Bite me Noz
The shenanigans with travel started about 2 weeks before departure. Rumours were circulating that Monarch were about to go under. I didn’t believe it myself but when the news was confirmed I was straight on Skyscanner on the Monday morning and quickly sourced a new flight for me and Ron from East Mids with the worlds shixxiest airline who were busy cancelling as many flights as they could at the time. It was cheap though and flew us into Murcia so wasn’t all bad. This wasn’t the end of it though. All Ryanair flights were cancelled the day before we were due to travel thanks to the lazy French air traffic control having their annual strike (aka extended bank holiday).
About 5.30pm Tuesday I received a text from Ronno to inform me that all of Wednesdays flights were also cancelled based on information received from his business partner Coops. We quickly convened in the Vaults to develop a plan of action – driving was discussed but abandoned when we realised that Coops doesn’t know the difference between Tuesday the 10th October and Wednesday 11th October. The flight was back on.
Me and Ronno, one half of the WHVGS La Manga A team (hmm no, best not) Advanced Party (no, bad idea) People Who Travelled A Day Earlier Than Everyone Else got picked up by Bomber at 4am for a swift drive in my dad’s brand new Audi Q5. The trip to the airport was uneventful – we both decided we weren’t having a drink until we got to La Manga – so after a swift pint in the airport bar and a few fags we boarded the flight. Because Ryanair are a bunch of robbing xxxts we weren’t sitting together. I took the opportunity to clear down all the duplicate photos on my phone.
We arrived safely at La Manga and were followed soon after by the other half off the WHVGS La Manga A team (Advanced Party People Who Travelled A Day Earlier Than Everyone Else. The plan for the day had already been established by the highly organised WHVGS La Manga A team (Advanced Party People Who Travelled A Day Earlier Than Everyone Else. It was to consist of a round on the par 3 course, and game of pool and a game of cards for 20Europes a man.
The highly organised WHVGS La Manga A team (Advanced Party People Who Travelled A Day Earlier Than Everyone Else soon found that we weren’t as organised as we thought. The par3 was shut – and any attempts to negotiate a decent price to play one of the other courses were met with the same indifference experienced when we found there weren’t enough buggies on the CJ Sunday. There was only one solution, we went to the pub.
Luck was on our side the Si bar also contained a table tennis table, which replaced the par3 golf in the Wednesday tournament. Me and Ronno took on Peds and Aust, it won’t come as any surprise to the reader to discover that Peds was not a natural table tennis player – losing both his matches, more surprising though is that Aust is, Ronno beat him narrowly and he took me down 21-8 in his second match.
We then moved on to pool. Aust discovered that he really likes this cider stuff, and was drinking his halves at the same pace as our pints – I believe this is the last day that he touched alcohol on the entre trip. The pool took ages – the table was awful with some cushions having no bounce at all, and it will come as no surprise to the reader to find that me and Ron took this down as well, giving us a good lead moving into the cards. As specialists in the Texas Hold’em poker format the result was never in doubt there was no chance that me and Ron could lose from our leading position. We had a quick dinner in the town (Steak) and headed back to the apartment for cards.
There was no way Peds should have been in the final hand – Ron had been dealt pocket 8s and Peds had King 9 off, Ron played it perfectly (apparently) and Peds played it terribly (apparently), but Peds won and him and Aust took down the 40 europes prize pot.
We carried on playing cards for a while and slowly people filtered off to bed having had a long but excellent day.
The next morning the WHVGS La Manga A team (Advanced Party People Who Travelled A Day Earlier Than Everyone Else eagerly awaited the arrival of the B team People Who Didn’t Travel A Day Earlier Than The People Who Travelled a Day Earlier Than Everyone Else. Everyone arrived in good time and had a spot of lunch before heading down to the course for a round of golf.
The format of the day was Bingo, Bango, Bongo, Bungo. I believe this is a recognised format but with the addition of Bungo (Millers) whose bad back meant that he may not be able to play the whole round but whose participation was critical to the format. Peds has spent about 3 hours that morning calculating what a very predictable golfer like Millers would do for each shot that he may not play. It would have given Millers a decent round of 30, but Miller chose to play the entire round himself and let his side down badly.
