A pilgrimage across southern England

[taxexile]

Dentistry and plumbing... not so very different!

more like precision mini carpentry or watch-repairing actually..... and welcome to blighty.

[Joe 90]

Like their owner.

We do not own the glass!

We are merely a custodian of said drinking vessel!

Till it smashes or is mineswept by another custodian.

#longlivethepisshead

Did I ever mention that time I was pissed off with minesweepers?

To cut a long story short...

Minesweeping was endemic in the early 90's in Manchester as you are no doubt aware.

A little naive to the whole minesweeping game and after suffering the misfortune of being mindswept three times in one night I thought enough is enough!

Apparently the whole idea and game for the minesweeper was to get pissed for free.
They would stalk their prey at the bar like a hyena.
As soon as the customer had set the drinks down and been distracted then the minesweeper struck with the ruthlessness and thirst of a dehydrated Ethiopian in the eighties with monstrous pierced ears ringing a Bob Geldof song on repeat.

This particular night I noticed several "hyenas" and witnessed their tactics , they appeared to have one tactic in common they all downed their stolen drinks in one!

I therefore concluded that the only course of action was revenge!

I took an empty pint glass into the gents and filled it to the brim with steaming frothing piss.

I sat it down on a table near the dancefloor with a view of it in the mirror on the wall then I turned my back.

Within a minute a hyena struck wearing a Ralph Lauren shirt and sporting a beer belly of someone 20 years his senior.

He downed it in one!
He stood and stared at the glass briefly, I thought I may have been rumbled but no.
He staggered of in search of new prey.

[Reg Dingle]

brilliant

[DrWilly]

^^ brilliant!

[BLD]

[QUOTE=taxexile;4412354]highly skilled professionals, deserve every penny, wouldn't be where i am today, etc QUOTE]What, in a bedsit in pattaya ? Being a miserable coonty.

[BLD]

Peace and quiet, and my first tin of Thatchers only 4 hours after arrival.

Bliss.

Wow. Only 4 hours in and your necking a can of Thatcher's got some Mexican pesos to hoover up Bristol's finest Charlie and you can read up on ferrets. Fantastic start

[Joe 90]

Ferrets by Brian Plumber

FFS how's this thread gonna pan out?

[bsnub]

I took an empty pint glass into the gents and filled it to the brim with steaming frothing piss.

I sat it down on a table near the dancefloor with a view of it in the mirror on the wall then I turned my back.

Within a minute a hyena struck wearing a Ralph Lauren shirt and sporting a beer belly of someone 20 years his senior.

He downed it in one!
He stood and stared at the glass briefly, I thought I may have been rumbled but no.
He staggered of in search of new prey.

[Mendip]

I bet they are made up to see her. Especially your mum.

Yes, it was quite something to see my daughter meet her Grandmother yesterday. Mini hasn't been over for nearly three years due to Covid and during that time she has shot up by around a foot I reckon. Now she's 5'3" and on the cusp of teenagerhood whereas three years ago she was still a cute little girl. It was great to see her meet up with her aunt and favourite cousin as well.

And it was also great when everyone went out and left me in peace for a while! I can only do so much of this family stuff in one go... maybe I've spent too long in Isaan sitting alone with my dogs.

Did you literally bring your Leo beer glass with you? legendary Mendip legendary! Have fun you two!

The Leo glass has been here for a few years now and I forget how it arrived. I can only think that one time we stayed in a hotel the night before a day flight coming over and I must have popped down to the hotel bar, etc...

Waited four hours to have a drink?? Madness.

I know, and I didn't even touch my bottle of duty free Bowmore. In fact I don't like to drink much in front of my mum because she's tea-total and worries about my alcohol consumption... and my weight and my diet and my job and just about anything else for that matter. I'll be driving most days while over and hope to just have a couple in the evenings while having active days. I have to be fair to the daughter.

^ There's his Welsh mate and the gardener and his ya dong stash.

