burn before reading

I cycle to work every day. I cycle there on the same route every day and then I cycle back on the same route every day.

I hate routine. This is, by all accounts, a routine.

The route that I use to cycle to and from work is the most efficient way to the office.

I hate being inefficient. This is why I take the same route to work every day.

Herein lies a clear conflict. On my cycle to work, which cannot be avoided, I must accept either routine or inefficiency. It is not possible to remove both.

This conflict blights my working life most obviously, however does apply to many other aspects of life. I am fortunate in the sense that I live in the centre of town and there are therefore several different ways of reaching my house thanks to the sundry large traffic arteries in the vicinity. There are a sufficient number to facilitate the avoidance of one or two particular routes that have latterly been too routinely trodden without affecting the overall efficiency level of the journey.

The journey to work, however, only benefits from this luxury in the final third of the section. That is not enough to dilute the routine or the minute but perceptible rise in stress levels that it causes me.

Therefore, these two atavistic phobias within me appear likely to forever remain in dispute.

I was in Turkey a couple of weeks ago. I saw a very cheap offer that included flights, hotels, airport and internal transfers and even though it reeked of package holiday, it was basically free so I went for it.

It turned out to be a little bit dreadful: vast, boated hotels full of wealthy, elderly shitheads; staff very much prioritising profiting as much as possible from said wealthy wrinklies; tasteless, soggy food; and, worst of all, absolutely no indication that we were actually in Turkey. Alas. At least I got a break from Berlin and got to practise some Turkish (I started learning it a couple of months back, and was positively overjoyed any time I understood even one word of what I said, and even more overjoyed if I managed to understand something).

On the last day, we took a walk from the horrible hotel and just kept on going. Ostensibly we wanted to see for how many kilometres the rampant, anemic tourist infrastructure would stretch but really, we were looking for booze. After about an hour and a half, we found a little shop with some overpriced beers, and after spending our last pennies on them (you didn't even need Turkish money in this place - they preferred Euro) we set out for the long walk back to the hotel.

Then it started raining. It started raining really, really heavily. The sea to our right roared and grumbled and battered. The horrible motorway to our right zoomed and splashed and honked. The lightening above us scintillated and flashed and forked. The thunder all around us growled and bellowed and menaced. The wind in our faces insisted and insisted and insisted. And we both really needed to use the bathroom.

And in the middle of all of that, all the splashing and roaring and flashing and menacing and the being drenched to the core after a holiday that promised so much turned out to be a bit crap, I realised that I was actually having a really good time and that it was all because I was there with her.

So I told her. We could barely hear each other with all the wind and the thunder and the rain and the sea and the cars but I still turned to her and I told her that I really believed that I could be in any sort of horrible, ludicrous, soggy situation, needing the bathroom and irritatingly sober to boot, and that I would enjoy that situation as long as I was with her.

She turned to me and smiled a smile that was much more of a grimace, what with all the rain and the wind and nastiness and what-have-you, and said that she had been thinking exactly the same thing.

I'm in Ireland for Christmas and my mother, an avid reader of what remains of this once-grand old blog, reminded me that I kinda left everyone on a bit of a cliffhanger with my last post. She's labouring under the delusion that anyone cares all that much, but in the event that anyone does, here goes:

I'm writing a book.

Yes, a book! One of those thick papery things on your bookshelf, written by people who had enough words in their head and enough belief in the importance of those words to convince someone to pay them to write it.

My book's not quite like that though. Although it is in some ways. It'll be thick and papery for sure. And some people might put it on a bookshelf. And while the words in it are mostly mine, they're also not really. You see, I am writing someone else's story. It's the story of a professional footballer and I am ghostwriting his autobiography. Exciting! And, also fun. Being a full-time writer is very close to the perfect job for me - I get to work from home, I don't have to deal with people and I decide my own hours. I know, I know, I had all of those luxuries in my previous jobs too. But they didn't involve writing a book!

So the reason for my panic was the fact that I was flying to Stoke to spend a whole weekend with this guy, interviewing him and pretty much finding out absolutely everything there was to know about him. Luckily, he's one of the friendliest and most down-to-earth people I have ever met, and I had a jolly good time. We both agree that the book should be more about his early life rather than his time as a footballer - footy autobiographies are ten a penny these days, and all a bit crap. So there'll be lots of focus on his time growing up in a dangerous suburb of Paris. There's something there for everyone, not just footy fans! So buy it please when it comes out!

