Gloucestershire: two boys from Perth and a rented Kia vs. the West Midlands...

what a weekend. no, seriously, what an epic fucking weekend. to think it nearly ended before it began, but i'll get to that. SpeedFox and i have had this planned for a while now - ever since we realised when it was going down. it started, as many of these ideas do, in a pub.

"Hey, have you heard of the Gloucester Cheese Rolling?"
hell yeah i have!
"You want to go?"
do i have a penchant for wearing too much black???

it's got to be one of the silliest things you've ever heard of. bloke throws a wheel of Double Gloucester down a hill with a 1:2 gradient and a mob of yahoos chase it. first one to the bottom gets the cheese. comparative silliness includes the Running of the Bulls and the Tomatina Festival, with similar injury ratios. colour me keen as mustard.

of course, there were a couple of setbacks. for starters, by the time we worked out when it was happening Fox was seconds away from hitting the "Confirm" button on a weekender in Belgium. louise was originally going to come along but managed to get herself uninvited, then with days remaining before we were set to head off the prices for hire-cars doubled overnight. we thought all was lost - our plans for the weekend really required having our own independent transport - until i came up with a bright idea which saved the day. see, it was only the hire prices in LONDON which had doubled...

our final plan was elegant in its simplicity: catch the first train out of Paddington to Bristol at 7AM on Saturday morning, pick up the car at 9 and head for Cardiff for breakfast. wander around Wales until we were sick of the idea and head for Coleford, a sleepy little farming village in the Forest of Dean (where SpeedFox was born and where we'd scored lodgings with his aunt and uncle). we get ourselves an early night and be up at 2:30AM to be in the car by 3 and on the road to Salisbury so that we can get to Stonehenge by 5:30. breakfast in Bath, then fire on to explore the Forest and the Wye Valley in the afternoon. have a well-deserved sleep-in on Sunday night, then off to Gloucester to attack a hill with a couple of other maniacs, thousands of spectators and global news coverage and generally try not to die before making a break for London and ditch the hire car at the Hertz down the road from my place in Kennington. what could possibly go wrong?

in the end: nothing. nothing whatsoever. well, almost.

getting up at 5AM sucks. when we met at Paddington we'd had about 7 hours sleep between us. itchy eyeballs aside, it was a pleasant train ride made easier by sugar-free energy drinks. we found the Hertz with the help of a map Fox had printed off the day before and were out of town quicker than you can say "which way to Cardiff?", which is a pleasant little town. we got in a little over an hour later, grabbed a bite to eat and spend the rest of our time there wandering around Cardiff Castle. amusingly, it was Fox who suggested that i make a scene and get my poi out in the courtyard of the old keep and of course i couldn't resist. it's well-worth a visit, even just for the quiet time of sitting around the grass being pleasantly surrounded by history (and tourists, let's not forget the tourists).

having had our fill of Wales we decided it was time to head for Coleford. Fox's aunt and uncle were sitting in the sun out the front when we got there so we joined them for a nice cup of tea and a chat before we went off to explore Simmonds Yat in the Valley. it took us a couple of wrong turns to find what we were looking for, but when we did the views were spectacular, and we eyed off a pub that we pledged to hit at the next opportunity. meanwhile, we were nearly late back at Coleford for tea kindly supplied by Fox's family, then we capped off the evening with a quiet pint at The Miner where he remembers his folk having a going-away party back when he was 6 and they were moving away to Oz.

getting up with less than 4 hours of sleep hurt. Fox lived his dream and took the wheel down to Salisbury so that i could play DJ and navigator (our little Kia had both USB and audio input so my PSD brought the noise). driving around england in the long pre-dawn was a great way to get around quickly, with sod-all anyone else on the roads. getting off the Motorway had us dodging deer and rabbits, and at one point the road was lined with bunnies all sitting and looking away from the road at regularly spaced intervals - our very own honor-guard, Watership Down style.

we finally hit Stonehenge at 5:15AM, just in time to see the sun crest the horizon. there were a pile of shivering people who'd come for their Stone Circle Access, and after a micro-briefing (don't damage the stones, no food, drink or smoking. now go have fun) we were let loose and spent an hour wandering around taking photos and with Fox as a willing cameraman i even managed to get a video of me flinging my poi around while he walked around me in a semicircle to get in as much of the scenery as he could.

you don't usually get to go INTO the circle at Stonehenge. if you rock up during the day you go through a tunnel under the road and are greeted with a discrete fence that prevents you from getting more within around 20 metres of the circle. book in advance, pay a little more and arrive before or after the regular session is closed and you get to go play. why the fuck else do you think we were there at ridiculous-o'clock in the morning?

when we got to Bath it was a ghost-town. the only people who seemed to be up and about were us and a few haunted-looking backpackers who were obviously on their way somewhere else. what was awesome was the chance to drive around the hilly streets exploring the place and getting to walk the streets without interferencne. we couldn't find a feed tho and by 9:30 we'd been there for nearly 2 hours and were getting hungry. we didn't find food until nearly 11, and had gone to Bristol via Avonmouth. we were originally heading for Weston-Super-Mare because it was a) on the coast, b) on the map and c) had a cool name, but every time we spied a sign for it we wound up lost and decided that the gods did not smile on WSM and we should try elsewhere. i finally got my Big Breakfast tho (which was... reasonably large), so at least i didn't go without.

by 1PM we were back in the Forest and buggered. we'd had a full day and covered 200 miles before breakfast on fuck-all sleep and we'd had it. alarms were set and we got 3 hours of sleep (each!) and were up in time to get back to Simonds Yat and hit The Royal for well-deserved beers in the sun.

i have a concept i've been working on for a while now: the Crystaline Perfect Moment: a quantum second in time that stretches out long enough for you to absorb everything about it and ingrain the entirety of the sensorium like a 3D photograph with the smell and taste and the warmth of the sun against your skin, the sound of the birds fucking around in the background and the view of whatever you're looking at. sitting at a park bench in front of The Royal with a view of the Wye Valley with a half-finished pint of cold Kronenboug, the tree-sperm floting in the air with a good friend sitting across the table... this was one of those moments. "how's the serenity?" SpeedFox quotes from The Castle. we must have say there for 2 hours, until the sun finally dropped behind the ridge across the river and we headed into town for some food and a few more beers to round off a fantastic day.

we hit Gloucester about an hour before the first race the next day. it's a tradition shrouded in history, but for once i'm not really interested too much in the background. take 100m of 1:2 gradient hill and throw yourself down it. thousands come to watch or participate, crowding the sides of the hill or the flatish plain below. we didn't manage to get in a race in the end, but once it was all over anyone who still wanted to go down hopped the fence, lined up and went down as a horde. i was a little worried about my knees, knowing that one foot wrong and i'd twist or jar something and it'd be all over red rover so i prioritised sliding on my arse to trying to stay upright. take three steps, slide, get some footing for another couple of steps, slide again and roll, slide, run, slide and roll until you hit the bare-10m of runoff before the bales of hay. the rugby team jumped out of my way - i was rolling sideways as i hit the bottom and somehow manged to get on my feet with enough time to hit the hay head-on, face to face with a woman who seemed part of the official team.

