Well, its been a while since we got drunk. Infact, just over a week. Admittedly the LowerFlat’s exploits in Petersfield are, at the moment, unrecorded, namely because we couldn’t quite remember exactly what happened, and then endured a matching set of 2 day hangovers. Ouch.

However, since Petersfield had been to celebrate the end of Rich’s exams, it only seemed fair that since Jim, Ross and Mark all had their final (and infact only) exam that a few beers were had in celebration. We were joined on the occasion by Paul ‘Mr’ Hayford, who for those of you who where paying attention joined us and Jean-Pierre the Polar bear on our visit to Calais back in December.

Jim met Mr H off the train shortly after the end of the exam for a couple of pints in Gunwharf and then moved on to Tequila Vodka Redbull in Tiger Tiger before Phil K joined for an inpromptu trip over to the Isle Of Wight. Only, we discovered on arrival that there wouldn’t be a ferry back for at least an hour, so got straight back on the boat. Thank goodness for cans of Fosters.

The intrepid travellers met the rest of the group at Apsley House where Mark was a little worse for wear making some rather amusing demands of Lucy having just Seven-Balled her at Pool. Meanwhile as the Cider began to flow, it seemed that Gubbs and Rich were going to settle the LowerFlat Pool Challenge following on from last time’s 1-1 draw. Before we can continue though, we have to include a message from Gubbs for Legal Reasons:

Just remember, when you put this on the website to point out that I beat Rich… which means he lost.

Which should make it blatantly obvious by now that Gubbs was infact victorious in what had previously been called the ‘deciding game’… which seems to have also resulted in the rules being changed to include more games.

Before too long, Mark and Gubbs left Apsley House to join Ross and a few others at Tange whilst the rest of us finished our drinks and returned home… which for Phil just happened to be London… Jim and Paul arrived home a little later having gone walkabout down the seafront to find Mark in the kitchen in a somewhat inebriated state and attempting to consume small chunks of cheese. After convinving Mark that calling his girlfriend at 1am was not the best of ideas he conceded to go to sleep.

Not that anyone got much sleep. Ross rolled in around 3am with Gobble and a still un-named 3rd man, and proceeded to spend most of the next 3 hours treating the rest of the house (and no doubt the neighbours) to a selection of music… and try and Jim, Rich and Mark could, there was no shutting him up. Revenge was served a little later when Ross awoke on the sofa (with no cushions), on enquiring why he wasn’t in bed the answer was quite simple…

“I think there are two men in my bed…”

… another night out for the residents of Chetwynd Road then…

Well, on Wednesday 2nd Feb, we went to Petersfield. We got drunk. Very drunk. There’s not much point in watching a full account of all this - we quite simply don’t remember… so, heres a few choice cuts…

• 5 pints…
• Followed by 3 bottles of Wine in our first visit to the Folly Wine bar
• The Wine Bar’s rather strange toilet arrangement
• “Lads, I love you”
• Jim forcing Phil to stop the car to attempt to steal a Road Sign which wouldn’t fit in the front
• Rich running back to try and get this sign in the back of the car
• Boarding the train home, having nobbled the rest of our bottle of wine and 2 glasses with Jim announcing to other passengers, ‘Yes, we’re drunk’
• 5 pints and 3 bottles of Wine exiting Jim’s system, being photographed by Ross
• The ensuing drunken brawl between Jim and Ross
• The 2 day hangovers

Guess what we did last night… no, really, guess? If you’re thinking we went to a live performance of Beethoven’s finest work - you’d be wrong. If you’re thinking we went to the pub, well, guess what… jackpot!

With Rich finishing an exam at six it didn’t take long before he arrived home demanding Jim’s presence for ‘a quick beer’, and despite a quick debate on whether to accept these demands or not, it wasn’t long before we were trying out the Duke of Devonshire (Albert Road) for the first time. For anyone who’s wondering, it’s just along the road from the sex shop. On the way however we’d decided to call ex-LowerFlat resident Ian ‘Gubbs’ Gubbins to see if he fancied playing a game or two of ‘hide the pint’… we were on this occasion in luck and we agreed to meet at the Duke of Buckingham around 40 minutes later to give Gubbs the time for what he deemed to be quite a necessary shower.

