Apart from obvious, being-utterly-devoted-to-each-other-for-the-rest-of-our-lives justifications, there are many reasons why Chris and I got married. The chance to have a really good party – or, indeed, several. The acquisition of presents (with fortunately, not a toaster to be seen). I no longer have to be Chris’s employee; she no longer bears the mark of Satan, in the form of her ex-husband’s surname. But perhaps most importantly, the opportunity to take five weeks off work, the longest break I’ve had since graduating in 1987.

Technically, it wasn’t five weeks holiday. Not the twelve days prior to the wedding, certainly, given the amount of running around that had to be done, arranging stuff e.g. suddenly realising, the day before, that we’d forgotten to choose hymns for the service or print up orders of service. Oops. Every day, new challenges to be met – meeting the minister, and hoping he wouldn’t ask tricky questions about religion (for the record, he was great. The subject of God never came up at all). Every day, we’d fervently vow never to go through this ever again. No, whatever it was, a holiday was not it.

After the big day, we could relax, though it was some time before we lost that wild, hunted look, and the fixed smile that goes with being photographed approximately 400 times in one day – I now have the utmost respect for supermodels. Indeed, for the whole female race: wearing a kilt showed me the difficulties faced by the skirt-wearing sex on a daily basis, with “sitting” and “getting out of cars” top of the list of problematic scenarios. I’m also here to tell you that pure wool chafes.

Once we picked up the marriage licence and got out of town, felt like the wedding was actually over and the honeymoon could start. First stop was Edinburgh, since Chris’s experience of it was limited to me poking her head above ground at Waverley Station (“Look! A castle!”) and my last significant trip there was for a job interview after university, which was followed by a pub-crawl, me losing my glasses off the Forth Rail Bridge, and a vow never to drink cider again.

This time round, no such disasters, and we’d both like to get back and spend more time there at some point. The highlight was the City of the Dead walking tour, which is centred around the Black Mausoleum in Greyfriars cemetery. It’s home to the Mackenzie poltergeist, one of the most active spirits in Britain and is certainly a spooky site. After numerous tales being recounted, you can understand why some customers faint – if only through the power of suggestion. The whole effect was, however, greatly diminished at the end, by some guy in a mask leaping out and going “Boo!” at the party. Oooh, I’m so scared.

The next day saw the ‘moon proper start, as we began our tour round Europe on the trains. I’d done this kind of thing several times before, as a student; this time, we were doing it properly: a first-class rail pass, no sleeping on benches, and with actual bathrooms. Still bearing rucksacks, mind you: it was a joy to see the snotty business travellers in first-class look down their noses, as we T-shirted ragamuffins heaved our rucksacks up there, fully expecting us to be thrown out when the ticket inspector turned up. No, fuck you… 🙂

Enough class war. Brussels. The number of famous Belgians I can name might stop at about five (including three members of Front 242), but I like the place. The equation is quite simple, and involves beer and chocolate. They take especial delight in the former, and it’s great to see restaurants where the beer list is longer than the wine list, or even the menu itself. Each beer seems to come with its own glass: we were particularly impressed by Kwak – cue jokes about “Kwak addicts” – served in what looks like an hour-glass with the top of the upper globe sliced off, and Chimay, a serious death-beer of 9% alcohol (compare Guinness at around 4.3%), brewed by Trappist monks. No wonder they don’t say much.

The main tourist attraction is the Mannekin Pis, a statue of a young kid urinating, whose origins are lost in the mists of time. Probably deliberately, if I were them. Dressed in a different costume every day – Peruvian gaucho on this occasion – it is to Brussels’ souvenir shops what the Eiffel Tower is to those in Paris. The corkscrews were particularly mind-boggling, like the result of some bizarre human/pig genetic experiment. So were the Mannekin Pis lollipops – Belgium must be the only country in the world where it’s legal to suck off small boys. And moving rapidly on…

Outside of the ancient city centre, there isn’t really that much to see, Brussels largely being a bureaucratic centre for various bits of the EU. We did venture out to Heysel for the Atomium, a large-scale (x 165,000,000,000 to be precise!) model of an iron crystal, built for the 1958 World Fair. It’s now filled with a lot of retro/kitsch stuff from the period; the views from the top would be spectacular if the windows weren’t so grubby.

At the other end of the scale spectrum, nearby is Mini-Europe, a model village designed to promote the idea of a united continent by…showing you 1/25 models of landmarks. No, the logic of this escapes me, too. It does save you the bother of having to visit any other countries, for which we were kinda glad, having just realised that we actually had four less days left than we thought. We cross off France and Italy (having seen the 1/25 versions), and head North into Holland.

