my life

… at last! I’ve dreamed of visiting Vancouver for years now, and I’m finally here, my feet have, at last, connected with the concrete of British Columbia (after a nightmare 3 hours in immigration!)

The view from the plane as we made our way into British Columbia

And it’s snowing!! It’s nice to see snow after all these tales of melting ice caps and polar bears with no homes; they should move to Vancouver – we have loads of it!

After booking into my hotel (where I was upgraded to the ‘Executive Suite’ for some reason I am not complaining about – free chocolates on the bed, oh yes!) I decided to go out for a wander to find myself some food. Found some food in the shape of sushi at one of the many Japanese restaurants that line a road I think is called ‘Robson’. They do some ace sashimi there I can tell you – really fresh, mmmmm…

I washed my sushi down with a bubble tea (a bit like Chooba – they copied us), looked at – then put down – some Bose headphones for $449, and headed back to the room, which is where I am now, tapping away using the complimentary wifi.

I’m knackered: my watch says 7.30pm but my head says 3.30am the next day (!) – well past my bed time. I should stay up, but I know I’m not going to make it for much longer. I’m nodding already.

I decided because I had to be at Madchester Airport for around 7am on the 10th, that I would stay in an airport hotel the night before, so that I could arise feeling all refreshed on the morning of the flight.

I did a bit of searching and found a few hotels, all priced at the size of a king’s ransom. I ended up booking at the Marriott at Manchester Airport for a measly £150/night. Good thing was though, that this included a week’s car parking, evening meal, and breakfast the next morning. So I figured it wasn’t that bad.

Believe me, this place is amazing! The bathroom is about the size of our bedroom, with split-level flooring. The main room is split into two, a bedroom (of course) with an office area and two massive windows looking out into the statued-up-to-buggery courtyard.

The evening meal was served, my choice. I had a smoked salmon starter and a burger for main course (you can take a man out of Hull, but you can’t take Hull out of a man!) … breakfast was a selection of fruits including kiwis, strawberries, pear, and melon, with cereal, yoghurt, honey, and more strawberries; all washed down with fresh cranberry juice (and served to my room by a fit Eastern European girl).

This really is how the other half live; it’s nice but I couldn’t do it all the time. I stole a sewing kit they’d kindly left on my trouser press.

I went out last night for Ben’s birthday, and as is customary on such occasions, I had a few shandies.

That night I fell asleep, seemingly having not re-hydrated enough because, all night, all I could dream of was drinking a load of water. Now normally when this happens (which surprisingly it does regularly) I manage to happily sup my way through a fair few pints of the stuff before I actually wake up and head to the kitchen for some ‘real’ water (if you can call it that in Sunderland).

Not last night though. No, for some reason I decided to make it hard for myself.

I remember, quite vividly, being in a public toilet somewhere (looked a little like my primary school) and drinking from a small baby-blue coloured bucket – fuck knows why, but the worst part was when soime random bloke came in and pointed out to me that this bucket was filthy! Sure enough, he was right, looking back at my bucket filled with water I could see fag ends, hairs, and a greasy scum to top it off.

Shit. Should I still drink it? I mean, I was really thirsty after all. No it’s not right. So I spent the next ten minutes – could have been longer, who knows, it was a dream – cleaning this bucket!

Why didn’t I just click my fingers and just like magic the bucket would have been clean? Better still, why the bucket in the first place?

The upshot is, I cleaned this bucket, then woke up and still had to go to the kitchen to get some real-life water.