New face at an old place

I'm liking the Star Inn more since its original manager Dave left, and now I can go in there without feeling like I'm prostituting myself by going into a bar whose manager I have no time for whatsoever (and whose boyfriend, mystifyingly enough, is a very nice bubbly chap).

Interestingly, Dave jumped before he was pushed by the owners, after he set up a darkroom in the pub one night, a night I wrote about previously. I derive no small amount of satisfaction from the fact that I was one of the few people who did what the owners were afraid of people doing that night, and it also makes me laugh that even though it had some people up in arms, it was actually hardly used at all. And now, a wanker who never showed his customers appreciation or respect is gone. Good riddance.

Perhaps disrobing him on my first night in the pub was a bit hasty of me.

Now onto the new manager.

His name is Russell Cooper, and he was one of the bar staff in the King's Arms I noticed that weekend I was up in London for Bear Pride last year. As you can see, he's nice and cuddly. He often greets me with 'Hi Gorgeous'. I think I shall have to get him into my bed.

Interestingly, on his first night of management there, a riot erupted. From BN2 Beeyatches:

'Flee has confirmed that there was a fight-cum-riot on Sunday involving two straight men and two straight women. These pieces of human waste had actually played the 'discrimination' card to get in when told it was a men only night. How low can these people go? Evidently as low as throwing heavy stools into crowds and biting lumps out of peoples arms. Savages.

Further it was the new manager's first night, the unconfirmed rumour that the old one was canned because the brewery didn't like the idea of men touching other men's wee wee parts on the premises. All bear events are 'Postponed until further notice'. Hmmm.

New manager a rather furry bear. Nice.

I couldn't agree more, Ms. Howarth.

Recreational chemistry

Last friday we had a rather interesting series of lectures on drug addiction by Angela McAdam, probably the most engaging lecturer in the university's department of pharmacy. Having gone to art-school and moonlighted as a goth/punk in the dispensary, she is proof that you can be a pharmacist and not be boring. Perhaps a little like Albert Hoffman, but without the incendiary hallucinogen discovery to her name.

Firstly, to prove a point, an assessment of the risk-taking potential of the classmates was conducted via individual questionnares. I scored 7, which means I must have been an accountant in a previous life. It was found, rather unsurprisingly, that the results of the class in general, instead of being normally distributed, were skewed somewhat towards the conservative end. Mind you, some of the questions were a bit silly:

Do you often arrive for a train at the last minute? (Yes, because disorganisation is genetically encoded into my DNA)
Do you wear a seatbelt? (Yes. Have you seen the end of the film Very Bad Things?)
Do you often go out of the house leaving it unlocked? (Yes, I'd like to hang onto the precious few things of value I have)
Do you often drive fast? ('I can't drive' wasn't given as an reply option here, so I don't know...)

Then we were given a glossary of all the different street names for all the different drugs and their paraphernalia:

'Bombita' - A mixture of cocaine and heroin (another name for speedball, in other words)
'Big Chief' - Mescaline (never hear of that nickname before)
'Uncle' - Federal agents (ditto)
'Busted' - Arrested on a drug-related charge (never would have guessed)
'Score' - To locate and purchase a quantity of drugs (Oh please)

It went on. And on.

Then we were given information on 'safe injecting', which provided the foundation from which we were supposed to advise users of a needle exchange programme. That particular part of the class was rather bizarre, giving us detailed step-by-step procedures on how to inject intravenous narcotics, along with some rather eyebrow-raising facts: Ascorbic acid is a better solvent for heroin than citric acid, as the latter burns your veins and leads to problems at the injection site. Also, did you know that the penis can be used as an injection site? I'll bet you could have done without that picture. For anyone interested in trying it, a masterclass in use was practically the order of the day.

