LET’S TWIST AGAIN

We’re currently sat in a truck stop outside Tulsa, Oklahoma as there have been tornado warnings and softball-sized hail spotted nearby. According to CNN, eight people died in a tornado just up the road yesterday. Regardless of the fact we both desperately want to see a tornado, we have been ordered to hole up at Flying J’s as our RV will “definitely tip over”; the truck stop becoming our version of Dorothy Gales’ underground bunker. Some of the truckers have been holed up here for three days, begging the question what would they do without endless episodes of CSI, which jump seamlessly from Las Vegas to New York to Miami, keeping their coffee-addled, chocolate chip-sized brains entertained.

Just as the interstates have superseded old stagecoach routes, truck stops have become the lawless, sheriff-less towns of the Wild-West. Truckers cuss, whores make midnight calls by knocking on cabs and 52oz beakers of coffee replace shots of whisky.

I guess I’ll have to leave my Jan De Bont- inspired dream until I beg for a job from my friend George; a real-life storm-chaser. Until then we’re stuck here checking the news and watching a real-time radar image as the yellow band signifying a tornado gets bigger and closer, waiting for this twister to hit.

24 HOURS IN TULSA

You know you’re unwell when the noise that emanates from your arse is the same as the trucker in the next cubicle. Morgan Spurlock famously ate McDonalds for 30 days. While we ain’t been eating McDonalds, it’s near impossible to eat anything healthy in this country. May I respectfully suggest, Mr. Spurlock , that you try living in an RV with my girlfriend and no electricity, water or LP for two months.

When you do find a Walmart (preferred choice of 200,000,000 North Americans) that does sell fresh produce, it comprises one fiftieth of the floor space. Everything else is packaged and processed. Artificial. It’s not surprising that they never venture off their couches. Despite possessing some of the world’s most beautiful sights, in between them, America feels like an imitation of a country; every supermarket, every truck stop is built to the same specification; reflections of each other, which is as confusing as shopping in a hall of mirrors.

Outside the town of Foyil, OK is Ed Galloway’s world-famous Totem Pole Park. It’s a typical example of the kitsch tat I was talking about. In his infinite wisdom, Mr Galloway decided to dedicate his life and land to building, amongst ten others, the world’s tallest totem pole.

I guess it’s these kinds of sights that make Route 66 what it is. As the light faded fast, just down the road we stumbled across The Blue Whale of Catoosa.

It is the remnant of a water-park where hippies in the Seventies used to dive into a lake from. High on L.S.D. naked yet covered in mud, with long tits and muffs down to their knees, no doubt.

TOO MUCH FIGHTING ON THE DANCEFLOOR

What I would call ghost towns, are somehow still inhabited.

Like Afton, Oklahoma.

Tumbleweed actually blows down the main streets and long deserted red bricked banks, fire-stations, bar-brawl saloons and ballrooms are now served by one still-open grocery store.

We walked into one to ask for directions and an autograph book was thrust in our faces. A man with long, dyed-black hair, a double-digit broken nose and covered head to boot in denim (even his eyes had a stonewash blue hue) asked where we were from…

“England” I replied.

“You wanna buy a meat grinder?” he enquired, holding one out with his left hand as though it was the most normal question in the world.

THIS AIN’T KANSAS

Route 66 is full of kitsch tat, leftovers, curios and bric-a-brac. Exactly the kind of shit that Natalie loves.

Antique shops full to the brim with rusted old school lunchboxes, old licence plates, signs, 78rpm records (like the ones my mum gave me as I’m the only one in the family with a working “gramophone” - you know, the ones which you can’t play unless you have a hole-extension) dolls, gollywogs, broken bikes, kid’s cowboy pop-guns, 1940’s games and hundred year old photographs which make you think about dead people’s lives and just how ugly women were at the advent of photography. In actual fact I do quite like looking at all that stuff, but not all the time… for me the geography and people of the land are more important… The Knight Rider lunchbox was pretty cool though, but maybe only as it reminds me of my own Hasslehoff-like, thousand yard stare when I’ve had too little sleep, which is becoming nearly every night.

And we all know what happens when my insomnia hits…

Route 66 was decommissioned in 1985, the year that Natalie was born and replaced by five Interstates, or Superslabs. Sometimes we take the replacement interstate and sometimes the old Mother Road which arcs into Kansas briefly. We hopped off Interstate 44 and onto the 400 to follow Route 66 passed a banana bridge constructed in the 1920’s; before the road came into being. We whizzed passed it at high speed.