Since my return from Stoke, I've been busy turning 60,000 words of interview transcripts into a book. I think I'm a little under halfway through now, and I am still very much enjoying the process. I'm finding wells of motivation that I never knew existed, as I positively spring out of bed at 0700 every morning to get working on it. I expect to be finished by mid-February at the latest, and it remains to be seen what will happen after that - another book? A return to translation? I would be more than content with either.

So there you go.

I'm not particularly good at interpreting what I'm feeling at any given time, but when the two things that I am feeling are so unmistakably huge, and so unmistakably incompatible, not even I can fail to understand what's going on.

Those emotions are:

1). Extreme nervous petrification;
2). Extreme jump-out-of-your skin excitement.

I'm endlessly reassured by the fact that everyone around me is infinitely more confident than I am that I will be able to successfully complete the thing that is petrifying/exciting me.

And even in the worst case scenario, if everything goes horribly tits-up and I have to limp back to normality with my tail between my legs (which I don't actually anticipate for even a second), I won't have actually lost anything, and will have learned a bloody lot.

So why be nervous?

Dunno.

Just am.

I will give you €1,000,000 if you DO NOT think about a green elephant for the next twenty seconds.*

So what are you going to think about? You could try to just concentratedly read on - it'll take about twenty seconds. But I am going to discuss green elephants quite a bit over the next few sentences, so that won't really work. So take a little break. Stop reading. Start not thinking about green elephants.

--------------

How did it go? You thought quite a bit about green elephants, didn't you? Or, more precisely, you thought about not thinking about green elephants, which is pretty much the same as thinking about green elephants, since green elephants are as inherent to the process of not thinking about green elephants as the process of thinking about green elephants.

So I hope you don't mind me taking it as a given that you did, in fact, think about green elephants. I know I did (when this little experiment was mentioned very fleetingly in a book I'm reading). What I am interested in, however, is how you thought about the green elephants. Did you picture a green elephant? Was it an accurate representation of an elephant (the greenness aside)? Did you have just a green elephant, or a green elephant in a habitat suitable to green elephants, perhaps with blue gazelles frolicking in the background with pink lions watching them from the red undergrowth? Or was your green elephant a totally cartoonish creation, one with features that were unrealistic even beyond the greenness of the elephant, perhaps with a little blue tutu or a black beret? Or did you see a green elephant in the peripheral vision of your imagination, and just look the other way in an effort not to see it? Or, like me, did you simply picture the words 'green elephant', and wonder if thinking about the words 'green elephant' counts as thinking about a green elephant? Or something else entirely?

I'm genuinely interested to know about your thought process. If you leave me a little comment below describing it, I'd be most grateful.

*Actually, I won't. Sorry.

You've all read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, haven't you? If you haven't, I recommend that you do because it wonderful and you'll laugh a lot and wish that you could write like Douglas Adams could. There's a character in it called Ford Prefect, who is an alien. He decided to call himself Ford Prefect because, on studying life on earth and concluding that cars are the dominant 'species' on the plant, he gives himself a car name so he'll blend in.

Last night I drank quite a bit of gin, and was brushing my teeth before I went to bed. Gin is a marvellous drink, and makes my brain work in all sorts of interesting and exciting ways. And that's when it hit me. If aliens were to look at humans, and if they were benevolent aliens with a strong inclination towards culinary excellence and therefore wanted to make the best most delicious meal possible for humans, what would they want to make for us?

It's obvious. Toothpaste. They'd make us a toothpaste dinner because it looks like it's our favouritest taste in the entire world. It's the first thing we taste in the morning, and the last thing we taste at night. We spend eight hours with our mouths all spearminty and then go smear it into our faces the minute we wake up.

That's all, really. Just thought you should know. You know, in case there are benevolent culinarily-inclined aliens watching you.

We definitely weren't sober. Thank fuck we weren't.

It hadn't been a completely wild day, not italics kinda wild, not by a long shot, more kinda 'oh I'll have a beer' and then 'oh, my beer's empty, I'll have another beer' and after that 'are there any more beers?' and before you know it you've drunk quite a few beers and fancy maybe a nice little gin and then maybe another and then that's probably enough because everything's pleasantly giggly now and experience has shown that going beyond that giggly phase usually ends in tears.

So, yeah, we were fun-tipsy and giggling. One of our friends was stone-cold sober because she was driving and the other was the other extreme, totally hammered and stumbling and losing stuff and herself and it was pretty funny really because it was all still in the giggly and hilarious stage at that point.

