Contains Mild Peril *

On Peaceful Protest

2011-10-10T08:38:00.002Z

From: Samba Drumming Instructor
To: All

Dear All.

Hopefully by now you will all be aware of what's happening in just about every major city across Europe and the States: New York financial district has been occupied now for 16 days, on occasion there have been thousands of people gathered and it's growing by the day, but the mainstream media has tried to keep this and all the European protests against corporate greed quiet. If they've covered any of what's going on they've just been rubbishing it and claiming the whole thing is just a bunch of misguided idiots with no coherent argument and no unified objectives. A few days ago however the 'protesters' issued this statement: www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8o3peQq79Q&feature=player_embedded. It's very moving, please listen to it and email it out and re-post it on facebook.

It's happening everywhere, there are thousands coming out onto the streets in just about every capital city, but corporate/mainstream media doesn't want you to know. Next Saturday (15th) it's starting in London. Let's go!!!!!!!

P.S. - By the way I didn't mean with drums. x

From: Toast
To: Samba Drumming Instructor

Why not?

We could make a rhythmic protest of it.

After all, I've never seen any uniformed authoritarian bash in the skull of a protester who was wearing a Number Two Surdo. Besides, with a well-placed defensive manouevre of the drum, one could quite easily deflect the fascist swing of a truncheon right back into the face of the wielder. Therefore, inadvertantly, the policeman in question will have actually participated in the demonstration - sonically, for all to hear. Instantly, he will be rejected by his colleagues, like a bee who gets stung to death by his brothers after giving the wrong directions to the pollen. Hell, we may even bring him over to our side. Forgive and forget, and all that.

Just as long as he doesn't bruise the skins by swinging too hard.

A perfunctory conversation with Mr. Dursley about the matter of confirming a meeting time.

2011-09-28T15:26:00.002Z

Durs: We're aiming for 6.30 tonight aren't we?

Me: We are. I shall appear to you as closely to that time as humanly (not spectrally) possible.

Durs: Lovely! I shall adjust the flat's atmosphere to Earth normal in time for your arrival.

Me: Sploonberbenak. (Gliese581Dian for 'Thanks')

Durs: Your customs are strange to me, Lizard man, but your race's rule over us has been an undeniable success.

Me: It is customary for us to thank the inferior humans when they accommodate our needs without forcing us to resort to violence. You have abided by this rule, and, therefore, you deserve my gratitude (in this instance).

Durs: Thanks! I voted for your people in the top secret Amphibia vs. Insecta ballot of 2009 to elect our favoured Earth Overlords. I voted for you, because your Emperor seemed like an approachable people person, while the Insect Emperor called me a bigoted woman for saying that I disliked his mandibles.

Me: By mentioning the Insecta you have offended me. Upon my arrival at your residence this evening you will be vaporised.

Durs: Well vaporisation is any invading Reptilian's prerogative and, while I personally disagree with this course of action, it is not my place to question the greater intellect of my Reptilian rulers. Since you seem determined to carry out this vaporisation, I just thought that I would apologise in advance for being unable to vote for your people in the 2012 elections. I will place a large rock to the right of my front door, for you to cool off on, following my vaporisation.

Me: I will bring a ballot paper upon which you can mark your vote prior to your vaporisation. I will then submit the vote upon your behalf next year. Please make sure the rock is placed in a refrigeration unit for at least 1 hour before my arrival.

Crank

2011-07-18T14:50:00.003Z

The films which I like the most usually contain a defining moment: a line of dialogue, or a scene which neatly encompasses the ethos of the entire movie in an easily-digestible chunk. Like popcorn.

In 'Crank', this moment comes shortly after the main character - a hitman called Chev Chelios - has finished conducting a meeting with a crimeboss in a swimming pool. Soaking wet, Chelios is trying to get into a taxi. But the taxi driver refuses the fare because he doesn't want his cab soiled. Chelios takes exception to this, so he drags the driver from the vehicle and throws him to the ground. For an instant, Chelios is unsure of what to do: he isn't thinking straight because he has a heart-full of fatal, adrenaline-suppressing 'Chinese Sh*t' with which he has been injected by his arch-nemesis. On top of that, he is on the run from the police and the mob. By assaulting the taxi driver he has kept his adrenaline up, but his conspicuity too. The crowd watch him with mounting suspicion, ready to alert the authorities. Chelios looks at the driver. He is of Southern Asian descent. Chelios looks back at the crowd. They are White Americans.

Chelios has an idea.

He points at the driver and yells 'Al-Qaeda'.

Then Chelios steals the taxi and leaves.

At this point the crowd begin to panic. Some flee. Others attack the stricken taxi driver. More join in. Then, an old lady grabs the driver's leg. She twists it as hard as she can, and it breaks with a crunch.

This scene tickled me. I'm not entirely sure why. Perhaps it was due to Chelios's jet-black appraisal of the situation, and the means by which he applied his prejudices against American Culture to his predicament with such anti-social success. Or maybe it's because I like the idea that an old lady could break the leg of a grown man with her bare hands, purely by strength she could only muster in a fit of jingoistic rage. Either way, I was not expecting such black satire from a potentially-brainless action film, which, on the surface, is exactly what Crank appears to be: man gets injected with fatal drug by nemesis. Man can only stay alive by stimulating adrenal gland. Cue action set-pieces of steadily increasing ridicule. Simple.

But, using this basic central premise, Crank inadvertantly transcends its narrow action movie credentials to explore much greater themes. It explores the psyche of a man who is forced to suffer an existential crisis. A man whose relationship with his environment is altered beyond his control. Chelios finds himself a refugee from his preferred state of being. And, like most refugees, he wishes to return home. But he is told very quickly that this is impossible, and he must accept that even his continued survival is nothing more than a luxury afforded to him - by his ability to explore and understand his own stimuli.

Did I mention that this film stars Jason Statham?

Anyway, this revelation sets Chelios upon a journey into himself. By necessity he abandons all fear of consequence in an effort to discover what excites him. He embraces impulse: he takes drugs. He forces a medic to defibrilate him. He commits robberies. He listens to 'Achy Breaky Heart' whilst he grabs a car steering wheel and almost shakes it off its mountings. He Christ-rides a police Harley Davidson into a busy restaurant to the genteel strains of Everybody's Talkin' by Harry Nilsson - a song about feeling detached from ordinary human interaction. And it is absurd and beautiful. A bizarre Freudian pastiche.

A side-effect of the life-affirming death serum is that it gives Chelios a raging hard-on, perhaps due to his body sensing imminent expiry: the primal need to propogate the species. This urge leads Chelios to his lover, Eve. But, when he sees her, rather than consummate his passion immediately, he feels a different impulse: to tell the truth. To face the possibility that when he reveals he is not a video game programmer but a hitman, Eve will leave him. This seems to be the only impulse in the film over which he hesitates. The only consequence of which he seems genuinely afraid. And it is strangely touching.

Still, reveal this secret, he does. But Eve won't accept the truth. As they leave her apartment Chelios protects her from some hired goons of whom she is unaware. Absently she reveals that she hasn't taken her birth control pills. Once Chelios and Eve escape into busy streets, Chelios's heart weakens again. More adrenaline is needed. To get it he knows that he must follow his impulses: he must copulate with Eve immediately, in public, to generate the life-saving adrenaline he needs. But first, chivalrously, he questions her trust in him, which she reassures. Then he asks her to have sex. At first she refuses. Then, reluctantly, she complies. They make love on a bustling sidewalk. Suddenly a bus full of tourists appears. Their flashbulbs go off. Unexpectedly, Eve abandons herself to the moment. She makes a sacrifice of her dignity along with his so that Chelios might live. Eve bellows her encouragement to him. 'I'm alive' he shouts. And, he is - at the very apex of life: a creature of pure animal instinct, throwing off the shackles of ethereal social expectation to perform the hyper-real act of creation in the face of imminent death. And in the midst of all this, the public look on, impressed, almost as if they understand the gravity of the moment.

Some might say that this is smuttery: just a flimsy excuse for a gratuitous sex scene. In fact, the whole film is just one big flimsy excuse for a lot of gratuitous scenes. After all, this film stars Jason Statham - a man not known for playing great existentialists. These questions were not on his mind when he read the script. He probably just chuckled to himself as he flipped the pages over, thinking about how he always wanted to play a character who deliberately burns his hand in a waffle iron.

Some might say that I am reading into things - far too much.

But I like reading.

It gives me an adrenalin rush.

It makes me feel alive.

Dragon's Den: Garden of Eden

2011-07-06T14:43:00.003Z

"Welcome to Dragon's Den. I'm God. What's your name?"
"You ought to know. I'm Jesus. I'm your surrogate son."
"Could you at least try and play along, just for the cameras?"
"Right. Sorry. Umm. I'll crack on then. I have a couple of ideas. One is
for a sandal that allows you to walk on water. It's called 'Sea Legs' and
the other is for a fish and a loaf that feed thousands of people."
"What's that called?"
"I haven't thought of a name yet."
"Why should I invest?"
"The Sea Legs will be good for crossing seas, like, say Galilee. The other
one would basically solve starvation."
"Have you built any prototypes?"
"No. I thought you could sort that out."
"Fair point."
"So, what do you think then?"
"I like your ideas. But how about this: we don't put them into
mass-production."
"What? Why?"
"We build prototypes just for you. Then you go out and use them. People
hail you, my son, as a miracle worker. They follow you. We build a religion. Make money that way."
"Isn't that a bit cynical? Wouldn't it be better to sell products that
benefit everyone? Didn't you hear what I said about solving starvation?"
"No repeat business."
"Wow. You really aren't very nice."
"And for that reason, I'm out."

lol

2011-06-22T15:07:00.001Z

gr8 f8
u cr8
1drfly

tbh
i <3 u
ttly

thnq

bl8d
i knw

btr l8
thn nvr tho

Dead in the Water

2011-05-02T14:13:00.007Z

Bin Laden is dead. After ten years on the run, evading the might of the western war machine, his blood was finally spilled in Pakistan, in a luxury military compound, possibly on the floor of a bedroom with bad carpets, if the grainy camcorder footage of the murder scene coincides with the spoken narratives on the rolling news networks. No-one seems to be sure. But it's probable: they say he wouldn't surrender, so he was shot by the insurgent Navy Seals and dumped in the sea. They played judge, jury and executioner, and it is entirely fitting that they should have done so, given Bin Laden's record for playing those same roles himself.

He had a pretty good run of it as Public Enemy Number One. He ascended to that position after a successful internship of murder and oppression of those whom he believed to be not aligned with his ideology. A grossly misguided man, he quite clearly saw the ills of western civilisation, but sought to overcome them in the most unhealthy way possible. On a fraction of the American defence budget, he waged war upon the most powerful nation in the world and succeeded because, terrifyingly, he was a man of considerable intellect.

The September 11 attacks in 2001 were his magnum opus, and they were conducted because Bin Laden believed that they were justified retaliation for American-Israeli actions in Lebanon. He believed that he should 'punish the unjust the same way and destroy towers in America so it could taste some of what we are tasting and to stop killing our children and women.'

But, like any fighting of fire with fire, there is a risk of the fire getting out of control. That loss of control resulted in Gulf War II, in which thousands upon thousands of civilians were killed when George Bush went into Iraq to hunt Saddam Hussein – partially on the proviso that he was sheltering Osama Bin Laden. This was never proved to be the case. But, regardless of whether or not he was hiding there, Bin Laden set alight the touchpaper for the conflict. He waved the red rag in front the Texan Bull and made him charge into the china shop. And, for all the damage it did, for all the human lives it cost, Bin Laden himself bears a responsibility.

Since the September 11 attacks he had been as good as retired, delivering the odd video message to remind us that he was still alive. But, other than that, there was little news of him performing atrocities. The reins of power have most likely been passed to some other fanatic. Someone else who shares an ideology which Bin Laden popularised through staging events of horrific theatre. This policy of indoctrination by staging acts of terrible drama will be his legacy. His will to undertake the utterly reprehensible. This, and his detestable, talismanic infamy.

So, now he is dead, and world leaders are coming on the TV to express their relief at the news. At ground zero in Manhattan people are laying flowers. There are girls in cowboy hats cheering. People are chanting USA, and saying that it's over - whatever 'it' is. We should let there be peace, they say.

'Justice' says a cute blonde in Times Square. 'We love New York City.'

Spawn of the Devil

2011-02-20T22:25:00.009Z

If any film deserves the right to have its name in the dictionary under the definition of B-Movie, it's the 1972 horror epic 'Frogs'.

The plot, of course, is of only cursory relevance. But for the sake of those who give a flying proverbial, it follows the story of disabled millionaire Jason Crockett, played by Oscar-winner(!) Ray Milland, and his be-flared family who live in a palatial mansion somewhere in the swamps of Okefenokee. They are partial to a bit of careless pollution. The titular Frogs take offence to this kind of behaviour. So they wage war upon the Crocketts, and all who associate with their frog-hating kind.

But you don't really want to hear about that. What you want to hear about are the meticulous production values that mark out this film as a seminal example of the genre.

Gasp in amazement as you see a man in a wheelchair pull a revolver on a snake which is hanging from a chandelier. I say 'hanging', but what I really mean is 'being held by a human hand'. I know this because I can see it. Watch through your fingers as another man stumbles into a greenhouse, closes the door behind him, then fails to notice as a score of lizards (somehow) follow him inside to loiter around menacingly amongst plant pots on shelves. See how they knock over open bottles vaguely labelled 'Poison'. Shudder as the man chokes to death on the fumes. Howl in terror as seagulls swoop down on a garden to scare some protagonists - not because breadcrumbs fly across the screen in an effort to lure them. No. Definitely not. Then scream for your life as another man wrestles an alligator which has had its mouth taped shut.

And all the while, the Frogs look on; leering at the mayhem they have caused without having to take a single human life themselves, because the Frogs rain down their justice with the most chilling power of all: telekinesis.

Frogs: you'll croak. To death.

Pixels Make People Killy

2011-02-15T09:58:00.004Z

I am tired of hearing people harp on about how video games are responsible for the violence in modern society. There are two issues I have with this line of thought.

Firstly, and most obviously, is the fact that video games have been around for a very short period of time in the span of human history. War, amazingly, has been around much longer. And its bloodiest episodes existed long before Punchout on the Nintendo Entertainment System had even been thought of. Back in 1206AD, Genghis Khan wasn't standing in his house in Mongolia playing the Final Fight arcade machine, only to run out of credits and decide that the best way to vent his pent-up aggression was by charging across the planet conquering nations, killing an estimated 40 million people in the process: he went out and did it because he wanted to build an empire - not because he wanted extra coins so he could come home with enough money to defeat the Mad Gear gang.

Secondly, and most obviously, is the ratio of Psychopathic Murderers Inspired to Kill by Video Games to Psycopathic Murderers Not Inspired to Kill by Video Games. I'm not too hot on the numbers, but I'm pretty sure that amongst the thousands of murders committed each year there can't be more than 0.001% of those cases in which an individual was found to be guilty of the unlawful killing of a turtle because 'Mario told me to do it.'

I'm not going to bother with a Thirdly. Or another Most Obviously.

I don't need to.

When Nature & Family (May) Collide

2011-02-02T09:35:00.002Z

Let battle commence!

Double G vs Cyclone Yasi

2011-02-01T09:08:00.001Z

My father's typically matter-of-fact appraisal of an imminent natural disaster situation:

Hi everyone,

We've just been advised by the owners of the hotel that we should let friends and relatives know that this cyclone is going to hit the the coast of Queensland tomorrow lunchtime, and being a category 4 will result in severe disruption. It may be difficult to get in touch with us because it may be 3 or 4 days before power is restored but not to worry as they are well used to cyclones here, and the locals are coming to the hotel because it is a safe and secure. We have been told to get plenty of food, water and alcohol in and we all will get together in a cyclone proof room so we imagine there will be quite a community spirit going just like the war Marilyn says.........!
We will be in touch again as soon as possible. It may be that we don't get the full force of the cyclone as the locals say that quite often it's not so bad as the forecast predicts.

Bye for now.

No Deaf Horror Movie Victims

2010-12-29T20:22:00.007Z

You know when you're in the bath and you think you've heard a sound? Something eerie? You do that slowed-down double-take where you try and look through the walls as if you've suddenly acquired x-ray vision. Well, just as long as you don't progress beyond this juncture in the scenario, you'll be just fine.

You know why?

Because as soon as you say that fatal 'Hello?' you're done for - you have indicated to the probable intruder that you are inquisitive. All they need to do now is repeat the noise. Maybe alter it once or twice to really get your attention, and then you're theirs - to do with as they please. You won't be able to help yourself. Before long, you'll be traipsing down the stairs in a dressing gown, carrying a golf club, waving it around in the hope that you look like Jackie Chan, when the truth is that you look more like Jackie Stallone. Or Jackie Onassis, by the time the killer has finished with you.

So just ignore it - even if you hear all kinds of awful noises. I can guarantee you will be at no personal risk - as long as you sit tight, and carry on enjoying your bath. Even if the mad axe killer comes storming up your stairs, wailing about how there's about to be a' dismemberin'. I promise you that as soon as they smash through the door and see you lying there in bath, reading 'Chat', humming to yourself, all their ardour will flee.

This is because the mad axe killer loves to lure. The mad axe killer loves drama. That's why they do mad axe killing, and not stamp collecting. That's why they stand around in corn fields, waiting. That's why they tap on windows. So for them, there's no fun in being ignored; no theatre. When they look at you, relaxing in suds, thumbing through stories about skateboarding owls and psychic parakeets - ignoring them - they will sigh like a lonely child at the swimming pool, and leave.

So, to avoid having your bath-time interupted at all, just pretend you can't hear them in the first place- because you never see deaf people getting chain-sawed in horror movies.

Another brilliant joke which I have written

2010-12-29T12:35:00.001Z

Q: What is the best way to kill a snake?
A: With Asp-estos

Celebrity Face Maths

2010-11-18T14:45:00.002Z

Max Headroom

+ George McFly

= Carson Kressley

6 Degrees of Wikipedia*

2010-11-09T16:38:00.004Z

Got people round? Bored? Have access to the internet? And booze?

Here's a game for you. It's called 6 Degrees of Wikipedia.

For the sake of example, I shall use 2 players*.

Both players fill their glasses. Player 1 chooses two completely random things: say, 'Pat Sharp' and 'SR71 Blackbird' (thanks Patch). Player 2 now has to navigate from one to the other through the annals of Wikipedia using the following rules:

1) There is a 5 minute time limit.
2) Player 2 is allowed to use links within the main body of the article, or beneath associated pictures within the articlem but not 'See Also' links, links within the box templates/category templates at the bottom of the article, or any of the links directly underneath the Wikipedia logo.
3) Player 2 is not allowed to back track under any circumstances.
4) If Player 2 exceeds 5 moves, or reaches a dead end with no links, Player 2 has lost, and must drink a predetermined measurement of alcohol, and has to play again.
5) If Player 2 does not exceed 5 moves, Player 2 has won. Player 1 must drink a predetermined measurement of alcohol, and has to play.

* I have just discovered that I did not invent this game. This is annoying.

**any number of players can participate in a pre-agreed, post-victory nomination system.

On the subject of the article titled ‘You’ve got to be Kidding’ on page 12 of today’s Metro newspaper.

2010-10-18T10:55:00.002Z

If I was the relative of a man who had been killed by a mountain goat, and I was in the process of grieving, the last thing I would want to read (in a nationally circulated newspaper, no less) would be an article which used his passing as an excuse to make a bad pun for a headline. But, as this sad incident happened in the States, I expect the family will probably never read today’s printed edition of the Metro, so I guess that makes it okay for a Metro staff writer to snigger behind their grief-stricken backs.

If anyone’s got to be kidding, it’s them.

I'm poor beyond my wildest dreams

2010-10-07T14:35:00.026Z

Just been dumped? Had your soul filed down to a nub by the careless abrasion of a cold-hearted, selfish misanthrope? Endured the fickle hand of fate unsheathing the genitals of misfortune to douse the fire of your romance with the urine of despair?

Well, fear not. I am here to help you to rise from the p*ss-soaked ashes of rejection like a stale-smelling phoenix - with these top tips.

1) Do:

Indulge yourself with drink and drugs. Pump yourself so full of the stuff that you can barely comprehend your own existence. Put Bon Jovi on the stereo. Get in the bath with a bottle of gin. Drink until you end up splashing around like a pensioner who fell into a lake when you try and perform the simple task of grabbing onto the lip of the bathtub to haul yourself over the side onto the carpet. Now lie there. Feel like a sun-damaged shop dummy which has just washed up on the beach and is being smashed in the face with a plank of wood - by some euphoric children; whilst listening to 'You Give Love A Bad Name'.

Don't:

Worry about the inevitable hangover. You'll feel so abysmal that a broken heart will seem like a comparative blessing: maybe you'll bleed to death and the pain will stop. If it doesn't, run another bath. Repeat. To fade.

2) Do:

Tell everyone you know about how bad you feel. Even once they stop asking. Even once they stop nodding and smiling. Even once they stop calling, or stop answering the door when you go over to their house. Even when they close the windows and enable the security lights. Even when they come downstairs in the middle of the night, open the door, and grab you by the shoulders and shout into your face SHUT THE F*CK UP!! SHUT UP! I'M TIRED OF YOUR SH*T! I'M NOT SURPRISED YOU'RE ALONE! MOVE ON! GET OVER IT!

Don't:

Be put off when they do this. After all, they have no idea what it's like. Try them again tomorrow.

3) Do:

Cast massive aspersions about what the person who dumped you might be up to now. Think, at length, about how much fun they are having without you. Think about all the other people they're sleeping with, and rolling around with in a big ball of pleasure; all of them laughing at the mention of your stupid unlovable name. Imagine there is a photo of you discarded on the floor. Imagine the other person curling one out on your face - for a joke, so that your idiotic, grinning smile goes from being crisp, white and glossy to a dirty smear. And it's hilarious, so all the other people who the other person is sleeping with (and rolling around with in a big ball of pleasure) cackle with joy. Then they all decide get it on with the other person - at the same time; to celebrate your excrement-stained inadequacy. And its amazing. Because you aren't there. Because you are crying in a darkened corner of a dilapidated beach house on the shores of Dimwit-On-Sea.

Don't:

Forget to book ahead: Dimwit-On-Sea is busy. You dimwit.

Space Weep Heartbreak

2010-10-05T10:21:00.013Z

On Sunday afternoon I was lying on the sofa watching the new Star Trek movie.

During the opening scene, the captain of the U.S.S. Kelvin gets invited over to a tricked-out time ship which belongs to a bonkers criminal called Nero - for a pleasant bit of surrender. Nero gets a bit eggy when he doesn't get his way, so he gives the captain a good old slaughtering.

It all kicks off.

Back on the U.S.S Kelvin, George Kirk assumes command. His first job is to be on the receiving end of a right shoeing. It becomes apparent that Nero is going to blow the U.S.S. Kelvin to kingdom come. So George orders everyone to abandon ship. He tries to set the controls of the Kelvin for a collision course with Nero's ship in an effort to prevent Nero from butchering his whole crew as they flee in the shuttles. But the computer executes the old blue-screen-of-death, so George has no choice but to take the helm and get the job done himself.

George gets a call from his pregnant wife, who is in labour. She's on her way from the ship's medical bay to a shuttle to evacuate. She asks when he's going to be getting on the shuttle. He says he's not coming, and tells the shuttle pilot to leave without him.

At this point I shed a tear.

George hears the birth of his child over the intercom, as the bridge of his ship collapses around him under heavy fire. Then George and his wife discuss the child's name. They come to a decision; Jim. George hears his child cry for the first and last time - right before the U.S.S Kelvin ploughs headlong into Nero's ship, and George dies a hero.

I cry (aptly) like a baby.

Stupid emotional transference.

A terrible joke which I have written

2010-09-28T08:33:00.001Z

Q: What is a horse's favourite chemical weapon?

A: Neighpalm.

Anyway..

2010-09-24T10:48:00.004Z

..enough of that.

It's rejuvenating image time.

Emo (boo-hoo)

2010-09-23T14:09:00.001Z

I threw everything into something and it wasn't enough. Or, worse, I threw the wrong things in and it was too much. Its all conjecture now, anyway. All I can do is maintain radio silence, try and make sense of it, and just hope it gets better. It usually does. Time, I hope, will subside the sense of near-permanent worry. The despair of absent reciprocation. The confusion of unpredictability. The frustration of a wilfully contrary nature. Blah blah blah (the usual pretentious waffle - scroll down).

One day, maybe I won't associate these intense feelings with that person. Maybe they'll just be another face in the crowd. Someone who triggers memories with dead nerve endings. Someone with whom I shared a little bit of history. Nothing more.

So, roll on, the great healer.

For the love of god, please: roll on.

On The Expendables Franchise - A discussion with Durs

2010-09-02T15:35:00.007Z

UTMG : Durs! Here is the synopsis for my film. It’s called: The Expendables: Genesis of Expendability.

The year is 1985. Times are peaceful. A global corporation called Serny controls the majority of the personal entertainment section of the electronics market with the Stepman product. But their head of Research and Development, Chip Solder (Gary Busey) gets a tip-off about a secret project being developed by a rival company called Grapple, whose treatment of their employees is rumoured to be barbaric. The secret project is in its earliest stages, but Chip knows that a few decades into the future the product will erode Serny's market share to massive extent, and lead to Grapple becoming the most dominant and oppresive corporate power on the planet.

Chip hires a group of ruthless mercenaries called The Expendables to infiltrate Grapple's desert stronghold in Nevada. The Expendables are Hank Chisel (Chuck Norris), Chains (Jesse Ventura), Brad Panache (Kevin Sorbo), Jonny Chin (Jackie Chan) and Jesus Jackson (Mr. T.) Their mission is to decommission the secret project, and take down Grapple's mysterious leader - a man known only as Job.

The Expendables drive 300 miles into the desert in custom monster trucks full of guns. They fight their way through the fortified perimeter and make their way inside the heavily armed bunker. After a vicious firefight in the corridors they find Job (Jean-Claude Van Damme) defending the entrance to the secret research area. After a long fight, in which many flying roundhouse kicks are performed, Job is overpowered. The Expendables enter the secret research area. But rather than an oppressive barbaric regime,they find workers who are happy and content.

Job explains to the Expendables that they have been double-crossed: Serny corporation want Grapple out of the way - because they are afraid that Job has seen the future. Job tries to explain about the coming of the internet, and about downloading entertainment. The Expendables cannot understand. But they do understand that the employees are happy, and that Job was trying to defend them.

The Expendables decide to go to Serny headquarters and destroy it. They battle many henchmen. When they finally get to Chip on the roof of the building, they tell him about the true nature of Grapple. He won't listen. A gunfight ensues which climaxes with Chip battling The Expendables in an Apache Gunship, which is destroyed with a Serny Stepman - by Hank Chisel.

Job watches the destruction of Serny on the news from his base with a mysterious man, whose name is Warsniak (Mel Gibson). He is Job's silent partner. They turn their back on the TV screen and watch their troops herding the dummy employees out of the fake secret research area, and back to the underground labour basement, where hundreds of abused workers are seen. Job thanks Warsniak for giving the anonymous tip-off to Chip. He says it was worth the deaths of all their troops to double-cross The Expendables and turn them against their masters, securing market share control in the future. Job says nothing can stop them now. Their laughter drowns out the sound of a click, which signals that a Stepman hidden out of sight has stopped recording their voices. A hand (Steven Seagal) reaches into shot and takes it.

Fade to black.

DURS: I'd send it to Stallone today! I love the Stepman destroying the gunship!

UTMG: Hank Chisel would wire up a tape with high grade explosives, put it in the 'Stepman' (Copyright) and throw it into the chopper with Chip.

Hank would say something like 'Looks like the Chips are down'

Chip would look confused, then the chopper would explode.

DURS: I'm also intrigued by Seagal's mysterious character. I'd imagine he would be motivated to stop Grapple, due their constant polluting of watercourses and destruction of rainforests.

UTMG: Exactly. I think I would quite enjoy writing dialogue for Van Damme in which he tries to explain iPods and the Internet to 80's action heroes. The thought of him attempting to talk about technology in an intelligent and believable fashion amuses me no end:

Job (lying on the floor, post-beating from Jesus Jackson): "Wait! Will you
just wait for a second? Try to imagine the Stepman tape player with the tape in it. Now, imagine a world where there is no tape in it. Because you do not have to put a tape in it. There is no tape! Your music is already in there. None of this opening and closing. None of this problem when the tape inside the tape case comes out of the tape case and gets stuck in the wheels: those wheels that give you pain when they do not turn - because there is no music for you. I can end this. I can end this suffering. Imagine that world. Imagine it!"

DURS: I quite like the idea of a 3rd film (Expendables 3: Maximum Expenditure), which would take place in the near future. The worlds economy relies solely on the now immensely powerful Grapple, who impose a totalitarian regime upon the population. Ex-President, Trench (Arnold), would reluctantly hire The Expendables to bring down the mighty Grapple Corporation and end their rule over the Earth.

The Expendables, realising they are out of their depth, realise that they must, in the words of Barney, "track down the missing, original Expendables Team, in order to create the most expendable team of Expendables ever expended". Both teams would then attack Grapples underwater base in an attempt to bring down the evil tyrant, Warsniak and his entire corporation. They would be assisted, along the way by Seagals character, who fights for mother nature. In the end the Expendables would take down Warsniak, while Seagal would face off against Job (now half cyborg) in a battle of nature versus technology.

UTMG: There are many things I like about your idea, aside from the excellent title, and the excellent tagline in regards to expendability. My favourite thing is that it incorporates elements of the original film and my prequel into a most excellent sequel of your doing. All the pieces, bizarrely, seem to come together in full scale ridiculousness. Marvellous!

Zombie Killer

2010-08-26T07:58:00.001Z

I'm a zombie killer
That's how I survive
Make myself a living
Taking undead lives
Get paid
For my bloodlust rage
Defending mankind
Against the undead plague
And I like it
When the zombies explode
When their blood rains down
On my boots and clothes
I get high
On the undead smell
Its heaven on earth
Sending zombies to hell

C/: (x2)
Living at the end of the undead trail
Living at the end of the undead trail

I'm a zombie killer
With blood on my soul
And an axe in hand
To make zombie heads roll
Get my pound of flesh
Just to keep me alive
To buy bullets for my gun
For when the zombies cry
And I like it
When the gunsmoke clears
When there's blood in the gutter
And zombies on their knees
I'm a zombie killer
That's how I get paid
Chopping up zombies
Is my everyday

C/

I'm a zombie killer
And my days are short
But my nights are longer
In the undead war
For the future
Of the human race
The axe must fall
On the zombie face
Decapitation
Is my stock and trade
My tools are a shotgun
And a chainsaw blade
I'm cutting
Through the undead chains
And I'll keep on cutting
'Till the end of my days

Panic

2010-08-24T18:12:00.000Z

Glass floor
Ear pressed down
Shockwaves pound

Vibrations cloud
Whereabouts
Your fist sounds

Too loud
Music sounds best
In an empty room

Flush

2010-08-18T14:11:00.002Z

I open the door to the office toilets. One of the urinals is free. The other is occupied. One of the cubicles is free. The other is occupied. Cubicle or urinal? Urinal is braver. I approach the urinal and unzip in silence. Only then do I realise that I will release gas as soon as I exert myself to urinate. I stand there in silence, wondering if the man next to me thinks I make a habit of standing at urinals, not urinating. His urine flows freely. It is a deafening waterfall of adequacy. I pray for a miracle. A loud gaseous noise erupts from the occupied cubicle. I release my gas slowly and quietly. Ask and thou shalt receive. The man next to me zips up and walks to the wash basin. The taps run, then stops. Silence again. I force out my urine and make sure it hammers against the back of the pan. I want him to hear. I want him to hear my adequacy. There is a pause. He leaves. I zip up, and wash my hands. I open the door to leave. Then I stop. I look back at the occupied cubicle. It is still. Silent, as I leave.

England Expects

2010-08-13T11:53:00.004Z

In the tunnel. Our boys. Palms sweat. Studs bang against dark walls. Echoes fall. For football. Minds try; they must ignore the hyperbole of all the talk that's gone before. Careless words, Sermons heard. On television. High definition optimism. Crowded herds. The same old story. Billboard glory. The battle's done on pundits' tongues: the war for them, as good as won. Old soldiers. Burdens gone. Laid to ground. Their hands out. Taking notes. Sell outs. Noses brown. They don't belong. Looming over shoulders young. Bending backs of England's sons.

Out the tunnel. The light comes. Our boys, sprint and run. Flags wave. The country roars. The empire lives on foreign shores. Pitched battles. Sporting war. Old grudges come to the fore. Knees sore. Strength poor. From shouldering the burden's lore. Enemy shirts swarm forward. Goals scored. Our tactics flawed. The crowd scorns. Anger soars: the offspring of expectance borne. Flags drop. Sticks rise. Vengeance brims in every eye. Players fade. Power dies. Fury comes from all sides. The whistle blows. England cries. Three lions, soon to die.

