Twenty-Ten In Short

No, you are not still drunk from the night before nor have you had a large glass of expired milk causing your mind to lie to you. This actually is a new post. After a short five to six month hiatus, I have decided just this minute to get back into the blogging world that is cyberspace.

Cyberpsace: A world where nerds become cool and paedophiles pretend to be schoolgirls, and once again where you can follow my Euro-adventures from your very home. Why would I choose to start back my blog so unexpectedly, you may be asking yourself? Is it because I’ve grown bored of spending my free time trying to hatch a plan to make Sky Sports Queen Georgie Thompson mine? No, my god, never will I tire of this. Is it because I am growing increasingly concerned that the amount of alcohol I drink will soon leave me an inability to remember things that have recently occurred? A little, yes. But mainly, it is because a strange fellow I’m not entirely sure I’ve ever met before said to me at work tonight that he had been reading my blog. Now, I’m not good with faces, so I can’t be certain that I’ve never met this person, but I’m fairly sure I have not. And I thought to myself, how are strange people I have never met before going to follow what I’m doing with my life if I do not continue my blog? C’mon James, I thought out loud, don’t be so selfish – give the strange randoms what they want. If nothing else, it will give me the opportunity to experience what it feels like to be on the other end of the stalking stick for a change [Georgie Thompson by God as my witness, I will make thee mine..]

So without further adieu [is that how you spell it? How confusing..] here is my brief and hopefully slightly entertaining [or at the very least, not mind-numbingly boring] summary of 2010. I started the New Year the same way I’m sure many of you did; by drunk-calling people you aren’t entirely sure you like or even know for that matter, and proceeding to yell nonsense that after a while stops being words and simply becomes noise… like moose mating. Wait, like moose mating. Like meese mating. Like mooses mating. Like moosai mating. Like two moose mating. SOD IT. Like drunk cows mating. That’s so very much simpler.

Midnight had come and gone, and it was now 2010. I don’t remember much after that, other than a man with braided hair named River, seeing it snow lightly for about 5 minutes, trying to trade my friend for a free beer… you know, the usual… and then I awoke on Jenna’s couch to a dog licking my face. And I do not mean an unbearably unattractive girl, but an actual dog. Jenna lived above the pub where we had opted to ring in the New Year, and after a coffee and some painkillers I was headed home to enjoy my hangover in privacy. However, on the short journey home [which seems a lot longer when you’re still a bit pissed] from Gunnersbury to Clapham Junction, my phone rang. It was my cousin Frank, and he had decided that he did not want to be hungover after what sounded like a great night, so he thought it best to continue drinking all day at a pub in Sutton. After considering for a good 30 seconds whether I would join him and a few other friends we work with, I boycotted my plans to bask in self pity and headed South! I know I promised to write merely a brief summary of my start to the year, however it is on THIS day in THIS pub that I was taught the greatest life lesson anyone could ever learn, and I was taught by Frank Kinsey.

Drinking the day after a big night to send your hangover packing is not unheard of, regardless of where you’re from. I’ve used the old ‘hair of the dog’ tactic and been drunk for a solid 48hours during my brief stint as representative of Sudan in the Australasian Model United Nations Committee I was peer pressured into being a part of last year [don’t thou judge me] purely so I would not have to deal with post-alcohol headaches. However, when Frank told me on that fateful morning that all I had to do was stomach two, yes TWO, pints of cider in order to triumph my hangover, I refused to believe him. It all seemed so simple, and make-believe, like something out of a Disney film. Well, a drunken Disney film for adults, at least. But two pints later, I had proven to myself that Frank’s now infamous two-pint threshold was the real deal. It was like science, only not hideously confusing. This is science I understood! Take that Ms Wilson, my mean and unnaturally short grade 9 science teacher; I was starting to get it! I now owe Frank for the alcoholic lifestyle I have come to cherish this year. And if I develop some kind of alcohol-related life-threatening illness, well, at least I have a relative to blame for it. Kudos, Frank. Kudos.

