So the prom was yesterday. Held at the Gosforth Marriot hotel and with an overall attendance of about 200, the function room rented out was more than large enough to fit everyone in.

I started the night out by going to my friend’s house from which we were going to share an ‘executive cab’, which turned out to be a Merc. See we wanted to make something of an effort to appear quite flash, but unfortunately limos are expensive and I am cheap. When I got there we proceeded to play about 5 matches of brawl on his imported copy using a boot disk (not out here yet remember).

When the decidedly gormless member of our company arrived he brought with him a bag of lemonade, vodka, and rum. Even though I don’t drink and my other friends aren’t much of drinkers. He gave them some atrociously proportioned drinks, blurring their vision before we had even arrived.

When the taxi arrived we all piled in. I volunteered to sit in the front with the driver and make token small talk “where are you going”, and the ever useful “Been busy?”.
The cab arrived soon after at the hotel where the ball was being held and I payed the £20 fare to cover the four of us. Of which two still owe me £5 each, not that I’m keeping tabs or anything.

By the looks of it we were the third or fourth party of friends to arrive. Across the way was some lads and lasses looking very smart and getting pictures taken by a fella with a camera, who later would charge us an extortionate £5 per photo to buy. We went and got some taken and watched more people arrived. I was told that last year a student arrived in an iced-cream van and everyone was waiting to see if it would be topped this year, unfortunately it was not. Though there was some very expensive looking limos and a very antique wedding car. Most people just arrived in taxis though there was one of the gaudiest limousines I have ever seen. It was an electric pink hummer limo, and was plastered in website information for the rental service, and was being driven by a hag with a fag hanging out of her mouth.

After having a bunch of photos taken with the entire crew we wandered inside the venue, which was nice enough. I was chatting to a few people and ended up talking to Scott, the student behind most if not all of the planning of the ball. He looked a bit knackered and I asked him about it. It turned out that he and ‘Ibby’ (Ibraheem) had been in a car accident just the day before, and while Ibby who was driving got out fine, Scott was mangled and had several bruised bones and one of those soft arm casts.

I looked at the table plan and was that they had spelled my name wrong as per usual (Allmond not almond) but I was to be seated with all my mates which was good. Off topic: I wonder how many people read this far through the walloftext that is this post. If any.
Now like I say, I don’t drink but I refuse to be the only one who doesn’t have a drink. So I went over to the bar and got a bottle of bud, as I feel that I’m above Smirnoff ice. But when I was charged £3.40 for ONE FUCKING BOTTLE I decided that I would be extra tight that night, I had only brought £60 after all.

I looked down at my watch after about half an hour of mingling, as you do, and remembered that this Rolex me dad had lent me had no batteries in. The wall clock told me that the meal would be starting soon so I wandered over to the table just as it was being served by waiters that all looked younger than me (I bet they wish they had stuck in at school). There was a little paper menu in the middle of the table and I had a look. Turned out that it wasn’t a menu at all but just a list of what we were getting and an instruction to like it or go to hell (not really, I made up that last part).

We were getting some kind of soup that turned out to be alright if too think. A main course of some French words that I fail to recall which turned out to be a disappointing chunk of undercooked chicken breast slammed on a pile of blatantly tinned steamed vegetables. It was at this point my vegetarian friend, who by the way must have been the only one in the room, had to make a fuss. About two minutes later a waiter brought out something that we have still not classified as anything other than a cheesy-something also on a pile of tinned veggies.

The dessert was actually quite good. It was a little bit of iced cream and some wafery things and strawberry slices.

Immediately after this the speeches came which I was looking forward to, as I think that people in my area don’t make very good public speakers. But Dan did a fine job of the speech and thanked all the right people and threw in a few generic jokes. After a few of the staff made some speech or other that I don’t remember due to my entire table being in stitches over some paedophile joke the ‘DJ’ chucked on some 3 year old hits and turned the disco light on a few people started dancing.

T’was at this point I noticed a lass I particularly liked looking lonely. So I did what any self respecting gentleman did and decided to go over and have a chat. But instead I did what any self respecting Dtoider and North Englishman might have done and got a few drinks in as I caught wind of the form tutor buying.

Many hours later when everyone was starting to get all dizzy and about the time where the smallest things were excruciatingly funny a few of the guys decided to go into town afterwards, but it turned out to be some shit emo bar that I hate so I decided not to bother. Which was OK as my rampant insomnia had caused me to have had four hours sleep in the last 42 hours and I was having trouble navigating through a world that had ceased to be 3 dimensional. So I booked a cab home.

Soon after peoples rides started appearing, I originally expected there to be more tears from the female portion of the year, as this would have been the last time some of them would ever see each other. But then I realised that in all the collective intelligence of the organisers they had booked the venue and ball about two months before the end of the exams and the end of this term. In fact, some people had sports science revision sessions at nine in the morning.

When my cab arrived I said my goodbyes and see-you-Mondays to everyone and ignored their attempts to drag me to ‘legends’ the bar I mentioned earlier.
I settled down in the taxi and told the driver where to go and started the token small talk with the ever useful “Been busy?”

PS: It later turned out that less than half of the congregation that had gone into town had managed to get into the bar.

PPS: I didn’t manage to catch any tail (own fault) but I did damage to catch crecelia on my version of pearl this morning... sigh.

Thanks for all two of you that will have read the entire post.