First, a disclaimer: I know I look pretty damn awful. It’s intentional. I was faced with either shaving and grooming myself… or working with it! Anyway, it’s what’s on the inside that counts, right?

I have a basic idea of where the story’s going, so I’ll try to update fairly regularly. They’ll probably just feature into-the-camera style monologue, but who knows… maybe I’ll start getting creative and exploring ‘the bunker’. Don’t be surprised if the style changes a bit in the first few installments either; I’m fairly new to the video thing, so I have to play with the software a bit and see what works!

Make sure you don’t miss an example of one of my, um, flexible facial expressions towards the end. And don’t give up until you get to the end — it’s short, and it’s worth it! You might also have to turn the volume up!

For those of you expecting something else entirely: sorry for the interruption; programming will resume as normal tomorrow.

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I went with the going-slowly-insane route for the plot of Day 37, my new epic video diary/vlog. Who needs sanity anyway? It’s a totally overvalued trait… Right?

As always, it was rehearsed and recorded in about 45 minutes, so don’t expect fantastic production values. If you titter, just once, I’ll be happy. If you grin broadly, laugh out loud, or — dare I say it — gigglesnort, I’ll chalk it up as a massive victory for hairy, yeti-like British men the world over!

Enjoy!

It is with great pride, and with almost no hesitance at all, I give to you the third — and final (for now!) — chapter of Day 37, a story that chronicles the poor plight of a Brit destined to spend all of eternity in a bunker, where no one can hear him fart.

There will be proper pictures of the half-beard to follow, don’t worry!

Please, fast forward 2 months.

As mind’s eye pans over the green, leafy British countryside the rapid staccato percussion of a helicopter’s blades can be heard. As we grow closer, the chopper comes into view. Hovering, its illuminating search light pointed down at the ground.

On the ground firemen and other emergency-response types move around quickly, with purpose. An a-frame and winch is assembled, with a taut steel cable running from it down into a pit as dark as pitch.

One of the firemen activates the winch. After what seems like an eternity of grinding gears and the sound of steel plinking tightly a hirsute… thing is hauled out of the hole and quickly lifted onto a stretcher. Half man, half something, he — it — blinks in the bright lights.

As he is dragged away from you and into the back of an ambulance only one thing is heard, a slight mania in his voice: “I can lick my own elbow you know!”

…

And that, kind sirs, is my epic escape from the bunker in Day 37.

Below is the next installment of Day 37. The beardless aftermath that picks up the story again, a week or month after Sebastian has been rescued from a bunker that he was trapped in for 3 months. If you haven’t seen Chapters 1-3 of Day 37, I suggest you watch them first, as this one won’t make much sense without the back story!

… but it’s now British Summer Time, and I’ve just had an hour of my life stolen away from me; nabbed, pinched and pilfered away by some minion of Morpheus.

I know it’s completely irrational — and thus, totally unlike me — but for some reason I feel a lot more tired than I should. It was as if time actually jumped forward an hour, in the blink of an eye. Which makes you wonder about the universal, agreed-upon consideration that is time, the fourth dimension. The forth dimension.

I should probably stop before this gets royally out of hand though. Before you know it I’ll be getting philosophical, and you know what that means — that means Nostradamus could finally check off the last item on his pre-apocalyptic checklist. He could finally tell everyone that he was right all along.

Tomorrow I’m going to try and continue (and finish) my story from Turkey. Right now though, I’ll give you one of my ‘morbid’ Jelly Baby photos, to keep you going until I wake up — after a thoroughly awful sleep, thanks to some British guy that invented Daylight Saving Time. Bastard.

This continues on from my hot air balloon flight over Cappadocia in central Anatolia, Turkey. If you like, you could also read about all of my adventures in Turkey.

Below us, as we flew over the unique, wild moonscape of Cappadocia, were thousands of hand-carved dwellings and churches. From above, we couldn’t make out much — just valley after valley of ancient villages and cities. I couldn’t wait to get down there and actually explore on foot; getting lost in some of the most ancient man-made structures on Earth is a dream very few people can fulfil, but I was about to!