Or is it the Netherlands? No-one seems sure. Even the official site of the Netherlands Board of Tourism is www.holland.com. On the train in, we see as many McDonalds arches as windmills, a depressing thought as we arrive in Amsterdam. I must be getting old, as it takes almost twelve hours before anyone offers to sell me drugs – about 100 times as long as when I was there as a student. Instead, the hotel accommodation offers come thick and fast from dubious-looking individuals outside the station, but we decline them all and head for the tourist office, who set us up with a lovely city centre hotel for 60 Euro/night.

[Swift detour. The whole Euro thing is great, especially when you’re whizzing through multiple countries like we are. No need to worry about flushing out loose change every other day, working out what notes to use, or coming to terms with multiple different exchange rates. One Euro = One Dollar, everywhere (except Switzerland, where chocolate remains the main negotiable currency). The bureaux de change must be hating it, hahaha!]

That night we go to the Korean State Circus, which is actually very good, it’s the Russian horse troupe who support them we can’t stand. I’m no PETA-phile, but equine legs are not supposed to go in the directions they’re made to here. We walk home through the red-light district, an experience in itself for Chris – not exactly having led a sheltered upbringing, the sheer in-your-face-ness of it all still has her initially looking like a deer caught in headlights, though she soon returns to her usual unflappable self.

Next morning, we go to the train station to discover the left-luggage is way too full, with a long queue even to put your bags in. To make matters worse, when we try to book our tickets on the sleeper to Munich (after a 45-minute wait, during which we become disturbingly familiar with adverts, in which Dutch guys of questionable sexuality put mayonnaise on their chips), we encounter Ilsa, Ticket-seller of the Dutch Train Service. She single-handedly nails dead the myth about the Dutch being friendly, laid-back and helpful. The Munich train is full, so tonight we will end up going East, to Berlin. Our carefully-planned schedule is now unrecognisable.

With the afternoon to kill before departure, we cheer ourselves up with some educational museum visits. Specifically, the Sex Museum and the Torture Museum. Who said travel didn’t broaden the mind? We also, totally by chance, bump into my sister, who is independently in Amsterdam. This was bizarre enough, but doubly weird is discovering that she has been staying in the same hotel – and paying almost twice as much, too. That really cheered us up… 🙂

Next: Germany calling…

A gruesome display of preserved bodies, thinly disguised as art? Sign us up – where do we get tickets? The Truman Brewery on Brick Lane, deep in the heart of London’s curry community, providing opportunity for a post-mortem poppadum or two, should you be capable of facing any kind of foodstuff. The exhibition had courted controversy since it opened, with protests from the usual quarters, and acts of vandalism including someone taking a hammer to one of the exhibits – always a good alternative to argument and debate – but this had not deterred the crowds from coming out in force, with several million served around Europe. Make that several million and two…

The procedures involved were pioneered by Prof. Gunther von Hagens, an creepy-looking dude who seems never to be without his black Homburg hat [The only photo of him without it I’ve seen is from his Stasi police record – he was arrested for trying to escape East Germany]. In the 1970’s, he invented the basic technique of infusing bodies with plastic, replacing the fluids. It’s a form of embalming that preserves the inside of a body as well as the outside, allowing both to be displayed for the education, and, let’s face it, gross-out entertainment, of the general public.

Criticism has come from many areas, labelling the exhibition as not much better than a sensationalistic freakshow which exploits the dead and degrades life. But much of it seems hypocritical, when mummies and other preserved corpses are part of the collection in most major museums. The medical profession too has a fondness for collecting dead bodies, and then there’s the whole business of religious relics. And in the Middle Ages, a business is exactly what it was – at one point, Christ’s foreskin was on display in 14 different churches.

The exhibition starts off tamely enough, with cross-sections of bones, etc. All very educational. Not particularly interesting. We joined the throng flocking past the cases, towards the main course…

The hardest things was having to keep reminding yourself that these were not wax dummies, and not latex. These were once living, walking people like you or I. As someone who views his body as a black box – feed one end, wipe the other – it was amazing to be reminded of how complex we all are. We can’t even build a computer that doesn’t crash at least once a month, yet possess an infinitely more intricate piece of machinery that runs for 70 years without a break.

Other things I learned from Body Worlds:

1. Smoking is bad. Early on, we stumbled across a comparison of the lungs of a smoker and a non-smoker – it was, literally, like black and white. Thereafter, every time we saw lungs, we’d go “Smoker…smoker…non-smoker…smoker…” If I had ever smoked, this exhibition would have cured me instantly.
2. Rethink that position on abortion. One of the galleries had a succession of preserved foetuses showing them at different stages of pregnancy. The legal limit for most abortions in the UK is 24 weeks. Looking at the 24 week specimen, it was largely indistinguishable from a newborn baby. Personally, however, I don’t have a problem with this, since I figure abortion should be entirely legal at any point up until the foetus gets off the couch, finds a job and moves out of the house.
3. You too can have an eight-inch penis. At first, I thought the specimens in the show were hung like Clydesdales. Hey, if I had equipment like that, I’d want my body preserved for posterity too. Then I realised where the testicles were. I always thought they were attached snugly to the body, but noooooo…there’s a long dangly cord. It also seems that much of the dick is tucked up inside too, so you just need to measure from the pelvis, and hey presto, a career in porn beckons.

