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.

gravy boat 17.08.07

sometime in august the gnarly hunchback tolled the end of an era. the sopranos, after 7 glorious seasons of pillage, butchery, plucking, shlurping, and thats just to make a parma ham sarmie it all ended before my very eyes. it's sad. monday nights will never be the same, a void has opened up in my life, a GAP on my hooded sweatshirt.
As dan stood before the burning bush in his leather strops he belted at the top of his air filled lungs, 'what am i to do, oh deary me, what am i to do?. Moses led a nation, i just wanted Sopranos back on the tube.
it was a year ago that klotzy plotted, preempted the down fall of monday nights. but not only did he add the double cheese to that steers burger, he also supersized that coke and made a megalomaniac out of a packet of freedom fries. the whale trail had our names graffitied on the pebbles we weren't allowed to nick and there we would lay tread where our tread had never been laid.

we flew Kulula. it's kotch green colours gave me the heebeegeebees and i nearly blew. i clutched those faux leather seats hard and read the information card like it was my blueprint to survival. thank goodness Kulula pay reasonable salaries cos we were on terra firma and ready to make a blitzkrieg for a wee town called infanta, just a sesame-seed coated bread stick's length from the hiking jump off point-de hoop nature reserve.
our two hyundai atos rentals- jam jars on raisins made Subaru rally cars look like old lemons marching over a pedestrian crossing. these wee shoe boxes took us from pop-up book readers to real live whale watchers in 3 blazing hours. we made a dust storm outta the gravel roads and punished all in our wake.-sorry beatrix potter

one thing the Monopoly board doesn't sell is southern african coastline, well
it didnt 20 years ago when me and my carpet-burned knees used to roll dice. why rissik street is still primo, beats the living sheeite outta me.
the whale trail begins in de hoop nature reserve, rises up steeply through the potberg mountains, where Potley was christened, plateau's a bit like a top deck chocolate bar and then like pamela andersons low cut top, plunges rapidly down towards the icey blue ocean and so begins to skirt along the craggy coastline. the path the 5 of us-milies, potley, leeroy klotzy and a russian bear hunter trudged upon steeply ascended the mountain range which was blanketed like an all american quilt stitched in the glamourous yellows, magentas, and flaming oranges of the majestic protea. the vultures did donuts above our heads leaving skid marks on our psyches-we weren't here to die man, we were here to harpoon ...uh i mean see whales.
the treacherous, yet beautiful coastline hasn't been defiled or violated by tuscan warts and the gangreen on the landscape that is shoppping malls. it's an oasis of unscarred earth. this was nature at its most prestine, syrupy, nice like hazel nut praline.
we spent 5 days bashing through the fynest bos of them all-kinda western cape .i packed nice and good-tuna, beans, noodles made soft in 2 minutes, ah and you can bet your bottom dollar i didnt forget to dip an ouma-went 4 rounds with her, it was a TKO.
this was no fast food extravagance, we worked like pigs, grinded out a foot path for other travellers to scuff their boots on. short of munching and foraging on maggots and live fish- Bear Grilles you complete me-we were the ultimate survivors, cooking on flame grilling gas, eating without utensils, and washing our own dishes.we did it like they did it on the Discovery Channel. our story wasn't filmed- it' was in our heads man, in our heads.

we drained the camels back thrice over and i was pissing triple distilled, as crystal clear as swedish absolute and as pure as morning dew. i coulda just added lime for a cool,sweet sundowner.
this was a no tolerance journey, the Hyundai Atos rented vehicles were super frugal on desert juice, and their carbon emissions low as a four calorie chocolate bar. solar power was our energy. had i not crushed that poor dung beetle, i could have cashed in my carbon coupons and antarctica could have been saved.
trudging at the coast the smell of the sweet sea breeze caved our nostrils in salt- we couldnt wait to hit beach and let the sea lap our limbs. Milies and I took the plunge daily, it was cold, ask my 3rd nipple.
we saw whales-, loads of 'em, bobbing, weaving, spyhopping and breaching. this was no scene from a jimmy bond flik, it was real, the real juice company real. the huge clunks of blubber bobbed in the icey waters safe from the mouths of sushi munching japs and norwegian trawlers, at least until the breeding season was over.

