See Sea(lions), Si!

At 2pm on my last full day in P. Madryn I strolled nervously down to Scuba Duba where I donned a suit made of rubber. While no farmers from the midwest were involved I was still pretty nervous. (For those in the dark - during my summer working as a door-to-door salesman in the states my hard-sell approach got me into a scrape with some farmers who were very much into wearing S&M and fetish gear). I´d not dived for four or five years and couldn´t remember what the bejesus the rules were or how to use the kit. The guy in the shop, Santiago, assured me all would be well and so I waddled across the road to join Bruno and, the ships captain, Carolina on the beach.

On the journey out to Punta Loma I was shown some caves where the Welsh settlers had used to cosy up in when they arrived, told some history of the Southern Sea Lion colony we were about to visit and some information on the boat. Despite my insistence there was prescious little information about how to use Scuba gear. What I did get was a quick run through of "this does that, that does this, run if you see a shark!". As the ship had dropped anchor I could see we were close to the colony, but I had no idea if they would come into the water nor what they would be like - playful and fun or a bit shirty.

It was with some trepidation that I put on my mask, flippers and tank and tumbled backwards into the icy cold water. Once I got my breath back and got the old BCD inflated I waited for Bruno (the only other person on the dive with me) before we descended beneath the waves. The visibility was pretty good and I was starting to get used to the equipment and to adjust to being under the waves. However, the lower we went the more I felt like I was in the middle of a horror film. Out of the corner of my eye I could see flashes of movement but when I turned my head to look there was nothing there in the gloom. I felt some genuine fear and started to wonder why they were called sea LIONS.

We got to the bottom (about 6m) and found a flat leafy patch to sit and suddenly we were surrounded by several sleek and swift bullets of blubber. My eyes nearly popped out of their sockets at what I was seeing before me and I kept forgetting to breath such was my amazmenet. They were beautiful and elegant with massive eyes and long whiskers that gave them the appearance of a soggy labrador begging for food at the dinner table. At first I was pretty nervous, but I mellowed as their curiosity and proximity increased. I reached out to touch one and it nibbled at my fingers with its sharp dirty teeth. I could also feel them nibbling at my head, arms and legs. (I had been told to expect this as its kinda how they communicate).

Suddenly, after a few minutes of us getting to know each other, a shadow descended on us and I looked up and saw a bloody enourmous submarine of a Sealion - at least 4 times bigger and meaner and darker looking than the ones playing with us. I looked at Bruno and he gave the handsignals for "Male" and then for "lets give it flippers out of here". We swam on for 10 or 15m and the smaller sea lions followed us and we carried on messing about, however, it wasn´t long before the big man was back making sure were weren´t messing with is harem. We moved on again and the Alpha males tailed us, so after about a total of 35 minutes down there with them we ascended to the surface. At the top many of them broke the surface and looked a bit miffed we weren´t playing anymore, but with the big grey blur still below us it was time to go back to the boat. Plus, I was bloody freezing.

Back on the boat, satisfied no doubt that we were buggering off, I could see the males drag his big fat ass back onto the rocks. As Carolina fired up the boat and I slurped on some hot chocolate I looked into the water and could see loads of them at the surface looking a like a playful pup waiting for you to throw a stick, but who knows that you´ve already turned for home. I gave them a little wave goodbye and grinned, my mind blown, as we gunned it back to shore.

Some Snaps

Wales

Monday Dec 3rd saw Em (a girl from Leicester) and me head to the "welsh" towns of Dolovan, Gaiman and Trelew. These towns were where the welsh settlers had set up camp after leaving their homeland because of getting throughly fed up with the disappointing attitude from the brits.

It had a been billed as a very welsh thing and lots of welsh tea houses and yadda yadda yadda, but, as Brits, we were naturally a bit disapointed.

The tea and cake we had was ok, but the bread was stale, boyo, (and believe me i know stale bread), there were no bloody people speaking bloody welsh and no one doing welsh jigs nor tom jones...

