VS045

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My old online diary caused much controversy through its many years online. I started it in 2003, when I was 14, and kept it until just a few months ago. I referred to it as a diary, not a blog, because it was very candid and honest. I grew up a lot in that time, and I used my diary to help understand the new thoughts and feelings I had. I’ve always been happy to expose myself like that; when I was 15 I bleached my hair because I had issues with self-confidence, figuring that if I drew all the attention to me, such that I couldn’t get away from it, I’d HAVE to learn to deal with it. I tend to do things in extremes. And it worked, incidentally. My point is I’ve always believed that the biggest problem in the world is miscommunication, and that if someone feels something, they should be proud of those feelings, and not try and hide them away.

Anyway, this is all a digression: the point is that this blog is designed with a more professional veneer. It’s a blog, not a diary. I’m still trying to be me, and be candid, and not just update whenever I have a gig to play, but I won’t go on at length about the new girl I’m dating, or my own personal friendship dramas. (I think that the people who read this blog will think ‘he’s so open!’ but the people who used to read my diary will think ‘he’s so guarded!’)

But out of everything I wrote in that diary over those six years, the thing I loved the most was when I wrote about travelling. I love travel anecdotes. I’ve never had any travel experience that didn’t contain at least one or two completely unique and surreal moments.

Charlie, Tom and myself are on a plane to New York right now :D Virgin Atlantic flight VS045. I’m in their flying club, so I got a lot of miles for this trip. Tom and I tried to blag our way into first class earlier by chatting to the woman at bag drop – her name was Lucy – and saying all this stuff about how we were launching a CD, and playing a gig, and would you like a copy of my album Parrot Stories

Here we are in economy, one CD down. xD And I think I’ll be giving another copy to the girl sitting next to Tom; a financial advisor named Claire, who seems just lovely.

Boarding this flight was the most hectic experience I’ve ever had at an airport. We went to get food. And then the food took ages, such that we only had five minutes to eat it, because the flight had already started boarding by the time it was served. I’ve never eaten a full English so quickly. And I remembered I had to buy shampoo so I raced off to do that, and we raced off to Gate 20 only to discover that Tom had left his ukulele in the security area, so he headed back and found it:

“That’s my ukulele!” he said in a panic, “can I have it please?”

The dreary-eyed woman at the security desk threw a casual glance over her shoulder at the instrument in its black carry-case, and replied at a pace that held no regard for our urgency, “how do I know this is your ukulele, sir?”

Tom and I looked at each other. “We do have a plane to catch,” I said, with that hopeful ‘give a guy a break’ face.

The woman decided to ask two questions to prove the authenticity of Tom’s ownership.

“What colour is it?” She said. “How many strings does it have?”

Tom came alive.

“Four! And … ukulele-coloured!” He didn’t know how else to describe that orangey-brown stringed instrument tinge.

And although correctly answering those questions required only that you know what a ukulele IS, Tom got his instrument back. She didn’t even check the bag. He could have said “green! It’s green, with sparkles, and the machine-heads are made of gold, and it tunes itself, and all the vowels are the wrong way round so we call it an ekulalo!”

We pegged it back to Gate 20 and made it on the flight in time, Tom played me an album by The Flaming Lips because he’s trying to broaden my musical horizons to anything beyond Green Day, and now I sit here writing this. Charlie is on my right watching District 9; Tom is on my left watching Family Guy; and I’m gonna open up the next episode of Flashforward and watch myself a treat.

(EDIT: Tom is now watching Up. <3)

The pilot just said, “welcome aboard this flight; on board today we have 324 passengers and two cats!”

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