In the tunnel. The light fades. Our boys walk away. The savage hand of England's rage turns on itself for glory days. Hatred leaps off every page of headline news that marks the age: golden players gone to waste, every red top paper says. Tradition states we must be great. All the world must be afraid. We made the rules. We made the game. Somebody must take the blame.

The players hide. The people search. Scapegoat herds are dragged through dirt. Names are called and axes fall. For nothing more than kicking balls.

EXCITEMENT INCREASE PROPOSAL

2010-08-02T09:45:00.002Z

Below is a list of 3 proposals for the incremental increase of excitement levels within the company. The current levels have been deemed to be unsatisfactory. Therefore I have conducted extensive research into stimulus enhancement scenarios currently in the marketplace. Positives and negatives of each proposal are highlighted, along with projected budgets and any overriding factors that may have bearing:

Badgers:

Tesco recently ran a trial scheme in which Badgers were allowed to live in their head office building. Administrators of the scheme reported that the Badgers took to the environment well, and that they became 73% compatible with their human colleagues. Staff alertness went up by 45%, due to a 35% increase in fear. Unfortunately, ankle biting increased by levels that cannot be accurately reported, due to staff being afraid to come forward.

Executive Air Raid:

Boeing use this scheme to keep staff on their toes in their Wisconsin offices. A siren will sound on the office floor, which is the cue for everyone to hide under their desks. Then radio controlled aeroplanes fly through the office and drop firecrackers. The planes are piloted by the senior executives. This works as an excellent stress reliever for the senior staff, and an excellent motivator to get as much work done as possible in between air raids. The downside of this proposal is that it breaches a number of ventilation and fumigation directives. Health and Safety Official budgetary supplementation proposals can alleviate this problem.

Spontaneous Dance Therapy:

In this scheme, dance motivators are employed to instigate spontaneous dance routines whenever morale appears to be flagging. The type of business generally dictates the success of this scheme. It works efficiently on construction sites and naval vessels, but poorly in chemical laboratories, funeral directors and hospitals.

Dawn

2010-05-27T21:56:00.001Z

The sun comes out
So long in the shadows
Almost forgotten
Hidden away

Confusing array
Of colours and shapes
Stinging my eyes
Amnesia waves

Eyelashes brush
Too little too late
The glare of the tide
Reflexes betrayed

Nuclear day
Blindness
Afraid

What came to light
And fell into shade?

Plane Speaking

2010-05-10T08:02:00.000Z

Illumin-arty

2010-05-07T14:28:00.002Z

A Surrealistic Nightmare

2010-04-01T13:41:00.011Z

Imagine, if you will, that Art is a planet. Imagine that this planet has a super-heated core constructed from compressed human intellect. Around this core is a mantle, formed from the fiery emotion which the intellect generates. And at the surface of this mantle is the crust: the final, coolest extremity of this hypothesis. It is made up of canyons of sculpture, seas of painting and mountains of poetry. These landscapes span the globe. This environment is populated with all the human souls that have ever lived. You are with them, in a city of televised skyscrapers.

The date is July 1st 1998.

Terrible rumours have been circulating. People have been whispering about a giant meteor. An intergalactic behemoth, they say. Something made of the same matter from which Planet Art was formed, but which is instead a grotesque parody. An abomination on a collision course. An extinction-level event.

A grim face appears on the colossal screens above the city.

"I address you tonight not as the President of Art, but as a citizen of humanity," booms a loud voice. "We are faced with the very gravest of challenges. The cinema calls this day 'Armageddon'. It is the end of all things. All of you praying with us need to know that everything that can be done to prevent this disaster is being called into service: our ability to create plots without holes; our entrenched knowledge of basic screenwriting; the grasp of logic to determine that installing a simple hatch for exiting a spacecraft makes more sense than installing a hotel elevator - with 'freedom' written upon it; the ability to understand a machine gun has no place on a NASA funded meteor drilling mission, and that 'Space Dementia' is about as likely to make a drilling expert fire bullets at mining equipment as Sea Alzheimers is to make an ecologist drop torpedoes on whale sharks; Every step up the ladder of realistic emotional expression, every adventurous reach into artistic originality; even the horrible soap operas that we've watched have provided us the tools to wage this terrible battle. Through all of the chaos that is our history; through all of the wrongs and the discord; through all of the pain and suffering; through all of our times, there is one thing that has nourished our souls, and elevated our species above its origins, and that is our integrity. The dreams of an entire planet are focused tonight on the brave movie critics traveling into the heavens. And may we all, citizens the world over, see these events through. God speed, and good luck to you."

The screen goes blank.

And Planet Art falls silent.

Bad Lines from Good Films

2010-03-23T10:08:00.004Z

No. 1: The Dark Knight.

The scene: Gotham City's district attorney Harvey Dent is speaking at a press conference following the murder of the police commissioner. He eloquently assures the assembled throng that something will be done. Silence falls upon the room. An officer of the law speaks up:

"No more dead cops!"

The Death of the Brief Encounter

2010-03-10T12:47:00.025Z

Recently an old friend came to stay at my house with his girlfriend. He lives and works at a safari park in Botswana. I haven't seen him for a couple of years. We sat around the dining room table, drinking. Soon after he had arrived, more people appeared on my doorstep. Word of his presence had gotten around. My friend told us tales of leopards and warthogs fighting on the roof of his tent. Adventures with Elephants. The pitfalls of carrying dung samples on aeroplanes.

The small hours closed in. Bottles and glasses were nearing empty. So were the chairs. There were only two of us left.

I said to my friend that I had enjoyed seeing him again. It had been good to talk at length. Once he had departed tomorrow, I said would keep an eye out for him online: watch the social network.

My friend sighed. He confessed to hating such websites. At the safari camp, he said, people used to entertain themselves by talking. But then the internet came. Laptops turned on. And voices trailed off, along with the sense of comfortable isolation. He put down his drink and stood up heavily.

I bade him goodnight, and watched him ascend the stairs. I swished the last of my wine around the inside of my glass. My mind trailed along behind it.

The experience of crossing a human path, I thought, is losing its sense of occasion. This is because modern technology has removed the physical necessity of it. We are now able to share our stories with anyone, anywhere, at anytime, virtually. This renders the notion of a physical gathering for the purpose of storytelling obsolete. The mass of our experience can be stretched out across cyberspace instead. But the dilution of this mass will affect the physical moment at which paths cross. Some of the gravity will be lost. The weight of the moment will have been shed. There will be less to share. This is the fault of instant gratification.

No longer do our experiences need to ferment in the barrel of the subconscious. Age in the cellar of our memories. They need not mature before distribution to become vintage: a bottled event to be uncorked on a special occasion, poured out before rapt faces swathed in smoke by a campfire. The tradition is dying. The flames are being starved of oxygen. Suffocated by the online social networks.

No longer do mysterious strangers need to vanish into the fog of the past. They need not be thought of with the wistfull, whimsical delicacy that the mind grants to the memory of missed opportunity. They can be hit with a search engine instead. And the romance of the brief encounter by which they came to be known can be bruised. Rendered obsolete.

I drained my glass and placed it amongst the pyre of bottles on the table.

The house was silent.

I went upstairs to bed.

Le Gers

2010-03-03T09:09:00.005Z

Regimented Love-Acknowledgment Ritual

2010-02-15T14:25:00.002Z

Like any self-respecting single man, I spent Valentine's day touching myself in front of a computer screen in a darkened room.

The lights were off because I didn't want to see my own reflection in the monitor. The sight of my ghostly face weeping tears of self-loathing onto my genitals against a background of unassailable sexual gymnastics would have been too much for me to bear - especially since my hand is forced (so to speak) because I have a dial-up connection, which means I have to make a perverse commitment to whatever sordid activity I have chosen to watch, and see it through to the bitter end.

There is none of the high-speed promiscuity of broadband for me. Just an arthiritic, geriatric shuffling of the loading bar as it wheezes its way towards the red light at the end of a seemingly-endless tunnel - while I go and do the washing-up, put the kettle on, watch Quincy and come back with handful of tissue, praying it was worth the wait. Which it never is.

So, happy Valentine's Day (belated).

You = Failure

2010-02-12T15:08:00.005Z

Okay. Listen up. You are the epitome of failure. And so am I. In fact, everyone is. And the sooner we all get used to the idea, the better.

Inspiring stuff, eh? You're probably aiming the cursor towards the exit right now, having succumbed to an overpowering desire to stop reading such negative drivel. But that's okay. Because you're proving my point: I have failed to hold your attention, and you have failed to maintain an interest. Therefore, we are failures. So, goodbye.

Anyone still here? Good. Then bear with me, if you will. Because there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Failure is one of the few human experiences to which every single person around the world can relate directly. From the long jumper who fails to leap the few millimetres that would win a gold medal, to the beggar who fails to attract a pedestrian for a handful of change. In that instant of failure, their totally disparate life experiences culminate in the same unifying moment. An identical sensation; the sharp stab of inadequacy - until the moment passes, and the next existential decision is made.

These instances prevail in the cultures of mankind - because, more often than not, all of us will fail at something, repeatedly, over the course of our lives; the great empires of the Mayans, the Egyptians, the Mongols and the Romans - who all bought humanity so many of its perceived advances, ultimately failed. And their failure lives on in us. Because we continue the emulate the destructive trend of empires - political, religious and commercial. We fail to acknowledge the failures of history. Because humanity can, and will, fail at absolutely everything.

Failure was a necessity abundant in history long before we were failing to record it. The solar system itself exists due to numerous astronomical failures: it was formed when a molecular cloud failed to maintain structural intergrity and collapsed in upon itself, forming a star. But the star failed to generate a field of gravity sufficient enough to consume all of the molecular cloud's matter. After that, the leftover matter circled around the star, failing to escape its orbit. The matter failed to avoid collision with other casualties of the collapse, thus causing planets to form. On Earth, extinction-level events failed to eradicate species necessary for human evolution. Indeed, our very gestation as singular human beings relies upon a colossal act of failure: millions of sperm failing to fertilise one sole egg -
which is an epic underachievement often overlooked. Perhaps its because the thought of so many deaths occuring as a necessity for us to exist as individuals might be depressing for some people to consider. They might casually think of the parallels between themselves and sperm. And then stop in their tracks as they wonder whether or not they, and millions of others like them, were born simply to die.

At this point I would like to reveal that, astonishingly, I am single. My turn-offs include; that stupid babyish voice that couples use on each other, and optimism. My turn-ons are fitness, literature, music, Speedball 2, and huge breasts.

Where was I? Ah yes.

Failure should be embraced. Because without it, we would not exist. And yet, I cannot help but feel that the society in which I live does not want this embrace to happen. I cannot avoid bombardment by advertising media that contains a glaring absence of failure. Everywhere I look. Products and services for sale in positions of prominence. And I am meant to come to the conclusion that no failure will be associated with them - just as long as I go out and buy them. And in more and more extravagent ways I am being told this. Ways which cost an exorbitant amount of money, and therefore, in a material wealth-driven society, ways which cannot possibly be indicative of failure. There was a time when I could simply ignore the fact that my reality of failure is not a worthwhile brand. But now I feel acutely dissillusioned by the sensation. Entrapped by it.

This is partly because of the rise in authority of the celebrity endorsee, and their overpowering presence in the collective consciousness. Celebrities engender the respect of voices on the street corners and in the offices around me. Their clothes and cars and make-up are emulated by the populace en masse. They hold such influence that, in certain cases, through the medium of television talent shows for example, they can muster more voting power than a general election. They hold more sway over public opinion than a head of state. For reasons I cannot quite fathom, they have me surrounded.

Celebrities have evolved into a weapon for generating demand in the marketplace. They are used by corporations to pervert the public's perception of the importance of the products which they supply. The level of that importance is increased by the use of selected clothes or cars or haircare products which are forced into the public eyeline wherever possible. The products are all modelled by people who either look like the authoritative stars of TV shows, or are the authoritative stars of TV shows; the lines are blurred just enough to maintain an illusion of diversity. Celebrities and their lookalikes are strategically placed on the billboards, in the newspaper, on the radio, on the internet, and on the television.

In magazines, the inevitable, but unwanted failure in celebrity lives is methodically contorted to make a parody. Molehills on faces are made into mountains. Divorce is compressed to fit into neon star-shaped captions. This contorsion is a necessity for the walls of consumerism to remain standing - because the construct of consumerism is built upon the foundation that purchasing products is good - not a failure. So celebrity failure has to be contorted into something unrecognisable. Something with which the customer cannot identify. Something which they cannot take seriously, so that the aspirational aura of celebrity remains intact. The purchase continues. The profits go up. And the corporations for whom this system of consumption works so well continue to divert attention away from failure as you and I know it.

Because of this, advertisments are becoming increasingly hysterical in their depiction of the absence of failure - even when marketing the most mundane and ordinary of products. For example: never have I seen the twice-daily chore of toothbrushing depicted on a billboard as the dull reality it is for millions of people. Not once have I looked up and seen a bored-looking face staring at a toothbrush. Instead, I see faces contorted with ejaculatory pleasure. Toothpaste never can, and never will, make me feel a sense of ejaculatory pleasure. Therefore I feel alienated by images of this ilk. Patronised by them. They make me feel like a failure because I do not fit in with the prevailing imagery.

But I only feel like a failure on the advertisers' terms: not on mine.

On my terms, I have failed to be duped. Failed to ignore the concrete of my reality. I have failed to need the corporation, and they have failed to demonstrate their necessity to me - the failure of which corporations are most afraid; failing to keep the attention of the customer. They are terrified that their empire will fail. But they over-rate the horror of failure.

When people are asked whether or not they would like to try a new task, the common response is that they are afraid of doing so - because they will not be very good at it. They are afraid to fail. Because they expect to be judged unfavourably by other people for failing - like a bad talent show contestant. The predominence of bad talent show contestants on TV, and the perpetual mass-judgment of these people by a large cross-section of society cements failure as a negative. But this concept of failure is not even of peoples' own devising - it is a simplistic polar extreme devised solely for amoral entertainment: you sang badly, so you're not through to the next round. You are a failure. When the protagonists of these programmes are so prominent in society, so famous, it is easy to believe that polar extremes which they represent are the only reasonable terms under which the quality of an experience can be valued.

But this is simply not true.

Imagine a person standing on a ledge that juts out from a bridge. The person has a bungee strap lashed around their ankles. They have failed to be overcome by the fear of standing out on a ledge, hundreds of feet up in the air. They have failed to be daunted by the idea of jumping. All that awaits them is the failure to undertake the jump itself.

The person might fail. But instead of dismissing that failure so that it is never faced again, the person can try to understand it. Make a friend of it; because the act of failing is human. And to keep failing at things is to take a journey into one's own humanity. It is to explore oneself: by embracing the reality of failure. Because one day, that person might go back out on that ledge on the bridge. They might be so accustomed to failure that they aren't scared of it anymore. They might fail, finally, to see the harm in jumping. And as they are bouncing up and down on the cord, laughing and whooping, they might fail to see what's stopping them from trying, and failing, to achieve something else.

Because, If we set our minds to it, we can fail at absolutely anything.

Super Mario Workout*

2010-02-09T15:29:00.006Z

Morning

3 x 50 mile sprint
Hammer Bros Body Combat - 1 hour
Breakfast: 1 x half a koopa (with yoghurt)
Plumbing duties

Afternoon

50,000 x Banzai Bill Squat
Lunch: 1/4 Fried Goomba. Actimel + 1 packet of Imodium
More plumbing duties

Evening

25,000 x Giant Thwomp Bench Press
Dinner: Grilled Monty Mole. (No mushrooms or stars)
Leisure time.

*may not result in weight loss

Shackles

2010-01-22T15:13:00.004Z

When I got into work this morning I went to the shower room to get changed out of my cycling clothes. The trousers which I leave hanging on the back of the changing room door to last me the course of each week were missing.

Mystified, I went down to reception to report their disappearance - fearing that I would have to conduct the day's business in lycra. The receptionist sighed. She told me that she knew the culprit: a human resources goon who will remain nameless. This nameless goon is notorious for regularly sending around inflammatory emails complaining about people leaving their stuff in the changing room. Once, The Receptionist told me, The Goon even threw out a colleague's suit because he left it in there.

The Receptionist suggested that myself - and another colleague who appeared in reception with the same problem - ought to check The Goon's office before she arrived. We found a black bin bag by her desk. Our clothes were crumpled up inside - presumably awaiting disposal. Furious, we retrieved them.

Once I was all changed and settled at my desk, I gave The Receptionist a call. "Has The Goon arrived?"

"Yes" she said.

"Okay, thanks."

I went to The Goon's office and knocked on the door. I entered without waiting for an invite. She was on the phone. I sat down.

The Goon finished her call and put the phone down. "What can I do for you."

"You can stop taking my personal effects," I said. "My trousers were missing from the changing room this morning. I was halfway through getting changed."

She tried a sympathetic smile. "It must have been the cleaners."

"Why were they in a bin bag by your desk then?"

"Did you leave them in the shower room?"

"They were on the back of the door."

She sighed. "All property has to be out of the shower rooms at the end of the day. For health and safety reasons."

"And how are my trousers a health and safety hazard?"

"Well, the cleaners can't touch them: if they knocked them off the hook into a puddle of bleach or something it would cause all kinds of trouble. You would be in here complaining."

"I wouldn't: because I would accept responsibility for having left them there in the first place. And I doubt the cleaners even touch the back of the door - judging by the amount of dust they don't touch on top of most of the monitors in the office."

"Well I'm sorry," she lied, "but that's what has to happen. It's not a changing room- well, okay; it's not a store room. You've got a locker. Why don't you use that?"

Rather than explaining the nature of creasing, I got up to leave.

"I think you're being excessive," I said. "Bye"

She said something, but I was out the door before I had the displeasure of hearing whatever it was.

Diversity in Exploitation

2010-01-21T16:57:00.001Z

The other night I watched a show called 'How To look Good Naked'

What happens in the show is this: the viewer meets a woman who has suffered extensive damage to her self-esteem due to an unrelenting bombardment of Inadequacy Missiles launched by The Empire of Superficial Perfection. The mission of the show is to rebuild her. Her saviour is a preening patronising peacock called Gok Wan. Gok sets about the task by brainwashing her into joining the ranks of - yes, you've guessed it: The Empire of Superficial Perfection. Gok, it appears, is Chief Recruitment Officer. Presumably, to undertake this humble task of enforced redemption he takes a regular sabbatical from programming the launch control computers of colour co-ordinated missile batteries.

The brainwashing begins with Gok stripping the heroine of her existing uniform - the dowdy threads of the Republic of the Ordinary. Next he dresses her in a new uniform bought with funds he probably skimmed off the top of his dandy armaments budget, and, lo, she becomes a footsoldier of The Empire of Superficial Perfection. Her existence is now deemed meaningful - at least until the next time Gok gets bored and decides to shift the ever-changing landscape of fashionable taste with a barrage of paisley-tipped warheads. Then the heroine will have to go through it all again (away from the television screens and without the television budget) if she doesn't want to be outcast by her fashionista comrades for being a hideous troll - because she thinks paisley is rubbish.

Anyway. This week's show was a special edition. It featured people who are 'different'.

The 'different' heroine of this week's show was a woman called Tracy Warren. In 2007 Tracy discovered that she would have to spend the majority of her life in a wheelchair - an experience which I won't demean with an uninformed attempt at empathy, or with any further use of a patronising, anodyne generalisation such as 'different' to describe her predicament. When asked how she felt before meeting Gok, Tracy replied that she felt 'boring and unimportant'. For alternative reaons, that's exactly how I feel; because the priorities of my worldview do not revolve around seeing the world in black and white. Or paisley. With a ruff - which would be considered an extinction-level event within the context of this show, as would my inability to rank slavery to fashion as any kind of emotionally healthy undertaking whatsoever.

During the heathen years BG (Before Gok) Tracy said that 'as someone in a chair it didn't matter how I looked'. So, with the abandonment of that idyllic spiritual notion, Tracy embarked upon her mission with Gok in pursuit of superficial happiness. They met at a generic clothing store. Gok announced that he would draw attention to the person, and away from the chair.

'Wheelchair coming through,' he said as he pushed Tracy through the aisles.

She couldn't find anything she liked. Gok was unhappy. He picked out something. She used the limited mobility allowed by her crutches to get out of her chair to try it on. This section of the programme was noticeably short: it neatly side-stepped the chance to depict the logistical realities that face anyone with a physical disability who attempts a serious assault on high street retail outlets. But Gok was trying to draw attention away from the chair, remember?

The next stage of the plan was to release Tracy's inner goddess. This entailed more wheelchair ignoring. Gok glammed Tracy up to pose on a bed wrapped in silk sheets for a generic sexy photoshoot. By the time the camera flashes had died down and the final product was there for all to see, it was almost as if she had no disability at all. Well hooray for self-proclaimed Auntie Gok. Hooray for propogating the message that a disabled person can only be at their sexiest by appearing not to be disabled. Hooray for pointing out what a shameful monster the wheelchair is. Boo hiss to the wheelchair. Boo.

That is until Gok decided to change tack entirely and wheel out a new chair with a pimped set of wheels and 'Gok' printed on it - just so everyone knows from whom Tracy got it. She said she used to feel 'boring and unimportant'. Now she'll be the talk of the town. Well, the chair will. The chair that we were meant to look past to see the person using it.

And yet, when Tracy took to the catwalk at the finale of the programme, her friends and family cried with joy. Tracy radiated happiness. And I felt horrible and ignorant for finding the whole affair distasteful and exploitative. But I couldn't help feeling that a broad spectrum of the disabled community had been excluded in favour of someone with a disability which would cause the lowest possible inconvenience to the production of the programme combined with the most prominent visually-impacting return. To put that in context - watching the futility of Gok trying to explain to someone suffering from schizophrenia why their blouse doesn't look very good wouldn't exactly make for the upbeat, easily-digestible television show the producers want. Instead, they would have a revealing farce on their hands.

The applause died down.

'Tune in next week to see me face my biggest challenge yet,' Gok said. 'A woman with one leg.'

The credits rolled.

Tracy was already yesterday's news.

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

2010-01-14T16:58:00.004Z

In 2008 there was an advertisement on the television which featured a boy who takes a trip through scenes of recent British history on his way home from the shop with a loaf of bread.

His travels began in cobbled streets at the turn of the century. He ran past Suffragettes. Past soldiers marching off to fight in the first world war, and then the second - after a subtle change of uniform. He saw the ruin of a bombed house. The rallying voice of Churchill filled the air from the crackling speaker of a bakelite radio. The boy stumbled upon a street party for the Queen's coronation. After that, some football fans celebrating the 1966 world cup victory drove past him in a car. Girls in mini-skirts watched. Then he stopped in his tracks between lines of miners and policeman preparing for a riot. With the loaf of bread under his arm he dashed along a waterfront. The fireworks that marked the turn of the millenium bombarded the night sky. He reached his home, pushed the door open, and laid down his burden upon the kitchen table.

Those fireworks were 10 years ago. So, for The Bakers, it seems the decade peaked within the first hour. As far as they were concerned nothing else that happened in The Noughties (ugh) was worth referencing: it was The Nowties. Nowt lamer than time, like. But, of course, The Bakers had to make compromises due to time and budget and attention restraints: The Nineties didn't get a look in. Nor did The Seventies. In the world of bread marketing, events of the last 40 years of British history were designated unimportant - except for a big fight over coal, and a punctual nationwide fireworks display.

This does not surprise me. As far as The Nowties go, palatable pop culture events encapsulating the era have been thin on the ground. Fashion and art and cinema have largely been a consumate worship of the reboot, the remake and the retread. Old is the new black. New is old news: old looks on new bands, and new looks on old bands. New looks on old films and old wars. Sequels are in on all fronts. So all hail the decade of regurgitation.

Fixate upon the half-digested trends thrown up by the churning guts of The Nowties. A puddle at which the general populace cannot help but gawp - because it is a distraction from sickeningly grim global catastrophes: falling towers and rising oceans. Disasterous conflicts that are still too hot for objective consumption. Indigestible catastrophes that might be symptomatic of the illness. An illness that causes a collective, feverish groping for the familiar - to settle the stomach. Catastrophes of such despair that they make even the indistinct bile of the hyper-derivative look palatable.

Which, of course, wouldn't sell many buns.

In the Na'vi

2010-01-11T16:34:00.008Z

When I first heard about Avatar I was less than enthused. A 3D ecological adventure? Ooh. Yawn. But my brother was raving about it. He said it would be a revolution in Cinema. I scoffed at the notion. Quite a bit. In fact, there was almost nothing left of it by the time I had finished.

So when my friend Bowser and I braved the snow to reach the cinema last week, I wasn’t expecting much. Certainly not a queue to get into the theatre. Especially three weeks into the theatrical run. It was a full house. The attendant who looked like Mortimer Duke from Trading Places told us so. Then he made us all squeeze up in the rows before leaving us to the eco-heavy trailers. Once they had passed I slipped my glasses on and watched the screen blacken.

In the opening sequence we see the lead character Jake Sully in a cryo-sleep chamber on board a space ship. Upon arriving at the destination planet of Pandora the chamber opens. The camera pans across to reveal rank upon rank of chambers stretching away to the horizon. The shot immediately stamps the unmatched quality of this particular brand of 3D onto the eye: the layers are more imperceptible, and there’s only a small trace of that tell-tale 3D effect which makes a subject close to the camera resemble a moving cardboard cut-out when they are shot in a high depth of field.

Jake is a disabled former marine who is sent to Pandora in place of his murdered brother - a scientist who was assigned to a project called Avatar. The project is an attempt by a mining company of human insurgents to improve relations with a native humanoid species called the Na’vi. The humans hope to coerce the Na’vi into allowing them to mine a particular vein of a valuable ore call unobtainium. The Na’vi don’t trust humans. So the humans interact with the Na’vi through an Avatar - a fully grown Na’vi body with which a human can be bonded using bio-technology. Because of shared genetic traits Jake is the only other person able to operate his brother’s Avatar. In exchange for his services Jake is offered reconstructive surgery on his legs when his 3 month infiltration mission is complete. But when Jake becomes engrossed in the Na’vi culture his loyalty to the mission becomes compromised.

The narrative runs a fairly predictable course: disabled white boy meets 9ft blue girl through bio-technological synchromesh and becomes the saviour of her species and a traitor to his own in the name of mother nature. You know; the usual. But the story is paced well, and the subtext of trans-cultural love, the overcoming of disability, and the use of technology altering traditional perceptions of identity all resonate strongly.

This resonance is amplified by the exceptional motion capture technology. The faces of the Na’vi are highly expressive and therefore more emotionally engaging. They blend seamlessly with their human counterparts. And, rather than being a gimmick, the 3D technology cannily enhances the immersive experience by drawing the viewer into the environment with which Jake falls in love. So much so that in one scene, after a prolonged human absence, when the disembodied beep-beep of a reversing mining vehicle rings out in the forest it sounds truly alien.

This integrity permeates the picture as a whole. Small touches like the Na’vi standing in a circle and putting their hands on each other’s shoulders at a ceremony, and the young warriors’ initiation rite of passage give the culture a genuine feel. Creator James Cameron has done his research. And in doing so, he has created a believable native character race that is stretched with science fiction, but not strained.

The only detriment is some truly B-Movie quality dialogue (“They’re going to bomb the Tree of Souls!”) and some blunt characterisation – most notably the cigar-chomping human general who is a cross between J. Jonah Jameson and George W. Bush, and the fidgety, shameless head of the mining company. But this is an action adventure picture for ages 12(A) and over: no place for a Patten or a Kurtz. The villains should be cartoonish. And that they appear so two-dimensional in the company of animated heroes is testament to the skill of the filmmakers.

Emergency Starsystem Lifespan Review (in a language called English)

2010-01-05T16:41:00.001Z

My apologies for my failure to supply the preferred chemical mesh sample from the dominant orbital body of this solar system - a planet called Jupiter. Circumstances negated this action. Instead I use a language called English which is spoken by various specimens of Human - a species which has evolved on one of the smaller, less significant orbital bodies called Earth. Humans appear to be the source of the transmissions we receive, although they are unaware of this.

In the absence of the chemical mesh sample I will endeavor to make this rudimentary report as good a compromise as it can be, but considering the circumstances outlined below, my submission of a costly and unnecessary report written in a language of the very party incurring that cost is an irony not lost on me.

This star is half way through its lifespan, as arranged. The environmental conditions on the orbiting body of Earth will have absolutely no effect on this. The human inhabitants appear to be grossly magnifying the extent of distress. They have no intrinsic, symbiotic understanding of their position of operation in the system as a whole - despite their unique intellect demonstrating the potential to grasp the immagnitude of their position.

This magnification seems to be the result of a previously unrecorded level of self-obsession. Therefore it is likely that this species will become extinct very quickly due to an ignorance of external events, and that further transmissions will not be received for the remaining lifespan of the solar system. However, due to the rate at which this species evolved, it is probable that another advanced species will take its place. Regardless of this, I would recommend that all future transmissions be ignored as a matter of course.

In conclusion, the system as a whole will continue to its predicted eventual end. The star will go supernova at the appointed time and commence upon its journey to the appropriate waypoint for the remaining matter to be redistributed in the usual fashion.

Ring ring.. Ring ring...

2009-12-21T17:07:00.017Z

"Hello? Yeah. This is James Spader."

"Uh huh. Yeah, I read it. I loved it."

"Mmm hmm. Let me stop you there. I hated it."

"Yeah. Hated it."

"Well, I'll tell you why: because I'm James Spader."

"Now let me ask you a question. Have you ever seen any of my movies?"

"You're a liar."

"You heard me. You're a liar. You know how I can tell you're a liar? Because this cute animated creature you want me to voice doesn't have a lot of sex."

"Hello?"

"Unreasonable? Do me a favour. Go out and actually watch my movies. You'll see a pattern."

"Yes. A pattern. A sexy pattern. A sexy pattern to which your cartoon animal does not conform."

"No. I don't care about the fee. Listen to my voice: Go and watch my movies."

"Okay. Good. Okay."

"Wait. What are you wearing?"

"Hello?"

Plop Idol

2009-12-14T11:57:00.008Z

At last. Its over. But not before a grotesque, duet-riddled back-slap of a finale.

My favourite part was when Robbie Williams came out to sing with puppet-legged half-wit Olly Murs, and missed his cue. But Olly Murs (an annoying cross between Buzz Lightyear and Scrappy Doo) wasn't concerned. He fawned over his idol with a bile-stirring display of sycophantic bum-hugging - a bit like a tramp pulling at the trouser leg of a banker.

My least favourite part was at the end of their audio cringefest. Robbie sang the line "She won't forsake me" to which Murs responded with "Why's that Robbie?" With a knowing smile Robbie sang "I'm loving Angels instead." Then they hugged like long-lost brothers.

I was almost sick on my shoes.

But, anyway.

Apparently, super-bland choir-sprite Joe McElderberry won. Whopee doo. Congratulations to surrogate grandmothers and pre-teen girls everywhere. You can operate a telephone.

And congratulations to Simian Cowl.

You are the World's Most Famous Call Centre Manager.

Spotlight

2009-12-04T13:17:00.011Z

I used to think that I would never overcome my stage fright. The fear would twist my voice out of control. Shake my hands. Project my terror. Magnify my obsession with my own performance. I would justify this fear by telling myself I was afraid because I was committed to my art in a way that others were not; the performance is everything, darling. You wouldn't understand.

What bullshit. I only wish this embarassing fanfare of pretension had fallen on deaf ears. But it didn't. I blew a trumpetful of it. Because I was just scared. Terrified of exposure. Plain and simple.

A long time ago I was in bed with a girl. She looked into my eyes with a sad face.

"Just relax," she said. "Let go of yourself."

Intimacy is the most difficult performance to reprise. I can't be sure that I am hitting my marks in front of the cast. The drama has taken on a worrying loss of meaning. A featureless landscape of triviality that throws the rare contours of humanity into sharp, acute relief. The plot has moved on. Or hasn't. I can't always tell. Still, I feel like a hole in it. Another loose end. Uncomfortable. Exposed.

But I found a refuge. The place I always feared. My voice doesn't waver anymore. My hands don't shake. The sound just comes out. Carelessly. And I'm just happy to hear myself. On my own.

Where I'm not afraid.

Cliffhanger

2009-11-26T13:06:00.007Z

I stumbled upon this news item in the bowels of a company's investor website archive.

