John Walker's Electronic House

This week I saw the film Before Sunrise. It’s a Richard Linklater film – the man responsible for some real favourites of mine, like the best last-day-of-school movie there is, Dazed & Confused, and the astonishing Rotoscoped documentary Waking Life. The two are so different in content (the former is about the moment of freedom that comes when the last day of school before the summer is over, the latter a proto-cartoon documentary featuring academics and actors exploring their philosophies, eventually investigating dream states and the potential of lucid dreaming) and yet contain so many similar tropes. And indeed many of the same actors.

More recently (and more widely noticed) there was the ridiculous (and really fun) School of Rock, again contrasting everything else he makes. And now a sequel to the first mentioned Before Sunrise, called Before Sunset. Chrissy had bought me Before Sunrise for Christmas, and I’d yet to watch it, waiting for her return from the States. With the sequel at the cinema this week, a few of us got together on Monday to watch the original, on Alec and Beccy’s home cinema (projector against the lounge wall).

It’s a film about what happens if you do talk to that girl on the train. So that was weird.

It’s a beautiful film, written by Linklater and the mysteriously aloof Kim Krizan, containing almost nothing else but the conversation of two strangers in a town foreign to both of them. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, an American guy and a French girl, in Vienna, neither speaking any Austrian or German. The language barriers emphasise the relationship. She speaks fluent English, probably better than him, and his French is stuck at a faded high school level. But since neither speak German, their compromised communication is within its own private bubble. And it’s a film purely about language, communication. It’s 100 minutes of conversation between two people. And despite the wobbly nature of Hawke’s career, he nails it in this. They are natural, improvising, and communicating. It’s the romance you dream of, if only you had the common sense, the guts, whatever, to talk to that girl on the train. I don’t mean “you”, do I?

And I’ve just noticed that Linklater is currently making a film of a Philip K Dick novel, A Scanner Darkly.

Monday 26th July

It’s interesting to see what different people remember. It’s now over a week since the Monday I’m writing about, and I’d forgotten half of it. Asking Nick and Victoria separately, I got two completely different, but entirely accurate, accounts of the day. Anyway, compiling our memory resources, this is Monday.

We needed to be back at the train station around 5ish, so we still had a near-full day to fill. And for the first time in my life, what I really wanted to do was go to Lush.

I’m not quite sure what my aim was. I think it was all about wanting to not let myself always be the person who walks away without having said anything. Although I hadn’t the faintest idea what I’d say or do if I did go there. There were many digs throughout the previous 24 hours, about how I should have given her my email address. Quite what this would achieve wasn’t really clear. What it obviously wouldn’t achieve was a prospective marriage. But in hindsight, the motivation to return, to be brave, to do something, was really a token. A stand. A deliberate action to say, “I’m not going to be a complete wimp about this always”. So when we went back, she wasn’t there.

Nicktoria set about buying some other non-chocolate/icecream gunge, and I had An Idea. I took out the notebook that lives in my pocket, and scribbled a note. Paul, in the bar the previous night, had told me that the guy from dEUS who had formed Magnus had also made a film. Lush Lady hadn’t mentioned this, so I guessed she might not know. So I wrote that, thanking her for the tip off about the music, and then added my email address, if she wanted to swap any other band recommendations. Another nice lady in the shop pinned the note to a board behind the counter, and then we chatted about how Lush Lady had leant her all the dEUS albums recently, and how much she loved them. If nothing else comes of all this, perhaps people will check out dEUS.

She hasn’t emailed. I don’t expect her to. But I went the step of offering my email address. Hooray for me! Yes, I sound ridiculous. I am.

As we began thinking about lunch, we bumped into Vlad in town. We had now been in Amsterdam for so long, we were bumping into people in town. That bizarre time-paradox of holidays was in full effect. We felt as though we’d been in the town for weeks, and of course on getting home, it felt as though we’d only been away a day. Nick asked if he knew anywhere we could get some nice chips. A random request. (Please don’t think we were the sorts who holiday abroad, determinedly seeking out ‘British food’. Not at all. But Nick just fancied some chips). Vlad did. In fact, he chained his bike, and told us to follow him. We walked through a small shopping centre, out the other side, and then were pointed towards a small alley. “Down there, on the right,” he said. These, he assured us, would be the best chips in all of Amsterdam. He then left us to it – Officially the Best B&B Host in the World.

