Let's Finish The Weekend...

This morning, I'm actually sitting around Lars' place for a portion, if not all of the Blog entry. I was over around his last night, since we spent a good portion of the night with a few more beers in hand.

Lars has just taken off for work and I'm raiding his CD collection for my MP3 player. A lot of the stuff he does have I would buy, but as circumstances are the way they are... I'll just get some copies of the good stuff so I don't miss out on his great music collection.

I'm currently raiding his Jack Johnson collection. Barry and Lars go on and on about this fella and what I've heard of it is quite good. So yeah, it'll be a nice addition to the collection.

Right, so anyways... I didn't tell you guys anything about Sunday, did I? Well, what another mad day that was. I was (half) expecting a phone call or a text message from Naomi about meeting up for the last time for lunch or something. I told her on Saturday that I was unsure what I was doing and to give me a call, just in case I was busy. You never know what kind of things could have happened.

I stayed over at Lars' place on Saturday night and the idea was if I didn't get a phone call from Naomi then I would automatically join the guys up in Manningtree for beers and Cricket. I had yet to actually play Cricket in England and since I was watching it over the summers, I was really interested in giving it a go.

Lars and I got up in the morning and mulled about for a bit and on our half dazed looks was a look of hunger. But we had just missed out the time for breakfast at McDonald's, but a tasty burger was in the cards for us as well. We got our shit together and headed up for a large Big Mac meal and we stuffed our faces.

By noon, I hadn't heard anything from Naomi was the plan was destined for Manningtree. By the time Naomi was late, I decided to just throw somewhat of a guilt text message at her. I definitely would have blown her off anyways, but since she didn't call me, I thought I could use the upper hand to throw some guilt her way, although she's a little too dense to actually even feel it, I find. Lucy was meeting us down at the station for 1pm and Lars was carrying an effects pedal for George and his electric guitar. I was just bringing me... I thought that'd be enough.

On the platform, we ran into Nelly. He was coming down from a night at Route. He was even less-talkative than usual. Chapman rang me up while we're on the platform to let us know he was already in the pub. Good effort! The 1:12pm train arrived and we were off to Manningtree. Barry was already in with Justin at Justin's house, so when we were on the walk into Manningtree, we let him know that we'd meet him in the pub. Nelly buggered off home to catch the OC.

Chapman & Jim were in the Red Lion down below with the pool table and a portable radio. Bring on the pints! Down went one, then two... a couple games of pool with Jim (in which I lost both!) and then everyone started to filter in. Barry, George & Jutty walked in, Tom walked in as well and we were beginning to have ourselves a pretty good little group.

A couple hours, a couple more pints, B&G had a few games of pool before I was getting a little anxious to go play some Cricket. Jutty and I tried to lead by example and go outside to throw the ball around. Talk about feeling good to throw the ball again. I did feel a tad out of practice, but it wasn't long before I got the hang of the throw and catch again. Trying to bowl in Cricket is seemingly difficult. Since you have to keep your arm straight throughout the delivery, it makes it awfully difficult for a normal baseball player to immediately step in and get it right.

PHEW! In my writing this, I thought I lost up to this point of writing when I tried to save it and the Notepad program locked up on me. My goodness... that really scared the hell outta me. I didn't want to lose all that writing. Sorry... I'll continue now.

The lads (and lady) all took the hint and finished up their drinks and we all finally left the Red Lion. Lars was heading off home for a roast dinner and decided to skip the Cricket... silly, silly boy. The rest of us grabbed some booze from the Tesco and made the trek over to the playing fields.

Unfortunately, the actual Cricket ground was being used by (so-called) proper Cricketters, so we made do in the fields next to it. Some makeshift stumps, some bottles of booze and we made ourselves a good afternoon.

We played through our first innings and stopped for a tea (or beer) break. The sun was shining, there was a small breeze (that tended to blow over the Cricket bag, which was one of our stumps) and it was just a plainly gorgeous day. Tom, Jutty & George went and did another run to the Tesco, because we weren't gonna go very far at all from the field. It was just too nice to leave.

George was fitting in quite well with us guys. For going on 15 (today, actually... Happy Birthday, mate!), he's quite the mature little guy... well, at least as mature as us, which really isn't saying a great deal is it? He kept up his banter all day and was all & all a great laugh to have around.

In between innings, I finally checked my mobile to see if there was any messages and sure enough there was one from Naomi. I could have understood a 'sorry she couldn't make it' text message or something like that, but instead (as it was agreed by Barry) she decided to wind me up or try to at least.

