Slappers Reunion Tour 2015

Posted on October 26, 2008 by borysSNORC

Some years ago… okay rather more than some….. many years ago, myself Big Sal and Bluddy Mary went on one of those holidays of a lifetime. We squirrelled away as much dosh as we could and took as much leave (with and without pay) as we could from our boring Govt clerical jobs and went to Europe to do a massive Top Deck tour. It was truly one of the best things I ever did.

We did a 70 day Grand Tour of Europe on a double decker bus affectionately named ‘Freckle’ with 18 other Aussie and Kiwi ‘packs’ one Boos Driver and one Tour Leader extraordinaire. Okay slight exaggeration on the ‘extraordinaire’ bit (between the three of us we were more knowledgeable on European art, history and culture than she was) but she was pretty fabulous all the same. Our trip was rather comprehensive given we had ten weeks we moved at a fairly leisurely pace ex London to Calais, Paris, Cognac, San Sebastian, Madrid, Toledo, Barcelona, Avignon, Marsielle, Nice, Monaco (for the Grand Prix) Florence, Rome, Naples, Sorrento, Brindisi, Athens (a week sailing in the Mediterranean), Meteora, Thessaloniki, Istanbul, Selcuk, Ephesus, Truva, Cannakale, Black Sea Coast, Bucharest, Cluj Napoca, Budapest, Vienna, Prague, Munich, Bavaria, St Goar, Innsbruck, Lucerne, Luterbrunnen, Luxembourg, Amsterdam and a tonnne of small places along the way before going back to London. It’s hard to describe the wonderful things we did and saw without writing and entire book so I won’t even try here. One of the most wonderful things to come out of our trip was a friendship with a chick from Rockhampton named Shell.

Bluddy Mary, Borys and BigSal cruising the Bosphorous in ’95

It’s really unfortunate that you can’t do trips the way we did it back then… our bus ‘Freckle’ was a retired London double decker bus which had been decked out with a kitchenette downstairs and tables, seats, lockers etc and the entire upstairs had been kitted out with three high bunk beds so there was no tedious time wasting putting up and down of tents and packing and unpacking of bags every day. We just crashed in which ever bunk we found closest and in the morning when the Boos Driver said it was time to pull out, we nursed our coffee mugs and our hangovers and stumbled back onto the bus and hit the road. It was a great experience though there was a few wankers on the trip as you might expect and I discovered something very valuable about myself…. after expending much effort to avoid the company for the worst offending wanker my tolerance threshold actually lasted exactly seven weeks and two days before I’d had enough of his machismo bullshit and I ripped him a new one. I am fairly confident that I wouldn’t be quite that tolerant nowadays.

But I am getting off the point. It was Bluddy Mary’s 40th birthday on Friday and Big Sal and I had been trying to figure out what we could do to help her celebrate. We struggled something fierce with the gift … Bluddy Mary is stylish and has way too much disposable income so not it was not an easy ask. We came up with a multiple choice gift certificate in order to avoid making a gift faux pas. We also arranged to take her out for fabulous Mexican dinner at La Quinta in Balmoral (totally worth the effort if you live in the area… and even though I don’t eat chocolate, I’m told the Chocolate Nachos dessert is delicious) and surprised her by organizing for Shell to come to dinner with us.

It was the first time we’d all been together for eight years and we really should make the effort to do it more often. We caught up each other’s lives, chugged back sangria, did the ‘remember whens’ and laughed until our sides ached. The four of us together were like a brood of cackling hens… in hindsight I hope we weren’t disturbing the other diners! It’s rare to have those types of friendships that remain unchanged over the years. It’s wonderful that we may not speak for months but when we’re together it’s as though we last saw each other yesterday.

I had a bloody marvellous time and can’t wait for 2015… when we’re going to do the "Slappers Reunion Tour of Europe". Four friends, one campervan and as many countries and vineyards as we can squeeze into six weeks!

Oh “G” shucks, meester.

Posted on October 25, 2008 by borysSNORC

Okay the lists are getting harder and harder. Not looking forward to the remaining vowels :S

List of 10 Things I Like That Start With “G”….

1.   Gilt frames – mirrors, prints, paintings, photo frames etc
2.   Graphics tablets – makes life sooo much easier
3.   Gold Class Cinemas – comfy chairs and frozen cokes w~bourbon
4.   Guacamole – it’s the simple things in life…
5.   Glassware – needs must have the right glass for the right drink
6.   Grosse Point Blank – one of my favourite movies ever.
7.   Glow worm caves – dark, cool, quiet except for a distant drip
8.   Göreme – amazing little place in Kapadokya
9.   Graph paper – it’s safer not to ask
10. Google – It’s common place around here to jump on the PC to find out or confirm ‘stuff’…    Need to make a point over a dinner party debate? Just Google it. Want to know what Sarah Palin’s latest gaffs have been? Google! How about what a Rhesus Monkey looks like? Or how to surreptitiously kill your neighbour’s annoying tree*? Get hire car prices in Istanbul? Investigate the mating habits of a dugong? Make a Mongolian Yurt? Find the perfect recipe for marijuana jam drops? It’s all there right at our fingertips. What on earth did we do before the internets !!!

