Sushi Restaurant Names...

The Point of Nori Turn

Sushi and the Banshees

Happy Sushimi?

Nice sushi yu (Sushi yu nice).


Your turn...

Kiss Kiss... Kiss

Wednesday evening, a French friend had invited me to her house for dinner - also in attendance was a Swedish friend. The three of us cooked dinner, drank plenty of wine and then filled our stomachs with delicious French food whilst trying to predict who would scoop up awards at the Brits. Feeling full of food, a little dizzy from the wine and almost retching at the sight of Mark Ronson winning an award for 'Best British Male' helped me decide that it was time to go home. I leant over to Frenchie and kissed her on the cheek to say goodbye, she demanded another on the other "Oh shit, European - TWO kisses you idiot" my brain said to me. My head then went into overdrive "Okay... do you do a third kiss now?... " I was about to go for the third but my brain intervened "NO NO stop! French = two kisses, it's the Dutch that do three". I then turned towards the Swede... My tired, dizzy, overloaded head couldn't take it - I just waved goodbye from about four feet away, spun around and walked out of the door.

What the hell are the rules for cheek-kissing? I thought we were supposed to just give one? I really haven't got a clue any more, even people in London have started two-cheek kissing now. My ineptitude has led to a few slightly awkward social situations in the past, my favourite being the time I was at a wedding a few years ago:-

Up in the north of England, the wedding\receiving line (Or whatever's it's bloody called) had formed and the reception guests were shuffling along congratulating the bride, the groom and their respective families on the way. I was a random guest in that I didn't know anyone but the groom. I kissed a row of five women (including the bride) on the cheek (my cheek-pecking confidence was soaring). Then I arrived at the brides father and out of sheer habit I leant over to kiss him "FUUUUUCK!" was the single thought that went through my head, I quickly leant back and shook his hand with a rather sheepish look on my face. Thankfully there were a few more women again before I arrived at the next male, the best-man - I extended my right arm for a manly hand-shake, he was grinning at me "Come on, I'll have a kiss on the cheek so you've got a 100% record" he said - He'd spotted the incident with the bride's father and he admitted that he tried his very best not to burst out laughing. "Might as well" I said, I went ahead and gave him a kiss on the cheek and a hug, he laughed again - but not as hard as the groom, his guffaw made the entire room look round at our embrace. The incident helped propel me from a nobody to super-star status that night, so I wasn't too upset about it at the end.

If anybody knows how many kisses you're supposed to issue, can you let me know please?

Be Mine

Taken in my local Tesco superstore. On the left, valentines gifts for those who have that special someone. On the right, Do It Yourself power tools - for those who don't.

Lazy Daze

Yikes, two posts in the last month. Someone's been pretty busy.

January had actually been the best month I've had for a while (despite the other months being great too). People seemed to be emotionally and physically exhausting themselves all around me while I grew from strength to strength, I helped as much as I could and yanked a few of them up to the clouds with me. I was mainly just stoked to be travelling somewhere new again...

So it turns out that skiing wasn't done at all, upon arrival in Andorra I decided that snowboarding looked FAR cooler and I decided to take that up instead. Neal, and my groin, wholeheartedly supported this decision. Thanks to my ability to talk to random people, within an hour of arriving at the resort we'd managed to get in contact with an instructor who was willing to offer two of us snowboarding tuition for under half the price of the ski-schools (which were incidentally full of wankers). After a couple of days of instruction on the baby slopes we were told to get our arses up the mountain to board back down again - I took to it like a fish to water and after a few arse-bruising falls I'd pretty much nailed the technique and even managed to look a little bit cool while I was doing it. The top of the first mountain looked something like this:-


Over the next few days I went further into the mountains, faster down the slopes and had bigger crashes - the grin on my face grew as the slopes got steeper. It seems as though I love that shit. Nights out in Andorra are nothing special, most of my fears were realised - there were FAR too many men there, most of whom clung to the 'funniest' member of their group for fear of being ousted and ridiculed - usually by the 'funniest' one again. On the first night of snowfall, EVERY SINGLE CAR had a penis (or several) drawn on it, usually with British mens names written underneath. Thankfully two Spanish kids had got hold of a couple of windscreens and made me laugh with this...


Luckily, the tossers can be avoided as long as you hang around in more expensive bars or go further into the mountains, it wasn't hard to be rid of them. We found some really nice places to eat and drink just from wandering around aimlessly. Everything plodded along nicely and we all had a great time. Then, seemingly out of nowhere - This happened....

As much as I enjoyed watching Wales defeat England, my heart sank slightly because I hadn't enjoyed it with all my friends back in Cardiff. Watching the game in a hotel in a mountain resort in Andorra was nothing compared to watching it in the country where it meant so much and in the company of the people who I'd shared so many rugby-related cheers and tears with.

I arrived home after a 14 hour trip home the next day, exhausted but buoyed by the fact that so many people in Wales were still grinning after the rugby result. It never ceases to amaze me how much a game can seemingly affect the mood of a whole nation.

So, February's here, the rugby's hotting up and the Scots are in town on Saturday - I'm completely unnecessarily excited. It's also party season in Cardiff again.... I'll be packing a few extra batteries I think.