Season 2008/2009: Match 9: Montrose v East Stirlingshire

For the first time this season, I missed Montrose scoring a goal at home.

Mrs Wife and I were delayed in leaving a first birthday party in Aberdeen, and by the time I reached Links Park, the Gable Endies were already a goal to the good against the magnificently inept East Stirlingshire.

Thankfully, my journey to the ground wasn't wasted, as I saw Montrose score twice more to remain unbeaten and move up to second in the league. Shire also missed a penalty and had a man sent off, so the afternoon was enjoyable even for those of us watching with a hangover.

But, as is often the case with matches involving the Shire, the most entertaining aspect of the match was the performance of Mad Bill, one of Scottish football's most colourful travelling fans.

I didn't capture any footage of the man himself in action, but here's a link to a post Big Rab made last season that includes a video of him on a previous visit to Links Park.

Of Hiccups, Monster Bobs and Visas

The dust is finally settling on a fairly hectic weekend and I'm almost able to keep my eyes open long enough to post, so I'll try to collect my thoughts.

Friday's working day culminated in a leaving night for a fellow employee, and the drink was flowing freely at the start of the evening. My recollections of events are hazy, but I'm told that my Elvis impersonation kept my colleagues amused.

Thankfully, I had the sense to bail out before things got too messy, and instead subjected the passengers on the Aberdeen to Montrose train to a spectacular bout of hiccups that lasted for the duration of the journey. These hiccups were more like sonic booms, and were so loud that I could hear them above Definitely Maybe cranked up full blast on the Magic Tune Box.

Having arrived in Montrose, I decided that food was required, and treated myself to a pizza. The first bite removed removed several layers off the interior lining of my mouth, and in shock I managed to spill molten cheese on both my hands. All in all, a fairly eventful post-pub meal.

After staggering from the pizza shop to Dungroanin', I managed to scare Pepper, Mrs Wife's rabbit, half to death, then retreated to bed.

Unfortunately, Saturday dawned for me at the early hour of 7.30am. Unable to get back to sleep, I settled on the couch, wrapped in a fake fur throw, and allowed my hangover to build up a head of steam.

What I found out later in the day was that a combination of hail, snow, horizontal rain and howling winds, mixed with the standard of football offered up in an end-of-season Angus derby, is enough to shift even the most stubborn of hangovers.

Though the match wasn't dire, the standard of refereeing, in a league renowned for atrocious officials, was honking, and the man in black's performance was enough in itself to deny Montrose a confirmed play-off spot. For a week at least.

And so Saturday night started with me shivering, attempting to restore my core body temperature to something above freezing and preparing for a second consecutive night on the lash.

I believe a good time was had by all, with most of the assembled crowd enjoying their first visit to Roo's Leap. This vast amount of food was washed down with a few civilised drinks....

....Which doesn't really explain how I ended up finally going to bed at 6am, having woken the whole house with an impromptu didgeridoo solo.

My body clock must still be on British Winter Time, because I awoke at 8.30am, unable to do anything but doze fitfully until my lift to Dundee arrived. Why Dundee? To take in the Dundee United v Rangers SPL match, one of the more entertaining games I've been to this season, albeit one in which the final result left a lot to be desired. But no team can expect to go behind three times and still win a match.

A long day at work on Monday was followed by a trip north to Ellon, where Mrs Wife acquired her second rabbit, a bouncing boy now known as Dylan (in tribute to Robert Zimmerman, not The Magic Roundabout).

Introducing Dylan and Pepper has been a high-tension affair. Pepper is no longer in possession of her womanly organs, but Dylan still has a full set of boy bits, and he's eager to use them. So far, as Pepper has investigated this newcomer, she's smacked him around the nose a few times and attempted to give him a warning nibble on the nose. But Dylan seems to take this as foreplay, so there may be testing times ahead.

Yesterday, the 28th anniversary of my arrival on this planet, saw Mrs Wife and I venture south to Edinburgh, with the intention of collecting our Chinese visas. Unfortunately, the Chinese Consulate is an awkward beast, and no amount of discussion or offers of cash would tempt them to process the application in a single day. Which means that I'll have to make a return journey next week.

So, a busy weekend means I'm pretty shattered and looking forward to a few evenings of realxing on the sofa to recuperate.

I must be getting old.

The Norse god of Lager vents his fury

Some of you may have noticed that there was no new post on this here website yesterday.

This is because I was ill - with one of those mysterious '24-hour bugs' that affect people who have consumed large quantities of lager the previous evening.

Yes, after about 18 months without a hangover, I finally pushed my body too far.

Thus, my day of rest was largely a washout. Except that I had to play football for my work's five-a-side team. Which meant driving through 80mph gales and horizontal rain for an hour, running around almost non-stop for 40 minutes with a splitting headache, enduring a 13-3 defeat, and driving back again through worsening conditions.

Let's just say I've had better days!

My head hurts

The combination of last night's wedding and Scotland beating France 1-0 gave me an excuse last night to over-indulge on alcoholic refreshments.

Regular readers (both of you) will remember that I don't get hangovers. However, today I am feeling a little tender.

Free white wine during the meal, combined with strong French lager (oh, how ironic that I should celebrate one of French football's most embarrasing defeats with Kronenbourg) and vodka, has left my head pounding.

But it was worth it.

We beat probably the best international football side in the world.

We are top of a group containing the world champions, the World Cup runners-up and quarter finalists from the same tournament.

It's great to be Scottish today, even with a sore head.

Hangovers

I'm now back in deepest, darkest Argyll after a weekend spent in Scotland's fair capital. The wedding turned out to be a good night despite the fact that the only three people I knew beforehand were Mrs Wife, the bride and groom.

Initially, Mrs Wife and I were stuck at the table from hell, where those couples who didn't know anyone else were put. No-one spoke for the first hour, so Mrs Wife and I decamped to the bar, where we met some people who actually had tongues in their heads, and all was well again.

The band was great, and it is definitely the only wedding I've been to where one of the tracks played has been Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison Blues. An odd choice to play at the start of someone's marriage....

Anyway, I awoke on Sunday morning after Saturday's heavy session on the ale with no hangover. And this started me thinking - I haven't had a hangover in almost 18 months.

Don't get me wrong, I've awoken after nights out feeling tired and thirsty. But in more than a year, I've never had a PROPER hangover, one where you could almost hear your internal organs shrivelling if you listened carefully, and if your brain wasn't hosting its own private Slipknot concert. One where you can easily drink six litres of Coke and still not need to pee, and where the comfiest resting place you can think of is a cool, steel mortuary table.

I don't know why I haven't had a real hangover in so long. The year that has passed has included two stag weekends, one of them my own, several birthday parties, Christmas nights out and a scattering of weddings, again including my own.

On my own stag weekend, I started drinking at noon on the Friday and barely stopped for the next 48 hours, yet never once did I have a genuine hangover.

Maybe alcohol has suddenly gotten more pure, and there are less toxins floating round my body waiting to be transformed into projectile vomit.

Maybe every drink I have had I the past 18 months has been watered down.

Or maybe, after more than a decade of drinking (we start young in Angus) I have developed a higher resistance to the demon drink.

Whatever the reason, I'm not complaining. Too many days have been spent shivering in bed through self-inflicted poisoning, and if I've seen the back of them, I'll happily celebrate - with a double vodka if anyone's buying?