Beer Festival Shenanigans
2008. I was at the Cotswold Beer Festival (which is this weekend again, anyone going?) with my b3tan ex-flatmate icezebra. My usual strategy with this particular event is to volunteer to work for the lunch session so that I am guaranteed a ticket for the evening. While this sounds very community minded it really means I turn up at about 11am, check in as a staff member (i.e. jump the queue) and start drinking as soon as I get allocated to a bar area. After three hours of "work" there was a pause before the evening session, during which I made the little trip into Winchcombe for a momentum-maintaining half, or six, before our triumphant return to the festival for another five hours of balls-out ale-pounding. Erm, I mean "civilised quaffing in the sunshine". Meh, who am I kidding?

At any rate, by the time 11pm rolled around, we were, well, rolling around. On the half mile walk back to the car park (which took about an hour) icezebra stole my last pint so of course, forgetting I was in shorts, I wrestled him into a nettle-filled ditch.

And so it was that, sweaty, beery and with vegetation sticking out of our scruffy clothes, we arrived at the pickup area above the campsite. Every so often a Cavalier would show up and somebody's long-suffering wife or Mum would collect another gang of drunken yahoos, plaintively asking as politely as they could if the still-brimming "last" pint could possibly stay behind.

As we approached I can recall people were animatedly talking about a Bentley they'd seen parked up - nobody had spotted anyone who looked posh enough to be a famous millionaire at the festival. And it was not surprising, for the car was not there for Richard Branson but rather me, and my equally ungentlemanly acquaintance.

Yes, I paid £6 for a beer festival ticket and then the thick end of £80 for a cab that just happened to be "Lord" Alan Sugar's old castoff (it still had the 1980's car phone in the rear armrest) purely for that golden moment when, t-shirt and shorted, I elbowed the astonished proles out of the way and sped off in luxurious comfort, waving like a pissed version of the Queen.

Worth every penny.
( pineapplecharm D d M Y, H:i, Thu 28 Jul 2011, 14:07, 4 replies)

I believe this post
to be an adequate and sufficient expression of both the letter and the spirit of this week's Question. It also has big cars, ale and sunshine in it, all of which I like. Have a *click*.
( Scrumper, Thu 28 Jul 2011, 15:20, closed)

Nicely done.
One of the best meals I have ever had was in a nice restaurant in Bourton-on-the-water, in the Cotswolds. Roast duckling. Mmmmm.
Rather decadent, I thought. Then it struck me that cute food tastes best. Pork is good, piglet is better. Mutton is OK, lamb is better.
This means the best meat in the world would be baby panda. I know they are endangered, perhaps part of the reason for this is that they taste so good.
(Lump, Thu 28 Jul 2011, 16:34, closed)

Bourton-on-the-Water
Nice place that...
(SonoraAeroClub "OH SWEET HELEN OF BALLS!", Thu 28 Jul 2011, 16:57, closed)

You may have a point
Young veal is always the best.

Also, the Cotswolds are pretty much the second-cutest part of the country after Cumbria so you went for a double-whammy there. Not sure what would happen if you had baby panda in a little thatched 17th century stone cottage. It might cause some kind of cuteocalypse.
( pineapplecharm D d M Y, H:i, Fri 29 Jul 2011, 9:21, closed)