Last weekend was Reilly’s stag – a three-day affair in Edinburgh, the theme of which was “it’s only gay if you get an erection”. A secondary theme was freezing your bollocks off in a floating armchair for extended periods of time. These were punctuated by briefer periods during which you were thrown out of this floating armchair and bounced off rocks, all the while swallowing gallons of water that Floody had probably just pissed in. This last is probably a moot point anyway as I’m pretty sure I was wearing his piss-sodden wet suit during the second half of that particular day, although I was thankful for the extra heat at first.

Yep, two nights in Edinburgh with eleven (other ?) reprobates, each emblazoned with their own ludicrous moustaches (apart from the prudes that didn’t bother and the poor sod who couldn’t). It would be a disservice to the canine world to say that this lot were like dogs who had been let off their leashes – from Floody and his aforementioned Lycra-triggered incontinence to Dempsey and his (ahem) interesting uses for yoghurt by way of Rocky’s predilection for head-butting and punching potential de-jockers to Conners’ facial hair, which can only be described as pedarastic.

Of course, it was in good fun. The weekend started on Friday last, with a short Aer Lingus flight to Scotland’s capital, followed by a brief bus journey that deposited us outside Waverley train station. A short walk later and we were on the Royal Mile, where we decamped to the first bar we came across (the Logie Baird, in the Bank Hotel) before heading to our accommodation. After this things go a bit blurry – we definitely had dinner in Shaw’s, and I know for a fact that, along with several of the others, I had my underwear removed without a) my consent or b) first removing my overwear. Of course, the smart thing would have been to make like Floody and go to the jacks to take my boxers off before someone else did it but hindsight is twenty-twenty and my recollection of pretty much everything else that evening is sketchy at best.

The following day started off badly, and went downhill – literally. Those of us who hadn’t already awoken with a dirty headache and a mouth that tasted like week-old teabags were dragged out of bed by Rocky and sent down to a bus that was waiting to take us to the River Tummel for the aforementioned water-sports. This involved a 90 minute journey that some of us used to catch some more Zs and others used to exercise their bowels. Those of us who were expecting our aquatic adventure to be based out of state-of-the-art facilities were sorely disappointed. Hot and cold running water? Yeah right. Changing rooms? Ooookaaaay… Try a muddy field, rain and the back of a bus!

It wasn’t all bad though; our first activity was white water rafting and after getting kitted out with our wet suits and paddles, we were off. It wasn’t quite ‘The River Wild’ territory (though Reilly does sound a bit like Meryl Streep when he screams) but it was pretty good fun all the same. Of course, given that Floody had pissed in his wet suit and I was on the right side of the raft, my heart sank whenever the instructor gave the order for ‘all left’. The highlight of the run was probably the last pair of waterfalls. The River Tummel feeds into a loch with a hydro-electric dam at one end; when the dam is open, the river’s water level can be quite low. What this meant for us was that although some sections of the river were shallow enough that we got snagged on rocks, when we hit the final pair of waterfalls the drop was high enough that we were completely submerged in the (freezing) water. Best hangover cure I’ve ever had.

After a short paddle across the loch, we arrived back at camp for lunch – I never thought I would be so glad to see hot slop in a bowl. Delicious. Once warmed up, it was time to get cold again; we struggled back into our damp wetsuits (now mixed up, hence my suspicion that I was wearing Floody’s makeshift nappy) which were now augmented with cute little flippers, and headed upriver with our ‘bugs’. Bugs are the floating armchairs that I mentioned in the opening paragraph; there’s no better way to describe them (though a picture would help). These were even more fun than the rafts; you just point your feet into the rapids and hope for the best. Unless you were Floody (who clearly pisses glue), the best you could hope for was to not have your head bashed in against a rock when you were unceremoniously dumped into the fast-flowing river the instant you entered the rapids.

Because we followed the same course as the morning’s rafting session, we inevitably came to the waterfalls. For safety reasons, we were ‘injected’ into the river at the top of the second waterfall. Really, we should have just thrown ourselves in and saved ourselves the hassle of trying to stay in the bugs (apart from that fucker, Flood; seriously, Loctite would do well to nick some of his urine). I was no sooner in the bug than I was out of it and thrown over the crest of the fall. Great fun. I spent the next ten minutes hawking my guts up on account of the manky water I had just ingested.

So, after a very tiring trip back across the loch (the propulsion system in bugs consists of, well, your hands and feet), we changed back into our clothes and embarked on the return trip to Edinburgh. Again, more sleeping and farting. At this stage we were, to a man, fucking freezing so the only course of action was to go straight to the Logie Baird and knock back some whiskies. A quick shower later, we all headed to The Filling Station on the Royal Mile for some grub. Our attempts to embarass Reilly were quickly thwarted by the fact that the man is incorrigible, so we just went and got drunk on beer and Jaeger-bombs. At approximately two-thirty on Sunday morning I found myself standing on one of the dancefloors at Espionage, drenched in sweat and wondering at the two extremes of heat (and sobriety) that I had experienced that day.

Sunday morning came and with it a quick walk up the Mile to the Castle with the lads, followed by a whistle-stop tour of Edinburgh as Rocky tried to convince us that he was well-versed in its finest breakfasting establishments, what with liking the Rugby and that. He wasn’t, and is clearly only a rugby fan because of its homo-erotic elements, so we ended up in … yeah, the Logie Baird where we had a “traditional” Scottish breakfast (i.e., an Irish breakfast with Haggis instead of white pudding). Of course, it was delicious and nicely set us up for the journey home, which just goes to show you: much as women always end up returning to the first shop they visit on any given shopping outing, men always wind up in the first pub they stagger out of.

The best thing about the weekend is that Á has taken to wearing the tee that we designed for the stag as a nightdress. Me. And Reilly. Together at last. In bed. It’s only gay if you get an erection.

Photos from the white water rafting. More photos are due to be posted by Floody.

I’ve created a little application in C# that transcodes almost any video into an MPEG-4 that can be played back on an iPod or streamed to an Xbox360. See here.