In we piled into the car, a compact little two-door, we were in the back and Sober Friend was driving and Drunk Friend was in the passenger seat, with her head lolling around hilariously and we set off speeding through the countryside because we were on a little island in the north of Germany and it's pretty much all countryside apart from the bits that aren't but even they basically are.

We were speeding along, zooming around the corners and over little hills and clearly Drunk Friend was having a rough time and then she suddenly leaned out the window and spewed everywhere and it splattered all over the outside of the window, chunks of Bratwurst made all gooey with booze and stinking and really surprising colours and it was bloody hilarious even though Drunk Friend was feeling pretty shit about ruining the car and Sober Friend was pretty fucking angry about the car being ruined but we just tried to not laugh as loudly as we wanted to and then of course we just wanted to laugh more and more but somehow we managed to not just burst all over the place and soon we were on our way again because Drunk Friend assured us she wasn't going to puke any more and that she was really really really sorry, really.

And off we went and moments later, we in the back seat suddenly thought it was raining because we could feel something splashing back into our faces but that didn't really make sense because it had been such a beautiful day and then we realised that the rain was really smelly and it stung like fucking fuck when it got in your eyes and actually it wasn't rain at all because it was Drunk Girl's puke because this time she hadn't managed to lean out the window when she started spewing and it was all just splattering backwards against the 60 kmh wind all over us, into our faces and eyes and hair and my beard and covering our clothes and we could see bits of it all over each other's faces and it fuckingstunk and it just kept coming and coming and what the fuck can you do when you realise that someone is spewing pungent puke all over you and you can't escape because you're stuck in a tiny two-door car rocketing along at a million miles an hour?

You laugh. You just laugh and laugh and laugh.

I can't help but wonder how different things would be if someone had taken him aside and told him that a day would come when all the things that seemed massive then would one day be baffling in their tininess. But then, of course, he'd miss out on the significance of the moment of that realisation. Perhaps he'd just be waiting for that day, wondering if it comes all of a sudden like an uncomfortable bout of heartburn or thanks to a paradigm of barely-noticeable shifts, perhaps carrying out measurements (of himself and of those things), and somehow allowing the momentous insignificance of those things (both relative to him, and to their own surroundings) to somehow just fail to be as significant.

His chest rose and fell as though each snore was a a petrifying beast within, summoning forth the strength to burst free. Each fresh shuddering nasal bellow was so great that there could be no healing in that sleep, engaging as it did seemingly every muscle in his body. His legs were akimbo, bent at the knee, his jeans having made it only halfway down before the irresistable force of gravity had sent him crashing to the mattress, probably unconscious even before he made contact with the thin, wiry cushion. His penis, flopped forlornly out in the jeans purge, had the decency to look embarrassed at its sudden, undesired appearance, as though it wished for nothing more than to scuttle away into a dark corner and hide.

The sound of dry heaving echoed through the dim corridors as the dawn sunshine poked its head over the horizon with a exasperated 'tut' at the utter, utter carnage before it. I felt ever so slightly better at the thought that as terrible as my night was, at least today my feelings of tiredness will be nothing compared to what these people will be feeling.

I had given up on any hope of sleep as soon as the snoring started (which is an enormous testament to my eternal optimism - all the time that one of the other drunk guys was trying to persuade a drunk girl to have sex with him in the eight-bed dorm, I had faint, faint hopes that I may get a tiny bit of rest at some later point) and cut my losses, just before one of their alarms started going off on loop - that MIA song from Slumdog Millionare. They were all too drunk to wake up to turn it off.

A lone girl stumbles sadly over to me as I emerge from the shower. Her head is down and she's hugging herself; such a pitiable figure could only have been the dry heaver from earlier. i´'m so drunjk, she whispers to me sadly, much more a resigned statement of fact than a plea for help. She can't find her room. It's number two, I find out, and it's five metres down the hall. I escort her home, no, I don't have the key, but look! The door's open anyway. In you go now. Thank christ none of the ogres in my room got to her first.

And now, now that I have extracted myself from that room and the snoring and the MIA and everything (taking the fiver I saw on the ground without even the tiniest hint of scruple), I am much more sad than annoyed. It saddens me that a facility such as this exists in the first place; a place were people can come and abdicate all responsibility towards others and are reminded only to tone down their obnoxious behaviour by printed signs on the walls gently asking them to be quiet. It saddens me that people would have such minute regard for their own personal safety as these - dry heaving girl, the friends of the drunks in my room who just didn't show up and whose absence concerned their friends not one bit. Might sound ironic coming from a bit of a boozy drunk such as I, but goddamn, exposing yourself to absolute strangers in a strange city in such a state of incapacity is riding your luck at best.

