#7 Moving to Greece

Once I had broken the chains and left Edinburgh, apparently London just wasn't far enough.

It was the summer of 1998 when I left my home city for the bright lights of London. I'd go into more detail about it, but it appears further up my Top Ten, so you'll just have to wait.

I was working and living in a bar in central London and had been seeing a beautiful girl from New Zealand called Dionne. She, along with three other friends, had decided that since it was summertime, they were going to carry on their travels and see a bit more of Europe. They'd headed off to Turkey and were then going to Greece afterwards.

I was gutted at having met such an amazing girl, only to have her disappear on me, but I understood why. I contented myself with tearing it up with the rest of the guys that were still at The Cittie of Yorke. That was the summer I was taught how to do the Haka. At 2am. In the middle of the legal district. Drunk. Stark naked, except for my trainers. What can I say? Boys will be boys and a dare's a dare.

So it's safe to say that I was still having fun and getting on with life without Dionne. It didn't stop me thinking about her, but what good did it do to just mope around? I had resigned myself to her departure pretty well, when early one saturday morning, out of the blue, I got a shout from upstairs in the office from the manager, Stuart. He said that Dionne was on line 1 for me. More than a little surprised, but excited, I picked up. The line wasn't great, but I could still hear her. She told me that they'd had a great time in Turkey, but now that they'd come to Greece and had gotten jobs and accommodation, that something was missing - me.

I was quite taken aback. I knew I had been missing her, but I had figured that this was more me than her. She didn't waste any time and blurted out that she wanted me to join her. The impulsive side of me jumped straight in and I agreed instantly. We spoke until her phone card ran out and then I headed up to the office with a massive grin slapped all over my face.

As soon as I walked into the office, Stuart looked up at me with a hacked-off expression of resignation and said: "Are you here to hand in your notice then?" I looked back at him, thinking 'I should probably try and look like I'm sad to be doing this to him', but I just couldn't manage it. "Yeah. I'm afraid so," I said, "sorry." He just looked at me and said: "Don't worry about it - this isn't the first time it's happened." When I thought about it later, the bar was staffed almost entirely by Aussies and Kiwis who were on working-holiday visas, so I would imagine that it had happened to him every year.

The following week, I had my flight booked for Athens, I had packed up my gear and said my goodbyes to everybody at the bar and headed to Luton Airport. The train journey was expensive and my leaving party had wiped out a lot of the money I'd had left. I hadn't saved any, because I didn't know I was going travelling. My calculations had told me that I had just enough to cover my trip out to the island and in my last phone call to Dionne, she had told me that I would be starting work in the same place as her a day or two after I arrived - provided that the restaurant owner liked me, obviously.

I got on the easyJet plane and tried to settle in to my overnight flight, despite my growing excitement. We landed at Athens Airport around 5.30am and I patiently waited to get my luggage. While I was hanging around the baggage carousel, I began to wonder if there was anywhere open yet to change Sterling into Drachmas. I had figured there probably wasn't, but as luck would have it, even at 6am, there was one bureau de change that had been open all night long. It was around then that my new-found luck deserted me completely. When I went to search for my wallet, it was nowhere to be found. I checked every pocket. Then I checked every bag. Then I checked the whole lot again, twice. I still couldn't find it. My heart had sank. Here I was in a foreign country, with no money, no travel insurance, no i.d. except my passport and I didn't speak the language.

I went outside and lit up a cigarette. While I was stood there, I realised that, since I had been limited by the funds I'd had at such short notice and had only been able to afford a one-way ticket, that I had better shoulder my bergan (very large army-style rucksack) and get my arse to the ferry port. I didn't even know what the port was called or where it was.

The port of Piraeus is 12 km from the airport and I was pointed in the right direction by a friendly policeman who spoke very good English. I noticed straight away that he had actually pointed me towards the bus stop, but found a map there that helped me quite a lot, although being a bus stop map, it gave no clear indication of the distances involved. There was nothing else for it, but to saddle up and start marching.

It was a little after 6am when I began and the sky was getting light, but the sun was yet to make an appearance. The few cars on the main road still had their headlights on. As I stomped along, my mood began to improve considerably as I thought about where I was and what I was doing. Every time I passed a bus stop, I would stop and check on the basic map there (if it still had one) and then carry on.

I was getting hot and sweaty and was already tired from the late departure from London and the lack of sleep, but I was doing fine. That is, until around 7.30am, when the sun decided to make an appearance. It was by then fully light and the first rays of sun were now coming over the tops of the hills and the buildings off to my right. As I walked along, I noticed something rather strange - most of the buildings seemed to be under construction. Those that weren't fenced off completely still had the odd pile of materials lying around and almost all still had the steel rods sticking out of the corners of the flat-roofed structures. I found out later that summer that this is because the owners don't have to pay tax on their buildings until they are completed, so most of them leave these steel rods there in order to convince government officials that there's still another storey to go on top.

By the time I was almost into Piraeus, I felt like I was dying from heat exhaustion - and it was only 9am! The heat from the sun combined with my forced march had drained me completely. I remember thinking to myself: "If this is what it's like at 9 in the morning, what the hell is it going to be like at midday?!" I found a shady spot near the bus terminal there and flopped on my bergan. I had not long moved from Edinburgh and had spent my time in London struggling to acclimatise to their weather.

As I lay there on my bags in the heat, I began to assess the problem. I had no number for Dionne and no money to call her, even if I did. I couldn't call my parents and, I thought, even if I could, they had no way of getting any money to me. I was stuck.

I've never really gotten very stressed in situations like this. I don't see the point. By this point in proceedings, my feet have already left the 'roof of the dentist's' and I'm in mid-air waiting to hit the ground - it's either going to be a good landing or a bad one. Either way, there's no going back.

Wondering what to do next, I started looking around for the ferry offices to get prices for a ticket. I had no choice, but to try and figure out how to get to the island. As I was wandering around, I passed a couple in their late twenties, chatting away to each other in English. I barely thought about it, swallowed my pride and walked straight up to them.

