Camp-ology

Woke up this morning and decided to go camping.

There's a little spot hidden in the Snowdonia range that I love.

Updates when I'm back.

Toodles.

Wii.

Wii tennis pro update: 860 points.

I don't know why but all my opponents are now people with over a thousand points which seems hardly fair considering my pathetic 860 point score.

The goal of a 1000 points seems just as far away now as it did when I started but I will persevere!

Notes from

I was still in an, interesting relationship just before I wrote this. We both knew the romance had died but we were still caught in the same routine of being together, it was just easier to keep on going, to not think about the problem hoping it would just go away.

It didn't go away so eventually we had to.

She made the phone call that finished us and it was weird, I'd been expecting it for months but part of me didn't want to let go even though I knew it was over.

So this was my way of putting my thoughts in some kind of order. It did help me get over her. As did some shockingly awful poetry.



And no, I will NEVER be publishing that particular pile of dross.



.

Notes from the Road 5

Chapter 5


She turns her face to the window away from him, signalling the pause of this conversation. It is by no means finished. This is merely a comma or a semi colon in the continuing argument they've been having for two years now.

The start of it escapes her memory as she watches the desert landscape shoot past. But she does remember the first time she saw him as she sees him now, like a little child upset at not getting his own way, not used to compromise, the give and take of a relationship.

After the honeymoon head rush of falling in love and the comfortable sensibility of being with someone who's in love with you, she remembers seeing him for the first time without the Vaseline halo of love, seeing him stamp his foot and pout like an errant ten year old who won't be getting his ball back.

It was funny at first. He'd pout then get over himself and they tumble into each others arms laughing. But as time wore away the novelty value, it would take longer and longer for him to laugh until one day he didn't laugh at all.

She knows she's not perfect and she doesn't expect him to be but its getting to the point where its more painful to be with him than not.

"I'll tell him." she thinks, new resolution welling up in her heart. " This is killing the both of us. The sooner we admit its over and move on the better. I know he feels it too. I can tell in every look he gives me, every gesture he makes. It just isn't the same and we should both grow up and move on. He must be waiting for me to say it, making it easier on himself." Her anger flared. "That bastard! He wants me to break up with him so he gets off guilt free! I break his heart and he gets all the sympathy! I almost fell for it as well! I'm sorry Mister you're not getting off that easily. You want to break up? You'll have to say it!"


-------------------------------


"I wonder what's wrong with her?" He thinks "Oh well. Her moods never last, maybe she'll have cheered up by the time we get home."


------------------

The car sped on taking the two passengers in totally different directions.

West End = Dead End

There's something irrepressibly depressing about a seaside town out of season.

My route this morning took me around the west end of Rhyl or the Chav ghetto as we like to call it. Its a depressing melange of derelict semi derelict and crumbled housing. Failed and burnt out store fronts litter the strip like shells on the shore.

However we have new news for the west end. The fun fair, which is neither fun nor fair, is being knocked down to make brand new housing and a huge ASDA.

This reinvestment is noticeable, half the broken houses have been raised to the ground and new builds are going on all along the front.

I would be optimistic for the seafront but I've lived in North Wales too long. This is what will happen.

2008 - New Executive Housing and ASDA stores are opened. Mayor announces "New wave of Investment in Rhyl beckoning in a Golden age".

2009 - ASDA currently employees more store detectives than actual staff due to high levels of theft and the year old executive apartments have to be rented out to the DSS when its discovered no executive would go within five miles of the west end of Rhyl.

2010 - ASDA forced to close when they come to work one morning to find the store completely stripped of parts and up on bricks. Each executive house now comes with its own sharps bin for all the hypodermics.

2015 - The new Whig government declares the area a disaster zone and virus bombs the whole of Rhyl from orbit wiping out half of its population. Nobody notices.

Wii.

Wii tennis pro update: 583 points.

My shoulder is like a hunk of hamburger meat mixed with PAIN!

You'd better get a solid gold racket for going Pro.

Although that wouldn't really help with the shoulder.

Walking

I'm trying to be a bit healthier, although if I hear the word 'diet' one more time I might scream.

EVERYONE at work is on some kind of weird diet. Eat a bowl of cereal instead of normal lunch, count up everything you eat in terms of points or sins, no carb, low carb, I can't belive its not carbs... ad infintum ad naseaum.

Not ONE of them just eats healthy and does a bit of excercise. They need quick fixes for a problem that can't be fixed quickly.

To quote Brian "My diet tip? PUT DOWN THE FORK!!!"

Sorry I'll reel myself back in from that particular tangent. I'm trying to be a bit more healthy so I decided to walk into town today which is about a twenty minute stroll. Fairly okay then a little walk a wander around the shops and a twenty minute walk back to work.

