It was an obscenely early start, the taxi was booked for 7am, it was our Ladyboy spotting friend from the day before.  Breakfast at the airport consisted of the new holiday favourite, but with a twist. This time a Tuna toastie rather than sandwich, number 77 on the menu for your notes.  The flight to Dubai was decent, no problems.  I watched the film Seventh Son with Jeff Daniels, Julianne Moore and the lovely Alicia Vikander…  It was a touch cramped for my liking, I’m not sure why they didn’t watch the film on their own TVs.  Still, I wasn’t going to turn away the company.  We arrived at 1pm and the airport was surprisingly quiet, we rushed through, caught a cab to Hotel Rowana on Jumeirah Beach (100 AED = £18 at the time of writing).  I soon remembered why I disliked getting taxis in Dubai as everybody drives like lunatics.  The motorways consist of seven lanes (at the time of writing), that’s seven lanes of cars driving as fast as possible, tailgating right up each other’s arses, overtaking, undertaking, total mayhem.  Surprisingly, we made it to the hotel unscathed.  The hotel was in a good location, ultra swanky and plenty of Ferrari’s parked outside, we were in our element.  We checked in and to our delight were told we had been given an upgrade, excellent news.  We got to the room to discover we only had two beds, but there were three of us.  What were we upgraded from? A single?  We complained and Ruby Bill was given a rock solid fold out bed, which he was happy about.  He was even happier when he found out we had no Wifi, either we weren’t allowed or we had to pay extra.  It was disappointing.  All the excitement of the outside of the hotel had been tempered by the disappointment of the inside of our room.

We decided to have a nose about the rest of the hotel and get some food.  Entering the elevator we were confronted by a fairly sub-mediocre looking man, well he was no oil painting, who was flanked on both sides by two stunning tall blonde women wearing skimpy outfits and holding balloons.  There was some giggling and whispering, possibly in Russian, but we didn’t want to annoy the other people in the lift so we quietened down. Trying to avert our eyes we stared at the ceiling hoping the lift would get to whatever random floor we were getting off at as quickly as possible.  The lift stopped at level 3, this would do, we left the elevator with our tails between our legs.  Here we were, the Rosso Bar, looked nice enough. I polished off the biggest Calzone they had and washed it down with a £9 pint of lager.  After filling up on food and drink we needed to stretch our legs, we stretched them into the 46C heat outside…We tried to walk but it was too hot, we stopped at every air conditioned cash point we could find, which was pretty much every few metres.  We couldn’t handle the heat any longer, we popped in an old friend, the Hilton Sports Bar.  It was Happy Four Hours!  Only 28 AED a pint (£5.50 at the time of writing), so we had four pints each to celebrate.  We had inexplicably got our drinking groove on in one of the few countries where it’s almost illegal to drink, well, you can only drink in the hotel bars and you can’t be seen drunk in public.  The Speakeasy Bar at the Ramada Hotel was next on our hit list.  A few Heinekens were consumed in here, an acoustic act played, but once they finished we commandeered the jukebox, cranking out the tunes.  Our popularity with the bar’s other patrons soared, peaking with Tom Jones’ Help Yourself.  Everything was right with the world.  We arrived back at the hotel at 3AM a little worse for wear, a slightly dubious thing to do in Dubai.

Green Cardamom Pods, Bruised

It was the morning after the night before and we all had hangovers, not the best start to the end of the trip.  The best way to shake off the hangover was to go outside in the forty odd degree heat and completely dehydrate, that would sort us out.  It was simply too hot, forcing us back into the air conditioned ATMs whenever we saw one.  If viable we could’ve spent all day inside an ATM (although there probably wouldn’t have been enough money in one of these to pay for one of those Russian escorts), but we spotted Bob’s Diner opposite, it was possible to make it across the street without being in the heat for too long.  It was like the sequel to the old eighties arcade game Frogger that never got made.  Instead of Frogs trying to get to the other side of the road while avoiding getting hit by traffic, this would feature three out of shape grown men trying to get across the street without collapsing of heat exhaustion, while also avoiding pedestrians and traffic.  That game would’ve been a sure fire hit, anyway, we made it to Bob’s Diner, no lives lost.  It was an authentic American Diner right in the heart of Dubai and very nice too.  The free refills of Coke and Sprite were a god send and went down a treat, as did the obligatory Philly Cheese Steak sandwich.  Ruby Bill and myself were feeling slightly better by this point, but Pat Rambutan was struggling, he headed back to the hotel.  The Hilton Sports Bar felt like the right place to watch Malaysia All Stars v Liverpool in a friendly.  It was a dire game, we battled through it by drinking one apple juice, two pineapple juices and one random Amstel.  The match ended 1-1.  I’m afraid to say that after an epic holiday we went out with a massive whimper, an early night, as we did have to be up at 5:30AM.

Dessert Figs, Coarsely Chopped

Out of bed with no hangover at 5:30AM, taxi at 6:45AM, flight at 9:10AM.  Unfortunately the flight was delayed by one hour and ten minutes due to a passenger putting their bag on the plane but not putting themself on the plane.  According to the pilot that person would be put in prison until the plane lands at it’s destination.  Hopefully that’ll learn them.  Even though we were grumpy at the delayed flight, Matthew the air steward was impossibly happy for the whole flight.  Maybe his holiday was just starting but ours was drawing to a close, we landed back in Blighty at 2:30pm, signifying the end of our Asian adventure.

A slightly delayed sequel.  Now where were we?  Ah yes…

Slowly the door opened, revealing the true horror that was hidden inside.  A naked hand attached to a naked arm clung to the door handle, fingers tainted yellow from years of tobacco abuse coiled themselves around the door handle.  Our horrified eyes followed the line of the arm from its  natural end back to its unnatural beginning, it wasn’t a sight for sore eyes, let alone our obscenely hungover eyes.  The naked arm was attached to a semi naked Ruby Bill Silks lying comatosed in his bed.  We hurled abuse at him, it was precisely 1.5 hours before our coach was due to leave Singapore and he was in bed and hadn’t packed.  This called for desperate measures, he had to forfeit his shower.  Although we left later than planned we still arrived at the bus station on time.  We had a gruelling journey ahead of us, although this was slightly improved by the coach being equipped with massage chairs, as standard.  The coach took us to the Singapore border where we went through customs and changed coaches.  Six hours passed quickly, with one brief crisp stop half way through (BBQ flavour), before we arrived at our destination…Kuala Lumpur.  We hailed a cab to take us to our accomodation, it certainly wasn’t a conventional taxi ride.  Driving with our bags in the boot, with the boot open, only being held down by an elastic band.  Nevertheless our bags were still there when we arrived at Lanson Place Apartments.  My my, what an apartment this was, probably the greatest apartment we had ever stayed in, absolutely huge and perfectly clean.  We took a stroll down the road to the Changat area,  a full on loud, brash, touristy strip of bars, it looked like us.  We popped in a bar to catch some Davis Cup tennis on TV, only to be met with a very forward, over friendly barman.  “Sex on the beach sir? Slippery nipple sir? Blow job sir?”.  I was quite taken aback, I’d only just arrived in the city, and the country for that matter, yet I was being bombarded with sexual requests by a strange man.  He handed me a menu and it soon became apparent he was merely enquiring into if we would like one of the vast array of cocktails, nothing untoward at all.  Breathing a sigh of relief we pulled up three stools and got stuck into a few cocktails.

Tablespoon of peanut oil

We headed to Racks for breakfast and a 5 Day Booster fruit drink.  The previous night had been fairly respectable, home by midnight, but we were feeling a touch run down and needed a boost.  After the pit stop we set about attacking our plan for the day, which was to visit the Kuala Lumpur tower.  We got the mini bus from the car park to the main entrance, which was further than expected.  Upon exiting the minibus we were immediately set upon by a salesman.  For 105 Ringgits we were promised great views from the very top of the tower and also a complimentary drink.  The views from the top of the tower were indeed great and it was a hot day, so that complimentary drink (whatever it may be) would come in handy.  Unfortunately the complimentary drink was not forthcoming, which was ironic as the salesman had told us we should always aim to “make our money work for us”.

After a dip in the hotel pool we headed to the ‘How you like it’ bar for a traditional Indonesian meal, I opted for the Irish stew.  From here the evening gets a bit hazy.  We popped in a bar I believe was called Guthra for a bit of sport on TV, before a local covers band started playing.  The cocktails began to flow… Unfortunately I remember very little about the rest of the evening, I got split up from Ruby Bill Silks and Pat Rambutan and got lost, walked for miles in the wrong direction before eventually (probably using the tall buildings as a guide) found my way back to the apartment.  As I approached the street our apartment was situated on I heard a person crying out “Excuse me sir!”.  The shouting was coming from a taxi, I walked towards the taxi and leaned towards the open passenger window.  “Blow job sir?”, said the taxi driver.  I’d always preferred Slippery Nipples and very much doubted he had the necessary ingredients of Baileys and Sambuca in his cab.  A combination of this and the nagging feeling he may not have held the required license to sell alcohol, led me to decline his wonderful offer and head back to the apartment to kip, it was after all 6AM.

Cinnamon stick

Today was a write off.

Lebanese cucumber, seeded, finely chopped

Up bright and early to get a taxi to the airport; still traumatised I continued with caution, luckily this taxi wasn’t selling cocktails or sexual favours.  After getting in an argument with the self service check-in machine we proceeded through security.  Ruby Bill Silks headed to the washrooms, so we waited outside.  No need for us to go in, he’d be ok.  Time moved on as it tends to do but Ruby Bill didn’t seem to be exiting the ablutions any time soon.  Thirty minutes we waited outside for him, the gate was getting close to closing, panic was starting to set in.  What should we do?  Miss the flight because he’d fallen in the toilet?  We headed in to survey the washrooms, he wasn’t anywhere to be seen… In danger of missing our flight we sprinted to the gate, we made it without a second to spare.  Who did we see sitting in the departure lounge minding his own business?  Ruby Bill Silks!  He had departed the toilets from the back entrance, given us the slip.  “Where have you two been?” he exclaimed… We felt like giving him what for, right there and then.

We took a smooth one hour flight to the island of Lankawi, which on first inspection looked like a tropical paradise.  It was a small island, the taxi from the airport to the hotel covered most of it, giving us a feel for the lay of the land and of the many scooters buzzing around the streets.  We stayed at Frangipani’s resort, a delightful collection of apartments and huts facing the sea.  We creamed up before strutting out onto the beach like pasty white peacocks.  A small amount of sunbathing ensued before hitting the onsite restaurant.  I enjoyed a ‘Beef me up’ wrap and a couple of Tigers, before watching a storm brew off the coast, “there’s a-strorm a-brewin” I thought to myself, while listening to free form experimental jazz.  So the thunder began, followed by the lightning, getting closer and closer to land, culminating in a storm of rain.  At this point, (and after two hours of free form experimental jazz) we decided to the leave the relatively dry confines of the restaurant and take a stroll in the rain to a local bar, Debbie’s Place.  Unfortunately it was shut.  Unperturbed we ploughed on, only to come across the One Love Reggae Bar, a bar very much in homage to Bob Marley.  Like three little birds we pulled up some stools and sat at the bar.  It was a friendly place and the barmen were keen to dazzle us with card tricks while serving us beers, they were jamming with us.  Ruby Bill had always fancied himself as a bit of a Paul Daniels and it was clear he was getting riled up by by the barmen’s magic skills. Every trick they did, he tried to out do them.  They could see he wasn’t comfortable, he was jealous of their skills and they knew it, they continued to stir it up.  Eventually we told Ruby to “simmer down”, he was redder than red, “don’t rock my boat!” he retorted.  It was time for us all to simmer down, there’s too much trouble in the world without us fighting against each other.  The barmen eased off on the card tricks and it was now that we noticed that there was nobody else in the bar, just us three and the two barmen.  We were all thinking the same thing, “no woman, no cry”.  After spending an hour or so in the bar it became apparent that the sound system in the bar was playing Bob Marley on constant rotation, it was on a loop and our brains were being emersed in Marley’s laid back reggae flavourings.  Sweet.  After a good few hours of Marley the novelty began to wear off, we’d heard his entire back catalogue on a loop, the only thing more annoying was looped free form experimental jazz.  I’d heard enough, I grabbed my rastacap, combed my dreadlocks out of my eyes and exclaimed “get up, stand up!”, it was time for us to leave.  There was an exodus, we headed back to the hotel, hopefully the Marley emmersion therapy had not affected us in anyway.

There was a huge storm during the night which sounded so bad I was convinced I was going to wake up in my bed but with no roof on the apartment.  It didn’t happen, I woke up, peered outside, “the sun is shining” I thought to myself.  I got up, put on my dancing shoes, as today we were heading to Langkawi’s cable car and footbridge (the island’s biggest attraction).  Considering we were on a small island this was an incredibly busy tourist destination.  We queued up with all the screaming kids, negotiated the obligatory “guys, pretend you’re having fun in front of  this artificial background for the photo you’ll never buy”, before getting out to the top station and a walk along the curved footbridge.  Great views of the island from up on the bridge, had a Jurassic Park feel about it.  After taking in the views for a while we headed back down to the main area to find a restaurant.  While eating a tuna sandwich I couldn’t help but notice the very sunburnt boy sitting opposite.  He sounded (and looked) eastern European and had clearly fallen asleep in the sun, bright red all over his face, then he took his sunglasses off…Wow! Impressive bright white sunglasses tan line, probably one of the best sunburns I’d ever seen.  I had to laugh, but only because it’s usually me getting sunburnt in silly places.  I once got sunburnt in Hay-on-Wye, Wales, the sun wasn’t even out.

