Mr Bread - Now more than 3 months old!



It goes without saying that it's STILL soft and still white! No sign of fungus anywhere!

Freaky...

Dark Phoenix



Just finished X-men: Dark Phoenix written by Chris Claremont, one of my favourite Marvel writers. Brilliant work. Big shout out to Joseph for the heads up on that one in China and I'm ordering Fables as soon as I get paid. Any further recommendations?

You've still gotta catch up on Swamp Thing though mate, cos if you don't our friendship really is in danger!

Our view of Toledo




Me and Sassy Catalina set off for Toledo yesterday, a town in Castilla la Mancha, home of the legendary Don Quixote and also the home of El Greco, Spain's most famous Renaisance painter.

We headed off at about 1pm and when we got there it pissed down so we stayed in the Bus station for ages and saw bugger all.

Nice place...

Air vent eyes


...and here's one I picked up yesterday in Toledo that looks uncannily like me!

Me and the Old Man


Just in case you haven't been watching the action on my Flickr site and missed this, this is the latest find on my grafitti tour of Spain. It's flipping HUGE and absolutely bloody amazing.

If you click on the photo you can see more photos of it close up and the detail is incredible.

Overcoming the difficulties with eating with a moustache

Been growing the moustache now for 6 weeks and it's now about 8mm long, and starting to cause me a few problems when eating.

So to overcome this I have worked out a completely fail-safe method of eating, which involves firstly pulling my top lip back and gnawing off the edges of my food like a gerbil.

Tache adventures

The second part of the eating process is tipping my head back to make the food drop down without touching the tache.



I've found this to be an effective method for keeping my tache ice-cream-free.

Shame it makes me look like a twat...

Alternatives to being poor

Lately, my pay packet has been bothering me a bit as, having left a well-paid job at a school in the UK my pay packet has been slashed by a third and this has left me with a sizable hole in my pocket [but a smug self-satisfied grin on my face for those in the know ;-)]

I was reading the Daily Telegraph the other day at Lucy's house and read that Cambridge University are paying crack addicts £300 to take part in some research.

Reading the Durex site yesterday and paying a quick visit to Club Pedestal's site today, it dawned on me...

I'm in the wrong job!

If I were just a crack junkie and sex addict, doing night shifts at Club Pedestal as a house slave, I would be paid in a week what I get paid in a month at the moment!

Now there's a plan!

Bargain! (You still lookin for a job Jase?)

Thanks to Chewy and me, myself and I who share the same love of Bargains as me.

A quick poke around their site and I uncovered bargain of the century!

Get paid £500 to test out Durex!!!

I've been looking for a new flask for AGES...

Still need a job Jase?

I think my ex-girlfriend is watching me


I saw this vehicle parked outside my flat this morning. I suspect she's still obsessed, but hasn't quite got the idea of what it means to go undercover yet...

Suspect whittled down from billions to...

I've been following the Bob Woolmer strangling case lately and today I read the following headline

Harry Potter poison killed Woolmer, suspect identified

Good to know that the Police have finally whittled down from a billion or so suspects to a 16 year old magician.

I always thought there was something strange about that boy.

Discipline

Holy shit! Apparently the Taleban have used a 12 year old boy to behead a US dude accused of spying!

He'd get a detention for that if he were in my class...

Not as skinny as I thought...


Perhaps I am getting stronger....

Cheers to Phil for pulling the bars apart . D'oh!

Dinosaur

I went out with my little cousin the other day



and while out we gave her the camera to go and take some pics.

I checked the photos when we got home and here's what she took!



I can't remember her taking this. Is this yet MORE proof that I am a lion?

We went to the Natural History Museum by the way, but I'm sure this has nothing to do with it...

Boy I'm hot!


Yes that's me folks - he's on FIRE! AAARGH!

Typewriters

A long time ago I was told that the QWERTY layout of keyboards was designed so that, for some obscure reason, typewriter users could spell the word "typewriter" using just the first line.

