Has anyone else noticed that roads always seem to be totally empty until you get near enough to cross them? Then all of a sudden, a load of cars will appear out of nowhere, as if by magic, and you have to wait ages to cross what was previously a quiet road. It seems to happen to me all the time and I just thought it was a rather strange phenomenon, so wondered if anyone else noticed it.

Ok this is probably really dumb, but I am going to put it out there anyway, because I can and I might as well.

Shrimp, crabs and lobsters etc are essentially the insects of the sea - granted lobsters would be big insects, but still that is pretty much what they are. So how come people are perfectly happy to eat insects if they live under water, but don't like the idea of eating bugs that live on the land? People eat fried grasshoppers etc, but this is considered to be totally weird; where as shrimp is entirely normal.

I'm not saying this like I don't do it - I love shrimp, but it'd be a cold day in hell before I'd eat a stag beetle or something. Maybe it's just a cultural thing, as we have been brought up to think that bugs/beetles (they are different you know) are pests and not food.

Come to think of it, it's probably just because we don't find crabs and shrimp scurrying around the kitchen and loitering in the bathroom when you go in there in the middle of the night - just ready to scare the hell out of you when you least expect it. I would definitely be freaked out if there was a crab chilling out in the sink.

This reminds me - I had some great shrimp the other day. It was at this awesome steak house that we found. You get a steak/steak pieces and then some other random thing to go with it, like chicken, pork, fish, shrimp or even lobster. It was a fantastic restaurant and allowed me to drop 'Steak?' into the conversation a good few times.

It has just occurred to me that (once again) I failed to give the previous month a score. Probably because the whole scoring thing was a lame one off statement that I have kind of stuck with for some reason, but don't care enough about to remember to do it properly.

Anyway, July scores 10/10. I visited many of my friends (apologies to the ones I didn't get to see), bought a laptop, got myself totally ready for my trip to Japan and, as far as I can remember, achieved largely everything that I set out to achieve. Therefore it is in essence a perfect month. I know there will be other months that may surpass it, but they will still just score 10/10 - it's not going to be like a Spinal Tap moment where it goes up to 11.

Oh and on a side note, I thought I'd promote a song I have been enjoying recently. It is by a band called The Sadtowns, who are from Norwich and feature our very own Dave. The song I particularly like is 'Alien Song'. Give it a listen and see what you think.

Anyway, time for me to head off for my first day at work me thinks...

Thought I would post something on here as I hate to leave it unused. This is just a rehashed version of 'The Walk' on Katakandy. As it is the same footage but fiddled with, I thought it'd be more suited going on here than on Katakandy. Anyway, watch it if you want.

I thought I better get this post published now, otherwise any longer and the words 'last weekend' will no longer apply. Anyway...

Last weekend was my penultimate weekend spent in England's pastures green. To help me get the most out of it, I was joined by a load of my friends, most of whom I had been unable to see during my last trip to Hull the previous weekend.

On Thursday I met up with Rami after work. He had got to Lincoln earlier in the afternoon and was taking some time out to chill with his new book by Danny Wallace. I met him (Rami, not Danny Wallace) in the Walkabout pub, which is only a couple of minutes from my office and we spent some time chewing the fat. We then headed over to Yates pub for dinner, before heading back to my house for the evening. It during this evening that Rami shared with me the address of a most excellent flickr stream, which I am sure some of you will enjoy.

On the Friday I had to go back to work, so Rami spent his day exploring Lincoln. I finished at 3pm so I joined back up with Rami at the Walkabout pub. After a little while we headed over to the station to meet Nick, who was on his way to Lincoln to join us. We picked Nick up at the station and headed back to Walkabout for a hearty meal and a much needed pint, as it was unreasonably hot again. After that we went back to the station where we were joined by Ian and shortly afterwards by Ben who arrived by car. We all squeezed in to his car (much at the delight of his suspension no doubt) and headed back over to my house.

Once everyone had dumped their stuff, we then walked back into town to go get some drinks. Unfortunately, as I don't go on nights out in Lincoln, I was a decidedly rubbish tour guide when it came to where we should go for a pint. In the end I decided we should go down to the wharf as the high street pubs were packed and I am too much of an old man for hot, busy places with loud music (damned young people). We went into a nice pub down at the wharf which was quite quiet and pretty much an old man's pub, which only had young people going into it because it was right next to all the other pubs and it had no queue at the bar. It was very pleasant and the cold pints of cider were decidedly welcome in the hot, humid conditions.

After that we made our way back to the high street and went to Walkabout pub, which was very busy. We stayed in there for a couple of hours before heading off to get a takeaway and then getting a taxi back to my house. I was rather pleased to discover the location of the takeaway as I only knew the whereabouts of one other takeaway in Lincoln and it was highly suspect.

