CHRISTMAS IS COMING...

Much as I abhor cold weather, there really is something special in the lead up to a northern hemisphere Christmas.

Bright skies and Christmas tinsel

Trafalgar Sqaure

Somerset House

Boris Bikes are less popular in winter

In Hampstead, even the snowmen are posh

Frosty Florence Nightingale

The Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square

NANOWRIMO ATE MY SOUL

Hello stranger. Remember me? I used to be someone you saw or heard from now and again. You may have been wondering where I've been. Or, you may have been rejoicing in the freedom of not having to read, listen to or deal with me and my stupid crap. If the latter, well, screw you. But if you're actually interested - here's the secret to my almost complete absence from your life this last month: NaNoWriMo.

Wondering what on earth that is (and feeling too lazy to exercise the 5 muscles or whatever it would take to click on that hyperlink)? Well, it's a completely ridiculous global challenge that asks participants to write the first draft of a novel, from scratch, during the 30 days of November. That's 50,000 words in 30 days. If you divide the total number of words required by the number of days in the month, and divide again by the average typing speed, what you're left with is...pretty much no social life whatsoever for the whole damn month.

I first heard of NaNo when I stumbled across the book that started it all, No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty, when I lived in Edinburgh in 2007. I thought it was a cool idea, but it was already part-way through November so I didn't do it that year. And being the very driven, goal-oriented, disciplined person I am, what I immediately did was to forget all about its existence. Two years later, I found the book in a bookstore in London. It looked vaguely familiar, so I bought and (re-)read it. Once again, my timing was impeccable, as it was already part-way through November. A great excuse to procrastinate for another year - hurrah!

l ran out of excuses this year, though, so I duly committed myself to the ridiculous and almost-impossible task of writing the first draft of a novel - with no plot, characters or outlining done in advance - in 30 days. The first week was awful. My boss left the country, dumping on me the organisation of an event in Nigeria in a week's time. I was crazy busy trying to sort that out, and ended up having to go to Nigeria myself for five very hectic days. I was thousands of words behind the daily target and utterly exhausted, but as I had a friend signed up to do it with me this year, I reluctantly resisted the urge to scrap the whole idea and start saying yes to invitations to meet real live people who didn't live on my computer screen.

The second week, too, was awful. That was when I realised that the NaNoWriMo philosophy of writing fast, without planning, and for quantity over quality, was resulting in my story turning out to be - how to put this delicately? - a big steaming pile of crap. It was (and still is, thanks to the 'no editing' rule) without any semblance of artistic merit by even the loosest of standards. It had no perceptible plot, nothing linking one moment to the next, except for the semi-coherent narrative ramblings of my main character, and no potentially redeemable features of any description. Even worse than all this, was the realisation that I needed another 25,000 words to stretch this tale out to the required length. Enter the third week.

So the first week was awful, and the second was also awful. The third, however, was...actually it was awful too. By now I was really feeling the lack of a social life. Hitting the required word target meant allocating about two hours per day to the novel, which essentially meant not being able to do anything else apart from work, commute, eat, shower and sleep. By now I hated my main character, and was getting frustrated at his complete inability to do anything remotely interesting. At the suggestion of a friend, I wrote in a scene where a dwarf dressed as a clown was thrown through the glass window of the bar in which my main character and his friends were drinking. That would surely spice up his life and force him to finally do something that would pique the interest of a reader. Instead, as the dwarf clown stood up - uninjured - and ran out of the bar, and crowds gathered outside to look at the mayhem, my characters simply picked up their beers, squeezed past the gawping crowd, and wandered off down the street. I hated them.

For this, I was forsaking nights out with friends, use of social media sites, the purchase and preparation of fresh food, and even the joy of reading a published book written by someone who wasn't the talentless loser that it was increasingly evident that I am. The weight of churning out pages and pages of rubbish each day was wearing me down. I was, however, determined to finish. And once I hit 35,000 words at the end of this week, I began to see light at the end of the tunnel. Cue week four, where I wrote like a maniac. I had a flash of inspiration that led to something remotely akin to a plot development. I started typing well above my required word count each day, and was finally seeing some progress. Once I reached 40,000 words, it was pretty much smooth sailing up until the final few thousand, where I had to find a way to end the damn thing.

