Just one more thing…

Why the flipping heck can’t I sleep any more.

I read stuff on Facebook about people that are suffering with ‘insomnia’ at about 1.30ish am; then hear nothing from them until the next day.  I know they have been to sleep because I haven’t and I have in theory been stalking them all night and they haven’t posted shit in 8 hours.

While they all sleep safe and snug I’m skulking around the information super-highway researching the fringe topics that lurk just beneath the surface of the Google home page.  I see the pictures that are unbarred on a Bing image search and read about dead midget porn stars; I search for the killer home-made drugs that send you into other dimensions just before you remove all your cloths and eat a tramps face.

But always there in the background a constant that I just can’t live without is my old friend/former lover, late night television.

I have had an affair with shit night time TV ever since my teenage years; a time when we only had four channels and two of them ended at around midnight.  I like to look back at them as my televisual glory years.

Just thinking back to those days when I would put my portable on the chair by my bed and put my headphones on to drown out the sound of my parents having drunken sex on a Saturday night.

We’d start with a little NWA wrestling followed by Noisy Mothers then Tour of Duty; if you were up on the Friday night you got American Gladiators and Sledge Hammer back to back.  Fucking get in!

And that was pretty much my weekends when I was about 14 /15ish, that and all the masturbation I managed to fit in.  I remember becoming rather aroused when a certain female gladiator was on the screen…  I also knew where my step-dad kept his grumble magazines… in a hold all under the stairs.  Looking back he had a worryingly large stash of grot-mags actually.

I have seen every episode of V, Colombo and the TV series of War of the Worlds, a personal favourite and as for Tales from the crypt, don’t get me started.

When I was a kid I used to stay at my grandparents place on the weekends and my granddad would let me stay up and watch the Hammer Horror double feature on BBC1 so I also grew up with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.  Not a bad childhood entertainment wise.

But it’s not the same now, it’s all so Americanised, nothing but advertisements and infomercials about crap that is way overpriced.

Have you seen the ‘Insanity workout’ advert with loads of well-toned nutters that have turned their garages into gyms jumping about wearing a t-shirt stating that they have ‘earned it!’  Fuck off.  Why the fuck would I want to fork out next to £70 for something that is blatantly going to finish me off.  I don’t want to be found dead on a gym mat from a massive heart attack; far too much hard work for me.

I want to get hold of one of those shirts though and give it to the fattest bloke I know and get him to ware it just for a laugh.

And as for ‘you can only get the shirt when you have completed the course’; it’s bullshit because you can buy them on amazon for a tenner.

The amount of times I have sat through those Time Life country and western CD box set adverts with Kenny Rogers and that bird just to get to the Johnny Paycheck tune ‘take this job and shove it’ is really quite remarkable.  When I worked up at the college it was the only thing that was on first thing in the morning and it almost became part of my routine along with a pot of tea and a few rounds of buttered toast.

where has she been keeping that microphone?

Another thing that gets me about night time telly is the amount of Babestation like channels there are nowadays.  Orange women gyrating on black satin sheets to a lame techno soundtrack; if you watch enough of it you will become an expert lip reader in no time.

I rang in once and spoke to one of the girls when I was pissed one night.  I asked to see her pussy and she said that she wasn’t allowed to do that so I hung up; £10 straight down the bog; worst wank ever. Ended up finishing myself off over a Women’s Weekly in the bathroom; some of their stories are very risqué.

Had lunch with a mate at King’s café the other day and he asked why I didn’t just start writing columns for porno mags.  (I had apple pie and ice cream if you’re wondering).

He said that they paid good money for the right stories and there was plenty of work out there due to the amount of magazines in publication.  He also went on to mention the more ‘specialised’ the mag and story the more I will likely to be paid.

I took what he said on board and have started to knock together a few hardcore S&M stories for submission and have seen a few place that accept that kind of shit and he was right, the money isn’t that bad.

So I did a little research and it looks like you can actually make a living off of it if I have the stomach to keep it up (no pun intended); a basic wage but a living none the less.  All I have to do is smash out about three or four wank bank shorts and I’m winning.

I’m going to send one off this week and see what happens.

