mwuaha-ha-ha! my evil plan is working.....

Well who would've thought it.
Mistah G purchased hiking boots today :)
no influence from me of course. No 'jesus mary and joseph you'll never get boots as cheap as that as they are today' statements.
It was great. Millets (TM, and no i'm not getting commission, although i should ask them,they are my fave shop) was having a sale today, and we wandered in 'for a nosy' after leaving the music shop eyeing up a ukelele.
We'll be walking the sidlaw's (hills near dundee) on christmas day and it'll all be grand so it will....

ah, the big sigh of contentment is so satisfying sometimes.

In other news, I have decided a regular feature of this blog will be.......


Balmore Street....*sung to the theme-tune of 'neighbours' in a bad-out-of-tune-karaoke style.

Balmore St is where our local pub is situated, called 'the balmore' funnily enough, in the heart of the Stobswell region of Dundee (aka 'stobey' to the locals) For those unfamiliar with British culture, the pub is an extension to people's living room, except much more social than the typical NZ pub. It's where neighbours and friends meet to chew the fat, (aka talk rubbish, or 'haver shite' as the scots say). Yes beer is drunk at the balmore, but that is not the primary purpose of the British pub. The primary purpose of the british pub (in my humble opinion) is to talk rubbish with friends and neighbours, and where the TV is absent (apart from catching the football scores, which in turn provides more discussion and debate and talking rubbish).

Now the 'stobey' region of dundee is particularly interesting in terms of it's high ratio of traditionally defined 'freaks/nutters' in complete unpolitically correctedness (god i love bad grammer).
e.g. when wandering down on a saturday morn (our fave time to peruse the characters of stobey) no-one bats an eyelid at volunteer workers turning up to the charity shops with humpbacks wearing marilyn monroe frocks, or young lads caressing the face of a statue of a butcher merrily holding a plaster-of-paris cleaver outside the local butcher shop. Mistah G and me however, sidle past hoping no-one will notice us and dash for the library doors. (which is a fab red sandstone building).
So.....my point is:
'The Balmore' is where a lot of the residents of Stobey congregate. It's fantastic people watching. So I hope to bring a weekly round-up of the latest happenings. But to introduce the basics:
there is, in the tradition of little Britain: 'the only gay in the balmore' a lovely bloke (originally from geordieland) who lives around the corner from us who mentioned that he was gay only approx 10 times the first time he started talking to us. G and him have heated debates about music, especially the validity of The Clash on modern music, and how G doesn't like enough female artists, so this makes him homophobic. I nearly hit him (as in the only gay in the balmore) tonight when he compared The chilli peppers to Phil Collins, before i realised he was, in the great British tradition, taking the mick. (he said the Chilli peppers were boring! how ludicrous is that).
There is also: Daniel* (not his real name, as all the characters will be) who is an institution at the pub, and always requests one song and one song only on the jukebox whenever you wander up to it ( a 'james' song).
It does have an infamous incident when one of mistah G's mates was visiting when a aforementioned 'freak' came to join our table and said 'Are you gay?' We all looked at each other and said 'no, but what's it to you?' The english mate of Garry did add (in what i thought was comedy genius) 'no, but I am English, which does confuse people'. The aforementioned freak (lets call him fred) said 'well it's just that last week there was a bunch of ukrainian potato-dressers in the balmore'. We responded: 'well, were they gay?' in some hope of finding relevancy to the opening question/conversation.
'Nah', said Fred, and wandered off to rejoin his imaginary friends.

God bless the Balmore.