Paul Schiernecker

Category: 30 Out Of 30

#18 – Take a train ride across India

Ten years ago I was hungover. Not much has changed. On this particular occasion I woke up on a sofa in the basement of my friend’s student digs in Cambridge. Stale smoke sat up in the air along with any plans I had for the day. Ben, the aforementioned friend, wandered into the room and chucked a DVD at me.

“You should watch this” he said, “it’s definitely a bit of you.”

The DVD was The Darjeeling Limited, the fifth film by dolly shot-loving, The Kinks sound tracking auteur Wes Anderson. It’s a film about family and loss and the most beautiful set of luggage you have ever seen in your life. I sat in rapture for two hours. As soon as the film let up, I started it again, watching with the opening short Hotel Chevalier the second time around. This was the start of my love affair with Anderson but also the seed of an idea about one day taking a train ride across India just like the Whitman brothers did in the film.

A couple of months ago I started planning a trip to India. It was to be the first time I had travelled alone. As such, I wanted to make sure I included everything I had ever wanted to do while in country. Amongst those was visiting the Taj Mahal, the Beatles Ashram and staying in a hut on the beach. I also realised I could live my dream of taking a train journey across the country. After a bit of research I found the twenty-seven hour journey from Nizamuddin, East Delhi to Goa.

I was told by some of my well-travelled friends (thank you, thank you, thank you) that it would be worth me sparing the expense and going First Class. This meant access to sweet, sweet air-conditioning as well as getting fed. I had some difficulty booking the ticket and had to utilise someone in my office with family based in India (thank you Peter).

I left my AirBnb with plenty of time and found my way through the back streets to the train station. The road outside was so full of taxis and tuktuks that it looked like they had been abandoned in the wake of a natural disaster. I wandered into the station and felt a lot of sets of eyes fall upon me. A number of friends asked why I would get the train for twenty-seven hours when I could fly it in under an hour. Why do I ever make my life more difficult? It’s always for the story.

I took a footbridge over the first three lines and came down onto Platform 4. There were a lot of people waiting, hiding in the shade offered by the overhead cover running along much of the platform. Again, people seemed to wonder what this white boy was doing there.

I found a board where the reservations were printed out on long streams of old-style printer paper, the kind with perforated edges that prints one page in seventeen minutes. I checked every list and couldn’t see my name. I would have to chance getting on the right carriage and working it out from there.

I walked the enormous length of the train (I’m going to be a man and over estimate it as being about six-hundred metres). I got to the front, expecting the class to go up as I went and was faced with the cattle class. I had walked the wrong way. I checked the time and started back in the opposite direction. All along the platform was a buzz of movement. People were loading . Luggage was moving. There were supplies too, being dumped by open doors to be hoisted up into the bulk of this behemoth that would take me some twelve-hundred kilometres down the coast of India.

I made it to First Class and found my way to Cabin A. I slid the door open and three Indian men reclining on their bunks looked up at me. I saw everything in symmetry, as Anderson would have shot it. I looked down at my ticket; an overhead shot, the text in Futura Bold, The strains of Joe Dassin’s Les Champs Elysee playing only for me through the headphones burrowed deep into my ears. I smiled and jumped up into my bunk.

The ceiling was so low that I couldn’t sit up fully. I took my flip-flops off and placed them off to one side. The train started on its way out of the station. I watched the remaining people waving us off and moving along. Nizamuddin continued on without me.
A member of staff served us cartons of Chach, a spiced buttermilk drink. I expected it to taste like the basic bitch coffee order of choice, the Pumpkin Spice Latte. It did not. It tasted like a creamy curry sauce mixed with milk. It was not good. I am so polite that I finished the whole thing, gagging at intervals like it was being forced upon me as a form of torture.

We were served masala tea and soon after we were brought trays of spicy tomato soup in a tiny red thermos with cutlery and breadsticks and seasoning on the side. Everything sat at parallels and I reminded myself to thank the props guy in charge of making this adventure as close to my imagination as anything I had ever lived. Shortly after, we were brought more food; a tray of four dishes covered over with foil and a wedge of something folded up in the middle. I opened them up like it was Christmas Day. Different curries – some lentil, others vegetable and rice. The foil in the middle unwound to present me with a stack of roti. I chucked everything on a plate and mopped it up with the bread.

I sat back on my bunk and looked at the little bag I had carted through Delhi just for this journey, a replica of the Whitman’s luggage – a satchel with the number 8 on the side, made by Very Troubled Child. It looked perfectly at home.

I praised the gods of good Wi-Fi for the connection at the AirBnb that had allowed me to download podcasts and films before I set off. Despite my excitement of the journey itself, I would need a lot to keep my mind engaged for so long. I spent the rest of the day watching Netflix’s Maniac, listening to Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcasts and writing up the notes from the previous days in the tiny leather bound notebook I was carrying with me.

Dinner was very similar to lunch. It was getting dark outside which was for the best otherwise I could have worried I was stuck in a loop. I had soup and then four little dishes of curry with rice and roti. My new friends (who I had not spoken a word to and who all had fabulous moustaches) left me. There were other stops along the way. It turned out it wasn’t a non-stop 27 hour thrill ride through to Goa.

I was moved into another room. Apparently there had been a mix up. A very angry Indian man had refused to share a room with me, probably because he found me so alluring that he didn’t think he would be able to keep his hands to himself through the night. I was moved into a two-berth cabin with a younger guy who was chilling on his bunk and watching films. I liked his vibe.

I climbed into my bunk, put Temple Of Doom on and promptly fell asleep – “no time for love, Dr Jones”.

When I woke up it was because a man was knocking on the door to bring me tea – the best way to wake up. I sat up, stretched out and realised I had slept for eight hours plus. The gentle rocking of the train had done all kinds of favours. I felt rested and happy.

We were brought breakfast, a vegetable cutlet with some spiced vegetables as well as cornflakes and two slices of bread – a meal fit for a king. I scoffed it all down and stared out the window before putting Temple Of Doom on again to try and work out how much of it I had missed. It turned out that it was the vast majority of it.

