Next time will not swallow the coat hanger whole.

Just read, it’s easier to explain by reading the court transcript (from this article).

Counsel: What is your name?

Chrysler: Chrysler. Arnold Chrysler.

Counsel: Is that your own name?

Chrysler: Whose name do you think it is?

Counsel: I am just asking if it is your name.

Chrysler: And I have just told you it is. Why do you doubt it?

Counsel: It is not unknown for people to give a false name in court.

Chrysler: Which court?

Counsel: This court.

Chrysler: What is the name of this court?

Counsel: This is No 5 Court.

Chrysler: No, that is the number of this court. What is the name of this court?

Counsel: It is quite immaterial what the name of this court is!

Chrysler: Then perhaps it is immaterial if Chrysler is really my name.

Counsel: No, not really, you see because…

Judge: Mr Lovelace?

Counsel: Yes, m’lud?

Judge: I think Mr Chrysler is running rings round you already. I would try a new line of attack if I were you.

Counsel: Thank you, m’lud.

Chrysler: And thank you from ME, m’lud. It’s nice to be appreciated.

Judge: Shut up, witness.

Chrysler: Willingly, m’lud. It is a pleasure to be told to shut up by you. For you, I would…

Judge: Shut up, witness. Carry on, Mr Lovelace.

Counsel: Now, Mr Chrysler – for let us assume that that is your name – you are accused of purloining in excess of 40,000 hotel coat hangers.

Chrysler: I am.

Counsel: Can you explain how this came about?

Chrysler: Yes. I had 40,000 coats which I needed to hang up.

Counsel: Is that true?

Chrysler: No.

Counsel: Then why did you say it?

Chrysler: To attempt to throw you off balance.

Counsel: Off balance?

Chrysler: Certainly. As you know, all barristers seek to undermine the confidence of any hostile witness, or defendant. Therefore it must be equally open to the witness, or defendant, to try to shake the confidence of a hostile barrister.

Counsel: On the contrary, you are not here to indulge in cut and thrust with me. You are only here to answer my questions.

Chrysler: Was that a question?

Counsel: No.

Chrysler: Then I can’t answer it.

Judge: Come on, Mr Lovelace! I think you are still being given the run-around here. You can do better than that. At least, for the sake of the English bar, I hope you can.

Counsel: Yes, m’lud. Now, Mr Chrysler, perhaps you will describe what reason you had to steal 40,000 coat hangers?

Chrysler: Is that a question?

Counsel: Yes.

Chrysler: It doesn’t sound like one. It sounds like a proposition which doesn’t believe in itself. You know – “Perhaps I will describe the reason I had to steal 40,000 coat hangers… Perhaps I won’t… Perhaps I’ll sing a little song instead…”

Judge: In fairness to Mr Lovelace, Mr Chrysler, I should remind you that barristers have an innate reluctance to frame a question as a question. Where you and I would say, “Where were you on Tuesday?”, they are more likely to say, “Perhaps you could now inform the court of your precise whereabouts on the day after that Monday?”. It isn’t, strictly, a question, and it is not graceful English but you must pretend that it is a question and then answer it, otherwise we will be here for ever. Do you understand?

Chrysler: Yes, m’lud.

Judge: Carry on, Mr Lovelace.

Counsel: Mr Chrysler, why did you steal 40,000 hotel coat hangers, knowing as you must have that hotel coat hangers are designed to be useless outside hotel wardrobes?

Chrysler: Because I build and sell wardrobes which are specially designed to take nothing but hotel coat hangers.

An amusing day in court that one.

Australian model Nicole Trunfio acknowledging the profession of holding up clothes.

Marshall family pic (courtesy of the mirror.co.uk article)

Let’s see what she does to afford such things:

Age: 50; No of ops: 3; Spent: £13,500. CARER and mum-of-nine..

I think they do the word “carer” a bit of an injustice. I’d also have to guess that (unlike their chests) it’s probably not too much of a stretch to assume this is one of those shining examples of permanent welfare sponges who does nothing except spawn large quantities of the next generation of dodgy chav welfare sponges (with a diverse range of DNA scraped off the barstools from various pubs) while mooching a council flat to boot. Good to know the tax I was paying in the UK is going to great causes like this. What would you expect really from a nation with the Queen as head of state (the UK’s prime council housing welfare sponge family).

So with a name like “Chantal Marshall” you’d think that the authors of the article would have done a quick google search to see if this person had a record of quality parenting leading up to this story.

Oh but she does this intrepid investigator can reveal, back in 2001: here and here. 14 year old Tara, now 22, featured in a documentary called “Tara’s story” in which her mum and “carer” answered criticism of her parenting technique.

