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The Hong Kong Sevens
Thurs 29th March - survived a pretty horrid day at the Apollo hospital with Hen, doing a full MOT check on the old body. Thought I'd better get that out of the way before 3 days of carnage in HK! Had dinner at the Galle Face with John-Seymour, Delphine and Eduard which was good fun, last decent meal for 4 nights, this was going to be a real test of endurance and survival!! I was so excited- there was so much to look forward to - seeing Mole, catching up with Tim and watching 7s.Definitely random - going to stay with Aaron, but he'd invited me and as this is the year to throw caution to the wind, I had thought why not. I'd always wanted to go to the 7s and he'd been a complete star and got me a 3 day ticket and Mole one too, what a legend!
Fri 30th March
Arrived at about midday and got on the airport express into Hong Kong Central. I was definitely feeling the randomness of meeting up with Aaron and hoped I'd recognise him. He came to find me at the station - already hugely hungover, an alcoholic sheen glistening on his face….nice. However, he was very friendly - gave me the tickets, the keys to his flat, took me to meet Mole at the Mandarin hotel and then went back to work, saying that he'd meet up with us in the stadium later. How random can you get?? Met the guy once! Anyway, it was totally brilliant to see the Mole - we thought that we were very clever having managed to sort accomodation and tickets. We headed to Aaron's flat, on King Kwong St, Happy Valley - opposite McDonald's (definitely had a few visits in the next few days!) The flat was OK, in a fairly grubby area, had a balcony but no view to go with it - just high rise, grey flats, with washing hanging out of the window and air con units stuck to the walls.Hong Kong is a weird place, great towering blocks of flats everywhere you looked, in the centre the modern glass skyscrapers, all hemmed in together. On street level, hundreds of people, loads of colourful signs and an air of slightly frightening efficiency. Certainly a far cry from the haphazard hustle and bustle of Galle. There are a lot of walkways up on the first or second storey, so often you'll walk about without even touching the ground!
Anyway, within 2 mins of being in his flat, we discovered the cats - Dave and Grant - one of them totally freaked out and broke a bowl in the process…..it wasn't us!! Then, of course, we had a good old snoop round the flat - checked out the hundreds of pizzas in his freezer, the porn in the loo and some rather girly rom com DVDs by the TV.The Mole and I were enjoying ourselves, he he he.
After shower and spruce up we were ready to hit the stadium - we had the address written down, the spare keys in the pocket, the team bag filled with money, tickets, camera, phone…what more did we need?
Turning up at the stadium was so exciting - what a buzz, you could hear the crowds roaring, the music playing and soaring up above us was the huge, silver, space age structure of the stadium - WOW! You could feel the atmosphere of the place - everyone in such a good mood and ready to party. Mole and I headed for booze first - jugs of Pimms were the order of the day and then made our way into the revered South Stand. What a sight!!! You've never seen anything like it - thousands of people…all in fancy dress - I'd had no idea that people went quite so to town on their outfits but we saw everything and anything, I'll try to write down a few: Borats, wrestlers, chickens, penguins, Power Rangers (all in one skin tight body suits, looked fab, but must have been so smelly and minging by the end of 3 days), sumo wrestlers, gay policemen with v tight shorts, clowns, indians, cowboys, Batmans, spidermen, French maids, bunny girls, Beefeaters, Ninja turtles, nuns - well that will do for a start.Mole and I sat on our own but were soon chatting/bantering to allthose around us - we were vaguely aware of rugby happening but we concentrated more on the party happening around us.Soon caught up with Aaron and his mate Jezza who was a very dodgy guy but a good laugh. Looked just like Malfoy out of Harry Potter (except with black slicked back hair) - definitely from the House of Slytherin. Aaron said he was definitely Gryffindor - however by the end of the weekend I'm not so sure.The stadium was fairly packed - apparently it was the largest Friday night 7s crowd ever - 32,000 people!! After the final game we then headed to the Beer Tent - this seemed very much the thing to do - down the dangerously steep metal stairs and into an area with huge tents, live music, food stalls (eating is cheating) and many, many jugs of boooooze.Here we met Gordon the Biker in his black PVCwaistcoat - who thought I was just wonderful and wouldn't leave me alone. Jerry came to my rescue - all very amusing!
