The Drunken Shits, UEA - My career in alcohol Part 2

During the freshers' week upon arriving at university the society fair offered no end of clubs and groups for young enthusiasts to engage in. I did the rounds keenly, asked lots of questions and signed myself up the three such clubs. The first one was the 'Fell and Cave' society. I don't think my 18 year old self fully understood what was involved but I do remember two weekends away from halls in term time. Those weekends had no caves but there was a lot of walking across moors in the rain. I also remember sleeping in a cold and damp derelict building in the Peak District and sleeping in a youth hostel in the Yorkshire Moors. I also remember a well-earned hearty beer or two at the end of each day and enjoying that the most.

The second club clearly had no impact on me whatsoever because I cannot remember what it was. I only remember that I joined three. The third, however, I partook in as a bona fide, full on, complete and utter, could not be more involved, enthusiast. That society was known as, 'The Drunken Shits'. For the fee they charged at the beginning of the year (£3?), you got an excellent service. Every Friday at about 3 p.m. a map with a list of at least ten pubs was delivered into the pigeon hole in your school of study. In the eighties, the city of Norwich boasted a church for every week of the year (not needed) and a pub for every day of the year (essential) and the Drunken Shits aimed to cover them all in the academic year. It succeeded.

Very rarely did I miss a crawl. It started early so sometimes I joined later. I also took to taking a carrier bag with me. I appear to have collected beer mats, towels and ash trays. I remember also always feeling lost. The maps they provided were clear but the route usually started in a place everyone knew and then often took you to an area in the outskirts of Norwich nobody knew. This was not at all helpful when your consciousness was the other side of several pints.

As such a loyal crawlee, I must have been in with the organisers too because I somehow managed to get a design my brother drew onto the Drunken Shits' official T-shirt one year. And this tiny photo - where you cannot really see that it tells you that I am a drunken shit - is all the memento I have of that extraordinary part of my career in alcohol. And that photo is of me with an American couple in Lucerne and we are all appropriately inebriated.