I was brought another tray of curry for lunch. I appreciated it but I was kind of done with curry, the same curry. I was starting to get stir crazy. My friend got off at Trivum and I started thumping my hand on the seat as a drumbeat and singing to myself to save myself from going insane. After a hearty rendition of Hardest Button To Button I went for a wander. I discovered it was possible to lean out of open doorways and look down the entirety of the train. It was only when I did this and nearly lost my face as we disappeared inside a tunnel that I realised there were some occasions when travelling on your own wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Aside from the fear of going missing and nobody noticing, I thoroughly enjoyed the journey.

I took a moment back in my cabin to reflect on what had happened. How amazing it was that I got to take this trip, to do it all on my own terms and to really understand what it was to be trapped with just myself for company. How fortunate I was to be able to afford to ride the rails and sit in the too-cool air conditioning and be brought delicious food on a near constant basis and live it up like Lady Muck. I was lucky. I was happy. I was so happy.

When we pulled in, I got off and realised what a number the air-con had been doing on me. It was 34 degrees and muggy outside. I stumbled out of the station and got a cab, onwards, to Palolem beach, Goa.

Note: It was only later that I was told by Akshay, who I stayed with in Goa, that not even Indians eat the food on the train and that I must have an iron stomach. Those of you who have followed my previous writing adventures in the Philippines and Peru will know that is certainly not the case.

October 15, 2018
#3 – Run a marathon.

There are some things that made it onto my list of thirty things to do before I was thirty that were pure filler. Up there I would include Play Cluedo and Make a Baked Alaska, both of which I managed to do in a single, very successful, evening. There are others that have genuinely been something I thought I wanted to do. You know how sometimes, when you’re drunk, you’ll start randomly getting off with someone, and then you’ll have a moment of clarity where you wonder what the hell you are doing and who this person even is and whether their parents are rich and elderly. Imagine that for twenty-six miles. Congratulations, you’ve just imagined running a marathon.

I have entered the ballot for the London Marathon every year for at least the last five years. I always said that if I got a place then I would commit to it with my everything, that I would dig deep. That I would quit drinking and drunkenly casual smoking and that I would eat nothing but spinach and pasta and kale milkshakes. In October 2016 I found out that I had a place in the London Marathon 2017. With six months before the event I did what any sane person would do, I buried the congratulations letter under the pile of stuff I inexplicably keep on top of my microwave and developed a hernia the size of a hamster.

I put the deal-breaker that I had to get in on the ballot for a reason. Any old shmuck can get in on a charity place, you just have to be willing to raise £3k+ for said charity. That’s an awful lot of pressure. Imagine having to run twenty-six miles while wondering whether your overdraft is going to stretch to cover little Timmy’s dialysis machine because you didn’t bother to host a charity curry night. That’s too much pressure. I’ll stick to regular old pressure, like a car tyre or an aneurysm.

Once I was over the hernia (which was in no way linked to my wanton love of casual sex) I started to actually train. I ran. I ran a lot. I ran at weekends with hangovers the size of Swansea. I ran in the mornings when the South Bank was a fucking Home Alone death trap of ice and bitter child stars. I ran for trains and for buses and from my responsibilities. I even joined a gym and considered getting a FitBit.

I was spending all week at work and every weekend at Hide & Shriek writing Delectably Dead. We would stay up late working and goofing around on ChatRoulette and then I would get up the next morning and run fifteen miles before working on our next project. It was pretty full on but I was still drinking and still casually drunkenly smoking. I grew tired of running in the gym because it felt like I was getting absolutely nowhere (ha!). I now haven’t stepped foot in that gym in three months. The Direct Debit continues to come out. I am shamed.

I had a countdown on my calendar at work. I injured my ankle and I bought a new pair of running shoes. I started to notice that my thighs were physically pained when pushed into a pair of skinny jeans. I was getting stronger. My self-control however was getting weaker. Three days before the marathon I discovered the two pint glasses at a Kasabian gig and was hungover for the next two days. Then, I discovered it was marathon race day and I had to get my ass to Blackheath.

It is a weird and wonderful thing to take part in the marathon. The first thing I feel I should comment on is how serious people take it. I was taking it very seriously. I ate pasta for breakfast, that’s how serious I was about this marathon. The other thing that people take very seriously is a strategic poo. The queues for the loos were horrific and everyone smelt like Deep Heat and Lucozade tablets. There was someone attempting to brighten the mood by talking loudly over a tannoy and playing Let Me Entertain You. I wanted him dead. I had tried to read up on marathon etiquette. The key things seemed to be:
Cover your entire body in Vaseline. You will die otherwise
Don’t you dare eat fruit or vegetables. You will die otherwise.
Blackheath is very cold at eight in the morning. Bring clothes.
Be prepared to throw those clothes away because when you run you get hot
Actually, forget the coat, wear a bin bag. You can rip out of it like a trashy lithe Hulk when you start jogging.
Don’t listen to music when you’re running. You will die otherwise.
Run with music because listening to people is awful.
Don’t talk to anyone.
Don’t take sweets from strangers.
Don’t drink water. It contains invisible eels that are poisonous.
Pain is just your toenails leaving your body.

I only made some of these up.

I was really nervous about running the marathon. I knew I hadn’t done anywhere near the distance in training. The most I had clocked up in a single sesh was fifteen miles. I know that’s a lot but it still left eleven glorious miles of undiscovered torture ahead of me. I was once told that running longer than ten miles is just causing damage to your body. That’s sixteen lovely miles of damage per marathon.

I started and there was this incredible roar from the crowd. I ripped through the binbag like a T-Rex on acid and realised I had nothing to be nervous about. It was just running. I knew how to do running. I had been running for years. Running is easy. It’s paying bills and toeing the line that’s difficult. I put my music on. I had put together a brilliant playlist called I Just Started Running. It was Biffy Clyro and Black Keys exclusively. I was sure that I could listen to Biffy Clyro and Black Keys exclusively for four hours. They had been my go to bands when training. I could do this. I could bloody run the marathon.

