Sydney to Cairns – Part Three

The Scottish sea captain was waiting to show us to our houseboat, which bobbed serenely in the inky black night-time waters of Sanctuary Cove. This was a gem of a rental that Chris had dug out from the cobwebs of the internet. Stepping aboard we discovered a slick interior, several bedrooms, furnishings fit for a prince and a spacious sun deck. Already this promised to be the Boat that Rocked!

We stocked up with hundreds of dollars of food and drink from the shops near the marina and ventured on board, vowing not to return to dry land for three days. Katie cooked a big pot of chilli for everyone in the ship’s galley. Beers were quaffed. Memories of this first evening on the boat have been pushed out by what followed, but I assume it was pleasant.

The next day the sea captain returned and fired up the houseboat’s engine. The ropes were cast off and we were out into the ocean. Luxury mansions drifted past and the skyscrapers of Surfers Paradise appeared on the horizon. We travelled maybe fifteen miles down the coast to a secluded bay and dropped anchor.

The boat towed a small dinghy for trips to shore. After a brief instruction on how to start its engine, the captain left the dinghy and boat in our semi-capable hands. It was time to unpack the beach towels and have a dip in the ocean.

Despite the afternoon sun, the water was quite cold and choppy. Dave and I experimented with floating a cheese-plate in the sea. It ended in disaster, with several crackers and a selection of continental cheeses heading to a watery grave. Such is the price of decadence.

That evening, we threw another party. This was an ‘un-birthday’ celebration as several of us had birthdays due. We drank some more and listened to recordings of a band performing Queen songs in Japanese. The Japanese Freddie amused us with his theatrical panache. I retired quite early and missed the birthday cake, but Caz ensured everyone else got a slice. From what I understand she turned quite sinister.

I awoke very early the next morning and spent several hours writing and watching the sun rise. Once the others had risen, six of us – Alex, Dave, Chris, Lindsay, Katie and I – decided to take a trip on the dinghy to the nearby sand island. We spent a carefree hour on the kilometre-long needle of unspoilt sands, in the brilliant sun, chasing the swarms of tiny blue crabs which scampered from our Godzilla-like footsteps.

The problems came when we tried to return to the houseboat. The boat’s engine wouldn’t start. We tried all the advice the sea captain gave us and nothing worked. Nightfall was only a couple of hours away and the houseboat was too far to swim. The dinghy held four people so we needed to make two trips to ferry everyone back. Chris cranked the engine frantically for around five minutes before we finally got it going. He, Lindsay, Katie and I were in the boat.

The following five minutes were a blur of adrenaline and survival instinct lunges. I was nearest to the motor and pumped the throttle to keep it alive. Stuck it in forward gear. The boat surged wildly across the incoming swell. A wave hit. I pulled at the rudder. We careered off the other way, into deep water. Where the hell were we going?

Another wave hit. We began to take on water rapidly. The boat was vanishing under the waves. One of us grabbed the bucket and began bailing it out. The rest of us lay on the boat to prevent it capsizing and scooped out water with our hands. Somehow we didn’t sink and made it back to tie up at the houseboat. Alex and Dave, stranded on the island, were brought back by some kindly locals.

A stiff drink was needed. When I turned to look back at the island, the area was swarming with boats and concerned people searching the sand. ‘A bunch of tourists in too deep.’ It must happen from time to time. I wonder if we made the local news. The dinghy bobbed innocently in the ocean like nothing had happened. I dare say the bastard was cursed.

Not to be outdone by its smaller cousin, the houseboat was providing its own share of technical wobbles. The grey water pump malfunctioned and regurgitated foul-smelling effluent through the shower’s plughole. The ship’s toilet, already an experience in avant-garde noise art and sphinctral discipline, was now full up and beeping madly. A meaty wave from a passing ship struck us and the boat began listing oddly to one side. Add all of these ingredients together and you’ve got a bad package holiday to Sharm El-Sheikh. I think we were ready to return to dry land.

