a pet shop and cafe combined

Out for a run today and found this shop.

I like the name of this place. sadly they did not sell either

Good Morning

Good Morning

I haven't written anything for a few days so thought i better say hello.

its been a busy week since Marks wedding. I was recovering for several days afterwards. I left my blond wig at my parents house. Maybe my Dad will use it. I've been busy at working serving tapas I've started a fitness regime, Michael Jackson died and it was my birthday.

First of all may i take this opportunity to thank everyone for there birthday wish's. Sorry i didn't reply to any to you personally but i'm really shit at getting back to people.

And now at the old age of 27 i've decided to start exercising. it all started a couple of weeks ago. I was getting very stressed and frustrated with a project and just wanted to get out of the house to clear my head. so I did something I have never ever done before. put on my trainers and went for a run. a proper run, for no reason and contrary to popular belief I was not running to make last orders at the pub or because there was a sale on at macdonalds. to quote Forest Gump "I just felt like runnin" i didn't make it as far as he did but i did go from my flat down to ocean terminal, which is 2 miles away. im not sure how i ended up there as i thought i was headin in another direction but thats where destiny conspired to take me. once i realised where i was i was annoyed when it started to rain. i thought "fuck it thats enough for today. luckily i had a tenner in my pocket, so I bought a bottle of water and a bounty bar and caught the bus home.

I've been out for a run twice since then, and no i have not got the bus again. now you may mock me for getting the bus home, but in my defense, it was raining and that is the most exercise i've done since......... well ever. the fitness thing was also partly inspired by Marks wedding. I was of course wearing the kilt to mark the day, and it was a bit tight. My kilt was a 21st birthday present making it 6 years old and it was a bit tighter than I remember. I have another wedding in early september and I suspect I will be the only kilted man there so I have to be looking good. No one is gonna wanna shag a fat man in a kilt, but once I've lost a few pounds and the ladies see me on the dance floor they will be queueing up for a taste of the Andy love!

As well as the running I also splashed out on a wii fit. I know this is not the most exact thing in the world but its cheaper than going to the gym. I'm working my way through all the exercises although I think its schizophrenic. One minute its saying I am a couch potato and next its saying I'm a muscle legend. Its weird because I am struggling to do one proper push up.

so Michael jackson is dead. I found out via text, all it said was "incredible news. its the day music died" i thought he was talking about this

I immediately checked online to see if it was true and sadly it was. it was on the internet so it had to be true. twitter was filled with tweets bidding jacko farewell. I follow around 15o people on twitter and almost all of them were saying rip jacko or quoting lines from one of his songs or some bollocks. At the end of the day im sorry he's dead. its sad when anyone dies. but has everyone forgot he was a kiddie fiddler??? someone told me recently that you should not speak ill of the dead. but thats bollocks. If someone is a cunt and then dies, why should my opinion of that person change, they were still a cunt, just now they are a dead cunt, which doesn't bother me. Hitler is dead, should we show proper respect and not say bad things about him? should we not make fun of his charlie chaplin moustache and the fact he only had one testicle?

Now don't get me wrong, im not comparin jacko to hitler, im just saying remember the facts. He was the king of pop and rightly so. He was an awesome musician but he was also very very fucked up. he looked like a toy. he was a very very strange man. That being said i would have loved to of seen him live. I still dance badly to thriller whenever i hear it.

So my birthday came and went, im now another year older but i don't feel any wiser. I share my birthday with a couple of friends, Martin, Aders and Jeanine. I wonder if they feel any wiser today? i doubt it, Jeanine is probably hungover from drinking too many cocktails on fire island and Aders is already far wiser than any man i know, just in his own unique way. My birthday celebrations started on saturday night after work. After cashing up the staff sang happy birthday to me which came as a surprise as i thought they had all left. they got me a cheesecake and wrote "happy birthday G.L.M" in caramel sauce. (G.L.M. stands for Good Looking Manager, i didn't come up with it, honest) After a glass of vino i was well behaved and headed home( this is mainly because i was skint). had a productive day on the sunday i did my wii fit workout, my wii fit age has went down by 9 years in the space of a day, i feel like a time traveller. treated myself to a new pair of shoes and then realised i still hadn't sent my mum a birthday card. it was her birthday 3 weeks ago. I always find it difficult to buy presents for parents. I never know what they would like. I got them vouchers for my old work for christmas as it was quick and easy. there should be some kind of shop for parents. Just head in there and they have everything that your parent might possibly want. After at least 20 minutes of searching the shops i gave up and bought her some marks and spencers vouchers. I wrote a poem in her card to apoloise for the card being late tho

Happy birthday Mum, sorry its late

how was your day? im sure it was great!

here's your present, sorry it's shit

from your "other child," the one who's a git!

I trust she'll enjoy that. so back to my birthday. After a power nap, the drinking team( Adam Jon and myself) headed into our nations capital for cocktails and dancing. the first few bars we went to were a bit crap, we ended up in element on rose street, its quite a cool wee bar and bumped into a couple of people from work. There we drank lots. Adam disappeared at one point. We were deeply concerned, then my phone beeped and i saw this picture.

Mystery solved.

more drinks followed then we headed to espionage to rock out!

I quite like the second level of espionage (the indie rock level) they usually play decent tunes and the drink is not too expensive compared to some other edinburgh Bars. At this point it became obvious that adam was more drunk than Jon and I put together. A fact he proved by dancing like a nutter while i held the drinks. I think this is the first time this has ever happened.

I left the club just after half 2 as i was knackered, Adam stayed on to dance the night away. I was gutted that cafe picantes(the local kebab shop) was closed i went home and attempted to cook but then remembered i cant. I put a couple of pasties in the oven but forgot to set the timer, i woke up nearly 2 hours later and ate half of a very burnt chicken and mushroom pasty. it was minging!

so that was my birthday Im off on tuesday and i might go to the zoo, I've lived in edinburgh for 8 months now and i still haven't gone to the zoo. thats just wrong. I wonder how much it is to buy a monkey? So now im 27, that seems an odd age to be, i suppose now im technically in my late twenties. and in 2 months im goin back to college and probably be in a class filled with 17 and 18 year old little shits who think they are ace cos they aren't at school. O dear what have i let myself in for.

well thats all from me for now. thanks again for all the birthday wishes. hope all is cool with you wherever you happen to be in the world.

this blog was written whilst listening to the sounds of chameleon circuit, which is without a doubt the geekiest thing i have ever done, but the tunes are good. check them out at http://www.myspace.com/chameleoncircuitmusic

until next time

be cool

Cya

Andy G

p.s. if anyone actually does read the crap that i'm writing you can subscribe through this website.

http://theblogofandyg.blogspot.com/

Richard playing in ps3 now. I'll go for a nap in the meantime!

Can't get fit on an empty stomach

Time to get fit!

Looking good!

There goes the bride!

Fit likey.
It's the day after the wedding. I am graphically unwell( I don't even
know what that means) here is a rundown if how the day went as best I
can remember.
Bacon butties & beer!
Service sponsored by the Scottish parliment & god.
Off to the hotel, champagne champagne champagne beer beer beer beer
beer photos beer beer beer beer line up shakin hands beer beer wine
wine wine wine wine speeches andy asks " is there more wine?" wine
wine wine wine dance badly with alice wine wine beer beer beer beer
wine walkin on sunshine dance like a nutter wine wine dance dance
dance wine wine beer beer beer beer dance with marks mum dance vodka
vodka watch topless men dance vodka vodka tell Jonny how much I love
him! Vodka vodka check out autons mum vodka vodka steal a blond wig
bus to town sing song espionage vodka vodka vomit vomit vodka vodka
forum beer beer flash lots of people try singing closing time by
semisonic but change words to " closing time so fuck off" beer beer
beer casino vodka vodka try to gamble can't find seat vodka vodka pie
shop taxi! Wake up kevs house irn bru toad in hole nap
Pretty decent day

Too casual?

here comes the bride

Bonjourno

Im getting old, I seem to be at that age when people are getting married and having babies. It’s very strange. I have 2 weddings this year and in the past 12 months several friends have had a baby or announced they are having one. I have Mark and Kims wedding on Saturday which I’m really looking forward to. Its gonna be a crackin day. Sadly I don’t see my mates in Aberdeen a lot as I’m constantly working or leaving the country so gonna make the most of my time there. It won’t be long till im back there full time as a student tho.

Weddings are a strange thing. There are lots of various roles to be filled. During the stag do a couple of us asked mark if we had a role in the wedding, he said no as he saw us as “the Drinkers” this was fine by me the less I have to do the better!

I did start thinking about what jobs were actually going

I don’t know much about weddings, I know they cost a lot of money, people usually get far too drunk and dance like morons( I plan on doing this on Saturday) but I don’t know much else

What roles are there in a wedding,?

these are a few of the titles I have heard mentioned in the past or seen in films.

The Bride ( not Uma Therman)

The woman getting married, usually the more responsible one out of the couple. Her main job seems to be to stress about every little detail, she has to make sure she looks better than everyone else in the room and scare the best man into making sure the groom arrives at the wedding in tact.

The Groom

The bloke getting married. The grooms job seems to be the easiest, he turns up says I do, usually gets too drunk and moans about how much everything cost.

