Right, lets see, what been down with the site then? Lets see…

Last time I updated, it was when I went to see Pendulum in London with the lads. In true musical elitist form, I’m going to have to say that seeing them in Brixton Academy was not as good as seeing them in a small club in Hull. Altho I feel that may have been related to the mass of ecstacy I had before the small club. And all the bellends in Brixton starting a mosh pit. Do I remember someone trying to start a circle pit? You can’t have a circle pit at a drum’n'bass gig.

And what have people been commenting on? I did a rant about Salamanders (not the amphibians, the Space Marines), and that’s had lots of people commenting on it, not realising I hadn’t updated in over a year. Well, I’ll catch up with them in a bit, and possibly do a sequal. Or not. There’s not a lot to follow up “they nerfed my favourite Space Marine chapter, boo hoo”.

And what have I done with my time?

Erm…

I’ve been playing lots of Kingdom of Loathing over the last year. Seriously loads. Like, everyones getting sick of me going on about it, and I’m minding other peoples accounts for them, and I’m basically running my clan, loads. And the only thing stopping me writing Greasemonkey scripts for it, is hating the shit out of Javascript.

Employment? Really? Would love some. Hit me up with an email if you’re some loony who wants to give me a job, based on this one update. Seriously, the only reason I’m not trying male prositution is a lack of positions available for male prositutions. Definatly not my standards, oh no.

That’ll do for now. Hope that this tiny stone gathers some moss and I start writing awesome content, don’t expect it.

• My santa hat got more action with the ladies than me. And I don’t mean in a “that’s a sexy hat!” way, I mean as in a “being stuffed down a very ample cleavage” way.
• Sixteen thousand crushed plastic cups are very hard to dance on.
• Over one thousand people trying to start a mosh pit in an approximatly hundred square meter area are very hard to dance with.
• Give the man handing out free badges a fake email address, you cretin.
• Don’t believe the official timetable on the venue website. The headlining band will not finish just before the last train home, it will start at the same time as the last train home.
• Do not believe the 3am bus driver. You will not be dropped by a pub in the middle of town, you will be dropped by a random A-road in the middle of nowhere.
• OK, I can see you need a smoke, and don’t want to leave the front of the stage to go to the smoking area. So yeah, ducking down to have a smoke is a genius plan. But why aren’t you dying of dehydration as well? And how does that make a fag palletable at all?
• When buying your tickets on eBay, check they’re on the main stalls, and not in the balcony a hundred miles away from the action. That took a bit of work to sort out.
• Do not try starting a circle pit to Pendulum, for fucks sake. They’re a drum’n'bass act with metal influences, not a goddamn metal band. You want to pull that shit, find Shellshock, they’re a metal band with drum’n'bass influences, you can do that shit with them. Let me have some room to dance already.
• London prices are always London prices.

Having rolled off of his arm, the woman groaned. Evidently, she had had a fair few herself. This wasn’t something he thought too hard about, since he was shaking his am into some semblance of life. The thrashing motion seemed to alert her to the presense of something else in her bed.
“Eurr… who’re you?” she groaned.
“I was… oww… hoping to ask you… eeeeh… the same question.”
“Ahh… do you remember what happened last night?”
“Not in particular… ooh, my arm… I know we were talking, and somehow we ended up here, and I’m hoping this is your room.”
“Yeah, thankfully. Did we…?”
Graham knw that he didn’t have a clue, besides the circumstancial evidence, but he didn’t quite know how to say this without accidently offending his currant hostess.
“I don’t know. It seems… oooeies… it seems quite likely.”
“What’s wrong with your arm?”
He froze at this question. This was most definatly one of those questions you dodged around like you were roller skating through a minefield, with an erupting volcano behind you: get out quickly, but do it carefully.
“I think I slept on it funny. It’ll be fine in a minute.” Which was near enough the truth, apart from the bit about it being alright.
“But its gone a funny colour, maybe you should take it to a doctor…”
“It’ll sort itself out, don’t you worry.”
Which wasn’t necessarily untrue, it had started to throb a bit less painfully, although it was still going to be some time before he could actually bend his fingers. She dragged herself up somewhat, and Graham actually managed to see who he was sharing a bed with.

She seemed to be one of those people who looked as if they would be stunningly beautiful if they were at least half their weight. She was blonde, with hair that cascaded down her shoulders like a waterfall, and she had blue eyes that sparkled, even though her hangover was paining her as much as his was. She fumbled around on the nightstand next to her, and found a pair of stylish looking glasses, which she rested on her face, before turning her eyes on him.
“Say, you’re not bad looking, actually,” she said, smiling slightly.
“Well, you’re… erm… not too bad yourself”, he mumbled, and he was annoyed that she would have been stunningly beautiful if there wasn’t quite so much of her. This fumbled compliment seemed plenty enough for her, however, and she broke out in a broad smile that actually seemed to glow. It seemed Graham had followed his old friends advice to the letter, but not necessarily to the spirit.
“So what’s your name then?” she asked.
“I’m…”, and here he stumbled. Having never done the one night stand thing before, and not so sure he should have done this one, he didn’t know the etiquette of trying to fob them off and making a run for it.

