Spawny's Space

The Last Great Rock and Roll Band

2011-12-09T20:35:00.002+01:00

The Last Great Rock and Roll Band

Wednesday 28th September

Today I am going to head out on my most ambitious trip for a long time. The main reason that it’s ambitious is that I don’t have the money to pay for it because my freelancing work suddenly dried up a couple of weeks ago. When I committed myself to the journey I was making decent money and knew there wouldn’t be a problem financing the trip. But now, after two weeks of practically no work, things are different.

Still, flights and hostels are booked and the band are coming for their first tour in three years, so I have to head out and hope for the best.

Before I leave though I have some things I need to do. Mainly it’s the usual pre-flight checklist; change money, pack, print off flight tickets, put credit on my phone, and so on. And I should have plenty of time to do what needs to be done before I go.

Except...

I almost forgot about my friends cats, who I have been making sure are fed and watered while said friends are on holiday. This means a trek across town to feed them before heading to the airport for my flight to Spain. It takes me 30 minutes to get to my friends flat, 10 minutes to do what needs to be done when I get there, and an hour to get to the airport. I have 90 minutes until check-in closes.

Something is going to have to give. Either that, or I am going to have to be exceptionally lucky with connections for buses, trams, and metro trains. Going off my track record of flying to Spain, chances are I‘m going to miss my flight. I contemplate just going straight to the airport and letting the cats go a day without food.

But this is not really a viable solution because my friends wont be back for another couple of days, so the cats are already going to be short as it is. I have to head over there and hope I get lucky and make my flight.

As luck would have it, I make it to the bus stop just in time to get a bus to my friends place, so there is a chance I might still make the airport on time. Having done what needs to be done with the felines I race to the metro station, only to see a train pull away just as I get on the platform. It being a public holiday, this means that I will have to wait 8 minutes for the next train.

8 minutes might not seem like a long time, but realistically there is every chance it could be the difference between making or missing my flight. Having waited the requisite amount of time I board the next train for the required seven stops before changing lines and being fortunate enough to just make a train before it pulls away.
It‘s still 50-50 whether I‘ll make my flight or not, and it all depends on how long

I have to wait for a bus at the final changeover. As it happens, I miss the normal airport bus by a matter of seconds, but an express bus is right behind it and I am able to get that instead of waiting for the next normal bus. I am now confident that I’ll actually make it to the airport on time for my flight, even more so a few minutes later when we pass the bus I just missed.

I end up making it to the airport 10 minutes before my check-in closes, which is just as well because I am at the wrong terminal and have to hurry over to the correct one, constantly checking the time to see if I am going to actually get there on time or not.

In the end I make it to the check-in desk with almost a full minute to spare, and I begin to hope that this will break a run of awful luck I have been having when it comes to flying to Spain to watch this band. The plane takes off on time (always a pleasant surprise), and lands in Barcelona 15 minutes early. Things are looking up.

I have to say, of all the places I have ever been, Barcelona is one of my favourite cities. And within 45 minutes of my plane landing I am checked in at my favourite hostel in the world and ready for a few drinks to celebrate the smooth journey and prepare for tomorrows trip to Bilbao.

So that’s exactly what I do, a few beers, a few games of pool, and a nice relaxing evening all round. In a rare fit of organisation, I even have the good sense to check the bus schedule so as to be certain I can actually make it to Bilbao before heading to bed for (what for me is) an early night at around 2am.

Thursday 29th September

I get up at 8am and make my way downstairs for breakfast before heading to the bus station. In a ridiculous display of over-punctuality I get to the station a full hour before my bus to Bilbao is due to depart, and once the ticket has been purchased I set about heading to a nearby bar for a pre-bus drink. I also pop into a shop to get some supplies for the 7 hour journey, said supplies mainly consisting of 10 cans of beer and a packet of crisps.

It’s all about the priorities when I travel!

The bus journey passes by without any problems, except for the discovery when we are still 150 kilometers from Bilbao that the toilet on said bus is not in working order. This, as you can possibly imagine, causes a few issues, as having been disposing of the cans of beer steadily throughout the journey I am now in serious need of recycling some of the ingested liquid.

In desperation I decide to try to confuse my body by drinking more every time the urge to urinate becomes almost too great to hold in any longer. I consider using one of the empty cans as an emergency urinal, but the very attractive girl sat next to me means that I cannot in good conscience behave in such a manner.

Fortunately, I manage to stop myself from making a smelly mess of myself and anything else and hold on until the bus arrives in Bilbao, whereby I waste no time at all in heading to the toilet for one of the longest and most pleasant sessions of liquid offloading of my life.

I then make my way to the hostel I am booked into and check in, where I am told that my friend Paul has already arrived, although where he is at the moment is anyones guess. With nothing else to do, I head for a little walk around town as this is my first time in Bilbao.

During my walk around Bilbao, I send a message to another friend named Alec who is supposed to be coming over for the entire tour just like Paul and I are. I am really hoping he is going to make it, as I have budgeted for him driving from gig to gig, and if I have to actually make my own way around Spain I will run out of money very quickly.

He replies almost immediately to inform me that he is stuck in America due to having to attend to some business with his sister. While I completely understand why he had to stay at home, it causes me a serious issue as it means my already tight budget is now much, much worse than it was a few minutes ago.

On my way back to the hostel I head to a store and get a few beers, and once back at what will be base camp for the next 36 hours or so I find Paul lurking by the communal computers doing some work.

We spend a little while just catching up with one another as it‘s been three years since we were last in the same city, then decide to have another little walk around town to try and find the venue for the first gig of the tour tomorrow night. This doesn’t take us too long and we both agree that it looks, from the outsde at least, like it could be a good place for a rock and roll gig. We are also encouraged by a poster on the door which indicates the gig is part of a free festival, as this greatly increases the chances of a decent crowd for the band.

We then head back towards the hostel, stopping off for a beer on the way, all the while speculating on the quite literally hundreds of teenagers sitting around all over the place on the street, quite clearly having some mass mid-teen street party for some reason.

We only have one drink and then head back to the hostel where Paul, after a short time spent watching cheesy movies dubbed in Spanish on TV, heads to bed while I stay up until around 5am writing, before I finally head to bed myself.

Friday 30th September

This is a day that Paul and I have both been looking forward to for several years.

The day Marah, and more particularly the brothers Bielanko, are going to be reunited and kicking off their first tour of Spain for three years. I am up at 8am, curious about what kind of stuff is offered as breakfast in the hostel. Not much, as it happens, consisting of bread, jam, cereal, and nothing else.

Paul has some work to do on the computer so he gets on with that while I occupy myself with some light reading. Around 1pm we decide to head over to the venue to see if the band has shown up yet. We get there and manage to head inside for a look around, and we are both super excited by the look of the place. A good sized stage and room for around 400 people on the main floor, with extra space on balconies on two levels that go around the whole space.

We leave a note for the band welcoming them to Spain and then head back out. On the way back to the hostel we stop off for a bite to eat and a couple of beers, and the place we find has one of the best chickenburgers I have ever had the pleasure of eating. After that we just wander around aimlessly for a little while before going back to the hostal for a short nap.

I notice a store not too far from the hostel and tell Paul I am just going to go and grab a few beers for the bus journey we are going to be taking immediately after the show.

The look on his face when I walk out of the store a few moments later with a slab of 24 cans of beer is priceless, but in my defence we hadn’t noticed a bar in the gig venue and the bus journey we have planned is 10 hours long, so I don’t think I am being too greedy.

I should point out at this point that Paul does not consume alcohol, ever, and so I have no doubt that he has real difficulty sometimes comprehending how I manage to function as well as I do with the amount that I drink!

When we get back to the hostel I check my emails and discovered that I have a few small proof-reading jobs to do, so I get on with that while Paul has a nap before heading back over to the venue to see if the band are around yet. He returns at around 8.30pm, and by 9pm I am done with work and ready to head out to the gig.

I am also down to 16 remaining beers, which does not bode well for my plans to actually have enough beer for the bus journey later.

We head over to the venue for the final time and have a brief chat with the band to say hello before they go on stage. The gig, as it always is with these guys, is immense.

This is the first time I have seen them in over 3 years, and Martin and Mark, the new drummer and bass player respectively, are members of the band I have never met before, although they could have been with the band for ever as the wall of sound is so perfectly put together.

I should state for the record right now that as an individual I do not dance. Ever.

Except one time in Barcelona, watching the last night of a tour of Spain by Marah. And now I’ve danced twice, as by the time they start the third number I can’t help myself any more and go crazy, all the while downing beers as though they were water.

By the end of the gig my 24 cans are gone and I am the happiest I can remember being for a very, very long time. Paul and I hang around and chat to the band for a little while after the show, but at around 1am we leave to head to the bus station for our 1.45am bus to Vigo, where tomorrows gig is going to happen.

Getting to the bus station is no problem, and we are soon en route to our next destination, a 10 hour bus ride to Vigo. So far my travels are all going according to plan, and I start to feel that the Marah curse on my Spanish trips is finally over.

I really should have known better.

Saturday 1st October

Things start to go wrong at around 5am when the bus pulls into a bus station somewhere and the driver announces a twenty minute break. At least, I am pretty certain he said 20 minutes, but as I don’t speak Spanish I go to the front of the bus to check with him, and he confirms that he will be stopping here for the aforementioned length of time.

Paul is asleep so I leave him to it and go to use the facilities. This takes me less than 10 minutes, so you can imagine my surprise when I come back out to see my bus driving away without me. I check the time on my phone which confirms that the 20 minute stop has actually lasted for only 10. I am stranded and have no idea where I am. This is not good. Not good at all.

I go to enquire about tickets and am told that another bus ticket to Vigo will cost me 30 Euros on top of the 60 I already paid for the initial ticket. The next bus is at 3.30pm and will get to Vigo at 10.30pm. At this point in time I have no idea where I am as I had been having a nap immediately prior to the bus pulling into the stop, and so I feel I have no option other Bilbao passed without a hitch, clearly this was only because it wasn’t on a Saturday, and I am now being bitten soundly on the ass by the usual Saturday Spanish Marah curse.

With nothing else to do for the next 10 hours or so I decide to head outside for some fresh air and to see if I can work out where the hell I am. At this point I realise that I should have actually made this decision before buying a ticket, because where I had assumed that we were at a random service station somewhere on the highway, in actual fact we are in the centre of a city, which I soon discover is Oviedo, and there is a train station just up the road.

I make my way up there and enquire about tickets to Vigo from here, and learn that I can take a train at 10.30 and get to Vigo by 8.30pm, and this will cost me 50 Euros.

I think about it for a few minutes, as I know that having already paid for the bus, taking the train will leave my financial reserves pretty much null and void, but the chance to leave 5 hours earlier and arrive in Vigo at 8.30 instead of 10.30pm convinces me that it is worth the extra expense, as the last thing I want is to get
to Vigo too late for the gig.

Having bought the ticket I have a walk around town looking for some WiFi to steal so I can email people and let them know where I am and whats going on. I initially post something on Facebook along the lines of being stranded in a strange town, and get a reply from Serge Bielanko, one of the two brothers that front the band, telling me that the band will come and try to find me if I can let them know where I am.

However, I don’t get this message until some time later, by which time I have already taken the first leg of the train journey from Oviedo to a place called Leon. From Leon I can get a train direct to Vigo, and once there I just have to find the venue for the gig. I have also sent Paul an SMS in the hope that he can rescue my bag from the bus once it arrives in Vigo, as otherwise I will be stuck with just the clothes I am wearing for the duration of the tour.

Fortunately I have my passport and wallet with me, and I keep my laptop and camera in my trouser pockets, so the expensive items are safe at least.

There is a 90 minute layover in Leon, so I head into town for a quick beer and check my emails, which is where I see the message from Serge telling me the band will make a detour to come and get me if neccessary. I reply to him to tell him that I have sorted things out and will be in Vigo at around 8.30pm, and he responds by telling me that the gig is at 11pm so there will be no problem. All I will have to do is find my way from the train station to the venue once I arrive, although if I’d taken the bus it could have been much more difficult.

Arriving in Vigo my first task is to find somewhere that I can check my emails and charge my laptop as the battery has died on me. I also need to check a map and find out where I am in relation to the venue for the gig. It takes me half an hour or so to find a bar with WiFi, and so I head in there and have a few beers, check to see if I have had any work come through, and look to see where I am. I find that I am only a short distance from the gig venue and so head round there at around 10pm.

There is no sign of anyone I know when I arrive so I head into the nearest bar for a quick beer. At 10.20 I head back outside and go up the street to wait for people to arrive. The band get there first, and are clearly happy to see that I have arrived in one piece.

They are kind of used to my crazy adventures to see them, as three years ago I ended up paying 500 Euros for a taxi from Alicante to Zaragoza after my bus broke down on the way to the airport causing me to miss my flight.

They also have a film crew with them who are supposed to be shooting a tour
documentary, so I said hello to all of them while I waited for Paul to arrive. After a brief chat with Paul, during which I explained why I had gotten off the bus and he informs me that he managed to rescue my bag from the bus, and had apparently been kicked awake by half of the passengers as the bus left without me, only to have the driver refuse to go back for me, and then we go inside for the second gig of the tour.

I have my camera with me so decide to try and film a few songs. The camera can only record 7 and a half minutes of footage as I don’t have a memory card for it, so my plan is to record one song during the first set, download it onto my laptop during the interval the band are having on this tour to allow people to have a cigarette, and then record a second song during the second half of the show.

It‘s another kick-ass show, and there are around a couple of hundred people here to see it. As is normal at a Marah show, we hang around after the gig and chat with the band before Paul and I head to the hostal that we‘re checked in at for a few hours sleep.

We need to be on a bus again at 8am for the next leg of the tour, but I also need to check my emails. The WiFi in the hostal isn’t working, so I head back out to try to find some somewhere else. By the time I manage to find some that I can steal and check my emails I am completely lost and have no idea where I am in relation to the hostal, so I then have to find more WiFi to steal so that I can check the map and find my way back!

I get back to the hostal at around 5am, and at 7 Paul and I get up and head to the bus station for the bus to Gijon which is the next stop on the tour.

Sunday 2nd October

There is a bus direct to Gijon at 8am, but when we get to the bus station we find that this bus doesn’t have any free seats. This causes us a bit of a problem, and the only way we can get to Gijon will be to take three buses. This means that our predicted 5 hour bus journey will in fact be much longer, as we are due to get the first bus at 8.30am and arrive in Gijon at 10.30pm.

After around 18 hours traveling yesterday I am not really in the mood for another 14 hours today, but there is no other option so we take the tickets and prepare ourselves for a long day and hope that the gig wont start before we arrive.

The first leg of the journey takes us to a small place called Santiago de Compostela. We have a three hour wait here for the next bus, so while Paul decides to have a nap on a bench outside the station I head into town to look for a supermarket so I can buy some supplies for the rest of the journey. Supplies in this case being something like bread and cheese so we have something to eat, as it suddenly occurs to me that I haven’t eaten for a couple of days.

It takes about 15 minutes to walk into the town centre, where I find that they are having a medieval festival which basically consists of stalls set up in the town square selling sausages and so on. As it‘s only 11am, I’m not really interested in having anything to eat at the moment, although I know this is going to change as the day goes on, so I continue on my way in search of a supermarket.

The first one I find is closed, which I find kind of strange, as is the second and the third. By the time I find a fourth closed supermarket I am ready to give up the search for the day. I do manage to find a bakery that also sells a few packets of cooked meats so decide to get a few french sticks and a packet of ham before heading back to the station to meet Paul and wait for our next bus. I also buy a six-pack of beer, just to make sure I don’t get dehydrated on the bus.

At around 1.30pm we head out of Santiago on the second bus of the day. This is annoying as we were hoping to be in Gijon by now, but there is nothing we can do about it. It‘s around 3 and a half hours on the bus to our next stop, which is a place called Ponferrada, and here we have another wait of a few hours before getting the third bus of the day which will take us to Gijon.

There is little to do in Ponferrada other than sit down and wait, so that’s what we do. We head into the cafe at one point for a beer, but mostly it’s just sitting there doing nothing, which is annoying as hell because we just want to be on the road and traveling, but we have no real choice in the matter.

We finally arrive in Gijon at around 10.30pm and both of us are feeling pretty tired, but we need to find the venue and watch the gig. The problem is that we don’t know how to get there, and it takes a while before we can find a taxi, only to have the driver say he doesn’t know where the venue is but he can take us to the street.

The venue that we are looking for is supposed to be called The Monkey Lounge and a few minutes later we pass a bar called The Monkey Bar. They are advertising a band tonight, but it isn’t Marah, so while Paul is convinced that this is the place we are looking for, I’m not so sure. We stay in the cab for a few more minutes discussing it, all the while getting further away from the potential venue, but eventually we decide to get out of the cab and go and find the place ourselves,

Paul instantly starts marching back towards the place we saw in the cab while I try to find some WiFi to steal in order to call up a map and check where we should be going. Paul is going far too fast for me to try and get a signal though so I give up and follow him, thinking that once we get to the venue and find out it’s the wrong place he will calm down long enough for me to look it up properly.

Of course, Paul turns out to be right and the place we are marching to is the place the gig is happening after all. When we get in the band are already playing, and from the sound of it we have missed the first couple of songs. The crowd is small, only maybe 60 people or so, which is a shame, but apparently this is because Gijon are playing Barcelona tonight so everyone is at the football.

Despite the small crowd the band still play an awesome gig, and afterward Paul and I talk to the guys and tell them about our crazy journey for the day. The venue closes shortly after the gig ends, and we leave Dave and Christine at the bar trying to get some drinks to take back to their hotel. Serge is also ready to go back to his hotel so he can talk to his wife and kids on Skype, as this is the first time he has been away from home since his son and daughter were born.

Mark and Martin, however, are up for going for a few beers, so Paul and I go with them in search of a bar that‘s open. It is getting close to 2am, but it doesn’t take us long to spot a bar with a few people sat at tables outside, so we head there to see if they are still open.

The woman behind the bar tells us that we can have one beer and then she is closing, but then Mark and Martin get talking to her and before we know it we are on the second drink, and the third, and the fourth, and then the doors are closed and we‘re locked in.

It turns out that the woman behind the bar is the owner, and she is called Isabel.
Most of the other people in the bar are musicians of one kind or another, and when I play a few of the clips from the show in Vigo on my laptop Isabel looks online to find some Marah music to play for everyone. She then plays a few songs from one of the other guys in the bar, before playing a song from her own band, at which point we realise that she is an amazing singer.

After a few more beers she decides that she is closing the bar. In true Spanish style, she informs us of this by turning off the lights and and heading to the door, telling us that she is going to take us to another bar around the corner. Of course there is no argument from any of us, and it‘s only when we‘ve been in the other bar for twenty minutes that we realise that she didn’t charge us for our beers!

My Spanish bartender freebies are kicking into play again, and after the debacle of yesterday and the state of my finances as a result, this is something I am most certainly not going to complain about.

The other bar Isabel takes us to is also full of musicians, which is kind of bizarre, but also really cool.

There is an Australian guy in the place who is wearing a Glasgow Rangers football shirt. It must have been the shirt, as most Aussies that I have met over the years are really laid back and relaxed, but this guy is really full on and agressive and in peoples faces. Mark especially is quite intimidated by him, but after a while he calms down a little and switches from trying to pick a fight to offering to go home and bring back beans and sausages and cook up a breakfast for everyone!

He eventually leaves as his friends want him to give them a ride home. The guy is so drunk he can hardly stand up, but he‘s planning on driving home anyway. This is something that really pisses me off, as one of the few things I am categorically opposed to is drunk-driving, but there is no point trying to talk him into getting a cab and off he goes.

The atmosphere in the bar improves markedly the moment he leaves and we all get on with the important business of drinking for a little while longer. At around 6am, Mark and Martin decide they want to head back to the hotel, so Paul and I leave with them to make sure they find it okay.

We don’t have anywhere booked for the night and decide to just find a bench somewhere to have a nap before finding somewhere to stay at around 9am, meaning that we only have to pay for a room for one night. Tomorrow is a day off for the band, although they have to do a radio interview at around 2pm, so everyone is staying in Gijon for the day before heading to the next stop on the tour, Burgos, on Tuesday morning.

Monday 3rd October

At around 9am Paul and I go in search of Wifi for me to steal with the intention of me going online and finding somewhere we can stay. We find a bench where I can access the internet and while I look for hotels Paul disappears and comes back a few minutes later with a bag full of what I assume to be food of some description.

I can only find one hotel online, but it has very unfavourable reviews. It is cheap, however, so we decide to try and find it and have a look for it so we can make a decision when we see it ourselves. I ask Paul for the name of the street we are on so I can check the map to see how close we are, only to find that we are not only on the same street as the hotel, but it is actually literally right behind us.
We take this as a sign and head across the road to check in immediately.

The price is good, the room is big, there is free WiFi, and we are checked in and in bed by 9.15am, meaning we can have a few hours sleep before heading out to meet the band at their hotel at 12.30 to go to the radio interview.

Paul sleeps while I, as usual, check my emails, hoping to find work but with no luck. We head back out at 12.20 and meet Serge at the front of the hotel. The radio interview is meant to happen at 2pm, and Martin comes down just after we arrive looking fine, but Mark has told him in no uncertain terms that he is staying in bed for a few more hours.

Of Dave and Christine there is no sign, however, and this could potentially constitute a problem if we can’t find them. The general consensus is that if they are awake they will be at the nearest place where they can sit outside and drink coffee, and the tour manager goes around the corner to a cafe looking for them.

They are not there, but Paul spots Dave at the top of the street, sat, as predicted, outside a cafe drinking coffee, and so we head up there to join him. He tells us that Christine is in the hotel room, and as we get closer to the time of the interview Dave goes to try and make sure she is awake. A few minutes later Serge goes back as well, and suddenly it‘s 15 minutes before the radio interview is due to start and the only band member we have is the drummer!

Fortunately, they all reappear just in time, and the radio station is only around the corner so we all head round there so they can do the interview. The band are put in a small studio with no air conditioning and told that they are going to be interviewed by someone in Madrid. The interview will be conducted in Spanish, which is a bit of an issue as the band only speak a small amount of said language, so one of the documentary crew is roped in to act as an interpreter.

The band play three songs during the interview and I record all three on my camera.

Once the interview is done we all decide to have a little walk around town and see what it has to offer.

We head down towards the beach where I get a great picture of the band and Paul leaning over the railing staring at the ocean. At this point Dave and Christine head back to the hotel as Dave has a broken toe having dropped a guitar amp on his foot just before the tour started, while the rest of us have a walk up the hill where we just sit and chill for a little while as Serge talks about a concert that is going on in his head that involves Simply Red playing on a floating stage out in the bay.

Martin also confesses at this point that of the top ten romantic places he has ever been to around the world, he has been to every single one of them with guys!

We relax for a little while, and then the band decide they want to go and have a siesta. I want to do some writing so head back to the hotel too, while Paul decides to go and have a walk along the beach for a bit. We all make plans to meet up at 8pm to go and get something to eat and have a few beers before heading our seperate ways.

I end up spending the time talking to my friend in Korea on Skype, and I don’t get any writing done before heading out to meet everyone at the pre-arranged time. We then have a walk around trying to find somewhere that can fit the whole group in for a meal.

Paul and I decide that we are not going to eat as neither of us are hungry, so while the band and crew sit and have a meal, we go looking for a couple of bars Paul went to the last time he was in town with another band. We only manage to find one of the two bars, and it’s closed anyway, so we go back to the restaurant where we left the band to meet up with them.

They are just finishing up their meal and we decide to all head to Isabel’s bar from the night before for a few beers before having an early night. When we get there Serge decides to bail and goes back to his hotel, and a few minutes later Isabel arrives and instantly grabs Martin and takes him into a place across the street.

This turns out to be a private musicians union bar with all kinds of instruments lying around, including a harp. Christine has never played a harp before so she asks for permission to have a go with this one, and this is the start of a bizarre night which dissolves into a jam session involving most of the band at various stages, Isabel singing, and random people joining in with whatever instruments are available.

One guy turns up with some weird kind of sea-food that he has been and caught himself, evidently some animal that lives in the cracks of rocks along the coast. This, he claims, is the rarest form of sea-food on the planet and is worth around 500 Euros a kilo, but he is quite happy to donate it for free to the band.

The proposed early night gets forgotten about, and it‘s around 4am before we finally leave there and head back to the hotel to get a little sleep, having all had a great night.

Tuesday 4th October

This is another early start, an 8am bus, although fortunately there‘s no issue with the bus being full and us having to take a major diversion. The journey is a little over 4 hours, meaning we get to Burgos by lunch-time. Things are starting to get back on track with our journey, and all we have to do now is find the venue for tonights gig.

We debate for a while whether or not to get a hotel, and in the end decide that we might as well as it will mean we can get a few hours sleep before the gig and another few hours afterwards. The plan is to sleep today and not book anywhere tomorrow in Madrid, as it‘s much more likely that the band will want to go out drinking there than here.

We initially have a walk around town looking for somewhere to stay, and I have a moment of panic when Paul suddenly turns around and starts talking to a couple of young girls he has overheard having a conversation in English. The last time this happened was in Brno in the Czech Republic, and the girls in question turned out to be ultra religious and tried to talk us into going to their Christian Rock gig instead of that nights Marah show.

The discussion we had on that particular occasion lasted quite a while, and in fairness to myself and Paul we almost managed to convert two of the girls to the dark side and get them to abandon their faith in favour of the best rock and roll gig in the world. But there was a third God-botherer with them who ran off for reinforcements when it looked like we were getting the other two girls to question their faith.

This time round though there is no such complication. It turns out the two girls Paul has heard talking are from an American dance troupe that are in town for a show tomorrow. They seem really keen on the idea of coming to the Marah gig when we talk to them about it, but as neither of us have the venue information on us we can only give them rough details and hope they can make it.

Once this is done we sort out a hotel and then grab a few hours sleep. Our plan is to head to the venue at around 8pm to listen to the sound-check, and so at 7.30 we leave the hotel and go looking for a taxi. I‘ve looked up the address on the bands website online and it‘s clear that getting to tonights venue is going to be a bit of a trek, so a taxi is the best option.

It doesn’t take us long to find a cab and he‘s happy to take us to the address we give him. However, when we get there we discover a problem. The address on the website is someones private flat, not a club where a rock and roll gig is likely to take place. We‘re fucked. And the chance of the American dancers turning up for the show is now looking pretty unlikely.

The only chance we really have is to try and find some WiFi to steal so I can send a message to the tour manager on facebook as we stupidly don‘t have a phone number for anyone involved in the tour. The problem is that we‘re pretty much out in the middle of nowhere so WiFi isn‘t easy to find.

So we take a taxi back to the center of town and I look online for the venue website. This gives me a completely different address, which is also close to where we are, so we go to check it out only to find the address given for the venue on their own website is a jewellers store.

This is not looking good.

Paul starts to accost people at random in the street, asking them if they have any idea where the place is, and he finally manages to find someone that knows it. The venue is part of a football stadium we passed on our way out of and back into town, and so we take a third taxi back up the road and finally find it about 10 minutes before the band show up at 10pm.

We aren’t really expecting much in the way of a crowd because of where the venue is, but we‘re all pleasantly surprised when a few hundred people show up. There are only so many times I can say that the gig was amazing before it becomes kind of boring and repetitive, so I think for the rest of the tour you can just assume, unless I state otherwise, that the gig was just as good as if not better than the previous ones.

I again manage to get some good footage, and because I‘m pretty much out of cash by now I‘m literally filming a song and downloading it onto my laptop before the next one starts to distract me from the fact I’m not drinking. I manage to get most of the gig recorded, but by now I am getting pissed off at this 7 and a half minute recording limit and considering buying a memory card.

After the show we all stand outside talking and mixing with people, and there is a totally surreal moment when some guy randomly asks Dave if he likes cheese, then goes and produces a whole wheel of said dairy produce when he recieves an answer in the affirmative. The general consensus amongst the band members is that this is some of the best cheese they’ve ever tried.

Paul and I then get talking to a few young girls who walk with us to the bands hotel, where we have a little scout around looking for a nearby bar in the hope that we might catch them having a few post-gig beers, but the search proves fruitless and so Paul and I retire to our hotel to get some sleep as we know we won‘t be getting any in Madrid tomorrow night.

Wednesday 5th October

This is a day where we actually get a late start as we had decided, due to it being a short distance to Madrid, to get a bus at 2.45pm. We know it‘s scheduled to be an early gig in Madrid, with the band on stage around 8.30pm, but this is fine as it‘s only a 3 hour bus ride. Our issues with full buses and getting lost seem to be behind us, but I am now having my own little problem.

Which is money. I‘d sent a message a few days ago to my boss to request payment for the few jobs that I’d done which I hadn’t been paid for yet, and the money is due to clear in my account today. But I keep trying banks and finding no money there. This means one of two things. Either my money hasn’t cleared yet or my card isn’t working in Spain. Either one is possible, as although my card had worked in Germany recently I had not been able to use it when I was in Austria at the start of the year.

Either way, I‘m down to my last few Euros, so something needs to be sorted out. The first thing I do is send a message to a friend in Prague who can access my bank account online and tell me the balance. He does this and confirms that my money is there, which just means that I have to find a way to access it.

I spend a while trying to think of a way to make things work, and in the end decide to send an email to a friend called Amanda who is going to be coming over for the final gig of the tour to see if it would be possible for her to send me the money, and then I can send is straight back to her from my account.

All this time, I keep trying different banks, all to no avail. We have to get the bus before I get a reply, and a few hours later we arrive in Madrid. More out of pointless hope than expectation I try the first cash machine I see, and am shocked when it actually gives me money! I withdrew most of the money I have in the account and hope that it will be enough for the rest of the tour, but leave a little in reserve just in case.

It doesn’t take us long to get to the venue, where we do the usual pre-gig chat with the band backstage before heading out front for the show. I again film a few songs, but for the most part this show is about just having fun, as for the first time on the tour I have a bit of cash in my wallet. This, of course, means that I feel compelled to dispose of said cash as rapidly as possible, but having discovered that a small beer is 5 Euros at the bar I decide to utilise the emergency supplies of cans that I had picked up earlier when nobody was looking.

After the show, we go back to the bands hotel with them and then head to a nearby bar for a few drinks. Which rapidly become a few more drinks. And then some more.

Followed by a couple of beers. And then the bar closes. So Paul and I, being the only two still going as the band have long since gone to bed, go in search of
another bar.

I should make something clear by the way. Paul doesn’t drink. At all. He steals leftover food from the bands rider, but he never touches alcohol. So his task in Madrid is to try and ensure I don’t get into too much trouble as I am finally cutting loose for the first time on the tour.

I manage to find, in Paul’s words, a Spanish gay biker bar, where I sit and have a few more beers before we decide to head to the bus station and wait for tomorrows bus. Or so I have been told. By all accounts, by this time I can barely stand up, but Paul somehow gets me somewhere close to the bus station and I immediately proceed to going to sleep underneath a bench.

While I‘m sleeping, Paul finds himself in conversation with a guy who has been traveling around working in various places and has found himself down on his luck trying to get from Guinea to Lille in France. The guy has apparently not eaten anything in days, so it‘s lucky that he bumped into Paul as he had very recently purloined the bands leftover rider food, which he gives to the poor guy in the hope it will be enough to sustain him until he gets somewhere that he can earn some money.

Me? I slept under the bench for a little while longer.

Thursday 6th October

At 7am we are on yet another bus, todays destination being Pamplona. I spend most of the journey catching up on sleep, as I haven’t had much in the last few days and drank a little bit more than I should have in Madrid. By the time we get to Pamplona, I‘m suitably refreshed and ready for a bit of fun.

First up on the agenda once we arrive is to find somewhere to stay. A quick check online gives details of a hostal which, according to my map, is quite close to the venue for tonights show. It‘s also reasonably priced, so Paul and I jump into a taxi and head straight there.

As we‘re checking in we notice that there‘s a board listing local events next to the reception desk, and at the bottom of the list is tonights Marah show. You know a band are truly making waves in the rock ‘n’ roll world when they are being promoted in backpackers hostels!

I ask the guy on reception for directions to the venue, and at this point it becomes clear that, just like in Burgos, the internet can lie to you sometimes.

It turns out the gig is not actually in Pamplona, but is instead in a small village about 10 kilometers away. Getting there shouldn’t be too difficult, as there is a regular bus service that will at least take us to the right area. Getting back after the show, however, could be much more difficult. This is something we can deal with later though. For now, as we have the time to spare we decide to go for a walk around and explore Pamplona a little.

Before we can leave, however, we get talking to a young couple from Australia who are backpacking around Europe working on organic farms for bed and board. They seem like a cool couple, and we would undoubtedly have no trouble persuading them to come to tonights gig if it wasn’t for the fact that they’re waiting for a bus to their next destination. Our time talking to them is far too brief, as almost as soon as I start to play them a clip from last nights gig their bus arrives and they have to leave.

We head down to the old part of town, where I find a camera shop and buy a memory card for my camera. I am fed up of only being able to record a short amount of footage. I also look for a light that I can attach to the camera, as some of the venues have been quite dark, and there is one song in particular where Serge goes walkabout in the crowd. I would love to film this, but it tends to be far too dark to get any kind of decent footage.

Paul and I walk around for a while looking in different shops but there is nowhere that sells the kind of light that I’m looking for. This is a little disappointing, but there is nothing much I can do about it so we give up and head back to the hostel for a little while.

At about 8pm we decide it’s time to try and find the venue, and so we leave the hostel and head for the bus stop. This is where the journey could get interesting, as the only directions I have been given by the hostel receptionist are to get off the bus before it turns right and the venue is on the other side of an industrial estate. This is the reason that we’re leaving to look for it so early.

The bus part of the journey is easy enough, but I’m already not looking forward to us having to find our way back to the hostel after the gig. It’s a 10 kilometer bus ride, and I really don’t feel like walking that distance at 1am in a city I don’t know. Yes, it’s a straight road, so there’s no chance of us getting lost, but I’m quite lazy and Paul isn’t really built for hiking, so it wont be a fun trip back.
All we can hope is that the band are staying somewhere in the center and we can hitch a ride back into town with them.

Once we get off the bus we are instantly hit with difficulties, as we have been told that the venue is on the other side of the industrial estate, but there is no sign of any such place.

Instead, it’s all residential houses and normal shops. We walk around aimlessly for a little while, me trying to find somewhere that I can grab WiFi so I can get my bearings and sort out a route, and Paul walking off trying to use his inbuilt music finding sat-nav to lead us to the venue, but before long we are back where we started and Paul allows me to actually use my computer to try and find out where we should be going.

It only takes me a few minutes to hijack some WiFi and work out where we are in relation to the venue, and then it’s a 10 minute walk to actually get there. As is often the case, we arrive early and Paul manages to talk our way into the venue, even though there is no sign of anyone else yet.

We were warned by someone we met in Burgos that tonights gig could be a disaster, as the venue is big but the people of Pamplona have a track record of not turning out for live music. Apparently the New York Dolls played in the same venue a few weeks earlier on a Saturday night and only 20 people showed up.

As this is Marah’s first tour of Spain for three years, and as they have never played in Pamplona before, the chances of there being nobody at the show are quite high.

Paul and I hang out with the band for a while before the show, with none of us having any idea what is happening in the venue. The set-up is strange, in that to get to the dressing rooms from the front of the stage you actually have to go back out of the building at the rear and come in through a different entrance. Either that, or just walk over the stage.

As it gets towards show-time, Paul and I are faced with the problem of having to get out front, and it’s decided that the best option for us is to just go across the stage rather than mess about trying to find one of the security people to lead us around.

Coming out of the dressing room area onto the stage there is a moment of trepidation as I wonder whether there will be any people here or not. Fortunately, my fears are unfounded as there are at least a hundred people already here and more people showing up by the minute. It looks like we’ll have a good crowd after all, and hopefully they’ll all enjoy the show as much as I’ve enjoyed every show on the tour so far.

By the time the band come on stage about ten minutes later there are about 150 people in the venue. It’s a strange atmosphere though because the stage is about 7 feet high, and so everyone’s stood at least 10-15 feet back from the stage so they can watch the band play. Anyone who has ever seen Marah play before will know that they feed off the energy of the crowd and vice versa, but in this case there is no energy coming from the crowd at all.

Don’t get me wrong, they all seem to be appreciating the band well enough, but for some reason they aren’t getting into the music and dancing as people usually do at Marah gigs. Towards the end of the first set, the band go into Dishwashers Dream, the song where Serge likes to get up close and personal with the crowd.

This presents a bit of a problem, as due to the height of the stage there is a real chance he might injure himself getting down, and then of course he will have to actually try and get the crowd involved in what he’s doing anyway.

The first of these problems is solved by Paul and one of the guys from the official documentary crew following the band (more on them later) helping Serge down off the stage. Serge, a keen fisherman, then solves the second problem by casting an imaginary fishing line into the crowd and drawing them in towards him before going crazy in his usual style once he’s surrounded.

Once this is done, the only other problem he has is getting back on stage towards the end of the number, and to do this he ends up having to use the steps at the side of the stage as it’s just too high for him to get up any other way.

The band then take a break to allow everyone (including themselves) to go and have a cigarette, before coming back out and rocking the place with their second set. The crowd are a little closer to the stage in the second set, but still not as close as a normal Marah crowd would be, although with such a high stage it’s difficult to criticize them for staying a little bit back.

This means that the crowd don’t feed off the energy of the band as much as at most gigs though, and vice versa, which is a shame as the band are giving it everything they have to seeming indifference from the audience.

This is demonstrated at the end of the gig when the band walk off stage, and rather than shout for an encore the crowd just start making their way out of the building right away. All in all it’s been a bizarre night, and I’m about to discover that the strangeness is actually only just beginning.

Once the gig’s over a guy called Oscar, who we met in Burgos and was the person who had warned us not to expect much of a crowd tonight, asks if anyone wants to go drinking with him. The band disappear quite rapidly back to their hotel, but Paul, myself, and the film crew decide to head to Oscar’s local bar for a drink, and from there Paul and I can work out how we’re going to get back to Pamplona for the night.

