Yearly Archives: 2005

I made yet another trip down to London last weekend to go see the AFL exhibition match between the West Coast Eagles and the Freemantle Dockers. After grabbing some food on the Friday evening we spent five hours unsuccessfully trying to win the “international cup” with Scotland in Pro Evolution Soccer 4.

On Saturday, the footie Oz style turned out to be a rather scrappy match, which was but a sideshow to the atmosphere and the beers. As it turned out, we missed the entire third quarter queing for beer, but at least the banter in the lines was good for a laugh and there were some pretty tasty aussie chicks milling about in there too. ;o)

The drinking went on all day, with a trip to Iain’s local Indian restaurant with its bring your own beer policy, then a few drinks in a nearby pub for the leaving do of Iain’s housemate. It was an exhausting day in the end, but pretty good fun – it would have been great if the game had been more entertaining.

Waking with a bit of a hangover the next day, the five and a half hour journey home courtesy of Virgin Rail and a track failure was a bit of a pain. Fortunately a mate at work had loaned me Tim Vine‘s dvd to watch, which made the last hour or so pass with great mirth – much to the amusement of fellow passengers on the epic journey, I’m sure.

That’s it for me and London for a while. Well, two weeks, actually, then I’m down for a work related event, but other than that I’ve had enough of making the trip for a good while. Cousin Iain is just going to have to visit me if we ever hope to make any progress with our Pro Evo teamwork.

Myself and a mate at work had a game of tennis the week before I went on holiday, and after weeks of failing to organise it we actually had a good game. Word spread quickly about the fun that could be had from a mid day knock-up, to the point where we now we have six of us playing at lunchtimes, with money being invested in new equipment by some.

It’s a long time since I’ve played a lot of tennis – we’re going back almost ten years here – and I have to say I’m a bit rusty. I’m getting less than 10% of my first serves in, and my lame ass second serves are easy return fodder. Once the ball is in play my shots are a little eratic, too, although I’m getting my eye back in slowly but surely. Fortunately, the fact that none of us have played a great deal has made the games competitive and comical in equal measure, so it’s a good laugh as well as a bit of exersize.

I used to look forward to lunch times so I could play a game at my desk for sixty minutes, but it seems so much healthier to get away from the monitor or screen and run around instead. I couldn’t play tennis every day of the week, admittedly, but every other day would be spot on. Hopefully we can keep the momentum up through the winter now that there’s a solid group of us who are up for it – by next summer I might have gotten that first serve ratio up above 20% ;o)

Lost in translation
“We are never, ever flying to a foreign country again when it’ll be dark when we arrive!” I ranted, as we drove into the darkness on a road somewhere outside Faro, lost just ten minutes after picking up the rental car from the airport.

Despite seemingly having access to all the other benefits of 21st century technology, Portugal appeared to lack the bare essentials I’d come to expect over the last decade or so of being a driver. Okay, I’ll concede that it’s expensive to run electricity cables everywhere in order to light the signs. But what about those cats eye things that I’ve seen in many other countries? Surely they could stretch to some of those to make the junctions a damn sight less terrifying while you’re trying to avoid the racey natives, hell bent on getting to where ever they’re going.

Two and a half hours of second guessing ourselves later, we happened upon our destination of Parque de Floresta, for our weeks’ stay in my Auntie Alison’s holiday villa.

Once we were shown to the villa by a lady from reception, we wolfed down the pizzas that the restaurant had furnished us with at short notice, before going straight to bed, exhausted from our travels.

Familiar faces
Next morning we woke to brilliant sunshine and a beautiful blue sky, as the full splendour of the resort was unveiled in the warm light of day. In the main, it’s a golfing destination, and even thought I don’t play the game I could see the attraction of playing in a place like Portugal. We were there for some rest and recuperation, though, and left the golf to the well to do folk that looked bronzed enough to have spent most of the year there.

Instead, we planned to drive into Lagos to meet Kieran and Ele, the friends we’d said goodbye to back in June when they’d set sail from Liverpool in their boat Dart Warrior.