Birthday Ramble

Wednesday December 20th 2005

I thought this year (as every year) I would go on a little ramble for my birthday. As most of you know I am not one for celebrating my birthday as celebrating getting a year older seams a bit odd to me. Like the Pink Floyd song says “one year older one year closer to death”. Same with New Year. Why celebrate a year that aint happened yet. It could be crap. You could loose your job and get really depressed, take heroin and become an addict. Then, after falling in with a dodgy crowd of smack heads (who give you Aids, hepatitis C and herpes) you accidentally kill somebody while mugging them to feed your habit. And just to top it off you get caught, sent to prison for 15 years and sodomised by a 19 stone man called Stan who seams to be of the opinion that you’re his little puppy now. Would you really want to celebrate that? So I celebrate the year that has just passed as I know what happened and know if it’s worth celebrating. If your year was particularly bad you could celebrate a different year. 1990 is good for me as I gave the green green grass of home the boot moved to the big city and got a job.
The other ramble I went on started after work on Friday and was down to the Anchor for a couple of pints. It was there I met up with a few more ramblers and a few more pints. As this was going to be a long ramble for me I thought we would start out gentile and go to the Nandos next door. I decided that we should stop for half a chicken, corn on the cob, coleslaw and a couple of bottles of wine. After we were rested and fed we got a bit more ambitious and made for the Balcony Bar in Waterloo. We sat on the shelf outside the bar with a good view of bovine London passing through the station and had a few pints. It was here our party split up and I set off for Paddington in search of the strangely titled Sleeper train to Penzance.
Now some of you maybe thinking that Sleeper train to Penzance is in now way a strange title for a train that travels through the night and has little rooms with beds in for you to sleep in. You have obviously never used a sleeper train. I got to Paddington with half an hour to spare and bought some crap sandwiches. The train was boarding so I had no time to play with the sniffer dogs. I was most upset. A rather well spoken stewardess showed me to my cell (which was a 6ft square box) and showed me how to open and close the door (which if you locked from the outside stayed locked and you had to call the stewardess, so no trips to the bog in my boxers), where the bed was and where my toilet (or small sink as some people call it) was. I was offered a wake up call (HA!) with coffee so I went for 7:25 which would give me 45 minuets to wake up and remember who I am and where I’m going. Now, I had a plan to plug my laptop in to the shaver socket and watch a DVD. I have dongles to attach my laptop to anything in any country, except the shaver socket on a train. So sleep it was. I pulled my tartan blanket back and jumped in, stubbing my toe at the bottom and banging my head at the top. Six and a half hours later I was still laying there wishing I could have slept. Pulling into the stations was the worst coz it gave you just enough time to drop off then the train would set off again and wake you up. Of all the things I could have done in that cell, sleeping was not one of them but I tried anyway. And failed. Then there was a knock at the door. It was my complimentary coffee (yahoo). After putting me in a room smaller than a prison cell with no plug socket and no chance of sleeping the least they could do was give me a pot of coffee. Yes, you guessed right, it was crap. They must have made it in London and warmed it up in the morning. So I sliced the coffee in half, folded in the milk and sugar and sat there staring out of the window chewing my coffee. There was something strangely peaceful about staring out of the train window, chewing coffee and watching dawn break over the misty farm land of Cornwall. Then again I hadn’t had any sleep in 24 hours.
The train pulled in to Penzance about 8:15. I think I was the only one that got off. A walk along the front was called for, which by chance was the quickest way to my friends place. Provisions had been made for me to gain entrance so after passing the two sets of guards and the dogs I was in. After 40 winks, coffee, toast and a shower my new rambling party set off for Sean’s for breakfast. A mug of coffee and a number two breakfast was planted in front of me and I tucked in. It was at this point I came to the conclusion that I could smell somebody ironing a wet dog. Nobody was doing any ironing of any kind. The women across from me had let the arm of her rain Mac fall on to the fan heater and was smoking away. I tried not to laugh as they stretched out the arm of her coat to check the damage. I nearly exploded as the women behind the counter cut off the arm of the coat. It was the picture in my head of her walking home with one long sleeve and one short sleeve that did it. So after a hearty breakfast of wet dogs and lightly toasted rain mac we took a walk around the town to pick up a few things. I went to Penzance to kick back and whittle some, which is exactly what I did. In fact I kicked back and whittled so much I needed a cab to get back and a skip for the whittlings. So after Breakfasts, fresh air, Party’s, lots of fun and the largest pork chop I have ever seen it was time to go back to the smoke.
As usual I was in the deliverance carriage with the old folk so it was a quiet and uneventful journey apart from the embarrassing conversation I started when I thought an announcement said we were going to waterloo and not Paddington. I wish I had known you can go to Waterloo from Reading. I would rather spend an hour on Reading station than half an hour on the tube. In fact I would rather spend an hour banging nails in my foot on Reading station than ten minutes on the tube.