It’s nature’s brute law that we do what he says,
It’s lean mean Emilio “Secret Sheen” Estevez
Doesn’t that high tempo freak-out shot make him look super-like his brah-brah? Maybe they roped him in as Emilio’s freak-out double. And then they stuck a wig on him and put his head up Molly Ringwald’s skirt.
I’d believe that before I’d believe anyone letting Judd Nelson get near their hoohoo.
Ragging on the Judd Nelson. Aren’t I recent? Keep scrolling down and I go to town on the Kaiser’s withered hand.
So I am now fully returnified from Canada, land of maple, constant apologies and slightly sub-USA portion sizes. Our last three days in Vancouver passed quickly and included a relaxed wander around an improbably beautiful forest-gorge. They crapped out on the authoritive accent lottery, but they can sure do geography.
The ugliest place in Canada.
As well as scooting around the mountains a little, we got to spend a bit more time with Charlie, Meg’s new nephew. He’s only 3 months old but he’s already porking up hard (like I can frigging talk), developed a kick that can pierce a hole in a car door and going through enough facial expressions in a minute that he looks like one of those weird face switching suits from A Scanner Darkly. Little known fact, before having the lengthy course of hormone therapy required to become a quip with legs, Robert Downey Junior used to be an actor.
You heard me.
My return flight was without serious incident though not without call to narrate. As Meaghan has mentioned to me more than once recently, I am getting old. There is a clump of grey hair in my beard, my knees often sound like I’m stepping on cornflakes and my previously trustworthy belly, no longer takes my hearty abuse with the good humour with which it is intended.
After multiple days of ribs and pizza for breakfast (zero exaggeration), dodging edible plant-life of all descriptions and boozing through each evening to one degree or another, I awoke on New Year’s day, my final of the trip with about a 5 on the hangover scale. Unpleasant, but forgettable especially as it was the first one I’ve had this year. Hilarious.
My appetite was reluctant to fully return though and I was unable to finish my early pre-flight dinner of pizza (accidentally ordered a prawn one and was able to swap it for the one I had actually wanted, their fault for having something so gross on the menu frankly) and some ginger ale which I felt flooding my system with much needed hydration and calories. All was right with the world.
If you’re nervous right now, it just means your spidey senses are functioning normally.
As we trundled along towards the airport, the car got warmer, or did it? My seatbelt started to tighten along my middle, or did it? Man these brakes are sensitive, keep jerking me forward in this seat. Feck, that’s just what brakes are meant to do.
We pulled in outside the terminal and I hopped out, feeling a minor hiccup rise in my ches- AAAAGHGHHHHHHHGGAGAGHGH!
There was more of it than anyone could have imagined. One single 37 degree celsius orange torrent, rising and falling and rising yet more, like a Fanta Amazon during monsoon. Heaping itself upon itself, with a simultaneous spirit of renewal and utter devastation. It drove itself on with an industrial determination, irrepressibly heartless, but magnificent like the baleen of a whale or an ant colony on fire.
My moustache must have looked preedy-good.
Feeling infinitely better, we boarded our flight home and I know this is going to sound a bit Fancy Dan but jaysus it is hard to settle back into economy class after getting a taste of the good life. I’m a real softie now. It’s the new me. But some things will never change.
Like I still manage to get out of a toilet using a maximum ever of three sheets. Creative folding and lots of fibre. M’lud.
I waved goodbye to my last sniff of comfort as some kind of fratboy-Eminem bundled in beside me and immediately took off his shoes and socks. Like a criminal. Then he pulled out a huge notebook and started scribbling in it like he covers his cereal in methadone every morning. I assume methadone would make you write quickly. I don’t take methadone.
Glancing casually over, this was the kind of nonsense I read.
[Why why why? There is all the confusion. All of the corruption. It makes me want to. SHOUT.]
[No one is original now, didn’t they hear. There are so many questions, but who’s the brother with the answers. No one…?]
[I am a total imaginationless gimp, who has laquered my ceaselessly steaming ballbag in Lynx (Axe for the North Americans) Africa, the most nauseatingly sickly sweet scent in the greasingly-pubescent arsenal of the 14 year old.]
And this turd was almost 30! He then proceeded to lean his sweaty ham-bone shoulder across the armrest and onto me, soaking his acrid stink into my shirt.Through my shirt. Into me.
Now I gotta take a slight tangent. I know, how unlike me, right?
Keep outta Belgium you gimpy-limbed so and so. You will ultimately discredit Germany, both by your own deeds and those you set in motion throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Yahah! Told that damn Kaiser good. This is what they call a comedy call-back. In the biz. This doesn’t read as fluidly as I’d like but my backspace is broken, I’m fairly jetlagged and here we both are.
Fart.
In other news, we have not been reacclimatising well upon our return to the UK. We are off our sleep and meals by 8 hours and (speaking for myself) swollen from weeks of revelry. Our diet is broadening to reinclude items that never had hooves as well as to the more drab standards of UK cuisine. As we wandered through our local supermarket (sometimes I find myself staring at the freakshows in there grabbing scotch eggs, three per hand and wondering to myself, “What are you?”) we discussed the options for lunch.
“Sausage sandwiches?” I ventured.
“No! It’s not… luxury.”
Canada ruined her.
Ant Coloner of Leek
thetonerofleek 