tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33800962152707727422024-02-21T01:02:20.840-08:00AyeCarambaPokerTales of low stakes poker and drunken idiocy. But mostly drunken idiocy.AyeCarambaPokerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06507500031143618357noreply@blogger.comBlogger122125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3380096215270772742.post-70344686059207105302024-02-04T05:06:00.001-08:002024-02-04T05:07:25.924-08:00My name is AC and I have an alcohol problem<div dir="auto">Greetings all - it's been a while since I posted but the past few years have been bonkers both work wise and personally but now it's time to admit that I have a major problem.<div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I'm not talking about being ready for 10 steps and submitting myself to almighty Jebus and praising dog (also whilst admitting my dyslexia) but it's actually time to stand up and say "My name is AC and I have an alcohol problem".</div><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">The major problem is that I've become a lightweight. There - I've taken the first step. My tolerance for alcohol is probably at the lowest it's been in my adult life. I'm rubbish at drinking now - my monthly intake barely covers what I used to put away during a lunchtime and still be productive in the afternoon. I'm ashamed of myself. And it needs to change pretty damn sharpish.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">This came to a head last weekend when I had an absolute shocker - I'd barely had a drop all month before meeting some friends for beers on Friday night. I managed to be home by 9.30pm despite only having met up just after 6. Then on the Sunday I thought I was being sensible by waiting all day for a beer before the NFL championship games - the 49ers playing at 11.30pm UK time with the early game starting at 8. I cracked a beer open mid way through the 1st quarter of the Chiefs v Ravens game and settled in for an anticipated 3am finish. By half time I was ready for bed - halftime in the AFC game! I'd barely managed 2 beers and a whole hour of sport! I'm rubbish and I really don't like it. </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Which is why I have a plan: get your ass to Mars then go to the Hilton and flash that Brubaker ID at the desk - that's all there is to it.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">No. Wait. Hang on. I'm pretty sure Mars isn't habitable yet and even if it is there's probably a dearth of decent beer and poker options. </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I mean Vegas don't I? I need to get my ass to Vegas. That has beer and poker if I totally recall correctly.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I've been to Vegas once since the big C (fuck me was that really 4 years ago?) and that was for under 24 hours which although profitable and alcohol fuelled is a distant memory. Or has my memory been erased by Richter? No - I really was in Vegas 2 years ago and it's definitely a case of absence makes the heart grow fonder. </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">So this is where I need to get myself match fit and ready for a big surprise - I'm in the middle of organising something that will have me in Vegas for a couple of weeks a month for the next couple of years. I've got a bit of planning to do but hopefully I'll make a return in June or July this year but I've got a load of logistics to sort out in the meantime.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">So I need to up my drinking game so that I'm ready for the carnage that my liver has missed out on - I'll be starting next weekend whilst watching the 49ers hopefully avenging the loss from 4 years ago and I'll be partaking in quite a few beers - so many so that it's going to make me wish that I had three hands.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div></div></div> AyeCarambaPokerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06507500031143618357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3380096215270772742.post-88843212740759242542022-04-20T11:55:00.001-07:002022-04-20T11:56:33.887-07:00Easter In Bruges<div dir="auto">One of my favourite films is called "In Bruges". If you haven't seen it you should - it's fucking brilliant.<div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Two inept hitmen are sent to Bruges to hide out after a job, which is one of the main character's ideal location with lots of historic places to see and the other's idea of hell which means he wants to spend most of his time drinking. It features copious amounts of violence and a dwarf on ketamine. It also has a shit load of swearing, which personally I'm not a massive fan of, as you may well know if you're a regular reader of my ramblings. But it's actually a dark comedy rather than an action or horror movie and there's nothing overly cerebral in the plot to confuse my tiny mind - a few of the best clips are here but it does contain a few plot spoilers <a href="https://youtu.be/Pr35evOG1s4" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/Pr35evOG1s4</a>. </div><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">It was on TV a few months ago and I watched it with Mrs AC who asked if I'd ever visited Bruges. I have, I was 7 or 8 and the only memory I have of going is spending half the day being told off by my mother because I'd managed to tread in some dog poo. I'll repeat that I was 7 or 8!</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Mrs AC then declared she wanted to visit as it looked fantastic. Any idea which of the main characters I'm going to be yet?</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Mrs AC, despite being American, is actually quite cultured and loves visiting historic European cities as her image of Europe whilst she was growing up was that we all live in some sort of medieval fantasy land. Bruges hits that spot as it's Northern Europe's best preserved historic city and the whole city centre has been designated as a UNESCO world heritage site. There are some far better photos than I'm capable of taking here <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruges" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruges</a>.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">But Bruges, being in Belgium, is not that far from the brewery where the world's best beer is made <a href="https://ayecarambapoker.blogspot.com/2019/10/im-just-going-outside-for-some-beers.html?m=1" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">https://ayecarambapoker.blogspot.com/2019/10/im-just-going-outside-for-some-beers.html?m=1</a> so having put in another order we organised a long weekend away over the Easter break which is a 4 day weekend in the UK.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">An early start and a long wait at the eurotunnel entrance (thanks Brexit!) didn't phase us and once we arrived in France (only 35 minutes by train under the English Channel) it was an easy 2 hour drive through northern France and Belgium before arriving mid afternoon and checking into a B&B not unlike that featured in the film. Less than 2 hours after arriving I'm itching for a beer despite Mrs AC's protestations that she wanted to do more sight seeing and we ended up in a fantastic 800 year old cellar bar with over 100 beers to choose from <a href="https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g188671-d4295035-Reviews-Le_Trappiste-Bruges_West_Flanders_Province.html" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g188671-d4295035-Reviews-Le_Trappiste-Bruges_West_Flanders_Province.html</a>.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">The weekend flew by like this before I took Mrs AC to Brussels for the flight home on Monday as she needed to be back in London whilst the only pick up day for my beer was on Tuesday so I found another B&B near the brewery and drove home on Tuesday with a trunk full of beer and a few bottles of wine (Mrs AC is the oenophile whereas I could barely tell a merlot from a malbec). Well I say a trunk full but thanks to Brexit we are now only able to transport a limited amount of booze before incurring import taxes but 42 litres of beer and 18 litres of wine should keep us going for a while. </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Please comment below with your favourite film and whether you've visited the location where it was set or filmed. My next favourite film is Dumb and Dumber but I'm not sure I fancy a cross country road trip whilst driving a dog liveried van! </div><div dir="auto"><br></div></div></div> AyeCarambaPokerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06507500031143618357noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3380096215270772742.post-42948215010104728682022-01-29T22:26:00.001-08:002022-01-29T22:27:55.450-08:0028 hours later<div dir="auto">It's Thursday morning and I'm told that the person I was due to spend time with on Thursday and Friday won't be in the office. I have virtually no other plans. <div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">28 hours later I'm feeling like death, there is definitely someone playing the bongos inside my head and I'm over 5,000 miles from home. Fuck. The last time I was here was 705 days ago and I was sitting in the exact same chair, feeling like death after another hastily organised trip and a big session the previous night <a href="http://ayecarambapoker.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-wild-and-furyous.html" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">http://ayecarambapoker.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-wild-and-furyous.html</a>. At least I'm consistent. </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I'm at the airport in Vegas, which was not exactly the place I was meant to be until my conversation the previous morning. </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I'd been in LA since Sunday with the intention of staying there all week when I'm effectively cut short on Thursday morning. What to do? The chances of getting a seat on that evening's flight back to London are pretty slim so I can either stay in LA or head to Vegas for a night. But one night in Vegas is barely worth it is it? Oh.....right.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Having booked a flight and a room for less than just an extra night in LA I'm at LAX for a mid afternoon hop over to LAS with a couple of drinks inside me before the flight. Therein lies the probable cause of me feeling like death, or at least the start of it anyway. </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">One thing I've really not done much of over the last 705 days is boozing. I've only travelled twice since the US opened its borders (it should have been more <a href="http://ayecarambapoker.blogspot.com/2021/12/i-am-complete-idiot.html" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">http://ayecarambapoker.blogspot.com/2021/12/i-am-complete-idiot.html</a>) and my drinking has reverted to what most people would consider a sensible level. I usually only have a couple of drinks at home and certainly don't drink at the level I do when I'm in Vegas - a long poker session usually sees me running out of fingers when counting beers drunk, necessitating the use of toes to keep a running count. </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">But anyway - back to Thursday afternoon and once I'd jumped in a cab and checked in I'm ready for some food and poker, in that order. Before Covid I would definitely have prioritised poker but now I'm sensible I actually need to eat so I headed to TAP for a burger before sitting down at the poker table just after 7. It's a very nitty game and I'm actually referred to as a "young Euro aggro" player more than once. I'm flattered to be called young but I've never been called aggro before - what do these guys expect though if there's 6 limps and I can 100% guarantee that by raising they'll all fold? Again and again it was the same story and I think I won at least 6 times preflop with this strategy. </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I must have scared them all off as by 11pm it's a much looser contingent of players and given I've now had a week's worth of booze in the last few hours I need to slow down so I can actually focus on the cards. A few unremarkable hours passed and it's nearly 3am before I cash out a $300 profit and stumble back to the Signature. I've missed doing the drunken stumble although I'd forgotten how far it is. Apparently I called Mrs AC who was back in London but I have literally no recollection of the phone call or conversation but she later told me she'd used a phrase which rhymes with "plucking sunken boron" but I'm still none the wiser!</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">So Friday afternoon was spent recovering on the short flight back to LA before I got some sleep on the overnight flight back to London and I'm starting to feel slightly less like death as I write this on the train home.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I'm still trying to organise a trip to Vegas for the Superbowl but it's looking less likely by the day at the moment. If the 49ers manage to win this weekend I'll be happy to watch it from home though and I won't need to take my shoes and socks off to keep track of the numbers of beers I've had! </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div></div></div></div> AyeCarambaPokerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06507500031143618357noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3380096215270772742.post-42739707239814937692022-01-06T08:12:00.001-08:002022-01-06T08:12:33.382-08:00Of mice (in the attic) and men<div dir="auto">Just when it was starting to look better somebody has obviously fucked with the game settings and we look like we're going backwards in terms of the world opening up.<div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Our original Christmas plans were to have visitors from the US at home in London before travelling to Paris for a few days but France shut their borders to travellers from the UK - what do they say about the best laid plans of mice and men?</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">On Christmas Eve we picked up our guests (Mrs AC's best friend plus boyfriend from NY) from Heathrow having given them strict instructions not to have found out the score to the previous night's 49ers v Titans game. Given that Mrs AC and our friends are all Giants fans they seem to have lost most of their interest in the NFL season by now - I wonder why that could be? My interest is waning now given that the 49ers need to beat the Rams this Sunday or hope for an unlikely Saints loss.