On the Road...

Dear Diary,

I told the guys I'd be writing to you about them and they insisted I disguise their names which I have duly done.

J.ames has given me a wetsuit with holes in it that give views which only one's doctor and one's darling should be subjected to. The lads qualify as neither so I wear togs underneath. I am still worried the lads will start calling me SeaGimp.

J.ames insists on talking to me while I am sitting on the toilet, even though he knows how uncomfortable this makes me. We might have to have a family meeting about it. P.aul says he is Canadian but does not have any Canadian flags sewn on to his bag. This makes me suspicious, I will see if he likes Celine Dion.

J.ames has R. Kelly on his iPod. This threw the future of the road trip into doubt but I quietly checked with the local authorities and they said they were aware of the situation and to continue as normal. I soldier on but have taken to sleeping with an open penknife.

J.ames wets his wetsuit when its dry. We will be walking down to the sea to surf and he will get a slightly distracted look and then smile slightly and we know he has just got a headstart on getting his wetsuit wet. It's wrong I tells him but he only laughs slightly hysterically.

My eyebrows, no doubt bolstered by the sun, wind, fresh air and water, are growing at a prodigious rate. I am worried that soon my eyelids will become obsolete. The lads will call me Curtains.

I have got that strange man pride of wearing the same boxers for 5 days. I also went unshowered for 7.

There is a condom kept in the tent in case anyone "gets lucky". We fight over who will get to use it, bald men fighting over a comb.

****

I went to the hills on my own after the lads went back to work, lived out of J;ames car, walked the peaks, swam in streams every day and watched solo sunsets with a bottle of red wine and a book. I camped in a valley ringed by slag heap giants, the barren peaks huddled together in a line, their shoulders rubbing like a barbershop quartet. On one of my walks I got lost on one of these shoulders. I battled my way through irreversable shrub forests and barbed wired plantations and then ran out of water in the midday sun effectively passing out when i got back to the car. Inevitably one of the highlights of my time here.

****

In a way my sense of direction has just failed me again only on a grander scale and I have caught a flight back up to Malaysia instead of to South America. Eleven hours in the wrong direction perhaps but then every direction is homeward bound on this side of the world.




Thats right, yours truly. Rad.