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Tim’s ‘Fucking’ Hot Salsa Chili is the hottest thing to hit the planet! Check out the Tim’s ‘Fucking’ Hot Salsa Chili Website
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or to order, e-mail:
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And on that note:
This week’s newsletter.
Valencia, a city so orange and round it was named after an orange.
Like the rest of Mediterranean Spain the beaches cover you in dirt, and this time of year the weak potato soup they call the sea inspires more sweat when you’re in it, then when you’re out of it, being relentlessly beaten by that radioactive tomato in the sky.
But it isn’t as dire as my whinging ramblings may imply. It could be worse if it was raining, which it never does here, or colder, which it isn’t. Overcast would be worse, not on my watch buddy. And as for the sea, well a cold sea sucks, and this one is fringed by all varieties of scantily clad senior citizens, and let’s not kid ourselves – a comedy boob or ball is better than no boob or ball at all.
We’ve got more cans on ice than the Russian figure skating championships.
Now everyone observe a moment of loudness and skull a beer for the tragic loss of our ashes.
After here the drunken road trip is heading up to Barcelona. Barcelona is a really good place to get red faced, a root and robbed. Or loose, laid and (have your wallet) lifted. Or smashed, screwed and stolen from. That’s enough. We’ll be having a massive party, an annual event whose name I haven’t yet conjured up. Actually, here is a promotion. Name our traditional annual event and you can win the prize of buying me a tequila and redbull, otherwise known as dancing juice, or, tomorrow’s worse hangover.
Post Barca we leave for Paris. The city of French people. There we will grow little moustaches, wear blue and white strips, hang garlic around our necks, put baguettes in the basket’s of our girls’ bikes. Berets, and snails and arrogance. We’ll dance under the Eiffel tower and head into the Louvre to marvel at how you have no idea why you like the Mona Lisa, and the amazing way that her facial expression suggests that she is aware of this. And, of course, we’ll be eating Gallic deliciousness and sampling the most fantastic cheapest wines by the litre.
After which we roll of into the sunset. Things get weird(er) after Paris. Bruges, which is full of Belgians, Amsterdam, say no more, Berlin, the German capital – Germans, and Prague. I am quite excited by the whole trip, but Prague I am particularly looking forward to. I am looking forward to the vampires, and Russian spies and beer that is cheaper than potatoes, but more expensive than a human life. Yes, life behind the Iron Curtain is sure to be fun.
We still have some seats on the bus, so if you want to either come for the whole trip, or just for one leg, email me, gravy@stoketravel.com, or call me on 
+34695487602
. We’ll also be putting on a party in every city, so if you are around let’s drink too much, dance horribly, be creepy and generally make a fool out of ourselves together.
I’ve already given you a promotion, you greedy bastards, but tell me the shittest thing about one of the cities we are visiting and you can win a free trip from that city to the next one.
Stoke Travel – making nonsense sexy.
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Social Networks for Torino and Piemonte from Ning.com – Anyone looking to set up a social network for any sports club, town, village or church should check out Ning.com
It is free and so many English words end in ‘ning – even from the beginning! It takes two minutes to setup and has full photos, chat, messaging, video and blogs, the lot. Check out these two sites that took a whole five minutes to setup!
OnlyTurining.com – Network sociale riservato ai residenti in Torino e Piemonte
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Tim Wades Rock Concert – Free festival? Where? lol
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The Climate Camp was not affiliated with the G20 meltdown protests outside the Bank of England, and was not, as has been suggested, an eclectic
association of “confused anarchists”. It was a coalition of people with one clear agenda; highlighting the deficiencies of the industrial worlds response to
climate change, specifically the failure of the Carbon Trading scheme. It is not possible to claim that the camp was the victim of the provocation of
“violent anarchists”; there were none. There is not a single report of violence by the Bishopsgate protestors, whilst a wealth of evidence exists to prove the
extreme brutality of the police tactics to remove the camp. Our intention is narrow in focus; rather than protesting against the numerous injustices
perpetrated against the innocent throughout the day, we want your help in challenging the institution responsible for this whitewash- the BBC.
To give an impression of police tactics, these are some of the things personally experienced and observed;
With no warning, riot police charged the camp, beating and pushing peaceful protesters who had their palms up as a symbol of their peaceful intentions.
