Blog On The Motorway

For seven days I was supposed to be blogging about any topic that my readers see fit to get me to write about, having asked on here and on Twitter. Unfortunately the bank holiday weekend coupled with an OU assignment I had completely forgotten about has put me back a few days. Sorry. Here, for your reading delectation, is Day Seven, presented on Day 9, subject submitted by Kerri.

Indecision is a bitch.  For example, my boss currently can’t seem to decide whether he wants to go on his lunch or not, which is playing havoc with my ability to make this post.  Or take the fact that on Monday morning, already a day behind on this esteemed challenge, I couldn’t decide whether to start on the next post before going out drinking. Which inevitably led to this post being two days late.

I’ve always had a problem with making decisions. Or at the very least I inevitably choose the path of least resistance. Why do something today that you can put off until tomorrow? While I have always suffered from an inability to choose a course of action, back in my teen-aged years this was an almost debilitating affliction, and in the end it cost me all the money I had saved up for University. 

One hot summer’s day, I had a day off from my job at Blockbuster Video (which still ranks as the best job I ever had, even now) and so a few of us grabbed the train from Basildon to Southend for a day at the seaside. Our ulterior motive was to purchase some weed, as there was a drought in Basildon at the time.

Once in Southend, we started to ask around in all the usual places, and eventually came across a very scary looking fella, who took our money and disappeared. He said he could only buy in bulk, so we ended up forking out all the money we had on us. We waited for an hour or so, and just as we decided that we’d been skanked out of all our money, he returned. But this time he had a group of thick skulled thugs to accompany him. ‘I couldn’t get any smoke for you, so I got you these pills instead,’ he said, menace and violence in his eyes.

Now, none of us in our party were interested in anything more than smoke (I have never gone past smoking weed) and so we started to argue that this wasn’t what we wanted, and so please could we have the money that we gave him back, please?  He refused, and his group of associates started to square off for a fight.

Sensing immediately that this wasn’t a fight we were about to win, outnumbered as we were two to one, we retreated immediately, without either the drugs or the money in hand.  Displeased overall with our day’s visit, we decided to call it quits and return home.  The only problem being that we no longer had the funds to get the train back.

Southend station was one of the first to have installed ticket barriers leading on to the platform, making it almost impossible to get onto a train for free, and so we pooled what little money we had and decided to buy a single to the next station on the route, allowing us access to the train without paying the full fare.  If we saw inspectors coming along, we’d simply alight at the next station and wait for the next train.

And so we boarded the train, all rather pleased with the duplicitous nature of our entry, feeling somehow that we’d finally had a small victory in a day of failure. The ticket man even came up and checked our tickets while they were still valid, before disappearing to the other end of the train. We laughed and joked and felt better.  All up to the moment when we looked up to find a British Transport Police officer stood right next to us.

He asked to see our tickets, making it plainly clear with his tone that he knew what he was about to find.  He looked at me first, and I decided that I wasn’t going to go down without a fight.  I pretended to look in my pocket, and said I couldn’t find my ticket, until he ordered me to empty my pockets.

‘Oh, there it is.’

‘Are you aware that this ticket doesn’t take you this far?’

‘Doesn’t it?

‘No.  You need to make up the rest of the fare.’

‘I don’t have any money.’

‘Then you will have to pay the rest of the fare, and a £25 fine. Can I take your name please?’

And this is where I got really foolish.  About a week previously I had split up with my girlfriend, who I discovered had been cheating on me with her ex, who was also now incidentally a heroin user.  Needless to say, I was miffed by this, and without thinking, I blurted out his name, presumably with my brain deciding that the least he owed me was 30 quid or so for stealing my girlfriend.  Although to be fair, I had stolen her off him to begin with.  My friends looked at me in shock.  Without looking up, the policeman continued. ‘And your address?’

Ah.

I hadn’t thought this through. I didn’t know his address. What should I do? Give mine? Make up an address? Admit defeat and come clean? Instead, I simply stammered, feeling my face grow redder and redder. The policeman looked up from his notepad and fixed me with a stare, making it even worse. Now I couldn’t even remember my own name and address.  There was a thumping sound in my head.

He let me stand there in my own shame and indecision, my mind literally frozen, for what seemed like hours (although, given that it was only a half hour train journey, that seems unlikely) before slowly he said;

‘That’s not your name, is it?’

