You know Radio Birdman!!!!!!!!?

Rachel, Gard, Darren and me.

The Hobgoblin.....what can I say. You ever get the feeling, as soon as you walk into someplace, that you were destined to be there? That the inextricable hand of fate has laid out a course for you that put you in that exact place and time for a reason?

That was walking into The Hobgoblin for us.....we've already mentioned Motorhead on the jukebox...there is more....so much more!!

While conversing with the manager, Darren, Gardner finds out he is originally from Brisbane. Our standard question to all Aussies follows...."You heard of Radio Birdman?". This question is normally followed by us explaining how great the band is, and how the person in question should check them out....not so this day my friends!

Darren incredulousy fires back, "You know Radio Birdman!!" Apparently, he doesn't run into people as well informed, intelligent, and of the discerning musical taste of the G-man and myself. We impress him further by mentioning The Lime Spiders, The Hard Ons, and The New Christs. So, within 10 minutes of walking into the place, I hugged the manager like we were best buddies....we were, we were bound by the most powerful of all agents...ASS KICKING PUNK ROCK!

Gard and I came back to our new home away from home a little before 10pm, after watching Red Dwarf and a smeg ups episode across the street. A few familiar faces and some new friends were on hand to greet us. The night was an absolute blur of coolness....the jukebox in the place is second to none, packed full some of punk and garage rock's finest. Most of them on mixes created by the man himself.

Rachel, in all of her firey haired hotness, is not only a fan of The Ox(John Entwistle of The Who to the uninformed), but is a bass player herself, AND is studying history......how perfect is she!!?

We also met a great group of Polish kids, I say kids because they were under 30, upstairs. They invited us out on Sunday night...we'll get to that later.

I could ramble about the complete and utter awesomeness of the eve, but lets just say that in my perfect vision of the perfect pub to hang out in, the only way The Hobgoblin is lacking is that I dont live next door to it.

We parted ways with promises to come back by and drop off some cd's of bands we are sure Darren would like.

Some more shots from The Hobgoblin....


G-Man makin friends....

I WILL visit Brazil before I die....

Bettie!?

He was only five foot three, girls could not resist his stare.

Episode two, and the kindness of strangers.

So....the story continues. We walk into the best pub in the universe, and as we are explaining our plight, we are asked by one of the other patrons, "What channel is it on?". Having beged half the city of Bath if we could watch with them, we reply, Sky 111. John, our newest bestest buddy says he can put it on in his resturaunt, The Lamb and Lion, which is acroos the street from The Hobgoblin.....SMEGGING BRILLIANT!!!

We show up and there's our good buddy John behind the bar, the place is pretty busy, but he still finds time to say hi and turn on the tele for us. We order dinner and drinks, if you ever get the chance to ahve stout and steak pie, do so, and get an entire corner of ther place to ourselves....too freakin cool!!

The show is great....it is in episode 2 that the plot twist is introduced. It came out of nowhere, but completely makes sense in then context of the series as a whole. Another half hour that passed far to quickly....some shots from my cell:


Listy


Rimmer and Katerina Bartikovsky.


Carbug.

A great start to a great night.....now back to The Hobgoblin....

Mercy mercy Mr Percy, there ain't nothing left in Jersey, but a broken down jalopy, of the man I left behind.

Day two....tragedy! Panic....frantic searching...begging....SUCCESS!!!....and the best damn pub in the Universe!

Day two....episode two.

High as a kite from episode one, we awake....sometime around 1pm to a beautiful sunny day.....rememeber, Steve had us watching tv until 4am.... A quick lunch in a fabulous courtyard cafe, then off to the local shops to get prezzies for the women folk. Sarah and Courtney have stoically endured our irrational obsession with the show, so we felt compelled to bring back something from our odyssey...I was motivated because my wife is the coolest person I know, and I still can't believe 7 years later that she married a geek like me....but that is another story.