After a couple of miles I realised how incredibly dull that bit of London is. The crowds were small and a bit boring looking. I did like high-fiving the kids who reached over the barriers with their tiny outstretched hands. I stopped for a bottle of water. I had been denying myself a proper drink because I didn’t want to get too much liquid in me. This would make me heavy and need to wee all the time. Also, don’t people die from drinking too much water? Is that a thing? I feel like it’s something people on Ecstasy do. Now that sounds like a VICE article – I Ran The Marathon On Pills.
I finished a bottle of water and picked up another at the next station. Then I really needed a wee.

There are toilets every two miles. That’s a lot of toilets I guess. It isn’t when you’re bursting and running and have to keep up your pace and trying to calculate how fast you need to run before the next marker to make up the weeing time. It’s a long way when you’re trying to calculate how long a wee really takes including untucking and retucking. I got to the toilets and they were all in use. I relieved myself against a fence. A million other men ran up and did the same.

At six miles we got to the Cutty Sark. Here there were huge crowds and I looked at every little face trying to recognise someone I knew but they were all smiling strangers. I had made the bold decision not to put my name on my shirt. I’m sure it’s fun at first but considering the state I was in by the end it would have really fucked me off for some condescending twat swigging a pint of London Pride to be going “come on Paul”. He can hypothetically fuck right off. The crowds thinned and then I did another wee, this time against a wall. I soon discovered that my Strava app, which I was using to map the distance I covered, was about two hundred metres short of the actual distance per mile. By eight miles it was making me want to cut my ears off.

I have never had an issue with my nipples when running. I know it’s a common complaint for runners and it was a subject of considerable mirth for my little brother to tell me to mind my nipples but it’s just never bothered me. At thirteen miles, the Vaseline I had smeared all over my body was sweating loose and my nipples were full of the joyous pain of rubbing. I cursed my brother, sure it was all his fault, and carried on.

Then, a miracle in the form of St John’s Ambulance. They were stood at the side of the path with their hands outstretched in latex gloves. Their hands were piled with Vaseline. We could help ourselves. I whipped up a glob and rubbed my sweet little nips down with a ferocity that really gave the crowd something to think about. I did not give a fuck.

At thirteen miles I ran across Tower Bridge and I was so full of joy and pith that I got my phone out and took a sweaty picture of myself. I was sure I could do this. I felt fantastic. There were so many people and so much noise and I was full of life and joy and bottles of Buxton water.
Around the bend I picked up some energy gels and realised that I don’t like energy gels. One revelation followed the other.

There was a “shower” just along Shadwell, where you could run through a series of spray machines that had been set up. The cold water took my breath away and I wasn’t sure if the moisture bouncing down my body was sweat or shower spray as I continued on my way towards greatness (and a stitch).

It was at around this point that people started to offer out sweets. Some of them had convenience store-sized tubs which they would dangle temptingly over the barriers for us to pick at as we ran past. I discovered that hoovering up pick ‘n’ mix at around six miles an hour is harder than it sounds. Other people had dishes and plates of sweets. Some people had wrapped up little packages of jelly beans and jelly babies in foil or paper so you could pick at them as you ran around. It was very much like what I imagine picking up heroin to be like. It was only as I finished my third scoop of confectionery that I remembered that I was vegetarian and that a lot of it probably contained beef gelatin. I’m sorry Paul McCartney. I’m sorry Morrissey!

Running in itself started to get tougher. I realised I was in a realm beyond the unknown. At mile sixteen I figured I was going to be able to do another ten miles with only a little bit of pain. I was starting to ache and the ankle I had injured while training was in good company as everything else in and around my body pulsed with the effort of what I was doing. I was on my third Biffy Clyro album. The sweet sound of Simon Neil’s voice was making me want to vomit. Everything was making me want to vomit. It didn’t matter how many bottles of water I had, how many Lucozade gels I sucked on or how many fresh dabs of Vaseline I was able to load up onto my tits, I was struggling.

I realised something had gone terribly wrong when I turned a corner onto Canary Wharf and started to cry. The only reason anyone has good cause to cry at the sight of Canary Wharf is if they work there. I knew I was being irrational but I couldn’t help it. I felt like I needed someone to slap me in the face, hard. I needed a good old Dynasty open hand to the chops. My running was still automatic but it must have looked like I was a clockwork dinosaur on the last couple of ticks.

I stopped running at twenty-one miles. I knew I was going to finish. I knew I had to finish but it didn’t mean that I was going to run the whole thing. I was in serious trouble. Everything hurt. I couldn’t get up the energy to start running again. I was pretty sure that the end was coming. I took a moment to remember that I had failed to write my emergency contact details on the reverse of my race number. If I went down then they weren’t going to find anything on me that would help identify who I was and what I needed (answers: Paul Schiernecker, not to run anymore). I was only able to start running again when I heard my actual name being called from the crowd. I looked up and my friends Adam and Tom were there. They grabbed at me and ushered me along and I started up again and realised it had been a mistake to stop. Along the side of the road were pale looking bodies in shorts and foil. They had blown up. They weren’t going to make it. I was. It was just a matter of grit.

Further down the same stretch I saw Clarissa. We quickly hugged and it was only afterwards that she was able to tell me how awful I looked. I had lost any kind of dignity. I just needed to make it to the end. The crowds were growing and there were people everywhere. I couldn’t show any sign of weakness. They preyed on that.

The final three miles were the best of the marathon. Not because I found some kind of inner strength but because I knew it was nearly over. I was running from Tower Hill to Westminster and I knew the area well enough to find it cool that the roads were shut off from the usual traffic and that there were so many people lining the banks. Music boomed at me through the tunnel and I tried not to look at the Walkabout by Temple. Someone had a full twelve-inch pizza balanced on the railings as I ran past them. I hated them, the selfish little cunt. I hated every single person in London. I hated myself and I hated the Queen and I wanted to give up my body and be reincarnated as a discarded Lucozade gel. Why would anybody ever do this to themselves? Why is this even a thing? What kind of monster decided that it had to be 26.2 miles and not just a nice round 26. Some sick and twisted son of a bitch that’s for sure.

