Whilst out in the ever pretentious Shore Club last night...let me first set the scene.
When I first arrived in Australia (Manly) Shore Club had just opened and I frequented it 3 or 4 times a week as the bar staff were genuinely nice and it was all new so there was no "you aint from round here looks", since then it has listened to its own hype of being Manly's number one bar also Australia's top new bar....and has become THE place to be seen by every local plonker in a pair of skinny jeans / sqwarky voiced just turned 18 year old GIRL looking for a night of free drinks off skinny jean wearing numpty's or the older tight white shirt wearing beefed up yuppie.
So after a few drinks down the road in Freshwater we end up going to said - Shore Club. And there we find them on the top floor (open air smoking room) in one of the cabaña's. A group of skins wannabe's with unwashed hair....mine is unwashed a lot of the time but I do not have shoulder length hair! headband wearing, being overly loud (as they actually have nothing to say apart from, "sick" "hey" "fully sick" & "hey bruu") plebs.
Now I hold a distaste for this group of society for no reason other than I do not understand them...man fears what he does not understand yes, but soon enough all my irrational hatred was vilified. Number one dickhead (20 year old who thinks he is Mick Jagger incarnate) stand's up looks in the mirror on the wall behind the horse-shoed seating area and starts to set fire to his f*cking hair as he is egged on by Ronnie Wood & Keith Richards - well that's who they think they are - when in fact they are just finishing college era - mummy & daddy's boys. Who go out on pingers (E's) on Friday, Saturday & Sunday night and think they are some sort of Big Brother Z-list celebrity, now im not Mary Whitehouse when it comes to drugs but Australia's fascination with ecstasy is a strange one, from 13-53 they are all* on them 7 days a week...the majority DO live by the law of "Jeremy" (Peep Show) "If It Feels Good, Do It".
Not only did his two cohorts find this hilarious as did others in the bar, i found it completely stupid. Jackass it was not. Looking back now I wish I had had the balls/speed of thought, to get a fire extinguisher and empty it's contents all over the little knob. Maybe im getting old, maybe I don't suffer fools gladly (unless I know them), maybe it was the subsequent smell of burnt hair that wafted across the bar that annoyed me. I was infuriated & just thought about how proud his parents must be of him.
Iv woken up in places that I could not remember how I had gotten there & filled up many a friends bath/sink/toilet with the contents of my stomach, but not in the manner of a recently evicted big brother contestant who has to let the entire room know what they are doing or about to do. Give me a cup of tea, slice of cake & a comfortable chair any day.
Sunday, 7 September 2008
Get a job, life, manners & some class
Thursday, 4 September 2008
The end of football
The very first day I arrived in Oz I saw the football team I would be playing for, playing their last game of the season and it was to be 6 long months til I was to grace the hallowed fields of the northern beaches making my debut for the mighty manly vale fc. After 20 odd games and finishing third in the league we went into "Finals".
In Australia most sports finish the season then have the top 4 or top 8 go into a finals system 1st playing 4th and 2nd playing 3rd in this case. So we went into our semi final last Saturday confident of making the Grand Final (or GF to those in the know) playing against a team full of "Poms" it was like being back home. We clawed back from 1-zip down at halftime to be level 1-1 after about an hour. We gave their goal an onslaught that could have been compared with the battering at helms deep, chance after chance went begging. It was down to penalties.
After the penalty competition we'd had at training on the Tuesday before hand, where Ben, Phil & Myself had been the most consistent penalty takers you would have thought we would have started off....well our gaffer & captain, best mates Pete & Gav decided they'd get things going and both missed. One was as worse a penalty as David Batty's in France 98 & the other clipped the outside of the post. I had gone to get the match ball from behind the far goal and when I returned the order had been sorted to my annoyance.
After the game everyone was cheering what a great season we'd had and I was sat in the corner having my beer, muttering why, why, why to myself. As you can tell its still a bit roar, we'd planned for the instance of penalty's and our plans were not put into place ARRRRGGGHHH.