G'DAY!
"Are you alright?"
i'm AWESOME! that was FUCKING INCREDIBLE!!!!

she must get a lot of that.

we'd waited in line for hours, drinking a couple of tinnies of Dutch Courage and making friends with a couple of kids behind us in the queue. they'd come down from Canterbury and camped on the hill the night before. it'd taken them 3 hours to walk from the middle of Gloucester so we insisted on taking them into town. it wasn't far out of our way and there were 5 seats in the car so why not?

we fly down the road to Ross-on-Wye and pull into the car park of the restaurant right behind Fox's aunt and uncle. we were in a hurry, but it helped that the A road was windy and begged to be taken at speed. we were still muddy and filthy so he dived into the toilets to get changed and i headed down into the town to do the same, making use of the public convenience to clean off the caked-on mud and change into something clean then crossing over into the park on the River Wye to have a makeshift picnic and read my book on a park-bench.

come 11PM and i was dropping him off at his place in Hammersmith then heading for basecamp. i'd got a message from louise on Saturday night when i turned my phone back on saying that she'd found the perfect place to move into and was shifting on Sunday, so once i'd dumped the car back at Hertz i walked into a half-empty room and all the peace and quiet i could want. how's the serenity? today included the now-regular ritual of going over the photos and uploading them to the web and preparing for the hate-mail from people screaming "YOU BASTARD!"

but seriously, what a great fucking weekend.

time off to catch my breath...

i've had a nice quiet week since getting back from Dublin - Eurovision on saturday night after wandering around Shoreditch looking at urban art, playing with carnies in the park on sunday and now a week of chilling around the flat, venturing out here and there for a bit of amusement whenever i can be bothered. Ireland left me nowhere near as exhausted or shattered as Egypt. the pace was better for a start, and i didn't feel like i had to be constantly on the go for fear of missing something important. this meant that the next day i was ready to hit the street which is particularly good since Ellen and i did plenty of walking.

i met Ellen through Moonbug back in December and while we've not been particularly close we've gotten along quiet nicely ever since and so when she picked up a guide-book outlining routes to take through various parts of London where you can see the works of the guerilla-artist Banksy i jumped at it. two people all dressed up for an evening out must have looked odd squeezing between fence-posts or climbing over walls, but these are the things you have to do if you want to see some of the secret scenery of Shoreditch. if you've not heard of Banksy you really should look him up. his work is anti-establishment without being rabidly anarchistic and interestingly executed.

i've hit a nice little groove for the time being. i'm still looking at jobs when i can be bothered, but i'm not really giving it much of my brainspace. in fact, i'm really just going with whatever seems to flow which is part of the reason i've not been blogging a whole lot. i don't really have anything much to say at the moment while i focus on cruising and enjoying the moment, even if that moment involves spending hours at a time cruising the net while i chat to people on IM, or talk to people across the world on Skype. life is going to heat up again soon enough and when it does i'll be screaming off in whatever direction i've found myself facing so i might as well be mentally prepared when it happens...

Ireland: Guinness is good for you!

we're already in Dingle, but we're heading to Dingle. it's a little confusing, especially when you wind up on a boat leaving Dingle Harbor in Dingle to go chasing the Dingle Dolphins off the Dingle Penninsula. there was once a fisherman who lived in those parts known affectionately as Fungus due to his general lack of hygiene and microbiologically curious growths who had a dolphin as a companion. Fungus is gone, but Fungi the dolphin remains and is regularly pestered by tourists - myself included. after wandering around the charming little town of Dingle i couldn't resist the chance to hop on a boat and bother the wildlife, and had a lovely time watching them splash around while i got to know the Claires (Sydney and Perth in order of age). i'd have taken more photos, but my camera battery was dying a death and i had no idea when i'd next get a chance to charge it so i kept it in my pocket a lot of the time. i'm just glad that most of the ones i did take came out nicely.

we're doing a bog-lap of the Dingle Penninsula. the next one along is Kerry which is the popular one. the route around it is referred to as "The Ring of Kerry", which you may have heard of. Dingle is the same sort of area, but smaller, more densely packed and fits more easily into the tour which is why we get it instead. i've grabbed a seat next to Nathan which may have been a miscalculation since we're both largeish gentlemen and the seating's a little cramped. still, i grabbed as an opportunity to get to know him a little better and it works out well enough. i manage to get some charge on my camera in the cafe overlooking the Sleeping Giant (an island which, if you look at it right, strongly resembles a colossal man lying on his back in the ocean) which means that Ginelle and i get to play our now-standard "grab one of me, i'll get one of you" game before we hop back on the bus for a nap before we get to Killarney.

Galway's a university town. Killarney's a tourist town through and through. word is that the population triples in the summer when everyone comes down to enjoy the National Park - one of only four in Ireland. when i think National Parks, my cultural bias is for large swathes of bushland, untouched but for fire trails and walking paths. Killarney's a lovingly tended park - tended grass and patches of forest, rivers, streams and lakes (with castles in the middle of them). i'm an "optional extras" junkie, so i take the chance to sit on a horse-drawn carriage rather than walking and we spend an hour clip-clopping our way through the place before getting dropped at our hostel. my body's screaming out to lie down on my bunk and do nothing for a while, but i can't bring myself to so i ditch the tourists and head of for a walk around the town. Killarney's a small town though, so it's not long before i run into Vic (England) who tags a long until i randomly find Paul and the other sibs at a pub. Vic keeps going and i stop for a pint and we hang out until we have to go get cleaned up tea. i don't feel that i have to spell out where we wind up later that evening. to cover band was decent and for the fourth time that day i hear Kids by MGMT played. everyone else is well into it, but i'm feeling a bit ill for some reason. the drinks don't taste right and i only have a couple before i leave them to it and head for bed. it was a great "one last hurrah", but it's been a long week and i need sleep, and i wind up sitting around the common room for another hour reading my book while the night-attendant sleeps on the couch across from my comfy armchair.

a solid night of unconsciousness and i'm feeling fucking great, ready to hit the last day with gusto. Paul and Jodie don't look so great, but sweet jebus they're troopers. they've drunk me under the table every night and they're still moving. i'd try to blame it on my greatly-reduced mass, but that would be a cop-out. the glorious weather's taken a break and the clouds have moved in, promising rain Vic tells me. we've been hanging out a lot on the bus while i educate her in the joys of melodic death metal and oz-rock. it helps that she's small so we don't get much in each other's way. it starts drizzling when we get back on the bus after wandering Blarney Castle.

the story goes that there once was a prince who knew he could be king, should be king, but had a bit of an embarrassing speech-impediment. one day he was on one of his long walks around the forest when he came across a witch to whom he poured out his story. she told him to head back home, but look for a stone along the way (he'd know it when he saw it, she said), give it a kiss, keep it close and one day he would indeed be king. fast-forward past the obvious and he does indeed become king of the land and his reign is prosperous, owing in great part to him being able to talk himself out of wars and whatnot, and he built the stone into his castle to keep it safe. now it's a tourist-trap that's disinfected four times a day (more often at the moment, i'd hope, what with the Swine Flu paranoia going around) that you have to lie down and hang down a metre or so backwards to touch your lips to while a beefy Irishman holds you by your coat. it's a gorgeous castle with grounds i could have spent half a day walking around. Nathan and i walk and talk and take each other's photos before we load up and hit Tipperary for lunch (it wasn't really a long way) and then spin on back to Dublin.

i drank a lot of Guinness in Ireland, and it does taste better. because you're in Ireland. and Ireland's awesome. i tended to alternate between Guinness Extra Stout and Bulmers Apple Cider. of course, say Guinness in relation to Dublin and everyone goes on about the Guinness Storehouse at the site of the original brewery at St James Gate and i'm here to tell you that... well... it's not all that. after the Heineken Experience in Amsterdam the Guinness Storehouse was pretty crappy. it's in a fantastic building, with vaguely interesting exhibits, but what you want to do if you go is to go through the "this is how we make our beer" and "here's how we advertise our beer" and "here's the history of the Guinness Phenomenon" shit in the first 20 minutes then fuck off at speed up the elevator to the Gravity Bar at the top of the building. go to the bar and get your free (by which they mean included in the entry fee) pint and find a seat with a view. this shouldn't be too hard. it has windows around ~350 degrees (the elevators aren't transparent) of its circumference with a commanding view of Dublin. it's off in the west of town, so it's not like you're on top of Hilite 33 in Perth, but it's a great view nonetheless. it's a shame we were all a bit too wrecked to enjoy it properly. a week of constant "see things, go drinking, wash, rinse, repeat" has Paul, Jodie and me sitting there trying to enjoy ourselves while we wait to get the fuck out and go have a lie down.

oh, and the gift shop's not all that, either. sorry, i don't need the same tshirt as 300,000 other fuckheads and i've got enough bottle openers.

the Kiwis are out after tea - we hit a chinese buffet in central Dublin because it's a) good, b) plentiful and c) not fucking pub food. they're dead on their feet, which is a shame because i'm in the mood to go exploring. daylight savings means that it's light well past 9PM around this end of the world. luckily, Nathan comes to the rescue with an idea, which is why we find our way to the Brazen Head: the oldest pub in Ireland, established in 1198. it was only supposed to be for a pint, then we'd head back to the hostel but we weren't done so we headed into Temple Bar to have a pint at... Temple Bar. we're still not done, so we find a quiet little local pub near the hostel and have a pint there, walking around in the rain while we compare notes and talk about this, that and nothing.

