A little bit of chapter 2...

20/10/07
Well, glad you kept reading into the second chapter. The first involved lots of me saying, and very little of me doing, which is never a recipe for success with so much doing of the thing to be done still to be done. Namely, all of it.
Today has been an eventful day, as was yesterday.
Today, Barnsley have drawn 1-1 with Burnley, England lost the world cup final in Rugby, and I have eaten a lot.
Yesterday I organised two very important events, and Bethan decided to come see me, which was terribly nice of her.
These two very important events are the first two picnics on my world tour. The first is tomorrow, In Leeds. Right outside my house. This is understandably quite an easy picnic to do, and not too impressive. The second picnic however is in London, on the 31st October, a slightly bigger jump, as I don’t live in London, and it is quite far to go just for a picnic. It is here I am meeting with my good friend Kate, and my namesake. I’ll leave you to guess his name.
I have been alarmed at how unprepared I am for these picnics. For one, I don’t really like picnics, plus its winter (almost) and that makes it very cold. I struggle to enjoy picnics when it is warm, mainly due to the fact that my Mum force-fed me them as a child, and I have many bad memories involving driving for hours with the picnic hamper she collected tokens for in the Daily Mail.
Now this hamper was impressive. It contained real crockery, metal knives and forks, and was beautifully crafted from the finest wicker available to mankind. It was a very ‘Middle Class’ picnic hamper, the only problem with it being that it took about 2 grown men to lift, and that despite living in beautiful countryside, my mother insisted on driving at least to Scotland before we could stop and eat by a busy motorway slipway.
The second lack of organisation though exists entirely on my part, and I couldn’t even dream of blaming my poor defenceless parents for it. I do not, as yet, own a Picnic blanket. I need to choose a blanket that is prepared to travel the world with me. It must be chequered (if it wasn’t Bethan would scream). I shall buy a blanket tomorrow, and show you all via means of an insert in this book what it looks like. I hope it is suitably exciting.
Finally, it has been brought to my attention that so called ‘Picnic food’, although easily available in England (due to the huge abundance of Tesco Express stores) may not be so easily locatable in such extremities of the world as Belgrade, or South Africa. To those doubters I say ‘PAH!’. Where there is a will, there is a way, and I shall resist all of hells fiery fury to get a cocktail sausage in any corner of the world. It is the right of an Englishman. So there. :P
Anyway, there is sleep to be had, so I bid thee farewell. Next stop, Leeds.


HYDE PARK NUMBER 1
HYDE PARK, LEEDS, LS6, UK.
Hyde Park, Leeds, is where I live, so getting to this Hyde park wasn’t so dramatic. In fact, the only exciting part of the journey was when we almost dropped our inflatable football, which would have caused chaos, as you can imagine.
This particular Hyde park is nestled between Leeds University and Headingley. It is quite nice. I was surprised at how warm it was, to say it is now October, and October is supposed to be cold. Unless you believe global warming, which I do.
Anyway, onto the picnic. I had a slight blanket related setback prior to the picnic. I bought a lovely chequered blanket from Poundstretcher, which actually turned out on closer inspection to be a rug. A small rug too. So not only was it too small for me to fit on (it is 90x150cm), the parts of me that were on it were wet. Luckily flatmate Charlotte had a blanket which she lent us, which was far superior to mine, and she also lent me a camera to document my visit. I still sat as much of myself on my rugblanket, just because I am a man, and I cannot admit that I am wrong, especially in front of two girls whom I correct so often.
My two present witnesses/friends were Bethan, my girlfriend, and Laura, my flatmate/challenger. That was it. More were supposed to be coming, but they lied via Facebook, and this upset me greatly.
However, despite this setback, I was happy. I knew that this was the start of something big, and that although there was a long journey ahead of me, I was on my way. One picnic down, 45 (at the moment of writing) to go.
There were however, two and half more ‘things’ present at this picnic. These were as follows...
1: A worm. We didn’t name the worm, but it seemed to like a piece of sausage roll that I dropped, and as I am a kind loving soul I allowed it to have my pastry, rather than picking it up and putting it out of worms reach.
2: A Freaky Ladybird. It was freaky. I have taken a photo, which will be put on Facebook, and eventually, when I get really really famous, on my website/ touring slideshow. It was freaky anyway. I eventually had to flick it away, it was encroaching on my personal space. And there really wasn’t enough room on my blanket for two.
3: A dog. Called Fido. This is classed as a half, for it only briefly joined us, but still caused the most exciting moment of my picnic adventure to date, when it made a nosedive for the cocktail sausages, and wouldn’t return to his whistling owner when asked. I eventually won Fido over with a piece of jam sandwich, and led him back to his slightly confused owner, bemused at the fact that we were having a picnic in the middle of October. We asked him to join us, but he was too quick a runner.
In an attempt to get extra participants at our picnic, I thought it to be a good idea to head to the childrens playground behind us with a box full of jam sandwiches. Unfortunatly though Laura stopped me, mentioning something about Michael Jackson (great singer, bit weird though?). I was upset, but understood. I can’t sing as well as him, I don’t stand a shance of getting a small child to come to a picnic with me. It wouldn’t have a blanket anyway, unless it was a telepathic child, in which case it would have remembered to bring one. Or it could have been a child who always carrys an emergency blanket for, well... emergencies.
Anyway, this picnic was not perfect by any means. But it was the first, the first of many more exciting picnics. My ticket to London is booked, and the excitement is really building! The next entry in this book will be on my bus down to London, which departs at an ungodly hour (540am I do believe... I know, the student audience does not believe that such a time exists... but trust me, it does).
One more thing. Charlotte just came out with an absolute peach... Whilst watching a woman direct all her anger into a spiritual stone, she said ‘Is that a stone? I thought it was a sausage roll!’.
Thank goodness she isn’t a picnicker.
I bid thee farewell, and goodnight.

26/10/07
Hello there. I now have a massive 57 members on my Facebook group! Thats almost a clan! Anyway, this is just a quick insert if you like, so that I can explain a new rule that has been introduced, namely thanks to a friend of mine, Naomi.
When I told dear Naomi of my plan, particularly of visiting Ireland, she asked the question ‘Will I be having Guiness with my picnic?’
Now at first this seemed ridiculous, why would I have Guiness in Guyana for example, or South Africa? Then I realised her point, she thought I should enjoy one aspect of the food culture in each country I visit. So thats a lot of burgers in America. And probably some Guiness in Ireland. I thought it was a good idea, and to be honest, i think i like it because it makes me feel a little bit like Rik Stein, travelling the world tasting wonderful culinary delights from across the globe.
Anywho, that is that, and I shall speak to you when I travel to London. As I keep saying to people... We are on the verge of something big... xxx


30/10 – The night before...
I’m fucked. Totally and utterly screwballed, I mean, if you put a mouse in a particularly hungry cats mouth, and told the cat to eat the mouse at gunpoint, I, at this moment, am more screwed than the mouse in question.
I shall proceed to tell you why.
The problem is that I am going to London tomorrow, on my own. A whole day of my life spent with me. I have no comfort of a friendly face when I arrive, no crazy namesakes to meet, no Kathers to take me round Camden. Everyone has pulled out. Including the people who live in London. So I have to find people to picnic with me. Fair enough, its probably a good thing, it’ll give me new experiences to write about, but this has thrown me well and truly out of my comfort zone. I like my comfort zone, it is, well, comfortable. I now have to find two people to have a picnic with me, in London, in October-nearly-November. I’ve invited Dave Gorman, it would be cool if he showed up. Either way, its sure to be an eventful day...