The Real Quiz

Helen and Mary had booked the four of us into a small holiday resort type thing in Noosa, and it turned out a million times better than we could ever have imagined. 

The little apartment we were staying in was nice enough to live in, it had a swimming pool that allowed us to sun ourselves around and a tennis court for football tennis. We spent the next few days doing just those things, getting exceedingly sun-scorched and eating beer and drinking lots and lots of food.

And we got The Dark Knight out again. Awesome.

We were going to be spending Christmas there, and were wondering what we were going to do about food on Christmas day. We finally decided on having a barbecue, and set about drawing up the extensive plan of the mechanisation systems of the feast. I was in charge of the meat.

As well as the meat derby that we planned to hold on the 25th, on Christmas Eve, we went to a hostel-cum-pub that was up the road and had a proper Christmas dinner with turkey and everything.

We weren't expecting much but it was actually pretty flipping brilliant. We were so impressed by the food, and also the three members of staff that were feeding and serving a whole pub full of drunken people late on Christmas Eve that we decided to whack on a sizeable tip at the end. 

I was charged with going up after the meal into the kitchen to dish out the money. The only problem was that when I got into the kitchen only the old lady that had been cooking the food was present.

'Can I leave this as a tip, please? That was lovely and it's amazing you were able to make it all in this little kitchen.' I gushed, like a schoolgirl in front of Gary Barlow's legendary genitals.

'Oh no darl', you're backpackers we can't take that much money off you.' She said, out of her good eye.

'No, really, we insist. It was great.'

'I tell you what, if you really want to give me something you can get me a drink.'

Right, now it became obvious that the lady thought I was tipping her. I panicked and ran back to the table and asked what to do. I was met with mixed derision and scoffing, and that I was that useless I 'couldn't even leave a tip'.

I was now emotionally hurt and the quiz was about to start, and so I returned to the kitchen trying to explain that it was for everyone, not just the extras from the riot episode of Prisoner Cell Block H. This was only half successful, and so I grabbed one of the waiter men in with me and asked if he could share the tip round everyone. Success.

After this experience, and the Dagley Trio's consistent haranguing, I was not mentally prepared for the quiz. I didn't have my brain head on. What's more the guy who was reading the questions out was dressed as Father Christmas and his fake beard kept going in his mouth, which inexplicably made me feel incredibly nauseous.

Despite this, I was by far and away the outstanding player on our team (for which we'd reverted back to the classic and called 'Buster Corpse and the Necrophiliacs') - if only they had listened to my answers.

The fact that I could not perform a transaction that only required me to hand over money and not even receive anything back seemingly meant that I also didn't qualify to know the answers to festive-orientated pub quiz quandaries.

We finished third from bottom behind three 'Slavs that held about fifteen words of English and the same amount of fingers between them and a quintet, or a 'tossload' as I liked to group them as, of Australian lads that answered every question with a different word for vagina.

Not letting this under-performance get us down, we got down to some beer swilling with a couple of Australian men and a Kiwi bloke. These lads were good fun, until it was home time and they realised that they weren't going to be able to sleep with any of us, and then they got reasonably aggressive. Nevertheless, we said our goodbyes and walked down to the taxi rank.

(The other day on a trip south in Argentina we were essentially forced to watch Vertical Limit, starring Chris O'Donnell of Batman franchise-ruining fame, which had the quasi-amusing line said by an Australian of an Australian, 'He's like a dog. If he sees something moving he tries to hump it, if he can't hump it, he'll eat it, and if he can't eat it he'll piss on it.' This was the state of play. Apart from the piss.)

Once there, we found two six-packs of bottles of beer that had been abandoned, and we quickly scooped them up and bundled into a taxi. One of the packs of beer just about lasted the trip home, before being dropped three yards out of the taxi. 

The other pack of liquid goodness was dropped as soon as we entered our flat, sending shards of miniscule glass everywhere over the tiled floor.

I knelt down to brush up the larger pieces and must have put my knee onto a patch of vaporised glass dust, as suddenly there was a pool of blood on the floor around my knee.

I rushed upstairs to wash my knee under the tap in the bath, only to pull the whole tap out of the wall. At this point, all hell broke loose.