Which I have now finally done, earlier tonight in fact: two days earlier than the deadline. Oh the relief. The sweet, glorious relief. There's a spot on the NaNo website where you upload your novel in order to get the final wordcount verified. If it's at least 50,000 words then you get the tag 'winner' appended to your profile, as well as access to all these blog badges I've been posting here. Am I aware that they're cheesy and ugly? Of course I am. But I don't care.

I'm proud of the fact that I stuck with something difficult, and saw it out to the end. My "life's too short to waste time being miserable" philosophy has served me well over the years, but has tended to mean that I bail out of commitments that seem like they're too much effort for too little reward. This time I didn't run away, and I'm very proud of myself. You should be proud of me too. Unless you're one of those people I mentioned earlier, who have failed to notice the absence of my delightful and uplifting presence in your life. In which case I reiterate: screw you! I'm a novelist, now, so I'm allowed to be self-centred and obnoxious, and to pass it off as the caprice of a creative personality. So there.

DANTE'S INFERNO

Today I went to an exhibition in the tunnels under Waterloo station, the same space in which I had previously watched the premiere of Banksy's docu/mockumentary Exit Through The Gift Shop in a pop-up cinema. Based on Dante's Inferno, it was called Hell's Half Acre and was one of the coolest exhibitions I've ever seen.  Welcomed to hell by a barking pit-bull terrier, the damp, tunnelled interior was macabre and nightmarish.

I won't even try to explain it - beyond posting these photos - but if you're interested, there's a video interview with the organiser (artist? curator? producer?) here.

London is so goddamn cool.

A plastic-wrapped body, suspended in limbo

The sun was made of hypodermic needles

LIKE SAND THROUGH THE HOURGLASS...

...so are the days of our lives [cue dramatic crescendo of depressing music] Nah nah, nah nah nah, nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah....nah nah nah-nah-nah-nah nah nah NAH nah NAAAAAH....NAAAAAAH.

Well that was fun for me at least. So my summer of freedom is over, the bank balance has been completely wiped out, and I'm back working for da man to earn enough cash for food, shelter and (now that summer is well and truly over) heating. Some of you may not have realised that I took the summer off to travel and play, most likely because I haven't written anything on this blog for about six months. Well I hearby vow to rectify that. Not only will I re-start writing, but I'll finish all my half-drafted blog posts stretching back 18 months (eeek!) and post them at last.

I'll back-date the posts so they appear chronologically, but I'm pretty sure Facebook is going to import them in the order they're updated.  So if you're reading Frankie through my FB notes, prepare to be chronologically confused. Oh, and please nag me if you don't see any new posts appearing. I need to get back into writing if I'm to write a whole novel next month. Which I TOTALLY AM (with the help of http://www.nanowrimo.org/).

See you soon!

FEELING FAT? MISERABLE? UNATTRACTIVE?

Just be glad you're not a blobfish.

Poor blobfish.

HOW THE FLUX CAPACITOR WORKS

In case, like me, you've been wondering for the last 25 years:

VIVA ITALIA

I've just attended the most marvellous wedding ever. EVER ever.

The wedding was to be held at a winery perched upon a hilltop by a village near Vicenza, Italy. Despite my (unfounded, I think) reputation as well-travelled, I'd never been to Italy. The wedding was the perfect excuse to address this terrible oversight. And I did so. With gusto.

Before visiting, I assumed that Italy was over-rated. History, art, food, blah blah blah. I don't even like pasta. I plotted a short jaunt from the capital up to the Veneto with the main objective of "ticking it off" my list and never having to go back. Mission failed, I'm afraid. Italy was amazing and brilliant and uplifting and very, very addictive. Over-rated? I was happily and emphatically proven wrong.

Rome

Oh how I love thee. Noisy and dirty and brash. Beautiful and surprising. And it was so, so packed full of treasures. During my first day there, I walked and walked and walked. I saw the tourist-clogged Spanish Steps, which were nothing special, and the  Trevi Fountain, which was exquisite. I visited the Pantheon (which I don't quite 'get') walked past an apparently famous statue of an elephant holding an obelisk in Piazza Minerva (wtf?), and huffed and puffed my way up the steps off Piazza Venezia, only to poke my head into a basilica for about sixty seconds and walk straight down again. I took a break to breathe some clean air as I wandered through the lush and green Villa Borghese. 



