A Lame Story

30.12.24 — Madrid

A Lame Story

30.12.24 — Madrid

Cycling home from work, the car in front of me began to brake, and so I did too… nothing out of the ordinary. But the brake on this bike was faulty and seized up without warning, leaving me zigzagging down the road as I struggled to regain control. In the end I couldn’t and so the bike fell to the ground.

The rest is a bit of a blur. I screamed out, a group of passers-by moved me to the curb, the police showed up, and then the ambulance arrived. The initial diagnosis was that it was just a sprain, so I hopped my way into the ambulance and off we went, sirens blaring, to the hospital. There I was told that I’d actually managed to smash the bone into pieces, and so I was admitted for the night and told that I’d have to have my leg operated on. Whilst the painkillers kicked in, I stared at the ceiling trying to calm my panic and force myself to sleep.

Thus begun the first month of what would become almost half a year of recovery. As soon as my mum found out that I’d be having an operation, she booked a flight over and wound up staying for over a month. Her company was vital as I adjusted to my new reality, both physically as she helped me undertake the most basic tasks, and mentally as we chatted the days away.

The operation was three-hour long affair in which they rebuilt the bone just below my knee with plates and screws aplenty. Apart from the nausea caused by the metal stitches in my leg and the intravenous drip in the back of my hand, the worst part of the process had to be the pain and subsequent lack of sleep during those first few days after the operation.

Despite spending the next few weeks tired, pained, and bored out of my mind, I was optimistic. As well as my mum’s company, my friends stopped by frequently and my bedroom becoming the hottest new place to hang for Pedro, Sara, Rhea, Julia, and many more. I began to appreciate the small things I’d usually take for granted, and started tracking my progress through the tiniest achievements and milestones: the road to recovery became almost a game.

There’s so much more I could talk about and so much more detail to give, but I’ll leave it here for now. These were a couple of the most testing months of my life, but I managed to scrape through thanks in no small part to the love and support from friends and family — especially my mum.

I love you all very much.

Oldest Friends

10.10.24 — Madrid

Oldest Friends

10.10.24 — Madrid

Whether it’s eating chicken nuggets off a trampoline bed to damning up a stream in order to make a new den, my earliest memories of spending time with friends are with the Smith sisters. Since the day one of them appeared peeking over our garden wall, Jemma and Lucy have been me and my sister’s oldest friends, inseparable despite the occasional shouting match of yore and the busy adult lives we all lead today.

Besides the universally bemoaned difficulty of organising things as a grown up, us four must also grapple with the complicated geography of our lives. I live abroad, Eleanor in Leeds, Lucy in Burnley, and Jemma’s often all over the place with her job. It seemed unlikely that all four of us would ever manage to meet up, let alone organise a trip for the girls to visit me in Madrid. And yet, despite all odds, last year I found myself rushing off to arrivals, heart in my mouth with excitement and a sign in my hand reading “Smith & Briggs”.

What followed was three days of chaos in the absolute best way. We caught up over drinks, chatted the hours away over food, and reminisced in my now very full house. Between conversations in bars we moved around the city, yapping away as we went as if no time had passed at all since we were making mud pies and running through the field behind our houses back in the early 2000s.

I’ve had the privilege of making many friends in all manner of situations and from all manner of places throughout the years, but I realise now that me and Eleanor are extremely lucky to still have Jemma and Lucy as close friends with whom we can laugh until we cry over ancient anecdotes and rewatch The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking for the umpteenth time since we first discovered it on a half-broken VHS tape in the Smiths’ living room.

Reconnecting with my oldest friends was the tonic I needed as summer came to a close last year. Although I’d no way of knowing it at the time, their visit marked an absolute high before the coming low—but more of that in my next post.

To avoid ending this celebratory journey on a low note, I’d like to thank Jemma, Lucy, and Eleanor for coming to visit me and for their continued friendship, love, and support. I can’t wait for you to be back, and I can’t wait to see you all in England.

Pippi Longstocking is coming into your town!

Buffalo & Toronto

31.08.24 — Toronto

Buffalo & Toronto

31.08.24 — Toronto

My time in Buffalo began with an eight hour journey from New York City, during which Kevin took the wheel and I took charge of keeping him entertained with conversation, fuelled by a disturbingly colourful Kit-Kat purchased in a half abandoned petrol station in the middle of nowhere. I thus started my visit to Kevin and James’ place as I meant to go on: putting the world to rights while nattering the hours away with Kev.

Once in Buffalo, we realised that I’d pretty much seen and done everything there is to see and do in the city during my first visit, so my time there turned out to be a rather relaxed affair. I went for walks, visited the school where James works as a teacher, and bought an obscene amount of the world’s best chocolate-coated honeycomb at a pretty little shop in the city centre.

One of the highlights of the trip was a day out at Six Flags Darien Lake, a theme park which I dragged James to while Kevin was at work. I initially just wanted to bag as many new coaster credits as I could, but it turned out to be a wonderful chance to spend time with James without Kevin around. I love Kevin dearly, but I also know we can get quite intensely engrossed in our conversation once the two of us get chatting.

