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So after the brief sojourn with the Lyonnaise Police department behind me, i headed to Grenoble.. A little city up in the mountains, away from Paris which was fun.. It also, as i found out later happened to be in the Chartreuse region of the world..
So after a few days hanging out with my mate Olivier, i jumped on a train to Geneva, where i was going to meet up with a guy off couchsurfing, who lived in this crazy punk house.. got to his house, called him up and he was at this party on the other side of town.. i dumped my bags and headed off on a bus, cross town. 5am and a dozen supermarket beers later it was party time back at the punk house..
stayed in geneva a very expensive 3 days, and an even more expensive train trip back to france, to go to Mulhouse to visit my buddy Anthony, where it was Vin Chaud all the way to the top..
(sorry. im the mucous man at the moment.. i cant think of anything clever to write..)
But in other News, the fun news.. From Mulhouse, the plan was always to hitch-hike to Berlin.. or at least somewhere in Germany.
So i woke up at like 6am, hopped on a bus out of town and walked to the freeway onramps, and wrote a sign on my sketchbook to ‘Allemagne’ (the french dont have similar names for countries like everyone else.. they just have to be different.) After 30 minutes of waiting, some Europcar guys took me to the border and dropped me at the bridge to Germany. I walked across, which was nice, i suppose.. From there, Frank drove me to Freiborg, and talked to me about some exchange students from melbourne who are staying with him.. Affie drove me in his truck from Freiborg to Offenberg with his Border Collie.. i waited in the rain talking to Gorge from Bulgaria who was the toilet attendent at a truckstop there, for about 2 hours, before Miroslav from Slovakia drove me to a truckstop just north of Frankfurt, when for the first time ever, i actually awarded myself a vague point..
Thinking to myself.. “Why the fuck have they concreted all the embankments next to the Autobahn?? and why does it extend beyond the embankments?? Whats the point??” This being in the centre of Germany, where it has on occasion been known to snow. A lot.. It took me about 20 minutes to figure that one out.. So Bessie – look out, I’m catching up.
Tony the Portuguese/German drove me from Frankfurt to Hannover, where i stupidly thought it would be cheap/easy to catch a train from there to Berlin. Trains to the capital? go all the time dont they? and cheap? no on both counts. I was too exhausted and couldnt be arsed anymore so i bought a ticket, some beers and caught a train to a small city kinda in between the two and got drunk and fell asleep at the station.. (By this stage it was midnight..) I got to Berlin 27 hours after id left Mulhouse, which by all accounts is pretty quick for hitching.. Fun times though.. it turns out every single truck driver smokes like a champion, so it was great fun riding high above everyone else, swearing in different languages and smoking millions of cigarettes..
So Berlin huh? Fun city. Easy to be poor (like me.. im getting into calling the folks territory fast.)
So thats it for now. Its beer beer beer, poland on the weekend, gluhwein at night, and vegan cooking. Good times.
Back in london on the 17th of December. In time to be even more poor..
Got arrested last night, spent the night in lockup. All because me and a mate were super drunk and painted a giant high school penis.. according to the copper taking my statement, it was a 50cm high, 15 metre long “Man’s sex part.” I actually giggled like a school girl when they told me that this morning. Good news is, I was released without charges..
So to celebrate the day, heres a video of Lenny “The Guv’Nor” McClean in an unlicensed boxing match..
does this ount for hobo points? i think it does..
UPDATE: the culprit..
the cock that landed me in jail
Just got into Lyon last night, after someone told me of the Beaujolaise Nouveau, which is pretty much the local french version of octoberfest, only with wine (thats only 2 months old..) and condensed into a 25 minute free-for-all brawl for free midnight wine, follwed by a bunch of drunken french guys singing. It was awesome..
But heres a video of the celebration before the arrival of the barrels into the town square. It is actually the most Eurotasticly Eurotastic thing i’ve ever seen in my life. I actually think I’d been waiting my whole life to see something so tacky, and totally rad at the same time.
