13-17th Feb: Just floating along

“Love is in the air”, as well as on the floor, the shop windows, the restaurants, the street, the public toilets; it was everywhere due to the vastly over-rated Valentines day being at the start of the week. I could come across as a bit of a curmudgeon due to me being single but even people in relationships dislike the day. Everyone I know seems to celebrate it the day before or after, to avoid paying excessive money for average food and to avoid being surrounded by creepily in love people. This is alright in theory, however, if this is what everyone’s doing then presumably you then get surrounded by all these people on the 13th and 15th. If this is the case then the restaurants should keep their prices high for a three day period. I may well be over-thinking it. Something far more noteworthy happened during the week, which I need to tell you about…

….I went for a Friday lunch with my friend Kai Humphries (Google him and you’ll probably see a picture of his tattooed white arse), who was in town for the weekend with some friends. We went to this very nice but over-priced American diner type place where they actively encourage children to be there and the chef says stuff like “I suggest the chicken pie”; to me this always implies that everything else he cooked, is a bit shit.

I went for a pre-meal trip to the toilet. Despite always being packed they have the rather awkward, one toilet for men and women system. As someone was inside the cubicle and I’m not a weirdo, I waited just outside for them to finish. This does, however, mean you have a two second uncomfortable stare off with the producer of the smell you’re about to walk into. There was now a queue system where a woman was waiting to go in after me, so I was fully primed to be extra quick so there could be no ambiguity about my deployment of a number one. The person that exited before me was a very sheepish looking eight year old girl. Why was she looking so sheepish I hear you ask? Probably something to do with the massive floater she’d left in there for me.

As I stared at this chunky heap of regret, it dawned on me that the woman after me would definitely think this was my handy work. Therefore, I urinated as hard as humanly possible onto this briquette, to break it up: to no avail. I had one saving grace, the flush: no luck. Then instinct took over and I’ve no idea why out of all my options I thought this was the best one: I wrapped toilet paper around my hand, picked it up and threw it in the bin. Feel free to vomit on your keyboard. I then used up all the soap that has ever existed on the planet washing my hands. This cleaning process took so long that the woman behind me probably thought I had in fact crimped one out.

When I returned to the table and told the story about how I had no other option but to do what I did after being stuck between a cronk and hard place. Kai replied simply with “why didn’t you just put paper on top of it? It would have then flushed away”. I did not know you could do this. I wish I had already known this. I wasn’t particularly hungry thanks to the eight year old girl that tried to frame me for leaving a dead body in the toilet. If you’re reading this little girl, thanks for ruining my chicken pie.

6-10 Feb: Slovenly Slovenia

Highlight of this week was that I got to have less than a day in Slovenia to tell some jokes to the locals. By less than a day, I was in the country for 19 hours. It’s the first time I’d performed to a crowd where english isn’t their first language. It turns out they understood and found amusing almost everything. I say ‘almost’ because they didn’t know who Jensen Button was, which meant one of my jokes was greeted by 600 people just staring at me like I’d wiped my jaffas on their doormat.

Flying to a country on your own feels eerily soulless. Whenever I get on a plane it seems like it should be with at least one other person about to embark on an adventure whilst drinking pints in a J.D. Wetherpoons at 6:00am and eating copious amounts of Burger King. It just doesn’t feel right when I’m merely using it as a means to get to work and all I’m consuming is green tea and sushi. I feel like I’m breaking unwritten airport rules. Although, if I was on my own getting MC Hammered whist shoving a whopper in my face at 3:30pm on a Wednesday it might have raised a few more eyebrows. The plastic bag for your liquids still continues to baffle me and now riles me as you have to spend £1 on purchasing 4 bags from a glorified arcade machine. Ironically, the fact I had to buy these bags meant I actually had an urge to blow up my plane. All I’m saying is, don’t be surprised if there is increase in terrorism from prudent jet-setters.

If none of you have been to Slovenia, specifically Ljunljana, I’ll give you a few little things I noticed in the 3 minutes I had to look around the place:

It is very small

the architecture is lovely

it is very cold

the people are friendly


If anyone reading this works for The Lonely Planet, I'd like to offer my services as a travel writer.

zbogom

30 Jan- 3rd Feb: New House, Same Old Shit

I managed to accidentally arrange my diary so that I was in Bristol on the day we had to move house. My co-habiters, therefore, kindly moved all my stuff into the new pad. I like to use the term ‘pad’ because it makes it sound like it’s constantly full of babes whereas in actual fact it’s riddled with mice. They unfortunately didn’t go one step further and unpack all my belongings into various closets and drawers. This may also have been because there were no drawers in my room just mice.

Now don’t get me wrong, the “pad” is cracking, it’s just tempered somewhat by the fact I’m on the ground floor and after seeing a mouse run across the floor I’m now terrified I’m going to wake up with my face gnawed off. I’m not normally scared of mice; I mean I’ve once battered one to death with a bog brush holder (true story). Once, however, you see one in your bedroom, it’s a different story. It’s a story that results in my struggling to sleep and confirming my hatred of cheese. Despite me and Jerry becoming far too well acquainted this house is so much better than my last “pad”. Here are a list of things that are better:

-There is a kitchen on the ground floor and not the second floor

-There are no trains going past my bedroom window

-I can’t hear my housemates bonking

-There is an actual fire place for burning wood and chucking a photo of an ex-lover in (if I was in rom com)

Now I’ll leave you with that list and the cheery thought of my face being bitten to shit. Having said that the maintenance man, Peter, is going to lay some traps down where the mice will stick to a “pad” (not the house), then get destroyed (not by a bog brush holder).

23-27 Jan: Me over the Mersey

I spent all week in Liverpool getting up at normal adult times to go to work. This is because I was doing a cheeky bit of filming. Not sure I can disclose what I was filming yet but it wasn’t amateur pornography and it wasn’t part of a reconstruction for Crimewatch so it was something that was enjoyable to be in and will hopefully be a hoot to watch.

My own stupidity unpleasantly surprised me again. Even though I was filming in Liverpool I stayed with my friend in Manchester because I thought they were just down the road from one another. In fairness on a map they’re about a thumbnail apart but apparently that equates to about an hour on the train. I’m an arsehole. I’d never really seen Liverpool properly before and despite my cliched southern reservations about the place I have to say it’s pretty nice on the eyes. Around the centre there is a lot of nice buildings and less tracksuit clad people than I thought. I managed to win an award for being the most southern man in the world by ordering a Capri-Sun in a pub. In my defence, I haven’t ordered one since I was at my school tuck shop, so it was more of a nostalgic order than a pathetic one (still quite pathetic). The rumours about scousers always trying to be funny are most definitely true. I had one cab driver who thought he was the funniest man on the planet. He managed to coat off everyone from footballers to Hollyokes actors in the space of a 15 minute journey. I’m pretty sure he would have a couple of one liners about his own mother if she walked past us. If you haven’t been to Liverpool before I recommend going but be prepared to have the piss ripped out of you by a complete stranger.

There isn't really much else to tell as filming stuff mainly involves sitting around talking nonsense with actors. The highlight was meeting a guy called Phillip who was in the same scenes as me. He was one of those guys who managed to link anything you said to story about someone he'd had sex with. When the Welsh accent came up in conversation he'd just drift off and go "ahhhh, Newport girls are amazing...it reminds me of a time when I bedded this chick". He literally linked anything. You could talk about the death of a family member and he'd go "talking of funerals...I once met a girl"

People like Phillip are important to keeping you sane when you have to sit around for long periods of time. Thanks to Phil and Liverpool for looking after me and my juice loving tendencies.