apparently it was a car chase...

that got the bikes (see my previous post)! Now that would have been fun to watch!

Went on Si B's Stag Do this weekend to Dan's parents farm down in Surrey. We did lot's of boy stuff, like shooting, quad biking and swapping manly stories about the good old days of being young, free and single!

The clay pigeon shooting took place on the farm itself under a lovely clear blue sky and was lead by a couple of real old geezers who regaled us with their stories, usually begining with 'well, when I was a lad' and 'caws, kids these days dhant know their bauwn'. We split into two groups; the have shots and the have not shots - I was needless to say in the beginners team and spent quite a while missing, but on my very last go I got 6 clays for six bullets so I was dead chuffed.

After a Bar-b-q that was most skillfully cooked up by Dan's folks we headed off to quad biking, which took place on a seriously hill-billy farm but was pretty enjoyable considering my preference is to have pedals if the word 'bike' is involved! There was plenty of mud and a fair amount of testosterone to boot.

Quad biking was followed by setting up camp back at the farm, and with a fair degree of optimism I strung my Hammock between some very thorny trees next to the camp site. I'd forgotten how cool the hammock that we bought way down in Florianapolis is, and it's fairly ironic that I carried it all the way up through Brasil only to send it home and not use it till now. I put up a tent anyway just in case the many predictions of rain were to come true...

Once camp was all set we headed off to the Hare and Hounds for a fantastic meal and some post shooting/quad biking analysis, general advice to Si on being married, er, again, and plenty of Spitfire ale and red wine.

Back at camp a number of hours later and with some marsh mallows and Stella Artois to hand we lit the carefully pre-prepared bonfire (Dan's handywork) and settled down to some suitable round-the-camp-fire banter. I'm sure at this point I began to bestow virtues on Red Ken beyond his merrit in response to the terror I felt that some of the party were considering voting for Boris... Oh well, seems to be the way with a lot of people I know, and it occurred to me today that we may well end up using the term 'Borisisms' way more that we can currently imagine if it goes his way.

After I failed miserably to get my guitar to play properly and we'd thoroughly exhausted a good number of Stella cans I fumbled my way into the Hammock and settled down to get some shut eye. Sure enough at some very early time of the morning I was awoken by rain pitter pattering through the tree leaves and onto my head, so in fear of a total down pour I upped camp and retreated to my tent. However, no sooner had I got there than the rain stopped and all was well again at camp Mohacek.

Sunday was a day of recuperation and rest and generally feeling pretty mash-up, which would mean that the stag do can count as a complete success.