Four people from work stopped their cars and asked me if I wanted a lift. On the one hand, its nice to be asked and to know people are kind like that. On the other....why aren't they walking? Its close enough to leave plenty of time to do everything you need in town and be back to work reinvigorated. Then you won't have to eat fake cardboard subsitute for five days a week!

Oh well. I suppose I'm just a bit weird like that.

Work's not been fun recently, I'm really looking forward to chilling in Madrid next week. A bit of sun and san Miguel and all will be right with the world again!

One of the weird things I love to do when planing a trip is use maps to work out the best routes between things. I'm a bit of a map geek, I read the atlas even when I'm not full of Indian food.

I love the idea and romance of travel even though a lot of the actual travel is boredom I'm still on the lookout for random acts of oddness that make trips special.

Anyways the road winds ever on.


(Wii tennis pro update: 328 points and rising. Man! This stuff is hard on the arm!)

Ball of the foot.

Every Tuesday, come rain wind or ice I'm outside playing five a side football.

 

I am not a manly man in the Grrr!! Beer!! Football!! Beef!! sense of the word. My pursuits are mostly geeky being games, books and music. I'm not much interested in premiership football or cars or mobile phones which is what most manly conversations seem to revolve around.

 

So Tuesdays are always interesting to me as I get to connect with people I have almost nothing in common with except a Y chromosome.

 

I would like to point out I am absolutely awful at football. My technique, if you can call it that, is to get in the way of the opposition almost like one of those plastic characters in a table football game. I get in the way and then boot the ball upfield.

 

I play with guys who aren't good with words, maybe have bought one album in their lives but who are artists with a football. Its almost balletic the way they can twist and turn in different directions with the ball stuck to their feet like glue. Their sense of tactics and gamesmanship would shame a tabletop role-player and retention of obscure facts could see them on mastermind. Provided of course all the questions revolved around Southampton FC or other such club.

 

It's fascinating to find depth and character in aspects of people you would normally assign as totally 2-D.

PS3 - A force for good.

Now I've mocked the PS3 in the past and rightfully so. From the fact it's about the size of a small moon, through the lack of decent games to actually play on it, right up to the pricetag which may require users to take out a mortgage on their house to actually get one. If you default on the payments you could use the box it comes in as permanent accommodation for four.

However I am not a fanboy just dissing the hatchback size console just because it's made by Sony. Some of my most memorable gaming experiences have been on the orignal Playstation (Resident Evil 2, Final fantasy 7) and its successor, the PS2 (Grand theft auto, Rez). So when something like this comes along you have to reconsider your position.

Basically if you leave this program running on your PS3 whilst you're not using it, the boffins at Standford University harness your machine in tandem with millions of others all over the world to find cures for cancer and other Horrific diseases.

The science is really interesting being all about protein folding which is like mad origami. The shape of the protein denotes whether they work or not and when a persons body has a problem producing the right shaped protein all sorts of issues can arise. Type 1 diabetes (The one with the needles) is a good example. However if you're not in the mood for all the spiel on their site just take it from me. Its good work they're doing.

So buy a PS3. It might be useless for games but you know you're curing cancer.

EXTRA! EXTRA! Tarantino Jumps shark.

SPOILERS. See here for proof. SPOILERS.

I will forgive many many stupid things to make a movie work but a car thats made 'death proof'? Really Quentin? Really?

Don't get me wrong I really liked Dogs, Pulp Fiction, even Dusk till Dawn but this sounds like total shite.

I may be proved wrong, in fact I hope I am but I get the feeling this is going to be Kill Bill part 2 rather than part 1.

Oy Sunshine!

You know we think we're pretty hip. We've got all these great things sewn up and all these amazing achievement as a race. We're sitting damn pretty thank you very much.

Then nature comes out of left field and socks you into submission with something truly amazing.

Ladies and gentlemen I give you THE SURFACE OF THE SUN.

How cool is that?

Well cools the wrong word obviously, but it just needs some Jean Michele Jarre IMHO.

Notes from...

I'd say this is the one I'm least happy with, I was attempting to get the emptiness of the desert out New Mexico way but I ended up talking more about Madison's life at home. This seems to be an issue when a character is on their own the environment has to provide the story and the desert is really pretty but not much in the way of narrative happens there when you're on your own.

Internal monologues can be interesting but I'm afraid I don't think this one is. I include this here partially for completeness but mostly as I'm too lazy to change all the chapter numbers.

Notes from the Road 4

Chapter 4


The spark flamed and died, again plunging the small clearing by the road side into darkness. Madison relocated the flint and striker in the evening murk and cursed herself silently.

It was cold in the desert that night. The same open sky that offered no shelter from the burning sun, provides no vapour blanket to trap the warmth during the night time. She shivered, wrapping the all too thin poncho around her tighter as she continued in her attempts to steal fire from the Gods.

