Sloan - Cigarettes and Alcohol: Confessions of a Stag Weekend

Chapt er One: The Stags Are Rampant!

Lets face it, every man loves a stag do. Whether its a night down the local public house or a full weekender away on the lash, whats not to like?

Its your chance to let your hair down. You can become the ultimate mans man by immersing yourself in beer, strippers, football, cigarettes, more beer and illegal substances.

Youre let off the leash. All the grief at work and chores at home disappear in a top beer buzz.

During the early to mid-nineties, a number of my mates decided to take the plunge into wedded bliss.

For the couple concerned this was a major commitment and a huge outlay of cash, involving loads of planning for the big day, the honeymoon, the dress and all that good stuff. To the lads this meant just one thing..STAG DO!!!

The wedding day holds no interest to real men, not even the groom. Getting togged up in a dodgy looking hired morning suit that reeks of piss, being on your best behaviour, paying out for yet another new outfit for the Mrs (even though her wardrobe is already full to bursting point with kit) its all dull, dull, dull.

The first question on hearing that another sucker is being dragged down the aisle is Where we going for the staggie then lad? These weekend jaunts were where legends were made, crap was talked, gallons of alcohol drunk and drugs were smoked, snorted and slipped into peoples drinks. Not the sort of behaviour to condone really, but as my Old Man says, if they cant take a joke, fuck em!

The main stag attendees were guys Id known since school. We were in our early twenties, had cash on hip and were well up for abusing our bodies in the name of a good time. Wed all grown up together and knew all there was to know about each other: our dating failures, the states we got ourselves into, the jobs we did, the fact that most of us still lived at home with our parents.all the embarrassing stories that would have us howling with laughter whenever we got together. Obviously more and more exaggerated since the last time the tale was told.

Theres no point describing these guys, you know what a group of blokes being blokey are like, youve been round the block yourself Im sure. Theres the cool one, the thick one, the permanently-drunk one, the loud one, the good-looking one, the slightly-creepy-looking one, the border-line-serial-murderer the list goes on.

In addition to the core stags were various family members, workmates, flatmates and anyone else who fancied it. As long as you were male, could drink your own body weight in Stella Artois and smoke hard you were welcome to be part of the weekend.

In this book, characters are going to be known as Kid A, Kid B, Kid C etc until they do something truly spectacularly daft and then will gain the nickname that has followed them around for the last twenty odd years.

Yeah thats pretty lazy writing but if you want a love story, youre in the wrong place my friend. This is a book about a group of immature lads on the hit and miss. If lavatory language and bodily fluids being spilt is not your bag, look away now.

Also by giving nicknames to the characters this will protect the guilty from getting the old broken television set routine from their other half. You know what I mean, a couple of weeks of no sound and no pictures from her indoors as punishment for your drunken crimes.

Youve heard all the old clichswhat goes on tour stays on touryoure not cheating on your girlfriend if youre in a different time zone and all that old nonsense. Well this book shows you what really goes on when the lads disappear for the weekend. Most people think stags just want to fight, flirt and fuck. Well we do, but we do other things as well, like talk utter horseshit and laugh at other peoples misfortunes.

This book is real stag stories, almost 100% truthful, OK maybe 90% truthful, though embellished for maximum levels of embarrassment and laughter.

Some may well find these tales of debauchery highly offensive and sexist. I honestly do not want to upset any sensitive souls out there. This book is no more sexist than your average chick lit paperback dribbling on about shoes, shopping and shagging. In fact this book may be the first in an all-new genre called dick lit as it is about a load of dickheads just dicking around. The only shops you will find these stags in are beer shops!

The Cigarettes Smoked Countdown at the end of each chapter is simply a plot device giving the book some sort of framework to connect all the incredible tales of idiots being inebriated. Im certainly not telling people to go out there and smoke 200 cigarettes in one weekend because that will properly ruin your lungs your health and your looks. Same with The Booze Binged Counter featured in each chapter, this book is a work of fiction not an instruction manual for the easily led!

Also for those civilians who do not speak Cockney/Mockney/Estuary English/Man of Kent/Kentish Man-speak as well as I do, there is a Glossary of Tossary at the back of the book. Here you will find translations and explanations of some of the phrases used within this book that you may not understand.

The action takes place across three days of one mad weekender on two stag dos in Amsterdam and Edinburgh from way back in the early 1990s and then one in Brighton in the present day, so do try to stay with the programme. We flit about across time and space like some demented drunken Dr Who.

So please come with me, in this time travelling DeLorean, like in Back to the Future.

Buckle up, set the dials to 1993, hit 88 miles an hour and bada bing here we are in an airport lounge..its time to Laugh, Joke, Drink, Smoke!!!!!!!