almost witty

As you’d expect from spending two nights in the biggest non-capital city in the European Union, traipsing up and down the area where the Beatles honed their gig-playing craft while the city celebrates its’ Harbour birthday, there were one or two interesting moments and observations to be had. To wit:

- The unforgettable sight of a woman. In a wheelchair. Vomiting. If she wasn’t sitting on her arse, I’d say she was drunk off it. At least before dodging the projectile vomit she emitted on the side of the road while slumped over.

- Having a gorgeous two-course Portuguese seafood lunch for just six euros. This is before the drinking started in earnest and I couldn’t taste anything.

- The smell of German sausages. Love it.

- Watching football team St. Pauli playing a key match, and observing that sitting on a wooden bench in the outdoors watching a team you’ve never heard or seen of before, is somehow more atmospheric than sitting with 70,000 Welsh football fans at the Millennium Stadium watching Wales beat Italy. Although both times I missed the instant replay that you at least get on television.

- At one moment, there was a adapted Mexican crowd wave involving some kind of hand gesture. In trying to mimic said hand gesture for practise reasons, I got rather odd looks from the crowd around me before my compatriots told me to sit down. Quite possibly because my hand gesture was somehow being mistaken for a Hitler salute - or maybe they were being all “Don’t Mention the War!” at me.

- Watching The Noisettes playing in a crowded, hot, steamy basement rock club. While I’m sitting on a comfortable bar stool sweating away and wishing I was fifteen years younger and my legs weren’t hurting so much. At this point in the evening, I am well off the taste of beer.

- Ending up in a Filipino karaoke bar at 5am, where the resident German singer knows enough tagalog to sing a few songs. Watching the stag murder a song or two. Video footage on request!

- Walking home with some old school friends, and standing at 5.30am on a street corner having a good-humoured argument on what constitutes a blog, and whether any old diary content could be repurposed into a blog. I say it can.

- The final day, and my body has just given up on me. My entire lower body is screaming. My upper body and head is fine, oddly. At least until we wonder down to the harbour and watch people hanging upside down on a fairground ride.

And yes, Eddie Izzard fans, people from Hamburg are apparently called Hamburgers. And a doughnut does seem to be called a Berliner.

Picture the scene:

George Bush shuffles onto the podium and announces to all: “Citizens! It is time to do your duty and proclaim your loyalty to America! To whit, I have announced that henceforth, May 1st is to be Loyalty Day in the United States!”

Then an aide takes him to one side and whispers: “But sir… you’ve announced this the day before 1st May. What do you expect people to do on Loyalty Day given a day’s notice?”

Another aide then takes him to the other side (a lot of siding to-and-fro here!) and says: “Isn’t this uncomfortably close to the May Day Bank Holiday, sir?”

So, Americans amongst us, what did you do on Loyalty Day?

Sorry for not entertaining y’all with words of wit and songs of erm… song but my life is currently the equivalent of four headless chickens wandering merrily down the M4 just waiting for the big truck to come and turn me into so much Kentucky Fried Chicken.

I’ve developed a pecuilar habit of suddenly mixing up my consonants, so that when I think I’m saying “sleeping like a log”, I’m actually saying “sleeping like a dog”. I did 8 hours of train travel on Monday (beat that, Joe!), and the eternal sunshine outside isn’t exactly helping. Yesterday one answerphone message gave me some slight hope for the future but of course I misintrepreted it with hilariously dubious consequences. Oh and I’ve lost my watch.

On the plus side, plans are firmly in place for a move up to North Wales for some point in early July. On the minus side, it’ll probably involve a huge convoy of truckers, and then the hunt for cheap/free furniture.

But I shall leave you with an example of just how scatty and disorganised my brain has become.

Last Wednesday, I had a meeting in London. So I jump onto the train, before realising I’ve forgotten the handy piece of paper that tells me where the meeting is. Not a problem, I think. I’ll just log onto work when I get to work and retrieve my email.

Not so simple. The computer refuses to log me in - indeed, I try three times and it locks me out of my account. The IT staff won’t accept proof of my ID unless I either fax them my ID or go up to their office in person. So no score there.

Next step - go up to reception and ask them if they know. The charming receptionist looks through all her papers but can’t find any mention of said meeting. But HQ is a big place, it might not be on the list.