"Hi. Sorry to bother you. I couldn't help overhearing you speaking English and I wondered if I could ask for your help?" I said. The two of them looked at me with barely a fraction of the suspicion that this kind of opening gambit would elicit back in the UK. I explained to them what had happened and what I was doing there and I think they were so touched by my romantic, yet nearly-tragic tale that they took pity on me. That, or I was seriously starting to look rough and was stinking by then. They gave me 20,000 Drachmas and I insisted on taking their address, so that I could return the money once I had reached the island. They said it wasn't necessary, but I wouldn't let it go. I didn't like the idea of scrounging off of anybody, let alone some loved-up couple who could well have been on their honeymoon.

I said as many sincere 'thank-you's as I could and left them to their holiday. Now that I had some money, I had to find me a ticket office. I checked all the different lines that went to the island of Paros and, since they all cost about the same, I went for the one that was leaving next.

I'd had no idea how much 20,000 Drachmas was worth at the time (turned out it was around £40), but was ecstatic when I got my ferry ticket for only 8,000 of them. When I walked around the shops and restaurants by the quayside, found that I had enough money for some lunch, water and even a packet of cigarettes. This made my day, since I had finished my last one a couple of kilometres from the airport.

I now had all I needed and after eating and drinking, I sat in the shade and watched this busy port bustle about its day, waiting for my ferry to dock. Most of my friends know that I've never been a fan of boats or the sea and I had had a particularly horrible crossing from The Hook of Holland to Harwich back in 1996 and I was now filled with memories of this as I got myself up and into the queue for the ferry. This example of sea-going craft wasn't in half as good nick as the one from back then, so I was getting more and more apprehensive as I boarded the ferry. Once we had made it out of port and into the open sea, I calmed slightly, mainly due to being filled with huge excitement that I was now finally on my way and the sun was shining down hard on me out on the open deck.

From Piraeus to Paros only took a little over six hours and we had made a few stops along the way. I was already in tourist mode, as I watched us pass by beautiful island after beautiful island. Each island port that we stopped was a stunning vision from the top deck of the ship. In between the islands, I was engrossed by the dolphins riding the bow waves and the rich colours of the deep blues of the water. I had only ever seen dark green or grey, angry-looking seas before and was surprised to find myself with the urge to dive right in.

We pulled into Parikia, the main town on Paros and its port, around 5pm and I was already well-up in the queue to get off while the ship did an ungainly three-point-turn and docked backwards into the quayside. This had been roughly the time I'd told Dionne that I should be arriving, so I only hoped that she would be waiting. As I waited for various cars and pick-ups to get themselves off the ferry, I spotted her waiting next to a very old-looking windmill about a hundred yards away. Everyone who didn't look Greek was immediately accosted as they hit dry land by an army of kamakis (those, sometimes sleazy, Greek men who stand around outside restaurants, and the like, chatting up passing women to come and sample their wares, which of course are always 'the best in all of Greece!')

These kamakis were touting accommodation and some bars and restaurants that were, of course, perfect for the weary traveller. Once I had repeated several times that I had somewhere booked already, I managed to fight my way through them to Dionne. I dumped the bergan at my feet and we threw ourselves into a tight embrace. I guessed I had been wrong - she had obviously been missing me way more than I had thought. After the hugs and kisses, she told me that she was technically still working, so we had to go. I picked up my gear and we headed off to the left of the big windmill and down the seafront, straight by what I supposed passed for a town square.

The main drag was lined with small boats and little concrete jetties on my left and several Greek-style coffee shops and tourist shops to my right. Parikia itself is a natural bay and the road followed the curve of the bay all the way round to the other side and out of sight. We walked along, chatting excitedly about my new surroundings and I relayed the story of my ferry journey. I was keeping the tale of my near-disaster until later. After a short while, we arrived at a restaurant which formed one side of a courtyard with a sun-bleached fountain in the centre of it. The restaurant was called The Cactus and was run by a Greek guy called Yannis and his Yorkshire wife, Vanessa.

I had to wait around while the people in the restaurant were served and then left and then I was sat down for an informal interview. I got the job without any problem and was told to start the following day. Dionne was just finishing up, so I waited for her and she lead me to our accommodation. We walked up through the main street of Parikia and began to wind upwards through narrow, white-washed streets. The paths between the houses got steeper and narrower the further we went. Eventually we came to a three-storey building and Dionne rang the bell. An old Greek woman came to the door and started spouting off enthusiastically in Greek, before trying out her limited English. We were handed another key for me and she showed us up the stairs by the side of her front door. They lead all the way to the rooftop, where she showed Dionne and I into a double room with a few bits of furniture in it and wooden shutters where the windows should be.

I was happy enough just to be somewhere I could dump the bergan. There was a flat roof outside, about three times the size of the room. It had a couple of washing lines stretched across it, some solar panels in the corner and a little table and chairs. When I looked around the views we could see, I realised that we had gotten ourselves that highest room in the town. The only things higher than we were were a couple of very small, blue-domed churches.

When she left us, I went in and flopped on the bed. Dionne and I were going out for dinner with the girls and Nick (another Aussie friend from London). I got showered and changed and off we went. After a very nice meal and some fairly strong Greek wine, the evening seemed to me to let out a sigh; like someone undoing their belt a notch after a big meal. We drank some more and laughed and joked late into the night. It was one of the nicest, most chilled-out evenings I've ever had.

I was awakened at around 7am by an almighty crashing sound. I sat bolt upright in the bed, wondering what the hell could be making such a loud noise. Dionne sleepily reached over and touched my back. She mumbled into her pillow: "It's okay - it's just the morning ferry dropping anchor. It does that every morning." Now that I was awake, I had to get up, so I left Dionne snoozing and went out onto the rooftop for a cigarette. The sun was only just cresting the small hills that surrounded the town. It was already very warm. As I stood there in my shorts, stretching, I looked around me and started to giggle.

Something had occurred to me that I still couldn't quite believe. Something that would make me giggle every morning for at least another month. I lived here. I had no address in London or anywhere else. It wasn't like I was just on a gap year and would return to my parents' house. This was it. This was my address.

This is just the story of me getting there. The rest of that amazing summer is a whole other story.

