The Final Push

        A couple of days ago my Mum tagged me in a post on Facebook, she'd found something about an Instagram account called @TravellingCars, made by a girl called Kim Leuenberger, who has been travelling around the world for the last five years taking pictures of toy cars in amazing places and situations. This Leuenberger girl has almost 50,000 followers, and has been featured on the official Instagram page – my Mum tagged me because she knows I've been doing a similar thing with The Rocker. What she didn't know was that I'd already heard of Kim's page, contacted her, and met up with her in London for a few drinks and lunch one afternoon a few weeks earlier.
        YOU LOSE MUM! TOO SLOW!!!
        Dickhead.

Just to give you guys some context, this is like the Toy Car equivalent of getting a picture with Brad Pitt, or like Hillary Clinton or Clarke Gable or some shit.

        I am under absolutely no illusions that what I've been doing with The Rocker is anything other than pointless and stupid. Aside from the fact that the stupidity is the reason I love it so much, I've also always thought that it's not really the particular THING that I, or any person, decides to dedicate their time to that is necessarily important. I could be spending my time taking pictures of birds, or trees, or earlobes, or collecting underwear, or doing something really indefensible like HAIRDRESSING for fuck's sake – the activity itself isn't important.
        What's important is that, as a person, I'm putting effort into something. Anything. We are all full of an infinite well of passion, but for that passion to be visible we need to pour it into something: a cup, a shoe, a dustbin, ANYTHING! Just to remind us that it's still there.

        These are my convictions, and I was hoping they were shared by the rest of the world, or at least by one Kim Leuenberger, when I emailed her on the 15th of June after a friend from Liverpool (IMAGINE!!) linked me to her Instagram. I emailed asking for help. Help with what? Who fucking knows man. My problem went something like this:
        I found this toy car on a playground in May, and planned on writing about it as a way of distracting myself from my imminent departure from London. The idea driving (teehee) the whole thing was supposed to be that you can tell who someone is based on the people they choose to surround themselves with, so rather than write about myself directly, I'd take a literary snapshot of my life in London by writing about the people I care about in this city who make up my life right now. I got a few posts in and realised that had absolutely nothing to do with Toy Cars, and the dawning of that lost, “what am I even talking about?” feeling was swift, and brutal, like when you realize you've paid for an awful haircut, from a stupid hairdresser, and now you're STUCK!

        So I asked Kim if she wanted to meet up because “HEY look at this we both enjoy taking pictures of our Toy Cars isn't that fun! We should do that together sometime, or at least meet up and exchange notes PLEASE HELP ME MY IDEA IS FADING I'M LOST AND ALONE there is no one here who understands me.” – if you really want to have a bit of fun with this blog, imagine me whispering that last part after the caps, maybe behind some sort of Door, like a Leader of The Resistance. Yeah!

Kim was even kind enough to take a pic of my car with her camera to make sure the rest of my blog looked like garbage in comparison

        I was hoping that the sheer gushing intensity of the email I sent Kim – complete with Rogue Capitalization and plenty of rambling asides – would convince her that I was an individual worth meeting in person. We chatted for a few days in long, impassioned emails, and after I was finished imaging our wedding and future life together, we agreed to meet up for lunch, which passed without incident, before we hugged an amicable farewell and went our separate ways.

        There is something unmatchably exciting about meeting a new person, and talking to them for a good amount of time. A few hours is really all you need, there's enough time in there for both of you to judge whether the two of you are working on similar wavelengths. Even a series of emails will do. Any type of free, open conversation with no agenda and no ulterior motives. Those conversations are some of the most invigorating and enjoyable moments in life, and they happen all too rarely, because as much as we all love them, no one has any idea where they come from.
        The trick is finding a good excuse: a good friend of mine from Paris told me he used to always carry a corkscrew so that on long afternoons spent drinking by The Seine, he had reason to spark conversations with people around him. That's kind of half the reason I still smoke occasionally, it's the reason I love working in the coffee industry and searching out new coffee shops to find those virgin conversations. It's the purpose of cocktail bars, and book clubs, and football, and pretty much incidental activity you can think of where people go out, try half-heartedly to do a thing, and sit around afterwards swapping details.
        People want to talk to each other.

