Farewell Fair Essex..

Billericay Brawls and Family Fun.

Billericay- home of ‘Gavin and Stacey’- Gavlaaar, Pamlaaar and ‘Smiffy’; the heart of Essex. Southend- home of Peter Pan’s play park, Adventure Island (a rite of passage for any child of Essex origin) and boy racers cruising the boulevard with gadgets attached to their Ford escorts that are worth more than the vehicle itself.

Combine the two on a Saturday night, throw in a few gallons of alcohol, a couple of birthdays, a bunch of people that in the words of Shameless’s Frank Gallagher “know how to throw a paaaaartay,” and you have an evening destined to be filled with jaggerbombs, brawls, vomit, and most importantly- cheesy chips.

Having decided to leave Essex for a while, this combination seemed as good as any for a bit of a ‘goodbye-Essex-blowout.’ My ever itchy feet are leading me to Kent for a while, living with my cousin, living by the sea again. :) My inability to stay still somewhere for more than thirty seconds is becoming a bit of a running joke with my friends, but I love being in new places, new jobs and people, and my life and various wacky plans may change at 100 miles per hour, but until I find what I’m looking for, (your guess is as good as mine) I can’t imagine being able to learn how to stay still.

With a pre drinking session in Billericay, followed by clubbing in Southend, I got the feeling I’d leave Essex with a bang. Now I’ve got a little bit of history with this particular gang of party-goers that deserves a mention before we continue this tale of Essex shenanigans …

I was eighteen years old, working in a bar in Spain that was a swimming pool, bar and restaurant -a place of various colourful characters and goings on shall we say, a job that could take up a whole separate blog post. Eighteen and living alone in a foreign country- I was having a whale of a time. I don’t think I ever slept in those first few months; living in a beach town in the summer season, learning the language and ways of the world as I went along in my own usual backward way- a beer in one hand, an ice-cream in the other, I was as happy as Larry.

Spain has a liberal way of doing things, as do its inhabitants; the chef at work used to get so drunk during the day, you’d hear him start to crash pots and pans together singing loudly at the top of his voice, and by 6 o’clock we’d be thinking- shit, how we going to get through evening service? There were various punch ups; (between staff not customers) the manager once wandering through the restaurant with a kitchen knife in his hand, looking for the waiter who’d just punched him in the face, sending him flying into the rack of crisps and then fled. God knows what the holiday makers made of Walkers packets flying everywhere- I remember being quietly amused, thinking- oh, this is what the real world, this world of adults is like then.

Anyway, one night while I was working, I met a young couple on holiday together- the nicest couple you’ve ever met and was amazed to find out we lived within a couple of streets to each other back in England. I spent the rest of their holiday loading them up with toxic sangria; knocking any type of alcohol into a jug of chopped fruit, topping it up with red wine and watching the girlfriend drink her boyfriend under the table every night. When they went home, they told their various cousins due to arrive the following week, “when you get to Mil Palmeras, go to the swimming pool bar and look for a girl called Melody.”

Hence some slight confusion when a group of rowdy boys and girls turned up at my work one day: “Are you Melody?”
“Yeh, who the hell are you lot?”
Two weeks of fun followed this little introduction, involving stolen wheelbarrows, death-defying drinking competitions and eating cigarette butts (I'll explain later…) I was a beach bum through and through by this point in the season and joined in their various holiday antics looking as scruffy as hell, I didn’t have a makeup bag or a pair of straighteners out there and I used to wear the same pair of green shorts all the time to the point that when we all met up in England when I visited home for Christmas, one of them said they half expected to see me walking down Romford high street in them.

They’re a great family and over the last few years in Spain and England I’ve somehow managed to integrate myself and meet them all; various brothers, sisters, mums, dads, step parents, cousins, step brothers, step sisters and boyfriends are always appearing out of the woodwork- this family is never-ending and so a birthday booze-up in Billericay was not to be missed.

* * * * *

Pre-drinking is an important, or rather a vital part of today’s culture- being an event designed to save you money; drink before you go out = less need to spend money in the club. The byproduct of this however is that you seem to drink twice as much twice as fast, which in the case of this particular evening, meant twice as many people being sick. (Not me before you ask.)

