nunoncastors

Undeniably, August has been a most eventful month. The gossamer web of activities and leisure that I had carefully planned out and pinned down lay in tatters by the end, ravaged by the unforeseen and unexpected, reduced to delightful surprises and unlooked for change. My life has been all the better for it, if I’m honest (and I am, usually), the best lain plans of mice and men, I suppose.

To describe things in the broadest of terms, August has seen in me a subtle change or, to put it another way, I’ve changed subtly as a person. This, as I am all too horribly aware, is a marvellously clichéd and trite statement mouthed all too often by people at a loss to describe some mediocre event in their lives and, rest assured, this is no different. I like to think that the fact I’m being knowing about the whole debacle helps distance me a little from the in habitants of myspace and their constant empty braying, but it really doesn’t. Not even slightly.

So, what happened? When and where and why? In truth, I’m not sure of the true order of events so I’ll start with the notes I scribbled down in Amsterdam and we’ll see where we go from there.

Oh, actually, Amsterdam needs a little precursor or you won’t know what I’m on about will you?

Right then, regular readers (all 6 of you) will remember that last summer I went off into the wilds of Yorkshire and spend a weekend camping with people off the interweb. Despite my initial fears, no one turned out to be an axe murderer, crazed rapist or, indeed, anything other than a decent sort who has read a particular series of books and quite likes a few drinks (alcoholic and not), some scran, and a bit of a laugh. Therefore I adjudged the whole experience to be a good one and made my way home unmolested and content.

Unsurprisingly, finding out that the people I speak to on the interweb actually are as nice as they seem in the real world made me more inclined to indulge in such adventures a second time. It is, after all, a silly person who snubs the opportunity to make new friends, even if your existing ones suspect you’re being brainwashed by an internet cult and tease you remorselessly about it. Not ‘try and talk you out of it’ by the way, tease. The rotten bastards.

Anyway, as per last year, a Euro Party was declared and organised by lovely people who really don’t get enough credit for what they do and all I had to do was pay £50 and make my way to Driebergen in the Netherlands for Friday the tenth of August where, if things stayed true to form, I would drink some beer, eat some food and piss about having a laugh with people I would otherwise never have met. Who can argue with that?*

And that is why I was in Amsterdam scribbling down notes on Wednesday the eighth because, lets face it, if you going for a weekend, you may as well make it a long one and grab some of the sights and sounds while you’re there. And no, I don’t just mean prostitutes and drugs; Amsterdam has more to offer than tawdry thrills and a mind numbing stupor. But hey, if that’s you thing, enjoy. You’re missing out though.

Now, it probably won’t surprise you to know that I had a vague plan for the first few days on my own. A vague plan that involved museums and books and sitting in cafes with a coffee and a paper, plans for watching the world go by and pretending to be bourgeois or possibly, an aesthete. Maybe I’d engage in conversation with those chaps you find in art galleries, always wearing a scarf, and wind them up about modern art and the merits of being able to paint over cutting a shark in half. I know I really should grow up, but it makes me happy to play childish games. Right, back to the plan, my plan ran thusly.

Wednesday. Get up ridiculously early and fly to Amsterdam on the unreasonable o’clock flight. Check into Christian hostel, chosen because it was cheapest, and wander around foreign capital going “ooh” and “aah” at all the pretty things.

Thursday. Thursday is museum day, go and look at Rembrandts and Vermeers, be impressed by the sheer quality of their artistry. Go to expensive restaurant, indulge.

Friday. Memory lane day. Get the train to Utrecht and see if it’s as you remember it from childhood. Wander around, go up the Dom, have lunch by the canal, see family friends.

Friday Evening, Satuday, Sunday. Camping with Wizards. Eat, drink and be merry.

As I said earlier, the best lain plans of mice and so on and so forth, and here we start with my notes.

Amsterdam.

I have to be mental; I went to bed around 12:30 last night and was up, awake, dressed and getting on the bus to the airport at 04:15.

Obviously the flight was delayed, we didn’t get airborne until 07:45, for fuck’s sake, that’s whole hours in bed wasted. Anyway, once I’d actually made it to Amsterdam, things improved vastly. It’s only when you travel abroad that you come to realise what a shithole the UK really is.

Public transport from Schiphol is amazing. It’s on time, clean and efficient. 2nd class on a train here makes our 1st class look like a public toilet with shit smeared on the walls.