He decided that, depending on how much he got for transporting the one little package, he could just stay in Amsterdam a while, get his bearings. It wasn’t a bad idea, every Dutch person he had encountered so far that day alone had been friendly, helpful, and had spoken enough English to help him get by. It was certainly tempting enough to keep him thinking about it for most of the evening. He decided, on returning to the hotel, to have dinner in its restaurant, enjoyed a braised steak, and a glass of red wine. Red wine wasn’t a favourite of his, but it went with the steak, and he found himself enjoying it. He was enjoying himself quite a bit, in fact, so he continued into the hotel bar, to have another glass. And he was really quite enjoying himself. He even decided to sample the local lady folk. However, this would have meant leaving the hotel, and gambling with the rather precarious Dutch nightlife, so he decided to stick with the contents of the hotel bar. He decided to start with the attractive young lady just down the bar to him. Beating down the sensation of “what the hell are you doing going up to some girl you don’t know and talking to her” that I have never in my life been able to break past, he sloped up to her, and surreptitiously claimed the seat next to her. He smiled, asked her how her evening was, which was a wonderful evening thank you for asking, asked what brought her to Amsterdam, discovered that she had come with her husband to an art exhibition somewhere in the city, panicked, talked for a bit longer, then made his excuses and retreated to where he started. Not a brilliant set of manoeuvres, even considering his skills were ten years out of date. Shrugging his shoulders, he moved to a different part of the bar, and observed for a bit longer. He then sidled up to an equally attractive young lady, and seemed to start on a much better note. However, even by his atrophied standards, there was something seemingly amiss about her. It was only when he discovered she’d not long broken up with her boyfriend that he rethought the entire situation. While semi-drunken rebound sex was an interesting game to play, he felt he had had enough crazy in the last few days, and adding to it with rejection issues and sadness wasn’t a good idea. Besides, he thought as he made his excuses and escaped again, it did put him in mind of Miranda. It wasn’t very kind, what he had done to her, and if he’d had a kinder option that would have worked, he would have gone with it. He wondered how much she was suffering at that moment.

* * *

Not much, as it turned out. She had gone up to the train station, been mildly thwarted by having a work experience student to deal with, and having shouted her way to someone who knew what they were doing, demanded her partners bag back. They acted very quickly, found the bag, and threw the work experience youth back out front. Thankfully for them, she had left, to go onto the police station, where she shouted her way to the chief constable for the station. Starting with attempting to lodge a complaint about how she’d been mistreated and shunned the other day, she proceeded into a missing persons claim. The chief constable had stared down drug busts, knifings, and the occasional riot at a protest before, so was not particularly intimidated. However, such a formidable sight as this angry, almost Amazonian woman did put him on edge.
“What evidence do you have that he’s gone missing, madam?” he questioned.
“What, apart from the fact that he was supposed to be back from his weekend away with work yesterday, he hasn’t contacted me, I haven’t been able to get hold of him, no hotel in London knows where he is, oh, and his boss didn’t even organise a weekend away? Not a bloody lot, I don’t think.”
“Now, you don’t have any clues where he was going?”
“None, apart from something that I did earlier. He told me he was going to London, then he got on the train to Milton Keynes.”
“What something?”
“The train station called and said he’d left a bag of stuff behind, I’d just gone and got it before coming to see you.”
“May I see it, madam?”
“Alright, I haven’t looked at it myself though.”
So they started to trawl through his bag. Changes of clothes were a common theme. As were maps of Europe, train timetables, guidebooks, a few language dictionaries that Miranda was surprised she hadn’t noticed were missing.
“It seems he’s planning a tour of Europe, madam”, said the chief constable.
“Well, why didn’t he tell me? I can guess what’s going on just at a glance!”
“What’s that, then?”
“He’s running away with some tart he’s seeing!”
“And what makes you suggest that then, madam?”
“The fact he’s run away and seems to be dead set on going round Europe without telling me!”
“And you’re sure there’s no other reason?”
“What do you bloody well think it could be then?”
“Well, how are things at home, by any chance?”
Miranda didn’t break step in switching who she was pissed off with.
“It’s none of your bloody business how things are like at home!”
“On the contrary, madam, it might prove very enlightening. But I’ll tell you what, would you like to make a statement now, answer a few questions, and we’ll get to work tracking him down?”
“Thank you, I shall.”

Having taken a statement, she made her way home, to begin starting her own investigation. The police would take too long to respond, and she wanted him back as soon as was possible. She knew she didn’t know anything about this conference, and assumed Graham was working on the same knowledge, so wouldn’t be trying to lay a false trail. This would mean he wasn’t heading to London at all, or else he’d have gotten on the London train in the first place. This meant he wasn’t taking any transport from London itself, and likely wasn’t taking the conventional seaward route out of England through Dover. And if he got off at Milton Keynes, he was either taking a coach somewhere, or going on to Luton airport. Further than that, she would need to investigate from home. Investigations did start at home, although they weren’t hers, as she found a number of voice mail messages from the Secret Service agents who were currently stationed in Hull. She picked up the phone, and was put through to Agent Stevenson.
“Is that Ms Miranda Burricombe, by any chance?”
“No, its Ms Miranda Sefton, but you’re nearly right. Is this about my fiancé?”
“Yes, we need to know where he is.”
“Funny that, so do I.”
“You don’t know where he is?”
“Somewhere in Europe, can you do me one better?”
“If only. We do know where he’s going to be tomorrow afternoon though.”
“Then we need to start talking.”
“You’re quite right, Ms Sefton. How soon can you be in Hull?”
“I need to pack a bag, you need to get me somewhere to stay, I can be there in under three hours.”
She then hung up the phone, threw a few pre-packed essentials into a bag (she had never associated with anyone involved with the Boy Scouts, but agreed with their motto of Be Prepared), threw the bag into the car, and went tearing off in the direction of the M1.