We took an eight minute walk to the base of the nearest waterfall, during the walk we could sense we were not alone.  The road was flanked by trees on both sides and we could feel our every move being watched.  Before you could say “There’s something out there waiting for us, and it aint no man”, we realised it was it was merely a bunch of monkeys.  They were sitting in the trees staring at us while combing each others hair, or at least that’s what it looked like.  We made our way to the waterfall, unhindered by the monkeys.  The views of the waterfall were great, although slightly ruined by the amount of six packs and muscles on display.  We didn’t want anyone to feel inadequate or body concious, so we covered up.  Which is more than can be said for the two identical Fabios, waxed and chiselled to within an inch of their lives.  We headed back to the resort, tails between our legs, we couldn’t compare to the Fabios.  I dived into the sea.  When I say ‘dived’, I mean I shuffled in to the the sea, only to get knocked over by a wave.  I had misjudged its power.  I pulled myself up, only to get knocked down again by a second wave.  I was flat out on the deck.  My arse and the pockets of my shorts were full of sand.  I crawled to safety, empied the sand out of every orifice and with my tail between my legs I  headed to the safety of the salt water swimming pool.

After cooling down in the pool we hit the bar for a curry and a couple of Tigers.  Sufficiently warmed up, we tried our luck at the Irish bar again (Debbie’s Place), it was open!  However, it was a bit on the quiet side, so we left and instead found a Mexican cafe (?).  A couple more Tigers, but once again it was quiet.  We couldn’t find anymore bars, so returned tails between legs to the One Love Reggae Bar.  Naturally Bob was on the stereo, but this time Ruby Bill Silks refrained from adopting his alter-ego The Great Bellendo, shying away from committing any disasterous card tricks this time.  The evening passed without incident.

Teaspoon of ground turmeric

Today we were flying back to Kuala Lumpur, but not before a quick tuna sandwich by the pool.  Unfortunately it wasn’t that quick as both myself and Ruby Bill ordered the tuna sandwich, which confused the waiter.  Ruby’s tuna sandwich turned up in good time, but mine took an age to arrive.  Nonetheless we ate them and headed to the airport.  We negotiated the mere one hour flight back to Kuala Lumpur and hailed a taxi to take us to our hotel, Leapple Boutique.  The taxi driver gave us more than we bargained for when he pointed out which bar all the local Ladyboys frequent.  We made a mental note not to go to that bar, although I can’t remember its name.  So if I ever go back I could be in trouble.  After throwing our bags in the hotel we headed to Johnny Rockets for dinner, Kuala Lumpur’s premier American diner.  I ordered the Philly Cheese Steak and was surprised to hear that every staff member has to say “Hi” and “Bye” to every customer.  Surely they must get cheesed off having to do that all the time?  However; they took this to a new level whenever a Bruno Mars song came on the stereo,   all staff partaking in synchronised dancing.  This was amusing maybe the first two times, but did start to grate after a while.  We certainly didn’t need to hear Bruno Mars more than once per meal.

We bode farewell to the Johnny Rocket’s dancing waiting staff and headed to our pre-booked trip to the Petronas Towers.  For 84 Ringgit’s we went up the middle section inbetween the towers, marvelling at the ten inch gap allowing the middle section to sway with the towers.  The trip climaxed when we went to the 88th floor of tower 2 for photos, but was overshadowed by Ruby Bill’s actions.  While taking photos he stepped back and trod on an Arabian ladies’ foot… We sucked in all the oxygen in the room, you could cut the tension with a knife.  Tensions were already running high in the middle east, could Ruby’s uncontrolled clumsiness be the straw that broke the camel’s back?  Our thoughts turned to calling recently resigned Middle East Peace Envoy Tony Blair.  Luckily, there were no repercussions, it was touch and go but after some apologies and some strained looks we made it out of the towers, everybody breathed a collective sigh of relief.  We popped in The Dome Restaurant for a quick Asahi, and then back to the relative safety of Leapple Boutique Hotel.  An early night brought a tense, frought, evening to an end, not only that but also our stay in Malaysia, tomorrow we were heading back to Dubai for some unfinished business.

So here we are again; back by popular demand, after what appears to be a three and a half year hiatus.  Where does the time go?  All those trips in between, lost, never to be documented.  Let me try to put that right and regale you with my latest travel offering…the journey to South East Asia (cue Oriental music).

Rice Vinegar

The date is Monday 13th July 2015, the location is Heathrow airport, the line up is the classic three way split.  To discover the mysteries of the Orient, first we had to negotiate a seven hour flight to Dubai.  It was text book, easily done, no problems at all.  Two hour stopover, sent Rob to the bar, he comes back with three £7 bottles of Heineken, textbook.  We continued onwards; no more time for Dubai, time for that later, we were heading to Singapore!  If we only achieved one thing on the flight it was to discover what our new aliases would be; we loosely did this by playing Tetris on the aeroplane’s entertainment system.  I became John Durian Green, Jim changes to Pat Rambutan and Rob morphs into Ruby Bill Silks.  Simple.   After another seven hour flight we arrived, it was now tomorrow.  We decided to forget about today, today was in the past, now it was all about tomorrow.  Unfortunately, as much as I wanted to forget about yesterday I couldn’t, the lag was starting to catch up with me.  Ever the trooper I battled on for the team.  We used the Metro to head towards our hotel, our stop was Aljunied.  Whoa!  Holy moly it was hot when we stepped off the train, “Oh the humidity!”.  Within seconds we were drenched in sweat.  It took me back to the time we visited Hong Kong, two years ago…(is that the sound of a harp being plucked?)….

Ding dong in Hong Kong

Ahhh, we arrived in Hong Kong and set foot outside the airport, holy moly it was hot, “Oh the humidity!”.  Even though it was night time it was still ridiculously sweaty.  We hailed a taxi, told him to step on it and crank up the A/C, “Canton Road please! And step on it! And crank up the A/C my good man!”.  He knew Canton Road because it’s huge, but he didn’t know our apartment, maybe because it was small, the numbers just didn’t add up.  He had never heard of our host, Eddie Wang either.  He dropped us off where he suspected Eddie Wang’s Palace to be, but to the untrained eye it did not look like any sort of abode resided there.  While pacing the street in search of Eddie Wang we arose the suspicion of a local gentleman who did not speak English and had no interest in our predicament, clearly he feared for his safety, the police were called…Shortly two Hong Kong cops arrived, it wasn’t looking good for us, no doubt we’d spend the night in the slammer.  On the contrary they were incredibly helpful, impossibly baby faced, but helpful nonetheless.  They called Eddie Wang for us, run him though their files, but no leads.  Who was the mysterious Eddie Wang and why had nobody heard of him?  The case seemed closed, Eddie Wang didn’t exist, his apartment didn’t exist, we’d been done up like Chinese kippers.  Hang on! Who was this rascal sauntering up the road in flip flops with a newspaper under one arm?  It was the Wangmeister! After being questioned by the police for illegal sauntering, he was let off with a caution.

The apartment and the rest of the building was proper hardcore Chinese, every front door had incense burning away outside.  It was fair to say it was an authentic apartment designed for your average Chinese person, which was fine, except how was it going to contain three strapping Englishmen for the next few days?  Well luckily there weren’t any staying there.  However they still had us, two Englishmen and a half Welsh, half English, one quarter Scottish hybrid known as Ruby (continuity error, he wasn’t called Ruby two years ago…).  It was by far the smallest apartment we had ever stayed in and one interesting aspect was the bathroom.  It was the smallest bathroom we had ever seen, but also the only one we had seen where it was possible to brush your teeth, drop the kids off at the pool and take a shower at the same time.  It was nothing if not efficient.  I digress…back to Singapore.

Gang bang in Geylang

We headed straight into the heart of it, staight to the harbour to cast our eyes over the Marina Bay Sands hotel.  It was quite spectacular, a three towered hotel with the roof shaped as a boat.  We took the elevator to the top like three excited schoolboys.  The views of the city were incredible and the little football pitch which floats on the harbour was particularly intriguing.  It was however ridiculously hot, the strawberry slushy cooled me down only momentarily.  We made our way back to ground level but it was all starting to catch up with me; the jet lag and the heat were combining to make a vicious cocktail.  It was probably the worst jet lag I have ever experienced; I was tired, I was feeling dizzy and my eyes couldn’t focus.  It was no use, we stopped for a beer, maybe that would help?  A quick pint of Tiger, but to no avail, I was in a bad way.  It was 6pm, we headed back to the hotel which was situated in Geylang, the red light district.  No time for exploring, I hit the sack (but if I had paid a little money I’m sure someone would have done that for me).

Teaspoon of whole cloves

Fourteen hours later I climbed out of bed…feeling refreshed, fighting fit and bushy tailed.  There was an ant hanging around in my shower, he was there the night before but I was too tired to get rid of him.  Now here he was again, I christened him Alan and left him to his own devices.  It’s fair to say we were hungry after all that resting, we popped to ‘The Ashes’ Australian cafe for all day breakfasts all round, I had the Bondi of course, hold the egg.  After that we were energised, time to hit the Singapore Flyer.  “Hey John! Isn’t that the largest observation wheel outside of the United States?” I hear you say?  Well yes it is.  It actually stands at 165m tall, which we all know is 30m taller than the London Eye.  The views were splendid, apart from still being able to see the football pitch which seems to float in the harbour we could also see the Formula One race track and the aforementioned Marina Bay Sands hotel.  It’s a good skyline and an attractive harbour.  After this it made sense to go to the Botanical gardens at what would now be considered the hottest part of the day.  We walked across the Helix bridge which links Marina Bay with Marina centre.  The Helix bridge apparently symbolises Ying and Yang and it’s shape resembles the structure of DNA.  Whether we appreciated this in the searing heat remained to be seen.  We arrived at the entrance of the Botanical gardens, but could we really face wandering around outside in 38C? With potentially no chance of finding any A/C? No we couldn’t.  With our sweaty tails between our sweaty legs we returned from the direction we had came from.  Ice cream!  Well a Gelato actually, big in Italy apparently.  While perched upon a picnic bench devouring this tantalising treat, I failed to notice an army of ants swarming all over my arm.  I was being ravaged and I hadn’t even noticed.  Eventually I started to feel a itchy sensation on my arm, I recoiled in horror, threw my arm into the air scattering the ants all around.  I’m not sure that Alan would’ve been too impressed but they were smaller than him, a different breed.

As the evening approached we made our way to the Singapore national stadium to indulge ourselves in some Football.  The stadium was impressive, certainly not sold out, but we were only watching Stoke v Everton.  Clearly the fans who stayed away had the right idea, the match was mind numbingly dull on an epic scale.  The stadium had A/C which they turned off during the game, which made it very difficult to stay awake.  It was warm, there was beer and the game was heading nowhere.  Peter Crouch came on in the second half but only Abbey Clancy could’ve made this exciting.  0-0, Everton won on penalties.  The stadium certainly filled out more for the arrival of Singapore Select v Arsenal.  Again, not an exciting game by any stretch of the imagination, the substitutions were inspired though, bringing on Achibald Tossi, Gillian Anderson and Bruce Willis certainly pepped things up.  Possibly only one of these was a real player, difficult to choose one from those names isn’t it?  I may have misheard the announcer of course.  Anyway, Arsenal won 4-0 and Chuba Toothpaste got a hat trick.  After an evening of watching predominantly English football we decided to fully integrate ourselves into Asian culture; we headed to the Penny Black Victorian English pub.  It was expensive of course, so swiftly moved onto the Bq bar, The Public House and Mogambo’s.  The latter became a bit of a favourite, not least because everytime somebody rang a bell they had to buy everyone in the bar a drink.  We certainly didn’t partake in this ritual, what do you think we are? Stupid?  However we were more than happy to accept free drinks.  Vodka red bull was supplied to everyone in the bar a couple of times and everyone seemed to enjoy it, especially that woman that was dancing around me, clearly she could sense I had some hidden dance moves…I kept them well hidden.

