One lucky bastard...

Getting High

2011-09-05T22:35:00.018+01:00

‘Get ready to enter the history books’, the sign reads.

Of all the implausible scenarios regarding the likely source of the fifteen minutes of fame owed to me by life ever since the day I reluctantly accepted that I would become neither rock star nor professional footballer, this has to be the most left field of all: going down in history as the first person to have his lower intestine, bladder and stomach force their way upwards and out into the evening air via my unsuspecting and open mouth was definitely not part of the plan, but this is exactly what appears to be happening to me.

As the world’s fastest elevator rushes me up to the 124^th floor at a speed of 18m/s, my ears pop once, twice, three times in quick succession but my guts stay put, thankfully. In less than a minute, my temporary co-astronauts and I have reached the outside viewing deck of the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai at an altitude of 452m. Although this is the tallest building in the world, my initial feeling is that I have been cheated of 376m, for only residents of the corporate suites and executive penthouses have access to the upper reaches of this architectural behemoth that stands 828m tall. As I step onto the platform, however, I soon realise that there can be no better vantage point from which to survey the first city to have entered the 22^nd century.

For there can be no doubt: this is the future. A dusky silhouette of extraordinary construction shapes and an ever-increasing random pattern of giant fairy lights dazzle as far as my stunned eyes can see in the fading evening light. It is truly breath-taking. Staring at the mesmerising sight before me, I very nearly forget that the building that I am halfway up is more than twice as tall as anything that stands within my field of vision. Incredibly, this city of just over two million inhabitants is home to 25 of the world’s 100 tallest buildings, all but 4 of which were only completed in the last three years. In comparison, the entire United States contribute a mere 22 to the list. Europe? Zero…

With each new addition trumping the aesthetic and structural excesses of the previous sprouting giant, this city has become a battleground for excitable, delusional and quite simply disbelieving architects given a blank cheque book and carte blanche to drop jaws. But whilst most of these spectacular skyscrapers would be considered icons of modern design in any European or North American city, there are a great many more that stand incomplete with empty crane cabins hovering hopefully overhead and alongside unjoined steel, glass and concrete. When the global housing market collapsed in 2008, the slow ripple of recession turned tidal wave in the overenthusiastic Emirati construction market, leading to the foreclosure of many dreams and the halting of many new follies mid-girder.

Nowhere is this more visible than at ground level. Where there ought to be parks, pedestrian walkways and office forecourts neatly filling in the space between the forest-like growth of shopping centres and tower blocks, there is nothing but dusty rubble and abandoned construction equipment. As the metro glides down Sheikh Zayed Freeway on its raised track, the scenery unfurling itself beneath me is more post-apocalyptic industrial wasteland than visionary city of the future. I half expect arab zombies to stumble into view, their rotting dishdashas blowing in the warm wind and revealing flaps of undead flesh tucked neatly inside diamante Gucci sandals...

Spot the zombie...

Up, Up And Away...

2011-06-12T19:52:00.003+01:00

In the wake of the global economic crisis and the ensuing devaluation of many of the world’s leading currencies, many stock market traders and financial speculators are deciding to minimise the risk of depreciation by investing in safe and tangible commodities, with gold or platinum the preferred values. Today however, it is not in precious metal that I am investing my life savings but modest wicker, for the simple reason that is the only material that will be separating me from an almighty splat onto the volcanic landscape of Turkey’s Cappadoccia mountains from an altitude of 1,300m.

It is 5:30am and I am standing in a remote field with a complete group of strangers for the first time since my last year at university. This time however, it is the sound of liquid propane being ignited rather than electronic music that is filling the fresh morning air. Despite the fact that I have only had four and a half hours sleep, I feel as though I have knocked back a dozen Turkish coffees and a petrol tanker of Red Bull and adrenaline is buzzing through my veins: I feel electric. As my oversized shopping basket follows several dozen other hot air balloons into the clear summer skies, the morning sun starts to warm the striking central Anatolian landscape. With each loud whoosh of hot air that is released into the thick canvas of the balloon, my heart both skips and adds a dozen beats: a traveller’s dream is coming true.

The main topic of conversation that can be overheard in the many backpacker bars and cafés of Göreme is whether the 120€ invested in a dawn flight represents decent value for money, with many travellers baulking at a budget-blowing expense that provides a mere sixty minutes of entertainment. But there can be no debate for me: of the many travel dreams I am hoping to fulfil before punching my clock for the very last time, soaring high above the striking geological features of Cappadoccia has long topped my adventure wishlist. That this is now a commonplace activity popular with tour groups of French and German pensioners rather than a white-knuckle ride and ‘real’ travel experience matters not one bit: today my extensive bucket list will see its highest-ranking entry ticked gleefully off the list.

As I jostle for position within my quarter section of the balloon basket with four middle-aged Spanish señoras equally eager to secure the best viewing position, I count no fewer than fifty-five other balloons rising gracefully into the dawn skies. Within ten minutes of being airborne, I have tuned my internal frequency modulator to cancel out the incessant Hispanic yelps of delight that Fernanda and her three excitable companions are exchanging and can finally set about enjoying the astonishing natural beauty of the unique terrain unfolding beneath my eyes and feet.

It was the eruptions of three volcanoes – Erciyes, Hasan and Melendiz Dağlan – a mere thirty million years ago that covered the plateau of Ürgüp in ash and mud, creating the region’s organic raw material: tuff. This soft stone was then easily eroded to create the valleys and gorges for which the region is so famous. Where the tuff mixed with harder rock, however, only the sides gradually disappeared, leaving hundreds of spectacular cone-like chimneys to litter the landscape. Various civilisations subsequently exploited the porous properties of the tuff to excavate numerous cave dwellings, pigeon holes and monastic settlements, many of which still feature perfectly preserved religious frescoes dating back over 800 years.

Four hours of hiking through the canyons, culverts and chimneys on the previous day provided enough photographic material to wear down the shutter release button on my camera to a smooth polish. Seen from the sky today however, I am moved to silence and have to keep reminding myself to digitally immortalise the occasion, particularly as my habitual verbosity appears to have deserted me momentarily.

To my great surprise, and in stark contrast to my only previous aeronautical escapade throwing myself out of an airplane, I find that time has slowed down whilst at altitude, and I can enjoy the sixty minutes in the unhurried serenity that such stunning scenery deserves. Drawing some enthusiastic cooing sounds from his middle-aged flock, our pilot alternates between rapid ascent to our flight ceiling of 1,500m and some adroit manoeuvres within touching distance of the fairy chimney cones. It is a magical experience. For once, the burden of expectation has not been too much to bear and the hopeful dream has become fantastic reality.

Baku To The Future

2011-05-06T22:17:00.013+01:00

‘No, this is illegal in our country, we have to confiscate it. You should not have it.’ I am in deep trouble. How stupid of me, I should have known that I would not be allowed to enter Azerbaijan with a live hand-grenade and a kilo of near-pure Columbian cocaine. What was I thinking? Oh wait, you mean the Armenian souvenir magnet depicting Khor Virap monastery framed by Mount Ararat? Illegal? Of course it is.

But I keep a straight face despite my innocent amusement, for the ongoing conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh is no laughing matter in Azerbaijan. With over 200,000 internationally displaced refugees and several counts of ethnic cleansing and alleged genocide during the past century, to say that neighbourly relations are somewhat strained would be a mild understatement. In all my travels, I have never seen such raw and intense nationalistic dislike as the one felt by Azeris towards Armenia.

The border guard maintains his stern official look and passes the offending item to his superior. ‘It is not true, you know. The mountain is in Turkey, not Armenia. You know this don’t you?’ I nod feebly, bowing my head like the true and guilty criminal that I am.

‘We cannot let you keep it, but we can give you this instead.’ He walks over to a desk and rummages around in the top drawer. Unbelievably, he hands me an Azeri souvenir magnet of Baku and a key holder with the national flag. ‘For your keys’, he continues, seeing the undisguisable look of consternation on my face.

Regaining a modicum of composure in this almost comically surreal situation, I clutch at the only straw left in my diplomatic bale of hay. ‘I know that Mount Ararat is in Turkey, but it is the monastery of Khor Virap that is named on the magnet, not Ararat.’ Silence, followed by a nervous glance towards his commander. Bullseye! ‘You are right, but you do understand that the mountain is in Turkey, don’t you?’ Sensing victory near, I confirm solemnly that we are indeed singing from the same geographical hymn sheet and the item is returned to me, albeit very reluctantly. ‘Have a nice trip, enjoy our country…’, the hitherto silent commander says, in flawless English.

Relations between the three countries of the Caucasus are complex

‘Enjoy our country…’ The commander’s words ring loud and clear in my ears as I realise that wandering hands from a fellow bus passenger have just divested me of £20 of local currency within an hour of arriving in Baku, the Azeri capital. They are still echoing bitterly the following morning as an entrepreneurial urchin grabs some coins from my hand and runs off just as I was about to top up my travel pass at the automated machine. Even with my eternal optimism and unrestrained love of half-full glasses, I am less than enthused by this introduction to my final destination on what had previously been a blemish-free exploration of the Caucasus.

Thus it is that I wander into the Old Town in my new incarnation as a walking wallet, with a face like thunder and a mood to match. These narrow streets may be worthy of the Unesco World Heritage list, but my feelings are as cold as the stones I walk upon. I am immune to the charms of the Palace of the Shirvanshahs and cannot see beyond the railing standing on top of the Maiden’s Tower, despite the jaw-dropping views of the Bay of Baku sweeping before me. This is all wrong, something must be done: it is time for some amateur psychoanalysis.

Thinking hard and clearly, it becomes obvious to me that an unhealthy combination of my uncharacteristic loss of faith in human nature and my post-geocoital longing for Tbilisi have robbed me of more than cold, hard cash: I am suffering from a classic case of travel disillusion and unreasonably high expectations of my new surroundings. This is all the more disconcerting as it is completely out of character; that I am aware of this is adding a large dollop of self-frustration to my bubbling cauldron of seething discontent.

After countless impressive monasteries, quaint old towns and spectacular mountain hikes, just why had I been putting undue pressure on myself and poor defenceless Baku? I had clearly forgotten my very own first rule of travelling: arrive at each destination with a blank canvas and enjoy your new environment for what it has to offer. Having spent more than forty cumulative hours in marshrutkas and avtobuses visiting nine different localities in sixteen days, here I was in a spectacularly unique sun-drenched city with a 4km leafy boulevard by the Caspian Sea. With café after inviting café beckoning me to cosy padded chairs and the travellers’ knots in my body and mind begging to be massaged, why was I looking for different opportunities to the ones already available to me?

There is only one course of action open to me: I sit down at table on the seafront bulvar and order the holy trinity of emergency mood-repair sustenance. With my milky cappuccino despatched to plumb new depths of stomach lining and the sinful honey-drizzled pakhlava following swiftly thereafter, it is left to the ice cold Xirdalan beer to complete the rescue mission. My brain goes into automatic standby and slowly but ever so surely, the clouds start to dissipate.

Calmer than I have felt in what feels like an eternity, I have made my peace with Baku. It has not given me what I wanted, but what I needed: three entire days of rest, relaxation and much needed contemplation. This is in no small part due to the inspirational hospitality extended to me by my Azeri host Ferid, his lovely sister Ayshe and their wonderfully inquisitive grandmother Zamfira (‘You are not married at 36, what is wrong with you?’ or ‘How many rooms does your house have?’). Evenings spent at the local çayxana drinking calming lemon tea whilst discussing world politics and male promiscuity to the soundtrack of clattering backgammon counters and bubbling hookah pipes prove to be the perfect antidote to my natural travel intensity and the best possible way of winding down what has been a phenomenally enjoyable Caucasus adventure.

My rehabilitation complete, I step out of the Metro station on my final full day to discover a brand new city, a Baku that is smiling conspiratorially at me with her arms wide open. I wink back in the noon sunshine and sense that my apology has been accepted. As I look around with fresh eyes and with the clouds of my irrational judgement lifted, I can finally see the real Baku: a fascinatingly progressive city riding the crest of an oil boom wave and embracing its unexpectedly good fortune with unreserved excitement. Perfectly manicured parks and fountains of gleaming white marble greet me on every street corner and avenue; everywhere I look, the glare of new sandstone on recently constructed ministry buildings, theatres and museums dazzles me with blind happiness. My propensity for exaggerated emotional response is soaring to new heights, it is as if I have finally broken free of my own invisible mind shackles.

As I meet Ferid and his friends on my final afternoon, I attempt to convey the near-euphoric intensity of my experience, but they merely think that I have been drinking or am suffering heatstroke. I try to explain the tough love that their city and I have shared, that we have gone through much turmoil but that we have come out of it stronger, together. They simply think that I am crazy, and maybe they have a point. But this emotional psychobabble is precisely why I live to satisfy my wanderlust: to connect emotionally with each country, city, culture that I am fortunate to experience; to feel as though I understand and am a part of it, for but a fleeting moment in time. These wonderfully open and warm Azeris are proud of their city, and rightly so. Tbilisi may have provided the passion and Yerevan the excitement, but it is the hard won mutual understanding and serenity bestowed upon me by Baku that has given me the perfect closure to this great adventure.

There is always a happy ending...

To My Love

2011-04-25T20:53:00.019+01:00

I can deny it no longer, you have to know this: I am in love with you. My heart aches with the all-consuming fire that you are burning inside me. I love you, I really do. I am dizzy with happiness for discovering you, but equally with sadness, as I know I must lose you soon. Hard and true you have hit me, as I have never known before.

Tbilisi, my darling, you have stolen my heart. You must share it, alas, but please do not be jealous. To feel for you as I do for Porto, Cape Town, Melbourne and San Francisco should be testament enough to your beauty, charm and the pure and innocent joy you have given me over the last four days. You are truly wonderful.

It was the grand magnificence of your vibrant pulse, your Rustaveli, which first awoke in me this long-forgotten passion. How Parisian you looked on that first morning, with your elegant streetlights and beautifully blossoming chestnut trees. How reassuring and heart-warming it was to see your world-weary Ladas stutter along your wide boulevards, how unpretentious you were. I strolled so easily with distraction on my mind and peace upon my face. Oh, what a first date you gave me - such promise, such hope, such anticipation for more.

I came to you as a wandering artist with his canvas blank, hoping to find inspiration but expecting grey brushstrokes and dark skies. As I stood atop your mighty vantage point, your fortress, your Narikala, you revealed yourself to me. You showed me your greens and your blues, your yesterdays and your today. You were beautiful, again. Your palaces, your churches, your hills and your life all filled me with a wonder scarcely to be trusted. Up and down your streets I wandered, joyous disbelief coursing through me as I understood what you were doing to me, how you were reaching out to me.

But it was in your old town, my love, in your own heart of history that you truly overpowered my senses, that you broke down my defences. How could I possibly resist you? As you charmed me with your delightful cobbled streets and wooden Ottoman houses, your sultry steam baths and quirky bronze statues, I could feel myself falling under your knowing spell. I tried to resist, for the love that we share does not come easily. But I gave myself to you, there, on the cobbled lanes near your oldest church and the theatre bell tower. Even as the clock struck seven times in the evening sun, and as your folk figurines danced to the gentle lullaby, I knew that I was all yours. And that you were mine, always.

I have to leave you now, my love, but do not be upset; you knew it would be so. Know you are unforgettable to me. You gave me what I sought so ardently but did not expect to find, here or anywhere. For this I thank you, and love you, my Tbilisi.

Hash Running

2011-04-20T09:38:00.014+01:00

‘Have you ever done a hash?’ my host Anne asks me. The indefinite article in her sentence throws me momentarily off guard before I answer with a cautious negative. ‘No?’ she continues in the same casual manner, ‘you should try it, there’s one at 2pm today.’

Thus it is that I find myself forming a loose human circle with an eclectic group of international expats in a litter-strewn car park at the bottom a hill beneath Erebuni Fortress, 6km outside downtown Yerevan in Armenia. A 50 something German engineer with a zeppelin paunch that hints at a casual fondness for beer and bratwurst takes a bottle of Armenian brandy out of his backpack and passes half-filled cups around the circle. The drink is downed with a short song and ceremony and we set off on our run, following a chalk-marked trail prepared earlier today by the local group’s Grand Master. These are my new friends for the day, proud members of the Hash House Harriers, a self-styled ‘worldwide drinking club with a running problem’.

As would befit a social organisation founded by a group of terminally bored British officers in 1938 colonial Malaysia, the concept is endearingly simple: thirty to sixty minutes of strenuous exercise in the form of a cross-country run followed by a few hours group socialising over a beer or three. Troubled governments of the world could do a lot worse than follow the organisation objectives detailed in the 1950 Constitution of the Hash House Harriers:

- To promote physical fitness among our members
- To get rid of weekend hangovers
- To acquire a good thirst and to satisfy it in beer
- To persuade the older members that they are not as old as they feel

Relating directly to the fourth objective, I survey the mountainous course with a mixture of apprehension and brandy-imbued excitement. Although the terrain seems steep, a touch too steep perhaps for an urban office worker with a recently cancelled gym membership, the pace is gentle as the emphasis is firmly on running as a group. Regular checkpoints and false direction markers ensure that pacesetters and backmarkers are frequently reunited in the relaxed and orderly manner of a school orienteering exercise. As we run through cattle and poultry, alongside long-abandoned factories and over the never-ending trail of litter that is sadly such a frequent sight in all former soviet states, I cannot think of a better way to have started this new trip. A glance at my watch tells me that I have only been in Armenia for seven hours.

The run finished, the hashers regroup at the starting point and several car boots are opened to reveal chilled containers filled with ice-cold beers for the adults and soft drinks for the children. A financial contribution is collected from every participant, except for me: as a hash virgin, the brandy and beers are my welcome to the community.

As the drinks are handed out, the Grand Master summons us all into another circle. After a semi-serious critical appraisal of the quality of today’s trail, a number of hash etiquette violations are punished with an enforced slug of brandy in the middle of the circle. Next to me, Axel the German engineer has made the contents of another half litre bottle of local lager vanish, his third in the space of fifteen minutes. From the smile on his face and the spectacular belch that shatters the peace, I suspect that he favours the socialising over the running.

All of a sudden, all eyes are on me as the Grand Master announces the induction of a virgin into the hash community. With a sheepish smile and feigning horror at being handed a full mug of beer, I take my place in the centre of the circle as my new brethren sing me into their bosom. As the last verse begins, I quickly despatch the contents of the mug and turn it upside down on top of my head before the song is finished. I have made it: I am a hasher.

Mine is not the closing ceremony, however. Today is a special day for the Yerevan hash community and for one person in particular. Nathan, an American student with Armenian roots and a recent hash regular has earned the right to be given a hash name. As he steps into the circle, a bag of flour is passed around from which everyone grabs two handfuls. The Grand Master then blows his whistle to announce the beginning of the naming ceremony and lucky Nathan gets pelted with enough flour to turn him into a human baguette.

As the sun starts to set over the hills of Yerevan, the parents amongst our group take their children home whilst we head back into town, to Hash HQ where more beers and chicken kebabs await. In accordance with my own initiation, I am now being addressed by my virgin name of NoNameMarc, but I get the feeling that this may change in the very near future…

Real sportsmen drink brandy before a race...

Snapshot of the scenic route

The finishing line is in sight

Etiquette violations are dealt with very harshly

NoNameNathan becomes Spank Me Daddy

War & Peace

2011-03-09T13:53:00.008Z

The Marks & Spencer shop has an awning that I can hide underneath for a few minutes, not to get dry - all the furnaces of hell would not help my current state of saturation - but simply to shelter myself momentarily from the monsoon that has so rudely usurped the popular reign of this morning's sunshine. It all seems so familiar: on the roads before me, cars are driving on the left; the grey skies and relentless rain above appear all too familiarly British; and back at the hotel, my mobile phone is charging with my normal three-pin plug. Yet this is not the UK that I find myself in, but the Mediterranean island of Malta - temporarily relocated to the North Atlantic, it would seem.

For this is not rain, these are biblical floods. Wading valiantly up and down Valletta's urban rapids without paddle or canoe, my thirst for exploration is being well and truly quenched and my outside chance of participating in the London Olympics has received an unexpected and timely boost - albeit in the as yet unapproved New Umbrella Spoke Inversion discipline. I have to tiptoe around each street corner to ensure that I will not be flushed out of the city and into the sea by one of the veritable torrents that are gushing down the freshly cleansed stone floors. By the time I reach the city gates, I am truly exhausted and my brain struglles to ponder my next move: do I wait for a bus, catch a taxi back to the hotel or simply sit down in a puddle to contemplate an alternative career in water divination.

And yet it seems strangely right that the weather is not what it ought to be, reflecting as it does the quirky personality of this island nation and its 400,000 inhabitants. These are warm people, so very Mediterranean in their customs, cuisine and complexion. They share much with their Italian neighbours, cleverly counterbalancing a suicidal sense of road awareness with profound religious belief as they drive around the 120km of potholed roads like heroin-addicted one-eyed pandas with glaucoma, relying only on a superglued dashboard crucifix and some rosary beads to save them from an early grave. They can rightly lay claim to the fast-track divine intervention they seek, too: with 98% of the population Roman Catholic and the only European constitution to declare divorce illegal, Malta can justly call itself the most devout nation of all.

And yet a strong and undeniably British influence permeates through each and every level of the social structure. Education and entertainment are taken from the most recent colonisers as are business customs, making Malta the most progressive and professionally reliable of the southern European nations. Most importantly of all, however, the bastion of civilization that is daily teatime is served in the only correct way - brewed lovingly in a teapot and served with milk. This is truly a melting pot of civilizations ancient and new, a Mediterranean minestrone of multicultural influences and nothing illustrates this better than the country's national language.

Bearing the unusual distinction of being the only semitic language written in the Latin alphabet, Maltese combines medieval sicilian dialect with a subdued non-guttural variation of arabic to create the most incomprehensible sequence of throat-clearing catarrh that has ever had the pleasure of passing my ears. To compound my confusion and frustration at my sporadic recognition of some phlegm or spit the Maltese enjoy interspersing random English words into their sentences, as witnessed between an elderly couple in the hotel lobby this morning: 'Inti ista 'tħgin bl that big suitcase darling?' 'Of course ħabib, fejn tridu.' How sweet.

'This is the worst weather we have had for a long time', the little old lady next to me informs me helpfully as I take a seat next to her on the #62 bus. Sitting in its warm confines, I assess the damage. With my canvas shoes waterlogged, jeans saturated to the knees, and the marrow inside my tarsals and metatarsals soggier than a tea-dunked biscuit, I would push the King of Drowned Rats to abdicate in my favour. I feel miserable, this is not how this business trip to Malta was supposed to be. I want my company's money back. Ahem.