#8 Boston, Fenway Park and the Red Sox...

They hadn't won a world series in 86 years!

The legendary "curse of the bambino" - Babe Ruth - had haunted the Boston Red Sox baseball team since 1919, after their then owner, Harry Frazee, sold their star player to the New York Yankees for a measly $100,000. All so that his missus could finance a Broadway musical; a musical that ended up being a complete flop anyway. When Ruth was sold, against his will, he "cursed" the Red Sox, saying that they'd never win another World Series without him. He was right. His last year at Boston - 1918 - was their last championship while he was alive. He ended his days a New York Yankee, who went on to become the dominant force in baseball for the rest of the century.

This was pretty much one of the first things I learned when I became part of the "Red Sox Nation" back in 2001. I have been a fan of North American sports since I was 5 or 6 years old. I am now a mad-daft fan of baseball, ice hockey, American football and basketball. I came to each one at a totally different time in my life and each in their own unique set of circumstances.

My love of baseball started when I was living on the island of Paros, Greece, in 1998. That was the year that Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire captured the imagination of baseball fans everywhere by slugging it out to see who could get the most home runs in a season. The record was definitely going to go... the only two questions on everyones lips were by how many runs was the record going to be smashed by and which of these two amazing players was going to win out?

To be fair, I'd never really noticed baseball before, but the bar I frequented was owned by a Greek-American called Costas, who had relocated there from Los Angeles, to get back to his roots and to escape the madness that is California life. He had the TV on everyday, tuned into some sports network that showed the games. I spent a lot of days there drinking free beer and watching the games with him. He became my unofficial baseball tutor.

That was where my love of the game began, but when I got back to London that winter, it disappeared from my life after the World Series had ended - not that anyone really noticed it happening. Apart from the fans of the teams taking part in the post-season, the rest of us were totally absorbed in the "slug-fest" and couldn't have cared less about what entire teams were doing. It was the most compelling, gladiatorial struggle between two professional sportsmen since Borg and MacEnroe.

Anyway, that was where it all started. I still didn't follow a team, but when I started university in 2001, one was chosen for me. I met a really nice young girl from Boston with a typically Boston-Irish name, called Shannon and we became good friends. She was a Red Sox fan and spent many an afternoon extolling the virtues of her city and her team. The truth wasn't sugar-coated though - she warned me about the inherited pain of becoming a Red Sox fan, the fact that we never win and the fact that we hadn't won since 1918. I was well-warned about the heartache of so many lost World Series; like the gut-wrenching, emotional rollercoaster of the '86 WS, when the Red Sox lost to the New York Mets in dramatic fashion at Shea Stadium in New York.

I had been a Hibernian fan for many years and figured that this made me the ideal candidate to join the ranks of the Red Sox Nation. My Edinburgh football team hadn't won the league since 1952 and their last Scottish FA Cup win was 50 years before that - I was used to disappointment. But the dogged determination to follow each of these teams til we die is what makes us some of the best sports fans in the world. I can't help wondering if the Irish connection to both teams has something to do with the obstinate dedication to the cause - no matter how hopeless it might seem.

When the chance came up in 2004 for a 10-day holiday to Boston and then onto Niagara Falls, I started making instant plans for a trip to Fenway Park to see my beloved Red Sox. There are loads of games a season to go and watch and they're very well varied between road and home games. The team were playing a 3-game home series against the Detroit Tigers and after a quick look at the schedule, I chose the game that had my favourite pitcher on the mound, Pedro Martinez.

My missus, Fawzia, had been told by some American colleagues that in order to get tickets, it was best to get down to Fenway early. Since the game was starting in the early evening, we got down there for around lunchtime and managed to get a spot that was only around 30 or 40 people from the front of the queue. The weather was hot, humid and mixed with the grimy air from interstate-90, which is right over the other side of the small row of buildings opposite the stadium. The Lansdowne Street side of Fenway Park is all part of the iconic "Green Monster" - a 37-foot-high green wall that forms the left field boundary and contains and old-fashioned manual scoreboard. The queue we were in was the other side of the Green Monster and I couldn't stop looking up at it, thinking: "I can't believe I'm actually here!"

I already had a Red Sox baseball cap, that had seen better days, but Fawzia didn't look like much of a fan, so I tempted her into going into one of the Red Sox stores strategically placed across from the ticket office. We asked some of the lovely people in line to keep our place while we went to the store and they agreed, but I got the impression that it wouldn't have mattered if we hadn't. I got myself a new cap and Fawzia got herself a Red Sox vest top. She got a huge cheer from those around us in the queue for managing to change into it under her other t-shirt.

After waiting a couple of hours for the ticket office to open, we filed in and got our tickets. Everyone else just seemed to be staying inside the stadium, so we did the same. There were plenty of little food and drink stalls tucked away underneath the stands, so we got ourselves some of both and wandered around, drinking in the atmosphere of this oldest of ball parks. It is a well-known fact amongst my friends that I have no sense of smell whatsoever, but I got the distinct impression that, for once, I was really missing out on something. Fenway Park looks like it should smell of baseball, in the venerable sense.

We found our seats, on the lower tier, way out in the right field, just past the famous "Pesky's Pole" (the right field foul pole named after Johnny Pesky - a Red Sox player in the '40s and '50s). We had a pretty good view of the field and a great view of the Green Monster and the bull pen (where the pitchers warm up during the game). The teams came out to warm up and I got a close up view of Pedro warming up with teammates and occasionally tossing a baseball to one of the hollering kids hanging over the small perimeter wall around the field.

Everytime I have visited the United States I have felt the same sense of awe borne out of the fact that we here in the UK only ever see the US on television or in the cinema, and so it has always felt like wandering around on the world's biggest movie set to me. This was no different. Once the ballpark began to fill up and the noises got more intense as game time approached, the sense of being a part of something intensified. I had been to see Arsenal versus Manchester United at Highbury some years before and, like that night, there are certain events, in certain places that just cannot be replicated or equalled. Fenway was one of those times. The feeling that I was being included in the American national past time was overwhelming.

