swumin’

Apart from the large Herons that would sweep over us, twist up into clear blue sky before plunging dart-shaped into the crystal sea, there isn’t really much more to say about the local animals, save the mosquitoes that, predictably, dined on European flesh as if it were Soylent Green –which it actually was. We sort of accidentally adopted a dog that we named ‘Wankita’. She was small mangy thing that just started to hang around us. She even slept on the porch one evening (I wasn’t complaining, she could keep the wildlife at bay) but we weren’t going to get too close. For a start she had an owner of sorts and secondly she was a flea theme park. There was an offer to dive with a school of dolphins, we saw them splashing and splishing from the beach, but I just thought, ‘nah, cunts,’ and dismissed the thought as if it were a previously cited bug.

The rest of our stay in Mexico is notably uneventful (save one life-changing event that I’ll come on to later) because something unexpected occurred. I don’t understand why someone would want to lie on a beach all day (and I still don’t) but I hadn’t considered how much I’d enjoy traipsing up and down miles of empty beach with my missus, on one side the rolling cerulean ocean as it smoothed eyeball-shattering white sand, on the other, picture-card palms waving slowly in the merest of breezes, bearing heavy clusters of drupe like an endowment of green and brown bollocks.

But most of all I’d not anticipated how much I enjoyed being in the water itself.

I’ve no objection to swimming in the sea per se but I’m more used to a cold grey muck that chews angrily at pebbles and rocks, the bone freezing stuff that takes five minutes to acclimatise to whilst one tip-toes gingerly over pointy stones, nails and ripped up cans of Blackthorn cider. After much persuading from IC I donned a pair of trunks, walked across the soft dry sand and dipped my toe in to the… fuck-a-donkey, warm crystal water! Like a five-year-old idiot I pounded into the sea and sploshed about in a manner most unbecoming of an English fellow. I dived, dove, ducked, swam and frolicked as waves crashed hither and thither. It was fucking marvellous.

As beach bars punctuated our long walks there was always plenty of opportunity for refreshments, I discovered the more margaritas I absorbed the more fun the sea was. We’d walk, drink, swim, for hours on end, in fact we spent days doing this. There was always time for a spot of serendipity, aside from the comings and goings of the natural habitat one afternoon we bumped into bar with a rock/reggae band playing on the beach. Bloody good they were too, the young, tanned sods.

In the evenings we’d eat locally with our toes wriggling in the sand, sometimes watching the sun set over the sea which was so absurdly beautiful the exact opposite of this unadulterated wonder would be contracting the Ebola virus just before Colour Me Badd’s ‘I wanna Sex you Up’ played on loop until you died.

Alas, all good things come to an end (an understatement if ever there was one) so we decided to end proceedings with a bit of a bang, if you please. As we were flying home from Cackcoon we felt it would be easier to spend a final night there, after a pitifully small amount of research at an internet cafe we found a five star mega hotel by the sea for $99.

This place was enormous, vast. It took ten minutes to walk from one side if it to the other and it featured Japanese Gardens, fucking indoor waterfalls, endless vines dangling from the enormous glass roof all enclosed in a building shaped like a pyramid. It had a convoluted swimming pool with a bar and steps down right on to the beach which had an uncanny effect of making all the natural beauty seem rather sterile. Our room on the 5th Floor was twice the size of our flat; it had a lounge fitted with all mod cons, a small kitchen, a bedroom and two balconies one of which contained a Jacuzzi. I really don’t get those, or maybe that was because when I tried it out I’d acquired a spot of sunstroke the previous day after leaving my silly-yet-effective straw cowboy hat at the cabana.

That evening we had the pleasure of some crooner in one of the bars (quite good he was if I’m honest) despite my managing to chuck my Martini all over the floor during his rendition of Twenty-Four Hours to Tulsa. The other guests were largely rich Americans, some of them quite clearly rich for reasons best described as ‘iffy’ as at times the place resembled the set of Goodfellas.

After our cocktails we retired to our room and ordered pizza and wine, bizarrely. I think it was our way of detuning. We consumed supper in front of a TV the size of a horse, even more peculiar is that we opted to watch a dreadful British horror film called Creep, it featured the London Underground and at one point, London Fields, for all intense and purposes, home.

