Welcome back folks. We are off on another holiday. Tub says I need to bring back the blog and do a good job of it or in her words a really good “Blog Job”. She says if I do it well I can change one letter and have the best 20 seconds of my life. I have no idea what a “Blog Jab” is but in the interest of science I am prepared to bend over and find out.
This one is going to be really hard. We are going away with a bunch of family and my usual style of taking the piss out of everyone I meet might not go down too well.
Tub says “Who gives a shit, they all live on the other side of the planet any way. We’ll be long gone by the time they find out about it.”
Actually she didn’t say that at all, but being able to use her like a ventriloquist’s dummy might be the way I can pull this off. Look, it worked last time.
Tomorrow we head to London and then back to Paris, then New Zealand, Russia, Buenos Aires and finally Marseille. From there it is only 2 trains and a cab to where we are staying. That’s not too much of an exaggeration. We do indeed head to London, flying over our holiday destination, then stay in my dad’s house (he will be in France by then) and on Saturday morning we head to France.
I blame Brian, my brother. He’s a tardy fucker. By which I imply retarded but actually mean late. He was 18 years late. I had nobody to play with because he got lost on the way out of the womb. 18 years it took him to follow the light and by the time he arrived I was like “Yeugh. Whatevers. I is leaving. Play with yourself brovva. ” And he has been ever since.
The retardedness came 2 years later when Tub dropped him on his head on a concrete floor from head height in of all places… France. I can see many vendettas being repaid on this trip.
Anyway… Brian booked himself first class on the train from London to Marseille. We copied him and booked the same train. So far so good. Except that we aren’t going anywhere bloody near Marseille. Its a bit like arriving at Melbourne airport and hopping in a cab asking the driver to drop you somewhere near the Sydney Opera House.
As we are going to be away we have left this huntsman spider in charge of the house.
Now I know he looks a big grainy but that’s because I took his picture from the next suburb. I walked in and this 8 legged bouncer asked who I was here to visit.
He’s gone now. He had a nasty accident. He’s outside coughing up 2 litres of insect spray and keeps knocking on the door to be let back in and asking if I can give him a glass of water.
So with about 4 hours of usable time before we sit on a plane for 24 hours here is the situation:
- Tub and I are back in the saddle and going on holiday.
- Jennie, Libby and Iain who are our children are coming too. Henceforth to be known by their proper names – Ratty, The Horse and Pugwash.
- Also appearing in starring roles are my dad Tom, and his wife Belinda.
- My father’s siblings Nigel, Penny and Joy are also coming, mainly for the drink.
- Keith and Ray are coming too but they are far too nice to feature heavily in this blog.
- And of course the star attraction is my brother Brian, who still claims (and with some evidence) that his name is really Stephen. Don’t expect to see him called Stephen too much in here though. Tub still feels bad about dropping him on his head and the fact he ended up having to do Engineering at Uni as a result.
It seems a bit ironic that we are heading back to France, the location that we gave up on the Redundancy World Tour the first time.
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So today our goal is to pick up Pugwash, get to the airport and meander to London, where Brian, Ratty and possibly even The Horse will be waiting for us to partake in a Champagne Breakfast at my dad’s house just under the flightpath at Heathrow Airport. As the plates shake and the glasses clink in the side dresser we can watch the planes flying over. I like to wave out of the window as a signal that we are landing so they can open the first bottle at 6am.
Recently Tub has been saying things like “The fucking Redundancy World Tour is over. I am working. You should work.”
I think this is a bit harsh given that I have now formed 17 Ways with Tuftsy and the Polar Bear.
Tub lives in the world of spare body parts, brutal bone surgery and borderline butchery, that is the medical profession. Recently I gave up drinking for 4 days and caught her trying to cut out part of my liver with a breadknife while I was having a bath. “Well you’re not making much use of it are you.” she said, “And anyway it grows back.”
In the tough world of IT consulting, Tuftsy, the Polar Bear and I are out chasing leads every day like a young Columbo but mostly we don’t make it past the first pub we come to. “Ah well. Let’s try again tomorrow chaps.”
But I digress.
Learning from our mistakes last time, Tub has packed an entire suitcase of shoes for our 2 week trip. She is also planning to take an Eski full of sausages and baked beans from London to France because “Nobody wants to eat that nasty French shit.”
So today we fly to London from Sydney arriving just after we left and then 24 hours later we are going to France. As I mentioned above there are a few minor problems with this. Firstly we are booked on a train to the wrong place. That’s really just a detail for hardened travellers like us. When we get to the wrong place we can hop on a train going back the way we came and then change for another train. So our trip will actually involve 4 trains, the London Underground, the Paris metro and two taxis. If we head off about 6am we should get there before midnight. As long as the bar car doesn’t run dry it shouldn’t be a drama.
The second problem could be a bit more severe. There is a train strike in France. Now for most people this might mean that they can’t make their train trip, but for us it means we can’t make our 4 train trips, which multiplied by the 6 of us actually means we are missing 24 train journeys. Now Brian isn’t looking so smug for having booked First Class.
Anyway that’s not for a couple of days. The more immediate problem is the London Tube strike. Thankfully we can just lob the luggage out of the window as the plan is landing and then walk back from the end of the runway.
