I came home from the States a couple of weeks back. Train from the airport then bus brought me back to my street. Funny thing, as in funny peculiar, was as I walked into my road I felt this huge sense of alienness. A feeling that I don’t really belong in this environment. This isn’t my home; it’s a place where I experiment with living.

Maybe I’m not at home with the me at the moment. Maybe it’s a side-effect of travelling. I sit in my apartment and play my music and all I want to do is empty it of all the furniture. Start again. Sell it on e-bay. This is not my beautiful house, even though there are patches where it is. I feel ungrounded here. The world isn’t solid under my feet in this place.

Lately, I’m not house proud at all. The tiles have fallen off the wall by the sink in the kitchen and I’ve taped them on a few times but now the tape is too waterlogged to hold them up and they’re down again. The coffee table in the living room is covered in film stuff. The dining room table I bought for dinner parties has only seen one and is now a desk.

Meanwhile, my horrible office desk is in parts outside in the shed. My horrible office chair–which is supposed to support your back and improve your posture but doesn’t really–is in parts in the loft. I have a surfeit of stuff. But it’s not all me. Next week should be a good time to purge.

Dave was buried this week. Work is full of noise and bustle and the busy busy ohso urgent, oh sour gent noises, musthave rightnow-ness of television. But Dave won’t be coming into work again. His clear blue eyes won’t be holding anyone’s gaze this week nor will he be responding to anyone with his, “Well, that’s just the thing, isn’t it?” That was just the thing. Now… now there’s no Dave.

The church was packed with more than two hundred people on Thursday afternoon as Ed, Dave’s partner for the past 17 years, stoicly stood up and bid farewell to the special person he’d shared his life with. A few friends remarked afterwards how liberated the church in Highgate was to openly acknowledge gay couples and welcome them to the congregation. More friends were simply lost for words. The sudden shock of a healthy man dying without warning, a man who was obviously loved and respected by a lot of people.

Dave was at work last Tuesday. He and Ed had just completed the purchase of a house in Turkey and, aged 41, Dave was planning on retiring in a couple of years, moving out there for most if not all of the year. Tuesday. Dave went home at the end of a typical day, if there is such a thing. He went to bed. And he never got up. A massive brain haemorrhage, they said. Hospital, life support, a heart attack and another haemorrhage. They said he wasn’t ever going to recover so, in a decision that no one would really want to make, they decided to switch the life support off.

A week later, we walked down the steep hill to Highgate Cemetary, sunshine peeking out from light cloud cover. The cemetary is a tangle of plants and headstones, uniquely beautiful, quiet, peaceful. Tucked away in one of London’s nicest villages. Karl Marx, the father of socialism is buried there, as are many many foreign nationals. Dave came from Staffordshire and only the Turkish dreamhouse we saw every day on his computer, his choice of Windows wallpaper, came from abroad. His family wept as the coffin was lowered down between the low hanging trees and the clergyman spoke the words of earth ashes and dust.

I wish I’d had something to say at the time, some words of comfort, a happy memory, perhaps. But the truth is Dave was an amiable colleague who I barely knew yet who always struck me as one of the good people. Perhaps that’s what I’ll write in the book of condolence. Otherwise, for me, death–all death, not just this one–still remains a mystery in many ways, necessary yet inexplicable. Something that on some level I try to comprehend through almost comicbook visualisation. Personification. A hollow spirit in a black clock carrying a sickle in a skeletal hand. Or something like that. The unreal made real.

Going to the funeral made it seem more real, somehow. An acknowledgement of the reality of death, of Dave’s parting from this world, our world. It comes to us all, of course. Yet you don’t expect to walk home one day, fit and young and full of life, and never see another sunrise. So we acknowledged that Dave has gone, not on holiday or on a long vacation, but into the ground, in a place of green tranquility to sleep the longest sleep of all. And if, perchance to dream, to dream peaceful soul resting dreams of a life well lived.

This is the UK’s main annual trade show for the film and television industry. I haven’t gone for a couple of years but I decided to pay it a visit this Thursday having got a free ticket through the post and despite the fact that the hidden cost of that ticket will be junk mail for the next three years.

Arriving at 12.45, I went straight to the free seminar on The Role of the Director in Pre-Production which was being run by the Director’s Guild up on the gallery level. I was about thirty minutes late but listening from the back of the room–actually just a partitioned off section of the floor area–I don’t think I missed anything. Main things I gleaned were that a TV soap director is expected to get through 50-70 pages a day (gulp) and scripts contain far too much stage direction (which we knew).

I went over to the Director’s Guild stand at the end of the talk and Herbie Wise (one of the speakers) came over. He ran a Masterclass on Working with Actors which I attended about six weeks ago so I wanted to say hi to him and thank him for that. I asked him along to the screening of Fate & Fortune even though that’s a bit of cheek. This is the guy who directed I, Claudius and Breaking The Code and so on and so forth.

Someone put a glass of wine in my hand at this point, which was kind of sort of the beginning of the end. The base fell off the plastic glass and I asked another director how they started doing what they do now. He berated me for not using and abusing my position in the industry more and said I should have an agent. I’m working on it. My wine glass was refilled and I foolishly drank some more of a vintage best reserved for deterring vermin.

Suitably pest controlled I made my way to the stand next door, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, where I recognised the chap talking to the hapless stallminders. Well, I recognised the name on the badge. I actually thought he (Stephen) was someone else until after we’d stopped talking and I recalled he was a script editor turned film drama producer. Doh. Anyway, he now works in interactive and internet so maybe not quite as big a faux pas and not one that he noticed.

Stephen wanders off, one of my Fate & Fortune postcards tucked in his pocket. Hey, I may sound daft but I the opportunity to make contacts is never missed. The Bafta stallminders top up my glass, which now has the base reattached and I politely enquire about joining Bafta and politely listen to their schpiel. I politely look at the fees and politely put the brochure in my bag. I’ll impolitely trash it later as I’ve no intention of giving up that much of my hard-earned cash for the privelege of being a Bafta member at my tender young age.

As I look up, a voice calls out my name. Someone else I recognise. Someone else I mistake for another person. However, their badge swiftly identifies them for me as a journalist from Screen International and the conversation rapidly establishes who they are. A friend of a friend. He introduces me to the guy who compiles the international grosses for Screen’s film listings and I crack an exceedingly funny joke (no really) about how that’s all about measuring manhood (or something) and nothing to do with art. They smile the way you would at a juggling leper who accidently throws in a hand while keeping the act going.

So far this show is a great success. I’m making a tiny amount of headway, careerwise, in terms of information gathering and I feel slightly befuddled on cheap nasty red wine which is disolving the enamel on my teeth. I’ve met some old friends who will hopefully come to my screening and I move on to see what else is on the gallery level.

Next stop has to be the Bulgarian film commission. Of course, I’ve no intention of ever filming in Bulgaria but they have a nice merlot to wash away the memory of whatever was in those other bottles. The Bulgarians seem jolly and promise English-speaking crews as they recharge my plastic goblet. Maybe I should think about filming in Bulgaria after all.

Almost the entire upper gallery is full of people touting their town, village, racetrack, railway system, country, whatever, as the perfection location for filming. The United States has taken over a large-ish corner across from the Bulgarians. New Zealand has a lot of pretty pictures up opposite a major racetrack and various others are vying to provide everything a film maker could ever wish for in one place. They’ve obviously never seen State & Main.

London Underground is asking £200 an hour for a crew on the platform and I negotiate for a free permit. No reason for this; I just feel compelled to get something for nothing. They give me a bag which includes a mouse mat, two pens and a tin of breath mints which I wisely consume before moving down to the main exhibition on the ground floor.

Downstairs is not that fabulous. The best I can do is to grab free martinis from a company whose name I don’t even bother to glance at as I dive in on their free bar. The martini is sweet and salty, straight from a bottle and the olive looks less than happy at the bottom of the perspex cup.