After a quick swim in the pool the following morning it was time to go. We packed and got the cab to the airport for our 4pm flight, as we took off we flew right past our hotel and, worryingly, didn’t really seem to gain much height for next hour so which caused me to freak out. It was a shocking flight, more ups and downs than Amy Winehouse and with a disturbing view over the flooded plains of Mississippi. After circling for half an hour we landed in Detroit, passed through customs after being interrogated by a jobs worth prick (everyone else went straight through, not us –and I was fucking sober) and hit a miserable wine bar.

We all know ‘American’ and ‘wine’ are as compatible as ‘shine’ and ‘shit,’ the muck they served in the place, and the pompous way in which it was served, was enough to make one almost sick. ‘Almost,’ not entirely, as it was consumed, albeit speedily. As we left some tool with a baseball hat called over to us, ‘hey, you young crazy kids…’ ‘Young!!’ I snorted back, ‘I’m 42.’ Which shut the dick up.

The flight back to London wasn’t as bad as we had a couple of good films to watch and, of course, lashing of food and drink. We landed at midday UK time but for us it was good knows when, we took the bus home feeling all weird and finally arrived back at the flat a couple of hours later. I weakly carried my wife over the threshold and we had some champagne to cheer us both up.

It’s worth mentioning that the threshold we crossed was no longer the rented accommodation we left. It was now our flat following a phone call at 5am Mexico time from our Agent.

Before the wedding (we’ll come on to that next time) and during the honeymoon we’d been having daily conversations with our solicitors and the vendor as we tied up the last of the details. But this wasn’t all, I’d been having similar conversations with my solicitor regarding the sale of that place I own in Sarf Landan, regular readers will recall that my neighbour is a steaming great cunt. Astonishingly, following the 5am call I got another one at 5.30 informing me I’d finally rid myself of that dreadful place after five years of unimaginable hassle. Even typing this now it doesn’t feel real. But it is. Yay.

Gerry’s chart and tune make a welcome return (it’s presented all funny for reasons unknown) enjoy the selected hit from his parade (perhaps an unsurprising choice to those in the know –and well done for some spot on advertising at the beginning of the video. Jesus Christ) and I’ll be back next week.

30
Yuck
Shook Down
29
Chase And Status
Time
28
Incubus
Adolescents
27
King Blues
I Want You
26
Paramore
Monster
25
Kings Of Leon
Back Down South
24
Ed Sheeran
The A Team
23
Brother
New Year’s Day
22
Moby
The Day
21
The Blackout
Never By Your Side
20
Avenged Sevenfold
So Far Away
NE
19
Miles Kane
Rearrange
18
Arctic Monkeys
Don’t Sit Down
17
P J Harvey
The Glorious Land
16
The Wombats
Techno Fan
15
The Vaccines
All In White
13
14
The National
Conversation 16
13
Miles Kane
Inhaler
12
Frankie + The Heartstrings
That Postcard
11
Motorhead
I Know How To Die
10
The Kills
Future Starts Slow
9
Martin Solveig ft Kele
Ready 2 Go
8
Depeche Mode
Personal Jesus 2011
7
Black Keys
Next Girl
6
Foo Fighters
Walk
5
Kaiser Chiefs
Little Shocks
4
White Lies
Holy Ghost
3
Adele
Set Fire To The Rain
2
Bring Me The Horizon
Blessed With A Curse
1
The Horrors
Still Life

croach

Not all the Mexican creatures that posed a threat were figments of my imagination, though some had the power to substantially revolt. On the second day, whilst walking down a dusty road, IC let out a gasp and pointed to a creature lying slumped by the side of road. I immediately assumed, as did she, it was a dead dog, more specifically, a small dead Labrador. We didn’t really want to approach it so we crossed over the road and passed on the other side. But something wasn’t quite right. When adjacent to the corpse curiosity took the better of me and I gingerly approached. What I discovered arrived so fast into my brain my head snapped back due to unprecedented disgust in a catalyst of utter shock. It was a fucking enormous rat.

That evening, after a dinner of nachos, guacamole, fresh shellfish and Margarita’s, we spent our first night in our new accommodation having arrived from Cancun the day before. It was a nice place, clean, cheap and set back from the main road in the central part of Tulum, a world away from the dump we’d stayed in on our first night after landing… allow me to digress.

Before arriving at Cancun we’d flown from Italy (following a two hour drive to the airport) at 11am local time. When we arrived at the airport we had enough time to stuff a few drinks down our necks before taking-off, and I’m pleased to say that after lunch over the Atlantic, which wasn’t too bad, Delta airlines reluctantly served us wine throughout the trip. By the time we reached Atlanta I was half cut and in a bad mood as I was aware that we had to do another routine of take-off/land, both of which I find fucking objectionable, as I did the cunts in the Airport. Even the bar staff.

