Liverbreak Hotel

What a great weekend! We arrived at the hotel on Saturday morning with few delays - the only major issue being that the sat-nav mistakenly told us we'd reached our destination whilst we were still driving down the highway. No matter, a bunch of bright young things like ourselves managed to work out that we had to turn off into the village of Marlow, where the Crown Plaza was located. The trip itself was also fun; we carpooled with Shoes' colleague The Photographer and his wife, The Giggler, and the four of us got on famously, despite the fact that they're Australian! Maybe that's because we can finally lord it over them in this year's sporting results.

On arrival, we checked in and the employees went straight into a 2 hour meeting, leaving the WAGS to take full advantage of the hotel facilities. Shoes and I did get a bit shafted with the rooms though. Everyone else had rooms upstairs, with king size beds and baths resembling swimming pools. We got the disabled room right by the stairwell; the room itself was substantially smaller (how does that make sense if it's for a person in a wheelchair?), the bed was only a double and there was a seat in the rather open plan shower, with assistance alarms everywhere. Of course, the first thing we did was pull a string and set one off whilst trying to find the bathroom lights. We're still a little confused as to why we got that room; we could definitely be classed as impaired when we're pissed, but I think disabled is pushing it a bit.

No matter though, as when the boys left for their meeting, The Giggler and I tried our hand at being Ladies of Leisure, aka Ladies who Lunch, and spent the next couple of hours drinking champagne in the jacuzzi. The company opened an unrestricted tab at the bar, and we were allowed to have as much as we wanted as many times as we wanted. Can you smell the lust for alcohol? We could. We found another WAG, EnglishRose, on our journey to the Good Life, and the three of us plotted and planned ways to make our husbands/boyfriends very rich so we could make this a permanent thing. After we'd discussed everything from having babies (there were several Chinese babies who we all went a bit mental over) to marrying a sugar daddy and bumping him off to keep us in a lifetime's supply of champagne, it was time to join the guys for a 3 course lunch.

Then it was back to the bar for more drinks, and watching the guys play Robot Wars, their elected team building activity for the day. It was actually less team building and more "I am going to fucking whip your ass!" as the game involved four teams of two each controlling an armour plated car, with the goal being who could flip the others upside down the most. After some serious competition and some even more serious threats (Director: I will fire anyone who beats me!), the game was over and the party began.

Shoes and I popped into the village of Marlow to buy him some shoes for the dinner, as he'd forgotten his at home and only had takkies. It's a really gorgeous little place, in fact, it has been voted the best kept village in Buckinghamshire. It's light years away from London, with it's open spaces, fresh country air and beautiful clean streets. If I ever had to stay in the UK permanently, I could see myself living there.

The dinner was excellent; a three course meal of prawn and sweet pea risotto (which I passed on - I have a pea phobia and find it difficult to even look at them), roast saddle of lamb and champagne and strawberries torte, accompanied by lots of wine and baskets of fresh rolls. We even had our own caricaturist, who went from table to table drawing as many people as she could in the 2 hours. Shoes and I each got one done. I'm quite proud of it; even with the exaggerated features, I still look quite fetching! Shoes looks like a seedy car-salesman. After dinner, we had a fireworks display organised by the company, and hot toddies on the terrace (think med lemon laced with cheap whisky, best avoided if you don't want to pull nasty faces in public).

By that stage, most people were well pissed already, and everyone headed into the bar for some gross abuse of the company tab. Shoes and I retired at about 12:30am; he had to drag me away from an intense conversation with Bill, the company's oldest and most interesting member. He is possibly the most knowledgeable person on the planet, and a great story teller to boot, but I don't think Shoes was too impressed when I asked if we could take him home with us. Bill, on the other hand, looked quite delighted. It was good we went to bed when we did, as I think we just escaped the part where people start doing things they seriously regret on Monday morning. The tab stayed open til 4am, when the hotel staff had to kick out the die-hards and deny them further intoxicants.

There was not one single person who didn't approach the breakfast table with a obvious hangover the next morning - well, except for The Photographer and some of the other Asians who don't drink. Some didn't even make an appearance at all, leaving us wondering exactly what went down as the sun came up. Breakfast was a bit of a chore, as much as we wanted to eat, none of us really felt well enough to take full advantage of the massive spread.

On our way back, we stopped at Windsor Castle, paid a whopping £15 each entrance fee, and proceeded to spend the next 2 hours checking out how the Queen lives. Suffice it to say that I would now quite like to be a queen, and if I was William or Harry, I wouldn't bother going out to the clubs in Mayfair - I'd simply entertain in my castle. It's absolutely stunning - grand and sumptuous like in books of tales about ancient kings and queens.

We ended off a great but rather unrelaxing weekend with our bums glued to the couch, watching X Factor and Tsotsi. I enjoyed myself immensely, but can't help feeling I was robbed of my down time. I'm going to have to do some serious lazing about over the course of this week.