Honey Badger

I can't sleep. A fire alarm just went off, but honestly I was awake before: naturally, this sleepless night before a full day of work follows a whole fortnight when I didn't have to work and therefore could sleep a full ten hours with no preparation or prevarication. I imagine this is no coincidence: the knowledge that I have to be up in the morning for some reason makes me wary to sleep now, as though I fear that, like Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral, I might overshoot the mark and might as well go round the horn, the long way around.
Is it worry that's preventing restfulness? That seems ridiculous. Honestly, this insomnia far outweighs in seriousness any other niggle that might prey on my mind. I think back to a documentary I watched at the beginning of the holiday that has now come to a rather damp squib of a close with this bout of listlessness about Honey Badgers and how they tackle all their problems head on with a grand display of insouciance and casual violence. Were I a Honey Badger, I'd use this extra night alloted to me to go piss off some snakes, steal some food from a pride of lions or have weird, hurty sex in a hole I dug. Instead, I'm an omphaloskeptic narcissist, so I shall blog my time away.

I never made it to Berlin this halfterm, as was my original plan, but I did go to Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels.

PARIS

I spent two days in Gay Paris, as it was Dani's birthday and I wanted to repay her for the marvellous celebration she gave me. The theme for the party was 'Glam Rock Pirates', so naturally I dressed like this:

It was while in Paris, staying with Dani's friends Matt and Dave, that I watched the documentary which gave us the title for this post as well as the incredibly unnecessary opening paragraph.
After the party, Matt and I, as well as a new acquaintance named Cordelia, and two Italians whose names I sadly never caught, went for drinks. The reason I never got their names was that the bar we went to was so loud that we couldn't hear each other talk. This lead to Matt proposing a rather novel form of conversation wherein we wrote to each other while seated at the same table: interestingly, this elevated the talk above the level of idle chittero chattero that one would expect from such loose acquaintanceships and meant we learnt quite intimate, fascinating details about each other (our greatest non-physical fears, when we stopped considering our parents' house home) in a very short time. I don't know why physically writing our thoughts made us more prone to divulge information, but the effect was palpable and incredibly liberating.

The next day, I looked around Notre Dame

Through the rooves and gables I can see them!

Naturally singing 'Hellfire' to myself all the while. This bought home to me something I had suspected for a while: my appreciation of aesthetic beauty has become much greater as I've grown older. I used to disdain looking around churches or my parents' frequent suggestion of simply strolling around and looking at what was around me. But that's exactly what I did, and I was so overwhelmed I even tried my incredibly inexperienced hand at some photography:

Admittedly, very few locations on earth offer up such levels of aesthetic pleasure as Paris, but it definitely contrasts to the first time I visited the city when I was disgusted that the plan was to just look around.
After this, I returned to the same poetry-reading tea party that I attended on my birthday and then caught the train home. It was a great weekend.

AMSTERDAM

On a whim, realising I would be all alone with killer clowns in Laon, I decided to soujourn for a week in 'The Dammage' as Anna calls it. Booking my train twelve hours before it left,  I naturally was left with Slim Pickin's for accommodation and decided to go with a hostel on the beach, an hour outside the city limits.
It proved to be the right choice: I met so many cool people, it made the week so much less lonely and allowed me to relax about trying to see everything- if I was spending time with others, I didn't have to find something for myself to do. I'm not gonna detail everything that happened in that city, because I genuinely don't have words for some of the experiences and also I want to find gainful employment in the future (hint: 'special' cake was involved). Here is just some general life advice for you all: don't go through Daylights Savings time while high. It hurts. And here's some pictures I took, just so this paragraph doesn't feel left out:

The fact that they still had C&A there blew my mind more than any substances I ingested.

BRUSSELS

I spent a couple of days in Brussels because the delightful Grace was visiting there and I wanted my life to be the kind where I meet my friends in capital cities of countries where neither of us live. Also, Grace is tout sweet and I hadn't seen her in too long. We went to the Brussels Comic Strip museum where we learned how Smurfs live:

And also about their depictions in times gone by:

While there, I also met up with Jonathan, whom I hadn't seen or spoken to in three years. Catching up with someone after such an amount of time is inevitably a strange experience, as you're reminded simultaneously how much and how little you've done in that amount of time. Jonathan took me to the Delirium Cafe, which boasts over 3000 beers, and so I finally found a brew that I actually enjoy, and so now I only have to journey 100 miles to drink 'a real man's drink' in the words of my father and every other macho douchebag I've ever encountered.

Apart from the above journeying, I spent the rest of the holiday watching films and writing creatively. It was a lovely break and I only wish it hadn't come so early after I started my job: oh well, only 50 days to Christmas.