BEER GOGGLES
Boulogne, je t’aime: the teen dream
IMAGINE a particularly vivid dream in which you tell all your classmates what you really think of them, call your form teacher an “ugly old bag” and inform your geography master he’s a “bald headed cunt”…. before throwing up over most of them.
Then you wake up in your underpants in a French hospital with tubes coming out of your nose, attached to a stomach pump machine – and, to your horror, discover it wasn’t a dream at all.
This was my first visit to Boulogne at the age of 14. We had been invited to visit there by our twinned French school … or some shit (I don’t really care).
Long before I experienced the joys of Spiced rum chasers with Nigerian Guinness, I gunned back two litres of rough-as-fuck French white wine (the two francs a bottle variety) during a school day trip.
I couldn’t tell you much about the town, except that it was full of horrified French people.
One French nurse that felt the full Beer Goggles brunt informed me: “Eet is not good to drink so much at your age”. “Fuck off you four eyed bitch,” I calmly told her. That set her straight. She should have been relieved I didn’t throw up on her.
The “ugly old bag” form teacher was entrusted with taking my classmates home on the ferry, while the BHC had to wait for my tummy to be pumped.
We shared an awkward silence on the journey back home. The only thing I can remember him saying to me during the long journey back was, “You might want to ditch those jeans.” He was right: they were caked in puke and literally stank to high heavens.
Next day, the shit hit the fan and I was ordered to write letters of apology to all the people I had insulted. That was a lot of paper. The UOB threw my heartfelt letter back in my face.
Unsurprisingly, our school was never invited back to Boulogne again…
Living the Lockdown Loca
Lockdown schmockdown! No one is going to stop me from boozing it up.
If anything, I’ve been drinking MORE since Boris banned me from the pub.
And I’ve discovered a new favourite tipple that you can’t get in the boozer: Nigerian Guinness. It rolls in at a generous 7.5% volume and is perfect with a chaser of Kracken Spiced Rum.
That’s giving you real bang for your buck. A Nigerian plus a large Kracken will cost you about £2.50. In a pub, you’d be paying about 15 quid!
Let’s face it: anyone can build their own pub garden. And you can get yourself tanked up for a fraction of the price.
We were faced with a difficult mission when the Yard of Ale was first conceived: to transform a weed-ridden garden into an office and drinking area.
Here is a pic of our London headquarters. The little blue laptop on the table is frequently drenched in beer suds – so its life expectancy isn’t very high.
We are encouraging readers to send in pictures of their own DIY beer gardens. The best one will win a six pack of Nigerians!
Send in your pics to hello@theyardofale.co.uk