If I hadn’t already shelled out $25 on books in Borders and didn’t already own a great satchel (or “manbag” as Ev calls it), I’d have bought this. Do they do T-shirts?
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“Cardiff,” I say. “Aberystwyth.” I can’t believe it – this is the second time this year I’ve met someone from Wales in Hof’s Hut. As I always wear a Wales baseball cap or T-shirt I’m usually not that difficult to spot. He asks if I’m on holiday and I explain that I live here. He asks if I keep in touch and I say, yes, we go home once a year and I listened to the rugby yesterday. His wife says that he’s trying to avoid hearing the score but it’s obvious from the tone of my voice that he’s guessed. “We lost?” “Yep – 30-17.” “Oh, bugger. Well it was nice to meet you.” “And you. Take care.” Poor bloke – he’s in the one country in the world that doesn’t care about rugby… and he meets me. Is there anyone else’s day I could bugger up for them? ONE of the best times to take photos of the beach is after a storm. As it chucked it down last night and this morning, I headed over with the camera once the skies cleared around 5.30.
WE LOST to England 30-17. Sounds like we at least gave the Saes a game of it, though; at one point we went from 20-3 down to 20-17. Flynn, James, you may commence the piss-taking. I’m going back to bed.
Anyway, today I was having brekkies with my friend Jamie when I spotted that she’s got the same thing with her little fingers. This is the first time ever that I’ve met someone else with bent fingers. I was so amazed I almost offered to pay for brekkies. Turns out it’s a genetic thing as her brother and sister have it. The condition is called clinodactyly, which comes from the Greek words “clino” (weird) and “dactyl” for (fingers). No, I’m joking – it’s from the Greek kliner, “to bend,” and “dactylos, “a finger.” The condition doesn’t cause any harm and isn’t a problem. Unless you’re Christian, that is: When the tip phalange of the little finger is bent, it represents the inverse guilt syndome in which the child assumes guilt after being abused or molested. The abuse may be verbal or physical. The molestation may be sexual. The child, who is unable to cope with such trauma, is overwhelmed with guilt, which continues into adult life. Which just goes to prove once and for all that Christians are utter, utter wankers. Every last one of them. ON SATURDAY the 2010 Six Nations tournament kicks off with us playing England at 9am California time. I’ll be glued to the PC as always, listening to the coverage on either BBC Radio Wales or 5 Live… that is assuming the dreaded hand of “international rights management” hasn’t used its reverse-Midas touch and turned my hopes to shit. Here are my predictions for this year’s tournament, which will doubtless have the piss ripped out of them by Flynn and James in the comments: February 6: England at Twickenham Oh God, England. There’s a saying in Wales: “As long as we beat the English we don’t care”. This is true – even though we lost to Ireland last year and played pathetically against Italy, we beat England and therefore had a successful tournament (even though thanks to points difference we ended up fourth in the table). The annual England game is 80 minutes of hell for us Welsh. We go through highs and lows not experienced by the most manic of manic-depressives with only the the promise of an outpouring of joy if we win and national humiliation if we lose. We’ve lost a few players to injury and I can’t see us doing it. Winner: I’m sorry, dad, but it’s going to be England. February 13: Scotland in Cardiff The Scots are the perennial whipping boys of the Six Nations. In our past 18 meetings we’ve beaten them 10 times and drawn once. And we’ll have home advantage, which is worth three points straight away. Winner: Wales. February 26: France in Cardiff Ah, ze French. A team marked by periods of brilliance only matched by their ability to fall to pieces halfway through. We only lost to them by five points in Paris last year so hopefully home advantage will make up that gap in 2010. Winner: Wales. March 13: Ireland at Croke Park Can we just skip the Ireland match? This is the one team I can say will definitely beat us. Ireland play a hard and brutal game and with any luck will penalise themselves out of the match like they did in 2005. But it won’t be us this year. Winner: Ireland. March 20: Italy in Cardiff To quote my dad, we played bloody awfully against Italy last year, barely scraping by in a 20-15 embarrassment of a game. We have lost to the Azzurri before, a day that will forever remain as the darkest in our history, but since then we’ve regularly beaten them. However, as I’ve said before, Wales are a team that’s perfectly capable of beating England one week and losing to Treorchy High School Under-13s the next, so I’m not going to let overconfidence cloud my judgement. Then again it’s Italy. Winner: Wales.
I’VE been meaning to take photos of this for ages and finally got around to it this evening. AFTER laughing our heads off at Eddie Izzard last night, we set out for a post-gig meal. We’d heard about The Original Pantry from a friend yesterday morning and as it’s only a couple of blocks from the Nokia Theatre we set off through the wild streets of downtown LA to Figueroa Street.
I plumped (pun intended) for the ham and cheese omelette with fried potatoes, coleslaw, rye toast, salsa and coffee… every single calorie of which is now settling down and raising kids on my waist. The omelette was excellent – firm yet fluffy, with plenty of strong cheese and loads of chunky ham. The fried potatoes were overdone, which I love, and the coffee was great and refilled without the need to ask. Oh, bear in mind I ate all this at 11.50pm and had two and a half coffees. No wonder I didn’t get to sleep til around 4.30 this morning. Ev wanted chicken fried steak but thanks to a cock-up with the ordering ended up with fried chicken, which was still fantastic. We’re definitely going to head back to the Original Pantry Cafe at some point.
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