Angry Chimp

After hours at the Zoo - Meerkat

2011-11-11T06:59:00.001Z

It took Chimpanzee slightly longer than 3 minutes and 32 seconds to reach the Meerkat enclosure.

This was because Chimpanzee was feeling so terrific about all the good he done so far this evening that he utterly failed to notice the tree stump that sat in the fork in the path, tripping over it and landing in a raggedy mess.

This particular fork was very important as it split the path between the Meerkats enclosure in one direction and the Crocodiles pit in the other. You really wouldn’t want to mix them up.

Crocodiles rarely greet unexpected guests with the same civility that Meerkats can usually muster.

On the other hand, if it’s a scare you are after the best a Meerkat can do is stand very very still and when you think it’s asleep, jump up and shout ‘boo’ at you.

Unfortunately, due to various cultural and language barriers, this charming small mammals attempt to terrify typically comes across as shockingly adorable.

“What’s that doing there?” Chimpanzee said to himself as he rubbed his bruised chimp shin.

“They must have just put that there,” he muttered under his breath as he limped onward to see his Meerkat friends.

The Meerkat sentry stood tall and proud on his rear legs; he rested his front legs on his tummy as he scanned the enclosure from right to left and then back again. Behind him lay a number of bolt holes from which could be heard the comfortable snores of the rest of the team.

Meerkat spotted Chimpanzee as soon as he appeared from behind the gate.

“Are you okay Chimpanzee?” asked the Meerkat, who as one of the most social animals at the facility always conducted himself with an air of confidence and easy charm, again, not qualities typically shared by the Crocodiles.

“Hurt my leg,” replied Chimpanzee, bearing his teeth in discomfort.

“Owww, nasty, how’d you do that then?” asked the friendly little Meerkat.

Chimpanzee looked embarrassed for just a moment before suddenly reply with a broad grin,

“Had a bit of bother with a fox…”

“A fox!” exclaimed the Meerkat, already quaking at the mere-kat thought of it.

“Yes,” replied Chimpanzee emphatically, “in fact there might even have been two of them.”

Meerkat thought for a moment and then furrowed his brow in the exactly that same way the person who looks after you might do, when you tell them you didn’t know you were not meant to eat all the choc chip cookies that were left out for everyone to share.

“So you didn’t just bash your leg on that stump by the fork like you did last Tuesday?” he asked as he scratched behind his ear with his paw.

“Most definitely not,” said Chimpanzee mock offended, before adding awkwardly, “Did I tell you about that then…?”

“Not at first,” said Meerkat.

“Anyway”, said Chimpanzee, now flustered by his own ridiculous attempts to cover up his now obvious quite frequent clumsiness, “how have you been chum?”

“Good,” said Meerkat, nodding to emphasis just how good he was, which secretly he wasn’t.

“Oh that’s great,” said Chimpanzee with a sigh, “It’s been all dramas tonight, Elephant and Hippo have been having a tiff, Penguin’s got a beef with Puffin, I was just about to –“

“There is something,” Meerkat said suddenly looking down at the ground.

“Oh…” said Chimpanzee, feeling slightly awkward that he was about to go off on a rant about how everyone wants him to solve their problems but no one ever asks if he has anything he wants to discuss, which he might…

Feeling Chimpanzee’s unease Meerkat shock his head. “Oh it’s nothing, honestly, forget I said anything. I feel silly even mentioning it. I absolutely will not start complaining when really it’s nothing… I can’t be drawn…”

Reaching through the bars Chimpanzee gently placed his paw on Meerkats tiny shoulder.

“Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it hon?”

“Oh well, if you insist,” Meerkat said and he sat down on his haunches, which were as it happens, phenomenally comfortable.

“It’s about the shift allocation”. He said matter-of-factly.

“What about them?” asked Chimpanzee.

“Well frankly I’m a bit tired of always getting the night shift. Every Monday morning we have our team meeting at the end of which we get our weekly rota, and every week I’m on nights. Every week.”

“Have you complained?” asked Chimpanzee.

“No, no I haven’t. I don’t want to complain. Complaining isn’t seen as being very team focused” Meerkat said, making those little air-quotation marks with his paws that folk who are a little bit insecure often use to make themselves seem less insecure and slightly smarter than they actually are.

“I mean do you know that last time I had a day off?” Meerkat asked pointedly.

“Saturday wasn’t it?” replied Chimpanzee.

“Well, yes, yes it was Saturday.” Said Meerkat, somewhat taken aback that Chimpanzee could remember as far back as the weekend. “And before that?” he asked trying to re-emphasis his point.

“Wednesday?” replied Chimpanzee again without batting an eyelid.

“Huh…” said Meerkat, again shocked at how well Chimpanzee could recall his Rota. “Well the point is do you know how boring these night shifts are?”

“No,” said Chimpanzee inquisitively, “How boring are they?”

“Very” said Meerkat, “And do you know how many potential threats there been since I started these night shifts?

“No,” said Chimpanzee even more inquisitively, “How many have there been?”

“None” said Meerkat with a huge Meerkat sigh (which is quite a tiny sigh by average size mammal standards)

“None?” exclaimed Chimpanzee, “No threats at all?”

“Well there was one yesterday,” said Meerkat half embarrassed even to bring it up.

“What was it? A fox?” asked Chimpanzee.

“What the fox that just attacked you?” replied Meerkat cheekily.

“Er…” said Chimpanzee.

“No, not a fox, not a fox at all. Not a hawk, or a cat or a wild dog… “ Said Meerkat, “A hedgehog.”

“A hedgehog?” spluttered Chimpanzee.

“Yes, hedgehog. Of course I got the team out. Had to, protocol. I felt like a right fool I must say.”

“And what happened, did you see the hedgehog off?”

“No” said Meerkat “After the team went back to bed we just sat and had a chat.”

“A chat?” asked Chimpanzee who was now becoming acutely aware that all he was doing was simply recapping each of Meerkats sentences.

“Quite a decent fellow as it happens. Just moved into the neighborhood.”

Meerkat just sat and stared into the clear starry night as Chimpanzee began to pace furiously as he contemplated this particular issue.

“Look Meerkat,” said Chimpanzee after a few moments of frantic thinking, “You know maybe the reason there are so few threats on you watch is that you are really good at it.”

“Good at it?” said Meerkat, now taking up Chimpanzees recapping mantel.

“Yes, no one comes looking for trouble when you’re on watch. And I assume the reason you keep getting this shift is because the others trust you so much.”

Meerkat stood back up onto his rear legs, Chimpanzee could see that his chest was ever so slightly more pushed out than usual.

“I think you’re onto something,” said Meerkat proudly, “That makes sense, right?”

“Er.. yeah, absolutely” said Chimpanzee in an almost believable way. “Okay, look Darling I’ve got to get going. See you again tomorrow night?”

“You bet,” said Meerkat with a newfound sense of duty.

Chimpanzee turned and began to limp away, anxiously biting his chimp fingernails as he did; maybe he’d try to get here a bit earlier tomorrow, when his friend was still in bed. It would give him a chance to have a chat with team about the shift allocation policy.

It really didn’t seem at all fair.

Just before he reached the gate he heard Meerkat shout out to him.

“Chimpanzee, I almost forgot to tell you something”

“Tell me what?” Chimpanzee shouted back.

“Crocodile wants to have a word with you” Meerkat hollered probably loud enough to rouse the rest of the team from deep dreams filled with play fighting and speed trials.

Chimpanzee was instantly alarmed, on point of principle he refused to judge any of the inmates but he couldn’t help but be absolutely terrified of Crocodile.

He still recalled the time Crocodile quipped that he would never view Chimpanzee as dinner.

“Phew” said Chimpanzee with utter relief.

“No” said Crocodile with his big toothy grin, “you’d only big enough as an hors d'oeuvre”.

Chimpanzee didn’t know what an hors d’oeuvre was but he certainly knew being compared to one by Crocodile was probably not a good thing.

“Did he say what it was about?” Chimpanzee shouted back nervously.

“No” said Meerkat.

“Phew” said Chimpanzee with utter relief.

“But he didn’t seem at all happy with you” Meerkat added unhelpfully.

Chimpanzee suddenly felt his knees go weak, which only added to the pain in his already quite bruised shin.

Give Mole a chance...

2011-10-06T14:23:00.002Z

The truth is no one really knows where Mole comes from…

Well actually they do, you see Mole is the result of the overgrowth of the skin's pigment cells, melanocyte. Mole doesn’t know this because Mole is just a Mole not the part of the brain that deals with knowing where moles come from or where you left your keys this morning. It isn’t Moles fault that Mole is the overgrowth of the skin’s pigment cells, it is just one of those things, and now here Mole is.

Despite being light brown in colour, Mole is not of an ethnic background, in fact everything around Mole is quite white, and like Mole rarely touched by the warm embraces of the Sun… or at least that is what we imagine.

Mole is of the soft variety, not in the sense that Mole can be bullied, or cajoled into committing criminal acts, although to be fair we doubt this has ever been tested; no, Mole is soft, and certainly not dysplastic. Mole had once been called dysplastic but this turned out to be both a mistake and somewhat offensive. It’s just not polite to call a regular mole dysplastic; in fact it’s rude.

Mole is not entirely sure how old it is; its earliest memories are of a fifteenth birthday party which would make Mole now around fifteen years old… which is not as obvious as you may first think.

Sadly, despite its splendor Mole harbours feelings of shame and insecurity, which anyone will tell you, are not good feelings to have. Good feelings to have are joy (within reason) and that gooey feeling you get in your tummy when someone nice runs their fingers inside your underwear waistband.

Now, we are not Psychiatrists, no we are not. But we believe that the reason for Moles feelings of shame and insecurity are simple; Mole is infrequently spoken to, or indeed spoke about, and when Mole does hear itself spoken about, it is rarely complimentary. And sometimes, just sometimes its name is mentioned in conjunction with a small medical procedure, which is a shame as Mole is packed full of personality and charm, love and kindness…

Mole has never harmed anyone, and with regular check-ups, it probably never will.

If only Mole can be given a chance.

The Middle Class Child 1:3:7

2011-09-22T13:38:00.001Z

Well... here we go again.

Not sure why it's taken so long to write... maybe the lack of anti-depressants. The good news is I'm fully medicated and experiencing a rare period of creativity.

So, taking advantage of this I present the first part of the movie version of The Middle Class Child.

Oh and I fully intend to email everyone that has contacted me over the past few weeks - SORRY FOR THE DELAY!!!

Enjoy...

The truth via Valentine card

2010-02-14T13:00:00.004Z

We'll it's that time of year again when fake sentiments written by someone more articulate and creative than you are wrapped in paper envelopes and received with disappointment and disdain (in my experience anyway...).

Maybe that isn't the case for you (I don't know who the hell I'm talking to, I've pretty much alienated all my family, friends, co-workers, blog chums and now even my dog - yep, i'm pretty much talking to myself here) but in case it is here are a few card ideas you may like to cut out and send to that special someone.... or something, I don't judge.

I'm such a terrible romantic... literally terrible...

The Middle Class Child 12.11.8

2009-03-27T05:34:00.004Z

Lizzie Jenkins and her almost thirteen-year-old daughter Esmé Jenkins-Strathmore (twelve years, eleven months and 8 days) are on holiday together at a beautiful coastal resort in Cambodia.

Esmé is unaware that only a relatively few short years ago this popular holiday destination for predominately Western tourists saw unimaginable horror during the regime of The Khmer Rouge, with over a million Cambodians, out of a total population of 8 million, dying from executions, overwork, starvation and disease.

All Esmé is aware of is the endless sandy beaches and the blisteringly hot sun which both her and her mother take care to protect themselves from whilst they work on their tans.

Her mother Lizzie intends to take Esmé to one of the many historic Killing Fields sites which she sees as part of Esmé’s world education, but not until late in the second week so as not to spoil her holiday in Cambodia. Ultimately this does not transpire, however Lizzie determines to discuss the history of the country with Esmé during the flight home. This also does not happen.

Recently split up from her ‘insufferable’ writer ex-boyfriend, Lizzie is starting to feel that time is running out for her to be truly happy, or even just content with her life. ‘Maybe just some time away somewhere sunny is the answer’, she thought to herself as she flicked through the listings on Tripadvisor.com a few weeks previously.

With her brother now permanently living with her father Marcus and his new family, Esmé is secretly pleased that it will be just her and her mother on holiday together. It had seemed like such a long time since they had had any fun together, in fact Esmé could hardly remember the last time she had seen her mother smile, let alone laugh.

By the second half of the break Lizzie is feeling relaxed, comfortably dividing her time between the beach and the resort bar. Esmé on the other hand spends a lot of her time with a sixteen-year-old Dutch boy called Gan, who is holidaying without his parents for the very first time.

During the next couple of days Esmé will try marijuana cigarettes and sexual intercourse for the first time.

She will leave Cambodia with the opinion that whilst she enjoyed having sex, she much preferred smoking joints as it made her feel quite lovely, helped her forget about all the sad things in her life, like her mother, and it lasted longer.

Britain bought out by Crocs.

2009-03-22T07:19:00.005Z

BREAKING NEWS:

With the stock price plummeting and redundancies escalating at an alarming rate, Great Britain has been in danger of a corporate buy-out for some time now and today it was officially announced that Crocs, the manufacturer of ‘injection molded day-glo plastic clogs’, has bought out Great Britain for one pound and will commence the massive task of re-branding and re-training of Britain’s 60 million employees.

How the UK will look by 2010

Crocs are undoubtedly the smash hit fashion accessory of this decade and in the words of their own unique advertising campaign, ‘The single ugliest item of clothing ever created™’. Crocs put their success down to the simple fact that the design free and cheap-to-produce plastic clogs are absolutely irresistible to people with no sense of style, such as children and reality TV show watchers.