Finally, a methadone pharmacist came in and told us some more about withdrawal management and working in addiction clinics. He was interesting enough, though he didn't hold out much hope for complete and utter recovery from heroin, being of the opinion that it was better to get people onto methadone and maintain them on that for the long-term. Both another classmate and I told him that we didn't consider that a recovery by our standards, as methadone is more addictive than heroin in some ways. He had a tendency to shrug it off, saying that people generally don't stay off heroin in general for very long, and seemed to have a rather Daily Mail-esque view of drug dealers: 'They're businessmen. Even if you try and give up, they'll come after you and try and get you hooked again. And anyway, all your normal friends will be gone and you'll just have other heroin users left'.

I asked Angela about this during an intermission. It seemed that all users (we can't say addicts any more, apparently) were depicted as occupying one of two opposite poles: Those who had tried it once, and at the other end, those who were so addicted, the focus at the centre of their miserable and wretched lives was the acquisition of the next fix. I asked her if there was such a thing as an intermittent user, whose life continued as it was before they had encountered it. She said there most likely was, but there were too many deaths from it for the popular media to allow such a portrayal, or for suburbia to accept it.

It reminded me of the film Drugstore Cowboy, which had a cameo from William Burroughs in it, playing an heroin user who was also a defrocked priest. At one point he waxed (I'm paraphrasing, because I can't find the bloody screenplay on the internet) about how the idea of people being long term users and not meeting with an ignominous end was anathema to some idiots, which goes back to what I was saying earlier. Having said that, all the characters in that film were living in a squat with no money, and were faking epileptic fits inside in pharmacies to lure the manager out from behind the counter so they could plunder the controlled-drugs cupboard. Living? Maybe, but not like that of Riley.

All in all, it leads me to wonder just how addictive something like heroin really is. Is the depravity to which some addicts sink related to the intensity of the withdrawal experience, or because they tended towards risky behaviour all their lives?

We're having workshop on Friday coming, where we get to meet ex-users. It should be interesting. I'll have more than a few questions.

Saint Patrick's Day

It was good and my friend Joanne and her boyfriend Tony came over for it, which was great given that I'm always too broke to go to Dublin to see them these days.

Friday night, one of the main sights of (my) Brighton, the Bulldog, was taken in. The atmosphere was great, and of course I didn't leave until the small hours of the morning. Pulling myself together on Saturday, I got out of bed and headed into town, and we met up again. It was there we took in various pubs before trying the Fiddlers Elbow, *the* most Irish pub I have ever seen. We're talking pale-skinned, red-haired ceili dancing people everywhere. I've mentioned before that some people have a cast that is totally any utterly nothing other than Irish, and it can almost be scary sometimes.

We ended up in the Bugle, the main pub for Irish students over here, and a great (if rather squashed!) time was had. Of course, it being St. Paddy's Day, loads of people were wearing silly Guinness hats, though most of the culprits were actually non-Irish, for some bizarre reason. There were lots of green jerseys as well, so being the rebel that I am(!), I decided to join in by wearing green eyeshadow. I have no doubt it enhanced my attractiveness to the more rugged of the sex, and I'm sure everyone else felt so too, as evinced by the fact that they all fell about laughing.

I got home at a fairly reasonable hour, and rose this morning to see off J and Tony before going to work, which is where I am now. Thankfully it's been easy enough.

In other news, I'm going home to Ireland next week for two weeks. I've also got my Kung Fu suit, which is black with red trim, and looks rather nice. The classes themselves are going reasonably well. There's been more running around the place outside the gym. On Tuesday night, we ran about a mile out of town and then up a wooded hill. In the dark. It was rather fun, though I had a bit of a problem getting motivated on Friday. I think more off-the-wall surprises are what we need.

College classes are winding to a close now, and after Easter, all our practical work is finished and we're down to just one day of lectures a week. Not that I'm spoiled with all the time I have. I'll need all of it for study between now and the summer exams.

HIGH as a KITE!

I just got back from Kung Fu. Our master ran us ragged tonight, and now, even though it's close to 10pm, I'm practically bouncing off the walls with energy.

