into the Atlantic

Missing the earliest memory or flipping a coin to decide what was the point in all of this.

My long standing memory of my grand father was for him sitting in his favourite chair, he would park a small table just infront of him with a large bowl, an apple and a sharp knife. The apple was always a green granny smith, he would flick on the tv with the remote control and then beginning peeling.

His technique was to have the long straggling skin which he would never break on purpose and as they were skinned from the flesh of the apple they would fall into the large bowl. He would then half the apple, then quarter it, turn it on its side and make a fairly large notch into what was the centre to remove the pips. He was an old man by the time I had these memories of him, quite frail and this great ability to hack up all the stuff from the back of his throat, I suppose that’s a generations gap of making sure I never got to know him.
We always had Christmas Lunch over at his house, there was a mad panic of who was cooking what and whatever, my uncle would be outside having a smoke, my aunties all talking loudly (which amounted to shouting), my cousins and I bunched together on the table with nothing in common apart from being cousins. The turkey was always dry, I was sure there was always a lack of gammon, we didn’t have a concept of cranberry sauce at the time. Once that was over, a James Bond film usually with Roger Moore as the star and then a plane trip to some place on the other side of the world.

Those are wonderful memories. You don’t ever need to flip a coin to make these, just make sure you remember them and hold them up to your heart.

Have a Wonderful Christmas My Beautiful People.

musik

• Organ Grinder- Murder By Death
• Sometimes the Line Walks You- Murder By Death
• PDA- InterpolMake War- Bright Eyes
• Oh My Sweet Carolina- Ryan Adams
• Every Line Of A Long Moment- Roddy Woomble

videospiel

• Little Big Planet
• GTA IV

vershieden

• trying to work out Murakami,
• doing the shopping in 2 days,
• working in my German office at least it has a nice view,
• seeing 4 London stadiums in under 5 mins,
• having two bowls of Chinese soup,
• Jason Stones- Element unto himself that boy,
• Watching videos of Chris Rock, Kat Williams, Eddie Murphy and Dave Chappelle.
• Simon trying to explain lacist to me and not realising that I was already a lacist,
• ‘yeah good one Newman’
• Still not getting over Bales ‘Batman Voice’,
• becoming a filth-bag with Zoe-face,finally realising its Christmas,

quite like you before

Something different.

Two nights before I made my move to Germany I was in a fury of downloading films to fill a lovely new hard drive which has kept me company over here. After catching a snatch of the Kermode on Radio Five I thought I trust this slick haired lothario, he was reviewing an American film which turns out to be a remake of a Spanish film. I could tell he was waving his arms about in annoyance of the remake and waving his arms in praise of the original version.



Of course I downloaded the Spanish version of REC.

In a few words, set from the point of view of people locked in the building which is ground zero for a virus which causes zombification, none of them knowing what is going on, all filmed from the point of view of a news reporting team. Where this film starts is obvious, where it ends is the beauty of it. Shocking, scary and most importantly freshly executed.

Suffice to say I had to phone Lily up and tell her how scared I was.

Sometimes the past whispers in your ear, if you listen too hard you won't be able to tell the truth from all the lies. A girl I was once in love with told me she missed me a few days ago, in my heart there is always a place for her, but that place sank a few feet and pushed me to want to smoke again.

I could feel it now, I running my tongue between my teeth and lips, the taste of nicotine freshness is all that coats my tongue. If I spent all my life wishing we were together, I would have put a noose around my neck a long time ago. I miss her too, but then I miss that time in my life, I'm not allowed to have it back, instead I decided that we should all make our own life in the present.

musik

• Eli The Barrow Boy- The Decemberists
• This Sporting Life- The Decemberists
• California Dreaming- Mamas and Papas
• Hurt- Johnny Cash
• Bitter Sweet Symphony- The Verve
• Girl From Mars- Ash
• Best Of You- The Foo Fighters

buch

• Blind Willow Sleeping Woman- Haruki Murakami

sport

• HSV vs Aston Villa (Deutschland gegen England)

vershieden

• the new land lord seeing all the coincidences.
• Seeing the prettiest German girl sitting opposite me on the U3, she was so angelic I felt almost paedophilic.
• feeling all Chungking Express again, I wonder if there is a Muenchen equivalent that I could try and live.
• Impressing Roisin with a stolen lyric.
• German Hip Hop is so fuckin gangsta is unreal tourno
• Missing Baker, not having tea with him in almost 5 weeks is soul destroying.
• Reading a book on the tube and ignoring all the people around me.
• Old Man James asking if I was all right in my office.
• You could have it all, my empire of dirt.

wake up younger under the knife

This year has been a year of many realisations, as Baker keeps telling me once you reach 25 there's no hope for you any more (his words with much poetic licence). But for all the manic mood swings and turning away of some friends, this year is another one of those years I could consider something. I could write them down and describe them in detail, but that isn't the point, many a post ago I talked about the moments which mean something to you.