(don’t feel the need to watch the whole thing.. but you get the idea..)
if you’re too lazy to sit through that, heres a video of another talking guitar.. but this one dances
heading up to the mountains after the weekend.. gonna hang out with my buddy Lio this weekend..
found it today.
hangin out in montpellier with my new buddy charlotte.. just had a nap, ate some freshly baked artisan baguettes just with butter and a bit of salt (totally fucken awesome btw.. none of that crap shit you get in england or spain..)
about to head back out and walk around a town i don’t know totally aimlessly like a zombie during a brain drought.
was in barca for a week, valencia for a few days before that, and am heading towards lyon and paris over the next week or so. fun times.
So. the trip begins..
I flew to Faro, southern Portugal on the 20th, and headed towards the hostel that i had booked, with the plan to just get there, chill and figure out where i could go. But as i was getting progressively more lost in Faro itself en route to the hostel, it turns out there was a week long, once a year festival type thingo in the town square.. Good timing. It was a good sign. So i found where i was going, dropped off my shit and headed back to the festival, drank some beers and stuffed my face with all sorts of portuguese chorizo, ham and then a whole lotta churras and fasturas. Good times..
It was still sunny the next day so i figured i’d head to Olhao, and jump on a ferry to one of the islands nearby and pitch a tent.. which turned out exactly how i figured. I pitched a tent on Armona, an island near to Olhao, ate chorizo and cheese and went for a swim in the afternoon. simple.. same thing the next morning and then back to olhao, where i jumped on a train to Vila Real de Santa Antonio, on the border to Spain. It was shit and it was raining, so i jumped onto the first bus leaving the bus station, headed to a place called Marim Longo..
This was a funny funny place.. the bus took like 2 and a half hours, and by the time it got there, it was already dark, so i figured that i’d just go and get drunk, at least the football was on and i could smoke inside, so as bars go, the boxes were ticked.. Then it turns out, after 60 cent bottles of beer, and sporting Lisbon scored, this crazy old guy named Javier came and joined me and he sterted telling me about how the guy sitting on the table next to us is the second best piano-accordian player in all of Marim Lungo but it was hard for him, even though he could play the guitar, the pan flute and piano.. Then once the bar closed i slept in the bus stop. Hobo points.
From there, I crossed the border into Spain and hung out in Ayamonte for a bit, and checked in an internet place where might be cool to pitch a tent.. Bought a book, caught a bus to Huelva and from there a bus to Punta Umbria, where i walked (in the sun.. oh yeah) outside of town, past a supermarket, and onto the beach.. pitched the tent, went for a swim and smoked like 8 million cigarettes, read the book and did absolutely nothing. At all. In the sun. The same one i didn’t see most of summer in England.. 2 days fuck yeah.
Bus back to Huelva, Bus to Seville. Found a hostel, booked in for the weekend, had a shower and made full use of the siesta, which turns out to be less about closing everything, but more about going for a really long drunken lunch.. So i walked around town, back and forth through the little streets, looking for that elusive awesomely spanish bar.. the one i’d always imagined. Then i found it. No ashtrays. No barstools, it only had 20 person capacity, there were two massive barrels of wine behind the bar, bottles with 50 years of dust on them, and to top it off, the barman was an old guy named Pepe. fucken rad.. i drunk with some of the regulars and then there was a bit of a lock-in. great afternoon really.. then i had a nap. Met some aussies, some kiwis, some canadians, some americans and we all ended going out and smash baggin it over jugs of sangria in a flamenco bar.. good times
Train to Malaga, train to Fuengirola.. met my Danish buddy Jakob in fuengirola and went to his place, drank some beers and figured out where we could go, him being unemployed as well.. so we hired a car, went to the first round of the Volvo Masters golf tourney at the Valderamma golf course, Gibraltar – which is pretty much a big rock where you can see africa and covered in monkeys, Tarifa and Ronda.. stopping at a few other places along the way.. Fucken hilarious road trip – culminating in a drunken evening at a really awesome Tapas bar in Ronda (incidently it also had an old guy named Pepe behind the bar) where, on account you can smoke inside still, we had no need to get up, apart from going to the toilet, so for the first time in years, i ended doing that one when you dont realise how drunk you really are until you stumble out.. Shit hangover. back to Fuengirola.. Prawn day. oh yeah..