Claire enabling

Nina trying not to enjoy herself

Davey smoking Da Shisha

Angie and Mel laughing

Yas, Liz, Ed, and ED'S BROTHER WHODIS?!

J'aime, whose mother named her in French

Rosie, who wouldn't let me photograph her without her face on

Rick looking excited

Maz trying her hardest

Yotam with a very brave woman

        So here's my idea: I'm giving The Rocker away.
        I'm going to give it to Brenda – of course – and ask that she give it to someone else, and they'll give it to someone else and etc... I've done as much as I can do with this thing. I've taken as many stupid photos as I have in me, and written a few decent stories, and now it's time to push my car out into the world, and see if anything comes back.

        What I would love, more than anything, would be if whoever Brenda gives the car to reads the few stories I've written on this blog, and then emails me for a chat. Wouldn't that be the coolest thing? Sending out a little message into the world in the form of a Toy Car I found in a playground one midnight two months ago.
        I would love if they contacted me (if this is you, my email address is at the top of this page... or right here even - crazhore@gmail.com) but even if they don't, it doesn't matter. I'm sending The Rocker out into the world to be Passed between People, and hopefully if this initial Push is strong enough, that journey will last well the glorious European Summer I'm writing from right now. The fulfilment of a Promise that two months ago was only taken on faith. I've brought this idea to a conclusion.
        And I got to shit pointlessly on hairdressers twice in the process hahaha...

        I mean come on, seriously, they're idiots. What a useless non-profession, I've cut friends' hair – AND MY OWN HAIR – more times than I can count, and I've done it drunk, and high, and never had to use some special basin with a hole for your head in it or some lame elastic neck-cloth or two-hundred dollar scissors. NONE of that dumb shit garbage. I haven't seen the movie, but I can see why the Demon Barber of Fleet Street started killing people, what a pitiful existence – a hairdresser is just a shit therapist with scissors.

        Hahahahahah. Three times.

Peace, Taco.

We got really fucked up that night.

Death and Brexit

        A couple of days ago my Mum tagged me in a post on Facebook, she'd found something about an Instagram account called @TravellingCars, made by a girl called Kim Leuenberger, who has been travelling around the world for the last five years taking pictures of toy cars in amazing places and situations. This Leuenberger girl has almost 50,000 followers, and has been featured on the official Instagram page – my Mum tagged me because she knows I've been doing a similar thing with The Rocker. What she didn't know was that I'd already heard of Kim's page, contacted her, and met up with her in London for a few drinks and lunch one afternoon a few weeks earlier.
        YOU LOSE MUM! TOO SLOW!!!
        Dickhead.

        I am under absolutely no illusions that what I've been doing with The Rocker is anything other than pointless and stupid. Aside from the fact that the stupidity is the reason I love it so much, I've also always thought that it's not really the particular THING that I, or any person, decides to dedicate their time to that is necessarily important. I could be spending my time taking pictures of birds, or trees, or earlobes, or collecting underwear, or doing something really indefensible like HAIRDRESSING for fuck's sake – the activity itself isn't important.
        What's important is that, as a person, I'm putting effort into something. Anything. We are all full of an infinite well of passion, but for that passion to be visible we need to pour it into something: a cup, a shoe, a dustbin, ANYTHING! Just to remind us that it's still there.

        These are my convictions, and I was hoping they were shared by the rest of the world, or at least by one Kim Leuenberger, when I emailed her on the 15th of June after a friend from Liverpool (IMAGINE!!) linked me to her Instagram. I emailed asking for help. Help with what? Who fucking knows man. My problem went something like this:
        I found this toy car on a playground in May, and planned on writing about it as a way of distracting myself from my imminent departure from London. The idea driving (teehee) the whole thing was supposed to be that you can tell who someone is based on the people they choose to surround themselves with, so rather than write about myself directly, I'd take a literary snapshot of my life in London by writing about the people I care about in this city who make up my life right now. I got a few posts in and realised that had absolutely nothing to do with Toy Cars, and the dawning of that lost, “what am I even talking about?” feeling was swift, and brutal, like when you realize you've paid for an awful haircut, from a stupid hairdresser, and now you're STUCK!