“Obviously our first move will be to ensure all our team wear Crocs” announced the company’s Dutch chairman Bo Gan Shuuse, “And then we will be working town by town, colouring each in a bright and exciting colour, some will be primary, some will be secondary and others will be more pastel in tone.”

PINK FOR BRIGHTON?

It is currently understood that London has already been designated as orange, with Birmingham and Manchester brown and lilac respectively. Further town colours will be decided in the next few weeks.

Britain has previously faced buy-out on several occasions, most notably during the crash of the late eighties when Amstrad expressed an interest. However it is only now that this abrupt sell-off of Britain, severely weakened by a cynical, shortsighted and morally bankrupt board of directors, has become a reality.

During a hastily organised press conference in one of the eight Oxford Street Croc shops, Britain’s current MD, Gordon Brown, hailed the news as ‘acceptable’, stating that “we were initially hoping that Apple would be bidding for Britain or even Starbucks at a push, but neither were interested due in large part to our work-forces’ growing love for infantile, tasteless footwear. At that point we realised that Crocs is a perfect match.”

BRAND RANT

The move has garnered predictable outrage from Britain’s militant union the BBC, whose leader Russell Brand claimed that the take-over was, “A f**kin’ disgrace”.

In a statement which Brand himself shouted out in the middle of the Lakeside Shopping Centre food court KFC, he bellowed that Brown was ‘once again short f**kin’ selling Blighty’ and that he himself would never wear a pair of Crocs, quickly adding “Not unless they are free, black and I can make a couple of quid from the celebrity endorsement”.

It took Brand’s own party members a further 4 hours to end his rambling speech, in which he lashed out at such targets as ‘the footie’, ‘funny things from yesteryear’ and ‘my discoloured willie’. The speech subsequently emptied both Lakeside Shopping Centre and much of Thurrock.

Brand’s dismissal of Crocs is particularly ironic; Brand has also described himself in the past as being irresistible to people with no sense of style, such as children and reality TV show watchers. However, Crocs have never been called ‘talentless’ or described as an obnoxious gobshite middle-class teenage Robert Smith wannabe prick.

SPAZTANIA

Speculation is now rife as to whether Crocs will change Great Britain’s historic brand name, with a suggestion that by the end of 2009 the former UK will be known as either ‘Croc Britain’, The United Crocdom’ or more simply ‘Spaztania’.

Bo Gan Shuuse elaborated on the current geo-political situation, “Where once the world was fought over on ideological grounds, now it is the footwear manufactures that vie for dominance”.

Crocs currently control much of Western Europe and at least 45% of Asia, whereas Australasia is controlled by Havaianas and the Americas by Converse. As a footnote to this, Birkenstock do not own any continental landmass but they do have more retail outlets then taste should allow.

I got a letter the other day...

2009-03-19T02:00:00.005Z

Priceless.

It's stuff like this that brings joy to my cynical heart... I received this email yesterday morning;

Hi there!

I recently searched online and came across your blog and came across your interview with the Bliss editor, Helen Jenkins. I am currently a third year journalism student and doing my dissertation on the sexual content in teenage magazines and was wondering if I could include your interview? Just need to verify with you that it is truthful and it was conducted, etc etc...I know that sounds silly but it needs to be done! Do let me know if you can let me use it, as soon as possible... Also, any further information on the interview would be great.

Thanks so much for your help.

I look forward to your reply.

Thanks,

Jennifer.

This is the post she is referring to;

Bliss Magazine - teenagers guide to fucking!

I can only assume she never actually read the post because lets face it, I ain't being subtle here.

This is almost as good as all the attention I got from the castration folk over my Castrato Academy I did a few years back.

Well, that's it, I'm definitely getting me one of those personal websites when I get back, all flashy like. I might even try my hand again at some satire, subtle or otherwise... and then maybe I'll get a job...

Leaving the tropical Island we're currently on and heading back home to England in 16 days. Is it true no one has a job there anymore and that it now resembles the future earth from the Terminator movies... only with more crappy telly?

Herge OUT.

The Lonely Lemon

2009-03-05T10:31:00.009Z

They called it the last great unfilmable work, but I've proved them all wrong and filmed it.

For your viewing pleasure I suggest you play it with either the sound turned UP or with headphones in.

Enjoy...

For the source material click here.

Confirmation on CRAP ANIMALS No.6

2009-01-27T11:35:00.002Z

As most of you will know I am a blogger of the highest dedication, and as such I have traveled halfway across the planet to check a few facts out on a post I originally wrote when I was about 14 years old - Crap Animals No.6 The Koala (reprinted below for your convenience).

Well, now having spent a good 5 minutes studying this animal up close and in the wild (the Great Ottaway National Park - Victoria, Australia) I can confirm that Koalas are:

A. Crap

B. Animals.

Enjoy the (small amount of) footage below which I hoped was going to show bumbling tourists getting their cameras rammed up their bums by uppity Koalas. Unfortunately this particular Ewok rip-off was far too monged on eucalyptus to give a stuff about the throng of cooing shutterbugs buzzing around him.

The original post...

I branded this one earlier, he put up quite a struggle, but I got 'im.

This is taken directly from the Australian Koala Foundation website;

“Koalas mean so much to the world. Even the hardest human heart melts when it comes into close contact with them - especially in the wild”

How much longer are we going to have to endure this incessant sentimentality for anything that looks vaguely like a teddy? It is this kind of crap that sank Return of the Jedi; you can be certain it will sink us.

And, if they are soooo ‘special’ that they can, ‘melt the hardest human heart’ then why are they currently endangered? – well, not actually endangered, but vulnerable in a number of Australian States. The truth is, if they weren’t such fussy bloodly eaters they wouldn’t be in the shit they are in.

Anyway, to prove that I know what I’m talking about, and why the Koala deserves to a member of ‘Crap Animals’, I have complied (or stolen from the Koala Foundation website) some interesting facts about the KOALA BEAR.

Example of the weird two headed koala.

Please Note: Not a single word has been altered from the original

1. They are not bears; although they are as crap as most bears (particularly our friend the Panda) they are MARSUPIALS, which means that they can carry their keys and fags in their pouch. Very handy for a night out down town.

2. Koalas are mostly NOCTURNAL animals. This means that they sleep in the daytime, and move around and feed at night just like vampires and the unemployed.

3. The male koala has a dark scent gland in the centre of his chest. He rubs this on the tree in order to mark his territory. This is known as ‘rubbing one off’, or ‘having a crafty grind'. Koalas will often become agitated or embarrassed if they are caught doing this by their mums.

4. Koalas also communicate with each other by making a noise like a snore and then a belch, known as a "bellow" – very much like our ‘Northerner’. (or ‘Morlock’ as they are also known)

5. Koala young are known as 'joeys', or ‘joey deacons’ or ‘deacon’ or just simply ‘eeerrrrr’.

6. There are about 600 varieties of eucalypts. Koalas Australia wide eat only about 120 of these. Koalas in a specific area would prefer to eat only about 4-6 different types, because they are uptight fussy little bastards who are a right fucker to cook for and are rarely appreciative of any of the effort you have gone to - often complaining that the rice is over cooked.

7. Eucalypts (gumtrees) are both food and homes for the koalas – which Is incredibly stupid, if you think about it.

8. When koalas become upset and worried ("stressed" – the sensitive souls that they are) by the loss of their homes (because they ate it, presumably) they may get " Chlamydia" or “Dirty bitchticus”

This is obviously a great excuse for giving someone this sexually transmitted disease.

9. Probably around 100,000 koalas remain in Australia – and I have a question – were they originally the British criminal underclass, like the rest of white Australia?

10. They look cute, like an Ewok from Return of the Jedi.

Ahhh, he's a cutey... bless him, I just want to give him a big cuddle.

So anyway, enough of the negative ninny stuff - here are my top tips for getting the Koala back in the game and stepping up the evolutionary ladder:

1. Eat other stuff.

Seriously, this addiction to eucalyptus was sweet to start with, but man - is that now getting old fast.

Treat yourself, have a lovely bit of pain de champagne from your local patisserie, some delicious organic butter, a couple of leaves of a sweet lettuce, couple of cherry tomatoes, a slice or two of good mature English cheddar – and bam! – Problem sorted.

2. Don’t get so stressed out – take a Ritalin, Lustral or even dope up on some Prozac, just chill. Worrying all the time is not going to solve anything. Have you thought about getting a hobby? And before you ask - no!- picking bits of eucalyptus out of your teeth ain’t a hobby.

3. Get rid of that cuddly bear image. It is just so 1983. What you need is to present yourself as a dangerous, territorial killer. Hire yourself some good PR people and get known. Maybe even sign up for the next Australian Big Brother. At the very least, it will be secure housing for a couple of weeks.

If the Koala can get off its arse and make these changes then I will be the first to suggest that they are removed from Crap Animals. (into the new, sub-category ‘not quite so crap animals).

"What you fucking looking at?"

But let’s face it, these lazy shits ain’t doing squat.

Previous 'Crap Animals'

No.35 The Wasp
No.18 The Giant Panda
No.26 The Miniature Dachshund
No.47 The Zebra
No.12 Human Children

Top 5 predictions for 2008 - RESULTS SPECIAL

2008-12-21T16:12:00.002Z

We’re already at the end of 2008 which means it’s almost time for Angry Chimps top 5 predictions for 2009.

Before however, that it is now traditional to take a look back at last years predictions and 5 from last year and the unnerving accuracy of my predictions – here they are again;

1. All new film releases will be ‘remakes’ (or ‘reimagining’ if you’re a gullible twat) – SPOT ON.
In fact it turned out I was a little conservative here as most new films released in 2008 were remakes of other remakes made within the last 5 years; but I was close enough. Personally, I prefer a remake than an original piece of work – when I go to the cinema I don’t want to be ‘challenged’ by a new story or interesting new ideas, I just want more of the same, that’s why I also enjoy the work of Coldplay and the comedy of Little Britain.

2. Everyone under the age of 25 will become a TV celebrity and feature in at least one article on E! News or Heat Magazine – ABSOLUTELY.
Universal celebrity has become one western cultures proudest achievement this century. You remember the campaign from the 90’s right? ‘Leave no spoiled, self-obsessed, egotistical, morally bankrupt, whorish, talentless, vile spawn of Satan behind’. Heart-warming.

3. Nepotism would become the only requisite on Curriculum Vitae – SO TRUE.
Let’s face it, it was about time. Why mess around with ability, skills and suitability when you can just employ the offspring of someone who had those skills –its nature NOT nurture, right? Makes me feel better knowing that everyone in business, the media and the entertainment industry has the same surname and eats at the same table at Christmas as the man or woman who had the job previously. Imagine how much harder it is to go to all the effort of auditions and castings for your new play when you can just put your daughter Keira in it instead – oh, and does he have a brother because audiences love an Affleck.

4. Apple will release a new version of all their product range every day ensuring that you always feel ripped off - YOU BETCHYA.
The commitment shown by the Apple corporation this year has been outstanding, even with all their dealings in stem-cell research and cloning to finally develop the iPerson (with the next version of iPerson released a week after you get yours – only this one will have a mouth that goes twice as fast) they still manage to update their entire product range almost daily. It’s marvellous, and only heartless cynics would suggest they simply hold back new features and gizmos from each subsequent release purely to get us consumer sheep to slavishly by the next iPod because it has half a gig more memory, will make you a cup of coffee in the morning, emit small puffs of sweet smelling ‘fresh Apple store smell’ and will give you a very decent neck message when you come home stressed from a hard day working for the son of the daughter of the nephew of the cousin of the man who started your company at the beginning of the quarter.

5. The ‘End of Days’ finally came – RIGHT.
You’ve probably already forgotten this happening. Remember back in September when the anti-Christ rose from the depth of hell and finally took control of the Earth unleashing his evil hordes to bring death, disease, pestilence and generally bad television to the world? Ironically most people didn’t notice figuring it was business as usual, and those that did applauded the fact that upon his arrival he immediately sacked Bush from office on the basis that he really didn’t need ‘evil competition’.

So, pretty good year for my predictions – coming soon are my 2009 predictions, and as always if you have any predictions of your own please let me know.

I'm in Singapore today. It's clean, I like it.

Sunday movie quiz - Yep, it was FARGO

2008-06-15T10:09:00.001Z

Yep - It was Fargo.

And here is a clip of the scene I took it from...

The winner is Jo who will get some rock, but due to my massive generosity the following will also be getting rock - Garfer, Sniffy and Piggy. Now I will be expecting both Sniffy and Piggy to post piccies of you both eating your rock - Garfer is exempt as I know he is camera shy.

Next time the quiz will be a lot tougher.

_____________________________________________

Okay, this one went a little better.

A relatively straightforward quiz this - watch the clip and tell me which film it's from. Answers on a postcard please, or the comment box which will probably be much quicker.

There is a prize this time; a lovely stick of genuine Brighton Rock - I know, right? Amazing! It does mean I'll need to walk down to the pier to get it, but never mind.

I know, more robots right?, I'm obsessed with the robots...

I'm a bit concerned that this is too easy, oh well, if you guys get it straight away I'll just have to make the next one much harder.

Garfer - email me your address, you're getting a stick of rock for getting the last one correct.

My email address is on my profile (for a bit).

DX9878986TYNX51791b for short...

2008-06-14T00:12:00.000Z

Okay, this didn't really go as well as I wanted. One of those things that you think half way through, 'I can't really be arsed with this', but by which stage I'd already put some effort in, so I figured I should finish it.

There's numerous things wrong with it; 'suppose it's good practice.

See what you think...

I have a couple of other ideas I'll stick up once done...

Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan at St Georges Rd Church, Brighton

2008-06-13T09:19:00.002Z

It certainly was the oddest venue I've been to. Literally the church just up the road.

Bloody bins overflowing - typical of Brighton.