It has drizzled, it has rained and it has also poured on me today, and yet my intuition tells me that my trial by inundation is not yet over. I am not mistaken. At the bottom of a hill, the Msida marina roundabout has flooded and is under a foot and a half of water. the bus aquaplanes briefly, slows to a crawl, or possible breaststroke, and finally stops. Through the glass, we can see that the water is a good twelve inches above the level of the doors and I have to convince myself that the shadow that just rushed past was a traffic cone and not the dorsal fin of a tiger shark. The situation is mildy amusing rather than concerning, for now. Then, as so often occurs in this great amusement arcade of life, the inexplicable happens.

Possibly smarting from a humiliating defeat by his youngest son at Monopoly or being 2011's first Maltese victim of an elaborate Nigerian banking scam, the bus driver decides to share his misery with me and my motley bunch of co-passengers - by opening the front doors. Three seconds of both muted and deafening silence precede the most expansively multilingual volley of expletives ever loosed on this or any other Mediterranean isle. If I had only been able to commit to paper this inspirationally creative parade of crude invectives, I would now be able to swear in at least three dozen new languages. I look artound hopefully to see if any of my fellow passengers have shopped for tar and feathers, but it seems as though the driver will be fortunate on this occasion. Grocery bags, souvenirs and feet are hurriedly lifted into mid-air as a miniature tsunami is unleashed within the bus. All but sealing his candidacy for an instant lobotomy, the driver then closes the doors and drives off again, leaving our custom-made paddling pool to alternate between front and back sections of the bus. I am tempted to allow the sweet old lady sitting next to me to get up and speak to the driver, as she seems keen to do. But her grip on my arm is a steel vice and she is foaming at the mouth. In the interest of humanity and the driver's family, I pacify her with a gentle hush and gently encourage her back into the seat.

Returning to my hotel in this mobile washing machine, I half expect to see pairs of animals escaped from our 21st century ark follow me into the elevator. But I am alone, and it is alone that I spend my first evening in Malta, sitting on the bathroom toilet seat with the soothing sounds of the hotel hairdryer attempting to dry my only shoes and jeans - fibre by sodden fibre.

Having failed miserably in my exploration of the country's current capital, I decide to seek touristic atonement by visiting the fortified city of Mdina, former capital of Malta before the arrival of the Knights of St. John who decided to use the natural harbour around Valletta as their strategic headquarters.

A hush. I notice it immediately, it is that obvious: the Silent City, as Mdina is known, truly deserves its moniker. It is as though the high sandstone walls are absorbing every sound as soon as it is emitted; footsteps are muffled and even the conversations of loud Italian tourists are reduced to conspiratorial whispers. With no public advertising, non-existent litter and fewer cars than cats, this city is a living embodiment of urban feng shui perfection: neatly handwritten ceramic street signs welcome visitors into another beautiful narrow medieval alleyway; a soothing orange glow emanates from evenly-spaced wall lanterns; well-tended hanging flower baskets adding an intermittent splash of colour. It is beautiful.

And the walls have absorbed me, too, as I find myself connecting with Mdina in a way that I have rarely done on my travels. The solitude, the silence, the serenity - three factors combined that make me feel strangely at peace in this elegant former capital city. This state of mind may have been overdue and waiting for me wherever I happened to be, but given the emotional turmoil of the last few weeks and the breakneck intensity at which I lead my life, this unexpected tranquility is more than welcome and I gratefully embrace it.

Peace

Wanting to make the most of this heightened sense of mental clarity and relaxation, I wander aimlessly and repetitively around the dozen or so streets that make up this historical enclave. I pause every so often to marvel appreciatively at the harmonious contrast of the magnificent ochre walls against a backdrop of pure azure skies and truly feel as though I am the only creature alive. After a few more minutes walk, and when the moment is just right, I enter Bacchus, a wine cellar I had spotted with growing interest on successive grid walks. Inside, I am the only customer in a lavishly decorated medieval wine cellar. A comfortable armchair beckons me over invitingly from next to a warm fireplace and a beautiful old bookcase. There is no music playing and the manager is busying himself with the reservations folder. With my glass of red wine and 700 years of history to keep me company, I write these words feeling calmer than I have done in a long time. I have a corner to turn.

Fringe Benefits

2011-01-09T14:23:00.011Z

I am a millionaire, finally. At least this is what the on-screen balance of the cash machine is telling me. I have to scan slowly from left to right in order to read and understand the vast sum of money that appears to be at my disposal, and then my mind takes off: the cars, the planes, the yachts - all shall be mine! But my reverie is as fleeting as my wealth is relative: these are Belarusian roubles that are being offered to me, not the Great British Pound.

Buckling under the intense pressure behind me from a heavy-breathing matryoshka with a fearsomely rugged complexion and hands like rusty shovels, I hurriedly attack the keypad and request the princely sum of 50,000 BLR. Instantly, the six lone mathematical neurons slumbering peacefully in the darkest recess of my brain whirr into frantic action in excited anticipation of five days' usage of the 4,450 multiplication table. I walk away with a grand total of £12.70 in local currency and the dubious record of the highest percentage value of bank charges paid for money withdrawn. Later that evening, as I am handed a 10 BLR note with my change and my net worth increases by £0.002/€0.0025/$0.003, it is clear that - for the moment - my financial aspirations are to remain as grounded as the British Airways fleet after a light snowfall.

Mildly amused by my mathematical idiocy, I pause to take stock of the situation: it is 7 o' clock in the evening of my 36th birthday , the thermometer outside is registering a cool fourteen degrees below zero and I am standing all by myself at Moskovsky Bus Station in Minsk, Belarus. Life is good. I am attracting more than a few glances from the local populace, possibly wondering like so many back home what it is exactly that I am doing here. The 'pretentious prick'* in me would no doubt seek to expansively describe a lifelong interest in communist sociology and reveal acute and sincere concern for the plight of the endangered European bison native to the plains of southern Belarus. The simple truth is that I am here because I have not been here before. In my quest to visit every single country on this wondrous planet, today and for the next four days it is Belarus' turn to be put to the sword of my global conquest.

The preparation for this trip was uncharacteristically straightforward, for Belarus is not a land endowed with touristic riches. A cursory internet search yielded very little of sightseeing interest beyond the obligatory churches and two vast national parks. Even the Lonely Planet, global barometer of genuine travelworthiness, spares it a mere 27 pages in its Eastern Europe travel guide, whilst East Timor, Bhutan and Antarctica each merit their own book despite their combined human and penguin populations being barely one fifth of that of Belarus.

A promising brochure obtained at the Embassy of Belarus in London provides more entertainment than enlightenment thanks to some rich vocabulary and syntax assembled economically using Google Translate. Page headers such as 'Adventure Foretaste and Movement Excitement', 'In Reflection of Profane Rites and Christian Wisdom' and 'Listening to the Steps of History' do more to excite my lust for restaurant menu mistranslations than wonders of architecture and natural beauty. Nor are my taste buds salivating with anticipation as I am informed that '... the Belarusians love beans. Boiled beans with garlic and linseed oil are a traditional Belarusian dish.' or that I might get to drink '... kvass made from birch juice, sometimes bread crusts are added for extra taste.' Licking my lips I am not...

If Belarus does not actively promote tourism, neither does it encourage it. At a prohibitive £75 for a single entry visa and with the cheapest direct flight from London costing a painful £250, one really has to want to visit the country, and make a concerted effort to get there. Thankfully I do, so I have. My reward is a trip to another outpost of the former Soviet Union that so fascinates me, a magnificent and vastly underrated architectural cityscape and an intriguing current geopolitical context.

Guided as faithfully as ever by the gods of civil unrest, I find that the timing of my visit has again coincided with local electoral discord**. President Alexander Lukashenko has been in power since 1994, Chavezing the law along the way to allow himself indefinite terms of office. Having 'allowed' rival candidates unprecedented access to the media and general public in the run-up to the general election last week, he then proceeded to have them all arrested and thrown into prison the day after he was returned to power with more than 80% of the vote. Upon declaring the voting process irregular and therefore condemning Lukashenko's bid for $5bn of EU aid to failure, the independent organisation responsible for supervising the vote found that its offices had been cleared out and closed when they tried to go to work the following day. Welcome to the USSR...

For now though, it is only the urban youth that looks to the west. They do not do so for a different way of life but simple democracy and freedom of speech. The older generations see no need to risk upsetting the apple-cart: if it ain't broke, why fix it? Unemployment is minimal, every house has electricity and hot water and there is enough food to feed almost everyone. That the factories are producing goods that are simply piling up, unused and unwanted, is irrelevant. The communist model is visibly working on such a small market.

Scratch the surface a little, however, and the foundations for the future do not appear so solid. Belarus' main export and source of revenue is the resale to the West of Russian gas bought at rock-bottom prices. The ideological price of this arrangement is political and social alignment with Moscow rather than the EU. And yet... These are not Zils or Volgas tearing down Independence Avenue, they are gleaming new Minis, Renaults and Fiats. The streets of Minsk are bright with the neon signs of countless cappuccino bars or sushi diners. To my infinite horror, that satan spawn of peasant footwear - the UGG boot - can even be seen warming the ankles of every Elena, Olga or Tatiana. How long will communism and Russia keep its iron grip? Half a generation would be my guess, although the transition may be precipitated should the gas tap be turned off.

I am discussing the fall-out from the elections on a bus heading into the centre of Minsk with my host Dmitry, but my concentration is wavering and my attention distracted. I have just been reminded of one of the principal reasons I am enjoying Belarus and why I am such a russophile. I cannot stop a huge smile spreading from ear to ear as I realise that I am not here to make a political study of this satellite soviet state and paragon of communist conformity, however fascinating it may be. My real field of interest lies elsewhere, in the inhabitants themselves or more specifically the back of their necks and the wonderful and highly unfashionable hair overgrowth that gently rests there.

As creatively avant-garde in this field as the Balkans and Eastern Europe may be, no-one quite does mullets like the soviets. Curly or straight, mid-length or cropped, evenly trimmed or wildly overgrown, I have never seen so many mullets in my entire life, they are everywhere. On this packed bus, I do not know where to look, so rich and varied are the styles. I am swimming in a sea of Billy Ray Cyrus lookalikes. To my right, so close to me, is a man whose head is completely shaved but for as layered fringe lightly draped over his shirt collar. Words can do him no justice and his rich contribution to the global mullet scene will remain alive in my mind only.

Meet the Mullets

The credit or blame for this wave of bad taste can be lain squarely on the shoulders - literally - of one man: Dima Bilan. Thanks to this pop star and supermodel, soviet coiffure has not looked back (unfortunately) since the day he burst onto the Russian television scene by finishing second in the Eurovision song contest with an overgrown blow-dried rat's tail hanging limply from the back of his neck . From St. Petersburg to Vladivostok and across 9 different time zones, the rise and rise of Bilan has doomed a nation's already suspect sense of sartorial elegance and signalled the closure of hundreds of barber shops and hairdressers across the realm. It is not only men that have adopted the style: women, children, unlucky pets and even shop window mannequins sport the look that has just made my day, week, month and even year. I am about to discover new cheek muscles and my sides will need restapling after this trip is over. I am truly getting the 'Adventure Foretaste and Movement Excitement' I was promised...

Dima Bilan - giving bad taste a name

Mullet Still Life

* Copyright Mrs Sue Knoll (1974 - present day) - may also be referred to as a familial term of endearment
** See also 'Moldova, Violent Uprisings In (2009)' or 'Ukraine, Student Demonstrations of (2008)'

Things I Would Change If I Were Mayor Of London - Rant #1

2010-07-30T10:40:00.005+01:00

RELAX UNITED KINGDOM GUN AND HUNTING LAWS

As undoubtedly vital and valued as every single cent, peso and pence relinquished by visiting tourists may be, the rehabilitation of our fragile economy must not come at the expense of Londoners' rising blood pressure. An ambitious programme of visitor extermination is to be implemented in order to facilitate the legal culling of irritating tourists in a humane and non-discriminatory manner.

To this end, a small percentage of each Londoner's council tax contributions is to be funnelled into a small arms & weaponry fund that shall furnish every resident with a big game hunting rifle, a temporary shooting permit incorporating extradition immunity and two rounds of ammunition for every year lived in the capital city. London Underground Zone 1 shall henceforth be known as The Reserve and acceptable grounds for reducing visitor headcount include the following:

- Ignoring 'Keep Right' signs on any London Underground escalator during rush hour. It is called 'rush hour' for a reason. No excuse. No mercy. BLAM!
- Sudden halts whilst walking in areas of high pedestrian congestion, resulting in unsolicited mutual introduction of my nose and tourist backpack. Making me look stupid = not good. BLAM!
- Clapping, cheering, donating money and any other form of encouragement afforded to street performers of any type. Living statues are below protozoa and immediately above amoeba in the natural order of things. BLAM!

In order to deter aggressive xenophobic behaviour, no more than 2 (two) specimens of any one nationality may be culled by the same Londoner during open season.*

* With the exception of Saturday mornings on Portobello Road, where a fire-at-will policy operates on Italian nationals.

One Down, One To Go

2010-06-26T18:44:00.006+01:00

Two distinctive races of people now populate this strange little universe I find myself in. There are the 'Still In' people and the 'Knocked Out' people. One by one, the 'Still In' people lose their identity and transform with brutal rapidity into 'Knocked Out' people until there is one lonely but happy 'Still In' person left. The transformation is irreversible and recognisable characteristics of the newborn 'Knocked Out' are the immediate acquisition of a one thousand yard stare and the loss of the jaunty sunshine-filled early morning skip so familiar to the 'Still In' populace.

Tonight, on this fateful tail-end day of June, one disconsolate half of me has made the unwelcome and permanent transition from 'Still In' to 'Knocked Out'. I stared one thousand yards and sighed one thousand more. I commiserated with my fellow sufferers and we immediately laughed, cried and denied the finality of the moment. But the truth is that it matters not one bit. After the initial contributions from rival supporters consolingly questioning the virtues of fate, chance and crap defending, I am despatched to the great mulching compost heap of loserdom.

To my great and almost certainly temporary relief, however, and in what can only be regarded as a great testament to my respected father's remarkable chatting-up skills, I have still got one other iron in the fire. Indeed, as I must lay to rest the ghost of the impotence of the Swiss national strike force (but not my father's, thankfully), I gleefully clutch at the straw gifted to me by the English rose that brought me into this world.

My stare disappears, replaced by a new flame of hope and anticipation. I am 'Still In'. As I look around me in disdain, I no longer recognise this forlorn rabble that I embraced in despair not a moment ago. Confident and determined is my stride as I depart, hurrying back to base in order to banish my Swiss jersey to the suitcase and indeterminate exile. As the red shirt disappears, failure in its every weave, so the white one emerges: hic sunt leoni - here be lions!

The odds are not in my favour - I must admit - and I cannot help but envy my fellow dual citizenship football prostitutes that have both Spanish and Brazilian passports enjoying a cosy siesta in the top drawer of their bedside table. But I must take what I was given, and do so with pride.

Come on England!

The Greatest Show On Earth

2010-06-23T00:24:00.008+01:00

It is 00:30am and I am proudly congratulating myself for my superbly mature but completely out of character decision to have an early night: at the wise old age of 35, two nights out in a row present the same challenge as the construction of seven medium-sized pyramids in one working week without overtime. I am just nearing the point when Long Street ends and Kloof Street begins - the official border between Cape Town city centre and the immediate suburbs – when a car pulls over rather abruptly with its stereo set to maximum aural annihilation.

The occupants of this nightclub on wheels do not so much exit as shimmy, boogie and mambo their way out of the vehicle. The driver closes the door, lifts his left leg onto the bonnet and climbs onto the roof of the vehicle, where he is quickly joined by his two passenger-cum-backing dancers. I stop, mesmerised by the spectacle. The car is shaking from side to side. I hesitate for thirty seconds, then the me of old takes over and I walk over to the car. No questions asked, none required and I hop onto the bonnet to strut my stuff. The roof is too busy – alas – but I have my own private dance piste on the front of the car. Rock and roll – literally.

Another car pulls over in front of us and four Portuguese fans – whose team is playing in town tomorrow – get out and quickly join the party surrounding our motorised fiesta. One guy motions to me to help him up and suddenly it is Toyota Night Fever. There are now no fewer than thirty people immediately around the car and a good fifty more watching the show from both sides of the road.

An unexpected and unsolicited siren brings a momentary halt to this free-flowing carnival atmosphere and a police car pulls alongside, blue lights flashing. ‘Howzit guys?’ asks the officer through his open window. ‘Cool man, says John Travolta on the roof, Loving the World Cup man.’ ‘Alright brothers, enjoy yourselves and stay safe’ replies the policeman before driving off without a second glance in our direction.

This is the World Cup and this is why I do this every four years. For one normally so prone to ridiculous hyperbole, I am truly struggling to accurately describe this innocent bubble-world euphoria that I am experiencing with every other visiting football fan.

Every single bar in every single street of this beautiful city is packed to the rafters with good-natured football lovers revelling in the insane and intense appreciation that they are simply… here. The streets are exploding with life, sheer unbridled enthusiasm bouncing around like a million rubber balls, people draped in flags, faces painted with national colours and everyone rejoicing in this fantastic festival feeling. Even supporters of losing teams are consoled by this overwhelming and infectious joie de vivre. A beer shared between victor and vanquished resigns the final score to the immediate past and nearly removes both furrow and frown.

One unexpected but wholesomely relished bonus within the suspended reality of this parallel dimension is my rocket-like propulsion from furious fashion nihilist to sartorial svengali. For four short weeks every two years, I can renounce my part-time Unicef rice sack modelling position and walk proud and small amongst my fellow sporting style antagonists. The stadium concourse and Irish pub are my catwalk and shop window and I can even leave the laces of my smelly Converse shoes out in open view without any vestimental recrimination. No-one cares. Here, it is t-shirts and backpack patches from previous tournaments that are the Armani and Gucci of my footballing brethren.

And if there is one single area where I have earned my stripes, this is it. For all its holes and faded pantone fibres, my World Cup 2002 t-shirt still covets insane religious fervour and attention, my very own shroud of Juventus Turin. As displayed by the disbelieving reaction of a young Mexican supporter this afternoon. ‘Were you in… ?’ but he dares not finish the question. ‘Yes son, I am a veteran of the Korea 2002 campaign. It was tough, but I made many friends’

World Cup Telegramme

2010-06-20T18:12:00.015+01:00

Eight hours sleep on the plane. Good start. Luggage fourth onto conveyor belt. Man waiting at arrivals with sign ‘Jean-Marc Knoll – Welcome to Cape Town’. Nice touch. Withdraw match tickets in thirty seconds from machine. Too easy. Buy cheap 1980s-Casio-watch-lookalike telephone for under £10. Ask for demonstration to make sure is not toy. Works. Very surprised.

Found in a time capsule, carbon dating estimate: 45BC

'Is this love, is this love, is this love, is this love that I'm feeling?' radio questions. This is love. Feels great already. First sighting of Table Mountain on journey into town. Big and flat, like a mountain and a table. Weather perfect for southern hemisphere winter: clear blue skies, 16c degrees. Arrive at temporary home for ten days. Meet neighbours - two black cats. Name cats Frank and Roger. Roger not impressed. Tell him to choose between Roger and Blacky. No more complaints from Roger.

Roger did not appreciate having his self-appreciation seminar rudely interrupted by the paparazzi

Go to pub to watch Holland vs Japan. Wearing Denmark shirt. Ridiculed by all Dutch fans for Denmark defeat to Holland. Say am English. Ridiculed for draws versus USA and Algeria. Say am Swiss. No redemption as not taken seriously. Start World Cup diet with beer and pizza. Feel need for variety, so move to another bar for second game. Drink beer. Go to pool hall after game. Win decider with double kiss on black. Good day all round. Testosterone overdose after burger, pizza ,beer, pool and two matches of football in same day. Tell body to toughen up, thirteen days to go. Go to Irish pub for evening game. Denmark win evening game. Still wearing Denmark shirt. Popularity goes through roof. Everyone high-fiving me. Unusual but pleasant feeling of supporting winning team. Cover blown when approached by Danish fans and unable to instantly become fluent in Danish. Stutter and mumble that am erm English and Swiss. Crowds part before me like Red Sea. Alone again. Dance on balcony of bar overlooking Long Street. Meet four Chilean fans. Learn Chilean song. Chi-Chi-Chi! Le-Le-Le! Chile! Chile! Chile! Fabulous. Teach Chileans Swiss song. Group hugs, high-fives and all-round mutual appreciation. Rodrigo, Rodolfo, or Roberto buys round of sambucas to celebrate. Return favour.

Chi-Chi-Chi! Le-Le-Le! Chile! Chile! Chile!

Legs out of control in dance frenzy. Approached by three well-rounded Xhosa girls and told cannot dance. Offer to teach me. Follow instructions and wave arms from side to side in air with butt moving in countermotion. Told am lost cause after thirty seconds. Atmosphere electric. Car horns blaring, vuvuzelas blaring. Flags of all nations everywhere, on trees, cars, windows, lampposts. Meet fans from Spain, Poland, Chile, Denmark, France, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Portugal, USA. Find vuvuzela. Moment of trepidation as love/hate decision will make/break holiday. LOVE it. Makes me sound tuneful. Mental note to take vuvuzela to next mailout meeting at work to liven up atmosphere. Walk home. Huge smile on face. Thirteen days of this life remaining. Open door to motorhome. Nearly pass out from old sock fumes. Eat salt and vinegar popcorn and Twix before bed in final insult to body. Instant sleep. Win World Cup in dreams. Happy.

Home away from home

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow...

2010-01-17T21:23:00.010Z

PLING

I wince and look down at the damp bath towel in my hands to see it shimmering weakly in the artificial bathroom light, this golden hair of mine. Another departed friend, gone, never to return.

Although I am still several months shy of being mistaken for an abandoned ostrich egg, the increasingly frequent and furtive upward glances at my hairline from shopkeeper, colleague, bus conductor, parent or girlfriend speak encyclopaedic volumes that can no longer be kept closed: I am going bald.

Those university photographs that once provoked mirth shall elicit only sighs as I wistfully remember the post-shower brushing ritual of my heavy metal mane. One hundred and seven full strokes of the large-toothed comb. No more, no less.

Such attention is no longer necessary, of course. Where only recently a crude dollop of hair wax was casually messed into my bountiful scalp to create a look of dazzling intensity, I must now tackle each morning's grooming parade with the grim severity of a drill instructor addressing raw recruits. 'You at the back, stand up straight! Front right, get down, down, I SAID DOWN!'.

Like an amateur topiarist on crystal meth, I no longer have any influence over the final outcome of my daily hairstyling but have instead learnt to enjoy the variety of disguises that are randomly assigned to me by my dissident and dwindling locks. Today's Adolf Hitler side parting will give way to the Donald Trump combover tomorrow, with many more tasteful variations available.

Yesterday

Tomorrow

But all hope is not yet gone. I have lost glasses in the past, iPods, wallets, keys and cameras - and many have returned! So why not my hair? Deep down, in the recess of my mind, where leprechauns adroitly jump their unicorns over the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, I still hope and believe. Maybe one rainy day in my late fifties, as I trip over a wooden beam in my attic whilst searching for my old Commodore 64, I will chance upon a padlocked jewellery box covered in dust, mould and cobwebs. As the lock reveals itself to be open, I open the lid slowly to discover...

