Monday February 5 - A Sober Stag Do

My name's Will and I'm a social alcoholic. It's been one month, four days and 21 hours since my last drink.

Warning: Some of the content of this blog entry is a bit colourful. Mum, you might want to go and make some marmalade at this point.

So, like Laura Ingalls Wilder's bottom, I remain firmly on the wagon. This is no mean feat. A proper stag weekend is the ultimate test for the budding tee-totaller. Not including close family bereavement or accidentally seeing Vanessa Feltz in the nuddy, obviously.

A stag do is the British drinking culture in its purest form. It is the very essence of binge. It is the B of the Bleuurgh. It does not pretend to be anything other than a 48-hour drinking session, interrupted only by occasional food breaks and the short stroll from Irish theme pub to ropey lapdancing bar*.

My spoilt generation may not have spilled its blood on Flanders fields or the beaches of Normandy, nor did we man the barricades in 1960s Paris. All we can tell our grandchildren about our great European adventures is how we puked in Prague, binged in Berlin, and were broken in Bratislava. The only time we've had nothing to offer but "blood, sweat, toil and tears" was on the lavatory after a particularly heavy session.

With this in mind, I approached the BEF (Brummie Expeditionary Force) trip to Barcelona, held in honour of Matt Cumbi's nuptials, with much trepidation. Anyone can stick to soft drinks at a cosy dinner party, I thought, or even a night out on the town. Just a few hours of purgatory, then home to a comfy bed. But how would my sobriety cope with being miles from home on a trip with little point other than massive consumption of booze (and, obviously, to celebrate a lifetime of friendship with the groom, essential rite of passage, blah blah, yaddah yaddah)?

The answer was, surprisingly, pretty darned well.

Rather than give a linear account of the weekend, allow me to present my experiences in a more academic fashion. As one of the few men to have witnessed a stag do through single vision, I will use my experiences to either confirm or dispel popular some popular nuggets of received wisdom about stag nights or similar mammoth booze-ups.

Received wisdom: Remaining sober during a stag weekend is boring.
Verdict: Fiction.
I can honesty state that I had a fantastic weekend. As usual, the hardest part was refusing the first few drinks. Knowing you are the black sheep among the "Sixteen large cervezas et uno fizzy water s'il vous plait, Pedro" can be a very lonely place. Particularly when Pedro insists on emphasising your second-class citizen status by not bothering to bring the water out until at least the third time of asking.
However, as per previous nights out, staying booze-free becomes easier as the night wears on. Within a few hours, there seems little point in drinking alcohol as it would present an unwinnable game of catch-up. Like watching Michelle McManus versus Karen Carpenter on Celebrity Fit Club.
Instead, you learn to make the most of the entertainment on offer. Just as it would be unfair to portray all tee-totallers as earnest dullards, it is unfair to claim that all drunks instantly become boorish louts.
They are still people. They still talk, they still debate, they still laugh and sing and tell jokes. My friends are great company, even when in drink.

They don't become boorish louts until, ooh, at least half past nine.

However, on both nights I stayed out until around 4am, which means I must have been having fun. This was longer than many of the drinkers managed, particularly on the Friday night (when half the party were in bed by 2am, the groom retired at midnight, and Shub appeared to be rushing back to catch the Spanish equivalent of Countdown).

Received wisdom: Alcohol and stag parties are a recipe for aggressive behaviour.
Verdict: Fiction. Sort of.
We did experience some aggression, but only as victims, not perpetrators. Bizarrely, those dishing it out were not other British stag parties or even the local hombres, sick with envy at our chiselled good looks and effortless style.
No, the only aggro we encountered was from the hookers who gather at the seedy end of La Ramblas, the slightly over-rated focal point of Barcelona. (It's a bit like Solihull Indoor Market, but long and thin. And not indoors.)
If that doesn't sound too scary, then all I can say is: you didn't see the size of the hookers. I think I now finally understand where the rugby union term comes from.
These girls were not the heroin-addled waifs you might see on a street corner in Britain, listlessly puffing on a ciggie and waiting for the next beating from an inadequate accountant while the bitter wind whips around their bare, purple legs.
No, Ramblas hookers are beefy African girls who dress for the weather and look like the result of an experiment involving Geoff Capes and the Williams sisters. Never mind Roxanne you don't have put on the red light. Try Roseanne.
They latch onto you by grabbing your arm - or worse - and making a series of increasingly terrifying propositions, that usually start with "let's go for a walk" to...well, let's just say I've been on plenty of walks and none of them have led to that.
As a sober man, I found it relatively simple to avoid them. Avoid eye contact, don't answer their questions, and keep walking. Some of my fellow stags learned this the hard way, and were involved in some heated exchanges. My favourite was this:

Hooker: "Hey, you, I suck your dick!"
Don: "No thanks, luv."
Hooker: "I suck your dick!"
Don: "No."
Hooker: "I suck your dick!"
Don: "No. Piss off."
Hooker: "You are racist."

