It's morning, but I've been awake for twelve hours. I recently had breakfast but it felt like dinner. A little over half way around the world people are lining up the evenings drinks. Here, thirteen hours away as the world turns, I'm about to go into a morning meeting. Interesting, if a little trite.
I know nothing about Houston, beyond it being named after the fat alcoholic founding president of the Republic of Texas, so I'm afraid no 'interesting' historical detritus to get sidetracked on. In fact, it seems unlikely that I'm going to learn anything at all about Houston at all, given that I'm staying at an airport hotel. I don't really care, I've heard the place is full of Americans... Texican Americans to boot. I can tell you that the airport is really really really, erm... airport-like. I love the fact that it's called the 'George Bush International Airport'. I'm assuming that's Bush Senior, it would probably be pushing the obsequious boat a little too far out of harbour to name an airport after a sitting president, even if he does chop wood whilst wearing a baseball cap. One hopes irony was involved in naming a Texan Airport after George Bush, the most useless American president since that other one who did the really stupid stuff - a man so Texan that he's actually from Connecticut [yes, dammit, I spelt that without looking it up]. I guess that guy who succeeded Kennedy - almost rhymes with Thompson [I'm having trouble typing the letter after 'I'] - already has enough things named after him. Hmm -- there must have been other, more Texan, Texan Presidents, but buggered if I can think of them. You only ever really hear about Bush and that Johnson bloke - maybe Texans are embarrassed by their other Presidents, maybe they voted for gun control or a woman's right to choose or some such heresy. Wow, this is really billious. Can't think why.
June 13th, 1.19 am, Beijing
Right. Those of you with nervous dispositions or indeed, normal taste thresholds, should turn way now - I am going to paint you a picture. It's not going to be edifying, it won't be pleasant and only those of you who've been living in some kind of sexual Sahara for several years will find it remotely attractive. I'm sitting here at this laptop naked as the day I was born, save for the bed-sheet that preserves my modesty. Its been a few days since I've shaved. Although only a few hours since my most recent shower, my hair is already starting to coagulate [a perfect word]. It's hot. Very hot. Several layers of sweat, each layer slightly more aged than the other - like the rings of a tree - form a membrane around me. An olfactory archeologist [should such persons exist] would probably be able to deduce my not particularly healthy diet of take out fish and chips and packet noodles from the smell. I have insomnia. I actually went to bed three hours ago. Three long hours of lying there in mildly sodden sheets waiting for the Clogs to work their soporific magic on me. The Clogs have failed me. Times like these, 'Happiness is a warm gun' makes the perfect soundtrack. Anyway, enough of this vaguely repulsive bollocks. Simply trying to present an audiovisual blog experience. Audio? Oh yeah - Try something off 'Selected Ambient Works' by Aphex Twin. That pretty much sounds like my head feels at the moment - sort of cold and remote, but weirdly warm and fuzzy at the same time. Anyway...
Been remarkably slack about writing this past month or so, mainly due to a life-destroying addiction to a combination of Gilmore Girls, Wikipedia articles on the papacy and out of reach women. Also seem to have had a bit of a computer meltdown - meaning that a rather wordy and excitable 'Drunk on an Aeroplane' about Martha and Vandellas has vanished into the ether. Such is life, buggered if I can be bothered to do it again. Take it as read - 'Heatwave', great song [subsequently found it you’ll be relieved to hear]. Anyway, apart from all the usual bollocks with women, here are the only two important things that have happened this month. The really ugly fertility statue that someone gave me in Nigeria last year has told me to use bullet points.
- ˙ Arrows Made of Desire graced a public stage for the first time and totally blew... us all away [heh! heh!]. Seriously, if I'd been them I would have been depositing brick shaped turds all over the pace, but Mr. Verhoeven and crew came out and were professional to a tee. Seriously, the album ['Songs That Sell Fish'] is excellent, but if you have a chance to see them live grab it by the testes and don't let go. The songs sound amazingly fresh and immediate on stage. So having given up their performance maidenhead at 2Kolegas.
˙ A 'friend' - Palmer - has devised the Sherman Scale - a scale of magnitude for sexual failure, in much the same way that the Richter Scale is a scale of magnitude for earthquakes. For example, the fairly common occurrence of failing to pull on a date is a basic 1 on the Sherman Scale, while taking pizza round to a woman's house at 3 o'clock in the morning [by her request] and through your own total incompetence and cack-handedness still waking up in your own bed alone scores a mighty 10 on the Sherman Scale. Apologies to the rest of my family for the associations. You always knew I'd bring shame down upon a noble name... I prefer to view this as infamy.
