The rains have arrived. Wave after wave of furious downpours followed by squally flurries followed by roaring, lashing gales. The sodden ground, fuzzy green lusciousness, struggles to cope with the constant barrage from the skies. Water wells under the feet as the sandy soil compacts like a sponge. My hair slicks to my face, my clothes to my back, ( Read more... )

Depth of Field

I’ll never forget the night sky as seen from a hilltop in the middle of fucking nowhere somewhere between Picton and Christchurch on the South Island of New Zealand, The Mainland as the locals call it but then I’ve learnt that both the North and South Islanders claim their respective lands as The Mainland. The sky was crystal ( Read more... )

Clouds form halfway up these hills, rendering their peaks invisible, shrouded in a silvery mist until the sun rises or the winds strengthen. Burning the vapour to nothing or pushing them down, down the valley into the tumult over Wellington. Where the winds that brought trade to the islands, the winds that created ‘the Long White Cloud’, buffet and ( Read more... )

The holiday ends but where da plane boss? Hmmm, hmmm. There is no plane for I do not go home. I no longer have a home other than that generic place me and 60 odd million other people call home. Old Blighty, a tear in either eye as, with hand upon our breast, we stand proud and upright and bellow the first verse and chorus of the old dirge. The rest ( Read more... )

That previous post was the ramblings of a drunken tramp, momentarily rendered insane by a mixture of local beer, expensive wine and cheap brandy, a weird experience involving a creepy guy who knew too much information about him and who may have been trying to kidnap, murder, bugger or pressgang him, 3 hours sleep on a girls sofa followed by him ( Read more... )

Brandy drunk morning on a train. Listening to 24 Hour Revenge Therapy. It’s no therapy but the old album is a form of nostalgia, like advice, as the song goes, I paraphrase. Hayes, broke the scissors, apologised. Face glowing and angry. I want to punch the guy sitting next to me, realising the C word helps with the anger. Then I cotton the guy ( Read more... )

***POP***
And I'm back in the room. I've survived my first week in New Zealand. Spent four days at the cricket watching a lacklustre England win due to an even more lacklustre NZ performance and one good knock by the new boy. 

( Read more... )

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Have you ever gone to work and popped in a chewing gum and then chewed it all day until you're in the bath at home some time after work and realise that you've had the same chewer on the go all that time and that your jaw hurts so you pop it into you belly button because you think it'll be funny (because you're like that and make your own fun in ( Read more... )

How crap are our terrorists? I remember the heady days of the early eighties when the IRA could hide a pound or two of semtex in the petrol tank of a car and destroy half of Manchester, blowing the faces off 50 people in the process. These new chaps don’t seem to know their arses from their elbows. I’m getting out my red pen and writing ‘Must try ( Read more... )