A bottom poke and a farewell

So you're at a farewell party, it's getting late, and you're chatting with your friends. Suddenly, some drunk 20 year old starts poking your arse. This happened to Mel Mel just last night. Rounding on this doofus, she proclaimed: 'stop touching me, if you touch my butt one more time I'm going to slap you across your face'. Chastised, loser-boy sloped off to the rest of his mates. Deciding, in a brilliantly drunken kind of way, to redeem his shattered manhood, he decided to return to the scene not 30 seconds later to steal Mel's full beer and proceed to sit back down and start drinking it. After a few incredulous and exasperated looks amongst the group, our cop friend walked over, placed himself with some body-language panache above Mr Cool, and told him he'd been a very bad boy. One of his mates pulled out the classic ' What are you going to do about it then?', earning the beautiful retaliation of a drawn cop badge and 'this is what I'm going to do about it'. 10 minutes and a new beer for Mel later, the party continued.

The moral of this fable: Don't send your children to private or single-sex schools; they won't know how to relate to the opposite sex for years afterwards.

Thanks to everyone who came to our farewell drinks, and for your well wishes. Thanks if you couldn't make it but also gave us your bon voyages. We're all packed and prepped, and ready to set forth for 9 months of adventure. We'll be thinking of you all along the way. No guarantees of keeping this up-to-date in the early 'whoopee' stages early in the piece, but if you'd like to know what we're up to, bookmark it and come back every so often.

For those of you we haven't bored with the detail, or those with shocking memories, we're heading to Thailand first and then on to a quick 4 weeks in Europe.

Dave and Mel