Best man

The grooms best mate, he is the most important man in any wedding. That’s why he is called the BEST man, out of all the men there, he is considered to be the best, he organises the most important part of any wedding, the Stag do He gets the groom very drunk, holds on to the rings and hopefully tells a very funny speech

Maid of honour

The female equivalent of a best man, she organises the hen night. Having witnessed dozens of hen nights in various restaurants I can safely say these are quite dull in comparison to stag do’s. They always start out all nice and talking about shoes and hair and all that other girly crap and then they get all bitchy and end up screaming at the poor restaurant manager who just wants them to leave!(sorry I may have went off topic a bit then) I don’t think they give a speech, and I don’t know what they do on the day, probably something to do with shoes. Traditionally they should shag the best man, if the best man is already married then they should shag the drunkest friend of the groom.(hopefully me)

Bridesmaids,

I dunno what there job is, as far as I can tell its just to hang around the bride usually in some minging dress and shag one of the grooms mates.(again hopefully me)

Ushers

I think these guys are supposed to tell people where to sit, this sounds like the shittest job if you ask me, its like one of those guys in the cinema who walks about with a torch. And usually its just are you with the bride or groom, the brides friends and family go on one side and the grooms go on the other. How hard is that to figure out? Essentially I think they are being taken advantage of. I think some bloke hundreds of years ago thought of a way to save a few bucks on the wedding day. he thought instead of paying people to show guests where to go he would just ask a couple of his mates to do it and give them a title, sounds a bit odd to me.

Groomsmen,

I have no idea what these guys do, I think they walk the bridesmaids down the isle, but I don’t know why the bridesmaids walk down the isle, is it just to show off? Are they just eye candy? So then would that make the groomsmen eye candy for the eye candy? I don’t know

Page boy

I have no idea what a page boy does, I remember going to a family wedding as a kid and my cousin was a page boy, I don’t know what he did, presumably turn pages on some kind of book. How lazy do you have to be that you can’t turn a fucken page?

Its all quite strange.

Wedding lists are something that’s also quite weird

I do understand why they exist. But anytime I give someone a present I like it to be something that I have put thought into, just ask any of my old staff. I like to give something unique that I have put time into thinking about and went to trouble to get. I suppose it does make sense to have a list tho. This way when the happy couple get round to opening there presents they will have something they actually want and not a bean bag with a picture of me on it. For Mark and Kims wedding I checked out there list. I thought it best to stick to it as several years ago I bought them a cushion with a picture of me on it. They did not seem to appreciate the gift and it has since disappeared. I wanted to get them something special that they would enjoy for a long time to come. After reading through the wedding list on john lewis.com I settled on a saucepan. I can only assume it’s the greatest sauce pan on the market as it cost 40 quid. Maybe it comes with a years supply of sauce. The website allows you to put a message along with the gift but only a certain number of characters, its like twitter for gifts. After several drafts I settled on “I hope you enjoy your saucepan” I think it was simple and to the point. Much like myself.

Weddings are always great fun. When my cousin got married about 5 years ago my dad was the classic “drunken uncle” at the wedding, the reception was in a marquee and after several beers dad headed off in search of the bathroom, when he found it he discovered he would be at the back of a very large queue. So dad being the genius that he is he thought he’d just nip round the back of the marquee and relieve himself there. However it was a very sunny day and around 100 guests were treated to the silhouette of my dad peeing against the side of a marquee. Its quite scary that are parents area a vision of what we may one day become.

The last wedding I went to was Richard and Lorraine in 2006, that was a great day. a great few days in fact. The reception was great fun, they had personalised M & M’s on the table which I thought was awesome, Kev the best man did an awesome speech which I helped with( I held giant comedy cue cards) and we danced the night away at a welsh ceildh. By the end of the day more than one of the previously mentioned tradition’s were fulfilled.

It was a brilliant day and I’m sure Mark & Kims wedding will equal or better it in levels of awesomeness.

The next wedding for me is Paul and Sonya’s from the QE2. This should be another good one. Will be good to catch up with a few old drinking buddies from the ship days.

When Mark and Kim sent me my invite it was from them and there was a slip to fill in about my meal choice. When I received my invite for Paul and Sonya’s wedding it was from Sonya’s parents. There was no slip to fill in, it simply said R.S.V.P. by April 30^th. So I wrote them a very nice letter.

Dear Mr & Mrs Naylor,

Thank you for your invitation to the marriage of your daughter, Sonya Marie Naylor, to the drunkard that is Paul David Riley. I am writing to you with good news and bad news, which do you want first?

I’m hoping you said the bad news first, as that is what I am going to give you. If you wish to get the good news first then please skip ahead to the next paragraph. And then return here. OK ready??? Here we go. The BAD news is that Mr Adam Poole, one of the founding fathers of the drinking team and drunkard extraordinaire, sadly will not be in attendance. He is returning to a life at sea, and will be on a cruise ship somewhere attempting to sell art to a bunch of freeloaders who turn up to auctions just to get free champagne (I don’t blame them I would do the same) He does send his apologies and wishes the happy couple all the best for the future. To be honest it is just as well he is not coming as he would no doubt drink far too much and fall asleep on a table by half past 7.

