Drunken Wasps On Tour! Full Details (yeah, right!)
Top Shelf Man!
By KevinTheB
October 14 2002
This is the story of the 2002 Official Drunken Wasps Tour to Parma. Names have been changed to protect the innocent. Except, of course, where it is embarrassing. Pictures will be added as they become available.
It started for me at home, about two o’clock on Friday. Old friends ‘Mad Dog’ Wayne Morris and Flavio Romano ‘Porno’ Walker arrive and we pile into the estate car with PhilTheB and 26 Special Edition Drunken Wasps shirts. Any idea how much room they take up?! Off to Chelmsford, where we get lost on the way to Neil ‘Flackie’ Flack’s house. Eventually agree to meet up in a pub car park, where his wife decants him into the car with us.
Through the back lanes to Stanstead. Gets a call on the Mobile Dog from Slaav. “Is there another flight after our one, as we haven’t left London yet!” “Oh dear!”, I say, and we get back to discussing the public domain forensic evidence from the recent Barrymore Inquest. Does anyone else know what a Rectal Thermometer Operative does for a living?
Rock up at the airport, throw the car in the Long Term, into the airport and check in. Through security, passport control, and into the bar by the gate.
Game On! Shirts given out, everyone agrees they are the canine’s testicles. Lizzie Eardley, a friend of Rachel Bayes of Wasps, arrives. She is travelling in our company. What a recruit! The Slaav story develops. Low level flying up the M11 by Spence gets Slaav into the terminal minutes before check-in closes – however, parking the car gets Spence and Rhiann to the gate seconds after check-in closes, and Ryan Air won’t open up for him. Disaster! We had previously discussed the possibility with the check-in crew – they put the pair of them on a later flight to Ancona – relief!
We board DrunkenWaspieOne in a state that resembles sobriety – and promptly set out to change this! Jar corners the champagne market; the rest of us make sure none of the other passengers get any beer. All done in the best possible taste and with no resentment by anyone! 110 minutes later, flare out onto Forli runway. Off the ‘plane and through customs in ten minutes flat – my kind of airport. Out onto the street and ….. bloody hell, the coach is only there waiting, with the DW emblem in the window as requested! Remarkable! Official translator Porno (ON RECORD: all of the DWs – what would we have done without him last weekend! Three cheers for Porno! Hip Hip …. ) and de facto tour leader KevTheB introduce themselves to the driver, and arrange a surprise for the party.
Prise the team out of the airport bar into the coach – big Mercedes job, very comfy, thanks. There’s a few tins involved at the back of the bus, obviously. First-timers are looking around, rabbit-in-the-headlights fashion! Onto the motorway. 100km/h with cruise control. After 20 minutes, off into a service station. “Surprise! 30 minute pitstop!” They serve draught beer, pizza, hot and cold sandwiches, so off we go. 30 mins turns into an hour, and we also raid the tinned beer fridge for emergency supplies. Everyone back on the coach except for Muppet, who is negotiating for a 4-gallon bottle of Lambrusco and the contents of the top shelf of the magazine rack. He finally boards the coach. First renditioning of the Lemon Song results.
Arrive at the hotel, clipboard comes out again, everyone allocated into rooms remarkably trouble-free. DrunkenDeutcheWasp, Spence and Rhiann are in the bar. How the hell did they do that? A fast cab driver coupled with our extended pitstop explains most of it. Paulie Knight decides the best way to introduce himself is to buy all the beer in the hotel bar and say hello – cheers, Paul!
So 0100am Saturday comes round. Some of us go to rooms, for a brisk start to Saturday. Some others go out ‘till dawn. Blue and White fans are found, and their game discussed with the aid of beer. Flackie enters a “I’ll bore you to death first” competition with Jon Humphries of Bath. Porno smuggles SmileyKate out of a Club before she gets fought over as part of the proceeds of a drug deal.
And that’s just the warm-up!