining Cian's disc for a while, a troupe of Bingers set off to Conad to buy supplies (note to racists: this word is unrelated to a Japanese surprise), which consisted primarily of beer, more rum!, beer, meat, potatoes and poker sweets (which are arch).
Upon returning to the camp, a game of Disc golf was swiftly organised and several horrible throws followed (several of them perpetrated by me. I nearly hit an old couple on one occasion and they weren't happy when I apologised to them, but it's ok. They'll be dead soon). We listened to "Opiate" by Tool.
As is so often the case, we decided to finish golf with some food and so I assembled a squad of merciless cooks and headed back to my cabin to make the now world-famous comedy stew, which was marvellous as usual. We listened to "Opiate" by Tool.Post-stew, the evening quickly deteriorated. Old Man Tony arrived with Jo and things get very hazy after that (the golf beer didn't do much for me). I remember touring the campsite with Si of Jesters pickup fame looking for somebody who might be Dutch. After that, Jiggles and I had our traditional Burla conversation, which she remembers far better than me. Apparently I nearly smashed her head into a bench or something. I'm not sure. She's probably just making it all up. We listened to "Opiate" by Tool. When Marko arrived (don't ask me when) we got up to some old school shenanigans. Beers were commandeered, pranks were made. We recruited the aid of Larkin and Gary and headed down to the pool. At this point, Marko was overcome by a fit of the fagnasties and announced he was going to bed. Slagging ensued. The reamining bingers attempted to climb over the pool fence (instead of just going through the gate...). A couple of minutes later, Marko returned to announce that he had changed his mind. Naked penguin diving ensued. A german woman came to admire the naked Binge men (plus guest). She also said something else but nobody was listening because we were drunk and being assholes. Naked trampolining ensued.
After that, I'm pretty sure that bed was gone to round about the 7am mark. My last memory of the evening is lying in my bed in the dawn light listening to "Opiate" by tool.
Pixie awoke the next morning still under the influence from the night before’s drinking. Feeling giddy he decided to go for a brief around the chalets in search of mischief. He reached chalet 69 and began his search for mischief starting with a dive into Col and Rony’s bed, much to the dismay of col, who threatened pixie with a scrote attack, his warnings were not heeded and after giving the two larries a bit of messing pixie moved on the next room, there he found Jo and Bobby Mac out cold and one Sligo man wearing nothing but a sleeping bag over his shoulder. Gary proceeded to wander in and around the chalet in the nip for at least 40mins. Jo awoke and stumble around the house with quite the unimpressed look on her face. Her age was beginning to show apparently in her day people wore pants with onions on they’re belts. Bobby Mac however seemed unwakeable but he would soon shock us all.
Having extracted as much fun as he could from chalet 69 pixie moved two doors down, greeting the friendly jesters on the way (they looked quite tired and slightly grumpy) so he kept in brief and pleasant. Upon arriving in Chez Micheal pixie repeated the col and Rony fiasco and dived into bed with Jigs and Ciara, many laughs were had, mostly at the expense of Ciara. The running joke was that had scored one jester Ciara however then a more senior jester in a prominent position on the team had come out and pulled rank on his junior team member or something to that effect. Duffman was no where to be seen but he was heard in the bathroom making music with Barry White.
Pixie wandered into the adjacent room to find Michéal and Dónsie sleeping like babies, Opiate by Tool was played however for the first time ever Angry Dad rolled over and turned it off. That room was a bit of a fun sink for pixie went on his merry way and returned to chalet 69….
Gary was still naked and Jo was still not impressed. Bobby Mac had woken up to certain rumours and accusations of an incident with a certain older lady, Bobby Mac was quick to deny the claims as hear say much to the amusement of myself and col. He had only apparently lost both his binge jerseys but he soldiered on without them.
People were up and about and apparently we had to go play games or something. As usual we missed the shuttle bus and Bobby Mac Col and Pixie started a walk to the pitches they wouldn’t son forget, or would they? What the conversation was about is still unclear but it was without a doubt one of the funniest ever had. Upon arriving at the pitches cruel fate stuck the binge and while in the middle of his standard warm up routine was taken down with a strain to his hamstring. As he hit the ground the binge fell silent, what would they do without the one and only bobby Mac. As he got up everybody let out a sigh of relief, he was ok and after a moment or two went back to his warm up only to repeat this injury feigning every 40 seconds for the next hour, much to our entertainment.
Then the games started or something but that’s a whole other story!
I believe Pixie's chapter 3 left us somewhere on the beach on Friday morning. There's not much to tell about this, from my perspective at least. I missed the beginning of the first game because it was Burla and I felt somehow entitled to it. We played 2 games, I think. We won both very comfortably (I don't care if this forum is public or not. The Binge walked their way to the semis. A certain binger even famously woke up one morning with one. Or was it a full one? Burla will do that to a man. Too much time spent drinking and playing ultimate and not enough time for light-saber training with Hand Solo).
I think I just lowered the tone.
Ok. From now on, no rudeness.
Anyways, we played some games. They were good. We won. The other teams, it must be said, played very well and I think Seamus was happy with the fact that they didn't give up when we took the lead. That's what happens when a 2nd division team is put in the 3rd division.
On a quick side note, for all of you who weren't present (the "Fagnasties Brigade", as I like to call you), we were in a LOT of trouble with the camp site. We had really misbehaved and been really loud and gone skinny dipping and done general Burla stuff that wasn't as acceptable this year, apparently. We had pissed off the camp site owners for disturbing the peace and for causing some Germans to abruptly cancel their stay and leave (one can only assume they annexed the campsite next door for Lebensraum (I sincerely apologise to all Germans reading this, by the way.)). Apparently, the noise made it difficult for them to concentrate on their camping (this is a significantly less funny chapter, isn't it? (but at least it has many more parentheses (nested parentheses, what's more))). We had also pissed off our immediate neighbours, the increasingly inaccurately-named "Jesters" .
I think I might have just offended a lot of people.
Ok. From now on, I'll be good.
Anyways (again), we had promised to be on our best behaviour. We assumed this wouldn't be difficult as the celebrations were off-site on Friday and Saturday. After a few beers, and a few for the road, we packed some beers into our pockets and sauntered down to the bus stop, beer in hand. The Friday night boasted a welcome party in a nightclub in the city centre called Ostras. Apparently, it's very posh and celebrities and nouveau riches have been known to frequent it. I say apparently because we didn't actually go inside. As our bus pulled up outside and we chugged the remains of our beer, the Jesters poured out of the club and announced that it was crap. It was, allegedly, expensive and there was a long queue to get not enough dinner. SO we all piled back onto the bus and returned to the camp site.
The rest of the evening was low-key. We grabbed some pizzas, which everybody except me bitched about. Mine was arch. It was a calzone, just the way mama used to make them. Benissimo. After that, we had a few quiet beers and eventually most of us faded. But the important thing is that we didn't upset anybody in the campsite. This would come in handy the following day.