A small story about my Welsh mate... There was a chance we were going to meet up over the next month in the UK as he has a trip planned over with his wife and son in a couple of weeks time. He's been waiting an age for his boy's UK passport to arrive because as everyone knows there are such huge delays in UK passport processing times post Covid. The passport finally arrived last week after about ten weeks and they'd entered the year of birth wrong, by two years. He's now trying to get this sorted out in two weeks... hope that's possible but I have my doubts.


Anyway, I've been here in Blighty for less than a day and have already identified a problem... the bloody weather!

It is great to arrive in a heatwave, but wall to wall carpets, heavy curtains and small opening windows certainly ain't conducive to a good night's sleep. Aircon isn't a thing in the UK and to be fair it's rarely needed but our bedroom was as hot and stuffy as hell last night and I've been awake since 4am... and also there's this kind of musty, fruity smell but I think that must be the cider! We're in a bungalow and I can't go along to the kitchen at 4am for a cup of tea cos the dog sleeps on my mum's bed and will start barking and wake everyone up. Bloody dog.

Top of my list today is a pedestal fan. And maybe some kind of muzzle for the dog.

And there lies a second problem... my car has been delayed until Thursday and my mum wants to take us for a drive today... a kind gesture but she's 86 and I'm dreading it. These 'drives' certainly aren't for the faint hearted and I'll be fighting me daughter for the back seat.

[DrWilly]

Tell her you'd much rather a stroll. Getting healthy and all that.

[Neverna]

He downed it in one!
He stood and stared at the glass briefly, I thought I may have been rumbled but no.

I bet he thought: "This tastes like warm piss!"

Obviously that's par for the course oop north.

[armstrong]

Tell her you'd much rather a stroll. Getting healthy and all that.

Yeah a nice 5mile stroll with an 86year old. Great idea.

[malmomike77]

And there lies a second problem... my car has been delayed until Thursday and my mum wants to take us for a drive today... a kind gesture but she's 86 and I'm dreading it.

Only one day, man up. You itinerary still seems to have a lot of holes in it to fill which is either going to give you a lot of flexibility or a larger hotel bill - time will tell.

EDIT

Looking forward to the video clip of you being driven by your mum and screaming in a Somerset accent.

[BLD]

Ferrets by Brian Plumber

FFS how's this thread gonna pan out?

Don't worry, Brian's the full bottle on ferret's. What could possibly go wrong

[Reg Dingle]

I don't like to drink much in front of my mum because she's tea-total and worries about my alcohol consumption... and my weight and my diet and my job and just about anything else for that matter. I'll be driving most days

Why don't you drive your Mother's car?

It's almost as though she doesn't trust you

[bsnub]

Why don't you drive your Mother's car?

It's almost as though she doesn't trust you

Are you implying that our Mendy is a shit driver?

[hallelujah]

Ferrets by Brian Plumber

FFS how's this thread gonna pan out?

I loved the ferrets book on his table. Soooooo wurzel world.

[aging one]

Anybody that can drive 50-80k a day through Thai drivers and traffic is going to be a driver of drivers.

[Reg Dingle]

Are you implying that our Mendy is a shit driver?

But that's oilroit... cus he carn drive a tractorrr

[malmomike77]

But that's oilroit... cus he carn drive a tractorrr

you betwaddled, youm must be um grockle cuz its a tracor weem ryde on yer. Anyways, nuff yer vlother i gotst tebe ambl.

[PAG]

Anyway, I've been here in Blighty for less than a day and have already identified a problem... the bloody weather!

It is great to arrive in a heatwave, but wall to wall carpets, heavy curtains and small opening windows certainly ain't conducive to a good night's sleep. Aircon isn't a thing in the UK and to be fair it's rarely needed but our bedroom was as hot and stuffy as hell last night and I've been awake since 4am... and also there's this kind of musty, fruity smell but I think that must be the cider! We're in a bungalow and I can't go along to the kitchen at 4am for a cup of tea cos the dog sleeps on my mum's bed and will start barking and wake everyone up. Bloody dog.

