After 475 miles of driving, 229 tracks on my shuffled iPod and 5 days of meeting up with a total of 35 friends, some old some new, our East Coast road trip is finally over.
It's been a lot of fun. More fun than I anticipated especially given the amount of driving I had to do. Highlights include the trip to the Niddry Street Vaults in Edinburgh (see "Who You Gonna Call" in my previous blogs), what became a twelve hour pub marathon on Tuesday where we managed to catch up with 15 friends we hadn't seen in a long time and get a sit down, table service meal at four a.m. and meeting little Charlie, the latest addition to our good friends the Hendersons.
A big thank you to you all for making our week so much fun.
It wouldn't be a holiday for me though without some level of misadventure creeping in.
Navigation proved a bit fiddly. I zigged plenty of times when I should have zagged and while city to city was plain sailing, and even getting to people's houses where we were staying was relatively simple, additional travel was fraught with wrong turns, dead ends and a lot of frustration.
Unbelievably the worst example of this was in Elgin. The main road through the town was closed for some reason and the authorities, obviously quick to react to whatever had required the road to close, had been somewhat slower off the mark with their diversion signs. By that I mean there weren't any. Half an hour added to the journey. Thanks a bunch.
This was definitely nothing compared to the service provided by The Crown Hotel in Inverbervie, the accommodation we had chosen so as not to impose on our friends Scott and Jane who have two small children. The alarm bells were ringing when we got there and discovered, on a quick inspection of the room, pristine copies of what we can only assume were complimentary editions of Mayfair and Asian Babes. All very reasonable you might suppose until you realise you have been put in the family suite.
We quickly threw our bags in the room and headed for our friends in Johnshaven, just down the road, to enjoy a splendid evening of banter, one of the best takeaway curries I've ever had and a fine selection of whisky. Being a touch inebriated we called a cab and headed back to our hotel.
Imagine our surprise when we discovered our hotel had been locked up for the night. Despite having a front door key on the set of keys we had been given the door would not budge, clearly having been locked from the inside. We tried the doorbell and we tried phoning but to no avail. In the end we had to call the cab back and make an emergency landing on our friends floor. I was not amused.
In the morning I retrieved our bags from the room and tracked down the proprieter to explain why I wasn't going to be paying for it. "We never lock the door" she said. The conversation that followed was a little bizarre. "You just turn the handle and push" she told me. No? Really? Is that how doors work round here? I was expecting a Star Trek style automatic door that makes a swooshy noise. If only I'd tried that when I was stood out in the cold at half one in the morning.
"I'm not bothered that you couldn't use the room, I'm worried my door's not working properly" was another gem. She didn't have to sleep on a floor the previous night!
My suggestion that perhaps another guest might have put the catch on the lock was met by "everyone was bedded down by that time" despite the fact I hadn't told her what time we had come back. At that point I began to smell a rat, handed her the keys and left.
As redundant as it seems to say it I heartily recommend you never stay at The Crown Hotel Inverbervie!
That was the worst mishap that befell us this time in an otherwise fantastic week. Now it's a weekend of putting up shelves (thanks Ikea) and then back to work. Boo.
Saturday 27 March 2010
Friday 26 March 2010
All Hope Abandon Ye Who Enter Here........
Ikea. No other word has the power to strike such terror in my heart. Unfortunately for me any trip with Barbara to Edinburgh comes with an unwritten rule that there will be an expedition to the towering temple of consumerist doom.
It's difficult, especially as a retailer, to legitimise the loathing I have for Ikea. I understand why people (mostly in my experience women) adore it. Yes, they have lots of well designed products (subjective). Yes, they are affordable (subjective). Yes, they are all available in one gargantuan warehouse environment (objective). All sounds good on paper but in practice, for me at any rate, shopping at Ikea is closer to eternity in the first circle of hell than the exciting and vibrant retail experience it is claimed by many to be.
Democracy through design I've heard it called. The reality is more like communism, the objective a subtly engendered conformity, herded round, doing the Dawn Of The Dead shuffle in the direction of the arrows past all of the wonderfully affordable, vibrant and exciting modular designs imported from Sweden. Most of it is nonsense but some of it is good. To get to the good stuff you have to get through an awful lot of nonsense.
But that isn't the end. If you survive the showroom, using the little pencils to note down all the product codes on the little pads and the accompanying bay numbers you have to head into the sinister market hall to get to the warehouse where you will finally collect your items.
Another maze of arrows and prescribed cattle flow leads you round past a cornucopia of cheap stuff that you really don't need. I don't think I've met anyone who has been to Ikea who doesn't have an unopened sack of 100 tealights somewhere in their home.
It's the sweets on the counter premise for grown ups on a massive scale and it is extremely effective. Even I find myself picking up items, thinking "this will come in handy" only to come to my senses in the nick of time. The worst part about this area of the store is you haven't even got what you wanted yet and they are already convincing you to buy more.