The Spanish Steps

Then, and only then, did I go to the Colosseum. It looked spectacular from the street. Yes, it was hemmed in by traffic and noise and 'real life'. Yes, it looked a bit like a Hollywood set that had been abandoned while the city whirled around it. But it was the Colosseum. THE Colosseum. Such an amazing sense of history. I must admit, though, that my sense of history was almost entirely dwarfed by my sense of Russell-Crowe-in-Gladiator.



You know what this is.

At times like these, I really wish I could draw. I sat myself down on a fallen column, resting in the shade while the light of the setting sun turned the arches and stone a burnished orange and the shadows gradually stretched across the facade opposite me. It was beautiful. So beautiful that I even went so far as to attempt to draw it. I stand by my assertion that it is only people who have a natural talent for drawing who spout that infuriating "everybody can draw" line. I challenge any one of them to look at the scratchy mess that vomited out of my pen that day, look me in the eye, and tell me again that anyone can draw.

 

As usual, I was staying in a hostel. Here I met some really fun Brighton girls and we decided to go out for dinner. After some filling food and reasonably-priced wine, we decided to stock up on some of the delightful and un-reasonably cheap wine available from the store instead, and to find a nice park so we could relax on the grass and enjoy a sophisticated chat with our Italian wine. Yeah, that didn't work.

According to Wikipedia, Rome has more green space than many other European capitals. If that is indeed the case, it was not in evidence that night. We didn't want to wander too far from home, and our map showed not a hint of greenery for what looked to our tired legs to be miles. So instead of a semi-picnic where we relaxed on the grass, drinking wine and nibbling on snacks while soaking up the balmy evening weather, we plonked ourselves on a median strip opposite the rail station, where we gulped down wine, monitored the successes and failures of the prostitute walking the strip of street in front of us, and soaked up the car fumes. You know, I'm pretty sure there's a deleted scene in Roman Holiday of Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck doing the exact same thing. It's THE thing to do in Rome, you know.



Inside the Pantheon

The next day I was off to see the Pope. He was rudely out of the country, so I didn't get to see the people crowded in St Peter's Square to hear him say mass, but I did still get to tell my Grandma that I'd been to the Vatican. I went with one of the Brighton gals, and we decided to fork out some cash for a guided tour that focused on the art in the Vatican Museum. I highly recommend it. The Sistene Chapel was indeed lovely (but not quite as magnificent as I had hoped) and though I had to rush through the Basilica so that I could make my pre-booked entry slot into the marvellous Galleria Borghese, I enjoyed every second of it.

My time in Rome was sadly over, so I jumped on a train heading north. Next stop...

Venice

If I could choose only one word to describe Venice, that word would be "Lovely". If you would permit me an extra two words, though, I'd add "Romantic" and "Expensive".

A woman I'd met during the Vatican tour in Rome had said that "Venice is so beautiful, if you have any sadness in your heart it will make it worse." I arrived sleep-deprived, slightly hungover, and having just discovered that my treasured Dutch croissants-in-a-can had been stolen the night before. So with sadness in my heart, I walked the bridges and piazzas of Venice with a growing sense of melancholy.

The evening light in Venice was extraordinary. Forget drawing, now I wished that I could paint the beautiful scenes that I don't have the language to describe.

I don't think I'll bore you with too much about Venice, but will instead let the photos do the talking. What was carefully hidden from my camera, was the night of evening adventures that I had with some of my fellow hostel-dwellers. The tone was even lower than my night spent drinking on the median strip in Rome, so you'll have to use your imagination to guess what we got up to.

Overcome with the history and romance of Venice, and with my delightful visit to the Galleria Borghese in Rome fresh in my memory, I decided to spend some time in the highly-recommended Gallerie dell'Accademia. It was amazing. By now I was starting to question my view of myself as 'not an art gallery type'. Italy was seeping into my skin, and I was enjoying history, art, architecture. And I was now very much looking forward to the opportunity to overload on food and wine at my friend's wedding. Next stop, Vicenza.

The Wedding

Like I said, this was the best wedding EVER.

I met the groom’s family, and two other Aussie girls who would be staying with them, in Vicenza and we all set off to spent the night in a gorgeous farmhouse. The drive there took us along winding roads and past vineyards, corn fields, even a palazzo as we climbed up the hills behind Vicenza. The wedding was the next day and was held at a registry office - apparently the only legal options in Italy are a church or a registry office - but the reception was at a magnificent hilltop winery owned by the bride’s aunt.

Oh my, it was extraordinary.

