5th, 6th, 7th November

Wednesday 5th November

I can’t believe I am already writing blogs for November, the time has flown by but there you go! We are of course still in the middle of our days off and the plan for Wednesday was to go off to Kent beach with Claire, Ronnie and the family, unfortunately little Ben was pretty sick so they decided not to go but since we had it in mind we thought we might as well enjoy it. We got Pa Jalloh to come and collect us around 10am and we set off. When I arrived I was amazed. It is a stunning unspoilt beach; the truth is in most countries it would have been used as the local tourist area. We swam in the sea for a couple of hours then went on a walk up the beach to the next bay. Another unspoilt beach this one we had completely to ourselves it felt really bizarre. We sat there for a while reading until the sun got to hot, then we headed back to the car. On arrival back at the house we noticed just how much sun we had caught, we were both pretty red. The new in joke involves us being the ‘red man’ instead of the ‘white man’ we were originally, the locals think it is hilarious.

Thursday 6th

Thursday morning we started the day in the office doing bit and pieces of work until the electricity went off, this is because Comium which is the telephone company who supply the ‘light’ where having a problem with their generator (Such a problem it is Saturday when I am writing this and it is still down). So to elevate the pain of not having so much to do we went over to seafarers for lunch and that turned into us having a couple of beers too. A pretty quiet day all in all!

Friday 7th

Friday morning we spent doing a couple of necessary jobs like collecting money from Western Union. This was fantastic as we were both getting towards the end of our supply. I think the girl at the counter must have had a bit of a thing for our Lozza as she forgot to do all the security procedures with him, sweet really! We then went off to do abit of shopping both at the supermarket and in the markets. We finally bought some of the football shirts we had seen, I got an AC Milan shirt since you won’t believe it but they don’t have Boro shirts here. We finished our morning at Mamasu restaurant.

We headed back to the house after lunch to get ready for our night out- it takes Loz ages to put his face on. To assist in getting up for the night we put on a few tunes and had a beer or two, then we ran out of beer so we had to move on to the wine. I have a feeling this is where it all started to go wrong for Loz! We left the house at 8ish and headed to D’s Bezzar for a drink. As we arrive the DJ came running over to talk about football as he always does and then continue to shout out that each song he played was for the Boro fan in the establishment. Good fun really! We then headed up to Wilberforce to meet with Phina and the illusive Stephen (the boyfriend). Of course she is a girl so we were stood around waiting for twenty minutes which seems fairly standard. We then moved onto the Officers Mess this is a club set up for all army folk to meet and relax, it was fantastic and cheap. We were introduced to some of the captains and commanders, which led to pretty interesting conversation. We had taken Fatta and Joseph with us and bless they looked so out of place almost scared but they got into the swing of things. Next was to Dumas a locals bar in Lumley, essentially it is someone’s house but with a tiny structure in front of the entrance which serves beer. By this time Loz had already had got to the point where he was feeling the pace. He was struggling to stay awake but wanted to power through to see the club ‘Old skool’ On arrival at the club we all jumped out and Loz said that we couldn’t do it and needed a 20min nap then he would be in. After an hour I got worried and went out to see if all was ok. I suppose it was as he was sleeping like a baby in the back of the car and Mansaray the driver asleep in the front. When he finally roused he said that we should continue in the club and he would join us when he was ready. Of course it never happened he was completely done in (abit of work still needed before Uni I think) and continued to sleep by the time I persuaded Phina and Stephen to go home, we got to the car to find Mansaray asleep in the driver’s seat, Joseph sleeping in the passenger seat, Loz asleep in the back and Fatta asleep in the other back seat. I think we might have worn them out. Bless! The best part was the journey home because we got down Kissy Rd in just two minutes but not that surprising it was 4am.