the next night we're meeting up again. i've spent the day doing a 3-hour walking tour around Dublin (the sort run by students and paid in tips), then wearing myself out hiking around to places that look interesting on the map. Dublin's a fantastic place to wander around. it's small enough that it's pretty much all foot-accessible, big enough that there's plenty of stuff and dense enough that there's plenty to see between point A and point B. i get to pose next to Oscar Wilde again in Mirian Park, emulating a photo i was shown by my good friend Eduardo J. Bovine when i saw him last in Perth all that time ago, saw the sites of the old Viking settlement, the bullet holes in the GPO and the spot where the Rebellion surrendered in 1916 (marked by a red spot on the map, and nothing whatsoever at the site. there IS a great bookshop at the top of the T-intersection which i can strongly recommend. they had possibly the best second-hand section i've ever seen). 7:30PM and i'm at the Dublin Spire (erected for the Millennium, completed in 2002. nuff said, really) meeting up with Nathan, Sydney-Claire, Vic and her mum Julia and do you want to guess what we did? that's right - how better to cap off a week of drinking than by hitting a few pubs? spin forward to somewhere past midnight and Nathan and i are saying farewell with a bear-hug, a promise to find each other on Facebook and offers of lodgings should either of us be in the other's home-town (hmm... now i have a reason to go to Edmonton, Canada :).

i want to fill in what's left of my time in Dublin by seeing as much of it as possible, but after an hour of walking i'm spent. i can see me coming back one day if the stars align, but i think i've had enough for now. unlike the arrival, my departure's uneventful. bus to the ferryport, ferry to Holyhead, the train arrives early and i have no problems changing at Chester. i fall through the door into a dark room at basecamp - louise is out doing whatever she does when she's out - unpack and settle into bed to watch some of the TV i've missed in last week. she rolls in somewhere after midnight and we trade hello's as if i've been out the day not a week, and that's all good with me. i'm still high from the joy of travel and forming embryonic plans for the next trip. it really is a good time to be alive...

Ireland: Is it where you were or who you met while you were there that makes the cider taste so sweet?

by the time i woke up in Dublin 6 days had passed, day after day driving through beautiful countryside, night after night in a different pub and hostel. our hostel in Derry was comfortable and well organised. the hostel in Belfast considerably less so. Galway was EXCELLENT, whereas the interior of the one in Annascaul i barely remember since i spent so little time in it, and almost none of it sober. Killarney was somewhere around average and Dublin did the job well enough, even with the radiators fused to "BLAST FURNACE" (nothing leaving the window ajar didn't fix). after a night out on the piss in Derry i woke up feeling amazingly good considering and stepped out into the dark, overcast morning with my coffee and realised that my mind was blank. nothing to worry about, nothing to plan or consider, just get on the bus and see what the day had in store for me: something i've been hanging out for since before i left Oz all those months ago.

over the rest of the week our merry bus meandered through most of the island of Ireland - the pins in the map on my Picasa album that misses a chunk of the south-east. we didn't really stop much in County Cork, i'm afraid. it's times like this that make me wish my camera auto-geotagged my shots, but micronised GPS is still a ways off, i guess. we managed to get to all the places i wanted to go to (Giant's Causeway, Blarney Castle), as well as places i never knew i wanted to see (The Burren, Cliffs of Moher).

i have a fascination for the Giant's Causeway - an area of volcanic rock which somehow cooled into an array of hexagonal columns marching out into the ocean. it's an almost unique rock formation where mathematical elegance meets the real world to the tune of the waves rolling in off the Irish Sea. it's the sort of place all the tourists want to see and while it's smaller than i'd expected it was still awesome to see and while every man and his dog's been there and wandered around, i kinda wonder how many people have stood in the freezing rain and flung poi around...

most of the tourists didn't hang around long - it was too cold and windy for most of them, but i got in as much as i could before heading back for the bus. next stop was the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge which started life as an access route for fishermen to get nicely in the path of migratory salmon, now another tourist trap. don't be fooled; it's safe as safe, but the views are incredible and EVERYONE wants a photo of them walking back and forth. i'm just glad it was open - they close it off when the wind's too strong. as far as i was concerned, it was worth it just to be able to look back and look out on the coastline. standing on a plank of wood suspended over 26 metres of air by a few ropes was just a bonus.

before we know it we're in Belfast, sitting in a couple of Black Cabs being driven around some of the political landmarks of the city, and there are many. after the definite bias of the last day it was refreshing when our driver told us that they consider themselves to be neutral - "we hate everyone equally," he says, and we laugh. i'm still not sure whether he was kidding. where in Derry there are murals illustrating the Catholics struggle, in Belfast we found ourselves in a Protestant low-rent area where they all came from the other side. we hear stories about the perils of disloyalty, both real and perceived. we sign the Peace Wall built to separate the residential zones which to this day have gates which close at night in an attempt to kerb the violence (it's explained that soon after the gates were installed the IRA fired an RPG over the top of them to prove a point, demolishing a church in the process. point made, i guess). we go to see the Sinn Fein HQ, site of even more bloodshed, and a prison where ten men died in a hunger strike over their status as Political Prisoners. we're warned to leave the pub half an hour or so before closing time so that anyone watching is less likely to guess at our allegiances based on the direction we head off in. by the time we hit the pub everyone's a little... wary. we're not far from the Europa Hotel which is claimed to be the most bombed building in the world (at one point the IRA decided that the best way to get the attention of the journalists was to start blowing a few of them up. it worked, apparently), and somehow after that we never did feel particularly comfortable.

that night had to be the least fun we had on the entire trip. we fetched up in a pub which was fairly OK for a while, then went off to try another which, while pretty cool, was packed and had nowhere to sit. we moved on to another we'd been recommended to find out it was student disco night, too loud and full of fat girls wearing far too little. back to the original venue and it was louder, messier and irritating. i would up walking a couple of the girls back to the hostel and sitting up chatting with one of the americans while she finished her pizza.

i can't say i'd recommend Belfast as The Place To Visit in Ireland. Dublin is nicer by far IMHO, although your mileage may vary. i got talking to a Brit the other day who's opinion was entirely the opposite. still, i may mention this a few times later until i feel like the point's been driven home enough.

the hostel was crappy, but at least i wasn't in it long. next morning we're off towards Galway way out on the west coast. the weather's cleared up and it's warm, sunny, clouds decorating the sky because plain blue's just so BORING DAHLING! out on the road and the world is green and blue and white, magnificent, glorious, perfect. we've a lot of driving ahead of us, so Tom's grabbed a copy of "In The Name Of The Father" - a movie about a group of Irish folk from Belfast wrongly imprisoned for a bombing in the 70's in the English town of Guildford. more political propaganda, but it's illustrative of the sort of things that went on in the Troubles. i let it play in the background while i watch the scenery i wish would never end scrolls past, thinking of nothing much more than how to frame the next shot. we stop at the shady green cemetery which is the final resting place of W.B. Yeats (as in "tread softly, for you tread on my dreams") and rattle off photos before blasting down to a little seaside town called Strand Hill where i get to dip my toe into the North Atlantic and go nuts with my poi. as i'm packing up Ginelle (Canadian) comes running up to join in and we almost miss the bus, dancing around the beach and generally having a ball, then onto Galway.

i fucking loved Galway. i was about ready to piss into my water bottle by the time we got there (i piss-bolted (pardon the pun) down an alleyway when we pulled up i was so desperate. long drives + diabetes = bladder strain), but soon enough our kit's stowed the sibs and i went a-wandering, fetching up down the docks after a bit of tourist-tat shopping to find that the grass is covered in students sitting around having a beer. beer. on the grass. next to the water. we're down the bottlo faster than you can say 'scuse mate, which way to the offie? and 20 minutes later we're in the middle of it, lying around the grass, enjoying the sunshine and generally having a glorious time of it and while it's only a footnote here, it was one of the highlights of the trip. the pace of the tour was just about right - plenty of things to see, but also plenty of time to chill out and soak up the atmosphere.

another night, another pub and we're in The Quay where i've decided that tonight i'm on cider and we watch the cover band. we're having a blast and laughing like drains - Paul and i get rowdy when they play All Along The Watchtower while Jodie runs around with her plushie sheep. after too many drinks we find the rest of the group at Bar 903 up the road after posing for photos with the Oscar Wilde statue and i call it at somewhere around 1AM to sleep.