I shook my head, and then proceeded to answer every question truthfully. When I had finished, he gave me a caution and told me that my fine would now be for a higher charge, and I may need to go to court. I sat down slowly, my face undoubtedly still supernova red. Needless to say, my friends made no such mistakes, and gladly reeled off their names and addresses.

Two months later, having elected not to defend myself in court, I was handed an additional £250 fine, on top of the £25.  I paid it out of the money that I had spent the summer saving towards University, and as a result went to Sunderland with about £15 in my account.

Looking back on it now, I think it’s safe to assume that it wasn’t my finest hour.

For seven days I was supposed to be blogging about any topic that my readers see fit to get me to write about, having asked on here and on Twitter. Unfortunately the bank holiday weekend coupled with an OU assignment I had completely forgotten about has put me back a few days. Sorry. Here, for your reading delectation, is Day Six, presented on Day 8, subject submitted by Joe Lee.

I can’t really claim to be a huge authority on Graphic novels, having what would be described by most comic book geeks as ‘a pitiful collection.’ But I do love a good one, so here is my entirely subjective list of the graphic novels that have really moved or tickled me since the tender age of 12, when I first found a copy of Aliens vs Predator in my newsagent.

1. The Walking Dead.

Technically not a single graphic novel, but instead a continual story that follows a rag-tag group of survivors through a zombie apocalypse. What really moves me about this is the wonderfully rich ways the characters are written, coupled with the sparse but haunting style of the drawing. Always gripping, frequently hilarious, this is a must have for me.

2. Chasing Dogma.

As with many things in geek life, Kevin Smith does it best.  This tale of exactly how Jay and Silent Bob make their way between the films Chasing Amy and Dogma is the only graphic novel to have made me laugh out loud from start to finish. It’s good enough that Kevin Smith was able to plagiarise half of his own work for the plot of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

3. Watchmen.

Of course. A seminal moment in comic book history, and like so much of what Alan Moore has done, breathtaking from end to end. The interweaving plots, the use of seemingly real news clippings, and best of all the comic-within-a-comic Tales Of The Black Freighter just make this the most ambitious and perfectly realised graphic novel ever produced.

4. Daredevil Vol 1: Guardian Devil

Another Kevin Smith entry, but this couldn’t be any further from Chasing Dogma. The character of Daredevil has always been intriguing, but Smith’s own weaving of his religious tale around a taut and suspenseful noir backdrop is for me the best tale from one of my favourite characters. Genuinely moving in places, the conflicts within Matt Murdoch have always been what drives Daredevil’s books, and Smith and Queseda capture that brilliantly.

5. Civil War.

Normally event comics are a nightmare. The studio, in this case Marvel, realises there are just too many plots in their universe and enlist someone to do a bit of a spring clean.  Cue needless fights between friends, enemies switching sides, yadda yadda. But Civil War, which examines the very Watchmen-esque possibility of unmasking and registering all superheroes for the sake of humanity is perfectly done, and the battle scenes are superb. The moment when Peter Parker unmasks at a news conference is one of the tensest moments in comic book history.

Geeks, feel free to tell me how utterly wrong my choices are…..GO!

For seven days I am blogging about any topic that my readers see fit to get me to write about, having asked on here and on Twitter. Here, for your reading delectation, is Day Four, subject submitted by [last year's girl]

Dear Rosie.

As I write this, your Mum has gone to work, and you are sat in the lounge in your ball pit watching Cbeebies. You just came in to give me a cuddle and I told you that I was writing you a letter, and you told me (in your roundabout way) that you didn’t want to grow up, so wouldn’t be able to read it. I hate to break it to you, but you are going to have to get older, so one day you might stumble across this.

Since I set myself this test, this was the one topic that has me genuinely daunted.  There are so many things I could say to you, so much advice I could give you, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot over the last few days, and there is one piece of advice that I can give you that hopefully can help you later in life.  It’s something that it has taken me most of my adult life to work out, and I offer it to you in the hope that it doesn’t take you as long.

Don’t ever regret your decisions or your actions, for they have all brought you to this point now, and for good or ill, they will all inform the path that your life takes. You wont ever know what that path is until it’s upon you, so enjoy the path you are on, and let it take you where it will.

This may seem like strange advice for a parent to give their child, given the emphasis we all put on making the ‘right’ decisions.  Maybe by the time you are reading this we are hassling you about your GCSE subjects, and how those choices affect your life, but the truth is that it is the smallest decisions that shape your life, just as much as the ones that seem to be big decisions at the time.  Every decision you ever make is a big one, and the truth is that nobody ever gets those decisions right all of the time.  I’ll give you one example, a small incident that has shaped everything that followed.