It was hot and sticky, but made bearable by the army of vendors walking around amongst the fans selling beers and hot dogs. The sun still shone over the top of the main stand as the players came out to take the field. The game itself was amazing, but I won't bore you with a play-by-play account... suffice it to say that the Red Sox came out victorious 5-1 and the difference between a televised game and the real thing was immeasurable. One thing I never knew until we went there was that in the US, simply because of the distances involved, they have no idea of the concept of "away fans" and this meant that unless the team was up against it, then there was very little in the way of chanting. This, of course, was entirely alien to me. Since I had decided to "represent" that day, I had gone to the match wearing my Arsenal shirt and during the three and a half hours of the game whenever I got a little bit bored (and after a few beers) I would stand up and start singing "ARS-EN-AL, ARS-EN-AL, ARS-EN-AAAALL!" This went down quite well with the Red Sox fans nearby, who blatantly hadn't a clue what this crazy Brit was shouting about, but who always welcome something a little out of the ordinary, in much the same way as a streaker always gets a cheer at a football match here in the UK.

I knew the Red Sox were having a good season and some of our players were hitting their top form at the best time of the year, since there were only around 30+ games left of the regular season. We finished second in the American League that year and made it into the post-season in the "wild card" slot, those damned Yankees having pipped us to the league pennant by just three games. While the whole of the Red Sox Nation was overjoyed to see the team get to the post-season at all, it was, of course, met with the same feelings of dread that the team would only go ahead and do the same thing they had been doing to Red Sox fans since 1918 - get tantalisingly close and then blow it. Again. Just to keep us all topped-up with heartache.

It would be very easy to sit here and say that I knew something was different now that I know the outcome of the whole thing, but with the players we had, there was definitely a buzz around the online chatrooms and in the media. Would this end up being one of those years where they took us to the very brink and then didn't win it? A curse is a curse, after all.

Then the team manager, Terry Francona, and the boys really started messing with our heads properly. To get to the American League Championship Series (which is a semi-final for the World Series - which , in turn, is always played against the winners of the National League Championship Series) we had to get through the Anaheim Angels... which we did in stunning form, winning that best-of-five series 3-0.

And who should be waiting for us in the ALCS... it just had to be the bloody New York Yankees and because they had finished above us in our division they had four of the seven possible games at home. Yankee Stadium remains the most hostile place for the Red Sox to visit and the prospects were not looking good. To cut this part short, we won an amazing ALCS 4-3, having been 3-0 down and are the only team to have ever come from 3-0 down in the post-season to win.

Once the Yankees were out of the way, the rest was agonising. We came up against the St. Louis Cardinals, who had finished the season with the best record in baseball, with 105 wins and only 57 losses.

The Boston Red Sox team of 2004 blew them away four-zip and won their first World Series in 86 years and, finally, laying to rest the curse of the bambino.

I know that I had nothing personally to do with their success and I wasn't even there for any of their momentous post-season matches, but I have always been left with a sense of having been a part of it. I had been a part of that season.

I still like to think that it was damned nice of them to wait until I'd been to see them play before they went ahead and won it.

With the curse broken, they only went ahead and won it again in 2007. Strangely enough, the Yankees won it in 2000 - the actual last year of the twentieth century - and haven't won it since.
There is some justice in the universe after all.

#9 My 30th birthday...

...Or how I learned to stop worrying and started to appreciate life.

For the six months leading up to my 30th birthday, life had been really rather shitty. I was still trying to get over my recent divorce and had had to leave London and suspended my studies for a year so that I could sort my head out.

I had moved up north, to North Anston, near Rotherham. My best friend Ali lived there with his lovely wife, Jules, and he had come to my rescue when I needed to get London and everything associated with it out of my head. I stayed with them for a little while and then moved into a little one-bedroomed flat across the street - the only time in my life I have ever had an entire flat to myself.

Ali had introduced me to a friend of his that owned a restaurant and I managed to get myself a job there, working as a chef. I've always been good at cooking and had even worked as a cook in a pub kitchen before, but this was something new to me and, although I was there for a short time, I learned quite a lot.

So... life was ticking along. I was still messed up over the divorce and as my birthday drew nearer, I began to reflect about where my life was and where it was going. University had already taken much longer than it should have and I'd had to repeat my second year twice already - the first time after being attacked in the university bar and having my face smashed in, then, while I was trying to get over the PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) that it caused, my Grandmother died, after a prolonged illness. It knocked me flat on my arse again.

The PTSD probably made dealing with my Gran's death a lot harder than it should have been. It ended up being just one more reason that I couldn't get my head round the studying.

My contemplation about the preceding decade had lead me to decide that, actually, my twenties weren't all that. I wasn't where I had imagined I would be in life, I hadn't achieved all that I had dreamed of when I was 19. Plus, I wasn't getting any younger. Like most people, I didn't look as good as I used to. I wasn't as fit as I used to be. I was getting wrinkly! It's a pretty depressing place to be. My world was crashing in about my ears.

There weren't any concrete plans made for my birthday yet and it was only brought home to me how close it was when Ali's birthday came round all too soon. His birthday is exactly a month before mine and I had taken great pleasure over the years by giving him earache about how old he was. I'd done it to him every year since we were 19. I'd gotten quite creative with it too. After several years of having a whole month of me making jokes about him being yet another year older, he was hardened to my jibes.

One year - I think it was when he turned 26 - I had a flash of inspiration in response to his resistance to giving me a rise. I turned to him and uttered a phrase that I know has bugged him ever since: "You know the best thing about doing this to you? It's never going to be your turn!" He went nuts. The mere thought of not ever being allowed to direct the same ribbing towards me narked him. Which probably means it's just as well for me that he's not bigger than I am and that he has a bloody good sense of humour.

Ali had a 30th birthday party at his house, which I enjoyed, but it only served to make my ominous feelings stronger. Rather than it being the sort of tear-up we had been used to in previous years, it was mainly his family in attendance and it resembled the sorts of family birthday parties I remember the 'old folks' in my family having when I was a kid. Of course, the fact that Ali and I ended up drunkenly dancing around in his diningroom to Cotton Eye Joe, only came flooding back to me in a wave of cringe-worthy 'morning after' shame. We really had turned into that 'someones Dad' figure that dances around at weddings and birthdays insisting:"Look kids! Yer old man's still got it, eh?"

