Cage fighting fops

Well, I think I may have just arranged my most dangerous assignment yet. Or at least the first part of the assignment, I've not actually got an editor to say yes but I have secured a place in a cage fight.

Yes, a proper cage fight in a competition. Now I've had a bit of training when it comes to fighting, but not for a while and nothing at this level. I mean really nothing anywhere close to this, so this will be one of the silliest things I've ever taken part in.

So if I do say yes - which is very likely provided I can find somewhere to write about - then I'm going to have to do a training montage and turn a slightly foppish chap with a nice snug waistcoat into a lean, mean, fighting machine.

Sounds like the start of an adventure to me, I do hope the editor I've pitched it to says yes.

Huzzah for Port! The miracle cure that heals all

Yes, after a fairly extensive course of drinking port last night while alternating between shivering and sweating I have been cured entirely, well mostly. I still feel a bit strange but that's probably due to drinking so much port last night. I wonder if they should list that as a side effect on the bottle.

Well since I'm feeling okay it's definitely time to go to a garden party, perhaps two. Now where did I put my pith helmet?

I don't get GQ

A few weeks ago I brought a copy of GQ because of some work things - I'd been asked to think of some feature ideas for a section of a newspaper that wanted to be more GQ. Now I don't often read GQ - but know what GQ is - or at least what it tries to be.

It's a slightly more intelligent men’s magazine, aimed at chaps in their 20s or 30s who earn a pretty good living and care about clothes, watches and the other indulgences while also wanting to know a bit about important global issues.

I don't think anyone at GQ would be insulted by that summary, they might argue a few points here and there, perhaps my age range was out by a few years or perhaps I didn't stress enough how much these chaps earn but I think I'm pretty close to who it is targeted at. Or at least who it is perceived to be targeted at - it is aspirational so, like other magazines, people buy it to feel part of a gang they would like to join.

Aside from the reasonable living part of the summary (which I'm working on) I'm fairly close to that description. So logically GQ should be exactly my sort of magazine, opening it should be like meeting an old friend, or discovering the perfect bar tucked away in my favourite part of town but it's not.

I went through the magazine reading everything, and there was only one tiny feature that even mildly interested me and that was it. It was hard to describe exactly what was so wrong with it, perhaps the writers are just too settled to really understand what it's like being a single chap - men change massively when they have partners, even more so with children.

Or perhaps the writing was just too busy trying to be worthy and important to be interesting. It really just felt like it missed the point, like it was put together by people who had heard of young chaps about town, and maybe met one or two briefly but they had completely missed what it was like to be one.

It's a bit of a shame really, I'm a chap and because I'm not a Zoo or a Nuts reader there isn't a lot for me unless one gets a magazine for specialist subjects so I'm bereft of lightly engaging topical reading.

So when did GQ become so out of touch? Why hasn’t anyone there noticed?

Of course this whole post can be discounted because I'm still suffering from man flu (it's been days now so I suspect it's really the plague) and I've been drinking port for medicinal reasons.

Breakfast wines

I had wine for breakfast today, not because I'm some decadent dandy* who bathes in Champagne and uses silk for loo paper but because I'm ill and I'd completed some tricky work even though I was practically deaths door due to man-flu and the only food I had in the house was a couple of slices of bread, some slightly 'troubled' cheese and half a bottle of terribly good Shiraz.

This morning I had to finish off a feature which I should have completed a while ago, and suddenly it was asked for so I woke up at 7am and wrote it, then I finished off another piece of work all before 9am.

To mark this Herculean effort I made myself some English Rarebit, which according to a telly program I watched last night is cheese on toast where you give the toast a good sploshing of red wine before you put the cheese on. I tried this and it was marvellous, so good I did a little dance.

Sadly after I ate it I realised it was the last bit of food I had in the house so I'm going to have to shuffle down to the shops while unwell. Blast, but if I do make it out I'm morally allowed to buy all sorts of treat foods because I'm not long for this world and I probably should enjoy it while I can.

It's entirely logical if you think about it.

*Although most of the time that is more than enough of a reason.

Strangely familiar

The final restaurant visit was extremely jolly. Through luck more than careful planning I'd managed to save the best place for last. Hurrah. It wasn't all easy though, we managed to order the largest starter the world has ever seen and it would have been more then enough for us. Actually, Piqued (who joined me) has already covered this so just read his account, it was a jolly affair.

The waitress told me I looked familiar, I've had four people do that to me in the last three days. It's very strange. Perhaps my hair has now got long enough that I look faintly reminiscent of David St Hubbins from Spinal Tap or perhaps there was an episode of Crime Watch I missed but recently strangers think I'm familiar and it troubles me.

