The most eventful night of my life
This is going to be a long one. It all started waaaaaay back when. It was the late 80s, I was 17 years old, and I had my first car. A Skoda. Back when they were proper shit. It had a green vinyl roof. I was a laughing stock.

I was due to go to a party one evening, so happily set off on my way. About 5 minutes down the road, doing about 60, the Skoda started swerving wildly across the road, and one of the back wheels promptly fell off. I was going down the big hill on the road by Legoland near Windsor (or Windsor Safari Park as it was at the time) if you know it. I ended up careering into a ditch as the newly liberated wheel bounced off down the hill into the face of a stream of oncoming traffic. It was quite a sight, after a few bounces it was getting up some height. Caused an awful panic, but mercifully it didn’t hit anyone.

Crawled out of the car and, with not much alternative, started thumbing for a lift home. Waited a good half hour or so with nobody stopping, then a very nice black Golf pulled up and a well-spoken man offered me a lift back to my place. He looked and sounded extremely familiar, it wasn’t until he dropped me off and flashed me a smile as he pulled away that I realised who it was… Jeremy Irons.

Called out the AA, the breakdown truck duly arrived, hauled the car out of the ditch, retrieved the errant wheel, and set off towards the Skoda dealer in Slough I’d bought it from. The driver was… well, nowadays I’d think he was a complete arsehole, but at 17 years old I thought he was great. He insisted on dropping off the car then taking me on to the party to which I was headed anyway, and having a beer as it was the end of his shift.

The party in question was in the sports & social club of a well-known hospital near Slough. Newly freed from my obligation to remain sober and drive home, I proceeded to get utterly arseholed and regale the story of my eventful evening to my gathered friends. Just before kicking-out time, one friend came over and said that there was a swimming pool out the back of the club, and when the bar shut everyone was going for a swim.

We staggered out to the pool, I had a quick puke, then realised that the pool (a small hospital “therapy pool” for the poorly) was in fact locked. In my advanced state of refreshment I wasn’t about to let a fact like that stand in my way, so I duly ripped the door off its hinges and we all piled in. Had a whale of a time throwing each other into the pool, fully clothed, oh what fun. Until a few lads we didn’t know started getting rather lairy and throwing chairs into the pool, and shortly afterwards through the windows, at which point we decided that it might be a good idea to leave it there for now.

Our group split into two parties at that point, one group wandered off to look for a cab while myself and two others tried to see if there was more fun to be had around the hospital. We found ourselves by the hospital radio station by the front entrance and elected to see if we could have a record played and ask for a dedication. The DJ was a young lad of no more than 15, clearly doing a voluntary stint. The sight of three soaking wet drunken idiots was enough to leave him practically cowering in fear and he meekly allowed us to put on whatever we wanted, and to take the mike. So it was that we put on UB40’s “Don’t break my heart” and gave the on-air dedication “This is for everyone on the cardiac ward. Try not to have a heart attack.”

At this point we reasoned that we might not be the most popular people to be found about the hospital at that moment in time, so we departed and headed off by foot back towards good old Slough town. Half an hour or so passed and we happened to see the other group we’d recently left, also trudging along soaked to the skin and by now very cold. We shouted, waved, caught their attention, and just as we were about to catch up with them there was the sound of screeching brakes from behind us, and we turned to face a pair of police cars. Then another three cars approached from the other direction behind the second group. Oh dear.

We were gathered together and the head policeman began to ask questions of us, such as “Why are you all soaking wet?” It’s been raining. “No it hasn’t. You’ve been swimming.” Ummmmm… yes, in the river. “And what river is that then, there isn’t one anywhere near here.” Errrr…. it was the Thames. “The Thames is about five miles away. And I don’t seem to recall that it smells of chlorine”. Ah. “Furthermore we’ve had reports of a group of young lads matching your description smashing up the swimming pool at the hospital.” Oh.

They started collecting our names, and one of my mates Eddie, who was currently wanted for burglary, gave his as “Tony Riley”. The copper asked him if he had a middle name, and he said “Anthony”.

This did not act in our favour.

Her majesty’s constabulary provided accommodation for some time after this.
(Ali Bongo 9000 Ali Bongo 9000, Thu 22 Sep 2005, 13:56, Reply)