The touristy crap aside, the best thing was seeing the left over welsh genes knocking about. We saw a little red headed welsh looking girl with a thick spanish accent... tho i think what we were expecting was very argentine looking people with thick welsh accents. heh ho

my brother

There were many day trippers on the bus back to P-Madryn - all in highspirits and drunk on the sun, salty sea air and rum.

It turns out that they´re fairly strict about where you sit on buses and i found my tired body was next to a local man of about 45, a goatee beard, long grey hair, leathery tanned skin and not too many teeth through which whistled the stale smell of booze. He started speaking in very rapid slangy slurred spanish but we managed to agree that i was from england and that he was from paraguay, but worked on a construction site in P.Madryn.

He then got quiet excited and said that we were brothers. "¿por que?" I asked not warming to the idea. He then said something i didn´t catch in spanish. "no entiendo" i said regretfully thinking i should have have just smiled agreeably not wanting this happy drunk to turn aggressive. What he meant then became obvious as he said, loudly, first in english and then, for the benefit of the mainly argentine passengers, in spanish: "Because we both hate the argies and love to kill them!".

I hope my pleas of "No Yo, Senor! No Yo!" carried around the bus but i think it may have been drowned out by the noise he made to accompany his mime of shooting uzis in the air like a mexican bandit...

I very quickly shoved on some music and feigned sleep. When waking from the real thing as we arrived in P.Madryn I noticed my brother had had the boistriouness bounced out of him on the bumpy road back. There was a slimy trail down his front that culminated in a puddle of sick at his feet. Miraculously there was not a drop on me or my rucksack - cheers, bro.

Whales

So, once aboard the good ship ´HydroSport´ we were warned by el Captain that we may have a bit of a wait on our hands. I was mentally preparing myself for an hour or two to wait. It´s the end of the season for the Southern Right Whale here in P.Madryn and most of them have already headed south to Antartica for the summer. However, after only 20 minutes the captain pointed off the starboard side - looking over I could see nothing but waves and a set of sleepy Sealions resting on the rocks.

Then all of a sudden rising out of the water came the biggest living thing i shall probably ever see. It was incredible. Majestic. Beautiful. I even gasped and swore in english, spanish and german. Then junior (as big as a bloody big car) turned up for a nosey.


I´m told that these were the last the last left in town and I feel very lucky just to have seen them. However, many other people I spoke to just saw them swimming around and blowing their blow holes, but while we were out there they started leaping out of the water and doing the whole splashing around thing. Holy Shit /Merde / Sheisser!! My photos do it no justice, of course, but it was remarkable and quite quite special I can tell you.


We spent about 45 minutes following them and then sadly returned to Terra Firma (oh - yeah - Terra means land and Torres means Towers... thats been bugging me for days nows).

In Patagonia...

"You´re not looking for a job, I suppose?" Milton Evans asked. It was lunchtime and he presented me with a slab of meat on the end of a small sword.
"Not particularly."
"Funny, you remind me of Bobby Dawes. Young Englishman, same as yourself, wandering around Patagonia. One day he walks up to an estancia and says to the owner: ´If you give me work, you´re a saint, and you´re wife´s a saint, and your children are angels, and that dog´s the best dog in the world.´But the owner syas, ´There is no work.´´In which case´ Bobby says, ýou´re the son of a whore, your wife is a whore, your children are both monkeys, and if i catch that dog, I´ll kick it´s arse till its nose bleeds.´"

Thanks to Bobby Bowley for the tipping me off about Bruce Chatwins excellent book - In Patagonia. Its a fine read even if you´ve no intentions of heading to this amazing land... For me it´s made me laugh a fair bit and added a lot of colour and history to some of the unexpected elements of Argentina (e.g. Welsh people, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Bobby Dawes).

I´m getting to the Whales....

So, Puerto Madryn is big news not because its a crappy town with the big pier but because of what´s to see and do in Peninsular Valdes. This huge spit of land is home to many lovely plants and animals. The number of tour operators in P. Madryn might well equal the total sum of wildlife, but I shunned them all and as an independent traveller I travlled independently to the main town (if you can call it that) on P.Valdes - Puerto Pyramides.

