Wednesday night I went out for a meal to celebrate Louisa getting her PhD, and disaster struck. The very first bite of my food got stuck in my throat. It's something that's happened before but it's always absolutely fine. I was surprised at how hot the food was and rather than rudely spit it out, I swallowed it quicker than I should've done. Normally this would've squeaked through my throat while my eyes water a little before relief when it passes, except this time it didn't.

Gag reflex ACTIVATE! and I (as discreetly as possible) vomit into a napkin at the table. Mortified, I quickly get up and run for the bathroom expecting a couple more shots. I think I've sorted myself out, get myself cleaned up and my throat *feels* pretty clear so I return to my table. I have a little something to drink, just to get my throat completely clear before trying to eat more food but this sets me off again. I run back to the bathroom and spend a few more minutes in there panicking and trying to sort myself out.

A frustrated Louisa pokes her head through the door, clearly upset that my buffoonery has ruined what should've been a nice evening. She quickly goes to settle the bill on a meal neither of us has managed to eat any of, apologising profusely the whole time. We saunter off back to her flat with me alternating between apologising and vomiting.

Back at the flat my throat is hurting a bit, but I'm not sure if it's just sore from all the puking or whether there's something in there. A&E quickly seems like the best (albeit annoying) option and sober but still over the drink-drive limit we get a cab over there armed with a plastic bowl to catch my shame.

Triage nurse's first suggestion is either fresh pineapple or Coke, one of which is much more readily available in a busy hospital. The idea (and previous experience backs this up, APPARENTLY) is that the Coke goes down past any small blockage and then the buildup of gas helps dislodge it. DON'T BE SILLY, NURSE! This endeavour proves to basically be me piling coke on top of a blockage that it won't go through, before hitting my gag reflex and forcing me to painfully hurl all the Coke back into the bowl.

Begrudgingly accepting that maybe I'm not there to waste everyone's time, nurse goes off to see if the ENT specialist will see me rather than making me wait in A&E with the terminally clumsy. He agrees, but I'll still have to wait a while, listening to an audio mix of Batman Begins on TV and a woman claiming that Codeine just isn't good enough and she simply MUST have morphine.

I see the doctor and have a soft tissue Xray of my throat to see if there's anything there. Dosing me up with buscopan (sp?) which is a muscle relaxer. The idea is that my throat will slacken and any blockage will just drop harmlessly into the acidic abyss of my stomach. Doctor also gives me an anti-emetic to stop me puking. We maintain that I'm not actually puking, since at this point the bowl is fillled with saliva and nothing else. We suspect that since I can't swallow saliva, it's just pooling at the back of my throat until it sets of my gag reflex and escapes into the bowl. Doctor is adamant that my stomach is foolishly thinking I'm being poisoned and that this is the way to fix it. Xray finds nothing in my throat and Dr hypothesises that the blockage has cleared from the buscopan and that it's just sore now because of the stress. He keeps to his stomach poison theory for an explanation as to why I'm still having to hurl saliva every 3 minutes. At around 3am he sends me home adamant that I'll be fine. He's on shift until 8am though, so if I have any trouble I'm to come straight back and he'll rush me through instead of me waiting at A&E again. Home to bed. I shall attempt to sleep.

I wake up properly at about 7:15 after a shocking night. The saliva hurls continue through the night, waking me up every so often so that I can clear the pool into the bowl and then go back to sleep. Meanwhile my body is telling me I need to vomit properly, something that the muscle relaxer and my non-working throat muscles won't let me do. At this point I'm started to feel especially bad. I may have even begun sobbing in front of the toilet. Back to the hospital then, albeit later than I really should've done because I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt for as long as possible during the potency of the medication. We get there to find ENT specialist has fucked off home and I have to wait in reception again.