So as I jump into the seedy underground world of the hardcore pornographer I wish everyone well and if you have any ideas for stories (or actual real life events) please feel free to keep them to yourself.  The last thing I want is to be reading the intimate secrets of people I know; I really don’t need that kind of thing in my head.

If it gets published I might post it on here… just for a laugh.

Enjoy the little things

What I wouldn’t do for a huge fuck off sandwich about now; I mean I could actually kill for a sloppy Joe or Bunny-chow.

Me and a bloke at work got to talking about what we would do if we won the lotto.  We came up with loads of normal stuff like buy a big house, a few sports cars get the Mrs a boob job and all that crap.  But then our lines became blurred from the sensible stuff to the more bizarre, more things we would have on our bucket list.

And although I have posted about the bucket list before, I didn’t quite make mine final and it certainly wasn’t finished; I merely came up with a few dark ideas.

And here is where the internet’s fucking P.C brigade turns on me once again…

… I have always wanted to do stuff with dwarves, midgets if you will; and if I won the lotto I would have a field day with the little devils.  It would be party, party every day with clown suits and tricycles.

For a start I would hire a group of dwarves and we would all dress up like characters from the Hobbit with me as Gandalf and we would go shopping in Iceland.  Imaging what that would look like at the bus stop.  We would have to get pissed while we did it and we will be questing for Stacy Solomon’s lost prawn ring (and career) while getting smashed on Special Brew, now that’s real magic.

I also want to fire a little person out of a cannon at some kind of charity event; probably when they have one of those human rights demos in Hyde Park or something.  Just turn up with a brightly coloured cannon on the back of a truck with full reggae sound system and fire a midget into the crowd.

I will truly do anything to piss off the hippies.

We will hire mini tanks and roll down the high street, hold pro-dwarf demos, invade a golf course dressed in nappies, bum-rush the stage at a local pantomime out of our minds on a mix of strong drink and psychotropic drugs.

It will eventually come to a head when I visit Mexico with Andy Dick to wrestle a midget in a professional masked fight.  I will probably get my arse handed to me in front of a minimal, sleepy looking crowd, but we will stop for tamales and beer.

Now I’m wondering how many pounds of illegal fireworks we can stuff into a frozen dwarf corpse?

And before you get all “well that’s just exploitation at its most base level” on me, there are web sites where you can hire a dwarf/dwarves for your play or fancy dress parties so suck my balls.  I didn’t come up with the idea of dwarf tossing or traveling freak shows; I’m just waxing lyrical about a metaphorical subject… but if I did win the lotto that stuff would happen.

And don’t get all “you can’t call them midgets” because you can, just check out this guy’s website! http://www.cheeky-events.co.uk/dwarf-and-midget-hire.html He hasn’t got a problem with it they why should anyone else.

But that’s not to say I don’t feel for the plight of the little man; in 2012 Martin Henderson (4’2”) was injured in a ‘tossing’ incident outside a pub.  A pisshead picked him up and threw him for a laugh leaving Henderson more than a little bit crippled up.  Double fucked!

Mind you, it was Henderson’s birthday and I’m willing to bet that he was pissed up too and you know what little blokes are like when they have had a few jars… Now I don’t want to say Napoleon… But…

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4056746/Martin-Henderson-news-Crippled-dwarf-blames-England-rugby-for-attack.html

I met king of the celebrity dwarves Warwick Davis at the Excel centre last year and found him a little stuffy, guess he was just knackered out from all the people wanting his autograph.  I did however get to see him eating a cheese roll under a table; how my day was made and he signed a ‘Leprechaun’ press shot for me.  His wife was lovely.

I also have the opportunity to meet Game of Thrones star Peter Dinklage at this year’s Film & Comic-con up at Earls Court; I wonder if he’s ever been to Mexico?  And R2D2 operator Kenny Baker is going to be there so I can get a double whammy of famous little folk in the same day.

Last time Kenny was at Comicon I couldn’t approach him as his tongue was sticking out like a fucked pug dog and I also think he was rather pissed.  His wife was lovely.

I think I’m going to have to put that on my bucket list too, to start collecting autographs of famous people with, now how do we say this without sounding to much like a complete wanker, ‘challenges’?

I think I got away with that… maybe?

I reckon that might be a hell of a lot more difficult than it sounds and would mean a lot of traveling, that and I don’t really know the names of that many disabled actors… any help with this will be much appreciated… seriously.

