SPAIN

What is about the English and Spain, eh? I dunno. But it’s as good a place as any when you’re on the run from government forces. So I’ve shacked up in a little villa for a couple of months and I have to say, in all honesty, I’m enjoying myself quite a bit. The weather is hot, the beer is reasonably priced and prostitutes walk freely through the streets. At least I think they were prostitutes. They didn’t speak any English so I suppose they could have just been people walking through the streets…

So I shack up in Spain a while until the heats off, when who should I bump into but RICKY MARTIN! That’s right, Latino music star Ricky Martin. I’ve always wanted to meet him ever since I found his autobiography on the floor of a pound shop in Sussex, so I was naturally overjoyed when I met him at the all male nightclub I’m living next to.

We got to chatting about all sorts of things and every couple of drinks I’d say ‘Hey, Ricky, we’re really living the ‘Vi Li La Loca’ now aren’t we?’ And he’d smile and nod and tell me to stop saying it, but in a friendly way, like.

Well he started telling me about himself and it turns out that Latino orientated pop music can actually trace its routes back to Spain, which used to called Latinaria before the war. So Ricky is back in Spain to try and absorb some culture.

“I just can’t hack it anymore, mate.’ He told me. ‘I’ve lost me groove and the ladies don’t cream at me as much as they used to. I’m starting to think I’ll be performing in backwater gay bars for the rest of my life.’

Cheer up Ricky! The world still loves you! Here, have a cigarette. Oh, go on. Here, I’ll light it for you. There we go.

“I am hoping that here in the country of latinaria I can get in touch with my Spanish soul and sell records again.”

Well there’s no chance of that, now, is there Ricky? I mean, you’re a nice bloke and all, but you’re a bit shit, really, aren’t you?

“What the fuck you mean, man? Didn’t you hear my song? They played it at the end of Shrek 2, for fuck’s sake!”

Yeah, well, but it’s a stupid song isn’t? I mean, it goes on about this girl who doesn’t realise that any real champagne is essentially French anyway, doesn’t drink any water and is addicted to a different thing every single day- and you make it sound like a good thing! If you wanna hang around with stupid, drugged up, dehydrated whore-slags then that’s your whistle, but why write a song about it? Face it Ricky, you’re shit!

Well that’s when it got ugly. Ricky punched me right in the face. Now, normally I think I could take Ricky Martin in a straight fight, but I was feeling cowardly so I just broke a beer bottle in his face. Needless to say, Ricky Martin went to casualty and the locals we’re not impressed. Once again I find myself making a sharp exit and moving on to the next country.

I should probably send Ricky a card, really. I was a bit out of order in retrospect and he didn’t really deserve massive facial wounds. Even if he is shit.

FRANCE

I get off the plane in Southern France and am immediately pleased to notice this is the first country I have visited in my ‘Round the World Blog’ that doesn’t end in ‘land.’

Surely this is a good omen.

It wasn’t though, because as I stepped off the plane I was run over by truckers on their way to a protest. ‘Sorry.’ Said the trucker as he crumpled my spine, ‘but we’ve got tourists to annoy!’

I lay there bleeding quietly for a while until some kindly peasants took me to a hospital where I was treated by smug doctors who took every pain to remind me of how medieval English hospital care was. Fuck them and their poncy healthcare- if you can’t take the occasional misdiagnosis and professional misconduct then you don’t deserve to get better.

Anyway, I was laid up in hospital for yet another month… which got me thinking- ‘This is the second time I’ve been seriously injured in my fantasy blog- why can’t I have a fantasy where things go right?’

Realising this, I went back in time and avoided getting hit by a truck. Then I realised that this was impossible, and, once again I woke up in a hospital bed- this time in a different part of France. Apparently I was in a boating accident and none of that trucker business actually happened anyway.

Needless to say this has been a very confusing and disorientating start to my time in France.

Well, knowing that my time in the great country of accordion music was short- I decided to get right to the point- nuclear testing.

Many people visit France for various reasons, some for the atmosphere, some for the culture, some because France is one of the few places left in the world where smoking is still considered cool and being a skinny gay weakling is still considered ‘chic’. But me- I come for the nuclear testing.

Wanting to sample at least some of the cultural swamp of France before my experiments, I fix myself a snail and horse-cock sandwich, washed down with a glass of pureed frog wine. I’m not sure why I even bothered to eat this, because, predictably, I just threw it up on someone’s face five minutes afterwards- but I always think you have to make the effort when your in a foreign country.

