I was absolutely fucking mongoloided last night and have no memory after 11pm - reports indicate an empty bottle of JD, a stack table take out in the Kings, dance off and an escort home - my head feels like it’s been in a tumble drier and I would welcome a firing squad.

Good send off.

Seems like a lot of life begins all over again as of June 1st - but before I go to Rotterdam I’m meeting up with Anna on Friday night at the Mint Leaf in London - we haven’t seen that much of each other since I returned which is a shame seeing as how long we go back - I still feel that despite the many I call brother and sister, there are few I’m at ease with as much as I am with her - lately we kinda got swept up in the everyday and the promise of arrangements - missed calls - day later text - a 5 second email - in theory we aren’t so far away - an hour or so on the train up to big smoke - which lends to thinking it’s no big deal and it’s easy to catch up - if not this weekend then next and so on - but when you think you don’t have to make the effort, the effort never gets made and ergo.....



I think I was better at keeping up with the day to day of those closest to me when I couldn’t be further from them, living on the other side of the world.......

Bundi was lying on his back with his feet in the air listeining to the new chilli peppers album when he suddenly saw my hung-over good self stagger down the stairs....



...Not seeming to recognise me for the fifth time in a week, he then jumped up and ran straight into the patio windows.



That cat is an idiot.

So it’s been a while since I sat and stared at the blank page and just started writing to see what happens - kinda been living in a driftwood type of existence these last few days - not really seeming to influence much around me, yet it all takes place none the less - not that I’m complaining as things have been drifting in a pretty damn decent direction of late - observe…



My recent good fortune has included the following:

• Totally unexpected end of year random bonus from the head office for no discernable reason has got me completely out of debt again - still in state of shock about this.
  
  
  
• Lady running the show in Rotterdam has found me a place to live - 2 bedroom apartment, by the river, 10 mins from town, fully furnished, 3 balconies, open plan living area, internet and cable connected - 795 Euro’s a month = sweeter than a cream covered cheerleader.
  
  
  

• As of June 1st once working in Rotterdam, I’ll get given a company travel card and which will mean never ever having to pay for buses, trams and trains in and around the city - currently I spend about 150quid a month on getting to verk on the train in UK - while this is indeed going to save me much in the way of moola, it is also going to save me from the change demon - I call him Changdemus - he who taketh notes - turns them into coinage - coinage which soon disappears without trace on random items, the description of which you can’t ever quite put your finger on - it might say £2.99 but once that 10 note is passed over, its gone in all its entirety.
  
  

• First lost mobile phone for almost 3 years was found by kindly old lady who used it to ring my Dad and organise to give me it back the next day (by way of gratitude, she got the classic tried and tested “say thanks to an old lady using chocolates and flowers” combo - ala streetfighter 2)
  
  

• Computer froze at 7.44pm yesterday evening meaning I could not bet on last nights Euro final game going to penalties - which it didn’t - saving me the 40 quid I’d convinced myself to place on it due to being able to see the future.
  
  

• Having one tequila too many late on Saturday - a tequila that inspired me to have the good sense to pass up a sure thing with a girl that would of surely got me into a whole world of cheap crappy soap opera style small town scandal - well I say ”inspired” when really it was more of a case of ”incapacitated- but it was a bullet dodged none the less.

Greatest FA Cup final EVER. Steven Gerrard is without a doubt Englands greatest player and that was the most colossal califragafuckinglistic display of sheer footballing genius I have ever witnessed.
What. A. Match.

Games such as these are defining moments in sport - and truly special moments in life - always to be remembered - well, apart from the celebrations afterwards - as you can see below.......I obviously can’t remember much from those.....

Drastic to the point of hospitalisation though my Columbian marching powder obsession was - the binges of my early to mid twenties did result in always being guaranteed to still be able to breathe through my left nostril when I get knocked for six by the flu....

Back to bed....

Most saw it as disaster but for me it’s opportunity - Rooney gets injured and the door opens for Gerrad to make this his world cup - he’s carried Liverpool on his back for two seasons and for England he’s never shone playing alongside Lampard, always cancelling each other out - now however, unleashing Gerrad into the forward role behind Owen is the bold move - perhaps alongside Cole - but Eriksson has never been bold - up until todays squad

Theo Walcott, Aaron Lennon, Stuart Downing and only 4 strikers all pointing to 4-5-1 and Crouch up front should Owen show he doesn’t have the juice. We may not be happy about Sol and Hargreaves getting in the squad but still, the man has finally grown some cojunes.


Walcott and Lennon etc - as he said “it’s a huge gamble - but if it pays off he may very well win the world cup.”


And there was no chance of that ever happening if he played safe.


Bring it on.

As far as the move to Holland goes, one of the main things that I have been worried about is that I’ll have to drive around Europe quite a bit. I guess it’s fairly well known among my friends and family that I am not the worlds greatest driver - I haven’t parked properly for the ten years I’ve had my license and have also crashed two cars for example - I also don’t have much sense of direction, although given time, I do believe I am one the worlds greatest short cut discoverer’s - but driving round Europe, where I’ll be asked to pitch up, hire a car and go find random tea buyers across the designated country - to those that know me this sounds like a recipe for disaster - I’ll be on the wrong side of the road, hopelessly lost, refusing or unable to ask for directions and I’ll be late for everything - I don’t really argue too much.


Well you see that’s the simplistic easy option I can use as my excuse - something I’ve been thinking about a lot today after my dreams from last night.