When I was seven, I was sat at school, alone on the swings, listening to a tape of Kylie Minogue.  Even back then I listened to a lot of music, mostly tatty 80’s pop, but when I was sat on those swings a boy called Ben came up to me and asked me what I was listening to. I told him, and he told me that I should listen to a band called Guns N Roses. Now at this point I could have dismissed him or forgotten the conversation, but I didn’t. Next time I was home I begged your Granddad for some money to go and buy the tape. And that was the tape that got me into music, something that has stayed with me for all of my life, and which has informed so many of the decisions that followed.

Now, I know that no matter what, I would have ended up becoming a music obsessive. It’s in my blood, and I hope that you will share the same passion for music that both your Mum and I have.  But I often wonder what would have happened if Ben had told me to listen to The Smiths instead.  Would my musical journey have been altered by a different point of entry? Would I have had the same friends at college if I had gotten into indie music rather than rock music? What if he had gotten my into the other new scene at the time, dance music?

When I went to Sunderland to go to university (again an utterly random decision based largely on the fact that I wanted to move as far away as possible from your Grandparents, who I wasn’t really getting on that well with at the time, in part because I kept blaring Korn and Marilyn Manson at top volume from my stereo) my entire social circle was based around the music I listened to.  I started a DJ night, and my love of music deepened even further.  I formed a band, and because of that, and the friends I had, I stayed in the north east for four years after I finished University.  Would I have done that if i hadn’t had those passions, those friends? No.

When I was still living in the North East I met someone, and when they left Sunderland I went with them to York.  When I was there it was the music that I loved led me to the friends I met here, a lot of whom you now call Auntie and Uncle because to me they are family.  But without that first Guns n Roses tape I wouldn’t have met them, wouldn’t have been in York.

And this brings me to my final point. Under no illusions do I want you to think that I’ve always been happy, or that I’ve always made the right decisions. There have been many times that I could have made a decision that would have improved my career, or taken me to new places, but I can’t ever change those decisions, and I will never regret them.  How can I ever regret anything? Even the slightest difference in my life could have taken me on a different path.  If I had never come to York, if I had taken a different job when I was here, or if I had skipped one particular works party then I would never have met your Mum. And if I had never met your mum, then you wouldn’t be reading this at some unseen point in the future, and I wouldn’t be writing this while you run around in your pyjamas, placing brightly blocks into a shape sorter. And that is a world I would never want to imagine.

I can’t ever regret any of the choices I made because without them, you wouldn’t be here, and no matter what happens for the rest of my life,I know I will  always have made those choices right because of that.  And so whenever you sit there and regret some boy you didn’t talk to, or exam that didn’t go well, or job interview that you missed, don’t worry too much, because that path you are on is still there.  And besides, no matter what road you take, what choices you make, none of them will ever mean that we love you any less, or that we won’t be there to pick you up when you fall down.

For seven days I am blogging about any topic that my readers see fit to get me to write about, having asked on here and on Twitter. Here, for your reading delectation, is Day Four, subject submitted by Fiona Gemmell.

One of the bewildering things about becoming a parent is the lack of basic instructions.  If you go to Argos and buy a piece of furniture you will find assembly instructions enclosed within, and yet when it comes to being given a new born child, which will require much more effort and constant management than a three tier wardrobe will ever do, you get nothing. At the very least they should provide you with the child equivalent of an Allen key, a multi purpose tool that can stop it from crying or deal with the never-ending flow of poop.

One of the things they should prepare you for is how much children’s television has changed since you last bothered to tune in. The main example of this is the advent of all day children’s channels, such as the wonderful and yet bewildering Cbeebies. No longer are children’s programmes a way to settle a child for a few hours in the afternoon, now they provide it from the moment your child wakes you up until the time they go to bed, like a constant opium release for your child.

Of course this leads to the temptation, especially on those weekend days when you are feeling a little worse for wear, to just pop it on and leave it running all day, like a constantly running distraction machine. But (and this is where the warning comes in) you do this at your peril, because soon you will get sucked in to the bewildering world within. When I was a child I doubt that my parents could name any of the characters of the programmes I watched. They lacked any awareness of the organisational structure of the Autobots, for instance. And yet I can name virtually every character that comes on Cbeebies over the course of a day. I know the words to all the songs they sing on Me Too, have seen every episode of In the Night Garden and have even found myself leaving the channel on when Rosie isn’t even in the house, dancing around to Boogie Beebies.