It's got me thinking. These last few months have seen not necessarily the worst winter ever, but certainly the most miserable, pissy, depressing weather has predominated for much of them and my mood has adjusted accordingly to reflect it. Now there has just been two consecutive days of sunshine, which means (hold your breath!) that spring may finally be here.

I once lived in Cork with a girl who always maintained that the lack of sun kept her in a constant state of melancholia. She used to visit Australia at every opportunity, and moaned about the lack of fine weather on her return. Not surprisingly, she eventually emigrated there for good.

I've noticed that in the past few months I've been more sluggish and unmotivated than at any time since I've come here, and I'm convinced that it has a great deal to do with the fact that for a given morning when I step outside the door, there is approximately a fucking 80% chance that I'm going to need my umbrella. Now that it's starting to become sunny, I'm feeling a little bit less like throwing myself off the top of a tall building.

The exercise I had tonight was a bit like that too. Normally we run laps of the gym to warm up. This time, our master thought it would be a novel idea to have us run around the campus a few times, battling furze bushes and muddy pathways that threatened to subside at any minute, in the dark, all with the on-campus stragglers looking on at us in amusement.

I've fallen behind a bit by missing classes, what with exams, placements and being sick and all that, but now I'm catching up again. I don't really care if I'll ever become good enough to use it effectively in real life, but the artistic aspect of it appeals to me. Also, I recently got a refund of tax I overpaid last summer, and I used this to pay for my suit for the class. So soon, I shall be sporting a black-with-red-piping outfit, which will strike TERROR into the hearts of anyone who dares to voice dissent against me, and people will come to FEAR my ability to kill at will.

Yeah right.

Sussex Beer Festival on Thursday night, at Hove Town Hall. I'm such a model of discipline.

Boots SUCK!

I am sitting here typing this with a red mist of rage in front of my eyes. Here is why.

Quite some time ago, I applied for a position on the Boots summer 2007 placement programme. The company now specify that if you want to do your pre-reg year (your first year post-graduation) with them, you must satisfactorily complete an 8-week summer placement with them between the third and fourth year of your course. The shower of cunts make no bones about the fact that they treat it like an extended interview, as if hiring a graduate straight out of a rigorous and demanding course presents a substantial risk on their part if they have no direct Boots experience, and it has recently become standard corporate policy that whichever store you do your summer placement in, that's where you'll also do your pre-reg. It's all part of standard corporate policy to get the costs associated with human resource management down. Right down. Down to the absolute bare fucking minimum and to hell with the students themselves.

I applied for a Boots summer placement while I was in the second year of this degree, last year. My main selling point was my first year results: I'd got a 2.1, and I spent a lot of time on the application and got it in well before the deadline. I heard nothing back for ages, and in the end, I received a rejection only because I e-mailed them, badgering them for a response. I since found out that some people in my class had been made offers. The secret to their success? They'd worked with Boots before, mainly during the college year, as counter assistants. Once they'd got their foot in the door, they were first in line to be considered for the placements that counted later. In short, getting a pre-reg with Boots depends on you getting a previous summer placement with Boots, which in turn depends on you being lucky enough to get a job with them prior to that (by whatever means possible, because the ongoing low-end jobs are no doubt more accessible to those who know the right people). It's pure nepotism and it fucking stinks!

I applied for Boots again this year. Once again, I was early. Once again, I heard nothing for ages, while certain classmates of mine who had worked with them before were quick to receive notification of offers in locations that were their first or second choice.

Boots got back to me today at about 3:30pm by e-mail, with an offer of a placement. In Wick. Fucking Wick!

For those of you who don't know where this is - and I didn't, until I looked it up on Google - it's almost right at the tip of the United Kingdom, relatively near John O' Groats. I asked for somewhere roundabout the South East, where Brighton is, and I got somewhere that couldn't be much more north.

Not only that, but they have given me until 9am tomorrow to reply to them. If I didn't have work this evening, I'd likely have either gone home, or gone into town and not checked my mail until tomorrow, and by then it would have been too late. Oh, and they've attached two documents, which I must fill out with reference details and reattach them when I reply.

