Lazy lazy lazy

Ok I’m trying to keep up the momentum by regularly posting here, but to be honest not much as happened since I got back.
I am currently lieing on my big warm bed wondering how long I can use jetlag as an excuse to do fuck all. At the moment I’m thinking until I’m thirty.

To say I’ve done nothing is a bit of lie; today was spent digging up roots in my Nan's new garden. And so the run of good karma continues at this rate I’m going to have to stab a nun just to even up the cosmic scales.

To the left of me is a mountain of unread books, while I was away my awesome mom continued collecting second hand books from the place she volunteers at, to fill up space here is a list;
Foulcault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco
The Dreamtheif’s Daughter – Micheal Moorcock
The Fourth Hand – John Irving
Count Zero – William Gibson
Wrong About Japan – Peter Carey
The Football Factory – John King
Charlie Big Potatoes – Phil Robinson
Falling Out Of Cars – Jeff Noon

The most prized item she rescued is a skeleton marionette I call Senior Carpenter (because he looks a little bit Spanish and a little bit like Karen Carpenter)

Boxing it off

Dealing with airports, Pucks way

1. arrive early, way early
2. Look around for the check-in desk and ticket office; store the location in your memory for later use.
3. Find the darkest corner of the airport; normally that's where they keep the bar.
4. Get served and suppress the urge to check you haven't accidentally travelled to the future, where the price of beer is roughly the same as gold, the trick here is to buy beer not spirits- the aim is to get comfortably drunk not conspicuously drunk.
5. Find the darkest corner of the dark corner bar.
6. Drink
7. Repeat.

The bars here at JFK are spacious, dark and free of cigarette smoke like a jigsaw with one piece missing. I'm on beer two and writing so no one mistakes my silence for an invitation for a polite conversation. A guy with his back to me is watching in fast-forward bootleg kickboxing from Brazil on his laptop, my kind of guy,
I'm trying to collect my thoughts about the last two months, box it off, draw a line under it, build a bridge and get over it. But it's too soon, I'm too close.

Instead let me tell you about the last few days, Washington was cool, just what I needed, (thank you Dawn). After Washington I arrive in NY about eleven with no where to stay, after phoning round the hostels I find them all to be fully booked. SHIT so I have three options.

1. sleep rough
2. Go to the bus station and hang around for eleven hours or so till the hostels open in the morning
3. Find a hotel and damn the expense.

Guess which I took?

1. Fuck that
2. Double fuck that
3. Not enough cash

So for the lack of any real plan I start walking, vaguely hoping to be picked up by a female volleyball team looking for a nocturnal masseuse/plaything. After passing my second thugcrack gang with dogs I hail a taxi. I tell him to take me to a cheap hotel and put so much emphasis on the cheap he double checks the door locks after I get in. The ride is uneventful apart from the drivers breathing so wheezy I check that he is actually awake a couple of times, and we pass so many rough sleepers in doorways on park benches under gaps in walls that I decide to pay whatever they ask at the hotel and give the next homeless charity a large note next time I get a chance.

$98! !

The room cost $98 over a third of the money I had on me. The hotel is so far south of the city, it might actually be in hell. But as the saying goes, when life gives you poop, make poopaid. The bed was a double and there was a working bath. It was gone two before I finally crawled into the room but I figured an hour soaking in a hot bath is worth two hours sleep, so I fell asleep in the bath, which puts me three hours ahead by my reckoning.

Fast forward to today and after being politely phone rejected by my sixth hostel I phone a very nice lady at Virgin and persuaded her to waive the $200 rebooking fee and jam me on the flight tonight. (Thank you Theresa I hope your kids enjoy camp and your cold clears up soon.)

Walking past the bar is a platoon (squadron, whatever) of marines wearing desert khakis, some look young enough to I.D, a table next to me is applauding but everyone else has settled for looking away embarrassed. Hardly a ticker tape parade.
Wow my booze tolerance is way down, something to work on when I get back I suppose.
Two marines have just slunk in and ordered "two beers, whatever" its took them ten or so minutes after getting off the plane, which is ten or so minutes longer than it would have took me. Up close you can see the marines all have A B or C written on the back of their hand in Sharpie. I really hope this isn't seating allocation, if it is I can understand the dire situation over there. I'm starting to like these guys, I don't think they are supposed to be drinking, they hide there beers when other uniforms go past.

Due to the excellent entertainment systems offered by Virgin, the next time I write will be in England but I think the image of two uniformed marines hiding beer from there boss in a smokeless bar like schoolchildren a nicely silly one.

I hate goodbye

Last full day at camp with the kids, and I am not looking forward to the next couple of days, it's not the cleaning or the paperwork that I'm dreading, it's the goodbyes. I hate them; to the people I don't like I find them disproportionately sentimental, and to the people I do like, I find them heartwrentching and in adequate. Saying goodbye is not about making you feel better; they are about making the other person feel better. But like anything I suppose I'm best to relax and let what happens happen.

a thought about thought

Yesterday was a good day, not only did I speak to my Dad, and receive a letter from my mom (guess which yielded the more information). But also the beach party was the funest thing we have done so far, both campers and councillors hanging out enjoying themselves, exactly how I imagined camp would be.

