Hooray - I worked out how to post photos on this thing!

So I'll start with a quick story: electro pioneer Brian Eno was involved in a car accident one time back in the 1970s. One night, confined to a hospital bed with his injuries, he was passing the time listening to a tape of classical music. Outside, rain was drumming loudly on the windows, and so the legend goes, the sound of this mingling with the music gave him the idea to invent ambient music.

'Where is this going?' you ask. Well sometimes in life you can make your setbacks work to your advantage. "Every cloud..." and all that. I'm ill with a bit of flu, and after spending a few minutes playing around with this website, I've worked out how to upload photos!

There are clear parallels between mine and Brian Eno's life, but only I seem to spot them. Yes, I may not have achieved anything impressive like invent ambient music, but I'm not completely boring. I can play the theme to Red Dwarf on guitar. And last year I went to a barbeque!

Now I'm gonna make like Rod Stewart and "get out the polaroids" - and show you some photos I've taken in the last 3 months:

This is where I live in Meltham...

I get less nightmares since I left my old house...

Castle Hill (near Huddersfield) at sunset - I'm quite proud of this one:

This is an arty photo of some stairs I took at Huddersfield uni (Harold Wilson building).

This is my friend Anthony.

This is my mum feeding the neighbour's tortoise.

This is my dad proudly showing off some of his vegetables:

My mum feeding a horse:

A bird that got trapped in the bird-feeder (we cut it free when we found some wire clippers):

And last but not least, a cat in a window:


Well that was completely interesting wasn't it? Quite a lot of animal antics there. I have other photos, but they're either too wierd to show you or not very tasteful. (I omitted all the happy-slappings after consulting with my lawyers.) I should hopefully have a few memorable photos to post of my travels in the weeks and months to come!

God bless Google and all of its infinite featurey-ness. What next? The ability to embed toast in blog entries? That would make breakfast a doddle, and help to feed the starving millions of Africa. Sir Bob of Geldoffs ought to take note.

Season's greetings from an ill bastard.

Yo ho ho, merrrry crimbo-mass everybody!

So here it is - my final Christmas at home before going away. An endless succession of grey wintery days has ushered in their glamourous, decorated, but ultimately empty-headed cousin: December 25th.

What a bloody disappointment! There is no snow. Instead we have the usual festive accompaniment of drizzle. After bravely holding out for most of the autumn, my immune system finally "did a Channel Islands" and surrendered its defences to man-flu a few days ago. I spent all of yesterday cocooned in blankets on the couch being fed cups of tea by the Duchess and listening to 60s music stations on digital radio. What bliss.

Right now I'm drinking coffee with whisky in it and trying to finish off a song I've been writing. My parched vocal chords have reduced my singing voice to a heron-like honking sound, which will no doubt make for interesting listening!

But every cloud has a silver lining, even the ones carrying festive drizzle. My mum's cooking a splendiferous dinner later. I'll hide upstairs ignoring all the crap TV, then I've got the Mighty Boosh Live and Borat DVDs to look forward to tonight. As well as some rather excellent CDs (Brian Wilson's Smile and a Woody Guthrie album), a music voucher from my cousin Al, a Match of the Day quiz game and the rest of the Jack Daniels bottle that thus far has been subsidising my coffee enjoyment! It's not all doom and gloom.

Merry Christmas to you dear reader, wherever you may lay your hat and declare your home. I hope there are loads of little sausages on your Christmas dinner (or chipolata-shaped buboes of quorn if you is a vegetarianist) and that you are promptly set upon by a sexually attractive person of the opposite gender holding mistletoe! Well here's hoping eh.

The boy who cried wolf (and other tales)

Greetings, welcome to another pre-departure edition of my travel blog. Help yourself to refreshments - there are tea, hobnobs, malaria tablets and Hepatitis A vaccination syringes in the corner. Drape yourself in a mosquito net, zip up all the flaps (ooh pardon) and we'll begin.

I've been massively busy the last few weeks sorting out various things. Things. Things to do with travelling. I acknowledge right now that if you know me at all you may well be jealous as absolute f**k about what I'm doing next year. I'm sorry, I'd love to take you with me but there's not enough room in my rucksack to fit you in on top of my camping towel and various boomerangs and snares (if anyone from HM Customs sees this that's a joke). You're there with your Barratt home, your curlers and your Robson & Jerome DVDs, and here I am, king of all Leeds, dancing a merry jig in the STA Travel office.

Yes I am very lucky to get the chance to do this, and I also realise I am either foolish or brave to attempt to do so much in one trip - I'm visiting about 14 or 15 countries at the last count, I forget how many exactly. Be assured it ain't easy; it takes about as much planning and organisation as your average invasion of the Nazi-occupied European continent (D-Day would be a good example). Which is about 10,000 times more planning than the average invasion of Iraq. (Oooh, controversial!)

I have never been very good either planning or organisation. Why did destiny pick me? Have I the makings of a successful globe-trotter? Or will I run aground against the rocks of my own naivety then get gunned down by the massed ranks of Hitler's armies? As Roy Keane memorably said to Mick McCarthy just before he told him to stick the World Cup up his bollix, 'fail to prepare; prepare to fail'.

Well it's Saturday night and here in Meltham it's dark and f**king chilly outside. There is a sense of subzero festive promise in the air. Not sure what it promises exactly; other than in about ten days it will be Christmas. From the lounge comes the gentle clack of balls as my parents watch snooker on telly. Outside two or three horses graze sullenly in the frozen field, wondering if this 'being a horse' lark really is all it's cracked up to be.

Over in Blackpool the Christmas Tree Ball is playing out in all its splendour. Certain very good friends of mine will be attending in their Sunday best. Local rock colossii the Sound of Superstring and Lotus Circle will soundtrack the evening, entertaining the massed dinner-jacketed throngs and pretty girls in sequinned dresses. I'm missing out on that dizzying eye-candy fix, so I came on here to spill my brains.

Now I've caught up with all my emails and paused momentarily to catch my breath it's about time to inflict on you another blog entry choc-full of verbal diarrhoea. And the next thing I will say is this: bloody Christmas! As if December wasn't busy enough for me already!

I really wish you'd have waited until the new year before popping into existence Jeebus. I've got a major scheduling clash going on right now in my calendar thanks to all these bank holidays and shit. I don't need the hassle and expense of present-buying right now while I'm frantically planning my trip!

True to the Bible, the merchants are all making a fair old wedge selling their trinkets and baubles in the temples, so come on Jeebus - bloody well come back and overturn their tables or whatever the f**k it was you did that sounded proper cool when I heard about it in infant school. At least make Amazon dispatch their orders on time (miracles can happen). You were the prototype of Jimmy Dean, and no-one can ever take that away from you dude. You're the man of the people, the rebel without a cause and all that. I know you're still pissed cos they nailed you to a cross, but look lively man, most of the world has been worshipping your ass for nearly 2,000 years, in some rather misguided and violent ways - so give the fans something back!