and thats up to date. ish.. photos to come when im not lazy
it seems like ive barely been away, but now its getting cold, and the days are getting shorter, it finally hit me that ive been away for over a year.
so naturally, i quit my job, moved out of my house and borrowed money off my bro and am going on a major no holds barred super adventure.. all things considered, i shouldve done this a long time ago (try summer) but what the hey?
im currently hangin out in velserbroek, near haarlem about 20km away from amsterdam chillin with my great auntie who turned 80 today and my folks too, but the real juicy action starts on the 20th – the one and only date so far that ive booked any travel for which is to Faro, on the southern tip of portugal..
the plan is to head north-ish and at least make it to berlin, through the pyrenees, southern france and paris.
wish me luck
so. sorry about the long delay in between posts, but thats just the way it is. live with it.
by sunday morning, festival fatigue had started to kick in. id spent the previous few days in some state of damp, and was getting over it a bit.. but none of that, it was the most bitchin day on the lineup, now that i had my little £6 program lanyard, i was organised. oh yeah.
so for sunday, i was amped about a few bands, ones that id gone to the festival knowing id be hyped about them – Baaba Maal from Senegal in the afternoon, something, something, then George Clinton and Parliament/Funkadelic for a glorious 2 hour super deadly cosmic nipple funk set.. and either side of that, Beardyman.. followed by Underworld..
the only spanner in the works – super strength festival rowdy juice. fucking brothers. why do you make that pear cider so nice, but have such long lines making me want to double up on pints every time?
meanwhile, in between beardyman’s super killer awesome beatbox set, and the mixed mud wrestling in the quagmire behind us, id set in motion a vicious hangover, caused by what was left of the vanilla vodka and lemonade we were drinking the night before, combined with warm cans of stella and said rowdy juice..
needless to say, i got way too excited during George Clinton and had to be carted back to the tent most of the way into Underworld.. who i couldnt even concentrate on.. rad. But when you see the biggest collection of pimps, a woman in gold spandex and roller skates, a guy wearing a giant nappie and they’re all playing the most outrageous funk and then to top that, they do a cover of James Brown – ‘The Payback’ you cant help but go over the top. At least thats what was going through my head at the time..
all in all.. awesome festival. the mud strangely mad it a little bit more exciting, purely because of the stereotype of the muddy english summer festival.. and the danger factor of the drunken walk back to the tent.
monday was hard to say the least. we knew we had at least 6 hours to kill from the time the tickets said we were getting the ferry til the bus back to london. It sounded easier when we were drunk and boisterous and all like ‘yeah lets get drunk again in the pub oh yeah!’ but in reality it was horrible. The ferry situation worked in our favour, cause we just arrived and jumped on a ferry we didnt have the right ticket for, and they just let us on, but when we went to ask if we could get an earlier bus, it was flat denial. Horrible bastards they are.. so it was get some fish and chips, then off to the pub for some pints..
but as it goes, by the time 6 came around and it was time to get the bus, me and marky were so knackered it was the most horrible return to civilisation you could imagine. Waiting for a bus after getting off the tube at Elephant & Castle covered in mud and smelling positively rancid is never fun. But we made it and the resulting shower fucking ruled.
i love festivals.