Fortunately there weren't pews but actual not-that-uncomfortable chairs. But it was still a church with us parishioners faced forward toward the band who gigged in the bit that is normally reserved for the harvest festival layout and stuff - You can tell I'm clearly not a regular church goer, right?

I was concerned that a church would make for a shitty venue, but then I guess religious types have been swearing by churches as the go-to venue for donkeys... turns out for once they were right; the sound was actually terrific, and despite the my initial thought that the place would be bit echoey this really added to the atmosphere.

They even served booze from a little table at the back, with the menu consisting of two types of cans of larger, bottled water and wine; red or white. Like a works do picnic. I know god goes all giggly for wine but does he dig Red Stripe larger as well?

Very civilized. In fact, my chum that came with' said it was the most civilized gig he'd ever been to, and I agree. Everyone was seated for a start - I have never been to a seated gig before, I normally would consider this crazy behaviour, akin to moshing at an opera. But the truth is, the last few gigs I've been to this last month or so, have been murder on my pins. Sitting for the 90+ mins the pair performed was a pleasure.

The audience was made up of Brighton's most middle class, mid-30's 'but-still-think-they're-with-it's' (of which I am most definitely one), and they were as well behaved and respectful of one-another as you'd expect from such a motley bunch. Absolutely inappropriate at a gig, of course. If I'm not being constantly jostled from behind, having beer spilt on me, idiots in front pogo-ing into me and at least two occasions of me giving someone the evil-eye prior to some confrontation, I don't feel like I've been to a proper gig.

Regardless of this I thoroughly enjoyed the night.

I am definitely getting old.

Mark Lanegan and Isobel Campbell have put out two albums so far and an EP. The first album was the well received 'Ballad of the Broken Seas', and their latest collaboration is called, 'Sunday at Devil Dirt'.

Their music is a mix of country, blues and rock. Most curious indeed, and very reflective of their musical backgrounds.

Isobel is an occasional solo artist. She started with uber twee Scot rockers Belle and Sebastian as cellist, keyboard player and occasional singer. Since then she's put out a couple of country-esq discs. She was a breathy singing voice, almost dreamlike at times.

Mark is a former grunger. He was (originally) the drummer and then singer for Seattle grunge band Screaming Trees. Since they split he pursed a solo career and regularly collaborates with one of my favourite bands, Queens of the Stone Age. I saw him about a month ago with one of his side projects, The Gutter Twins (where he sings with former Afghan Whigs frontman Greg Dulli).

Campbell and Lanegan are a combination that really shouldn't work, but it does. Lanegan's deep growling vocals, and Campbell's serene breathy singing voice, almost dreamlike at times, combine in such a beautiful way...

Here's a little taster:

It's noice isn't it?

Le Cochon de Bonheur: Tension dans la salle de bain 3 (NOW WITH ADDED SOUND EFFECT)

2008-06-11T17:20:00.002Z

Here it is, now partly revised, the final part in the Tension Trilogy (there will be NO more).

Hopefully this answers some questions regarding some of the deep and meaningful stuff that came up in the previous two short movies.

This really is my Return of the King; it's overblown, over long and by christ, it does not know when to end.

Anyway hope you enjoy it. I'm off to see Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegen at the little Church venue 1 min from my flat. Noice.

Isobel and Mark clip here

Enjoy.

Revelation Choquante! (Tension dans la salle de bain 2)

2008-06-08T13:59:00.001Z

Or... My Sunday afternoon movie project.

Enjoy...

Via Flickr and then YouTube - the flickr version I think is slightly better quality.

Saturday afternoon movie project

2008-06-07T16:03:00.001Z

A little film created with my digi camera and the very basic iMovie...

If only I had a video camera, some decent ideas, a ton of cash and my youth back.

And now it's on YouTube - where it looks a bit crappier.

101 Reason's I'm going travelling - No.1

2008-06-06T15:20:00.000Z

This was the most exciting part of my day:

The fact that these aren't my eggs, this isn't my pan and that ain't my stove does not help to make this more thrilling.

These eggs were cooked in London SE1 - which to some may seem moderately more exciting, but I'm here to tell you it ain't. South East London (like most of London) is noisy, dirty, smelly and very busy.

To be fair to the eggs they did form part of a delicious Jabob's Cream Crackers, butter and sliced boiled egg afternoon snack combo. I washed this down with a cup of tea, with one sugar, but no biccies - boo.

I bought a little Canon Powershot in the US last year (think they're called the canon ixus here), I'm not at all a camera bod (unlike experts Sniffy and my lovely pal edwaado), however, I am very pleased with it; it's 8 mega pix which I think is noice and the little video facility isn't bad either (hence the little video, which is my first attempt to upload video to flickr and then onto the blog; this should be useful in South East Asia).

Combined with iphoto on my macbook everything is piss easy, even for a total dobber like me.

Art

Thinking of going along to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition on Monday. Tracey Emin is curating a gallery for the exhibition and this is already getting up the noses of the mass media who gleefully vilify anything Emin does, They understandably do this for two reasons;

1. Emin is a clever woman.

2. Emin is a clever woman.

I'm very fond of Emin's work which is much more than just My Bed; her monoprints from some years back are beautiful as is her photography and painting. Check out some more of her work here.

She only curates part of the Summer Exhibition, but this has been enough to rain scorn on the event; to me this is enough reason to take a trip out to see it.

I will of course have my ipod with me; the prospect of listening to the waffle of the other gallery goers is horrific. I'm sure they're not all hideous tossers, but I'm just not willing to take any chances.

D'oh and a movie quiz

2008-06-05T06:03:00.002Z

Oops, didn't mean to post that, fucktard, thought I'd bashed draft. Nobber.

See, that's the problem with doing anything early in the morning, you make mistakes, at least I do anyway. I'm not really effective until about 9 o'clock at night, and that only lasts for about 15 minutes.

Movie Quiz

Think it's time for a bit of movie quiz action - this isn't going to be easy peasy but this first one ain't that bad.

Here are two clues to a very popular flick - just name it.

1. Dead monkey

2. "Ha, I bet you would!"

Simply.

Answers on a comment post please.

London to Brighton: This is NOT the age of the train

2008-06-04T04:53:00.000Z

End of the Brighton line

Every other week, when the memory of my most recent drive between London Bridge and Brighton is still haunting me like the recurring nightmare of a recently deflowered socially train wrecked teenage at the hands of a toothless, scabies ridden embittered grandmother streetwalker, I decide that maybe the train would be less hassle.

It’s also not nearly as expensive.

Journey breakdown.

CAR

Brighton – London circa 50 miles

Diesel = approx 10 GBP

Congestion charge (outward) = 8 GBP (if I manage to remember to do it)

Congestion charge (return) = 8 GBP (ditto)

Parking (with vouchers) = 3 GBP per day

Total cost = Stacks, like can be over thirty quid sometimes, not to mention if I manage to get clamped, which i have 3 TIMES this year, at 120 GBP a pop.

Obviously the cost can be reduced if I drive at night/ early in the morning, but seriously, who can be arsed.

Travel time = anywhere between 1.30hrs and 4hrs – honestly, when you set out on that journey it’s anyone’s guess. The only guarentee is if you set out in either direction at 11pm, in which case it can be done in 1hr 15mins.

TRAIN

For some reason I always walk to the station.

Return ticket (within one month and on any network) 25 GBP

Travel time = 30 mins walk to station

1hr on the train

15 mins walk from station

Wow, seems like a much better idea getting the train, right?

Nope.

Invariably, the train is old, dirty, stinky, very noisy and clattering about. The line between Brighton and London is dreadful, probably the result of way too many fat Londoners weekend day trips.

The train ALWAYS has some drunk on it, I think this is a policy. It will also have a number of yoofs. I’m not keen on yoofs for no other reason than they are the black hearted children of Satan.

Last time I got the train a family of about 6 fat, smelly, sweaty, drunken, sun burnt, football shirt wearing, tattooed up, almost to thick to string a coherent sentence together, bulldog puppy worrying, SARF Londoners sat right next to me. They proceeded to SHOUT EVERYTHING SINGLE FING THAT CAME INTO THEIR BLACKHOLE OF A MIND, and let their tick-infested mutt snuffle around unrestrained.

Between Clapham Junction and London Bridge they decided to have an argument about something, I think maybe they were trying to remember if they were related by blood or by Fosters lager. It quickly got heated and one of them stood up and walked to the other end of the carriage continuing to hurl abuse at the rest. Lovely.

I am English, so therefore I pretended nothing was happening; I had my gort nano on loud and a copy of Edge magazine (surprisingly quality videogame monthly rag).

Suffice to say, don’t like it.

In conclusion.

Avoid both London and Brighton.

However, if you do need to travel, like I do to see the lovely Lou Lou (not a euphemism MJ), well, it may be a cunt in the car (it is if I’m driving) but at least you don’t have to share it with anyone else and you can listen to Radio 4 without someone calling you a tosser to your face.

Upon reflection...

Christ, I hope all my travel posts from the far east aren’t as misanthropic as my UK ones.

What's for dinner Meester Smeef?

2008-06-03T16:46:00.000Z

Urgh, can’t be arsed to go shopping, going to London tomorrow for a week so really no point anyway.

So, lets see what’s in the fridge…

Hmm…

A couple of manky mushrooms…
Half a week old packet of Feta…
An egg…
Some Parma ham (3 curly slices)
Slowly liquefying bag of salad...
Some chillies…
Half a broccoli…
Some butter…
Almost empty tub of Guacamole…
Bit of a loaf…

So from these humble ingredients I shall be concocting this magnificent feast:

Is that a man in there... or something?...

Wow, tell me how!

It's quite straightforward as long as you follow this very simple guide.

Here’s how:

1. Get the best Thai takeaway menu out of the kitchen drawer where you stuff all the menus that are rammed through your letterbox every day of the week.
2. You’ll need a phone and a credit/ debit card. Alternatively you can use cash, but you will need to get this ready.
3. Phone the Thai place and order a Green Chicken Curry and some rice. I like egg-fried rice because I am a lardy bastard, you may want to try jasmine or steamed rice.
4. Maybe get some of those spicy prawn crackers.
5. Don’t order a starter, I know it’s very tempting but you just won’t finish everything and if you do you will feel bloated and be wracked with feelings of self loathing.
6. Here’s the important bit, speak slowly and clearly when giving your address. Remember the person on the other end of the phone may not use English as a first language, and if they miss hear you because you’re babbling away in that, ‘they should bloody well speak British as good as like what I do’ way that you do from time to time, you won’t get your Thai green curry. And in that circumstance who’s the one to lose out?
7. Agree a payment method.
8. Wait. My local Thai delivers within 20 minutes, depending on which evening it is and their proximity to you, you may be required to wait a little longer.
9. Once it arrives pay the fella and dish up.
10. Stuff your face and feel all happy as the chilli works its magic.

Perfik.

For pudding? Sod off, I've just bloody made dinner, sort your own pud out!

For the love of a beautiful game No 1: REZ HD

2008-06-02T21:29:00.003Z

I’m a gamer, out and proud...

... and have been since my parents got me a ZX Spectrum (48K 'natch) when I was 8 or 9. Since then I’ve seen them all come and go, the Commodore 64, the Atari, Megadrive, NES, SNES, Gameboy, PS1, Saturn, Dreamcast, N64, GBA, Gamecube, PS2, DS, Xbox; and I’ve owned and still own most of these and have an antique (esq) wooden trunk full of games.

Currently it’s all about the Wii and Xbox360. Don’t own a PS3 and don’t ever intend to.

I finally got onto Xbox Live at the weekend; this is basically Microsofts console server where you can download games, movies, updates, play games with others etc.

I was after one thing REZ HD.

REZ originally came out for the Sega Dreamcast in 2001 (Garfer and Piggy already self-outed as owners; the shame of it!). The Dreamcast was a doomed console from a manufacturer that had lost sight of what had once made it great. It was also not helped by a limited and poor line up of software and very very strong competition from Sony’s marketing giant. The game itself was not a success and due to the relatively few Dreamcast owners out there it disappeared. However due to it's critical success it was deemed worthy enough for a conversion for the Playstation 2 (I think) a year later.

It was moderately more successful but in light of an increasing trend for ‘realistic urban/war’ games such as the Medal of Honor and Grand Theft Auto series it was already somewhat of an anachronism – an on-rails shooter that last only an hour where most games were trading their desireabilty on many many hours of play (anything less than 20 hours of play is still seen as a rip-off). Few could see it's true worth.

It again disappeared from gaming store shelves and 2^nd hand bins, only to be found on eBay where it was changing hands (for both consoles) at only marginally less than when it was first released (albeit for an elite few, an anathema for the majority of old or 2^nd hand games).

The thing is, REZ is not just a game. When you look at the trailer you can see that it appears to be about the visual and the music, and that is the point. It’s meant to be short because it’s meant to be played in one sitting; an hour of crazy shapes and booming beats that vibrate through your hands and arms until before you know it the games over. And although it does look complicated it is in fact very simple, point and shot.

Just like a great album it has fantastic replay value; something many games simply do not have.

It looks terrific, and sounds fantastic. I hesitate to call it art because the issue of can games be art is so tired right now, and without the appropriate distance it’s impossible to be subjective. Saying that though, I’m certain REZ will be a contender when the definitive history of the first 100 years of video gaming is written.

Even better, Xbox Live has just released it as a download for only 4.00GBP and it’s in beautiful HD. The game looks absolutely phenomenal; crisp, sharp, colourful and loud. In fact the only thing to change is the HD aspect, everything else is as it was. Perfect. An absolutely bargain

GTA 4 is great, of course, and it may be a fun and bang up to date game now, but unlike REZ it just won’t be being played 8 years from when it was released; unlike REZ it will look old and yesterday.

REZ is pure gaming; fun, crazy and diverting. Sure it ain’t the real world but it has absolutely no pretense to be so.