Teaspoon of Coriander seed

I awoke this morning to find Alan was running up and down the wall opposite the shower door.  I hope he realised how privileged he was; to spend time in my bathroom, most people would pay good money for that.  Today we were heading to Sentosa island, apart from Alan that is.  Alan had a job interview in the city; due to his fondness for mathematics he had applied to work in the finance sector, he had always dreamed of becoming an Accountant.  I wished him luck and continued showering.  We jumped on the metro and headed to Harbourfront, for $29 we got to use all the cable cars around the island.  Arriving at the island it looked like Jurassic Park, not so much because it had dinosaurs wandering around (which it didn’t), but because of the vegetation and layout.  Basically Sentosa island is a theme park with beaches and hotels thrown in.  We decided the best way to see the island was to walk around it; it’s possible that not many other people shared our view.  Mainly because it was another roastingly hot day and the humidity was off the scale.  Forget the rides, our number one attraction was to find the shop which had the coldest Air Conditioning.  For your records the best A/C could be found in the 7-11 store in the Merlion area, fairly close to the Merlion himself (giant half lion, half fish statue that guards the island).  We decided to get some lunch; I opted for the steak and onion baguette, nothing quite cools me down like a hot steak and onion baguette.   This time it didn’t work, it possibly made me feel hotter than ever.  I was possibly hotter than that guy we saw wearing a leather jacket.  We retreated and returned to the city.

Tonight was our last night in Singapore, so it was important to go out with a bang.  Our first stop was Raffles, naturally it was Singapore Slings all round and at $31 a pop (£17), they were not cheap.  Our expensive fluescent pink cocktails were all too easy to drink, we prolonged the experience by eating the monkey nuts and throwing the shells on the floor along with all the others. From here the evening started to gather pace…  A quick pit stop at Paprika & Cumin for Rib-eye steaks and a duck pizza all served by an impossibly cute waitress.  After this we upped the ante by paying a visit to the ultra trendy Loof bar, probably too (a)Loof for us.  We had one cocktail each in here but we felt a little out of place, and a little under-dressed (even though it was very hot in this outside rooftop bar).  After this we found the all too familiar confines of Molly Malones Irish pub.  Familiar in that no matter where you are in the world you can always find an Irish pub and most of them look the same.  What wasn’t quite familiar was the price of a pint…£9 a pint!!!  Understandably we only stayed for one.  To finish the night off we decided to head to our new favourite, Mogambo’s and as before somebody was once again buying drinks for the entire bar.  This time the shots were being bought by Tanya; Tanya Hyde, the Brit from Dubai.  It turned out to be a good night, the very poor taxi services were the only blot.  It seems that if it’s late, Singapore taxi drivers bide their time driving around the city waiting for their shifts to end but not actually taking any passengers.  Strange.  I arrived back at my hotel at the ungodly hour of 6:35am, in 1hr 25 mins I would need to get up, as by 9am we would need to be on our way to the bus station for stage two of the adventure.  Not the best preparations for our 6hr bus ride, a lack of sleep and a hangover.  No matter, it was done.  The plan was to rendezvous in the hallway at 9am.  Pat Rambutan was there, I was there, but someone was missing, where was Ruby Bill Silks?  We gently rapped at his chamber door…No answer…We tapped again…Still no answer…Where was Ruby Bill Silks?

To be continued.

Before we get stuck into the main course of this blog I would like to begin with a starter before the main course, if you will…

The Starter:

Friday 2nd Sept 2011:

It was a gorgeous summers day, very hot actually, one of the few hot days of the year.  To celebrate the weather I found myself sitting inside a pub on my own (The Queens Arms if you must know).  I was awaiting the arrival of one Jimmy Jazzgood as it was the day after his birthday, it’s not cool to celebrate birthdays anymore, it’s far cooler to celebrate the day after the birthday rather than the birthday itself.  Anyway Me, Jazzgood, Dave and Nick were heading to the centre of all things debauched, Reading Berkshire, to celebrate the aforementioned day after the birthday.  Once everyone turned up we had a swift pint before catching a train.  Don’t worry I’m not going to describe everything that happened that night as to be honest I don’t think anything particularly different happened to elevate it to full blog status.

However one thing did happen that night that will haunt me until the end of my days…We were sitting on the train as you do having a pleasant almost mature conversation, well two separate conversations actually.  Dave and Nick were having a conversation about their respective newly born children whilst me and Jimmy Jazzgood were having a moderately mature conversation about future holidays to go on.  It was all very civilised, none of us were drunk, we’d had a pint each before we got on the train (I’d had two, because I’m super tough).  Anyway whilst chatting I couldn’t help but notice out the corner of my eye that a chubby woman, probably in her early 50’s was staring at us.  To be honest I just thought she fancied me, I mean she’s female and she’s only human, of course she’s going to fall for my charms.  So I thought nothing more of it.

As we approached Mortimer she stood up walked over to us, leaned over and said “I hope you’re proud of yourselves”, then walked away.  She walked towards the doors and tapped a completely innocent man who was also getting off the train on his shoulder.  He turned around, she pointed at us and said rather loudly “Those little f**king idiots are going to Reading”. 

Well, we were in a state of shock, why on earth had this woman decided to hurl abuse at us?  Where had this foul mouthed tirade come from?  A few things have bothered me about what this woman had said.  Firstly apart from Jim, none of us are particularly little, certainly bigger than her and secondly I don’t like the idea of a stranger calling me a “f**king idiot”.  At no point during that journey did she challenge me to any sort of general knowledge quiz.  Trivial pursuit, Who wants to be a Millionaire or even Eggheads (if there’s such a boardgame) I would’ve happily played against and most probably destroyed her.

I have also started to wonder if maybe she has been sent back from the future to give us a message, Terminator-esque.  Maybe her quote “I hope you’re proud of yourselves” is a warning against something which all four of us do in the future which brings planet Earth to it’s knees.  I don’t know, but it’s worth thinking about…However just in case she is reading this I’d like to say to her “No, I’m not actually”.

So for future reference if anybody gets a train from Basingstoke to Reading and a small chubby woman in her early 50’s/late 40’s possibly drunk, possibly on drugs, possibly a gypsy starts staring at you and starts mumbling under her breath I suggest you hide in the toilet until the train has departed Mortimer station…

The Main Course:

The following takes place between Thurs 15th Sept and Mon 19th Sept 2011:

5pm I set foot from my house into town, at 5:30pm I was rendezvousing with the other members of our ragtag posse.  The aim of this trip was to spend a weekend in Munich, in particular at Oktoberfest.  Our posse consisted of yours truly, Piotr J, Kelvin and Quentin.  There is a small chance some of these names have been changed to protect the innocent (or not so innocent as the case may be).  We met in BCOT car park and Quentin exclaimed to everyone (in English, but with a Polish accent, you wouldn’t think he was Polish with a name like that would you?) “I’m early!”.  Sadly he was early, but only because he had forgotten to pack his yellow high visiblity vest, so he trundled back home to get it.

At this point I need to point out that this trip was about to become a logistical nightmare.  The aim of our game was to drive from Basingstoke on Thursday night to arrive in Munich Friday morning, then spend two days partying before driving back Sunday to be back in Basingstoke in the early hours of Monday…Now that is crazy.

So we set off, little did we know we would be spending the next 15 hrs travelling and lest we forget travelling in the very spritely if slightly incommodious Vauxhall Agila owned by Kelvin.  We nearly made a schoolboy error in mistaking the Channel Tunnel for a ferry but apart from that it was all pretty much plain sailing getting to France (pun intended).  We did see one of the coolest cars ever whilst queuing up for the ferry, it was believe it or not a car covered head to toe or rather bonnet to boot in pink leopard skin Velvet carpet.  Of course I know you don’t get pink leopards with skin made from Velvet, but this car was definitely made of that very material.  I have to say I can’t actually remember what model of car it was, I think it may have been some form of BMW but I’m not too sure.  Well whatever it was it resembled a Pimp Mobile of the highest order, it looked a classy drive.

Our ferry docked in France at 23:35 French time, and this is when the Aguila would come into it’s own.  We effectively spent the next 10hrs in the Aguila, there isn’t really much to tell, so I can easily whittle this part down.  Piotr and Quentin fell asleep in the back, whilst Kelvin and myself assumed driving duties.  Kelvin drove for as long as he could before he got too tired, then I took over.  I think I did a respectable 250 ish miles which took me into the early hours of Friday morning just as the sun was coming up.  One thing we did notice is there are a hell of a lot of toll roads in France and they’re very expensive and pop up incessantly.  Anyway, we negiociated an expensive France with ease before crossing the border into Germany, this was when I decided to hang up my driving gloves as my eyes were getting tired and I did come off the motorway a bit too fast and then underestimate the angle of the bend, thus nearly careering off the road into a hedge.  Luckily my Formula 1 style drivers instincts kicked in and I managed to compose myself, control the car, before getting out and swapping seats with Kelvin.

We arrived at our Hostel on the outskirts of Munich at around 10am (I had now been awake for 22hrs).  We were staying at the hostel Pension Carl which we later found out was 1 bus and 1 train ride away from the city centre.  The location may have been a bit further away from the action than we would’ve liked but as Oktoberfest was on everywhere was booked up and any accomodation still available in the city centre would cost a fortune.

As we had arrived incredibly early (about 5 hrs before check in) our room wasn’t ready.  As much as we wanted to get a few hours kip, it would have been stupid to sleep when we were only there for two days.  We decided to ask the three women at reception if they could pinpoint exactly where the festival was located and how we could get there.  Baring in mind it’s the biggest tourist attraction Munich has and it takes place every year and gets around six million visitors you would have thought any German person would know exactly where it is and how to get to it.  Alas these women weren’t entirely sure where it was.  Speaking in English didn’t really yield any results and it was only when Quentin and Piotr started speaking in their native Polish did we get some results.  I must admit listening to five people speak in a mixture of broken English, German and Polish started to get on my nerves (don’t forget I’d been awake 23hrs).  I decided to familiarise myself with a map outside whilst the rest argued at reception.

We dumped our bags in the room.  The room consisted of five beds (we only needed four but the fifth bed did come in handy, you’ll find out why later) a wardrobe and a table and chairs.  It wasn’t the most salubrious of bedrooms and the bathroom was out in the hallway and we would have to share it with whatever riff raff were staying there as well.  I have stayed in far worse places before so wasn’t too concerned.  We all had a quick shower each (not together obviously) and Quentin couldn’t bare to stand in the shower and make contact with the floor, so he made sure he had a plastic bag to stand on at all times.  Whilst waiting for Quentin to shower Kelvin decided to reveal to Piotr and I that he prefers to sleep in the nude, especially as he didn’t have his Nylon Kung Foo pyjamas with him, because they “cause sparks” apparently.  You may wonder why I’m sharing this information with you, but all will be revealed (well, hopefully not…) later on.  Stay tuned.

So, armed with our instructions on what to say to the bus driver in German we headed into the city to tackle Oktoberfest 2011!  We were off, we were going to get amongst 6 million drunken revellers and party hard…”Excuse me?” we said to the very attractive door woman who was standing outside one of the huge beer tents “How do we get in and get a drink?”.  “Sorry, the festival doesn’t open until tomorrow” she replied…Bugger, we were a day early.

When confronted with disappointment I decided to do what I always do, go get a Pizza (currently eating 3 Pizza’s a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner).  We popped into an Italian restaurant called Il Castagno which had a small garden so that we could dine Au Naturel.  I ordered the Pepperoni with extra mushroom although to be honest I wasn’t too keen on the mushroom so decided to remove most of it.

Whilst waiting for the Pizza I missed something happen.  It’s very rare for me to miss something happen, but I did indeed miss something happen.  I did notice a woman who must have been in her early 40’s join two men at a table (so far so potential Prostitution racket) opposite us.  However what I failed to see was the provocative hand gestures she made with the rather large black pepper shaker that was on the table.  Maybe it didn’t happen, I don’t know, but we’ll have to assume it did happen.  After this she left.

The Pizza took far longer to eat than it should’ve mainly due to the fact I had to try to cut it with a knife which was as sharp as a very blunt spoon.  We also enjoyed our first German beers of the holiday (2 each), little did we know we were now on a one way trip to booze central.  Those first beers are always so innocent aren’t they?

As I had been to Munich before (“table for one sir?”) I decided to take the team into the city to experience some of traditional style pubs and Bavarian atmosphere.  We hit possibly the most famous pub in the city the HofBrau House.  This is a great pub with now legendary status.  I have to point out that whilst in here we were drinking two pint Steins each, so effectively we were drinking two pints as quickly as we would normally drink one pint.  Dangerous.  There is a certain buzz about the place and when the Oompah band aren’t playing you can here the noise of everybody speaking at the same time, it’s quite strange.

We were joined at our table by “Strike me pink you flamin’ galar!” an Australian couple.  The guy was called Riley and unfortunately I can’t remember his girlfriend’s name, they were very nice though.  However by this time the two pint Steins were beginning to take effect on Kelvin, not only was he convinced that Riley was actually the Fonz from Happy Days (thus forcing Riley to shout “Heyyyyyy!” every 5mins whilst giving the thumbs up) he was also bashing his hands on the table so loudly in a kind of “Down it! Down it!” kind of way that he actually got a telling off from one of the bar staff.  No it wasn’t good, he was given a severe reprimand, pretty much a booking, just a yellow card but if he did it again it would’ve been a red card and straight out for an early shower (without the plastic carrier bag to stand on).

