Life in the Yorskhire Dales

A brief visit to family in Yorkshire showed me what an utterly boozed up place it is.  Under the guise of genteel little villages, stunning countryside, funny accents and a lot of red faces.  Oh, hang on... that last one is a clue.

The day I arrived was Whit Friday.  Apparently, it's some backward religious festival they have perverted into a drinking orgy combined with a brass band competition which closed most of the roads in the area.  Reminds me I should watch the film "Brassed Off".  Police riot vans roamed the area, not for drunk and disorderly but for enraged drivers unable to get home after a long week's work.  Clear evidence of the inebriated state of the people who planned this event.

Look, here is one of them in the final stages of planning-

Only to fit in did I bring down some champers and a bit of rouge.  And only to fit in did I drink quite a lot of it.  It seemed safer to stay in that night.  And then.....

We discovered Dance Central for the Kinect Xbox thingy!!!  I could go on about what an amazing bit of kit the Kinect is but just to prove it, it got me up dancing like a complete spaz with half the usual amount of booze it takes to get me up.  Much hilarity ensued.  It has a "freesytle" bit that you are supposed to express your artistic freedom while taking pictures of you and then replaying them at high speed.  Not a pretty sight but incredibly funny.

As if that wasn't proof enough of a serious problem in Yorkshire, the next day was a Beer Walk.  They haven't even the shame to disguise it anymore!!  I witnessed the latter stages of this as I tried to get to my next destination.  As I came to cross a sleepy crossroads, I was confronted by scores of pissed people slowly staggering past me dressed up as all sorts.  A group of female Red Indians had to sit down on the verge next to my car, it was all too much for them.  Blokes dressed as nuns stared vacantly at me, a bunch of plumbers (I think they may actually have been plumbers, very unimaginative) staggered all over the place and as far as I could see there were strange, pissed folk walking up this hill.  All in the aid of charity.  Yeah, whatever.  All in the aid of getting pissed and indulging your sickest sexual fantasy.

I only take the moral high ground because I beat my bro-in-law at a dance off with Salt n Pepa and "Push it".