Last night, I went to the clubs in the nearby town of Bath with my friends. It was kind of crazy and I planned to write a long blog entry summarising what happened, but then I realised I can extend each of the noteworthy things that happened into their own entries. Here’s one of the crazy things that happened.
I was having a chat with my friend Octavia when her mobile phone started ringing and she walked off to answer it in private. I wasn’t left alone for long though; a few moments later Elliott Egan walked over, heavily intoxicated with alcohol.
    “Hello, Egan,” I said.
    “Alright? Having a good time? You having much to drink?” he asked.
    “Yeah, I’m enjoying myself,” I said. “I have had two alcoholic drinks, but that was kind of crazy, I’m not going to have more.”
    “Ah you need to!” He sounded a bit disappointed. “Anyway, I need to have a pee.”
    Egan then jumped onto the other side of the wall we were stood against; unfortunately, there was a twenty to thirty foot drop on the other side of it. He was now stood on the ledge and about to jump down.
    “What are you doing?” I asked, somewhat alarmed.
    “Like I said, I need to pee,” he said.
    “Perhaps you should climb onto this side of the wall where it’s safe,” I said, grabbing his arm.
    “Nah I really have to pee!”  he said and stepped over the edge. He was now hanging over the edge, the only thing keeping him up was me holding his arm, and he was quite heavy!
    “Get back up!”
    “Let go of me or I’ll wet myself!” he complained before worryingly trying to free the arm I had hold of.
    “Are you insane?” I asked, politely as possible. “Can you not see the huge drop below you? You’ll die if you fall down there.”
    “Nah I’ll die if you make me hold it in any longer let me go!” he said.
    “The difference is that you’ll actually die if you drop down there…”
    “No, seriously I have to go!” he was starting to get annoyed by this point.
    I decided it was best to try and call for some help. “Octavia, please help me pull him up! He’s quite heavy I’m not sure I can keep holding him!”
    Octavia continued obliviously chatting on the phone. I let out a gentle sigh.
    “It’s fine,” he tried to assure me. “Really, just let me have a pee!”
    “I’m not trying to stop you from having a pee; I’m trying to stop you from falling down there and breaking your legs, or worse. If you let me help you up you can just go in an actual toilet or in an alley if you really need to…”
    “Nah I can’t hold it that long, I need to go now!” he seemed to be forgetting that he was hanging over the edge of a significant drop.
    I was now, using both of my hands to try and pull him up by the arm of his I had a hold of. I was even pushing my feet against the wall to give me more force. Unfortunately, I’m very weak, so he just carried on hanging. At this moment, my friend Ben Wood walked past.
    “Oh my God what’s Egan doing there!?” asked Ben.
    “Well,” I said, “he wants to use the toilet, and he thinks it would be a good idea to jump down there first… Help my pull him up!”
    Ben reached down and grabbed Egan’s other arm and together we were able to pull him back up.
    “Huh, what happened here?” said Octavia, who had just come over after finishing her phone call.
    “Egan, go and use the toilet somewhere else! There’re plenty of secluded areas you can do it,” I told him.
    “Urgh fine,” he moaned and then ran off down the road to find somewhere else.

I’ll post more events from this day over the next week or so.

Have you ever really tried to stop thinking? To put an end to the ‘constant inner monologue’ (as I’ve heard the mind referred to in some book or another)? I mean, obviously, you won’t be able to do it right now because you’ll be reading this and so you’ll be thinking everything that I’ve written. But even if you weren’t reading it I’m sure your thought process would be something like this: “Okay, so I’m going to stop thinking… Now. Now I mean. Well, in just a second. Sheesh, why can’t I stop?” and onward. Because for some bizarre reason it is incredibly difficult to ever stop thinking.
    But last night, I managed it, and I don’t mean for a few seconds, but for a significant period of time. I couldn’t get to sleep last night because my mind kept babbling on about one thing or another and it was keeping me awake. So I decided to focus and to simply stop thinking. I managed it eventually and everything suddenly seemed to be so quiet. Perhaps this is the point of meditation, to literally stop yourself thinking. This whole thing may sound a little strange, but it was just very relaxing when I did it last night, so I thought I’d make a blog entry about it.