He was wrong. When we got there, the cafe we were expecting turned out to be a hatch in the wall, selling chips in paper cones over a small counter. And he was wrong. They were the best chips in the world. Absolutely incredible, with giant dollops of variously flavoured mayonaises on top. Atheroma in a cup. Joyous.

The afternoon meant the beginnings of the public-transport-a-thon again. The trains in Holland are weird – when the clock hits the time the train is due to leave, the train, at that exact moment, leaves. It’s not natural. Where is the 38 minute delay? SAVE THE POUND! And so on. Which reminds me – getting home, and finding the Euros that you’d been spending in France and Holland in the previous couple of weeks no longer work, is galling. We’re so rubbish. Please don’t save the pound.

Night time. On a boat.

Final story: the ferry. We decided it would be “fun” to go to the Sunset Misery Lounge, to watch what was described as “the entertainment”. Promising “Our version of a popular television quiz show”, we settled down on the upstairs balcony area to watch everyone’s favourite TV show… “The Nostalgia Quiz”.

First question: How old was David and Victoria Beckham’s child Brooklyn in 2001.

Ahhh, that takes me back. Remember those days, eh? Brooklyn Beckham isn’t the age he was in 2001 like he used to be.

And it got progressively worse. Possibly peaking with question 11. “Who wrote the play Waiting for Godot?” Followed by the most incredible flow of gibberish from the man with the microphone, with an attempt to give a ‘clue’, saying “Existentialism”. At which Nicktoria entered a frenzied rage, stage-shouting “IT WASN’T AN EXISTENTIALIST WORK! IT WAS NIHILISM!”

I was more confused, as with every question, by how it was possible to be nostalgic for the name of the author of a play. This didn’t appear to matter.

We gave up soon after, although walked past later overhearing the answers.

“And who wrote Waiting For Godot? It was… Samual Becket. Or Backet. I dunno, something like that.”

I have just seen the most beautiful thing in all my life.

The thunderstorm over Bath tonight is unlike anything I have ever witnessed. It is still going on, drifting further towards the valley, my study illuminating violently every thirty seconds or so.

I love thunderstorms and always have. Of course I have been scared of them, tonight included, but it is a delicious fear, an awareness that this planet we attempt to destroy is so many million times more powerful than we are. So my natural response to hearing thunder is to open the curtains and windows, in order to be able to see and hear more clearly. And on occasion, to go outside to watch properly.

I wrapped myself in my cagoul and stood in the carpark behind the flat. The storm was happening behind the houses, meaning I could see the flashes from my front door, but not the lightning itself. Standing in the carpark, I was able to see every blistering rip in the sky, every purple-white-blue-purple jagged explosion, and hear the booming from the belly of the sky with perfect clarity. And then the rains came down, torrential like I haven’t seen for years. And then heavier. And then heavier. To the point where my cagoul admitted defeat, and I became soaked. But above me was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

I once flew back from Chicago, taking off in a thunderstorm. That was incredible. We flew alongside it for about twenty minutes, and I was able to stare out the window and watch something utterly mind-blowing – the thunderclouds themselves, and the secret electrical activity that goes on within, that we are not privvy to from the earth. The ceaseless dancing of the lightning, viciously and balletically flitting from one mass of droplets to another. I was enraptured, unable to look away, nose almost touching the glass of the aeroplane window. Which was awkward, as I didn’t have the window seat. The girl who did was reading her book. As was the man to my right. And as was every other person on the plane, reading, sleeping, staring at the chair in front of them, each of them ignoring the most wonderful site I had witnessed. I wanted to stand up and scream at these people. “WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?” “How can you live a life in which reading the in-flight magazine is your preference above the inner workings of an electrical storm.” Of course, I realise looking back on it that they may well have been scared to death, staring at anything other than the theatre of death performing its macabre play outside our giant metal tube in the sky.

