I came here from a backwards place that's somewhere in the south.
But I have had the some learning (mostly mouth to mouth).
Now some might call me nasty or hasty but in a certain kind of way.
I've been thinking, waiting, hoping and planning
For and almost sacred sort of day.

A day when the burning
Of bridges and crosses
Is not mere Childs play.

A day when mad men explode
In a most incandescent bloom.
With loveless souls and imperfections
Bared in all their lustrous groom.

So I stand fast like some old mule.
Soothing my contemplations
With burning hole and aching fire.
For my stubbornness is of the living
And cruel anxiety has begun to die.

(Poorly adapted from Charles Mingus's "Freedom")

Set of at 7:30 some morning and made a long and drowsy road towards that charming capital of mine. Stopping only once for a Welch coffee (Welch in the sense that it was very far from Irish) and a piss in a roadside grease spoon somewhere between Wiltshire or Hampshire. Discussing loudly and prophanly about that morning’s edition of the sun. I never would never read the sun on a normal day but my hands were tied between the Daily Star's endless river of detritus and tits, The Daily Sport's bias towards sport, the Daily Mail's terrifying right wing approach to reality with a title that in essence read, "Don't go outside! It's full of Immigrants, Gays and Gypsies and they're all after your job!" and a random selection of partly solved puzzle mags and gossips rags. So picked up the Sun and began complaining about that until my traveling band finished their breakfasts.

At 9:13 am precisely as we cruised up the 303 the rolled under a huge motorway LED sign that read "Don't Drink and Drive, Thank You.” With left me staring out the window wondering who the hell drove under a motorway sign while under the influence up a motorway doing 70 at 9 in the morning? Then realized I would.
So I pondered why I wasn't drunk at 9 in the morning and how I hadn't gotten around to getting my driver's license yet when we jerked hard and over took a Bentley with a custom plate that read "LIWTS" doing 55 in the middle lane. Driven by a curious looking man with cheap reading glasses perched on his nose. Tied with a chain that ran under the collar of his violently tweed jacket. That his very bored wife most likely advised against buying but he did anyway because he's the man of the house and all that brass bollocks nonsense. But a many cars do on this long and dirty trail we grinded into services where I was greeted by Cornel Kentucky. A smiling southern gentleman just like my paw'. I was so moved I bought some gum and moved on down the dusty trail. Eventually we cruised into the city and parked ourselves outside the home of young bachelor with little dog Turner Green of Turnham green. Who said, "Who's a clever boy then girl?" Yes you know who I mean. Because his mongrel laid a cable in the sandpit of the playground of the park where they had been. And with a bit of Kleenex. He wiped her bum'ole clean.

I bought myself a travel card and wandered the streets of black umbrellas with a fag in my face and a song in my heart. Through hordes of preppy Essex girls buying gifts for preppy Essex boys and couples having arguments and families walking arm in arm I felt like the loneliest man in London. So I bought myself some new shoes in Camden Lock because my feet were cold and tried every bass in Harrods because I could and because I can treat a man who is better educated and better paid than I am like discarded gum on my shoe because he has to take it like a bitch. So I went under ground for the last time. Misdirected some tourists and made haste to Covent Garden. Where a cockney pastor and an African woman were shouting at shoppers that the end was nigh and all should return their shoes before the companies went tits up and repent all their sins to their respective gods so they could all go to their separate Valhalla’s. A homeless gentleman sat with me on my pillar foot as I watched them both from the cover of Saint Paul's (church. not cathedral) and asked me for a cigarette. I obliged and we discussed the pastors and enjoyed hot smoke in cold weather. Later I caught up with my crew and we went and had seafood before hitting the hotel. The theatre, the pubs, the clubs, some local rubs and then our beds. Possibly not in that order. Details are hazy at best and it hurts when I think about this. The only details I do recall are trying to have a bath in a tub that was no more than three feet long. And not being able to stretch my legs had very dirty knees and pins and needles that felt like I had eaten my own feet and riding to reception in Schindler's Lift. (I shit you not. The lift was made by a company named Schindler...and they make lifts. Awesome no?)

