Football (U.S.) and Dumps!
If Bill Gates has the audacity to make us select our language as “English (UK)” then I believe that using ‘Football’ and ‘Football (US)’ instead of differentiating between American Football and our English, almost apologetic, vernacular that goes something like this:
“Football, well, errrr, soccer. You know, our football.”
Before violently shouting,
“PROPER FOOTBALL!”
Or, perhaps just settle for ‘Gridiron’ instead of American Football.
That was the theme of the weekend. It seemed appropriate that as America was sending something over here we should send something American away and it was for that reason that Foe & Erin left these shores to finally settle down into a life of their own in Dubai. Foe accepted a job as some sort of construction man in a suit working on (I think) the infrastructure around the new Jumeirah Palm Island and, according to their new blog they seem to be settling in quite well with some help from the pixies at Balfours who have kindly stocked the fridge, sorted immigration and bought a car. Their blog is linked on the left. Good luck to them!
I hadn’t been feeling too great and it was touch and go whether I’d be able to make it out for any of their night out on Friday but I did and we fully intended to end up in Walkabout but we got stuck in Chicago Rock Cafe as they were pushing all the right buttons and Erin gave us carte blanche to get Foe as wasted as possible. That was like a red rag to a load of evil bulls and Foe was shortly prancing around like a drunken lunatic. A great way to send them off!
We were then up on Saturday to get the 11.42 train from Manchester to London for the NFL game that was played at Wembley on Sunday. We had ‘plenty’ of time at the station to get the tickets, paper and some breakfast but after the unexpected ticket sadness it turned out we were wrong. We very nearly had time but as Easty, Dunc & I were holding our Burger King bags Stuoobs was sweating and eventually had to leg it to the train without his food.
The next hurdle to overcome was the drinking situation, this was solved when our new best mate, John the gay shop man, came over the tannoy (not literally) and announced, “The shop is now open and since it is nearly twelve o’clock it is more than socially acceptable to start drinking.”
That was all the encouragement we needed and John continued to use the PA system to give a running commentary on our journey specifically focusing on which people are disgusted by our conversation and the girl from along the carriage who was doing her best to stay out of it (he wanted Stuart all to himself).
We had a whole weekend in London, a full 48 hours with ONE thing planned for Sunday evening. That left the rest of the weekend to explore our nation’s glorious & historic capital. Our first stop of our amazing sightseeing weekend was Tesco Express in Bayswater for some vodka & redbull which we polished off in our Hyde Park apartment before heading out into London Town to meet Magic, Erin, Ches, Bee and the legendary Danny Hall. We ended up in Soho in a ‘trendy bar’ before demanding to be taken to Walkabout.
Saturday got messy in the end and this resulted in a sticky Sunday morning but we eventually pulled ourselves together and made our way to the NFL Tailgate Party outside Wembley. This was so promising. We got a beer and then wandered around looking for stuff to do but it was either too rainy or too busy leaving us with nothing else to do but drink beer; we figured that this would be best achieved in the pub down the road whilst watching the Chelsea v Liverpool game. It was then time to head to Wembley for the razzmatazz of the pre-game show (Cheerleaders!).
The game was quite a good one, the highlight for me was annoying the Chargers fans in front of us. Again, I don’t propose to go into in-depth reviews of sporting events when there are journalists paid a lot of money to do it properly. After the game it was necessary to see what Leicester square had to offer on a Sunday (vodka cranberry!).
I still think I was getting over my Aids from Thursday because it’s unusual that I suffer more than Stuoobs and on Monday this was the case. We made it to the train station and ended up chatting to the same people we saw on the way down!
Lots more to update you on re Tignes and the birth of Tignes’ newest snowboarding duo – Pop & Mack; but I’m off to campaign for the release of Jonathon Ross & Russell Brand who are being held against their will by militant wankers known as The Daily Mail’s Angry Mob.
Andy
xxx