Sir Cliff Richard, the biggest-selling recording artist in British chart history, returned to his old home town for the first time in more than 20 years to open a new McCarthy & Stone retirement development named after him. The enduring star, who grew up in Cheshunt, Herts, spent over an hour at Cliff Richard Court to cut the ribbon and meet the residents.
“He was the perfect gentleman” said Keith Johnson, regional managing director of McCarthy & Stone. “He had time for everyone, sitting and chatting with the residents and their families who had come to share the moment.” Sir Cliff also toured the development and signed autographs for the crowd of over 100 people who had gathered outside to catch a glimpse of Cheshunt’s most famous son.
“We were delighted when Sir Cliff agreed to have the new building named after him as this is the first development of its kind to mark permanently his association with Cheshunt. But we never thought he would find time to pay a visit. “It is a measure of Sir Cliff’s popularity that he took the trouble to do this properly by making a personal appearance. Everyone was thrilled to bits.” Said Keith.
Sir Cliff said he was “dead chuffed” to have the building named after him: “This isn’t the only building in Cheshunt to bear my name,” he said. “It’s the only one in the world!”

Things I learned about Cliff:

a) Cliff probably does not like Cheshunt. His absence of more than 20 years is a strong indicator of this.

b) Cliff probably won't return to places he doesn't like unless a local building is named in his honour.

c) When Cliff attends the opening of a local building named in his honour, he will probably make a snide remark in reference to the lack of invitations he has received for other buildings to be named in his honour.

d) Cliff probably won't spend more than an hour on-site, but he probably will expect someone to fabricate space-time-bending evidence to indicate that he 'had time for everyone'.

e) Cliff will probably make a tasteless pun. Even about mortality at a retirement home, if he feels like it.

Pour Vous, A Baradat

2009-11-19T16:05:00.003Z

To stumble upon my paradise was a wonderful thing. The absence of expectancy gave it an innocent sheen. A mellow surprise that will never lose its luster. It was a revelation. A dawn upon a path. Circumstance had pushed the sun up at that moment when I reached the right place at the right time in the right frame of mind. At a farmhouse in the south of France.

I could feel it every morning when I threw the shutters open. It was underfoot when I creaked down the stairs and crossed the stone floor to sit down at my desk by the wood burner. It was outside the window on the wing of Red Kites circling overhead on the breeze that ran off the mountains. It was in the song of a bird that would fly through a hole in the roof and sing from the banister in the hallway.

With bare feet I bore down upon a dream. My days were spent writing. I took short breaks in long grass between clouds of butterflies. Crouton hay bales garnished the fields. Mourning sunflowers and ranks of vines climbed the hillsides.

In the night I built fires. Bats picked off insect stragglers. I watched the moon from my back. I chased satellites across the sky between a crowd of stars until they burned bright in the light beyond sunset. I was alone but not lonely.

My friends sent themselves to me. Their writing became a new puzzle from old hands. Our letters were a contest of retention much thicker than carbon copies, using our own memories as a server. I felt close to the envelopes on my desktop. I missed the writers very much. But I could reach for them whenever I wanted. And when I heard the exhaust note of the little yellow mail van, I knew they would be arriving in another letter to tide me over until I saw their faces again.

There were other knocks on my door. People keeping an eye out for me. Always there if I needed them. They made me feel at ease with rare words never wasted, synchronised with the pace of life.

When I came back home, I left a part of myself behind. The part of me who would stand outside in a thunderstorm until the clouds broke for the chance of seeing a double-rainbow. The part who relished every moment he was living beyond his means. The part who cried out when he went beyond those means and who came to understand the value of such things in paradise. The part who realised he had no choice but to leave.

If I close my eyes and block out the traffic and the sirens and the chatter, I can take myself back there. I can remember that I achieved what I set out to do, and that I need to be here for now.

Paradise has not gone away. It is still there waiting for me.

Pay Attention

2009-11-12T09:55:00.006Z

The beautiful are expecting you to join their ranks. They are patrolling the television shows and the newspapers. They are waiting for you on the shop fronts around town. They are falling out of expensive nightclubs, and falling in with expensive bedfellows. Watch and learn. Witness the demonstration of success

You can emulate the beautiful. The blueprint of their lifestyle is everywhere you look. You can consume their clothes. Chase their cars. Drink their drinks. Fall out of a nightclub and you’re half way there.

But that’s close enough. Pick yourself up. Check your pockets. Go home.

When you wake up, the scenery may have changed; the costumes, the props, the faces. Because the beautiful move on - without you, if you cannot afford the chase. So turn on the TV. Turn over the page. Watch and learn.

Witness the all-new demonstration of success.

Weapon X Program

2009-10-22T11:59:00.009Z

I am being haunted by a symbol. It watches me from the television. Waits for me on billboards. Speaks to me in tongues on the bus stop and on the waves of the radio. Wherever I go or whatever I do I cannot escape it. The symbol is a giant red X. A weapon of propaganda positioned to convert me at every available juncture. The icon of a rich and powerful movement. A movement in which I want no part.

This movement's success is built upon a powerful concept. An idea that resonates deep within the collective subconscious. The notion that everyone has the potential to succeed if they are given the opportunity. In a culture addicted to fame, this idea is ripe for abuse. And the X-Factor movement has grown rich from its understanding of this abuse. It has cooked up a fine opiate that people never even knew they wanted; the chance to not only experience the hallucinatory birth of fame, but also to decide upon the participants within this hallucination. To pass judgement and change someone's life for the better. Who has the X-Factor? You decide.

But the truth is that you do not. You actually decide who does not have the X-Factor. The vote you use for a candidate you like is actually a vote against a candidate who you don't like. This is because the vote itself works by a process of elimination. So, by not voting for candidates, you put them in the firing line of the judges. And the judges get to experience the real high of judgement. The absolute power of elimination. The reality of shattering a dream. Not the passive positive hallucination you experience: the illusion of choice.

This illusion appears to fade in the final stage. The judges turn the gun over to you. But this final choice is just another illusion. Because whoever you choose does not have the X-Factor. This is proved during a comedown period in which the selected candidate fades away at a rate of decline proportional to the quality of marketing applied to them. The fade occurs because the candidate is reliant upon others to propagate their success. They do not have the ability to do so themselves. This is why they joined the movement in the first place. In doing so they demonstrated that they do not have the X-Factor. They demonstrated that they want it.

This flaw is something the end users of the opiate choose to overlook. This is because they simply do not want to believe it is true. They want to believe that they chose who has the X-Factor. They need to believe that they were right in their decision. Right to invest in their judgement. Because it has been demonstrated to them that to invest in judgement is to succeed. This demonstration exists in the form of The X-Factor judges themselves, who repeatedly supercede the success of those upon whom they pass judgement. And this success comes not from the outcome of judgement, of justice, but from the very passing of judgement itself. So when the judges bestow that gift of judgement upon the user, the greatest honour the user can bestow is to give it back. To keep investing in judgement. Keep fuelling the movement.

To be proud of having a big red cross next to their name.

2009-10-02T13:34:00.006Z

I walk into the tea room. Familiar faces are buried in magazines. They occupy the same places around the same old tables and chairs. They wear empty expressions I thought I had forgotten. Muscle memory takes over as I open all the right cupboards and jars. I pull the handle on the hot water caddy to fill my mug. The resistance is no surprise.
One of the faces looks up. "Hello. Long time no see."
"Yeah."
"How long has it been?"
"18 months."
"How come you're back then?"
"They made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Mainly because I'm skint."
"How was America?"
I sip my coffee. "Amazing."
"How long have you been back?"
"A year. But I've been in France for 6 months."
"Oh. You get around"
"Yeah. It was beautiful. Vinyards. Sunflowers. The Pyrenees on my doorstep."
"Sounds nice."
"How are you?"
"Same old," she says. "Nothing much changes around here."
"No."
I walk over to the window and look down at the empty lot across the road. In the space between the office blocks, a blanket of long green grass has grown. The blades are thick. They shimmer in the wind. Undulating. Obedient. Defiant. Victorious against the diggers that came and turned a building into rubble, and the rubble into earth. From corner to corner the land has been retaken. Right up to the tired sign leaning against the fence. 'To Let.' A lie. Because verdance is the tennant now. And when eviction day comes she will pay with her life.

"Hello" says a voice.
I turn around. Another familiar face. The rest have gone.
"Long time no see."

Detour

2009-02-10T15:42:00.006Z

The posts for this trip were often typed in dark, deserted toilet cubicles or under the lonely fluroescent strip lighting that seemed to be ever-present in the rumbling campsite laundries scattered across North America. Long after everyone else had gone to bed, I would squint and blink at the screen into the small hours. Some posts were cut-and-pasted together in the homes of the people that cared for us. Others were carved out in hostel accomodation, or in the score of nameless coffee shops where we loitered with an intent unswerving.
Generally, most were scrawled by my jagged hand in notebooks gifted by friends under torchlight in a small Wal-Mart tent, or in the passenger seat of our trusty Japanese chariot whilst The King of Space worked the pedals and aped the eclectic soundtrack blasting through the speakers with a steady nod or a subtle drum upon on the solar curve of the steering wheel.
These, and a swathe of other memories are set like concrete now in the unsettling fluid rush of the intervening months between this and my last post. Until recently, I had been working in a sunless, overground bunker with a gaggle of lost souls so devoid of fire or passion that they could barely muster the righteous indignation to complain about anything other than the most trivial of matters; if they were to tackle the glaringly obvious, dim-wittedness ignorance of those in charge, they would be broken. Their indelicate fragility smashed.
All for the stuffing of an envelope.
But I work there no more. And today, on my birthday, I sit with all jobs done before I embark upon another adventure. My clothes and books are boxed up. The room in which I have been a most grateful guest of Squiggle (see sidebar) and B, rent free, for these last five months, is cleansed. The King of Space's old computer peers down at me from the top of the stairs. Somewhere across town, my father wings his way towards me this very moment to collect me so that tomorrow we might drive to Poole. The ferry awaits. France will greet us and we will drive its length to reach the rolling beauty of its nether regions. In Gascony I will live in a remote farmhouse belonging to a friend, mostly unaccompanied for the next 4 to 6 months. I will help him renovate, and occasionally work for his parents; a rose grower and a roofer. I will slow burn 400 euros in my pocket. I will to try and get a book written. I will write to my friends because I will miss them, and that will be my only means to communicate; devolution.
Back to the written word.
So, I won't be around here for a while.
If you miss me, take your own journey through this place. The road starts on the toolbar.
It grows late, and I hear a car at the end of the road.

Boys To Men

2008-08-28T17:57:00.007Z

I open my eyes gingerly. The blank canvas of the ceiling stares back at me. I turn my head sideways and see The King of Space awakening from a black hole slumber in his sleeping bag amidst a cluster of pillowy asteroids. I cannot yet grasp the concept of his pending absence. I have become so accustomed to his ever-presence: 4 months on the road around this almighty continent with day upon day of trading seats at the wheel, tunes on the iPod and quips on the locals, and nary a cross word spoken. If that is not a sign of an unbreakable bond, I do not know what is. So many times we had been asked how we would cope with any fallout. There has been none. So my worries about broaching the subject in print became an irrelevance. He opens his eyes, crossing the event horizon, and grins. We look over to the door and see our stuff piled up and ready to go like kids eager for Disneyland. After a quick shower we step across the threshold into the hallway and I cast a quick eye back. The apartment looks tidy. The absolute least we can do for a couple who showed astonishing trust in allowing two men whom they had never met before to stay in their home in their absence. We never did have enough time with them. We never really had enough time with anyone. I close the door and descend to the lobby, forcing the keys into The Duke and The Princess’ mailbox for a later retrieval. They return home this evening. We will be long gone by then. Out in the streets, students and pensioners shuffle past in worship of their lives. They have no idea what we have been through or how much I will miss their cursory, fleeting appearance. I feel like a deserter. Patch waits with the luggage whilst I flag down a yellow cab on the high street and direct it around the corner. We cram everything in, just, and head off; the final chariot ride, out to the airport. The city fades away behind us. Only the outskirts remain. At departures we pay with the last of our dollars. Incredibly, our budgets were nigh on perfect – except for the terrifying bill that we incurred with the failure of our treacherous behaviour towards the hire car company. Had we pulled that off, we would have been home and dry, breaking even. But no. Dark figures lurk on a balance sheet somewhere in the future. ‘Your excess baggage comes to a total of $160.’ The poker face of the check-in clerk is unmoving as mine drops. ‘How would you like to pay?’ I tell him that I wouldn’t, and that I will be back shortly. He nods tiresomely. We retire to the back side of a pillar. I have to lose 10kg. The King of Space used his extensive training to cleverly wear most of his excess baggage. In direct and logical mockery of a somewhat ridiculous system, he is wearing 6 T-shirts, 2 sweatshirts, 3 pairs of pants, 4 pairs of socks and all of his underwear. He stands tall and proud like the Michelin man – all that fabric bulk accentuating the confidence of his swagger. So it is that I start rummaging through memories. First to go is the tent. I so dearly wanted to keep it; a paean to the reliance of budget camping. $30 from Wal-Mart and it was my house for so long, withstanding biting cold in New Brunswick, torrential rain in Atlanta, and searing hot temperatures in Memphis. We have been through so much together. But alas, it goes in the bin. The cargo pants I bought on recommendation from my ex-girlfriend Monkey go next. They were broken and torn anyway, too big for me. Time is running short. I ditch old t-shirts and jeans and I even throw away the laminated picture of El Ladante that graced the dashboard of the hire car. Our mascot for this trip. Perhaps it is fitting that he performs one last gesture of selflessness in the name of weight loss. Patch shakes his head sadly. Is there nothing else I can lose? No. More clothing goes. Eventually I make it down to the target weight. We are ushered through the gates. Patch strips down to the necessary layers once we are inside, sniggering at the idiocy of the system. ‘How does it make any sense that a person weighing 15 stone has the same baggage weight allowance as someone weighing 8 stone? And how does it make sense that I can do this?’ He points to the pile of smuggled clothes. We play the waiting game. The King Of Space goes for a waste dump. I check my Facebook account. Smudger pops up in the chat window and asks me when the coming home party is. He’s in far away Leeds. It won’t be far away for long. I barely have time to tell him that much before our numbers come up over the crackle of the public address system. We make for the gate and walk out onto the tarmac. I step up onto the boarding ramp. My feet leave this soil. I look back down. That’s it: over. It will be a long time before they touch it again. And they will never touch it in the same way. No return could be as eye-opening. I am lost in a daydream. I come around when I notice there is a queue building behind me. One last sniff of the air and I retreat into the body of the ‘plane. We rumble along the airstrip and the engines build up to a thundering roar. I take a deep breath and the ‘plane rockets along the runway and lifts up into the sky. Canada shrinks down into the distance beneath us until we disappear above the clouds and North America is gone. The sun beams across the cotton wool carpet. I think of all the wonderful bloggers we met. I think of Benji and Suoko in Halifax with their beautiful organic house and their concrete morality in a world of liquid values, Scott in Boston with his boisterous and welcoming heartiness, Shroom Monkey in Atlanta whom I could have treated better after I got distracted by something shiny, Mob in Midland's self aware suburban underground that was far more interesting than the overground, bubbly Yas in Phoenix with her big heart in a small apartment, Deidre: proud child of the desert in Las Cruces, Shari the earth mother in homely Puyallup, ever-mysterious Okami in Calgary, Doozy the dog loving live wire, The Duke of quick wit, Princess of analysis and the supremely enigmatic Trevor in Vancouver; All such generous people who let us have a glimpse into their lives and overwhelmed us with their hospitality and their uninhibited exposure the worlds they live in. People who went out on a limb for a man they never met. People whose lives I had never seen, whose eyes I had never met, whose stories drew me in from a computer screen far away on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. I think of Topolk in Carolina, Farrago in Chicago, The Topiary Cow in The United States Minor Outlying Islands, Singleton in Florida, Pie! in Munich, Eric in Detroit, Onkle Tom in Calgary and endearingly geeky Doug in LA: all souls whom I would love to have met -had circumstance worked her magic in our favour. I think of all the people the King of Space introduced me to: Tom and Mirta, Mart, Donna and Lisa, and Dottie and Jon. I think of all the fantastic random strangers we crossed paths with: the good old boys by the fireside in New England, Ivan and his family in Bristol, Tennessee, those crazy drinking boys on the road to Montreal, Nichola and friends in San Francisco. My mind aches. The flight is long. The movies are bad. My mind is not really on them. After a long, long time we descend through the clouds and the grey slab of London rises up through the rolling hills of England; home. Smoke flees from the tires as we touch down and the plane grinds to a halt. We wait for our baggage amongst the grim faces of English airport attendants. I fumble through quarters to find mysterious English coins for the vending machines. We emerge into the arrivals area where Space Mother and Trev greet us. I have never met them before. Space Mother is short and generously built with glasses and short blonde hair. Trev is an older Bristolian with a jewel in his ear. Space Mother asks about the trip. ‘How was it?’ To sum up a life changing four month crusade of tens of thousands of kilometres through the highs and lows of North American culture is not an easy task. But I am not put off: ‘Amazing’. She smiles. I expand as much as I can through the jetlag as we wedge ourselves into their little rover and roll out onto the M25. The lanes are narrow, the cars are fast and everything is on the wrong side of the road. The right side now. I peer over the bag squashed on my lap. Sheep graze on the grass verge beneath the end of the runway. Dirty cars and vans squeeze past at ridiculous speeds. Patch tells of his amusing meeting with the homosexual element of the pub next to our motel in San Francisco. ‘Well,’ says Space Mother philosophically ‘One up the bum, no harm done.’ A car cuts her up. ‘F*ckin idiot!’ We reach the M4 and gradually the squeeze lessens. Bristol is half an hour away. Soon I will see the friends I have missed so much. I will see Dogbowl, Motherloaf and Double G. I will see Bowser, C Unit and JayMcGee. I will see Vicks, Wally, Penny, Paul and El Ladante. A weekend's camping trip in Mumbles beckons. Keep on rolling. If I don't sleep, it isn't quite over. The grass of the tumbling fields looks greener than I remember. I smile at the beauty that dislocation reveals when one returns. The old churches dotted around the countryside bear no brown signs of historical illumination: their age is normal here. We turn onto the M32 and swing off onto the ring road. The little rover stops outside my family home and I disembark. My dad is out. I pile up my luggage at the front door. My concentration is broken by the familiar burble of Swedish metal swishing to a halt. Dad emerges with a big grin on his face. We hug and he pats me on the back. ‘How was it?’ I laugh. I’ll tell you all about it in a minute. Small talk is exchanged and then watches are checked. The King of Space has to be off. We smile at each other and hug. ‘We made it’ he says. We did. There is no one I would rather have done this with. Now our bond is unbreakable. I can feel it in my bones. This is something we will always have. We separate and he grins again and wiggles those suggestive eyebrows. ‘See you later’ he says. I watch him waving out of the back window of the rover as he turns the corner at the end of the street and vanishes. But he isn’t really gone. Dad and I turn towards the house: back at the epicentre, in the town where it all started. Where 34,000 clicks around North America, around the world of my fellow bloggers and around the world of my curiosity began all those years ago when I hovered over the ‘next blog’ button and changed my life: with a single click of the mouse.

Virtually Over

2008-08-27T21:14:00.002Z

I am carefully guiding the joysticks on the control pad with my thumbs. My onscreen alias is curled up in a ball, shooting through plastic piping. A giant winged beast of alien origin swoops and claws at the tubing in an effort to destroy me. I am trying to reach a distant control room to activate power on a troubled settlement. I flew here to save the local polygons from a life of subjective suffering. ‘Charge up your shot and stun it’ says The King of Space. I take his advice. He didn’t get that title for nothing, and I have faith that he has some experience of negotiation with xenomorphs. It seems to work. Patch takes a slug of juice and nods knowingly. The remains of breakfast litter the table. We have forgone the formality of formal dress. Slobbery prevails in the late morning of our last day on this great adventure. And it will not be wasted. The final hours between sunrise and sunset are being filled with the important task of heroism administered from the chariot of a borrowed sofa. We have been immersing ourselves in Metroid Prime for hours now. No point moving anywhere. We have no money to do anything. Why not indulge in some fantasy and take a virtual journey at the end of our very real expedition? I hammer the buttons mercilessly and grimace at the TV set. The flying space beast retreats. I think of the golden eagle we saw in Yosemite. We were winding the car up the hillside at the fade of day when we saw it in the road. The formidable beak tore great strips of flesh from the bones of a deer with poor road safety awareness. The eagle threw a glance sideways. Those great orange eyeballs clocked approaching cars. The eagle casually scooped up the carcass in its imposing talons and spread out its enormous wings, dropping effortlessly over the verge into the valley below. The tyres of the oncoming automobiles flanked the bloody leftovers. We flashed past and I cast my eye shoulderwards in the hope of seeing the bird rise back up in the distance and soar away into the sunset. But I saw nothing. I jam the joystick to the right and my character pops out of the tube and stands tall in robot form. The viewpoint shifts inside the helmet and I stand ready for action. I run into a room full of hostiles and start shooting. What a life that Eagle must lead; gliding high above matchbox cars tracking around the head of the valley. Perching atop great swathes of conifers, surveying breathtaking lands of which it has the freedom to roam by the currents and eddies of nature’s wind. And whilst all the other eagles swoop and dive through the trunks and branches and swaying grassland to catch their prey, this eagle just waits for the cars to hit and picks up the pieces. A noble vulture. A fast food junkie. I wonder what its doing now. I hit the pause button and put down the controller. For the sake of tradition we adjourn to the local shop and buy tins of Chef Boyardee and Green Beans; our signature dish. It was always there to sustain us when we camped out under the stars. The hob in the apartment seems like futuristic magic after the humble flickering of our rusted camp stove. The soup heats almost instantly. None of the unhurried waiting we are used to. It never bothered me to wait half an hour for the pot to bubble when we were watched over by the arriving light of long-extinguished stars in the night sky. The flicker of the camp fire and the elasticity of time all our own made it okay. After our primal hunger is sated we resume the struggle against virtual odds. I climb into my spaceship and pull up the map. Ours is packed away. I will pull it out upon our return home and retrace the steps we took. I pick a planet and zoom off into the blackness. I wish I had my own spacecraft. I would go to Titan. Then Io. Then Gliese. The day wears on. We build likenesses of ourselves on the Wii. I like the idea that some semblence of our presence will remain in this house after our passing. When The Duke and The Princess go virtual bowling, we will be hanging around in the background like Walter and The Dude, pixelated. I stare out of the window at the very last of the daylight. Its hard to capture the memory of the sun setting for the last time on this place. We have seen so many majestic sunsets. I guess it doesn’t matter if it blends in with all the others. It is more important that they are all there, lodged in the mind. The buildings around us go grey, then black with orange highlights. The man with the shopping cart scoots down the alley again, singing boisterously. The happy homeless. Or the completely bonkers. I leave the window open and pull down the blinds. I lay my head down on a pile of unfamiliar pillows and pull an unfamiliar blanket around my body. Patch snores happily across the room somewhere. I try hard to capture the memory.

Running on empty

2008-08-26T20:04:00.003Z

I grab my wallet and the keys from the desk. It’s a clear day outside. The clouds are en route somewhere, too distracted to trouble us with rain. I slam the door behind us and we stride through the back alleys towards Granville Street. Rather than take the bus, for monetary reasons, we walk again. But we like to walk. We cross the great big bridge again and stare at the glass spires and the funnel shaped apartment block far below by the water. Traffic rushes past us. We both feel bone-tired. The miles are finally catching up with us. We wander almost aimlessly, here near the end.

Patch buys a t-shirt from a native Canadian shop. We peer at the Gastown timepiece pumping steam into the air above the heads of a gaggle of tourists. We climb the last of the tall towers and walk around taking in the rooftops of the city.

A man with strange contact lenses, a big build and goth hair tells a tour guide how he is a player on the LA makeup scene. Tumbledown buildings stand on tip-toes next to proud new constructs. Back down on the street, covert stickers peek out from road signs and lamp posts. We see a funny little independent shop with a selection of random soft toys and storage cans featuring whacked out kitties and strange alien shapes. We get things for Princess and The Duke. The young and the hip and the old and the hurried criss-cross each other outside the EA building by the water. We sit down, exhausted. A dandelion head fountain sprays water enthusiastically onto its concrete base. The clouds gather overhead. The day after tomorrow we leave. All this exploring and eye opening over and done with. Back into the daily grind. Back to grey old Bristol and the unsavoury prospect of trying to raise a lot of money to pay off a huge credit card bill. We pick ourselves off the slab and head back towards the bridge. We pass an open fronted barber shop with half a Cadillac for a registration desk. A metal looking man gives me a smile. We stop in at the rockingest rock shop and buy themed treats for our friends back home. Once we have left Vancouver city centre, I have one more errand to run on Granville Street. I stop and buy just enough beef jerky for C-Unit to leave me with cab fare in the morning. As the light dies in the apartment window, I spot a man loitering in the alley. He looks hopelessly bedraggled. He is thin with worn clothes and a worn face. He huddles up against a kerb in a parking space in the lot across the road. Hands fumble inside a rucksack and a spoon appears. Then a needle and a lighter. He starts cooking up. The substance slowly starts to bubble. He awkwardly drops the needle into the bowl and pulls gingerly. The syringe fills. I whisper to Patch to come and look. Just as the man is getting his poison together, his ritual is interrupted by a pristine white Lexus waiting patiently for its spot. The man shuffles across the way and carries on with his business, inspecting his leg like a surgeon. A woman alights from the vehicle and glides out of view beneath a canopy. The needle slides into the leg of the addict. He picks himself calmly off the floor from his cross-legged meditation and disappears down the alley. Night falls. We while away the restless hours with TV and Wii. I stare out and try and see the stars on this last night of our quest around North America. Melancholy rules. Fear of the future is the incumbent prince. Not knowing what we might stumble upon next was an exciting adventure. Now it is a veiled apprehension. Soon we will part company, The King of Space and I. My eyes close as I lie on the sofa and think of old friends soon to be seen and new friends soon to be left behind.

Record Contract

2008-08-25T16:30:00.005Z

I sit on the bench in the entrance hall to the apartment building and peer lazily over my shoulder at the envelopes haphazardly stuffed into the narrow brass mail slots behind my head. A free paper hangs precariously off the wooden slats. Steve Coogan is on the cover; some article about Sexy Jesus. The clouds seem to be in no hurry to make their way across the crate paper sky that lies beyond the flower bushes lining the pathway. I am waiting for the last of my literal conquests; the charismatic, imaginative and articulate Trevor Record (see Everything I Say And Do Is Right on my sidebar). A man walks past and I go to rise from my seat to open the door; I cannot wait upstairs in the apartment for Trevor to buzz because the intercom links to Mike’s phone, which will cause endless confusion. Therefore, I must sit as a sentry at the gate and observe. But the man is not Trevor, so I sit back down. I am looking for a slightly less pencilled figure than the avatar that used to adorn Trevor’s blog. It was a picture fit for revolution; a red background with a bold black outline of a proud white face. A few cars flit past, but no sign of the man. This will be the last rush of blogger-meet anticipation that I feel flowing through my veins on this trip. No more after this. No more looking at the pieces of the unfinished puzzle to take a guess at the whole picture. I will have to go Cold Turkey. The flowers shudder in the breeze. A bicycle slides into frame. It is equipped with a baggage rack. The pedals are turned by a young man with a dark mop of almost unkempt hair. He hops off and stalks towards me. A friendly stalk. Keen eyes reach out from beneath the fringe. His face is pale but far from lifeless. Only the ends of his thin lips turn up in a smile as I approach the door and hold it open. ‘Hey Trevor’. ‘Hey Toast’. We shake hands almost cautiously. I feel like Martin Blank meeting Grocer, but without the animosity. Every blogger has some kind of aura about them. To say that Trevor is no exception is a massive understatement. He has more of a reputational precedent, for me, than any other blogger I have met so far. Others have painted him as a real character in their meets with him; a live wire with a short attention span; a faintly manic lover of the ladies. I have only his posts to go on. And his posts are usually stories or abstract musings on circumstance and space and time and art. The stories he tells are always so imaginative. He approaches characters and narrative from angles others do not see. Some time ago, he entered a regular writing competition hosted by another blogger. He had never entered before. The rules of this competition stated that one should write a story based upon a picture; a sink full of washing up in this case. He won outright. His story stood alone from all the others. I cannot really remember what others wrote, but I remember Trevor’s story was about the world just stopping one day; People not bothering to get up, machines not bothering to work. Everything grinding to a halt; a perfect literal accompaniment to an abandoned, dirty basin. I can imagine Trevor not really having to think to hard for the inspiration. ‘You find the apartment without any trouble?’ I ask. He rolls up the sleeve on his right arm and points proudly with the back of his hand; the address across his knuckles in marker pen. We ascend the stairs and push through the door into the apartment. We shoot the breeze about politics and Trevor’s return to college. He sits in a chair against a wall. He speaks with an incisive, even tone. The voice, and the knowledge, I had imagined. But the laugh I had not. When it comes, it is almost as if it escapes from him. His speech is so articulate and subconsciously crafted that the laugh seems to be the diametric opposite of that; raw and uncontrolled. ‘So you guys like to smoke?’ We head back downstairs to the car park and hang out by the bins again, sitting cross-legged in a small circle by the trash. We crane our necks upwards occasionally to see people walking past in the sun-drenched alleyway in between pulls on the pipe and discussion. Trevor tells us that you are highly unlikely to get busted here. People frown more upon cigarette smoking. A man walks past and looks at us completely indifferently. We head back inside for a while. Trevor suggests we go for noodles at a place he knows. Patch decides to stay in – he is worried about money. And completely battered. He has the look of a man terrified of fumbling some basic human interaction and being dragged away by the thought police for unwanted penetrations. I feel disconcertingly spritely. Good weed; high with no paranoia. Maybe Trevor is protecting me subconsciously. We decide to head out across the bridge. I tell Trevor about Benji and how he said I should submit my Vegas stuff to a magazine. I tell him that I am nervous about it being rejected ‘…because you are terrified that it means you are just mediocre’. I look him in the eyes and nod. He says he feels the same way. We talk about the story he wrote. I ask him if he has anything of his own to submit. ‘I’ve got some things’ he says pensively, looking away into the distance. We seem so alike. The sun balms us with an ideal temperature. The breeze is subtle enough not to disturb our correspondence. We walk in silence for a while. ‘You close to your family?’ asks Trevor. Yes and No, I tell him. Sometimes I don’t quite feel like the direct product of my mother and father. It makes me feel that I am not as close to them as I ought to be. I feel closer to my friends a lot of the time. He nods in agreement and understanding. Barely an hour in and we are already in deep, but not too deep for me. The sky moves at our pace. We reach Ezogiku - the noodle place - and Trevor orders his usual from the waitress who knows him. We talk of many things – most of which I cannot remember. I ask him about his technique, where he gets his ideas. He makes notes of when things come to him. Sometimes he just writes straight off the bat and holds onto whatever it is for a while. He tells me I am a good writer and I feel humbled hearing such things from him. We talk of brothers and sisters and the future in space as people all around us click-clack away with their chopsticks amongst the sizzle and steam gushing from the kitchen. The food is excellent. I raise the subject of Henry Darger, whom Trevor made me aware of through comments on my blog. ‘It’s amazing to think that he spent years in obscurity painting this masterpiece undiscovered’ enthuses Trevor as he shakes his head in amused disbelief. He scoops up another mouthful from his bowl. I tell him that I would never have found out about solar sails if it were not for him. We laugh about how our maths got confused when we were trying to work out how to get to Gliese 581. We agree that one day it will happen. They’ll throw up a massive space galleon that’ll go through a few generations before anyone finds anything. We finish up and wander back towards the house. The weather is still apt. The city slides past us. I shout up to Patch on the top floor, hoping my voice catches the breeze and blows in through the window. His head appears and he grins. The keys dive out of the sun. I catch them like an outfielder and struggle with the back door. We flop onto the sofa and play some video games for a while and shoot the breeze. Trevor has never really put a lot of time into them. He’s more of a reader and thinker. Patch whips me at Mariokart. Trevor and I head out again later, leaving Patch to do some surfing and watch Legally Blonde The Musical: The Search For Elle Woods. Night has fallen. Trevor takes me to a restaurant that feels up-class: Maurya Indian Cuisine. Smart and stiff waiting staff glide between tables and swish past light-saber light fixtures that glow on the walls above the well-dressed Vancouverite diners that line them. We look refreshingly casual. A plant does a poor job of creating a divide between us on the table. Trevor is looking forward to going back to college. He was stuck in a rut at his old job. He’s made some collateral adjustments to go back and get some more learning done. The food is wonderful. I tell Trevor that I will submit stuff. ‘Don’t you find that sometimes you are terrified that you might just be doing something ordinary?’ I laugh. Yes I do. A desperation to say or do something relevant often overtakes me. I tell him that a lot of my friends went to university and got degrees and are pursuing responsible and rewarding careers. I never did that; just jobs straight out of school. Sometimes I feel that maybe I am trying to catch up, or compensate, by throwing myself into writing or performing. He nods over his plate. Trevor keeps me up to date with The Athabasca Nemesis Gauntlet; a ‘gentleman’s contest’ between himself and Blake McStravick. It is a year long battle of wits that is soon to be over – on December 15th. ‘The competition is based on who has the most marbles at the end. I lost my marbles when we were walking down a street one day. We managed to pick up most of them, but not all of them, so I'm probably losing due to this spillage. I have won slightly more competitions, but Blake has yet to have such a misfortune come upon him. Perhaps he thinks he has the advantage, being such that he has not lost his marbles. But in the words of Jeffrey Lewis, it's the ones who've crack that the light shines through’. The waiter scoops up our detritus with a deft hand and casts a quick, appraising glance at us; maybe guessing how we know each other. I have faith that his guess would be wrong. ‘We could be brothers’ says Trevor. Yes we could. We are, in a way. I feel a kinship with him. We are walking a similar path, I think; we are both looking for something we can’t quite put our fingers on. Feeling around in the dark for an unfamiliar texture. After we eat, we walk back to the apartment. The day’s end. Orange light shines in pools in the back alley behind the apartment. ‘If you submit something’, I say to Trevor ‘so will I’. He swings his leg over the frame of his old bicycle. ‘I don’t want another competition’ he says hesitantly. ‘Not a competition. Just a mutual attempt at doing something we both want to do’. He smiles. ‘Okay’. We shake hands. ‘Good to meet you, Toast’. ‘You too, Trevor’. And then he is gone – pedalling off into the darkness; a brother in arms. Our paths through the jungle have finally over-lapped. And then under-lapped in the blink of an eye. I hope his course goes well and he keeps putting dents in paper. He is a fine storyteller. Once he has disappeared around the corner, I let out a long sigh and look to the stars. They are hidden by the glow of the city. That’s it. No more meetings on this soil. My heart feels heavier than my head as I yell at the open window and wait for Patch to appear.