After casing the joint for the best whale watching deal I started chatting to a very cool Czech guy - Jirka - who was travelling properly independently with only a tent and his wits. He laughed at my "very english humour" and we shared nightmares over living near Basingstoke (he had been a handy man for a retired Colonel near doughnut city to fund his trip). Like a good Douglas Coupland novel he could sum things up (in this case the trials and tribulations of being on the road) with wry accuracy and a good line in humour. He shared with me some fine tips and, after we parted like old friends, I felt like I should buy a tent and a sleeping bag and rough it a bit.. which i still haven´t done, tho he has encourgaed me a few times by e-mail since.

other stuff on Bs As

So - just quickly then:

- beer - stella is delicacy here - go figure. quilmes, a fairly decent local brew, has pretty much cornered the market here tho...
- going out - it seems that argentines don´t go out for a night out until about 1am and parties aren´t pumping until about 3 or 4. nuts. i´ve tried a couple of times - oh how i´ve tried- but almost always need to pass out at about 3.30...must be my age... btw - have i mentioned that i was accused of having a mid-life crisis by some stuck up little 22yr old madam from england? when i was her age i had a bit more respect for my elders i can tell you. kids today....


so anyway - yes - three weeks in Bs As studying spanish (well kinda... the last week and a haf was a bit sow and i maybe didn´t give it my full attention...which i´m regretting now) and i was mad keen to get out of the city. kinda thankfully the ady running the homeess shelter i´m gonna help at was busy for teh couple of days i was gonna head there, so i changed my plans of boozing in the big city and booked a ticket for puerto madryn... which i´ve already mentioned i think...

anyway - yeah. Puerto madryn was like a flipping ghost town when i arrived at mid afternoon. I checked into my hostel which was,again,like a zombie virus had swept through a week before. i went for a walk along this holidays first beach and then along the town pier (to see my 2nd big flag of the trip - tho madrids big flag can sleep easy for now) when i came back to shore the town was FULL UP and bustling. it was a bit freaky. anyway. it turns out everyone who goes to puerto madryn goes there for day trips and not for the town....

bugger... i´ve run out of time again. i´m now in chile (i´ve been to Ushuaia since my last post) and am in punta arenas and am heading for punta natales to do some 4 day walk round some montains. the place is called torres del paines.... i know that torres is land, but i hope paines doesn´t mean pain..... i´m not sure if i really am the outdoor type...

Btw - i´ve not had a cigarette for 5 days now... which is odd becuse i was smoking like a bloody chimney for the first month and sounded like i´d borrowed pat butchers larynx.

The greatest sandwich ever

just so you can sleep easy, sndthry. the pre-sealion sandwich was the best i´ve ever had and easily gets in the top three sandwhiches of all time. sure you get jamon y queso the world over, but the bread here was just the right side of stale, you could tell the processed ham had ben steamed of the bones with love and the weight of melted cheese was greater than my mochila / rucksack. i´ve had nightmares for a week.

mmmmm...

Bs As

So yes, before i get up-to-date I shall share a quick overview of Buenos Aires.

Folk
Portenos are ace people it turns out. Very friendly, convivial and like a good laugh. But not as much as they like dogs. Of which there are kazillions and, consequently, bazillions of pro dog walkers exercising 10 at once. I saw a fight between the dogs of two rival dog walkers - very funny to see the humans getting dragged down the street as the hounds took flight for a royal rumble. However, no-one likes picking up dog poo very much. My trainers have collected some soveniurs along the way. in Argentina they also love the Mullets and Rat Tails here - no two haircuts are the same. They also like beards so I fitted in fine (NB: in my folly i left my beard trimmers at home so i made my spanish teacher write down very clear instructions that i could read out to Barbers to get my facial folicles trimmed... it worked too...tho its a little bit sculpted like a "Just For Men" advert).