I've accepted this for a while not bothering to look but today I took a look at my keyboard and found that it's got FAR too many letters for this.

I mean what sort of twat spells "typewriter" with a Q!?

And why the fuck would you want to write "typewriter" anyway! Do normal writers write the word "pen" all day long?

I think not.

Looking through the wikipedia entry for QWERTY on alternative layouts could it be that the Italians, Czechs, Hungarians and Germans spell it "TZPEWRITER" and Lithuanians "TYPEŽRITER"?

Dade this is all YOUR fault!

Productivity has gone through the floor since discovering that you can watch kungfu on youtube...

A cosmic collision of two meteorites indeed

If you haven't read it already check out Brainwaves, the official magazine of the 4 Leaf Clover Mental Health club in Sherborne, which features ME of all people on the front page!

That's in preference to the Mayor.

MENTAL!

http://4leafcc.co.uk/ and click the Brainwaves link.

Warning - Trying to balance on a Boomerang is futile


I'm totally obsessed with the Flickr groups Stick Figures in Peril and In Numerical Order at the moment, so much so it now takes me about an hour to walk home, armed with my camera every day cos I'm searching high and low for stick figures and numbers from 1075 upwards.

No I've never thought of getting a girlfriend...

Yippee!! Someone finally noticed my facial hair!

I've been growing it for a month and finally a kid in the lower school says something in Spanish to me while rubbing his Index finger over his top lip and pointing at me.

I presume he said "Cor blimey you look like a LION" but given that he followed that up in English with "You need a shave, Andy" I think that that's fairly unlikely.

Unique

"Bleedin' eck!" Lou says to me the other day, "I looked on Google for people to join me on this crazy hitch"

"So I typed in "interests eurovision hitchhiking" into Google and ALL the links point to ME!"

I always knew Lou was a little special...

My moustache Month 1 and a bit



I was told the other day what whiskers are for on cats.

Apparently a cat's whiskers is exactly the width of their bodies so if you cut the whiskers off a cat they will get stuck when they go through gaps like fences.

Combined with my fence-squeezing antics, that explains why my moustache hasn't grown at all in a month!

More proof that I am a lion!

ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAR!

Hitching to Eurovision with Loopylou

Ever wanted to Hitch-hike across Europe and watch the worlds cheesiest pop show live?

No me either.

But my mate Loopylou does and she has a spare ticket for Eurovision waiting for YOU! Yes YOU!

Check out her gumtastic ad or send her something on her myspace page, www.myspace.com/givecheese to cheer her up cos no-one else can make it.

awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!

...on second thoughts DON'T buy Mens Health Magazine this month!

My brother tells me I'm not in it after all!

Bastards...

Buy Mens Health Magazine this month!!!

I appear in it twice!

Oh and buy me a copy too while you're at it...

Also this month I appear on the front page of Brainwaves magazine, the official magazine of 4 Leaf Clover Club, the mental health joint that I raised money for with the Dosa Boys

Just found another link to my hair too

Food

According to the old saying, apparently you are what you eat.

So tomorrow I am turning to cannibalism in an attempt to win back my humanity after becoming a bowl of lentil soup this lunchtime.

Moustache and pies

The moustache area is starting to get a little hirsuite (pics later) as I haven't shaved since I said I was gonna start nurturing tache-canopy (March 13)

It must be at LEAST half a centimentre in length after a months growth!

I was thinkin about this and my skininess today and it dawned on me that, as a Yellow brother, my lack of insulation and facial shrubbery was actually an indication that I am both weak and stupid.

Let me explain...

Firstly, it is clear from watching such educational videos as Drunken Master with Jackie Chan, or Fu Manchu that if you are yellow and in possession of facial hair, then you are immediately bestowed with great wisdom.

Examples of bearded and wise Yellow Brothers in history include Confucious, the Father of Chinese philosophy



Lao-Tzu, the Father of Taoism



and Lee Yan Ho the father of Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon



Then comes the fatness issue.