Drizzle Lmizzle

2008-08-24T16:19:00.007Z

I hold the plastic bag with the book in it over my head and splash through the downpour towards the shelter of the overhang by the payphone. A man with his nose absent due to what could only have been a monstrous coke habit asks me for change. Sorry. No can do. I dial Doozy’s number for the third time in as many half-hours. Frantic, I am desperate for her to pick up. We were supposed to be at her apartment ages ago. But the busses are not running in our favour because it’s a Sunday. We have to walk. And I need to let her know. Where is she? ‘Hello, this is the Operator.’ I sigh in relief. ‘Yeah I’m trying to reach Doozy’. She laughs. The penny drops. She’s been downstairs with Steve waiting for us. She forgot to take her phone. I apologise and tell her we’ll be there shortly. She laughs and says that’s fine. I hoof it back to the apartment and tell Patch. He throws on some clothes. By the time we get back outside the rain has stopped. We splosh through puddles on our way across the Granville bridge. Cars and busses and runners rush past us. I see concrete blocks stacked up like Duplo bricks at the cement works far below. The monolithic glass of residential towers with roof gardens and sunflowers on their balconies watch over the harbour. We find the right turn we need. Just before we take a left we see a billboard of the Jonas Brothers and give it a kick for good measure. Starbuck’s have a shop front in the bowels of the block we are aiming for. There is a posh computer plinth outside with a touch screen that finds the people one wants. I am part way through negotiating with it when I notice Patch is already inside. Doozy and Steve are waving at me through the open glass door. I wave back sheepishly.

Doozy (AKA Lmizzle) is smaller than I thought she would be. But she is as vibrant in energy as I expected – despite her cold. Her dark hair falls to her shoulders and her square black spectacles sit atop a little nose and an endearingly dangerous grin: geek chic in full effect. Not dissimilar to Steve. He is enviously well-groomed with his neat beard, short cropped hair, South American good looks and eyewear that complements Doozy’s. He has exceptionally good teeth. They bounce off each other on the journey skywards in the elevator.

We emerge in the corridor of a high numbered floor. Doozy swings open the door to the apartment. It is one of many, many nooks and crannies that make up the living space of this spire, and that of all the other spires out beyond the balcony. Winston and Zelda bound across the floor in a riot of excitable scratching and scraping to get at us. Doozy laughs as they leap into our laps. Winston and Zelda roll over and over each other, snorting in fuzzy canine pleasure.

Cartoons are on the TV. We get the tour of the cosy little broom cupboard. We all talk fast, in a blur. Doozy and Steve spark off each other so quickly it’s hard to keep up sometimes. I give Lauren the NASCAR romance novel I bought as a present. She looks confused but amused. She used to write of her stepdad sitting around the house in his underwear watching NASCAR with her mom in his lap – a sight Doozy never relished. Perhaps, I thought, a novelisation of the tyre smoking drama of the racetrack might go some way to disassociating those horrific memories from the might of V8 heaven. She gives me a book about the best way of being Canadian. It will go nicely with the book of Canadian phrases and sayings she sent me by way of Squiggle (see sidebar) when he visited her. ‘He dropped off the radar right after he left Vancouver’ she says. ‘What happened to him?’ I explain that he was in the process of buying a house and he has been so busy with his job that he has scarcely had time to do anything but eat sleep and work, unfortunately. Steve takes me out onto the balcony and points out where all the building work has been going on across the glassy grey skyline.

He passes me his spy scope so I can take a look at what is going on in the various apartments in the distance. I peer into the viewfinder and see a man at his minimalist desk in his minimalist lounge clattering away on his keyboard. I wonder what he is writing. We close the door on the dogs and make our way back down in the lift to the ground floor. Doozy and Steve have armed us with umbrellas. Our first stop is at a trendy restaurant for breakfast. Modern art adorns the walls and I eat posh granola. Steve talks effusively. He is a journalist. Steve muses on what their kids might look like. We chatter away about out trip over our food. Most of the talk is of movies and TV shows we all like. Clone High is recommended. Mike has a copy on his shelf. Doozy pushes her food around the plate. She’s liking the change away from non-profit. She used to write about her old job back in Banff a lot, but she got axed from there when someone read her writing and blew the whistle. Getting fired for blogging. Sweet rebellion. We talk of other bloggers and how she met them. Okami used to work in the same faculty as her. They didn’t really speak much until Okami started leaving cryptic, knowing comments on Doozy’s old blog. The penny dropped in the end and they became friends. But, alas, they have drifted apart. She asks me about the meetings and how they have gone. I tell that they have gone well without exception – mainly because I have had an idea of what to expect beforehand in most cases. The only example of an unexpected meeting was Scott (see Hard To Want on the sidebar) who was anything but the straight arrow I had pictured. He was a fine surprise. We finish up our food and walk out into the rain. The pathway takes us past spraypaint of the highest quality.

We dip down an alley and see a photo shoot going on amongst the puddles. Patch gropes a few sexy looking walls. They lead us towards Gastown – the place where the very earliest roots of Vancouver were put down. Doozy’s conversation runs almost exactly as her blog does. There are the same patterns of slang and exclamation. I get the impression that she rarely has to stop mid sentence when she writes to think about what she will say next. I had always thought her writing was conversational. I am glad to see that borne out as we chuckle our way around puddles and lampposts, waving our umbrellas about under the clouds. Steve is almost stately in the way he articulates without fault and gesticulates with the tip of his umbrella. ‘This is the library’ he says with a proud sweep of the handle. ‘I’m a member. I can get you inside’ he intones with self-effacing grandeur.

They shot ‘The Sixth Day’ here. A lot of shooting gets done in Vancouver. On the main street of Gastown we see a lot of shops with Native Canadian sculptures and artefacts in them. Doozy explains that the settlers and the locals have a much less tumultuous history than they do across the border in the USA. The evidence is right there behind the windows staring out prominently into the street. We see the old steam clock, which is now electric. It looks like something Doc Brown might build. People mill about and peer through the foggy glass to look at the inner workings. We wander off to the statue of Gassy Jack. He was the first settler of the site. Back in the day ‘Gassy’ referred to one who might talk a lot. We amble along further and cross a street. It is as if we have crossed an invisible barrier of some kind.

The plush shops and antiquated buildings are gone, replaced with dilapidated brick husks. The people are no longer the diverse hip urbanites on the other side of the road. They are the torn and threadbare figures at the ripped edges of the city centre. They moan and stagger in zombie clusters, but none of them trouble us for change as they shuffle past. Maybe they have given up on that. Doozy and Steve raise sad, knowing eyebrows as we wait at the crossing for the lights to change. It is an alternative dimension. The side of Vancouver they don’t tell you about when you read the top ten lists of the best places in the world to live: Hastings. The first I saw of it was when I read Doozy’s blog entry some time ago; She explained how the scenery and people change so suddenly. Her photos were incredible. She tells me that when the Olympics come to town, the homeless of Hastings will be herded out of town for temporary re-housing. It would not look good for the tourists. They’ll probably be moved back in when everyone goes home. We cross another street and suddenly we are somewhere else again: a Chinese temple garden. Leafy, serene and austere – a far cry from the squalor we left behind mere footsteps ago.

Vancouver seems to be a city of extremes. We head to a comic book convention at the VAG. There are a lot of manga comics with dramatic phallic covers. Nobody buys them. It’s hard to buy cartoon cocks with a straight face. We don’t stay long, adjourning to a café over the road for more banter. An SUV rolls past with a camera mount on the hood and a unit crew following behind. We chatter for a long time. The talk flows easily. No awkward moments. Just a steady flow of shared interest. It’s getting late. We head back towards the apartment for a while to see the dogs before heading out again. At the street corner where the Jonas Brothers lurk on the walls we say goodbye. ‘I think I’ll start reading you blog’ says Steve as he shakes my hand. I hug Doozy and wish her well. Steve puts his arm around her and they disappear off down a side street. I watch them go with a grin. Patch and I walk back across the bridge towards the apartment. Only a few more days now. All these wonderful interactions soon to come to an end. I am scared and sad. The white lines will run out. What lies beyond is an indistinct haze, signposted vaguely. The lights over the water flicker invitingly as night falls and the sky bleeds pink and orange and blue as we walk on towards our final days off Granville.

The Man From Uncle

2008-08-23T15:25:00.015Z

I hold the receiver close against my ear. The busses crackle against the wires as they whirr past and people talk excitedly by the stop on the pavement. The dial tone cuts out and Doozy (see Doozy on my sidebar) picks up the phone. She doesn’t sound like I thought she would. I had her down as an MTV voice. She’s wackier. Less rehearsed. Excellent. She couldn’t get the phone yesterday because she was at her desk. She was waiting for me to call back. She is happy for us to meet tomorrow. I bid her good day and click the phone down into the holder with a smile. I have been looking forward to this. A queen of the surreal. Fellow donkey hater and finder of all things random. And lover of pugs. A Canadian cool kid. Probably the second blog I ever read after the Duke’s. They once were tight, but no more. I never will find out how they spark off each other. And that was something I had always wondered about. I relinquish the phone to a hippie. ‘I won’t be long’ he says. I crouch down by the wall and eye the hairdressers a few doors down for a cut. The hippie slopes off. ‘Thanks, man’. I punch in the numbers for Trevor Record – founder of The Angel’s League of Broken Hearts and Whiskey Bottles, and founding competitor in the ongoing titanic duel of The Athabasca Nemesis Gauntlet. A man of great words; a man of whom other bloggers speak with wry smiles and knowing nods. ‘You’ll see’ they say cryptically when I ask what he’s like. Trevor writes like no one else. His musings make me wonder if he is not of this Earth, but rather more a being imported into a human body and mind through some intergalactic administration error. He picks up the phone as a young girl walks past with a wakeboard under her arm. ‘So you like to partake in a bit of smoking eh? Ha ha ha!’ he chuckles. ‘I’ll see you Monday then!’ This is all going rather well. Third time lucky? I dial the numbers. A voicemail. Risu (see ? on my sidebar) is unavailable. Ah well. I’ll send her an email. There’s still time. I flick the pages of my journal over with a pen to find Great Uncle Sid’s number. My only relative in this country. Sid has seen it all. When he lived on a sheep farm in Meekathara as a boy, his father bought home a lump of gold after a healthy day’s prospecting. Sid used it as a football. He carried it with him when the family took the long, long boat ride to England before the war. A boat ride that almost cost them their lives when a storm hit The Cape. The Captain wanted to abandon but my Great Nan refused and demanded that they ride out the 6 hour nightmare with good solid prayer. It worked. They made it to England. And she made it to a mighty 106 years old. The golden ball got lost when a V1 rocket destroyed their house during the war. Sid almost took a bullet jumping on a boat at Dunkirk. Then he moved to Canada to make his fortune. I had only seen him once as a small boy. I do not remember. But, at the ripe old age of 91, he shuffled back into my life in a riot of Technicolor regret. He should have come over sooner. Why did he abandon his family? These things happen, I told him. I’ll come and see you. I’ll be out that way soon. The phone rings and rings. ‘Hello?’ says a voice. It’s me – Toast. ‘Geoff?’ he says faintly. No, I say; it’s Toast: Son of Geoff. ‘Oh!!! Toast!!! You made it then!!!’ He tells me to come over after 1. Get the sky train. I nod and hang up. I rut with the back door lock. Upstairs, Patch is staring at the computer screen. He looks stern. His square jaw is locked in a focused, distant grimace. ‘What’s wrong?’ The hire company have billed his card $1150.

F*ck. We forgot to report them lost.

For all our planning and deviousness, in the end we were undone by our own appetites. Time flies when you are having fun. ‘You’d better check yours’. My heart sinks. I daren’t even think about it. Not now. These are our last days on the road. Not the time to clog the last absorbent pores of the sponge with the tacky, unsavoury matter of coin. ‘Coming to see Sid?’ I say. Patch picks up the Wii remote, thwacks an imaginary ball and shakes his head. ‘I can’t really afford to’. I nod grimly, and then wish him a good day’s Tennis, Golf and Karting. I go and wait back at the bus stop by the payphone. Goddamn it. Cars rush past. I stare at them ambivalently. The bus glides to a halt and I clamber on. ‘Downtown please’. The bus whisks me over the bridge back into the throbbing heart of the city. The Duke told me that Vancouver has the most densely populated centre of all the west Canadian cities. So many people everywhere. Not the ghost of central LA. All kinds of people mingle here. Mostly skater kids. There is an event going on. They olly onto benches whilst a DJ pumps out tunes.

A guy with a megaphone shouts above the noise. Piercings, eyeliner and tattoos dominate. I edge through the crowd aimlessly. There is an information booth. The gentleman behind the desk prints a route for me. I need to get out to Scott Rd Station if I want to make it to Delta. I thank him and head along a narrow walkway between shops and a building site. The skytrain station is quiet. I find the right train eventually and it rolls out of town until the tall buildings fall away to reveal mountains across the river above the rooftops. The journey is just about long enough for me to think too much. We curve gently upwards and ride over a fresh suspension bridge that is white grey with clean unspoilt lines. I get off at Scott Rd. The connecting bus has gone. I call Sid. He will come and meet me. I kick cans around the kerb and sit next to discarded magazines and bottle tops. I look anxiously around trying to spot him in the car park on the other side of the flyover. Sid is my Colonel Kurtz at the end of the river; the man to whom I have developed an unbreakable attachment that went AWOL from the family. But I am no Willard. I do not want him dead. Only his regret. I see him walking slowly, evenly and deliberately in the distance. He wears a white shirt, brown trousers and big glasses. Those vintage eyes scan around but don’t see me. I rush up the stairs of the flyover and descend the other side before he gets a chance to move away. I walk up behind him. ‘Sid!!’ He doesn’t hear me from 20 paces. The kids lounging on the wall look over. ‘Sid!’ He turns gradually and flashes that battlement smile. ‘Toast! Good to see you!’ We shake hands. He leads me to his car, talking of how he only just remembered I have no car. We get in his G5 and he fires it up. The car park exit goes past my window. ‘How do I get out of here?’ he says. I point him in the right direction after a wobbly circuit of the oval. Out on the streets he drives well for a man of 92. ‘You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t talk’ he says. ‘I’m old. I need to concentrate’. I nod. He points out all the docklands of the Delta and elaborates effusively upon their history as we trundle along the narrow road. He asks how the trip has been and I tell him all about the many places we have been as his house draws in closer. He laughs and smiles as I regale him with our adventures. He looks well. We swing off the road and onto a driveway next to a black Pontiac. A large white SUV is parked outside the garage. Sid picks his way carefully up the steps and we go through the front door into a large spacious lounge. I meet my cousin Debbie for the first time. She looks like Jane Fonda. She has a welcome but distracted air about her. A woman with a lot going on. It soon becomes apparent that she runs the house. Husband Ernie is in construction. He’s out on the job at the moment. Sid leads us down to the ground floor and out onto the patio so I can admire his garden. And what a garden it is. So many plants: baskets of purple flowers and pots of green leaves lining the walkways that weave through the garden to the fence down beyond. Sid shows me the ornate bridge he built with his own hands only a few years back.

There is a gazebo too. Such determination to overcome the inevitable slowing bought on by old father time. Debbie looks out over the water. Sid leads me further down the path to a small urn with a candle alight beneath its heart. A faded black and white picture of a lady sticks to the chipped ceramic. ‘That’s Muriel’ he says, his eyes hard. ‘The flame never goes out’. I lean in close and look at the woman he lost whom I never knew. The leaves and bushes rustle against the clear sky. A train rolls by on the railway tracks somewhere below. We walk back up the path and take a few steps up to the gazebo by the back door. Debbie is relaxing. She sits on the swing chair and basks in rejuvenation; a busy day for her. Megan swings with her legs. She is a 17 year old mobile keypad veteran with ten thousand texts under her belt, and a bunch of horse riding rosettes to boot. Debbie says that they take her all over to compete in events. They have use of a nearby stable. Megan studied in London, Tokyo and Paris. ‘What did you think of London’ I ask. The tapping of the buttons stops for a moment and she looks up. ‘Dirty’. I laugh. It is. ‘Do you remember when we went to London?’ Sid chimes in. Debbie says that they once got a free ride on a London Bus. They charmed the conductors to take them to the end of the line. Sid chuckles. Ernie arrives. He’s like Desperate Dan or Paul Bunyan played by John Wayne. He thuds into a chair tired but content: a man who makes you feel comfortable with few words. Debbie tells me Ernie travelled all over on road trips when he was younger. I look over expectantly. ‘Long time ago’ he says with a wistful smile. He leaves it at that, so I am left to my imagination. Megan’s telephone makes itself heard. Sid says he’s taking me out for lunch as he walks towards the toilet. He’ll be back in a minute after he has checked his ‘numbers’ – Sid is diabetic. Debbie leans in close. ‘So how was the drive?’. I look bemused. ‘Well I was expecting worse.’ I thought he was quite good. ‘Megan won’t go in the car with him’. Sid returns and we head out. The McDonalds and KFCs of Delta slide by in the creeping evening shadows. We pull up at The ABC Country Restaurant. It’s in the shop front of a light industrial complex. A paean to times gone by with its old fashioned napkins and dark wooden furniture that looks too new to conjure up real association with the past. But it does. Maybe an austerity is bestowed upon this place by the inimitable atmosphere of mature folk sharing their years with their offspring. The delicate guitar chords of ‘In My Life’ drift softly above the clink and dink of distant glasses. Out beyond the windows cars rush by in a twilight strobe. I lean on the wall of our cubicle. Sid looks at me with his head cocked and keen eyes. ‘So you’ve enjoyed your trip. How was Oregon?’ I tell him that it was wonderful. That Crater Lake was spectacular. He laughs. I say that I can’t believe it will all be over soon. I spin a fork in my hand and look out into the fading blue sky.I tell him that I can imagine being on the road for ever. Just keep going. Suck up as much as I can. Sid nods in understanding. He has been to so many places himself; all over the North America when he had his own business. But the good times passed and he lost a lot of money. ‘I wish I could still go travelling. I want to come to England again next year. But the health insurance premiums are huge’. He looks past my shoulder. ‘When we came to London years ago my friend and I decided to get a car and drive to Wales. I can’t remember where we went now, but we just picked roads at random’. He tells me about a girl he knew before the war. Before Muriel. They were friends. But he had to leave to join up. When he came back after years on the front he went to her house to look for her but she had gone away. He had thoughts that he might see her again one day. Maybe when he came to England to see my father. Her name was Anne. I tell him I am still looking for a girl. The right girl. Or maybe I am waiting to be found. The food arrives and we eat slowly between stories. Sid leans across the table with a twinkle in his eye. ‘I used to go to this McDonalds restaurant down the road. Same time every day. I would buy a paper and eat my breakfast. I noticed this woman eating there. Always on her own, she was. One day she came over and asked if I minded her sitting next to me. ‘Go right ahead’ I said. Anyway, we got talking and before long we became friends. One day she stopped coming in. She didn’t come in for weeks. No word of warning. I asked the staff if they had seen her but they didn’t know anything. There was another McDonalds across the street. I went over and looked for her after about a month and sure enough, there she was. I never went back again’. I put the steak hanging from the edge of my fork out of its misery. Sid says that he is too old for love. She was too young for him anyway: 53. What’s he going to do with her? ‘I’m in my ‘90’s for god’s sake!’ I tell him that there are pills you can buy. He looks sceptical. He just wants a companion. Sid tells more stories that I have heard before, but the edges are smudged. I can see that he tells them because he has to remember. And I listen because I love to hear them, and because I want mine to be heard when I start racking up his numbers. But I can see that it is getting harder for him. He picks up the bill. I thank him. We head out into the early dark of the evening. Back at the house Debbie and Ernie are downstairs in the studious basement lounge watching NCIS on the TV. It’s about a serial killer who used to be a man: just got back from Bangkok. I snort. That’s where all the sex changes are done, right? Sid shows me the doll’s house he built for Megan.

It’s a work of art over three meticulously crafted storeys. Every light has its own switch. She doesn’t use it anymore. Megan is out in her car collecting a friend. Ernie is relaxing in the recliner with a beer. Debbie sits in quiet contemplation. Megan and her friend arrive. Debbie offers me a lift home. She whispers that Sid can't drive at night. It's too dangerous. He totters out to the front step to watch us go. I tell him that I will try and see him again before I leave. He waves lightly and smiles that toothy smile as we roll out of the driveway. Lights streak by the tinted windows on the highway. Saturday night rush hour. The mountains are black stencils against the deep blue sky. Megan and her friend gossip in the back seats. ‘How was the meal?’ says Debbie. I tell her it was good. I always love to see Sid. He seems to doing well for his age. ‘Did he tell you about Mary?’ I shake my head. ‘She’s this woman that he keeps talking about who he knew before the war. Some girl he dated before he packed out for the service. He only mentioned her in recent years. Next thing I know he’s booked a ticket for England.’ I tell her that he referred to her as Anne. She smiles thinly and hardens her frown as she looks out at the busy road. I say that it must be hard to hear that because of Muriel. ‘When mum died, dad took it remarkably well. He threw himself into all these things he builds.’ I say that it was probably his way of coping with things. We arrive at the apartment. Debbie and I hug awkwardly across the handbrake. It feels strange but good. We are related after all. I’m glad we met. I wave goodbye to Megan and her friend and head out round the back to wiggle my key in the lock. Eventually I get in. I climb the stairs and swing open the apartment door. Patch frantically waves the Wii remote in his T-Shirt and boxer shorts with his legs bare. His eyes are locked on the screen. Total focus. ‘How is Sid?’.

I've got the key, I've got the secret.

2008-08-22T21:12:00.003Z

We try the key in the lock again. It doesn’t seem to be working at all. This is bad. Very bad. The Duke and The Princess left for the airport not long ago. I shout up to Surfergrrl from the back alley. She comes down and lets us in. What are we going to do? If we can’t sort something out then one of us will have to stay in the apartment at all times whilst the other goes out on adventures. Not good. I call The Princess from Surfer’s mobile. She will leave her keys with the information desk at the airport. We can deposit them in the mailbox when we leave on Thursday. They will pick them up when they arrive the same day. I wish her the best for their trip. Surfergrrl bids us farewell. She is off to Seattle. Jetsetting. Another blogger who I meet in person before I meet online. I hadn't bargained for so many flipsides of the coin that bought me on this journey. Now I will go home and devour their words after meeting them instead of the aforementioned vice-versa. I head out towards Granville. A lady in a bakery helps me find the stop and I wait to catch the bus. Girls with hip shades and edgy dresses stride gracefully down the sidewalk. Boys with white framed sunglasses carry skateboards and books. Everyone is so cool here. The electric crackle of the overhead cables flicker in the midday sun as the bus zips to a halt. The driver is helpful and polite. I need to change further along. When my stop comes up he tells me. I shout a loud thank you down to the front of the bus. The airport shuttle arrives. It is busy with foreign accents and wheeled luggage. That will be me soon: heading back to my old life. I overhear conversations about how strange it will be going back to jobs after 2 weeks off. It's hard getting back into the swing of work. All that time off. Hope I don't forget how to do the job. My ears wander. I get scared suddenly. What is waiting for me back home? What will I choose? Momentum is everything and I must not lose it. The hydraulic brakes hiss. I step out into the terminal past the totem poles and find the information desk. The lady asks for my name. I tell her. She finds the keys in a file with a note. She picks up a key ring with two keys on it and a separate key. She calls for help because she is confused. I point to the note and say that 3 is written there in brackets to indicate that there are 3 keys. She still isn’t sure. I get frustrated waiting. Another attendant arrives. She confirms my thoughts and gives me the keys. I ride back on the bus towards the apartment and press the keys into my thumb. The Duke and The Princess. Gone. And they have left us in charge of the apartment. After meeting us once. Such is the nature of blogging. You persevere for long enough and you can’t hide yourself. I guess it was almost a forgone conclusion that we would all get on just fine and that we could trust each other. It is so generous of them to offer us such hospitality. The spirit of welcome is alive and well on the internet. Not every unfamiliar face in the street is a killer and not every familiar face on the internet is an online psycho. But I am preaching to the converted. And maybe some inquisitive souls lurking at the windows. Can they hear through the glass? I try one of the keys in the front door of the apartment. No luck. Oh dear. I try around the back. Still no luck. I shout up to Patch. He comes down and lets me in. Worried looks are exchanged. Are the keys Englishproof? Or are we so inept as to be unable to work something as simplistic as a key? After a lot of practice, we finally get the back door to unlock. Sighs of relief. Patch goes out for a wander whilst I spend the rest of the day writing. I am far behind again. I am caught between a desperation to get things down in print and a cloying inability to attack the paper. The day is mostly unproductive. Tomorrows yet to come are weighing on my mind and clouding my judgment. Patch rolls in later. He wandered over the bridge to get a look around the city. I climb under the duvet on the sofa. We leave the windows open. I hear the man singing again. I get up to have a look. Patch keeps rhythm with his snore whilst the man down below pushes his cart with determination. He bellows at the top of his lungs.

The Monarchs of Vancouver

2008-08-21T19:46:00.005Z

I jolt awake. There is a sudden bump. Touchdown in Vancouver. The sky is grey outside the portholes. We peel ourselves out of our seats and shuffle out into the arrivals area. I am in the midst of a full blown hangover. Waterfalls and Native Canadian poles wait near the baggage carousel. There are plenty of taxis on the rank. I peer through the windows streaked with old rain. The flowers of the Welcome Bienvenue sign do their best to brighten up a dull day. We splash down Granville Street. I give the taxi driver Princess and The Duke’s address. He pulls up outside and we unload all our stuff. The apartment is just off Granville. A 70’s affair with old metal window frames and lots of greenery lining the path to the doorway. The buzzer labels both The Duke (see Falling Out Of Time on my sidebar) and Princess Pointful (see …And Hijinks Ensued on my sidebar). They are on different numbers. I try the Duke first and get the answering machine for his mobile phone. Then I try the Princess. She answers. ‘I’m about 2 blocks away’ she says. We sit with our luggage. Then she rounds the corner with shopping bags in her hands. She is petit with long dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin and a soft face. She wears bright confident colours and radiates a nervous energy as if somehow her brain is a highly powered substation that the rest of her body is struggling to keep up with. This might explain the prolific output on her blog. All that constant analytical thought going on behind the scenes needs to be offloaded just in case the circuits fry. This is how I had pictured her. Not the wide-eyed South Park kid she uses as an avatar. Perhaps that is a playful nod to her writing being anything but childish. We started reading each other by association. I saw her pop up in my comments and wondered how she found me. After a while reading I noticed her referring to the Duke in the cohesive sense, so the penny dropped. Princess thinks fast and gets us organised on our way through the door. She has a friend with her – surfergrrl, whom I have I never read. She is taller than the Princess with red hair and a cool LA demeanour like she has a degree in being unfazed. We clump up the stairs of the 3 storey apartment block and the Princess turns the key in the lock. The Duke steps out into the hallway scratching his head. He looks over and smiles. He looks every bit the wise cracking erudite bacchalian chipmunk I had expected. He has the fashionably unkempt look of one who thinks a lot. Maybe it is just because he got out of the shower five minutes ago. Finally we meet. His was one of the first blogs I ever read. And his posts still make me think more than any others. I don’t always understand them because he has a mind far sharper than mine for philosophy and sociology. But he raises valid questions. And he makes me laugh. He nominated Nickelback’s ‘Photograph’ for the title of ‘Most Shit-Stained Rock Song Of All Time’. I have read some of his most personal poetry. Read of his difficult splits. And some of his most loathed gigs. Dragon Force springs to mind: especially his desire to get up on stage and curl one out to show his ‘appreciation’ for their work. We sit down for tea. My hangover is kicking in. I feel shattered. I must remember to report my credit card as lost.The princess makes tea. Books on deep thought and human interaction fill the case that stands against the wall. ‘Clone High’ nestles next to a bundle of ‘24’ DVDs. Plants balance along the beam of a wall that runs along behind the sofa we are slouching on. Princess breezes in from the light and airy kitchen and mugs land on the coffee table in front of us. The Duke and The Princess talk in sporadic waves. Sets of tidal thought rush from their mouths uninterrupted by umming and aahing. The princess gesticulates occasionally, usually when she reaches the crest of a point, as if to imply that the wave is about to fall. The Duke, never. That would be a waste of energy. His hangover does not seem to blunt his mind. If this is operation at half capacity, I can only imagine what 100% system control is like. They went to see Radiohead recently. The band rarely come to Canada. So it was rammed. Everyone stood around in a holding pen for hours. I suggest that Thom Yorke may have been watching from the shadows, laughing. It was an amazing gig. They relinquished a prime position near the front, but these things happen. We all decide to go out. I stink, so I get The Duke to douse me in Febreeze. We all squeeze into Surfergrrl’s car and head over the bridge towards downtown. The water is crisp. Towers of glass dominate the island. The sky is blue.

We stop at Ocean Side Park and take a walk along the footpath around the water. Surfer takes photos of us throwing up the gang signs. We talk about the worst kind of herpes to contract and the general consensus is that eye herpes wins. Or iHerpes. Patch and I find a dead bird under a log. It looks like it was crushed. We skim stones, badly. Children play in the fountains. We make bad jokes about hosing them down. An old man and woman drive down the footpath in their car, completely lost. We ask about the sights of Vancouver. The Princess and The Duke tell us to visit the Vancouver Art Gallery, or the vag. Few enjoy the joke as much as they do. I cannot understand why. Puerile humour. Always a pleasure. Patch asks if they have food at the vag. ‘I think it’s eat out’ says The Duke. We all pile back into the car and drive towards the apartment. After a lot of back streets and head scratching we finally find a place to park. The Princess & Surfer will have to come back at stupid-o-clock to refill the meter. We go for food at a bright and trendy café bar called Cafe Barney on Granville. The food and drink flows as well as the talk. I am well into the rhythm of blogger meeting now. With the Duke there doesn’t seem to be any ice to break at all. I can’t quite explain why, but there is something about his blog that is indirectly, almost accidentally, revealing. I’m not sure if he realises how incidentally he manages this. We talk small mostly, but occasionally we touch on deeper things. But again I get a skewed variant on the feeling of catching up with a long lost friend. We get more beer. It’s a shame we don’t have longer. The Princess and Surfergrrl are off to see Jack Johnson. Surfergrrl managed to get their names on the guest list. They bid us farewell so we arrange to meet up later. We retire to the apartment for a while. The Duke gets out his supplies so we head downstairs out back. The Duke looks mighty intellectual supping on his pipe out behind the bins in the alley. Occasionally, people walk past but they say nothing. The Duke tells us we are more likely to get frowned upon for smoking cigarettes. We head out to The Rugby Club. I feel very, very baked. A waitress officiously shows us to a table. There are only a few customers. The atmosphere is cool. ‘I am so high’says The Duke. We all nod. Rugby clubs back home are somewhat more riotous than this. It's more like a yacht club. And a dour one at that. ‘Do you remember that scene in Fear and Loathing when Thompson sees everyone as reptiles?’ whispers The Duke. We wait, but sadly none of the punters tersely enjoying themselves in this super tense venue of relaxation start shedding their skin or running about on all fours. That would be outlandish. And this place seems to radiate the need for an absolutely regimented leisure experience. The waiter arrives and we order in an extremely formal manner. We do not want food. Drink. This is a good place to start. The Duke likes to work on a similar template to myself for a night out: start at somewhere mediocre or acceptable purely as an intellectual curiosity. Then move on. The only way is up. We hit more bars. Things become something of a blur. Original Joe's is definitely in there. I cannot remember a lot of what we talked about, if anything. The last bar we visit is really busy. A hustle bustle. It’s a homely spit and sawdust riot of wood at The Regal Beagle. More drinks. The Princess and Surfergrrl arrive. They had a wild time at the gig. Jack was within grabbing distance when they first arrived. Celebrity freeze struck them down when they had a chance to speak to him so they waited until afterwards to use their back stage passes to make sure they nailed him down second time around. But alas, they queued forever and got nowhere. We hang around for a few more drinks and make our way back to the apartment. Princess and The Duke have to be up early for a flight tomorrow. They are off to Nelson to see Princess’ family. We pass out on the sofa. I get up in the night and go to the kitchen for a glass of water. I hear a man walk past in the alley outside singing a happy song. There is great poetry on the fridge in magnetic letters.

