CURRENT MISSION

Learn as much as I can about the widest variety of things possible

ABOUT ME

musical?

Interessen

Musicals- Lead in the uni musical last year.
Cups of tea
Singing
Cooking (I used to be a chef)
Mexican food
Japanese food
Any food I've not tried yet
reading
gigging
listening to radio 4 shows on bbc iplayer

Football
Movies by the Cohen brothers

• animals
• cats
• singing
• dining
• cooking
• breakfast
• japanese food
• mexican food
• drinking
• clothing
• movies
• reading
• traveling
• drawing
• music
• backpacking
• soccer
• emergency services
• science

Musik, Filme und Bücher

Cloud Atlas- David Mitchell
Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet- David Mitchell
Catch 22- Joseph Heller
Three men in a boat- Jerome K Jerome (because he's a local boy)

Eine tolle Erfahrung, die ich gemacht habe

‘The items you will need are a 2 items of photo ID, the police report, a passport photograph and 110 dollars.’
‘Where do I get a police report?’
‘They should have given you one when you reported the crime.’

My mind was a thick cloud of mirth. A faulty computer attempting to reboot, trying to catch up in time with the world around me.
‘Keep your eyes open please’.
If only he’d asked the 21 years or so before today, but at this moment he may as well have asked me to levitate.
‘It’s very important you stay awake for this procedure.’
A pause; then came the questions.
‘Do you remember what happened to you?’
‘Have you been drinking?’
‘Did you see the guys that did this?’
A buzzing and whirring began around my head. Squinting through my sore eyes I looked to the inquiry, across at my feet. Through the fog in my head I wondered how I was going to pay for all this without travel insurance.

48 hours earlier

The sofa outside reminded me of the opening sequence to ‘Keanen and Kel’. I wasn’t expecting much and anywhere was better than sleeping at a train station in Nowheresville, Alabama which folks had told me, however apocryphal, was in the ‘ghetto’. I looked at Chris; he was the epitome of western adventure with his checked shirt and large scar across his cheek. Sheila shut the driver side door, not bothering to lock.
‘Just ignore the smell of cat piss and stuff on the walls’.
She raced ahead of us but knocked instead of using her keys.
‘I can’t wait till you meet my mom, she loves the British’.
We’d met Sheila about three hours before, she asked us if we were bored and wanted to go somewhere. We’d ended up at her scientist friend’s flat and argued about Dawkins, who he greatly admired. There wasn’t the room for us to sleep there and Sheila offered her place instantly; it was our last chance of getting a place to stay.
A figure appeared in the doorway, the mother. She was one of the most delicate and frail beings I had ever seen, shy and mild-mannered. She had exactly the kind of look movie make-up artists use for characters that butcher wandering strangers in their sleep.
We introduced ourselves and went inside. There was indeed both a faint odour of urine (though oddly no cat) and a short epic written on the bare walls. No furniture inside at all; save for a stained mattress in the corner of what I assumed was the lounge. It was there, I would shortly be told, that all four of us would be sleeping that night.
We were led in and sat cross-legged on the naked floor. Her mum stayed quiet and watched us both. Chris was unnerved beside me but I felt there was something fey and romantic about the scene, the hard dimensions made our voices reverb with gravitas in the still night. Sheila was always too filled with life to let the conversation loose colour, interested in almost anything we had to say, she dominated the room with her volume and personality; and seemed to have taken a liking to Chris. I didn’t know where this was heading and decided to have the common decency to be unconscious for it.
‘I’m really sorry but I’m absolutely knackered’.
‘Oh, ok. Do you need any sheets? I have some clothes you could use.’
‘I’m fine thanks’.
Chris gave me an unequivocal look of contempt. I picked out a great spot right on the edge of the bed and let sleep envelop me. He told me afterward she had been rubbing his back in bed which although alarmed about at first he had begun to enjoy; at least until their first conversation the next morning.
‘Oh wow, I feel like I’ve been up all night giving head,’ offered Sheila, complaining assumedly about a sore throat.
‘You haven’t though, right?’ asked Chris, delicately.
‘I wish’.
She drove us to the station and waited with us till the train arrived. I was getting hungry so I reached in the backpack to get a carrot and began peeling. She enquired as to this unusual behaviour and, sensing competition, found a marker pen in her handbag and walked across the tracks to draw on trains and freight sat in the station.
A man approached us.
‘Friend’s gonna get hit by a train if she don’t get off the tracks’.
I had no intelligent reply to offer.

‘Unfortunately we cannot issue you with a temporary passport here; this is just an honorary consulate.’
‘So how will I get one?’
‘You’ll need to go to a British embassy. The nearest is in Atlanta.’
‘But we just came from there.’