Nevertheless those three days on the houseboat were magical and unforgettable. Next day, as we chugged back to the marina, the group reclining on the sun deck was a picture of contentment. Caz had failed to apply suncream and turned bright pink like a lobster. We all envied her colour-changing abilities.

Everyone had ‘sea legs’ for days afterwards. The world span slowly round us as if moored to a buoy in a serene maritime bay. Next up: another day in (Surfers) Paradise. Katie cooked sausages in the hostel kitchen while I sorted out my travel plans on a borrowed laptop. I was to part ways with the group in a few days.

We celebrated our return to dry land with yet another piss-up. Hitting the pubs and bars of Surfers Paradise, everything seemed eerily reminiscent of Blackpool. It was full-on. Let’s be under no illusions: Surfers is not a quiet glass of red wine by the fire and a discussion about philosophy; it’s an evening doing shots of tequila through a fire-hose in a crack den. Dressed as a priest.

Never mind, the slap-up breakfast the next morning, in an all-you-can-eat fry-up cafe, made up for any perceived trauma. We strolled to the vans, hungover, taking photos on the golden sands. The views were stunning. I wasn’t taken with this huge, bristling elephant of a tourist resort, but Surfers has an absolutely fantastic beach.

Sydney to Cairns – Part Two

The next day we went to Byron Bay. It had a nice atmosphere and was full of hippie shops and backpackers. We parked our vans at a fortified campsite where there were lots of old people. Our lodgings that night were a cheap and cheerful twin bunkhouse close to the shower block. The triple bunk beds were a squeeze to get into.

I bought a T-shirt with ‘Byron Bay Australia’ on it. It looked proper good. Everyone was buying clothes. We went out for dinner at Hog’s Breath but they didn’t have hog. Then we went out and got pissed, as Byron Bay didn’t shut down at 6 in the evening like the last two places we stayed in.

It was a messy evening involving meat platters, cycle taxis and numerous changes of venue. The bloke in the cycle taxi ferried us all to the other side of town in two trips. Not surprisingly he was a very thin man. I asked him where he got his cycle taxi from and he said Colorado.

We watched Lindsay sing at the jam night. Two guys from a band asked her to record with them at their studio. Later on I hit my head in a minibus. Everyone was going mental and singing something called the ‘Magpie blues’. Things were getting out of control. I didn’t enjoy this night.

The next day, nursing one of many hangovers, we went for a look at Byron Bay bay. It was bloody amazing. There were great views up by the lighthouse and the council had thoughtfully employed a man to run up to our window and tell us the car park was full. We didn’t get any photos up there so the nine of us went for a swim down on the beach. Well it was more like a British seaside paddle; shoes and socks off but no funny business.

There were lots of surfers on the beach, some of whom I am reliably informed by the girls were ‘fit’. Dave spilt coffee down his new astronaut T-shirt and tried to wash it off in the sea. I remarked that it was a likely act of subconscious self-sabotage and that the T-shirt was too beautiful for this world. After those high jinks it was time to do more driving. We had to keep an appointment with the boat man up in Sanctuary Cove.

We stopped off for the afternoon in Nimbin, a famed hippie town. Psychedelic shop frontages lined the street in silent homage to the long-vanished days of flower power. Aging figures in tie-died clothing minded stalls. This town was home to those who turned on, tuned in, dropped out for good then started a small business once the drugs wore off. Signs in the street warned, ‘no dealing’. In a big city you’re never more than six feet away from a rat. In Nimbin you’re never more than six feet away from someone selling a bag of weed, apparently.

The Sat Nav had obviously been at the ‘space cakes’ and directed our convoy down a narrow and winding gravel track. Alex, who usually drives a Mini, put in a great shift at the wheel of the second minibus as the vans crawled up and down hills and through miles of forest, seemingly without end.

