Got paid and promptly put out financial fires all over the shop – looking like head above water for another month - but wait! What’re those there gleaming shiny CD like things on the music shop shelves?

Arctic Monkeys (sound sought of like if Pete Doherty was talented),
The Editors (have not been able to get the track called Munich out of my head for weeks and they also sound like Interpol),
Clap your hands say yeah (great reviews, great name, not sure about it once I listened to it though…bit weirdy beardy.. maybe it’s a grower) and
Broken Social Scene (who are also nay bad, despite having a name sounding like a comic book written by thuggish Lesbians)


Can you justify 4 CD’s at once when you are saving money and are on a time limit to get your financial shit together?


Well if I hadn’t bought the CD’s then I’d be robbing myself of musical brilliance for more days than were necessary – I was going to buy them one day – buy them now damn it! - and then just don’t go out and get drunk with my friends this weekend.


Surely new brilliant CD’s are better than getting drunk with people I already know too much about?


Hmmmm…. Much harder to justify once I move into that flat in a few months I imagine….but….. OK. deal.


But I must not become a hermit and start doing this all the time – I justified coming home from a place that had 30cts CD’s to a place that had $30 CD’s with the argument that I missed my friends – now I’m buying $30 CD’s instead of hanging out with them.


Idiot!


Good CD’s though.

...and I thought ”well really it would be much better if everyone thought about the greater good at the end of the line and tried to get there a bit quicker without so much piffle paffle and bureaucracy, all these meetings, think-tank nonsense and business speak bollocks” – that it would be better if one person was allowed to make decisions on the spot and get things moving, rather than having to check with everyone else to make sure they were all happy with their cut of profit, their level of involvement, their level of chin stroking time etc etc – that there should be trust that one person knew what they were doing and would make sure everyone got what was coming to them equally at the end of it and people should just do what they were told and bloody well get on with it.

At this point I was told that I was sounding like a communist dictator – and after a little pondering, I agreed with them but argued that communist dictators might actually have a point as long as they didn’t get drunk on power, start killing people and steal everything for themselves.

I then went off on a ramble about the “World of Spo” and how there would be far more modes of transport and habitat that involved floating and flight such as jet packs, flying cars, hover cities and those skateboards from Back to the Future II – Human/Animal army experimentation to create the ultimate soldier - food that tastes like Original Pringles but has the health benefits of carrots - general knowledge tests with cinema tickets so you don’t sit with fools who play with mobiles and talk all the way through the god damned movie – segregated sin city areas where anything goes and if it all goes wrong then you knew what you were walking into and it’s your fault and we don’t have enough time for rehabilitation as we’ve got enough people in the world so you will have to go and work down the mines until you sort your rotten little head out – and general anesthetic for children on long haul flights (and leg room for everybody!) – conservation based on how cool animals were – cloning Al Pacino and using the Al Pacino clones for the majority of TV - far more places connected with Ski-lifts and escalators – being connected to drips at work so you get the right vitamins and water for the day - wage caps in football and a minimum home grown players rule – the gradual reduction of teenagers from society - Televised supreme common sense courts that can operate outside the law, use punishments as a form of entertainment and can bring a swift halt to the likes of Gary Glitter’s existence, Michael Jackson’s career and the music of Crazy Frog – and finally the use of paper scissors stone as a national way of solving petty disputes that once played could not be argued with under penalty of death.

At which point I was told that it was paragraphs containing such random thoughts as the above which suggested that if I were allowed to make decisions without consultation, then my company would surely cease to exist and furthermore that if I ever got into government office then the future of this world was possibly at stake – I protested that this was my off the cuff version of Spo’s World and obviously I’d take council – it was more of a pub conversational Spo’s World than a final blue print

But it was no good – although people agreed there were some interesting ideas – (for example, that of general anesthetic being used when traveling long distances as long as you weren’t involved with the control of direction and speed, that hoveboards were indeed overdue and that more Al Pacino was undeniably a good thing) – in the end, sin cities, drips at work, a lax attitude to the law and conservation as well as meddling with nature to create super soldiers was inevitably going to cause chaos and needed far more thought before I’d be getting their votes.

Fair enough – I realised the thought of absolute power had indeed gone to my head and I had threatened to create a world of laziness, chaos and debauchery – I needed to be stopped – whether I had weapons of mass destruction or not – and the people had spoken by not voting for me in the first place – which is why we live in a democracy - Full circle.

The quiet weekends of January take hold after the events in Thailand – all about saving pennies and taking time outs as we start the new year – January, February, March – this side of the world they all suck a bit don’t they? It’s cold, wet and miserable outside and everyone is penniless and reflective.

Took the day off to take delivery of my shipped goods from Jakarta – all arrived around 11am and now one of the two real items of significance I own in this world – a lazy boy chair – sits proudly in my parents front room – everything else; Tri and Bach’s Buddha statue, pictures, DVD’s, books, few lamps, game consoles, clothes – can all sit in the boxes they were packed in until Spring – when the other item of significance that I own, my flat, will be completed.