Getting about
The aforementioned subway system is good and cheap (just over 10p to go where you want) and taxis abound (again fairly cheap, but it can be expensive if they give you the ´tour´or pull the old "that´s a fake 50" trick). However, my favourite mode of transport was the Collectivios (buses). They´re brilliant. They have, I kid you not, about 1000 different routes. The buses of each route have they´re own colours with the drivers ties reflect the team strip. Again they cost about 10p and, not that I´ve turned into a Bus Spotter, if i was forced to choose the best route i would have to settle on the 152. Dedo Arriba!

One thing that did cross my mind was how screwed this enourmous city would be if / when we all run out of petrol. I think our grey haired friend above might, instead, be waving his middle finger about (with his 152 tie round his head as he loots an electronics shop). Still, at least the stinking fumes would vanish.

Cultural differences / stuff
Men kiss each other goodbye. Thanks to the infinite wit and wisdom of Rob Andrews I understand why (back in the day you´d complement folk or pass on secret messages and stuff). Which is fine...except I wasn´t really expecting, as i said goodbye to a Porteno friend, to have a peck planted on my cheek. That or i´d gone in the wrong kind of bar and had a dose of Rehypnol slipped in my drink and he thought i was out of it.

They love a good protest - nearly everyday there was some group or other having a pop at the government in the main square (no posties that i could spot, tho, mum). The most moving one of all tho is the weekly (Thursdays at 3.30pm) protest by the Madres de Plaza de Mayo. Very moving stuff...

ummm... i´m out of time. I´m in Puerto Madryn at the moment and have to get a quick bite to eat before i do a scuba dive thing with some sealions. Can´t wait - i have a feeling this could be one of the highlights of the trip...

Tango Tango

So, one person I haven`t mentioned yet is Dario. A properly properly sound porteno (a native Bs As). He`s related to a friend of mines brothers wife. James Araci (said friend) kindly put me in touch with him and Dario (and his sister Lisa and their buddies) have been really kind in tipping me off about some cool stuff todo.


One of the said cool things we`ve done is head to see the Orquestra Tipica Fernandez Fierro at their own very cool venue Club Atletico Fernadez Fierro. It was brilliant.


I arrived there a bit early and there were Tango Lessons just starting up so I joined in. Of the thousands of words the instructors were saying, I understood only a few but soon enough my partnre and i were swirling round the room treading on my (very short) partners toes. Tango is mentioned everywhere in Bs As and i thought it was just a tourist gimmick, but apparently people genuinely love it. And i can see why. when done properly it`s amazing to watch.

It transpires that the man leads the way and the woman has to try and guess whats gonna happen next. This was not easy for me (a tall, indecisive, polite englishman) but, my partner, Anna (a fairly short, tho mobile, Argentine) was fairly game and i was soon tripping her up on the cramped dancefloor. Twas great fun.

Anyway - when the lesson (or milonga) was over the show proper began. On stage trooped on a pianist, two dudes on double bass, three chaps on the violins and four fellas playing what looks like an accordian, but isn`t. Anyway, they were wicked. With no percussion they banged out some brilliant tango and salsa tunes. I think they`re very well respected and are sort of making tango cool again with their alternative approaches to stuff and things... i don`t really know. all i know was that it was good. yes.

My First Loco In South America

So. Theres this thing that i`m pretty good thats been dubbed a "locochimpo". The root of the name is a long and embarrasing story, but essentially to LOCO is where one royally put ones foot in ones mouth and through lack of thought unwittingly cause offence and / or provides the tinder and the flame to a potentially dangerous situation. (The Brothers Clark and Andy Mac may be able to provide a better description).

On Saturday last week I went to a barrio /district of Bs As called La Boca to meet some New Yorkers I`ve been hanging out with - Kelty and Rob. (In fact i had my first ever thanksgiving dinner in their flat the week before... tho we had steak and chorizo sausage rather than turkey... and some slight american chap managed to eat through half a cow. He had the meat sweats after that, alright).

