Have you ever been stuck in a lift at 2:30am with 4 drunken
Geordies? No? Well, I’d highly recommend it. If you’d indulge me, I’d like to
tell you of how we became stuck in this predicament.
It all started on Thursday 4th
April 2013. Newcastle United were in Lisbon to play Benfica in the Europa
League. We’ve had some amazing away trips in recent years (type in “drunk
Geordie sings coloccini song” into Youtube. It’s my uncle doing karaoke in
Swansea last April. He was drunk. I nearly died laughing Below is a photo of
myself and my brother. We can’t really breath, we were laughing so much. I’m
the one who has collapsed from laughing, my brother’s the one who’s having the
heart attack.), so expectations were high for this one. New country for me, new
stadium for all of us (I think) and good times a plenty.
Anyway, I digress. We flew from Manchester airport early
Thursday morning, strolling past the plebs who didn’t opt for fast boarding or
whatever it’s called. Everything from then on was hunky dory, get into Faro
airport fine. Now, we get to the passport control, and lo and behold, the people
have been replaced by machines. In theory, a great idea. In practice, when a
plane containing the odd drunken Geordie turns up, not such a great idea. One
man in particular, my God, he approaches the machine, which was already quite
troublesome for the many holidaymakers already, and puts his passport in upside
down, backwards, on the wrong page. Every possible incorrect way, he did this,
until finally he gets through the first gate. You could hear everybody behind
him let out a sigh of relief. Until he shouted “Tonight Matthew, I’m gonna
be…”, not realising he had another gate and check to do. Wanker.
Driving from Faro to Lisbon was fine, I was in my shorts and
t-shirt, enjoying the 15oC Toon summer that Lisbon was experiencing. Until it
started raining, so I sadly had to change into my jeans out of practicality,
leaving my ambition by the wayside. We
get into our hotel which is right next to a metro station and make our way to
the city centre for lunch. As first impressions go, Lisbon: you fail. Within
seconds of leaving the metro station, we were offered coke by a 15 year old,
crack by a 30 year old, and a huuuuge bag of weed by a pensioner with no top
on. Crazy. I’d go back there in a heartbeat if all the people buggered off. We
even saw one girl with only one arm, who one of us gave a euro to. She then
walks over to one of the drug dealers, gives the money to him, high-5s him
(with her one remaining arm, clearly) and proceeds to put on the “help me I’m
poor” face. You’ve got to hand it to her, she’s handy at her job. Let’s give
her a big hand. She does help collect alms for the poor.
This face.
The thing with our football trips is that, more often than
not, the match becomes an irrelevance (mainly cos we lose, a lot). We lost the
match 3-1, but that doesn’t matter too much in terms of how enjoyable this trip
was. Before the match, to ramp up the atmosphere and as a sign of “fate” or
whatever, a bald eagle is flown around the Benfica stadium, and if it lands on
a certain spot, then Benfica will win. So of course it lands on the certain
spot, and of course Benfica win. Oh well… After the match had finished, and we had
some food, we settled in the Hard Rock Café like any tourist would, and enjoyed
some good music and a few cocktails.
The next day, up early-ish to travel back down the
Portuguese coast to Faro. Getting into the hotel there, we learn that my uncle,
who had organised it all, had in fact booked us in for the previous night. So,
with some negotiating, he gets the 4 of us rooms for the night, upgraded from
the ones we would have had, only paying a bit extra on top of the previous
fees. Well worth it I’d say. Faro is really where the story gets going though.
After finding a beautiful bar on the city walls over-looking the sea, and
drinking some caiprinhas while getting a bit of a tan on, dearest uncle again
had a fantastic idea of doing a boat tour of the coast. Ok, bird-watching on a
footy trip isn’t quite what I signed up for, but we went along with it. Before
getting on the boat, I thought it my duty to buy at least one round on the
trip, so I did. Luckily, it only came to 6, yes 6 euros. And that wasn’t even the
cheapest round of the night, but more on that later. Anyway, realising that the
boat we were getting to an island which was “one of THE places to see in the
Algarve” was going to be the last one of the day, we decided to do what all
Geordies would do in that situation. Upon arriving at the island, we ran off
the boat, straight to the bar, got in some beers, ran back to the boat and
relaxed, having seen all we needed to see. The overall turnaround of
boat-pint-boat was about 90 seconds, which is pretty impressive, even for toon
standards.