OK so I’ve been rambling for a while about my life in 2010 and so far have made it to about 4:00pm, January 1st. I think I need to speed things up for a bit. So that night, we danced, we did the limbo with Alison’s scarf, we ate epic nachos, drank sambuca, moved on to different bars, Frank was kicked out of All Bar One, we went with him, ended up on Frank’s kitchen floor drinking Budweiser’s and then thought it best to all share a bed, much to the confusion of Frank’s dad, Brian.

Man, this is hard. I thought I would be able to summarize 2010 in a hilarious but short story. I may have to leave out some of the anecdotes. So I’ll continue with the summing up. Australia Day was glorious amounts of fun, and we celebrated it on 2 different days. On the actual day, some Australian friends of mine took us to an Aussie Walkabout bar - but not before stopping off at Belushi's for the most awful shot in the entire world - vegemite & vodka. I never tasted anything so foul, and a little part of me died that moment and will never be replaced.

People have come and gone, sometimes it’s been sad and other times a bit of a relief. There have been numerous Billy Vincent gigs, each one better than the last, and they also released a new EP which you should all check out at www.billyvincent.co.uk – I’m not kidding, they’re well rad, listen to them otherwise you hate orphans and happiness, and do you really want to be ‘that guy’?

I spent my 20th birthday in Paris, and was able to find an English pub [with an English bartender by the name of ‘Flannan’, yes – apparently that is a name now] that was showing the Arsenal match against Liverpool. We also met an exceedingly cool English girl from Newcastle named Fran, who was in the middle of trying to find a place to live in Paris. So on my birthday, not only did I get to see the Eiffel Tower, the Notre Dame AND see it snow in an outrageously cool, foreign city… BUT, I got to see Arsenal beat Liverpool, and then have a table of 20 French theatre students sing me ‘Happy Birthday’. The latter was because I went to visit a French friend of mine that I met in Brisbane a couple of years back, who in recent years has decided to become an actor. And then it was time to head back to London. Oh and on the bus back to London we met another guy from Brisbane who, after 6 hours of trying to work it out, I had actually met when I was about sixteen and he was a hippie and dating my friend Davey’s older sister. SMALL FREAKING WORLD.

It is a shame that I won’t get to write about all the things that have happened this year, but I don’t wish to bore you nor I remember them even in the slightest. I’ll try to sum a few more things up. I’ve had plenty more long nights at the Kinsey residence, starting around 5pm and working our way through the night and sometimes onto almost 6am. Almost every one of these nights involves a drunken rendition of ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ by Journey, and by ‘almost every one’ I mean ‘every daaaamn single one’. I’ve been out to Berkshire to visit the family, and have also re-discovered my love and respect for Primark, the world’s greatest store. It also snowed in January so we got have an epic snow fight which I feel Frank and I won, before spending HOURS making a snowman representation of Andrey Arshavin, my favourite Arsenal player.

I have also met two English celebrities; Matthew Horne and Pete Docherty. Many of you back home will have no idea who Matthew Horne is, so I will tell you because I’m such a generous human being. And by generous, I mean self-involved. Matthew Horne is the star of one of my favourite English shows, ‘Gavin and Stacey’. Youtube that shit up right now! Pete Docherty played with a rather average local band at Social Bar in Soho a few weeks back after Billy Vincent had finished up on stage. And after he finished, I finished my drink and went up and made a right twat of myself. I have literally no memory of what was said, and I wasn’t even drunk. I remember going up to him, saying “Excuse me” and then I blacked out. I am yet to receive word of a restraining order so looks like I’m in the clear… for now.

We've had several Mexican Monday's, Tequila Tuesday's/Thursday's, Sombre Sunday's - all of which were fun, but the most recent one where Helen cooked an epic Chille and provided toy guns with pallets to shoot at each other took the cake. What started out as a few drinks, some nachos and a bit of fun turned into a battle of the sexes, with Frank and I once again taking victory over the girls. Take that, women's rights.