It was like the 'crazy' scene in a Steve Martin film where things were flying around and people were going mental and Steve Martin stands in the middle of it with his hands over his ears and shouts something hilarious like 'STOP!'. 

Except that nobody was laughing.

No wait, that is the same.

Mary and Helen started to shout at each other about something - possibly the tap, which was pouring out about 200 litres a minute, my knee was pissing blood like a confused mosquito and Emma was trying to Skype her mate back in England.

Things then quickly escalated to all out lunacy when Helen attempted to call the police, yes, you read correctly, THE POLICE, and then ran outside into the residential cul-de-sac and shouted ´IS THERE NOBODY THERE?!!´ as loud as a 757 taking off on a runway of kittens before shortly blowing up and smashing into a piano factory.

A shame to end a very fun evening like this, I thought.

Then I remembered it was Christmas Eve. Standard.

Christmas Day was a much more fun affair, with more meat than we could eat, and even Helen had great food too. Our differences were forgotten, even Helen let the Police off for not coming round to fix our tap. 

'Really though, we really got no beef with the PoPo.' She might have said.

Three days later, it was time to say goodbye to Mary and Emma. This was a pretty emotional affair as Emma and Mary were on separate planes and so there were two 'saying goodbye' sessions. I didn't cry so much as get pissed. Won two beach balls and a sweat band on three out of four scratch cards! Bonus.

And then it was just Helen and I again. So we quickly went back to Lisa's in Sydney so we didn't have to spend any time alone.

Prison Break (without the tattoos or the vaguely masked homoerotics)

Racing along the motorway back to Brisbane I had a feeling in my stomach reminiscent of the time that I stole a newspaper from a garage forecourt and Helen's mum had seen me, slight awkwardness of what was about to happen with a hint of, 'Well, whatcha gonna doaboudit?'.

This time however, I was to only be an accomplice in the tea-leafing and it wouldn't be Wednesday’s Guardian that I'd be stealing but a real, in nearly every sense of the word, person. Emma Louise Dagley to be precise.

Screeching up to the shop like a baby with a bayonet, we realised we had no rope or dynamite between us (having used it all making lunch), and, when all was said and done, not a gnat's cock of a real plan.

Ever the hero, I stepped up to go and grasp Emma and her stuff from the shop. This was essentially because I feared for the safety of the population of the surrounding area if Helen or Mary had been the ones going in Rambo style.

Gingerly stepping out of the car, I imagined that I was moving in black and white and slow motion, and I kept saying 'Megatron must be stopped, no matter the cost...'

My mantra only succeeded in me walking into the shop singing in my head 'You´ve got the touch! You've got the POOOOOOW-EEEEEEEEEEEERRRRR!' at the top of my mind-lungs and being totally ill-prepared for what was about to happen.

Luckily, my own stupidity allowed me to bumble through the next five minutes of Emma running away from her employers and we all joyously jumped into the car - I tell you, we were glad it wasn't a Yaris the amount of stuff Emma had, cor - and the sheer excitement of having everyone together and ready to go and have fun for the first time (for Emma at least) in six months was overwhelming.

For about three and a half minutes.

The Dagley trio then went back to business as usual, and much of the drive home was spent at either top of the range shouting or complete silence.

I used all of my Finnegan skill to disarm the situation by keeping absolutely silent. I did fart once to try and break the deadlock but I reneged on my own bravery and blamed it on Emma in the end.

But, after all was said and done ('You never walk, you never run - YOU'RE A WINNER!'), Emma was free, I was four, and we were on the road to Noosa.


A quick aside, all of this Transformers soundtrack talk has forced me to remember that I sat through a two minute teaser trailer for the next 'Transformers' (those are quotation marks of contempt by the way) 'movie' the other day. 

I solemnly swear, with my hand on my heart and my heart in my lap, that when I get the money I will find and personally kill Michael Bay with my own hands. 

I will rip off his stupid little CGI head and shit down his neck, and what´s more I'll film it, going around and around and around in a two-shot like he does in every fucking film he´s ever made. Cunt.

Your hair are your aerials, man...

