The Blog of Lone

See the facebook group listed below for all my travel info.

As some of you may know, I'm off to Canada for a few months in a week or so. It's a big adventure, and I'm a little nervous but very excited!

The main reason I'm nervous is that, being me, I've done hardly any planning at all for the trip. I've basically just about managed to do all the legal admin stuff and work out a very rough plan (start in the West, head East), but to all intents and purposes I'm setting off to cross a strange and alien continent with no clue as to how I'm going to do it. Hitch hiking seems to be a good option, mainly because it's cheap and I get to meet people, but then there's always the possibility of waking up in a bath of ice with my kidneys removed. Hiking without the hitching appeals to me, but the possibility of being eaten by the wildlife is pretty high, and it's damn cold in Canada at the moment. Guess I'll just have to see what happens.

I'll try and keep the Blog updated with my exploits as far as possible, but don't be surprised if there's a week or two between posts (like that will be a big change!). Oh and I've created a group on facebook to document my travels, if you're a member of facebook and fancy laughing at me stumbling across Canada, feel free to join up the link is HERE.

Peace out.

So, I got bored of sticking needles and tweasers in my neck (long and painful story) and decided that after all the blood and pain a little light hearted entertainment was needed.  So I wrote a quick little piece of satire to lighten and brighten the day (it's also posted on my Helium if you'd like to check it out there).

Warning: May offend conservatives, old people, the French, squirrels, and dictators.  Sorry.

As some of you may know, if you read the post Vehicular Woes, I'm having more than a little trouble with my car at the moment. Today I bit the bullet and took it to the garage to get the professional opinion on whether it's screwed or not. And the professional opinion is that it is very much screwed. Basically the cylinders have all blown - something which the Colchester garage (damn you filthy swines) should have noticed when they charged me £500 to replace the head gasket, £500 which has now incidently gone to waste because of their incompetence. So I'm looking at £1000 to basically replace the entire bottom half of the engine. And that's replacing it with a second hand part. Which is itself going to be none too reliable. None of which I can afford as I'm off to Canada for several months very shortly. So for now I'm driving a car liable to die on me at any moment in a massive cloud of stinking black smoke.

All of which is pretty depressing.

On the flipside though, I can't afford it because I AM going to Canada. Which just plain rocks!
I'm finally getting excited as I try and gather together all the last minute admin things, which I admit is not much seeing as I'm going out there with little notion of my movements and nothing planned or booked. It's not laziness, or not entirely, it's just the way I want things. At the moment I'm looking up a few good (and by good I mean cheap and disreputable) hostels in each city that I like the sound of - for instance Medicine Hat, now that's a fun sounding city - and just printing off a few maps so that when I roll into a town I've got a vague idea where I am. Wandering across Canada, rolling from one place to the next with no set plan and just doing as I fancy for a few months, I quite simply cannot wait.

But I will be sad that I'm going, and so would like to say goodbye to a few folks before I leave. I've Facebooked a few people, a few because I'm lazy and hate organising anything, so hopefully some kind of farewell visit will materialise from my hazy messages.

Life is full of ups and downs.

As you may or may not have heard, the sci fi legend Arthur C. Clarke has recently died at the age of 90. This is a huge blow for the sci fi genre and for writing in general. I personally am greatly saddened by the loss, Clarke has written some truly ground breaking novels and I've had the pleasure of enjoying several of them.  A real loss of a master writer who will be sadly missed.

For the full story: Clicky

That's right, your eyes do not deceive you (unless you thought you were looking for pictures of naked ladies), there is now a new blog!!!

Shock! Horror!

It's called Shelved Dreams, and is specifically for all my writing related stuff.

I want to start keeping an up to date record for myself and anyone interested in what I'm writing at any given time, but didn't want to have people who were after the writing trawling through the dubious depths of my life as it is exposed on here.

So from now on most of my writings posts will be over there, freeing up the space here for more meaningless trivia from my strange life.  So don't be sad Blogmonkeys (all 2 of you), the Blog will still here in all its decadent and rotten glory, but now you have the option of popping over to the slightly more urbane Shelved Dreams if you want to have a read about what's going on with my writing. 

Good stuff.  That calls for choc ices all round I think.  Hurrah!

So what's new in the world of Lone you might ask. Well, somebody might, some day anyway. And I'm going to tell you even if you don't want to know. Because it's my Blog, and it's a dictatorship baby, none of your bleedingheart liberalism here thank you very much.

So life has been pretty routine mainly, divided fairly evenly between working, going to the gym, and sitting around reading. Exciting stuff, huh? In fact I've been going to the gym so much to stave off boredom that I've developed calloses across my palms from lifting weights. Impressive.