A swift ride in a taxi later we found ourselves at the Duke of Buckingham - thank god really as our Greek taxi driver’s in-car entertainment appeared to be listening to musicals on Radio 3 or 4… not sure which, but it certainly wasn’t at any risk of playing something from the last two decades. Anyway, Gubbs turned up a little after and we settled in for a few games of pool on the 60p a game table (strange amount if you ask us). Suffice to say that after an initial good performance Jim’s playing went tits up and returned to normal, whilst Rich and Gubbs battled it out for LowerFlat Pool Player of the Year. Unfortunately, they reached a 1-1 draw by the time last orders were called, meaning the title’s still up for grabs… until the next time, Ciao!

Good God Shirley, it seems we haven’t written anything on here, in, well, years, so, it’s time to do something about that, and also stop the excessive use of commas in this sentence.

Based on past experience it seems to be a pretty foregone conclusion that whenever Al comes down to visit, there’s usually a vast amount of alcohol involved, and this time was no exception. Fresh from some highly important Navy course, Al arrived in his suit with the appearance of sophistication… a vision soon to be destroyed.

No sooner had Mr P walked into the door there was a beer in his hand and shortly after that Jim managed to knock up dinner in the form of Pork and Chorizo kebabs whilst also managing to knock back a good few glasses of beer. Al and Jim left the house shortly after dinner to obtain a couple of bottles for ‘later on’ before heading off to the first pub of the evening, the Duke Of Buckingham.

Rich and them from the UpperFlat (that’s Mark and Ross to you) joined Al, Jim and Penny in Langtry’s… sorry… The White Horse for another quick drink, before progressing to Apsley House. Rich kicked off the Pool challenge, defeating Jim, Mark, Ross, and just about anyone else in sight. All to soon though last orders were called and everybody headed home via the legendary epicentre that is ‘Charcoal Grill’ for chips in Pita bread - and possibly certain members of the group also stopped to indulge in the sport of ‘urinate on the most expensive car in the street’.

Getting home the bottles of Rum, Kahlua and Southern Comfort were cracked open for a game of snakes and ladders with an alcoholic twist. Al however was somewhat in the mood to ‘dance his ass off’ and dragged Jim out to the Union at 1am for a quick groove before finally giving up and coming home.

But that wasn’t the end of the night… it turned out in the morning that Al had crawled out of Jim’s room and experienced a little encore of the previous night on the floor on his way to the kitchen. Unfortunately, Al had neglected to remember this and the offending pile of vomit was discovered by Jim. When he stepped in it barefoot.

Out for revenge Al was promptly kicked out of bed and given a mop to remove the offending mess, before then continuing to stay in bed feeling fragile for the remainder of the day whilst life carried on as normal for everyone else.

Monday 12th December saw the Uni’s Xmas ball in full swing, with live music from The Chip Shop Boys, and perhaps a little more impressively… Rachel Stevens. Once again Vince was in residence in the LowerFlat, and Steff came down for the evening’s festivities.

After Vince got ready (something about waistcoat and tie not matching) we headed off to Spoons for a few lubricating beverages and then onto the ball itself… not really a lot to be said, so instead, check out the pictures in our Christmas Ball Gallery…

Hello Pop-pickers….

So, a little quiet around here this week… that’s because we’ve been working! All these deadlines to meet can be such a pain… anyway, it’s all over now, so time to tell you a little about last weekend…

Firstly: Alan Fletcher - aka Doctor Karl Kennedy rocks. The man is a legend.
Secondly: We don’t have many pictures, because most of them are on Vince’s camera, so we’ll be skanking them off him next week and making our very own Dr K online gallery

Dancing on a Friday Night…
So, it all started last friday night, with Vince coming down to join the festivities. All in all a rather civil evening up to a point, with Jim, Vince, Rich and Lucy (aka Mrs Rich) all going out for a few pints in the local, alas only to be slightly disappointed to find that the much promised pool table had been delivered but wasn’t quite working - namely because some bugger had walked off with a fer parts of it. Dinner seemed like quite a good idea, and we all piled down to co-op to obtain some cash from the machine, and whilst waiting for a taxi Rich and Jim were to be seen practicing the art of ‘lefties’ - much to the shock of a somewhat inebriated tramp sitting nearby attempting to give oral pleasure to his can of Special Brew. To explain, ‘lefties’ is quite simple, two people run towards each other before jumping and attempting a mid-air chest impact… the term ‘lefties’ is to encourage each participant to remember to tilt their head, er, left, in order to avoid any long term damage.