When people were knocked down, protesters who went to help were hit with shields and attacked with batons.
When people sat down to try and prevent the police from charging, they were kicked in the chins and beaten (some for long periods of time whilst lying helpless).
The police hauled people out and dragged them around, bending their arms back and threatening totally peaceful protesters.
Some riot police lost control and began hitting everything in sight, including fellow police officers and innocent protesters. On mass, the police removed their identification, preventing us from pursuing any avenues of complaint.
This sounds horrendous, and immensely unlikely but we cannot emphasise enough that it is fact.
The BBC is supposed to be an institution that reports important issues and does so impartially. This usually includes reporting from a variety of perspectives
and ensuring that breaking news of something as significant as police attacking entirely peaceful protesters, gets through. Unfortunately, none of this has
been reported by the BBC; their website was not updated past 9.30 pm on Wednesday, which is exactly when innocent people were being subject to police
brutality. BBC News 24 supposedly provides round the clock coverage of current news, but they did not mention the atrocious behaviour of the police towards
the climate campers. To us, this seems completely inexcusable; the BBC has essentially blanked the issue and has not portrayed the true nature of the
protests or the police tactics.
If you agree with us, and believe that the BBC has failed on this matter, please please fill out a complaints form which can be found here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/com
Your complaint can be as simple as “I don’t think that the BBC provided adequate coverage of the police tactics used on peaceful protesters at the G20
Climate Camp”, or it can be more extensive.
If we get enough people to do this, then it will become a headline in itself and the BBC will be forced to say why it did not think that the attacking of peaceful citizens was not newsworthy and did not warrant attention. What’s
more, we may be able to hold the police to account.
Please invite all your friends to join.
Thank you for taking the time to make a small difference.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/com
***UPDATE***
The issues raised here two weeks ago have finally come to light. Thank you to all who have helped made a difference.
Please join the campaign to prevent a reoccurence of the brutality of April 1st.
http://www.defendpeacefulprotest.or
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?g
The last couple of weeks have been a beautiful testament to the power of common people united in their outrage.
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Don’t say no fucker ever gives you something for FREE. Just like Robin Hood, I’m a poor fucker, stole this, modified it slightly, and am giving it away totally free to all you poor fuckers.
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Following the overwhelming success of last weeks newsletter (we received at Stoke Towers three entries in the “Stoke Slogan” competition and a never-before-seen four candidates for the “Worst-Job-In-The-World)”,
That’s right ladies and ball lifters, it is….
This Week’s Stoke Newsletter!!!
Where, oh where, have the bulls run off to?
Given the unprecedented volume of calls pertaining to the running bull’s well-being post San Fermin, Stoke Towers decided to call the A.H.T.D.M (Association of Half Tonne Death Machines) and find out what becomes of our testicled friends once the final tourist has been gored.
The press officer there was pressed for time, but sent me a press release, press. So here it is:
“Contrary to popular belief the bulls are not actually killed in the ‘bull fights’ which take place every evening after the morning’s mad scramble. Like in all good, professional, shows our bulls are highly trained actors who practice for months in advance with the ‘matadors’. For those of you who watched the ‘bull fight’, the blood you saw was little more than corn syrup, and the violence choreographed, like in your WWE. The spectacle is only believed to be true by the mentally challenged, young, and, of course, ignorant tourists.
All of the bulls, having completed their yearly goring obligations, pass the off season in the Pyrenean foothills frolicking amongst daffodils and mounting saucy milker after saucy milker, enjoying both their time away from terrified humans and the emptying of their ample testicles”.
So worry no more, concerned hippy, all of your favourite bulls will be there next year, ready to scare the absolute shit out of you again.
Water Sports.
And I’m not talking about people pissing on each other (we here at Stoke Towers understand and even participate in all of the sexual fringes, we just try not to mix business with sticky pleasure). I’m talking about surfing, chucking on some rubber, waxing up your stick, and trying to slot your way into some tight, wet, caverns.
The Stoke Surfari runs year round, passing its summers in Zarautz, North West Spain, and its winters in Taghazoute, way down in South Morocco, where the Atlas Mountains meet the Atlantic Ocean. Both locations are regionally, and internationally, renowned surfing locations during their specific seasons. We cater for beginners, and experienced surfers, and offer, blah blah blah. This isn’t the Stoke Towers communication that you have come to know and delete. So let’s get back to some familiar territory.