Graham didn’t go tearing off in any direction that evening. He had tried with a few more ladies, but he was having any more luck than he had started off with. There were a couple more women who were taken, one of those preferring those of a more female persuasion (or as normal people might call them, lesbians), and he had been told where to get off at more than a few times.

The problem wasn’t just that Graham’s game was bad, it was that it basically didn’t exist. When he was younger, he prescribed the principle that if something was meant to happen, it would happen, and there wasn’t a lot he could do about it either way. This wasn’t a terribly good attitude to take, considering that focus groups have shown that women prefer their men to be a bit more assertive. I assume they’ve done focus groups on that sort of thing, they do focus groups for just about everything else these days. But basically, he may have been a nice enough guy, but he just didn’t try as hard as he should have done. So on the average night out, he would have had a few drinks, observed a few ladies, drunk a few more, then perhaps plucked up the courage to actually talk to one of them. But he never had the balls to take it any further than that, and thus created your everyday self-fulfilling prophecy. By the time he had realised this was a ridiculous way to attract women (or not, as the case actually was), his system had netted him Miranda, and he therefore couldn’t try out the whole “actually talking and enjoying it” system for fear of an attack of a highly jealous nature. So now he had the freedom to experiment, he didn’t have any idea what he was really supposed to do, and assumed he’d still been doing it wrong in the first place. So, despite the wisdom of several nights in a row, he fell back on the backup plan – empty the contents of the bar into his gullet.
I’m not quite sure whether you ought to be surprised by this, but this was actually quite a clever way of going forward. While beer droop might have banjaxed his plans for a finishing move, the drink made him relax a bit, and muted his inhibitions a bit too. This is regarded as a good start, but he overplayed it when he acquired his second bottle of rosé, a splendid wine in this authors opinion, finished it off, completely ignored his nerves and his concerns about taste and decency. Although wine did seem to make him a fairly quiet drunk, it did ensure he ended up cozying up to the second biggest woman in the hotel bar that evening.

The next morning appeared before the end of the night reappeared. Graham once again found himself hungover, with a blaring headache, and a sense he’d done something incredibly stupid the night before. He also didn’t quite know where he was, even though he’d gone to quite some effort to memorise his room the night before. This was because he wasn’t in it.
Something snorted in its sleep next to him, and Graham jumped at the noise. He would have jumped out of bed, but he couldn’t, because something was lying on his arm. He also noticed that he couldn’t feel his arm, and that seemed to go beyond simple “lying on your arm, it having a lack of blood, and needing three minutes of thrashing it around to get it back to life” numbness. If he was me, he would have vaguely recalled a story about the frontman of the band Megadeath, Dave Mustardpot, or whatever his name is, causing fairly serious damage to his arm by falling asleep on it funny. Months of tours had to be cancelled, and assumably Mr Mustardpot felt quite silly as well. Of course, since Graham didn’t care much for Megadeath, or even know who Dave Mustardpot was (and I know his name isn’t really Dave Mustardpot, but it is Dave MusSomething, and to be quite frank, I don’t give a tuppenny fuck), but he might have been able to draw similar conclusions as to how his arm was feeling. And as he drew conclusions, he also drew memories to explain why he was in an unfamiliar room, with enough similarities to make a proponent of the Uncanny Valley theory start drawing up fresh notes, with his arm stuck under something huge that was in bed with him.

He had been drinking, he could draw that conclusion just from the state of his head. There had been ladies involved. A lesbian, perhaps. Had he got his arm stuck under a lesbian? He thought about this properly for a moment, then realised that given his skills and experience, getting his hand caught under a lesbian like this would involve getting his hand into a lesbian at some prior point, and that was a bit less likely than him getting his hand in Jesus. So what was the obvious thing he had missed? He remembered talking to a large number of beautiful girls, without much luck, and he remembered talking to a large girl… oh gods. He remembered a mate of his at university, who had sworn by the principle of “bedding fat birds, because they’re easy, gagging for it, and cum dead good too.” And he believed he had followed this friends modus operandi to a tee – get roaringly drunk, and find the fattest bird he could find. Brilliant. What he hadn’t noticed was that relative to the previous few nights, his head wasn’t as bad as it should have been, but this was because at first he’d just noticed it was bad, and later he’d developed more important things to worry about, like a stupid night the night before, and the fact that his arm was likely to start dying any minute now. He tugged on it as hard as he could, but tugging too hard jarred his head and stomach, and didn’t do much, and tugging gently took the direct route and did absolutely nothing. He lay there, panicked a bit, and wondered what the hell he was going to do. As if to taunt the principle he had rejected some time ago, the waiting seemed to solve the problem for him. The large creature next to him mumbled something, yawned, and rolled over.

Rather worried, she called anything with any hotel even approximating the name Arlington Row, and found no luck with anyone she sought. She was beginning to think someone was seriously wrong, but she couldn’t quite tell what. She decided to call the police. Seeing as it was Sunday, it seemed the only man there was a near-retirement gentleman, who didn’t quite grasp how important this all was to her, and suggested she come in to see them tomorrow. She was getting more and more worried, and she was less than impressed at how she had just been fobbed off.

* * *

Graham would have been less than impressed with the accommodation he had been fobbed off with, if he hadn’t been in an interesting mental place as it was. As it was, he was simply happy to have a bed that appeared comfy, a locked door to keep the ducks away, and an interesting selection of thoughts to keep him occupied until he fell asleep, which he did, very quickly.