The bar Oscar takes us to is a short walk from the venue, and evidently has officially closed for the evening. This doesn’t prevent Oscar from knocking on the door until someone comes along and opens it though, and before we know it we’re part of a late-night lock-in, something which I have become very familiar over the years.

As I may have mentioned earlier, Paul doesn’t drink, and nobody in the film crew seems interested in having a beer either. Which means that there are 6 of us in the group (me, Paul, and four filmographers), and one person drinking. While I avail myself of a few nice cold beers, Paul is negotiating with the other guys and they offer to give us a lift back into Pamplona in exchange for an interview about the band for their documentary.

This request is not exactly unexpected, as Dave has spent the last couple of days talking about how the documentary should be about me and Paul rather than his band. This is seemingly because the guys are getting a bit of a reputation as the world’s worst film crew.

On the surface of things, this seemed quite a harsh thing to call them. They are all really nice guys for a start, and are certainly keen to do the best they could. But they have managed to get lost a couple of times, have blown up a car on one of the journeys between cities, lost a really expensive camera lens, and seem to have an amazing knack to turn up to places about five minutes after something worth documenting happens.

Anyway, faced with a 10 kilometer trek back into town or a lift in exchange for a few minutes on camera, it isn’t a difficult decision, and so we leave the bar and head back towards the venue, as they have left their car there. My only other stipulation to the interview is that we have to find a bar in the center of Pamplona as I’m not going to appear on camera without a beer in my hand.

As we walk back to the venue it occurs to the three film crew members that are with us that their friend, who has already gone back to the hotel, has the car keys. So they tell Paul and I to head to the venue and wait by the car while they go to get the keys. They describe the car to us and we head there while all three of them go together to take possession of a set of car keys.

Paul and I speculate that they either have an extremely heavy set of keys that necessitates the need for all three of them to carry them, or they’re ditching us because they don’t want to drive us into town after all. We get to the venue and there’s no sign of the car they described. So we go around to the other side and find that it isn’t there either. At this point, we think it might be a good idea to head back to where we’d parted from the guys so we can wait for them there.

We don’t have to wait long for them to arrive, but our information that their car is not where they claim to have left it is met with incredulity. So we walk back around again, only to find a few minutes later that Paul and I are completely correct. The car is not where they left it.

This sparks a few moments of panic amongst them as they realize that all of the footage they have shot during the tour is in the car. This means they have spent the last week and a bit of their lives shooting a movie, and it was a complete waste of time. The car is a rental (after the aforementioned car being blown up incident), so there’s no need to worry about insurance. But they are completely screwed on so many other fronts.

It’s Paul who thinks to ask them to check with the other member of their group to see if he might have moved the car. After all, he had the keys and left the bar before anyone else. Maybe he didn’t want to leave the car there overnight with all of their film stock behind a club in the middle of an industrial estate. A quick call to him reveals that he did actually move the car and it’s back at the hotel.

That would be the same hotel that the other three guys have just been to in order to
get the keys. Clearly it didn’t occur to him to mention to his friends that the car was actually downstairs, and not half a mile away where they were expecting to find it. This level of communication makes it suddenly much clearer where the title of ‘world’s worst film crew’ is coming from.

After a walk back to the hotel we all jump into the car and head back to the center of town, dropping Paul off at the hostel first before the film crew and I go looking for a bar. It takes us about twenty minutes to find somewhere open in the old town area, and the first bar we find, while cool with me, is not good for the worlds worst film crew as there is a live band playing so interviewing me isn’t really an option.

I have one drink here, then we go to a place across the road. This place is quiet, at least when we walk in, but is too dark to actually get any decent film footage in, so again the film crew are screwed. By now the fact that I am walking around Pamplona at 3am with my own film crew is starting to attract a bit of attention, and people are wanting to know what we’re doing.

So I make up a story on the spot about me being a famous porn star from England who is looking for a girl or two for a shoot and tell the guys to pass it around, as obviously my Spanish hasn’t improved much in the last few days. We eventually decide that the best course of action is for me to take a drink outside with me and sit on some steps around the corner while the crew interview me for their documentary.

It takes a few minutes to get things set up with regards lighting and making sure the sound is good, and then we proceed with the interview. The questions are the kind of stock questions you might expect from someone conducting their first ever interview, and once the interview is over I point out to the guys that they really should have asked better and more insightful questions if they wanted to get some good footage.

Maybe asking me about the ridiculous journeys I have taken to watch this band would be a good place to start, but instead they just ask me why I like the band.

There is a moment of excitement in the middle of the interview when a group of guys walks past us up the steps. This, in itself, is not all that exciting. But when they get to the top of the steps one of them turns around and throws a beer glass at my head. Fortunately for the glass, it misses me completely, and flies over my shoulder to smash to the ground between two of the film crew guys.

They have a moment of panic wondering what the hell just happened. As for me, I don’t even react, and sit there drinking a little more beer while I wait for the guys to calm down a little bit so we can continue. I try to explain to the film crew that after 20 years of working in bars I’m used to having stuff thrown at me, but I’m not sure if they really understand why I don’t feel the need to react.

Interview over, we have a couple more beers each and then head back to the hostel. I go inside and the film crew head back to their hotel. Next stop Valencia.

Friday 7th October

I get about two hours sleep before Paul is up and moving around. We are going to part ways here, as he has to head to Barcelona to meet Amanda who is arriving later today and is disabled so not able to get around on her own all that well. His bus to Barcelona leaves about 90 minutes before my bus to Valencia, so we wish each other a safe journey and off he goes.

I nap for another hour and then make my own way to the bus station.

This turns out to be quite an eventful bus journey for me, for the second time on the tour, although fortunately not quite as bad as the trip to Vigo was.
Initially I have no idea of what’s going to happen, and the bus pulls out of Pamplona at the correct time. I instantly do what I have gotten used to doing on this trip, which is taking my shoes off so my feet are comfortable and nodding off for a nap. Around half an hour later the bus stops suddenly and I jerk back into conciousness.

I am instantly confused, as we appear to have just pulled over at the side of the road, seemingly for no reason. The driver jumps from his seat and comes stalking up the bus glaring at people, before getting to me and seeing that I don’t have my shoes on. Evidently this is the reason for the unscheduled and sudden stop.

He starts shouting at me in Spanish, and I manage to get the gist of the fact that his ire is directed at my lack of footwear. So I put my shoes back on and try to apologise, but he keeps on shouting at me. Eventually, he pauses for breath long enough for me to tell him I don’t speak Spanish, at which point he directs another bout of bitterness at me with the word ‘Policia‘ interspersed here and there. I kind of get the impression that he is threatening to have me arrested if I take my shoes off again, and, suitably drained of his ire, he heads back to his seat and the bus continues on its way.

A few hours later we pull into a service station and the driver announces what I think is a 40 minute rest stop. But I’ve been screwed by this before, so even though everyone else gets off the bus I refuse to move. Then the driver comes back to me and practically man-handles me off the bus anyway.

I need to pee quite desperately, so run to the toilet and then run back, and am gone for a maximum of three minutes.

Only to find that the bus is gone.

Again.

I have a few minutes of panic, trying to work out what the fuck just happened, and then turn around in frustration and see a bus filling up with fuel behind me. I also recognise a couple of passengers from my bus sitting around, so start to calm down a little. Five minutes later the bus is done filling up the tank and comes back around and re-parks in the same place and I start to relax a little. This wasn’t some crazy conspiracy to force the guy with smelly feet off the bus so they could continue without me after all!

The rest of the journey to Valencia is uneventful, and I arrive early in the afternoon. Now all I have to do is find my hostel. I wrote down directions so I can get from the bus station to the hostel I’m booked in before leaving Pamplona, and it’s supposed to be a ten minute walk. And all seems to be going well, right up until I get to the street where the hostel is supposed to be, only to find a vacant lot at the address I have written down.

I wander around aimlessly for a while, but eventually work out that what appears to be an abandoned church by the vacant lot is actually my hostel, although the entrance is on a different street to the one I have written down. Nevertheless, a few minutes later I’m checked in and head to bed for a few hours as I have nothing else to do with my time.

From what I’ve heard the gig is due to start quite early so I head out to find the venue at around 8pm. I’m pretty much out of cash again, so have to be careful with what I spend, so when i get to the venue and see no sign of life I take to walking around the block a few times until I see the band pull up.

Once they arrive I go to a bar on the corner with Dave and Martin initially, although the others join us soon enough. Dave is bitching about the sound in the venue, and warns me in advance that he has no idea what kind of gig I might be about to see. If it was just Dave then I wouldn’t pay much attention, as he is one of those musicians that seems to really believe that every sound engineer in the world is out to get them.

But it isn’t just Dave. The entire band, including Martin the drummer, who is one of the most laid back guys I have ever met, is bitching about the sound. So far on this tour every gig has been awesome, even if actually getting to them has been more difficult at times than I would have liked. But as I sit there and listen to the band bitch about how bad the sound is, I mentally prepare myself for a below par gig.

I should have known better.

Don’t get me wrong, there are serious issues with the sound, so bad that even my untrained ear can pick them up (although looking at the footage I shot of the gig later I started to question myself as to whether things sounded as bad as I thought).
Anyway, they play a few songs and then Dave decides it’s time to go all folky and brings his microphone into the crowd so he can actually hear himself play and sing. Before I know it, the rest of the band start taking turns joining him, including Martin, and it turns into one of the most amazing gigs I’ve ever seen.

By the end of the show I can tell that there are issues with the band members, as some of them clearly think that they just played a great gig while the others think it was a disaster. I do my best to reassure them all that it was fucking awesome, as can be seen from the footage I shot of the whole gig, but am not entirely successful.

There’s one night to go on the tour and the band are at each others throats because of a crap sound engineer, despite the actual gig being one of the best Marah shows I’ve ever seen. This could only happen with Marah!

Once everyone disperses, all I have to do is find my hostel and get some sleep, which takes much longer than it should do after I decide to see if I can find any of the band in a nearby bar and accidentally lose myself in the middle of Valencia!

Saturday 8th October

This is the final day of the tour, and is also a Saturday so I’m worried about being screwed by public transport, as I’ve now been totally fucked over in some way on the last three times I’ve tried to watch Marah in this country on a Saturday.

I get a bus at 8am, thinking that the earlier I start the less chance there is of things going horribly wrong. For once though, my Saturday travel jinx seems to be having a lie-in, and I make it to Barcelona by lunch-time. The only issue I now have is that I don’t actually have enough cash to pay for the three nights I’m booked into the hostel, as even though I know I left 100 Euros in my account for just such an emergency, the bank isn’t actually willing to give it to me.

I do have enough for two nights, so decide to pay for those two nights first and then see if I can borrow some money later to cover the last few days of my vacation.
After a brief nap I arrange to meet Paul and Amanda near the venue for a bite to eat and so we can watch the sound-check.

Amanda is, like Paul and I, one of the biggest Marah fans there is. I met them both back in 2007 when they were kind enough to drive me from venue to venue on a Marah tour and have been close to them ever since. She wanted to come and do the whole tour like Paul and I did, but she has health problems, and even a couple of days ago it was still touch and go as to whether she’d make it over for this one show.

I arrange to meet them in a bar next door to the venue that we’ve been to before, and this is a place that I’ve been looking forward to heading to for the entire tour. It’s a bar where every table has its own beer pump and you get to pour your own drinks, something I always enjoy as it means I don’t have to waste valuable drinking time waiting for service!

However, to my shock and consternation, when I get there I find that the place is closed for renovations, as of a few days ago. This pisses me off somewhat, as the inconsiderate bastards could have at least waited until after the weekend before closing the place!

As the place is closed, I wait at the venue for Paul and Amanda to arrive. Amanda has a friend with her that she went to school with who now lives just outside Barcelona and has done for many years. This woman has an amazing story, as it turns out that when she first moved to Spain she ended up working for an agency that was booking all the big acts of the time to play in Spain. At the time, the country was still being run by Franco, so there was a lot of oppression and restrictions in place that are hard to imagine these days.

And yet here was this young girl from England, fresh out of school and traveling for the first time, who was liasing with people like Black Sabbath and the Rolling Stones in order to arrange gigs for them in school gymnasiums and so on!

Anyway, we have a quick bite to eat across the road, and then the band show up so we head inside to watch the sound check. Amanda is kind enough to lend me 100 Euros, which is the money I’m supposed to have left in my bank account, and I can relax knowing I have enough money to cover the last couple of days of my vacation.

Once the sound-check is done we all hang around talking for a while, and then head off to do our own things for a bit before the show. I do a little bit of writing, but can’t really concentrate as I’m looking forward to the final show of the tour.

As always, the actual show is immense, and there’s a surprising number of British people hanging around. Amanda’s friend comes for the start of the show but then has to leave to pick her daughter up halfway through.

We get talking to a young couple from London before the show, and it turns out that the flights to Barcelona and the tickets for the show were a surprise birthday present from the girl to the guy, one that he’s obviously overjoyed with.

The only downsides to the show are the interval, where the band goes off for 15 minutes to allow people to go outside and have a cigarette break, only to have the venue security people refuse to actually let anyone go outside, and a guy from Manchester (horrible place) who is really drunk and behaving like an idiot.

I ignore most of this though, and for only the third time in my life I end up dancing like crazy at a gig! By the end of the show I’m feeling pretty worn out, and the band are clearly feeling the same way as they decide to head back to their hotel rather than have a few post-show drinks.

I leave the venue with Paul and Amanda and another friend called Dirk, a German guy living in Spain, and the worlds worst film crew. Amanda is hungry and the rest of us are thirsty. It being quite late, and not really sure of where else is open for food, we head to the Hard Rock Cafe and sit outside while Amanda and a few of the film crew guys have a bite to eat.

Once they’ve eaten, the film crew decide it’s time for them to head back to their hotel, and so we say our goodbyes to them. Dirk and I then walk back towards Paul and Amanda’s hotel with them before bidding them a goodnight and heading out on the search for beer.

After a while, Dirk remembers a bar he’s been to before, and we go looking for of it.

When we get there we just have time for a couple of beers before the bartender tells us she’s closing for the night. This confuses us somewhat as at the same time she says she’s closing, about twenty people walk in who she seems more than happy to serve drinks to. Evidently it’s just us tourists that she doesn’t want to serve for some reason.

We leave the bar and Dirk heads back to his hotel. Exhausted from all the traveling and a total lack of sleep in the last week or so, I decide to head back to my hostel for an early night.

Sunday 9th October

I basically spend the day lounging around in the hostel, not really in the mood to do anything other than sleep. At around 6pm I go and find a supermarket and get myself a bottle of vodka and head back to the hostel bar and just sit there drinking. After a few hours I join in with a few people playing pool, and generally just chill out all night.

By midnight, my vodka is all gone, and as I don’t have a whole lot of cash to spare I just head up to bed for the earliest night I’ve had for a long time.

Monday 10th October

I get up bright and early and feeling fresh and head to the supermarket where I stock up on bread, cheese, and some ham, and grab a twelve pack of beer, before going to the roof terrace in the hostel. I spend most of the day writing up my tour diary, but eventually get distracted by a bunch of Canadian guys who are trying to chat up a French girl. This attempt is going on despite the fact that none of the Canadians speak and French and the girl’s grasp of English being non-existant, so it’s kind of funny to watch.

I finally take pity on them and I offer them my computer, pointing out that they can use Google translate to communicate with one another. This leads to several hours of conversation via text on my computer while I just sit there and make my way through my cans of beer.

Eventually we all head downstairs to the bar and continue just chatting about general stuff for the evening. After a while I manage to convince the person in charge of the music in the bar to download and play some Marah songs as I’m starting to get withdrawal symptoms.

The bar closes at 2am and the Canadian guys head out on the town. As for me, I’m officially broke again, so I head to bed. Tomorrow I’ll be heading home to Prague, and as much as I love Spain I really want to go back to a country that serves the best beer in the world at a price much cheaper than anything I can get in Spain.

Tuesday 11th October

I wake up at 9am and check out of the hostel. I have a couple of hours to kill before I have to head to the airport, so walk around for a while looking at the sights. The only money I have is for the deposit I paid for my room key in my hostel, and I need that for the bus to the airport, so all I can do is hang around doing nothing much until it’s time to head out.

I make it to the airport without any difficulty, then find a spot with WiFi where I can sit and check my emails and do a little writing before my plane is due to take off. The journey back to Prague passes by without incident, and the first thing I do when we land is go to the cash machine to withdraw some money. Only to find that my account is completely empty.

The only thing I can think of that makes any kind of sense is that my bank charged me at least 5 Euros every time I tried to use my card in Spain, even though I was only actually able to use it in one place. This pisses me off, as it means I have literally no money, not even enough to cover the bus and metro back to my flat.
I also have no phone credit left, so can’t call anyone to do anything about it.

It takes me a couple of hours to get home from the airport. I have just enough cash to get the bus part of the way, but then walk the rest of the way, a distance of around 6 miles. When I finally get home I’m in an odd mood.

I have no money in the bank, have had hardly any work for the last 6 weeks or so, and I don’t even have any food in the flat.

But I’m happy, because I just got home from watching every gig on a tour by the best rock and roll band on the planet. In just two weeks, I‘ve traveled over 7000 kilometres, got lost a few times, been to places I really had no intention of going to, been threatened with arrest because my feet are apparently chemical weapons, met some great old friends and made some awesome new ones.

Everything else can work itself out later....

Our Kennedy Moment

2011-09-11T22:55:00.002+02:00

I think every generation has a Kennedy moment.

In the 60's we had, of course the original Kennedy moment. Everyone who was around at that time knows exactly where they were when they heard J.F.K had been assassinated. The President of the United States, the great hope for world peace, and certainly the last hope for America to get out of Vietnam before it was too late. The idea that the most powerful man on earth could be assassinated sent shockwaves around the world.

For the 80's, it was probably the Space Shuttle Challenger exploding. It was supposed to be all about the first teacher going into space. Instead, the world watched in horror as the shuttle disintegrated seconds after take-off.

The first one probably changed the world, or certainly had a tangible impact on a lot of people around the world. The second one didn't really make much difference to most of the world, although the shock and sadness was there for all of us.

Then we get to the Kennedy moment for my generation, and there can be no doubt that this one changed the world dramatically.

Ten years ago today two passenger jets were flown into the side of the two main buildings of the World Trade Center in New York City. Another one was flown into the side of the Pentagon, and a fourth plane crashed into the fields of Pennsylvania, apparently brought down by it's brave passengers before it too could be used as a missile.

A lot has happened around the world in the ten years since.

I am not going to go into this next section in depth, as to do so would tarnish the names and memories of those thousands of innocent people killed that day, but it would be remiss of me if I didn't at least mention the growing belief amongst people around the world that 9/11 was an inside job.

Like the Kennedy assassination before it, as soon as 9/11 happened there were people looking for evidence to show that the official story was bogus, and prove that in reality the whole thing was stage managed by the U.S. Government.

I have friends who were living in New York at the time, and many friends who still live there. So I am not going to sully their memories of that day by dredging up questions that I don't know the answer to. Today should be about remembering those that died and those that lost loved ones, not trying to score points in some argument.

So I am going to move on to something more concrete, which is how those attacks changed the world.

The first response was the war in Afghanistan, intended to remove the Taliban, who were supporters of Al Qaeda, from power and install a democratic government. Ten years later and troops from around the world, but mainly the United States and the United Kingdom, are still there trying to install permanent peace in the region.

Then there was the war in Iraq, and that stirred up a whole hornets nest of trouble, both inside the country and everywhere else. For a start there was the issue of whether Iraq was really a viable target in the wake of 9/11, or was it really just about George Dubya going after Saddam because Saddam tried to kill his daddy once.

Most of the world was really dubious about those Weapons of Mass Destruction that Saddam was about to hand over to Bin Laden, and in view of the fact that we still haven't found them, coupled with the fact that they still haven't been used against us, it looks like the rest of the world was right.

But we went in there anyway, and just like Afghanistan we've had troops tied up there ever since.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 George W. Bush promised a war on terror. And on the surface of it we seem to be winning.

Of course, there were the 7/7 attacks on London, which cynics might suggest could have been orchestrated deliberately in order to get the British public on-side with going after Saddam after a million people marched through the streets of London protesting against the war in Iraq.

But I'm not a cynic, so lets look at the main evidence.

From an English perspective, the IRA took one look at the aftermath of 9/11, saw what the world would now expect from them if they wanted to be taken seriously, and finally decided to do the honourable thing and sit down and talk about things, leading to a lasting peace after decades of violence.

The Taliban are no longer in charge of Afghanistan, so that objective has been successfully achieved. Saddam is also gone from Iraq, and we even managed to find him hiding in a hole so we could hang him just in time for Christmas a few years back.

Then there is Osama Bin Laden. Leader of Al Qaeda and mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and despite being a cripple and living in a cave, somehow managing to avoid the combined forces of the entire Western world for almost ten years. But we finally got him too a few months back, so that's all good.

The nastiest terrorist organisation the world has seen has finally lost it's leader, so surely now we'll all be okay.

Or maybe not.

Prior to 9/11, there had only ever been one suicide bomb attack in Pakistan, for example. By contrast, in 2010 alone there were an average of six terrorist attacks PER DAY.

So it's certainly not safer to live in Pakistan than it was pre-9/11.

There was an attack by gunmen on the Sri Lankan cricket team in 2009, and last year the Togo football team were similarly attacked on the way to a tournament.

There were bombings in Spain, originally accredited to ETA, but then credited to Al Qaeda. The Middle East has gone crazy, especially in the last year or so, with uprisings against governments in just about every nation, some of which have been successful while others failed. All of them though led to innocent people dying.

Even as I write this, confusion reigns in Libya. That would be the same Libya that George W. Bush was so keen to make friends with, and NATO have been bombing in support of the uprising.

Israel and Palestine still can't sort things out between them, and now Turkey are threatening to send gunboats to Gaza to support what they call relief ships, and what the Israeli's think are something far more sinister.

I'm not well enough educated to spout on about my own personal feelings about whether certain policies have worked or not. I'll leave that for other people smarter than me to decide.

All I will say, on this anniversary of our Kennedy moment, is that ten years ago today the World undoubtedly changed. We probably wont know whether those changes were for better or worse until the next generations Kennedy moment. In the meantime, all we can do is sit back, watch the fireworks, and hope none of our loved ones become collateral damage.

My Mum and Marah

2011-08-27T13:18:00.003+02:00

I was, of all places, in a Second World War Gestapo prison just outside of Prague with a very cute young Australian girl when my phone range. It was rare for my phone to ring while I was on holiday. Hell, it was pretty rare for my phone to ring when I wasn't. When I saw on the caller I.D. that the call was coming from my mother, I instantly assumed the worst and made my way out of the exhibition room as quietly as I could before answering the call.

"I need you to call the Roadhouse for me," said my mum, before I'd even had a chance to ask her what was wrong.

Now, to put things into perspective before I go any further, I should explain a couple of things about my mother;

1 - She had been running a bar in the center of Manchester for over 10 years at that point
2 - She knew EVERYBODY in town
3 - Her bar, The Castle, was less than a 5 minute walk from The Roadhouse, which was a live music venue
4 - The girl that ran The Roadhouse was a good friend of my mothers
5 - The guy that originally opened The Roadhouse used to own The Castle
6 - There was a standing unspoken agreement around town that if my mother wanted to go to The Roadhouse or any other venue in Manchester she just had to turn up and she'd get in for free.

With all this in mind, you can perhaps understand why I was feeling more than a little perplexed at this sudden insistance that I call a venue from Prague that my mother could quite easily walk to within a couple of minutes and sort out whatever little minor disaster happened to be going on in her own little world at that precise moment in time.

Still, she was my mother, so the least I could do is hear her out.

The 'emergency' turned out to be a band called Marah.

I had seen Marah play a couple of times before at that point, and had come back both times enthusing to my mum about what a great live band they were and how she would have to go and watch them if they ever made it to Manchester. And it appeared that they were now doing just that, just a few days after my visit to the Gestapo prison, in fact.

My mother, being the kind of person that she was, had decided that as I had gone to so much trouble to get her excited about this damn band, then it was my responsibility to make sure everything was sorted out for her to see them.

Which meant I had to call The Roadhouse there and then and make sure that we were both on the guestlist (although as I already said, we were permanently on the guestlist anyway), and then I had to hurry up and change my flights around so I would actually be home in time for the gig.

This I did with the minimum of fuss. I had seen Prague plenty of times before, and had another trip booked for around 6 weeks later, so there was no big issue with me heading home a couple of days early. Especially when it meant going to see a band I truly thought with someone special with my mum, who I knew would absolutely love them.

And so there I was, a few days later, fresh off the plane and heading down to The Roadhouse with my mother to watch a band called Marah.

When we got there the band were just starting and the place was pretty packed, meaning that the only place to really stand was at the back of the crowd. I was fine as I was tall enough to see what was going on, but poor mother was a bit on the short side so couldn't see anything.

I noticed a table right by us and jokingly offered to help her get up on it so she could watch the band, but she just told me not to be stupid and ordered me to the bar. I returned with the drinks pretty quickly, and by the end of the second song my mum was really getting into the music.

It was round about then that she punched me in the arm and ordered me to help her up on the table after all, which I was more than happy to do.

A lot of guys might have felt uncomfortable going to a gig with their mum, but for me it was cool. The fact that she was 55 years old, rapidly approaching 56, and was dancing on a table watching a band was also something that I thought was amazing. This woman was the strongest person I knew, and she believed in living life to the full and sod the consequences.

How could anyone NOT admire that attitude.

The gig itself, as always with Marah, was an absolute blast. Every 20 minutes or so I would get a punch indicating it was time to go to the bar again, but other than that my mother was just going with the flow and loving every minute of the gig.

I'd been with my mother to other gigs, to see people that she had been into for a long time, including Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi amongst others. She loved live music and was always more than happy to get down and go a bit crazy. But I never saw her enjoy herself as much as she did during that gig.

As always happens though, eventually the gig came to an end, much to the chagrin of everyone there who would have been more than happy to watch them all night. As soon as Marah went off stage and it became clear that there wasn't going to be another encore, my mother decided that her one goal in life from that moment was to get the band back to The Castle so she could have a drink with them.

It took around 10 minutes before the band members started coming back out of the dressing room to meet and greet people and sell CD's and T-shirts, which was their customary post-show routine. My mother wasted no time whatsoever in charging up to Dave Bielanko, lead singer of Marah, and asking him what the bands plans were for the rest of the evening.

His reply left her absolutely stunned.

"We've heard there's a really cool bar somewhere around here called The Castle so we're probably going to go check that out."

(I may have mentioned to Katie, the manager of The Roadhouse, that my mother would probably want to drag the band back to the pub after the gig and any help she could offer with that would be greatly appreciated when I called to get us put on the guestlist. But it was a long time ago, and I may not have. The Castle just had a great reputation at that time as one of THE places to go.)

Anyway, after swelling up with pride, mother dearest went into military officer mode and started issuing instructions. She was going to go back to the bar and tell the staff that they would have to work late. I was to stay with the band and ensure that they made it to the bar without any problems. I was left with no illusions as to what my fate would be if I failed in my escort mission!

In the end I took the band and half of the crowd from The Roadhouse back with me.

Marah seemed to think it was really cool when they discovered their own CD on the jukebox (bought and paid for by myself at previous gigs, although I would later put a bootleg of that nights gig up on there as well), and my mother, who made it a point to never pay to watch any band, refused to accept their money for any drinks.

Several fun filled hours later, I was tasked with escorting the boys from Marah back round to The Roadhouse so they could get in their van and make the trip down to Nottingham where they were supposed to have been spending the night. Although by the time they got there it would have been time for breakfast thanks to their little side trip to The Castle.

The following day my mother, still enthusing about what an amazing night she'd had, and telling anyone and everyone about this great band called Marah that I had been talking about for a couple of years, and how she was now friends with the band, decided that she had to make it up to me as I had cut my holiday short to take her to the gig.

So she informed me that she had been on the bands web-site that morning. (This I was amazed at because she was petrified of technology. It took her five years before she would plug an electric kettle in by herself, for example, because everyone knows water and electricty don't mix. So I would have to plug it in for her. Evidently she wasn't overly bothered whether I got electrocuted or not, as long as she didn't!)

Anyway, having visited the web-site, she had found out that a week later Marah were playing two nights back to back in Barcelona, and as I had flown back from Prague to take her to the previous nights gig she was now sending me to Spain to watch them play a couple more shows!

And so my propensity for flying all over Europe to watch Marah play live was born.

Just a couple of months after that gig, on her 56th birthday, my mother was diagnosed as terminally ill, and she died on August 27th, 2006, five years ago today.

She was the strongest, most amazing person I ever met, and every single day of the last five years has been a struggle for me. But when I remember nights like the one detailed above, I can't help but smile and be greatful for the time we had together.

The image that will remain in my mind forever is the one of a 55 going on 56 year old woman dancing on a table to a band without any thought whatsoever of how silly some people might have thought she looked.

I think that's a good way to think of her, at her happiest, loving life, and giving it everything she had.

Magic Pillow Syndrome

2011-04-04T03:37:00.002+02:00

What, I hear you ask, is Magic Pillow Syndrome?

It is a little known disease that affects, as far as I am aware, only myself.

Disease, in fairness, is probably too strong a word for it. Perhaps ailment, or malady, would be more appropriate in this case. There are, in fact, many words I could use, but I think on reflection that defect, or disorder, are the words that would most accurately describe the affliction from which I suffer.

So, basically, the crux of the matter.

I have a magic pillow. I don't know where I got it from, or how it came to be in my possession. I certainly didn't exchange the family cow for it ala Jack and his magic beans. But there is without doubt something truly magical about the item upon which I lay my head when I wish to sleep.

As those of you that actually know me personally will be aware, I am a person that rarely sleeps. I have lost count of the number of people over the years who have recommended that I use sleeping pills, or try some herbal remedy that was passed down by their grandmother.

My attitude is this;

If I can't sleep after drinking a bottle and a half of vodka, what on earth makes you think a cup of hot chocolate with a bit of cinnamon in it is going to work?

It's not that I don't get tired. I feel my eyes drooping and start to yawn just like everybody else. I wont try to make myself out to be superhuman here, quite often I feel absolutely exhausted.

And when that happens I do what any right minded individual who is suffering from extreme fatigue does, and retire to my bed to go to sleep. Which is where the magic pillow comes into play.

Because the moment my head hits my pillow, no matter how tired or weary I may be, and regardless of how much beer or vodka I may have consumed prior to that point, I become instantly wide awake.

My mind, the moment it gets within touching distance of it's intended resting place, becomes so full of thoughts, ideas, and inspiration, that I just know things are going to be whirling about there for hours and hours.

But that's not where the magic ends.

Somehow my pillow always knows what time I need to get up, and is extremely adept at dragging me down into a deep sleep precisely 4 minutes before my alarm clock is due to go off.

It does this to me every night, refuses to let me sleep until right at the point I need to get up.

I would throw it away, but I know from experience that it would make no difference. I've lived in a lot of places over the years, and there is one thing that is constant regardless of where I am in the world, I suffer with the same problem.

That, in my opinion, is what makes my pillow truly magical. I must have tried hundreds of them over the years, and every single one has had the same ability to deny me the very thing for which it was designed to be used.

A peaceful sleep!

The Accidental English Teacher

2011-03-21T15:45:00.004+01:00

A short while ago I got myself into a spot of bother in Prague. I was drunk and decided to write an online review of a bar I used to work at. This was not a particularly nice review, and when I sobered up I set about trying to get the review removed.

I wasn't quick enough though, and the owners of the bar discovered what I had written about the place.

I had expected them to be annoyed at me over it, but their response took me somewhat by surprise. The owner, along with some friends, decided that in order to defend the honour of his bar, they needed to go hunting around Prague looking for me to teach me a lesson.

Being a person who has always been well aware of when it is a good time to take a step away from a situation in order to allow it to cool down, I decided it was a good idea to disappear for a while.

Which is about the time a friend of mine contacted me and offered me a teaching job in Austria.

This was a Saturday morning. I had no teaching experience whatsoever, and hadn't been anywhere near a classroom since leaving school more than 20 years ago. The job was due to start on the following Monday.

Of course, I like a challenge, so I jumped at the chance and said I would give it a go.

I was working all day Saturday, and didn't get home until around 9am Sunday morning, by which point there is a chance I may have been more than a little under the affluence of incohol. Arriving home, I found an e-mail informing me that I had to be on a train to Austria at 11am.

So I threw a few things into a bag and went straight back out of the door to the train station. I arrived at my destination, a small town called Wels, at 5pm that evening, and found the hotel the e-mail had told me I was staying in.

My plan at this point was to get online, find some simple lesson plans, and work out what I was going to do the next morning when I made my debut as an English teacher. The problem was, the hotel's wi-fi wasn't working. Which meant I was well and truly getting thrown in at the deep end.

I was about 12 hours away from my first ever teaching job, and I had absolutely no idea of what I was going to do, how I was going to do it, or anything else teaching related.

The next morning I got up and went for breakfast, and met the other teachers that had been assigned to the school for that week. I had about 20 minutes to talk to them, and then we were off to the school. Once there, all the kids were split between us, and I found myself with a room full of 15 and 16 year olds who were expecting me to take control of them for the next few hours.

To cut a long story short, somehow I got through the day. I have no real idea of how I did it, but I did. I then spent the whole afternoon in an internet cafe trying to find some lesson plans I could work with for the second day.

Tuesday went a little better than Monday, and by Friday I was confident that I could almost pass for a real teacher!

Like most things in life, practice makes perfect. Maybe one day, when I actually know what I'm doing, I will go back to Wels and show them what a real teacher looks like!

In the meantime, I just have to keep on pretending and hope nobody catches me out!

Lack of motivation

2011-03-02T19:44:00.003+01:00

I have had a serious lack of motivation to write in recent months. I don't know what has caused it. I just know it is something that has been really getting me down. I sometimes go through these spells, where every time I try to write there is nothing there.

I am just hoping that I can break whatever is stemming my flow of inspiration sometime soon.

In the meantime, I apologise for the lack of updates on here.

Nine Lives

2011-01-10T19:26:00.002+01:00

Superstition would have us believe that cats have nine lives. This is apparently due to their ability to survive falling from great heights without suffering any serious injury. Over the years, I have come to believe that I must, at least a little bit, actually be part cat!

Now, this may seem like a bizarre statement to make, but I do seem to have developed an amazing propensity to survive incidents that I really shouldn't, although I have no idea how this has come about. In fairness, I rarely have much of a recollection of the incidents that I somehow survive.

Sometimes I feel that if I am not part cat, the only other plausible explanation would be that I am a distant cousin of Rincewind, the hapless wizard in the Terry Pratchett books, as he seems to share the same trait for surviving when death would be so much easier that I do!

Using the nine lives analogy, it would appear that I am rapidly using mine up, and I only have a few left. But just for entertainment purposes, here is a list, in chronological order, of the times I have thus far managed to cheat Death.

The first time I should have died I was around six years old. At the time our family lived just up the road from some woods, and, as kids are likely to do in such places, we had made ourselves a rope swing from one of the trees.

Of course, being the kind of kids that we were, we didn't just use any old tree, and instead picked one that was at the top of a rather steep slope. When I was last there, I calculated the rough height of the hill that our swing was at the top of, and worked out that when the swing was at its apex, the distance to the ground was around 150 feet.

Which of course made for a really thrilling time for us kids swinging away on it.

After a while, the usual swing out over the drop became a little boring, and so we started to spice things up a little. This was mainly done by us taking turns to jump on the swing when someone was already on there, and try to get as many people on there as possible.

It never occurred to us that the rope might break, which, considering that sometimes there were four or five of us on there at any one time, would have been a total disaster. But we trusted the rope, and it never let us down.

I was, however, once let down by my younger sister, who actually decided on one occasion that she would prefer it if I refrained from joining her on the swing, and kicked me in the head a couple of times as I tried climbing aboard.

The third time she kicked me, I lost my grip, and at this point the swing was approaching its zenith, which caused me to plunge 150 feet straight down, with nothing to slow me down except the inevitable impact with the ground a few seconds later.

Fortunately for me, I landed on my head, and so managed to walk away with no injuries. Although some people would argue that clearly such an impact must have had some sort of effect, and point to my fucked up writing as proof of this!

Of course, this did not deter me at all, and a short time later I suffered my second near death experience, when, whilst in the process of walking along a tree branch in order to get onto the roof of our house, said branch made a sudden and irreversible decision to part company with the rest of the tree.

You know those scenes in cartoons like Roadrunner, where Wile E Coyote runs out over the edge of a really big drop and then just hangs there momentarily before gravity takes over?

Well I can vouch for the fact that this does actually happen in real life. Or at least, that was how it seemed to me at the time anyway! Once gravity had realised what was going on, and had taken a fair old grip of my shoes and started dragging me in like the Death Star tractor beam, I went plunging 70 feet straight down, managing at the last second to throw out my arms and grab hold of the lowest branch of the tree on my way past.

It wasn't enough to stop me completely, as I was not able to get a proper grip due to the speed with which I was traveling, but it was enough to slow me down enough that I was able to land on my feet, and once again I survived without injury!

Then I seemed to calm down a little bit, and went quite some time before my next brush with death. And by now I had found a new way to almost kill myself.

Sod that falling from a great height thing, I was far too old for that kind of nonsense now. Not that I didn't continue to climb trees, or cross bridges by clambering along on the underside of them as opposed to taking the normal route across the top, and various other silly things involving high places and danger.

I had just learned not to suddenly let go when I was high enough to do myself any damage, which no doubt has helped prolong my life considerably.

No, my new way to try to hurt myself involved a bicycle!

I was heading down a fairly steep hill one day, rapidly approaching a main road which was busy with rush hour traffic, when it suddenly occurred to me that the bike I was riding seemed to lack a major safety feature, the one that is known in laymens terms as 'brakes'.

Yes, there I was, charging down the hill, heading towards a constant stream of traffic in both directions, and I had no way of stopping. I really should have considered this possibility a little earlier, but I was still a kid, and so not overly endowed with the ability to foresee the potential consequences of my stupidity.

