the plankmeister's interweblet

Wednesday, January 16, 2002

Tonight we had the toga party and barbecue. And I got slightly tipsy. What do you mean you don't believe me? Ok, ok. I got drunk then. You don't believe that either? Ok.... ok. I'll come clean. I got so completely and utterly pissed that by 9pm I was taken to hospital in an ambulance. HAHAHAHA! How pissed is that?!

Allow me to recall the evenings proceedings. At about 6pm, everyone assembled en masse in the unit to figure out how to put on their togas. At about 6:45pm (togas successfully applied) we all went round to the benches and took our positions for the night. Virtually as soon as our asses touched the seats we were playing drinking games. And that's where it all started to go wrong. (Well... actually, it was Stuart saying "Plank... let's kick things off by downing a cup of wine each," so I blame Stuart ;) Within about 30 minutes of sitting down, I'd lost the drinking game so many times - and been stitched up so many times - that I'd probably had to drink around about 2 litres of wine. Drinking 2 litres of wine in 30 minutes (as I'm sure anyone can tell you) is not a good thing. But I carried on regardless. The bunch of people I was drinking with have pretty much all guesstimated that I alone had drunk the entire contents of approximately 2 boxes of wine. (I simply have no idea, as the last thing I remember was taking a photo while standing on the table at about 8pm.) One box of wine is 4 litres. So by their reckoning, in the time between sitting down at 6:45, and being carted off to hospital at just after 9pm - which works out to be slightly over 2 hours - I'd been consistently drinking wine at the rate of 2 litres per half hour. Now that's some serious alcohol abuse. One thing that I find funny, is that on the side of each box of wine it has printed: "Enjoy wine in moderation." If only someone had told me beforehand! My memory of the night gets a little shaky past 8pm, but I do remember lying back and having two boxes of wine (one red, one white) poured simultaneously down my throat by two torturers. (Don't know who!) The good thing is though, that the camera from "Australia Uncovered" was zoomed in and trained on me for the whole disturbing display. So hopefully I should be on UK TV in March! Woohoo! Aparrently, they filmed me doing something else, but I'll not go into that, in case they don't show it. **wipes brow in relief** After that, the next thing I remember was a bit later when Stuart poured wine all over one of the blokes the "Australia Uncovered" team was following round. However, one of the production assistants went crazy cos he was wearing a $2000 dollar microphone. The next thing I remember was waking up in the morning with a sort of "head of dread." Not a hangover, though. Just a niggling suspicion that I'd done more than I remembered and some of it could have been embarrassing. From here on, I've had to reconstruct events from speaking to various people who happened to interact with me:After I was filmed having the boxes of wine poured down my throat, I fell backwards onto the floor, and some glorious photos were taken. Then I appear to have sat back up and gone back to drinking games again for a brief spell. Somehow or other, Stuart and Paul decided it would be a good idea to put my now unconcious form into the bin. Much laughing and applause followed. As this didn't rouse me, they picked me up while still in the bin and put me and the bin into another huge wheeliebin. Which was nice. I think that woke me up, as you can see in the pictures, I have a bit of a grimace on. They then proceeded to wheel me about the hostel for all to see. Much cheering and laughing. I have a vague recollection of freeing myself from the bins, and in doing so, gouging open a small wound in my arm which bled profusely down my arm. Then I drank some more, for good measure. And a bit more. Then aparrently I fell off the table heavily onto my side (Which makes sense, because I've chipped a bone in my elbow and my hip really hurts when I walk) and was absolutely, completely and utterly out cold. I think Stuart even said that a few people thought I was dead. This is the point at which the ambulance was called. Now this is the point where there really is a huge gap that no-one can fill. Somehow, from being put into the ambulance at about 9pm, (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! 9pm! What a lightweight!) I managed to make it back to the hostel (Well... nearly.) I was either discharged or I discharged myself - I have absolutely no recollection of this whatsoever - and weaved my way back up the road towards the hostel, where I promptly collapsed and fell asleep in the gutter on the road. A bouncer from a pub down the road was walking past, picked me up and carried me to the hostel to see if that's where I belonged. Someone recognised me and decided to put me to bed. I think the first time, this might have been a guy called Thomas who works at the hostel. Then I got up out of bed and went round to where all the action was happening again and carried on drinking. Then I collapsed again. Then someone else took me back and put me to bed. Then I got up again. I think it was at this point that I stripped myself naked and was "helicoptering" my old fella for all to see. Then I collapsed again. Then Rick tried carrying me back, but aparrently this is when I was concious enough to realise that I'd lost my Canon SLR camera. I wriggled free of him, shouting "My camera! I've lost my camera!" and ran round the corner and fell headfirst into the back of the hostel's van. Once again I collapsed. Rick and a couple more guys took me back to my bed again. This appears to be when Connor showed up. Connor was the night manager for the night, and he was trying to throw me out of the hostel, because he didn't want to be responsible for me. He was going to call the police and everything. According to Stuart I was saying "But I'm not drunk. I'm fine. I want to go to Cheeky Monkeys." but Connor was not going to be budged and insisted that I either go to bed or he'll call the police. This is probably the wisest decision made that night, as if he hadn't forced me to go to bed myself, I might have gone on drinking even more. By this time it wasn't even midnight. So I went to bed. Well... I must have, cos I woke up in the morning in my bed. There ends the story of "The Big One," when I single-handedly drank 8 litres of wine and was taken to hospital by 9pm after only 2 hours or so of drinking. Then went on to piss of a lot of people and amuse even more and make a reputation for myself. Since that night, I've been walking down the street and a couple of people have pointed and said "There's Plank... that drunk bloke!" It makes me so proud! :)I'd like to thank everyone who had a hand in taking care of me that night, as without them - even though it turned out OK in the end - it could have turned out very differently. Thankyou.