Finally you reach the warehouse and the stuff you actually came for in the first place. Picking your way through the racks you locate the necessary bays to collect the various flat packs required to assemble your oh-so-cleverly designed tables and chairs and what have you. Only you can't because there aren't any left. Oh you can get the legs for the chair but the seat element you wanted is gone. Several hours of browsing, trailing and fighting the urge to buy complete and total nonsense rendered worthless in the seconds it takes you to realise they don't even have what you want.
That's the point I usually crumble and get filled with a Michael Douglas in Falling Down feeling that reinforces the necessity of strict gun control laws in this country.
This time we minimised the pain. Knowing what we needed ahead of time we skipped the showroom, cut straight to the "home organisation" department, grabbed what we needed and headed out with the minimum of browsing and only a few minor excess purchases. Nothing short of a miracle.
More like Purgatory then Hell then, at least this time round.
It's difficult, especially as a retailer, to legitimise the loathing I have for Ikea. I understand why people (mostly in my experience women) adore it. Yes, they have lots of well designed products (subjective). Yes, they are affordable (subjective). Yes, they are all available in one gargantuan warehouse environment (objective). All sounds good on paper but in practice, for me at any rate, shopping at Ikea is closer to eternity in the first circle of hell than the exciting and vibrant retail experience it is claimed by many to be.
Democracy through design I've heard it called. The reality is more like communism, the objective a subtly engendered conformity, herded round, doing the Dawn Of The Dead shuffle in the direction of the arrows past all of the wonderfully affordable, vibrant and exciting modular designs imported from Sweden. Most of it is nonsense but some of it is good. To get to the good stuff you have to get through an awful lot of nonsense.
But that isn't the end. If you survive the showroom, using the little pencils to note down all the product codes on the little pads and the accompanying bay numbers you have to head into the sinister market hall to get to the warehouse where you will finally collect your items.
Another maze of arrows and prescribed cattle flow leads you round past a cornucopia of cheap stuff that you really don't need. I don't think I've met anyone who has been to Ikea who doesn't have an unopened sack of 100 tealights somewhere in their home.
It's the sweets on the counter premise for grown ups on a massive scale and it is extremely effective. Even I find myself picking up items, thinking "this will come in handy" only to come to my senses in the nick of time. The worst part about this area of the store is you haven't even got what you wanted yet and they are already convincing you to buy more.
Finally you reach the warehouse and the stuff you actually came for in the first place. Picking your way through the racks you locate the necessary bays to collect the various flat packs required to assemble your oh-so-cleverly designed tables and chairs and what have you. Only you can't because there aren't any left. Oh you can get the legs for the chair but the seat element you wanted is gone. Several hours of browsing, trailing and fighting the urge to buy complete and total nonsense rendered worthless in the seconds it takes you to realise they don't even have what you want.
That's the point I usually crumble and get filled with a Michael Douglas in Falling Down feeling that reinforces the necessity of strict gun control laws in this country.
This time we minimised the pain. Knowing what we needed ahead of time we skipped the showroom, cut straight to the "home organisation" department, grabbed what we needed and headed out with the minimum of browsing and only a few minor excess purchases. Nothing short of a miracle.
More like Purgatory then Hell then, at least this time round.
Tuesday 23 March 2010
Who you gonna call?
It may come as an absolute shock to you that I am a card carrying, dyed in the wool sceptic when it comes to the world of the supernatural.
I've always been interested in myth, legend and folklore and in my younger days I was undecided about some aspects of the supernatural although the realism and rationality of maturity have left me in no doubt of the preposterous nature of so-called paranormal activity.
This has never been illustrated for me so perfectly as it was when I visited the Niddry Street Vaults in Edinburgh, purported to be the most paranormally "active" site in the capital, if not the country. So legendary are it's multitude of spectres and poltergeists it even attracted ghost hunter supremo Yvette Fielding and her Most Haunted accomplices.
The vaults themselves do have an impressive atmosphere about them. According to our guide they started out as an open street of traders which was eventually built over and became the vaulted storerooms for the tradesmen and retailers constructed above.
Limestone construction proved to be incompatible with the storing of goods however as they vaults let in too much moisture and so were eventually abandoned as storage. Lying empty they became a refuge for the city's poor and disenfranchised who set up their own community beneath the South Bridge.
As with all ghettos the inhabitants fell prey to criminals and ne'er do wells, out of sight of the authorities. Burking, murder, rape, child abuse - all commonplace activities in the vaults. This bloody and sadistic history forming the basis of the many alleged hauntings of the vaults.
Eventually they were sealed up and remained undisturbed until three students in 1973, aware their flat adjoined the vaults, broke through the wall for a swatch and had a party in the vaults. So terrified by the evil they experienced they never returned to the flat. The landlord of the flats, clearly shrewd in the extreme, immediately purchased the vaults and made them a tourist attraction.
Up until yesterday I had never actually visited any of the Edinburgh vaults although I was aware of their existence and their reputation. With an afternoon to spare and a tourist spirit we decided to take one of the many guided tours of this most grisly of attractions.
