Celebratory Youthmovies Adventure Quest

In Which: Our Hero Travels To The Big Smoke, Encounters The Problems With A Place That Is Bigger Than A Square Mile, Hijacks A Friend’s Evening, Replacing The Last-Train-Home With An Expensive, Relentless Blistering Sleepless Night, And Returns Home, Bemused, One Camera Lighter, But With A Crème Egg In Tow

Those of you who know me well enough to be reminded about it on Facebook will have duly noted that it was my birthday last week. In celebration of this fact, I travelled down to London with Dan and Chris to see one of the last-ever Youthmovies shows. Feeling in rather fine spirits I decided that the most appropriate way to travel was IN STYLE. That’s right; second class carriage, with two bottles of whisky and a large tub of vanilla ice cream. Those of you who know me at all will be well aware of the fact that I very rarely make mistakes, however, my barely finished description of our choice of journey refreshment probably offers some explanation as to the following series of unfortunate lapses in judgement.

By the time we arrived at the gig I was effectively too tight to speak properly (or at all come to think of it), and thus I passed an enjoyable couple of hours swearing, stumbling, forgetting people’s names and hurling abuse at Youthmovies when they were onstage (I should point out here though, that nothing I said came close to Dan’s champion effort of telling Al, the guitarist, that he looked like he was wearing a fat lady’s tee-shirt).

Although we had a place to stay in London with someone who was at the gig with us, we decided at about eleven that it would be a tremendous idea to go and see another gig, having been invited for free by the lovely Cats In Paris. On the way we bumped into Iain making his way to the last train along Bishopsgate, so kidnapped him explaining that there was an excellent music show to attend, and he could certainly stay with our friends in Crouch End, no problems! We arrived, and were met with what I can only assume was the clerical gaffe of a distinct lack of our names on any guest list, but gladly paid money to get in, in such high spirits were we. We danced like massive pricks at the very front of the stage, in the most prominent and distracting position possible, in order to demonstrate to the band how much we were (loudly) enjoying the show. We probably hurled abuse again. I honestly can’t remember. All good things must end though, as I’m sure you are aware, and we eventually turned, tired and well cavorted, to make our way to borrowed beds in Crouch End.

Four hours and seventy-eight buses later, we arrived in the bright morning sunlight at Crouch End, hair be-drizzled, eyelids and limbs a-lolling. An odd thing happened on one of our many autobus journeys. Those of you who know my name will be aware that I’m not one to jump to conclusions, if we’re honest jumping is the kind of physical exertion I rarely stretch to, but I am quietly confident that the two charming [and when I say charming I mean incredibly intimidating] youths that specifically chose to sit either side of me for a period just long enough to offer me a selection of narcotics and accuse me of racism before alighting but 100m down the road from whence they came may have had something to do with the disappearance of one camera from my jacket pocket. Then again it could have fallen out. I’m not making accusations. Well, it was an ancient camera anyway, and full of pictures of my genitalia, so joke’s on them. Ha.


I would like to introduce to you now a concept which I have cleverly denoted by the word ‘blessaster’. The key here is the joining of the words ‘blessing’ and ‘disaster’ [I picked through a long list of words to join together there, for instance ‘plaster’ was a close contender] a neologism which I feel sums up that odd feeling of having been given the best and worst news ever, somehow bundled into one nauseating sentiment. For example, entering a pub to the words “Ben! Just in time, I’ve bought a round of drinks, here’s yours! Carling tops all round!” or perhaps discovering that the Beach Boys have reformed to support Keane on tour.

It is at this point in my evening that I encountered my first example of a blessaster, for as we finally arrived at our destination, with that welcoming door with warm comfortable sofas and beds nestled behind it in sight, we discovered Chris had not in fact been in contact with our supposed host since we left Hoxton, and moreover, he was not in contact with them when we were stood outside their rather grand house in a rather cold place miles away from anywhere I’ve ever been before.

We ambled back to the bus stop, whereupon we received the second dose of blessaster – we managed to stumble upon a bus that took us straight to just round the corner from Liverpool Street in about half an hour. It felt amazing to not have to trek around again for another three hours, but it certainly made the last four hours of brutal wandering seem all the more futile and misery-stricken.

Iain and I got off the train at Stratford, directly onto the platform of the next train departing for Brentwood. The home straight. But no, another blessaster, for you see, we had to wait TWENTY MINUTES for that train. Yes yes yes, it probably doesn’t seem a great deal to you now, but believe me it was very cold, and none of the shops were open so we couldn’t even stand around and browse through porn.

I got home at 8am and promptly slept for as many hours as I could squeeze into my head. Despite how much I am grumbling now, it really didn’t seem that bad.

That is until my phone stopped working, and when I returned home I found my now defunct camera charger. Boo.