a new radiator, 4 new tyres, sump repair and a full set of suspension bushes including track rod ends! gotta keep the old bus reliable. in six weeks time it has another road trip across spain back into mallorca.

have finished work at the garage now until i leave. have one small boat to fix in the harbour at sagres before i leave but apart from that all done.

so for the next six weeks, house work and beach work. i am looking forward to some time off before i hit mallorca again. the work there will be full on until the christmas break but it is always good for the bank balance.

will be in england from 29th september but only for a few days until i return here. Kelly and amy land on friday 13th for a week and then after that, i just have one trip to make to holland to see the very beautiful Dr . when i return, i have just one day here before the road trip begins and that will be my last chance to surf for 2 months.

my back injury has still not recovered but the bowen therapist has offered me a free consultation because he didnt fix it first time. i am not a believer but as i dont have to pay again, will try it once more. failing that, it is off to lagos for a visit with the cracker.

today , there is only a small wave to be had but never the less, i will find my way to the beach for the afternoon. the optimists in town are believing the internet forecast of a 3 metre swell before the weekend, me, i would just rather wait and see, forecasts tend to be wrong more than they are right.

have a job on sunday, baby sitting a dog for my friend anna. i wonder if i can get the little blighter on my surf board? worth a go i think.

so i guess that will be it for now. the sun is still out although it is a little cooler now, i am hoping that the water is still warm enough for shorts but there is only one way to find out i guess.

ate a proxima

so.

Today i find myself all alone again, i must admit, i like it that way too. not that i dislike having my friends around but sometimes the solitude and peace of being alone is irreplaceable. Mason left today after three week, mike and family also bailled out today , all heading back to mallorca, somewhere i will be again in 6 weeks time. Lineke has been home for a week now, i also miss having her around but more about that shortly!

so today, i came to the bubble to have breakfast with everyone, it was a perfect scenario. mason, mike, penny, tracey, brandon and benjie. when i got here, francie, kati and julia were already here, rick and sofia working in the bar, all of my friends for breakfast on a sunny sunday morning. just the way i like it. of course there was no surf to be had, thats why everyone was in the bar! so we sat and ate pancakes with fresh fruit and maple syrup, drank fresh orange juice followed by a black coffee, just the perfect start to the day. the rest of the day would be spent fixing a few problems in the bubble, a fair trade for my food and drink for the day.

yesterday i had a late afternoon surf at amado, somewhere i havent been in ages. the tide was high and the surf small but there were some decent waves to be had. I spotted brandon out on his bodyboard and paddled out to him. I was in my shorts , on the west coast, in the atlantic in september. i surfed for over an hour and the water was unbelievably warm, the sort of day you long for when you live here, tourists are getting less and less by the day the sun was burning down, it was just heaven.

i left the beach in a hurry, i had to be at home to sell my motorbike. but the best part was yet to come. the drive from amado was lined with pine and eucalyptus trees, the sun high in the sky and and the car windows open, my hair blowing in the breeze with dave grohl playing on the stereo, always brings a smile to my face (thanks max for that music, i doubt you knew how important it would become in my life when you sent it to me).

When i got home, i sold my motorbike for 200 euros, the same bike i bought last year for 50 bucks. the two dudes rode away on it , without a clutch! you have to just love this place, if they got stopped by the police, i doubt they would have had any trouble.

the work on the house is way behind schedule but it doesnt seem important. i hope to have made good progress on the two front rooms before kelly arrives mid october. i have decided to work with russ until the end of september then for october, surf and work on the house as much as possible.

October will also see me spending a long weekend in holland with Dr Groovey Nose Rider (not her original name but i was asked to edit it out for future employment purposes). i am guessing it will be cold over there by then but something tells me i wont notice too much. I do have photos to upload but cant until this page is fixed so stay tuned.

I managed to blag the same apartment again in Palma, Santa Catalina, so all is peachy. due to arrive on the 1st November. Will be travelling a lot between now and then. Decided to head to england for xmas, arriving on saturday 23rd and leaving again on tuesday 26th , heading to portugal to see in the new year and have some time to surf. Of course, the doctor will also be here for new year so we will enjoy some winter swell together (she does look seriously hot when she is out in the waves) before returning to palma in the new year to begin work once more. finally will return to portugal either at the end of april or mid may, depending on work and of course when the doctor comes back for a surf.

I hope to have a project ready for the house before i leave, i can leave it with the council while i am away, but the first thing i will have to do when i return next year is a new roof for the old section of the house. i have patched it this year but it is time for a new one!

my back is still hurting. it ranges in severity from ‘uncomfortable to poo’ all the way up to ‘no surfing’ i am sure you can work out which end of the scale is which? anyway, yesterdays surf saw me bail out twice in very shallow water and land on my arse which has agrevated the old spine a little bit, that was the first surf i had tried in over a week and i was gagging for it so it was almost worth the pain.

the tourists are finally leaving and the sun is still relentless. it feels good to surf in shorts, especially on the west coast, where the water is usually colder, a south coast swell this week would be heavenly – i will be praying hard.

so this coming week i will be working as hard as possible to help clear the work from the workshop in preparation for an october of surf and house work.

so i leave you with a request for help with two things,

1, can anyone fix my problems on this page with photos? can you tell me if you can see the photos ok?

