Four entertaining stories from my trip to Morocco.

ONE - Vicar in Ralph Lauren.

Thanks to it being the off season and me having a fundamental lack of responsibilty with money, we stayed at two rather nice hotels in Morocco. The first guests we met were a well to do couple in their late fifties from Gloucester. Whenever I meet someone, I can't help but try to impress them with my knowledge of where they're come from. It's a little bit of a twattish trait but at least I'm making an effort. As soon as they said Gloucester all my brain kept shouting was 'FRED WEST! FRED WEST!'.

I managed to avoid that subject by moving onto another of my conversational weapons and asking what they did for a living. Seriously guys, try it. Turns out she was a nurse and he a vicar. Here's the thing, they were dreadfully posh, staying in a relatively pricey hotel and wearing what looked to me like expensive clobber. In this country at least, I've always been under the impression that those are two of the worst paying professions. I decided that he must be a former stock broker who handily found God just before the last crash. Being the judgemental arsehole that I am, I delved deeper and asked how long he'd been in the 'old clergy game'. Twenty four years it turns out and before that? A CEO? A drug baron? A yacht salesman? No, a fucking teacher! There's something seriously fishy going on there and I can't prove it but I am dead certain that this couple in some way profited from the Fred and Rose West murders. IT. JUST. ADDS. UP.

TWO - The Branson Couple

Hot weather, laziness and a basic lack of curiosity about other cultures (not true, I've been to Epcot) meant that we spent a lot of our time by the pool. Our most common fellow pool dwellers were in their mid twenties and quickly became known as 'The Branson Couple'. That was because he always had a copy of Richard Branson's autobiography in his hand. Always. Even when he was in the pool, he leaned on the edge with 'Like A Virgin' in his hands. Here's the thing though, and this became an obsession of mine, he never seemed to be reading it. At the end of the four days in which we shared the same hotel it appeared as if he had read no more than ten pages. He just sat there, talking to his transfixed girlfriend about Richard Branson.

Here's something he actually said after reading his paragraph for the afternoon...

"Did you know that Richard Branson invented Times Square?"

I think you might want to see if you can get another source to verify that for you mate because it sounds like Branson might be telling you a bit of a porky there. Yes, it would seem that in one of Richard Branson's books he claims that Times Square, named 'Times Square' in 1904, was invented by Richard Branson.

THREE - Ramadam

Two things worried us before arriving in Morocco. We wondered whether we had been foolish to book a holiday in a place which was forecast to have 40 degree heat and which was going through the last week of Ramadam. That doesn't seem like a good combination. Between the hours of 6am and 7.45pm every healthy adult in the entire country was refraining from food and water. Literally everyone who served us on our entire trip was staring at us through a kind of giddy haze.

"What's that you want? Another Mojito? And a big bottle of still water? Of course. And a chicken sandwich? With fries? Yep. Sure. Sure. I'll just walk up those stairs to our furness of a kitchen and get that for you. No worries. You stay in the shade and surreptitiously listen to The Branson Couple with a view to mocking them in your shitty blog."

While we sat under our umbrellas and sipped on our cold drinks complaining how hot it was, we watched starving gardeners hard at work in the midday sun. It's amazing how quickly you can put guilt to one side.

FOUR - DANGER!

On our first trip to the souks of Marrakech we got a little lost. No problem, I thought, for I am a seasoned traveller. Salt, pepper, herbs. The lot. Yes these souks have a reputation for hassle and ball ache-ery, but I think I know how to handle it thank you very much. My ability to fit in abroad is yet another reason why I am the natural successor to Michael Palin.

I thought about an old university friend who came back from Marrakech telling tales of being tricked, virtually kidknapped and cheated out of money. That won't happen to me. He was naive, whereas I am fucking Phileas Fogg up in this bitch.

Three minutes after having that thought someone offered us directions. Someone else had already given us some without any hassle so we figured this guy was the same. He saw that we weren't some weak ass Europeans he could mess with. But then rather than just pointing us the right way he insisted on leading us there. For ten full minutes. We sensed that this wasn't just a scout collecting a good deed badge. We would have to pay for his services.

Once he had dropped us near our destination he mumbled his price at us. It was, I thought, a high price. Enough money to get a black cab home on a Saturday night. We handed him something we considered more reasonable. Immediate anger.

