It feels like ages since i’ve written anything so i might be a little rusty. Sort of like Basketball at the moment. I’d love to see the German’s i play with, play a game with a full referee – it would be hilarious. It’s not a foul if you lose the ball people…these are called steals and turnovers. I’ve also read an incredible piece of tedium from Squires which may have dulled my creative abilities in telling a tale so apologies up front…it’s all on your shoulders mate.

I’m still contemplating whether or not to give my parents the address for this page. My emailing has become infrequent at best with everyone it has to be said so maybe this would fill the gaps…though i’m not the most regular poster either. I think the deciding factor would be my frequent dropping of the c-bomb. I’ve toned most of my swearing down i feel but i do like a good c-bomb…pun may or may not be intended.

Well just in case i do let them in on it, here are the highlights i guess of my xmas adventure.

So what was technically my last week at work, kicked off with several Christmas parties – my work’s, pimp’s etc – resulting in too much alcohol and not enough sleep. Bring on Saturday…Squires doesn’t drink much…before 8am…

So i get up at silly o’clock to get out to Hahn, the cheap tin shed in another state masquerading as Frankfurt’s second airport. I am notoriously late for flights so i plan to get there ridiculously early to break with tradition. Phong hung out at mine the night before so i just went straight to bed without packing. Again, this is a feature of my holidays – the morning pack session. I get down to the u-bahn and have a 20 minute wait for a train…my bus to the airport leaves in 22mins…After pushing down an old lady, several feeble women and some cripples to get off the train i make the mad dash through the hauptbahnhof and through the middle of the street to stop the bus from leaving. He tried to pull away but my suicide run defeated him and he relinquished. End up getting to the airport like a day before my flight thanks to good weather – i had been banking on snow – so t’was a little boring but my holiday had begun.

Texting Squires that my plane is 20 mins late i board in reasonable spirits. Like i said before i’m not the best flyer. For some reason i cannot joke or speak during turbulence…obviously as i don’t want my voice to interfere with the pilot’s concentration…what accent is that?? I also need to look out the window at the wing during turbulence, as if my Jedi mind powers have developed sufficiently enough to stop the engines from falling off.

I had been told that the approach is quite breathtaking so i was following along admiring the view when all of a sudden we were out over water again…my geography of Italy is not brilliant but i couldn’t figure out why we would be leaving land for water. So on comes the captain to tell us – in three languages – that Pisa airport has been closed mid-flight due to snow. I check out the window again and we have bright sunshine here. How fucking far away am i? I’m not really bothered at this point…not much i can do. Maybe i could talk a bit more and the pilot might get distracted and take us somewhere else, but generally it’s out of my hands. It didn’t stop the hot chick next to me wailing her arms about firstly to the German announcement that Pisa had been closed and we were re-routing to Genoa, then again to the Italian announcement, her native tongue, and finally to the English announcement. Bout as predictable as a Tom Cruise movie that one love. Silly cow. You’ve lost your chance with me.

A lot of gesturing at the airport and i figure out that Ryanair have actually footed the bill for some buses back to Pisa. I was sure i would have to train it in. 1000 text messages later and i’m able to meet up with Squires in Pisa and we nab one of the few trains running back to Massa or somewhere near to it. He puts me in a cab and gives the name of his local Irish to the cabbie on paper. Squires sets off on a bike to meet me there. I had been getting a few looks at my Man United beanie along the way but i think Mr Cab Driver and his son were football fans as they began to have a conversation with each other in Italian about all the Italian managers in the premier league. I was going to contribute Zola to the conversation until i heard him say “blah blah blah blah Mancini blah blah blah blah Manchester United”. Well you’re about as useful as tits on a bull aren’t you…so i left them to it. I didn’t know at this stage Mancini had just signed for the massive club city. Still, an unforgiveable mistake.

We make it to the pub eventually and navigate our way through the menu, proceeding to get reasonably drunk on beers, and later Guinness with creatively-priced Port chasers. Class. After agreeing on heading back to watch a movie i saw a bit of the credits and then was out like a light.

The next day we walked around a bit to see the beach and the square and stuff before eventually rejoining the savagely hot waitress at the pub for more Guinness & Port combo’s. Said waitress kept making passes at me while Squires was in the bathroom [citation necessary] but i figured it was better if i left her to a local, long distance relationships and all that. I’m just that kind of guy really.

Unfortunately it was only a short visit this time round so will have to venture back down soon, had a great time – and i agree, i haven’t laughed that much in a long time either mate!

