Prologue - Curry Night!

Since asking my boss for Friday off went unexpectedly well, I left work at 3:30 on Thursday and headed to Bournemouth. I stopped by at Dom’s house for an hour or so, then we headed into town to meet up with Ant. The few hours we spent in Wetherspoons were great fun (Curry Club <3), but we ended up having to leave quite early to pick up incoming DDRFUKkers from the station. On the way there, though, we randomly bumped into Elise and Nigel, and recruited them for the weekend! At the station we picked up Lime, Splidge and Tau, then we all headed back to Ant’s place for Pop’n ASC fun!

Chapter One - Waterslidefun

Take Splashdown. Add DDRFUK. Win! Water parks are pretty damn fun normally, but with all the FUKkers there it was just awesome. Splashdown highlights:

The Sauna. Saunas rock, especially when all of us get in one together.

The Jaccuzi (sp?). Whilst queuing for a ride, we notice Adam and Tasha together in the Jaccuzi. Rather than leaving them to it, of course, we go and invade… ^_^; Turns out it’s just about the right size for all of us to fit in together, so everyone else who was in there promptly leaves.

Lime is going to Jail. …well, we knew that already =p

The Man-train. All of us in rubber rings, holding hands and going down a slide all at once. Cue a huge pile-up at the bottom, and a member of staff telling us we’ll be thrown out if we do it again. We do it again as our last ride.

Chapter Two - Expected and Unexpected Reunions

After getting back from Splashdown we stopped off at McDonalds for a while to properly meet up with Phi and DJ Damien (who we’d seen earlier but hadn’t joined us for aqueous fun). This was the point when Char arrived, making the meet even more awesome than it had already been. =p Looking around, I was rather surprised to see Martin sitting next to Phi! One of those “small world” moments I guess - it seems like they know each other (or at least Phi described him as “one of her stalkers” =p).

And then, as I turn around who do I see at the next table but Paul Bolton! I get chatting (it’s been two years since I’ve seen him, after all) and it turns out he’s at Southampon Uni too. Admittedly his lectures are on a different campus to mine, but it’s still kind of weird that I’ve never noticed him in Southampton at all!

That was certainly an odd half-hour…

Chapter Three - Dance Games and Fireworks

Time for our usual summer friday night fun - fireworks and EZ2Dancer! Only this time there’s over a dozen of us, rather than the usual five. Super fun was had by all, and the fireworks were, as usual, brilliant. Also much <3 to the manager of Westcliff arcade (whose name temporarily escapes me) for staying open an hour later than normal for us and giving us 12 free credits on EZ2! ^_^

Chapter Four - How to Enjoy Oneself at a 24-hour Convenience Store

Lime wins the prize. In an exceedingly good way.

I shall explain. On the way home to Ant’s house, most of us were hungry or thirsty so we stopped at a 24-hour One Stop. Rather than being properly open at that time of night, however, there was just a small window through which you can talk to the person inside, and they’d go off and get what you wanted for you. I don’t think the guy spoke very good English, so some of the things that people wanted took him a while to get. He didn’t seem to have much of a problem with the bottle of water that I wanted, but he struggled a bit with some of the food people were asking for.

And then there was Lime. Who asked for a porn mag and a box of tissues.

Probably the most hysterical ten minutes of the whole weekend. Genius! ^_^;

Chapter Five - Ant’s Attic, Part One

After some metal-pad DDR fun when we got back to Ant’s house (I know it’s designed to be able to cope with high-level play, I can’t help but wince when I see it being subjected to Legend of MAX ;;_;;) we went to bed - all five of us, in Ant’s attic room. I think everyone was pretty tired that night though, so it wasn’t quite as awesome as the following night would be…

Chapter Six - A Lazy Morning (er, Afternoon)

Well, we said we’d be at the station at 11am to meet Neo, who was coming down to Bournemouth then. But… we kinda’ woke up at 11:30, so that didn’t really happen… Anyway, after everyone had gotten ready, at an unhurried pace, we got a bus into town and enjoyed our second Shakeaway of the weekend. Some of us then headed for the beach - we’d meant to play some beach volleyball, but seeing as there was barely enough space for us all to sit down, we just sat around and chatted for a while.

Chapter Seven - Dead at Quasar

Awesome fun! Special mentions to Char for Dead-at-Quasar.jpg, and Lime who, wandering around wearing a hat, sunglasses and no shirt, wouldn’t have looked out of place in Apocalypse Now.

Chapter Eight - I.D. and Drama

Saturday evening didn’t start quite as well as planned… first of all we went to the Wetherspoons in Bournemouth, but Neo didn’t have any I.D. so we couldn’t go in. Whilst we thought of other places to go, Phi and Tyma decided to stay in the town centre regardless of what everyone else was doing, so they went off to Burger King to get some food. Fuse and DJ Damien stayed behind with them too (I never did find out exactly what went on that night for them, but I imagine some form of DRAMA was involved)…

The rest of us headed over to the Boscombe ‘Spoons to try and get some food and drink there. But guess what, there were bouncers on the door asking for ID there, too. At this point we decided to split, and half of us went across the road to the Thai Smile (well, we apologised to them after last Bournemouth Meet, so I assume they were okay with us coming back…) while the other half went and got pub food instead.