"This is for small boy. You give this money to small boy. Not for me."

Like a dickhead, I showed him exactly where my credit card was by putting my hand in my pocket to hold it. He looked at my pocket and at me, letting me know he knew the score. He pointed at my girlfriend's handbag, implying we owed him the contents. There suddenly seemed to be a lot of dark corners around and not many people. Briefly, I pictured my rape.

As it happened, five minutes of firm insistence that he wasn't getting anymore, in the manner of my dad telling me I couldn't have an ice cream was enough for him to leave. It was that same kind of head mastery attitude that got Britain it's empire. Oh no, hang on. I've just checked. It was guns.

Beer Snakes

Y'all know what a beer snake is? It's something that happens, as far I can tell, only in Britain and only at cricket matches. It's controversial too. As you enter the stands at The Oval cricket ground in London you will see signs which say that...

"The making of 'beer snakes' is prohibited. Furthermore, anyone seen making a 'beer snake' or facilitating the making of a 'beer snake' will be ejected from the ground and shot".

That is (almost) what is says, word for word. So what is this dangerous evil creation? For the uninitiated, a 'beer snake' is a stack of empty beer cups, held by a number of secretly depressed men, which, once large enough, begins to resemble a giant snake.

During the summer, I will sometimes join 21,000 other people at The Oval on Friday nights to watch T20 cricket. A visit to any London pub, restaurant or Tesco Metro shopping basket would suggest that Londoners like to drink every night of the week. So 'legitimate' drinking night, Friday, just means heavier indulgence. This is very much in evidence at The Oval. Civil servants, human resources managers and legal secretaries all clock off and bundle in there under the pretence of watching cricket. By the start of play most will have drank more units than we're told a small woman should drink in a week.

Roughly half way through the game, some fancy dress wearing P.E teachers on a stag do will put together a stack of about twenty cups, quickly taken away by a steward. This will be half noticed by the closest 2,000 people when a few boos are directed at the steward.

About fifteen minutes later, you'll hear the first localised chant of 'FEED THE SNAKE!'. Turn, and you'll see a sixty cup high stack and a flurry of excitement. A steward approaches. Boos rain out. Just as he's about to get there, the stack is quickly passed to someone too far for him to reach. Huge cheers. 'FEED THE SNAKE! FEED THE SNAKE!'. The closest 5,000 people are now throwing empty cups in the direction of the rapidly growing stack. No one is watching the cricket. Another steward approaches from the other side. Boos. The stewards laugh, good naturedly, but stick to their task. Now there's a third steward. They're closing in. Soon, the stack has nowhere to go. It's taken away and, we can only assume, humanely destroyed.

But wait! Two stands to our right there are not just one but TWO stacks, both at least as large as the recently confiscated one. Frenzied excitement. 'FEED THE SNAKE! FEED THE SNAKE!' A shower of empty cups. And look! Passed from row to row, the stacks are gradually moving towards each other. We all know what has to happen... the stacks must be conjoined. As two brave souls begin the delicate surgery, the crowd shout in anticipation 'Ohhhhhhhhhhhh'. A world famous cricketer hits an incredible six. No one notices. And then it happens - the stacks are successfully connected. Huge cheers. Unbridled joy. The tower turns from vertical to horizontal. Those lucky enough to be underneath it hold what can now officially be called a 'snake' aloft with pride. Everyone in the ground gets a hint of what the VE Day celebrations must have been like.

'FEED THE SNAKE!' FEED THE SNAKE!'.  But we're running out of cups now and each new one is merely adding to the innevitability of the snake's eventual death. Unable to take the strain of it's unweildy weight and the approaching net of stewards, the snake slowly dies.

There is nothing more representative of what is right and what is wrong with Britain in 2015 than 'beer snakes'. They should win the Turner Prize. I urge you to go and see one before they die out.

Brothers

Me and my brother used to make my other brother think that he didn't exist.

From roughly 1989 until 1993, the three of us shared a room. We lived in a two bedroomed house in Newcastle and my parents (selfishly I think) decided that they wanted one of those bedrooms entirely to themselves. A much fairer arrangement would have been for us to alternate who slept in a three person room and who in a two person one on a nightly basis. That way we'd each get the chance for a little more space and we'd get to know each member of the family a bit better. But no, we lived under a kind of adults versus children apartheid. Come to think of it, it may having been Mandela's impending election in 1994 that brought our own tyranny to an end. Either that or us moving to a three bedroomed semi in Essex.