Enough.

Rainbow Daze

2009-09-03T21:21:00.024+01:00

'No nay, no no,' said the White Rabbit, 'don't drink the potion! It will make you shrink in size. Follow me, hee hee, follow me this way, it's much more fun. Let me take you to this amazing place, follow me. Follow me!'

Alice hesitated, but quickly gave in and followed the White Rabbit down the tunnel, swayed by his enthusiasm and curious for discovery. 'What can there be? What will I see?' she asked herself, fidgeting with excitement.

Running as fast as her new school shoes would allow her, she pursued him desperately, but he hopped and he skipped very fast indeed, too fast for poor Alice. Before she could call out for him to slow down, he disappeared out of sight. There was very little light in the tunnel, and although not cold, Alice felt a slight shiver run up her spine. Wishing she had taken the potion after all, she reached into her dress pockets to warm her hands and... WHOOSH!

When Alice woke up, of the White Rabbit there was no sign, although she did not notice this, so surprised was she by the sight that greeted her eyes. She was in a city, that much was obvious, but the kind of city Alice had never been to before, or even seen, or heard of. Everywhere, a riot of colours, geometric patterns, whirls and whorls of all shapes and sizes overwhelmed her confused sense of sight. 'What a crazy place this is!' she thought.

Every building she looked at (and she looked at many) was painted a different shade of pink or orange or green or blue or yellow or red or any wonderful combination of primary and secondary colours. Here and there, two-dimensional coloured cubes bounced gayly in the midday sun. The whole place radiated warmth and energy, where none there ought to have been, so desolate and poor was this part of the world.

'What is this place, where am I?' Alice asked herself.

Welcome to Tirana, Albania:

Emerging in 1999 after 45 years of grim communist isolation, the good citizens of the Albanian capital must have shared Alice's confusion as they struggled to come to terms with their new and surreal environment and relative freedom. Finding themselves staring into the dazzling headlights of democracy like a wheelchair-bound deer with two flat tyres, they promptly elected a charismatic former national basketballer with a diploma in fine arts from a prestigious Paris school as their new mayor. As one does.

Within weeks of being elected, 6'7"/1m97 Edi Rama had slam-dunked the ultimate cosmetic make-over in a wave of instant change that rapidly swept over his city. Pothole-ravaged streets were repaved and derelict buildings bulldozed; the environment regained an urban footing as 4,000 trees were planted along the central avenues; but most visibly of all, the majority of Tirana's architectural drabness was dramatically transformed by an army of painters on a psychedelic mission to create an ocean of colour on the world's largest blank canvas.

No other vassal of the former Soviet Union had undergone such a radical and sudden political, structural and psychological change since the collapse of Stalin's totalitarian ideology. Yet all this was unknown to the western world, or at least to me. Rama even achieved the incredible feat of being voted World Mayor of the Year in 2004 and one of Time Magazine's Heroes of 2005.

This being Albania, Rama has already survived two attempts on his life since his election 10 years ago, and his most vocal opponent has vowed to repaint the city in lustrous shades of grey if or when he is invited to power. Still running the city, today's mayor of Tirana is currently campaigning to become the country's Socialist Party leader and is a strong contender for Prime Minister in this year's elections. Europe's 2nd poorest country and its 40% unemployed populace can dream of better times ahead.

But this is not about politics, progress or even hope. I feel like the Cheshire Cat in Wonderland, so wide is my grin, so unexpected is this heart-warming kaleidoscope skyline. This is the purest form of satisfaction that travel can offer: the powerful surprise of discovery that surpasses even the most breathtaking beauty.

That my last evening in this architectural crack alley is spent in a 16-floor high revolving bar that draws my gaze over the crazy stripes and pastel hues for one last time at sunset - and in the company of some equally appreciative travellers - is fitting. It truly is.

Of Alice there is no sign however, maybe she has fallen down one of the few remaining potholes after one too many shots of raki...

Different Strokes

2009-09-01T21:46:00.004+01:00

'I believe in a purer form of love, where sincerity of sentiment transcends all aesthetic beauty to create an overwhelming rush of blind understanding', my next-table-neighbour announces cheerily to his fellow diner, before delicately popping a rosy sliver of entrecôte au poivre into his eloquent mouth. Only some supreme in extremis control over my oesophagus prevents me from projecting a minor mountain range of deliciously buttery mashed potato onto the partition wall in surprise at this casual conversation opener. 'YOU WOT?', my mind screams.

Meeting this statement with a look of bored insouciance that betrays his nationality, his compagnon takes a slow, measured and savoured sip of his verre de rouge and remains silent. They can be no older than 20.

I am confused. These are multi-syllabled words being spoken here. Where are the Texa Fried Chicken drumsticks and cans of Tennents Super? What is this love that is being mentioned? Love is Tracy on Monday and Jenny on Tuesday and whatever her name was on Wednesday, who cares anyway?

All of a sudden, I remember that I am in France, and that these people are French. They think. Actually, they think. And they do it very well.

Even as I accept, understand and adjust to my new surroundings, I can feel the inevitable change come over me. I am becoming more introspective with every passing minute, as I always do when I find myself sitting alone at a Parisian bistrot with a glass of red wine within lazy reach. France does this to me: it rekindles a fire that has no right to burn in me.

Eight years of French schooling and a lifelong proximity to all things gallic have made me as close as one can come to being French without routinely pan-frying amphibians and perfecting the complex art of subtle retreat. Until the age of 12, I read the same comics, watched the same cartoons and stole the same 1980s additive-ridden sweets as any Thibaut, Luc or Guillaume from Brest to Biarritz. I know the French, I know them very well and feel myself inexorably drawn to their smooth and cultured ways whenever I set foot on Gaul.

And here I am again, in fair Gaul. Having left the safe haven of Queenie's noble shores, it is not long before vague after vague of existential questions batter my uncouth saxon morality: Am I a good person? Will I ever see the bigger picture? What legacy will I leave to this planet? And more importantly, did I really need that last profiterole?

I love France for doing this to me, for challenging the very core of my system of belief and how I function. I willingly give in to my masochistic urges and strip myself bare: here I am, the real moi. I can look at myself in a way I could not even imagine possible from the safety of my comfortable middle-class life in leafy South West London. I am.

But just then, as I prepare to hang my soul out to dry on the clothes line of purgatory, I am yanked back into the realm of reality and saved from certain think-too-much doom by a fortuitous glance at my briefcase. All thoughts of complicated self-improvement vanish in a genial flash as I see the beacon masthead of the Daily Mail smile at me in all its glory.

What truly matters in my life is not here, it is not introspection or even understanding. There are more important things in life than morality and humanity: it is transfer deadline day in the Premier League and the Villa were about to sign a central defender. There is nowt more existential than a change to your playing formation two weeks before the local derby.

I lean back into my chair and relax, gradually fading out the dull sounds of silent debate to my right. My life status improves from good to perfect as I turn to the games page and realise that I still have two Sudoku puzzles to solve.

Bliss...

Some Random Numbers...

2009-08-12T18:01:00.009+01:00

8 - days gone and days to go on this magnificent tour of the Balkans. The third and final day in Montenegro marks the halfway point of our 6 country blitz. With Sarajevo, Mostar, Dubrovnik and Kotor behind us, the next week sees us leave the mainstream popularity of the Adriatic coast and enter the unknown entities that Albania, Macedonia and Kosova present.

0 - hangovers on this trip so far. Has maturity sneaked up on us? Previous vodka-fuelled adventures in the Russian winter and drunken jungle treks in Central America seem a thing of the distant past as we revel in our discovery of mountain hikes, beach laziness and early nights. Unchartered territory.

1504 - steep steps climbed to reach the mountaintop fortress overlooking the Bay of Kotor and marvel at the breathtaking scenery provided by Europe's southernmost fiord.

3,4 - litres of perspiration leaked by yours truly over the local vegetation during the ascent of the aforementioned mountain, producing an Oscar-worthy performance of an exploding fire hydrant.

1.778, 45 and 23 - kilometres of heavenly Adriatic coastline allocated to Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia & Herzegovina respectively in the re-distribution of land following the break-up of Yugoslavia. As my lungs fill with the diesel fumes from a 3rd generation German transport bus hand-me-down at Mostar bus station, memories from my previous holiday exploring the Croatian coast flood my mind and bring a large and knowing smile to my face. Soon enough, the bus inches its painful way around the hairpin bends of the high coastal road, precipitous cliffs dotted with gravity-defying conical pine trees fall down dramatically into crescent bays of crystalline waters. Further splashes of colour catch the eye here and there with a group of magnificent pink oleanders in bloom and pretty whitewashed houses sheltered by warm terracotta rooftiles. In all my travels, I have seen no coastline that can compare to this.

1,454,000 - a conservative estimate of the combined total number of inhabitants currently in their home countries of France, Italy and Russia. The rest are distributed evenly amongst the cities of Sarajevo, Mostar, Dubrovnik and Kotor. If ever there was a time to go and conquer France again, this is it.

17 - number of Australians dining three tables away from us in Dubrovnik, bravely attempting to redress the balance of the previous statistic. No fewer than twelve names overheard during their figurative and literal dissection of their seafood platters ended in the Antipodean nickname suffixes of choice. Thus our own dinner conversation was all but drowned out as Scotty, Julesy, Taylesy, Smithy, Matty, Jimbo, Simmo, Robbo and the rest of the gang performed lengthy crustacean autopsies with the occasional outburst of 'Shit guys, this is real good! I mean it ain't like the shit you get back home, but it's still pretty good shit!'.

93% - my current State Of Relaxation. Five days at the beach and some gentle sightseeing has given me a serenity and peace of mind I have seldom experienced in London. Every single nerve in my body has its own deckchair on a private beach and it is happy hour on Mojitos. The only blot on the spectacular landscapes we have visited was an unsightly, ungodly and quite frankly unwelcome Wednesday afternoon appearance from two horridly sunburnt, long-haired, middle-aged Greek men proving by their unfortunate beach attire that Speedos should be a form of cereal narcotics rather than indecently revelatory swimwear. Brrrr, not a pleasant image.

2 - total number of words learnt and used on this trip, conveniently common to all countries visited. A little slack by my usual linguistic standards perhaps, but for the moment, 'Hvala' and 'Pivo' more than fill my daily needs.

Two Bridges

2009-08-10T15:13:00.009+01:00

BREAKING NEWS: 37 Bosnian youths were admitted to the Psychological Trauma ward at Sarajevo General Infirmary in the early hours of this morning. Initial reports are as yet unconfirmed, but this just in from Ana Ivanovičeva, a 21 year old student from Višegrad:

"Horrible. It was horrible, worse than the worst of all war atrocities this country suffered. It was an English man, he was on the dance floor at the Old House discotheque. He was dressed in army shorts and yellow flip-flops. Flip-flops! His moves were terrifying, unlike anything I had ever seen."

A second youth, a 23 year old sociology student from Banja Luka who preferred to remain unnamed, managed just "His gyrating hips, they just...", before passing out, her eyes glazed with fear. Doctors on the scene fear for her sanity.

The fragmentation of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslav Republic may have generated an unexpected upturn in business for cartographers from all corners of the world, but to me it simply means that a new audience of unsuspecting nightclubbing enthusiasts can be subjected to dance moves that would make an arthritic three-legged pregnant water buffalo appear to move as gracefully as Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn performing their legendary Baroque Pas de Trois. As I wreak my path of destruction through the Western Balkans with my Irish travel buddy, I can expect no fewer than 12 new entry and exit stamps from this trip, all in a passport so dog-eared that it may soon require a flea collar and its own miniature kennel.

A last minute pre-trip examination of the Foreign Office's current hotspots left me feeling somewhat cheated as I failed to find a single one of my upcoming destinations rated at more than a moderate level of geopolitical instability. No civil unrest, no rigged elections or seismic activity to report and it would seem as though the keys to the safety of this voyage will be held in the most dangerous hands of all - my own.

So far, so good. On this, Day 3 of 16, we are nearing the end of our discovery of Bosnia, a country known principally for two architectural structures that have been historically significant in shaping the map of Europe over the past 100 years. Two bridges. The first of unimaginable consequence, Sarajevo's Latin Bridge: the site of the assassination that precipitated the start of a century of nationalistic fervour and war. The second, the Old Bridge at Mostar, a symbol of culture, learning and prosperity for 500 years, then of suffering, death and horror during the Bosnian War, and finally of the reparation and attempted cohabitation of two feuding brothers of different faith.

And what a discovery Bosnia has been. Bosnia, the poor neighbour of powerful Serbia, beautiful Croatia and emerging Montenegro, has truly surprised us. Bosnia, the wonderful aroma of grilled čevapčiči in the evening air, everywhere; the surprisingly pleasant sounds of copper being hammered by skilled merchants into coffee cups, reverberating around Sarajevo's enthralling Baščaršija Bazaar; the entrepreneurial psychopaths leaping from the 21m height of the Old Bridge into the Neretva river in Mostar to fleece tourists of their holiday money; the glorious Mediterrannean climate and cheap beer.

I am on the road again, and it feels great.

The Good, The Bid And The Ugly

2009-07-30T19:54:00.007+01:00

The small basement room is full this evening, yet I can draw no comfort from the fact that I am not alone in my suffering.

As I walk inside, I notice that my palms are already moist, an instant reaction to the harsh neon lighting and the imminent torture that it represents. I approach the loose circle of chairs in this, my purgatorial antechamber.

The shy young computer technician - Robert, I think - is here, as he always is. He affords me the slightest of nods as my glance sweeps past him. We tried to hold a conversation several weeks ago, but it was so painfully awkward that the relief was mutual when the time came to sit down. we have not spoken since.

I can also see Jason, who is beckoning me over to his side of the room. He pats the empty chair beside him, and although I cannot bear the thought of his incessant whispering and nudging, it is the only available seat and I reluctantly make my way around the outside of the group and sit down.

Now that each and every chair is occupied, the group grows silent in nervous anticipation of the next event to occur.

Mustering uncharacteristic courage, and ignoring the familiar shameful weakness in my knees, I stand up. All eyes are now on me, with a mixture of relief and encouragement. I can do this, I think to myself as I address the room:

'Hi, my name is Jean-Marc and I am addicted to eBay.'

*****

Having lain dormant for two and a half years, my eBay account recently had its e-cobwebs dusted off during my desperate search for a ticket to the reunion concert of Faith No More. With a generous budget of £100 and my fingers hovering expectantly over the keyboard, I approached my mission with the naive confidence of an ex-smoker taking a drunken puff at a party, forgetting how much junk I had purchased on the site many moons ago.

Fast forward 48 hours and I have added several dozen CDs to the online marketplace and am bidding in an equal number of buying auctions. I have rather rapidly come to question my moral integrity as I discover the sadistic satisfaction obtained from driving the price up on items I have no interest in winning. It is a stupid and risky game that appeals to the purest form of my competitive spirit.

But I also play to win. I bide my time and bid at the very last moment, outfoxing my opponents in Manchester, Moscow and Melbourne. And I buy, I buy more items. Most items I have no use for whatsoever. But I have WON these items, I am a winner!

I am hooked again.

Analysed carefully, I am able to distinguish the differing sentiments coursing through me, a trinity of emotions with each success: the instant rush of victory as the auction closes just after my last gasp bid; the crushing low as I instantly question the validity of the contest; and finally the warm glow of anticipation and expectation as I wait for the glorious prize to be delivered to my door.

For almost four weeks during the month of June, I sold, mailed, bid or re-bid from the crack of dawn to the fall of night. It was only my holiday to Portugal that saved me from descending into full-blown addiction as I realise now how much time I actually spent on the website.

By a strange wringing of the wet towel of coincidences, I opened this morning's Metro newspaper to discover that the British arm of eBay was celebrating its 10th anniversary on this very day. I am but one of the 38.4 million people to have made 964 million transactions during the last decade, to have felt the magnetism and experienced the winning rush. I have luckily managed to wean myself off this cybervice, but how many others are logged on right now, buying one of the 3455 handbags sold very day at the rate of one every 25 seconds?

Having felt quite smugly content with the sparkling originality of this post's introductory scene, I watered the seed of my own doubt by Googling 'eBay addiction' and was rewarded with a kick in the creative cojones as I discovered that it really is a recognised form of Internet Addiction. Reading the recollection of a recovering addict ('It was 5am and I couldn't log on, I had a complete breakdown, I started crying. That's when I realised I had a real problem') and remembering the countless hours tucked up in bed with my laptop, I realise how easy it would be to succomb to the siren's call once again.

*****

'Hi, my name is Jean-Marc and I am addicted to eBay. I have been clean for three weeks.'

That Johnny Cash Song

2009-07-13T21:21:00.010+01:00

22.11.2008: Swatch Group International HQ - Biel, Switzerland

Catalogue Coordination Manager: The print deadline is this Friday, how are we doing?
Senior Graphic Designer: Well, the images are all prepped and templated, but final text is waiting for your approval and has to go to the printers tomorrow.
CCM: Have you run the new collection names past the translation agency?
SGD: No, we're already over budget for the catalogue, we'll have to do it in-house this time. It's only the duty free magazine in any case, and we used last year's copy for the basic translations.
CCM: That sounds reasonable, leave the text on my desk and I'll proof it and get it back to you by close of business.
SGD: Great, thanks.

01.07.2009: Seat 7A - Flight TP387 from London Heathrow to Porto

I can barely contain my annoyance at having had my holiday enthusiasm deflated by a two-hour delay to our flight. I need a pacifier or there will soon be a hail of toys flying out of my pram, I need to find something to occupy myself fast. But what? Two carefully selected holiday books are gleefully gathering dust, lying forgotten on my office desk, my iPod has taken a vow of uncharged silence and dinner is half an hour away.

Faced with no viable alternative to alleviate my frustration, I reach for the in-flight entertainment world's equivalent of a full frontal lobotomy: the duty free magazine. Indeed, no sooner have I contemptuously flicked the first three pages than my brain commits itself to instant hibernation, pausing just briefly enough to wonder how on earth 102 pages of cosmetics, perfume, chocolate, alcohol and tobacco can be crammed into the narrow trolley that the cabin crew are wheeling down the aisle.

As I flick through the latest products from the houses of haute couture and smelly scents, I gradually sense my cerebral activity beginning to flatline when

WHACK!

It hits me like a sledgehammer, I can barely understand and my eyes nearly pop out of their sockets.

Successive waves of shock, disbelief, surprise and finally elation wash over me. There it is, right before me: the Holy Grail of inter-linguistic double entendres. I am gobsmacked, both figuratively and literally as I clasp my hand to my shocked mouth so fast that I nearly knock my front teeth clean out.

I turn to show Sarah the source of my side-splitting comedy histrionics but can utter no words as I am still in the delicious ecstacy of pure and unexpected laughter. It is all I can do to hand over the magazine and reveal the full glory that is:

Go on! Do it, laugh out loud! Let rip your snorts, guffaws and sniggers. Marvel at the unfortunate shape of this fine piece of jewellry and then read the fine print for further puerile gratification (hint: a 'ç' is pronounced 'ss'). Most of you will have by now closed this window and moved on to more serious business*, but for those of you who appreciate infantile humour as much as I do, please click here for an extra dollop of cheap entertainment.

€55,00 it may well cost, but in reality it is priceless...

* Except for you, Brooks, I know where you are reading this and this one's dedicated to you.

Double Trouble

2009-06-24T21:06:00.011+01:00

1 & 2) 05:50 - Heathrow Terminal 2 is dead. There are no shops open and I am shuffling despondently in the zombie procession that is the queue at Caffè Nero. In my determination to explore unchartered depths of sleep during every minute I am airborne, I decide against the coffee that I am craving and select the most obscure mixture of berries to be blended into icy submission at the cost of Nicaragua's gross domestic product.

As the barista turns his back to me in order to prepare the first and last of today's 5-a-day, I cannot help but read the company slogan that signals my downfall. 'THE BEST ESPRESSO THIS SIDE OF MILAN', his t-shirt reads. The never-quite-asleep 9-year old in me wakes up and snorts disdainfully in the face of this potential comparison challenge. 'And a double espresso!' I bellow so loudly that the nearest double chocolate chip cookie turns white.

I love coffee, but I cannot handle it. Within thirty seconds of the hot liquid searing its lightning path down my oesophagus, my pace has increased to the speed of the marching Wehrmacht in late 1939 and it is all I can do to stop myself from banging on the cabin door in my eagerness to board the aircraft. Why did I leave my tin-opener at home?

Once on board, the effect wears off just as suddenly as it first electrified me. I am now so tired that Morpheus claims me almost as soon as I have my seatbelt on, but I am conscious enough of the caffeine hit to know that the dreams will not be good. Soon enough, two spectacularly ugly three-legged leprechaun brothers are cavorting naked with an unnaturally frisky sabre-toothed tiger in the deepest and darkest recesses of my mind. Pretty it ain't.

3) 09:45 - As I walk through the sliding doors into the arrivals area at Milan's Linate airport, my greatest fear is confirmed. There, at the strategically-placed espresso bar opposite baggage reclaim, my sales agent awaits my arrival, elbow on counter and coffee in hand. 'Vuoi un caffè? Come stai?', or do I want a coffee, and how am I, by the way.

He is not alone as every inch of the bar is supporting an amorphous mass of designer fabric and espresso-brandishing arms. The suffering and longing of countless Italian women is extended by a full 95 seconds as their partners choose coffee bean over love unseen. In the parking lot, taximeters tick over happily as the Italian economy is further crippled. And my heart is racing.

4 & 5) 10:40 - The meeting is about to begin. Despite the typically cordial opening exchanges, this will not be pleasant as our turnover in Italy is down 30% and I am here to kick some serious gnocchi-kneading butt*. But I am ambushed before I can take my seat in the boardroom. 'Un doppio, grazie', I tell the secretary, not wanting to appear to be rude as I take another double hit. The meeting begins, but all I want to do is direct traffic manually at a very busy London intersection.

6) 12:00 - We have a break. And a coffee. 'Krrrzzztgrtzzt', my mind thinks as I prepare to submit my environment-saving plans for a new form of renewable energy by connecting my manically-blinking eyelids to a portable wind turbine.

Although usually receptive and understanding, today my business brain seems to have become the reincarnated love child of Josef Stalin and Cruella DeVille. I reluctantly agree to extended payment terms for the third quarter, as long as there are no Dalmatians involved.

7 & 8) 13:30 - FOOD! FOOD GLORIOUS FOOD! I devour my pasta starter and attack my pepper steak with the carnal gusto of an Italian prime minister about to enter a brothel. The wine soothingly coats the surface of my corroded stomach wall and my pupils dilate for the first time since leaving West London. There may yet be cause to cancel the pre-ordered room defibrillator service at my hotel this evening.