I'm off for a restorative stroll in the morning sunshine.

It's noisy. Of course it's noisy. You can't wedge thirteen million people into a space without the volume going up a little. Especially if many of those people like to pray in their mosques, and need to be reminded of when to do so. The call to prayer sounds bizarre through the loudspeakers - artificial yet earnest, tradition utilising modernity to keep apace of a place that moves at a breakneck speed that it seems entirely comfortable with.

When the praying and the honking and the ringing and the shouting and the bartering and the invitations to eat all get too much, we take a ferry out to one of the Prince's Islands, Büyükada, some ten kilometres off the coast of Istanbul. There are no cars on the island, but there are packs of friendly wild dogs. We meet an American girl who lives up a hill with her boyfriend and dog, with ten more hounds staking a claim to the hill that rises up behind their little house. They are aloof, those dogs, inbred as all heck with ears pointing bizarrely at all sorts of unexpected angles, and as charming as could possibly be.

We pack up some beers and take off up the hill. The dogs follow and lead. Our own personal protection unit, constantly revolving around us, occasionally coming close for a scratch around those crazy ears. We pass through another pack's territory, and there are some growls from both the invadees and invaders. Two wild ponies appear from nowhere and gallop away, looking for a different type of tranquility to the one we've found.

We pass a sixth century monastery and arrive at the top of a cliff. Behind us, Istanbul lies like a lazy great beast, snoozing in the dusk. In front of us, the ground disappears and drops into the Sea of Marmara, stretching further than we can see. We sit, and the dogs lie all around us. In two hours we've moved from the epitome of bustling action to the most remarkable and unexpected peacefulness I've ever experienced. The power of the juxtaposition leaves us sitting in silence, reverential. The dogs lie there, occassionally nibbling at each other, probably thinking that these people are pretty big idiots from deriving so much joy from something so banal.

Reality returns and we have to get back down for the last ferry back to Istanbul. I consider just staying. Maybe for one night. If the dogs can sleep in the bushes, why can't I? But then, I might never leave, because only a fool would leave Utopia. Or would only a fool stay, allowing daily life to rudely invade a moment so extraordinary? I decide upon the latter.

As we hike down, the call to prayer begins in the small town at the bottom of the hill. As one, the dogs sit down and begin to howl. To Allah, perhaps, or maybe they're annoyed at the breaking of the silence. Maybe just for our benefit. Either way, we leave them to it. We've invaded their routine enough for one day, and they have been the most remarkable of hosts.

The ululations and howling merge into one as we move on, making it seem all the more as though this place has somehow managed to synchronise the rhythms of man and beast, of urbanity and nature. On the ferry back, Istanbul twinkles in the darkness, mosques and skyscrapers standing together.

I can't help but idly search for a metaphor. They're like scales of a disinterested snake, I think, happy to stick around on this part of the Bosphorous for a while.

No. No, they're not.

They're like the talons of a majestic bird of prey.

No, they're not that either. No, it's more like something completely different, something I haven't ever seen before. Some life form that is happy to let us parasite along with it, equally as ambivalent to our presence as our absence, until some day it stands up with a great shuddering yawn, buildings and people falling from its vast, broad back, and just moves somewhere else. It's far too full of life to just lie there in the same place forever.

Now that I am back in Berlin, I have Wanderlust on a scale not seen in many, many years. I feel reactivated after a couple of years of uninspiring back and forth between Ireland, Italy and Germany. I feel like I need a great deal more than that now.

It was the sort of little town that looked like it was a hundred miles from everywhere but itself. Cracked pavements, rustic taverns, folk who stand and stare at a sweaty Irishman who blurs past on a white bike. Streets with numbers instead of names, and roadworks that are landmarks.

It wasn't a hundred miles away though; it was just outside Berlin. Just across those big lakes in the west of town, past all the Charlottenburg cyclists who need the entire cycle path and the houses with pretty little gardens. And it wasn't even as rural as I'm describing - I just want to think that my knee is capable of taking me further than it actually is. I was there to report on a football match, one that turned out to be so schizophrenically full of incident that a nice, relaxing ride home would have been the perfect thing to help me process a fan revolt, two last minute goals and two red cards.

But my bike has a flat tyre. An unexplained one, like bruises after a drunken night. So I'm stranded. Marooned in the countryside. All the fans are piling onto buses that definitely won't take a bike, and then taking a ferry across the lake. What to do? Perhaps if I pump up my tyre real good and sprint, I mean bloody sprint, I'll be able to get to the S-Bahn station 6km away before it pfffft deflates again.