2, i want to buy a laptop – if you know of one for sale, mac or windows, so long as it has a fast processor and a big hard disk

but before i leave, a few late hello’s

sandhya desai – it is always good to hear from you,
sandra antunes – how does it feel when people play games with you ???????????
granma – save me a seat at the dinner table, i will be home for xmas
jake – its about time you came to portugal for some surf
alex – you faggot
Marta – just wanted to say hello!!

ok enough for now

i would like to throw a big fat smelly egg at microsoft for updating their blog pages, now you can see, nothing works. i have tons of photos to add but they are having a few techinical problems. why is it always the way that whenever computers are ‘updated’ they never work the same again? always been the same, whenever a business introduces a new version of software, things always go tits up, despite their best reassurances that all is good.

so where do we start?

well, mason , the cock has been here for over two weeks now. we surfed a little, he fished a lot, caught very little (in fact at one point i was sure he was buying fish from the shop and telling me he was catching them). amongst other things, he had offered to help me with the house so that offer was readily accepted. By the end of the first week we had managed to re-set the tiles on the rear of the house, they leaked after a rain storm, and also managed to relay some new concrete floors in the front of the house . Not without problems though. all the manual work of breaking up the old concrete, my back has been completely wasted for a week or more. we battled on during friday afternoon so that all of the rooms at the front were finished floor wise but i have paid a heavy price.

tonight i tried some bowen technique. i am a little sceptical but we will wait and see. how can you fix someones back without actually touching it ?

so the house is way behind schedule. there are a couple of reasons for that. I have been working loads at the garage, and i also met a real sweet chick, so spent a lot of time with her. I will tell all.

Her name is Dr. Gary and she lives in holland. 25 years old, and cute as you like. great figure, nice ass, big brown eyes and yep, she surfs too. Did i mention she is a doctor???? so not only is she very sexy but also incredibly smart with it. She is so damn smart that i just booked a flight to holland in october to go and spend some time with her before i head back to mallorca for the winter. i am guessing that holland will be very cold at that time of year so we might have to cuddle up close for a while. I would add some pictures of course but thanks to uncle bill, it just aint possible yet.

I broke my car again too last week. smashed the oil sump off again. havent had time to strip it off yet but mason has offered to help so maybe tomorrow night would be a good time to start and finish it. cant find an exhaust pipe for love nor money in spain or portugal so i figure i am gonna have to weld that up and take a chance with it.

I took my land back from my drunken belgian neighbour. i rented a dude with a JCB and he dug out the garden like you wouldnt believe. of course, we dumped all of the rocks and the soil onto my land that borders with his so i am going to absolutely piss myself when he comes back and sees it. that is one confrontation that i am looking foreward to.

Still have to re,plaster teh walls in the front section of the old house and i really have to get that done before kelly gets here in october, otherwise they will have to sleep in my cave and i will have the sofa yet again. would be good to get things finished and rented out but it looks like i will miss my targets of what i wanted to get finished. One bonus of that is that i will have more money left than i budgeted for so it cant all be bad.

Jake had his exam results, and i have to say – jolly good show old chap.!!!! a top set of results! 9 A’s, 1 ‘B’ and 1 ‘C’ so not only did he inherit my gorgeous buff and studly good looks but also got my brains too eh? now he fancies a career in politics and a further education at oxford so looks like i might have a few more winters left in mallorca !!!

I decided that xmas will be in england this year, then back to portugal for new year and then finally back to mallorca for more work until i have enough dosh to survive the summer. seems i am quite the jet setter again!

so, will stay at work until the end of the month and then try to blitz off everything i need to finish off before i leave at the house but keep watching.

may try and get back here again at the weekend but dont hold your breathe.

special hello’s to

Jake
Max
Verity
granma ( for seeing me as a vision in one of her dreams and then calling me to check i was still alive)

and lastly

Dr Gary!!

thanks to all those computer nerds out there, who constantly update their products so that they no loonger work! windows live, yeah right! so no photos to see and nothing to read just yet,

real tight on time today but will update again this week.

stop by again soon

i scored a couple of sunset sessions at tonel this week. one was spoiled a little by the shouting from the beach bar. i never understand why these dumb ass kids have to shout ‘whooo hoooo’ all the time.

