granola bars 16.12.07

Do you eat a 1 kg of cadburys chocolate at once?no you eat it in small chunks. This `like a greyhound to a furry rabbit so kick started my december 'summer' vacation.

cornwall beckoned, it was number 8.0 on the list of places my blue-inherited eyeballs demanded attention. , and having clicked our heels 3 times, the great south western who flung dung us into st ives aka stevies. Cornwall was to be a journey of discovery,. It was to reveal the flesh of the peeled banana.

St ives is the size of your baby toe, hemmed on 3 sides by ocean. It's a surfers paradise they say. the only barrels I saw were filled with beer.
We crash landed in a plumbers crevice of a b&b, and the grunts and groans of Frankenstein next door left us screaming looney tunes. Stevies is an art colony painted in rich yellowed roofs, tiny slim roads, bleached houses, knobbly cobbles and golden pastries. Burrowed mid hill sits the Barbara Hepworth house-creaky wooden floors, shards of stone and blunt sculptors tools and a treasure cove of rich sculpture revealing a masterful woman.
We crisscroseed the wall, cornwall like the tartan on a hairyscotsman's kilt.
St Austell, even if it read its own biography wouldn't have known itself once the now famous Eden Project, the fragmented eye ball of a common fly, grew out of a once abandoned china clay mine. The bulbous cellular organism siddles hard up against the edge of the clay pit like the greenest of soon-to-erupt pimples. The skeletal structure vacuum packed in hexagonal ETFE air-filled cushions envelops two alien environments-a tropical equatorial sweat-in-your-shirt air bubble and another bulb which left us feeling like being crusty croutons in a cheese fondu. The project finally came to fruition after the seed was sown in the hummous of my brain. I could feel it touch it, photograph it.this magazine article didnt need recycling.
Penzance, Cornwall, was a dream, plays were scripted on it. But yes it was all a dream. Like congealed fat to a bloodied artery so was Penzance.

Me and my sweet tooth made headway for Lands End. single roads hemmed on either side, jagged edges and a plunge to your death. We were there and it was deserted. we strolled and rubbed rocks, braved the ripping winds and tea-ed at 3, bus 17 was the last bus home and we were on it, but we disembarked at Mousehole-a nostril hair of a town, but an enchanting hair indeed. She is no larger than 3 paces of my size 8 Caterpillars. Her Christmas lights pranced at sea, on shore and on hillock.

The battered fish and chips clogged my arteries but it was abuse I smiled upon.

St just had been circled with a fat koki pen, initially we weren't sure why. St just was as worn in as a pair of leather underpants, and as gray and miserable looking as a decaying corpse but she harboured a jewel, no not the bowl of oats I scoffed but landscapes rolling, mended walls, beaten foot paths, an icey breeze and old england.
My eyes journeyed, indulged themselves in all sorts and reflected an emerald landscape. Cornwall she was, Cornish but not corny.

And before an imprint of my butt cheeks on the train to London could rise to greet others, I was on a jet plane to Scandinavia.
Norway was as sweet as a freshly squeezed bee .the flight there saw me juggled around like a wee marble in a shoe box. And then one of those 'crazy-sweet-gsus-did-that-just-happen-to-me-scenarios kicked in. 'queue doodoodoo music, queue lightning and cracking thunder, queue airhostess with vodka dry martinis. This was an episode of the twilight zone and although I didn't audition, I found myself starring in a lead role-i sat aisle seat, and she window .She asked me where i was from, i mumbled Jozi, she belted Shlaap stad. She was travelling down south, shawowee so was i. next thing I'm riding back seat in a RAV 4 with 2 girls I'd just met. 2.5 hours later having carved the highways , bridges, frozen fjords and lakes of southern norway, we arrived at Statoil Petrol station. Nic, who I hadn't seen after 10 years of books id read, foot steps id taken and heaps of hair id snipped, was waiting for me. 'dude meet Tessa and Antonia'. he knew her. i was in the twilight zone, 'maestro play the closing credits.'that dvd, yea that dvd is in my classics collection.

Tvedestrand, Norway, the size of an hobbits out stretched arms, hugs the top end of a Norwegian fjord. Timber houses, a cobbled road, one pub and the most glorious holywood setting. The surrounding burch forests and idle glassy lakes are the scene for an oscar winning landscape in the category of most pristine landscape.
I aint no foody but when it comes to fish, im a grizzly to a salmon run. I endulged in the freshest of Norwegian salmon, the fleshy pink in all its form and glory on Christmas eve, on Christmas morn, the nightmare after Christmas, and the morning of our bus ride to Oslo 2days after Christmas.

I lived dangerously, it was the year of living dangerously and so i walked on ice, licked a frozen waterfall and emptied a boat stuck in ice. I met crazy norwegians, drank heaps of beer, and warmed me feet in the bathrooms.

Oslo, was a whirlwind and it rained tears. Edvard munch gallery saw me screaming at the ice Scream. Days are short and nights are long. Punk rock seemed outta place but beer has become furniture. The streets at night are for everybody, the canal walks and parks too.i found a nation that eats fish for breakfast, recycles and has a two button toilet flush system and i dug it.
And so I bid farewell to Nick and Hilda and jetted back to londinium, hello darkness my old friend..

ah so new years hatched itself like a premature birth. i landed up at this house party, kinda crashed it like ayrton senna into a wall at a 100 miles an hour. i pulled in with 4 beers, but punished 5. the year began well. and those massive pretzels were a dream munch.
Time ticked by and I bid my sweet tooth farewell. She was hurt, yog-hurt.

I finally left Europe, the Europe I so love, and having left my brain on a newly painted bench in Warwick street, Soho I flew into the middle east with sweaty palms. It was hot, i licked them dry.
Dubai is a transients non-destination, but i was destined to visit pepe p, a kid i studied with. An airbed kept me afloat in pepe p and laurens apartment. it was super high, this was no short book, it was 36 stories. i was scared to look over the balcony. my ears shut shop, but i swallowed.

Dubai defies the brains natural senses for a city. she is barry peppered with heaps of tall buildings. each one a toothpick trying to vie for a rack of teeth to please. pedestrianisation is detroyed and public space is bubble wrapped in air conditioned shopping malls. She is sprawling and densifying, she's growing upwards, longways, sideways, and often i could only say, 'no ways'. Who the hell plants a tree in the middle of the sea?, i palmed it off and said 'that aint eco-friendly'.
Pepe, a syrian and i drowned my disbelief in Tiki puka puka juice. By the end i couldnt see, that day old pizza was my saviour.

Dubai is totally westernised, her only culture is AB.the american injection has pulsed through the veins of the middle east. She is slowly stirring herself into the arabic batter. She didnt come raging into arabia with m16's, bunker bombs, hum vees and two miunute noodles. she merely strolled in with a mcdonalds double whopper in one hand, a super subway sarmy in the other and planted her flag. see , one 2 3, its that easy.

anyhoo
i came back stronger than a fired up fat man. This journey differed in many ways from my other escapades. It had mega highs, and low GIs. I was proud of the way my jeans worked hard and by the end of this uber journey they could stand up on their own.