Wet teenage school girls, Ghanian folk songs, Bollywood and learning Italian while urinating!

Surreal moments in ones life come and go. Driving golf balls of the 7th floor of a building in Tokyo late at night, urinating in the snow on America's 'most scenic highway' come to mind, but the latest, alas wasn't as exotic or potentially arrestable! Erotic yes, well it did involve teenage school girls, wet sodden t-shirts, tents and professional models but exotic, no. Good 'ole Eboracum (that's York for all the non Roman history individuals) had to do this time.

After the film, a child 'crocodile' set off across the car park to the restaurant. Where on entering the toilets I had another surreal moment. At this point I must state that it was not a George Michael moment but an educational one. While having a pee a language instructional CD was playing, so there I was having a pee been instructed in the subtle complexities of the Italian language....

While out in the rain in York eating my sausage roll and escorting the wife around the many varied attractions that York has to offer the sodden visitor, 'Oh look - another quaint old English tea room'. We came across a tent pitched in one of York's many squares filled to the brim with a group of white middle class public school girls singing accepela Ghanian folk songs. The rather charming group of girls were competing and sad to say losing out to a marketing campaign in Browns department store.

You know the Wonderbra™, well Browns department store had hired 3 shapely models to demonstrate, to the great pleasure of the assembled York male, the equivalent to the Wonderbra™ but for the young models arse instead of their you know what. And all this happening to the strains of 'Lady Marmalade' from the Moulin Rouge soundtrack. Drugs! I should be so lucky.

Star Wars. I suppose I had better mention it. Well we went to see Star Wars: Attack of the Clones with twenty one, 11 to 5 year olds. I was one of five adults 'looking after' these pre-teenagers two of witch were the nephews. Star Wars and a birthday meal at "Frankie & Benny's" was, you've guessed their Birthday treat. I thought about taking my pick-axe handle with me to keep everyone in line but they very well behaved.

Well England and certainly London has re-affirmed it's love affair with India at the moment. The big Selfridges in Oxford Street has gone all Indian. Andrew Lloyd Webber will have a new musical out in June called 'Bombay Dreams' and Bollywood movies are putting more bums on seats than some Hollywood blockbusters.

Speaking for ourselves, Sunday afternoon has become Indian movie matinee time. I'm getting to like a good Bollywood film, I only wish my backside would get used to them too. The other Sunday I thought I was either suffering from Deep Vein Thrombosis or my backside had become mysteriously paralysed. You certainly get your money's worth, four hours, four fucking hours. I could drive half the length of England in four hours.

We watched 'Sholay' the other week. I think it was made around the early seventies. The collars are little big and the trousers a little flared. The story line is about an ex-policeman who hires two small time crooks to track down and capture a bandit that is terrorising a local village. By all accounts this film is the Indian equivalent of 'Gone with the Wind'. The good lady wife has seen it at least four times and can quote whole tracts of dialogue verbatim.

The equivalent to the 'Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn!' goes something like this. The henchmen arrive back at the bandit's hide away after suffering loses to the two petty crooks hired by the ex-policeman. Gabbar Singh (the bandit) asks the question 'Kitna aadmi tha?' which loosely translates to 'How many of them were there?' The henchman reply 'Teen aadmi', again loosely translates to 'there were three of them'. At this point the wife had muted the DVD and was 'doing' the dialog, including acting out all the menacing stares etc.