It seems that, if you want to be a tough Yellow brother that no-one will mess with you need to have a few pounds of noodle-induced fat around your ass. Evidence of this can be seen clearly by looking at Sammo Hung



and various sumo wrestlers



So from this evidence I come to the following conclusions..

1) Bad Hair = Wisdom
2) Obesity = Strength

So I guess that technically, I aspire to be fat and hairy. This isn't normal is it...

Pass me another pie Jools...

Dosa Boys Insider: The Finish Line

Hopefully while I'm in the UK with a bit of time i should be getting the final days done. I'm hoping for a Tuesday sprint finish.

It aint over til after the vehicles are handed over to the Mercy Corps and SO much has yet to happen between now and then...

Keep watching www.dosaboys.blogspot.com

Stupid stupid stupid

In my wisdom I was messing about with the Spanish blogging wonderphone and got to this menu where all I could understand was the bit that said "Puntea 1234" which means "Press 1234"

So I did

The rest of the message I figured out later to mean

"If you want to reset your phone,...."

So if I haven't called you it's because your number has now been erased from existence.

What an Ass-hat

Scrawny git...

One or two of my mates who I went to school with may remember that I could get through the gaps in the fence whenever the gates were locked.

I went to Oxford today with the family and saw this fence with a little gap in it and just wanted to test if I still had no body fat and here's what happened...



Approved by Vanessa Feltz!


I'm not sure what's more absurd, being given the Vanessa Feltz seal of approval or the fact that the restaurant, called Wong Kei, which regularly gets voted rudest restaurant in London almost every year in various magazines would proudly display it in the window!

I wonder what I need to do to recieve the Vanessa Feltz seal of approval. Perhaps I need to ring her up and slag her off then go over and spill soup down her shirt and swear at her in Chinese...

Duty free bargains in Santiago

I like a nice bargain, so when I get to airports and rummage around the duty-free I always expect some sort of reward.

Santiago airport this morning at about 10:30 had a mini-Gameboy on sale with the humongous saving of 4 whole cents!



I don't really play computers though, so I had to pass on that one, but a 4 cent saving on a Nintendo DS (retail price E149.99) was almost all my willpower could take...

Blog 500

It would be 600 if i just had an extra couple of fingers...

Useful Spanish phrases

You may recall some time back that I bought this phone, purely for blogging, only to find that the whole bloody interface is in Spanish and can't be changed.

Anyway, after tryin to get my hands on an English version without success I decided in my infinite wisdom that havin a phone in Spanish that I didn't understand at all could only be a good thing in helpin me get to grips with the language (and ultimately get laid)

So i kept it and navigated mainly using the icons. But on my way I have picked up some useful phrases to expand my repertoire with the ladies.

Now, in addition to the alphabet I can say Cut (cortar), Copy (copiar) and Paste (pegar)

...which i can't see getting me very far. If that fails i can try sayin 'select all' (seleccionar todo) or 'remove cells' (eliminar celdas).

With this level of charm at my disposal no doubt I will bag myself a cute honey in no time!

If all else fails though, what lady could possibly resist the man that slides up to them in the bar and whispers in their ear...

"Insertar columna guapa" (Insert column beautiful)

Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all...

Gods down the pub

I pissed a good friend off the other day with this one and you will see why. PLEASE don't sulk Pony every god gets the piss taken out of them!

So i was thinkin right, if you had a choice of any god or biblical/religious figure to take down the pub, who would you bring?

Obviously Venus springs to mind straight away but you'd sit there just wantin to take her home while seriously avoidin your drink.

So perhaps the Indian gods, cos they're always a laugh. Imagine Ganesh walkin in with his elephant head and stickin his trunk in his pint glass and sprayin it across the bar. That would be PRICELESS! And he'd no doubt give you the lowdown on what happened when his dad caught him shaggin his mum and cut his head off, that would be great fun...

Hanuman is everyone's favourite too. Anyone who turns up at the pub with a mountain full of herbs would go down a storm especially if he's a monkey.

