Monday 2nd November, Day of The Dead. No work. Sheffield United are playing football, in England, at 7:45pm their time, 11:45am my time. According to the t'internet, which has never been known to lie, the match is being transmitted live by Setanta. The match would be shown (live) in The Shakespeare Pub and Grille. Your mission, if you are willing to accept it, is to get across the border, on a Monday morning, with no visa, and watch the match. This tape will self-destruct in five seconds.
Game On!
Woke at 7:30am. Got up thirty minutes later. Got dressed. Hung around flat for twenty minutes more while maria finished getting ready. Exchanged money. Drove towards San Ysidro Sentri Border crossing. Realised that I was in the car, headed towards Otay Sentri Border crossing. Traffic up to Otay was abysmal. Finally got to Otay. maria joined the Sentri line, I joined the walk-over line. You remember this video? Forget it. Monday morning is busy, very busy. A Monday morning when half of Mexico has got the day off is double-very busy. It was busy.
An hour and a half later I was finally stood in front of a Border guard. I pointed out that my visa had expired and I would need to renew it. (For those of you who are non-Mexican and have travelled to the USofA, you probably remember having to fill out a green form, full of interesting questions: Have you ever overthrown a government? Were you a member of the N@zi party from 1939-1945? This is a visa waiver because you are from a friendly country. It expires after three months. For those of you who are Mexican, you never see this form. Not because you might be ex-N@zis, you have to go through 14 hours of queueing, a full background check, several hundreds of dollars cost, just because gardening is in your DNA.) I was sent to join the queue at the visa application window.
There was no one giving out visas. We stood for twenty minutes, waiting. Eventually, once the queue had grown big enough to start causing consternation amongst the other Border guards, two people turned up to give out visas. Fifteen minutes later, after denying association with H!tler's N@zi Party, being fingerprinted, having my photo taken, I was issued with a brand new visa. Valid until February 1st 2009. Wait. What? 2009? I pointed this out to the border guard. She tutted, took out a pen, scribbled the 9 out, squeezed a 1 in between the zeroes. You know, that's not going to cause any problems every single fucking time I try to cross. From there I was sent to join the queue at the payment window.
There was no one at the payment window. We stood waiting for twenty minutes, waiting. Eventually, when the queue for people waiting to pay for visas was longer than the queue for people waiting for visas, someone turned up. Paid for the visa, ran out the building, jumped into the car, set off to see the match.
We stopped off at the post office to check our mail. We'd got the book for the book club we are in. Whoot! Back in the car, North up the freeway, into the pub carpark. Sorted.
In the pub there is a man, wearing a Newcastle United shirt, sat in front of the television. The match hasn't started yet. We'd made it. On time. How awesome is maria? Drinks ordered and served, I start to lubricate my vocal chords. Soon the mighty Blades would be taking to the field, to the theme tune of Star Wars, and then it would be time to sing The Greasy Chip Butty Song - a song described by maria as the gayest football song ever (roll over link for the lyrics). The television came on, the teams ran out. West Bromwich Albion and Watford stood side by s...Hang on. WTF? The Newcastle fan looked at me, I looked at him. We both looked at the chalkboard on the wall where it announced Sheffield United v Newcastle. Everyone looked at the television again. Setanta had decided to switch matches. They would be showing the Blades v Magpies game at 5:30pm. At exactly the same time that the NFL game was going to be shown in the pub. We both knew what that meant, no footy match for us. Three hours. Three hours to get there, on time, to watch a footy match. What could be worse? Well, being the bloke in the Newcastle shirt. He'd taken the day off work to watch the game. It was even his birthday. Yep, he thought the gods had smiled on him, putting a live Newcastle match on his birthday, so he'd taken the day off work.
He left the pub. They promised to record the match and he could come back any time to watch it. We ate (I had fish, chips, and mushy peas. maria had chicken pot pie, chips, and mushy peas.) and left. Went to IKEA and bought some picture frames. Got home. Checked the final score on the internet.
Sheffield United lost, 1-0. And the goal? It was an own goal, scored off the foot of team's captain.
Dodged a bullet there.
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