Bright Lights & Crazy Nights, Pt.4

I can’t remember the last time I woke up at half four in the afternoon, although I’m sure if I racked my brains a little, it wouldn’t have been too long ago. Ryan had been here for a week and Monsieur Weather had a collection of different buckets of water of all different shapes and sizes, falling graciously upon the nation that normally is void of rain. In fact I’m sure there are some sort of “rain people” that live in bizarre squalors somewhere, allocating sections of rain to certain parts of the earth and this time, Portugal’s Downpour Protector, Paulo, must have fallen asleep. “Quick! Now, get them! We shall finally show them that they can have bad weather too! Mwa-Ha-Ha! Eat it Portugal!!!” And so, typically, Paulo also decided to wait till this day to allow El Soliooo to smash its way through the clouds and the thickly pasted ozone that lies above Portugal and ravish its lands with sun aplenty! Problem was… we missed it all. At 5 p.m. we ambled down to Avenida da Liberdade to grab us some breakfast. Still feeling like something non-human, we polished that up and walked through the baking streets to grab some items, typical of Portugal, for Triad to take back home to Blighty with him as a memorandum. Portuguese cocks and classic porn were on the menu and we fulfilled the touristical gods’ dreams amply… That day we were scheduled to head off to see my Grandmother to help her empty out the flat next door. What we didn’t realize was that there were 17 ½ tonnes worth of furniture to move. Still, we got in the car, probably still a little drunk, and headed on out there with Wolfmother blaring out on the stereo. It took the albums worth of time to get there and by the time we did, such was our buoyant mood that we’d have been ready to move the apartment, create a huge circular wooden disc on the floor so that we could have put everything back and spun it round to give us a psychotically euphoriaec felling that say, a drunkard coming home would feel or maybe that of a first-time-ever carrousel user. We decided, however, to keep it simple and a few buckets of sweat later we’d completed our mission, so we snatch n grabbed my grandmother and whisked her off for some fried chocos – the town’s local food and especially special speciality. It’s kinda like breaded cuttlefish, deep fried served with chips and a salad. By half ten we were just about finished and decided to head on back to Lisbon for Triad’s last night. We took my gran back and then decided to quickly stop off at Jesus - well, more like a huge statue representing the chap – who overlooks the city Lisbon. Just like the French donated the Statue of Liberty to the Americanites, so the Brazilians found it in their hearts to offer us a humungous statue of Lords son, which I still believe is being used by the Brazilians to hypnotise the Portuguese with invisible gamma ray radiation beams that shoot out from its evil eyes, in an attempt to give us all cancer and move in in the morning! I dunno. Just a theory. If I dissapear off the face of the planet in the next 24 hours, you'll know what's happened to me. Anyway, the statue is located on the top of a quiet hill on the south side of the river and when we got up there, we were shocked to find that not only was the perimeter closed off, but that it was also being guarded by a dog, a security guard and his shotgun. That’s one safe bloody Jesus. I mean, the statue is a million metres up in the air as it is anyway. Why on earth do you need some big and green angry dude with his gun and rabid three headed dog down the bottom to protect it?! I dunno. Anyway, also in the vicinity, we realized there were a few cars parked up in the shadows with their windows all steamed up and a couple of others in the distance doing some drag racing or something. What were all these people up to? There were no cafés open, no convenience stores, nothing! Oh well. Still, this didn’t stop us from having a little fun, melting some car tires and taking some cool photos. By the time we’d finished, most of the people in the cars must have gotten angry cus they’d cleared those misty windows and had driven off. And so it was our turn to drive off as well and go and meet up with our lady friend, the sexy cocktail bar waitress ;-) We’d phoned up Teresa but unfortunately, she was still recovering from the previous night’s proceedings and so wouldn’t be able to make it. After driving back through Lisbon, windows down with Wolfmother blasting outta the car once more, we got home, dropped our stuff off and headed out for another night on the tiles. We got up to the cocktail bar and sighed a sigh of relief when we saw that she was indeed there again. When she saw Ryan, she tilted her head in that sexy kinda way and beamed him another one of those smiles. The rest of the night was another of ogling, smiles, hugs, kisses, cocktails, beers, firewater and ciggies. Lots of sitting in the streets, lots of walking around all the different bars and cafés and plenty of tire melting. We then finished it off by going to a little bar where we suspected the cocktail waitress would go to, as apparently she’d worked there before and knew all the staff. When we got in there, she was standing by the bar and we were finally able to go and have a chat with her without it having to be quick convos inbetween asking for drinks. Her lushiously long, straight hair haloed from behind the red lights of the bar and her sexy smile turned us to goo once more. She turned out to be a lovely girl on top of the fact that she was utterly drop-dead gorgeous and we all got on like a house on fire. We chatted with her at the bar while she simultaneously helped out with empty glasses that would arrive and occasionally pour drinks out for people. At the end of the night, she was gonna stay behind and help her friends clear up and, once again, it was hard leaving the place without her. Nonetheless, six in the morning arrived at the speed of time (amazing that!) and Triad had to be in the airport at eight, so we thought better of it. She made us promise that we'd come back and visit soon, then we gave her a kiss goodbye and headed on home. Geez, man, why is this world jam packed with so many missed opportunities like that? Can we blame it on unfortunate circumstances this time? There are so many occasions we look back on and wonder, what if? The thing is, I don’t think that’s an entirely bad thing, and anyone that says you should never regret anything is frankly wrong in my eyes. For starters, those missed opportunities give you dreams ;-) if you know what I mean! Hehe! Turn it positive dude! And also, if you just go for everything and rush into it with solely one intention, you’ll probably find that you end up making more enemies through your blatant disregard and lack of respect for others around you, and eventually regret more of life that way. I dunno. This could be seen as an excuse for cowardly actions of course - don’t think I haven’t thought about that - but, I’d like to think I’m a pretty good judge of situations and if the moment isn’t quite right, what’s the point in pushing the boat out. I mean, you’d probably just end up falling into the water! OK, ok, if that water was a beautiful lake with rivetingly oasissitic features, palm trees at the side and glistening pebbles on its bed then fine! Hey what the heck, throw a little mermaid in there while you’re at it too! But… what if that’s the Thames, eh? You’d think twice about it, wouldn’t you?