Maybe next (and on a similar theme): JET SET RADIO FUTURE

Murderball - movie heaven

2008-05-30T17:05:00.001Z

Here's another flick that I knew about when it was released but for one reason or another I didn't get round to seeing.

Like me, I know a lot of you will think from the title that this is some sort of low-rent sci-fi actiony moronathon like the remake of Rollerball or any one of a dozen films by Jean-Claudie Van the Dame and Dolph Lungdrone.

It really isn't. Take a look at the trailer -

Fuck messing with these guys!

I learnt more about quadriplegics from this movie than I've learnt from anywhere else; and I think a lot of the problem is that we're kinda nervous about being perceived as being nosey and also slightly horrified about what this would be like if it were us.

Murderball does go into detail about how each of the main guys wound up in a chair, and as each one talks about their individual impairment you can't help but wiggle your toes or clench your fist. It is also very frank about these guys sex lives. This kind of thing is just terrific for liberating so much irrational fear we have around any form of physical impairment.

It's both very funny at times and genuinely touching, and not in a mawkish forced sentimental way; these guys do not want your pity and sympathy, and as Mark Zupan says, just because he's in a chair doesn't stop him being a dick and getting in your face.

In particular the side story of a young guy who broke his spine on his trial-bike beautifully explores the very personal loss of ones old life and the start of a new one in a wheelchair. The look on this guys face when he meets Zupan and sees that the Murderball chair could be some serious fun is just phenomenal.

I'd urge all y'all to rent this, especially if you have the Lovefilm thing or similar. It's well worth a watch and you might just learn something at the same time (in a good way of course).

The Black Keys - Birmingham Carling Academy

2008-05-28T15:05:00.003Z

I've been to a The Black Keys gig before, and like seeing The White Stripes the first thing you think when they start belting out their mix of lo-fi rock/ blues is,

'Wow! They make a lot of noise for just two of them'

Funny thing is, like last time I wasn't really looking forward to the gig, but once you're half a song in they totally grab you with their sheer passion for the music. And that is the essential element for these two remarkably ordinary looking guys from Akron, Ohia, they absolutely positively look like they're doing it for nothing more than the love of the music.

Dan (guitar, vocals) and Patrick (drums) blasted though choice cuts from each of their five albums pausing only briefly for Patrick to get his breath before piling back into another riot of percussion and wailing cords.

The lack of pretense with these two is so refreshing, that's not to say pretense in music is a bad thing, it most certainly is not, but the absence of any here just leaves the tunes to speak for themselves, and they speak real nice.

So, if you're in the mood for some real rock/ blues to blast out on a sunday morning, or when you're driving through Tesco's carpark, these are the boys. I'd suggest you start with Rubber Factory.

After the gig I hooned it down from Birmingham (actually Droitwich where my chum lives) to Brighton in 2hrs, which was perfect as I managed to get in 3 Black Keys albums. When I pulled up at 1am my head was ringing. Oh well.

Bromyard... where's that? (Herefordshire)

2008-05-27T23:47:00.004Z

Help!!!!
The only bad thing so far about deciding to piss off abroad travelling like a selfish swine is the fact that you feel the need to be a tiny bit more considerate to family members in the run up to the period in which you can pretty much forget all about them, and their birthdays.

Hence my visit north - not proper Piggy, Sniffy, Spennal or Garfer north, just north to the Midlands. I'm not sure if I'm north or south of MJ, I assume MJ is somewhere quite filthy and nicely rude judging by the blog.

Bromyard

This left Worcester at 16:15 in 1946; arrived in Bromyard last wednesday morning.

Both my Mother and Sister (representing almost 50% of my entire family) live in a small, small, tiny, horrible, no-horse, can't even spell horse, or know what one looks like (does it look like a sheep?) town called Bromyard.

Here's a link to the wikipedia page which is both brief and uninspiring.

The bit about the Christmas lights is great, unlike the lights themselves which are okay at best. Lets face it, they are only of note because none of the surrounding towns can be arsed with lights; the main offender being Great Malvern, another small town, but of a much higher reputation which hosts a particularly shoddy display each year, honestly, it really is woeful.

Stuffed full of booze
Apparently there are 60 thousand pubs in the UK for around 60 million people, which roughly means that there is 1 pub for every thousand people. Bromyard has a population of around 4 thousand, but about 20 pubs. That pretty much sums the place up.

'wogs!!
It was also the scene of the now infamous 2006 gollywog scandal, which even made national news. The general populace of Bromyard refused to bow down to 'Political correctness gone mad TM', and stood firm that the stuffed childrens doll in question which dipicits black people as generally having thick curly hair and big ruby red lips was absolutely nothing but a bit of fun and certainly not a highly offence throw back to a time of slaverly and general ignorance.

In Bromyard there is no throw back to ignorance, they live with it every day.

London
London is considered by the average Bromyardian as a place, 'I ain't ne'ver bun to, b'hut I knows it ain't all thart. I can gets to 'ereford on the buzz, so why bozza with Lun'un?'

Quiet and Safe
Saying that though, it is generally far safer than anywhere else I've been this year and much much quieter.

Places to visit when here
For the meat scoffer, Neil Gladwins the local butcher is fantastic; stacks of great cuts, terrific pies (the steak and kidney is particularly delicious) and the tastiest Lamb chops around for many a mile.

For the non-meat scoffer? Probably give Gladwins a miss.

ON ANOTHER MATTER - can you lot tell me if the font size is working for you, I'm all over the place with it at the mo.

beautiful (and weird) photography

2008-05-25T19:10:00.001Z

I've been a fan of photographer Gregory Crewdson for a good few years now; a number of his photos have popped up on the blog over the years, including the blog header which held the fort during my absence (the naked couple on the dirty mattress).

Last week I finally got to see his work up close. It was fantastic!

I'll be writing about it in a bit more detail tomorrow. For now please enjoy a few pieces of his most recent work.

CLICK TO SEE SLIGHTLY LONGER VERSIONS.

Brighton is STACK FULL of these bastards!

2008-05-24T17:20:00.000Z

Ugly, boring, thick, pale cunts-a-plenty

Had a stroll down the seafront to get a 99 with a flake from the most disgruntled and dirty ice-cream pusher in Brighton; I didn't think about how filthy his hands were until after I'd finished the 99. Thank fuck I'm full of vaccinations, I'd probably be nursing a healthy dose of Hep A if not.

Rant

Feeling really misanthropic, probably a result of all the wankers that invade Brighton every fucking bank holiday weekend. Honest to christ, what is wrong with everyone now, why are all these bastards so fucking noisy? This must be the defining feature of our culture, the amount of noise everyone makes. If it's not the worst lowest common-dominator dance music booming from every druggie tossers top floor flat it's scream selfish semi-retarded kids, squealing fake tan addicted women and their bellowing beer-gutted topless football tattooed Gary boyfriends laughing like the morons they are at every vaguely amusing thing as if they're constantly being filmed by a furtive Channel 4 crew for another of their pseudo-documentaries about the legion of disgusting people with absolute no self awareness but a ridiculously disproportionate sense of their own worth; which make you think maybe these people that want to destroy western society have a point.

Think Sniffy is on the same wavelength this afternoon.

Or maybe it's just my low blood sugar and all I need is a sandwich and a cup of tea.

Live in da now!

Better still, just watching The Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan. Seriously, this man is a fucking genius, and he is one of the only 'celebrity' self helpers that doesn't talk absolute shite; this is probably why when Trey Parker and Matt Stone had an episode which featured Cesar they were unusually respectful of his techniques, and like everyone else that watches the show realised that his training methods would work perfectly on problem children (also known as 'children').

"Calm, assertive energy".

Yes, Mr Millan, feeling calmer now.

Brighton is full of these bastards.

2008-05-23T16:17:00.000Z

And they're big cunts as well; hocked up on left over Mr Whippy and sugar filled crap dropped thoughtlessly by the tattooed plebs and their fat ugly noisy kids that infest Brighton everytime the sun comes out for a nano second.

Look at him, I was literally seconds from getting a peck off this wanker... fortunately just after taking this photo I was able to distract him by throwing a small passing child at him.

At least with a pigeon you stand a fighting chance, these mothers are about twice the size.

I had one land on my window ledge yesterday, when the window was open... it might even have been this shitter, who can tell, they're like hooded teenagers, they all look malevolently the same.

It smells like summer

2008-05-22T13:38:00.003Z

Undertook an epic journey today as I walked from the heart of Kemptown to farthest Hove (almost into Shoreham). Took an hour of super-fast left-home-too-late walking to get there, and then a delightful two hour stroll back along the seafront.

It's a beautiful day by the sea today, and as I walked past Brunswick Square I got a waft from the cut grass on the squares communal lawn. Being a bit of a country boy originally this particular aroma really fires my 'scent association' to 'summer time'. After getting a lung full the next association kicked in; fucking hay-fever.

I wonder, will I get hay-fever in SE:Asia?

Jabbed in Hove

The reason I was in Hove was to get some more jabs at the travel clinic. Although my local GP is just round the corner you can't get everything there; Japanese Encephalitis and my Malaria tabs are dished out by the travel clinic and are not NHS sanctioned.

So, had a second round of jabs; I am now 1/3 inoculated against Japanese Encephalitis. Joy.

I just know I'll get all my jabs done, get to SE:Asia feeling invincible and get hit by a bus.

The travel clinic staff were incredibly friendly and helpful and then I realised that it was a private clinic, which totally explained why the service was so good. Hmm... funny how not dealing with smack heads but paying customers can improve your disposition.

Malaria

There appears to be two options for my malaria tabs;

1. Doxycycline

Doxycycline is an antibiotic that prevents the development of parasites in the blood that cause malaria. You need to take it 1 or 2 days before you enter the malaria zones (for me this is Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and border areas with China) everyday you are there and then 4 weeks after you leave. The 4 weeks is paramount. It has a few side effects, mostly making you feel a bit rough and that.

This costs circa 29 quid for 50 tabs

2. Malarone

Malarone is a better drug, a combination medication that stops the development of parasites in the blood that cause malaria. It has no really unpleasant side effects (in comparison to Doxycycline) and you only need to take it a couple of days before you enter the malaria hot zone, every day you are there and a couple of days after.

However, it costs circa 40 quid for 12 tabs!!!

Now, my problem is I don't know exactly how long we'll be in the malaria areas, it could possibly be anywhere up to a few months which means if I take Malarone (which everyone has recommended) it'll cost a fortune.

I think the thing is, most people that have recommended Malarone only stayed in malaria hotspots for a few days or a couple of weeks, in which case 100 quid on meds doesn't seem too bad.

Loulou reckons the Bermondsey Mission is dishing them out to her free. Hmm...

How much?

This travelling lark ain't cheap. It's already starting to cost a fortune; I know once I get there everything is dirt cheap, but getting there may skint me out.

What kind of food do you suppose they serve here?

A gem of a restaurant I walked past this morning in Hove...

I immediately snapped the place with my phone and sent it to my Frenchie flat mate, who previously had been asking me about decent places to eat in town.

Obviously I was being well cheeky...

Her reply?

'I hear it's quite good'...

All at sea (man!)

2008-05-21T09:00:00.001Z

August 29th.

We've had confirmation that we are due to set sail August 29th from Le Havre aboard the CMA CGM RIGOLETTO for about 25 days, arriving at Port Klang in Malaysia at the end of September.

Very exciting. We'll have a twin-bedded cabin about 24 metres sq, which isn't a bad size. The boat also has a little gym, swimming pool and library (although as a French freighter I suspect a lot of the books will be in frenchie).

Keeping busy

Being at sea for almost a month is going to be quite the experience, and hopefully a positive one. I've previously never been at sea for longer than 12 hrs. I'm fairly certain i don't have sea legs so I imagine at first puking will be a big feature during choppy weather. I read an article by some dude that had also done this crossing who said that you puke until you think you're about to die, and then you realise that you won't. Most reassuring.

I am taking my laptop on the boat and intend to do some writing during the trip. I already have a couple of ideas, but I'm going to settle for nothing less than the 'Great British Novel', tentatively titled -

"I tried for a bit, but it was exhausting, so I gave up" by Herge Smith

That should capture the national zeitgeist; should be a belter.

My idiotic pre-conceived ideas about South East Asia and that.

2008-05-20T12:43:00.001Z

It’s very tempting when writing about travel to give the impression that you are a worldly-wise right little know-it-all. This is the reason the majority of travel writing is so infuriatingly smug;

“As a seasoned traveller I was certain that the earthy and indigenous gentle folk of Clacton-on-Sea would welcome me into their midst as long as I got totally ratted on Friday night and tried to frisk up an over weight slapper…”

I am not the least bit worldly wise and consider myself to be fundamentally thick and/ or naïve when it comes to places other than Worcestershire and East Sussex (and I’m not much of an expert on East Sussex).

Despite all the information I have read I do still have a lot of odd/ ignorant/ ridiculous pre-conceived ideas about the places I am about to travel to. And despite telling everyone I knew that I was going without any expectations I actually had some crazy ideas about both Cape Town and Johannesburg in South Africa, both of which proved to be entirely inaccurate.

Typically, I would keep these daft ideas to myself for fear of ridicule, however, that really wouldn’t be much fun would it?

So here they are:

(I may at a later date return to these ideas and compare them to my actual experiences thus proving what is already highly suspected, I am a nobber).

The freighter – I am a bit worried about getting held hostage by pirates

Malaysia – Nice, but junglely (not Roni Size)

Singapore – Very western and clean. No chewing gum.

Vietnam – Lots of paddy fields and a bit scary.

Cambodia – A bit depressing and scary.

Laos – Basic, bad toilet facilities, lots of mozzies.

Thailand – Touristy, like Blackpool but with more convincing transsexuals.

Philippines – Very scary.

Indonesia – Packed, like Oxford Street on xmas eve, less stabby though, I hope.

East Timor – Scary, war torn, people with arms off and stuff.

Papua New Guinea – Junglely.

