Weekend Break - Part Deux

With the trauma of the previous days accident taking up most of my thoughts on Sunday morning, it was hard to get motivated to do anything other than feel sorry for poor Johnny, who was obviously still in tremendous pain and hadn't slept much. 

But we all soldiered on, making to best of a bad situation.  Mrs. Doyle (Gill) began preparing the food for the barbecue.  John had more painkillers, and myself and Rolo began thinking about cigars.

Soon, the three of us each had one on the go, selecting the cigars we picked up the day before, mine a Cohiba, John's a H. Upmann and Rolo's a small Cuaba which I think was a Divinos.

The Cohiba seemed more divinos than the other cigars which the boys had a bit of trouble with.  Johns Upmann was robusto sized and went out 3 or 4 times and had to be cut twice, and Rolo had a bit of bother with his Cuaba.  The Cohiba was flawless which is pretty much what I'd expect to be honest.

So with John now on the sidelines, it was up to Rolo to step up and take on the role of head chef and get the barbecue going.  Needless to say, the food was great (thanks Gill) with lots of meat (obviously), crusty bread rolls and salad.  Kaz became the mojito maestro for the afternoon and produced two large jugs of what was to become known as "The Kazmo".  Beautiful.

A few hours of chilling and another Cohiba for me later, we starting making way to Rock-a-field, which is a one day music festival in a field somewhere.

The line up was headlined by Arcade fire and Artic Monkeys on the main stage, with the Monkeys on last.  I thought Arcade fire were excellent but I lost interest with the Monkeys and didn't really pay much attention to them.

With a constant flow of wine and beer, we broke out the cigars.  I actually had two cigars at the gig.  The first was Partagas Serie D Especial Limited Edition 2010.  This is a seriously good cigar and a first timer for me.  Much better than a normal Serie D No. 4 that I'm used to.  It opened up straight away and seemed to last forever.  This one went to the nub and is most definitely on my shopping list for next time.

The next cigar was the Oliva Double Robusto.  This time Rolo and John joined me and by all accounts, they enjoyed it very much.  This made me very happy because I'd selected it especially for them, especially for this weekend.

The end of the night is a bit of a blur if I'm honest and before I knew it, it was Monday and Rolo and Kaz had said goodbye, Gill had gone to work and we were in a taxi with John, on our way to the hospital, then the airport.  John was to have an operation to fix his collar bone and we had a plane to catch.

At the airport, thanks to the wife, I bagged 3 Partagas Serie P No. 2's and 3 Hoyo de Monterrey Epicure No. 1's.

Once back home, I was eager to get the new cigars into the humidor so set about unpacking.

I unzipped my bag, opened it up, and then did a double take.  Instead of looking down upon the lovely colourful Culebra box  I was expecting, I saw women's clothes, a hairbrush and some documents in a plastic folder...no cigars...em...this is not good...I actually thought somebody had switched the contents of my bag with somebody else? surely not...I check the bag again...yes, this is definitely my bag alright...or is it...

On closer inspection I realise it's not my bag.  The women's clothes were a bit of a clue but the clincher was the fact that my bag had 2 bits of red tape on the handle and this one didn't.

Now I know it was a dumb thing to do, but let me say this in my defense...the bags were the same colour, made by Oasis about 10 years ago, they had the same broken zip tags (two) and were on the same flight from Luxembourg which only had around 20 people on it.  These bags were practically identical and even fooled the wife.

So basically, minutes after getting home, we had to make our way to Crowborough in East Sussex, a mere 90 minute drive away, to drop off the impostor luggage.  The girl at the other end was lovely about it and couldn't believe herself that somebody would have exactly the same bag with the same faults on the same flight.

We drove the 90 minutes back home in around 80 minutes, empty handed.  Our bag was still at city airport and would stay there until the following day.

The following day, the wife got my bag back and the Culebras are now resting in the humidor.  Phew.

While she sorted things out at City Airport, myself and the Father-in-law were risking life and limb in the biggest thunder storm to hit London in years, on a golf course, under a tree.  We survived.

So that was the weekend over.  A great weekend which would have been a whole lot better had poor Johnny not taken a tumble, but it could have been a lot worse.  Many thanks to the Doyle's for their generousity, and also to Rolo and Kaz for stepping into poor Johnny's shoes and Gill for the huge effort in keeping us full of food and drink.

Poor Johnny

Rolo and his Cuaba

My 1st Cohiba of the day

Rolo the Chef

Cohiba number 2

Nice Partagas

RAF

Oliva Double Robustos

A box of 3 boxes of Culebra