A little exercise for you all, place your hands in front of you, turn one palm up to the ceiling or the sky and turn the other palm to the floor. Close your eyes and try to remember the moments in your which you realised something or if something changed in that split-second. Be them good or bad, these are the sorts of moments I'm referring to. Open your eyes and whisper them into your closed hands and press them to your chest, if we were to share them, they would lose their lustre. Instead keep them in your heart.

1990, 1996, 2003, 2006. And for this moment in my life 2008. Last year was a learning curve a definite change but also a chore, it was making the motions like walking through life's rites of passage. One thing that hasn't changed, I still don't know when I'm in love with someone, but I have learnt to not yearn for something you can't have again.

I whispered the moment a few times to myself and it won't leave my heart.

Something I wrote in 2006.

The bus up to the airport was bumpy and badly driven, the driver was bald with wisps of hair between his ears, he stayed silent for the whole journey bar ten minutes at the end. In my tiredness I’m assuming he’s scared of my cousins loud Chinese and even louder English. I still think he’s an awful driver even when he opens up to us and tells us where we should be heading in Heathrow. I keep writing about it being my second home, but the airport is always cold and the essence of multiculturalism which I never see living in the quiet south. My cousin makes me laugh so hard that I want to fall over and get crushed by a thousand sandals, his words too politically incorrect and ignorant for me to repeat without fearing a backlash. I rub my eyes to red again, trying to stay awake so that I can take in all the experiences which I know I'm going to enjoy over the next 7 weeks. All the new ones and all the usual ones, I'm checking in my bags and already infuriated with my adopted family of my cousins down the road. I know its going to be a hard 7 days with them and I can look forward to the dreaming spires of steel and concrete that is Hong Kong built over a bay which is sinking into the sea.

I wonder what the girl is thinking and hope she is asleep having a lovely dream maybe about me, but I would prefer a dream about the good things in her life. I think I will buy her something from Hong Kong.

musik

• Rise Up With Fists- Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins
• The Red, the White, the Black, the Blue- Hope Of The States
• Temptation- New Order
• Bizarre Love Triangle- New Order

vershieden

• Gary being sufficient.
• Geoffrey for being such a top guy and speaking in the Queens English.
• Waking up at the bar trying to remember where you are.
• Taking solace in other peoples pain.
• Canadian whiskey.
• Being inspired by bored children and passing trains.

ambitions are low

Untying the feelings I have for someone is a full-time exercise. If it was physical exercise my brain would be able to bench press twice my body weight. At times it would be easy to be sick in the mind, being so self absorbed in the words you write, read and perceive that the world doesn't revolve around oneself. In reality the world doesn't even revolve.

It scares me that to read about someone so sick in the mind and for them to take their own life, that I can grow a fixation, I suppose it's the first time in my life I can admit I do have a fascination with it all, even if people in my life have second guessed me about it. Case by case they are all different, but reading it from the perspective of someone on the other end of it, the parallels to me get scarier and scarier, to hear how they are hurt in the process. It makes me physically sick that they/I could hurt the ones they love.

I take back what I said before, peace is too good for some people, even me.

It was Christmas and this was the first one we would go to as a married couple, this time to my parents, save for my love of my parents I had a deep loathing for them. Janice loved them, I always felt that she stayed with me and married me simply because my parents were nice to her. For all my girlfriends, she was the only one my parents approved of. I never understood why though. I married Janice because I fell in love with her on a snowy day, she was working in a coffee shop just off the high street, the snow had become heavy and I wanted something warm to drink. She made me a really bad cup of brown water which I added copious amounts of sugar to. I was dishevelled and smelling of cigarette smoke, my black duffel coat soaking from the melting snow. It took me a month of bad coffee to gain the courage to ask her out.

I reached into my top shirt pocket and pulled out a pack of luckies I had been saving all journey. I placed one between my lips and rooted around for my lighter. I wound the window down a little and the cold draft blasted in. Janice took one as well and put it to her lips, 'like this? Or am I as stupid as you?' she said. She then took it from her lips and threw it out of the window. She did that because she loved me, but knew how stubborn I was.