Now for the GOOD NEWS, it is with great delight that on behalf of myself (Andy G) and Mr Jonny “Torpedo” Hemy that we are RSVPing with an absolute YES! (Is RSVPing a word? I think it is, if its not it should be) we are both very much looking forward to it. Now if you did read this paragraph first so you can read the good news before the bad news then please go back to the previous paragraph.

Jon and myself will most definitely be in attendance at both the wedding and the reception, Kilts in all. May I also thank you for your most informative information sheet that accompanied your invitation, I am impressed. We are planning on staying at the Sheraton where the reception is being held, as we will most likely get too drunk to find our way back to anywhere else. Also, if we pull anyone it will be much handier, I assume you have invited large amounts of attractive single women, please inform them to form an orderly queue and myself and Jon will be glad to dance with all of them throughout the evening.

I am sure you have seen the movie QE2 Reloaded to which both your daughter and future son in law feature; well now you get the thrill of meeting two of the founding fathers of the drinking team. How exciting for you. I’m sure it will make your day. Jon and I are equally excited to meet you. I have attached a photo featuring the 2 of us so you can remember what we look like. (I’m the good looking one on the left). Regarding the reception, is it possible to put in my musical requests now? I would especially like to hear 500 miles by The Proclaimers, Everybody by the Blues Brothers and of course, Walkin on Sunshine by Katrina and the Waves. In the past I have been described as a “dancing machine” and look forward dancing the night away with many of the previously mentioned attractive single women.

I realise this letter was a tad long for an rsvp to a wedding and the majority of people will simply write back saying “ill be there” or “ sorry I can’t come” but I had a day off and nothing else to do and this letter has kept me occupied for about 45 minutes, fortunately the pub has now opened so I must depart.

Until September

Be Cool, Like Fonzie

Kind Regards

The Drinking Team

Andy G, Jonny “Torpedo” Hemy, & Adam “The Fool” Poole

I have yet to hear anything else from Mr and Mrs Naylor or Paul & Sonya, I hope our invitation still stands..

A Poem about weddings

Get down the isle and say I do

Then we all party, you know you want to.

We’ll have a great night, it’ll be crackin

Ill be dancing so much I might do my back in.

I spot the bridesmaid, who I’m taking to bed

She’s a bit of a minger, I'll put a bag on her head

Guy love

Its guy love, thats all it is!

Paddy the Yankee

He's a lumberjack and he's ok!
He's going back to the U S A!
no more paddy at Cafe Andaluz,
Just as well cos he stinks of booze!

Duck & cover

Hi

I’ve just seen an advert and it has enraged me! It was a charity appeal for pet vaccinations.

“Just 2 pounds a month can save a pets life”

and all that crap. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for charity and helping animals, I’ve always said I’d love to have a pet monkey.

But two things really annoyed me about that advert. First of all, if you can’t afford to give a pet its jabs, then don’t fucken own one.

Secondly, in the advert it has a montage of shots of various pets looking sick, like a dog, cat, rabbit etc, and then a horse showed up! A fucking horse!!! Who has a pet horse? If you own a horse then your probably pretty well off. I’ve never seen anyone going down to the pound and walkin out with a horse. A horse for fuck sake! So some rich bastard has spent all his money on caviar and wants me to spend 2 pound a month so his prize stallion doesn’t get horse flu! Well fuck that!! (the situation, not the horse)

I’ve never really had a pet, my old flatmate had a cat when we lived in rosemount, he sadly died on hogmanay, I was gutted. I just spent a tenner on catfood.

This got me to thinking about pets. As I mentioned I would love to have a pet monkey,I would teach it to do things and we would be like ross and marcel in friends. But sadly I don’t think this will happen.

So thought I better have a more realistic pet. Im thinking about a duck.

I think ducks are my favourite bird. Think about it, ducks are cool.

Here are some of the celebrity ducks

Ed the Duck

Definitely one of the cooler ducks out there. He lived in the broom cupboard with Andy Crane and Andi Peters (whatever happened to them?) he had a cool green Mohawk . click on the you tube link to see him attempt to fly a plane, this scared the shit out of me, why would you let a clearly irresponsible puppet duck pilot a commercial aircraft? Madness

Donald Duck

One of the most famous Ducks around. He usually wears a sailor shirt and cap but there is no evidence he was ever in the navy. His birthday is apparently on Friday the 13^th, this explains his constant bad luck. Personally I never liked him, I always thought he came off as a bit of an arse.

Huey, Dewey & Louie

The kid ducks, There Donalds nephews. they strike me as being a pain to look after.

Scrooge McDuck

He’s definitely in my top 3 ducks, He’s Scottish he’s like a gijillionnaire, he goes swimming in his massive pool of mney and was the star of Duck Tales, one of the coolest tv shows ever! According to wikipedia in 2007, Glasgow City Council added Scrooge to its list of "Famous Glaswegians", alongside the likes of Billy Connolly, Sir Alex Ferguson & Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

Daffy Duck

He always struck me as having serious mental problems, a very angry duck, always shouting at bugs bunny. Someone should get him some serious therapy.