I'm currently sitting in a super hostel in Valparaiso writing this. It is, therefore, written with a Chilean keyboard with lots of Chilean functions that I cannot grasp. So if there happens to be funny squiggles over any of the letters, strange spaces in the quotation marks, or even any spelling mistakes, I apologise.

As I may or may not have already mentioned - I could obviously check this, but I´m not reading this bollocks back, it haunts my dreams enough as it is at the moment - Helen´s mother, Mary (or MrsMaryMum as I embarrassingly called her the first time that we met) was coming out to meet us for Christmas time. And, better than her word, she actually did.

Mary flew into Brisbane airport on 18 December, where the three of us met her with open arms and smelly breath. I´d forgotten to brush my teeth.

This may be a good time to recant possibly the funniest thing that has happened since we´ve been away, and maybe ever in the history of history.

A few weeks prior to Mary´s arrival, whilst using the magical see-speak gadgetbox that is Skype, Helen and Emma noticed a different tone to their mum´s usually blondey barnet. 

They asked Mary if she had done anything to her hair. ´No!´, was Mary´s curt response before diving down under the table and grabbing a magazine, in the order of Good Housekeeping or possibly a pullout from the Mail on Sunday.

Adamant, especially after the Action Man antics, that she had, Hel and Emma pressed her further. Mary eventually revealed she had recently dyed her hair brown, after having blonde hair for her entire life. Her not-really-upset answer: ´I wasn´t going to tell you, it was going to be a surprise when we get to the airport.´

I was honestly, and I PROMISE, absolutely no exaggeration whatsoever, nearly sick with laughter.

But I digress. Mrs Dagley, new hair colour and all, landed safe and sound and we proceeded to where we had been staying for the week, in the store cupboard in the back of the shop... the Ritz it aint. Surprisingly, or perhaps not after such a long flight, Mary took to the living conditions very well indeed and had some good nappage in the back.

With the Midland Police Service´s HR Queen partially refreshed, that evening we went out to Chinatown in Brisbane and, incredibly, had a Chinky (I'M IN FUCKIN AUSTRALIA SO ILL SPEEK THE FUKING LANGWIDGE). 

It was great to see the three Dagley ladies reunited, and it was also supremely rewarding to eat something other than apples, a strange cereal called something along the lines of ´Wake the Fuck Up´ and toast.

If my memory serves me correctly, which if the last six or so blog entries are anything to go by - it doesn´t*, the next day, whilst yours truly caught up on some little needed beauty kip, Team Dagley went out to collect a rental car. It was all right, and, much to Mary´s relief, was not a Toyota Yaris. ´I tell you Chris, I´ve seen them and there´s no way, no WAY, we´d get four people´s luggage into a Yaris.´

* Helen read through the last few entries that I´d written the other day, her response: ´You do realise that none of this happened? Or if it did it certainly didn´t happen in that order. You´ve compacted the entire Halong Bay trip into one day. You´re an idiot. Do you even know where you are now?´ Home truths. I told her that where her wisdom teeth are coming through at the back there is a smell that reminds me of the time I found a dead cat in my Grandad’s compost machine. This backfired though, as she´s taken to rubbing her finger on the offending stump of gum and gnasher and wiping it on my upper lip while I´m concentrating on something, like eating, or the wind.

[This was also long before we found out I had a brain tumour...]

Alas, I digress.

The very next day we left Emma all alone in her ´orrible shop to go down and have a party in Byron Bay. As Mrs Dagley was essentially on holiday we were afforded to up the ante somewhat on our accommodation budget and splashed out on a superwicked triple room in a reasonably posh motel. Strangely enough, unbeknownst to Hel and I at the time of booking, it was but one door down from where we´d stayed the first time round. Spookier than a threesome with Casper and Dusty Springfield.

Our time in Byron was mostly spent deciding which was Mary´s favourite Australian beer (Toohey´s), lazing down the beach (strange squeaky sand) and arguing with Australians - well, one in particular - about who was better out of the Stones and the Beatles (we were firmly in the Stones camp, plus the bloke was a charmless narcissist dressed as a sycophant who attempted to ridicule Mary and got ´beat down´ by the two young Dutch lads that we had been sat and ´making some shmoke´ with. (Me that is, not Mary, if you´re reading this Chief Superintendant.)

