On Being 18

The worst thing about being 18 is not that you're spotty and you sweat a lot and you constantly worry about what other people thing of you and whether you are cool. Its not that you are purely a product of your hormones and you can swing from dark moods to glorious happiness to anger in the space of minutes.

For me the worst thing about being 18 is not that you are naive and inexperienced in the ways of the world - and lets face it, a little stupid. the worst thing about being 18 is that you don't realise that you are naive, stupid and inexperienced.

In fact you think you are rather clever and that all of the lessons of thousands of years of civilisation don't apply to you. You have better, more clever ways of doing things that all of your predecessors.

I was reminded of this when I was 18 and I went on my first lads holiday with much the same group that I will be going on holiday with this year (incidentally 10 years later) - The Artist, The Nurse, The City Worker and the newly named Tank (who I am pleased to hear will shortly be moving back up north).

We went to Tenerife. To Playa de las Americas. To a place where I would never choose willingly to go again. It was a mess of horrible concrete hotels and cramped clubs with 2-4-1 deals on pints of vodka-redbull hawked outside. We had a good time.

I in particular had a good time until day two, when I was so perfectly reminded of how stupid I was in such an extreme way.

When we were messing around in the pool toward the end of the day (completely sober I might add) - the City Worker cleverly informed us to watch out when diving into the pool, as once his sister had dived into a pool of similar depth (also surrounded by no diving signs as ours was), and had knocked some of her teeth out. Yeah whatever.

That very same day, we were playing an interesting game which involved slam dunking some kind of inflatable ball into some kind of inflatable ring. The kind of game that will keep up you interest for only a short while. I decided to create an additional element to the game and try to actually dive through the hoop whilst holding the ball.

As any sensible soul will tell you - the first thing that happens when you dive into water holding a ball is that your hands will shoot up with said ball into the air. This happened to me.

What happened during this act was that after passing through the hoop I got a little too close to the bottom of the (1.5m) pool. At speed. So close in fact that I had to stop my descent through the use of the only appendage available to me (my arms being in the air and all). That appendage happened to be my face, or more precisely, my front teeth. I rose to the surface and swore loudly when running my tongue over my teeth and realising that the front ones had broken in half.

No pain. No blood. Just a good clean break. Needless to say I wasn't much of a hit with the ladies for the rest of the holiday.

I was also in quite a bit of pain as I was walking through the street a day or two later when some Spanish kid ran up to me, slapped me round the face and then ran off. A little unusual, but not normally a problem but for the fact that my lips caught on my jagged teeth and caused them to cut open. Coupled with recycled Tenerife water those cuts caused me the biggest, most painful set of mouth ulcers I have ever had.

Also I wasn't best pleased with the "I told you so!" from the City Worker.

Today I have been playing around with a scanner that somebody gave to me some time ago and have finally made it work, so over the next two weeks I hope to bring you some gems from the past.

Starting with this picture of some chavs in Tenerife in 1999 (dont worry, the dust is on my scanner, not your screen):


Left to right: The City Worker, The Tank, The Nurse, The Artist

Cutting up the Dancefloor

I finally have hold of my package which I sent to myself from Australia. This means that I have the lead from my camera (which I stupidly posted) which allows me to download my photos (and videos) to my laptop.  So I have spent the afternoon sorting them all out.

This afternoon I re-discovered this gem from our September trip to Brighton. The Sergeant Major cutting up the dancefloor:

Nothing else could have cheered me up more from thoughts of what is to come on Monday (and a pesky bout of Man-flu. I particularly like the bit where he realises he is being filmed and suddenly switches to "cool" mode.

p.s. apologies for the sideway video. I haven't quite worked out how to get it right way up!

This is a picture

This is a picture of my friends.

More specifically, this is a picture of my friends on a sun kissed beach in Porto (Portugal).

More specifically still, this is a picture of my friends on a sun kissed beach in Porto (Portugal) last week each wearing t-shirts with pictures of my face on them (which were given by Lucy on my UK leaving do).