I get seem again by a nurse who's very nice to me and understands that I've obviously had an especially shitty night. Annoyingly I'm going to have to wait for an ENT doctor to do the rounds before I'm seen, but the first thing she does is put me on a drip since I've hurled up nearly all the fluid in my body. Doctor comes around, asks some questions and makes vague allusions to surgery. Our main question is "How can this be happening if there's no blockage" Her response is "There IS a blockage" Doctor from previous night seemingly proved wrong. After swabbing some foul tasting anaesthetic into the back of my mouth she attempts to jam a fibre-optic cable into my nostril. Apparently my nostrils are "small" so this doesn't quite work. In the end she has to remove whatever protective sheath this fucking cable has to make it narrow enough to get through. My nostrils sting like fuck and I can't stop coughing at this camera tapping the back of my throat from inside my head. Doctor can't see anything, although she can see a giant amount of saliva compared to the norm. Progress!

So it looks like I'm having an operation. I'm left to sit around while they try and find me a bed. Meanwhile a nurse kindly offers and then brings me some diazepam. That's the stuff Solid Snake uses to make him awesome at sniping. I'M ALL FOR THAT! Moron nurse brings me a fucking pill, and then when I tell him I can't swallow he implores me to "Give it a try" I win in the most minor way possible 2 seconds later when the pill is hurled back into my trusty bowl. So at this point it's somewhere around 10am and they get me a bed. All the surgeons are in a meeting until the afternoon. My operation could be as early as midday or as late as 5pm. Brilliant. The next few hours are spent in my hospital bed, alternating between sleeping and throwing up into the bowl. Louisa sits by my bedside the entire time, reading the Guardian and trying to ignore some of the idiots on my ward. I'm "Nil by Mouth" so can't have the dinner they bring me. I tell them to give it to Louisa. They kick up a fuss before checking with the nurse that loves me (because I don't make a fuss) Nurse agrees that it's better going to my incredibly hungry girlfrend than into the fucking bin. Durrrrrr.

Should probably mention that this is the first time I've needed a general anaesthetic since I was very young and had it for a tooth extraction. Retreating to the safety of films, I search my mind for frames of reference. The hospital aesthetic most closely resembles that of "Never Let Me Go" albeit much nicer. Everytime somebody in "Never Let Me Go" goes under anaesthetic it ends badly. At this point I'm being especially worried. Someone from theatre comes to get me at about 4pm and I impress everybody by walking upstairs rather than insisting on being wheeled like a scumbag might. I apologise profusely for hurling saliva onto the floor of the theatre before they get me all setup with those groovy EKG probes and everything. One of the surgeons makes a crack about my heart rate racing before offering to make it all better. Everything goes a bit blurry

It takes me 2 hours to wake up from a 20minute procedure. The surgeon explains everything to me, although since I have absolutely no idea where the fuck I am, none of it really sinks in. It's later relayed to me that they found the blockage something like 12" below my larynx, which apparantly goes against all medical convention. How the fuck does one get something stuck that far down!? The giant metal tube they jammed into my food-hole must've been fitted with some kind of grabbing system because they've supposedly pulled most of the offending morsel back up my throat and out of my mouth. The remainder of it is small enough to just be pushed into my acid sack. I've basically been used as a fairground claw game for highly trained and educated surgeons. I spend the rest of the evening drifting in and out of sleep struggling to get properly comfortable. I'm not dehydrated because of the drip but I'm still more thirsty than I've ever been in my life. 4 more hours until I can drink anything, and even then I'm only allowed sterile water. At this point I would pay £50 for a Sprite.

Bored as all hell in my hospital bed and not allowed to leave, I resort to just sleeping as much as my sore throat and chest will let me. I struggle through breakfast and dinner before I'm told that I'm pretty much good to go. They're baffled as to how a young non-smoker can have this happen to them, but they're gonna chalk it up to misfortune and forego any of the tedious barium swallow tests so I can just go home. HOORAY!

I've been wanting some new glasses for a while now just for a change, but annoyingly when I had my most recent test a couple of months back I couldn't find anything I liked. Then, a couple of weeks ago......