Marshall will appear in a TV programme on Thursday called Tara’s Story to explain why she allowed three of her daughters (one of them being Tara) to have sex at the age of 11 – and why two of them have already had abortions.

Tara, now 14, says she had sex at 11 because Kirkby-in-Ashfield, where they live, is boring: “We haven’t got a swimming pool or an ice- skating rink. So sex is the only thing you can do.”

Would have been easier just to call the mother Chavtail on factual account of her life. You’d think after one kid getting knocked up you’d sit the rest down and explain how condoms work, but I suspect with 9 kids she’s got no fucking clue what one is or how to avoid getting pregnant.

Parental fail

Well, back to little Tara, so bored and unhappy at age 11 she started having sex for something to do. It seems when you get a bit older you find hobbies, so tells a now 22 year old Tara:

“I knew bigger boobs would make me happy but rather than getting upset about it, I decided that as soon as I was old enough I’d save up and have breast implants.

“I managed to save up the money I needed and as soon as I was 17 I booked a consultation.

“After I had my daughter in 2005 I decided to have them done again. I love the fake look so I decided to go for a 34E. I feel amazing.”

It’s good to have dreams Tara. Perhaps when your daughter grows up you’ll point her in the direction of saving up for an education rather than an operating theatre.

So now she’s big titted and bored. Or perhaps there’s a swimming pool or ice-skating rink around these days so she’s got something else to do.

Scary thing is that Tara is probably the success story of the household with her job as a receptionist and financial good sense to save up for the operation. Her sister “Terri, 25, is a dancer”. Perhaps I’ll go out on a limb and suggest that the author should have skipped the euphemism and just put down “stripper” to avoid confusion with, say, ballerinas or similar higher brow varieties of dancer. Her other sister took out a loan to get her inflated ego.

Anyhow, takes all types I guess..

But let’s face it: if the 10 pints of cheap beer and chips (erm.. crisps!) the typical kebab shopper has consumed before they’ve suitably damaged their self preservation instinct to utter the drunken “Letsh get a kebab Ihm fukken starvin’” haven’t damaged your health: a kebab with nasty stuff isn’t going to make much difference.

While most were clean, five per cent were discovered to be a potential health risk from salmonella, E.coli, staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus spp.

Given that the article talks of how a greasy kebab contains almost the entire day’s calorie intake for a woman it’s probably best if it does just pass right on through you via food poisoning.

Tips on how to statistically improve your chances of a squirt free kebab:

The researchers found that cucumber, which is handled for chopping, was most likely to be contaminated. Chilli sauce was the biggest risk of the various sauces.

For the Muslims/Jews with their ridiculous pork phobia, it’s quite likely a bunch of them are going to hell:

Also, a number of kebabs do not include the meat claimed.  Some sold as Halal and so suitable for Muslims were even found to contain pork, which is banned by the faith.

Given there’s no way to tell if beef is Halal other than if you know it has suffered more by bleeding to death (thousands of years of progress and animals are still essentially sacrificed by throat slitting to appease religion): I’d say a good portion of that would be just whatever beef they could buy cheaply, and thus another ticket to hell.

What makes a good Kebab?

Kebabs for me are like Indian food: it’s not really the taste that’s most important.

What truly matters is if you don’t get sick.

If your stomach doesn’t complain then it’s good. If you have a few stomach gurgles the next day then it’s “okay”. If you eat there a handful of times and your friends who have eaten there also have not been sick AND it tastes ok then it qualifies as a “great kebab”.

That’s really the only criteria that matters with any food that’s traditionally associated with liquefying your insides for days on end. It goes into your stomach already looking like vomit and occasionally comes back up looking the same. Thankfully I battle hardened my stomach in HK and tend to survive dodgy food pretty well. For those who haven’t gone through the bouts of 3-4 days of hellish food poisoning it takes to get a cast iron stomach kebabs are a potential landmine. So the more used to bad food your stomach is: the wider the range of “good kebab shops” there are.

Now I’m sure everyone’s got a “oh but I know a great kebab place”. Sure, when you stumbled there last time you were drunk and the sweaty looking guy managed to slice some half cooked substandard meat resembling spam off an inadequate cooking device and squirt the flavour out of a big squeezy bottle over some chopped tomato and parsley without wiping his nose while you were there: great. Such chef level skill required!

They all generally taste good because there’s typically enough grease in the meat for it to taste good regardless. Case in point: if you let the “juice” (e.g. fat, grease, sauce mix) soak into the wrapping too much you tend to find you’ve started to eat it (sometimes even the aluminium foil). Is it variety that might make a good kebab? Not likely! The thought of offering something “exotic” like sour cream, or avocado is enough to trigger many a dodgy kebab shop a small grease induced heart attack.