I think I might be going to hell, that’s if I believed in it to start with.

Things that don’t go bump in the night

So today I had to sit through another episode of Most Hunted as there was nothing better on and I couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed and find the remote.

It still staggers me that this show is still on the air due to all the shit that has surrounded it.

First up we have my old mate Derek Acorah and the whole Kreed Kafer scandal where the parapsychologist on the team fed him a load of false information before recording.

Derek in his wisdom later went on to channel the spirit of Kreed Kafer during the show; a completely fictional character made up by someone who seems to be the only rational person on the show.

Yvette Fielding’s very own husband and producer on the show was also guilty of pushing things over, throwing stones and just generally setting up ‘scares’ during filming for dramatic effect.

And in all the years; with all the footage they filmed have they ever come up with concrete evidence of life after death?  I don’t think they have, but then I haven’t seen every episode.

Then you get the American version and for the life of me I can’t remember the name of the thing or any of the presenters but holy shit, what a pile of shite.

They have this broken radio that screeches static and they talk to it and every now and then the voice of a ‘spirit’ comes through.  The guy presenting once even said “this is just proof that this stuff works and it’s all the evidence we need to show that this place is haunted.”

No, its proof that you can sell anything to thick people when you have a sound man outside with a walkie-talkie and evidence that you don’t have any real evidence.

Here’s a list of some of the stuff I’m talking about… http://tvoftheabsurd.com/2010/01/01/top-5-ghost-hunting-shows/

I think the one with the spirit phone is Ghost Adventures with Zak Bagans, I think; you should check out his website too, he’s a bit of a douche.

I know loads of people that are into these shows and take the whole thing really seriously but they haven’t seemed to lock into the fact that they are just watching people getting scared in an old building or at the very least acting like they’re scared.

There are some really funny clips on the net showing presenters trying not to laugh when these so called spiritualist mediums start to channel spirits or become possessed by ghosts.  I think my favourite would be Mr Acorah’s “Mary loves Dick” moment; although you might find some of the others a little less childish.

I was once asked what it was like to have little to no mysticism left in my life and just when did the magic of my childhood turn me into this unfeeling, cynical monster?  And do you know what?  I really couldn’t tell you.

I don’t recall a specific moment when I just stopped believing in things.  I don’t remember believing in Santa or the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy and the last time I really believed in ghosts was when I quite young.

I didn’t really go to church with my family or attend a Sunday school or after school youth club and was always brought up believing (or not as the case may be) that organised religion was something archaic… and it is, before all you believers out there start on me.  Let’s face it; it’s a little bit out of date.  We have deal or no deal now… let it go!

Which brings me head-on to my next point… I am completely scared by ghost stories.

I find books on hauntings and films about ghosts the most scary of all.  They are the ones that give me the terrors and send chills up my spine when I turn off the hallway light.  Every now and then I get the feeling that someone or something is going to push me down the stairs as I walk down them in the dark.

Now I can watch all the most hardcore zombiefied gore movies, stuffing my face with popcorn until the cows come home but you stick a wet Japanese schoolgirl’s head on upside down and make her appear in a mirror behind someone and I’m behind the sofa… seriously.

I can’t stand the fuckers, even though I know that they don’t exist, they still petrify me.

Look at it like this.  If zombies were real you can at least run from the bastards or smash their brains in with something, same as a nutter in a ski mask; you can defend yourself from them right.

But how can you do that to something that can become invisible or move through walls but is more than capable of fucking you up by throwing you across a room.

Or the thing will make you go mad until you kill yourself or die in some nasty overflowing bath style accident.  And if you think that is the end, then you are very much mistaken because your spirit becomes part of the ghostly gang with nails sticking out of you head behind a shower curtain or something… fuck off and no thank you.  I do not want to be the ghost in someone’s bathroom; having to watch them take a shit or wank into the sink while maintain eye contact in the mirror every day; no wonder they get pissed off.

I remember watch the third ‘Ringu’ films in my old place down by the river and the toilet window looked over the garden and it was so dark out there that I had to piss in the kitchen sink in case I saw that bitch Sudako slid around the corner.  I knew she wouldn’t but I didn’t want to take any chances.