In our three child bedroom (or township) spirits were kept up by fucking about. The three Craig boys were born in '80, '84 and '88 respectively. At the opening ceremony of each Summer Olympics my mother would pop out a brand new baby boy. Those relatively large age differences gave me, the eldest, a rather healthy upper hand. While the other two slept on a bunk bed, my dad constructed a sort of shelf/tree house type thing high on the opposite end of the room for me. From there I was able to hold court. I scared the shit out of them with improvised ghost stories. The best of those revolved around a man who climbed through windows, took children, killed them and then put them into a machine which extracted the salt from their bodies. He went on to sell that salt to chip shops.

In 1991 I turned eleven and Alec, the youngest, turned three. The mental advantage I had over him was unfair. Mason (seven years old, born at the Los Angeles Olympics) and I playfully wound Alec up. The most memorable occasions were when we pretended that we were the only two people in the room.

ME: Mason?
MASON: Yeah.
ME: What do you think it would be like if we had another brother? Do you think it would be good?
MASON: Yeah.
ME: But we don't have a another brother do we?
MASON: Yeah, it's just you and me.
ALEC: Hey! What about me?
ME: Don't you think it's weird that mum and dad bought a bunk bed when there's just you.
MASON: Yeah. It's weird.
ME: Yeah. The bottom bed's just empty isn't it?
ALEC: Hey!
MASON: Yeah, it's empty. There's no one in it.
ALEC: Hey! Can't you hear me?!
ME: Just you and me, eh, Mason.
ALEC: Hey! Mason!
MASON: Yeah.
ALEC: Fergus! Mason! Can't you hear me?!
ME: Can you hear a little fly buzzing or something?
MASON: Yeah, I think so.
ALEC: It's not a fly! IT'S ALEC! YOUR BROTHER! HELLO! HELLOOOOOO!
ME: Oh, it's gone now.

I made another human being question their own existence. Fucking hell. I am a monster.

Sundayfication

I don't know about you guys but I'm tired of hearing about Britain running out of bees. You can't turn to page 34 of your newspaper without reading about it. But then, no one reads newspapers anymore either. Britain is running out of bees and newspaper readers. What else? Pubs. That's what.

I wrote a blog post about this about five years ago. Since then the situation has got worse. Far worse. Britain is running out of pubs and no one seems to give a shit. I'm talking about actual pubs and here is my definition of an actual pub...

1) I should be able to go into the pub on a Tuesday afternoon and find at least four alcoholics at the bar. They're allowed to talk to each other but they must know each other from no where other than that pub.

2) I want a pool table, dart board or at the very least a quiz machine.

3) If there is a child in that pub I want it to be an eight year old spending his fortnightly Saturday afternoon with his semi absent father by the pool table - NOT A BABY IN A BUGGY.

4) This pub cannot serve hot food. Crisps, pork scratchings and possibly some cheese rolls. NOTHING THAT REQUIRES A KNIFE AND FORK.

5) Women are certainly allowed in this pub but it is still ran primarily as a creche for men.

These pubs are dying out and they are dying out fast. And who's fault is that? YOURS. Why? Cos you love your fucking Sunday roasts so much don't you. But you can't be arsed to make one can you? No. So you trundle down to your local, point at your mouth and say 'where's my fucking dinner?'.

And so we've had what I call the Sundayfication of London (and I suspect, most of the rest of Britain). All pubs now revolve around Sunday. The market gets what the market wants and what the market wants apparently is leg of lamb. Go into a gastro pub on a Tuesday. Not that you would of course because you're still digesting your fucking roast but go on, go in. They'll be some newspapers at the end of the bar next to an unlit candled wine bottle. Pick them up. Not Tuesday's newspapers are they? No. No, they're fucking well not. Every piece of reading will have been part of a Sunday newspaper. If you're lucky there might be a Sunday Times magazine left but most likely you're looking at the scraps - the money section, the 'family' section and the section that best demonstrates the utter uselessness of print newspapers - the TV listings.