In Kansas, we stopped in Gallena before making our way into Oklahoma, unfortunately missing the Spook Lights of Joplin. Strange balls of light that levitate above roads. Not cos we got lost, but because we arrived in daylight. However, that said sometimes the old route is not signposted at all, leaving it to your own imagination and internal compass. As a result we have taken wrong turns and bumped along farm tracks, while dark storm clouds gather over coloured carbon copies of Aunt Em’s farm.

If we saw a Tin Man, he would definitely feel at home in our giant baked-bean can. If he was searching for a heart, the lion for courage and the scarecrow for a brain, then what the hell am I searching for?

I’ve come to think I’m searching for something to search for…

Or something worth finding.

I think I found her.

Is that just plain old crazy?

Need.

Sleep.

MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS

Missouri begins with the city of St. Louis, where the famed Gateway Arch overlooks the Mississippi like a giant advertisement for a new fast food restaurant… NcDonalds.

Think about it, you'l get there in the end.

We got lost on the confusing intersections and drove through the hood once again to get our bearings. Although we are in the Mid-West, it feels like we were back in the Deep South. People sit, occasionally waving at us from their wooden porches as we pass and Creole-sounding street names have reappeared. They say this is where the South begins, and it really rings true.


We drove miles out of the way to get petrol and stopped at a famer's market for bread, cheese and oranges. That's all we need; food, petrol, map, each other and the sun.

Some miles along the road we stopped at antique shops in the hometown of the first battle of the Civil War, Carthage.

In the west of that town lies the Route 66 Drive-in theatre, which was showing The Fast and The Furious later that Friday night, but was closed when we pulled up; slow but still a little miffed.


We stopped in Carterville, Missouri, home of the Route 66 Superman Museum.


But it was closed.

In the town of Webb City, north of Joplin, we happened across a small-town fair, complete with funfair rides, candy floss and a real Indian selling dreamcatchers and T-Shirts emblazoned with Native Americans and reading “Homeland Security… Protecting America since 1492”

On a stage in the town square a local barbershop quartet crooned to a crowd of twenty five, all seated in school chairs. They were pretty good. It was the kind of town funfair that pregnant teenagers wander round on that weekend every year and every year it is rained off.

Will they never learn?

GET YOUR KICKS

We joined Route 66 in Dwight, south of Chicago and immediately our souls were buoyed.

We stopped for photo-opportunities at a characteristic road-side diner and disused gas stations, alternating the superslab for old R66 to make sure we get back to California as quick as we could.

In the capital city of Springfield, Illinois lies the tomb of our second assassinated President; lawyer and soldier Abraham Lincoln.

I don’t know that much about his life, perhaps I’ll read up, but I do know he helped abolish slavery, which makes him alright in my book.

In his impressive mausoleum, we joined a party of school kids on a field trip and were treated to a guided tour of his final resting place and the fascinating story of how a gang plotted to steal Lincoln’s body, but a co-conspirator got drunk and blurted the plan to a whore. By the next morning, the whole town knew of the plot. Thinking about assassinated Presidents and the like, Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth, Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald, Martin Luther King by James Earl Ray… do all assassins have three names?


That night we stayed at Beaver Dam State Park in Illinois as a treat after all the car parks, to refuel with electricity and to use the dump station. A tall wooden pier stood overlooking a midge infested lake so we watched a Canada Goose rearranging her nest; keeping her eggs warm.


Anyway it’s time to go to bed. Those fireside baked potatoes have made me sleepy.

Signing off… Will Howell-Cornes

FNG

Drawn to the hood like flies around shit, we parked in the ghetto yet again and placing the RV on craigslist.com and eBay, we waited a couple of days to hear absolutely nothing from either… Spending the days trying to post and repost on craigslist in Panera Bread (free wifi and great pumpkin muffins) we got bored so went and got drunk in an Irish bar, just missing Arsenal and Liverpool’s 4-4 draw but joining in with the regulars watching Cash Cab.

A few people called in answer to the for sale sign on the truck, including the police, who left us a lovely $50 fine for “selling a vehicle on a commercial property” A quick trip to the cop shop, and using her new-found confidence and charm which has finally rubbed off on my partner in crime, a nice lady-cop let Natalie off on account of her being from England. By way of a receipt she gave Natalie a photocopy of the ticket and wrote FNG in big letters.

Found Not Guilty.

After a whistle stop in Downtown Chicago, we had a great, sunny day at Lincoln Park Zoo, with my favourite animals being the Sand Cats, which I didn’t even know existed. I haven’t been to a zoo in about 15 years, I think. I find it cruel to see big cats and polar bears locked behind cages bored and pacing. It was like looking in a mirror, they reminded me of us, of our lives… bored and stagnant.