Which Hanuman is...

Other notable Indian gods to take down the pub would be Shiva the goddess of war, who apart from bein a babe (i hope i've got the right one) has 1000 arms. She could go up and get the rounds in while everyone's sat down and she wouldn't need any help carryin em back! Wouldn't want to piss her off though.

Vishnu would turn up on a cow but i don't think he'd be a lot of fun. Mind you if you catch him at the right time he's also Buddha and so he'd have some crackin adventure stories! The jury's out on Vishnu. Think it depends very much on which incarnation you get really.

But what about Christianity?

Alright let's work our way down.

Would you bring God down the pub?

Obviously he'd already be there, unless it really IS some God-forsaken place in which case he won't. I'm not sure how much fun God would be really. I mean what does he DO exactly? He'd obviously drink any of you under the table as he's been at it for years but if you've read the book, chances are you've heard most his jokes.

Jesus would be brilliant down the pub. Just as long as you don't order the red wine, cos it makes him a bit squeamish, he'd be a bundle of laughs i reckon. The guy was a proper gangster i reckon, he was from the streets, he hung out with 12 lads, his dad was a workin class geezer and his mum was not some slapper she was a proper bird just hit the hard times but raised him well ya know.

Just picture the scene. Jesus says with a cheeky wink

"Watch this boys"

and goes to the bar

"Just a tap water and a bag of crisps mate"

And he comes back.

Next thing you know he turns the water into Rioja and the crisps feed everyone in the bar! It would be wicked!

Moses would do the old party trick of parting his pint and Herod would slaughter the first pork scratching in every bag.

Most of the Norse gods would be fun I'm sure. Thor, Odin and any of the other Marvel characters. Greek gods anyone?

But Allah.

Man he'd be crap down the pub wouldn't he! Every time you wanted to talk about girls, scoff a pork scratching or just skip praying in the direction of Mecca cos your team has just scored he'd be moaning and whingeing like a girl.

Well at least we know who's drivin us home...

Evolution

I was in the shower right and it occured to me that I always apply shower gel to my chest first, which is where I sweat least, and which is consequently probably the cleanest part of my body.

I figure that it's cos we've evolved with arms that bend sort of forwards and that got me thinkin what sort of other adaptations the human race still has to undergo before we become homo superior, like Magneto off the X-men.

My mate Anu revealed to me the other day that she was actually born with 6 fingers, the extra digit growing out of her little finger on either side. So she's a bit like Wolverine.

How cool would that be! She could do ctrl+A then any number of edit operations in a fraction of the time we 5-fingered homo inferior take. If we had 6 fingers I could produce 20% more blog and assuming this sort of productivity increase across the globe we could solve the world poverty crisis and produce food for everyone. No-one would have to go hungry all because we all grew an extra finger.

But the short-sighted, narrow-minded fools took the decision to amputate on grounds that they wouldn't be able to find gloves that fit, and the children of Africa cried...

What other evolutionary fun do we expect to see in future...?

Too many churches

I know that Santiago is famous for it's churches and that people walk for miles to get here and see them but today I have had quite enough of churches.

I mean you turn a corner here ------- CHURCH!

I opened my curtains this morning ------- CHURCH!

When I opened the papers --------CHURCH!

Really though what on earth do we need this many churches for in one place! Anyone would think that it was a religious place or something...

Personally if it were up to me I'd knock one or two of them down and make them into pubs. After all, how many times have you found you needed a church? What can you do in church that you can't do in pub? I used to see my vicar in the pub all the time smokin and drinkin and he wasn't allowed to do that in church.

This isn't a major problem is it doctor...?

...too late

I have to supress a giggle as the little lady wrinkles her nose and politely walks away!

but deep down I'm laughing

HAHAHAHAHAHA!

God that smells bad I'm drowning in my own buttstench!

Fart

Oh shit I think that all this Estrella Cerveza (Galician beer) and damn nice Galician cheese and pork has brewed in a funny way downstairs.

