I Left My Bus Fare at the Pub, and......

[Ceri Shaw]

Inspired by Ians recent posts on the related topics of misspent youth and woefully inadequate travel arrangements I thought it might be fun to invite members to embarrass themselves with similar tales in this forum. I enjoyed a number of bracing walks in my teens and twenties having neglected to provide myself with the means to get home after a good night out. I heve walked from Pontypridd to Cardiff on a number of occasions. I avoided walking from Barry to Grangetown one fine day after me and my mate were picked up by a passing garbage truck ( we got off the Waverley at the wrong port ). But I still consider my finest achievement in this area to be my 40 mile or so odyssey from Llwynypia to Chepstow Rd , Newport. If anyone can help me out with the exact distance I would be eternally grateful. All in all my drinking habits in those years kept me as fit as a fiddle.

If drinking beer was an Olympic event I know that this group could field a strong team So hows about it? Regale us with your tales of drunken misadventure. It doesnt have to involve a long walk home although I have always thought that a good 20 mile hike is the perfect way to end a perfect evening. If its all too embarrassing create a sockpuppet and post anonymously. And if its good ( and more than a 1000 words in length ) enter it for the short story competition! I'm sure you can make it relevant to one or other of the photos there.

[Ian Price]

In 1990, fed up with and suffering from Thatcher's Britain, I decided to return to university in order to verify that there was indeed some vestige of humanity and alternative thought left in the world. It was a tremendous and unexpected time of revisited youth where I was looked upon by some women with great affection and by some boys with an all weather hatred;I was thirty one and they were 18.

During this period my closest friend was one Simon Wales. Wales was an easy going quiet fellow with a liking for women, films, booze and Regal King Size. He was a local chap from Treorchy and had married his long time girlfriend. If he had one flaw it was that he had married his long time girlfriend. Their marriage was fraught with difficulty and ended in divorce.

While I was at Swansea University the rumblings of discontent were rife in his marriage and he would often visit me to get away from the grief he was experiencing at home. He told me that his wife had started searching his pockets when he got home in order to find condoms or some such in order to accuse him of infidelity - knowing full well that he wouldn't do any such thing . His health was suffering and he was always pulling a handkerchief out of some pocket or another of his Wrangler denim jacket in order to blow his nose.

Now! As fate would have it I had moved into a house with six other students during the second year of my course. Two of them were in the throes of student lurve and had broken up in acrimonious circumstances. The male in the partnership had been ejected from the premises and was sorely repentant for being silly and acting like a complete arse. He was trying everything to get back into the folds - if you get my meaning.

Well anyway! On one weekend I invited Wales over and we all ( the house residents ) went out on the razzle. During the night out, unbeknown-st to me, Wales and said ejected male met and got into a conversation. They'd met before on one of Wales' previous visits.

As we were well in wine no one could remember or cared to recall who had spoken to whom that night and so we did what most people do and returned home to crash until the cold light of day.

In the house we all went into the lounge and Wales was one of the first to pass out in a chair. Sitting there looking at the poor bastard and then looking at the ejected males girlfriend I had a brainstorm. I asked her if she had a pair of panties she could do without so that I could put it in one of his pockets so that his wife could find it. This I thought would give his missus something to think about. She agreed and gave me a pair which I neatly tucked into one of Wales' jacket pockets. We all passed out at some point and didn't wake until about mid afternoon the following day.


When Wales had eaten and came around he said that he was going back to Treorchy and was going to give ejected male a lift to there so that ejected male could catch a train to his home in Cardiff. So we said our good byes with very little recollection of the previous night's frivolities.

A couple of days later a letter arrived from Simon which went something like. ' I gave Lee a lift back to Treorchy and we went for a pint in the Cardiff Arms before he caught the train home. I felt the need to blow my nose and so reached into my top pocket to get a handkerchief out. When I did, Lee went nine shades of white, pointed and said "Those are Sarah's knickers".

You can imagine the rest.

[Ceri Shaw]

hahahahaha...and let this be a reminder to us all that the road to hell is paved with drunken good intentions. Diolch Ian.

[Ceri Shaw]

Intriguing....please elaborate....lol.