* * *

I appear to have written myself into a corner here, since all the characters are taking time out from doing things to sleep, worry, and analyse photofit pictures of each other. Nonetheless, we need something to fill up a section of writing until someone does something, so we’ll talk about a duck on a pond in Amsterdam.

It was a rather boring life for a duck on a pond in Amsterdam. It was a cold time of year, with autumn coming to a close, and very few people coming out to throw out bread. There was always a few insects, or some plants, to nibble on, but these were fewer in number at that time of year, and the leaves coming down from the trees were clogging the pond up somewhat.

He reached round and preened his feathers. The mating season was still a long time away, and he was supposed to be foraging for some food. He dunked his head underwater, and was rewarded with a mouthful of splendid pondweed.

Suddenly, he had a flash of realisation. Ducks were a mighty breed, capable of dominating the entire world if they put their minds together and worked as a cohesive whole. It was simply a matter of instilling a revolutionary consciousness in his fellow duck comrades. He swam over to where the other ducks were gathered.
“Quack quack! Quack! Quack quack, quack!” he loudly declared.
However, since ducks have no formal language system, this meant absolutely nothing to the other ducks.
“Quack?” asked another duck, trying to discern his meaning. However, since that too was a simple quack, it made an equal lack of sense to his revolutionary brother.
“Quack, quack-quack, quack! Quack-quack!” declared the first duck. He was getting annoyed at his brothers’ lack of insight. Surely they could see that instilling them with a revolutionary mindset would set them up for a brutal yet ultimately victorious take-over of the hated human society. What he had not realised was that ducks were simple birds of the water, not given to violent insurrection. However, it worked out quite nicely for me, since now I can tell you that Graham was having a vivid yet bizarre dream about ducks, and we can cut back to the police station, having comfortably hit 15,000 words.

* * *

“So this is the guy they’re using then”, said the first special agent.
And it was indeed Graham, though of course, they didn’t yet know he was called Graham, this resulting in this long and probably unnecessary explanation.
“He doesn’t seem to fit the normal profile for this sort of work.”
“Maybe they’re trying something different. Throw us by using new tactics.”
“Well, it isn’t working, for a start, we know what he looks like. Circulate this image to Customs in every port along the North Sea coast, and send one down to Humberside airport. We’ve probably just missed him, but perhaps someone in passport control might recognise him.
And recognise someone he did. The man on passport duty in Rotterdam got back to them.
“He seemed a bit… suspicious,” he told the special agents by phone. “I just thought he was hung over, but you tell us he is smuggling contraband… I should have stopped him.”
“You weren’t to know, if you can tell us his details, we can move onto arresting him.”
“Hold on, let me check the passenger records for that trip…” which preceded a flurry of keyboard tappings. “Aha! I remember his name now; he is a Mr Graham Burricombe, passport number…”
Finally having his details, Graham’s details were pulled straight out of the police records, his credit was run, and in no time at all they had a more comprehensive record of information on Graham than Graham had. Comprehendible, however, was an entirely different matter.
“He booked the ferry ticket before making contact with Winterton?” asked an incredulous Second Special Agent.
“This makes things even more complicated,” postulated First Special Agent (see, making up actual names for characters is a ridiculous idea. First and Second Special Agents are much better names than, for example, Agent Townsend and Agent Stevenson. Oh bugger, I’ve gone and named them now. And there goes the fourth wall sailing out the window again.)
(Hang on, where was I?)
“This makes things even more complicated,” postulated Agent Townsend, not realising he’d actually acquired a name. “Normally its either booked a while before, or it would have been booked on the day and paid in cash. He booked this only the other weekend.
“Its not fitting the normal pattern. Still, we’ve got to work with whatever we’ve got. OK, someone find his old lady, his boss, anyone who can give us the heads up on this guy, work out his normal modus operandi, then see what’s changed in the last week.”
* * *
Quite a lot had changed in Graham’s world. He woke up, and felt like his head was stuffed with cotton wool. Hangovers, he could understand and work with, but this was something else. His next thought was something else as well, as he had no idea where he was. It seemed like a hotel room, and a relatively nice one at that. Was he still in Rotterdam? Had he dropped off the package early? What the hell was going on?
He took a moment, and a deep breath to go with the moment. Five minutes to look around before he started properly freaking out. He found a notepad and pen with the name of the hotel, with a name that had something to do with looking at ducks.
Ducks… why did ducks seem so familiar?
At any rate, the hotel seemed to be somewhere in Rotterdam, which was a good start. He showered, dressed, and wandered downstairs to where he hoped he would find breakfast. He found a fair few of the staff giving him funny looks. Not necessarily nasty ones, more like the sort of look you would give a man who had showered up covered in cheese and singing Disney songs. He went up to the front desk.
“Are you feeling all right his morning, sir?” asked the girl on the front desk.
“What happened yesterday?”
“Ah, sir was was… in a very strange way. I think he had been smoking the marijuana…”
Oh shit. He hadn’t even touched a joint since he was at university, and he hadn’t gotten very far before being gone for the night. By the feel of it, it hadn’t been a little he had smoked.
“I’m so sorry, did I do anything particularly stupid?”
“No, no, at worst you were a bit rude, but as long as you don’t plan to do it again…”
“Oh gods no. Did I actually pay for my room?”
“Yes you did, although depending on when you need to go, you may have overpaid somewhat.”
“Well, I’m going as soon as I’ve had breakfast…”
Difficulties sorted, Graham recieved a small refund, made smaller, because despite what the staff
were telling him, he had the idea that he had done something horrendously embaressing. He then enjoyed a light continental breakfast, and departed the hotel.
Ignoring the worryingly familiar statue of a duck outside, Graham attempted to get his bearings. He wasn’t quite sure where he was, but after about fifteen minutes of searching, he managed to find a tourist information station, where he acquired a fresh set of maps of Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and the Netherlands in general. He was advised to also buy a bus ticket, which he did, ending up very perplexed by the bookmark-like strip of card he was given. Taking an English translation of the bus timetable, he went outside, and went in search of a bus stop heading to the train station.
Holland is very small. Most counties in England, if not being bigger at it, can at least give it a massive inferiority complex, and the average American state would eat it up for breakfast. There are also enough stereotypes about the Dutch being stoned all the time, an image I the author have done nothing to try and disprove. But they do public transport right, which is sixteen million billion times better than the rubbish we have here.
A bus ticket in Holland, shaped like a bookmark, as I have mentioned, is valid just about anywhere in the country. There’s some business about zones, but when it was being explained to me when I went to Holland a while ago, I was already stoned to my eyeballs, so I missed what parameters a zone came under. But one bus ticket could take you across ten zonesworth of Holland, in any part of the country, on any day you liked after buying it. This is infinatly more useful than a British ticket, which only works on one line, needs buying afresh every bloody day, and costs an arm and a leg.
Buses also actually show up on time. And indeed, show up at all. You’d think these would be things that normal buses would do, but you would apparently be wrong. Wrong. And trains! It takes half an hour to take the train from one end of the country to the other! A marvellous combination of miniscule geography, and trains that actually move. I remember them being double decker trains too, just for good measure. Basically, English public transport is pants, Dutch public transport is brilliant, and I’ve managed to pad out my story a bit more.