It is times like these that I am so very glad to be able to type without looking at either the keyboard or the monitor, as I type these sentences while staring out the window, waiting for the next flash. And there again it was worth it. The sky becoming violet – not dark purple or less black, but violet. And then purple-white jagged fingers of power tearing through it like the ground tearing open during an earthquake, splitting into tendrils that fizzle as it fades away. That’s what I saw just then. What I saw outside was a bit better.

People often comment, “ooh, listen, it must be passing overhead now” as the gap between light and sound narrows. Tonight I saw it pass overhead. I looked directly up, and saw the epicentre of the sky’s illumination, the whitest purple spot in the middle – lightning leaping within the clouds – that spread astonishing brightness in a disc about it. Immediately above my head. That’s when the storm is passing overhead now. Which is why I went back to my front porch.

Being above the shop, my porch is not on the ground, but troublingly high up when wondering about which target the lightning might wish to choose. So I stood a bit inside, out of the wall of rain. But from there I could only see the flashes, and not the forks. I stepped outside again, and hid under the open window of the porch, which kept the majority of the rain off me (a mostly pointless exercise, as I was already shower-wet).

I’m not embarrassed to admit that I ran inside. This time the bolt didn’t stay inside the clouds, and this time there wasn’t the narrow pause between flash and bang. It was the most beautiful thing, and it was also the most dangerous. And the sound was so loud, louder than any other noise I have heard nature produce. So I ran in, and watched from the kitchen window.

This was lightning so bright that some flashes lit every moment of the sky, every building and tree, not “as bright as daylight”, but a unique brightness, that were it to last longer than the split second of the burst, would probably be more terrifying than a mind could cope with. Purple-white bright, as if the whole world were the ghost of itself, coming back to haunt the place in the universe it had once floated. And then after the light was gone, there was a darkness. That was the strangest part of it. For a moment that lasted just too long for comfort, before things went back to normal, there was a black darkness. I presume it was the result of my eye having just contracted its pupil as fast as possible against the ethereal light, suddenly trying to interpret the night through a pinprick. And so all that can be seen is nothing, until the pupil expands, the light is able to soak back in, and the world fades back into view.

Thank you God for tonight’s display. There is nothing that nature offers that I love more than thunder and lightning. I was on the verge of tears tonight, so powerfully overwhelmed by so much beauty. It’s still going on now as dawn begins tidying up.

I wish I had the words to share how storms make me feel. How alive and yet fragile. And tonight there was no aeroplane window between me an the electricity.

Sunday Evening

Flashback – Sunday Morning

I get up for breakfast, and after waiting fifteen minutes for Nicktoria to emerge after our agreed breakfasting time, I join some of the other guests instead. There are three people from San Francisco, and Jason, Vlad and Ken’s ‘maid’. Two of the SFians are a stand-offish male/female couple, and the other is a friendly gay guy, Brian. We chat about how he is planning to ensure Bush won’t get a second term, and this and that and the other, and eventually Nicktoria comes in and joins us.

Flashback – Saturday Night

The three of us are sat in Nicktoria’s room, around 11.30pm, and the front doorbell of the B&B rings. No one answers. It rings again, and Victoria decides to see who it is. Nick and I, because we are forward-thinking new men, let her do this without going with her. It would be patronising if we were to suggest she should not be murdered by a strange lunatic in the night. And involve standing up. She is down there for quite a while, with lots of chatter. If she’s being murdered it’s certainly quite amicable. And then eventually she is rescued by the return of Vlad and Ken. The person at the door had been trying to get hold of someone called Brian, who was apparenty staying at the B&B. He was meant to be joining him. Victoria was confused, as he was enormously camp, but kept referring to his ex-girlfriend in Amsterdam.

Sunday Morning Again

Brian’s night visitor comes into the room, touches Brian gently and affectionately on the shoulder, and joins us for breakfast. They are a couple. Sweet. So why is Brian referring to a wife? Sure, there are camp straight people, but these two are clearly together, and we’re all staying in the Gayest B&B in the World. It’s not as if there’s a need for such a pretence – Ken and Vlad were reasonably unlikely to cry, “Your’re a GAY! Get out of our establishment, you abhorence of nature!” And they’re from San Fransisco, the gay capital of America. It’s all very strange.