Today I am homesick.

Beers on Heads

So thats it. I'm 27 years old. There were no fireworks, no sudden enlightenment. Only an impending sense of doom. 

I got some very nice presents (the Thundercats DVD still hasn't materialized though), someone also baked a cake for me at work which was pretty cool (added to the chocolate that was sent to me in the post I am feeling pretty sick).

Tomorrow I go out to celebrate at the Opera bar (next to the Opera House unsurprisingly), pictured here on my last venture:

Not a bad venue to be spending your friday night I reckon. Very sophisticated and high class.

I have to say though that its on days like this that I miss gods country the most, I miss family, I miss friends, and Lucy obviously. I even created my first podcast with loads of Yorkshire artists on the other day, but still can't figure out how to upload it.

But most of all, on this day, on my birthday...

... what I wouldn't give for a good old game of cups in the Nook!

I've been trying to get these Aussies to play cups and do beers on heads in 'Rock Star fashion. But its not the same.

They're all off to Porto this year on holiday. I am very jealous. I will just have to go to Western Australia and New Zealand to  outdo them But in honour of them, I made this short video of our time in Valencia at the same time last year.

UPDATE: The neighbours brought more cake and a chocolate bar around. I think I may puke.

Turning on My Head

So as you may know I have spent the as couple of weeks in the UK, to see Lucy and have a brief break from my job here in Sydney. The trip back has thrown up a few surprises, things I wasn't expecting:

Firstly I wasn't expecting to miss the Yorkshire countryside as much as I did. Over a 30 hour trip I went from this:

To this:

(note: photograph is actually Lake District)

I grew up amongst rolling hills and woods, dry stone walls and most importantly buildings over 20 years old. And I wasn't expecting to miss it as much as I did. As a friend of mine (Introducing "The Gambler") said to me: you miss it because its your home. It was blooming cold and it was snowing, but I really enjoyed being back there.

Secondly, its only been a few months but I forgot how much of a good laugh my friends and I have together. You meet people and spend a lot of time together, but its only amongst the friends that you grow up with that you can let your true sense of humour shine and stop constantly editing yourself. I miss that.

The third thing that I realised, is that nothing really changes. as much as I love it at home, I love it out here for different reasons and things at home will always be the same. My friends will always be there (although a little older and more  under the thumb). So I'll be sticking it out here for a few months more (until I have enough of my job) it seems.

Anyone Need a Lawyer?

My friend The Lawyer last Saturday in the Nook.

Operation Messiah

I haven't been doing a lot of blogging in the last couple of weeks, and there is a good reason - I am currently on holiday from my Sydney residence in the rainy, snowing and cold UK! 

I didn't tell either of my parents and surprised them 10 or so days ago, but couldn't blow my cover until just now as we had a surprise birthday for The City Worker over the weekend. Boy was it hard to plan the operation! I was thwarted at every turn by moder multimedia communication devices. I had to delete facebook wall posts, blogger comments, engage the help of several people in my deception and even get The City Workers girlfriend to hack into his email and delete tell tale messages accidentally sent through to him. Lord knows how the guy is supposed to have an affair when his girlfriend hacks his emails!

It all went well in the end and my mother was suitably surprised:

My Dad wasn't too bothered:

The City worker was hardest of all to decieve as my sources tell me he had a small paddy at the thought that no-one would come to his birthday (we told him all the other guys weren't coming too). But we had a fantastic time in The Infamous Nook. 

Biarro Alto

Another periodic look at one of my most memorable photos over the last few years (although I must confess - I didn't take this one)...

This photo was taken by the Sergeant Major on the steep slope up to the Biarro Alto (I took this to mean 'beer district' but apparently it actually means 'high district') in the Portugese capital of Lisbon. 

The cast were (I think) right to left: The Artist, myself, The Nurse, The City Worker, and the Lawyer.

There were some good times had at the top of this hill, including playing street football with a couple of Brazilian teenagers (who put us seriously to shame!), watching Portugal play in the World Cup in the bars during the day, drinking Sangria all night, and people milling around in the streets until sunrise.