Darkwing Duck

A true duck superhero with a cool theme tune, number 2 in my top 3 ducks.

Orville the Duck

Everybody loved Orville the duck, although you have to worry that he’s not nappy trained yet. He was a bit of a pessimist claiming he couldn’t fly. Just give it a go, what are you, a duck or a chicken? It was also quite strange that he was bright green. What was up with that? Too much midori?

Howard the Duck

From the 1986 movie of the same name, he was a very cool Duck. He easily takes the top spot of number 1 duck! He accidently got sucked here through a wormhole from his home, planet of the ducks. He fought a massive space monster, shagged lea Thomson (Marty Mcflys mum) and played in a rock band. That’s one cool duck.

any thoughts? who is your favorite duck? got to be howard!! come on!

cya

Andy

Digging up Edinburgh until 2011

Wham,

Bam

wait for 3 years and take the tram!

Andy's coffee!

It was a Slow day At Tapas Towers, so one of the staff made me this.

Adam the drunkard!

How I found Adam asleep on sat night!

Poetry corner

Hey there!

How’s life? Your lookin good! Well, to be honest you might look like shit, but it’s nice to be nice.

Well its been another fun filled weekend in the busiest tapas bar this side of Edinburgh. I fell madly in love on Saturday. She came in and sat on table 207, She had long light brown hair, brown eyes she was wearing a low cut top and had amazing boobs. One of the other managers commented her make up was too dark for her face, I don’t know what this means but as I pointed out to her at the time, I was not looking at her make up! I took her drink order, a bottle of white rioja, I made a joke about the size of the wine glass and she laughed, I knew she was falling for me then. In my head that was it. We were already a couple, one of those really coupley couples, the ones you see holding hands and kissing in the street who make you feel sick! We were the greatest couple in the world, we had similar taste in films and liked the same bars, we would go on nights out together, find a club and dance like a couple of nutters to “dizzy” by Vic Reeves and The Wonderstuff, Then hit the bar for a couple of drinks and run back to the dance floor when they started playing walking on sunshine( I think in this fantasy we are living in 1992) We were truly an awesome couple, she loves to cook and I love to eat, how is this not a match made in heaven! We would go to the cinema and hate the same bits in films, we would have lengthy discussions about who would win a fight between Indiana Jones and Han Solo, she would argue that Han would win but secretly agree with me that Indy would be the winner. We would eventually get married on a beach in Hawaii, she’s wearing a bikini to show off her magnificent boobs and I’m wearing Bermuda shorts to show off my magnificent legs! We would form a band and travel the world playing sell out concerts, then along come the kids, Andy Jnr and the girl, we would be the greatest family band since the Jackson 5. It would be glorious!!

Sadly while I was busy day dreaming, some mop haired twat came in and sat down with her! I tried to stop him, he came to the door and said he was meeting someone here. I told him that no one was waiting and to take a seat at the front door and wait there. My plan was to make her believe her boyfriend stood her up, convince her he was complete twat and then she would be all mine. Unfortunately he saw her sitting down and he didn’t seem to believe me when I said she wasn’t waiting for anyone and obviously he mistook her for someone else. Bastard!

Never mind, as I said at the time, She’ll be back, they always are. Plus I stole her handbag! (joke)

A Poem for the woman of 207

Oh pretty lady on table 207,

I look at your boobs and I’m in heaven.

Are they real?

I’d love to cop a feel!

Marks out of 10? I’d give them 11!

Anyway after my 10 minute imaginary love affair with the woman of 207 I went back to work, there was a well dressed family sitting in a booth, the 2 kids must have been around 6 or 7 and the young boy was wearing a kilt, he was opening cards and counting some money he just received. I assumed it was his birthday, when I asked, they said they had just been at the boys first holy communion. I have no idea what this is and can only assume they belong to some kind of cult. Well done on the cult leaders for recruiting them while they’re young, and for bribing them with cash incentives. I can only assume the kid will be forced to invest the money back into the cult to make sure he gets his place on the mother ship to take him to planet blisstonia or something.

So on with the day, in the middle of a busy lunch there was an issue in the kitchen, the gas went off, this meant we could not do any fried foods. Some customers went mental at this. I tried pointing out that this meant things would be a little healthier and then a fat man accused me of calling him fat (which I was).