Sunday Evening Again

At breakfast Brian and (no one can remember his name, so Nick has christened him ‘Tyler’ until someone remembers) Tyler had asked if we knew of anywhere to go for drinks in the city. We recommended the place we’d been to the night before (banana beer), in turn suggested to us by Vlad. We were going to be back there for some of the evening, as we’d arranged to meet up with someone from a mailing list we’re all on, a guy called Paul Rees who lives in Amsterdam. So come the evening we head there once more.

Victoria and Paul Rees

After a while, Brian and Tyler appear, and join us. Tyler sits next to me, Brian next to Victoria. Nick and Paul sit opposite each other in order to better trade loud insults and arguments. And out the corner of my eye, I can see Tyler’s hand doing something it really ought not. If you’ve seen the excellent Curb Your Enthusiasm episide with the “trouser tent”, you’ll understand the situation. All trousers ruck up a little bit when sitting, and sometimes that rucking can appear rude. But it never appears more rude than when being fiddled with, constantly. Obviously I didn’t stare, but to the best of my peripheral vision, it didn’t look like it was only trouser.

Ewwww.

And then all of a sudden, he appeared to become incredibly aware of his ‘situation’, and began trying to cross his legs and drape his arms ‘casually’ in his lap, like a school boy in assembly. (Oh, that was the worst thing in the world – the mysterious assembly… appearance. Thank goodness for school bags). But he didn’t stop all evening, constantly fiddling with himself. And it’s not fair to have someone doing that out the corner of your eye. Short of cupping a hand to my face to provide an improvised, and exceedingly obvious, blinker, what could I do? Well, I could attempt to mediate between Paul and Nick, ignoring him altogether.

And throught the day, I’d been thinking about Lush Lady. Again, like Train Girl, I wasn’t thinking, “if only I’d exchanged phone numbers we’d be married by now”, but more generally, and how I wish that momentary meetings could only be better orchestrated – that there could be some sort signal that allows both parties to indicate their interest in chatting some more, maybe meeting for coffee. But a signal that could be shown without embarrassment or rejection. Or fiddling with yourself in public.

A day off from telling the tale – a day of playing City of Heroes, and then a party in the evening.

So I’ll write the rest of Sunday on Sunday, and it will at least confuse me less.

Sunday Afternoon

My ambition for Sunday was to visit the Van Gogh Museum. Someone had told me that they’d been to Amsterdam twice, and both times failed to visit, and they wished they had. I’ve completely forgotten who that was, but for some reason I felt it my duty to avenge this wish. I don’t even like Van Gogh that much. But whenever suggestions for what to do were being voiced, I offered the Van Gogh Museum, and eventually got my way.

However, there were many detours along the way. Continuing our defiant walking along the lethal streets, we eschewed public transport for our entire stay, and so all (but one) destinations were reached by winding trudges. Apart from the achy feet, this seemed the best way. There was enough public transport employed either side of the stay – a person could get quite fed up of it.

The Nicktoria entity has a strange, and somewhat disturbing, obsession with Lush – the soap shop. I hate Lush. Everything in those shops looks like chocolate or icecream (and occasionally cheese), but it’s all soap. Mean, tricksy soap. Lush hates me too, because despite my best efforts, whenever I go into their shops the tsunami of smell smacks me in the face and makes me cough. The staff hate that. They glare at you, and think that you’re fake-coughing to make a point about how horribly smelly their rubbish non-chocolate-and-icecream shop is. But it’s real coughing because of how horribly smelly their rubbish non-chocolate-and-icecream shop really is. It’s so unfair.

Nicktoria, however, disagrees. It instead chooses to buy each and every ridiculous product, to feed its bizarre obsession with baths. And so having spotted a Lush on Saturday, there was no avoiding a visit.

It was just the same as any other branch of the store – the same products, the same blackboards sporting the same font (although some of it was in Dutch), all apart from the music playing. I recognised it but couldn’t place it, and it was extremely good. Nick and Victoria dashed about, picking up various not ice cream or chocolate items and thrust them under my nose for me to say, “yes, it does smell a bit like honey”. But eventually I had to ask, so I went up to a friendly looking member of staff and asked what the music was.

