NaNoWriMo starts on Saturday. Jess and I now have matching shirts: The only real difference between them is that hers will get washed sometime during November. As usual she was way ahead of me and to tempt me away from my soon-to-be-stinky writing shirt she bought me the best t-shirt in the world: Roy was always a personal hero of mine. In a stupid attempt to use the NaNoWriMo as a jumping off point for other projects I have made a list of other November undertakings. # I'll be living on coffee and juice and NO takeaway food at all. We have a great kitchen now and I want to use its virgin surfaces for something more than just emptying Indian food out of a bag onto. # Whenever I get blocked I will work on a new design for Visible Monsters. I want this place shipshape before I leave for NYC. # Continue working on the new place room by room. By the close of NaNoWriMo I want this place to be EXACTLY as we want it. # Continue the CULL & ARCHIVE project that I started this evening by sorting out my old writing. I have way too much paper filed away and not enough papier-m�ch� ART. # Deny other media orientated distractions. The Osbournes shall no longer have sway over me and Dr Who can repeat itself silly without my participation. Wish me luck.

Time to go home. Thank fuck. Today was horrible... I hate working in bookshops when an 'event' book like the Diana one is published. All these Sun readers dragging their knuckles as they slobber into a bookstore for the first time in their miserable lives hoping for something with lots of pictures and small words... And tomorrow I am free for the day. I think we are going to see The Firery Furnaces but I also have tickets for the American Splendor preview... Decisions decisions...

I'll fill in the details later Our move was complicated by the fact that three separate moves took place at the same time. Our removal company turned up on the Thursday morning bright and early. Ten minutes later another van arrived to take away the crap belonging to Jess' aunt that we have been storing for the last two years. An hour after that and our lodger's dad arrived with a van to empty her room. At one point there were 15 people trying to carry boxes out through the same front door. A couple of hours later and we were left alone with a bewildered cat, a television and a bed. Thankfully that evening we went out to see Funeral For A Friend with Daisy. I hadn't heard more than a couple of songs before we went but it was a great gig. Been a while since I saw a five piece on stage and they really wanted to be Iron Maiden - bless their little Welsh hearts. I picked up the CD a week or so ago but its not a patch on the live show. Go see them if you get the chance. So then we had just one last night in the old place before the removal guys picked up the few remaining boxes and pieces of furniture. It didn't really hit us until the next morning that we were really leaving. It hit Jess a lot harder of course - she grew up there and all her memories of her mum are wrapped up there too. I shot a lot of pics of the place and especially the garden. The removal guys got stuck in traffic so we had an extra hour to stroll around the garden and pick some flowers to press. It was a difficult morning. After that it was full speed with the new place. The previous owner was still in the process of leaving so we killed a few hours in the cosy pub right next door (cat and all) until we got word that all the money had transferred and that the place was ours. Then we just had to wait for the removal guys to do their thing. That was slow work. They overloaded the lift and broke it and then two pieces of furniture refused to be squeezed up the spiral staircase. Not that it matters now - the lift is fixed and we are shopping tomorrow for a new table. Then we had a swish new place that was filled to the brim with boxes. It took us a good week to break the back of that job but now you can see the place that we fell in love with. If you are in the London area expect an invite soon.

So another week without broadband. BT are s l o w l y making their way towards us but I'm not holding my breath. The new laptop is also about ten days away. We do have an iPod and cable television to keep us occupied. And the unpacking. Yesterday I had a blitz on the last remaining room while Jess watched Amelie. There are still one or two things we need to change and a few more boxes left to unpack but we are winning the battle. As I type this a drunk is staggering around outside the store screaming abuse at the people waiting for buses. I can't wait to get out of London. I handed in my notice here and it looks like I'll be leaving around the 15th of November. We'd like to get to New York soon after that but we are waiting for another set of plans regarding the flat and the cat to fall into place. Everything seems to be dragging. Only five days to go to NaNoWriMo. We had out first guests around last night and that helped the new place feel a lot more like home. Once we have the new lights in I think we will have cracked it. And the broadband of course. No reply yet from Mr Bush. Tomorrow I get a new tattoo...