        So I asked Kim if she wanted to meet up because “HEY look at this we both enjoy taking pictures of our Toy Cars isn't that fun! We should do that together sometime, or at least meet up and exchange notes PLEASE HELP ME MY IDEA IS FADING I'M LOST AND ALONE there is no one here who understands me.” – if you really want to have a bit of fun with this blog, imagine me whispering that last part after the caps, maybe behind some sort of Door, like a Leader of The Resistance. Yeah!
        I was hoping that the sheer gushing intensity of the email I sent Kim – complete with Rogue Capitalization and plenty of rambling asides – would convince her that I was an individual worth meeting in person. We chatted for a few days in long, impassioned emails, and after I was finished imaging our wedding and future life together, we agreed to meet up for lunch, which passed without incident, before we hugged an amicable farewell and went our separate ways.

        There is something unmatchably exciting about meeting a new person, and talking to them for a good amount of time. A few hours is really all you need, there's enough time in there for both of you to judge whether the two of you are working on similar wavelengths. Even a series of emails will do. Any type of free, open conversation with no agenda and no ulterior motives. Those conversations are some of the most invigorating and enjoyable moments in life, and they happen all too rarely, because as much as we all love them, no one has any idea where they come from.
        The trick is finding a good excuse: a good friend of mine from Paris told me he used to always carry a corkscrew so that on long afternoons spent drinking by The Seine, he had reason to spark conversations with people around him. That's kind of half the reason I still smoke occasionally, it's the reason I love working in the coffee industry and searching out new coffee shops to find those virgin conversations. It's the purpose of cocktail bars, and book clubs, and football, and pretty much incidental activity you can think of where people go out, try half-heartedly to do a thing, and sit around afterwards swapping details.
        People want to talk to each other.

        So here's my idea: I'm giving The Rocker away.
        I'm going to give it to Brenda – of course – and ask that she give it to someone else, and they'll give it to someone else and etc... I've done as much as I can do with this thing. I've taken as many stupid photos as I have in me, and written a few decent stories, and now it's time to push my car out into the world, and see if anything comes back.
        What I would love, more than anything, would be if whoever Brenda gives the car to reads the few stories I've written on this blog, and then emails me for a chat. Wouldn't that be the coolest thing? Sending out a little message into the world in the form of a Toy Car I found in a playground one midnight two months ago.
        I would love if they contacted me, but even if they don't, it doesn't matter. I'm sending The Rocker out into the world to be Passed between People, and hopefully if this initial Push is strong enough, that journey will last well the glorious European Summer I'm writing from right now. The fulfilment of a Promise that two months ago was only taken on faith. I've brought this idea to a conclusion.
        And I got to shit pointlessly on hairdressers twice in the process hahaha...
        I mean come on, seriously, they're idiots. What a useless non-profession, I've cut friends' hair – AND MY OWN HAIR – more times than I can count, and I've done it drunk, and high, and never had to use some special basin with a hole for your head in it or some lame elastic neck-cloth or two-hundred dollar scissors. NONE of that dumb shit garbage. I haven't seen the movie, but I can see why the Demon Barber of Fleet Street started killing people, what a pitiful existence – a hairdresser is just a shit therapist with scissors.

        Hahahahahah. Three times.

Peace, Taco.

Goodbyes: Mark and Rebecca (and Aaron)

        I once knew this guy called Aaron who told me a ridiculous story about jumping onto a slow-moving freight train as it passed a station, and then climbing over the train and into the driver's cabin. The police were waiting for him at the next station, and when they angrily asked why he'd jumped onto the train, he replied: “I just love trains!”
        There's no way that can be true, but who cares I love it anyway.

        Aaron used to sit and drink vodka in the kitchen of the Melbourne Connection Backpackers Hostel most afternoons, until one day he announced that he was leaving for Darwin.
        “Are you coming back?!”, I asked, young and scared of losing my new friend in a city I was still coming to grips with.
        “NEVER!!” was his exaggerated reply, and he never did. And sometimes that's what happens – most of the time actually – friends come and friends go, but it's just like that song says: “Don't touch me baby, I'm extra spicy!”

