Free Hugs For Cute Guys

I went to the Notting Hill Carnival yesterday.
I was in the area anyway so thought to myself Let's party!
There was a girl holding out a sign saying Free hugs for cute guys.
I walked past her. She didn't clock me.
Then I walked past the other way just to be sure. She still didn't clock me.
After circling her for 20 minutes I went home.
Shit carnival.

Today We Have Naming Of Parts

I was at a petrol station somewhere on the motorway back to Calais.
I was filling up on coffee having filled up the bike on petrol. It rested outside in the sun, its engine making the odd clicking sound as it cooled down. It was bored, it had dined finely on Alpine passes and now could only graze on dull autoroutes.
A woman walked by in flip-flops. There was something on the side of one foot. I looked more closely. It was a tattoo. It was a tattoo of the word Danielle.
I frowned. She had the name Danielle tattooed on the side of her foot. Her name? Her child's name? Her partner's name? Her foot's name? Did she have another name for her other foot?
Cursing the ghastliness of the moronic inferno that governs much of modern life, I hopped on the bike, fired it up, and took off down the motorway to be alone again with my thoughts.
One of them was maybe having a Suzuki Sebastian tattoo across my belly button.

Long Way Up

I'm focused.
I'm watching for the white line in the middle of the road. It snakes left, then right, disappears round a sharp bend, then stretches out straight to a vanishing point.
The bike and I are one. I'm part of it, part of the metal. We flip one way then the other, locked on the solid white line. My mind is blank. This is all there is. Life is far away. Here is just a thin strip of road, giant mountains either side.
I click down a gear, twist the throttle, the engine whines, and I scream as I accelerate forward, towards the vanishing point...
If my mother asks, I don't own a bike and this didn't happen.

I Took A Grasshopper To Work

I noticed him as I was riding around Marble Arch, he was hiding on the bike’s right mirror. I hadn’t seen him at first although he was bright green. He must have come from the public garden near where I park. Probably, like most youths, he was bored and just wanted some fun on a motorbike.
As we zoomed down Park Lane, I started talking to him. I called him Grasshopper; I became the Zen master old guy from Kung Fu. I said stuff like, “This is how one can travel without moving.”
Near Buckingham Palace, a Porsche cut me up. “Hang on,” I said twisting the throttle, tearing forward and slicing back past it. “Power is nothing without control, Grasshopper.”
We went round Trafalgar Square and along the Embankment. Grasshopper watched the Thames as I taught him about life. “There is no point in going fast in the wrong direction, Grasshopper.”
We rode into the City and parked up near Tower Bridge. “Keep well,” I said and left him there. I went to the office, pushed the rock up the mountain and forgot about him.
He was waiting for me when I came back. He was on the speedo now. “Grasshopper, at least tell me you visited the Gherkin?” He didn’t have a bowler hat or pinstripe so maybe he felt he would stick out. We rode home, seeing off all-comers.
Once parked, I coaxed him onto my glove and flicked him off into the bushes. “I have taught you everything I know, Grasshopper. Your future is now your own.”
I leave for France tomorrow on the bike, he can come with me but I’m not doing any translating.

Magnificent Desolation

Get up stand up...
So I'm sitting in a coffeeshop in Amsterdam but I'm not having a coffee.
I have the first floor to myself and I'm sitting on some cushion thing at an open window watching people walk by. There's a fish tank in the corner and a TV showing music videos but with the sound off. Inevitably, the soundtrack to all this is Bob Marley. It's all a bit cliche but what isn't these days.
It takes a few drags before it starts to hit but it hits.
One love...
I look at the fish. One has a huge poop dragging behind it. It's just swimming around with this unending poop coming out of whatever a fish arse is called. I find it repellent and magnetic at the same time and wonder if I could do it in the office.
I'm gonna be iron like a lion in zion...
Some young French hippies walk in and sit in the corner opposite me. I can tell they're French because they are speaking it. I can tell they are hippies because they look it. I don't want to sound presumptuous but unless Ralph Lauren has designed a range of hippy clothes for yuppies then I'm pretty sure that these guys are hippies. I discreetly check for a polo logo just to make sure.
No woman no cry...
The fish are beautiful. The music video is great. Marley is the best ever.
I look out of the window and it all coalesces, it all makes sense... The journey, the wrong turns, the right ones, they have all led me here to this point, this time and this place... and suddenly I think... where is this place again?

Can't See The Bush For The Forest

I'm talking to a guy at work. We're in the kitchen, making ourselves some tea.
He tells me a story.
He tells me how he went to watch a football match on TV in a strip club. Girls were taking their clothes off and twirling upside down on poles and he was watching Nottingham Forest play on the TV. He says that not many places show Forest games but that place does. So he was watching the game and Forest scored and, wait for it, he punched the air and yelled 'Fuck yeah!' just as a girl was bending over and spreading her beef curtains. He laughs and then asks if I want sugar in my tea.
I blink, then I laugh too. I laugh as a sign of bonding, a male thing, fuck yeah. Inside, I'm thinking that we must be wired differently, that although we share a same planet we live in a different universe.
I don't know what to say so I say, 'Yes, one please.'
Then I think about telling him that time I was at a Monet exhibition and saw a girl with her skirt caught in her knickers.

Notes From Underground

God, that's a short skirt.
It doesn't leave much to the imagination at all. (Not that I need imagination, I know what goes on up there... Not up there specifically, no, but in general... I mean I 've been there, you know... A while back, granted, but I've been there... In general, I mean... But not widely in general... Not general like that... Uh... I digress...)
It's a very short skirt. She's standing in front of me on the Tube. I'm reading my book but I'm not really reading my book. I have Superman x-ray eyes and I'm looking at her legs. They're great legs, toned and tanned. I'm not alone. Girls are looking at her legs too, their looks are approving, disapproving, jealous... Guys are looking at her legs and just thinking Aroooooba.
I mean, look at that skirt, it's tiny. If it was any shorter it would be a necklace.
She catches my stare. Quick, back to the book, focus. It's The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, it's about how we can't plan for the unexpected because, well, it's, uh, unexpected. It's 300 pages about that. It's not really what I was expecting. Anyway, this particular chapter is all about... She's getting off. God, that's a short skirt.

I Think Therefore I Yam What I Yam

I'm looking at the painting.
I stand there a while and try and get it. I'm not sure I do.
Other people walk by. I don't know if they get it either but they don't seem to be trying very hard. They don't dawdle, they pass by as if on an escalator.
I'm trying. I focus on it. It's of Popeye. He's against a collage background with a big red inflatable lobster painted hanging above his head. It's by Jeff Koons, it's a small exhibition of his work. I guess it's about the usual stuff: consumerism and childhood and memories and... uh... big red inflatable lobsters.
Wait, maybe it's trying to say that... er.... um... consumerism is inflatably childish? No, I don't get it.
'Maybe art is the spinach,' Koons allegedly said.
Well, it's made me feel like some spinach and god knows that makes me art for a while afterwards... 

Arf arf.