I’d booked a small tour to Goreme (Göreme) National Park for later that day. Just three of us, and a tour guide. To say I was excited would be an understatement. Fortunately, I would be sharing the tour with a lovely, young American couple — and Americans can’t get enough of hairy, bouncy easily-excitable British guys!

Cappadocia and its ancient cities are so unique and so special that it’s actually a UNESCO ‘World Heritage’ site. That’s no surprise, considering some of the world’s most ancient, recorded history occurred there: It was the home of the Hittites in the Bronze Age and later provided considerable resistance to Alexander the Great, even as he was riding high on the wave of a world-spanning empire after destroying the Persian Empire.

Coming up to ‘modern’ history, and birth of Christ, Cappadocia was a safe haven for religious types. While Christians the world over were being persecuted for their cultish beliefs, priests were holing up in the hand-hewn caves now found in Goreme National Park. While it’s impossible to date when the structures actually became churches, it’s believed there were sites of Christian worship long before Emperor Constantine ratified Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire.

Today, Goreme has the remains of the oldest churches in the world. To tell you that it’s weird to walk through a hole in the wall and find a 10th century Byzantine fresco would be a gross understatement. Around 900AD, the monastic complex at Goreme was carved out, and within 300 years, scores of churches were cut into the earth itself. Fast forward to today and there are still more than 10 fantastically preserved churches; churches that you can simply walk into!

What I found interesting was how small these churches were. Perhaps due to the constraints of their tools, or their knowledge of engineering, the largest churches were only 3 or 4 meters square. You’re walking into a single room — soom of which were vaulted — literally plastered with murals and frescoes. I wonder if they were small for another reason though: perhaps these churches were built back when religion wasn’t about being grandiose and self-important. Once upon a time, religion was probably about prayer, and finding solace in some greater entity than ourselves. A small room, with a priest, would be more than suitable for that, right?

Somewhere along the line, probably hand-in-hand with advances in engineering, churches became bigger, vaster and more pompous. If you’ve been to a truly huge cathedral, I think you can relate to that feeling of awe and wonderment as you cross the threshold and look up at the stained glass window above the altar — but that’s the majesty of the building, not God touching you. I assume that churches grew in size as faith swelled, and their eagerness to reach the firmament increased. It’s the same reason banks are always large, imposing structures — they inspire you to trust and believe in whoever dwells within, whether it’s the bank manager or high priest.

I don’t want to get too stuck into the topic of religion, as it’s rather obvious that the churches in Goreme were certainly not used as some kind of control structure; there were simply too many Churches for a single priest, or some particular rites of worship, to prevail! They were meant only as places of worship; vestibules of silence where you could be on your own, or with God.

We poked around for a few hours, scampering from room to room, trying to avoid the incredibly hot summer sun. There were houses, baths and even halls where they would gather to eat (but again, they were small, only a few meters across). My favourite features, though they scared me senseless, were the pitch-black escape tunnels that ran out of the city into adjoining valleys.

Building a city at back of a valley is already fairly hard to penetrate — you have to climb a mile-long incline to get there, with almost no cover — but, if an aggressive force actually made it to the top, there were a few tunnels that had been carved, by hand, out of the solidified volcanic ash.  These tunnels — which could be longer than a mile! — would enable the women and children to safely escape to another valley.

They also enabled poor, hapless, home-sick tourists like myself to escape to… ’safety’. Egged on by some hopelessly enthusiastic American (’Dude, I bet it’d be totally awesome…’), I finally steeled myself and climbed up some near-vertical stairs into the escape tunnel itself.

What followed was an experience I don’t really want to relive, but I will anyway, for your sake and certainly not mine. The stairs you see in the photo were just the beginning — there were two more flights, each one more run-down and life-threatening than the next. On the last flight, before the tunnel itself, the American in front of me slipped, fell, and broke the torch he was holding.

We were plunged into complete darkness. Most people have never experienced real darkness — the kind of darkness that you only get when you’re surrounded on all sides by at least 100 meters of rock. You’d probably consider a dark, moonless night ‘quite dark’; dark enough to bump into other people, at least. Let me tell you, a moonless night is about 10 times brighter than that escape tunnel — an escape tunnel that I was sure would shortly become my final resting spot. How ironic.