What really matters is how well they cleaned their hands, how many years old the meat was (see below for a German story on that!) and how long the stuff’s been sitting there. It shouldn’t matter, but that’s how it works currently.

The dodgy Kebab in the News past

Some other great kebab triumphs:

• 160 people get food poisoning from one Kebab shop
• Aussie snooker ace struggles after bad kebab
• A dodgy kebab turns out to be a baby
• 150 tons of spoiled 4 year old frozen meat thawed out and sold to dodgy kebab makers in Germany

But..

All that said, they do pack a good grease hit and who says you want something healthy after alcohol anyhow? Find one that doesn’t result in the squirts the next day and you’ve got yourself a “good dodgy kebab place”.

I got back from my most recent touring and then had to sort out what to do with the bike. Tossing up whether to try and sell it in a short time was complicated by the need to get something fixed under warranty. The day I was due to drop it at the shop, London had some very heavy snow (reported as “The heaviest snow in 18 years” but actually wasn’t but still enough to grind everything to a halt).

Snow on the bins shows just how much fell.

So instead of riding in the snow Scott and I had a snowfight, built a Calvin and Hobbes inspired snowman and explored the surrounding snow covered countryside.

Scott next to my snow smiley on the Northwood golf course.

The fix and store bike plan got delayed a day or two and I ended up hiring a van on wednesday to get the bike up North to the warm, dry garage of my mate Chris (thanks again Chris!).

My Daytona 675 tucked in for a roadtrip.

Got back at 5 in the morning or there abouts and had to be awake waiting for my mountain bike bag to be delivered (another thing that had been delayed thanks to the snow). Luckily it turned up and I rushed to pack, sort and chuck out ready for my flight to Hong Kong.

After a stopover in HK to see friends, I am finally over the jetlag (flying against the sun is always harder).

HK skyline from Tunde's place.

It’s strange going from snow to summer, especially with the crazy bushfires in Victoria that have sadly killed so many people. I’ve been up close and personal with bushfires while growing up (have done a bit of burning off and fire fighting on occasion) and the footage of the massive fires in Victoria is quite scary.

Next up I’m looking at getting a bit settled back in the wonderful land of Oz.

The “together for London” bit is right: everyone together, trying to make it onto the train with complete disregard for anyone else.

Let’s look at it in parts..

	This helpful chap is trying to say “give up your seat for someone else”. Firstly that’s assuming that the person has a seat and isn’t stuffed up in the cleverly designed tube shaped carriages that are designed for minimal seating and maximum discomfort if you haven’t got a seat and are anything above 5 foot nothing. Secondly this guy is clearly an emo with that haircut and pale skin. So for them to be wearing that t-shirt it’s probably just being ironic and showing off the teen angst. Let’s see the back of it eh?
	Where on the tube can you get reception on your mobile? This one was obviously a misprint: here’s the correct one.
	Let’s be brutally fucking honest: anyone who wears big arse silver headphones isn’t going for subtle or consideration of others. And with those sideburns he’s probably put a few people’s eyes out on the tube in addition to deafening countless others. They’re going to be blaring out some godawful cheesy shite RnB or some indie band they’ve deprived of income by downloading their mp3s. The whole point of walking around public wearing headphones is really about being able to ignore everyone else. It’s rare to find a big bling pair of headphones that don’t have exposed speakers which mean they broadcast out as much as in.
	Bit unnecessary as there’s no where to drop litter on the tube because of the million and one shittily written crapsheet free newspapers that sheeple take each day read about what posh and becks had for lunch and who Britney flashed her pink bits to recently. That’s if they don’t leave it on way up the escalator in some teetering pile waiting to crush some unfortunate small child.

One final big mistake

Anyone pick what else is wrong with it?

Since when does anyone bloody smile on the tube eh? This will NEVER change and any ad that implies people are happy to cram into awkwardly shaped slow cooking devices on tracks like mopey, grumpy sardines. People look at you funny if you smile at them, wondering whether you’re going to stab them or merely kick them into a coma (and rightly so given the stats).

Here’s one that might help too:

Packing/Prep and “I’ll just check tyre pressure”

Murphy’s law struck and I found I had a puncture just before I went to head off, and was doing my usual packing at last minute. The culprit was a bit of glass causing a slow leak. So stuck a puncture plug in and hoped for the best. Bit daunting turning a slow leak into a gushing hole via the spike thing you have to use to roughen up the hole.

Murphy's law strikes

So I’d like to claim it was the puncture that mean I didn’t sleep the night before. But really it was just disorganisation and stuffing around that meant I was leaving at 4:30-5 am from Watford (north of London) to get to Plymouth.