But none of this prepared me for the latest marvel to grace Cbeebies.  The terror that is Waybuloo.  I first stumbled across this one afternoon after Rosie and I had been to the park. After two hours of running after a toddler as she attempted every single area of the park that she was not old enough to go on, we returned home with me far more exhausted than her.  I popped on Cbeebies and curled up on the sofa to die.

About half an hour later I woke, with a strangely serene feeling washing over me, as the gentle music of pan pipes and clinking crystals greeted me. I opened my eyes and could see Rosie transfixed to the screen.  I glanced at the television, trying to make out what was going on.

It was no good. On the screen were what appeared to be three small monkey like creatures, all laying on the floor doing yoga.  Then they suddenly exclaimed something in a weird language and started to float off the ground, manic smiles plastered on their faces, eyes huge with dilated pupils.  The screen cut to another of the little monkey creatures, this time holding what appeared to be a watermelon.  Another was jumping calmly up and down on a box, neither of them showing any expression other that what appeared to be a manic bliss.  The monkey holding a watermelon handed it to another monkey and then flew away without a word. ‘Noktok,’ said the other monkey creature, and walked away to do some more yoga. Everything was so surreal that I wouldn’t have been in the least bit surprised if what they’d actually said was ‘Nobody puts Noktok in a corner.’

I watched the rest of the episode without a clue what was going on, but unable to look away. Even the most surreal episode of In The Night Garden will still furnish the viewer with some plot, generally about someone losing something and then finding it again, but try as hard as I could there was no plot to be found here.

Afterwards, I turned the television off, despite the protestations of Rosie, who began immediately to shout ‘Beebies.’  I looked at her, and said ‘We’re going to go back outside Rosie, I think we need to make sure that the world is still real after that.’  She nodded and headed to the door.  Thankfully all was as it had been only an hour before. But for a while there I was beginning to suspect some kind of cosmic shift, the world spun out of orbit by the sheer oddness of the show we had seen.

Needless to say, it’s now Rosie’s favourite show. 

For the next seven days I am going to blog about any topic that my readers see fit to get me to write about, having asked on here and on Twitter. Here, for your reading delectation, is Day Two, subject submitted by @gregeden on twitter.

I consider myself to be quite the connoisseur of festivals, having been to about 20 of them over the years, and like anyone who has been to festivals have quite a few good stories. My favourite festival story is not mine though, and so I bring you the story of my good friend Rob at Reading 99.

Rob has always had a bit of a reputation for needlessly getting himself into trouble.  This is a man who did a bungee jump one week after a hernia operation. The same man who scaled a lighting pole at one Leeds Festival only to lose his grip and plummet into a bin. Who once had his own Father put a hit out on him.  Rob is the guy you take with you to a festival who gets so wasted on the first night that he doesn’t go and see any bands until the last day.

At the Reading festival in 1999 he outdid himself.  It started off with Rob on the first night asking around if anyone had any acid, which none of us did. He’s never been a prolific drug taker, none of us were, so it took us a bit by surprise.  He didn’t manage to score any that night, nor the night after, although he remained adamant that he wanted to take some acid.  He got drunk out of his skull as per usual and by the last day of the festival none of us had heard from him for a while.

It turned out that on the last day he had decided that in order to procure said hallucinogens he needed to look further afield than our little field.  Off he trundled, asking everyone he could find if they had any. It’s a wonder he didn’t get arrested.

Apparently, what happened next was that he bumped into someone who recommended he go and check out the Herbal High tent.  He wasn’t sure if that would do the full job he had in mind, so he carried on his fruitless search for a little while longer.  Eventually he gave up, and was about to head back to our tents when he came upon the aforementioned Herbal High tent.  He enquired as to their effectiveness and was assured that they were every bit as strong as the real thing, and that since it was his first time he should under no circumstances take more than two tabs.

Instead of taking this advice, however, Rob decided to digest the whole sheet systematically, not realising that the ‘kick’ would not come for a while.  It was around the time he finished that it finally arrived, and he spewed forth a torrent of festival food and beer and paper.  Disorientated and tripping, he made his way back to the tent while we were all still in the arena and collapsed into the relative safety of his plastic abode.