The two girls and I were the only Australian guests (apart from the groom’s family) but the happy couple had a huge circle of Italian friends and family who were just hilarious. We were all seated outdoors at tables beneath a marquee, with views of the hills and a lovely breeze that kept the temperature perfect for the entire afternoon and evening. The wedding lunch went on for hours, at some stage morphing into a wedding dinner. And the wine - oh, the wine. And the Prosecco. And the Limoncello.

As night fell, music was cranked and the outdoor dance floor went crazy. Most guests had pitched tents so the party was set to go in to the wee hours. By now the classy wine had disappeared, to be replaced by a keg of Tuborg beer and, later, some very dodgy home-made cocktails that essentially consisted of moonshine and coke with four teaspoons of added sugar to sweeten the deal. My memories (such as they are) are of moshing to Nirvana and wresting control of the music-making-machine from its owner in order to play Mambo Italiano.

It was SUCH a good wedding. I’ll share just three of my favourite memories:

• The groom being accosted on his way into the ceremony by a bearded man in a wedding dress and lipstick, clutching his suspiciously bulging belly and yelling “Marry me! Marry me! What about our baby??!!”  (The man turned out to be the bride’s best friend, which is probably why she forgave her husband for showing up to their wedding with pink lipstick smears on his face!)
   
• The crowd had called for the bride and groom to “Kiss, kiss, kiss!” whenever they were spotted sitting together at the table during moments of rest between socialising with guests; when the bride’s best friend (now thankfully sans wedding dress and fake pregnancy) briefly sat in the groom’s chair to have a chat with her, someone in the back started the  “Kiss, kiss, kiss!” call again; the gentle, Buddhist groom then raced up from the back of the tent with feigned outrage and pretended to deck his 'rival' before kissing his bride. Shenanigans. Very sweet.
   
• Climbing to the top of a hill overlooking the vineyard with five new friends, sitting on a bench, drinking wine we’d smuggled out of the reception marquee and watching the sun set over the valley and hills beyond. At that moment, Italy felt like heaven.

It was such a marvellous, wonderful event. It had a relaxed vibe and everyone was genuinely having fun. To put its awesomeness in context, I should probably mention how much I usually dislike weddings. Intensely is probably the best word. (Can you feel a rant coming on now? I know I can...).

I find weddings incredibly uncomfortable. They're so formal. Firstly, I find the idea of a woman being 'given away' by her father completely insulting. At the reception (after the mandatory period of guests standing around awkwardly, doing nothing while the bride and groom are whisked off for their wedding photos), you're told where to sit and therefore who you must speak to for the next hour or more. What am I, five years old? There are so many other stupid traditions you're forced to endure, which I'm trying very hard not to bang on about here. The thing I hate the most is probably the expectation and intense pressure the couple inevitably face about the guest list. If the groom hasn't seen great-uncle-whatsisname for twelve years, what right does his family have to make him invite him? And to pay for his (no doubt overpriced) meal? Don't get me wrong, I'm not actually anti-marriage (though I was when I was younger), it's just the wedding thing that I have a problem with. I genuinely think it's great that two people have decided to publicly commit to being with each other forever, I just think that they should be able to do so without being constrained by other people's expectations of how it should be done. This Italian wedding had that feeling. It was casual, and celebratory, and really great fun.

So, unlike my extended rant, this amazing wedding was too soon over. In fact, my entire Italian trip was now drawing to a close. But before leaving I had managed to cram one more stop into my itinerary...

Verona

...In fair Verona, where we lay our scene...

Verona was fair indeed. Though many scholars believe Shakespeare never set foot here during his life, he couldn't have picked a better choice in terms of somewhere to set his tragedy about two warring families and its effect on their children. I only had one night in this lovely city, which was unfortunately not long enough to fall in love with a handsome Italian and arrange a mock double-suicide.

It was, however, just long enough to fall in love with the city. Walking along the Adige River, I imagined myself living here and cycling to university every day. It was exquisite.



True love
 - outside "Juliet's house"





And this, sadly, brought my trip to Italy to an end. I set off back to London, to start a new maternity cover contract at the workplace I'd left a few months earlier. 

Goodbye Italy, I'll miss you!

SUMMER FESTIVALS!!!

Oooh, I love the freedom that unemployment brings. The lack of income is becoming quite a problem, but...oh...the freedom. Although I toned down my original plan to attend festivals non-stop for the whole summer of 2010, I did end up doing pretty well.