‘Eric?’ I called out quietly. I don’t know why I called out quietly; probably because of some primordial urge to lay low and pray the velociraptor doesn’t eat me.

‘Seb?’ came back the hushed, not-quite-so-enthusiastic voice of Eric the Enthusiastic American.

‘You’re right, this was totally awesome.’

‘I think I’ve busted my ankle, Seb. I can’t move.’

And so we crawled on in darkness. Or rather, I crawled on, using my super-human inner geek-strength to drag Eric behind me. Minutes went by, and soon hours. Scrapes from the jagged lining of the tunnel turned into bruises when we tumbled down some stairs and ended up in a pile of scared, sweaty man flesh. But we persisted, and eventually — about 2 hours later — we emerged into another valley to be greeted by a beautiful Anatolian sunset.

We were cut up and bleeding, shaken and stiff, rendered blind by the return of the sun. Worse than all that though: we had no idea where we were. The agreed meet-up time had long past, but when you don’t know where you are, it’s very hard to know where to go. Somewhere, Eric’s wife was eagerly awaiting his return.

I stood up, and looked down at Eric’s scratched, crumpled heap of a body.

‘She’ll be wondering where I am, Seb…’

‘I’m not the most athletic person in the world, Eric. I’m not sure I can carry you all the way to safety, after dragging your broken ass through a mile-long half-meter-wide tunnel…’

He grunted pathetically up at me. I sighed deeply.

And that’s how I walked off into the sunset, with an American called Eric in my arms.

I don’t have long to write today. I’m not ashamed to admit the reason why, either: in the last 2 days, I’ve played 20 hours of World of Warcraft.

Okay, actually that does sound shameful… but only a little! It’s not like the time I played 60 hours of Final Fantasy VII in 3 days…

The last two days have been positively tame in comparison!

What is shameful however, is that this blog entry will resemble one of those awful mash-up ‘clips’ episodes of The Simpsons when Matt Groening was obviously too lazy to make an entirely new episode. Instead of entirely fresh content, I’m going to serve up the blogging equivalent of re-fried re-fried beans (repetition intentional, because seemingly, you’re meant to refry them at least once before consumption). You know, this is a rare case of me having to actually bite my tongue: I just looked it up, and it turns out ‘re-fried’ is actually a mistranslation, and ‘re’ should actually be translated as ‘well-fried beans’. How about that; funny and educational.

Bear in mind as you read this entry that I’ve been doing pretty well. I’ve posted once a day, every day, for months! If you’ve only just started reading this blog, you’ll probably learn a whole lot of new stuff about me; if you’ve been here from the start, you can probably come back tomorrow, when I’ll hopefully have some pretty photos to show you of the seaside city of Brighton.

So, first of all (because apparently, a lot of people who read this blog don’t know this): I’m tall. 77 inches of semi-lean geeky goodness. 196cm of prime-cut, intelligent Britishness. That’s 6′5″ of witty hairiness for you fellow Imperialists. I had a look through my blog, and there’s only one entry about me being tall, but it’s quite good: ‘Wow, you’re mighty tall‘. Unfortunately, this means my cousin will kill me again for publishing the above photo of us; a small price to pay for such a great photo, though. Also, I’m aware that it looks like I have a huge moustache on my upper lip, but it’s actually my shadow! I’m aware that I look short — but if I tell you he’s 6′8″, 200cm — that makes me look a bit taller, right?

Talking of moustaches… (and a lot of you know what’s coming)… did you know I once shaved off half my beard, purely for your enjoyment? OK, I enjoyed it a little.

Sorry, I must’ve used that image at least 3 times, but I can’t just leave it to gather dust in an old entry. I even went to the post office, with the dual-beard, to prove that I am, without a doubt, a fearless weirdo.

Right now, you’re probably thinking there must’ve been a really good reason for shaving off only half of my beard. Unfortunately, you’d be wrong: I did it for YouTube. Yup, I sold my soul to the appreciative, 5-star-rating masses — all 250 of them — for my short video blog series ‘Day 37‘. It’s in 3 short parts, and features, at its pinnacle, the dual beard. I’m told it’s actually quite funny, so perhaps you should go ahead an watch a hirsute Brit babbling bullshit for 5 minutes.

