As we arrived at the Mission San Antonio de Valero, otherwise known as the Alamo, the strains of Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” was just fading out on San Antonio’s new 97.7 rock station (so new it didn’t even have a decent strap line - they should follow the lead of San Francisco’s 107.7 The Bone - “Classic Rock that Rocks”).
Its funny that Ozzy Osbourne should be singing at this point, since he famously urinated on the Alamo during a tour there in 1982 (he was wearing one of Sharon’s dresses at the time, since she confiscated his clothes in an attempt to stop him going out and getting drunk and doing things like urinating on famous monuments). He was arrested and was banned from San Antonio until 1992.
1982 was a big year for Ozzy in many ways, not all good. This was the year he bit the head off a bat on stage in Des Moines (the bat incident was supposedly in response to the infamous CBS record signing incident in 1980. He and Sharon decided to generate some publicity for themselves by releasing two white doves in the CBS office when they finished the signing. When he released them he bit the head off one of them). 1982 was also the year his guitarist and songwriting partner Randy Rhodes died (along with two others) in a plane crash. He married Sharon later that year, she took over as his manager and he shaved off all his hair (all in that order).
Anyway, back to the Alamo. This was the scene of numerous battles between Texians (they were called Texians at the time when Texas was not part of the USA) and Mexicans, the most famous of which is called, unsurprisingly, the Battle of the Alamo. This ended March 6 1836 in a defeat for the Texians at the hands of the Mexicans. The Texians regained the Alamo (along with all of Texas) after they defeated the Mexicans in the Battle of San Jacinto in April that year. It was during the Battle of San Jacinto that the cry “Remember the Alamo” was made famous. Sam Houston led the Texas Army in this battle and it was this more than anything else that made him famous (definitely more than the Comcast adverts in which he appears today).
The title of today’s entry is on a plaque on the door of the Chapel building in the Alamo.
San Antonio is also famous for its Riverwalk. This is a 5km stretch of walkways which is below street level and takes you all along the riverside which goes in a loop round the city centre. The Riverwalk is full of restaurants and bars and is a great place to visit, day or night.
Amongst the bars on the Riverwalk was Mad Dogs, another annoying self-titled “British bar” that you get all too often here. This one is a chain which started in Hong Kong by people from Cambridge and Aberdeen. Not that you would have guessed it from the menu which included some sort of Guacamole, Deep South Spiced Rice, Mediterranean (that’s the sea just off the coast of...no, wait...isn’t it somewhere near Spain?) soup and vegetable kebabs. I could have forgiven them if they sold doner kebabs (even though they aren’t really British either, but like Chicken Tikka Massala it seems like they are) but what’s the point of claiming to be British and then selling stuff that plainly isn’t from Britain? I mean, its just not British. No wonder there’s no Empire these days...