He remembered a trip to the zoo he had made when was in school. It hadn’t been a huge zoo, but they had had quite a few monkeys. Ranging from chimpanzees, to some ring-tailed lemurs, to itty bitty things called pygmy marmosets. He started giggling at the thought. Tiny monkeys! Monkey monkey monkey! He started giggling a bit more. Monkeys were funny! Why didn’t he have a monkey? They were funny, and everyone would enjoy the sight of a tiny monkey sitting on his head. Even Miranda! If he had a tiny monkey, and trained it to sit on his head…
“Excuse me, sir?”
The train of thought about monkeys stopped, and utterly vanished. Someone was talking to him! This was important! Something important was going on! What was happening?”
“Sir?”
“Erm… yes?”
“Your cheese toasty is ready.”
A cheese toasty! He was hungry! A cheese toasty was a delicious idea! At that point, there was nothing he wanted more in the world than a cheese toasty in front of him, and him eating it!
“Do… do I eat it here?”
“If you want to, sir. How is your skunk?”
A skunk! He didn’t have a skunk! What the hell did he… ooh yeah, the weed, silly me!
“Its splendid, my friend.”
“You got enough for now?”
“Plenty.”
And he did have plenty. He’d only smoked pot a handful of times at university, and it hadn’t been as much fun as this stuff. It made his brain happy. His brain was sitting on a beanbag made of a Jamaican flag, feeling so happy it was unreal. He couldn’t quite remember why he’d ended up in here in the first place. Something to do with directions. But now he was here, it was all about smoking up a fat…
“Sir, your cheese toasty?”
Cheese toasty! Cheese toasty delicious!
And so it was. If he had been back in England, it wouldn’t have done much to excite him, but in Holland, stoned royally off of his face, he couldn’t have been happier if he’d been served the finest filleted steak, served off of a virgin’s backside. The cheese toasty didn’t stand a chance. It simply vanished, and was quickly forgotten.

* * *

Graham had not been quickly forgotten by the man in the head shop, however. This was not to his advantage, as the two senior policemen sitting across the table from him were very interested in what he had to say.
“I’ve told you all time and time again, I don’t sell drugs, I don’t advocate drug taking, I just sell these things, and what people choose to do with them is up to them. Not my business.”
“This is not the issue, Mr Winterton,” exclaimed one of the policemen, “although perhaps another time we might want to discuss why selling smoking paraphernalia inherently condones smoking. What we’re interested in hearing about is a certain package you received two days ago.
“A package? You want to know about packages, talk to the Royal Mail. I understand they have an international business based around delivering them.”
“But it wasn’t the Royal Mail who delivered this package to you, was it sir?”
“I’ve told you, I don’t know anything about any package! What’re you doing interrogatin’ me about something I don’t know, when there’s smackheads and rapists wandering round Hull as we speak?”
The two police officers shared a quick look, and the second policeman took up the interrogation.
“Mr Winterton, we have photographic evidence of a known felon visiting your place of work this Friday, and delivering a package matching a description of the one we are searching for. He claimed he only knew it as a bag of fish, and he had no idea what was in it. Much the same as you claim.”
“This individual,” continued the first policeman, “was tried last thing last night, and I understand has been sent down to HM Prison Hull for, how long is it?”
“About seven years, if I’m not mistaken.”
“That sounds about right. And he genuinely had no idea about this package. If we find out you are withholding information about it…”
The policemen let this thought trail off into thin air, allowing Winterton to stew for a minute.
“Anything you’d like to tell us, sir?”
“Well, I did have a package that fits the description you gave me.”
“Did, sir? Did have a package?”
“However, a man came yesterday to take it…”

* * *

That same man had taken a lot of something else as well. He no longer knew how he had gotten wherever he was, where he was going, but he did know how to rip a fat bowl of bud, and he had decided to go through his wallet. So far, the results were not particularly interesting. A debit card and credit card, each with colours on them. Apparently, there was money on them, although he couldn’t see it. A green driving license with the letter L on it. He couldn’t drive a car, therefore he didn’t know what he was doing with a drivers license. A red and blue card with a National Insurance number on it. Did that mean he was paying to insure the nation? And which nation was he insuring? Would he have to pay if it got lost or stolen?

