Only the Washing Up!

How do you buy your bikes? Go into a shop, point out the one you like and say: “I’ll have that one, please”? Not me!

Ask a friend if you can buy one off him? Well, sort of ‘yes’ but also ‘no’.

I’ll stop talking about how you might get one and I’ll start telling you about how I got one.

We were staying with our friends Christophe, Susanna and Ava at Christophe’s dad Joachim’s house. Joachim invited some friends round for dinner. One of them was Daniele, but everyone called him ‘Papa-Nous’, which is French for ‘Our father’.

Somehow he managed to fit in “I have 160 bikes” into the conversation. My bike is too small for me now and I was looking for a new bike, not a mountain bike or a BMX but a dropped handlebar road bike like the ones in Le Tour.

We knew it would be hard to get one but Papa-Nous came to the rescue. He invited us to see his bikes the next day, so we went to his beautiful house in the middle of the countryside and looked in his barns at all the old bikes.

He would find them, or buy them cheaply from flea markets, do them up then sell them. He had loads everywhere!

We asked him if he had any kids’ bikes. He thought I wanted a BMX, but I said I wanted a road bike and he said he knew where to get one. He had leant one to a friend who lived nearby.

He jumped in his car to fetch the bike, brought it home, cleaned it off and took me on a test ride through the lanes. It was 30 years old!

How did it feel? Well, I was just about to tell you. Because it has dropped handlebars I can go more aerodynamic (faster because the wind doesn’t buffet you) so it felt like I was really racing. It was great because that’s just what I wanted.

I hope you enjoy the pictures and this blog., and a big thank you to Papa-Nous. My new bike cost the massive amount of . . .  €0 (although Mum and Dad bought him a bottle of wine to say thanks)!

Billy

And that is all the sporting and general news . . . but, before we leave, over to Olympia, the home of the Olympic Games, where there is an exciting race on:

So, all the contestants: from Gaul we have Asterix (Billy), from Rome we have Timotheus (Dad), from Britannia we have Charlius (Charlie) and  from Helvetica (Switzerland) we have Chris (a friend).

On your marks . . .

get set . . . .

GO!!!!!

And it’s a great start from Asterix, overtaking Charlius and Timotheus within 15m.

There’s only Chris to go and Asterix overtakes him, but then he’s overtaken back by Chris, and then they’re equal, and then Asterix sprints over the line in first place.

Now to the podium: bronze medal goes to Charlius, silver medal goes to Chris and in first place with the gold medal is Asterix.

Speaking after his victory, Asterix said: “Racing at Olympia, on the same track used by runners thousands of years ago, was amazing. I can’t believe I won gold.”

First Fantastic Football.  I have been to the neu camp for the second time!!!  I watched Barca beat athletico Bilbao 2-1. The first Barca goal Alves ran down the right wing and crossed it in to Villa and BANG GOOOOOAAALLLL.  Then a muck up by Abidal passing to Busquets who puts his foot out causing the Bilbao striker to clumsily fallover his foot for a penalty, boo. Smash, the ball finds the top corner and it’s one all.  In the second half both teams have loads of shots but none go in until the 83^rd minute when Xavi kicks a flying through ball to Alves who crosses it to Messi who scores so casually it is almost like the ball just hit his foot!!  This was a great match because Bilbao is a Basque team and Barcelona are Catalan and the two regions are big rivals, like Gloucestershire and Somerset in cricket.

Next sport Rough Rugby.  I have seen 2 rugby matches the first one was in an odd place, it was in Barcelona – I didn’t know they played rugby in Spain.  It was only a club match and we didn’t watch for long but we did see a punch up! That never happens in Rugby (hee-hee)

The other rugby match was in Italy it was in a bar in Florence and it was Italy v Wales in the six nations, there were some Italians and some Welsh fans and it was an Irish bar run by Chinese so as mixed up as an ice-cream sundae – mmmm,ice-cream – sorry back to sport.  I am surprised that I am not waking up early as it is my rugby day at home and I am missing playing and hope I won’t get to battered when I get back.

Yet another sport American Football (pass the burgers!)????  So I saw football in Barca, Rugby in Barca and now American football, also in Barca – city of sport!  It is an odd game because there are 3 hours during the match which may seem long but 2 hours of that is spent changing, delays and eating burgers. They keep on running into each other, it sounds like an Italian dust cart – clatter,clatter,bang! – but it is just the players I  their armour.

That’s all for now adios amigos and Ciao baby.

p.s How is Dursley doing in the season so far are you still winning?

Hi guys

Happy Christmas I hope you all love your presents

From Billy

Hi guys,

It’s the same day as I got back from the football because I stayed up until half past one. It was a great game, second versus third, the equivalent of Man Utd v Arsenal.

After only 21 minutes, David Villa had scored a stunning goal for Barca. Iniesta set him up, passing to the left of the box, Villa smashed the ball into the top right corner. What a goal! 1-0 Barca. All of the crowd went wild, there were barely any Villarreal fans – we can only recall seeing three of them, wearing their yellow strip.

In the 26^th minute, Iniesta passed a great ball to Messi who then passed it to Pedro, who scored, but Messi was offside. From the freekick, Villarreal equalised.