        Hahahahahaha... yeah I don't know what that bit means either, but boy did it make me laugh. Okay.

This is my new favourite picture with my four-wheeled friend, The Rocker.

        Mark is another hostel guy, I met him at The Dictionary hostel in Shoreditch during my first few weeks in London and I immediately admired the abandon with which he seemed to live his life. He was 32 (or something? SORRY MARK!) and had spent the last decade or so travelling the world, with his base being the ski fields of Canada. He was also from Adelaide, and so we bonded over that rare coincidence – two hometown boys who both made it out into a glorious life of wandering poverty.

        The Dictionary was almost two years ago now though, and I hadn't seen much of Mark in London since I quit that 16-bed dorm for damper pastures. The Dictionary used to stage random 3am fire drills, evacuating a few hundred sleepy travellers onto the streets of Shoreditch to dodge buses until someone turned the toaster off, also one time a guy pissed on my bed while I was sleeping in it. It's hilarious, now.
        Mark and I always stayed in touch though, chatting here and there online. I remember seeing a picture he posted of a car flipped on its roof next to a quiet dirt road, with the caption, “Oops! Crashed the rental.”
        Turns out he just found the car like that somewhere in Croatia. Seeing things like that – little windows into distant friends' lives – is sometimes enough to make you feel connected again.

I am slowly learning to love watching what people do when I give them The Rocker and tell them to pose for a picture, it's such an unnatural moment. Mark chose to pretend it was some sort of Thumb/Burrito.

        He hit me up a few weeks ago and told me he was coming back to London, and we caught up a few times and reminisced on old stories. I love that about catching up with friends you haven't seen in a while: those memories are all in there, but the only way they ever get let out and dusted off are when you have someone else who was there to remember them with. That's why it's so important to keep in touch with those people who have been a part of different periods of your life, because without someone else who cares to share those memories with, they lose meaning, and disappear into the bottomless fog.

        Another one of those people is Rebecca. A British girl. We met in Bolivia in 2011 when she was 31 and had recently divorced from the man she spent her 20s with. I was 20, and in retrospect I'm sure my immature cockiness must have grated her – fuck, it's grating me right now... but we bonded over the place that Bolivia was. That summer was a hugely pivotal time in my life, and evidently in hers too, because she hit me up a few weeks ago upon seeing that I was leaving the UK soon and suggested we catch up to relive those moments over a beer.

I didn't even get The Rocker out for this picture with Rebecca, I fucked up.

        After a lot of half-assed fucking around we finally caught up last night; she's in London for a quick internship as she enters the last year of a law degree, and came to grab a drink at what I would loosely term a 'comedy night', that I was performing at. I reassured her that I often do better gigs than the carpeted attic we and the ten others sat in, but then quickly checked myself and re-reassured that I often do much worse ones as well.

        Every time you see someone, there is every possibility, no matter who it is, that this time may be the last time. But we never say goodbye like that, that would be insane – all tears and snot and shouting. Sometimes people say hello like that and it's disgusting – “OOOH MY GOOODDDDDDD! AAAAAGHHHH!!!”
        Everybody hates you.

        But in the last week I've said goodbye to two people who, in all probability, I will never see again. When you say goodbye to someone, it's kind of beautiful. It's like you're both admitting that to each other, at the same time, and you're both okay with it, because you had your thing and there doesn't need to be any more.
        It's rarely sad in those moments. If anything, it feels like a victory, because for every knowing goodbye, there are hundreds of relationships that have soured, or faded away without word, as the image of what two people first see in each other changes into something different.
        People change, but goodbyes are forever.
        “We did it!”, sighs that final hug.
        Perfect.