Even after this warning Kelvin and now Quentin continued to bang on the tables once again in a “Down it, Down it!” kind of way.  Strangely every time they did this everyone in the pub joined in, even though nobody was doing anything crazy and we weren’t celebrating anything.  Anyway, after three two pint Steins each we decided to move on, we were definitely becoming more lubicated  (have  I mentioned that I had been awake for around 32 hrs by this point?…)

Next we headed to the the Augustiener bar which is very similar to the Hofbrau Haus except smaller.  Here we had to share a table with three American chicks, which certainly wasn’t an unpleasant experience.  We quenched our thirst with another two pint Stein each and I did manage to get an American girl’s phone number, alas we can forget all about this as she does not reply to text messages (most women don’t, strange that…).  A very brief holiday romance.

We decided that we loved the Hofbrau Haus so much that we wanted to go back, so we did.  At this point I have to say I don’t like people who push into queues, I certainly don’t like to think that we barged into the queue.  So what I’m going to say is that the three lovely Swiss girls who were fairly close to the front of the queue decided to let us in.  The Swiss can simply be known as M, V and S.  After a very brief stint here we decided to go somewhere else for a beer, as we were pretty thirsty at this stage.  We escorted our new female friends to an Irish pub.  I had been to this pub before and knew it was a busy popular place and that was an understatement, it was absolutely heaving.  I believe there was a live band playing but to be honest we were pretty drunk at this point and I had probably been awake about 35 hrs by now.  I’m convinced that there was a couple sitting at a table quietly drinking there own drinks and minding their own business, however as we stood our drinks on their table it soon got to the point when we were drinking not only our drinks but their drinks as well.  Sadly the guy kept buying more drinks for him and his girlfriend only for them to get continually drunk by us, strangley the guy seemed to find this amusing or at least from what I remember he did…By this time we were seriously drunk, the Swiss girls seemed to be tolerating us.  Kelvin was playing Air Guitar, Quentin had created his own dance floor in the middle of the bar, I have no idea what Piotr was doing and I was getting in an increasingly bad mood.  We were all a mess and as the bar was getting more and more busy and my mood was getting worse and worse I decided something had to give, and it was me.  I had to get out…The rain was hammering down outside, but I didn’t really care.  I think I spent maybe one hour walking around in circles in the rain.  Drenched to the bone I tried to get a taxi back to our hostel.  I don’t really know what I was thinking as I didn’t have any keys so even if I got back I wouldn’t be able to get into our room.  Even so I persevered.  I climbed into a taxi and asked the driver to take me home, I didn’t have the address on me but knew the street was called ‘Industriastrabe’.  So I shouted “Industriastrabe!” at the driver a few times, but he wasn’t having any of it.  So I climbed back out the taxi, possibly hurling abuse at the driver as I left.  I was back in the rain.  I climbed into the next taxi, “Industriastrabe!” I shouted at him.  Still no luck, he didn’t want to know either.  OK, I tried one more taxi, this time I tried a different approach.  I got into the taxi, called Kelvin on my phone and asked him to read the Hostel address to the driver from the card he had in his wallet.  Sadly that didn’t work as again this taxi driver didn’t want to know.  So I hurled more abuse at him, then left.  Back out into the rain.  I managed to meet back up with Kelvin, Quentin and Piotr, together all four of us managed to get a taxi together.  Apparently whilst I went for my wander in the rain, Kelvin decided to take a lie down in the street to try to compose himself, or at least get some sleep.

We arrived back at the hostel and immediately dived into our respective beds (did I tell you I had been awake for 38 hrs?), we were all incredibly drunk and incredibly tired.  As I tend to do, particularly when I’ve been drinking I find nothing better then falling asleep listening to some angry Metal music on my Ipod.  I began to drift off to sleep with just the sound of Metal ringing in my ears.  Whilst I was drifting along on a wave of Metal tunes I suddenly felt my bed sheets lift up…this felt a little strange…Was the girl of my dreams in Germany?  Was she climbing into my bed?  Were all my dreams about to come true?…

Actually no.   As I began to awaken from my slumber I could once again hear the Metal ringing in my ears and as I opened my eyes I could see it was Kelvin who was lifting up my sheets and diving into my bed.  Intruder Alert!!  What on earth was wrong with his bed?  What was wrong with the spare bed? Why was he getting into my bed?  It seems he got out of his bed and sleep walked over to my bed.

If you were paying attention earlier then you will be fully aware that Kelvin mentioned that he prefers to sleep in his birthday suit with everything on display.  Luckily for me he was wearing clothes, not his Nylon Kung Foo Pyjamas, but at least he had something on.  Horrified at having to share my single bed with another man I tried to get out, but he was lying on my earphones…It was no use, I had to leave the earphones and make a run for it.  I told the earphones I would be back for them, but they told me they were trapped and injured and that they would slow me down.  They told me to save myself, and I did.  I made it to the relative safety of the spare bed.  How long before Kelvin noticed I had gone?  Would he come after me?  I was unsure, so spent the remainder of the night sleeping with one eye open…

I awoke the next day to see that Kelvin was now back in his original bed, my bed was now free and I was still in the spare bed.  “Why are you sleeping there?” Kelvin asked when he woke up.  Ha!  Did he really want to know?

Also why did Kelvin have white powder on his glasses?  It was nothing to do with me, and reports of him going to the toilets in the pub with a credit card and a rolled up £10 note have yet to be confirmed.  Indeed a messy night.

Saturday 17th Sept:

It’s fair to say everyone felt like death today, we had the hangovers from hell, yet we hadn’t even been in the beer festival, how ironic.  Today was going to be a hard day…

After the obligatory showering, some standing on carrier bags, some not, we headed to the festival.  It’s fair to say Germans do like their beer and the festival itself was huge, we’d never seen so many sausages (of all shapes and sizes) and lots of women in traditonal Bravarian outfits.  I can’t remember the names of those outfits, but you know the one I’m talking about.  There was certainly a large amount of boobage on display, personally I don’t think I have seen such a large concentration of womens boobs brazenly and openly on display.  All women of all ages were leaving little to the imagination, everything was pointing out and being thrust in your face, but obviously this was classily done.  Anyway that’s just something I noticed, maybe no one else noticed that.  It was certainly soothing my hungover eyes and my headache.  There was however only one way to get rid of the hangover and that was to start drinking again, we had to, it was the only way to balance the equilibrium.  All the tents were heaving with people (and bosoms) and as we didn’t get there early and we didn’t have reserved tickets we had to trawl the whole site looking for anywhere to sit whilst munching on the odd sausage to keep our energy up.  Of the twenty or so tents we found two which were less busy and thus we found a small area in each to sit or stand which wasn’t too crowded.  Check my spelling but I believe the two tents we favoured were the Nymphenburg (?) tent and the Pshorr tent.  By this time Piotr was really struggling with his hangover, he had relapsed.   We forced him to stay out and it was only when Kelvin and Quentin started to buy £12 bottles of water that we decided to head home.

The festival was great and I would certainly go back, and what was quite surprising was that with thousands of people there I never saw any sort of attitude or violence.  I’m sure if that was held in England it would be a different story…Just as we began to leave the heavens opened and it poured down with rain, a wise time to leave.

On the way back we decided to go for one last pint in the Irish pub, for old times sake.  Piotr was desperate to go back to the hostel and it was only when we bumped into the Swiss girls again did he perk up, so to speak.  As if by magic the night out had now been extended!  There was plenty of Air guitar going on, in fact I think at one point there was an entire Air band with possibly Kelvin on guitar, Piotr on drums and I played a little bit of bass.  Although that may be wrong, I can’t remember, we are Air multi-instrumentalists anyway, so we can easily change instruments at the drop of a hat.  That’s what made the band great and kept everything fresh and exciting.

The Swiss girl who we shall call M had also developed an annoying habit of tapping on the top of my bottle of beer whenever I wasn’t looking so that my beer would froth up and go all over me.  This was amusing the first three or four times but did get a tad annoying especially when the final time it frothed up so much I dropped the bottle on the floor smashing it to smithereens.  To her credit, she did feel very guilty about it and disappeared off to the bar to buy me another beer, bless her.

The evening drew to another stumbling drunken conclusion, we bode a fond farewell to the Swiss chicks and headed for the taxis.  None of us were prepared for the taxi we got into…I can’t remember what it was but it felt souped up, maybe lowered, with lights on the bottom like something out of The Fast and the Furious.  It was the party taxi!  Schumacher in the driving seat was actually DJ’ing whilst driving, playing awful Euro dance and Hip Hop.  It was easily the loudest taxi or even car I have ever been in.  Whether it was necessary for the  driver to proclaim at the top of his voice “F**k, P***Y,F**K” I’m not entirely sure.  Maybe he was just trying to impress the 4 guys in his taxi, or maybe he was just mad.  Either way I’m not sure I would necessarily opt for the party taxi again if I was faced with that option, unless of course it was covered bonnet to boot in pink velvet leopard skin then I may have to have a rethink…

Sunday 18th Sept:

Another day, another hangover.  Athough this was the second hangover it still felt really bad, as bad as the first hangover, even though technically everybody knows second hangovers can never be as bad as first hangovers. 

We checked out and started our mammoth journey home, we had another 15hrs of travelling ahead of us.  We decided to avoid the toll roads of France and instead take in the scenery of Germany, Holland, Belgium before swerving back into France to board the ferry home.  I say ‘we’ avoided the toll roads, when really I was not in a fit state to drive, which meant Kelvin rather unfortunately drove a full 15 hrs single handedly.  I spent most of the drive home asleep, I just couldn’t stay awake.  Then when I was awake, I was having trouble getting my eyes to focus.  I decided it was because I was either hungover or worse still drunk…I later found out it was because I had my contact lenses in the wrong way around.  Schoolboy error.  

High praise should go to Kelvin for driving 15hrs on his own, I’m not sure how he stayed awake the whole journey, maybe he didn’t, maybe the car was on Autopilot, we’ll never know, but we made it back.

I arrived home at about 2:00AM, finally I could climb into my bed for a proper nights sleep…No I couldn’t!  I had to be up at 6:00Am, then be at work at 7:00AM…No rest for the wicked.  Rock and indeed Roll.

The following takes place between 06:01AM 07/05/11 and 11:00AM 13/05/11:

Day 6:

My earlier conclusion had been right, it was indeed the feathered cushions that had caused my near death experience due to not being able to breath.  As we all know breathing is fairly important.  Once the feathered cushions had been moved into a seperate room the problem subsided.  So we can definitely add feathers to my list of allegies.  If any women out there want to cook me dinner sometime, please remember no eggs, no milk (although we may be able to come to some sort of compromise with this) and definitely no feathers (in the meal or in your upholstery/soft furnishings).

Today E and G drove us around the whole of New Orleans showing many areas which had been worst hit during Hurricane Katrina.  It was particularly sad to see the remains of homes and houses that still have military paint daubed on the outside to symbolise whether people were alive or dead in the houses back when the Hurricane hit.  It appears work has started on restoring these areas six years on, including some Brad Pitt designed Eco homes being built.

I also noticed apart from all the drive thru fast food burger outlets they have there, they also have drive thru Daiquiri outlets.  Surely this is a little strange?  A place you can drive thru and pick up very alcoholic drinks?  Hmmm.

We did have a few Daiquiris that night, although obviously we were not driving at the time.

Day 7:

Sadly today was our last day in New Orleans as we were due to fly back to Miami in the afternoon.  We got up early today as we wanted to see the Man U- Chelsea game in a bar, it was a 10am kick off and I at least was desperate for Chelsea to win.  It takes a lot for me to sit and cheer on Chelsea but my hatred for Man U out weighs my hatred for Chelsea, sadly Man U won 2-1.  Gutted.  The game wasn’t helped by the fact the very loud American Chelsea fan opposite kept yelling out “C’mon! What you’ll say blues!” and “C’mon! What you’ll say boys!”, every few minutes.  Most irritating.

It was time for us to leave, so we headed back to the house to pack our bags and R could say an emotional goodbye to Otto the dog, they had formed quite a bond.  It seemed to me that R and Otto were clearly brothers from a different mother.  Both like to sleep as much as possible and both like to go for a wee in the garden first thing in the morning.  We said our goodbyes and caught the 5:25pm flight back, it was a good flight and we were back in Miami by 8:50pm.

Sadly we couldn’t get a room at out favourite the Essex House Hotel so we had to make do with the San Juan Hotel.  It was clearly not on the same level as the Essex or indeed any of the other hotels on it’s street.  From the outside it looked ratty, the blue porch roof was falling down, it was in need of a spruce up.  Inside it was basic, basic was ok, but we really thought we had moved up in the world.  Why settle for basic when we could have ‘mediocre’ or even ‘above satisfactory’.

We had dinner out (not a candlelit affair like most of the other punters) then had a couple of beers in a bar called ‘Tequila Chicas’.  Now with a name like that you would expect to be served by an awesome looking waitress with lots of other hot waitresses running about in the background and to be fair there were some awesome looking waitresses working there.  Sadly they weren’t serving us, we got served by Jeff.  Great…Nice one Jeff.

We headed back to the hotel because I wanted to check out the view from our window.  We were on the ground floor and the view from our window was of a wall…It was a nice wall though.

