October 2 (Saturday): Show Me Your Weenis! Wow, today is a fantastic day, the weather is fantastic! My day begins early with me comfortably wrapped up in bed watching my new Mr Show DVD. This show is fantastic, thoroughly hit and miss but when it’s hit, it is some of the funniest stuff I have ever seen in my life. I would quote you some stuff but it is also very very disposable.

After five episodes, I eventually make it into town on a newspaper. Today is beautiful day and it is a blazing Saturday morning which just makes Colchester look glorious. Town is so so busy but you sense this is almost the calm before the Christmas storm. I feel like hanging out in this environment, I feel empathy for people in this atmosphere and good about the people around me. I wander around the streets with the hope of accidentally on purpose bumping into somebody I know and getting them to go for a drink and/or hang out. The people I accidentally bump into this morning are: Asian Sara (from Wellington House), Jeremy from football and tourettes guy from yesterday lunchtime, somewhat calmer this morning. No dice for a hangout though, in the first case, Asian Sara won’t give me the time of day since I accused her “sister� of being in the Taliban (shame really, she is just SO fit!). Second case, Jeremy appears to be with his girlfriend and I wouldn’t fancy hanging anyway. Third person, I’m just glad the guy isn’t in a tourettes storm entering my path.

When I return home, I return to more Mr Show episodes, my favourite this time being a high school kid being made the next Dalai Lama. As much as I dig the shows though, I have to admit, I do fall asleep again.

When I wake up, I find that Mark has tried to phone. I leave, figuring he had too much of a good thing yesterday (ha ha), so instead I (hungry) opt for eating a cold tin of beans out of the can whilst watching the remaining Mr Show episodes. Fortunately for me, Mark phones again and rescues me from my funk and calls me out.

I turn up at Mark’s around 2pm and we head into town, for the hangout I had been wishing for early (there is a god and he makes things like this, well timed occurrences, happen when you need them most). In town Mark has to get ready/prepared for Tokyo on Monday and he has a few last gifts to get for people, left right and centre. Late Saturday afternoons in Colchester town are even better than gorgeous sunny Saturday mornings. And I actually manage to do it without spending any money! Once Mark gets all his prep out of the way, we head to Costa for a coffee but up arrival go “nah� and like old women head to the Debenhams café. Queuing there with us is the most amazing looking pregnant blonde lady with an old man, either her sugar daddy or just sugary dad. Either way, hope I’m the father of her next kid. We sit by a window looking over Culver Square and from this height the town looks even better, from our view the people look like ants, not because of their size, they’re just freakishly ugly. Eventually we chip but not before I try searching for coats again. Finally I find one that resembles what I want, resembling the one Billy in Football Factory wears. I try it on and Mark completely rips it to shreds (not literally/physically but he may well of/have). Whilst also in Debenhams I see a woman that looks exactly like Sombat Bigley, Ken Bigley’s Thai wife. Accidentally I find myself gawping at her and she thoroughly gawps back, like the trooper that she is.

We get back to Mark’s and its an empty house, his brother has just moved to London and his parents are away in Italy/Spain (?) until tomorrow and don’t even know about his new job yet. We listen to Radio 2 and talk bollocks, somehow heavily on the subject of religion for reasons I forget. Oh yeah, Azmei texted me out of the blue and naturally it all goes onto the subject of Muslims. Azmei tells me how her ex-husband has been in touch and is trying to make nice nice. I just tell her that a leopard doesn’t change it’s spots. Radio 2 meanwhile plays all this weird sixties music, some of which Mark recognises as Love. I sense that Mark is mucho busy and has stuff on and I figure I really ought to leave him to it but he tells me I might as well hang, he isn’t doing any of it (it being leaning Excel, reading over the treatment for his Dad’s book or any else of another twelve options). Instead, instead we buy fish and chips for dinner (Mark’s treat).