I am then handed a loaded gun which I gleefully fire at both my right and left feet. To tell the truth, I just drink the double espresso that somehow materialises in front of me, but it amounts to the same.

9 & 10) 15:30 - At the mid-afternoon break in our meeting, the secretary gives me a strange look as I answer 'Yes, a double please...' to her question about our current delivery times. I am about to smash the porcelain cup on the floor before I remember that I am not in Athens, and this is not Stavros' wedding.

11) 17:20 - We visit a customer. After failing to stabilise my arm long enough to take a decent photograph of a quite stunning retail display of my company's products, the customer suggests we adjourn to the bar next door for a coffee. Who am I to argue? The fact that a the mere sighting of a plastic spoon within a seven metre radius of my right arm is likely to cause the slaughter of a thousand souls is irrelevant. I NEED caffeine.

I am now in the zone and I am dangerous. Bring me the eskimo, for I shall sell blocks of common ice to him; bring me the desert Touareg, for sandcastle property shall he buy from me; bring me the Italian gift shop owner, for he shall buy my wares without question nor quibble. We walk out of the shop with an order for 2,000€ from a customer who already has a stockroom full of glassware and a three-week holiday coming up. I nailed him.

My agent looks at me in a new light. I just look at the light, realise it is the sun and that my retinas have probably been turned into fine slivers of ocular carpaccio.

12 & 13) 20:30 - My body may be in the chain restaurant in the lobby of my hotel, but my mind is definitely floating in a magical wonderland of Tim Burton-esque animation. As my waiter tries to argue that I ought to start with a starter or at least a main course and not a quadruple espresso with a side order of coffee ice cream, a baker's dozen of coffee biscuits and a snifter of coffee liqueur, I wave him away, dreaming of Ecuador, Columbia, Costa Rica and Kenya.

Conscious that I am but one caffeine hit and a couple of elbow jerks away from being diagnosed with Tourrettes, I decide to call it a day. I somehow manage to sign my bill, barely aware of the team of cleaners hurriedly assembling to mop up the ever-expanding lake of drool that my twitching lips are generating.

That was four hours ago. The spasms have slowed down in frequency and I find that I can now focus enough on my keyboard to create random new entries in the Kazakh language section of Wikipedia. I am about to attempt to sleep, knowing I that I am going to plunge head first into a caffeine coma. In four and a half hours, my alarm clock will sound and it will be time to wake up and smell the...

* Not a pleasant image to have in your mind, dismiss instantly or avoid potato dumplings forever.

Bite Me

2009-04-12T23:46:00.004+01:00

I have been bitten.

Two puncture marks four centimetres apart on my left ankle testify to the passage of a bloodsucking visitor last night. They don't waste time in Transylvania.

But immortality does not beckon just yet. No, this is not the result of Count Dracula's kinky foot fetish, but rather the nocturnal feasting marks of a coven of bloodthirsty mosquitoes.

Having unwittingly tenderized my own flesh by virtue of last night's chicken kebab and lager marinade, I woke up this morning to find seventeen angry swellings of various shapes and sizes covering my fingers, hands, arms, toes, feet and legs. One bite in particular, on the inside of my right arm, can only have been left by a rabid pterodactyl, or at the very least a mildly miffed bald eagle.

And boy do these buggers itch. As I struggle to contain my frustration, my superhuman efforts to refrain from tearing strips of my own skin off only serve to make me look like a sexual deviant in the delicious throes of an auto-erotic massage.

Sipping my wine on Piata Mica, the smallest and quaintest of Sibiu's holy trinity of medieval town squares, I am all too aware that the sun's slow descent behind the magnificent Saxon cathedral signals the opening of another all-you-can-eat buffet at Chez Jean-Marc.

Sure enough, within minutes I can sense the falsetto vibrations and light tread of the first hungry diner on the back of my neck.

Bon appétit.

Techno Train

2009-04-11T14:42:00.004+01:00

The English Channel has served us well. With the insignificant exception of a handful of disoriented Romans, some Norman bastard in a longboat and a few unhealthy rats in the 17th century, it has pretty much kept out most unwanted guests and annoyances.

In recent times, it has even served as a natural barrier against the aural scourge that is Euro Pop, leaving our continental cousins' shameful taste for formulaic disco electronica outside our front door.

Unfortunately for me, I am no longer on the safe side of the sound barrier. I am on the slow train from Timisoara to Sibiu in Romania and all my own past musical sins have come back to haunt me in the shape of my current train carriage companions.

Sitting diagonally opposite me in an 8-seat compartment, two frisky young Romanian girls are canoodling openly. Their hands are roaming and fumbling so wildly that I start to get my wallet out, convinced that this cannot be for free. Very rapidly, though, my surprise turns to annoyance. It is not their sexuality that is disturbing me, however, but rather their taste in music.

They each have an earphone connected to a 1980s Sony Walkman cassette player (!) and the aural distortion (for music this is not) being played at full volume would incite poor Vincent Van Gogh to slice off his other ear. Every single song that I am forced to endure sounds like a handful of medium-sized ball bearings bouncing around a tumble dryer on its highest spin cycle, with the occasional deep rumbling sound of a wild goose passing wind. That this music is clearly putting them in the mood for some jiggery-pokery is beyond comprehension.

I stand up to go to the toilets in order to relieve my poor ears as well as my bladder, only to return thirty short seconds later, with my face ashen. For the sake of public decency, I will refrain from relating in graphic detail the horrors that have just confronted me, suffice to say that Timisoara's only Indian restaurant must have done a roaring trade last night.

With sight, smell and hearing annihilated, I attempt to protect my two remaining senses by simultaneously stroking my moleskin coat and eating a Kinder Bueno. So much for a peaceful scenic train journey through Romania's heartland.

But my luck changes within ten minutes. The train pulls into a station and the girls get off, still joined at the hips, lips and various other body parts. I swear I can see steam rising from their clothes as they jump off the train and head for the nearest barn.

As the immaculately dressed ticket inspector enters the compartment to check my ticket, he spots my guidebook and smiles at me. "You are alone now until Sibiu," he tells me in perfect English "enjoy the beautiful views."

And he is not wrong. Calm has returned to my world, and the scenery is also changing. The monotonous farming countryside dotted with power stations and disused factories has given way to the rugged mountains and lush forests of the Transylvanian Alps.

I am entering Dracula country.

If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em...

2009-04-10T09:59:00.004+01:00

Wizz Air Flight W6704 to Timisoara
Scheduled - 08:10
Estimated - 12:00

Wondering briefly whether tearing my toenails out with a pair of pliers would be more fun than spending four hours at the departure lounge of Luton Airport, I remind myself that I am still on holiday and decide to indulge in a spot of people-watching.

As I survey my pauper's kingdom, I soon establish that there are two clear breeds of animal in this low-budget human zoo. Dotted around the lounge are pockets of Eastern European migrants dressed in navy 1980s Adidas tracksuits, leather flat caps and mountain goat overcoats. They are taking this delay in their stride, animatedly discussing the soaring cost of cabbage and exchanging the latest mullet-grooming tips. Here and there, a handlebar moustached is twirled distractedly.

An escalating argument to my right draws my attention. The more hirsute members of a group of Romany gypsies appear to be remonstrating with each other for regrettably checking in their violins and accordions, thus missing out on a huge cash cow with such a large audience at their busking mercy.

Also congregated in small groups, but far more noticeable, are the bands of Ibiza-bound Home Counties chavs dressed in clothes so white and so bright that I am forced to pen these words from the sanctuary of the Sunglass Hut stand. A veritable sea of 3/4 khakis, pink polo shirts and dazzling white trainers reminds me why I will never explore Spain's Mediterranean coastline.

These two groups may be polar opposites on the social spectrum, but today they are united in their unquenchable thirst and the beer taps flow uninterrupted at the bar. It is 8:50am.

With my faith in humanity eroding fast and my patience wearing micro-thin, I must do something quickly or perish in this gene pool of mediocrity. Weighing up my limited options, I choose my only path to salvation and make my way to the only person who can help me redress the balance.

'One pint of Kronenbourg, please!', I order cheerfully at the bar. I am on holiday after all...

Perfect Timing

2009-04-08T23:11:00.007+01:00

BBC Radio 2 News Report - Wednesday April 8th 2009:

'Security forces have regained control of the presidential palace buildings but tensions remain high in the Moldovan capital Chisinau after mass protests and demonstrations following the victory of the incumbent Communist Party in the recent general elections. The British Foreign Office advises against any immediate travel to the area.'

I am travelling to the area. Fairly immediately.

Even by my supremely chaotic standards, travelling to Europe's poorest and most corrupt country the week after a general election may have merited a little more consideration. With a sense of timing more prone to disaster than a wheelchair-bound lemming about to launch off a 60m alpine ski jump, I must have somehow known that a random group of 10,000 communism-intolerant Moldovan mofos would decide to complain about not being able to get an extra Sweet & Sour Chicken McNugget Dip just before I decided to grace the country with my presence.

With the cherry trees in blossom and its welcoming Mediterranean climate, Malta is a nice place to visit in April, or so I am told. But somehow, the ancient Saxon citadels of Transylvania, the breakaway republic of Transnistria and hordes of rioting Moldovans just sounded more 'happening'.

Hmmm, the news must be overreacting. I pick up my reading material to reassure myself:

'Whether you are a lifelong resident or a fresh-faced visitor, submitting to police shakedowns for bribes is a fact of life in Moldova.', the Lonely Planet guidebook to Romania & Moldova begins, rather promisingly. Having read the two remaining pages in the 'Dangers & Annoyances' section, I am no longer merely concerned with the potential financial extortion that may await me. No, a combination of the rabid packs of wild dogs, urban bears, gypsy bandits or organ thieves should be more than enough to cut me in my prime. No wonder Dracula is a myth in these parts, he plainly bit off more than he could chew...

But the reality of my mission is simple and beautiful: I have a burning desire to explore every square millimetre that this planet has on offer. And on the eve of my trip, I feel so electric that I could boil the kettles of a thousand teas. I have been hiding in the bushes for far too long. I am about to sneak out of the darkness and crawl on my hands and knees, getting my jeans dirty with the soil of curiosity. I will shuffle up to the window, pause for a moment, then open it gently, quietly and unnoticed. And I will look inside, and discover with wonder and awe a new world with the enthusiasm of an innocent child.

I am about to hit the road again, and I can't wait.

Obsession

2009-03-27T13:33:00.009Z

High up in the azure skies, a prairie falcon unfurls its magnificent wings and glides majestically over the vast plains of South Dakota. In the distance, on the open ground, a sudden flash of movement catches its sharp eye: a pocket gopher has just emerged from its burrow after a mid-afternoon siesta and is now dozily searching for the right location for a spot of al fresco nut nibbling.

A moment is all it takes to turn this graceful bird into a ruthless killing machine. Its wings tucked firmly alongside its now taut body, the prairie falcon commences the velocitous descent that will soon spell the end of one creature's life and the beginning of today's luncheon hour for this skilled hunter.

Only this wildlife scene is not being played out on the sun-drenched plains of South Dakota, but rather in the lounge of our cosy flat in Putney, South-West London. I am the prairie falcon and the poor unsuspecting pocket gopher is an empty glass that my flatmate Phil has just placed on the footstool to my right. It is Thursday night and we are watching a movie, but I have lost all interest in the television screen. I have eyes for the glass and nothing else. I try to resist, but it is stronger than me, so very strong. Giving in to the urge, as I knew I would, I stand up, swoop triumphantly and walk into the kitchen clutching the glass in my talons. Once deposited in the dishwasher, my inner peace is restored and I return to resume watching the movie.

At the grand old age of 34, I have finally come to terms with the fact that I have developed an acutely domestic case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I have long considered myself to be quirky, eccentric and even downright odd, but OCD is the only way to describe the hidden force that drives me to randomly wipe the crumbs from the breadboard, rearrange the contents of our refrigerator* and double check that I have not mistakenly mixed my navy and black socks.

I may have only recently diagnosed myself as a new-born nutcase, but the signs were always there, even in the chaos and disorder of my university years. From the steam-iron shaped burn marks on the synthetic carpet in the lounge to the mould growing on 54% of all kitchen surfaces, our household of seven second-year male slackers was every bit the archetypal student fleapit. But in my room, high above the savage hordes of e.coli bacteria doing battle over the congealed kebab encrusted on my carpet, there, on a bookshelf covered in enough dust to warrant dune appellation, rested a collection of over 600 CDs in precise alphabetical AND chronological order.

As with documenting most emotional or mental deficiencies, recording this here madness onto my humble blog has enabled me to wrestle and defeat one of my most demonic obsessions. Emboldened by the release these writings are giving my soul, I have nipped downstairs in between paragraphs to trim the frayed ends of the rogue doormat that has recently come to threaten my very sanity. Where once inside my head there screeched the sound of yellow ingrowing toenails scraping down a blackboard, there now only echoes the calming sounds of beluga whales and bottlenose dolphins. Aaaahhh...

Screeching nails

The sound of whales

How long until I keep a diary listing sell-by dates for all the food contained in our refrigerator? When will I set my alarm for 23:59 in order to ensure my flatmate's shrivelled cauliflower does not overextend its intended lifespan by even one second? Very soon, my friends, very soon.

With these painfully irritating manic obsessive tendencies only likely to be exacerbated by the cruel sands of time, and with my repertoire of lame jokes already surpassing my father's worst gags, I can only imagine what a cheerful and well balanced chappie I will have become by the ripe old age of 75, and what excellent company I will be.

Good luck Sarah...

* Top Shelf - dairy, sauces & condiments / Middle Shelf - meats & ready meals / Bottom Shelf - fresh produce & alcohol

Stereotypes

2009-02-27T13:46:00.011Z

Rrrring! Rrring!

It is 11pm on Saturday night and I am sitting in one of Frankfurt's most popular Apfelwirtschafts, or cider pubs. The room is packed to the rafters as students, tourists and locals cosily share communal benches, all equally contributing to the genial atmosphere and consuming the potent local apple brew poured freely from traditional oversized ceramic jugs.

Let's get fruity, Fräulein...

By this stage of the proceedings, my Czech customers and I have consumed the fruit of enough apples' labour to have ditched sales forecasts and credit crunches in favour of football and bad jokes. The business meeting is going well.

Rrrring! Rrrrring!

I am the first to spot the source of the shrill noise, although my mind struggles to compute the strange data relayed by my eyes. A man has just walked into the pub. He is wearing a white cloth cap, baker's apron and a pair of wonderfully snug lederhosen. Perched on his upper lip, a spectacular handlebar moustache with the wingspan of an adult albatross nearly takes out an old lady's eye as he ventures further inside the venue. I suspect this gentleman may be German.

Over his right arm, he is proudly carrying a large wicker basket that is clearly heavy. A pretty white lace tablecloth hides the contents from view, but his vigorous thumbing of the bicycle bell strapped to the handle tells me that this mystery will be short-lived.

Rrring! Rrrrring!

'Warm pretzels, sesame loaves, poppyseed rolls! Fresh bread, get your fresh bread here! Pretzels, fresh pretzels!', he shouts to the room menacingly.

This is truly mindblowing.

The Czechs have never seen anything like this either, and the three of us sit in stunned silence for half a minute before I realise that my jaw appears to have relocated to the floor. The scene is so painfully German that I half expect a band of singing bratwursts to jump onto our table and burst into an almighty rendition of 'Deutschland Überalles'. I pause to think of the reaction this most stereotypical Helmut, Wolfgang or Dietmar would get at the Dog & Pheasant in downtown Scunthorpe, and quicky stop. The images are too painful.

My initial laughter and disbelief swiftly transform into respectful admiration as one eager and hungry customer after another stands up around the room like a family of meerkats in the Kalahari Desert.

Ein Pretzel, bitte schön!

He bounds jauntily from table to table, selling his doughy wares with great enjoyment. One third of his goods is sold in less time than it takes to invade Poland and he makes for the door, departing with a hearty 'Guten Abend!' bellowed at the room. This is both insane and hilarious.

This is Europe.

From the morning espresso rituals taking place in bars across Milan to the so-very-French baguette-wielding mothers walking their children to school in Paris, such wonderful scenes of everyday European life are the very essence of this astonishing continent. Through my much-maligned job, I am lucky to be in a position to witness and appreciate on a regular basis how intricately woven these rich and varied cultures are.

I walk out of the pub with a smile on my face and enough vitamin C in me to ward off scurvy until Judgement Day itself.

This Saturday, my business travels take me to Amsterdam and Utrecht in the Netherlands, where I fully expect clog-wearing prostitutes in bright orange dungarees to offer me a joint and an edam sandwich on every street corner. One can but hope...

Other People's Money

2009-01-22T22:00:00.007Z

- Hey honey, what say we go down to that nice little gift shop on Church Street? Let's buy that nice glass vase we saw the other day.
- Ooh, you mean the lovely blue vase we both liked? But it cost £75, and we only have £80 to last us until pay day, and that's 5 days away. Oh, you're right, who cares? Let's get it!

Fact 1 - In this credit-crunching, wallet-worrying and penny-pinching climate, the above extract of scintillating conjugal conversation is unlikely to be heard in households across the land.

Fact 2 - I sell glass vases.

These are not vase-selling times, particularly not £75 vases. Today, the board of directors announced that 4 warehouse workers would be made redundant by the end of the month and that several departments would be 'restructured'. Happy New Year!

I am currently in Paris, on the eve of the opening of the season's most important housewares exhibition. Already, tales of insolvency and cash-flow concern abound. Within an hour of being on our exhibition stand today, I had been offered enough sales CVs to construct a papier maché Eiffel Tower, 1:1 scale. As I addressed my sales team this morning in the least inspirational speech since last year's sales meeting, the twisted irony that a fully-salaried person was trying to motivate a commission-only sales team was not lost on me.

This exhibition is a time to assess the economic implications of the global downturn, and how it will impact on our company. This is a time for planning and prudence and sound sales strategies and good marketing. But most importantly, this exhibition means one week of spanking the company credit card to within a micro-sliver of its laminated plastic life. This is the time to discover what the bottles inhabiting the lower reaches of the wine list actually taste like. Dessert? But of course, and send the cheese board and port at the same time, my good man!

There is nothing quite so grotesquely obscene as spending the money of others with neither care nor concern. Yet that is exactly what we are doing, and we are proving rather adept at it. Our eyes adjust automatically to focus on the most expensive dish on the menu and a rota is kept amongst all company credit card holders so that no-one will go home with more than one bill to his name. In the kitchen, another scuffle breaks out as the waiters fight amongst one another to serve us, for there is no better tipper than an expense account tipper.

As a pang of guilt threatens to resuscitate my conscience from its temporary coma, I remember that I am sacrificing another seven weekends this year to the glorious art of vase-selling, and that today is Day 11 out of 19 without a break.

As I open my wallet and lovingly thumb the unsuspecting card in and out of its slot, I let a gentle whisper escape my lips: 'You're in trouble, my flexible friend, you're in big trouble...'

It Takes All Sorts

2009-01-14T21:19:00.007Z

Every Sunday evening, as I have just sipped the last of my hot chocolate and am about to take my slippers off and retire to bed with my comforting hot water bottle, a rather clever blog-reporting tool called Site Meter discretely delivers its weekly findings into my inbox. This utterlessly pointless yet fascinating statistical factsheet provides me with non-specific information on how 759 websurfers to date have had the shining path to eternal literary salvation pointed out to them.

Most of the esteemed and treasured visitors who have surprisingly chosen to not (yet) subscribe to my blog find their way to this nirvana of online enlightenment via my Facebook or CouchSurfing profiles. Some test the waters with a curious toe via a link on a mutual friend's own website, whilst others still locate me directly using a search engine.

The vast majority of my cyberguests, however, stumble upon my pretentious musings by pure coincidence. They are lured by the pseudo-intellectual references to Greek mythology or modern literature that Google's keen nostrils have sniffed out from within my wild ramblings. Most of these accidental readers disappear within seconds in order to quench their thirst elsewhere; some stay, dazed and confused by the sheer brilliance of these Pulitzer-worthy scribblings. All, however, leave a trace of their passage, including the original search parameters that led them erroneously to me.

It was one such search request in last week's statistical report that very nearly caused me to fall off my chair and swallow my tongue at the same time, so sharp was my intake of breath. Misled by Google combining one word from my post on training donkeys with a Cannibal Corpse song mentioned in another, one poor soul sitting in front of his computer at 10:04pm on a Friday night was quite unwittingly but very wittily redirected to my site, when his search wording hints at another line of entertainment altogether.

Search Engine: verizon.net
Search Words: equine sodomy videos
Visit Entry Page: http://jeanmarcknoll.blogspot.com

There really is everything on the internet.

Blot On The Landscape

2009-01-13T22:19:00.005Z

Uh-oh.

I have just boarded the evening flight to Milan and am very patiently waiting for the elegant Italian lady blocking the aisle to retrieve her BlackBerry, Prada leather notebook, MontBlanc fountain pen and Gucci make-up bag out of her Louis Vuitton travel case before placing it in the overhead locker.

Upon registering this walking who's who of exhibitionist branding, my casual observational glance plants a worried frown on my brow and sweeps past her, scanning the other occupants of the entire cabin in a matter of seconds. As my poor uneducated senses are instantly and repeatedly battered by an earthy kaleidoscope of olive, brown and beige fabric, opulently fragrant perfumes and bedazzling jewellry, I take one look at myself and realise the severity of my plight.

I stand out.

Converse shoes - CHECK
Dirty blue jeans with frayed ends - CHECK
Grey zip-up fleece cardigan from Primark (£7) - CHECK

Instead of the image of a suave young entrepreneur confidently dashing across Europe for another business meeting that I was hoping to convey, I have instead managed to pull off a remarkably accurate impression of one of the first detainees from Guantanamo Bay returning home after sixteen months in an underground cell without any food, drink or, crucially, clothing allowance.

Yes, I may fancy my tongue to be sharper than a really sharp cocktail stick, and my linguistic ability is lauded by many, but when it comes to sartorial elegance, I clearly have all the class and style of a colour-blind clown with an obsession for sequins. As I sit down, deep in my shame, I allow a sepia-tinted glaze to mist over my eyes as I recall the haute couture simplicity of my heavy metal years. This season's de rigueur colour? Why, it's black again, hurrah! But those days are gone, long gone.

In the meantime, I take a 50 Euro note out of my wallet and slip it inside my passport at the photo page. This will surely be my only hope of avoiding deportation upon landing.

Welcome Back!

2009-01-06T22:24:00.005Z

1 x short-sleeved t-shirt
1 x long-sleeved t-shirt
1 x wool sweater
1 x fleece jacket
1 x moleskin jacket (R.I.P. 187 brave and very soft moles)
1 x scarf

Unfortunately not my clothes-to-pack list for a weekend break in Stockholm, instead it is what I am having to wear at 9:20am on my first day back at work as I park my no-longer-plump-but-still-something-to-squeeze backside on my office chair and stare blankly at my computer screen for the first time in two weeks.

