Catching up with the Truppe Alpine in Dubai

The Truppe Alpine reigned supreme as London's premier faux-Italian football team between 2005 and 2006. Things fell apart with the departure of 1st cult hero Paolo Tanet and then Paul 'The General' Fields to Dubai. It would've been rude not to have a stopover in the UAE on our way back to blighty to catch up with these living legends of the Norbury Power League

(Ed, Nic, Paul, Paolo and Hagir)

In one of the strangest twists of our trip we got upgraded on the flight to Dubai, it would seem, sadly, given the evidence, that our selection was based just on us being European.

Backtwatters became Flashpackers and we spent the time gooning about in the enormous adjustable chairs, mucking about with the phones, and tucking into free booze and food.

Dubai couldn't have been a stranger transition to back home. 1st up everywhere is huge, and its a massive building site. It feels like one huge shopping centre; Bluewater in the desert. Its devoid of any real heart or soul. It's impressive, but all without any real substance. The actual shopping centres were incredible. Just a shame we had zero money to spend. There were enormous fish tanks and ice rinks and ski slopes to marvel at too in these cathedrals to consumerism.

Sheiks on skates

Friday night in Dubai led to predictable levels of gooning, and money being spent with reckless disregard for our daily budget. I suppose £45 for 3 drinks will be something that we need to get used to when we get back to London.

An aborted attempt to hook up with Paolo meant that the presents I had for him from India got taken out with us. The Indian bouncer was more than a little surprised by me me having a plastic bag with coffee beans and a lunghi in it, "you wear lunghi?!" Soon after this photo, the sex-pest police that roamed the club took exception to me having my arms round Nicky whilst I gave her a kiss. I, in turn, took exception to this and gave the bouncer an ear full; exploding with an expletive laden rant that she was my wife (I have had to jump the gun with referring to Nicky as my wife over the last few months, as it is unheard of for a couple our age to be together and not be wed. The fact that we don't have children yet tends to melt their heads too). He later came over to me, told me his name, that he was from Pakistan, and that he was sorry. I replied by telling him my name, that I was from Britain and that it was OK. We shook hands and went our separate ways.

Massive hangovers ensued, which were cured by relaxing in Paul's bachelor pad watching the whole second series on skins (disappointing) on his enormous TV, eating bacon sandwiches and baked meat and macaroni pie (Delia's bastard lasagna love child) ticking off 2 of the boxes in our top 5 of our foods we've been missing most list.

All in all, we were fighting it, but its time to go home