La Boca is a fairly dodgy neighbourhood and apart from two or three blocks around a very colourful street called Caminto its fairly rough. I heard a story/ travellers myth about a Swedish guy who independently went to see a Boca Juniors game in La Boca and got mugged at gunpoint by some children clad in the blue and yellow of boca juniors. Cute. Its very weird. I`ve never been anywhere where the divide between safe and dangerous is so stark and obvious.

So, naturally, I decided to walk the 10/15 blocks along what i had been told were the "safe streets" from San Telmo to meet them in Caminto. My map reading skills let me down and i took a wrong turn a couple of blocks early. I kept my cool when i noticed my mistake, but still quicked my pace through a couple of quadras and started to sweat when (i thought) folk were giving me some funny looks.

Thankfully, I got there safe and sound, but when i sat and considered what i was wearing i was all the more grateful for still being alive....without thinking i had decided to wear the yellow and blue t-shirt here (this computers playing silly buggers and i can`t seem to paste it in)... it`s obviously no surprise that my beeches / death to boca juniors t-shirt could have caused a few eyebrows to be raised... but, thankfully, no guns.

hola

So - apologies for the break... time really does zip by.

I was a bit worried, before i came away, about how easy i would find it to adjust from a fairly full and busy life to one where i please myself. How would i find not doing much? how would i fill my days?

well...it turns out, its been fairly straitforward and painless (apart from some early starts for school). Time has become a fairly unimportnat concept (apart from for buses and spanish lessons and even then Argentinian time is fairly flexible) and i eat when i`m hungry and sleep when i`m tired (i recommend everyone has a siesta). oh and drink beer when the sun sets.

Today is my last day in Bs As... for the time being. I shall return to this fine city and do it properly. Due to the spanish classes it feels like I`ve not done everything i want to do in this town. However, three weeks into my trip and muy desperate to see a bit more of Argentina and spend some time in somewhere a bit more chilled (Bs As houses a third of the argentinain population).

So, now that schools out, i`m headed out of the city with Don Otto to a town 20hrs away by bus called Puerto Madryn. On route i hope to finally do some reading (i fear i brought too many books) and once there i intend to see a whale or two with my own eyes.

Yo vivo en Republic de Indonesia

So, yes. 59 calle (street) Republica de Indoneasia has been my pad for the last 5 or 6 nights. A lovely, traditional Argentinan house owned by a kindly latin lady called Diana (dee-anna) with her adult sons and two Japanese students - all of whom have made me feel welcome. I have my own room which, seemingly from the moment i entered, my rucksack exploded and I´ve filled every flat surface with my stuff). Diana has fed me well (not helpping my stool count with steak on the first night) and has paitently put up with me taking an hour over dinner to say the simplest things wrong.

Speaking of which, the spanish course has taken up nearly all my time and energy for the past week or so. I signed up for a course starting at 9am, so have been getting up at the usual hour and commuting on a crowded subway train to get to a big old building in downtown...just like being back in Londres.

Except ...
- The weather has taken a turn for the better.
- I clock off at 1pm.
- That crowded train is ace. The line I´m on is the oldest in Bs As and the wooden trams are equally old. The windows at the front have meant I´ve been pushing kids out the way and laughing like Homer Simpson with Spiderpig as I watch the upcoming tunnel...

The course is fairly hardcore and I´ve been spending my afternoons (and some evenings) on the roof of the house trying to get these damn spanish words into my head (all power to Clarkovich for his skills... and all spanish speaker while we´re at it - how do those olive skinned buggers do it?). As such, this holiday hasn´t quite felt like a holiday as yet. However, it most certainly isn´t work so you´ll get no complaints from me.... just not much gloating about yak treking with my new best mates SmurfMan Frosty, Jazz Fingers Gunter III and Peter Puker: Commander in Chunder on the Royal Feet (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) ... yet.

(NB: the last bit was for the benefit of my colleague and friend Liz Mickel who complained I wasn´t shoving in enough exclamation marks, crazy names of people you´ll never meet or hear of again and in jokes about being sick).

me no hablo bueno espanol

aye yae yae! espanol es muy dificile.