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Mrs AC had been itching to decorate the house with Christmas decorations since just after Halloween but I put her off until after Thanksgiving. When I retrieved the decorations boxes from the attic I found traces of some uninvited guests - mice! Oh joy. I put a couple of traps up there and I've been finding one every few days so lord knows how many of the little fuckers are up there - I lost count at 12 and we had a shock one morning when there was an utter racket coming from the attic. It turned out that the trap had caught one without killing it and it was dragging the trap around the attic trying to escape!</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Christmas was pretty relaxing, followed by a few days in London doing touristy things then driving down to Stonehenge </div><div dir="auto"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehenge" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehenge</a> where we met up with friends who then came back to London with us and stayed for New Year.<br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">But now the house is quiet as Mrs AC has travelled back to NY for work for a couple of weeks and it's just me and the ever dwindling mouse population as I'm not confident that I've killed them all yet. If I keep finding them I may need to invite my mother to stay so she can kidnap a neighbour's cat <a href="http://ayecarambapoker.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-butterfly-effect.html" rel="noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">http://ayecarambapoker.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-butterfly-effect.html</a> but I'm afraid that the cure will be worse than the symptoms. </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Anyway - happy new year all and I hope you all enjoyed the holidays. </div></div> AyeCarambaPokerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06507500031143618357noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3380096215270772742.post-54151600785090227042021-12-10T21:55:00.001-08:002021-12-10T21:55:33.745-08:00I am a complete idiot<div dir="auto">Back when I was young organising a drinking session was full of pitfalls - usually dominated around whether we'd get served or when we'd manage to act like dicks and get thrown out of the pub. An evening out usually folllowed the same steps: get to pub and hide in the nook round by the pool table, the oldest looking or the one with the best ID would head to the bar and order (why is it that some kids seem to be 6 foot and able to grow a full beard before the age of 15, which was definitely not me); then we'd play pool, put shit songs on the jukebox (90s music has a lot to answer for!) before we'd invariably act like dicks because we were, at the end of the day, still kids, and therefore dicks. Then we'd get thrown out. <div><br></div><div>Sometimes there would be a few hours between the first and last of these steps, sometimes there would be a lot less time, but I'd say that the last step was achieved around 75% of the time before we left of our own accord or just ran out of money. It was a constant game of cat and mouse with the landlord of the pub who obviously knew what was going on but was prepared to take our money as long as we didn't act like dicks. I grew up in quite a small village and this seems to be the norm - if you've watched the fantastic film "Hot Fuzz" starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost it's exactly like the pub scene - right down to the part where a 5 foot 2 teenager produces a fake ID stating that he's in his late 20s (my brother is 12 years older than I am and I thought about carrying his old passport but there was no way that anyone was daft enough to have taken it seriously).</div><div><br></div><div>But anyway - back to the last step of our night out in getting thrown out. On none of the occasions of getting thrown out was I ever tempted to argue or even fight with the landlord or the bouncer doing the evicting. Primarily because I was the 5 foot 2 teenager (I think I must have been starved as a child as I grew nearly a foot in under a year when I worked in a restaurant between the ages of 16 and 18), secondly because the landlord was fucking massive (although looking back I assume everyone looks fucking massive when you're only 5 foot 2) and thirdly because the landlord knew all of our parents, who if they weren't in the other bar of the pub were probably regulars. As I said, it was a small village and everyone knew everyone else.</div><div><br></div><div>Nowadays a drinking session is much easier to sort out - turn up, drink then go home. Occasionally the added step of showing ID rears its ugly head but that's usually not my concern (Mrs AC actually loves it when she gets asked for ID but it usually only happens in the US, although I was asked in Walgreens beneath PH in Vegas and I declared to Mrs AC that I must look under 21 - my parade was soon pissed on when the cashier stated that it's store policy to ID everyone, irrespective of age). </div><div><br></div><div>But a couple of weeks ago I was enjoying a nice lunch with Mrs AC, sipping a few glasses of something chilled and bubbly when I was asked for ID and the end of the conversation was "this gentleman is going to escort you out" and I actually thought of violating my cardinal rule of "don't fight with the bouncer". The gentleman in question was 20 years older than me, a foot shorter was not going to be prepared for a fight - even if he could kick like a mule I could out run him quite easily. But I had a flashback to when I last got close to fighting a bouncer - it didn't go well. I got my head staved in. I must add that the bouncer in question was a Winnie-the-Pooh baby bouncer which was being used by the older cost centre to bounce in a door way and smashed me right on the side of the head, breaking my eye socket and giving me the worst black eye I've ever seen. In my line of business it's really not a good look to turn up to work looking like I've been in a fight over the weekend although I did notice that even senior guys were offering to get me coffee that week!</div><div><br></div><div>So back to our lunch - we were at Heathrow airport waiting for flights when there's an announcement "If there's a Mr AC please could he make himself known to a member of staff". This isn't overly unusual as I often get offered pre-boarding or assistance getting to the gate but given that I haven't flown in nearly 2 years it's certainly a surprise. I usually politely decline this but some agents in the US take this to a new level (I once had my carry on luggage ripped from my hand by a NY check in agent who then proceeded to literally shove people out of the way whilst loudly stating "VIP coming through" which still causes me pain). So I identify myself and get back to my lunch and drinks with Mrs AC. </div><div><br></div><div>That's when the problems start - the lady who approaches me is not with a bouncer, he's with UK Border Force (our version of CBP) and she asks to see my passport. I hand it over and she asks if I have another passport to which I reply no. Then she starts reading from a script (about being denied boarding which is effectively making me aware that I can't sue them) and tells me that the border force agent needs to escort me out of the airport.</div><div><br></div><div>My passport has expired - I am a complete idiot. Not only have I let it expire but a few weeks before I've actually renewed my ESTA and typed the soon to be expired expiry date into the site.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I say my farewells to Mrs AC and get escorted out of the airport whilst making small talk with the border agent and ask him if he thinks I'm an idiot. He diplomatically says he sees it all the time but then enquires whether Mrs AC is going to be ok. Luckily for me she was off to NY for work whereas I was heading to LA and we weren't spending any more time together in the US after our lunch.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">On the journey home I e-mail my client telling him I won't be able to get to the US and I'll call him on Monday morning to explain which ended up with him howling with laughter and calling me a fucking idiot. </div><div><br></div><div dir="auto">But that was a few weeks ago and now I've renewed my passport I've been in NY for a week, heading home this evening and I'm back in NY next week with Mrs AC who has been spending a week per month in NY since she started her new job back in April.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Happy holidays & Merry Christmas to all - at the moment I'm planning to be in Vegas some time in February (hopefully Superbowl time but not confirmed yet) next year but given I haven't played a proper hand of poker (home sessions don't count) in nearly 2 years I'm sure there's some easy money to be won.</div></div> AyeCarambaPokerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06507500031143618357noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3380096215270772742.post-8005174485096204812021-09-03T11:22:00.002-07:002021-11-11T02:05:41.482-08:00Some sports, some sports. My kingdom for some sports<div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span>It's been ages since I last saw some live sports - the last time I was in Vegas, in fact, when I had a last minute trip and obtained an unscheduled ticket to the Fury v Wilder fight, just before everything went to ratshit back last February. </span></div><div dir="ltr"><span><br></span></div><div dir="ltr">I haven't been to see anything with Mrs AC since New Year's Day 2020 when we watched some lower league football with the friends we'd been visiting and I haven't been with the cost centres since a few months before then, when we saw our team trounced by Manchester Utd. </div><div dir="ltr"><span><br></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span>But we've got something to look forward to in a few weeks time - well some of us are looking forward to it anyway. </span></div><div dir="ltr"><span><br></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span>"I'm not doing it"</span><br><span>"It's so unfair"</span><br><span>"You can't make me"</span><br><span>"Even if I do go then I'm not going to enjoy it"</span><br><span>"You can't tell me what to do"</span><br><span></span><br><span>These were not the words of a stroppy teenager - the antagonist was Mrs AC and I need to keep her sweet because she'd kick my head in if we ever come to physical blows. </span><br><span></span><br><span>But anyway - what's prompted this from Mrs AC? She's normally as easy going as I am and is more than willing to partake in new experiences. But this isn't a new experience. Sort of anyway. </span><br><span></span><br><span>I've just told her that I've got tickets to one of the London NFL games. She's a big (no pun intended) Giants fan and we even had plans to attend the Giants v 49ers (my team) game last season before all the travel bans were implemented so we watched it from home in London instead. Therein lies the problem. </span><br><span></span><br><span>One of my sons doesn't have a particular favourite team, the other does. It's the Jets. Mrs AC doesn't particularly like the Jets, albeit she doesn't particularly like most other teams, notably the Cowboys and the Patriots (when I first started seeing Mrs AC she was surprised that a Brit liked NFL and when I said I already supported a team her exact words were "if you say the Patriots this might be our last date". I don't think she was joking either). </span><br><span></span><br><span>The rationale for my eldest son supporting the Jets are explained in this post </span><a href="http://ayecarambapoker.blogspot.com/2020/09/a-family-divided.html?m=1">http://ayecarambapoker.blogspot.com/2020/09/a-family-divided.html?m=1</a> and they are playing in London this year so those are the tickets I've just got. </div><div dir="ltr"><span></span><br><span>"I've just forked out a kingdom for these tickets, I'm not having them go to waste. Besides, I thought you'd be pleased that Sarah is coming with us as well" I pleaded (Sarah is my son's friend's mum and she and Mrs AC get on like a house on fire). This perked her up and I managed to seal the deal by telling her that we can have a few drinks at the game - we've only ever been to football in the U.K. where it's illegal to drink alcohol in view of the pitch although I've told Mrs AC of my previous alcohol fuelled trips to rugby and cricket. </span></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">So if you're watching the game and see someone in a Giants jersey (she's adamant that she's wearing hers although the boys will have Jets jerseys on) in the crowd it will most likely be Mrs AC. And if the person in the Giants jersey is holding a drink, ignoring the game whilst constantly chatting to a seat mate then it will definitely be her! <br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br></div></div></div></div></div>AyeCarambaPokerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06507500031143618357noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3380096215270772742.post-43377671693838351622021-07-11T04:16:00.003-07:002021-07-11T04:16:52.241-07:00We’re all going on a summer helliday<div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Last year when trying to organise summer holiday plans with Mrs AC we had a few conditions that needed to be met: good weather; good local food and drink; a bit of culture and the ability to communicate with the locals - if there's one thing I do around the world is ensure I know how to order beer even if I can understand nothing else!<br><br>We ended up on a driving tour of France and Italy and we had a lovely time in the European sunshine, visited a couple of vineyards in the famous Champagne area and soaked up some culture on our trip to the Uffizi gallery in Florence (less famous than Paris's Louvre but definitely worth a visit if you're ever in the area).<br><br>This year we had the same conditions but also had a couple of extra passengers to cater for - the cost centres. Now if I'd given them the choice of destinations the only prerequisite would have been the ability to eat their own weight in ice cream on a daily basis. But anyway, I'm rambling. <br><br>Unfortunately we had to add a couple of extra conditions ourselves: country on the green list (amber means 10 days home quarantine upon return whilst red means 10 days hotel quarantine) and we had to be able to drive there again (the boys' mother has decided to not let them fly, trying to make my life as hard as possible as usual!)