But enough finger-pointing at major religious figures. My point is - neither Jeebus nor Santa Claus will bring you gifts of joy; you've got to flash da plastic to get da goodz. And ain't dat da awful trut'. In readiness of my travels, I have now bought:

• Fujifilm A820 camera (on special offer at Jessop's - a more advanced camera than the Canon Powershot I loved and lost this summer thanks to a thieving bastard Ukrainian)
• 2GB memory card for said digital soul-catcher, capable of storing over 1,000 photomographs in glorious technicolor
• Brand new 80 gigabyte iSchmod; thanks to stupendous technological advances, my sprawling music collection no longer needs a team of 10 hand-picked Burmese militiamen to cart it through the jungle in tarpaulin bundles behind me as I hack my way through the undergrowth with a machete.
• Belkin Tunetalk: small digital recording unit about the size of a fag lighter, available for the new low price of £30. Plug it in to an iSchmod, and it records CD-quality audio on to it through its stereo micromophones. (A stupendously simple answer to the question 'how can I lay down a demo of my killer new song while I'm traversing the Thai-Laotian border by riverboat'? Damien Allbrans from Gorillaz eat your heart out!)
• A year's worth of comprehensive backpacker insurance, costing just over £210. This will provide the bearer with generous financial recompense should they wander over a land mine, get their limbs knawed away by sharks or stumble into a Pet Shop Boys concert by accident and suffer brain haemorraging after their auditory cortex implodes.
• Indian visa: now... not to get up on my soap box or anything, but if I was a promising up-and-coming economic superpower like friend India, I'd make my visa-issuing department a LITTLE BIT more customer friendly! As it stands, if you want to visit India with a UK passport, your options are: send your form to the Indian High Commission in London, enclosing payment for £30, and start praying, cos they only accept payment by postal order (on condition that you: enclose a lovely crayon drawing of some flowers, promise to send them a birthday card every year asking after their mother, and your name contains a 'J'). Or pay significantly more and get your visa through a third-party agency, who generally seem like quite rational and friendly human beings. After hearing a lot of horror stories about option A (which I have not exaggerated all that much), I chose the hassle-free route, and after parting with the princely sum of £80 I have an Indian visa to show off in my passport!

I've needed to buy a hell of a lot of stuff for this trip. I now have more gadgets than James Bond! I have also seen fit to open an account with a bank that will let me withdraw my dosh abroad without laying loads of heavy breadhead monetary shit on me. That would be Nationwide then - every single one of the other f**kers demand a pound of flesh every time you dare to be so bold as to access your savings from remote corners of the world such as Katmandhu, Prague or Barnsley. And get this - by law they can make WHATEVER charge they like! (I read that on the internet so it must be true.)

Unfortunately I'm not gonna get to see Japan dammit! Dropped from my itinerary cos it just isn't feasible. To recap, after I go to India, the plan is to fly to Singapore, then on to Bangkok. From here the straightforward option would be to travel on through Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and South China up to Hong Kong (where I have a flight ready and waiting to take me to Oz). If you study a map of the far east you'll notice that Japan hardly fits into this route as it sits out on its own in the ocean. A bit like Britain and Ireland; isolated amongst the waves.

I'm repeating myself here slightly but some golden rules of long-distance travelling seem to be to keep your itinerary as uncluttered as possible and your route as simple as possible. Just get from A to B, without going through C, Z, Y, X and Q. You can't visit absolutely everywhere. Getting myself over to Japan then back down to Hong Kong by air could potentially add a lot of logistical problems and cost a f**k-load, plus I'd be crossing God knows how many time zones in a limited number of days. And I don't like crossing time zones. We'll have to save our blossoming romance for another year, Japan.

My bloodstream is now swimming with so many antibodies and vaccinations I swear I must exude a smell of disinfectant from my pores. I'm more toxic than an Azerbijani chemical factory. (Watch out Britney Spears!) In the last year I've had: Hepatitis A, Rabies, Typhoid, Diptheria, Tetanus (the vaccinations, not the illnesses) and I'm also planning to get Hep B and yellow fever jabs. Who needs Deet? Any mosquitos brave enough to bite my pasty white English flesh will most probably puke their guts up and die on the spot.

This mammoth operation takes ca$h to do. Hence I have now shamelessly dedicated myself to the pursuit of MONEY. Junk from my closet has been diligently parcelled up then flogged on Fleabay. I work Monday to Friday at an office for the local council, helping those lovely folk bring free childcare training to the great unwashed. I work evening shifts at a local pub too, helping drunken idiots get even drunker. Pub life is proper ace though, I love it. Recently I worked behind the bar till 6am for the Hatton-Mayweather fight. Bloody hell what an epic night. I'm no boxing fan but it was clearly a special occasion. We bonded that night, the pub and I. I feel its sleeping life-force and its quiet inertia.

In amongst all these developments I have doggedly pursued that silly indulgence of mine, my "music career". Again, if you know anything about me you will know this is my NUMBER ONE passion/delusion in life. I'm taking a year out of music and I need to keep things ticking over. By the time I head for Heathrow on 10th January, I need to have my website (http://www.bondymusic.co.uk/) fully updated, my highly sexual musical content uploaded on to every free music site between here and Timbuctoo (to get what exposure I can), and a framework in place so my CDs and promotional material can be posted out and my stuff can remain on sale while I am living the life of a bushtucker man, incommunicado with the world at large.

The website is now updated with some of my recent various witty remarks. I am now signed up to about 15 music sites, with another 20 or so on my list to do (including NickRhodes'sBiscuitHour.com and Al Jazeera Unsigned). Thanks to a good buddy the CD orders will be delivered. There is loads more work to do, which will keep me occupied during the terminal French & Saunders re-runs over Christmas eh? Oh and amidst all that I'm releasing a special limited-edition Christmas EP. Madness!

Once that's all over and done with I'm hosting a final farewell piss-up in Blackpool - at the West Coast Club Above, on Friday 4th January. Bands. Booze. Partying like it is one year shy of 2000, i.e. 1999! Certain good mates of mine are getting sick of all these leaving parties I keep having. I'm starting to feel like the boy who cried wolf. But rest assured guys - you're not gonna see me for a VERY long time after this one. This one is for real. Wolf! Wolf! WOOOOOOOLF!!!!!!!!

The first twentyish years of my life were quite boring and uneventful, and I would like to commemorate the fact there is now such an insane amount going on in my life. Regular concerns like wooing the ladies and shooting turkeys for Christmas dinner with my trusty 12-guage have been pushed temporarily to the back of my mind. Would you really want to be in my shoes, with all the accompanying hassle of getting visas, buying travel insurance, booking vaccinations and bugging friends and acquaintances for every last travel tip when you've got the presents to wrap and a great big bird sat in your kitchen waiting to be stuffed? (Talking about the turkey obviously.)

I am labouring under the delusion this crap I write is in some way funny and/or entertaining and I hope it makes a good read. I came out of my mother's womb as a fully-fledged after-dinner speaker and I am more than happy to share the experiences I have as I go on. Hell, if you even bothered scanning this far down the page then I'm delighted! Rest assured life ain't never easy, and a pimp's gotta do what a pimp's gotta do just to survive in this modern world. But it will one day make a thrilling novel that someone will glance at then put down in an airport book shop.

Merry Christmas, y'all.

Packed it, booked it, f**ked off!

On Saturday I walked into a travel agent’s in Leeds and spunked £1,600 of my hard-earned savings on a rather long holiday. Then to my annoyance I had to follow it up with another £150 on Monday to seal the deal.

My trip next year is no longer the hollow pipe-dream that it has been for so long. It’s no longer a vague platitude spooled out to friends, family and bemused onlookers ad infinitum: ‘I’m going travelling’. I went out and sorted it all on my lonesome. It’s happening for real! It’s going ahead!

The plane tickets are booked; the dates set in stone. I am excited and elated. I've handed over a large chunk of my savings to make this happen, and I would go as far as to declare that one is veritably buzzing one’s tits off with excitement. Like JFK handling the Cuban missile crisis, I told those bloody Russians where to get off and no mistake, and now the world is my oyster.