Strangely enough, I gave Ali very little in the way of ageist abuse during April that year. I knew what was coming and I didn't like it one little bit. The nearer it got to the end of the month, the more depressed I felt.

Now, I bet you're wondering where this is going, since this is in my Top 10 of great moments from my life so far.

There was something to look forward to. A friend from university, Carrie, had gotten in touch at the start of the year and she and her husband-to-be, Mattie, had invited me down to Bedford for my birthday. Ali worked almost every friday and saturday night anyway, so I figured that he would be busy. I made my way down there on the saturday morning, even though my birthday was the sunday. I thought why not make a weekend of it?

It was a beautifully hot and sunny day the first time I set foot in Bedford. Mattie had come to meet me at the station and was to make sure I didn't get lost finding the others. The walk from the train station to the pub that she was in was just the right side of being too long for the heat and sun we were bathed in. The reception I got from Carrie was, as usual, as warm as the weather outside. One of the reasons that she and I were such good friends is down to her having the same sense of humour as Ali and myself, which meant that I wasn't surprised when she launched straight into how old and fat I was looking. Despite my feeling depressed about it all, this was the sort of banter that never really causes any offence. If anything, the irreverent nature of it, bizarrely, made me feel more relaxed.

We had a couple of drinks, had a laugh, did our catching up and then we went back to their flat, which was a small place upstairs from a dingy little club called The Angel. I was staying over, so I dumped my bag there, had a shower and got myself ready for that evening. I had already met Mattie some months before, but other than him and Carrie, I didn't know anybody. I was still made to feel very welcome and we went out in Bedford and had a fun night getting drunk and acting silly.

I can only vaguely remember carrying Mattie down the street, over my shoulder, at the end of the night. While I was doing so, we bumped into to a bunch of Carrie's friends. Among them was Almo, an absolute giant of a man, who I had no idea was going to end up my landlord and housemate later that summer. After being told to put Mattie down, we weaved a path through the human traffic back to The Angel, via the kebab shop across the street, and went upstairs.

They went straight off to bed and I went through to the spare room and out onto the flat roof above the nightclub for a cigarette, it being a non-smoking flat. I don't really remember what time it was when we got back there, but I do remember being awake for the rest of the night and sat outside, on the garden furniture that Carrie and Mattie had built on their 'roof garden'.

By now, it was well past midnight and we were officially into my birthday. I was born at 5:37 a.m. and have had the very odd habit of being awake at that exact time, either by accident or design, for almost every birthday I can remember. Sure enough, as the first rays of sun were just beginning to kiss the chimney tops, I was sat there, alone, on the roof of the club, the slightly sozzled feeling just wearing off. I began to think about what it meant now that I had reached this milestone. I tried to remember turning twenty and couldn't remember it specifically. The kinds of thoughts I was having were a world away from what I had been feeling back then.

At 20, I couldn't wait for the following year, so that I could have a big party and have everyone make a fuss of me, and so that I needn't have to worry about getting ID'd for nightclubs. Now that I was 30, I was full of mourning for the loss of my twenties and sad at how quickly they'd come and gone.

The night of my 21st birthday, my uncle and I had sat in his house and drank a really nice bottle of Glenmorangie between us. He told me something that night that I didn't pay any attention to at the time. He said: "The next 365 days are going to go by so fast; it'll make your head spin." It didn't really mean much at the time, but, the day I turned 22, I got home from work and was getting ready for the night out ahead when the phone rang. I picked it up to hear a voice say: "Told you." What was most annoying about it was that, not only did I know who it was, I knew exactly what he was talking about. It felt like he had told me about how fast it was going to go by only the day before.

The years only get faster and faster and I had now hit 30 a lot faster than I felt I should have. It was like the last decade had been a blur. Then I began think of it like this: I hadn't enjoyed my twenties and I didn't want to be sat there at 5:37 a.m. on my 40th birthday ruing the fact that I hadn't enjoyed being 30. After all, when I got to that age, I was surely going to look back and wish I was 30 again, wasn't I? I started to realise that every milestone age was going to leave me wishing I was younger than I was and that from this moment onwards I would view 30 as being a lot younger than I did for the six months leading up to it.

Something in me changed there and then. I had made the conscious decision to enjoy being 30 for the sake of being 30. I was never going to be that age again, so why not enjoy it for what it was? When I looked back on some of my happier years, I had enjoyed being 18 just for the sake of it - even if it didn't mean exactly that to me at the time. I vowed to make the next ten years better than the last and, almost instantly, I stopped worrying about it. It was like a huge, dark cloud had cleared and revealed the beautiful sunrise I saw before me.

I went to bed and rewoke around midday to hear Carrie and Mattie moving around the flat, having showers and various other morning stuff. I got myself up, washed and came out of the room to meet them. I had been expecting some sort of build up to another night out - it was, after all, now officially my birthday. It came as a bit of a disappointment then when Carrie asked me to hurry up getting myself in order because she and Mattie were off round to his parents for sunday lunch. I shouldn't have been so self-centred about it, but I had just assumed that ,when she had invited me down on the saturday, we were simply making a weekend of it.

We all said our goodbyes and they dropped me off at the train station. I hope they didn't see the disappointment I was feeling, but I also know that I'm pretty crap at hiding these things; it's usually written all over my face.

The biggest surprise of the day was when I got back to Yorkshire and discovered that Ali had had his gig cancelled and that he and Jules weren't busy.

When my ex-wife and I had split, we did the usual division of possessions. I hadn't really given it much thought myself, but I had gotten custody of our large set of poker chips, so that night we got ourselves set up for a bit of poker and some drinks. Ali had a large piece of green baize that he used for gigging (after being accused of scratching pub and club tables with his equipment one too many times) and we threw that over his diningroom table to make a fairly realistic looking card table. Ali figured that it just wouldn't be poker unless we had a large bottle of Jack Daniels to go with it, so after a quick trip up to the local shop for booze and nibbles, we sat down and started playing.

