In the spring of 2008, my mate Steve and his teammates embarked on a record attempt which would take them to the very limits of human capability. They were going to attempt to break the crown green bowls endurance record.
Me and El have been planning to come down to Brighton for years. We stayed at a B&B here during the Big Daft Bus Trip back in 2002, and after having a great time on our brief stopover, we vowed to make a speedy return. A mere 16 years later, we’re back.
Not that there was anything wrong at all with Birchover or the campsite, but it was my first time sleeping under canvas, and I just wasn’t prepared for inadequate pillow facilities or to wake up covered in mid-sized spiders.
Putting the letter ‘e’ and a dash in front of a word doesn’t make the object in any way more modern or desirable. Just like adding ‘2000’ as a suffix to provincial club names in the 90s didn’t make fights less likely to break out at their funky house nights.
The building is so oppressive that I’m developing the early stages of architectural Stockholm Syndrome towards it. Sheffield Syndrome, I suppose.
From a polar bear bench pressing a giant key in Norilsk, the magnificent minimalism of Magnitogorsk’s black triangle, and the bag of wriggling puppies being drowned in a sack on Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky’s standard, Russia has an instinctive understanding of how to best represent yourself on a flag.
As previously mentioned, I’m really not one for flying. The first time I got on a plane, I spent the first half an hour whimpering and shaking into my mum’s bosom while she had me in a protective headlock.
I was 31 at the time.
We’re here because we’re heading to Amsterdam to smoke loads of drugs and have it off with all the prostitutes (Eleanor), as well as maybe having an aimless wander around the canals and checking out the city’s Botanical Gardens (me).
This is home turf for me; I grew up on Abbey Hey Lane, went to Abbey Hey School, and to complete the set, I even contrived to make sure that my first girlfriend was called Abigail Haye.
Understandably, he said that he “felt physically sick” when he saw the crossbow bolt sticking out of the astroturf, although he’d have doubtless felt worse if fate had sent it a few inches the other way.