Now my itinerary is set (to a degree), this is a very good time to outline where I am going, what I plan to do and what my expectations of my trip are. Even though I am both a spunky young whipper-snapper and a well-read ‘man of the world’, I would be the first to admit I know next to bugger all about most of the cities, places and countries I am set to visit.

I don’t want to come across like some pompous eco-warrior shouting “we in the West are ignorant, man!” but I have a burning desire to learn about other places in the world. Recently I was greatly inspired when I went on a volunteer training weekend in Cardiff with UNAexchange. They were very nice but I think they might have brain-washed me a bit. Now I plan to work on three of their international volunteer camps in India and south-east Asia. This will give more structure to my travels, give them some sort of purpose other than globe-trotting for the sake of it, and help me to meet people and delve into local cultures.

I want to record my travels on here to better understand them, and I want to share as much with my friends and family of what promises to be a varied and utterly amazing experience. And anyone else who’s bothered is welcome to join us for the ride! Perhaps you are dreaming of doing something similar yourself? In which case draw wisdom and inspiration from my cultural learnings!

I'm no Bill Bryson but I dream that one day my travel writings will be published and collected in leather-bound anthologies, and pored over by academics at Oxford University (or Oxford Polytechnic at least) who consider them such culturally significant, top-quality pieces of literature it frankly gives them the horn. But if not, this blog will still be here on the t’interweb as a monument to my journey. Unless it gets deleted for gross obscenity and/or libel.

Well the days and weeks are ticking away. On 10th January next year I fly from Heathrow to Delhi with Virgin Atlantic. (I hope someone remembers to tell the pilot he’s not flying to America!) I will be spending a month in India and I’m hoping to:

1. See some of what old and new Delhi has to offer. I don’t know an awful lot about the city yet, apart from that it is bloody big and in India. Confusingly it is called ‘New Delhi’ on all the maps, but really ‘New Delhi’ is just the modern name for the ‘traditional’ Delhi, and it encompasses a place called ‘Old Delhi’. I think. We’ll see. If I turn up in the wrong place it will make for a hilarious (and profanity-filled) entry!
2. Work on a volunteer project with disadvantaged schoolkids in New Delhi. I have always been pretty awkward around kids, and I have tried my best to avoid them throughout my life, but I sense that one day I will be forced to spawn and raise offspring (possibly to save the future of the human race). So, I figure that on a personal development level, I need some sort of once-in-a-lifetime baptism of fire to traumatise me into liking children. Hopefully it will do the children (and me) some lasting good! I aim to occupy the ‘kindly uncle’ role of Chef on South Park and am considering bringing a chef’s hat, black face paint and a ladle to dish out food.
3. Travel further south to explore the city of Mumbai, where my dad was born.
4. Travel even further south to explore the beaches of Goa and get hallucinogens slipped in my drink by hippies. Spend the night at a beach party raving my tits off to pulsating trance music, convinced I can ‘see’ time as waves of colour. Wake up in a bamboo pit with a bandaged stump where my left leg once was. Time to dust off those travel insurance documents!
5. Realise that waking up in the pit minus a leg was just one in a long chain of freakish hallucinations. Journey back to Delhi by train, convinced my shoes are out to get me.

Hopefully no bad things will actually happen and it will be proper good.

On 14th February I fly out of Delhi with Singapore Airlines, to – funnily enough – Singapore! Which brings us on to the far eastern leg of my journey. The itinerary I have planned is thus:

1. Spend 2-3 days exploring Singapore, going on a tour round the (City? Country? What the hell is it?), followed by the amazing experience of a night-time safari round the state zoo! Expect me to post loads of pitch black photos that supposedly portray various amazing events and creatures. I’m not sure what effect flash photography would have on all the wild beasts and I don’t want to risk sending hordes of animals stampeding through Malaysia by turning my flash on!
2. Fly to Bangkok (via budget local flight, not yet booked). Spend a few days sightseeing and inspecting the temples and shit. I will be mortally afraid of looking any woman in the eye in case they are a ladyboy. (“Well you just can’t tell with some of them can you?”) Best case scenario: I will shatter my negative stereotypes (i.e. ladyboys, Thai prisons) and fall in love with the country. Worst case scenario: I will get locked up in a Thai prison on trumped-up drugs charges and lose a leg. Then discover it was all a hallucination, brought on by a ladyboy spiking my drink, and wake up in bed next to the ladyboy. With a sore rectum.
3. Depending on funds I will briefly journey around Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. All of these territories promise remarkable unspoilt scenery and much exotic cultural wonderment. But there is so much to see in this region and I have so little time in which to see it. I am working to a tight schedule and have to keep my itinerary as uncluttered as possible. Dammit!
4. Travel to the Chiang Mai area of northern Thailand, to take part in a five-day cooking school which will teach me Everything You Need To Know about cooking Thai cuisine. This sounds absolutely fascinating, and the brochure tells me I can “take time to explore the vibrant night bazaar and many temples or just laze by the pool”. Well bollocks to lazing quite frankly, I can do that at home! I’ll be scooting off on a borrowed push-bike, as it informs the reader “Chiang Mai is small enough to get round by bicycle and this is a great way to see this happening city”! I really hope I’m not laid up with the shits or something. It would do my head in to miss this chance to learn something about authentic eastern food, as “the chef will reveal the secrets of Thai cooking in the relaxed atmosphere of his family home”. I hope it really is relaxed and he’s not an unhinged psychotic Gordon Ramsay sort of chef. No more super noodles for me after this jaunt!
5. Work on my second volunteer project, doing cultural understanding work with the inhabitants of a remote village in the Golden Triangle area near Chiang Mai (it is also near the border with Laos). I will be living in a hut beside a beautiful lake (which sounds fantastic, assuming the volunteer organisation is being more honest than your average estate agent). I imagine this could really broaden my horizons about issues affecting local people. And I can put my newly-acquired cookery skills to use! Expect to hear of a spate of poisoning-related deaths in Thailand in the news.
6. Travel into Laos/Cambodia briefly if I didn’t get time to earlier. I’m still on a tight schedule though as I have seven days to…
7. Fly to Osaka or Tokyo (again via local budget airline), see a bit of rural Japan and then arrive to work on my third and final volunteer project, helping a school in the Fukuoka (pardon my French) area of southern Japan organise an arts and crafts festival.
8. Do some sightseeing in Tokyo, then fly on to Hong Kong to chill out for several days and enjoy the night-time light displays that bathe the entire cityscape in swathes of breathtaking colour.

Of course when you tot it all up, this is all likely to cost oodles and oodles of money. In this respect my savings are like a lump of delicious Edam. We all love Edam don't we? There's not enough Edam in the world for everyone. And I have to take care not to use a blunt knife to carve my Edam up. I know from past experience that when you’re abroad, luxuriating in a country with prices much cheaper than your own, you end up spending just as much in a month as you would back home. Before I know it, I'll have really buggered up slicing that Edam. So a sharp cheese knife is essential at all times.

I have completely lost my thread now. Erm... the basic gist is, I need to seriously economise on my journey. I will have to descend back into my hereditary Yorkshireman mindset and employ a coin purse to keep track of my cash. It will be a challenge after years of wasteful spending. I really have wasted my money on some crap in my time!

Anyway - the next part of my trip affords me a much-needed chance to earn back some travel funds. That’s right folks, armed with a working visa I am going to the kingdom of the dusty outback, the kooky kookaburra and Rolf Harris’s ethnically-inspired hyperventilation and wobble-board combo (not to mention Rolf himself) – good old Australia!

