Our Antipodean friends

So as I trawled through the world of internet television, I was flicking through some video content, one of the pieces was about an Australian girl, who got into smoking marijuana and it became an addiction, she woke up, did a bong, got up had a coffee and smoked a blunt at the kitchen table, then met up with her hippie friends and drove to someone's house and smoked until she came home at midnight. She continued to do this until one day she heard a voice telling her to jump out the window, then another few voices telling her to do all sorts of crazy, religious and dangerous things. She had developed schizophrenia. The girl checked herself into a mental hospital that deals specially with cases involving severe aural and visual hallucinations brought on by psychotropic drugs and where the average stay is 3 weeks. She was there for 6 months. Possibly because she was crazier than a shithouse rat, and the drug was the trigger for her mental breakdown. Or it was because she simply did smoke too much. I watched in horror as her life fell apart and she couldn’t even walk down the street as the buildings closed in and her father (in her mind) worked for the CIA and was going to have her "taken care of". I left the programme as I had decided to continue to apply myself to the project I had been working on the previous day, the complete ransacking, tidying and clearing out of my "office". So as I drew the task to a close, I found a small bag of grass on the table under my keyboard. Instead of immediately thinking of my Australian hemp smoking pseudo artiste friend, I plunged headlong into construction of a powerful mind altering joint. Having 12 personalities was low on my list of importance as I scanned the desk for a lighter and lit the top of the perfectly made cone. I sat for a moment allowing the smoke to fill my lungs and my mind to slowly empty of coherent thought as my body slipped into the chair. Quiet filled the room and sun shone in the window. For a few seconds I had complete relaxation, but my moment of peace, serenity and utter abandon was shattered almost immediately with the sound of a posh English voice filling the room, "are you going to paass that or must i have to aaask". I must have frozen in my chair for what seemed like an age and then slowly swivelled to face the voice. A well dressed middle aged man with a thin ginger moustache and a wide brimmed hat sat cross-legged on the couch facing me, his left foot bobbing up and down and his highly polished shoe dangling from his toes. I gazed down at my hand. The joint had gone out. I lit it again and leaned forward towards the man and extended my fingers towards him. He plucked the joint from my hand. "Splendid" he cooed. There was a long pause. "Hallucination" I finally replied. He reclined in the seat and moved the hat back onto the crown of his head, the joint pointing upwards from his thin fingers. "Well dear boy, I wouldn’t normally be an advocate of it, but you should have listened to the bloody Australians"

The Amazingly True Coincidence of Chris Isaak (or Blue Hotel)

On a recent sojourn to the wonderful and limitless city of London to see our heroes of North London, my good friend Ovak and I were taking in some of the sights and sounds of St James' Park behind 10 Downing St. Among such topics that were discussed was the blatent sharing of yellow or pink womens undergarments. (I was proved wrong on the return to the park entrance - they turned out to indeed be yellow) and of course modes of transport that would allow us not to expend any more energy that was needed in the growing heat.

So we lay on the grass recharging our bodies and sipping bottles of water. Eventually we decided to move on and see where our ramblings would take us, before we left Ovak went into the nearby cafe to replenish our water supplies, I waited outside and observed the local people coming and going in the sunshine. As I leaned against the wall I saw a gentleman who bore a striking resemblance to the popular music provider - Chris Isaak. It was obvious to me that it was not the afore mentioned Isaak but a man who shared a few of his facial characteristics.

So our journey took us further through London (passed the yellow undergarments) as we laughed and joked about accosting Isaak and through verbal wordplay tricking him into revealing his identity.

Ovak : "hello Chris"
Chris Isaak : "I am not Chris Isaak"
Ovak : "ahhhha, we never said anything about Isaak - so we must now assume that you are said Isaak"

These humourous imaginary exchanges went on for a while until we shifted gear into reflexive racism or the "here's your mate" line which is used for all quasi non normal approaching individuals.

Our day in London came to a close and we headed for Healthrow Airport with sadness at departing a great city that had provided us with a great weekend. The flight was uneventful and we disembarked and fumbled in our pockets for our documents as we approached passport control. As I managed to locate my passport I slowed almost to a standstill to re-zip my bag and throw it back on my back, I looked ahead and chuckled to myself as another Chris Issak lookalike sat on a bench to my left. Then the staggering realisation of what was happening became apparent. This was not a Chris Isaak lookalike, this was indeed the real Isaak, I caught his gaze and cracked a small smile, he half nodded in acknowledgement, I tapped Ovak on the shoulder and pointed, his face dropped with a look of utter suprise and disbelief. We scuttled forward towards passport checkpoint looking over our shoulders with complete disbelief, here was the very man we had joked about less than 3 hours previously.

To quote a great thinker of our time and to try and somehow explain this inexplicable event I shall finish with this : A lot of people don't realize what's really going on. They view life as a bunch of unconnected incidents and things. They don't realize that there's this, like, lattice of coincidence that lays on top of everything. Give you an example; show you what I mean: suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o' shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconciousness.

The terrible shit stand off

Friends, I come to you in terrible times. What should have been a happy day has sadly taken a turn for the worst. I must lay bare before you - my "cubicle shit phobia". Cubicle shit phobia, a terrible affliction, suffered by many but spoken by few. Likened to anal warts, terribly painful but ultimately curable - but I digress.

I will start at the beginning. It all starts with dental hygiene, I decided that gum after each meal would keep my teeth free of food and my breadth minty fresh, so I bought myself a couple of boxes of chewing gum, you know the kind, flip top box and 50 pieces approx.

So with my new found dental hygiene plan firmly in place I set about chewing for all I was worth. But then it started to take over, it wasn't just after meals, it was after, tea, water, snacks, then it just became all the time. With all this chewing I was becoming unwell, my stomach was churning and I found myself with a severe belly ache. So I decided to read the chewing gum packet and to my complete horror and surprise - I find the following warning in tiny letters emblazoned on the underside of the box. "excessive consumption may produce laxative effects".

By the time I had read the sentence it was becoming unbearable, I rushed forward from the cubicle but keeping my paces to a minimum so as not to draw too much attention to my ever worsening condition. I walked through the hall to the "unused" toilet in order that I could relieve myself from the awful aching. I swung the door open and to my surprise, the two cubicle toilet had an engaged sign on one of the doors. My phobia, started to kick in, I mean the manly pursuit of shitting is all very well, why I can piss like a racehorse standing at a urinal but I cannot, I dare not, unload the watery chewing gum fuelled contents of my bowels while another gent, who's shiny shoes poked under the corner of the cheap wooden door.

And so it began......the terrible shit stand off. Dead silence less the drip drop of the tap. Not a movement from either man. My face grimaced, beads of sweat trickled down my forehead. This man was made of steel. "Oh god he could have a paper" I thought to myself. What if he has some sort of novel in there. I stared down at my shoes. The pain becoming unbearable. I would have to leave. There was another toilet at the other end of the building, but would I make it ? Suddenly as I was about to seize my pants and make a dash for it I heard it.......the slow recognisable tug of toilet roll. He was finished. This was it. I dreamed of bidets, waterfalls, andrex puppies, emptiness. I heard a belt buckle being fastened and a loud flush. Then water and soap and the whoosh of a hand dryer.

I waited, the door opened. My only fear now was the double pass, he would leave and someone else would enter, this surely would be my downfall. The door slammed shut.

Moments later my grimace turned slowly to a smile and my groans became a relieved sob, the sweat on my brow was replaced by a small tear from the corner of my eye. I sat for a moment in some sort of faeces induced nirvana.

The terrible shit stand off was finally over.