An undetermined time later, the tent door was unzipped and Rob looked in horror as a bald man and a woman climbed in and commenced fervent lovemaking next to him. They went one for quite some time until the bald man looked over and saw Rob.

‘Oh sorry mate, I didn’t see you there,’ he said nonchalantly, before adding ‘are you all right mate, you don’t look very well.’

‘Well actually, I just took a whole sheet of acid.’

‘Really? Are you seeing anything weird?’

‘Well there’s two strangers fucking, right in front of me.’

Undeterred, the man and woman continued to go at it, completely ignoring Rob. The next he knew, another woman climbed into the tent and made her way alongside Rob, so paralytic she could barely speak.  She fumbled around with Rob for a bit, but he was so freaked out that he says at this point he simply blacked out, presumably his mind shutting down for the sake of self preservation.

Now all of this comes from the account of a man tripping heavily, so I can’t be sure what is real and what isn’t. But the one thing I do know is that the next morning, concerned for where Rob had disappeared to, we opened the tent to see Rob laying in the tent looking utterly bewildered, two naked women laying alongside him asleep, with no bald man in sight.

And who says drugs can’t do good things?

For the next seven days I am going to blog about any topic that my readers see fit to get me to write about, having asked on here and on Twitter. Here, for your reading delectation, is Day Two, subject submitted by @tylermassey on twitter.

As regular visitors of this site will know, I was educated at boarding school, my parents at the time rich enough and in love enough with Conservative capitalism to think that this was a good idea.  During my time at my first school, I went on a French exchange trip. I don’t ever remember the French coming over to us, so maybe it was one way, but this was one of my strongest memories of childhood, so I shall relate to you the story of my one week in the small French town of Condom.

The trip itself was the first time I had ever been away without my parents, and the other people I was going with were all excited by the possibility of the French contraband they would be stocking up with on the trip. The possibilities seemed exacerbated by the fact that the town we were visiting had a name which was to us a very rude word. We had all heard of the plurality of french merchants of ninja stars and pornography, which overwhelmed any sense we had that we were going to be stuck in a foreign country of whose language all of us had only the basest grip.

Once we stepped off the bus, however, all of our inhibitions were tempered by the harsh reality of the fact that we were all about to be lined up to be matched up with families we had previously no contact with.  We surveyed the children in front of us, who seemed as scared as us. I was paired up with a pretty blonde girl and counted my lucky stars as the thoughts of romance blossomed in my pre-pubescent mind.

My happiness was short lived however. At my school I was always singled out by the powers that be as the son of a publican, not truly deserving of the heritage that the school had, and as such was predictably paired off with the one desperately poor family. They ran a small eaterie in the town itself, and by the end of the first night it was clear that the parents of my new friend expected me to earn my keep. The whole of the first night was spent washing dishes and picking up and cleaning the mess of the clientele.

The family I was with spoke no English at all, and since my french was broken at best, they spent most of their time barking their orders at me in the same way you can see British tourists doing whenever they go abroad.

My predicament was not helped by the fact that whenever we all met back at the school the next day, everybody else seemed to be having a whale of a time, with lovely families who did nothing but feed them exotic food and sneaking them wine while taking them out on bike trips. By the third night I was broken, and called my parents in floods of tears, proclaiming how I wished to come home immediately.

The next day I was taken aside by one of my school’s teachers and told that I would be moving families, presumably after my parents had been in contact to kick up a fuss. The teacher didn’t seem too happy about it but I was overjoyed, even more so when I realised I was moving to be with two of my friends, who were already at the same house with a pair of french boy twins.

As I arrived at the new house, I was startled by the change. This was the kind of France I had heard about, a beautiful cottage seemingly hewn in to luxuriant countryside and a kitchen that seemed to be always issuing the smell of tantalising baked goods. Even the weather improved as soon as we got there.

Once I had put my stuff into what was now the most crowded bedroom in France, the kind matronly mother pulled me aside and spoke to me in perfect English.  She told me that everyone was going on a bike ride together, but that unfortunately all of the new bikes were taken, and would I mind joining them on one of the older bikes they had locked in the garage?  Of course I immediately agreed, eager to finally start what had so far been a pitiful trip.

I sized up the gigantic and ancient racing bike they pulled out for me, but refusing to be left behind awkwardly mounted it.  It wobbled constantly and I felt completely unsafe, but I gritted my teeth and followed everyone out onto the long gravel driveway.  The other kids sped out in front of us, and the parents quickly followed them.