I'm not sure what one is supposed to say in response to 'you look familiar'. One of the International Party Girls said I looked familiar but after an hour of rum fuelled questioning she was no closer to the reason why. Maybe I should say to these people 'oh yes, you owe me five pounds' and thus I could use this strange effect to pay off various credit card bills and things.

Gout and Chips

I've been testing restaurants for days now. The feature I'm working on is focused on a type of food that is extremely fatty and meat focused. I think I ate so many ribs yesterday it gave me nightmares. No really, I had horrible dreams full of meaty products that glistened with menace.

It reminds me faintly of that scene in Matilda where the kid is forced to eat all the chocolate cake as punishment but manages it and wins. Except I'm not winning, instead I'm feeling rather unwell from eating so much BBQ sauce and chips. Still tonight is the last day of it, by sun-down I will have eaten at the last place I need to and I can enter a whole new world of eating habits where a chap can have a light salad for a meal, or possibly something interesting on wholemeal toast.

Still, even with the rather strange diet it is a rather fun job, I wonder how one gets this as a regular gig.

Blast

I had bad news on Friday, which is probably why I went to so many parties. Option two of the life changing news finally came back today with a negative. I'm mildly despondent to say the least. Blast, blast and thrice blast.

The view from the people was they liked me but my idea was a bit to strange for them, or at least too strange for them to be able to sell it to other people in the company. Publishing is a funny ol' game. Even if you do have a bit of a following (a faintly ridiculous amount of people read this blog now), a reasonable profile in the papers and fairly comprehensive battle plan of how you would promote a book it just doesn't seem to be enough.

Never mind, I shall allow myself an hour of feeling a little bit glum, while drinking a brandy and then I shall redouble my efforts.

I've to got a restaurant to review tonight, and tomorrow I've got a couple more and then for reasons I don't really understand I'm going to the Danish Embassy. That's bound to cause an adventure.

Weekend adventures, part 2

Having stiffened up my resolve and changed into a fresh set of party togs I skipped up to Earls Court for the rest of the weekend. The theme of the weekend seems to be relative strangers so I'd be going to a birthday party of someone I'd never met with a good friend.

The party was in Oxfordshire so I was bundled into a car (again mostly filled with people I didn't know) and we set off. The drive was good fun - we listened to music and managed to completely avoid getting lost even though the directions were vague (the arrow on the map pointed to nothing).

It was a very well equipped bash, there was a huge tent for everyone to dance inside filled with a plethora of booze, a chequered dance floor and the loudest sound system I've ever encountered outside of a festival. There was a hog roast but I wasn't really in any sort of state to eat that much.

Everyone was in fancy dress, superheros were a fairly popular look but thankfully there was only one of each hero - I was the only super hero without foam in his costume to make him seem more manly. Modern men eh?

The most popular costume, especially for couples was Top Gun, which I've never really considered before but it's a good one. Interestingly the couples were a few variations on Top Gun theme, so it wasn't just the main characters appearing.

I had an excellent time as Spiderman, although I did get caught in the heavy rain at about 2am having a duel with party poppers and got completely soaked. I changed into 'normal' clothes rather than spend the rest of the evening squelching about damply.

Everyone else at the party had done the same thing already so I just got stuck into the serious business of dancing with someone dressed as the lady from The Birds and drinking far too many cocktails.

Some time rather early, I think at about 4am I found myself in a tent and fell asleep to the soft lullaby of pounding dance music. I can sleep almost anywhere, and was exhausted anyway so it didn't bother me but I can imagine that people who aren't so trained in napping might have issues.

I woke up again at about 11am to find the party still going strong (the music had of course not stopped) and got to witness some early morning croquet while people sipped bitter and listened to grinding hardcore music. The music made the whole scene seem a bit wrong really.

After a few cups of tea it was time to set off but the chap who had driven us up managed to 'clong' his car on a rock and it was bit broken and leaking oil everywhere. So we had to hang around while we waited for the rescue services to appear and give us a lift home, by this point everyone was so tired that conversation was a struggle and when I finally made it home I was exhausted and went straight to bed.

It was quite an adventure and I really enjoyed it but it was definitely time for an early night.

Weekend adventures, part 1

I don't often have hardcore weekends, not that I'm slipping into an insipid world of wondering around Ikea in a daze and thinking about blinds but that normally I try to have at least one day of rest for every day of charging around doing something strange. So if Saturday is spent swinging from trees or racing motorbikes than Sunday will be spent reading the papers and listening to radio 4.