None of us is very good at poker, but I had been playing for a little longer than both of them and I started winning a lot of the chips, mainly down to some ill-advised betting by the others. I did my best to let them in on any little nuggets of information I remembered as we were going along to try and even the odds - we weren't playing for money, after all. One of the things I imparted was that a lot of the time, you're not really playing the cards, but rather what peoples reactions tell you and also that I had learned that poker seemed to be 95% psychology to me. I could be wrong, but that's how I look at it.

As the evening wore on, it turned into humorous farce. I, apparently, have a really annoying habit of picking up a stack of about ten chips and just clicking them through my fingers. It drives Ali mental and Jules found it quite distracting as well. Ali, for his part, discovered that when he laid the cards out in the middle of the table, if he laid them out all square to each other, except for the last one, that I couldn't leave it alone. I didn't even realise that I was reaching over and straightening it up until several hands had gone by and I couldn't figure out what the two of them were laughing at so much.

We played. We drank. We laughed. We took the piss out of each other. It was everything that a birthday spent with close friends should be. It went on until Jules looked at the time and shocked us by announcing that it was after 4 a.m. She was supposed to be going to work in the morning! Ali and I stayed up about an hour after Jules went to bed and had a few cigarettes in the garden and a few more JDs. When we finally floated off to bed, I drifted off to sleep on their sofa with a big, contented smile on my face.

All in all, it had turned out to be one of the best birthdays I have ever had. For having had no plans made at all, the few friends I still had nearby had made it a thoroughly enjoyable weekend. Over the years, I have had many different kinds of birthdays, but you can't over-estimate the value of these kinds of nights. I can only hope there are many more of them.

The best days of my life... so far...

A run-down of the highlights of the personal history of me.

For the last 33 years I have had the privilege of being a part of some wonderful experiences. Some of them I was the focus of and for others I was just a very happy participant.

Compiling a list of the "top ten" days/events from my life was an awful lot harder than I ever could have imagined. I challenge you to sit down and do this for yourself. You'll see what I mean.

I'm fairly sure that the natural deterioration of my memory due to age has had a lot to do with the omission of certain episodes in my life, which is a real shame, because, even though I can't recall them at a moment's notice, I know that they are in the darkest recesses of my mind. I know that my late teens and early twenties were littered with good times (and not just through the proverbial "rose-tinted glasses" either - I know I eked out the maximum amount of fun that I could from those years).


Anyway... down to business. These are my Top Ten Moments In The Life Of...

#10. Hitch-hiking from Edinburgh to Wick and back. June 1994.

I had just turned 18 and was doing what most Scottish 18-year-old "men" do... I was exercising my right to be drunk whenever I wanted, without the risk of getting arrested for it.

Most of my friends were students at Edinburgh University and we spent most of out time in or around the student's union bars. We would divide our time between Chambers Street Union (mine and most of my friend's personal favourite - unfortunately only open thursday, friday and saturday nights) and Potterrow (which was, at least, open during the day).

One particular evening, I was at Potterrow union with my friend Ben and a few other people, including some girls Ben had befriended one day whilst out driving in the ESCA (student charities organisation) minibus. Leanne and Alison were about a year younger than me and were still in the 6th form at a very posh Edinburgh all-girls boarding school.

Ben had already become the focus of Leanne's attention some weeks prior to this and they seemed to be getting along famously. I, on the other hand, was simply contented within myself to be out having fun, getting drunk and being very silly indeed with my friends.

That night, Leanne came outside to talk to me while I was having a cigarette under the vast perspex dome that covered the university buildings attached to the front of the student union bar. People kept drifting in and out of the bar and as soon as we had a moment alone, she blurted out a question: "What are you going to do about Alison?" I had no idea what she meant. "What do you mean: 'What am I going to do about her'? I said.
"She's crazy about you." Leanne said.

I was blown away. I hadn't even begun to suspect that a girl this good-looking would be interested, so my mind had just filed her under 'friend' and left it at that. I wasn't the most perceptive when it came to women and their subtle signals at that age.

Of course, I was interested. She was stunningly gorgeous and a great deal of fun to be around. Our relationship started that night and over the following weeks, Alison and I - along with Ben and Leanne - spent most of our spare time together having a blast. Ben and I even managed to get ourselves invited to the boarding house for lunch, which, rather predictably, turned into very funny and very childish behaviour. On the suggestion of Leanne and Alison, the four of us played a game of Bollocks in the dining room. For the uneducated among you, Bollocks works like this: one person whispers the word bollocks and then the players each take their turn saying the word. The only rule is that your utterance must be louder than the last; a kind of verbal game of Chicken for situations where it is as inappropriate as possible.

The end of the school term was approaching and Alison had told me that she would have to spend the summer back home with her parents in Wick - around 250 miles away. I was dreading the day when she had to go; especially since we had only very recently found each other.

The day she left for home, we had a bit of a get-together at one of the student union bars and we said our goodbyes there; me promising to come up and see her as soon as I could. She laughed this off, saying that there was no way I had enough money, but that it would be great if I could.

I decided there and then that I was going to hitch-hike from Edinburgh to Wick. Alison must have thought that this was me being all talk or beer-fuelled bravado. I didn't know how serious I was about it myself at the time.

Her parents came and picked her up and I went back to my friends at the bar. A lot of my friends were trying to keep my spirits up with their philosophical take on the situation. The others were content to get drunk with me... content enough to go on drinking til about 3 a.m.

During the evening, I had been telling Ben and various others about my plans for hitch-hiking. These mostly came up against a sea of derision and scorn, which only cemented my determination to do it. I'm not really sure at what point of the night it went from me just wanting to do this to me going to do this... the very next day.

I clearly remember staggering back towards Marchmont around 4 a.m., firmly set on the idea and was trying to formulate a plan for putting it into action. Alison had been right - I didn't have any money. I was 18 - I'd drank it. So I'd established that if I had some sort of food and drink and enough cigarettes, then I'd be pretty much set. The only other thing I needed was the cardboard sign.