the Cliffs of Moher are out in Connaught, the area Oliver Cromwell pushed the Catholics into during the Plantation. after the plush, fertile lands in the east the west is next-to-barren, rocky and hard to cultivate. much of it is bare limestone with shallow soil in the low-areas, contrasting grey and green. during the 17th century the kings of England decided to confiscate catholic lands and hand them over to protestant nobles and army veterans. the Irish were forced to rent their lands back, and anyone surplus to requirements was pushed west "Death or Connaught" was the choice, and millions wound up trying to eke out a living in the Burren. during the Potato Famine nearly 2 million people died out there when their cash crops were barely enough to pay the rent and their food crop shrivelled black with Blight. now it's a tourist mecca and we're driving around looking at the rock walls build all over the place - Famine Walls. some were built to divvy up land for farming, some just to give people something to do. they had a lot of rocks to get out of the way so that they could till the soil they had to go somewhere, so they went into the walls. now the walls remain protected by the National Trust as a reminder and a county-wide monument.

meanwhile, limestone is a pretty soft, fragile sort of rock. unlike the volcanics like granite which are hard and wear slowly, limestone erodes like nobody's business. the waves of the North Atlantic have been battering at these shores for millenia, grinding away from the bottom and undermining the landscape which makes for some unbelieveable cliffs (think Great Ocean Road region in Victoria, Australia). we stop in an area that gives a great idea of what the Burren is all about on one side of the road, then drops off not far from the other. of course, i HAVE to go horsing around and my new friend Nathan (Canadian) helps out taking some insane photos.

from 30-40 metre drops to 250, our next stop is at the Cliffs of Moher which i'd not actually heard of prior to the tour. gentle green slopes drop off into the abyss and the water is so far down you can't even hear the waves. a section of it's been nannyfied and safetied with walls and pavement with a sign which reads "Please do not go past this point" blocking the way to the old goat-trail along the top of the cliffs to the south and is easily defeated. Ginelle's camera's just died - she tried to turn it on as we got off the bus and it's not playing anymore. she's shattered. i know the feeling - that's happened to me twice now in the last few years, so i tell her that's fucked up, but look: come along with me, use my camera for any shots you want to take and i'll copy them over to your card with my laptop later. over the next half-hour we take some mind-blowing photos, and even get videos of us flinging poi around on top of the cliff, two paces away from the dropoff. it's yet another insane part of the world and whenever i look at the photos i'm speechless.

it's also stuck me with a new hobby - getting photos and video of me playing with my fire-toys in amazing parts of the world. sure, Where The Hell Is Matt? got in first, but i'm not getting paid to do it motherfucker. meanwhile, all this adventuring is thirsty work, so it's onwards to the Dingle Penninsula and our introduction to the Irish Carbomb.

Paddywagon Tours decided at one point to set up shop in a little town called Annascaul. it's one of those quiet little villages with somewhere around 330 people living within a 6 mile radius. it's rural and pleasant and fairly conservative, which is of course why they took over a hostel, painted it bright green and named it the Randy Leprechaun. don't ask me, i'm just a fucking tourist, ok? it caused a... um... small amount of controversy, but they finally talked the townsfolk around and so there it sits. it's only open when the tour's there, and i have the feeling it owes its existence mostly to its convenient location for the next day's bog-lap around the Dingle Penninsula. still, it's neat, tidy and has its own bar, and in that they serve Irish Carbombs at 3 for a tenner. it's a bizarre, but entertaining concoction which i have the feeling you'd have to be mad to come up with, and Irish to name so ironically, but what the fuck? take a half-pint of Guinness in a glass. sit it next to a shot of 50/50 Baileys Irish Cream and whiskey. now pick them both up, depth-charge the shot and scull it. now to the other 2 in rapid succession. the men's record is 29 in a night. the lady's record is now 15 since Jodie went in with a bunch of Euros and something to prove. me? i only had 6, and a couple of pints. i was pacing myself... which somehow didn't stop me being talked into doing karaoke. call it peer-pressure. call it i'm surrounded by relative strangers so what the fuck? either way, i was in Ireland, so i sang U2, and i'm at that sort of stage of my life so i sang "i Still Haven't Found What i'm Looking For" and everyone must have been good and drunk by that point because they answered with roaring applause. don't ask me, i can't sing for shit, ok? they must have just been too polite to yell "Get off the stage!"

after that things got messy. Jodie spent some hours searching for her lost camera, only to find that it had fallen under Paul's jeans when she put him to bed. Pam was so sick that she spent most of the next morning clutching a double-plastic bag. faces on the bus were a mixture of "oh god i need more sleep" weariness and "please kill me" despair. no time. NO TIME! we're off to Dingle!

Ireland: leave your troubles on your doorstep with the junkmail and get on the Paddywagon...

i stepped off the train at Euston Station and into a wall of noise that slammed in through my optic nerve, London's high-density stimulus bombarding me like i'd spent a week in sensory deprivation and opened the casket to find i'd been left on the median strip of a freeway at rush hour. standing outside for a moment before hopping on the tube, rain pattering on my coat, it took a minute to remember what the fuck i was doing, where i was going, who am i again? it's only 7:35PM, it's not too late. no, it's 9:35PM. that means i was on that last train for 4 hours. no, that's not right. yes it is. fuck i'm tired, i've been travelling since midday to get back here. i can't be tired, i haven't done anything. shut the fuck up and get on the fucking train - you're not allowed to be in culture-shock, it's only London for fuck's sake. you know London. you're home again. do NOT argue that point with me now, you're not in the mood.

sir, yes sir. this is no time to be arguing with myself. don't fight a battle you know you're going to lose. follow your feet - they know where i'm going.

i've just got back from 8 days in Ireland, out of the green and into the grey. the tension i'd dumped at Euston on Wednesday-last waited for me like a faithful puppy-dog and immediately got back to humping my leg and getting slobber everywhere. it's no wonder i prefer cats. 9 days ago i'd walked into Euston Station with a spring in my step and the smell of escape in the air. another trip booked at the last minute, bag packed the night before and hidden so that it wouldn't be obvious i was going away and snagged on the way out the door. i've got a few things to do today, i'd said on the way out the door. a few things to do involve a tube, 2 trains and a ferry to the Emerald Isle followed by the location of a pub or three in Dublin. Virgin Trains have to be the most comfortable i've ever been on - they even have power points in the cheap seats which allowed me to bash out a couple of thousand words on the way to Chester. 15 minutes after arriving i'm on Arriva Wales and firing on towards Holyhead, a drab and somewhat charmless little village notable only for its ferry port. i pulled up to the Irish Ferrys counter an hour before scheduled departure with everything lining up nicely to find out that the 17:15 service had been cancelled due to poor weather on the Irish Sea.

fuck!
um... i've gotta be in Dublin in the morning. so what do i do?
"You can still get on the 02:40 service if you like. that gets in at 6:00AM"
riiiight. ok. no worries. shit happens i guess. so where's the nearest pub?

next thing i know i'm sitting more or less alone in a pleasant little pub called bar2two cruising the free wifi and making my drinks last, engaged in the fine art of killing time with 10 hours to slaughter. i'd complain, but what the hell? i wound up chatting with the locals for most of it, meeting a nice guy called Trev who was keen to learn about this wonderful thing we call the "interweb". suddenly it's midnight, i haven't bought a beer in a long long time despite there being quite the collection of pint glasses in front of me and the pub's closing. "I've got beers in the fridge - come back to my place. It's only 10 minutes down the road and I'll get you to the ferryport by 2," he says. how could i say no? by the time i stagger through check-in i'm sloshed and i've made a good friend in Holyhead. i've rolled out my sleeping bag on a bench and passed out for 3 hours sleep before the ship even leaves port.