Eventually, our strange journey through the woods bore fruit, and we emerged on to another highway that would take us to Sanctuary Cove. Now we crossed over the border from New South Wales into Queensland. The clock was ticking and we were very late for our rendezvous. Chris, the instigator of the trip and official Holiday Dad, was starting to show his dark side to the stragglers.

We’d driven relentlessly for a few days since leaving Sydney and everyone was craving a moment to put their feet up, crack open a beverage of alcoholic content, gaze out to the horizon and give each other a contented high-five. It was with not inconsiderable excitement that we awaited our three days at sea.

Sydney to Cairns – Part One

The trip started in late June when the group of eight came together in Melbourne, with six of them flying in from England for a three-week holiday. Apparently the best thing which happened in Melbourne was that everyone went on a Neighbours tour. Not liking Neighbours, I thought this was pretty tragic. But they got up to lots of fun antics and they were clearly having the time of their lives. Then they moved on to Sydney and I flew in to meet the party.

I was excited as I’d not seen any of my friends in fifteen months. For two years I’d lived over in Perth, doing my own thing, but now I was like a fish back in water. I knew Lindsay, Chris, Laura and Theresa, but Katie, Alex, Caz and Dave Cheese were all new faces. Sydney was like an old flame, as I’d lived there for a month in 2008.

Our very first outing was to Harry’s Pies. This was a dark corner near Central station with tables and chairs, where a bespectacled foreign student in a caravan served up all manner of pie-based exotica. Hangovers and tales of last night’s Irish pub abounded among us. My drinking libido was rising, a day late. We spent a quiet evening in at the hostel.

The next day: road trip! We girded our loins, assembled our party and set sail for the beach at Manley; by which I mean we drove there. We had rented two camper vans to take the nine of us and our luggage up the coast. Our eventual target was Brisbane.

Wicked Campers seem to have two styles of van for hire: ‘new’ and ‘junkyard death trap’. We paid extra for two nice new ones with automatic gearboxes and CB radios. Each van was adorned in a custom ‘graffiti’ paint job. The one in which I was travelling had ‘Skool-a-palooza’ emblazoned on the side in ghetto lettering. We were still Skoolies in spirit, if sadly no longer in age.

In Manley we strolled on the beach then went for lunch with Caz’s friend James. He grew up in Blackpool and now works in Manley as a groundsman at a golf course. We ate in a busy seafront restaurant. They served up a cracking seafood risotto. Later on Laura was sick in the bogs. We said goodbye to James and left.

“On the road again!” came Theresa’s sing-song call over the radio. We were up, up and away, travelling through New South Wales’s breadbasket. Heading north into the night we cut a huge swathe through the countryside, finally stopping for rest at Port Macquarie. Theresa and Cheese did a great job of driving – no doubt sustained by the game of ‘Blind Date’ they played over the radio.

We had expected ‘Port McFlurry’ to be quite a happening place, but when we pulled up, at 9.30 on a Sunday night, it was of course dead. The one and only food shop still open was a Dominos, so we all bought takeaway pizzas. Fast-food franchises are often your only friend in Australian country towns.

Beds were waiting for us nearby, at a tennis court motel run by a friendly Asian woman. We stroked her cat then took our pizzas back to our rooms. I shared a room with Laura and Theresa. I was to be on the receiving end of a lot of girly chats during this holiday.

The next day we had breakfast in Port MacQuarie – mainly memorable for Linz canoodling with a statue of Aussie politician Sir Edmund Barton. Moving on to Coffs Harbour, we found a curious community radio station that resided in a shopping centre. It was run by a friendly lady with a strange name which escapes me. She gave us all a tour of the studios and I waved at the DJ. It was like a step back in time to the mid 1980s.

The barbeque was good. We cooked many fine foods at the park by the beach –supermarket sausages and burgers basically. You’re either too full or not quite full enough after a barbeque. I think we were all very full and there was food left over.

