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When Barack said “Change”, people thought he meant diapers and have been deluging him with Fedex’d babies ever since..

Those without a return address are being left on the border with Canada for free distribution and babies from India and China are being distributed evenly amongst the textile industries and local call centres.

Barack Obama travels a lot but many babies live where he hasn’t yet been… (Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Wyoming, Uzbekistan, Canada, the Clinton household etc).

Don’t be left behind and don’t let your child miss out on the possibility of hope and change! Send Barack your baby.. Click here for more!

I wonder if it works with iPods too? Really need to change the music… talking of which this is my train out of here.

Have you ever spent your Sundays with your family pondering that age old question: “What should you do, if you fall on the tracks and a train is coming?”

I know I have.

Many a day has been lost looking for the answer to that question along with others like; Should America be removed as a British colony? Should women be given the vote? And which countries are for sale, so I can start my own?

Not wanting to be caught in a jam, I asked the waitress at my local lounge club only to be told the question would cost $20 and the answer another $130. But I was on to her game pretty quick, paid the $50 for my one beer and left post-haste.

Thankfully that is why we have Canadians. They have the answer to everything and have managed in this case to serve a higher purpose other than simply a refuelling stop on the way to the Americas.

Now then - mind the gap.

DON’T Click Here!!!

Mind your P’s and Q’s! My mother always said and I spent a frustrating childhood trying to find that elusive “Q” in thank you… but little would she know bad etiquette has made a come back and now its cool.

Not answering emails and text messages has taken on a life of its own like the creature living under my bath in that towel that hasn’t been washed in a year or two. There is a sport it seems in how long we can take to answer to basic emails and text messages something along the lines of:

Monday: “Hey how are you - how was your weekend?”

Thursday: “All good - and yours?”

Sunday: “Sorry too busy to write - lets mail next week!”

Wednesday: “ok!”

Of course I am allowed to do it because I get three hundred emails per minute, even if seven are spam, two hundred and ninety are from myself and three are from the viagra salesman… oh wait does that count as spam? But bad etiquette kicks ass and I am going to start applying it in real time like when I get into a taxi:

“Where to Sir?”

“None of your damn business!”

Or what about in the bar on a Saturday.. sidling up to that cute blonde chick in the short skirt..

“Hey can I buy you a drink?”

“Sorry my in-box is full right now, please try again later”.

I am not going to stop for red lights anymore either and when the cops stop me (if I decide to stop for them this week that is) and ask me what my problem is, I will calmly explain that I will stop for the red light next Thursday but they shouldn’t worry because I won’t forget.

Bottom line? Bad on-line etiquette is for the illiterate, the uneducated and Californians. And yes if you pass me in the street and say hello and I don’t answer… don’t worry, I am thinking about what to say, you might just not be there when i say it.

Good bye..

With the summer upon us I could be forgiven for thinking all this heat is getting to me or maybe I just put my beer goggles down somewhere but I am fairly damn sure I left the bar around here somewhere.

One thing is for sure its not in my kitchen so I really need to stop looking in the fridge for it, old habits definitely die hard.

“Vodka Cranberry Sir” said the guy behind the bar. I couldn’t help but wonder if he called everyone Sir, I was hoping not.

“Vodka indeed” I said like a man who had just voted for Clinton in the Canadian elections.. “but what makes you think I need cranberry?”

The barman froze as barmen do and looked me straight in the eye..

“You look like a cranberry kind of guy!”

It’s true - I can’t deny it.

What happened to “Sir” and what was the barman doing in my kitchen anyway?

Moving swiftly on.. my life these days represents a cross mix of Groundhog Day and those 1960’s Batman shows.. no matter how hard I try I keep waking up with my clothes on in the wrong order and the desire to walk up the side of my house looking for the Bat Signal which invariably gets confused with the Bacardi logo.

To the Barcadi-mobile..

The dude was pacing so furiously up and down I swear he was going to leave track marks in the floorboards of my lounge. I looked under my chair hoping to find a discarded hammer that I could throw but no such luck.

He waved his arms frantically in the air, the excitement and passion spitting forth from his lips and mouth.

“…and then scene 36 becomes scene 32!”

I nodded furiously like the minion I am and took notes.

“Aaaaaaaaaaargh!” he screamed loud enough for all of my neighbours and half of Poland to hear.

I jumped out of my seat looking for the fire, flood, earthquake or sniper fire that usually precedes such a scream and grabbed the nearest weapon I could find, ready to fend off the invaders and protect the one guy bringing me paid writers work.

I looked down at the wooden spoon in my hands and wondered…. just wondered… if James Bond ever had moments like these.

Umm… I seriously doubt it.

The dude was not finished. My script was getting badly twisted in his hands as he waved it triumphantly like an AK47 above his head and I was just plain thankful there was no trigger. The people living above me just somehow wouldn’t appreciate that.

“Damn I am such a good writer!” he said in one easy outgoing and self-calming breath.

“You are?” I asked wallowing in his greatness.. “I mean you ARE!” quickly correcting myself and wondering what he had indeed done.