But chat we did, and right until the end, when Kevin dropped me off outside my hotel as I prepared to spend the last few days of my holiday in Toronto. Kevin and I had visited for a day trip in the past, but this time I had the chance to explore a little further, and I must admit that liked what I found.

From its graffiti-filled alleys to the delicious street food in its markets, Toronto offered a lot more than I could ever imagine. Whether exploring the university campus by day or waltzing along the waterfront by night, I discovered that the city reminded me of a more European version of New York City, combining the best of both continents in one vibrant and chaotic package.

I fell slightly in love with Toronto those last few days, even if it tried to kill me. You see, I spent the last evening having a lovely soak in my hotel’s bath, but the bathtub was deep and the floor, slippy as hell. You can imagine the scene…

Gays in New York

17.08.24 — New York

Gays in New York

17.08.24 — New York

The train from Vermont to NYC was going well until the tannoy announced that a bridge up ahead was stuck open and that we’d all to get off here, in —as Megan would say— bumfuck nowhere. After wondering how the hell I was supposed to get to my destination, they ushered us back on to the train: the bridge had been fixed.

I spent my first night in the Big Apple alone. Alongside what felt like the rest of New York, I sauntered across Brooklyn Bridge as the sun set, resolving to walk the way back to my hotel in the financial district. This meant I had time to pick up some street meat in the form of a tiny hot dog which cost me a whopping six dollars. After paying a measly 25c for hotdogs in Burlington, I was pissed. I thus finished off my evening meal with a cheap burger from McDonalds. U-S-A! U-S-A!

The next day I called Kevin while I walked around Central Park. He was driving down from Buffalo to meet me in New York and I wanted to tell him the good news: I’d got up bright and early and secured us tickets to see Chicago on Broadway. Having already practically drained my dollar stockpile in the ticket office, I then mooched around the shops on 5th Avenue until my very dear and very unpunctual friend arrived.

With the daylight dimming, we made a couple of stops to spend our first night together. First was Dumbo Market, almost tucked under the Brooklyn Bridge on the Brooklyn side of the water. The food was expensive and the people were a bit too hip, but it was a good spot to take a selfie to prove we were in NYC. Then I was dying for Kevin to experience the sandwiches at Katz’s Deli, which we washed down with some ice cream as we sauntered back through Manhattan like the cool kids we are.

Morning came around and with it the usual battle to get Kevin out the door. I succeeded eventually, and we stopped by Little Island to suffer a while in the summer heat while I took a few more photos, after which we ducked into a couple of markets whose prices meant that our custom was limited to the use of their bathrooms. Then it was showtime, where us two gays in New York had our fill of music, dancing, and camp tomfoolery. We loved every second of it, thus deciding to carry on our queer adventures with a trip to Stonewall for a drink and a boogie under a thousand rainbow-coloured lights.

That evening, optimistically nonchalant of the storm brewing overhead, I insisted we head out on one of the city’s municipal ferries. These are intended for use as transport between New York’s boroughs, but I surmised that we could make a return trip in order to watch the sun set over the city. As you can imagine, there was no sun to be set from under the storm clouds, clouds which then began to drench us through as the journey progressed. By the time we’d arrived at the end of the route, we’d to leg it down the dock and hide under a canopy until the boat set back off again. Drenched to the skin, we took it back down to the financial district, grabbed some more dodgy street food just as the rain began to lift, and dried off in the hotel while I greased up the bedlinen with my box of fried chicken.

It was an absolutely chaotic final night, and it could have happened in no other way for me and Kevin, who is chaos personified. Watching musicals, exploring the big city, and getting into this pickles certainly made for an exciting stint in New York, but I know that I could go to the dullest place on earth (Hull, say) with Kevin and it’d still be endless chats, laughs, and mischief. There’d just be less bagels.

Green Mountain

16.08.24 — Vermont

Green Mountain

16.08.24 — Vermont

This year marks the third that I’ve headed to Vermont for my summer holidays, and for good reason. There’s nothing quite like kicking back amongst stunning nature to spend time with people I love… and hey, I don’t even have to learn a new language to visit!

This year’s trip, as they’d say out there, was a doozy (here meaning ‘outstanding’). Reunited with Megan and family, we visited swimming holes, went on hikes, hosted BBQs, kayaked out on Lake Champlain, and drank shitty coffee at my favourite diner.

Most nights we spent chilling out at Maureen’s, but we did venture out after dark on the odd occasion. We spent one evening getting bitten to death by mosquitos as we watched a film at a drive-in cinema, which was a lot of fun despite the nasty critters. Another we spent at a campsite, where we rocked up with marshmallows, sausages, and a bottle of wine… but no tent. We’d seen the forecasted thunderstorm and decided that, given me and Megan’s combined survival skills, we would probably die if we tried to brave the night. It was a good shout, as the heavens opened after a couple of glasses of wine and we made for the warmth of home as our campfire was slowly smothered by the rain.

It’s silly little moments like these that make Vermont my happy place. The people make the place, there’s no doubt about that, but there’s also nothing that can beat escaping from my day-to-day amongst the green mountains that give the state its name.

All must things must come to an end, though, and this trip ended with Megan and family waving me off as I boarded a train headed south — but more on that next time.