I love the fact that this woman was so quick to play the race card, mainly because it'd be a head-scratcher for any Guardian readers who happened by. What should they do? Engage her services and be accused of exploiting wimmin. Refuse it and be called a racist. I imagine they'd try to find an acceptable middle ground. Accept the woman's kind offer, perhaps, but make absolutely sure she was working under an official Fair Trade agreement.

My second favourite exchange was the straight-talking gal who spied one of the, ahem, larger members of the group and shouted: "Hey, Fatty, wanna blow job?"
Now I'm no expert on prostitution, but I'm thinking she may need to refine her patter if she wants to make something of herself in that game.
And what does one reply? The standard response - "I'm big-boned, actually" - sounds like an acceptance.

Received wisdom: Drunk people are repetitive.
Verdict: Fact.
Harsh but true. However, I refer you to my earlier comments about still having a good time.
The repetition thing is mildly annoying, but it can also be very entertaining. Particularly if you are not the victim. I was standing near one stag as he worked his silver-tongued magic on a British girl in a pub. I was only half-listening, but his patter appeared to go something like this:

Stag: "So where you from?"
Girl: "Manchester."
Stag: "Manchester?"
Girl: "Yes."
Stag: "Whereabouts in Manchester?"
Girl: "Moss Side."
Stag: "Oh right. Is that in Manchester, then?"
Girl: "Yes."
Stag: "You sound like a Manc."
Girl: "Yes, I come from Manchester."
Stag: "Do you?"
Girl: "Yes."
Stag: "Whereabouts in Manchester you from?"
Girl: "Moss Side."
Stag: "Oh, yeah. I think I met someone from Moss Side earlier. Will? Have you met Claire? She's from...sorry, luv, where are you from again?"

Repeat in this vain for about an hour. No, he didn't pull her.

Received wisdom: Drunk people whiff a bit.
Verdict: Fact.
Again, harsh but true. However, they don't smell of what you might expect. They don't waft clouds of pungent alcohol, like a cartoon boozehound. They actually smell like rancid milk. Weird.
They also fart. A lot.

Received wisdom: Drunk people are vulnerable to crime.
Verdict: Fiction.
The cancelled flight chaos at Barcelona airport gave British travellers the chance to indulge two of their biggest passions: queueing and moaning. Several groups shared horror stories about bag-snatchers, pickpockets and muggers. Thankfully, my group suffered no such fate, despite being pissed for most of the weekend.
This may have been dumb luck, or perhaps God was smiling on us. I suspect, however, a simpler explanation. One drunk is perhaps easy meat to a mugger. Fifteen drunk brummies, however, are like a well-oiled war machine.

Received wisdom: You don't need alcohol to have a good time.
Verdict: Fiction.
No stag do would function without buckets of alcohol. I was able to have a good time sober, but only because I was effectively riding the coat tails of my drunken pals. If we had all been sober, it would have been much less fun all round. So, a sincere and cheesey thank you to all the stags for providing the entertainment and destroyed livers while I minced around with my fizzy water. I salute you, particularly Raj, who has been bellyaching for a shout out in this blog since day one.

Oh yes, nearly forgot. You also definitely need alcohol to have a good time in the Baja Beach Bar, the Club Tropicana-themed monstrosity at which we dined on the Saturday night. It is too traumatic for me to describe here, so let's just say a bottle of tequila per head should get you through the night.

* Point of interest. The phrase "lapdancing bar" is also the Catalan word for "brothel, where no lapdancing whatsoever takes place but full sex costs 100 euros". At least, it is if you are a taxi driver who presumably gets a commission for every car load of stags he drops off at said establishment. We made our excuses and left. Sorry mum, but I did tell you to go and make some marmalade.