        I'll always remember Aaron for teaching me that lesson, as well as that train story which is fantastic. And I'll always remember Mark for reminding me of it by being the humble, unassuming image of a life well lived, and lived for people.
        Before last night I remembered Rebecca as the lady who once dismissed my Spanish Speaking Abilities at a group dinner, and who I secretly competed with for the rest of the time I was in Bolivia. That's right. LIKE A CHILD!!! Hahahaha I can't believe I did that to myself.
        Last night she brought her brother to the show, and while she and I were drinking and chatting, he sat mostly silent. Every now and then I'd turn my attention to him and comment on how quiet he was being, and a few times I directed stories at him because his comfortable silence was making me nervous. I'm so pitifully insecure it's hilarious.

        But at least I never felt the need to speak Spanish in front of them.
        YES! Baby steps.

        "Extra Spicy! Extra Spicy! OH! OH! He's EXTRA SPICY!!"

Peace, Taco.

PS Remember when this blog was about the Toy Van that I found? HAH! Don't worry, it's coming back soon.

Click here to read the next part - The Final Push

Brenda

        I can't remember what Brenda reminds me of. It's either one of the four Futurama movies, the one titled 'The Beast With A Thousand Backs'; or the Joaquin Phoenix/Spike Jonze film, 'Her'. It's not that she hasn't made a crystal clear impression on my mind, moreso that my memory is garbage.

        The first time we met was at the Department of Coffee store in Spitalfields Market, I was working there for the day, and it was one of her first days working for the company. Maybe her first day ever, even? Let's say for the story that it was. And she'd just gotten out of jail. And it was raining outside. And let's say it was... ooooh I don't know... a WEDNESDAY!!
        We did whatever we do at work all day: make coffee and chat, and then at the end of the day I said my goodbyes, and turning to her, said something to the effect of, “cya round!”
        “Are you working tomorrow?”
        “No, I was just at this store for today, normally I work at a different store.” With that, the news that we wouldn't be spending the next day, or any in the foreseeable future working together, she turned to jelly and let out what would be the first of many trademark Brenda Cries:
        “Aaaaawwww!”
        And my heart turned to jelly with her.

        That's the thing about this girl, she can melt your heart in a second. It's dangerous though – hearts melt because they feel special, and finding out that she does that to a lot of people... well that's why she reminds me of whichever movie she reminds me of... I'll remember in a second.

        In 'The Beast With A Billion Backs', an alien comes to Earth (look at this point I'm assuming you guys all know the basic premise of Futurama, right? Come on...) and spreads love to everyone by way of shoving one of it's infinite number of alien tentacles into their brain.... or something. There's a scene where Fry confronts his ex, who he broke up with after discovering she dated four other guys at the same time as him, but the confrontation takes an unexpected turn when, with the new perspective of the alien love-tentacle, he offers, “Why should you be satisfied with one man, when love needs to share itself with the whole universe!?”
        Futurama is kind of a parody though, or a satire... whatever it is, it doesn't take itself as seriously as 'Her'.

When I took this photo the gardener asked "what's with the car?", I replied "It's my to van and I like it." To which he said, "Good answer."

        'Her' is about hypothetical near-future AI technology that basically acts like a person without a body, like a human mind inside a computer. The AI minds evolve faster than their human counterparts can keep up with them, and while Joaquin Phoenix's human character remains in love with his computer-girly (Samantha), she evolves past the human limitation of finite love – she's in love with six-hundred and forty-one others at the same time as him. That all sounds so wanky and I can't believe that I just wrote it. I'm almost at the bottom of my can of Stella, sitting in my room, it's nearly midnight. I think I'm going to open another beer.
        The line that hits home here is this one, from Samantha:
        “...but the heart's not like a box that gets filled up, it expands in size the more you love.”

        Beautiful shit.

        So Brenda and I (or “Brenda and Me”... honestly I can't stop thinking about it) took acid on Wednesday. We took acid at midday, and then went to the Tate Modern. It was insane, there were moving colours (MOVING! IMAGINE!!), and paintings, and sculptures, and nowhere to sit down. Modern ART!! The coffee was adequate.
        At one point I started ranting, because as far as I'm concerned – and I stand by this point – art galleries should be places where people are driven to wild, visceral emotions, right? Art is supposed to be this crazy thing that inspires and scares and challenges us and whatever. All of the feelings. So why then, does no one in art galleries show any trace of emotion whatsoever?
        People just file past, straight-faced. “Ooh look at that, that's a bit of wood there, very angry, the artist was clearly in a state of turmoil blah blah”, SO WHY ARE YOU BARELY BREATHING THEN!?!?!
        I pretty much shouted exactly that – those words there in capitals. I shouted them in the middle of the gallery, and then Brenda ran away to let me calm down for a bit.

