Late Darwin Award Entry 2022 ->

Just shy of midnight last night Kieran and I had a brainwave. We were going for a midnight dip. In the stormy sea. What could go wrong?

So we both legged it out of the Centre Stage pub on the Brighton seafront where we had been partying on a mission. It was raining hard outside, and the wind was wild. Undeterred we ran across the road dodging the cars, all but fell down the slip onto the pebble beach, and dashed towards the dark stormy water. We were really doing this. 

We shed our clothes as we ran and stumbled towards the crashing waves. The sea was foaming and surging menacingly. Just as we reached the waters edge and were about to throw ourselves into the freezing cold and perilous darkness a hand seized us both by our naked arms. 

“No!”  

It was Darce.  He had grabbed us. 

“NO!”

“You are not going into the sea!” 

We struggled a bit but he held tight. 

“I’m not losing either of you tonight” Darce shouted at us. He held firm. 

“No. You are not going in.”

Kieran and I looked at each other. We both looked at the sea. We looked at each other again. Fuck. Darce was right. We laughed at our stupidity. What were we thinking? We were standing there naked, wet, and cold in the driving rain staring at the raging sea - probably having just been saved from doing one of the most idiotic things we could have possibly thought of. If it’s any explanation, I blame the “it seemed like a really good idea at the time” that comes from 9 hours of heavy drinking after beating Brighton 4-2 earlier in the day. 

Realising we’d seen sense Darce let us go. 

Bedraggled, we pulled our clothes on and headed back up the beach to the pub just as the midnight fireworks were going off. We paused to watch. 

Then like drowned rats Kieran and I reentered the steamy bar room and laughed at ourselves. Few others did though. We were wet, cold and slightly ashamed of ourselves. 

We drank the rest of the night away being regularly, and quite rightly, scolded by Darce for being such Idiots. But he hugged us. We were his living, breathing, non-drowned idiots. 

A Darwin Award that so nearly was.