Holland Tour
Churchill once said "We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm".
And so it was that whilst the US Navy's SEAL Team Six were busy administering some frontier justice in the hinterlands of the sub-continent, London Academicals SEAL Team Seven were similarly despatched to NATO headquarters to visit retribution upon a hockey tournament that had got out of hand.
In traditional fashion we RV-ed at a top secret location in London's Bloomsbury district. We boarded the pair of stealth troop transporters (disguised as Ford Galaxy's) that Eb "Sands of Time" Mukhtar and Dan "The Ventilator" Borg had acquired from their rentals.
It was a 6 hour journey to Brunssum (just outside Maastricht), punctuated by a short stop at a Calais hypermarket for Sam "The Nemesis" Balch to buy himself a clue (and some firecrackers). There soon followed one of the more entertaining moments of the tour, when The Nemesis decided to activate a fog horn in the ear of Sands of Time from point blank range. The response from Eb was as measured as you would expect...a firm size 12 straight into Sam's genital region which saw him down for the count and Eb hoping he had done future generations a favour. There were few other highlights in the journey, other than the statement that Sam was not given any bread at his wedding and the confirmation that rush hour traffic round Brussels is as dog sh1t as everything else in Belgium. Next time we will take a squadron of Panzer IV tanks as they seem to be able to make substantially swifter progress through the country.
As we approached Brunssum Andy "The Plumber" Bott took the opportunity to demonstrate why you should never ask a copper directions. We did eventually arrive at the sports ground, just as the sun was going down, to be confronted by an uncannily realistic Princess Fiona (of Shrek fame, but sadly not in her Cameron Diaz form) who directed us to some tent space.
Presently we'd erected a tent the size of The Palace at Tuileries (kindly supplied by Ally "Skittles" Francis), which was the accommodation for one and all, and over the course of tour would become known as the scat tent. As the 250th (and last) tent peg went in the final member of our party, Jon "Chin-Womb" Mann, appeared out of the dark following his 6.5 hour journey across Europe in a cattle truck. All that remained was to get dressed up in our "Royal Wedding" attire, consume our own body weight in high strength alcohol, and get the party started. This we did, and we also managed to end the party with a touch of without prejudice criminal damage.
The second evening required LAST 7 to don their favourite animal fancy dress. This saw The Plumber reprise his role as Gene Wilder ("come with me, and you'll see, a world of pure imagination"), Ally in a leopard print onesey, Eb as a monkey and the return of super crab. The animals dutifully got down to some live music provided by a band whose lead singer appeared to be a Dutch cross between Roger Daltry and Gary Glitter. Upon returning to the tent, Sascha had found himself a rather large mattress, and Skittles was demonstrating the Hampshire Death Grip on an unsuspecting Chin-Womb, and all this while Botty slept peacefully in his (slightly damp) bed.
There is little to be said about the hockey. The opposition weren't very good, we finished 3rd after losing a semi-final 1-0 when we were all still half comatose, and Sasha "The Postman" Benson-Cooper scored 19 goals in about 8 matches. It is to remain unconfirmed whether he acquired his new nickname because he always delivers, or because of the Van that seemed to be consistently in his presence.
And without much mlaaaaaaaarrrrrrr ado that wraps up the trip. Save that it tooks us about 2 hours to get on le Shuttle on the way back as they conducted a detailed search of every vehicle for any of Osama's body parts. Many thanks to Bourgois for organising - Accies touring lives on. Bring on the next one.
By the way, does anyone have a spare £41,000 kicking about?