Damn that smells bad...

I hope no-one comes near me in this web cafe for their own good!

Bloody useless pilgrim



Yup I got the bus from Sanxenxo to Santiago. I couldn't really see the point of any more white sandy beaches and wanted to get to a town again!

Bloody nice town too, Santiago

So much for pilgrimage huh. Pass me another beer and cheese Foss...

Dosa Boys Insider: Drivers and passengers

I imagine it's pretty obvious why I removed your admin privileges on the blog as soon as the race was over isn't it Nick. I know why you begged me not to in Darjeeling, I'm not as dumb as I look.

If it's not, here is a plain and simple explanation.

I never set out to write nasty things about anyone because that's not the sort of person I am. Far from it, we were supposed to be a team with equal privileges in everything and we were before the race started. I reflected this in the fact that we were all administrators on www.dosaboys.blogspot.com So that all posters were equal. I was never meant to be the principal blogger and I was really looking forward to seeing what you could do.

Blogging allows people a freedom of speech unavailable in other media lime TV, and control and editing never came into the frame.

It's called equal opportunities and applies across race, colour, age religion and more. You know what I mean. ;-)

So here is where it went wrong.

You are a driver. For those 10 days we drove, you later bragged that you done 90% of the driving.

No-one in the rickshaw will deny this. You did indeed do 90% of the driving. Ivan done about 9.9% after you relinquished the wheel on day 8 briefly and I drove 100m with you complaining all the way.

But did you ASK if we wanted to drive before taking the wheel? We all contributed our ends to getting on this run but YOU took it all yourself and wouldnVt let us get in at all.

You were the driver.

We were the passengers.

Well the situation has changed now. While you drove then, I am now the driver.

I have been writing blogs for 7 years and i write all day long. They say the keyboard is mightier than the ignition key Nick.

I am a blogger. And you are now my passenger and this is how it feels in the back seat.

After all, you got possesive of the steering wheel in the rickshaw and who can blame you. You're a driver. It's your domain and you didn't want anyone to interfere with its perfection.

Welcome to my domain and I trust you enjoyed the ride as much as me and Ivan enjoyed yours.

You live. You learn.

Adios amigo

Oh and one more thing.

No need to thank me for leaving out the REALLY bad shit you said on days 8 and 9 after the crash which i wrote down word for word in my secret notebook, witnessed by Ivan.

Let's just call that a favour from a teammate...

Your quote

"I work in the media! I can fuck up Mercy Corps if i wanted to! I could really embarass them!"

My quote

"I blog. After all who watches TV these days anyway..."

Finally managed to get some walking done!

So I walked from Pontevedra yesterday to Combarro, about 5km. That was a start.

Then I got drunk and ate fish pies and cheesecake and fell asleep at 8pm. Alright alright I'm no St. James.

Combarro is a tiny little fishing town with lots of these corn-sheds on stilts all over the place.

This morning I have walked about 10km already and it's only 1pm. I'm at a place called Sanxenxo, which is a little like a Mediterannean costal resort. I took a little detour through the forests and found myself checkin out some churches and cemeteries up in the hills.

Lost for words for once

I had to write something last night about Simon for a dedications book.

Suddenly everything that I've ever written seemed to mean very little. All the experience of writing just evaporated.

For the first time in ages I could say nothing.

How to sum up a great friendship is something that I just couldn't do justice to in words.

Just over a week to the funeral.

RIP Simon

Still can't be bothered to walk anywhere



I'm not doing too well at this walking from place to place business.

I've covered a total distance of erm, nothing so far, but got cool pics around Pontevedra, which I must add is a bloody nice place! Beer is good, seafood is good and the museum is well worth a look in.



Legend has it that the geezer Columbus may have been born here. They made his ship here you know...



The plan for today, if i can be bothered is to walk to Sanxenxo, about 30km west of here.

Obviously I need to get in a couple of pints first for the road...

