Monday 25th September 2006 10:33pm - Come hither, Come assunder.

A young man wanders down the cold, unhealthy streets, his chin tucked into his collar and his short, neat sandy hair tucked under a cap.

He bustles into the warmth of a hairdressers, and gets seated quickly as most have kept indoors on a day like this. The hairdresser cheerily greets him;

- What style would you like?

In response the young man fumbles into his coat pocket and pulls out a crumpled piece of paper, handing it to the hairdresser wordlessly.

What was on the sheet of paper?

Monday 25th September 2006 1:53am - 'Brightness falls from the air'

Due to you, the reader's unfathomable wish to return day after day to see an un-updated site I will crank up the ol' machine again and share some love, happiness and disgrace.


What I will not do, is finish my travelogue due to interest from parties unwelcome. So needless to say we plugged the leaks and clenched our teeth and held on through the storm.

After catching my second Ryan Air Flight home; God dammit those things are like buses, and touching feet to the soil of the motherland, my feelings about a return north can be felt in the following snippet of a text message sent to a friend on the overnight boat to Orkney and work, and cold and reality:

'I feel like swearing loudly, insulting my fellow passengers and spitting on the crew.. Because I'm tried but can't sleep, have 6 hours of nerve sedating nothing in a fucking badly designed chrome laced bucket, and the sea isn't even rough.. so I can't pass the time watching tourists throw up. I'm heading back to the grey skys, wind bitten, rain smeared primitive rock outcrop. Give me Orkney and I'll give you colourful language and frustration."

Now maybe I was just in a foul mood.. but can anyone tell me WHAT THE HELL the announcement warning passengers not to leave their baggage unattended or a member of our crew will come and dispose of it is all about? Is it some sort of introduction to an intercom standup session to put the passengers in good humour.. it seems not.

Picture yourself, you really really want to cause mayhem, blow some stuff up, get some attention, maim some innocent infidels and you get your quaking hands on some C4 and all is well. What on earth would possess you to attack a boat serving a northern isle filled with people who haven't heard that John Lennon was shot yet never mind that the world is in a silent war?.


I would sling a guess that the majority of suicide bombers would perhaps struggle to pin Scotland on a map never mind Orkney. Even if they did and for some reason did, then they would spread more fear, dissatisfaction and pain by leaving us with the service as it is, a service that fascinatingly takes on the properties of a black hole when public money is poured into it.

Interestingly, nobody was paying any attention to these warnings, as usual bags were left strewn around and unwatched for hours on end. Interestingly, nobody came to 'dispose of them'. So picture yourself packed to the gunnels with high explosives, and... oh shit what did they say on the intercom? they will be disposing of bags left unattended.. Our plan is ruined.. all is lost!



What's the next step? Raids on WRI meetings, stop searches on all buses in and out of Kirkwall?

It sickens me to think that there is someone, somewhere wearing a Northlink tie who gets turned on by piles of paper, sitting smiling smugly thinking they are Clark Kent quietly helping the world in someway. Well I have something to say to that person; All your naive actions do is fan the flames of hysteria, the unshakable shiver that crawls under the skin of the western world. In short, spreading fear, panic and terror. Think about that.




'Terrorism' - coming to a town near you

Friday 4th August 2006 11:17am - Open Season On Backpackers

Pretty racked up, we asked the police if they could tell us where we might locate a hostel or hotel or anywhere we could collapse.

No.

We re-asked and they suggested upstairs in the train station. I felt like mentioning that we´d tried that one and it didn´t really work out.

Reading from afar may seem amusing, but I can tell you for those of us who were there it was like we had taken center stage in a shakespearian tragedy.


Now, many of you may like to think that in this situation you would remain objective and level headed. I also thought this. We found a sleazy looking cretin who took us to his ´hostel´ and listened to our tale of woe with half and ear. Whatever happened later, he did make an important point, he said that money and possessions will come and go, we perhaps should be thankful that we are uninjured. This at the time was quite helpful, if i´d fallen asleep at the wheel of a car things could have been much worse. He then gave some rightous speech about experience and that he had 2 mobiles phones stolen and now he has it on a string around his neck. From this point on I began to really distrust and dislike this small boogle eyed man. He had lead us into what seemed like and infact was an untidy house.. Steve admitted later that he tried the doors to see if he could escape if need be. The man said we would get a room to ourselves for 40 euro each.. this are bloody hotel prices. Although a hotel was out of the question as they won´t give you the time of day without a passport these days. He asked for payment up front, I´d have been damned if I´d just handed him the cash, I said only when we saw the room. He just pointed upwards. The ¨room¨ was just a normal sized kitchen with another floor stuck in it. You couldn´t stand up in it and infact was so low that I cracked my head off the celing when I sat up in the morning. We settled on a reduced price of 30 euros and only because our options were not numerous. We attempted to settle down, there was a small tv set just sitting on a chair which he happly pointed to as a feature. As Steve went down stairs (not an easy task twsiting bending and climbing backwards)This man asked if another girl who had just arrived could share our room. Steves short-sharp and very irritated ´no´ made the point and infact we never saw the man again.

Finally we tried to get some sleep, Steve struggling as he went over the situation a hundred times and mentally thumbed his lost posessions and mulled over his next moves. Myself chewed up with guilt and also pondering my next moves. As soon as I drifted off to sleep I would snap awake and grip my bag, sweating and terrifed and shaking. This long long night along with many preceding nights was lost from sleep and peacefulness..

To be continued..

Sunday 30th July 2006 1:46pm - Q- What has no legs, no arms, snapped vocal chords, many items that don't belong to it and is left as food for the worms at the bottom of a disused well?