Here I am in Vision Express making sure they don't look too horrendous, taking the requisite photos and the details from the frames before fucking off outta their overpriced hellhole. A guy I train Muay Thai with has just opened an independent glasses shop so I figured I'd give him some support and get a great deal at the same time. They're currently on order and soon I will be hipster as all hell, although I'm probably the only person in the world to have those frames with a prescription in them.

Since sometime in April I've been forced back into sales where I used to be, to cover for somebody who left. At the time I was told it'd only be about 6 weeks and now, about 15 weeks later they've finally found somebody else. They've used all kinds of stupid excuses for why it's taken 3 months to recruit somebody but I'm just glad it's finally over with. It's not awful, it's just a longer more expensive commute and it kinda sucks being on my own in the office. Not long before I'm back in my old chair drinking tea from my Xavier Institute mug. Whoop!

Amazed that I didn't mention it here but back in May I had my car written off. I was sat at a roundabout waiting for traffic from the right to clear before something hit me up the arse and pushed me into the oncoming traffic. No idea how fast he was going, but my glasses flew off my face and the stereo bounced out of the dash. Luckily that traffic missed me, and then pulled over to leave their details as a witness. My car had been giving me some annoying trouble that meant I would've struggled to sell it, so in the end the whole thing worked out pretty well in my favour, but it was still a pain and a bit fucking terrifying at the time

I joined a band. It's something I've been looking at doing for a bit without ever really thinking it would go anywhere. Most of the adverts I'd seen were dead set on "making it" and being the next big thing, while I was really looking more for some people to motivate me into practicing more and having a laugh. I finally found some people to play around with although it's yet to take off properly. So far we've met up once for drinks just to meet each other and then managed to meet for practice/jamming the once. In 6 weeks. I'm sure it'll get up to speed sometime soon, it's just that life seems to be getting in the way. I really enjoyed the one practice we did manage and I'm looking forward to doing it some more. Suggestions for band names welcome, although I think I'm probably going to lobby pretty hard for "Snowball & The 3-Day Week" for all you Animal Farm fans.

Training going much better lately after getting back into it properly. Managed to royally fuck up my foot the other week by accidently kicking somebody in the elbow. It went pretty damn purple around the ankle and now hurts when I extend it (like when going up on tip-toes) Bruising's gone and I can move without too much of an issue though so should be fine. Been talked into taking part in an interclub thing they've got in a couple of weeks. Basically just sparring like I normally do but with somebody I've never met before. I'm assured that it should be fine, and that it's only 3 1-minute rounds so I'm not too worried, but we'll see what happens when I'm back on here in a few weeks time telling you all of how I was knocked-out without much of a resistance.

I got off my arse and went away for once. Spurred on by the prospect of seeing NHL hockey without having to travel all the way to America I went to Stockholm to see San Jose play Columbus in 2 games over 2 nights.



This was the view from our seats. Honestly it was fucking awesome, and strangely enough I met the Sharks manager Doug Wilson on a train earlier on in the day. He was ridiculously nice to me and we just chatted for like 15 minutes, most of it being driven by him. He had no reason to put effort into the conversation beyond courtesy but he was REALLY nice

Also went to the Moderna Museet where they had, amongst other things, a wall of communist propaganda art. Fucking awesome



Stumbled across an exhibit of the chinese Terracota warriors



Went in a big glass ball up onto the world's largest spherical building



Wished I liked beer just so I could drink this out of respect, even if it was about £9 a pint



Went to the National History Museum where they attempted to fill my head with lies about dinosaurs and other theories that conflict with my long-held creationist views. "Evidence" indeed



Went to a bar made of ice where I made a fool of myself struggling with that fur-lined poncho thing you can see me wearing. The woman could see I was struggling with my bag for a few seconds, so why the fuck would you just fling the thing over my head? After a few seconds I realised that I was having problems because my hand was sticking through a hole in the front rather than down and through the sleeve. It doesnt seem that cold at first, but fucking hell it hits you after about 15 minutes



Went to the Vasa Museum which is basically a 17th century ship that they dredged up, restored and conserved back in the 70s. Unfortunately they wouldn't let us swing onto it like pirates



In the Tekiska Museet, Watch_It_Burn tries to find out how the fuck magnets work



Otherwise I just tried to relax and enjoy the scenery. It's well worth going to Sweden, even if everything does cost a fucking fortune. It's like £8 for an extra value meal in McDonalds. No wonder they founded The Pirate Bay.