Amsterdam itself is beautiful, aside from the tree lined canals and row-on-row of gorgeous houses, it’s clean. Sure, they have urinals on some street corners, but it still puts our best efforts to shame. I don’t understand how it’s achieved here when over the channel we can’t do the same, it’s ridiculous really, and embarrassing.

I’ll tell you what, if I could afford to move here, I would in a heartbeat.

Their toilets do confuse me though, but the women are largely gorgeous so it’d be swings and roundabouts really.

Yeah, I know, the grass is always greener.

Wednesday Evening.

I am staying in a Christian youth hostel. I’m not a Christian, as we all know, but it’s cheap and, most importantly, not full of stag parties, sex tourists or pot-heads.

There are of course, concessions. I cannot get drunk or stoned or shag anyone in the dorms, which is fine; there was only really a danger of the first happening anyway. Still, concessions.

There’s also quite a lot of talk about god, because these people are Christians, they pray frequently and believe utterly. Ordinarily this would drive me up the wall, yet I find I just feel out of place and, if I’m honest with myself, a little guilty. My reasons for staying here were purely cynical, play on their good nature, get some cheap accommodation, free food and skedaddle. I hadn’t actually considered the fact that they’re really rather kind, pleasant, caring people.

Don’t get me wrong, I still think organised religion is a pile of shite, but it does make you take a long hard look at yourself when decent people unwittingly hold up a mirror to your actions.

Well, would you look at that? Something finally cracked my cynical shell and effected a change in me. All it took was a long conversation about the nature of religion and belief with a girl whose name I forget but who was, quite honestly, lovely in every sense of the word. I, churl that I am, leave a lot to be desired in comparison.

So, am I off to start being all happy-clappy? Well, no. I am however going to make an attempt to be somewhat more constructive and, rather than seeing the negative aspect of everything, have a go seeing the positive. Crikey, eh?

Now, it was at this point that plans began to fall apart and the whole journey deviated into the unknown. I’d spent the Wednesday wandering about, taking in the sights and sounds and so on, but all that changed when I checked my email and found a message from one of the guys on the forums telling me he was going to be in Amsterdam on Thursday and would I like to meet up with him and some others for a pre-party tour of the city?

Obviously I said yes, who wouldn’t?

Well, it turns out that he doesn’t have a clue about Amsterdam and the guided tour was more of a random wander via cafes, bars and an Italian restaurant with incredibly rude staff. People came, people went and a good time was had by all. The only downside, for me, was that everyone spoke English to a high level and I couldn’t reciprocate. Not that it’d be very likely that I’d learn Finnish or Dutch, but I should at least be able to have a crack at German or French, right? Anyway, those of us still left in the evening had a few beers and plans were laid for making our way to Driebergen on the Friday.
I know I’ve said it before, but the trains in the Netherlands really are awesome. Cheap too. I think I spent less flitting about Holland for a week than I would do on a return trip to London. Anyway, following a bit more pottering about in Amsterdam and a trip to a tiny wee pancake house up some absurdly steeps stairs, a train was caught and before long I found myself sat outside some locked gates in a wood just outside Driebergen with some Germans, and Austrian, two Finns, a Scouse, some Dutchies and, well, someone from just about any European country you care to name. There were even some Americans, one of whom thinks I say banana in a funny way.

I don’t.

Camping with Wizards, as I’ve taken to calling it courtesy of my sceptical housemate, is and was, great fun. Once the gates were opened and everyone settled, beers were opened, jokes were told and general genial behaviour indulged in. Folk were waxed against their will, namely me, and drinking games were rigged to the detriment of anyone who didn’t keep hold of their Hasslehoff. Cryptic. Campfires were made, food was eaten and dodgebrick invented. I am still a TimeLord, Joel has been everywhere and the Finns make a sweet that does weird things to your tongue.

I won’t bang on about it, you weren’t there, you won’t understand, but I’ll say this, if you’re a regular on a forum, any forum, and they meet up for parties now and again. Don’ think, “that’s a bit weird”, just go. At the worst, you won’t enjoy yourself, at the best you’ll make new friends and have an amazing time.

Thus ended the first two weeks in August, then what?