Dinner followed in the Duke of Buckingham, with the waitress making the very foolish mistake of removing the Wine Glasses from the table a few short seconds before it was demanded she return them and 2 bottles of wine. Feeling somewhat merry after dinner and the amount of booze consumed, we walked over to Langtry’s (OK, so it’s not called that anymore, but hell, if all the Folkestone people keep calling ‘The Pris’ by the name ‘The Pris’, then we’ll stick with Langtry’s thank-you-very-much)… after a few more beverages there it came time to return to the LowerFlat to re-group, dropping Lucy off on the way. Once back, Rich and Vince tarted themselves up, and off to Gunwharf it was to continue lowering the level of blood in their alcohol system…. that’s as far as Friday goes… quite simply because Jim wasn’t there and since it’s him (I mean me) writing this, the rest of the evening wasn’t really all that exciting…

When Saturday comes
Through some kind of miracle, Rich made it to work bright and early on the Saturday, although come 9am Vince was looking a little fragile after his night on the sofa. Jim disappeared bright and early to go up to collect people from Salisbury, namely Dave (Westy), Joh and Sophie… two Australians and an old friend of the LowerFlat who’d all decided to make the pilgrimage down to see us and Dr K.

Admittedly, Dave on the snakebite at 11am should really have started alarm bells ringing, but alas they didn’t, and the day continued with Vince and Mark going in search of hats and drills to be assembled as part of ‘Project Hat’ to create the evening’s headwear… yes, you’ve guessed it… hats with dangling corks! After spending a large part of the afternoon contemplating exactly how to construct the head gear, Vince did a sterling job of drilling holes through some 49 corks, whilst Jim, Joh and anyone else at hand began to attach them to hats. It’s believed by this point Dave had consumed the better part of half a large bottle of Jack Daniels…

On Rich’s return from work, dinner was served and somehow the earlier tidying of the kitchen became almost feutile as 8 sets of washing up appeared, along with Rich, Mark, Vince and Jim all drawing on T-Shirts whilst Dave, er, carried on drinking.

The Union was pretty empty when we arrived, but by around 10 upstairs started to fill up, infact, it got pretty damned insane waiting for the K man to appear on stage, which he eventually did at around 11.45… but hell, it was worth the wait. Fletch and Waiting Room belted out some quality tunes, including Wonderwall, Angels, some of their own stuff… but best of all, “The Susan Song”… if only alcohol haze hadn’t been so bad at this time, perhaps we’d be able to elaborate

As the gig ended, Rich and Vince took the small pile of CD’s we’d purchased to get them signed by K-man whilst Jim and friends went off in search of Dave who’d now been missing for some hours… eventually giving up and choosing to return home in the vein hope Dave would turn up… Which he did… at 9.15am the following morning…

All-in-all, Dr K is a legend in his own right, and hell, if we did LowerFlat T-Shirts we’d send him a free one! That’s all for now, but watch out for the Dr K picture gallery we’ll have online soon

Saturday…
Yeah… so anyway, it’s been a fairly quiet weekend here in the LowerFlat. Jim got back from home on Saturday night and since there was nothing better to do, the LowerFlat and Mark decided to head out down the pub, and for a change of scene we went for the Duke Of Buckingham down in Old Portsmouth. Feeling in a somewhat sociable mood, we also invited Penny and Gubbs - both of them actually arriving to grace us with their presence.

A few pints were consumed and the world put to rights - somewhere along the lines Jim and Rich even agreed that they’d attend the Quiz at the Union on Sunday night - depending on what state of inebriation they were in at the time. Come 11pm some rather unsociable person rang the bell and shouted ‘Time Please’ - all they had to do was look at their watch really but for some people even the most basic task can evidently be a chore.

Piling in a taxi, we returned back to Casa Chetwynd and feeling surprisingly the worse for wear after just a few pints we cracked on with the spirits, and cooked a highly delightful bowl of chips cheese and beans before heading off to bed - the idea being to get some work done sunday.

Sunday…
Sunday kicked off all rather normally with a little bit of work (not a lot mind you) being done. Rich had the brilliant idea of knocking up some Bacon and Egg sandwiches, whilst also drinking his first beer of the day. Come lunchtime, it was decided that the LowerFlat should pop out for a ‘lunchtime pint’… we never returned.