A Tesco Clubcard emerged next, but was not very interesting. A very old student card, from the University of Manchester, and an ID card from work. He studied each of these in turn, as if he’d never seen them before. And they were all very interesting, except for the fact that they weren’t.

What we all need, he thought, is a piece of card, saying “I AM STONED”. This would tell everyone in the world how stoned we were, and how awesome being stoned is. It could also make rolling paper appear out of thin air, and could be torn up to make roaches out of! And what about having a car made of chocolate?

Chocolate. He was hungrier than he’d ever thought he could be, and somehow, he’d started thinking of chocolate. It was the Dutch that made chocolate, wasn’t it? Or was it cars they made? No, it was the Ukrainians who made cars… Ukrainians sounded like aliens. Was there an entire race of people who were aliens, living in… wherever Ukrainians lived. Ukrainia?

And so on. Having never smoked a large amount of weed before, Graham had taken the approach of a gigantically fat man learning to swim by jumping into a lake. Doing all this while exhausted and hung over was like the fat man wearing lead boots and carrying a piano. Eventually, the tiredness, THC and general despondence got to him, and he fell asleep. This was not something the people running the coffeeshop approved of, so he was, fairly politely, asked to leave.

“Where am I?”
“You are in a coffeeshop, and we need you to leave.”
“Why?”
“Because you are falling asleep.”
“I’m tired!”
“We know, but you cannot sleep here.”
“Well, where can I go to sleep?”
“Where are you staying in Rotterdam?”
He had to think about this one, and only responded when asked again.
“I don’t know!”
“Do you have anywhere to stay?”
“I don’t think so.”
“There is a hotel down the road, go left, and walk until you see a big duck. Go in, and they’ll have a room. Now please leave.”
He picked up his stuff, and somehow set off. This was even more difficult than he’d have imagined, even if he had the capacity of mind to imagine anything. His brain had a pulse. The entire road had a pulse. And wherever he looked, everything looked slightly like a duck. There were ducks in the windows, people looked like ducks, without looking any less like people, and the air even seemed to quack ever so slightly. Every duck seemed to be watching him, and he wanted nothing more than to hide from all the ducks. Except he couldn’t do that, until he’d found the biggest duck of all, and gone into a hotel next to it. He swayed, he felt like he was walking through treacle, and time seemed to stretch like a piece of chewing gum caught between two people on trampolines. Duck, duck, duck, duck, everywhere he looked, he could think of nothing but ducks. And yet, he could not stop looking, for eventually, he would find…

A large statue of a duck, in the middle of a crossroads. It was quite large anyway, but to Graham’s mind, it loomed as large as a mountain, only shaped like a duck. So somewhere about here, there was a hotel. He looked around, but being stoned made the language unreadable. He sat down, and looked around, slowly considering the problem that now he had sat down, it would be next to impossible to stand up again.

And at some distance away, he saw a sign that could have said “Hotel”, but might not have. It was enough for him, so with the sound of ducks echoing through his head, he staggered towards it. Closer inspection made it out to be the “Hotel Van De Eendmening”, which made no sense. But it said hotel, and hotels had rooms, so he staggered inside.

“Hallo, kan ik u helpen?”
“Whaaaaaaaaaa?”
“U sprekt Engels?”
“Uh?”
“Can I help you, sir?”
Which would make perfect sense, but the two lines of Dutch had done horrible things to Graham’s head. He hadn’t understood a word she had said, and therefore he simply couldn’t understand her, even when she switched over to English.
“Do you speak English?”
“Yes, can I help you?”
“I can’t understand you, but I need… a room!”
“Yes, how long for, sir?”
“No, a room! Where you sleep in!”
“I know, sir, but how long do you need a room for?”
“Can you find someone who speaks English?”
“I can speak English, sir.”
“Yes, English, can you find someone who’ll speak it.”
Giving up, the poor woman on the desk went to find the manager. He was a middle aged gentleman, used to the English, but inexplicably not understanding the mind of the stoned man.
“Can I help you sir?”
“Yes, I couldn’t understand your woman there just now.”
“She was speaking English, sir.”
“That’s no English I’ve ever heard. I need a room, my friend.”
“Certainly sir, how long for?”
“…I don’t know. How long can I have one for?”
“Hmm, we’re almost completely booked, sir, there’s only one single room left, and only for two nights.”
“I’ll take it, here’s some money, I’m going to bed.”
And with that, he slapped the remains of the hundred euros on the desk, and staggered off to where he thought the lifts were.

Very shortly afterwards, he staggered back.
“Sorry, I’ve no idea where I’m going.”
“Quite alright sir. (Adrianna, show this stoned idiot to his room).”
The girl who had tried to serve him winced.
“(Sir, do I have to?)”
“(Everyone else is at lunch.)”
She sighed. She always got stuck with the mad people.