Finally, way back when, in the ‘early days’ (read: February 2009), I did a series of podcasts/audio blogs called ‘The Penis Monologues‘. They actually get a lot of hits from search engines, but people don’t navigate there from the blog itself. This is me plugging them, and my fantastic array of awful accents. Marvel as I attempt a Scottish accent and fail. Dismally. The Irish is actually passable, if you’ve never met a real Irish person. If you enjoy them, you might like to read about the ‘creative process‘ (a fancy term for ‘I enjoy the sound of my own voice, so let’s record something funny!)

As you read this, I’ll be waking up at ungodly o’clock and hopping on a train to Brighton, to have some fun and do a little research at the same time. I want to talk about this little business venture I have planned, but I don’t know if it’s safe to!

Today is Floreta’s birthday.

If you don’t know Floreta — the Solitary Panda — she’s one of my many geeky online friends (actually, she’s probably even a bit dorky, and if you don’t believe me, just wait until you watch her video blog). She’s a poet and photographer, and likes to while away the hours by putting on dark, pensive make-up and pondering existential conundrums.

Anyway, I asked her what she wanted for her birthday, and here’s what she said:

“Seb, that gentle, melodic, breathy British voice of yours really gets me hot under the collar. In fact, when I’m listening to your podcasts, I sometimes have to press pause and… well, take a break, you know? Anyway, it would be totally awesome if you recorded a reading of my poems. It would make my day! And night…”

Who am I to deny a cute Asian girl such a great birthday request? So I recorded two poems, one where I play a gay teenage boy circle-jerking with some other boys (…) and the other is far more serious, about love and fear.

But then, things got interesting. She remembered that I’d asked her to write me a poem, about, er, me. Not only did she want to write me a poem, in return for my dramatic readings, she also wanted to perform the poem. Dramatic-like.

Trust me when I say it’s an experience that you don’t want to miss. She even shimmies. In a gamer geek t-shirt. And gets a little too excited when she says ‘Seb’.

Follow this link for Floreta’s video guest blog and follow this link for my readings of her poems.

This continues on from my brief introduction to Poland, which actually turned into a bit of a history lesson, oops. I’d been invited to Poland for a weekend of excess: food, women, alcohol and video games. It would soon be apparent though that Polish food is a bit shit, and their women are veritable cesspits of disease and damnation.  At least the video games and alcohol were OK. I’ve scattered a few random photos of mine from Poland throughout this entry, don’t try to make sense of them — they’re completely unrelated, but pretty!

When I’d boarded the plane in England it had been sunny, warm, breezy. I’d been promised lovely weather — continential Europe, when it gets warm, gets really warm. I’d been promised a lot of things actually and the weather was going to be the first of many broken promises. The door to the plane opened with a hiss as the pressure dropped instantly. Snow. Frackin’ snow blew into the cabin and into our faces. We’d been promised sun and warmth! If we wanted precipitation, we’d have stayed in England.

Mike met me after I’d collected my bags. ‘I thought you’d sound more British.’

Seriously, do I really not sound British? 24 years — a quarter century, next week — of speaking English. The Queen’s English. And a Canadian, a fellow member of my Queen’s Commonwealth said I don’t sound British?! Not one to punch my host in the face — always better to do that on the way back to the airport, after they’ve kept a roof over your head — I let it lie. Britishness is in the heart anyway, right? In the crumpet-shaped heart…

We headed outside to his car, trudging through a few inches of sludgy grey snow. After slighting my accent, I made sure he carried my bag — it’s good to remind the colonials who still rules the Commonwealth roost. His car was a race-tuned BMW M3 (a really fast car). My face cracked into a grin. ‘I haven’t got around to putting winter tires on the car yet, Seb… so it might be quite a wild ride back to my place.’

‘We hadn’t anticipated quite so much snow…’ REALLY?

So we skidded and careened our way along the crappy Polish highways in an automotive example of Brownian motion. Mike’s car was pretty crappy too. The dash kept falling to pieces, and the rubber seals around the doors ‘needed to be fixed, but last time I sent it to the mechanic, they kept the car for 8 weeks without fixing it.’ Poland is not a highly functional country. It’s drab and grey. Driving through the slippery streets of Gdansk, we turned onto the road leading to Mike’s flat. Street after street of poorly-maintained concrete apartment blocks. They had been painted once, just after being built, back in the 60s — there were traces of pinks and greens and baby blues — but since then they’d just been left to dilapidate and wallow in their own crappiness. Gdansk was probably quite pretty once, but not today.