I don't know why I keep to such a strict system, I work strange hours in the week so occasionally have hours, or days off so weekends mean less. It's a couple of days when everyone is about to play but it's harder to do actual work.

This Friday started off in a fairly tame way. I spent the afternoon doing arts and crafts for work. After making some models and an excellent collage while drinking sherry I ambled over to Sloane Square to meet a chum for a post-work drink. This turned into quite a few after work drinks as we went to a hidden pub off a side-street I had been introduced to by a girl when I first moved up to London. After the pints we went to a Chinese Restaurant in South Kensington and then to a house party.

My chum sort of knew two girls who were, well International Party girls. I've encountered this breed before, they dance from city to city going out and meeting people as a career. They might have 'promoter' as an official job title but really their job is to have fun and search for future husbands. These two girls were from Northern Ireland, and having realised that they had missed their favourite flight to LA had decided to go out in London. They rented a vast flat in Kensington to use as a base of operations and even hired two chunky chaps to stride around topless near them. These two chaps were like Derek Zoolander, but with an angry hint of too many drugs and steroids just bubbling away under the surface.

So we met up with these sort of friends, even acquaintance would be pushing it, at their flat for pre-club drinks. We tried to play some moderately complicated drinking game because one of the hostesses insisted on it but a couple of missing cards made it almost impossible and so it was abandoned in exchange for polite conversation while sipping rum. One of the hostesses had decided I looked familiar and so spent about an hour trying to work out where she had seen me before. I couldn't place her and I normally have a pretty good memory for faces.

This scintillating conversation ended when they had to dance off to get to the club early, we were left in the flat with another girl who had appeared so we could escort her to the club when she was ready. I was slightly taken aback by being left, as strangers in a flat after only having met this girls about an hour ago. We didn't do anything, but we could have.

Anyway we ambled into the club, got whisked in to the VIP area and fed bottles of Vodka. This was all well and good until about midnight where the place filled up massively and got a bit sinister. Chaps were doing drug deals right in the middle of the club, or if they weren't dealing they were buying very expensive tic-tacs.

We decided this wasn't really our scene and the vodka had run out so we went to a flat for a light party (as in short) before we would rejoin the main group to go to the larger house party in Kensington. We ended up drinking grog at 3am with some girls who didn't drink and that we hadn't met before. It was all a bit strange. My memory gets a bit hazy at this point but at about 10ish I woke up on a sofa while a chap in a top hat arranged a cab to take him to the train station.

I managed to get up and then made my way home feeling a little bit woolly. There wasn't much time for rest, I had a quick wash, a power nap and I was off to the second part of the weekend...

To be continued

What time is it?

Why it's 2.30am so of course it's grog o'clock.

Oh dear.

Grog o'clock is a dangerous time of day, especially when at a house party with a load of strangers.

A little bit more magic

I seem to have covered half the office in silver spray and the fumes are, interesting, but the little wooden chaps are starting to look a bit more magic.

The poses are so I can get them completely covered in silver.

Arts and craft afternoon

Today I shall be making models of famous magic chaps so I can photograph a montage for a book.

This is one of the most silly things I've done for quite a while.

Washday at chez Louche

I have quite a few different washes I have to do. I can remember being strangely proud when I accumulated enough pink items of clothing to justify doing a pink wash, and tweed day is very special.

Today a new wash was born, I've been invited to a fancy dress party this weekend and the theme is American Films. I think you will be able to guess who I'm going as from the picture I just hope there isn't any abseiling involved.

Going to a party in this costume will be a bit of an experience, it doesn't leave a lot to the imagination to say the least. Still I'm sure Spiderman has faced worse threats.

Oh it's a sailors life for me!

I've always wanted to go Tall Ship racing, I think because I was born about 200 years too late to really get stuck into a bit of firing cannons at French people and jumping about with swords. It's almost entirely wasted on the modern world that I'm decidedly dangerous with a sabre, can ride horses like I was born in the saddle and can wear a floppy hat with panache.

So it was great delight that I'm managed to persuade an editor to let me go Tall Ship racing for a feature. While the sailing would be limited to going from point A to point B with very little chance of boarding actions or capturing Spanish gallons it will definitely let me run up and down the rigging and possibly keep an eye out for any Dutch pirates that might be in the area.

Now I just have to organise the blasted thing, which for reasons that aren't really worth going into will require a full background check before they will let me get on the ship.

I bet a chap didn't have to put up with this when Nelson was in charge.

The end?

I had a stand-up gig last night, probably my last one. I say this because I already have one high-risk, low reward career that doesn't pay as well as I'd like so I don't need another one.

The gig was excellent - probably my best - so it's good to stop on a high-note. Loads of friends turned up so it was cosy little gig and my new material went down well, especially the joke about shoes.