Now you are probably expecting to read here of how the bike and I managed to miraculously find a gap in the traffic to shoot through and arrive in safety on the other side of the road.

But even I am not that lucky I'm afraid. Although there is always the possibility that such a gap would have materialised for me if needed, I didn't have the balls to take that chance, and self preservation took over at the last instant.

A few feet short of the junction, I twisted the handlebars hard to one side, causing an inevitable crash, but one that I was confident was going to be better for me than taking my chances with the moving traffic.

As it was, I was catapulted around 10-15 feet through the air, only coming to a stop when I collided, seemingly inevitably head first, with a lamp post. I had been giving it everything I had going down the hill, and as I said earlier, it was a steep hill, so I was probably doing around 20-25 miles per hour.

Not a particularly fast speed, but if you ask most doctors what the chances of someone surviving a head on 25 mile per hour impact with a concrete post without serious injury, I'm sure they would tell you slim to none! The general consensus would in fact be that a person would be lucky to survive such an impact at all.

For the record, I got a small cut above my right eye, and that was the full extent of my injuries. As for the bike, that continued on into the main road and was smashed to pieces by a bus that just happened to arrive at that moment. I would like to tell you about the image of the bus drivers face as he realised he had just run over an un-manned bicycle, but I was too busy running from the scene, as the bike in question had been 'borrowed' from a neighbors garden!

The above, and other mishaps too innumerable to mention, all occurred before I was eight years old. After that, although I still continued to behave in the same way, the ability to almost kill myself appeared to have dried up, and I got through the rest of my childhood and early adulthood without any serious problems.

Then I went traveling for the first time, and while I was working in Austria I almost killed myself twice. The first time was a snowboarding accident. I was a novice when it came to snowboarding, and so tried to stick to the easier slopes. One afternoon, however, I took a wrong turn, and inadvertently found myself on a black run.

Not just any black run, either, but on a run that is considered one of the more testing of the World Downhill Skiing Championships! This, as you can imagine, is not the kind of place that a novice snowboarder should be hanging around, and a more intelligent one than me would have realised the situation they were in and worked on finding another route down the hill.

Me? I just continued on down there, picking up speed rapidly, and equally rapidly coming to the realisation that control and my snowboard were two mutually exclusive parties in the on-going drama of my life. Eventually, on the steepest part of the hill, I lost it completely.

I had crashed plenty of times before on a snowboard, but never anything like this. I went head over heals, over and over again, all the way down to the bottom of the slope. Once I finally stopped moving, I lay there in the snow for a moment, wondering if I was dead or not.

After a while, I came to the conclusion that I was, in fact, still alive, and slowly sat up. Looking back up the hill, I could see the point at which my cartwheeling had begun, around about 200 meters further up the hill. I was stiff all over, and when I stood up I realised that my left arm didn't work any more. It would be another 3 days before I actually regained the use of my arm, and to this day I have problems with my shoulder.

It was about a month later when I made a much more concerted effort to inadvertently kill myself. I had lost my job, and, being short on funds, had decided that I was going to head back home to re-group. The first problem I had with this was when I went back to my apartment, to find the locks had been changed, seemingly as I had forgotten to pay my rent. For the previous three months.

After intense negotiations with my landlady, I was able to get access to my room at the cost of half of my final weeks pay. Once there, I packed up my belongings, snowboard and all, and headed out. It was too late for me to start hitch-hiking, so I went to find somewhere to stash all my gear, and found a suitable spot underneath a bridge crossing a river.

It was secluded enough that there was little chance of anyone stumbling across my gear by accident, and the level of the river was low enough that I had no need to worry about any sudden flash flood washing everything away. Then, with nothing else to do, I went out for a beer.

My plan at this time, such as it was, was to go and have a few beers, say goodbye to some friends, and hope one of them would let me crash at their place for the night, before heading back home the next morning. As it happened though, and as it often does with me, a couple of drinks became several, became a session, and at 5am the next morning I was ready to leave the bar and start the journey back to Manchester hitch-hiking.

Or so I was telling myself as I staggered down the street anyway.

The first priority was to collect my backpack and snowboard from under the bridge where I had stashed them around 12 hours earlier. This seemed an easy enough task initially, and up until the point where I had to climb up a ladder back to the path I was doing fine.

Then I developed a serious lack of balance problem, and promptly fell into the river. Five or six times. I was soaked to the skin by the time I managed to gain the footpath, and it was starting to snow.

It was at this point that it suddenly occurred to me that I was extremely tired, and I promptly sat down and went to sleep.

Then my guardian angel appeared. Or so I have decided to dub her in the years since anyway.

Who she actually was, I have no idea. All I know is that before hypothermia could start to take hold of me, I was led into a house, and then down some stairs and into a bedroom. Moments later I had been stripped naked and was fast asleep in the bed.

When I awoke, my kindly benefactor was standing over me with a plate of food, and she informed me that she had washed all of my clothes, which of course had gotten soaked with the rest of me from my repeated forays into the river, but they were not yet dry so she suggested that I might wish to stay where I was until the following morning.

The bed was comfortable, I couldn't go anywhere in soaking wet clothes anyway, and so I took her advice.

After that particular escapade, I was much more careful, and managed to last several more years before my next attempt to meet my maker.

On that particular occasion, I was on holiday with a friend of mine, who promptly abandoned me to spend time with a guy she had only just met. I found myself surrounded by a bunch of absolute nut-jobs who were staying in the same hostel I was, and I can honestly say I thought I was having a great time partying with them.

Right up until the morning that I woke up suffering from involuntary full body spasms. Or a grand mal seizure as doctors would describe it. This went on for some time, before I was eventually able to stagger to the showers, hoping that this may help to wake me up and take away the fuzziness from my head.

Once in the shower, another seizure came over me, and I slipped on the wet floor, somehow contriving to smash my head against the ceiling in the process! It would be several days before I could properly ingest anything again!

And then, finally, we come to my latest episode of supreme stupidity, as detailed in the previous post. Yes, I am well aware, and have always been aware, of the fact that using a frying pan when drunk is not a good idea. And going to sleep whilst said frying pan is on the stove should never, under any circumstances, be on any persons 'to do' list.

But I did both, and by rights I should have died. Instead, I get to sit here and write about all the other times I should have died, and realise that if I really did start off with nine lives, I am now down to just two.

Hopefully I can save them for a long time to come, and not use them all up at once!

Happy Fucking New Year!

2011-01-03T18:18:00.003+01:00

I woke up at around 5pm on New Years Eve, feeling more hungover than I had ever felt before. I was supposed to be at work just around the time I regained consciousness, but could tell the moment I opened my eyes that work was not going to happen on this particular night.

For someone like me, a lifelong hard consumer of alcohol, to wake up in that state was a serious shock to the system. But nothing like the shock that was on the way around 6 hours later when I finally amassed the energy to stand up and walk to the toilet.

I was staying at my friends flat, looking after his dog, and as I staggered into the kitchen in the early hours of 2011, bleary eyed, limbs all seeming to be working together to demonstrate the practicality of discombobulation to my weary brain, the sight of the kitchen was the stuff of nightmares.

The last time I had any recollection of passing through the room, it had been in pristine condition. Immaculate white walls, a place for everything and each item behaving exactly as it should.

This was how the room had looked when I had last left it at around 11pm on December 30th.

Now?

Impossible, even with my grasp of the English language, to adequately describe. It was black. Completely black. As was the dog I had been left in charge of. As, on closer inspection, was I. And the bathroom, and the living room.

The whole flat had seemingly been redecorated by some acid dropping goth freak.

In normal circumstances, I am a fairly rational human being. I study what is in front of me, and can generally come to a swift conclusion with regards what it is I am seeing, and how best to go about remedying whatever the given situation may be.

This time, I scratched my head and went back to bed.

Waking up properly at around 6am on New Years Day, I quickly grasped the severity of the situation, and also managed to decipher what had happened. Or as best as I will ever be able to work it out anyway, as there is a whole period, practically the whole period, of December 31st that has vanished from my memory bank, I suspect permanently.

So here is what I was able to deduce using my best Sherlock Holmes skills, even though I was still feeling remarkably fuzzy around the edges at that point.

All of the available evidence suggests that at some point in the early hours of New Years Eve, I arrived back at my friends flat having been out for a few drinks. I then made the ridiculously stupid decision to make myself something to eat. More importantly, I decided it would be a REALLY good idea to fry myself some food.

This, as anyone who has ever seen a home fire safety video will attest, is a stupid thing to do. More than stupid, fucking insane.

I know I don't usually use profanity in this blog, but it is the only way to accurately describe me making such a decision.

So I put the frying pan on the stove, threw a couple of potato pancakes in there to put on a sandwich....

and went to sleep.

At least, I think this is what happened. The pan on the stove was certainly real, as were the cremated potato pancakes inside said pan. The smoke damage to the whole flat, again, is without dispute.

But I have no recollection of even leaving the last bar I was in, so am only surmising that this is how things happened.

Something else that can be surmised is that both myself and the dog I was 'looking after' are damned fortunate to be alive. How the pan got turned off, what prevented the whole flat from burning to the ground with me and the poor dog inside, these are things I will never know.

I make no excuses for my behaviour, as it is impossible to excuse me being so fucking stupid.

I know that in the last few days I have been struggling, both physically and mentally with what happened. On the physical side, I was finally able to eat something today, so it appears that I am slowly recovering in that respect. My lung capacity I guess will gradually return to normal with exercise and fresh air.

Prior to this all happening, I was fitter than I have been since I was a teenager, and I am sure that is one of the reasons I am still alive now. No, physically I am not so worried. It has been a few days now, so I think it is safe to say that I am probably out of the danger zone.

Mentally, that is a different matter.

I have been unable to sleep since. Don't get me wrong, I have never exactly been a person that sleeps a lot, but now I just physically can't get to sleep. I guess when someone has an experience from which they are lucky to wake up, it is natural that they will fear sleep as a result.

I am also scared of my kitchen. Well, not so much MY kitchen, but kitchens in general. This, I think, is part of the reason I have been unable to eat for the last few days. Eating means going into a kitchen to prepare food, and the last time I tried that it nearly killed me.

This, again, is something that I am sure I can get over in time. I am, understandably, in a reflective mood, and everything is still very fresh in the memory. With time I will find myself getting distracted by something shiny and moving on from this, hopefully a more mature and better person.

The easy way to end this would be to say I will never drink again, but I am too honest for that. I have always been a social drinker. I enjoy the banter of sitting at a bar with friends, talking shit, and having a few drinks together. And I object on principle to paying more money for smaller amounts of non-alcoholic drinks.

But I am done with shots in bars, and from here on in I am limiting myself to just a few beers here and there, no crazy 16-20 hour drinking sessions just because I have nothing better to do with my time.

It is time to take a step back, breathe a deep sigh of relief that I am still alive, and look to move forwards from this in the best way possible, which is to take note of the fact I have just had one hell of a lucky escape, and live my life accordingly in future.

In the meantime, I have to find the money to pay for all the damage caused by my stupidity, but that, at the end of the day, is only money. There are far more important things in life to worry about.

The Impressions and Red-Tape of Croatia

2010-11-24T13:42:00.002+01:00

When I was offered the chance of a months work in Croatia, I jumped at the chance for two reasons.

1 - Work has been kind of hard to come by in the last six months or so, and paying my rent has become pretty much an impossibility. So the money would definitely come in handy, as long as I can keep myself away from the pubs every night that is....

and....

2 - It is somewhere I have never been before, and I am always interested in checking out new places.

Now, my journey down here was anything by fun, and the details of that journey can be found by clicking this link;

http://www.fictionpress.com/s/2864893/1/Duncan_the_Snail_and_the_Confused_Cock

But now that I have been here for ten days, what do I actually think of the place?

Well, I am in a really small medieval town called Trogir, and I am here to basically help to renovate a couple of apartments. This, in English, means that I am being paid to spend my days atop rickety scaffolding trying to clean 700 year old blocks of sandstone.

Not the most glamorous of jobs I can assure you!

Other than that, I have only been out a couple of times, and have found the locals that I have met so far to be friendly enough, if a little reserved. The beer is not as good as in Prague, but that is no great shock, and things are more expensive here than I am used to.

Again, not really a huge surprise.

Other than that, it is hard to form much of an opinion. It has been raining most of the time I have been here, which of course makes the stone polishing that little less enjoyable, especially when wearing just my usual attire of jeans and a t-shirt.

As I said, the locals seem to be friendly enough, but an incident today has gotten me suspicious of them.

Basically, somebody reported us to the local conservation office for working here, as we seemingly need permits to do so. I suspect that the person responsible for this act of reportage was the guy from whom we leased the scaffolding we have been using.

Why would he do this, I hear you ask?

Well, it's simple enough really....

During the summer months Trogir is a big tourist area, and so all the locals have plenty of work to do. But in the winter, it becomes a ghost town, with the only work being the restoration of the old buildings, trying to clean them up in time for when the tourists come next summer.

And then me and my boss come along, an Irishman and an Englishman, needing just a jovial jock to complete the set, and set about one of the biggest jobs in the town.

This, to the locals way of thinking, is a job that should have gone to them. So they get sneaky.

First they are all chatty and friendly, offering to help us on the job for a certain fee. Then they arrange the equipment for us, for a fee of course, and for that we are grateful.

And then, once the work has progressed to a certain point, they report us, their hope being that we will go running back to where we came from with our tails between our legs as soon as the word 'Police' is mentioned, and as a result they not only get the whole job for themselves, but also the rental fee for the scaffolding!

But we are better than that. The British didn't take over the entire world, with the Irish as our main troops, by running away at the first sign of adversity!

No. We pointed out to the young lady from the conservation office that as we had already completed a huge part of the work, she had two choices;

1 - We could pack up and go home, leaving the building unprotected against the winter and thus liable to incur a great deal of damage....

or....

2 - She could rush through the paperwork allowing us to finish the job.

In view of all the facts, she had no alternative other than to let us just get on with it.

But that doesn't mean I am going to trust those crafty Croatians any more!

Where have I been?....

2010-11-11T22:11:00.003+01:00

I haven't posted here for a while, and there are a couple of reasons for that.

Firstly, I have been working on a couple of novels, and so that has been taking up a huge amount of my time and energy, as you might expect. Never one to realise when I have bitten off more than I can chew, I have also been writing, at the suggestion of a couple of friends, the tale of my first ever trip away from home, when I went hitch-hiking around Europe many years ago.

This is also quite an extensive tale, taking in nearly a year of my life, and including some of the most insane things I have ever done, and again, it has taken up a lot of my time.

Add to that, I have been through a lot of my old stories, and realised that many of them are long overdue an update. All in all, I am working on around 15 stories at the moment. Hence there has not been much time for me to write anything here!

Also, my aging laptop finally gave up the ghost and died on me. Or the screen did at least. I managed to hook it up to a monitor that somebody was kind enough to lend me, but the problem with that was that it meant that I was limited to using it in just one spot, which kind of defeats the objective of having a laptop in the first place!

So I went and got myself a new laptop. Well, not new exactly, as my financial situation at the moment certainly doesn't spring to such excesses of extravagance! So I got a second hand laptop a week ago, and have had nothing but trouble with it since.

Those problems appear to have been resolved today, fingers crossed anyway, which means I can get back to writing again.

Although....

Tomorrow I am heading to Croatia for three or four weeks work. I have no real idea of what to expect when I get there, except for the fact I will actually be working for a change. After the way this year has gone, it will be nice to be working for once.

Hopefully I can earn a decent amount of money while I am there, and I expect to be spending my evenings at home writing as opposed to going out drinking every night like I do in Prague.

It will also be nice to get away from Prague for a few weeks, as I have been here for nearly two and a half years and have spent just three days outside Prague. So a break will be good, even if it is a working holiday.

My Top Five Liverpool Games

2010-10-19T15:43:00.002+02:00

THE TOP FIVE FOOTBALL GAMES OF ALL TIME

(That I personally went to)

Anyone who knows me will be aware that I have three passions in life, which are music, travel, and football. Not necessarily in that order. I have written about music already, and a little bit about travel. But where is my blog about football?

This is all about setting the record straight.

As the header indicates, below you will find a list of the top five football games of all time that I was actually at! There are countless games that I have seen on television that put some of the games listed to shame. But I wasn’t actually AT those games, so they don’t make the cut.

I make no apologies for this list being 100% Liverpool-centric. They are my team, and so I have been to more of their games than I have any other side. Also, three of the games chosen are at Anfield, Liverpool’s home ground, and similarly there are three games from the same competition in the same year.

All I can say in my defence is that these were games that I actually attended. There are, as already stated, there are a huge number of games that I saw on the television that would knock most of these off the list. But I wasn’t THERE for those games!

Maybe at a later date I will compile a list of the top five games I ever watched on the TV, but I don’t think it would have the same impact! Anyway, here we go, in reverse order, the best five games of football I ever attended;

5 – Liverpool 2 – 1 Arsenal (FA Cup Final, Millenium Stadium, Cardiff, 12th May, 2001)

I think it says something about the games I have been lucky enough to attend that this one only just scrapes into my top five!

This was the year that Liverpool won a historic three trophies, having scraped by Birmingham City in the League Cup Final, and shortly after this game they would go on to win the UEFA Cup against Deportivo Alaves of Spain in a dramatic match, which would eventually finish 5-4 to Liverpool.

Had I been at that game, you can be sure it would be high up on this list, but it will have to make do with an honourable mention!

Anyway, this particular game was all about the Arsenal machine grinding Liverpool down and creating chance, after chance, after chance. Somehow though, the Liverpool goal remained un-breached until 19 minutes from the end, when Freddie Ljungberg finally found a way past an inspired defensive display.

Liverpool had played the entire game in their own half, content to let Arsenal come at them and try to catch them on the break, a very risky strategy with a team like Arsenal, and were lucky going into the closing stages to be only 1-0 down.

But cometh the hour, cometh the man, as they say, and with 8 minutes to go Michael
Owen reacted first to a free-kick to beat David Seaman in the Arsenal goal with a right footed shot from eight yards. It looked like Liverpool were going to get lucky and snatch a 30 minute extra time period that they didn’t deserve, and the Arsenal team were clearly wondering how this was still even a contest with a few minutes to go.

And then a moment of magic from Owen, racing past two Arsenal defenders before putting the ball past Seaman once more with just 3 minutes remaining. From nowhere, Liverpool had won the cup.

I actually went to Liverpool the next day to see them bring the cup home, and saw what I think I will always consider to be the best football related banner of all time;

“Michael Owen. Beats Seaman more often than the pill!”

4 – Liverpool 3 – 3 Manchester United (FA Premier League, Anfield, Liverpool, 4th January 2004)

This was, as far as I am aware, the first game ever to warrant a highlights program of its own on BBC2! It was also my sisters birthday, and she is a United fan.

Normally getting a draw at home would not be something to cheer about, even against our biggest rivals. Maybe especially against our biggest rivals. But the nature of the game meant that at the end of the game Anfield was awash in a sea of euphoria.

Prior to the game there was an air of optimism. The Liverpool team was decent enough, and the United team didn’t look like anything special. Walking onto the Kop that night I was struck by how crazy the crowd was. I can honestly say that prior to that night I had never encountered a crowd in such a primal mood.

And this was an hour before kick-off!

The game got underway, and almost instantly disaster struck. Within a couple of minutes Steve Bruce had scored a header to put United 1-0 up. Then Ryan Giggs made it 2-0 with a delicate chip over the goalkeeper. This was followed, just 18 minutes into the game, by Denis Irwin hitting an unstoppable free-kick to make it 3-0.

The thing that got me though, was that every time United scored the volume in the Kop actually increased! I had thought they were noisy before, but it was nothing compared to how they reacted to going 3-0 down. And unlike most crowds in that situation, the reaction of the crowd was not even remotely negative.

The team needed the crowd on their side if they were going to get out of the hole they had suddenly found themselves in, and every single person standing on the Kop that night was making it damn clear that we were doing our part. Now it was time for the team to do theirs.

The reaction was everything we could have asked for. Nigel Clough took a long range shot that somehow managed to find the back of the net. Then, a few minutes later, he did it again. 3-2 now, and it was well and truly game on.

On the stroke of half-time, Liverpool had a goal disallowed, and then came out for the second half and laid siege to the United goal, although it was starting to look like it would all be for nothing.

Then, a few minutes from time, Neil Ruddock appeared in the United box and got his head on the end of a cross. The force of the header was such that with the follow through Ruddock took two United defenders into the back of the net with him, the ball, and the goalkeeper!

The sight of him trying to celebrate scoring the goal while clearly suffering from early onset concussion is one that means that, for all his faults as a player, Neil Ruddock will always be considered a legend to Liverpool fans!

3 – Liverpool 3 -1 Olympiakos (Champions League Group Stage, final round, Anfield, Liverpool, 8th December 2004)

This was a more than just a must win game for Liverpool. They went into it knowing that they had to win by two clear goals in order to progress in the competition.

They were buoyed somewhat by the fact that Olympiakos did not have a great record away from home, but knew it was going to be a very difficult task.

After all, Olympiakos had no need to attack, and could just sit back and defend in depth. Nothing less than two goals would do for Liverpool, and the team that season was one of the poorest that Liverpool had put out for a long time.

Liverpool started the game well, but were stunned midway through the first half when a free-kick by the Brazilian Rivaldo put Olympiakos 1-0 up. Liverpool now needed three goals if they were to stay in the competition.

At half-time one of my friends turned to me and asked what I thought the chances were, and I replied that I felt if we could get a quick goal in the second half we could still pull this off. And the team clearly felt the same way about things.

Two minutes into the second half, Florant Sinama-Pongolle, who had only just come on, met a Harry Kewell cross at the near post to score with his first touch. 1-1, and very much game on.

With ten minutes to go, Neil Mellor was brought on, and like Pongolle had earlier, he made an immediate impact, following in to lash in a second goal after the goalkeeper fumbled a shot. 2-1 now, but time was running out for Liverpool.

Liverpool then had two good shouts for a penalty turned down, before, with minutes left, Steven Gerrard let fly a rocket from 25 yards that flew into the top corner and sent Anfield into a frenzy. Somehow they had done it, and would continue in the tournament in the new year!

2 –Liverpool 1 – 0 Chelsea (Champions League Semi-final, Anfield, Liverpool, 3rd May 2005)

I decided on the way to this game that if we actually managed to win I wanted to go to the final. I had been adamant all along that I was not going to go to Turkey even if Liverpool somehow made it all the way to the final, because of the reputation of the Turkish football fans. On the way to this game though, when the dream of actually seeing my team play in the biggest game in club football was only 90 minutes from becoming a reality, I changed my mind.

After all, as stated previously, the team Liverpool had that year was awful, and so the way I figured it was this would probably be my one and only chance to see my team play the game that could potentially crown them the best team in Europe!

But first we had to beat Chelsea, which was not going to be easy. Liverpool at that time were a team very much in decline, while Chelsea were heading rapidly in the opposite direction. Anfield believed though, and the atmosphere was electric well before kick-off. I think that deep down everyone there was of the same opinion as me. To see your team, such a poor team, just one game away from appearing in the biggest game in club football…

Well, we had come this far, so a little hope wouldn’t hurt any!

The game got off to an amazing start. Just four minutes in, Milan Baros was released, only to be hauled down by Petr Cech, the Chelsea goalkeeper. Luis Garcia pounced on the free ball and smashed it goalwards, and despite William Gallas doing his best to clear it off the line, the goal was given.

To this day, the debate rages about whether the ball crossed the line or not, and television replays are inconclusive. My opinion is that whether the ball was in or not, the referee made the correct decision, and not just because I am a Liverpool fan.

He had a split second to decide if it was a goal or not. If he was to decide that it wasn’t, he would then have no choice but to award a penalty and send Petr Cech off for the foul on Baros immediately before. Even if Liverpool had missed the penalty, they would have been playing against 10 men for almost the entire game, and would surely have gone on to win in those circumstances.

For the good of the game, the best thing the referee could do was give the goal, giving Chelsea almost the full 90 minutes to get back into things, with both teams on an equal footing. With the away goals rule, a 1-1 draw would be enough to put Chelsea through, so in reality little had changed. At the start of the game Chelsea needed to score one goal to win.

At 1-0 to Liverpool, Chelsea still needed to score one goal to win, so I think it was the fairest decision for both teams.

That being said, for the sake of my heart, I think I would have preferred the penalty and play the rest of the game against 10 men!

The rest of the match, whilst maybe not the highest quality football game ever played, was pure drama. Chelsea had chance after chance, and Liverpool were content to sit back and let them play. Half-time was still 1-0, and when the sign went up at the end of the second half to indicate six minutes of injury time there was a collective groan around Anfield.

Could we really hang on for another six minutes? I think most people doubted it, and were already starting to become depressed about how close we had come to our first European final for twenty years.

With seconds to go, the Liverpool goalkeeper Jerzy Dudek came out to punch a cross away, and missed. The ball fell to Eidur Gudjohnson, just a few yards out, unmarked, with an open goal before him. He took the shot that would put Chelsea into the final and knock Liverpool out with the last kick of the game…

And it went just wide of the post. Liverpool had done it. They were in their first European final in 20 years. Achieved, and there is no doubt about this, with the worst team they had put together in that entire twenty year period! It felt like a miracle, but the real miracle was to come a few weeks later in Istanbul.

1 – Liverpool 3 – 3 A.C. Milan (Champions League Final, Ataturk Stadium, Istanbul, Turkey, 25/05/05, Liverpool won 3-2 on penalties)

Anyone who was reading this and had any doubt whatsoever as to which game would make my number one spot has clearly never met me!

I think this has to go down as one of the greatest games of football ever played.

The drama, the tension, the passion, and the never say die spirit of a team that were ripped apart time and time again by their opponents, only to keep coming back for more.

My journey to the game consisted of a flight to Prague, and then a 30 hour drive to Istanbul, and that can be read about elsewhere. This here piece of writing is all about the game. And what a game it was!

Prior to the game, most people were predicting a boring, sterile affair, as the traditional Italian football style is to pass the ball patiently around, probe gently, and wait for a mistake, and the Liverpool style at that time was to let teams probe as much as they liked, defend in depth, and then hit quickly on the break when the chance presented itself.

The two teams had a different idea of how this particular game was going to be played out though.

Less than a minute into the game, an Andrea Pirlo free-kick was met by Paolo Maldini, the Milan captain, who swept a finish high into the Liverpool goal. The rest of the first half consisted of wave after wave of attacks by Milan, with Liverpool barely able to get the ball out of their own half.

Six minutes before the break, Milan increased their lead, when Andrej Schevchenko broke away down the right side and crossed for Hernan Crespo to score from close range. Four minutes later, it was Kaka’s turn to release Crespo, who scored with a delicate chip over Dudek, the Liverpool goalkeeper.

The mood in the stands at half-time was a somber one. Defeat was something we had been half expecting, as we were well aware of the limitations of the team that we had available. For us to be forced to stand here and witness a defeat like this though, with no effort or passion by the team, was something that we were disgusted by.

We had travelled all the way across Europe to support our team, spent ridiculous amounts of money on flights and hotels, in the hope that we could witness something special. And on the evidence of the first half, the team we were here to support couldn’t care less. They were like rabbits trapped in the glare of headlights, knowing they should really do something to stop the juggernaut heading towards them, but powerless to think of a way to protect themselves.

A friend of mine, the same guy I had been sat beside at the Olympiakos game actually, suddenly turned to me and asked the same question he had on that night, all those months ago.

And I gave him the same reply. If we could snatch a goal early in the second half, anything was possible. One goal might put doubt in the minds of the Milan players….

My sense of optimism seemed to be picked up by those around me, as suddenly three sides of the stadium burst into song. Initially it was a hopeful “4-3, we’re gonna win 4-3”, but it soon changed.

About midway through the 15 minute half-time break, the Liverpool anthem, You’ll Never Walk Alone started. This is a song that has always sent shivers down my spine, but never as much as at that moment.

This was like the game back in 1994 against United, 3-0 down, seemingly without hope, and the team needing their twelfth man, us, the crowd, to show them that we still believed, we still had faith in their ability to turn things around.

Looking around me I could see grown men crying with the emotion of the moment. Like me, they had reached the point where they had given up believing that they would ever see their team competing for the biggest prize of all, and now, suddenly, we were here, and it was happening, and it was real.

If only we could make the players feel what we were feeling, surely then something could happen, and they could turn this around and give us the miracle we had come here hoping to witness.

I looked towards the pitch, and saw Dietmar Hamman, one of the Liverpool substitutes, stood in the centre circle. He was supposed to be warming up, but he was just stood there, hands on his hips, staring in awe at this mass of humanity blaring out with everything they had the message that they still believed in him and his team-mates, even now.

I watched him for a moment and had a feeling about things. If he came on for the start of the second half, we could win this. The players that had been out there for the first half, they might not understand what it meant to us, the fans, but HE did, that was clear, and his body language told me that he wanted to come onto the pitch and give everything he had for us, just as we were giving everything we had for them.

A few minutes later the players came out for the second half, and I was overjoyed to see that Hamman was out there with them. At that moment I started to truly believe
we could pull this off after all.

The first chance of the second half fell to Milan, where a free-kick from Shevchenko produced a fine save from Dudek. And then came the six minutes of football that shocked the world.

On 53 minutes, John Arne-Riise crossed from the left, and Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard was there to score with a fine header. 3-1, and we were back in the game with the early goal I had asked for.

Just one minute later, Vladimir Smicer fired in a shot from 25 yards that went through a crowd of players and into the bottom corner. 3-2, and now Liverpool were on fire, and Milan were shell-shocked.

And then Gerrard, bursting into the box, almost certain to score, was brought down by Gennaro Gattuso, and Liverpool had a penalty and the perfect chance to equalise.

Xabi Alonso stepped up to take the kick, low down to the goalkeepers right, but Dida, the Milan keeper guessed right and made the save. Heartbreak for Liverpool, or so it seemed. All Dida could do was parry the ball, and Alonso was the first to react, smashing the rebound back over Dida and into the goal.

The comeback was complete. Now we just had to finish the job.

The fight-back seemed to have taken everything out of the Liverpool team, and for the rest of the game they sat back, content to defend in numbers, and with Hamman protecting the back four chances were few and far between.

Shevchenko had a shot cleared off the line late on, and then it was into extra time, where Liverpool demonstrated real backs to the wall defending, with Jamie Carragher especially putting his body on the line on more than one occasion to make desperate blocks.

Just moments from the end, Shevchenko was through once more, and all Dudek could do with the shot was direct it back at the Ukranian striker, who hit the ball goal-wards once more, only for Dudek to somehow get a hand to the ball and palm it over the bar. That was the last chance of note, and Liverpool had somehow managed to hold on for a penalty shoot-out.

Milan were up first, and Serginho, who took their first kick, hit it over the bar. Liverpool had Hamman taking their first kick, and he was a German. Everybody knows that German’s never miss penalties, and this time was no exception. Liverpool, for the first time, were ahead in the final!

Milan’s second penalty taker was Andrea Pirlo, who had been exceptional throughout the night, but placed his spot-kick too close to Dudek and it was saved, Djibril Cisse took Liverpool’s second penalty, and again was on target. 2-0 Liverpool, and now Milan needed a miracle.

John Dahl Tomasson took Milan’s third kick, and this time made no mistake, and when Riise missed Liverpool’s third the scores were delicately balanced at 2-1 Liverpool.

The Brazilian Kaka stepped up to take Milan’s fourth kick, and again he made no mistake, meaning the scores were 2-2, but with Milan having taken one kick more Liverpool were now clear favourites.

It was down to Smicer to take Liverpool’s fourth kick, knowing that if he scored Milan would have to score with their fifth kick, or Liverpool would be Champions. If he missed, however, and Milan scored, then the pressure would be on Liverpool’s fifth penalty taker to score to keep his team in it.

So although Liverpool were in the better position of the two sides at that moment,
Smicer knew that a miss now could be catastrophic, as it would put the momentum firmly back in Milan’s favour. Fortunately, he managed to keep his cool, and planted his kick into the back of the net with aplomb.

It was now down to Shevchenko, who had scored the winning penalty in the previous years final, and who had been waging a personal battle with Jerzy Dudek all night, and so far had been unable to beat him.

He stepped up and took his kick, straight down the middle of the goal….

Dudek dived to his right, leaving the middle of the goal open for the ball….

And then….

From nowhere, Dudek’s left arm appeared in front of the ball and palmed it out away from the goal. It was an amazing save, and Liverpool had just won the Champions League trophy!

Without any doubt, that night was the greatest of my life. To see my team, and such a poor team all round, win the biggest prize in club football was an experience I will never be able to forget.

Two years later, Liverpool and AC Milan met in the final once more. This time it was Liverpool that dominated from start to finish, but Milan who won the game. It was disappointing to lose on the night, but part of me felt that some sort of karma had been restored.

We should never have won that night in Istanbul, but we did, and I was there. We should have won comfortably two years later in Athen’s, but we didn’t, and I was watching the game in a pub in Liverpool.

In the life of a football fan, it is important to try to pick the games you go to wisely!

Iron Maiden and Marah Top 3 Shows

2010-10-16T21:31:00.003+02:00

In a weeks time it will be seven years since I first saw Iron Maiden play live. A week after that will be the sixth anniversary of my first Marah show. I haven't seen either band since 2008, so in reality I spent 5 years watching Maiden, and 4 years chasing after Marah.

And the end result?

30 shows, 8 countries, and 17 cities. Somewhere in the region of 27,000 miles traveled.

In honour of this, I have decided to try to compile a list of my favorite shows from each band, and as much as memory allows I aim to explain what it is about these particular shows that make them stand out from all the others. As they are by far the more successful band, I will start with Iron Maiden.
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IRON MAIDEN

First gig 22/10/03, last gig 8/8/08. Total 9 gigs, 5 countries, 7 cities, 11,000 miles traveled.

1 - 22nd October 2003, Prague, Czech Republic

This was my first ever Iron Maiden gig, and will always stand out as the best gig I ever saw them play. I had been a fan for many years, but for various reasons had never had a chance to see them live. They were worth the wait!

Walking into the arena, the first thing I saw was a pig on the concourse inside the stadium, being slowly roasted and with slices being sold for practically nothing. That would never be allowed in the UK!

The show itself was amazing. Being in an arena full of people who couldn't speak English, yet knew every single word of every single song, and belted them out as loudly as they possibly could, was something that was truly breath-taking, and I have never been so exhilarated leaving a gig as I was that night.

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2 - 14th March, 2007, Belgrade, Serbia

By rights this should go down as number one in my list of Iron Maiden shows, but I just can't find it in me to have it replace the Prague gig as my all time favorite. Which may be hard to believe when the circumstances of the gig are explained.

On every Iron Maiden tour Bruce Dickinson, the lead singer, 'borrows' a plane from his boss at the airline he flies for, and pilots a plane load of fans to one of the gigs, and not only was this the gig chosen for this particular tour, but I was lucky enough to be on the flight.

That's right, the lead singer of the band personally piloted the plane that took me to an Iron Maiden gig, and it wasn't the gig I enjoyed the most by the band. Even getting a backstage tour, and meeting a very nice girl on the flight, are not enough to make it my favorite.

As I said, by right, it should be my number one show of all time, and not just my number one Iron Maiden show. And the reason it isn't is the security at the gig. Or, more specifically, the complete lack thereof.

The venue for the gig held around 12,000 people, and two hours before the band came on stage, as a conservative estimate, I would say there were around 25,000 people inside. This inevitably led to some pretty serious crushing problems, and the people in charge had no idea it was even happening, never mind what to do about it.

Being a veteran of countless gigs, and being aware that people were in serious danger of being crushed to death, I tried to take control of the situation.

First I reprimanded the stewards, and ordered them to find some water and start to pass it to the people at the front of the crush.

Then I found the guy in charge of security and ordered him to strengthen the barrier at the front of the crowd before it collapsed under the weight of all the people being pushed against it.

I spent most of the rest of the night running around shouting at people who looked like they may have some semblance of authority and ordering them to do whatever I felt was needed at a specific time to keep people safe, and even did a spell pulling people who were on the verge of passing out from the crowd and to safety.

The actual gig I don't remember much about, and this is why it doesn't make my number one spot. Being flown there by Bruce Dickinson, meeting a very nice girl, and ending up in charge of security for the night though, that makes it worthy of the number two spot in my mind!

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3 - June 24th, 2007, Brixton Academy, London

When I heard about this gig I just had to get a ticket. The chance to see Iron Maiden play in such an intimate setting was one that I just couldn't pass up, even though it meant a bit of a logistical nightmare for me.

The problem with this gig, for me anyway, was that I had taken a week off work to go on holiday with the afore-mentioned very nice girl that I met on the flight to Belgrade.

Initially, this was to involve us flying to Prague and being tourists, with a break on the Saturday to go to a friends wedding in a small town on the Czech/Slovak border.

Then we decided to start the trip by flying to Rome to watch Maiden play in a festival on Wednesday, spend Thursday sight-seeing, then head to Prague on Friday, wedding on Saturday, and then a few days relaxing.

About a week before we were due to leave for Rome, Iron Maiden announced the gig at Brixton Academy on the Sunday evening, the day after my friends wedding, and after a brief discussion we decided to incorporate the gig into our plans for the week.

As far as I was concerned, taking a beautiful girl who also happened to be an Iron Maiden fanatic on a trip involving two of the most romantic cities in the world, and throwing in a couple of Maiden gigs, plus a wedding, well, seriously, if I couldn't get lucky on that trip I may as well join the priesthood!

The week started well enough. We made it to Rome, saw the gig there, and had a nice day out exploring the sights. On the Friday morning, we made it to the airport in plenty of time for our flight, which was fortunate, as like an idiot I hadn't looked at the tickets properly and we suddenly found ourselves, two hours before our plane took off, at the wrong airport!

A 50 Euro taxi ride through rush hour traffic got us to the correct airport on time though, so all was good.

Arriving in Prague, we headed straight for the train station and made our way to the border town near where the wedding was taking place. By the time we got there, we were both dog-tired and so we retired to bed for the evening.

