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I'm back. I survived the hen do with no injuries apart from a sore toe (unsuitable shoe related) and a broken thumb nail (ten pin bowling related). It was a very enjoyable day. Now I'm exhausted because we didn't get in until 2.30am this morning, then I had to share a bed with my friend and I always struggle to sleep when I'm in the same room as someone else. Early night for me I think.
I'll take it from the top. I started my day by dropping off my stuff at the hen's house in Hampshire. We then had lunch and got ready. This was a bit stressful as we were against the clock but in the end we were all ready with time to spare. We met up with the hen's sister and baby nephew at the station and got the train to Guildford. Once in Guildford we got the bus to the Spectrum Centre where we were due to go bowling. Twelve women in 70s fancy dress at 2.30 in the afternoon provoked a great deal of interest from the other passengers! Unsuprisingly for a Saturday afternoon the bowling alley was packed with young children attending birthday parties etc. I estimated that around 75% of the people there were under the age of 10. It was very, very noisy and sadly the baby got a bit upset and had to be taken home. We met up with the rest of our group and played two games of bowling. There were 17 of us so we took up three lanes. The groups had been chosen at random and I had managed to be put with all the really good people. In the first game I was last but I still had a higher score than anyone on the lane next to us. In the second game I went to pieces and was third last overall. It was good fun though and gave us a chance to get to know the other hens. If anyone else feels the need to go bowling at the Guildford Spectrum don't bother with the party package. It consisted of a table behind the lane to put your drinks, some balloons and certificates for the overall winner and loser. Not worth it at all.
After bowling we hopped back on the bus and returned to Guildford town centre where we visited a pub called The Tup. In The Tup we gave the hen her silly hen night goodies (wand, willy straws, willy whistle, veil, L Plate, stickers to give to random men etc) and played Mr and Mrs with answers pre-prepared with the groom to be. We were quite impressed by the accuracy level, although he didn't know that her favourite film was 'The Sound of Music'.
Now the poor hen looked completely ridiculous (she was also wearing a luminous pink wig and a bride to be sash) we made our way to Zizzi for food. There we met another hen night which turned out to be the first of many we encountered that evening. The food was great. I had a pasta bake with chicken, mushrooms and bacon. The breads we had as starters were particularly good, especially the red pesto one.
After dinner we made our way to the final destination of the night - Flares 70s themed disco bar. I am not generally a fan of (a) 70s music, (b) cheesy music, (c) town bars/clubs on a Saturday night, but the hen loves her cheesy music so I went in with a smile on my face. Once inside I made my way to the loo to put on my afro wig. The ladies was miles away from the dance floor and contained an extremely irritating singing in toilet attendent. I made up my mind not to make a return visit if I could possibly help it. The afro wig looked fab though. Once back on the dance floor our free 'bubbly' had arrived in the form of three bottles of (warm) sparkling Lambrini. Classy! We then went on to dance the night away. I didn't go to the bar once as the queue was 6-8 people deep all night and frankly life is too short. As a result I finished the evening stone cold sober for possibly the first time in my life. The dancing was fun. I danced from when we arrived at around 10pm until we left at 1.15am with just a few breaks. We were one of about 6 hen nights in the bar, along with a stag night and several birthday parties. About a quarter of the clientele were in some form of fancy dress. All in all the evening was very good natured. I didn't see any fights of anything like that. I did however realise that the 70s was a quiet era for the novelty dance record. We did YMCA and The Time Warp. They didn't play Blame it on the Boogie or Oops up Side your Head and I genuinely can't think of any others. I liked doing The Time Warp though, hadn't done it for ages until last night. The DJ was awful. He clearly had no idea how to mix and sleezed over the (engaged) Chief Bridesmaid when she went up to request a record. Additionally, he had an odd idea of what constituted 70s music. A medley (well he called it a medley, I called it bits of lots of tracks played randomly one after the other) of tracks from Dirty Dancing (a 1980s movie about the 1960s) was played at one stage along with several Jive Bunny tracks. Hmmmmm. Anyway, my afro wig went down a treat and I think a good evening was had by all.
At 1.30am the 7 of us who were staying with the hen got our pre-booked minibus back to Hampshire and retired to bed.
This morning we watched the X Factor (it was awful, I complained all the way through) and hid the willy straws and willy whistles before the mother of the bride turned up. We then had a very nice lunch and at 3pm left for home. I was home in time to pop in to Asda before it closed at 5pm. I will upload photos to FB after I get my new bandwidth allowance from Madasafish on Wednesday.