Australia – Noice, noice, different, unusual.

New Zealand – Hobbitty.

Hmm… this really demonstrate what a total ignoramus I am.

Let’s hope travel does broaden the mind, at least a bit.

A missed Dogumentary

2008-05-19T00:05:00.003Z

I really haven't been paying enough attention to the movie scene over the past couple of years, which is why this absolute gem passed me by.

I only found it on IMDB after doing a quick bit of research on Wikipedia regarding the controversial and increasingly popular sport of Wiener racing.

Click here to go to the official site

I will now make it my (mini) mission to see this film and report back to you all.

Art Fraud!!!!

2008-05-18T08:40:00.001Z

It’s shocking isn’t it, Art Fraud?

Hubristic people and institutions with too much money and desire to own envied art being scammed by unscrupulous blaggers, typically more talented and ingenious than those they scam.

Ripping off old geezers and regular twits like me is one thing, and extremely distasteful too, but when these bigwigs with stuffed wallets get taken for a ride it doesn’t seem so bad, in fact it’s often seen as oddly heroic.

I have no problem with art being copied, as long as the artist doesn’t lose out. If for example, Mr Spleenal was being ripped off and his work sold for a fortune to the Tate or some such bods I’d have a problem with it, as would Mr Spleenal no doubt. But generally Art Fraud is almost a victimless crime, with only these daft sods who place such ridiculous stock in artwork feeling hard done by. Typically the artist that’s being copied is dead/ and or the piece of art lost anyway so that doesn’t matter, and if those that are scammed never find out, then so what?

On the other had, I have an original piece by Spleenal so I’m very keen for him to get real famous so I can flog it to some nonce for a stack of dosh – actually I’ll flog a badly photocopied version to the nonce and keep the original just for myself.

And on the subject of great art...

This fab picture was emailed to me by edwaado - any guesses why this appeals?

Sadly, they do shoot the biker scouts if they break a leg; the winning dachshund gets a Dentafresh chew (most need 'em after a heavy pant).

Childcare - a proposal

2008-05-17T12:46:00.000Z

Following on from an interesting debate over at the wonderful beyond belief Cakesniffers regarding the popular subject of children, and this article on the Guardian website which made me want to kill, I have decided to make a serious proposal about this common pest, erm I mean joy.

Baby timeshare.

This is how it works. Everyone is forced to look after a random child for at least a couple of weeks a year.

Technically, no one will be allowed to own any more than 1/26th of a child – again a great way to prevent us hitting the 9 billion mark in 50 years time

Now don’t start jumping up and down about there being no way you’ll lend out your kids, or your indignation at having to look after someone else brats, just bear with me…

This could be good –

1. It will socialize the child early in life.
2. It will put a lot of potential parents off, slowing the impending population crisis.
3. After a couple of weeks with a screaming child, the remaining weeks of the year will seem so much more enjoyable.
4. No parent will ever again be able to say, ‘You’ve never had children so you can’t possible comment on how they should be raised.’
5. It’ll bring us together as a society.
6. The child will be passed around a real mix of socio-economic and religious backgrounds, thus grounding it and (hopefully) preventing pig ignorant views in the future.

I think we should at least give it a try, could be a laugh right? AND if you sign up now I’ll do my best to make sure you’re last on the list to get one.

Of course, as the creator of this scheme, I shall be exempt. Only fair I reckon.

Bloody tourists, yeah!

2008-05-16T00:00:00.001Z

Yes, but which one will make me look like a twat?

Spent the evening in the basement of a Thai Restaurant just off Trafalgar Square in the company of ‘Travel Indochina’, a tour operator who, for exorbitant fees, take lazy (mostly aging) bastards who can’t be arsed to organize their own trips round Asia – booking them into the best accommodation and generally making sure they don’t ‘rough it’ in any way whatsoever.

We initially had a slide show presentation on Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, which simply whetted the appetite even more for the impeding trip. After which we stuffed ourselves on the platter of absolutely yummy assorted Thai starters. The second half of the evening was dedicated to China.

We’ve not really planned to visit China, but seeing the presentation there are definitely a few parts of the country we’d like to go to, in particular the Silk Road, (east to west China) and Shanghai – which looks absolutely amazing.

The only reason we sat through the slide show was to get some additional ideas on places to check out and to see what accommodation they recommended – obviously it’ll be significantly cheaper to dead the tour operator and book everything directly.

We also got that ace free Thai nosh, which to be honest I’d have sat through a presentation on Eastbourne for.

The Travel Indochina bods proudly stated that the area of the Great Wall they would take you to would be far away from the tourists.

Far away from the tourists… wha wha hat? Aren’t we all bloody tourists?

I don’t know if it’s just Asia that elicits such travel snobbery but it seems to be rife. All the books I’ve read and all the websites I’ve visited constantly say ‘don’t go here, full of tourists – you really need to go to this unspoilt area’ – not unspoilt for long I think if you’re recommending to all and sundry. I guess this is why if you take a rucksack anywhere round the world you instantly have to refer to yourself as a backpacker and not ‘god forbid’ a tourist – imagine how dreadful that would be! You would be just the same as ‘those’ that haven’t tried to enjoy their ‘holiday’ as much as you have.

I understand that certain sections of the Great Wall now have McDonalds and Starbucks along with the usual array of postcard and tat peddlers which is ironic, as I was under the impression that the Wall was built to keep the barbarians out.

Hmm… perhaps I’m already a travel snob.

You may feel a bit of a prick...

2008-05-15T11:32:00.001Z

Captain America juice

I’ve just had the first round of vaccinations for my trip. The nurse at my conveniently placed local practice (literally 30 seconds from where I live) has given me an extensive list of potential hazardous illness I will need to be protected from if I’m to emerge at all from my hermetically sealed suit whilst in South East Asia.

This feels like the first real step to going traveling, before it was all talk, now I’m getting dosed up with drugs – yeah!

So, today I had Tetanus, Diphtheria and Polio in one arm and one of three syringe full of Hepatitis B in the other, presumably both arms were used so that I don’t become unbalanced with all the extra fluid in each arm – not sure you can tell, but I’ve had no formal medical training.

I now have the following to look forward to over the next two months –

Typhoid

Hepatitis A

More Hepatitis B

Japanese B encephalitis (I asked for the British one but it wasn’t available)

Malaria (actually just tablets)

Yellow Fever (an absolute must and a pre-requisite for freighter travel through the Suez Canal)

And good old Rabies

Had a discussion with my Girlfriend, Loulou, who suggests that we give Rabies and Japanese B a miss on the basis that it would cost us to get the jabs despite the fact that we probably don’t need them and in the event of a bite from a rabid beastie (you’re okay-ish if you can get medical treatment within the first 24 hours of a mauling) the Rabies jab would only give us an additional 24 hrs to get help.

I had a think about it then I pointed out that we rarely if ever complain about the cost of stuff we routinely waste our money on, like over priced meals, ridiculous hotel rooms or indeed socks (more on socks another time), so to give the jabs a miss - these things that would potentially protect us from illness and death, due to the cost was a bit daft.

“Hmm…” was the reply.

It’s so rare that I’m this logical or rational, think maybe the DIP/TET/IPV + Hep B are having an effect already.

What's up with Michael Haneke?

2008-05-13T15:28:00.003Z

Explain yourself, Haneke!

I’m just not sure about Michael Haneke. I’m just not sure whether his work is genius or it’s the ramblings of a nobber.

Michael Haneke is a Austrian filmmaker and he has made a number of foreign language films in Germany, Austria and mostly (for the ones I’ve seen) in France. His most recent, a remake of an earlier film is in English and set in America.

It’s not like I’ve just written him off after one film; I’ve now sat through almost half a dozen of his films and I’ve still yet to have a, ‘Oh my god, that was amazing’ moment. It’s not that I’m hopelessly cynical either, I have loads of ‘Oh my god, that was amazing, moments when watching movies, most recently with Planet Terror.

YES! Planet Terror – who couldn’t love a film where a mother gives her a child a gun insisting that if he sees his father to shot him, and to be careful with the gun whilst she leaves him momentarily in the car, only to have the child almost immediately shot himself in the face.

There was another reason I liked this movie...

Of course, Haneke’s films are as far from the type of zombie/ action/ comedy/ violence that Planet Terror represents as it is possible to get, and I’m obviously not comparing the two, but they are both movies and they are both designed to be in equal measures art and entertainment (although in both cases Haneke and Planet Terror director Robert Rodriguez miss balance the art/entertainment to varying degrees).

It is also interesting to note that the depiction of violence in Haneke’s movies is far more disturbing than anything Rodriguez has ever and will likely ever come up, him and Grindhouse mate Tarantino.

Here is a brief synopsis for each Haneke film I’ve seen –

Hidden

Middle class man is (not really) terrorised by videotapes left at his home demonstrating that he is under some sort of surveillance – the purpose of which is never fully disclosed. Middle class man miss appropriates and blame and spirals into guilt ridden introspection.

Funny Games

Recently remade in the US with Naomi Watts – Middle class family is terrorised by two young politely spoken psychopaths who murder them one by one, child first. Very nasty and very uncomfortable viewing.

Code Unknown

5 or 6 different story lines, only vaguely connected for a few minutes, progress throughout the running time of the film with little or no resolution.

Time of the Wolf

Middle class family flee an undisclosed potentially apocalyptic event, are initially terrorised (for the first five minutes) but slowly become part of an adhoc (although benevolent) community of refugees waiting for supplies and a train. Again, no resolution offered.

The Piano Teacher

Uptight middle-aged and middle class Piano Professor, lives with her mother and spends her days chastising her pupils and visiting peepshows where she views hardcore porn and sniffs the used tissues of the previous booth occupants. She also cuts her vagina (I think) with a razor blade and pisses on the ground next to a car in which a young couple is frisking about. She ends up having a torrid relationship with a youthful and eager to please student but freaks him out with her list (literally a list) of sado-masochistic demands.

This scene, not as erotic as it looks.

Hmm… I still have the Seventh Continent, Benny’s Video and 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance and I will have done his entire film oeuvre, more or less.

There are two important questions I am asking at this point –

What is the point of his movies?

I think Haneke is trying to portray extraordinary events and people with as much attention to the ordinary as possible, hence no music, little in the way of close ups, long takes and no heightened sense of reality. This isn’t to say his films are either boring or un-cinematic, typically they are neither, with Funny Games and Time of the Wolf out standing as both great visual pieces and dramatic gut-wrenchers.

All of them end with no real conclusion or resolution for the characters (other than Funny Games in a twisted way) and their messages are somewhat oblique to say the least.

Funny Games is probably his most notable and well known, yet it is almost the most detestable simply because the message is clearer and than the rest and for that is much more shallow – the message being ‘Hollywood movies are unrealistic and your vapid desire to see violence and revenge driven satisfying conclusion to these films is pathetic’.

Definitely the best way to shut the kids up

Why am I bothering to watch them?

I think partly because I have a bit of time on my hands with the run up to disappearing to SE Asia, I also have this ‘Lovefilm’ 3 month free rental thing and partly because I’m curious when it comes to movies – I’m just twisted right?

I’m like ‘The Piano Teacher’, except I’m not taking a razor blade to any part of my genitals, well not again, anyway, genital mutilation is so passé.

To recap...

2008-05-12T10:36:00.000Z

Just what have I done in the last 12 months that has kept me from writing anything longer than my address?

Well…

I sold my house (just before all the selling house issues started).

Drove a Ford Mustang from the west coast to the east coast of America including spending a week in Death Valley during the summer where the temperature was circa 50 degrees C (makes the weather this week seem mild).

Moved to lovely lovely Dog Poo, erm... I mean Brighton.

Went to Paris for a bit (très bien).

Went to the US again, this time to work in Pittsburgh (PA) for a bit.

Quit my job (about the 3^rd time in 2 years).

Visited Dublin – was okay.

Got the worst flu ever at Christmas (the 4^th or 5^th time in recent memory that I’ve had flu at Christmas - no turk or stuffing for me).

Went to a bunch of gigs (including the Breeders – Pod, Trump - Pod).

Sat next to Gillian Anderson during a performance of Glengarry Glen Ross in London.

Stood next to Harold Pinter in the lobby of an Anthony Gormley exhibition (actually I stood, Pinter was sitting in his wheelchair, lazy bastard) - actually that's something I hadn't noticed before, where's my avatar thingy gone?

Went to South Africa for a bit (Cape Town lovely, Johannesburg a bit scary - stayed at a guesthouse in Johannesburg which had a smooth miniature dachshund running about.

Completed more videogames than a man of my age should have any right to do (not going to list them, frankly it would shameful).

Became a Pro at bowling, boxing AND tennis on Wii Sports.

Bought a MacBook – Yes, a MacBook.

Read a stack of J G Ballard - Crash, pure filth.

Visited Cambridge, Oxford, Cardiff, Manchester, Birmingham, Reading and others.

Spent a small fortune on hotels, am now a Malmaison expert.

Went to a lot of restaurants - the best was in Manchester.

Think that’s about it.

I’ll go into more detail on some of the places I been during the past 12 months later, obviously makes sense now that this is a *cough* travel blog.

Brighton

2008-05-11T19:35:00.001Z

You can never go back, that’s what they say. You can never go back.

Well, I did go back and of course it’s true, although the clichéd sentiment should be changed to ‘you can never go back because it’ll be a lot shitter than you remember it and caked with dog poo’ just to clear up any misunderstanding.

Dog poo

In fact, dog poo is my overwhelming impression of Brighton. It seems that as a nation of dog lovers, the British have decided, quite without my input, to turn Brighton into the country’s dog toilet, like one of those inconveniently placed bins you get on country walks, which seem to be always placed at least a mile from where your dog actually drops a load – not that my dog ‘does it’s business’ on a walk, very much like it’s owner the dog prefers to go on home turf, which did raise my neighbours’ eyebrows, me squatting on the lawn, shaking like an old man trying to explain to a teenager why everything was better in his day.