Thursday, 8th June, 9.42, somewhere in the sky - probably over Ukraine or one of those anonymous CIS states, en route back to China
You’ll bear with me I hope. I've had [purposefully] about two hours sleep in the last forty eight and I'm working on my 11th glass of Riesling. Picture a pictogram where I am represented somewhere midpoint between a coma and total liver failure - you’re nowhere near where I'm at right now. Very soon I'm going to fall into a deep deep sleep, and when I awake I will be back in the land of Olympic smoking. This is good… I love Germany, have I mentioned this? Can’t remember - but in case I haven’t - they’re a beautiful beautiful wonderful lovely race - full of kindness and grace, and their airline is pretty special, to boot. Sloppy way of saying that Lufthansa have YET AGAIN upgraded me. I've moments ago finished what was possibly the healthiest most well balanced meal I've had in a decade [and I'm including The Tree in that calculation]…. On an Aeroplane, fer feck’s sake.
Oooh… that was weird, but part of the process I guess. I finished the above paragraph and was suddenly struck with a fleeting, terrible, feeling of loneliness. If I was anywhere but forty thousand feet up at the moment I’d be sending someone - possibly you - drunken self-pitying text messages full of self-loathing, gender anxiety, crude hateful comments about German men [but fuck ‘em, they deserve it], and general patheticness. Feel the lack of comradeship. But anyway, enough of that shit, before I push down the Sherman spiral as it’s known in the trade.
Beautiful blood red sunset up here.
S.P., Wednesday 7th June, 7.33 pm
I have a new least favourite word. ‘Wellness’. As in ‘a wellness centre’ or ‘would you like a wellness shake with your macrobiotic nut roast, Mr. Sherman?’ What the fuck was wrong with ‘health’, eh? Not stupid enough? Not nearly cloyingly, teeth-grindingly NOW enough? So, welcome ‘wellness’ - welcome to the pantheon of pointless neologisms. Waiting to welcome you are other shitheel usages, such as ‘to action something’ and ‘financials [as a noun]’ and men who wear coloured bowties. Okay, okay, that last one isn’t exactly a neologism, but it’s still irritating as hell. This comes up because this revolting turd of glass, metal and orange paint masquerading as the hotel that I'm staying in boasts a ‘wellness centre’. On general principles, I certainly won’t be working out there. Sigh… looks like I’ll have to forego my regular exercise regimen for a couple of days. Hope I don’t bloat.
Every radio station in Poland to seems to play Classic Plastic Eurocheese, if you’ll forgive the expression. You know what I mean… or maybe you don’t, being colonials. I'm talking about old school Eurocheese - your whigfields, seals and haddaways. Maybe you don’t remember these early nineties nuggets or, even better - never drunkenly danced to them - God knows I wish I didn’t and hadn’t. Let me explain then that this music is evil, not because it’s plastic, but because it insidiously worms it’s way into your head and chases away all the quality tunes that would ordinarily have the run of the place. This music is Satan’s work because its ‘fun’ and a spastic four year old with autism can understand it. Europeans have always been good at this type of stuff - simple, direct, infectious [like herpes], stupid and awful - think Boney M or some of that Giorgio Moroder/Donna Summer stuff. Okay, I can sense your mostly American brows furrowing in confusion all the way over here in Poland. You will, unfortunately, remember that Macarena song? Ah, now you’re in the right musical place. Like the Macarena, real Eurocheese needs to have its own bespoke dance that drunken middle aged account executives can ‘entertainingly’ do while attending weddings. Or university students for that matter. Who hasn’t indulged in a spot of that hand-rolling, bouncing ‘Saturday Night’ dance whenever whigfield gets play at the student disco? Oh… that’s just me, is it? Oh well….