After a couple of hours the problem was fixed and we went back to helping Scotlands obesity problem. Apparently Scotland has the second highest level of obesity in the world. Coming second to our American cousins. Having spent 5 months working in America I can confirm that they are in fact much fatter than us! That being said we are a close second based on the customers I’ve had in the restaurant lately. We had a booking turn up on sat afternoon that we didn’t have room for. So we set up a table upstairs and I served them myself. They were 15 women having a leaving do for some people who are pregnant, there were 4 preggos there and not one of them seemed interested in calling there kid Andy. I even offered them a free drink but they didn’t seem keen. The pregnant women were all quite large for obvious reasons, but some of there (non pregnant) mates were MASSIVE, I thought that maybe these women weren’t actually friends, the preggo’s just wanted to go out and look thin by comparison. It was quite dull up there and whilst they were all arguing over the bill I wrote this poem

Serving the preggos, sittin upstairs,

One woman’s so fat, she’s on 2 chairs.

Working very hard, hopin for a good tip,

Reminds me of when, I worked on the ship.

Now they’re arguing over the bill,

I just want them to leave, I’ve had my fill.

I’ve had enough of these pregnant bitches,

Eventually they left, but didn’t leave me any riches!

It was Paddy the american’s last day on Saturday. He’s worked with us for a few months now and we wanted to give him something to remember us by. So inspired by my recent camping trip to st cyrus, from around 5pm onwards any food that did not get eaten was put in a slop bucket. By 7:30 this bucket was almost full of all the left over crap, the chorizo sauce, the honey mustard sauce, garlic cream, mayo, ketchup, olive oil. When the bucket was full it was put aside for later. Paddy was very excited to be finishing, he was going to be done by 11, he was planning on sitting down and having a couple of beers while the rest of us finished up. We had been winding him up all day to bring a change of clothes, but he didn’t believe us. So 11pm came and a couple of the waitress’s asked him if he wanted to go for one final cigarette. They took him out the back, myself and Ailsa were hiding behind the bins ready to attack, as soon as we heard the accent we crept up behind him and chucked the bucket over him. It was brilliant! His face was a picture, he could not believe this was happening. Ailsa then threw a bucket of water over him, to wash him off. I did feel a bit guilty as this bucket was MINGING. I was nearly sick when I took it out the back. But Paddy took it all in good humour. After work we all went into town and had a few drinks.

I was quite sensible, after a few beers and an unsuccessful attempt to chat up the bar maid I headed home. The rest of the staff did not. Sunday was an INCREDIBLY long day. I’m fairly certain that a scientist somewhere has found a way to slow time and was conducting an experiment in our restaurant. Everyone was knackered and hung over, we did have a bit of excitement when the barmaid found a mouse crawling on the bar. We’ve had a bit of a mouse problem lately. We have code named them Rufus (because Mickey was too obvious) we have been laying traps for weeks and caught a few, but they only come out at night and they are crafty little buggers. This Rufus however was not, he was only a baby and was crawling along the back bar by the coffee machine, dunno how he got there without anyone seeing him tho. I theorized that maybe he was like Spider-mouse, he swung down from the ceiling to avenge the death of his uncle. Scott, The Asst Manager squashed him with a hammer the other day and now Spider-mouse wants justice. I scooped spider-mouse into a coffee cup and released him into the wild to fight crime elsewhere. I did consider running into the French restaurant around the corner and leaving him on a table but I did not want to disrupt Spanish/French relations. I don’t want to be held responsible for an international incident!

A Poem about Sunday

Its easy to grin,

When Rufus comes in,

Scuttling past your shoes.

But what makes it worthwhile,

Is when you can smile,

When all the staff are stinking of booze!

That’s all for now

Im off to bed. Im knackered.

Catch ya later

Andy G

Dear Mr Mayor

Hola

A few weeks ago I suffered a barrage of verbal abuse from a pissed off German tourist, he came to the restaurant on Thursday night and loved it. He asked if we were busy on Saturday and I said yes and advised him to book. He didn’t.

Saturday night came along and he turned up when we were at our busiest and demanded a table. I managed to get him a table after a short wait, it was a crap table at the front of the restaurant by the door, but considering how busy we were he was lucky to get that without a reservation.

After his meal he came up and tried to get money off his bill. For the past few months we have been giving out 5 pound off vouchers to every customer. These have 2 conditions. They can only use one voucher per table and they are not valid on Saturdays. This German did not read these conditions, which were clearly printed on the voucher. He threw four in my face and demanded money off. Now I'm a fairly reasonable guy, if you're nice to me then I'm nice to you. But if you’re a twat then you’ll get fuck all from me.

I very clearly and politely explained the conditions of the voucher and said he could not use them tonight. He then went nuts! He kept shouting about how we invited him back to the restaurant and tricked him with money off. I will now repeat the conversation as best I can remember

German: This is bullshit. Do you know I am a journalist?

Andy: no I didn’t know that. What’s your point?

German: I am a travel journalist I travel all over the world writing about my experiences and write reviews of cities and restaurants for very famous German magazines.

Andy: I see. Would I have heard of any of them?

German now looks angrily at Andy

German: I am going to write a story about how you’re ripping people off with vouchers you can’t use. This is bullshit!