The options open to me now are:

1. Tell them to stick their offer up their arse.

The most tempting option. They've very obviously prioritised me at the bottom of the pile, and for them to give me less than 24 hours to consider this offer is taking the extreme piss.
'We aim to meet your prferences (sic) and the offer is the best match we can make between the information you have given and the placements we have available' they told me in the mail. Loosely translated, this means 'We have given summer placements to all the people who have previously been pulled into Boots by their parents, and now we have a few dumps left, which we may as well give to the rest, in case our current crop of little darlings realise what a shower of wankers we are and decide not to work for us after they graduate'.

Unfortunately, this chain is all over the UK and Ireland like a rash right now, and it wouldn't benefit my career to start limiting who I work for before I even graduate.

2. Politely decline, explaining why.

Again, reducing my options before I know what else is on the table. Just supposing I couldn't get work anywhere else for the summer? I'd either end up in the Co-op supermarket in Kemptown for the summer, or worse, back in Mallow with my parents and no money. That way lies suicide.

3. Accepting for the moment, until a better offer comes along.

This looks like the best option. I might get a placement in a hospital in Brighton or snag a job in a pharmacy that's within commuting distance from here, and if I got one of those, I could just write back something along the lines of 'Sorry, but due to circumstances entirely within my control, I'm leaving you in the lurch'. Or something.

Bitching apart, this is what happens in all corporations once the number of applicants for something exceeds the number of jobs. Rather than genuinely screen out the worthy applicants, the company just takes the laziest, most risk-free, cost-effective way out, regardless of whether it'll benefit them in the long run or not. I'm not overtly depressed. I'd never have stayed with them anyway, I'd have just used them to get experience and then set up my own place, but it would have been handy from a money point of view.

Oh well, fingers crossed something better presents itself.

Uuuurrgggh!

The weekend was great. Sarah Al came down with her flatmate to see me, and because she knew I was down to my last tenner, paid for everything. Big Hugs doing to ya and Mark, babe!

Yesterday was interesting. I had a gentleman caller, who shall remain known as Hot Rob, over to my place, and a hot sweaty session was had.

But now? NOW?? I've been laid up in bed ALL DAY as a horrible virus has invaded my system (and that of my flatmate's as well. I wonder which one of us brought it into the house?)

Lemsips, Lockets, hacking coughs and sniffles are what I have to put up with now.

BAH!

Hooray!

I got the results of two clinical assessments back today (one of them being the controlled-drug exam I blogged about before), and I aced them both!

There will be other assessments before the end of the year is out, but these were quite substantial, and now that I've done well in them, a decent end-of-year mark is within the realm of possibility.

Whew...

Bear411 Bitchfest

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The weekend

It's been mental.

After the placement finished on Friday, I went into town to meet my parents, who had flown over for Dan's wedding, and the weekend kicked off from there.

After a night of making g&ts for MizzFlee (and myself!) I fell home at about 5am saturday morning. I rose at lunchtime, beautified myself and hotfooted it into town. From there, my parents and I went to the wedding service in Hove.

Shitty weather notwithstanding, the service was very nice. One of the readers of the gospel enunciated everything with great stridency and drama, and as a result made it sound a bit more interesting, there were little children singing and playing wind instruments (a tuba or french horn? I'm not sure) and the organist played only an accompaniment, leaving it to us to actually sing. This last exercise was performed with various degrees of success with different people: I hadn't a clue, so completely ballsed it up, but everyone else seemed to know what they were doing.

After the parents and I had gone off to get something to eat after, we returned to the reception. There we found the groom, and for once the bride, nicely trolleyed. After a while, I had caught up to them. Meeting the others from the stag night was also a good laugh.

At the end of the night, a small group of us headed on the long walk home. I eventually got a taxi (I think) and got home at the not too outrageous hour of 3:30am.

