Don't eat the Staff!
I finally arrived at the company apartment in Costa Rica some twenty seven and a half hours after getting in a cab to Gatwick airport in the UK. My sleep patterns are so wrecked that I have not slept more than four or five consecutive hours any day in the last two weeks. Yesterday at 9:30PM the Airbus A330 lowered it's undercarriage on approach to the runway at San Jose, the pilot thought better of it and I was drinking coffee in Panama airport until reboarding at midnight for another attempt at the rain soaked, fog smothered airport in Costa Rica. I finally went to bed at 3:30am, woke at 7:30am and was in the office after half an hour or so.


Due to jet lag induced sleep deprivation the day had a slightly padded feel to it. Shapes slightly less distinct, voices less clear, my thought processes had slowed. I decided to quit the office about 3pm and try to sleep. I moved the last of my six suitcases up to the apartment in the same building and unpacked. I feel distressed about being homeless. I have no fixed base, no address as such, I have a job, but no contract. Together with the absence of any fixed timezone, currency, country or altitude. In short everything in my life is a little unstable, me included. I haven't spent more than 5 consecutive nights in the same place for nearly two months and I always seem to be packing or unpacking, I am not happy about it. I went back to the office to fetch a network cable for my laptop and was met by a young lad from the facilities management team, who informed me that there had been a mistake in the apartment booking system, they had double booked and that I would have to move to a hotel on Monday. There was a loud click as my incisors snapped shut between his 6th and 7th vertebrae.

After the red mist lifted and I realised that this was probably a mistake. I regurgitated his head and tried to pat the red soggy bits of his torso and neck together. I met my boss later who asked me to refrain from bighting other members of staff although he understood that my mental state was somewhat fractured.

Last Wednesday
Manda had very nicely let me use apartment while I was in the UK. I woke had a coffee and got in the shower. The streaming hot water reaching into my skull started to massage my brain into acceptance of the new day. I thrust an arm out and grabbed the only non-girly shampoo within reach. I always get confused when buying shampoo, because I am a man. This means that I do not know whether I have dry, normal, greasy, thick, thin, delicate or any combination of these types of hair. I just know that if I take my head to a special type of shop every two or three weeks, a nice lady massages my scalp with hot water and then leans over me a lot with her boobs at eye level while doing stuff with clippers and scissors. This makes me even more handsome, if you can imagine such a thing. I read the label on the bottle it said "SHAMPOO FOR MEN, FOR BODY BUILDING AND THICKENING". I used it anyway, but I was careless about rinsing, spilled some on my belly and when I got out the shower I was fat.

I needed to get a copy of the criminal record I haven't got from the police to help me apply for residency in Costa Rica. The police told me that I couldn't get a copy unless I had a proof of address, such as a bank statement or phone bill and that it would take forty days to arrive. I learnt several things here. My passport and birth certificate are no longer useful for verifying my identity and I should resort to carrying bank statements; people that do not have utility bills do not commit crimes; it takes forty days to find out if you have a criminal record, so policemen locking people up for anything less than that are just doing it out of spite.

I tripped into London via bankside, visited Thomas James, had a pint with Dave and then got back on the train to Waterloo, where something strange happened. The carriage I was on filled up with drunk people all wearing the same ties. They were very amiable and all started singing this song about some fellow called Father Abraham and taking their clothes off. I twigged, this was obviously a rugby club. Within 5 minutes there were a dozen stark naked rugby players dancing and singing on the train. I thought about joining in but as I didn't know the words and didn't want them getting jealous of my tackle, I wisely kept quiet. By the time the train arrived at Waterloo they were fully dressed again and on enquiry I discovered that they were Guys Hospital RFC which is actually the oldest rugby club in existence.

I met up with Manda and her bloke Rodge in Richmond and we went for a pint. After a quart of London Pride I stood at the bar panicking over whether last orders had been called, franticly gesturing to the barmaid that I was in medical need of more beer when a face from the past appeared in front of me:

bloke: Jason?
me: Yes
bloke: Jason Ellis?
me: Yes
bloke: Jason Ellis, Mile Low Club?
me: Yes

The face belonged to a chap Chris James, whom last saw about 10 years ago when we worked for a planning tools division of a major UK IT consultancy. The Mile Low Club thing he referred to was an incident in which The Sun newspaper ran a front page story recognisng me and my girlfriend of the time as the first people to have had sex in the Channel Tunnel.

After finishing my beer Manda dropped me off home and I caught a few hours shuteye in readiness for the marathon journey back to Costa Rica.

Last week at the airport I saw a metallic burgundy 1990s 3 series BMW with a 8 inch high, 6 inch wide spoiler on the boot (trunk). I have never felt the urge to urinate on a car as much as I did at that moment.