It meant a lot to me, that little hotel room halfway between Bristol and the airport. Nothing particularly interesting happened: we just dropped our shit, showered in turn, and lay in our beds vaping and watching Peep Show until we fell asleep past midnight. But it was important to me because it felt like an adventure – and not like the adventures I’d known recently. Over the years, I’d come to associate adventure with being alone, and by extension with the fear that comes when you’re on your lonesome, far from loved ones, and you find yourself huffing up a dirty great mountain or darting through some alien humid cityscape and you realise that if you fuck up, there’s not a soul within ten thousand miles who gives a rat’s knob about you. I got such a kick from that crappy little four-hour bungalow nap because, for the first time in years, that adventurous feeling was there without all the bad stuff. I’d begun to believe they were welded together.
Continue readingEurope
Strasbourg | A New Life
Everything moves in great, long cycles. You live and live and live and then – pop – in the midst of all that living, you find yourself right back where you started. I am in Manchester Airport. I am always in Manchester Airport.
Continue readingStrasbourg | Un peu de Tranquilité
I’m drinking a freshly squeezed lemon juice and looking out of the window, past the great weeping willow in the garden, to the pale blue sky over Alsace, where a trio of parachutists twirl towards the Earth.
Continue readingParis: Muggings and Riots and Notre Dame Engulfed in Flame
After Chiang Mai came two sweaty nights in Bangkok. After Bangkok came Paris.
Jeanne and Justine got an earlier flight out of Thailand, and I arrived in the city fourteen hours after them, in the evening. By the time I arrived Justine had already left the city for Orleans, an hour or two south. Won’t be seeing her for a long time now. After a year of perpetual company and a merry-go-round of familiar faces, suddenly Jeanne and I were all that remained. Weird. Continue reading
Drink, Play, Loathe: The End
Previous: Drink, Play, Loathe: Day 10, Riga
Because my being heckled as a ‘faggot’ in the backroom of a dingy bar in Riga isn’t a particularly wholesome way to end this series, I’ve decided to visit a point a few hours earlier, same day. Continue reading
Drink, Play, Loathe: Day 10, Riga
Previous: Drink, Play, Loathe: Day 9, Riga
I woke up late, hungover, boiling hot, again. I spent a short morning scribbling on maps on my bed but didn’t hang around too long because my dorm was full of old men and the air was thick with the musk of leathery bodies slumbering and overheating and snoring and farting. Continue reading
Drink, Play, Loathe: Day 9, Riga
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Drink, Play, Loathe: Day 7.5, Venice After Dark
Yesterday was a strange point in my journey. Countries are flicking past so quickly it’s disorientating. I woke up in Venice yesterday morning, I had dinner with friends in Berlin last night, and right now, the morning after, I’m above the clouds on the way to Latvia. This is my fifth flight this week. Continue reading
Drink, Play, Loathe: Day 7.5, Venice After Dark
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Drink, Play, Loathe: Day 7, Venice by Sunlight
It’s 11pm and my last night in Venice has been spent in the hostel bar, after a lonesome meal by the canal on a candlelit terrace, where the waiter felt sorry for me and gave me free wine, with a wink. I was extremely humbled and grateful until the bill came and I found I’d been given free wine but charged 4 euros for a glass of tap water. Bastardo.
I was hoping to meet the Toronto girls from yesterday and chill, but they’ve gone to the opera. I had a look at tickets and they were around 40 each, so no. Instead, I sat myself at a central table in the hostel bar and nursed a beer, my eyes roving around the bar for a friendly face. A group of Spaniards in animated chatter, no; a rabble of droopy eyed Englishmen all attempting to charm the same one American girl, no; a middle aged Chinese couple knotted up in each other on the sofa, no. So that’s the kind of evening it was to be, then. I began to unpack my bag with a sigh, reaching for Kafka, my most loyal friend of late; a twisted, morbid companion, but a companion nonetheless.
‘How’s it going, mate?’ Continue reading
Drink, Play, Loathe: Day 7, Venice by Sunlight
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Drink, Play, Loathe: Day 6, Venice by Moonlight
Got up early, quickly dressed and escaped the snoring, smelly dorm, and skipped breakfast; no time and no money anyway. I’d arrived in Venice under darkness, and stepping outside and seeing the city in the daylight was a true and rare joy, one of those moments in life where you actually stop and say ‘whoa’ out loud, even though there’s nobody around. I kicked through the hostel doors with a yawn and a stretch, and I was greeted by the bluest lazy waters, easy young skies in a cirrus haze, majestic old buildings and barnacle clinging docks. Oh fuck yes, what a day. Continue reading
Drink, Play, Loathe: Day 6, Venice by Moonlight
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Drink, Play, Loathe: Day 5, Barce-Loner
Awoke alone and lay cosy in the dorm a while. Dragged myself to get ready, checked out and caught the bus across the city to Park Güell, as I wanted to catch the views in the midday sun. Entrance to the park’s centre is ticketed, and I was given a slot around midday. To kill time, I hiked up the hill behind the park and sat in the sun enjoying magnificent views of the city, it’s soft edge square blocks of rooftops and terraces, viridescent mountaintops beyond, and at the end of it all, sparkling ocean merging with the horizon. Continue reading