UK cruising..

Morning kids... well this is my first blog entry for the 2007 trip... what a flight... 42 hours from the time I left my place until I turned upto Clint and Lisas place in ol London Town... Im sure it will be worth it tho.. I will give you the tip though - if you have a lay over in Tokyo on the way - there are no ATM´s in the transit lounge... hence no Yen.. hence no food, nor newspapers or magazines or anything... interestingly though it was a relief to get back on the plane!!

Clint told me that the guy who decorated his place was a little ¨out there¨.. apparantly the pad was previously used as an art gallery... all the good ones were sold and the not so good ones were left behind.. looks like its true about the most creative artists using the most drugs... obvious by the designs below..

I hope your not shy in the bathroom!!... I reckon they should have at least installed those mirrors that make things look bigger... lol

Clint and Lisa headed for work so I decided to start relaxing via a nice cuppa of English Tea... I went to fill up the jug and noticed that Clint is still living a clean lifestyle... he tried to tell me that he cleans this every month and that the scum in there is good minerals and vitamins - I´m wondering why he has had a cough for the entire trip!.. but for those of you that know him - would you believe him?

Being the good ´sport´ that he is (Ray that was for you).. Clint had organised some tix to the local English Premier League match of Fulham v Bolton about an hour from his place. He organised them through an old friend of mine Eneaz who I used to go to primary school with. Poor old Eneaz... I used to tease him by calling him ´Any azz will do...´ he used to hate it - so I didn´t bring it up with him again seeing as though he was nice enough to get us some tix. The only problem was that it was a typical English summers day and was bucketing down with rain... about 2% of the stadiums seats were uncovered - including ours - so Clint and I pinched someones elses seats while poor old Eneaz sat in the rain for 90 mins.. About 20 minutes into the game I told Clint I was going to get us a few (more) beers... but I was informed that in the UK you can only drink at half time... and in plastic bottles... (am I at Summernats!?!?) and I thought they shipped the uncontollable ones of to Van Diemens land 200 years ago..

The stadium at Fulham is steeped in tradition.. from what I understand they usually get pumped.. however on this occasion they won... they were looking in trouble at one stage when their coach waved me over to come run on and provide some firepower.. I told him that unfortunately I was contracted to UniNorths Rugby Div 3 for the entire 2007 season and that I was therefore unavailable, so hes going to give me the call up for next season if I don´t get resigned. Getting back to it though, that small hut in the centre of the picture is about 150 years old - and the rest of the stadium just used to be grass - so when they decided to build a bigger stadium, they simply built around it rather than knocking it down..

And that concludes my short tour of the mother land England.. I´ve been here before and sampled their warm beers, bad BO and shite weather - so I think its time to head over to a warmer climate - such as Scotland and Ireland... NOT!