I find Peter, my rerecording mixer, manning a stall for the Association of Motion Picture Sound technicians and Anela the sound editor from Last Train appears. Peter gives me the gloomy news that deferred payments are no longer possible on sale and leaseback and I move on to hassle some guy from West Herts Media who looks totally fed up, hidden on a tiny stand at the back of the show. Then I go back to the place with the free martinis. By this time, I am no longer interested in the Production Show generally.

Somehow I find myself back at the West Herts Media stand and the fed up guy suggests we swap ID badges. At this point, swapping ID with a complete stranger and manning a stall I know nothing about strikes me as an absolutely brilliant idea so I do it. I become Drew and Drew wanders off, lured away by the promise of free alcohol and candy. Okay, just free alcohol.

I give out leaflets to some poor producer looking for a freebie and suggest to the girl on the scriptwriters guild stand opposite that she should swap badges too and become Drew. For some reason unfathomable to me, she is reluctant to do this. Several other passers-by are also reluctant to become Drew before the real Drew returns. A pity, I think.

We bump into Anela again and we all chat. It turns out that Drew is really a film maker, Anela is really a costume designer and the scriptwriter on the stand opposite is really a producer. Really. As in, that’s how they really see themselves. I hand out more film invites and pencil them in as line producer (Drew), production designer (Anela) and script editor (Drew wannabe) for my next project.

The Production Show has actually ended about thirty minutes earlier so it’s time to head for the train. I reflect that when I first went, about ten years ago, it was full of cutting edge digital editing equipment as well as cameras, lights and grip equipment. This week there was far less film kit on show, no sign of Kodak or Fuji, and in fact fewer stands all round. And the editing kit seems to have been replaced totally with location specialists.

Location location location. Why so many locations? Not every place is a film location, yet you wouldn’t think so to hang around at the Olympia exhibition centre in May 2002. Oh, well. Mine is not to reason why. I have achieved some crewing, some schmoozing, a free filming permit, much freeloading and best of all, some mayhem. The day is complete although I’m going to have to drink a lot of water and have ttwo aspirins fairly swiftly to avoid the plonk headache which is already threatening. Still, that’s showbiz.

WARNING: If you want the above-named Bond movie to be a complete surprise, don’t read on!

****

There really isn’t anywhere as cool as the James Bond soundstage at Pinewood. Especially today. I’m standing in the bar area of a massive ice hotel, scene of the climax for Bond’s twentieth screen adventure, Die Another Day. Next to me are Paul and Simon. Paul is my old friend from school, a prop and modelmaker who has just made about 200 pieces of ice furniture in six weeks. Simon is Simon Lamont, the art director responsible for this whole set. Shooting starts tomorrow. You can smell the fresh paint.

“It’s never going to look this good again,” remarks Paul. “I know,” says Simon. “It breaks my heart what they’ll do to it.” What they’ll do to it is race cars around it, flood parts of it and eventually blow it up–well, a model of it at any rate. “It will be trashed,” Simon smiles. This multi-million pound set has taken months to build for just such a trashing. Each art director on the Bond is given responsibility for creating a particular scene and this is his baby. He coordinates and manages the construction crews, draftsmen, prop makers, riggers, effects people, set dressers and everyone responsible for putting this together.

Today the floor is clean and white and we’re all wearing white paper overshoes to make sure it stays that way. Around us are blue and white walls, pillars, catwalks, a central bar sculpted in what appears to be ice, towering internally illuminated columns also designed as ice, a restaurant like seating area, upper level booths and various specially moulded doors, both fake with nothing behind and real, leading off set. There are two waterfalls, a revolving ice sculpture fountain and a reception area detailed down to a rack of postcards of the non-existant resort. Outside, through the hotel’s main doors, is a mountain scene. The ice is all perspex and fibreglass. The mountains are a painting in false perspective.

The set is on two levels and Paul and I have just walked down from the top via a wide semicircular slope. This is apparently reinforced with heavy duty steel so that cars can race up it. Overhead, the real major giveaway that we’re on a soundstage is that there’s no ceiling, otherwise it’s like being in a really cool nightclub. Lights poke through above and we can see the corrugated steel roof. We can also see dozens of hoses rigged into the top of the set where hundreds of gallons of water will be pumped in to enhance a laser effect that’s supposed to slice through the hotel’s ice roof.