For the next leg of the journey I took over as van DJ and dropped quality track after quality track. I remember selecting the classic hit ‘Bills Bills Bills’ by Destiny’s Child and treating my fellow passengers to some freestyle dance shit. You can take these risks when you’re on holiday.

Arriving in Grafton (a small country town) that evening we found it to be just that – a small country town. All the shops were shut and the streets were empty. It was an exact repeat of our experiences in Port MacQuarie with the added twist that this was a weekday. Perhaps everyone living there suffered from agoraphobia?

After the hotel bar closed at 7.30 we came up with the genius idea of having a shopping trolley race down the deserted high street. Chris and Cheese wheeled the girls along the pavement at full tilt. I think Chris’s team won the race. We whooped and hollered. Curtains twitched. The town slept. Grafton seemed to merit no more than an overnight stop but the hotel was very good. We stayed up playing dirty drinking games in Dave’s rented cottage.

Sydney to Cairns – Introduction

A sudden wave broke. The boat pitched violently like a leaf. The four of us scrambled in vain to stop the water engulfing us. The oar and a lifejacket went overboard. The water surged. The engine let out a distressed whine. The boat span round in aimless circles. Figures on the nearby sandbank looked on in horror. Our trip to the island was ending in catastrophe.

This isn’t some Rolling Stone-style introduction to a tale of rock star antics gone awry. This is an everyday scene from a recent holiday, when my friends and I nearly sparked a major search-and-rescue incident off the Queensland coast.

When we Blackpool folk holiday abroad, we have a knack of drawing attention to ourselves. If I were to give a reason it is simply because we love life. The world is a great big playground.

It was not a good idea for me to pilot the dinghy in hindsight. I knew as much about boating as I did about Kyrgyzstani import tariffs, which is not a lot. But despite a nerve-jangling afternoon featuring a dodgy outboard motor and a few unexpected waves, the gods conspired to micturate the sweet urine of good fortune down on our day. We bailed all the water out from between the seats while I steered the dinghy back to our houseboat; an oasis of calm floating on the sea a few hundred metres away.

Vuvuzelas - some friendly advice

Hurrah, rejoice, Allah be praised – the World Cup is with us once more. The global carnival, the cirque du monde, “football’s big party”. One month and sixty-four matches of top-class international football. The greatest players in the game taking each other on under the banners of nationality.

Here in Australia, thanks to SBS every single game is being shown live and free-to-air. SBS is a curious old thing - normally it's a broadcaster of lesser-known jewels of world cinema with titles such as Steamboat to Kyrgyzstan. But now the World Cup dominates its schedules.

Due to blanket wall-to-wall promotion in the media the normally soccer-cynical Australian populace is suddenly embracing the beautiful game. And thanks to advertising we get to watch Cristiano Ronaldo, a man with more wealth than most Pacific island nations, attempt to sell us engine oil with all the charisma of a mechanoid, six f**king times a match.

So far I have watched South Africa-Mexico, Argentina-Nigeria and England-USA. A lot of the games are on in the middle of the night due to the time difference. To watch them requires heroic feats of power-napping and the cessation of normal night-time activities. We’ve already seen a lot of great football, and it’s great that Africa is finally playing host to a World Cup… but do we really need the vuvuzelas?

Vuvuzelas? Surely you know what they are. I’m assuming you are familiar with the atonal honking sounds accompanying every single match on TV made by the long flute-like plastic trumpets in the crowd. The subject has already generated a lot of ire so it would be far from an original sentiment if I were to say they’re a bit bloody annoying.

The typical pro-vuvuzela argument is that they are part of South Africa’s cultural heritage, generating as they do a raucous celebratory atmosphere amongst the country’s gleaming new stadia. And therefore by extension, to want to deny the fans their vuvuzelas (or vuvuzelae?) is apparently to be a bigoted colonialist or a snobbish football purist.