The place we are eventually going to get to is called Lunel. I looked it up on Google to find out a bit more and apparently it is the French centre for Jihad.
This is from the NY Times:
“Antiterrorism prosecutors in Paris are investigating whether Lunel has been infiltrated by a jihadist cell.
The mayor, noting that the number of Lunel residents who traveled to Syria is perhaps no more than 20 in all, said his town had been unfairly put in the spotlight because of its “bad luck” at having so many be killed in quick succession.
Mayor Arnaud said he doubted the existence of a network in Lunel, believing that those who left were just a group of school friends who decided to take up jihad.
A bit tough for the poor old mayor this one. In an effort to sort it out he tried to do a joint press conference with the president of the local mosque, a Mr Goumri. Not a bad idea really, but it didn’t work out quite how expected:
But instead of condemning the surge of young recruits, Mr. Goumri told local news media that the policies of President François Hollande were the main culprit and complained that it was not his job to denounce the jihadists when nobody protested French citizens who traveled to Israel to help the army “kill Palestinian babies.”
I bet that was a bit awkward for the old mayor.
*****
Off we go. Tub has invented her own version of Uber, where instead of using a taxi you drive yourself.
So off we went to pick up Pugwash. He had started celebrating a bit early and was looking somewhat the worse for wear. He lives in a beautifully maintained 1930’s heritage listed building with the original furniture from the second world war.
His flatmate Kiran is taking it all very seriously and hides on the ceiling in case the Japanese try to bomb him. He’s got company and doesn’t seem to be too bothered about the whole thing though.
Hi Kiran, welcome to the blog.
For some reason Pugwash has a suitcase full of women’s clothing, some of which at least is to be delivered to a friend of his in Germany where they don’t have women’s clothing. He opened his suitcase to show us in case who didn’t believe him. He was also looking for his keys which he’s left in the front door. Apparently he picked up most of the clothes when he was out in Bar Century last night. Having seen the state he is in today the only way I can imagine he could have got them home is by wearing them.
We Ubered our way to the airport but couldn’t find the long stay car park. Apparently the name was really confusing people so they have changed it to Blu Emu Car Park and as we drove around in circles looking for the long stay car park all I could find on Google was people complaining about the name change. It must go well with under 8 drivers as they have a full range of character to go with it.
We parked at the Harry Horse parking spot.
This Uber business isn’t all that cheap after all. With $15 a day parking and $5.50 each to get the bus to the airport I reckon we could have bought a taxi and still had change for Harry the Horse.
Pugwash met one of the bouncers from Bar Century working as a security guard at the airport. A bit embarrassing for him really since his bag scanned positive and the guy had to look through all of Pugwash’s bra’s and knickers to find his illegal aerosol. Anyway, he got a nice wink and a knowing smile when the bag was handed back.
Well I might as well carry on with the same theme for a bit. Pugwash claims to be a heterosexual bodybuilder, an oxymoron for sure. As such he needs to eat meat or drink protein shakes every two hours. I also imagine that he shits like a horse but I’ve never asked him. Maybe someone else can raise this embarrassing topic with him and post the answer discreetly below. To quench his bloodlust and to help with his hangover he had a bacon and egg roll.
and half of his mother’s pepperoni pizza.
I think this was just as well as we had a little surprise for him on the plane.
We have arranged for all us to have the vegetarian Indian option for the next 24 hours.
We are now 3 hours into the first leg of the trip, which is 14 hours. Tub woke herself up with the world’s biggest pig snort while we were still on the runway. A bloke 3 rows behind unkindly shouted something about “First the Queen Mary, now this!”.
It’s pretty tough getting drunk in economy. You sober up quicker than they can bring those little sample bottles to your seat. Tub finished her first one today in 2 seconds flat and grabbed the stewardess on the arm as she was leaving. “Yes, that will be fine.” she said, “I’ll have a glass of that one.” Business class is better, after a couple of trips to your seat I usually find they bring out the “big glass” that they have hidden away and fill the thing up properly. I’ve only once been in First Class and they had bottle holders built into the seat which they filled with white wine, red wine and whisky. Perhaps if I hadn’t tried to drink them all I might have got a subsequent upgrade to First Class, but I don’t care. It was the best 90 minute flight I’ve ever had.
I just had that “It’s 8am in London you know” conversation with the barmaid/stewardess. I think she’s assuming that I don’t know it is 8am, rather than that I don’t see anything wrong with being drunk at 8am.
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Okay, swapped flights, 14 hours done, 10 to go. This is the leg you try to sleep on. Unfortunately the little kid behind me slept on the first leg and is now practicing his soccer skills on the back of my chair. Fortunately he is doing it quietly and his parents are sleeping soundly. I reckon you should have to sit in front of your kids on a plane not next to them.
Another top travel tip: If your baby is crying don’t stay in your own bit of the plane. Instead walk up and down the whole plane so everyone can join in with the fun.
I decided not to use this snakes on a plane joke. Plus Pugwash ate them all as soon as we got on and I was too slow getting the camera out.
Getting there now. In fact this is as close as we are likely to get to our final destination for a long time.
And here we are, finally in London (well almost, we are still on the plane).
This day is already 36 hours old and it’s only 11am. Time to watch the cricket and drink.
Brian has to go to work soon. He’s doing a ying and yang thing with coffee and champagne.
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