Aesthetically, I confess that certain models did make us feel uneasy, though there was no consensus as to which ones. Chris was disturbed by the flayed guy with his skin draped over his arm like an overcoat. I got wobbly at the “exploded” specimens, where the body was split and separated, giving the appearance of, say, multiple heads. On the other hand, we were awestruck by the work on the circulatory systems. They replace the blood flowing through the veins and arteries with coloured plastic, then remove everything else. The result is a feathery shadow of the body that definitely enters the realms of art.

We bought the book. We bought the DVD. We bought the postcards. We bought the T-shirt. We even, heaven help us, bought the watch – though the strap fell off as soon as I opened the box. Cheap Oriental crap. We did, however, balk at the forms whereby you can donate your body to the exhibition. I can see why people do – it confers a kind of immortality, and means you don’t have to deal with the whole “getting eaten by worms” thing. But it’s not for me. The prospect of Japanese tourists poking my genitals and giggling is more than this mortal flesh can bear…

ATLANTIS GALLERY
THE OLD TRUMAN BREWERY
146 BRICK LANE
LONDON E1.
Open daily, 0900-2100, until Sept. 29th 2002: £10 adults.

By the time you read this, I’ll probably have left America, on my way back to Britain, having seen Phoenix for the last time as a single man. At time of writing, I have twelve days to go until I get married, a prospect which fills me full of…well, the odd thing is, I haven’t really come to terms with it yet. I don’t think it will until I find myself standing at the altar, hearing “Dah-dum-de-dum…” music playing, watching the most beautiful woman in the world walk down the aisle, ready to begin the rest of her life with me [which will forever be a source of amazement to me!]. Then, it might just sink in. 😉

Part of me – the part which thought I’d never get married – says it’s an excuse for a good party (two, actually) and lots of presents, not to mention five weeks off work. But somewhere in the back of my skull, tucked next to the lizard brain but rather more smartly dresses, is a chunk that whispers that this is the most important day of my life. I think this part was passed down from my mother, because we have frequently to remind ourselves who is actually getting married, us or her. Still, she who pays for the reception calls the tune – just as long as it isn’t country and western.

Do have to say that getting married is a hassle. If we had to do it over again, it would probably involve just the two of us, Las Vegas, an Elvis impersonator and screw the presents (we’d probably keep the five weeks off work though). But if a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well…5,000 miles away…in three different towns…over a six-day period. Er, is this the point where I say something like, “It seemed a good idea at the time”?

It is, in any event, far too late to pull out – without bringing down the apocalypse, in the shape of The Wrath of Mum. This is likely to be the only chance she gets to see one of her offspring marry (my sister is 41 and stoically single), and given she brought me into this world, raised me, and is largely responsible for me being who I am, it’s the least we can do. Especially since all we really have to do is show up, the organisation of the Forres reception having largely been taken care of from that end.

Because of the location in Scotland, it’s going to be a hugely unbalanced affair: I’ll have all my relations there, Chris will have, at most, two – and possibly not even those. This is something of a double-edged sword; I’ll know everybody, but it likely means I’ll have to be on my best behaviour to avoid a scandal which will ripple through the family for decades to come. Chris, on the other hand, can relax, safe in the knowledge that she’ll never see most of these people ever again. Besides, she’s foreign…whatever my one true love does, we can just claim it’s a Cuban tradition. 🙂

We will, however, both be quite glad when it’s all over and we can relax, heading off for the honeymoon, training round Europe. If you’re short of a TC-fix while we’re away, we’ve set up a wedding diary online where you can follow our progress, be it triumphant or disastrous (and depending on us being able to find Internet access in our current location). Otherwise, the next time you hear from me, I’ll be a deliriously happy married man…

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The northern half of Arizona is not a place you want to be at the moment, as large chunks of it have been reduced to a pile of smouldering ashes. To be specific, as of this morning’s scorecard in the (slightly singed at the metaphorical edges) newspaper, an area about the size of Los Angeles is ablaze, 32,000 people have had to leave their homes, and none of it is being contained. You could even see the smoke from downtown Phoenix – not because it was particularly close (despite the note from a British friend, solicitous of our wellbeing, unaware that Arizona is bigger than the entire UK!), just because there was so much of it.