As I think back I notice my memory has already began the editing process, skipping the bad or hard parts. The more I think about it maybe its not an editing process at all, maybe its more that the bad or hard parts are only bad and hard at the time and memories of emotions are barely shadows of the factors they were.

sooo tired

I'm in no mood to write right now, the washing machine's broken so I have no clean clothes, Every time I try to eat I get flashbacks of the shower some boy had a "accident" in this morning (and by accident I mean shit), and my sleep was broken all night by a younger camper that was determined to wake the entire boys side of camp. I'm so tired my eyes are crossing and uncrossing as I try to focus on the page.

Ghetto chess

I have just been beaten at chess by a ten-year-old, in like seven fucking moves. I'm not mad though, planning ahead was never one of my strong suits, and anyway there is a mother of a thunderstorm going on outside. Its weird to see, but give these bunch of ghetto-nightmare pseudo-gangster kids a chess set and they settle right down, not that I expected any less from them its just incongruous from the image they front. Some are pretty good too (as I found out). As I write an argument breaks out and the kid that beat me recites the last seven moves of the game to prove himself right. I know I couldn't do that.

Things I do with them that's cool

1. Play chess
2. Read to them, mostly I read Rahld Dahl using funny voices. (as a plus point this is also an excellent way of getting them to sleep)
3. Wake them up with the same song blaring every morning, if they don't get up by the time the songs finished I squirt them with a water pistol I keep by my bed for that exact purpose (Blister in the sun by the Violent Femmes its two minutes eight seconds long)
4. Hide round corners and scare them with a wresting mask.
5. Every morning we have a different walk to breakfast, one morning cowboy style, next day astronaut spacewalk, next day Monkees side by side step

This list is not a look-at-me-how-great-am-I-? list it's just to show that's its not all hard work and tantrums, basiclly i'm having fun.

Stress sandwich

Wednesday night of the first week of the last session, I'm trying to decide if I've been given nicer kids or whether I've just become better at handling them.

The time will come soon for self-assessment and I don't think I can tell them what they want to hear. You see as all touchy feely Americans, these guys are big on "personal growth" and simply don't think I have. Have I been tested? Oh yes. Has this been hard? Hardest job I've ever had. Have I got a lot out of it? Without a doubt. Have I changed or "developed" in any way? No, well only in the being away doing something interesting way.

Reading this back to myself it almost sounds bitter, but that is wrong. The time here has been very very hard, but ultimately worth it. It's been an amazing experience that will stay with more always. But sorry folks you're getting back the same Puck you all know and owe money to.

***********************

And like a carefree butterfly emerging from a headache cocoon made entirely of worry and bad vibes, I imagine my dear friends Mix and Belle to be escaping from the stress sandwich that ended on the eighth (the date may be wrong, it is me). I don't actually know the results but I am confident in this case the bastards didn't grind them down.

Lethargy and good vibes

Its hotter than the seventh ring of hell, and the shower I took half an hour ago is a sweat covered memory. The temperature is well into the 100's, lethargy is the default setting even breathing seems more trouble than its worth, I'm on a break right now looking at a photograph of my nephew wondering if he misses me.

Also, real soon, some good friends get a decision about something really important; a set of circumstances that was given to them by a small and petty mind, here is fingers crossed and all my good vibes being sent for a common sense victory.

Stinking PJ's

OD again, and once again I'm grateful for the peace, several bad days littered with good moments have passed and as ever I need this coming weekend so bad I cant even find a funny metaphor. It's twelve midnight on a warm summer night which is a good job because I'm currently sitting outside on the floor dressed in only an old towel I found lying around as all my clothes are in the wash.

Do YOU think you could do this job? Answers on a postcard, mark it

No fucking way
P.O. box No
Never street

If you can have this kind of morning, and, without the aid of dark and mindbending chemicals, still smile at the end of the day, maybe you should apply next year (better still go get a check up from the neck up).

You wake up an hour earlier than you should do (five thirty) by a ten year old telling you he has wet the bed, reluctantly you rise, send him to the shower and hide his wet sheets under your bed, and go back to bed. When he gets back he wakes you up again, you tell him to put his wringing and stinking pj's with his sheets and lie on his bunk until waking time. This of course wakes the entire cabin, that systematically gets up and goes the bathroom robbing you from the hours sleep.
Using pretty much every once of willpower you have you get up and "rise and shine" only to discover Mr Pissy didn't put his pj's on with his sheets, he actually put them on top of a pile of your clean clothes
At breakfast the girl you have been stupidly falling for (despite every inch of your brain screaming "Noooo you fucking idiot!"), splits up with you via NOTE! Which you have to grin and bear because you have to get the kids motivated to clean the latrines
After that another councillor takes offence and massively overreacts blah blah blah I could go on

The point is some days are like a viscous beating, just when you think its over the skinheads get a second wind and its time to slap on another smile. But when its good its like being cuddled better by a pack of tame warm cuddle bears with antiseptic fur and degrees in soothing warmness.