Sunday saw me get up and meet the parents again, get something to eat and then go home. Monday saw me run into college in a panic to finish an assignment that was due in at 5pm that day (A+! Yay!), and then meet my parents for food again. Can you see the pattern that is emerging? I was certainly well-fed while they were here. I then dragged them to the Dragon to meet one or two of the beeyatches of BN2. Once they had gone home, I went to the Bulldog. And stayed there until 2.

Today, I saw Ma and Pa off on the train to the airport, and then headed over to college to do another clinical assessment.

Now it's back to normality and poverty and studying. And Kung Fu, which I haven't been at for about 3 weeks. It's on in 10 minutes. Wish me luck...

Thank Crunchie it's friday.

The placement was more shit than shinola.

The commute to the hospital was 2 hours each way, with two stop changes along the way. The hospital was uninspiring, being out in the middle of nowhere, and consisting of wards that were, in the main, occupied by the elderly. And the pharmacist I was assigned to was more than a little indifferent to the work I had to do while I was there (and then had the cheek to tell me at the end of the week that while the university might chase after me to get work done, it wasn't how things were done there!).

On Thursday, I left the house for the railway station at the required time of 7am, to find everywhere carpeted with snow. Naturally, the public transport system, which seemed not to have a contingency plan in place for this kind of thing, was disrupted. On that day, I got about halfway towards my destination, and then it was matter-of-factly announced over the intercom that we would be staying put until further notice, as there was a fire after breaking out in the tunnel ahead. The train was crammed full of pre-teen brats on their way to school, and they erupted in cheers.

If ever the makers of Levonelle or Dianette wanted footage for a marketing campaign, they couldn't do much better than film what it was like to share a morning train with these little shits for the entire week.

We were herded off the train, onto a bus provided at short notice, and then back onto the train again once it was discovered that everything had been sorted out. This put me in the best of form for the rest of the day.

I had to copy down five prescriptions from the pharmacy files. I did this, often in front of the pharmacist I was with, but at the end of the week, she wouldn't stamp them to verify I had done it at the hospital. She said she would have to verify them on the computer, as I 'could have got them from anywhere'. She wouldn't support me with the taking of a drug history (a bit of a necessity in this case, as most of the patients were old or confused). And finally, when I did a presentation on a patient at the end of the week to a group of pharmacists - most of the information collected with the bare minimum of help from her - she focused only on its bad points, leaving it to the other pharmacists to point out that I had at least laid out the presentation well, and was comprehensive in my coverage.

I would have haggled with her over certain things, but by the end of the week, all I wanted to do was get away from that hospital and her, so I just left. I was quite cold towards her at the end, but I couldn't help myself, and she won't be getting a positive review from me when I hand in my placement feedback form next week.

So that's it. My placement over for the year. If she gives a report of 'unsatisfactory' back to the university, I'll go back out there and divest her of her head.

All of this is unfortunate, as I had planned on doing at least one year of clinical work after I leave college, but now I'm wondering if I'd be better off just making tracks for a drug company instead, and making my money there. I'll see. Time will tell how things pan out.

Dan and Junes' wedding tomorrow. Woo hoo!

The Weekend

It's been a bit mental, but great. Last night saw me at Dan's stag night, which saw us first in a bowling alley, then in a all-you-can-eat chinese buffet, and finally back at the organiser's flat. One of the guys there had a vinyl collection that went back to the Velvet Underground and the decks were spun all night. It was a great way to end the night (clubbing was wisely ruled out early on) and some of the songs took me right down memory lane. Then there were others (Bauhaus, Gang of Four) that I had never got around to listening to before.

I finally forced myself to leave in the small hours, getting home at 7am this morning. For all I know, they could still be at it now. Getting up at 12 for work was a barrel of laughs, of course, and now I'm sitting here with a microbiology report to do that must be finished by 8pm this evening, if I'm to get it handed in on time tomorrow (and of course the one day that I need it to be quiet in here, a domineering woman keeps monopolising my time and making me show her how to print out documents in the most awkward way possible).