I rose at 8:00 because there was work to be done on this day of rest. I checked us all out (but left the others as a surprise for the cleaner) and went to put some food in my tummeh. I walked past the Cuban embassy and down towards Tottenham Court Road and then all the way back to a Mediterranean place I had seen on the other side of the music distinct. Slew my hunger as was my desire with a Mediterranean breakfast and an Irish coffee (Irish in the sense that it was far from Welch) bought my self a ticket and rumbled my way east to the Marble Arch and speakers corner.

Now at this time of year at the corner 'tis the season to be extremely religious and stand on a stepladder proclaiming very loudly just how devout you are. I homed in on the largest crowd around a man with and Israeli flag and a torah who spoke with his eyes shut. He reminded me of my old chemistry teacher. He started shouting in a long descending and condescending monotone about how superior he and his people were and that his scripture was "the one true scripture”. It may well have been. I'm not prejudiced...much. Shortly after focusing the wrath of his "sermon on the step ladder" at me he turned to bashing a group of Muslims from atop his high horse (that's the brand of ladder not and actual and quite random horse) and arguments ensued. I left silently before punches could be thrown or anyone had a chance to detonate themselves.
Within 8 seconds of leaving that group I was stopped by a large woman claiming that I was a Liar, a Thief, an Adulterer and a blasphemer. I had to agree that I was. (The Jew on the stool had gotten me thinking) She gave me a fist full of flyers and said she hoped to see me next week. I left awkwardly and joined a crowd watching a Nigerian pastor in a makeshift pulpit speaking a big, creamy spoonfuls of sense (aside from the whole "this is THE word. No room for your liberal thinking here" attitude and blind faith in book that was written by hundreds of people over thousands of years and translated and reworded countless times and taking it as gospel. It doesn’t even have pictures!) He told me how he "used to fight in the discos" and that he "could take on 10 maybe 12 guys" (no they aren't euphemisms. I asked) I told him he should have been a boxer. The boxing industry needs more gentlemen like Swedish heavy weight Ingemar Johansson and his chum the amply nick named "gentleman of boxing" Floyd Patterson who kept having rematches until they both got Alzheimer’s because they were not so gentle men playing a gentleman’s sport. Boxing needs more gentlemen and less zoloft soaked animals like Tyson. I told him he "could have been the next Mohamed Ali. All he needed was a slave name he could give up and convert to Islam, an Olympic gold medal to throw in a river and a prize fighting attitude" (Though I seriously doubt any Vietcong has ever called him "nigger"). Enter the rabbi, the New Ager and the Muslim entourage and my personal Irish Christ named Christie. All working as one united front against a protestant pastor from the West Country. The events ad truths that unfolded are too numerous to mention. Our rabbi brother revealed that god hated Christians and gave the Jews a secret untold book all about it. He told me that the Jews rejected Jesus because he loitered with prostitutes. To which I reply "so rabbi, what you are saying is...that he's not the messiah, but a very naughty boy!" which cut a gaping hole in the wurzle pastors argument who moved the subject somehow to life being like a conveyer belt. Birth, growth, sex, drugs, rock and roll, work, rest, play, rest work, rest, play rest, death, cuddly toy! So I climbed up a lamppost and recited the prayer.

"Our father who art in Hendon
Harrow road be thy name
Thy Kingston come
Via Wimbledon
In Erith as it is in Hendon
Give us this day our Berkhamsted
And forgive us our Westminsters
As we forgive those who would Westminster against us
And lead us not into temple station
But deliver us from Ealing
For thine is the Kingston
The Purley and the Crawley for Iver and Iver
Crouch End" (Dury)

I left with a handshake from all and a page from the gospel according to Christie.

"Jesus is Irish, The devil is Welsh, Heaven is Dublin with a pint in your hand and Hell is Dublin without. God was a catholic until the reformation when he turned protestant and inside every fat man is a skinny one waiting to come out (because I ate them)" Christie

So I rolled myself home with out being stabbed, shot and/or mugged (not even once!) and got myself thoroughly pissed and woke up in my own shirt (not a typo) my lust for adventure slain for another week. Maybe you should come with me next time? Where would you go? What would you do? Who would fund it? And where would you find enough drugs to pull it off?