So we decided to head back to LA along Route 66 as we believe that we’ll have more luck selling our behemoth in California. Setting out early evening we immediately had a sense of purpose. It would cost us God-knows-how-much in gasoline, but at least we had a plan. 150 miles out someone called wanting to buy the van, they were four hours north of Chicago and we were south, so we had to leave it and just take it as a good sign that someone will eventually buy it.

WITNESS

Driving west on the 90 through Indiana we were detoured from the main highway along some smaller roads. At first this unrehearsed ball-ache seeemd like it was cutting into our time yet it turns out, as the saying goes, that sometimes the journey ellipses the destination and on this occasion it truly did. from the point on, we made a vow to each other, we would not scramble back cross-country at such a break-neck speed.

We saw a real, living Amish person doing road maintenance in the town of LaGrange and then drove through several Amish towns eventually settling in Shipshewana. With a curious mix of new meets old, black, horse drawn carriages clip-clopped passed cars or pulled up next to petrol pumps.

The "plain people" as they are known are tri-lingual, speaking English, High German and Pennsylvanian-Dutch though here it is with a Swiss dialect. Amish children in traditional dress rode bikes or played volleyball in headscarves, hats and dungarees no doubt before a dinner of cooked ham shoulders and potato salad served with hunks of crusty bread while the townsfolk sang Christian hymns and built barns in a day.

It was a refreshing change to the Interstate, a glimpse of something different from The United States of Generica, our new name for this secured wifi, mall-infested country.

No sign of Harrison Ford or any evidence the Amish are good at bowling though.

As the sun set on another day we made our way towards South Bend and then onto Chicago.

EVERYTHING MUST GO

So its time to sell the RV, our home for the past two months.
Truth be told, I can’t wait to see the back of it.
Here is the advert we put on craigslist.com

CURSED RV FOR SALE

Alleged 1990 Fleetwood Flair Motorhome, although we firmly believe it may be a bronze age prototype.

120,000 miles on the clock. FACT. The black fellow we bought it from was adamant about this.

Length: Undetermined. Although a nice man, with what he thought was a dingo, but was actually just a dog, instructed us it was 26 feet. Personally, we believe it's roughly the length of two medium sized cars.

Feel free to bring a tape measure or a pedometer.

Slight damage to rear.
It's probably not worth getting this fixed.
You'd only be throwing money down the drain.

It does go!

Miles to the gallon:
Unsure, although it has almost bankrupted us.

0 to 60 when going downhill.

We have never needed to do an oil change or check the tyre pressure.
We don't know how.

Really long, curly dipstick.

Two non-locking windows make ideal escape hatches, one large and one small.
Great family selling point!

Non-retractable step.
Watch out for those curbs!!

Security conscious:
Front door used to have a dead bolt.

Double battery, sometimes.

Pleasant breeze from unfixable gap in front door, which provides respite from constant Woodstock-esque odour.

Sleeps six small people. Ideal for mobile nursery.

Carbon Monoxide alarm: Definitely working.

Paper plate holder.

Engine inaccessible from interior and exterior.
Perhaps there's a secret door?

Venetian blinds!

TV stand. TV not included.

Shower / Foot Jacuzzi when holding tank overfills.

Generator needs attention.

Please buy this RV!
We are an English couple who went on holiday by mistake.

$8000 for quick sale.

SOMETHING’S GOT TO GIVE

We exited Canada near Detroit but somehow missed out the whole of the United States of America, ending up in Mexico. Just across the border was a sign pointing us towards Little Mexico Town where every other building was a cantina, every sign written in Espanola and, like so much of America, every next building is abandoned; shut up shop. We backtracked to remedy a wrong turn, whereupon a bunch of school kids loitering on the sidewalk made lewd gestures as we passed. I flicked the bird back. Natalie thought they would chase us with guns on their BMX Mongooses.

Again days blurred into each other and ennui set in. I have rarely been so bored. The land of the free, nation of impenetrable deserts, impassable mountains, imperial cities, impressive monuments, imploding canyons, immeasurable forests, implausible mile-wide rivers, impeccable museums, impoverished ghettoes and impeached presidents, and I was with an impossibly beautiful young girl yet bored to tears. Our lives consist of waking up late, driving somewhere, getting lost, arguing about getting lost, finding a Walmart and sleeping.

Repeat ad infinitum.

I feel like I’m living my life on pause, like an 80’s mix tape you make for a girl you fancy at school, stretching until the only conclusion - it snaps. If I’m running away, do I need to get back to London and face the music?