It turned out to be quite enjoyable if only because it was a bit of a laugh. Some of the historical tales (gleaned supposedly from police records and other written sources) of crimes committed - the murder of a man caught molesting a woman's son, the death of a large group of people who, seeking refuge from fire were asphyxiated and cooked, the stone vault becoming a massive oven - were interesting and engaging. Standing in the dark, damp vaults it was easy to imagine the horrors that people must have faced living and working in them.
Then it started to get a bit silly. One tale in particular undermined the experience for me. That of a seventeen year old girl lured into a meeting of the Hellfire Club where fifteen of its members subsequently raped her, roasted her alive on a spit then ate her ("they even made her eat parts of herself!" our guide declared with grim sincerity) in a dark occult ceremony.
Apart from the obvious practical inconsistencies (how exactly does one eat oneself once one has been roasted alive on a spit?) my biggest problem with this tale is the lack of any documentary evidence to back it up. "We had no idea this had taken place" our guide told us, "until a psychic entered this chamber and figured out what had happened".
I have grave misgivings about psychics and mediums. Largely because they are all charlatans and liars. Yes that's right Derek Acorah, I'm talking to you and all of your manipulative ilk. Perhaps a debate for another time, it's sufficient for my purposes just now to emphatically state that all so-called psychics and mediums are simply con artists adept at cold-reading, generalising and manipulative vulnerable people. Usually for money. You should all be ashamed of yourselves.
Anyway, the guide's credibility quickly drained away as he maintained a highly amusing and slightly irksome level of "What was that? Did anyone else hear/see/feel/smell that?" theatrics. Yeah mate it was traffic noise. It was dripping water. There was nothing there at all you've just made it up.
A couple of the people on the tour seemed to be buying into it although I don't think anyone got really scared. The highlight was a room that had been used by a modern day witches coven (I know, I know) in the late nineties until the atmosphere turned sour and they were too scared to go back into it. The stone circle they had made in the centre of the room was claimed to be imbued with evil powers and our guide did a great job of hamming this "fact" right up.
Supposedly a sceptic, foolhardy on the fumes of his own disbelief, ignored his warnings to stay out of the circle. When he stepped in he felt a presence and challenged it to do something to him. He promptly suffered a (non fatal) heart attack and was carted off by paramedics.
As a result the guide would not allow anyone to step into the circle while he was in the room. He left the room ahead of us to give us the chance to try it out. Despite it pandering to him on some level I obviously had a wee dance in the circle. I was horrified when I felt the overwhelming urge to giggle like a schoolboy at how nonsensical it was. Maybe it did have dark powers after all.
It's easy to be dismissive of the notions of hauntings, especially when the brochure lists among the catalogue of supernatural occurrences "an adolescent boy vomited in one of the vaults" (spooky) and "regular occurrences of panic attacks and visitors leaving the vaults" being two of my favourites. I firmly do not believe in ghosts and ghoulies.
The vaults however do possess an atmosphere that is sinister and oppressive. They are dark, dripping and cold and feel very out of place under the streets of a modern city. It's easy to see how impressionable minds could be convinced they are experiencing strange phenomena and witnessing the materialisation of spirits. In those claustrophobic cells your imagination can run riot, and the sensory deprivation of the darkness would easily give rise to mildly hallucinatory imaginings.
From that point of view it was an enjoyable experience. Out of your comfort zone it's a watching a scary movie on your own sort of experience where the only demons you are likely to encounter are your own expectations that you drag in there with you. Our tour group seemed relatively sensible, I would imagine in a larger group of "believers" the tour would be an absolute riot of ghost train proportions, each person's hysteria magnifying the other's.
So a mixed experience although ultimately rather satisfying. And proof to me of that age old adage - I ain't 'fraid of no ghost!
I've always been interested in myth, legend and folklore and in my younger days I was undecided about some aspects of the supernatural although the realism and rationality of maturity have left me in no doubt of the preposterous nature of so-called paranormal activity.
This has never been illustrated for me so perfectly as it was when I visited the Niddry Street Vaults in Edinburgh, purported to be the most paranormally "active" site in the capital, if not the country. So legendary are it's multitude of spectres and poltergeists it even attracted ghost hunter supremo Yvette Fielding and her Most Haunted accomplices.
The vaults themselves do have an impressive atmosphere about them. According to our guide they started out as an open street of traders which was eventually built over and became the vaulted storerooms for the tradesmen and retailers constructed above.
Limestone construction proved to be incompatible with the storing of goods however as they vaults let in too much moisture and so were eventually abandoned as storage. Lying empty they became a refuge for the city's poor and disenfranchised who set up their own community beneath the South Bridge.
As with all ghettos the inhabitants fell prey to criminals and ne'er do wells, out of sight of the authorities. Burking, murder, rape, child abuse - all commonplace activities in the vaults. This bloody and sadistic history forming the basis of the many alleged hauntings of the vaults.
