What I did in my summer holidays (when I was 19) by no offenc (aged 23)
There was a brief period of my life (well, a summer holiday when I was at uni, if I'm to be honest) when I was dossing down in London with a couple of mates I'd made in my teens. One of these mates was Billy, a lovely lad, if a bit dimmer than most. He'd wound up vanishing off to live the dream after school - by that, I mean he wanted to be a rock star, and went to seek his fame - and so it came as a bit of a shock when I got a phone call off him saying he was back in the UK (I never knew he'd left!), and would I like to come down and stay with him and Paul, who he'd apparently bumped into down there whilst working. Of course, being 19, freshly single and skint, I jumped at it, and a few days later I was down in the Big Smoke, rucksack over my shoulder, wondering exactly what the fuck I was playing at. I'd sulked when my mam said I couldn't have money for a ticket, and she only relented when I started giving her the silent treatment. I was a kid and wanted to see two of my better mates from school, couldn't she understand that? Obviously looking back now, I was acting like a spoilt knobhead, but at the time I felt justified as fuck.

Anyway, I'd gotten there on a Saturday morning, so the next two days were spent getting reacquainted with the two of them in the most traditional of ways - buying copious amounts of cheap knockoff booze from the offy and proceeding to knacker our livers and brains. It was sometime on Sunday morning when Billy pointed out to me that he should probably lay off it once it gets to tea time because he was in work tomorrow. "Work?" I asked, as if the concept was alien to me. Actually, who am I kidding; I was a media student, of course it was fucking alien.

"Yeah mate, I've been given a fuckin' fantastic job, I get to work with royalty and everything!" He said, looking smugger than R Kelly probably did when he got off that kiddy diddling charge. "Really," says I, "What doing?"

Of course his face turned red at this; perhaps he'd thought bragging he worked with people from Buck House was enough to sate my curiosity. He was wrong. "Well... actually, to be honest, it's not that great," he said, now shame-faced and beginning to regret he'd a) drank so much and b) told me about it at all. "I work..."

"Go on," I said.

"...ah Jesus. I work in the fuckin' laundry, okay?"

"The Royal laundry??"

"Well it's not like I wash the Queen's frillies, it's mostly just the guard stuff like." He then proceeded to tell me, in detail, just how manky and disgusting the guard's uniforms get from standing outdoors in those stuffy little guard boxes, and how they had to stick them in giant vats of stupidly-hot water to literally cook the smell out of them. Especially so in the summer, as it was then.

After this, we carried on drinking. Billy more than myself or Paul, probably so he could get a nice hangover on for the next day's work. At some point during the evening, I made a proposal - if I could finish the rest of the cans and save Billy from puking into a big tub full of coats or bearskin hats, I got to go into work with him tomorrow morning to see the inner workings of the Palace, and maybe help him out for a bit of sly cash on the side. I'd even made him sign a badly-scrawled affadavit saying yes, I (Billy) agree to let you, no offenc, do all of that if you finish the last of the booze.

So I did. I awoke the next morning with sick in my mouth, which isn't pleasant when you realise you've forgotten your toothbrush and your host doesn't seem to have one of their own that you can borrow. I leapt out of the couch and into the kitchen, where I deftly gobbed the vomit into the sink and washed it away. A quick half-pint of Thames Water's finest, and I felt at least marginally human. And then I spotted the piece of paper from last night. And it all came flooding back.

The ride to work was unpleasant to say the least. As much as I'm a fan of public transport (it's cheap, it's generally reliable, and in plentiful supply) when you're riding a bus with what seems like an entire officeful of people and a raging hangover, it's not in the slightest bit fun. Even less so when you've got to stop your also-hungover mate from sicking everywhere. Thankfully we got there without as much as a dry heave, and so Billy snuck me past the guards (well, no, actually, there were no guards, it was just a door with a clock-in thingy, but anything to make a dull story more interesting) and we got changed. Apparently one must wear special overalls when working in the royal laundry. Whatever.

We wandered down the corridor from the changing room to the main laundry room, and upon opening the door the most foul, sweaty, ripe stench struck me in the nose. I very nearly spewed my hoop there and then. Thankfully I must have been made of stronger stuff than I thought.

"Christ, what's the smell?" I said, gagging from the hangover and wondering if they kept pegs down here. "The smell?" quipped Billy, looking a bit green but grinning at me as there was a joke I wasn't in on, "'s boiled bear-'ats, innit?"

Length? I barely even KNEW 'er.
(No offenc - not to be confused with no_offenc, Wed 15 Oct 2008, 11:30, 8 replies)

palm. in face.
(tweebianmonkey Should be known as Widget, Wed 15 Oct 2008, 13:14, closed)

*SPANG*
.
( girlinthehole, Wed 15 Oct 2008, 13:21, closed)

Oh dear!
Forehead hits keyboard.
(Tugnut Ex of this parish, Wed 15 Oct 2008, 13:24, closed)

Well..
I've not posted for YEARS. What did you expec-*SPANG* *SPANG* *SPANG*
(No offenc - not to be confused with no_offenc, Wed 15 Oct 2008, 13:40, closed)

Add in a
*SPANG*

From me.
( MatJ LOOK, Wed 15 Oct 2008, 14:08, closed)

Bah
You got me good and proper!
(EuroSong I love horse meat: best of all the animals, Wed 15 Oct 2008, 14:59, closed)

you utter twat!
really didn't see that coming!

SPANG!
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Wed 15 Oct 2008, 22:47, closed)