Sitting in a café stealing wifi and downloading the Bourne Trilogy, Natalie looked up her ex-boyfriend on facebook. You remember James? Well it turns out James is heading off to the same city, in the same country as we have been planning to teach English in… That’s one hell of a coincidence. I thought I got rid of him, for once and for all, but you know what they say about bad pennies. Gandalf was right; it turns out the Gollum-looking creature may have a part to play after all. Why he wants to teach English there of all places I don’t know, why he wants to teach English at all… we tried to work out his motives with me concluding that he is a freak with no dreams of his own, so he needs to steal other people’s. Loser.

Like I say, teaching English in Chiang Mai is an option, Nat says I’d be good at it, but is it what I want?

One of my dreams is tornado chasing, but I’m in the wrong part of America at the wrong time of year.

I’ve also been dreaming of going back to college. A lot. Maybe I should join that Scriptwriting for Film and Television course I got onto thirteen years ago…

Living in Central America sounds pretty cool too.

Dangerous but cool.

Would look good on the CV though.

LAST CAMPSITE ON THE LEFT

The night we left Toronto we found a campsite and drove through the open, unmanned gate. Looking for a dump station (our house stank of festival toilets again) we manoeuvred around the lanes spying for signs of life. There were none. It was like a ghost town. Abandoned trailers sat lifeless, while their war-veteran-patriot-owners sat in hollowed-out tunnels plotting the revolution or a clock tower massacre. We walked around and saw the lonely, distant silhouette of a man, of course a murderer… our murderer… chopping imaginary wood with an axe. After checking out the dilapidated shower room, again the domicile of axe-wielding homicidal maniacs, we investigated further into the creaking, rusted dark. The lights surely hadn’t worked this decade, perhaps this century so we hooked up for free electricity and locked ourselves in; certain we would be bumped off in the night.

Next morning we made our escape from what we thought was a free stopover only for the owner to show up as if by magic (like the shop owner in Mr. Benn)and charge us twenty bucks for the pleasure of almost being butchered in our sleep.

IF ONLY TEMPUS FUGIT

The days rolled into each other, punctuated by a visit to the supermarket washroom or a six-hour sit-in at a bar with wifi, trying to download one fifth of one movie. We didn’t see my oldest friend from when I was seven as he’s too busy and missed my friend Amy from school… One day we took a trip to the local baths, whereupon after a forty minute, free shower, shave and general spruce-up in the company of the city’s madmen and hobos, I walked outside to find a freezing and forlorn looking Natalie who wouldn’t shower in public showers without a bikini. Four hours later we were both showered.

We did however, one day, make some friends… An Australian lad called Clem, part of a gallery-dwelling art collective called Funktion along West Bloor Street invited us in for showers. As we spoke to him a man with a dog who truly believed it to be a dingo rocked up and started chatting about his RV and then an aging probably-not-very-good rock musician joined the party telling us all about Canadian marijuana and the Bible. Clem’s friend invited us to a party on Friday night, but alas like always, we’ll be long gone… ghosts in their cannabis addled memories.

Two days later we met Dave, complete with pink slip so we can sell the van. Good job too as the RV was beginning to get on my nerves and I came to think of it as less of a home and more of a burden. A sluggish, cumbersome weight round my neck that I know we’ll be lumbered with. We thanked him profusely, I said I’d send him some musings and we skidaddled oot of Canada quicker than you could say Bryan Adams.

DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME, OR TIME WILL WASTE YOU

That’s what happens when you wait… time happens to you, not you to it. We were waiting for our pink slip, the proof of ownership of the RV that we need in order to sell it. And when you are waiting for something you can’t do anything else but wait. Nothing constructive anyway.

Maybe origami.

Dave took us out for Chinese on Easter Monday lunchtime, it was refreshing to see him again. I used to work with him in London. We chatted of times at our old company, of departed friends (and foes) and of writing. I always found Dave quite inspirational, not in a self-help, happy-clappy way, but just in terms of asking the right questions to focus your mind on what you want. He said from the way I held myself that it was plain I was not over what happened in London, and that I would not be able to write until I was. I’m not so sure that’s true, but I do hold myself differently now… gone is the cocksure sod who walks into a room and tells people what to do. Maybe that’s a good thing.

Right or wrong, what Dave said got me thinking about what I wanted….

I spent the next sleepless night planning what to write, that’s my problem you see… I know I have great ideas but never know which to run with. This movie script, that drama series, this website, that book… My mind is a maelstrom. Especially when I’m trying to get to sleep.

I literally don’t know what I’m doing, or where I’m going…. We have a few ideas for what next and I hope that when we stop moving, settle down a bit I can start on one of these ideas at a time. I have always viewed time like sand. When I get chance to breathe I can begin x, y and z, but I never get that chance to breathe. The sand slips through my fingers as I try to catch it with the other hand. There’s always a new set of barriers stopping my way, holding me back.