i was out on the water and could hear the noises. i shrunk a little bit hoping that they werent english, the germans were also thinking , mein gott, i hope zey are not germans, the french were thinking sacre bleu, i ope dey are not french, the italians were thinking where is my next bowl of pasta and the spanish were thinking, that sounds like fun, shall we go?

yep, you guessed it, a whole bloody tribe of spanish spunkers, dancing on the tables and generally being a bunch of ass wipes! there are tons of them here this year, more than i ever remember and all of them have the same middle name – arrogant!

but there is one exception, a guy called gonbzalo, he busted his car good and proper and came into the garage but man, what a nice dude, polite and all, he changed my opinion of your average spanish spunker straight away.

so we have a bank holiday weekend here now, no more work until wednesday. mason hits portugal on thursday so might actually make some headway with the house repairs.

i finally removed the little wall and soil that the drunk fool next door had put down on my garden while trying to claim the land as his own. i threw the bricks all over his garden and dumped the soil onto his gravel path. i went to the police yesterday to report it. when i told the plod about the neighbour being a mad belgian, the policeman described him perfectly to me, seems everyone knows the old fool, for all the wrong reasons. i am guessing that he wont stay around much longer.

I have now rented the annex of the house too. a friend, justin, is using it to make surfboards. i figure that i wont have the money to restore it until later next year so i might as well rent it to him in the mean time, its all good.

maybe will have to make a project too to make the changes to the building, will have a chat with a builder soon, could put the plans in while i am away and see what happens.

so my plans for tomorrow are to check out the surf early and then potter around the house, maybe put up the security lights i bought last month and clean out the place a little bit – does my life rock or what?

and just in case my 88 year old granma has suddenly become computer literate and is reading my page, still no news on the woman front – sorry !

special hello’s to max, as always, Verity for always being stunning, alex for being a complete fag, chips for being so in love with his tart that he has forgotten about ALL of his chums and georgia lee because i totally forgot about her birthday again, and if i forgot hers, it also means i forgot her dads too.

i bet i remember my sisters though

mason the cock will be here next week so hopefully we will finally get some surf, havent had a surf for two weeks now, been working my ass off for so long. south coast swell predicted for later this week so maybe a dawnie at mareta on thursday morning, keep watching.

i would also like to send my deepest sympathies to alex (faggotpants) clifton who has seriously succumbed to the corporate slag lifestyle that i once had and that he helped to steer me away from, it is strange how our tables turn.

yesterday, we sold soapys landrover on ebay. the guy flew down from holland with cash to collect it. after the deal was done, he told us that the car was going to a museum in amsterdam , a special exhibit of old fire engines, as robs landy started off as a fire engine for the austrian fire brigade, he was keenly interested. for sure we could have sold it for a lot more if we had known the status of this guy – but i guess thats just life.

as i followed rob across the algarve yeasterday i got to thinking, something that i do far too much of.

it is funny how we remember milestones in our life from the sad things that happen. we seem to remember when certain eras finish – let me give you some examples.

years ago when i was around 17, there was a radio presenter on radio one called roger scott. he used to do an afternoon show just on saturdays. listening to his show was the only reason why i was happy to work on saturday afternoons. abruptly, his show ended. only after a couple of weeks did the bbc admit thata he was terminally ill with cancer, the guy had just wanted to keep presenting.

remember the programme cheers? we all watched for years , and then it finished! later programmes like cold feet all had a similar effect, when they finish, we close another chapter in our own little book.

when we leave a job we like, another chapter closes. when kurt cobain blew his stoned little head off, i wondered what would be next ? what would influence me in the same way.

when our friends die, we close bigger chapters in our life, these of course take a little longer for us to leaf over onto the next page.

so, soapy leaving for germany will close another chapter in my life. he has been a prominent character for the last couple of years and of course he will be missed, even to the point that i will miss skinning my knuckles on that old land rover of his.

but as i followed him, i could only remember the chapters closing in my life and i began to wonder why, the human brain being such a wonderful tool can only focus on the downside of life as we navigate our own path. i would like to have a typical wayne answer for this but simply, i dont! i know for sure though that for the rest of my life, i will be bookmarking on my time line with the sadder side of life. why cant we navigate and remember with just the good things? why is it that the sad things in life help to keep us motivated, why do they insist that we push on with our own journeys? when do we get all of the answers that we spent our lives pursuing? when – if ever, will i understand women ?

so you can tell, the absence of salt water in my head has allowed my brain to function normally for a while. i hope to correct that imbalance over the coming days. whenever i feel disheartened i suddenly realise that i havent been to the beach for ages, when i get there , it is almost like life itself has been restarted.

i am not sure what i am blabbering about today but i am sure there will be some careful thoughts as you read. i am only thankful that i have the ability to stimulate your  minds. i am lucky i guess to have found relative peace of mind for myself, for this i would like to thank sincerely

ryan, kirsty, grahame and debbie for showing me another way although at the time, they would have had little idea what was happening.