She had been on the road less than a week and the familiar luxuries of home were still foremost in her mind. The smell of freshly laundered sheets, the comfort that years of use wears into 'your' sofa or 'your' bed the furniture shaping itself gradually around you.

*Spark*. The tinder failed to catch. She sighed and reshuffled it around.

'The stuff you own ends up owning you' she repeated her own personal mantra culled from some book she had read many miles and a couple of years ago. It was exactly why she had struck out on her own to get away from the home comforts the distractions of the everyday. To find out what's important, what's really real, instead of excepting everyone else's version.

*Spark* Again there was no real ignition, just a small orange glow to start to warm the heart before fading out again.

She had set out with noble aims but what was really real for her right now was the total lack of matches she possessed. Or some fuel for her fancy fake Zippo that seemed to leech a petrol smell but not enough vapour to ignite. Her possessions lay scattered around her like spell bones and you didn't need to be a Witch doctor to see in her future, things looked really cold.

*Spark* She needed more kindling she decided and got up to find some.

She knew she'd packed the matches, even in her hurry to get out of the trailer before anyone else came home. There would be nothing quite as embarrassing as trying to leave home with people eating dinner in the next room. having to explain she didn't know where she was going, only where she was leaving. There would be tears arguments, threats, ultimatums and words that could never be taken back.

Better a swift sure break. Disappearing with no need to explain her actions other than the short note she'd left under the remote where they were bound to find it when they went there for their daily blessings of Soap Opera and Wrestling.

"Don't worry, I'm not pregnant or joined some weird cult. This is just something I've got to do. I couldn't explain it to you face to face and I still can't now, I just know you wouldn't understand."

*Spark* More kindling now but the same result.

She hadn't even looked back at the double-wide caravan she'd shared with them for her first 18 years. They'd got nothing in common, no shared interests or passions. Oh she'd loved them in her own way but she'd grown up seeing their faults and flaws everytime she looked at them. In her mother she'd seen a pale and shallow reflection of the woman she could become and the horror of that reality had spurred her out the door.

*Spark* This was getting very tiresome.

She couldn't ever let herself think shed made a mistake, a grand error in her calculations that perhaps she couldn't do this. Perhaps she should settle. She should accept that she was exactly where she was supposed to be. Settle for Chad's foolish fumblings on his back seat at the drive-in, instead of the champagne soaked love she knew from novels and plays. Accept that no-ones heart would ever break over her there would be no sonnets or odes written in her honour. That, "You look real pretty." would be the extent of compliments she would ever recieve.

She paused, her flint hanging over the whetstone as her mind tried to fit her enourmous soul into the confines of the tiny life she'd envisioned.

Fuck that.

Better to be cold and alone with hope than warm and unloved with no chance of hope. No opportunity to look forward. Still breathing but emotionally dead.

*Spark*

The flame caught. The burning desire simply to 'know' she'd rekindled in her heart reflected in the circle of firestones she'd assembled around the new life she'd created in the flame.

I be liking the jerky.

JERKY JERKY JERKY


Why do I like jerky so much? Its smoky dried meat that turns into flesh chewing gum in the mouth and yet I love it. Its like chewy grislely steak with a 'flavour' all of its own.

My Boss got back from America and brought back sweets and chocolates for the rest of the team and my own personal bag of jerky. Aside from the fact American chocolate is closely analogous to shite I would chose jerky even over our own Cadburys deliciousness.

Yesterday

Didn't write anything yesterday at all as I was busy as all hell at work and then had to go to an art show.

I do really enjoy certain aspects of my job. The fiddling around with numbers is actually kinda fun, imagine if filling in sudoku was your job that's kind of what I do. I know what the numbers should be but I've got to actually get them there. Ok if you hated maths it akin to being suspended upside down over a vat of acid full of acid resistant sharks and being gently dipped in and out all day as the sharks nibble little bites from your flesh.

Sort of.

But I do enjoy it. Its just days like yesterday that get me down, its constant bollox being thrown at you from every angle, including problems you thought you'd solved months ago! But these days happen only once a month so twelve bad days a year isn't that bad really.


So I finish and take Em to an Art exhibition organised by her employers. She's entered a rather nice painting of a peacock which I'll upload later. She didn't win but they did give her a certificate and a big buffet which was nice. And then we saw the winners paintings.


I swear they were awful. They were worse than Emissary's Tot art but taken totally seriously. A couple of photographs were so badly framed and focused I couldn't work out what the hell they were. To be fair it was a amateur competition but the judges seemed to have randomly selected the winners based on... actually I've no idea what it was based on.

Now I know this sounds like sour grapes but Em herself said "I don't mind losing. There were some paintings that were much better than mine but they didn't win either!"

