You know when you get one of those times where possibly your body had been assaulted and perhaps not in a good way, where even the laws of gravity are not on your side. This was one of those times.

Having gone to bed with a mixture of sleep deprivation, foreign booze and a cuddly toy, I was taken into a world of darkness, and would remain there if only for the melodic ringing of the blackberry at my bedside, informing me that either I was entitled to a special ultra deluxe phone package with 4756746773458734583458345 minutes of free texting for the cheap price of £450 a year plus the body part of your choice or someone wanted to talk to me who was in Estonia.

The ordeal of trying to open your eyes was more traumatic than trying to evade capture by the student people on the streets of London. The pain, the suffering, all that had been before was nothing compared to the sheer strain of letting a glimmer of daylight piece the darkness that had consumed me.

Pressed on I did, until one full eye was open, and I found after a few seconds that I could read again too. It was Steve, just wondering if we could meet up at 11, a mere hour from the phone call. You would have possibly had a safer bet on the plumber not over charging for that bit of bent pipe which costs 50p from the Plumb Center.

But never one to lie down for long, I raised my head aganist my better judgement and made my way out of the sleeping world into the waking one. Not a clever thing to do but there we are.

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Sorry dear campers, I’ve been very busy this week with work and then the last few days, I have also been ill, leading to the point of redecorating Poplar Docklands Light Railway Station Platform 3 with the contents of my stomach.

I’m slowly getting better and more than likely, the chaos will continue post haste.

One thing’s for sure, when you get Bangalore Belly, you really do get it!

One of the best things of wandering around in another country is taking things the wrong way, so why not keep up that tradition right now?

Upon seeing this sign, you kind of wondered if that execution tape was real, and they did actualy kill him in Iraq….

And here it appears Estonia has a drugs problem, and they are in need of people to help clean up….

After the wonderful night in the Airport, at 4:45am, I was finally able to check-in and move one step closer to getting away from the damned place which forced the perpetual state of drifting in and out of consciousness with questionable amounts of caffeine and Wallace and Gromit saving the day against the were-rabbit.

The entire process was in fact speedy and painless in terms of checking in, however when it came to going through security, that took far longer.

As mentioned on the previous post, where I was still awake at 2:25 in the morning, I had been chatting to some of the staff onsite at Stanstead and they were telling us of the expensive operation they now had in place in order to deal with the less savoury individuals of the world.

Now I had the chance to experience this first hand, having not been abroad since the trip to Prague some months ago, and Liverpool Airport had next to none of these measures in place.

Even at 5am in the morning, the queues were swelling.

You see, now because they can’t trust anything you have on your person, you have to take it all off. Coats, shoes, belts and in one case with a Frenchman, his trousers. It’s not a nice slight seeing a man walk through a metal detector in his underpants.

Your laptops, if you were lucky enough to have one to kill the boredom of cheap flights to various places, had to be out of their cases and placed separately to go through the special scanning equipment.

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As I write this, it’s 2:25am on a brisk Thursday morning, and all the while every creature on the earth is stirring if the noise is anything to be believed. I’ve even got to the point where I think the cleaner man is enjoying going up and down the check-out where everyone is trying to sleep, just because he’s stuck on the crappy night shift.

I’ve had to reside myself to the fact that there is not going to be much sleep between now and the now agonising flight out to the forbidden planet, or whereever it is, I’ve forgotten at this point. I suppose it comes from a combination of sleep depravation which has all sorts of funny side effects which come into play at some point, like getting twitchy and hearing more voices than usual.

To combat this, I’ve taken refuge in the Costa Coffee place next to the building site they seem to have errected in the middle of the check-in area, which is kind of daft considering it also appears the workmen are enjoying themselves at this time of the day too.

It was also interesting to chat to a couple of the airport staff, as they brought up the issue of liquids still being disallowed on all flights, in case we have the thoughts “I can’t take any more, goodbye cruel world!!” and detonate the handy liquid bomb we just happened to carry at the time.

Millions of pounds they say it costs, and it will never be changed owing to the fact that the shoe bomber of yesteryear, Richard Reed’s own device was clear liquid, and was not really distingishable from water. Eep. This does kind of beg the question: Would these measures really stop someone who was determined, seeing as it was easy to mix in with something else?

Of course time will tell on that score.

Ah well, those matters are for another time, for now, let’s keep back the wave of tiredness with an overpriced and under tasty coffee drink. Take it easy campers, and sweet dreams.

After yet more happenings in the world which will have all the people who care dearly for their pound coins crying after another day filled with issues for those lovable bankers (I wrote bankers), it’s nice to get away from it all. To wander off into the wilderness, to seek out new life and new civilisations. To boldly rip off that sci-fi series’ catchphrase like everyone else has done before.

That’s what is in store for the Lord of Leisure, as he boards the freedom train. WHOOP WHOOP!

Well, ok, the freedom train is actually a plane, and the destination isn’t the sun swept islands we all know and vomit over which also happen to feature in all adverts for Bounty chocolate and that holiday place that doesn’t like gay people.