By the time I hit 26 miles, and Strava was telling me that I was at twenty-five I was ready to kill and I was ready to die. I had been broken down and rebuilt so many times that I wasn’t entirely sure of who I was. It was a great feeling. I just had to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I ran past Liz’s gaff and then realised that I was at the finish line and that I had just run a marathon.

I hobbled along the return stretch beside St James’s Park and tried to work out where I could collapse and die. I collected a medal and for some reason they took note of what shoes I was wearing. I posed for a photo where I looked like a skeleton wearing a Paul mask and then I got my bag and struggled through the park and fell down beside a tree. I had another cry. Running a marathon is tough and emotional, like an Adele album.

I stayed down as though getting up again would involve more punishment, like getting knocked on your fanny in a boxing match. I waited for someone to come and get me. I winced and sobbed when I stretched out. I started to get cold. I texted my mummy. Clarissa came to meet me and we slowly made our way to get food. I decided that I was vegetarian again.

Along the way people congratulated me and kids wanted to high five me and it was the nicest version of London I have ever been a part of. I felt excited and tired and giddy and sick and sleepy and hungry and ready to drop all at the same time. I was all of the fucking seven dwarves. Nothing compares to it. Nothing can beat it. I still didn’t know why I had done it. I didn’t know why anyone would ever do it.

The train home was so full that I took to the First Class carriage just so I could stretch out. As it was a Sunday the train stopped at every possible station and it was over an hour before I was hobbling back through town and up the two flights of stairs to my flat. When I bought the flat I never considered the fact I would one day take part in a marathon and then have to get home. I struggled inside and didn’t leave for two days.

There are many things I could say about running a marathon. I could tell you never to do it. I could tell you that I decided straight after that I had now done a marathon and didn’t need to ever take part in one again. Or I could tell you that it really irked me that it took me four hours and sixteen minutes to complete it. It irked me so much in fact that when the applications for the ballot for the London Marathon 2018 opened I entered again. Pain fades. Glory doesn’t.

Note: Despite how tough this whole experience was for me, I will always remember 2017 as the year I struggle my way through the marathon of Thirteen Reasons Why. What a terrible pile of dross. It took me three times as long to finish that as it did the London Marathon and I didn’t even get a medal at the end of it. Clay is a whining little piss baby, and I say that as someone who just spent three thousand words complaining about running.

May 18, 2017
#7 – Fire a gun.

‘What’s Gunny doing here Jeremy?”

My ears are still ringing. On Friday, the show I co-wrote, Delectably Dead, had its first trip outside of its home county. We headed to Guildford where we performed for eighty people at G Live. Despite how many times I shouted at it, my Sat Nav kept pronouncing it “live”, as in, to still be amongst the living or Liv Tyler.

The key difference with this show was that I was actually going to be “treading the boards”. In previous incarnations I had only ever been part of the ensemble as a zombie. Last night I got to play Nathan Dimble, a character I only realised during the show spends around two and a half hours onstage. Where’s the gun? Where’s the smoking gun?
It’s here, here in the story. It’s no secret that DD has loud noises. One of those loud noises is gunfire, from blank firing weapons, including the two I got to pop off to save the audience from the hoards of the undead that tried to get at my beautiful man-flesh. I have always wanted to fire a gun. There’s something carnal yet Hollywood about it. I think of Danny Butterman’s “ever fired your gun in the air and yelled, ‘Aaaaaaah?’”.

Guns tend to get a bad reputation. It’s probably because of their ability to end lives and all that. I don’t give a damn about my bad reputation. Last night was awesome.
They key thing with guns is safety. We have to keep them under lock and key, they’re assigned a marshal to safeguard them and are also covered in our public liability insurance. After being trained in handling and operating the weapons I got dressed up in my costume and was ready for the show.

I don’t want to say too much about the show itself because a lot of the magic is in the mystery. In fact I feel bad that you know there are guns in it. How else are we supposed to protect ourselves against the infected?
I had an amazing time with a brilliant team of cast and crew and the audience seemed to enjoy themselves.

I would also like to take this opportunity to express how fucking hard acting is. It is one of the most consuming and exhausting processes and I was playing a character somewhere between myself and Karen from Mean Girls so god knows how Helen Mirren or Danny Dyer feel after a day on set. I have so much respect for anyone who has the discipline and ambition for that, who strives for it. Especially if they’re one of our cast members. Thank you guys.

March 31, 2017
#27 – Play Cluedo.

Was it Mr Pink? In the observatory? With a draft excluder?

We’ve all played Cluedo before, or have we? That’s a lot of questions to open with, isn’t it?

Until very recently, I had not played Cluedo. That was why it was on my list of 30 things to do before I turned 30.

How did I get some Cluedo all up in here? Well, for that we have to head back to a long time ago, about a year ago, when my mum bought me a Cluedo set which sat, wrapped in plastic, in my wardrobe until this week.

I had friends over. We ate pizza. I made mulled wine. It was a total hoot. As it turned out, we had the maximum number of players possible for Cluedo. Six. That’s how cute and popular I am. Six friends!

I feel like I have always been aware of Cluedo. It’s like The Godfather. I knew all of the Godfather before I ever watched it. I found the actual viewing somewhat disappointing as a result. I hoped the same wouldn’t be said of Cluedo.

The rules of Cluedo are complex in their complexity. There are cards for each of the rooms , each of the weapons and each of the characters. One of each is put in an envelope and the rest are handed out to the players. For all you know, you could be the killer. I was. #Spoilers.

The aim of the game is to work out what happened and where and by whom. When there are six of you, it can get a bit involved because everyone has some kind of sick strategy. It feels like it goes on for ages before you get to do anything and your poor little part is being dragged all over the shop. In that way it’s very much like an inefficient handjob.