There are dozens of huge perspex chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, some with icicles hanging from them. Hotel room doors (fake) line the corridors around us. The seating areas are draped with what look like animal skins and the detail continues down to specially made rugs with the villain’s trademark signature–a capital G–on them. I can’t tell you how good I think one of those would look in my living room. The set dressing is completed with obligatory product placements: stacked bottles of Bolinger, Finlandia vodka bottles in ice tables and so on.

Paul snaps a couple of photo’s of me sitting at one of the bar tables before we move on, saying goodbye to Simon, who is probably wondering what I’m doing there at all. The backlot of Pinewood isn’t exactly a public area and most of the media are kept well away, only let in under strictly controlled conditions. The whole thing of just being there in this forbidden zone and on something that will be such a major on-screen event gives me a tremendous buzz.

We walk down a corridor to where they’ve constructed an ice hotel room in detail. We can peer through a gap in the door at the smaller set, which is still quite big. The Bond girl’s bedroom. This part is mounted on a breakaway section and will be lowered into the tank. The whole of the Bond stage is built over a massive tank that goes down well below ground level. You can’t really flood a room as fast as it happens in a movie. Lowering the bedroom into the tank will give the impression that it’s filling up with water.

Honestly, I’d love to see them filming all this but as I say, that starts happening tomorrow and if I wasn’t supposed to be there today, I certainly won’t get in tomorrow. We head out to the back lot where there are crews working on the massive exterior facades for the ice hotel and also the geodesic dome that appears next to it. Between the two is another painting of a mountain scene. I thought it was a sculpture until I looked closely.

A guy on a cherry picker is painting the top of a pale blue column with white ‘snow’ outside the hotel facade. He’s about twenty five feet up and the whole front of the ‘building’ is several hundred yards wide. The exteriors are actually only the bottom two stories of the buildings. Behind us are a number of workshops where they’re building scale models of the upper parts. These will somehow be composited into the final scenes. I see two small scale models, identical, which suggests that the models are going to get blown apart in classic Bond style before the movie finishes.

We move on past dozens of pallets stacked high with big packs of fake snow to another workshop which is full of people wearing white paper suits and several wearing respirators. These are to protect their clothes and lungs from the dust as they rub down a massive scale model of a Russian heavy-lift transport plane–the Anatov An-225; the world’s largest aircraft. It’s been constructed in wood and filled with car filler, now being sanded before painting, detailing with panels, rivets and windows, then moulded in fibreglass from this original, which is around twenty five feet foot long–one-sixth scale, I’m told.

In the same workshop is another model of the Anatov, this one about ten feet long, and another model of the ice hotel, which is at least fifteen feet high and has people working on ladders dressing it. The smell of solvents and chemicals in this area–actually another one of the Pinewood soundstages–is so strong I can barely breath. The doors are open to the air but I’m surprised everyone isn’t just floating off.

Yet another workshop with doors flung wide reveals yet another hive of industry nearby. At the back of the famous Pinewood paddock tank–scene of more great movies than I can begin to remember–more artists are creating iceworks using a combination of moulded perspex filled with crumpled and heat shrunk clear plastic sheet to make the internal refractive/reflective surfaces of frozen water.

Piled on the floor are six foot square moulded perspex sheets of ice hotel doors. Under a bench is a big stack of semi automatic and automatic weapons. Rubber. Real guns are too heavy for actors to carry and run around with so the props people mould most of them. In a corner at the back, surrounded by balls of the clear plastic sheet stuff, rests a new replica of the jet pack from Thunderball. Paul was brought on to make this for a scene where Q’s gadgets are lined up on display. Apparently no one can find the original jetpack so he’s made this new one and the FX people rigged it with whatever fireworks it needed to make it look as if it’s flying.