This was nothing that couldn't be fixed by us going out and getting mashed that very same night, and yes we did! On the Sunday however it is apparently tradition for a sporting team to go out on a "mad Monday" where you go out on the Sunday after your season is over and continue into the wee hours of Monday. I turned up a couple of hours late after going for lunch in the city with Lia. To be met by half the team at the pub, drinking COKE'S!! some had been and gone, others left 1 hour after I got there. This was a rubbish effort (no matter how much id of rather been laying on the couch). Five of us soldiered on until we were met by Phil & Chris who had been working and we drank to a promising season in which we fell at the final hurdle.
Now the long wait of 6 months til next season, the best thing about the weekend however was the JetCat trips to and from the city on Sunday morning. On the way there we managed to get the JetCat just as the hooter was going. The gate actually didn't let me through but my card had gone in and Lia was through so I hopped it with a knowing nod from the Wharf personnel. On the way back we the exact same, we got to the gate as they were saying last call. 10 seconds from disaster each time but just on the right side, am I the only one to get such exhilaration from this?
Not sure if they will have them in every Aldi across the globe but next time your in one (if you ever do go in them) look out for choco pillows, no its not a cliché for a poo ridden nappy, its the best cereal in the world! like a desert in a bowl for breakfast mmmmmmm & the bag is dual sealed! so you get two bowls out of the top....then you rip off the plastic bag and you have another bag attached to the bottom with enough for another 2 portions (3 portions if your not a pig like me).
In Australia most sports finish the season then have the top 4 or top 8 go into a finals system 1st playing 4th and 2nd playing 3rd in this case. So we went into our semi final last Saturday confident of making the Grand Final (or GF to those in the know) playing against a team full of "Poms" it was like being back home. We clawed back from 1-zip down at halftime to be level 1-1 after about an hour. We gave their goal an onslaught that could have been compared with the battering at helms deep, chance after chance went begging. It was down to penalties.
After the penalty competition we'd had at training on the Tuesday before hand, where Ben, Phil & Myself had been the most consistent penalty takers you would have thought we would have started off....well our gaffer & captain, best mates Pete & Gav decided they'd get things going and both missed. One was as worse a penalty as David Batty's in France 98 & the other clipped the outside of the post. I had gone to get the match ball from behind the far goal and when I returned the order had been sorted to my annoyance.
After the game everyone was cheering what a great season we'd had and I was sat in the corner having my beer, muttering why, why, why to myself. As you can tell its still a bit roar, we'd planned for the instance of penalty's and our plans were not put into place ARRRRGGGHHH.
This was nothing that couldn't be fixed by us going out and getting mashed that very same night, and yes we did! On the Sunday however it is apparently tradition for a sporting team to go out on a "mad Monday" where you go out on the Sunday after your season is over and continue into the wee hours of Monday. I turned up a couple of hours late after going for lunch in the city with Lia. To be met by half the team at the pub, drinking COKE'S!! some had been and gone, others left 1 hour after I got there. This was a rubbish effort (no matter how much id of rather been laying on the couch). Five of us soldiered on until we were met by Phil & Chris who had been working and we drank to a promising season in which we fell at the final hurdle.
Now the long wait of 6 months til next season, the best thing about the weekend however was the JetCat trips to and from the city on Sunday morning. On the way there we managed to get the JetCat just as the hooter was going. The gate actually didn't let me through but my card had gone in and Lia was through so I hopped it with a knowing nod from the Wharf personnel. On the way back we the exact same, we got to the gate as they were saying last call. 10 seconds from disaster each time but just on the right side, am I the only one to get such exhilaration from this?
Not sure if they will have them in every Aldi across the globe but next time your in one (if you ever do go in them) look out for choco pillows, no its not a cliché for a poo ridden nappy, its the best cereal in the world! like a desert in a bowl for breakfast mmmmmmm & the bag is dual sealed! so you get two bowls out of the top....then you rip off the plastic bag and you have another bag attached to the bottom with enough for another 2 portions (3 portions if your not a pig like me).
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