I fly into Sydney on 14th April and I have four and a half months to work, party and travel my way round Australia. I have no specific plans apart from spending a few weeks in Sydney, a few in Adelaide and a few in Melbourne (which I am told has a good music scene).

Hopefully by then I will have hooked up with some other travellers down at the hostel for company. In my imagination we’ll form into a tightly-knit gaggle of tie-died, generation X surfer dudes who enjoy nothing more than a cold tinnie, ‘flipping the bird’ at ‘the Man’, and tripping on peyote cactus if they have that in Australia. While lying wasted under the stars one night, we'll all resolve to travel the outback. We’ll spot a knackered old slaughterhouse truck with broken axles on sale for peanuts, and we’ll set off for some high jinks on the road, our death-trap vehicle careering all over the place in the dust clouds. Later I will come to regard these times as my happiest upon the Earth. How will it all end ... or begin?

Timewise, nothing after my arrival in Oz is set in stone really, apart from one condition of my air ticket being that I have to return within twelve months of my departure date, i.e. January 2009. Britain!? Fuck that, I hate the place.

Once I get to Australia I have to consider my budget for the rest of the trip. At the moment I have my stops in New Zealand and Fiji provisionally booked for September and my stops in LA and New York pencilled in for October. This is because the airline booking system cannot reserve plane seats more than eleven months in advance. The provisional flight dates are 1st September for Oz to New Zealand, 29th September for New Zealand to Fiji, 1st October for Fiji to Los Angeles, and lastly 4th October for New York to London. How I will get from LA to New York is also undecided.

Nearer the time, for a flat £35 fee I can re-arrange these dates to suit my itinerary (bearing in mind I have to keep within the cursed 12-month rule). I will need to make some big choices when I reach Australia. If my money is holding out I would like to spend some time travelling round Peru, Bolivia and Chile after reaching LA. If not I’ll have to postpone my trek round south America for another year (sob) and fly straight to New York, and from there, home (double sob) to enjoy a Christmas being broke (treble sob).

To be honest there’s no telling how tired and grumpy I will be when I get to America, after several months on the road. Will I be able to face more cheap domestic flights, more overnight bus rides and buying yet more visas off border guards using strange notes with lots of zeroes on? I suspect a direct plane journey home, a steaming hot British cup of tea and a good night’s sleep in my bed at home will probably seem more desirable to me than the most beautiful woman on Earth by that point.

Later in life, I will no doubt rue the missed opportunity in hindsight! Such is life.

If I am seriously hard-up I will stay and work in Australia until the end of October. Croupier, tree surgeon, fireman – name it, I will try it. My portmanteau case bulging with Australian dollars (yeah, right), I will spend four weeks in New Zealand, a week in LA, then fly straight to New Yoik to spend a week there just before Crimbo.

If I really am desperate for money on the road, there’s always cash to be made as a medical research subject, or donating various non-essential body organs. The human body is a walking cash-crop - though hopefully I won't have to cash in any of the rather valuable chips my maker has blessed me with! I will have to watch my own back out there in the world at large, and not stray over-budget or behind schedule. That’s a challenge if ever there was one.

If I am mega-flush I will leave Oz on 1st September, spend four weeks in New Zealand (hopefully meeting up with some friends from back home), two in Fiji, one in LA, up to six in south America, and one week in New Yoik. I will return home on a similar date, gasping for the aforementioned cup of tea and comfy bed.

Back to the present, I spent Sunday evening typing out most of this blog in a mood of great optimism. Then STA bloody Travel phoned me on Monday morning to tell me I'd have to stump up another £150 to guarantee the departure date to India I wanted! 10th January is so close to new year that it got flagged up by their billing department, but I could leave on 17th January without paying any extra. Though of course then I'd miss all the volunteer projects. Bastards! Out came the plastic.

And it is now time for even more spending: the framework of my journey in place, I have 3 volunteer projects (£360+) and the Thailand chef’s course (£200) to pay for – taking my spending well over the two grand mark! As I had only £4,400 savings to start with (and I now have a monstrous itinerary snaking its way through 2008’s calendar pages), it is imperative I find work as soon as I hit Oz!

Well I’ve been prattling on for long enough. Rest assured the next instalment won’t be too long in coming!

Congratulations! Now you’ve finished reading the full article, here’s the condensed ‘light read’ version for your convenience:

Have booked my ticket. Going to lots of places, leaving 10th Jan. Cost shitloads. I don’t care. Bye!

Planning for next year

All is dark and quiet here.

Suddenly a key turns in a rusted lock. Bats flutter from their resting places. The imposter swings the door open, sending mini-cyclones of dust billowing through the air. The rats nibbling the crusts of mouldy bread on the table scarper into the shadows. Light pours in from the hallway, clouded with dislodged cobweb fragments.

I am back after a hundred years, to once again post on my travel blog!

Wow, it certainly has been a while since I posted a blog on here. Looking at the fractured messages below that I spat out on to cyberspace as I journeyed through the Balkans (oo er), our travels seem like such a long time ago. I could have been wearing different pants, it was that long ago.

I hadn't completely forgotten about posting on here, in fact I've been searching all this time for a suitable way to sum up and round off what has been a rather crazy and eventful summer in a rather crazy and eventful year! No ideas came. In the weeks and months after I finished off my travels and returned to England I let this journal die a slow, quiet death. Until now.

But rather than closing off the tale I must now begin the telling of a whole new "story arc" (like George Lucas innit). Welcome to Episode II: Bondy travels the world!

You see, I like the world. I think it's interesting. I think it's dead good. I always told myself, 'Bondy son, one day you'll travel the world, and see some fine sights.' Through years of university study and work, I never gave up my dream. I told myself that no matter what happened to me afterwards, I wanted at all costs the chance to go and see the world.

Even if I returned home penniless and destitute, and was forced to accept work as a manual declogging operative on a sewage farm, scooping handfuls of human shit out of dark and cavernous processing ducts in exchange for a paltry minimum wage, at least I could roar defiantly to the world that I had travelled (in place of the pitiful squeak my lowly incumbency would dictate).

Earlier this year, as most of you know, I got made redundant from the omnipotent and rather sinister multinational IT firm where I worked, and that got me in a right tizzy - until I realised fate had dealt me the hand of champions, and it was time to vamoose, brave Sir Lancelot! The money I'd squirreled away from my earnings was burning a hole in my pocket, and the world waited out there to be discovered, like a million bejewelled delights.

So there I was, in the middle of April 2007, having just made the decision to take off and travel but not knowing where to go first. I needed a bit of a trial run, a "dress rehearsal" for the real thing. A couple of months traipsing round obscure corners of our glorious new friendship-based European super-state would get me in the mood, right? Right. So I booked a place on a WWOOF farm on France, arranged to rendezvous with my friend Katy a few weeks later, and off I went, staggering under the weight of my comically over-stuffed rucksack [1]. (I have certainly learned a few lessons about travelling light! That rucksack weighed 39 kilos at check-in!)

As you probably know I had to return home earlier than planned after I got mugged in the Ukraine and ran out of funds. I went to stay with my mum and dad in Meltham and tried desperately to wine and dine the travel insurance folks via Royal Mail so they would give me a big fat juicy payout. Having already arranged the rest of my travels I had no alternative but to book another flight out to Budapest a couple of weeks later. Things hadn't turned out quite as I expected but, to be fair, forking out for a fresh air ticket was greatly preferable to spending my summer moping around in the lush yet decidedly un-foreign West Yorkshire countryside. It was cool to see my homeboys Anthony, Chris and Gary travel all the way to Hungary from Blackpool by road! RIP to the Pepy machine.

