And now the end is near - and so I face, the final curtain

This may very well be the last thing you ever hear from me.

I’m going on a Stag Weekend.

I’m going to have my manliness put through its paces and tested for the first time in a very, very long while.

It’s not so much the drinking that I’m concerned about. I’ve survived a lot of years by knowing how to keep moving about a room so that no one realises you are still drinking ‘the same’ pint.

Mocking and ridiculing a great friend for no real reason I can do in my sleep.

Cynically besmirching the very idea of marriage at every opportunity I can do as well. If anyone can shake their head knowingly and reveal an F.O.W thumbprint, then I can (Fear of Wife).

These aspects of taking a good mate out for a pre-marital blow-out, I can do.

What is worrying me is the assault course.

Quite why he feels he need one last go on an assault course before he hangs up his boots I’m not really clear about? Is his future wife anti-scramble nets do you think? Perhaps she feels that muddy rope swings are not really appropriate for husbands in case it spurs them on into thinking they can start crawling through water-filled concrete tunnels.

Who knows? Whatever the reason, it appears that his last few days of singledom are to be filled by being manly. Clearly this is a trait he is expecting to relinquish.

So I am off to some man-place where men do man-things and will be running around an assault course on Saturday, while you lot relax with a cup of tea, or coffee if you are American.

It is more than 20 years since the military stopped trying to force me to do one of these things so I may, just possibly, be a little out shape for it and so, as I said at the top of the page, this may well be the last thing you ever hear from me.

Goodbye all, it’s been fun.

 P.S. Before I depart, I just want to confess to Shirley that it was me who drew a cock on your bag on the school bus returning from swimming class, and not, as I had previously maintained, Robert, who you then dumped from being your boyfriend and replaced him with me.

Sorry, Shirley.

Sorry, Robert.

That feels better. I’ve carried that burden on my shoulders for 31 years. I can rest in peace now.