<br><br>Having studied the list of available destinations we were left with one choice - a staycation. But having looked at prices and availability we were stumped - anything near decent was either ridiculously or fully booked. <br><br>Then one of the cost centres uttered the most scary 5 words I've heard in my life "We could go to Nanna's" (if you're new here that's in the Highlands of Scotland whereas we live in the suburbs of London). I swear I heard the Psycho shower scene music. <br><br>Dear lord no, it doesn't even get a point on the original holiday criteria does it?<br><br>Weather: could be ok, could be shit. Probably the latter but the problem is that it's not consistent - it could be freezing one day and mildly warm the next. A hot day is barely into the mid 60s - any warmer and the entire population will either explode or shout at the sun and start sacrificing goats or virgins to make it go away again. <br><br>Food and drink: the country's main contribution to world cuisine consists of a dish made of a sheep's heart and lungs served up inside the sheep's own stomach lining. I think it was invented as a joke to stop the English from stealing it and it's been banned from the USA since the 1970s. Their other contributions include the deep fried mars bar - a candy bar coated in the same batter you'd cover fish in then deep fried until crispy, disgusting and the precursor to having a heart attack and an unintelligible conversation with a paramedic (see point 4). If you survive your heart attack you'll get to sample the local favourite drink as well - Irn-Bru (again banned in the USA) which is a sickly sweet bright orange soda with more sugar in a can than should be consumed in a lifetime. Don't be fooled that because of its colour it might actually taste of orange - it's fucking vile and makes you want to spit it out, but if you do the orange colouring will instantly stain anything it touches (I think that's why it's banned in the USA and I think His Donaldness wanted it banned in his U.K. golf resorts). They do have whisky though and there are a few local distilleries within an hour so they get half a point. But even I can't survive a whole holiday on whisky can I? Hmm...no I'm not even attempting it. <br><br>Culture: there's some old castles and historic battlefields but nothing that we haven't been to before. <br><br>Language: whilst the official language is English I'm not overly convinced. Some of the locals have such a heavy accent that I just smile and nod politely. They could be asking to sacrifice the cost centres to appease the angry sun god and make the weather return to constant drizzle for all I know. There's also a sizeable group that don't particularly like the English - a stranger in a pub drunkenly barking "Are you English pal?" is usually a precursor to a fight. Mrs AC is ok though as she's American so she'll answer for me and I'll do the heroic thing and stand behind her if things turn nasty. Some locals are intelligible though but that's no better, they are usually insane and have invented their own language - wittering. My mother for example. <br><br>So no. If I have one ounce of sway in this decision we are not going to stay at my mum's in Scotland. The boys and Mrs AC are adamant that they want to go but I'm standing firm - no amount of pestering will get me up there. <br><br>We're going to Scotland then! Fuck. Maybe I was really nasty in a previous life and this is my punishment. It's a summer helliday. <br><br>But anyway - I'm not one to mope around when I don't get my own way so after the boys finished school for the summer on Friday we set off on the 650 mile journey early <a href="x-apple-data-detectors://1" dir="ltr" x-apple-data-detectors="true" x-apple-data-detectors-type="calendar-event" x-apple-data-detectors-result="1" style="text-decoration-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.258824);">on Saturday morning</a>. It's pretty plain sailing most of the way but it's an all day journey with only a stop for coffee mid morning and a late lunch before arriving just in time for the football <a href="x-apple-data-detectors://2" dir="ltr" x-apple-data-detectors="true" x-apple-data-detectors-type="calendar-event" x-apple-data-detectors-result="2" style="text-decoration-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.258824);">at 8pm</a> and I'm gasping for a beer. Then the insanity started - if you're a regular reader you'll know that my mother is completely bonkers. </span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">My mother brings me a beer - a warm one. What am I? A heathen? She'd texted one of the boys whilst we were travelling and asked if we wanted anything when she popped to the shop and my only request was for beer. I obviously hadn't stated that they needed to be cold because anyone that's not completely bonkers would understand that. Not my mother though - she'd actually bought them cold from the shop's fridge then put them into a cupboard to warm. FFS! At least she waits until half time before inflicting us with her next portion of lunacy. </span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">She then announces that because the next day is 4th July she's got a treat for Mrs AC - a turkey. Err ok! Why in utter bejesus has she got a turkey I hear you ask - turns out she's mixed up her holidays and as she'd defrosted it we had to cook it. My mother is not good in the kitchen and as we don't fancy eating turkey that's rare or has been nuked we end up spending nearly all of Sunday sorting out a turkey dinner.</span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br>But anyway - we've been here a week now and have walked, biked, golfed and fished. Mrs AC is still determined she's going to see a live haggis this time <a href="http://ayecarambapoker.blogspot.com/2019/09/haggis-hunting-and-scottish-long-necked.html?m=1">http://ayecarambapoker.blogspot.com/2019/09/haggis-hunting-and-scottish-long-necked.html?m=1</a> but we have seen otters, seals, deer and an eagle (U.K. wildlife is a bit tame in comparison to the US - we don't have anything overly interesting but the most dangerous thing we have is an adder although I've never even seen one). </span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It's now Sunday and we're all looking forward to tonight's game - if England win then the boys and I have said we'll wear our England shirts for the rest of the week. This will probably end up with us being hunted down by a local posse as if you ask a Scottish football fan who he supports he'll declare he has 2 teams - Scotland and anyone playing England. Again I'll be hiding behind Mrs AC if things turn nasty. </span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">We are travelling back at the end of next week but here are some photos (I'm the world's most useless photographer so I'm more amazed that any of them are actually in focus)</span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br><br>Dog - useful as a sundial for the 8 days per year you can see a shadow<br></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic6h6rEAotSbWZmHSETJyb-0Mnghqzh8qGLhZz5xr4IAE4h4EpGyB9KBBdoWpH9tnorAVX-tXDqJXVcdrLidRkwhsEiP69E6GgiCYqR7oC27V9UeMgIcVQT0-qyFo4jQqCFQdZx625GG4/s1600/image1-782267.png"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic6h6rEAotSbWZmHSETJyb-0Mnghqzh8qGLhZz5xr4IAE4h4EpGyB9KBBdoWpH9tnorAVX-tXDqJXVcdrLidRkwhsEiP69E6GgiCYqR7oC27V9UeMgIcVQT0-qyFo4jQqCFQdZx625GG4/s320/image1-782267.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_6983625769455462418" /></a></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br><br></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Seals - just fat, wet dogs really</span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFRxC6BVHrtoclPpf9iCtSIWruE9d9Oec47bJlTyRQmeGuMIGBfo4LG0XAFDmQvrlk2yYhFgJHTPhv1C81Yyr3XqMxWxaQDoN4mpSLo5GrqSpyrjaexPJC-C4hwWOKR9gBRlvjV4BuKtM/s1600/image1-783471.jpeg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFRxC6BVHrtoclPpf9iCtSIWruE9d9Oec47bJlTyRQmeGuMIGBfo4LG0XAFDmQvrlk2yYhFgJHTPhv1C81Yyr3XqMxWxaQDoN4mpSLo5GrqSpyrjaexPJC-C4hwWOKR9gBRlvjV4BuKtM/s320/image1-783471.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_6983625777935303074" /></a><br><br><br></span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Links golf - hard. Even harder when there's a 60mph wind blowing across the course</span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEianfTEYusJyrxQGvcfa4LfFaqJC7H0qCTnX4cnWXXwB1dUugycUMeHcWysUP6Brn9sC3fssDAi2JgrMJolJPYMAwoRb017351PE2bSzG5ZILB_5NzFSPsmI-EX-3ZxCnF3oiDUrZJeTYs/s1600/image6-785017.jpeg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEianfTEYusJyrxQGvcfa4LfFaqJC7H0qCTnX4cnWXXwB1dUugycUMeHcWysUP6Brn9sC3fssDAi2JgrMJolJPYMAwoRb017351PE2bSzG5ZILB_5NzFSPsmI-EX-3ZxCnF3oiDUrZJeTYs/s320/image6-785017.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_6983625780613447842" /></a></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br><br></span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Scenery - nice view and I couldn't think of anything witty to put here </span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX_FqegA1y4wB1pQiZzICDTFlplgitRbbdSDedg0XjHDqwnkgAbJqXrcqG0_-cJ7oBjEExJ_veKWGoRWIPvn28FZn28WWYR_ZzQJCsAjY5LvNvt0nDx0iMbyU7BvVywXtsInQTN4Aw6RU/s1600/image1-786386.jpeg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX_FqegA1y4wB1pQiZzICDTFlplgitRbbdSDedg0XjHDqwnkgAbJqXrcqG0_-cJ7oBjEExJ_veKWGoRWIPvn28FZn28WWYR_ZzQJCsAjY5LvNvt0nDx0iMbyU7BvVywXtsInQTN4Aw6RU/s320/image1-786386.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_6983625787107778994" /></a><br><br><br>More scenery- still can't think of anything witty to write</span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD1taAawba7GtDxQ8rQqX2ZQIRfK43C22oANV3utD65YqaAf0t8TgszGEsd3gDk0rCnPr-FXhJ5iAKg2vedYflxYwFdUhaV6eZxbHA-Zrnd1Jz6JoaTdGClcEk7DlsyhY_kTq6bQ5tgfU/s1600/image1-788508.png"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD1taAawba7GtDxQ8rQqX2ZQIRfK43C22oANV3utD65YqaAf0t8TgszGEsd3gDk0rCnPr-FXhJ5iAKg2vedYflxYwFdUhaV6eZxbHA-Zrnd1Jz6JoaTdGClcEk7DlsyhY_kTq6bQ5tgfU/s320/image1-788508.png" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_6983625796344697762" /></a><br><br>Mother - batshit insane (yes she really is vacuuming her patio - no, I have no idea either)</span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgejrrzxV38memyIh7aTSJJxvp2XvLhc1sEjtzAEf7REWJZWFtMMo0M8GN7u4IIaBsHOOVzfnn1SxhzRMOAZopIgWyRSiHsrxIqnSgnBEsveWPGQ8vsgjiGg6o9IWqyAeTPKMmemUxe_WU/s1600/image1-790982.jpeg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgejrrzxV38memyIh7aTSJJxvp2XvLhc1sEjtzAEf7REWJZWFtMMo0M8GN7u4IIaBsHOOVzfnn1SxhzRMOAZopIgWyRSiHsrxIqnSgnBEsveWPGQ8vsgjiGg6o9IWqyAeTPKMmemUxe_WU/s320/image1-790982.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_6983625804320003282" /></a><br><br></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Neighbour - another tick in the insane column as they have what appears to be a missile outside their house</span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzhBwpi7u0OA2PxQBQkXb5IKAsreN1RWmRXi3_47Wlni0PBHULR8dqDkPomlMv0KS_qLdyb40MLzto7cnjiw5vi9hwMJroV7qc53buI6F2SC1pfd9I870x0lezaADMCZ1Fuk2hzbEYtjk/s1600/image1-792987.jpeg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzhBwpi7u0OA2PxQBQkXb5IKAsreN1RWmRXi3_47Wlni0PBHULR8dqDkPomlMv0KS_qLdyb40MLzto7cnjiw5vi9hwMJroV7qc53buI6F2SC1pfd9I870x0lezaADMCZ1Fuk2hzbEYtjk/s320/image1-792987.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_6983625815506157826" /></a><br></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Beer - wet and cold. It's a local beer and not actually available in England. I read a review that described it as "tasting more of tomorrow's hangover than yesterday's hops", maybe the US will ban it but it's not like they have an aversion to bland, tasteless lagers is it? </span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvhz9Gyi2MSc61eFciYq4DhaiioA6mgHweKfIH90BrEbW6vhar7ZdNToxcIhjHcJWClrV3h21o9qb2zBMHEVvXywTYAcdjltjS5St_wGAueRgiuHjhFD98bjLdfCLScHoVTPg6AdgdrAA/s1600/image2-794663.jpeg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvhz9Gyi2MSc61eFciYq4DhaiioA6mgHweKfIH90BrEbW6vhar7ZdNToxcIhjHcJWClrV3h21o9qb2zBMHEVvXywTYAcdjltjS5St_wGAueRgiuHjhFD98bjLdfCLScHoVTPg6AdgdrAA/s320/image2-794663.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_6983625824589785122" /></a><br><br><br></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><br>Have a great summer all - hopefully I'll get up to some drunken shenanigans fairly soon as I'm starting to get tired of this boring version of life!<br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br></span><br></div><div dir="ltr"></div></div></div></div></div></div>AyeCarambaPokerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06507500031143618357noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3380096215270772742.post-13357061219214752872021-05-14T10:20:00.001-07:002021-05-14T10:20:13.191-07:00Beauty is in the eye of the bee holder<div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span>Over the last year or so I've had the same conversation with Mrs AC quite a few times. The doorbell will go around 11am and Mrs AC will state that it's the postman delivering something for her. Of course it's going to be for her as I hate shopping so much that I actually don't even like doing it online. </span><br><span></span><br><span>But anyway, the conversation usually goes something like this:</span><br><span>AC: what have you been buying now?</span><br><span>Mrs AC: something I really need, it's a ravioli maker / remote control hairdryer / phlogiston detector (insert other device which looks really snazzy but has virtually no use and will be used once before spending the rest of eternity hidden in a drawer)</span><br><span>AC: that's nice (whilst in my head I'm trying to figure out which drawer it's going to be deposited into in about 3 hours time)</span><br><span></span><br><span>If we both die in a freak accident whoever has the pleasure of emptying our house is going to think that we were a pair of utter nutters when they find out how much tat is secreted about the house. I might just leave a couple of notes in the aforementioned tat drawers absolving myself from any responsibility in order that my obituary doesn't read "Tat collector dies in alcohol fuelled idiocy." When I do get written up I want it to read: His last words were "what could possibly go wrong - watch this!"