And self made barriers are the hardest to hurdle.

IT’S NOT OKAY

We spent nearly a week parked between a school and a park in a dodgy Mexican-looking grey van with blacked-out windows, from within which, every morning an Englishman would appear in his pants or worse, girlfriend’s pyjamas smoking a roll-up watching the children frolick from betwixt our blinds. Seemingly every third building in this country is a Degrassi Junior High looking school. Moving at 8.30 am to Walmart and back “home” again at 5.00 pm became de rigour.

In nautical terms we were well and truly in the duldrums.

When I don’t have any stimulation, my mind wanders, and never to dreamy, floaty places… always to dark, malevolent, hellish places.

In these quixotic quagmires I question, yet again, what I am doing with my life, where I’m going, ask myself whether I’m wasting it, make grandiose plans and forget them nearly as quickly as I formulate them all from under a headache-fogged veil.

My fuse shortens as boredom sets in and trivial nuisances take on nightmarish proportions.

No electricity, no hot food, no liquid propane, nowhere to buy it (as ludicrously Canadian L.P. nozzles differ from their U.S. counterparts) no hot water, no showers, no wifi, no healthy food, no nuffink...

Many Walmarts don’t even sell fruit and veg, and when you ask, you are told that they have frozen vegetables, like that is okay.

It’s not okay.

TIME TO GET ILL

We made for yet another trusty Walmart parking lot near my friend and ex-colleague’s flat. We were meant to be staying at his… in a bed… with clean sheets… with showers… maybe even a bath… and electricity… and television… and DVD’s and dancing girls.

Well maybe not dancing girls, but you get the drift.

We parked up in a street as the Walmart had a fuck off big sign saying that overnight parkers would surely be towed. At four in the morning I started vomiting. Food poisoning, no doubt from the Vietnamese meal we had. We had to cancel seeing Dave the next day which was a real shame as all his workmates were coming out to welcome us to the land of the Maple Leaf. Twenty four hours, two stone lighter I was recovered. Now it was Natalie’s turn…

She didn’t have it coming out of both ends like me, but was pretty ill and it took the wind out of our sails for a good three or four days.

CANADA EH?

In the northernmost part of New York state there is a town called Niagara Falls. Why it’s called that I don’t know but Natalie battled through the wind, sleet and snow to get us there. We parked up in a ubiquitous Walmart and because we were British, the Assistant Manager Ed let us hook up to an electricity point. Natalie hit upon the idea of seeing if the heater worked when the gas was on and hey presto, it did. For the first time on our journey we had heat all night. It was bliss. She’s sometimes much cleverer than me at that type of thing… Venturing outside to attach the cable was a feat befitting Scott and Oakes at the Antarctic.

Awaking in an icicle sarcophagus, next morning we drove to Niagara Falls, and prayed they were not frozen. Pitting our wits against horizontal snow, we entered the town to find a dirty, industrial mess. For some unknown reason, Indian curry houses were dotted everywhere. We saw the American Falls and the more famous Horseshoe Falls across Goat Island. The weather was not the best so neither impressed much, but we got some snowy photographs and talked to a black squirrel, ate fries and drank hot chocolate in Denny’s diner, while the waitress brought endless refills and free buns and cream, bless her cotton socks.

I think Natalie had one too many!

Amazingly in 1969 they turned off the 675,000 gallon-a-second flow of water to study the geology, channel the flow and make safe certain dangerous, precipitous billion ton rock-faces. Next day, the Canadian Border Patrol let us in and stamped our passports for a full six months even though we need to leave the states within a month. The view of both sets of falls is far more impressive from the Canadian side. One thing that is bigger and better than in the States. The Canadians have capitalised on tourism far more than the Yanks. Casinos and Wax museums, IMAX cinemas and trips on a miniature London eye abound. We treated ourselves to a Cadburys Caramel, paid for with currency with the Queen’s face on.

And so to Toronto.

Where the mad folk live.

BUFFALO STANCE

I shall now commence the writing of the blog…

Are you sitting comfortably?

Then I shall login…

Yesterday driving on the north New York interstate the car in front of us swerved slightly to avoid what we thought was a black plastic bag… Only this black plastic bag had fallen off a truck and was made of metal. The car hit what looked like an axel and veered violently into the middle of the road. Wheels locked in a skid the driver battled as the car deviated left and right across the lanes. From out of nowhere, behind us another car screeched as it’s driver wrestled with the steering wheel to avoid a seventy mile an hour, sure-fatal crash. I expected that one or both vehicles would flip, like in the movies or a Grand Theft Auto type videogame. Feet from us one car came to a halt on the left hard shoulder while Natalie did well and slowed us to a stop behind the second car on the right shoulder. I scrambled into action to go see if everyone was alive. I’ve never met Natalie’s mother and after the event realised I never need to. “Put the hazard lights on” I screamed as I exited the door… “Remember we can make them a cup of tea” she shouted after me.