Long before your dad sprouted his first pubic hair all life lived in the sea. That’s right god botherers, I said it – ALL LIFE CAME FROM THE SEA (we here at Stoke Travel respect, and represent, all of the major, and minor, religions – what is written here is merely Gravy’s opinion. See the upcoming newsletters; “Buddha, Surfing for Fatties”, “Will Your 40 Virgins Look Good in a Burkini?”, and “Jesus, Surfing Without Surfboards” – ed). That’s right, humans can claim a direct ancestor in the humble mermaid/man, just as sea bears gave evolutionary birth to the humble grizzly and trout are a close cousin to pigeons.
It’s just that, like Ariel in the Disney classic “Mermaid Tails”, we got the idea one day that we’d like to leave the sea and pass our time on the land. I’m not sure if our ancestors were pursuing princes with dutch hairstyles, but between you and me I hope they had better taste. But we made the journey out of the soup, and we stayed, because it proved a practical environment for the maximum enjoyment of some of our favourite pursuits. Drinking beer in the sea sucks, as salty, fishy brine breaches the bottle from time to time. Smoking durries? Come on! And as for copulation, if one of the scrowlers breaks the seal, all the lube is washed away. Shithouse. So it is for good reason we have stayed on the land.
But we still have a connection to the sea, going back to our merman and maid days, when we’d hunt oceanic hares, the elusive aquatic ostrich and deep sea racing wombats with our tridents and whips made of seaweed and peppered with tiny, stingy, barnacles. So it goes, summer in, summer out, that we make the pilgrimage home, back to the sea. And that is why surfing, that’s right, surfing, is so much more than a really fun sport, that makes one inexorably attractive to the opposite sex. Check out this passage from Charles Darwin’s “Boozin’ and Cruisin’ the South Pacific” I found in the Stoke Towers’ library:
“… and part of the ceremony, after the beers had been finished and Bundy and Coke just cracked, some foolhardy souls would grab their thrusters and, cheered on by those too pissed to stand, let alone surf, paddle out the back. When I inquire to one of the savages what exactly the ceremony signifies, he says in a dialect that I can barely comprehend, “they’re juz, fuck it, surfin’ out, like, there man. Where you from anyway? New Zealand”, at which point I retreat and he vomits. It wasn’t until I was on my boat, and with the aid of my translator that I could discern what he was saying, “They are just, for God, surfing, out like mermen”. Which completely reinforced my early claims that man is descended from the merfolk (I came to this conclusion after seeing first-mate Downes in an erotic situation with that dugong off Cairns), and that, indeed, they have combined their new worship of a Christian God, with an age old, internal, primal, knowledge that their ancestors rode these waves, with scaly man-tails.”
It is only a fool that argues with Charlie. So there you have it, it is our evolutionary responsible to go surfing – if you don’t you can really only expect to live half a life. Shithouse. This weekend we are running the Surf Fest weekender out of Zarautz, with buses leaving Barcelona on the Friday, and everybody cruising up the coast to sniff out whatever France has to offer, wave wise, over the weekend, before partying the night away at the annual and infamous Stoke Travel Surf Fiesta. So get involved, get your fish on, jump in the sea and lets go for a wiggle, yeeew!
Giveaway.
We have a spare seat to give away on Surf Fest. In order to claim it send me an idea for a promotion, as my brain is fried from years of drug and alcohol abuse. We’ll call it the, Promotion Promotion. Actually, if you can’t make Surf Fest I’ll even consider giving you a double pass to Tomatina, or Oktoberfest, if your promotion is worth stealing.
Stoke Travel – on the beach drinking piss since 1996
For comments, questions, death threats, indecent proposals or hate mail email gravy@stoketravel.com.
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………..then listen to this. A hospital that is 5 years old in Sicily (Sicilia), is being evacuted because its construction company slightly ‘cut corners’ with the cement, ie they glued it together with mud, and now it is falling down. 20 years in construction costing over 20 million euros, at five years old, it is now evacuating over 1400 patients to safer surroundings.
Could New Labour make friends with Berlusconi’s Sicialian Blue Circle Cement Group? Maybe!
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