Even now I’m thinking about that silly tart down in that well and it’s freaking me out… I fucking hate ghosts.

Even though I don’t believe in them… but Yvette Fielding would still get it… sort of.

http://youtu.be/SDn6LxSQ_CQ

Its festival season bitches

Yep, the sun is shining and the temperature has gone past a staggering 15 degrees C, and the fucking students are ready to sit in a field and take drugs to mediocre Indy music.

Now I’m not saying I have a problem with festivals, only the mainstream ones.

For example have you seen the line-up for Glastonbury this year?  How the fuck does that pack of faux talented retro god bothering dickheads Munford & Sons headline over one of the greatest song writers of a generation in Nick Cave?

You also have Dizzy Rascal, Professor Green, Chase & Status, Example… what the fuck happened to this festival?  Surly Jay Z couldn’t have done that much damage?  A couple of years ago you had Kylie Minogue, now that’s what I call rock and roll.

But thank heaven for the Rolling Stones; when all around you is turning to shit and your line-up is lack a certain something it’s time to wheel out a bunch of coffin dodging twats with a gyrating big lipped singing monkey from Dartford … yay!

But to be fair I’m not really into this type of music so it’s quite easy for me to pick holes and point out its ‘flaws’ but there is a festival that over in this country that is related to the sort of music that I like… fucking Download!

this is Wacken… not Download!

Talk about a pickle of a line up; properly shit.  And you can stuff that attitude ‘you don’t go to a festival for the music’ because if that’s the case just go camping and save yourself the price of the tickets you fucking mugs.

When I go to a festival I’d like to see some band especially with the prices of the tickets over here.  For example you can fly to Europe and pay for the ticket with full camping for the price of a Download ticket; believe me, I have done it… and the beers a shit load cheaper and a thousand times better… fucking Carling.

That and the music is so much better and if you don’t believe me check out Hellfest down in France or Obscene Extreme in the Czech Republic or Hole in the Sky in Norway or Neurotic Deathfest in Holland or Wacken in Germany.  Seriously, check them out.

But if you’re one of those people that like generic, mainstream metal and pop punk intermixed with lashings of professional wrestling and the current trend of loving Marvel super hero’s then knock yourself out.

Trust me, you are the worst kind of people and will eventually look back at your youth and say ‘god, I can’t believe I was into all that screaming crap’.  You will end up saying this because you listen to the metal equivalent of Bliss magazine.

http://youtu.be/jKLZilHRO6s you wont get this at Download!

I haven’t been to a good festival in ages and the other night I thought about why this is so and I came up with a few good reasons.

First up, the noise at night at a festival is almost unbearable.  You get loads of pissed up morons shouting ‘butt scratcher’ or ‘arse’ at the top of their lungs in the middle of the night.  Oh and there will always be one arsehole screaming ‘SLAYER’ over and over again whether they are playing or not.  FUCK OFF!  You have to be properly pissed up just to get some sleep.

At least at a euro festival all you get is the French and Italians having sex (which you can deal with) and the sound of some rowdy Scandinavians having an arm wrestling competition over in the party camps.

Secondly I find it hard to sleep in tents at festivals because of all the people walking past at such close proximity.  Have you ever had a pissed up metal-head pull up all your guide ropes of just plain crash through your tent when you’re trying to stop the world from spinning.  Not good.

And whatever you do don’t drink from the beer tents at a UK festival, what a fucking rip off, far too expensive;  For the price of a pint of pissy Carlsburg you can get 4 cans of Stella, now that’s just good business scene.

That’s one of the reasons why I would prefer to go abroad, just the little changes in everything.  The quality of the beer combined with the price when on the continent is enough just to go.

get it down you!

You’ll also find nice little snacks and types of food that you just won’t find over here for example there is a brand of Pepperami out there that has this weird bread stuff around it with a sauce in there too; amazing.  And there aren’t just a couple of different flavours there’s tonnes of the bastards.  And don’t even get me started on the mixed kebab flavour crisps I got out in Prague; such a big packet.

And I just love Czech ice cream… right Dave.  (Double thumbs up!)

But in reality I am slightly envious of everyone that has a ticket to any festival this year and I hope you all have a great time and meet loads of cool people and party like it’s the end of the world.