One of my friends 'The Artist' probably has some more vivid memories than most of this street. This street was the precise street that he got mugged. 

The Artist doesn't have much luck when it comes tour our little holidays - in fact you might have heard me mention The Artists close encounter with a moped in Slovenia(a year earlier). The year we went to Lisbon was no different. 

He had decided to walk home early on the Sunday (our last night) and was heading down the hill when he was confronted by a couple of locals with knives. He did what any sensible person would do ... he ran for it. Unfortunately as it turned out, his assailants ran quicker. This surprised us  - as to us, the Artist was the fastest man alive. We used him as a kind of 'Forrest Gump' during our interform rugby years. I guess time had taken its toll.

He found himself bereft of his mobile phone and wallet (anyone who knows The Artist would realise that the value of those items was probably a princeley 53p). And for some reason became exceptionally annoyed when (after spending the entire evening in the police station), we rolled back into the hostel room after an outrageous nights partying (including persuading a number of dancers in a club to do the world cup Peter Crouch robot dance) and didn't believe that he had actually been mugged.

The next year, the Artist was pickpocketed in Valencia - but that is a different story...

Good News Indeed...

If you visit this place regularly, you may have noticed a link (amongst many of my other defunct links) which doesn't work entitled 'Buy T-Shirts and Contribute to my Mates Beer Money'. 

This was an enterprise undertaken my one of the former members of the gang, we will call him 'The One That Got Away'. 

We lost contact when we were around 17 and he went off to the 'College of Knowledge' which was the name we gave to the local Tech, whilst most of the rest of us went to Greenhead. He was a good lad, but got involved in some shady stuff and ended up moving away to Manchester which was a real shame.

Anyway in recent year he has returned, and we've had a few beers together. Its amazing how quickly you revert to old ways after not seeing one another for nearly 10 years. You spend your youth developing your sense of humour with those who are around you at the time - and that connection never really goes.

I was in contact with him earlier this year, and it turns out he has a new enterprise:

You have no idea how much this excites me because, the idea of discount beer is much more appealing than discount t-shirts (although I will accept a t-shirt too if someone is willing to give me one). And also - the restaurant is literally less than 80m from my mums house! So the stumble to bed will be an easy one!

The only problem is that in order to make the 30 hour trip from Sydney to Holmfirth worthwhile - I would have to skank approximately 400 beers!

Here is the link if you are interested (as usual it doesn't work):

www.mezze-bar-restaurant.com  

Everything is Backwards

Its strange being on the wrong side of the world. Everything is backwards. The toilets flush the other way (actually I haven't checked that yet ....... yes they do), and the sentences go up at the end rather than at the beginning (like everything is a question).

Another thing that is the wrong way round is that my friends have got around to booking the annual lads holiday away (number VI, I think). To Porto (that in Portugal for any Americans ... near Spain) no less, with promises of sun and sand and more importantly Sangria. It is usually done on a shoestring budget like 100 pounds for flights and accommodation. Normally this would make me extremely happy, as it has done on all past occasions. 

However, this year it has made me extremely unhappy. I wonder why - oh wait COULD IT BE THAT I AM ON THE WROG SIDE OF THE PLANET!

A Group Portrait

Due to the lack of any real news, I am launching a new regular feature looking at some of the most memorable photos I have taken over the last few years...

Picture the scene ... its Christmas Day and I am just getting out of bed early in the morning to sunshine over the harbour, the glorious Sydney sunshine pouring in through the windows. Lucy is mid-way through her month long visit and a usual is hard to wake up (despite my best attempts). At this point I am missing home somewhat, its the first real Christmas I have spent away from my family and friends and I have woken to an extremely quiet flat.

I switch on my Mac and load up skype to see what is going on and see that my friend The Sergeant Major is online as we had pre-arranged. I called him up and an image popped up on my screen ... a big group of my mates somewhere in Yorkshire, already pretty beered up and on their way out for our annual Christmas Eve celebrations. 