* * *

This was an assumption shared by the two special agents in Hull’s main police station, after they had finished interviewing Mr Winterton.
“So some random guy turns up in his shop yesterday, takes the package, and buggers off? That doesn’t make much sense.”
“It does, in a twisted kind of way. This individual we’ve got a description of sounds like someone out of town, and not one of the usual suspects. This thing seems to be big enough that they’re taking risks to make sure it gets there.”
“So what is this elusive package we’ve spent three months tracking?”
“I don’t know much more than you. It apparently came across from America, and its something terrorist cells in mainland Europe have been trying to get hold of for months, maybe years. These Dutch people normally deal in more… unusual imports, but this one’s going to make them a fortune if it goes through. By the look of it, if we capture this package, it will damage this Dutch group, a number of European terrorist organisations, and… I don’t know.”
“You seem to know a lot more than me about this. Why didn’t I get a briefing like that?”
“Not sure.”
“If I didn’t know you actually didn’t know, I’d put this all down to politics and think someone was messing me around.”
“Could still all be politics. I had to do a lot of prodding to find out even that.”
“So you do know why I didn’t get that information?”
“Oh shut up, you know now.”
Before they could have a rather unhelpful argument, the phone rang. The agent who knew what was going on picked it up, listened for a second, then  put the phone down.
“They’ve got the photofit for this guy together, let start our investigation. We’re running out of time quite badly here.”

Hull Docks, as far as I’ve seen, isn’t particularly exciting. If you’ve seen a commercial ferry port, you’ve seen pretty much everything you need to. After enduring Pies’ declarations that last night had been “the most awesome night there’s ever been, ever”, and reminding him he couldn’t remember any of it, he let the two lads get back to sponging off of the government, and wandered if he was going to meet anyone vaguely normal on this trip.

I was quite looking forward to writing a couple of hundred words about how Graham had packed his passport in the other bag, and the royal buggering Passport Control at the docks would give him as a result. However, that’d pretty much kill the novel, so thankfully, Graham had his passport on him, got through Customs alright, and was left with very little to do for most of the afternoon. He wandered around, and looked at the boats, but this got very boring very quickly. There wasn’t anywhere to drink, there wasn’t anyone to talk to, so he amused himself by trying to tame a seagull using some chips he bought. He was very relieved when the tannoy system announced that foot passengers were boarding.

The ferry itself was a bit more interesting, although only compared to three hours enticing seagulls over to eat chips, the expecting them to stay for the conversation. Having had the good sense to book a small berth to stay on, he threw his meagre possessions under his bed, and wandered out onto the deck. It was a wonderful spacious deck, as you would expect on such a large ferry, and while there wasn’t much of a view so far, still being in Hull Docks, it still had plenty of potential to be a stunning view, and just needed some fresh scenery to achieve it.

Apparently, it was a relatively nice ferry. While not exactly being a cruise ship (a bit too glamorous to be passing through Hull, perhaps), it was certainly much grander than the pokey boat he had done the day trip to France in back in Sixth Form. And since it was an overnight ferry, it had to be. There was even supposed to be a small cinema somewhere on-board. Exciting stuff, but what to do first? First thing was obviously first, food. As the ferry started to pull out of the dock, Graham sought out what had been described as high quality catering, but found was something not too similar to the canteen in his hall of residence back in the old days. The ancient, greasy-looking woman standing behind the counter looked about the same. The dry-looking roast beef sat despondently under a hot lamp in much the same way. Hoping for a miracle, Graham instead opted for the chicken korma, and was thoroughly not delighted to see some sort of fluorescent orange gloop being poured over some crusty looking rice. Handing over a fiver, Graham discovered the best part of the meal was the can of Coke, a sealed drink that hadn’t even been touched by the catering staff. Just to make things more fun, the chicken korma went through him at a rate of knots, and he had to become acquainted with the facilities on the boat fairly quickly. This was made twice as fun by the gentle swaying of the boat going down the Humber, and the heaves of a man already being sick in the next cubicle.

Hoping for something a bit more fun to follow all of this up with, he meandered up to an information point, and was told by a woman who was covered in bright orange fake tan, that the only films showing that evening were a nauseating kids film, an artsy foreign film, and one of those films with explosions and char chases and not a lot else, trying to be a James Bond film and failing miserably. None of these piqued Graham’s interest, so he went back to Plan B, the extremely overpriced bar.

Several hours of drinking, and Graham hadn’t managed to get as ratarsed as he’d have liked. There were several good reasons for this. Since it was three pounds per can, and proportionately more for spirits, he had forced himself to savour his drinks, seeing as even if he tried to get drunk on his own, it’d cost as much as it did when he was seemingly buying for a crowd of students. Secondly, the staff seemed to be keeping a very close eye on him, probably looking for an excuse to arrest him, or throw him overboard, or whatever they did when you were drunk and disorderly on a boat.

Most significantly, of course, was the fact that once the ferry had left the mouth of the River Humber, they had immediately hit the North Sea. Apparently, it was quite calm for a night in the middle of nowhere-on-the-water, but since Graham had only been on a ferry for the sum of about four hours in his life, he wasn’t used to the rocking motion of the boat, and he had discovered just how sick you could be when you had sea sickness. In moments of relative calm, he had experimented with drinking away the sickness, but this only made it worse, so that by about nine at night, he was very drunk, and very ill. The crew weren’t sure which it was, but left a handful of sick bags under the crook of his arm, and hoped he got the idea.