The flight to Cancun was in a relatively small plane and to make matters worse, dry. I was delighted, initially, to land, until I saw where we’d landed. Cancun, dear reader, is a shite-hole. To add insult to injury the hotel the miserable taxi driver took us to was under a newly built flyover (apparently the only one in the region) and looked like Colditz.

It was 8pm local time and dark. We’d been up for 24 hours straight, we were jet-lagged, hung over and last thing I needed was to be pitched by the fat Mexican concierge, with food on his shirt, about how great his mates restaurant was, and how he was going to reserve a table, right now, “especially, for you.” (at which point he grinned and gunned us a pair of stubby fingers.)

I instantly told him where to get off, until IC reminded me we didn’t know where the fuck we were and both of us were in need of food and drink. The offer was reluctantly accepted and off we went. We both felt weird, for reasons cited, but also because we were both not entirely sure we’d done the right thing by being here in the first place, ‘here’ being Mexico.

The food in the restaurant was excellent, butterfly shrimp with lots of garlic sauce, and gradually we settled into our new environment. Seven Mariachi, all dressed to the nines, arrived and began to play loudly. It felt authentic enough as most of our fellow diners were Mexican, but still a bit tacky on account of my cynicism, either way it was entertaining enough (in a bemusing sort of way at least)and IC and I began to warm up. This faded quite soon after we left the restaurant as no taxi driver knew where our hotel was and we were both properly shattered. It took them half an hour to locate (it was here we learnt that we lived under the only fucking flyover in Cancun). Once it’d been discovered all I can remember is paying the driver almost nothing through gritted teeth and suddenly it was morning.

We left for Talum as soon as we could the following day, suffered a two hour coach ride to our destination and set about finding somewhere to stay. This was quite easy, it was the start of low season so we had a choice of accommodation, not all of it good but a choice nonetheless. After an hour we found a nice little place -clean, cheap, quiet- and only a five minute cab ride to the beach. Both of us were happy to dip in and out of the whole beach ‘thing,’ but we preferred the idea of being in town -well I say town; it was more of a lazy A road with bars, restaurants and shops lining both sides.

After our day, still a bit behind on sleep, we went to bed at 11-ish. I was woken at 2 am by IC yelping and scrabbling for the light, when it came on I saw a three inch long cockroach calmly sat on her leg, at which point she screamed. Now, I’d never seen an actual cockroach before so it took me a very short while to decide if it was frightening or not. I concluded decisively that it was and joined her.

The roach shot over the bed clothes and ran under the bed, we both alighted and stood at the farthest corner of the room staring at the last place the creature had been visible. IC decided that unless it was instantly dispatched she’d wait outside until morning, so it was down to muggings to deal with it. But first I needed a big shit.

Obviously IC wasn’t best pleased at the timing of my ablutions but the earlier meal of shellfish, nachos and guacamole weren’t going to stand casually by, indeed, they were most insistent. Unfortunately there was a large gap under the loo door, even in her moment of fear she knew I was somewhat vulnerable should the roach decide it wanted to check out the source of the commotion, so she agreed to keep watch from a chair as far away from the bed as possible.

I was mid-way through dropping a third Presidente when I heard another, slightly more protracted, scream. Then, “it’s on the fucking door!”

Door? Which door..? My heart stopped.

I heard it scratching outside the very door I was behind crouching out my dinner. Quick as a flash I dropped the rest of my nachos. ‘No time to wipe,’ I muttered as I grabbed a flip-flop off the floor and rose to my feet. I swung back the door and there it was, a mere inch from my face. I didn’t waste a second and I smashed the bastard as hard as I could. To my astonished horror it resisted the first few blows but gradually it began to flatten and, with stuff oozing from its back, dropped to the floor where I killed the shit out of it.

I flung it outside, kissed my wife with a wink, and then went back to the bathroom to wipe my bottom.

beest

I’ve absolutely no clue how to start this one.

It’s been the longest time since I started writing this crap that I’ve not posted, but that’s not really a sufficient way to begin. If I were to only say that the last month has been the best period of my life to date that would be plaintively unfair to the few remaining buggers that still perceiver with this… So I’m forced to start with an incident that took place on the sixth night of our trip in Mexico.

