2005

I found an old diary...
it said...

It’s about that time again…
It’s time to run away from the cold and jump on a plane…
To leave the small town shit for a while and go play out in the world,

Past few months I’ve been having a great time out here in England,
this place is all about drink and I’ve sure been doing a lot of that…
I spend my days in the gym and my nights getting fucked up, I can’t remember the last early night I had.
In some ways I really didn’t want to leave…but this sort of trip is what makes me…so here I was again…

A cheap holiday in other Peoples misery

I rode down to London Monday morning in the back of a local bands tour bus, packed in amongst the drums and amps and shit, we rode south and shot shit, with The Ramones in the air my hangover eventually disappeared but last nights smile stayed.

Six hours later I’m in Londons east end, brick lane where a century ago jack sent his girls to hell…

I said farewell to The Motorettes and I hauled my shit an hour further across town.
The London stinks as usual, but I like it.
I stayed that night in a friends house in Balham and skinned out early to Heathrow,
The tube is as usual a cursed journey but I quite like the solitude of these times,
Waiting around in airports…no ones idea of a good time.

Next step Los Angeles, a friends wedding and adventure
Riding the plane squashed in amongst the Jews listening to tunes and dreaming,
Oh to be in first class, my legs are just too long for this. 11 hours, who can sleep?

Here we are again…America ….it’s been six months.

LAX airport…this place is hell on earth at the best of times, not the type of place I can endure after an eleven hourer.
I’m supposed to be getting picked up here and my lifts nowhere to be seen…I wait 10 minutes and then call,

“hey…I’m at the airport man…where you at?”
“oh fuck Chris man…I’ve got the shits, I can’t come get you… your Gonna have to get a taxi out here”
“fuck man…Erm… how much is that shit?”
“100 bucks, don’t worry about it…I’ll take care of it”
so it was that, I flagged a cab…tired eyes,
a huffy Pakistani taxi driver and a ride to nowhere fast,
I arrived out there in hillbilly riverside a couple of hours later.

"here man...it's next to Van Buren...stop fuckin' cryin'"

Out there in the hills…this is cowboy town...not postcard L.A...
this house is a bmx house.
A strange day followed, a Chinese woman massaged my feet, cut my nails and waxed my brows…Cali style stuff…ha ha marvellous....she didn't really bleach my ass

I spent three months out here earlier on in the year and it’s a good place to hide from the world, a big ass ranch house with corals and stables, the whole place is surrounded by the biggest bmx dirt jumps you ever did see…widow makers each one of them....they've gave me new scars and
i hardly ride them
in fact no one rode at all in the past few days which was strange…but theres a lot of work to do before it’s wedding time, the place is busy man…everything going a hundred miles an hour.
We went back out to the airport a couple of days later to pick up the English…10 guys from home need a ride.
We get the wrong airline and keep them dudes waiting an hour…oops.
Drinks at the cowboy bar and a big ass bottle of jack daniels put a full stop on the night after a late one and everyone stretched out where they fell, the settees, the floor…the garden…this is gonna be the flavour from now on, you can bet on that.

Rest of the week It was drinks every night and of course the silliness that goes with it, these nights kinda blend into one after a while, you know what I mean…small time laughs and little to do bar torment someone or take a ride out to the store to get more booze…I really can’t remember what the hell we did for those nights…strictly business I guess…fuck that.

Weekend comes…now there’s the little matter of a bachelor party in Las Vegas…
It’s all arranged, ha ha we’ll believe that when we see it…
A big as tour bus pulls up onto the drive…a disco on wheels…a big ass Winnebago thing with a mirrored ceiling and plasma television screens, I think we squeezed twenty five people onto that shit…full volume,
5 hours of piss, crack, pills of every description followed…and a bunch of human spastics hellbent on euro rave music danced all the way there.
Fuck there was some freaks on that bus man…but it was a lot of fun.
Billy Ray Cyrus actually drove...

The time flew in a whirlwind of piss and before we knew it here we were again,

Las Vegas…sure has changed, I lived here once many years ago but the place has got swallowed up by big money stupid ass theme hotels and crazy plastic ideas…everywhere you look theres another neon monstrosity…ha ha it’s fucked up man…some of these places are just plain madness, it turned into a kids lunchbox.
Worst thing is the crazies have been driven out, that’s a shame…they were the soul…
I liked how it used to be…it had a certain style…
even freemont street ghetto got cleaned up…damn.
We got ourselves a 300 dollar room in the hard rock hotel just off the strip and decended once more on the piss.

Las Vegas nightclubs are full of shit…the bars are where it’s at,
We stayed up all weekend drinking, shooting machine guns, riding scoots, smashing things…all the things you have to do out there in the desert.
Then comes the downside…the assholes we had in tow, an especially annoying freeloading turkey, the fights, arguments, you know that shit…come Sunday night we’ve been fuckin’ abandoned, everybodys left and gone back to L.A…
We have to stay another night and hire a car to drive back to the 909.

The atmosphere got a little tense out there with the whole family at odds with each other so the English decided to fuck off for a few days out to Huntington Beach,
Once again we hired a bunch of cars and skinned out…this trip turned out to be a laugh a minute, we hired some overpriced motel and headed out to the bars, that was the story for the next couple of nights… I got so pissed I shit on a body board in the motel room…I was so hungover the next day I had to pull over in the car and throw up by the roadside…we wound up staying In the shittest motel ever for the last night, one of the guys was really scared to climb into the bed, it was full of hairs and had this big shit stain on the covers…ha ha before we left the next day we got out the marker pens and wrote all over the paintings on the walls and pissed in the draws.