</span><br><span></span><br><span>So when the doorbell rang at 11am one day a couple of weeks ago I hadn't anticipated the next words out of Mrs AC's mouth: "Who can that be?"</span><br><span></span><br><span>Seriously woman? You've spent so much time with him over the last year that I'm surprised you don't know how many sugars he likes in his tea and his entire life story. </span><br><span></span><br><span>"It's obviously the fucking postman" was my response. "Oh yeah, I'm not expecting anything though" was hers. She was right - the delivery was for me for a change. </span></div><div dir="ltr"><span><br></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span>"It's for me" I told her, "I've been expecting something - </span>It's my bees". Mrs AC then proceeded to call me by her usual pet name name for me - she can speak fluent Italian so she uses Italian to get me in the mood "fottuto idiota". Not now honey - amore later but I've got something to get on with. </div><div dir="ltr"><span><br></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span>"I'm not that fucking stupid - seriously what have you been buying?" Now I have been known to wind her up about things - I've told her about mythical creatures called haggis which roam the Scottish countryside </span><a href="http://ayecarambapoker.blogspot.com/2019/09/haggis-hunting-and-scottish-long-necked.html?m=1">http://ayecarambapoker.blogspot.com/2019/09/haggis-hunting-and-scottish-long-necked.html?m=1</a> and once I tried to tell her that dinosaurs weren't as big as everyone thought but that time had caused the bones to swell to enormous proportions. I probably deserve my Italian moniker to be honest. </div><div dir="ltr"><span><br></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span>"No seriously - I bought some bees". The look of disdain on her face was palpable. </span></div><div dir="ltr"><span><br></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span>So anyway - back to the bees. It's my latest weird hobby - last year I made a few cheeses to pass the time </span><a href="http://ayecarambapoker.blogspot.com/2020/04/thats-mature.html?m=1">http://ayecarambapoker.blogspot.com/2020/04/thats-mature.html?m=1</a> and this year I'm entering the world of beekeeping. Sort of anyway. There's a local society who are always looking for gardens to put hives in and one of the members asked if I'd be interested in putting a couple in the garden. </div><div dir="ltr"><span><br></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span>I haven't really had to do much but as long as I get some of the honey I'm fine so I've been researching how to make mead so we've got some extra booze to get us through the winter and at least some members of our household will be doing some flying this year, because it's unlikely to be me for quite a while. </span></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr"><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>AyeCarambaPokerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06507500031143618357noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3380096215270772742.post-13211754703453062262021-03-28T11:32:00.000-07:002021-03-28T11:32:05.246-07:00Delusions of grandeur <div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span>Some people wish they had aristocrats, royalty or long lost rich relations in their family. Not me though. I just wish I had a normal family instead of the dysfunctional lunatics that I'm forced to share a few days a year with. When Mrs AC first met my family a year or so ago she asked "Are you sure you're not adopted? You're so unlike anyone in your family that I can't believe that you share the same genes!". </span><br><span></span><br><span>She's right. I am so unlike my family but I'm pretty sure I'm not adopted as I'm the spitting image of my father and seem to have inherited his predilection for more beer than is healthy. Although I'm secretly hoping there was a mix up in the baby unit and my real family have been looking for me for all this time. I don't care if they're rich or famous. My only hope is that they are normal. Or just not lunatics with delusions of grandeur. Like my mother for instance. Why is it that whenever I use the word lunatic I generally talk about my mother? </span><br><span></span><br><span>For years (since I was a child anyway), my mother has told me that we're related to someone famous - Lord Horatio Nelson </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Nelson,_1st_Viscount_Nelson">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Nelson,_1st_Viscount_Nelson</a>. You've probably never heard of him but he was a celebrity in his day of the late 1700s and early 1800s. He was a very famous naval commander who defeated the French and Spanish navies before he was killed in battle at Trafalgar in 1805 and is commemorated with a statue atop a column in Trafalgar Square in London. </div><div dir="ltr"><span></span><br><span>It's a family story passed down the generations as her mother's maiden name was Nelson and they all originate from the approximately the same location - North Norfolk, hence my allegiance with Norwich City. Dear lord could we not have had Robin Hood in our lineage then I could support Nottingham Forest who at least have won the European Cup a couple of times? </span><br><span></span><br><span>But anyway - I'm rambling. During the lockdown my mother has been researching our family tree. Oh fucking joy when she calls me up to ask "Do you remember my uncle Eddie?" </span><br><span></span><br><span>"Who? No". Only to be told that he did something utterly unremarkable and over the course of an hour's one sided conversation I learn he was the first person in our family to walk from his village to another village and he died 10 years before I was born. So how the fuck would I remember him then? "Well I thought you would" was her reply. I told you my family were lunatics! </span><br><span></span><br><span>So back to the family tree. We have literally nobody of historic interest within our tree. For as long back as it went all my relations have been landless peasants. There's no connection with anyone of any interest and if there's an unclaimed crock of gold waiting for a rightful heir it won't be coming my way. </span><br><span></span><br><span>At least I won't subject future generations with this ignominy. Not that I've done much better than my predecessors but it's that I'll be able to tell them in person as I'm pretty sure that I'm immortal - I've got a 100% success rate of not dying so far so it must be true. It's either I'm immortal or a lunatic. It's not like certain traits are passed from generation to generation is it? </span><br><span></span><br><span>Oh........wait.......hang on. </span><br><span></span><br><span></span><br></div></div>AyeCarambaPokerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06507500031143618357noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3380096215270772742.post-49374869188620751422021-01-29T00:15:00.000-08:002021-01-29T00:16:03.418-08:00Worst sequel ever<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">I always think movie makers are a bit lazy - pump out enough movies and eventually you'll produce a box office hit. Kind of like the infinite monkey theory whereby given enough time a monkey at a typewriter will produce the complete works of Shakespeare. <br><br>But when they do stumble upon a box office success then that movie gets sequels, prequels, remakes, animated, prequels done in lego... you get the drift. Basically anything to keep the money rolling in. Take "Fast and the Furious" for example. What are we up to now? Fast and the Furious 87: Now reshowing the original movie because we've been going on for so long that everyone has forgotten the 1st one? Something like that anyway. <br><br>Not that I dislike movie franchises though - Paddington 2 is brilliant! Not a movie you want to be watching at the cinema on your own as you'll be making parents a bit nervous but it's brilliant all the same. <br><br>But here we are in Lockdown 3.0 and I'm starting to get a bit tired of it all. The first iteration was actually a bit of fun - I usually travel so much that spending more than a couple of weeks in my own home was a bit of a novelty, once I'd made it clear to Mrs AC that "working from home" didn't involve me drinking beer and watching porn all day we got ourselves into a routine. <br><br>Then the 1st lockdown ended but we were no means closer to normality - I was still unable to travel to the US so apart from a few more restaurants and pubs being open nothing really changed for us. We managed a couple of weeks away in Europe at the end of summer but little were we to know that the sequel was already being planned. <br><br>Lockdown 2 came and went in November but it was over pretty quickly - much like Highlander 2 which must be the worst sequel I've ever seen.<br><br>Then much like a Taylor Swift album that gets announced 2 minutes before its release we hit the Christmas restrictions. Just prior to the weekend before Christmas there was chatter that the US was about to lift its own restrictions which would have meant me being able to accompany Mrs AC on her trip back to NY. But no. That got swept from under our feet on the Saturday before Christmas when the entire SE of England was put under the highest restriction level (short of a full lockdown) with 24 hours notice and another travel ban was effected. But Mrs AC still needed to travel back (for work which was allowed) so on the Monday before Christmas I took her to the airport and got stopped by the police for the 3rd and 4th times in my life on the same day (the 1st time was nearly 20 years ago and I was doing 98mph so probably actually deserved it then and the 2nd was whilst driving my mother's car and had been reported by a nosy neighbour!). <br><br>So a dull and boring Christmas ensued and I did something on New Year's that I probably haven't done in my adult life - I was stone cold sober. I hadn't had a drink since Christmas Day and was asleep on NYE before <a href="x-apple-data-detectors://3" dir="ltr" x-apple-data-detectors="true" x-apple-data-detectors-type="calendar-event" x-apple-data-detectors-result="3" style="text-decoration-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.258824);">10pm</a> but was awake just after midnight in NY to wish Mrs AC a happy new year. Mrs AC was not stone cold sober, or even close to being sober. She'd been catching up with a friend (she'd been in the U.K. since early March and not seen anyone since before then) and they'd obviously had a few drinks. Why would anyone think that booze makes them funnier and more interesting? Oh... wait.... hang on. <br><br>Then things really kicked off again - the entire country was put back on lockdown just after New Years and it looks like we'll be in this situation for most of February as well. It's also just been announced that arrivals from certain countries will have to quarantine in specific hotels rather than doing it at home. At the moment arrivals from the US are ok to quarantine at home (which had been our plan) but given how things can change at pretty short notice this has caused Mrs AC to expedite her return from NY to 10 days time, rather than coming back at the end of February as originally planned. <br><br>But I think there's some light at the end of the tunnel - vaccinations are being done and hopefully this will relieve some pressure on the healthcare system (which was the true purpose of lockdown albeit not widely understood) and I'm hopeful of being able to get back to normal towards the end of this year. With a bit of luck that will mean being able to travel again and there is definitely a blank space in my diary being reserved for the next time I get to a Vegas poker table and get to overindulge on the free drinks, although I think I'm going to need a bit of practice before I do it as my alcohol tolerance has dropped to the lowest point of my adult life. Or the light at the end of the tunnel could be a train, in which case I'd better get off the line. <br><br>Anyway - a belated happy new year to all. Hopefully whoever is running this simulation that we call reality has got their act together and this year will be better managed, if not it promises to be the worst sequel ever. </span><div dir="ltr"></div>AyeCarambaPokerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06507500031143618357noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3380096215270772742.post-58719044424646563782020-12-15T09:58:00.000-08:002020-12-15T09:58:08.670-08:00It’ll be lonely this ChristmasJust a quick note to wish everyone a merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah or just a celebration that the days will be getting longer if your gods are happy with the yearly sacrifices - in which case it's probably best to throw a couple more virgins into the volcano as something seems to have pissed them off! It's been a funny sort of year which seems to have dragged on for eternity on one hand but actually sped by when I consider that I've not actually travelled for work since February.
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<br>But it's finally happening - Mrs AC is leaving. Despite arriving in early March for what was only meant to be a 10 day stay she's been here over 9 months, but she's finally had enough and is travelling back to the US. I can leave the toilet seat up and walk around my own house scratching my balls as much as I want.
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<br>Now I've only got a limited period of time to enjoy my freedom as she is actually coming back, but this time on a more permanent basis. Due to the current situation and my inability to travel to the US coupled with a 2 week period of self isolation each time she could do the transatlantic trip she's accepted a job in London. But before she starts that there's some paperwork, admin and immigration documents to sort out which can only really be done from NY. She also needs "to pick up a few things from home" which will probably necessitate us having to move to a bigger house (when she first came to London I think she brought more things for a 2 week trip than I actually own!).
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<br>The only practical solution to having to quarantine in NY is to travel over the Christmas period - her apartment is going to be empty so it's either do it then or spend 2 weeks in a hotel room which would see anyone going crazy and drinking their own body weight in booze. Oh, didn't I do something similar last year? But at least I got a modicum of exercise, human contact and fresh air rather that sitting in a hotel room on my own for a fortnight!