So I get down to my nuclear testing viz-a-viz the DIY splitting of the atom. All you have to do (or so the theory goes) is take an ordinary sheet of paper and then tear it up as small as you can until you finally tear it into its component atoms. Then you smack fuck out of the atoms with a hammer. Theoretically (and I think I’m right on this one.) this should produce a nuclear explosion.

Needless to say, I rip up my paper, smack it with a hammer, and- lo and behold- I level half of the South of France in a cataclysmic nuclear blast.

God knows why I wasn’t killed along with the several thousand unfortunate bystanders. It might have something to do with the amount of marmite I ate as a child- but this is a working theory.

Anyway, long story short, I leg it before anyone cottons on that I blew up France.

Next stop- anywhere but here.

GREENLAND

Greenland is full of fucking Ice. I'm emotionally confused and I don't know what to say. I've had enough of this damned 'around the world blog.' The world is a cruel and unfair place. Oh well. Maybe my next stop at France will cheer me up.

ICELAND

My plane has just landed at Iceland. I don't see any ice. This is blatant false advetising. I tell the air waitress that I'm not setting foot off the plane until I see some damned Ice. She brings me a cola...with ice. She probably thinks she's funny. She's not. She is, however, now on my revenge list.

I'm not going to give Iceland the satisfaction of a visit. I'm just going to stay on the plane until we set off for Greenland.

HOLLAND

As I fly from Ireland (in a plane… I can’t actually fly.) a little piece of nothing enters my brain-
Oscar Wilde was a great Irish wit and writer. Does this mean that Ireland is a country that produces great minds and personalities? If so, we have to take into consideration that Oscar Wilde was a bender, and therefore Ireland produces people who take it up the bum.

I think the moral of this little distraction is that you can’t judge an entire country by one dead guy.

This conclusion gets me neatly into Holland, where, or so I’ve heard, it literally rains drugs and prostitutes. I’ve never been before so I’m not sure how this meteorological abnormality is possible, but my mate Dave says its true so I suppose I should just operate on the assumption that he’s right and not, as I am oft to think, just a twat who talks bollocks.

I get off the plane and step into the Hollandish weather, which is exactly like Englandish weather, so, so far, the weather on my ‘round the world blog’ had been crappy.

It does not rain drugs and whores in Holland. I am more than a little disappointed.

But on the plus side- you can smoke dope without fear of authority figures stoving your head in, you can sleep with beautiful women for a fraction of the price of going out on a date with one (with less chance of getting diseased), and there’s a legal orgy a couple of times a year.

I like Holland.

Apparently there’s some windmills and trams I’m supposed to look out for, but, frankly, everything is taking a backseat to the whore and drug fuelled psycho binge I have planned for myself.

Later, as I crawl along the Amster-damn streets, crying happily to myself and trying to ignore the small blue pixie resting on my shoulders, I come across a fellow English man doing exactly the same thing.
“You do know there’s a small blue pixie on your shoulders, don’t you?” He says.
“Ahehehehehehehee.” I say. And then I fall down and laugh for about three days.

Now, red-eyed and cock-sore, I prepare to leave Holland- not falling into the trap that usually awaits the English man in this almost Babylon; that of moving to Holland and then spending the rest of your days too stoned to do anything and eventually dieing homeless. I’m going to save that one for my retirement.

I leave this wonderfully liberal country with a tear in my eye and an itch in my crotch.

Next stop Iceland.

IRELAND

I flew into the Emerald Isles courtesy of Irish Regent Airways. I was a bit dubious about flying with them at first, but apparently the abbreviation is just an unhappy coincidence. In all actuality the flight was quite uneventful and I completely failed to be exploded at any time.

I was quite optimistic when landing in Ireland, which is apparently one of the happiest places on Earth bar Disney Land and Surrey, and I was looking forward to a warm sense of hospitality and, possibly, leprechauns.

To be honest my real reason for including Ireland in my Blog Around The World was simply the possibility of Leprechauns. I figure that if I catch one, torture it until it tells me where its god damned gold is, I could make a fortune and hire assassins to kill all of my many, many enemies.

Sadly, there were no leprechauns. I did have a run in with one likely looking chap though, and was halfway through jamming a red-hot poker up his arse before he confessed he simply had a growth defect. I apologised profusely and the chap was surprisingly good-humoured about it.
“It happens all the time.” He laughed as he limped away to casualty…

Anyway.

I stopped in at an olde Irish pub for a pint or two of Guinness. It wasn’t really an olde pub at all: in fact, the building had been completed less than six months ago, but, apparently, it was an olde Irish pub regardless.

