You're not leaving!!......SLAP!

This is what you're waiting for. I hope I didn't build it up too much.

At the weekend I had a most enjoyable weekend scuba diving in the town of Oban on the west coast of Scotland. Whilst the rest of the UK took cover from sleet, snow, high winds and baltic temperatures, we enjoyed two days of what can only be described as summerish weather. If you were in the UK this weekend, observe the photos and gasp in wonderment. I even got sunburnt!






The diving was great, as was the company, and I saw many exciting things:
A conger eels
Mermaids purse (shark egg)
Starfish feeding frenzy (yep, those critters can go crazy when there's a tasty crab to be eaten!)
Gary Glitter (not quite, but someone looking a lot like him)
A girl riding a bycycle down a very narrow single track road next to the sea with a snowboard on her shoulder. (maybe she was going to use it for wakeboarding)


Watching Scotland beat England at the rugby was particularly entertaining. This weekend also saw the annual Scottish Young Farmers conference decend upon Oban, with 400 young muscley types who sweat beer painting the town red, and we watched the game in a partizan pub full of them. There were probably only 4 or 5 England fans in whole place, and they got a lot of abuse. And Scotland won (for the first time in 8 years or so and deservedly so) -cue much dancing on tables and hugging of complete strangers. Comeon!





Saturday night the whole group of us had an 80's themed fance dress party. My costume was supposed to be Magnum PI - you can decide for yourselves how successful I was. I don't know how many of you ever tried to drink with a fake moustache on, but it aint easy. The hair had a knack of soaking up the beer before it reached my lips, and unfortunately the accumulated moisture was too much for it in the end and it breathed its last and feel off my face after a mere couple of hours.



Anyway, a very strange night ensued. We had planned to go to a few bars and end up in Oban's only club, but then we discovered the juke box in the first pub had an astonishingly wide selection of 80s classics which immediately got pumped full of small change. However, this was NOT the kind of pub you would go to under ANY normal circumstances. It was a locals local, small, very busy and full of people with no teeth, large women with moustaches and tatoos and several lonley alcoholics in severely inebriated states. I was VERY scared as we walked in. I'm guessing that had we been in normal attire we would have been immediately piocked up and hurled back through the door. As it was they seemed to appreciate our choice of outfits and welcomed us with open arms, slurred words and gep-toothed smiles and we stayed their for several surreal hours. (We did make it to the club eventually, but it was so pap and such a waste of £6, it's not worth mentioning)


And finally, my favourite story of the weekend. On Friday night we tried to get into Oban's only 'classy' (note the inverted commas - i say classy because it had a bouncer on the door. and an alleged dress code), only for the bouncer to turn me away because I was wearing tracksuit trousers. On reassesment of my outfit (trackie bottoms, blue hoodie - chosen for comfort on the 3hour car journey), I realised I'd never looked more like a ned/pikey/charver/scally/chav (choose your colloquial term appropriately) on a night out in my life. As we were debating what to do next, one of the guys decided he would have a word with the bouncer. A short conversation followed, after which the bouncer went inside, only to reappear and let us in. But what had Dougal said to make him have a change of heart?

"We're all member's of Edinburgh University Sub-Aqua club, and that guy you're not letting in is a devout Christian"

Evidently, my faith gives me license to wear comfortable clothes and not be a threat to the management or other customers! As it turned out, everyone had much more to worry about with the young famers turning up and throwing bales of hay around....