The Photo Meme of Mystery

Many thanks, albeit through gritted teeth, to Humdrum Mum for tagging me for this meme. When I first read her blog bio I thought she had said that she worked for sanitary purposes, and I spent 20 very confused minutes trying to figure out why. How did working keep her clean? Was she a teacher of the sacred art of water aerobics? Was she a faulty umbrella tester? Did she, in fact, work in the bubble bath bubble measuring department of a leading bubble bath manufacturer? I had so many questions until I re-read her bio, and reminded myself never to skim again.

Anyway here are my instructions:

1. Open the first (oldest) photo folder in your computer library
2. Scroll to the 10th photo
3. Post the photo and the story behind it
4. Tag 5 or more people to continue the thread.

Well, what to say about this photo? It's of my sister Lucy (and let me tell you, she knows a secret or two?) and my eldest daughter Storm, taken in the pub I used to own before I became a househusband and started housebitching. It was the 20^th June 2006, and as you may be able to tell, it was taken during a football match. It was England's game against Sweden in the World Cup Finals, a game we drew 2-2 that let both teams progress to the knock out phases. I can't tell you much more about the photo because I wasn't there. I was in Brno, Czech Republic, in another pub, watching the same game with 15 fellow stags, all there to celebrate my mate JG's upcoming nuptials.

I guess you would rather hear about that now wouldn't you? Women tend to be quite inquisitive as to what us men-folk get up to on these trips. That's probably because men tend to stick to the 'What happens on tour, stays on tour' code, and after hearing about some hen nights I wish more women would follow that code. All of which mean I can't give you any of the juicy bits, well none that involve anyone else but me.

Although to be fair, as there was 16 of us on the trip you was almost always with someone else. I did one morning decide to go for a bus ride on my own, but that's about the only thing I can think of off. I don't really know why I went on the aimless journey, it's not something I like to do at home, I guess I just wanted to feel like one of the locals. Unfortunately I had to fare dodge as I had thrown all my coins at a mate the previous night. He had decided to start pole dancing in a club we had accidently wandered into, ahem, and he certainly didn't dance well enough to deserve any notes.

The only other story fit for outside consumption would be the morning when me and my roomy No Rent Boy (we all had tour nick-names, mine was Boy Band Wannabe) decided to wake the groom up early. I burst into his room only to find a very naked, and very startled Czech Businessman (he was wearing a bowler hat) who was now wondering why there was two shouting Englishmen in his room. It's hard to sincerely apologise to someone in that situation. Laughing your arse off whilst walking backwards doesn't help, neither does waving his 'do not disturb' tag at him.

I can't tell you who spent so much time sleeping outside the door to his room, we ended up calling him 'draft excluder'. I can't tell you how we run up a bill of 12,000 Czech Crowns in a pub when a pint cost 35 Crowns. And I also can't give you the name of the only stag to insist on booking into a fancy hotel away from ours. I can tell you that we managed to convince him that ours had a pool on the roof. I can also tell you that he wandered into our hotel bar in trunks and a towel, demanding that one of us show him where it was, much to the merriment of ourselves and the staff.

So there you go, a couple of stories within the story that was explaining why I wasn't in the photo that I was meant to be telling a story about. I am also glad I had to pick the 10^th photo and not the 11^th. This is the 11^th and it would need more explaining than it needed editing.

So now to nominate some wonderful wordsmiths I admire, and I know have got way too much time on their hands.

1. Brits in Bosnia.
2. I'll think of a title later.
3. Bringing up Charlie.
4. No wine on Wednesdays.
5. Notes from Lapland.

Good luck folks, I'm sure you will entertain the crap out of me.

Favourite Photo Meme

An oft used phrase is 'Great minds think alike'. I would like to add a slight addendum to that, 'Sadistic minds think alike'. The lovely, colourful, and slightly twisted bloggers that are Insomniac Mummy, La Beet, and The Dotterel have all tagged me with the 'Favourite Photo Meme'. I would like to think that they asked me because they love the self depreciating and modest humour of my blog, but I rather suspect they had the 'Shit, I need to think of some names to pass this on to' blind panic. I am thinking of renaming my blog site 'Zoo's line is it anyway', so in future dodging the meme lists by being at the end of their reading lists. All jokes aside, would leave me with nothing to say, so I will continue in this vein.

My first photo is one from one of my most recent surreal days. I was going to say most surreal day, but that prize would go to the day I missed a plane coming home from my Brother-in-law's house in Germany. There was a huge traffic jam on the way to the airport and we started to do the 'missing the plane' panic. Stephen had a theory that all the roads ending in an even number ran horizontal, all the odd ones ran vertical. Using this theory, and without a map, he attempted to leap frog the jam. It's hard to judge if this theory was correct, or if it even worked, but we did miss the plane so I'm going to answer in the negative.

The Airport was one of those dodgy ones that was nowhere near the actual city it pretended to be. In fact, it was just an aircraft hanger on an old deserted Army base. It had a portacabin toilet, and when you (eventually) handed your luggage over, it was between a hole in a corrugated plastic wall, with a pair of hands the other side. In one corner of this massive hanger there was a vending machine, but that was it for facilities. The next plane was not for another 10 hours, so we decided to get a cab into the nearest town and waste the day there.

It is at this point in the story that I should probably introduce my fellow travellers that day. There was my good self, a staunch atheist, almost rabid in my hatred of all things holy once there is a drink inside me. My Wife the good catholic, her brother the lip-service catholic, his wife the God knows what, and finally the person the Pope rings up when he has a theology question, the Mother-in-law.

The first thing we saw when arriving, was a huge cathedral/church. The second thing we saw were Nuns, loads of them, hundreds. I felt like a Lion wandering the Serengeti in amongst a herd of unsuspecting Zebra. There was row after row of shops all selling holy candles, candles so big you could use them as pillars. Holy pictures of Jesus in every pose known to catholic-kind, except that really funky double thumbs up one. Then there was a sea of brown cassocked monks, steadfastly avoiding eye contact with all the nuns, lest an explosion of pent up lust occurred.

I had to spend the day in this place and I had no idea how I was going to cope, then I saw a bar and my prayers were answered. I started to drink like my life depended on it, and the others joined me, the place was just too damned creepy. I'm not sure I could ever do justice to how funny that day became, I seem to remember just laughing all day, but can't think of many reasons why. We hid from my BIL every time he went to the toilet, I attempted to get my photo taken with as many Nuns as possible, and I rinsed beer out of my hair in one of the church's fountains, all juvenile stuff I know. Anything to pass the time, we even made a song up called 'Welcome to the nightmare Niederrhein' to the tune of Hotel California.

Anyway, I can only find one photo from that day, and I'm smoking in it, and as I gave up three years ago and still miss it, the picture makes me sad so can't count.

The most recent surreal day was the day we had a power cut that lasted all day and into the night. Just me and the two little ones, the whole story is at 'Your Worst Nightmare' on this here blog. So here is a photo from that day.

This is my favourite photo though, has no real interesting story to it, hence the above babble you had to wade through just to get here. I used to own a pub in East London and every summer I booked a big 16 piece Swing band called Harry Martin and the London Swingfonia. Martin is a mate of ours and would oft hang around afterwards for a few beers. He had left his microphone set up and my then one year old daughter decided to give us her best Liam Gallagher impersonation and started singing.

OK now to my victims, in alphabetical order of course:

Are we nearly there yet Mummy?
Brits in Bosnia
I'll think of a title later
Musings of a Geriatric Mummy
W.M. Morrell's musings from Down Under

Good luck.