Flying Lotus was performing in Amsterdam in March and Kez had invited us to go with him, simply for the night. Leaving everything to the last minute as I so often do, I was running late on the day we were supposed to fly out and nearly caused us to miss our train. When checking our bags, Kez had to ask that we skip the queue as we were running late. We obliged, but due to liquids we were held up at baggage control while they searched the bags. As the doors to our plane were meant to close in ten, count ‘em, TEN minutes, it was agreed that I would run the painfully long journey to gate one hundred and something, and stall the attendants. As I ran towards the gate, playing that really fast "late for the airport music" from 'Home Alone' for inspiration, it hit me that I had no idea what I could do to stal - and I began to panic. After what seemed to be a marathon, I arrived and, out of breathe, slammed my hands down on the flight attendant’s desk. Still a tiny bit drunk from the night before, I yelled, honest to God, “We have to get on that plane!” to which the pretty stewardess from BMI replied, “Right. What flight is that?” I told her I was flying to Amsterdam, only to find out they would not be boarding for another fifteen or so minutes. So I proceeded to sit amongst my future fellow passengers, alone, while each one stared and snickered, waiting for the others to join. Once we reached Amsterdam and our hotel, we were upgraded to the penthouse for no extra charge. The place was amazing, and even had a hidden kitchen that literally took us seven hours to find. Stefano came around, we had some red wine and then to Flying Lotus we did go! And at the airport home the next day, I thought it wise and appropriate to buy a wheel of Gouda cheese and, once I had used my teeth to cut through the protective seal of wax surrounding it, I proceeded to hit it as a hand-food. You might think that since the Dutch are big on cheese, they would find this a normal activity on a Thursday morning. They did not.

This brings us up to about mid-March, which is when I took off to Dublin for St. Patrick’s Day. Lauren, a friend from Brisbane whom I met at an infamous Ricci Betty party and instantly liked due to her unbelievably wicked taste in music and love for Arrested Development, had been studying and living on campus at UCD. I was to stay with her and her new friends, none of whom were Irish but all of whom were ridiculous amounts of fun. The first night started off a bit difficult, as somebody ‘up there’ really did not want us to eat or drink. Lauren had a brand new bottle of vodka, however when he opened the lid we found there was thick glass sealing the vodka in the bottle. We tried numerous tools to get through the glass; pens, bottle openers, butter knives, and I believe at one point we even began to saw through it using a bread knife. At the same time, our pizza had decided to fall apart in the oven forcing us to attempt to fry it instead. This did not work out smoothly at all, however tasted amazing and we did, eventually, get to the liquidy goodness that is vodka. Now that I think about it, I cannot remember how we got in or who was responsible for this – otherwise I would give them the credit they deserve.

I’d like to tell you we caught at least a bit of the St Patrick’s Day parade, really, I would. But that would be lie. You see, Phil, a friendly American fellow, had cooked us an epic Irish breakfast and we opted to stay in, eat breakfast, have a few drinks, and rock out to a Alphabeat, Journey and Toto instead. I regret nothing. St. Patrick’s Day came and went quite quickly, and the next night we went out with an Australian named Eoin which ended with us returning to campus and waking everybody up so that they could drink with us until 7am. The plane trip home was horrible and I was unbelievably sick, but although I did not have the time or the energy to go into detail about this trip, it was definitely one of the best weeks of my life. Lauren was amazingly good to us, we had an epic Chinese feast, we met Bridget and Catherine - two girls from New York who are easily two of my favourite people in the world, and others including Phil who I previously mentioned as the amazing chef, and ARDI - world's nicest guy. I also forgot to mention that we dressed up for St. Patrick’s Day, and in the end I did look like a drunk clown with a large head, tiny hat and green beard. I am almost entirely out of dignity.

I am a bit distracted now so am going to leave it there. Now that I have once again written a long and boring summary of the last six months, I will aim to update this blog far more frequently! Stefano [yes, his name deserves to be in bold, he's that cool] arrives in London for a few days in 2 weeks, so no doubt there will be stories worth sharing after that.

To anyone who did not simply stop living [due to the boredom] and stayed til the end, cheers. I would say something witty now but I’m too tired and exhausted so all of you imagine a witty sign off and then like picture me saying it or something so I sound funny and smart.

Nice one.


Ps. Once again I am too lazy to proofread so just deal with my mistakes and errors, mum.