“It’s dEUS!” she replied, with an enthusiasm that made my head light up. “Of course, dEUS!” I said. “You know them?!” she replied, sounding delighted. And so we talked about dEUS for a bit. They are a great band, if you haven’t heard them – a friend of mine’s favourite – and so we nattered away. Then she said, “Have you heard the new project by the lead singer?” I hadn’t. She told me they were called Magnus, and then said, “Do you want to hear them?!”

There’s not much I can think of that is more attractive than someone’s being enthusiastic and excited about something that’s important to them. She was very attractive. She disappeared behind a screen, and changed CDs, putting Magnus on. We listened. It was good. We said thank you, Nicktoria bought some lump of rubbish, and we left.

Train Girl had been on my mind for the last couple of days. Not her particularly, but the whole issue of being pointlessly shy in the face of an attractive girl. I was pleased that I had chatted with Lush Lady. (We didn’t quite get her name, but I’m sure Nick will add his improvised spelling as a Tsukkomi). She was lovely, and best of all she was enthusiastic, rather than ordinary. She wasn’t embarrassed to be excited about loving a band so much, and wanted to share it with others. I had enjoyed my visit to Lush.

Victoria now named her my girlfriend, and she was referred to as such for the rest of the trip. Both chided me for not having swapped email addresses or similar, and scared me with suggestions that I should go back in, in order to do so. Erk. But we were now on our way to the Van Gogh Museum.

Surviving the queue with the life-giving power of A&W Root Beer and pretzels, we launched ourselves upon the gallery. Nick and I had once visited the Tate Modern. Wandering around the top floor Nick had said, “I had thought it would be difficult to know what is good and what is crap. But it’s easy. Look: good, crap, good, good, crap.” But such ease of crappiosity identification is perhaps hindered when looking at the works of recognised “Masters”. Um… The Museum was having an exhibition of Manet’s sea paintings, and it took us only a couple of minutes to realise that they really were completely rubbish. Obviously Manet was an Impressionist, and so it was never his intent or goal to create accurately rendered seascapes. But those potato-print messes were just stupidly poor. Perhaps he was very good atpainting other stuff, but honestly, they were dreadful. This ended up causing us to get the giggles, which probably annoyed others trying to see the Emperor’s New Brilliant Paintings for what they weren’t. The museum seemed to only point this out further by hanging a Monet sea scene next to one of Manet’s finger paintings. I don’t like Monet at all, but in that light he looked like the greatest painter of all time.

I know it’s a cliche, but Van Gogh’s stuff does look that bit more impressive for being immediately in front of you, and actually being the real thing. Standing in front of the Sunflowers (shush Victoria) is a slightly bizarre experience – you’ve seen it on the TV and in books so many times that the painting had become ficitional. And there it was, in real life.

We decided that the only sensible way to get back to the B&B, especially in recognition of our aching legs, was to hire a peddalo and pedal our way along the canals. Only offering two-person power, Victoria sat in the back, like the Lady she truly is, while her two Men pushed furiously at the pedals, avoiding the ferocious motor-powered menace of the tourist barges.

How God punishes those who use motors

We proudly obeyed the strict rules of the canal, and chastised all those who did not. Those motor-using fiends. We were clearly far better than them, and their unnatural, unGodly diesel driven monstrosities. If God had meant us to use motorised tourist barges, he wouldn’t have given us feet that fit onto the pedals of a peddalo.

Saturday

So finally Holland. The ferry kindly wakes you up with pre-recorded announcements in seventeen different languages informing you that the ferry will be arriving in an hour and a half, so you’ve still got plenty of time to be asleep and not lying awake listening to pre-recorded messages in seventeen different languages.

The most repeated message was, “Foot passengers, please wait in the Sunset Misery Lounge on Deck 8, or the Oirish Bar on Deck 9, and NOT in the reception area.” Over and over and over. Bah, we thought. These Butlins loving idiots must drive them mad, standing in reception, the fools. So we waited in the Irish bar, fearing that were we to head to the Misery Lounge, residual echos of the strained tones from last night’s P&O North Sea Players might stumble upon our ill-rested ears. But no one else did. Then a couple of others came in, but they wandered away, probably peturbed by the low numbers of fellow passengers. Eventually, fearing we were in completely the wrong place, we wandered down to the reception to ask where we were supposed to be. The Sunset Misery Lounge on Deck 8 or the Oirish Bar on Deck 9, we were told. But where were we? Standing in reception…

So far the journey had been Train:Train:Train:Car:Train:Train:Taxi:Ferry. Now we added Coach:Train:Walk and finally appeared in Amsterdam.

