Stags and Hens

I had been invited on my sons stag do and Anna, my wife, the hen do. How times have changed. I love my father dearly, but the thought of him sitting next to me in Spearmint Rhino on my pre wedding bash fills me with dread. I said I wouldn't feel bad if I was left out, but Murray, my son, was adamant I partake, as Emma's (Murray's bride-to-be) father was participating. 

So it was, we bombed it up to Coquelles, where we stay in a Formula 1 'hotel' before crossing. We hadn't stayed there since Covid and the place had had a make over. You still have to traipse down the corridor for a pee, memorise a five digit pin number to get back into your room post pee, the one pillow I had was the size of a T-bag and breakfast is bread and jam. But it is cheap. 

The gals were off to Bath for three days of activities including a life drawing session of a tattooed man and an It's a Knockout sort of games afternoon. The boys were off to Cambridge for one night only. The afternoon activity was paintballing and then into town to drink. My wife had given me the responsibility of making sure our son got back to his hotel and wasn't tied to a lamp post naked. This was of concern, as my track record with alcohol is not good. 

At Apocalypse Paintball I felt like a member of a fanatical militia training group as we donned our Guantanamo style overalls, face shields in the middle of some redneck woods in East Anglia. There were about sixty of us, all male, all ages clutching our compressor guns loaded with yellow balls of paint...the Mujahideen we were not.

I thought it would be just our stag party running round the woods, occasionally firing at each other. How wrong I was. It was akin to the opening twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan. Mayhem. Bullets flying everywhere. The second, third, fourth and fifth games were quite similar. 

My strategy was to hide behind a stack of tyres and avoid getting shot. Because when you did, it hurt. I found squatting behind a large tree physically challenging, let alone running into a hail of yellow bullets. I would have given myself a white feather for cowardice, but I didn't want to get hurt. I have always considered myself more of a lover than a fighter. 

One groom-to-be had been dressed in a tutu and pink high vis jacket...at the end of the session he looked like a walking egg yolk. 

The party then sojourned to Cambridge. I had gone up in the world and was staying at a Premier Inn, where I met up with my brother, who was charged with looking after me. We had been informed on the Staggy-McStag-face WhatsApp group to wear Baby Luigi fancy dress costume. It had to be explained to me that he is a character from the Mario Brothers computer game. Murray was dressed as Mario. The costume (an all-in-one lycra affair bought from eBay) comes in one size, so there were some very tight fitting outfits; some of the bigger guys had to stoop so they weren't cut in half and one chap had to cut the trousers off altogether to accommodate his ample girth. 

It was hysterical seeing whatever the collective noun is for a group of Luigis wandering into the centre of Cambridge. Some people stopped the group and had their photo taken with them, some beeped their horns, one charmer shouted 'you w*****s' from his car window. 

I don't know if it was the paintballing or the fancy dress but a sense of camaraderie came over the group. Most of the stags were mid to late twenties. But, it was lovely how everybody was made to feel part of the group. After copious amounts of booze and games involving a ping pong ball, a night club was the next port of call. As tinnitus suffers my brother and I decided the night club wasn't for us and staggered back to The Premier.

Just as we were leaving the pub another stag party came in, they were dressed as beefeaters and the the groom-to-be was dressed as her Maj' the Queen. It was like a surreal version of West Side Story, the Luigis against Beefeaters. But from nowhere QE2 produced a ceremonial sword, Mario took a knee and was royally dubbed on either shoulder and arose as Sir Mario to a cacophony of cheering from the Beefs and the Luigis.