So saturday.. holy mother of shit what an up and down day.. i felt fucken great, tucked up in my sleeping bag (so far dry) probably still drunk and had no idea of the puddle that was forming around my feet from the heavy rain outside.. Mark had already bit the bullet and went for a walk to figure out something to do, but no more than 20 minutes after id woken up, disaster struck again.. the puddle shifted and lo-and-behold my sleeping bag is soaked. shit. shit. double shit.
fuck it. i put on my pair of damp jeans, damp hoody, damp jacket and put my now destroyed phone (damp) in my pocket.. everything else seemed to have miraculously escaped the devastation.. i got up, and went and had a cuppa. lovely.
so soon after we sorted our brains out, the option to bail out and head back to london was quickly scratched.. the option to go back to town, buy a tent, grab a bite to eat that wasnt dirty festival food and go to the pub was starting to shine. it just turned out to be a mission, which a lot of other people seemed to be making as well.. so saturday so far – new tent? check. pint down the pub? check. still not dead from hypothermia? check. we were good to go. oh yeah!
once we had returned to the festival, we made the long hike through the quagmire to where we had been camping, emptied what was essentially a tarp at this stage, and pitched the new tent. result. then got onto the cans. straight down to the stage.. and who was on? the fucking human league. oh yeah! 80’s pop all the way.. mid set, i asked a bloke who had a programme to see who was playing, and found out the lineup for the afternoon/evening ahead.. turns out gary numan was on the main stage afterward the human league had finished their set in the big top.. i thought why not. check him out. marky went for a tactical afternoon nap and i went and drank some more festival rowdy juice.. it really gets you rowdy.. then on account of a combination of gary numan being shit, getting woken up by a puddle at 7:30 in the morning and being a little bit pissy, i went for the tactical snooze option. bad manouvre. by this stage i’d bought a program though which was a good manouvre..
turns out the specials and grace jones were the surprise acts. fuck. missed em. ah well.. its what you get.
by the time we’d got out shit sorted again, bright and refreshed, we hiked back to the main arena. oh yeah yeah roots manuva. just on. just like that. fuck yeah, which was kind’ve a bit shit, because it meant missing DJ Yoda and his AV show, but for a bit of rowdy dub action, it was awesome. Then to what i see now as probably the best show i saw all weekend, factoring in not expecting anything – Hot Chip fucken rule live. My god i was so fucking impressed by everything they were doing, even more when i noticed they were all dressed up like everyone else at the festival.. And dont worry Amy – i thought of you when they played Over and Over..
After that was a bit of a blur.. i know we went and saw Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, caught a bit of the nextmen in the sweatiest festival tent ive ever seen in my life.. then saw a bit of Amy Winehouse’s monster disappointment of a show.. seeing a highlight reel the other day i noticed she was struggling to keep her jaw straight. good one..
-
with vanilla vodka in the foggy tent
now i remember why it was a blur – the litre bottle of vodka we had brought down with us.. plus the super strength festival cider i kept buying and drinking really fast.. come 1:30 both of us had the drowsies (i had the rosies too) and piked it.. didnt miss much after that, had a fun day. back though the mud and dont know how we managed to make it without breaking our ankles..
so fuck you flip.. theres saturday
stay tuned for the bender bus rollin on.. sunday
so from what i can remember of bestival (now a week past.. bear with me) it was totally fucken rad.
I’d worked 6 days straight and 10 shifts up until that weekend – penance for asking for a whole weekend off – and by the thursday night i was completely knackered.. so i was ready to smash it.
actually, rewind just a minute.. my mate danny sorted me out with a pair of free tickets, so me and my other mate mark ‘muscles’ lawler were excited from the get go.. we didnt even know who was playing at all. all i could remember from a brief look at the website was george clinton and funkadelic, hot chip and amy smackhouse. while i was busting a nut working, marky sorted out how the fuck we were gonna get there, and courtesy of a cheap bus and an expensive ferry, we were on the isle of wight.
Too bad for us it was pissing down with rain.. like harder rain than i’d seen since melbourne flooded on christmas day 5 or 6 years ago.. Not boding well so far for the weekend, so first things first for the team rowdy boys.. pair of gumboots. then the pub. A cheeky couple of pints later, we’d jumped on a bus that was going towards the festival site, through more rain.. got to the festival (Robin Hill Country Park) and to our dismay, it started raining heavier. What do you do in that situation? Crack into the cans, what else? Brief chat to Rob from Reading over a can of Stella until the weather cleared up a little and then straight into the sea of mud.. as far as the eye can see. It really was everywhere.
