I am currently embarked on a  journey to Paris where I hope to work in the English language bookshop Shakespeare and Company. Although there are perfectly good flights that would get me there in no time at all, I have decided to travel through the UK visiting old friends who have since moved away. The following is an assortment of excerpts from my travel journal.

I’m sitting in Waterloo drinking a coffee and waiting for the train. As usual I am ridiculousely early… …next to me a man tries to explain some form of buisness model to a woman. It sounds like an accademic exercise. Thank fuck I don’t need to do anything that even resembles that now…

Later, in the Travelodge

I arrived here at 3.30 and spent a purgatorial five hous waiting for the rest of my family to arrive. They insisted I wore a suit, but due to extreme good fortune they’d forgotten my horrible black shoes, so its green Doc Martins for the wedding tommorow!

At the party I tucked in to some well deserved stout whilst Bollywood classics played over the PA. One part of the evening involved a dance where the women took it in turns to hold a dish of candles over their heads whilst dancing. Nobody seemed to know what this signified…

…a curry buffet… …is Uncle Andrew a spy? I tried catching him out again, but to no avail. I asked him if he was Q but he wouldn’t say…

Sun 28th October 2012

Yesterday began with a fryup at the Weatherspoons under the Travelodge. Sufficiently fed, Mum, Dad, Jonners and I walked over to the hotel where the reception was to be held to see Grandma settled in…

…the service was simple, friendly and down to earth… …whole thing went without a hitch. There were the usual photographs, but they took them at “The Balloon Shed”, an old Zeppelin gantry reflecting Farnborough’s aeronautical past.

Helen had organised everything right down to baking her own wedding cake. Champagne, wine, steak, there were even little presents on the table – chocolate trees with enough sugar to keep the energy levels up. Shelly, Uncle Andrew, and Shelly’s brother (the best man) all made excelent and highly individual speeches that hit the mood spot on…

…disco and Indian buffet, and my little cousin Joshua manouvered all over the place, a different drink in his hand every fifteen minutes. I had been warned not to lead him astray, so I bought him a whisky. Towards the end of the evening he was slurring and demonstrating a dance known as Gangnam Style…

This morning we moved out stuff to the main hotel for breakfast, and then to Aunty Deb and Uncle Andrew’s house for lunch, beer, wine, etc. I organised my “Caxton” currency card, and am now embarked upon a journey to South Bermondsy to see Nichelson.

Later, camped out in Ben’s living room.

Skyfall was an excelent film. Classic Bond styling, it has become witty again without falling into farce. Ben has lost none of his brains, if anything he’s sharpened up. Rapid analysis of the film in true Lit Crit style (maybe he missed a calling) and I suppose that shows you don’t loose it if you use it. I’ve lost it which is why I’m clumsily grasping at cliche and self-reference…

Mon 29th October 2012

Ben arrived and took me to a pub called “The Mayflower” where we had a beer called “Scurvey.” We chatted about miscelaneouse London, and bods of old…

…On arriving back at the house we were greeted by Jess, who was watching Top Gear. Ben did the veg and invited me to cook the steaks, rare with peppercorn sauce. Very nearly set the kitchen on fire…

31st Oct 2012

I’m sitting in Luke and Emily’s flatmate’s room (she’s away so I got a propper bed.) Yesterday… …shopping for dubbin to put on my boots. It was probably worth it, don’t reckon most people in the UK know what dubbin is, so the chances of tracking down someone in Paris who knows what it is, and knows the word for it in English also seems unlikely…

…got round to Luke and Emily’s. Webster was there too, and we ate and drank and talked an awful lot about “buffness” and the difference between “toned” and “ripped.” For full deffinitions, see Webster. Luke gave me a cartoon he’d drawn of an astronaught who abandons his mission and throws himself into the earth’s atmosphere, burning like a commet on the way down. On the back the astronaught is postured like the Indian god Ganesha, remover of obsticals and parton of letters…

…headed round to Webster’s. We walked through an extraordinary graveyard all grown over and about by trees and ivy, through a park, and along a cannal. At one stage we stopped for an excelent lunch at a local deli. Webster gave me a lift to Seven Sisters and I took the tube to Victoria. I’m now sitting on the megabus, readying myself for the forthcomming adventure.

More instalments at irregular intervals soon, later, or not at all.