Rhys' Big Adventure

[danger awesome]

(This was taken from my blog/space thing btw, so isn't quite written up as a 'proper' story)


So, last friday was 'Chav nite' down the college bar (there's a theme every friday), and we all dressed up accordingly, as you may have seen. What's not so clear from the pictures is what happened after that, especially to Rhys... So here's what happened:

Following the 'Chav nite' festivities in the bar, there was a party at the flats at Barts (where 2nd/3rd years live), a short bus journey away. Most people were going, and we weren't going to let our night end at 10.30, so we decided to go along. Martin and myself were quite drunk, having had a fair few pints since starting just after dinner at 7, and Rhys was uncharacteristically undrunk for this time in the evening. We thought nothing of it.

Arriving at Barts a little before 11, Rhys was just finishing the (pint) bottle of Newcastle Brown he'd picked up at the bar from the journey, and i was pleased to see his drinking had upped in pace - but it was about to get much worse (better?). The party was in the shared flat of 4 second years, and there must have been close to 100 people packed into their kitchen/lounge/diner. The main attraction in the room was a large bucket (more like a small water trough for a horse really) on the table in the corner full of punch - basically, whatever you'd brought with you, went in there: standard student party practise really. Rhys/Martin added a small bottle of vodka, and i put in a few cans of beer. At this point the punch was a nice looking pink, but it soon changed (about 10 minutes later) to a pretty vile yellowy-brown colour. The taste was surprisingly good however, fruity and well-masking the ridiculous alcoholic strength it must have had (most people poured bottles of cheap spirits in).Rhys was caning down the punch, from the empty (pint) bottle he was refilling with this fruity death. Me and Martin were helpless (read: too busy talking to girls) to stop him from having about 4/5 pints of punch within the space of about an hour.

Not long after 12, we both noticed that neither of us had seen Rhys for at least 10 minutes. I assumed he must have over-indulged on the punch, and went to see if i could find him being sick either in the bathroom or outside. No such luck. We started asking people if they'd seen him, now quite worried. Eventually, someone said they'd heard him shouting: 'My girlfriend, my fucking girlfriend!' while stumbling off towards the bus stop, looking at his phone. We assumed he must have gone home due to some argument with her on the phone, and got back to partying. We ended up leaving about 2, and went back to our room with a few others from college, and were just sitting chilling in our room...

Nearly 3 hours after the last recorded sighting of him, Rhys fell into our room a few minutes before 3am. 'I am FUCKED!' he proudly declared, before sitting on my computer chair and immediately pitching straight over the side of it onto the floor. A little help getting back up later, he told us what happened:

(This is reconstructed from what he told us both that night and in the few days after, as details slowly came back to him. Some things are still totally unexplainable, and the order of events may be slightly off, we just don't know)

At about midnight, seeing missed call on his phone from his girlfriend, he decided to go outside of the party to ring her. Hearing him totally rat-arsed on the phone did not please her in the slightest, and she refused to talk to him, and hung up. Rhys, obviously upset and distressed by this, decided to go home. He walked back to the main road, and caught a taxi. If it hadn't been for one single problem Rhys had at that point, nothing unusual would have happened. But he did have a rather pressing problem at that point - the total abscence from his person of any money, whatsoever.

Admitting this to the taxi driver was the first big mistake. The taxi driver asked him to get out, and Rhys continued to argue with him, saying to drive him to a cash point where he could have 'all the money he wanted'. The clearly vindictive cabbie then turned the car around, and dropped him back on Cowley road, a mile or so further away from college as Barts. But Rhys didn't know he'd been dropped off further away, what with his total lack of cognitive ability due to excessive alcohol consumption. He carried on walking, thinking he was only a few hundred yards from college, but the truth of it was that he was actually several miles away, and walking further still from home.

Feeling the call of nature at this point, Rhys committed the crime of public urination - 'not in the middle of the road, but on the pavement'. And unfortunately for him, this was spotted by a passing policewoman, who stopped and started having a go at him, which was fair enough. Rhys told her slightly less politely to 'fuck off', and had an argument with her for a few minutes, resulting in him getting an official police warning (though sadly he lost the piece of paper he would have been given), and her driving off to leave him to his own devices.

[At this point i feel we must highlight the sheer ineptitude of the officer in question. Any semi-capable 'officer of the law' would have at least given him a lift home at this point, as i believe they are required by law to do so (but i'm not entirely certain of that, don't quote me/take that as fact) when someone is so obviously incapable as Rhys was at that point. Clearly Rhys wasn't the most incapable person present at that point in the evening, it was obviously the officer in question, who was likely far too lazy/stupid to do her job and take him home, or arrest him for drunk+disorderly (at least he would have had somewhere safe to stay overnight). Nice one Thames Valley Police, for keeping people safe - Rhys could quite easily have wandered into the road at that point, been hit by a car, and died. And should such a thing have happened, it would be purely because your officer was too idle/unprofessional to do the job the general public pay her to do. That said, at least he didn't get beaten to the floor by the officer for 'resisting arrest', as i read is becoming increasingly more common these days. End of rant.]

Following this brief encounter with 'the law', Rhys carried on walking in the completely wrong direction, and found himself at the side of the A4142, Oxford ring road. Feeling very angry after arguments with his girlfriend, a taxi driver, and a police officer, he walked along the grass facing the oncoming traffic, 'swearing and shouting at the lorries'. Some time later, a 'black, souped-up middle-age-racer car' (probably an impreza/supra) stopped next to him at the side of the road, and a nice guy of 30-something asked Rhys if he was alright and offered him a ride, despite the pretty high (and obvious) risk of having his upholstery ruined. Rhys got in, and doesn't recall much about the journey/driver, except that he was in the car for at least a half hour, went to a whole other town (He thinks Reading, but this would have been over an hour's round trip - possible but unlikely), and the driver said he was from Slough.

Dropped off a few blocks away from Jesus after an unknown period of time, he walked the rest of the way and arrived in our room. He then told us what had happened, phoned his mum from Martin's phone (waking her up at 3am for no reason), then went back downstairs and to bed. Amazingly, he wasn't sick until lunchtime the next day after a McDonalds, when it was 'florescent green' in colour. Delightful.

[daphne]

That's interesting that your police officers are supposed to take people home or arrest them. I don't think I would ever be offered a ride home by a cop here. Surely, there would be an arrest.

I crave McDonald's french fries after hard nights of drinking for the sodium, probably. To toss McD's is so sad...I bet it's a bit more expensive there. In Japan, where my cousin lived for a few years (played pro ball), going to McDonald's with his wife and 2 children cost him 50 dollars American.

[G_W]

I too crave the greasiest fries and cheeseburgers after drinking. Wierd

[Resident Asshole]

Fun stuff. Though in all actuality, I would blame the situation on the girlfriend rather than the cop. That's just me though.