Our viewing plans for the evening had been a bit sketchy for Saturday, as Steve had plans to go to a friends to catch a special episode of Dr Who. We spent most of our day after shopping for the ladies running from pub to pub, hotel to hotel searching for someone to let us tune in for a meager 30 minutes....30 minutes is all we asked to fulfill what at this point, we see as our destiny....

Lady luck, the fickle bitch that she is stymied us at every turn. Saturday, April 11th brought one of the biggest football matches of the year to the UK....no joy me hearties....Red Dwarf, Back to Earth, episode 2 seemed to be a ship we would not board...a train we could not catch....a lusty wench to be bedded by the whole of England excepting us.

Dejected and broken hearted...contemplating ritual suicide in the face of our dishonor and failure....we looked up to see the Hobgoblin. We had walked by the pub on the previous day in our first rambling about town, and we both remarked that it looked like a cool place, and that we should pay it a visit.

The door opens, and we are smacked in the face with the dulcet strains of one Mr Ian Fraser Kilmister....known to his initiates as Lemmy.

When is the last time you walked into a bar or pub in the US and they had Motorhead playing on the jukebox? I fucking thought so....we, my friends, were home.

A quick scan of the pub yielded no tele, so we resigned oursleves to drinking with these kindred spirts all night and drowing our misery in hand pulled pints of the ambrosia known as Hobgoblin ale....

While telling our tale to the manager and barkeep Darren...we were overheard by a sympathetic ear....our saviour, a man known only as John took pity on our quest...like the sword from the lake, he came forward to champion our cause....to end the suffering we had....we had.....suffered.

Our Hero...John.

My Dad's better than your dad, he's got eight cars and a house in Ireland.

Sing It.

Day One.....Episode One....

Bath is a gorgeous.

So day one dawns on us making the descision to change venues.....the Hostel just isn't working out. Nothing against the hostel or its staff....20 years ago, I could see myself loving it there. It was by all means full of friendly, interesting people that I had a ton of fun talking with. Truth be told, G and I are 42 and 40, and realized that we require certain things from an abode, no matter how temporary....the least of which is a lack of body odor and crack of dawn full volume conversation of our roomates.

We cross the street to find the last room in the Goerges Hotel...literally, across the street. By comparison, the room is positively palatial....with its own bathroom!!....attached!

Most of the day is spent wandering around the city. the great thing about Bath, is that it is what you picture the quintessential small English city to be. Sandstone buildings, an abbey (in the states it would be a cathedral), cobblestone streets, a canal...friggin briliant!

Abbey Courtyard

Abbey

Pooch

Canal

We grab a dinner of fish and chips and a pint of local brew...hand pulled, before heading out to Steve's to watch the show. Steve lives outside the city proper we grab a cab and get there around 8:15. Hellos and hugs are exchanged, and we get to the business at hand of drinking and watching the show.

The show is brilliant, I can't begin to describe the feeling of hearing that all too familiar tune...."It's cold outside, there's no kind of atmosphere...." chills and goosebumps, uncontrollable flatulence...you name it, we ran the gamut of human emotion.....Our biggest complaint is the lack of a laugh track....it worked well in the previous series, and we were all baffled by its omission here. The Cat(Danny John Jules), seems the least affected by the ravages of time, but as a whole the cast looked great. The writing got serious for about a minute, then the Cat made his appearance and all was well with the universe. The half hour went by far too quickly, but fortunatley Steve had plans for us.

What followed was a whirlwind tour of the best of Brit comedy, we watched "The IT Crowd", "Peepshow", "Brass Eye" and possibly the most innovastive and original show I have ever seen, "Garth Marenghi's Darkplace"

The night was capped by the two part season finale of "Dr Who".......that brought nearly everyone in the room to tears, arguably the best two hours of the Dr I have ever seen.

We left Steve's place at 4:30am to catch our cab back into the heart of our new favorite city. In the words of the ever effusive Steve O'Brien..."Fucking Hell"

in a sluggish economy
inflation,recession
hits the land of the free