Latvia part trois and the trip home

The following morning at the hotel I was to learn that most of the cast stayed awake all night and even went to the beach skinny dipping. I'm so glad I went to sleep now! I wouldn't have heard the last if I'd shit out of getting in with them and I certainly wouldn't have been able to live with the shame (even if it was only spoken about when I wasn't around) of them all bearing witness to my tiny baby's cock. Phil went and apparently didn't want to go in and so that's where Clive with the assistance of one or two of the others decided for him that he was going in, and in he went clothes and all. As he recounted the story to me, he was still shivering with cold.

Clive was on full pissed-up, piss-taking mode. 4 hours of sleep was worth having over drinking heavily and getting naked on a beach of a foreign former soviet republic at fuck off o'clock in the morning, provided ample fuel of his wind-up pursuits. Just when I thought I'd won him back with a little joke of my own he'd return pass with, "how would you know mr Mackrill? You were asleep!!" in a childish girly "sticks and stones will break my bones" manner. As I was still absolutely gutted about the rugby result, I wasn't in any mood to deal with it, he'd won today so I just kept quiet occasionally emitting a "fuck you Yeti!" only when absolutely necessary.

a Yeti, yesterday.

The queue at the airport for check in was huge. Then the queue for departures was huge-er! This didn't bode well with everybody being in their hung-over bloody mess. Even though I had ended up cut off from them about 20 meters behind, I could 'feel' the moaning and grizzling going on.

I'll say many nice things about Latvia from what I know of it. It's absolutely beautiful, it reminded me very much like Bavaria in Southern Germany. But the people have that typical Eastern European/Russian look. Even though it's hard to explain you must know what I mean. Well, just go to Llanelli or Peterborough, there's thousands of them there! Latvians don't give a fuck about queues.... And they DO give a fuck about queues! I saw loads just think, "fuck them all and fuck this shit for a spot of cat juggling, I'm off to the front!" and do just that. Then at the same time loads of others saying (but in Latvian) "OI!!! Where the fuck do you think you're going cunty?!?"

The flight was smooth as a baby's bot. Which was nice, I was hoping it wasn't going to be as shaky as the one on the way over. Boy, was it Shaky!!!

- Shaky!

During the flight, two people got up and were talking in the space between one lot of rows of seats and another, that section over the wing. She was very attractive, probably in her mid 30's blonde and slim. He was tall, slim and slightly unshaven. He looked a little bit like Boris Becker except his face was slightly less like he had been in a vacuum chamber.

Boris Becker - Vacuum Chamber face.

They seemed very candid with one another. But then I noticed her mannerisms toward him change. I could hear bits of what they were talking about and then it came to me that they didn't know each other at all and he was giving it, "So do you come here often... what's a nice girl like you doing on a plane like this" etc. So what probably happened was she'd got up for a piss but couldn't get through because of the trolly in the aisle and him, spotting her from some distance, figured it would be a good time to chat her up. He was American I think, she Australian. In her efforts to not make eye contact, she noticed me watching what was going on. The aisle cleared and she made her escape, but as she passed me, she gave me a rolling of the eyes expression as if to say, "Jeez I can't go anywhere without some letch trying it on!"

I was on my own through the flight so I paid through the nose for some wine. As I had an iPod but no headphones, I managed to conjure enough courage to ask a flight attendant to borrow some. He kindly agreed! So I sat down, opened my wine and was just about to launch myself into some missed episodes of Days Of Our Lives, Vladamire-the royal pain in arse-Ovic decides to strike up a conversation with me about Harley Davidson bikes. I was wondering when that was going to happen as he'd been eyeing the Harley jacket I'd been wearing.

He was actually a really nice guy and I'm glad he spoke to me. His name wasn't Vlad, I have no idea what it was. Being knee deep in conversation about lots of things made the flight whizz past and before I knew it, we were landing.

The Air Baltic Plane that brought us home.

Once on the ground, bags collected and in the van, we were on our way home.

In the Van, a row erupted with the girls (principally Katie) and Greg, the stand in for Greg (his son) it was quite funny but also quite tense. It was an ill-thought out/not asked for/matters not to any fucker opinion of Greg's that wound Katie completely up. And rightly so! Suffice as to say Katie now agrees with me about him when she didn't before. Paul had mentioned before he'd even met any of us that "you either like him or hate him" And I can quite safely say that out of the 13 of us, NOT ONE of us like him. I think even Paul had words with him, and he's supposedly one the ones that either like or hate him, that like him. Not bad considering he was only with us 2 days.

The bit that I found funny, was when he was trying to show Jim some bass licks. Paul mentioned that he was a great bassist and had played with some famous band, so famous that I can't remember who they are and any songs they did, in the 60's. The only thing I remember of them is that Roy Wood (From Wizzard and ELO) was in them... once. Anyway, so there's Jim listening attentively while Greg is showing him a standard Rock And Roll walking bassline, the kind you'd learn on page one of "Play bass like a Moron" book 1 and talking about it with the command you'd expect from a University Lecturer.

WOW!!! Fucking move over Mark King, Victor Wooten, Billy Sheehen, here comes Greg from Birmingham! Not only that, he was playing it really shit anyway!

wooten - humbled.

King - Never can show his face in Brum again.

Billy Sheehan - Needs to practice.

Personally, after meeting him and thinking, "what a prick" I decided to give him a clean slate and start a fresh while packing down the kit at Glenroaths. I tried so hard to just have a decent chat with him but the problem is, he's a twat. He knows fuck all and talks too loud about it. He was on about not throwing "decent sticks away" I should learn how to file the end and shape it into a ball like a stick. I tried to explain the balance would be fucked then AND it would be shorter but he was arguing the point, so I ended up having to say, "Look shhh! speak when spoken too!" and from that point giving him a wide berth or ignoring any shit that happens to fall out of his mouth. It's a shame because his son, the other Greg, is a great bloke.

After getting to Clive's and collecting my car, it was back to Swansea. I have two days off and then it's up to Skegness, Scarborough, Dundee and Dunnoon.

Or so I fucking thought!!! It turns out Dundee and Dunnon were cancelled ages ago. I have no recollection of that email so when I got in, I checked and rightly enough, I DIDN'T GET ONE. The only email that would have suggested it's cancellations was a tour itinerary that I got which just doesn't have them in. Nothing about a cancellation. I am quite upset by it, how many gigs have now been cancelled. Again I remind myself that I turned down a Mediterranean cruise for this, move over Greg, there's one more for the twat bus!