Going our separate ways in Pisa, Squires was off to Rome with Luca for Christmas and i was on my way to Sunny York, via Sunny London. Planes, Tubes and Trains later and i’m in a cab in York, almost on schedule, playing one of my favourite games – where the fuck are you from? I have no problem talking about Manchester United and calling the team ‘we’ as in ‘We played well’ on the weekend, and can do the same for Australia – except for some reason after i have been talking about another country. Then inexplicably i become Switzerland and don’t commit to anything. Country after country we talked about, me critiquing them objectively, until finally the cabbie utters the immortal words…so where exactly are you from, cause your accent is neither here nor there? I’m a child of the UN…me, Kyle Minogue and Elle MacPherson.

I’ve always enjoyed York and particularly seeing Lynda and Gordy. It’s always relaxing and indulgent to say the least! A few more days of solid eating and drinking and a white Christmas to boot and i was off to London.

Back down sowf of the river and my heart was at ease. I always felt more at home in sowf London than nawf London. KFC for lunch and Raclette for dinner as i felt the gut getting bigger. Only another week or so of debauchery left to endure. Reminiscent of Dad’s 50th in Cowra, we proceed to drink all of the beer on Christmas Eve leaving only a few bottles for Christmas itself. Sang and Shaun’s kid Aiden is pretty cool. I don’t really deal with kids. I’m not bad with kids, in fact they mostly get along with me, but i wouldn’t be described as a traditional caregiver. Children are just little people to me, susceptible to the same frailties and motivations that we all are, so i don’t treat them very differently. I don’t make faces at them or speak to them in an incomprehensible language – how that is helpful i’ll never know. I don’t really get anything from seeing them smile or do something ‘adult-like’. I find it amusing when they throw a fit for no apparent reason, the child equivalent of a voiced rant… Their attraction lies in their unique reactions to stimuli, just as any other grown persons.

Shaun’s present for christmas – The Beatles Rockband for Xbox! Unfortunately we didn’t get to play it but i have to say it looked wicked, particularly the guitar. It also caused Shaun to coin a phrase which would be used for the rest of the week….”Hey….” Admittedly this does not really work in printed format, but just imagine the beginning ‘Hey’ of ‘Hey Jude’ not immediately followed by the ‘Jude’. Almost like the quickie round of a musical quiz where they play the opening half second of a song and just kill it cold, and you have to guess it. Perfect pitch and tempo for ‘Hey Jude’ but just never completed. Priceless.

Waiting until the day after boxing day when trains would be running…(awful, awful system) we decided to nick down to Redhill in Surrey to see my mates Craig and Ana from the old Duke of Devonshire who have also recently popped out a couple of kids – i’m going to avoid euphemisms here as my previous attempt led me to write ‘rug-munchers’ instead of ‘rug-rats’….totally different kettle of fish there.

The original plan was to pop down for the afternoon, maybe catch a bit of the premiership and then head back to Phong’s cousin’s place in nawf London. But something happened. We’d managed to buy return tickets to sowf London and so had to arrange extensions to get back nawf. We managed that. We also managed to find out when the last train back was. What we didn’t manage was to get on it. Several pints later and about 20 quid each in the trivia machine and we were still at the pub to see the staff go home for the evening. Thanks once again to Craig and Ana for putting us up for the night :o)

Back into central London for a cheeky pint at the real Waxy’s, followed by a few more at a random O’neills for the footy. Lunch with Phong’s Dad, Sang, Shaun and Aiden and then back to O’neills for the rest of the footy. This was followed by a roadie somewhere else for a loo break and we finally made it to Phong’s cousin’s place…some 26 hours late. Not bad.

The following day we had arranged for a few of the London folk to meet up for lunch. I had suggested S&M Cafe as had been meaning to go there ever since i lived in London. Sadly it would win that round as well as it was closing as we arrived. We decided to wait in a drink-selling establishment on the corner. Boychild arrived just in time as we witnessed an altercation between the landlord and a couple eating their food. We’re still not really sure what happened but the landlord asked them to leave and the couple asked for their money back. Neither party looked too keen on the argument at first but the landlord was up for it alright. 10 minutes later and we had two cop cars and a paddywagon…hate to see how many coppers they send for an actual punch-up.

