Saturday, April 23, 2005

gilly gilly hassen pfeffer catch an allan bogen by the sea

Yes, there's a tiny house, by a tiny stream, where a lovely lass.. but first things first. The football. Yes, we got to see Palace v Norwich.

Sadly the scoreline wasn't what was required. A stirring fightback maybe but we needed more than 1 point from surely the easiest of all the 38 games.

As always, our viewing of the big game wasn't without the usual stresses and strains. The sports bar we were in decided, in its wisdom, that somehow the totally irrelevant Liverpool v Tottenham game should take prime position on the big screen, relegating Palace to the small screen in the corner. As you can guess, I wasn't a happy bunny about this. Even asking 3 different bar staff to change it round didn't have any effect.

Still, at least we had sound and a screen. Worse was to follow. At halftime the bar staff came over with the news that we were being further relegated (no pun intended, not yet anyway) to a tv even more in the corner and this time without any sound. And merely so a bunch of Australian trailer park could watch a delayed recording (not even live ffs) of some bobbins Aussie Rules Football. Well, at this news all the toys came well and truly out the pram and landed halfway down the street. Once more Ms Love donned her mediator hat, but all to no avail, apparently 'you were lucky they didn't throw you out', and we moved to the soundless corner.

Anyway, to prove there is a world outside of SE25, we have spent the week since in Gili Air. A lovely island just off the coast of Lombok with absolutely no connection to Max Bygraves except the name Gilly.

Post camera debacle, and the $300 that the smelly German stole off us (but that's another story), the budget had taken an almighty hammering. Thus it was back on the bemo-ferry-bemo-ferry-horse&cart-12hour option for getting to Gili Air and no more 1hourplanerides. At least we got to use possibly the slowest (and oldest) ferry in the world across to Lombok. Setting a new world record we took 4 hours to cover about 20km; it would have been quicker to swim. Nevertheless the ship made it, eventually, and we were off to play Robinson Crusoe for the week.

Gili Air it was. 2km tall by 2km wide, all the locals living in the middle, with a sprinkling of tourists staying around the edges. Lush green vegetation, no cars just a few horse and carts, palm trees, fresh fish barbeques and endless pebbles for Courtney to collect and needlessly weigh her rucksack down with.

Now, for much of the last 32 years when it came to swimming I'd confined myself to breaststroke. Largely due to not really liking putting my head beneath water. Strange it maybe but I was happy and content. So clearly I'd never seen the bottom of the ocean and snorkelling held a strange fear.

So there we were, practising in the shallow water (so noone else could witness my shame!). But, miraculously as if the previous 32 years had never happened, in a matter of minutes I was away and swimming out to sea, head safely beneath the surface. And by jove, it really does look like Finding Nemo. Apparently the coral wasn't as good as some other places in Indonesia but we were both happy as larry with what we saw. Fishes of all different colours, big and small, swimming around. Truly spectacular.

Elsewhere we met up with Claire and Stuart again and celebrated Claire's birthday, even making it out past midnight. Courtney discovered the new camera took photos of flowers which at least distracted her from collecting the entire contents of the beach to take home with us. And there was even a mobile phone signal so we could find out the distressing news from Ewood Park.

Still, there's only so long you can spend in paradise, even when you're away for a year, so it was by total coincidence that we left the island (no internet and no tvs) on Friday in time to reach Ubud (internet and tvs) by Saturday night.

Yes, you wait ages for a bus and then two come along at once.

Crystal Palace v Liverpool, live tonight on ESPN at 10pm. And we're in a town full of possible bars. And the other game on at the same time is Middlesborough v West Brom. I defy any local to state he'd rather watch that one...

yes, that is a necklace Posted by Hello

fins, mask, snorkle Posted by Hello

flower #1 Posted by Hello

cidomo Posted by Hello

flower #2 Posted by Hello

on the beach Posted by Hello

precious, my precious Posted by Hello

flower #4 Posted by Hello

swing lo Posted by Hello

flower #15 Posted by Hello

boat Posted by Hello

flower #31 Posted by Hello

black and white Posted by Hello

coconut  Posted by Hello

jessica pig-tails Posted by Hello

and we all went to sea in a pea green boat Posted by Hello

flower # 60 (my favourite) Posted by Hello

railings Posted by Hello

we discover the 'vivid blue' function Posted by Hello

fat bottomed girls Posted by Hello

flower #91 Posted by Hello

bloody tourist, go home. Posted by Hello

stand and deliver Posted by Hello

flower # 128 Posted by Hello

it's no secret that the stars are falling from the sky Posted by Hello

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