On Saturday morning we were greeted with shots of Slivovice, a Czech plum brandy, before we even left the hotel, and by the time we got to the church we had consumed several shots each. In the church I found myself sat next to a very pretty Czech girl who had been assigned as my official translator for the ceremony.

I rapidly realised that what this really meant was that she was there to pass me a bottle of Slivovice every few minutes for me to take a shot of. And this was at 10am!

Anyway, the wedding went fine, and then we went across the road to the reception. My newly married friend was aware that we had a train to catch at midnight, and when, at 11.30pm, there was no sign of the driver that was supposed to take us to the station, I began to panic.

Then he appeared, and drove the 40 miles to the station at a ridiculous speed, especially since, like me, he had been drinking all day! Still, we made it to the station with moments to spare, and flew to London on Sunday morning.

The gig itself was amazing. It was a tribute show for Clive Burr, Iron Maiden's original drummer, who has Multiple Sclerosis, and to see the band play in such a small venue was something that will live with me for ever.

The following morning, we flew back to Prague to enjoy a couple of days well earned rest and relaxation!
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MARAH

First gig 31/10/04, Last gig 15/05/08, Total 21 shows, 5 countries, 14 towns/cities, 16,000 miles traveled.

1 - 7th April 2006, Roadhouse, Manchester, UK

To be honest I didn't even know about this gig until about a week beforehand. At the time I heard about it, I was, of all places, visiting a World War Two Gestapo prison in a small town called Terezin, an hour or so outside Prague. This was my second visit to Terezin, and the only reason I was here was because I had found myself accompanying a very nice Australian girl I had met a few days earlier in my hostel and acting as her tour guide.

Anyway, as we were walking around and looking at the cells where the Jewish people had been kept prior to being shipped off to the death camps, my phone rang, and I answered it as quietly as possible out of respect for where I was, only to be confronted with my very over-excited mother on the other end of the line.

She had just discovered that Marah were playing around the corner from our pub the following week, and was calling me to order her to organise guest-list tickets, immediately, if not sooner. I pointed out to her that she was very good friends with the club owner and so could sort the tickets out herself, but she was not to be distracted from the mission at hand.

I had been given a task, and I had better complete it now or I would be in trouble!

So I called the Roadhouse manager up, and sorted the tickets out, and then called my mother back to inform her that everything was arranged.

When we actually got there on the night, the place was packed, and so we were forced to stand at the back. We found a spot next to a table and chair, and I jokingly asked my mother if she wanted me to help her get up onto the table so she could see what was going on properly. As I was expecting, she declined my offer. She was too much of a lady to be dancing on tables!

The band came on stage, full of energy and vitality as usual. Halfway through the second song, my mother punched me in the arm, and told me to help her get up on the table after all!

For the rest of the gig, she stood there dancing away, giving me a slap occasionally to inform me that it was time to go back to the bar and get her a re-fill! I think I can safely say that she enjoyed that gig more than any other she ever went to. And she enjoyed what came afterward just as much.

Once the gig was over she decided that she was going to invite the band back to the pub and get them drunk to repay them for the great show she had just witnessed. So she approached Dave Bielanko, lead singer of the band, and asked him what their plans were for the rest of the night.

The look on her face when he replied;

"We've heard about this really cool bar called The Castle and were planning on checking it out" was absolutely priceless.

The Castle, of course, was my mums pub!

The rest of the night passed with my mother and I hanging out with the band in the pub getting drunk, before I escorted them back around to the Roadhouse at around 5am so they could make the drive to Nottingham they were supposed to make as soon as the gig ended. They had a designated driver with them, so don't worry about any drink-driving issues.

This was the last gig I ever went to with my mother. A few months later she was diagnosed with inoperable brain tumors, and she died in August that year. The enjoyment she got from that gig makes it my all-time Marah favorite.

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2 - 11th March, 2007, Barcelona, Spain

This was the last night of a European tour for the band, and the third night in a row that I was there to watch them, having been to Valencia and Zaragoza on the previous two nights.

The night before, after the show in Zaragoza, I had hung out with the band for a while after the gig, and Kirk, the bass player, had promised me a show of epic proportions for the final gig of the show.

He wasn't lying!

The show lasted somewhere around 3 hours, and the band played 24 songs, which was 5 or 6 more than their standard set. By the second song of the 6 song encore, I was a mess, jumping up and down like an absolute lunatic and dancing away!

The only time I have ever been so exhausted after a gig was when I saw Iron Maiden in Belgrade, the details of which are above, and that gig was just 3 days after this one! In fact, that journey consisted of me flying to Liverpool from Barcelona, before riding down to London overnight on my bike, and arriving at the airport just in time to make the flight to Belgrade!

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3 - 23rd February 2008, Zaragoza, Spain (with Nick Hornby)

This trip turned into a real epic journey, and is ranked up there as one of the best gigs because of it. I was flying out from Liverpool to Barcelona, and then getting the train to Zaragoza, then coming home the next day.

Unfortunately, my bus to the airport broke down, meaning I missed my flight. I really wanted to see this gig though, so paid for a ticket on the next plane to Spain, which turned out to be Alicante. No big problem though. I still had around 14 hours from arriving in Alicante to get to Zaragoza.

I mean, how hard could it be?

Once in Alicante I went straight to the train station to get a train to Zaragoza. Only to be told that the earliest they could get me there was 7am the next morning! This seemed quite ridiculous, as it was only 8.30am at the time, but no matter which way they looked at routing me, 7am was the earliest they could manage.

So I went to the bus station, where I fared slightly better. They could get me there by FIVE the next morning! This was not good....

I cogitated for a little while, and decided there was only one option open to me if I wanted to make the gig, and having already paid for two plane tickets, I decided I had no choice.

I was going to have to take a taxi!

The biggest problem with this was that I didn't have enough money to pay for it, but that was something that could be sorted out on the journey. I had a credit card. All I had to do was text my bar manager a little later and get him to put a few hundred pounds on my card, and it would be job done.

So off I went on a 500 mile, 500 Euro taxi ride!

Once it was late enough, I sent my bar manager a message telling him I needed £200 putting on my card at 4pm, because I knew by then the money would be there. My phone battery was dying, but I also sent a message to a friend in London informing her of the situation. Not really sure why, but it seemed like a good idea at the time!

At 2pm, I got a message from my bar manager. He had just put £100 on my card and was probably going to be too busy to put the rest on later. Once I got home, he was no longer going to be my bar manager!

With the £100 he had put on my card, I could afford the taxi ride. And nothing more.

My hotel room for the night? No chance. My ticket for the gig? Out of luck. A few beers after a ridiculously long day traveling? Not gonna happen. My train ticket to Barcelona for my flight home the next morning? Sorry pal. And my phone battery was dead, so I couldn't do anything more to rectify things.

As you can probably imagine, the last couple of hours of the cab journey passed in some serious trepidation on my part. Where was I going to sleep? How was I going to get into the gig? Or get home even? What were the chances that someone might be kind enough to buy me a beer?

It was a long trip, made longer by my worry. But eventually we arrived in Zaragoza, and I made my way to the gig venue having given the taxi driver every single scrap of cash I had on me. I was broke, well over a thousand miles from home, and no idea what I was going to do next.

The first item on the agenda, I decided, was to try and get into the gig. I asked the doorman if he could possibly be so kind as to go and see if he could find any of the band members. I knew the guys well enough, and was sure they would be happy to put me on the guest-list in the circumstances.

I was a little shocked when the doorman replied by asking me if I was Damien by any chance, and then, once I replied in the affirmative, he pulled a ticket out of his pocket and handed it to me!

I walked into the venue, and was approached within seconds by a guy I knew called Paul who promptly bought me a beer, before taking me upstairs to speak to the band and let them know I had made it safely!

Evidently, my call to my friend in London, who was Paul's business partner amongst other things, had resulted in all manner of e-mails and so on with regards my whereabouts. I turned up at the gig as something of a celebrity, and found that random people throughout the night were constantly giving me beer!

The gig itself was awesome, and consisted of Nick Hornby reading essays about certain gigs in his life, followed each time by Marah playing a song relevant to the essay, before they eventually played their normal full set.

After the gig was over and everyone had gone their separate ways, I found myself wandering the streets of Zaragoza with Paul, who it turned out hadn't bothered booking a hotel room. I spoke to him about my problems with getting back to Barcelona, and he was kind enough to lend me the money for the train the next morning, and so all in all things worked out pretty well.

When I finally arrived home, exhausted, I left a post on the bands message board explaining what had happened, and went to bed for a few hours. When I woke up, I was very pleasantly surprised to have received an e-mail from the mother of Dave and Serge Bielanko, the brothers who front the band, who had apparently been enthralled by the lengths I had gone to in order to watch her sons play rock and roll!
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So there you have it, after traveling 27,000 miles, these are the top three gigs I saw from both bands. If you ever get a chance to see either band, do not hesitate.

Both are amazing!

Top Five Entertaining Front-Men

2010-09-03T22:26:00.000+02:00

I think everyone knows what I mean when I talk about front-men, but for those that don't, I will clarify. A front man is the guy (or girl) in a band that does everything in their power to ensure every single person at the gig is having the most fun they can possibly be having while watching that band play. Usually, it is the lead singer, but occasionally, very occasionally in fairness, it is one of the other members of the band.

Now, I am not saying that my list is the definitive version of the best front-men of all time. There are many great front-men that I have never been lucky enough to see, and so I do not include them on this list. This list is purely about the guys I have seen personally over my many years of attending gigs. So, lets get started then, in reverse order I think....

NUMBER FIVE - AXL ROSE (Guns n Roses)

Okay, the guy is a complete and utter moron. I thought about using more incendiary words, but in reality there is no point. Everyone knows what a tosser he is. But what many people forget is that he was also one hell of a front-man in the late Eighties/early Nineties. Okay, fans never really knew if the band were even going to show up or not, and certainly never expected them to show up ON TIME, but if and when they did arrive you were pretty much guaranteed a blistering set, with Axl tearing around the stage like a two year old ADHD sufferer after too much orange juice!

Ridiculous numbers of outfit changes per show aside, it was clear to anyone that Axl modelled his performances somewhat on Freddie Mercury of Queen. Someone who, had I been fortunate enough to see him play, would no doubt have been very high up on this list. Alas, he will have to make do with an honorary mention courtesy of the man who would be Queen, Axl Rose!

NUMBER FOUR - STEVEN TYLER (Aerosmith)

One of the ugliest men in rock? Undoubtedly! One of the best front-men around in the last 30 years or so? Also hard to argue. How the man is even alive is beyond me, especially after the earlier years where he and sidekick/guitarist Joe Perry were labelled The Toxic Twins because of the amount of drugs they were both taking.

Legend has it that the scarves around Tyler's microphone stand used to contain wraps of cocaine to help get him through the show in those days. I wouldn't be entirely surprised to find out this was true, but the fact remains that on his day Steven Tyler could have a huge crowd eating out of his hand in seconds, and keep them there for the rest of the evening, and could always be guaranteed to leave you wanting more.

NUMBER THREE - MEAT LOAF

Maybe a corny choice, but I can only go with what I have seen, and this guy knows how to put on a SHOW ladies and gentlemen! The first time I saw him live was on the Bat Out of Hell 2 tour, which was his big comeback after a long time in the wilderness once Bat Out of Hell faded from peoples memories. I only found out at the last minute that he was playing, went down to the venue on the off chance and asked a security guard where the ticket office was.

And he pulled a ticket out of his pocket and gave it to me for free. So I guess I was already kind of happy going into the show, and the next two hours or so were magical. Whether you like his music or not, I would implore anyone to go and give this guy a chance. His show is all theatre, which is perhaps not so surprising given his background. The last time I went was to take my nephew, who was around 9 or so at the time and had recently declared himself a fan. He absolutely LOVED the show, and that is what you get with Meat Loaf when you go to see him.

He doesn't play gigs, he puts on shows, and it is an important distinction, and one of the reasons he makes my list.

NUMBER TWO - BRUCE DICKINSON (Iron Maiden)

Like Meat Loaf, going to watch Maiden is a lot more like going to watch a show than it is going to a gig. Yes, they play music, and are damned good at it as well. But the thing with Maiden is that it is more about the lights, and the effects, and the way the band make every single nuance of the effects go with their thumping music. To most people the heart of Iron Maiden is Steve Harris, and this is correct to a point. It is HIS band after all, and he is the only person who never left to go and do other stuff.

But without any shadow of a doubt, Maiden without Dickinson is like Guns n Roses without Slash. With G'n'R, Axl was the front-man, and Slash was the guitarist that took them from being a very good band to being an excellent one. With Maiden, Harris is the bass player who drives the band on and on, but Dickinson is the conductor, the conduit that ties everything on stage together.

How he finds time to do this nobody knows. He is, or has been, at various stages, a singer, airline pilot, fencer (as in Olympics with silly white suits and swords not building), broadcaster, author, director, screenwriter, actor, entrepreneur, and songwriter! All this, and he is only 52 years old! His vocal range is amazing to hear, and it is no surprise that after some barren years when Dickinson went off to do his own thing, Iron Maiden have gone from strength to strength since his return in 1999.

NUMBER ONE - SERGE BEILANKO (Marah)

WHAT? I hear you cry. Who the f*ck is Serge Bielanko? Who are Marah? If they are so good, why have I never heard of them?

And each of those questions is a good one, and I promise to answer all of them to the best of my ability. But before I go any further, I have a bit of an apology to make.

You see, technically speaking, Serge is not the front-man of Marah, and never has been. That is the job of his brother Dave, who is also extremely good I must state for the record. The thing is, he just isn't Serge. That isn't to say that you shouldn't go to see them play if Serge wont be there, because they are still an awesome live band. It's just, that one guy takes them to a different level.

So, Marah. Who the hell are they? Well, they are a band originally hailing out of Philadelphia, who have gone through numerous line-up changes over the course of their existence. They were formed by Dave Bielanko, and he is the only constant throughout the bands lifespan. So a bit like Steve Harris with Iron Maiden then.

Unlike Maiden though, when people leave Marah they don't usually come back, as the band constantly evolves to suit the people that are in it at that given time. And they have an amazing talent for drawing some of the best unsung musicians around to come along and play with them. Celebrity fans include Bruce Springsteen, (who Dave and Serge have joined on stage a few times), Steven King, and Nick Hornby, who has even performed with the band himself a few times.

Serge was with the band pretty much from their inception, but went off on a sabbatical to go raise a family with his wife, beautiful daughter, and another little one on the way. So his priorities, understandably, are away from music right now. Most people, myself included, hope that he will one day find a way to balance family life with being back on the road with Marah, but it is always going to be his decision and his only, and I for one am never going to try to pressure him to get back with the band and ditch his growing family.

Right now, they need him a lot more than we do, and I wish him and his family every success in the future.

As I said though, just because he is no longer with the band, that shouldn't stop you going to see them. They are all kick-ass musicians and put on one hell of a show, whether playing to 8 people or 1200 people, the show, the energy, the vibrancy is always at the same level.

For those of you that wonder how I could put this guy at the top of my list of great front-men though, just watch this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHVSVHm1vKM

Serge is the guy playing harmonica. Now really, if you honestly think you have EVER seen a better front-man to a band than that guy, drop me a line. As stated at the beginning, this is only about the bands I have seen personally!

Common Courtesy

2010-08-20T16:28:00.000+02:00

I lost my wallet once, many, many years ago. This was back in the days when you could actually still stand up at Premiership football grounds, or the First Division as it was still called then, so that gives an indication of just how long ago it was!

I lost my wallet in, of all places, The Kop at Anfield, surrounded by 16,500 Scousers, who are renowned throughout England as thieving, no-mark scum.

There wasn't much money in it, and I have never been well off enough to have a credit card, but it did contain my train ticket back to Manchester, which was a huge problem. Also, this was before mobile phones, so I couldn't really call someone up to come and get me!

The best I could manage was a reverse charge phone call from Liverpool Lime Street train station to my mother, explaining the situation.

After about 2 hours, and a lot of messing about due to red-tape, including the train company informing my mother of the price of a ticket, but not bothering to tell her there was an 'administration charge' for somebody to call from Manchester to Liverpool and tell them it was okay for me to board a train, things were finally sorted and I got the train home.

By the time I got back home, the person who had found my wallet had already called the house, as I kept the phone number in my wallet for some reason I can't remember any more, and had promised to send it back to me as soon as possible.

This all happened on a Saturday, and on Tuesday morning my wallet arrived in the post, sent from a Toxteth post-code, which has never been one of the nicest parts of Liverpool by all accounts, and the £20 note that was in my wallet at the time it vanished was still there.

There was a return address, so I went straight to the shop and bought a thank-you card, and sent it back to the person who had found my wallet, complete with the £20 note that he sent back to me, and a message saying 'have a drink on me'.

Since then, I have found several wallets, and have always returned them to their owners without taking anything from inside them, even when I have been seriously short of money myself, which, in fairness, seems to be most of the time.

I have felt that sense of loss when you realise that you no longer have the means to get home, to buy the weeks shopping, and everything else losing a wallet or a purse entails. I have seen the problems my mother had when she had her purse stolen, ringing around company after company to report cards missing and so on, which left her with nothing to live on until the replacements could be sent.

But more importantly, I have felt the relief of getting your belongings back, of knowing that there are people in the world who are not selfish, who wont take from others, even when there is no risk to themselves. That common courtesy that was shown to me by someone I never met all those years ago, when I was still an impressionable young man, helped make me the person I am today.

I try to help people whenever I can, whether I know them or not, and regardless of if I can gain anything personally from doing so. Sometimes when I have returned wallets the owners have acted like I did, and given something back as a way of saying thank you. Other times, all I have recieved in reply was the phrase "Oh, cheers, I didn't even realise I dropped it."

One thing I have noticed though over the course of time;

It is always the people with next to nothing in their wallet/purse who feel the need to give something in return. Those people who had wallets bulging with cash returned to them, they were the ones that gave nothing back to me.

Do I feel I am entitled to a percentage of the amount in any given wallet for facilitating its safe return to its rightful owner?

Of course not. Why should I? Okay, some people would argue that the money was already lost, so surely them keeping 95% of the contents of their wallet and giving the 5% as a reward to the person returning it is not too much to ask. But I don't see it like that. For me, that would be someone trying to put a price on honesty, and if we start to do that we begin to descend down a steep and treacherous path.

That being said, I do find it interesting that the people with the least to offer seem to usually be the ones who actually offer the most. I guess when you think nothing of spending a few hundred pounds/dollars or whatever the currency is where you are reading this on a pair of shoes, it is hard for you to understand that the person returning your hard earned cash is probably getting by on less than your annual hairdressing budget.

But if more people acted with common courtesy, returning lost property as swiftly as possible when they discover it, and offering something as a reward to those who took time out of their own lives to try to ensure you are inconvenienced in the smallest amount possible by your own stupidity in losing things in the first place, there would be a lot more goodwill flowing around the place, and maybe a lot less trouble.

Well, it's a nice idea anyway!

Another Novel Attempt

2010-08-05T09:36:00.002+02:00

I am making another of my periodic attempts to actually motivate myself to write a novel. I have managed a complete plot outline, which is a new thing for me, and I have my character list all sorted out.

I have even written the prologue, and hope to write one chapter a day until it is completed. I will post the chapters on-line as and when they are written, but for some reason todays effort is not showing up on the site I posted it. So I am also going to post it here, now.

The title needs some work for sure, and I am hoping a better one will spring to mind as I get further into writing the whole thing. In the meantime, here is the beginning. Please let me know what you think of it....
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The Platform Phantom

Prologue

It was a just after 4pm, and if things went according to plan I was going to take another persons life in a few minutes. It wouldn't be the first time I killed someone. In fact, a few weeks earlier I had killed someone else just a short distance from where I stood now, watching the commuters as they milled around the train station.

That had been different though, justified. This killing would not be. It would be nothing more than the taking of a life, an innocent life, at random.

I could feel the adrenalin start to pump through my system, my senses becoming more alert by the second. The noise of the station was being filtered out as I psyched myself up for what I was about to do. Just moments ago I had been stood in this same spot, wondering if I would be able to actually go through with my plan, trying to work out if I would be able to live with what I was thinking of doing.

Now I was wondering if I would be able to live with the consequences of backing out.

It was an almost foolproof plan and had been successful for years, even when people were watching out for it, still it had been used over and over again. I knew I was about to enact an almost perfect way to get away with murder.

It was almost time, the train due to arrive in just a few moments. I debated whether I should move towards the platform now, but decided it wasn't worth the risk. There were a lot more cameras around these days than there used to be, and I couldn't take the chance that I would be picked up on them. It was better to wait a few minutes, wait for the inevitable crowd to form, and then I could start to make my move.

I looked around, seemingly casually, trying to see if there were any police officers hanging around, but couldn't see any. That didn't mean too much, not these days. They would be in the station somewhere for sure. I wasn't too bothered about them being around somewhere though. As long as they stayed there long enough for me to do what I came here to do.

I could barely make out the station tannoy announcing that the train I was waiting for was delayed. This was not good. The longer I stood here the more chance somebody would remember me later. I couldn't really take a chance on moving though, as I knew I was in one of the few camera dead spots on the main concourse, and the longer I could stay out of sight of the cameras the more chance there was I would walk away from this afterwards.

The sensible part of my brain knew that I should just turn around and walk away now, before it was too late. But in reality I think it had been too late a long time ago. I was on a set course now, and nothing was going to make me turn back from my plan of action. I had come too far to turn back now.

Another announcement, this one saying the train was approaching the platform. This was it, the time was almost here.

I scanned around again, looking once more for any sign of the blue police uniforms, but there were still none of them around. This was lucky for me, but not so lucky for someone about to get off that train.

As people started heading for the platform I joined them, head down, face covered by the peak of my baseball cap. I was glad that it was winter, as it meant that nobody was going to give my gloves a second glance. I couldn't afford to leave any fingerprints behind. That would be a stupid mistake and one that would be sure to get me caught.

Joining the throng as they made their way through the ticket barrier and down the platform, I looked ahead to make sure my escape route was still open. The escalators I was looking to use were running smoothly, which in fairness was usual, although there were occasions when they were down for maintenance.

If that had been the case, I would have had no option other than to turn around and think about coming back another day.

The train was alongside the platform now, just coming to a halt. In a few seconds the passengers would start to disembark, although to do so they would have to battle with the mass of people waiting to take the places they had just vacated. In some ways it resembled a cattle market, although I have noticed that cows and pigs tend to be better behaved and more dignified than your average commuter.

Still, I was relying on that jostling to make things easy for me.

As the train stopped and the doors open, starting to disgorge hundreds of tired business men and women I prepared myself for what I had been thinking about for weeks now. Reaching across my body with my left arm, I touched a stud under my jacket near my right elbow, and this released the knife, allowing it to slide down into my waiting hand.

I had practised this repeatedly until I could get it right every time. If I missed the knife as it left the holster I was done for. The best I could hope for would be that nobody noticed it drop until I was far enough away to just keep on walking. There was no mistake though, and I continued along the platform by the train with the knife held down by my side, scanning the passengers as I walked.

Then, right in front of me, the perfect opportunity. A man, taller than me, although that was no big feat, talking on his phone as he pushed through the crowd, his back towards me. I was just a few feet away, moving at a brisk pace to catch him up, and then I was past him and continuing down the platform towards my target escalators.

I had gone another four paces before I heard the first gasp behind me, followed quickly by a scream. I lowered my head and kept walking along. This was not my problem, I had somewhere to go. As I got to the escalators I glanced back, just once, to see what the fuss was about, trying to make it look natural.

I could see my victim, the guy on the phone, lay on the floor, with my knife sticking out of his back, blood pooling around him where he lay. Even from this distance I could tell that I had done as intended. He would be dead within minutes.

Looking down at my gloves, I noticed some blood on the right hand one, so, taking no chances, I took them both off and put them in my pockets. I had made the kill, now I just had to make my escape.

I was smiling by the time I reached the top of the escalator and continued on my way. This had been surprisingly enjoyable and cathartic, and I found myself thinking back to how I came to be here in the first place…..

You don't know me?

2010-07-30T10:06:00.003+02:00

Sometimes I wonder what people see when they look at me. I mean, the physical part of that is obvious enough I suppose. 6ft 1 tall, short brown hair, brown eyes, usually in need of a shave, and wearing black jeans and t-shirt....

That much everyone can see.

But how many people see beyond that and see the actual person behind the description?

Truthfully, my guess is none.

I don't think there is a single person I have ever met, and that includes my family, that actually gets me or understands me. Everybody sees a different thing with me.

Some people see me as a sarcastic wanker, others as one of the most caring people they know. Certain people think me miserable, while their friends consider me to be really funny. Witty, charming, and knowledgeable are words used to describe me, along with stupid, obnoxious and angry.

Some people know me as a writer, others for my love of music. Some people think I am nothing but a drunk, and others have been served plenty of drinks by me, but have never seen me actually have a drink myself.

I am a sensitive guy, willing to do anything to help out a friend in need, and I am also a jerk, always ready to pounce and take advantage from another persons misfortune. The hardest working guy you will ever meet, and the laziest and most incompetent person you could ever think of hiring.

The big enforcer that everybody fears, who stands in a corner at parties trying not to be noticed.

Basically I think to most people I am something of an enigma. They don't really know what to think of me.

Here in Prague, most of the people I know make it a big point to be up in each others business all the time. If you want to know what person A did with person B in bar C on a Tuesday night, just say 'hi' to person D and they will tell you all about it.

I don't work that way though. I try to keep myself to myself as much as possible. I don't invite people around to my flat to hang out, and while I am happy to go for a beer I am not one to call people up and ask them to tag along.

And I think that is why everyone feels the need to treat me so badly.

I just don't fit in with them. I don't gossip, do drugs, or feel the need to get fucked up and make a fool of myself, and so they consider me a threat. I don't feel the need to tell everyone I meet the most intimate details of my life, or anyone else's for that matter, and this confuses them.

I am content to try and get on with my own life in my own way, without the need to live vicariously through others.

Truthfully, I am everything described above, and a whole lot more besides, but nobody ever sees the whole picture because they are not willing to invest the time required to get to know any more about me than their first impression.

That is their loss. But it gets pretty fucking lonely at times.

NEW TERRORIST THREAT LEVELS

2010-07-29T16:47:00.001+02:00

NOTE: I borrowed this from another site. As much as I think my writing is funny sometimes, I am not going to claim responsibility for something I didn't write myself. That doesn't mean I can't share it though!
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The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent terrorist threats and have raised their security level from “Miffed” to “Peeved.” Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to “Irritated” or even “A Bit Cross.” The English have not been “A Bit Cross” since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies all but ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from “Tiresome” to a “Bloody Nuisance.” The last time the British issued a “Bloody Nuisance” warning level was in 1588 when threatened by the Spanish Armada.

The Scots raised their threat level from “Pissed Off” to “Let’s get the Bastards” They don’t have any other levels. This is the reason they have been used on the front line of the British army for the last 300 years.

The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from “Run” to “Hide”. The only two higher levels in France are “Collaborate” and “Surrender.” The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France ’s white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country’s military capability. It’s not only the French who are on a heightened level of alert. Italy has increased the alert level from “Shout loudly and excitedly” to “Elaborate Military Posturing.” Two more levels remain: “Ineffective Combat Operations” and “Change Sides.”

The Germans also increased their alert state from “Disdainful Arrogance” to “Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs.” They also have two higher levels: “Invade a Neighbor” and “Lose”.

Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual, and the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels .

The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy. These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so the new Spanish navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish navy.

Americans meanwhile, and as usual, are carrying out pre-emptive strikes, on all of their allies, just in case.

New Zealand has also raised its security levels – from “baaa” to “BAAAA!”.
Due to continuing defense cutbacks (the air force being a squadron of spotty teenagers flying paper aeroplanes and the navy some toy boats in the Prime Minister’s bath), New Zealand only has one more level of escalation, which is “I hope Australia will come and rescue us”.

Australia, meanwhile, has raised its security level from “No worries” to “She’ll be right, mate”. Three more escalation levels remain: “Crikey!’, “I think we’ll need to cancel the barbie this weekend” and “The barbie is canceled”. So far no situation has ever warranted use of the final escalation level.

101 WAYS TO RUIN A WEDDING!

2010-07-27T20:27:00.002+02:00

Spawny note: I wrote this a long time ago, but as wedding season is upon us again I figured it was worth dusting it off for another viewing!
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So, I think we've just about all been to weddings by now right? And is it just me, or is the actual wedding ceremony mind and bum numbingly boring? I don't think it is just me for some reason, but who cares?

Anyway, I was at a wedding a little while ago, and that's when I came up with the idea of trying to think of 101 ways to spoil a wedding. Although I'll leave it up to you guys to try and guess which of the ideas below I did actually use at my friends wedding. Because some were just too good to resist!

I don't actually have 101 Ways To Ruin A Wedding yet, as I haven't been able to think of that many. But the ones I do have are listed below. This is dedicated to Micah and Alison, who's wedding I was bored out of my mind at when I came up with this idea.

Any suggestions you may have to add to the list would be greatly appreciated.

Shall I just shut up and get on with the damn thing now? I had an idea you might say that!
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1- Make sure you have a seat immediately behind the groom. As he stands up to see his soon to be wifey walk down the aisle, quietly whisper to him that judging by the state of the back of his suit, it looks like the pews have been recently re-varnished or something. Like maybe in the last hour. Which b*st*rd stole the 'Wet Varnish, do not use this seat' sign?

2- Hide a stereo system somewhere in the church, with volume set to FULL. The reason your hiding this stereo system, remote control of course, is number

3- Sod the wedding march. Everyone's heard that hundreds of times. It's boring as hell. So, when the doors open, and the blushing bride starts to walk down the aisle on daddy's arm, that’s when you hit 'PLAY' on the stereo remote. My personal choice of record here would be Iron Maiden with Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter.

4- Ring the groom on his mobile phone during the ceremony. Provided he has his phone on him and turned on of course. Which if he's planned in advance and switched his phone off like a smart ass, go to number

5- Ring the best man on his mobile phone during the ceremony. Or the bride’s father. Or the priest even. Basically anyone that's stood at the front of the church being all serious, they have to be the targets. One of them is sure to forget to turn his phone off!

6- Pay a local tramp 50p and a bottle of White Lightning to stand up in church when the vicar asks if anyone knows a reason the couple in question can't get married. Make sure he shouts loud enough for absolutely everyone to hear that the bride to be is pregnant with his child. Okay, no one's going to believe him, but that's not the point. Maximum disruption possible is the point.

7- If you can't find a local tramp, then head down to the local strip club. You need the skankiest, ugliest bint you can find. And guess what. She's going to announce in church that she's pregnant. And guess who the alleged 'daddy' is!

8- Get one of your mates from the pub to pretend he works for the local newspaper and burst into the church to question the priest about alleged child sex allegations as the ceremony starts. Lets face it; those altar boys have to have a reason for those high pitched singing voices! And has anyone apart from me noticed the unusually large ears that all altar boys seem to have?

9- Try to get the groom, the bride, the best man, bride's father, or the priest alone for a few minutes just before the ceremony. Then tie them up and hide them in the confessional booth.

10- Heckle the priest all the way through the ceremony. Tell him he needs to speak up as you’re actually broadcasting the service on your mobile phone to your mother, who couldn't make it for contractual reasons, and is in France, or Egypt, or somewhere, and she can't hear what the priest is saying. Come to think of it, she can't hear what anyone else is saying either. Actually, you just realised you dialled the wrong number. Any chance of starting all over again please?

11- One of the main players in the ceremony needs to be arrested for something. It doesn't have to be something they've done, or even something serious. But they need to be arrested anyway. Preferably if you can arrange for the bride and the groom to both be arrested, by different police forces, on trumped up charges, you'll be on the right track.

12- Offer to take your neighbours kids along to the service so they can have a day out. Pay them 50p each to just scream and shout at each other all the way through, maybe even break out into a fight amongst themselves. If you can get hold of them, Kelly and Jack Osborne would be ideal for this. If not, it'll have to be the neighbour’s kids. The gypsy neighbours kids hopefully. The ones that heard somewhere once that Bath is a place down south somewhere, but have never actually heard about the one's you can get in your houses these days.....

13- Take a local rugby team to the church with you. Preferably a drunken local rugby team. Make sure you know which hymns are going to be sung during the service, and have taken the time to re-write them with lewd lyrics. And that the rugby team has a copy of the new lyrics. And that they all sing as loud as they possibly can.

An example of possible lewd lyrics is as follows.....

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound

When she c*ms on my tongue

She squirms and screams, but that’s because

I usually do it all wrong............

14- So, all else has failed, and despite all your best efforts the wedding has actually gone ahead and been completed. But never fear, because there's still plenty of fun to be had yet. For a start......remember that stereo system? Well, when the bride and groom sit down and pose to sign the register, that's when you hit PLAY again.

This time, I'd recommend 'Another One Bite's The Dust' by Queen....

15- Now the bride and groom are walking up the aisle together and saying thank you to everyone for coming. Which is an ideal opportunity to point out to the groom when they get in earshot that you have a 100% record at weddings. Every one you've ever been to so far has ended in divorce.

16- Tell the bride how lovely she looks. Indeed, even perhaps mention the fact her dress seems to fit her like a glove. It's a shame it's a dress.....

17- Ask the groom when he has to take his suit back to the tailors to get them to finish making it.

18- Tell the bride you'd like to offer your congratulations. Then look at the groom and say something along the lines of 'but it's not really is it'.....

19- Tell the groom you would have gambled and gone for the star prize instead of chickening out at the last minute.

20- Make sure there's a pool table at the reception hall. Then invite the pool team from a pub called 'The Shepherds Boy' in Waterhead, Oldham, near Manchester along.

They like to play with their trousers around their ankles for some reason. And yes, that does include underwear. Meat and two veg anyone?

21- Steal all the DJ's records. Not for long. Just long enough to take each one out of its original case and put it into a different one. So he'll never actually know what songs going to come on next. Especially if you substitute some of his records for some of your Death Metal collection....

22- Spike the drinks of both proud mothers. Not with anything dangerous, as I would never condone that kind of thing. Just make sure they drink a lot more alcohol than they intended to. One of them is bound to make some sort of stupid, embarrassing scene...

23- Do the same with the proud fathers....

24- And the bride and groom of course.....

25- And the best man and the bridesmaids....

26- And don't forget the priest if he's there.....

27- Sod it, spike everyone's drinks with a nasty vodka, brandy, and lime juice mix. And make sure there's a supply of gas masks at the toilets.

28- And nappies. Or diapers as the Americans would say. Because the queue for the toilets going to be pretty long. There's certain to be a couple of accidents.....

29- Speaking of which, laxatives in the food is always a fun option.....

30- Especially if, due to a technical malfunction, the toilets are actually closed. Except for the one disabled toilet on the fourth floor. (Why do people always put disabled toilets upstairs? Is it just me that thinks this is extremely poor planning or something?)

31- You need to know the boss at the place the reception is being held very well for this one. Then you need to get him to save all his spilled beer for a week or so prior to the wedding, and serve it to people as fresh beer. Won't actually do any permanent damage, although at the time people wont believe you when you tell them this.

32- One word. Jagermeister. Get as many people drinking this as you can. Organise drinking games with it so everyone drinks lots of it. To be honest, it won’t have much effect on the night. But there will be a lot of calls to plumbers the following morning to come and unblock toilets.....

33- That dirty old stripper from the church earlier comes into play again here. When she bursts into the reception, preferably carrying a young child, who she's going to thrust into the arms of the groom and tell him it's about time he did his own share of the work.

34- The best mans speech. Steal it. And substitute your own version. Which will actually start of exactly the same as the original version, in order to lull the best man into a false sense of security, before it will start detailing various misdemeanours carried out in the past by the groom. Misdemeanours his new wife, of course, will know nothing about. Truth is, it doesn't matter if the grooms hearing about them for the first time too.....

35- A power cut is always good. Preferably about the same time as the happy couple are just making their way onto the dance floor for the traditional first dance. And of course, in the confusion you're going to

36- Substitute the record the DJ has all lined up and ready to go, which is bound to be something slushy and soppy picked by the bride and groom, and replace it with something a little more appropriate. Maybe something along the lines of 'Cupid's Dead' by Extreme. Or 'You Give Love A Bad Name' by Bon Jovi.

37- Remember those horrible gypsy neighbours kids from earlier? Well guess what, you still have them with you. And they're going to lay siege to the buffet table. Of course, once they put their grubby, never washed hands all over everything, no-ones going to want anything to eat anyway.

38- And one of the kids is probably going to go and show off his break dancing skills while the happy couple are doing their first dance to a totally inappropriate song. And no doubt accidentally crash into the bride and groom and send then flying head first at high speed towards the nearest table. Oops is the word I think.

39- Did I mention the wedding cake yet? There are a couple of different options for this. Option one is for one of those horrible kids to accidentally knock it over. But I think that may be a bit obvious. So we move on to the next option. Which is

40- Bring a small box containing twenty or so ants to the wedding with you, and sprinkle them around the bottom of the cake at some point prior to it being cut. Trust me, they will multiply by a huge amount pretty damn quickly when they realise there's free food around. With luck you should have a couple of hundred ants and a half eaten cake by the time they get round to cutting it.

41- But if you can't find any ants, cockroaches will do. You only need one of these, which needs to be placed near the base of the cake, so it can run to it to escape the light. Always fun to see how many people have pieces of roach on their plates once the cake is finally cut.....

42- Of course, if you're good at the old sleight of hand stuff, you can always substitute the real cake for a fake one. Preferably made out of laxatives. Does anyone else sense a certain theme running through here?

43- Now is about the right time for those pool players, the ones with their pants around their ankles, to start trying it on with all the women at the reception. Let's face it; at least the girls will know exactly what's on offer. But of course, it's traditional that the first women they try it on with are the mothers of the bride and groom.

44- And if the pool players don't have any luck with the ladies, they can always try it on with some of the guys as well. Starting with the two proud fathers of course...