Eventually they were sealed up and remained undisturbed until three students in 1973, aware their flat adjoined the vaults, broke through the wall for a swatch and had a party in the vaults. So terrified by the evil they experienced they never returned to the flat. The landlord of the flats, clearly shrewd in the extreme, immediately purchased the vaults and made them a tourist attraction.
Up until yesterday I had never actually visited any of the Edinburgh vaults although I was aware of their existence and their reputation. With an afternoon to spare and a tourist spirit we decided to take one of the many guided tours of this most grisly of attractions.
It turned out to be quite enjoyable if only because it was a bit of a laugh. Some of the historical tales (gleaned supposedly from police records and other written sources) of crimes committed - the murder of a man caught molesting a woman's son, the death of a large group of people who, seeking refuge from fire were asphyxiated and cooked, the stone vault becoming a massive oven - were interesting and engaging. Standing in the dark, damp vaults it was easy to imagine the horrors that people must have faced living and working in them.
Then it started to get a bit silly. One tale in particular undermined the experience for me. That of a seventeen year old girl lured into a meeting of the Hellfire Club where fifteen of its members subsequently raped her, roasted her alive on a spit then ate her ("they even made her eat parts of herself!" our guide declared with grim sincerity) in a dark occult ceremony.
Apart from the obvious practical inconsistencies (how exactly does one eat oneself once one has been roasted alive on a spit?) my biggest problem with this tale is the lack of any documentary evidence to back it up. "We had no idea this had taken place" our guide told us, "until a psychic entered this chamber and figured out what had happened".
I have grave misgivings about psychics and mediums. Largely because they are all charlatans and liars. Yes that's right Derek Acorah, I'm talking to you and all of your manipulative ilk. Perhaps a debate for another time, it's sufficient for my purposes just now to emphatically state that all so-called psychics and mediums are simply con artists adept at cold-reading, generalising and manipulative vulnerable people. Usually for money. You should all be ashamed of yourselves.
Anyway, the guide's credibility quickly drained away as he maintained a highly amusing and slightly irksome level of "What was that? Did anyone else hear/see/feel/smell that?" theatrics. Yeah mate it was traffic noise. It was dripping water. There was nothing there at all you've just made it up.
A couple of the people on the tour seemed to be buying into it although I don't think anyone got really scared. The highlight was a room that had been used by a modern day witches coven (I know, I know) in the late nineties until the atmosphere turned sour and they were too scared to go back into it. The stone circle they had made in the centre of the room was claimed to be imbued with evil powers and our guide did a great job of hamming this "fact" right up.
Supposedly a sceptic, foolhardy on the fumes of his own disbelief, ignored his warnings to stay out of the circle. When he stepped in he felt a presence and challenged it to do something to him. He promptly suffered a (non fatal) heart attack and was carted off by paramedics.
As a result the guide would not allow anyone to step into the circle while he was in the room. He left the room ahead of us to give us the chance to try it out. Despite it pandering to him on some level I obviously had a wee dance in the circle. I was horrified when I felt the overwhelming urge to giggle like a schoolboy at how nonsensical it was. Maybe it did have dark powers after all.
It's easy to be dismissive of the notions of hauntings, especially when the brochure lists among the catalogue of supernatural occurrences "an adolescent boy vomited in one of the vaults" (spooky) and "regular occurrences of panic attacks and visitors leaving the vaults" being two of my favourites. I firmly do not believe in ghosts and ghoulies.
The vaults however do possess an atmosphere that is sinister and oppressive. They are dark, dripping and cold and feel very out of place under the streets of a modern city. It's easy to see how impressionable minds could be convinced they are experiencing strange phenomena and witnessing the materialisation of spirits. In those claustrophobic cells your imagination can run riot, and the sensory deprivation of the darkness would easily give rise to mildly hallucinatory imaginings.
From that point of view it was an enjoyable experience. Out of your comfort zone it's a watching a scary movie on your own sort of experience where the only demons you are likely to encounter are your own expectations that you drag in there with you. Our tour group seemed relatively sensible, I would imagine in a larger group of "believers" the tour would be an absolute riot of ghost train proportions, each person's hysteria magnifying the other's.
So a mixed experience although ultimately rather satisfying. And proof to me of that age old adage - I ain't 'fraid of no ghost!
Monday 15 March 2010
Throw me the idol, I'll throw you the whip...
Raiders Of The Lost Ark. One of those films that has been permanently etched on my psyche due to excessive levels of repeated viewing in my youth. I will always think of it with great fondness as one of those taped-off-the-telly videos I had with the adverts paused and the wee tab snapped off so I couldn't accidentally tape over it. I'm fairly confident that every frame is inscribed indelibly in the jumble of neurons in my brain. This probably explains why Alfred Molina's ultimatum to Indy in the opening sequence ended up repeating itself in an endless loop during a run-in I had with a shoplifter yesterday.
It was around lunchtime, I was going about my business in retail land on a relatively quiet day, the usual throngs of shoppers more than likely spending some time with their mums. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a shifty pair of eyes at the other end of the shop. My spider-sense tingled.