Here In My Car, I Feel Safest Of All

2008-08-20T03:55:00.005Z

I walk towards the garbage disposal bins in the morning dew. The camp attendant walks his dogs. A family empty out their RV waste. I elect to keep walking towards the toilets. I think I might look strange throwing my roll mat in the bin. Patch is shaving. He looks at me quizzically. ‘What are you doing with that?’ I tell him that I thought it might look weird to the spectators if I throw away a roll mat. ‘That’s just weird’. He’s right. I go back and toss it in the dumpster. The discarding of material possession. An old friend that has helped me sleep for months. Gone, amongst a pile of trash. By my own hand, no less. I close the lid sadly. Patch takes the wheel for the last time as we prepare for The Final Push. The dump and run. We wolf down breakfast at Mickey D’s and hit the road. The last of the tarmac. But not the end of the journey. It is sunny again. Our supplies are not low enough, so we throw caution to the wind and just start working our way through it in the car. Why not? We haven’t seen a police officer for days. Plenty of time to straighten out. Sure enough a squad car sits by the verge. I roll up the window immediately and watch him in the mirror until he completely disappears, ready to shove all the goods into the airvents where he won’t find them. No sirens come. Good. We pass a sign that says ‘Bison Meat’. I tell Patch. He thought I meant ‘Bison Meet’. Like a car show. I say that you could put iPods in the horns. Phat ice in the hooves. Patch thinks differently. He would get a custom paintjob. I would go with dreadlocks. He would get his lowered with custom shins. We sing over syrupy RnB about the G8 – slamming war and pimping out peace. 'Thelma and Louise' is spray painted on a rocky outcrop. We are not far from Sudbury. ‘Wild Horses’ comes on the radio. I turn it up loudly and sing badly. Here we are then. Into the home stretch with Keith Richards gently strumming in the background. And now that the end is in sight I feel an incredible sadness. The thought weighs on my mind that a time will soon come when I don’t wake up in the morning to a day of unexpected adventure. This has been the highest peak in my life and I do not want to come down the other side to a complete stop. I want there to be another great climb of some kind. Maybe it will be the farmhouse to which I have been lured in the south of France: a restoration project with which I can join in. No rent as long as I work. I can graft hard by day and type by night. I might take up the offer of a job with a roofing business so I can work for two days a week. Why not? After all, I’ll need some money. But how will I cope up a ladder? And will I even make it down there? Can I afford the trip? What does my bank balance look like? I ask Patch to use his powers as the King of Space so we can go a bit faster: a take-off and landing affair known only to the intergalactic monarchy. He says that unless there are severe weather conditions he’s not even interested in re-entries. Blue sky today. So no joy. He’d rather wait for a storm. Then he might be indulge me. I ask him how he would pass the time up there in orbit waiting for the atrocious weather to kick in. ‘Have a few beers probably. Play some internet poker’. I will miss this. Four months spent mostly in a small mobile cabin with barely a cross word and always a laugh. We have often been asked how we will cope with falling out. We’ve had no need. Old friends. I think I will call him up from time to time and nudge him for puns. Have a good laugh about our time on the road. There are a lot of trucks for sale on driveways in small towns. We drive past West Gwillimbury. I wonder if it has four pubs around a cricket green and a maypole in the centre. The roads get wider and the buildings thicken. Traffic begins to swarm around us. We reach Barrie. The city again. Back into civilisation. No more grassland to make me feel tiny. Lots of other people and clustered apartment blocks to do that.

Soon we are in the thick traffic of the 400 and then the 401. The supplies are going down gradually, but still not enough. To save time in our nasty little battle plan, we head to the airport to put our luggage into storage. We wander around the wrong terminal for a while. A bad omen. We find the right one and lug all our stuff inside. Just one bag left. Essentials only. Same for Patch. The car seems so empty. Like a room just before you move out of a house. We grind back through the rush hour traffic and find a McDonalds just north of downtown Toronto. Strange to be back here: at base camp for this great adventure of ours. At a nearby Shell station we vacuum the car and throw out the last of our garbage. Considering the deviousness of our plan, the least we can do is leave the car looking decent. Patch slots the near side front wheel into the conveyor belt of the car wash. We hop and bounce through the spray and mist and rolling soap. The car does not look too bad, apart from the insect graveyard around the license plate. No place for a mass burial. I pity the poor fool that has to scrub that off. But it looks much better than it did. Darkness has fallen. The hours grow late. Time to enact the plan. Patch thinks he remembers where the street was. I see familiar sights and nearly guess the right road name before I see the sign. Then I am sure. We cruise up outside slowly and keep out of sight. No lights are on. It looks deserted. Excellent. We unload the bags at the kerbside and I wait whilst Patch screeches across the road and hurls the keys through the letterbox. We hot foot it towards the subway station and l take one last look at the most robust car ever to come into unfortunate contact with me. So much distance covered without so much as the bat of an eyelid. It has been bulletproof. A fine advert for Nissan. All we have done is change the oil a few times and put new tires on the front end. It has carried us through sights and sounds that have opened my eyes and enthralled me at every turn. I will miss all that it is an all that it represents. But this is no time for sentimentality. We must flee. On the subway train I feel like I have lost a part of myself as we rumble towards downtown. I feel naked. We consume more of our supplies on our way past the CN Tower – the first and mightiest of all the towers we visited.

In the need for consumption we abandon secrecy and no one seems to care. The streets are quiet anyway. It is fitting, when one considers that we were plied with such things on our very first night in this great land. To complete the cycle we head past Mike’s Hotdog Stand where we got our first sausage in a bun. I want to speak to him and see if he remembers us, but he is not there. Must be his night off. We go to Gabby’s where we drunk our first Canadian pint. Patch spots a barmaid who was here last time. Jamaica and Canada approximate a game of soccer on the TV. A thin guy with a Chelsea cap and a beard sits next to us. He’s been getting into soccer for about a year now. I buy a pitcher of Moosehead. He likes the premiership. Once he got into the strategy and tactics he was hooked. Another pitcher. Patch comes back in after a smoke. The doorman had to move on an Irish drunk. He was too rowdy. Patch told him the guy’s passport looked fake. A girl comes up to the bar. What time does this place close? An English accent. I tell her it’s at 2am. Her name is Siobhan. She just got here. She’s off to New York soon. Her friend is queuing for a club. It’ll take hours. She’ll try and drag her back here. Off she goes. We keep drinking. By 1:40am I am out of money. No way to change travellers cheques at this hour. We find a taxi rank to head out to the airport. The stink of booze and weed must be horrific. Patch offers the driver $40. He say’s that’s fine, but once we are moving the price rises. We’re too messy to argue. We spill out into the terminal. It is deserted. All the snaking ribbons flow towards the check-in desks that stretch out before us like a huge deserted bowling alley. The glass ceiling is high above us. Eerie, eerie silence.

Patch is freaking out. In the absence of activity he is fearful that the automated boarding machines that stand like parking meters in long ranks will turn on us. I laugh and whip out the Frisbee from my bag. We hurl it up and down. It clatters noisily against the ground when our inebriation causes fumbled catches. Our voices echo off the shining floor. We tire quickly. In the seating area I take off my jacket and shoes and make them into a pillow. My dozing is fitful. I am curled up in a ball. I hope I don’t throw up. Patch wakes me at 6am so we can retrieve our luggage – a sorry affair of rumpled scrambling with heavy bags. I move some of my liquid baggage around (not in the metaphorical sense) before I check in my bags. But I forget something, so when we make it through to the scanning and frisking area, I have to dispose of forgotten liquid from my hand baggage – a bottle of Mr Sulu’s Asian Hot Sauce that I bought for El Ladante in Vulcan. The staff look at me sadly. ‘You can check it back into your regular luggage’. I just look dejected and move on, leaving it behind. I decide against telling them that Asian Hot Sauce makes a nice meal but a terrible bomb, and that I am too much of a state to want to go and retrieve my bags to go through all that again. But I think they can tell these things. In departures I curl up again. Patch nudges me awake and we slope on board our plane. Patch is in the row in front of me. Neither of us has anyone sat next to us. Thank heavens – for their sake and ours. My eyes snap open. I must have slept through the safety procedure. We are high above Ontario when I squint out of the window. It must be around 8 or 9. Soon, the hire car guy will be getting to work. Out front he will notice his shiny old wagon. The one he probably thought he wouldn’t ever see again after two foreigners walked through his door three months ago and paid upfront in cash. Hopefully, he will look around and be pleased at the surprising cleanliness. He may have expected blood or bodies or at least a missing door. Hopefully, he will put the key in the ignition and look at the fuel needle at the top of the gauge, chuckling in disbelief to himself that not only is he sitting in the driver’s seat again, but he doesn’t even have to fill up the tank. His reaction upon sight of the odometer is anyone’s guess. He may assume that there has been some kind of electrical error. He might sigh just a little bit, saddened at the figures, but glad that his baby is back with him and not somewhere near the Mexican border, on fire. At worst, and most probably, he will scream in rage and shake his fists in the air, shouting ’34,000 kilometres! 34,000!! Those English bastards!’ If he is a man of maths, he may well calculate that this figure is the equivalent of 84% of the Earth’s circumference. But it will be too late for him to do anything about it. I look down over the patchwork prairie far below us. We should be over Manitoba by now. Soon we will be in Vancouver. I jam my skull against the bulkhead and close my eyes to sleep.

Middle of Nowhere

2008-08-19T00:43:00.004Z

I accelerate away from the junction. A free night’s camping. The debt collector slept in. 680 to Sault Ste Marie. No sweat. But road works delay us. Prepare the sweating. Guys with moustaches, hard hats and walkie-talkies spin the signs too slowly. Eventually we break free. I fiddle the numbers to make up time. Big barns at the roadside look like fallen acorns. We are back in range of our favourite radio station – The Bear: ‘contributing to global warming with hot rock’. Cryptic signs appear – ‘Corn’ with an arrow. No cost or location. Nothing. A tackle shop sells its wares with a moose holding onto a fishing rod in a boat by the road side. The rocky verges climb and fall along the banks of mighty Lake Superior.

Last night I had a dream that I was hanging out of the side of a helicopter rocketing along the water. I was so low I could reach down and skim my hands across the surface of the water speeding and shimmering in the sunlight. But something cracked and broke above me. Blades of metal flew past my head and I threw myself towards the water. Another small town slides by. The lake is a vibrant rich blue. We spend all day rolling around the shoreline.

The sun falls into my eyeline. I narrow my gaze when the trees don’t shield me. Tired, I roll my shoulders, flick my head and paradiddle the steering wheel. This is it: our last night’s camping before tomorrow’s dirty work. No more nights under the stars in the great wilderness of this country. No more campfires and the pleasure of a simple meal after a long day on the road. In the last of the light we pitch our tents at the Sault Ste Marie KOA. The woman gives us three bear warnings. We assure her that we know the dangers. I call my Uncle Sid from a payphone with saloon doors that sound like a breaking guitar string. He’s glad to hear from me. He bets I have a lot of stories to tell. I do, but I want to hear more of his. I am to call him when I arrive in Vancouver. I call The Duke (see Falling Out Of Time on my sidebar). ‘Leave a message’. Succinct. I like it. We will be in town soon, as planned. Just confirming previous correspondence. I check my email. He’s got someone else staying too. Intriguing. I should be transcribing. But it’s cold out here under the pavilion. My eyes are heavy from the driving and the supplies we have been trying desperately to drain. Bedtime.

Ethics on the Grasslands

2008-08-18T17:48:00.002Z

I sit and blink at the computer screen. I rub my eyes and take another slug of coffee. There won’t be time to post up everything. People mill around by the counter. It’s busy here at the mall on the outskirts of Winnipeg. I cut and paste as much as I can before Patch gets back from the Royal Mint. I see that Okami is online. I open a chat window and say hello, apologising for my tardiness. She says that’s okay. I hope our paths cross again soon. So does she. I say that I will post all that we talked about and that I guess I won’t find out what she was trying to tell me through her fear of exposure. She says that she knows I would never intentionally write anything malicious about her. Patch appears in the doorway. I have to go. Ontario calls. Take care. I close the lid on the laptop. We walk back to the car through the mall. Patch got photos of what his weight would be worth in gold and platinum. They make 40% of the world’s coins here in Winnipeg. Patch cruises out around the ring road and back onto the Trans-Canada. The prairie turns into trees. I scribble away in between rolling cigarettes. We are back on them. Long journeys will occasionally do that to the temporarily reformed.

A bigfoot baring his teeth sweeps past the window. Patch swears at a fly that bugs him. I spin my pen between my fingers. ‘Rebellion (Lies)’ comes on the iPod and I crank it up. I think of Okami again. Should I have expected anything else? Would I tell all if I were in her shoes. Tell my secrets to someone prone to considering such things for online publishing? She says she could trust me with her life, but not with all the details. To protect herself: because she has been paying attention to what I have been writing. I understand. Would I have written this differently if no one was reading? Probably not. Before I left, a friend said to me that I should never mention the purpose of my trip: keep everyone in the dark and then write with an extra measure of secret purity. I have not had to consider sticking the knife in at anytime on this journey: meeting someone, disliking them, and then writing about that dislike for my readership to peruse. But this dynamic with Okami is a different aspect of the same problem, nonetheless. A double edged sword. I write to reveal some of myself, and that revealing earns a modicum of trust from a reader. So I am privy to certain things. But only so much. If I write without revealing myself and meet a person, will that person still reveal as much, or more because they think I will not write about it? Who knows? This is all about trust, and I am not in the right frame of mind to properly tackle it now.

The thin black stripes of the trees cross the double yellow lines onto the other side of the road. I squint to avoid the sun barging in through the wing mirror that Patch finger-painted with ‘Wizard’ and ‘Styx’. Objects in the mirror, apparently, are closer than they appear. The dust looks old.

He beeps the horn in time to the ‘Dad Man Cat’ by Corduroy. We are a long, long way short of the campgrounds on the map. Quetico Provincial Park is seemingly unreachable by nightfall. 130 kilometres away. It’s 7:30pm.

But time flies and we get lucky when I spot an unlit sign in the darkness. A campsite hiding its light under a bushel. We pitch and eat. A couple pull up next to us in their RV. It’s close to midnight. They are local. They’ve been helping their son restore his boat down at the lake. Both of their boys are in the teaching business. Good money. How de we like Canada? We love it. Are we single? Uh. Yes we are. He is of Polish and Russian descent. I can see it in his chiselled face and grey moustache. She’s got English roots. In Somerset of all places. We tell her that’s just down the road from us. They wish us well and roll off back to their trailer. Patch looks up into the cavernous sky. Red lights blip somewhere high near the ceiling. ‘That’s the new K90 prototype’ he intones dramatically, quite stoned. ‘Took it out last week. It’s brand new so I only had 4 beers before flying it’. I ask him if there are cup holders on the flight deck. ‘No, I wear one of those hats with the straws. Maybe some pants.’

Little Else On The Prairie

2008-08-17T06:56:00.003Z

I swing the car in next to a line of corvettes basking in the sun. Patch gets another fridge magnet. This one is from the tourist information booth on the Manitoba border. We have made good time today. I’ve had the cruise control at 120kmh all the way, save for the occasional roadwork stops where we’ve waved at every cute girl with a hard hat and a slow sign. And there are a lot of them out here. The corvettes roll out. We stop for food and gas somewhere. Patch cleans bugs off the screen whilst I fill the tank – a pit stop necessity, now that every kind of flying insect is bouncing off the screen.

It’s an unsavoury crime scene to peer through when you are trying to focus on the yellow lines. We listen to ‘Don’t Believe The Truth’, ‘Who’s Next’ and ‘X&Y’. ‘Fix You’ pumps through the speakers. We pass a tank ona flatbed truck coming the other way, then a golf buggy in the back of a pickup. I haven’t posted anything since I can’t remember when. It will all have to go up in a lump. If I have time. Otherwise it’s small chunks until we get to Lester B. Pearson’s airport. The world’s largest tepee goes past outside the window. Earlier we saw great piles of salt at the roadside piled up redundant next to Canada’s second largest saline lake. I need to contact Okami and tell her I am sorry for not keeping it together. Winnipeg is only 100 kilometres away now.

She was as mysterious as I thought she would be. All those hints at something unseen. Maybe I could have found out more if I had made more time for her. But maybe not. Maybe I type too much. Perhaps we are destined to cover the most ground from behind the safety of our computer screens. A car passes with a hand out of the window giving the rock salute. We catch up and return the gesture. They do the same. We lose them in the traffic on the outskirts of Winterpeg - as Donna calls it. Patch directs me north. But can I stop somewhere so he can empty his bladder? We see no service stations for 20 kilometres on the ring road. He holds out until we get onto the inlet road beyond the Bird’s Tail Provincial Park entrance. Off he goes into the trees. We pitch our tents and rifle through our can supply for food: Split pea and ham soup. Lovely. We stink out the car. Keep the windows up. Don’t want to upset the other campers. ‘Mummy! What’s that smell?’ ‘Criminals Darling! I’ll fetch the torches!’ Then we get another fire going to sit in quiet contemplation. The logs burn. We stare silently, peacefully into the flames as the wind whips around the trees and teases the fire to spit and crackle beneath the clear night sky. The head of Draco looks down upon us. Patch gets up and stretches. I look up to the heavens. ‘Throw in some Ewoks and a fireworks display and this could be the end of Return of the Jedi’. He flops back onto the bench. 'Oww!’ I turn around. ‘What did you sit on?’ He’s holding his foot. ‘An Ewok’ he groans.

The Trouble With Travels

2008-08-16T17:33:00.004Z

I feel really rough. Last night I pebble-dashed the bowl again. Lisa says not to worry. She too was ill this morning. She got back from her massage and unloaded. I tell her about what I said to Jon last night. ‘Yeah he mentioned that’. He put it down to me being ‘pretty blind’. He is not wrong. There is a note on the table: ‘Thanks for the wine!’ Okami. She got a taxi home last night. I feel bad. An improper goodbye. I take a careful bite of the fries that Patch bought me while I was dozing. Make amends. But not now. We have to be off. The town of Vulcan awaits. Last night Jon told us it it a funny little place. You can practically see from one side of the town to the other. We leave Calgary behind and head south on the 2. An hour or so later we arrive. The Vulcan Country Inn greets us.

I hope to see Sarek checking out so he can get to an urgent morning meeting. But no. The information centre is a big ufo. Inside we are greeted by an enthusiastic lady who tells us that they are campaigning for the premier of the next Star Trek film to be held here.

They had over 3000 visitors at their last Trekfest. 6 men came fully dressed as Klingons. Vulcan jerky hangs on the wall. There is a Borg teddy on the shelf. Patch gets pictures of me wearing Starfleet clothing surrounded by cardboard cut outs.

Hundreds of figures donated by a trekkie who has passed on reach from the floor to the ceiling like the gold records in Graceland. I sign the guestbook as Kirk and say that Khan to me to come here. A statue of the Enterprise patrols the main road. I want to send a gift from the Vulcan post office, but it is closed. The Pon Far must be on.

Patch turns the car north. We drive past corn fields near Milo and emerge at the Trans Canada junction. I peruse the map. ‘Take a right here and keep going for about 2000 miles’. He nods. ‘So it begins’. The flatness goes on for the rest of the day apart from the odd dip and peak. The sun burns hot in the sky. We pass through Tilley, Medicine Hat, Tompkins and Antelope. Album after album passes by on the iPod. We reach Swift Current. In the truck stop toilets I notice the ever telling graffiti on the paper dispensers. A couple are looking for a well hung bimale. They cum through here twice weekly. Leave a message if you are interested. Hillbilly on channel #19 is. The sky turns purple and orange over Patch’s forearm as we head north on the 4. We pitch for the night at Saskatchewan Landing Provincial Park. We make fire and sample more of our supplies once we have eaten and everyone else has gone to bed.

Headlights appear in the darkness. A ranger car. Patch hides the evidence in his pocket and I hold my fingers under the bench. The car rolls past slowly. We watch in silence. The lights sweep around us in a big loop and then disappear. ‘That would have been funny’ says Patch, grimly. Would they really bust two travellers for having less than a handful? It’s just for sedative purposes Officer. We need it to get our heads down after huge stretches in the saddle. One long last burn of the oil to take us from one side of this great wilderness to the other. But the car has gone now. My worries have not. They have shifted to other matters as I lie in my tent and start to wonder whether there has been any real point to this adventure. What will it all mean when I get back home? Has it been worth me tirelessly documenting this? Do people read this and wonder what makes me think that my story is worth telling? Such long thick chunks do not ease digestion. A fawn sniffs around outside my tent. The shadow moves gently in the moonlight. What will I do when I get home? How much money do I have? What will I do next? Enough. I turn my head and rest it on my other shoe. No time for that now. I need sleep. I need rest for energy and concentration for my turn at the wheel. All this paranoia will be gone by the time the sun comes up. It always is. Always.

A Man About A Dog

2008-08-15T07:42:00.002Z

We leave early making good time as we blast through small towns called Patricia, Millicent, Brooks and Bassano on our way back to Calgary. It is another scorcher. The house is empty when we get back. I call Okami straight away and leave her a message. Patch sunbathes on the deck out back. I write. I am far, far behind. The hours roll by. Lisa gets home around 5. She finished early and went for a drink after work then bought a BBQ chicken for us. Patch has a shower. Lisa and I take Zepplin for a walk. But he doesn’t do his business. He’ll need to go again later. She is looking forward to moving into her new house with Jon. We’ll go and see it. We can go there after we get the supplies she has sorted out for us. I am showering when Patch knocks on the door and says we have to leave as soon as possible. The supplies are in ahead of schedule, so we have to roll out fast. It is often the way with these things. I speed up but not quite fast enough. So we run a little late on our way across town. After a few logistical phone calls we find ourselves twiddling our thumbs in a car park Waiting For The Man. Ah, memories. An old pastime. Lisa drums the steering wheel in the long shadows of the empty car park. Patch yawns. The radio plays. We scope out cars that roll in and then out again and lean back in our seats. Then our man arrives. Lisa walks across to the pick up. It’s a laconic high noon scenario without the gunfight. Pleasantries are exchanged and she flops back into the drivers seat. The pick up rolls away all nonchalant. We zoom over to the half-built house Lisa will call home early next year. The skeleton is up. We walk around the exposed timber and pipes of the interior. A man made lake is going in out beyond the tall window above the staircase. Zepplin will have somewhere to play. The car tugs us up hill past the prison and the juvenile detention centre which collude together in defeatist harmony at the roadside. Lisa stops in at the house to take Zepplin for a walk again. I call Okami. She got my message. She’ll meet us as planned. We stumble our way into the car. Lisa takes us to Moustache Pete’s. It’s a slick log cabin style bar with local ales, a restaurant and a pool table. No sign of Okami yet. We order a pitcher of Rickard’s White and I order a glass of Rickard’s Red. The barman starts a tab. Okami appears. She looks glamorous with her hair up and black and white sunglasses on her head that match her outfit. We all sit at the bar. She only just got here. Calgary taxi drivers are useless. He got lost. Had to radio headquarters for directions. What have we been up to? I tell her that the Rockies are beautiful. She says that she loves to get up there whenever she can. She doesn’t get the chance very often. A pause, and a hint that I could have invited her. Maybe. I stare into my glass. The barman asks where I am from. I tell him our story. He’s from Calgary. Done a bit of travelling himself. A customer appears. He’ll be back to tell me all about it. ‘You do that’ I say. ‘I love a good story’. Okami smiles. I ask her what she will do with herself now that she has taken the bold leap of quitting her job. She likes the idea of a European road trip. She feels like she may have wasted her time studying accountancy. Its never too late to change things. Do what you want to do. I glance over at Patch and Lisa and notice breasts. They are playing a spot the difference video game on the bar. Okami says that she is tired of living for other people’s expectations. I ask her what she means. She says that she has been living someone else’s life. What does that mean? A pause. How much of this is going on the blog? I laugh and look away. ‘I’ll respect your privacy’. Not a real answer, I think. She looks me dead in the eyes. ‘I wish you could read my mind’. The drinks flow. Lisa lures us onto a video game bowling machine. Okami and I don’t quite grasp it, but Patch and Lisa duel through nail biting frames. Lisa always wins. Jon arrives and hugs her. He has facial hair like mine and glasses I covet. His England football shirt is a welcome sight. ‘You’re starting well’ I say. He shows me a picture of his starship collection. Impressive. Quite a fleet. I am envious. He also shows me a picture of Patrick Stewart’s autograph. The closest I can get is David Prowse’s. I like his style. He works in software quality control, so when he starts bowling his skills bump him up way above Okami and I. He joins in the high fiving – which is usually administered after Lisa lays down smooth alley justice on Patch. He pumps his fists in frustration. I am the devil on his shoulder whispering in his ear that he can take her. But no. ‘Don’t encourage him’ laughs Okami. The pool table is empty so I put some Loonies down for a game. A local fellow challenges me. He has a long pony tail, a baseball cap and a toothy grin atop a wiry body. I look over to her. ‘I’m fine. You carry on’. She sits on a stool and watches. I am half in the bag already. A mess. But just the right amount of a mess to induce geometric confidence in my own abilities. I am like Dave Lister from Red Dwarf in the Aigburth Arms on the night no one could get him off the table. Every shot I try comes off. Smaller balls. Bigger pockets. And I am paying much more attention to my backswing than usual. I play with a straight deliberate action and follow right through the cue ball. ‘It’s your table’ says my gracious opponent when I sink the black ball. Two youths loiter nearby. They look shifty. Young with flat pack casual wear and earrings. One of them wants a game. I rack them up. Then I knock in two off the break. I sink another two and then play a disgracefully dirty safety shot. He squirms out of it, but then I lock him into another one and he fouls the white into a pocket. With my two shots I clear all the balls left on the table. ‘What was that?’ He looks a mite angry. What do you mean? ‘You took two shots’. Yeah. ‘We don’t do that’. Oh. Well in England we do. ‘In Canada you play Canadian rules’. I look bemused and shrug. I wonder why he didn’t mention something when I went down for my second shot. They wander back to their table looking moody. I revel in his defeat a little too much. When I turn around again they have gone. We finish up our drinks and go out to the cars. Jon has a tasty looking Sentra. Practically brand new. A beautiful deep red with aftermarket rims. Okami and Patch go with Lisa. I go with Jon. He shows me what it can do. Go very very fast. I giggle just a little bit. Back at the house we sample some of the wares: a bad idea when I am drunk. Do it before, then drink. That’s my rule. For a reason. And that reason manifests itself soon after. Okami is on the decking talking about her love of cats and the sadness of when they have to be re-homed if they get replaced. I remember that I never go to hear the barman's story. ‘I’m going downstairs to pass out’ I slur. I get to the bottom of the stairs and decide to say goodnight to Jon. ‘It was nice meeting you Dave!’ There is an understandable pause. ‘Uhh….you too’.

To the Beat of the Drumheller.

2008-08-14T06:39:00.000Z

Donna is wandering around in her pyjamas. They look like the official pyjamas of twister. Mart is wearing shorts and loafers with knee high socks. I suddenly remember that I was deriding such a look the previous night in reference to my father’s attire back in the day. Ooops. Donna gives us a hug and Mart shakes our hands, wishing us well. I say that it has been more than a pleasure. We will return the courtesy when they next get to Bristol. Good people who opened their doors to us, tending to any need that we might have. We watch them drive away in the ‘Birds. Now it’s our turn. We drive out of Calgary on the Trans Canada eastbound. Then we turn north on the 9. The lie of the land is flat, save for the occasional rise and fall that drops the seemingly endless road into troughs as it disappears into the hot and hazy morning. The sun flickers off the tiny specks of metal rolling towards us in the distance. There is a lookout for Horseshoe Canyon which looks a lot like the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. There is a lot of purple, brown and grey strata in a surrounding of rocks that look like a geological trifle. The road carries us down into Drumheller where we wind down past more trifle rocks. They frame the whole town. There are dinosaurs everywhere.

On the main street a blue triceratops stands guard outside a 1970s cinema with a cowboy painted above the counter. He looks out over the road from his cell of tall glass window panes. A red tyrannosaur with a barb wire tattoo rears up a few blocks down. Even the banks have fossil designs embossed in their brickwork. The Drumheller water tower rises above the thick canopy of trees beyond the wooden settler houses with wind chimes hanging from their balconies. A large diplodocus watches over the highway. I try to climb it as traffic rushes past. I fail. It is too slippery, no matter what approach I take. Even with bare feet I cannot back up the tail far enough to grab hold of something. I slide all the way back down and fall off into the grit.

Dinosaurs hang around phone booths and paintings on service station walls. They cling to lampposts, peek out from behind real estate signs and peruse the racks outside tumbledown clothing stores. We cruise towards a giant T-Rex that does its best to intimidate the town in a frozen pose of terror. Patch gets a fridge magnet before we climb the steps up to the gaping mouth of the ‘World’s Largest Dinosaur’ which Wikipedia says is ‘considerably larger’ than any actual specimen found. Well I never.

Pennies and bottles are scattered behind the front teeth. The upper jaw bites through the sun into the blue sky. Trifle rocks are on the horizon. The houses hide amongst the trees. Children play in the dinosaur fountains down below. Bones and drawings adorn the walls on the way back down the stairs through the belly. ‘This is what the inside of a dinosaur looks like Mummy!’ A little girl races up the steps in excitement. We drive to the Tyrell Museum of Palaeontology. Patch raps about archaeology over some generic RnB oozing out of the radio. He could be XKav8 featuring MC Fossil. The museum is fascinating. They have a lot of skeletons on display and some incredible fossils. A T-Rex leg stands high above our heads beneath moody lighting. ‘Some of the time, some people believe that birds are descended from dinosaurs’ says a passing mother to her child. Patch shakes his head. But her statement, essentially, is true. We roll out to the Hoodoos. They are big rocks that look like mushrooms.

A man makes a fortune selling iced water under a tarpaulin. It is hot today. There is a Hoodoo trail that goes on for ten kilometres. Shouldn’t take long. We turn off onto the empty track and bounce across the ruts and massive potholes for 50 yards before abandoning the idea completely. We drive the dinosaur trail. I spot a tiny church at the roadside so we stop inside and say some little prayers.

Patch points out a sign for a ferry so we drop down into the river valley and roll onto the ferry. A man with a deep tan and a baseball cap operates the levers. Two women play with their dogs by the water. The ferry phone rings. The man doesn’t hear it. A woman in the car behind us checks her phone. The bottom of the boat grinds against the shore and we drive off. At a lookout Patch finds a squirrel family living in the pipe work of a bear-proof litter bin. We drive out towards Dinosaur National Park to camp for the night. It is in the middle of nowhere. Patch guides me down long gravel roads which are the only thing breaking an uninterrupted vista of prairie grass. The occasional pump jack pecks metronomically at the ground. The smallest of small towns slide past in the dust. The park is busy. We pitch as the light starts to fail. Patch goes of to get photos of the sunset. I try and call Okami from a payphone which doesn’t like my money. One of the guys on the next pitch has been playing some atrocious guitar says Patch. ‘And I’ve heard me play’. They are having trouble using an axe so they pitch chunks of wood at each other and smash them up with a baseball bat. The moon emerges big and bright, crowding out a lot of the constellations. I lie on my back and use the planisphere that Bowser sent me. Ursa Major, Draco and Cygnus are all visible. I lie in my tent and try to sleep. But the guys at the next pitch are waxing lyrical about Warhammer 40,000. ‘Yeah, but it’s got claws that are made of pure chaos which makes it the most powerful creature in the world’. They argue about how many snakes there were in the first Metal Gear Solid game. One of them talks about some girl who was coming onto him, but he wouldn’t make out with her because her dimples make her look like Dexter the serial killer. The same guy talks about some other dude he knows who isn’t very good with girls. He used to throw Garibaldi biscuits into her garden next door because her last name is Garibaldi. Mercifully, I start falling asleep as they get into a conversation about the inefficiency of the Gotham city police, with nary a hint of irony.