It is cold. Damn cold. -5c cold outside and not much warmer inside an office that has not seen people for some time. I turn on the electric heater in the vain hope that frostbite or, at the very least, chilblains can be averted, but my heart plummets as the machine murmurs rather than roars into life and I feel less warmth than I would from the dying breath of an ageing fieldmouse. There is further bad news as rumours spread that the food van will not come today. In the distance, gentle sobbing can be heard from behind the photocopier.

The first working day of the new year is invariably a cheerful one in the wonderful world of the office. Two weeks of peace, rest and relaxation, jolly Christmas spirit and goodwill to all mankind have all but evaporated as the harsh reality of the 9-to-5 backhand slaps me across the face with a wet haddock.

My first attempt to log in fails miserably as my gloved finger hits four keys at the same time. 'dfrt' is not the first letter of my password, it would seem. I glance at the clock and barely choke back my howl of despair. It is only 9:24am and I have to endure 486 further minutes until I am freed from this tyranny.

I decide to bite the bullet and get stuck in. I am a responsible person and am being paid and trusted to do my job, after all. The only question that remains is which shall I check first: Facebook or CouchSurfing?

Toilet Humour II

2008-11-14T18:09:00.005Z

These things only happen to me, of this I am certain.

I walked into my hotel bathroom earlier this evening, intent on freshening up before heading out to dinner for one in gai Paris. 'Hmmm, veal or beef, I wonder...', raged the carnivorous debate inside my mind as I absent-mindedly reached for the after shave up on my toiletry shelf.

Now it is a well-known fact that I have the coordination of a one-handed raccoon attempting to peel an apple with a blunt chisel, so it was no great surprise to me when my brain mistakenly sent the 'knock after shave off shelf' command to my hand, rather than the 'pick up and spray on neck area' impulse it had intended. Again, knowing myself, it was with even less surprise that I watched the bottle of after shave leap from its lofty perch with the grace of an Acapulco cliff diver...

... straight into the toilet bowl.

Just as a hearty 'Woops-a-daisies!' was about to escape my angry mouth, I was overcome with a realisation so blindingly brilliant that my knees nearly buckled beneath me. I stumbled into my room and collapsed onto the bed, exploding with silent laughter. Before long, I was struggling to contain a gushing torrent of tears and my sides ached as though felled by the lusty blows of many rusty axes.

It took me a full two minutes to recover my composure and rescue the aptly-named Aqua by Carolina Herrera from its porcelain paddling pool. It would be a while before I would stop grinning from ear to ear as I came to terms with the fact that my after shave had undergone the most severe gender change the world of perfume has to offer.

For after shave it no longer was, it had become

eau de toilette...

Book And A Cover

2008-11-13T20:26:00.007Z

It is 8:29am, I have a suitcase and laptop case and I am catching the train to Waterloo, the opposite direction to my usual routine. This is new territory for me. No longer the fresh salmon leaping freely against the flow of this raging commuters' torrent, I am now a common sardine waiting to be packed into an oily tin heading for the big smoke. I am not in my element as shoals of umbrella-laden piranhas patrol the platform, I am uneasy. That I have not been torn to shreds as the train pulls in is remarkable in itself.

Having fatally misjudged the positioning of the train doors, I entered the carriage in 23,682nd position out of a possible 23,682 and earned myself pride of place: half wrapped around the central holding pole, with the dulcet tones of some 78 kazillion decibel hard house sounds inches from my right ear and a luxurious leather briefcase engaging in unsolicited flirtatious activity with my posterior. Only 32 years to go until I can draw my pension, woot woot...

By 8:38am, as the train drew into Queenstown Road station, I was preparing my insanity plea for my projected defence against 23,681 counts of Mass Homicide With Nokia E65. Just as I was concluding my case with an emphatic 'Wot-evah, dem all deserved it, innit?', the doors opened and a ray of sunshine pierced through the storm clouds as an angel squeezed past the peasant hordes and took her 17 square inches of commuter allocation opposite me.

She was pretty in a simple and understated manner, with looks that attract a second glance a full ten seconds after the first, and a good many thereafter, but with neither lust nor leer. As she too sought shelter from the early morning madness, she gripped the orange pole just above my hand, looked at me, smiled sweetly and opened her Lonely Planet to Berlin.

As I half closed my eyes, her delicate floral perfume and wispy golden locks transported me momentarily to a safe haven of peace and calm, a beautiful oasis of tranquility.

Then, the unthinkable. Delicately balancing her book in her left hand, she slowly extended the exquisitely manicured index finger of her other hand and plunged it without hesitation deep into her right nostril. Trying not to think of hot knives and butter, I stood stunned, transfixed and very nearly tearful as I watched this raw commuter wildlife documentary unfold. My oasis of calm was battered to the ground by the wildest of desert storms.

Foraging for an eternity with the wild abandon of an award-winning truffle-hunting pig, the hungry digit eventually emerged triumphantly with a fragrant trophy delicately perched on its tip. With the same distracted expression she had worn throughout the excavation, the prize was cruelly discarded to the floor with a deft flick of her thumb. Just like that.

The mining operation having duly been conducted and completed with the military precision it required, she re-entered the land of the living and looked up. Straight into my eyes.

It is hard to say which of our faces achieved a deeper pantone of red, so fleeting was the moment of mutual realisation, shock and, ultimately, horror. As our eyes developed an instant and quite possibly fatal allergy to each other, one final unspoken conversation played itself out in that last parting glance. 'I'm sorry...', her anguished eyelashes fluttered in a silent apology to my heartbroken 'Why?'.

We are not always what we seem.

In Sickness And In Health

2008-10-21T13:37:00.005+01:00

It all started this morning, at precisely 10:34am. The sound came from the other side of the building, possibly from one of those footloose and fancy-free creative types in the Design Department, or likelier still, from the devious stock-pinching rascals in UK Sales. It wasn't loud, but there was no mistaking its impact and the resulting shockwave that would be felt by every single joyous employee of this fine company.

It was a sneeze, and a mild sneeze at that. But this seemingly innocent shattering of the early-morning office torpor meant more than a sore throat and blocked hooter for one poor administration urchin. No, this sneeze represented doom and gloom for all of humankind for it signalled the opening of the dreaded Office Sickness Season.

All activity ceased at once as surprise, shock and fear etched their unwelcome features on the faces of office and warehouse workers alike. So it had begun.

The initial stunned silence rapidly gave way to the loud rumble of angry thunder and the building reverberated to the sound of desk drawers being violently rattled as each and every employee frantically searched for the leftovers of the previous year's medicine supplies. 'Nooooooo...' howls the front desk receptionist as she realises that her last Lemsip Cold & Flu sachet has split and is now neatly layered around her box of multicoloured paper-clips.

There is no escaping the spread of the contagion either. As our antibodies prepare themselves for interdepartmental biological warfare, the hallways echo with the dulcet tones of hacking coughs, sinus-imploding catarrh inhalations and the violent trumpetings of red raw noses. Those with more robust constitutions will be ground down into sick submission by the alternating blasts of hot and cold air emanating from scalding heaters and open windows as the feverish strive to cool down and the frozen attempt to thaw out.

On this day, Tuesday October 21st, the 2008/9 Office Sickness Season has started early. There will be many casualties as strong and weak fall like toy soldiers and the surviving few struggle to breathe and function in this cursed and impure air. As in times of plague, the desks of the diseased are marked with a yellow Post-It note, their occupants dismissed as office pariahs until they have passed their ailments on to the next sufferer-in-waiting. Once the circle is complete, the merry-go-round starts anew, and a-tishoo, a-tishoo, we all fall down...

It will be a long winter.

Where Is My Mind?

2008-10-11T13:55:00.005+01:00

I have long given up trying to understand and unravel the big ball of yarn that passes off as my mind. No, nowadays I find it much easier to go with the flow, to accept the sheer random and incoherent nature of the thoughts bouncing around the inside of my skull. I smile and nod as I recall last night's dream that saw me running up ramps leaping over barrels thrown at me by a giant spasm-muscled gorilla, even though I have not played or even thought about Donkey Kong since 1989. In the middle of a presentation to the board of directors of a department store group, I pause to think about what life would be like as a penguin. Nope, this nut is best left uncracked. I have learnt to live with it, but sometimes, every now and then, even I have to pause and think 'Where the hell did that come from?'.

I was killing time flicking through magazines at the supermarket during my Tuesday lunch break - the highlight of my working week - when an article headline on the cover of a magazine caught my eye and stopped me dead in my tracks.

MULES, ASSES, DONKEYS: YOU CAN TRAIN ANY EQUINE!

Having never previously purchased Horse & Rider magazine, I was totally unprepared for such a bold statement. The provocative nature of the italic 'CAN' added highly-combustible fuel to the fire that had instantly ignited in my mind and immediately prompted me to wonder angrily why the world had been misled for so long that a bad ass and a stubborn mule could not change their ways. My mind began to visually portray the ground-breaking session when the horse whisperer became the donkey shouter in one final attempt to break the beast's resolve...

A bruising encounter between my calf and a supermarket trolley tore me from my equine reverie and nearly earnt a frail old lady a reverse slap from my left hand. She apologised, I smiled sweetly at her, assuring her that the gaping flesh wound would heal rapidly as I mentally wished her a particularly nasty bout of arthritis that evening. I continued with my shopping, returned to work, finished work, went home, went to the gym, had dinner and went to bed.

On Wednesday, midway through an afternoon of boundary-pushing office tedium, a curious but scrambled thought popped into my head and nibbled gently on my brain, arousing my curiosity. It disappeared almost instantly, leaving me in a state of slight bewilderment, as though my mind had been subjected to a bungled attempted robbery. The following morning, just before lunch, it happened again. This time the thought was a little clearer, but still I could not decipher it. I let it drift away again, if it wanted to make itself known, it would do so.

At precisely 12:53 on Friday, with motivation at an all-time low and my mind already in weekend mode, the mysterious impulse thought returned. There was no subtlety or subconscious approach on this occasion. No, it announced itself with a full marching band, tubas and trombones blaring the brassiest of questions inside the hollow cavern of my mind: can one really train any equine? I had to know.

Displaying a streak of rebellion worthy of James Dean, I left my desk a full THREE minutes before the official start of my lunch break and set off for Tesco's once again at a brisk pace, like a man possessed. I have no idea what I was hoping to gain from this little escapade, but the urge to read that article was stronger than me. I raced into the store and headed straight to the magazine section, pausing briefly to look around me in case my chariot-racing nemesis was in the vicinity, but she was nowhere to be seen. Her lucky day, you don't come between a man and his Horse & Rider magazine twice in one week...

As I began to read the article that had been taunting my subconscious for three days, I realised that I was venturing into a world about which I knew NOTHING and the facts were hitting me hard and fast.

Unlike canids - think dogs, wolves, jackals, coyotes - equids (the family to which horses, asses, donkeys and zebras all belong, not an electronic pound) often look beyond their immediate species for extra-curricular fun and frolics. In fact, research has shown that equids are so sexually driven that they are known to try to play a quick game of 'How's Your Father?' with pretty much anything that has a pulse. This is undoubtedly the reason dogs stick to dry-humping your leg, they haven't got the genetic make-up to go all the way.

Having scribbled a mental note never to stand with my back to a horse again, I continued my equine education. Hands up all those who knew that a mule is in fact the result of a horse interbreeding with a donkey. I did not, although had I been entrusted with the honour of naming this new animal, I know that it would now be referred to as a honkey rather than a mule.*

The title of the article - 'Who's A Smart Ass?' - ought to have prepared me for the worst but the opening sentence of the second paragraph blew even me and my love of casual innuendo and cheap puns right out of the sky. 'And a chance encounter with a special ass proved uplifting...' induced a snort so powerful that the security guard and two nearby shoppers turned to look at me with a puzzled look. Upon noticing my reading material and instantly labelling me as a deviant, they hurried away. The security guard kept an eye on me however, I may have to shop elsewhere.

After re-reading the article three times, I reluctantly tore myself away from the magazine, my thirst for equine education having been well and truly quenched.

My mind can now rest in peace. I now know that mules are not stubborn when they refuse to move, they are simply assessing the situation for any danger. And the Himalayan Mountain Ass can be trained with the right combination of love and patience but will not trust any human it has not met before it is three years old.

The only question that remains is that of my own sanity, welcome to my world...

* I have since discovered that I am apparently the ONLY person in the world who did not know this. So much for the private school education...

I Am gulp Not Always Right

2008-09-24T20:27:00.005+01:00

'Oh my Achilles...' is an expression one might reasonably expect to hear at a Greek play depicting the fall of Troy, the poignant wailing cry of Hippodameia as she realises that her master and lover has been brutally slain, leaving her to fend for herself in a world ravaged by war. Instead, it is the expletive of suffering that echoes around every stairwell at work and at home as I wallow in the pain and misery of my first sporting injury.

'Remember to stretch, and don't overdo it at the beginning.' advised the fitness trainer during my gym induction, as did my flatmates, one of my work colleagues, two good friends, my mother, the homeless man who sleeps outside the newsagent at the corner of our street and the ticket inspector on the 08:19 to Kingston.

Being famed across the land for always listening to good advice and not thinking that I know better than everyone, I decided to stretch, nay, hyperextend my index finger to increase the speed of the treadmill to 11km/h before even setting foot on it. As I observed the well-toned athletes and gym class regulars on the machines to the front, back, left and right of me, I can even remember my sense of overwhelming superiority as I mentally castigated them for wasting such precious calorie-burning time warming up and down. Stretch? Pah!

Similarly, a running sequence of 10km, 5km, 10km, 10km, 5km and 5km on consecutive days one week after joining the gym and doing exercise for the first time in 7 years might also be regarded in cardiovascular circles as 'overdoing it'. Pride before a fall indeed...

The result is a cute little chipmunk-blowing-bubblegum popping sound in my left ankle every time I go up or down stairs, the limp of a freshly-castrated snow leopard and a no longer reluctant admission that I am a Grade A tool of the highest calibre.

My lofty perch is now riddled with woodworm as everyone at work seems to recall long-forgotten tales of tendinitis and tendinisis, 'Did you stretch before running? No? Well that explains it.' becomes the office mantra and the canteen has a fixed menu of humble pie for the rest of the week.

I can only be grateful that my parents are on holiday and cannot impart the most bruising 'I told you so'. Until next week...

Toilet Humour

2008-09-09T21:00:00.010+01:00

The Colosseum in Rome, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the majestic Gateway Arch in St. Louis, the Mayan temples at Tikal in Guatemala, the Sydney Opera House, the Great Wall of China: all magnificent examples of man's constructive creativity.

To these masterpieces of ancient and contemporary design can now be added the Toilet of Room 552 at the Hôtel des Bains in Paris, a slightly less illustrious but no less worthy addition to an international Who's Who of architectural genius.

I could easily express my anguish as my predicament dawned on me. I could bluntly convey in several poignant phrases the pain as I incurred three trapped nerves, two pulled muscles and a short but electric bolt of sciatica in my upper back in my futile attempt to grasp my Holy Grail. But on this occasion, words cannot do the situation justice and I shall let a picture do the talking.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the world's most ridiculously located toilet roll dispenser.

Daylight Robbery

2008-08-28T13:13:00.003+01:00

'Hmmm...', I pondered to myself in the small computer shop last Saturday, as my mother completed her purchase of a brand new laptop (finally...). '£29.99 for 80gb or £39.99 for 160gb. Which one shall I go for? Ah, never mind, I'll get a hard drive and back up all my stuff next week.'.

That fateful thought process promptly retreated to the Filing Cabinet of Bad Decisions (F.C.B.D.) deep inside my brain, where it lay dormant for exactly four days, six hours and twenty-five minutes. Last night, under the cover of darkness, it quietly opened the middle drawer, jumped out, tiptoed its way out of my head, shuffled down my back until, clinging onto my belt with one straining hand, it bit me in the ass hard and good.

I was sitting in Caffè Nero near Covent Garden yesterday evening, about to submit my friend and French language pupil to her first test. My mood was buoyant, sadistic even, as I uncapped my red pen in gleeful (and misplaced) anticipation of carrying out some swashbuckling corrections. The test began, our expressions earnest and thoughtful, the concentration intense.

At 20:00, the test successfully completed and marked, we got ready to leave for the second half of Holy Wednesday, dinner at the bar in our local French bistro, our oasis of calm in this troubled world. I looked down from my stool and was pole-axed by what I saw, or rather did not see.

Had a photo of our table been taken at both 19:00 and 20:00, a short but easy game of Spot The Difference would have cruelly revealed the most ironic twist of fate since Alanis Morissette found herself owning ten thousand spoons when all she wanted was a knife (and some good medication for her terminal case of cutlery fetish): I had had my laptop stolen at some point during our French lesson, a mere four days after deciding against buying a hard drive in order to back up all my files.

In. My. Face.

Thus vanished into the ether approximately six years of memories, photos, video clips, short stories, personal notes and other assorted mementoes of my past. From the 2002 World Cup in Korea to wearing a Mongolian warrior's costume in Ulaan-Bataar, from the wild nights of Amelia House to the D-Day beaches of Normandy, me holding a Geiger counter fifty metres from the decomposed reactor core at Chernobyl, me in Red Square, inside the Grand Canyon, sailing a boat in Croatia or watching cricket at the MCG. Gone. All gone.

The one comforting factor in this short tale of treachery and misery is that I can at least find solace in the fact that the £20 obtained from the immediate street corner resale of my laptop was undoubtedly given to charity or contributed towards a programme of sustainable agriculture in northern Sudan, and not used to buy a two-litre bottle of White Lightning (9,4%, try it with muesli at breakfast to kickstart your day), 20 filterless Benson & Hedges and a dirty wrap of heroin cut with washing powder.

I am trying hard to stay true to my very simple life philosophy - as soon as something happens, be it good or bad, it is in the past and cannot be changed: understand, learn and move on. But the bitter truth is that I feel more deflated than an International Hot Air Balloon Race Meeting flying over the Great Britain National Archery Centre on 'Free Arrows Day'...

I am hurting.

The Running Man

2008-08-22T13:07:00.004+01:00

I have joined a gym.

*** Canned Laughter ***

As I walked through the doors of the Putney branch of Virgin Active (the gravest example of a product not matching the expectations of the name), I was most surprised to see that I did not break out into a horrendous rash or even hives, and neither did I vanish into a puff of smoke. Evidently I am not allergic to the gym.

I started my induction with a few warm-ups before progressing on to the Power Plates, which were easy and fun, although I could not help but think that their primary function was as an accessory in a sex shop for blue whales.

Everything was progressing smoothly until I met what will surely be my nemesis, the Swiss Ball. I am not the most coordinated person at the best of times, but if you ask me to lie on my back and keep a large green inflatable ball the size of Greenland wedged firmly between my Ukrainian shot-putter thighs, before thrusting it away repeatedly, then you are simply asking for ridicule to happen. I promptly delivered, by releasing the ball mid-thrust and practically launching it at an unsuspecting girl working out on the other side of the room. That it shares its name with my nationality further adds insult to physical injury.

Having now rediscovered the forgotten joys of quantum physics, I was soon reacquainted with another bête noire from my school days: biology. There are certain parts of the Guyanese rainforest that remain undiscovered and untouched, with an abundance of crystalline waterfalls cascading handsomely into ragged rock pools within the lushest greenery known to man. Closer to home, however, I was proud and honoured to be able to reveal to the world a supremely fascinating and unique new ecosystem: the treadmill.

Overcoming my initial reluctance to indulge in the seemingly tedious and unimaginative act of running on the spot for an extended period of time, I soon settled into a steady rhythm and actually found myself thoroughly enjoying the experience.

Halfway between kilometres two and three, however, disaster struck. My lower intestine performed some cardiovascular exercise of its own and unkindly generated an uncontrollable and unavoidable urge to expel air from the southern ventilation unit. Fully conscious that the consequence of my actions might lead to a full-blown military evacuation and enforced quarantine zone for the whole of South-West London, yet at the same time unwilling to interrupt my triumphant march into the kingdom of exercise, I let rip.

What followed next was not for the faint-hearted, let alone the faint-nostrilled. In what can only be described as the cruellest coalition of evil forces since Hitler and Mussolini met at summer band camp, the circular motion of the rubber treadmill belt and the bulky frame of the machine conspired to keep the repugnant odour within my immediate airspace for longer than it takes to walk from Rome to Naples. I felt myself being teleported to the trenches of the Somme in July 1917, crawling through the cold mud in No Man's Land with nothing but a broken gasmask to protect me from the incessant shelling of Zyklon B and mustard gas. Senseless horror...

It is a simple fact that I would not have been able to run 5 metres, let alone the 5 kilometres I managed before breakfast this morning without the assistance of music. I owe every single second spent pounding the oversized elastic band into sweaty submission to cheerful ditties such as Cannibal Corpse's 'Meathook Sodomy', Slayer's 'Dead Skin Mask' or Immortal's 'Impale The Virgin'. This surely must be the reason thrash metal was created.

My other self-motivational tactic involved mentally removing from my stomach any food consumed during the day using the machine's calorie counter reading. Thus, yesterday's lunch of king prawns was being despatched from my metabolism at a rate of one every 24 seconds, as explained by the following scientific formula:

Total Pack Calorie Count 102 / Total Prawns 34 = 3 Calories / Prawn, or Calprawns.

Since I ran for a total of 156 prawns, but only ate 34, I can now consider myself 122 prawns to the good. Equally, I will still be running into the 27th century if I ever have a kebab for lunch.

It is only the beginning, and the road ahead is indeed fraught with lazy danger, but for now, a new day has dawned...

Word Up

2008-08-20T14:43:00.004+01:00

There is bad news for all those regularly exasperated by my convoluted contortion of the English language within these garrulous musings of epic and infinite wisdom (*). The mellifluously meandering river that is my muddled mind is about to break its banks and flood the plains of verbosity.

Responsible for further fuelling the vagaries of my undernourished pseudo-intellect is the magnificent www.dictionary.com and its Word Of The Day.

No longer is my early morning mood dictated by the whimsical timekeeping of SouthWestTrains' third world wheelbarrows-on-rails. It is with a sense of palpable excitement that I momentarily abandon my glass-selling duties in eager anticipation of discovering the word that will shape my fortunes for the next 24 hours. Being informed by this fountain of linguistic knowledge that my nature is in fact 'perfervid', that I am often prone to 'logorrhea' and that I ought to be living in 'Cockaigne' rather than Putney send me into the wildest throes of verbal ecstasy.

That Microsoft Word is showing the loquacity of a newborn Lower-Andean pigmy llama by incorrectly underlining in red all these marvellous additions to my vocabulary only serves to swell my newly-inflated linguistic ego. Not so smart now Mr. Gates, are you?

I am as yet uncertain as to when the time and place might arise for me to sprinkle such sparkling etymological masterpieces as 'sesquipedalian', 'vexillology', 'tatterdemalion' or 'emolument' over this pompous smorgasbord of a blog that I find so enthralling.

But Pandora's Box has just been opened.