Physics teacher on a Mountain



I was at the top of a hill with the Atlantic Ocean behind me, waves crashing against the rocks 117m below me.

A quick calculation said that if i dropped a stone and threw one horizontally, they would both hit the waves below about 3 seconds later so I thought I'd give it a go.

The one that flew sideways narrowly avoided a seagull and the one that went straight down knocked out a pirate 117m below me at the same time.

I calculate I will fall off the end of the plank in about 10 seconds.

SHIT!!!!

Summer 2007 - The BIG one...

Ivan seems a little lukewarm on the Summer Rickshaw Run and so am I.

But there's a bigger one calling me. I feel that the time has come and I can no longer hold back.

This summer I'm gonna do the big one. Dosa Boys, America 2002, Ghana 1999, Romania 2005, Kuwait 2004-5 were all practice for this one.

This summer I am going back to my roots. I'm going back to where I originated.

I'm going back to Vietnam on a moped to trace my ancestry.

This is the one I've had up my sleeve for at least 5 years if not all my life.

This is not a trip this is my destiny and it will unfold for you right here on this blog. The Banana returns 2007!

Watch this space!

The only person in sight


Right.

I need a girlfriend. I figured it out today. i need a girlfriend NOW!

Why?

Well basically it's like this.

The hotel that I'm in tonight costs 36 Euros a night for a single bed. A double room costs 40 Euros.

So if you work it out that means that if 2 people share the room then each person makes a saving of 16 Euros!!!

WHAT A BARGAIN!

and when you throw in the free sex as well that saves you a further 30 or so Euros (so I'm told...)

So if anyone wants to save money with me on a regular basis just apply below.

...and they say romance is dead!

The cow by day


Just in case you had to squint last time here's that cow again

Choices choices...



Today I had to decide whether to walk 20km north towards Santiago on a pilgrimage or erm.....sit on the beach with pure white sands while eating cheese and drinking beer....



No I wouldn't make a very good pilgrim!

Especially as I'm a pirate...

SORRY PONY!



What I was trying to say through the haze was

"They've got TWO harps playing lead! Oh my days! They're being played by angels!!"

Yes I was pissed on local homemade wine...

Motorbike trial



Phil and me went out to test-drive a motorbike the other day. He wants a Triumph Bonneville so i went along for the ride.

Woooohooo!

Art and chinese

We were only supposed to be going to the Chinese in Plaza de Espana, 10 minutes down the road. But as usual , me and Einar got sidetracked. He was actually supposed to be in Norway at the time (this was just before i left to oe to Galicia for an adventure) but he forgot his passport, so we decided to go for lunch and take photos as consolation.



Turns out that on the way to the Chinese we notice this art gallery, completely devoid of any tourists with wall to wall drawings by Pablo Picasso! That was all of one minute around the corner from our flat!



As if that was´'t enough we come out of there and there is this contemporaru art gallery down the street. When we walked in we were confronted by a HUGE gittery wall and some mad crazy architectural art.



I love this city!

Walking the walk: Day 1 - Vigo



Hmmm not really the rural side of Galicia this. Vigo is a large port town, dominated by seagulls and pigeons. It's pretty cool taking in the sea breeze after months in Madrid so I'm not cryin about the lack of excitement.

Lookin at the route though between here and Santiago doesn't exactly fill me with excitement. It's not actually the path that people usually take to Santiago cos there's bugger all to see on this route.



However, saying that I've just walked into the tourist office and the pretty girl gave me a guide on routes through Galicia where you can eat cheese and wine! So I may just sod this religious thing and go on a cheese and wine tour!

Whoever said that you couldn't live on alcohol and cheese! Bring it on!

Train journey in style

So with absolutely no preparation at all, and after borrowing a rucksack and a pair of walking boots off Juliet I was ready to go.

Off to Charmartin to get on a train that cost 3 times the price of an air ticket. This had better be good, I thought.

and here it is. A 177 Euro train ride...



Sorry it's a bit dark and confusing - I only figured out how to turn the lights on an hour later...