AMERICAS NEWS

TUPNews recently visited Houston, in the Republic of Texas. I had more fun than I would care to admit, little of which would translate to the page. Again, if you’re on your way over there, drop me a line and I’ll tell you some good spots to go. But do let me tell you about the wrestling.

It was the day after a conference organised by my employers, and most of my colleagues were jetting off. A handful of us were left behind, and we sat nursing hangovers in the lobby of the Intercontinental, wondering how we were going to kill the three days until our return flight.

After an awful dim sum lunch at the lobby bar, I struck out with my colleague Danny in search of the wrestling. Danny is my business travel Paduan learner; after blooding him in Essen, I have been instructing him in the art of expense fiddling and foreign strip club patronage. On that last count, I fear I have created something of a monster.

There was some sleuthing involved; we were aware of the upcoming wrestlefest only because of a large tarpaulin poster we had seen from a cab some nights previously, so we instructed the mad Polish taxi driver to drive around the area we thought it was until we spotted it. On the way over, he pointed out Lakewood Church, which with 30,000 attendees per week is the largest church in the world. It didn’t look that big from the outside, although it was later explained to us that the actual worship area was a massive underground cavern.

After a few false starts we found it. We pulled in, wheedled some blank receipts from the driver and joined the fun.



I’m a fan of non-league football, so I was delighted to learn that WWF-style wrestling has its equivalents. This was a World Outdoor Wrestling event, hosted in the car park of the Diamond Club, a strip club in southwest Houston.

The crowd was sparse, consisting mostly of families and strippers. Danny and I stood in a roped-off beer tent by the side of the ring, drinking $5 cans of Coors and watching one of the warm-up matches. There, we got chatting to Jay, a young bartender with a blonde mohican haircut, and Tom, a fortysomething real estate agent who was clearly a regular at the Diamond Club. They were planning a holiday together, and argued over the destination. Tom was set on California, while Jay was insistent on Europe. “I only get one fuckin’ week of vacation a year, I’m not spending it in this fuckin’ country,” she explained. We advised Amsterdam.

The subject turned to real estate and the shocking price of London property. I mentioned plans to purchase abroad. Tom, who minutes earlier had been seeking my assurances that audience participation in Amsterdam sex shows really does involve onstage fellatio (NB I have never been to Amsterdam), handed me his card with a view to facilitating a purchase in the Houston area. Drunk in the heat, this actually seemed like a good idea.

This conversation was interrupted by a little audience participation of our own: the MC invited all comers to don comedy over-sized boxing gloves and duke it out in the ring. I apologise to you wholeheartedly, reader, for not volunteering. It was just too hot. But Jay, firecracker that she is, was up there in a flash, merrily beating the crap out of one of the strippers. We congratulated her on her return and treated her to a beer.


Jay, before the fight

I mentioned to Jay, as politely as I could, that the girls working in the Diamond were a little unconventional-looking. “Oh yeah,” she replied breezily, “we have all kinds of girls here: fat girls, old girls, ugly girls – doesn’t matter what you’re into, we got it.”

After the boxing came the main event.

The title-holder, pictured, described himself as the “Ultimate Bad Boy,” and had stalked the perimeter of the stage throughout the day, barking self-aggrandising statements and put-downs of future opponents. He was not a popular champion. His repeated threatening of the master of ceremonies did not endear him to the crowd, who seemed to find him arrogant and out of touch. He did, however, comfortably defend his title in the marquee match.



Now quite drunk, we bid farewell to Jay and Tom and caught a cab back to the hotel to join our other colleagues for dinner: fish and chips in a mock British pub called 221b Baker Street. It was the best fish and chips I have ever had in my life.

LONDON NEWS

TUPNews recently visited Brockwell Park Lido, in South London. I will never tire of telling people that Brockwell Park Lido is simply one of the best things about the London summer.

Last Friday was cloudless and hot, so I rang work and pretended to be incapacitated by a duff oyster. After a little lie-in, I whipped on my trunks, grabbed a towel and packed my bag with the essentials: music player and headphones, a selection of light reading, and a bottle of mineral water.

On the way to Brockwell Park, I stopped off at the market on North Cross Road market to buy some of stallholder Andrea’s fishcakes for lunch, and then at East Dulwich Sainsbury’s, which was selling Amber Solaire spray-on sunscreen for six quid; a fucking result in any language. I got the lido around one o’clock.

There’s a great ambience at the pool, as always. We all roll our towels out onto the London concrete and pretend we’re in Spain, or Morocco, or Egypt. Police sirens sound at a distance, planes circle overhead, but we’re in a little secret patch of our own: it’s lovely.

The near-nakedness of everyone is also pleasantly relaxing: Londoners of all shapes, shades and sizes, sans class signifiers save some tattoos, letting it all hang out. The first half hour I devote to checking out pretty young things, but soon this impulse fades and I just dig the naturalist, garden-of-Eden vibe.

The pool is Olympic-sized and ice-cold, which means it rarely feels crowded. You get the odd point-to-point lap swimmer, but I’m more of a five-minute dip man. I specialise in the underwater somersault and the lying on my back with my feet sticking out of the water. Me and the lap-swimmers don’t get in each others’ way too much.

These little dips have a remarkable effect on me. Within seconds of being in the water, I feel as though all of the stress of city life – which in my view is amplified in the sticky-suited heat of the summer – is discharged into the water, like static charge grounded. I dry out in the sun, and then repeat: after two or three of these dips, I am as relaxed and restored as I would be after a week’s vacation.

I have a small but persistent hangover from last night’s band practice, I’m hungry, and I find my reading matter doesn’t quite match the mood (last summer was all Murakami and Blondie’s Parallel Lines, absolutely perfect for the pool). Also I’m a little bummed out by a text from Emeline, a gorgeous French girl I’d met last weekend, cancelling our date that night. So after a couple of hours in the sun, I hit the road.

On the way back I stopped off at Nicolas, my local wine store, for a few bottles of Corsican rose to drink during the next day’s England vs Portugal World Cup quarterfinal. In France, there is a Nicolas on every corner; in England, around forty stores, all in Greater London, all staffed by French nationals. I think they may be posted out here from France. This Nicolas was displaying a large flag of St. George in the window.

“Ne pas un tricolore?” I inquired. “No,” the French national responded gloomily, “I zink zere is more hope with zis flag.”

Alors!!