After being joined by some of our pals who got the train
down instead of rent-a-lack-of-legroom, we went in search for some authentic
Portuguese cuisine, which we found on the off-chance in a small, quiet
restaurant off the beaten track somewhat. Great food, nice owner, the evening
seemed to be progressing well. Until some pretty rough looking Geordies walk
in, one of them going (in a Geordie accent, obviously) “ee, what are ye deeing
here?!”, rather aggressively. One of our party of 5 got pretty annoyed about
this, and started mumbling to us about fighting them if anything kicks off.
That is, up until he goes to the toilet and, upon his return, is stopped by one
of the hard-arse Geordies commenting about his t-shirt, which was a Rush
t-shirt (a Canadian prog-rock band, seen in I Love You, Man, starring Paul Rudd
and Jason Segel). Suddenly these aggressive, drunken louts were now best
friends, or Rush Wankers as the rest of us called them. How things can change
in a blink of an eye.
Maybe it was the amazing Portuguese cuisine, the great
atmosphere created by the Rush Wankers, or the wine; actually, it was
definitely the wine, but we were all having a class time. At the dinner table,
we decided to play a tongue-twister drinking game we call Mrs
Higgledy-Piggledy. It may go by a different name to you, but that’s what we
call it. Anyway, you have to recite a 9-stage tongue-twister, stage by stage
all the way through, drinking when you make a mistake and starting at the stage
you made an error at. It goes like this: "One fat hen; A couple of ducks; Three
Brown Bears; Four running hares; Five fat females fixing for a fight; Six
Sicilian seamen sailing the seven seas; Seven sleek sheep slitters skilfully
slitting sheep; Eight: I’m not a pleasant pheasant plucker, I’m the pheasant
plucker’s mate, I only pluck the pheasants when the pleasant pheasant plucker’s
late; Nine: Mrs Higgledy-Piggledy has a square-cut punt, not a punt cut square
but a square-cut punt. Round in the middle, square at the front, Mrs
Higgledy-Piggledy has a square-cut punt."
Saying this as fast as possible,
especially when even the slightest bit tipsy, is hard, but so very funny. I’d
strongly recommend it.
From the restaurant, we wondered the streets of Faro for a
bit, stumbling upon a student festival outside a church. Yeah! Students! Booze
and debauchery and stuff! No. Portuguese students prefer to recite poetry and
crap like that for their parties. As lame as it sounds, I managed to buy
possibly the cheapest round of drinks I’ll ever buy. €2,80 for 4 beers, not
pints, but y’know, that’s amazing no matter how you look at it. So in total, I
bought two rounds consisting of 4 beers each, and still got change from €10.
Economic ;)
The student festival thing was pretty lame, so we headed
back to the bar on the city walls, which was now heaving and had a live band
playing, consisting of a guitarist who thought he was far better than he really
was, and a female singer who was suitable for the venue. Now, there’s a phenomena
that I only really noticed here, but in fact it is a worldwide thing: if Shania
Twain comes on, be it band or DJ, women in their late 30s-mid 50s just appear
out of nowhere and dance. Remarkable.
Leaving the bar at 2ish in the AM, we started the walk back
to the hotel, passing by a park on the way. Only, this wasn’t a park. It was an
outdoor gym, with cross trainers and arm thingies and other gym stuff. So,
being pretty merry, but not smashed, well one of us was, we decided to have a
bit of a late night/early morning workout. After satisfying our inner child,
something inside us possessed the 5 of us to samba through the streets of Faro
all the way back to the hotel. I can’t comment on how good we were, but we were
loud enough to seem amazing. Reaching the doors of the hotel, we stop samba-ing
and start walking, as if everything was normal. Getting into the lift, we wait
until the doors close, and start samba-ing again, lift shaking. One of us
thought it hilarious to jump and stomp on the floor, stopping the lift before
we even reached the first floor. Black.
I do believe this is where I started this story. 5 of us,
myself included, stuck in a lift at 2:30am in Faro. We burst out laughing, and
I decide to stopwatch how long we were stuck for. It felt like hours. One of
the more senior members of the group, seeing certain death on the horizon, got
very angry indeed, shouting at us for wasting oxygen for laughing so much and
samba-ing further in this time of crisis. Three and a half minutes almost
exactly. Doors open and a very disgruntled female receptionist stands, probably
swearing at us in Portuguese, staring into our souls as we try not to laugh. Of
course, once we get to the first floor, we samba up the stairs again. A perfect
end to a rather good trip.