To lose to a better competitor is one thing but to lose to stuff that's artisticly inferior to my early morning turd is another.

Oh well.

OH I nearly forgot as we walked around the paintings the Old both female couple ahead of us had a conversation that went something like this;

CRONE 1: "Oh I like this one."

CRONE 2: "Is it painted?"

Crone1 then reaches out and actually strokes the painting.

CRONE 1 "Yeah its painted"


I had to have a fit of coughing to stop myself screaming "DON'T TOUCH THE FRICKING PAINTINGS!!!".

There are some things that are just plain rude. Laughing at stupid people for instance and then there are some things you should not do. LIKE TOUCHING PAINTINGS!

I was just amazed at the audacity of her actions.

So Em and I went back to the buffet and stuffed ourselves full to take the full value from the evening.

Wales 27-18 England

Aaaah. That's better.

sense of perspective.

It's not everyday you get compared to the Nazis.

For no good reason either. At work today a guy phoned up and had a complete ratn at a colleague of mine over some money that shouldn't have been taken from him. I think if it had been most other people they would have collapsed weeping on the floor.

I could understand if we were talking about livelihoods or entire salaries but a mistake for a little over ten quid which we are already correcting? I think some people occasionally need to calm down, breath a little deeper and stop reading the Daily Mail.

On Last nights TV

I couldn't bring myself to watch celebrity come dangling, where non celebs dangle out their tiny amount of self respect and we all point and laugh at them. I mean, there is money to be made from those kind of shows but Jesus! would you really want to?

{old man} I remeber the days when people wanted to be famous for actually doing something. Singing acting whatever. Now it seems to be 'make me famous!' for no apparant reason other than to be famous. I mean who would really want that? Seriously. Think about it.

You have to go to the shops because you need some bog roll. so you don't bother getting dressed up just throw on a tracksuit head to the corner shop and buy the first bogroll that comes to hand. A week later the front page of 'WANKER' or 'CELEB' or whatever your glossy of choice is has you in all you sports casual glory with the triple velvet cluthched to your chest.

"Has X given up on their looks? Are they buying triple velvet because of their PILES secret?"

I mean most of us routinely make poor choices be that in our partners our business or even our meals. but we can get away with it because the lens of the world isn't focused on us for 24 hours a day. And thank Christ for that because it would be unbearable to have these titles directed at you.

ROBS NOSE PICK HORROR!
ROB'S SIX PACK? A CASK MORE LIKE!
ROBS LOVEHANDLES.
MALE CELULITE? WE REVEAL THE AWFUL TRUTH.

And who really needs that?

brain hurty

I hate getting stressed. Most of the time I am mr placid, calm focused and cool but when i d ge stressed I am so over the top that it actally becomes funny to those around me.

I was stressed at work today, deadlines and suchlike and a new process I'm not totally au fait with yet. So I got all stressy but as soon as the process was complete I was back to normal.

Pressure is just not knowing 100% what you're doing and I agree with that it just makes me moody and stupid and unable to concentrate for the rest of the day. I mean just look at how awful this writing is. Its all over the place even more so than usual!

Righ I'm going to go and shout at the Tv because its crap. I'll let you know what i let myself in for later.

Notes from

I like this chapter purely because it was the first one where I actually got the relationship I was trying to describe right. I was trying to mark that feeling of establishing a connection with someone some spark, some zip, that you feel when you meet someone of a similar mind.

It happens very rarely. It last happened to me about 3 years ago when I met my fiancee in the pub. We talked for nearly four hours without a pause or an uncomfortable silence. It was exactly was I had been looking for in the girls I had been unsuccessesfully dating. Untilthen I didn't know what was missing just that something was awry and nothing you can do can ever fake that spark of something special. Bewteen you and me I still get talking with her even now.

It can even be platonic sparkage, but for me the old guts and blood and love and lust sparkage still does it for me every time.

Notes from the road three

Chapter 3

She was just 15 when she left home. Mummy didn't beat her and Daddy didn't rape her, she wasn't escaping poverty or abuse. She just wanted more than the homespun, applepie lifestyle that everyone else in her class aspired to. She didn't want to be a cheerleader and date the quarterback, she couldn't bake and would always drift off in her Homestudies class.

"High School was all about teaching you to be a good little wifey," she said exhaleling a lungful from another one of my cigarettes."How to make the housekeeping go as far as possible, please your man and be all subservient and demure. Fuck that."

As you can probably tell Madison is anything but demure. Shes a good 5-11 making her tower over most men "which brings out the asshole in most of them", wears faded blue jeans with a dark brown suede jacket. she looks three square meals short of normal but has a softness in her eyes that years of travelling haven't been able to harden. We're occuping a booth in a roadside bar where the lighting is several watts short of 'intimate' and not quite into pitch black.

