Authored By Max
St Patrick's Day 2007 and despite having no Irish connections myself, always likely to be a messy day, especially with it being on a Saturday. Even better was the fact we had Lincoln away that day. A good number of us had agreed this could be a big one on the train, with it being one of the lads birthday's a day later too, just a general recepie for a good day.
We got the 9:01 out of Barnet and most of us promptly cracked straight on with the beers. An easy journey up, with a change at Peterborough (as usual) saw us get to Lincoln just before midday. Straight away we went off in search of pubs in the city centre. I forget the name of the first one we went in, but it was slightly out of the way of the main area of pubs. Anyway, we all strolled in, some of us already in relatively good spirits. As we walked up to the bar the landlord said; "you're not football fans, are you? We don't have football fans in here." The response from one of our group was pretty good "no mate, stag party." The best bit however was when the bloke behind the bar asked who was getting married and completely un-planned, we all pointed to the same person. Funny.
We had a beer in there, but it wasn't that good anyway, so we went down the road to the little stretch of about 4 or 5 pubs, Lincoln's 'bar street', if you like. We walked into a pub called The Cheltenham with a sign outside saying 'shotz.' Interesting. The shotz thing was there for a reason. Within about half an hour in there I'd lost count of how many Corky's Creme Egg shots I'd put away. A quid ago, everyone was getting involved and subsequently, battered.
Even before kick off, my memory gets a bit hazy. I know we all got to the ground on time for kick off, but the journey there I am not sure about. I do remember a few of us walking through the city centre and going past a group of buskers, playing a sort of samba tune. So, we went and stood just in front of them and started doing our own little samba dance. Thankfully, they had a sense of humour, as did the crowd of people watching, which our dancing seemed to help get bigger. It was alright though, when they finished everyone clapped us and we gave a bow, before heading off to the ground. I'm not sure if we walked it or all jumped in cabs. I'm gonna go with cabs, I think.
Now whilst Lincoln is a good away day, Lincoln City v Barnet at Sincil Bank is rarely a good fixture. No change on this one either. The first half was so, so boring. Neither team did anything, 0-0. The second half, Lincoln got a goal fairly early on and went 1-0 up. Once this happened, it already looked like game over. They didn't look like getting a second and we certainly didn't look like equalising. So, after about 60 minutes myself and two others decided we'd have more fun getting on the £1 shots than watching this drivel.
Not quite sure how we managed to find our way back to the centre of Lincoln. I remember all three of us jogging at various paces; "Second gear lads, wooah, drop it to first for a bit" and so on. Amusing.
We got back to the pub we'd been in before and watched the scores come in on Soccer Saturday. That day was the first time I'd ever done a football accumulator and I sat there watching in pleasant shock as nearly all my games were going as I'd bet. For a split second I thought I'd won, then I can clearly remember reading Doncaster Rovers 0-2 Cheltenham Town and shouting quite loudly, in the pub, "bollocks!" I had £2 on at 55/1 and this one result had let me down. Ironically, I was sat in the pub called The Cheltenham at the time. Gutting.
The others came back to the pub shortly after. Barnet had indeed lost 1-0 and we had indeed missed absolutely nothing leaving so early. We stuck around for a bit longer, I think we got the train back about 6. With it being St Patrick's Day they were giving out those big foam hats with every pint of Guiness. However, no one wanted to buy one, so I made the daring raid over the bar when the staff's back was turned and nicked a pack of 4 of these hats. Didn't get caught for it and the others seemed quite happy with their new head gear. So we made our way back to the station, via the off licence, all Irish-ed up.
The train journey home was an absolute farce. A day drinking shots as well as copious pints of lager really caught up with me and I even had to have a bit of a 'time out' on my own listening to some music in another carriage. When I did come back, the general behaviour hadn't changed. We were treated to watching some of the most brutal games of 'slaps' that I have ever seen. It just got so, so silly. Funny, though.
We got back to New Barnet about half 8-9 I think. Everyone went there seperate ways. Myself and two others got on the 184 bus and went to a house party in Muswell Hill. Probably not the best idea, I remember throwing up in the garden there, before heading off to the O'Neills in Muswell for a bit, before returning to the house party briefly at about 2am, eventually stumbling home about 3. An absolute shambles of a day.
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