But in all seriousness, she didn´t.

We also made the trip up to the lighthouse and the most easterly point of mainland Australia, saw lots of live music and generally had a great time. I think out of the places that we spent any considerable time in Australia, Byron Bay was probably my favourite. If you can ignore the fashion-over-function surfers and just plain idiot floosies that flock around them then it´s actually a very fun town.




Our time in Byron also allowed Mary a nice and easy place to adjust to the heat and the ´lifestyle´ that doesn´t really exist but Australians consistently harp on about. During this time she made some rather brilliant observations:

1. Mary Dagley (she didn´t say them like this in the third person, she wasn´t like my dad from Christmas 1998 - ´Brendan wants more custard´ etc) does not like Australian lorries.
2. Mary Dagley was surprised at the lack of Jags, pleased at the lack of BMWs and also thought the junction turning system was mental. (It is - look it up.)
3. Mary Dagley believes that Australia, as much as she had seen of it, was very much like America, or how she imagined it, as she's never been.
4. Thank the Lord we didn´t get a Yaris. Have you seen them?

During our time doing absolutely nothing of any cultural value or mental stimulation (although those Dutch lads did try and alter that) we also bought my second ball of the tour (at the very secret cost of $23, I told the Boss it was $10) and taught myself two new tricks, and I think, invented one.






Above all it was good to see Helen and her Mum spend some time with each other, as they had both missed each other lots and lots. It became ever so much more evident that Helen isn´t fibbing when she says she is homesick. The real shame was thinking about Emma the Younger slaving away in possibly the most boring environment conceivable for the equivalent of about three quid an hour.

But that was all about to change, we were off to Brisbane, we had a car (thankfully not a Yaris, you´d never fit four people´s luggage in a Yaris), a full tank of gas, it was night and we were wearing sunglasses. [We] Hit it.

(Again, if you are reading this Chief Superintendant, at no point did Mary Dagley wear sunglasses while driving at night, nor did she hit anything. Other than that drifter, but I'm pretty sure he was already dead.)

So, feeling like that big nosed man that presents Big Brother, in unison we say: ´Hold on Emma, we´re coming for you!´

(Emma, if you´re reading this, obviously we´ve already come for you, and we got you, it was nearly three months ago, so it´s not necessary for you to hold on any longer.)

Noosa Could Be Looser, If It Choose'ta.

After our time in Surfer's with Deirdre and Ross we got on the train and finally made it up to Emma in Noosa, where she was living in her bosses' granny flat at the end of their gigantic garden.

The flat was really pleasant in the day time, but as scary as Gerard Depardieu with a cold at night.

The noise at night from the two miniature swamps bellowing out of the vast black expanse sounded like someone had rigged up a 'Mental Sounds of the Amazon' tape and turned it up to eleven. And a half. This took a bit of getting used to, but we eventually adjusted..

We were a little bit shocked that Emma had the balls to stay down there on her own, especially at times when there was no one at home in the mini-mansion at the top of the garden. Wes Craven would have killed for a set like this.

Emma's friend Jim had sent her over a stack of DVDs to help her wile away the little time that she had to herself and for the first couple of nights we settled down and watched a few good films, including the immortal Robin Hood (of the Disney variety).

During these first few days we would either go down to the part of Noosa beach that, as Emma assured us, only the locals went to, and would frolic in the waves that were very much fun, but also very much the colour of a hangover piss.

We of course met, for me for the first time, the family that Em was staying and working with. They consisted of Gareth and Suki, two ex-Olympic swimmers that now ran a swimwear and sports merchandising company, and their three kids - also all rapacious swimmers - the quite unbelievably named Buster, Scarlet and Tigger.

These three were great to hang around with, and Tigger, the youngest at about eight, would challenge me to football matches galore every day we were there. I think the average score was about 30-10 in his favour most days, but I've put that down to him having the home advantage.

We also saw a lot of Scarlet, the middle child (I often told her I felt her pain), who was as dry and sharp as an Egyptian dagger, but only half as cold. She was also a swimmer, but I felt that she wasn't as keen as her brothers and I fear that she may burn out if her parents continue to push her as they presently do.