Fortunately, Gdansk belongs to the Tricity of Gdansk, Gdynia and Sopot — the latter two being both a lot more charming then Gdansk and not quite so… drab. Sopot is where we would spend most of our time: eating, drinking and carousing. Sopot is where we spent hundreds of pounds on sushi and saki, where we entertained the company of beautiful, chisel-cheeked Slavic beauties and where I threw up for only the third time in my life.

It started, as these things do, with an idea. In a group of guys, that idea isn’t usually very intelligent or sensible: ‘Let’s get naked and run around campus!’ or ‘Let’s inject our testicles with fish paste and dangle them in a hungry pool of piranhas!’ — men are not the most deep and meaningful creatures at the best of times, but when you get 2 or more of them trying to agree a course of action by consensus, there are only so many possible outcomes.

‘Let’s get DRUNK!!!’

When the English, Irish and French settlers headed over to North America, did all of the enthusiastic people go with? Put an American, Canadian and Brit in the same room and it’s hard to believe they all came from the same common genetic line.

‘Sure… let’s get drunk…!’ That was me, trying to echo Mike’s enthusiasm. The last time I’d got properly drunk was on my 20th birthday, at university, 3 years ago. That was also the last time I’d been sick, and I’d avoided alcohol abuse since.

As an aside, what gives with having to drink everything that’s bought and placed in front of you?

‘I’ve had at least half a litre of spirits and a bottle of wine… I’ve swilled and gargled 5 shots of Aftershock… I’m on my last legs. When you’re tall like me, you have a long way to fall if your legs give way… ‘ (Read the linked Aftershock Challenge — alcohol and the membranes in your cheeks/under tongue =  nasty)

‘But… I’ve just paid money for this drink!’

I knew that a night in Sopot would be the same deal, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. Apathetical drunkenness. Drunkenness Induced By Benevolent And Generous Host.

‘Can we at least get some food in our stomachs first? There was that nice sushi place…’ Forever the Jew, I can spot a good restaurant from well over 200 yards.

That nice sushi place turned out to be awesome. A tiny little exclusive restaurant with 15 stools placed in a circle around a central food preparation area. In the middle stood 3 proper Japanese sushi chefs — I have no idea what they were doing in Poland, so don’t ask. Perhaps some Poles had kidnapped their families, who knows. Each one served whoever was sitting in front of them — you pointed at an item on the menu, and they prepared it, right under your nose.

But, it gets better! There’s a moat of of water between you and the chefs, with little boats in it, each one carrying some kind of side-dish. I sat and watched in awe as the little boats made their way around the restaurant. You don’t want to know how much it cost for that single, appetite-whetting mouthwateringly delicious tiger king prawn that floated by on a little bamboo raft. Or the next one. And the next.  In fact, after I’d taken 4, the couple sitting to our right started to get a little angry when no prawns had made it past me for 10 minutes…

Anyway, this story is about when I got drunk, not how I spent way too much of my host’s money in a snobby sashimi sushi saloon. We finished up our food, polished off the large bottle of aged red wine and headed down to the club.

The club was… cosy. It was only about 20 feet across — 5 meters — but it was deep, and on 3 floors. The ground floor was just a bar, the middle floor had some heavier rock music and the top floor was the dance-like-a-spastic cheesy-euro-disco zone. It was April, off-season, but this place was obviously the most popular club in town: shoulder to shoulder, nut-to-butt, gropefestingly jam-packed — FULL. Really damn full. We shouldered our way through the busy ground floor, hoping to find more space upstairs and guess what? It had a spiral staircase.

I guess fire regulations don’t exist in Poland — or at least, they’re not enforced. A 3-storey club, with perhaps 1000 or more wild, passionate Poles, all ascending and descending a tiny, wrought-iron spiral staircase. One thousand drunk and angry Polish people (and even a few Mafioso-looking types that everyone made way for). Making my way down that staircase at the end of the night, drunk out of my mind, struggling to put one foot in front of another — not even sure which feet were mine — is not something I want to repeat… ever.