Before we took acid we had a nice brunch with poached eggs, and then we took this picture to get The Rocker involved.

        I had a difficult afternoon that day, but that's down to my own inability to get out of my head at times, and that's not really part of the story.
        When we got to London Fields towards the end of the trip, we met up with a bunch of mates, including Adam – boyfriend, last blog, no time for re-exposition – and he and I had the chat that we've been working up to for the longest time.
        I mean, it was more him having the chat at me, because I was beyond fragile and in a vulnerable drug-state, but everything he said was perfect.
        We both care about that girl a lot, and we both want her attention all the time, but for some reason, there's something about her that is conducive to close relationships with guys. That's why we've both been able to feel so strongly about her, and that's also why we can't let our own needy inadequacies get in the way of other people's connections with her. That's about as well as I can say it, and that's why Brenda reminds me of those two movies. That girl's heart is open, and no matter how many people she lets in, it doesn't get full.

        I guess, upon reflection, it's more 'Her', than Futurama, so I guess we can call that mission accomplished huh? I had a question, and I answered it.
        Brenda reminds me of the movie 'Her', you guys! The movie 'Her', starring Joaquin Pheonix and Scarlett Johansson! Directed by Spike Jonze! Released by Warner Bros. Pictures in 2013!! Rated R for language, sexual content, and brief nudity!!1!
        I'm actually the stupidest person.

Also some more things about Brenda: she's a super passionate barista, great photographer, and is humble as all hell. Sometimes she dresses like a Japanese Geisha, but other times she wears dungarees, because you gotta mix it up some.
        She's my friend, and that in itself is fantastic.
        BRENDA!!

Peace, Taco.

Click here to read the next part - Goodbyes: Mark and Rebecca (and Aaron)

Adam and Brenda

        I don't want to say that the way I tend to see relationships in my head is wrong, because that's a crazy thing to say, and seems a little dramatic. Fatalistic even. So let's not call it wrong, but it does seem to be incorrect.

        Two people, together as one. That's the dream right? That's the Spice Girls song.
        Two halves of one whole. The two lost searchers put to final rest in the blissful company of their other. But that's insane, and that's way, way, way too much pressure. I've started to look around and see the friends of mine who are in relationships and the ways they still live their lives as separate people – it seems obvious now to say, but I need to say it out loud somewhere, because I think I've been infected my whole life with Disney-Brain.
        Life isn't a Cinderella Story.

        We went to The Garage in Islington to see By The Rivers – that's Me, Adam, and Brenda. By the way, as an aside, fuck this old “Adam, Brenda, and I” grammar rule bullshit, it sounds fucking ridiculous and I hate it. If nothing else, it consigns ME (or “I” – SORRY!!) to the end of the list, which I thoroughly disagree with, being as I am – to myself – the most important part of any group.
        Seriously, I'm not even joking.

        So Me, Adam, and Brenda went out last Wednesday night to see By The Rivers, a six-piece ska/reggae act from Leicester. We'd had tickets for a month or so since Brenda bought them after we'd listened to their debut album like five times the first day we put it on in the cafe. She came round the corner after a few minutes' silence, and announced, “I bought us tickets!” That girl is fantastic, I've never loved coming to work so much.
        Adam is her boyfriend, he's the person who first listened to By The Rivers out of the three of us – he'd actually seen them a year earlier. He comes into one of our other cafes in Piccadilly every day and gets coffee, and theirs is a tale of customer/barista romance, and one hard-fought on his part. Months of being just “Brenda's Friend” to every other questioning suitor who cast a cursory eye her way. I was one of those suitors too, in the beginning, but Adam held on.

This really isn't the best picture of Adam, but I feel like it's the one he'd be most upset with me posting, which is why I posted it.