If I'm a bit more awake tomorrow I may write up my response to the results of Empire Magazine's 500 greatest movies of all time poll.
I apologise in advance for terrible spelling, grammer and possible missing words in this entry. I'm too tired to put them right at present.
I'll take it from the top. I started my day by dropping off my stuff at the hen's house in Hampshire. We then had lunch and got ready. This was a bit stressful as we were against the clock but in the end we were all ready with time to spare. We met up with the hen's sister and baby nephew at the station and got the train to Guildford. Once in Guildford we got the bus to the Spectrum Centre where we were due to go bowling. Twelve women in 70s fancy dress at 2.30 in the afternoon provoked a great deal of interest from the other passengers! Unsuprisingly for a Saturday afternoon the bowling alley was packed with young children attending birthday parties etc. I estimated that around 75% of the people there were under the age of 10. It was very, very noisy and sadly the baby got a bit upset and had to be taken home. We met up with the rest of our group and played two games of bowling. There were 17 of us so we took up three lanes. The groups had been chosen at random and I had managed to be put with all the really good people. In the first game I was last but I still had a higher score than anyone on the lane next to us. In the second game I went to pieces and was third last overall. It was good fun though and gave us a chance to get to know the other hens. If anyone else feels the need to go bowling at the Guildford Spectrum don't bother with the party package. It consisted of a table behind the lane to put your drinks, some balloons and certificates for the overall winner and loser. Not worth it at all.
After bowling we hopped back on the bus and returned to Guildford town centre where we visited a pub called The Tup. In The Tup we gave the hen her silly hen night goodies (wand, willy straws, willy whistle, veil, L Plate, stickers to give to random men etc) and played Mr and Mrs with answers pre-prepared with the groom to be. We were quite impressed by the accuracy level, although he didn't know that her favourite film was 'The Sound of Music'.
Now the poor hen looked completely ridiculous (she was also wearing a luminous pink wig and a bride to be sash) we made our way to Zizzi for food. There we met another hen night which turned out to be the first of many we encountered that evening. The food was great. I had a pasta bake with chicken, mushrooms and bacon. The breads we had as starters were particularly good, especially the red pesto one.
After dinner we made our way to the final destination of the night - Flares 70s themed disco bar. I am not generally a fan of (a) 70s music, (b) cheesy music, (c) town bars/clubs on a Saturday night, but the hen loves her cheesy music so I went in with a smile on my face. Once inside I made my way to the loo to put on my afro wig. The ladies was miles away from the dance floor and contained an extremely irritating singing in toilet attendent. I made up my mind not to make a return visit if I could possibly help it. The afro wig looked fab though. Once back on the dance floor our free 'bubbly' had arrived in the form of three bottles of (warm) sparkling Lambrini. Classy! We then went on to dance the night away. I didn't go to the bar once as the queue was 6-8 people deep all night and frankly life is too short. As a result I finished the evening stone cold sober for possibly the first time in my life. The dancing was fun. I danced from when we arrived at around 10pm until we left at 1.15am with just a few breaks. We were one of about 6 hen nights in the bar, along with a stag night and several birthday parties. About a quarter of the clientele were in some form of fancy dress. All in all the evening was very good natured. I didn't see any fights of anything like that. I did however realise that the 70s was a quiet era for the novelty dance record. We did YMCA and The Time Warp. They didn't play Blame it on the Boogie or Oops up Side your Head and I genuinely can't think of any others. I liked doing The Time Warp though, hadn't done it for ages until last night. The DJ was awful. He clearly had no idea how to mix and sleezed over the (engaged) Chief Bridesmaid when she went up to request a record. Additionally, he had an odd idea of what constituted 70s music. A medley (well he called it a medley, I called it bits of lots of tracks played randomly one after the other) of tracks from Dirty Dancing (a 1980s movie about the 1960s) was played at one stage along with several Jive Bunny tracks. Hmmmmm. Anyway, my afro wig went down a treat and I think a good evening was had by all.
At 1.30am the 7 of us who were staying with the hen got our pre-booked minibus back to Hampshire and retired to bed.
This morning we watched the X Factor (it was awful, I complained all the way through) and hid the willy straws and willy whistles before the mother of the bride turned up. We then had a very nice lunch and at 3pm left for home. I was home in time to pop in to Asda before it closed at 5pm. I will upload photos to FB after I get my new bandwidth allowance from Madasafish on Wednesday.
If I'm a bit more awake tomorrow I may write up my response to the results of Empire Magazine's 500 greatest movies of all time poll.
I apologise in advance for terrible spelling, grammer and possible missing words in this entry. I'm too tired to put them right at present.
