At the turn of the century, Nick O’Mahoney was encouraged to go out drinking with his Dad and Uncle, for the whole day. On Christmas Eve. As a 17 year old boy he feared for his safety, and so brought with him a friend for safety in numbers. James Elmer his name was, and actually is still. Little did they realise during that single 10 or so hour under-age drinking binge what they had started.

Now, a full decade later, it’s Christmas Eve again. Along the way he lost the Uncle [nasty business] and also Dad [nothing sinister, he just doesn’t come anymore. His drinking day is the 23rd apparently] but he gained a handful of other people. Myself included.

I jumped on to the Christmas Eve All Dayer bandwagon in 2003, and I’ve been a stalwart ever since. Over the years the event, a tradition in its own right, has picked up little sub-traditions. The day begins at 10:30am in the Roebuck Inn, a Wetherspoons pub where my personal ritual includes a pint of whatever Christmas themed guest ale they happen to have on the go. One year it was Santa’s Piss, and last year it was Robot Santa. This year I kicked off the day with a hearty pint of ‘Miss Clause’.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. There’ll be plenty of time to explain all the established traditions. First and foremost, a new one.

Ross ‘The Gilbs’ Gilbert; Ladies Call Him ‘The Gilbs’, got all in a tizzy about cooking a massive breakfast the morning of the big race. He does this sort of thing all the time. Grand gestures, big plans and what have you, but they never come to fruition. The one time he actually went through with a cooking plan, he gave him and his girlfriend dysentery, so hopes weren’t high. Less high were they when we called him at the designated time and he didn’t answer the phone.

Still, gamely we sheened over to his Mum’s house [he lives with his Mum. It’s a sad story] to find his kitchen in full swing and a wok full of bacon simmering away on the stove. The breakfast, it’s fair to say, was fucking dense. The amount was £4, and it was money well spent on everyone’s part. TWO kinds of sausage people! I even got a text from him a couple of days before to see if I had a preference, as he was sausage shopping at the time. Bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, beans, eggs both fried and scrambled. There was even black pudding for the love of God, and toast. So... much... toast.

I tried to eat it. I really did. But when I realised I was coming up to being full I looked at the breakfast and it wasn’t even touched. The plate was still full. I couldn’t understand it, but glancing across at Chris Hall and Nick, James and Neil... even Ross. Their plates seemed to be just as plentiful as mine. It was a nexus of food. A never ending Full English. The Long Dark Breakfast of the Soul.

Also we had t-shirts.

Last year Nick made us all Merry Rex-Mas shirts, featuring the smiling face of popular internet pariah Eddie Rex, standing flamingo style in a big plant pot, made up to look like the most homo-erotic Christmas Tree there has ever been. We knew that the 10th Anniversary required a shirt, and eventually it was decided that it would be a collage of Christmas Eve’s past. This one, it was later pointed out, heavily featured myself [I appeared in 4 separate pictures] and no Chris Hall.

My own shirt, unlike everyone else’s, was red [theirs were white] it yet another swept up tradition stemming from last Christmas when aforementioned Rex-Mas shirts were handed out, printed on Kalenji sports t-shirts which appeared to me to be made of breathable neoprene. The tag said Large, however I put mine on and it was more like wearing a wetsuit. For an 8 year old.

But fuck it, I’d paid for the bloody thing so I was gonna make it work. A few scissor cuts and some sowing later, and the smiling face of popular internet pariah Eddie Rex was grinning out from my chest on a red t-shirt which was actual human man sized rather than Gay Pride Extra Small. The boys took it to heart and so if ever there is to be a t-shirt for Christmas Eve, mine will be red. Which I’m down with, because I look a dick in white.

We trammed it to the pub, however Neil and James were sent back on their merry way because, like dick heads, they forgot to bring shirts belonging to the people we would meet in town. Those being Dave and Tony Stark [actually called Brendan, but he looks a bit like Tony Stark]. Neil wasn’t best pleased that we boarded the tram without him. A fact which became evident when he rung up to kick off, then hung up because I was laughing at him.

“You can tell Dave his fucking t-shirts on the tram tracks youth! Fuckin’ leavin’ us here you dick!”

“Haha!”

“Yeah fucking hilarious innit!”

*CLICK*

He really is the ghost at the feast.

MOVING ON!

One pint. One pub.

That was the only rule of the day. We’ve had a few years where we dawdled somewhat in certain pubs and rendered the day less of a pub crawl and more of a pub... stay in the same pub... day. Which is no good.

Nick was particularly stringent about this rule, to keep up moral. The longer you sit in a place drinking the sleepier you become and then the whole thing is knackered. One pint in the Roebuck and then we moved on to the next one; traditionally The Blue Bell”, in which I was jipped by the barman for having red hair [yet another Christmas tradition]. I had a go at burning him back again, but he threw out a quip fire response that was so good it put me in my place at the time and which I have since forgotten.