And let’s hope scousers don’t slash your tents, steal your valuables and take a shit in your sleeping bag.

PEACE!!!

Before I go…

So me and a mate get talking at work while we’re scanning a load of old shit that makes some prick somewhere rich, about what we would put on our ‘if you only had 6 months to live’ bucket list.

We started with the usual ‘swimming with sharks’ or ‘spacewalk’ type stuff but then it deteriorated to nervous breakdown level dementia.

I said that if I was going to have a breakdown I would like it to go down in the Lakeside shopping centre around the Christmas period.  Dressed in a Santa hat and stick on beard I would go into the glass lift by the Santa’s grotto and furiously masturbate until I got to the food court.

This would kick off one hell of a wanking spree all over the premier shopping experience in Essex culminating with me getting stun-gunned in the West Ham shop while Joey Essex looks on with a tear in his eye.  Joey and eye would make eye contact and just as I pass out from the last whack of voltage I see him mouth the words “you’ve killed Christmas!”

Greg’s rule number 25… if you’re going to do it make sure it gets in the paper.  (This rule also applies for suicide and sexual assault.)

My mate and I also agreed that a mass killing spree would be in order and just have a think for a second; everyone has a list of people that they would like to see suffer.  I know mine is quite extensive.

I believe they call it a shit list.

But I don’t think I’d like to go one a rampage style massacre, no, I think I would have to do it like the ‘Saw’ films; a bit more methodical rather than just going around shooting people.

Don’t get me wrong there is a heard of you fuckers that I would love to tear apart with some kind of snub-nosed sub-machine gun or hit with a bat until your nothing but a puddle but, think of the fun you could have with a good old home invasion or a night of setting booby traps.

I’d love to break into someone’s house when they are asleep and gaffer tape up their family then go to town.  I’d probably have to burn the place down afterwards with some of the stuff I can think up;  and I can think of at least two people that I feel deserve to have everything they hold dear fucked with.

We also put cannibalism on our bucket list.  I went for a human sushi bar; a selection of different carrion rolls all laid out on a French prostitute’s naked body while I puff on an opium pipe in some secret Soho back street basement.

A Chinese madam bringing me plate after plate of anthropophagic delicacy; bare-arsed maidens rubbing fine oil into my sweating shoulders as I drift into a world filled with talking mushrooms and midget wrestlers fighting on a yellow brick patio owned by the a walrus king who sits happily on top of a pile of ready money firing balloons that contain the screams of children from a canon that looks like a cock.

Speaking of cannibalism I found this online and I think it’s a little weird.

http://www.emanuelpimenta.net/ebooks/archives/koellreutter/chapters/us/KOELL%20Emanuel%20Pimenta%20US%20Oswald%20de%20Andrade.pdf

Wrong; right?

We also threw in the obligatory celebrity kill list… of which mine is too long to list here.  I started to think of my list at work yesterday and I’m still compiling it in my head as I type this; it really is that long.

Later in the night he told me he had a list of elevator related anecdotes which was that extensive that he could come up with a top 5.  It got me to thinking if I had any… 2… and here they are.

When I was a kid my little brother stood with his head in the lift doors and let them shut; bear in mind that this was before they had sensors on them to stop them closing on cheeky ginger kid’s fat heads.

The look on his face was priceless as he didn’t expect them to close with the solid force that they did.  It did give my mother the perfect target to slap him on the head and tell him to stop fucking about.

The second happened in the Covent Garden tube station lift on a Saturday night when a group of rugby lads got in the already packed confined space.  One of their party waited for the doors to shut and for the lift to start moving before breaking the silence with one of the biggest, smelliest farts I have ever heard; to this day I don’t think I had encountered bigger.

As you can imagine, hilarity ensued.  A woman was nearly sick and I can only guess that with a fart that hard it must have hurt his back.

If you have any lift related yarns that you think are pretty funny please feel free to send them to me… I would love to take my time to go through them all and delete them one by one, all unread.

Cheers.

So yeah… when I get a proper bucket list together I might go out of my way to post it on hear but I think that putting a list of one hundred things to do before I die would be a tragic waste of my time.  Just think of all the things you could be doing instead of coming up with a massive list of things you will never be able to afford to do.

Sleep tight and happy Kwanza!