The time between Sundays for neighbourhood pubs now is just dead air. They might fill it for an evening with a quiz night but where does that leave Gary and Barry and Terry? They had enough of feeling thick at school, thank you very much.

Look, I love a pub roast and I love a pub quiz but while we're all worrying about the rain forests and the bees something far more important is disappearing. Pubs. There's about four actual pubs left in London now. The rest are just restaurants masquerading as pubs.

Back in the last century it was all about the Campaign For Real Ale. Well, that battle's been won. You've even got your ye olde tankard style jugs back. Congratulations. I for one appreciate it, well the good beer anyway. But if I now have no other option than to drink that beer sat between a child with a colouring book and someone eating mackerel tagine with a diet coke then I'm not sure the battle was worth it.

Right, that's it. I'm writing a book on this.

Haircut

I got my hair cut today. Actually, I got all of my hairs cut - at least the ones on my head anyway. I don't enjoy getting haircuts which is why I only do it about once every two months. That means I have about three weeks of relative confidence in my head followed by two weeks of 'I should probably get a haircut' followed by three weeks of avoidence of mirrors. How often do most men go? Whenever I'm in a barbers I find it difficult to tell the difference between the men who've just had a haircut and those who are about to.

Here's why I don't enjoy it... for roughly twenty minutes you are forced to look at yourself go through varying stages of unattractiveness whilst a stranger prods at your personal space. That seems fair enough right? I'm not one for conversation either. Everyone else in the barbers seems to be having a right old good time - nattering away like breakfast DJs. Me and my hair dresser meanwhile look like we're in a difficult marriage.

Once the haircut instructions have been sorted it goes like this...

'Day off work today?'

'Yeah'

'Lovely'

Silence.

I don't know how to get it past that point and have no real desire to do so. What should I say?

'Well, kind of. I'm self employed you see so almost every day is a day off should I choose it to be so. What's actually happening here is I'm using the need for a haircut to avoid writing the novel I started last November but am making slow progress on because I'm finding myself going into dark areas which are forcing me to confront the worst aspects of my personality. Later on I'll most likely write up our conversation in a blog which will make me feel like I've done something but will ultimately take me no closer to achieving anything of real consequence'.

'Do you mind if I use the clippers on the side here?'

'No, go ahead'

On a positive note, I think I've cracked what my standard haircut is. I'm going for what I like to call 'normal' and until hair loss forces me to change tack, that's what I'm sticking with.

I'm taking some Americans to watch a 20/20 cricket match tonight. That should be fun. I'm intending on loudly telling them the wrong rules...

'EVERY TIME A FIELDER TOUCHES THE BALL HE GETS A POINT. THE FIRST TO TEN POINTS THEN GETS A GO WITH THE BAT ALTHOUGH WE DON'T CALL IT A BAT, WE CALL IT A WICKET KEEPER. HEY! OFF SIDE! OFF SIDE!'

Then if anyone tries to correct me I'm going to shout...

'SAY ONE MORE WORD AND I WILL DESTROY YOU. DESTROY YOU!'

I Can't Drive.

I can't drive. This year I will be 35. Hang on a second. Sorry, I just saw that last sentence and had to yell at the wall with tears streaming down my face for fifteen minutes. 35! This was very much meant to be a blog post about my relationship with driving but I may just have to rant about this whole turning 35 prick of a situation for a couple of thousand words. I mean, who is responsible for this? Am I supposed to just sit here and take this kind of treatment? There's a packet of biscuits on my desk. I've eaten two. I might as well eat the whole lot. Enjoy my last few years, eh, before I'm bundled into the incinerator for the good of the nation.

Right, driving...

No. Hang on. Election tomorrow. I will vote for any party who will pledge to freeze the ageing process. Not taxes, not energy bills, not train prices - fucking time! I want you to freeze time and I want you to do it now. Can we not put some kind of quango together to work on this bitch? You can argue over the top rate of tax all you like but no one seems to be addressing the real issue which is the fact that we've all got death running towards us at ten million miles an hour.

I realise that if you're older than me (perhaps a grandchild has just shown you how to use the internet) this is a little irritaing. Sorry. Just because you're further along in the decaying process than me it doesn't mean I can't complain. Can the people of Greece not complain just because the people of North Korea are worse off? What? Yes, I'm okay. Of course I'm thinking rationally. That was a totally measured comparison to draw. I'm fine. Honestly. DON'T TOUCH MY FUCKING BISCUITS!