Flamestown

2008-08-13T05:06:00.002Z

I climb out of bed late. No hurry today. On our way downtown we stop for coffee at a gas station. Cryptically, pre-paid envelopes for the gas station’s accounts department wait in plastic dispensers on the pumps. We stop in a car park near one of the +15 walkways that weave around the city. Strange cow sculptures hang around the elevators. They are all painted bizarrely. One is watching TV. I like Calgary. We wander along Stephen Avenue and look up at the big steel trees that frame the skyscrapers high above.

At the bank my mind wanders as I queue to cash traveller’s cheques. I wish Pie! were here. Another blogger whom I had hoped to meet. Her writing is a mix of the thoughtful, the hopeful and the vulnerable. She shares stories of her adventures with her good friend Camara, stories of mentors lost to drunk drivers, stories of festivals and missed trains, and stories of the best way to convert a refrigerator into a handy storage device. She also contributes to Write Club (see sidebar). Right now she is pushing herself with her studies in Munchen, Germany. She is on my turf and I on hers. And she’s seen more of it than I have. Not long until she comes home to see the friends she misses. Just like I do.

I try and picture her amongst the restaurants, walkways and hanging baskets of her home town. No choice but to paper her to the walls in her absence. We had batted around the idea of sharing a car journey to see her friend Helloitsme of Top Ten This (see sidebar). But we will be gone long before she returns. Alas it will be sad not to meet her. The queue dissipates. The woman behind the counter thinks I am Irish. I get my bundle of cash and leave. Office workers chomp into their sandwiches on benches. Two showgirls with bright blue feathers punch through the grey suits with a confident stride. We stop them for photos. They think we are Australian. We should check out the casino they are promoting. They wave us goodbye and seek out more punters. We follow our noses past an iron horse on the way to the Calgary tower. The lift takes us to the top after we push the buttons for ourselves. Usually tower lifts are staffed. I like the view from the tower. Its plucky. A lot of the surrounding buildings are taller.

We look down on the ant people on the sidewalks and the balconies of their apartments. The stampede grounds are empty. I try to imagine what it is like when the festival kicks off. Cheesy, but enjoyable according to various reports. I get Patch to lie on his back on the glass floor and imagine he is falling.

Back at street level we see a sign for the Telecommunications Hall of Fame. It sounds like the most exciting place in the world. We must go there. On the way we stop at a park with slender figurines caught in poses of care and conflict against the backdrop of a Buck Rogers apartment building.

But when we reach the hall of fame I cannot bring myself to go inside. I cannot feign the seriousness of interest. We keep on walking and step over grates with metal footprints on them. Inside Dragon City Mall lanterns glow on the ceiling. Patch spies Transformers in a window. We go inside the shop and robot boxes are piled high. We continue our loop back to the car park. Fantastic reflections bounce off the skyscrapers.

For such a new city, Calgary seems to have a strong sense of identity. Maybe it is rooted in the maturity forged from a need to constantly adapt in the face of changing economies. Like a child who has to grow up too fast. When the luxurious infancy of the oil boom hit puberty and crashed in the 80’s, the city was forced into a hormonal shift. Instead of going off the rails, it diversified. The soaring unemployment subsided and left the face of the city with its pores cleansed. Now it has paid off. The city is in its prime. Black gold is booming again and Calgary has a lot of it.

Back at the house we take the wheels off the car. We are worried about the brake pads. I’m expecting dust to pour out of the callipers when we pop out the pins on the pads. But no. The pads are intact. And there is a lot left. They will have to last. Mart, Donna and Lisa takes us to Stavros – a sports bar and pizza emporium just down the road. We sit and watch Olympic swimming. Pitchers of beer arrive. The big screen has a large yellow spot in the middle. Tongue in cheek, Mart says it’s because it’s in China. Donna pokes him. ‘Mart! You can’t say that!!’ The reaction he was looking for. Patch says the screen should be slanty. Ho ho ho. Post ironic racism. Back at the house we sit around and play with the dog. Mart and Donna are off to Edmonton tomorrow for a car show. Mart says that the judging is generally dodgy. He’s got the car all up together. Donna is flagging. Her ABF (absolute bloody final) wine goes down and she goes off to bed. I swill my beer around in the can. We part company tomorrow. Mart is a silhouette against the blinds behind him as he sits on the couch in the dark. We will not see him or Donna before we leave on Saturday. I slip into bed and think of dinosaurs in Drumheller.

Two's Company, Freeze A Crowd.

2008-08-12T06:01:00.005Z

My nose is cold. It is the only extremity peeking out from my sleeping bag. I am wearing all my clothes. I forgot my pillow so I had to use a rolled up towel. Chilly here in the mountains. Even in summer. The blowers heat us in the car. Today we brave the Columbia Ice Fields. The tourist centre sits safely beyond where the glacial wave breaks in the depths of winter. Moraine is piled up outside. Tidal debris that shows just how close the ice gets. We look out of the window whilst we queue for tickets. In summer the glacier retreats up the mountain hillside high above us. The coach arrives. Patch hands his ticket to the driver. ‘Ice to see you’. Her smile flickers ever so slightly and confusion plays across her face for an instant. It is as if she is considering raising a question, but she says nothing. She moves onto the safety and security of the next person in line. We leap aboard. Over the PA system she says that her name is Mary-Ann and that she will be our guide for the next 7 minutes. ‘That area of really old trees over there’ she says informatively ‘is called the Ancient Forest’. She makes a lot of bad jokes. I like her. Up in the Athabasca glacier car park we disembark and climb on board a Monster Truck Bus.

The wheels are huge. We climb aboard and the driver, Luc, tells us all about the vehicle as we drop over the steepest incline of all North American roadways: 36%. The bus was custom built for this journey. We step out onto the ice. Water runs off in channels down the roadside. Snow blows off the rocks in the distance. Walkers pick their way across the glacier with their guides. Very dangerous to attempt this crossing without assistance. You could fall 300 feet down a mill hole. Cones make sure this doesn’t happen for tourists like us. I drink fresh crisp water from the glacial stream.

We spend 20 minutes picking our way across the ice before we get back into the bus and rumble back up the mighty slope towards the car park. This road shifts with the glacier so it is closed in winter. The bus takes us back to the information centre. We leave awestruck. Patch suggests we take a look at Peyto Lake. It is a short draining hike to the lookout. Peyto Lake is an Eden of turquoise water laced with evergreen under a mountain canopy topped by white and blue. My batteries are dead so I commit it to memory. We leave the Rockies behind. I did not think I would find a favourite place for natural scenery because we have been spoiled. But this is it. The cherry on the continental cake.
I follow the 1A parkway and then drop the hammer on the main road back to Calgary. We have to be back at the homestead by 7. Donna is cooking salmon. Luckily we are early. Zepplin doesn’t recognise us. His growling passes. He is licking our hands before long. The food is delicious. Lisa doesn’t like the potatoes. Donna had to be in for a 5 minute meeting early yesterday. Her boss is leaving. She will miss her. I ask her if she will take the job. She thinks not. I write whilst everyone else watches the Olympics. Mart arrives home later. It was a good day for him. Quiet. One night, when it was slow, one of his fellow employees got bored and decided to rearrange all the vehicles. He was bored. So he parked all the cars outside and thought about another way to park them. Suddenly a swarm of cops descended on the unmarked premises on the edge of town. A chopper was flying over and saw a bunch of limos outside a warehouse and decided a mob meet was going down. The bosses were not happy with the employee. I disappear off to bed. Patch and Mart stay up and drink more beers. I fall into bed next to a strange clay display of white tigers and cotton wool no doubt hewn by Lisa or Dave in the distant mist of their childhood.

Rocky Road

2008-08-11T04:50:00.004Z

‘Enrique Siusiu!’ I yell as loudly as I can, using Patch’s Vegas moniker. I can’t see him from my vantage point atop the rocks overlooking the iridescent blue of Lake Moraine. He appears over a ridge leaping from rock to rock. Some tourists look on in flattering amazement. ‘I don’t know why they were so impressed’ he says. We set off early this morning to ascend into the snow-capped majesty of the Canadian Rockies. Highway 1 dumped us off onto highway 93. It is the most visually spectacular road I have ever travelled. A jaw-dropping picture postcard at every turn. Mountain ranges like jaw bones chomping at the sky with row upon row of giant incisors tearing through the clouds. Pure water and decorate a geological utopia. We stopped in at Banff to see the Banff Springs Hotel where people played bowls on a terrible green in the shadow of massive peaks. A luxurious alpine paradise. We left it behind and passed a man pushing himself along the shoulder with roller skies and poles. Then we found ourselves here. Ten peaks guard the crisp blue water. Chipmunks bounce around the shoreline. Logs lie jammed against the banks. We stop for food at the café. Patch secretes his animal attraction juices again. A chipmunk climbs up his chest and starts eating a chocolate bar right out of his hand. ‘Get off me’ he yells instructively. The chipmunk does not listen. I think he will probably need to translate. His words are having no effect.

At Lake Louise we stare out across the vast expanse of water and watch people kayak with the mountains in the background. We look at hiring one ourselves. But it is too expensive. ‘That’s a hull of a price’ I say. Patch says that he thought about decking them because he nearly keeled over when he saw the cost. ‘Maybe they’re having a sail’ I say. The 93 takes us north through more epic scenery. We pass through a valley cut by the master of all crafts. The symmetry on such a large scale is humbling. We pull into lookouts and stare in awe.

Dried meats fill our bellies from a roadside food stop. We drive for a long time, making it to Jasper to buy supplies. Just out of town we find a campsite and pitch for the night. Caribou come close to our camp. We follow them for a while. Two other guys do the same. They pick their way back through our camp on the way to theirs. ‘Howdy’ I say. ‘Party?’ says one of them. ‘No, howdy.’ He grins ‘Oh. Howdy, like the cowboy, yes?’ in a rich Dutch accent. He is here with his friend for 5 weeks. He studies psychology and business management. His friend is studying chemical engineering. They are hiking mostly. The altitude is killer. They keep fit but it does nothing at this elevation. They fly out of Vancouver on the same day that we do. We arrange to meet at a brewery at Granville Island. They head off back into the night to finish their game of chess. I practice my high beam work on a fallen tree and play boule with logs as the fire burns long into the night.

Fear of Flying

2008-08-10T02:38:00.003Z

Flags for the Dragon Boat Race flutter in the breeze of a grey Calgarian morning. I pull up next to a park attendant and wind down the window. ‘Hi. Can you tell me the way to the Wild Rose Brewery?’ A blank look. ‘It’s near the old army barracks’. His eyes light up. ‘Oh yeah! Down there. Turn right and then left onto Crowchild.’ Off we go. After a few wrong turns we find our way with the help of a fighter jet on a stick. I swing the car into a parking space and walk towards the brewery. I have no idea what Okami looks like, but she spots us from about 40 yards away. At least I assume it must be her because she is waving at us. The gap between us closes. She has bright blue eyes and long, long hair that reaches all the way down her back. We both get a hug. I apologise for our lateness. My fault. Too much mirror time. She takes us round to a table at the brewery and presents us with presents. Patch gets a bag with familiar beer can labels plastered across it. Inside is Strongbow. He is very happy. I get a long plastic container that looks like a rocket launcher. Inside is a fantastic Fight Club style print of William Shatner with Trek tattoos all over his chest. I also get an excellent book of Shatner inspired artwork. I have nothing for her. I make a note to myself to mail her something very English when I get home. We sit around a big wheel of a table and order ales from the bar. Okami caught a cab to get here. She is half an hour away. This is a regular haunt of hers. We talk about the trip. She knows a lot of the details. She liked my Vegas posts because they have the most of me in them. I tell her it has been the mother of all adventures. So many surprises. So much beautiful landscape. I ask her why she hasn’t posted for a while. Online inspiration has deserted her. She only reads my blog now. I say that is sad. She laughs and asks why. Because mine isn’t the only blog worth reading. We finish our pints and walk over to the farmers market.

Okami says that it is quiet, but it seems busy to me. Shoulder to shoulder is busy she says. I order a Cuban sandwich that takes forever. The lady who takes my order has been here in Canada for a few years. She left Cuba for the work. Okami says the queue is usually huge at this stall. The sandwich tastes okay. We walk past the Ostrich soap and special breads to Phil & Sebastian’s. A jazz duo play lounge music whilst we wait for the bean grinding to finish. Excellent coffee. Super strong. We sit outside under grey skies and sip with both hands. Okami looks out into the distance. ‘This market is hanging by a thread’. She says that developers probably have bulldozers waiting out beyond the trees. We’d best be getting going. She has a few things lined up for us. The first being at Olympic park. The world’s fastest zip line is there. We push all our stuff over to one side of the back seat and she slips in behind Patch whilst I drive. We apologise for the smell of the car. She says it’s not that bad. We roll back out onto Crowchild Trail. I watch Okami in the rear view mirror as she adjusts herself and tosses her hair around. She is only our second passenger. Yasmin was our first. Maybe we should have picked up more people. We have ridden this road alone for the most part. The road climbs up the hillside. We park outside the Olympic centre where the flame is burning. Okami says it was lit on Sunday when the games started n Beijing. The podium is a good photo opportunity. Patch makes like a winner. Okami takes silver and I get bronze.

Fellow tourists snap us on our cameras and we do the same for them. We order our tickets for the zip line. ‘Do you have any questions?’ says the counter girl. ‘Yes. Am I going to die?’ I feel a hand on my back and I hear Okami laughing. There is a 30 minute wait so we walk over to the ice house. Patch goes on a luge for $6. Okami says that in the winter you can do the whole bottom third of the course. As it is Patch does about 30 yards. He nearly hits the sides of the short course on his way down. But he loves it. We hoof it back to the zip line and wait outside a cabin. Okami pulls her hair out of the breeze and tucks it down the back of her top. ‘Don’t want that getting caught in the line. She looks out over the Calgarian sprawl behind us. Now that she has quite her job she has no idea what she wants to do. Neither do I. She says it is funny how we are both in the same position. The cabin door opens and we are ushered in to have our helmets and harnesses fitted. After a quick practice on a short line at base camp we clamber under seatbelts to get into the back seat of a minivan that takes us up to the summit. I get a little nervous as we double back on ourselves on the way up the hill. Okami points out the houses behind the ski jump. They weren’t there a few years ago. Practically sprung up over night. This city is in a constant state of flux. I look nervously at the ski jump tower. We all squeeze into the lift; 12 of us in helmets and webbing. Lift muzak plays. They should be playing ‘Paranoid’. Patch suggests ‘Jump’. People on the tower tour waylay their descent when they see us trooping out. My heart sinks as we step out onto the jump launch. It’s a long, long way down. The attendant steps through a gate and says ‘First two’ without looking back. Everyone looks at each other. I gulp. Best go now before I change my mind. The breeze is stiff. I lift my thighs so the attendant can clip me in. ‘Fly position?’ I sit in the harness with my arms out wide. He nods. ‘Stop position’. I lift my feet into the air and lock my elbows straight as I push against the crossbar. I look like a dog on his back. He nods again. The radio clicks. ‘How’s the wind down there?’ Static. The cable sways. I look back up at Patch and Okami. They are grinning. A lever is pulled and something drops away beneath to leave me hanging over empty space. I do not look down. More static. Then a crackling response I cannot decipher. He nods yet again. ‘Okay, go!’ Another lever pull and suddenly I am falling maybe 10 or 15 feet. My stomach turns. Then the cable goes tense and I accelerate. I throw my arms out wide and laugh and giggle and scream. The noise is deafened by the wind so I make as much as I can. I rocket along through the air. My parachute drags behind me. The tiny cone marking the position change gets big, fast. I lift my legs and straighten my elbows and shunt into the coil. It is over. I want to go again. Now. I look expectantly and enviously back up the zip line to the tower high in the distance. Patch and Okami shoot down soon after.

We endure a long and windy wait for the rest of our party. Some clatter into braking coil at massive speed, others are so slow they have to be retrieved with hooks before they even get there. A second zip line takes us back down to the centre. Patch and I race each other. He wins. So I have to buy the first round when we get back to the Wild Rose. On the way Okami points out a children’s hospital out beyond the freeway. It looks like it is made of duplo bricks. Children were given a say in what they wanted the building to look like. Inside they have all sorts of interesting juvenile features. We arrive back at the market as a stream of cars leaves. The guard lets us past and asks us to have a few drinks for him. We sit around the same table as we did before. Beer and food go down nicely. Zip lining makes me hungry. Okami takes us downtown on walkabout. It is quiet, Sunday afternoon is dead. Dance music pumps valiantly from over the vacant chairs at Earl’s. We head for the Flames headquarters. Closed. Instead we stop in the Henry VIII next door. It looks as typically English in its décor as the moniker suggests – a small bar, bad furniture and a lot of meaningless semi-historical trinkets scattered around for good measure. Okami is not sure if she should keep her hair. She fiddles with it thoughtfully. Her stylist went mad when she suggested this notion. Do it if you feel like it, I say. After a swift one we head back out on the road. There is nowhere near Okami’s for us to go, so she guides us out to Kensington. On the way she points out a blues club where the former state premier used to go every Friday night for a few beers. He made headline news when he pulled up his car next to a bunch of homeless people on his way home one night and yelled ‘Get a job!!’ The public loved him. We roll over a bridge and drive around the suburbs looking at the good comic shops and the Ship and Anchor where Doozy’s boyfriend used to work when they lived here. It is a tradition that people sit outside even in the most inclement weather. T-Shirts and jeans in the Calgarian winter, says Okami. It grows late. Patch says we had better get back and see our hosts. We drive Okami out to her house. She needs to run some errands so we drop her at the local mall. I tell her we will call her when we get back into town. She doesn’t need a lift home, despite the weather. She hugs us both and we watch her walk away through the drizzle towards the bank. It is a strange experience meeting her. Like seeing an old friend who I lost touch with. She gives away little in the way of what she might be thinking, I had labelled her as wilfully ambiguous – a label she quite enjoyed. I wonder what, if anything, she is hiding behind that mischievous giggle and those bright near-unblinking eyes. Her blog gives the impression of someone quite insular who would rather expressive herself in anonymity. I want to scratch the surface more. Rain clouds the windshield on the way back to Mart and Donna’s. We pull in next to the fence and walk past the garage where the T-Birds live. Mart is at work. Donna tells us he has gotten a raise. He’s only been there two months. The funeral wagon cleaning business must be good. Always a body to deal with I guess. We meet Lisa. She looks a lot like her mother, but with extra piercings and longer hair. She is an orthodontic assistant. We eat leftover enchilada which is delicious. Mart arrives soon after. He is in good spirits. He works with one girl who rebuilds bodies after horrific accidents. Recently she had to reconstruct the body of a young guy who died in a motorcycle collision. He lost his head. All that was left was the ears. She had to make him look good for the casket. With some creative draping of fabrics and replacement of the head she was able to give him dignity on the slab. Such a strange calling for someone: A task that exists solely to make the transition of life to death for a loved one less unbearable for the family and friends involved. It takes 10 years to train for the difficult job of embalming. It would be ideal for Mart. He has no sense of taste or smell. He woke up one morning to find the sense had just gone. Nerves had died. The condition is incurable. His life changed overnight. He stopped drinking scotch and started eating less because eating became a chore without the pleasure of taste. Strangely, he started eating foods he hadn’t eaten before because the smell put him off. He thrives on texture now. We sink a lot of beers as night closes in. I close my eyes and think of the huge mountains we will see tomorrow.

Stampeding towards Calgary

2008-08-09T18:00:00.000Z

We drive all day, heading through the craggy majesty of Glacier National Park. The enormous foothills of the Canadian Rockies lurk on the horizon beyond small town Golden. Banff flies past on our way to Calgary. We will sample its wares later. The land flattens out to an occasional gentle roll. Upon first sight, the home of The Stampede is a sprawl of houses stretching across the prairie skyline. The Olympic Park ski jump overlooks it from the hills to the south. Patch already looked for the road we need, but apparently it was the only road that isn’t on googlemaps. But we find it. Mart and Donna live in modern timber framed house with a happy yellow living room and a raised deck out the back. They are the parents of Dave – a Canadian with whom Patch used to work. Now they are long time friends. Mart is an easy going guy. Short and slim with the last of his grey hair receding from his deeply tanned forehead, he has a deep laughter lines and a beaming white smile. I like him straight away. Donna is a mother hen with short hair and tanned skinned. She has dark brown eyes and shotgun laughter. She makes a lot of ooh and ahh noises as we explain our trip and the distance we have covered. She works in the city. Gets the bus most days. Mart was born in Sheffield but he moved over here when he was very young. Donna takes Patch to the grocery store in the bright yellow T-Bird to get some beers. Mart and I walk the dog up on the high ground near the bypass. He came to the UK recently to see his cousins. One one side of the family they welcomed him with open arms. But on the other they couldn’t really be bothered. It troubles him. Zeppelin sniffs about in the grass. I run my hands through it. He is excited to make these reconnections, but saddened that some people don’t want to engage. I say that he should make the most of the ones that do. We look out over the city. Mart points out Olympic park and the ski runs. As we get back to the house Patch and Donna pull up in the yellow T-Bird. One of two they own. The other is an ’81. It is pristine. Spotless. All original except for the tyres, which had only done 147 miles when Mart acquired the car. He opens the driver’s door and I peer in. It is like stepping back in time. The car came along by chance and he felt he needed to preserve it. To be the custodian. So now this is Mart’s hobby and he is consummate about it. At every cars show he takes it to he wins best in class – because it is the only one in its class. He laughs. We eat home cooked burgers and keep drinking, talking long into the night. I excuse myself to the decking outside and call Okami of When Apathy Takes Over (see sidebar). We have been in conversation in one form or another for years now. The intensity reached fever pitch during my time at Call Centre Hell when we would googlechat for hours at a time. Our schedules across the time zones seemed to coincide, so we both made use of the coincidence and alleviated our boredom with small talk about my big plans. Yet despite all our correspondence I am still not sure what to expect. She is wilfully ambiguous and therefore intentionally mysterious. A hard worker who loves to cook, she likes the mountains and her family. But she keeps her cards close to her chest. Most of her creative output remains unseen, off Blog. It is strange to hear her voice, finally. She is taking us to the farmers market tomorrow. And she mentions a zip line. We arrange to meet at 10.30am and then we hang up. I click the phone back into the holster and return to the chattering and laughing indoors as the last of the daylight glows in the windows across the street.

Leaving Things In A State

2008-08-08T16:40:00.001Z

I grab a coffee from the campsite reception and sit outside scribbling. Patch is catching up on email behind the glass over my shoulder. Rinse the connection whilst we have it. I look up briefly and see a familiar face in front of me. The girl from last night. She tells me that she feels very old for her age. I gulp. ‘I’m just myself and people have to accept me for who I am’. Okay then. Mercifully, Patch appears with the laptop. He looks at me and then he looks at the girl with slight puzzlement. ‘Uh..the computer’s free for umm computer stuff’. Computer stuff. Thank god. I make a hasty exit for the entrance to reception, half waving goodbye and half dismissing the girl with a flap of the journal. I don’t really look back as I shout ‘Well, good luck’. I turn to see she is following me in indoors. She stops dead in her tracks and her eyes fall to the floor in embarrassment. Cheeks glowing, she says ‘It was nice to meet you’ before turning and scurrying away. I might as well have told her to f**k off. Jesus. What a bastard. Still, it’s for her own good. I cane the keyboard for a while. Then we head north towards the border. I stare absently out of the window. Our last day in this great country. We wait at the border as the traffic moves slowly through the checkpoint. When I leave it behind, I will leave behind the tiresome stereotypes solidified in my subconscious from too many doses of Hollywood movies about All-American Action Heroes shooting up their enemies, and too many doses of All-American Teenagers shooting up their allies in the hallowed halls of the schools that have to teach them. These are the real Americans: People like the self-proclaimed hicks from New England who had never left the confines of their borders but extended their borders to ours by feeding us and talking to us about our lives back home. They are people like Patrick; the cleaner at the hostel who told us what the score was from Jamaica to New York. They are people like the hooker wronged in Vegas who does whatever she can to maintain her place in the incomprehensible superstructure of a city with no sympathy. They are people like Audrey with her beautiful, insatiable thirst for education, experience and knowledge. People like the bloggers who we met: Scott in Boston, Shroom Monkey in Atlanta, Whattacrock in Phoenix, Mob in Midland, Diedre in Las Cruces and Shari in Puyallup: all people living fascinating ordinary lives with fascinating ordinary problems from fantastically diverse backgrounds shaped by the ebbs and flows of all the lives gone before them. People like people I have ever met anywhere else on my travels through the western world – singular souls struggling to maintain an individual equilibrium within the pre-determined boundaries of their collective societies. America is not really that far removed from England. The bait to raise ones status hangs from a lot more lines into the water, and the casualties of taking a bite are a strewn a lot more substantially along the banks, but the river is flowing in the same direction. So when I go home and I hear anything negative about America, I will make a point of saying that you cannot entirely judge a country by what it exports. It is what remains on home soil that tells you the most about a place. It is an old adage that you should never judge someone until you have walked a mile in their shoes – easier said than done in a society where possession is nine tenths of the law. Maybe the next best thing for me to do is to seek that someone out and try to follow their footsteps as best I can and keep my eyes open. There are so many miles to walk here. Miles of staggering opulence and poverty. Miles of roadside strip mall towns that all look the same except for the name, and miles of American faces that show roots in all continents. I have heard important questions from the mouths of unimportant people. I have seen all that western culture can give and take away. This country has everything, which is both fortunate and unfortunate. And yet I have barely scraped the surface, scratching only so deep before the clock called and I had to move on. Flags of Canada flutter in the breeze. Our car reaches the booth and we receive the briefest questioning: Any alcohol or tobacco? ‘We gave up. We’ve quit’. The barrier goes up and we roar off. Definitely no gold label Jack Daniel’s in the car. No sir. Oh Canada! Back into the white numbers of kilometres, back into more expensive gas and back into novel independent stores and towns with curious names. We stop in Revelstoke and pitch at the KOA. A pickup truck drives around in a loop with a sign in the window that says the ice cream social is at 8. ‘Dancing Queen’ blasts out on repeat through the open windows. A small boy chases it over the bumps and ruts on his bicycle. ‘Ice cream, Mummy!’ he yells. A man smoking a pipe rides past on a Harley. Patch goes to bed. I call Okami (see When Apathy Takes Over on sidebar). I get her very professional voice mail recording and leave a message: we’ll be in Calgary soon. I type long into the night under a pool of light outside the reception building. Two Aussies appear. They use the payphone to call home. They are mountain bikers here to enjoy the scene in Golden. 5 weeks of a cruising around and a bit of competition riding in the championships being held here. I overhear a lot of familiar old phrases from the handset: ‘Yeah, things are pretty cruisy, What? Sorry. No, the phones here are shithouse.’ Soon I am alone again. My concentration is broken when a bike rolls in. The rider looks tired. Battered from riding into the small hours. ‘Are you staying here?’ he asks. I am indeed. ‘Is it a good site?’ Yeah, I guess so. He rubs his eyes. California is his destination. Should he stop for the night? I suggest he should. He can’t seem to make his mind up. He wanders around in a daze and then climbs back onto his bike, deciding to keep going. He flips his visor closed and roars off into the Albertan night.

If Hollow, Induce Traveling

2008-08-07T16:32:00.000Z

I hear Shari milling around so I roll off the couch and get dressed. She apologises for waking me. I am glad to see her before we go. She left us a note. I get a photo of us which I promise not to post. There is going to be a town portrait at midday. We should try and get into it. I like the idea of pulling a Doc Brown & Marty on the locals. We hug and I thank her for her hospitality. Her beat-up car pulls out of the driveway after she reconnects the battery and disappears up the road. On out own again – except for Maya who dozes under a pile of bed sheets on Shari’s bed whilst I gingerly press the keys on the computer, trying not to wake her. I search googlemaps for Hendrix’s grave and the Microsoft Museum. I frame them up with my camera and click, then whisper goodbye to Maya. We slip out of the front door. She is in charge now: a slumbering junior security officer in charge of the fort. Back on the road again. I am desperate for caffeine. We stop at a trucker café in an industrial estate somewhere. Then I crank up ‘Band of Gypsies’ on the way to Hendrix’s grave. We park up and cast our eyes about. They fall upon a modest mausoleum. A family snaps pictures. The circular monument stands about ten feet high. Jimi’s body is entombed beneath a marble square in the middle. A guitar with dates next to it is mounted on the side. The top is littered with pennies, flowers and sodden cigarettes. Part of me wants to wipe it all off. Part of me wants to leave some more. In the greatest possible act of respect, Patch puts one foot up on the grave and busts out some air guitar.

I watch in reverence. If only we had a ghetto blaster. I would play ‘Hear My Train A’ Comin’ at maximum volume. We wander back to the car and I throw a glance over my shoulder. We head north away from Renton towards Redwood. ‘Today I desecrated a grave’ says Patch with searching tone of self-doubt. ‘It’s what he would have wanted’. Patch checks his voicemail. There is a worried message from the hire people ‘Are you coming back with the car??’ The Microsoft Campus appears. The buildings are the faceless glass cubes I had expected. ‘Oh look. They’ve got Windows’. I grab my notebook as fast as I can and start scribbling. He’s off. ‘I bet there’s quite a Vista from there.’ I desperately flick through the pages to find a blank one. ‘They Excel at what they do’. I beg him to just wait a minute. ‘The batteries on my camera are low. I hope they have a Powerpoint.’ Empty lines. Excellent. Patch throws up his gang signs ‘Word!’ I tell him to get it out of his system. We drive around and look for the museum, but it seems that the Access is not very good. Eventually we find the way in and park up. I hurry across the parking lot, desperate to see some bespectacled geek pointing admirably at an archaic concrete box running MS-DOS in a grey room with polystyrene ceiling tiles. But alas, we are trounced. The museum is closed all day. Dejected, we slope upstairs to the official Microsoft store. A very Russian security guard lets us in, apparently pleased to be relieved from sitting in a chair. They have Windows Vista polo shirts for $60. Maybe we could buy some and sneak back downstairs into the museum pretending we are employees. It’s no good, says Patch. They already know our faces down there. Back in the car we roll towards Lynwood. I feel cheated. We decide to find a cinema and watch Batman. After some asking around we strike it lucky. The trailers are generally rubbish. A lot of sequel/prequel fodder that seems to be the bread and butter of mainstream Hollywood movies these days. Thankfully, whilst being in much the same vein, The Dark Knight doesn’t disappoint. It is fast paced and cluttered with action, assuming the viewer is familiar with the first film in the successful franchise reboot. I am tired and struggle to take it all in. But the two and a half hours fly by. Everyone has been raving about the late Mr. Ledger’s performance as The Joker. With his psychotic slobbering and nervous ticks he was uniquely disturbing enough in his characterisation to distance himself from the long shadow cast by Nicholson. Especially in a rather unsavoury incident involving a pen. But Aaron Eckhart was the most pleasant surprise as District Attorney Harvey Dent. He didn’t have long to convincingly portray the rise and fall of a man of virtue. But he did so believably. Some of the plot devices weren’t quite so believable, most notably the mobile phone Sonar device that Lucius Fox invents and Batman manages to adapt into a city wide super gadget in a time-frame that even Superman would be proud of. But it’s based on a comic book, remember? Back outside in the blinding sunlight we head over to a soccer store. Premiership shirts are everywhere. Only a few US shirts. We find the LA Galaxy one we are looking for. An old poster of Beckham in Manchester United colours is on the wall. It’s the only specialist soccer store we have seen. Time to head north towards the border where we will leave this country behind. We aim towards The Cascades.

Two lane mountain roads carry us through valleys and mountains past a river and dams. Time rolls on. We get to Winthrop – the most wild west town I have seen and it is in the far north. Perhaps the frontier outpost isolation deters the intrusion of development that blurred the picture of old that we couldn’t quite see at the Alamo. This place seems a little more unspoilt. It is still all wooden. Everything is built from logs. The sidewalk is all planks.

We find the KOA on the edge of town. It is backdropped by yellow rays streaking out from behind pink clouds. The light dies. I retire to the communal are at reception to get writing. A girl comes over and sits next to me, watching me hammering the keys. She says nothing. Just stares. After a while, I ask if I can help her with anything. No. Okay. I turn back to the screen. I ask her again a few minutes later. She wants to know how old I am. I tell her I am 30. She thought I was 25. She was going to ask me a question. Which was? She doesn’t want to say. Ah, I see. The penny drops. There is a very long and very awkward pause. For the sake of something to say I ask her how old she is. 17. She is leaving with her family tomorrow. They head back home. It is the end of her vacation. I scratch my head and turn back to the screen. She watches me for a bit longer, intently. Then she loses interest and wishes me a good trip, disappearing into the night. I breathe a long sigh of relief. One day she is going to talk to the wrong guy. I stay in the reception area as long as possible, leaving five minutes before closing time to get back to the tent to sleep with my head on rolled up clothes because I lost my pillow.