7AM sees me standing outside the central bus station in Dublin, immigrated, a pocketfull of Euros, vaguely awake, looking bleary-eyed at the streets. i'd been fortunate to spot the pickup point for my tour - a hostel called "Paddy's Palace" - on the bus out of the ferryport so at least i didn't have to wander around in circles trying to find the place. i'd booked to stay there the night before and because of the 24 hour notice policy my fee was gone which sucked a little, making for an extremely expensive rushed shower, coffee and bowl of cornflakes. when i emerge from the kitchen the foyer's full of tourists. there are 4 different tours starting from here today - i've booked in for the 6-day All Ireland tour through Paddywagon. i used to be dubious of guided tours, but after Egypt i'm warming to the idea. doing the maths, i'd easily have blown the cost of the tour if i'd hired a car and booked my own hostels, let alone the entry fees for the parks and sites i wanted to go to, and i'd likely have missed a lot of the interesting things i got to see, or taken far too long to get to them when i missed turns or got lost. our guide/driver was a tall Irish guy called Tom who was, to be honest, a bit of a dick. that said, he was entertaining and knew his stuff. one thing you miss when you do these things on your own is the stories and commentary and over the days he drove us around we heard the history of the Protestant/Catholic conflict, folklore, tales and songs, explanations of the significance of a lot of what we were driving past - the colour which is lost if you only have a Lonely Planet as a guide.

loaded up on the bus, we headed north towards Derry (or Londonderry, depending on your political bias) past a couple of sites of interest - the town of Drogheda to see the cathedral which is home to the mummified head of St. Oliver Plunket (where i managed to find some desperately-needed energy drinks), and a picturesque little cemetery wherein there is a Round Tower (where monks would hide in times of Viking raids) for us to wander around and take pictures of. we spent a lot of time on the bus - 6 days isn't really a very long time to see all of a place like Ireland, so a lot of our stops were "quick, jump out, take some photos and then we're off again" sort of affairs. the last thing i wanted to do was to sleep on the bus - not when the scenery was rolling by to show another beautiful view every 84 seconds. in Egypt i read or blogged while we cruised through the desert. once you've seen half an hour of desert you've pretty much seen the lot. in Ireland i wound up sitting around with my eyes glued to the window and my camera in my hand, trying to capture what i was seeing at 100kph and knowing that it just wouldn't be the same in 2D.

by the time we pulled into Derry and loaded into the hostel i'd made friends with Paul and Jodie - a pair of Kiwi siblings having their last hurrah before she went off to Cypress for a while and he went back to Edinburgh, and Jordan and Jamie - Canadian siblings doing something similar. we were all to be met by a local who took us for a wander through the walled city (the only one remaining in Europe, apparently), then down to the Bogside to see the political murals. Derry is in the far north of Northern Ireland. the change from the Republic of Ireland to Northern Ireland is marked, even to this day. once upon a time there'd have been a checkpoint on the road manned by British Army soldiers carrying live ammunition. now it's just a sudden change of steet-signs and currency: RoA uses the Euro, NA still has the Pound. Derry is a charming little town which is fairly peaceful now, but still obviously divided. the hardline Loyalist areas wear the blue, red and white of the Union Jack on the kerbs and light poles. Republican areas wear green and RIRA graffiti. in the times of the Troubles Derry was the site of a number of the Civil Rights marches demanding the right to vote for Catholics (as well as the abolition of various other abuses of human rights), the most famous of which ended in the massacre called Bloody Sunday. Bogside is a low-rent area which became a Catholic ghetto so named because... well, it used to be a bog (i don't make this shit up, i just regurgitate. blame the Irish). when you walk out of the walled city and down the hillside you can see the neat rows of estate housing in a broad bowl, marked by a wall on which is painted "YOU ARE NOW ENTERING FREE DERRY" - a declaration and a challenge to the Powers That Be with the flag of Palestine flying overhead in a show of solidarity. all around on any wall big enough you'll see the murals painted over the years by the Bogside Artists - 2 storey high political artworks illustrating the oppression of the Catholics in the area. not far from the "FREE DERRY" sign is a small monument to Bloody Sunday inscribed with the names of the dead. there are still fresh flowers sitting around its base. the memories do not fade quickly in this place, part of why a conflict that started 400 years ago with Oliver Cromwell simmers on to this day.

it's still sinking in when we get our shit together a little while later to go find some food and head to the pub we've been recommended for the evening - the Peadar O'Donnell's which we're told is still IRA owned and run to this day, and where there'll be traditional Irish music. the political bias of the place is obvious when you walk in the door - it's a lovely little pub with the Irish, Palestinian and Basque flags pinned to the ceiling. there's a bastardised Australian flag too, with the Irish green, white and orange covering the Union Jack which makes me smile, so i snap a photo, trigger-happy as ever (there are over 1100 photos sitting on my Eee to sort through making for a snap-rate of around double my time in Egypt). by the time i walk out of there i'm feeling like i've just had the longest day in memory, but the night air is cool and clean, i've a skin-full of Guinness and as far as i'm concerned things are right with the world. the trip's only just begun, but i can smell the makings of a craic'in good time on the horizon and that night i sleep better than i have in months.

the zen art of looking for answers that you know don't exist...

i haven't written anything more serious than an email in 3 weeks. i'm not even sure i can string a sentence together now, but i'm in a train with a power point and 2 hours to kill so i swear i'm going to try. when the emails started coming in asking if i had writers block i knew i had a problem. when my phone started to ring i knew it was serious. for the last 3 weeks i've been looking for answers, mind spiralling through the outer reaches of sanity while i desperately try to keep it together and keep putting one foot in front of another, utterly lacking in direction, going with the flow of the current, anything to avoid feeling like i'm standing still. i'm blind and mapless, internal compass in freespin like i'm standing at the magnetic pole and everywhere from here is south, blank and devoid of landmarks to give me a sign and when every direction looks equally unpalatable all i've been able to do is wander around in circles with a dumb look on my face while i wait for something to pop out of the snow and say "this way".

i got back from Egypt, glad to see London again and get some time to sort myself out. 3 days of work materialised out of nowhere which kept me commuting back and forth from Heathrow again for the remainder of the week. by the end of that week louise and i weren't talking again and we've spent the fortnight hence in stony silence and narky staccato conversation, quietly tearing chunks out of each other in a decaying orbit of mutually assured destruction. i wasn't in any state to sit there and deal with it so less than a week after getting back to London i was heading out of it again - a hire car booked on the spur of the moment, a route worked out on the way, a destination picked out because it was somewhere i'd be forced to turn around again and submit to the gravitiational pull of the capital.

over 2 days i drove 712 miles through the English countryside, hitting Land's End and coming back again. i kept the 5" tall map of the UK donated to the cause by Shadow's folks on the passenger seat, folded up so the last 6 inches of useful page were visible and more or less navigated by which town sounded nice, or which road looked most interesting. from London to Bournemouth to Dorcester to Exeter to Plymouth i explored the English countryside, driving past rolling hills and pretty villages, stopping every once in a while to take a photo. the countryside was lush and gentle, hedgerows stitching the pastures together and i remember standing there alongside some lonely road wishing i could spread myself thin over the countryside and be absorbed into the green. i found a cozy little B&B in Plymouth and spent the evening drinking with the locals measuring carefully from the £30 i had to my name and finding vast entertainment regardless. back on the road at 9 the next morning i headed down a tasty-looking A-road which led in the vague direction of Penzance and was a joy to drive, stopping when i saw a sign for the Eden Project which i'd heard about but hadn't expected to actually find. after walking the gardens and the biodomes i was back in the car to Lizard Point (the southern-most point of the mainland) to Penzance to Land's End where i saw a while and ate the pasty i'd picked up in the last town. this was part of the vague notion i'd had when i set out - get to Devon and have Devonshire Tea, get to Cornwall and have a Cornish Pasty. i had my cream tea sitting at the quayside in Exeter. i had my pasty on the rocks over the cliffs of Land's End (from a shop recommended by a hitchhiker i picked up a few miles out of Penzance). back in the car and it was back through Penzance to Newquay where i'd intended on staying the night, but by the time i found somewhere to park and i was wasn't feeling it so i moved on, picking Launceston more or less randomly because it was in the right direction, i'd never been and it has the same name as a place in Australia.

the first place i found to park was right next door to Launceston Castle which i decided to at least go and look at (it was 6PM by this point, still bright thanks to Daylight Savings) and wound up lying around on the soft grass overlooking the rolling green hills and village in the valley beyond for the best part of an hour while i tried to work out what the fuck i was going to do from here. eventually i realised that i'd seen enough of the english countryside and that from here on in what i really needed to do was drive. just drive and drive and drive, set the cruise to the speed limit and go until i ran out of road, fell asleep at the wheel or got back to London, which is why i wound up driving down some of the now-familiar streets of Mayfair and Westminster at midnight, through Knightsbridge past Harrods, all lit up like a Vegas casino, down Piccadilly and through Piccadilly Circus, around Trafalgar Square and down Whitehall to Westminster where i did a U-turn and went back, cruising down The Strand and Fleet St, dropping right at Monument so that i could drive across London Bridge, through Elephant & Castle and off down Kennington Park Rd and back to basecamp.