A- The motherfucker that swiped Steve's backpack in Rome after I have finished with him.


I'm updating from the sun raked shores of the cote d'zur, a metaphorical stones throw away from Italy on one side and the principality of Monaco on the other. This is by all accounts a preferable place to regenerate and reassemble myself after the wheels fell off.

Myself and Steve Wheater, my esteemed friend and travelling companion struck out for Europe, all area's rail pass in hand as the date dipped into July. We dropped in to spend a frantic week with Christos (Greek flatmate) and family (many thanks), tasting the delights of the Athens highlife, the Turkish pipe and the Greek cuisine and not tasting the pulse-skipping visually-teasing delights of Mikonos, mores the pity.

On our last night in Greece, we were pulled over by what at the time seemed like half the Greek army's worth of armed special drug enforcement police, One van and two Jeeps full of the blighters. We were asked via raised voices, via megaphone in Greek that we should place our hands out of the car. Obviously being fully fluent in shouted Greek via megaphone Steve and I treated the situation with the utmost sincerity (not). That was until we glanced in the mirror and noticed numerous Greek policemen, reaching into their shirts. Being logical beings, we guessed they weren't fondling their breasts and indeed were probably very close to filling our British bodies with lead. Anyways, to cut a moderately long story short the police patted us down, apart from Gillian (flatmate) possibly because they didn't want to touch her, although possibly not, and they searched the car. Amazingly enough we weren’t the drug lords they were looking for, in fact the thought may have dawned on most them, when we stepped out of the car chattering in English and looking bemused. If you have taken the time to read the 'todo before I die' list on the Malarky page you may have noticed that I came close to getting arrested for something I hadn't done in a foreign country. Close but no cigar.


Speaking of notable things, I got the number of the cutest Polish girl in the Vatican Museum, I felt this needed a mention, would have been more note worthy if it was in the Vatican itself though.

The group of four in Greece split back again to a group of two with Steve and I leaving Christos and Gillian and leaving Patros for Bari. With plans to head to Napoli scrapped, we headed directly to Rome, a long train ride away. This is where the lemon starts to turn sour. We were both shattered after travelling for over a day, and staying up on the boat from Greece to keep the company of a couple of Dutch girls.

We reached Rome around 11pm and decided that we should kip down there for the night, as a hostel for a reasonable price would be nigh on impossible to find. We picked a busy spot directly in front of the main security camera. I feel asleep, but Steve correctly felt uncomfortable and too warm and woke me up to tell me he was going to find a hostel, this is all I remember. The next memory is a scraped and desperate voice waking me up saying 'it's gone Ken, every fucking thing is gone'. This I can reveal was one of the worst moments of my life, I felt like I could feel the contents of my stomach spill forth onto the shinny marble of the station floor. The feeling of shame and guilt was horrific. We rushed around shouting 'polizia polizia!' hoping upon hope that somehow it wasn't stolen or there was something to be done.

While I slept on both our bags Steve had left for little more than a minute he returned to find, and man holding his wash bag, grabbing his arm he yelled for the police. The man professed innocence and pointing in the direction the man with the bag had gone, Steve ran that way, it is quite possible that this man was teamed with the thief and sent Steve in the wrong direction.


With as much hope as we could muster between our shaken shoulders, we hunted for the police. Perhaps if any of you have had the misfortune of dealing with the Italian police, what is said next will not come as a surprise to you.


After being directed all over the station by vague gestures and shrugs we found the police station, cunningly hidden well away from any of the hustle and bustle of the thieving pit. We were greeted by two Italian Policemen chasing each other on Sedgeways, (A Sedgeway being a two wheel electric transportation device) one got his jammed in a doorway and struggled while his friend, I presume taunted and baited him.

Now at this juncture I would also like to point out that a well oiled thief could easily out-run a Sedgeway and even if he couldn't the could just push the driver over. With this in mind I wish to make a statement that I beg all Police forces to pay heed to. THE SEDGEWAY IS NOT A GOOD POLICING DEVISE WHATEVER THE WELL DRESSED SALES MAN SAYS.

We swallowed our contempt and headed into the office, where approximately six policemen were sitting around 'discussing', drinking coffee and smoking. They gave Steve the form to fill, and that was it. I inquired about the CCTV and the officer revealed that they couldn’t afford to put film in it. However, as you may have noticed they can afford Sedgeways, gods forbid the officers get sore feet.

To be continued...

Wednesday 3rd May 2006 5:56pm - Much to the Delight of Justin Thyme, and other famous Clockwatchers

Tonight or to be more exact tomorrow morning the time will reach a landmark 01.03.04 of the 05/06/07, a delight for clock-watchers everywhere. See that? A string of numbers in the date of time. I sense the works of warlocks such sorcery cannot just happen. What I want to know is, who classes themselves as a clock-watcher? I wonder if you get clock watching meetings where hundreds of Clock-watchers gather to watch the time, If they do I doubt the conversation would reach an staggering heights. "Hey Gloria what's the time?" Snigger snigger. Are they expecting something exceptional to happen?.

"Hey Norman I'm sure it's going to skip an hour this time, I can just feel it."

Even if it did it would be the fault in the clock, not time. This must be up there with stone watching ("just checking that they don't move") or following formula one. I always wondered what happened to the kids that never grew out of the belief that if you star hard enough at a clock you can actually change time. That's probably what these clock-watchers are trying to do, trying to slow down or speed up time by all willing and staring and willing at exactly the same moment. Wow and I thought they were boring...!


The website also Claimed that every second on average of £150 in Britain is given to charity which is a really heart soothing thought, well it would be if they didn't also tell you that £881.53 is spent on Cigarettes and Alcohol... !