(*) 'On the constructive side try not to use those big words and stuff, also try and put in pictures of boobs and cars on the blog, people like boobs and cars.' - Darcy Curnow (Wagga Wagga, NSW), May 22nd 2008.

Roll With It

2008-08-16T13:20:00.008+01:00

In the dead of the night, when the witching hour has long gone and black is the only colour, They come. Knowing no fear and advancing in numbers from their hiding hole, their den, their nest, They come. For all the defenceless rolls and unguarded paper, They come.

Of the menace there is no trace, only a gaping void remains where previously salvation awaited. But there can be no accurate description of these beasts with no soul, they have never been seen. The monstrosity remains unnamed and untamed, only the legend, the dark unforgiving legend lends shape and substance to the myth. The black and bloodied razor-sharp teeth get ready to tear, shred and pulverize. No-one is safe. 2-ply, 4-ply and aloe vera, all are but mere fodder for this most voracious of cannons.

Every single day our sacrificial lamb is prepared, and every single day the lamb is slaughtered. My breath runs shallow and stutters as I consider the fate of the next offering. We must accept destiny and open the purse strings once more. We must accept life and death, we must rear our new virgin.

Let the ceremony unfold, let the new roll out of its plastic sarcophagus. Release the new sheets.

Thus disappear four new rolls of toilet paper, unseen, unheard, unmourned. We will never understand how a whole family pack of Andrex peach-coloured toilet paper can be brought into the pristine world of our upstairs bathroom on a Saturday morning, yet be consigned to a lifetime of vanishing luxury loo-paper limbo before the downing of the evening sun. Their perforation will never live to see the following dawn, nor shall they ever cleanse the new day buttock.

The silent killers have struck again. The paperlust has been satisfied. The burning question there for our brave and foolish household of three men to answer: which of us will be caught short this time?

Thank You For The Days...

2008-08-10T16:39:00.006+01:00

Yesterday I went back in time.

I had returned to Bristol only once in the previous eleven years, but a promise to visit a new CouchSurfing acquaintance and the ideal opportunity to resurrect an old and precious friendship presented me with all the reasons I needed, and so I decided to dust the cobwebs of my past and revisit the city that I called home during my four years of further education.

Like a spring-heeled koala on a massive eucalyptus rush, I jumped off the train and bounded down and up the stairs leading to the exit, more excited than an only child at Christmas at the prospect of seeing my old flatmate Marc and his girlfriend Tracey. The fact that I was also meeting a new friend from CouchSurfing, Lucy, lent a nice symmetry to the occasion, the equivalent of my life coming full circle, mixing the old with the new, a meeting of past, present and future.

The pretext for this visit was to recreate a venerable old institution that we had worshipped as students: the Bristol Ale Trail. Every year, for a period of six weeks, twelve Bristolian pubs showcased and promoted one real ale a week and offered a t-shirt stating 'I conquered the Bristol Ale Trail' to whoever managed to get a stamp from each pub over the duration of the campaign. Being students (i.e. borderline alcoholic slackers with too much time on our hands), we decided to take the challenge one step further by completing the full set on the first day of the campaign. Every third Sunday in April for 5 years in the mid-1990s, the good folk of Bristol could therefore look forward to seven students more hammered than Hammy the Happy Hammer from Hammertown stumbling down the Gloucester Road just after pub closing time, all wearing the same t-shirt and cap.

With this in mind, I had booked a train ticket to get me into Bristol at 11:15am. Marc, Tracey and Lucy were to meet me at the station and we would head to the pub for our first beer at 11:30am. A minimum of seven pubs were to be visited and our numbers were expected to swell as more CouchSurfers joined our merry throng as the afternoon progressed. The final event of the day was to be a visit to Klub Kute, an indie nightclub playing old school Britpop from the 1990s, the very soundtrack of my university years.

A simple equation really: nostalgic tour of old stomping ground + all day pub crawl + CouchSurfing meeting = a fantastic (and very long) day.

As we wandered lazily from pub to pub (to pub to pub to pub...), I found myself rediscovering this fascinating city that was my home for four years. The beautiful Georgian terraces, trademark steep Bristolian hills, the canals and waterfront, all the memories started to flood back from the moment we left the train station. Every street name, every sign, every building reminded me of a long-forgotten time, of the period of my life that shaped me into the person I am today. Nostalgia was thick in the air as I saw the cultural and historical landmarks that were part of my everyday life all those years ago. Particularly pleasing to my eyes was the discovery that Flames Kebab House, responsible for at least 35% of my nutritional intake, had stood the test of time and was still bringing e.coli burgers and ebola kebabs to the masses.

The Station, The Shakespeare, The Llandoger Trow, The King William, The Drawbridge, The White Lion, The Bay Horse, Colston Yard, Micawber's and The Highbury Vaults. No fewer than ten pubs were put to the sword by our now ten-strong party, boosted by the regular arrival of new CouchSurfers. It was a thoroughly enjoyable day spent in particularly pleasant company.

In fact, it was a perfect day. And one that could only be finished in style with a good old-fashioned boogie to some old indie favourites. I was ready to rock, I was ready to roll. I was in dance mode.

What happened next should not be committed to paper, indeed the most eloquent writer would struggle to find the words that best describe the devastation and carnage that was about to hit the dance floor. After threatening all and sundry with visionary dance moves that would not be out of place in a Jane Fonda Keep Fit DVD, I decided to take centre stage.

Holding the railing between the dance floor and the bar at arm's length, I squatted and stuck out my un-J-Lo-esque backside backwards before unleashing further misery upon a clearly unsuspecting audience by displaying some wild posterior gyrations that the most limber of Russian pole-dancers would have been proud of. With my centre of gravity some kilometres beneath the earth's crust, I was moving as though my butt and the floor were two equally charged ends of a magnet pushing up against and away from each other. People were stopping in mid-dance to marvel at this circus-worthy aesthetical prowess. My own memories of this 'dancing' interlude are somewhat hazy, but I reportedly built on this solid foundation by doing the can-can and the twist at the same time. And the jive. And tapdancing.

Oh yes, I hit the dancefloor, and I hit it hard. Unfortunately, I also hit at least 7 other dancers with my flailing arms à la octopus-on-crack. Although the nightclub manager declined to call in the paramedics, several people who witnessed my dancing did have to receive treatment for shock and will undoubtedly be consulting a hypnotist in the not too distant future in order to repress these scarring memories. Needless to say, I will not be requested to audition for the Royal Ballet Society anytime soon.

It may be another eleven years before I am allowed back in the city.

Swing The Mood

2008-08-08T14:13:00.009+01:00

It is commonly accepted that the universal answer to 'What kind of music do you like?' is 'A bit of everything.', swiftly followed by an immediate self-contradiction along the lines of 'Mainly rock actually, I don't like hip-hop, or dance music. Or techno.'. Every so often, however, your curiosity will be rewarded with a simple yet mind-numbingly depressing 'I don't listen to music.'.

I do not understand this.

At the risk of sending the entire universe into a deep slumber with this flattest of platitudes, I hereby boldly declare that music is a source of immense power that can instantly inspire intense, sublime or harrowing waves of emotion. It can invigorate, amuse, energise or motivate. It can bring closer a loved one far overseas or swell the heart with the memory of a childhood moment. But it is also a two-edged sword. For every intimate and precious moment that can be revisited at will, there is also a reminder of pain gone but not forgotten, of extreme sorrow and grief. Music shapes a moment, defines a memory, twists a mood.

Take this morning, for example. A minor conflict was raging inside my head as I sat in my seat, my very own seat in the same carriage of the same train that I catch every single dreary day of every single dreary week. As I drifted in and out of the subconscious plane known and inhabited only by commuters, I sensed that the mood power struggle within me was drifting ominously in favour of an all-day stinker, and this on a Friday! Putting it down to the soul-destroying rainbow of greys filling this most British of skies, I somberly resigned myself to spending the day in the doldrums of drudgery.

Somewhere between Twickenham and Strawberry Hill, however, my little universe was picked up and shaken into the frenzied action of a demented snowglobe tumbling down a Swiss mountain. A blizzard of joy had entered my body and manifested itself through near-imperceptible motion in my left hand. Index finger up, middle finger down, index finger up, middle finger down. A remarkable feat of dexterity for a man without a musical bone, muscle or ligament in his body. This bold digital activity was even being mirrored by my equally talentless right foot. Tap tap taperoo. In the space of thirty short seconds, the existential funk that was threatening to engulf me for the day had surrendered faster than the entire French army facing a troupe of Albanian goat-herders at the gates of Paris.

As realisation slowly dawned on me, I looked down at the source of this miraculous change of fortune. I am certain that my iPod winked at me as I saw the name of the track that had surreptitiously invaded my mind and violently battered the burgeoning black mood into bleak submission.

I play the song again and the day is safe.

Kokomo

2008-08-04T22:49:00.005+01:00

Once every seventeen months and four seconds, the celestial beings that control the cosmos unleash a bolt of astral brilliance destined to bring wisdom, power and everlasting glory to its intended recipient. Today, at approximately 22:17 GMT, Sister Juanta Maria de Salvador de los Marientos of the Order of the Holy Cool Dorito Convent School in Choluteca (Honduras) felt an all-consuming radiance as she was filled with the magnitude of her life-fulfilling prophecy. She was to revolutionalise the printing of wax-embossed long-sleeve t-shirts in Central American sweatshops and make a name for herself alongside Messrs. Fitch, Abercrombie and Banana Republic in the world of designer fashion.

Meanwhile, in The Fox pub opposite Putney Railway Station in South West London, at the Monday quiz night, Tim and Marc were about to feel the brute force of the tail end of this comet and its little known side effect of provoking what would go down in history as POTENTIALLY THE DUMBEST QUIZ ANSWER. EVER. SERIOUSLY.

Having had less success in the first round than a three-legged leprous chihuahua at the Cruft's Dog Show, we had managed to claw our way back into contention with a sizzlingly hot streak of 21 correct answers out of 24. With the pressure and tension of success suddenly within reach, we found ourselves confronted with question 36, a picture round question depicting five fresh-faced young whippersnappers and the question: name their first UK Number 1 hit

We pondered and cogitated, debated and speculated, until a flash of inspiration entered my soul and took my hand reassuringly.

Marc: hey, doesn't that look like Matthew Broderick?
Tim: yes, but a chubby Matthew Broderick.
Marc: hmmm, but he wasn't even in a band, can't be him.

*** Cogs grinding and whirring ***

Marc: that looks like Mark Wahlberg!
Tim: then that must be the Funky Bunch!
Marc: hold on, they weren't famous, it was just him. They wouldn't be in the picture.
Tim: and he only had one song, can't be him.
Marc: then it must be Donnie, it must be his brother, it must be...
Tim: NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK!!!
Marc: yes! Got it! Then it must be...
Tim: Hanging Tough!
Marc: *sings* Oh-oh-oh-ho, oh-oh-oh-ho, the right stuff, shit that's the wrong one...
Tim: never mind, at least we got it!

FFWD 24 MINUTES

Quizmaster: OK guys, that was a toughie, well done to those who got it. Next, Question 36, the first UK Number 1 Hit of the Beach Boys was...

Ouch.

How To Spin A Good Yarn

2008-08-03T11:48:00.012+01:00

'Be outside the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park at 1pm sharp. Follow the instructions.' reads the enigmatic text message that has just landed in my inbox.

I walk into the gallery at 1pm sharp, although I am certain that I am not meant to be inside. 'I really hope it doesn't rain, that would spoil everything...' I remember her saying last night. I can be pretty bright at times. A perfunctory glance around the small exhibition reveals brushstrokes of lazy pretension and inspired intensity in equal proportions. Hooray for contemporary art. But this is clearly not why I am here, it is outside that this mystery shall be unravelled.

It catches my eye as I exit the building. Fluttering in the wind and tied to the wrought iron railing by what appears to be red knitting wool is a paper note. I walk over and kneel to untie the message, very conscious that several people are now watching me closely. Nutterwatch has begun in Hyde Park. The message says 'Follow me JMRK' in French. I smile at the inclusion of my hidden initial and start to follow the trail.

It IS bright red yarn, and 20 metres of it leads me to and around a small conifer and forces me into an abrupt change of direction. I move up several gears and begin to reel it in eagerly, revelling in the originality and sheer fun of the occasion. So eagerly, in fact, that I soon manage to wind half the captured yarn around my jacket buttons as well as design near-symmetrical 8-shapes between and around my legs. A small crowd has now gathered to watch my amateur Mr. Messy impression as I attempt to disentangle myself from this red scourge.

I feel like Theseus in the Labyrinth, using the beautiful Ariadne's red fleece thread to find my way out after having slain the mighty Minotaur, thus delivering Athens from its sacrificial bond to Minos. In reality I look more like a demented escapee from the local mental asylum zigzagging around Hyde Park attempting to gather one large ball of red wool in broad daylight. You win some, you lose some...

Several trees later and I am brutally stopped in my tracks. The red line ends up above my head, wrapped around the high branches of a large holly bush, like some diet tinsel on a prickly Christmas tree. Surely this cannot be the end of the line? There is nothing in the tree and I see no trace of the mastermind behind this skillful plan.

I pause to decide my next move. There were no needles provided with the note, so I can only assume that I am not expected to crochet a pair of baby booties. My suspicion of foul play is confirmed by the gallery receptionist, who has been watching me from afar on her cigarette break. She walks over to me, smiling from ear to ear and informs me that 'Some bastard must have snapped it, that's well out of order! I'll give you a hint, there's more, look around for the other end.'.

Like a pointer that has just regained the scent of its prey, I set off again and conduct an FBI-inspired grid search of the surrounding areas. After five minutes of frustration, I finally do see red and pounce on my new lead.

I am close, I can feel it. One last tree turns me 90 degrees and I finally see the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Or to be more accurate, a pot of gold hair underneath a classy red beret. My best friend greets me with a big smile and signals for me to seat myself down in preparation for our al fresco lunch. As each utensil and victual is carefully placed on our lime green picnic blanket, so too is its corresponding French translation flag. 'Le fromage', 'Le pain' and 'L'eau' sit proudly on the cheese, bread and water, and the blueberries and smoked almonds also look mutlilingually appetising. At this very moment in time, I would fancy my chances in a 1-on-1 against the Cheshire Cat as my grin threatens to acquire permanent residency. This is why I love teaching French, and this is why she is my star pupil.

I am genuinely touched, this is one of the nicest and most fun things anyone has ever done for me. A delightful open air banquet in the most genteel of surroundings is the perfect start to a beautiful day so thoughtfully organised by my dearest of friends. I want to freeze this moment in time forever.

The Revelation

2008-07-26T18:50:00.006+01:00

A seemingly innocent stroll to the shops on Saturday afternoon inched me one step closer to completing my lifetime mission of self-humiliation for the entertainment and benefit of the general public.

I was walking home from the supermarket carrying a multitude of bags containing victuals for the evening's barbeque, when an uneasy feeling came over me. With no belt on, my hands full and gravity working against my cause, I began to feel my shorts slipping ever so slightly downwards.

A quick stop to buy some lemonade from the local convenience store sealed my fate as I was returned my £18.53 change in coins only. Weighed down by the loose change equivalent of Russia's annual iron ore output, my shorts were getting bolder in their attempt to enrol in a rapid and thoroughly undesired southbound relocation programme.

My house was just around the corner, but so was disaster.

I can do this, I thought to myself as I closed the distance from the safe haven of my home to a mere 200 yards. And so I wriggled on, with enough clench in my posterior to render the biggest prune-consuming rhinoceros constipated for eternity. The concentration and determination this gargantuan effort required was making my perspiring forehead displace more water than the Mekong Delta two weeks into monsoon season.

It is commonly known that Shakira's hips do not lie, less so that mine do not grip shorts well. With a delicate slide into eternal damnation and two fingers thrust at my dignity, they finally decided to set sail for warmer climes, smoothly vacating my waistline in favour of my ankles.

Which in turn casually revealed the forgotten yet crucial fact that I had inadvertently gone shopping commando-style, au naturel, or to put it more plainly, without any underwear on.

Oh dear.

The last thing that the couple behind me were expecting to see on a relaxing walk in the Saturday afternoon sunshine was the unsolicited appearance of my two plump lily-white buttocks in their immediate field of vision. A sharp intake of breath was swiftly followed by the bray of laughter of a wild donkey as the man raised his hands to slow-clap my impromptu freestyle stripping act. His companion was doubled up, no sound managing to escape her still-shocked mouth. 'Nice one mate!, he managed to congratulate me in between peals of laughter, 'That's the funniest thing I have ever seen.'.

With a face bearing striking resemblance to an uncooked Polish beetroot, I quietly put my bags down in order to reclothe myself, affording the lucky couple one final unforgettable viewing of my fleshy double full moon impression.

JMK = 50% Swiss, 50% British, 100% class...

Hidden Treasures

2008-07-16T23:59:00.011+01:00

As I draw my unfortunately imaginary KillAllTourists3000 and vaporise an entire tour group of Italian adolescents outside Leicester Square Tube Station ('Butta werra izza Trafalgar??? Whya you shoota me???), I begin to slow-release the permanently festering hatred that I have for the West End. A spaghetti carbonara made from offcuts of Shellys shoeboxes and discarded polystyrene BigMac containers from Burundi maybe? Perhaps Steak & Kidney Pie rehashed from reprocessed lambs' umbilical cords and 14-day old chip-fat gravy? What shall we have for dinner tonight?

But tonight is different. I have a glint in my eye. I am in classy company. It is time to take a risk. No Aberdeen Steak House for us tonight (sorry Erik, you gotta convince me it ain't from your home town), not even the Angus. The corner of my eye has seen something, and it knows best. A hidden gem of a bistro may have just entered my field of vision.

We walk into 'Beaujolais' and get the customary French greeting:

'Hrrmnnn?'

Two please.

'Hrrmnnn?'

Two please, can we sit at the bar?

'Hrrrrmnyesh. Grmmmnfgd.'

As the spoils of the war of our fromage platter are divided (blue cheese for she, smelly for me), we start to take in our surroundings. Or rather our surroundings start to take us in. A stout, portly and one suspects JackDanielsy Frenchman barges into my left shoulder, the bar, and probably an oil rig in the North Sea at the same time; he curses from afar an unfortunate customer who has taken lawful advantage of his bladder-induced absence to rob him of his barstool. 'I'l m'a niqué ma chaise, je vais le niquer!' he bellows, in the absolute certainty that his neighbour - yours truly - would not understand his bold assertion that 'He fucked my chair, I will fuck him!'. As I share this beautiful linguistic nuance with my companion, the owner comes over and shares some of the wondrous history behind this magical venue we have discovered par hasard.

We are sitting at the bar, au zinc if we were in France, and in front of us lies a discrete brass plaque commemorating the life of Tony Hogan. We are told in a very reverential and respectful manner that Tony, local patron of more than 20 years, was THE archetypal English gentleman, favourite guest, and that he had passed away recently. Up on the wall, we are shown a members' board, complete with each local's In/Out sliding marker. Tony's is at the very top, set to Always In. We understand immediately how much this person means to everyone here, all four barmen stop to describe Tony as a local legend never to be forgotten. It is a very touching moment.

We are but new people in this bar full of past, present and future. That the owners take a shine to us and care to explain the significance of the place we are lucky to be in is more of a crowning glory than a mountain of chantilly crème topping on a rich chocolate mousse. Which makes part-owner Jean-Yves' words all the more special after we have enjoyed a fantastically entertaining soirée of cross-Channel banter. He waves regally at his clientèle and turns towards me. 'This wine bar has been here for 30 years and there are only locals here.' he whispers, his salt and pepper (avec hint of Brie) beard rustling and bustling nervously as he leans towards me and continues 'You will be locals, I know it...'.

He is truly not mistaken. My friend and I had entered this Narnian enclave within the infernal chaos of Soho with the innocent hope of escaping reality for but a short while. Ethan, you would be proud of me...

When Doves Cry

2008-07-02T19:58:00.007+01:00

3:30am - two more gunshots echo. I am lying on the floor of a hotel room, flattening myself against the wall beneath the window in order to offer as small a target as possible to the psychopath shooting at me from a nearby rooftop. There is glass everywhere and I realise distractedly that I have a deep gash on the palm of my left hand. It is the least of my current worries. Where am I and what the hell am I doing here? I have no recollection of the previous five hours. "Shit man, that was too close, let's get the hell outta here!" a voice behind me says, somewhat too excitedly. I am not alone. "Get up bitch! They're coming". The stranger opens the door, motions impatiently for me to follow him. Unable to think clearly, I do so.

5:30am - My right leg seizes up. Every muscle, tendon and joint in my body is aching and my lungs are burning with the very fires of hell itself. We have been running for days, it seems. I pause for breath and lean exhausted against a rusting locomotive engine. I want to scream, to release this rage that is in me, but more than anything I want to cry. "Move it NOW asshole, or you're dead!" the stranger hisses at me as he shoves me to one side before setting off at pace again. I hear the dogs barking in the distance and quickly follow this man I know nothing about.

As we weave a ragged course towards a thick copse beyond the railway yard, I can barely make out the minefield of obstacles waiting to put an abrupt end to the death chase. Rails, sleepers and boulders, I dodge them all panting and sweating like a rabid animal. The dogs are gaining on me, aware that their quarry is tiring and excited that there will be fresh meat for breakfast. A shot rings out. As I turn my head in time to see the stranger felled by a bullet in the back of his neck, my foot catches a root and I fall hard, knocking myself out on a flat rock.

6:30am - I wake up, although not in the local morgue but under a blue polka-dot duvet in my bedroom in Putney, London. Not quite under actually, half of it is on the floor and the pillows are nowhere to be seen. The dogs are not in my room, neither is the dead body of a stranger.

Another night, another crazy dream...

That bright old doyen of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud believed dreams to be a disguised fulfilment of a repressed wish. Whilst much of his research is rightly revered to this day, I nevertheless have to question the validity of his statement. There are many achievements and wishes I hope to fulfil in this lifetime, but finding myself in a seedy hotel room with a random bloke is not one of them, and neither is running like a rabid lunatic for TWO HOURS with said random bloke before being chased by a pack of bloodthirsty hounds in a disused railway yard.

My curiosity piqued, I decide to trawl the internet for possible interpretations of my dream and stumble upon the inspiration that is Dream Central at www.sleeps.com. Confidence in the website's powers of interpretation courses through me as I spot the advertising on the homepage ('We deliver compatible singles to you!'). A biblical reference confirms my worst fears and my seconds of hard toil are rewarded as I open the magical portal that is the.......... [drum roll].......... Dream Dictionary and its universe of platitudes, banalities and life's-what-you-make-of-itisms.

Example:

Doves: The symbol of peace and love herald the end of disagreements. Dreaming of white doves foretell a happy domestic life filled with peace and tranquility. A flock of doves means that you will soon welcome home an old friend, and if you hear doves cooing, your love will be returned, but, if you hear turtle doves, you will soon hear some disheartening news.