So I start ringing doorbells, trying my utmost not to look like some sort of nasty paedophile prowling the neighbourhood. Thank goodness for the angelic curls. I wonder if they make me look as innocent when matted down with sweat? I finally get my hands on a pump and take off at frantic speed. Knee feels good. Tyre's definitely deflating. Not all that slowly, but definitely surely. I get there though. Just in time. Buy a ticket for me and a ticket for my bike, and settle down for the long train ride home.

I'm interrupted from my exhausted stare into space by a bunch of men drinking beer coming into my carriage. They're not overly boisterous; I've just witnessed a fan revolution. I have my iPod blaring so I can't figure out why two of them suddenly jump out of their seats and scamper down the carriage in panicked, undignified fashion.

Oh. A ticket inspector. The most hated of all folk. A kindred spirit of the guy who fined me €40 for a ticket a couple of minutes expired on a train that was a couple of minutes late. Or the other guy who wouldn't let me use my ticket (valid for two) for a tickeless fellow traveller. The people who epitomise all that I dislike about Germany, with their pernicious, dogmatic adherence to rules and unfailing refusal to allow for valid mitigation.

So I 'lose' my tickets. Are they in this pocket? Or maybe this one? I just have so many pockets! Surely in this one? No. Wherever could they be?

But he doesn't hassle me. He doesn't get rude. He checks a couple of other tickets, and comes back to me. Patiently. Politely. He even smiles.

He's not playing his role. He should seem like a monster, interminably pursuing his prey. Not a man, a nice man, earning a living.

And I am taking his living from him. He could be catching those drunk idiots who scarpered off if it weren't for me and my delaying tactics. I'm stealing from him. Taking bread out of his children's mouths.

I'm feeling bad for a Berlin ticket inspector.

I fish out my tickets, show him, and wonder what life will be like in this parallel universe where everything is turned on its head.

As of last Friday, I am no longer the BCUK support dude.

The time had come to focus on other things. Writing. Translating. World domination, etc. As much as I was loathe to admit it, that was never going to happen from BCUK HQ.

For almost six years I was the guy on the other end, answering all of those questions that needed urgent answering. You wouldn't believe the things I got called. Nazi popped up a couple of times. All sorts of hilarious German stereotypes were thrown my way. I never had the heart to inform how wide of the mark they were. People just need to let stuff out - they are bloggers after all. We're not a group of people well-practiced in holding our tongues with only a computer screen to be offended - well, sections of us anyway. Luckily, online insults in my direction make ducks' backs look like sponges.

And there were the crisis moments. The Private Posts Problem. Tag-gate. Christ, the tags. The Arab Spring seemed tame in comparison to that. The ability to formulate diplomatic emails came in very handy there, as BCUK violently ripped bloggers' first-borns from their mother's arms, and stomped on their heads in front of them. Exaggeration? Seems appropriate.

But then, there were those who were unfailingly polite, pleasant and a pleasure to deal with. People who understood that in order to have a problem solved, it helps to not deliberately make new ones. A please and a thank you actually really, really did make a difference to my day. For those of you who said them (and both you and I know who you are), it's my turn now: thank you. I really mean it.

And to BCUK. I wouldn't still be in Berlin without this job, one that provided me with a desperately needed first payslip six months after making the move. The cupboard wasn't bare by that point; there just wasn't a cupboard. I don't want to think about what would have become of me had Vasco not seen my ad for English lessons and just given me a call. Serendipitous in extremis. Gratitude too.

Hmm, the future? No Dice Magazine, I hope. We're on Issue 2 and it's selling healthily. I've started working on Issue 3. People are starting to not ask me to repeat my name or publication when I introduce myself. That's got to be a good thing. Failing that, there will always be German words that need to be turned into English words. I enjoy that a lot too.

So, that's that. Whoever he/she may be, go easy on the next support dude, eh?

It's been almost a month since I embarked on this diet of no carbs, no meat, no fish and no booze. And I have kept to it remarkably well. I probably don't even need to any more: the results of my latest blood test have been sitting in my doc's office for the last couple of days, but the truth is, I don't really want him to give me the OK to eat and drink whatever I want again.

Because I feel fucking marvellous. I haven't drank any alcohol in a month, and I have never felt so clear-headed, rational and in tune with my own desires. I know that sounds wanky. I know. I would want to smack anyone who said that to me in the mouth, and force the worst beer I could possible find down their cunty, smug throat. They'd deserve it. Prick.