2 days of driving, the best part of 18 hours behind the wheel with my PSD (Personal Sanity Device) strapped to my head, occasionally listening to BBC2, alone and with nothing to distract me from the chaos in my head, i had a lot of time to think and get my head straight. it didn't work... not entirely. by the end of it i still couldn't make a decision about what i was going to do with myself long-term and when i walked back into basecamp my calm evaporated like petrol, leaving an oily, explosive fume which has coiled in the air ever since.

i've been completely incapable of making any real decisions for a while now, so many of them i've offloaded onto other people who are more than happy to make them for me. the support i've had from around the globe has been unbelievable. i've got Shadow working to replace the rusted ruin that used to be a spine and replace it with a fresh rod of steel. Rapunzel makes the decisions i'm too indecisive for or simply don't want to make. i've got Sandra to keep me smiling and my eyes forward, SpeedFox and Daywalker who've fed me beers and listened to my ranting, always good for distraction. SiJ has filled in the cracks with movies and pleasant conversation and pushed me to cruise the meetup groups, which is why i've wound up meeting firedancers in Green Park for the last 2 weekends.

my poi hadn't had a whole lot of use until a couple of weeks ago. i've played around here and there, got a bit of my skillz back, then pulled them out when i could in my wanderings, usually so that i could say i'd spun them in interesting places (seriously, there has to be someone else who's spun poi on top of Mt Sinai at dawn, but i challenge you to find them). suddenly i'm in a park in the middle of town with a dozen other circus-types and i've been flinging staff or poi or juggling balls or devil sticks around for 4 and a half hours. the buzz from that day took half a week to fade, and by wednesday i was dying for sunday to come again, just for the like-minded company and the joy of spin. louise accused me of only doing it to show off, but for the first time in longer than i could remember i actually felt happy and energised. i hadn't realised how much i missed hanging with a bunch of people who all want to play and learn and have no agenda past meeting up every once in a while and doing something fun, where drinks in the pub are an afterthought not the main event, where you have a common interest past being bored.

the best thing is that while i've had a chance to just go off in the park, i've also met some hugely interesting people. 2 night ago i went to a play written by one of the guys from the park which was actually really good - you take a bit of a risk with these things when some guy you meet in the park begs you to come see the play he wrote. this once, i got lucky. afterwards he grabbed me and asked if i was coming to the pub and how could i say no? 2 hours later i'm heading off with a tentative invitation to head back to Scotland for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the thought rattling around my head of wait... what exactly did he mean when he said "perform"???

it's the people who make life worth living. i've been remembering that more and more. every time i've started feeling fucked and abandoned i hop on Facebook and wind up having an hours-long conversation which leaves me smiling and helps get me through the day. one of them ended with the following, after which she promptly went offline so i couldn't reply:

"remember this , one of you most endearing qualities that you have it that you want to be better and stronger than you were and you are always striving to be happy...... you are better than you believe yourself to be, you just have to look at yourself in the mirror and see what the rest of us see"

the strangest thing is the patterns that are emerging. in the last fortnight i've had 5 different people use the phrase "Remember who you are," and 3 who've sagely whispered in my ear "I think the universe is trying to tell you something." two is a coincidence. 5??? 5 separate people in 3 cities. the problem is that they're right. life in London has ground me down. a couple of days before leaving for Egypt i was on the bus back to base from doing some shopping and i overheard a conversation between a middle-aged black guy and a Russian teenager on tour:

"Have you lived in London before?"
"No"
"Well you should! It'll make a hard man out of you. You learn to suffer in London..."

and i couldn't help but grin and think i'm blogging this...

it's true though. you know how you always hurt the ones you love? well it works both ways (thankyou Fight Club), and i have been loving London. the other problem is that i've been on the receiving end of an avalanche of derisive, demeaning bullshit and i've made the mistake of listening to it. somewhere along the way i've been blessed with a horde of irreplaceable friends but i've managed to lose sight of the knowledge that i'm well loved amongst them. it's a shame to see a friendship spanning years come to dust and blow away on the wind, but there comes a time when enough's enough. it's been a long, long time since i've had to write off a good friend, but i've finally run out of cope and the pen's in my hand. the only person who should be allowed to make me miserable is me godsdammit. i'm not entirely the victim here - human interraction is a 2-way street, but i'm sick of feeling like i'm standing in the middle of the road with my hand out-stretched.

i hate having to write off a friend but if the wisdom of crowds is anything to go by, too many people in two different countries seem to think i should have done it a long time ago and since i patently can't make a decision of my own at the moment, who am i to second-guess? if there are still people who look up to me, even in my reduced and demolished state, shouldn't i at least try to hold my head up high and make it worth their while? when the screaming majority keep saying you have worth, won't even the most self-deprecating eventually stop, listen and maybe even start to believe?

enough of this shit. life's too short and i have forward to worry about rather than back. it's taken me 3 weeks to sift through the entrails and work out in which direction they point. as the days go by the range of choices gets shorter and shorter, and what i want becomes gradually clearer. the lighter i get the easier movement becomes so we'll have to see how the world looks when i'm free of the last of the deadweight.

System Failure: Please Reboot...

somewhere in the last week or two i completely lost the ability to write anything coherent or meaningful. i think they may have confiscated it at customs or something. i've applied to have it returned but this is British Bureaucracy we're talking about here so there may be a wait involved. otherwise, i might try wandering around the markets in camden to see if i can find a cheap chinese knockoff.

regular service will resume once i can find and install the missing components. thankyou for your patience.

Egypt Interlude: breaking the 4th wall for fun and profit...

Deafening Silence by Machine Head's echoing in my ears when i pull my Eee out of my shoulder bag and try to work out what the fuck i'm going to say about Alexandria... and right now i've got nothing. i've been sitting in seat 24H of this 777 for nearly 2 hours reading a Bill Bryson book while i try to get the mojo up to say something interesting and i have the feeling it'll be later tonight or tomorrow that i go and sit in the kitchen of Louise and my flat in Kennington before i have the spare capacity available to process. looks like i'll have to do another retroactive. i hate having to do that - backdating something i meant to write so that i don't have weeks-long gaps in my content followed by hard busts of output. on this trip it's been unavoidable sometimes - i don't always get the chance to sit and write stuff as it happens and wind up bashing out 4 days' worth of entries on a long bus ride before my battery dies, checking it in my hotel room while the battery charges and my PSD and Louise's iPod hang off by their USB cables, then run downstairs to get them uploaded and set everything back on the charge before we run out for the evening.

before getting on the feluca i held court in the restaurant of the hotel we were in like that - rotating between 3 different power adapters, shuffling 3 camera chargers, 3 mp3 players, 2 phones and my Eee so that everything had enough juice to handle the next 2 nights away from power and flushing toilets. i just about got everything done, too - Mike's iPod didn't get a full charge and neither did my camera, but then neither ran out of charge before we could charge them again either so it all worked out.

it's all been a little insane on the blogging-front over the last 3 weeks. when Louise has been sleeping on the bus i've had my Eee out, bashing at the keys. any time that hasn't been spent sleeping, doing stuff, or on trips too short to make it worth booting up have been spent bashing keys or editing. here's a rough idea of what i do to get a post up online:

while i'm wandering around taking photos, seeing things or (if i'm not travelling) living the life, i'm drafting. witty or useful or insightful phrases or ideas that come to mind get filed away for later. sometimes i'll have entire paragraphs, or themes, or ways that i'm going to proceed with explaining something sitting in my head for weeks before i actually commit them to print. while on tour it's a lot easier - my framework is what i do with my day, and everything else flows or segues out from there. once the ideas are together i sit down to bash it out. almost every blog entry comes out fully-formed and ready to run with. no half-finished artifacts lying around on my Eee's hard drive, no fragments or drafts that need completing, no planning or writing-plans. i've always been like this. back in high school when they said you had to show yoour planning i'd fake it - write what i wanted in my essay and throw the "plan" together afterwards. that's just how i work: start with an idea and run with it until the spool runs out of string. the the only exception to this is when i'm writing something long and i get interrupted, which has happened a few times in the last couple of weeks, whereupon i have to pick up the flow again from where i left off which i always hate. each entry is the child of the mood i was in when i was writing, and that's going to be different 6 hours later. it's a pain in the fucking arse, which is why i wind up re-reading through what i've done already and often re-write the last paragraph so that the next flows the way i want it to. sometimes i go in with something resembling a plan or framework, sometimes i go open up my text editor with nothing more than a topic and my randon-simile-combinatron running in my headmeats.