Money on the Bond really is no object. I ask someone what they’re making and they show me. Breakaway chunks of ice moulded in clear rubber. There are about a dozen drums of this rubber compound stacked up by a workbench. I’m told that’s about five thousand pounds worth. Half the budget of Fate & Fortune. Paul gives me a small chunk, “Break it like this between your fingers.” I do. It crumbles to perfectly realistic yet harmless shards. “Says ‘ice debris’ to me.” Brilliant. Expensive but brilliant.

Around the stages, workshops and cutting rooms, forklift trucks manouevre with pallets and planks, milk floats and golf carts glide along carrying who knows who to who knows where and the whole impression is one of a small town of people working to a common purpose: The Bond. Die Another Day. All this and more just so that you and I can go spend ninety-odd minutes in a darkened theatre. To distract us and show us an alternative view of the world–an unreal one but a beacon in our reality nonethelss–with a tale of heroes and villains. These are our dreams being made.

If you think about it too much, it boggles the mind.

My dreams are getting really weird lately. Anyone else experiencing this? Is it to do with this comet, Ikeya-Zhang? You are sad sad people for asking that. Also, if you hate reading other people’s mad dreams, you might want to skip this post entirely.

One dream I’ve been having is that I’m riding a bike and it’s getting harder and harder to pedal and I think I’m really out of condition. Then I look down and see I have a flat tyre. So I try to keep riding it with the flat tyre but it’s painfully slow so I have to get off and push. Later I come out of the place where I was going and I get on my bike again, forgetting about the flat tyre and it’s the same thing. Hard work then realise then push. And all the time I’m thinking, I must get this bike fixed, it’s such a great bike…

Next night it’s this: I’ve replaced the windscreen wipers on my car. Except what I don’t realise is that the new wiper blade is really heavy the old stick thing that it attaches to has grown really weak and feeble. So it starts raining and I turn the wipers on and the stick thing can’t cope with the heavy new wiper and it buckles and I’m left trying to drive through the rain but I can’t see anything and I can’t clear the windscreen…

Finally I dream that I’m going to get a haircut. I can’t stand my hair any longer or any longer. It’s a mess so I go to the stylists and say I want it really short, so short I can just push my hand through it to tidy it up after washing it in the mornings and, um, really that’s it. So they get this electric razor out and buzz me and it’s not quite a crop but it’s getting there. Then they bring out the mirror and do that thing where they show you all round and you’re meant to make some kind of appreciate noise. But I can’t. Because one side of my head is completely bald and the long hair has been hiding it. And now I’ve got this half bald, half shorn look and there’s no way of making any of it look good.

No wait, that last one’s real.

Ha, not really. Fooled ya, suckah. I know you wanted to believe it because you’re strange, stranger than fiction, but I still have a full head of long hair and the ponytail. As for the dreams, it’s either the comet or the supermarket wine.

Every day I come to the computer screen and it sits there implacably in its blank slate state. Some days I have nothing to say or I’m just to tired to feel I’ll make any sense so I leave it blank. Today feels a bit like one of those days but then I was thinking about why I feel so worn out on the way to work this morning and I reminded myself I’m not doing very much exercise.

So I was thinking about exercise. I haven’t been to karate for four months. That’s bad. And the gym keep sending me these emails saying, “We haven’t seen you. Where are you?” and I write back and say, “I’m here, camouflaged!” but sending these literary pearls to the gym swine isn’t really getting the blood flowing around my veins. Most days it feels like an effort walking from the station to home. I’d much rather take the bus.

The thing with the gym is always, “What’s the goal?” And that’s also the thing with most exercise–why do it? Yes, yes, it will save my life and make me feel good and sound soothing sleep and so on. Ahhhh. But really, it’s just harshness in a soft world isn’t it? Can you kick it? Yes, we can.

So I was thinking about what I used to really enjoy doing, which was going to salsa, and I was wondering why I don’t do that any more. I gave it up when I started going out with someone who didn’t understand why it’s fun–or can be fun, and incredibly sexy–to dance with a partner.

Incidentally, I seem to know a lot of women like that–independent modern British woman dances to her own tune, on her own, thankyouverymuch. But more than one (of the same type) has said, “What I really want is a cottage with roses around the door and a hubby and two point four kids.” Well, guess what–you have to dance with someone (metaphorically speaking), give up the indepen-dance, to make those dreams real.