History (sort of)

When I lived in Brighton a decade ago I don’t remember it being so chock full of K9 doo doo. It does however seems to have the same number of pretentious alternative lifestyle wankers who have hung around after they finished their degrees and decided that they will drop out of the mainstream by claiming benefits from the government and smoking stacks of dope.

Brighton appears to also have the same amount of dope dealers, and gay folk (being the gay capital of England, or Europe or something). There are far more foreign workers in Brighton now, but frankly it’s a relief to have these hard-workers replace all the fucking Aussies that dominated all the bars, restaurants and pubs, with their cheery ‘everything about Britian is shit, mate’ attitudes – nah, they’ve all pissed off elsewhere I assume, maybe Bognor, who knows?

Toffs

Brighton also has more toffs, which I believe is a result of the terrific improvements in public transport between London and Brighton (yeah right!) and the fact that a few D-grade celebs lived here once – anyone remember Zoe Balls? But then again Britain generally has more toffs now doesn’t it? Or is it simply that for some horrific reason they’re no longer ashamed of their privileged interbred heritage.

Kemptown

Area of Brighton in which I live, Kemptown, is probably the most gay part of this increasingly popular seaside town. Kemptown has stacks to offer the visitor, a couple of crappy shops, a half decent pub, some shingled beach, mr whippy dog poo by the arseload and a church which is also a venue for gigs. As for what it has to offer the gay visitor, I really don’t know. My ‘live-in’ eligible lesbian seems to like it, but then she did live in Birmingham previously so anywhere would be an improvement. Maybe not Dagenham.

Dangers

They say that Brighton is an artsy town, stack full of artists, writers, musicians, thinkers, lazy bastards, smelly bastards, drunken violent bastards and old Scottish gentlemen who frequently sit on the bench opposite Brighton Pavilion growling at passersby and occasionally standing to either relieve themselves or to inexplicably shake one another’s free hand, the other hand clenched with a teenage masturbators grip around a can of whatever will get them the most blind.

Booze appears to be the main pastime of the average visitor to Brighton, along with gay-love of course. The two top the chart of the main reasons for visits to the casualty department, conveniently located in Kemptown (convenient to Kemptowners but not convenient to anyone else as the town centre is a good 20 minute walk). Alcohol related incidents and over use of ‘poppers’ for loosening up see many folk enjoying a 4 or 5 hour wait for treatment or an overnight stay if you’ve really pushed the boat out.

Places to eat

I dunno, you can get a pizza or go to McDonalds. I like Thai food if it’s my choice.

Must visit

London, yeah, I’d suggest getting the train to London. Only 50 minutes from Brighton station to London Bridge, which in fact will be the part basis for my next thrilling travel blog.

Rules of the blog

2008-05-10T23:16:00.003Z

I hate travel blogs, HATE THEM.

The vast majority are specifically designed to;

a. brag about being on holiday/ traveling (holidaying for the middle class)
b. talk utter shite about ‘spiritial journeys and ‘experiencing’ other cultures.
c. Constantly stating about how we don’t appreciate what we have and how lucky we are – if you can afford to piss off round the world rather than working like a slave like decent folk then I suppose you are lucky and probably a cunt.

Reading about other people visiting exotic locations is fundamentally boring, and only mildly interesting if you happen to personally know the person. That’s why 99.6% of travel blogs are exceptional dull. So the challenge is, as I see it, is to make a travel blog both interesting and amusing, rather than what most travel blogs are, dull and cuntish.

Which nicely brings me to announce the latest incarnation of Angry Chimp – Angry Chimp: Your basic travel blog

What what?

I shall be departing these shores with my girlfriend in just over 2 short months time for South East Asia, a rite of passage for all white middle class lazy bastards.

Our simple aim is to spend as much time as possible traveling around and having a really easy time of it. We will try to visit as many countries in SE Asia as possible; although we may decide to give Myanmar a miss (but I do hear Burma is nice this time of year).

This travel blog will be an unflinching account of my travels as we journey on a shoestring (a relative shoestring, we’re a long time past our gap years, although I am technically on a gap year - a gap year from any responsibility or progression of my so-called career).

When I first kicked this blog off way back in 2005 I set some rules (which I don’t know if I ever stuck to) so it seems appropriate to refresh these rules for this new incarnation.

Rules of this travel blog –

1. For each destination visited I will restrict my use of the words ‘beautiful’ and ‘amazing’ to only one occurrence each, e.g,

“It was a beautiful morning when I saw the amazing sight of a ship load of scary Somalian pirates approaching our freighter at an horrific rate of knots”

or

“As we departed Portsmouth, a small southern costal town in England I considered it to be neither amazing nor beautiful, but rather a bit of a shit hole”

2. The only growth I will experience whilst abroad will be my waistline through stuffing my gob with tons of top, cheap foreign nosh. Or from an infection of some sort.

3. During my time in southeast asia I will not remark about the generosity or gentle spirits of the locals or indeed anything that can be considered to be patronizing or vaguely racist. You can not define an entire race of people by the very few you may meet – if this were true visitors of the new Mayor of London would believe us all to be stooped and privileged, floppy brained, deceitful, shallow twats. Personally I am neither privileged, nor stooped.

4. There will not be photo upon photo of impossibly beautiful golden beaches that look as close to paradise as it is possible to get… actually this is untrue, hopefully I’m going to stuff the blog full of them.

5. I will never use the terms ‘off the beaten track’ or ‘unspoiled natural beauty’.

6. I will only write about places I actually visit. Again, I know this is not a hard and fast rule for many travel blog writers.

7. If/ when I visit Thailand, I will not proceed to tell an ‘amusing’ story about visiting a Thai bar where a local of indeterminate gender chatted me up with a view to selling sex. This is THE MOST CLICHED STORY EVER in travel writing!

If I happen to be approached by any indeterminate gender local with a view to exchanging bam bam for wam wam I will simply have sex with them and be done with it.

I'm joking of course .

When's your flight?

2008-05-10T11:37:00.007Z

The Chimp is sick of flying, really sick of it.

And the reason Chimp is sick of flying? Other simians, that’s the problem, other simians and their horrifically selfish need to take their own screaming abortion dodgers on the plane with them, so everyone, even those that have stumped up for premium economy precisely to get away from this sort of thing can suffer for 12 hours with them as their ugly offspring screech the entire journey – but we mustn’t say anything of course, they can’t help it.

Chimp can’t face it, Chimp won’t face it and neither will Chimp’s significant Lady Chimp other.

Hence the Chimp's decision to take a boat all the way from his domicile in very occasionally sunny but mostly overcast flat in Brighton to Port Klang in Malaysia.

The boat in question will be a Frenchie freighter stuffed full of containers holding those essential items the South East Asians are crying out for, like toasters and Lego (possibly).

The Chimp and Chimp’s significant Lady Chimp other will be two of only about five passengers along with twenty or so surly sea-folk who for one reason or another (mostly the money I guess) spend their lives traversing thousands of miles of salty tears.

On board the vessel conditions will be harsh and basic, with only a small pool, a small gym, a small library and a tidy mess to sustain him. Chimp’s cabin will be furnished with only an en-suite bathroom, television, dvd player and a comfortable seating area - yes, the Chimp will soon certainly know what it is to rough it.

The journey (actual journey, not some annoying personal journey - there will be no personal journey), the journey will be an arduous 25 days at sea, during which, with the Chimp’s relative lack of sea legs (he's much more of a land and tree mammal) he fully expects to lose a significant amount of monkey blubber overboard.

There will be dangers of course, the main one being pirates - although the Chimp is sure that with his own vast experience of pirating (making CD's for fellow simians, downloading all the latest top quality telly from the states) - he will be able to find some common ground with the cut-throat Somalians who routinely capture and hold to ransom foreign freighters traveling through the Suez Canal - but more on that another time.

Once he has arrived in Malaysia the adventure (holiday) will really begin as the Chimp does his best to relax without comics, movies, gigs, jumpers and Xboxes. With only delicious food, exotic locations, fabulous weather, beautiful beaches, his significant Lady Chimp other to keep him safe and secure (and to make all the important decisions) and the small amount of money he has left in the UK enabling him to live here, abroad, like a relatively hard up King.

Next: Rules for this travel blog.

Away for a year and hopefully...

2008-05-09T23:05:00.002Z

... away for another year.

Only this time, I'm taking you with me...

Erm... if anyone is interested of course.

More very soon.

Soul

2007-05-29T00:12:00.000Z

“Oh, there you go, that’s why you feel cheerless all the time,” the Doctor says, “You don’t appear to have a soul.”

“I beg your pardon?” I say, somewhat shocked and confused by my local GP’s peculiar statement.

“I said, it appears that you do not have a soul.”

“I soul?” I say, “I don’t have a soul?”

“Yes, you seem to be completely lacking one, this would account for your feelings of emptiness, fragility and ennui.”

Doctor Murphy gestures for me to sit back down, which I do. He puts the strange chrome medical apparatus which he has just used to determine my lack of a soul back in its leather snap fastened case and then he also sits.

“Is there anything I can do about a lack of a soul?” I ask.

”No,” The Doctor says unequivocally.

“Don’t I need to be religious or something to have a soul?”

Clearly irritated by my question the Doctor sakes his head as if I am a silly child asking if the world is flat.

“Religion is irrelevant, what we are dealing with here is your complete inability to feel any kind of normal emotions. Yes?. Compassion, warmth, empathy, companionship, friendship, love; these emotions are controlled by a person’s soul. You do not feel these things, yes?”

“Oh,” I say, unable to think of anything remotely intelligent to add.

“Have you ever been in love?” Doctor Murphy asks.

“No,”

“Ever had a really good friend that you would do anything for without expecting anything in return?”

“Erm, no.”

“Are you married? Do you have children? Ever had a relationship not end with you cheating, lying or becoming bored?”

“Erm, no.”

“There you go,” Doctor Murphy says, “You are completely without a soul.”

“Did I lose it?” I enquire.

“No, you never had one.”

“And you say there isn’t anything I can do?”

Doctor Murphy spins round in his chair and taking my head in his hands starts to move my head this way and that. After a few moments of examining my face and eyes he stops and turns to his desk top PC and begins to type awkwardly with two fingers.

After a few seconds of silence only punctuated by the slow tapping at his keyboard I realise that he has either ignored my question altogether or has forgotten what I asked, so I repeat it.

“Is there anything I can do about this, can I get a soul if I don’t currently have one?”

“No.” The Doctor says impassively, “There is nothing you can do about it.”

“Oh right,” I say.

“Now, was there anything else?” The Doctor asks, clearly trying to rushing me out so he can get to his next patient.

“No,” I say, “I guess not.”

“Well,” Doctor Murphy says, “Take care.”

And with that I get up and leave.

Deconstructed man

2007-05-24T21:07:00.000Z

The first piece fell off during a row with his wife.

An earlobe, that was all. A single earlobe from his right ear. There was a very slight tingling, not unpleasant, like an itch and it simply fell onto his shoulder and then onto the floor.

His wife stopped mid-sentence and looked at her husband in horror.

“What is it now?” he screamed, thinking the look on her face was in relation to something he had just called her.

“Your ear,” she replied, “Part of your ear just fell off.”

The casualty doctor was utterly bewildered by the small round piece of flesh that was once attached to the man’s ear. He had never seen anything quite like it. Perfectly detached, no open wound, no abrasion, no sign of trauma. Absolutely no blood on either the earlobe or what was left of his ear. It was as if it had never been attached in the first place. In fact, because of this it was deemed impossible to reattach;it wasn’t really part of his body at all now.

Following extensive tests for various potentially illness the man was discharged from the hospital, it had become apparent that he was suffering from no known aliment, and certainly nothing at all that could have resulted, directly or otherwise in the loss of a small bit of his body.

Time passed, and the incident with the earlobe fell from the headlines of this particular couples life, quickly replaced by more mundane concerns and disputes.

The second piece of the man’s body became detached during a meeting at his office. Whilst managing to retain his own job, the man was forced to free up half his team, due to downsizing. Following the same slight itch, the little finger on his left hand suddenly dropped off as he explained to a senior project analyst that due to one thing and another and the current strength of the pound against the dollar that his services would no longer required.

Another rush trip to the hospital garnered the same results, it could not be put back on. Physically the man was in perfect order, he had suffered no pain other than the emotional pain of the loss of the finger; luckily it wasn’t even an important one. No, the important ones came later.

The man quite rightly decided that perhaps this was a sign that he should take a break and enjoy some of the annual leave and lieu days he’d be amassing for the past year. Unfortunately, the increased time at home just meant he became engaged in more vicious and destructive arguments with his good lady wife.

A disagreement over who should cook Sunday dinner lead to his entire left ear falling off and both little toes. This was quickly followed by a bitter quarrel regarding a suspected indiscretion the man had possibly once had with a young office co-worker some years previously, this resulted in the loss of a right buttock.

Most distressingly of all however, the exact same day his wife decided she would leave, unable as she was to cope with her husband’s painless but ultimately horrific mystery illness, he saw the separation of his left foot from his leg and then his manhood from its usual place of residence.

Two months passed, the man sat alone in his conservatory and looked out with his one eye across the large unkempt lawn. He was no longer able to walk properly as he was missing the entirety of his right leg and his left leg up to his knee. He could only see out of the one eye and was now completely deaf and mute, due to having no ears, lips or tongue.

Fortunately, he still had an arm and hand, although this was only partially functional as it was shy of two fingers and lacked a chunk of wrist and elbow. His other arm was gone completely, now residing in the chest freezer in the garage with all his other redundant body parts. They had told him they would never be reattached but he had decided to keep them, just in case.

As he watched a small grey squirrel bound across the grass he considered (once again) how it was he had ended up in such a sorry state and where it would all end.