45- And the old tramp from earlier should turn up sometime about now as well, probably complaining about how the brides father put his (that's the tramps) best mate on a bonfire last year by mistake instead of the guy made of straw and old clothes he was supposed to burn....

46- There's always a hairy lipped aunt at weddings. ALWAYS. And she's usually gay. Which I certainly have no problem with personally, as the more hairy lipped women there are that are gay, the less hairy lipped women I'm likely to get beer goggled into going to bed with!

Anyway, so we need to have a word with said hairy lipped aunt, and tell her how the bride only got married today because she didn't want anyone to know she was really into women. Especially older women. Especially older women with hairy lips. Add plenty of alcohol and you could very well end up with an interesting conversation between bride and hairy lipped aunt.

Quite possibly a very loud and very public conversation.....

47- And if the hairy lipped aunt isn't gay? No problem. It's the groom that's always had a thing for her.....

48- Or the grooms father......

49- Or the priest maybe.....

50- And if all else fails, you can be sure she'll get lucky very publicly with one of the naked pool players!!!!!
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So, that’s all I could come up with for now. Send your suggestions on a post card to the usual address, and anything worthwhile will be added to the list!

Nice guy? Why bother?.....

2010-07-18T22:46:00.004+02:00

I was raised to be a nice guy. To be polite, open doors for ladies, insist on paying my way in bars and restaurants. The usual kind of thing that I think most guys get drummed into them by their mothers from an early age. I can always remember being told that if I work hard and treat people the right way then they will respect me and reciprocate my behaviour.

And I really believed that she was right. Until the last few months anyway, and now, as much as I loved my mother, I am starting to believe that, on this subject at least, she was talking crap. You can have no idea how much it hurts me to write that last sentence, but I am going to give you an insight into what has led me to where I am now.

1 - Last summer I started working in a small bar in Prague. When I say small, it was literally a one man show. The owner just wanted to play darts, watch football, and smoke weed with his friends, so I ended up pretty much running the place.

I worked my ass off in that bar, putting in 70-80 hours a week minimum, for a crappy wage that was barely enough for me to cover my rent. Then, in February this year, my boss stopped talking to me. Then he started sending me messages telling me not to bother opening. Then he just closed the bar.

He never told me he was closing, and as of this moment in time he still hasn't been man enough on the myriad occasions he has seen me to even speak to me. I don't want much for all the effort I put in there, but maybe a 'hey man, sorry things didn't work out' kind of thing.....

Really, would that be too much to ask?....

Still, I moved on, and shortly after;

2 - I learned that a few friends were planning on opening up a new bar, just around the corner from where I was working previously.

They had no real experience at this kind of thing, so asked me to help them out. In conversations I had with them, it was clear that they wanted me to work there full time once the bar was opened, and this was fine with me as I needed something quickly so I could pay my rent.

I spent the next few weeks running around for them, doing things like pricing up beer and spirits, general maintenance work, cleaning, and generally whatever else was needed to get the place up and running. I created groups on sites like Facebook so people would know about the bar and get excited about it opening, and advised them on what kind of prices they needed to be charging in order to turn a profit.

The opening night was a huge success, but I quickly realised that something was not working as expected. I found that instead of working full time, as I had been told I would be, I was instead just working a couple of shifts a week, and these were generally being cut midway through the shift when the bar was busy, but before anyone had paid up.

This meant that not only was I getting paid a pittance of a wage, I was also losing my tips because customers were paying well after I left. So I sent the owners an e-mail, not wanting to create a scene in front of customers and trying to voice my grievances in an adult manner.....

And in reply I received the most hateful and critical message I have ever had in my life, making all kinds of accusations against me, and making it clear that they couldn't afford to pay me for any more shifts so I was now fired.

The next day, they hired another bartender to work there full time. It is clear to me now that I was basically used as a tool to help them set their bar up and get it open as quickly as possible, and then discarded as rapidly as they could manage to bring in someone else in my place.

These are people I considered to be my friends. I have tried several times to arrange clear the air talks with them, but all my requests fall on deaf ears.

So, working hard clearly isn't earning me any respect, so how about being a nice guy in general? Well, that will bring me along nicely to point number;

3 - There is a girl I like. A lot. She knows who she is. Hell, anyone who knows the two of us and DOESN'T know is an idiot!

We started off as friends. She was new in town and needing somewhere to stay, and my flat had a spare room, so it worked out for both of us. I quickly developed feelings for her though, and in a rare effort to be practical I told her this before our friendship had developed too much for us to move beyond just that.

Had she told me at that time that she didn't feel the same way, things would have been fine. But she didn't, and in fact told me the opposite. There are many reasons why things might not work out between us, probably more reasons than an average new couple would have to deal with, and so we talked and decided that it was best for us to stay as friends and let nature take its course with what would happen next.

Which we did, and things progressed beyond friendship, but we have never made any official commitment to one another. Which I am fine with, for the most part anyway. She is a fair bit younger than me, and away from home for the first time and looking to experience life, not get herself tied down permanently.

On the friendship side of things, I behave as I would anyway around her. Occasionally I cook her breakfast if we are up and about at the same time, I am there to listen to and advise her on her problems with work and anything else that comes up.

Also, being somewhat of a night-owl, I am usually up all night, and so make sure she is up for work each morning. These are not things I do because I have feelings for her, although my feelings grow stronger by the day, but things I do out of friendship.

Her reaction to all of this is to throw it back in my face.

She has told me that she does not want me to make her breakfast, or ensure she makes it to work on time. Having told me this, she went out yesterday afternoon and only returned late this evening, having ignored several messages I sent her and a friends birthday party.

I know that the next time she doesn't get up for work she will be crying at me for not waking her, but when I do wake her all I get is abuse. She tells me she loves me, and then disappear with an unknown person for most of the weekend, and takes every opportunity she gets to tell me that she could leave at a moments notice. As well as reminding me that there is a guy in France that she likes just as much as me.

All of the above leads me to believe that my mother was wrong. It is not the nice guys that get what they want or deserve in life, but those people who go through life riding rough-shod over everyone else.

They say that the meek shall inherit the earth, but I think it is more likely that the meek shall inherit the earth's debt and spend the next few millennium in indentured servitude.

As for me, I don't know why I bother....

A ZIZKOV INSTITUTION

2010-07-09T00:50:00.002+02:00

There are two places that just about every ex-pat in Prague ends up spending time at during their stay in the city. Many of my friends can attest to experiences with both places, and some readily confess that they never really wanted to go anywhere near either of them based on reputation. You just kind of get sucked in to them….

One of these places is Icon, a call centre predominantly known for cold calling people in the UK to try and sell broadband packages.

Anybody who has ever worked there will tell you it was not a fun experience. I could go into a lot more detail, but I am worried that doing so could get me into a whole heap of trouble. Let’s just say that when my own personal Icon experience came to an end I was more than happy to be out of there, and I know a lot of other people who feel the same way.

The other one is Blind Eye, who have the slogan ‘purveyors of questionable entertainment’ on the sign over their door, and make every effort to live up to their motto, especially at the weekend.

Now, this is where I have to make a confession. I was visiting Prague for a long time before I ended up living here, and for the last four or five years that I was coming over here Blind Eye was one of my must visit places during every trip. This, in fairness, was mainly due to it’s location in relation to the hostel I was staying in each time, and the fact that it was open later than anywhere else locally, with the exception of a really dodgy Russian bar on the corner, and an equally nasty Herna bar down the road.

Invariably I would end up in either the Russian place or the Herna bar anyway once Blind Eye closed. Either that, or I would get a bottle of vodka from the petrol station down the road and proceed to get the hostel receptionist so wasted he would fall asleep, even though drinking on duty was banned by that point.

Well, drinking on duty was banned unless the staff member of the hostel was drinking with me. I was staying there five, sometimes six times a year, for anything up to ten days at a time. I tended to be in the bar from the moment I got up until it closed, then went out for the night, so I was spending a decent amount of money there. This encouraged the manager to give his staff leeway when I was around.

He knew if he fired them because I forced vodka on them, I wouldn’t go back there again, and I tried to limit getting them drunk to only once or twice during each trip, as I didn’t want to be pushing things too far!
Anyway, I should get back to what this is actually all about, which is Blind Eye.

The first thing you should know about Blind Eye is that it is located part way up a very steep hill, in the area known as Upper Zizkov. The border between Upper and Lower Zizkov is a street named Seifertova, which coincidentally is at the bottom of the hill on which Blind Eye can be found. There is also a tram stop, Husinecka, at the bottom of the same hill, and Victoria Zizkov’s football stadium is located by the tram stop.

The main problem with the location of Blind Eye is that unless you are very lucky, you have to either walk up the steep hill to get there, or walk further up it to leave. If you are really unlucky, and depending on where you are coming from, you may sometimes have to do both!

In most cases, it would be better to do the former, and walk up the hill when sober, but in this case I am not so sure. As I said, it is a steep hill, and most people, when drunk, tend to lean forwards when falling over. Now, if you are heading up the hill and this happens, you don’t have a great distance between your head in its more natural vertical position and the ground.

If you are heading down the hill though, you could be in for a very nasty accident!

Over the years, it has not been uncommon for some people to crawl up the hill to a friends house rather than risk trying to walk down it after too many Jager-bombs!

It’s possible that I may have made that last sentence up! It is equally possible that the sentence is entirely factual!

So, I have explained about the location of Blind Eye, now I suppose I should describe the bar itself.

The first thing you notice when you go inside is that it is very dark. There will also be music playing, and with most bars I would be able to give you an idea of what to expect. Not with this place though. To say they have an eclectic mix when it comes to music is like saying Brazil occasionally produce a half-decent footballer.

Walking into Blind Eye your ears could literally be bombarded with anything from pop to punk, movie soundtracks, or, worst of all, karaoke. Fortunately, the karaoke is only on a Monday night, so the rest of the week you are pretty safe.

What else will you notice when you walk in there? Apart from the darkness and the music that is.

Well, on the left hand side of the room are a few tables with banquette seating around them. If it is busy, there will usually be a big pile of jackets somewhere as well, and this seems to work on a trust basis. As the night goes on, you will see people spend ten minutes plus going through the mass of coats trying to find their own.

This is particularly funny when the person doing the searching is some blonde girl from California who will eventually realise, possibly with the assistance of a friend, that her jacket is actually tied around her waist!

Opposite the tables there is a bar. The bar is long enough for six, maybe seven bar stools. They only actually have three though, and these are almost always in use.
Once you get beyond the bar there is another small room with a couple of tables around the edge and a DJ booth. This room doubles as the dance floor and karaoke stage.

Upon closer inspection, you will notice that the seating around the tables is in a very poor state of repair. In some places it is held together with duct tape, in others they just don’t bother trying anymore. As for the toilets, well….

They are located on the right hand side as you walk towards the bar. There is a short corridor, with the toilets on the left, an office, and another little room on the right. This other room has been used in the past for movie screenings, but now is used mainly as an overflow area for the bar. In here, you will again notice the furniture is a mess. The fabric is torn and there are broken springs in the chairs. And those are the good chairs!

Seriously, if you want to show your new girlfriend a good time, this is not the best place to make a good first impression. It is dirty, dilapidated, and a complete mess. And I still didn’t get round to mention the toilets. How about I just say that they are pretty much what you would expect them to be like once you have had a walk around the bar, and leave it at that.

I suspect you are now contemplating the obvious paradox of a bar that is a complete mess, and yet everyone goes there. Surely, you are no doubt thinking, the place must have something good going for it!

The easiest way to work out the good and bad points of a place is to list them, one by one, so lets try that….

It isn’t the décor, or the furniture. The metal bar top seems cool at first, until it starts randomly electrocuting people. It is dark and dingy, and the first impression you get is that this is to hide the myriad problems that the bar has, although even in the darkness the flaws are still all too evident. The prices are reasonable, but nothing special, which is also pretty much the best thing that can be said about the quality of the beer.

Blind Eye is, to put it in the bluntest terms possible, a dive. This is the kind of bar where you wipe your feet on the way out!

Still, it’s very popular, so they must be doing something right.

Just about the only thing I haven’t mentioned so far is the bar staff. I would like to say that they are the reason the place is as popular as it is, and I suppose some people do go there because of specific bartenders. These are few and far between though. For the most part, the service is like everything else in Blind Eye.

Okay, I suppose, but nothing special.

Don’t get me wrong, most of them are friendly enough, especially by Prague standards. This is a big difference to the owner who can be a real grouch most of the time. The main problem is that the Blind Eye bar staff can have a tendency to be more interested in doing shots with their friends than they are in serving customers.

They also have a very limited number of glasses, which means most people will be served their drinks in a plastic pot. Anybody who knows me will know that I abhor the use of plastic as a receptacle for alcohol.

While I can understand it in certain circumstances, such as football matches or music festivals where there are literally tens of thousands of people milling around and a real danger of injury should a glass be accidentally broken, I have always believed that any bar that uses them is doing so either because they are too lazy to collect and clean glasses, or because the bar is a real trouble spot where glasses are used more as weapons as they are for something to drink from.

Either way, these are the kind of bars I tend to want to avoid.

Fortunately for me, I am on good terms with the Blind Eye staff, and even with the owner. I guess five years of tipping very well as a tourist have earned me some of the privileges more normally reserved for close friends. Suffice it to say that I am usually served as soon as I walk in the door, and always get a glass and not plastic, even if the bartender has to go looking for one prior to serving me!

And I think it is that kind of more personal service that I like about the place.

They also have a long term issue with the local police, meaning that for large periods of their existence they have been forced to operate with the door closed, with only people who are known by the staff granted entry. This generally leads to a much more trouble free environment than you would normally associate with a bar that looks as bad as Blind Eye does.

Again, this is something I like, as when I go for a drink I am only interested in doing that. I may have a conversation if there is a friend or someone that captures my attention, and have even been known to make up the numbers in a table football match when teams have been short a player.

For the most part though, I just want to sit down with my beer, sometimes a book, and mind my own business. Places that are known for being trouble hotspots are places that I avoid like the plague, and I can honestly say that for all its dingy-ness I don’t think I have ever seen a fight in Blind Eye.

People passed out on the sofa’s, I see that regularly. But that is not something that is exclusive to Blind Eye. Sleeping in bars is just as much an integral part of the Czech way of life as drinking beer. Fights though, that is a completely different story. To sum up, I will give you marks out of ten for a few of the main categories that bars are judged on;

Cleanliness - 2
Decor - 3
Music - 6
Service - 3 (unless you are friends with the staff, then 9)!
Toilets - 1
Atmosphere – 9

So there you have it. In every single way this bar should be an abject failure and nothing but a muddy footnote on a trip to Prague. Yet it stands there as a bulwark against the trendy, characterless bars that are becoming more and more common-place even in Prague these days, and a reminder that when it comes to having a great night out, you don’t need a place where the toilets are inspected every 15 minutes and where the under-trained staff at least look smart in their uniforms.

You just need somewhere that you can go and get absolutely wasted and make a complete fool of yourself with your friends. And despite all of its faults, Blind Eye is a place that I would recommend to anybody who is looking to have a fun night out in Zizkov.

CALLING OUT CAPELLO

2010-06-27T20:39:00.001+02:00

This was meant to be England’s best chance to win a trophy for years. It was apparently a better chance than our last best chance four years ago, or the one four years before that, and so on. Seriously though, this was the tournament were England’s glorious Golden Generation were finally going to get what they deserved.

We had an experienced and knowledgeable manager, someone who actually has a proven winning track record. In qualifying for the World Cup, England were almost perfect, winning the first 9 games comfortably. Then they got to South Africa and it all went horribly wrong.

An awful display in the opening game against the USA, even worse in the second game against Algeria, some improvement against the might of Slovenia, and then the worst defeat in English World Cup history against Germany. So where did it all go wrong? Well, I personally think we should look at the manager first of all.

Fabio Capello made his intentions for his World Cup squad clear when he announced that he was going to pick his team based on form and fitness, not on reputation. In other words, nobody was going to the World Cup unless they were playing well and regularly for their club and could prove they were fully fit. So let’s see how that worked out with a look at the squad that was taken.

1- David James – The most experienced of the three goalkeepers England took to the World Cup by far. Generally a solid player, but a number of high profile mistakes over the course of his career earned him the nickname ‘Calamity’. Was in and out of the Portsmouth team with injuries all last season, and going into the World Cup there were doubts about his fitness.

Did nothing wrong once he was given the gloves after the USA debacle though, with solid performances all round.

2- Glen Johnson – One of the youngsters who has only recently broken into the team. Very good going forwards, but can be defensively suspect sometimes. Started last season for Liverpool with some great performances, but was then out for a big chunk of the year with injuries, and has played very little football since the turn of the year, and that in a team that was awful for the whole season, so his confidence was likely to be low.

Offered little in this tournament, although I am sure he has a lot to offer in the future.

3- Ashley Cole – On his day one of the best full-backs in the world. Another player that missed a big chunk of the latter parts of the season with injury. So of Capello’s claim that he would pick players on form and fitness, a disturbing trend is already emerging!

Was solid enough throughout the tournament, but didn’t offer as much going forwards as he would do normally.

4- Steven Gerrard – For many years an inspirational leader for Liverpool, but someone who has never really performed all that well for England. Many people put this down to him and Frank Lampard being too similar to one another, meaning one of them always has to sacrifice something of his game to accommodate the other one, and this has generally been Gerrard’s role, sacrificing his own attacking instincts to cover for Lampard going forwards.

Had an awful season for Liverpool, probably the worst of his career. At least he was fully fit though! Apart from the game against the USA, in which he scored, he was played out of position on the left throughout the tournament, again sacrificing his own game to allow Lampard space in the middle.

He did not play particularly well in the tournament, continuing the poor form he has shown for the last twelve months.

5- Rio Ferdinand – Barely played all season, and when he did he looked off the pace, so should have been left behind on account of both form AND fitness. Was made captain after the John Terry scandal, but barely got to South Africa before he was on his way home injured again.

Replaced by Michael Dawson, who had a solid season helping his team finish fourth in the Premiership, and should have really been in the squad from the start, but didn’t make it onto the pitch during the tournament.

6- John Terry – On his day an inspirational defender, but came to this tournament with a whole heap of baggage. Stripped of the captaincy after it was revealed he had slept with one of his Chelsea and England team-mates girlfriends, prompting the other player, Wayne Bridge, to say he would never play for England again while Terry was in the side.

In a tournament like the World Cup, the players need to trust one another, and Terry coming out mid-tournament insulting some of the other players and the coaching staff betrayed that trust. Although it is doubtful most of the players trusted him anyway after the Bridge incident, trying to instigate a players revolt against the manager was clearly not the best decision he has ever made as a footballer.

Solid enough for the most part, but his lack of pace and the lack of understanding with the three partners he had at the back during the tournament meant England were always vulnerable at the back.

7- Aaron Lennon – A very good attacking winger, but like many of the England team he had some injuries in the latter part of the season and was a big doubt to even be fit.

One of the players for the future, but at the moment too raw and inexperienced, and that fitness issue didn’t help matters either. Never really produced much, but hopefully he is young enough to come good in the future.

8- Frank Lampard – One of the main criticisms of Lampard has always been his greedy shoot on sight policy. At the last World Cup he had more shots than any other player from any other team. And didn’t score a single goal.

Was ineffective at this World Cup and barely seemed to do anything, although he did have a perfectly good goal against Germany disallowed.

9- Peter Crouch – His goal per game ratio at international level is second to none, although his critics point to the fact that almost all of his goals have come against smaller nations, and he has never really proven himself against the big teams. His supporters point out that he has never been given an opportunity to prove himself against the big teams, and this was again borne out in this tournament.

He spent practically no time at all on the pitch, meaning that the different options his 6ft 7 frame offer the team were not utilized, so England looked very one-dimensional throughout.

10- Wayne Rooney – Is considered to be one of the best players in the world in most circles, but his temperament has been suspect for a long time. Sent off in the last World Cup, this was Rooney’s chance to atone for past mistakes and stamp his foot on world football properly, rather than stamping on other footballers!

Had a great season at club level, but was in and out of the side with injury in the last few months, and has not scored a goal at any level since March. Did not look like the same player during this tournament, and despite some flashes where he linked up well with Gerrard, it was clear he was short of form, fitness, and confidence.

11- Joe Cole – Another player who is great on his day, more than able to terrorise the best defenders in the world and one of the few players in the England side capable of creating something out of nothing.

A lot of injury problems last season though, and even when fit he could barely get a game for Chelsea. Wasn’t given much of a chance in this tournament, but offered little when he did finally get onto the pitch.

12- Robert Green – Goalkeeper is the most important position on the pitch, as if your ‘keeper makes a mistake it usually costs you a goal. In last seasons Premiership, Robert Green made more mistakes leading to the opposition team scoring than any other player.

A decent enough shot stopper, but he is even more prone to howlers than ‘Calamity’ James, which was proven during England’s opening game against the USA when he gifted the American’s a goal with an awful howler. That goal cost England the chance to top the group, and set the tone for a series of insipid displays from then on.

13- Steven Warnock – Only in the squad because Wayne Bridge has refused to play for England for as long as John Terry is in the side after Terry got it on with his girlfriend. However, Warnock is a good, solid defender, and pretty decent going forwards too. Didn’t make it onto the pitch in South Africa though, which was no great shock with Ashley Cole in front of him.

14- Gareth Barry – Meant to be the key player in the England midfield, allowing both Gerrard and Lampard to get forwards knowing that he is there covering for them. Yet another player who was injured leading up to the World Cup, and was not fit to play the first match against the USA.

Played poorly in the other three games, regularly mis-placing and over-hitting passes. Clearly was not match-fit, and his inclusion in the squad despite this smacked of desperation from Capello.

15- Matthew Upson – Had a reasonable season at club level, but has never been an outstanding player. He generally reads the play well and is solid and reliable,

Was great against Slovenia, which meant he got the nod to partner Terry against Germany. Scored Englands goal, but other than that was woeful, and it looked at times as though he had never played with any of the England team before. Positioning was rubbish throughout, and a player who is normally dependable was anything but today.

16- James Milner – Solid and consistent more than anything else, able to beat a man and get a good cross in as he showed against Slovenia. Also works hard to get the ball back and defends well, but has never been a player who is likely to catch the eye as a major threat.

17- Shaun Wright-Phillips – Small, fast, tricky, able to conjure a goal out of nothing. His critics will say he is TOO small, and can get knocked off the ball with ease at times. His confidence will have been low going into the tournament as he spent the second half of last season being kept out of the Manchester City side by Adam Johnson and has also, like many of this England team, had some injury problems.

Was used out of position as a substitute on the left wing against the USA, and was brought on with just a few minutes to go against Germany. Many people will ask why Capello took a pacy right winger to the World Cup and then never played him in his correct position until it was far too late.

They will also ask why he was taken in the first place, given that his position for his club side had been taken by another English player who didn’t make the squad!

18- Jamie Carragher – I have to confess, I have always liked Carragher. His no-nonsense, take no prisoners, approach to defending is something I have always admired, and 4 or 5 years ago I would have held him up alongside anybody as one of the best central defenders in the world.

At that time, however, the England management team did not agree, and 4 years ago Carragher retired from international football after being asked to play on the left wing for England while a midfield player was picked at centre back. At the time, he was quoted as saying “If the England management team don’t take me seriously now, there is no chance I will be being taken seriously by the time the next world cup comes along.”

He then admitted in his autobiography that losing matches playing for England never felt as bad as losing when playing for Liverpool!

So it was something of a surprise in the build up to this world cup when Capello came knocking on his door begging him to change his mind and come out of retirement for England. Especially since, just like Gerrard, last season was probably as poorly as he has played throughout his career.

Still, he answered the call, and played the second half against the USA and the match against Algeria. England did not concede a goal while he was on the pitch, so I guess his selection was justified. He did, unfortunately, pick up bookings in both games, ruling him out of the Slovenia game, and then Upson was picked ahead of him for Germany. All round a solid performance by the Liverpool man though.

19- Jermaine Defoe – Plays well week in and week out at club level with Peter Crouch, but the partnership has never been given a chance for England. Scored a good goal against Slovenia, but like all the strikers was short of service for the most part.

20- Ledley King – Without a doubt a great natural defender. The main problem with King is a chronic knee problem which means he has been unable to actually train for well over two years, and is not able to play back to back games. This is a major issue in tournament football, where the games come thick and fast.

On football ability alone, he would walk into almost any side. His fitness meant he was always going to be a big risk, however, and this was borne out after he was forced to pull out of the side after 45 minutes against the USA.

21- Emile Heskey – A succession of England managers have steadfastly stuck by and supported Heskey, and the players say they like him too. Just about every England fan wants to know what it is exactly that Heskey brings to a side that so many people seem to admire.

He is big, and can hold the ball up well.

And…..

That’s it really.

His record of 7 England goals in 60+ appearances is shocking, especially when you consider there are two GOALKEEPERS who have scored more international goals than he has!

He is pedestrian, unable to beat a player, rarely scores, and falls down a lot.

Oh, and he barely played for his club last season.

Still, he was given the nod against the USA and Algeria, and brought on when England went 4-1 down against Germany. Seriously, England had 25 minutes to score 3 goals, and they brought Heskey on. A donkey would have been a better option. Even a dead one!

22- Michael Carrick – Yet another player who has been plagued by injuries for the last year. In the squad as cover for Gareth Barry, but didn’t get into the team when Barry wasn’t fit to play. Never made it onto the pitch.

23- Joe Hart – Of the three goalkeepers England took to the World Cup, Hart was most people’s pick to play. Had a very good season at club level, unlike Green, and injury free, unlike James. Was never given a chance though, although you can be fairly certain that he will get his chance in the future.

So there you have it. Capello promised to take a team based on form and fitness, and not reputation, and then took 12 players in his initial squad of 23 who had injury problems, and another couple who can’t get games for their club sides. He also started with the most mistake-prone footballer in the Premiership last year in goal, which cost England victory in their first game.

Plus taking David Beckham of course. I mean, seriously, does ANYBODY know what he was actually doing there?

The team looked short on confidence, short on fitness, and short on ideas. Players that were scoring goals for fun last season were left out of the squad in favour of the people they were keeping out of their club sides.

Players were consistently played out of position, meaning there was no width and no real support for the front players.

All in all, it was a disaster all round. The only thing there is to smile about is that France and Italy were even worse! Well, that, and at least we didn't lose on penalties!

Customer Service, Czech Style

2010-06-25T04:22:00.001+02:00

One of the most difficult things for a foreigner to adjust to in Prague is the unique manner in which the Czechs approach customer service. As I am from England, I am of course used to a certain kind of service when I go into a bar or a shop. This would typically mean efficient yet friendly staff, there to assist the customer and ensure that they get what they came for.

I have also spent some time in America, and found that their idea of service tends to be a little overly polite and friendly, with far too much emphasis on making a customer think that the staff member is a long lost friend with whom you share a rich and storied history, I guess in an effort to persuade people to spend more money than they may have initially intended to.

Czech service, however, is in a class of its own, and can be most adequately described with the following sentence;

Service with a snarl.

Now, as anybody who knows me will most joyfully attest, I am a person who is most happy when I am seated somewhere in the vicinity of a bar, preferably with a glass containing a large quantity of alcohol in my hand.

This is one of the main reasons I decided, upon being forced to either abscond from my native England or face working to pay off debts for the foreseeable future, and probably beyond, to come and live in the Czech Republic. Not only do they make what I consider to be the best beer in the world here, they also sell it at a ridiculously cheap price.

I also chose to live in an area of Prague that goes by the name of Zizkov, which, as far as I am aware, is the only district of Prague that was actually named by its inhabitants, as opposed to some pen pushing power freak in a municipal building somewhere. Actually, the pen pushers did try to rename the area, but there was such a public outcry that they backed down.

However, you didn’t decide to read this for a history lesson, so I should get back on track and continue with my original premise, which is to explain the Czech service culture.

As I was saying, I chose to settle in Zizkov. This was not because it is the nicest area, as it is most assuredly not a place anybody would ordinarily aspire to reside if you were looking to show people you were moving up in the world. Zizkov is, in fact, as working class an area as you are ever likely to come across, and home mainly to people like construction workers, bartenders, schoolteachers, and gypsies.

The majority of people in Prague think of Zizkov as a bit of a slum area, and do not consider it a particularly nice or safe place to live. This is mainly because of the gypsies, who the Czechs hold in very low esteem, considering them to be nothing more than thieves and vagabonds, although in fairness this is not too far off the mark in a lot of cases.

The one thing that stands out above everything else with Zizkov though is the bars.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not an area you want to go if you are looking for a party atmosphere on a Saturday night. The thing with Zizkov is that there is no such thing as the weekend when it comes to drinking.

Every night is a Friday night to the people of Zizkov, and there is a whole plethora of establishments designed to allow the seasoned drinker a chance to go and do just that. The only problem with most of them is that they have Czech people working there!

This, you would think, is of course to be expected. After all, if you are in the Czech Republic, you have to expect the staff in most places will be Czech. And you would be perfectly correct.

The problem I have with this is that I do, as already stated, like to drink, and with Czech staff I invariably spend most of my time staring at an empty glass hoping that the bartender will desist with the conversation he or she is having with their friend at the bar, and actually fulfil their contractual obligation to serve thirsty people with their beverage of choice.

It appears that the general rule in Czech bars is that those people fortunate enough to know the bartender will always receive prompt service, whilst the random people who make up the majority of customers will be served as and when the person responsible for such duties feels up to the task.

This is made even more unpalatable by the fact that when they do eventually get around to serving you they make a huge presentation of huffing ad puffing around to demonstrate just how much of an effort they are making on your behalf. I presume this is intended to try and persuade you to give them more of a tip, although certainly as far as I am concerned it is much more likely to have the opposite effect.

It isn’t just bars that are like this though. Shops, especially small potraviny or grocery stores, can be a real ordeal if they are run by Czech people. These days, most potraviny’s are actually run by Vietnamese, and when you enter these stores you are usually greeted with a smile, they tend to help you put your purchases into a bag if required, and are generally nice and helpful.

If it is a Czech owned store it is a different story completely. They tend to start off well enough, with the cashier saying Dobry Den, or good day, to you as you walk in the door. Don’t let this fool you into thinking that they are going to continue in this vein though, as you will be sorely disappointed.

The first thing to be noted with these stores is they are generally quite a bit more expensive than the local supermarket. They do have the advantage of being open for longer hours though, and of course many people use them just for convenience, myself included. I have two supermarkets within a five minute walk of my flat, one of which is open from 8am to 8pm daily, and the other from 8am to 9pm. So I have plenty of time to utilise their services on most days.

Some days, however, I am very lazy and can’t be bothered leaving the flat until it is too late. On other days I often find myself coming home at some point before 8am and feeling hungry, but with no food in the flat. On these days, I will use the shop around the corner from the flat which is open from 6am to 11pm every day.

Yes, most things are quite a bit more expensive than the supermarket, but if I am drunk and hungry at 6.30am I am not going to sit and wait for them to open when there is a shop next door already open. I want some food and I want it now, before I go to bed for the day. So into the shop I go.

Now this is an odd little store, with a group of four or five Czech people working there. They include a woman who I am constantly tempted to advise to go and shave her moustache, two old guys, one of whom always seems to be wearing the same sweater and fiddling with his glasses, and the other one constantly wandering around the store, seemingly wondering what he is doing there.

They also had another guy working there, although I have only seen him a few times, and have not seen him for several weeks now. I suspect he may have had his employment terminated prior to his probationary period being up. The reason I suspect this is that he was far too friendly to work in a Czech potraviny, and even made a point the few times I saw him to speak to me in English, which is totally forbidden for people working in such places!

The general rule of thumb for staff in these places is to make each customer aware, in the clearest way possible, that although you are serving them it is under the utmost protest. The Czech’s do not enter the service industry because they want to actually help people. They work in shops because they have no other options, and having worked in the same store for 25 years they want you, as a customer, to know just how much of a hindrance to their enjoyment your presence is causing.

This is made especially evident if you ever dare to try to pay for your goods with an amount of money greater than that which is actually required for payment. If the few items you are purchasing comes to the total of one hundred and fourteen Czech crowns, then that is the amount you are expected to proffer to the person manning the till.

If you offer one hundred and twenty crowns, then you will be greeted with a trademark Czech huff. Two hundred will bring you a huff AND a sigh. If you really want to upset them, then try paying with a one or two thousand crown note. This, I can assure you, will result in nothing short of apoplexy in almost all cases.

They are so bad, that my flatmate, who gets paid each month with a number of five thousand crown notes, actually saves them up until she can talk me into going to the shop and changing one for her!

The other problem is that the Czechs, especially those working in stores, have some sort of ridiculous fear of infectious disease. Don’t get me wrong, I, like most people I think, would not like to catch any sort of ailment from another person.

This is something I completely understand, but the Czech’s take that natural caution and turn it into paranoia.

If you are ever foolish enough to pay for your goods somewhere with an amount greater than that needed to facilitate payment, you will of course need and expect to get change. Now, although I have heard some horror stories about people being ripped off, for the most part I have found the Czech’s to be a very honest bunch of people.

With the exception of the Gypsies of course, who exist solely to steal from people.
Or so you will be led to believe anyway.

Never mind that though, I was talking about being in a shop and needing change after buying your groceries.

In most cases, you can expect that you will be provided, after the obligatory huffing, puffing, shaking of head, and sighing routine, to be given the correct amount of change that is required.

However, unlike just about anywhere else that I have ever lived, this money will not be handed to you. It will, instead, either be slammed onto the counter or into a dish on the counter which is there solely for the purpose of giving the shop assistant somewhere to put your change without having to risk any kind of physical contact.

I have a theory that this may stem from the time when Czechoslovakia was under Communist rule. Maybe the Government were worried that the local resistance people were passing secrets along in stores along with a collaborators change, and banned all physical contact on punishment of 30 years in a Siberian Gulag.

Or maybe it is just a way for the Czech’s to distance themselves from their customers, and what they perceive to be their demeaning job.

Whatever the reason, it can certainly be disconcerting for a foreigner to arrive in Prague and find themselves being treated in such a cold manner wherever they go. The good news is that if you actually travel outside of Prague, people tend to be much nicer and more polite, so maybe it is just a capital city thing.

I know that just about everybody in England has similar complaints about the people of London for example, and my French friends all tell me that the people in Paris are extremely rude.

So my advice to anybody thinking of coming over here for the first time would be come on over, but expect rudeness from staff in most of the places you go, unless
you get out of Prague, in which case people are much more friendly.

Even with the rudeness, Prague is a beautiful city, and I would never do anything to try to deter somebody from visiting. Just please bring me some cheddar cheese if you do decide to come over here!

Running to nowhere

2010-03-03T14:07:00.002+01:00

Back in July last year I wrote this blog update: http://spawny666.blogspot.com/2009/07/end-of-castle.html

At the time I was starting to come to terms with a lot of things about myself. I was hoping at the time that that part of my life was over, and I had finally accepted the things in my past which were beyond my ability to control.

Now I realise that it is not so easy to just forget about things and move on. Since my mother died I have been constantly running, first all my trips to get away from the bar for a while, then the move to Prague to start afresh. I am just now noticing that in my own way I am STILL running, even now.

I have been here for 20 months now, and I have nothing to show for that time. I have all the same clothes that I brought over with me originally, not a single new item purchased. I live in a decent enough flat, but one that is far from perfect.

I have a dead-end job with no prospect of it improving, and a boss who takes me for granted and pays a pittance.

And I drink.

Of course, most people drink, but not the way I do it. I have spent the last 5 days on a marathon drinking session involving practically 24/7 beer and vodka, apart from a brief period on Monday morning where my flatmates were treated to the sight of me passed out in the kitchen as they were getting ready to go to work.

I also regularly wake up in a morning with UDI's, or Unexplained Drunken Injuries to those uninitiated with the phraseology.

If I was 18 or 19 years old, this would be considered normal behaviour, and something that I will surely grow out of. But I am not 18. I will be 37 in a months time, and I need to seriously get my life together and take control, because otherwise I will be lucky to make it to 40.

So here is my plan of action:

I aim to save up enough money to take a TEFL course so I will have the qualification to teach English. This, along with my bartending skills, will allow me to work literally anywhere in the world. I will then continue to save money until I have enough to get me away from Prague, and especially Zizkov. This will allow my liver a chance to repair itself!

My aim is to be out of Prague by this time next year. It is not going to be easy, but with the help of a few friends I think I can make it. Now is the time for me to take control of my life, and stop drowning myself in beer and vodka every night while refusing to come to accept that the bad things that have happened in my past are just that, in my PAST.

Now I need to look to the future, as that is something I can control.

Dumpster Diving for Dummies

2010-02-25T03:26:00.002+01:00

There is a monthly ritual here in Prague that even now, 18+ months after moving here permanently, I still have certain difficulties understanding. And it is all about the dumpsters.

My lack of understanding comes in two parts.....

1 - Once a month, on countless street corners around Prague, the dumpsters arrive. These are huge containers that are designed for the local residents to throw out all of their junk. This part I understand completely. It is a service provided by the local council to ensure things like fly-tipping are unnecessary.

However, where I get confused slightly is in the fact that every single one of these dumpsters is full of junk within one hour of being deposited on it's given street corner.

These things come along so often, and everyone runs out there and throws their junk in. Makes perfect sense right? But why, 4 weeks later, do they all feel the need to go and fill the damn thing up again? Surely they got rid of all the junk a couple of weeks ago, right?.....

Never mind, that is the part of this monthly ritual I find the least puzzling.

Far more disturbing are the monthly appearances of the dumpster divers.

These are people that go to the dumpsters, not to dispose of trash, but to pick through all the other peoples unwanted trash, to see if there is anything salvageable that they can take home and use themselves.

They spend literally HOURS combing through the garbage, looking for that broken lamp that can be mended with a small application of gaffa tape, or that chair that almost matches the other three around the kitchen table, or whatever else it is they are looking for at that given time.

Yesterday, I saw an old guy, very well dressed, spend three whole hours picking through the trash as I was throwing in the remnants of some de-construction work I had done for a friend. I could almost swear that he had a shopping list detailing the kind of things he needed to bring home, or no dinner for him!