music's important. i'm not sure if words can express just how important, but you could consider trying to drive a car without any bearings. i've tried, it doesn't work. crank the speakers, plug in earphones, doesn't matter, but give me noise. what it is doesn't seem to effect the flavour of the product, either. i've written angry while listening to Death Cab for Cutie, mellow and melancholy to In Flames and depressed to Blink-182. right now i've skipped through to Parkway Drive because after the last 3 weeks i desperately need metal. i've been listening to a LOT of Parkway Drive and Inhale Exhale of late, especially "Romance is Dead" and "I'll with no friends (and a grin on my face)".

when i'm sitting in the kitchen in Kennington with a reliable connection i'll usually write straight into the text entry field on the blogger site. out in the world i use a text editor and save it locally until i can get online. raw-text files from the last couple of months still litters the home folder on my Eee because i can't quite bring myself to delete them despite their having been uploaded weeks ago. once the file's saved it tends to sit for a while, hours or days, before i go through for an edit. read, correct, fix typos, add detail, rearrange sometimes. usually it's just a case of adding a few lines of information i missed out the first time around, embellishments or extra words to make the picture clear, sometimes a whole paragraph needs rewriting. these things you do for the sake of art...

whenever i have to work offline i'll note down the time and date i started so that i can fill in the timedate stamp when i finally get it up online. if i'm writing a retro i'll usually project the time i WOULD have been working if i hadn't been drunk, tired, distracted or generally not in the fucking mood to stare at a screen for hours on end. sometimes i try to string a sentence together and it just doesn't happen and if i try to force it all i get is drivel, a foul mood and a dead battery. i had that problem after getting back from Amsterdam - for a week and a half i couldn't write to save me and then spent the following 2 weeks catching up, retro's all the way.

once all that's done it's down to getting onto the net for 10 minutes, pasting all the appropriate words in the appropriate text fields, making sure it's tagged correctly (so you can click on the "UK" tag and only get my UK-related posts, for example) and hitting "Publish". sometimes i'll load up the page to see how it looks online, but since i don't use images or funky layout i don't usually bother. generally i'll spend an hour writing a thousand-word entry, do a quick read-through and post. i've improved my output in recent weeks and the other night in the hotel room in Cairo i was able to bash out 4700 words in around 3 hours, including a couple of breaks. i wound up adding a bit of content and splitting the entry into two for reasons of pace, so the editing-session took around 45 minutes. bearing in mind that i've posted near 24k words so far, you can guess how much time i've been spending in the cracks and quiet moments, on buses, trains, plains and boats. i'd have blogged in the fucking donkey if i'd had somewhere the rest the Eee - don't think i wasn't tempted, or that Louise didn't jokingly suggest it. 24k words and i'm nowhere near done.. i still have to worry about that fucking day in Alexandria, then try to capture the atmosphere of the last couple of days in Cairo... then somewhere in there i need to put together the exposition piece i've been planning since yesterday evening, but have no idea yet just how i'm going to make work.

sometimes when i sit here looking at my Eee i just can't bring myself even to start. sometimes i attack the keys with a focused fervour that would make an OCD-sufferer on cocaine blush. sometimes i sit down to say something i thought would be interesting, like... say... what i did in Alexandria, and wind up talking about something completely different. whatever it is i upload, i try to keep it fresh and interesting and people keep reading it so i guess i can't be doing too poorly. i often get perplexed when people i've only met recently tell me that they enjoy the blog, but i won't try to pretent it's not gratifying. meanwhile, i'm planning to continue with this until i get sick of the idea... or when people stop yelling when i don't post for a while. getting things out of my head and onto the screen tends to help reduce my desire to kill people, and the feeling of getting an entry that i've written, edited and feel good about posted is, while less than post-orgasmic, still a real buzz.

meanwhile, i need to eat more of the monster Toblerone i bought at Cairo International Airport (i was feeling shite and wanted chocolate. no preaching about my diabetes, i'm SO not in the fucking mood) and get Alexandria out of the way. i need something to get me in the mood... hmm... Slipknot brings a smile to my face. "Subliminal Verses" it is...

Egypt Day 17: the house that Alexander built...

i've always had a quiet admiration for Alexander of Macedon... and not just because because his grandfather and my grandfather came from the same part of the world. where Louise will be coming back from Egypt with pile of Ramses II swag big enough you could bury her in it, Alex always gets a not of respect from me. he was followed by men twice his age, fought his away across the known world and won and died before he turned 30. he's history's embodiment of "life fast, die young, leave a beautiful corpse".

somewhere earlyish in his career he wandered into Egypt and kicked the Persians out with (from what Soobie was saying) about as much effort as it takes to slap a mosquito that makes it into your 6th floor hotel room late at night and keeps you awake with its buzzing. i can imagine the conversation now... or at least how it would have played out if Egypt was Brunswick St in Fitzroy:

"So wheresa capitala dis place? LUXOR?? Wassamadda you? I'm not gunna rule from fucking Luxor! Youse all can get fuck mayte. All get fuck! I'm not gunna going up anna downa Nile all de time. Call my cousin Christos anna his mayte John an Stef. I wanna new capital closera to home. Youse can call it Alexandria... yeah, i lika that. Get going! I gotta polish ma Monaro mayte!"

or... well, proably nothing like that, really. still, you get the point. from the capital in Athens Luxor is a long, painful way away. shifting the capital to the coast of the Mediterranean made sense, even if just in travel time. Luxor was the capital of Upper and Lower Egypt, so its location vaguely central made a good compromise between Memphis in the north and Aswan in the south... kinda like Canberra in Australia. Everything in the Middle Kingdon of Egypt was about that balance between north and south. the crown of the kings was "the crown of Upper and Lower Egypt". the temples are covered in a synergy of papyrus and lotus - papyrus being the symbol of the north and lotus of the south. north and south, east and west, life and death, the ancient egyptians liked to play things in pairs.

meanwhile, Louise and i are running late for our meetup with Mohammed... or he's early. i'm not sure, but we get a call from the concierge while i'm throwing my showes on to tell us he's here already. when we get down we find a kindly man with a beard who looks like he may be in his early 40's... which around here means he's at least 50. he leads us out to his car - a late-model Hyunday Verna (Accent in Australia) and we're off up the Alex Desert Road. cars in Egypt are... intersting - Cairo especially. the standard taxi you see in Cairo is a 20+yo Fiat, Peugeot or Lada (the Egyptians did well out of their treaty with Russia... or maybe Russia did well outof Egypt. everywhere you go there are Ladas, the Air Force use MiGs and the police use AK's), painted black and white and looking like they've had every side patched and straightened at least once or twice. most of the cars i see don't have a straight panel on them and if it's clean it means it was washed this morning.

the Alex Desert Rd runs almost straight out of Giza north and west through the Nile Delta. it has 4 marked lanes, which makes it 5-6 lanes wide and surface i'd go so far as to say is "decent". you'll pass a mosque every couple of kilometres in case you're travelling at prayer-time... in fact, they seemed more frequent than service stations (got to love a country where religion's more important than petrol). over the course of 200km you gradually make your way from desert beige to farm green as you go deeper and deeper into the rich soil and and abundant farmlands in the north, then swamp and marsh-lands and then suddenly the blue-green of the Mediterranean. the city was originally built along a natural bay with a couple of small islands across it, which was altered over time to become a calm, enclosed harbor. the Lighthouse (one of the 7 Ancient Wonders) on Pharos Island is long gone and Pharos Island is now an indistinguishable part of the mainland, near enough to where the Citadel of is now.