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<br>It's also not my year to have the cost centres since I took them to family in Scotland last year. So it'll be lonely this Christmas - although my mother has decided that she's not comfortable travelling due to the current situation so every cloud has a silver lining!
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<br>Anyway - I'm off to leave the toilet seat up for the next few weeks. "What's that Mrs AC? I promise not to leave the toilet seat up - just don't beat me again! Aargh no, not the face...."AyeCarambaPokerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06507500031143618357noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3380096215270772742.post-83124826839838038022020-09-28T00:11:00.000-07:002020-09-28T00:11:37.837-07:00A family divided Mrs AC is having a fit. We're just about to watch my mighty 49ers trounce her beloved Giants and she's not a happy bunny. Firstly because we should have been at the game (which would have been my first game on US soil as I've only ever been to the London series games) but secondly because my eldest cost centre has just announced that he wants to support the Jets. "You could have mentioned this a week ago when we trounced you" I said. "Also - Why in fucking bejesus would you want to do that?" Mrs AC and I both enquired simultaneously. We already support one mediocre football team (real football with the round ball) in Norwich City so you've got a lifetime of despair to look forward to in that I told him. Why not choose the 49ers or Giants so he has someone to cheer along with? Or at least someone who might be on TV more than once a season so you've actually got a chance of watching a game - we only get 5 games a week (3 of which start well after midnight) and apart from the main Thursday, Sunday and Monday night fixtures which are chosen in advance the U.K. sports channel mainly revolves around teams with a winning record.
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<br>"Well that's the point" was his reply. "I didn't get a choice in picking a team - you did it for me". That's the way it is with football - you don't get to pick your team and you can blame me for the rest of my life I told him. It used to be about geography and where you grew up - everyone just supported their local side albeit I haven't lived anywhere near the football club since I was a teenager. But nowadays the local playing fields are full of Man Utd, Liverpool and Man City fans who probably couldn't locate their teams on a map and have likely never been to a live game. I gave the kids options when they were younger - support my team and we'll go to games or support someone different and we won't. Luckily they chose the former although we do attend games lower down the leagues involving local sides.
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<br>But back to the original question - why in bejesus do you want to support the Jets? Well one of his friends at school does and he wants to show solidarity with his friend. He then declared he could side with another friend who is a Patriots fan - dear lord no and we're both quite happy for him to support the Jets!!
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<br>Luckily we don't have the same issue with my younger cost centre - he's only just started watching the sport but he'll happily watch a game, especially when an American level of snacks are provided. Mrs AC asked him who he was supporting for today's game and not wanting to disappoint either of us he replied quite diplomatically "I'll support both teams". But he's got a Machiavellian streak in him, especially when it comes to food or money so when Mrs AC offered to make him some popcorn whilst we watched the game he thanked her by declaring that although he's still supporting both teams he's supporting the Giants a little bit more!AyeCarambaPokerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06507500031143618357noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3380096215270772742.post-18159980415147739962020-09-14T00:35:00.000-07:002020-09-14T00:35:00.807-07:00A farewell to the queenFrom the moment I saw her I was besotted. It was more than love, it was lust. She looked so good and I can remember every minute that I've ever spent with her. She's never complained that I've spent quite a lot of our time together working, drinking or sleeping but she's getting old and the competition is younger, lighter, quieter and far more economical. It's time to say goodbye - unfortunately I never got to plan one last ride as it's all happened so suddenly. But I'll always have my memories of the queen of the skies - the Boeing 747, which British Airways have just announced the retirement of.
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<br>Now I'm not one to look at the past with rose tinted glasses - one of my favourite activities when I spend time with my mother is asking her to name one thing from the past that is better than the present day (the nights are long and there's no pub in her village). She came up with diseases! Yes, polio sounds like a wonderful way to have spent a childhood. Modern diseases are rubbish by comparison. Who wants to benefit from modern medicine and vaccines when we could all be worrying about catching something preventable that will kill or maim vast swathes of the population? But it's not like there's anything going on at the moment that's relevant is there? Oh. Hang on.
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<br>But due to the current situation BA have worked out that there's going to be a drop off in demand for global flights, especially in the premium sector of which their 747s are pretty heavy caterers to.
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<br>Now I'm lucky enough to usually sit in the pointy end of an aircraft when I fly - it's a necessity rather than a luxury really as I often need to work on flights and I'm just getting too old or useless to be able to miss a night's sleep and be slightly productive after an overnight flight. And one of the most special places to sit on any plane is upstairs in the bubble behind the cockpit. It's solely business class but on a nighttime flight I actually prefer it to sitting downstairs in first class as the bed is just as easy to sleep on and there's a lot less noise and foot traffic.
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<br>There are other aircraft that do the same job for lower fuel and maintenance costs but none of them feel as special as the 747 - most flyers won't notice the difference but I certainly will. So next time my mother tells me that everything was better in the past I can add the first item to her list.
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<br>On a more positive note I have actually booked some travel - it's not until next year but there are some amazing fares at the moment but I have no idea if the travel restrictions will have been eased by then so I'm not getting my hopes up too much.AyeCarambaPokerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06507500031143618357noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3380096215270772742.post-58879040823091518332020-08-19T10:07:00.001-07:002020-08-19T10:07:44.380-07:00A spanner in the worksWell that didn't go as planned! Literally the day after I'd organised the trip the U.K. placed France on the quarantine list meaning we'd have to self isolate for 14 days as soon as we got back home (Belgium was already on the list but according to the rules I think we'd have been ok if all we'd done was stop to pick beer up and not been close to anyone, as we'd planned to do). But a stop at a large supermarket and wine merchants in France would have seen us having to quarantine for 2 weeks at home - which given we were only planning to be away for 2 days seems out of the question.
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<br>So the plans got changed - Mrs AC still needed to leave and re-enter the country so we either changed our plans to travel to a country that was exempt from quarantine (which meant foregoing the beer that I'd already paid for) or we elongated our stay in order to justify doing a 2 week quarantine upon our return. Eager not to lose my beer, I mean to spend some time out of the house (we've not been away from home since we arrived back from Scotland in mid March) I chose the latter and arranged to spend a few more days in France and I've arranged a tour of the famous Champagne region of France for a few days, with obviously a few tastings along the way. Then we'll be driving down to Italy (which had been our original summer holiday plans all along) for 2 weeks for a quick tour of some bars with maybe the odd cultural site thrown in as well. This is using the 2 weeks in Italy as our U.K. quarantine as it's exempt so as long as we don't stop off in France on the way back then we can arrive back in the U.K. with no need to spend 2 weeks stuck at home. Not that we've been going out a lot anyway and all our plans to return to the US are on hold until I can enter the country again - I really can't see this happening any time soon though and Mrs AC will need to repeat the exit & re-entry palavar in another 6 months so maybe I should order more beer now!!
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<br>Now I haven't told Mrs AC yet of the extended plans as it will be a nice early birthday present for her - but given when I just asked her if she regularly reads my blog her response was "do I look that bored?" there's no way she'll find out before we leave on Friday. She also added her pet name for me so hopefully I'll be getting lucky tonight as well!AyeCarambaPokerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06507500031143618357noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3380096215270772742.post-36346922785712035182020-08-13T12:19:00.000-07:002020-08-13T12:19:38.672-07:00Killing two birds with one stone<div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span>We have a problem. We Brits are a pretty stoic bunch and we don't like to cause a fuss but I can promise you that it's something major - I've run out of booze! I've just finished off the last of my fancy Belgian beers that I bought last year </span><a href="https://ayecarambapoker.blogspot.com/2019/10/im-just-going-outside-for-some-beers.html?m=1">https://ayecarambapoker.blogspot.com/2019/10/im-just-going-outside-for-some-beers.html?m=1</a>. You can only buy 48 small bottles at a time so I've done quite well getting them to last nearly 9 months, although it's not really a "session" beer and I don't think I've had more than 1 in any given sitting. </div><div dir="ltr"><span></span><br><span>We also have another problem - Mrs AC has been here for nearly 6 months and needs to leave and re-enter the country in order to renew her visitor visa, otherwise it will cause all sorts of problems if she overstays. When she arrived in the U.K. in early March it was only meant to be for just over a week and we obviously had no idea that it would be this long before we got to travel again. But she's been keeping Jeff Bezos's net worth high and my cardboard recycling bin full whilst ordering anything she's needed for the changing seasons. </span><br><span></span><br><span>But anyway - Mrs AC is a grown up and can sort herself out. There are plenty of relatively cheap flights within a couple of hours from London so I'd originally suggested she take a day trip just to get the necessary exit mark and a new entry stamp. But hang on. I am a genius, maybe not a stable genius but a genius nonetheless. Why not combine a solution to both problems and kill two birds with one stone? Get Mrs AC to pick up some beers on her trip abroad! I suggested this to her and asked her what time she'd need to be at the airport. Her answer was her usual pet name for me. I think she's shy of using English when being affectionate so she uses Italian, "fottuto idiota". I think it means "my intelligent, handsome sweetheart", but I could be wrong! </span></div><div dir="ltr"><span><br></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span>Mrs AC's suggestion that we take a trip together probably makes a bit more sense to be honest - it would be pretty hard for her to carry that much beer through an airport on her own and we'd run the risk of getting a few broken bottles at baggage reclaim. Plus we've been cooped up at home for so long and our summer holiday plans have been put on hold so it will be good to get out of the house, even if it's only for a short time. </span></div><div dir="ltr"><span><br></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span>So next week we'll be having a day out on a booze cruise - driving over to Belgium and France to pick up some beer with a stop off at a wine merchants so that Mrs AC can spend whatever money she has left that she hasn't thrown in Jeff Bezos's direction. </span></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr"><br><span></span><br><span></span><br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>AyeCarambaPokerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06507500031143618357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3380096215270772742.post-68498945354665082822020-06-25T08:24:00.000-07:002020-06-25T08:27:18.405-07:00It’s just not cricket<div dir="ltr">
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Here in the civilised world we have an expression of "it's just not cricket". Which has nothing to do with actual cricket (Ace <a href="https://adventuresofanace.blogspot.com/?m=1">https://adventuresofanace.blogspot.com/?m=1</a> has uttered a sigh of relief as I know he's not a fan).<br />
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It's a bit hard to describe the true meaning of this expression but it essentially means that something just isn't right. Not that it's necessarily illegal, immoral or even against any rules but it's just not right. An example would be taking a fine Trappist Belgian beer and diluting it with lemonade, putting pineapple on a pizza or, to quote a blogger who has recently celebrated his 2 millionth page visit, putting mayonnaise on a hotdog <a href="https://robvegaspoker.blogspot.com/2015/03/who-hell-puts-mayonnaise-on-hot-dog.html?m=1">https://robvegaspoker.blogspot.com/2015/03/who-hell-puts-mayonnaise-on-hot-dog.html?m=1</a> (congratulations Rob on the number of views, an achievement I can only dream about). </div>
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But what isn't cricket I hear you ask? Well, football isn't. Not at the moment it isn't anyway. Now anyone who has read my ramblings for a while probably knows that I like my sports and my first love is football - the English sort with the round ball although I am a fan of what the Americans call football as well. And football is back - there's been none played in England since the start of March but I never got desperate enough to have watched the Belarusian Premier League which was the only league to have remained playing in Europe over the last few months. </div>
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If things had gone to plan we would be sat here watching the European Championships where England would be sure to hype themselves up before crashing out to some lowly underdogs (it happened last time around where we lost to Iceland who have a population of 360,000!). But because everything has been on hiatus for the last few months we're now resuming the season with 9 games to go, plus the culmination of domestic and European Cups with the national tournament postponed until next year. </div>
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I don't hold out much hope for my team in the league (even less so given we've now lost our first 2 games since the restart) - we were bottom of the Premier League at the enforced break and looked set to be relegated (I'm pretty sanguine about this to be honest as we are effectively a yo-yo club bouncing around the top 2 divisions) but I was more excited about the FA Cup. Just before the break we'd won entry into the 1/4 finals of the competition and we are 2 games away from the final - an achievement we've never managed in our club's 118 year history so every fan held out a small bit of hope that maybe this would be our year to win some silverware. Being part of an FA Cup final crowd is an amazing experience (I've been once before but as a neutral being hosted by a corporate client but I want to do it as a fan) but there's no hope of that happening. Not because the odds are stacked against us but because all games are being held behind closed doors with no fans in attendance. </div>
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To me this is wrong - most sports are about the fans. I'm not naive enough to say the fans pay the players' wages or that the fans should have a large say in the running of clubs but without fans then sports are essentially meaningless. Even watching on TV is different with no fans in attendance - it's like a kickabout in the park being televised for all the enjoyment I'm getting out of it. There have already been 3 goalless games in the opening 14 Premier League matches (a small sample size I know but the long term average is around 8% of games remain goalless) so it's as if the players know that without the fans they don't need to care as much as well. I can't even imagine the apathy I'll feel if we manage to make it to the FA Cup final and there is no one in the stadium celebrating, no spontaneous acts of joy or beers shared with strangers after the game celebrating a win or commiserating a loss. It will be like it's just not happened, so it may as well not be happening. It's just not cricket! Talking of which, the cricket season is starting soon and I'm more than happy watching that on TV, with or without crowds in the stadium. </div>
