A perky start in the land of the Coffee bean

When I went out to Brasil (yes it is spelt with an ´s´. I have no idea why we spell it differently. Maybe cause we ruled the world a while ago and thought it would piss them off), I wrote a lot of emails back to friends and family back home. Simply because I didn´t speak a word of Portuguese and longed for good old blighty banter. So instead of trying to remember what I said I had the brainwave of just copying them and adding them her. So what follows is my interesting trip to Brasil. In email form. I hope it isn´t confusing.

By the way if there is any Italics like this then it´s because I have need to add or explain something that would otherwise be lacking sense. Hope you don´t mind.

From Heathrow to Sáo Paulo. This was a very long day.

Ola. Just a quick hello to all back home. Is it raining? Beautiful weather here. Have just got to a internet cafe and thought I´d drop you a line. You must be about 6pm there. It´s 3pm here at the moment.

I feel the need to explain the bit coming up about Heathrow. I had booked a flight from Heathrow at 6:00am to Sao Paulo as it was cheaper. And my father was kind enough to offer me a lift to the terminal. Much easier then me having to trek there on trains and underground tubes at four in the morning. Thanks I said and thought no more about it. ´We´ll be leaving at 1:00am and getting there for 2:00am´, said my father on the evening before my trip. ´Í beg your pardon?´ I managed. ´But I´ll be there four hours early´. ´Sorry´, he replied. ´Got to think about the traffic`. Oh well. Could be worse. I´ll just have to bum it around Duty Free for a few hours before checking in. Needless to say I was not in the best of moods after only one hour sleep, and with a heavy heart, and even heavier legs, we set off for Heathrow. Me and my father spoke little as I dozed on the way. ´Which terminal am I taking you to?´ he asked. I looked through me e-ticket but it said nothing about the terminal number. Thanks KLM. ´I think it was number 4.´Okay, this was a random guess and proved costly. I ended up at terminal 4 at Heathrow at 2:30am. Still tired I tried to sleep on the benches provided in the waiting area but found i could not manage it. My days as a bum were far behind me obviously. To keep some kind of energy flowing through me I looked for my gate number. Wasnt there. Probably too early i thought. So I looked around for the airlines that flew from this one. KLM? KLM? KLM? Nope no KLM. Oh crap! Oh yes. My plane was leaving from terminal 3. And if you haven´t travelled from or to 4 from any other terminal then let me tell you that the distance between them is close to the length of the Channel Tunnel. Maybe I exagerate but at 3:00am it certainly felt like that. So I set off for the underground. Ít´s only five minutes by the tube. I walked along empty corriders; my footsteps echoing like ancient tombs shutting. The florescent light blinding my vision. My....you get the picture. Twenty minutes walking led me to what? ´Underground Opening time - 5:30am.´ You have got to be joking. Well then, I´ll get a cab. No cabs. Fine, a bus! No buses for an hour. ALRIGHT! I`LL WAIT AN HOUR! Got there in the end and was very glad of a warm........well, a warm anything. I would of hugged someones colostomy bag if it had given me my feeling back in my hands. i hope that will make the next sentence a little more detailed and heart felt. Good.

 After a very long journey from heathrow, which consisted off one of the coldest mornings of my life, I finally landed in Sao Paulo where Paula was waiting for me. I then learnt that our bus was not for another 5 hours at another bus depot. I should not moan as Paula did this trip to the airport once already that day. We got to the depot at 9pm our time and settled down for the 3 hour wait. I tried a bread found everywhere in Brasil called ´pao de queijo`which literally translates to ´bread of cheese´which turned out to be very nice.

Apparently you can get beer from just about anywhere at any time. James (my younger brother) would like it here. We went to a huge park today(nothing to do but walk) and then to a shopping centre that some bright spark had decided to build in the middle of the motorway which led to a bit of mission impossible with us dodging and strafing across the roads. The drivers here are a bit insane and seem to speed up when they see a person in a shirt sporting St Georges cross.

Now for my moment of triumph. I was invited by Paula´s brother-in-law to go play in a football game with him and some friends of his. I tried to explain my hideous back problem (crippling pain I´ve had all my life - except the first 18 years) would keep me from playing but would of loved to show these silly brazilians what the good game of english football is all about. But none of Paula´s family speak english so I had to say yes. I claimed to play like Steven Gerrard. They didn´t seem to know who I was talking about and I´m sure I heard the name Stevie Wonder mentioned. Oh well. Anyway I went all dressed up, in long shorts, and ready to kick butt. ´I´ll show these barbarians how to play the beautiful game´, I thought. By they way these guys play twice a week and are all much bigger then me.

Ready and eager to show my silky skills I asked, ´How long do we play for? ´

´We will be playing for an hour and a half´, came the answer.

´I beg your padon? How long???? An hour and a half??!!!!!!!!! Do know I smoke twenty a day? Could be worse I supp...........what do you mean NON-STOP!!!!!´

When I came round I found that I had passed out for only 5 seconds and had the whole game to play still. I slowly wandered on to the pitch desperate for some stroke of genius to get me out of this situation. Maybe a stray meteor. But upon looking at the sky and finding no hellish ball of rock and fire plummeting to my location I took up my postion on this five-a-side pitch (which turned out to be a mixture of astro-turf, grit, earth and fist sized pebbles as my back and knees can testify). I was on Jefferson´s side (Paula´s brother-in-law). The whistle was blown by the guy who owned both the pitch and the restaurant which sat next to it. He then walked back in. Great! No ref! And I swear one of the opposite guys winked at me. Time to suck it up and try to do the brave thing and hide in the corner as far from the ball as possible the entire game. Didn´t work.

Well, I knew I was crap. They knew I was crap. Everybody bar Paula, who kept shouting encouraging remarks, seemed to agree I was utterly bollocks. I thought every last breath would be my last and that this red hot bullet who I was marking (he had the name Robinho on his back. Not far wrong if you ask my legs) would twist me up again and again until my lungs would eventually give up hope and seek the quickest and shortest route to fresh air...via my mouth. But then the moment came. I was 15 yards from the opposition goal when the ball was passed to me (my team mate, I suppose, had assumed I was someone else). My first touch was perfection. I went to fake a pass through to our best player up front and was being closed down by what I can only describe as escapee from the local gorilla sanctuary. But a liitle bit of skill, Ronaldinho would be proud of, and I flicked the ball past him to the right. I heard the inhuman grunts he made as he missed to my left and fell in a heap behind me. I pulled my right foot back like a sling shot. The keeper shat himself but made a brave attempt to look big and menacing. I pulled the trigger. Silence. GOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLL LL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They now have a picture of me on the wall next to Romario. He used to come and play here when he was young. I scored two more goals that game. After an hour and a half the guy came out again a blew his whistle and slowly turned all the lights off. It was nearly midnight. I bent down to pick up my water bottle, my dignity and what i could find of my lung. I then went to the toilets and threw up for ten minutes. Great day though. They´ve asked me to come back next week but thankfully Paula has booked us to go for a week to the beach island of Florianapolis. Oh well. And I have photos to prove it! (Actually I lost the camera for a week and when I found it again all the pictures of me playing and then dying after the game of football were gone. None of my family believe me and Paula won´t tell them, as my only witness, because she thinks it´s funny not to)

All the best and wish Mum and Amy hello. I bet James is reading this and not believing a single bloody word of it.

Tchau

Dan

(some of this email may have been embelished for the sake of story telling. So sue me!)