I have my hospital placement all of this coming week, which I expect will be more than a little challenging. Please God it goes well.

My parent are coming over for Dan's wedding on Friday coming (the occasion itself is on Saturday) so that should be interesting.

Roll on the end of the week, that's all I'll say...

A wedding photo

My niece and I at my brother's wedding. More will be forthcoming when I get them.

Geometry

When you are locking lips with the man of your choice in your local pub, the stance you adopt has long been established: Opposite and facing one another.

But what happens when you are playing tonsil tennis with more than one beau at a time? The solution lies in the power and beauty of mathematics.

If there are three of you altogether, you each should occupy one of the vertices of an equilateral triangle, aim towards the centre, and tongues away!

Euclid, eat your heart out.

In the (even better) event that there are four players in the game, you should each occupy the corners of a square, again aiming towards the centre.

In the extremely rare - and even more pleasurable - instance that there are five protagonists in the drama, each of hot n' hairy bears needs to occupy one of the five vertices of a pentagon, and once again lean towards the middle.

In the case of six, seven, or even EIGHT burly beasts playing this game, it can be shown that you should perform the same with the corners of a hexagon, heptagon, or octagon, respectively, though I can't (yet!) say that I have had experience with these numbers in that context.

However, it is best if the feat is not followed by either - or both - of the following:

1) All of them disappearing as soon as you have gone to the bathroom, in spite of your best efforts to bring them all back to a location of your choice.

2) You leaving your jacket out of sight for a while, and then when returning home (under a black cloud, because you thought you were going to have the night of your life, only to have iced water poured on the whole thing at the last minute) you discover that your phone is no longer in said jacket.

BAH!

Things I have to stop doing when I'm drunk #55,368,792

Running around asking everyone if they share my opinion on how hot a straight guy of our mutual acquaintance is.

Well, thank CHRIST!

The current wave of exams is over, and apart from a few assessments I have to hand in over the coming weeks, I'm finished with them for a while. I celebrated by going on a bender from hell yesterday, which saw me get home in the small hours of this morning.

Well, at least I was able to stand at the end of the night, which is more than can be said for some of the people I was out with. Now I'm at work though, with my head on the desk again, and I'm supposed to be going to Kung Fu tonight.

The Medicinal Chemistry exam wasn't as bad as it could have been, thankfully.

Once I've shaken this hangover, I'm going to go out and do something I haven't been able to do in a while without feeling guilty: Head to St. James' street and get me some COCK!

I HATE exams

I had a controlled-drug dispensing exam this morning.

Only someone who has done, or has to do, one of those can appreciate what a minefield they can be. You leave out the most tiny, seemingly insignificant detail when submitting your supporting paperwork, and you get a big fat zero. I narrowly avoided making some mistakes, correcting them at the last minute, and then ran at top speed from the post-mortem that was conducted by the other students outside aftwards.

I don't feel too bad about this, but gut feelings are useless when it comes to this kind of exam, as there is no sliding scale. You either get full marks, or nothing.

And just to put me in good spirits, I had a rather unexpected dose of the runs just before I was due to go in. I think I need to take stress management classes.

(Though it must be said, having hot sex with a beefy muscle-bound guy the day before helped, even if the timing might have been a bit ill-advised)

The results aren't out for over a month, which is just fine by me. Ignorance, for the moment, is bliss.

Next week: Medicinal Chemistry exam. Now where are those razor blades?

Gawd ALMIGHTY!

Got back into the swing of things by staying up until nearly 1am last night, finishing off a report for a lab we had earlier that day. A lab that ended with an MCQ exam.

The deadline for applying for a summer placement with Lloyds Pharmacy was midday today. I had a 4 hour class this morning, so I resolved to go in early and try and get the application done first. Sleeping through the alarm this morning and waking up half an hour late didn't help, and now I've missed that boat. The only consolation is that the 4 hour class this morning was a mock exam in dispensing controlled drugs, a very difficult one to pass, and I managed to pass muster. If I play my cards right, in a week, I'll be qualified (almost) to give out morphine, methadone, valium, and the like.