HA HA HA! AMSTERDAM! DRUGS AND PROSTITUTES!!!!! HAHHAHAHA. Oh, you wits.

Let me give some examples:

[15:05] botherer: we’re staying in Amsterdam. I am in charge of creating an itenary
[15:06] Charybdis: 9:00: Large bowl of drugs. Also orange juice.
[15:07] botherer: yawn

[15:07] botherer: I am in Amsterdam this weekend
[15:07] Jim: ooo
[15:07] Jim: sex n drugs?
[15:08] * botherer awards Original Response Of The Day Trophy to Jim

[02:02] cheese toasties: Going to Amsterdam on Friday
[02:03] Soul279: for the drugs, huh?
[02:04] cheese toasties: CONGRATULATIONS! YOU’RE THE ONE MILLIONTH PERSON TO SAY THAT!!!
[02:05] Soul279: what do i win?! drugs?!

and so on.

So of course the first thing I saw as I stepped out of the train station in Amsterdam was a British guy smoking an enormous spliff, trying to offer it to Dutch people who looked at him, embarrassed.

Our B&B – Mae’s B&B. Run by Ken and Vlad. It was, without question or proof, the gayest B&B in the world. The whole world. Ken and Vlad, who called each other “honey”, were the kindest and most helpful hosts we could ever have asked for, giving us really helpful tips for things to do, and nice places to visit. It was a great B&B all round, really lovely old building, spiral staircases, and a complete soap opera to unfold by reading through the ten years worth of guest book comments. See, originally, it was Ken and Someone Else. And then, at one point, Ken and Someone Else were away, and Vlad and Another Man were looking after the place… Ooooooh! You don’t get that sort of speculative nonsense in a hotel.

By the time we arrived, we were so tired from our intrepid travelling, and time-travel addled sleep, what we really wanted to do was sleep. But Vlad was having none of that. We were told that sleeping was wrong, and that going to the giant open market was right. And so we did. It would have been a brilliant place, were the stalls to have been two feet further apart, so that human beings could walk between them. As it was, it was a hellish nightmare of shoving and standing still. However, we still managed to perform some excellent cheese purchasing – the sort of cheese purchasing to be proud of – and went back to the B&B to eat. And then, using this eating as a clever ruse for being in, went to bed for a couple of hours.

We wandered around Amsterdam a lot. There’s lots to see there, without rushing frothy-mouthed around the red light district, or becoming feverishly excited that the Coffeehouses sell weed. (“Coffeehouse” means dope joint, “Coffee House” means coffee joint. We all know which drug is best). And it’s small enough to walk across, so long as you don’t mind constantly flinging yourself out of the way of the Nazi Cyclists.

Amsterdam is a city owned by bikes. For example, this is the bike park by the station.

The roads are divided into three sections: a thin sliver for cars, wide areas for bikes, and occasional bricks that pedestrians are allowed to step on. And all three are overlayed by the ever-present tram tracks, ensuring that even if you find a place to stand where bikes aren’t attempting to cleft you in twain, there’s always the possibility of being splattered by a tram.

We went to a nice bar in the evening, after eating at a nice restaurant, which boasted over a hundred different beers. Vlad had recommended it. We love Vlad. Sitting outside, I guarded the table while Nick and Victoria went to get drinks. It was one of those microbrewery type places, and remembering the delicious blueberry beer I’d had a couple of times in San Rafael, I asked for them to select a fruity beer. Nick came out and said, “The choice is: banana, apple or cherry.” “Ooh, banana,” I said. “Well, you’re getting apple,” he replied, “we’ve already chosen.”

“But I want banana!” I protested. Nick went back in. He came out again, and said, “The banana one I’m having is the last one they’ve got.”

So when the barman came out to give us our drinks, as he was pouring them, I asked. “Is this really the last banana beer you have?” “No!” he replied, surprised at the question.

