We Do Adventure

Fans of football will know the English Premier League kicked off this afternoon. I was following the action via the BBC website, although for me things don’t really start until Spurs take on Liverpool at White Hart Lane tomorrow at four. Being a Spurs fan here is a funny thing. Most local people expect you to support Man Utd or Chelsea, perhaps Liverpool or Arsenal. Say Spurs and you get a blank look. Say Tottenham Hotspur as you would in England and that look remains unchanged. Pronounce it TOT-EN-HAM and suddenly you get the appropriate look of pity! With my mind still pondering the possibility of ‘Arry being able to produce a result tomorrow, I took some English visitors to Blagaj after lunch today. Imagine my surprise when I saw this sign of the back of an English registered blue Passat. What this vehicle is doing so far from home is anybody’s guess. Taxi-driver’s-holiday doesn’t quite have the same ring as the bus-man’s equivalent. But if it's not that then somebody has very d...

We did a few spontaneous things before we left the UK. When you realise you might not be able to do something again for a while it tends to make you a bit more decisive and proactive. One thing I did was take a trip to White Hart Lane for a UEFA Cup tie between Tottenham Hotspur and PSV Eindhoven. It was a week or so after Juande’s finest hour (or two) and the night they presented the Carling Cup to the fans. The team then conspired to lose a disappointing tie, and dropped out of the competition after the away leg. Probably the first nail in coffin for Ramos. Anyway, the point of the story is not the result but the price. I paid about £50 for the ticket, and after adding train travel, match programme, scarf and food probably didn’t get much change out of a hundred pounds. Today we attended a seven-goal thriller in Mostar. Local side HŠK Zrinjski are top of the Premier Liga BiH. Finish first and they could be playing Champions League football next season. Getting tickets was as easy as ...

No Saturday morning lay-in for us. we were up and out to a music practise. For Rowan this was a chance to dust off her bass playing skills, while I got the chance to give my new Sound City amp it's first run out. For those interested in the intricacies of valve amplifiers I would caution that this modestly sized, and competitively priced, package punches above its weight, making 'quiet' quite a challenge! Still, I've no regrets about the last-minute purchase and I'm sure it's going to get plenty of use in the months ahead. So this afternoon has been spent going over out furiously scribbled notes to make sure we won't have forgotten anything by next week. It seems language lessons aren't the only thing to come with homework! And on that subject, I think I got plus points of a translation from the sports section this week. It wasn't so much the quality of my work or the commentary I'd written but that the article mentioned Luka Modrić and Vedran Ć...