Travel beard

Artist's impression.

There seems to be a consensus that personal hygiene and grooming go down the toilet (sometimes literally) when travelling, but not for me. I look after myself slightly better now than I ever bothered to when I had a proper job and people to impress. Slightly.

Since I left my squalid Scottish flat, I've even been shaving more than once a week. Until this month anyway - when I decided to temporarily grow a beard, now that I'm an author.

This isn't a cross-promotional tie-in with Movember, I think one crazy stunt per month is enough (I said stunt). But if I'm going to convince myself that I'm a proper writer, I might as well pretend I'm a proper man too.

Eternal September

September doesn't usually last this long. Does it?

How does that old rhyme go: 365 days hath September - April, June and November are just fabrications invented by the seasonal gifts industry to sell more Justin Beiber calendars?

(I don't even know who that is, I just saw the name on some kid's top and imagine I'm making a contemporary reference).

In the past, September always seemed to be roughly 4.29 weeks long, but this year it feels like it's lasting forever. Despite my computer, this website, NaNoWriMo and my internal chronometer all informing me that we're rapidly hurtling towards winter, I can still walk outside at night in just a T-shirt without feeling the cold.

Sometimes I wear trousers, pants, socks and shoes as well, though that's more out of decency than fear of catching a chill.

Friendly Jew jokes

Mixed feelings about leaving Israel today, so I invented some friendly Jew jokes to cheer myself up.

They are all very offensive - not to the Jewish people, whom I love, but just because of their staggeringly poor quality that will almost certainly offend your good tastes. Especially the rubbish one about the snail, which is just wank.

Some of these may exist elsewhere on the internet (I gave up googling my comedy gold a long time ago, it was too depressing), but I'm confident that the more insane and convoluted ones are my own creation.

Travel evidence - Italy

I owned a digital camera for a brief time last year and had fun documenting my activities in and around Edinburgh. But then one night I got ludicrously drunk and the camera was one of several casualties (deservedly, I felt).

I didn't feel the need to buy a new camera to document my travels, mainly because there are already so many photos of the places I'm going to that are a lot prettier than any I would be capable of taking. Still, it's nice to have a few mementos of the things I've done and the people I've met, and it's always satisfying to use other peoples' resources, isn't it?

So here are some other peoples' photos to prove I was in Italy. It's taken a while just to get these few, so hopefully more can be added in the future (answer my emails, Pompeii people).

Note: Above photo may not be genuine.

Chapter one

Having embraced the prospect of his inevitable death, comedian Robin Ince is currently undertaking the task of downsizing his vast book collection. The process involves him reading the first chapter of every book he owns in turn, and using this as the sole basis of whether to keep or discard.

While I'm not saying the novel I'm currently, hastily writing will ultimately deserve a place on anyone's bookshelf (Aside: I am saying that, it will be a modern classic), the disgusting first chapter I wrote yesterday will really not be typical or indicative of the rest of the book, which takes the form of a murder mystery with girl trouble.

I won't be posting the whole book online - hopefully it will be available from Amazon.com in a few months, with proper artwork and pages and everything - but here's an extract from the self-edited first chapter for your enjoyment and disgust. While the whole book will be semi-autobiographical to an extent, this first bit practically counts as travel blog material, thanks to its inspiration coming from my first night out and morning after in Jerusalem.

See if you can spot which bits are made up and which are from life.

National Novel Writing Month

Before I started travelling, 2010 was definitely a year of all work and no play (with the exception of the Edinburgh Fringe). It was just the way I felt. One of the casualties was my lifelong love of writing for pleasure, which felt incompatible with my newfound love of writing for money and wondering where all the months went.

Although my writing talents arguably peaked at age six, when I wrote such modern classics as David's Wardrobe Learn's to Talk and Dr. Disguised as Beetle, I ploughed the creative field regardless for the next 18 years, at some point being allowed to get away with 'studying' creative writing for three years at University. But once I started writing corporate news articles and web pages for eight hours a day, the prospect of going back on a computer in my spare time seemed less inviting.

Now I have more time on my hands (Exhibit A and Exhibit B), I've started feeling the creative urge again, and have decided to embrace the insanity of National Novel Writing Month this November.

Travel romance

My friend Oliver recently wrote a heart-wrenchingly tragic blog (he probably won't mind me linking to it) about travelling to Israel in pursuit of an amazing Russian-Israeli girl he met once, who ultimately seemed less enthusiastic than him. The beautiful fool.

I obviously didn't learn a thing from this parable, and became a bit obsessively infatuated with a Russian-Israeli girl (not the same one) who I met last month in Florence, who was irresponsibly appealing.

Sleeping in a bed

...is so much better than sleeping on a roof. What was I thinking?

Sleeping on a roof

...is bloody cool. Lying under the stars, watching the red moon rise over the golden temple roofs. I might never go back to sleeping indoors again. I wonder why I ever did in the first place?

Oh yes - because I lived in Scotland.

And did those feet

Jerusalem is a great place for people who love to aimlessly wander around, especially in the Old City.