Bran is distracting himself with the pinball machine in the corner, pumping quarter after quarter into its waiting, glisening maw watching the lights flicker and dance in a morse like pattern of score. The only other occupant is the bar tender who gazes, slack jawed at the images on the bar TV. With the sound turned down the pictures of the war could be part of a gritty war movie. I half expect John Wayne to run into the picture urging his men to "Move your butts, you sons of bitches!" before charging the enemy position with guns in both hands and a knife between his teeth.

You could almost make it a vicious escapist macho fantasy, except for the blood. Hollywood would never use blood like that.

She leans over towards me and I am struck at how perfect her face could be. If she washed her hair and put on some makeup...no. That would ruin everything that was beautiful and unique about her. She'd become another one of these airbrushed women, the spray-on beauty availible at every drug store from here to timbucktoo. Better to stay special, to stay unpredictable.

She leans even closer in. Is she going to kiss me? Panic rises up in my chest. When did I last brush my teeth? Or shave for that matter?

Closer still, I can smell the perfume she used to use, until she grins, grabs another one of my Malboro's from my side of the table and leans back against the booth wall as she strikes a match on the underside of the table and lights the smoke she paid for through flirting.

"So what were we talking about?" she said casually as the match hit the ashtray.

"You were going to tell me a story."I replied Mirroring her relaxed nature trying not to show how affected I was by this woman.

"At least I didn't close my eyes." I thought.

"I was? Oh, yeah of course I was." She said breathing the sentance out through the smoke. I imagined her words mingling, mixing with the nicotene giving them more weight, more gravitas.

Bran walked over to the bar and swapped a twenty dollar bill, I knew he kept in his shirt pocket in case of emergancies, for quarters. Not having the highest score on a pinball table was an emergency he was fully prepared to spend gas money on.

"Well?" I said.

"Well what?"

"The story?"

"You're like a kid before bedtime," she said. "There was once a girl with long blonde golden locks..."

"...Who enjoyed making fun of strange men in bars." I countered.

She smiled with geniune warmth and I felt my chest ache with that strange almost pain we feel when we're falling for someone and with Brans game binging in the background, with all the gore and blood on TV I shared a look with a stranger I can still feel to this day.

Dreamz

I don't often dream.

 

Actually according to research we all dream its just some people remember their dreams and others, like me, tend to forget they dreamt at all. Actually most of my dreams that I do remember are pretty boring so much that I envy Lovecraft
and Blake for their visions and nightmares. Of course the opium was bound to help.

 

However last night I had a very clear dream. I was in my office and someone stood up and started singing one of my favourite songs. Swiss Army Romance by Dashboard Confessional. I know this sounds weird but even in my dream I thought"that's weird" but as the song continued these waves of peace and beauty radiated out from the singing and I felt all my pent up anger melt away and I felt my soul whole again.

 

I woke up this morning and was at complete peace with the world and I like to think it was the songs healing music. So if you dream about a guy with a guitar listen to what he has to say. It might be worthwhile.

Getting up early is something I occasionally have to do for work. There is a certain thrill of driving to work when the roads are totally empty and you own the asphalt.

Of course the only thing that keeps me going on such mornings is a damn fine cup of coffee. Normally I'll drink whatever instant crap is to hand but early in the morning the ritual of making actual filter coffee is an essential part of actually waking up.

One sniff of real coffee and ZING you're awake!

Notes from...

I was interested by the idea of writing five hundred to a thousand words whenever time or an idea presented itself. They wouldn't have to link together in terms of a series in that one story could be set five years before of five minutes after the other.

In this I actually failed as pulling off that pulp fiction stunt of having scenes happen in random order is actually really really difficult to do with any kind of thread for the reader to hold onto.

I do have a great tendency to overcomplicate even the simplest scene and bog myself down in the detail when I should be looking at the whole thing.

Anyway chapter 2 just kind of establishes hidden depths to Brans character, his love of Opera was something I was planning on expanding but haven't yet. It also gives the narrator a chance to actually do something.

My problem with a lot of amateur ( and professional) fiction is that the lead character is just passive. Stuff happens to him and that was a trap I was trying to avoid.

Spring has sprung, the grass has riz...

There's something in the air today, something that seems to herald spring. There's a a bounciness about it a certain lightness of feeling that whatever's going on in the world it can't be that bad. A feeling that all is well and everything is in its rightful place.

 

It could be the weather, or the black-market Russian vodka I had for lunch. Who can tell?

Notes from the road pt 2

 

 

I was enjoying a small bowl of stew and Bran was shielding a coffee with his slab like hands in a diner on the outskirts of Calamityville.

