July 2005

We all have cures for hangovers, I still don’t but anyway……….does anybody have a cure for Bar Rash?? I am thankfully not afflicted by it but it is a skin rash which appears on the face after a few beers. Please email me with possible cures. I always say the best cure is prevention…..ie. don’t drink or alternatively get totally blind until you don’t give sh*t. Here is a classic example of Bar Rash. This photograph was taken at White House on Saturday, it got so bad the poor victim of this disease decided to head home early.

Last night capped off a three night partying stint that started off on Thursday with the first of “Farewell to Truman and Sarah” We went to a wine bar just off Berkeley Square in Mayfair and met up with Truman and his work colleagues including a cameo appearance by Flan, Terry, Micky, Nicole, Trudi etc. Had a great night catching up with everyone although it probably didn’t need to be closed out with a few drinks at Dover Street!!

The Estonia Crew reunion started off on Friday night with a hangover removing cold Bud at legendary Waxy O’Connor’s in the West End. A few of the boys were missing but Adam, John, Terry, Jason, Cormack and myself made sure that the night would be memorable. Memorable, although not repeatable, ok just a little bit. We all ended up at digress in Soho until 4 am despite John Ellemore telling his girlfriend at 7pm that he would be home in time for dinner!

Saturday arrived and both Monkey and myself felt like we’d been hit by an articulated truck! The big day had arrived and we weren’t up for it at all! Saturday was meant to be Truman and Sarahs final farewell at White House in Clapham from 2 pm and then a cheaky move later to Plan B in Brixton. First off though was the small matter of South Africa vs Australia in the Tri Nations opener. About twenty Aussies (Truman, Scratchy, Jezza etc ) surrounded by 2 South Africans (Kramer and I) watched the game in The Alex in Clapham. If you haven’t heard the score by now it was a simply fought, easy victory for the marvellous Springboks.

South Africa 22 - Australia 16

WE downed our beer after the game and headed toThe White House ending it off at @ Plan B at about 4 in the morning - AGAIN.

Photos to follow once I get my laptop sorted, some beauties of Russell Hatcher, Jason Monk and Truman Dare.

TRUMAN, I am really going to miss you buddy, you are great friend and world class wingman!

Are these guys completely crazy. Its little wonder the Aussies are gonna get thumped this weekend! Read this article posted by Mark Keohane on what the Australians call team building!?

Aussies make a meal of bonding session
July 28, 2005

A team bonding session for the Wallabies added more embarrassment to the embattled tourists when the carefree players left their notes at a restaurant in Cape Town.

Read the rest of this entry »

So I get back to work to find my inbox swamped with emails. Many of them were funny but only one could be considered originally funny AND fit for publication.

Peksta sends me an email titled “The Greatest Night of Dick Muirs Life”. Upon opening the email I see a grainy photo, one I can barely make out, of Dick Muir (the coach and former great player of our home team The Sharks) and someone who looks like he let the council cut his hair …..ohhhhh…. no, wait, ….. thats Peksta ….the guy next to big Dick.

I’ll make it easier for you, Peksta’s the one on the right.

Another funny mail I received happened to be during the bombings, everybody was panicking and sending round the standard waste of time “Are u alright” emails, texts etc. Some girl responded to one saying she had heard a suicide bomber was shot dead running through Covent Garden. Kramer responded saying Read the rest of this entry »

Arrived back from the States on Saturday morning after flying the whole of Friday night. I arrived back to have a chilled weekend - yeah right, like that EVER happens in London. Saturday morning after landing Kramer and I went to a romantic breakfast for two in Wimbledon Village. Kramer is a great conversationalist and nearly always says stuff that he shouldn’t really, but he does know how to talk about stuff and I always manage to gleam the maximum amount of skinner from his latest trips back to SA. Read the rest of this entry »

Wow, what an awesome week I’ve had. Even though I have had internet access the entire time I’ve been here I just haven’t had the time to get round to updating the site. I AM still alive but with work and play taking up 23 hours of my day there isn’t much time to do anything else. Hooked up with all the same cool people I met last time I was here nd literally met loads more. My new favourite drinking destinations in this small planet we live on are Chadwicks and Union Street in Old Town Alexandria. I have had some of the best late night bar parties ever! Its one of those long classic movie style bars with a whole bunch of cool people from all walks drinking everything from a “Tight Snatch” (no joking) to a regular Bud. The best thing is that once you know a few regulars and introduce yourself to the finest barmen in the world then you’ll all set for a few thousand rounds on the house - yes in the US my second favourite four letter F word is FREE.