Kristkindel Markt next, for a pint of Germany’s best lager beer.

It’s at this point I started something of a chain reaction. When I hit the Beer Hut there was a guy in front of me just walking away with a beer. Since I’m English and have a very heavy sense of national embarrassment, I was too afraid to ask for a beer in the barman’s [is he still a barman if he works in a hut?] native German and also didn’t have the balls to try and pronounce any of the beers in my usual English. Instead I waited for the man in front to walk away, then looked the bar/hutman square in the eyes and, with a stiff upper lip, said “Same again please mate”

A sort of domino effect was created as Neil said “Same again” after me and then Chris, James, Rob, Dave, Tony Stark, Nick and Ross followed suit. As a result we all ended up with Wheat Beer which is like the beer equivalent of Ross’s breakfast.

We tried to drink it. We really did... etc.

Possibly feeling shunned due to their lack of t-shirt exposure [neither of them were on it... me? 4 times] Rob and Elmer got their heads together and did something to assure their appearance on any future collage shirt. They bought 1200g of German biscuits. Thin ones. They were actually quite nice, and came in a variety of shapes including Windmill, Swan and Santa with Golf Clubs. Probably won’t get them on the shirt, but it did provoke an almost actual fight between the two James’s [Nick’s Ginger Idiot Brother and Elmer] later on in the night when Ginger Balls punched 300g of Spekulatium biscuits out of his hand into the road. They squared up to each other and everything. Suddenly it all wore off and they snapped out of it, even to the point where Elmer asked me “Did that just happen?”

We had an arm wrestling contest in Revolution [it all came down to Tony Stark vs Ross, which was disappointingly a draw], we came face to face with Johnny Warm in Browns and frightened some girl in a pub no one remembers the name of.

I’ve gone to bullet points because it starts to lose parity for me round about now. Obviously we went to the Pit and Pendulum, a fantastic goth themed pub which has, in recent years, been inexplicably taken over by people’s mums and besuited business types. Cocktails happened, we bought a vibrator [another tradition] and stuck it in each other’s drinks before Nick threw it behind a light fitting, still switched on, so it could be seen but not reached and turned off. We left soon after.

Christmas Eve is a two pronged affair.

Prong One – Nottingham City Centre – 10:30 am – Very Drunk

Prong Two – The Red Lion, Underwood – Very Drunk – Closing

It’s at this stage that we enter Prong Two.

Don’t remember getting from town to the Red Lion, but I’m told it was a taxi and I’m also told I convinced Dave to pay for it. Good on me.

In the Red I managed to talk my way into a slap, then back out of it again before it actually occurred.

One of Chris Hall’s mates, Johnny Waistcoat his name was, and he was obviously spoiling for a fight. For a start, Chris asked him if he’d gotten into any fights that night. I thought they were just pissing about. Some sort of private joke perhaps. I thought I’d get in on the fun.

Chris Hall: “Gotten into any fights tonight? Haha”

Johnny Waistcoat: “Tee hee, Not tonight mate”

Me: “No fights? Ho ho... you faggot”

Johnny Waistcoat: “Don’t call me a faggot!”

The text in bold is the point where Johnny Waistcoat lost his smile.

He gave me the shit eye and repeated that I’d best not call him a faggot. Here, I thought, is a man in a waistcoat who takes himself too seriously. I also wondered why someone aged 20 would have such a terribly receding hairline, but I kept both of these things to myself because he already wanted to smack me and there was no point helping him through the door.

Talking my way out of a slap involved adopting my best ‘alright now mate, we’ve all had a bit to drink’ voice and letting him know that he wasn’t a faggot, and that I wouldn’t be saying so again. I left soon after.

Legend has it [Ginger Balls was in attendance] that later on in the evening, still trying to get his fight, Johnny Waistcoat went serious with entirely the wrong person and wound up with an honest to God round house kick to the jaw for his troubles. Nice work there.

The rest of the evening is, as the final tradition would have it, something of a blur. They played ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ by Journey four times, but no one actually knows the words. Enthusiastic loudness is a fair substitute though to my mind.

Nick’s Dad stopped me from trying to do the entire Thriller dance routine, making his appearance at the Red entirely worthwhile.  There was a massive circle mosh to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’  in which my sister got an elbow to the face by an overly excitable Ginger Moron. He wasn’t in the mosh, he wanted to be in the mosh. Fat lip for my sister.

Then I probably got a taxi home and that was the end of the night. I’ve done write-ups for 4 out of my 6 Christmas Eve All Dayers, and they always end the same way.

‘Then I probably got a taxi home.’

I never can be sure.

They’re good, these annual 14 hour drinking sessions.