 

It was a low class, low rent diner where the food wasn't particularly good but it was mostly quiet with four other customers dotted around its fake - fifties interior. The not entirely ugly waitress couldn't have been a day older than twenty five but she already looked like her best days were well behind her. The makeup was so heavily plastered onto her heavy skin that it was impossible to see any detail behind it. Instead of the flawless look she was aiming for, it actually gave the impression of a badly plastered wall. That combined with the beetle red lipstick gave such an unappetising impression that if I hadn't been so hungry I probably wouldn't have eaten anything.

 

She had a small suitor, a lad of fifteen or so who was obviously struck by her judging from the milkshake after milkshake he was ordering. He would get her attention, attempt some offhand remark then lose his nerve and order another stammering strawberry milkshake. The empties surrounding his table were a silent testimony to his continuing cowardice.

 

In the far corner a couple were almost coupling together, decency almost forgotten in their desperation to possess each other. only the occasional look from the waitress would dampen their ardour.

 

"They could at least find a room," I said to my gigantic companion.

 

"Love obeys no known laws," he replied.

 

"I didn't mean from a legal standpoint," I said, again put on the back foot by his previously hitherto unexplored knowledge of Opera. "I just meant in our currently single situation I don't really feel like being reminded of what I'm missing out on."

 

Bran looked at me deeply and returned to his paper. It was just then I became aware of a disturbance from outside the diner making its way in through the sun shielded doors.

 

Two good ole boys, Tall and Short, crashed in whooping and hollering carrying a holdall, obviously the wrong side of several Miller High Life's.

 

"Beers for everyone!" the taller of the two shouted slapping his buddy on the back. "That's right everyone! You can thank me later," he continued, "Or buy me one back."

 

No one jumped to praise him but I could sense Bran tensing up behind his paper. No stranger to trouble he seemed to have a sixth sense when it came to brewing storms although in this situation my own much less sensitive danger radar was going off.

 

They took two stools at the bar next to The Milkshake Kid who looked distinctly uncomfortable as the waitress leaned across and murmured something to the two intruders.

 

"What's that sweet cheeks? You'll have to speak up." Said Tall.

 

She repeated her murmur.

 

"What?"

 

"Murmur."

 

"What!?"

 

"We! Don't! Serve! Beer! This is a diner!"

 

"You, don't, serve, beer? What kind of a place is this?"

 

The couple in the corner tried to make their exit as quietly as possible.
 
"Don't serve beer!" continued Tall "Is that why you guys are leaving? Well goodbye now!"

 

"Y'all come again y'hear?" said Short.

 

The couple made their embarrassed way to the car but at least they were free.

 

"No beer Hunh? said Tall reaching into the holdall. "Well it's lucky we brought our own!" He popped the tops on a couple of bottles and gave one to Short and drained one himself.

 

"You can't do that in here!" shouted the waitress fearing for her job more than for annoying these less than honourable fellows.

 

"And who, exactly, are you to tell us what we can and cannot do," he looked down at her lapel "Charlene?"

 

His gaze lingered on her chest for long seconds until finally her juvenile would-be white knight broke the deadlock.

 

"Leave her a.a.a.alone!" he shouted. Unfortunately his voice broke halfway through the sentence which then dissolved into a stammering frenzy.

 

Tall and Short shared a glance and then started laughing fit to burst. I made a move to stand when I felt a weight on my wrist. Bran had his hand on my arm but his eyes were fixed on Tall.

 

"Wait," was all he said.

 

They stopped laughing.

 

"What the hell do you think you're doing boy?" Tall turned and started pushing The Kid backwards, jabbing him in the stomach with every word. Short kept on grinning. "Didn't your Daddy ever teach you to mind your own goddamn business and leave the adult stuff to us grown ups?"

 

He backed the boy up so he was parallel with our table and then just at the height of the tension, the boys' stomach gave up under the assault of nerves and prodding fingers and catapulted the 13 strawberry milkshakes all over his would-be assailant.

 

Before anyone else could react, Bran, in one sweeping movement pushed the kid backwards and Tall forwards away from each other. He kicked Tall in the groin and laid out Short who was still whooping with laughter in his chair.

 

He walked back to our table, picked up his paper, slung the comatose kid over one shoulder and walked out the door. I followed throwing a twenty on the counter and advising Charlene to phone the Sheriff.

 

We dropped the kid off at his house on our way out of town and I'm sure he felt so bad he swore off milkshakes for life.

 

But not waitresses if I'm any judge.

 

 

Intimidated by your own work.

So, I'm meant to be doing some work today on my, very, very dull, course and i'm letting itunes do its thing, not really paying attention and then 'Sweet child o' mine' comes on and it blows me away. All of a sudden I'm 12 again, Axl is the most lusted after man on the planet and Slash is just cool personified.