Puget Sounds

2008-08-06T16:19:00.004Z

Shari waves goodbye as she rumbles away back to the house for a day working from home. She leaves us on the platform at Puyallup railway station to catch The Sounder an hour north into Seattle. The suburbs slide past outside the windows on the top deck of the carriage. $10 for a day return. Pretty good value. We disembark near Pioneer Square and follow the commuter snake to the Starbucks nearby, beating the rush by minutes. Last night I slept fitfully on the couch. My eyes need coffee. The cracked pavements and splintered lives outside the mission pass by our feet on the way through Belltown. Carts and cloaks clutter around doorways. We walk all the way down to the Space Needle – the 605ft tower built to celebrate the World Fair that came to the city in the ‘60’s.

We ride the lift to the top and gaze out over the hazy downtown high rise with the monorail track reaching from between the buildings in the distance to run right up beneath us at the needle’s base. A tour guide points out the landmarks down below. As I wander away I catch the tail end of one side of a conversation she is having with a tourist. ‘Yeah. The Microsoft Campus is north of here. They have a museum now with all the old technology in it. If you like computer, you’ll love it. Any other questions?’ I store that one away in my hard drive for later reference. Getting a tour of old computer bits from a super nerd sounds brilliant. The lift whooshes back down to ground level. The operator asks if we have any questions. A woman asks what the structure is out in the Puget sound. The guide hesitates for a moment and then abandons any attempt at softening the blow. ‘That’s a barge’. The woman nods, seemingly unflustered. She must ask questions like that all the time. The lift deposits us in the gift shop where I see a Space Needle pepper grinder that looks fantastic. But not for $110. We wander over to the space age building that houses the Experience Music Project. It looks like a big blob of ectoplasm. Outside, a guitarist plays Bright Eyes’ ‘At The Bottom Of Everything’ while his friend claps along.

Hendrix’s ‘Band of Gypsies’ blasts out of the big screen hanging from the ceiling whilst we wait in line for tickets. I have never enjoyed a queue so much. There is a guitar gallery filled with icons of the medium: the Tin Pan, the Broadcaster, the Les Paul and the Gretsch all bathe under soft light behind thick plastic in their earliest forms. The Hendrix exhibit has shards of a guitar he symbolically smashed on stage. An orange costume radiates through the glass. In the atrium of the building a tornado of guitars spirals up to the ceiling. On the top floor we play instruments in the jam rooms. I bust out europop on a sampler. Next door in the science fiction museum we look at an animatronic ninja turtle, star trek uniforms and an original can of leopard lager from Red Dwarf. I am reprimanded for taking photos. There is a robot exhibition in one of the side rooms. They are lit up in a long plastic case like the crown jewels. Ranks of toy soldiers for the modern age. I see Grimlock and another robot from Transformers, the name of which I have been trying to recall for a large portion of the journey. At the end of the case there is a slot full of laminated guides – presumably in case of nerd drool. I scan through it excitedly. I furrow my brow. Grimlock is listed as Robosaur and the other toy is listed as Planebot or something of that ilk. I am confused, so I ask a nearby attendant who answers with an educated tone, hiding any excitement he might be experiencing at the joy of finally being asked a question. The robots in question are not Transformers. They are robots built by a Japanese company who sold the rights to the manufacturers of Transformers. They are the prototypes, the forerunners. Heads were changed. Planebot became Skyfire and Robosaur became Grimlock. A geek hovers nearby and starts to engage the attendant in conversation about mouldings and other such minutiae. It looks like a very long discussion is about to take place, so I extract myself from the situation and leave them to revel in their knowledge of detail, feeling like I have found my place in the nerd hierarchy – somewhere in the middle. We walk back towards the harbour and the Public Markets. They are bristling with people. Crowds gather cautiously around display units overflowing with ice and giant fish. Mongers call out loudly to find out who wants what and how much. We rub shoulders with shoppers in corridors that lead past a magic emporium, old record stores and antique parlours. I buy sushi and eat it off the top of a newspaper dispenser as the crowd criss-crosses the sidewalk in all directions. We pick our way to the original Starbucks.

A gospel group sing outside beneath the bare-breasted mermaid that swings on a sign. Cameras click and whirr. The queue is large. Baristas write names on cups and toss them across the dark wooden work surfaces and crowded heads by the cash register. Eventually our coffee arrives. It tastes no different to what it tastes like anywhere else, but it is from the nerve centre nonetheless. We walk towards Pioneer Square for the underground tour.

It is an irreverent look at Seattle’s chequered past. 40 of us sit in a converted saloon bar. The host is half stand-up comic. He mocks Tacoma repeatedly and makes a lot of jokes as he tells the start of the city’s underground story. When Seattle was first built it was made of wood. One day in 1889, a fire started in a glue factory when a brick of the sticky stuff was being melted down. The perpetrator, panicking, threw sawdust and water on it – not exactly the best way of suppressing a chemical fire. The blaze caught pretty quickly, spreading to the gunpowder factory next door. This unfortunate geographical proximity was instrumental in the destruction of the whole city, which burned to the ground in approximately 12 hours. Amazingly, no one died in the fire. Devastated, but undeterred, the folk of Seattle elected to rebuild rather than uproot. It was decided that stone would be used exclusively so that there would be no repeat of the cataclysmic inferno. It was also decided that something needed to be done to avoid the horrendous sewerage problems that had affected the old city. Because of the tidal flow and the shoreline’s close proximity to sea level, people had found that the cess pit toilets they had dug would regularly rise up and deposit their loads in the street, causing a stench foul enough not to encourage imagining. To avoid this problem in future the authorities proposed that soil be taken from the nearby hillside and piled up on the ground down below – a practice recently made illegal in California. This would raise the elevation of the city high enough above sea level to eliminate the sewerage problems associated with pit digging. But the whole process would take ten years. The citizens were outraged. They couldn’t wait that long. There was money to be made. So they simply carried on and began to build anyway. We will find out more on the rest of the tour. The host dismisses us and we are spilt into groups. Out in the street our new guide takes us through non-descript doorways on bustling sidewalks that descend into the underground below, where the story of the city continues. The new rules meant that stone walls had to be built between businesses to further prevent the spread of any fire, so pedestrians had to climb up and down ladders to get from one business to another. Furthermore, the city council obstinately insisted that they would administer the running of the city at the new level, despite the resident’s industrious actions dictating otherwise. Immovable and stubborn, the council built new raised walkways that ran above the original home made sidewalks. The council also made a raised sewerage network to avoid the bilious uprisings of old. The pipes were made of wood and ran above the streets. They were notoriously fragile. Children would be sent in a rush to buy newspapers in the morning to find out the tide times for the day, because at low and high tide, the pressure in the pipes would build up to a critically dangerous level. If one were foolish enough to pull the flush at the wrong time of day, one might send effluence shooting 20 feet up into the air from one’s toilet, or one might burst through the fragile joint of an overhead pipe downtown and send fresh manure all over some poor soul climbing a ladder over a retaining wall. After a while, the business began moving their main operations to the second floor where the council sidewalks ran. The underground was consigned to the underworld. The guide tells us lots of blue stories about the influence held over the city by the lady who ran the whorehouses and the speakeasies that spawned down here during prohibition. After the tour we are tired. The Sounder takes us south back to Puyallup. We alight and wander back to Shari’s. Chalk drawings scatter the sidewalk. Later we will find out they were done by Maya and Sophie. Shari has been working and attending phone meetings but that’s pretty much all. She sent around a few YouTube videos. Natalie arrives. She has abandoned her trip. The connecting flight was delayed so she will leave tomorrow instead. We talk about the girls we saw today who were showing far too much cleavage. They can’t have been more than 14. It’s not right. Natalie and Shari agree. Revealing swimsuits are not for children. Eric arrives. He’s finished hanging the door. All done. He was up until 11.30 last night. He figured he might as well just push on through it. Natalie tells us about Minnesota. She went there with Eric on a whim. They were somewhere else nearby and they weren’t really feeling it. So they got a taxi through a blizzard to go to the club from ‘Purple Rain’. Near the stage she found a really plush ladies rest room. Whilst she was powdering her nose a giant dumb waiter spat out a girl in the mirror. Natalie turned around and smiled. They chatted for a while. Natalie asked where one might find Prince’s dressing room. The girl pointed to the giant dumb waiter and gave her the I-Didn’t-Tell-You sign. She rode it down into the Prince’s purple inner-sanctum. She sat in the chair and wandered through the closet but she didn’t see the man himself. ‘You’ll never guess what I saw!’ she babbled to Eric when she eventually emerged. He had been waiting forever. We say goodbye to Eric and Natalie and Roxy, who now has Patch as her ‘Eurotrash boyfriend’. They wish us well and us them. Shari will be up at 6am tomorrow. I cannot sleep on the couch. I sneak outside to the back porch and try to cool off. My eyes finally close around 2am on our last day in idyllic Puyallup.

Hey Mickey

2008-08-05T15:59:00.009Z

It takes all my physical effort to open one eye. A purple fairy display hangs over my head. Soft toys are splayed across the floor. My feet are scrunched up against the end of the bed. Surely I wasn’t that drunk. I roll over. Alone. Thank heavens, I feel horrific. Jackhammer pounding against the back of my eyes. Damn that Jaegermeister. Damn all that beer. And damn my appetite. I crawl out of bed to look for signs of life. My head and my throat are raw. No one is around. Shari must be at work. The girls must be somewhere else. Natalie’s maybe. I think I am still drunk. It feels like it. I haven’t slept for long. I grab the bare lever of the tap where a handle used to be. Water gushes noisily into the beaker. I drain it, and then I drain another. There is familiar rhythmic snoring from the next room. Patch. Thank goodness. I am not alone. I stumble into the bathroom and stare into the mirror. I look terrible. My eyes are black and my face is pale. My beard looks out of control and I appear as if I may have stopped in to relieve myself whilst robbing the house. I glance away from the bright lights and see a note by the washbasin. It is from Shari. It says we are welcome to eat whatever we can find. She will be back later. The nanny will be around at 11. Nanny? But there are no children? Maybe she will look after us. I wander around the house and look for clocks, Some show different times to others. I conclude that it must be approximately 10.30. Half an hour to straighten out. I fumble through cupboards and find a nut based cereal. I squint at the ingredients. Protein. Sugar. Carbohydrates. Excellent. I clatter around in the fridge and soak a bowl of the stuff in milk. It goes down quickly. Best not risk tasting the stuff for any length of time. I am too delicate. I slope into the lounge and blink out of the front window into the bright Puyallup sunshine. The couch looks comfortable. I flop into it and rest my heavy eyes. There is a sharp knock. I snap to attention, but the door opens before I can reach it. A short elderly lady with blood red hair and lipstick and the biggest sunglasses I have ever seen appears in the doorway. ‘Hello?’ she says in a thick New York accent. ‘Hello’ I manage from my deathbed on the chair. She turns to look at me, baffled, her mouth hanging open. ‘I’m Toast’ I offer up by way of explanation. Silence. ‘I am a friend of Shari’s’. Those huge sunglasses come off and she looks at me in bemused appraisal. I smile and pray that she doesn’t spray me with mace. ‘I’m here to look after the girls’ she says. I tell her that I have no idea where they are. I slept in one of the girls’ room. She looks at me again. The lawnmower drone of a sleeping man catches her ear and she treads carefully towards the kitchen, leaning gingerly around the door frame to peer into the other bedroom. The contented snoring form of Patch in his pants lies beneath a poster of Miley Cyrus. The bedcovers are halfway to the floor, draped over dolls on the carpet. ‘That’s Patch’ I say, helpfully. She dials Natalie’s number immediately. ‘Hey Kiddo. So I’m at Shari’s and I’m speaking to an Englishman’. Silently, she absorbs the relevant information. ‘Yeah. He says he doesn’t feel very well. So you guys had quite a night last night, huh? You’ve got the girls? Okay. Well I guess I’m not needed. I’ll call Shari. See you later. She hangs up. I say that I didn’t catch her name. ‘My name’s Mickey, like the mouse. I help Shari out amongst other things’. I explain my disorientation at waking up to an empty unlocked house. ‘Oh that’s nothing to worry about. We all look after each other here. Everybody knows everybody. It’s a real nice neighbourhood’. Shari fed us well. ‘Oh yeah. Shari cooks real good. Real good. Almost as good as I do’. A big smile. ‘I’m Italian American you know’. I grin and scratch my head. She rings Shari and leaves a voicemail. ‘Hey Kiddo, It’s me. I spoke to Natalie, She’s got the girls so I guess I’m not needed. I’ll call you later. Oh yeah, and I have three authors for you’. She hangs up and gathers her things together. ‘Well it was nice to meet you. Have a good trip’. She beams and then mounts those huge sunglasses on her nose and closes the door, disappearing into my past. Silence again. I eat an apple and flop back down onto the sofa again. I doze. Patch shuffles out, rubbing his head. ‘You missed a real character’ I say. He looks confused. I feel weak. Within five minutes he has fired up the organ by the window. He finds the beat generator and starts playing weird space rock. Freestyle. Emotional gurning goes into every note. I am entertained as always, even in my fragile state. After a while he gets bored and falls asleep on the other sofa opposite me. My stomach starts to churn and my head spins. Natalie pokes her head around the door. ‘Isn’t that sweet?’ Patch is snoring softly on his side. I squint and grin weakly. She looks concerned. But there is a slight knowing smirk on her face. Karaoke will do that to you she says. ‘That and a boat load of alcohol’. She laughs. Did I enjoy The Thunderbird? I gulp nauseously. ‘I must have done’. Would I like some painkillers? Yes I would. She returns five minutes later with some fresh soda and some Tylenol. There is a cluster of ice from the industrial sized machine she got on Craigslist. I thank her and tell her that she has caught me at the worst possible time - during the pre-heaving cranial nausea phase. ‘Why did I tell you that?’ I say from between my hands. She laughs and diplomatically makes herself scarce. But not before leaving Eric and Brandon’s numbers. They’re going up to the lake later on for more partying. Sweet mother of god. My stomach turns. Just the thought of it makes me feel unwell. I head for to the toilet. I am scrunched up on the floor, spit dribbling from my mouth into the bowl. I psych myself up for the forthcoming attractions as the uneasy magnet of discomfort coils up in my stomach. After what seems like an hour the jolt finally hits kicks in as my nervous system slams down the plunger and my back arches. I retch, then retch again, dumping apple core into the bowl. My eyes water in relief and I now endure the agonising wait to see whether this is a one night only spectacular or whether I am scheduled to endure a repeat performance. I shuffle back to the couch. Patch is dozing. I try lying completely stationary and focusing on happy thoughts. It doesn’t work. The repeat performance slowly creeps onto the stage and I find myself back in the bathroom. The electric cattle prod zaps me again and the rest of stomach empties in a gush of mushed nuts and bile. Sweet, sweet relief. It is all over. For good this time. I can feel it. I am glad Shari’s daughters are not here to witness this sorry display. I stumble back to the couch and fall on my side again. More dozing. Maya & Sophie appear through the door just as we are surfacing. ‘What happened to my room?’ I hang my head. I call Brandon and leave a message to advise him that I just got through puking and that I will call him later about the lake. It’s a miracle of nature that I even managed to pick up the phone. Shari walks through the door. She had a boring day. Not much going on. The job is quiet. Sophie is all over her, begging to go out now. ‘We don’t have to be there until 7’. They are off to collect a replacement DS for the model Sophie broke recently. She’s working it off. Shari has a list of stuff for us to see when we go to Seattle. She reads a book and I write. Patch reads too. I try calling Brandon again, but with no success. I get a strange message this time. Automated. Not his voicemail. We decide to just go up and look for him. Shari raises an eyebrow. ‘Are you sure? It’s a pretty big lake’. We’ll give it a go. We go our separate ways. The lake is crowded with launches and properties all the way around the large perimeter. I search in vain for Brandon’s white Sentra but find nothing. We watch a large V8 power boat thunder under a road bridge. Bikini girls on board reach up from the seats and brush the underside. Dance music pumps from the boat’s speakers. It gets dark as we circumnavigate the water. Chance has defeated us. We return to Puyallup. Shari & Natalie are cooking kebabs. I am starving. They talk about their coffee bus idea. We spend a long time trying to think of puns. It is our favourite game, yet when it would serve us most useful we fail. We promise to nail it down. Eric is busy at home hanging the door that they got on Craigslist. The website is great. They have seen some strange things on there. People wanting to swap iguanas for washing machines. That kind of thing. Natalie has to be at the airport early tomorrow for a flight to Florida. She has to head off early. It was nice to meet us. It was nice to meet her. She leaves us to the lights on the porch and the last of the kebabs before we retire for the night. The insistent, reliable toot of railway engines punches through the night again as we disappear indoors to get our heads down before we hit Seattle in the morning.

Heart of Glass

2008-08-04T15:41:00.007Z

For once, I rise early. The park is quiet, serene. Until Bert racoon wakes up. I wander through the trees past the occasional dormant camper van or snoozing tent. Patch awakes. We pack up and rumble north towards Tacoma. It’s a cosy small town. Coffee shops dot the narrow main strip. No malls as far as I can see and not many chain stores. I find a payphone and dial the number for Shari. She is our next target. Her blog (If Swallowed, Induce Vomiting - see sidebar) is a celebration of the accidental and incidental: the snippets of circumstance that catch in her net to be pulled out of the current for the perusal of blogworld. I expect to meet a liberal mother who loves her children. A bohemian. Someone laid back and easy going. Having never even met us, she is willing to put us up on her couch for as long as we like. The phone rings and rings. The voicemail kicks in. I say that we are in Tacoma and that we will aim for her place later after spending the day here. I go postal to send a bunch of gifts home whilst Patch types away at Starbucks. I join him afterwards. We decide to go looking for the Museum of Glass. ‘Is that mountain?’ I say as we double back on ourselves. Indeed it is: Mt. Rainier. Somehow we had managed to miss it dominating the horizon.

A mighty metal cone marks the location of the museum. The smooth sides are cut with groves that evoke the glass blown in the furnace within. We sit and watch the artists work with a practiced balletic efficiency. They spray the opaque bulbs with water, fire them for a few seconds, then shape them with steel tongs – drawing the shape out of the temporarily animate form. It is a maternal flurry of artistic birthing. The heat rises up and disappears through the vent at the top of the cone. Inside the gallery we see the work of a master: Lino Tagliapietra. He has been blowing glass for 40 years. He has assembled a team of excellent assistants so that he might lead them in dance and they might follow, to paraphrase the man himself. I am not allowed to photograph his work. It is dazzling. His shapes push the boundaries of what can physically be done with glass. Beautiful forms and colours: Lots of ‘pimped glass’ and ‘tricked-out vases’ according to Patch.

He cannot find a fridge magnet in the store. It would amuse him to come in here with a briefcase full of money and pop the catches on the counter. ‘Sir! You could afford anything in the store! What would you like?’ He would stare po-faced and say ‘Nothing!’ as he started picking up the fragile masterpieces of the shelves and smashing them on the floor, one by one: ‘Rubbish.’ Smash. ‘Also rubbish’. Smash. ‘Too much green’. Smash. ‘Rubbish’. Outside we find a bridge with blown glass in cases lining the walkway. Headless flowers with bright blue crystal leaves reach skywards.

The freeway rumbles underneath. It takes us north. I follow directions from google and stop near the aptly named Shari’s restaurant to call her again. Success this time. She is ready for us. We are not far away. The road to Puyallup is short. It’s a homely little suburb where rustic wooden houses stand in endearingly uneven plots along the road like a lovable squad of misfits. A national guard building at the end of the block is the only uniform sentry on duty. A joke , almost. I guess the house and swing into the driveway that roughly fits the bill: set back from the sidewalk. Green with white borders. A Badminton net stretches across the front lawn. Bikes lie discarded on the gravel. The front door that opens from the top of the small wooden steps is ajar. Shari appears and greets us with a big welcoming hug and a beaming smile. Every bit the bohemian mother I expected. Blonde Curly hair, fair skin and hippy glasses. Earthy clothes and accessories. She leads us across the wooden floor of the living room and out into the kitchen to the back door. ‘So that was the tour’ she deadpans. Out on the decking amongst the fairylights in the back yard we are introduced to Natalie – a bright, smiley blond woman with a deep tan and mischievous grin reflected in her conspiratorially gossipy demeanor that manifests itself even when she is talking about innocent subjects like her dog Roxy who jumps up on Patch’s lap and licks his face. It makes me feel like I am privy to secrets. Occasionally she waves her cigarette like a conductor’s baton. We all throw back beers. Shari couldn’t be much more relaxed. She grew up in Montana on a ranch. Her origins are Nordic. Her grandmother and grandfather met in this country. She saw him out on the water in a boat. She hadn’t seen that since she was back in Scandinavia before she emigrated. So she was smitten. Shari and Natalie are happy here. For Shari, Puyallup is a wonderful neighbourhood where doors can stay unlocked and her kids can go next door. Shari can’t see herself leaving, she says as she leans back on her chair and looks heavenwards. Seattle is an hour away. The lake is just over the hill and Mount Rainier is wonderful to look at. Natalie returned here to raise her kids after fleeing because it wasn’t cool enough. Now it is, and the arrival of the railway is pushing the prices up. People want to buy here and commute to Tacoma or Seattle. There is a tap on my shoulder. ‘Are you Toast?’ asks Sophie – Shari’s youngest at 9. Her fingertip hovers close to my eyeball. ‘Woah. Move it back there’ I say melodramatically. She giggles and takes on step backwards. The point is now a foot away. ‘Are you Toast?’ That’s better. I didn’t want your finger in my eyeball. More giggling. Yes I am. Hello. Maya appears and asks the same question. She is 11 and slightly taller than her sister. But much more reserved. Both have dark skin, lively dark eyes and dark hair. Sophie is the more animate of the two - dramatically screwing up her face if she disagrees with something or skipping enthusiastically around the boards of the deck dodging the flickering fire basket, the metal weave garden furniture and the ice bucket beer coolers by the step. Sean and Megan arrive with their kids. Megan owns an old VW beetle. A 69 I think. They run a donut shack. We share our stories. Sean is from Canada. Megan is American. We share our stories. Matt arrives with a sunny disposition and a big grin. He’s a Kerouac fan. I should check out the recordings he made of his work. The beers flow. Shari makes fantastic food. Pork and sausages that taste delicious. Night falls. The fairy lights glow against the dream catcher hanging from a fencepost. Bottles multiply on the table top. Natalie’s husband Eric arrives. He’s a tall guy with a shaved head and an outdoorsy build. Adam & Jessica arrive. She is pregnant. Apt, considering the amount of children running around the deck. They play DS and rock on the swing chair by the fire. Adam is a pilot. He flies 72 seater turboprops all over the place. Brandon shows up soon after. He looks like a skater with his backwards cap, long shorts, football style shirt and sneakers. A party boy, he’s boisterous and enjoyable company. Stratocasters are the best he says. Got rid of his cheap Japanese model, moved onto a Mexican and finally graduated with an American standard. I listen to his band on his phone. Gritty blues rock. The bass player just quit because he got a girlfriend. Brandon has a wife and he’s still in the band. She’s Korean. Probably bust his ass with some kung fu if he gets out of line. He shows me a picture. She’s pretty. More drinks. Brandon starts talking about a nearby karaoke bar. He’s going with Eric and we should go too. I say to Shari that I don’t want to seem rude by running off. ‘I want you to have a good time’ she says. ‘Enjoy yourselves’. The kids are dozing on the swing chairs. If we go now, we could still make it onstage. Brandon takes us to his car – a Sentra like ours. Its white with nice rims. Patch and I climb in and comment on how strange it is to finally ride as passengers in the back of our wagon. Brandon blasts over to Thunderbirds – a spit and sawdust joint on the edge of town somewhere. We get in Mack & Jack pitchers. Brandon introduces us to some of his friends. One is a poker player. He makes a living out of it. There is a mischievous look in his eyes. Another has a sideways hat and baggy jeans. He just got out of jail after getting busted with $50,000 of weed. 4 kilos. More beer arrives. I get talking to ‘black Brandon’. He used to be a garbageman. Busted up his knee. He’ll go back to it once the wounds have healed. He is well-versed in politics, Reads a couple of different papers regularly to get a few opinions. He supports Obama. None of them vote. Someone brings over shots of Jaegermeister. I urge them to. I tell them that out of everyone we have spoken to, not one person is happy with the way things are going. Not one. Usually disgust or outrage are expressed. Not the usual slight disgruntlement of the begrudgingly satisfied voter you get back home. Brandon gets up and sings ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’. I sing ‘Mmm mmm mmm mmm’. Brandon goes to church on Sundays. Everyone is welcome. Even the homeless? Everyone. People come along with their nice rides. The atmosphere is wonderful. I tell him that my beliefs fall somewhere between science and religion which are falling either side of some greater truth. The lights go up and we are herded out into the night – the last of the punters to brave a 1.00am Tuesday morning. The boys are going up to the lake tomorrow. We are invited. Everyone will be there. Brandon’s friend has a boat launch. Everyone parts with a custom handshake. We spill out of the taxi at Eric’s. He disappears inside to get more booze. We drink outside his garage under the stars. I purport my idea of earning a bunch of money and then retiring onto the road to distribute it where it is needed. No middleman. We are all quite drunk by now. Patch and Eric convince me that it would be better to give all the money to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation because they are excellent with money and give most of theirs away to charity: the rich getting richer stops the poor getting poorer. A fact of economics they tell me. It make me feel slightly inadequate. Perhaps it is just my ego: wanting to wander around giving out cash like some kind of Jesus figure showering cash around with people clamouring at my feet rather than quietly doing the right thing in dignified anonymity. We wander off into the night, stumbling along the street back to Shari’s at the end of another chaotic day.

Mount Up

2008-08-03T05:58:00.001Z

I snap the lid of the laptop closed happily and jump into the car. Shari of ‘If Swallowed, Induce Vomiting’ (see sidebar) is looking forward to having us. We just have to call her when we get to Seattle. She’s 30 miles outside the city. The Columbia River guides us east. Highway 35 pulls us south. Mount Hood pulls our eyes upwards. It is the highest point in Oregon at 11,239 feet - a great lonely snow-capped knuckle punching into the sky as it appears around a bend, magnificent and solitary as it stands high above the timberline.

Harleys roll along the road and brave cyclists lift out of the saddle, digging in with their heels and pedals. We stop at a ski lodge to take photos of snowboarders and skiers carving down the lower slopes of the mountain. Far away to the south is the snow capped simile of Mt Jefferson and The Three Sisters.

Patch freewheels down the hill. He turns sharply and a brown fountain of red hot liquid arches elegantly from the hole in the lid of the polystyrene cup resting in the holder. Hot coffee burns my leg. ‘Hot coffee! Burning my leg!!’ I yell informatively. ‘Well do something about it!’ says Patch. I grab something fabric and wipe it down. We head north again into the last state we have planned to visit in the USA. Washington proves just as lush as its neighbour upon first inspection. Mount St. Helens is our next target – the mighty volcano that blew its stack back in May 1980 and permanently embedded itself like shrapnel in the body of the American conscious. The yellow lines climb steadily for miles and miles. At an overlook we see Elk the size of termites grazing by a river far below. The car breathes heavily. Then we see it: the enormous crater that lures the eyes and the imagination to what is not there – 300ft of rock blasted into pieces 28 years ago: mere milliseconds in geological terms.

The crime scene is something to behold in its relative freshness: hundreds of trees all lying on their sides, fallen in the same direction. Bare trunk corpses spread across the hills in a massive graveyard pointing as one confessional whole to the direction in which the murderous lateral explosion fled. High above, an amphitheatre crater with the same lateral blast damage, but far older, shelters ranks of trees that stand like tombstone watchmen over their fallen brothers equal in their nakedness.

The blast left one side of Mt. St. Helens’ crater weakened. It gave way and caused a massive landslide. Had the walls of the crater held, maybe the volcano might have collapsed in upon itself and left the building blocks for a repeat of Crater Lake in Oregon. The mark of tributaries lies in the ash strewn wasteland of the volcano’s slopes. For the fourth time, a man next to us tells a couple that he lived here during the eruption. ‘Yeah? Well I used to be a volcano’ whispers Patch. Cloud gathers around the silent rim of the sleeping giant in the blue sky high above us. I try to picture the mass of rock that used to be here. Incredible. The might of Mother Nature squeezing one of her beautiful spots with a devastating tectonic pinch and sending a colossal spurt of powdery, stony puss burning across her skin. In the visitor’s centre I read about a couple who had to leap onto logs when the vehicle they were taking shelter upon tipped onto its side. The husband managed to hang onto the wife’s wrist and keep hold of her whilst he ‘rode the log like a horse’ down the hillside. He broke his wrist but he was ‘adrenalized’ so he didn’t notice. I hear a familiar voice telling the clerk that he used to live here when the volcano erupted. Descending on the tarmac, Patch tells me he thought it was ‘magma-nificent’. I say that I would lava to make another visit. I pumice to come back again someday. Our KOA magazine tells us that Chehalis is the closest campsite we can get to before night falls. It is new. So new, in fact, that it is not even finished. A blank yellow sign awaits the KOA logo. The Kamping Kabins have boxes piled up outside. Nobody to be seen. We stop at a gas station nearby and I buy beef jerky. BB guns crowd the glass cabinets and knives point at my knees, should I suddenly have the urge to purchase a deadly weapon whilst I am performing a task as innocuous as refuelling the car. Be prepared. Lewis & Clark State Park is most definitely finished. We camp amongst the trees. The host tells me the bundle of firewood I am buying off him will last only 45 minutes. I look sceptical and that scepticism is proved correct when the bundle burns well into the night and I wonder what other money making scams he is trying to pull as the stars start twinkling above me.

West Side Astoria

2008-08-02T05:11:00.006Z

We leave Waldport behind and cruise along the 101 past countless state parks and old wooden towns like Lincoln City and Newport. Patch calls up a contact for accommodation in Calgary. I sink coffee cup number two. 5 hours sleep last night. The attendant fills up the tank ‘You’re out of state’ he grins. ‘And then some’ I say. The shore stays out of sight for most of the day as we pass more ranks of trees, rolling hills and towns with driftwood walls and weathered people. At Cannon’s Beach we stop and go looking for One Eyed Willie’s ship, taking photos of all the rock formations for later analysis. Where did the boat sail from? Where did Mikey look through the medallion? We rush up the beach and press on towards Astoria. The sky is Goonie grey when we drive across narrow strip of land that leads across the water to a place about which I fantasised as a youth. A place I imagined that I was when I wobbled through the local park on my BMX with a gang of friends yelling about criminals and hidden gold.

Weather-beaten timber-framed houses rise up the hillsides, bracing themselves in ongoing deference to the humbling, majestic onslaught of a windswept coastline. Lumpy roads ascend the slopes past the tumbledown houses to disappear into the trees. Homes are stacked up like the rickety crates at the harbour side which wait patiently to be loaded onto boats. Tankers in the distance float past the dormant form of a large paddle steamer waiting in the dock. Kids wander the streets. Shops struggle, Business support agencies go bust. The longest steel truss bridge in the world towers above us as we consult the directions we got from the internet. We’re looking for the county jail. I feel the evil of The Frattellis coursing through my veins on the infamous steps of the movie. I can only try and imagine how esteemed character actor Robert Davi prepared himself for the rigorous dramatic demands of chasing kids about and singing. I look over at the museum where Mikey’s dad works which is just across the street. Over on 38th street we climb the gravel pathway to Mikey’s house.

I take in the view and try to picture Chunk doing the Truffle Shuffle. Sadly, the elaborate gate mechanism is no longer there. An Israeli flag flutters in the breeze next to its American counterpart. Data’s house is next door. 3 other nerds hang around looking uncertain. ‘Is this the place?’ They look as grimy as us, but in a more affected manner. Yes it is, we say assuredly. Big grins. ‘Been anywhere else?’ I tell them we saw the jail and the museum. They tell us we can get a map from the tourism centre. I wonder whether it might be hidden in a picture frame which we have to smash. We drive there, but I would rather cycle on a small bike for authenticity. Inside, an old man gives us directions to all the places we have already found, like ‘Goonie House’ and ‘Goonie Jail’. I curb the desire to deride his vague titling of the properties. Kindergarten Cop and Short Circuit were also filmed here. We raise our eyebrows. Hidden treasure! The old man asks if we are staying the night. We apply in the negative and start making for the door. The look on his face is impassive, but I sense that we might as well have ‘Just Here For The Movies’ stamped on our heads. On the corner of Leif-Erikson and Main we try to picture the police chasing the Frattellis down the hill.

