Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Up King George!

Up King George

Our bi-annual school reunion was on over the weekend, and rather than spending the day getting jolly sozzled at The K-Club or Druids’ Glen again, or hunting wild boar in Crumlin, I tabled the idea of a spot of paintballing.
"What a capital idea!” my old school chums cried. And my amusing plan was in motion...

We were all supposed to rendez-vous somewhere in the Wicklow mountains, and although the very idea of woods brimming with disenfranchised IRA trainees, moonshine makers and cattle thieves frightened me out of my wits, I was consoled by the fact that I’d have our Man - Old Jim - with us; a fluent Gaelic speaker and spectacular shot with a crossbow.

So while the others were having pre-bataille tea and cucumber sandwiches, the chaps from my old dormitory - King George’s - were busy readying a team of large horses behind and embankment.

We arrived late guffawing that cake was the done thing these days and chortled at the boys of St John’s and Weatherby’s - all grown ruddy, goutish and disgusting in the last few years - unlike the Dorian Gray fops of King George’s Rooms.

We chose our weapons and were allocated barracks to defend. When the others had trundelled off bellowing naughty, triumphant songs to their end of the battlefield, I instructed the men to don their codpieces; I’d heard somewhere that a direct hit in the Queensbury’s causes all manner of messy unpleasantness. I then whistled to Old Jim to fetch the horses and crank up the gramophone.

Imagine the terrifying sight of fifteen fops on horseback bounding over the hill, their crotches bulging, swinging Planet of the Apes nets to the splendour of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’! We thundered down upon the boys of St John’s and Weatherby’s, their peppering paintballs were no match for our nets and the great gushes of cheap Spanish sparkling wine we rained upon them. How they squirmed and reeled, wept and squealed!

Within minutes there wasn’t a fat man standing, and the fops galloped round them guzzling real Champagne, huzzaring and pelting the vanquished with rotten quail eggs.

In the end old Tobias Wheatcroft had a mild heart attack, but they were awfully good sports about the whole thing.
Another Crisis In Foptown

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