Somewhere in this drunken haze, I had a moment of inspiration. It occurred to me that I was more likely to get there asking for short lifts, since I was wholly convinced that Edinburgh to Wick wasn't the most popular route. I got two flaps from a cardboard box in my room and wrote 'Wick' on one side and 'Edinburgh' on the other (another flash of clarity - after all, I was going to need it coming back, right?) and on the other I wrote 'Perth' and 'Inverness'.

Once I had my provisions sorted, I threw the whole lot into a small rucksack and set off westwards, heading for the general direction of the Forth Road Bridge. Unsurprisingly, there wasn't a great deal of traffic on the roads at 5 a.m. and what traffic there was seemed strangely reluctant to pick up a slightly wobbly hitch-hiker within the city limits.

That's exactly how it went - I didn't get anyone stop until I was almost at the outskirts of Edinburgh. This was nearly 6 a.m. and my preconceived ideas of hitch-hiking didn't stack up against the reality. I had had this idea of the big, hairy trucker pulling his 'big rig' over to the side of the road and I hop right in and off we go. The first person who stopped for me was a regional sales manager in a large executive company car. I must have made up for stinking of booze with my story of teenage passion, since he was quite relaxed about my scruffy appearance.

He was only going as far as Perth and we made good time getting there. I was dropped off at a large roundabout on the A9 and didn't go into the town centre after my failure to get anyone pick me up in Edinburgh. It was while I was standing there waiting for the next lift that I realised that I had almost sobered up.

It was then that I had my out-of-body-experience moment. As I stood by the side of the road in the early morning sunshine, with my thumb and sign on display, a voice in my head went: "What the fuck are you doing?! What exactly do you think you're doing? You idiot!"

Now, I have been what I would call impulsive for a great deal of my life, starting with the day my mother caught me and some friends from school throwing ourselves off the roof of the local dentist's office when I was 7 years old.

This was just one of those times when I figured "you've just got to throw yourself off the roof of the dentist's and see where you land". Happily, there have been many of these moments ever since and without them, my life so far would have been an awful lot more dull.

I resigned myself to the fact that I was too far to turn back and stopped worrying about it immediately. If anything, that feeling just made the whole thing more exciting. I pressed on.

There were a couple more 'sales manager' types who stopped for me that day. Alas, still no truckers.

About half way up the A9 to Inverness, in the middle of the Highlands, I came across a young deer that had been hit, by the side of the road. It didn't look like it had been dead long, but to this day it is still one of the saddest things I have ever seen. I stood and said a quiet prayer to myself for it and walked on. I didn't really know why I'd done it at the time, but I know now that it was for seeing such a beautiful creature brought to an untimely and, ultimately, needless end.

Not too far past Aviemore, a Land Rover stopped, with two absolutely stunning girls in it. They were marine biology students heading for the Moray Firth to study the porpoise population and their effect on seal colonies. If I hadn't had a girlfriend waiting for me in Wick, I might have tried to chat either of them up.

I got the one and only truck driver stop for me just after the Black Isle, north of Inverness and took me most of the rest of the way to Wick. I was given a lift by a local guy out on a short journey into Wick itself and from there I set about finding the house.

Alison had said that she was annoyed with her parents for taking her home so early, especially when she had had an offer to stay at Leanne's in Edinburgh. What really pissed her off was that they had buggered off on holiday that morning to Dunkeld (a small town that I passed on the way up there). I guess that was just the sort of mentality one has to expect from a family that would rather see their kids packed off to a boarding school for most of the year.

I had made it to Wick around 1:30 in the afternoon. A grand total of 8 hours later. Not bad, I thought.

Finding the street wasn't hard; Wick's not that big a place. It was a cul-de-sac with some fairly impressive houses on it. Hers was the last one on the right. I marched straight up to the front door, full of my own self-worth and bravado for having managed the seemingly impossible (I was only 18 remember!)

When Alison opened her front door, it was one of those moments that I really wished I had a camera with me; the look on her face was one of sheer disbelief and I'm sure she was maybe just a little bit impressed. Once our doorstep reunion was over, we went inside and she told me that I would be able to stay for the night but would have to leave first thing in the morning. Her parents had arranged for her aunt to come over and check on her every day. Trusting or what? Thankfully, 'Auntie' had been round that day already.

The part of the story between then and the next morning are not part of this story and I shall leave them to your imagination.

I got up the next day, we said our goodbyes (me promising to see her again, really soon - her making me promise I'd let her know before I was coming) and set off again for Edinburgh. The trip back, although minus the 'dutch courage', wasn't daunting at all, since I already knew it was doable. I quickly got a lift, again from a local, at the edge of town and was dropped off about 30 miles back down the coast road.

Plenty of other vehicles drove past me on the road, but I didn't care; I was elated with what I had just done and very happy to have seen my girlfriend. Then it happened... the only time this ever happened to me whilst hitch-hiking...

I was wandering down the coast road with my sign and my thumb out. A beat-up, red Transit van pulled up about 30 metres beyond me and I started to jog up to the back. Just as I was about there, the wheels spun hard and it shot off down the road. I stood there in the middle of the road and screamed after him: "BASTAAAAARRRDS!"

I know the idiot heard me; there's no way he couldn't have. I hope he had a good giggle about it. I also hoped that he suffered a major breakdown, miles from a telephone (this was '94 - nobody really had mobile phones yet!)

There was definitely someone smiling on me from above that day. Not five minutes after this happened, a red Porche 911 pulled over and I said a quiet thank you upwards and got in.

The guy's name was Ian and he seemed quite nice and not overly chatty. He asked me why I was heading for Inverness (very cleverly displayed on the return part of my cardboard sign). I told him I wasn't and explained to him my cunning plan for increasing my chances of a lift.

Then he laughed and told me that he was heading for Edinburgh himself and offered me a lift all the way back.

We rolled into Edinburgh - in some style I might add - in time for the early evening summer sun to be nicely toasting the arm I had hanging on the open window, hoping we would see at least one person I knew. Alas, this was not to be. Ian dropped me off next to Potterrow and I walked in to find a few of the usual suspects ready for another night's drunken adventures. The return journey was a mere five and a half hours from door to door.