We settle for Nando’s for tea and afters at some random bar described by Shaun as “There’s a decent pub around the corner with a tranny landlord”. Good enough for this motley crew. We all gathered around the world’s smallest pool table, me guzzling a pint of scrumpy which was truly awful. The alcohol was beginning to kick in however. I had to work hard not to piss my pants when the aforementioned landlord came by and asked Boychild not to sit on the pool table and proceeded on to the ladies room, to which boychild hopped off the table and said “Sure, no worries…..number 1′s or number 2′s? It was not the last time this question was posed to patrons that night…

We headed up the road to yet another pub around Spitalfields. I vaguely remember being in this pub once before. Strange crowd, but then again we bring our own entertainment these days. We posed for several boy band promo shots – i was apparently tuning some chick with purple teeth and then it was back up nawf to the cousins….via Fried chicken for dinner number 2 :o)

In the morning i awoke to find my shoes and trousers covered with suspicious mud/poo-like stains all over them. Your guess is as good as mine but after careful consideration i have determined the only plausible explanation was that the neighbours further up the road, pissed off after having their garden ‘watered’ by Phong the night before had scrupulously hand painted their shrubbery with this mud/poo-like substance to catch this little black duck completely unawares on the encore performance. Mission accomplished.

Sammy’s sister was kind enough to give us a lift up to Stowmarket for Phong’s 30th. I just prayed that she could not smell the substance all over my trousers and shoes. The ride provided some great banter along the way with such highlights as J-Lo being a musical sorbet to cleanse the palette, and my personal favourite, in response to women being released from jail for being pregnant, that surely now instead of people sneaking in files in cakes etc, that people were sneaking in turkey basters of goo. Lads just throwing handfuls of the stuff over the prison walls and the inmates doing cartwheels across the yard to catch it….think about it…think about it…there you go!

But whatever banter we had managed there, it was nothing for what was to come that night.

Unfortunately out of the two cab companies in ‘One House’ where Sammy originates from, only one had a taxi running – go figure – and apparently they were not prepared to shuttle all 12 something of us to and from the pub. Never mind we had some board games and ourselves to keep us entertained.

Due to some mischievous misinformation Sammy’s girlfriend Lila began questioning Tyler (Sammy’s sister’s Canadian husband) why he felt it necessary to club seals? Well played to Tyler who reasonably justified it while keeping a straight face. Not entirely convinced either way, the table chat dried up in anticipation to how Lila would receive the explanation. Enter Spike (Sammy’s sister’s friend) to take some of the heat off Tyler with an amusing tale of running over a cat, and then to check if it was still alive he poked it in the eye with a stick. Phong then came to Spike’s aid with an amusing tail revolving the catching of a fish and releasing it back into the water…via the underside of a bridge. Thud!

The banter continued spiralling out of control until Spike labelled Sienna Miller a vacuous husk of a woman at which point we lost the battle to hilarity and descended into mayhem.

I still can’t believe we had fake blue wkd’s and Port and did not make cheeky vimto’s…

A few hours sleep in the morning and we were dropped off at the train station complete with visible aura’s of alcohol. A jaunt back into London, a quick skip across town and we were on another train headed North for Wigan to meet Adam and the boys in the Brocket – the Wetherspoons pub we stay at when going to old Trafford. Feeling very rough i could feel it in my bones – we only had two more days to go and there sobriety was waiting for us.

We make it in time for a shower and a few drinks at the Brocket before hopping in the cab for Manchester, and Sam Platt’s, the united only pub just round the corner from the theatre of dreams. At this point in time my body ceased to recognise alcohol as alcohol and merely treated it as liquid…something it was in dire need of. Drinking pints of cider to the others’ bottles of bud – pronounced “like having sex in a canoe….it’s fucking close to water!” – we quickly caught up and indeed surpassed the others in merriment.

Into the ground and i think Adam was more shocked than we were to find out our tickets were in the nosebleeds. About 5 rows in from the very top of the East stand it was like watching some red ants run around…run around and destroy some blue ants 5-0! In my three visits to Old Trafford we are yet to concede a goal. 2 wins and 1 draw with 8 goals for and none against. It could easily have been more. We weren’t that good, but Wigan were poor. Still, proved quite the night and hopefully a good present for Phong’s 30th.

Back in to Sam Platt’s after the match for some more chat with the lads and some more cider. Turns out we had been drinking with a Sir as well. I had forgotten that in between this and my last visit, Anthony had become Sir Anthony after being knighted by the Pope in Rome, complete with a papal seal-looking signet ring. The more i hang around Adam the more surreal life becomes. Chatting to Andy who provides us with extra tickets when needed, the topic changed to Aussie sport and he asks if me and Phong know of a Rugby League player called Amos Roberts, as he has just transferred to Wigan and now lives next door to him. I said sure! My sister used to knock about with him.

Ok, now it must be said a lot of alcohol had been consumed at this point Carly if you read this. I may have got my facts intertwined but as far as i can remember i thought my sister knocked about with an Aboriginal rugby league player at some club in Sydney until the infamous ‘cousin’ incident put an end to it. Was that Amos Roberts? I had a feeling that the he played for the Dragons at the time, so Amos fits the bill?

