Oxford & Cambridge Goat Race

There are people who can make even an old curmudgeon like me smile. I smile because in the main they do a send-up parody of a popular event. Alternatively they debunk or give a slanted view on life just to remove any last vestiges of normality or conformity. One such event is the "The Oxford and Cambridge Goat Race."

Now for those not in the know - the occasional running of the Oxford and Cambridge boat race is also timed to coincide with this goat racing event. So today Saturday March 26th 2011 at Spitalfields City Farm, London you can enjoy the "The Oxford & Cambridge Goat Race." By the way, the other Oxford and Cambridge event is being held on a near-by river.

 

I have noticed that the weather has improved dramatically, however this may be because I am writing this whilst sat in the airport in Girona. We are waiting for our "Fly by Dire" return flight with rip-off Ryanair. On our flight out I asked for a bottle of water "Bottle of water sir - that's 3 euro's."  Later, I noticed on the price list that a bottle of beer was only 2.5 euro's!! However, the physical size of bottles and mineral water cans would not be out of place in a dolls house.

Yes, we are just returning from a short holiday in Spain. We went to Calella on the Costa Brava. The Memsahib is currently busy doing the rounds of the airport shops to dispose of the last few Euro's that we have left over.

The highlight of the holiday was catching the train into Barcelona. At a cost of 15 Euro's for two return tickets for the one hour journey, it proved to be good value when compared to the cost of a similar length of rail-journey in the UK. We did all the usual tourist things like a visit to the marina and we even managed to find a Subway sandwich shop where we both had a meal for about 3.5 Euro's each.

I like Barcelona but I must admit Barcelona is a real tourist rip-off. Do not even try and have anything to eat near the attractions. We went into one of those "Pizza Shed" places where they tried to charge us the equivalent of £18 for a medium sized pizza! Not only that, but tea or coffee was an extra!! Need less to say we made our excuses “no way Jose” and left.

 

The Memsahib did a lot of window shopping just off the Plaza Catalonia where all of the international fashion houses are located. They are the ones with clothes made out of what looked like recycled sacking and spray-on glitter. We were able to compare the prices of the glittery recycled item's to what the total outlay had been for our all inclusive holiday. So we saw quite a few three and four holiday recycled glitter coats and a large number of two holiday flimsy glitter shoes.

When it comes to the bare faced cheek in asking folk to  pay out such sums of hard earned money – I am minded that Dick Turpin the highway man at least wore a mask. Yes, the grumpy old curmudgeon is still alive and well.

Later....