You see I don’t think I’m that much of a bad driver - I also happen to think that when it comes to parking, I’m just forever lucky - there always seems to be an easy space to drive into - I also don’t care that much about whether or not my car is sticking out into the road or if it looks ridiculous to others - frankly cars, engines, custom made accessories and driving skills all amount to a whole lot of nothing in my eyes - I get from A to B and find it a chore - I’ve never been a petrol head and most of it is a foreign language to me - the rest of the world can get over my bad driving, I’m just not bothered - I don’t drive too fast and, Jakarta apart, I’m not exactly a danger on the roads - I’m just not a great advertiesment for the British school of motoring, that’s all.


The two times I crashed my car it was while under the influence of various mind and mood altering substances - both where fairly remote yet still brainless occurrences for which I cannot really defend, other than to say that at the time of driving I thought I was fine - the states of the vehicles afterwards would obviously suggest otherwise.

For the first I was around 23 when I took a corner at speed and jumped over a steep verge before diving down and smashing into the curb below at the bottom of the ridge - I was half cut on coke and booze and I busted the drive shaft after smashing the right wheel up pretty bad - lucky, in so much as it didn’t get any more serious than that and at so early in the morning, the only person I could of killed was myself - I was able to limp the car to the end of the road and leave it on my parents drive - it was a write off.


I’m supposed to write lesson learned there.


The second time was last year - details at a glance: 3am wasted after the club - picked the car up from the hotel 5 mins from home - kissed the girl driving round a corner at speed and drifted across the three lanes to hit and mount a concrete foot high central reservation - drove through some bushes and trees - dodged the upcoming flyover concrete wall by swerving at last minute to jump back on the road and continue on back to the apartment - dawning realisation kicked in the next day about how close a call it all was - car was fucked up, but fixable.


I didn’t really drive much after that - I guess there wasn’t much reason as taxi’s where so cheap and the traffic was atrocious - I’d do errands here and there and the short drive to work - but I suppose I definitely avoided it if possible - once I got back here in the UK, my old car was long sold and trains have been par for the course as far as work goes - moving to Winchester, I wouldn’t of needed a car either - I told myself it was the expense - petrol, parking, tax, insurance, MOT, upkeep - avoidable.


But last night I dreamt about the last crash for the first time - very surreal - I don’t think I’ve ever dreamt of it before - even as I sit here now I remember the dream so well - as I do the crash - it was the peaceful serenity of the situation - how something so quick, out of the blue, violent and unpredictable just seemed like a perfectly calm state of affairs - there must have been maybe two or three seconds where I just watched events unfold in front of me - like the windscreen was in fact the next step in plasma TV technology and it wasn’t actually happening - something so quick seemed to last so long - I had time to look around and take it all in - like I can still remember what all the plants looked like - the way they would appear in the headlights and before suddenly being sucked under the wheels - as though a magician had clicked their fingers to make them disappear.


Drifting through possibly the last few seconds of your life in slow motion and not seeming to have any influence over events - quiet acceptance and faint amusement as events unfold - with Aphex Twins Selected Ambiance playing in the background - for all the world seeming like the scene in Fight Club where he just lets the wheel spin and come what may.


Apart from the girl - she was screaming but I wasn’t really listening - I mean I can remember her face - but not the sound - well, that is how it goes in the dream.


Could have been the whisky.


So I haven’t driven much since - and I always figured it was circumstance rather than actually avoiding it - up until last night I’ve never really given the incidents themselves much thought - and by that I don’t mean the stupidity of the situations or the possible consequences etc - I mean the experience itself - which I don’t remember as frightening or terrifying - quite the opposite - leading to questions of how wasted was I that I though a hi-speed car crash was peaceful - but really, it just seemed quite surreal more than anything else.


We were in the bar last night and another round of Sambuca arrived at the table - I dutifully downed the distasteful dirge and reached for the JD and coke to wash it down - my body reacted instantly to dispel the evil within - watering eyes, deep gasps and taking a moment to concentrate on not upchucking - it was an automatic reaction to drinking something disgusting - it didn’t matter that I wasn’t drunk or that I have no other problem with any form of alcohol - the body wanted rid of it and wasn’t in the mood for argument - however, I did argue and I won in the end - but the body had made it’s point - No More Sambuca or I would be losing my chin pretty fast and upchucking in a not so quiet corner.


So I’m thinking that the body and deeper reaches of the mind are subconsciously running the show called my life - that I’m being tricked into thinking my conscious thought is making decisions when really there are some automatic choices made for me - for my protection - where instinct is overstepping it’s usual duties and getting involved with conscious decisions, taking over - Jedi mind trick style - instinct has looked at conscious thoughts track record and decided to step in - sort of inner monologue along the lines of:



You don’t need to drive a vehicle
You aren’t very good at it
It’ll endanger us all
You might not have been scared by that last experience with the crash in Jakarta
But the rest of us vital organs sure where and we’ve decided no more driving.
You can’t even park for Christ’s sake!



As though my instinct has decided my mind can’t be trusted and has taken command of the master controls - and telling me that I no longer drive because of circumstance - when really it’s just not a very good idea.


(I think like this thanks to this evenings consumption of Jameson’s Whiskey and something I saw during a family holiday to America when I was about 13 - we were in the Epcot centre and there was this film where Norm from Cheers and a few other people where all in charge of different areas of the body, running it like a factory with orders getting passed down from the management in the brain - all supposedly working together to get you through the day)