a note for first-timers

If it's your first time here and you're new to blogs, the first post you'll see is the most recent so that's where you should be ending, rather than starting. Otherwise, carry on...

Please, feel free to comment - you know you want to.

inappropriately titled "the Disney brand"

I'm thinking that, perhaps, I should have been given the nickname "Disney". My emotions these days seem to be a bit like that, if not my moods: A couple of days ago I was miserable; today I'm not - far from it.

But enough about my emotional rollercoaster - I'm here to speak more about LA (the one in Tenerife). I probably shouldn't have mentioned Disney and LA in the same post - you'll all be thinking of the wrong one now. Ah well, concentrate and you should be fine.

I spoke to Rich last night and he approved of the tale about the first night there, even recalling the ickiness of the four free shots. But he wants more. He got a bit of a reminiscent fix from reading of our adventures and now wants another hit. Pretty soon, I think, he'll be a junkie and, when the true stories run out, I'll have to start making stuff up just to keep the poor guy from crashing back down to Earth. Seriously - he'll vividly remember when we scaled Everest on that holiday by the time I'm finished here.

So, let me tell you of the cast of characters we encountered over there:

Emily
The first morning we were there we were supposed to be up at ten (I think) to meet the Reps and other people that were on the same package holiday thing as us. I say "package holiday" but it wasn't really like that - we still had to pay for all the activities they had planned for us, which was nice.

Anyway, in the lift on the way down to this meeting, we met a couple (both in their forties, I guess) and had a wee chat with them, unaware they, too, were going to the meeting. And there was us thinking it was a variation on the 18-30 theme! It turns out that they were there to gain information on behalf of and pay for the future activities of their daughter - Emily.

You know, I don't remember actually seeing Emily with normal hair but I'm sure we did the first time we met her - it's just that her braids became so "Emily" that I've forgotten how she looked without them.

Emily was an addict. She didn't look like your typical addict but she was. She liked to feel out of control, though it was apparent to us that it also scared the shit out of her - not literally, fortunately. I remember one night she, Rich, some others, and I were out and she had us wait for her on a street corner while she went off to buy drugs from a guy who'd done his best to pick a fight with me in a club the night before. The police turned up and yet still she stood there paying for whatever shite it was she was going to smoke/snort. Fortunately for her, the Police in that LA seem not to be the most efficient or observant.

"Not for shit, mate" was her response to most things she didn't agree with. This was both amusing and annoying all at once, though it became much more the former when we got back from LA and Rich started dating a girl from the same part of the country as Emily who also favoured that particular ism. Serves him right for making me do that Gas Chamber, I say!

Remember why Disney was christened Disney? Well, on that basis, she would have been an even stronger candidate for that nickname. She was a sweet girl most of the time... but she could turn at the drop of a hat and then cry about it. Madness. Still, she had braids. And "not for shit" would she change them.

Personally, there's not much I would do or exchange for shit, but perhaps that's just me. Maybe I don't yet understand the true value of the brown gold. Is it to be a future currency, I wonder?

Bugs
Rich, you probably ought to explain about Bugs seeing as you knew her much more intimately than I did, or wanted to. Silly boy. *tut tut*

There's not a whole lot I can really say about Bugs. It's a harsh name for her, I guess, because she didn't have that much of an overbite, but it fitted well enough. And when you see who's up next you'll see better why that is.

Rich and Bugs,
sittin' by the sea,
kay-eye-ess-ess-eye-en-gee.

Rich and others,
playin' drinking games,
this one's 'bout flu-id ex-change.

Ohhhh yes. And that was how it ended. They got together at a Foam Party - both parts of that sentence turned out to be bad things: the first because... well... because (Rich, help me out here. Explain.) and the second because the pair of us (along with the bulk of the people that were there) ended up getting some sort of chest infection that knocked us all for six - and it all finished when one of the drinking games, which involved ten guys and ten girls in two teams (five of each in each) sitting on a flight of stairs and passing alcohol of some description from the top to the bottom via their mouths, was participated in by a certain young man who answers to "Rich".

You see the blue text a bit further up? Repeat.

Daffy
See? This is why Bugs was really Bugs.

In this instance she actually did look like Daffy Duck. In-so-much-as someone can look like a cartoon character (don't get me started on Roald Dahl here!) anyway. She really did.

And, with a thick Mancunian accent, she almost quacked too. Without meaning to offend anyone from England's second (or is it third? Or fourth?) city, the accent isn't the easiest to understand at the best of times - and this wasn't the best of times.

Both Bugs and Daffy were nice enough but they were the people that tag onto a larger group of people. That, in itself, is perfectly okay - it's just when the tags start moaning about where the luggage is going that things can get a little less... errr... okay.

More to follow... but I've got to go and check out a car. Come on, Wombat - lunch.