To plymouth, ferry to santander, spain

The dark (mut not stormy) road to plymouth

Surprisingly decent temperature (was wearing summer gloves rather than winter + inner gloves). Ran into some old guys while filling up on classic/cruisers who said they were doing 1000 miles in 24 hours, crazy bastards. Although I can’t really talk.

Sun came up as I was travelling.

Made it through the night, sunrise at speed.

So ferry from Plymouth to Santander (city in the top coast of spain) takes 24 hours, just got the reclining seat option (getting a cabin is not economical because they don’t do single rooms, always doubles, quads etc and you pay for the whole thing if you’re single traveller). Was 110 pounds for a one way. Bit expensive, but last blast from Spain to Calais cost a small fortune in freeway tolls, was miserable/cold/wet like you would not believe and I’d rather spend it sleeping.

Caught the last ferry until next year. Brittany has a strange definition of running services all year round.

Spread my inflatable mattress out on the floor and got a semi decent sleep. Stupid drunk english skank woke everyone up a few times because she thought it was funny to stick her head in and scream and then run away. So sleep wasn’t the best and I hope that if nothing else she has a neighbour move in with a Harley Davidson who likes to rebuild engines a lot.

Santander and westward to Portugal

Arrived lunchtime to a brilliant sunny day. This is more like it!

Blue Skies of santander, Spain.

Not a cloud in the sky, a bit of a contrast to my last trip past this part of the world a month ago (went via Bilbao on the way back to London after my alps/pyrenees/Barcelona trip and it was pissing down and gusting like mad).

Snow ahoy! Thankfully far away this time!

I headed west along the coast and toward the snow-capped mountains in the distance, although keeping between them and the coast for warmth and to avoid having to ride through snow.

Hitting the fast roads west towards portugal.

Got a few kms under my belt and then hit the back roads. Some lovely winding roads although the trick is that there are bits that don’t get the sun and subsequently have ice on the corners (Only on the corners it seems.. funny that!).

Frosty patches where the sun had missed during the day. Always seemed to be on corners funnily enough. Had a few "wiggles" of my back tyre as I found these on the roads.

Found a spot to camp inland and down an abandoned grassy road near some farms. Woke up with frost over everything to the extent it looked like snow.

Frosty morning awaited my rise. Made a note to camp in spots that would get sunshine earlier in the day.

Amazing the difference crossing into portugal. The landscape was quite beautiful. Trailed a guy in a 600cc ninja through the canyons for fun, then pulled over to check my camera and he did a U turn and came back to see what I was up to. A bit of broken English later and we’d chatted about bikes and riding and decided to head for a petrol fill up and then go for a coffee at his friend’s work who spoke better english. Good to have some company and a bit of a chat (weather, bikes, why cars are inferior, camping and why I was crazy to be travelling all these distances alone..).

Friendly locals

Said farewell and headed on my merry way thinking that Portugal was indeed a friendly place.

Camped that night in a pine forest and had a proper fire which was quite nice and meant I headed off to sleep warmed and sleepy from the flickering flames.

A heart warming fire to doze off to sleep with. Beats the cooking stove for heart warming efficiency.

Even smelt like home as I’d used Eucalyptus (gum trees to Australians) sticks to get it going. Awoke around lunchtime with the sun finally finding me in amongst the trees and it was time to head down the coast to Lisboa (lisborne).

To Lisboa/lisborne

Racing the Christmas holiday clock I managed to find a bike store just minutes before closing time (well, actually the shop was closed, but a knock on the window got me in), the old guy didn’t have michelin pilot power IIs so I bit the bullet and replaced front and back. Got about 12-13,000kms or so out of them, so not too bad. Pity I had life left in them but don’t fancy my chances of finding sports bike tyres in Morocco so I’d rather have a brand new set.Anything would have to be better than risking the tour with a temporary plug that was already up to 1100 km!

Also replaced my pretty thin front brake pads too, so an expensive stop over. Found that the guys from the triumph place in Barcelona where I got my front fork seals replaced had done the old “tighten the shit out of things with power tools” and the guy had a hard time getting the bolts undone, had to replace them because they were stripped. No thanks to the mechanics in Barcelona who were the last to touch it. Anyhow, enough ranting and back to the touring. Many thanks to the old guy at the Kawasaki place, seemed quite conscientious and put up with an xmas eve drop in like myself.

Lights were up for xmas in lisborne and it looked quite pretty to ride through.

Pretty christmas lights in Lisboa

Stayed two days to do a bit of riding around lisborne and to find that there’s absolutely nowhere to get food on xmas eve, then headed south for more adventure.

Nathan

PS the accompanying video will be up shortly (when I finish editing!)