This weekend I went down to Richmond Virginia to visit an amazing theme park aka Rollercoaster Heaven called Paramount Kings Dominion. I steamed through the place managing to go on every single ride in one day - including all 9 rollercoasters!

Tomorrow night I’m off to watch another baseball game. I have learnt a lot about the rules of baseball since I’ve been here to the point where I am actually able to grasp the concept of the in-field fly rule!

I should be back in London this weekend if all goes well but I will try and update the site before I get home.

Saying of the week “C’mon now, Git R Done” (Larry the Cable Guy)

Just finishing up everything I need to do this afternoon before my flight leaves for DC in a few hours. I had a monster day yesterday. It was Trumans birthday so we headed down to O’Neills to watch the rugby with Guy and Sarah, Kramer etc. Well, needless to say the rugby was world class crap and we lost to the dirty Aussies after Stevie Larkham taught a few of ours boys how to play the game. Truman was strutting around like a peacock for the rest of the day.

Guy and I decided that we would drown our sorrows by getting stuck into snakebites (Cider, beer, blackcurrant). I know, I know, you’re thinking to yourself “why the hell do you drink that shite” …and you’d be right. It was just that it was midday, Trumans birthday and we’d just lost to the Aussies. So we decided to go hard - the actual word used for the day was BLOW-OUT. Cut a long story short (’cos I don’t have the time right now) - we had a great day of inebriation in Fulham. We hit a few different bars in the afternoon, restaurant for lunch and then went to the store, bought some Bacardi and gatecrashed (sort of, Sarahs mate really but we didn’t know anyone) some Aussie barbecue. We all fell down shortly after that or at least that is how I am going to end the story ‘cos I have to go.

Next update will be coming from State side.

Latest Tour de France news, Lance loses yellow jersey but things are still looking ok.

Please don’t waste your money any more with texts, phonecalls, emails etc. I am fine, naturally otherwise the previous post couldn’t have been written, just managed to miss the blasts by about 30 miles! Thanks for caring folks.

Obviously today has been a sad one, but the small matter of a MAHUSIVE 9 wicket victory by the damb squib English cricket team over the cocky Tasmanians, err sorry, Australians brought a cheeky little smile to my face.

The Australian government probably spends more money on sports/sports development/sports facilities etc than the South African government spends on healthcare. Why are the Aussies so shite then? Can somebody remind them how easily we crushed England in the 1-dayers earlier this year.

London came under attack today as four bombs went off around this city this morning. I heard the first reports come through at about 9.15 this morning in the car down to Surrey- they were initially reported as power surges(!) Three bombs went off underground and one bomb went off on the No. 30 bus outside my old head office in Tavistock Square. The bomb literally blew the roof off the double decker outside the offices of EC Harris which is situated on Tavistock only a few hundred metres away from Russell Square underground station.

At one stage during the day it was reported that there had been 7 explosions but it turns out that the explosions happened between tube stations. A guy was interviewed and said he’d had to evacuate his train to the nearest tube station where he literally had to step over bodies strewn everywhere underground!

The Underground is an easy target for terrorists but surprisingly they chose not to attack the Live8 concert or the Trafalgar Square celebrations of the Olympic Bid. They are trying to destabilise and terrorize the capital by killing innocent people.

Its really sad that Londoners can no longer feel safe while traveling on the underground, but I suppose thats what they were trying to do! Hopefully London can get back on its feet as soon as possible but I doubt there will be any decent tube service for at least the next week. So far the death toll is still under 50 which - although tragic - is nowhere near 9/11 or even the recent blasts on Madrids underground (200+).

This certainly won’t alter the things I do or the way I go about my life but the lives of the families of the 37 murdered people have changed forever!

London has it! The IOC yesterday awarded the 2012 olympics to London. I don’t own property in the east end although I did take a bet at 8-1 about 2 months ago that London would take it!

Lance has got the yellow jersey. The guy wearing the yellow fell really badly yesterday and Lance was there, right on his heels to pull on the shirt.

Well it turns out SA won the Mens doubles for over 35’s and also won the over 45’s category!! Kevin Curran joined up with Johan Kriek to win the over 45’s. Kevin Curran, like yours truly is a Glenwood High School old boy!