I’m not saying get rid of vuvuzelas – I’m saying change them. Make them more musical. I know a fair bit about musical pitch and what strikes me is that when vuvuzelas sound together en masse, they don’t produce a clear note. It is a horrid dissonant mix of B and B flat. In musical terms it’s like a badly-tuned-in TV picture. That’s because no two vuvuzelas are alike – they are manufactured using crude plastic moulds - and they all produce a slightly different pitch when blown into.

With a bit of precision engineering these instruments could all be developed to strike exactly the same pitch at once, like instruments in an orchestra. Hey presto – the horrible drone would be replaced by a clear note, ringing out throughout the stadium.

To take this further, the companies making these things could manufacture different varieties, each playing a certain note in the musical scale. Some would play a C, some would play E and others would play a G, and together, through collectively blowing the three notes, the crowd would sound the chord of C major.

Imagine 50,000 vuvuzelas playing the chord of C major in a football stadium. It would marry art and beauty on a vast scale; it would a fitting musical accompaniment to the colourful and exuberant crowds. The World Cup is an event like no other - and as it only comes around once every four years, South Africa 2010 requires a grand vision to make the occasion uniquely memorable.

I propose that the tournament organisers work together with the fans in choosing different chords for different matches. France-Uruguay could have worked well with an A major (vuvuzelas in A, C sharp and E). England-USA could have been a D major (D, F sharp and A).

For teams of countries with oppressive regimes, such as North Korea, perhaps a more mournful minor chord, such as A flat minor (A flat, B and E flat). That would poetically convey the fact that the poor buggers on the pitch may be sent to a gulag if they fail to qualify from the group.

And for Argentina, a more complex diminished seventh chord, to reflect their players’ technical prowess, and in the case of Maradona, a fragile mental state teetering towards full-on psychosis.

All of this is esoteric waffle and if put into place would drive up the cost of these plastic trumpets. Then again, surely it would be a good thing to price the vuvuzelas out of the fans’ range? The world would be free to enjoy the tournament without the noise of frigging trumpets.

Take note FIFA: with my vision, you could have created not so much a tournament as a UFO ride into outer space.

I expect a call.

Eleventh hour reprieve

There’s never a dull moment in my life at the minute.

So far this year I’ve booked a holiday to India, cancelled it, bought a car, driven it into a Mercedes, taken my parents on a road trip around Western Australia and nearly been deported. And it’s still only April.

Apart from the road trip (more on which later) I’ve mainly been preoccupied with the struggles of getting a new Aussie visa. For the last two years I’ve been on a working holiday visa and it was due to end this month. Once your second year as a backpacker is finished, it's all over, the eternal goon cask has run dry, and you have to go home. But the adventure can't finish. I won't let it.

After checking out all avenues, such as returning as an international student (hideously expensive) or applying for permanent residency (only open to certain skill types and takes years to be approved) I was advised to try a 487 regional migrant visa. This would allow me not only to stay, but to eventually be eligible for permanent residency. It sounded like a win-win.

First there was the little matter of passing the skills assessment. Sending off the Vetassess paperwork was one of the most complicated things I’ve ever had to do. I had to gather copies of my passport, degree certificate, contracts of employment, old payslips from the early 2000s, a photo of me holding today's newspaper, proof I owned at least three stubby holders… not an easy task considering most of this stuff had to be extracted from my old bedroom and posted to me by my folks in the UK.

It cost $555 just to send off for the assessment. If I passed, I would then have to pay $265 for a medical, $200 for state sponsorship and a whopping $2,525 for the 487 visa itself. This means the total costs would exceed $3,500 (£2,100) and I still wouldn’t be guaranteed a ‘yes’ from immigration at the end. It’s no lie to say that the buggers charge an arm and a leg, and I was taking one hell of a gamble throwing myself with gusto into this, using what money I had.

