Holiday Countdown.

[Roger Kettle]

Only ten days now till I disappear to Portugal for a week in the sun. It's at this stage I start ticking off the things I have to do before I go.
Look out chest wig.
Buy waterproof body paints so that I can paint on a six-pack.
Exchange a thousand pounds for eight Euros.
Take drawing pad and pen so that I can work throughout the holiday. (I lied about that one).
Check passport and laugh at photo.
Find books to read. (Malc, I've decided against taking "9/11--The New Evidence" on a plane).* in joke.
Wind up my 19 year-old son about how I'm going to thrash him at pool at the local Sports Bar.
That's about it.

[Diane CBPFC]

You could just get a bigger chest wig, the Robin Williams model, that covers your belly too - don't want to spend your whole holiday touching up your six pack.

[Roger Kettle]

Excellent suggestion, Diane. No point in looking silly.

[Malc]

How's the water over there? Drinkability-wise, I mean?

I used to live on Malta as a child, and I don't remember any problem with us kiddies and the water, yet when Mel and I honeymooned there, we were warned all the time about drinking local water.
We pretty much toed the line on that except one night when I had ice in my drink. I had food poisoning and a dose of the runny bum-bum afterwards.

Are things in Portugal more civilized?

[Roger Kettle]

Much the same, Malc. It's not recommended for visitors to drink the water. However, it's no great hardship to stick some bottled water into the fridge next to the six-pack of beer.

[Malc]

I can understand the need for bottled water in some areas sur le continong, but why are we selling millions of litres of the stuff in Britain, with crystal clear lakes sending bacteria-free water down the pipes for nothing?

[The Peepmaster]

Gullibility, Malcolm.

[Malc]

Gerald Scarfe, cartoonist and illustrator who directed animation for Walt Disney?s Hercules, will host this year?s annual Dundee Literary Festival in Dundee England. Festival runs June 25 to 28

Will you be attending this festival in England, Roger?

[Roger Kettle]

Hmm. I would have gone to that but it's too far away.

[Joan]

  Yes, you may have had difficulty finding it too, me thinks. I vaguely remember Gerald Scarfe - the name rings a bell.

I'm sure you'll have a great time, Roger, with or without the chest wig (do these things actually exist?) and/or the six pack.

Next time you're in Sydney, give us a call and I'll take you on at pool.

My daughter and friend are very excited.  We just booked their flights to LA and New York in July for a couple of weeks.  Of course, I'll be worrying about them the whole time they're away, despite the fact that at their age I "did" Europe on a Eurorail pass, slept on trains and remember one very hairy evening in Frankfurt station where we decided just to get on the first train anywhere, it was so scary. 

[Malc]

There were chest wigs on sale for real in the 70s (maybe early 80s) because real men were deemed to have hairy mats on their chests, a la Burt Reynolds, and some deluded fools thought that without a hairy abdomen they were somehow less than adequate.
They were right of course, but it had nothing to do with their chests.

Myself, I never managed to cultivate a decent hairy chest as a youth, merely two unsightly hairy nipple rings.

I do, however, have a light and appealing cover of hair right across the chest now that it's out of fashion, and now that the chest has slipped to the mezzanine floor, as it were.

[Joan]

Oooh, those images are somewhat hard to digest.    I'm just going out to dinner with a friend, as well.  I think my ideal would be somewhere in between - not too hairy, not too smooth (depending on the physique, of course). 

[The Peepmaster]

Oooh, those images are somewhat hard to digest.    I'm just going out to dinner with a friend, as well.  I think my ideal would be somewhere in between - not too hairy, not too smooth (depending on the physique, of course). 

You want something between Fairly & Hairy, a bit like Mince.





Fairy

[Joan]

   I'm hoarse now.  My friend and I hadn't seen each other for a while, so we didn't stop talking for about three hours.  We laughed a lot, too. 

[Diane CBPFC]

My dog Chip is hoarse too - he is love-sick and has been barking non-stop since Gemma went in heat. You can see him barking with his little front legs lifting off the ground but no sound.