By 2 PM, they were on a catamaran packed with other stags, hen parties, and a DJ who looked like he’d been awake for three days. The rules were simple: don’t fall in, don’t lose the ring, and keep Tom’s glass full. Alex had ordered the "Viking Funeral" package—an open bar and a plank to walk off.
They stumbled off the boat and into a waiting minibus. Destination: Western Water Park. The hangovers hadn’t arrived yet, but they were lurking. The key activity here was the "Kamikaze" slide—a near-vertical drop that made Tom’s stomach relocate to his throat. Finn went first, screaming like a banshee. Tom went second, his inflatable T-Rex arms flapping uselessly behind him.
Tom, as the stag, had a handicap: for every "bogey" (finishing a drink slower than par), he had to do a forfeit. By hole 7 (a bar called The Crazy Donkey ), he had a collection of plastic monkeys, a sticker on his forehead that said "KISS ME," and had already lost his left shoe. By hole 12 (a karaoke dive), he was singing "Livin' La Vida Loca" into a hairbrush microphone while Paul, the quiet cousin, played air guitar on a pool cue.
Tom, a mild-mannered accountant from Manchester, was forced to do a keg stand while wearing a inflatable T-Rex costume. The hens from Leeds cheered. His mates filmed it. For one glorious hour, they raced a rival stag boat, lost, and then bribed the crew with a bottle of vodka to let them "win" the dance-off anyway. The Mediterranean blurred into a swirl of sun, sangria, and shouting.
Tom took off his headphones for a second. The silence of the sea crashed in. Then he put them back on, cranked up the Eurotrance, and danced like nobody was watching—because, really, nobody sober was.