on the march, we sucked super c's, silly sucking champions we were, till our tongues were yellow and our worries dissolved. it was the dried fruit and nuts that caught me with my pants down. it was a soil enriching experience.

its marvellous what Milo can do for you, when you got mates drooling at your feet for a taste of the good stuff. i didn't need other's Milo, cos i got high on my own supply.
we kipped in huts, bunk beds, showered under the stars. there were no sounds just the heave hoing of our lungs against our rib cages and no odours, just the sweet smell of fynbos-it was chronic.

the journey ended at the end, where the sand dunes meet the sea and a coke machine greets you. we made like the swiss and roll-ed into Bredasdorp where the lady without her front teeth suggested we munch our fish and tsips at the corner cafe.it was straight outta the sea...of oil. it was so lekker. my heart thanked me by pulpitating. and with a greasy hand it was time to bid my fellow hunter-gatherers adieu, and off to Cape town i journeyed with Leeroy, pilot of Atos 2.

i crashed landed at the Haar-bingers place in sea point and that night went to a restaurant in the city called Mesopotamia, it was kurdish. i can now understand why Sadam went all bride of chucky on these people. the bird served up to me was an insight into what appears in little glass jars filled with formaldahyde found in biology museums.
cape town is always spritely and after many years Fishhoek greeted me.
what a journey it was. gotta dream, gotta see,gotta hear,gotta munch, gotta breath gotta keep walking

goo goo catchoo, its been a while since i last scratched the surface. hope alls well west side, east side, state side, sea side

be cool , stay cool
dna(my name as seen by dyslexics)

quote by unknown tag artist about scratchings on the streets of new york, 'reading has never been this much fun.'

Nintendo thumb 18.06.07

jozi. trying to find super exciting things to write about in this here urbis is like trying to suck fillet medallions in a mushroom sauce through a straw. but every now and then a residue of steak breaks through the firewall and so spawns my taste for the eventful.

this is a story, a true story about a pair of boots, a pair of timberland boots.

i bought a pair of timberlands-sawft and leathery to the touch, cheese griller rugged underneath and with a shiny orange dot emblazoned with a tree. these skones would work harry potter magic through the snowy climes of finland, to the harshest of russian landscapes. i was now to test them under super extreme conditions in the dry rockyness of africa, rahh.

dring dring the blinger did ring.jingles was on the otherside inviting me to the drakensburg. friday rolled through and i cut the day in half.
we rode in one car- jingles, tijen and me, i felt good about it. 'al gore, let's talk carbon credits?'

the hilly hills of the drakies enveloped us with its open arms.
i unravelled my smurf pj's, shoved my chimpmunk cheeks full of marshmellows, warmed me gulliver at the open fire and viewed the Texas Chain Saw Massacre, all this in our thatched bungalow. i wanted to draw straws but they were too high.

the sun arose as an egg yolk and i saw Leatherface in my spilled milk.
it was hike time, and my boots new it.their rubbery soles grasped on every surface making a leach to a blood clot look like a pimpled, bespectacled harry potter sucking his forearm for kissing practice. these leather-upper skinned boots were amphibious cutting Thorpedo-style through lakes and streams up rocks and past savanna, it was dry but i couldn't smoke it. the crags,they were sharp, they were splintered-i was wearing run-flats. they knew my every move, they had intel inside.the icey wind turned my Aero chocolate cold and me into a milky skinned, red cheeked pommy. but thank goodness, my toes were safe from frosts bite.
the grunt of the man-eating baboons did little to scare my boots for they, like the goddess of speed, are nimble. those apes weren't gonna get my pastrami sarmy
hiking for 8 hours, dehydration is as common as 10 dollar monopoly money.a human in need of a kidney would do well to retrieve mine after i flushed those pie-fillers with 3 litres of H2O, some from the taps others from the sweet streams we waded through.
i could not have asked any more of my kickers.
on that rocky mountain i was introduced to a black cat peanut butter bar- peanut butter should only be found on toast. there at the top of the world with my heart clinging to my rib cage I found myself nibbling a peanut butter bar at 600 feet above sea level with the ever chirpy kev. Clearing my sticky palate, looking back at the footpath we'd carved, thinking 'gees i wish i was watching currie cup rugby now, oh wait, not really.'
but then we reached 900 feet, my lungs heaved under the strain of thin, fresh oxygen and fear kicked in. Me and my flashy kickers stared death, that's D.E.A.T.H, in the eye. and then death, or was it heights, ate me like a jelly donut, leaving the centre for last. it was time. the front of the mountain saw the back of me. i skidded down, my pants soiled.
'i came here to conquer you, but you drop kicked me like Naas Botha's boot to a pap rugby ball.'
this pair of boots trekked the second highest peak, but they didnt give a sh*t for being second best, the prom queen was still mine.

