Sven's Party

What do you get as a last minute gift for a really good friend's birthday when you're a penniless student? Something he'll really enjoy. A fire extinguisher! Sven was a mate from school days but he was at a polytechnic in Wales while I was at university in Coventry, so when he invited me to his birthday party one March I didn't hold out much hope for getting there. By an amazing coincidence one of my university mates, Graham, was driving down to Wales that weekend, to a place not very far from Sven's town (and equally unpronouncable) to visit his girlfriend, fish-face. (We called her that because she had eyes that appeared to be on the sides of her face; not a pretty girl.)

So I took another mate, Darren, and we drove down in Graham's silver Vauxhall Viva. Only one problem: the heater didn't work, so we froze our arses off for about four or five hours on the way down. Graham dropped us off on a Friday night in Pontypridd, outside a semi-derelict end of terrace house that Sven allegedly shared with normal human beings. The first night was just a dress-rehearsal for the debauched party on Saturday but we did some damage with Brains SA and Red Dragon and slept on the floor. The following morning I scoped out the bathroom - no bog roll. There were apparently two girls living in the house but they had abandoned it this weekend, and there were no signs of feminine influence. There was, however, a copy of the Sun newspaper that made serviceable toilet paper, except for the fact that it turned your arse black. Darren, though, could not bring himself to use it and consequently remained "blocked".

That night at least a hundred odd people, mostly students, descended on the house. We presented Sven with his fire extinguisher, a powder model which we had liberated from a university residence hall, and he was delighted. We all drank to excess and Sven discharged his gift, partly from the balcony at the back of the house (which had, in fact, been condemned, and was at risk of collapsing into the sewer-like river below) but mostly inside the house. Almost everyone had a good time, even the supposedly lesbian girl that I kissed, thus winning a bet. The one exception was a fat bloke who seemed to have some mental problems, resulting in him punching out two large windows. We followed his blood trail the following morning down to the railway station where we later heard that the ambulance had picked him up. Dickhead.

So the next morning we woke up on a carpet that was beyond filthy when we started but which had, through the addition of beer, cigarette ash and fire extinguisher powder, now attained a measure of disgustingness seldom seen outside Mexico City slums and student accommodation. Last night's fish and chips, plus beer, plus everything else, was making its presence known but my arse wasn't ready for the Sun again. I theorised that no girl would live in that house without soft toilet paper and, on forcing the locked door to a room, I was rewarded with a blue roll, almost full. Sometimes it's the simple things in life... Darren was now so backed up that he would have needed dynamite to shift it, and he remained bug-eyed for the rest of the weekend.

Eventually Graham turned up in the Viva and liberated us from the temple of filth. His weekend didn't seem to have gone as well as ours, but I'm afraid we weren't too sympathetic. If you date a girl who looks like a fish, don't expect your mates to listen to you carp about it.


Copyright 2007 Edward Bison