Driving. Yeah, can't do that. But you know who else couldn't drive? Jesus Christ. I'm in good company. Why can't I drive? Combination of a few things. I didn't have much (any) money in my teens. Any Americans reading this may be surprised that money was a factor. Unlike in your country, we don't just hand over $50 and a smile for our licenses. You have to take proper lessons and that costs a bit.

Then I went to university, where not only did I not have any money but at no stage in those three years was I sober enough to legally drive a car. Again, Americans - I know you all think nothing of driving with the wheel in your right hand and a margarita in your left but we're a little more uptight. Think Jeffrey the butler from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

Since University, I've lived in London where driving a car is completely unnecesary and only really an invitation for people to ask you to help them move house. Fuck that.

So there's my excuses. The truth is though that I'm terrified. In five years of Craft, Design and Technology at school, all I made was a bread board. Essentially, I picked up a piece of wood that looked like a bread board, took it for one trip round a jigsaw, and called it a bread board. I don't trust myself with heavy machinery. Would you feel safe with me prowling the roads (and most likely pavements) in a ton of metal on wheels? Nah, mate. Didn't think so.

And so, here I'll sit for the next half of my life, watching you lot drive around you planet killing MONSTERS.

I Faked Whooping Cough

It's 23 years since I spent seven weeks pretending to have whooping cough so that I could watch the World Snooker Championships and coverage of the 1992 General Election. It started with a bad cold, possibly a throat infection. I had a bad cough - there's no doubt about that. My mother took me to see the GP and upon learning that I hadn't been vaccinated for whooping cough* he mentioned that as a possibility.

I took two key facts from that consultation - 1) Whooping cough can last for up to three months and I should stay away from school as long as I have it. 2) A sure fire sign that I did have whooping cough would be if my coughing fits developed a 'whoop' noise as I took in breath.

I went home to work on my 'whoop'. In the days before internet, it was impossible for me to find out exactly what a 'whoop' sounded like. One thing I did have in my favour was that it was impossible for my parents to find out too. As long as my 'whoop' sounded plausible to a novice then I would be okay. Did my 'whoop' sound plausable? Listen mate, I was just a few years away from receiving an A* in GCSE Drama - of course it fucking did.

So this became my life for a few weeks. In exchange for a few exaggerated coughing fits a day and a bit of home work, I was free to do what any eleven year old home from school would do - watch political coverage on TV.

This is where my obsession with politics started. It's not ideology I'm into by the way. Not even issues really. All that stuff is way too hard. If you think you know what the fuck we should do with the NHS I would suggest that you are misguided. It looks like we'll soon get to the point where we can keep people alive until they're 150 as long as we spend £10 million a week on their drugs and they promise not to move. AND THAT'S A FACT!

Dealing with the actual issues involves moral dilemas and compromises and the odd clear conviction. Like I say - too hard. What I'm into is Cameron forgetting what football team he supports or Andrew Neil ripping a series of middle managers a new arsehole or the ongoing adventures of Grant Shapps. Stuff that doesn't matter. I like arguments I have zero chance of losing because I'm simply watching them.

That's not to say I don't pick sides and it's not to say that I don't care. It's just that, as with my well documented love for Neighbours, I'm happy to buy into the day to day bullshit narritive served up to me. This morning, for example, Cameron slipped on a Freudian and said this was a 'career defining election' before correcting himself with 'country defining election'. That'll be fun for a day. People will load it with lots of conspiracy revealing nonsense. It's funny. It's not important but it's funny. To me.

Anyway, the throat infection I suspect I did actually have cleared up and then I was left having to muster up entirely manufactured coughing fits. In time, they lost the enthusiastic energy of earlier performances and after seven weeks I was bundled back to school. My well informed John Major and Roy Hattersley quips didn't go as well with my classmates as I would have liked. It would be another four years until I touched a girl's boob.

*I think that my mother would like you to know that I wasn't vaccinated becasue of some crazy Daily Mail induced paranoia. Apparently there was a dodgy batch going around our area at the time. If you're into getting high on that sort of thing, there might be some still availible on the black market.