Saturday August 20th,2004

Kicking Back in Ipswich

Made the kids come over for the Full English Breakfast this morning. They arrived at 8:30 and we went right in. Num. After breakfast we lounged a bit before heading over to Matt's at 10:00. Woke Matt Up. Hung around his place for awhile while he got dressed etc. Decided to head into town. The girls were desperate for major caffeine. Kel and Adri to go shopping, us men-folk to hang out in a pub. The pub we decided to meet the girls at later was the Cock and Pye. The second they walked away we noticed it didn't open until noon... and hour away. D'oh. Checked out some other places and finally found an open one. Ipswich's Irish Pub, McGintys. Place was packed... with the coolest Guinness junk this side of Dublin. We were the only customers. Had a round while Matt S. lost £25 (about 48 bucks) in a 'fruit machine', which is a rather complicated slot machine. We think he has a gambling problem :-). The pub had a great Guinness fan that would flash messages on it's blades with red and blue LEDs. Very cool. According to the staff Guinness gave them out to select pubs but does not sell them. Would look great in my backyard. Dave called while Matt was losing money and said he was in town but hungover. He'd see us later. At one point a couple of police came in, one was from Wales. We think they were there cuz there was a football match at the nearby Football stadium that day. We hung out at McGintys for an hour, or 2 rounds.

At noon we headed back over to the Cock and Pye to meet the women-folk. Not quite open on time and there was a group of about 20 people waiting to be let in. Finally opened. It was a lot bigger inside than it looked from the street. This was what we'd call a sports bar. 8 foot video screens on either end of the room, 8 video monitors above the bar, and tiny little lcd monitors mounted on the taps! At 12:30 a game between Southampton and some other place was scheduled to begin on the telly. We 3 found a table in the corner and had a round while waiting for the shoppers.

Adri and Kel came in at 12:25 and we got them drinks. They didn't buy much except for a cell-phone dongle. The second the game began it get extremely loud in there. We finished up our drinks just as the 2 coppers we saw at McGintys strolled in.. We accused them of stalking us. Took off back to McGintys, a much quieter place to enjoy a pint or 3. We told each other old jokes, bad riddles etc for the next few hours. Really not much interesting to write about people hanging out in a pub.... Went back to Matt's around 4:00, stopping at the Iceland, a convenience store that also sells appliances... for some beer and wine.

Hung out watching TV with Matt for a bit until Dave finally showed up. Chatted a bit with him and got him caught up on all our escapades. We all then walked about 5 blocks to a really good Indian restaurant, The Taj Mahal. Ate WAY too much. I had Lamb Tikka Pathia plus a bunch of starters I couldn't even begin to remember the name of. We all staggered out of there full to bursting. Back to Matt's and another round of chit-chat etc. Kel and I hit the road around 10:30 and hit the hay about 10 minutes later.