The Buck and The Hen

Well, this weekend say the great festivities of Mick's Bucks party and Steph's Hens party. Obviously I can only speak in detail about the Bucks as I was not at the hens, but I do know some of the gossip :)

The Bucks started with a beer at Mick's place at 12pm, although Mick and Lambie had been drinking since 11. Then we headed off via tram to The Prince Alfred in port melbourne to begin the days celebration. The crew consisted of about 20, starting off with an even dozen then growing as the day wore on. The pub itself was pretty good, although our attempts to conceal the fact that we were on a bucks turn were quashed when the barman spotted it literally in about 30 seconds. The pub was cool thoguh and were happy to have us, especially since we weren't that rowdy and put nearly $700 over the bar through the day, plus another $300 in food.
It was a good day, got caught up with everyone and managed to finally meet Mick's dad and brothers in law. Funny thing about Mick's dad is that when he was young his best mate was a guy named Arthur Griffin, who I also knew quite well as a kid. When I was growing up my family was involved in the South Morang football and cricket clubs, and we spent a lot of time up there. Among their best friends were Arthur and Marcia griffin, so my brother and I spent a lot of time playing with Craig, Glenn and Jamie Griffin. When Arthur passed away it was very sad for my whole family, and it was really nice to meet someone who had also known him.
For the day we had used Mick's licence photos to make a T-Shirt, an old one on the front from when he had hair, and we used the photo off his new one to cover the back with photos of him in various hairstyles, mainly cheesy ones. We also all wore ID badges made from the "Mick with Hair" collection. :)
The pub was pretty good, and we'll probably head back there again. The Bar staff were cool, willing to put up with us and when it came time for Mick to get thrown out they were very understanding :)

So we drank heavily, mick sang with the band, various members of the team chatted up various members of other teams and then we made a move on to the next pub. The next two pubs were crap, so we grabbed a greasy supper pizza/souvlaki/etc and went back to The Prince Alfred again.

By this stage there was a very cool band playing called The Nudists, a three piece band playing electronic music on analogue instruments. tracks from Groove Armada, basement Jaxx and the like, very cool.

Then we started to head back to Chez Mick then got the call that the girls from Steph's Hens night were at Hubcap, so a slight detour had us arrive there, to do a little dancing, a little more drinking, and a little laughing at how drunk they were. (Not us of course, we were a picture of sobriety)

Steph decided it would be a good idea to get up on the tabel for one of the numbers, and Mick decided that it was his opportinuty for a little striptease. Luckily peer group pressure stopped im in time :)

Anyway, here are a few photos:
One of Mick's challenges was to sing karaoke, but since there wasn't any available he ended up singing a number with the first band that was up. These guys were pretty good and did most of the pub classics and a few newies. They were so good that nobody left when Mick started caterwauling :)

Obviously, you drink all day, you get drunk. I mean it's no big surprise. By the time we met up with the Hens night, we were all pretty hamered and in need of a bit of a boogie.

Of course the girls had been drinking all day too, so it really didn't take much for Steph to get up on the table, followed by Mick. Although to her credit, she was sober enough to stop him taking his pants off. It's possible he was just bluffing but that's a risk none of us wanted to take :)