Final step - call the switchboard, randomly pick the relevant department and hope the other person on the line knows where the meeting is. Thankfully, she does.

Unfortunately, it was the day after. I’d gone to the meeting a day early.

but this morning, I did something that I haven’t done for fifteen years. It was curiously and strangely satisfying basking in the glory of the sun, getting wet and dirty with it, and I look forward to years of doing it with Miss R.

Yes, I put some of my laundry out to dry on the washing line.

Ever since I left home at the tender age of 18, joys such as hanging washing out were denied me as I lived in a succession of student, then bedsit, then one-bedroom flats in city suburbs. With no garden or back space, I had to hang my damp clothes on radiators that would slowly turn dark with damp, and wait about a week before the clothes would dry out.

But when I moved into my new temporary digs, it not only came with a cool resident landlord and a huge airy room with jungle plants and wireless internet, it also came with a garden complete with washing line. So early this morning, I was taking my clothes out of the washing machine and hanging them on the washing line, juggling clothes pegs and sagging lines in the glorious sunshine. And lo it was good, working slightly in the sunshine. I stood back, and admired my handiwork as if I had personally handcrafted the Holy Grail of washing.

Fast forward four hours later, and it’s raining in Cardiff and my clothes are probably extraordinarily damp again. Sod’s bloody law.

So, phase #1 of the great move has been completed. Albeit with a huge number of comedy errors that make the Keystone Cops look like they should be engaged in the war on terror.

After seeming to spend the last two weeks throwing, packing and dumping - culminating in a climatic weekend with Miss R and I packing, and dragging five crates of magazines, one crate of glass bottles and 14 bags to the recycling dump - the time came to start the move on a sunny Sunday morning. On quite possibly the hottest day of the year. I was sweating in 10 mins.

So it started - but after an hour of moving stuff from the top floor to the van, the van was only quarter-full - and we still had half a room full of stuff. Miss R unfortunately had to disappear at lunchtime, so for the next two hours, I just lugged boxes from the top floor to the bottom floor.

I then begged Anni for some help in watching the van while I loaded it. And bless her, she took time out from a relaxing Sunday afternoon to sweat, move and generally be indispensable. My mate Dylan also came over to help move a bloody huge TV set - and they both navigated my inept driving of the transit van out of the cul-de-sac, and then onwards to the self-storage depot.

So we got in past the security, the keycodes, lugged three carts of belongings to the first floor, whereupon I suddenly realised that I’d left the keys to the self-storage place back at the flat. So I had to go back and get them while leaving Dylan and Anni - who’d never met before - in what seems to be a nuclear bunker with shopping mall muzak for half an hour. When they could have been relaxing in the garden on a Sunday afternoon. Gawd bless them.

Still, the last time I forgot my keys in moving house, I was moving from London to Cardiff - and didn’t realise till I was at Reading, about 30 mins in. So I had to drive all the way back, go back up to my London flat, and still couldn’t find my keys. Except when I returned to the van and found them in a bag beside me.

Eventually I got back, we lugged up more stuff and squeezed it into the storage space - it was like playing a giant version of Tetris. By the time I released Dylan and Anni from their voluntary duties, it was 7pm and the weather was a lot cooler.

But it wasn’t over. Now I had to move my “essentials” over to where I’m staying for the next month. Calling on the services of Rhys and Scott, this took another couple of hours before I tried to drive the van away while still leaving the side van door open - and then navigate it down a narrow side street. At this point, we were trying to unload the van in the dark, while the odd annoyed motorist buzzed at us to get out of the way - necessitating a drive round the corner to unblock the road.

The van was finally unloaded at 10.30pm - but the fun wasn’t over. I had to go back to the original flat and spend the next couple of hours, cleaning the place, and making a note of the electricity and gas meters. Except in my haste to get out, I left the notebook with the essential details behind. Doh.

So I didn’t get back to my new room till midnight - then it was time for a shower. Then I couldn’t sleep because I was so exhausted. But sleep I managed - until I had to get up early in the morning to return the hire van.

As I left my original flat (which I’d been in for four and a half years) for the last time, this charming sight greeted me.

So many many thanks to Miss R, Dylan and Anni, and Rhys and Scott. Couldn’t have done it without you!