"You're not drunk enough if you can still lie on the floor without hanging on."- Joe E Lewis

This past weekend was interesting one drinking wise on two fronts. Firstly, I was house sitting a friends place and looking after his dogs. Sat morning arrived in Cape Town which meant it was a Sat afternoon in Wellington NZ. My buddy Blue and his father had booked a table at the Dias Tavern for the rugby (SA v NZ) at 9am.
I had no instructions to walk the dogs and felt bad about leaving them inside when I left the house, so I decided to give them some exercise in the gratuitous back garden with the a massive pool - just smaller than the reservoir across the road. These hounds had plenty of energy, but I never knew any of their games so I had to improvise. The little bugger had too much energy and was bouncing around my feet expectantly. I managed to get to the other side of the pool and then let him chase me. As he went one way I would go the other and when he changed direction I would too. A classic. I could have kept this up all morning. You can't go wrong when returning to basics - doggy style?!
Right moving swiftly back to the 'firstly' part of the drinking scenario... So I arrived at the legendary Dias Tavern - a truly locals eating/drinking establishment with NOTHING lavish but again, good basics. I would give you the address, but then again if you don't know it already then it's probably not for you. Leave it to us locals right? Good. Ok if you really feel the Dias plastic tables cloths and chairs are calling out to you, mail me and we can pay a visit to see how many Catemba's you can drink (half red vino half coke) before the live band gets you up on stage (in this case the stage is actually the floor next to the bar with a big screen above it. Just some dead space really but might as well be Carnegie Hall after a few jugs of those Catemba's).
9am is not the ideal time for red wine. Blue's Dad was thirsty though and even though my yoghurt and muesli was still settling in the tummy we knocked back a few beers and by half time with the excitement of the game, it was looking like a long day of grogging. As it turns out the Springboks forgot the basics in the 2nd half and we lost. Drinking momentum gone too and a session of daylight drinking gone a begging.

This was not the case for one of my brothers and his buddies. They pushed through for what nearly ended up as a 24 hour epic. The biggest casualty and man of the match was the sturdy red head - Bo. Bo's dame was tucked up at home ill and the lad got a little over exuberant. He does have a real problem when he drinks that amount though. He has the normal natural bodily reaction of his stomach rejecting the beers by chucking them back at him. The extraordinary thing is that when this happens his eyelids explode! Properly. I saw Bo the next morning and his eyelids looked like they had rivers of lava flowing from the eyebrows to the eyes. A freaky site indeed. This weekend it's round two in Knysna. I'll be buying our boy plenty shots to see what we can do to those peepers of his.