Posts Tagged ‘drinking’

On Friday we headed out from work to grab a few drinks as as I am heading out the door and Darren has only fairly recently arrived at Open Door so we thought it high time we organise some kind of outing to the pub before I left.

Of course a few beers turned into a few more beers (as was the underlying plan when it came down to it 😀 ) until the night began to draw in at which point people started coming up with really silly excuses like “I’m quite ill, on quite a bit of medication for it and I shouldn’t be mixing it with alcohol.” What else should we expect from the cotton wool culture of modern society though?

We ended up with just me, Nick and Dean (my boss and the MD respectively) in the gay district at the bottom of town. Everyone denies they were the one leading us in that direction but we somehow ended up there never the less so decided to head into The Elbow Room which I’ve never actually been in before.

Turns out it’s a rather cool place, it really reminds me of the bar in The O.C. with the indie band playing in the corner and a really laid back attitude in the middle of a sea of over-trendyness that surrounds it. Well worth a visit.

Yesterday was the usual Tuesday night A-Soc social once again at The Library as the union is closed until next week. They finally had food back on this week so I took the chance to order one of Scream’s rather tasty mixed grills to which they didn’t have any steak for :o. I mean, what is a mixed grill without the steak? They ended up doing me double chicken and double gammon though so I’m not complaining.

Attendance was good, Nicola is back in civilization if only for a few days and The Gijs put in a guest appearance too. As ever, a successful night in the end.

Yesterday was the first of two Christmas parties at my office. The first of two because we’re really busy at the moment so didn’t want to have a full on night and so decided to go out for a meal last night and have a proper drinking session in January. Of course last night turned rather heavy as everyone knew it would but there you go.

We started off at the Cuthbert Broderick which was absolutely packed. I don’t understand why there were so many people out on a Thursday night, maybe because it’s so close to Christmas, maybe because Thursday is just a heavy night in Leeds. In any case, I wasn’t too impressed.

Dinner was at Ha Ha Bar also in Millenium Square which was a bit of a mixed bag. The starters were very small indeed while the main course wasn’t too bad but basically you just get some kind of meat on a dish and then a few potatoes and vegetables to share. To be fair to them though the steak was cooked very nicely but then it’s not like they gave you a choice how you wanted it.

Once we’d eaten we headed out round a few bars including the one in the German Christmas market which was an interesting experience (and where I happened to run into Rosie and Danny) and then worked our way down to the Headrow. By this time it was gone midnight and so with only half our number remaining I decided to head home. Nick was buzzing and so headed off with Tom and Dean for further beers (no suprises there lol).

The damage from last night showed when I rolled up to the office to find I was the first person there. Tom arriving soon after informed me that he had gotten in 5:30 that morning having goten through a great deal of antics including Mojos, breaking up several fights and a cup of tea in Little London. Good stuff.

By last Sunday that time of year had rolled around again so we headed out to Nando’s for a meal Sunday evening. It being Sunday night and all with a lot of people having work Monday morning, turn out was limited to those really hardcore people, a select group of myself and 18 of my good friends.

We arrived at The Light at 7 as planned to find that Nando’s had in fact run out of food.

I’m not kidding.

Apparently, they were closing for a week to refurbish so rather than maintain a sensible stock level and transfer any remaining food to a different restaurant they just let it run out. So we headed down to the one at the bottom of Briggate. I like to think of it as a surprise party as we didn’t tell them we were coming.

Having got down there they said it would take us an hour to get a table and to come back then. They also asked for an exact number of people, which I gave them based on how many people we had there at the time. After that, we headed off to the Hog’s Head around the corner for a quick drink while we waited.

Problem was, people started turning up faster than they could seat people. By the time we had got back we had another two people and by the time they had found seats for those two we had another two people! Needless to say the staff at Nando’s were not amused. But I was 😀 .

The food was excellent as usual, although we did find a chicken brain in Kate’s meal.

Afterwards, we headed up to Bourbon which was of course closed – it’s like an A-Soc event all over again. So we ended the night at the Cuthbert Broderick next door drinking until kick out time. Good times.