After a couple in the local we had a phone call from Rachele to see what we were up to, and in the interests of beer we headed off to The White Horse for a few whilst we waited for Phil to arrive from London to join us for the rest of the evening. He took a little longer than we’d have liked, so we moved onto the Owtback bar for a couple where Jim’s co-ordination was getting somewhat worse than usual. After putting the world to rights for a bit, followed by a short drive in the recently arrived Phil’s car we ended up in Goose for some food. Service was a bit slow, and so Jim resorted to eating Tartare Sauce out of the sachet. Thankfully shortly after a various assortment of food turned up, including Phil’s 6 bangers and mash - which ended up being quite an amusing sight to watch. During this time, the members of the LowerFlat also came up with some new hand gestures, and despite the best attempts of Rach to catch them on camera, they remain a mystery. There was also another co-ordination incident with Jim managing to get a large amount of ketchup to score a direct hit onto what had been a clean jumper.

After a dash back to the LowerFlat to get a clean jumper, we dropped Rach home and then headed off to the Union to get settled for the evening’s quizzing. By this time, feeling a little worse for wear. We arrived at the Union to meet Mark, Ross, Gubbs and Gem - and a whole host of ladies even worse for wear who probably wouldn’t have survived more than ten seconds infront of Simon Cowell with the level of singing talent they were demonstrating.

The quiz kicked off, with us in 2 teams, the idea being use the same answers and therefore get 1st and 2nd place and an increased winnings fund… however, owing to some confusion the final result was that ‘We never win anything’ came second and ‘LowerFlat.com + 1′ came aroud 5th or 6th - not really too sure how it all happened, but never mind. Jim’s skill in the half time quiz tie-breaker ensured that both teams got round on the house with the winning answer of 90,512… the question is what was the question…

Once it was all done and dusted, it was time to head home, courtesy of Phil’s driving once more, and Jim keeping (relatively) quiet in the back of the car.

So that’s the weekend, we’re next going drinking on Tuesday evening…. in Somerset.

Jim’s mates Phil and Dan came down to take part in the Lower Flat ‘Experience’ last friday. Perhaps it was rather foolish that Phil came down just after lunch o’clock only to be taken by Jim to a number of ale houses (and a certain Vodka bar). Rolling in at about 5pm to watch Richard and Judy followed by Neighbours, Rich (of the LowerFlat not the one with Judy) then joined us to start off the evening’s proceedings in the local pub where a number of pints of beer, and even more strangely that new Strongbow Sirrus stuff were consumed.

Around 7ish Dan (aka Dave) wandered past the window and was promptly pulled in for a swift pint, before we headed back home… Dan being hungry opted to visit the ‘Kebab Centre’ and grab a kebab - and all credit goes to him for actually managing to stomach one when sober.

Whilst sitting in the lounge of the Upper/Lower Flats indulging in some of the cider that Jim remembered leaving outside the back door some days before, Gubbs rang to say he was in the Vodka bar. Oh crap. Seems that in the haze that was the afternoon Jim had somehow forgotten the agreement to meet Gubbs in the Vodka bar at 8. The distinct lack of taxi meant moving out of the house and down into central Southsea pretty quickly to the chosen venue, HKC’s Vodka Bar - of course.

Meeting Gubbs we were shortly after joined by another acquaintance of Jim, Dan and Phil’s - Jonathan. Moving downstairs in HKC’s and commandeering a couple of tables the drinking continued with such Vodka delights in flavours including Milky Bar, Pear Drop, Rhubarb and Custard and Refreshers.

A change in taste dictated the move to Apsley house for a few pints of Addlestone’s - Dan lightweighting out onto the Stella, whilst Phil lightweighted out even more and proceeded to experience an encore of his previous consumptions into the toilet - before returning to the table and continuing to drink his pint, which by now contained a rather dubious amount of Cigarette ash… not that he noticed.

It became time to move on once more, Ross and Gubbs opting for the Union, the rest of us for the City Bar in search of a Midori Illusion, although they refused to serve those so we had to stick with the beers instead. Sometime after 11, Jonathan had to dive off and catch a train home and the rest of us feeling a little worse for wear decided to head back home. Walking to the Taxi Rank on Guildhall Walk there was the sudden desire to run up the steps of the Guildhall itself and joining in the chants of ‘Blue Army’ - though it had to be explained to Dan it wasn’t his native Birmingham City Blue Army we were in support of.