I’m sure that will provoke a few thoughts here but back to the plot…

Dancing. There was actually a goal, and the goal was to feel confidant enough to go to cool dance clubs in London. Every week my friend, Nicola and I would go along to the local clubs and do the lessons and spend the night dancing with people. It was really good.

Bonus: if you go dancing with a girl who’s a friend, as opposed to a girlfriend, it takes the pairing-up pressure off. Women don’t feel that you asking them to dance is some kind of come on and so I got to dance with practically all the women at the local clubs, big and small, shy and confidant, beginners with two left feet and snooty girls who knew everything and tutted a lot if I missed a beat. There were a lot of very good people between those extremes. So my dancing actually improved. And that does wonders for your self-esteem.

Eventually, after about a year, Nicola and I felt going up to London would be cool and off we went, no doubt full of images conjured by Strictly Ballroom where everyone who goes to a big latin dance club is really into dancing. Now here’s the thing–everyone who goes to a big latin dance club is *not* really into dancing. What we quickly found out was there were a handful of superb dancers (literally about six) and loads and loads of guys who were the worst kind of dance club pigs.

Here’s what your average dance club pig does: they ask a girl to dance then lift them across their leg and grind it into their groin for the whole seven or eight minutes of the track while they gyrate their hips. They don’t actually move or dance other than that but leer horribly at their partner. I don’t quite understand how they think this is attractive or sexy or anything. It’s actually quite sickening to watch and, following on from my thoughts above, I can totally see why so many women would rather do the indepen-dance thing.

Nevertheless, the first London club we went to was full of these leery greasy guys hanging on to the walls like vampire bats and frankly it was the thing that started putting me off the whole thing. Then when a girlfriend came along who didn’t want to go any more, it was actually quite easy to give it up. Plus Nicola had partnered off with my French buddy, Jaffa, and he doesn’t do dancing. A man of few words, he does grinning, stories, cabinet making, wine and would chain-smoke very thin roll-ups if Nicola let him.

So dancing was no more. The goal had gone and there was someone new in its place and life was fun and so on (and so forth). And yet now, time has passed and that girlfriend is long gone, the dust has settled, and I’m thinking, hmmm, salsa–that felt good. I don’t know if I’d take it up again, but it was definitely fun when it was the small local hall and a few people, all ages, shapes and sizes. On that scale, in that atmosphere, I highly recommend it.

Los Angeles International Airport has very little in the way of facilities. Me being me (as opposed to a giant steel panda called Yanis), I arrived early to deal with security which consisted of getting my bag X-rayed, then my jacket, then going through the metal detector, then being asked if someone could search my book. I was worried they might not approve of my latest taste in reading material–a low-grade fantasy novel–but I appeared to pass this tricky test.

Also gave a load of pennies to a guy with a bucket by the escalator and the reassuring noise of cash jingling prompted him to engage me in his version of highbrow conversation. Once he realised where I was from, he regaled me with his impersonation a UK accent. My goodness, how we did laugh. The tears of mirth could have drowned a small village in Worcester or the Ukraine. Then in I went.

Now, when I say LAX doesn’t have much to offer, I mean the duty free shop is tiny and there are only a couple of other shops, run by the most disinterested shop assistants I’d come across in the US. The appear to be having a competition to see who can create the longest line to the till. One shop also sold the most staggering array of tawdry souvenir crap I’d come across too. Naturally I bought gifts for people there.

Highlight of terminal two, LAX, are the splendid catering facilities. These consist of: one facsimilie Cheers bar, one pizza establishment which could have been okay–I didn’t go in–plus one noodle bar, closed presumably because patrons might run amok with chopsticks. There’s also a Burger King which served food without trays so that people had to eat off the uncleaned tables. Ugh.

Still, it’s nice to see somewhere that makes Heathrow look good.