Sometimes I see others sit there all day with a wheelbarrow besides them, inspecting every item as it goes into the dumpster, with those things deemed salvageable taken out immediately and placed with all of the other possibly serviceable selections made for that day.

This is a country in the center of Europe, and it is common practice to search through other people's trash to see if you can re-use it.

It is all very bizarre, but is one of the reasons I love the place I live. Where else could you get a mix of people as interesting as those detailed in my previous and current posts?

The Lower Zizkov Liberation Alliance!

2010-02-23T06:34:00.004+01:00

Lately it seems that almost all of my friends are becoming huge conspiracy theorists.

Amongst the things that they are convinced about are:

1 - 9/11 was an inside job.

On this one I can kind of see their point. It was actually what I believed myself when I saw the second plane hit live on my TV screen. As a very good friend of mine said at the time, who was a police officer of more than 20 years;

With any crime it is important to look at who stands to gain the most from it. George W Bush was a worldwide laughing stock after stealing the election from Al Gore. On 9/12, the entire world was falling over itself to show that he had its support in fighting the people responsible.

And a few things that remain unexplained for me with that day include what actually happened to Building 7, and how is it that one of the hijackers was identified by his passport being found in the rubble?

2 - Jet trails.

You know what I'm talking about here. The lines you see behind aircraft overhead. But why do you not see them behind EVERY aircraft? Different weather conditions is one theory, but what about when you look up and see a couple of different aircraft at the same time, and one has a jet trail and the other doesn't?

According to my friends, this is evidence of the powers that be using aircraft to drop some sort of slow acting chemical weapon on us all, in order to dumb down the population and make us more amenable to being controlled by the powers that be.

Not sure I buy that one myself, although it would be interesting to hear a scientific reason for why some planes have chem trails and some don't.

3 - Global Economic Meltdown.

There is no doubt that the worlds economy has been in trouble for the last year or so. The general consensus is that the people running the banks made some huge errors of judgement and got their fingers burned.

But my friends think differently. This is apparently a carefully engineered financial collapse, being facilitated by the New World Order so that they can kill all of us poor people off and start again with carefully selected people and a targeted breeding policy that would put Hitler's Aryan race to shame.

Of course, they are not literally going to kill us all, as that would be too much work for them. Instead, they are going to shut down all of the banks suddenly so that none of us have any money. This, of course, will result in chaos, looting, and eventually a survival of the fittest scenario where people will kill each other over a loaf of bread.

This will provide a great deal of entertainment for the leaders of the New World Order as they sit in their bunkers under Washington, Buckingham Palace, and assorted other places watching it all unfold whilst eating sumptuous banquets and guffaw at the stupidity of us working class idiots for allowing ourselves to be treated in such a manner.

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But fear not, the poor people of the world, because salvation is at hand with the Lower Zizkov Liberation Alliance!

This is a group of enlightened individuals who see what the world is becoming, and are making plans to survive the impending economic Armageddon. Already, food is being stockpiled ready for the day when all of the stores are closed. Medical supplies are also being stored in case members of the Alliance become ill after civilization as we know it comes to an end.

People are being assessed with regards the skills they possess, and being assigned tasks in order to ensure the survival of the group. Dark times are approaching, and the world as we know it is about to end. If you want to survive, and you have a skill that could be of use to the rest of the group, now is the time to head to Zizkov.

Space in the Alliance Headquarters Building is limited, as are the number of people who can safely stay there. So get your name submitted now, as otherwise your survival is uncertain!

You will have to take your chances in attempts to locate the Alliance though, as their whereabouts are a closely guarded secret due to the sensitive nature of their knowledge of the New World Order. Each member of the Lower Zizkov Liberation Alliance is in dire fear for their own lives in the run up to the planets impending doom, and must take daily precautions against assassination.

The L Word

2010-02-21T19:52:00.003+01:00

This is something I have been thinking about quite a lot lately. And I don't mean the soft porn lesbian tv show. Although I have nothing against that either!

No, I'm talking about something completely different.

In the last few months I have started to have certain feelings. I don't really understand what has gotten into me, or why. Although I at least know WHO. But the feelings I am having are wrong for a number of reasons.

Age is one, background another. The fact that at some point in time, possibly a year from now, perhaps sooner, maybe later, we are going to go our separate ways, these are certainly reasons to reign in those feelings I have.

And yet, I can't help myself. Every time I look at, or even think about, this particular person, I feel a weird sensation that I am totally unused to. And I know that she has similar feelings, because we have discussed it several times. We both know that in the long term things would never work out between us.

Still, we are drawn to one another.

This is something that is completely new for me. I have always been a loner, as described in an earlier entry. But this person makes me think about things in a different way. I have never been a guy that chases after women, preferring to take things as they come and go naturally.

With her, it is different. I want to impress her, to show her what I am capable of achieving, even though I have no idea myself what I want to do with my life.

Already she has made me more mellow, more open to other people, although none of my friends seem to have noticed! I am a guarded person, always very careful about revealing any information about myself to others, and yet she knows all of my secrets.

She is the first person I have ever met that I have been willing to lay things on the line and be vulnerable around.

I know that things are unlikely to ever progress beyond friendship, as deep down we are both too afraid of ruining what we have already established together. But I want SO much more, and it hurts me just to think about the fact that I may never get a chance of what I want.

As I said at the start, having these kind of feelings is something that is completely new to me. I don't really know properly how to describe it. I have never loved anybody before, so maybe that's what it is. It would explain why I don't understand things at least.

Maybe that's what this is all about. Perhaps I am, for the first time ever, falling in love with somebody. I don't know though. It's all new to me..

It's been a while.....

2010-02-10T05:06:00.002+01:00

I know I have been neglecting this blog recently. Some people would say I have been missing in action. But I think it is more a case of being missing in IN-action, as obviously the lack of updates makes it clear there hasn't been much of note going on in my life for the last 5 or 6 weeks!

Truthfully though, I have just been too busy trying to stay afloat in the madness that has enveloped me recently. My last post was in the run-up to Christmas, so I guess I should explain where I have been in the meantime, as it is now practically the middle of February!

I worked like 13 days straight through the Christmas and New Year period, including all of the days normal people have off. This led to me being pretty cranky and tired, and was not conducive to good writing! I did manage to make time to go to a friends bar on Christmas Day for a full Christmas dinner with all the trimmings, but had to leave that early to go to work myself!

Thanks to Ari at the Black Widow for making it happen though, and to Marc for cooking around two thirds of the turkey! I have an iron constitution fortunately, so was not in any way ill after eating several portions of the almost cooked bird!

So, after the Christmas and New Year period was over, I finally had a day off on Monday 4th January. Which did not go at all according to plan!

I went to my new favourite after work bar after work on Sunday 3rd January, and was ambushed with lots of shots of vodka. In fairness, this is normal practice in this particular bar, and is no doubt one of the reasons I like it so much! Although in the last week both of the bartenders there have quit, and I am reserving my opinion on their replacements. Although it will undoubtedly be good for my liver for the time being as I wont be getting forced to drink shots I didn't order!

Anyway, back to the tale of what has been happening to me recently. went to my favourite bar, and was, as usual, plied with lots of un-ordered vodka, and I finally got home at around 9am. Which was cool, as I had no real plans for the day, other than to wake up at some time and go out and get drunk and celebrate my day off!

Problem was, a friend of mine called me at around 3pm and asked me to come and meet him to discuss a business proposition. So I arranged to meet him in about an hour, figuring it would take me that long to get myself sorted out and get to where he was. And that was when my day went awry!

My flatmate, Martina, heard me talking on the phone. Next thing I know, she was knocking on my door telling me she needed my help with something. So I threw some clothes on and left the room, only to discover that the thing Martina needed help with was a bottle of vodka!

There I was, practically asleep, and being handed a full glass, using American 'finger' measures, around 4 fingers of vodka, and being told I need to take it as a shot. Two hours, and a couple of bottles of vodka later, I finally escaped the flat to meet my friend. Who promptly ordered me beer after beer after beer for the next few hours. By this time, it is around 10pm, and I have had a litre of vodka and around 12 beers.

Business with my friend concluded, off I went to start my pre-planned tour of Zizkov for the evening. I managed two more beers before I fell asleep at the bar of my second stop. Did I mention already that I forgot to eat that day? Probably not....

Anyway, I then got back into my usual swing of working 6 nights a week, and going out after work and spending most of my wages trying to relax after the stupidity of the bar I work in. I generally work in a triangle of work, drink, sleep, with the sleep side being the very short side of the triangle.

Then I got hit by a bombshell. Martina, my flatmate for 14 months, had found somewhere else to live, and was moving out. In FOUR DAYS! And I had that length of time to find a months rent!

Which I just about managed to scrape together thanks to various loans from friends who will remain nameless. Then I met with the landlord to discuss me taking over the contract on the flat. And was told that I had another 5 days to find what is to me the equivalent of TWO months rent.

Obviously, with Martina moving out, there was an opportunity to find somebody to replace her, which I did, and the new girl paid a hefty deposit up-front which just about meant that I could make the payment the landlord needed on time. But it also meant that for the next few months I will be paying around 30% of the new girls rent in order to make things straight with her.

So the last month has contained a lot of stress for me. But I am coming out of the tunnel of darkness, and by this time next week will actually have some money to spend on ME, instead of rent payments, repaying loans from friends, or anything else for that matter.

Money that I earn that is MINE, and not pre-destined for somebody else before I even earn it...

That will be a truly happy and momentous occasion for me. The good news is, this year has started so badly for me, the rest of it can only get better!

CHRISTMAS CHEER. OR NOT......

2009-12-16T12:08:00.005+01:00

Christmas is that special time of year where families come together, exchange gifts and tokens of their love for one another, and then go away and do whatever it is they do for the rest of the year. It is a time for giving, and for remembering how wonderful life can be, and how lucky we are to have these great people in our lives, even if it is only for one day a year.

At this time of year, it is easy to forget all of the people that DON'T have family members around them. All of those people around the world who will NOT be receiving gifts from their loved ones.

Whether it is the homeless guy you pass every day on your way to work. The old lady down the street who outlived her husband, and her children, and so gets to spend this special time of the year reminiscing about how it used to be special to her too.

There are studies to show that suicide rates are higher over the holiday period than at other times of the year, as people see everyone else having so much fun, which makes their own awful existence seem even worse.

There are, of course, other studies that completely dispute the above sentence. This obviously, is the problem with studies. Every time somebody publishes one, someone else comes along and publishes another which shows the first one to be flawed.

The fact is though, that over the next few weeks, when most people are having a great time, re-connecting with family and friends that they may have seen very little of in the last 12 months, there are many people around the world who will be going through Christmas alone.

I am writing this to try and get people to think about all of the people who have nobody to share their lives with. Not through any choice of their own, or anything that they did wrong, but because sometimes that is the way life works out.

This post is also about the people that may outwardly lead full and joyous lives with plenty of people around them, but who inwardly feel a sense of despair and depression that most of us could never comprehend.

This year is the fifth anniversary of the Indian Ocean Tsunami, in which more than 235,000 people were killed, and millions more were made homeless across 11 countries.

While most of us were wondering what to do with the left over turkey, or trying to figure out just when the annoying sister-in-law was going to take her kids and go home, one of the biggest natural disasters in the worlds history was taking place.

Every January, we remember the victims of the Holocaust, and hope that we will never again see persecution and genocide on such a massive scale. On September 11th, we all pause and think about the horrific terrorist attacks on that date, and in November, we have services all over the world to remember the brave men and women who have died fighting for the freedoms we have today.

Yet each year, we barely think about those 235,000 plus people killed by surging waves, or the millions who are still trying to rebuild their lives and homes.

Of course, each and every year we see natural disasters around the world that cause devastation and destruction, sometimes on an even bigger scale than that of the Tsunami.

As an example, in 1918-19, a worldwide influenza pandemic claimed somewhere between 35-75 million lives, and at least 16 million in India alone!

More recently, between 1995 and 1998, more than 3 million people are said to have died in floods and famine in North Korea.

Every year, malaria takes somewhere between 2 and 5 million lives worldwide. And this is a disease we can vaccinate against!

Throughout history, millions and millions of people have been killed due to earthquakes, floods, famine, and preventable disease. And of course, we can't remember all of these dates, or those people killed, or the loved ones that are left behind.

Christmas is supposed to be a time of joy and celebration, and yet, for all of those people affected by the Tsunami 5 years ago, we can be certain it will be anything but. I know that there will be services on the beaches where the Tsunami hit, and this is right and proper.

But what about the rest of the world? What are we doing to remember these people?

Not only the ones who died, but the ones who didn't, and have to spend each and every Christmas period for the rest of their lives, not in joy and happiness, but in sadness, remembering that their children and grandchildren will not be coming to visit. That their mothers and fathers will not be leaving presents for them under the tree.....

Please, when you sit down with YOUR family on Christmas Day, spare a thought for those people around the world that no longer have one. I am not a religious person, but if you are, I would ask that you offer up a prayer for those for whom the holidays are a time of sorrow, not of joy.

Our time on Earth is finite. None of us will live forever. We all hope to die peacefully in our sleep when we have attained a ridiculously old age, preferably surrounded by our family. And for some of us, this is what will happen.

But for many of us, there will be a different fate, and so I think it is important that this time of year, the time for giving and sharing, perhaps more so than at any other time, is when we should be thinking of those less fortunate than ourselves.

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This post is being entered into a monthly blog competition entitled 'The Great Experiment'. There is a big red button to the right which explains what it is all about. If you think it is worthy of winning such a contest, please go to

www.thegirlwho.net

and leave a message in the comments stating that you would like to vote for me. You can also read the other entries, and vote for whichever one you think is the best.

Many thanks

The Difference Between Being a Loner and Alone

2009-11-30T16:32:00.003+01:00

I've always been a guy that is happiest in my own company. This goes right back to when I was a small child. I know, for example, that when I went to school for the first time, my mother was called in by the head-teacher after a couple of weeks, and advised that I may have to be removed from the school for being anti-social.

When my mother asked for an example of my anti-social behavior, she was informed that at each break time, while all the other kids ran outside to play, I stayed behind in the classroom alone, reading.

In my opinion, and also, in fairness, the opinion of my mother, reading a book is not the worst example of anti-social behavior. It's not like I was bullying other kids or anything like that. She also pointed out to the headmaster that I was 4 years old, and the book I was reading at the time was The Hobbit.

She was of the opinion that maybe I didn't want to play with the other kids because they were reading books aimed at people our age, while I was reading Tolkien. She pointed out that perhaps I felt a little too advanced for the kids I was in class with.

As the years went by, little changed. I was always happy enough in my own company, with a book, and didn't really need other people around me to be content.

Don't get me wrong. I have always had friends, no matter where I have lived. But here's the thing. Most people have at least one friend that they went to school with, or grew up with. I don't.

From the day I left school a little over 20 years ago, I haven't had any communication with a single one of my school friends. From the day I left my first job, I have never spoken to a single colleague from that job.

You can probably see a pattern developing here. It doesn't matter where I have been in my life, and I have been around a fair bit, there have been people in my life who I considered friends. Who I have never spoken to again after moving on to the next place.

Of course, in the past, it was a lot more difficult to keep in touch with people when you moved to somewhere different. But in this day and age, there is no excuse not to keep in touch. E-mails and social networking sites, for example, on-line chats, all things that are available to me.

And yet, since I left England in August last year, I have barely had any contact with any of my friends from back home. They were a part of a period of my life that is now over, and a period that did not end in a particularly happy way for me. So perhaps this is the reason I don't speak to them, because they remind me of the bar I used to run, that I took over from my mother after she died.

At least, that is the excuse I try to make for myself. But the truth is, I am a loner, always have been.

I have a lot of friends here in Prague, but I know that one day I will probably leave this beautiful city, and all of my friends here, behind, and it will be like they never even existed.

In the past, this is something that has never bothered me. As I get older though, I am starting to think that it would be nice to have at least one person in my life that will always be there, that will understand the things I am talking about when I discuss where I used to live with the people I meet where I live at that time.

I've always avoided serious relationships with women for the reasons detailed above. I move around a lot, and never keep in touch with the people in the places I have left, and it would not be fair on any woman to get involved with me, only for me to decide I want to be somewhere else.

I am starting to think about this now though. I have always been something of a loner, but for the first time in my life I am starting to actually FEEL alone. And I'm not sure I like this feeling.

Will I ever trust anyone enough to allow them to share my life?

I have no idea.

Am I finally getting to the stage where I am willing to at least think about giving someone a chance to earn my trust, instead of keeping them at arms length?

I think maybe I am.

For just about the first time in my life, I am actually going on a date tonight, instead of just relying on random hook-ups like I always have in the past. It may turn into something special, or it may be over and done with and I'll never see her again within an hour.

And I'm not sure I'm all that bothered whatever way it goes. The important thing is that at least I am giving it a go, and that, for me, is a huge step forwards.....

I THINK I'M IN (CYBER) LOVE....

2009-10-13T07:07:00.003+02:00

There is a woman out there who I have never met, and almost surely will never meet. But I really like everything about her. I love her senses of humour and style, her great (similar to my own) "fuck you I'm going to live my life MY way" attitude....

Over the years I have discovered many things about this particular lady, none of which shall be shared here.

Suffice it to say that I have a serious crush on a woman I occasionally communicate with online. I know already that it will never progress further than the current status, that being two people who have never met.

One of them though is deeply and stupidly in love with the other, despite being aware that he will never get to spend even 30 seconds in the other persons vicinity, even though any meeting would be interesting to be sure!

And the sensible one of the two is already totally in love with someone who is so much better for her than I could ever be, in every way imaginable.

So how did this situation come about? How can I have such a huge crush on someone I have never met, and almost certainly never will meet?

I think that this is one of the wonders/dangers of the internet. You get to see one side of a person, and rapidly develop feelings and thoughts for the whole being. You never get to see their faults, or have to cope with their mistakes or tantrums, but instead only have the good things to consider about them, as that is the only side that they show on such a public forum.

Nobody is perfect. I very much doubt there has ever been a more true phrase. But on the internet, and on things like this blog, we get to reveal certain things about ourselves. Unlike in real life though, we don't need to worry about any social mistakes.

Right now I can read through everything I have written here and delete it if the mood so takes me, for example. Which I can't do in real life when I blurt out something I shouldn't. Which, in my case anyway, is quite often....

And this is why I know, deep down, that should I ever meet the person this post is in reference to, nothing would ever happen between us. I am pretty sure that we could be good friends, but never anything more.

Occasionally one of my friends will ask me what I am doing with my life. Why am I still single at my age? My reply is always the same.

If I ever met a woman who told me she was looking for a guy like me, I would run a thousand miles in the opposite direction. I am, in no order of preference, sarcastic, obnoxious, selfish at times, messy, a drunk, and lazy. Which about covers my good points!

So a woman that is looking for a guy like that must have big issues, and I don't want to know.

On here though, I can be witty, irreverent, smart, and even charming if the mood takes me. Because I have that freedom to sit and think about everything I write here, which in the real world doesn't happen.

On this blog I share a side of myself that I am happy for the whole world to see. When I write short stories another side of myself is revealed.

But the whole package remains protected. What you see on here is not what you will get in real life. Not all of it anyway! Which is why I like the internet so much.

I can think about people that I will never meet, and how we might interact together, and no harm is done. Realistically, I don't even want to meet the woman I refer to at the start of this post, as if I ever did all of my perceptions of her would almost certainly be crushed.

Yes, the side of her I have gotten to know and love through the internet will be there, but in real life so will all of her flaws and weaknesses. I prefer, as a result, to keep things as they are. That way, my dreams can never be shattered!

CHILDHOOD MEMORIES

2009-10-12T16:10:00.002+02:00

I remember being five years old and playing on the roof of an old air raid shelter in next doors back yard. One of my friends thought it would be funny to push me off. I landed badly on the corner of a brick and fractured my right ankle.

That’s the first time I was ever broken.

About a year or so later, I fell out of a 60ft tree from near the top, somehow managing at the last second to grab hold of the bottom branch on the way past to slow myself down enough to only be slightly winded.

That was the first time that I should have been broken.

Nevertheless, I was completely unperturbed by these near misses, and the next day was half way up a rock face when I dislodged a boulder with my foot. I kept my balance, but the boulder hit my friend below me, and he fell sixty feet to land on some rocks in the waterfall below.

That was the first time I ever broke somebody else.

Fortunately, he regained consciousness after a couple of minutes, and by the time we got home the whole incident was a distant memory and not worth telling our parents about.

Before long, I was falling off a rope swing and plunging over a hundred feet straight down, only to land on my head and sustain no damage to anything but my pride.

Still, I never learned.

Since then I have fallen out of, or into, countless trees and rivers, had several motorbike accidents, been hit by a car, and once famously knocked myself out on the side of a truck that mysteriously appeared around a corner as I approached at full tilt running home from school!

I appear to have spent most of my life attempting to cause as much damage to myself as possible, and yet always walk away with minimal damage.

But I have a serious point to make.

Imagine if the Wright Brothers had been stopped from making their maiden voyage because their mother was afraid of what might happen. Or if people had never felt the need to explore and discover new lands, braving long ocean crossings in small wooden boats just to see what lay on the other side.

It is human nature to push boundaries, to explore new places and try new things. Without this, we can never progress as a race, and it is this gene, which I call the stupidity gene, that sets us apart from all the other animals.

But these days we suppress that gene, preferring to keep our kids locked in the house playing video games. We are so afraid of everything outside, that we forget that as a race we are only as strong as we are because in the past people did great things despite their fears.

Now we let the fear rule our lives, and as a result our society is stagnating. We have one chance at life. Use it…..

***THIS POST IS AN ENTRY INTO THE GREAT EXPERIMENT FOR OCTOBER 2009. CLICK ON THE BIG RED BUTTON TO THE RIGHT TO SEE WHAT IT IS ALL ABOUT, AND WHEN THE TIME COMES, IF YOU LIKE WHAT I HAVE TO SAY HERE, GO ALONG AND VOTE FOR ME AND I CAN WIN SOME MONEY!!***

GLORY TO THE CHANCERS!

2009-10-11T17:42:00.003+02:00

Yesterday the football team I play for, the Harp Chancers, played in our second tournament. It was a similar format to the one we played back in July, where, due to a complete lack of preparation and fitness, we were totally humiliated, conceding a total of 66 goals and scoring just 1 in reply, in a total of 5 games which lasted 16 minutes each, or a total of 80 minutes.

This time though, we were feeling much more confident. Weekly training sessions since the July debacle had improved fitness levels hugely, and we had recruited some very good new players as well to strengthen our squad. Our hopes rested mainly on out two French players, Matthieu and Yann.

Matthieu is a great attacking player, super fit, and able to run around defenders as though they are not there. Yann is an excellent goalkeeper, and we knew that despite our improvements overall our goalkeeper would have a lot of work to do.

And then, a few days before the tournament, disaster struck, as Yann was forced to go back to France for personal reasons, meaning that we were entering the tournament without a goalkeeper. We went from feeling that we had a real chance of doing well this time round to just hoping that we could do better than last time.

Just so you have an idea of how we performed last time, here are the stats for the 5 games we played back in July

Game One: Lost 7-1
Game Two: Lost 16-0
Game Three: Lost 7-0
Game Four: Lost 24-0
Game Five: Lost 12-0

So we were looking to improve on both our goals conceded and goals scored stats, and anything else would be a bonus.

We started our first game of the day with a sense of optimism. This was a team that back in July had been almost as poor as us. Surely we would be able to give them something of a game. And then, straight from the kick-off, disaster struck and we were 1-0 down after just a few seconds!

We thought hard to try and get back into things, but on the stroke of half time some ill discipline from an opposition corner, when the players were too busy looking towards the bench to try to make sure substitutions were handled more efficiently than they had been up to that point instead of paying attention to the game, meant one of their players had a simple tap in from two yards, meaning the half time score was 2-0.

This was not the start we were looking for, and early in the second half another goal made the score 3-0. Then we suddenly found a little bit of focus and started to play, keeping the ball on the ground and passing it around instead of just kicking it long all the time. And it paid almost instant dividends, when Lukas pounced on some uncertainly amongst their defence and went on to score our first goal of the day to make the score 3-1.

We spent the rest of the game camped in the opposition half, trying to apply pressure and get the second goal that could have made them worry about throwing away their lead. But it was not to be, and the game finished 3-1, with the team coming off very disappointed in the way we had started the game, but buoyed up a little by how we had played towards the end.

Our second game started as the first had ended, with Vinny breaking away and scoring early on to put us 1-0 up. For the first time in our history as a side, we were actually leading in a competitive match. This was short-lived however, as the other side started to turn the screw, and ended up totally deserved 7-1 winners.

This was a much younger side than ours, and obviously they had been playing together a lot longer. But we took heart from the fact that we had taken the lead against them, and also that if we had actually had a goalkeeper the scoreline would have been much closer.

We went into game three with both some good and bad things to take from the first two matches. Our opponents in this game had won this tournament in the past, and finished runners up a couple of times. So we were up against a very strong side, who romped into a 5-0 halftime lead.

We were undaunted though, and thought back in the second half, where Vinny scored his second of the day to make it 5-1. A lack of concentration at the back meant we were soon 6-1 down, but then Lukas, not wanting to be beaten to our teams golden boot trophy, scored to make it 6-2. We went pushing forwards to try and score another goal, but were left exposed at the back and conceded once more, to make the final score 7-2.

We left the pitch though with a lot of confidence in the way we had played in the second half, and although we had lost our first three games, conceding 17 goals and scoring just 4 in reply, this was a huge improvement on July, where at the same stage we had conceded 30 goals and scored just 1 after the first 3 games.

There was a little break before our next game, and so we went into the nearby restaraunt for something to eat and a nice isotonic drink in order to boost our energy levels.

Whilst we were there, the referee for our last two games walked past, and Roy, who was on the telephone at the time telling Kieron, who had overslept, to get to the venue as quickly as possible and he could still play a part, broke off his conversation by saying "Hold on, I just have to go and bribe the referee."

The ref did not look amused by this statement, even though it was something clearly made in jest, and I had a feeling that it would come back to haunt us. And it duly did.

Early in the fourth game I went in for a tackle where I missed both ball and player, yet the referee, to the bemusement of our opposition, gave a free kick. Then a ball from their goalkeeper went straight out of play, only for the referee to award the throw in to them!

We were clearly not going to get any sort of decision from him in this game, which was proven a few minutes later when Matthieu went past a couple of players and burst into the box, and just as he was about to shoot he was brought down from behind. The opposition players accepted that a penalty had been conceded, and the player who tackled Matthieu apologised to him. And then the referee awarded a goal kick instead!

This only served to anger Matthieu though, and a minute later he burst through once more, and this time he was not going to be denied. We were 1-0 up and it was halftime in the fourth game. The question was, could we hold on for a victory?

The second half started and we were comfortable in defence. Right up until the moment that Matthieu back-heeled the ball and turned to chase after it and run out of defence, only for our goalkeeper to pick up the ball! The referee instantly awarded a free kick for a back-pass, only for one of our opponents to remind him that there was no back-pass rule in this tournament.

He was insistent, however, and from the resulting free kick the ball was deflected into the back of the net. It was 1-1, and we were feeling very hard done by. The game was not over yet though, and a couple of minutes later we had a throw in deep in the opposition half. Matthieu took the throw, and Vinny got a sneaky little touch on it to knock the ball past their goalkeeper.

We were 2-1 up, and time was running out.

Then, with seconds to go, their goalkeeper played a long ball up the field and their striker headed just over the bar. We were safe. But wait, the referee had decided to award a corner. By now, even our opponents were getting fed up of such ridiculous decisions. Nevertheless, they had a chance to salvage a point from the game, and whipped in a dangerous cross....

Which was hoofed away to safety. A few seconds later and the final whistle went. We had done it. The Harp Chancers had won their first ever competitive game of football!

We came off the pitch in a jubilant mood. One more game to go, and confidence was high. We had finally won a game, and deservedly so, despite the referee consistently giving awful decisions against us.

After four games, our record stood as 1 win, 3 defeats, 6 goals scored, 18 conceded, which, compared to July after 4 games was 4 losses, 54 goals conceded and only 1 scored, was an immense achievement. And all without a goalkeeper!

In the final game we were again playing a team who had won this tournament in the past, and who had consistently made it to at least the semi-final stage. So, just as in the third game, we knew we were facing an uphill struggle. But we had just won our first game, so we were feeling confident that we could put in a good performance.

The first half was a very tight affair with neither team really threatening too much. However, a shot from distance took a wicked deflection past our stand-in goalkeeper, and we went in at half-time 1-0 down.

Still, we felt we had committed ourselves well in the first half, and were somewhat unlucky to be trailing. So we went out in the second half sensing that there was still a game to be won here. And then it happened. Lukas went charging through the middle, around their goalkeeper, and slotted the ball into the empty net. 1-1, and Lukas was now tying Vinny for the teams best goalscorer with 3 each on the day.

Then, just a minute later, their goalkeeper tried to hoof the ball upfield, Kieron, who had finally arrived just before the game started, managed to get his head on the ball, which went back the way it had just come, looped over the goalkeepers head, and then dropped down just below the cross-bar and into the net. We were 2-1 up and the supporters on the touchline were going wild.

All we had to do was hold on, keep them out, don't make any silly mistakes....

2-1, just a few minutes to go, and a draw would be a sickening result for us considering we were leading and looking comfortable in defence.

Then the referee, who had been reasonable up until that point, remembered that he had something against us, and awarded a free kick against us on the edge of the box. We were slow getting organised defensively, and they curled the free kick around the wall and just inside the post. 2-2, and we were shell-shocked.

Seconds to go though, and we were still looking to take at least a point from a game that we had been expected to lose easily. Then the opposition broke down the left wing, Matthieu went across and made a great sliding challenge knocking the ball out for a throw in.

Except, that damn referee for some reason decided that sliding tackles were suddenly not allowed, even though he had been letting them go all day, and awarded a free kick. The ball came into the box, there was a big scramble, and somehow the ball was in the back of the net.

3-2, and then the referee blew the final whistle, and we were devastated. To lose that game, when we were so close from winning it but for two goals from free-kicks that should never have been given, was disheartening.

On the positive side, we scored 8 goals on the day and only conceded 21, and 14 of those had come in two games where we had played particularly poorly. Other than that, we had held our own against some very good sides, and recorded our first ever win.

All in all, it was a day to be satisfied with, and the Harp Chancers left the venue with heads held high! All we need to do for the next tournament is make sure we have a first class goalkeeper, and that Roy doesn't try to bribe the referee, and we will have a chance of victory!

TIME TO START JOB HUNTING AGAIN....

2009-10-07T18:51:00.002+02:00

I lost my job today. This was something that was completely unexpected, and stems from a phone call I made at work yesterday. I did something during that call that I have done countless times in the past, but seemingly the company have changed their policy on that particular issue and decided that it meant my position with the company was untenable with immediate effect.

It would have been nice if they could have informed me of this major change in company policy prior to actually firing me for breaking a rule I didn't know existed, but I guess they just don't like to give staff too much information, as otherwise we would have the power to make sure we didn't fall foul of their new rules.

Of course, the situation is compounded by the fact that I was working as an officially self employed person, and only get paid on a commission basis for sales that I make, which means that despite being informed that I was not going to be allowed to work my official notice period, I will not be getting paid any money in lieu of notice. So I'm in the shit. Deep....

There is some hope though. They may take me back, although they will not be able to let me know until the weekend at least, and if they do it will have to be on a full time contract, instead of being allowed to work whichever hours best suited me. And I think this is where the problem really lies....

I was not fired for anything I said on the phone. This was just an excuse. I was fired because last month I worked a total of 58 hours, and earned the same amount of money as all of the normal staff who work 160 hours per month. And the management don't like it.

So they have come up with an excuse to ditch me from my current contract, based on something that would be, at the very worst, a slap on the wrist for one of their full time employees, in order to try and get me to accept a normal full time contract, where I work a massive amount more hours for the same money.

Which I don't want to do. If nothing else comes up in the meantime, then I will have no choice, as I have rent to pay, food to buy, and a fairly hefty bar tab still from my recent 3 months off work.

But I have an interview for another job in an hours time, and have applied for 3 others today already, so hopefully I can finally be free of that dreadful place that has been like an albatross around my neck and dragging me down since I first came to Prague.

MY BIGGEST REGRET

2009-10-03T16:55:00.003+02:00

Over the years there are plenty of things I have done that I later wished I hadn't, and at least as many things that go the other way around. Yet the thing I regret the most stems around someone I knew for most of my life, but never got on with.

I doubt anyone that really knows me is reading this. Hell, most of the time I doubt anyone at all is reading this blog. So is there any point in me spewing out all the crap that is about to issue forth from my fingertips, to be transferred via my keyboard to this small ocean of cyberspace that I call my own?

Actually, I think there is. Because whether people read it or not, this is something that has been festering in my mind for a couple of years now, and it's time, even if only for my own sanity, to finally accept it and get it out in the open. So here I go....

I never really knew my real father until I was 16. He walked out on my mum and her 5 kids shortly after my youngest sister was born. At the time I was around 3 years old, so you can forgive me for not knowing exact dates I hope!

Anyway, there followed a few boyfriends, none of whom apart from the last, I can remember much about. And all I can remember about the last one was that he had one hell of a temper and was not really conducive to a stable family environment for us 5 kids.

And then, when I was 8 years old, a form of salvation arrived. I think my mothers boyfriend had hit her or something. I'm really not sure what happened. But one moment all of us kids were down the street playing with the neighbours kids, and the next thing we knew we were being dragged into the house and told to throw some clothes in a bag, as we were going away.

Away, as it turned out, at least initially, to my grans house. Looking back on things, I have no idea how we all crammed into that little house. My gran, my three uncles, my mother, and us five kids. All in a small 3 bedroom house!

We weren't there for long, maybe a couple of weeks, before this guy showed up and started spending some time with us. Soon after that, we had moved to his place in Manchester, and this would be the man my mother would be with until she died. I would later learn that he was also the father of my two elder sisters!

Talk about a slightly dysfunctional family!

His name was Ian, and at first I had no problems with him. He seemed a nice enough guy, easy enough to get on with, laughing and joking a lot, and strict only when required and with good reason. My two elder sisters, naturally, were calling him dad pretty much straight away, and my younger brother and sister soon settled into the same routine.

But not me. Not once, in the entire time I knew him, did I ever call him 'Dad'.

At the time it was out of some misguided loyalty to my real father. I have no idea where this sense of loyalty came from, as I didn't even know the guy. I just knew that Ian was not my dad, and so to call him by that name would be, in my mind, a lie. And I knew that telling lies was bad.

Things progressed without too many issues for the next few years, and life, as it generally does, just plodded along from one day to the next. Then something happened that changed the family dynamic.

Ian's mother died. I only actually got the full story on what happened about 18 months ago, and I don't think it is something I want to go into on such a public forum. Just a few months later, his father died too, and the change in Ian was obvious.

He started drinking more, and working less. He became very quick tempered, and in my eyes it always seemed to be me that received the brunt of his anger.

Two incidents in particular spring to mind:

One morning he accused me of being in his room the night before, claiming to have seen me when he looked back on his way out to the pub. I had been in bed at the time, and had certainly not been anywhere near his room. But he insisted that he had seen me, and started berating me even more for lying to him.

I knew that he was wrong, that I hadn't been in his room, but it quickly became apparent that he was not going to admit to being wrong, a trait that I would become all too familiar with in the years that followed.

In a flash of genius, I imagined a compromise. A way that he could have seen me after all, but I would still not be admitting to knowingly going into his room:

Maybe I was sleepwalking....

This was not such an outlandish suggestion, as there had been a couple of incidents where I had woken up in a completely different room to the one in which I had fallen asleep in.

However, it sent him mad. He accused me of making up the idea that I might have been sleepwalking to try to justify being caught in his room, where I should never have been in the first place. This was the first time I ever got hit for something I hadn't done, and the beating was more severe because of my 'lying' about it.

On another occasion, me and my brother went to our grans on a Sunday afternoon. This was a common occurrence, and it gave my mother a break from all of us kids, as my sisters went off to see our grandfather at the same time. We tended to alternate each week, just so none of us got too bored.

We left our grans house at the same time we always did, giving us ten minutes to make the five minute walk to the bus stop. So we were pretty pissed off when we saw the bus come around the corner early when we were just approaching the stop, and then drive straight past us. Especially as the next bus was not for another hour, and we had to be home by a certain time.

After a quick discussion, we agreed that the best thing to do was to run the four miles from where we were, just outside Radcliffe, to Whitefield, which was about halfway between Radcliffe and Manchester, and from there we could get several different buses to take us the rest of the way, and so perhaps make it home in time for our 7pm curfew.

And we almost made it. We walked into the house at 7:04pm. I will always remember the time, and the sight of Ian sat there, whiskey bottle already open, asking us where the hell we had been until this time!

I tried to explain about the bus coming early, which earned me the first slap of the night for lying. As the elder brother, I was responsible for us being late, and so my younger sibling got off with no punishment. In fairness, I had no problem with him not being punished as he, like me, had done nothing wrong. But in the eyes of Ian, it was a different story.

He had decided that we must have been messing about otherwise we would have gotten to the bus stop on time, and nothing I said would change his mind on this. The more I tried to protest my innocence, the more I got hit for telling lies.

As a result of this kind of treatment, at the age of 16 I left home to go and live with my real dad, who had recently got in touch once again. Within a year, I was back home again, having become quickly aware that the reason my beloved father had re-appeared when he did was because he knew his eldest child was ready to leave school and get a job, and so earn money, which he was more than happy to take out of my bank account and spend whilst I was at work!

Over the years that followed I would leave home on numerous occasions. I moved down to Bristol for a while with work, then I went hitch-hiking around Europe for nearly a year, and then another trip to America for around 9 months. Always, though, I would end up back at home, and Ian really didn't seem to like having me around.

If I had been the kind of son who just lazed around sponging off his parents, refusing to work and expecting handouts all the time, I would have understood this attitude completely, and condoned it as well.