Two people, a man and a woman who for the sake of illustration, we’ll call them Steve and Kristi, because that’s their names are soon to embark on the soul destroying, argument ridden and possibly life threatening journey which in some cultures, is called “Marriage.”

Ok, the above isn’t going to happen, but come on, those who are married for a long time always paint a really bad picture of it, and you do end up wondering why the hell it ever happens, but happens it always does.

Meanwhile, the happy couple are going to be tying themselves up in a knot, over in the world class holiday destination Estonia, filled with…err…Estonians….and…..light bulbs…OK, I have no idea what is out there really, but shortly after a booze filled evening stuck at the airport then struggling to stand up, let alone make it through the check in process, and evade having a cavity search, I aim to find out what is there.

Saturday is the blessed day when it all occurs and I hope that the readers here raise an imaginary glass filled with milk for the bride and groom in celebration. There will be lots of pictures aplenty and maybe a story to tell about the lack of towels in the hotel room in the days ahead but for now dear campers, ALL ABOARD!!

Lehman Brothers.

Ah, Already you will know where tonight’s blog post is going, you already have a sense of fear and trepidation. Sweat may be going down your face, as you start wondering what’s going to happen next.

Or, you could be laughing yourself silly.

When I read the news this morning about the fact that Lehman Brothers, the world’s forth or perhaps now former fourth largest investment bank, had filed for Bankruptcy, a sense of Schadenfreude had overwhelmed my senses, leaving a rather wide smile on my face.

Schadenfreude, is a German originating term used to convey the delight humans take when others fall down. We all have this sense, when the rich and powerful become the poor and drunk, or when someone falls over in the street and hurts themselves, somehow we feel better. Where else does a phrase “let’s all point and laugh children” make so much sense?

So when it came time to point and laugh at this latest occurrence of yet another bank gambling with people’s money without thinking, I failed to even feel sorry for the people who have lost their jobs at the hands of some city boys hell bent on chasing their million pound bonus checks, spending other people’s money as though the world would end the next second.

These people, some of them were only going there to make ends meet like the rest of us, now have to trawl around the job market, as shrinking as it appears to be, looking for something else to stave off the nasty people who take TVs away.

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There have been many great games over the years, Fallout, Freespace, MDK to name but just a few. Back in the heady days in the nineties when a lot of them were released, the internet was still getting going in terms of mass consumption, Google was a pipe dream, and porn was only available for those willing to wait 28 minutes for one decent image.

People were happy, the most we had to worry about (aside from the Gulf War)was Bill Clinton doing naughty and gay was still a word which meant happy and not the fact that you enjoy investigating other people’s bottoms, possibly sending a canary in first to see if it was safe.

Who wouldn’t want to relive some of those moments, albeit confined to the gaming cyberspace of your home computer?

The problem these days, most of the old games now will not play on our super-deluxe-cyber-squatting-eating-beasts-of-burden with that Frankenstein’s monster from Microsoft, Windows Vista all running in the background, instead those machines prefer burning villagers while asking “can’t we all just get along?”

So a great number of gaming’s finest hours are lost.

Well inject your arms with cocaine no longer, because a brand new service, Great Old Games, or GOG to its mates, located at www.gog.com now provides a limited number of people (myself included) with the ability to purchase all these old classics, which they have tweaked and massaged into running on modern day equipment, all for a reasonable price while they are at it.

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Wednesday was a great day, and beside the celebration of of the birthday with friends and family, which always seems to be an award winner, of course the day of graduation from Wolverhampton took place, the main thing I suppose to take away was the fact that after all that effort, the time taken away from the the blog and other things being stranded in the Arctic tundra all that time, getting cold and losing games of ludo to the polar bears, it was all worth it.

And finally here are only just a couple of pictures from that day:

The three surviving contestants on the long windy road which lead us to this point, or course you may recognise the world renowned Lord of Leisure, wanted in three countries for his severe criminal case of apathy. We then move to the middle of the pack, Paul Bremer, a man who defies gravity on a daily basis with his secret machine of lies. Lastly of course, we present Mr. Steve Middleton, the man who remained confident to the last that all would be well, even when it got hugely annoying, er, I mean inspiring….

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So another year has been and gone, The Lord of Leisure is now the wrong side of 25, which only means the belly gets larger, the chins become numerous and the flatulence gets unbearable.

Basically, for all intensive purposes, I can no longer pretend to be young. For once I have to now face the stark reality of being 2/3 to 1/2 way through my existence and pull my socks up. So no more eating super noodles from a shoe, no more wiping my face using next door’s cat, and no throwing up in people’s hats.

Time to act my age. Time to get together a plan to define what I am to do with life and stand up, be counted, no time to stay below the masses without making any impact. No more should this manly man stand by while evil wanders across the land and up ladies’ skirts.

I feel sick now. Maybe I should slow down and just take it one step at a time, like trying to get dressed without getting stuck in the dishwasher again…

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