During half time the Villerreal subs were warming up and when the players came back out, the subs didn’t take their balls away, so the Villarreal keeper had to get rid of the balls.

In the 58^th minute, Barcelona had another goal, this time from Messi, who chipped the ball over the keeper from close range.

With only four minutes to go, Messi scored again. Before we left we watched Messi’s top ten goals on You Tube and last night’s goal was just like one of them – he was running down the right and he was really close, just kicking the ball over the keeper into the top left corner and with only one minute left, Messi had a great chance to score his hat-trick, but his shot was blocked by a sliding defender.

We had three people we could have given man of the match too – Xavi, Iniesta and Messi. The atmosphere was amazing. We were sitting behind the goal, just to the right. They only had a few songs but they were loud ones.

Hi guys,

I’m going to yet a another match Barca –Villa Real at the neu camp (Barca).

Since I left Sicila I’ve been to  Pompeii, Cassino and from Roma to Barca.

How is life in England?

from

Billy

p.s.Say get well soon to anyone how is Ill from me

p.p.s.I hope no one is ill

If you ever come to see a Serie A match, bring your passports to the ground.

As an early birthday present, Mum & Dad bought tickets for the game, but when we got to the stadium, we weren’t allowed in because we had no identification.

Mum volunteered to race back to the van to get our passports, thinking we had only half an hour to kick off. She made it just in time but when we got into the ground we were wondering why the game hadn’t started.

All our watches said it was half past 12, but then we worked out it was half past 11 because the clocks went back, but we didn’t know – oops! We had made Mum run back as quickly as she could for no apparent reason.

We were behind the goal and really high in the stand. It felt strange because whenever we watch Gloucester City we are really low down behind the goal. We probably had the best seats in the house. It felt as if we were watching it from the TV because we were so high up.

We were supporting Palermo – the capital city of Sicily – whose shirts were bright pink.

After a minute Palermo had a chance but it was missed by Pastore, who was clean through. There were some people in front of us who were standing up, so we had to stand up on our chairs to see. It was a terrible miss. We thought it was a one-off but all the rest of the game he played really badly.

There was someone who had a ponytail who was the only one who seemed to want Palermo to win. He wore No 42 and his name was Balzaretti.

It was an amazing atmosphere. We saw an punch-up, some good time-wasting by Lazio and some great dives, even more impressive than Ronaldo and Drogba . . .

The full time score sadly was Palermo 1 : Lazio 0, which meant Lazio stayed top, ahead of Inter Milan. It’s surprising the way Lazio played and how excited their fans were, especially because they were top and should be used to winning. They have played 9 games in the season so far and they’ve only scored 13 goals.

It was the equivalent of watching Chelsea v Aston Villa, but a lower standard.

Hi guys,

Sorry we haven’t been able to blog, it’s been hard to find a place with internet access.

Me and Dad went to bar to watch the Italy v Serbia game a week or so ago, but a Serbian fan wearing a balaclava climbed on the fence, cutting the wire, and the game was abandoned.

We went up Mt Etna yesterday, and stayed the night up there. How are things in England? It would be good to hear from you.

Billy

We’ve been away now for coming up for three months, so I thought I’d give you a highlights package (like Match of the Day) of our adventure.

i)     DENMARK Bog man – someone who was hung (he had a cord round his neck), maybe as a sacrifice about 1,000 years ago and thrown into the bog (marsh)! He had been preserved very well and looking at him, you might think he drowned in mud yesterday.

ii)   GERMANY Brandenburg Gate – there was a chariot and the Goddess of Victory on top of the gate, on the poorer side of the Berlin Wall. About 200 years ago, Napoleon conquered the Prussians (old-fashioned name for Germans) and nicked the trophy and took it back to France but in the battle of Waterloo, when it looked like the English were going to lose until the Prussians turned up and won and got the trophy back.

iii) CZECH REPUBLIC Punk fire show – there was a mad show in Prague by some Swedes. One of them was riding a motorbike through a ring of fire. It wasn’t actually that dangerous because there was a gap for him to go through, but someone nicked the motorbike and someone else had one and they started mucking about and going through it dangerously. Another time there was a man who covered himself in petrol, climbed into a barrel of petrol and set fire to it . . . (health and safety warning: don’t set fire to a petrol station, it’ll go up much more than you wanted it to).

iv) AUSTRIA Rain, rain, rain = bore, bore, bore zzzzzzzzzz. There was only one day when it wasn’t raining and we went up to the top of a mountain. It had snowed the night before, so there was fresh snow which was nice to eat (yum, yum) and throw at people (hee hee)

v)   SLOEVNIA Big waterfall. At one stage it was practically vertical. It fell into an emerald pool which looked tempting to swim in –  well, it was a hot day!!!!

vi) CROATIA Amphitheatre at Pula. The Amphitheatre was the 6^th biggest remaining in the world. The biggest is in Rome but I don’t know the name of it. The one at Pula has survived for more than 2,000 years. You could see where the wooden seats for the poor were. Only a few of the stone seats were still there.

vii)        ITALY Mad drivers The Italians like to honk their horns. They also pull out in front of you without indicating! How mad is that!?!?!?! We thought the Croats were bad but we were wrong wrong and even more wrong.