I was walking down towards the wilderness sometime last year. The sky was a dark-bluish grey because it was fairly late and would soon be dark. It was around winter time, so it was pretty cold, but it was the nice crisp chill of winter so I didn’t really mind, especially after doing up the buttons on my blazer. I’ve mentioned in previous posts the problems I’ve had with wasps, and so, this entry will show the problems I’ve had with cows…
    To get to the wilderness I have to pass through this fairly small field where there is occasionally kept a herd of cows. On this day those cows were in that field but, luckily for me, on my way there they were all bunched up in the corner of the field and far away from the path. As such, I walked on to the wilderness without incident.
    When I was standing at the top of the hill that overlooks the whole area I saw that there was a slight mist around the woods, making it all look much nicer than it usually does. The dark sky above it coupled with the shroud of mist gave it a kind of mysterious look, one that I really appreciated.
    After I’d wandered around there and enjoyed the view for about an hour (there was now barely any light at all) I decided to turn back and head home. Bizarrely, when I was back on the path which went through the cow field, all of the cows were huddled together in a kind of circle in the middle of the path. I thought this was a little suspicious, but decided I’d just walk around the cow circle and ignore them.
    However, as soon as I started passing the cows practically all of them turned to face me and began walking slowly towards me. I couldn’t really continue in the direction so the cows were slowly backing me up towards the edge of the field. I reached for my Trusty Water Bottle and swiped it at them a few times, hoping they would turn back and run away in fear, but unfortunately they totally ignored me. Realising that swiping at them wasn’t going to do any good, I decided to try scaring them off in a different way. Specifically, I tried scaring them off by squirting water at them. Again I realised that this wasn’t going to work, so I returned my water bottle to my pocket.
    Before long I would have been pushed all the way up to the edge of the field and crushed amongst the cows. With no other option, I quickly turned and tried to run away from the cows in the small gap between them and the large bush at the edge of the field. Cows are a little unintelligent, so it took them a while to realise I had started running away, but once they had they all turned and began to run after me in a large group. Due to the fact that I have only two legs and they have four, they were speedily catching me up, the problem being now that cows running all over you is much worse than cows slowly walking towards you.
    Luckily for me, as I said before, the field was pretty small, so before long I had reached the stile (which I virtually jumped over mid-sprint) and I was safe on the other side of the fence. The cows had all stopped running and were all stood around the fence, staring at me with their murderer eyes. But all I could do was laugh, I’d escaped and those cows and now they were left stupidly staring over the fence at me.

I apologize to any readers of my blog for not posting a new entry yesterday. Unfortunately I didn’t have access to a computer for a long enough period of time to write one. Anywho, today’s entry is about two failed attempts of mine to buy a birthday present for my friend.
    I was invited to a birthday party but I was rather low on money so I wondered whether or not I should buy them a gift. I told them my problem and asked whether they would mind if I didn’t buy them anything. He said, kindly, that it would be fine if I didn’t buy him anything because he only bought me a really cheap gift for my birthday.  The ‘cheap gift’ that he had bought me was a delicious plank of chocolate so I decided that I would buy him one as well.
    The next day I brought two pound coins with me while I headed out to do my MDSA work at school. My plan was to head into town once I was finished and to buy him the chocolate then. However, while I was out on the school field picking up rubbish a young boy ran up to me and said “Can I have a pound please?” obviously he needed it importantly for some reason so I gave it to him.
    “Oh well,” I thought, “I can probably still buy him some chocolate with just one pound…”
    Once I had finished my MDSA work I walked on into town. When I was just outside the super market there was a charity collector standing at a table with charity buckets. I took out my wallet, thinking that I would just give him my spare change, when I realised that all I had in it was the pound to buy the chocolate. If I hadn’t given him the pound it would have been like wagging a treat around in front of a dog’s nose before putting it back in the cupboard, so I gave the pound away. I decided that the next day (the day of the birthday party) I would buy him the chocolate.
    Again I went through my day as normal and did my MDSA work. Once I had finished I headed up to the office where the litter picking claws are kept and put them away. As I left the office I came across that boy who had asked for a pound the day before I thought to myself “Ah well, if he wants another pound I can probably still get one with my other pound. All I need to do is keep my wallet away when I see the charity man…”
    “Can I have two pounds please?” asked the boy.
    So I was left with no money to buy the gift. In the end I bought him a drink at the party, but the moral of the story is this: always bring more money than you think you’ll need.