After the farce of last year's Organised Wackiness, Mark J. Vernon made it his mission to ensure this that all hijynkery this year would be cranked up to the max.

The plan this year was to go to Amsterdam for a bit of a counterculture jamboree. Three and a half days of non-stop capers in the heart of the Netherlands. Interestingly, i knew a bunch of people that were going by coach and would be spending the weekend in some dumpy youth hostel. Two words: FUCK THAT. I'm 26 and way too old to be farting about in some glorified crack-house listening to a bunch of teenagers with hormonal issues scream hysterically about Leonard Cohen or whatever the fuck it is kids these days listen to.

Nope, we were to be spending our break in the comfort of one of the cheaper hotels on the edge of the city centre, traveling in the comparitive luxury of a budget airline.

• Richie Cunningham: Sadistic Grinning member of the Warwick Uni porn police.
• John-Paul Holt: Hyperchondriac web designer dying in a glorified squat in Camden Town.
• Alex Manning: Chuckling Mockney Pyro with a coat full of knockoff Seikos.
• Paul Richardson: Marxist Physicist Anarchist, working as an Accounts Manager at British Telecom.
• Mark Vernon: 25-year old who actually converted his spare room into a home office.

Hopefully five of us would be coming back. Paul would be flying from Newcastle. Alex would be flying from London. I decided to make the Exodus up to Warwick to join Mark and Richie the night beforehand for reasons that still aren't quite clear to me.

So on Wednesday 22nd March 2006, I turned up fresh from work in London at Warwick train station where a smiling Richie chaffeured me up to Mark's house in Leicester. I arrived to find Charlotte greeting me at the door.

"Hey Char, where's Mark" i said, after the usual nicities.
"He's just in the kitchen serving up the lasagne he's made" replied Charlotte.
"What the fuck?"
"Seriously, come in."

And sure enough, Mark was there wearing a pinny and cutting a giant fucking lasagne into four pieces. Still, i was pretty hungry, it looked good and the meal gave us time to discuss. We would be getting up at 5am the next morning so we decided to stay up all night and watch Peep Show. Predictably, we fell asleep at around 3am and I grogilly awoke 100 minutes later.

We arrived at Birmingham International Airport feeling a bit better. After faffing around finding tickets, Richie suggested a pint. At 6am. At this point i pondered whether or not it was too late to back out. Don't get me wrong, i'm pretty hardcore (i once rubbed fishpaste on a plug socket to see if i could injure my mate's Siamese cat - long story short: yes) but between Mark making freestyle lasagnes and Richie's blossoming alcohol addiction i realised was in at the deep end.

We found a Wetherspoons inside the airport that would serve us booze and breakfast and soon we were on the plane and ready for whatever The Netherlands would throw at us.