wow i left the drakkies feeling groovy and high on my own supply.
that experience and the landscape have clung onto me like a fat kids jam smeared fingers.

ey all my friends-androids an imagined
be cool, stay cool and keep reading cos watching telly'll turn your eyes square.

the dan, russian bear hunter master swordsman and the carbonated water in a fizzy drink.

tony soprano 20.05.07

Oh crikey, it's been a couple of months.
Like a ray barb through the heart I've been energized into exploring the landscape that is South Africa.

I witnessed over-grown 18 year olds, looking like chickens on steroids play in the local easter rugby festival at st johns college- a college, immaculately designed on a ridge dividing Jozi into north and south.

along with lil mikey razzo, i experienced the wrath of inebriated small town folk, loaded up with booze, skimmed stones, rode rough quad bikes till our jeans stood up on their own and ate hake in the trout fishing capital, all in the wee town of dullstroom.

I let my golf game slide a slippery slope and instead got sunburned like a gas- torched peppadew, suffered lex lutherian megalomania on crushing termite mounds, was confronted by large man-munching gorillas and soiled myself at the prospect of bumping into one of a gazillion indigenous snakes as featured on the snake chart of South Africa, kicked my kit off and plunged toes first into the string of pea-pod like pools and allowed the gushing Lipton's ice tea to wash the red dust off of my parched African lips. This was all in a day on a hike with the lyrical Jingles, the Chuckles chocolate ball that is kev and a peach, dijan, in the red earthed, rocky landscape of the Magaliesburg.

Li'l dan and I traversed every Spar and every petrol station that Roodepoort has to offer to navigate our way to the Roodepoort botanical gardens. There we saw the lesser spotted black eagle and her two eggs, and were denied the right to toss Frisbee.

And then just as I thought the bloodied graze on my knee that was my nature experiences was about to clot up, along came this past weekend.

Alice, invited me to lecturer Heinrich's, Thabaphshwa. It's a massive farm set betwixt the hills of potgietersrus, spotted with wandering cattle. the camp we crashed at, 'kanniedood' is a hut perched on the rocky face of an outcrop, isolated from humanity, electricity, pizza delivery vans and jehovahs witness knock-on-door conversions.
It was only two days so we needn't forage for fruits, nuts and berries. It was all carnal, grr, raah. The undulating landscape was our bedroom, the cool breeze was our ventilation, a bamboo screen was our lavatory protection, the roar of baboons our morning call and the sunrise our eggs, sunnyside up.

I barbequed chicken like no Nando's slave could. the big bird lay flat pack against the grided fish grill, and simmered over a low coal as I punished my windhoek draught and lemonade. I was keith ffloyd.
Gazing upwards, the African evenings are a wonder.
The night skies are a sensual, gorgeous Claire Forlani in a, glittering, sequened, turquoise evening gown.
Shooting stars blitz the heavens, is it a bird is it a plane or is it kulula.com? everyone is an astronomer when the stars come out-the 'milky lane' was splendid in the autumnal sky.

The final day left us without water, and monkeys on the rampage. We were in a situation in which 'we coulda died.' But my pig skinned water bottle was my swiss army knife.
I'm still getting to grips with nature. I do believe I'm a city boy, but I think beneath the chocolate coating, the sprinkled almonds and the nougat, lies a caramalised nature lover.

Anyhoo all my fans, Albert Einstein once said, 'life is like a bicycle- In order to keep balance, you need to keep moving.' Johnnie walker confirmed this.

Stay cool, be cool
The dan Ger, russian bear hunter, master swordsman and soon to be action figurine. safari khakis sold separately.