Three cheers and a drink for Waggy

Arrived tanned, fit, bright eyed and bushy tailed in London after three months of Polish fare, and nights spent shaking meat to the beat at club Kitsch. A ‘gay’ friendly club, where Erazmus students and the odd sprinkling of English teachers get lo down and dirty.

The weather in Krakow was beautiful. The temperature fine, the square bustling, it’s people fleshy. And all seemed to feast faces on shed loads of Lody (Ice cream). A welcome respite from scorching spring days in Valencia previously. Where cooked at the end of a day, an ice cold bottle of Amstel would quench a throat, supped slowly and lovingly on my balcony.

Krakow’s charm can be seen everywhere in the spring and summer months. Couples walk hand in hand along the Planty, as hunched nuns in black habits pass young lovers entwined on benches. Riots of flowers have run into bloom.
The Planty, a green belt of public park ringed around the old town, has transformed into a giant block of green. A contrast to the harsh, stark, black and white of winter.

And now here. Mile End London. Writing from high speed internet access installed in my digs. A halls of residence room at The Queen Mary University, together with an ensuite bathroom and mini fridge freezer, that could, with ease, double up as a mini bar. Will have to stock the thing meself, as the school budget obviously doesn’t stretch as far as one might wish.
Met a lovely Australian lass, who while having a long chat in a ropey Wetherspoons in the company of equally ropey looking punters, talked about her travels. She has just come over from a stint teaching in Italy and writing. She has finished a creative writing course, and encouraged me to take up this thing called blogging.
Being ex pat and out of the country for the last three years, not quite technologically up to scratch and with it. I arrived back at my plush little room and before long looked her up. Was impressed. And thus now converted. Time to blog.

This last week upon arriving on campus, has seen me interview teens from all over: Russia, Ukraine, Spain, and Italy being some, then placing them in suitable levels for classes.

The first week has been entertaining. My Spanish students, all girls from Majorca and Ibiza in their late teens, are positively horizontal. So laid back and so nice. If a little jaded by lunch time. A couple of them mentioned wearily that they needed a siesta. Bless em. God knows how they ever got an Armada together :)



Saturday afternoon.

A meeting in Farringdon at the Sir John Oldcastle, an old drinking hole where charity fundraisers would meet circa 2000, have a drink or six, and chug a joint outside. The occasion was a drink for my dear old friend Chris Wagstaff whose life was cut far too short while piloting a micro-light off the wild coast of Africa, filming the annual sardine run for National Geographic. He had hit the water along with a French cameraman and hasn’t been found since. I couldn’t help but think that Waggy would have wanted to go out this way, and not with a box of office stationary falling on his head.

The occasion threw together faces and thoughts, that after five years seemed never to have receded. Time has been kind to us and most look just how I remembered them.

He was beautiful man Chris. A mad fucker at times. Intelligent, well informed, travelled, a bit of a dare devil, an environmentalist, a comedian.
I have fond memories living in a flat above a furniture shop in Acton town, where dark rainy evenings were spent rolling up, and making Tahini. And of a mescaline loaded night, his manic manc cackle filling rooms before embarking on a mind enlarging 4 am walk to the green.
I’ll remember an outrageously funny, grumpy, dry, witty, black humored guy that would never stop shouting obscenities at the televison whenever he’d disagree with some bod or another on the box. Honest. he was unbearable at times!
Above all he was an inspiration on how to live life.

Waggy where do we go? After that black trick that squats at the end of all our lives.
One minute we’re here the next we’re not, and where we go to, nobody knows.

Goodbye for now Wag wherever you are.