List of 10 Things I Hate or Dislike That Start With “G”
1. Grocery shopping – save me from the tedium that is filling the pantry
2. Game Cube etc – responsible for Vitamin D deficiency in our youth
3. Goats – apparently one should always draw the line at goats
4. Girly problems – oh dear God shoot me back in ’99
5. Guinness – fine if you like carbonated molasses which I do not
6. Graffitti – disrespectful on so many levels… especially if it’s obscene
7. Glamour puss photography – totally tacky and trite
8. Green – not my colour… not in my decorating my wardrobe
9. God botherers – don’t mind if you’ve got God, just don’t inflict it on me
10. Gossip – Everybody does it. I think it’s just human nature to discuss mutual acquaintances and see what your friends are up to. Hell it is probably the entire reason Facebook and other social networking sites exist. But I can not abide unsubstantiated or deliberately malicious gossip that has no ground in facts – it’s destructive and pernicious and often leads to nasty consequences that unfortunately never seem to fall on the gossiper. Strangely I don’t usually mind if I hear people have been gossipping about me… so long as they stick to the to truth.

* Not that we’d ever do such a thing of course.

“Not happy Jan” is understatement of epic proportions.

Posted on October 23, 2008 by borysSNORC

This morning, I was sitting in my living room on my PC, checking the email and minding my own business when I heard somone drive down our driveway. ‘Ah, that will be BigSal we’re going shopping to find BluddyMary the perfect birthday present this morning’… was what went through my mind. Until I heard someone hard on their car horn (that was Mr K) and then I heard some thing make a sickening crunch noise.

Which of course caused me to run out into the front yard with ‘What the fuck’ going through my mind. Whereupon I was greeted by the ridiculous sight of my fucking eejit of a sister, BigSal, having just reversed her brand new car into our brand new car.

She didn’t check her mirrors she said.
She didn’t see Mr K drive down behind her she said.
She reversed straight into our car without looking she said….

GRRRR!!!! FUCK. FUCK. FUCKITY. FUCK.
IT’S FUCKING FIRE ENGINE RED!!!
HOW THE FUCK DID SHE ‘JUST NOT SEE IT’?

"I’m so sorry Borys, I just didn’t see Mr K pull in". Hmmm. Nope. Definintely one of those times where "I’m so sorry" just don’t cut it. What sort of stupid chicken fuckin’ moron reverses their car anywhere (let alone in someone’s front yard which is often frequented by small children and small dogs) without checking what is behind them first.

Naturally I handled the situation with dignity and aplomb…. read – let loose with a string of accusatory expletives that would have made sailor blush. So yeah…. I think this confirms it – she is officially THE worst driver I have ever met in my entire life.
.

Schoolies will be schoolies.

Posted on October 22, 2008 by borysSNORC

Is anyone really surprised when a bunch of priviledged schoolboys from a toffy private school go on a bit of a bender at the end of their Year 12 exams? I’m not. Not even a little surprised. It’s been going on for years. It’s the same old shit every year… just a slightly different colour really.

My Dad and his mates (raging hoons that they were) went off on Schoolies when he finished his senior studies must have been about ’65 or so and back then they used to go round toilet papering people’s lawns/trees and putting penny bungers in people’s letter boxes. Ooer… rebels without a cause! When I was finishing Senior in ’88, in our last week there was a gaggle of boys from our ‘Brother school’ that came creeping though the park behind our school armed with water bombs and flour bombs. They struck at lunch time for maximum damage and plenty of girls copped a water bomb quickly followed by a random flouring. I have a vague recollection there were dozens of rotten eggs being thrown around the quad that day too….

A few years after I finished high school I heard that kids from same ‘Brother school’ had some very expensive damage bills from end of year hijinks when some of their Senior students pulled a couple of rather stupid pranks. The first one involved placing some firehoses running full bore through smashing windows into the school library and the second prank saw every loo in three of the schools toilet blocks filled with quick setting cement.

So are we surprised at school leavers racing around being half drunk, half nekkid and acting half witted in 2008? Nup. I am a little surprised at some of the reactions though… talk about one extreme to t’other.

What ever happened to a good wallop across the head! That’s what these boys are lacking! When I went to Catholic School (graduate of 1995) we were taught respect, and were disciplined accordingly if having stepped out of line. The problem is these little rich kids have never learnt respect for others, never learnt how to take responsibility for their actions and certainly have no idea on social etiquette. Bring back the cane! 🙂
CR, Melbourne, Australia

Glad to see not much has changed since my departure from Xavier in 1968. Now, if only the Jesuits would bring back the 15-inch strap (with the two inlaid Aussie pennies at one end), all would be right with life. Well done boys . . . you’ve made some of us old timers proud.
TL, Los Angeles, CA USA
.

What are little boys made of? Snips and snails, and puppy-dogs’ tails.

Posted on October 21, 2008 by borysSNORC

We had what will no doubt be the first of many summer thunderstorms this afternoon. When I was a kid they were regular as clock work. Around 2.15pm the dark clouds would start to come over, by 2.30pm half the class would be continually glancing out the windows at the lightning and counting the seconds until the sound of thunder caught up. By 2.55pm it’d be pissing down cats and dogs and school would let out at 3pm. The kids who caught the bus used to make a dash across the quad to try and make it to their buses dry, the ones who got picked up would huddle under the awnings until they saw their ride turn up and my sisters and I used to try and run home from school in the middle of the thunderstorms through a park that rapidly became a three inch pond with hardly any trees arriving home soaked to the bone and laughing our collective arses off.

If it was raining really heavily we’d get fairly saturated before barely making the school gate and we knew there was no point rushing home and getting in trouble for ruining our shoes any quicker so we’d sometime race leaf boats down the gutters and dwardle our way home. That’s what little girls do when it’s raining cats and dogs out.

Today I discovered what little boys do. When I went to pick up the Small Child this afternoon, he and two of his little mates were standing in the pouring rain seeing who could pee with greatest accurately into the storm drain. Nice.