Rich dived off to Megabite, whilst Jim grabbed a passing Policeman to have his photo taken with, and Dan provided the camera man services - for some reason pretending to be foreign. One Mr Munchies had obtained his chips, cheese and beans it was time for a taxi home where the rest of us could order some pizza before passing out to sleep….

Well, aside from the phone call from Gubbs to let us know Ross had been kicked out of the Student Union (let’s not go into why…)… and in the case of Rich, being awoken for the half hour it apparently took Ross to get in the front door.

And who said alcohol’s bad for you?

Wednesday saw us do something we’d rather not admit. We went to Southampton. Now, in most cases the aim of being in Southampton is to get out as quick as possible, it’s the best thing to do really. But this time it really did have a purpose… we’d gone to collect Al who usually lives down in Falmouth (this is going to confuse things a bit as we actually know two Al’s, both of whom live in Falmouth. Don’t ask how or why, it just happens like that).

Arriving in the glorious masterpiece that is the multi-storey car park of West Quay Shopping Centre (Gunwharf is so much nicer…) we set about searching for Al who was apparently in Costa Coffee, near Waterstones. Was it not for the fact it seemed there were 2 Waterstones and an abundance of Costa Coffee branches about the place, it might have taken less than half an hour to find him, but ah well, at the end of it all we piled into Yates’ for a beverage and some lunch. Well, it took a little longer than expected since it took an hour to get food - but on the plus side, we had changed the order just after making it, and as some kind of bonus the very friendly Waitress gave us what we ordered, and a chicken and bacon baguette. Rock on.

Once done, the next aim was rather simple. Get the hell out of Southampton, get home, shower to de-toxify ourselves, and get down the pub. The first public house of choice being the Spice Island where Al and Rich both indulged in Real Ale, whilst Jim who was suffering from a rather immense cold/flu sat in the corner slowly drinking a lager.

Spice Island was evacuated in favour of the Still and West where Rich could puff away on some cancer sticks, and Mr Gubbsy Gubbins joined us for a pint before he was going out to a night at the theatre avec his lady. By this point it was getting a little dark and we moved to Osborne Road and the Owtback bar for a game or two of pool. It’s also interesting to note we actually looked at the rules - and intentionally jumping over a ball is a foul - take note Mr Mark Holley - we’ve got your number, and it’s not 118 118.

Next stop was a trip to HKC’s Vodka Bar… before kicking ourselves for never going there before… Vodka - in every confectionary flavour you can think of… Milky Bar… Wine Gum… Skittles… Pear Drop… Rhubarb and Custard. Owing to Rich and Al’s obsession with the barmaid (Jim staying out the way to avoid coughing all over her), we ended up in there for several rounds - including meeting the Chinese (?) owner of the place, who when we asked how he made the drinks answered ‘Sorry, me no speak English’ - the blatant cheek!

We toddled back towards Old Portsmouth after this to the Duke Of Buckingham to go meet Penny for a couple of beverages since she hadn’t seen Al for coming on 2 years and so there was a bit of catching up to be done. After a few more games of Pool, Al and Rich were in the mood for dancing and as we called a Taxi, and intended on heading home then onto the ‘Ulster’ Union to do some dancin.

Taxi Man was a bit of a legend that evening, and when we got near the LowerFlat and it’s one-way street, he decided to save us a bit of money by reversing up it - probably for the best since there was a car parked blocking the street so we wouldn’t have been able to do it going forward anyway. The only problem was this car wasn’t another taxi. Because Taxi’s don’t have large numbers of lights on the roof, or the word ‘POLICE’ on the bonnet. Taxi Man was a little alarmed: “Oh Shit, it’s the Old Bill!”. Before you could say ‘Hello Hello Hello’ and offer a beating with a truncheon down ‘Letsbe Avenue’, money was swiftly deposited into Taxi Man’s lap as we all dived out and back into the house with our newly adopted favourite Cabbie speeding off.

Alas after some phone research, the Union was heaving, so Al and Rich decided to give it a miss, instead opting for the Bolognese which had been cooked by Jim earlier. We would have had a beer with it - but some bugger has nobbled the corkscrew. It’s just not cricket… after which, there was nothing left to do, but go to bed and wait for the hangovers to kick in.

Ross went out last night… and after arriving home at 4am he’s not feeling that great today. Infact, he’s decided to go our lecture in beachwear. Why? We’ve got no idea. Not a sausage.