I watched the finesse with which my friends played and probably learnt more about the situation from their reaction than I did from actually taking any turns. It’s basically a game of elimination. Then you head into your mind palace and try to fathom out how exactly you would kill someone with a candlestick. I suppose the obvious choice is blunt force trauma it could also be fun to down the throat or up the anus of your intended victim until they choked.

It took three of us making a dive for the centre to make our allegations before we were able to conclude that I was in fact the murderer. If I had known from the off then I would have done whatever I could to put the other players off, or I would have booked a flight to the Philippines. Either way, they never would have caught me.

February 25, 2017
#11 – Ride a horse.

They say that horses are intelligent creatures, don’t they?
Wait, am I thinking of dolphins? Or velociraptors?
Clever girl.

Anyway, one of the things I really wanted to do was ride a horse. I think I was inspired by Django Unchained. I can’t think what other reason I have for wanting to do anything. Ride a horse. Become a free man. Eat some white cake.
The opportunity to ride a horse came to be on my actual 30th birthday. Clarissa had offered before but I had never committed. Here’s the thing about saying you’re going to do something, sometimes you actually end up doing it.

I don’t trust horses. I feel like they are plotting something. What do they know that we don’t? Why are they always standing about, watching everything? What have they seen? They say “oh, if I could be a fly on the wall”, try being a fucking horse.

The first thing I noticed about Bentley, my noble stead, is that he was massive. Apparently he’s small for a horse. He’s bigger than a vacuum cleaner or a Paul Schiernecker so in the grand scheme of things, I’m declaring him big. He also didn’t like me. Horses do what the fuck they want, don’t they? Unless you’re some kind of cryptic horse whisperer, threatening that they’ll become Iceland Lasagne, horses rule the roost. Clarissa made me dress him in a little S&M waistcoat and then we took him out into the ménage. That’s basically where they train horses and idiots, dressed in pea coats, who haven’t been on horses before. It’s a fenced in square, covered over in sand, so if you land on your tuchus you’re not going to die.

I assumed I would be a naturally gifted horse rider. I quickly realised that the reason I thought I would be able to ride is that I once spent an entire weekend eating chicken nuggets and playing Red Dead Redemption. It turns out that you can’t tap A to make it go faster. Instead, you have to be horrible to him.

Basically, there are a lot of instructions to follow. I was busy trying to send pictures to my brothers and didn’t hear a lot of them. It’s sort of like riding a bike. You put your hand out to the side to make a turn. You also have to talk to the horse. This is where it becomes different to riding a bike. You don’t talk to a bike. I’ve seen people talking to bikes but they were in Amsterdam.
You are supposed to be sure of what you’re saying, which is difficult when you don’t ever feel sure of what you’re saying. I mean, how can I be in charge, he’s been horse riding a lot more than I have, and we both know it.

After much persuasion (Clarissa to me), Bentley started doing what I wanted. He still stopped at the gate because he hated me and he always diverted off the course but other than that, we had a good time. I even managed to get him to trot.
The only harsh thing is that to do so, you have to give them a little kicking. At first I was really apprehensive because it’s like someone punching me in the kidneys to force me to run.

Basically, riding horses is excellent. Now I’m gonna go and hunt some foxes and poor people.

February 19, 2017
#5 – Write a letter to myself at the age of 60.

Dear Paul,
As you can imagine, this is a weird letter to have to write. I mean, I’m me. You’re me. It’s asking for all kinds of disappointment for either one, or both of us. I have spent a lot of years worrying about not achieving the great things I always felt I would achieve. I don’t want to put too much of a downer on what I am hoping is a spectacular birthday for us both.

I am writing this letter as part of a challenge I set myself. I wanted to complete a list of thirty things I wanted to do before I was thirty. I achieved some of these. I am hoping that between the pair of us we managed to take that train ride across India and visit somewhere to see the Northern Lights.

So here is where I am at now. I’m thirty years old. I am working. I know I am lucky to have a job but it is not what I feel I was put on this planet to do.
I have a one-bedroom flat where I can see the hospital in which I was born from the kitchen window. This flat is always cold, especially in February. We are due to clear the mortgage in thirty-two years.

I have independently published four books (Where Did All The Money Go, The Stamp Collective, Yallah! and The Stamp Brotherhood). I have written, recorded and released an album called Workbook. My latest project was co-writing a zombie dinner show called Delectably Dead with Scott. All I want to do is write and love and travel.

Today I went for lunch with Clarissa and then rode Bentley, her horse. Again, this is something that was on my list of things to do before I was thirty.
I’m waiting for Luke, Luke, Ben, Kate and Alex to come round for pizza and games. I’m taking Clarissa, Dad and Sue to see Delectably Dead tomorrow.
On Friday I’ll be out in Southend with my friends. I wonder what you are doing and who you are with. I hope you see Robb and Edd as much as you can. Unfortunately, they know you better than anyone and should be feared and respected.

I hope you don’t let your ego step on important friendships and I hope you are still a force to be reckoned with.

I guess what I was to say is that I am proud of the pair of us. Wherever you are, it’s where I am heading and I know you have solid reasons for everything.
Just stay true to who you are and what we want.

If you aren’t still writing then now is the time to pick it up again. Go and listen to DeBussy and make something great.

I love you.

Paul.
x.

February 17, 2017
#1 – Write a screenplay.

It has to be accepted among “creative people” that it is very rare to finish up the projects we start. I have lost count of the amount of times I have excitedly started something, only to lose the passion for it somewhere along the way. Some of those things will remain unfinished forever, and I have to be cool with that as an idea. We all have to be cool with that as an idea. I have started a number of things that I will never get around to finishing for one reason or another.
I suppose it was for that reason that when my dear friend Scott asked if I wanted to write a play with him that I assumed it was going to be one of many projects that never really comes to fruition. If the percentage of things I start and finish on my own is low, then the number of things I start and finish as part of a collaboration is even lower.
The maths is quite interesting. You take the chance of you ever finishing anything and times it by the chance of the other person ever finishing anything and then do some maths and the odds are pretty low. I’m not even going to complete that equation. It’s just another unfinished thing.