Everyone was alright; all three girls in the car that hit whatever fell off the truck and the single female occupant of the second car. Shaken and stirred, but alive and injury-free. Once we had ascertained this we had to scarper before the rozzers arrived as our insurance had run out days earlier. A lucky escape from jail and with our lives.

We’re currently sat in a Flying J’s truck stop near Buffalo. We miss meals in favour of sharing an $8.50 shower. Like when you become a parent, priorities change.

It’s snowing again outside, better than snowing inside I suppose… Why would anyone choose to live here, when they can live in Africa? Guess I’ve answered my own question there... Choice. That said there can be too much choice…

The waitress just asked a fella at the next table if he would like baked potato, loaded baked potato, mash potato, loaded mash potato, cheddar cheese mash potato, Swiss cheese mash potato, American cheese mash potato, bacon mash potato, sour-crème mash potato or fries?

His answer?

“Fries”

Natalie is writing her blog as I write this, she’s well ahead of me chronologically but that’s cos she constructs sentences like “We did some good shopping” Anyway, she just asked me the name of the security guard in New Jersey who said we could stay in his car park

“Patel” I informed her…

“Was he Mexican?” she asked.

Bless.

She also has her own words for things…

Oars she calls “rowing sticks”, mercury is “the metal that’s in temperature” and human arms she refers to as “front legs”

I’ve just been to the bathroom and had the worst poorly-poo of my life. When I stood up to wipe, I had to lean backwards, keeping my knees slightly bent so as not to stain my jeans or boxers with brown bum drips. Last time I drink four litres of Coca Cola refills, even if they are free.

Thinking about it, it could have been those jalapenos I had for breakfast.

I’ve just looked through my first aid kit, but there’s not much there… does anyone know if applying superglue to a burst rectum stops dihorrea?

BINS

I like Boston. I like a town with bins. Bins are important. The right amount of bins is important; not too many, not too few. That’s all I’ve got to say on the matter.

Not really. I loved Boston; not as much as L.A. but I could definitely imagine living there… Much of it reminds me of Bristol. We parked in an area called Charlestown, north of the river, just down the road from some projects, like Bubbles inhabits in The Wire. We bussed it into town and the bus driver went to great lengths explaining how the caaahrd-reader worked. This town was named after Boston, Lincolnshire which is where the unusual accent comes from… Thinking about it, it is a bit East Anglian, akin to how Norfolk folk elongate vowels and slightly roll their R’s in Naaarwich.

We got off the bus as we saw a pretty square ablaze with fairy lights in the trees, what with the cold and rain it felt like it was a wet day in December in Bristol where Darren Day or Dennis Taylor or someone from S Club 7 was about to switch on the Christmas lights. We saw the Cheers bar, and walked around Quincy markets which felt like German Xmas Markets that I’ve always wanted to go to… Best save that for junior now. I’m not sure how, but we have incredible serendipitous luck sometimes; even though we were in a touristy area, the first place we happened upon was a perfect, compact sports bar full of regulars. I don’t like Irish pubs or sports bars in England, they’re usually varnished and tarnished with the stench and discolour of vomit or afterthoughts in cinema complexes, or both, but here it feels homely.

We tried New England clam chowder which was smooth and exhilarating like a liquid fish pie and not at all like puke. We drank 16oz pints of Budweiser at $1.50 a pop while the tourists paid four times that next door. What else could a guy wish for? Waitresses serving cheap Bud, fish soup and the company of a beautiful girl. A Boston Celtics game was then beamed the mile from their home ground “The Gaaarden” to our screens and after two overtimes, they beat the Charlotte Bobcats (whoever in the hell they might be) to the rowdy Bostonian cheers of the locals.

If only it were a Red Sox game, I could have been even more baffled. Even though they are my team; I now have a pair of boxer shorts to go with my official Red Sox baseball.

I mention the price of the beer as anyone who knows me can say for sure that I cannot resist an offer like that… One or two turned into six or seven and a shitstorm of massive proportions unfolded. I wasn’t even that drunk so will never understand why girls insist that you must stop drinking when they do. In an attempt to stop us arguing yet again I picked up my bag and walked out. Hiding round the corner so I could see Natalie all the time I smoked a cigarette to give us both time to calm down. A few minutes later I walked around the building and decided to go and get her. Only she wasn’t there.