Croatia and Bosnia are wonderful places to visit. I was incredibly moved by the warmth and hospitality of the locals, considering they hardly had the best decade ever back in the 90s. At least they were spared the massive disappointment of Oasis' third album.

Straight after I returned, I went to Tommyfest, which was cool for all sorts of reasons. "An outstanding weekend of music, sun, warm beer and good solid happy times" is the tagline commemorating that particular bank holiday weekend in my mind. I was slightly sick of camping out in a tent after braving the 'seven day mud and piss marathon' formerly known as Sziget, but it was well worth making an extra stop for. I got to play a gig on the Saturday lunchtime, and I fancy the organisers raised a packet for cancer charidees. Not exclusively from my gig you understand - I'm no Kate Moss!

I had decided while out in the Ukraine a few weeks prior to this that I would relocate to Meltham and move back in with my parents for the time being. A slightly unusual move for a twentysomething perhaps, but I needed and still need to save money for my travels.

Also I needed a break from Blackpool; love it as I honestly and truthfully do it is a fucking dump all the same, and my repetitive routines of work/pub/sleep and work/gig/get pissed/buy fried chicken/sleep had left me in a creative and emotional rut after three or four years of little success. I'm not cutting ties, I just need some time to chill. And if you've ever visited the Huddersfield area, you'll know that compared to Blackpool, Meltham is an excellent place to do just that! (Thank god I have family outside of the Fylde. Otherwise I'd be living under an overpass in Salford or something.)

Two months down the line the move seems to have paid off brilliantly. My batteries are recharged. I feel great. I'm writing so many new songs it beggars belief. Thanks to my parents' patient support I am still financially solvent. I've even discovered enough momentum to catch up with my emails and update my website (which has languished without an update for far longer than this blog), and then do the dishes before the Simpsons came on! It's all go here at Bondy HQ!

I recently had a four-week temping job at Huddersfield uni as a room surveyor, which involved going round all the classrooms in a block, knocking on the door and disrupting the lecture, and then counting how many students were in the classroom (much to the bemusement and then amusement of the class). I also got a nice smart clipboard to write the numbers down on. They paid me to do this! And I got free time every hour so I could read a book. Or just sit and stare. (I alternated between the two depending on my mood.)

One time I made a room full of medical students burst out in laughter as I walked in. I looked up wondering what was happening and realised that at that moment the lecturer was busy pointing to a close-up of a vagina infected with thrush on the projector screen! (Ladies, if you have worries in that area, you can come to me. I'm a qualified GP now. I can't do prescriptions though.)

That job finished last week, which more or less brings me up to the present. Right now I'm looking for more temping work, and trying to use my free time to do productive stuff like plan for next year, and throw wing nuts and apples at the squirrels in the garden for laughs.

I have also turned to the TV shows of Michael Palin for enlightenment. Some of his journeys (f'instance Pole to Pole and Full Circle) provide a lot of ideas and inspiration. Here is a man who shows you How It Should Be Done in terms of travelling - and he entertains the ass off the viewer.

I have certainly noticed a recurring theme in his recent work - wherever he goes, whatever continent or time zone he winds up in, he invariably 'meets up' with a hot female companion from that country, who gladly introduces us to the local culture. Always. A bird in every international dialling code it seems. Phwoaarrr, they is fit innit! Representative of the Earth's population? Maybe not - but respect, Palinmeister, you are the pimp daddy of global travel. (Maybe he gets the chicks cos he was in that Monty Python band innit?)

Today, I went to visit a travel agent in Leeds to get some "ball park" figures for round-the-world plane tickets. I was pleased with what I found; a six-stop ticket going to Delhi, Singapore, Sydney, New Zealand, Fiji and LA costs in the region of £1,250 after taxes (through STA Travel). My original plan was a bit more ambitious and I've had to cancel the stops I wanted to make in Africa and South America as this would add a thousand quid on to the final cost!

I have until 9th November to confirm all the dates, and pay up, and then it's official! I am off round the world! My date of departure is 15th January of next year, and I plan to return in December 2008 (on around the 10th). Thus 2008 will be a giant voyage of discovery; a huge frosted marshmallow cake of adventure.

Though it seems like a good deal I must say I was a bit surprised at the general lack of choice for a budget round-the-world traveller (not pointing fingers at STA in particular). If I use the route above I am following something of a standard backpacker route, as you can only connect from certain airports to certain airports, depending on the availability of flights. (Basically it appears like all the world's airlines are divided into two giant camps, like playground gangs, and the two camps proper hate each other and won't share customers and diss on each other's mamas and stuff.) When I planned it in my mind I'd hoped to get a little more off the beaten track.

South America and Africa were both no-nos for reasons of cost (but I could have done a round trip to both quite cheaply if I'd missed out SE Asia, Oz and New Zealand - hence the 'two camps' theory). If you're travelling east from India, Singapore is the only place you can fly to. When you fly east from Fiji (crossing the beguiling and entrancing International Date Line, I believe), the only place you can go is LA. I'm not super-keen to go to LA (I would have gone on to Santiago in Chile if I had the choice), but as I'm obliged to pass through that part of the world I thought I might as well drop in and see what disgustingly opulent lives our porculent cousins over the pond live in Californ-i-yay. Who knows if I'll get another chance? It's all life experience.

But I would like to fit in a quick final stop in New Yoik afterwards if I can - for similar 'living for today' type reasons. The Newyoikian culture and history particularly amaze me. (How much it will amaze me when I go there will depend entirely on whether I have any money left!) Anyway, here's to romantic notions of the world of Carlito Brigante and Travis Bickle - and let's forget those troublesome money worries for now!

I think today showed me that intercontinental air travel can be a hard-to-fathom, mysterious beast. What you quickly realise in the planning stage of a backpacking trip is that certain flights cost more than others of comparable distance, and those prices can randomly fluctuate throughout the seasons. You have to live with it. It's not straightforward like buying a bus pass - you're seeking to travel thousands of miles round the world at an advantageous price and, at the end of the day, you have to pick and choose your opportunities. (Though on a separate note you should perhaps plant several thousand trees when you return home to make Jesus happy.)

Let's face it, if you're lucky enough to get the chance to go anywhere, a million bejewelled delights will await the visitor in many of the globe's destinations; having restrictions imposed on your plans can paradoxically give you greater freedom to decide what you want to do. I suppose you have to be prepared to enjoy the moment and go with the flow.

As long as there's no stag parties or suicide bombings where I venture to (or explosive train crashes for that matter), I'll be happy. Amen!

Bosnia is even better

Howdoo,

Me and my good buddy "Rick" have just returned to Croatia after two days in the lovely little medieval town of Mostar in Bosnia. It's a very picturesque place with lots of cobbled streets and little old Turkish-style buildings, and unfortunately it suffered a lot of bombing in the war. But now it is almost rebuilt, though you can still see old bombed-out ruins in amongst the spectacular scenery. A very eye-opening experience.

So anyway, we've got back to Dubrovnik now and we were looking forward to spending our last day going on a day trip to Montenegro, but we've found there's bugger all happening trip-wise tomorrow! So we'll be sat around getting drunk I expect. Although Dubrovnik is in Croatia, it is full of British and Australian people, so it barely feels like being away from home. Which is kinda confusing. This internet cafe is quite nice, they're playing a song by the Byrds on the CD player, but it's not as good as the last one, which was outdoors! In a park! Crazy.