Stick a pound in the glass Mr!

Thankfully, since I blogged about alternative models many moons ago and the fact that 95% of them are a fucking state, the scene has died away in our local area and all I can say is good.

It has taken a while but it really shows that that the good alternative types of Gravesend have finally given up the ghost and realised that we don’t want to see them do a fucking fan dance down the pub.

Don’t get me wrong I have no problem with women taking off their clothes for money; this isn’t the 70’s after all but it’s not good when the women in question are swamp donkeys.

I was in a strip club once in High Wycombe; I believe it was called the White Horse or something.  You know the kind of place; dirty boozer that had strippers during the day on Saturdays where the girls go around with a pint glass and you chuck in a quid or two.

Well, I had come around the corner of the bar after having a piss to be greeted with a rather fit Polish girl’s butthole winking at me.  The girl in question then made direct eye contact with me as I crossed the bar.  I was not interested in watching the girls (as I had no money) and joined my mates away from the stage.

After the girl had finished showing her gusset to two slightly mentally handicapped gentlemen by the stage she came around with her glass.  She got really upset when I said that I had no money and became aggressive and threatened to get the bouncer because I had seen her snatch.

It’s quite hard to win an argument with a completely naked woman in the middle of a pub with a gigantic Russian doorman breathing down her neck.

I went to the cash machine later that night after borrowing some money so I didn’t get stabbed by a naked tart.

Later on one of her naked colleagues touched my dick after her show and asked if I wanted a private dance for twenty quid… I will not tell you what happened next on the grounds of good taste… let’s just say I had to throw my underpants out of a toilet window.

Have you ever been to a working man’s club stripper afternoon, is one of the most depressing scenes I have had the misfortune of seeing.

Some middle aged housewife over on the corner stage taking her gear off to Lady Gaga while a load of old blokes look on supping on light and mild.  All you can hear is the sound of clinking glasses and the tarts feet sticking to the carpet as she comes on to you for a little extra gin money.

The ones I have been too were over the old navy club back in the day before the smoking ban so the atmosphere was enhanced by low lighting and the smell of pipe smoke.

I also have this power over middle aged women, it’s a gift but they just want to mother me so I would get rather a lot of unwanted attention from some of these birds.  That and I was one of the only people in there during the day on a Thursday; I was unemployed for a while.

One time this woman got a little too fruity and put her fanny in everyone’s face, she wasn’t the greatest looking stripper in the world but she was rather keen after a few large Tia Marias.

What a girl, nothing says pure class than fingering a 45 year old pub stripper in an ally by some bins in broad daylight for a few drinks and a pack of pork scratching’s.

Fishy.

There used to be this backward guy that used to come in and masturbate under his coat that he folded up over his lap.  He had a metal plate in his head from a car accident and the management just let him get on with it.  What a strange little man he was.

I once saw a huge fight kick off at one of these things; some bloke came in because he had heard his Mrs was stripping to make ends meet and caught her mid act getting a motorboat from an old sea dog.  The dude kicked off big time, the old bloke got a slap, a barman copped one, and from what I found out afterward the poor stripper got the granny kicked out of her in the car park.

I only used to go in there because it was almost empty during the day and you could get a pint of mild for £1.50, it was just a cool place to stop and read when it was raining and I couldn’t be bothered to hang around the flat… and the snooker was free if you had your own cue.

That’s probably why I don’t take the whole burlesque thing that seriously; these so called alternative girls aren’t going that extra mile.

They act all slutty but the end result is that you haven’t seen that much and you have paid more to get in than if you had gone to an old school strip show and got the full whack for a pound a pop.

Just get your rat out!

But it’s all about freak shows nowadays.  I have been to gigs recently where the main focus had been on amateur clowns and freak acts rather than on the bands that were playing.  What the fuck?  Get the bloke picking up an empty beer keg with the skin of his left bollock off the stage and get some grindcore bands on you douche bag wankers.

I have never wanted to be at a show where you might hear someone say “check your foreskin, I think I’ve lost my lighter!”

I still love the way it says ‘trained professionals’ on the promotional literature, practicing in some dudes back yard a couple of times is not  professional.  I used to go just to see things go wrong and I can’t be the only one who does that.  I would gladly pay a fiver to watch some fire breathing go tits up and I betting I wouldn’t be the only one there filming the aftermath if it did.

