The Wrong Side Of The Tracks

Oh boy. Saturday's choo-choo extravaganza was messy. Very messy.

We started drinking at 10:45am and finished round about 03:00am today. I won't bore you to tears with alcoholic bravado, but we're not talking pints, we're talking gallons.
But I digress.

The 1940's weekend at the Severn Valley Railway consisted of people milling around dressed up in military & civvie period costumes, a fair few military vehicles and gun emplacements, and stalls ranging from decent army surplus to tat.

I daresay that any German tourists might've taken execption to the people dressed as Stormtroopers, but after five pints of Bathams, I relaised that one of the troopers was actually a woman.

A really attractive woman. In a Nazi outfit.

It's like watching Monkey! as a kid and you kind of fancy Tripitaka and you know (s)he's supposed to be male, but you know he's really a lovely she. Maybe that's another story.

At least I wasn't the only oddball there. Some guy collared me as I was bumbling along and got me to take a photo of him with the German soldiers.
He then slips on an old RAF hat that he'd got in his coat pocket. "I want you to take a photo of me being arrested by these guards", he explains.

Er, right. So these three soldiers assume the pose with him. I'm pretty sure I managed to take a blurred picture, but I think that captures the sense of occasion rather well. I daresay it'll look a publicity still from the long-lost Dad's Army acid-fuelled gonzo Christmas special.

Cut scene- more drinking around Shropshire and back to Chris's.
Suddenly it's 04:00am and Chris decided we should go for a walk. There's a place with a fantastic view to watch the sunrise, and it's only ten minutes away, he assured us.

Sounded good to me- always good to catch the sun's first rays, and it was some small concession to our no-doubt distended livers to get a bit of fresh air.

Ten minutes, my arse. We ended up doing three miles of pitch-black, steeply ascending, drunken rambling.
It was indeed a good call- it was a fantastic view, high up over the river Severn, hills rolling for as far as the eye could see. It was more of a transition from darkness to light rather than a sunrise. Which was fine, but then we get to see that we're right on the edge of a ravine.

Just us and thin air and a bloodstream full of booze and devoid of sleep.
I'd have expected an adrenaline rush, but we all ended up just having a half-hour kip, slumped on the edge of this abyss.

Then it's another three miles back, at least downhill now, and then sitting outside the local Esso garage until it opens for business.

Like tramps outside a Wetherspoons.

Ginsters cheese & onion pasties have never tasted so good.