I was pretty nervous before I went on, it was a long wait and I didn't want to mess up in front of friends. The organisers had put me on last which technically makes me a headline act but it's more that 95% of the audience were my friends and the organisers didn't want them to leave after seeing me and leave an empty room for the other chaps.

It really was impressive how many people appeared, including some chums I've not seen for years. Bless. Some of the women there were probably in a pub for the first time in their lives, they are rather more the cocktail set.

In other news, I've had some news, and it's not good. Not terrible but not great either. Sort of neutral to good. Ho-hum. Well I suppose if the promise of a full time job hadn't been waved about I'd be doing a little dance now because of the commissions, but it seems the goal-posts have been moved again.

Surfing, Aching and inappropriate touching

Where to begin? Well I ache every where. Surfing requires muscles I didn't know I had. It's slightly my own fault as yesterday I stayed in the water for hours waiting for 'just one more wave' even when everyone else had gone in. This seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I'm starting to regret it. Ouch.

The surfing was fun and the girls were very pleasant, we didn't actually interact with them that much - the organisers had got us some private lessons with an instructor so we got to progress very quickly but sadly didn't get as much splashing around and giggling. Ho-Hum.

I managed to stand up and ride some (admittedly very tame) waves and this was going brilliantly until somehow I ripped the nail off my big toe. It must have been on a passing shark or something. I had to stop then, to try and bandage it back on and then instructor recommended I stay out of the water for a bit so we limped into town to get some medical supplies, which ended up as some drinks, then a few more.

Post drinks we hobbled back while doing a bit of light shopping and I hit the steam rooms which amazingly really helped the toe. In the evening we had a big meal with all the girls , and then went to an awful bar. It was terrible - packed with stag parties who were farting away almost constantly which made you long for the days of smoking and then a terrible live band appeared. It was enough to drive a chap to drink, which I did and it was around the time that we started drinking bright red drinks that the dancing contest started. We were drinking quite a lot because we had be told that surfing as a good hangover cure and we wanted to test this theory.

This went on until about 2am when the prospect of an early morning surf seemed a bit daunting so we got a cab back. I had a couple of moments during the night where I had to go and sit by the loo, just in case but I was fine and we woke up at 7am to go and surf. The surfing did clear our heads brilliantly and I ended up staying out for hours after the photographer had gone. The photographer was awful. Every time I did something good - like share a wave with a chum while striking dramatic poses the photographer would be playing with a passing dog or getting something out of his shoe.

After I finished surfing - I was so exhausted I had trouble walking we had a light lunch and I went for a special surf massage. This was excellent although the lady doing it seemed to touch my bum an awful lot so afterwards I didn't know if I should call the police or buy her flowers.

Sadly at this point out surfing adventure was over and we bundled back into the bus, all skin-kissed with salty hair and went back to London. It was a great experience and I'm going to be surfing again, perhaps in a few weeks but I don't think I'll be buying any gear just yet, it was good, but not as good as motorcycles.

The return

I have returned to London so normal service will resume once I've slept and the floor has stopped wobbling around - I spent so much time in the sea the ground feels a bit weird and as if it's moving.

I'm pretty sure the tectonic activity in London is pretty minimal so I think it's my head that is being a bit wrong.

Oh dear

Yesterday we were told that surfing was an amazing cure for hangovers. This was a very dangerous thing to say to me as I instantly decided to brew a mighty hangover to test this in the name of science.

I can't believe how much I drank, I really can't. I put away a whole range of drinks I though had been made extinct years ago, Reef anyone? It didn't stop with that either. Cocktails also followed, although they were rather poor. At about midnight this reached critical mass and thanks to some bright red energy drink (with booze in of course) I started dancing, with my very unwell toe.

It wasn't just any dancing it was a dance off with the girls. I don't think they've seen dancing like that in Cornwall, and I'm sure they don't want to see it again, but at least I got to the finals. I'll blame my toe for not winning, but I think it was the robot dancing that let me down.

My. Head. Is. Not. Well.

Clubbing

I've been clubbing with a spazzy toe. It's late and only four people from the surf course remain.

Oh my word, I think I've had rather too much gin.

Oh no Toe!

Welll surfing went well, up to a point. I was happily standing up after about 30 minutes and I was having a whale of a time humming the beachboys and riding waves.

That was until I smashed up my toe. No more surfing for me today, and tomorrow I'm just going to have to tape it up in a boot and just grin past the pain when the photographer appears.

Which means tonight I'm on the prowl for a sexy nurse or some sort of spirit healer in a short skirt.