A grounded boat selling fish and chips stands beneath a tree. The food is delicious. A burnt out old woman shuffles up to the counter. Her order barely makes it past her lips. ‘Just three pieces today then?’ the question is laced with the optimism this woman so desperately needs. She nods slowly. ‘Did you fall down again?’ Another nod. Her hands are gnarled. There is one long fingernail on her right hand. A coke nail maybe. That would explain a lot. But I can’t be sure. ‘You want two cokes with that?’ assumes the waitress with an air of familiarity. The head shakes and a finger hovers precariously over the menu, caught in a crippling mist of indecision. She mumbles until she’s prompted. ‘Two cokes it is’. Her feet drag towards the bow where she waits for her order. We eat at a bench. Seagulls hang around for scraps.

I direct Patch towards Johnny Five’s house. The street doesn’t appear to be on the map. The road just ends before we reach the specified intersection. But I am sure that one of the houses is the right one. I form the image of a sports car being dismantled by a comedy robot. It must be here. I take a long slug of the view and then we move on to the local school and stand where Arnie stood when he ushered the kids outside in Kindergarten Cop. I had not expected us to be the only ones here. It makes me feel like more of a nerd.

The car bounces through the pothole streets and steep turns on the way back down to the highway. We leave Astoria behind and drive eastwards through the verdant landscape, batting ideas for films back and forth. It seems like the right thing to do considering the sets we have visited today. I suggest ‘First Class Whale’ as a title. Patch envisions a pixar adventure of some kind in which a whale fires letters out of his blowhole. He could scoop up letters in his mouth. The villain could be ‘The Net’ which is taking valuable business away from the lovable sea mammal. I suggest that the whale could be voiced by the actor who plays the titular character’s brother in the sitcom ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’. Patch is unconvinced. Not a big enough star. It’s the perfect vehicle for him, I plead; a breakthrough role. Just imagine that voice coming out of the mouth of a lovable blue whale. What child would not be enamoured with that? Patch is still uninterested. He’s out. No funding. How about ‘First Class Snail’? He is a snail postman. It’s already funny before the script is even written. We cross over into Washington and leave Oregon behind. At a roadside refreshment stop with free coffee I find some fascinating artwork scratched into the walls of the toilet cubicle. There is a very specific schedule relating to adult relief. It even has a rudimentary timetable of events and cryptic instructions to ‘brake twice’. I can only assume this is a double red flash of the tail lights to indicate one’s interest to any parties who might be outside waiting for events to proceed. I make a note to myself to brake in one smooth and fluid motion whenever I stop at a darkened rest area anywhere in Washington State. The road takes us over a beautiful bridge past a riverside sawmill back into Oregon. The big steel triangles frame blue water and deep green forest. A freight train rolls by. Patch urges me to roll down the window and bait the driver. I reach out of the window and pull an imaginary chain as hard as I can. Sure enough, a deep and mighty toot rings across the hillsides. We cheer and cheer again when we cross over the train tracks and switch places like slot cars, and Patch pulls the same stunt on the other side and we get the same results. I think of the driver and hope he is laughing to himself like we are as we go our separate ways into the setting sun of another day on the road.

What A Crater Behave

2008-08-01T04:48:00.003Z

I awake feeling as if I have slept like a fairy penguin – for about 40 seconds every four minutes. My legs ache. It was cold last night up at Crater Lake. We read a sign that says the temperature falls below freezing nearly every night of the year at this elevation. The blue water below is so crisp it looks like antifreeze. The Phantom Ship pokes out of the calm surface – a jutting mass of rocky masts that suggest the ascribed moniker. Across the water stands Wizard Rock. It rises 700 feet out of the water, a strange natural pyramid formed by the volcanic activity that sculpted this natural wonder; a volcano imploding upon itself to form a massive crater where water can gather to bring life. Patch has terrible back ache. He turned over in his sleep and pulled some muscles. Far below the other side of the rim the trees spread out in an infinite weave to snow capped mountains at the blanket edges.

Chipmunks sniff inquisitively at the stonework of the lookouts. Boats bob in the sparkling waters beneath. Oregon is a joy to behold. Patch guides the car down the side of the crater nd retraces our steps back to the highway and the freeway to take us north on the 101. The skies turn grey. Speckles of rain dot the windscreen. ESPN chatters from the radio. I doze again. More penguin sleep. Faded wooden pirates dot the roadside. A carved whale holds a mailbox aloft. Wind whips past the driftwood art galleries and general stores of small town Oregon. Patch stops the car for reasons people usually stop cars at desolate roadsides. In the bushes I see a makeshift trail down to the river. The sun breaks for a moment. Bushes flutter over my head. I grab a branch and run it through my fingers. I won’t be back here again. We are into the home stretch now. A truck barrels past so I rush back to the car and we roar away. Patch stops at a general store with delicious freshly-caught-tuna sandwiches and I call the KOA in Waldport to book a site for the night. She wants me to hold. But I cannot. I am on a payphone. And I am on a different payphone at a different general store with different (but equally excellent) home grown fish products the second time I call. She will hold the booking for us so I don’t have to hold anymore. We are checked in and an escort to our pitch is booked. But we can see it from where we are. Having managed thousands of miles on our own, we figure we can make it another 20 yards without shepherding, especially since it is visible from the car park. The tents go up and I hit the showers. It feels good. Two days of road grime gone. I stop by the camp shop and notice an excellent collection of terrible movies on video: such classics as Silent Rage, Iron Eagle I & II and Rocky III but to name a few. There is even some of Lou Diamond Philips’ seminal work on display. But they will not work in the UK. Alas. Whilst cooking I pitch a product idea to Patch: Foil Lid ™. It is a portable device to cover pans that halves uncovered heating time. It is flexible and efficient and not prone to smashing like glass lids when, say, some non-specific lanky half-wit drops them. I want £250,000 against 1/8th of a percent of the business. Patch looks up from the counter. He’s out – ‘foiling my plans for that one’. He goes to bed and I bust my back writing until my eyes and back are sore.

Look In The Trunk

2008-07-31T04:07:00.003Z

I release the handbrake and press down the accelerator. My turn at the wheel today. Yesterday, Patch covered a herculean distance of 280 miles of demanding coastal tarmac on highway 1, averaging a concentration-sapping 33 miles per hour. We leave Eureka and head towards Redwood National Park. Grey skies overhead. We stop at a general store in Arcata near the border. It feels like Oregon already. The heat of the south west coast has all but completely faded. Rural wind and cloud rush through the greenery. We get sandwiches and eat whilst a hobo stalks the car park for a ride. His friend sits against a wall and plays guitar waiting patiently for his friend to get them a break. Whilst I drive, I take photos of the seasoned road grime infecting the interior of the car. I frame a camper van at the roadside with one hand and use the wheel with the other, narrowly avoiding a 70mph collision when my eyes draw my hands towards the stationary vehicle. Idiot. I click the camera off. The Redwoods appear. Patch feels miniature. A juggernaut lumbers past like Tonka toy next to the girth of the mighty trees, some of them as much as two thousand years old. We stop and hug them. The aptly named Big Tree is just that with branches that stand taller than the average tall tree. Ewoks could build a fortress in it. A woman with video camera narrates her footage. ‘This is the Big Tree. It’s called Big Tree because it is big, big, big. Get out of the shot Billy. I’m filming..’ Later we stop suddenly in Klamath to see the gigantic Paul Bunyan statue standing by the roadside.

He tells stories in what I assume is an automated loop. But a little girl is at his feet with her teddy bear in hand craning her neck to look at his big face far above her. ‘Hey, what’s your name? Alice, huh? I’m going to give you a wink.’ Sure enough, one of the large eyelids clunks downwards. He talks to her about 250lb pancakes with one eye closed like some giant wooden stroke victim. ‘Now I’m gonna give you a wave.’ There is an ominous wobbling as the right hand of the huge statue wobbles from one side to the other. The little girl gets distracted and runs back to her parents.

We decide to entertain Bunyan by rolling down the windows and blasting ‘Winds Of Change’ by The Scorpions as loud as we can. I drop the hammer as we wind around the two lane freeways and the shadow grids cast by the trees across the road in the late afternoon. The 99 carries us to Grant’s Pass. Somehow we get into our punning game. This time, the subject is Rap School – where one might study Tech9ology, Shizzics, G-ometry, Diss-tory, Homey Economics and Illosophy. Wal-Mart bargains yield cheap camp food and car cleaner. I nearly buy a Tinkerbell rubber footwell mat for Patch but decide against it. The 5 carries us south to Medford and the 62 takes us north to Crater Lake National Park. We pitch and clean the car. I eat as quickly as I can and we hop into the car so I can career up the road that rings the crater, tyres squealing as ‘Jump’ booms into the setting sun. We barely make it in time to take pictures over the water. Oregon already dazzles us with its beauty. The lake is high up in the caldera of a collapsed volcano. Rainwater has collected over an eon to form a pristine body of crisp blue water. It doesn’t look real. It is as if Mother Nature has photo-shopped her own wondrous creations. The sun escapes so I cruise gently back down the rim stopping at a snw drift to take more pictures. The site is winding down when we return. Patch goes to bed and I do more stargazing before retiring to listen to the cicadas in a peaceful darkness broken only by the distant wheeze of an inflating air bed.

Sans Francisco

2008-07-30T04:03:00.003Z

I awake feel strangely perky. But not as perky as Patch who has already been up for a couple of hours running errands. It is still early. We are just about to head out to the car to set off when the phone rings. It is Nichola. She is sorry she missed me when she left last night. I tell her that’s okay. These things happen in the fog of a heavy night. I thanks her again for her hospitality and tell her to expect the same treatment if she makes it to Bristol. We both cheer and hang up with good wishes for one another. Patch steers the car out towards the Golden Gate bridge. The fog is so think that the towers are almost invisible. It leaks into my head. I feel the hangover creeping up on me. I am exhausted. Yesterday’s exertion takes its toll. Visibility is near-zero from the edges of the coiled roadside and beyond. Nature is forgiving; no visible distractions to torment my fragile nauseous brain with information to be processed. I need only maintain basic bodily functions. I feel melancholy. I close my eyes, scrunch my feet up on the dashboard, wedge my head against the seatbelt and doze in between daydreams. I miss The City already. It is the first place that we have visited in which I could quite happily live. San Francisco has the cultural diversity of New York, the languid pace of San Diego, the heritage of New Orleans and the chic of LA. Something spoke to me from around the corners of the elegant condos and from between the tracks that pull the cable cars in romantic lines around the hilltops. I’m not even sure what was said, but it was something alluring and mysterious, and it was something I have not heard anywhere else. I open one eyelid gingerly. Rocks and white water roll by. I cannot fight the weight of it so I allow it to drop again. Later on, it isn’t so heavy. Buildings rush past. I wake up just in time to notice the sign for a Drive-Thru-Tree. Forest surrounds us. We giggle like idiots and follow the trail.

A massive trunk blocks out the sun, standing head and shoulders above the rest of the canopy. At its root there is a tunnel carved out. SUVs are inching their way through. Their mirrors scrape against the wooden walls. ‘We must be barking mad’ says Patch with a suggestive raise of the eyebrows and a big grin. ‘Well I was rooting for us’. The thoughtful pause that follow so many of these exchanges makes its presence known. ‘Don’t be a sap’. We filter through the trees and shadows and strobing daylight until it fades above the town of Eureka. The tents go up and the food goes down. I type away in the laundry room whilst a small boy rides his bike over speed bumps as fast as he can, throwing himself out of his seat with laughter. The sign on the door says that closure for the day is imminent so I sidle over to another laundry and carry on in there. The screen cuts through the darkness. I jump when a man appears out of nowhere. He’s locking up. I was lucky not to get shut in. My tent is cold. The temperature is dropping again as we claw our way north along the jagged pacific coastline. I sleep with all my clothes on.

Frantastic

2008-07-29T10:34:00.002Z

The breeze pounds against our faces as we pedal out past Crissy Field. Patch is remarkably unhungover. Hi-spec bicycles speed past us. People jog. Dogs bound enthusiastically around heels tugging at their leads. We ascend an entrance ramp and pick our way cautiously through a meandering ribbon of people crowding the footpath. The clouded peak of a Golden Gate Bridge tower hides somewhere high above. Faces of all sorts edge past us. ‘Sebastian’ yells a woman to a man in front of me blocking the path. He stops in his tracks and turns around ‘Oh!’ he yells as I almost hit him, balancing against the railing with my elbow. Towards the far side of the span, the crowds and the air clears as the wind rushes through my hair and the water swirls far below. We freewheel downhill into Sausalito. Expensive wooden houses of blue, red and yellow peek out between the trees from the road and hillsides overlooking Alcatraz and the Oakland Bridge beyond the water.

A beautiful custom chopper thunders past with a deafeningly sweet exhaust note. A woman behind us says it needs a tune up. I am wearing a fleece and a hoodie because the sky was a nasty grey when we poked out heads out of the door this morning. Over here across the bay it is scorching. Such strange weather. Classy restaurants and cafes with water views beckon with alluring chalk boards. Bikes are chained up everywhere. Vintage cars roll past towards the yachts bobbing in the harbour. We go into a shop that has action figures of Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, Jesus and Moses – with removable stone tablets. We eat fantastic sandwiches. On the way back out of town we climb a steep hill. A girl passes us on a smart bike in the full race attire. She is training for a 70 mile event in Tahoe and she is out of shape. She wishes us good luck on our trip and accelerates away. When we clear the bridge the tailwind carries us all the way along the waterfront past boats duelling in the waters near Alcatraz. A beachfront artist installs a large display of themed globes by the cycle path.

We drop our bikes back at the cycle hire shop. I watch a Dutch boy speaking to the hire attendant on behalf of his family. He peers into the restaurant next door and a waitress catches his eye. His father says something to him and he looks flustered responding with only one word: Hooters. Furtive awkward glances are exchanged and the family go back to their negotiations. We queue up for the legendary cable cars. The wait is an hour or so. But we are used to this. Its in our blood. There is entertainment of sorts. I want to call the police when I hear a man murdering a Black Magic Woman with a guitar. ‘Thank you’ he says to no-one in particular. A banjo player takes the next slot. He has hat with a propeller on it. His band is called ‘change!’ which he yells to everyone present. The queue inches forward. A man shuffles onto the tracks where the cable cars are turned around. He wears a strait jacket and chains. If we do not tip, he will follow us home. After 3, we must shout go! He has a minute and a half to get out of his costume before certain doom prevails. He succeeds by the narrowest margin and manages to avoid the crushing fate of a telling-off at the hands of menacing cable car operators. We talk to a Spanish woman who is back here visiting relatives. She moved to Germany years ago but come back often to see family. She says cable operators sound like they’re from New York – a stark contrast to the generally easygoing nature of regular San Franciscans. The operator does not disappoint when we leap aboard and hang off the rails beneath a wrought iron sign on the overhang that says ‘hold on’. He barks instructions at the passengers as we all squeeze together. A huge number of tourists ride the cars every year so his gruffness is a necessity to maintain some sense of order on this wonderfully chaotic means of transport. ‘Watch out for those sides!’ he roars from between the packed benches as he pulls on the levers that clamp to the cable running beneath the road. Suddenly the car jerks into life and we rumble purposefully up steep inclines past coffee shops, the blowing curtains of apartment windows up above and hill walkers scaling the rises.

Not many overweight people here in The City. The bell nearly deafens me as we grind to a halt. ‘Only three at this stop, Only three! Hurry up!’ Another passenger asks if he is from New York. A few people laugh. He stares the offending party down without a word. We drop over a lip and rocket down a steep slope. ‘Watch your right! Pull your backs in! Mind that car!’ I look down to see a Porsche zoom past my feet as I grip the handrail tightly. I grin and stare at the sky. This is a beautiful health and safety nightmare and I love every moment of it. I think of the trams I would so dearly love to see returning to their prominence in my home town. Two kids rocket past on skateboards trying to dodge pedestrians and scooters as they career into the road.

They give us the rock sign and disappear into the throng. This is my favourite American city. At the last stop downtown we all disembark and say thank you to the reticent driver who regards our presence with a nod, his eyes scanning the perimeter of his car as always. Somebody asks him if they can ride the car back the other way. ‘This ain’t Disneyland’ he quips. A tramp sits hard-faced on the sidewalk with sign that said ‘will accept verbal abuse for change’. Don’t be shy, he says. I’m worthless. We stop at Starbucks for coffee and a man plays guitar with sheet music in a booth. Beautiful people huddle around waiting for their orders. Through the window I see a woman hunched on the ground with a burger king cup at her feet amongst a sea of knees. We walk back towards the hotel along Market Street. The fastest clouds I have ever seen rush across the rooftops, blown up to a heightened velocity by winds accelerating through the bay. I take photos of the homeless. A woman grabs me.

Her shirt is torn and her eyes are dead. She babbles incoherently, gripping my sleeve intently. I tell her I cannot understand her and try to pull away but she won’t let go. ‘Get off me!’ She becomes more urgent in her tone, but I still can’t decipher what she says. Patch turns around. ‘Just walk away’ he says firmly. I pull harder and she breaks away becoming silent as if released from a trance. We move on past a busker who is getting the talk-to-the-hand treatment from a commuter as she descends into the underground. Quite calmly, he says ‘You are a dirty white whore’. Two message from Nichola back at the hotel. She hopes I get them. It would be terrible not to meet. I rush to the payphone across the street and call her. We both say hurrah. 7:30 at Puerto Allegre. I click the phone back into its holder and scamper back to the room to get ready. Google tells me the restaurant is half a mile away in The Mission district. Perfect. Gallery standard graffiti decorates the walls and paving slabs of Valencia Ave. Cosy restaurants are door-to-door with retro clothes shops and bohemian bars. Couples of all kinds pass by as we wait outside the restaurant for Nichola to appear. ‘What does she look like’ asks Patch, quite reasonably. I realise I have no idea. I make eye contact with the occasional passer by, but no-one is inquisitive enough. The waitress gives me a ticket and tells me to wait outside with everyone else. I advise her there will be more of us at some point, but she says not to worry. I look longingly at more confused faces on the sidewalk. I see a girl in a yellow waterproof jacket and pinned back hair searching with wide urgent eyes. She sees me and says my name. Success. Her northern twang is a welcome reminder of home. Scott gave her a profile when she realised she didn’t know what I look like so she knew what to look for. Nichola goes to grab a ticket but I tell her I have got one. But it’s for two. The waitress looks exasperated when I ask to change it to ten. She will sort it out if we go for a drink next door. We order drinks and sit by the window for an outside view. Nichola is a teacher. I thought she was a screenwriter. She moved here from Cleethorpes near the grim surrounds of Grimsby a long time ago. She lived with Scott for a while whilst she found her feet, having travelled all over the US before deciding to stay here. Susan arrives. She is a perky Irish girl with blonde hair and a laugh that reaches up from deep inside her. She loves The City. The waitress reaches over the rail and tags. We head into the restaurant. The Nachos disappear as Patch and I start telling our story More faces appear; Su, Kristen, David and Cathy. She has left her kids at home to come out. She used to live in the surrounds of London, but elected to leave and come here because she loves Janis Joplin – the only reason she needed. Her current breastfeeding routine is a topic of conversation. She jokes about making White Russians straight from the barrel, so to speak, right into the glass. We all laugh. Kristen sits next to me. She has wavy blonde hair, bright blue eyes and a relaxed confidence about her. She is a teacher also, from Ohio originally. Her subject is English. She is well travelled having been to most of Europe, The US, Australia and Asia. South America is next on her list. Peru, specifically. The food arrives. I didn’t order anything, but a selection of random dishes pass over my plate so I take bits of everything as wonderful chaos presides. Everyone chatters and laughs and eats and drinks. Morgan arrives and slips in further down the table next to Nichola. Su is discussing Patch’s idea for ‘Bristols’ – the west country Hooters. Drawing her long dark hair behind her ear, she smirks mischievously and suggests it should be called ‘Breastols’. The discussion turns to implants somehow and it is agreed an all-natural policy should be enforced. ‘All Killer, No Filler’ I say. Susan has to go. Work in the morning. Cathy disappears because she has to get back to her kids, and so does Morgan; A boy’s night out already planned takes preference. I talk to David. He’s not local either, although he is American. He's a techie of some kind. San Francisco appeals to him. His job pays the bills and affords him the luxuries of fun. The table gets cleared so we all throw in $20 and the bill is paid. No hassle. Nichola takes us to Beauty Bar. A DJ plays electro. Hairdressing chairs with the beehive dryers dot the walls. A disco ball spins enticingly overhead. Kristen and Susan hit the dance floor almost immediately. And Other Susan can move. She busts out all kinds of wacky action using the décor as props – notably a fan and a telephone. She reminds me of ZooLou. David joins in pulling modelling poses and dancing like a smooth catalogue model. More drinks. More sweat. We take turns in the novelty chairs. Another friend of Scott’s arrives. Word gets around. Jarlath is an Irishmen who goes where the work takes him. Scott used to be a colleague. He works for a small start up company. His two year old son keeps him entertained. We talk for a while but I am drunk and crave dancing.

I excuse myself for more moving drinking and sweating. I do my knuckle dragging dance and get spanked. I flop into a barbers chair. Nichola tells me that Scott is lovely – a big teddy bear. I say that I think he goes all-in when he invests in something. Committed. I look over to the floor and see a man dancing with his pet dog to Paula Abdul’s ‘Straight Up’. People look at him with nary a hint of surprise. My love affair with this city is complete. Sadly it grows late. Patch, Su, Kristen and I are standing outside. Nichola has disappeared. I am sad. I do not want to go. If only we had more time. We make some drunken chatter about going to Peru – as you do when the adrenaline and alcohol are flowing in equal measure before you wake up in the morning and wonder if it might have been a dream because everyone went their separate ways into the night. And what a night; when a lot of people came together for the first time and Tuesday night sparks flew between us in all directions as we laughed and bumped into each other like social atoms in some kind of wacky nightclub particle accelerator. As we walk the deserted streets homeward I hope that those sparks don’t dissipate before I have the chance to record them for posterity. I think it unlikely from results so marvellously interesting.

A Bridge Too Far

2008-07-28T10:20:00.004Z

We rise late. Patch is a little hungover. I was up until the small hours cursing the abysmal internet connection whilst sirens wailed and voices were raised outside the windows. Patch manages to mangle the coffee machine. Again. He is having no luck with it. He pours the sorry-looking mess of brown liquid and saturated sugar packets into the sink. We walk the same route as we did yesterday and the cast of characters are much the same. Commuters use all their experience to completely ignore a man with a Mohawk, piercings, body armour and cape who strides past them with an air of supreme confidence. A man emerges from a dilapidated side door with bare feet and torn clothes. He starts picking things off the streets. Down at the dockside the Alcatraz tour is sold out. It will be until well after we leave. For us, The Rock proves as hard for us to get onto as it was for the inmates to get off. Undeterred, we book a boat tour for later and stomp up to the crooked road. Cars roll down the flowery hairpin turns like pennies in fairground slot runs.

They swing left and right at the bottom, dropping away over the steep lips to disappear down towards the harbour. We follow them to queue up for the boat tour. A man waits to photograph his family in front of the pier sign as we all filter along in his background. The wind is brisk on the top deck. Dramatic naval music booms from the speakers while we sit in dock waiting. Once we are underway, the music gives way to the voice of Captain Nemo. He has retired from commanding The Nautilus. Bay tours are the life for him now, presumably because he is on the run from the Jules Verne Estate. How the mighty fall. On the way out to the Golden Gate windsurfers buzz past the bow showing off their jumps and turns. The tower nearest to The City stretches high above our heads, the top lost in a mass of fog. When the bridge first opened, people gathered from all over town to walk across it before traffic was allowed. The same thing happened on the 50th anniversary. The road closed, San Franciscans gathered in their thousands to repeat the landmark journey. There were so many of them that the arched span completely flattened out when they crossed. Nemo’s helmsperson spins the boat around and takes us back towards Alcatraz. During its 30 year operational period, Alcatraz became the most infamous prison in the American penal system. It was the last stop for the worst of the worst. Officially, no-one escaped The Rock.

One conniving inmate stole a military uniform over the course of a ten year period working in the laundry which handled all the armed forces’ dirty clothing. One day, he calmly walked onto a disembarking ship to escape. But he made it as far as nearby Angel Island before being escorted back to The Rock in chains. Anyone who tried a maritime escape would die from the strong currents or the chilling temperatures of the bay water. A raft attempt was made, but all the occupants were never found. They were presumed dead from exposure. Patch surmises that they may have escaped and that the reputation of the prison was too important for the officials to admit it. I wonder whether he had an advisory role in Michael Bay’s staff for that film which gets worse every time I watch it. I suggest that we could have smuggled a rubber dinghy onboard and inflated it in the toilets to attempt an assault on the island like the Indians who landed on Alcatraz and claimed it as native land under an obscure loophole back in the ‘80’s. He is not convinced. We watch tourists clamouring around the outbuildings shrink as we head back to dry land to inspect another great American legend: Hooters. It is a food and boob outlet which is a masterstroke of marketing genius in that it combines two of the primary necessities of the heterosexual male’s appetite. I munch thoughtfully on my chicken wings as girls in tight vests and hotpants wander past. This place would go down a storm in the UK if it is not doing so already, although I fear our predilection for consuming vast quantities of alcohol in single sittings might warrant some sort of heightened security arrangement. Patch says we could call it ‘Bristol’s’ in homage to the English equivalent slang for Hooters. Afterwards, we nip next door to hire bicycles for 24 hours of two wheeled tomfoolery. Patch rides off around the harbour. I brave the mighty hills downtown and aim for Market Street.

I huff and I puff my way up the inclines telling myself I am Richard Veranque, Robert Millar and Miguel Indurain all in one. I call Nichola from a payphone across the street from the hotel. No answer. I leave a message with the room number. In the hotel room I type frantically and take occasional breaks to smash my fist on the table with frustration because the internet connection is weaker than hotel coffee. Patch returns to watch TV for a while, but he is restless and disappears out again soon after. The hours get sucked away. Patch arrives back just before midnight. He is very drunk, grinning like the cat that got the cream. Gay men love him, he says. He went to the Buck Tavern around the corner. Tim, the barman, was very nice to him. So was Rob who chatted to him when he first went in. Two other guys also struck up conversation – one straight, one not. The latter showed Patch some video on his iPod of two men undressing each other on a workbench. He politely found a distraction when things on screen began to escalate. Another fellow, Adrian, might just be the gayest man he has ever met. Happily, he falls into bed. ‘Sleep, you are going to be my bitch’. The proud announcement has barely left his lips when the content snoring starts. I grin as I turn back to the screen and crack my knuckles.

Frisco is a nasty word

2008-07-27T07:26:00.005Z

Patch flops back into the car seat with his brow furrowed. Apparently the park is closed. Two employees in the roadside snack cabin told him so. Overnight, a fire that has been going on somewhere in the park moved 6 miles in this direction. Evacuation of all campsites was considered. Harbingers of sorrow. I nod ominously at Patch. That explains the eeriness of yesterday’s evening skies. The tents are all packed up, so we can’t go to bed. No option but to give it a try anyway. Otto is at the gate again. He waves us through before we even flash our pass. He must remember us from yesterday. Alright! Patch was sure the fire talk was all lies. Had we been disallowed entry, he would have disclosed his status as the King Of Space. Then we would have gotten through without incident. He would have offered to fly a shuttle upside-down and dump water from the payload bay directly onto the raging inferno, thus ending all troubles and earning us free entry for a year and another space shuttle to add to his collection. The roads are quiet at 7:30am. We are able to reel in Glacier Point quickly, air-guitaring to Journey and The Stones in between corners. Walking out to the point, we hear whooping and hollering from somewhere down below. A hang glider soars out into the sweeping expanse of the valley beyond the plummeting crevice walls. In the silence, the pilot floats away towards the sheared faces opposite, sinking and shrinking into a tiny white dot. We leave Yosemite behind to aim for San Francisco. Part way through the 187 miles we stop at the same Seven Eleven as we did yesterday. The buckets are still empty. No conspiracy. The church is clean. The clouds thicken as the freeway draws us across the vast slab of tarmac that hangs from the mist-shrouded tops of the four massive towers of the Oakland Bridge – which is effectively two suspension bridges joined together by a huge concrete plug that was dropped into the water before construction commenced. It is as impressive as the Golden Gate about which everyone raves. The weather is chilly with the sea breeze. Retro trams of green and yellow haul themselves along cables scored into the road. Cables run above our heads. We follow the map along Market Street to the Travelodge at the junction of Valencia. Dumping our stuff, we hit the streets. It is Sunday.

The sidewalks are dirty. Homeless people dominate again. They are everywhere. Lots of carts. Big groups of them sit on the walls at UN plaza where great quotes on the wall offer no consolation. Characters of all kinds shuffle along talking to themselves. Bare feet. Haggard tracksuits. Open shirts with no buttons. Broken eyes and spirits. Dark faces with dark expressions. Women dressed completely in green. Shop fronts looks battered and tired. Boxes are piled up in the windows. Plants die in them. Electrical service fittings are painted up like mushrooms.

We turn onto Taylor and walk past a man with a thousand yard stare, a grinding toothless jaw and clothing that does nothing more than maintain warmth. A man passes him and says ‘Hey Doug’ without breaking stride. Doug does not react. He just keeps shuffling. We climb the hill past clustered groups that gradually thin out as the gradient steepens. Crackheads can’t climb, says Patch. We turn right and pass a man on a posh street full of high end shops who is praying on his knees, babbling in religious fervour outside the Cartier shop. We pass bronze monkeys on benches and see the arch for Chinatown.

Tourists bustle on the sidewalks. I tightrope walk along the kerb and dodge around meters. An old Chinese man sits on a camping chair and plays a shamisen. We hit a restaurant and eat a fantastic meal. Dragons and lanterns frame the bustling street. A temple shares ground with a Bank of America that looks almost regal. Our feet carry us all over the city. The famous cable cars climb past with people hanging from the bars. We climb hills and see discarded shoes by doors. As the hills get higher so does the class of building. A pair of shoes wait in a doorway for an owner. Period wooden condos watch over quiet pavements. Plush coffee shops with original artwork spill their hip clients onto the sidewalk. The peak of The Pyramid tower is invisible behind a thick boil of watery cloud. Roads fall away either side like the rollercoaster dives. Others climb to a steep point and disappear as if they are a gateway to a faint grey portal. I love this city. We drop over the crest and down towards the harbour where tat shops and restaurants line the roadway. Patch spies a car with ridiculously oversized rims. It looks like a roller skate. We stop at an Irish pub for Magners. I get up and sing at Karaoke and we move on, now well into the evening. Back on the sidewalks we find our way to The Buccaneer – a friendly looking bar fairly well populated for the late hours of a Sunday. We meet Denise and Carol. They are very drunk. Both are in their ‘40s. Carol is a slim long haired blonde and Denise is almost the opposite. Denise does Math for a bank. Not accounting. Tech stuff. Carol goes out to smoke. Denise hates smoking. She has lost friends to lung cancer. She likes marijuana, but she eats it in cakes. Never inhales anything. Have we heard of Elbow? They are huge here in The City. Carol is in marketing. She is divorced. Her brother has found a place for her in New York. She leaves at the end of the month. Are we gay? No. First time we have been asked. They apologise. For what, I say? Are we from London? Carol wants to know if we have heard of Reef. We advise her that we have and that we know SMARTbuddy (see My Copied DVDs…on my sidebar) who is the lead singer’s cousin. She loves The Replacements. Are we from London? Again, no. I get talking to a girl next to me who advises us to cycle over the bridge and go to Sam’s in Sausalito. Denise says goodbye. She has work in the morning. Time rolls on. I am drunk. Patch is getting on famously with Carol. I make my excuses and leave them to it, wandering off into the night, getting the room key off Patch before I go. I find myself back on Taylor amongst some unsavoury characters. Not the place for a tourist. I pull my hood up and stay close to the shadows. I slouch and start limping. It works. Nobody bothers me. People in cars try not to look at me. I take it one step further and mutter to the occasional street dweller, mumbling greetings without stopping. Here I am amongst the no-hopers. Safe. Hiding in plain sight. Misdirecting like my good friend Mr Shazam, but I do not use his magic on cards. I use it on my knees and heels and shoulders and clothes to make a disguise. I get hopelessly lost and drop out of character to flag down a taxi. Patch is back at the hotel already. He too used misdirection for reasons he is not quite sure of. The taxi driver gave him a discount because of his background Mini-cabbing. Patch span an excellent story and told tales of taxi booters and weekend drunks causing trouble. We fall into bed drunk and disorderly in a city of extremes within barely a few blocks. A city of forged identity. A city of structural icons and nasty back street motels with massage parlours just beyond the curtains.