i went to lisbon at the weekend. not a big city fan most of you will know but i had been gagging to try out the legendary trains here in portugal. i treated myself to a first class ticket to lisbon, some 300kms each way. the cost, return was a measly 44 euros, thats about 25 of your johnny english pounds! i was a little hungry so i ordered from the buffet ( or to be truthful, the waitress came and took my order) so at 120kph i was eating a very good beef stroganof followed by fresh fruit all washed down with a half bottle of portugals finest vinho tinto, all for an amazing 11 bucks!!!!

eventually, the train hit top speed of 220kph (approx 130mph) and i arrived in lisboa after a pleasant two and a half hour trip. OK, i admit, i was a little pissed from the wine, but it was a good trip.!!

I was also treated to a bill from the local council for the portuguese equivalent of council tax. for the year, just 47 euros – yes that wasnt a mis print!!! so i actually smiled at receiving a bill.

i stopped at the local council today too, to check on the land borders. sadly they didnt have maps so i am going to the police next to report the theft of my land before reclaiming it with a spade and a wheel barrow. then i got to thinking, maybe luis the neighbour had done exactly the same, as there was no maps, he thought he would get away with it. OK i admit, the whole issue has pissed me off a lot! the drunken old fool, while i was away in mallorca, stole my land. that, is a very sneaky thing to do, certainly not the level of integrity i would expect from an old military man. when he comes back, i will tell him that i have a gun and a spade and am not afraid to use them.

soon i will have a little more time to work on the house. of course, i am way behind schedule but on the bright side, my bank balance is above schedule (if that is a correct thing to say)

the car is still going strong. have a few new suspension parts to fit, hopefully, this weekend but apart from that, all is well. I might even try to fix the air con too!

ok, the sad news – i havent been in the water fro two weeks now, so this weekend i am going to get up early and take both boards to the beach. hopefully i will avoid the whoardes of tourists which are a real pain in the ass.

i have managed to survive the first month without going shopping. i am trading my time as a maintenance man at the bubble lounge in exchange for beer and food tokens. the system works well and they always seem to have problems that i can fix.

i am desperate for a washing line though, you know the whirly sort? the triangular or square ones with loads of space on them. cant find one anywhere here, tried ebay but the stupid woman wouldnt post it to me in portugal – there are some real dumb asses on ebay.

seems the local trendy surfers have a new outfit for the summer. to help them look cool, they are wearing shorts and t shirts the same colour red as the life guards……some people really do need to get a life.

i have some guests coming out soon too, Mason, the gay cock from mallorca will be here in a week or two and then Junior has promised to come out in october – finally!!!!!!! like it only took her two years!

b een into some real good books too, will update my reviews next time i am on but until then, you ar ejust gonna have to wait.

lastly – Hi to max, always good to hear from you

saturday saw me slogging my guts out in the garden all day but at least i have finished digging the footings for my new wall. today was more of a finish and tidy up.

this coming week it is time to buy bricks and cement and hopefully by the weekend i will have started my first wall ever! wonder how straight that will be? how hard can it be? its less than a metre high so i reckon i can pull it off.

had a visitor today, a german dude was lost and needed directions. i know my place is a little remote but that was a first. i was playing xbox in my towel after having a shower when he knocked…….bizzare

i have finished a little vegetable patch for julia and her tomatoes and red hot chilllis, maybe this will cut down on the bugs a little?

so this week, back to work. i am toying with the idea of going to the sudoeste festival this year, some good names like goldfrap, zero7, the prodigy and even the mighty madness are playing this year, all for 70 bucks – damn cheap, maybe……

watch this space for more on that.

picked up the mini mal today, so looking foreward to a ride on that sometime this week, lunchtime surfs are cool but you have to trade food in place of a surf – no competition really.

so enough for now

saturday and sunday evenings , at sunset, i scored two beautiful sessions. yup, small and beautiful, just like a good woman, these are how i like my waves.

ponta ruiva was my chosen destination, on the west coast, my nearest beach to home, just ten minutes down the dirt track. at that time in the evening, all of the trendy boys have gone home after strutting their stuff to the local talent all day long.

that leaves you with the beach all to yourself. i just love paddling out back and saying hi to my chums that are already there. Sven, Ricky and rob, already in the water picking off the better shaped stuff.

the water was warm with a light off shore breeze, i should have gone in wearing just my shorts really but i wasnt sure………next time, i promise, i still have last years hawaiian shorts, dusted off and ready for action this year.

at the weekend, the holiday season starts so all hell will break loose. time to study the tide timetable and pick off an early morning surf before work (a dawnie) and last thing at night (sunset session).

and while the tourists are here, i can hide away in my tatty little farm house and start fixing it up.

nothing more but work this week – its fun being at autorapo ……..sometimes russ can be a complete cock !!!!!!  oh yeah !!