Saturday (I don't want to blog about politics) night

Me and Mrs Bucko have decided to book a holiday to Greece in the new year. We haven't been away for a while and we are due.

Since we got married six years ago, we have only been abroad together once. We had a great time but that holiday didn't quite have the character of the lads holidays I used to go on before we got married.

Every year a group of us would get together for a cheap package holiday abroad. They were excellent fun and sometimes quite painful because of the inevitable practical jokes that a bunch of boozed up lads will play on each other.

We went to Faliraki in 1999 and there was a lad with us who I haven't seen in years. His Name was Pissed Up Dave, or Pudsy for short. He was the brunt of a lot of practical jokes because his reactions were legendary.

One evening, a couple of us got back to the apartments early. We removed all the slats from Pudsy's bed and carefully replaced the mattress on the frame. When he got back, he didn't just sit on the bed, he dived on it. Straight through the bed with the mattress and on to the floor. We legged it out of the apartment, pissing ourselves laughing and he locked the door. The slats from his bed were in another apartment. He wouldn't let us back in with them (I was sharing his room) but said we had to pass them through the bathroom window. When he had them all back he would let me back in the room.

We passed the first few through the window and he disappeared off to put them back on the bed. When he came back for the second lot, we soaked him with a fire extinguisher. He buggered off again for a bit and then returned wearing nothing but a pair of swimming trunks.

Eventually we returned the rest of the slats and he let me back in the room.

Pudsy was the one who got us thrown out of the millennium new years eve party. He tripped over the bloody barbecue and sent the whole lot flying across the ground. He actually manged to go arse over tit, right over the hot coals and not get burned. He also once ate a pool chalk for a bet. Do I need to explain why we called him Pissed Up Dave?

The following year we went to Benidorm. Two lads called Rob and Chimmy shared an apartment. Chimmy snored that loudly the Rob could not get any sleep. Eventually he brought the patio furniture inside and moved his bed onto the balcony. Apparently that was the only way he could get some peace.

Chimmy decided it would be fun to throw water off the balcony onto me and my mate John. As we left the hotel entrance we heard a noise behind us and looked round. Chimmy, with terrible timing, had missed us with his bucket of water and hit the hotel managers son who had walked out behind us. He very nearly got thrown out of the hotel for that one.

I got chinned off a fat lass on that holiday. I was chatting up this Icelandic lass in a bar. She couldn't speak a work of English and I couldn't speak a word of Icelandic, but with the use of some choice gestures, it was going well. I asked her if she wanted to go back to my hotel room. After a bit of gesticulating she figured out was I was on about and agreed. She went and explained to her (fat) sister where she was going. Her sister walked straight over and gave me a proper good right hook. It later turned out that the girl I was chatting up was a little younger than I imagined. Nuff said.

I'm sure you can imagine the ribbing I got of the lads.

Happy times but holidays like that are behind me now that I'm a responsible married man, so I can look forward to romantic evenings in Cyprus next year. Dammit, I could use a holiday.