Club Party
By Dave Tooley

Every summer Marten's parents would go off somewhere Continental for a well earned break, leaving him in charge of their property at the back of Fareham.

This gave him the perfect opportunity to invite a few friends (few???) around for a small soiree.  One of the first times this occurred the word went around the Solent city club that a party was on the agenda for the following weekend.  Marten became a little nervous at the implications of the word 'party' and tried to play it down a little, telling everyone that it would be just a small gathering watching Match of the Day, and maybe ending with a Chinese Takeaway.  He had been formally threatened with serious consequences if his parents had even the slightest suspicion he'd invited anyone into their house. 

Come the Saturday evening everyone and their dog turned up outside Martens home (including a very young bunch of girlies that our friend Martin Holmes had invited along)  For the first hour or so, much to the annoyance of many of Martens neighbours, a continual stream of scooterists tore up and down their Avenue practicing wheelies and just generally having burn ups.  When eventually one of the more irate neighbours threatened to call the Police, the riders called it a day and we all went inside.  That's when the fun really started…Martens parents had only recently bought a brand new gleaming white carpet for their lounge. 

Yes…white!!!  Can you imagine?
One of the first things to happen was my brother spilt almost a whole bottle of Cherry Wine over the carpet right by their window where the light would really show it off to its best advantage.  What a disaster, we spent ages desperately trying to remove the stain with just about everything we could find in the cupboard under the sink.  Eventually, in desperation, we covered it with the settee.

From that point on the whole evening descended into chaos, with Marten realising he was a dead man when his parents came back.  So he just got drunk…very drunk…in fact so drunk he locked himself into the toilet with a bottle of something strong and promptly fell asleep on the bog.  This was a disaster, with so many beer swilling club members staggering around looking desperately for somewhere to empty their swollen bladders.  There was only one thing for it, someone came up with a screwdriver and embarked on removing the hinges to the door.  Typical, at the precise moment he succeeded in his quest, Marten woke up.

I often have flashbacks from that party, even now.  I shall draw a veil over what actually went on in the latter part of the night, but suffice to say there was one particular young lady who was more than just a little friendly and accommodating to anyone who would care to accompany her.  I seem to remember 2 queues up the stairs.  One to take part, and another just to watch.  Marten will know who I'm talking about when I mention someone actually lurking in pole position behind the curtains in the bedroom.

Suffice to say, the following morning the state of the house had to be seen to be believed.  I will leave it to Marten to explain how he managed to present an explanation to his Mum and Dad.

Note from MH

Luckily my Parents were mild mannered and they believed the story I gave about spilling a glasss of Ribena. They did however suspect some sort of foul play when the Neighbours squealed. To this day, every time I have a drink of Rum I get flashbacks to that night, and waking up in the downstairs loo cuddling the bowl. In later years we had other parties, but more civilsed affairs with the crowd from the Horseshoe Pub Folk Club, but that's another story.