When it comes to spotting somebody up to no good there is no substitute for years of experience and good instincts. I can't explain exactly what it was about the way this particular person was behaving or looking but it triggered the gut feeling that he was up to something. Closer inspection revealed he had a Farmfoods shopping bag literally stuffed with contraband and was intent on leaving without paying for it.
He left the shop with me hot on his heels and, I suspect, oblivious to my presence. He set off the security alarms as he left and as I began to ask him to return to the store he decided to make a break for it. I grabbed his arm as he ran and he dragged me several feet until we were standing more or less in the neighbouring store. He stopped and turned to me and I braced myself for the possibility the whole thing was about to degenerate into a brawl.
"Let me go and I'll drop the bag" he said. I'm pretty sure I blinked with surprise. "Drop the bag" I said, "and I'll let you go." He didn't seem to get the idea. "No let me go first, then I'll drop the bag." We went back and forth on this line of debate for what felt like ages but couldn't have been more than 10 seconds. It took him a while but I think eventually the idea dawned on him that if he held onto the bag and I held onto him, I technically had the bag of stuff anyway. He slowly lowered the bag to the floor and true to my word I let him go. Somehow the thought of a brawl on the floor of the jewellers didn't really appeal to me. Throw me the idol, I'll throw you the whip. That phrase was circling round my brain for the duration of the confrontation and the rest of the day, which I spent pacing like a caged animal, amped up on adrenaline that I never had the chance to release.
There's something about shoplifting that really gets my goat. As far as crimes go it's probably, objectively, at the lower end of the scale (although in this instance the criminal in question had about £200 worth of stock in his bag) and yet it inspires a disproportionate level of rage in me. I can only put this down to taking it personally. If you ask the British Retail Consortium they will tell you that last year shoplifting cost British businesses £1.1 BILLION. They say businesses but the brunt of that cost is borne by the British consumer in higher prices, etc. That's a ridiculous amount of money that could be put to much better use somewhere else in the economy.
Personally, I hate people who think that they have the right to take what they want and not actually work for a living to earn money and things. I take great pride in the fact I have put in years of hard graft to achieve the lifestyle I live and have the things I have. I hate (and I don't use the word lightly) people who feel the world owes them a living. However, like all human failings, it has been around forever and will continue to be around forever to come. Some people, and this is a fact I accepted long ago, are just wankers. It's all part of life's great tapestry I suppose.
On balance the whole debacle did nothing to dampen my post-holiday good mood, in fact it had quite the opposite effect. It's always nice to thwart somebody on the rob and the recovery of so much stock in one go is enough to keep me smiling for a couple of days.
Cost of a Farmfoods bag full of boxsets - £200. The look on the faces of the jeweller's staff and their customer while the drama unfurled before them - priceless.
It was around lunchtime, I was going about my business in retail land on a relatively quiet day, the usual throngs of shoppers more than likely spending some time with their mums. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a shifty pair of eyes at the other end of the shop. My spider-sense tingled.
When it comes to spotting somebody up to no good there is no substitute for years of experience and good instincts. I can't explain exactly what it was about the way this particular person was behaving or looking but it triggered the gut feeling that he was up to something. Closer inspection revealed he had a Farmfoods shopping bag literally stuffed with contraband and was intent on leaving without paying for it.
He left the shop with me hot on his heels and, I suspect, oblivious to my presence. He set off the security alarms as he left and as I began to ask him to return to the store he decided to make a break for it. I grabbed his arm as he ran and he dragged me several feet until we were standing more or less in the neighbouring store. He stopped and turned to me and I braced myself for the possibility the whole thing was about to degenerate into a brawl.
"Let me go and I'll drop the bag" he said. I'm pretty sure I blinked with surprise. "Drop the bag" I said, "and I'll let you go." He didn't seem to get the idea. "No let me go first, then I'll drop the bag." We went back and forth on this line of debate for what felt like ages but couldn't have been more than 10 seconds. It took him a while but I think eventually the idea dawned on him that if he held onto the bag and I held onto him, I technically had the bag of stuff anyway. He slowly lowered the bag to the floor and true to my word I let him go. Somehow the thought of a brawl on the floor of the jewellers didn't really appeal to me. Throw me the idol, I'll throw you the whip. That phrase was circling round my brain for the duration of the confrontation and the rest of the day, which I spent pacing like a caged animal, amped up on adrenaline that I never had the chance to release.
There's something about shoplifting that really gets my goat. As far as crimes go it's probably, objectively, at the lower end of the scale (although in this instance the criminal in question had about £200 worth of stock in his bag) and yet it inspires a disproportionate level of rage in me. I can only put this down to taking it personally. If you ask the British Retail Consortium they will tell you that last year shoplifting cost British businesses £1.1 BILLION. They say businesses but the brunt of that cost is borne by the British consumer in higher prices, etc. That's a ridiculous amount of money that could be put to much better use somewhere else in the economy.