I have another shitty bio lab next Monday.

On the Wednesday, I have the controlled drug exam.

The Thursday of the following week, I have another exam, an end-of-module one.

I could certainly do with some morphine, methadone, or valium now...

Well, FUCK IT!

The christmas tree is down in the Ryan household, the decorations put away, and the last of the presents have been handed over.

How do I know this, seeing as I should be in Gatwick airport by now? Three guesses and the first two don't count.

This is just the cherry on the cake of my day.

The flight has been rescheduled for tomorrow at 12:55pm. It can't come soon enough.

I hate this time of year

The Dutch are gone. We saw them off at the airport yesterday. I took a picture of them all with my parents before they headed through the departure gate.

It looks sort of ropey - I still don't know what I'm doing when it comes to my parent's digital camera - but it's the first we've got of them all in a while so it has sentimental value.

Once they had gone through the departures gate, they waved from the other side. I took a picture of that too, only to have a security guard (alas, not a hot one) coming straight for me. He made me delete the picture I had just taken in front of him, or else I would have had to give up the camera. Thankfully he left the rest alone. My father got ratty and asked him if he thought we were terrorists.

Now I have nothing to look forward to except a very shitty January, laden down with exams. Normally I'm optimistic about heading back to Brighton. This time, Urrgggh. Even the prospect of hot n' horny no-strings fun doesn't have quite the same allure.

Well, maybe...

My brother's wedding and New Year's Eve.

It was a day to remember. For different reasons.

On Saturday, both my brother-in-law and my Dad were sick. My brother-in-law particularly so, but his bug proved to have a short life, and by sunday, he was more or less ready to go. My father was a different story.

Ever since my father had a bypass operation for his heart 3 years ago, he's been a lot more careful about his health. Add to this the fact that his skills at social prioritising were never the best - to invent a random and arbitrary term that only goes someway towards describing his problem - and he has sometimes passed on attending things that really required his presence.

This wedding, believe it or not, was one of them.

He aired the notion of staying away on Saturday night, and it was met with no small amount of hostility, so he appeared to backtrack. However, on Sunday he was adamant. My sister was raging, as she was of the opinion that as he was on a course of antibiotics, going to the wedding wasn't a big risk, and that he would need to be on death's door to consider missing it anyway. Initially, he said he would go to the reception, and sleep in the room that he had booked in the hotel. He backed out of this later, and decided to stay at home. Needless to say this was not taken well. My mother was quite upset on the morning and if it wasn't for a couple of the neighbours offering moral support, she may never have gotten out of the house at all. My brother appeared to shrug it off, but as was pointed out by my sister, it was always my father he got on best with, so he had to have been disappointed.

We got on with it, asking one of the neighbours to check in on him regularly, and deciding to phone him every so often.

The church ceremony was nice, with a guy playing an acoustic guitar throughout, instead of the usual organ stuff. Having little to do other than direct people to their seats, I was able to relax after a while. Well, after I had read my prayer of the faithful, which I was given only minutes before the service started.

After the ceremony was over, we mingled outside and met a few relatives that I hadn't seen in a long time. It was nice, I hardly recognised some of them, and of course most of them didn't recognise me. After that, we headed to straight to the Silver Springs hotel in Cork and once I got in the door I descended on the free sparkling wine that was provided in the foyer. After that it was into the reception room to sit down to our meal.

It was then that things got a bit more interesting. Because our father was absent, it was decided that I would take his place at the top of the table. It was also decided, not long before the speeches were to start, that I would have to say a few words on his behalf. I was momentarily assailed by waves of terror, but I got it together. By the time my turn came, I'd had a few glasses of wine and was full of my own importance. After being handed the microphone, I started off inauspiciously, but then decided to improvise.