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What about US sports though? Are these going to be the same with empty or mostly empty stadiums? </div>
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AyeCarambaPokerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06507500031143618357noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3380096215270772742.post-64717749999294776202020-05-03T11:37:00.000-07:002020-05-03T11:37:31.544-07:00Girls just don’t understand football<div dir="ltr">
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Quite a few years ago (I just looked this up and it's 29 years ago - how time flies) my older brother took his girlfriend (now wife) to our football club for her first ever game. She didn't have fun. She spent the entire time not being able to see (she's quite short and people were standing in front of her) and our team suffered its worst home defeat for quite a few years. She's not been back since so a family joke is that she's effectively been banned from the ground ever again. <br />
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I've been going to watch my team since the mid 1980s and the cost centres love going to watch as well but it's a bit of a pain as we're 2 hours drive away and they get bored in the car. I usually take the kids a couple of times a year but I often go with my grown up nephews, but we usually take the train which means we can grab some beers and relax before having more beers before the game, more beers on the train on the way home and the football plays second fiddle to a day's drinking. It's also fun going to away games when we are playing in London as the reduced travel time means these are effectively home games for us.<br />
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But I've had awful experiences taking girlfriends to games - we've never won a game when I've taken a girlfriend and I even had one try to start an argument with me at halftime then act surprised when I told her she could make her own way home (we both lived a 2 hour drive away and she'd not thought ahead enough to actually think this might not have been the best of ideas). <br />
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But a few months ago Mrs AC decided she wanted to go to a game. Brilliant. It's been lovely knowing you Mrs AC but I'm not sure our relationship is this strong - the last time we'd watched a match together was at 8am in a Vegas hotel room where we suffered our worst home defeat in 10 years. Plus she banned me from drinking at 8am so it wasn't the best of omens. What is the world coming to when you can't open a beer whilst still in bed?<br />
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It's also an absolute PITA to get tickets - our capacity is only 27,000 or so and we have over 20,000 season ticket holders meaning tickets are rarer than hens' teeth. But I managed to get 4 - not quite adjacent but we managed to switch seats with our neighbours and all managed to sit together. </div>
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Before the game Mrs AC got her own team shirt plus other paraphernalia from the club shop - it looked like she'd been covered in glue then rolled through the shop. We all had our usual pre-match ritual of a meat pie (you really have to be British to appreciate this) and Mrs AC "borrowed" my favourite scarf (which is actually only 3 years younger than she is) - a scarf being the only item of the club shop that hadn't stuck itself to her when she was in there. </div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Mrs AC is not one to watch sports in ignorance so she's constantly asking questions about the game. This isn't so bad when we're watching on TV but live it's pretty irritating. Luckily my oldest cost centre is a bit of a know it all so regales Mrs AC with each player's statistics, rules of the game and even teaches her the words to our songs (we actually have the oldest known song in world football at our club <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Ball,_City">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Ball,_City</a>). </span></div>
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Now if this were a Hollywood movie we'd have won the game and we'd all live happily ever after. </div>
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We didn't. We got thrashed. We were awful. If they had announced that they needed substitutes from the crowd my boys would have volunteered, with the exception that I'd have said my boys were too good for this standard. The score line of 1-3 flattered us, we conceded 2 penalties (both of which were missed) and we only scored our consolation goal in the last couple of minutes when the game was already dead. </div>
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To be honest we were never expected to win - the prematch odds on us were +300 as we were playing Manchester United. Now even if you don't follow English football you've probably heard of them (they've won the Premier League more times than any other team) but our mood was sombre on the way home (on the flip side I took a Man Utd supporting colleague to this game about 15 years ago and he sulked all the way back to London after we'd pulled off a shock 2-0 win). </div>
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Our mood is lightened by hearing this story of a Southampton fan on the radio - having travelled 4 hours to his first ever game they got thrashed 9-0 at home <a href="https://talksport.com/football/620992/southampton-fan-st-marys-leicester/">https://talksport.com/football/620992/southampton-fan-st-marys-leicester/</a>. </div>
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I dropped Mrs AC at home before driving the boys back and as she said goodbye to the boys she told them to look on the bright side as at least we'd seen them score. It's on the short drive back to the boys' house that we discussed the game and the youngest piped up with "that's exactly what mum is going to say, what does it matter that we saw them score or not if we lost? Girls just don't understand football". I told Mrs AC about this comment when I got back and she laughed whilst promising to give my youngest a friendly telling off next time she saw him. </div>
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So now fast forward to New Year's Day - we spent the previous evening with friends in a town called Torquay which is about 200 miles south west of London. We were staying for another day so after a pub lunch and a couple of drinks we decided to watch my friend's local team - Torquay United. This is as far removed from the glitz and glamour of the Premier League as you can imagine - they play in the 5th tier of English football so the footballing standard is not overly great whilst the grounds and facilities can only be described in one word - spartan. Most clubs at this level have old school terraces where spectators stand rather than sit (these were banned in the upper leagues about 30 years ago following various incidents but most famously at Hillsborough stadium where 96 Liverpool supporters were killed during a crush in 1989). Quite a few of these terraces are also uncovered so you're open to the elements - luckily it's quite a mild day so we're not getting cold and wet but that didn't stop the girls from moaning that we had to stand. We jokingly told them they weren't worth the extra £2 ($2.60) it would have cost to sit but I actually prefer to stand at these sorts of grounds as it adds to the atmosphere. For the entire match they chatted to each other and they didn't talk to us apart from offering to get some coffees during the game. My friend is a semi regular here and never usually brings his wife but she agreed as she had someone to chat to. The opposition had a man red carded after 10 minutes but that didn't stop them from beating the home side 2-0. It was only at the end of the match that my friend told us that they'd lost 6-2 to the same opposition only a week or so before. After the game we headed back into town and as we sat in the pub Mrs AC asked a question about the match "what was the score?"</div>
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Now we've all been at the same match so we just looked at her for a bit before my friend's wife said "oh, I wasn't paying attention either so I can't tell you" before my friend tells them the score, shakes his head whilst turning to me and saying "girls just don't understand football". I chuckled at this and Mrs AC told my friend that it's not the first time she's had that said about her - but that the last time was by a 12 year old boy! </div>
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AyeCarambaPokerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06507500031143618357noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3380096215270772742.post-45350088446495929092020-04-24T06:21:00.000-07:002020-04-24T06:21:15.885-07:00The new normal<div dir="ltr">
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There are a few ways that the current global situation ends - the most extreme is that civilisation falls, the infected turn into zombies after they've spent too long injecting themselves with bleach and inserting UV lightbulbs up their arses in a futile attempt to cure themselves and spend their days seeking out the healthy in order to crack their heads open and feast on the tasty treats inside. Those who remain uninfected spend their days avoiding the zombies and trying to scavenge enough food to make it until the next day. There are no farms, utilities or power because .... well, civilisation has fallen. At least the zombies will be easy to spot if you have a UV sensitive camera or happen to be a bee (which can see in UV) because the zombies still have a UV light stuck up their arses. Fuck knows what any invading alien species will think when they finally invade and find millions of corpses with UV lights lodged in the bodily remnants of the fossils they find. <br />
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The other extreme is a return to normality. At the moment, without a vaccine and without knowing whether recovery from infection provides lifelong immunity this scenario is just as unlikely as the first.<br />
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I think we'll see somewhere in the middle. This may take far longer than most people think - I'm guessing sometime towards the end of this year but it will certainly be measured in months, and not days. It will become the new normal, at least for a while anyway - but anyone expecting things in Vegas to change will be in for a very rude awakening. I've read numerous tweets, blogs and news stories about Vegas in the last few weeks and they all have one thing in common - what will Vegas be like when we get to the new normal? <br />
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The consensus is that things will change: room rates will decline, resort and parking fees will be dropped and everything will be done in order to entice people back into town. This is rubbish, in fact I think they'll do quite the opposite - rates will increase, more fees will be implemented in order to squeeze every last dollar (forget nickel and diming now, they want paper money not pocket change). <br />
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"What the fuck have you been smoking?" might be your response but hear me out. The new normal is where economics is turned on its head - I mentioned a few blogs back <a href="https://ayecarambapoker.blogspot.com/2019/12/lies-damned-lies-and-statistics.html?m=1">https://ayecarambapoker.blogspot.com/2019/12/lies-damned-lies-and-statistics.html?m=1</a> what I do for a living so I (sometimes at least) think my thought process is rational and I might be on the right track. </div>
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In a normal situation there is one thing a supplier can do to stimulate demand - reduce price. It's a basic tenet of supply and demand that demand increases as prices drop (there are certain situations where the opposite is true but these are called Veblen goods - think fancy perfume or celebrity endorsed goods, if the price of smelling like Britney Spears's Snatch is $2 then no one wants it but increase its price to $100 and it's suddenly more desirable). </div>
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So let me get back on track - in the new normal there are still social distancing restrictions meaning that tables can only seat 3, 1/2 the slots are removed or kept dark and restaurants and bars are only allowed 30% occupancy. In short - Vegas doesn't want to be full. Far from it. They don't want 100% occupancy in cheap as chips rooms when people can't drop a few hundred bucks a day into slots or on table games. They only want to attract 2 types of people - the first being the total degenerates who come to gamble away every dollar they have and have missed the place so much that they don't care about the price (we call this price inelasticity) and for the second group we're talking about whales, Moby fucking Dick. These are the guys who will keep the lights on in the new normal. They don't want people like me there (to be honest did they ever want me there in the first place? But I wouldn't want to be a member of any club who wanted me to join!) as I don't fit into either category. So they won't try to attract people like me, if you find yourself being targeted by Vegas you're either the Moby Dick (in which case congratulations and can I please borrow a few quid?) or you've got one hell of a gambling problem. </div>
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But I'm just a monkey throwing darts at a dartboard, what do I know? </div>
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Please let me know if you agree or disagree in the comments below. </div>
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AyeCarambaPokerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06507500031143618357noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3380096215270772742.post-8992616021549458562020-04-18T11:38:00.000-07:002020-04-18T11:38:23.117-07:00Chekhov’s gun<div dir="ltr">
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I alluded to this story a few posts ago - I was out with Mrs AC and I was telling her about something stupid which then prompted me to tell her about this blog - here is the story that I was telling her. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">As I've mentioned in previous posts I travel a lot. Now to some people (cough, Mrs AC, cough) any form of travelling involves packing 2 or 3 massive suitcases to the brim then struggling to move them at every step of their journey. Not me though. I usually travel pretty light and I can usually have a few weeks away with just a regular sized carry on plus a separate briefcase. This saves me time at airports</span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">,</span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> avoiding check in queues and waiting for bags to be delivered which can sometimes take longer than the actual flight. It also allows me to use public</span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> transport to and from airports if that's more convenient to me.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">On every trip I have my list of essentials such as laptop, </span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">chargers </span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">etc</span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> but</span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> sometimes I have to get some laundry done mid trip – this isn't as much as a PITA as you think it might be though as I usually find a hotel that has a laundry room or even a public laundry where I'll drop my things off, head for a couple of beers and return a couple of hours later. No sweat. On some trips I have to pack a few non essentials like a dinner suit and shoes but I still manage to get away without checking bags. I'll </span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">scrimp on a spare pair of shoes or</span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> </span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">not take gym kit if need be if only to accommodate my one absolute, definite, must have item. But I've not always packed this item – I only started doing so in the last few years – and I'll explain why now.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">A couple of years ago I'd returned from Spain and was staying in a small hotel in London for a couple of days before heading somewhere else. I'd never needed this particular item before and it certainly had </span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">n</span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">ever crossed my mind to have packed it, in fact I'm not entirely certain that I owned this at the time.