Top of my list today is a pedestal fan. And maybe some kind of muzzle for the dog.

[Joe 90]

[Mendip]

^^ That was eerily similar to the state of my bed this morning PAG, although my middle sweat stain was a bit longer than that, if you know what I mean.

After waking at 4am today I watched around 5 episodes of Cheers before risking getting up and waking the household. My mum seems to like sleeping in these days which will be a problem for me... I like be up early this time of year. Around 7am I dragged the daughter down to the river to see if there were any trout about. We passed this patch of 're-wilding' which is a new thing for me. A great idea but depressing to see that someone has deliberately driven up onto the verge and over the bramble barrier put in to protect the new wild patch.



A weeping willow.



Around 40 years ago I caught a 3lb rainbow trout that had escaped from Blagdon Lake during a flood in this pool. Fishing isn't allowed on this stretch but I used to creep down in the evening from the other side of the river. Today I'd love to cast over a free-lined worm but it would mean fixing up all my tackle and I think now that I'm approaching middle age I would look a bit odd crawling through a field down to the river at dusk. All I could see were a few fingerling brown trout, anyway.



And a wonderful thing about the UK... sausages and back bacon, any time, any place.

When we returned from the walk I transformed this...



... into this. What I'd give for an unlimited choice of sausages and back bacon in Korat.

Why don't you drive your Mother's car?

It's almost as though she doesn't trust you

My mum needs her car for her various activities, but yes, she doesn't really trust me anyway. I may be a fully grown adult but back here I'm treated like a child again. It's getting a bit frustrating to be honest.

Our threatened 'drive' happened and we went to Clevedon for a couple of hours. My mum may drive at a snail's pace and do emergency stops every time a car approaches from the opposite direction but she has this unnerving habit of cutting corners. In Clevedon she cut straight across two lanes on a roundabout and it was absolutely petrifying, but we survived unscathed.

We eventually managed to find somewhere to park on Clevedon sea front and I went with the daughter for a walk along the famous Clevedon Pier. My mum didn't want to come so waited in the car.

But £6.20 for the two of us to walk along the pier... bollocks to that. A 4-pack of Thatchers is only £4.50. The daughter wasn't keen, anyway.



There's the pier in all it's glory with Wales in the background.



The best bit about Clevedon was popping into Tesco. It takes me 3 hours to make a trifle in Korat but here you can just pick one up, ready made. Real cream as well.



The second walk of the day... I'm looking forward to picking up the car tomorrow and getting mobile. It won't be an old banger like this.



The Mendip Hills in the background.



The trees along the left of this picture line the river I was hoping to catch a trout in but it's become so overgrown you can't get anywhere near the water. I spent half my childhood fishing along here but I don't think I'll ever be doing it again. This will have to remain a memory.



The field has twp crops... a 5 metre wide perimeter of one crops surrounding the main crop. I sent the daughter in to collect a few ears of the inner crop so I could have a look.



I'm sure I should know this, but why? Pest control, pollination aid?



The ears on the left are the inner crop, on the right the outer perimeter. Anyone know anything?



Anyway, as I pondered over that the Grandmother and Granddaughter started making cup cakes together, thus freeing me up for an hour or so.

I looked through another book while admiring my new geological hammer that arrived in the post today. It may seem a bit flash having two geological hammers spread across two continents but we international geologists can be a bit decadent at times. I decided against bringing over my Thai hammer in favour of getting a second one which will stay here. That's an extra pound and a half of sausages I can take home next month!



It's not all cider and skittles though... I've just heard that the trains are striking on July 27th which may be the first of many strikes.

FFS... fingers crossed.

[Looper]

Thread of the year brewing already and it has only just set sail...

Safe travels to you and the mini on the epic Odyssean pilgrimage Mendy

Enthralling tales are sure to ensue

[DrWilly]

You didn’t pay the £6 to walk on the pier? Your daughter will feel like she’s not worth it.