Although of course, if I had been that kind of guy I would have in fact been a selfish bastard and so would not have seen anything wrong with behaving in such a way!

But I was not like that. I was always working for my own money. At one point doing three jobs at the same time. All of which paid crap money, which is why I had three of them, but it was MY money that I was going out and spending. So he had no real reason to resent me as much as he did, but the fact that the relationship between Ian and myself was approaching breaking point was obvious to everyone.

By this time, my mother was running a pub, The Castle, where she had been working since I was around 15 years old, and I was helping her out where possible, at the same time as working full time myself. Ian had stopped working pretty much the moment my mother took over the pub, preferring instead to just sit at the bar all day and night and pick fights with people.

Then one day I was forced to work late, so I called my mother to tell her I wasn't going to be home as planned to help out with the bands that were organised for the night. She had no real problem with this, and so I got on with work.

I finished work that night at 10pm, and decided to go for a quick pint on the way home. I was halfway down my first pint when I realised I had left my keys to the pub in work, which was a problem as I had to leave for work at 6am the next morning, and so would need to borrow either my mothers or Ian's set of keys in order to get out the following day.

So I called my mother to arrange this, only to find that there was something wrong with my phone. I could get as far as saying "I have a slight problem" when my mother answered, and then the phone would cut off. After this had happened two or three times, I instantly decided to get home as quickly as possible, in order to make sure that she was not too worried about me.

So I ran across the street to the tram stop, for the first and only time in my life leaving behind a half-full beer, and got the first tram back into town. Half an hour later I was in the pub, to be greeted by Ian in full-on rage mode.

He wanted to know what I was playing at, calling my mother up and saying I had a problem and then hanging up on her. He asked me repeatedly if I thought I was being funny making her panic like that. As usual with him, he would not listen to a word I had to say, and I was becoming increasingly angry.

I was ready to hit him, but I knew that if I threw one punch it would be impossible for me to stop. Years of slurs, abuse, and pent up anger were welling up within me, and his head was about to become the focus point of all of it. One punch, and I wouldn't stop until he was dead.

Instead, I took a deep breath, then threw my phone at his head, shouted at him to try and make a call on it himself and he would see what the problem was, turned around and walked out of the door.

I had no idea where I was going, and just walked around aimlessly for hours. Then I realised that it was almost time to go to work, so I did just that. I arranged to stay at a friends house, and started to slowly move my things out of the pub, piece by piece, and never when he was around.

It would be six months before we would speak to each other again. He would always go upstairs when I walked into the bar, and I would always leave when he came back down again.

Slowly but surely though, an uneasy truce was declared, and I eventually moved back into the pub.

In the years that followed, we tended to try as much as possible to avoid speaking to one another, as conversations between us would invariably turn into blazing rows, which was not a good way to behave in front of the pubs customers. At least a couple of nights a week though, he would start an argument with someone or other, quite often my mother, and would rarely go to bed at night without in some way making it clear to the whole bar that he was the most important person there.

Life went on like this for several years, with the tension always bubbling just under the surface, but with both of us trying to keep it down there and not out in the open.

And then my mother became ill. Then we were told she was going to die, and soon.

Ian and I instantly agreed that anything that was said in anger, by either side, while mum was dying was to be classed as an outpouring of stress and not to be taken seriously, and that no grudges would be held, no matter what was said.

We had decided that we had much more important things to deal with than our own battles, which without doubt was the only way we could get through things.

And get through them we did. It was hard, but I don't recall a single row between us in the time that my mother remained alive. There was one hell of a row a couple of days after she died though.

My sisters and I had been discussing pall-bearers. I wanted to be one, of course, and the partners of my two elder sisters also wanted to be involved. Which left three more people. My three uncles all made it clear they were not interested.

So I asked my mothers two best male friends if they would help, and they were honored to do so. Which still left one spot, which was for Ian if he felt up for it, or we would need to ask someone else if he didn't.

The next afternoon I broached the subject with him when he was sober, as I didn't want to discuss it with him when he was drunk. And he went absolutely mental at me, telling me that it was HIS job to sort out who the pall-bearers were, and he had decided that he was going to get the funeral home to supply them, and everyone else could go screw themselves.

He told me, in no uncertain terms, that he would not allow me to carry my mothers coffin into the church.

One of my sisters was there to hear this, and she jumped in front of me before I could swing a punch, at which point I walked out of the door and stomped off down the street. I called my other two sisters, explained what had happened, and told them that unless he changed his mind I would not even be going to the funeral.

Then I called my best friend and told him to meet me in a pub on the other side of town, and proceeded to get wasted.

I finally got home at around 6am the next day, and when I got up to open the pub Ian was sat there. The first thing he said to me as I came downstairs was that he had asked one of the regulars in the pub to help carry the coffin, as he didn't think he could do it himself.

This was the nearest I ever got to an apology off him. For anything throughout my entire life.

Remembering the deal to forgive and forget anything that was said though, I sucked in a deep breath, and the subject was never mentioned again. Although I could neither forgive nor forget what was said that day, I could accept that he didn't really mean it even as the words came out of his mouth. It was just his way of dealing with grief.

Six months later, he was diagnosed as having terminal cancer, and the nightmare that had been my mothers illness was in danger of starting all over again.

I spoke to my two elder sisters, and told them I couldn't go through the same thing I had with our mother. It was too soon, and me and Ian had never gotten on with each other anyway. The things I did when my mother was ill were done because she was the one person on the planet that loved me unconditionally, and that I felt the same way about.

Ian and I had been at each others throats for well over 20 years. There was no way I could put myself through those things for him. I just couldn't do it.

An agreement was made that we would deal with things when they became an issue, as at the time he was not actually feeling all that bad. He promptly booked himself plenty of holidays, reasoning that as he didn't have much time left he may as well spend it seeing new places, which I had no problems with, as it meant he was out of my way most of the time.

Then he went on holiday one night, and called me up the next day to say it was no good. He was not in any state to do anything. He needed to come home on the first available flight.

I went upstairs immediately and booked him on the next flight back to Manchester, and called my sisters to let them know what was going on. The next day he was home, and he was a mess. His nose had been bleeding for the last 48 hours straight, and his complexion, which had been bad before, was now much worse.

It didn't take a doctor to work out he didn't have very long left to live.

We got him upstairs and into the living room, and set up a bed for him there, before calling out a doctor to come and look at him and see what could be done to make him more comfortable. The next morning, we were visited by a district nurse, one of the same ones that had treated mum, and she said he wouldn't last much longer.

Just a year earlier, my mother had died in that same room, and seeing him lay there brought all of those memories back to me. I told my sisters once more that I couldn't deal with all that again.

Arrangements were made so that my sisters would take it in turns to come down to the pub for several hours at a time and do what they could to make him comfortable during the daytime. But at night I was going to be alone in the pub with him until other arrangements could be made.

That night, just before going to bed, I went into the living room to see if he needed anything. He was mumbling something, but I couldn't understand a word he was saying. His nose was still bleeding profusely, and by now there was a pile of blood-soaked tissues under his bed.

Not able to work out what he wanted, I put a fresh box of tissues at the side of the bed for him, and made sure that he had a jug of water within easy reach. I also left his mobile phone by his side with my number programmed in, telling him that if he needed anything to just ring me.

Then I went to bed.

I got up the next morning and thought about going in to check on him. I put my ear to the door and listened, but could hear nothing. I figured that this meant he was probably asleep, and so did not want to disturb him, and so went downstairs and got ready to open the pub.

A few minutes after opening my eldest sister turned up, and her husband pulled up at the same time. She asked me how Ian was that morning, and I said I had listened at the door and it was all quiet, so I hadn't wanted to disturb him.

With that, she went upstairs, baby daughter in her arms, and her husband right behind her, to wake him up.

Seconds later my sisters husband was calling for me urgently, and I knew instantly that Ian was dead. I ran up stairs to find Tony holding my sister and comforting her, and went into the room to see Ian face down in the middle of the floor in a pool of blood.

In the two years since this happened, I have tried to justify to myself my reasons for not going into the room that morning. And I have now come to the conclusion that I can't really justify it.

I didn't go into the room that morning, not because I didn't want to disturb him, but because I didn't care enough about him to do the decent thing and check on him.

I knew Ian for 16 years. For two whole thirds of my life he had been my step-dad, and yet I didn't have the decency to walk into his room, knowing that he was not too far from dying, to check on him, and as a result my sister found him in the most horrific of circumstances.

Yes, it wasn't long after my mother had died, and I had certainly not come to terms with that at that point. Of course we didn't get on with each other. But that doesn't excuse how I behaved that morning, not to myself anyway.

I was being selfish, was thinking only of how difficult this was going to be for me, whilst ignoring how difficult it was for my sisters, my two elder ones especially, who had just recently lost their mother, were about to lose their father, and had to deal with me whining about how I wouldn't be able to cope with looking after him.

It is only now, two years later and after a year in Prague coming to terms with what happened in my life in those traumatic last few years I had in England, that I can start to realise and accept the things I did right and the things I did wrong.

My biggest regret? That is, after all, the title of this missive....

Maybe if I had called Ian 'DAD' all those years ago, there wouldn't have been that same animosity between us for so long. Who knows? It's too late to do anything about it now, but at the end of the day he was much more of a father to me than my real dad ever was.

Yet I never accorded him the respect he deserved for taking on the role, and I think that as a result he struggled to accept me, hence the issues between us for such a long time.

I will never know how right or wrong I am in thinking along these lines. I do know that at the time they needed me the most, I let my sisters down, and all because of the personal feelings I had towards the man who raised me, who I always refused to call my dad, and for that, I will always be truly remorseful.

SPORTING GREATS IN THE MAKING?

2009-09-30T02:00:00.004+02:00

A few months ago, I wrote about a football tournament I played in on behalf of my local bar. You can read all about it in my archives for June, under the heading "Chancers is probably an understatement"

Needless to say, the tournament was many things, but a success is certainly not a word that would spring to mind. Why am I bringing this up now? I can almost hear someone ask over the sound of the tumbleweed blowing through this blog? Well, it's simple really. In 11 days, we get to try it all over again!

Only this time, we aim to get things right!

In the months since our last tournament, we have been training hard, working on our fitness levels, our (foot)ball control skills, and may have even managed to recruit a few new players. We are much more confident this time around than we were back in July, when we were a complete shambles.

But is our confidence justified? Well, in fairness, we wont know until the day in question. Honestly though, I believe we are much better equipped this time round than we were back in July. Personally, I have lost somewhere between 60 and 70 pounds in the last few months, so am one hell of a lot fitter than I was then!

And I am still pretty unfit compared to some of the other players on the team!

But we have one hell of a goalkeeper, provided his current ankle injury clears up in time, a very skillful attacking player, and a whole bunch of other guys who just don't know how to give up.

Can we win the tournament? Who knows....

But I am 100% certain that we will cause a few surprises to anyone who remembers us from last time around and expects to have a nice easy game!

I will, of course, report on how we do once the tournament has taken place!

IN ZIZKOV, IT'S ALL ABOUT THE HAM AND CHEESE!

2009-09-20T01:38:00.002+02:00

In recent weeks a new craze has started taking over the Zizkov area of Prague in which I live. It all started innocently enough, with the Harp Hospoda, the bar I play football for, starting to put on sandwiches every week for the players.

It rapidly became apparent, however, that Czech bread, certainly when you are talking about the sliced loaf variety, is not all that great. Within about two minutes of taking a piece out of the packet it is already starting to go stale. So the bar decided to improvise slightly, and dusted down their toasted sandwich machine.

I'm sure everyone reading this has, at some point, had experience of a toasted sandwich machine. On the off chance you haven't though, here are some simple instructions with regards the use of such machines.

The machine can make two sandwiches at once, so you need four pieces of bread. Unlike a normal sandwich, however, you actually butter the OUTSIDE of a toasted sandwich.

So, you start off by buttering two slices of bread, and placing them, butter side outwards in the machine. You then add one slice of ham, and one slice of cheese, to each piece of bread, before placing the remaining two slices, butter side outwards once again, on top to complete the sandwich. Then you just close the machine up and wait until the sandwich is toasted.

Now, this is a very simple thing to do, and on the face of it, there is no reason for such a craze to be developing over it. Yet that is exactly what has happened.

As well as the sandwiches for the football team, the bar has started to sell them. Except, what is actually happening is that the bartender is eating a full loaf of bread and a few packets of bread and cheese each day!

Then I discovered that my flatmate possessed such a machine, and so have been gorging myself in a similar fashion for the last week or so at home. And the bar around the corner is about to start 'selling' them as well, although I suspect that once more it will be more a case of the staff eating them all themselves!

Of course, nobody really cares about the snacking habits of the bar-staff of Zizkov. But I figured, as there is nothing else monumental happening in my life right now, I would tell anyone who may happen to be reading this about our favourite bar food now, so that when it becomes a world-wide phenomenon you will know that it was started in this little corner of Prague!

A MESSAGE FOR AN INSPIRATION....

2009-09-11T02:25:00.003+02:00

Over the years I have met hundreds, if not thousands of people. For the most part I have gotten on pretty well with the people I have met, but I have noticed that there does seem to be a general air of negativity about the vast majority of people these days.

And yet, surely it shouldn't be like that?

We have such great technology these days, we can get pretty much anything we want at the touch of a button, and okay, the last 6-12 months have not been great with regards the global economy, but are any of us REALLY suffering as individuals any more now than we were 12 months ago?

No doubt one or two people are struggling a little more than they are used to, but for the most part people are just doing what they always do. Getting on with life, making ends meet whichever way they can, and not worrying about the global issues as they don't really mean much to the average guy or girl in the street.

We bitch and moan about how things could be better, but in reality we are happy with the status quo. Truth is, most of us are happy to have something to whinge about, as our day to day life is so tedious and boring that without the occasional bout of bitchiness we would all go mad.

This post is not about the human race's desire to endlessly complain, no matter how good things are really, though.

I want to dedicate this particular blog post to someone I first met a few years ago. Someone that would absolutely LOVE to be in the position I am in where I can complain about a dodgy foot playing up every now and again. A person that has more reason that most to look up to the sky and ask the mythical man on a cloud what she has done to deserve all of the hardship and health problems she has had to put up with over the years.

And yet, she is one of the most positive people I have ever met. This is a person that, despite very severe health issues, travels around all over Europe watching bands she loves, and taking photographs of those bands, and doesn't for a moment let the fact she is unable to walk stop her doing what she loves.

A person that always has a smile on her face, is extremely generous, even to people she barely knows, and whose home is always open to friends to come along and crash on the sofa for a few days.

This is a person with more reason than most to look upon the world with pessimism, but who does the exact opposite, and forces everyone she meets to look through her own personal set of rose tinted glasses

She is the kind of person that everyone who meets will consider their second mother, and who will treat everyone she meets as though she WAS their mother.

I have no idea how old this wonderful lady is, and I have no wish to know. But I do know that today is her birthday. So I wanted to take a few moments to write this, and to say....

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMANDA!

Let's hope there will be plenty more to come in the future....

Sexual Harassment - The Flip-Side

2009-09-09T01:20:00.003+02:00

First off, I want to make it clear that I, like any right minded individual, abhor sexual harassment and all of the ugly connotations that come with it. But here's the thing. With any event that has 'ugly connotations', there is always the other side of the story.

To be honest, I don't know what it was that got me thinking about this subject earlier today. It certainly wasn't anything to do with work, as I was on a break at the time, and wandering around, as is my way, exploring the area around where I work. Which for the record, includes a river to walk along, and several really big hills to walk up, and some tunnels through afore-mentioned hills to walk through and stuff....

So it wasn't like I was just walking around the block pondering on an incident that happened a few minutes earlier or anything....

Anyway, there I was, walking through the shrubbery (no Monty Python jokes please) and heading up towards the top of a VERY big hill, and suddenly I got to thinking about the only two times I have ever been involved in any sort of sexual harassment case.

Don't ask me why this topic came to me at the time it did. Maybe it was because I was wading through a bush at the time and just some weird word association thing kicked off in my head....

Who knows?....

Back to the topic at hand though....

When I was sixteen years old I left my home in Manchester and went to live with my biological father, who I had not seen in 12 years or so in Kent. I got a job working in the Sterile Services Department of a hospital. This was basically the place where all of the equipment used in hospitals was sent to be cleaned and re-sterilised after use.

At the time I was working there, I was the only male member of staff, and was working with 30 women. Which could have been a dream, but apart from one girl they were all over 50 years old! The one young girl was a very cute girl from New Zealand, and she was 19 years old, so fairly close to my age.

Now I was a very shy kid at that age, and even though I thought this Kiwi girl was cute, there was no chance in a million years that I would ever have the guts to act on it. She seemed to think differently though.

For three months, every time she walked past me, she would give a gentle pinch of my ass. At first I thought it was an accident, or a mistake or something. The last thing I wanted to do was misread a signal and get a slap from her.

But it went on, and on, and on. Anything up to 10 times a day for three months. Then one day, I walked past her and returned the favour. Ten minutes later I was in the office getting a final written warning for sexual harassment! So my ass gets pinched maybe 600 times by a girl, (working on 10 times a day x an average 20 day working month x three months), and that is fine.

I pinch her ass once, and I get a warning and threatened with "If you do it again we may have to look at putting you on the sex offenders register"!

So, as you can see, I have a certain amount of reason to dislike the system.

The only other time I have ever been involved in anything like this, was about 10 years later. I was 26 by this time, and had been hitch-hiking around Europe a little bit and stuff. I was basically a hell of a lot wiser and a huge amount more street smart than when I had my first job.

At this time I was working for a company that sold mobile/cell phones. You've probably seen the newspaper ads in whatever country you're reading this in offering free phone and free connection and blah, blah, blah and stuff. Well, I worked for one of those companies.

Except, my job was not to sell phones. My job was to contact people who failed a credit check and find a way around it. And I was DAMN good at my job. Before I started there the company was losing maybe 50 sales a day due to failed credit checks. When I left, we still had 50 people a day failing their credit checks, but we were making 70 sales a day from those 50 people!

So I was good at my job. And so, as often happens in a sales team, I was rewarded. In this case with a trip down to the south coast of England to go yacht racing. Which was cool and everything. But the problem was that there was a girl on the same trip who I had enjoyed a one night stand with six months earlier. And her boyfriend.

Now I'm the kind of guy that doesn't like to mess with people's relationships, and when me and her got it on she was single. So all was good. But this particular night she came after me for a second helping, and, seeing her boyfriend at the other end of the bar I said no.

Ten minutes later he had me pinned up against the wall by my throat for 'feeling up his girlfriend'. I eventually managed to calm him down, (by telling him I was gay and would rather feel him up than her, which made him feel flattered, but kind of sick, but at least I was no longer a threat to his masculinity), but he was still watching me the rest of the night just to be sure.

The following Monday, I went to work, and the owner of the company, who had also had a one-night stand with this girl, fired me because of my 'inappropriate actions' on official company business....

Like I said at the start, I hate anyone that uses a position of power to play the sex card against someone. But this should apply to women as well. Because us guys are totally unprotected. At least women have laws in place to help stop neanderthal guys from treating them like pieces of meat. And this is perfectly correct.

But where is the legislation to protect the guys who are wrongly accused of things, just because some bitch is on a power trip?

Please, on this post, I want to see some comments.....

TIN-MAN AND THE GREAT AMERICAN DREAM. (Part Four)

2009-08-28T21:33:00.003+02:00

Quick recap time: Having hitch-hiked around America for a while, and fallen in with a drug addicted truck wheel washer, before escaping and moving on, I found myself working in a bar in Kansas, and falling big time for my manager who unfortunately didn't feel the same about me. Anyway, it's time to move on from there, and into the final installment of the story.
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BACK TRACKING

Once I had made the decision to leave Emporia, I then had to decide where I wanted to go to next. Not anywhere Northwards, that was for sure. That direction led to cold, and snow, and a possibility of accidentally bumping into Tin Man again. The only thing I was certain of was that I definitely did not want to go anywhere that he might be.

So I sat by the truck-stop, trying to hitch a ride to warmer and sunnier climes. For three whole days I sat there, with no success at all. None of the truck drivers would even glance at me. Because of the state of the weather, I had taken to spending nights in a hotel, as it was now too cold to stay in a tent. I was getting back to the desperate state I had been in when I had met Tin Man.

Only I had, foolishly, long ago thrown away the gear I used for cleaning the wheels and gas tanks. I was now down to my last $50. No job, nowhere to live, no concrete plan of where to go. And it was minus 18 centigrade. During the day. I was in trouble, and didn't know what to do for the best.

Then a truck driver came up to me and told me he was heading to Chicago if I wanted a ride. I told him that ideally I wanted to go south, and he said that was fine by him. He was leaving in half an hour if I changed my mind. His was the big red truck right over there.

I wasn't ready to concede defeat on this little adventure just yet. I wasn't ready to go home just yet.

I sat there for the next 25 minutes, feeling the cold creeping into my bones all the time, hoping desperately for a ride that would take me somewhere warm. Then I got to thinking. Was I really going to pass up a lift to Chicago, just because I was too stubborn to accept that the dream was over?

In my bag I had an open return air ticket, valid for any flight from Chicago back to England. In my pocket, I was down to my last $50 or so. No job, no realistic prospects of getting one any time soon. I could either hop on that Mack express back to Chicago, or I could sit here, and probably freeze to death before anyone heading south was willing to give me a lift.

As the driver got in his truck and started the engine, I walked across the road and asked if the offer of a lift still stood. He replied in the affirmative, and a few minutes later I was headed north again, back to Chicago, where this particular adventure had started all those months previously.

Now you probably think that I arrived in Chicago, tail between my legs, and headed straight for the airport, right?

Well you'd be wrong. The tale does not end there. Not at all, although it is getting towards the end, of that you can be sure.

It turned out, my benefactor wasn't going to Chicago after all, although he wasn't going too far from there. He dropped me off at a truck-stop around 20 miles south of Chicago about 40 hours later, before branching off and heading up towards Canada.

You know something strange? In the time I spent in America, I never understood how those truck drivers managed to keep going for the length of time they did. They would literally drive for 30 hours straight, nap for an hour, then do another 20 hour stint. And they did this ALL THE TIME.

Those guys, truly, are the unsung heroes of America. And the weird thing is, I only ever saw one of them take any sort of drugs, although I'm sure there's a lot of it going on in that game. I mean, there has to be. How else can they possibly do it?

Anyway, I'm back doing my digressing thing. I really need to work on that.

So, there I was at this truck-stop, 20 miles or so south of Chicago, and for a little while I got my second wind. I started to believe again that I could make this work, that maybe I could keep going and not have to go home after all.

The first thing I noticed about this place was that it had a 24 hours drivers rest room. This was basically a room where the truckers could go and sit, watch tv for a while, then get back out in their trucks when they were good and ready. Most truck-stops has something similar, but not usually open 24 hours a day.

This meant that I had somewhere I could sit all day, and all night, in the warm. It also meant that instead of me having to hang around on the forecourt trying to catch a ride, I could just sit there and ask drivers when they came in where they were headed, and then try and persuade them to give me a ride if they were going my way.

I figured if I could somehow get down where it was warm, I would find work somewhere. I'm one of those people that always manages to find something when I really need it.

I was trying to preserve the little money I had left, but it wasn't working, and after ten days in the truck-stop, I was finally broke again. It was just about time to give up once and for all.

But I wasn't quite done for yet. There was one final, desperate throw of the dice still to play, and I heard about it on my final morning in the drivers lounge, around about 3 hours after I had been informed by the manager that if I was still there at 10am he would be calling the police, as I had officially over-stayed my welcome.

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CHICAGO HAS A NEW CELEBRITY. OF SORTS

Around about 8am that morning, some guy came into the drivers lounge and threw me a brown paper bag.

“There's some food in there man, enough to get you through the day, and I have a friend of mine willing to give you a lift to Chicago. Get yourself to 601 West Adams. Someone there will be able to help you out.”

I thanked the stranger for his kindness, and, too numb to really argue any more, soon found myself in the centre of Chicago, with the person who had given me a lift pointing in the direction of West Adams Street.

I walked along the street for what seemed an age, looking for number 601. I eventually found it just when I was about to give up, and found the address I had been given was for a homeless shelter. By now I was tired and hungry, so I figured 'what the hell' and knocked on the door.

I was admitted into the building by a kindly looking black gentleman, of indeterminate age, although I later found out he was 42. He told me his name was Peter, and asked what he could do to help me.

I explained I was from England, had no money left, had been looking for work without success, and needed somewhere to stay. He took my bag from me and explained that the rules of the shelter were as follows.

Nobody was allowed in between 10am and 4pm. This was the time when people were expected to go and try and find work. I would be guaranteed a bed for two weeks, after that it would be pot luck depending on how busy the place was whether I would get a bed, or just a mattress on the floor, or, during really busy periods, just a blanket.

The schedule was wake up call at 7am, breakfast at 8am, morning service at 9am. Everyone out of the building at 10am, although a packed lunch would be provided. Back in at 4pm, where people tended to congregate in a common room upstairs. Evening meal would be at 6pm, with another service at 7pm, then one more hour in the common room before bed and lights out at 10pm.

He asked if I agreed to their rules, and I figured I could put up with the religious stuff a couple of times a day if they were going to feed me three times, so I agreed.

I quickly became something of a celebrity amongst the other inhabitants of the shelter. I was the first Englishman most of them had ever met, and they found it hilarious I, a white Englishman, had travelled all this way to end up in a homeless shelter with them. I was dismayed at the percentage of blacks to whites. It was literally around 95% black in there.

Yet there was no bitterness from these people. Most of them were there due to drug or alcohol abuse, yet neither drugs or alcohol was tolerated on site, and anyone who came back from a day out under the influence of either was refused admission to the shelter. They knew the rules, and they knew this was a last chance to better themselves.

I learned that all of the staff had at one point been homeless people themselves, had spent time on the streets, and so knew what the people staying there night after night were going through. Most of the inhabitants said they didn't like the religious stuff too much, but, like me, they put up with it, as without it they would have had nothing.

On my second day, I was shocked when I was eating my evening meal, and one of the meanest looking guys in the place came up to me and offered me a piece of bread from his plate.

“You look like you need some feeding up, English. We can't have our celebrity going hungry now, can we?” I was waiting for some kind of punch-line, or some sort of abuse to follow. It never came. He was deadly serious and really was worried that I was too thin! And not only him, it seemed, as from that point onwards every meal-time I seemed to get an extra bit of something from the person serving the food.

These guys were the lowest of the low, showing ME, a person who was basically there by choice, with a 'get out of jail free card' by virtue of a plane ticket in his bag, sympathy and compassion.

I'm not a religious man, and nothing will ever convince me that there is a God. However, many of these people DID believe, and for them, that was all that mattered. As I talked to different people, I found that the shelter was home to convicted rapists and murderers, people who had been released on parole but had nowhere left to go.

And each afternoon, from 4pm onwards, they would start to stream through the front doors again, many of them going upstairs to the common area, yet a good percentage of them going straight to the chapel.

I stayed in the shelter for the two weeks that I was guaranteed a bed, and by then I felt that it was really time to go home. On my final afternoon there, a Sunday, the weather was deemed too bad for anyone to go outside, and so a television set was put up in the common room, and everyone had a rare treat, as they were allowed to watch the American Football wild-card play-off game between Tennessee Titans and Buffalo Bills.

This was a game that to this day is remembered for what became known as the 'Music City Miracle', when with seconds remaining, and after Buffalo had just taken the lead, a kick of return was passed first to tight end Frank Wycheck, who then threw a cross-field lateral pass to wide receiver Kevin Dyson, who ran the whole length of the field for a touchdown to win the game.

I know the next morning, when I left the Christian Homeless Shelter, everyone was still talking about that miracle touchdown.

It still wasn't nearly enough to make me believe in God of course, as Tennessee eventually lost in the Super Bowl anyway. But still, it made those guys in the shelter happy, so that was good enough for me.

A few hours after leaving the shelter, I was on a flight back to Heathrow from Chicago. When I got home that night, my sister insisted I was ridiculously thin, and insisted on cooking me all kinds of silly foods.

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THE AFTERMATH

It's now nearly ten years since my trip to America. In the time between, I have done many things with my life, and made many friends. But at least once a day I think about Nicole, and not a single week goes by where I don't think about the people in the homeless shelter in Chicago, and how lucky I was to have met them.

I went through some tough times during my American adventure, but in hindsight I believe each and every one of those tough times I went through helped mould me into the confident, well rounded, (mostly anyway), individual that I am today.

If I didn't have people like Tin Man in my past, I would never have had the confidence to do some of the things I have done since.

Things like jumping out of perfectly good aircraft just because it sounds like fun, like chasing one of my favourite bands around Europe, initially for 3 days of a 2 week tour, and then next time round just dropping into a different city, in a different country, once a week for 6 weeks, just to show them that I care.

I would never have had the confidence to promote the same band in a country where I didn't speak the language, and where the only people I knew from that country now lived in mine. Okay, the actual gigs themselves were disasters, but I did manage to get top class venues organised, book hotels, transport, and all kinds of other things as well.

It's not my fault if people couldn't be bothered showing up to watch the damn gigs!

A 500 Euro taxi ride across Spain, when I only had 250 Euro's in my wallet, and was hoping that enough money could be put on my credit card before I got to the other end, is also an experience I wouldn't have missed for the world.

The greatest adventure of all though, was the 36 hour drive from Czech Republic to Istanbul, then 36 hours back again, for the 2005 Champions League Final. The greatest football game of all time, one I probably would have missed were it not for my American adventures years earlier.

Damn, that was a fun trip!

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Authors Note: Almost everything detailed above happened as stated. The only two things that are changed are the name of the town where I was arrested with the flag (awful memory), and the address of the homeless shelter I stayed at in Chicago, for the same reason, although it could actually be the right hostel after all. It was so long ago I just don't remember any more.

Tin Man was a real person, and I never did learn his real name, hence it not being mentioned here.

Nicole, also, was a very real person, and someone I still think about on a regular basis. Although as you can probably imagine, after 9 years not quite as regularly as I used to!

BACK DOING WHAT I LOVE BEST.....

2009-08-24T17:36:00.002+02:00

This weekend I worked behind a bar for the first time in over a year. For the first time since I closed my own bar and ran away to Prague in fact. And there were two things I noticed, although neither of which really surprised me.

1- I absolutely LOVED every minute of it....
2- I took to it like a duck to water, with no problems settling in at all.

Of course, number two was no doubt helped by the fact the bar in question is my local bar, so I know most things about how they run things there already, and a lot of the customers are people that I drink with several times a week, so there was no need to try and get to know people of course!

I worked Saturday night and all day Sunday. Both were short notice affairs, as the regular barman was off watching Australia get battered at cricket by the English, and the landlord decided he would prefer to be on the social side of the bar than the working side. Although I know myself that in reality you work just as hard regardless of which side of the bar you are sitting on sometimes!

The regular guy should be back tonight, which is cool. I don't know when I am going to get another shot behind a bar, but at least after this weekend I do know that when the chance comes knocking I still have what it takes. And the boss of my local knows that he has someone he can turn to in an emergency as well now, so all in all it was a good weekend I reckon!

Now I am going to do something I have been meaning to get around to for a long time, and actually start writing my first novel. Wish me luck with that one, as it's taken me over 5 years to start it, so who knows how long it will take to finish!

THIS HAS NOT BEEN A GOOD WEEK FOR ME.....

2009-08-20T03:15:00.003+02:00

Every now and then I get this thing in my life where I go all self destructive. I drink too much all the time, but when this is coupled with several days of forgetting to eat anything, that is where it becomes scary as hell. And that is what happenend this weekend/stroke start of week....

On Saturday, the Premiership football season began. And I was so excited about that I forgot to eat anything that day. I think. There is a slight chance I MAY have cooked some pasta when I got home from the pub at stupid'o'clock on Sunday. but no conclusive evidence either way.....

On Sunday, I was back in the bar to watch my beloved Liverpool start the season with a pathetic and totally deserved loss. This induced a pretty sustained bout of alcohol abuse, and there is no doubt at all, I did not eat anything when I got home.

On Monday, I had agreed to go and help a friend with a little demolition work. She had just acquired the shop next door to her bar, and wanted to double the size of said bar. The problem was, the floor in the shop next door was rotten and needed to be removed. In discussions we had later, we deduced that for a Czech builder, this would be a job that would take several days.

I did it in 5 hours. Using only a hammer. Remarkably enough, I was in need of a beer or 20 once I'd finished. And, of course, I forgot the food thing again.

Tuesday saw me having to play football, and I was an absolute MESS. So much so, that I volunteered to be a substitute player, only coming on to replace people that were exhausted, before we knew if we had enough players to begin with! Then an extra guy turned up, and we ended up playing 6-a-side instead of the usual 5-a-side.

And in case I didn't mention it already, I forgot to eat before we started playing!

Once the hour of running around like idiots was over, we retired to the bar that we play for, where I took one sip of beer and damn near passed out, exhausted. I rapidly deduced that the way forwards was to go home, and so I did, and my traditional 10 minute walk from bar to flat took 4 times as long as normal, such was my physical state.

Today, (Wednesday) I made a point of eating several times. I'm still fucked though. Probably has something to do with the nine or ten beers I just drank! Will I never learn?

TIN-MAN AND THE GREAT AMERICAN DREAM. (Part Three)

2009-08-16T13:42:00.002+02:00

The story so far: Having arrived in America, I hitch-hiked around for a while before ending up working at a truck stop polishing the wheels and gas tanks of trucks with a drug addict called Tin Man. This tale continues with what happened after I left said truck stop and moved on....
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WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?

A few days later I found myself in a very small truck-stop in a place called Emporia, Kansas. It could only hold maybe 30 trucks at a time, but it seemed pretty busy, so I decided to give it a few days and see what happened.

Learning a lesson from Tin Man, I pitched my tent in a copse of trees adjacent to a field behind the truck-stop. Somewhere that I could get to my stuff quickly if need be, but somewhere that a casual observer was never likely to spot.

Then I set about trying to make money.

It quickly became obvious that this place was never going to be the same kind of money spinner Des Moines had the potential to be. But that place could hold 20 times as many trucks, so that was no great shock. I soon got into the habit of getting up at 7am, heading across to the truck-stop, and approaching drivers throughout the day as they arrived asking them if they wanted their wheels and gas tanks polished.

It was hard work, but it was usually good for around $30 a day, and after a meal in the adjacent cafe, I would retire to my tent with a couple of beers around 8pm, before doing it all again the next day.

My life continued like this for a couple of weeks, with me gradually building up some savings. When I got to $300, I figured I was due a day off and a bit of me-time, so I cleaned myself up as best I could, then headed into town for my first Saturday evening out for months.

Arriving in town, the first thing I noticed was a hairdressers, and as I hadn't had a trim since arriving in America, I decided to treat myself to a haircut and a shave. A half hour later, feeling like a new man, I walked into the bar next door, and ordered myself a draught beer for the first time since I had left Canada, nearly three months before.

It wasn't long before I was in deep conversation with the lady behind the bar, and I'd already made up a story for what I was doing in such a strange place. I'd been hitch-hiking around apparently, ended up with a bad crowd, and found myself suddenly without money. I'd picked a few things up on my travels, and so was working out at the truck-stop up the road trying to get myself back in a position where I could resume my travels properly.

After 5 or 6 hours, I was feeling pretty drunk, so decided to head back to my tent before I forgot where it was. I was invited back the next night by the lady behind the bar, and she said she might even know someone who could help me out with work.

This intrigued me somewhat, and so the next evening I arrived back at the same bar at around 7pm, just in time for the first American Football game of the season to start. So I sat and watched the game, and pretended I was interested, as it was clearly so important to everyone in the bar the the Chiefs got off to a good start, and then, when the game ended, got ready to leave.

“Don't go just yet, son,” said the lady behind the bar, who I later found out was called Mary. My husband will be here in a moment, and he wants to talk with you.”

So I waited, and, true to her word, a few minutes later her husband, Gary, walked in the door.

“Gary, honey. This is the young man from England I was telling you about last night.” Mary said as soon as he came into the bar.

He looked me up and down, and I did the same to him. A little shorter than me, but not much, probably late 50's, looked pretty lean, as though he spent a lot of time working outdoors. First impressions?

A man that I could respect and trust, and he seemed to reach a similar conclusion about me.

“Ever done any bar work, son?” he asked.

“Yes sir. A little over 10 years, in 8 different countries. I'd say I'm a pretty competent bartender.”

“Well, I don't have any jobs going here. But I think my son may have. Come with me.”

With that he led me outside and we got in his pick-up truck, and he proceeded to drive a few blocks further into town. Gary parked behind what appeared to be a pretty big bar, then went in through a side door that he had a key for. He then went straight up to the bar and asked where Gary was, at which point I became momentarily confused. I thought he was Gary?

Turned out his son was also called Gary, and he was in the office waiting for us. Walking into the office, I was introduced once more as 'the Englishman we mentioned last night,' and was asked the same question;

“Ever done any bar work?”

“10 years, 8 different countries,” Gary Senior answered for me. His son looked at me for a few moments.

“Be here at 12 noon tomorrow. Ask for Morgan.”

With that I was clearly dismissed. Gary Senior drove me back to his bar, and offered me a nightcap, which I politely refused. I'd already had quite a few watching the football game, and I didn't want to make a bad impression the next day at what I assumed would be a proper interview.

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A NEW JOB

The next day I arrived bright and early at the bar, which I now realised was called Bruffs Bar and Grill. I walked up to the bar and asked for Morgan, and a very pretty lady came out of the office and said

“That would be me. And I'm guessing from the accent that you would be Damien, our new member of staff.”

“I guess so, although I kind of thought I was here for an interview.”

“Don't worry about stuff like that. It's much more informal than that here. If Gary decides someone is getting a job, we make room for them. It is his place after all. I'm Morgan, the deputy manager by the way.”

“Cool, Damien, pleased to meet you,” I replied.

“Don't get too used to me though. Tomorrow is my last day,” she said, giggling slightly, before calling another girl over.