One less cigarette meant 5 more minutes with me.

musik

• Easy/Lucky/Free- Bright Eyes
• All Sparks- The Editors
• Transmission- Joy Division

videospiel

• Pro Evolution Soccer 2009

buch

• Touching From A Distance- Deborah Curtis
• Batman Dark Victory- Leob and Sale

vershieden

• Stones for his jousting, mate you beat me this time, but I will get you back in the future.
• 4 hour reinstall of Togusa, runs sweet as it once was.
• Friday night with the YPA, was a fun night guys.
• Getting to try other hire cars of the world.
• Listening to an old man tell me stories.

cut the oxygen tanks

It wouldn't happen like a film, she wouldn't be bending over
at the machine furtherest away from me, placing each piece of bad smelling
clothing into the machine one by one. Mesmerised I would wait until I see her
finish putting in the last piece, lift her head up and flick her hair back.
Porcelain skin and the most beautiful pair of autumnal eyes I had ever seen. She
would be wearing a tight pair of faded jeans and a tight yellow college t-shirt
hugging at her taut body. Her eyes would scan across from her empty basket to me
taking off my sun glasses and then glancing down at my watch. I reach for the
pack of luckies in my pocket and pull one out and lit it in one motion. We fall
in love in the moment when I light her cigarette with my own and pass it to her.
The truth is, I would never want that.

She was the one lighting up in one motion, her hand smooth
as it slips into her pocket and she reaches for her packet of Parliaments, in
that moment I want to quit non-smoking and pass her a light, she's already
smoking. I'm in love and my washing is still in the basket reeking of the worst
things on earth. Perfection in my small little world, her lungs are caked in
filth and decay, yet we haven't spoken a single word I can
remember.

I never would remember the words we would say, that was
never important. What was important was the laundrette, I always felt that was
the perfect place where we could meet, the perfect place to see her at her most
personal and relaxed, she couldn't cast any shadows here. I stare at the wall
for a few moments hoping to see something of note but I fail miserably. She's
completely naked so I draw circles with a marker on the wall to tell everyone
I've failed. This is the moment where she sees me for all the flaws of my chain
smoking, breath smelling of alcohol and all the bandages on my wrists, my face
full green and unable to to look into the harsh light of the place, that I'm a
failure. I feel sick and I cough up a bit of blood but she's sitting next to me
enjoying a cigarette with me asking how my day was and what I would be doing
this weekend. I lied the truth is we do fall in love the moment when I light her
cigarette with my own and pass it to her.

But then I was always good at telling a lie.

musik

• Love Will Tear Us Apart- Joy Division
• Transmission- Joy Division

kino

• Resident Evil- Degeneration

vershieden

• Pardon Ms Ardon- random band, random night,
• the British girl that grabbed me and made me jump about to 'some might say'
• dim sum with A 師父
• not realising where the hours in the day slip to,
• Ewan Macgregor speaking in German.
• Meeting some more people in Germs and then going bowling with them,
• the number of colleagues now working in Germs.
• My cousin telling me to repopulate Bavaria.

tastes like strawberry wine

Loneliness is something in the mind, if you really want to be lonely then fine be that way, if you want to make friends and you don't want to go out, then tough. For me it's less art and more of an attitude of belligerence.

I know many a person that struggle with being in a room on their own with their thoughts chasing them around the sofa, the voices in the mind becoming louder by the second. Lucky for me, I've listened to the voice in the head called Akira, kept me company in all the bad times and was never there for me in the good times. Its funny how the most messed up aspects of your life are the ones that save you from a future which will never happen now.

We all miss Akira, I know Hartle in particular does.

Songs of romance to recognise our sick obsessions. We all know Art is Hard.

I'm forever caught out staring into space, be it at a television, a wall, the newspaper covered in blood. Someone snaps a branch over my head and there is no reaction, that's just the way I am. But the truth is none of this is making much sense, I want to draw a picture for everyone to describe
everything I'm feeling. My egos like my stomach, I keep shitting what I feed it.

musik

• Art is Hard- Cursive
• Red Handed Sleight of Hand- Cursive
• Hands Down- Dashboard Confessional
• A Swizz Army Romance- Dashboard Confessional
• Temptation- Dizzee Rascal
• Straight Outta Compton- N.W.A.
• Guilty Conscience Eminem
• Amityville- Eminem
• Hounds Of Love- The Futureheads
• Absinthe Party At The Fly Warehouse- Minus The Bear
• Temptation- New Order
• Talk Tonight- Oasis
• Sureshot- Yellowcard
• Bleed America- Jimmy Eat World

kino

• Cloverfield

sport

• FC Bayern vs Hoffenheim
• Hamburg SV vs Galatasary

vershieden

• People understanding my German.
• People understanding my English.
• Watching the Bayern match standing outside of the bar with all the other cretins and plebs.
• Learning typical football fan phrases are universal across the continent.
• Realising the strengths I have will get me far, it's my weaknesses which I will not allow to hold me back.
• Looking good side by side with this girl I know.
• Dim Summing my fucking face.
• And mentioning my mate Phil on here because we agreed I would do it but we can't remember what for.
  

she lost control

I'm as guilty as anyone in this world for not giving things a second chance, watching Control for the first time and I realised that a teenage hero for me was lost because others were obsessing about Kurt Cobain. If you wound the clock back 10 years and placed a Joy Division album between my copy of The Bends and OK Computer, I suppose my life would have been a little different.