So it seems that i´ve spent the last couple of days with my head buried in spanish notes trying to figure out whats what. bloody hell - it´s a trickier than an argentinian wonder kid on the left wing.

on the upside, i have moved into a really lovely house near the rio de janiero stop on the Bs As subt. it´s a little way out, but its a properly nice pad. more on that later.

voy ir a una cerveza (o dos!).

ciao

Bs As = cool... and wet.

So, my Dad is a travelling gypsy these days who, according to the rumours my cousin has been spreading around her school, is pootling round europe smoking cannabis. As he himself put it, at least she doesnt know about the cocaine and the heroin.... tho that may change if she sees this...sorry Dad.

Anyway - Mr G Hayes and I have a running fued about how the good the weather might (or might not) be wherever we are. I was looking forward, what with being in the Southern hemisphere, to spending the lions share of the next 6 months being genuinely smug about the excellent climatic conditions I was enjoying. Sadly, however, any plans Ive had to becoming tanned have been dashed by greay clouds and rain drops the size of budgie heads. Hmmph...

La Bomba De Tiempo

Monday night I rocked out with Pete (a New Yorker who runs a Pizza Place in Mar del Plata), Monica (an urban planner from Colombia) and Mike (a well travelled flamenco playing dude from California) to the incredibly cool outdoor KONEX centre to see a percussion band called La Bomba De Tiempre.

The show started with a group of their students knocking out the rythyms. There were about 16 dudes and dudettes playing a variety of percussion instruments and they would take turns to play conductor. It was proper ace to see and hear the way they controlled the bands beat, dropping instruments in and out of the weaving beats. Magic.

Then the real deal started...holy moly, they were properly brilliant. Ive not had a listen to their myspace page so im not sure if its one of those things that are awesome when you see it on your hols and yet the journey home seems to turn the music on the cd into little better than than peruvian pan pipes (of which ive already seen two bands on the street and no doubt with more to come).

The show began very early for Bs As at 7pm and was all over by 10. Well, over at least inside of the Konex centre as outside a load of dudes with percussion instruments (including a cow bell which, for my money, you cant ever have enough of) spontaneously popped up and kept the beats pounding that some capoeira kids used to put on a show as the dancing crowd spilled out into the road.

Muy muy bueno.

Boca post 2

A couple of things I forgot to mention about the game:
- The Throne of Maradona - Before i came away i was told that your man Diego had a throne at the boca stadium and that no one was allowed to leave the ground until the scorer of the "cosmic kite" had stood up to go. When i got in the ground i looked around for a 6ft golden seat, but the guide pointed to 4 yellow plastic chairs in the middle of a row of blue seats as he told me Diego would not be holding court today.
- Man of the match - despite scoring two goals Martin Palermo does not receive the coveted very un-dude MoM award. Rodrigo Palacio played a good game as he danced around the Velez defence, but the tireless running, strong tackles and crisp passing of Sebastián Battaglia means he wins a bottle of the inexpensive yet very tasty Malbec wine which i shall drink in his honour at somepoint in the next few days. Well done Seb. Keep on Battaglia-n. (hmmm).

The first weekend

So, that first night i ended up passing out and so missed the steak dinner with the chileans. However, since then ive made up for it with two grande steaks in two nights (one was probably the best steak i will probably ever have - if you ever go to BA get a steak from La Cabrera in Palermo). That Immodium is starting to feel like a waste of money now...

This weekend Ive been staying in a hostel in San Telmo in BA. Very nice it is too with its leafy cobbled streets. However, that might all end tonight as I have signed up to a Spanish Course and maybe a homestay thingy. The school ive chosen has come recommended by a couple of people, but its also the most inexpensive place ive seen so far. i figured that the money id save on the school could be put to good use when i get fed up with staying in dorm rooms....or to fuel my steak habit...

