So, there I was, back in the UK just five days after having left...

Justin did a far better job of bestmanly organising for Steve than I did for Foggy. And I managed to join them early enough on the Friday evening to really take part. I joined them just as they arrived at a Japanese izakaya-style restaurant and we proceeded to eat various bizarre wobbly animal bits and drink Sapporo and hot sake. Delicious!

Next stop was a private karaoke booth in Islington. This was far less dodgy than it sounds. Nine of us (Steve, his brother Robert, Justin, myself, H, Nick, Rupert, Tom and another friend of Steve's whose name escapes me) had what was basically a padded cell with a flatscreen TV to ourselves.

Our throats were readied for singing courtesy of the "thirsty button", which you pressed to make a waitress appear with beers. The rest of the time we could sing to our hearts' content, with no pesky strangers to be embarrassed about, just a seemingly inexhaustible list of tunes on the computer to choose from, two mics, and a few kitsch props to give us that popstar feeling (the rainbow shiny wig was a personal favourite).

Steve, Justin & I got to our hotel near King's Cross at about three in the morning, and some six hours later made our way, bleary-eyed, to the breakfast buffet to line our stomachs for Saturday's mammoth pub crawl. Foggy met us on the other side of town an hour later, and we proceeded to pub number one for a darts match and our first drink of the day at ten thirty.

To paraphrase a current popular ditty, I Drank A Shandy And I Liked It! The Taste Of That Beery Liquid. I Drank A Shandy Just To Try It, I Hope My Boyfriends Don't Mind It. It Felt So Wrong, It Felt So Right, It Don't Mean I'm A Lightweight Tonight. I Drank A Shandy And I Liked It, I Liked It!!

Justin & I did feel like a couple of twats ordering shandy, it has to be said, but with woozy heads and strong sunshine the idea was So Wrong - but it really was So Right! Hard-core Steve went straight onto the hard stuff, and of course Foggy was not the worse for wear from the previous night so he got stuck in straight away too. I have to say, though, the many, many other beers of the day slipped down so much more easily after the rehydrating and reinvigorating effects of that small quantity of lemonade.

We walked from pub to pub, Steve carrying out Justin's many pub-name-related challenges at each stop along the way. And as we progressed, we picked up more & more co-drinkers: Jezza joined us in Hammersmith, Nick in Chelsea, erm, um, my memory is a bit hazy now about who else joined where, but suffice to say that we were a very merry band of men by the end of the evening in a pub opposite the Palace of Westminster.

It was left to four of us (Steve, Justin, Foggy & me) to take it to the limit by going out clubbing in Clapham, but we rose to the occasion. Okay Tom was there too but he left early so that's a thousand jesse points to him. The four of us finally made it back to the hotel at about three o'clock once again.

Sunday morning was like Saturday morning only more so. We broke the fast and then jumped on a train to Justin's house in Sunningdale (losing Foggy along the way to go back to Kath's in Kent). There Sam, Grace & Maisie brought happiness into our addled brains with pizza and laughter, before we drove off to Wycombe to watch the Wasps play the London Irish.

We'd arranged to meet up with Nick Tostivin at the Park & Ride car park, but the traffic coming off the M40 was mad, and the car park was overflowing by the time we got there. We managed to meet up with Nick, and then played "find the parking space" all round the edge of Wycombe, before finally deciding to park ever-so-slightly illegally in the Park & Ride after all. We made it to the game only a few minutes late, (missing the first try) and saw pretty much all the action.

Justin was kind enough to drive me to Heathrow after the match, and this time - for the first time for me - Terminal 5 was efficient, pleasant and stress-free. I sat in Wagamama savouring my udon noodles and reading the Economist, then made my way to the gate with a minimum of fuss.