Stag Do
It was 1.30am on a Tuesday morning and I was stood in my kitchen, taking tiny mouthfuls of lukewarm chicken soup and hoping I could hold it down. I knew that on returning to my bedroom a night of shivering, sweating, half-hourly trips to the bathroom and livid Louise awaited. “Stop fidgeting, just go to sleep, Andy!” I was going to work in a few hours. I just felt sad.
It was always going to end like this. If my stag do had happened one hundred times, I would have ended up in this state ninety-plus times (give or take the chicken soup.) Three or four times would have ended up with broken limbs in a Portuguese hospital and five or six with a lost passport and having to fill in forms with a quivering hand to get one of those temporary paper passports, so I suppose I should count myself lucky.
I have no complaints. The long weekend in Lisbon was truly wonderful but deservedly robbed me of my fun tokens for the month. We got off to a flier (pardon the pun) at Manchester airport when we bumped into non-other-than-TV-royalty, Roy Walker. The Roy Walker. Resisting temptation I refrained from shouting, “Say what you see!” at him — I reckon he’s heard that before? — and Roy agreed to a photo. What a man. He was much friendlier than Darius Vassell, my last airport-celebrity-spot. Darius was in a foul mood.
On the plane, a middle-aged man wearing a cap spotted Roy Walker and his eyes lit up.
“Roy! How are you, mate? We met once before in the eighties, do you remember?”
How good did this man think: a) he was or b) Roy’s memory is? It was an ambitious gambit.
Roy gave a flat smile.
We arrived in Lisbon in high spirits but dehydrated. Red wine, dry bread and 40,000 feet does that to you. Who knew?
“Can I get some water before the taxi?” I asked my pal.
“How about a cigarette?”
“Hmm…”
Our taxi driver was fiercely passionate about Lisbon, giving us an impromptu history tour en route to our accommodation. This was interesting but turned out to be a marketing gimmick; a sneak preview of an all-day tour that him and his mate could take us on for 50 euros each. Such was the fire in his eyes when he told us about an old castle, I was tempted to sign up. By the time we arrived at Arty Hostel in the trendy Bairro Alto district, I couldn’t have been thirstier. My group were the last to land with the rest of the guys having arrived earlier in the day.
As a lifetime worth of mates gathered jubilantly in the hostel foyer, all I could think about was water. I said a quick hello before slipping off to find a quiet jazz bar in the same building as our hostel where I ordered a pint of water and sat alone, guzzling it and tapping my foot to the music. A wild start to the weekend. At least I felt a bit like Ryan Gosling in La La Land.
Heading into the balmy Lisbon night with my brother and my pals, I experienced waves of exhilaration. It was like being fifteen again, going on my first night out. Predictably our excitement got the better of us and after dinner, the sixteen-strong crowd soon disbanded into subgroups, splaying across various bars and up cobbled side streets. I spent the majority of the first night with two pals, sat on a small plastic stools discussing pressing issues such as our thoughts on Fabio Borini’s goal celebration (largely negative, in case you were wondering.)
After struggling with the little cursor thing on Google Maps for slightly too long we reconvened with the rest of our friends outside an Irish bar in the early hours. Culture vultures. All of them were wearing silly hats so I relaxed in the knowledge that everyone was having fun. There are silly-hat salesmen everywhere in Lisbon and, I must admit, they are persuasive. They have winning smiles and unwaveringly balance huge piles of hats on their head. What’s not to like?
Some / almost-definitely-all of these guys double up as drug dealers and it wasn’t long before I was offered, in increasingly hushed tones, “hashish, coca, ecstasy?”
“No thanks to the drugs, but I will take some of your rainbow-coloured rosary beads please, sir.”
One drug dealer took umbrage with my friend, a nice mild-mannered chap, because he rejected his offer of MDMA.
“No? What do you mean no? You are a scumbag!” the drug dealer said. “Scum!”
This seemed harsh and also, can a drug dealer take the moral high ground?
The next morning I was woken up by my friend who was carrying a four-pack of Sagres lager. Sun was streaming through the windows.
“So, Fabio Borini. Are you really not a fan?” he asked.
We spent almost all of Saturday atop a beautiful rooftop bar overlooking the city. This was arguably the best bar I’ve ever been to and we were unexpectedly popular with the barman, a long-haired hipster. He had tattoos on his shins.
The day flew by in a haze of lager, tequila, sunburn and salty snacks and we were soon leaving. Well, that tells half a story; we were asked to leave by an aggressive bald DJ who’d taken unkindly to our dancing. Cosmopolitan Portuguese folk were drinking early evening cocktails and gazing into the distance, while we were in 2am mode and crowd surfing a friend who was wearing one shoe. The DJ might have had a point.
I’d predicted that if there were to be any ritualistic humiliation, it would be on the Saturday night but, to my relief, nothing happened. Have we got past the age where we humiliate each other? Or had it been (correctly) decided that me being chained naked to a lamppost would not be enjoyable for anyone? Instead, we had a nice dinner in a steak restaurant, where a friend was sick on his lap, before another evening on the bars of Bairro Alto, where we were reacquainted with the silly-hat salesmen as well as making new friends, including a hen party from Lille and a food critic from Quebec who was on holiday alone.
The food critic from Quebec (background).
On Sunday, we had a run-in with a local taxi driver. To get the short distance to the coast, he took us on a scenic route, which included cruising down a motorway in the wrong direction for a while. Eventually he dropped us off a mile from where we wanted to be.
“No further,” he said solemnly.
But why? All we wanted was to be dropped off at the kiosk where we could board our beer bike, we weren’t entering a warzone.
The beer bike was obviously excellent, although at one point we were glugging lager and singing Three Lions. Perhaps the drug dealer wasn’t too wide of the mark with his scumbag comment? If my stag do had happened one hundred times, ninety-plus would have ended up singing Three Lions on a beer bike.
We went for lunch at a restaurant by the side of the Tagus river, which was pleasant apart from an anxious moment where I got lost on the way to the toilet and wound up in an industrial kitchen getting quizzical looks from a chef holding a butcher’s knife.
The final activity of the day was a boat cruise. It was marketed as a deluxe sunset cruise, serving dinner and free-flowing drinks. Dinner was melba toast and soft crisps and the free-flowing drinks were vinegary red wine or barely-drinkable lukewarm lager. The water was choppy, the temperature had dropped significantly and I suffered from a two-hour bout of shivering seasickness. A pal of mine, who was enduring a similar plight, was lying down on a bench in the cabin when the boat crashed into a giant wave. One second he was sleeping soundly, the next he was on his feet getting slammed from one side of the cabin to the other. Apparently the guys on the top deck had a great time.
Torrid time.
Terrific time.
By Sunday evening, we were exhausted with most people calling it an early night and retiring to their bunks. Three days of decadence is hard work when you hit thirty. In fact three days of decadence has always been hard work. I kid myself that I was invincible at eighteen but really, I spent large chunks of any lads’ holidays writhing around in bed, wishing I was at home.
A sparse crowd managed to make it out for a bite to eat and some beers, before my brother, my best man and I returned to the jazz bar near our hostel for a final night cap. This nicely bookended the stag do and, as we discussed the weekend’s events over a bottle of red, I felt sophisticated and happy; the trip had been a success. Everyone had got on, nobody had suffered any injuries or made any regrettable decisions. Nobody had disgraced themselves.
Have we grown up?
After returning to the dormitory at midnight, one mate was reluctant to accept that the weekend was over. He bounded into the room, shouting gibberish. He was glugging wine from the bottle, chain smoking and blaring out the Drowning Pool song, “Let the Bodies hit the Floor,” from his phone.
Not quite.