Anyways if you happen to be travelling through Wigan at any point in time Carly and run into a bloke called Andy you might have a few questions to answer ;)

Cab back to Wigan and we decline the search for food on icy streets and head to bed WITHOUT hurling abuse willy nilly at the bar staff for refusing to serve us after hours…

The trip back to Manchester and Frankfurt was on complete autopilot. I knew we had to make it through just one more night and then it was sweet, sweet sobriety. I’d given up going to the toilet, i had no liquid to spare.

A quick visit home, long enough to throw some laundry on and we were off to Sammy’s for more drinking and some €370 worth of Fireworks. I’m not really into the destruction and blowing shit up sort of game so i just acted as cameraman. The night kind of fizzled in the wee hours of the morning as our holidays were catching up on all of us…Strom had just flown long haul from Australia and me and Phong had been pickled for weeks so it was with no trepidation that we shelled out for a cab back to Bornheim. A bit of tv to wind down fully and i was done. It was over.

It’s a good thing i am ironman and probably have to give these shenanigans up soon enough…

Friendships aren’t rational. It’s like when you’re a football manager and your star Ivorian Coast striker blatantly dives and you claim not to have seen the play and will have to see the video. You have to take your friends side no matter what. If you are shown the replay at a later stage then you best be good at bullshitting.

The next part was written last weekend before I actually looked at Squires’ blog to find him updating now more than ever.  Guess I don’t really need to post it…

My internet usage has just been dealt another blow. Squires has escaped from this issue-ridden cul-de-sac of the world to hopefully greener pastures. What does this mean? One less person to talk bollocks about music too, one less person who would agree to go to 3 Kings to watch psychobilly garage folk experimental Scandinavian gypsy bands on little or no notice, and one less dedicated Puts Marie fan! But as previously mentioned it may be my internet usage that suffers the most from this. See when i log on in the mornings and evenings i have a very set routine. I turn on my computer and go and poo. This is generally enough time for Zone Alarm and whatever other assorted crap i have on my computer to fully load. Then i open outlook to check my mail. Invariably this is an email from Facebook updating me on what my friends have voted me…currently:

Your friends have voted on your strengths and weaknesses:

STRENGTHS:
person who can drink the most
best dinner companion
best singer

WEAKNESSES:
most likely to succeed
toughest

It’s very informative and does wonders for my self esteem.

I open up Firefox which starts with the football page of the beeb. Quick scan of the headlines to see if anything new has happened. Not much seeing as i was looking at it 5 or 6 hours ago before i went to bed. Open a new tab to load wastebook. Yes i know i can pre-save all my tabs so that they all load when i open up but then my morning routine is too streamlined. I have a scan to see what’s been happening. Again not much due to me having read it some hours previously. Open up a new tab and bring up Squires’ blog. Not much happening here either seeing as he updates almost as infrequently as me. Gone are the days of the blog wars and trading comments and the wittiest of witty banter, the in-jokes and the just bizarre observations and critiques. Yet i am content. I have my pattern and it was what i expected. I can start my day as normal.

But now he’s going to some little backwater town that may or may not have telephone lines and tinterweb hooked up, and he’ll be hovering round a candle or some sort of gas lantern typing on his laptop plugged into his donkey-powered generator about a bunch of Italian people who i don’t know and have no connection with – who i probably dislike (given). It’s a sad day for all of us.

In summary, you will be missed mate =)

Given that this financial crisis seems to be prolonged and seems to have coincided nicely with the point in my life i chose to enter into the finance industry, i think it might be best if i have a back-up plan so to speak. Depending how successfully received this first ‘future career’ entry is i may or may not continue this idea. Such is my style of writing. No real boundaries or limitations, but no real goals either.

So without further ado, here is my audition if you like, of me as a music reviewer.

Vanilla Ice is Back! Hip Hop Classics (2008)

There is a reason why this album was made. I don’t know what it is, but i’m sure somebody out there does. Vanilla Ice himself may not know, but i bet he didn’t balk at the opportunity. There will be somebody who knows, and hopefully they are tied up in a basement somewhere being severely flagellated for allowing this to be burnt to CD. Well i assume it was released on CD (it is available on Amazon – a veritable steal at £11.98), but i wouldn’t know because i would never pay for this dribble. I ‘came across’ a copy of what can only be described as an exercise in humiliation.