They had projected me onto the wall at the Sergeant Major's house and we proceeded to have the most bizzare long range conversation, including a quick game of round the world flip-flop tennis (I will have to explain the rules to this someday). I was shouting out loud by the end of it, until Lucy politely reminded me that we live in a block of flats with a bunch of OAPs and it was 7am on Christmas Day morning.

This photo is one taken of my computer screen of the larger part of the gang - from left to right: 

The Artist;

The Rock Star; 

The City Worker; 

The Nurse; and 

The Sergeant Major

This photo makes me remember that it doesn't matter where you are in the world, its the people that you keep around you that will make you happy (puke).

This is what you get for writing a post whilst listening to Radiohead!

Under the Bridge

Retrospective Monday is here again, (I may have to change this to a fortnightly event or I will run out of stories).

This is one that my friend The Artist told me:

You may remember me talking about my local pub 'the Nook', a haven for alcoholics and underage drinkers (perhaps future alcoholics) alike? Well, along with some of my other friends, The Artist used to work in the Nook on quite a regular basis (when he remembered to turn up to work). He would spend the evening earning his wages, then as far as I could tell - blow them all on after work lock-in drinking.

One particular evening (probably sometime around 2005), The Artist was feeling pretty down, having faced some serious girlfriend problems since moving back from his university town. He was drinking heavily with a whole group of employees and a couple of regulars, descending into more and more of a drunken state. 'Going Darkside' is a very apt phrase one of my friends would use, referring to that kind of drinking that turns your mood more and more dark and destructive .

Now Holmfirth, the town in which I grew up is built on top of a couple of rivers, one of which is the river Ribble. The river Ribble runs through town, past the Nook and directly under all of the banks and shops and the high-street. It probably passes underground for a grand total of around 70 metres and reaches a depth at that point of around 1 ft.

The Artist, in his self destructive state announced to his workmates that he was going to walk under the town, and made off to clamber down the 8 ft wall into the river. He spent a lot of time scaring us (his mates) with his drunken antics, to the point where we had become kind of immune. His work mates (who perhaps didn't know him so well) attempted to stop him, but were also a little the worse for wear and didn't put any real effort into it. 

After he disappeared into the black hole, it took them a few moments, to realise that they should go round the other side and make sure he got out alright. When they finally did, they couldn't spot him. Time passed, and they got more and more worried. They thought that in his depressed and drunken state he might have fallen into the water, hit his head and drowned.

After a while, he still didn't appear and anxiety increased. Eventually (not willing to clamber into the hole themselves), The Artists work-mates saw fit to call the police. The sensible thing to do ... but unfortunately this triggered all kinds of crazy chaos. 

The police had officers down in the river searching for him amongst the rocks and in the pools but with no success. Worst of all had had mobilised search helicopters (the kind I used to see chasing down criminals in Leeds - how I miss the place) which scoured the river with roving searchlights for some distance up and down. There was no sign of The Artist. He was no-where to be seen.

The next day The Artist turned up for work with no knowledge of all of the drama of the preceding night at some point in the afternoon (on time for once). He was a little hungover, but had enjoyed a descent lie in after walking through the tunnel and deciding to walk up the hill straight home for some sleep (following his exertions).

"Christ are you OK?" was what he got as soon as he got through the doors.

"We searched for you EVERYWHERE, we had the police helicopters out and everything. We had no idea what happened to you!" Said the Landlady.

"Why didn't you try calling my mobile?" Said the Artist. "It was switched on all night!"

"..."

The Artist and the Moped

Its Retrospective Monday here at RCWR and as such I will attempt to regale you with a tale of my glorious past.

It was three in the morning when I awoke as the taxi slowed to a halt in the patch of wasteland next to our hostel. We were caught in a monumental Slovenian thunderstorm, the kind where you can't see more than a few meters and you have to protect your head from the painful impact of the raindrops. 