As always, it got a bit better before getting much worse. Near ten at night, the seas calmed down just enough, so that Graham considered going outside for a bit of fresh air. This was not a brilliant plan, as the winds were fast, freezing, and full of sea water. To complement this, once Graham was a good distance from the door back inside, the waves picked up again, rocking the boat by two metres each way. Nausea took hold again very quickly, and came to a head almost immediately. It also came to the head of a crewman wandering around the lower decks, who had the bad fortune to be right underneath as Graham unleashed the remains of the chicken korma. The poor man swore very loudly at Graham, and retreated, assumably to somewhere with a shower. Graham tried to shout out an apology, but it sounded more like a further round of heaving, which naturally it was. Considering himself beaten for the evening, Graham staggered back to where he reckoned the door was, and tried to make his way back to his room. But he had re-entered through a different door entirely, and the rocking of the ship did not abate. He therefore spent a fruitless hour wandering round the ship, alternately trying to find his cabin, and dry heaving into a bag, before giving up and collapsing in a heap in a corner next to a flight of stairs.

* * *

The police raid on the head shop was swift and efficient. While the man running the shop had the good sense to not keep any weed in either the actual shop or his flat, this wasn’t the target of the raid. They had been tipped off that some other highly illegal contraband was being stored in the shop prior to being transported to Holland, and they wanted to nip it in the bud before it left the country. However, as we well know, they were too late. However, they took the man in the shop in for questioning.

* * *

Miranda was starting to get worried. Graham hadn’t called at all since he set off, and even now, his phone appeared to be off. She tried it again, and lay down in bed. She couldn’t sleep.

* * *

Bizarrely enough, Graham found it very easy to sleep, although he would have thrown up several times in the night if he hadn’t emptied his stomach earlier. However, even with a two hour delay due to the inclement weather, the ferry still arrived in Rotterdam harbour far too early for Graham. He was shaken awake by a worried looking crew lady, who had evidently seen the gastronomical carnage he had wreaked the night before, and was defiantly not in the market for an encore. It wasn’t the problem, by miles. His head hurt, and he still had a great deal of sea sickness, although most of it had migrated to his head. Plus, as a change from the previous morning, he was far too tired to be disembarking off of a ferry. Besides, all his stuff was in his cabin, which, after asking the disapproving lady where it was, turned out to be just around a corner at the foot of the flight of stairs he had fallen asleep by. Quietly but angrily resolving to never set foot on a ferry again, Graham retrieved his stuff, and disembarked from the ferry.

Once again, he made it through Customs without any problems, although the man on the passport desk spent rather a long time staring at his passport before handing it back over. Bloody stoned Dutchmen, thought Graham, oblivious to the fact that his stumbling around and red eyes gave the self same impression. He couldn’t see this, but he felt it nonetheless. He had no idea how he was getting to Amsterdam, no idea where he was in Rotterdam, very little idea of the language, and a head and stomach that were waging war on the rest of his body. The first port of call, therefore, was breakfast and the strongest cup of coffee known to man. Despite feeling decidedly uncultured, he decided a traditional Dutch breakfast would be good. Finding a café, with a waiter who seemed to speak English, he ordered such a breakfast, and something terrifyingly strong and coffee-like. He ended up with both of these things, and was pleasantly delighted. The coffee was indeed coffee, and was terrifyingly strong. The breakfast was a wonderful selection of decidedly plain things, some cereal, some toast with chocolate sprinkles on top, and some currant buns. Overall, while not as interesting as he was expecting, it was just right for his flailing insides.

He then set off walking around, trying to gather his bearings. He started discovering a vast selection of stereotypes about the Dutch were very true indeed. There were certainly a large number of canals running through Rotterdam, and there seemed to be a fair few people smoking things in the street that would have gotten you arrested in England. But he couldn’t find anything that resembled anything providing tourist information. He needed to find somewhere to sleep, preferably now, but later if all else failed, and he hadn’t planned this far ahead. After yet another hour of wandering round looking, he decided to just enter the first shop he could find, and ask for some directions. He made a sharp left, and went into an establishment with a picture of Bob Marley on the side of it.

* * *

Miranda couldn’t understand it. Graham had said he’d call her, and he hadn’t. Full blown crazy paranoia overtook her, and she rooted out the number for his boss.
“Hello?”
“Hello, is that Graham’s Burricombe’s manager?”
“It most certainly is, but I actually have a name, its…”
“…undoubtedly very interesting, but I’m worried about Graham.”
“Ah yes, he came in to see me about that a couple of days ago.  All organised a while ago, and he’s away with it this weekend.”
“Its just that he hasn’t called me, and I’m a bit worried… hang on, arranged it how long ago?”
“Quite a few months ago, as it was, and he’s just taking us up on it now.”
“He said it had just come up out of the blue!”
The first series of chuckles came out at long last.
“My dear, he’s been meaning to go on this for a long time, but apparently… things kept coming up.”
“What sort of things?”
Another chuckle, this one a rather nervous one.
“Well, I think what he meant, the thing that he meant by that was, erm, ha ha ha…”
“What did he mean?”
“Well, not to put too fine a point on it, young lady, I think he meant problems with you.”
A frosty silence came up, and hung around for a long pause. Suddenly, a gasp came from the other end of the line.
“What is it?” cried Miranda.
“A damn bird just shat on me! That’s not funny! My dear, I have to go. This is just the worst…”
And the phone promptly died in her hand. She stared at it in disbelief.

Giant Chickens. That is all.

And the only sign of one I’ve seen since I found on in 2005… was when I was looking through the archives of my old LiveJournal, and found that picture… in the entry saying I couldn’t find one.

Brilliant use of my novel-writing time there, but I’m over 10,000 words, and I’m hoping to pump out more when I’m not working next week.