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Fast running out of synonyms for getting married, but nevertheless, writing about another friend’s wedding is always a good thing, especially when it’s the wedding of everyone’s favourite couple... Sare & Adrian!

The first memory I have of Adrian, or the Toomstone as he’s been come to known, is standing on the door of the infamous Bath Student Union, blocking the sun out with his barrel chest and goatee beard. It was here, coincidentally, that he apparently met Sarah for the first time, at the Sports Association Disco in the Plug (!), where he had a vegetable strapped to his head as part of a rugby vegetable eating game. Sare obviously liked his meat and one veg, and the rest as they say, is his story.

Paris 1999

As for Sare, I have a very vague memory of her trying to debag me and Tarrant while we were running around the union with our trousers around our ankles, after polishing off a bottle of Vodka and attempting to ride a bike with a chained front wheel from our halls.

Paris 2000

The other first proper memory I have of her is after returning to Paris after 3 weeks inter-railing, only to find that her and Adrian had found us the Best Flat Ever™, and she welcomed me with a big hug, and I knew my 3rd year out living in Paris with them was going to be awesome. I remember having just come off sleeping on the floor of some grotty French train after a 7 hour journey from Venice, then meeting Sarah in our new flat, and seeing white veil curtains billowing in the wind from 10ft high balcony windows and sun streaming in to the massive living room. Here’s a photo of our flat on the second to top floor with a stolen Radio FG banner wrapped around the balcony, and the Eiffel Tower for height comparison.

  

This flat was to be the launch pad of some of the funniest nights out in Paris, almost always starting out with Sarah or Adrian cooking up some absolute gut busting delight for us all to feast on, fuel for the evening ahead.

Sare and Adrian were the best flat mates I could have ever imagined, not just what they did for me and how they treated all my mates that visited, but also that they were so fun as a couple, which I think is so rare. Everyone loves Sarah, who is possibly the sweetest person I’ve ever met, and Adrian, reliable, supportive, well-hung.... and always ready to finish your sentence with a quote from the Office, but when they’re together, the comedy doubles! I love it!! And all the time putting up with the flat mate from hell and his pals pumping out offensive trance music until all hours...

3 player Micro Machines on the Playstation, the disco train down to Cap D’Agde where someone pulled the emergency stop cord, house parties which ended/started (?) with me barfing in a barftub and Sare out of a window...  Oh yeah, we were in Paris to study, so here’s a photo of our business school in the Paris suburbs, where we spent 6 months learning....absolutely nothing!

Infact, a lot of the times I’m laughing uncontrollably have been with Toomey, either whether I’m laughing at him: like the time Sare and I lost him at a humungous piss-up on the south coast of France, and found him a couple of hours later wearing a massive afro wig, white as a sheet with his eyes rolling all over the place. Or the next day when I took him out on a waverider in tsunami conditions, and watched him fly off the back every time we flew off the crest of a wave, land about 10 metres away on his head, then swim back to me, white as a sheet, with eyes full of panic, a mouth full of sand and begging me to take him back to the beach! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man so scared in my life.

Or perhaps the time when they all came over to Tokyo, and Toomey and I were crying ourselves to sleep every night with our ridiculous word-association games. Or the time he ran up a flight of stairs instead of running straight onto the platform to catch our last train back to my house, and ended up killing 5 hours in Shibuya in a 24hr shop, which finally kicked him out, no doubt for looking suspicious with a vegetable attached to his head.

Here’s a photo of Toomey reaching out for the Love Stone in Kyoto, sealing his fate with Sarah...

and Sarah binding her fortune roll to a shrine, the fortune which predicted having children...

...and guess what came next?!

See Isla, pops might look hard but he’s still sh#t scared of the water!! And check him out when he gets p#ssed!

By the way, the running jokes of the Japan tour were A) The Blind Man’s Endless Search for the Love Stone:

B) Toomey trying to get his head into every photo. The one at the bottom with the Buddha, and knowing that Toomstone had to time his leap precisely to totally ruin Garcia’s one and only cultural shot, never fails to make me piss.

and C) Toomey’s take on the David Brent robot dance - check him out on tv at the Sony store in Osaka and the movie clip of his spastic crab version and me losing it in the background...

 

Infact, there were so many good photos from that trip that I’ve stuck them all in this album. Here’s to Adrian and Sarah!

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