I Am, Quite Literally, Staggered Part Two: Electric Boogaloo
Milton Keynes is a funny place.
I mean very unusual. It feels like you’re always on the industrial estate on the edge of town rather than actually in it. Every road is either parallel or perpendicular in a perfect grid system. And as you walk through the ‘town centre’ (actually a shopping mall) you see that this too is set out in a grid. You get the feeling however much you zoom in from the macroscopic to the microscopic, you will get the same repeating pattern, passing through a weird rank-and-file Milton Keynes ant population all the way down to the unicellular bacteria stoutly refusing to move in any way other than at right angles. “Beware: don’t like the likes of you triangles coming in here, stealing our corners!” I can safely say, the designer of Milton Keynes didn’t ‘get’ Pythagoras.
The major drawback of this layout is that there are no landmarks. And, as there are no landmarks, there is no way to navigate by landmarks. There’s not even an odd tree that you can notice. Nothing. Thus, you can’t get to anywhere in Milton Keynes without a SatNav. Even if you’ve lived there your entire life.
Don’t get me wrong – it’s a really nice place. It just literally felt like I was in a different country, such was the vibe of the layout. The parking system, in particular, seemed ludicrously efficient for a British town.
We arrived ambitiously early for my stag do. At 10:15 to be precise; exactly three hours and forty-five minutes before we were due to meet. So, we decided to find somewhere to get ourselves a full English breakfast in preparation for our well-documented Willen Lake jaunts.
The Premier Inn-attached pub, however, refused to take our money, as they stopped serving at 10am. Ironically, it seemed our ridiculously early arrival was not quite early enough.
We put our trust in the SatNav and arrived at a Wetherspoons in ‘central’ Milton Keynes, where a very helpful member of staff informed us we were in one of four MK Wetherspoons. Our sight-seeing tour was clearly only just beginning! “Ambassador – you spoil us with all your Wetherspoonses!” She then provided us with a large, and very satisfying, breakfast each.
After the whole lake extravaganza, we returned to the very agreeable Holiday Inn rooms and its pleasant, shuts-way-too-early bar. Don’t rely on finishing off the night there with a final drink.
Three more of my friends joined us at the hotel, swelling our numbers to twenty-one and we set off for our curry appointment at Jaipur, allegedly ‘Best Restaurant in the UK Outside London (‘97-2000)’. That’s a bold claim, isn’t it? I imagine the marketing discussion went thus:
Chocky told Dan to drink the cocktail
MANAGER: Let’s put Best Restaurant in the UK!
MAITRE D’: Well, you know, that ‘Claridge’s’ is quite nice…
ASSISTANT MANAGER: And that Connaught is alright.
CHEF: I’ve heard good things about The Ivy!
BUS BOY: And that Marco Pierre White one!
MANAGER: Oh, okay. Well, what about ‘Best Restaurant in the UK… Outside London’?
As we were a little early, we thought we’d stop off for a drink. We walked up the steps of ‘The Living Room’, as this sounded like my kind of pub; sofas, big telly, wear your slippers and watch the news. I’d like to say I found out, but the bouncer just laughed at our group of twenty-one, me in my personalised printed t-shirt (courtesy of the best man) and unnecessarily mentioned something about a ‘truncheon-fest’ before suggesting the Wetherspoons over the road.
So, to Wetherspoons number two then – I should have brought my I-Spy book – before we trundled off down the parallel boulevards to our chosen culinary bliss.
An executive decision was made and set menu B for twenty-one was swiftly shipped across our extremely long table. It was all very nice, except that the really hot stuff was… really quite hot. However, I will boldly proclaim that it’s not the best restaurant outside of London. In fact, it’s as though they’d never stopped at the now-defunct Wimpy of Northampton services.
By this stage, Mr Dan’s-Best-Man had become infuriated by my friends’ complete lack of decision-making. “Well, you know…” I humourously replied. This did not seem to diffuse the situation.
The problem appeared to be that when arranging this shebang, the ‘strip club had been cancelled due to lack of interest’. Now, however, with the lack of any better halves present, all had gone a bit gung-ho asking which strip club we were to be attending. This all seemed to point to everybody’s decisions ordinarily being made by someone else. Either that or they didn’t want to be held accountable with email evidence of interest.
Now, however, I was being frogmarched towards said club. If I’m honest, I’m completely indifferent to strippers. I have nothing against naked ladies, per se, but on the very few occasions I have frequented such an establishment, there is always that off-putting attitude that ‘it’s just their job’, nullifying any excitement and rendering them quite, quite pointless. Besides, the last time I was lapdanced by a woman of Amazonian proportions who crushed my mobile phone into my thigh. It was the single most painful experience of my life (yet seemed the height of rudeness to stop her).
I was slightly alarmed as the keenest of the strip-club goers appeared to be the already-married guys. I don’t mean individually, I mean as a whole it was concerning that, once I’m married, I will never again see a naked woman until I go to a strip club! What really happens when you get married?! It made me a bit glum.
Anyway, after all that, a ‘private party’ meant we couldn’t even get in, which at least meant I wouldn’t be in trouble when I got home. Still, free tickets in commiseration means all my married friends can drive up to Milton Keynes every subsequent night that week and get in for free.
How a stag do should always start
Thus, we returned lesser men to the half of the guys who had foregone the experience. Oh, hang on, wait a mo’, what’s this? Oh, it’s another Wetherspoons. We finished the night in there, getting my loyalty card stamped and now qualifying for my very own free branch.
At 10am the next morning, Mr Dan’s-Best-Man got us all up and dragged us out for breakfast, as the hotel’s was quite the expensive option. So we had a very nice breakfast.
At the sole remaining Wetherspoons.
Four, fuck’s sake.
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