Now the cool thing about Scott is that he co-owns Hide and Shriek with his friend George. The pair of them are like the odd couple. George needs numbers and calm. He works well on his own and very much speaks his mind. He’s like a cat I guess. Scott on the other hand is like a dog. He is silly and he loves people and he will do almost anything to get a cuddle. Somehow, the pair of them work together very well. George counts the beans and Scott watches YouTube videos and screams Sum 41 lyrics. Maybe that was more my influence than anything else.

The show they wanted me to help with was a dinner show. Dinner shows are popular at our local theatre, but they are mainly aimed at a British sitcom nostalgia audience. Things like Fawlty Towers and Father Ted are put on over the course of a three course meal. Hide and Shriek were contacted by the second largest theatre company in the UK to put together a zombie dinner show. I just happened to wander into their unit in Southend when Scott was putting ideas together for it. And the rest, as they say, is history. Scott told me about this before Christmas and it wasn’t really something that either of us picked up until into the New Year. It was then he told me that the first date for the show was 7th February 2017. I pretended that was absolutely fine.

In the last two weeks we have put together a script. We have redrafted and rewritten. We have spent entire days locked up in their tiny office with just electric storage heaters and a borrowed coffee machine for company. We went insane, we slept among rats and set pieces when we could. We watched a lot of YouTube videos. We danced to Avril Lavigne. We tried to work out if we fancied Josh Homme or Brody Dalle-Homme more. George would come in and poke us with a stick to make sure we were still alive, and then throw us a pack of NikNaks in the hopes it would give us enough energy to carry on.

We have held auditions, shot promo shots and a video, met with people from the theatre and considered dropping it all to write a drag show. It has been an incredible experience and we are now in a position where we not only have an amazing script and a brilliant opportunity but also an amazing cast who all immediately shone. I feel so excited to be a part of something that I truly believe in. There were tough days but I wouldn’t change it for anything else and am so grateful that I get to be involved with something that is gathering so much interest.

On top of that, Scott and George let me be the central focus of the promotional stuff. They even photoshopped my teeth.
Thanks guys.

January 15, 2017
#14 – Research my family genealogy.

In my constant quest to get good post I sent away for a DNA Collection Kit from 23AndMe. I don’t know much about my family history. My paternal grandfather was born and raised in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation. He never really shared a lot about what happened to him understandably. I know it was quite a hard thing to go through. He never spoke to us directly about it but he did eventually write about it. He was my last surviving grandparent so when he passed away, it left me with all these questions about where I came from. I thought I would eventually get round to addressing this.
I was actually contacted a year ago by a distant cousin, based in Holland. She had a lot of history on the family and was able to share pictures of my great great-grandfather and the Schiernecker family from the 1920s and earlier.
I have an ongoing conversation with my brothers about Britishness and what it means to be British. I describe myself as being a mongrel child of Europe. My brother is quite set in thinking he is British, which is ridiculous. Nobody is British, especially us.

The kit consists of a small pot that at first I thought meant I had to give myself a blood test. I had to go thirty minutes without food or drink which was a struggle as I had celebrated opening the box by eating a pack of Hula Hoops. I had to spit to the fill line, which they advise is two to six minutes of spitting. I then had to ship the box back, ironically, to the Netherlands.

They then send you a test result back with a percentage breakdown for each country. Before I start, I would guess that I am a quarter Dutch and there’s some Germany in there. On my paternal grandmother’s side they are English but I’ve recently been told there is some Jewish heritage in there. My mum’s family is Jewish so I guess there are eastern European links there, maybe something Israeli originally. I think it’ll be a real hotchpotch of stuff in there.

So, five weeks later I got my results through. This was following a weird incident where I took the spit speciment out to a fancy London bar and had my bag checked. I digress.

It’s quite interesting looking at what I said before and what the results showed:

Now I’m going to assume that the 17.8% Broadly Northwestern European is going to be Dutch based on what I know of my family history.

I had to look up Ashkenazi Jewish. It’s basically the Eastern European Jewish community who spoke Hebrew and Yiddish. It’s cool to see because I’ve always been interested in my ancestry, particularly my Jewish heritage. More than anything else that’s what I am composed of. I think my father’s side is the split and my mother’s is just Jew. Jew down the line.

I also got a list of famous people who are in the same Haplogroup on my mother’s side:
Imagine them at a dinner party.
It would explain some of the bumbling nonsense that comes out of my family that we are related to Prince Philip I guess.

There are also family traits:
This is all above board. I can confirm my ear wax is wet.
My eye colour changes. It’s sort of blue and green and grey. A lovely little Spirograph.
I also have <1% chance of having red hair and am likely to smoke more if I am a smoker.

I am 2.5% neanderthal which is lower than the average of 2.7%. This makes sense as I have a higher brow, narrow shoulders, taller than average.

So I guess the point of all this is that’s what makes up me and my brothers. If you go back then that’s who my dad is and on the other side, the Jewish side, is my mum. I would be interested to get both of them to do it to see what they have given me, aside from being pretty awesome parents.

Just remember, when we are threatening to leave Europe, that we are all from Europe, or further afield and there’s nothing wrong with that. We can all exist together. There’s not some ulterior motive in people that makes them want to be here. We have it pretty good. We are pretty fucking lucky. You’re talking about people who are related to you. You’re talking about people who are only split off from yourself by a couple of generations.
People say that charity begins at home. What is closer to home than the planet we inhabit?

December 24, 2016
#25 – Go surfing

Surfing has always seemed like the coolest sport anyone can do. It conjures up images of handsome people with lovely teeth and sun-bleached hair scoring their boards and their bodies through the water as they escape whatever it is people hide at sea to escape from. I’ve always watched from the shore and wondered, would I be as good at that as I feel I would naturally be. Before we continue, the short answer is no.

As a kid I watched Neighbours a lot. There were a lot of cool surf dudes in Neighbours at the time. There may well be still. I can’t deal with the thought of watching soaps though. My first experience of death was Todd Landers. He got hit by a van. It was 13 July 1992. Todd was really cool. I still miss him.