Well, I came back and was a little depressed to be honest. With everything, the UK, the weather, the fact that I wasn’t in Holland having fun, however, buoyed up by the realisation that I need to be less of a cynic before I die inside completely, I made an effort with friends I’d been neglecting recently, I lunched and coffeed and spent amicable time in the company of people I like, doing things I wouldn’t normally because life’s too short to be an arse about it.

I went to London with Tom to see Tool. I’d never even heard of Tool, but they were rather good and put on one hell of a show with lasers (I love lasers) and smoke machines and disturbing visuals that were rather distracting. I went to see some mysterious avant-garde play that made no sense at all but had a naked woman in it shouting about something or other. Strange, yet fun.

A group of us helped Ian move house because he’s living with Amy now and being rather grown-up. It’s a prospect that terrifies me, but then I’m single and it’s to be expected. I’ve been invited up to Leeds, down to London and apparently have to play host when some mates come up to visit. The weather’s been shit, but I’ve been busy and it’s been good. Satisfying.

Yesterday I went out for dinner with friends and we talked about, stuff, nothing important but it was nice, Sunday I’m going climbing trees because that’s what a friend wants to do for their birthday. Awesome.

I think that just about covers everything. I’ll see if I can get back to regular posting again now. How about you, good month?

*Not counting my friend Duncan, who dubbed the whole event “Camping with Wizards” and refused to see it as anything other than odd.

When I was a child, physically that is, there were infinitely more butterflies than there seem to be these days. I don’t think this is an illusion in the same way that Mars bars seem smaller now than they did back then, I’m willing to accept that I’ve grown and they haven’t. Scale is something I can grasp. But when I was younger there used to be loads of butterflies and now it seems as though there’s hardly any, you scarcely even see Cabbage White’s anymore and they used to be everywhere.

So what I want to know is, what’s going on, where’s my kaleidoscope?

So, it turns out that ‘the media’ has been lying to us; they’ve been fixing phone-in competitions, faking deaths and being generally unscrupulous and dishonest.

Shock. Horror.

Oh, I know my slant on life is somewhat oblique to the norm, that I’m a dour and mistrustful soul, but is anyone really that surprised that in today’s world of figures, ratings and market share, someone decided to cook the books? Really?

No, I thought not.

You see, for whatever reason, a large proportion of the populace believe what they read in the papers and what they observe in the news. It seems that it seldom occurs to any of them that that box in the corner of the room, the device that swallows up so much time and attention, could be lying, that the motivation behind the whole media industry might not be some altruistic need to provide news and entertainment, that instead, the whole shebang could be driven by profit margins and the needs of shareholders.

Ignorance, it has been said, is bliss.

The sad thing is that it’s our own fault, a shackle of our own making. When I was growing up, in the 80’s, BBC News was erudite and apposite. People with cut glass accents relayed information to me with weight and gravitas, they used words of more than three syllables and I trusted them. If there was a disaster they told me where and when and how and why. They didn’t need to be filmed standing hip deep in water to illustrate a story about flooding, they credited me with sufficient sense to imagine what a flood looked like. Now I’m greeted by simpering Muppets who speak nice and slowly and don’t use big words in case I don’t understand them.

Why? Because they have to compete for viewers with other channels. People no longer care about quality or context, people want sensationalism and gloss and the latest news about some non-event fucking ‘celebrity’, famous for nothing more than being a vacuous shell the media can feed off like a vast crippling parasite. Once unassailable bastions of quality and respect are reduced to running endless reality TV shows and repeats of former glories while papers that once ran stories to make you think now tell tales of private lives and vignettes on the current cause celebre, I know more now about talentless ‘pop stars’ than I could ever bring myself to care about.

Where once there was depth and feeling, there’s now nothing more than superficial dross designed to latch on and keep you hooked without ever engaging your brain. We’re told what’s cool, who’s good and who’s bad, what to like and what to loathe. We’re even told how afraid to be for Christ’s sake. And all the while, people go on Big Brother to become famous. For what, you might ask, for being utterly worthless and self-obsessed? Indeed.

Once fame was borne of great achievements, feats of engineering and works of art, now you can be famous for getting your tits out on TV or being a heroin addict in a band.

We have become shallow and meaningless and our media casts its mirror over us as we labour in our mire. Those people who go to lengths unheard of and debase themselves publicly for the illusion of fame and fortune shouldn’t be surprised when the industry that offers up that shiny bauble goes to similar lengths to keep their idiotic dream alive.