I woke up on the day I was to leave Sweden feeling like complete shit. One of those damn vikings had given me the lurgy. I struggled through the flight home, including the 3hr wait for a connection at Heathrow, basically feeling like I wanted to die. I then spent the next 2 days boiling hot but shivering like mad. Like a commited nerd though I powered through and on the Friday left to geek out at Birmingham with Sticks , ikaruga and his fine countrymen.

I arrived into Birmingham on the Friday evening feeling less fragile but still not brilliant. Found my hostel and went out to meet the Scots. I choked down some mediocre lasagne in the pub and had about 2 drinks all night, still feeling like my guts had some kind of vendetta against me. I returned fairly early to my hostel where it was boiling fucking hot and I woke up about 5 times through the night because of it.

Following morning I go out to buy about 4 bottles of orange juice and head to the convention. After much queueing to get in, the queues to actually get shit seem much shorter. First acquisition was from Mahmud Asrar who in lieu of a War Machine (too complicated and time consuming) did me this awesome Spider-Man



Next was Staz Johnson who had nobody waiting. I'm always happy to give him my money



After that I went to queue for Dave Gibbons who decided he wasnt sketching because his line was too long. He assured me I could catch him again in the weekend and he would oblige, but for now I went off to get something else.

Yanick Paquette had basically demanded a table rather than just spend an hour signing as was originally planned, so while it took a wait of about 2 hours I got this awesome Colossus from him.



Sticks had turned up at this point, so we milled around slightly waiting for Duncan Fegredo to finish ikaruga's awesome Godzilla. Then we went for drinks and food, where again I struggled to really put anything away. Back to the hostel fairly early, where again I struggled to sleep. Day 2!

Got to the convention hall fairly early and decided to grab something from Charlie Adlard. He's a VERY popular man and you can spend a long time waiting for him, so if you do decide to grab something then get there early and you free up a lot of the remainder of the day.



Back to Gibbons again, who this time was more than happy to sketch. Amid the constant requests for Rorschach or The Comedian I think i brightened his day somewhat by asking for Kyle Rayner. He couldnt remember how to draw him and I had no reference so we settled on a Tomar Re instead. He sat back smiling, replaced his marker with a pencil and said "I'll have to actually draw this one properly" I told him his run on GLC was awesome. He seemed surprised.



Phil Winslade was next, who I'm always surprised to find never has a queue. He poured his heart and soul into doing this "headshot" of Dark Phoenix and then actually apologised for not inking it



Next up was Peter Gross who did a lovely Tom Taylor for me. He used heavier pencils than he normally would because he was being interviewed by someone at the time, and suggested that I might want to leave it as is rather than have him ink it. I was inclined to agree



ikaruga had been badgering constantly about how I should go see Tim Keable and Andrew Cheverton, buy a copy of West and get a sketch while I was at it. In fact he's been saying this at least since Bristol and had now reached the point of threatening physical violence if I didnt. Like trying to get a friend into rehab, it was for my own good. Tim was a lovely guy.



Con was wrapping up but I had just enough time to grab Nicola Scott (not like that) before everyone departed. I'm told I showed great restraint in not smacking the mouth-breather who cut the line in front of me, but I took it in stride and got a lovely albeit quick sketch from Nicola. It's a shame I didnt catch her earlier because her paid-for stuff was stunning.

"Can I have either an Oracle or Nightwing, please? Your choice"
"I'M DOING NIGHTWING! I've been doing chicks all weekend!"