You have now been officially invited to London's fourth FLASH MOB, and the worlds FIRST GLOBAL FLASH MOB. If you do not know what a FLASH MOB is then it can best be explained as an inexplicable gathering of a group of people in a place for a short period of time. Be sure to forward this note as quickly as possible to other people you know who might like to join in. (1) At some point during the day on SATURDAY October 25th synchronise your watch by using the speaking clock or the following website :- http://www.timeticker.com/main.htm and click on England/London* (2) By 2:10pm on the 25th you should locate yourself in and and around the plaza at Covent Garden Market at the russell street end of the square. Act casual and mill about.. (covent garden tube station may or may not be open so plan for alternative routes) Aim to get there on time, if you are early, stall, if you are late hurry! No one needs to rush. (3) PRINT OUT THESE INSTRUCTIONS AND BRING THEM WITH YOU. (4) ALL THE INSTRUCTIONS YOU NEED ARE IN THIS EMAIL, THERE WILL BE NO INSTRUCTIONS HANDED OUT ON SITE TO AVOID FLASHMOB HIJACKERS! (5) At precisely 2:15 start to circulate the piazza and the central market main building in a clockwise direction (6) Walk briskly and keep up with the flash mobber in front of you Do not run. (7) This is a Global Flash Mob! As you pass each corner of the main building, greet fellow mobbers with one of the following:- a. English hello! I'm pleased to meet you b. Spanish Hola, encantado de conocerte (phonetic: O-la, enkanTAdo dekonoSERte) c. French Bonjour, enchant� de vous rencontr� (phonetic: Bonjoor, anshant� de voo rencontr�) d. Polish mi�o mi ciebie pozna� (phonetic: me wo me tchebie poznatch) e. Italian Ciao! Piacere di conoscerti! (phonetic: Chao! Pee ah che reh dee coh noh sher tee) f. Mandarin ni hao! wo jiandao ni hen gaoxing (phonetic: nee how! wo jandow nee hen gowjing) g. Korean phoenetic AN-NYUNG-HA-SE-YO! BAN-GAP-SUM-NI-DA h. Russian Privet , jarad tebja videtj (8) be brave try each one in turn! (9) At 2:25 precisely, jump for joy and cheer, this is the signal to leave the area, the flash mob is over (10) These instructions contain everything you need to know and MOST importantly the time to leave the MOB site by. The dispersal is just as important to the success of this MOB as is the arrival. Everyone should leave as quickly and orderly as they can and truly disperse. PLEASE DO NOT LOITER , PLEASE DO NOT RUN, ENSURE SUCCESS AND PROMPTLY LEAVE. (9) After the Flash MOB, carry on with your lives as per normal, await instructions for Santa in December. (8) At all times remember that a MOB is just for fun. (7) Instruction numbers may go down as well as up All around the world at 2:15 local times on saturday the following cities are taking part with us in this global flash mob. New Plymouth/New Zealand, Sydney/Australia, Seoul/Korea, Manila/Philippines, Taipei/Taiwan, Beijing/China, Hong Kong/China, Kuala Lumpur/Malaysia, Singapore/, New Delhi/India, Omsk/Siberia, Russia, Bombay/India, Moscow/Russia, Kharkov/Ukraine, Odessa/Ukraine, St. Petersburg/Russia, Alexandria/Egypt, Kishinev, Moldova, Helsinki/Finland, Athens/Greece, Stockholm/Sweden, Budapest/Hungary, Cape Town/South Africa, Vienna/Austria, Prague/Chechia, Venice/Italy, Berlin/Germany, Oslo/Norway, Augsburg/Germany, Rome/Italy, Hamburg/Germany, Cologne/Germany, Nice/France, Amsterdam/Netherlands, Barcelona/Spain, Toulouse/France, London/England, Belfast/Ireland, Dublin/Ireland, Rio de Janeiro/Brazil, Sao Paulo/Brazil, Boston/Massachusetts USA, Montreal/Canada, New York City/New York USA, Philadelphia/Pennsylvania USA, Washington D.C./USA, Toronto/Canada, Palm Beach/USA, Fort Lauderdale/Florida USA, Miami/Forida USA, Orlando/Florida USA, Columbus/Ohio USA, Huntsville/Alabama USA, New Orleans/Mississippi USA, St. Louis/USA, Des Moines/Iowa USA, Houston/Texas USA, Indianapolis/Indiana USA, Kansas City/Kansas USA, Minneapolis/Minnesota USA, Austin/Texas USA, Chicago/USA, Mexico City/Mexico, Billings/Montana USA, Denver/Colorado USA, Tempe/Arizona USA, Phoenix/Arizona USA, Salt Lake City/Utah USA, Edmonton/Canada, Santa Rosa/USA, Las Vegas/Nevada USA, Los Angeles/California USA, Milwaukee/Oregon USA, Santa Cruz/USA, San Francisco, Portland/Oregon USA, Seattle/USA, Vancouver/Canada, Toledo/Oregon USA. Still confused, surf on over to http://www.geocities.com/londonflashmob/ for some more info and surfing links.

My email was down yesterday. If you sent me something important it may be worth resending it if you didn't get a reply.