Answers in a postcard addressed to my house. And if you like what you have heard I’d like you all to send you cheques and cash and credit cards straight to me.

The End

I stepped off the plane around two with pins in my feet and fire in my belly. A hungered lust for Tapas and curiosity to what the week would bring. The ten feet to the bus was not unpleasant. With the sun on my back like a lover pressed against me, breathing sweet nonsense down my neck.

The squeeze of fitting the contents from a hundred metre aircraft to that bus was a disgusting experience I do not wish to reapeat. It was steaming hot and crowded; everyone bumped and grunted. In briefs, it was like a Turkish bath house. They made us wait for twenty minutes to get us plenty sweaty and then bumped across the asphalt to the arrivals lounge. I stood next to a stinking pig of a man with trousers so tight I could read the washing instructions on his underwear. Genuine lace, dry clean only. I sat on the static luggage belt wiping someone’s sweat from my face and listening in boredom to a middle aged woman yapping about her friends, relatives and other assorted and irrelevant dribble into the air two metres left of her assumed spouse. He lent on the trolley and answered her blindly with a series of nods and short “hmm”s. praying to some deity that the belt would move soon. Collecting my luggage I wobbled down the street to the bus bound for the Placa de Catlunya, into the underground and a on to Liceu and the Hotel Peninsular.

We killed the remaining daylight scouting for food. We end up at the most Norwegian joint in all Barcelona “Vildsvin”. I was tempted to order the reindeer but it had been a long day I could never eat a whole reindeer; even on a good day. So I waited and hour and a half for two sausages and a dollop of mustard. I was so hungry I lured a waitress to the table and was about to stab her in the neck and eat her bones clean when a Lise’s rough hands and powerful grip arrested me. I dropped the fork and sat down. This is the last time I offered to share my plans or my waitress with her. I made do with some left over mussels in tomato slush until Leidulv made some tasteless comment about them looking like severed vaginas. This killed my appetite and the evening. Vaginas in tomato? Could you consider Ragu an aphrodisiac or even an effective lubricant? I’m not going to endorse the idea. I will not be held responsible for the medical and economic complications of abusing Dolmio sauce. When’s-a your Dolmio day? I left the place twenty euros poorer and in a foul mood. The only upside was discovering a sweet, dark ale called Korza. I must go back for more someday.

The following day we ate fresh bread and cream cheese and took the tube to Gaudi’s cathedral. As outdated and garish as this building had a certain majesty. It looked so out of place that even the surrounding buildings seemed to stare. And there was a sort of violence in its jagged spires. Like it would stab you if you didn’t like it. I went inside and was admiring the trippy stained glass windows when I was caught in a cloud of French tourists. They swept me through the building and then scattered as soon as they were outside. I remained where I lay for a time then sat up straight legged and lit up a lucky laying back bathing in the beating sun. Squinting through my shades at the skyline until Leidulv caught up. After going as slowly as we could through every corner of the museum I sat in the park with my baguette and waited for the group. We then walked with blistered feet within pissing distance of La Rambla before catching the subway to some other corner of town to see Gaudi’s house and garden. Where I ate an entire chorizo before heading home early to get myself cleaned and pressed for a night of heavy drinking.
After meeting the rest of the group and eating diner in a very fine restaurant named Quid. Run by the Finnish mafia in the back alleys by the water front. We wandered through the red light district looking for a drinking hole. After stopping for three drug dealers and two pairs of hookers. We found the London bar. Many beers later a Middle Eastern man with a moustache came up to the table selling roses “for the ladies”. His sales pitch involved kissing three of us, laughing a lot and finally shouting “INDIAN?” repeatedly and loudly at one of our party. Finally he left and after one final beer we crawled home through alleys lined with broken glass, fag butts and dog piss and caught as much sleep as we could for the next morning.

