World Travel Guide Online

A Night of Hot Air

I always keep a journal when I travel. In it, I have a section I call “Characters of the Road”, in which I describe the interesting people I meet along the way. No matter where I go, it isn’t hard to fill the section up.

Although I was absolutely exhausted, having been awake for almost two days, I did quite a lot on my first day in London. The first and most important thing to do was to get to Hyde Park and feed a squirrel. Which I did. That took me until approximately 8am. Realising I had at least 12 hours to kill until bed if I was to adjust my body clock, I decided to ‘jump’ on one of those jump on – jump off buses to tour the sites. Many cities around the world offer this type of bus tour, but in my opinion only a handful of cities can really justify having them. London is one of them. I spent the day traversing its streets, revisiting famous landmarks, regenerating my memories and falling in love with it all over again.

Back in the hostel that evening, I was mildly surprised that no one was in my eight bed dormitory when I arrived. A backpack was on one of the beds, but the owner was obviously still out. Forcing myself to stay awake just a little longer, I settled down to read my novel.

As I lay there reading, the door suddenly flew open and a portly, menacing figure came crashing through. In fact, he kept crashing through, slammed head first into the nearest bed and collapsed to the floor, where he remained, motionless. I sat up in alarm, hitting my own bloody head on the bed above. With a million thoughts rushing through my head, I rushed to his side, wondering if he was dead. I knelt over him and was just about to prod his tummy when a small chuckle escaped his lips, his eyes flew open and he said “Well hello there, you must be my roommate then.” Still chuckling, he rose to his knees and held out his hand. “My name is Warwick, I come from Aberdeen, Scotland and I’ve drunk 11 Guinness’s today”. As I stammered my name and country of origin I realised that Warwick was surely going to be character number one in the journal.

Warwick was a really pleasant chap, with a wide smile and a booming voice. As he told me about his travel plans, which involved moving to New Brunswick, Canada for work, he frequently informed me that he’d “drunk 11 Guinness’s today”. Whilst describing the figure skating he’d seen on TV at the pub (“the boy skater looked right up his partner’s skirt as he twirled her”), he suddenly paused, clutched his stomach and ran to the bathroom. Vomiting sounds were heard for several minutes. After emptying his stomach, he threw the door open and stumbled out with a smile, admittedly smaller than the one earlier, but a smile nevertheless. Holding his hands out in bold supplication he proclaimed “I hereby say, better out than in!”

Without another word he climbed into bed and promptly fell asleep, snoring softly.

After a shake of the head and a bit of a giggle, I soon hopped into my own bed, very happy in the knowledge that the year ahead was at least going to be interesting.

The bed was comfortable and the outside street had little traffic, thus it was very quiet. I soon reached that pleasant state where you know you are just moments away from sleep. I felt warm, comfortable and at peace in the world, ready for sleep to envelop me and carry me off into dreamland…

Then I heard the loudest, lengthiest, most ear piercing, raucous fart I had ever heard in my life.

It went for about 30 seconds. After a moment’s hesitation, I burst into loud, wild laughter. I waited to hear what Warwick had to say for himself but slowly realised that he had slept completely through his performance. He snored on, oblivious. Stifling giggles, I turned over and was trying to get back to sleep when another loud explosion reverberated around the room. My lonely laughing started again. My eyes started to water. After an interval there was another one, then another, then another. For a very long length of time (hours it seemed) my sleeping companion exploded away. I couldn’t believe my ears. This guy just wouldn’t stop! It was tremendously distracting and a little tense (when was the next one going to come?), but despite its “uncoolness” it put the icing on the night’s cake.

Eventually, to a very strange tune, I was lulled into sleep. My last thoughts were again of the year that lay before me, it was surely going to be a blast.

The next morning I woke up and wondered if I had been dreaming about the previous evening’s experiences, but hoped that I hadn’t – because that would just be sick. Warwick cheerfully bade me good morning and asked if I had slept well. Trying not to smile, I said I’d slept alright. He said that he’d slept like a baby. Errrrr yes.

There was one thing I wanted to find out from him, but I couldn’t think of a way of asking him directly, so I tried a roundabout approach. I casually asked him if he knew of any good dinner places nearby. He replied, “Yeah, I ate at the restaurant next to the pub last night. Fantastic. Really delicious food. Do you like Indian at all?”