So I’ve been here just over a week now, I’m still walking around like a lightbulb being propped up by two milk bottles and my hair wouldn’t look out of place on a 1980s record sleeve.  The days go so quickly here, I feel  like i’ve done more this week than I have in the past ten years.

The room in which I currently reside holds my belongings nicely.  The walls are adorned with origional artwork and the furniture evokes a forestial feeling. Dark stained wood that not only looks fantastic but smells incredible.  

The mornings are mine, I wake up early and drink the best coffee I’ve ever  tasted and smoke a cigarette in the open courtyard filled with trees and plants, it literally is a jungle out there. The heat doesn’t kick in until maybe ten or eleven so I enjoy the breeze and the clouds and the peace. I then head upstairs to find the family, which is one of my most treasured things here.  This place has life and soul in abundance. There’s a table in the kitchen, and we all sit around and talk and eat eggs and drink tea from a pot and plan the day ahead.

Finally, things feel the way they should.

                   Chapter One| The Big Move.

My flight leaves in fourteen hours and I believe that now is the time to start packing. As I run around accumulating more and more miscellany. Things I think I will need but obviously will not, forms a small mountain and I realize the ridiculousness and forced to rethink the whole affair, I start over. Paints and Pastilles come foremost, along with Pens and Paper. Creativity is Key and without These sacred items my soul shall surely cease to be. Light cottons, short shorts and sparkles ( for the evenings ) go in second alongside sandals and see-through scarves. Before I know it I’ve got over 50 pounds of belongings crammed into a Scarlett suitcase and it’s hard to believe this is all I will have for the foreseeable future, I take one last look at my treasure which didn’t make the final cut and separate myself. In with the new life, and out with the old one.  A small item snuck in at the last moment, Marmite, my mate, I will not miss you, because you are coming with me.

Airports are airports, I don’t have to go through all that for you. It was long, It was uneventful, by the time my bottom sat in its seat on the plane I was ready to get my drank on. I don’t think I've ever been so happy to receive a small amount of cheap acidic red wine, slightly sweetened by its complimentary nature. Free alcohol is the best kind of alcohol.

This alien unknown feeling, I’ve just realized, is one that can only be described as feeling alive. The temporal nature my life is taking, a toll it may be, but when I gaze out of the airplane window I get an overwhelming rush of feeling free. I am going, I am leaving to just go am be me. To be, to dream, to breathe and see.

                I found myself flying above Ireland, I have a seat in the aisle, Papa is sitting opposite and I have a stranger to my left.  I immediately notice an unbearable smell of dried cheese and E numbers plunging deep into each nostril and an overly polite, borderline patronizing accent saying ‘chips?’  with each exhale. Upon looking up I spot the trolley and exhale myself as this means wine, and as if by magic a perfectly tiny bottle of Merlot came to introduce himself, it would be rude not to say hello. We got rather aquatinted rather quickly and it was only when I got up to relieve myself I noticed how much fun drinking in the sky is. Three little bottles later and I’m being informed the red wine has run dry but there is plenty of Jack Daniels. So an even littler bottle presented itself and again, a beautiful friendship was born.

All of a sudden we were landing and the Eight hour flight from London to New York, quite literally flew by. The first leg of my journey was over and I had an Eight hour stop over to look forward too. Sleep had not happened yet and I could tell Papa was tired but I explained in no uncertain terms that we were going to visit Times Square in Manhattan. There was no way I’m forty five minutes from the Big Apple and I wasn’t going to take a bite. Serendipity reared her head and a bus pulled up directly in front of us, JFK to Manhattan. We headed on with heavy hand luggage and found two spare seats at the back. The bus was small, the road was ridiculous and I didn’t see an awful lot of anything for an awful long time, but as soon as I  saw the skyline on the horizon with the glittering lights winking at me, I winked back and my heart waved. I headed into the armpit of America with with my hopes high and my Papa next to me both exhausted and disorientated and neither one of us having a clue what we were letting ourselves in for. I checked the time, We’d hit Times Square at about Ten Thirty. What day is it? I thought, Saturday. Shit.

Admittedly it wasn’t one of my best thought out plans. It would have been an entirely better experience if we would have slept on the plane, eaten a decent meal, and unloaded the unnecessary items out of our hand luggage so we weren’t traipsing around the busiest city in the world aimlessly getting lost and flustered, tired, sweaty and disorientated.  Papa stopped a cop and asked where we could simply go and drink a cup of coffee and sit down, I wasn’t paying too much attention because my eyes had locked onto the guys name badge and it took every muscle in my body to contain myself. There is was, in its golden glory, KRAMER. As a huge Seinfeld fan this gave me the boost I needed and snapped me out of my mood. I wanted a photo but thought better of it, all I wanted was to sit down. It was about half past eleven before I clocked an A board offering a smoking terrace above an Irish bar, we ventured in, and upward on the steepest steps and were greeted by a pretty little Irish barmaid. Her dulcet Irish tones soothed my ears and her smile comforted my stress. At last, a seat, a beer, a cigarette. I sat alone outside and watched the tops of the taxicabs, observed the party goers and pondered my awaiting adventure. I stopped and smiled again, for the first time I felt where I was and I felt the excitement .  I am living .