Now I am quite prepared to admit that there is a frustrated ornithologist inside each and every single one of us but '... if you hear doves, you will soon hear some disheartening news'??? If I cannot tell the difference between an American and a Canadian, quite how I am expected to spot the single turtle dove in a line-up of regular doves I do not know. No, the only disheartening news I will hear will be a) the soft rumble of the turtle dove's bowels as it releases breakfast, lunch and dinner onto me from a great height and b) the 'Ker-ching!' of the dry-cleaner's cash register, nothing more, nothing less...

As for the interpretation of my dream? I will stick to my trusted self-analysis: I am just weird...

WARNING: READ ON AT YOUR OWN PERIL

PS How does a dove get into power? Thanks to a military coo...
JMK 2008 (TM)

Midnight Callers...

2008-06-27T13:13:00.000+01:00

January 26th was a fateful day in history. By sailing the First Fleet into Botany Bay, Captain Arthur Philip not only doomed this Albion nation to the better part of a century's heartache at cricket and an eternal locust-like Antipodean infestation of West London, but also pretty much guaranteed yours truly monthly mobile phone bills larger than the Gross Domestic Product of Antigua & Barbuda.*

Let us paint this portrait with vivid brushstrokes. It is 11:35pm on a Thursday night. Your stomach is playing happy landlord to six of the establishment's finest tipples, you are still wondering how you managed to tsunami yourself when washing your hands in the toilets and there is a momentary lull in your thrilling conversation about the faux-chintz décor of the velvet curtains. It begins as a gentle whisper, trickles into a rumbling murmur before exploding into an almighty roar of inspiration: let's call friends in Australia on our work phone!

Why? Just why?

My mother is English. My father is Swiss. My grandmother was Italian. I went to school in France and studied in Germany. Why by the Beard of Zeus, Odin's Great Raven AND the Knights of Columbus could I not befriend and pester telephonically the kind folk of these countries? Short of joining the London Club for Fijians About to Return Home (LCFARH), I could not possibly pick a longer-destinationer long-destination country to call after a few cheeky ales (until New Zealand gets telephone masts).

The not-so-lucky beneficiaries of last night's philosophical ponderings were Ash and Erin, two of my nearest and dearest friends. Before I continue, please consider the following point: not once during their far too brief stay in our fair and wet country did I contemplate calling them late at night when slightly intoxicated (by 'slightly' I in fact mean 'absolutely' and by 'intoxicated' I mean 'battered' - Editor's Note). Now that they are back in the land of sunshine, marsupials and VB however, they have become what is known as 'fair game' and are henceforth strongly advised to use the silent feature on their mobile phones between the hours of 6:00am and 10:00am. Not together? No problemo, I'll just call both of them! What made last night's ramblings even more amusing (i.e. just above zero on the international scale of hilarity) was that my partner in crime Tim decided to get in on the act by calling Ash's brother AT THE SAME TIME! Ha! How funny are we?**

Thankfully, the figurative blood, sweat and tears that went into my passionate conversation with one of my closest friends were justified when I received the following message in my inbox this morning:

Hey mate,

I just spoke to you on the phone, and I wanted to give you a run down on how you are going to feel tomorrow:

- after waking up: breath smells like death and want to go back to bed
- after shower: thought the shower would make you feel better, but no go
- waiting at tube stop: wondering why the fuck you drink
- waiting at overland stop: wondering why the fuck you work on overland
- on train: hoping no-one can smell the beer burps you are doing
- sitting down at your computer at work: devastated when you realise you have 8 hours of work left!

Enjoy your day at work today!!!

He is right every single step of the way of course. Spoken from experience no doubt...

* £117.85 - 2005 figures
** Not at all

Intervention

2008-06-24T22:30:00.000+01:00

I want to write. My hands hover impatiently and my fingers are anxious to type, yet they remain cruelly suspended in mid-air, frozen in a barren wasteland of uncertainty four inches above the black keyboard that is rapidly becoming a symbol of my failure. After a raft of recent ponderings from the murky depths of my deranged mind, including offering to the world my transcendental observations on decapitated pigeons, all cerebral activity appears to have ceased. Like the hollow shell of a discarded frozen lemon sorbet in the bin of a backstreet Chinese restaurant, my brain is empty, totally and utterly devoid of creative thought.

I. Have. Nothing.

As if to twist the knife and scrape the bone in this already deep mental wound, dear old Microsoft Word has just autocorrected my harrowing 'I. Have. Nothing.' cry for literary help into a Roman numeral paragraph header. I am seconds away from creating an indentation of my own on my keyboard before realising that my work colleagues can hear the grinding of my teeth and are gently but purposefully pushing their chairs backwards towards towards the exit. I attempt a soothing count to ten, but do so in German by mistake, further fanning the flames of frustration and arousing in me an uncontrollable urge to invade and conquer the neighbouring offices without warning. Scheisse!

Calming myself down by thinking of Ron Burgundy's many leather-bound books, I briefly consider a light-footed hop, skip and jump to the nearest 'Razorblades R Us' superstore in order to put an end to this literary flatline that has turned the contents of my head into twice-pickled Polish cabbage. But I don't. I am stronger than this.

Literary Flatline

Can it be that nothing of any significance whatsoever has happened in my life over the past two weeks? Having experienced a phenomenal football trip to Euro 2008 in Austria and Switzerland as well as a superb CouchSurfing weekend in Brighton with a crew of eight under one roof, can it be that the one paltry idea for a blog entry that I have had is about a song that has blown me away by its haunting poignancy. Yes folks, a song. Most of the people who know me think I am a reincarnated crack whore as it is without having to have my review of the Top 40 drop into their inbox on a Wednesday morning. What next? Jean-Marc Knoll speaks to the world about the mating patterns of the Arctic Tern [Part 2 - Foreplay], puhlease...

Next I'll be writing about writer's block...

Monday Bloody Monday

2008-06-10T21:55:00.000+01:00

Monday 8:41am: my train from Putney pulls into Teddington Station one minute late and I mutter under my breath "This would never happen in Switzerland, heads would roll...".

Unaware of how eerily accurate my thoughts are about to become, I hasten my step so as to be at my rightful spot in front and slightly to the left of the back doors of the first carriage on the 8:45 to Shepperton. I notice that it has taken me 28 steps from the footbridge rather than the usual 32 and put it down to the increased tempo. I am perturbed however, there have just been two changes from The Routine in the space of two minutes. This is going to be a tough week.

As I briefly consider whether to triple salto or double pirouette into the path of the oncoming train in anticipation of another week of 9 to 5 drudgery, my attention is caught by some movement down on the tracks and I realise one poor soul has unwittingly beaten me to it.

There is a pigeon on one of the sleepers. Or rather 7/8ths of a pigeon since its head lies a full six inches from its body. Wait, three inches. No, one foot. A monstrous crow - black as the night and easily the largest I have ever seen - is tossing the lifeless head in the air like a bloody rag doll. Next to it, another raven is pecking at the pigeon's neck with great gusto, scattering random pieces of red flesh across sleeper and rail alike. I am standing no more than one metre from this scene of carnage and can clearly see the dead bird's spine protruding from its torso. A gruesome sight.

I wonder briefly whether it is an omen for the week that is ahead of me. Although there is little chance of any of my work colleagues meeting the same fate, I attempt a minor curse on the accounts department and put my faith in the spirit of the pigeon. One thing is clear though: I do not trust the Benjys food van's offerings at the best of times , but this railway station is too close to their catering centre for comfort and I will not be opting for the chicken and mushroom pie today.

The 13th Month

2008-06-07T10:23:00.000+01:00

Every second year, the Gregorian calendar upon which the very fabric of our society has been based for centuries undergoes a subtle and temporary change. An additional month is added to the twelve we are already familiar with.

The 13th month does not challenge or even bend the rules of time and space, it simply functions as a parallel universe sewn onto the hem of the sleeves of chronology. It contains its own units of time measurement and is generally referred to as the "Euro Month" every leap year and "World Cup Month" every non-leap even year.

The Units Of Time (UOT) of The 13th Month are as follows:

- The 'Group Stage' UOT is split into three separate units, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Group Games. Each Group Game lasts the equivalent of 4 Gregorian Calendar days and contains 8 'Football Matches' (also known as 'Soccer Matches' in developing countries). Cholesterol levels increase by 862%, salsa becomes an integral part of the daily nutrition plan and the next 16 generations of the Dorito Family are guaranteed private schooling as The 13th Month gets underway.

- The 'QF' or 'Quarter-Final' UOT follows the 3rd Group Game without interruption. The 'QF' lasts the equivalent of 4 Gregorian Calendar days and contains 4 'Football Matches'. The dilution of the matches/day ratio is compensated by the increased significance of the 'Football Matches'. This is a direct symptom of the 'Knock-Out Phase' effect. Hundreds of cases of partial rigor mortis are reported as supporters lose mobility in both hands from holding beer cans permanently, also known as Playmobilitis.

- The 'No Game Days' UOT occurs between the 'QF' and 'SF' UOT as well as between the 'SF' and 'F' UOT. It lasts the equivalent of 2 Gregorian Calendar days and contains NO 'Football Matches'. Essentially a matrimony-saving period of time and also known as 'Vacuum' or 'Black Hole', the 'No Game Days' UOT induces acute feelings of disorientation, confusion and paranoia. Viewed as a curse by supporters and a blessing by phillistines, the only known remedies to 'No Game Days' fever are 'Goal Of The Tournament' competitions and 'Highlights Clips With Trendy Indie Music'.

- The 'SF' or 'Semi-Final' UOT lasts the equivalent of 2 Gregorian Calendar days and contains 2 'Football Matches'. Generally recognised as the most dramatic period of The 13th Month, the 'SF' UOT is also known as 'The Business End' of The 13th Month. Requests abound for players to be counted after standing up. Several European trade agreements are annulled, and during the half-time commercial break of the second 'Football Match', 162 million fans across the continent recite in unison the words to the Adidas, Canon, Castrol, JVC AND MasterCard adverts.

- The 'F' or 'Final' UOT follows the 2nd 'No Game Days' UOT and is the climax and anti-climax of The 13th Month. The anticipation and excitement inevitably end in disappointment as a 90-minute snoozefest ends in a 0-0 draw and tame penalty shootout. Images of jubilant Germans and crying French children are beamed across the world. Alcoholics Anonymous hire 17 new administration assistants to cope with increased membership applications.

This morning, I very nearly beat the long jump world record as I leapt out of my bed. I sang an entire music festival's material under the shower. I am more energized than the Duracell bunny after 32 cans of Red Bull, 7 double espressos and a good hit of Colombian grade A primo.

I am about to become intimate with 368 players in a footballing orgy of leather, studs and swerving balls. The father/son bond will reach its biennial peak as "Why have you not started a pension plan yet?" becomes "Are you blind? He was never offside!". I will agree wholeheartedly with my mother when she tells me that Romanian winger is tasty.

Today, my hometown of Basel is the centre of the universe and my chest is about to burst with pride.

COME ON SWITZERLAND!!!

Chernobyl

2008-05-31T12:05:00.000+01:00

At precisely 01:23am on 26 April 1986, Reactor #4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the former Soviet Union exploded, causing the worst nuclear disaster in the history of the world. Large areas of current-day Ukraine, Russia and Belarus were severely contaminated by the intense radiation and nuclear fallout, leading to the evacuation and resettlement of over 300,000 people. Twenty-two years on, the world has largely forgotten the largest man-made environmental disaster of the 20th century, but in the Ukraine neither the mental nor physical scars have fully healed.

Yesterday I stood not 50 metres from Reactor #4, the needle of my Geiger counter shrieking and leaping like a maniacal leprechaun with an angry rattlesnake down his green velours dungarees. The burning question: what was I doing there?

The self-styled 'Weirdest Tour in the World' had started off with the usual backpacker recipe,

*** Open Culinary Interlude ***

Eastern European Tour Group
Preparation: 8 - 10 hours
Serves 9 people, not including driver and tour guide

Ingredients:

4 x Brits - three Lahndahners & one Mancunian with chip on shoulder about life Up Norf, the older gentleman bearing a strong resemblance to Hannibal from The A-Team.
3 x Canadians - preferably Québecois, each with symmetrically positioned maple leaf patch on backpack.
1 x Australian - effing and blinding for first hour while describing Great Barrier Reef and home town, then snoring rhythmically in haze of vodka fumes.
1 x Irishman - quiet and mysterious, attracting immediate interest from Canadian girls, probably gay.

Pour into one minivan, shake and bounce about on potholed Ukrainian road for two hours, creating heavenly aroma of hangover halitosis and Bacon & Egg McMuffin breakfast odours oozing through sweaty pores.

Serve irritably as group discovers road time is double that stated in brochure at hostel.

*** Close Culinary Interlude ***

and as we sped (for literary effect only, plodded would be more accurate) through the lush Ukrainian forest, blue skies and blazing sunshine above our heads, the mood was more Paddington's Grand Day Out than Thyroid Cancer Exclusion Zone. To answer my own burning question, I was curious to test my usual moral ambivalence by going on a tour described by guidebooks and fellow travellers alike as moving, distressing, disturbing and a further Thesaurus-truckload of similar adjectives. Would I, the heartless one, feel any of the above emotions?

Truth be told, it was impossible to feel anything more than voyeuristic curiosity in the now miltary-populated town of Chernobyl and at the plant iteself. Our interpreter's liberal use of the word 'stuff' (eg. "The fallout was 30 to 40 times more serious than Horoshima and stuff..." or "They added stuff to the Uranium-235 and that made it melt..." - what did they add, a slice of Kraft processed cheddar?), the aforementioned good weather and the fact that the Red Forest (so -called because of the ginger-brown colour of the 10km radius of pine trees that died from absorbing high levels of radiation) had been replaced by lush green vegetation all detracted from the tragic events that had occurred here. That each and every single one of us was more obssessed with obtaining the highest reading on the Geiger counter lent an even more jokey element to what ought to have been a sombre and serious affair (and yes, of course it was only-child-me-me-me with a whopping 729 micro-roentgens).

It was only when a book released to commemorate the 10 year anniversary in 1996 was passed around that we began to appreciate the enormity of the catastrophe and its repercussions. As I flicked through photos showing firefighters equipped with fire aprons only (aprons!!!) to fight the chemical fires in the immediate aftermath of the explosion or of radiation burns victims with their skins flayed and torn to shreds, I felt a tightening in my chest. Incidentally of the 56 deaths attributed directly to the accident, 47 were firefighters and accident workers and 9 children with thyroid cancer, although, in a textbook display of the ills of the soviet propaganda machine, doctors were forbidden from recording "Death by Radiation" as a death verdict in order to keep the number of 'real' casualties down. Truly sickening. I bought the book to serve as a reminder of the bravery of the emergency services and the true horrors now disguised by new trees and abundant flora and fauna.

If the book showed us a side of the events that few people know of, then the next part of our tour conveyed a message blunter than the billboards of Times Square. The city of Pripyat, not Chernobyl, was the closest to the reactor and therefore the worst affected. The whole city was evacuated in 72 hours, with a 40km long caravan of buses carrying all 50,000 inhabitants to pastures and lives new. Schoolbooks and a teddy bear at the school, a broken projector with filmreel in the cultural centre, all artifacts showing the panic and urgency of this forced migration. In the centre of the ghost city stands the rusting hulk of a large ferris wheel, visible from miles around, all the more poignant since it did not manage to complete one single rotation, its public opening due three days after the accident.

This was not moving, this was not distressing, this was not even destruction, this was sheer postapocalyptic desolation. I felt unsettled and even obscene standing on the roof of the abandoned hotel looking down at what had once been a thriving community living in the shadow of its employer and executioner. I held my breath irrationally, radiation was minimal but I did not even want to breathe the air in this place truly forsaken by God, Buddha, Allah and all their furry friends. I felt like an extra in 28 Days Later (the zombie movie set in London, not 28 Days, the crap Sandra Bullock rehab romance schmaltzfest I hired by mistake the first time around).

There was a lot more to the tour, but this just about covers its mental impact on me. The physical aspect is another matter altogether. The level of radiation we were exposed to was high enough to cause concern, but only over an extended period of time. Many Ukrainians we met assured us that we would sprout a third leg within the week and that we were madder than an army of March Hares on crystal meth for going into the exclusion zone. It certainly plays on your mind though, and we duly followed the base commander's advice in drinking alcohol in order to accelerate our metabolism and flush the radiation out of our bodies. I am not sure that he had 2 litres of vodka over 3 hours of playing Shithead in mind, but hey ho, better safe than sorry...

For further information on the Chernobyl Disaster, Wikipedia has a thorough account of the event and how it has affected the Ukrainian psyche and identity. I have come away from what I had initially seen as a form of extreme tourism with a greater understanding of one of the most important events to happen in my lifetime. I now also have an easy answer to the "What is the strangest place you have ever had a beer?" question. It gave me a warm glow ;-)

Dish of the Day...

2008-05-27T13:20:00.001+01:00

One immensely rewarding aspect of roaming this wonderful planet is the sheer unbridled joy derived from discovering a randomly surreal translation on an English food menu abroad. If travelling is food for the soul, then English menu translations must surely be its dessert. My previous championship contenders, 'Gordon Blue' in Krakow and the rustic-sounding 'Village Style Shop' in Moscow, had remained unchallenged for over one year but they have been consigned to history books as also-rans by the sheer creativity and subtle syntax of Ukrainian cuisine. There must surely be an undergraduate course in Menu Mistranslation at Kiev University for the talent and excellence of these plainly ridiculous entries are unlike any I have ever seen on my travels.

The following are genuine culinary selections taken from several English translation menus across the Ukraine, followed by my very own linguistic interpretation:

Squids in rings Orly style: a performing troupe of circus cephalopods swinging gleefully from ring to ring mid-air high above the check-in desks at Paris' second airport.

Frying Pan Happy Pork: a low-IQ pig unaware of the severity of the situation, grinning inanely as the butcher comes to bludgeon it to its bloody death with a Tefal non-stick griddle pan.

Mother's in law tongue: a cheap thrill, but I liked the positioning of the apostrophe. Enjoyment is presumably derived more from silencing an unliked non-blood relative than actual taste.

Fried grey mullet: I have had to shackle my fertile and vivid imagination on this one, the potential is too immense. From the high price (125 Ukrainian Grivnas versus 95 for the lacklustre and clearly inferior Black Mullet), I am assuming that the greyness signifies a more mature and stylishly reared beast. It comes with the bold assertion that it is "... as good as grilled and fried...". Popular in Australia, particularly in Outback Queensland.

Salted hunchback salmon: swims with a stoop, but very tender underbelly. Served with Notre-Dame sauce.

Butterfly chop: for the light hunger.

And finally, my all-time favourite, a new entry straight to the top of the charts, Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you...

Caesar with a Hen.

Picture the Emperor himself in an ancient Roman chair, one eunuch playing the lute and another fanning him with arabian palm fronds. One plump fluffy chicken lies (or possibly lays) despondently across his toga, miniature laurel wreath resting on its head. He strokes its rich plumage absent-mindedly à la Blofeld as he plots the downfall of Carthage. It sits content, aware of its privileged status across all of poultrykind. It is... Caesar with a Hen.

Little things do indeed please little minds...

A modern-day Greek Tragedy in one very long Act...

2008-05-16T21:27:00.002+01:00

Had Sophocles and Euripides still been plying their trade today, I have no doubt that their concept of tragedy would have been dramatically altered after sitting in on one of my company's world famous mailout meetings.

The fact that my venerable employer has been sending catalogues of its new collection twice a year for the past 36 years would lead the rational mind to deduce that a mailout meeting (feel my shivering spine as I write these mere words) would be a smooth and rapid decision-making process. Not so. Truly not so.

Today's biannual festival of dullness saw me achieve a lifetime PB, or Personal Best for those of you not acquainted with strenuous fitness regimes. I managed to record three R.D. and one D.O., or in layman's terms three Rumbled Daydreams (the eyes are open and staring in approximately the right area, but you miss a simple question aimed in your direction, a situation salvageable only by BAFTA-winning amateur dramatics recovery skills) and one actual Doze-Off, the pinnacle of office meeting embarrassments that all wannabe Dilberts strive to attain.

The conditions were perfect. Eight people in one small windowless meeting room immediately after lunch; fragrant body odour mingling intimately with prawn cocktail crisp and ham & cheese breath; the cash and carry checkout promotion clock on the wall taunting the room on a Friday afternoon by ticking back one second for every seven forward. I knew I was doomed the moment I walked into the room. Most non-hibernating mammals would have succumbed within half an hour but I lasted forty-five minutes of herculean proportions before making the fatal mistake of allowing my eyelids a short rest. The four centuries of sleep that I so richly deserved were brutally taken away by a poke between my third and fourth ribs by my UK Sales counterpart, fortunately sparing me from total humiliation in front of three of the company's six directors.

For the record, the meeting lasted one hour and twenty-seven minutes and concluded with the revolutionary concept of repeating the previous year's procedure. Such is the fulfilling and stimulating life that I lead. Had Archimedes been taking a bath in the meeting room, he would have drowned long before the seeds of Eureka had even germinated in his head.

Slaying the Beast...

2008-05-13T15:46:00.000+01:00

[Author's Note: all names have been changed in order to protect the identity of those concerned.]

Tying in nicely with the 12 Labours I have set myself in 2008 is this little mythological anecdote recounting the unexpected fall from grace of a fearsome warrior. This is...

The slaying of the mythical beast known as........... Mimon Saguire.

To put the man's propensity for mayhem and destruction into context, I will boldly declare that Mimon is to the artistic field of wanton debauchery what the Wright brothers were to aeronautics or Alexander Fleming to medicine: innovative, groundbreaking and light-years ahead of anyone else.

Plenty are the people privileged enough to have watched - in blind fascination - Simon, er Mimon brutally bulldoze many a weekend into more carnage and devastation than the trench warfare of World War I, razing entire cities to the ground on his renowned three day rampages. He could go many months without sleep and eat nothing but the foil from bottlecaps to fuel his burning engine of destruction. Nothing could stop this last man standing amongst hedonists.

Or so we thought...

As Achilles was brought down by his humble heel, so too did Mimon buckle and fall, slain by a much fiercer adversary than the sword: the mighty absinthe.

Any form of liquid alcohol banned across 19 European countries for over ninety years for having "psychoactive and hallucinogenic properties - © Wikipedia" is probably not recommended for a Sunday afternoon picnic in the Hammersmith sunshine. And certainly not four large shots in twenty minutes. Yet that is what our hero did, and the price that was paid was neither headache nor hangover, but his aura of invincibility.

Within a mere half-hour of the final herbal drop descending into his gullet, our hero was babbling incoherent groups of random words with his head lolling about like Churchill on crack (the insurance advertisement dog, not Winston) and eyes looping in opposite directions like inversely magnetized ball bearings. Battered into instant submission, he slowly dragged his failing body into the lounge and onto the sofa, where into a deep coma he fell.