For my 29^th birthday Charlotte and I headed down to the coast. Which coast you may ask? The coast if you want to get away from it all and have the chance to surf. Cornwall. We stayed in a gypsy caravan for a week where we would often fight over who was going to get out of bed and into the two degree winter morning to make tea (it was invariably me) and see what culinary delights it was possible to summon up on a simple red camping stove. It turns out you can bake a Camembert and grill a salmon if you really commit to it.
While we were there, our kind host Dale, who we found through my new best friend AirBnB, asked if we wanted to go surfing. Dale had lovely teeth and sun-bleached hair even though it was February and for some reason I trusted him.

On the last full day we were staying in St Ives he picked out a couple of wetsuits for us, found the biggest, thickest surfboards known to man and we followed him in his 4×4 down to the beach. The car had to be bump-started every time he took it off the farmland. It was part of the charm.
We pulled up in a residential area and walked through a number of alleyways to get down to the beach itself. Dale kept pointing out different buildings and telling us how much it would cost to move into them and move it up. For a cool surf dude he had a real eye for property development. I could hear the roar of the water, feel it rising up high enough to sit on my lips and make the experience taste salty. I wedged the board under my arm tightly and tried to make it look like I did this shit every day. I don’t do this shit every day. I process words and numbers every day for “the man” but I wanted to look like I knew what I was doing.
We got to the beach and quickly got changed into our wetsuits. There were two reasons we quickly wanted to get changed into our wetsuits, the first is that we were very exposed in the little concrete overhang beneath the stairs down to the water and the second is that it was four degrees out. If you take anything away from this, it is important to know that it is a bad idea to go surfing in February as a first-timer. It’s a bad idea to do anything in February really.

Wetsuits are a curious thing. With the way Bond slides out of them revealing a tuxedo underneath you would think they come away like the outer layer of a week old onion. They don’t. It’s like trying to fit your entire body into the rubbery insides of Ronnie Corbett via his mouth hole (especially when you’re six foot tall). I eventually wangled my way in with a lot of elbow grease and grunting and like in every other situation I’ve ever been in, started to wonder how much of a tit I looked. I looked over at Charlotte in her sea-blue wetsuit, she looked like Lara Croft in those levels where you spend a lot of time underwater watching her fabulous pixelated backside. As a boy I used to enjoy watching Lara Croft drown. Concerning and also possibly the reason I didn’t offer a lot of support when my girlfriend went under the water.

We waddled out awkwardly, trying to impress on the dog-walkers huddled up against the cold on the far reaches of the beach that we knew exactly what we were doing. I’ve seen enough people having surfing lessons to know that you’re not allowed in the water for about an hour. Instead you have to put the board down in the sand and practice lying on that, popping up and riding around like a sand god or goddess. Before we even have time to ask if you still called the front the bow and the back the stern, Dale and his girlfriend had run out into the water and disappeared. The waves breaking about a hundred metres out looked incredible. It was only as they reached them that I was able to see how large they were. Aside from the little dots climbing up the side of the walls of water everything looked fairly grey. The sky was grey. The water was grey. My skin was grey and sort of mottled. I tied my GoPro around my wrist and hoped that it a) wouldn’t come off and b) would make me look cool. It held around 50% of the bargain.

Charlotte was a couple of steps ahead of me and bravely headed out into the water.
“My shoe just filled with water,” she said of the two-pronged Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle-looking shoes we were both in. “Is that supposed to happen?”
“Yeah, of course,” I said in a way that I hoped convinced us both. We walked out a little further, her slightly less stable because she doesn’t have the gangly proportions of a Beano character and can’t wrap an entire arm around a surfboard.
We soon discovered that the cold we had been expecting, that breath-shuddering induction to the water simply wasn’t there. I felt comfortable in my wetsuit. Maybe, I considered, I had found my true calling. I pushed the board out further and dipped the back of it so the front rose over the first few waves we had encountered. Charlotte was struggling. What I hadn’t considered is the differences in our history around open water. I spent a lot of summers in the sea, and I don’t mean that in the twenty-first century call to get rid of something we don’t like. We would always find a beach and my brothers and I would bodyboard our way to glory. I therefore know how to get through waves, how to ride back in and most importantly, what to do when you inevitably go under. Charlotte managed to set herself up to ride her board in a couple of times before she went down. I helpfully captured the whole thing on GoPro before she was able to splutter enough seawater out of her face to call me a bastard and call it a day.

I headed out deeper without her. Waves started to seem like daunting bullies from my secondary school days, big foamy versions of the boys who hit puberty first and didn’t like me. I bounced up and nutted them down. I wasn’t having any of it. I rode in a couple of times laying out on the board and then decided to test this standing up thing. If you’ve got to crawl before you can walk then I had put in plenty of time riding into the shores of the med as a pre-teen. The first time I “popped up”, I made it to my knees before the board tipped up and I disappeared beneath the water. I coughed up a lot of seawater and quite probably a less important internal organ. I looked up to the beach to see if Charlotte was hanging around looking cold and concerned for my safe return from sea. I couldn’t see her anywhere. I headed back out to try again.
I knew it would be just a matter of time before I found my natural rhythm and went pro. All I needed was a couple more hideous wipeouts and I would be the best damn surfer this ocean had ever seen. The next time I managed to stand I was too far forwards on the board and it nose-dived to the sea floor, sending me hurtling upside down into the water again. For a second I wondered if it looked like I could have been hanging ten, a move I only know from playing Tony Hawk, again as a teenager. Watching the footage back there’s no mistaking the fact that I simply didn’t know what I was doing. I was also very liberal with the bluest of four-letter words.
I pushed the board out again and waited. Tick followed tock followed tick followed tock. Everything went black and white. Some horses started to gallop over the lip of the next wave. I was in a Guinness advert. I lined myself up and started to paddle. The wave caught me and I bolted forward. I held the board steady, got up onto my knees and then jumped up. I was standing on a surf board. It could only have been for a few seconds, enough time to triumphantly lift my arms over my head before it all went Pete Tong but I was going to have that. I had done some actual genuine surfing.
Once I had recovered I looked up to the beach alcove and Charlotte was still not there, not watching me. I wondered if she would ever realise how truly cool her boyfriend was. It started to rain. Then it started to hail. I was reminded of the line in Forrest Gump:
“We been through every kind of rain there is. Little bitty stingin’ rain… and big ol’ fat rain. Rain that flew in sideways. And sometimes rain even seemed to come straight up from underneath.”
This was the rain that seemed to come straight up from underneath. I decided to take on one more wave before having to explain to my girlfriend why I thought it would be enduring to capture her first wipeout to show to our grandkids one day.