Was it some sort of punishment from God? Unlikely, he had little to no faith, believing those that had such strong devotion to be weak minded. By his own standards he hadn’t been a terrible man, somewhat self serving and selfish, but then who wasn’t?

He had never been entirely fulfilled by his work, but an over stretching mortgage and a demanding wife meant he’d stuck at it for so long it was the only thing he felt remotely able to do. Not that it was a problem anymore as his bosses had swiftly found cause to let him go. He surmised that they probably felt that a man regularly falling to bits would upset morale, and on this basis he didn’t blame them for their actions.

If he was honest, he’d never really loved his wife, it was the pressure from his parents and peers that had seen them marry and routine and a lack of imagination that had kept them together so long. She was gone now, and despite everything, he was happier for it.

No, he thought, as bad as this condition was, he’d make the most of what time he had left, and if that meant simply sitting in his conservatory watching life go by then so be it.

And for first time in his entire life he believed he had reached a sense of serenity that had previously always alluded him.

Sadly, at the exact moment he felt this newly found tranquility and calm he also felt a very slight tingling, like an itch all around his neck.

Goal setting

2007-05-21T22:33:00.000Z

“What’s your goal?” The big boss asks the assembled sales floor, “What’s your ultimate goal in life, because we want to help you to achieve it”

“To make a million pound this year” shouts some wet behind the ears new boy, hoping to impress with his rampant enthusiasm. An un-ironic cheer goes up and I feel physically sick.

“Doug, what’s your goal?”

Doug without a moments hesitation says, “To buy a Jag.”

“Good goal, and you Alan, what do you want?”

“To buy a four bedroom detached house.”

“Excellent Alan, Jen, what do you want, what do you hope to get?”

Jen looks around the room and frowns, thinks for a moment. Her face blushes slightly before triumphantly announcing, “I want to have the wedding of the year. To have the biggest and best wedding of the year”

Another cheer, this time with ‘whoops’.

Pathetic I think, hideously un-imaginative I think, painfully predictable I think.

“And you Ged, what do you want? What’s your goal?”

All eyes are on me, all eyes look into my mine and I can feel them desperately trying to second-guess at what I will say.

Mortgage free living? Promotion? New car like Doug, New house like Alan, Marriage to Jen... What’s it going to be?

I’m that frog we watched as kids (second fiddle to a small bald bastard) and I just don’t know what flavour I want this time.

What if the reason it took so long for him to answer the question of which flavour he wanted, wasn’t to give us a chance to guess which flavour; banana, chocolate, strawberry, chocolate, chocolate, chocolate! What if we sat and watched and he never decided, because he was sick to death of milkshake. The very thought of another lactose cocktail made him want to retch his liver up, as if having to gulp it down one more time would shatter his soul.

“I don’t want another motherfucking milkshake”, he’d scream his band and at us, “so stop fucking asking me!”.

“Why are you interested?” I say.

The room frosts over.

The big boss stiffens his casual inclusive stance, adjusts his tie and looks around the assembled crowd.

“No, it’s a good question Ged,” the crowd relax, “The fact of the matter is we want you to achieve whatever your goal is. We see this as a partnership between you and this business. And if you help us achieve our goal we will help you to achieve yours”

“I don’t have a goal”, I say.

“I really don’t have a goal”, I say.

“Didn’t you say you wanted to travel?” Mike chips in, in a thinly veiled attempt to give me a life line out of this career nosedive I’ve steered into.

I knock away the line. “No I didn’t, Mike, you’re thinking of Pete, y'know, who quit to go round Southeast Asia.”

The room bristles again, the reference to Pete is unwarranted, especially as Pete’s holiday in Southeast Asia, his holiday of a lifetime, ended in his death. I knew what I was doing by mentioning it.

“Come on Ged, there must be something you want, what did you do last night for instance?”

I sucked back a gram of Delirium and then sat in my flat drifting through space.

“Nothing,” I say, “I didn’t do anything.”

I just look at him, blankly. Everyone else just fades away, it’s just me and the big boss, like Gary Cooper and whoever, and it’s only a quarter past nine in the morning.

“You must want something, otherwise what’s the point, right?”

What if I was to die, right here, right now? What if I just feel to the ground? Not in any Hollywood style dramatic collapse, but the way cows fall to the ground when the slaughter men puts a bolt in their brains, like they were puppeteers dolls who had all the wires cut at the same time.

“You must want something?” He says for what now feels like the one-hundredth time.

“You must, everybody wants something?”

And my wires are cut and I fall. My head hits the photocopier table as I go down and splits across the bridge of my nose, forcing the bone into my skull and flinging my head back. And then smack, down into the thin shagged shock carpet with a sickening thud.

“He didn’t want anything after all” they’d say “not even to live”.

“You must want something, you must desire at least one thing in your empty, meaningless, trivial, sterile, Godless existence. There must be, because if there isn’t then why do you continue?”

I don’t know, I really don’t, I exist, and that’s it.

And you’re right everyone wants something, right?. Be it an end to this war or that conflict, food for their children or a better chance in life. To forget the attack or see them all killed. To be beautiful or intelligent, to have them all stop and listen to you or not work every hour of the day for pittance. To have work, to not to go to work to offer work to others or take his job. To play for that team or have them win when you’re there. To not worry about the bills or see them pay all their bills so you don’t need to worry about yours. Somewhere to live where you won’t be messed with, a larger house for your ever expanding brood, that mansion on the cliff that says you are successful and should be respected for your endeavours by people who hate you and would eat you if push came to shove. To live to a ripe old age, fully fit, to be able to walk again, talk again, write again, feel again. To be happy and safe and content and feel loved and desired and needed. To have that feeling again that you had as a child when your mother cuddled you and stroked your hair and told you everything would be okay. To not feel sick with jealousy as she stroked his hair and you watched and wished it was you.

To not think about these thing, to be able to sleep, or be able to wake, or have her finally wake up, to not feel constant pain, to know what your purpose is to be at peace to know a God loves you and has a place all ready for you because you are special. Really special.

To know someone is thinking about you as much as you thinking about them.

But why is it complicated? Why is your goal, your dream, your desire the hardest thing to achieve. And not because you’re lazy, because this isn’t about being lazy, it’s about not knowing if you push it where it will go and who will be hurt. And what if, just what if you tell her and she laughs at you.

Because really you do want something. To not be yourself and have her and her desire for you and have both your histories erased and start at a Chairman Mao year zero. Because that would mean you’d have a chance at least.

You don’t have a chance though, and you know it. She knows to much about you already.

But I can’t say that here can I? I can’t say to be happy, to be loved and more importantly to feel love.

“Good answer” the big boss would say with a level of warmth and generosity of spirit that you associate with Christian yet ironically never see., “We can help you with that, we have a team of stylist and psychologists to iron out the issues with your physical appearance and obvious personality flaws.”

“Anyway Ged, you just go ahead and think of something. When you’ve come up with it bring a picture of it in and put it on your desk, to remind you what it is you’re striving for.” and then he moves onto William who wants a black belt in Karate, which is bullshit because we all know his goal is to finger Becky in HR.

“Ged” shouts over the big boss as the meeting breaks up, “Can you come into my office for a moment please?”

As I step in he gestures for me to close the door.

“I didn’t mean to show you up.” he says and I feel confused, this is the same man that routinely screams at the team about missing targets. This is the man who throws books at us and tells us we’re shit. “It is important to have a goal, Ged”

Is it?

“Yeah, otherwise how are you going to get through this bollocks? And if you really set your heart on something, even if it really seems impossible to achieve, well, when you get it you’ll appreciate it all the more.”

At this point I expect him to launch into a tale that starts with a little boy who wanted a train set that he saw in a department store window, and ends with that little boy being him.
Instead he tells me to piss off back to my desk and make sure I bring a photo in by Monday.

Twig

2007-05-19T10:13:00.000Z

It takes more than necking another bottle of OC Skinny to get me flipped over by a memory jacker out for cerebral kicks in the pitch-coal-black grind base connectors at Paralyze, the hippest nite-mare this side of Fryday.

I lounge with my co-conspirators and suck it all in. Eight white hot chimeryczny chicks; we get what we want, we get who we want. And right now it’s more free drinkies and then a glide to the floor to cut it up and make a mark.

The Tri-D scares no one with all that magniloquent bleugh about how the relentless boom boom boom of the electro-ratcheted future sounds of the megalopolis will mean I’ll be pierdolić by the time I’m really ancient and well on my way to a quarter century. I won’t be able to hear for skitt, so what, right? Not only is this dreamy aura delight well worth any minor to major loss, but by the time I turn twenty-five I’ll be to old to care anyway.

Right now the furious reverberations are so massive they bury beneath my skin, resonating with my bones; I am one and the same with the sociopathic beats and with my Skinny and maybe, just maybe a snifter of something a little bit more potent; Frenesí, liquid Pozgon or a tab or two of Ten/10?. Ten/10 mixed with Delirium and a line or three of Marzenie, yummy. They call it Hotspur, the best drug you’ve never had. I ain’t paying for none of it mind, never do. Let them think they’ve spiked me, the truth is my little spaceman, I can take any amount you can, and still crawl back home.

Fifteen summers, two in a rotation of blissed-out twilights to raging first light and yeah, possibly I am an old timer now, but this is more home to me than that dried up witch and her newest limp dick. ‘Ohhhh honey, you’re not going out again is ya?’ Trying to relate to me with furrowed brows, long words and his sweaty sweaty hands, that when the witch looks away end up, everywhere. Can't really blame the poor old sod, guess I look like the witch, only much younger, much thinner and a cutrillion times hotter.

Yeah, they call us twigs. They call us scratch-jills, they call us access-whories they call us pill-girlies, giggles and worse. They call us when they need to look good and want to get sucked (go suck yourself). They think we do it for what they hold in their pockets but that just ain’t the case. I do it ‘cause I choose to, and ‘cause it’s fun.

Missing

2007-05-18T10:07:00.000Z

Well, he just had to face up to the facts; he had lost himself.

He tried to remember where he had last seen himself, but this was proving to be extremely difficult.

There was of course that stag do, almost a decade ago. One of a succession, which seemed to take place over a very short period of time.

Strange, but now he came to think about it, it was entirely possible that they had all been gripped by a strangely virulent virus, which spread throughout his clique stealing their individual identities as it went, hiding them, never to be found again.

Rob, Mike, Liz, Roseanne, Martin, Agatha, Jenne and himself; all transformed from cosy, efficient, inclusive relationships into what they were now; dog owning, estate car owning, Sunday with the in-laws, Can’t ‘cause of the kids, Friday night recoveries in front of the TV. Families.

That first stag do though, when Mike was getting married to Agatha; he was definitely there, he wasn’t lost at this point. He remembered he was heroically drunk and laughing uproariously all night. Yes, he was definitely there. After that though…?

Was that the last time he could recall seeing himself? Was he already missing when he and Jenne shortly after their friends wedding talked about their own marriage, that it was the thing to do, and that if he did truly love her, then why not…?

No; he’d started to get confused about where he was but he wasn’t lost because the engagement had been followed by that moment. That dirty disgraceful moment, which even now as he tried to remember it in exact detail made him blush with shame.

Really it was nothing more than a drink after work with a colleague, Kate, who worked in accounts, or maybe it was a series of drinks? The thing was though, during those few short hours he knew exactly where he was and precisely what he had wanted, but he was weak and despite his true longing he had betrayed himself and walked away. Maybe he’d left himself in that bar, and he was there right now, crumpled up in a box out back somewhere in the office, waiting to be reclaimed. A reunion which would never happen.

He definitely was not there at the wedding. The fuss, the ceremony, the rings, vows, kisses, speeches, tears, the traditions observed, the expense; he was not present for any of it.

And the children? Weren’t they in some way meant to drive any concerns of where he’d gone from his mind, anaesthetise him, to allow him to focus on his primary task of preparing his offspring for the same feelings of loss they would invariably encounter many years down the line?

What about Jenne? Was she as lost as he?

It was a possibility, although if she was she certainly never showed it. Her outwardly confident and resolute mother, wife, career woman persona portrayed no signs of doubt. Maybe she wasn’t lost at all, maybe she had simply decided to leave herself somewhere, with a view in years to come to recover herself and pick up from where she’d left off.

Perhaps Jenne was at work, which is precisely where he had been for a time, that was until promotion and responsibilities meant he misplaced himself there also.

The truth was, the part of him that would care where she was, and would move heaven and hell to find her again, was already gone.

He was lost to him now. And it probably always would be.

No chicken burger for Will

2007-05-16T00:11:00.000Z

Although his head was stuck firmly between the doors of the bus, Will's first concern wasn’t to pull himself free, rather it was that he might drop his precious polystyrene plate of chips, soggy chicken burger and gravy, which he had queued diligently for twenty minutes previously.

Upon reflection, up until this point the evening had been reasonable ordinary; a couple of drinks with friends, followed by a couple more, followed by a ridiculous amount more and then chips, chicken burger, lashings of gravy, head stuck between doors of bus.

He hadn’t even had a single chip yet. No, he’d been conscientiously saving them for the late night bus journey home, a pleasure he allowed himself only once or twice a week.

Why was the driver doing this? Was he being malicious? Vindictive? Had years of taking abuse from drunken kids finally snapped him? Or had he simply not seen Will lean in to ask a question when he threw the switch to close the door before he began to pull away? To be fair, Will considered, it was as this precise moment in time a moot point at best.

Will’s pace was quickening now, and no matter how much he pulled, his head was jammed solid. The pain of course, was becoming unbearable, and despite screaming and banging on the side of the bus for the driver to open the door, no action was forth coming.

Ironically, this wasn’t the first time this had happened to Will.

Daddy

2007-05-14T21:51:00.001Z

Maryann takes the gum that she’s been chewing throughout our flirtation from her mouth and presses it hard into a nail scrapped peephole that has been conscientiously carved by god-knows who over god-knows how long.