The glory of any such psychoactive and hallucinogenic properties is that their grip on the mind continues even beyond the portal of sleep. Within ten minutes of having lost consciousness (for sleep it was not), Mimon began to recite a string of telephone numbers to the great delight of his bemused audience. Thus "0-2-0-8-7-1-4-9-6-3-3" followed swiftly after "0-2-0-7-4-1-1-8-5-2-5" before giving way to several short yet profound philosophical ramblings along the lines of "I must have more self-respect...".

The whole borough was then subjected to a snoring sonata of such violently epic proportions that all lumberjacks in Canada and Russia united in putting down their chainsaws as a mark of respect.

So there you have it folks. Let this be a marker in time of this memorable moment. More efficient than any silver bullet or wreath of garlic, I officially proclaim the distilled form of a common mountain herb to be the most effective slayer of this fine beast we have the pleasure of knowing.

The beast is dead. Long live the beast.

Sunset in Hammersmith

2008-05-06T23:00:00.000+01:00

There are relatively few moments in my hectic life that can be described as having been utterly peaceful. Tonight, I was fortunate to experience one.

As my back rested against the brick wall overlooking the River Thames, holding a glass of Sauvignon Blanc in one hand and an ever-so-pretentious collection of Chekhov plays in the other, I attempted to cajole my body and soul into some semblance of normality after yet another mind-numbingly destructive day at the office.

Instead, I looked up and felt myself and my self-important universe melt into insignificance as I witnessed as delicate and touching a sunset as one could possibly hope to see in one lifetime.

The sun, eerily pale for the fifth month of the year, began its downward course as a faded and jaded lemon casting a hazy aura over the Thames before transcending the most intense rainbow of peachy hues, eventually skewering itself on a yacht mast and vanishing gracefully behind some distant Chiswick vegetation. So simple, yet so breathtaking.

A privileged and inspirational moment...

Test

2008-05-06T13:33:00.001+01:00

Test, only for Silkylein...

Flip-Flop Butchery...

2008-05-05T20:44:00.001+01:00

I had never considered myself the type of human being that wears flip-flops. For a multitude of reasons - each and every one of which so depressingly dull that it would lose me my one blog subscriber if I aired them here (you know who you are...) - I have never strayed from the safe haven provided by sandals. There is something immensely comforting and reassuring in having your foot strapped snugly within a sandal. Not for me this crazy foot-half-off-edge-of-flip-flop flying by the seat of your pants attitude to life. I used to positively shiver at the boldness of these sartorial buccaneers whenever I encountered them (ie any Australian on the Fulham Palace Road in mid-December). Brrr.

Until now.

My previous sandals having self-destructed in Tijuana (RIP dear friends, may your soles rest in heaven) and the sands of time having trickled too fast between holidays (it's a hard life I lead), I found myself on a sandy beach in Monterosso on the Italian Riviera sporting Converse trainers and socks in 26c heat. A social faux pas in any self-respecting country, I was committing this heinous crime in the very home of fashion! With conditions within my shoes rapidly approaching heating levels of vegetable-steaming proportions, this was a moment for boldness, for grasping the bull by the horns. Influenced by the plastic staccato sound of my three travel buddies' footfall and faced with no justifiable alternatives (anyone for Crocs?), I finally gave in. For the princely sum of 8,00€, I became the proud owner of a pair of black dragon red Diadora flip-flops, rapidly becoming the proud owner of a pair of black dragon-less faded pink Diadora flip-flops (lawsuit in progress, stay tuned for details).

Beaming with unbridled happiness, I opened with much enthusiasm and very little panache this new chapter in my life. To say I had a certain swagger about me would be misleading, it was more of an awkward stagger as I struggled to replicate the near-perfect sound of my friends' echoing footwear. But I was happy.

The word 'shortlived' regrettably follows 'my happiness was' on a relatively frequent basis and this was to be no exception. It rapidly became clear to me that my glorious zenith would mirror that of the sun in its daily brevity. The blazing sunshine, crystal-clear waters and stunning scenery could not distract me from the fact that my new footwear was achieving an all-too-swift transition from the world of looking-tsss-hot-in-new-funky-beach-accessory to the world of incessant-agonizing-pain. Inevitably, the stubborn streak that has possessed me since I entered this world would not accept that my feet were being butchered to bloody stumps and within six hours I felt as though I was locked up in a medieval torture chamber, having one-inch thick wooden wedges hammered gleefully between my first and big toes by the Marquis de Sade himself. AND having the sides of my feet being shredded by a hedgehog being viciously and violently rubbed against my poor soft untreated skin.

I am hoping to lose the freshly-sodomized-by-a-rhinoceros look that the brutal wounds between my toes have given my walk, regain some dignity and will use the flip-flops as a door wedge from now on...

Next week, on "Life on the edge", we see what happens when Tesco runs out of Strawberry yoghurt. The drama, the tension, the raw emotion. All on this blog... Wow...

PS: I apologize for the 'sole' joke in paragraph 2, I truly do. That was abysmal, even by my usually low standards.

The 12 Labours...

2008-04-28T21:49:00.001+01:00

Blink and you may have missed it. No, not the only ray of sunshine in an English summer or the forward advance of a French army but the flash of inspiration that led me to challenge myself into *** shock! horror! *** doing something new every single month of this glorious year 2008, my very own 12 Labours. With neither the Cretan Bull nor the Erymanthian Boar being available for re-capture, my tasks have had to be rather more mundane.

April 2008: discover and conquer a new borough of London, this month and every month until the end of the year...

Me new mucker Sazzo - whose fantastic description of her home borough "a place-name crossed between a cliched expression and the charming sound of pleghm" so accurately describes it - suggested going to a politically supercharged free carnival, Love Music Hate Racism. In Hackney. Not Hackney-upon-Thames, a name that might suggest lollipops and balloons, but Hackney, the name presumably coming from ancient pirate dialect, "Arrrrrr, you be 'anding over 'at doubloon Cap'n, or we be playin' a game of Hack-Knee", as the swinging cutlass swooshing through the air turned a two-player game into a one-winner game.

And so I set off for the Wild East, iPod in pocket and supersized dose of apprehension in my mind. Five years of West London snobbery have instilled a deep-seated belief that the rails of the District Line bend downwards at Aldgate East into the deepest pits of Hell itself, or worse still, Essex. Apparently this is not the case.

Getting on the Tube at Hammersmith, I found myself sitting opposite two girls - clearly sisters - with acutely emotive expressions on their faces as they talked to each other. Poignant looks such as I had never seen before, they fascinated me. I was so moved yet curious at the same time at what seemed like such raw emotion, what terrible news could they possibly be discussing? I felt like an intruder even looking at them and so decided to take things one step further. As I took out my earphones to eavesdrop more effectively, I was truly surprised as the first words I was able to make out were "Shall we get off here or at the next one?" in the most beautiful London accent one could possibly hope to hear. Aaahh, the joys of a fertile imagination. No prizes who would be at the other end of the line if you dialled 1-800-DULLANECDOTE...

To be totally fair to Hackney, there was more chance of being killed by a paper cut from the neverending stream of anti-BNP flyers being handed out than anything else (during the hours of daylight anyway). It was a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon. The fascinating political undercurrent mixed with the palpable appreciation of a free event of this magnitude being organised made it a trip well worth making. Predictably, the loudest cheer of the afternoon went to the sun, as he peaked a hesitant, then confident look from behind his cloud and warmed our souls for the last hour...

Ash's Farewell...

2008-04-23T19:16:00.001+01:00

No fancy titles, no smartarse puns, this is going to be as raw and gritty as the 3:10 to Yuma, and I mean the original...

Imagine the long conversation to the girlfriend you have not seen or spoken to in 6 days. Remember the nailbiting final minutes as your team clings on to a vital 2-1 lead. Picture the time it takes to get from Hammersmith to Cockfosters.

That is how long the barmaid took when pouring the spirit measures in our drinks last night. Whilst St. Louis and Dallas may have started in 4th gear, San Francisco inched into the lead in 5th, Las Vegas most certainly generated a free-drink motivated 6th and San Diego (a whale's vagina in German allegedly) hit the nudity heights of a colossal 7th, the poor old Townhouse Cocktail Bar (did they name the bar knowing what Ash was going to do?) in Venice Beach L.A. hit the Flux Capacitor and Turbo Boost at the same time during our 3 nights there.

Given that our hostel was 17,4 yards across the street and that Ash has already urinated on two telephones on our previous visits, the portents were looking strongly in favour of an almighty battering when he ordered octuples rather than just sextuples. The best compliment I can pay the Townhouse Bar is that I cannot remember the last 2 hours of the last 3 nights spent there. Last night was no exception.

You want the details? Read on...

Ash got naked. That should come as no surprise to those of you fortunate to know the now moustache-like-a-slug-on-fire sporting legend from Melbourne. But this was good. He got naked in the bar. He posed on stools, yes, still naked. He ran into the street and tried to wrestle his friends on the beach. Naked. And then, the climax (thankfully figurative)... He played naked basketball (1 on none) using his miraculously still accessible boxers. That they did not bounce at his feet and did not glide through the air like a LeBron James 3-pointer did not deter him in the slightest. He was possessed. He was driven. He was naked. Butt naked. The sole salvation for our freckled friend was that my camera battery had sold its soul to the devil and decided to spare him from the ignominy of facebook humiliation.

And I miss him already. The time I have known him has been a special time, a time before cable. When the local anchorman reigned supreme.

I digress. Ash is a phenomenal human being, a melting pot of all things good, funny and downright amazing. It is stupendous to see such intelligence, logic, thoughtfulness and maturity counterbalanced by the sheer retardation that this man is capable of. I love him. I love him to bits and the last two weeks were as fitting a send-off as our friendship required.

The fantastic nature of such a good relationship (ggghhhhaaaaaayyyy) is that the sadness of parting ways (ggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy) was instantly wiped away by the knowledge that it WILL NOT be long until we are reunited discussing bowel movements and outconsuming the Russian national GDP (Gross Drinking Philosophy).

See ya soon mate...

Panda Watch!!!

2008-04-19T21:28:00.000+01:00

If last night were to be described in military terms, it would almost certainly be called the Shock and Awe evening.

Shock at the sheer stupidity of 4 travel enthusiasts consuming enough alcohol to strip naked in a hostel kitchen and Awe as in "Awe my God, what a bunch of tools".

Equipped with only a large-brimmed straw sombrero each and enough idiocy to be elected village idiot of the millennium, our evening descended into unadulterated anarchy from the moment drinking rules were added to what had previously been an 'innocent' game of Shithead on a night preassigned as 'quiet'. How many nights can be described as having Mexican stripping, medieval jousting with empty cases of lager, beer pong and more group photos that you could wave a big stick at? For those of you with a graphic imagination, try to picture 5 guys and one girl in the communal lounge/kitchen of a youth hostel at 3am stark naked creatively using a sombrero as a lone item of clothing. Or perhaps do not try to picture it. My conscience often has to slap me around the chops with an imaginary wet haddock, saying "Hold on, me old mucker, you are 33 years of age". Fortunately last night, my conscience was incinerated by an obscene streak of immaturity that retorted "Wot'evaaaahhh".

*** THIS IS A PUBLIC HEALTH WARNING: do not look at the photos if you are a) of a nervous disposition; b) liable to projectile vomiting at a second's notice or c) allergic to the sight of Swiss/British love handles. ***

The sign of a good holiday is when you do not want to share the tales and memories with others because a) they will not understand them and b) they will not appreciate them. This baby is staying 100% in my own little head. It is a cracker and if you see me grinning inanely as I walk down Fulham Palace Road, there is a good chance I will be recreating the Naked Sombrero Soirée in my head...

How now brown cow.

Slipsliding away...

2008-04-16T09:54:00.000+01:00

Creative spirits are often asked how their inspiration takes form, what seed is sown in their mind and how the idea germinates. It is an honour, nay privilege, to be able to quench your thirst for knowledge. The following paragraphs were the product of a nine hour creative marathon (translation: copious amounts of wheat beer during the hours of daylight followed by the flash of genius that pushed me to go online and add an entry to my blog) and will surely enable common mortals to grasp with both hands the literature genius of my mind:

"Must. Write. Slowly: I would love. To write. Clearly. And. Enthusiastically. But. My. Brain. Is absolutely blown away.

I have been in Las Vegas for 72 hours. Period.

This is most distressing. Ouch. Fading. Away... I miss the real talk. I miss real speech. I will have to disappear. "

The mind boggles... If Nobel prizes were awarded for mental debilitation, I would surely be a contender.

California Dreaming...

2008-04-11T07:37:00.000+01:00

There is something quite intrinsically romantic about driving around the hills of San Francisco. The quaint European trams trundling their way around town, the glorious views across the bay and universally recognised street architecture, it all seems so ideal to drive around.

Or so it would be with the right driver / partner. Our taxi driver, an early but strong candidate for Lunatic Asylum Escapee of the Year 2008, took it upon himself to launch our 1,2 tonnes of Detroit automotive steel into the path of fellow drivers, dog-walkers and pensioners at every opportunity, using the steep gradients of the world-famous local streets as a basic but effective rocket ramp. That we laughed rather than cowered in fear was undoubtedly down to the bottle of Sauvignon Blanc consumed during dinner.

Today I witnessed something special. Basking in the unexpected glory of being entrusted with excursion duties for the day and treating the scale on my map with wholehearted disdain, I suggested a short walk to and across the Golden Gate Bridge to the leafy and upmarket suburb of Sausalito for dinner.

14km, a brush with death and an absolutely breathtaking stroll across the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset later and I am fairly sure that my tour leadership skills will not be called upon again by my fellow travellers. It is said that objects in the rear-view mirrors appear closer than they actually are. I would like to extend that conjecture to the Golden Gate Bridge. 14,5 gazillion tonnes of steel and hundreds of feet high (Statistics kindly provided by the It-is-midnight-and-I-cannot-be-arsed-to-check-the-guide-book-for-the-correct-numbers reference library), it nevertheless appeared to sprout castors at its base and roll slowly and surely away from us every time it seemed we must be close to hitting the final straight.

After living in a universe inhabited entirely by blisters and profanities, our annoyance and tiredness rapidy transformed themselves into unrestrained awe and marvel as we timed our arrival onto the bridge so perfectly to coincide with a glowing sunset over San Francisco Bay. As the city slowly completed its transition from day into night, lighting up the sky with its myriad lights, the evening sky and sea gave us the most splendid hues of orange, blue and aqua from the lofty heights of America's largest man-made construction. A truly spectacular moment in my life that I have no hesitation in describing as one of the finest sights I have ever witnessed.

The often unjustified high esteem in which I hold myself as a world traveller usually leads me to judge a city too rapidly. After orderly St. Louis and sterile Dallas, my first impression of San Francisco was of a dirty and disorganised city that did not deserve its reputation and status as unique amongst American cities. And all this within the first block upon exiting the Metro...

Well dammit and damn you to hell JMK. You were sorely wrong. This city is a magnificent and vibrant metropolis in an absolutely unique geographical location wrapped around the shore of a natural bay. This is THE city for lazy strolls and long lunches. Whether gorging on tastebud-arousing Dim Sum in Chinatown or sipping a ruby chianti at a streetside table in Little Italy, we have enjoyed every picosecond of our stay here. I will be sad when we leave on Saturday... And a little fearful, because:

Next stop Las Vegas...

Rage against the Machine...

2008-03-18T20:00:00.001Z

I am in a cold rage.

I have taken a leaf out of Friends' book in order to defuse the ticking bomb of anger that festers deep inside me tonight. Although instead of having a big mocha/frapa/cappu/whackaccino and a slice of cheesecake, I am putting my faith in the healing powers of a large mixed shawarma and a bottle of rioja. Already the rich juices of the kebab are clogging my arteries and the wine (a £4.67 Berberena, on offer at half price) is working its tannin-inspired magic.

I could scarcely believe the intensity of my anger on the journey home. Unable to even look at my colleagues on the train, I felt a short but all-consuming desire to stand up and scream out loud, share with the entire carriage the frustration that has undoubtedly been building up like a monumental geyser about to pierce the earth's crust for the first time.

The eruption nearly came at Fulham Broadway as I read in the evening trashrag that is London Lite about the latest moronic antics of the current generation of sons-and-daughters-of-stars: Alfie Allen photographed stumbling out of Mahiki at 3am, his charm and class oozing as he hurled monosyllabic insults at the paparazzi. WHO GIVES A SHIT???

Yet Alfie Allen was a mere accelerant to the inferno that was already raging within me. The combustion agent that ignited the blaze was a combination of several highly volatile components:

- My boss checking into rehab for alcoholism for one month, having gone AWOL at the recent round of trade exhibitions, creating a car-crash atmosphere within the department.
- Said boss having one month previously cancelled a once-promised 3 month sabbatical period. I have now reassessed what I need to do to get one month off at my company.
- My assistant being diagnosed with M.E. and her primadonna antics as she struggled to come to terms with her illness, leading to my other assistant threatening to resign and forcing me to recruit a temp for three months, further slowing me down by requiring a back-to-basic training monotony.

I need to get out, I need to get away before I burn out or implode. Failing that, firing a few thousand rounds on an AK-47 right here, right now would probably do the trick. I yearn for excitement, and I want it now.

I do however know that the grand scheme of things is firmly in place. I am 23.3% (recurring) of the way there and look longingly at the world map every day as I head for the shower. Call it a cherry, a carrot, whatever you will (in my case a pint of Guinness would probably work better), I can truly think of nothing else in the world that could keep me focused and make this mundane routine even remotely bearable. No longer rudderless, I now amazingly find myself with more direction than I have ever had before. Bring on April 2009!

Wow, it is true. Transferring my anger and frustration into typewritten words has helped me return to a more level plane.

Either that or it is down to the kebab and red wine, you pick...

The Strange Case of Dr. Knoll and the Polish Vodka Bar...

2008-03-08T07:48:00.001Z

The story begins on an overcast Friday evening in March (as if a Friday evening in England would be anything but overcast. Or July for that matter.). It was balmy and I had a case containing my laptop with me. The train was late but I was on time. London was throbbing with an invisible pulse, the city felt alive, electric even.

It was...

THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. KNOLL AND THE POLISH VODKA BAR... (oooohhhhh)...

How the bloody godfathers do I always manage to go to the Polish vodka bar, start off with the best intentions (ie no vodka karma papa, pray let me drink no vodka), meet no fewer than 75 new people and consume even more shots, wake up the following morning with a troupe of Siberian forest yaks playing Tennessee banjos in my head WITHOUT ACTUALLY REMEMBERING A SINGLE HUMBLE NANOSECOND OF THE JOURNEY HOME????

Why, dear reader? How, dear reader??? Elucidate this mystery for me, I beg thee! This has been going on since time immemorial and still I cannot conjure an answer.

Answers on a postcard please my friends, but forgive me if I do not hold my breath.

The Girl from AMT Coffee...

2008-03-07T13:47:00.001Z

Words cannot do this feeling justice. The sheer lifting of my heart when she smiles her perfect smile is a sensational feeling of elation, a glorious moment of rapture, when the whole world stops and I live only in that moment in time.

Her name is Adriana and on Wednesday she waved at me. She was in the middle of the coffee shop, hidden from view behind a ridiculously oversized coffee roaster, making the beverages (for she does not make common drinks) for her colleagues. I unusually decided to buy a drink even though she was not serving - I like to live on the edge. As she reached over to give her colleague my beverage, she saw me, smiled that perfect smile of hers, raised her sweet hand and waved at me... time stopped...

It has taken me two years to find out that she is Colombian, soon I will risk a cheeky "Hola!" and hope for the best...

Re-reading this 10 minutes after having written it, one has to wonder what Grade A crack pipe I was smoking at the time...

CouchSurfing: a beginning...

2008-03-04T21:51:00.000Z

I really did not know what to expect of my first tentative steps in the world of CouchSurfing. What I was hoping for was to meet a few people, be they locals or foreigners, with whom to share a few beers and rediscover Vilnius.

So what did I get out of it? A world-class hangover on Saturday for starters, with what felt like a little marching band of Lithuanian folk singers, complete with tambourine section, all bouncing around quite happily inside my cranium. But mainly an absolutely fantastic weekend partying hard and a real hint that there is a lot more to be had out of this traveller's phenomenon. Yes, it is a social networking group and site, but one with a real purpose, with a real reason to exist, it feels real and truly alive.

Thank you, CouchSurfers of Vilnius, for your friendship and time, and the seed of inspiration you may just have given me...

Aciu.

... Tzzzer Phut Phut Kergrrrr Zzzummrurrg.....

2008-02-28T21:01:00.000Z

... is as accurate a description as I can come up with for the sound of the propeller engines on Tuk-Tuk Airways' flight DoNotPassGoButPloughStraightIntoThatColdBalticLake 747 descent into Vilnius.

Quite what I was expecting for £37,50 between Tallinn and Vilnius on Golden Air,

*** PAUSE ***

Yes that was Golden Air.

, I do not know, put the pilot put on the finest aeronautical impression of a Disney-on-Ice meets Grand Theft Auto 4 landing. It truly was like a Commodore 64 flight simulator with a broken PowerShot 2 Joystick.

I had not been expecting quite such an entertaining landing, but it was perhaps fitting given the way I left this city the last time I was fortunate enough to grace it.

Flashback to rented apartment (£11 per night, not even per person, just per night) in January 2003 with Fabian, having just returned at 11am from a drive to a petrol station 14 miles out of Vilnius after an all-night bender with a brother and sister drinking machine team. The brother downs 0,5l of neat vodka from the bottle, the sister finishes it off, and the landlady calls the police for our flagrant abuse of rental regulations (ie not drinking pure gasoline).

Boy am I glad to be back here, and boy am I glad I am staying two extra nights... Unfinished business, bring it on!

And in the Beginning there was Tallinn...

2008-02-27T22:03:00.001Z

I have always liked my job, but recently I have started to love it... I am currently undoubtedly mistaking this new-found passion as a sign of long-overdue maturity, and my mother certainly interpreted it in that way last weekend as I gushed about how huge an empire of glass sales I was building.

Was I on crack? I should say so... Perhaps even perma-crack, for the lifetime commitment to lunacy.

I have always liked the idea of a blog, of committing to posterity those fleeting thoughts that I think are so profound but are in reality would struggle to feature on a Channel 5 reality TV show. But for whatever reason, tonight is the night I have decided to start it. Some may say the beers on the plane may have given birth to these revolutionary thoughts. And some would probably be right too.

But I know why (flash of inspiration!), it is because of my unbridled joy at landing at Tallinn airport, whizzing through passport control, customs and no traffic to a nice boutique hotel in the shadow of the cathedral-type thingy on the main square. I have a beer in my hand and I feel great. I feel truly lucky to be here. Don't get me wrong, I am going to work my nuts off over the next few days, but it ain't bad being able to ply your trade by flying all around Europe. To paraphrase the much maligned Ronald McDonald: I'm loving it.

How is one supposed to end a blog entry? 10-4? Wilco? Does anyone care?

Nope, goodnight...