A drunken stumble across town (cobbles are really not the best friend of the woefully inebriated) and a 5 minute drive later (Mike wasn’t drunk, I swear…) we arrive at the flat, me considerably worse for wear than him. He’d been giving me his drinks, instead of drinking them himself. Bastard.

‘I think I’m going to be sick, Mike…’

He just grinned at me. The cretinous Canadian cockmongler just grinned at me. ‘The bathroom’s over there.’

If you’ve ever seen the toilet in student accommodation, you’ll know that they’re dirty enough to cultivate at least three bacterial conurbations.

‘I think you’re getting close to recreating the conditions required for the genesis of multi-cellular organisms, Mike. This is pretty primordial down here!’ My voice was muffled and slurred, what with my head being almost fully in the bowl of the toilet. [I wanted to work in a joke about being pissed out of my head here, but I couldn't quite make it fit...]

‘What?’ I’m obviously more intelligent than backward backwater Canadians, even when drunk.

‘Never mind, come and hold back my hair…’

Sushi really doesn’t taste great the second time around, even the posh stuff. Mike and I came out of the weekend worse for wear, but closer friends than before.

No, this is not one of those banal blog entries where I give you the chance to ask me questions. Sorry if I got your hopes up. Maybe in a few years.

This is far cooler. By now you’ve hopefully realised that I’m fairly wise. Not wise like a silver-mane octogenarian gently rocking himself to a slow, peaceful, poignant death on the veranda of his prairie house, no, a different kind of wisdom — a body of knowledge far more applicable to modern-day problems than an oldie trying to shoehorn your experiences into venerated and celebrated, I’ve-heard-this-one-before, so-what’s-the-point-gramps? anecdotes.

With equal measures of applied intellect and real world experience, a smidgeon of sarcasm and the tiniest soupçon, the taste-defining splash, of dry white Britishness I will dissect, analyse and solve your problems.

What kind of problems?

This is going to come back to haunt me, but I will attempt — and probably succeed — in solving every kind of problem. No matter how weird, esoteric or downright daft, ask me. In fact, esoteric is good. Daft is great. Bonus points for contentious, sensitive issues like: how best to broach the topic of domination, gimp suits or bukkake in a consensual relationship — make them as juicy as possible, but try to keep them real, it’s only interesting if it’s real.

Some sample situations you might need help with:

• Sebastian, I seem to have slipped into a problematic relationship with my gay university lecturer. How can I safely escape without jeopardising my course grades?
• Geek Master, my computer’s broken Fix it!!! (OK, I will hate you with every fibre of my body, but I will still try to help. I’m nice like that)
• Dear Dr Sebby, my girlfriend accidentally left my vibrating anal beads on the kitchen table. I think my house mates might’ve seen them and now refuse to make eye-contact with me. I’m so ashamed. Help!

What format? When and where?

The solutions to your problems, questions or philosophical quandaries will be published every Friday at 07:30, UK time, here on this blog (http://blog.mrseb.co.uk). It will take the format of a normal blog entry, though I will probably spice things up with some funny pictures of me in a white doctor’s coat. Or posing in a grey wig, pretending to be an agony aunt. If I can find some suitable models (any lingerie models out there?) I might make some of those awful photo stories, with equally-awful speech bubbles describing their precarious predicament.

How do I submit my questions, problems or philosophical quandaries?

Go here: http://blog.mrseb.co.uk/ask-me-anything

And tell your friends to ask questions too (direct them to this page!)

Feel free to ask me anything, but please try to include as much detail as possible! I’m unlikely to answer vague questions that have no background or no real purpose. Again, try to keep them real.

Terms & Conditions

Anything you submit will be totally anonymous. Please don’t leave your name or email address anywhere on the form — it’s a lot safer for both you and me. I will of course endeavour to answer every question but some will no doubt fall by the wayside. Don’t take it personally! I am but one man. Continue to check back each Friday — I might answer you in the following weeks!

I think that’s it. Feel free to quiz me on any technicalities in the comments.

Go, ask me a question — ask me anything!