I didn't meet Buster until the second week that we were there when we collected him from his school on the last day of the year. I was glad - I have no idea why - that he had just about clung on to his English accent, and he was a really nice lad. 

We got to see him race once at a gala, and although his team lost, he was really strong and apparently has a good chance of making the 2012 cut. He's the current national champion, and he still has about another eight inches to grow, which will help as his current competitors are all 6'4" at fifteen years of age. Truly scary stuff.

We spent a good deal of time in and around the house, trying to help out a bit with the kids and also just dossing around by the side of their pool, which on the sunny days was idyllic. Emma would have to work in the office which backed on to her flat during the days, and Hel and I would try and keep her spirits up as she wasn't really enjoying herself - even more so when her sister and favourite boy in the whole world were lounging about next door watching the extras on the Bedknobs and Broomsticks DVD.

Noosa itself was an OK place to stay for a while, if only a small town with a lot of rich people with no taste.

The time came when Emma had to go down to Brisbane to man the actual shop outlet, and Gareth would come back up to the office. We went down with her and stayed in the back of the cramped shop amongst the stock. I hope that we brightened up Emma's days a bit, but we didn't get up to much here at all. I didn't particularly like Brisbane as a city, but perhaps I just saw the wrong end of it.

One interesting chap would crop up every day and shout at the shop, or directly at us if we were there, that we were 'Fucking filthy European cunts' and that we should 'Get fuck out of my country you fucking cunt faces'. I couldn't help smiling at this, but for Emma, who had to endure this everyday that she had been there, on her own in a shop that he lived ten seconds away from, the situation was somewhat more menacing.

Emma's situation at the shop was rather dire, and I don't think she would mind me saying that it certainly wasn't the adventure that she'd had in mind when she'd left England nearly nine months before hand.

When we were there we ate a lot of Tim-Tams (the only chocolate that Australians do better than the British - to the uninitiated they are essentially uber-Penguins) and spent a lot of time on the internet. I watched everything that Adam and Joe have ever done, including this, which is an act of such genius it's hard to describe in words, and when attempted comes out more like the sound when you accidentally swallow the wrong way when you randomly have too much spit in your mouth.

During this period Helen became severely addicted (not too strong a word - she had a problem) to going onto racist groups on Facebook and arguing with the cretins on there. For hours and hours and hours. 

As an example of the sort of moronic tone that she met with, one of the groups was called 'YOUR IN ENGLAND SPEAK THE FUCKIN LANGUAGE' - without a hint of irony.

We also went to see the new James Bond movie; the least said the better.

I will say this though, you could sit me down in front of a single sheet of A5 paper, give me a piece of pink crayon two centimetres long, a thousand paper cuts to the bellend and set me on fire from the eyeballs down and I could still draft a narrative that made more sense than the steaming pile of shit-debris that was left for Daniel Craig to try, and try he did, to sweep up.

We also did some dressing up, Helen managing to get on 65 per cent of the stock on sale.

In the next episode of Helen and Chris Fuck Around For a Year...

A mother arrives, we return to Byron Bay and we do an old fashion prison break!

If I Could be a Pirate, I Definitely Would (be a Pirate)

Goodness, in my rush to share these incredibly fascinating golden memorypearls of the historypast I almost forgot a whole chapter. That being this.

You may recall that whilst we were in the 4,000 Islands at the bum end of Laos, we were on the same site as two Australians, Ross and Deirdre. On the other hand you may not. Either way really, you're here now. 

On one of the long evenings we spent chatting about gadgets and drinking Beer Laos they, naively, said that if we were ever in Surfers Paradise we should drop by. Well, the moment came and we did just that. In fact, we dropped by for a full four days.

Emma and Rick, on the way back to Noosa, dropped us off at Surfers and we had a quick walk around, including having a go on a Buck Rogers toilet that played Burt Bacharach songs at you while you poo.

I had the day of my life, playing in massive waves with other men that seem to do it for serious sport rather than fun. Quite impressive watching the nobheads go.