No-one is really too surprised, given the extreme drought conditions in the state this year. Here in Phoenix, we’ve had no rain at all in almost two months, and less than 0.2″ for the year so far. I appreciate that to wet, cold British people (Wimbledon’s on – by logical inference, it must be raining) this would seem like paradise, and indeed it is nice to have reliable weather, where barbecues are no longer a lottery. It does have drawbacks though, such as having to take the car to get washed, rather than relying on a good downpour of acid rain to do the job.

Anyway, the equation goes something like:
           Drought + Timber + Psychopathic Forest Ranger + Conservationists = Inferno.
Some of this may require explanation. One of the biggest fires this year, in the next door state of Colorado, was allegedly started by the forest ranger who claimed to have discovered it. She was apparently burning a letter from her ex-husband. She didn’t do this in the sink, like any sensible person. She did it in a forest. In the middle of summer. Why do I sense there may be more to this story?

As for the environmentalists, accusations have been flying, right the way up to the Governor who suggested, more or less, that if the Forest Service had been allowed to clear out some of these damn trees without hippies setting up home in their branches and holding hands round the trunks, we wouldn’t get such conflagrations. And where’s your goddamn spotted owl now, tree-huggers?

It also gives us another reason to be glad we live in civilization, having recently been toying with idea of buying some land up North, in order to escape the 45C heat. Needless to say, that idea has gone onto the, er, back burner. As indeed probably has the land itself. We appreciate the joys of urban life, such as a working fire service, instead of having to rely on water dropped from a safe height by a passing helicopter.

Besides, any fire here in Phoenix would only get about 100 yards or so, before coming across a fire break cunningly disguised as a car-park. These have approximately one tree per square mile – with four cars clustered around it like camels at an oasis, all looking for the tiniest piece of shade. Still, compared to what’s happening elsewhere in the state, I think we should chalk up yet another reason to pave paradise and put up a parking lot.

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You may have noticed the lack of updates here recently – we’ve slipped from once a week to once a fortnight, and we went through the whole month of May without a new editorial at all. There are a multitude of reasons for this – work, other projects, travel and planning for the upcoming wedding – and I should probably warn you that none of them are likely to get better for the next couple of months. Updates will remain sporadic, probably until around the end of August, when we come back from the honeymoon and deal with everything that has accumulated in the meantime.

Such things are an inevitable result of possessing a life, and I amn’t complaining. Well, only some of the time, anyway, when trashcity.com is so busy that the day runs get up, process orders, pack orders, eat, sleep. But then, I’m never satisfied, and we could just as well be teetering on the edge of starvation, with Chris and I having to comtemplate a return to wage slavery. Besides, how many jobs let you work in your underwear, watch Jerry Springer and take five minutes out to go paddling in the pool?

Other projects are twofold. girlswithguns.org, home to a slew of female action heroine pieces, is coming along steadily, with about 30 short reviews and a dozen lengthier pieces. The estimate for its arrival on the Net is around the start of September, though a beta-version may seep out before we go away. I’m also in the process of writing a book on conspiracy theory: it was originally intended to be something like Conspiracies for Idiots, but there ain’t no such animal. Having done the UFO chapter, I’m now looking into Freemasonry. It’s all very interesting, but boy, does it make your head spin.

Travel. Had a five-day trip up the west coast of California, driving up from Los Angeles to Santa Clara for the Conspiracy Con, peeking briefly into Oakland (six baseball stadiums visited, 24 to go). Highway 1 has to be the twistiest, trickiest piece of road I’ve ever been on, largely because Americans are clearly not used to a single lane in each direction with no median. This explains why I had my first experience of coming round a corner to find a psychopath attempting an overtaking move coming rapidly towards me. Two miles later, I had my second experience thereof. I’m sticking to interstate highways from now on.

And, of course, next month I’m getting married. Next month. Blimey. Puts a whole exclamation point on things, doesn’t it? Though it’s both simultaneously an irrelevance, and the most important event of my life. It’s not as if it’s going to make any difference to things, though it will mean I get a green card and become a permanent resident, rather than only getting to stay because I’m an employee of Trash City. Otherwise, it’s actual impact will be negligible; Chris will take slightly longer to sign her cheques, since she’s swapping a four-letter name for an eight-letter one.

And yet…it also acts as me planting a stake in the ground and saying, “This is my life, and it is what I want.” It’s an affirmation of confidence in the way things are; you can walk away from a job or a home, but not a marriage. Chris keeps asking me if I’m sure I want to go ahead, but every day makes me more certain that it makes sense on every level. Mind you, I’ll also be quite glad when it’s all over, but that’s another story! Till then, hope you understand if new stuff here is not quite as regular as it might be… 🙂