Personally, I hate people who think that they have the right to take what they want and not actually work for a living to earn money and things. I take great pride in the fact I have put in years of hard graft to achieve the lifestyle I live and have the things I have. I hate (and I don't use the word lightly) people who feel the world owes them a living. However, like all human failings, it has been around forever and will continue to be around forever to come. Some people, and this is a fact I accepted long ago, are just wankers. It's all part of life's great tapestry I suppose.
On balance the whole debacle did nothing to dampen my post-holiday good mood, in fact it had quite the opposite effect. It's always nice to thwart somebody on the rob and the recovery of so much stock in one go is enough to keep me smiling for a couple of days.
Cost of a Farmfoods bag full of boxsets - £200. The look on the faces of the jeweller's staff and their customer while the drama unfurled before them - priceless.
Saturday 13 March 2010
People are strange...
..when you're on holiday.
Or maybe it's just my seemingly innate ability to become the centre of orbit for lunatics the world over.
Over the years I have met my fair share (perhaps even more than my fair share) of, to put it delicately, eccentric individuals. Admittedly my line of work puts me in the firing line of the more unusually minded members of the community but it's the people I have encountered outwith my profession that have been among the oddest.
There was, for example, the man in Amsterdam airport about 10 years ago who asked if he could sit at a spare seat at the cafe table I was sitting at. Expecting him to sit down and mind his own business while I carried on reading my book I nodded my assent. Schoolboy error. His opening gambit set the tone for the conversation. As he sat down he placed two large brandies and two bottles of beer on the table. "I'm not an alcoholic" he told me. That was his opening line. Swiftly followed by both brandies. I attempted to maintain all my concentration on my book but to no avail.
What followed was a string of tall tales all about this man's ever so interesting and exciting life. He was Polish-American and apparently had done it all. He had met Bill Clinton (this was just after the Lewinski scandal) and had told him he had disgraced the office of President and was "an asshole" as a result. He had shared a drink with John Lennon's ghost on the night he was shot. His greatest endeavour however put these achievements in the shade. "I signed a deal with the devil" he told me. Expecting a metaphorical tirade about how he wasted his life pursuing a career at the expense of his family or some similarly tired cliche I braced myself for the inevitably dull punchline. "I sold my soul to the Devil," he continued, "but I outfoxed him. I signed the document using my middle name, not my first name, so he won't get my soul when I die." At this point I was desperately trying to attract the attention of Amsterdam airport's armed police.
That encounter came to an end when the fellow shouted to another person sitting in the cafe to come and join the conversation. It turned out to be Josh Hartnett who, obviously used to dealing with random weirdos at that point in his career (it would have been a year or so after The Faculty) made some excuse about having to catch his plane and left. Four hours later when I boarded my flight I discovered I was sitting next to Josh Hartnett. I thanked him profusely for abandoning me with the crazy person and then spent the next six hours being bored to death by his self obsessed wittering.
Another odd encounter happened on Academy Street in the town. It would have been around a similar time, after a night out with the girl I was seeing at the time. Walking along the street we got talking to an American man who was apparently on holiday. Seemed like a nice enough guy (lot's of remarks about young love and similar) and then out of the blue he decided to tell me about how he "owned three major American cities", was in the Mafia and then proceeded to offer me a job. To this day I wonder what would have happened if I'd accepted his offer. I suppose I'll never know for sure if he was a Mafia Don or not.
Anyway.
I've been thinking about this phenomenon lately due to some encounters on our recent trip to Tenerife. Barbara shares my track record for attracting what can affectionately be called "Crazies" and so when we are together it really is just asking for trouble.
It started on the plane on the way over. One chap in particular marked himself out as being of special interest, henceforth to be known as "Drunky-Ginger Man" or DG for short. DG worked his way through several cans of Stella and half a bottle of champagne. Presumably after being at the bar in the airport given his state of intoxication. He lapsed between being unconcsious and semi-concsious throughout the flight, his stupor so deep at times that the cabin crew began to fear for his safety. When we were disembarking at Tenerife he became a tragi-comic figure as three flight attendants tried to ensure he had all his relevant documents (including passport) and get him off the plane. His prospects didn't look good.
Our coach connection to the hotel was short of two people. DG wasn't on the bus. Even money said he was one of the missing people. An hour and a half later we had checked in, dumped our luggage in our room and headed for the bar. Several drinks later we left to hunt down some late night food in the resort. Who did we pass, sat on a plastic chair, passed out by the pool but DG. Somehow he had managed to find his way to the hotel, presumably by some instinct that was immune to the effects of all the alcohol. He was to reappear from time to time over the course of the week, innocuously innebriated and apparently having a whale of a time.