Glastonbury

(A.K.A. The greatest festival in the universe)

I decided to use said freedom for good and volunteered to work for Shelter at Glastonbury. Shelter was providing volunteers to work at many of the bars dotted over the thousand acres of Worthy Farm, so I had no idea where I'd be assigned and what type of festival experience lay before me.

Recycling bins

We were to be there Tuesday-Monday, and only needed to work three 8-hour shifts in exchange for our tickets. We also had a secure staff campsite equipped with a subsidised bar and canteen, a chillout area with beanbags and lots of phone-recharger plugs, and most importantly of all, plenty of showers. Showers! As this must have been one of the hottest and sunniest festivals in its history, those (practically) queue-free showers were an absolute godsend.

Peak hour at the Pimm's Bus

As it turned out, I was assigned to work the Pimm's Bus. Brilliant! Not only did I get to wear a pretty red Pimm's shirt, I got to work shorter hours as our clientele tended to disappear with the sun's last rays. This meant I was free to explore the madness that is the Glastonbury Festival.

And this is the part that is difficult to explain. Glastonbury is like no other festival on earth. It's crazy. It's enormous. Various reports cite Glastonbury as either the second or third-largest city in south west England during the last weekend in June. The statistics are impressive: it's home to 3,225 toilets and 60 stages. Set over 900 acres of land, it's over a mile and a half from one side to the other. With 170,000 other people milling about the same pathways, it can easily take an hour to get from one side to the other. And that's not allowing for being distracted by the myriad of interesting diversions you'd find along the way.

Everyone always asks, "So, who did you see play at Glastonbury?" And anyone who's been to a few festivals, anyone who 'gets' Glastonbury, always comes back with the same answer: "It doesn't matter who you see. Glastonbury is an experience." I know people who don't see a single popular act, who go nowhere near the Pyramid or Other stages the whole time. And they maintain that their experience is every bit as awesome as those who manage to catch half a dozen or more of the world's hottest acts for the price of one of the expensive seats at the O2 Arena.

I'm not sure whether I believe that - going THE WHOLE festival without watching any music? I was a bit of both this year. The first couple of days I was there, the main bands weren't on (they start on the Friday) so I had a lot of time to wander the collection of villages that make up the festival: visiting the Green Crafts field, exploring Block 9 and The Unfair Ground while they were finishing their build, sitting in the Stone Circle and watching the sun go down. Once the big bands started, I tried to see as many acts as I could. I worked day shifts on Friday and Sunday, and a night shift on Saturday, so I missed out on a couple of bands I would have like to catch but it was no big deal.

The final list went something like this: the end of Snoop Dogg, most of The Flaming Lips, the opening of that poor excuse for a set delivered by The Gorillaz, Florence and The Machine, Dizzee Rascal, The Wurzels, a smidgeon of The Scissor Sisters and Ray Davies (from the Kinks) on a break from work, The Pet Shop Boys, a bit of Gomez, and Stevie Wonder.

In addition to that, I saw loads of unknown acts perform in smaller venues. The Fluffy Rock Cafe was a favourite and the Front Room in Croissant Neuf was brilliant. My mate and I also ended up popping into a salsa bar, dancing at 1am to a playlist of cheesy 90s classics, dipping into the madness of Block 9 with a visit to the Dog-Faced Geishas, getting harassed by a very creepy guy dressed as Heath Ledger's Joker as we tried to throw a ball through the gaping jaw of what looked like corpses on a daisy wheel, and having a million other amazing experiences that make Glastonbury the enormous bag of Awesome that it is.

I have an entire album of photo memories, but I'll leave you with the ones below as a taster.

I warned you that it would be difficult to explain. Just get yourself there next year. I insist.

T in the Park, Kinross, Scotland

One week back in London then I was off to Scotland to spend four days at T in the Park. My sister had organised everything, including earlybird camping tickets, only to realise about a week before the festival that she couldn't get time off work. What?? The lineup looked amazing, so I decided to head up there alone and check it out.

I caught a bus to Glasgow (9 hours, 15 minutes and no toilet stops, in case you were wondering) stayed a night there to recover, then dragged myself to what must be one of the world's longest bus queues to catch a lift to Balado Airfield in Kinross where the festival is held. Standing in the queue, I noticed for the first time what everyone I've spoken to since then seems to have already known about T in the Park.

Everyone who goes there is really young.