But, I'm sorry, it's true. Not drinking alcohol and taking care what you eat makes you feel really, really good. I've been allowing myself one day per week where I eat what I want, and I find myself feeling disgustingly full when I eat meat and carbs. So I am genuinely considering not bothering to start to drink again, and cutting carbs as much as possible out of my diet, at least until I start running again (meat's coming back though. Meat's just really yummy).

Perhaps I'll falter the first time a beer is offered to me. But perhaps not - I have still been going out and having sober fun, and actually finding myself getting quite drunk by proxy. It's fun. You should try it.

Anyway, in the interests of making your life a little easier, I am below providing you with a list of quick and simply ways to insult me because of this blog post. I'll even number them, so it'll be even easier - when writing your insulting comment, you can just just write in the number. Convenient!

1.) You holier-than-thou twat.
2.) You knob-end, bodies are for abusing, not for cherishing. Dick.
3.) Oh, I bet you feel fucking great, waking up all chipper and happy and not hungover every morning, like some sort of fucking Irish Budda monk prick, don't you? Fucking shithead.
4.) Ram your aubergines, ya carrot-sucker.
5.) Beer is enjoying its new life without you too, you ungrateful cretin. Good riddance.
6.) Another insult of your choosing.

Have fun!

Remember how I used to run and cycle a lot, and wasn't a big no-exercise slob? Well, back then my diet consisted mostly of carbs, all of which got burned off as I chased abstract running goals and took off on extensive cycling tours. It was marvellous; I stuffed my face relentlessly with basically whatever I wanted, then ran it all off. A beery, carby, sweaty state of perfect equilibrium. Bliss.

But then my stupid knee snapped and the equilibrium wobbled and fell like an Irishman on St. Patrick's Day. Apparently, eating so many carbs when not exercising is not such a great idea, especially when one is drinking plenty of beer due to frustration borne of exercise withdrawal.

And apparently this can jigger you liver a bit as the poor thing tries frantically tries to sweep all the unused carbs under the carpet, or whatever the biological equivalent of that may be. And one is forced to embark on a diet of no booze, no carbs, no meat for a few weeks until things get back to normal.

So how does one live exclusively from fruit and vegetables? Well, remarkable easily, it turns out. Roasted broccoli with a ton of pepper and a little chili powder and a squirt of lemon juice is bloody delicious. Raw carrots are the best snack in the world. Mango is fucking sublime. Why did no-one ever tell me how sublime mangoes are? Peeling oranges, making sure you get all the bits of pith off is surprisingly relaxing - and then you get a yummy yummy orange to eat as a reward! Blueberries are great things to have in the fridge - a little bluey bubble of joy every time you open the door. Avocados are fantastic in a salad. Bananas and yoghurt make a glorious lassi, especially if you bung in some peanuts (which I probably shouldn't). Peaches make you hands all sticky, and anything that makes your hands sticky is good, right? Chickpeas and beans go with just about everything, and if there's a more versatile vegetable than the aubergine, I'd like to know about it. Oh, and peppers! Marvellous to nibble on, especially if you've got something yummy to dip them in.

Yes, the farting can get intolerable (even for someone like me who really loves farting), and they type of fullness you get from a ton of fruit and veg really just can't be compared to that from pasta or rice or bread of meat. But I am pleased about discovering lots of new things to enjoy that I otherwise wouldn't have.

Goddamn, that was a good mango.

You know how I love languages and language barriers and all that? How I don't like living in English-speaking countries cos it just kinda bores me? How I like the constant battle to make myself understood? How I love proving to people that the ability to express oneself in another language is purely an exercise in bloody-minded determination, and very little to do with individual capacity for language acquisition? How I love the buzz of successfully integrating a new word into a conversation? How people sometimes think I am German/Italian and I delight in informing them that I am actually just a successful mimic, a fraud, a glorified parrot who has learned to understand and implement prevalent patterns?

Well, about all that.

I've started to wonder exactly what it is about the battle to make myself understood that is so attractive to me. I think it's something to do with how simple the methodology is. I mean, sometimes I fail to communicate even the most basic of ideas, and sometimes I come across a person I simply cannot understand. So that's when you go back to basics. Simplify the simplest concepts. Everything can always be broken down into smaller and smaller component parts. Hell, just resort to gestures and symbols - no good for explaining abstract concepts, but for the basics, you only need the basic tools. And without basics, you can't have the complicated stuff. It'll just fall down, lacking a foundation to keep it afloat. Build it up, slowly.

