Rum & Dal

Its Sunday morning and Dal and I are a bit worse for wear. Well what do you expect? We went on a bender the night before. The occasion? Was there one? We just need an excuse these days. Oh yeah… we went to Kate’s birthday bash, her Hen night and Gerald’s Stag. These two love birds are getting hitched sometime soon. However the guest of honour was James, Gerald’s best friend from London. Many jokes were told, piss was taken out of others and pints went down smooth in the 35°C heat. Plenty of fun was to be had and it felt like we were home with our British/English friends and mostly the British sense of humour was on form.  Sitting in the Riverland pub on the edge of the Yaara River

Grand Prix morning, Dal and I met up with G and James, at the Transport pub at Federation Square… but where else. It’s about two in the afternoon and the sun is steaming and baking us in 41°C  this is one of those times you wish you brought a spare pair of undies. The crack of my ass was steaming.

We had never been to formula 1 race before but as it was on our doorstep we thought we’d go otherwise Pal and Parm back in the UK wouldn’t forgive us.

At the entrance to the parks we were being sold packs of sunscreen, paracetamol and ear plugs and once inside I could understand why. The noise from the cars was unreal it was such a buzz at this point and they were only warming up. We slapped on the sunscreen and went looking for the nearest beer tent before the race started.

At the beer tent we armed ourselves with the maximum amount of beer they would let us have, no 4.5lt genie bottles here. Turned out to be two cans of VB each, that’s Victoria Bitter by the way, not to be mixed up with VD. Gerald and James had no trouble guzzling down theirs, after all they had been getting blocked all week.

Having watched the F18′s and Qantas flyover, we stood at the side and watched the start of the race on the many large screens dotted around Albert Park then witnessed them whizzing past on the track at such speeds that it was difficult to identify whose car belonged to what team. A few laps later we were ready for a pit stop ourselves. We found another beer tent and parked up outside it. Sitting in the burning sun, with the beer tent only a metre away, exercising the British humour on the poor soles who went by. Remember that crack whore in the queue with VD? James??

We all applauded as Hamilton gave a lap of honour and once the track was cleared of those jets on wheels, there was a rush to get out onto the track and obviously we followed. Thought I’d get myself a piece of tar from the track, you know a little souvenir. It was quite unreal walking around the track with the tyre skid marks under our feet. The TV crew starting to pack up, people foraging around the outskirts of the track looking for debris from the cars, the shit some people look for to sell on ebay! We walked passed the pits but couldn’t really see much due to the fencing. Though I got a good picture of the Force India pits.

We will definitely be going again next year if its still in Melbourne but this time were going earlier to find a good spot and to enjoy the other events they put on. Do you know when you watch formula one on TV and they show all those beautiful long legged women, well we didn’t see any. But we did get a picture of someone pulling a moonie… more pictures on flickr.  Those of you who want to join us at the next one, see you all in March, even you James.