​THE LOST HOURS - By ROY 
 
My side of the story begins when Mr Woodthorpe had felt that it was time to beat a hasty retreat from the oppressive arena of Dam Square and it's particularly menacing pigeons. Looking at me through bloodshot eyes, he claimed that he was "scared of absolutely everything", and to be fair judging by the way he was cowering on the pavement and shaking uncontrollably, I thought there was every chance that he was telling the truth.
 
Without hesitation I judged it to be my responsibility to get him to safety. Primarily, this was because Woody is one of my closest friends and I could not help but feel sorry for him, but secondly, after he went walk-about yesterday evening, a concerned Louisa had phoned and told him to "stay close to Dave" on the premise that "you'll be alright then". How wrong can a girl be?
 
It has happened to us all on occasion I'm sure that looking after a fellow Roy who has over allocated himself in some way or other has had an immediate sobering effect and allowed you to stay relatively in control. Well unfortunately, this was not one of those occasions. I was tripping wildly in the bright Amsterdam sunshine and was starting to doubt my ability to get Woody back to the relative safety of the Demonik apartments.
 
Then, when all seemed lost, a fellow Roy sensing my obvious discomfort with the situation came to my rescue- step forward Jez. To this day I have no idea why Jez came to my rescue in such a timely fashion, all I know is that I could not have got Woody back to the apartment on my own and I will always owe Jez a debt of gratitude for this.
 
Now we were three, and a full half cotteril. Empowered by this knowledge I felt decidedly more in control of both the situation and myself. Seizing the moment, Jez and I bundled Woody into the back of the nearest taxi and barked our address at the startled driver. To the casual observer this probably looked like the particularly clumsy kidnap of a lanky handicapped boy such was Woody's obvious distress at what was going on, but fortunately we were in The Dam, and such behaviour is not as uncommon as one might think.
 
As the driver sped through the narrow streets, as eager no doubt as we were to reach our destination, Jez spied a fellow stag party dressed in full 70's regalia complete with Afro wigs.
 
"Fancy coming to Amsterdam and dressing up in stupid wigs", remarked Jez.
 
A fair point I thought, but in his confusion all Woody had heard was "Do you fancy dressing up in stupid wigs?"
 
As you can imagine, this nearly sent the poor bloke over the edge and I encouraged our driver to get his foot down before electric shock treatment became a very real solution to Woody's predicament.
 
Thankfully, we arrived at the apartment very shortly after. I say thankfully because I think I was still daft enough to think that these slightly more familiar surroundings would somehow take away all of Woody's anxieties and allow us to get on with the job in hand- i.e. having a laugh with the Roys.
 
However, it soon became clear that this was not going to happen when Woody stripped down to his underpants and began making a noise which, in my state I could not quite put my finger on, but I was sure reminded me of the mating call of a particularly agitated walrus.
 
Unsure as to our next move, Jez and I debated the issue whilst I attempted to build a well-earned reefer. As the walls began to close in around us and my attempts to skin up were hindered somewhat by my complete inability to judge distance we slowly came to the realisation that to stay here with Woody was going to lead to certain mental illness.
 
This feeling was compounded when Jez stumbled across a note on the table, which read simply "OFFICE NOW-HANK". This was not good. Our minds began to race as our twisted heads conjured up all manner of reasons why Hank would want to see us- and to be honest none of them were very good and so in true Reg style we decided to leave Woody to it. That this was the correct decision was re-enforced by Woody's last confused outburst:
 
"Fine go, don't touch me, don't talk to me, just fuck off, but don't leave me."
 
Our comeuppance for this cowardly act was, however, only seconds away.
 
No sooner had we emerged into the bright sunshine than I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned round to be confronted by Hank's grinning face. "You pay bill now please." Shit, rumbled.
 
Now it was not that we ever intended not to pay the bill you understand, it was just that at this moment in time the thought of any financial transaction with a straight person, let alone someone who wanted £800 was enough to turn my brain to jelly.
 
Apparently, Hank was going away for the weekend, and so our business had to be concluded now, and no, this could not possibly wait until tomorrow. And so, with heavy hearts Jez and I trudged into Hank's office as he laboriously set about the task of writing us an invoice. I remember thinking to myself that the one bright spot in all of this was that at least we had managed to hide Woody away from Hank's prying eyes. Little did I know that they were to have a meeting of their own later that afternoon………………..
 
Things took a turn for the worse when Hank tried to engage us in some idle chit chat to fill the silence that, as far as I was concerned, was becoming more awkward as each second passed.
 
As it was Sam, Lloyd's intended, who had made the booking for us, it was her name that Hank was most familiar with. Now, whilst his English was undeniably better than my Dutch, he spoke with such a thick accent that it had been very difficult to understand him at our first meeting. Now in our second meeting, our little Mexican canapés had seen to it that this task was nigh on impossible. As he mumbled some sentence or other that ended in the word "Samantha", so Jez rose to his feet and sped from the office saying, "That's it. Sorry mate but you're on your own." Now I knew how Woody felt, talk about a taste of your own medicine.
 
It transpired later that Jez had thought that Hank had been talking about some form of sexual activity "involving a panther". You couldn't write the script could you?
 
Anyway, now I was alone in that office and the moment had finally come for me to sign the credit card receipt. I knew how difficult this would prove to be, but I hadn't expected to fuck it up quite so badly. After staring intently at the biro in my hand for what seemed like an eternity, I eventually plucked up the courage to put pen to paper. The result was a pathetic, yet predictable scrawl that only just passed as joined up writing.
 
To this day I have kept that receipt as a permanent reminder of why I am never touching those algae ridden Mexican death sticks ever again.
 
Anyway, back in the bright sunshine I was confronted by Jez looking more confused and bewildered than ever.
 
