Into the unknown

Bored with life's predictable eddies and swirls at Christmas I decided to do something unpredictable and different this year, to step a bit further out of my normal circles and see what the world had to offer. I toyed for a while with the idea of voluntary work sabbaticals or large career switches but couldn't summon up the courage needed for such life-wrenching changes. I needed something challenging but not too disruptive, a source of anecdotes and experience, turning everything upside-down is next year's project.

In February an e-mail invitation dropped into my inbox. It was from Dervala, whom I had met for one evening last July, and had been in occasional e-mail contact with as she travelled the world. I had been following her excellent website (which now forms part of my daily work-avoidance half-hour before I reluctantly convert my computer from internet-browsing device to word processor) and knew she was heading to South America. Did I want to join her for a bit of Andean trekking?

The perfect opportunity. I knew the answer right away, but deliberated for a couple of months as I attempted to generate the impetus to get over the "Travel? In a strange country? For two weeks? With someone I've only met once?" kneejerk reaction. Then I booked my plane ticket to Lima and told her I was coming over.

So tomorrow morning I report to Heathrow for 18 hours of flying and a step into the unknown. I'm about to travel halfway around the world to hook up with someone I've only met once for three hours and exchanged a grand total of thirty e-mails with. My paranoid side tells me that I could be her money-mule, she's gone bankrupt and she'll mug me at Lima airport to run away cackling with a fistful of US Dollars as my pathetic figure lies prone on the unyielding Peruvian formica. Or maybe this is all an elaborate hoax - she's moved our rendezvous point twice in the last month, from Lima to Cusco and now she's suggesting Puno - I'll spend two weeks criss-crossing Peru looking for a non-existent Irish lass while my increasingly desperate movements are filmed from space for the delight of the Fox Network subscribers (I'll admit it's unlikely).

Oh well, here goes nothing.

The Whimsy Generator

I keep a small machine in the bottom drawer of the chest in my bedroom. It's portable and lightweight, but can only be deployed when conditions are perfect. It runs on numerous different ingredients including Sundays, bad journalism and breakfast tables. It can be part-fuelled by fatigue, the metabolic remnants of Saturday night excesses or it can run solely on like-mindedness and banter. It acts as a lens through which different interpretations of life's underlying truths can be seen. I present to you my Whimsy Generator.

A previous use of the machine during a long train ride from Brussels revealed the cow that lives in Phil and Gareth's Putney flat. Its bovine duties were initially restricted to milk production, but after proving trustworthy, its role has been extended to light domestic cleaning and a part-time minicab service named "Tom Harris Cow Taxis" specialising in picking up drunks from Southfields station.

A long time ago the Whimsy Generator proved conclusively that I was the sixth member of Take That. I would wait, warmed-up, in the wings at their concerts lest Robbie twist an ankle or Howard be overcome by a spell of extreme dizziness. Alas, my opportunity for fame as a travelling minstrel never arose.

On the most recent occasion conditions were appropriate to fire up the generator - a long, long Ridgeway walk this past weekend - it showed that Boo is a lesbian Vampyr, energised by Satanic rituals and unable to cross either moving water or the thresholds of holy buildings. Also, the quintessential English country village of Bledlow is populated entirely by bears, from a rather cute ursine barmaid to the grizzlies that live in the large house next to the church.

Quite a nifty little contraption all-in-all, a shame the uses are relatively infrequent.

From the Glasgow Hilton

The best word to describe the Glasgow Hilton is unappealing. It is a tall, narrow building, a twenty-storey architect's photocopy of myriad other undistinguished hotels and office blocks around the world. On one side lies a red-light district, on the other lies a flaking concrete morass of motorway, bridge and slip road that writhes around the incongruously well kept front lawn. The pedestrian's approach from the city centre is through an unlit tunnel coated in pigeon crap and up the slip ramp dodging taxis.

From my room on the fourteenth floor all the architectural and locational tediousness is easily forgiven. I can see far beyond the fringes of the city, where the low hills that fringe the entire horizon stand grey and quiet. I am part of the sky that fades from a clear blue above to a dark blue and sunset oranges elsewhere, scabbed in places with small cloud scuds. In the further reaches of the city, the shiny metal dome of the exhibition centre glints in the remaining sun, and the glass front of an office block holds a funfair mirror up to distort the surrounding houses.

The thick double-glazing drains the road roar of volume so that the traffic forty metres below moves with a pleasant synchronicity. As night falls each car pours a shimmering pool of orange light in front, drags a glowing carpet of red behind it and dances a complex moonwalk through cones, lorries and exit lanes.

All this, and the room service breakfast is quite good too.

Content-free content

I haven't felt much like posting recently, as the month gap between this post and the last demonstrates. I can't put my finger on why there's been a hiatus, I could say it was because I've been too busy, but that's always an unconvincing stand-in excuse for a deeper change in priorities. This entry is just to prove to myself that posting is no big effort and prove to you that my writing hands haven't atrophied.

More soon. Probably.

