I am writing this in a Cologne internet cafe on the 29th Nov. No photos for a while, I guess. This is an account of what happened last Wednesday night (23rd Nov).

Friday, 25th November
I woke Thursday morning and the soft matter in my skull had crystallised into painful little shards of heat. Something was burning against the nerves on the back of my eyes. No, it was Mel knocking on the front door. My phone had rung out, she tells me as I let her in. I grunt and go back to bed, checking the phone on the pillow beside my head; yep - two missed calls.

As I lay there I began retracing my last day's path for signs of burned bridges.

The day begun as one of the best - taking three girls onto the London Eye (an enormous Ferris Wheel in the center of London that has a 45 minute round trip time.) Then, on the way to the Tattersails Pub - a permanently moored ferry on the Thames - we were accosted by a news reporter-looking guy to do some vox pops for the channel More 4. Having given answers to many questions about how terrified we all should be about the ever-present danger of asteroids, we continued on to the pub. This is where my recollection began to fragment.

The Tattersails was awesome. We got food and drunk. Then Mel and Honi left me, ostensibly to 'work'. I buried my disappointment in alcohol.

Myself and an American tourist I had promised a tour to continued from there up through Trafalgar Square, where I saw snow for the first time ever. It was basically a huge pile of ice being sprayed with water by a big bored dude.

We were at the Science Museum when my Scouser mate Kev rang and asked when I was going to be at the pub for our pre-arranged football viewing (Liverpool vs Someone). Oops, sorry Sonya, I gotta go to the pub instead of the National Gallery. OK, she said - and she came along, but thats the last clear memory I have of her presence. As my mind scanned the road ahead I began to understand why.

I rocked up at the pub. "What the fook is that?" Kev said. It's my new hat, and it makes me look distinguished.

"OK, well whats in those bags?"

What bags? Oh, I must have gone to the Borough Markets, I guess. (The bags contained a bunch of really expensive cheese and sausages from the food markets.)

The game, after 6 pints each, degenerated into Kev and I singong some Scouser song to the tune of "if you're happy and you know it clap you're hands" and ending with Kev picking some patron of the bar, staring him in the eye balefully and screaming "DO YOU FUCK!?"

I got a massage from a professional masseuse in the bar. The price was "whatever you feel it was worth," though when I started pulling out a 5 pound note the chick jumped in with "but most people pay 10 pounds." So I did, of course.

The train ride home was the painful part. Another song Kev was teaching me was sung to the tune of the Beatles' Ticket to Ride, though I only picked up a few lyrics at a time, and generally hummed the rest. For this reason, the subject matter didn't really hit me till much later.

A quick segue into a little story; theres a doctor called "Doctor Death" who operated in Manchester. He is known for killing (by accident or design I do not know) a bunch of old ladies in Manchester. The Liverpool people (who call themselves Scousers) do not like people from Manchester (who they call Manks.)

The song we were singing loudly on the train was actually a glorification of the work he did, praising him for what went down. With this realisation came not only a deep shame for what I'd been singing, but astonishment that we didn't get the crap beaten out of us at some stage.

On an up note, however, I did get home in time to see us on the news. Of the five or so minutes we were interviewed for, only one of us (me) got a single word in:
Reporter: What would you say if I told you that the Earth could be hit by an asteroid very soon?
Paul: Soon!?