For once, I got to be the centre of attention - in a group that excelled at doing outrageous and stupid things and getting themselves into the most impossible situations - it was my turn to have a tale to tell.

I hitched to Wick and back another twice that summer before Alison and I succumbed to the harsh reality that long-distance relationships take a lot of hard work and commitment to each other. We realised that we were young and we weren't ready for that quite yet. We did part company on very good terms, but I often wonder what would have happened between us had it lasted.

I've never seen her since, but I have to admit that I remember that summer with great fondness more for the adventure than the romance.

This has made it in at number 10 on my Most Memorable Moments, So Far... they only get better from here...

What I'm all about...

Or 'Who is this Rakeem bloke and why is he white with a name like that?'

Well... it's like this... I'm a 33-year-old Scottish, muslim convert who has lived in London for most of the last eleven years. I have spent small amounts of time elsewhere, but have firmly decided that I am destined to end my days as a Londoner.

I studied media (journalism) at the University of Westminster's Harrow campus, but have yet to achieve the successes of my course's two most famous exports - Mike Jackson (former head of Channel 4) and, the infinitely more entertaining, Danny Wallace.


My main reason for choosing journalism was to further my writing skills and pay the bills while I secretly write a novel or ten.

I have grown to realise that this is a filthy cliché and that several professional types are merely treading water in their current vocation until they have the time to "write the book".

Cliché it might be, but I'm going to see it through.


I'll get to the "muslim" bit shortly, but other than that, I'm originally from Edinburgh and am still fiercely proud of being Scottish... I just happen to like living in England - something for which I am reliably informed may well earn me a "good doing" next time I'm north of the border.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that I love being Scottish. It very similar to being Irish, in many respects, not least the fact that we love to leave our homeland, spread ourselves to every corner of the globe and then we get drunk and sit there singing about "how good home is".

As for the name... well... I converted to Islam in 1999 after meeting my ex-wife. I was told by her and her family that I had to choose a new name - something I have since learned is a custom rather than a rule.

One of the strangest things I have ever had to do was change my name.

Picture the scene: a six foot plus, white Scotsman with a book of Muslim baby names and a mirror. It went something like this:

"Abdul?" Quick look at my face. "Erm... no." Flicking of pages. "Mohammed?" Look. "No." More flicking. "Tariq?" Look. Laugh. Sigh. "Not really, no."

In the end I chose Rakeem because it means 'writer'. Strangely enough, there have been lots of friends that have said they couldn't imagine me named anything else. Even those that now know that my original name was Neil.

It has also been a very slow struggle to get those who knew me as Neil to get Rakeem into their heads. My mother - bless her - stil can't do it. Then again... her usual M.O. is to reel off every name in the family before getting to Neil anyway.

A very interesting, but not unexpected outcome of this is stranger's reactions. Whenever I book a taxi or a table at a restaurant by phone, I encounter the same reaction about 75% of the time. We finally come face-to-face, then I tell them my name and they look at me as if they've been told a lie. Occasionally, they will apologise (I can only presume for the look of bewilderment on their own faces) and say: "I'm sorry, I was expecting someone Indian."

Indian, of course, being the generic term used by many people for "Asian" or "Pakistani" - I think because saying the word "Paki" is the generic abusive term and stupidity is easier to forgive than racism (sad that they cite this without realising that the two are virtually inseparable!)

The other end of this reaction chain is when I meet people face-to-face in the first instance and my appearance doesn't match up with the name they're being told.

These people fall into three categories:
1) There are those who take it in their stride and don't get even slightly fazed by it one little bit.
2) There are those who hear the name properly or are confident enough to ask for it to be repeated and who then cannot help themselves from asking it's origins - almost always apologetically - as if I'm going to get very angry or offended for them being so inquisitive. If it was something that I had thought was going to bother me or offend me, I would never have done it in the first place...

...and my personal favourites... 3) There are those people who appear to have a total brain meltdown right there in front of me.
These people are hilarious and ridiculous in equal measure. I have seen the same kind of change in their faces as one might if you had just said to them that despite being 6' 2" and very hairy and manly, and dressed as a man, that I am, in fact, a woman and always have been.

It is at this point that I bear witness to conclusive proof that the human brain, when faced with something it does not believe to be true, will very often just fill in the blanks or change the information it has received to suit itself.
There then follows the only part I do not like about this category... the question...

"What was that? Ricky?"

Because, obviously, being white British, it has to be Ricky instead of Rakeem!

An aspect of the change of name that was quite a surprise to me, was the way that I seemed to take to the name so quickly. It was in the latter part of 2000 when I changed my name by statuatory declaration and by the time my sister-in-law, Tallat, and her daughter had come to visit London for the day in the October, I was already more used to it than I would have thought.

We had spent the day having a wander around Covent Garden and doing a little shopping. There were still a fair amount of tourists around; London being one of those cities that keeps it's tourist trade all year round. I had to use the public lavatory in Covent Garden and had asked Tallat to wait a moment.

I was almost at the entrance to the toilets when she shouted: "Rakeem!" across the square, to point and motion that she and her daughter would be looking at some market stalls when I returned. I waved acknowledgement and hurried down the stairs. I thought no more of it.

When I came back, Tallat was grinning at me. Confused, I asked her what she was smiling at. She replied: "You didn't even hesitate when I called after you. It was instant. Your head whipped round as if you had been called Rakeem all your life."

This made me smile too.

I have fully embraced my name now and have even begun to ask the members of my family if they wouldn't mind making more of an effort. My dad has made the switch instantly. My mother and younger sister don't even seem to try.

The only reason that being called Neil has been bothering me so much is that my trips to Scotland have been so sporadic that I am spending the vast majority of my time being called Rakeem. Having to spend a week or two being referred to by my old name is so jarring in my mind. It has, after all, been nearly a decade. Almost a third of my life.

As time has rolled all-too-quickly on, each new meeting means just one more person that knows me as Rakeem. Most of those that woulld still call me Neil are fading into the past.

I am still the same man - as much as any of us are over time - but the fact remains that I am a Muslim man, with a Muslim name, in a pale, pasty-white, Scottish man's body.