This fookin free beer is shite!
Limp Bangstick held up his plastic glass of pretend Estrella he had just been served and grimaced like the rear of a human Caterpillar at feeding time.
Ughhh... There's a pub just round the corner? Who's up for it?
He turned his glistening sunburned face to the fellow desperados, of which I was one, standing at the bar.
We can't do that, the wives might catch us?
Arselick, another of the crew at the bar, twitched in fear at the idea of the guards wives finding us and dragging us back for punishment.
But this stuff is rank, man!?
Limp Bangstick whined pitifully.
He was right too, whatever beer was being served it was not what they claimed it to be. In fact it reminded me a bit of that shit Tennents that they brewed back home. A lager so distressingly bad that even golden Labradors won't drink it.
What we need, my dear fellows. Is a plan.
A silence fell over the motley crew at the bar as they looked at me with a piteous kind of hope.
The kids club disco just started five minutes ago. That means we have forty minutes left. We can go there and be back in time for it finishing.
I looked at them, Limp Bangstick, Arselick and Mad Sherrie who was neither man nor beast.
Text your other halves and tell them you are going to the toilet, you will be back shortly. That way if they look over we are safe.
I pulled my own phone out and started texting, everyone followed suit.
Ok, done. Will we just have a sneaky pint and come back?
Mad Sherrie hooted in his/her/they/them/it's strange fluting voice.
One!? Come on mate. Let's push the boat out and try and get two in, it's forty minutes??
Arselick said confidently as if he had just put on his sexy pyjamas.
Two pints?
I realised a hand and stopped them dead in their tracks.
If we are going to escape then lets do it properly.
I slapped the back of my right hand against my left at if it were a naughty child.
I say three pints and four shots. There's no other way.
A silence fell over them again, this time tinged with incredulity.
Three pints... Four shots? No way man, it can't be done? It's not possible. No one could drink that much in forty minutes!?
Limp-Bangstick shuffled from foot to foot and shook his head as if tormented by flies.
I chuckled and took a pull from Mad-Sherrie's 'spare vape.' These guys wouldn't last ten minutes in Scotland.
Don't you want to take the chance? Feel the fresh air of the outside on your face, just once? Come on man, nothing's impossible.
I flipped my phone out
Thirty eight minutes left. If we go now we can still make it. They need never know...
I looked at them. This ragtag band of holidaymakers that thought they used to be somebody.
I was going to make them be somebody again. At least for just for one night.
First round is on me.
I slid off my bar stool, beckoning them on and we escaped into the night.
Hey Dawgy. You ok, you look a little flushed? And hey, cool hat! Where did you get it?
The Good Lady returned from the kids Disco, kids trailing along behind with the other wives and partners of the bar crew.
I tipped the cowboy's hat upward on my head and peered at her through squinty eyes.
Howdy ma'am.
I burped.
Haha, did you drag these guys to the Irish bar again for shots?
She giggled remembering the other night I had done the same.
Of course not. Been here the whole time!
I winked mannishly.
Behind me, Arselick fell off his chair with a thump.
Ahhh, holidays.