By hole 4 of Bingo, Bango, Bongo I was furious. FFS Boyce (as he was continually addressed throughout the round) was marking the card in our group and it seemed to take an unbelievable amount of time at each tee for him to complete this task. I told him after each hole the exact scores he had to write down but it still seemed to take 2-3 minutes on every tee. We were the final group so had queues of golfers behind us adding to my frustration. At points, we had all played our tee shots and Boyce was still pratting about in the buggy, god knows what he was doing. He’d then wander up to the tee and say “Right, what have we got here then”, then wander back to the buggy, then choose a club, then change his club then maybe play his tee shot.
Adding to my growing rage was the utter stupidity of the group ahead of us, which had Gregs (Director of Heartflood), Donk (Director of Raygun consulting), Aust (Finance Director of a multi-million-pound fruit and veg supplier) and someone else who I can’t remember. They were assigning 12 points a hole incorrectly regardless of the decision as to who was boss etc etc. I informed them of their error and they decided they would stick with their own incorrect scoring format as the correct format as explained to them was just too complex. I stormed off I believe my final say on the matter was “Fine, whatever, I can’t be bothered with this”. I had my own problems with FFS Boyce to cope with.
I can’t remember too much else about the round – it was a fun format that I’d play again. Back in the bar Peds added up the team points and the reader will not be surprised to learn that the winner of Bingo, Bango, Bongo was the WHVGS La Manga A team (Advanced Party People Who Travelled A Day Earlier Than Everyone Else by 3 points. There was no wild celebration as you would expect, just a quiet acknowledgement of the inevitable.
The evening was pretty uneventful and nothing of note happened at all. We had a nice dinner in the Last Drop (Steak) a few quiet beers, stocked up on food and drink in the garage where FFS Boyce bought a magnum for pudding. Wooly was managing the whip admirably, FFS Boyce was ensuring he got maximum value from it by ordering additional garlic bread. Me, Millers and Bacon stayed out with the Cat and Gregs for a few extra beers after everyone else went off to bed. Gregs stole 20 europes from the kitty and the last we saw of him and the Cat was them heading into Mulligans so the Cat could continue chasing the married middle aged woman who was out for the night with her husband. Somehow Gregs got hit by a stray golf ball in Mulligans and got a nasty cut on his eye from it. I got back to the WHVGS La Manga A team (Advanced Party People Who Travelled A Day Earlier Than Everyone Else apartment and there was a game of cards being played, which I joined. About 3am I shouted at Peds. A combination of too much alcohol, not enough sleep, losing badly at cards and being abused for continual rule transgressions got the best of me. Fortunately, this was the final massive meltdown of the weekend and needless to say I had the last laugh wining 80 euros on the final hand of the evening (KKK, A23 os, QTT)
The Amy Austin took place on the Friday afternoon. We played the same course as the previous day. Most of it’s a blur – I have no idea who I played with, no idea who came second, no idea who won the dog and no idea who sharked. By the fact that I’m writing this it means I must have won though. This meant I got my handicap down to the 22 as forecasted many weeks earlier. The only hole of note for me was a birdie on the par 5 Dog hole (14th?) which pushed me over the finish line.
I got to the final of the excellent Pedro Power funded matchplay stimulator that was universally enjoyed and was receiving jealous glances from the other societies in the bar. It fell badly for me though covering a run of the 3 holes that went blob 1 blob so Wooly took down the generous 50 europes Pedro Power funded prize. It’s fair to say that the matchplay stimulator is absolute genius, creating fantastic betting opportunities as well as being a great laugh. We phoned the idiot at this point but he was on his way to Tae Kwan Do so couldn’t talk. There was a number of other presentations, including the fantasy golf prize giving (thanks to Zahra) where Dougals dream of receiving his prize money directly from me was granted.
Evening meal was a giant paella for most (no steak) and then a game of cards back at the WHVGS La Manga A team (Advanced Party People Who Travelled A Day Earlier Than Everyone Else apartment. It may have been this night I shouted at Pedro – I can’t really remember. The remainder of the evening was again uneventful to my knowledge and at this point I hand over to the Claret Jug winner.
Thanks to all involved in organising (Dougal / Peds primarily) and everyone else for a great time. Despite certain events that fortunately I don’t need to cover, it was a cracking almost week away and I’m already looking forward to next year.