“Written by ME!…. Directed by ME!…… Executive Producer….. ME!”

I raised my hand.

“Could I possibly, maybe, perhaps get a writing credit too please Sir and maybe some potato soup for my three months of work?”

We were a team it seems and I was slowly getting the point that there is no “i” in team, no matter how hard I tried to put it in there. “iTeam” sounded very cool to me. My.. sorry, excuse me.. I mean “our” one hundred and twenty three pages, ninety scenes and twenty four thousand words now resembled something like the television movie it was supposed to be. I was ready to see the outside world again, take deep gulping gasps of fresh air and perhaps use the bathroom.

But more than anything I was slowly learning what it takes to become a writer. You have to sell your ass like hot cakes on a cold winters day. And don’t forget to smile whilst you do so.

Executive Producer dude smoothed out my.. (damn I did it again) I mean “our” film script, smiled and walked out the door.

So. Who gets the invoice for my potato soup?

Hello? Anyone..?

Click.

So three months back I get this invitation to join a new writing group. Guaranteed English speakers and wannabe writers only, in the heart of funky Berlin.

Hey that’s me! I’m a wannabe English speaker.. or is it wannabe writer? Always get those two mixed up.

Anyway, having always been something of a writing introvert this was nothing short of a literary coming out but why I felt like I was attending an Alcohol Anonymous meeting that first evening, I have no idea.

The fruitcake supposedly running the session opted to turn up thirty minutes late on the excuse that she couldn’t find the place she had organised. A reasonable level of intelligence was obviously not required but still we sat in a semi circle enduring the ritual of “what’s your name and where are you from?”

“Hi my name is Paul, I am from lots of different places and I am a wannabe writer!”

“Hi Paul, welcome!” said the group in chorus but I wasn’t done.

“I’ve been writing for four months, three days and six hours and I am proud!” I said beamingly.

“Paul perhaps you would like to warm us all up with two truths and a lie and we all have to guess which is the lie” cackled Fruitcake.

Our exulted leader was on a roll, a fruitcake roll but it wasn’t gonna last long if the evil but cute Dr J had anything to do with it as she sat quietly in the corner and plotted with all the gusto of Cruella de Vile. But anyway where was I? Oh yes.. doing the warm up..

“Excuse me?” I thought very loudly.. “Warm us up? A Jägermeister shot can handle that job without the need for a word to be spoken.”

Still I grimaced and played along.

“I once worked for the government, was shot and stabbed and was once diplomatically expelled from a country!”

“Oh wow!” said Fruitcake hardly able to contain herself.. “and what about the two truths?”

Good bloody question.

“Dude!” said Marcus who had just woken up and was so laid back he was still in yesterday but he said nothing more. “Dude” we would learn, had multiple meanings and could be tactfully applied to almost any situation.

California Chick, who thought her name might be Megan, giggled from her corner and asked if this was the Herpes Anon Group (HAG) and by the way, had anyone noticed how cool she looked in leather pants?

“Ummm!” said the Fruitcake. “I wannabe in charge because I spent two hours on Google learning this stuff!”

Dr J wiped the traces of vodka away from her lips and slammed the shot glass down on the table. Nobody moved. We would still be there now if she hadn’t given us the nod.

Intrigue it would seem hung thick in the air before the first pen was even drawn, Aussie Tom quickly sliced it all in half.

“Fuck that - let’s get the beers in mate!”

It was clear my writing was going to benefit greatly at this group but the cute Filipino was also a welcome distraction. I gave her my best smile and she promptly never turned up again.

Time to roll but this story…… and this group…. is far from over and the winter was just beginning.

Hold onto your hat Dorothy, it’s about to blow!

“How are you Paul?”

Things were getting stranger by the minute and yet it was one of those days that made London simply ooze with the grey brown sweat that hung in the air like an old persian carpet.

It was pushing five o’clock and every last breath had gone out of the city and my day was nearly over. A fast train to Paddington, dance with the tourists and commuters, stop by the bank and pick up some cash and that was me walking down St Michael’s Street where I lived at number sixty seven.

The guy standing in the doorway of number thirty one looked familiar and yet I couldn’t place him but still there was something oddly familiar about him. Dressed in a black suit and tie and white shirt he could have walked off the set of “Pulp Fiction” and the heat did not appear to bother him half as much as it did me. It was rolling in waves now and i felt like I was standing before an open oven.

“How you doing?” He called out.

I nodded.

“Good thanks”

He folded his arms.

“Do you have a minute?”

I stopped.

There was a playground a few doors down built on the site of a World War II bomb crater and the children were busy screaming and playing. Mr Johnson, the retired accountant who lived at number seventy three was being helped into his house by the pretty Polish assistant he had hired and whom I had seen around for some weeks now. I looked back at the guy. I just couldn’t place him and yet…

“What’s up?”

“Somebody here wants to meet you - come in, we don’t have much time I am afraid. Rather tight schedule”

Without much due thought I walked straight in. The home had a narrow corridor from the street leading to a bright sunlight lounge. So bright I could barely see the elderly man sitting in the chair. He smiled.