We go to a fish and chip shop on Mersea Road that Mark has been raving about. We do the basics but to me the basics always seemed to cost more than being “exotic� in a fish and chip shop. While I wait in the car, Mark does the deal as he takes in the “ambience� and digs the guy that runs the shop as being a real gent. This is a shit part of town, I even feel intimidated just sitting in my car in the dark down to it just being dog rough. Apparently while Mark is/was in the shop itself, some homeless person came in and starting talking to the owner as a “father figure�. At the end of the exchange, when the person leaves Mark says the person who was plainly male turns out to be actually female, in other words real fucked up.

We eat dinner and I still feel as if I am imposing, causing an obstacle to Mark getting on with his evening, remaining days in Colchester. Eventually however we do our usual thing of playing Pro Evolution 3 on the Playstation. Tonight is hard going, far from my days earlier this year winning the Quidney Cup with the handicap of being stoned, tonight I suck. I do manage to win the first game, England 1 Ireland 0 with Mark down to nine men but eventually he winds up beating me in every match. In the end he gets tired beating me in every game and turns off the Playstation in an almost disappointed fashion.

For some reason we decide to really endure Saturday night TV and to be honest it doesn’t turn out to be too bad (with the aid of cable). After initial laps of watching the “groomer� channels (the pop music channels featuring scantily clad teens for your enjoyment), after a heavy dose of Celebrity Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, we wind up watching the Bush v Kerry debate from Thursday. Its actually fairly entertaining but also very frightening how Mark gets almost every political reference made by the two and I get very few/little of them. Ignorant thicko. I do blag my way into making intelligent/sensible points though, not least for commenting on George Dubya’s body language and the frightening way he got the blinks (his eyes) during his closing address to camera.

Beyond such a heavy, we find ourselves skipping over to Sky One where they are into their first town on Britain’s Toughest Seasides. Now this is more on my level. It all opens with Blackpool and stag/hen nights that it is apparently famous for having. It is real car crash TV, these people look fucking horrible and act stupid as hell, never before has acting sober and reserved ever been so appealing. We joke about hoping Clacton gets included in/on the show and after some hovel in Scotland and another in Tyneside (complete with seaside wrestling!), just before the ads we get a glimpse of an Essex town and I just know it is going to be Jaywick. When Jaywick comes on and has its moment, we both early watch in the hope of recognise people faces and places. It all reminds me of the time that Loaded did an article on the town. The piece is fucking horrible and people smell of desperation, the people who seem barely able to spew out a coherent sentence are given the most air time. The show does mixed justice for Jaywick, it makes it appear more lively/interesting than it actually is, giving it more credit than it deserves but also at the same time portrays the people living there as fucking idiots. Mark and I both lap it up, laughing in mock celebration but when the piece focuses on the local “hot� musician boasting about his talent/abilities and cutting to his performance in a local pub suddenly I become melancholic on the realisation that I know a lot of people from my hometown for whom this would actually be entertainment, horrible fag smoking people with crap jobs and no education dragging their little fucker spawn along because they are too young to go out burgling houses with their elder siblings. I have to admit to spending some Saturday nights of my youth at such social events as the one on this show and suddenly it hits me hard that I am mocking something that I really shouldn’t be, shouldn’t be dismissing as just quaint and knocking the people on the show, people the producers at Sky are already burying in the ground with the show by it’s mere existence of mockery.

Still, we watch the whole disaster of a tabloid TV show, starting out as viewings looking for a lark and winding up as complete voyeurs by the ending. Our only saviour is Ricky Gervais appearing on Parkinson. Ricky Gervais is such a hero and even though tonight he is really held back, he still manages to knock out enough funnies to stuff that bore Parkinson into the pine box from where he came from, fucking wooden stiff. Beyond, we attempt to watch the all new Match Of The Day once more but again, it is just so fucking boring now. It is notable however for Tottenham v Everton and our boy Tim Cahill looking a proper star before Jamie Redknap chooses to nobble him. Nevermind.

With nerves weaker than Gary Linker, Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson combined, I leave Mark to it, still reeling from guilt at my mockery of Jaywick/Clacton and I head home in the hope of better TV on my set before turning in to go to bed. No dice.

np: Helmet – Wilma’s Rainbow