Let me explain for emphasis: when I say young, I mean proper young. I mean teenagers, with the (very) occasional mid-twenties festival goer. And when I say everyone, I mean everyone. I queued for 2 hours at Glasgow Buchanan waiting for a bus, and was part of a crowd of at least a couple of hundred people. In all that time I saw a grand total of two people who looked anywhere near my age. Sh*t.

I was actually dreading going to this festival. It wasn't even the fact that I was going to a campground festival alone - which was a bit adventurous, even for me - but rather that it had been too soon since my last festival experience. Everyone knows that it takes at least a week to recover from Glastonbury, and I had cut that recovery time short to replace it with a massive bus journey, a two-hour queue, and a muddy field full of teenagers. The thought of living under a little piece of canvas again so soon, and being reliant on portaloos, was almost too much to bear.

Still, the show must go on.  And in the end, it looked as though The Universe was pleased that I'd made the effort and decided to give me a helping hand.

I dragged myself and my camping gear to an open spot that was close enough to the...er...'facilities' for it to be convenient for late night toilet needs, but not close enough to smell them. I'd pitched my tent in a clearing, gone for a wee wander around the campsite, picked up some beer, and was back in the tent flicking through the programme when I heard a couple of Scottish accents setting up their tent right beside me. I wasn't even really listening, but some of the words that floated over my way were too hilarious to ignore. I can't really remember the details, but one snippet went like this:

Voice 1: "Put that in the little flappy thing. Use the yellow one."
Voice 2: "I don't see a yellow one."
Voice 1: "Well you need to use the yellow one."
Voice 2: "I'm telling you, there IS no yellow one."
.. 5 seconds later ..
Voice 2: "Oh, here's the yellow one."

I ended up laughing out loud, so stuck my head out to say hello to the owners of those accents and thank them for the laughs. Lo and behold, the Scottish accents belonged to two rather attractive Scottish lads who were older than the festival's average age of 19 years. Nice. Even better than the fact that I was now camped beside two hot guys, was the fact that they were both really nice hot guys. I didn't know that was even possible.

Rodrigo y Gabriel

Just as I was thinking all my christmases had come at once, they told me they had another mate joining them - he had discovered at the gate that he'd left his ticket at home so had to drive back home to find it. Luckily he lived somewhat closer than London. When he eventually arrived, it turned out that he too was hot/nice. Thanks, Universe!

You'll have to trust me on their hotness, but as evidence of their niceness - when the guys found out I was there on my own, they promptly adopted me for the weekend and I became an honorary member of their crew. Consequently, my weekend turned out to be all kinds of awesome. We saw great bands (Temper Trap), awful bands (Airbourne) and separate bands - I went to see the Black Eyed Peas while they went somewhere else that could not POSSIBLY have been as cool as the Peas set. All in all it was a fantastic four days and I made some great new friends.

I was so glad that I took the fearless option of travelling the length of the British Isles alone to a festival where I didn't know a soul. God bless Scotland.

Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Scotland

More Scotland time! Hooray! This time I'd had three weeks back in London, so I was well and truly ready for another festival experience. Still this was a bit of a last-minute decision, and it was only thanks to a generous offer of accommodation by my friends in Glasgow that I decided to go ahead.   I caught a bus up, again marvelling at how surprisingly non-awful the 9 hour ride (no toilet stops, remember?) actually was, arriving Thursday evening and spending time with a mate I hadn't seen in a while. Well, technically I'd gone out to dinner with him during my last trip 3 weeks earlier, but that doesn't count.

Like most normal people, J was working on Friday so I made the short trip into Edinburgh myself and started absorbing the festy vibe until he could join me later. I love Edinburgh at Fringe time. Every building with four walls and a roof becomes a venue and hosts performers ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. This year I spent most of my time watching comedy shows. Free ones, paid ones, good ones, bad ones, and one that included a man singing about a monkey.

I had a brilliant time, and even managed to spend some time visiting one of the new friends I had met at T in the Park a few weeks earlier. R lived in a small village north of Edinburgh, so I spent some time with him and crashed at his house before dragging him in to the festival madness the next day. I love the Fringe.

As always, my time in Scotland was too brief. Five days flew past and it was time to head back to London, and back to the reality of a job search. Yuck.

Still, I live in hope that somehow I'll manage to continue to have awesome adventures. Just between you and me, I think that's a pretty safe assumption. Stay tuned!