Oh and at the moment I'm reading Lullaby by Chuck Palhahunihuiluiujikk who wrote Fight Club. It's a stonking good read.

Croatia is better

Hi there,

I`m now in Dubrovnik in Croatia. I cant write for long and this keyboard seems to have no apostrophe, possessive or otherwise. Its very upsetting. Nevertheless, its very nice here and hot and sunny. Sziget was fun in the end. We all cheered up once we located a warm shower! Then we watched Madness, who were pretty good. Then I packed up my tent, caught a train with Rick and Katy to Zagreb. Then we got an overnight bus to Dubrovnik. By the way it is impossible to sleep on one of these contraptions, but at least they played a Croatian cover of George Harrisons "my sweet lord" which was pretty funny to listen to. Now weve spent a couple of days here on the Adriatic coast, and we went on a nice cruise round some islands yesterday. I have to go now, my time is up. Take care!

Bloody rain

Hello,

I'm now at Sziget. I am tired. It's been raining loads overnight. My friends got soaked last night in a torrential downpour. I didn't cos my tent is ace. Ray Mears eat your heart out. The weather's not very good this year, though we've seen the Chemical Toilet Brothers and Madness, which was cool. Either I'm getting old or the weather's not like it used to be. I really enjoyed Sziget last year, and the year before that, but this year just hasn't felt the same.

We've got another three or so days of this World War One-style mud, madness and mosquitos, then we all go our separate ways. And then I'm off to Croatia with Rick and Katy, which should be good. Though I can't wait to come home all the same. Camping is rubbish.

Still... there's always tomorrow!

I think we're all going into Budapest today, to get a shower in Rick and Katy's appartment. Possibly we will enjoy some fine wines and witty banter, aboard the city's own Reggae Boat. I still have high hopes.

Anyway, I can't stay for long, there are guards patrolling the perimeter of the internet tent, with dogs on chains and freaking big guns. Tattybyeski!!

Worst birthday... EVER!

If anyone is still reading this, you'll be aware I've not written anything for a while. I'm not dead, I'm pleased to say. Things just went "titski-up" as the Ukrainians say, and we had to fly home to Manchester on 21st July. Since that day I've been living in a horrible stupor, unable to comprehend the amazing events which befell Katy and I in such a short space of time. I've been keeping a low profile in the Huddersfield region. Tomorrow I resume my travels in Budapest with the Sziget festival.


I left off when we arrived in Lviv. On the Saturday we took a taxi to the meeting place, Polyuya 7A, which turned out to be a massive soviet... arrrrgh, I'm far too tired to explain every intricacy of our extraordinary few days right now. It's 2am and I have to sleep - I'm catching a plane in 12 hours. Basically, this is what happened:

1. We went to the volunteer camp in Zolochiv.
2. Lots of nice people at Zolochiv. Sunshine. Mosquitos. Searing heat. Very basic accomodation, featuring the world's most gruesome shower, which actually resembles the inside of the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl. Unbelievably cheap local beer (22p for a bottle of fantastic Lvivske lager, f'instance). I was starting to fall in love with the place.
3. Train crashes nearby, spewing toxic phosphorous over a wide radius and causing a minor environmental disaster.
4. Katy and I did as the locals did and fled the aforementioned cloud of gas, and decided to spend a few days in Kiev while we figured out what to do.
5. We arrive in Kiev on the morning of my birthday, severely hung-over from pre-birthday drinks on the night train, and without a place to stay for the night.
6. After several exhausting journeys around the city looking for accomodation (we're both carrying all our luggage with us), someone secures us a booking over the phone, and we catch the underground train to our hostel.
7. As our train arrives in the underground station, an old lady starts inexplicably waving leaflets in our faces and shouting at us. When I free myself from the gibbering old crone and make for the Metro train, I discover someone has stolen my wallet and camera from my pockets while the woman was distracting us. F*ck. This is one pickle Her Majesty's Constabulary will be unable to resolve. What's more, we now have 1 Hryvnia (10p) between the two of us!
8. We made it to the hostel and somehow Katy persuaded the dude on the desk to let us leave our bags there without paying a deposit. Phone calls to family. Tears. Expletives. Bank cards cancelled. No way we can continue; Katy has no access to funds either. Katy's mum books us plane tickets home the next day.
9. Trip to British Embassy in Kiev. We plan to throw ourselves at their feet and beg for assistance. No such luck - they've closed early as it's Friday afternoon. Leaving us loyal British subjects right in the brown stuff and with nowhere to turn.
10. Visit to police station. A nice man who happens to be there (and we were extremely grateful for this chap's help) lends us money to buy water, and acts as a translator to help us report our crime. The Soviet-style bureaucracy we encounter means it takes 3 hours for us to obtain a police report for my insurance, but at least we get a ride in a Ukrainian cop wagon.
11. Vitaliy (a dodgy American dude with loads of cash we made the acquaintanceship of in Zolochiv) comes to our rescue, chucks $100 at us, and offers to buy me three hookers for my birthday. I decline, politely, but we take the $100.
12. Next day we use the money to catch a taxi to the airport. We fly home to Manchester. Numerous delays. My baggage got lost changing planes at Heathrow but at least we got free crap food from Costa Coffee, and some wine.

Some of our fellow passengers were less impressed with the baggage mix-ups, and took it all out on the hapless airport staff at Manchester with a series of four-letter tirades, which I thought was unfair. Like Bill Hicks said, the human race is just a virus with shoes.

Oh and I lost my camera so all the wonderful photos I took to show you are all gone. Bugger. I'm hoping some of my buddies at Zolochiv will let me show some of their pics. Next I'm off to Hungary, Croatia and Bosnia.

My lack of camera will forcve me to paint pictures with words, as per the greats of classical literature. Strap yourselves in, you're in for one hell of a ride!

Sziget road trip - read my friends' blog!

My friends Anthony, Chris and Gary are travelling from Blackpool to Budapest by road, to go to the Sziget festival, which starts this week! Then they're driving all the way back! I am now back in the UK (long story) but will be flying out to meet them at the festival! Read about their amazing encounters with bandits, sorcerers and unforgiving Eastern bloc toilet paper here!

http://szigetroadtrip.blogspot.com

Anthony, Chris and Gary are three very crazy characters. Anthony is a whelk salesman. Chris teaches monkeys to clean up inner-city graffiti. Gary flies jumbo jets for a well-respected Egyptian airline. It is my pleasure to know people in such a diverse range of occupations. And let me tell you - they work hard and they play hard. Innocent lives will most likely be lost before the end of the month as the result of our no-holds-barred partying in Hungary. But hey, these are the crazy times we live in, and we need to document our lives so as to warn future generations away from the depths of debauchery to which we sunk.

An epic journey featuring people selling vegetables, and some other things.

Hello! Or to use the equivalent local word, 'greetingski'.

Well we've arrived in Lviv, the main city of western Ukraine! Getting here was an epic journey in every sense of the word. 24 hours travelling across eastern Europe by train. Very little sleep. Christ. I'm knackered!

None of the signs here make sense to me cos they're written in the Cyrillic alphabet, but I'm pleased to see there is a man working on the counter at this internet caff who has a 1980s mullet a bit like Dr. Sanchez off Garth Marenghi's Dark Place. That familiar sight in this unfamiliar land has brightened my day.

So where did I leave off...? Oh yeah, on Wednesday evening my friend Katy and I went to an underground punk gig at an east Berlin squat (that, as I have already mentioned, has its own website... or should that be a websquat?). The place took a lot of finding, and we missed the first few bands, but it turned out to be a really great night!