[Shannon Westover]

40 miles thats unreal

uk walking probably is better

i hate how they drive in wa

oregon seems better maybe

i think in uk you can walk through fields moreso legally

[Dafydd Crwynwr]

My most embarrassing moment would probably have been the bobsledding incident.
It was a nice cold winter with lots of ice and snow and I was helping a mate shovel his driveway for his dad. When I went into the shed to get a shovel I saw a glorious tobogan up in the rafters with nice shiny(actually they were kind of rusted) blades. I came back to the house with both shovel and sled.
Now since the road was like one long sheet of ice and in a cul-de-sac, I thought it might be a great idea to shovel a strip of the road and sweep it up all nice like and put a bit of water on it. Any car coming down the lane could easily straddle it, but this wasn't a busy neighborhood. I gave it a few test runs and as long as you were on the path you went down the road like lightning.
We were watching a movie called "Out Cold" before all of our other friends showed up for the weekly Sofa Saturday (called such because we would pull an old sofa out of the garage down to the end of the driveway by the street and start a fire out by the road. Like I said..it's not a busy neighborhood). In it these snowboarders go down the hill "Papa Muntz" style which is drop trow. Papa Muntz started it by dying on his skis whilst dropping a deuce in the bushes. Noone ever found out why he went skiing with his trousers down, but if you're that interested you can watch the film.
That evening after it got a bit cold and the party moved into the house, I began getting really hot. I took off my shirt and went out and lay in the snow to cool down. Of course this lead to making snow angels. Finally after being quite soused I suggested we all go back out and run the course that I spent a better part of three hours preparing and none of them had ridden on yet.
Outside we had a great laugh as everyone tried their hand at the course, some with booze in hand. I decided I was going "Papa Muntz" style. Mind you I didn't have on a shirt and I dropped trow and ran the entire length of the course up over the turn and into a neighbor's yard. Standing in victory with nothing on, but my boots and trousers about my ankles.
Skip to the following year at a Halloween party at the same house. Many of the neighbors were invited and one of them asked my mate,"I don't sleep well so I sometimes get up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water and I can hear your music playing next door, so I look out the window to see what your up to. It usually gives me a laugh to watch you guys having such a good time. Last year I noticed that you built a bobsled run down the street and I had gotten up as usual and there was a naked man standing in my yard. Which one of your pals was that?"
To which he pointed at me and said, "That guy!". "It sure must have been cold" the neighbor said with a smile and walked away.

[Ceri Shaw]

Nice one...I think we should feature this and do a broadcast email.....lol.

[Caitlyn Johnston]

OMG!! That is the funniest thing I've read in years!!! I'm at work, and the guy next to me thought I was crying (which I am!) because I'm trying not to make a huge commotion!

[Caitlyn Johnston]

I lived in New Zealand for 6 months when I was 17 (my father was on sabbatical from the University of Arizona to Uni. Canterbury in Christchurch). My younger brother and I would often walk with our friends across ChCh from our place to theirs and vice versa. We all would regularly spend the night a Craig's house, get legless, and play Risk, where everyone would cheat, accuse each other of cheating, lie about having cheated, and no one could prove a thing because we were all too tanked to make any sense. It was loads of fun! Anyhoo, one night after sobering up a bit, we went out for some take-away, walking of course, to get fish and chips, burgers, whatever.. well, in this posh neighborhood we were passing through, Brett started bragging to my brother that he could yak on demand, without sticking a finger (or anything else) down his throat. We didn't believe him, so, as we were passing this house with a yapping littlet dog at the fence, Brett turned and barfed on the dog!

[Caitlyn Johnston]

I should have prefaced this by saying that it's actually pretty sick, not really truly funny. But it was embarrassing!

[Ceri Shaw]

No worries:)...a fine addition to our collection of boozy sagas. We are hoping that there will be many more to follow.

[Caitlyn Johnston]

Oh, 40 miles is nothing. I drive more than that all the time!

OK Ceri, I just have to ask.. how long did it take you to walk 40 miles?!

:) - Caitlyn

[Ceri Shaw]

I couldn't tell you exactly but I seem to remember it taking a helluva long time. Calculating by the Naismith rule ( 1 hour for every 3 miles and a half hour extra for every 1000ft of ascent ) and given that I walked very fast in those days, I would estimate about 12 or 13 hours. The last section from Cardiff to Newport was sheer torture. I tried hitching but passing motorists could tell from the cut of my jib that I was a shiftless and feckless young ne'erdowell on his way back from the boozer.