Bored at work today. Found this on the interweb: Which led me to emailing the Pres: Dear Mr President, I am in the process of buying an action figure based on you and your historic Aircraft Carrier landing when you landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) and officially declared the end to major combat in Iraq. Before I go ahead with my order (which I understand has nothing at all to do with you, your government or The Whitehouse) I was wondering if you could shed some light on one of the details. The figure comes with "a realistic head sculpt, fully detailed cloth flight suit, helmet with oxygen mask, survival vest, g-pants, parachute harness and much more". What exactly are g-pants? I am guessing that they have something to do with g-force but all my google searches take me to g-strings which isn't exactly what I was after. Can you let me know what they are please? Thanks for taking time out in your busy schedule (I am planning on visiting Australia myself at the end of the year - was it nice?). Regards and good luck with it all. Mike Atherton London United Kingdom PS I noticed that my spellchecker wants to change the word 'Whitehouse' into 'whitewash'. You may want to get someone to look into that. I'll let you know if I get a reply. Drop him a line yourself: president@whitehouse.gov

Gig update: Last week we saw Funeral for a Friend Monday night we saw Helloween and tonight Demented Are Go at The Underworld.

So we moved. Not the smoothest of transitions but we are still alive and slowly getting used to our new surroundings. I'll fill in the details later. For now we have no broadband but the phone is hooked up. I'll be emailing and texting out the new number and address later this week. Once we have the place unpacked properly we will invite some of you over. At the moment one room is nothing but boxes but the rest of the place is slowly coming to life. The cat was not a happy chap but now he has got over his fear of the spiral staircase he seems to be a lot more relaxed. Too many new nooks to sniff at for him to get too concerned about the lack of a garden yet. Yesterday, I showed him the view and he panicked. Norman Foster's London Gherkin had that effect on me too. Back in work today which is a nice change from throwing boxes up and down the stairs but I need to sit down and draft up my notice letter. I've been putting it off because its still a lot of fun working here but the sooner I leave the sooner we can get on with the travel plans... My mobile is still the same so give me a shout if you need to.

Holy Fuck I enjoyed that.

So I got to interview Adrian Tomine yesterday and he was very cool. Few follow up questions today and then off it goes to Jessa. I'll post a link once the interview is published. This is exactly the kind of thing that I want to spend more of my time doing once I get out of this place. That all took a step closer yesterday and we now have a provisional moving date for this coming Friday. Busy busy.

Here's another great LONDON story: This morning I'm stood on the tube and I can't be bothered taking the book out of my bag so I just watch people instead. This is a very enjoyable pastime as the city is overflowing with crackpots. So after some time watching people read their crappy tabloids, underlined bibles and each others chests I notice this one guy fidgeting. He is obviously in some discomfort. Two more stops and he gets off at Waterloo. He leaves behind a small puddle of blood on the seat. Now this is rush hour and seats are at a premium so the next person in line simply takes her big thick Financial Times and soaks up the red stuff until she is satisfied its not going to soak through onto her designer arse and then sits herself down. It gets better. This human dumpling gets off a few stops later at Leicester Square at which point some guy opposite leans over to grab her newspaper and manages to stain his white trousers with a dashing splash of red. He was still wailing when I got off at the next stop. All this took the attention away from the fact that today I am sporting a large droopy moustache with matching chin strip.