We were staying in what can best be described a bug infested treehouse. The correct word for such accommodation is ‘cabana’ but as we were on the second floor of a wooden structure with a straw-thatched roof built round a tree, one that backed onto a full-on fuck-off jungle (with Jaguars and snakes as long as two dead men, we discovered later) I think ‘treehouse’ is just fine. Besides, it’s us that were staying there, not you. And I can’t imagine you’ve been there.

This gaff had no electricity and the bog was cruder than Jim Davidson on a stag-do in Hull with a flush weaker than vicarage barley water. The four litres of liquid we kept in the plastic mini-drum by the bed wasn’t just for drinking, believe me. IC and I were forced to sleep under a fairly ineffective mosquito net that had miserably failed to keep these vicious little parasites off our ankles, legs, and my case, ball bag. I know we were woken at 2am by something because we had to use the light from IC’s phone to ascertain what the Christ had made a noise in our ‘room’. We were both more than aware that whatever had gained entry had done so with ease, I’d already pointed to the gaping gaps in the mesh-wall and roof when I’d begged IC to reconsider our (her) choice of hotel earlier that morning before we’d taken the coach to Chichen Itza to see the Mayan ruins.

We’d had an exhausting but super day out. I’d advise anyone to go and visit this place, the four hour journey there and back from Tulum, where we were based, was more than worth it -if only to see the ‘real’ Mexico. i.e. endless plains and jungle interspersed with almost third world levels of poverty and degradation from the windows of the air conditioned coach in which we travelled.

The pyramid at Chichen Itza is simple awe-inspiring and we devoured information as we traipsed about the site learning of the natives that built and inhabited this part of the ancient world. The only snag was that it was forty degrees and the heat debilitating, in addition to this the place contained horned lizards which, I discovered, frighten the living fuck out of me. These bastards could be three feet long and had the propensity to move in a way that, on recollection, inspires me to copiously vomit all over my underwear. No. No.

As IC wasn’t exactly basking in the heat (unlike the horned dinosaurs) it wasn’t much of an issue encouraging her into the air conditioned bar where they sold delicious mango margaritas for about two bucks a pop. Of the four hours we spent at the site three were in the bar watching mainly Mexican waiters, brightly coloured locals spinning about with bottles on their heads -some sort of tourist side show set against this dreadful din of twanging Spanish guitars- and each other with varying levels of yellow ice in our cocktail glasses.

By the time we arrived back to Tulum at eight-ish it was dark and we were feeling a little sordid from the cocktails and journey, so we popped back to the bar nearest the treehouse and spent a pleasant evening drinking and eating fresh nachos with guacamole. All had been tickety-boo until 2am.

My first thought that the creature thrashing about was one of those horned cunts, I must’ve verbalised this in a hissing shriek because I was told by IC that I was being ridiculous. She scanned the phone over the room, a plastic bag containing some toiletries a few feet away had fallen onto the floor. I’m not ashamed to say I lay behind her paralyzed with fear. It couldn’t have fallen by itself… it must have been knocked over by, by…

Then to entertain most horrific primeval fears, IC uttered something so completely terrifying I nearly, and mean really nearly, shat the bed.

“There is something looking at us.”

She had stopped moving the phone now and was directing the weak silvery light at a sizable dark shape a foot away from the side of the bed. Caught in the middle of the shape were a dull pair of little beady lights staring right back.

I was so frightened I actually tried to ignore it by rolling over and going to sleep. I know I was saying ‘No’ a lot because IC told me that I was, and then, what was I going to do about it? I wasn’t going to do anything about it. But it was still there, motionless as they had been at Chichen Itza before suddenly moving like fucking lightening.

It wasn’t a question of gathering courage; it was simply shit-filled fear that shifted my thinking away from ignoring it to doing something about the problem. Images of their earlier behaviour swarmed into my head. Still one second, suddenly running the next. Stop. Start. It had stopped, any fucking second it would…

I clambered out the mosquito net and jumped off the opposite side of the bed to where the creature lay; definitely expecting it to run under the bed, up my legs and using my genitals as purchase launch itself into my face and eat itself into my screaming mouth. When this didn’t happen I continued my flailing journey round the bed until, what seemed an age, arrived at the still dark shape whereupon I gathered every last quark of audacity to dash toward it, shouting. I drew back my leg and released it at the stationary monster; my foot shot from under me and made contact with a large plastic container two thirds full of water, stubbing my fucking toe in the process.

barewiv

Hello

I’m still here you know… just trying to gather a few words together to convey the past month

I’m not giving anything away now but I’ll tell you this. I’m very, very angry…

Watch this space