</span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">It's the middle of the night and I'm slowly waking up in unfamiliar surroundings </span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">because I'm busting for a piss – I'd had a few beers the previous evening with a friend but it certainly wasn't a heavy session. </span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">As I come round I'm trying to work out where I am and where the bathroom is</span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">,</span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> but for the life of me I can't find the light switch on the table next to the bed. In fact I can't find the table which should be next to the bed and I'm not actually in bed at all. I seem to be on the floor. I also seem to be in a corrido</span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">r rather than in my hotel room.</span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> And still </span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">busting for a piss. Really, really busting for a piss. </span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Did I mention that I'm naked as well?</span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> Suddenly busting for a piss doesn't seem to be so important now.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">So having come to my senses I need a plan. I stumble through the corridors to find my room, desperately hoping that my door hasn't slammed shut behind me but I'm way out of luck. The hotel isn't big enough to have any need for a phone on each floor and there's no bathroom anywhere without going through the lobby. I'm glad that </span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">it's</span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> 4am </span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">as the chances of anyone other than hotel staff being around are pretty minimal.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">It's also pertinent at this point to come back to a very minor detail that I explained earlier in the story – that I'd just come back from Spain</span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">. This invokes the principle of Chekhov's gun that every minor detail </span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">included in the telling of a</span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;"> story must be relevant or discarded if it's not necessary </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov%27s_gun"><span class="s4" style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov%27s_gun</span></a><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">. Where I'd been in Spain had plenty of mosquitos and I think every single one of them had taken a bite out of me during my stay there. I mean every single one as I've got dozens and dozens of bite marks over my body – bizarrely none on my face or head but my torso is literally covered in bite marks. I'd been back in the UK for a few days – earlier in the week I'd probably have looked like a plague victim but now I just look like I'm recovering from the plague. </span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">So I'm naked, busting for a piss and look like I've recently had the plague. And I'</span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">m locked out of my hotel room in the middle of the night. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">Luckily there are a couple of room service trays outside a few of the rooms on my floor and I fashion a makeshift modesty protector out of two of them. I head down to the lobby and poke my head out of the lift to make sure that the place is deserted before I go to the reception desk. </span><span style="line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I explain that I've been sleepwalking and I'm in room 1234 and I'm handed a replacement room key. I'm shocked. I've not been asked for any ID so surely anyone could pull this trick to gain entry!! </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">I head back to the room and I put my case against the door to try to prevent me doing this again – hopefully I'll fall over and wake up before getting out of the room if I have another unplanned walk. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); line-height: 21.600000381469727px;">So the one, must have, unforgettable item I now pack is a simple pair of pyjamas – I've not found myself in this situation since but if I do manage a repeat at least I won't be naked.</span></div>
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AyeCarambaPokerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06507500031143618357noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3380096215270772742.post-4311071880553516722020-04-14T08:36:00.000-07:002020-04-14T08:36:17.617-07:00That’s mature<div class="mobile-photo">
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If I asked you to guess something personal about me I can virtually guarantee that no one would predict what I'm about to tell you - I make my own cheese. I've been doing it for a few years now - not overly regularly but one thing I do when I'm bored is learn something new. And a few years ago I learned how to make cheese. I've had a few hits (mozzarella, cheddar) and a few misses (a Brie which ended up harder than a hockey puck and one which I left in the garage to age but forgot about and by the time I found it had produced a swarm of flies and maggots of biblical plague proportions) over the years.
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Last week I went to the supermarket for the weekly shop (just to get essentials and with no thoughts of buying 30 pints of milk) and they had an absolute fridge-load of full cream, non-homogenised (that's important - you can't make cheese with homogenised milk as the fat globules are too small) milk so I decided to pick some up and make some cheese as I've got quite a bit of time on my hands at the moment.
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So when the cost centres went home after the weekend I told Mrs AC that we were gong to spend the day making cheese - stilton in this case. She initially thought this was hilarious and that I was joking - nope. You get to be the cheese maker's assistant I told her - chief job being timing and pouring the wine. The wine having no relevance to the cheese making process other than making it more fun!
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We ended up making these 2 beauties - unfortunately I didn't have any different culture so had to make 2 Stilton rather than waste the milk.<br />
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So now the waiting begins - the book says to let them mature for 6 to 8 weeks but given the current situation I think we’ll still be in lockdown by the time they are ready.<br />
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What’s the weirdest activity that you’ve been doing whilst in lockdown?AyeCarambaPokerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06507500031143618357noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3380096215270772742.post-10274010975699086812020-04-05T10:41:00.000-07:002020-04-05T10:41:34.647-07:00Honesty is the best policyWhen I'd just started seeing Mrs AC I told her I needed to make a confession. Her immediate reaction was that I'd lied and was actually still married and was using her as a bit on the side given I travel a lot. Nothing that bad I told her - I've never understood why people want to run the stress of a double life, one woman in your life is hard enough work but 2 would be a complete nightmare (I did once casually date 2 girls at the same time but it was made easier by them having the same name).
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The previous night we'd been to watch basketball with a couple of friends of hers. Of all the sports in the world basketball must be near the bottom of my list that I'd choose to watch. I'd rather watch paint dry. There's a central Asian sport called buzkashi (not what you think it is!) that is higher up my list - it's a bit like polo but uses a goat carcass as the "ball" - I've never actually watched it but it sounds better than basketball. It's not that I don't appreciate the skill or athleticism of the players - it's that there's too much scoring. When 1 score can be worth less than 2% of your total then each individual score has a diminished value - what's the point of cheering a 2% increase when it means nothing - just play the last 5 minutes and let everyone go home. Even the crowd know this as no one really gets excited until the last couple of minutes. If I was given the option of only watching basketball it would be a bit like offering me unlimited beer for life - but the only offering being Bud Light, I'd honestly rather have none. But anyway - I'm rambling.
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Mrs AC asked why I was happy to go out to watch the game. Firstly there was beer available and secondly (I might have reversed the order when telling Mrs AC) it's because I told her I wanted to spend time with her - even now (I wrote this pre lockdown and we've now spent 3 straight weeks together and she hasn't murdered me yet!) we still don't see that much of each other and I told her I was prepared to go through the tedium of watching basketball if it meant I got to spend time with her. She thought this was sweet. So since then we've always had a policy of being honest with each other - if one person asks a question then it has to be answered honestly, however embarrassing the answer. Neither of us is the jealous type and she's laughed herself silly hearing my stories about being pounced on by cougars and my drunken adventures in Vegas (especially when someone she knows was in town and took a few of us out drinking for the weekend).
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Which is why I'm writing this up now. I've told Mrs AC about this blog. It's not that I'd deliberately kept it from her but that it had never come up in general conversation - it's probably not top of any questions to ask people when you get to know someone.
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But just after Christmas it came up over dinner - I was recounting one of my stupid stories (bizarrely not poker or even booze related but I've promised to write it up) and Mrs AC asked whether I'd thought of writing any of my escapades down. Errr. Yes. I already have! So I showed her.
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She read a few entries and laughed at some of them before telling me that I was a bigger idiot than she already thought I was - given that this is her regular friendly insult for me I know I'm not in the doghouse!
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I've deliberately kept this blog anonymous (albeit there are a few very subtle clues along the way - stories that involve beer obviously!) due to the nature of my work, on the off chance of a client coming across this I might find myself with a bit too much spare time on my hands if I'm easily identifiable.
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So welcome Mrs AC - you'd better behave yourself from now on otherwise your drunken idiocy might get recorded for all of 4 people to read about. But is anyone interested in the time you came in from a girls' night out and I found you asleep in the bathroom at 3am? Then proceeded to admonish me for "not paying you enough attention" the previous evening despite me not having been out with you!! It seems I've got a challenger in the drunken idiocy department - game on 😍
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I wrote this a couple of months ago and now it seems the end is nigh - there's no sports on TV! First English football postponed their fixtures, shortly followed by F1, NHL and the majority of sports across the globe. I hadn't realised how much sport I watch but it must be a lot given how much I'm missing it - and that's only going to get worse as it looks like there's going to be nothing on for the foreseeable future. I miss sports so much that at this moment I'd actually watch basketball - but only if the world paint drying championship is not being televised at the same time!AyeCarambaPokerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06507500031143618357noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3380096215270772742.post-53394627519903995942020-03-30T06:25:00.000-07:002020-03-30T06:25:27.788-07:00I only played them cos they were suited<div dir="ltr">
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Those were the words that my opponent uttered when he flipped over a turned flush, beating my flopped set of Kings. Idiot. I'd raised to 5x preflop from UTG and he'd called from the button with 8-2 suited, flopped middle pair with a flush draw and we'd got it all in on the flop. What a fucking clown. I guess that's just poker but I still want to berate him for being so daft. <br />
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But I can't bring myself to do it - I just shake my head, reach into my pocket to rebuy and casually ask him if he's old enough to be playing as he looks like he should still be in school. "You know how old I am Dad" is his reply. He's just won about 85 pence ($1) from me and he's not even going to give me the chance to win it back as he announces that he's leaving with a profit and wants to watch a movie. </div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It's the 1st weekend of lockdown and we are having a home poker session just for something different to do - I've only just recently taught Mrs AC to play whilst the boys have been learning for a couple of years so every once in a while we have a game. I never seem to win though - as bad as I think I run in casino games I can probably double that at our home games but at least my losses are only small plus I'm closer to the beer in the fridge. </span><br />
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So rewind to the previous weekend and when I picked up the boys they couldn't have been in more differing moods - my eldest opened the door looking morose and declared sadly that his school would be shut for the foreseeable future. My younger son was virtually skipping through the house and told me the same news but with a level of glee in his voice that only an 11 year old can have - he was so excited that I thought he was going to explode. I don't have the heart to tell him that the majority of the next few weeks is going to be spent cooped up inside with his brother and mother. </div>
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There's no official lockdown announced at this point in time but social distancing has been recommended. But given most people have read this as "cram yourself into the busiest train possible and go to the pub as usual in the evening" a full lockdown was announced on Monday after I'd taken the boys home on Sunday evening.<br />
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The 1st week of lockdown hasn't been too bad as I've actually been quite busy but the next couple of weeks will be much quieter work-wise so I'm not sure how they will go. Mrs AC had run out of meaningful work to do by Thursday so has binge watched an 80s British comedy called Only Fools and Horses - luckily there's another 5 series left to watch so that should fill some time. If you've never seen it I highly recommend it - it's one of the best loved British comedy series and here are a couple of classic scenes <a href="https://youtu.be/ZZj3BY3186I">https://youtu.be/ZZj3BY3186I</a> and <a href="https://youtu.be/63rcdLeXiU8">https://youtu.be/63rcdLeXiU8</a>. She's also tried to tempt me with daytime drinking but given I've had work to do I've resisted so far - next week will probably see my resolve tested. </div>
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There's a park near my house so we've at least had a touch of exercise most days but I really can't see this subsiding for a couple of months at the minimum - even when this is over I think it will take the rest of the year for the world to feel anywhere close to normal again. </div>
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If we get to the end of April it will be the longest that I've not travelled on a long haul flight in about 6 years but there's a good chance that a large portion of the world's airlines will have gone bust by then so maybe my next trip to the US will be by ship - a couple of days spent crossing the Atlantic seems quite relaxing but I'm not sure how practical it will be for getting back home for the weekend. </div>
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How is everyone else coping with lockdown? </div>
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AyeCarambaPokerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06507500031143618357noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3380096215270772742.post-19964196982785852232020-03-22T05:29:00.000-07:002020-03-22T05:29:44.338-07:00It’ll feel just like being in Vegas<div class="mobile-photo">
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This was the sight that greeted me down the beer aisle when I'd fought off the zombie hordes at the supermarket on my return to London - screw getting a lifetime's supply of toilet paper or enough hand sanitiser to clean up even the most germ ridden of children. I wanted booze - Lots of it. I'm certainly not stock-piling or panic buying but the only thing that's going to make an enforced extended stay at home slightly bearable is the thought of getting a few beers in me every evening (something I actually rarely do at home but given I effectively can't travel for at least a month I need something to keep my spirits up). I've also got a cell mate - Mrs AC who decided against travelling back to NY and will probably be here for the duration as well. So booze is going to be the thing that keeps up both sane.