        Brenda and I are very close. More than anyone I've ever met, she somehow feels comfortable giving herself to people. I've never been able to do that, it makes me uncomfortable, just like it's making me uncomfortable right now to write about. I'm not sure if you noticed, but I haven't said something sarcastic in like three paragraphs.

        But going to By The Rivers with Brenda and Adam did not make me feel like a third wheel.

        The fact that I even expected it might is symptomatic of the attitude I was talking about at the start there – the idea that two people in a relationship with each other can only operate within that paired dynamic is crazy. We are dynamic people, we can change according to different situations, and also our relationships are dynamic, there are no fixed criteria to define relationships between two people, and just because two people work well together doesn't mean they can't work well with anyone else.
        Sure, two wheels is great sometimes, but three wheels can be great too, because we are none of us, bicycles. We're all just wheels, rolling around life, bumping into shit and dancing.

        Before the show we went to eat at a Vietnamese restaurant that Adam randomly pointed to, not realising that it was EXACTLY what I wanted to eat. I pulled The Rocker out of my bag and put him upside down in the empty basket of prawn crackers. We laughed, ate our food, smoked cigarettes, and missed all of the three support acts. It was still light outside, because summer is coming and life is beautiful.

The Rocker's eyes are bigger than it's stomach!

        After the show my full stomach had settled. The dancing was good, although a little subdued – reggae is a little too slow to REALLY get down to. I like the kind of vigorous dancing where you nearly hurt yourself, I like music that makes you want to do something embarrassing. We grooved at a leisurely pace for the whole set though, with big smiles across the crowd.
        By The Rivers are about as positive a band as you're likely to find. I sent them a Tweet back in April about Spurs coming for Leicester in the Premier League, and then immediately felt like a dickhead, because even though it was just banter, that kind of thing is so not what these guys are about.
        I also felt like a dickhead because Leicester ended up winning, and Spurs came third.
        The crowd at The Garage chanted “Campeones” instead of “encore” to bring the band back on, and all six of them grinned their faces off before launching into the last tune.

        And then I lost The Rocker.
        I realised it was missing when I started rummaging through my bag with increasing fury after the lights came on, and the other two quickly picked up on what was happening as I raced out the door and across the road to the Vietnamese restaurant, inside, “DID YOU GUYS SEE A LITTLE TOY VAN SITTING ON THIS TABLE?!”
        The staff had it waiting on the counter. Reunited.

        Seriously man, I love this little car.

Peace, Taco.

Click here to read the next part - Brenda

A Distraction

I don't want to leave London man.

        I've been here since August 24th, 2014 – I remember the morning I got off the bus from Edinburgh at Victoria Station and walked, with everything I owned in the world in two backpacks, through Hyde Park to the Brazen Head pub/backpackers near Baker St, and set that everything down in the bar rather than store it somewhere more convenient, because I was scared I was going to miss the free breakfast.
        It's been almost two years since then, and now, in... Jesus Christ... 70 days. In 70 days I have to leave.
        Back to Australia, which doesn't even feel like home any more, just a place I used to live.

        Honestly, I wish people would stop asking me about it.
        I don't mean to be rude, or sound bitter (even though I am), or act like I'm not grateful for people's concern, I just wish that all the people who show their concern for my situation every day didn't express that concern in EXACTLY THE SAME WAY. Like word for word, the same questions, every time. I've almost got the answers down verbatim now, so I can rattle them off and change the subject as quickly as possible so I can sidestep the undercurrent of impotent anger that runs through every answer, every insistence on my part that yes, it really is that hard, yes even though I'm Australian, “I know right? Your Queen on our money! You'd think wouldn't you! That it'd be easier!? But IT ISN'T!! IMAGINE!!!”

        But it's my fault too, me in my vanity, always talking about myself.
        “Hey, I'm a comedian, I'm from Australia, I've been here for almost two years... yeah actually my visa runs out soon, yeah I'm pretty bummed about it. Have I thought about the options? Well....”
        Fuck.

        But 70 days is a long time to spend on bitterness. That prospect alone is daunting.

