I don’t remember which of us came up with the idea, but we decided to make Christmas Eve in the Dart pub an annual fancy dress get-together. It began quite simply with a Santa hat and pairs of big ears in honour of our big-eared mate Derek. He also turned up wearing a pair! Paul rigged us up a small Christmas tree for the table and the scene was set. What followed became the stuff of legends!
Each year got sillier, rowdier, and messier. We’d turn up in the morning and put a large kitty behind the bar, drinking copious amounts of alcohol throughout the day. You would have thought that our behaviour might bother the other regulars, but in time some them even joined in! We would always clean up after ourselves (as much as we could), and whatever remained in the kitty jar was always left for the staff.
Eventually, we moved our gathering to the Flowerpot pub on Bilton Grange. I’m not sure of the reason, it may have been something to do with Dave who had moved to the estate and made the Flowerpot his local. We had calmed down quite a bit by then, and although we still dd the fancy dress for a couple years, the events did become a bit more sober.
After we had left the Dart, I did pop in one time just to reminisce. Some of our photos were still pinned to the wall in ‘The Lads Corner.’ I also learned that some of the old locals had popped in on Christmas Eve, seeing the empty corner and asking where the lads were; we were actually missed!