"Paul and Claire's relationship reminded me of Cathy and Heathcliff's in Wuthering Heights", I declared to Claire's bemusement, "but we've got a happy ending in this one". Falling in love with the sound of my own voice, I continued: "There have been quite a few contenders over the years for who would be my sister-in-law", to which the whole place gave a big 'Ooooooh!', "but I'm glad Claire has become the one".

Once I had called a toast and sat down again, I felt as if I had been a bit artless, but everyone seemed to like it, although my brother-in-law said that it was a bit like the Italian Job: I went right to the edge and then braked.

The rest of the night was a blur. The white wine that my glass was constantly being topped up with was maybe the best I've ever had, and I partook liberally. After a while I ended up buzzing around talking to loads of different people and giving one or two men the eye. One such example was my step-brother, the son of my brother's birthmother (my brother was adopted). He had acquired a beard since I saw him last, and was looking distinctly wolfish. Sample: "Matthew, as my step-brother, it would be WRONG to say that you look distinctly doable with your current look. Very wrong indeed". To which he guffawed. Then there was another bloke. He looked at me with fear in his eyes.

The night finished well. I found out that two people I had always liked were now engaged ("Catherine and Peds! Paul and Claire may have been my Cathy and Heathcliff, but ye were always my Romeo and Juliet! Oh, and make SURE you send me an invite to the wedding!") and I rang in the new year by hugging just about every one of the 300-odd people who attended. Then there was an indie disco (Gotta love that category) where we took a trip down memory lane moshing like madmen to Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, The Sultans of Ping FC, and God knows what else.

After that, I went to see about which room I was in. It transpired that my parents hadn't booked me into one after all, even though they'd said they'd had, so I ended up having to wake up one of my cousins at about 4am and sleep on the floor in their room.

The morning rise was horrendous. My cousin woke me, saying that my mother was downstairs waiting for me and was driving home in 10 minutes. I stood up, racked with the mother of all hangovers, and staggered into the bathroom. Once it became apparent that I wasn't going to puke there and then, I put on my jacket and shuffled downstairs, shirt still open halfway down my chest. I went to the bar and met one of the tenders from the night before, with a big smirk on his face. "Orange Juice", I slurred. "Certainly", he replied. I annhilated it in under 2 seconds.

I got a drive home and once our destination was reached, I got into bed and slept for a few glorious hours.

Looking back on the whole thing, it was quite a success. I had wondered what it would be like having very few of my friends there, as they didn't really know my brother well enough to come, and had their own plans anyway, but it ended up for the best, as they ended up in different locations, scattered throughout the region. This has been as good a new year's as any I've ever had.

The one major fly in the ointment was, with the crisis of my father not coming, my mother and I forgot to bring the digital camera. The evening has been well documented, as loads of others brought theirs, it just means I don't have any decent pictures immediately to hand to put up here. It's a shame. Apart from anything else, I wanted the world to know what I looked like with a dickie bow and a tux with tails. Perhaps if they're forthcoming from other people.

On reflection, my brother's friends, a bunch I didn't always believe would be the most focussed of people, really came through for him, and I really didn't have that much involvement at all. I still have kind of mixed feelings about this. My brother was the black sheep of the family for quite some time when he was younger, and this may explain why, even now, that his friends seem to enjoy a place in his life that is at least - if not more than - of equal importance than his immediate family. My mother had asked me over Christmas if we still got on, and the truth is he can still be slightly hard to take sometimes. Having said that, I was still paying attention to how much our immediate family was involved over the day. It shouldn't have bothered me, it certainly didn't when my sister got married 10 years ago, maybe I'm just being a bit paranoid. He asked one of his long-term friends to be the best man (thank God his speech came after mine, so he could put my Wuthering Heights reference into context), and I never heard anything about his stag party in Hamburg. But that may have been because I think I once said that I wouldn't be able to afford it, studying in Brighton as I am.

He and his wife are now en route to their honeymoon. They flew to Gatwick today. They had no idea where they were going after that, they were just going to jump on a cheap flight and head somewhere warm. Not a bad idea at all...

So that's it. Major event of the year over for us. Back down to earth with a bang. Bah!