I have to dig out the original album and it's just one great song after the other; "Welcome to the jungle", "Mr. Brownstone", Paradise city". This was the album they spent the rest of their entire careers trying to recreate. It is just perfect dirty rock n roll.

This album was the reason for a thousand leather jackets and a million dodgy eighties man-perms, and for countless teens to grab a guitar and start pounding on the fretboard like an epileptic gibbon.

I don't care that its success turned Axl into the biggest walking cock on the planet or that he felt the need to replace Slash with a guy with a kfc bucket on his head or that its taken him twelves years to 'perfect' the latest album. By the time he finishes it there may well actually be a 'Chinese Democracy'. But with the shadow of 'Appetite for Destruction' hanging over you, I'm not surprised.

Oh and don't get the greatest hits album. If you start listening to 'November rain' now it may be a future civilisation that has to turn off the player. That song lasts for aeons.

Italian disaster for Wales.

.from mobile.
Well wales lose and the rest of the rugby playing world laugh. And i die a little inside.

Italy played well but some poor reffing contributes to some sore Welsh losers tonight and some sore Welsh heads tomorrow. Including mine.

Franken Vs Coulter - Two men enter one man leaves.

I was up late enough and bored enough to watch a BBC4 program about comedian and broadcaster Al Franken who was one of the founders of liberal radio in the US. Now this scratched many of my particular itches. Anyone thats worked in American media will tell you this misnomer about liberal bias in the media is utter bollocks. Truly, truly horse shit. When I was at CNN there was a fanatical dedication to telling the truth no matter what. Trying to tell the news without bias is not only a broadcasters job it's his vocation. He should dedicate his entire life to trying to achieve that goal even though it is in itself unachievable.

As the late great Dr Hunter S Thompson once said "The only two things that are totally without bias in the newspaper are the stock reports and the sports results.' By the mere act of observing something we have influenced it, but if we are aware of this dichotomy we can try and balance it out.

However the Left in America don't seem to be concentrating on policy or reform, just baiting and being bated by the right seems to be enough for them.

Ann Coulter has probably made herself the most interesting commentator on American politics right now. Go and take a look. Really, I'll wait. Be warned you have to remember she says most of the stuff she does purely to bait liberals and before you think about flaming her and giving her a piece of your mind remember shes a very VERY smart person and also a top flight lawyer. Yeah. thats right. Put down the keyboard. Its not worth it.

Now these two have met on several occasions and each just choose to score points off each other rather than trying to listen to the position the other has taken. Its weird that these two very different individuals, clearly both intelligent and humorous in their own way, can find no common ground to agree upon. The 'debates' degenerate into farce as they're both so partisan they refuse to even acknowledge the others humanity (must resist gag about Coulter.)

Anyway I'm losing my point here so here goes. Remember, just because they're on the Right don't mean they're automatically wrong. And just because you don't agree with them doesn't mean you shouldn't respect their point of view.

American Politics, a better spectator sport than baseball

Oh and as it was pointed out to me late night in a New York bar; Yes I don't get to vote in America but I DO get a say in your politics as Britain seems to have become Americas Stooge fellating George whenever he needs a quick pick me up. So as soon as Britain stops being Americas mini-me and being dragged into badly thought out wars and policies we want no part of, THEN I'll stop commentating on your politics. Until then goodbye from the fifty-first state.

Taken at lake windemere last year, the light was just right and everything just came together. That was the weekend my best friend asked hs better half to tie the knot. Everytime I look at this photo I can't help thinking about that.

Anyway all the rest of my stuff is being uploaded to flickr so have a rummage by all means.

Flickr main site

Notes from...

Notes from the Road was what I might poncily call a story cycle, I started whilst bored at work. This lasted for over 19 chapters before, against my strongest efforts I got promoted and now how much less free time during the working day. I'm collecting them here just to have a place to point people at if they want to read them.

Any new work will be clearly labelled as I don't want for ideas, just time. And possibly talent.

