"In the beginning was the word, and the word was 'Cricquet'."
(Genesis, Ch 1 v1)
Of all the things that stick in my mind, apart from the shrapnel of course, then it is the day when I (Clarkey), my brother Rob Key, and my friends Damon Hill and Les Dennis Waterman, all got drunk after a successful cricket match against local rivals, The Boxted.
It had been a tight match that had involved lots of swearing, which at the time affected me deeply as my parents, McGrath and Minogue (Warne), had brought me up a good clean Catholic girl. It had also involved a lot of physical abuse, but i have since had therapy to cope with the ongoing pain this has caused.
These negative tactics used by our rivals had the effect of forging a strong team ethic and when myself and Waterman had knocked off the winning runs we ran off the field quickly to embrace the rest of our heroic team, and also to avoid the false teeth that the losing team were by this time kicking at us.
I was lifted high up in the air by my team mates and they carried me all the way to the bar where, in true club cricket fashion, I was ordered at gun point to get the first round in. I happily obliged after the first bullet had lodged behind my left knee, and we all drank to victory and avoided the angry stares of our defeated rivals.
After draining the clubhouse of all liquids, we staggered out into the late summer evening and hit the many neon bars and slapper filled clubs of Colchester town where we all attempted to break the world record of "Loudest raucous song sung by a victorious cricket team, on a Saturday, in Colchester, in 1995, and that...", a feat we easily achieved.
And there was much rejoicing....
By the end of the night we were all either falling over, puking, or falling over AND puking at the same time. Taxis were hailed, batting orders were discussed and drunken snogging of slappers was achieved, and the night was over. But in our haste to get home we had forgotten about Waterman! We had not seen him for the last two hours of revelry and no one could see him in the crowd. In the end it was left to me to go back into the last few clubs we had been in to try and find him. But he was no where to be seen. I traced our steps back through all the bars we had been to but still could not find him. in the end i was about to give up when I heard a faint voice singing quietly down a back alley. As I moved toward the sound i felt a growing sense of amusement as I had seen this before, and LO! and behold! there was Waterman, pi$$ed out of his tiny mind and singing "Everytime you touch me, I become a hero" to a brick wall. Poor guy.
I had to hold his head out of the window of the taxi all the way home, as the driver had threatened us with castration if we puked in his cab.
The evening was over. We had all learned a valuable lesson, and then immediately forgotten it.