A lot of good work for charity

For no particular reason I'm doing a 10K fun run around Hyde Park on May 18th. Although I'm not motivated through a desire to be particularly philanthropic, the event is raising funds for a charity called Help a London Child who (according to an e-mail they've just sent me):

• distribute grants of up to 000 to community and voluntary groups all across London


• fund projects that will help disadvantaged children and young people (18 and under) including: young carers, after-school clubs, disabled, terminally sick children and many more

Appallingly, I am indifferent to Help a London Child's efforts, but if you're feeling eleemosynary you can sponsor me online using nothing more than your credit card and typing fingers. Better still, why not use this as a spur to give some money to an unrelated charity entirely of your choosing.

A musical world

I wear my MiniDisc player like a coat for walking around town. When the tightly sealed headphones are slotted firmly home in my ears and Deep Dish are coursing through the electronic veins of the glittering little gadget I can ward off the city's roar and watch other's dance to the tune in my head.

It's easy to drown in the enormity of the music, and impossible to believe that the sounds wedged into my head are not filling the rest of the world. Soul of Man's enormous breakdowns must be syncopating the High Street's activities, Orbital's soaring riffs have to be forcing the sun to shine such a beautiful light, Digweed's soothing tracks are hushing and calming the train carriage. So I start to move in time too, occasional hand sweeps to introduce new bars, head nods to keep the rhythm, and huge, ear-splitting, pumped up, smiles as the bassline comes back fast and hard from the vertiginous breakdown.

I looked a bit of a pillock walking through Ipswich town centre the other night.

Instructions for a walking weekend

Friday Night

• 20:00 - Congregate at Linhope. Beforehand you must either have lugged inappropriately large bags of walking kit around your various business commitments all day, or travelled at least 100 miles to get there.


• 20:15 - Pile into the car, ladies first and in the back, men in the front (it's 'cos the women have shorter legs, or something). Barry gets to pick the music, it's his car; there will always be Bob Dylan, other allowed artistes are The Streets, 2 Many DJs, Lou Reed and any Gangsta Rap (Barry likes to keep it real). On no account will Take That or Abba be allowed.


• 20:15 - 22:00 - Crank music up very loud and drive very fast on a succession of nearly empty motorways. Have at least one major swearing session at bad drivers. If you are sitting in the back you must fall asleep before leaving the M25.


• 22:00 - Swap drivers on a cold roundabout.


• 22:00 - 00:30 - Drive just as fast down some smaller roads, overcook at least one bend.


• 00:30 - Arrive at dark campsite. Ignore "No pitching after 9pm" sign and noisily pitch tent in the muddiest part of the field. Drink whisky and talk in stage whispers.

Saturday

• 08:00 - Get up and shower.


• 08:20 - Wait for Carla to have a shower.


• 08:30 - Pack bag, look at map.


• 08:40 - Wait for Carla to finish in the shower.


• 08:50 - Fiddle with kit, swear at broken gaiters.


• 08:55 - Send Gus in to find Carla.


• 09:00 - Head for hills.


• 09:00 - 4:00 - Walk up at least one large hill. Simon will start fast but not last, Gus will spring into action about two thirds of the way up. Variously comment on good/bad weather, appalling lack/amazing surfeit of views, own incredible/atrocious fitness level. At 700m high enter the "Offensive Zone", like the Death Zone afeared by many climbers, but with more swearing. Make several lewd and offensive comments in earshot of troupe of cub scouts or young family.


• 16:30 - Finish walk and shower (Gus may omit this step).


• 18:30 - Go to excellent local pub, unless you're in North Wales, in which case, go to terrible and unfriendly local pub.


• 18:30 - 23:00 - Drink seven pints of local session beer. Eat large plate of welcome stodgy food. Read gory elements of local Mountain Rescue report aloud in braying posh, London voice.


• 21:00 - Fall asleep on table.


• 23:00 - Walk back to campsite and collapse unconscious in bed.

Sunday

• 02:00 - Wake up desparate for a piss, and realise with horror that you will have to leave your warm sleeping bag in your semi-naked state to stand by a hedgerow in the night drizzle for an incredibly long time.


• 06:00 - Wake up very cold.


• 06:30 - Realise that putting the sleeping bag hood on will warm you up.


• 07:00 - Put sleeping bag hood up.


• 08:00 - 16:30 - As Saturday. Walk may be omitted in the case of bad weather or extreme hangover (or general laziness).


• 17:00 - 20:00 - Drive back to London very fast along a succession of nearly full motorways. Listen to the Charts, swearing at the bland nature of modern pop music.


• 20:00 - Drape sodden camping gear around house to annoy urban flatmate.

General Notes

• Destination may vary, behaviour may not.


• General conversational gambits include The Simpsons, Reading FC's recent form (tenacity, spirit, flair), the appalling laziness of the Linhope landlord, certain flatmate's Barleyesque tendencies, loud and socially unacceptable jokes.


• On no account may the swearing be omitted.

See here for the latest implementation of these instructions.