Holy mother of God.

I asked the DJ, our waitress… no-one had seen her. I ran back to the only place she could be, the bus stop with the fairy lights. Nothing. My mind exploded in a fit of anger, regret and $1.50 Budweiser… Where could she be, what had I done? She wasn’t meant to walk off… then again, nor was I.

And boy, was I drunk all of a sudden.

It’s ok for someone like me to be wandering round an unfamiliar city on their own, but not my little Natalie. I started to panic. We fell out on Koh Samui one night and she sped off home on her own but that’s different, that was our home, now we didn’t even know where our home was parked. My brain played the tricks that a parent of a lost child might play; has she been kidnapped? Is she in the boot of a redneck’s car? Or worse has she gone off with a boy?

I thought to myself I’ve lost her forever, if not physically then emotionally.

I half-ran, half-fell back to the bar to retrace her steps. Zip. Back to the square. Nada. I tried to get some money out for a cab, I think I could remember how to get home, but could she? I considered showing people the picture of her from my wallet, calling the police, then I saw her ahead of me. I think she saw me but she carried on walking. I caught up. She’d assumed I’d walked off and was well pissed. I was angry. “Never do that again” I ordered hugging her, and realised why my mother and parents all over the world, throughout mankind, are that angry with lost children.

We got a cab back and found the RV easily.

We slept like logs and all was forgiven.

She’s a very cool girlfriend to have sometimes.

I won’t leave her again.

SLEEPY HOLLOW

North of Yonkers and north of New York still, lies Sleepy Hollow. Resting place of Washington Irving and haunting ground of The Headless Horseman, it is now inexplicably inhabited by thousands of Mexicans. We spied an restored seventeenth century mill over a locked gate and took pictures of a statue of the phantom himself and walked over the bridge. Next to the Old Dutch Church, we wandered the eerily still yet beautiful cemetery, full of magnificent mausoleums and creepy crypts. Using a map we found the grave of the town’s most famous son and I explained the short story is pretty dull compared to Tim Burton’s most well-crafted film.

I would have liked to have seen the reconstructed bridge featured in the film, but it was getting dark and I think Natalie was secretly scared. We were, after all, in the graveyard where the Headless Hessian Soldier begins his nightly ride from the bowels of Hell.

We didn’t see the terrifying spectacle of the Headless Horseman but we did see a shopping trolley move across a car park of it’s own accord. We told ghost stories and scared the living bejesus out of each other as we drove down yet another, unplanned, evil country road.

It was a quaint town, and you could feel the sleepy spell that the place casts over you, but we escaped with our lives.

TO THE FIVE BOROUGHS

Parking in New York is about as likely as a Labour government taking Britain to war. After a short discussion and little thought, we ignored all advice and popular attitude and did it anyway.

We parked in Jersey City, New Jersey, which is ironic as we both needed new jerseys. Getting on the subway in Hoboken I didn’t get to see any of the city until we popped up right in the midst of it at Broadway and 33rd. Times Square brought out the child in me… Every billboard moved, every sign flashed, bright graphics lit up the sides of every building… NYPD cops wandered passed, yellow taxi cabs honked at me as (not paying attention) I stepped into the road, steam vented from the subways and a man with a pneumatic drill fixed the middle of the road, shouting. I think everyone in New York is called Shorty as that’s what everyone yells: “Hey Shorty!”

Natalie had a photo taken with the object of her nightmare sexual fantasy - Cookie Monster; she dreams of his crumb-covered blue furry fist inside her almost every night. I suggested we roleplay and I dress up as him but she declined.

Opposite the Hershey’s store, inside the M&M’s store, hundreds of people queued at ceiling-high dispensers, collecting their favourite coloured rabbit droppings in bags and paying by the half-pound when they could walk into any gas station or visit any news-stand for exactly the same thing. There were cuddly toys, mugs, even Mars leather jackets. We had to evacuate as this brand confused the crap out of me. When I say confused I really mean I have just one question… Who the fuck buys this shit?

Maybe they’re the confused ones, breast-fed confectionary consumerism by a cathode-ray nipple.

I mean I like nice things, I want but will never afford an Aston Martin DB7 Vantage, and despite the recent scrimping, saving and stealing I like Diesel jeans, but c’mon who needs a $4000, diamond encrusted M&M leather jacket?

Wankers. That’s who.

Fat American wankers.