Firstly, to announce to the world that ‘Ice is Back’ reeks more of defiance than a celebratory announcement. No one was waiting for this for ten years a la Chinese Democracy…i think you would find it hard to locate anyone who was eagerly anticipating the next Vanilla Ice release…except maybe his agent. No, he is defying the laws of nature in reigniting a career that Darwinian principles had raised to the very pinnacle of the ‘unfittest’. This is not a Tom Cruise movie. Vanilla Ice was not a good pool player / barman / jet fighter pilot / nascar driver / samurai / spy, who became disenchanted with his craft till he met a girl and fell in love and became the best of the best. Vanilla Ice’s career died because he was no good to begin with.

Don’t get me wrong, i know every word to Ice Ice baby and was one of the first ‘cassingles’ i ever bought. It was yellow. Perhaps i should have realised it was a sign of things to come when the B-side was a cover of Wild Cherry’s Play That Funky Music. Hum the rest of the chorus to see just how much Vanilla was playing up the white boy image for his maiden release. As fond a memory as this song brings back, i don’t particularly think it required 4 different re-workings on a ‘Hip Hop Classics’ compilation. Queen may or may not have minded the Ice man using their bass riff for his apparent 4-time classic moneyspinner, but i am wondering what Public Enemy did to deserve his version of Fight The Power? Perhaps Flavor Flav turned down his white trash sister (or Mum) on Flavor of Love. I can see the white boy rapper connection with House of Pain – pretty much the only track which he has slightly altered from the original – the heavy guitar riffs alluding to his moonlit career in a thrash metal band. Evidently Ice felt the same connection to Cypress Hill and put out a carbon copy of Insane In The Brain complete with bong sound intro for that added street cred. All that’s missing now is the ‘Fight for your Right to Party’ Beasties cover to embed him in the white-rap frat boy hierarchy. (A cover of Snow’s informer would be a bit too close to home i suspect.)

As obviously out of place and useless as tits on a bull is his cover of Bob Marley’s Buffalo Soldier. All jokes aside, there has not been such a criminal cover-version atrocity committed since the personally offensive American pie by Madonna. Sure there have been some terrible covers but this just hurts. I don’t agree with libellous practices in general but if i was any sort of relative of Bob marley i would take this as far as i could possibly go. I’m sure Vanilla Ice is just what Bob had in mind as a musical ally and contemporary and would gladly have collaborated to pool their immense talents together. After painting himself into the white-rap upper echelons with the subtlety of someone laughing at a joke told in another language of which they have no comprehension, Ice inexplicably lunges forth into the struggle for black rights and resistance. Combined with the aforementioned fight the power, Ice is clearly taking it to the man! Seriously, what man is keeping you down Ice? Gas prices hindering you from rolling in your 5.0? Lord knows what he is trying to insinuate by throwing in a loose cover of Baby got back, but i’m not going anywhere near that. Dave Chappelles’ next ‘Trading Spouses’ sketch will hopefully have someone kicking Vanilla Ice, not out of a car, but out of the whole music industry – Ge, ge, ge, ge, ge, goodbye!

Dude can i have your autograph? :)

While we are on the topic of movies i am very excited about the release of what is surely to be THE blockbuster movie of the summer. It’s a veritable who’s who of Hollywood. Christian Bale stars but is aptly supported by Hugh Grant, Wesley Snipes, Tom Cruise, Julia Roberts, Vin Diesel, Jennifer Aniston and Joe Pesci with Cameo’s by Adam Sandler, Vince Vaughan and Eminem.

“Playing the only characters they know how, Hollywood’s biggest stars unite in this Summers blockbuster extravaganza – THE ONE DIMENSION!”

Who are you? John Conner? No I’m Batman. Cunt.

There is no finer ice-breaker than the moonwalk ciao. I have never seen someone fail with a moonwalk ciao.

What do the cv’s of Scaffolder’s look like? Skills – I was really good with Technical Lego before moving up to Mecano. My shit was always better than my friends.

Apologies, to any of my friends who became scaffolders after school. But seriously were you heaps better than anyone else at playing Mecano?

Ok i have a mate and i won’t name any names, but they happen to be Irish so you can just make up an Irish name here. So Paddy was on holidays recently and got stung by a Jellyfish and decided it best to pee on the sting to neutralize it. I have no idea if this works nor am i writing about the validity of this method. I just want to know if it’s possible to pee on yourself without hearing Chappelle doing R Kelly – Piss on You! in your head. I don’t think it is. While he was telling me this story i just had all these visions of standing in the shower pissing on my leg thinking “Players want to hate, Lovers want to love, i don’t even want none of the above, i want to piss on you…pee on you…”

Drip drip drip.