“Take a walk on the beach, draw a heart in the sand.   Gimme your hand.  Damn you look sexy.  Let’s go to my yacht in the West Keys, ride my jet skis, loungin in the palm trees”

Day 8:

Today we decided to even up our tans (well, not so much tans rather uneven burns).  We had meticulously planned exactly how we were going to achieve this.  We decided 20 minutes on the back and 20 minutes on the front and with no sun cream whatsoever.  You can call us crazy if you want but it was do or die, we needed to tan up. 

After spending 20 minutes on the back and then 20 minutes on the front I decided to get in the sea to cool down.  At this point I should’ve put some cream on but boys will be boys and all that, so I didn’t bother.  R couldn’t go in the sea because he was wearing the wrong shorts, so he stayed with the bags.  By this time he had realised his error with the aforementioned womens sunglasses so was now spending most of his time squinting and sadly not perving over women on the beach.

Anyway I strolled down to the sea without a care in the world, I may have been super white with red bits but I knew come the morning I would be golden brown or even a rich mahogany colour.  The sea was incredible, crystal clear, warm and refreshing whilst the sand was soft and felt good between my toes.  Upon entering the water a small shoal of fish swam past, I was at one with nature.  The sea was surprisingly calm and there wasn’t even that many people in there either.  The time flew by and whilst I thought I had been in there for maybe 20 minutes, I had actually been there about 45 minutes, all I may add without sun cream.  After my 45 minutes I decided to leave the sea reminiscent of the way Daniel Craig did in James Bond (Casino Royale).  To be honest I think the heart of every woman (and maybe even a few men) skipped a beat as my toned muscular torso rose from the sea.

If you now do a quick calculation you will have noticed I spent 85 minutes (1 hour 25 minutes) without putting sun cream on.  Plus I needed a few minutes to dry, so rounding up that’s 90 minutes in the blazing hot Miami sun without putting cream on…Big mistake.

Proud of our success on the beach we hit Finnegans Way bar for a celebratory pint or two and to hopefully catch the Fulham-Liverpool game on TV.  Obviously you all know Liverpool won 5-2 and it was a cracking game of football.  After watching that I thought Liverpool were going to make a late charge for the Premier League title, but they didn’t.  There was a cute barmaid serving us, which always makes drinking even more enjoyable and the good thing about her was she remebered what drink I wanted even though she had only served us once before a few days earlier.  I could think of only two reasons why she remembered my drink:

A) She’s a great barmaid, and good at her job.

B) She’s in love with me.

After mulling these two scenario’s over in my head I came to the conclusion she was probably a good barmaid.

After this footballing triumph we headed to Lincoln Avenue, all together now!  “We gonna rock down to Lincoln Avenue and then we’ll take it higher”.

Lincoln Avenue is a swish trendy shopping strip with lot’s of fancy restaurants, including Pizza Rustica.  Whilst wandering around I did start to realise that I may have caught the sun earlier.  I wasn’t expecting the colour to come out quite so quickly, after catching a glimpse of my incredibly burnt back and front (not just lobster red, this was seriously red almost luminous red if that’s possible), I decided to go back to the hotel and hide. 

Another night without sleep was on the cards and not just because of Rs snoring.  The burn was hurting a lot and I was in desperate need of some Aftersun (which I didn’t take on holiday as it wouldn’t fit in my bag) and there was also a party kicking off in the room next door.  By the time it got to 3:50AM their party was in full swing, it sounded like 2 guys and 2 girls probably students.  All night all I could hear was “Oooooooo!” “Oh my god!” and “Dude!”.  At one point it sounded like they were all bouncing up and down on their beds like trampolines.  I don’t think I was being naive, it did generally sound like trampoline bouncing rather than bedroom olympics.  R somehow managed to sleep through the party, but I was seriousy pissed off, absolutely livid.  At one point during the night I heard another high pitched “Ooooooooo!”.  I have to say it scared the crap out of me.  It definitely came from our room, it definitely wasn’t me, I would’ve known.  Which meant either:

A) A party reveller next door had got in our room.

B) We had a ghost in our room.

C) R was subconciously being sarcastic in his sleep towards the party revellers next door.

“Ooooooooooooooooooooooo!” There it was, that noise again!  It was bloody well R wasn’t it, either being sarcastic or having a nightmare.

By 5:55AM the party was beginning to die down and by 6:15AM it had finished.  Thank god for that, but it was no use getting any sleep now as the night was over.  I really should’ve made a complaint, but I guess I’m too nice.

Day 9:

I didn’t wake up today as I technically didn’t go to sleep, so as I was already awake I might as well get up.  I was tired as hell but we continued with our plan of attack, today we had decided to visit Downtown Miami.  For all the public transport fans out there we caught the C bus on the corner of 8th Street and Washington.  Obviously we didn’t catch that bus until we had breakfast at the now infamous 11th Street diner.  We hopped off the bus at an area known as Bayside, which was a pleasant touristy area with plenty of shops, restaurants and harbour.  I have never really seen any episodes of Miami Vice but I imagine there would be a good chance that a lot of chase sequences where the criminals were being chased by the cops would be filmed there, followed by the criminal jumping from the harbour into a waiting speed boat and thus the chase continuing on water.  I may be wrong, but it looked about right. 

It was very hot today, I would say it was potentially the hottest day of the holiday so far and because of this we decided to cool down by having a beer in Hooters.  OK, now I know what you’re thinking “James you’re a classy guy, why on earth did you decide to go in Hooters?  Surely not just to ogle the waitresses?”.  Of course nobody pops in Hooters for the ambience or the decor, everybody goes there to drink beer and check out the massive jugs.  So we picked our table and the waitress bounds over to take our order and I have to say I was diappointed.  Every other waitress was good looking apart from our one, don’t get me wrong she was better than Jeff from Tequila Chicas the other night but still not as good as the other girls.  I mean take a look at the blonde girl working at the bar…  Of course I thought about moving tables, but I feel that would have been a little  rude.

After the disappointment of Hooters we took a boat cruise around Miami bay and Star Island, which is an exclusive island with some huge mansions owned by the mega rich and famous.  We saw homes owned by Will Smith, Sylvester Stallone, Rosie O’Donnell (Whoooooo!?), Gloria Estefan (“Doctor Doctor, won’t you please help me?  You gotta help me, you gotta help me.  If you got trouble can’t stop your feet, pay a little visit to Doctor Beat.  Doctor Doctor, won’t you please help me?  You gotta help me, you gotta help me, Doc Doc Doc Doc Doctor Beat”), P Diddy and believe it or not the largest erection we saw on the island was the mansion owned by the inventor of Viagra.

After this nautical nonsense we headed back to South Beach and as our holiday was nearing it’s end, tonight would be a good night to go crazy.  Guess where we started the night?  Bingo! you’ve got it, Finnegans Way…Whilst having a few brewskis in here we watched baseball on TV, it was the Florida Marlins against the Philadelphia Phillies.  I have to say I find baseball to be pretty boring to watch, however a couple of things made it a tad more exciting.  The first thing is that one of the Philadelphia players (I forget his name) plays best when he is ‘In deep’.  I thought baseball was supposed to be a family sport so I was a bit concerned he plays better when he’s up to that sort of thing.  Secondly Philadelphia have a player who is delightfully named Antonio Bastardo.  Ha! Seriously!  Fantastic.  After 4  or 5 pints here we headed to the Good News Bar, Tommy Banana was working as usual and we were a little surprised to pay $20 for 2 pints, but we shouldn’t have been surprised as we’d been in there most nights.  Next up was Duece Bar Club Duece, I wasn’t too keen on this place.  It was pretty busy and once again R decided to try his luck against the locals at Pool, sadly on this rare occasion he lost.  I’m not quite sure what happened, or why his game went wrong.  All I can say is he let me down, he let his country down and most importantly he let himself down.  After this embarrassment we left.

We hot-footed it across the road to a club called Jazid.  It was busy as there was a band playing, I can’t remember their name but musically wise they were quite good, but their singer ‘Fabio’ liked himself a little bit too much.  I can’t actually remember him doing that much singing to be honest.  The reason I know his name was Fabio is because the girl standing next to me kept banging on about how great he was.  I disagreed with her, he wasn’t great he was rubbish, but I decided to be nice nonetheless.  Sadly at this point in the evening everytime we bought a beer we were given a free shot of Tequila.  This was definitely not a good idea, who ever thought that would be a good idea?  I continued to work my magic on the local girl whilst managing to force her small gay male friend to talk to R.  He was most unhappy about this, and I don’t really blame him.  We continued to drink beer and down free Tequila and sadly I found a pair of beer goggles at the bottom of that Tequila bottle.  I even felt sick at one point (which is rare for me when drinking) which I think had more to do with the Tequila rather than the girl I was talking to (although I can’t be sure).  The night was clearly beginning to go a bad way, my usual ultra high standards when it comes to women (Do you live on your own? I hear you ask..of course I do!…) were in serious danger of being blown to smithereens and R was most unhappy about the little gay chap camply shouting in his ear.  Something had to give and it did…R left and went back to the hotel (No, no, no, he went on his own, don’t worry he didn’t leave with his new friend).

So I moved on to Waxy O’Connors again with the girl in tow (I have to admit I have absolutely no idea what her name was).  It was rubbish in there and the girl was hammered, she was an absolute mess.  I decided I would have to try and take her home, but I didn’t know where she lived and I don’t think she did either.  After stopping every few minutes so that she could lie down on the pavement I eventually pretty much carried her home.  I really don’t know how.

Now for the whole evening she hadn’t smoked any cigarettes whilst I had been out, but once she got home she got one secret cigarette out of a secret nondescript box.  I’m not sure what was in that cigarette and I wasn’t sure why it was hidden in the secret box, but whatever it was it must have been quite strong as she passed out.

Marvellous.  I didn’t know where I was or what I was going to do, so I kipped for a couple of hours before waking up to hear her snoring…Are you kidding me!?

Day 10:

I couldn’t handle being in a strange apartment with a strange woman who was snoring, I didn’t know where I was, or who she was, or who I was.  There was no way I wanted to come up with pleasantries at that time of the morning so I decided to quietly leave.

It was 7am, the sun was up and it looked like it was going to be a lovely day.  I stepped out on to the street  and stood for a second to get my bearings, and try to figure out where I was.  Literally as I turned round and began my journey I felt a rather unpleasant tight feeling in my downstairs area, as my testicles were in the vice-like grip of a local prostitute.  Where the hell had she come from!? “Hi! Do you wanna party?” she asked.  “Err, no thanks it’s 7 in the morning” I replied.  “You can **** me for $100” she said. “Ha, no way!” I exclaimed.  She wasn’t all that and a bag of chips, definitely not worth that sort of money.  Why do I always get attacked by either gays or prostitutes?  Everywhere I go, Town, Tesco, Amsterdam, San Francisco, Soho, Brighton…It’s only a matter of time before I get attacked by a gay prostitute, I’m really not looking forward to that moment.  Anyway I politely declined her offer, wriggled my balls out of her grasp, hopped on my beer scooter and left.

I think I was on 2nd or 3rd street and needed to get up to 17th street, so at least 15 blocks to go.  I think I made it 2 blocks before I bumped into the prostitute again, how did she appear in front of me when I was ahead of her?  She was like the character Droopy from the cartoons, always one step ahead…”Hi do you wanna…” before she could finish her sentence “Noooo! No interested” I said.

I accelerated on my beer scooter and managed to get back to the safe confines of our hotel, at just gone 7am, R was asleep.  Thank god he was asleep, at least he’ll never know what happened that night after he left…

I managed to get 5 hrs sleep (that’s 5 hrs sleep in 2 days for all you people who are counting), I got up at Midday and felt as rough as a badgers arse.  After spending days moaning about not getting any sleep for a variety of reasons I now had only myself to blame.  I had stopped myself from getting my much needed beauty sleep.

We headed to Manolo’s restaurant for lunch, I struggled my way through a Chicken baguette, but felt seriously bad.  The Coke refills were a blessing.  As I had a massive hangover and felt insanely dehydrated the best thing I could do was go to the beach and sit in the sun…Made perfect sense.  R was desperate to go in the sea as I had been banging on about how amazing it was last time when he had the wrong shorts on so this time he had the right shorts on and wanted to take a dip.  Whilst he playfully paddled around in the sea, I sat on the beach covered up as I was already burnt and still struggling with my hangover.  Once R returned from the sea (I don’t think he had the same impact on the women and men that I had) we retreated to the hotel as I needed to lie down for a bit.  I needed to compose myself.

Once my hangover had subsided we headed out for dinner to the very nice Van Dyke Cafe on Lincoln Avenue.  The food here was not only plentiful but very nice with it, it may have been a little more expensive than usual, but what the hell it was our last night.  Whilst waiting for my food to arrive I couldn’t help but notice the strange set up on the table next to us.  With a combination of subtle hand gestures, and exaggerated eye movements I managed to get R to notice there was a stunningly beautiful blonde girl of about 20 years old sitting with a fat old guy in his, I guess mid 50’s.  This kind of thing really winds me up, and I always need to know what the hell is going on.  Obviously I couldn’t ask so I came up with 3 possible scenarios in my head:

A) He’s her dad.  This didn’t seem too likely as dads don’t generally get that touchy feely with their daughters…

B) She’s an escort girl/Prostitute.  Although maybe we can rule this out as another 3 men turned up and they all seemed to know her…Although maybe that isn’t a good reason to rule it out…If she was a prostitute I wouldn’t have minded her squeezing my balls the night before…instead of that other one.