In speaking languages, this is obvious, simple and clear to me. Of course it is; I have spent years working on it.

But there are other areas of self-expression that I have not spent years working on, and I am only now realising that the same principles apply. Like when dealing with other people - ones you care about. You really just have to learn their language, starting with the with the absolute basics.

Basics like 'I am'.
I want.
I like.
I don't like.
Do you like?
Do you want?

And you go from there.

Minus five, I'm told, the coldest day of the remarkably mild winter so far.

And I have a game to report on. Sixth division. No adequate shelter. It's going to be cold. Not cold in the sense of bit-of-a-shiver kinda cold. Oh no. Cold in the you-could-die-from-it kinda cold. Like getting the order of the procedure of death mixed up a bit, and going to the morgue first and climbing into the freezer and awaiting rigor mortis.

So I put a t-shirt on. On top of the t-shirt, a long-sleeved t-shirt. On top of that, a woolly jumper. Over that goes a thick fleece. Finally, an insulated jacket.

Five heavy layers. That's the top half sorted.

Now, bottom half. Undies. Long johns. Trousers. Should be fine.

Then, ankle socks. Woolly socks. Tuck long johns into woolly socks. Winter boots.

Oh yes, my head: woolly hat, hood.

Done. Off I waddle, snug and smug as all hell that I'm beating the winter so comfortably. LITERALLY.

I arrive, take out my notebook, sit down with a gasp (damn, that bench was cold).

And the vast, gaping, yawning, evilly cackling flaw in my perfect, perfect plan hits.

I am going to be spending the next ninety minutes writing.

AND I HAVE NO GLOVES.

Oh, a monkey!

A lady monkey. I think I'll shag her.

(shagging ensues)

Oh, a tree! I think I'll jump around in it for a bit.

(jumping ensues)

Phew, bit tired after all that jumping. Oh! A banana! I think I'll eat it.

(eating ensues)

Ooh, bit full after all that eating. Might have a bit of a sleep. Oh, there's a nice, comfy-looking branch.

(sleeping ensues)

Yes, that was a nice sleep. Oh, a tree! I think'll jump around in it for a bit.

(jumping ensues)

Oh, a monkey! A lady monkey. I think I'll...

---------------

That, my friends, was not a foray into bestiality, as much as it may see as though it was.

No, I was merely responding to the incredulity that greeted me when I told a friend that I don't really daydream or fantasise very much, and when I do it's mostly just about actual things that are going on in my life. My friend, on the other hand, lives semi-permanently in a world of intrigue, mystery, chance encounters, unexpected sexy moments, Catch-22 situations, bizarre dilemmas and much more besides.

He challenged me to come up with a fantasy while he went to the toilet, and the first that came to mine was that I had become a monkey. And, in my true pragmatic style, my fantasy monkey life was really quite mundane. No secret agents. No-one pretending to be someone they weren't. No implausible coincidences. Just monkeys jumping, eating, shagging and sleeping.

So what does this mean? Is my brain so mired in reality that it can't conceive of even the most marginally fantastic fantasy? Does pragmatism dominate my thinking to the extent that giving it a free licence to roam leaves it curled up, cowering under its bedsheets, wetting itself and whimpering for mommy?

Or is it a security system? Is the process of fantasising simply a pining for a different life, an indicator of malcontent that can't be solved, causing a retreat back into the safety of the mind's eye where good things end only when you want them too? Does my inability to fantasise suggest that I have the perfect life and that I am brilliant at it?

Am I asking more questions than I am answering? Do they even make sense? Does it matter? It is quite late, after all.

It hasn't felt like a long year at all, this one. The rhythm has been very odd, and has skewed my perception of it far beyond the linear progression that a year usually follows, like a frustrated scribble scrawling back over itself many times.

It started excitingly, 2011, and continued to get more and more exciting until it completely stopped being anything even close to resembling the faintest hint of excitement for the last five months.

The great thing about spending a long time waiting, even if it is interminable at the time, is that, in hindsight, it appears to have flown by.

But still, when I sit down to think of my five most significant moments of the year, it's domainated, utterly and completely, but one single incident. Guess which one. Doesn't take much.

Late February
Oh, that farm was beautiful. That cheese was indescribable. Damn, those two weeks in Tuscany feel like a long, long time ago.

June 19th
The third half-marathon in three months was by far the best, and made me determined to run many more. Alas, August 23rd stepped in to bugger up that plan for the next year or so. Here is a little scribble on my thoughts about the first half-marathon of the year, in April.