But really the worst part was that I spent nearly thirty minutes searching for hard candy. Hard candy is a crucial staple of all airports because you need some to suck on it when your ears start popping in the plane. Okay, it’s important stuff because I need sugar for my sweet tooth. Lots. And I need it how I need it, not in gummi form. No chance. Gummi rubber chewy candy of every conceivable variety was on offer, but no hard candy. That sucked, in a non-ironic way.

I realise this recap of the joys of LAX is a perhaps a little lame as posts go–hey, I’m tired, it’s been a loooooooong day–but let it be a warning to you. If you’re flying out from Los Angeles, be sure to pack your sweets before you get to the airport.

Farewell, my sweets.

So far I’ve discovered a few things of note on my latest trip out to the US of A. First is that I still have no clue about tipping and am leaving too much by way of compensation because by the time the bill arrives I’m usually too wasted to work it out in my head.

Second thing is the Met. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. This is excellent and deserves many more revisits. I’ve actually got some great inspiration from ancient swords and other exhibits there to work on a new logo and website design for Ascalon Films.

Third thing, and this really is ‘more fool me’, is that I’ve discovered teriyaki flavour beef jerky actually tastes like dog breath. Yes. Exactly how a hound’s mouth smells when one exhales in your face has been captured in this unique faux food product. I didn’t finish it.

Fourth on my list of stuff to remember is that it’s actually incredibly easy to get from Newark airport to Manhattan. There’s a train, the New Jersey Transit (NJTransit) which runs from Penn Street, Manhattan, to the airport, takes 20 minutes and costs $11.15. At the airport there’s a monorail to take you to the terminal, which is cool and has a great view of the NYC skyline.

Fifth thing–and most important–is that all my friends out here are great. Very cool people. Very real. Unique, smart, funny. That’s the ones I’ve met up with and the ones I haven’t had a chance to see on this visit. I the USA. I you all. (Except you. You know who you are. I hate you.)

And yes, I have had a beer this evening. Okay, more than one.

Rabbit started university after a year out. It should have been a year out travelling but Rabbit screwed up his grades while learning new card games, discovering the wonders of alcohol and disappearing out of the school window to head for the local bowling alley. During lesson times. Rabbit had lots of friends but his academic record wouldn’t pull anything out of any hats.

Rabbit realised it was time to pellet or bust.

Work loomed nigh and work was a bad word. Work certainly didn’t seem like a good idea. There was only one thing to do to get a grant aided place at a top state-subsidised establishment and spend three years ostensibly studying while out partying to all hours at something other than Her Majesty’s pleasure. Yes, only one thing to do if Mr and Mrs Rabbit were going to cough up their share of the grant money. Rabbit buried his indifference at the back of his burrow and cried the tears of a good green crocodile when his parents discovered his results.

They fell for it.

Really, Rabbit was smart enough to know that on a balance of probabilities they’d rather buy that than the fact Rabbit was a champion slacker who had the potential for anything and all the drive of a clockwork monkey setting out on the foothills of Everest. Why would they buy it? Because no one in Rabbit’s family had ever been to university before. Ever. At least one of Rabbits parents was possessed of a middle class snobbish pretention and the other was smart enough to know his son would do better with a degree. So they bought it and paid for it.

Except a few things happened.

Firstly, Rabbit didn’t go back to school straightaway. Rabbit went to a college of further education to get his grades and the major thing that impressed him was that the teachers treated him as an adult. This was a revelation. School still treated him as a kid. Here he was respected as a person from day one. He could succeed or fail. It was up to him. There was no pressure and there were very few rules. Rabbit thrived. Well, with the exception of mathmatics when Rabbit went to the pub, Rabbit thrived. And even then.

The next thing followed this growing maturity. Rabbit began to realise most of his school friends were very immature and actually not real friends at all for the most part. Rabbit wasn’t called Rabbit but they all called him that and Rabbit could feel it pulling him down to their level. They needed him to be small so they could appear large. Rabbit had to cut loose.