Pushing me back to an arms length she pulls her tight leather skirt up to her waist, slides her hands either side of her soft pink love heart panties and slowly runs them down to her ankles.

She looks up at me with those big blue saucer eyes and says, “I’ve got what you want, Daddy,”

“What I need, you mean,” I say, licking my lips.

Leaning back on the toilet seat, she jams both booted feet against the wall brackets, one either side of her. Gleefully exposing her holiest of holies, Maryann reaches forward and with one hand tightly holding onto the empty paper dispenser she begins to push the fingers from her free hand into herself.

I’m so crazy for it now it’s almost unbearable. It takes what remains of my threadbare will power to stop myself diving in there with her.

Sensing my growing discomfort she giggles and throws her head to one side, her long dark tangled web of hair obscures half her face like the ubiquitous Japanese scare-teens.

“You hard for me?” she purrs with a wink, “I’ll help you get there, Daddy.”

“I’m hard honey, but it ain’t for you,” I say, “And I’m not your Daddy,”

Same all over the megalopolis, if you know where to look you can find your perfect brand of filthy cube dweller, always spinning their deals, immune to the stench of excess and distorting beats that resonate throughout these tiny dark slate and shiny chrome spaces.

Comfort stops on the way to chemical oblivion is their office space, where everyday is a case of the Mondays.

After an eternity she finally pulls out a silver cylindrical tube which she immediately cleans by putting it in her mouth and sucking through her perfect bee stung lips.

She rests her feet back on the piss drenched floor and holds her hand out with the one thing I desire most in this world sitting innocently in the centre of her palm.

As I reach out to take it she snatches it away, and holds it far behind her clenched tightly in her tiny fist.

“You want it right, Daddy?”

I say nothing.

“You pay me a hundred.”

It’s worth half that again. I offer eighty-five.

“Ninety-five Daddy, and you can have me as well,”

I don’t even think for a second, “No offence,” I say pointing loving at the silver tube, “I just want that.”

“Ninety,” she says without dropping a beat.

There’s a loud bang on the cubicle door; she shoots me a look and I know she wants me to say silent.

Another bang followed by a cry of angry desperation. “What you doing in there? I need to take a whiz for fucksake.”

“I’m butt fucking your mother, bitch!” Maryann screams at the potential intruder.

Yet another bang on the door, “Get fucked, bitch!” she screams again, this time showering me in her angry warm spittle.

I wipe it away and offer eighty-eight. Pulling the notes from my back pocket, I offer them to her; no more, she gets no more.

Maryann holds the cylinder between two fingers and sniffs the one inch length.

“For eighty-eight you get a little bit of me as well, Daddy.”

She hands it over and without even taking a second to looking at it I crack its back and pour the contents into my mouth.

The sweet sweet liquid immediately has my tongue and gums tingling like electrified space dust.

Maryann shakes her head and starts to push her way past me. I obligingly let her.

“You might want to lock this after,” she helpfully suggests as she pulls the door open. I nod in agreement and push the door closed as she leaves, dragging the bolt across before slumping back on the toilet seat.

My body already weighs four times as much as a moment before; the effort in pulling each of my legs up onto the seat so can rest my chin on my knees is extraordinary.

The electrified space dust is seeking out every inch of my body, leaving traces of burning radiance like gunfire at night.

Suddenly pulsars fire from the back of my skull guiding blinding white light into the infinity before me.

A star field bursts into life, each newborn satellite exploding with the force of a million atom bombs.

I see it, I see it all through closed eyes.

My body, now relieved of weight drifts forward, slowly at first, but quickly gaining momentum until I’m moving at hyper-light speed through an angel filled cosmos.

Falling free through space I’m caught by the gravitational field of a super massive black hole, sucking me down, stretching me like rubber until with no more give I shatter into a billion pieces each flickering like sparks dancing on the surface of the sun.

Not long now I think.

Not long now until the foreplay is over and Delirium really kicks in.

Fantasy date

2007-05-13T23:30:00.000Z

The candle flickers, precariously balancing between extinction and fiery brilliance. It’s all a matter of control, he thinks, everything is a matter of control.

He leans in a little closer to the garish table decoration, pushing aside the remains of the dessert as he does. With his lips pursed he gently blows again; the flame dances to his tune.

She glides back into her chair, no sound, no fuss and smiles at this man so entranced in the moment. He lifts his eyes to hers and gently increases the flow of air to the candle; the flame vanishes leaving a glowing orange wick and pencil thin trail of smoke.

He sits back into his seat and pulls a lighter out of his jeans pocket. Nothing fancy, just a cheap blood red disposable. Relighting the candle he widens his eyes in mock horror,

“I’ve brought it back from the dead!”

“So I see,” she replies in feigned amazement, “Is there no end to your amazing powers?”

“Well…”

It has been the perfect evening, he thinks. Why was he so nervous before? The conversion had not for a single moment been forced, flirtatious remarks had been reciprocated and he had even successfully avoided the main courses with garlic. Now that pudding was done he was optimistic that there would soon be seconds of another kind.

Throughout the meal she had fascinated him, her life stories and experiences so rich in detail and depth; a life so bustlingly full for a woman of so few years; how was it possible?

She is of course utterly beautiful, a vision, long coal black hair, beguiling dark frosty green eyes and a complexion so pale and so perfect that he imagined every china doll would crack with uncontrollable jealously if they were to see her for just the briefest of moments.

And just like those porcelain figurines her clothes are wrapped to her body, tight, leaving no room for extraneous material; yet it wasn’t what she was showing that was slowing driving him crazy with desire, it was what she was allowing no one to see.

Her stylish charcoal jacket echoes a faintly militaristic design, with its vertical zips pockets, row of metal buttons and an outer and inner zip line running from three quarter length to just below her marble carved chin. It holds he believes, all kinds of pleasure for him. Not least her neck which he simply knows will be so divine that it may well be the gateway to a heaven he’ll surely never want to leave.

“Shall I get the check?” She rhetorically asks as she commandingly beckons the waitress over.

They continue to talk like old flames hoping to re-ignite as he drives
the short distance to her house on the edge of the towns large Gothic cemetery.

“Interesting area to live,” he jokes carefully.

“Everyone’s dying to get in.” She says with a complicate grin.

Parked beneath a street light, which like an inquisitive stranger arcs forward from the front of her house bathing his car in an otherworldly orange glow, he seizes this perfect opportunity and moves in for the kill.

The kiss is pure passion.

He carefully slides his hand from her evening cold cheek past the perfect line of her jaw which grinds rhythmically with his own, before finally resting next to the branded zip that guards the entrance to her jacket.

With just a moments hesitation, he begins to pull purposely down, but only enough to allow him to follow his hands path with his tender kisses.

Her breathy sighs of pleasure accompany his journey, pressing his lips to her neck, it was all he imagined, so soft and smooth and…

… and then he feels a scar; round, the size of a cigarette burn. And then another. The two are only an inch apart.

He pulls back for a moment and stares intently at his discovery.

“That’s odd” he says with a playful smile, “They look like –”

The force that yanks his head back from hers is immense, he tries to pull forward but he simply cannot.

Pain grows quickly yet all he can do is look down the bridge of nose in a futile attempt to make sense of what is happening.

She growls like a rabid dog, saliva dripping from two hugely extended fangs. Her beautiful green eyes are now blood red. She lunges at his throat, biting deeply.

His life flickers, precariously balancing between extinction and fiery brilliance. It’s all a matter of control, she thinks, everything is a matter of control.

I don't want what you want...

2007-05-13T01:46:00.001Z

I feel a bead of sweat running down the centre of my spine, so I push back into the deep chocolate leather sofa that’s comfortably supported us through the past god-knows-how-many rounds, and let my already sodden shirt absorb it as best it can.

My pack is almost dead and I’m already through this weeks cheque so I savour the last smoke I’ll pay for this week.

The distorted lounge music grinds throughout, seeping in and out of our superficial conversation, frequently obscuring words and meaning. The truth is, when you really don’t care about what is being said, you just let it go.

She’s probably talking about her mother not loving her or about the trouble she had in college or how no guys really understand her. I don’t really know what she’s talking about. I’m just nodding in all the right places and saying stuff like, “That’s too bad.”

Seems to be working just fine.

I say, “You’re beautiful hon. Why do you care what anyone else thinks of you?”

She says, “Oh, you’re just saying that to get me in to bed,”

'Course I am.

She’s okay to look at, I guess, if you’re a drunken disillusioned man in a dark late night bar in the crappy end of town. But then under those circumstances, so am I.

I say, “I’d have to be one lucky bastard to ever sleep with an interesting, intelligent, beautiful woman like you.”

She says, “You’re such a terrible flirt, keep saying stuff like that and you might just be in luck.”

I’d only really be in luck if a bolt of lightening struck me from the heavens and burnt out this graphite heart that’s been eating at my soul like rage filled cancer all these years.

Didn't used to be like this; no grey, no lines, no thousand yard stare, full of hope, full of joy, full of naïve stupidity.

She says, “Are you listening to me, handsome?”

I say “Yeah sweetheart, tell me some more about the dickhead that knocked you about.”

I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking, stupid worthless whore.

You’re wrong about that. You find it so easy to forget that we’re all human beings out here. She's just like you and so am I, except we don't feel what you feel.

We’re damaged by years of trawling for love and finding only hollow reflections of ourselves in the haunted eyes of those that we share our dependence for counterfeit gratification.

She says, “Where you wanna go now?”

I want to go back to the start. I want to try again and this time maybe I’ll get it right and I can look from the outside in and say with you, ‘How can people live like that?’

I say, “I’ve got something that'll really get the party started back at mine.”

Where do I go from here? I’ll go to the same places in the same order with the same results.

She says, “Do you love me?”

I say, “’Course I do sweetheart, ‘course I do.”

You never know, with enough stuff up my nose and cheap whiskey down my throat, I just might.

I crush the empty pack in my fist and throw it on the floor. She gets her bag and we start the long crawl home.

'Mon Meilleur Ami' or how to upset your best friends.

2007-05-12T16:18:00.000Z

So, I went to see the French movie ‘My Best Friend’ (Dir. Patrice Leconte) last night with my own frenchie chum. Nothing weird about that right, except after the movie frenchie declared it wasn’t much of anything and that in fact she hated french movies – b’ah, the French right? Even their cinema is wasted on them (shout out to all the haters!)
However, turns out I upset two of my other bestie chums for different reasons.

1. John. Okay so I admit for the past few months I have been seeking refuge at his house, variously on Friday and Saturday evenings. His house offers friendship, beer, curry and a good nights sleep. (I’ll go why this is so important to me another time).

So, a week ago I agreed to go round this weekend, I thought it was Saturday, he says Friday, he can’t do Saturday – I go ahead and arrange to see ‘My Best Friend’ leaving my actual best friend to feel that I’ve dropped him for a non-date with my newest meilleur ami.

2. Popular occasional blogger edwaado, my other BFF finds out from his good lady wife, with whom I had a very pleasant lunch on Friday that I’m off to the flicks and I haven’t invited him. Oops. He feels left out and pissed off at me.

I wouldn’t mind all the hassle but the fact is the movie was only ‘okay’, not great and certainly not a patch on the rest of Lecontes oeuvre (The Hairdresser's Husband, M. Hire, Ridicule, The Man on the Train to name a few).

Urgh!!!!!

Daniel Autueil learns in the film that you have to stop being selfish and self serving to have friends. Well, I manage to have friends and still be exceptionally selfish and pathologically self serving, but fuck me it can be hard work at times.

NEXT TIME: Why I’m moving to Brighton…

Clue: It’s not because I’m gay...

(not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Does all this talk of best friends and bff's make me sound about 12?

The Middle Class Child - 11.1.10

2007-05-10T21:08:00.000Z

Turning eleven had not been the momentous occasion Esmé hoped it would be.

She certainly felt older, and like all her friends she was beginning to feel more and more part of the wider world, as if all the companies and all the television programmes were aimed directly at her, which of course to certain degree they were.

Such huge changes had taken place over the past year that turning eleven held little joy, in fact she was already longing for her life before.

“Mum?” Esmé asked Lizzie.

“Yes, Ezz,” said her mother Lizzie who was writing the final chapter of her novel, ‘Having it all (not)’, an ironic look at what Lizzie believed was the modern myth of women who can juggle career, marriage and parenthood.

“When is Dad coming to collect me?”.

Lizzie sighed heavily, “He’s not coming today Ezz, I thought we’d already had this discussion.”

“But it’s Saturday, why isn’t he coming, Mum?”

“Ezz, I’m trying to work Sweetheart, can we talk about this later.”

“I just want to know why he’s not coming today.”

“He’s busy, Ezz.”

“Doing what?” Esmé protested.

“He’s in Japan with Emma.” Lizzie said before continuing to tap away at the tiny keyboard on her laptop.

How had their family become so crowded thought Esmé. Where once it was just her Mum, Dad, Esmé and her bother, now there was Emma, her fathers ‘friend’ and Aaron, the man who wrote those terrible books which always had mournful looking people staring out from the cover.

Her mother called Aaron's books, 'inspirational'; however, she had recently overheard her Aunt Heather describe them to her Father, Marcus as ‘miserable’ and ‘self-absorbed’. Esmé wasn’t certain what ‘self-absorbed' meant, but from the way her Aunt and rolled her eyes as she said it she knew it was not a compliment.

“But Mum, Dad said I could stay at this place straight after my birthday.”

“That was only a few weeks ago, Hon” said Lizzie without a moments break in her typing.

“No it wasn’t, I’m eleven years, one month and ten days old so that means it was six weeks ago.”

“You know Esmé, counting out your age like that is awfully childish, now please Hon,” Lizzie implored, “I need to work on this for a bit longer, then I promise we can do whatever you want.”

Esmé thought for a moment, and then responded adamantly, “I want to see my Dad.”