The Kopi squat is a huge apartment block on a backstreet near the city centre, hidden from the world by a tall gate and covered on the inside with multi-coloured paintings and graffiti. We found it packed to the rafters with punks and assorted Germanic crusty types - my kind of people! There was a great atmos, a little bit like Blackpool "rock club" the Tache but one thousand times better!

There were hardcore punk bands playing in the central room, using an immense sound setup that cleaned the cobwebs right out of my eardrums let me tell you - and there was a bar selling bottles of beer and a stall selling CDs and records (these squatters think of everything)! The music wasn't really my cup of tea but I thought it was a great spectacle to see - you don't really get the same underground music/squatter thing going on in the UK which is a shame. F*ck tha man!

Yesterday we started the journey to Lviv, catching our first train from Berlin to Warsaw. Nothing much to say about that bit of the trip other than we passed lots of green and pleasant hills and lakes and stuff, and spent 2 hours stuck outside Frankfurt when the train broke down! They sent a replacement train to tow us to Warsaw.

This delay didn't really help cos we were cutting it fine making it on to our next train at Warsaw station. We ran round like headless chickens trying to book the sleeper carriage, which it turned out wasn't as simple as we'd first hoped. But after bribing a surly-looking railway guard on the platform with our leftover Euros, we were allowed access to the train with seconds to spare! (Another guy who wanted to get on the train was trying to bribe the guards with a software CD, and he wasn't having much luck. Crazy times! This episode taught me that 9 out of 10 communist officials prefer cash bribes.)

The journey to Kovel was great fun - we shared a rickety wooden carriage with a nice Polish man called George. As the train sidled through the inky-black outskirts of Warsaw the three of us got chatting in broken English. He was heading to the Ukraine too, to see his family. He was a great bloke - really generous. He bought Katy and I a black tea, and he unexpectedly produced half a roast chicken from his suitcase and shared it out! We then discovered his suitcase was full of contraband roast chickens - he explained poultry is much more expensive over the border in the Ukraine so he was taking his family some supplies. So there you go.

We all got a bit of sleep but then at 2am we reached the border and there was a lengthy stop while we scribbled our names into immigration forms. Then the train was winched up off the ground to get its wheels changed to a different gauge! I was excited about this wheel-changing but in hindsight I would describe the experience as like spending the night inside a garden shed while a friend bashes the walls with a sledgehammer.

This is one of the profound things I will be putting in my book when I write it.

We arrived in Kovel at around 7am local time. It was grey and wet and full of grannies on their way to market. We made friends with one old lady who was 86 years old! They were very curious to see some Westerners, let me tell you. Her and her granny mates were very nice and seemed to be offering us accomodation, which we sadly had to refuse. Our train to Lviv arrived eventually - we were now only 5 hours from Lviv!

Now, I don't know if you've ever been on an internal Ukranian rail journey before, so I'll assume you're new to this particular delight: it's a bit of a culture shock if you're used to leg-room and seats soft enough not to give you terminal piles. It was bloody amazing though. There was a family of buskers in our carriage singing songs to pay for their train ticket, people on their way to market selling vegetables, bundles of wood and other random goods (like stationery and make-up!), and people trading goods each other! The guards allow it all to happen; it's part of the local culture I guess. It was fantastic to watch but it got a bit tiring to be stuck in the middle of it!

We arrived in Lviv around lunchtime today. We're staying at a new hostel in the city centre called the Sun Hotel tonight, then tomorrow we're meeting up with a lady called Olka to start our two-week volunteer placement. Who can say what it will bring? The info we have on our placement is mysterious and vague. It involves restoring an old castle out in the countryside at a place called Zolochiv but we know nothing else.

I have to sign off now. It is getting late. If you made it to the bottom of this page, jolly well done, and thanks for bothering!

Ich bin ein Berliner!

Guten tag,

Berlin is ace. It's a fine city with great people. But it's raining lots. Yesterday we went on a tour with a nice Canadian woman who was a bit shouty, and looked at the Berlin Wall, which I thought was really interesting. We had a look round the city centre too. Later we went to the hostel quiz night and got trolleyed. Today we went on a short train ride to a place called Potsdam that was all pretty and had loads of castles and gardens and a windmill. We went inside the windmill to speak to the man. It's all really impressive.

Tomorrow, we're setting off on the next leg of our journey to the Ukraine. It's gonna take us - wait for it - 24 hours to get to Lviv by train. It is really bloody far. We're going via Warsaw, waiting a few hours, then catching an overnight train to somewhere or other in the north of the Ukraine, then boarding another train to Lviv tomorrow morning. To survive I'm just going to buy lots of alcohol and sit in the carriage singing bawdy songs about the seaside. I think this is a good Plan.

Tonight we're off to an underground punk gig at an east Berlin squat. This officially makes me cooler than Henry Winkler, i.e. the Fonz. The squat has been going for 17 years! There is no interesting stuff like this in England. I am very excited!

At the moment I am amused by the German word for Wednesday, Mittwoch. It sounds more like a blasphemous swear-word than a day of the week. Other than that I haven't been using my brain much.

My time is up so I'll have to dash. We're off for dinner at the Mexican across the road. See you later, bye bye, auf wiedersehn!! Peace and love.

Bondy :)

Spandau action

Hello there,

Another brief blog entry as I'm a bit pushed for time - we're in Berlin now. We arrived at the wonderfully-named Spandau station. The overnight train turned out not to be first class at all and we were forced to slum it and share our carriage with some shifty Belgians who turned up at midnight as we passed through Brussels.

Had a nice day yesterday - went up the Eiffel Tower and to the Pere Lachaise cemetry. It rained loads though. Berlin is nice. Everybody here is really helpful. We're staying at Hostel Circus, it's really good. We're going on a free tour round the city this afternoon. I will take pics, and when I can find a computer with a USB socket I will whack them on here.

Cheers, see you later!

One train-ride later...

I'm in Paris! Finally. There are some nice buildings and architecture but everything is chuffing expensive and there is a smell of wee. Mostly it's a cool place though.

I met up with Katy on Saturday and we're spending a couple of days doing sight-seeing, then tonight we're catching the night train to Berlin, first class!

Yesterday we saw the Bastille, Notre Dame and le Louvre. Today we're visiting the cemetry where Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison were buried, then we're going up the Eiffel Tower.

Will write again soon. Ta'ra!

Have scythe, will travel!

Howdy y'all,

Well my second week at Chateau Brametourte has flown by. It's great to spend another week in this delightful part of the world but my placement is fast coming to an end. I leave tomorrow (Saturday), and I'm travelling from Toulouse to Paris on a TGV train, the sort that can cover a quarter of the globe in about 15 minutes - if you believe the French!

I'm definitely sad to go. I've had a great time here and met some wonderful people, who I hope to stay in touch with for a long time. But a leopard don't change it's spots, and after two weeks in these tranquil surroundings I'm ready to prowl the city streets like the buddha of Rock that I am, searching for fresh carrion.

I am meeting up with my good friend Katy in Paris, to start our month of travelling together - though she might struggle to recognise the sun-shrivelled fly-blown mess I have become. I have grown a bit of a beard again now that two weeks have passed without my chin seeing a razor. Also I have gone a couple of shades more brown, but that's mostly dirt. I've grown older and wiser.

I'm looking forward to seeing more of eastern Europe, though I'm wondering exactly what the Ukraine holds in store! 'Cheap as chips,' the Lonely Planet guide tells me, 'but don't drink the tapwater or dance provocatively with the locals - you will most likely be shot.' Having never been there, I have no choice but to believe them.