        The other night I was walking home from the station around midnight while listening to a podcast, but about five minutes from my house I realised I still had 20 minutes of podcast left. I knew as soon as I walked in my front door I'd get distracted, and never end up finishing it, which would be a shame because it had thus far been lovely, so I decided to take a long detour through the park near my house, and ended up on the playground.
        I only mention all of this now so that I can tell the rest of the story without having people wonder what I was doing, at night, on a playground. All connotations of sexual deviancy and whatever other funny inferences people like to make aside, I'll tell you what I was doing at night on the playground last Saturday night.
        I was playing.
        Duh.
        Like, actually. I went down the slide and everything.

        So I wandered around the playground for a bit, having a go on all the different things, and somewhere in between the merry-go-round and the climbing wall (I know right they have a CLIMBING WALL ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!!) I found, sitting on a bit of wooden edging between paving and sand, a toy car.

        It's a van actually.
        Specifically, a 1979 Matchbox 'Super Kings' Dodge Van, with two cartoon guys walking in joyous strides across the sunset, and the phrase 'It's Only Rock n Roll', in peeling paint on both side panels. One of the guys is playing the bass guitar.
        I've decided to call it The Rocker, because of the 'It's Only Rock n Roll' thing. Also because the suspension is fantastic, and although everyone who I've shown it to in the last week (plenty of people don't you worry) have commented on the suspension, I don't think anyone has really enjoyed the tenuous sexual innuendo that calling a van 'The Rocker' presents us with as much as they should be. So there's that too.

        Huuuuuunngghhhhhwwooooooohhhhahhhhhhhhhh... okay, I already feel a little bit better.

        I've been trying to write about this van for the entire week since I found it, because I knew it was important, but I couldn't figure out how or why. I thought for a little bit about writing a story about it with all characters and shit – like imagine if the driver of the van (absent, because that's how Matchbox cars are made, without a driver), imagine if HE was actually The Rocker, and I was trying to find him – “Who is he? Where did he go? Is anyone trying to find him!?” – and then at the end of the story I realise that actually I'VE BEEN THE ROCKER ALL ALONG!! Or maybe, like, we're all The Rocker, you know?

        I laughed at that awful idea for a while, and then I had the idea that maybe I could give the car back to the kid that I assume it belonged to until it was left that day on the playground.
        I'd have to get posters printed and stick them around the playground, but make sure I wrote them to specifically address the parents of the kids, rather than the kids themselves, and put them at Adult Eye Level and put pictures of the van, maybe even pictures of myself to show how fun and non-threatening I am and...
        ...the odd thing about considering how to pre-emptively convince people you haven't met yet that you're not a paedophile, is that it makes you feel an awful lot LIKE a paedophile, because only a paedophile would spend time doing that.
        I'm not a paedophile, you guys. I promise.

        So this is the idea now. I don't want to leave London, but I have to, that's the premise – a difficult fact that I am gradually coming to accept.
        But I found this fun toy ca..VAN! (a Van is not a Car) I found this toy van, and I'm going to take pictures of it, and of my life, for the next... 70 days. God damn it... breathe, breathe, breathe, it's going to be okay.

        I'm going take pictures of this van in the places I travel to and with the people I meet in the time that I have left before I have to leave London. Because I need a distraction. And whenever my inevitable narcissism turns conversations towards the fact that I have to leave, I can cut the lonely tension by telling people about this.
        And I can show them some pictures of The Rocker on a hill in Newcastle, and a windowsill in Glasgow, or next to some empty cans in the street in London. It's just like everyone's always said, the best way to cope with an impending, strangely-inevitable, death-like experience is to distract yourself by taking pictures of a toy van on bridges.

        That's kind of what leaving London feels like: impending death. So now, in the next 70 days, I'm going to live.

        HAH!! Nailed it.

        But seriously, 'The Rocker'. THE R-O-C-K-E-R!! Like rocking back and forth... like if it was a van that people were having sex in, you know? THAT'S why it's funny, cos it's like, a tiny little sex van. Hahahahaha sex.

Peace, Taco.

Click here to read the next part - Adam and Brenda