OK girls - YOU steal my heart and I'LL steal Christmas...

I got up suitably early (about 5pm) with practically no voice at all so it seemed sensible to go and talk to PMB (Whose name, I finally discovered, was "Mo" and with that moustache he is the most suitably named young man I have encountered) for three hours. The rest of the neighbours wandered in and out of the conversation, wine was consumed and those gold darned beneficial herbs were again in no short supply. Tom the Norwegian American very kindly made me a bowl of soup and showed me his record. This is more significant than you may think. It’s his record – he runs a small label and put out a compilation this year, one side featuring US artists, the other European. Typically, like so much other garage punk, it is only available in vinyl form. When he finished showing me it he went to show it to the neighbours. It’s very nicely packaged and you can tell he has put a lot of work into getting it just right. I look forward to hearing it. Here's a rather blurry Mo, myself and the elusive Sandra:

I have also put a lot of effort into ruining myself over the last few nights so decided the best thing to do would be to continue willy nilly. Steve and I had thought the festival had finished and that we would have “A quiet one” but it was revealed that there were three bands playing in the pizzeria, including De Hoje Haele and possibly some Greeks. Not wanting to eat another pizza Steve and I drove to BUGGER YOU! Where we ended up having squid again, half a litre of vino rosso and a thoroughly nice time. We got back to the pizzeria in Portixeddu just before eleven and also (handily) just before the first band started, who were the Danes. This made a change because for the rest of the week we had been two hours early for everything.

(Pictured) A post-gig De Hoje Haele, or to be precise - Myre, Magnus and Ebber in various degrees of intoxication.

Obviously we drank like fish. Everyone did. A startling number of women that I didn’t know seemed to know me rather well. Sandra I definitely already knew (previous blogs dictate that) but as for the Columbian girls that lived in Barcelona, the Brazilian girl who lived in Switzerland or the two Sardinian beauties who could only ever reside in my dreams I haven’t got the faintest idea when we chatted but we obviously had done because they all, in turn, intermittently approached me and said “Hi Paul! How are you?” to which I could only reply “I’m fine – do you mind me asking who you are?”. The Columbian girls said I reminded them of The Grinch (I do bear a resemblance in my little hat) but I got a bit peeved when they started telling everyone that I had stolen Christmas. I told at least four of them that I loved them over the evening. This brings me to deduce that I either have a lot of love to give or I am a touch fickle.

The Danes were followed by The Rippers who were again monumentally fantastic and this time they did “Right Time To Kill You” which made me very happy indeed. They may have done it the time before but I probably just missed it whilst trying to decrypt the booze-ordering ticketing system in a field about a mile from Guspini). I didn’t see the third band though - I was too busy drinking shots, telling girls I loved them and getting my jeans destroyed by Vikings. The (rather odd) Swiss kept themselves to themselves and I began to think they were conspiring against me, such had been their withdrawal. Lars (Stoned) informed me that he had woken up in my bed, spooning me and thought it best to get up before I noticed. Typical. I have fallen in love repeatedly with beautiful and utterly unattainable women over the last six days but the only people who want to get in my bed are bloody German men. They have a window of opportunity roughly between 4am and sunrise which seems to be the time I meet all the lovely girls, have great conversations with them and then promptly forget all about them.  If this all seems a little disparate it’s because I don’t really remember the order of all of this but my situation can (I think) best be summed up by the conversation I had with our excellent barman on one of the occasions it was my round when he smiled as I approached and said simply “Birra or Mirto?”. The literal translation could easily be:

“Beer or death?”.

Steve and I did quite a good job of buying each other drinks when we already had them so I had a bottle in each hand for most of the night. They were only put down to be replaced by shots of Mirto but I did successfully stay off the vino rosso so rightfully should have remembered a little more about the events that took place. Sadly, however, the next thing I knew was that it was 7pm the next evening, the furry crash helmet wanted forty euros off me and I was still in bed.

PS. Just a note on the nature of the Prickly Pea Bowls Festival. Most "Weekenders" are obsessed with getting as many people in as possible, As many bands as possible, making as much money as possible and having the best toilet facilities, food concessions, camping areas and sound systems as possible. To give you an idea of the PPBs attitude to what encompasses the perfect festival, have a look at their sound system: