I’m really worried about this weekend.

“Dragon’s Winter Tour ‘03″ is continuing with a trip to Manchester for my brother in law’s stag do. (I haven’t mentioned about his brief visit earlier in the week and the revelations that may or may not result in the postponement or cancellation of his wedding next month. Muchos excitement and scandal!) It’s going to be a Very Drunken Weekend™. There will be rugby, drinking, go-karting, drinking, lapdancing, drinking, clubbing, drinking and we are all going home in an ambulance.

I’m not sure I can take it!

I normally would be well up for getting trashed but I seem to have been doing quite a lot of it recently. After Gozo (four days solid), last weekend (two days solid) and wednesday night this week, I think my liver is planning on using my lower intestine to strangle my brain at the first sight of any more alcohol. Maybe I’m being a little over dramatic about it but I felt terrible yesterday. Really fucking awful. And I don’t feel on top of the game today either (although that could be more to do with lack of sleep).

I know I don’t have to drink but it is a stag do and there will be a few marines going so I may have to succumb to peer pressure and join in and it’ll be great and I’ll get shitfaced and it’ll be a total laugh. An absolute riot.

On Sunday I’ll feel like shite and want to die and be faced with nothing except the four hour, round-the-houses, high-probability-of-being-delayed trip home again. I think I’m getting too old for this shit. It’s a sad state of affairs. I’m not as young as I used to be. Everything seems to ache. I find myself considering having afternoon naps at the weekend and even caught myself out shopping the other day for a new pair of slippers. Okay, so I haven’t quite got to the sherry drinking stage of life, but I am a little concerned that it’s not that far off. I have passed my prime (as my dear, wonderful wife delights in pointing out to me) and am desperately clinging to the tree at the top of the black run ski slope that is the rest of my life. And I don’t know how long I can hold on for.

Of course, maybe the solution is that I shouldn’t go at it quite as hard as I do. Yes, my body may well be struggling with processing the amount of total and utter crap that I’m putting into it and yes, my liver is probably the most exercised organ in my body and is no doubt beginning to falter due to the decline in youthful regenerative capabilities of this frail shell of flesh, skin and bone that I inhabit. And the two cases of alcohol poisoning I’ve had in as many years.

Christ! Listen to me! Moaning like a bitch on heat. Just because I already feel like I’ve had a five day hangover that’s nothing another few beers and night on the tiles won’t sort out. What the hell have I got to complain about? I’m in for a weekend of pure loucheness and debauchery, rubgy, lap dancing and drinking games. A boys weekend away where the only rule is “What goes on tour, stays on tour!” A chance to show these young upstarts how it’s really done.

So bring on the dancing girls, bring on the bottle of sambuca and the matches, bring on the (convenient!) memory loss, bring on the strippers, the blow up sheep, the handcuffs and leaving the stag secured naked to a lamppost on a cold November night in the middle of a strange Northern city.

I wonder if they’ll let me plug my laptop in at the hospital?