When I got into a pub I was completely shocked by the lack of bicycles on walls, pictures of famous Irish persons, ginger people dressed in green and rustic odours I’ve come to associate with all things Irish. Apparently they only pull that crap to lull in gullible foreigners. They didn’t even serve stew for christsakes.

I was disappointed to tell you the truth. It strikes me as odd that I have to go all the way to Ealing for an authentic Irish pub experience. Oh well. The people were as friendly as advertised and we all got really smashed on the foul-smelling potato juice known as stout.

I was halfway through singing a merry song, when, all of a sudden, I was grabbed by a group of guys in balaclavas, blindfolded and thrown in the back of a van. I must admit, I was confused- this was Southern Ireland after all.

We drove for what seemed like hours until my blindfold was taken off and a light was shone in my eyes.
“Just do as we say and you wont get hurt.” Came a gruff Irish voice.
Ha! I thought. That old chestnut! Last time a group of masked men said that to me I couldn’t walk properly for a week!

Fortunately though, violent gang rape was not on my kidnappers mind. I listened in growing confusion as I he told me about his plans to get into a bank and how I was somehow central to them. Then it occurred to me- it was simply a case of mistaken identity! The group of robbers clearly had heard that I was a ‘banker’ when in actuality I was just a ‘wanker’!

Oh we all had a good laugh about that one. The lads were surprisingly alright about everything and let me off with a bullet in the back of the knee. I managed to crawl thirty miles, chuckling to myself all the way, to the nearest hospital.

There I slipped peacefully into a coma and didn’t awake ‘till just now.

Apparently I’ve been unconscious for a week! Which has put my Round The World Blog seriously behind schedule!

With this in mind, I limp away to the airport- next stop, Holland.

SCOTLAND

I take the train up to Scotland, just to experience a little more of this archaic, barbaric, totally worthless means of transport. To my surprise and delight I find that the Northern line is one of the few trains left in England to have a smoking section. I don’t normally smoke on trains, but seeing as the opportunity to smoke in public is fast becoming outlawed in this piece-of-shit island we live on, I thought I’d smoke about seventeen packs of cigarettes and twelve cigars.

I had a delightful conversation with some chaps from Newcastle about how all southern people were essentially poofs and that Northern people had a great sense of humour. However, when I told them all they were bunch of moronic, worthless wastes of skin they failed to see the funny side and punched me quite a few times. I would have fought back but I couldn’t breathe properly because of all those cigarettes.

Oh well. I knew I’d get in at least one fight this close to Scotland so I wasn’t too upset.

The train pulled into jock territory and I was, at first, quite impressed by the large mountains. Where I come from the ground is flat, and that suits me fine, but the mountains were quite impressive nevertheless.

Some jock guy next to me seemed awfully proud of the mountains and the mist that accompanied them. I couldn’t see why. I mean, its not as if the Scottish people built the mountains or anything, is it? They were just there. Nothing to be proud of. And the mist? The Jock chap went on about how bracing the Scottish weather was. I’m going to assume that ‘bracing’ means ‘shit’ just like all the other weather in the U.K.

I told the guy he was a deluded jerk and then ran off the train before he could catch me.

Edinburgh (which is actually pronounced Edingburough) is a city filled with nice looking old buildings. Like the queen mum used to be before she died. Except not a building. And not nice looking.

In retrospect that analogy was rather poorly thought out.

Anyhoo, I wasn’t too hot on the nice old buildings because, lets face it, there just an excuse for lazy minded people not to build nice new buildings instead. Heritage my pimpled arse! Live in the now! What’s done is done and we shouldn’t dwell in the past!

With this in mind I went into the nearest pub to offend someone.

There are many ways to annoy or offend the Scots, here are a few.

a) Point out that a kilt is a dress, no matter what they say.
b) Tell them bagpipes are shit.
c) Say Haggis is shit
d) Say their whisky is over rated.
e) Tell them their football team is great and then laugh, point and do a mocking jig.

Well, I said all of these things, but, surprisingly, because my grandmother’s uncle was Scottish and of a certain clan, I was accepted as family and not pummelled to a greasespot as I originally anticipated.

Oh well. Weirdos.

I was surprised by the amount of Scottish flags I saw lying about on cars and stuff. I mean, I already knew what country I was in, and doubtless, so did the Scots, so what’s with all the flags? If they wave their flags in other countries I could understand it- that’s just plain old pissing off foreigners- but in your own country? That’s just kind of gay.

I asked a homeless person about this and he let me in on a secret. Apparently, there are so many Scottish flags in Scotland because they want to convince foreigners that they’re actually a proper country rather than a bunch of hairy squatters who couldn’t take a hint when the Roman’s moved in.