“Hey, Nicole, come meet our newest recruit,” she shouted across the bar.

I looked across to where she was shouting, and was instantly smitten. This was a girl I could enjoy spending time with for sure.

“Nicole is taking over from me as deputy manager, so she'll be your immediate boss.”

“That makes you my bitch,” said Nicole grinning. If I wasn't careful, I was going to get myself in trouble over this girl. That grin, man. I felt something, right there and then, that I have only felt a couple of times since, and never as strongly again.

“Okay, down to business,” said Nicole. “I'm guessing you don't have a work permit?”

“I'm afraid not,” was my sheepish reply.

Morgan and Nicole looked at each other and started laughing. “Whatever you do, keep that accent,” they said simultaneously. “You do NOT want to end up with a Kansan accent.”

Okay, so this was a little surreal, but after Tin Man and friends, anything had to be an improvement surely. Especially if it meant working with....

Nicole....

“Right, no work permit, okay,” Nicole was going all business like on me again. “All of our bar staff have to be registered with the police, state law, and they come in now and then to check the people behind the bar are registered. This isn't helped by the fact the station is across the road.

So, what we'll have to do is employ you as a doorman, who doesn't need to be registered, and you can help out on the bar with private parties as and when they happen. Wage is $5 an hour, under the table of course, we can guarantee you 30 hours a week on the door, parties will be on an as and when basis. How does that sound?”

Wow. I wasn't expecting that.

“Sounds great. When do I start?”

“Tonight at 8pm. We'll have you do Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, 8pm until we close at 2am. Monday and Wednesday you'll usually be on your own, but tonight we'll have someone on to show you the ropes. Now, what size shirt are you?”

“Erm, extra large I guess.”

“Cool, hang on a second.” And with that, Nicole and Morgan both vanished, leaving me sat there stunned until they came back.

“Okay, 4 shirts for security, 3 for the bar. We have a lot of parties coming up at this time of year and the students are so unreliable, so you'll probably be needing that many. Okay, see you at 8 tonight.”

And then they were gone again, leaving behind a young man who was sure he was missing something, but had no idea what it was. I sat there for a few more minutes, slightly dazed, before picking myself up and heading back to my tent.

It was mid-September, and after months of fruitless searching I had finally found a job once I stopped looking. I spent the afternoon making myself look as presentable as possible. For a small truck-stop, it had great facilities. There was a laundry, a shower, the whole lot, and by the time I left my tent that night I really did feel like a new man.

I was going to work. Nicole would be there. Could life get any better?

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WORKING AT BRUFFS

I walked into the bar just before 8 that evening, wearing one of the security shirts, as I had guessed that would probably be my job for the evening. I found out that the person chosen to show me the ropes was none other than Nicole, which was fine by me. This would hopefully give me a chance to get to know a little about her.

If I could get past the business front first, that was.

“Okay, Monday night is simple,” she started as soon as we sat down by the door. “Ask everyone who walks through the door for ID. No ID, no service. If they are 21 or above, give them a wristband, under 21, use the marker pen to put a cross on both hands. Any questions?”

“Not that I can think of right now, sounds simple enough.”

“Great. We're short staffed on the bar because someone called in sick, so I'll leave you to it for now. I'll check on you in a little while.”

And with that she was gone again.

The night passed without any event of note, although I was unhappy when I realised I would be working every Monday, which also happened to be karaoke night. I hate karaoke! Still, beggars can't be choosers and all that. It was better than sitting all day doing wheels and gas tanks.

I settled into a routine pretty quickly, with the only differences between Monday and Wednesday nights, when I worked alone, and Thurday, Friday and Saturdays, when there were always 3 door staff working, was that at the weekend they opened up the first floor of the building as a disco hall and all the under-age kids were charged $5 admission.

The way we tended to work weekends would be to have one person on the door checking ID's and giving out wristbands or marking the minors, another one with him taking money, and the third person floating around upstairs, watching for trouble. Around midnight, when most people were already in the bar, the second person on the door would also head upstairs, leaving one person to check the ID's and take the cash, although this was never a big issue normally.

In my time at Bruffs I had two incidents of note. One of them was about a month after starting, when I was on duty upstairs on a Saturday night. I was working that night with two guys. One was called Dan, and was rapidly becoming a good friend. He was around 5ft 10, and fancied himself as a bit of a cowboy, but I knew he was a guy I could rely on if there was ever any trouble.

The other was a guy called Vince, who I had disliked from the moment I met him. He was 7ft 8inches tall, and that is not a misprint. He was almost as wide as well. He truly was the biggest guy I had ever met. It was clear he had been hired because if you were about to start a fight and this fellow came and tapped you on the shoulder, you would suddenly think twice about it.

But there was something about him that I didn't like.

Anyway, I was upstairs, just walking around, minding my own business, when one of the waitresses came up to me and told me that she'd asked a guy for ID and he'd refused to give it to her. I asked her to point him out, and she gestured towards a black guy, similar size and build to me. He looked like he was probably old enough, but I knew the police were always likely to pop in at any time, and the bar could be hit with a massive fine for one under-age drinker.

On an average Saturday night, we'd call the police 4 or 5 times ourselves and hand kids over to them. The kids usually got off with a caution, as long as they weren't repeat offenders, and it showed the police that we were doing our jobs properly. That didn't mean they weren't beyond sending someone in to try and catch us out though. It had happened to other bars, so I wasn't taking any chances.

So I walked up to the guy and asked him politely for his ID, and he told me to fuck off and leave him alone. I pointed out to him that refusal to show ID was illegal, and if he continued to refuse I would have no alternative other than to escort him from the premises. At this point, he looked at me and started to play the race card.

“It's because I'm black right, that's the only reason you're here, in my face, demanding to see my ID. Racist bastard.”

At this point, I noticed two things at once. I noticed Vince, the tallest and broadest guy I had ever seen, was about 20 feet away looking right at me, and gave him a hand signal indicating I could do with his company. I also noticed that there seemed to be a lot more people around me than there had been a few seconds earlier, and they all appeared to be very big, and very black.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Vince smile, then he headed for the stairs. Clearly he was leaving me to the mob. And it appeared to be a pretty angry mob too, all wanting to get a piece of this racist pile of shit stood amongst them.

I knew I was on my own, and that I only had a couple of seconds to seize the initiative, then I was probably going to be beaten to a pulp. If I was lucky, I'd only be beaten to a pulp. So I went on the attack, and got my face straight in the face of the leader of the pack.

“Now listen to me, pal. I'm not asking you for ID because you're black. I'm asking for it because without it it's illegal to order a drink in this state. Now you have a choice. You can either show me your fucking ID, as required by state law, or you can continue to play the race card, at which point I know I'm probably going to get hurt. Just be aware though. You'll get hurt first, and unlike your friends, I have no need to worry about who I'm kicking and punching, whereas they all do, so I reckon I can take at least 3 or 4 more of them down with me.

Now, are we going to do it the easy way, or do you want to explain to all your friends later why they are in hospital over something so fucking anal?”

He looked at me for about thirty seconds, clearly trying to psyche me out. Then he pulled his ID card out. He was 24. Bastard.

Not as much of a bastard as that Vince though. Fucking coward leaving me to deal with a gang all alone.....

The second incident was about a month later, and again I was upstairs on my own, when a couple of Mexican's started a fight amongst themselves. I got in between them, which was my job, then I heard the sound of a flick knife behind me and started to think I was done for. A second later, I heard a dull thud, and turning around I saw a Mexican, knife in hand, unconscious on the floor, with the guy who'd played the race card stood behind him, grin on his face.

“You always got your back covered here,” he told me. “It took guts for you to face up to me and my boys like that. You got our respect.”

I nodded my thanks, then dragged the Mexican downstairs to wait for the police to arrest him for possession of a knife. And a decent amount of drugs as it turned out. Dan claimed that one as his collar, as I couldn't go to court or anything. I was officially just a punter who jumped into the fight to stop it, and Dan was the guy who hit the Mexican from behind.

That was the official story anyway. The police weren't idiots, and knew what really happened. As far as they were concerned though, the bar was policing itself, and doing a damn fine job of it. So they were damned if they were going to start chasing the place over a doorman who didn't have a work permit.

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LIFE OUTSIDE BRUFFS

Away from work, my life was just carrying on, as life tends to do when you aren't paying it any attention. Nicole and I had gradually become friends, to the extent that she confessed to me one night that she was bi-sexual, something no-one at work knew about her. She also admitted that she was in love with a guy we worked with called Troy, although he was totally oblivious to her attentions.

I met her on-off girlfriend a few times, and even helped them with carting the furniture upstairs when they moved into a place together. Although my feelings for her were as strong as the day I met her, I was old enough and wise enough to realise that it was never going to happen between us. And anyway, as the token Englishman in a college town in Kansas, it wasn't like I was getting starved of female attention.

I had Tuesdays and Sundays off each week, unless there was a private party going on upstairs, which usually happened around twice a month. I would spend each of my days off with a girl, didn't matter which girl. Usually whichever one I had gone home with after work the previous evening. They were college girls going through their wild phase, and I was the guy on the door in the biggest bar in town. With an English accent.

I never took any of them to my place though. Mainly because I was still living in a tent. Although that sure came in handy as a chat up line, of course. Especially when winter started. I usually used something along the lines of;

“I know we only just met, but is there any chance of a kiss so I have something to think about and keep me warm in my tent tonight?”

Corny and cheesy as hell, but with an 80% success rate, you sure weren't going to hear me complaining! The important thing for me was to be honest with them. I told them up front it was casual sex, nothing more, which is why it was only 80% successful in fairness. Who would have thought 1 in 5 college girls in small town America DIDN'T want to have casual sex?

Still, it was a good time. On nights where I didn't get lucky, I would spend the following day in the town library, which was just across the road from the bar, next door to the police station! Some days I'd sit there for 8 hours straight, reading whatever book I felt like picking up that day.

On other days, some girl or other would recognise me from the bar, and I'd give her the “I have to spend my days in the library because my tent is so cold now it's snowing!” line, and before I knew it I'd be round at her place.

Good times for sure!

Of course, all good things come to an end, and at the start of January the bar laid of 4 members of staff. I was one of them.

I was known well enough around town by then that I knew if I went for a job at another bar I would probably get it. But I was worried. What if they asked me about a work permit, and then used the fact I didn't have one against Bruffs? I was no idiot. I'd heard enough talk in enough bars to know that there were people who really didn't like Gary Junior, or his parents for that matter, because they owned around about half of Emporia between them.

I deliberated for about a week after losing my job, but in the end decided the best thing for me to do was leave Emporia behind. If something had ever happened, or if I had believed that something could happen, between me and Nicole, then I probably would have stayed. But I knew that was something that was going nowhere, that my feelings were not reciprocated, and so, because her boss had been so good to me, I left town. Heading who knew where next.

I never spoke to Nicole again, never told her how I felt about her. A few years ago, in a rare moment of weakness, I decided I would try to contact her again. The only point of contact I had for her was Bruffs, and no doubt she had long since moved on from there, but I figured it was worth a try, so I went on-line in the hope of getting contact details for the bar.

Only to find that it had burned down around 6 months earlier. Some things are just not meant to be I guess.....

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TO BE CONTINUED.....

THE GREAT EXPERIMENT

2009-08-12T04:02:00.003+02:00

So there are a few other peoples blogs that I like to keep an eye on, and one of them has come up with this great idea. In my opinion at least. Basically the plan is that each person that joins in agrees to contribute a nominal sum (the amount currently being touted is $1 US per month)

Each month, there will be a contest, with rules laid out at the time, which every contributor is allowed to enter. This contest will involve some sort of challenge, the result of which needs to be posted on your own individual blog by a certain date. A round of voting will then take place where basically everyone in this particular community will come and read your entry, and the 3 most popular go through to a final vote.

The winner of the final vote takes the cash to do with as they please. The plans are not all properly in place yet, but if you are interested in joining in then please visit www.thegirlwho.net and register an interest. The main idea is to build an internet community of bloggers who are there to help each other out in times of need.

You can also join in by clicking on that big red button just to the right, the one that says "The Great Experiment".

I am, categorically, and 100%, in support of this initiative.....

I hope anyone reading this feels the same way

IT'S BEEN A FUNNY OLD WEEK......

2009-08-07T01:08:00.002+02:00

On the off chance that anyone is actually interested in what I get up to in my normal life away from the internet, here is a diary type entry of the week up to now, which, for people who may be reading this in many months time, runs from Sunday 2nd August to the early hours of Friday 7th August....

I think we should start with Sunday....

SUNDAY 2nd AUGUST

I am supposed to go running this evening, but I don't think I'll be able to make it. I was up most of last night with my right foot in a bucket of cold water, trying to reduce the swelling. My on-going problem with it has returned, and I'm getting desperate now. At 5pm I send a message to my jogging partner to say I can't make it and need to spend probably a week or so letting my foot heal itself. By 7pm, I can just about put some pressure on it, and when my flatmate invites her boyfriend over I opt for the pub rather than listen to the two of them getting frisky with one another. A few beers, some darts, and by around 2am my foot is actually feeling okay.

Although that could just be the alcohol having an effect!

MONDAY 3rd AUGUST

Today I start my new job. Although it is not really a new job, but is in fact the job I left two months ago having gotten fed up of the attitude of the management. But I need to pay my bills, and as nothing else has come up in the meantime, I have gone back. Only this time I am on MY terms, not theirs.

It is basically a sales job, and the selling part of it was something I was always good at. Very good even. But I got fed up of having to work until 10pm every night, having to dress in smart clothes to call people up and speak to them over the phone, having to listen to my bosses tell me and all my colleagues every day that we were all shit. What really got me were the days every few months where the management would come around and take people off the phones one by one and fire them, before bringing in a load of new people the next week.

I hated that place with a passion. But, like I said, bills need to be paid. So I called them up and told them I would go back on certain terms.

1- I work when I want to work. If I want to come in for 2 hours a day, I do so. If I want to have a day off, I take it off. If I want to work for 8 hours, I will do so. But probably not the last one....

2- I work on commission only. So if I make no sales, I am working for nothing. If I can make a couple of sales a day, however, I am on a pretty good wage.

3- I dress how I like for work. No shirts and trousers, my clients will never see me so whats the point?

4- Minimum interaction with management. I only want to speak to them if there is important information about the product I am selling that has changed. Otherwise we are just wasting time talking bollocks about nothing.

Surprisingly for me, they actually agreed to all of the above. So I went back. A few hours work, a couple of sales, and I was ready to go home. My job was done for the day. But something strange happened as I was walking home. I started to become really hyper.

Anyone that has ever spent time with me will no doubt be able to come up with lots of adjectives to describe my personality. None of them will EVER think of 'hyper'. I'm just not that kind of guy. I'm quiet, dour, dry. I have a sick sense of humour. But when it comes to moving, I have always worked on natures principle of the path of least resistance. Why run for a bus when there will be another one along shortly is my motto.

But still, the nearer I got to my flat the more I felt this strange tension building up inside my body. And after a while I worked out what it was. I wanted to go for a run. No. I NEEDED to go for a run.

This is something that has never happened to me before. I play football because I enjoy it, but that is all. This NEED to run thing? Where the hell was that coming from? Nevertheless, I got home, got changed, and off I went. And I managed a whole 3 miles. Less than a week ago I felt I had done amazingly well to manage half that distance. On the previous Tuesday I had managed 5 minutes of football then needed to sit down for 20 minutes to recover. The day before I could barely even WALK. And now there I was, running 3 miles. Comfortably.

When I got home, my flatmates boyfriend was round again, so I felt I had no choice. I got changed and went to the pub for a few hours!

TUESDAY 4th AUGUST

Tuesday is football day, so it meant a short day at work. This meant just the one sale, although I only worked for a couple of hours, but it basically meant I earned the same money in 2 hours as the rest of the staff earned in 8. And some of them did a few more sales than one. I am very fucking lucky to have the deal I have in fairness!

Anyway, after work, it was football time. We actually had too many players for once, which meant we had to take it in turns to come off and give the other guys a chance. Except, I wouldn't leave the pitch. I just felt too damn good! I ran around like an idiot, and after 40 minutes was ordered by the others to take a break. I also scored 4 goals, although one has gone to our dubious goals panel because someone else is claiming it. So lets say 3 and a half goals. All in all, I felt I had performed really well considering in previous weeks I could barely compete!

After the game, it was back to the pub for post match refreshments. I'm not sure what happened then. It may have had something to do with the sandwiches, but all of a sudden it was 11am, and I seemed to have a young Russian girls tongue stuck down my throat! For the record, we were in the bar by around 7.30pm after football, so it was a long drinking session!

Anyway, I recall walking the girl to the train station so she could get the Metro home, and then suddenly it was 2.30pm, and I was on the opposite side of Prague from where I should have been. I really have no idea what I was doing there or how I got there! So I got the tram back home, only to be pulled up by a ticket inspector, which meant a big fine for not having a ticket.

I had a few remaining wits about me though, although I'm not sure how, and so pulled my phone out of my pocket, intending to send a message to buy a ticket, thus negating the fine. Instead, the tram pulled up at a stop, I spotted my chance, and bolted from my seat and off into the Prague afternoon! Fine avoided!

The rest of Wednesday was spent pretty much asleep, so we'll leave that part there! Work was not an option. Again, I have a great deal there right now!

THURSDAY 6th AUGUST

I made it to work for a few hours, and pulled in 3 sales which evened out the one I missed on Tuesday. Then I went to the pub to pick up my bag, which I had left there on Tuesday night/Wednesday lunchtime! I was well behaved for once, and after 4 or 5 beers decided it was time to go home.

And then it happened again. That whole hyper thing from Monday hit me all over upside the head one more time. I wanted to go for a run.

So at midnight, there I was, running around what is supposed to be one of the worst districts in Prague. I again managed around 3 miles, but this time a lot of it was actually UP hill, whereas on Monday it was exclusively DOWN hill. And I'd been drinking. And running UP HILLS! What the hell is happening to me?

I got home at around 12.40am, and have no idea what my flat-mate thought of me taking a shower at such an ungodly hour. But I keep having to listen to her have sex, so I think I can take the moral high ground on this one!

Anyway, that's my week so far. Too much beer, too much running, very little work for big rewards, and a nice Russian girl thrown in for good measure.

Roll on Friday is what I say!

AM I WRITING TO MYSELF?

2009-08-01T02:29:00.002+02:00

Sometimes I wonder if anyone is reading this blog. It's here, just hanging around, with all of my thoughts laid out for people to examine, occasionally maybe even think about. My aim with this page is to write stuff that people enjoy reading, but if there are no people reading, is there any point?

It's possible that I am just wasting my time, and a chunk of cyberspace that could be better utilised by someone else who is a better writer and more insightful about how the world really is today.

Like I said, sometimes I think about these things.

For the most part though, I don't really care if anybody is reading this. At the end of the day this is here for me to write about the things that I am interested in. Does anyone out there care about the football team I play for? Probably not. Who gives a fuck about my recurring foot problem? Just me I suspect. And as for me training for a marathon....

Well, the people that know me best are convinced it's all just an elaborate hoax!

Who knows if I'll be able to last all through the winter months with training? Certainly not me, although I intend to try. In the meantime, I'll continue to post stuff here whenever the mood takes me. If there is anyone actually reading this, I guess I should say thanks for stopping by. Feel free to leave a comment on any of my posts should you ever find you have something to say. Or not, as the case may be....

GOOD NEWS, NOT SO GOOD NEWS, AND BAD NEWS....

2009-07-30T16:10:00.003+02:00

First the good news. After several years of procrastination, I have finally started to write my first novel. I am hoping to have it finished somewhere around the end of the year, sooner if possible. It all depends on if I can keep myself motivated enough to keep up with it. But at least I have started the damn thing now....

For the record, it will be a dark tale about a serial killer, told mainly from the point of view of said killer. As I am fed up of mass murderers always being portrayed as the villains in literature! I'm sure that there will be some comic moments along the way as well, and I can pretty much guarantee one hell of a twist on the last page!....

Now the not so good news. It appears my dodgy right foot didn't take kindly to the marathon training yesterday, especially with it coming hot on the heels, so to speak, of Tuesdays football practice. I'm hoping that the pain will be gone in time for tomorrows run, but if not I intend to hobble along regardless, as this is something that I really want to do.

Anyway, the way my body tends to work is that it sends me signals telling me not to do things, which I ignore, and then it goes back to normal. Or something like that. So hopefully I'll get through things without any more discomfort than absolutely necessary.

And now on to the bad news. After two months of doing absolutely nothing, I am starting work on Monday. Which would actually be good news, if it wasn't for the fact that I am going back to my old job, a job that I really do not like and which damn near drove me crazy last time round.

On the plus side, I am going back on my own terms, which is part time and on a commission only basis, which should mean I earn double what I used to earn for half the effort. So maybe not so bad after all. Who knows, I may even earn enough to be able to buy some proper jogging shoes and a real pair of football boots, instead of wearing a cheap pair of trainers for both.

This, I suspect, could help with my ongoing foot problem, which can only be a good thing.

Of course, going back to work also means I will be able to pay my rent, buy some food, and even pay off my rather substantial bar tab, so it'll be smiles all round for people. So roll on September 10th when I get paid!

MAYBE I'M NOT SO LAZY AFTER ALL....

2009-07-29T23:19:00.002+02:00

As I may have mentioned previously, I have recently started playing 5-a-side football once a week. My local bar, the Harp Hospoda, made a shocking debut in competitive football a few weeks back, conceding 66 goals in five 16 minute games, and scoring only one goal in reply. So it's fair to say we need the practice.

Last week I took part in this practice session despite being barely able to stand up due to an ongoing problem I have with my right foot and ligaments that really don't seem to want to stay where they belong. By the time this weeks session came around, my foot was feeling fit and healthy for the first time in about a month, so some good news there.

The bad news is that I am VERY unfit. A life of far too much alcohol and little to no exercise will do that to a guy, and I consider myself as the only person responsible for my physical condition. And I'm not here looking for sympathy either. I'm unfit. Who cares?

Well, actually, I'm starting to. For too many years I've just plodded along in my life, eating junk food, drinking too much, making no effort to work off all the toxins I regularly saturate my body with. All of that is over as of now. Welcome to the new me....

So, it started with football training once a week. This training is probably going to be stepped up to twice a week pretty soon, as our whole team needs to work on fitness, ball skills, and a lot of other stuff if we are going to avoid humiliation in our next competition in October. But it doesn't end there.

I have also, as of today, begun training to take part in the 2010 Prague Marathon. You read that right, it was not a typo. When I was younger I used to enjoy running, and always used to watch the London Marathon every year, thinking one day I would probably enter it myself. And nobody knew about this until now, but I actually tried to enter this years London Marathon.

The annoying thing is, I have no idea if I got in or not, as by the time the letter of either acceptance or rejection was sent to me in Manchester, I had been living in Prague for 3 months!

So, this marathon thing isn't a strange drunken whim that suddenly overcame me. It is something that has always been in the back of my mind as something I really want to do. I was spurred on to actually do something about it by seeing a post on a web-site from someone looking for a training partner, and decided that as I am not getting any younger I may as well go ahead and do it now.

I think that fact that I have someone to run with will help to encourage me to actually turn out 4 nights a week and run, as I wouldn't be able to motivate myself to do it otherwise. I'm just too damn lazy. So tonight was the first training session. And I surprised myself. I actually managed about 1 and a half miles before I needed to stop running and start walking. It might not seem like much, but I was seriously expecting to only be able to manage a few hundred yards!

Next session is Friday, and I find I am actually looking forwards to it already. I suppose it helps that my training partner is a very attractive young female....

NOW I KNOW I'M OLD.....

2009-07-18T19:12:00.003+02:00

I think it's now official. I am definitely an old man!

I have some sort of problem with my foot where a couple of ligaments keep popping out. This means that I currently have to hop around the flat on one foot on my occasional forays between my room and either the kitchen or the toilet.

I had a similar problem a couple of weeks ago, but it is much worse now than it was then. Which means there is no doubt that I am not the young man that I used to be.

More importantly though, and the thing that convinces me that I am now 'past it' without any doubt....

I have spent the last 3 days listening to Test Match Special. That's right, I'm listening to cricket. Not watching it, nothing anywhere near so exciting as that. Listening. To CRICKET for crying out loud. It's almost enough to make me call for a jug of arsenic to finish myself off....

But it actually gets worse....

During boring periods in the cricket, like I would usually think there was anything else with cricket, I have actually been going to the BBC web-site to look at text commentary....

Of the Tour De France!....

So, listening to cricket whilst reading about a cycling race....

Somebody put me out of my misery now. Or, failing that, let's get the bloody football season underway so at least I can have some real sport to occupy myself with whilst sat here with one leg!

Which reminds me, I'm supposed to be playing football on Tuesday. With one leg....

I think I need to try to hobble on down to the pub and see if I can make myself feel any better...

TIN-MAN AND THE GREAT AMERICAN DREAM. (Part Two)

2009-07-17T10:05:00.001+02:00

The story so far: This is a factual account of a trip I made to America when I was younger. In the first part, I arrived in Chicago and tried to get a job, but, having failed, and running short of cash, I hitch-hiked up to Canada to try my luck there.

With no luck there either, I headed back into the USA, got myself arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and left the tale as I was almost out of money, with my luck about to turn, although whether for the better or worse is hard to predict....

Anyway, on with the story....

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LIFE WITH TIN MAN

I was practically out of cash, and starting to get desperate for a job, any job, when I found myself in the cab of a truck heading west on I-80. As was usual, talk got around to what I was doing in America, and then out of the blue the truck driver told me he knew a guy who might be able to help me out, just a little way up the road.

He warned me the guy was a drug addict, so I would have to watch my back, but if I wanted him to he'd have a word with the guy and see what became of it. I replied that I was pretty much at the end of my tether, and any job would do. I figured I was big enough and street smart enough to be able to cope with most things, and when I met Tin Man a few hours later, my confidence grew somewhat.

He was a good six inches shorter than me for a start, and was all skin and bones. I wasn't fooled though. I knew people like this guy from back home. They'd steal anything, from anyone, to feed their habit, and I knew at first glance Tin Man was the same. Fortunately, I had nothing worth stealing, something that I was happy to demonstrate to him as soon as we got to the place where he had his tent pitched.

I also knew from the people back home that there is a strange code of loyalty amongst people like Tin Man. They are the dregs of society, the people that failed at life, and nobody wants anything to do with them. And so they stick together, and help each other out, sometimes with money, more often with drugs, knowing that the generosity would almost always be remembered and reciprocated when they had nothing.

And now I, a working class guy from Manchester who had never touched any drug other than alcohol in his life, was one of them.

I decided the best thing to do was to make the most of things for now, and get out of there as soon as possible.

I think Tin Man sensed my intentions straight away. He may have been a loser in many ways, but he was also a survivor, and survivors develop instinct much sharper than the average persons. They have to. When you live in a tent just outside a truck-stop, your only friends thieves and drug addicts, either your instincts become sharp or you die.

I also got the feeling that he saw me as his last chance to sort himself out. I was the person that would wake him up at first light every morning, insisting we go out and do some work, the person that tried to keep him working, when his every instinct, as soon as he made ten bucks, was to go and get a case of beer and drink himself into oblivion.

Believe it or not, there were good times in that truck-stop. We had one day where we could do no wrong, where every truck driver we approached wanted his wheels AND his gas tank polishing. The deal was $5 a wheel, $15 a tank, and with potentially six wheels and two tanks on each truck, we were looking at potentially $60 every time we went up to someone.

It took about 90 minutes to do a whole truck properly, but one day I managed to keep Tin Man away from the beer, and we got through 7 whole trucks that day, one after the other. We were doing such a good job that people were parking their trucks alongside us as we were doing one truck, asking us to do theirs next.

It was a back breaking ten and a half hours work, without a break for anything other than a toilet visit, but at the end of it, including tips, we'd made nearly $500 between us. Not that I saw any of it. Not in cash anyway. Right from the start Tin Man was careful about making sure I never got my hands on any cash. He was afraid I was going to run off and leave him if he ever let me have any money. And not without cause, as that was my plan all along in fairness.

That's not to say I didn't get my fair share of the money we earned. That evening we booked into a hotel attached to the truck stop complex, both in separate rooms, and treated ourselves to three days of luxury.

It wasn't always that good though. Usually I'd try and wake Tin Man up at around 10am, then if we were lucky by 12 he'd be ready to go to work. We'd walk around the truck-stop, touting for business. Some days we'd get something straight up, other days we'd wander around for a couple of hours.

Eventually though we'd get something, usually just the front two wheels of a truck to see how good a job we did. $10 later, we'd be hunting again. Sometimes $10 was enough for Tin Man. He'd go and get a case of beer, and insist no more work would be done until we finished it off. So I'd sit and drink with him, all the while nagging at him and saying we should get more trucks done, make more money.

Some days my nagging worked, some days it didn't. Deep down, I don't think my nagging ever worked though. It all depended on the mood of Tin Man.

About twice a week Tin Man would wake up with an odd look about him, and I would know that it was going to be one of those days. The days he woke up like that, I knew we'd be working until we had at least $60, at which point he would go buy a case of beer, deposit me at our camp site with the beer and orders to look after things, before disappearing into the local town to score himself some heroin.

The first few times, I didn't mind so much. It got him away from me, gave me a chance to be on my own instead of having my own little smackhead shadow following me everywhere I went. But that all changed when he started bringing people back with him. People I didn't know, didn't trust. I had nothing worth stealing, this was true, but who in their right mind wants to be around a load of fucked up heroin addicts?

Not me, that was for sure. I just needed to get some cash from somewhere, then the next time he went into town I would be gone for sure. Except, he was always so damn careful with the money, even when he was wasted. I also knew that if it wasn't for me he would be on the dope everyday, instead of a couple of times a week. He looked up to me, because I was someone who didn't need that shit to survive, and he really felt that as long as I was around there was a chance he could get clean himself.

I knew when I finally did get the chance to leave, it would send him crazy, and I had better make sure I was long gone before he found out, as if he caught me trying to leave there was no telling how he might react.

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ESCAPE FROM TIN MAN

My chance to escape finally came after two months. By now, Tin Man was having one of 'those' days three, sometimes four times a week, and as a result he got sloppy. We were working on a truck, and another guy pulled in and asked if we could clean his wheels and tanks for him, a $60 job. He was in a hurry, so Tin Man hustled over there and started on his truck while I finished off the one we were doing already.

This first job was also the full monty, as we liked to call the $60 jobs, although we were pretty close to finishing when the second truck pulled in. I finished off, the driver came around to inspect the work, then gave me $75. I glanced around, and realised I was on the blind side of the truck to Tin Man, and so pocketed the $15 tip before going around and handing him the $60.

The same thing happened with the next truck, and a third one after that. The final job of the day, which was just two front wheels, so $10, Tin Man went off to the store to get a case of beer. I'd seen the look in his face that morning, and knew he was planning on heading into town pretty soon. I took the $10 off the driver, no tip this time, and went to give it to Tin Man.

“You can keep that. I don't reckon you'll be running off anywhere with ten bucks. Good job today. Here's some beer, head over to the camp and I'll catch you later.”

This was a stroke of luck, but I wasn't foolish enough to just think I could run off there and then. It might be a ploy by him to see if I did decide to run out on him, even with just $10, so I went back to camp and had a few beers. Then I went for a walk around the camp, before heading over to the truck-stop to see if I could find him.

I spotted someone I knew, and asked if they had seen him.

“Tin Man? Yeah, he got a lift into town about an hour ago.” This guy was too dumb to lie to me, so I knew he'd definitely gone. But when would he be back. He was right. Chances are I would never have run with $10, but he didn't know about the tips I'd pocketed. $55 still wasn't much, but I also knew I could make more money when I needed it now, thanks to my new found talent for polishing wheels and tanks.

I decided to wait until it got dark, then packed my tent up, took the gear we used for cleaning the wheels and gas tanks, knowing that Tin Man, even after getting wasted, would have more than enough money left to replenish his stock, and headed out of camp.

I avoided the truck-stop area, as I didn't want anyone I knew to see me leave, or still be around when Tin Man got back, and instead headed down a side road, knowing that a few miles down the road was an on-ramp to I-35, where I could catch a ride heading south, and hopefully as far away as possible from Des Moines and Tin Man.

When I got to I-35, it was around 2am, and I didn't want to draw any attention to myself by standing there hitching through the night. There was also a slight chance that Tin Man might guess which way I had headed, and catch a lift from some friends this way just to check. I didn't want to risk that kind of meeting in the middle of the night!

So I headed a little way back from the roadway, and found a 6 foot high wall with what looked like some trees on the other side. This seemed like as good a place as any to camp, and so over the wall I went, before heading about 30 feet or so into the trees and pitching my tent, making sure it couldn't be seen from the wall I had climbed over.

After an uncomfortable few hours sleep, I was awoken by a car horn which sounded remarkably close to me. Poking my head out of the tent, I realised that I had inadvertently pitched my tent around 6 feet away from the driveway of a private school, and some rich parent bringing their precious little child to school was none too pleased to see a vagrant on the premises.

I packed up quickly and ran out of the gates, heading the few hundred metres down the road to the interstate on-ramp. I was fortunate to get a ride pretty quickly, and so have no idea if the police were called to investigate the strange homeless person. I was just glad to be heading south, away from Tin Man, and hopefully towards something more productive.

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To be continued....

A LITTLE BIT OF CZECH HISTORY

2009-07-16T14:11:00.006+02:00

I've just started a new job as a Prague tour guide. This means that I have to spend the next week to ten days trying to cram a whole lot of history into my brain, and come up with an entertaining script in order to pass all of this information on to tourists.

As someone who left school just about 20 years ago, I kind of felt that learning and stuff was something that was in my past. However, needs must, and so I am doing my best to cram all of this information in as quickly as possible. And I find that I am actually enjoying the research, which comes as something of a surprise.

But then, this city is full of surprising tales and stories, at least to someone like me who tends to walk around with eyes blinkered, my only focus being the distance from my current location to my next beer. And the purpose of this particular entry is to relate a couple of these tales of the beautiful city in which I now live....

First off, I want to talk about a couple of guys called Jan Hus and Jan Žižka, and things that they did which were credited to other people much later. First off, Jan Hus....

Jan Hus was born in 1372 in the town of Husinec in Bohemia. He was a Catholic priest, philosopher, reformer, and master at Charles University. In the time of Jan Hus, the Church was very closed to common people, and was pretty much exclusively for rich people and royalty. Jan Hus didn't like this, and wanted the Catholic Church to open its doors to normal people, and use it's riches to help the poor.

Now, the church did not like this idea at all, and called Hus in front of the Council of Constance, where he was ordered repeatedly to recant his beliefs and conform to the official Church views, orders that he repeatedly ignored.

He was tried, and found guilty of being a Heretic and on 6th July 1415 he was burned at the stake. Hus is generally regarded as a key contributor to the early Protestant movement, but, in typical Czech tradition, few people have ever heard of him, as opposed to Martin Luther who came along around 100 years later.

Jan Hus 1372-1415

Now, Jan Hus had a bunch of followers, who you may have heard of. These were early Protestants, and became known as Hussites. The Hussites are famous mainly for their parts in two wars, the Hussite Wars, and the 30 years war, from 1618-1648. For now I am now going to concentrate more on the first of these, in the immediate aftermath of Hus being turned into a kebab!

On July 30th 1419 Jan Želivský, a Hussite priest, led his congregation on a procession through the streets of Prague to the Town Hall on Charles Square. The town council had refused to exchange their Hussite prisoners. While they were marching a stone was thrown at Želivský from one of the windows of the town hall. This enraged the crowd, and led by Jan Žižka, they stormed the town hall.

Once inside the hall the group threw the judge, the burgomaster, and several members of the town council out of the window and onto the street below, where they were killed by the fall. The technical term for this is defenestration, which literally translates from Latin as throwing someone out of a window!

This was the turning point between talk and action between rival groups, and led, 8 months later, to the Hussite Wars, which would last until 1436.

The most important part of this tale, for me anyway, is the leader of the group that stormed the town hall, Jan Žižka.

Žižka was born in 1360 and was a prominent Czech general and Hussite leader, who had lost an eye in a childhood fight. He fought in the battle of Grunewald in 1410, where he defended Radzyn against the German knights. He was attached to the court from his youth, and held the office of Chamberlain to Queen Sofia.

After the burning of Jan Hus and the defenestration of Prague, Catholic Crusades were launched against Bohemia, and Žižka was compelled to defend the kingdom. He was a pragmatist in developing military strategy. Knowing that his troops were mainly farmers and laborours, and lacking both the funds and equipment to turn these men into classic soldiers with sword, horse and armor, he used their farmers' skills to boost their military value.

The agricultural flail was transformed into th flail. Farm wagons were used in an ingenious tactic called the Wagenburg. The wagons were parked wheel-to-wheel forming a circle, much like the Pioneers of the Old West formed with their Conestoga Wagons. Of course, nobody outside of the area realised that Žižka had devised this tactic, and so the Pioneers took the credit for it much later!

The horses and soldiers were kept safely inside the enclosure. The outlying side of the wagon and the undercarriage were armored with thick wooden planks, with holes through which soldiers could shoot pistols and crossbows. Gaps between wagons were covered by pavises or housed small cannons, which marked the first ever use of artillery in field operations.

Žižka's tactics were unorthodox and innovative: In addition to training and equipping his army according to their abilities, he used armored wagons armed with small cannons and muskets, presaging the tank of five hundred years later. He was also a master at using geography to full advantage as well as managing the discipline of his troops.

He is considered to be among the greatest military leaders and innovators of all time. Žižka is one of the few commanders in history who never lost a battle. He lost his good eye in battle in 1421, but, although now totally blind, he continued to command the armies of Tábor, over which he had taken charge earlier that year.

Žižka died of the plague at Přibyslav (October 11, 1424) on the Moravian frontier. According to chronicler Piccollomini Žižka's dying wish was to have his skin used to make drums so that he might continue to lead his troops even after death. Žižka was so well regarded that when he died, his soldiers called themselves the Orphans because they felt like they had lost their father.

Jan Žižka - 1360-1424