London - It was a dream weekend for South Africa at Wimbledon.

Liezel Huber, who previously lived in Durban and her Zimbabwean team-mate, Cara Black, won the women’s doubles tile on Sunday.

Wesley Moodie, who was also born in Durban and his Australian team-mate, Stephen Huss, won the men’s doubles title on Saturday afternoon.

And if that was not enough, Johan Kriek and Kevin Curren, two of South Africa’s top tennis players to date, won the doubles title for men over the age of 45 for the third consecutive year.

Both of them accepted American citizenship in the apartheid years to circumvent the sport boycott against South Africa, but they are still considered South Africans by all and sundry.

Curren, the South African Davis Cup captain, lost to the 17-year-old Boris Becker in the singles’ final 20 years ago.

And this is not all - a former Pretoria player - Ellis Ferreira and Paul Haarhuis of the Netherlands won in the 35 years and older category.

The brilliant Roger Federer, who won his third successive men’s single title on Sunday afternoon, may travel with a Swiss passport, but his mother Lynette is an Afrikaans-speaking woman from Kempton Park.

There are 5 titles for the taking at Wimbledon : Mens, Womans, Mens Doubles, Womans Doubles and Mixed Doubles.

Well, it seems SA did pretty well. Wesley Moodie won the Mes doubles and Liezel Huber won the Womans Doubles. Cara black was Liezels partner and she is from Zimbabwe.

The best result was obviously Roger Federer. Now most of you don’t know that Federer has a South African mother and is a full passport carrying South African!! Thats good enough for us to claim him, especially seeing as he is world number one. So eight people won titles at Wimbledon (excluding seniors and juniors) and over one quarter of them were from SA. Pretty impressive considering most us think that we’re really crap at tennis.

Lance Armstrong is one hell of a sportsman. I really hope he manages to get 7 tour wins under his belt. That is one hell of an amazing record. The only thing I wish was that I could be over in France to watch just one stage of what will go down in history as one of the greatest races ever, I am sure of that, especially if Lance wins.

I can’t make it across to watch any of it ‘cos I am going to be in Washington DC again from this Sunday until the 22nd July. Unfortunately I haven’t sorted my laptop out yet so I am going to battle to update the weboste over the next few weeks, I will try though. Free broadband internet in the states so if I do get it working I’ll be online everyday. Nobody seems to even know what wireless security is about so it is simple to hack into peoples wireless broadband for free.

PS: Springboks play Australia this weekend. With Stevie Larkham in scintilating form at the moment it doesn’t look good but just to spoil my good (for an aussie) mate Truman’s birthday I reckon we’ll pump them by all of 5 points!!

So here it is, the line-up for those living outside Britian of the Live8 concert held at Hyde Park in London. Anybody lving here needn’t be told again. It has been the only thing in the news for the past week leading up to and after Live8.

Lineup in ALphabetical order ‘cos I don’t remember the order they played:

Annie Lennox
Bob Geldof
Coldplay
Dido
Elton John
Joss Stone
Keane
Killers, The
Madonna
Mariah Carey
Ms. Dynamite
Paul McCartney
Pink Floyd
Razorlight
REM
Robbie Williams
Scissor Sisters
Snoop Dogg
Snow Patrol
Stereophonics
Sting
Travis
U2
UB40
Velvet Revolver

Add to this a few cameo performances eg. Pete Doherty with Elton John, Yossou N’Dou with Dido, George Michael with Paul McCartney,and then probably best of all Richard Ashcroft (the Verve) singing Bitter Sweet Symphony with Colplay as his backing band.

Throw in a few celeb appearances on stage eg. Brad Pitt, Bill Gates, Kofi Annan, David Beckham

And you have the greatest concert ever held!!!

What you really want to know is who was good and who was bad Read the rest of this entry »

All I will say (for now until I recover on lost sleep) is …………….. I WAS THERE! Read this article to keep you entertained until I tell my story.

LIVE8: GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH: EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD Jul 3 2005

By Colin Wills

IT was the day the world linked arms and vowed to make things better. The day millions opened their hearts and said to the dying people of Africa: “We are your brothers and sisters.”

Live 8 - the biggest event in the history of entertainment - outshone all the hype with concerts in eight countries and a world-wide audience of THREE BILLION.

But statistics don’t even begin to sum up the emotion of the day.

Read the rest of this entry »