Nick is a Bad Liar, who rather than asking the barman to swap the unopened bottle of apple beer for an unopened bottle of banana beer, instead made up a Bad Lie. Which makes Baby Jesus cry. Although he did somewhat make up for it, by explaining, “It was too late – he had already opened it,” as we sat at the table, five minutes later, watching the barman opening the bottles in front of us. If one is going to lie, I think it best that one lies so ridiculously that the lie is being revealed as such as it is said.

Victoria, who is best, swapped my horrid apple beer for her much nicer cherry beer. And the banana wasn’t very nice anyway.

Friday

My people are coffee people. In the first portion of the day (trip to the chemist for Victoria, then to Nick’s mum’s house for a strange errand) it was important that we find some sort of coffee dispensing corporation, in order to prevent my day being spent in a no-caffiene-first-thing headache gloom. Yes, I know this is terrible. I am very aware that I am addicted, and that I will inevitably die horribly face down in a vat of brown liquid. But I can defend it.

I went to the doctor for a medical a couple of years back. He asked me if I smoked. I said no. Had I ever smoked? No. What about drugs? Nope – never taken any. How many units of alcohol do I drink a week. At that time, it was 0. And had been for a year or so. Finally he asked if I was in a sexual relationship. No. The doctor put his pen down, looked at me, and said, “You need to get a vice”.

So a coffee addiction is only following doctor’s orders.

Nick kindly took me into the first place he saw, his extensive knowledge of the shops one millisecond from his house untroubled by the decision. They served me something that they had rudely chosen to describe as “coffee”. I differed. And then around the next corner, a specialist Italian coffee house, run by Italians, serving Italian coffee. What makes me proud of me is that I threw the hideous goo away, and walked in. I said to the man behind the counter, “I’ve just bought a coffee from the place the around the corner.” He frowned. “It was horrible,” I explained. He nodded. “Make me something better,” I asked, knowing he would understand. He understood. Because my people are coffee people.

Nick had said a couple of times that there would be lunch on the train, so we didn’t need to eat before we left. This struck me as odd – food on a train – but I didn’t give it much thought. It turned out, for the three hour journey from London to Hull, we were in First Class. This was something to do with Nick’s company and various string pulling, rather than an outlandish expense on our part. I’ve never been in First Class before. I always mutter and grumble as I walk past all nineteen empty coaches to reach the pleb-seats, so far down the platform that you’ve already made impressive inroads into your forthcoming journey. It was nice, though. More leg room, comfier seats, and a lady offering us tea and coffee (not horrible coffee, impressively) every half hour. Although somehow they had run out of lunches. Which was an impressive feat, bearing in mind there must have been about ten other people in the posh bits. So we were offered the paultry recompense of a sandwich from the buffet car, and a bit of cake.

Don’t worry, we were told by the Daily Mail reading bearded man sharing our carriage, the lunches are always horrible. He explained how it was all so yucky, and that the chicken was so spicy-hot that it was inedible. Stay tuned for Tuesday’s write up to see if Daily Mail Reading Bearded Man was a trustworthy person, or a stupid-faced Daily Mail reading twit. He was also rubbish at magic tricks.

Victoria was excited to show us around Hull. She was probably the very first person ever to be excited to show someone around Hull since Mr Hull, having just invented it, showed it to his mum and dad. She had gone to university there. There was a hilarious adventure involving buying shoes, and ending up with two pairs!!! It was so funny! If only you’d been there. Sigh.

And to the ferry.

When I was a kid, my family went on a few holidays to Scandinavia via ferry. This was, of course, before these newfangled low-price airlines, so the ferry was a great cheaper way of getting to Abroad, and the Scandiavian Seaways ferries were completely brilliant. When I was 12. I have no idea if they were great, or if it was just that I was 12 and on a ten deck boat with a swimming pool, cinema and decks to scrurry around. One of my strongest memories of those ferry trips (apart from the time we had a really rough crossing, and you couldn’t walk in a straight line, and everyone was being sick except me and my mum, and we were having a great time because it was so fun) is my dad, sat in a deckchair on deck, smoking his pipe. He stopped smoking a pipe over a decade ago, so it seems really strange now. And he was far too young to be smoking a pipe at the time.