Despite these words of caution it promises to be great fun. I will be providing photographic evidence of all our escapades! (If you're wondering where I'm heading I've done another blog explaining it here.)

This week I have mostly been working outdoors, clearing space for vegetable allotments in the field known as the potager [1]. I have also been learning how to use a scythe [2]! (The picture shows me preparing to harvest the souls of some French peasant folk. I did get a bit carried away - thankfully not much damage was done.)

Part of the chateau's charm is how it teems with hidden wildlife, with bats flying through the rafters at night, and falcon chicks nesting in one of the upstairs rooms. Paul and Alison also keep several chickens, whose antics almost fill the void left by TV [3]!

I have no tales of dinner parties or open-air pools to entertain you with this week, though on Monday I went on a drive with Peter (one of the Australians) to a nice town called Albi [4] [5] [6] [7], which was the birthplace of Toulouse Lautrec. We had a look around at the amazing giant mutant cathedral of Sainte Cecile [8] [9] [10] and sat out at a cafe "watching girls go by", as per the Andy Williams song. That was fun. We felt at least 10% more cultured afterwards.

This week has been a mixed bag weather-wise. We caught the tail end of some of the nasty UK weather on Wednesday. I got caught in a torrential downpour while I was working, and I got all wet and pissed off. Today though, there has been brilliant sunshine and scorching temperatures. On a clear day like today you could see as far south as the Pyrenees and Andorra. They lie on the horizon like forbidden jewels.

I spent tonight attempting to cook dinner [11], then having a final meal with everyone [12] (left to right: Bin, Geoff, Paul and Alison). Tomorrow I'll be saying my goodbyes and hopefully looking forward to a long but very fast train journey. I'm not sure how soon I can do another update, as it depends if Katy & I pass an Internet cafe, but treat this as just the first slice of what will hopefully be a very intriguing travel pie.

Hope you are well, wherever you are this Christmas.

Much love and respec',
Bondy

Week 1 - from Chez Filth to Chez Tony, and beyond...

Bienvenue and welcome,

It's been a week since I left the shores of the UK for France - a momentous week which has seen England doused by torrential rainstorms, Gordon Brown become PM and smoking become illegal in pubs. Is it just me or have I managed to avoid a really crap week? Right now I am gloating as much as the devious French waiter who has found a discarded centime on the floor of his Bistro. (Notice how I'm picking up the lingo.)

The journey began last Saturday (23rd June), when my mates Laura and Anthony waved goodbye to me and my ginormous sack (oo er) from Manchester airport [1]. A quick two hours of planeage later, I arrived in Toulouse. As it was late I decided to search for a taxi so I could get to my hostel and hit the hay - a room was waiting for me at the wonderfully-named Chez Tony [2].

Despite said hostel lying only ten minutes down the road, the robbing b*****d taxi driver charged me 40 euros! I think this is what they call in France le rip-off. I was its latest victim. I felt encouraged that I was understanding French culture already, and once I got to my room [3] I ran myself a hot bath to celebrate.

I've got to give Chez Tony a thumbs up as my room was en suite, despite only being 35 euros per night. However there was no rubber duck to go in the bath; yet another terrible example of the animal cruelty that seems commonplace on the Continent.

The next day I caught a train over to Vielmur-sur-Agout (a village about an hour from Toulouse, in the Tarn area of France) where I met up with my WWOOF hosts Paul and Alison, who introduced me to Chateau Brametourte, where they live [4] [5] [6]. They are from England and for the last two years they have been working round the clock to restore this fantastic place to its former glories, whilst also setting it up as an organic farm.

At any one time they have a number of people staying with them in the chateau who help them renovate it, in exchange for board and food. It is a farming community and everyone lends a hand cooking, cleaning and working. Paul and Alison are being assisted this summer by Bin and Geoff, a great couple from Australia who are travelling round the world, plus Ryszard and Pavel (a father and son from Krakow in Poland). I've also met part of Alison's family (Dominic, Begonya and Tristan), and Bin and Geoff's friends Peter and Sarah, who are all really cool too.

On my first day Paul showed me round the nearby village of Lautrec and gave me a tour of the chateau and its many gardens. He showed me the ingenious well they use to water the Potager (vegetable garden) [7], the chateau's spiral staircase [8] [9], and the room where I would be sleeping (with my own four-poster bed!) [10]. Then we all sat down outdoors to admire the view [11], and enjoy cake and the finest wines available to humanity.

I was awestruck, like the poor grubby-nosed kid from the wrong side of the tracks that I am. It's fair to say that I'd forgotten the taxi driver incident. Even the rubber duck episode had lost its sting. I was deep in the French countryside and loving it!

WWOOFing is no holiday though, and I knew that from the outset. Once the last champagne cork heralding my arrival had popped, it was down to work. This week I have been quickly getting used to gruelling manual work, thirty degree heat, mosquitoes, nettles and snakes [12]. On Monday and Tuesday I helped Paul and Geoff dig out trenches for electric cabling in the attic, and for the rest of the week I have been busy excavating a historic part of the potager, which features a 700-year-old stone wall [13] and a famous fountain used in medieval pilgrimages [14]. After three days of clearing shrubs and trees, my arms now look like I've been arm-wrestling with Edward Scissorhands, but I honestly find this much more satisfying than office work. Plus the chicks dig a man who relishes pain.

I'm being very well looked after and after living off a diet of mostly junk food back home I am finally enjoying some wholesome vegetarian nosh. I've been out and about in the surrounding area lots too. On Wednesday we went to a local market at Realmont [15] [16] [17], visited an art gallery opening in Toulouse [18] [19] and nibbled upon fancy canapes (for future reference I recommend the prosciuto ham ones), and also saw some of Toulouse's sights and architecture [20] [21]. On Friday we were treated to a dinner party at a chateau belonging to friends of Paul and Alison [22] and swam in their pool! [23] [24] (I am the sexy one in the foreground.)

So I've got another week to go until it's time to leave for Paris. This week has flown by like you wouldn't believe. I have been trying to record as much of my experiences as I can, but also to enjoy the moment. At times it's been tough but I feel like I'm fitting in more and more with other the people here every day, and I hope I can make a positive contribution to Paul and Alison's work. Even the grubby-nosed pauper has his purpose in life.

Bondmeister over and OUT.

Hello from France!

Howdy, or should I say "bonsoir"? (No I won't, I don't know what it means.)

I have touched down in France... I got ripped off by an airport taxi driver in Toulouse but safely found my way to Chateau Brametourte and it's great, I'm really enjoying the farm work and the people are cool. It's a beautiful place, and thus far I have been enjoying good food, fine wines and great company. I'm dreading the day it is my turn to cook on the rota. I hope they like cheese sandwiches or crisps on a plate.

I'm knackered cos I've been hammering the f*ck out of plasterwork in a loft all afternoon, which is ace, but I'm getting up at 7am tomorrow to do yoga, which should be interesting. I will have to crawl to my bed now but will tell all (with photos) soon!

Adieu, adieu (to yieu and yieu and yieu)Bondy :)

Reflecting on leaving

Hello there,

Well, it's the evening before I fly out to Toulouse. I am sat in my comfy little abode in Blackpool tip-tapping away on the computer, filled with trepidation. It's reached the stage where I'm sick of sitting round waiting to go and I can't find anything more meaningful to say than I am sh*tting myself!

Will write more when I get chance. Just wanted to get "off the mark" as it were. Right, I'm off to shave off my beard!