More peregrinations

Continuing with this Grand Tour, such as it is, I used up my remaining holidays of the current tax year and on 2nd March, in company with Mel Leigh and Tom and Lynsey Jenkins, visited Claire Cohen and ten month-old Ruby in Ash Green (via Dartford for myself and Mel). Tom regaled us with escapades in the police, including being awarded a medal for gallantry cited by incapacitating a knife-wielding hoodlum. He played down the incident, saying he had been wearing a stab jacket and applied mace and a truncheon-beating of the leg to this truculent thief (he had been spotted by a plain-clothes policeman), before handcuffing the now compliant yob. Often, such thugs taken into custody issue grievous threats to the copper bringing them in and to said copper’s family. Tom at first was incredibly worried that he would be hunted down, but the frequency of these idle boasts and the fact that he has recognised them in town while this was not reciprocated as he himself was in his ordinary clothes means that now he joins in the banter to show they are not getting to him.
Tom also gave us a rundown of a memorable stag weekend to forget, in Frankfurt-am-Main of all places (but why, why?). His account of it was especially entertaining and I advised Tom to write it down, but he demurred, explaining that speaking for him was a different matter to committing such thought to paper which did not come so easily. So I’ll record much of what he said.
Essentially nothing happened that could not have realistically taken place inside of a marriage. The twee attitude was compounded by the man getting hitched, Joel Lucas, having his father come along – it was organised by Joel’s brother – who, according to Tom, was quite camp. The game plan was that they had to abroad (?), they had to watch football while there (?) and they had to time it to coincide with Viki’s hen party (???). Viki had planned for it to fall during her half-term holiday her being a teacher, which meant during the brutality of February. Tom and other would have much preferred Joel’s do to have been postponed a few weeks as he was not under the same constraints as Viki. As to the first two conditions, Frankfurt, Germany’s financial district in the industrial heartland of that country, was chosen. Tom was not he only one non-plussed by this decision. When first told this, I instantly thought of four Teutonic cities more appropriate – Hamburg (where The Beatles started out), Munich (famed for its beer), Berlin (with its fashionable nightclubs and cheap prices) and Dresden (for the culture), with the first three good for fußball. But no, it had to be Frankfurt, whose stadium has that stupid television cube hanging from the centre, deflecting any balls hit too high (the architects were probably not au fait with footy), as happened during England’s World Cup match with Paraguay.
They flew from Stansted on a budget airline, having the most enjoyable part of the experience on the town in Bishop’s Stortford before they departed. However, unbeknownst to them, when they landed in Germany their airport was closer to Cologne than Frankfurt, while Chris Brown flew from Heathrow with British Airways, got served dinner and landed at Frankfurt’s main airport which was just ten minutes from the hostel where reservations had been made. Once the bus from Frankfurt-Köln airport to Frankfurt-am-Main proper was factored in, Chris didn’t end up paying much more and travelled in luxury for that. The hostel was absolutely crummy, stressing Mark Michael out to Tom’s delight. By chance, it was located right next door to a World of Sex emporium and a big gay gar (potential for a few ironic drinks), yet neither were frequented.
The temperature in the daytime was a continental -10°C; at the stadium pints developed an impenetrable frozen layer after just five minutes and boiling hot chocolate from the kiosk was lukewarm by the time Tom got back to his seat. Though the main man Joel always returned to his room in the hovel of a hostel early and never got drunk, the others found some fun at a local nightclub after inadvertently joining a group of gay men on a bar crawl. This was after being threatened by some German heavies at a crappy go-karting circuit (Tom was victorious in the race, despite Joel betting against him) after one of the group was crashed into by another German on the track, dislocating the steering wheel but expected to pay for the damage. After refusing this demand, they pelted it past the closing gate but Joel’s dad was as clam as can be and so too slow. Not wishing to leave him to his fate, they rattled the gate to be let back in and, in the end, bartered the cost down to half of the original demand. The nightclub was a drunken laugh, but again, nothing out of the ordinary occurred.
Among other activities they watched the FA Cup where Southampton was pulverised by Portsmouth at the former’s home which did not put Chris Brown in a good mood; the Jersey group left early one morning for the carnival. Leaving the Canterbury lot to kick their heels playing pool at the hostel.
Aside from Brown, their coach returning them to their distant point of departure in Frankfurt-Köln, collided with a lorry that first dragged itself along the side, shattering some windows, letting in that nice -10°C air, before jack-knifing in front of them, with its load pinning them to the central reservation. They evacuated the rear of the bus to the front for fear that anyone might be careless enough to ram into them. It made for a chilly old time waiting to be freed by the emergency services before driving to a stop-over station where they boarded a replacement bus. All this for £400. What an outlay for such a time.
In general at Claire’s we shot the breeze and, for a while, tried to make Ruby’s alphabet caterpillar toy say rude words – it partially subverted our attempts with words that ended in ‘k’ with “that tickles,” but was helpless when ‘k’ was supplanted with ‘c’ (which was hard) and a host of others that had no such limits imposed. We took a brief tour of the local area, taking in the playground and before long it was time to return (especially as I had a PPC meeting that evening to attend).