Helen is scared of waves, more than a slight Achilles heel for a marine biologist, and so sunned herself on the beach whilst I ran around smiling and yelping like a puppy with pedigree chum stuck in its teeth.


Around four o'clock Deirdre picked us up from the main shopping and beachy part of Surfers and took us back to Ross' gaff in the suburbs. It was a really nice house, and Helen was over the moon as he had two cats, Molly and Moet. They were both around four hundred years old. Molly, in particular, was looking slightly worse for wear, but as Ross explained, she probably had the right to...

'She ate about 250 grams of rat poison, fell off the [two storeys up] porch and then got hit by a car. Bit of a miracle she survived any of those really, but she's fine now. Aren't you Molly? [To Molly] You're ugly aren't you Molly? Ugly.'

Molly the Invincible

The next day our hosts had to go to work, so Helen and I explored the area and went down to feed the ducks at the wharf. We got stung by a posh-man's kebabian, charging us 50 cents to a dollar for every different type of salad we wanted. The owner then patronised us by saying, 'I don't know how they do it in your country, but over here this is how it's done.' Bent, you mean, you fucking fuck.

After walking off the anger we returned home to await the antipodeans. Ross had big plans about taking us out on his beloved boat, and the next day all of his dreams were fulfilled. Although in a slightly windier fashion than he'd expected.


We probably shouldn't have gone out on the water, but Ross is a competent seaman (chortle) and it actually made it quite fun. The day was spent reading, looking at rich people's houses and pretending to care about boats, boating and, in particular, Ross's boating boat. 

I was attempting to do things that Ross asked me to do using confusing boat terms such as 'the front of the boat' and 'the red rope'.



That evening we talked about a variety of things. Why you can't call people 'Pakis', even though 'that's what they are'.

The curious incident of the Madeline McCann in the night time. 

(Which, incidentally, I got told off by Emma for mentioning about a month later, saying 'Wouldn't it be good if we found her?' before we went out fore the day, which I thought was a strange thing to be told off for. It would be good, wouldn't it? I mean, she's dead, and it wouldn't be initially very pleasant, but at least we could clear that whole up. Anyway. What was I talking about?)

Ross continuously asked us if we'd ever heard of the most obscure Australian bands, before saying that we'd never heard 'of anyone', then Dancing Queen came on the radio and he asked us if we'd heard of Abba.

'Well, yeah. Of course we have.'

'Oh, so you've heard of someone then!'

'Well, yeah. But Abba were Swedish...'

We also talked about a few of their acquaintances, the most interesting of whom was a gay feller that moored his boat a few up from theirs in the harbour. This chap, in all seriousness (we met him briefly), believes that he won the British National Lottery jackpot when a female friend of his 'played it on the internet'.

This was meant to be two years ago, and he's still waiting for the money. Apparently, the man who writes the cheques was ill, and then his dad died, and an assortment of other mind bogglingly stupid reasons that he hasn't got the money yet. The sad thing is, these are all things that his female friend has told him.

Whilst this is happening he's lending her money, paying for both of them to fly over to England first class (where he surely could have substantiated at least some of the things this conster trickswoman was telling him?) and all sorts. 

Hilarious and tragic at the same time. Like a monkey in a tux killing a man with a banjo.

Considering Helen was reading a book called Live Working or Die Fighting: How the working class went Global, she fit into the rich-white-girl-on-a-boat routine very easily.


We stayed on the boat that evening and I had an asthma attack, my first in about 12 years. It wasn't that bad, but the dust in the little cabin in the boat combined with a nose more blocked than US aid to Cambodia made breathing pretty hard. I got about an hour’s sleep, but on the upside, I saw a super duper sunrise.


The next day we spent mucking about on kayaks and Hel and I attempted to go for a walk along a wooden promenade whilst Ross and Deirdre drove off somewhere on the boat. 

I literally took one step before getting a hundred splinters in my foot, making me as mobile and as friendly as a Reeves vs. Hawkins bare-knuckle brawl.

Deirdre went off for a paddle in the kayak, and went missing for two hours. We honestly thought she'd been dragged out to sea.


Helen, although disappointed in the lack of walking, was then delighted to take out the shards of wood with what she said were tweezers, but felt like more splinters.