We walked around one edge of Central Park and sat on a rock where Natalie asked yet again if I was in love with her… So we discussed whether we were in love. A little bit we concluded. More importantly though, we had a 7oz burger at Jackson’s Hole in a secret subterranean burrow for meat-lovers on 64th and 2nd and ambled back to get a few £4..50 bottles of Corona. We took some pictures in Grand Central Station, but being night time there was no famous shaft of light penetrating the magnificent windows so turned into photo-magicians playing with time and space under the star-speckled ceiling. We also saw a couple of black fellas in suits though, which was nice, but bizarrely they didn’t show up on any pictures.

Anything else of note? Oh, we kinda got engaged… in H&M.

With a ring purchased there, well four rings for $4.90.

Of course we’re not really engaged… well, just "a little bit"

Walking out of the Irish pub, enshrouded in winter mist and fine rain, the Empire State Building loomed high above us. It was something straight out of Gotham City and I hoped to see the Caped Crusader swoop down to batarang me home to my bed as my feet were aching like a motherfucker.

The next day was a cold and wet Sunday; we didn’t do much so on Monday we went downtown. Getting off at Ground Zero was a strange feeling, but I wasn’t saddened as I expected to be. Like the massive construction site, I just felt a bit empty but I did buy a 9/11 hat and World Trade Center salt and pepper shakers. Not really, I was glad to see no-one trying to capitalise on the worst event of recent times, but thinking about it there were those parachutes in case it ever happened again… I imagine some fat-cat businessman hoping for more hijacked planes to line his pockets.

We took the ferry to Liberty Island to see the Statue of Liberty. There were signs informing stupid people that she was not painted but in fact that oxidization had coloured her green. It was bloody freezing and blowing a gale so we were not allowed up her. I didn’t really want to go up her as that would mean cheating on my new fiancé so I just took a couple of up-skirt shots instead. I’m pleased to be the first to inform you that The Statue of Liberty, vision of beauty and shining beacon of freedom throughout the world, has copper-coloured pubes. Proper wiry, ginger, short and curlies like a cross between a Scottish “jimmy” football wig and a pan scourer.

She doesn’t shave her armpits either… well she is French.

Wandering passed the Brooklyn Bridge I remember from the opening titles of Cagney and Lacey we took some really great snaps of a moon-walking seagull and I got some of Natty looking simply amazing. Sometimes it does feel like I’m in love, you know when the lighting is good but we’re more like best friends. We both love each other, sometimes lots, sometimes not so much… everything else is there but just the romance is missing. My undying love for her… died. I think it’s still in there somewhere, deep down, hidden, lurking… Perhaps it will come back one day. I don’t know what will come of us when our little adventure is over but it will be difficult to leave each other. We’re all each other have.

That said, I’m not sure how long my game of hide and seek with reality can go on...

Someone we know in L.A. (and his writing partner) have just been given a pilot on Comedy Central… and $100,000 each to write it. That’s what I want, and I know I have the ability to do it, just lack the application… and a comedy partner (come baaaaaccckkkk John, I miss you!)

We ate in Chinatown, what we both felt was our first real meal in this country. An idiotic thing to say I know, but it was like the real food that we used to share, the real food we’re used to eating, the real food we crave from Thailand. Cheap, simple, clean and fresh; making me realise every other Chinese dish is for fat white people. Despite having been there, Nat asked if there is a Chinatown in China. “Yes” I enthusiastically told her… “It’s so big that people get lost in it, and you can only find your way out by finding an airport”

Following the self-same route that she and her ex-boyfriend had taken, (I know - weird) seeing the same sites in the same day, we strolled to the Lower East Side that Nat had been telling me all about… only she couldn’t find it. So we sat in a bar called Lolita’s in Noho. Happy Hour fed us a few beers and then a guy informed us there was a comedy night downstairs. Amazingly Nat has never been to a comedy-night before (I know, I know, what am I doing with her? She’s cute alright) and somehow we had just stumbled upon a tiny, quaint, typical New York venue, almost as if it were planned… I considered getting on stage but decided against it, though I do have some new material. The comics were okay, highs and lows as ever but it was good to not be there to scout talent, to analyse - also good to not have to talk to or be pestered by the comedians.

The last act featured a girl out of Flight of the Conchords. Their act was the worst of the lot, less ad lobbing; more unprepared and rambling - possibly a bit too much red wine love. I said I wasn’t going to analyse. Anyway Natalie was really excited to meet her and had a photo taken whilst wearing her Brettesque Canada Goose jumper. I don’t think she’s met anyone famous before.

I had expected to fall in love with New York. I didn’t. It was cool and all, but it just felt a bit like London. Not how people say that it’s the loneliest city in the world, I just didn’t fall in love with it.

Got engaged though.