Of course, my theory is that the Scots are bunch of unnecessarily pugnacious bastards and wave their flags so some unsuspecting English guy comes along, asks about the flags, and then they pick a fight with him and thirty of their mates jump out of the shadows, beat you to a pulp and take your wallet.

I suspect this because this is exactly what happened to me.

Oh well. I wanted to take my ‘round the world blog’ from a typical tourist point of view, and I just wouldn’t be a tourist if I didn’t get headbutted in Scotland at least once.

Next stop, Ireland.

Around the World in 80 Blogs (or less...)

LONDON

Day one of my fantastic around the world trip and, rather than trying to be clever about anything, I thought I’d start in London, seeing as its in the same country I live in. I know that there are many great cities in England, and many shit ones, but one of the prime objectives of my ‘round the world trip’ is to approach each destination through the virgin eyes of a typical tourists, and, as all tourists believe that London is in fact the only part of England and everything else is a rancid swamp land inhabited only by ghosts and demons, I thought I’d operate on that same assumption.

Oddly enough, this assumption is shared by most Londoners as well.

As I take the train down to my first destination, I check through my belongings. Wanting to look as much a tourist as possible, I have stolen the clothes of a homeless person and bought a backpack that’s far too big for me. Also, I haven’t shaved for a month and have been practising my gormless facial expression.

My inventory consists of:

a) 1 change of clothes. For my change of clothes I thought I’d bring a trenchcoat and Stetson, as these items of clothing seem to be appropriate for pretty much everywhere. At least, so the theory goes.

b) A camera. Because I wouldn’t be a tourist if I didn’t have a fucking camera now, would I?

c) Traveller’s cheques. In order to buy things.

Satisfied that I have everything I could possibly need for my ‘round the world trip’ I catch a brief nap before entering Luton, which, apparently, is on the way to London.

As I sleep I dream. Dream of the reason for this crazy quest. You see, it turns out that there’s this bank, right? And they're not doing very well, so some chap wanted to save the day for them and bet the guy who was doing them out of business a huge amount of money that I could go around the world in 80 blogs or less. I don’t know why he picked me. I think he was pissed. Anyway, the bets on now and I have 80 blogs or less in which to travel the globe.

I don’t know what’s in it for me. No-one’s giving me any money or anything…

Oh well. Action is my reward, and it beats the quiet life of a barman cum office clerk. It’s nice to have a quest once in a while, even if the reasons for said quest are a little vauge.

So I get to London and for a while I’m impressed by the large buildings. Then I think, fuck it, there only like small buildings except bigger, aren’t they? So I stop being impressed and look at the floor instead.

On my way to Buckingham Palace (apparently a popular tourist destination) I am jostled by many people with mobile phones who don’t seem to realise they’re walking into me. For a while I’m convinced I’ve gone invisible, but then I realise- they’re all a bunch of twats.

I arrive at the Palace and don my cat suit. Why a cat suit you ask? Well, isn’t it obvious? My plan was to wait around in my cat suit until the Queen walks past and then shout “Well? A cat and look at the Queen you know!”

In my head this was really funny and I could imagine the Queen being quite impressed and giving me a knighthood or something. Unfortunately I was moved on by authorities, who thought I was connected to some sort of ‘Fathers for Children’ movement. I tried to explain to them that I don’t even like kids, but they weren’t having any of it and were quite rough with me.

To cheer myself up I went to a nightclub to spend some of my meagre funds getting drunk. ‘The Purple Pussy Cat’ was a lovely place with an upbeat atmosphere and jovial clientele. No birds, though, which I thought was a bit weird.

Oddly, everyone I talked to was not originally from London, they had all moved there and were now too scared to move anywhere else because of the vampires and ghosts. Apparently, everyone who is born in London lives in a tunnel system underground, where it is less crowed and less full of twats.

I got really smashed and woke up the next day with a bit of a headache. I said goodbye to the chap I’d woke up next to (I can’t remember his name) and make my way to the train station. The next stop is Edinburgh in Scotland, and I feel a slight surge of excitement as my ‘Round the world trip’ takes me to my first foreign country.

Hangover season...

Hey hey.. its january!!

...


In light of the fact that nothing interesting is likely to happen to me in the immediate future, rather than offend the countenance of anyone who still may read this bloging blog by typing any old boring shit about my day, I thought I'd just fabricate my life for the next couple of weeks.

So, as from now, I will be blogging about the 'round the world trip' I'm going to take.

Does it really matter if I don't actually go 'round the world'?

No, because this is the wonderful world of disinformation, and that's what the internet is all about really isn't it?

So fuck you. I can pretend to go around the world if I damn well want.