I've been neglecting the blog. To be honest I'm a little bored with the format. Plus I have been staggeringly busy. But more on that later. I think this is going to be a long post. No photos though I promise. I am listening to You can't fight what you can't see by Girls vs Boys. I picked it up from the sale in Borders yesterday. I work in an exceptionally good bookstore but like the anti-Randal sometimes I just need to go to a crappy bookstore. I also picked up a really weird Japanese horror comic book - not the best thing I've ever read but interesting. We ended up in Borders because we ran away from the Borderline and the hellish music that had been raping our ears. Its been a long long time since I heard a good unknown band. Every fucker and his dog seems to be starting up the noisy guitar thing at the moment - it's not a good thing. So before that I got in between two junkies who burst into the store intent on pulling knives on each other. I am losing count of the times I have rang 999. I am also getting bored of London. The house move picked up some speed and then almost spun out of control completely. Turns out the family buying our place were expecting to move in here this coming Friday while our own new place was still in limbo. A few telephone calls later and we think we may have sorted everything out. We will know more on Monday or Tuesday but it looks like we will be out of the old homestead before the end of the month. Super. If the house sale goes though as planned we will be able to confirm our travel plans. The idea is to get across to New York in November and then spend four weeks making our way to San Francisco, calling on friends along the way. Then down to Mexico for another few months and then back on the plane but this time to Australia to annoy another bunch of friends. This could all change but for the moment there it is. Which means I'll be handing in my notice at Foyles soon. Shame. I'm hoping to be able to come back after we have wandered for a while because I am still not bored with the bookselling lark and if you are going to do it anywhere then you should do it here. Be nice to get away from the general public though. As usual I've also been writing a lot and fiddling around with different ideas. Now some of my pals over on Black Napkins want me to get involved in something new too. It will be nice to have a little more time to work on that stuff. Which brings me to hardware. The computer at home is on its last legs. We were planning to get a new box for the new place but now that we've brought the travel plans forward we will probably hang fire on that idea and get something more portable. It was frustrating having to rely on internet cafes while in Hong Kong (although most of the coffee shops there have free broadband access as the norm) so I guess what we need is something light but durable that we can access the interweb with from anywhere. Blogging via a mobile would also be handy... I'll start hunting around for new kit this evening and tomorrow but any suggestions would be appreciated. Which brings me back to the blog itself. I'm feeling its pretty dead at the moment. I need to take some time to go into all the old stuff scattered around this domain and tidy it the hell up, delete all the crap and bring it into line. Then I need to make everything instantly FTPable so I can update easily and quickly as we move around. I also want to make it easier to get hold of me as my email is getting more and more clogged. Not so much with spam but with brand new people emailing me out of the blue. I think I'll set up a dedicated secondary email address... My day to day blogging may become a little hit and miss while I start getting to grips with all this but I'll probably still be posting daily on Black Napkins. And I'll be through the email backlog soon so if I owe you a response you'll get it over the next couple of days. I have tomorrow off which is going to be great. Jess finished her contract so she is once more a lady of leisure - treading water until the house move finally clicks into place. This week we need to organise the moving company and a skip for all the crap we need to chuck... Busy busy. I'll pick this up later.

Photos. A whole fuckload of them. If you are not interested in what we got up to in Hong Kong or have a slow browser please turn away now. The rest of you can take a look... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This was the view from out hotel room - 18 floors up and overlooking the harbour: Slightly different view from the room - We were surrounded by more regular buildings but you can begin to see the more outlandish pieces of architecture in the distance that make up the awesome skyline: The view straight down - You can see clothes hanging from almost every window in Hong Kong: Slightly out of focus Jess. A trio of the first of the more impressive buildings we came across. The skyline takes shape as we move out to the islands: Our wake: Skyline. You should see this place lit up at night... And this place is GREEN. Lantau Island. The Giant Buddah The Giant Mike More Buddah action. Jess in Buddah's shadow Outlying Lantau. Outlying Mike. Worshipping statues. I SO wanted these things to come alive Ray Harryhausen style Getting closer to the big guy. View from the top. Jess looking cute as hell. Even the monks were horny. Jess doing the Tripitaka thing. Bored by Buddah we go off looking for something different. On our way back to the mainland. Honk Kong changes into a different city at night. This is maybe my favourite building in Hong Kong. The roof has these giant bear claws that reach into the sky. Local Feng Shui experts HATE it. It took us a while to get hold of the self portrait photo thing. Hong Kong advertising. A woman and a pig on a lead Jess on the MTR (Mass Transit Railway). The underground here seems to run like a charm and is maybe the EASIEST one I ever had to navigate. The Power Puff Girls remind you to 'Mind the Gap'. Infernal Affairs 2 was the big movie. The original is already in Hollywood remake pre-producrion with maybe Brad Pitt set to star. We set off looking for the seedy side of town. This is where I get my tattoo done a couple of days later. Leather underwear also seemed like a big deal. En route to find Pandas. Flamingo in Ocean Park. The view from Ocean Park. Ocean Park Tower. A revolving viewing platform. The view from Ocean Park Tower. Sharks. THINGS swim around you as you walk through the aquarium tunnels. Jellyfish. The reef. The main reason I jumped at the chance to go to Hong Kong was to see these guys: This guy was so playfull. Unreal. When he had enough fooling around he simply got up and knocked on the door so he could go and have a nap. Awesome. My new tattoo. We found this very cool old school tattooist. Jess was pissed at the lack of hygene but I was just agog at the guy's skill as he listened to what I wanted and then just drew the whole thing freehand straight onto my arm and got straight to work. After an odd Indian meal we set off for a romantic walk on the opposite side of the island. The skyline was just beautiful. The place on the water that we found turned out to be a local make-out spot. Cute. Us. Just Jess. Just me. Chunking Express. Out and about. The view from The Peak. We got there via a 112 year old tram. Exploring The Peak. The HSBC building. Another Feng Shui nightmare as it looks like it could turn into a giant robot at any moment. Back in Hong Kong air conditioned coffee shops were a good place to hang out. Jess and a bull. More cool skyscrapers. On our way to Stanley Market and the beach. Not that we were the first ones there. That, I believe, is MORE THAN ENOUGH...