More Donkeys

The Grand National went badly for me again this year. I had three horses in two separate office sweepstakes. One of them came third ("Snowy Morning" - prescient but too slow), no good for me since both sweeps were winner takes all. The other two were complete donkeys. One wasn't even running.

We also went to the pub after work on Friday and they were running a sweep in there too. That was my fourth donkey.

Moral of the story is to only spend money on beer in pubs.

Still, at least none of my horses got shot this year. Not that I know of, anyhows.

Sweet Machine!

I found the best machine in a pub ever. Better even than the one in Cambridge years ago that did the rat-shaped condoms that we played Fingerbobs with. It serves little Pringle-like tubs of sweets/nuts for a pound a go. They're great! We had loads:



And once you've bought and eaten you can play fun games like the old three cup swizzler game or any other magic involving cups that you can think of. I discovered an innate talent for making things disappear. As long as they were sweets.

Haiku About Remembering The Very Funny Thing Matt Accidentally Said In The Pub Last Week

"I was not aware
They'd installed a TV here?"
"That's a blackboard, Matt"

Haiku About Forgetting The Very Funny Thing Matt Accidentally Said In The Pub Tonight

What were the daft words
Matt said tonight in the pub?
I don't know, I drank.

Pointless Toilet Communication

I don't like bumping into people I used to know whilst mildly drunk in pubs. Firstly, I rarely have anything useful to say - if I did they'd be in the category of people I still know rather than people I used to know. Secondly any conversation as is tends to be stupid.

For example, tonight in Brigantes I met an old work colleague in the toilet corridor. Let's call him Simon.

Si: Hello!
Me: Err, hi! Hello! How are you?
Si: Good thanks, how are you?
Me: I'm fine, thanks. How are you. Oh, I've done that already, haven't I? Bye!

Nobody gained anything from this brief exchange except that I realised he'd been sitting on an adjacent table all night.

Agents Are Go!

This is quite unusual but it's after work on a Friday and I'm at home and not in the pub. Been out the past two nights and had a fair few drinks so I'm not missing it too much. In addition I have a four hour drive in the morning so don't want to have too much tonight in any case. Will probably pop out for a while later on. It would be almost offensive to go to bed completely sober of a Friday.

In the meantime Elite Beat Agents is finally out on the DS so I'm having a lot of fun tapping away on that.

Evil!

I went to The Evil Eye for dinner last night with a couple of friends who'd come up to visit. It reconfirmed for me that:

a) The 'Eye does some really great (hot hot hot) food.
b) It's the most schizophrenic bar in York, combining as it does, an oriental (hot hot hot) eatery, a cocktail bar, an off-licence, a fine selection of beef jerky, an internet cafe and too many stairs.

No Smoking!

Today, the smoking ban in England has finally come into force. This makes me happy. I hate nasty smelly horrible cigarette smoke.

Celebration of this change in the law is taking two forms:
1. A trip to the pub for a last cigar (last night)
2. A trip to the pub for some smoke-free beer (tonight).

Yay!

Monks and an Astronomer at Byland Abbey.

It feels like it's been raining forever. Despite that, I've done reasonably well at escaping it over the weekend. On Sunday morning (ish) we went for a walk near Byland Abbey in North Yorkshire.



It's an old ruined Abbey in a tiny village. I don't think much monkery goes on there any more, what with it having no roof and all.

The walk was out of the AA book. This time we didn't get lost (much), partly due to choosing a walk with a map (it was walk number 21, fact fans). It was lucky we missed the rain as certain parts of the walk would have been very slippy and dangerous had there been much water underfoot. There was a steadyish (200m up) climb to the top of a hill where through a forest is an old abandoned observatory. So far, so fine. But the walk down again is very steep and can only be done very slowly with a fair amount of tree-grabbing for balance. Kinda fun, but not if it had been wet. I think we'd have died horribly, impaled on branches after slipping over and tumbling out of control.

After that it was mostly ok apart from the heavily overgrown forest path that was filled with prickles, brambles, flies and bees. And the two fields labelled "Warning: Bull" at the end. I think they just put those up to scare people. I saw no bulls.

Lunch was at The Abbey Inn (next to the Abbey, believe it or not).



It's much more of a restaurant than a pub but the food was tasty and reasonably priced. Good old antique chairs too!

It started tipping it down about five minutes before we got to the pub. Could have been worse.

Revolutionary Food

Went to the new Revolution in York for lunch today. I haven't had a drink there yet - I had been in once before but we left soon after because it was too slow and busy. This time we got served a bit more quickly (at table) but it still then took an age for the drinks to come. I had a Staropramen which subsequently seemed to give me a stinking headache - that's probably more linked to last night than the actual beer itself though.

When you order food they give you a 15 minute hourglass and and let you have the food for free if it takes longer than that. It's quite exciting. 15 minutes isn't actually that long so it must be quite hard for them to stick to it at busy times. Today, our hourglass actually expired and so we didn't have to pay for it - they were actually really good about things and didn't try to make excuses or wriggle out of us getting the freebies. Food then came quite soon after.