C) He’s loaded and she’s just with him for the money.  Although this sounds cynical it’s also the most likely reason.

We left in disgust and headed to the Drexel Irish pub to catch the end of the basketball, Miami beat Boston 4-1.  Then on a rather quiet note we made our way back to the hotel, but not before popping in the Liquor Lounge for 1 last beer.

Day 11:

Up at 9:30am today as this was the last day, we were going home.  We checked out of the San Juan hotel and had breakfast at Jerrys Diner which wasn’t great actually.  I ordered the Roast beef sandwich, alas they were out of Roast beef so I settled for the Salami sandwich.  Surprisingly the Salami sandwich was just a Salami sandwich, literally Salami in bread.  Oh and a massive pickle on the side of the plate, which I don’t like anyway.  You can never get away from the pickle.

After this rather disappointing breakfast we caught the bus to the airport.  The bus cost $2.35 which was an  absolute bargain when you compare it to a taxi which cost $32.  Bargain!

We spent the next 4.5hrs hanging around the airport generally looking cool.  We had a couple of pints at the bar, a turkey sandwich and a packet of Miss Vickies salt n vinegar crisps.  We made the obligatory trip to Duty Free as R wanted to stock up on fags.  The sales assistant popped over to ask “Do you need any help?”.  Quick as a flash I replied “He certainly does need help”.  Ahh how we laughed.  A classic joke, executed to perfection.

The 8.5hr flight back was fairly quick although it was very cramped and my back and legs were aching quite considerably.  I watched  the film ‘The Dilemna’, and this didn’t really help matters, it wasn’t particularly funny and wasn’t particularly good, in fact nothing really happened. The only dilemna I could see was whether I was going to be able to finish watching the film or not.  They were also showing another film about a plane that flies from Miami to London, I guess this was the sequel to the original film that I saw on the way out.  Personally I thought the original was better, as is generally the case, not always, but generally.

We touched down in good ol’ Blighty at 8:40am, and after having no gay comments from passport control we touched down in good ol’ Basingstoke at 11:00am.

That’s it!  The holiday was over!  I had a fantastic time, it was an epic holiday, one of the best for a long time, but sadly nothing lasts forever.  What have  I learnt?  I hear you ask.  I have learnt the following:

Never drink Tequila, always use sun cream, never sit on feathered cushions, always use Mosquito spray and most important of all…always wear industrial ear defenders when trying to sleep…

The End.

The following takes place between 05:30hrs 2/5/11 and 06:00hrs 07/5/11:

Day 1:

Awoke at 05:30AM, but it didn’t matter as today we were going to Miami (we being me and my trusty sidekick R).  We jumped in L’s A-Team van at approximately 6:30AM and headed to Heathrow.  Nothing of any note happened at the airport, but my mild concern at potentially spending 10hrs on a plane was replaced by the excitement of 10 days in Miami and New Orleans.  Excitement was in the air.

We took off!  Within 5 mins of take off I had the woman in fronts chair in my face, this was most unwanted.  9hrs and 55 mins of the woman in fronts chair in my face wasn’t good, plus there was minimal leg room.  I don’t know why it is but I can never bring myself to lower my chair back on a plane.  I feel like I’d be invading the person behinds personal space, I don’t like it when it happens to me, so I never do it to anyone else, thus I spend all my flights sitting bolt upright.

I put the TV on.  There was a film just starting, it was a film about a plane that took off in London and had to make it’s way to Miami.  It was a fascinating film although to be honest it was a little slow in places.  I watched it for a couple of hours but began to get a little bored, so decided to see what else was on.  I decided to watch the film ‘The Green Hornet’.  This was not a great film, mediocre at best, the best thing about it was Cameron Diaz and she was crimally underused.  I would suggest if you haven’t seen it then don’t bother.

I decided to flick back and see how the plane was doing in the other film, it was doing well and I couldn’t help but feel a strange parallel between the film and my journey, especially as our plane and the plane in the film landed at the same time.  Strange.  Still I love a happy ending.

We landed at 2:15pm US time (7:15pm British time), and believe it or not we were 1 hour early.  Nice one Biggles.   Here we were…Miami baby!  Now all we had to do next was negociate passport control…It actually took longer to get through Passport control than it did to fly there.  I think it’s fair to say US passport officers are some of the scariest people you could ever meet.  Even though I have done nothing wrong ever they still have the ability to make you think you’ve done something wrong.  They put doubt in your mind and make you think that you’re up to no good.  Anyway the English guy at the front of the queue was getting asked all sorts of questions getting all sorts of paperwork out of his bag, it was like he was being questioned by Columbo or the Spanish Inquisition.  R and I began to panic, “What if we are bad people, and we just don’t know it?”.  I had all the documentation for the hotels in my bag, but R didn’t have any paperwork.  What if I get let in the country and he doesn’t?  We decided to approach the officer together, big mistake…”What is your relationship to each other?” He asked me.  “Err just friends, travelling together” I replied.  “Aah, are you friends?  Or are you friends…?” he asked with a funny look in his eye.  As he said this he interlocked his fingers and clenched his hands together.  Ahh bloody hell! 1o hours into our holiday and we had the first gay comment, bloody marvellous (not that there’s anything wrong with that, whatever floats your boat).  Well we tried to laugh it off.  “Just friends” I replied in a very masculine heterosexual voice.  R was told to take his pink suitcase and diamond encrusted Louis Vuitton handbag and get back in the queue. 

Taxi to Miami South Beath please and step on it!  We arrived at our hotel, the wonderful Essex House Hotel (obviously I tried taking photo’s of the sign and covering up the first two letters, hehe!  I managed to get a lampost to cover the first ‘s’ but that just made it the E sex House Hotel which doesn’t quite work.  Oh well, small minds and all that…).  The only way was indeed Essex with this hotel, usually a place this nice would be out of our league, but I guess we bought it in a sale.  Very nice.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Miami uh uh, Southbeach, bringin’ the heat, uh.  Haha! Can y’all feel that?  Can y’all feel that?  Jig it out, uh”.

It had been a long day and we needed a beer, we hit possibly our soon to be most visited bar of the holiday ‘Finnegans Way’.  We had beers and I had a pork sandwich (no gay connotations with that).

Within hours of being there I had been bitten to death by Mosquitos.  I had underestimated the mosquitos.

Day 2:

I got up at 9:30am, the beds here are very comfortable.

We took one of our long aimless walks before breakfast.  The problem is we cannot make a decision on where to eat so walk for miles in the boiling sun, hungry and thirsty just because we can’t make a decision.  No matter where we are in the world we walk aimlessly in search of food.  I had a Chicken burger and Chips for breakfast, when in Rome etc…It was nearly brunch by then.

Today was all about the beach, we needed a bit of beach action.  I needed to turn my superfit white body into a superfit adonis like tanned body.  We needed a plan, we couldn’t just go out there half-cocked so to speak otherwise we’d burn to a crisp.  We decided upon a 1 hr tanning session, 30 mins on the front, 30 mins on the back.  We needed to take it easy.  Of course I applied sun cream, but I’ll admit I’m crap at it.  I miss areas and never get it all on my back, hence after 1 hr, half my back was red, whilst the other half was white.  I looked like an idiot, a tanning disaster.

Anyway whilst lying there on the beach, I remembered a quote from R the night before.  His quote was “I’m not a pervert”.  What made me remember this was that a not unattractive woman had decided to lie on the beach not far from us.  I’d clocked this woman as soon as she got there, but obviously I only glanced at her in short sharp bursts, though as not to raise suspicion.  R however was wearing a new pair of sunglasses that he’d just bought, he was very proud of them.  He bought them in the shop earlier, when asked if they suited him I replied “Yeah, they look good”.  He was after a pair of Aviator shades like Tom Cruise in Top Gun.  There was something wrong with the shades but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, so I let him buy them.  Sadly he looked more Penelope Cruz than Tom Cruise and more Top Shop than Top Gun.  They were womens sunglasses!  Ha!

Nevertheless he wore his womens shades to good effect whilst definitely not ‘perving’ over the woman who was applying sun cream to her norks.  Topless.  I was half expecting him to go over and tell her she had missed a bit and offer to rub the cream in for her.  Fair play to him, she never noticed.  Or maybe she did, maybe she saw the female sunglasses and thought “well that can’t be a milky white British guy perving over me as she’s wearing womens sunglasses, it’s obviously just another woman who appreciates my body, just one woman complementing another woman in a strictly non sexual way with only just a hint of Lesbianism”.  I think I’ve thought about this way too much…

Drinks consumed during the afternoon included Coors, Heineken and an insanely strong Long Island Ice T.

“Bouncin in the club where the heat is on.  All night, on the beach until the break of dawn.  I’m goin to Miami, welcome to Miami”.

The evening consisted of some strong rum based cocktails in the hotel bar, before hitting the ‘Good news Cafe’.  Where the barman Tommy Banana, sorry misread his t-shirt..Tommy Bahama told us “Pimms tastes like Ass”.  I’m not really sure why he told us that as we weren’t drinking Pimms, and if he was trying to sell us some then he really needs to work on his sales pitch.  After this we headed back to our most visited bar ‘Finnegans Way’ for some Pool action.  If there’s one thing me and R are good at on holiday it’s beating foreigners at Pool, admittedly R is the better player.  Mainly because since he was old enough to hold a pool cue he has been playing Pool, even as a small child before he was tall enough to see over a Pool table he could play.  He would sit in his pram and use a complex system of mirrors attached to his cue to be able to see every ball on the table.  Anyway did I ever tell you about the time we took on the entire nation of Australia at pool and won?…That story is for another day.

So, we set up camp on the Pool table, when this time a gang of Cubans decided to try there luck against the Welsh Wizard.  Obviously R didn’t lose a game and the Cubans were defeated.  We were introduced to DonGato of DonGato Productions.  A shifty looking character who got his nickname because the pupils of his eyes were not circular but instead they were rugby ball shaped.  To be honest I’d had a few drinks and I had a hard time understanding what he was banging on about, I got it in the end.  To be honest the Cubans were a nice bunch of people, DonGato even thought R and I were 23 years old!  Sadly R told them the truth “We’re actually 27” he said.  DonGato couldn’t believe it.  Whilst the little Cuban guy and his Argentinian wife invited us to their family party which are legendary apparently.  Sadly we couldn’t make it although I doubt they would’ve remembered who the hell we were if we turned up on their doorstep “Hola! We’re here for the party…You don’t remember us?  Oh dear…Adios!” 

One last pint in Waxy O’connors Irish bar before heading home, I was a little drunk by now but two things were bothering me.

A)  I saw a man wearing shorts that were incredibly long, but should they really be called shorts?  At what point do shorts become longs?

B) Why was I attracting the attentions of not only Mosquitos but now cats?  I guess even they find me irresistable…

Day 3:

Breakfast at the 11th St Diner, Chicken sandwich.  This place was soon to become our favourite eating venue.  The diner is actually a silver railroad car which began life in Pennsyvania but now sits on the corner of 11th St and Washington.

After this we once again aimlessly wandered about but it was too hot, so we headed to the hotel pool to come up with some sort of plan.  Though the pool was small it was very nice and certainly did the job.  Not much else happened today, except watching some football before the evening set in.  We headed to the Good News Cafe, though Tommy Banana wasn’t working, then we stumbled across the Mayame Hotel bar.  It looked cool and sophisticated, right up our alley.  It was me and R all over, this is where we belonged.  It had a tropical beach hut bar in the middle of the hotel garden and there were a few cool looking people sitting at the bar.  “2 for 1 on cocktails ” the bouncer said.  So we were in, we couldn’t turn down the chance to look cool whilst drinking half price cocktails.  We had 3 cocktails each (My cocktail of choice for the evening was Caipirinhas), baring in mind it was 2 for 1 this was going to be cheap…errr not so.  Our bill came to $92 (£60)…Ouch.  It was at this point I rather coincidentally realised I had no money on me.  This forced R to pay on his credit card.  Who knows what happened to the half price cocktails, maybe they were half price and really they are double $92.  We both learnt from this experience, I learnt that it’s alway good to have R and his credit card around and he learnt to check I have money on me.

Day 4:

Today we were moving on to New Orleans for a few days, we bid a fond farewell to the Essex House Hotel and jumped on a flight to NOLA.  We arrived at 11:50am and we were picked up by E and his girlfriend G.  G is a born and bred New orleans resident while E is a Bostonian but spends a lot of time there.

We dropped our stuff off at there house and met there dog Otto.  I must admit he was a cool boxer dog, I’m  not sure how happy he was at the thought of spending the next 3 nights sharing his room with us. 

