When the booooooooooattt comes in, or, The Tale of the Flying Disablist.
If any of you have been to Newcastle, chances are you may have spent a fine* evening on the Tuxedo Princess/Royale, known to locals as "The Boat". What quite possessed someone to say "hey guys, let's have a nightclub on a car ferry moored underneath the Tyne Bridge" is beyond me. Lots of horrific beer (Carlsberg apparently, but I reckon just pumped direct from the river) and the feeling that the whole room is moving....because the whole room was fucking moving with the tide.

One of the dancefloors was extra special in that it rotated, which always added an element of fun**, and the ceilings were painted red. Absolutely fine, but when things got hot and sweaty, the paint started to melt, so you ended the night with many spots of red on your nice clean shirt that looked suspiciously like blood.

The Boat was truly an atrocious night out. And the boat was the time of an unfortunate incident in my life which I will now relate to you.

For some reason, despite its atrocity, a few friends and I decided to venture onto the boat for a few sherberts and to throw down some high class dancing moves. On our arrival, the place was fucking dead. I swear, there was more life in Michael Barrymore's swimming pool. Unfortunately, we'd all bought £25 tickets that gave you 10 free drinks, so we weren't going to leave.

At this stage, a guy in a wheelchair arrives with some other mates of ours. Now this chap had quite bad cerebral palsy (we shall call him Chris, for 'tis his name), and was a genuinely nice bloke. His mum (bless her) had never let him out before on his own to something like this, so us as "responsible" friends were supposed to look after him.

That was an error.

Unfortunately, when we all bought our tickets earlier in the day, Chris's mum had refused to get him a £25 one, as "Chris must NOT drink."
Well to be fair, Chris was a bit of a beer hound, and also was good at procuring herbage. and obviously, who's going to search the guy in the wheelchair?

So, a few beers later, and we adjourn* to the deck - Chris has to go up in the goods lift, as obviously any of you who've been to The Princess will know, there were many stairs. We sit on deck and pass round a rather impressive roach. Now, I have a problem with drugs - due to a relatively fast metabolism, I always tend to feel the effects first. In this case, I had a horrific whiteout, vomited profusely over the side and sat sweating for 20 minutes, followed closely by all my mates, Chris included. We managed to pass it off to the bouncers "no no, it's just we feel a bit seasick, honest" and went back in. A few sherberts, and we were back to normal.

"Right chaps" I said. "I'm off for a dance"

"I'll come with you" says Chris and I acceede. Having a cripple as a mate is great for pulling teh ladies, so off we go.

As we get to the revolving dancefloor, the DJ announces to the (slightly busier) room "let's give a big hand for our mate in the wheelchair. Well done fella" in true patronising style. Chris, to be fair, is used to this. And also very pissed.

This might explain why he didn't see the edge of the revolving dancefloor.

This might further explain why one wheel of his wheelchair went on the dancefloor.

And the other didn't.

He got thrown from his chair like a leaping, spastic salmon and hit the dancefloor.

On his face.

That took some explaining to his mum.

Chris wasn't allowed out with us again.



*unlikely to have been fine
**not fun. Oh no. Not fun at all.
( Undercovercarrot got done for gross misconduct on..., Thu 9 Apr 2009, 8:30, 2 replies)

That was...
..the one at the end of "Our Friends In The North" wasn't it?
( Stevedix http://www.stevedix.de/blog, Thu 9 Apr 2009, 12:13, closed)

I was waiting
for somebody to share a story about The Boat, sadly (or perhaps gladly) it had moved on by the time I moved back up to Newcastle
(Banjax, Thu 9 Apr 2009, 13:07, closed)