just a quickie out the back...

oh, sorry! i didn't mean it THAT way!!

last night era*, fawad** and i went to a salsa club in southsea, portsmouth. we had a few shots of vodka (WHAT ELSE!) before we left because they thought it'd make me dance. and dance i did, albeit briefly.

i know you might not believe this but i actually felt shy. i used the same excuse i use when i don't want to dance at virus: "errr...um...i'm not really dressed right..." which, in this case, was sorta kinda true. but really, you and i both know it's a load of rubbish. or bollocks, as they say in these parts. so i just sat and drank pints instead.

yea, so yesterday was lubbly. got to sleep in, that is, have a REAL sleep for the first time in at least a week. picked up victor, that's era's eight year old son, from school and visited era's friend john who works in the william hardwicke hotel (that's hard willie's if you're a local) here in bognor.

and today, after era and i had a much needed greasy english fry-up and she went off to work (in the post office), i went for a walk on the "beach" and...IT WAS SNOWING ~ no shit! not much, just gentle flakes but enough to get in your hair and look pretty. hope this isn't turning into one of THOSE travel blogs...

xx

*that's iryna, my ukrainsky cousin ~ her mum and my grandma were first cousins if you MUST know!
**era's lovely twenty-two year old afghani hubby who she met salsa dancing!!

ps ~ i still can't access my gmail but should be able to sometime over the weekend

bognor

I CAN'T LOG in to email and i can't get the dvd player to work (which would only allow me to watch american pie III anyway) so until the lovely era gets home from work, i'm here to tell ya bout bognor and tokyo, i guess.

yah, hokay, well my tokyo plans ENTIRELY fell through (thanks for NOTHIN, sam) so i ended up hanging out with cameron from north dandenong. it's not as bad as it sounds though.

cameron is the TPB* who was sitting next to me on the plane. twenty-three years of age and leaving australia for the first time, he was all cute and excited. but, better than that, he was allergic to nuts so i scored all his peanuts amongst other goodies!

this, in the end, was rather lucky coz i forgot to order vegetarian meals (yup, clever, i know), so those peanuts really got me through. plus, plane food sucks no matter what so i reckon you're better off sticking to the salad and bread rolls (AND ALCOHOL) anyway.

nah, i actually didn't drink much at all even tho they had the cutest little bottles of absolut you've ever seen! i just had one mini bottle of red (jacob's creek if you MUST know) and steered clear for the rest of the trip.

well, i was asleep most of the time so it might'a been a leetle hard to be getting drunk at the same time. although in future i might try it just for the challenge!

anyway, as i said, tokyo plans fell through so cameron and i just caught the shuttle into narita for a couple of hours. narita is where the airport is so it's about an hour and a half from anything else.

but there's a little city there, which may or may not have just sprung up around the airport, and we found some crazy patchinko hall ~ i gather this is kinda like a cross between the pokies and timezone. but played using ball bearings...yah...

anyway, after that our exploring encountered a bar. a tiny bar** with a funny sign out front saying "welcome to warika pub" or something. mr north dandenong was a bit cautious about going in but must have sensed that i would have either dragged him in or left him for dead, so he came.

unsurprisingly, it turned out to be a fine idea (no false modesty, please). the owner of the bar, hiro, and his few "customers" one of whom was definitely his guitar teacher, were superlovely...i think.

we couldn't understand them much and they couldn't understand us much. but we had some beer and peanuts and our palms examined ~ really couldn't tell you what was the outcome of that. hiro told me "good health" which made me laugh but his mate, nagasawa, made ominous noises which were, it seemed, untranslatable. meh!

true to form we missed the shuttle bus back to our hotel by merely seconds. but luckily cameron north dandenong is a fit n healthy leetle munchkin so he bolted after it, making it wait for me!

anyway, era's home from work now so youse can all just WAIT for the rest. oh, just in case you DON'T know, the weather in england is bloody miserable. yesterday i think it was snowing, or if not it was damn heavy hail.

but guess who couldn't care less bout the cold?? yup...me!! more updates sooneo, love youse heaps...and miss youse too...(a bit anyway). have fun & be cheerful xx


*TPB = totally pashable boy
** if you happen to get standed out in narita, this bar is right outside keisei narita station near the am/pm.