Perhaps it was the fruity punch (which more accurately was a bowl of every brightly coloured liquid in the kitchen poured into a mixing bowl,) or the little cups of florescent vodka jelly being passed around generously, but whatever the ingredients, the outcome was that everyone was feeling pretty jolly by the time the taxis pulled up to take us onto Southend. I managed to shotgun a lift with a designated driver, although his girlfriend calling shotgun to the front seat made a good call- puking out the window the whole way to Southend, yelling at a signpost she mistook for a human being, (an easy mistake to make with that much vodka in your system.) But the show must go on, and indeed it did- cutting some rug, making some shapes, free bubbly and little cards offering free shots to the group. We managed to loose at least half of the original number during the course of the evening- people throwing up in the bathroom, being thrown out and bundled in to taxis- but a few survivors lasted until around 3am- when followed the obligatory ‘kebab-and-a-punch-up’ routine.

The ‘kebab-and-a-punch-up routine’ involves two main elements:
A. buying large quantities of regurgitated meat wrapped in pitta bread smothered in cheese and mayo.
B. Throwing it all on the floor before you’ve eaten it to passionately fight a worthy cause in the middle of the street whilst waiting for your taxi.

I’m going to say that the origin of this particular punch up is irrelevant, merely because all I remember everyone saying was ‘he was being a dickhead’ being presented as the main justification for why everybody turned on this bloke. (Who I was sure had started off as one of our party?) I think the best way to judge whether it’s worth getting involved, is to ask yourself whether you would bother if you were sober. If the answer is no, then perhaps it’s the jaggerbombs churning inside that want a brawl rather than the decision-making part of your brain.

“Hold my cheesy chips, I’m going in.”
I was solemnly handed a polystyrene box and off one of them marched into the battleground. All that was missing was the theme tune to ‘Rocky’ with slow motion effects. I had the feeling that the fellow underneath them all was beginning to seriously regret ‘being a dickhead.’ Before anyone panics- it’s wasn’t blood and guts, indeed kebabs went flying and voices were raised, but there were a lot of punches that hit nothing but air, a lot of swinging and stumbling, a few repetitions of ‘cumon then, cumon then!’ and a fair bit of prancing around like ballerinas on steroids.

But all is fair in love and war as they say, so I strolled around from one end of the street to the other watching this little parade, the box of cheesy chips in one hand, a banner in the other cheering them on (I'm joking, I swear.)

The bouncer standing outside the club we had left nearly an hour ago gave us some friendly advice as the punch-up-parade shimmied past him; “Here’s a tip for you guys- if ya want to have a punch up, don’t do it the middle of the high street were ya ugly mugs will be caught on camera at every angle.”

Ah.

Hence the speedy exit into a mini-van back to Billericay, the cabbie kindly letting 8 people in the 9 seater, a cosey journey where we were all given a blow by blow account of what we had just witnessed from the punch-up-parade’s participants. Cheesy chips dude was convinced he’d strained his shoulder as a result of his contribution (either that or it was an excuse to ask for a back rub) and their battlefield tactics were still being repeated at 6am by the more enthusiastic members of the punch-up-possy;
“Yer and then I swung for him, and then I ducked and then I was like pow…”
By the next day when the story was being retold at the pub to another uncle, (this family is everywhere) it turned into a tale resembling a Mission Impossible style sequence. I was tempted to ask who was going to play them in the movie.

The guy on the receiving end of all this drama was left in Southend. He’s probably still there now.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself as the night was far from over. Back at their house after we bundled out of them mini-van, I took the liberty of putting the kettle on, making cups of tea and was half way through pouring the milk when I realized shot glasses were being lined up. It was 5am, the logic behind it being; “we bought all this alcohol, we might as well drink it.” A few rounds of sambuca and jaggermisters later, a new game started- The all important ‘anything you can do, I can do better’ game. This game can appear under several familiar titles; the ‘I bet you can’t do this’ game, or the ’I bet you a tenner you won’t eat that’ game.

