Amateur Time Travel

"This isn't right, get us out of here, this wood isn't happy"
We had made a wrong turn, gotten off the highway one junction too early. We didn't know what we were looking for, but we knew we'd know it when we saw it. We turned around and back on the big road. To the next junction and try again.
This looks better, we soon find some signs to what we are looking for. We turn into another wood, this one is happier to see us.
Suddenly, from a small road on the left some wheels appear, it takes me a moment to notice they are attached to a drag car. We are definitely in the right place now. I stop to let him go first - he doesn't look like he's got the handling for anything other than straight lines. We follow him around until he turns back toward the airfield and we head into the car park.
This is our first of many encounters with Swedish drag racing.

We were waiting in the bar downstairs for the doors to open for the Henry Rollins gig. We happened upon Mike, a friend of ours who had moved away to Leicester but was back for something to do with his studies here. We ask if he's going to the gig. He didn't know Rollins was playing tonight but definitely will come along if he can get a ticket. He rushes upstairs to try to buy one on the door. He returns with a smile, he's got one. Then a sudden look of concern, "Oh shit, it's Jos birthday. I've got to make a phone call, back in a minute"
Another of our friends asks who Jo is, having only met Mike tonight. "His wife"
Upon his return "Are you alright? Are you in trouble?"
"She knows what I'm like and she still married me"
We hear the soundcheck coming to an end and all head upstairs when the doors open.
The gig is intense.

I saw the car advertised on blocket.se a short bus ride away from our flat. There were no pictures of the passenger side on the advert. The first thing I did when I got to the sales lot was see why that was - there was a dent in the front passenger door. Fine, it's a 13 year old car with 160k miles on it, I'm happy if it's a little worse for wear on the outside.
I take it for a test drive, I have to leave my driving licence with the salesman but he lets me take it out on my own. It is my first encounter with a turbo and this one has power just where you need it, around 2000 rpm, more lively than anything I've driven before. I take a quick journey down the local dual carriageway and decide I'm going to take it.
I go back to the dealer and explain I'd like it and ask how I go about insuring it and if there's anything like an MOT. He arranges six months of insurance for me, for a very reasonable price and explains the bilprovning system.
Once I've collected the cash together (which takes longer than expected because my bank had put a limit on my withdrawals) I go back to pick it up, he loads up the winter tires and hands me the keys.

Ashleys zebra pattern land rover was famous all around Norwich. He'd arranged a minibus from his school to take some of us, so I was driving the landy. My first experience in such a large vehicle. It kept jumping out of gear, but it took me a little help to figure out which of the four sticks had jumped.

There was only one minor incident on the way there, I had to make an emergency stop, and poor Andy Rowe flew along the bench seats in the back making his ear bleed.

Engine were loud, none of us could hear each other on the way home. Serious ROCK.

After the gig there was a huge queue to leave the car park, but since we were heading out of town the other way to everyone else we took a short cut across the pavement - thats when off-road vehicles come into their own.

Our office sits high on a hill overlooking the city, from here we can see the smoke rising from any fire in the city centre.

"I can't just sit here when I can see theres a fire, there could be people in danger and I might save them. I've got to call the fire brigade. Besides I'm sure thats the chinese restaurant I go to for lunch sometimes."

"But Simon, thats the third time in as many months you've called out the boys, and its getting closer to the office each time. People will start to talk"

We board the tram towards Skansen, it is old, more a tourist attraction than a functional piece of infrastructure. There are tables set, we choose one toward the back of the carriage. There aren't any other passengers - everyone else got on the other carriage. The tram pulls away, rocking gently, turns through the square and onto the boulevard along the harbour front toward Djurgarden.
Shortly a waiter arrives to take our orders, I choose a coffee and cinnamon bun, Adelle a tea.
The tram tracks run down a tree lined avenue in the centre of Strandvagen. The coffee is very swedish, strong and it has the grey tinge of coffee of a certain age. The bun is nice, though, as is the view.
We cross the bridge onto Djurgarden, past the Nordiska Museet and Biologiska Museet, and finally Cirkus, arriving outside Skansen as we are finishing our drinks.
It is a short journey but has to be one of the best cafes I have been to.

One of the things about depression is that it keeps you in a loop of only seeing the bad stuff. It is difficult to navigate your way to seeing how things could be better. Even though my situation suggests an adjustment disorder rather than a depression, the treatment is the same.

I am going to resurrect this blog as a place to publish memories from happier times.

It's another weekend and another club in Tokyo, they often don't start until 11pm and nobody really turns up until 1am. Indeed you frequently see times like "25:00 'til 30:00", the club opens 1am the next morning from the date shown.

Roppongi this time, two stops from where I live, so I'm in no rush to get ready. The trains seem unusually quiet as I'm heading there. I check my watch as I ascend from the platforms deep underground. It's nearly midnight. Then I falter for a moment and remember that it's New Years Eve. I have less than ten minutes to complete my ascent, find the venue and get through the door.

When I get there, panting from the run, I am welcomed with a relieved look and ushered straight through to the DJ booth. This is somewhat unexpected as I'm here only as a paying customer. It takes us both a couple of moments to work out what has happened, I have been mistaken for the American DJ who was supposed to be on the decks as the year rolled over.

The club organiser is frantically looking at her watch and asks if I know where Rob is, everyone else is dancing away oblivious to the passing of midnight.

An hour and a half later he turns up, hits the decks and we all celebrate the new year somewhat later than everyone else.

I had figured there'd be buses to Dereham. How wrong I was, so I set out on foot along the road, with my thumb out hoping for a lift, but not expecting one. It was my first, and as it turns out, only, hitching exercise. I'd been walking for a couple of miles along the A47, it was getting dark now and I'd nearly resigned myself to missing the gig, when someone finally took pity on me and gave me a lift to the outskirts of the small town, from where I could walk to the centre. I was tired and hungry by the time I got there.

It was a Dr & the Medics gig, one of the most fantastic I ever saw, and I saw them a lot. I met the Dr after the show and turned into a babbling wreck.

I'm sitting next to a Japanese businesswoman on the flight from Osaka to Haneda - I've been flying all night, redeye from Helsinki, after a day there which turned into an evening in Tampere too. Its a morning flight for the locals but I'm the most jetlagged I have ever been. We strike up a conversation during which coffee arrives. I'm perhaps a little over-animated and while the stewardess is sneaking the cup onto my tray I wave my arms to cause the coffee to fly, soaking all three of us.