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So back to the supermarket - the only large packs of beer they had left was Corona. It seems that the UK has reached peak stupidity as well given everything else has been cleaned out so I filled my trolley with that - I did ask the manager if I could get a bulk buying discount given no one else was touching the stuff but I just got laughed at. Now I rarely even drink Corona in the UK, let alone at home, but it's usually my go-to drink at the poker table - every place has it so I don't have to waste a waitress's time asking what beers they have plus it's not overly strong so I can drink quite a few and still be able to see straight enough at the cards.
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So after the kids have gone back to their mum's I'm going to play the video poker app I've got on my phone, tell Mrs AC to put on something skimpy and tip her a buck every time she brings me a beer - it'll feel just like being in Vegas!
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I haven't told Mrs AC yet that she's going to role play as a Vegas cocktail waitress for the evening - I might need to ply her with something much stronger in order for her to agree. It's a good job the spirits aisle was well stocked on my shopping trip!
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What are everyone's plans for getting through this?AyeCarambaPokerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06507500031143618357noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3380096215270772742.post-84797596757667636382020-03-13T15:01:00.000-07:002020-03-17T14:26:47.508-07:00Zombie apocalypse I don't know if they did it deliberately but a British TV channel aired the movie 28 days later the other evening - quite apt I thought and I ended up watching that plus the sequel 28 weeks later with Mrs AC whilst we were up in Scotland pet and house sitting for my mother.
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We then watched Shaun of the dead which I thought was the much more realistic way that the world is going to end - more so given the hero's major plan is to sit in the pub and wait for all the nonsense to blow over.
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But given the current state of affairs I'm in a quandary as to what to do - I need to be in the US over the next few months and Mrs AC needs to head back home as well.
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I have narrowed my choices down to these options:
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A - Stay in Scotland with Mrs AC. Pros: More time with Mrs AC, lowest amount of human contact. Cons: my mother will be home next week, won't see the cost centres, my mother will be home next week.
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B - send Mrs AC home to NY but remain in Scotland. Pros: Hmm, not sure but still remains a minimal amount of human contact. Cons: see point A, did I mention that my mother will be back?
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C - travel to New York as if nothing is happening. Pros: I'm not sat in Scotland being wittered at by my mother. Cons: 8.6 million potential zombies within 25 miles, not seeing the cost centres, potentially getting trapped when the military blow up the bridges and tunnels and ending up going as mad as Will Smith in I am Legend
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D - head back to London and cancel any further travel plans. Pros: I'm not sat in Scotland being wittered at by my mother, see the cost centres, ex Mrs AC might become a zombie and I get to be the one who takes her out. Cons: 8.9 million potential zombies within 25 miles, I'm not sure how much toilet paper I have at home.
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Please let me know what you'd do in my situation.<br />
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What an absolute clusterfuck. The day after I wrote this they announced that the UK was going to be part of the travel ban - oh fucking joy. Double fucking joy considering it’s a Saturday and neither I nor Mrs AC can get hold of anyone work related to discuss travel and work plans.<br /><br />The original plan was for Mrs AC and me to fly to NY on Wednesday but this wasn’t possible for me since the ban came into effect for non US residents after Monday’s flights - Mrs AC would have been ok flying back to NY without me but would have been made to self isolate (no idea how this is going to work or even be policed but that’s an entirely separate matter).<br /><br />So my options were then limited to travelling to NY on Monday or not at all for at least the next 30 days, knowing that if I left the US I wouldn’t be able to return for the same period. We debated a few options but my mind was made up on Sunday after seeing how flights from mainland Europe were being treated to a 6-8 hour wait at CBP and customs. There’s no way I’m getting on a 7 hour flight if there’s going to be that long a wait at the other end.<br /><br />As Mrs AC would have had to work from home for 2 weeks if she went back to NY she’s opted to stay in the UK for the foreseeable future and we are both flying back to London on Wednesday as anything more than 2 hours with my mother in Scotland would have me going mad, or killing her.<br /><br />Fuck knows when I’m going to get back over to the US but I’ve got a few stories of poker and drunken idiocy I need to write up so hopefully this will give me the time to get those done. In the meantime stay safe kids - if the world really does go to ratshit the attackers can be stopped by removing the head or destroying the brain. And if you get hungry there’s a Breville out the back and John will do you a toastie.</div>
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<br />AyeCarambaPokerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06507500031143618357noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3380096215270772742.post-24483210733716688162020-03-05T09:06:00.001-08:002020-03-05T09:06:45.012-08:00Inane or insane <div class="mobile-photo">
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I'm a fully functioning adult. I think I am anyway. I might be far too partial to adult beverages and bouts of idiocy following those adult beverages but I'm pretty sure I still qualify as a functioning adult. But there's one person who thinks I'm not - my mother. I swear she thinks I'm 12 - well that is my mental age so maybe she's got one thing right.
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Now if you're a regular reader of my ramblings you'll know one thing about her - she's as mad as a box of frogs. Every time she tells me about anything in her life it usually breaks the dial on my insaneometer. Or it will be inane. She'll regale anyone who listens with the most banal story of everyday life as if any trip out of the house is the search for the holy grail. The other day she actually rang me up and wittered about going to the local grocery store with the highlight being that they'd run out of the yogurts she usually buys and she'd bought a different brand.
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But despite her obvious insanity she's actually very self sufficient - she lives in the middle of nowhere but has a wide circle of friends and often travels down to London to see my cost centres and abroad to visit family - which is why I'm now writing this up. One of my brothers lives abroad and every year or so my mother travels over to <strike>annoy</strike> see him and visit friends she's made. This obviously involves booking a flight - which can take her forever as she procrastinates the merits of each individual flight option and regularly rings me up to ask various details about aircraft types, seating options and meals. My usual response is "how the fuck would I know?" because she's asking what meal they will be serving on a 6 hour flight. Now when I travel I'm usually in the pointy end but my mother will only ever book economy (coach) so asking me anything about seats is a waste of time but I'm sure some people manage to survive in the cramped seats without starving to death or resorting to cannibalism. I'm imagining meal times involve some sort of communal trough but that's about the height of my knowledge.
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It's taken her 5 weeks of dithering but she's actually worked out what flights she wants and is just about to book it but there's a problem. Her neighbour, who usually looks after her cat and dog when she's away, is away at the same time. Can I go up to Scotland to look after them? I'd already told her that I'd probably be in the UK and I can work from virtually anywhere so fine - I may need to take a day trip or two down to London for meetings but I can work around it.
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Normally what I'd do in this situation is fly up to Scotland, coinciding with her southbound flight so I get the absolute minimum of interaction with her and pick up her car before reversing the process on the way back. But this time it's different. She's got some jobs for me around the house plus she needs to show me (in her words) "how things work as I'd have no idea how to work things around her house". This is despite me having been there numerous times over the last 5 years since she moved there, including at least once every year whilst she's been away. Oh fucking joy. Not only is she going to witter at me for 2 days, I've got to do manual labour around the house (come the year zero agrarian revolution I'm the first to get shot as apart from some kitchen burn and knife scars I've got soft hands that refuse to do manual labour).
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But it doesn't end there - I've then got to drive her to the airport whilst she witters at me, the last time I did this one of her topics included whether her dog would remember living in the town we were driving through. Fuck knows what actually goes on in her head to have these thoughts but the 1 hour journey feels a lot longer. Hopefully a fuel tanker will crash into us, putting me out of my misery. I feel sorry for the poor sod who has to sit next to her on the plane though - that 6 hour flight is going to feel like days as she doesn't use the excuse of only having met someone as a reason not to witter constantly at them.
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I'll at least get a day of drinking under my belt - at the airport, on the flight plus a couple of beers at the station waiting for the train. Then it's a day or so listening to her wittering before I get to do some of her household jobs - hopefully one of them will involve a chainsaw and I can arrange a little accident!
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On a more positive note there was quite a lot of booze leftover from our stay at Christmas (which I secreted in her garage) which is probably near its expiry date so at least I'll have something fun to do when I'm up there!
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I actually wrote the above earlier this week whilst travelling to the airport but forgot to post it - once I arrived these are the instructions my mother needed 2 days to give me:
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How to use the oven - ignoring the fact I cooked Christmas lunch for us all
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How to use the tv - it's a fucking tv how complicated can it be? Completely ignoring the fact it used to be mine and I gave it to her when I upgraded mine a few years ago
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Tidy up her garage because she keeps falling over things - apparently it's easier to do this than wait for the light to switch on so she can see anything that she might fall over. I did manage to tidy up the beer I'd left in there at Christmas but my enthusiasm for anything more productive waned as soon as I'd found it.
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Jet wash the patio and path - this is fine and I've written a message in her path to welcome visitors. I did write a ruder one but didn't think she'd appreciate that - I forgot to take a photo before erasing it so you'll have to make do with the politer version.
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Go to speak to someone down the road about their gate letting their dogs out - they probably already know as their dogs go missing
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Thank her friend for the piece of cake she sent me - her friend who came to Christmas sent me a piece of her birthday cake. Her birthday was 6 weeks ago and my mother ate the cake. So I have to thank her for a piece of 6 week old cake which I didn't actually see? Fuck right off
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Be careful driving her new car because it has a turbo - she has no idea what a turbo is or does but is convinced it makes it faster than an F1 car. Me pointing out it's only a 3 cylinder 1.1 litre with about 100hp apparently made no difference. I don't think I've ever owned a car with less power. I did clean it though - she's had this car for less than a month and it was a health hazard with hair and drool everywhere as she often has the dog in there - I hope the drool was from the dog anyway.
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Water various plants - even this was made more complicated by her writing a list of everything in the house and detailing watering frequency. But instead of writing obvious notes such as "blue flower in the conservatory" she's detailed their botanical names as if I'd know what a hydrangea is - she might as well have called them Steve, Frank or Dave for all the help it made.
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I've barely had any human interaction since Tuesday but luckily Mrs AC (who I haven't seen since Super Bowl weekend) is arriving from NY on Friday so I'll need to pop down to London to pick her and the boys up - then I'm likely going to be over in LA & Vegas towards the end of the month.AyeCarambaPokerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06507500031143618357noreply@blogger.com7