Next morning I took a sudden notion to go down to the ocean I got my sun-tan lotion my flippers and my mask. It was a good solution and with proper execution we could go to that ocean of pollution in which I daren't bask. Some terds were teeny-tiny and some were big and shiny. They tossed in the briney in which I dipped my toe. If you go swimming in that shite you'll get worse than dermatitis from the sea of grey detritus Where the sewage ebbs and flows. And there is no respite From the cess-pit no shelter from its pong. The poor old ocean is full of motions where the hell did we go wrong?
Like a lamb off to the slaughter I pored myself a glass of water but I failed to spot I'd caught a little creature in my cup I was well and truly bollocked from the fires of hell that followed it was the cup of life I'd swallowed and it truly fucked me up. Something was coming through that plumbing that should not be there at all. The glass is brimming and things were swimming and quite frankly, I'm appalled
I was a very hungry fella’ so I had me some paella and came down with salmonella and three weeks in intensive care. But they failed to send technicians in to check the air-conditioning which was unfortunately transmissioning a case of Legionnaires. Now there’s a malaise about my mayonnaise and a poo-poo in my prawn. I can feel ‘em them in my system where little germs are being born. Then I went out for more drinks. Lost two of our party who stayed and discussed politics with an overweight American in a patriotic jumpsuit.

Awoke on the morning of Sant Jordi with a bad taste in my mouth and an empty Diablo Noir in my hands. But today is a special day and I will not have it ruined. I perform the three S’s and limp downstairs (I never discovered the cause of this limp)

Now it's fiesta time in old Ba-th-lona and I long to be back on the beach with my Corona Where we lived for today never giving a thought to tomara to the strumming of guitars in a hundred grubby bars I would whisper "Te amo." The mariachis would serenade and they would not shut up till they were paid we ate, we drank, and we were merry and we got typhoid and dysentery. But best of all, we went to the Plaza de Toros and now whenever I start feeling morose I revive by recalling that scene with names like Belmonte, Dominguin, and Manolete If I live to a hundred and eighty I shall never forget what they mean. (For there is surely nothing more beautiful in this world than the sight of a lone man facing single handedly a half ton of angry pot roast!) Out came the matador who must have been potted or slightly insane, but who looked rather bored. And the picadors of course, each one on his horse I shouted "Ole!" every time one was gored. I cheered at the banderilleros display as they stuck the bull in their own clever way why I hadn't had so much fun since the day my brother's dog Rover, Got run over. (Rover was killed by a Ford Fiesta. And it was done with such grace and artistry that the witnesses awarded the
driver both ears and the tail) The moment had come I swallowed my gum, We knew there'd be blood on the sand pretty soon. The crowd held its breath, Hoping that death would brighten an otherwise dull afternoon. At last, the matador did what we wanted him to. He raised his sword and his aim was true. In that moment of truth I suddenly knew. That someone had stolen my wallet. I wasted the night away in a bar. While my strange company discussed their sex lives over their gin and tonics. I had another drink and herded them home.
The only event that truly stood out was paying a cabbie five euros to drive us a hundred metres around the corner. He told us to fuck off. I exited the taxi and hurled a fist full of change at him before slamming the door and walking down the street with a big ol’ smile on my face.

The rest of the week is a blur of Campari and tonic and surrealist art at the house of some god awful artist named Salvador Dali. I never heard of him but I hear he’s big in Spain and France.
I distinctly remember being removed from a house of worship for wearing a shirt sporting the band “Bad Religion”. I may have also danced the can-can atop Montserrat. I remember destroying my leg and purchasing my cane. I twirled it grimly as I ate three day old chorizo and sweaty cheese in a stale baguette. Before we left the gang hit the clubs down on the beach. We picked up a charming a charismatic man named John or Matt or Mark or possibly Mack. I seriously regret not packing him. Now I’m back in the cold, clean of Norway. Where all the women are blonde and all the men have beards (or some kind of manly stubble) and all the children are running wild in the streets. Within two days of landing I will develop a nasty cough and six days later I will die.

Goodbye everyone!