I as wondering whether it would be a good tactic to order a steak with every meal and ask for it to be really, really well done.

I didn't do that today - I had Thai fish cakes which were very tasty. Burgers looked ok (and big too).

Top Labels

Here are the top 10 labels I have used on blog posts since Blogger introduced them.

1 Wii (7)
2= Food (6)
2= Music (6)
2= Pubs (6)
5= Christmas (5)
5= Metroid Prime (5)
5= Prague (5)
8= Toilets (4)
8= Trains (4)
8= York (4)

I find that quite a depressing list.

Cowboy Picture

The cowboys rode horseless through York on Thursday night for the Pub Treasure Hunt and drank cowboy drinks, sang cowboy songs and talked cowboy toot.



We started at the Varsity (where we sensibly had food before starting the proper drinking - scampi and chips, an authentic Western dish) then went to
The Cross Keys, The Punch Bowl, 1331, The Last Drop Inn, The Three Legged Mare, Ha Ha and Orgasmic. Not too bad a selection of pubs all things considered.

No idea of the results yet. I think we'll have done ok overall but probably not in the top 3.

Why are they not called cowmen?

Pub Treasure Hunt XIV tonight. My team (me and my work colleagues) are going as cowboys. I don't think I have ever dressed as a cowboy before, at least not since I was a small boy, so it should be fun. My hat is especially fine (since it costs a whopping thirteen pounds!).

Sadly we have no horses to ride. This might make it easier to gain admission to York's various saloons, but it does mean we lose a little on the authenticity stakes. Only this lunchtime did I realise that we could have alleviated this with the careful use of a few half-coconuts. I don't think there is chance of us making that happen this afternoon, so we will have to be unhorsed cowboys.

Photo tomorrow, maybe.

Gnome Quizzing

You've got to love York - the only town in the UK (*) where you can see man called Alan (who used to drum in a 90s Britpop band) conduct a buzzer based quiz in a pub with a slightly rude name but excellent pizza.

We went there tonight and fielded a team called The Gnomes - I myself was not gnomelike but two of the others were on very low chairs and the fourth member had a big red beard. Seventh place out of eighteen. Not impressive and no prizes won. But I did get to have a nice pizza for my tea.

(* apart from Bolton where Alan from Oasis does the buzzer-quiz every Wednesday night in the Fudgepackers' Arms)

Rapping In The Pub

We went to The Yorkshire Hussar for lunch today. Although it was quiet upon arrival, it quickly got busy with a few large groups who arrived just after us. Food was good, and cheap as always.

We sat in the main bar but could see through into the front bar. What we could see happening in there was a little odd. Here's the view:



Look carefully and you'll see a number of men dancing in a circle with swords, performing the Northumbrian Rapper Sword Dance. They had brought their own music and everything. Apparently they were practising for a competition.

I don't think people should be allowed to take swords into pubs - any pub worth its beer should ask you to check in all weapons at the front door. Swords are dangerous at the best of times, but the combination of swords, dancing and alcohol can only lead to "accidents".

The people there appeared to have all their own limbs, and none of them were missing chunks of ears, noses or fingers so maybe they were relatively safe. I'm glad I was in a different room though.

Just ridin' the storm

I spent lunchtime in a local pub playing Mario Kart DS wirelessly with some friends. I've played the console versions with real people, in the comfort of my own home on many a happy occasion. I don't normally do very well at the business of actually winning, but I have a good time nevertheless. However, I've never played it in a pub at lunchtime before. I guess until recently it just wouldn't have been possible. Now that it is, I'm surprised more people aren't doing it!

Like normal, I wasn't very good, but I was managing to just about stay in fourth place (last human, ahead of the CPU players). I won one race (out of 25!), Baby Park, so it was not a total write off.

Of the four of us, three including myself were using white DS Lites. The other had a black one. He was clearly an evil person! He said that black was the only colour they had in the shop when he bought it but I find that story unlikely.

I think I'm going to have to do some practice on my own to improve my karting skills.

Return of The Yorkshire Hussar

The First Hussar wasn't one of my favourite York pubs, but it was one of the closest to work so I'd find myself there from time to time. It was recently taken over and refurbished, and it reopened a week or so ago under its original name of The Yorkshire Hussar. Whilst it's still in the same location, it features some new and improved features inside such as:

1. A bigger bar
2. An extra door leading to the toilet corridor
3. Better beer
4. Not being sh*t (i not u) any more.

Apparently it had a VIP opening.

.

I wasn't invited though, this wasn't my invitation. I didn't go.

I'm not bitter though because when I went to the newly opened pub for the first time, Jack the landlord gave us a free bag of crisps. My custom can always be bought with free crisps (hope you're reading this, Landlords of York).