I finally got the paperwork together and sent off for my skills assessment in early February. It was then subject to a lengthy delay after the perpetually useless shower of bastards known as "Australia Post" managed to take a whole week to deliver my overnight express delivery parcel to Melbourne.

Once it got there I had to sit and wait patiently for 6 to 8 weeks while my assessment was considered. I was still confident of getting the results before my visa expired on 15th April. Even a few days' leeway would give me enough time to apply to immigration and be granted a bridging visa to stay.

By Easter I was getting a bit worried that I’d not heard anything back from Vetassess. Repeated phone calls to them yielded me the same solitary sentence of information: “it’s with the assessors and they’re looking at it now.” Had I missed out paperwork? Did they want to see my A-level certificates? No-one was telling me anything.

I’d already made big commitments on the assumption I’d get this visa – I bought the car and signed a new contract with work stretching till the end of June. The immigration laws are really strict and you face strict penalties for overstaying. I'd have to leave on the 15th without that bridging visa, even if I subsequently passed my skills assessment, regardless of my employment. Not knowing what hemisphere I’d be living in in a couple of weeks started to feel strangely liberating.

I finally got the skills assessment back last Thursday, on 8th April, and as I impatiently scrolled down the fax I saw the telltale words, “ASSESSMENT OUTCOME: NEGATIVE”. Oh shit. How had I failed?

Apparently my work history wasn’t up to scratch – I’d done too much IT work to be considered as a business information professional, but not enough to be classed as an IT professional. Bullshit. They could have told me that earlier! I had no time left to lodge an appeal, which would cost another $330 anyway. There was now no way I could apply for the visa.

My dream of staying in Australia was in ruins. I was left to break the news to my work and to my friends that I'd have to leave very soon. Then I had to think about selling my car, guitars and computer, packing my bags and booking a plane ticket home. All in less than a week. I tried to keep calm, but wondered what the hell would I do back in England?

On Thursday evening I switched on my computer to start arranging all this, and hit yet another stumbling block. After months of working fine, Windows suddenly deactivated itself and was refusing to start up. Now I had no access to a computer and couldn’t do a thing. Really all I wanted was to pour myself a cold beer and chat to my mates on Skype. It seemed like God was not only laughing at me but sodomising me with a ginormous comedy dildo.

The next morning I turned up at work, after a miserable evening stewing in my own company, and talked through the situation with my boss. He was gutted I had to leave so suddenly. His issue was that they hadn’t been able to recruit somebody else with my computer skills after my first spell working there. Luckily, we suddenly realised, there was a way out of our problem.

The 457 long-stay business visa is often seen as the holy grail of backpackers; you're allowed to stay for a long time, with few of the attendant costs or hassles of applying for your own visa. Often this can lead to permanent residency. I phoned the immigration department and they confirmed that, yes, I would be eligible to apply for a 457, and yes, there was still time for us to lodge the sponsorship paperwork. Sponsorship would allow me to stay until at least the end of my contract in July and give me time to plan my next move.

Before the day was out we had completed all three stages of the application and submitted them on the immigration website. Cost to my work: $415, cost to me: a quite palatable $260. And with one last click of the mouse, the application was lodged, and I was legally able to stay in the country on a bridging visa. I made sure I reached profound levels of drunkenness that evening to celebrate.

With six days left to go, it was not so much an 11th hour reprieve as an 11th hour and 59th minute reprieve! Some people say computers are the future... maybe mine had known I was staying all along when it refused to start up.

Raw food diet

Today I am listless and lethargic with all the energy of a dead dog. I have lines under my eyes and I shuffle round the house with a lumbering, unsteady gait, trying distractedly to find something to do.

It's not flu. It's not a hangover. The reason for this is that I have just begun something known as a 'raw food diet', which I will be on continuously for the next three weeks. I can eat only fruit, salad and nuts, plus certain specific meat and dairy produce. Caffeine and alcohol are both horrifyingly off-limits.