On the Saturday we generally just loafed around for the day. We were joined in the afternoon by Ed and Tom who had driven over from Hull for the evening. I had planned to do a big barbeque but, typically enough, a rather nasty storm descended from the heavens and considerably reduced our inclination to go outside. So instead we just grilled/cooked all the food and it all ended up quite well. We then all went to the pub as the rain had subsided and chilled out there for a few hours, which was cool.

After returning from the pub, Ed and Tom made their way back to Hull and the rest of us went to bed (after people had got more of their fix of JFK Reloaded – a game Rami had become obsessed with on my pc).

On Sunday, it was time for everyone to make their way back to their respective homes. The guys left at various intervals throughout the day, with Nick and Rami leaving last around mid-afternoon. I then spend the rest of my day chillin’ like a villain and copying some of my vast collection of mp3s onto my laptop – a task which has taken me most of the week’s evenings to finish.

It is now boiling down to the last few days, as those of you who have been paying attention to the countdown timer on Katakandy will have noticed. I am largely ready for it now. All I need to do is sort out some new trainers (at long last) and then sort out my train ticket down to Heathrow airport. I will probably do one more post on Monday on here and then the next post I do after that will be from Japan – how exciting.

I know I still haven’t posted about last weekend yet, but I assure you I will do it soon – my account of it is rather dull anyway. So consider this an intermission….

For the last few days I have been suffering from toothache. As I am sure most of you will know, from previous experience, toothache is utterly infuriating. It isn’t so much the pain itself as that is reasonably mild for the most part; it is just the fact that it is unrelenting which causes so much frustration.

Now aside from wondering why life hates me so much as to inflict me with a dental disaster shortly before I am due to emigrate to a largely non-English speaking country, I have also been thinking about what I can do to relieve the symptoms until such time as I am able to visit a dentist [I checked online and there are quite a few English speaking dentists in the area I am moving to – good thing I am not being stuck in the countryside or I’d be screwed].

I have just had my lunch break at work, so I decided that it’d be sensible to go get some Sensodyne toothpaste, as that is supposed to be helpful, and also buy some uber-strong Ibuprofen. Now those of you that know me well will recall that I loath taking pills due to my innate inability to swallow them [I don’t know why; I am just hopeless at taking medicine. I’m sure we all remember the chewy multi-vitamins]. However I had conveniently forgotten this at the time of purchase. I got back to the office and opened the packet to discover these giant, blue orb-like capsules – each one about the size of a baby elephant. It suddenly dawned on me that I would probably have more chance of being able to swallow my own head than swallow one of these capsules. I put one in mouth regardless and gave it a shot.

After several ‘Argh!-I’m-going-to-choke-on-this-crap’-ridden moments, I decided that I was definitely not going to be able to get this thing down my throat in one piece. I decided that as it seemed to be of the same consistency as a jelly bean that I would just chew it and then swallow it – how bad could it be?

Shortly after biting into the capsule, I remembered that they had been described as “liquid filled” capsules. Almost immediately there after, the taste of said liquid became apparent. The flavour reminded me of the time that I learned another valuable life lesson, when I found out why teachers told you not to chew/suck on the end of biros. The liquid then managed to effect a rather unpleasant burning sensation throughout the whole of my mouth, causing me to rush to the bathroom in order to rapidly eject this vile concoction. My mouth then continued to produce an alarming amount of saliva for several minutes, giving me a lovely insight into life with rabies.

So basically, in an attempt to quell a mild toothache, I managed to napalm my entire mouth and still not solve the initial problem. Essentially, Ibuprofen is the US Military of painkillers – well, if you make a complete mess of things like I did anyway.

At least I have learned a very valuable lesson, which I now pass on to you – never bite into an ‘Anadin Ultra Ibuprofen’ capsule. It is about as pleasant as setting fire to yourself, only to then find that you are somehow still cold.

NB: Shortly after writing this, my toothache seems to have died down quite a bit. It seems to be helped chewing sugar-free gum. Thankfully I am in possession of approximately 2-3 million packs of Extra sugar-free gum at any one time, so all should be well for the time being.

I have no idea what that means – I just had it in my head. It must be from an advert or something – who knows where these things come from. Not that it matters.

As per usual, my posting has become subject to delay. I am sure I could come up with various plausible reasons as to why this occurred, or I could bore you with the tedious truth of it all, but let's go for a more stylised, outlandish reason as to why I haven't posted on here for a while…

On and off this past week, I have been undergoing special training for a highly secret mission for the Federal Bureau of H'Investigation. Yes, that's right – I am an undercover operative for the Jamaican government. Well, no doubt considerably less undercover now that I have broadcast it on possibly the furthest reaching medium of information in the world – t'internet (well, other than the BBC World Service perhaps). Anyway, that is neither here nor there. I'm afraid the nature of the training and of the mission is highly classified, so I am not permitted to divulge any details – just be assured that it would be a highly interesting read and that it would be a perfectly reasonable account as to why I have been unable to post about the last week until now.