August 23rd
blah blah moan whimper knee ouch operations physio blah blah blah. Moving the fuck on.

Sometime in October
I met a person of the female persuasion that I like quite a lot. And, in an enormous break from the norm, I am not blogging about it, or even talking about it all that much. I have been asking myself why. Perhaps I have finally learned the value of discretion. Perhaps there's not really very much to say, because it just kinda, sorta works. In a way that doesn't leave me frustrated, or feeling like I'm making compromises I don't want to, or like I am chasing my tail. Yeah, it's pretty alright. She's pretty alright. Maybe these relationship things aren't the big dose of desperate frustration that I always thought they were. Fingers crossed.
(Oh, and funny thing - we would never have met were it not for the knee injury. Life is a funny old type of grumpy bastard)

November 4th
The birth of No Dice Magazine, as the first copies hit a (very limited) number of shop shelves all over Berlin. It was a tentative step, testing the water to see if there are many other people out there who like the dirty, freezing world of lower-league Berlin football as much as my co-founders and I do. The response, I am delighted to report, was overwhelmingly positive. There are only a couple of copies of the first edition left, and we have been getting plenty of attention from the wider world of football writing, including from no less than The Guardian. This one will only continue to get more exciting.

So what to conclude? Not much, really. There are any infinity of shitty things that can happen at any given moment, all of them very much out of your control. I'm lucky that my shitty thing, in the greater scheme of things, wasn't really all that shitty. I'll be back, to live more in the moment than ever before in 2012.

Depending on how far you go, things are usually the same, but different.

The thrilling mystery is in that slight difference, a pool that is ever-so-slightly out of your depth. You could get out, of course, but why would you? Why on earth would you?

Dive in head first instead, cover yourself in that difference, coat yourself, relish it, because it's harder to find than it used to be.

That faint rush of confusion, fear, is it fear? diluted by the rising tide of excitement at the challenge. Feet so close to the bottom, but not quite there. Toes grasping. Relax. Relax. It's worth it. Just relax and feel the difference.

Is it a drug? An addiction? I feel like I need it. Crave it. The state of being enslaved to a habit or practice - that's an addiction. I slowly, surely, start to fall apart without it. A cloud gradually accumulates, a dark one, one that impairs rational thought and obscures truths.

But no, it's not an addiction. No. It's an antidote. To the mundanity, the humdrum, the rhythm and *shudder* routine that normal life insists upon. It must be interrupted. It must. Otherwise it will consume me and I will be automated, pre-conditioned, thoughtless. Running on empty but never quite running dry.

Fuck, I need to go somewhere far away. Just for a week. Or two. And then I'll be fine again.

We all know about the Stockholm Syndrome, a phenomenon whereby hostages begin to develop fondness for their captors.

I think I have it.

I'm not a hostage to a person though. I am hostage to a limb.

My operation went well, and I'll be spending the next couple of weeks lying on my bed doing bugger-all. By Christmas though, I should be able to walk again and life will be heading more and more in the direction of normal with every passing day.

The thought scares me a bit.

Every single conversation I have had over the last three months has involved my stricken knee to some extent. Every movement I make must be carefully thought through so as not to damage it. It's been a convenient excuse for getting out of things I don't really want to do, but has also caused me to forgo plenty of things that I most definitely did want to do.

In short, it has absolutely ruled my life for a quarter of a year.

So what happens when it's gone? I expect I'll feel a quite lost. I already feel a little lost, restless, distracted, and I've only just started the latest bout of physio.

It's interesting to note how the people I have met over these last three months are amused by how obsessed I am with making it clear that I AM NOT ACTUALLY A SLOB, and THIS BELLY DOES NOT BELONG TO ME (I'm just looking after it until January, and then IT LEAVES). My legs are no longer those of a cyclist or a runner. They are emaciated, and one of them is highly uncooperative for simple tasks like standing. Or moving from standing to not standing.

I suppose I am worried about how, when I start running and cycling again, it won't be to chase down personal bests or to take part in fun races or tours. My favourite pastimes will become slow, painful chores with little in the way of appreciable rewards. What if I grow to dislike them?

I also find it interesting how people are desperate to assign meaning to things and events that contain none whatsoever.

My knee bust. It wasn't a test of my strength of character. Anything that has happened over the previous three months as a result of the injury did not happen because it was meant to be. There is no such things as meant to be, just as bad things can happen to good people and vice versa. A meaningless footballing cliché feels appropriate: it was just one of those things.

I don't even know what I am trying to say any more. I don't think I did even when I started the post. I guess that says it all, really.