We’d walked for fucken ages to try and find somewhere to camp and then disaster struck. Im talking disaster of all disasters.. So we’d found somewhere to camp, pulled out all our stuff and lo and behold, tent? check. pegs? check. beer? check. dryish patch of ground? check. tent poles? WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE DONT HAVE TENT POLES?? fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. After a quick stress smoke and another can, reality finally hit us and we just went ‘fuck it. lets get drunk’ a-la the dude.. Off to the main arena we went..
Friday Night. It was on. We were there. Cans were in our pockets ready for action.. We just didnt know who or when any of the bands were on.. lucky for us, we went into a tent and the breeders were playing. like the breeders all the way back from 1994 the breeders.. fuck yeah. after that, we went and got a few pints of rowdy juice and went to check out the main stage.. it was shit and we went back to the big top tent and up next was this radcore canadian two piece called chromeo, and i think at that stage flip called me.. a whole lotta yelling later, it was back to the serious business of getting smashed so much it didnt matter we were sleeping in a tent without poles that night, and dancing to some serious 80’s revival electro funk.. oh yeah..
Soon after, we were knackered.. back to the tent, through the mud.. into a tent without poles.
Stay tuned for Saturday.
and now the news..
flew in last night back to london after 5 (mostly sunny) days in Risor, Norway. Which means the plan changed again.. and again and again. Kept us on our toes, more to the point, kept Judith on her toes.. I was just happy to do whatever. So it turned out that funky Mark Lawler and his band of Vikings made changes to their plans (thanks for that boys!) and cut a little bit short their west coast adventure to drive to Risor to meet up with me and Judith. After a long and sunny walk further than we needed, me and Judith pitched a tent in the woods just outside of Risor on one of the bays thinking that the boys would arrive late the next day, so we settled in and managed to have a super relaxing time.. Mind you, at this stage, it was a beautiful day, and we had planned to spend the saturday lounging around and swimming all day..
Day2. Rain. Shit.. woke up to rain on the saturday, but after sleeping for around 14 hours, i didnt mind.. and funnily enough, neither did Judith.. she figured funky mark lawler and the vikings would arrive in town earlier, on account that it was raining pretty heavy in most of norway.. so instead of lounging around all day in a pair of ridiculously short yellow shorts, we sat out the day in a pub spending £6 on each pint.. good one norway. turns out she was right and the boys got there a couple hours earlier than expected. then the real booze-a-thon began. With Jacob and Jonas the snus eating shit talking champions of scandinavia. Skal!
Days 3-4 Weather began to pick up and more and more of the day was spent doing sweet fuck all. bought some prawns from the fish market and stuffed ourselves.. followed the next day by some weber action and more super drinking time.. involving whatever was in Jonas’ booze cupboard, which turns out was a lot..
then the sun came out. lovely. swimming with jellyfish is always an exciting prospect.. much funnier when you’re conditioned to think that jellyfish are only there to kill you, like most australians. made for a heartracing afternoon. that night – more beer. fuck these vikings can drink.
last day. woke up at like 2. more of sweet fuck all. checked the bus back to Torp.. cooked dinner for everyone. had a beer. caught the plane. not much to it really? fuck that. english public transport can suck a fuck. got back to stansted and had to wait for fucking ever to get though customs, then theres some shit with rail works, so the trains arent going, which means buses. twice as long and 15 times more uncomfortable meant we didnt get home til 3am or some shit like that.. pricks.
ah well.. it was all worth it. thanks to funky mark lawler and the merry vikings Jonas and Jacob.. thanks for letting us stay! Enjoy that sun lads! im envious.. Skal!
Monkey and the Bandits 