Then Joy of Joys - Tim turned up, with the hugest grin on his face carrying two large jugs of beer, ready to party. I just love partying with my brothers- if Nick had been there too it would've been perfect.Tim towered over Aaron!! But we were all having a great time - we drank and bantered in the tent for a while and then headed to Lang Kwai Fung (??). On the way, Aaron introduced us to the taxi game - every time we stopped at a red light, we had to get out of the cab and run round to sit in a different seat. Well, needless to say we became utterly hysterical with laughter, the taxi man was well into it - speeding up to the red lights and shouting 'Go, Go, Go!!!' Aaron tried to get the cab driver to swap too…but funnily enough, he wasn't that keen to have some totally plastered bloke driving his cab! LKF was totally brilliant - one street with a bend in it, bars both sides, every bar and the street packed with partying people, music blaring - just amazing.The atmosphere the whole time we were at the 7s was just fantastic, considering how pissed people got, there was no trouble at all - in the whole weekend, I only saw one scuffle - the same certainly couldn't have been said if it'd been a football tournament. We made our way to Le Jardin, which was the bar run by a woman called Barbara who I met in Sri Lanka during the Elephant Polo. It was heaving too and Tim led the way, getting the shots in - B52s all round, the first of many. The rest of the evening was a definite blur …….
Saturday 31st
We had a bit of a late start - the sort of thing 7s virgins would do - and not for any exciting reason either. We got to the stadium and the South stand was full - a sea of fancy dress, beer jugs, singing and dancing. We got seats as close to the South stand as possible and Aaron left us to go to his corporate box.Mole was really suffering and fell asleep amidst the noise and the mayhem - a sight so rare that complete stranges were taking photos of her!! Aaron and Jerry returned - we ploughed on through the jugs, having a bit of banter but I admit, it was with relief that I saw my bro turn up - full of life. Everyone else was so dead and tired - Tim and I partied on and had such fun chatting and laughing at the South Stand. The Mole went through waves of being alive and being dead. Jerry and Aaron were seriously suffering - Tim and I are Fallowfields…what more need I say? We made it into the South stand for the end of the day - watched the most amazing jug chucking display, was very glad that I wasn't on the receiving end of it, as it would've really hurt, funny to watch though.Bumped into Will Marsden - mate of Monie and Dully's - who was v v pissed and clad in a shiny,bright red, skin tight, all in one most unattractive wrestling suit.All he could say was " you're my friend"!
Tim, Mole and I headed off to the beer tent where quite a few random guys lurched in my direction. The funniest was a huge Batman who was wearing very short shorts, who kept showing me his legs and trying to get a snog, he even tracked me down on the dance floor but he did not succeed. Aaron and Jerry went off to the champagne tent and us 3 hit the dance floor. It was a fantastic live band and we were all dancing like demons - in a sweat pit - surrounded by every character every invented - it was brilliant.I got Tim and Mole into the champers tent and we drank a couple of bottles of Bollinger, surrounded by rather w***y crew and then we departed - off to Lang Kwai Fung again.
We played the cab game again - just as funny second time round. We ended up in a bar with a really rocking Japanese band - we were all crammed in, Mole and I with our pink feather boas, Tim wearing a green Fez, pogo-ing up and down to hard core rock!!!
Sunday 1st April
The alarm went off at 8am, which considering I'd gone to bed at about 4.30am was pretty hellish. Mole and I dragged ourselves to the stadium - our bodies crying out "Why? Why? Why do this to us? No more alcohol, please".We walked straight into the South Stand, which was already heaving, and 5 mins later it was declared full. Thank goodness we made it, as people were having to queue for a hour or two to get in.We started off sitting low down in the stand but were totally overwhelmed by the stench of 3 days of spilt booze, it was humming. So we moved and found Will and his mates - perfect. Just chilled with them watching the rugby, attempted a few jugs of Pimms, bumped into Mike and Lincoln Bolsover but we were both just knackered. Mole and I decided to escape for an hours kip - we nipped back to the flat, passed out for 1 hour exactly, then got dolled up and were back in the South stand by 5.30pm, ready for partying once more. We met up with Patrick (married to Gils from Uni) and we were totally back on form, feather boas in place and surrounded by lovely guys. As soon as the finals was over - Samoa beat Fiji - we escaped the stadium as everyone began chucking jugs.It really was amazing that considering the state everyone was in - absolutely hammered - there was very little trouble.Everyone had this glazed looked on their face and it was a completely bonding experience catching anyone's eye - as you both knew what we'd been through and that we were on the last night!! We headed off to the…..Beer Tent for the last time. Mole and I almost left at this point, but we bumped into Will again who was still running around like a mad man and then we got talking to a crazy bunch of people who lived in Hong Kong - Debbie, Hamilton, Bryan, Rob etc. We went on to Lang Kwai Fung with these guys and we did loads and loads of dancing, so much fun on the tables at Al's Diner. Finally got back to A's flat at 5.30am and slept…at last.
What an amazing first 7s experience!
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