The City Worker, The Artist, the Nurse and I were coming back to the small, very industrial town of Koper on the Venetian coast, an hours drive from Trieste in Italy. We had been out on the beers in another place named Izola - the so called 'Blackpool of Slovenia', and most of us were more than a little worse for wear (particularly the Lawyer who we had lost at some point earlier in the night). The combination of beer and jet-lag (we had been up for around 26 hours at this point) had sent us all to sleep in the taxi, and in our doziness waking up, we neglected to notice that we were still about a quarter of a mile away from the hostel until it was too late and we had paid up and were getting out.

The Artist and an Old Man in Piran, Slovenia 2005

The extremely heavy rain caused us to make the decision to run as quickly as we could back to our room to avoid getting wet. the Nurse ran off first, closely followed by myself and the City worker. The Artist was considerably more drowsy  (or maybe more inebriated) than the rest of us and was slow to catch on to what we were doing. When he finally realised what was happening, he made to sprint across the road afterwards .... then BANG!

The Artist ran straight into the first of two mopeds that were coming at breakneck speed around the corner into the road where the taxi had just pulled away. Both moped and rider were thrown down the road (moped taking considerably more damage than rider). The rider got to his feet and ran to his bike trying to set back off again. But no use. The moped was well and truly trashed.

At around this time, The City Worker and I had realised what was going on, stopped running and turned back to help our mate. The Nurse had well gone (didn't notice it apparently). As I remember the two guys were off their bikes screaming in Slovenian at The Artist, who still didn't have a clue what was going on (and was completely unharmed). We ran over to where they were and coaxed the Artist into walking off and going home. At this point I think the Slovenian guys realised that we were English. They changed tactic.

"Your friend ... he come with us ... we go have drink", they kept on repeating in their best English.

"No, we're going home" we replied

"Don't worry" they said "We just have drink"

We were under the influence, but not stupid enough to fall for that one (though it wouldn't have been the first time the Artist had wandered off). And though one of the guys was pretty big (there's always a big guy), there were three of us and only two of them. They grabbed the Artist by the arm and tried to pull him away (he was just swaying at this point), as we grabbed the other and pulled him back in the other direction like a kind of Christmas cracker, and tried to walk off. Every time we did, they would come back and grab his arm again and pull him away again. This wasn't working and the Slovenians were getting more and more irate.

What happened next was the most hysterical, poorly co-ordinated comedy of a fight that it wouldn't have looked out of place in a Charlie Chaplain movie. The two guys came at The City Worker and I (who were honestly just trying to get away with our friend in one piece), and we defended ourselves. I think at one point The Artist was on the floor and being kicked whilst the City Worker and I tried to pull them away. 

I remember attempting to throw some punches, but I was pretty hammered and I don't think any of them hit anyone, and The City Worker did the same.  When finally we managed to get the Artist away and run back to our hostel, the good thing about this, and about us being so drunk was that none of us really got hurt. The Artist had some cuts and bruises, a torn T-shirt (his favourite apparently) and wounded pride, but that was it. I myself have one clear and embarrassing memory of the injury that I sustained that night.

I remember clearly standing there, about 15 feet away from our assailants, not moving ... just standing. Then, completely randomly - falling backward for no other reason than my drunkenness (and gravity) onto my backside and scraping all the skin off by elbow on the hard concrete.

Only when we got back to the room and thought about it for a bit, did we realise ... the guys on the moped were completely off their faces too, and that was - in fact the only reason why we didn't get killed (despite the fact it was three to two) as we were essentially as much collective use as half a person.

The police cars turned up around 2 minutes after we left the scene to apprehend the Slovenian guys. The Artist told us his tales of the extreme dislike of the Slovenian police for British tourists - a lucky escape. I always felt sorry for those guys, to whom the cost of a moped must have been extremely high, we probably would have offered to pay some money if they had been reasonable. I still can't understand how the police never came to the hostel considering they must have heard the accusations of the Slovenian pair, and we were at the only hostel in the entire town.

(sorry Mum)