Stark contrast to the harmless Drunky-Ginger Man was Fiona. We first met Fiona on the first night we were at the hotel when I managed to lock us out on our balcony. It was at about half one in the morning and the hotel bar was locking up for the night. Our first attempt to attract attention worked, with a hotel security guard attracted to our somewhat desperate cries for help. As he approached we appealed to him to go to reception and ask them to come up and let us back into the room. Smiling broadly he told us to keep the noise down. "Not a problem," we told him, "we just need some help first". He told us to keep the noise down again. I don't think he understood what we were saying. I don't think he could speak any English other than "keep the noise down." Then he buggered off, leaving us hanging.
Plan B. I assessed the possibility of a controlled leap from our balcony (first floor) to the ground. No danger. A sheer drop, onto concrete with no way of reducing the height of the fall seemed like madness even to my drunken brain. A couple of balconies across I spotted a tiered wall-come-flower-bed arrangement that looked liked a decent prospect for clambering down. All it would take would be a deft hop across a couple of dividing walls, a short leap to the tiered wall and job's a good 'un. Thankfully for me Barbara has much more common sense than I and did a tremendous job of dissuading me from this loopy course of action. We opted for Plan C, shouting loudly at the one remaining human being in sight (who was locking up the bar) in a vain attempt to attract his attention. He disappeared in the opposite direction, bin bags in hand and took our hopes of rescue with him.
Just then we hear a voice from above us. A neighbour, attracted by our shouts, had come out to see what the fuss was about. Perhaps she would prove to be our saviour? As it turned out she had attended the same "how to help people stuck on a balcony" course as the hotel security man as she opted for the telling us to keep the noise down approach. She then started mumbling to herself so quietly we couldn't hear what she was saying and then disappeared back into her appartment. In the end I managed to break back into the appartment with a sudden and direct application of force to the sliding door that popped it off it's catch, opening it. So much for security! With one eye open and a sense of relief that we had invested in the safety deposit box for the room we retired to bed.
Fiona was to feature quite heavily over the next couple of days, largely due to the fact (which we found out later) that she was a paranoid schizophrenic who had flushed her medication down the toilet the day before we arrived. Her outlandish behaviour escalated over the next day or so culminating in her battering seven bells out of her mother by the pool before drifting into a very unsettling, very strange tirade to herself, talking about herself in the third person with a lot of references to spirits, her own death and the FBI. In the end her sister had to be called in from England with additional medication which settled her down almost immediately.
There were so many more. The dildo-wielding transvestite at the carnival, Frank the Mancunian bin man (not a bloody chip-shop anywhere can you believe it?), Frances the Glasgwegian care worker and a man so convinced that all foreigners are stupid he spent five minutes trying to explain his complaint to the girl at reception in single words, spoken loudly and slowly, only for her to tell him in perfect English that she couldn't understand what he was trying to tell her.
I love people. I love the fact that no matter where you go in the world there are plenty of loonies to keep it interesting. Genuine characters who, love or loathe them, give you pause for thought and plenty to talk about. As infuriating and loathsome, as ignorant and insulting, as irrational and unreasonable as they can be, I somehow can't bring myself to completely write off humanity.
At least not all of it anyway.
Or maybe it's just my seemingly innate ability to become the centre of orbit for lunatics the world over.
Over the years I have met my fair share (perhaps even more than my fair share) of, to put it delicately, eccentric individuals. Admittedly my line of work puts me in the firing line of the more unusually minded members of the community but it's the people I have encountered outwith my profession that have been among the oddest.
There was, for example, the man in Amsterdam airport about 10 years ago who asked if he could sit at a spare seat at the cafe table I was sitting at. Expecting him to sit down and mind his own business while I carried on reading my book I nodded my assent. Schoolboy error. His opening gambit set the tone for the conversation. As he sat down he placed two large brandies and two bottles of beer on the table. "I'm not an alcoholic" he told me. That was his opening line. Swiftly followed by both brandies. I attempted to maintain all my concentration on my book but to no avail.
What followed was a string of tall tales all about this man's ever so interesting and exciting life. He was Polish-American and apparently had done it all. He had met Bill Clinton (this was just after the Lewinski scandal) and had told him he had disgraced the office of President and was "an asshole" as a result. He had shared a drink with John Lennon's ghost on the night he was shot. His greatest endeavour however put these achievements in the shade. "I signed a deal with the devil" he told me. Expecting a metaphorical tirade about how he wasted his life pursuing a career at the expense of his family or some similarly tired cliche I braced myself for the inevitably dull punchline. "I sold my soul to the Devil," he continued, "but I outfoxed him. I signed the document using my middle name, not my first name, so he won't get my soul when I die." At this point I was desperately trying to attract the attention of Amsterdam airport's armed police.
That encounter came to an end when the fellow shouted to another person sitting in the cafe to come and join the conversation. It turned out to be Josh Hartnett who, obviously used to dealing with random weirdos at that point in his career (it would have been a year or so after The Faculty) made some excuse about having to catch his plane and left. Four hours later when I boarded my flight I discovered I was sitting next to Josh Hartnett. I thanked him profusely for abandoning me with the crazy person and then spent the next six hours being bored to death by his self obsessed wittering.