I focused on the road in front of me, and although the others were soon out of sight the downhill momentum meant I was soon picking up speed.  Not far down, just as I was approaching top speed, the front wheel hit an enexpected bump and the handlebars jerked. I went flying over them and landed hard on my side.  The momentum carried me forward, my bare leg scraping against the gravel road and leaving a thin red trail behind me.  I was screaming in pain before I even stopped.

The group ahead must have heard my screams because soon they were back. The father lifted me in his arms and took me into the house. He informed me that I wasn’t to worry, that his wife was a nurse, and she would look after me.  She cleaned out the wound as best she could and dressed it.

This understandably put a dampener on the rest of the week, my leg throbbing constantly. I was cheered slightly by the discovery that the vending machine in the school was confused by our currency so that you could buy a Nestle Crunch bar for 4p, but nonetheless it was not a good time.

Not nearly as bad a time as when I got home though.  It turns out that my French Nurse had declined to think to change my bandages in the whole four days I had been there, and the gauze was now a part of the giant scab I now had. It took my Dad 6 hours to remove it in a warm bath, my screams so loud that by the end I couldn’t speak.

Thankfully, the next school trip was to Disneyland, and I returned from that one with nothing more severe than a pack of pornographic playing cards and a ninja throwing star.

For the next seven days I am going to blog about any topic that my readers see fit to get me to write about, having asked on here and on Twitter. Here, for your reading delectation, is Day One, submitted by @punk_beatz on twitter.

Back in my university partying days, when I lived in Sunderland, I found myself and my friends frequenting on particular takeaway with remarkable frequency.  Back then there was only one club night worth mentioning in Sunderland, and that was on Tuesdays at the terribly named Pzazz nightclub.

Opposite said establishment was an eatery whose name escapes me now, but we used to go with such frequency that when we entered the staff behind the counter used to greet us by name and immediately start our orders without questioning. Every Tuesday night, a large garlic bread with cheese.  And I wondered why I could never pull at the end of the night.

One one night, however, my choice of late-night haute-cuisine actually saved my life, or at the very least saved me a beating.  Of my friends, one was a mild mannered chap by the name of Ben, the other a slightly more fiery Scot by the name of Ian.  One thing I should mention about Sunderland for those unfamiliar with the north east is that it is unseasonably rough in the city centre, especially at the weekends. For these reasons most of the non-dance nights used to take place on a weekday evening so as to avoid throwing the 200 or so alternative kids onto the same streets as the ‘townies’ at two in the morning.

On this occasion, however, we stumbled out of Pzazz, all full of vodka jelly and beer and mirth and into said eatery, only to be confronted by the sight of disconsolate looking staff, who all looked towards the far corner of the room as we walked in.

Naturally our eyes followed theirs and in the corner we saw five gigantic skinheads in Fred Perry tops staring back at us. Naturally we turned our attention straight away from them and back to the corner. We ordered, careful not to turn our attention back behind us.

Once we ordered we started talking to the staff as usual, but quickly the man behind the counter retreated into the kitchen, and we heard a voice behind us.  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Turning, we saw one of the larger of the herd staring at us, malice in his eyes.

‘Um, ordering?’ I said, trying as hard as possible to show with my face a level of cowardice that would render any ensuing fight to be pointless.  Instead of retorting, he simply shook his head and walked back to his table.  We waited for a few minutes in silence before being handed our food, and then tried to leave unnoticed.

Back on the street we wondered aloud what the hell that had been about, and then, foolishly, Ian looked back into the shop and made the sort of gesture that could only end badly for us.  Without a word the skinheads got up from their table and ran out to follow us.  We pegged it.

We were chased down the street, all the while scrambling to hold on to our delicious food. We rounded a corner onto the high street and I lost control of the big box in my hand, spilling my delicious looking supper all over the street. Cursing, I turned and continued to run.

We stopped a little further along to see if we were still being pursued, just in time to see one of the skinheads round the corner and put one of his boots onto a large slice of garlic bread with cheese. He immediately lost his footing and slid backwards, falling backwards into a shop window, which luckily held, but he slumped to the floor with a force that suggested he wouldn’t be immediately getting back up.

As his friends rounded the corner, they came across their leader lying stricken on the floor and stopped. Without waiting to see any more, we ran on into the night, now completely sober and with me suddenly very hungry.  And that is how one night a garlic bread with cheese saved my life.