Can’t think of a better night out than watching woman dressed in a leather bikini and a glowstick up her arse rolling around on the ground as someone pours a pint over her smouldering head to a Rammstein track.  Saturday night.

Gin and cheap sunglasses

So I go away for a few days and as soon as I have left the area they chop some poor blokes head off in Woolwich.  Apparently it was something to do with religion.

Needless to say it stirred the local right wing community with groups like the BNP and ELD posting statements on their websites and in the media.  The ELD even took to the streets of Woolwich with a bit of argy-bargee with the old bill… angry scenes indeed.

But I had other things to worry about, something a hell of a lot darker, a thing that has been the bane of my travels.  It has been a problem that I have had for several years and strikes whenever I am away from home on my holidays.

I just can’t get a good night’s sleep in hotels.

Why the fuck do I find it almost impossible to settle down in a hotel, especially one that I have never to before.  The last place was the same, if not more so with the Nigerian group on my floor that thought it was fine to have a party in the hallway at 5.30am.  They were wrong, the concierge was called and I wasn’t arrested.

It also didn’t help that the floor was really uneven throughout the room and the bed was really high up.  It felt like I was sleeping on a hill and I had the feeling that I was going to fall out of the thing constantly.

It’s okay after the first two or three nights because I will just eventually shutdown and sleep for 24hrs but in those first few days I find it a bloody nightmare.  This time I even had a stress dream about a man standing over me in a shiny full body gimp suit.  I think it was rubber.

I also had the thing under the bed creeping out to grab my foot; a neurosis that I have had since childhood that I still can’t explain.

I once convinced myself that a nice couple that run the B&B I was staying in were a really kinky sub/dom BDSM couple.  I was adamant that they would come for me using a system of walkways and tunnels between the walls, drug me and use me as a living fuck toy in their sex rituals that would eventually lead to my death.  I stayed in that place for five nights… they didn’t come for me and my body wasn’t abused then stuffed into a bin.  On another note, the full English they did in the morning was also one of the best I’ve ever had in a B&B; well in Sea Spray Guesthouse, well in!

With the fact that all hotel rooms are done in the same way with bright walls and cheap, almost transparent curtains/blinds so when the sun comes up at about 4.30 the room glows like a football pitch floodlight.  This does not help me get to sleep.

Then comes the screaming bastard that is sleep deprivation.

With this comes light sensitivity, nausea, indigestion, dehydration, disorientation, slowed reactions, confusion and my absolute favourite symptom… hallucinations.  These are usually quite mild, mostly colour changes and spots before the eyes due to the light sensitivity, but they can still be a hazard when crossing a road.

All these things when you’re trying to relax and enjoy the sun can be, as you can imagine, a complete fucker.

This is when you think you must turn to self-medication with alcohol but this is wrong.

So you buy a cheap pair of sunglasses from an overpriced gift shop to shield you from the light and go bar hopping.

You start pounding the booze at around midday and find yourself involved in some kind of altercation on the adventure golf course with a French family and their severely disabled son.  How they thought he could complete the round in that massive electric wheelchair I will never know; he was never going to fit over that bridge bit by the pirate ship… and they wouldn’t let us play through; wankers.

Now this drinking approach is okay for the first day but when you wake up after only three hours of drunken slumber to the sound of seagulls fucking on your window ledge you will instantly regret it.

So you spend the rest of the day in and out of public toilets as your partner drags you around the seafront evacuating what little fluids and toxins from your slowly shutting down system.

Having afternoon naps is an option and may be the only time you might get some real sleep due to exhaustion.  But if you sleep for too long you will spent that night just staring at the celling in the dark for most of the night until it’s time to get up and go downstairs for some breakfast.

But you know what I still manage to have a blinding time even though I feel like complete shit.  After the booze (and occasional meds) kicks in and I see a few sights, you know, mission around on the beach and that for a few hours I usually manage to get some sleep.

It’s probably because I don’t like change and I am so used to my bed that I have problems sleeping in hotels.  Next time I’m taking a tent.

One bit of advice I will give is to never go swimming while sleep deprived, you will end up on the afternoon news when the RNLI pull you on to a boat looking like a drowned rat.