"Hey clay.what a nite.had a wonderful time with lis then met a guy called rob from roberta at mapal leaf.v v drunk.we slept under the stars in st james park.magical,but a tad cold.how ru?"

Where do I begin? Okay, for starters... I typed the message out exactly the way it came. The typos, the slang... everything. In the wind up sort of sense, what the hell is she doin' picking up other guys in my favourite pub. She's trying to be gay, but failing miserably, as I thought she would. She made points of going to the places I usually went in London on her trip to see Lisa. And where the hell is roberta? I'll assume that she meant Alberta and in her drunkeness heard the word as if a Chinese man was saying it to her.

Deep breath and I'm okay. I wasn't terribly wound up by the whole thing, because I was increasingly drunk by that time and well, I'd rather be thinking about Nicolette instead of dwelling in now what is a lost-cause. Saying that, she's pretty much lost my attention and more than likely the chance of meeting up before we go. Lars and I were chatting last night actually... it's hard to just turn your back on somebody... but it's just so hard to keep any sort of patience with Naomi, 'cuz she doesn't seem to want to earn it. Right... I'm done with this now.

The second innings turned out to be quite funny. I could understand how they go so fast in Test Cricket, because if all these players were as growing drunk as we were, then the wickets fall a little faster than normal.

I think Lucy ended up with the pictures of the day out on her camera. I would really liked to have taken a look at those, hopefully I can get them on disk or in an e-mail soon.

We packed up around 8pm, because Barry had to get George on the 8:35pm train back to Harwich. By the end of it all, it looked like George had a really good day. I had given him my orange sunglasses, because I did sort of bend them away from the proportions of my face when I was dancing like a madman at Twisters the night before. The glasses still seemed to fit him well and he wanted them, so he was able to keep them. Hell, they were free anyways... (heh, heh... wink, wink)

Chapman, Tom & Jim all buggered off home after the day out on the pitch. I'm sure I'll catch all of them before I go. Chapman said he was definitely coming down to London on Friday, so that'll be awesome.

Jutty and I started the walk back to his place, but got stopped by looking at a girl outside one of the pubs in Manningtree. I forget what it was called now... but we decided to go in for a drink.

We go in for a drink and end up doing a quiz. HA! We made it through about 10 or so questions before Barry and Lucy finally got back from dropping George off at the train station. Jim joined us as well for another couple drinks and a couple answers as well. I don't think we ended up doing so well in the quiz, but we didn't really care. We lost our competitive edge on the Cricket ground anyways. It was just a good excuse to keep the ol' whistle wet.

Next stop... Jutty's place. Jim was really only gonna pick up his Cricket gear from Jutty and take off, but when you're in the pub, how can you not have a drink. So, he grabbed his stuff and he was off while the four of us went to Jutty's to finish the night off.

Jutty got his guitar out and we all got a chair to sit in the garden. I can't exactly remember how it all happened, but I ended up chasing Lucy around the back garden, lifting her on my shoulders, falling over as she's screaming and then Jutty's Dad comes out and yells for us to leave. Ha! Nice one. We got the boot from Jutty's back garden. He was yelling about it being Sunday and people trying to sleep and what not... we actually agreed, said sorry, got up and left through the gate. Quite humourous, because we were getting ourselves together and not really putting up any resistence to his kicking us out, but he continued to yell 'get out' to us. We were pretty slow, but c'mon... we were also pretty drunk. Through the gate we went and then Lucy and I just sat on the wall adjacent to the house for about 5 minutes until Jutty brought us back in to sit around... I would love to say fire, but it was a candle. Heh heh.

I've gotta say, Jutty is a pretty good guitar player. He was playing some excellent tunes and was singing along to them. It was quite a good night with just the four of us outside. We sat and chatted and sung along... it was awesome.

We eventually moved inside, but not before Barry and I sorta did the drunken 'gonna miss ya' routine, which in the end really got me. He broke me down, that bastard... heh heh... dropped a couple of soppy tears and hugged it out. Yeah, I'll do all the 'miss you's' and stuff later.

We moved inside and we continued singing. Had ourselves a cup of tea and then by about 2am our cab had arrived and Barry, Lucy & I headed back to Lucy's for the night. What a great day that was!

Cheers Lars for letting me copy a few of your discs around yours mate. It's just about 10am and I'm waiting for the Goldie Lookin Chain CD to finish up then I should be off back home. Gonna give Jutty a ring today and meet up with him.

Oh yeah... I got those pictures from Lars' camera last night. We spent a load of time looking over most of the pictures that I have and then I made him a couple CDs for himself and for Roger to put on Dirty Hairy Mouth. Nice.

Right... CD copied... catch ya guys later!