We took the streetcar (tram) into the downtown area for a good look around the city.  Our first stop for food in the city was a daunting experience as New Orleans is well known for having a big seafood scene, in fact I’ve never seen such a diverse selection of foods in restaurants, all kinds of bizaare meats and seafood.  Anyway Oysters are a speciality and we were forced to eat them.  Anyone who knows me, knows I’m always up for trying new foods.  I’m not the type of person who eats the same things everyday, you’ll always find me in the kitchen at home whipping up a culinary storm.  I’m not the type of person who eats Pizzas and burgers all the time.  Anyway I must admit I have never eaten oysters before and I was a little scared and apprehensive.  They looked horrible.  We were given crackers to eat with the oysters just in case.  Most hardcore people eat them on there own, but if you want to wimp out a bit you can put it on a cracker.  There wasn’t enough crackers in that restaurant to make me enjoy this but I had to do it…I put it in my mouth, bit down on it and it exploded in my mouth, it was slimey and smooth.  I swallowed it and just concentrated on the cracker…For a minute I thought I was going to bring it back up…I didn’t.  I wouldn’t be doing that again.  After I’d eaten it I found out that they are alive when you eat them!  Noooo!  There is no way Oysters and Crackers will replace my classic Saturday night snack of Cheese and Crackers.  Give me cheese please anyday.

I’m glad to say after this we got some proper food ie meat that is already dead.  Apologies to all the vegetarians out there, but you know I like meat (no gay connotations to that comment either).  We had dinner at the World War 2 museum, which consisted of pork sliders (mini baps with pork in them) and some sort of beef pie things (can’t remember the name).  After eating this feast I was surprised to see the manager come over and ask if the meal was ok.  E told her it was ok, but the chips were too salty and over spiced, so we got them free and I imagine the chef was made redundant.

Next we checked out the famous Bourbon Street, which is the home of Jazz.  The most famous name in Jazz.  I must admit even though it was the daytime and jazz is more of a night time activity I couldn’t see too much jazz going on.  We did see Preservation Hall which is possibly the most famous jazz club in the area, but what I did see was a sea of ‘jazz’ clubs of a different kind.  That’s right, strip clubs everywhere!  I don’t think I have ever seen so many strip clubs condensed into an area like that before.  Even during the daytime, there were strippers hanging out of the bars trying to drum up a bit of business.  A few years ago I would’ve been over the moon at finding this sort of place but I felt strangely nonchalant about the whole thing.  I imagine this is the type of place Americans go for stag doos or Vegas.

We walked a fair few miles today, all over the city.  In particular we made a beeline to a bar called Le Bon Temp Roule.  The rock/metal legend that is Pepper Keenan owns the bar and we wanted to meet him.  Apparently he can always be found in his bar, alas the one time I turn up he isn’t in.  It was a bit of a dive bar, but I liked it.  Quite a few beers on tap at the bar.  I didn’t really want the European beers that I drink all the time, I wanted something a bit more off the beaten track, something a bit more dirty.  There was a beer tap with a yellow rubber dog on top of it, I asked the barman what it was like.  I can’t remember what it was called, something like Surfin’ dog, or Dirty dog or Crazy surfin’ dog.  I don’t know.  Anyway the barman told me it “Isn’t a great beer, not very nice, you probably won’t like it”.  Well after selling it like that I was sold.  The barman was a born salesmen.  “2 pints of Crazy dirty surfin’ dog please!”.  I took a sip, it was digusting.  Needless to say it took a while to finish those beers.  The barman must have been pleased though, his cunning reverse psycology had sold probably the only 2 pints of that stuff ever.

Whilst walking back to the house we came across Magazine Street which has a few fancy shops and a few cool shops along it.  The shops were taking part in Shopfest, which effectively means all the shops stay open late and strangely to entice potential customers into their shops they give you free beer and nibbles.  This felt wierd, going into shops with no intention of buying anything, just going in to get free beer.  Of course we drunk as much as we could, we weren’t going to turn it down, but it did seem strange.  We went in one shop that specialised in feng shui-ing peoples home.  Basically they go in and remove anything that they believe is cluttering up somebody’s house, then sell it in their shop.  So they get paid to remove goods from a house then they make money selling the objects…What a great idea.  So we went in the shop which was being supervised by children, children hiding everywhere, operating the tills, giving out beer or Sangria if you  want it.  Needless to say we went in drank the beer, used the toilet, didn’t buy anything then left.

The evening was drawing to a close so we headed back to G’s house.  Otto was there awaiting our arrival.  At this point I knew something in the house was bothering me.  I didn’t know what.  My eyes were itching and more worryingly I was having problems breathing and my chest was very tight.  I could think of 3 possible reasons for this:

1) Otto the dog

2) Feathered cushions

3) Egg filled cookies

I unfairly thought that Otto the dog was to blame, I think I jumped at that conclusion too quickly.

I got no sleep at all that night due to 3 reasons:

1) R’s snoring was intolerable.  So loud.  It was like being in a room with a jumbo jet taking off whilst Maria Sharapova plays a 3 set tennis match against Victoria Azarenka, whilst a  Formula one car drives up and down the street outside at full speed.

2) I couldn’t breathe properly.

3) Worried Otto the dog would attack me because I suspected him of causing my allergic reaction.

Day 5:

I didn’t get any sleep at all, I was very tired.  I was half expecting to get up and see Otto the dog holding a pillow over his ears with his paws, I’m not sure how much sleep he got last night.

Today was all about going to the Jazzfest, this was one of the main reasons we were here.  It is a very popular festival, even though it is called Jazzfest it actually hosts all kinds of acts, Jazz,blues, gospel, rock, pop, etc.  It was an extremely hot day and being out in the sun all day with no real shade was difficult, any chance we had to walk through a tent we took it.  To cope with the heat we bought 2 large strawberry lemonades each then filled then when no one was looking with half a bottle of Vodka each…That should take the edge off…  Acts we watched today included Guitar Slim (Blues guitarist, too clean for me, need my blues to be a bit more dirty and unhappy), some Gospel (Praise the lord!), some Folk, The Soul Rebels Brass Band (very cool, synchronised dancing, excellent part band), Bonerama (white brass band, nice cover of Black Sabbaths War Pigs), Better than Ezra (Inoffensive tedious middle of the road crap).  Then onto the Headliners, Arcade Fire.  They were excellent, best band of the day for me.  They played all the hits off ‘Funeral’ except ‘Crown of Love’, but they never seem to play that…

“If you still want me, please forgive me, the crown of love has fallen from me.  If you still want me, please forgive me, because the spark is not within me”.

They played a great show, lots of energy and I was amazed by how they are all multi instrumentallists, continually swapping.  I get annoyed because I can’t play one instrument, yet these people can play four or five each.  They also have two good looking female violinists which made it even more enjoyable.

After 9 hrs in the sun it was time to leave, not before having a few beers at some post festival street parties.  We headed back downtown to the incredibly busy Bourbon Street area.  It was bedlam here now, crazy busy and strip clubtastic, I have to say it was too busy for me.  Drunk people falling out of allsorts of bars and the ‘clubs’ were in full swing.  We did maybe 3 more hrs of walking and drinking before settling in a bar with a pool table.  R was challenged to a game of doubles by a way too confident American guy and his mildly irritating girlfriend.  They tried every trick in the book to put us off, mainly the girl jiggling her boobs in front of the pockets etc.  It didn’t put us off, we crushed them.   After our victory we got a taxi home.

After complaining about R’s snoring the night before (I think Otto would complain if he could talk), I was hoping for a better nights sleep.  The snoring was more erratic, maybe 50-70% of the night was Snorefest but sadly for me R left his phone on all night and received some sort of text message in the middle of the night.  Which meant every 20 minutes or so a large “beep” would emanate from the phone, and it would do this until the message was read.  I couldn’t figure out what the noise was or where it was coming from.  I had a look around in the dark but couldn’t see anything.  I didn’t want to turn the light on in case it woke Otto up and he ate me.  So once again I got very little sleep, so even when R wasn’t snoring too much he still finds ingenious ways of keeping everyone else awake.

End of Part 1.

Sunday 20th March 2011.

Once again I found myself at Basingstoke train station.  The fact that I was there meant heavy metal was afoot.  Strangely I wasn’t on Platform 3 heading to Camden via Waterloo and the Northern line.  No sir!  I was on Platform 4, which could mean only one thing…I was catching the 18:47 train bound for Oxford, but I was cunningly getting off at Reading.

First obstacle to negotiate was the ticket gates.  Simple you might think.  Place ticket inside, ticket pops out, grab ticket, gate opens, hey presto!  Nope.  This gate was already open, so I casually strutted through cool as a cucumber.  Sadly the gate began to close on me mid strut.  I let out the type of high pitched scream only teenage girls at a Justin Bieber concert can emit.  In fact I think it was too girly/feminine even for them.

It was at that moment I thought I was going to die, crushed to death in the ticket machine at Basingstoke Train Station.  Not really how I imagined I was going to go.  My life flashed before my eyes…That didn’t take particularly long.  There was no way I was going out like that, so I pulled myself free and rather sheepishly made my way towards the platform.  At this point I was joined by someone who wants to remain nameless, but as he’s not Clint Eastwood we shall call him ‘P’.

P and I (That’s P and me, not P and somebody else called I.  To clarify nobody else will be entering this story called I).  So P (Him) and I (Me) made our way to the Pitcher & Piano bar for a pre-gig beer.  It was a fairly swish bar and was charging £3.95 a pop for a beer.  If the beer was expensive, you’d expect the toilets to be spankingly clean.  I headed to the toilets to stock up on tissues as we were seeing Napalm Death tonight and I know their romantic numbers always tug on my heart strings, bring a tear to the eye.

The plan was simple, duck in the cubicle, grab some bog roll and leave.  What I didn’t expect to see was a sight which will stay with me forever.  It looked like someone had fallen off the toilet seat, half way through their business, if you get my drift.  Then rather than using the aforementioned toilet paper, they just wiped their bum on the wall.

Shortly after this we were joined by ‘C’, but in no way am I insinuating that he perpetrated the toilet incident.  In fact he wasn’t even in the building at the time.

After another swift pint we made our way to the venue.  Tonight’s venue was the salubrious Sub 89 bar, which was probably half full, but half full with a full metal crowd.  As we sauntered in, the first band were just finishing, ‘Mutant Zombie Foetus’ they were called.  They were wearing studded leather wristbands, that tells you all you need to know.

It was at this point in the evening I decided to pull from my pocket with dazzling effect a packet of ‘Pom-Bear’ crisps.  I’ve never eaten Pom-Bear before, so this was an exciting moment.  I glanced at the back of the packet, it read “Pom-Bear created these yummy teddy shaped snacks for you and your friends to enjoy anytime”.  What it clearly should’ve read was “Pom-Bear created these yummy teddy shaped snacks for you and your friends to enjoy anytime, unless you are in a dirty rock club in Reading as they are forbidden”.  This was because as I was nearing the end of the packet a bouncer came over.  “No eating in here sir” he said.  “Err…they’re only Pom-Bear” I replied.  “No eating in here sir” was his monotone reply.  “But they’re pom-Bear, do you want one?” I replied quizzically.  “No eating sir” was his robot like reply.  So what he was telling me was that it was against the law for me to eat a packet of crisps in a dingy rock bar in Reading on a Sunday night.  He couldn’t even see the humour in a fully grown man (in his mid twenties) eating a packet of childrens crisps whilst watching death metal bands…I don’t know.  I could understand if I bought my own 3 course meal with me and a full waiter service.  Then assembled a fold out table and chairs and sat and ate the meal in the middle of the room, but I didn’t.

Speaking of bouncers, this was the third time that weekend that bouncers had annoyed me.  On Friday night in Basingstoke town centre they had stopped me and some friends getting into two bars.  First up the Rhu bar.  The Polish bouncer decided not to let a friend in as she did not have ID.  I don’t have a problem with him being Polish as I have a few friends that are Polish (although maybe not as many as I thought), but I do have a problem with him being a moron.

Anyway we then tried ‘Pure’ bar (Pure turd if you ask me).  Again my friend got turned away, but I guess that was because she is too good looking.  That’s the reason I usually get turned away from clubs, because of my intimidating good looks.  Just a glance through the window of this pretentious dump shows you that the majority of the clientele in here have fallen from the ugly tree, hit all the branches on the way down, then hit a carefully positioned trampoline at the bottom of the tree…  Whilst not getting let in I noticed a couple of women tottering about on high heels wearing dresses that they probably bought ten years ago when they were probably ten stone lighter.  I was tempted to run home and get my harpoon gun…I hate bouncers.  I digress…

Next on stage were a Welsh band called ‘Desecration’.  I wasn’t a big fan of this band, nothing to do with them being Welsh, just didn’t like them.  Sound wasn’t good, couldn’t hear the bass or the drums, could just hear the high pitched crackle of the guitar turned up way too loud.

Finally Napalm Death rolled on stage, now we were talking.  As expected they started with a Lady GaGa cover….Noooo! Of course not.  I must admit to not knowing too much of their material but they were excellent.  Fast, super heavy and raging against everything.  Always amusing to hear Barney’s inbetween song rants.  Anti-war, Anti-religion, Anti-dandruff and Anti-oxidants, generally Anti everything.