Wanting to get at least some drinking in, we all headed down the road after our meal to a quieter pub, where - at last - our plans weren’t foiled by someone asking for ID. Much fun was had in the beer garden there, and everything was pretty awesome! (Kinda’ spoilt a bit by Ant losing his glasses when everyone decided to bundle into a bush, though…)

Chapter Nine - The Long Walk Home

After leaving the pub at closing time, we spent about an hour falling into a bush, searching through the bush, and lying around on the grass before we finally decided to start walking home - and it was probably the slowest, and most fun, walk home ever. First of all we had some traditional traffic cone fun, which I believe (after being paraded through Boscombe on our heads and thrown in and out of bushes) ended up being put on someone’s front doorstep. Later, we sat around next to the subway (the under-the-road variety rather than the food-selling variety) for an inexplicably long time, before we all (except for Splidge and Tau, anyway) decided to go topless for the rest of the walk.

A while later, Lime and Char disappeared for a few minutes, then came back proudly bearing a golf flag and a sand rake, acquired from the golf course we’d been walking next to. The walk resumed, with us singing songs (courtesy of Char) and phoning random people (courtesy of Neo’s phone contract). Before long an eight-seater taxi happened to drive by, so we all piled into that - all eight of us, and the golf flag too - and got back to Ant’s far quicker than it would have been to walk.

Chapter Ten - Ant’s Attic, Part Two

At Ant’s house we had a bit more DDR fun, then watched some of the (bizarre, terrible and often both) background videos to songs from a game called “Stepping Selection”. We didn’t actually play the game - the videos on their own are funny enough!

We had yet more fun later, as we tried to fit yet more people in Ant’s attic - eight of us this time. Ant slept up there too (in the same bed as Lime - HOT) to join in the fun! Certainly a night to remember, even if Ant and Lime’s conversation scared the hell out of me. Oh, and I know know what “teabagging” is, although I rather wish I didn’t…

Chapter Eleven - The Journey to the West

After rushing to the station to say goodbye to Jo (which involved a taxi for us as buses were decidedly absent on a Sunday morning), the rest of us caught another train - to Weymouth, for the continuation of the not-just-Bournemouth-anymore Meet. Predictably, nothing particularly interesting happened on the train ride…

Chapter Twelve - Oh Shit Banned

Well, we went to the arcade to play some 5th Mix (which is no longer £1/credit Joint Premium or 50p/credit, but now £2 for two credits. Which means, annyoingly, that if you’re playing on your own you have no choice but to have two consecutive goes…). About 20 minutes in I went off to get some water, and returned to find everyone sitting outside. Apparently, we’d all been banned for sitting down in the arcade! A quite impressively poor reason to ban someone…

(The arcade manager there didn’t complain about me going back later, though. Really I’d like to boycott the place, as we got kicked out for a completely stupid reason, but unfortunately it’s the only good arcade in Weymouth so I think I might end up having to go back…)

Chapter Thirteen - Kids: Don’t Do Drugs

Avoiding the absurdly full beach, we headed to Nothe Gardens for a BBQ, which was great! Whilst there, we had an, er… “interesting” encounter with a couple of stoned people.

To start with a guy staggered up to us, asked if we had any weed, then wandered off and fell down the hill. A few minutes later he was back, walked past us and straight into a tree. Once he’d picked himself up off the ground, he started shouting at the tree and complaining that the trees were all against him.

At this point, Lime decided to prolong the comedy by going over and chatting to him - starting off by convincing the stoned guy that not only did the trees have it in for him, but the hill itself did too. Much fun was had over the next five minutes or so, especially as Fuse was filming most of it…

After a while the guy’s (equally stoned) girlfriend turned up, and they decided to sit around our barbecue. More comedy moments were had as we convinced them that there was a drug called “Badger”, convinced them that Naoki was “really hardcore” music, and (only just) failed to convince them that Lime was a Wimbledon tennis champion.

Epilogue - My Farewell at the Station

Well, as I near enough live in Weymouth now, and I have to work here on Monday, I said my goodbyes at the station before everyone left for Bournemouth again. That’s the end of the DDRFUK Bournemouth Meet for me, and to say it was one of the best weekends of my life wouldn’t be an overstatement.

Thank you Adam, Ant, Char, DJ Damien, Dom, Elise, Frieza, Fuse, Jo, Lap, Lily, Lime, Martin, Mofo, Neo, Nigel, Paul, Phi, Splidge, Tasha, Tau, and Tyma!

Life is, in the end… just like IRC. =D