A brief summation of the situation was this: Whilst waiting for me to emerge from Hank's office, Jez had been enjoying some fresh air when a very glamorous, good-looking couple wandered past. As they did so, the chap retched up an enormous amount of phlegm and spat it onto the floor. As the phlegm hit the floor, so an old chap fell off his bike fifty metres up the road.
 
Now presumably Jez is no expert in chaos theory or the finer points of cause and effect, so I can be fully sympathetic of the obvious confusion that this sequence of events would bring about in his state-particularly as he had to wait a full five minutes for me to re-appear before he could tell anybody what he had just witnessed. Anyway, I could provide no answers and so it was decided that we should focus all our efforts on re-joining the others.
 
However, a full hour had probably past since we left the rest of the Roys and we had no idea how to get back to Dam Square. To be honest a zillion things could have happened to the lads since we last saw them but I was willing to bet every penny I had on me that they weren't still in Dam Square. This mission, though, gave us both a much-needed sense of direction and took my mind, albeit momentarily, off the stark realisation that as time progressed I was becoming more, and not less, clattered.
 
I forget how long we were walking around Amsterdam for, but it seemed like days. After a very short while, we decided to head away from the red-light district. This, I think, was a very wise move as Venusville is not the sort of place you should be bimbling about in that state.
 
I thought that ours was a quest doomed to end in failure. It seemed that every person whom we asked for directions was obviously as lost as we were, or else wanted at all costs to avoid the crazy Englishmen with the wild look in their eyes. I swear we walked in a large circle around the town centre for fully two hours before I had a rare moment of clarity: "Fuck this off, let's go and get a beer and consider our options." I didn't have to ask twice.
 
Eventually we settled on a bar in the nice part of town, which by pure coincidence happened to be full of really pretty girls. It was only whilst sat here that I began to fully appreciate just what a beautiful city Amsterdam really is. The architecture is quite breathtaking in places and there was an air of youthfulness and vibrancy about the place, which quite frankly was wasted on us, or were we just wasted?
 
Contrast this with the sleaze, corruption and downright Regness of the Red Light District for which Amsterdam is more (in) famous and you have some idea of the bizarre dichotomy that surrounds this wonderful place.
 
Anyway back to Dumb and Dumber in this bar. We ordered a beer and finally began to come to terms with the fact that it would take a miracle for us to find the Roys in the middle of a place this size. We therefore decided to buy some cigarettes to make ourselves feel better, and this was where we really let ourselves down.
 
We were still in such a state that the girl who served our drinks had to bring us our change and then count out exactly what coins we would need to put into the machine. She did, however draw the line at actually going to the machine for us-though we did ask. Jez drew the short straw and despite precise instructions as to the location of the machine came back empty handed some time later. When questioned about this he said he had located a machine that upon closer inspection had appeared to be an air conditioning unit and so he had beaten a hasty retreat. Whilst on his way back downstairs he had passed another room, and had heard some familiar sounding voices coming from inside………………..
 
Convinced he had found the Roys Jez burst triumphantly into the function room expecting jubilation and merry making on a huge scale. Instead, he was greeted by a Dutch family gathering and some bloke telling him that the "toilets were outside". Dejected and deflated Jez had made his way back to where we were sitting. After such a heart-rending story, what could I do except take my turn at trying to procure us some cigarettes.
 
I located the machine, and in fairness to Jez there was a hint of air-conditioning unit about it. I located the coin slot, selected Marlboro Lights, heard the cigarettes drop and then……… nothing. Confusion reigned and for the life of me I could not work out how to extract the cigarettes from the machine. My personal low point of the weekend arrived when a woman walking past the machine to the toilet was greeted with the sight of me scrabbling frantically at the front of the machine and cursing loudly. Needless to say she did not stop to help.
 
Finally I returned, triumphant, cigarettes in hand. We sat, smoked and talked about anything apart from how battered we were. Then a terrible realisation dawned on us both. It was now four hours since we left Woody, and God knows what would have happened to him in that time. Again, our minds ran through a million terrible scenarios and we decided, having failed so dismally to find Dam Square that we should head home and seek out the Woodster.
 
We left the bar, turned left, walked for a hundred yards and found ourselves…in the middle of Dam Square. I shit you not. Needless to say the Roys were not there and we made our way back to the Demonik as quickly as we could.
 
We gingerly opened the front door and braced ourselves for the terror that we were sure laid within. We were expecting carnage, a rock-n-roll style trashing at the least, maybe a bloodbath or worse still an empty flat. Instead we saw only Woody watching TV in his tracksuit. Whilst he had not made a complete recovery (who had?!), we were both delighted that he was once again able to hold a reasonable conversation. Indeed, it seems that we had timed our arrival just right and he was just beginning to get bored- a sure sign that normal service was being resumed. And so out we went again.
 
What had happened to Woody in the intervening four hours is now the stuff of legend and a full description is in Roy's account of this trip elsewhere on the site.
 
By now the wind had been well and truly taken from our sails and whatever we did and wherever we went, we were never truly settled. The excesses of the day had certainly taken their toll and all that remained now was to find the other Roys.
 
This we duly did not twenty yards from the apartment at a pub called the "Jolly Joker" which seemed somehow appropriate. In the eight hours or so since we had parted, two very separate adventures had taken place-three really if you can call Woody's afternoon an adventure. After briefly comparing notes on the proceedings both factions retired to the safety of the apartment soon after, a valuable lesson having been learnt. The excesses of the day had left us all drained both emotionally and physically- we had nothing left to give.
 
I think the thing I learnt most today was although life is an adventure and a voyage of discovery, if someone has taken the trouble to write out some instructions, the least that we can all do is read them.