We got back out to Riverside for the wedding, time to get out my marvelous new suit and my super new shoes…as weddings go people got fucked up pissed and danced their asses off but my head really wasn’t in it, my thoughts were elsewhere and I had one eye on the flight the next day, don’t want to take a hangover on a fifteen hourer,

Here I was again, back on the plane squeezed in the middle…I don’t much recall much about the flight, after a while they all blend into one…lame movies, shitty food, no sleep,

This is unfamiliar territory…It was five years ago last time I crossed the equator, last time I hated it…who knows what will happen this time.

Once again I hated Australia for the first few weeks,
Airport customs took about an hour and a half to get through…I got picked up and we caught the train out to the sticks
I was staying over in the western suburbs of Sydney in Liechharht, shacked up in some pokey little room with a mattress on the floor sharing a house with a disgraced vicar, an alcoholic skeleton, a barmaid and a normal, oh and lets not forget a shit loads of cockroaches who would run across my face in the middle of the night.
Urgh.
it was so shit…my days involved veggie burgers and hiding from fucking horse flies,
trying to read my disaster on mount everest book whilst being buzzed and bitten by them little fuckers isn’t the shit…in fact it’s crap.
I got to wondering what the fuck am I doing here?
Out here in the depths doing fuck all good except living for the piss at the weekend…
My patience wears thin.
The only good memory I have of that place is seeing that asshole kiwi pisshead trying to skateboard one day and falling over into a massive pile of cat shit…ha ha… he had that shit all over him, he cut his elbow and the shit was inside the wound…ha ha…
I felt uncomfortable in that place, I mean fuck…I don’t want to hang out with them freaks…I have nothing to say to a fat fucking vicar or a speed freak un funny man, small talk can fuck off.
After a couple of weeks it all got too much…
We left that place with an argument about rent and shit, the day we moved all our shit out I really wanted to hit that creep and possibly I should have…
too late now…just glad to get out,

Bondi saved me, I moved straight over there…
I stayed over on a friends sofa and finally enjoyed myself,
This guy has been one of the freaks for years man,
We used to hang out years ago, he’s a laugh a fucking minute…
one night when he was pissed he hung out of the window and shot his compound bow and arrow right through a parked car in the back lane outside…ha ha
I’d wake up each morning and go surf of skate Bondi skatepark, drink smoothies and shakes and eat the most marvellous sandwiches they sell out there at the beach, and of course by night we’d go out on the drink and get fall over pissed,
I know quite a few people out there…so this was a home from home, it’s always good to be amongst your people…and it’s always fun.

All good things have to come to an end…it’s time to go back to England, It’s winter, I have bills to pay and theres the little matter of shoulder surgery…hmm not looking forward to that…but it’s gotta be done

Back home and I’m having the hardest of times, nothings going right for me, I am in darkness…I shall get drunk and hope it gets better…

I need something to cheer me up…if your out there come and save me…

it doesn't happen...I'm in hospital for the next 2 weeks...

January 18 2006

I have a brand new shoulder
i sleep in the evening and stay awake all night, messed up style, I look terrible, feel even worse, this is a dark time dude and I don’t like it one bit, I’m lonely, bored, unchallenged and tired…the world got small

January 23

tv is my salvation and I hate it,
what else can I do whilst under medical house arrest,
I’ve started to try to train a little, nothing much, just a few stretches and a few set here and there to oust the cobwebs…
I really miss training and I’m going crazy with the lack of motion in my shoulder joint…just want to jump in the pool and swim but theres no way I’m gonna be able to do that for a month or so…these are the things I have to endure

January 24

Sold a few suits on some online auction to finance a new delightful suit I intend on purchasing sometime soon,

January 26

Spent the past couple of days painting yet another battle royale, seems like whenever I’m a little low on cash there’s someone out there who wants a painting of school kids killing each other,
I’m beat at the mo…sat up painting for hours has busted my back,
I’ve gotta start putting some money aside for a voyage…being trapped in my broken body has left me starved of adventure,
I need out of this place

February 1

Feeling a little better, arm works a little more than it has for a while, been pulling on those rubber ropes to try to get a bit of strength going but it’s still early days,
I’ve mostly been selling a bunch of old crap to make money, got a bunch of parcels to post off so it’s keeping me mildly busy out here,
I began dieting too…not being able to train has loosened me up and that’s no good, gonna start training in the next couple of weeks…I can’t wait

February 19

Just got back from touring with a band down the London, I fell/jumped off a balcony into a wheelie bin full of glass and hurt my back so covered in cuts and bruises and I’m aching once more…broken glass tore the ass out of my favourite jeans...a weekend of drunkenness and spendies…I bought myself two new suits too…I have a friend who’s a designer and I got measured up for a nice new two button high end number and then whilst I was waiting to meet up with a band I got seduced by a nice brown mod suit that just called out to be put on the card,
What can I do eh? These things just happen…time to behave myself anyways, tomorrow I’m gonna join the gym and start to fix myself up for summer…my shoulder injury has been putting that shit off and I’m falling into the lazy so it’s right about time I started to train, a welcome change to this first few months of the year layed up invalid…

they were the only words...