So Rabbit got smart. Rabbit still got drunk a few times and sat under tables at parties but no one minded. Along the way Rabbit started losing some of the ne’er do wells and there were no more tears shed. Well except over the love of Rabbit’s life who wasn’t having any of it at age 18 because she didn’t love him and couldn’t they just be friends? Papa Rabbit had clearly missed out on some of his son’s education somewhere along the line because Rabbit said yes. Oh, yes. Let’s just be friends while my heart breaks. Rabbit’s life was a Billy Bragg song yet to be written in the sand for the tide to wash clean.

Still for a whole year Rabbit applied himself to his studies–a small price to pay for the forthcoming three year vacation coming up–and he got the grades needed for a top university. And off he went. And there he learned Rabbit Tricks.

Because, you see, Rabbit learned from the girl who became his best friend and confidante, that life is all about people. People are the only game in town. Engage them. Romance them. Discover them and let them discover you while you each discover yourselves. Rabbit made lots of new friends. It was a trip. Rabbit came home for vacations to realise he was passing those old school buddies at lightspeed and so he went back to uni–which the trendy called college to play down how smart they all were–and he started his second year.

And in that second year Rabbit learned the next part of the trick, which was no trick really but life biting him on the tushy. The friends you make in the first year are nearly all the same kind you had at school. You fill up the gaps. So in the second year Rabbit did what everyone else had told him would happen, he dropped the friends of the first year. And on into the third year he made new friends. Real Friends. Close Friends. The best.

Then a strange thing happened. Rabbit finished college. It was totally unexpected. No job. No plan. Just a degree and no money. Not enough to buy a portion of chips with peas and gravy. Well just about. Rabbit realised Rabbit was going to have to work for a living, at last, and after swallowing the shock of it, Rabbit followed his academic preparation and finally studied up at the last minute on what to do. Then Rabbit went and did it and–although there was a stint working in a bun factory for a few months until some of the loans were paid off–it went exceedingly well.

Years passed and Rabbit’s career moved roughly in the direction he aimed it and meanwhile the last piece of the Rabbit Tricks fell into place. You see, Rabbit had distanced the school friends and lost the first year surrogates. But then Rabbit had gradually lost touch with the Real Friends too. Marriage. Distance. Work. One by one events had conspired to take them away and at last Rabbit was left with only a few, those whom he considered his closest friends (which actually included two from school).

The final part, however, was strange. For in those three years at college there had been those he openly loudmouth abused and who abused him back. There were enough potential buddies around that some verbal vitriol didn’t hurt here and there. Rabbit hacked people off. And Rabbit got hacked off too.

Yet Rabbit sits at the computer today and Rabbit reflects that there is one person who he would do a favour for from college and who he knows would always put him up in his home and sort out his problems, feed him and provide the all-important beer and sympathy. Or laughter. One person from college still sent Rabbit a Christmas card this year.

Rabbit smiles because it’s one of the first people he insulted and who gave as good as he got for the whole time they shared a flat with an assortment of geeks weirdos and some normal looking chainsmoking medical students. Today two characters can say anything to each other and sometimes they do. It’s water off a duck’s back. They can cut the crap and get to the truth and talk about it and, what’s still important, laugh. Or they don’t talk and nothing is lost either way, although often a smile and some reassurance is gained.

Rabbit Tricks. Speak your mind. That simple. Speak your mind. Only if you do will you discover who’s real and who’s not. It’s a trick that doesn’t work if it’s not honest–it’s not deception in that sense because it’s not really a confidence trick. It’s more a commonsense magical thing because when it works, you find some solid people, some of them more than worthy of being called Friends.

Along with all the rest of you, of course.

Today I learned a new acronym–AQI. It stands for Australian Quizzical Intonation and the TV presenters I work with have started adopting it.

What is it? Well, it sounds like they’re about to ask a question or continue with a thought but they actually stop in what seems like midsentence on an upward cadence. Apparently it’s very popular with British kids.

I can’t figure out a better way to explain this in print except maybe if you try reading this with a faux-Aussie accent, you’ll get the idea? Just read these sentences as if they were questions? And maybe you’ll see what I mean?

Of course, I’ve been speaking like this all day? I hope it wears off by tomorrow.