But that's the interesting thing, at that age all you can do is feign at really believing the words that you read and write, I certainly did, for every feeling in my heart it was pen to paper with a selection of poor metaphors about some girl I never had. Control to me sums up everything romantic you believe at that age, music doesn't have to be beautiful, that love is pain, that people are shit and cannot commit and that the only way out is suicide. Aged like a beautiful bourbon in an oak barrel and I cant bring myself to even consider those things anymore, let alone declare them romantic. At the end of the film although knew what was to happen, I felt the shiver crawl up my spine and remind myself that life is in front of me.

Counting the days as they slip by, like some sort of advent calendar which shows how your life is falling away from under your feet. I decided to stop living in pity and it changed my life, I gave up trying to be in a good mood and just stayed in a good mood. Since I said those words in the mirror staring myself straight in the eyes, my own pretty brown eyes, it wasn't the world that changed. The world stayed the same and everyone got on with their lives.

If I could go back in time I would have spoken to Ian Curtis and said to him, it's ok to feel the way he did. I doubt I would have made a difference, but it clears my concious for all those kinds of feelings he went through.

RIP Ian- I hope heaven is beautiful for you.

musik

• Close To Me- The Cure
• Just Like Heaven- The Cure
• Let's Make Love (Listen To Death From Above)- CSS
• Strawberry Wine- Ryan Adams
• Grounds For Divorce- Elbow
• Acquiesce- Oasis
• Waiting For The Beat To Kick In- Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip
• Ceremony- New Order
• Bizarre Love Triangle- New Order

videospiel

• Final Fantasy Tactics- War of the Lions
• Street Fighter Alpha 3
• Minna No Golf

vershieden

• Geoffrey and the others for letting me join in- very much appreciated to make some new friends and give me a chance to learn Mando properly,
• Not needing to speak English,
• Papa Pedro hating Thursday,
• Not craving nicotine even when they sell it on the streets,
• Nutella in a vending machine- Germans 1 : Japanese 0,
• The scary black rubber cock in the window of the erotic shop on Scheimlesser Str,
• Trying to work out what 'There Will Be Blood' is about,
• Promising myself I wouldn't miss out on Joy Division for a second time in my life,

to describe the world

There's always a first for everything, but today was the first day the locals all spoke German to me. Not a word of English all day, even when I didn't have the words for 'can I have the bill', everything was in German. Sure I admit it was survival German, I wasn't having an involved conversation in German about Kandinsky or about the economic crisis and what that means for my pocket, but its a start.

Although, I still don't see what the big deal is about the sausages here, they taste like sausages.

Missing them (fried) eggs back in the UK will see you guys soon.

Things I've noticed (which may only be applicable to Munich).

• When crossing a road, you will be guaranteed even if the guy is steaming around the corner, he/she won't run you over.
• On the tube, the doors do not automatically open but they do automatically close.
• About 50% of people I have seen smoke here.
• You order chestnuts by the stuck (pieces).
• German MOTD has an audience with much appreciative applause.
• 'got talent' the Germs equivalent is about fat middle aged to elder people prancing about on stage doing covers- yes that scary.
• Sundays are as they were in 80's England.

Musik

• Tell Me Ten Words- Idlewild
• Kala- M.I.A.
• Hustle- M.I.A.
• Sarabande- J.S. Bach
• Stockholm Syndrome- Blink 182
• Girl From the North Country- Bob Dylan
• Munich- The Editors
• It's Not Over Yet- The Klaxxons
• Uno- Muse

Kino

• The Mad Detective- Jonny To/ Lau Ching Wan
• Control
• There Will Be Blood

buch

• Lonely Planet Guide- Germany

Vershieden

• Realising one of my favourite things in the world are markets,
• Watching a Bavarian volks band playing, violins, guitar, pipe, random percussion and lots of shouting.
• Gluewein- one mug and I was mugged.
• Pan-fried sauerkraut, another notch on the posts, will try that when I return to the UK.
• German fussball is pretty entertaining,
• Finally understanding the public transport system here, a lot more simple than Tokyo (although no Maranouchi line, oh how I miss thee)
• The cellist at the end of the Gallerie Str- she played beautifully,
• No Hansen on MOTD-Germs Edition.
• Ricardo Montalban texting me while I was on the 2.5km walking tour.
• Not realising the significance of Konig Platz in history, it isn't just the place which Shumbles drove past when he was lost in the dark looking for a hotel.
• Seeing people dressed up as yetis with masks dancing in front of the Rathaus, will have to ask someone or investigate.