6th June 2006, Sklarska Poreba, 6.00 pm
Polish people drive like maniacs. That sounds like a generalization but it’s not. This is my third trip here in the space of 6 weeks, and everyone has driven me around like they have some sort of grudge against the speed of light - are personally affronted by its very existence as a some sort of upper limit of possible velocity - and therefore are in a constant battle to beat it - Chuck Yeagers on four wheels. Maybe it’s a Polish man thing, I don’t know, I've never been driven by polish women. These polish men are aware of the insanity of their driving. On three separate occasions in three different parts of Poland, men oozing a kind of limpid, faux machismo that is only possible when wearing short-sleeved polyester dress shirts coupled with grey slacks, black slip-ons and piss-yellow gold chains around their necks have asked me if I like to go fast. First time they got mumbled affirmation from me, second time nothing at all, third time a simple statement that I would like to be alive at the end of the journey and a well nourished, if unspoken, idea that Polish men aren’t having nearly enough sex. The problem in Poland is that there are ample opportunities for speed - miles upon miles of deserted country road, 85% of it single carriageway. Which makes matters even worse, since if you are sharing a nice dual- or triple- carriageway motorway with other cars - all zipping along at 200 kph you become used to the presence of other vehicles and work accordingly. I have welts across my chest, courtesy of the seatbelt cross strap, after last night’s trip from the airport - our journey following a simple rotation of;
[1]Hurtle along [swiftly followed by sonic boom] for 10 minutes at vomit inducing speeds down dark ‘topographically interesting’ country lanes, [2] Break sharply when another Polish maniac, also overcompensating for poor wardrobe/sexlife/facial hair/ aftershave, comes hurtling over the crown of hill/round bend at vomit inducing speed, although presumably without similarly terrified captive Englishman in the shotgun seat, [3] Occupants of car make fun of terrified captive Englishmen in shotgun seat who has turned an unexpected shade of puce and unknowingly taken to muttering frantic hail marys out loud, [4] Driver of car will then launch into monologue regarding how few times he’s been stopped for speeding because he knows these roads like the back of his hand including where the police like to hide… Repeat.
Sklarska Poreba, Lower Silesia is a ski resort situated very close to the borders with Germany and the Czech Republic, which would put us in the south west of Poland. This is all very cool, except for the fact that we’re in the sixth month of the year - hence no snow, hence no skiing. In fact, I'm not at all sure why I mentioned the skiing thing, its totally moot. Ignore all further references to skiing. Anyway, we’re up in the mountains. Not exactly the Alps, but about 1000 metres above sea level. Beautiful scenery. Unlike the flat, monotonous, depressing woodlands and farmland of Pila and Poznan, this is, erm… hilly, wooded and depressing. Still getting a strong ‘don’t even think of going into the woods without your axe and crone-repellent’ vibe but then at least here you’d have skis to run away from the wolf - shit, mentioned skiing again. All the buildings that I've seen are quaint chalet-like constructions whose foundations have been gouged into the mountainside - all woodpiles out front and roaring fires in the hearth [probably]. Except for this fucking hotel, which is quite possibly the ugliest building I've ever seen - urban or rural. Someone in the soviet-era planning office received a lot of brown envelopes filled with rapidly inflating cash for this puppy to get made. And for a long time as well, since apparently it took twenty years to build. I'm sure he considers his dacha in the Crimea adequate compensation for inflicting this awful eyesore on an otherwise beautiful town.
Pics:
Alright, so I know it looks like some dilapidated African shanty town in the above photo, but take my word for it - I'm in serious ‘Sound of Music’ territory here.
Erm… a church. In the forest - I’d say this was definitely forest. I like churches. Doesn’t everyone? Not to go into, you understand, but to look at. Oh, bite me!
I went for a walk in the above forest today. Boy, am I proud of myself. Ignored the insects and strange wildlife and everything. Hell, I'm practically a yokel - my hands are growing callused as I write. Angry woodcutter on a mission is out of shot.
...
And then...
It looks kind of cool in this photo. Trust me, it aint.
S.P., as I'm going to call this town from now on as I simply refuse to type the full name again [remember the calluses], is, simply put, lovely. As an urban scumbag myself, I find it hard to access the language necessary to describe it fairly. Insert your own Faux-Coleridge passage here and be sure to include the word ‘buccolic’. Of course, if I had to stay here any longer than three days I’d probably develop a serious smack habit and take to wandering around town with a loaded shotgun and a nervous twitch, but it sure is good to breathe clean, non-oyster-sauce-laden air for a while - at least until my next fag anyway.
5th June 2006, Frankfurt Airport [again] Interesting thing... well maybe not interesting but definitely a 'thing'. The black-hole-of-Calcutta-like smoking room in the business lounge here is always - and I mean ALWAYS - full of Asian people. While the rest of the world - curse them to hell - is slowly giving up on the fad of smoking, Orientals - god bless their [usually white] cotton socks - seem to be refining it and exporting it to the world. It's so typically oriental. Love them for this if no other reason. Germany seems to be something of a European Holdout when it comes to airport smoking rooms, which are usually designed to make you feel like the lowest of the low upon entering. Here in Frankfurt, there are actual windows, tables, seats and even a smidge of ventilation. The worst airport for lung-busting is either Bangkok or Reykjavik. Some sort of evil genius designed these smoking 'facilities'. I suspect the hand of a reformed smoker.
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