we haven't spoken to Mohammed much. i'm in the front passenger seat with Louise sitting behind me in the back. it's a habit we got into on taxis if only because i can fend them off if things get nasty, and it means i'm a buffer against potential leering. it's important to note that this hasn't been an issue. at all. even in the slightest. Louise gets a lot of looks from both blokes and ladies. i get more than a few myself we're a novelty and there's no taboo in this culture about staring. regardless, sitting in the front it's mainnly my responsbility to keep the driver entertained, but when Mr Sayed mentioned that Mohammed's english wasn't the greatest he wasn't kidding. he gets by amazingly well though, it's just some of the concepts he doesn't follow our words for. this means that while Louise sits in the back sleeping with her headphones on, or playing with her DS i'm stuck up front not wanting to be rude by pulling my book out. Mohammed's our driver, but he's not a taxi. we're paying him, but he's not our servant. we need to be a little more respectful, so my book doesn't come out until WAY late on the way back to Cairo. it's not too bad though - he's having a fun time trying to explain things to me and teaching me new words in Arabic, little of which sticks. by the time we crest the last rise and are looking over the sea i'm getting well and truly ready to go for a walk around and not have to think too hard about how to say what i mean in simplified english.

one of the first things i notice about Alexandria is how much cleaner it is than Cairo. in fact, that statement is way too much of an understatement. it's Cairo's supermodel younger half-sister. same mother, different fathers, smaller and without the soft middle and saggy boobs, sporting a perfect smile and a better tan. in the 30's it was a slice of Europe-in-Africa - more French and Greek than Arabic. over the last 70-odd years the Arabs have reclaimed it, but kept most of the good habits. the streets are startlingly clear of litter, and because it's insulated by 100km of farmland and marsh it's nowhere near as dusty. i don't see a single tour bus in the entire time i'm there, so i'd guess that it's pretty far from the usual tourist routes. in the rest of Cairo when someone says "Welcome to Egypt," or "Can I take your photo?" i've learned to ignore them. i have to stop ignoring them here because Alexandria is the only place i've been in Egypt where no one. NO ONE has asked me for money or tried to sell me anything i didn't tell them i wanted to buy first.

Mohammed drops us off at the Citadel first up after skirting the bay. it looks like a fucking sand-castle - limestone walls which have been repaired and rebuilt recently from the looks of things, a squat boxy little fort with crenellations and arrow-slits, murder-holes and stout walls that i'd not want to lay siege to with weapons less recent than the last century or a ridiculous number of expendible mampower. we do our standard wander around, but here we're two of the few non-Egyptians in the place. it's full of school groups and Arabs on holiday. it's refreshing like a cool breeze, as subtly different from everywhere else we've been as a feather on the end of a sledgehammer.

exploring the passages and hideyholes in the Citadel i find out that in Alexandria i'm a superstar. i keep getting besieged with high school lads who want to take photos with me, they all want to be my friend, practice their english... i'm not sure if i look like someone famous or what the story is, and Louise is copping a bit of it too: catching shy glances and furtive smiles from the girls. i see one of them whip a phone up out of nowhere to get a photo of her before blushing and making a run for it. i'm a little wierded out by it all, but i'm learning to cope. it's kinda fun, especially when a group of lads blocks traffic on both sides so that i can get a nice photo of Louise while they wait for their own photo op. Louise isn't particularly impressed and doesn't think it's particularly appropriate - i shouldn't be encouraging them, she says. me, i'm just happy they're not trying to hit me up for cash or buy their shit and what the hell? if there's one thing in this world that puts a smile on my face it's making people happy without trying and the number of times i hear "Thankyou thankyou! You're a good man!" makes me think that if this is all they want of me then i'll give it twice.

we finish taking photos and looking around after an hour or so and eventually find Mohammed in the carpark so that we can get on to his next recommendation - the Library or Alexandria. there used to be a Great Library of Alexandria and at the time it was the greatest collection of written works the world had seen, but that mysteriously burned down somewhere back in Roman times. rumour has it that the most important, rare and interesting pieces were squirelled out in the hours preceeding, but i wasn't there so i couldn't tell you. it's only down the road, but it takes a while to get here because we have to wait for the diplomatic convoy to go past. "A Big Man is coming," Mohammed tells us as the armoured cars and trucks full of guns roll by. i spot the flag of Cyprus on the bonnet of a car, but that's all i know.

the Library is a massive, stadium-sloping building with rack after rack of books extending up 12 levels, each with a reading area. there are a couple of exhibitions on the middle floors, and a massive datacentre hosting the Internet Archives. it's a grand building, awe inspiring. its a temple dedication to the worship of accumulated knowledge and the written word. after looking around for a bit we head for the door, dodging the official party who've arrived at the Library since we're come in, so i walk up to part of the diplomatic entourage and ask who's come to visit. "Mr , El Presidente of the Republic of Cypress!" is the grinning response of a woman who's absolutely excited to be asked. sweet fuckery... we just walked within 10 metres of the guy.

Mohammed's looking for somewhere for lunch. he's got somewhere in mind but he can't remember where it is and it's obvious he's got his heart set on something specific because he's asking the same question over and over of every taxi driver we drive past. i don't understand the Arabic, but i CAN pattern match when i hear variants of the same phrase repeated. eventually we pull up in a vaguely-legal parking spot and sit down to some of the best, sweetest charcoal chicken i've ever had. it's been lightly marinaded, and roasted with a covering of onions and tomato. there's so much food that we can't get near to finishing it all and Mohammed gets some of the leftovers to go. it's a cool, dim little place we've fetched up that seems fairly clean, considering the woodchips strewn across the floor. there's even a basin with soap so we can wash out hands before and after tearing half a chicken to pieces and devouring it.

we stock up on water from a cheap-arse little supermarket. the other thing that Alexandria seems to lack is "tourist pricing". we've been here for something like 4 hours now and no one's tried to sell us anything, begged us for money or coax us onto a camel or horse. i'm loving the vibe more and more as time goes by and i'm starting to realise that if i had to live anywhere in Egypt it'd probably be here. back in the car and we find out that the greek ampitheatre is closed, which is a bit of a shame. we make up for it by getting Mohammed to park near the harbor and wandering along it for half an hour or so. i try to explain the concept of "beach" in a mixture of simple english and pantomime but it's not going anywhere so we call on Mr Sayed to help. at a little piece of beach at the eastern end of the main bay i get to dip my toe in the Mediterranean for the first time and celebrate by pulling out my poi and going off on the sand. when i stop 5 minutes later there's applause - everyone's come to watch the crazy white guy with his tennis-balls and streamers at the end of some string and for the first time in something like 6 years i get to bow to an audience of more than a couple of people and while we climb back up onto the footpath i'm grinning so hard i could break walnuts on my cheeks.

we're out of ideas and it's 3:30PM. with a 3-hour drive ahead of us we skip out on finding coffees and shisha and opt to head back to Cairo, getting back on the highway and into the insanity of Egyptian traffic. driving in this country is something of an experience. overwhere you go in the city there are cars squeezing through gaps i wouldn't have rated as such. the ends of wing-mirrors everywhere are scratched and cracked from where they brush regularly. even the open roads are ridiculous - on the coach on the way back from Abu Simbel our driver's going at least 30km/h over the limit, passing 2 or 3 of the other coaches at a time like they're standing still. our driver on the way to Dahab is regularly on the wrong side of the road playing chicken with trucks, and despite pulling over seconds before impact neither driver seems to blink. it's Situation fucking Normal. Mohammed's pretty relaxed. our taxi driver from Tuesday was one of the most skilled collision-avoidance drivers i've ever seen. i'm not sure i could have predicted traffic as well as he could, and i'm not shy about rating my own skills. Louise passes out in the back seat again and as we roll back from the delta to the desert i finally relent and pull my book out for a while.

i'm a little pissed off by this point - if i'd known how nice Alexandria would be i'd have tried to get a night there and see more of it. of everything on this trip it's been the biggest surprise. i love the genuinely friendly atmosphere of the place. i've been hearing "Where you from? Welcome to Egypt!" before a hundred times, but this is the first time i've felt like they're really pleased to see me as someone different rather than as a walking wallet that bleeds cash if they hit me with the right-sized stick.

nearly 12 hours after we left and we're back at the hotel finally, still stuffed from our excessive lunches. my appetite's slowly fading into a shadow of its normal self, so tea's skipped. Louise parks herself in bed and plays with her DS while i crank some tunes and i get to work blogging again - a little over 3 hours wearing the keys of my Eee smooth and i'm still nowhere near finished, so i keep going until my brain melts and i need to sleep. there's not long to go now before we head back to London... the days trickling away and i'm edging towards looking forward to it. there's only so much of this i can take, i think, before it starts to seriously do my head in but i'm in my stride and i think another 2 days are easily surviveable.