This one is actually true. Mostly.

There has been, I feel, a silence from me that is without cause or explanation and I must apologise with a personal address to all my readers: Dear Mum, sorry I haven’t written very much but I have been busy...

I haven’t written anything since the seventeenth of March 2011 and frankly there is no reason for it beyond a lack of inspiration. However today someone told me that they had read my blog and I found myself flattered, valuing, as I do their opinion so highly. It has never before occurred that I need not force someone to read my writings so I was deeply shocked. Upon returning home I took some minutes to view my blog and slog back through the pages of self-congratulatory, mind-numbing nonsense in the hope of convincing myself to write more in a similar vein. Certainly I was inspired but for different reasons. My post entitled ‘Soap’ is, I think, the only writing with any (albeit negligible) merit owing, I feel, to its vast lie content. So I thought I would endeavour to write a more engaging blog, one which has a heavy grounding in truth. ‘Why not!’ I cry, ‘Is my life not exciting enough without resorting to absurd and foolish flights of fancy?’ ‘It is’ I respond to myself in a mildly schizophrenic manner.

I shall start with a tale of terror and trauma and a fine onion soup. I feel that every tale should have a happy ending and this one ends with onion soup – what could be finer?

Some months ago I embarked on a bold and daring adventure alone across the world. I thought to myself ‘There is not a good book where the hero doesn’t embark on some great and terrifying adventure across the globe, facing all manner of dastardly villains and cruel rogues and yet always managing to get by and befriend someone who will be of great value to them later in the tale’. So I set off like the adventurers of old in search of someone like that. My travels took me deep into Essex to a place called Stansted Airport. From there I flew to Jerez de la Frontera in Spain. I am aware that none of this is very interesting. Feel free to skip ahead.
Spain was dull and everyone spoke Spanish. That is all I really have to say on that place. Also where I stayed, whatever it was called, was really rubbish.
Needless to say I set forth from there heading for Morocco – where could be more fun than this historical country with its souks and its mosques and its medinas? Almost anywhere, as it turned out.

The bus I got to take me to Algeciras was slow and I all but missed my boat – a disaster averted. So I dashed to the departure gate where a Spanish lady ushered me through passport control and spoke to me reassuringly in that language. Did I mention I don’t speak Spanish? Because I don’t. However, being British, I just nodded like I understood. I was directed to a large white lounge with many many many chairs, all empty, positioned around the room. I took a pew and watched the vast clock slowly moved past the scheduled departure time for my ferry. Perturbed, I got up and sought to leave this purgatory in which I had found myself through either of the two electric doors at opposite ends of the room. However I was hindered in my movement by the sensor for the doors being on the outside of my current cosy little space. Frantically I dropped my bags and turned to the person I had been travelling with. Finding no one there and recalling that I was travelling alone I got my phone out and began to text everyone I knew just so they could share in my irrational abject fear. No one replied...

Eventually (after about 3 hours which, when in a room that looks like a prison visiting chamber, is a long time) the door at one end slid open and I fled from that terrible place, getting on a boat. Frankly I didn’t, at this point, care where it was going. It was just a change of scenery. Usually when a person is shut in a room with a pot plant it is days before they begin to anthropomorphise it and call it Geoffrey. In that room I lasted 10 minutes before Geoff and I were having the most detailed chats that have ever occurred between man and pot plant. I still miss him.

Anyway, back to the tale. I boarded the boat and sat down with relief. There were people and some of them were ginger. Now, I don’t know if you have ever been in a similar situation to me but nothing says ‘Hello, I’m a westerner and I speak English’ quite like ginger hair and a straggly ginger beard and one of those money-belt-pocket-things. It also says ‘Hello there little girl. Do you want a lollypop’ but I thought I was probably quite safe. This man and his wife (not ginger, French – there’s someone for everyone) helped me fill out my landing card, get a visa and they bought me a coke. Actually, maybe I wasn’t as safe as I thought.

Anyway we passed the hours quite nicely aboard this nameless rusting vessel and I found myself comforted by this strange old hippy and his wife. They had driven to Morocco from Scotland where they lived and managed some rich old bloke’s land. Eventually as we neared the port they bid me adieu. Insisting, boldly and, as it turned out, wrongly, that I was ‘Clearly a strong and independent young man, I will be just fine. People are very kind and helpful in this country’. And we arrived in Tangier. Or rather we arrived at what should have been Tangier. Regrettably it wasn’t and within mere minutes I was hyperventilating and casting desperately about for my slightly eccentric new friends (notably absent). I was, it emerged, 150km outside of Tangier. The ferry that I was due to have taken was cancelled (hence my long wait) and they had just put me on the next boat.

But I was still strong from the coke, gifted to me by that odd man and his wife and, with their words echoing in my head, I set out to Tangier. Three hours later and I was waiting at a bus stop outside the ferry terminal. Hooray. However a bus did arrive and I got to Tangier after merely another four hours. That is efficiency for you right there.

Tangier, I thought to myself as it neared didn’t look very nice. But then it is hard to look nice when being viewed through a dirt-stained window by an emotionally traumatised traveller so I don’t blame it. Upon disembarking it came to me how wrongly I had judged the city from my seat on the bus. Certainly the city was a foul and unwelcoming place but that was vastly overshadowed by the people. The moment my feet touched the ground I was grabbed and pulled in all directions by people who seemed to desperately want to relieve me of my possessions. But, ever the experienced traveller, I realised that this was how things were in Morocco, boundaries were different. And so it was with a friendly smile that I punched the lot of them in the face. Retrospectively that was a bad idea. Don’t do it.

Free from the hoards I strode purposefully off up the hill in the direction of the tourist office – I had no idea where the tourist office was but the crowds were regrouping and I didn’t fancy my chances a second time. Then blah blah blah, walked up a massive hill and sweated a lot.

Cut to scene, I am in alley. Man is also in alley. Man has terrible teeth, bad grammar and a knife.
‘You want I should cut you?’
‘Not especially.’
‘I cut you for your money. You a bad person’
‘I’ve always thought of myself as a terribly reasonable person. How about you don’t cut me and then I don’t owe you anything?’
(If anyone doubts the accuracy of this exchange, I can promise that the reality of it is ingrained firmly on the inside of my brain. I’ll tell you if you ask me. Just don’t make me do the accent.)
‘You bad man. My God hate you’
‘That seems quite unreasonable of your God. We are not even well acquainted’
‘You want I should cut you? You bad man. Give me money you owe me’
‘Well this all seems very appropriate and above board. How much did I owe you for your time?’
‘Money’
‘Aren’t you the chatty one...? However let’s not get sidelined.’

I gave this charming man in the stained denim-suit-and-matching-cap my wallet. But – and this is the one aspect of this tale of which I am proud – I cleverly gave him only a fake wallet. It contained only €20 and a few loyalty cards. I am still rather delighted at the idea that he may try to use them and only succeed in donating to me Tesco Clubcard points. Ha-ha-ha...

Anyway now I shall round off this rather long tale and tell you of how I jumped in a cab and fled whimpering to the first hotel in the travel guide: I jumped in a cab and fled whimpering to the first hotel in the travel guide. I checked in and, being the brave and unstoppable travelling force that I was, I asked firmly (in French I might add – I’m practically fluent. We chatted about football. I’ve realised that I actually know more about French than I do about football. It was a difficult conversation) where to find a computer with the internet. There I sat and wrote my mother a little email. It went something like this:

Mum
I’m coming home
Ed

Then I booked a flight and was gone by the next lunchtime. However that evening I settled down and enjoyed the most delightful onion soup in the restaurant of that particularly salubrious establishment that I had come across.

And so ends my tale.