I spotted the wave. I turned and started to paddle. It caught me. I stood, I whooped and I fell. I realised as I walked back to the shore and started to consider getting out of my new layer of Rip Curl skin that everything is like surfing or that surfing is like everything else. The things you fear about it, the being cold, the going under, the drowning. It’s very unlikely they’ll actually end you. You might fall, you might go under. You might end up in tears because you can’t feel your feet for an hour afterwards but at the end of the day, if you can just stand up for two seconds and holler it out to the world then it feels like you have got somewhere.

February 21, 2016
#19 – Watch the sunset over the Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon is probably the most famous gap in America after the one between Donald Trump’s ears. It’s the stuff of Wild West legend. It’s so big that in the day I spent on the rim, gazing out at that shotgun blast wound of Earth I only saw ten percent of it. Everything from my toes to the horizon for the duration of the day was just a tenth of what it was even possible to see. Probably less than ten percent considering I have quite bad eyesight at distance.

The Grand Canyon was the third trek in three years I signed up to do through work. The previous two were across the Sahara desert and over the Inca trail to Machu Picchu. In comparison the Grand Canyon trek did not sound like it was going to be as hard. The reason being that you can fly out of Vegas on a helicopter, loop around the Canyon and be back at the Bellagio in time for a Bellini. What we were doing was trekking through the depths of the canyon and camping out. It still didn’t sound quite as hardcore as Morocco or Peru but there was something about the idea that stirred me in the place I like to get stirred if I’m considering a trek. What really sealed the deal was a BBC documentary by Dan Snow called Operation Grand Canyon where a team rode traditional wooden rowboats down the mighty Colorado river. Seeing the scale of the canyon walls, the power of nature and the plight of ordinary man took me over the edge. The next morning I signed up for the trek.

My favourite thing about trekking, about getting away from it all and setting my Out Of Office email notification, is the change from my life. There’s nothing quite like going without washing for a few days, only working with what you and the team can carry, eating as much as you can and never being full, watching the sun go down and realising you miss this incredible feat every other day. That’s a number of things all under the umbrella of change from life.

When I was in the Sahara I couldn’t believe how excited our guide Saaid got as the sun headed for the horizon each day. He made sure we were out of our tents and with him. We would crouch down on the nearest dune and watch the colour of the sky change from blue to orange to red to blue to black. It was incredible. It was life affirming. It made me realise that it didn’t matter what pacifiers I had in my life, I could strip them away and there were all these amazing things I could spend my time with instead, these awesome people who had been strangers just days before. There was an incredible bond we shared as we watched the sun go down. With nothing manmade in our way the sky was an opera and it happened every day no matter where you were.

Knowing I was heading out on another trek I decided to include watching the sunset on my list. I had got so much from it in the Sahara and the idea of being in an incredible setting like the Grand Canyon and watching something like that filled me with a renewed joy for what I was embarking on.

Of course the reality is never the same as the expectation and the Grand Canyon was no change. It was great. It was grand in fact. It had the most varied wildlife and flowers and fauna. It could go from bizarre Wile E Coyote rock formations to lush greenery in just a couple of miles. I got to climb down dynamite-blown passages in the rock and I got to swim in waterfalls. I captured the kind of moments that would make my social network jealous. I wanted them to know how much fun I was having. Then came the sunset. Now the issue with the sunset in the Grand Canyon is that it comes at about four in the afternoon. It isn’t the same as the sunset on the horizon because you’re several hundred feet below the horizon so the sun just sort of goes and then it’s black. I’m sure from the right position in the Canyon it would be possible to watch the sun descend all the way down between those huge walls but we didn’t get that. We got the sun and then the darkness and there wasn’t a whole lot in between.

What was fantastic was heading back from camp to Havasu Falls to see if we could make out the stars. When we looked up from where we were you could just make out the closer and brighter ones. We knew we needed to be away from the few lights in the camp itself in order to get a clear view. We would have suggested it as a group exercise but when we turned around the others were playing a game where they tried to pick a cardboard box up off the ground with their mouths. They stood around, egging each other on and jeering. It seemed there were two kinds of people in the camp and we were the kind who wanted to watch the stars.

Somehow we managed to find a spot where the canyon was wider than anywhere else I had seen it. The moon was behind us, giving just enough light for our shadows to be a mixed grey stretching out across the brush. The amphitheatre to the heavens was free and we all had front row seats. The stars were strong so far from artificial light, they wished us well and offered us peace and safety. The longer we looked upon them, the brighter they shone, in the way love works. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you have come from, there’s something incredibly enjoyable and humbling about looking up and wondering about just how big or small we are. Nothing else seems to matter. There’s everything you need in the exact moment you are in. We all felt it, that strange pull from the beyond and that’s why nobody said anything for so long.

We were only interrupted by outside interference, by the flash of others heading our way with a pair of flashlights. We considered hiding, just keeping it between us, not allowing people outside our purposeful group to join. Eventually we allowed them into our secret society with the special handshake of a flash of our own torch and gained another two members with absolute respect for the great beyond above us. The silence resumed, our muted respect for the world above. A prayer and a gift and a wish and a belief. We were together and we were apart.

‘I’d rather be here than playing with a box in the dirt’ said my friend. It remains the most profound thing I heard while in the United States.

November 17, 2015