Speaking of freshers’ week events, Thursday was the pub crawl, a bit of a good old fashioned social to introduce the new members to the society.

Not that our new member turn out was particuarly impressive, it wasn’t, and it certainly wasn’t what we hoped for but they came none the less. More importantly in the end, plenty of existing members turned up and had a great night by all accounts. I’m glad someone did.

We made it through The Old Bar, The Fenton, Dry Dock, Bourbon, Courtyard and Weatherspoon’s before finally being stopped by a very closed Bar Censsa. I mean, who the hell is closed on freshers’ week? Apparently quite a few places. Town was dead for what you would think would be the busiest week of the year. Still, that just got us served faster 😀 .

Apparently.

I missed much of the drunken conversation last night but apparently Norm’s response when they started playing Ring of Fire was “last time I played this I ended up having sex with a man.” Sarann is a fantastic resource for remembering such comments.

Another Tuesday, another record breaking A-Soc social. This time we managed 18 people just creeping ahead of the previous summer socials and most probably the most well attended event since Rationalist Week 2008. We had more people in there than the rest of The Old Bar put together including both patrons and staff.

There were so many people I wanted to chat to I didn’t manage to make it round everybody though I did manage to beat Oli at pool. It was fantastic to see everyone in good spirits too – Rich returned for a second week which was fantastic, Liz got quite drunk, George was out and about and both Matt’s were brandishing a smile which I am most pleased about.

The evening came close (in a way) with my somehow standing on the steps outside of the union preaching about upcoming events to everyone and though I am reliably informed by a multitude of texts from various people that many of the others went on to party in Hyde Park. Fantastic stuff.

How many of you have seen American Graffiti? If not, well, you should. It’s a defining moment in the young George Lucas’s film career and will explain a lot of Simpsons jokes to you. But never the less I shall fill you in. It’s a movie about the 50’s rock and roll cruising culture in the States before it made way for the crime and the drugs.

That’s exactly what The D used to be like. We’d get out from a close at 3am and cruise down to Tesco, grab ourselves a sandwhich and eat, chat and generally wind down.

Those days are gone. Less closers, people heading straight off claiming they are tired despite being doped up on caffeine, taurine and increasingly these days even alcohol as well. The drink and the drugs is pushing out the friendly sandwhich culture which made the old days so great.

Still, having gone through the usual Sunday night ritual of pub quiz then drive thru for some late night food we found ourselves for one night re-capturing the spirit those days, if only for one night. What made last night different from any other night? Maybe it was because we had all been drinking more the normal. And maybe, just maybe, alcohol really is the cause, and solution to all of lives problems.

Friday saw our long time coming (though possibly not so awaited) house warming.

I never really put much thought to it, I’m not even sure I got round to inviting people and was quite suprised when quite a number of people began to tell me throughout the week that they would see me at the party on Friday.

Still Friday having arrived it was all but dead until 10:30. Still with Kieran having turned up all the way from London, a few other select guests and there being plenty of alcohol in the house, we had sufficent company and drink to make it a good night anyway. Not that it was a problem was once the night drew on the guests began to flood in.

The party ended up going on till around 5am before the approaching daylight sent us running for cover. Not too bad for a group of suburbian based OAPs ;).

This year the union are running a “Skint” fortnight which means that instead of offering free entry to the last two Fruitys like they normally do, they are charging £2 entry. It still proved a tempting enough offer last Friday however.

I seem to be even more of a light weight within the past few weeks. We got to the pub about 5 past 10 and by 11 I was struggling to finish my 6th drink. It’s clearly been far too long since we were doing regular Bondi Beach Bar trips, that was like the first 15 minutes “back in the day.”

I recon we did it the right way though – hit The Old Bar first, then head up to Terrace when The Old Bar kicks out and finally head into Fruity when Terrace kicks out, that way Fruity is already warmed up and playing ultra-cheese by the time you arrive.

On saying that maybe it was a bad idea to get there in time for B*Witched. We seemed to scare Rosie’s housemates off by bursting into song. I mean, it’s not that strage a couple of mid-twenties males screaming their hearts out C’est La Vie. Right?