As for the sitting part of my life, that's normally spent in front of my compy writing on Helium.   If you want to check out some of my 50 odd articles there's a link on the sticky post above (sticky in the good way, not the bad), or for the terminally lazy people who don't want to move their mouse that far here it is again - Helium!
Here you can read everything from book and film reviews to articles about curing baldness and anxiety disorders, and everything in between.  Heck you can even buy them if you want!  Yes that right folks, you heard it here first, you can buy my articles.  For the princely sum of $25 you can purchase yourself a timeless classic of literature.  Perfect for weddings, funerals, birthdays, anniversaries and divorces.  So why delay, buy your piece of Lone today!  Commissions undertaken.

We had our first open day of the season at Finchcock's today, and in true Finchcock's style it was totally chaotic and unpredicatable. Being the first day of a new season, we had to run around getting everything ready and set up, which meant that everybody was running in different directions, yelling instructions at one another, and generally acting like a flock of headless chickens.
But somehow, and I'm not sure how, it works.
Against all the odds we got ready in time for the first coach load of people, 30 lovely German music students to arrive. Only their coach had somehow managed to wedge itself at a right angle across a junction on the main road, with the front end in a hedge and the back tyres in a ditch. To get it out the police had to call out someone they knew who just happens to own a gigantic american monster truck. Yes, a monster truck, like at the shows or on tv. Well anyway, this monster truck had to come along and pull the huge coach out of the bush and ditch so that the lovely Germans could finally come to Finchcock's for tea, sandwiches, and pianos in equal measure. It may have been a chaotic and unusual start to the season, but there you go, that's Finchcock's. Roll on the 3 course lunch for 30 on Sunday where I'm the only waiter/barman/dishwasher/piano mover/odd job man working. That'll be interesting.

Tonight, to break from my work/gym/sitting rut, I'm off to see Li'l Bro at his student squalor in Canterbury. Apparantly there's an evening of Xbox, cider (my nemisis), and general debauchery at some intriguing place called Magic Mungo's in the works, and I'd be a fool to miss out. Of course this does mean a night spent sleeping in my velco lined (ouch!) sleeping bag on the sofa with the old pizza boxes, chinese takeout trays and beer cans. But waking up with a meal's worth of gently rotting food stuck to you is a small price to pay for a good night out. Hey, if I'm lucky it might even be fresh enough to call breakfast.

So at the moment I'm going through one of my periodic and depressing episodes of being rather bored with my life. After the week spent in Colchester wrestling with my broken car and playing with a kitten called Mouse, my life has gone back to the usual routine. Cleaning things during the days, stacking things on cold shelves at night. If I'm lucky I break up the monotony with the occasional visit to the gym, or trip to walk the dogs on the beach with my good friend CJ. The only excitement in my life at the moment is my car's rather annoying new habit of the engine cutting out mid drive, which locks the power steering. So far I've been lucky, but when it eventually cuts out and locks the steering when I'm taking a corner at 50, I'll be in serious trouble. Frankly it's the kind of excitement I could do without.

One thing I have recently started liking is 'The Surprising Adventures of Sir Digby Chicken Caeser' from 'That Mitchell and Webb Look'. Basically it's a pair of tramps, Digby (think a drunken and homeless Sherlock Holmes) and his man Ginger, trying to solve the mystery of everything, thwart his Nemesis "that bastard who's probably responsible for everything', and get drunk for under a fiver. And it's absolutely hilarious.  Worryingly enough Digby is actually exactly how I imagine Squire Dix if he ever decided to become homeless...

Sir Digby Chicken Caeser in all his trampy glory.

Some highlights:

Any bit with Digby running away going "dun de dun de dun de dun". (the song is 'The Devil's Gallop' in case you're interested.)

Ginger: I think we've got the making of crystal meths here, Sir...
Digby: It's going to be an Easter weekend to remember!

Digby: (Begging, on recieving a pound) I am indebted to you. Write to my club for full remuneration.

Ginger: I've found batteries, we can melt them down and drink them!

I finally have my lovely car back running again.  And all it took was a new head gasket, shin slip, skimming the engine, changing the oil.  5 Days it's taken.  And only £200 over the quote.  Almost a bargain.  I think not.

Here I am, still in Colchester, waiting for my car to be fixed.  But at least there is movment on that front.  This morning the car got taken on a flatbed van to the garage to await it's repairs tomorrow.  For moving the car all of ten miles I had to pay the princely sum of forty English pounds.  I fear that is going to be just the start of the mounting repair costs.