Halfway through their set C decided it was time for him to bid farewell.  He was concerned his local kebab shop would shut without him.  As he had ran a half marathon earlier in the day, who could begrudge him a kebab?  I’m sure Paula Radcliffe does the same.  Shortly after P decided to leave.  This was always on the cards as he had been drinking a bottle of water for the last half an hour and it was becoming embarrassing.  Eating a packet of Pom-Bear was supercool, but drinking water was unacceptable.

I decided to move a bit closer for the end of the set.  Excellent stuff.  It was a good night and I even got the drummer’s autograph, though not whilst he was playing, though that would have been very impressive.

It was 23:00 hrs and time to leave.  On my walk back to the station I noticed my left shoe was squeaking.  The only way I could stop it from squeaking was to almost invent my own Ministry of Silly Walks style walk.  Most embarrassing. 

After spending £1.60 on a Cadburys Twirl it was time for the 23:35 train home, calling at Reading West, Mortimer, Bramley and Basingstoke.  No falling asleep this time, hurrah!

The last obstacle to tackle was the taxi home.  Easy you might think…  Not when you have to share a taxi with a miserable as sin driver like this one.  £9.60 it cost to travel maybe three miles, then the fact he couldn’t even be bothered to tell me how much the fare cost.  I know it was in big glowing red digits in the front of the taxi, but it would have been nice for him to politely ask rather than sitting there with his hand out.  He didn’t say a word to me the whole journey, then sat there with his hand out.  I’m not expecting him to point out places of interest along the way, or give me a plotted history of Basingstoke from say Cromwell’s battle of Basing right through to the rise of Liz Hurley in the late 1990’s (nothing much has happened since).  However if he had I would’ve said “This has been a most insightful and educational journey home, why don’t we call it a tenner?  You can keep the change”.  However he didn’t so I told him rather sarcastically it had been a wonderful drive home, snatched my forty pence change, then slammed the car door and squeaked my way off into the distance…

Monday 21st Feb 2011.

Blimey!  It’s been over 2 weeks since the date above,  could be difficult to remember what happened.  Let’s see…

After another eventful and thoroughly rewarding day at work I headed off to London again.  Yep, that’s right, barely 2 days had passed since the incident of the previous blog, but I had obviously not learnt my lesson as I was going to jump right back out of the frying pan and into the fire.  So here we go, hold onto your hats again and fasten your seatbelts as this could get bumpy (or not, you never know).

Climbed aboard the 18:15 crazy train to London, final destination Camden Town (again) via Waterloo Station and then the Northen Line.  Fairly standard journey into London, nothing out of the ordinary appeared to be happening.  I must admit I was beginning to doze off on the train (and this was at 18:00, let alone say 23:00 hrs).  Even though this train terminated at Waterloo, there was probably a reasonable chance I would fall asleep, the train would arrive in London, then leave and I would wake up to find myself back in Basingstoke and effectively missing the whole evening.  I had to find a way of staying awake, how about scrutinising the other passengers in the carriage?  Ok, let’s do that…So the guy in front looked normal enough, but unsure as to what he was listening to on his Ipod.  Can only be described as the sound of a wet cat bouncing up and down on a set of Bagpipes during a thunderstorm.  It was either that or he was merely listening to a loose Jazz trumpet solo.

So what about the 2 guys opposite you may ask?  Well it appeared that one had got dressed in the dark, as he was sporting a fashion faux pas of the highest order…Well, it looked decidedly wrong to me, but what do I know?  Especially as I gave up modelling a few years ago due to me getting fed up with being treated like a piece of meat.  Looking back they were some of the worst years of my life.  I hated the fact that people were only interested in my looks, they didn’t seem to realise I had brains as well as beauty.  Don’t even get me started on having to spend every night out partying with Heidi Klum, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell et al…  It was a very superficial world and I was glad to get out of it.  I digress…

Anyway, the guy opposite was wearing black trousers with vertical grey pin stripes, so far so Ralph Lauren you might say.  However he had matched the black trousers with vertical grey pin stripes with a black jumper with thick horizontal grey stripes!…This was too much for me to bare.  The combination of vertical and horizontal stripes had driven my eyes into a state of frenzy.  My eyes were crossed and my mind was discombobulated, somehow I had pull myself away from the human magic eye puzzle opposite me and focus on the job at hand, ie staying awake.  I know!  Focus on the wet cat bouncing up and down on a set of bagpipes during a thunderstorm….Ahh, and relax.

I made it!  I was now back in Camden (around 19:30).  I was on a solo mission as sadly nobody else was interested in seeing the bands.  No matter, I didn’t need to hold someone’s hand to Rock out!  First of all time for a swift pint in the pub upstairs, nothing really happened in here I’m afraid.  There may have been a couple of couple’s getting a bit smoochy near me, which was was mildly annoying.  However not as annoying or as unnecessary as seeing a couple in their late 50’s or early 60’s getting smoochy in the swimming pool the other day (Sunday 6th March).  Do I really want to see that?  No!  I’m swimming.  Anyway, I digress.

So pint 1 was consumed, so I headed back down to the Underworld, the scene of the crime barely 3 nights previous.  Pint 2 was bought, merch was avoided as it was expensive and cheap at the same time.  First band up were ‘Burn Alaska Burn’.  Unsure what to say really, they were ok, didn’t really get me going one way or the other.  Back to the bar for pint number 3, then back to watch ‘Carpathian’.  These guys were pretty good, much better than their name suggests, pretty heavy hardcore and very polished considering it was the first night of the tour, infact they sounded the best all evening.

Back to the bar for pint number 4, before watching the main band ‘Defeater’.  For a very heavy hardcore band with incredibly depressing songs and depressing lyrics, they had a very large following of ‘cool’ kids.  If you weren’t wearing a back pack and a hat and weren’t experimenting with a newly grown beard (and that was just the women…Joking) then you weren’t worth knowing.  Nonetheless, the band were pretty good although a short set mixed with long gaps in between songs gave the impression they may not have been quite with it.  A good gig though.

So 23:00hrs and time to hot foot it back to Waterloo and make sure I get the not remotely crazy train back to Basingstoke and at no point fall asleep and wake up in Bournemouth or France.  Stage 1 of Operation ‘Negative Snoozefest’ was to buy the now legendary Taw Valley Cheddar Cheese and Ham Baguette and a full fat sugar rush balls of war bottle of Coke.  Bingo.  Next up, consume them on the train in a timely manner, preferably using my time management skills so as not to finish the food before the train even leaves the station.  At least have something to eat by the time we get to Clapham.  I don’t think I lasted that long…

I could feel myself starting to doze off, dreaming about Heidi Klum and Cindy Crawford playing Jazz trumpet solo’s in the rain  (I don’t think that’s a euphemism, but not sure).  I couldn’t fall asleep on a school night, I had to work the next day.  I couldn’t miss another day of work in case they decided to take my pilots license away.  I decided to stick the Ipod on and crank the volume up 11.  The sheer Rock power was the only force which could keep me awake, and no doubt probably keep the rest of the people in the carriage awake.

‘Welcome to Basingstoke’, get in there!  I had made it, and not only that but I was also back home and tucked up in bed by 00:45.

A true story.

Friday 18th Feb 2011

It was a Friday not like any other, simply because I had something to do.  Got up, went to work, but that’s not important.  Went to Tesco, blah blah blah, you’ve heard that all before.  Oh you haven’t heard about Tesco?  That’s a story in itself, but that’s not important right now.  Went home, put my clean black ‘Slayer’ T-shirt on, ahh yeah now we’re talking.  You can see where this story is going, it’s going to get seriously metal.  More metal than you can handle.  If you’re of a nervous disposition or just a bit flouncy then look away now…

So, climbed aboard the 16:57 crazy train to London Waterloo, arrived at Waterloo around 6pm, I don’t need to be exact.  Hot footed it down to the underground and climbed aboard the crazy train to Camden Town.  Oh yeah, you can already smell the joss sticks, or at least I could as I spent about 30 mins standing next to one in the Camden Eye pub.  I was waiting for two fairly Metallic acquaintances to arrive.  At precisely 6:30pm they did not arrive, however at around 6:41pm they duely arrived, bounding into the public house with their metal horns ablazing.  To preserve their innocence we shall call them Chris and Nick or C and N for short. 

After 2 pints in here we moved to the Worlds End pub for pint number 3.  After swiftly disposing of pint number 3 we moved downstairs to the ‘UnderWorld’.  I was expecting a lung full of sweat as we walked in but lo and behold it didn’t smell too bad.  It didn’t smell of roses but it didn’t smell of sweat, looks like those new air conditioning units are already paying dividends. 

It was time to crank up the metal, pint number 4 was bought and we headed as close as was acceptable for three impossibly attractive blokes in their early 30’s get could to the stage without fending off rabid teenagers potentially in the throes of puberty who were intent on starting their own ‘Circle of Death’.  Sadly nothing to do with Elton John.

The band were called ‘Feed the Rhino’ and they weren’t half bad, all synchronised headbanging in an oldskool Maidenesque way, but with more up to date riffing and screaming.  After they finished we retreated to the bar for pint number 5 and a brief look at the merch, nothing doing there.

So to the main band…Devil Sold His Soul.  It was a good set by them, better than the last couple of times I’ve seen them.  There’s no denying the old hits are better than the new songs.  There’s also no denying it’s pretty depressing music, but at the same time has a slightly uplifting feel to it.  They take you down to the bottom, make you feel a tad cheesed off then bring you back up and let you leave on a high.  Not before finishing pint number 6 by the way.

So we left the Underground, back upstairs overground, wombling free.  It seemed stupid to go now, it was early but I can’t remember the time.  So pint number 7 was consumed, it was at this point we may have spoken to some strangers, can’t remember who they were, don’t really care.  Pint 7 was finished so C and N decided to head off into the night on their merry way home.  I decided to stay in the pub for a small amount of time on my own, don’t know why. 

It was at this point the evening took a more sinister turn.  I cannot remember getting the train back to Waterloo, but I obviously did.  I can only speculate as to what happened next but, what potentially happened next shaped the rest of my evening.  Usually at this juncture of the evening I would buy a Taw Valley Cheese and Ham baguette and a bottle of Coke for 2 reasons.  Reason 1 is that the eating of the baguette gives me something to do and, Reason 2 the Coke keeps me awake.  However I can only assume I was faced with a crucial decision, buy a Taw Vally Cheese and Cheddar baguette and a bottle of Coke or get the next train which is leaving any second.  I can only assume I opted for the train and ignored the Taw valley cheese and ham baguette and a bottle of coke.  So you can see what was going to happen, and so should I.  I was Taw Valley Cheeseless with a one way ticket to snoozeville.

I woke up…Where the hell was I?  This wasn’t Basingstoke…Bollocks.  I was in trouble, I’ve done this time and time before, waking up in all sorts of South Coast resorts, Southampton, Eastleigh and Winchester.  However nothing prepared me for the sign as I got off the train…’Welcome to Bournemouth’.  “Aahhh S**t!”, was my fairly restrained reply.  Although to be honest, I was down, dejected and pretty fed up, I couldn’t even muster the effort to swear properly.  All trains back towards London had finished for the night.

So to the taxi rank.  I approached the first taxi in the que.  To be honest the driver looked like he had crossed eyes, I’m not sure if they were originally crossed or just crossed once he found out where I wanted to go.  “Hi, can you go to Basingstoke please?”.  “Ha Ha!” Was his reply, similar to Nelson from the Simpsons.  He wound his window up and screeched off into the distance…I guessed he didn’t want to go to Basingstoke.

I was flummoxed, now how do I get home?  It was 2am now and options weren’t at a premium.  Aha!  Get a coach you say?  Of course.  There was a coach going to London at 3am!  So I stood in the pissing rain outside Bournemouth train station for 1 hour until the coach turned up.  I had £25 on me and couldn’t find a cash machine, luckily the fare was £23, finally I’d caught a break…

Got the ipod out and rocked out whilst on the coach, thank god for my ipod, I would’ve gone insane without it.  We arrived at London Victoria at 5:30am and finally it felt like I was on the way home.  Ony an hour to wait until the 6:32am to Portsmouth departed.  Obviously if I had fallen asleep again on this train I would’ve been severely pissed off, but I didn’t.  Got off at Clapham and after buying a bottle of Ribena and a newspaper (no need for an Upper Crust Taw Valley Cheese & Ham baguette and a bottle of Coke now, didn’t want to rub salt in my tired wounds) I was back on the next train home.

Finally I arrived back in Basingstoke at around 8am, jumped in a taxi.  Told the taxi driver this very story, he laughed and hopefully so did you, I didn’t.

At 8:30am on Saturday 19th Feb 2011 I climbed into bed and drifted off to sleep…..the phone rang and woke me up, “leave me alooooooone!” I shouted, at my empty bedroom in my empty flat…..I drifted back off to sleep.  1 hour later, the phone rang again “Nooooooooooo!” I shouted, at my empty bedroom in my empty flat…..I drifted off back to sleep…1 hour later the phone rang again…You get the idea.