All this ocean-crossing nostaglia is a pre-cursor to annoucing that the Hull to Holland ferry is like the very worst Butlins holiday camp, but with the handy escape routes blocked off by the sea. It was all too horrible, but by a fluke Nick and Victoria’s cabin had been naughtily double-booked by P&O, and to fix this they had been upgraded to one of the Well Posh cabins. On the corner of the boat, it had two windows, lounge area, television, seperate bathroom and toilet, and a complimentary fridge full of drinks. My cabin was a cupboard with a bed folded up against the wall. So much hiding in Nicktoria’s cabin was enjoyed, apart from a brief foray to the “entertainment” to witness the gruesome murder of a number of already rubbish songs by the “P&O North Sea Players”. So, so wrong.

Time travel is incredibly complicated, and this unnatural activity took its toll for us. Deciding to see a film at 11.30 (The Cooler – very good, if trying slightly too hard to be ‘a bit Scorcese’), we realised we’d be out about 1am, and that we’d be up cruelly early the next morning. But we would be fine. Were the time not to also move forward an hour. Which, by the cruel position of the Sun, it did. Three and a half hours of sleep. Yummy.

The tale, in some parts.

Thursday evening involved Leg One of the travelling adventure. From Bradford on Avon to London, to Mill Hill. The first section of this being the relatively simple train to London. I had a table to myself, and on the other side of the aisle, so did a pretty girl, henceforth known as Train Girl.

She was reading a Christian book. This evokes two responses from me.

1) A Christian! A pretty Christian. [Checks left hand]. And no ring!
2) A girl reading a Christian book on the train… is she a Weirdo?

But, because of my complete patheticness, I’ll never know. It would have been so simple. Just a, “Is that book any good?” would have worked. I display an interest in the Christian book, immediately revealing enough to at least hint I’m One of Them, and at the same time her response would be a great way to gauge whether she was a loony Christian. So simple. Never said. Exchanged smiles, but nothing else. And then one station later four American teenage girls appear and fill the seats around us. The chance is gone, the moment is lost.

Of course, the moment isn’t lost at all, but now I’ve a vague, if somewhat weak, excuse for being a big cowardy-custard. Arriving at Paddington we both gather things to leave the train, and as she stands up she gives me a big smile. I smile back. The End.

Sitting on the next train, I begin the embarrassingly futile plans for what I will do or say if she were, by utterly improbable circumstances, to appear on this obscure Platform 13 train. I will definitely say hello. At least hello. I will find out if she lives in London (which would be the sad ending) or if she is in the South West, visiting London (the happy ending). And we will get married. But of course, “The End” has already happened, she doesn’t appear, and she shall be, forever more, Train Girl. There are lessons to be learned here.

The night was spent at Nick and Victoria’s, my hosts for the holiday, which involved a trip to TGI Fridays and (later) a very quick lesson on how to play Texas Hold-em poker.

This was then made more concrete by viewing an edition of Super Death Poker 7000, or similar, recorded from Mr Murdoch’s Mailer/Hiley-funded Sky television. This is an excellent way to put such lessons into perspective, and one I remember from school days. It was all very well to be told that trees turn into paper, but there’s no concrete belief from me until I’ve seen it happen in 1970s-0-vision on a video with that old white clock on a blue background before the programme starts. And so on. But of course no such lazy nostalgia was offered by the contemporary craze for poker on the television. Like so many things, it ought not be watchable, but is about as compelling as television gets. I’ve long stated that should a Future World ever emerge, where we are given the power to create television channels of programming of our very own choosing, mine should be nothing but alternating episodes of Late Night Poker and Scrapheap Challenge. Of course neither are great programmes, and of course there are programmes I would much more immediately choose if asked to name an important favourite, but these two stand out as the very most perfect shows to stumble upon when flicking through the channels. No, you’d never set the video for them, but once noticed, the remote control can be safely lost.

It seems that many more such programmes exist on the more evil channels of Murdoch’s kingdom, tempting me toward it only further. Ones with whizzy graphics and explanations about what on earth is going on.

So it was late to bed, before the Big Push.

Off to Amsterdam.

Now shush with the stupid drug/sex references.

Good.

Back Tuesday.