Another odd encounter happened on Academy Street in the town. It would have been around a similar time, after a night out with the girl I was seeing at the time. Walking along the street we got talking to an American man who was apparently on holiday. Seemed like a nice enough guy (lot's of remarks about young love and similar) and then out of the blue he decided to tell me about how he "owned three major American cities", was in the Mafia and then proceeded to offer me a job. To this day I wonder what would have happened if I'd accepted his offer. I suppose I'll never know for sure if he was a Mafia Don or not.
Anyway.
I've been thinking about this phenomenon lately due to some encounters on our recent trip to Tenerife. Barbara shares my track record for attracting what can affectionately be called "Crazies" and so when we are together it really is just asking for trouble.
It started on the plane on the way over. One chap in particular marked himself out as being of special interest, henceforth to be known as "Drunky-Ginger Man" or DG for short. DG worked his way through several cans of Stella and half a bottle of champagne. Presumably after being at the bar in the airport given his state of intoxication. He lapsed between being unconcsious and semi-concsious throughout the flight, his stupor so deep at times that the cabin crew began to fear for his safety. When we were disembarking at Tenerife he became a tragi-comic figure as three flight attendants tried to ensure he had all his relevant documents (including passport) and get him off the plane. His prospects didn't look good.
Our coach connection to the hotel was short of two people. DG wasn't on the bus. Even money said he was one of the missing people. An hour and a half later we had checked in, dumped our luggage in our room and headed for the bar. Several drinks later we left to hunt down some late night food in the resort. Who did we pass, sat on a plastic chair, passed out by the pool but DG. Somehow he had managed to find his way to the hotel, presumably by some instinct that was immune to the effects of all the alcohol. He was to reappear from time to time over the course of the week, innocuously innebriated and apparently having a whale of a time.
Stark contrast to the harmless Drunky-Ginger Man was Fiona. We first met Fiona on the first night we were at the hotel when I managed to lock us out on our balcony. It was at about half one in the morning and the hotel bar was locking up for the night. Our first attempt to attract attention worked, with a hotel security guard attracted to our somewhat desperate cries for help. As he approached we appealed to him to go to reception and ask them to come up and let us back into the room. Smiling broadly he told us to keep the noise down. "Not a problem," we told him, "we just need some help first". He told us to keep the noise down again. I don't think he understood what we were saying. I don't think he could speak any English other than "keep the noise down." Then he buggered off, leaving us hanging.
Plan B. I assessed the possibility of a controlled leap from our balcony (first floor) to the ground. No danger. A sheer drop, onto concrete with no way of reducing the height of the fall seemed like madness even to my drunken brain. A couple of balconies across I spotted a tiered wall-come-flower-bed arrangement that looked liked a decent prospect for clambering down. All it would take would be a deft hop across a couple of dividing walls, a short leap to the tiered wall and job's a good 'un. Thankfully for me Barbara has much more common sense than I and did a tremendous job of dissuading me from this loopy course of action. We opted for Plan C, shouting loudly at the one remaining human being in sight (who was locking up the bar) in a vain attempt to attract his attention. He disappeared in the opposite direction, bin bags in hand and took our hopes of rescue with him.
Just then we hear a voice from above us. A neighbour, attracted by our shouts, had come out to see what the fuss was about. Perhaps she would prove to be our saviour? As it turned out she had attended the same "how to help people stuck on a balcony" course as the hotel security man as she opted for the telling us to keep the noise down approach. She then started mumbling to herself so quietly we couldn't hear what she was saying and then disappeared back into her appartment. In the end I managed to break back into the appartment with a sudden and direct application of force to the sliding door that popped it off it's catch, opening it. So much for security! With one eye open and a sense of relief that we had invested in the safety deposit box for the room we retired to bed.
Fiona was to feature quite heavily over the next couple of days, largely due to the fact (which we found out later) that she was a paranoid schizophrenic who had flushed her medication down the toilet the day before we arrived. Her outlandish behaviour escalated over the next day or so culminating in her battering seven bells out of her mother by the pool before drifting into a very unsettling, very strange tirade to herself, talking about herself in the third person with a lot of references to spirits, her own death and the FBI. In the end her sister had to be called in from England with additional medication which settled her down almost immediately.
There were so many more. The dildo-wielding transvestite at the carnival, Frank the Mancunian bin man (not a bloody chip-shop anywhere can you believe it?), Frances the Glasgwegian care worker and a man so convinced that all foreigners are stupid he spent five minutes trying to explain his complaint to the girl at reception in single words, spoken loudly and slowly, only for her to tell him in perfect English that she couldn't understand what he was trying to tell her.
I love people. I love the fact that no matter where you go in the world there are plenty of loonies to keep it interesting. Genuine characters who, love or loathe them, give you pause for thought and plenty to talk about. As infuriating and loathsome, as ignorant and insulting, as irrational and unreasonable as they can be, I somehow can't bring myself to completely write off humanity.
At least not all of it anyway.
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