Perhaps this is the place to expand on the cigarette butt story aforementioned. Back in Spain all those years ago when I was first introduced this rather entertaining group, I realized these boys in particular bore a competitive streak that knew no bounds- but possibly a line was crossed when one of them ate a cigarette butt for a 50 Euro bet. Impressed, we offered another 50, and he carried on, consuming the contents of the ashtray until he was violently sick in the flowerbed. It was the best 50 Euros I’ve ever spent.
Then there was the ‘I bet I can drink more than you’ version the following evening, a particular favourite, a bet with an outcome is still debated today. Myself and my competitor had 100 Euros each, the rules stipulating that whoever was sick first, lost. Now alcohol is relatively cheap out there and the measures rather generous in good old Espana so this got slightly out of hand, matching each other drink for drink as we went from bar to bar. One particular pint of long island iced tea that was more accurately a pint of petrol with a splash of coke, forever scars my memory. (And my stomach.)

This is where ‘shots of death’ first appeared in my life- Tequilla, sambucca and Tabasco sauce- which I realise I’ve previously mentioned in this blog (eight smelly boys and a small apartment) confessing to immediately chunddering it up, so actually I’m pretty screwed after four years of lying to my opponent saying I drank him under the table and laughing at him throwing up on the way home that night.. Damn. (Perhaps he won’t read this??)

So back at the house in Billericay, the suns coming up and these games start up again in the intelligent form of- ‘I bet if you punch me in the stomach, it doesn’t hurt-’ a game no doubt inspired by their Rambo-style performance on the streets of Southend. They took it turns- the part where they psyched themselves up, tensing stomach muscles being almost more entertaining than their faces as they pretended they could still breath after receiving a heavy blow; “That… d..didn’t hurt… my turn.”
I genuinely adore these boys, but I couldn’t quite work out the point- cigarette butt boy obviously ageeing as he disappeared into the living room to watch re-reuns on ‘One Tree Hill’ (!?) leaving the others to continue until one of them went flying, putting a plug socket through the wall.

They weren’t giving up; one began counting of the change in his pocket- “I bet you four pounds eighty he beats you in a race to the end of the street.” I had an urge to pat him on the head.

One thing to note when you’ve had a drink, is that your internal volume button increases without you even being aware, i.e. you’re shouting at the top of your voice when in your head, you think you’re being witty and polite. Eight people in a kitchen in the wee hours of the morning, despite all conscious efforts found it impossible to be respectably quiet to the sleeping parents upstairs. The alternative- yelling “Sssshhh! Ssshhh!” every thirty seconds surprisingly creates more noise than a bunch of football fans at an away game. The idea was that whoever was doing the most ‘ssshhhing’ would be seen as the one being good trying to calm everyone down- but, mother’s have a special instinct when it comes to their family; they know exactly which ones are the culprits, even through ceilings.

6.45am- watched a bit of breakfast news and after untangling myself from three excitable cocker-spaniels and three cats that were intent on sitting on me, looking at me with confused eyes as to why everyone was still awake at this ungodly hour, I crashed out on the sofa.

The next day involved typical Sunday hangover behaviour- a pub lunch where there’s always one that orders a pint of Stella, downs it bravely and disappears off the to the men’s to meet it again in the toilet bowl thirty seconds later, and one that wants to ‘get back on it,’ needing to be gently convinced otherwise. This was followed by a dose of X Factor back at the house, (they still hadn’t managed to get rid of all of us that had crashed on various blow-up beds and sofas by this point) a show that is far more fun when watching it in a group so you can all yell at the T.V collectively, giving expert opinions on judges and contestants. One of the boyfriends had said to me walking home from the pub,”it’s not just her I love, it’s the whole package- the family.” And curled up in their living room with them all in various states of dishevelment, cups of tea being passed around, I could see what he meant. It’s not a bad family to be a part of.

I made the rookie error of borrowing someone’s phone to call home as mine had run out of battery, only to call ‘home’ in this girls phone book. I was momentarily confused at the stranger’s voice, a stranger that definitely wasn’t my mum, so I hung up in a panic. I hung up on her mother. Everyone fell about laughing and after apologizing, I took my cue to leave (convincing my brother to come and pick me up as I was still wearing last night’s outfit.)

So I’ off to Kent folks! And with a psychic cousin, a beach and a whole new town of people who haven’t met me yet- Lord knows what’s in store. Whatever I find, my pen is at the ready…