I have to eat specific foods, in a specific order, at specific times throughout the day. The life of monk-like asceticism and self-denial is mine. All I need now is a robe, a manky length of rope to flagellate myself with and a religion that makes absolutely no sense.

It’s extraordinary how much you can come to rely on food. Food is there to prop you up when you feel low; to console you when all is wrong with the world; to replenish you when you are tired and weary; to waste your time when you've nothing better to do but exquisitely stimulate your taste buds with some wondrous foodstuff. Eating defines so much about our lives. Remove this comfort and you are left staring at the bare bones of your own existence.

And what is it that has sent me on this solitary outwards path into the nether regions of the soul? Why could I possibly do something so stupid? Well, over the next few weeks I am participating in a ground-breaking personal development course here in Perth that requires a heightened level of mental clarity and focus for a sustained period of time. A level of brain performance that would not be possible eating normally. A heavenly parabola of thought that will breed fresh and astonishing insights into my life, or so I'm led to believe.

As the old adage goes, you are what you eat. We all know caffeine gives you a boost in the mornings then takes it back with interest later in the day (‘first it giveth, then it taketh away,’ as the Queens of the Stone Age sang, though they were talking about drugs). Well other foodstuffs have this effect on the brain, in subtle, far-reaching and incalculable ways. Processed foods serve to muddy the waters of the mind and distract its focus away from the path it wishes to follow.

As such the course requires I must shun them, and the only things that can pass my lips from now on are the Lord’s own vegetables, grown in his holy nourishing Soil; and the feta cheese, skinless chicken breasts and boiled eggs that are his children. We are all one, connected and hard-wired into the universe, humans, animals and vegetables all. By eating life you regurgitate life through your thoughts and deeds, or so the theory goes.

It's taken a hell of a lot of self-discipline to get this far, but a whole lot more is needed to see this through. Once the detritus of everyday living and everyday eating has cleared itself out, my mind will be clear to soar and swoop like the mighty hummingbird. Many folk never dare to tread that far, and I won’t be practicing the elimination diet for any longer than the prescribed three weeks. If you eat this way for too long there comes a point where malnourishment kicks in and you get sick.

My mouth salivates at the prospect of the finish. As a doughnut-loving sugar fiend, I plan to be back among my everyday thoughts, happily gorging on my everyday crappy, over-processed, mind-numbingly delicious foods once the period is over. And through doing the course I will hopefully take home some enlightenment in a doggy-bag, to remind me of the strange and hallowed spiritual turf on which I once trod.

I’ve already lost a prodigious amount of weight over the last few months, through tons of exercise and cutting out a lot of the crap I used to eat (compulsive cheese sandwich-eating being the main and surprising culprit). My previously rotund frame is now much more thinner; but this diet will take it a step further and give me protruding ribs that could double up as a mid-range xylophone. I plan to continue going to the gym in the midst of this - I figure the exercise won't swallow up too much of my meagre energy and will burn off more fat.

And yet there are two more gaping holes newly rendered in my life; with caffeine and alcohol off the list, I find my general enjoyment of things massively restricted. I’ve lost all appetite for going to the pub and socialising - it just isn't the same when all you can drink is tapwater. Soft drinks can no longer be purchased and consumed, depriving me of the associated cool that aligning my thirst aims with these quality brands would provide. How can I cut it with the cool kids now!

Wisely I chose to quit tea and coffee several weeks ago, so that's one battle less to face. But it's still not a pleasant task to write this as the delicious smells of toasting bread and fresh coffee waft up from my housemates' unencumbered breakfasting orgy in the kitchen. The bloody bastards.

I don’t even have a job now the Christian fee-paying school I was temping at (oh yes) no longer requires my services for proof-reading school reports. I've got nothing to occupy me until the course starts in earnest next weekend.

I can only sit at home, listening to the sounds of nature and the street; absolutely certain in the knowledge that somewhere, someone is having more fun than me.