He’s had so much Nescafe, he’ll never get to bed,
It’s that English bloke from Buffy, Anthony Stewart “Giles for miles” Head
That’s him alright, a real fancy boy. I once saw him in Heathrow as I was in full business-guy mode and he was wandering around bereft with a Virgin Atlantic minder who kept apologising to him for something and holding his shoulder bag while he took a piddle.
Because that’s what men do.
I am a sashaying nonsense-sayin blog-delayin fool and I needed to go dark (internet media speak for laziness, not an insensitive Al Jolson reference) again last week for largely reasons of jetlag. Last week I was in these United States for work and to break my diet as hard as my python-like detatched lower jaw would allow. My flight out on the company dime (premium economy, slumming it with the shiphands and the hoards of Irish emigrants doing endless interminable jigs) was straightforward. Straightforward unlike my conversations with border guards, “So you’re here on business, what do you do?”
All it would take is me joining the wrong queue and some vindictive passport-jockey would have me on the no-fly list with that Subway guy and Gerard Depardieu. He drunkenly messed his man-panties on a Ryanair flight. It was a whole thing.
After getting through I realised I was going to have to take a shuttle bus to the nearest metro station. This perturbed me slightly because Washington used to have a bit of a shooty-injecty kind of reputation and despite it now having been overtaken by places like Detroit and Baltimore I was slightly pertubed by the prospect of, while laden down with luggage and cash negotiating my way past Avon Barksdale and Kurtwood Smith from RoboCop.
Eric and Kitty will be devasted.
I emerged from the bus station into the bleary Maryland afternoon with stalls serving artisanal coffee and Welsh-Indian meat-pastries. Now relaxed, my predominant thoughts shifted to “this little snowdrop is gonna be AAAAAALLLLLlright… I wonder if I have enough arm room free to carry my luggage AND a stack of baked meatpockets.”
Incidentally, “Meatpockets” was my prison name back in the 80s.
So DC, is really nice. It’s super European with a proper Metro that goes everywhere, parks, museums but on the other hand a mad dictator level of monuments and enough cholesterol to give an elephant arrythmia. I’m keen.
The next day was my tourist day in DC as the rest of my trip was locked in with work commitments so I hit it early and hit it hard, which is also my policy with regards toilets on planes. DC has a massive cross-shaped area through its centre with all the famous stuff on each of the 4 spokes and the Washington monument stone-boner proudly impregnating the clouds with its patriotic fervor.
It’s a strange feeling going around there as I, at least was quite aware I wasn’t getting the same feelings that many of the other largely American tourists were. Example, overhearing a burly tourguide explaining the Vietnam conflict to a bunch of junior high kids, “…this was to stop the growth of Communism. In Communism if you don’t like the government, you’re not allowed to say it.”
That’s not what Communism is. Indeed sometimes, it’s what America is. September 12th 2001 and on for a quite a bit for example.
Remember when we thought this was the worst President America could ever have? Those were the fucking days
Walking around the war memorials, in particular the Vietnam memorial it was… communicative. The memorial is a just a list of names on marble of all the people that were killed. It’s a big monument in a small font. It’s tough to look at.
Awww… unlike this liddle feller. He makes you feel okay about things. He says 58,220 US soldiers died in the Vietnam war, more than 13 times the Iraq war. Snerp snerp!
Ain’t no puppy in the world is going to make that not look like a combine-harvester bin filled with human skulls.
The next day I was on the clock and was shipped out to Georgetown (such a local) for work-times and that evening I was shkooted out towards New Jersey. By which I mean Noo Joisey.
Don’t. It’s a kip.
The saltwater leeches into the inlands of the “Garden State” and has turned the whole hole into a marshy methaney fart-fest. The area I was in has been conquered by developers who have erected plastic uninhabited leisure monuments up and down the coast, for the likes of Snooki, J-Woww, The Dilch-uation and all the other Jersey Shore wannabe turdcicles that turn up for a few weeks a year.
Honest to God, I could look at these guys for hours. They’re like a tanned lava-lamp with a questionable interpretation of consent.
After 72 hours in New York’s crumbum neighbour it was back down to DC for some Paddys Day pints with a former Maynoothian chum under a fittingly slate sky. While sauntering around the city ladened down with luggage I passed a girl wearing a sash with the word “Rose” on it. It was indeed the DC contestant in the Rose of Tralee, the International lovely-girls competition run out of my home town. Her Dad clearly thought I was a vagrant pornographer until I explained where I was from, at which point he documented the whole thing with a photo (probably in case I abducted her).
That man had a grip on him boy. Word to my network of fellow vagrant perverts (I know you’re reading). Leave that one alone.
In other news Meg and I have been gittin’ down to business. Nasty business. Wedding admin. We spent a fraught hour discussing stationary until she got angry and we just went with her idea which we both agreed was the best choice going forward generally. In retrospect my suggestions may not have been as positive as the tone within which they were delivered. I suggested a lot of turkey-themed ideas, a London bus (for an Irish wedding) and this cow skull thing I thought was pretty nifty.
There was a time that Meg wasn’t so keen on me travelling for work. Now I feel she would prefer I travel more. Much more.
Jersey Shoner of Leek
thetonerofleek 