Soon we were in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. The houses were tents in a field, like the owners had pitched and built them as quickly as they could. Each was different in some way and I must have watched every one we passed as we walked side by side with our backpacks bobbing up and down. A music friend from back home had asked me to write a Christmas song for an eponymous album he wanted to record around the time I’d get back. I had a habit of mindlessly singing an idea I had for it aloud.
‘Man the stations. Get on the stage mate. Start a fiesta for everyone in town.’
‘What does man the stations mean?’ asked Chris, most likely irritated as the melody was becoming tiring even to me.
‘It’s like stand to attention, or get ready.’
‘What does that have to do with Christmas exactly?’
‘I just thought it’d be a nice device to capture attention,’ I told him; ‘everybody, pay attention and get together.’
He remained sceptical.
Later that evening we met Ben, the most American man in the world. He bought us drinks all night and took us back to his bar for a lock in with a few friends, though it was late by this point and the energy fizzled out quickly. Unperturbed he told us we could spend the night there, and after pointing to a couple of couches, went home and left us to our own devices. We retired almost as soon as he was gone.
‘Brush your teeth, wash your ass,’ demanded the megaphone.
I jolted out of my soul. It seemed I had barley shut my eyes. Holding his instrument of oppression Ben walked over behind the bar, reached under the counter and threw some animal crackers at us.
‘That’s your breakfast fuckers. I’m off today so let’s give you a tour of the city.’
He owned a huge pickup, meaning despite the size one of us had to travel in the back. We told him our plans next, onto Austin, where we’d both been most looking forward to visiting.
‘Fuck Austin. Do yourselves a favour and just stay in New Orleans a week.’
It was good and bad advice.
Soon it was back on the train, it was filled with the purest southern stereotypes. An old church group wanted to talk to me about God and existence and I humoured them a while ; a complete stranger nearby yelled ‘tea party’ and I decided it was time to make my excuses and go and find Chris in the world of the ordinary and familiar. He tried to rouse me into joining him watch Lake Pontchartrain beneath us but the air became more humid as the train strolled to its destination, the noise somehow gentler and I began to dream about the day just spent in the back of Ben’s pickup, traveling around and interacting with the city.
I’d been to the hottest kitchen in the world, the home of an elderly lady in the poor part of town. Local people would stop by to eat her food and leave a tip; to everyone she was known, without apparent irony, as ‘Big momma’. Ben had taken us to all his favourite parts of town, with his enthusiasm often overshadowing the actual destination itself.
‘Have you guys tried Mexican Coke yet?’
‘Uh no, not yet,’ replied Chris
He told us to wait by the car and ran in and out the Mexican convenience store to get them.
‘So can you taste the difference?’
I looked at Chris. He was as clueless as me.
‘I’ll be honest, not really Ben.’
‘You gotta be kidding me! You see we can’t use real sugar in the US because of...’
‘Yeah, the Cuban embargo makes sugar prices artificially high’
‘Yeah,’ continued Ben, ‘that’s right. In Mexico though they don’t have an embargo, so Mexican cola has real sugar and tastes waaay better.’
‘You know cola in the UK is made with real sugar too right?’
I was shaken awake. There were lights up ahead, the ground began to move the same speed as the train, the doors opened, the air rushed in and I stepped out into a musical Jacuzzi. My immediate reaction was I was not cool enough to walk into this place. The pavements around us swam with brass. As we approached out hostel one of the first people to catch my eye was Siguy. He was short, brash, perpetually drunk, often incomprehensible and irresistibly likeable. He didn’t seem to register much conversation at all and had the same, automated response for anything even mildly incredulous.
‘Get the fuck out a here.’
There was a small crowd gathered round him as he was recounting a story of having his wallet pinched by a girl he’d been with earlier, but such was the pride in his delivery it was difficult to judge if he was trying to inspire sympathy or admiration from his audience.
‘Oh man, she was incredible.’
‘What do you mean? How did she do it?’
‘She was suckin’ it, likin’ it, doing evrythin’ man. Everythin’.’
‘No, I mean. But she took your wallet, right?’
His face saddened. With his trousers round his ankles she had took off and left him, most probably, smiling where he sat.
We ditched our bags and hurried into the excitement of the creole air.

‘Or there’s Houston.’
‘We can’t go to Houston; it’s not on our route.’
‘You still plan to carry on with your trip without a passport?’

The sequence for the next events were filled as if the film reel had been cut into pieces and thrown in the tumble dryer. It was only two days later a tram driver on the famous canal street stopped his vehicle and asked me if I was OK. He explained he’d saw me staggering along the tracks two nights before and had escorted me to the hostel; from there I recall seeing Siguy.
‘Woah, what happened to you man?’
‘I need to find my friend,’ I attempted, through my grossly swollen lips.
I let him lead me. My shirt was covered in my own gore, and a started to realise there was something wrong with my face. I walked with him to the dorm we shared and found Chris asleep. Waking he lifted his head.
‘Man they got you too?’ blurted Siguy, seeing his scar.
‘No, he always looks like that.’
The consulate for New Orleans was sat opposite me. It was a day later but I was still kind of out of it and had not really picked up who the lady on the line was I had been directed to speak with; she was empathetic but losing patience.
‘I can’t tell you what to do, but traveling without a passport, even if not crossing borders is ill-advised.’
Siguy had called a taxi to the hospital after it was explained it would be madness to call out an ambulance with medical insurance. They told Chris they had no way to bill me as I had no security number. I felt kind of ashamed for my friend that I’d ruined his good time and I felt he couldn’t really enjoy himself while he was looking at my patched up face.
Maybe I should have felt spiteful and vindictive, fearful and afraid, untrusting and unmoved; wished all hell’s harm and vengeance on the guys that did what they did. The people that were foremost in my mind were the people that maybe I hadn’t appreciated at the time. Sheila and Ben had given my friend and I shelter and used their free time to look after us and Siguy had used his sharpest of wits at his most splendidly intoxicated.
I thought of how disappointed Ben would be in me if I had somehow lost my sense of adventure and was a little embarrassed already I had wasted the ‘fun’ vibes he had done his upmost to build up. I looked up at my friend who had already offered to help me with money after my wallet was stolen along with everything else.
‘I understand but I’m willing to take the risk,’ I sent down the receiver.
There was only ever likely to be one chance to backpack across America, one chance to experience the bottomless kindness of strangers first hand and one chance to get beaten the shit out of and left for dead in New Orleans.

Länder, die ich besucht habe

Gambia, Ireland

Länder, in denen ich gelebt habe

United Kingdom, United States

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