So until then, the transitional phase continues – once moved in come May, a final line will be drawn under my far eastern tea tasting adventures and, I guess, the more independent life once led – looking around at what was delivered today – the things I have accumulated in life so far that well and truly belong to me – all I really own is a leather bound chair of comfort bought off the back of the unlikely winnings from Liverpool FC defying all the odds and becoming champions of Europe – everything else is largely superfluous – kind of how it has always been so that I could pitch up and leave where ever I ended up with little or no hassles what so ever - this job or another – in the end physically all I have is the chair to sit back and reflect.

Financially I paid off everything ever borrowed – now what I came away with is sown up in bricks and mortar – emotionally I left Africa and Asia without relationship commitments in the end – although reflection leads me to wonder on that, with regards to Hanh in Vietnam – yeah, that might be different if I could have a do-over – one day hit 88mph in the right place at the right time and go Back to the Future landing in Hoan Kiem Lake, centre of Hanoi and realise life has accidentally hit the rewind and I get another shot at the title.

In the end choices were made at the time and fate decreed the rest – hindsight’s a bitch as is often said – if I fall into the same flow of water later on, I’ll know which way to swim from previous experience. Hanh mailed me yesterday – her job with my company is going really well, she’s happy with life and about to go on maternity leave – baby comes in Feb - she talks of meeting again one day, to drink raise a toast and look back on it all - life indeed moves pretty fast.

Yuni mailed me too – she took her old job back running the bar – her daughter is flying through school with top marks – says she misses me and wants to come visit one day – would be good to show her the sights and sounds of UK - but I wonder if it’s good that we stay in touch – talking of seeing each other again all the time – can’t quite see it really – sure one day – but the phone calls, texts emails, promises of plans – they start to die out as we both quietly accept our 3 months together were exactly that.

Lucky that both women will remain in my life where ever I end up – good terms and good times making up most of the memories.

I think that my travels certainly changed me with each journey – I found old photo’s from Malawi when I was 22 the other day – how different I was before and after – then I found the pictures of the leaving party before Vietnam – those two years changed me more than anything else I’ve ever been through (ha! many men went to Nam and came back a different people and I’m no different!) – that was two tours of tea trading frontline duty my friends – learned a lot about life and what I wanted from it.

The round the world tour made me realise this spinning-spherical-mud-ball called Earth can be a very small place and that essentially the same things bind many - a love of family, friends and food and drink and a constant need to provide.

The last year in Jakarta? Well when I sat to think about it all it seemed like a bit of a stop gap – I don’t know how much I changed – a lot took place there – the relationship with Yuni, the car crash, the whisky over-indulgence, the earthquake, the late, late nights in MYbar and BATS, the tea auctions and dealing with a new city lingo and culture – but I was pretty much the same person from beginning to end.

Well actually, apart from figuring out how I felt about women from the past and present, I feel like I went backwards in a way – the vitality and drive from Vietnam dissipated into lackadaisical apathy – I got used to taking it easy with no responsibility or direction – wallowing in indulgence of women, drink and debauchery – and a shit load of DVD’s.

Compared to Hanoi, if Jakarta had any of the charm and the job any of the challenge, then things would have been different. When I left I was thinking I was coming back to the perfect set up and job, but that hasn’t quite turned out that way so far – time away paints memories in a golden light rather than reality – but I’m still settling I guess.

I suppose going backwards for a bit has shown me what not to do to get things back on track and heading towards the grand design of the job in the Malawi tea office in a few years – with that the plans of a beach bar with boats and hammocks on the side – I gotta remember what got me up every morning whilst in Hanoi and take that to the job in UK to get there.

Having said that, the above shows I’m still thinking I’m able to drop everything and leave when the opportunity presents itself – but wanting to get back into a relationship, owning your own place, the commitments that come with, all the things you fill it with and your name on all these various important legal documents and bills, pay cheque disappearing on arrival…. I’m feeling that this represents not so much dropping anchor as selling the god damned ship.

I’ve been in the wars, to be sure.

But never broken a bone or a dislocated anything.

However, for three days with the wind in my hair, being my own man, I was free as a…… well no I was concentrating on not falling off actually – and when Jenks suggested a 13.5km there and back trek up and down dodgy jungle roads to the remote part of Ko Phan Ngan, I said ”Ok” but I knew that it was one mission I probably wouldn’t be coming back from – like the guy that was a bit short of the mark in boot camp and looked at Normandy Beach as artillery fire whistled towards him and thought “yeah – I’m probably gonna get it - first off the boat” – that’s me, the perennial non-cast member that makes up the extra man for the exploration party to new planets – and when I saw the steep verges and gravel strewn drops – the people in the passing mud covered taxi’s laughing and shaking their heads as they knew what we were driving towards – I thought