Enough of this twoddle – let's take a trip back down memory lane and visit last Tuesday in a detective novel, self-narrative stylee [wibbly-wobbly screen effect ensues]…

It was a cold, dark night… wait a moment – no it wasn't. It wasn't remotely cold or dark – it wasn't even night. It was Tuesday morning; it was hot and it was sunny. I had taken the day off work to travel down to London so that I could sort out my visa, as I was due to travel to Japan for a year in less than a fortnight. Lesser men would've recoiled at the thought of a day in London on the hottest day of the year, but I didn't care – I had a job to do. The train was crowded – like a village fete, but without bouncy castles or a pond. It failed to make a dent on my steely determination to succeed. The breeze from the AirCon whistled down the train like a cool, silent whistle.

I arrived in Kings Cross at 11:21 and was greeted by a stench so vile that it made my eyes water. This was London alright. I made my way out onto the streets and began my long, hard walk to Regent Street – home of the Nova Groups London office. The sun bore down on me like a giant, yellow radiator in the sky; unrelenting in its perpetual desire to make everyone perspire to an uncomfortable degree. I couldn't let it deter me.

I made it to Regent Street and stopped to gather my thoughts. The heat had caused them to scatter – like youths evading the police after an unsuccessful attempt on a liquor store. My sudden lapse in cognitive ability had led me to forget where on Regent Street the Nova offices were located. This could become a problem. Fortunately, time was on my side, so without further ado I pulled my phone from my pocket and dialled the number for the Nova offices. The woman greeted me like only a Nova receptionist could. I filled her in on the details of my predicament and she was quick to resolve the situation. She directed me from my current location to the offices with the greatest of ease; you could tell she had directed people before.

Upon reaching the offices, I noticed that I still had time to kill before my impending meeting with the big wigs. If they could wait then so could I. I asked the doorman how to get to the Japanese embassy. It seemed like a good idea to suss out the route, so that if I had to make a hasty getaway later, my options were open.

The doorman's directions proved sound as I soon found myself stood at the doors of the most Japanese embassy in all of London. With the route now firmly secured in my mind, I headed back to Regent Street.

The incredible heat and my constant walking were beginning to take their toll and I knew I needed to act fast. I immediately made my way to Oxford street to search for the nearest Starbucks, which transpired to be a considerable distance from Regent Street.

I entered the Starbucks and ordered a good old cup of tropical fruit juice blended tea. It tasted like only tropical fruit juice can taste and was as cool as a Snowman's skiing holiday. I knew then that I had made the right decision.

I headed back to Nova and waited for my time to be up. Time passed slowly – seconds felt like minutes, minutes felt like hours, hours felt like slightly longer hours. I read my guide to life in Japan and allowed my mind to relax.

Then the time came. I made my way up the stairs to join the other future Nova employees. They were a mixed bunch, all of whom had their own story to tell. We were given the information we wanted and the certificates we required. With this now complete, we made our way to the embassy.

I began to chat to a young beauty by the name of Fiona. Her hair was as gold as gold can be and her eyes were as blue as the Windows taskbar. We spoke of many things in our short time together, but all too soon the time to part had come.

My time in the embassy was brief and uneventful, save for a disagreement between my belt and the metal detector. A group of us headed to the nearest Pub to discuss the day's events and our new lives in the land of the rising sun.

A couple of hours later and it was time to depart. I had a long walk ahead of me and I had become pressed for time. I bid my farewells and made my way back to Kings Cross station. The walk was long and hard; my feet felt I had been walking on hot coals.

I arrived at Kings Cross only moments before my train was due to leave. I made my way to the far carriage and hopped on. My only option was to stand in the intersection between carriages. It was hot and busy and there was no AirCon. Sweat trickled from my brow like a waterfall and managed to exacerbate an already uncomfortable situation. The sun had won this round and didn't I just know it.

The train ride seemed to last forever – it amazes me I'm not still there now. I eventually returned home, knowing that the day had been a success and I could now rest easy.


THE END


Well, there you go – that was something a bit different. Also, I neglected to highlight in my little story that during my day in London my laptop was delivered.  I am currently using it to do this post (well this last little bit as the rest was done at work) and it is most excellent.  

This is looking to turn into a giant post actually as I have managed to ramble on for ages and I still have last weekend to cover as well. I think I will cover that in a separate post, otherwise this will become some sort of epic post of ridiculous proportions. So then – onto the next post…