Andy: so you’re a travel journalist?

German: yes

Andy: and you didn’t think to read the details printed on the voucher?

German: you are ripping people off and I'm going to write an article about it, you’re not going to get away with this!!

Andy: and what’s the article going to say? I went to a restaurant, had a great meal, got given money off vouchers for next time, but I forgot to read them! Forgive me sir but that will be a short story, are you paid by the word?

He then got very angry and threatened to report me to the Scottish tourist board. He claimed he was going to write a letter to the mayor of Edinburgh complaining about the restaurant, and more specifically me. As he left I gave him my email and said I would love to read the article. That was about 2 months ago and I have yet to hear anything back.

Bloody Germans!

There is a point to me telling you this story. As you may be aware I have just returned from a stag do in Poland. It was awesome! However, like the German I was disappointed in a restaurant we visited, unlike the German my complaints were justified. I got to thinking if the German can write to the Mayor of a city to complain about something, then so can I.

Dear Mr Mayor,

I am writing to you to pass on my comments about your fair city. I have recently returned from the away leg of the stag do of Mr Mark Cruickshank. I feel I can speak for all the boys when I say we had an AWESOME time. We were very Happy to discover beach volleyball in such a landlocked location. Were you reading the several hundred emails that got sent to the boys regarding the away leg? One of my questions was if there was a beach! I find it an interesting coincidence that one of the first things I ask about, you provided. I am impressed, and a little scared that you wield such power! All the boys had a fantastic time in your fair city, were you out at the weekend at all? If you were, you probably seen us! We were the very loud drunk lads, you may have spotted us out on Saturday night, we were the bunch of guys with the fairy, oh and the stag was wearing a pink outfit too. We were all very impressed with the nightlife in your lovely city. And there is an amazing amount of talent in your town. I mean seriously, I don’t know how you guys get any work done. The boys were calling dibs on girls all over the place. (Do you know what dibs are in Poland? If not just Google it) It was mental. I suspect you already know this. I have met several polish women in my time and lots of them have been “Hotties!” I suspect however that you are keeping the best ones for yourself. I don’t blame ya. A few hotties are slipping thru the cracks and finding their way to the bonnie scot but all the really hot birds are not allowed to leave are they? I am impressed you would use your political power for such selfish means. I would do the same.

The prices are something we all appreciated during our stay. I was quite alarmed when I spotted vodka red bull was 10 Zloty, but then I realised that was 2 quid. I certainly had wings that night. I hope we will all be fondly remembered in your city. We spent a lot of money and i'm fairly certain that a couple of boys could have bought a small house for the money they spent in the strip club. To be honest we were slightly disappointed that we could only find the one strip club, but we were very happy when we discovered it was right beside the hostel we were staying in.

Now all this being said I feel I must inform you of our sincere disappointment in one of your cities restaurants “The Sphinx” beside the Cinnamon hostel and conveniently located next to the Go Go strip club. This was a thoroughly disappointing dining experience.

Now Mr. Mayor I don’t know much about your background, to be honest I don’t even know if you’re a man and there is a good chance I may be accidently insulting you. I presume you come from a political background filled with bribes and claiming too much on your expense reports. I feel I should inform you of my background so you know where I'm coming from when I go off on the rant I am about to go off on.

For several years now I have been working in restaurants in various positions. I worked as a waiter and barman in a Toby carvery in Aberdeen and then left the Granite City to work on the QE2 (perhaps you’ve seen my DVD, QE2 reloaded, if not then please just ask and ill send you one) while there I worked in every restaurant on the ship in various shitty jobs. I started as a commis waiter. Officially I was Chief Chocolate & Cheese Distribution Officer, Quarter Deck, Starboard Side (C.C.C.D.O.Q.D.S.S. for short) after this I worked my way up to become a Waiter in the top level restaurants. I left the ships in a drunken haze in July 2005 and started at a Restaurant in Aberdeen and quickly became Manager because I am so ace. I am currently one of several asst managers at an incredibly busy Spanish restaurant in Edinburgh. So you see Mr. Mayor I know how restaurants should operate, I'm not just another moron that’s been watching Ramsay's kitchen nightmares (although I do love that show). I am someone who has been working in the industry for a while now; this is both a good and a bad thing. People who work in the restaurant industry are always the most understanding when there is a problem, however we are also the hardest to please. In other words when I go to a restaurant I am a bit of a c**t! (I realise that due to certain cultural differences you may not understand what I mean when I type c**t! It means cunt! If you don’t know what cunt means then Google it.)

