It'd been years since the old uni lot hung out together, everyone's very busy and a bit shit at organising things, you know how it is. So we planned a few drinks on a Friday night in central London. I met The Cyclist and Badger and we went to the Ship & Shovell - a lovely old pub off the Strand, alas on a Friday night it's rammed with City pissheads and has a scary barmaid who shouts at you if you step outside the painted lines that corral the smokers outside the pub. (Obviously we tested this by standing on the line/ with our feet within the line but our upper bodies out of it... she wasn't very impressed.)
The pub is at the top of Villiers Street, and you look down the covered arches that lead down to Heaven nightclub. We were waiting for The Gay (he's not really, but he is the campest straight man I know. Saying that, I can't vouch for his heteroxexuality 100%) and befittingly, the first we saw of him was him strolling under the arches right next to the massive rainbow sign that advertised the night G-A-Y at Heaven. He clocked us watching him and proceeded to skip jauntily up the steps to us, sporting an 'I Heart Tea' t-shirt and wearing his omnipresent bike lock around his chest like some sort of confused He-Man.
After a few pints of everyone catching up and watching The Cyclist's other half Mr Scooter talk about his new vehicle and do excellent impressions of how cool he looked on an 80s Honda Vision compared to cyclists and mobility scooters, we went for some Mexican food at the first place we stumbled across.
It was too busy to get a table immediately, so we were ushered down stairs to the 'bar' - a tiny floor space where we generally got in the way of other diners and nosied in cupboards next to us. Mr Scooter nicked the last mojito they had but he kindly shared it with us, we were undeterred even when he licked the straws and some of the ice before offering it to us.
Once we were equipped with a round of margaritas and a table next to the boiling hot kitchen, we pored over the menu. For some reason that I'm still not clear on, the male members of the table decided that it was a brilliant idea to take the little ramekins of Mexican condiments and do them like shots.
"Can we have another round of shots please? Er, I mean, some more sauces?"
"I'm not swallowing a spoon, I am still waiting for this wedge of lime to go down."
The sensible people in our group decided to leave after dinner, whereas Badger and I thought having more drinks was a wicked idea. He tried to shove me over outside and I stumbled into some people who worked in the restaurant we'd just been in. Despite us clearly being idiots, we got chatting to Stefano the Italian manager and he kindly invited us back to the restaurant for a lock-in.
This is why I found myself, post-tequila, in a cupboard in the restaurant basement with Stefano ranting about how much he hated one of his colleagues and how he didn't know what his next move should be. I tried to be empathetic and offer him genuine, well-meaning career advice. Badger just looked at him and said,
"Stefano. You're just being a bit... Italian about it. Chill out, yeah?"
Stefano didn't mind this and still wanted to try on Badger's leather jacket so we avoided upsetting him. I think. We thanked him for the tequila and headed back to mine, where Badger got fixated on brushing my hair at 4am which was nice. If not a bit odd.
What I really enjoyed on Saturday morning though, was being woken up by a slap to the forehead and some abuse. I tried to go back to sleep for a bit and was just about to succeed when Badger poured cold water directly into my earhole, the utter, utter bastard.
I swear my balance hasn't been the same since.