So... Creamfields took place this weekend, but instead of blowing cash on 15hrs of electronica music (which would have been some kind of hell i think), i instead took a trip the Bombonero to see Boca Juniors vs Velez Sarsfield. Boca kicked their asses 4-0 in quite an exciting game. Bocas star striker, Martin Palermo scored two goals to put him within 6 more strikes of being the top goalscorer for boca of all time. This irked the Velez fans somewhat and they started throwing bits of chairs, bags of flour and bottles of warm yellow liquid down from their tier onto the the bit where we were. Thankfully i was under the lip of the tier and nothing came our way, but twas a bit mental nevertheless...

Well, when i settle into the language school things should calm down a bit and i can fill you in on the other stuff ive seen and done...

Im off to a percussion school / club tonight so that should be pretty cool...

hasta luego (who needs language classes!)

And so it begins...

It´s been a long day... 27hrs since leaving my sisters pad in HBT, Hampshire I have arrived at my hostel in BA, Argentina. Holy Moly. Too tired to write much. Gonna get my head down and then get down to the serious business of beer and steak with some Chilean dudes I met at the airport.

(Dos) Mas later

Map Man

Big shout out to Sam Strudwick for his assistance with the mapping thing I've got going on. I'm hoping to put some pins in the map for nearly everything I do:
- Day 3: Dicky tummy - check.
- Ran out of hostel without paying - check.
- Smuggled guns across border - check.

It gets crazy on the road... and awful lonely

Thanks to Sound Theory for making me understand why my momma called me what she did.



http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=O5tWwefmAfM

"You bloody f***ing democracy loving c**k licking b*stard."

Just seen this picture on the BBC web-site:
"Passions run high in the Turkish parliament during a debate on constitutional changes which would allow ordinary citizens to elect the president."

I love that kind of shit. Political big wigs, who know better, getting so enraged by what their opponent have said they actually dive across the floor and swing for the buggers. Brilliant.

Leave your captions in the comments!

The Big Flop on the River

A big shout out to "atthechimeofacityclock" for hosting a poker night at the weekend. Despite being overwhelmed by cheese and onion kettle chips, a fine evening was had by all

As for form, i did pretty darn badly in the first game, but what they didn't realise was that i was all part of the very un-dude plan of lulling my opponents into a very false sense of security. 2nd game i came out all guns blazing and calmly secured a big pot with a pair of aces. Hell yeah! In the end Colonel Bowley and yours truly split the pot.

Proof, if you need it is here - Classy!

George Martin Gets Kidnapped

back at the ranch

Howdy folks.

i'm here chillin with my pipe, slippers and a sour on ice as i write my first home based blog. Thanks to the powers of cable free interweb thickband superhiway jibbery i am now able to blog my ass off from the comforts of my own leather swivel chair - which is something special indeed.

here's to you!
cheers

What they Sung about Park.

A buddy of mine went to see, their team, Blackburn get beat 4-1 by Man Utd at Old Trafford last weekend. He told me that all the utd fans sang the following song to Park Ji Sung:

"Park, Park, Where ever you may be
You eat dogs in your home country
But it could be worse
You could be a scouse
Eating rats in your council house"

What must that poor (ok, filthy stinking rich) man think?... or care, i guess.

Looking the song up on Google I found this description of the said player by CBC sport:
"The right winger for Manchester United is ... a wizard with the ball at his feet who can burn defenders with his pace, Park has great vision and uses it to deliver and distribute the ball to his teammates with pinpoint accuracy in the attacking third of the field."

Huh? Thats like saying:
"A man of wit, style, intellect and composure. He's popular at work and has charmed the public with his high brand of humour and the effortless knack of asking the right question to reveal the most pertinent and, often, moving answer: Garth Crookes"

Hallo

Yeah, so I've been thinking about doing a blog for bloody ages, but struggled to come up with a good name for one.... finally managed to think of an aceptabel moniker and some other bugger got in before me (and not updated it for two bloody years): http://veryundude.blogspot.com

Still, i think mines got the correct punctuation..if in fact that's the right word...which i fear it's not.

Anyway.... more soon.