We went in around noon in the hope of having a big greasy fry up and some beers to help with our collective hangovers, sadly we were informed the restaurant did not do breakfast. Which is fair enough, we booked a table for 8pm that evening for 20 of us and headed to the pub, the group then split for the day. Some of us decided to stay at the beach volley ball and drink more cheap beer and some decided to go sight seeing. I’m sure you already guessed I stayed at the beach, there were better sights to be seen there, Miss Poland was there doing some kids sports day and then Tails (the really drunk one) tried (and failed) to jump over the pool. It was a great afternoon. As I understand it the guys doing the sight seeing enjoyed themselves too, I am told they went to C & A’s. After a quick power nap we all regrouped and headed to the aforementioned Sphinx Restaurant. I was initially confused as there appeared to be Egyptian décor and yet there seemed to be all types of food on the menu? From oriental style ribs to pizza. I did spot the Egyptian chicken soup on the menu; I was very surprised, as I had no idea chickens were from Egypt. In the movie Chicken Run they all sound like there from Yorkshire, someone is lying and I intend to get to the bottom of it, but that’s an issue for another day.

I was also very confused when our table was shaped like an L. This has always been a terrible choice for a table shape. Personally I have only done a table for a group like this once and only because they especially requested it. They were booked under the name ALF, the group seemed very upset when I asked which one of the guys were Alf and was later informed that it stood for Aberdeen Lesbian Federation. (In my defence they all looked quite mannish).

Anyway I digress. I was a tad upset at this table shape, due to unavoidable circumstances some of the group arrived 7 minutes later than the rest and I was forced to sit at the inside corner of the L. It was very uncomfortable as every time someone moved back they were banging into me, I had to move along and most of the time it looked like I was trying to shag the table leg. I know it’s been a while but I’ve not reached that stage yet.

After ordering we had beers and the banter was in full force. Then the starters came out. I was impressed they came so quickly, but then the restaurant was pretty dead except for us. As I'm a nice guy, Jonny and myself shared garlic bread as our starter. Poor Aders was sitting directly in front of us still waiting for his breaded cauliflower. By the time we finished ours Aders was still waiting as was Dazza and Adam, Dazza was only having soup! As I was finishing off my last piece of garlic bread Dazza finally got his soup. And Aders still had nothing. Then all our main courses came out. Before Dazza had his first spoonful of soup he was being told he had his steak thrust in front of him. All this and poor Aders was STILL waiting for his breaded cauliflower, He asked the waiter, who was clearly confused and offered him some bread. Meanwhile at the other side of the table Dazza had only just got his soup and had twice been offered his main course. Colin who was sitting beside him was RAGIN!( this was partly because he did not get the garlic bread he ordered) All the main courses got put down with the exception of Dazza, Aders, Lee and Adam. I had the black steak, it was alright, no one asked how I’d like it cooked though, which was weird. Do they ask in Poland? I assume they ask everywhere how you would like your steak cooked? Anyway we were all hungry and we all ate our mains while Dazza, Aders and Adam ate there starters and poor Lee was kept waiting, it seems they forgot about him. Eventually we all finished our mains and Lee and Aders were still waiting. I was tempted to run round the corner to MacDonald’s to buy them both a cheeseburger but sadly for them I'm a lazy bastard. Eventually Aders and Lee got their mains, 2 seconds after there plates went down the staff went to work of clearing the rest of us. I'm fairly certain they wanted rid of us. Mr Mayor I ask you, have you eaten in this place? Is this the norm? Or was this a tactic on your part to get us out of the restaurant and spend more money in the strip club? If so I applaud you, tell me do you have some financial interest in this strip club? Is this how your funding your next campaign? Sadly I doubt this is the case and so my whinge stands. I noticed on the sign for the restaurant it says “Sphinx” and underneath it says “Best Food by Tom Malton” Well Mr Mayor you must be a well connected man, get Tom on the phone and tell him to get his arse over to Poznan and sort out this bloody mess!!

Your city can be slightly intimidating at times, when we first arrived the woman at passport control scared the crap out of me. She had a scowl that could kill a man, why not greet everyone with one of the previously mentioned hotties that live in your town? Everyone would love that. I know I would!

I do not want to leave you on a sour note. Please understand Mr Mayor that we all loved your town, we had a great time. Everyday we found something better than the Day one we discovered the beach volleyball,

Day two we had a cracking night out in some awesome clubs I was a dancing machine and a couple of the boys paid for some strippers kids to go to university.

Day three we discovered my favourite bar, I can’t remember what it was called but it had fish tanks all along the wall and a terrarium with a snake and some turtles. That was really cool. I like the idea of combining a zoo and a bar. I hope one day you take it to the next step and employ Apes to take drinks to your table and have an elephant to give you a lift home. Imagine that Mr Mayor! That could help put your town on the map! I would be happy to help with this in any way I can. I should let you know that there is talk of a Stagiversary party (Please don’t let Kim know) and we may consider a return visit to Poznan, you would be very welcome to join us for a couple of beers one night. On that note Mr Mayor I shall end this letter. I hope you will take my comments on board, employ better looking passport control women and sort out that restaurant, oh and if you do find out where chickens come from then let me know.

Kind Regards

Andy G