“How are you Paul?”

I looked around in bewilderment. Things were getting stranger by the minute.

“I’m fine thank you but…” I trailed off stammering for no particular reason.

He laughed quietly interrupting me.

“I know, I know”

His smile faded.

“Paul your Grandmother needs your help, you need to look after her ok, there isn’t much time.”

“Time for what?”

But he didn’t answer me and I started to feel like I was in a Fellini movie. For a full ten mins this curious elderly man told me things he couldn’t have known but did anyway, then as if on cue he looked at his wrist but his wrist was bare. He smiled nodding at the watch on my wrist.

“It’s time to go, see yourself out and don’t forget what i said. There isn’t much time.”

As the front door clicked shut behind me I heard him call out one last time.

“See you soon!”

“No you bloody well won’t” I muttered under my breath and that was that.

The street was awfully quiet now. Nothing moved, no kids playing, no cars but still the heat was rising. It was getting harder to breathe, I found myself gasping for air. I hadn’t gone more than a few paces when I stopped. I could see my house now but no air was coming into my lungs. I gasped noisily falling to my knees desperately trying to suck air into my body.

Then suddenly I blinked and sat up. I was in bed. It was all a dream.

I hadn’t seen my Grandfather since I was nine years old shortly before he passed away. We sat in chairs in a hospital hallway, him with an oxygen mask around his face and me with a red and yellow lego brick mountain I had built for him. He said goodbye and I asked him where he was going. He just smiled and placed a shaking hand on my head and that was that but his words proved right.

They found my Grandmother that same warm summers day on the floor of her kitchen and weren’t sure if she had been there one day or three but it was the beginning of the end. What time we had left remains as one of the best summers of my life. I couldn’t have predicted what was coming but my Grandfathers words were never far from my mind that time was truly short.

As I look down at his watch on my wrist I know he is right. Time is only good for as long as you can hold it in your hands.

The email surprised me… I recognised the sender but we had never exchanged mails before and frankly had no previous reason to do so.

The few times we had met had always been on the outer fringes of our circle of friends and the conversation had rarely extended beyond the polite, the weather and occasionally the price of imported beer.

But still we smiled, we drank, we laughed and drank some more, swapping niceties like the elderly at a bus stop. Intellectualism was not a card to be played.

Still the odd times we saw each other we would smile, wave and kiss each other on the cheek as Europeans do and that was that. Or at least I had thought so.

Opening the mail I was surprised to see its length. There was probably more words in there than we had ever spoken. She was, it seemed, ready to pour her heart out and I was obliged to listen and read. More than that I was compelled. And pour she did.

I took a deep breath and then stopped for a moment staring out of the window. A bird had landed on the window ledge and was happily minding its own business. It turned its head and for a second we stared at each other. Both oblivious to our opposite worlds or perhaps just intrigued but I know there are days when I wish we could grow wings and fly off into the blue.

I started to read the mail, this outpouring of thoughts, an island of words that I found myself washed up upon with nowhere to go. On the radio, Linkin Park started to play “Hands Held High” and I turned it up. I had never seen someone express themselves so directly and forthcoming. From the short time we had known each other, who could have predicted the depth and breadth of feelings that lay within. If there had been but a hint at our casual meetings then I had missed it.

I turned the music up louder and as I read deeper I found myself almost forgetting to breathe. My heart started to race.

These deeply private words and thoughts twisted and danced their way awkwardly across the screen until one thing started to shine through.

The mail was about me, my personality, my integrity and who I am - that was clear. But the mail wasn’t intended for me.

By the hand of God the mail had landed in my in-box and …… as they say….. the heavens had opened.

But this is not a love story to rival Tom Hank’s and Meg Ryans “You’ve Got Mail” with a slushy Hollywood happy end. In fact this was not a love story at all. This mail destined for someone else had landed on my desktop with all the grace and sensibility of a hand grenade and with the click of a button somebody had pulled the pin. What descended from the heavens was not Cupid but acid rain that burned and scarred.

It pays these days to double check who you are sending mails to before you actually hit that send button… more so if you have personally just character assassinated someone.

Ten years ago… I lay in the dust and sweat, my face pushed so far into the ground as the bullets flew overhead that I hoped the ground would open up and swallow me and take me to somewhere safe and blue. And we were the good guys.

There was no easy way out and we had to stand up and be counted on that day and countless before it. I came home but not everybody else did.

As I looked again at the email I realised not everyone stands up to be counted. It’s easier to shoot words like knives into someone’s back, especially someone you barely know, than stand and fight them face to face. As I hit the “reply” button I wondered what she would think when her mail with my own personal response came sailing back. Or maybe I didn’t care.

The mail might not have been intended for me but still I fight my battles standing up. Integrity is a life quality that I carry in my back pocket like a badge of honour and is strictly not for sale.

But bring it on… now who’s next?

“With hands held high into a sky so blue
as the ocean opens up to swallow you”
Linkin Park - “Hands Held High”