Rob

Notes from the road pt 1

Notes From the Road
Chapter 1
The road looks different when you travel closer to it, I'm talking here about the desert roads that snake all across the Nevada desert but it applies to all tarmaced spaces everywhere. From the driving seat of your car or the passenger seat of a bus it can start to look like a black ribbon snaking off into the distance. A guiding line, guarding against the encroaches of the wild. A straight strip of civilisation taming the desert like a brand mark of domestication on Americas backside. You might think you know it pretty well after all this experience but when its whipping along a inch or so away from your head you tend to get a totally different perspective. It occurs to you just how hard and unforgiving roads are compared to the soft and jelly-like you. There were three of us in Branches truck that day. Branch, or Bran as he preferred, had been with me for many hundreds of miles now. He looked like he had been forged in Detroit rather than born in Maine but as with many men his size he was a gentle giant preferring to use the threat of violence his bulk implied rather than actual physicality. He was however, an ideal travelling companion. Observant, bright and not prone to fill the empty miles with empty chatter. When he spoke, in that deep rumbling baritone of his, people listened, desperate to glean the knowledge contained within this man mountain. The other, Pancho was a much more recent companion and had already fallen into our bad graces. His name belied the pasty white skin covering his narrow frame and the thin reedy voice that stank of a patchwork education with no desire to learn more than how to open a beer and shoot a rifle, often at the same time. We had picked him up at a rest stop just south of Sympathy, Arizona. It was Branch's choice as it was Branch's truck we were travelling in. We had actually bought the truck together deciding that it would be more frugal to have our own ride rather than rely on the whims of strangers. And a lot of the drivers were very strange with odd habits which, once they had picked you up, they loved to share with their captive audience. Captive 'till at least the next town which could be a good four hours or a very bad four hours depending on the trip. Once our/his the truck was acquired we felt it our duty to pick up hikers wherever possible and offer them a normal ride with no pigs sharing the cab or strange stains on the inside of the roof. The first person we granted our favour to was Pancho who was standing, blinking by the side of the rest stop in the noonday sun whilst there was an abundance of shade not 10 yards away. "Let's pick him up," my erstwhile companion intoned and had swung the pickup around before I could begin to voice my concerns about the type of person that purposefully suffers around the suns glare. Branch pulled up alongside him and it was our unspoken agreement that I always start any conversations to be had with strangers. "Hey friend, where are you heading?" "New York," he said. "That's a long journey," I replied. "Can we take you part of the way? I think there should be a bus station in Desperation that should help you on your way." He grabbed his pack and swung it into the flatbed."Thank you! That'd be mighty neighbourly of ya!" He sat uncomfortably between Branch and I and as the miles rolled away never let his jaw stop for one second, afraid maybe that once it stopped he might never get it started up again. He talked endlessly about his dreams of a better life in New York, how he had come from 'The arsepit of Texas' , and every sexual encounter he'd ever had. These were the worst. They all involved him wooing a reluctant girl, bedding her (in great great detail) and then once he had his way, leaving her alone begging for more. Boring the first time but unspeakably tedious after the twentieth, especially when all that had changed was the name. I began looking for the road signs that symbolised my freedom from this burden, each decreasing digit a welcome sight on the almost empty road. Pancho was wildly gesticulating again when his left arm caught Branch a resounding crack above the eye. His hands went up to his damaged temple, throwing us in a spin over the edge of the road which resulted in the truck flipping over onto its roof and continuing along the road. Branch was firmly wedged in his seat and I had taken to wearing my seat belt but Pancho had crashed to the roof of the cab amongst all the other detritus of our trip, candy wrappers and coke cans. Through my open window I could see the tarmac disconcertingly close and above my head. The majestic view I had been enjoying out of my window above the endless prattle had been reduced to a few inches wide and a lot more urgent. Pancho was celebrating this exciting new turn of events on the roof whooping and hollering like a mad monkey. Branch caught my eye whilst we were both hanging there and from the expression glaring across the cab to me, I knew Pancho's days travelling with us were numbered. The car ground to a halt on its side in the ground about 500 yards away from where our upside down adventure had started. Pancho was still beaming as we extracted ourselves from the womb like cab and I had to birth myself through the window as the door had buckled into the frame. The accident didn't stop Pancho from his inane chatter as Branch took a firm hold of the side of the van and with a Herculean effort flipped it back onto its waiting wheels. Astoundingly aside from deep scoring marks on the roof and the adrenaline fluttering in my heart everything looked as normal, except there was a darkness in my silent friends' face that had not been there before. "Gee after all that excitement I've gotta take a whizz," announced Pancho who still hadn't made any kind of apology for nearly causing our demise. He disappeared behind the nearest rock formation as Branch continued to inspect the vehicle. He turned his enormous head towards me. "Get in." I was still slightly traumatised by the experience otherwise I would have put up some kind of defence on Panchos' behalf. But as it was I climbed in unthinkingly as Bran threw out the bundle of rags Pancho had brought with him and started the engine. As we roared away into the distance I could see Pancho running out into the clearing voicing his protest. We left him with his trousers around his ankles jumping up and down in fury. I stared at Branch for some time. He knew what I was thinking but not saying about not abandoning people to the dangers of the wilds. He turned and looked at me. "Better dead by the desert than by these hands," he said, savouring each syllable as if he had a finite resource he didn't want used up needlessly. "Yeah," I said, "I'm sure he can reach that gas station we passed a ten miles or so ago. He can get a lift from there." It could be my imagination but Bran looked a little disappointed by this revelation. We drove on into the dusk.