Mr Ashley Frieze
9 Claremont Road
Spital Tongues
Newcastle
NE2 4AN.

Telephone 091 261 9731.

Dear Lucy,

Well, it's Wednesday, and I think I have just recovered from the journey of the year. Actually, perhaps I have not, since it is about 3am, but I am used to doing things at this time of the morning since I am Mr Jet-Lag most of the time anyway.

So, you have now met me. That must have been quite an experience for you, but at least you will be able to tell your grandchildren about it. You can say, "Now settle down everybody, and I will tell you all about the time when I met The Fat Kid. It was a cold, windy, freezing, very chilly and cold morning in Bath, and I came down the stairs, and who should there be waiting to meet me? That's right, Fat Kid, Tall Kid, and Tall Kid's Girlfriend". I am sure that when you do eventually get to the right age and have those descendants, you will recall the moment when it all went quiet and everyone went all tired and boring, and I had to run round making a complete sheep's bottom of myself just to stop me from crashing on the way home.

So, the homeward journey, what was it like? Well, it was a good deal like sitting in a car driving for a few hours. But there must have been more to it than that. The trip to Birmingham was pretty ok. I took a wrong turn in Bath, and rather than go back 50 yards, I decided to press on in the direction I was headed, hopeful that it would lead to pastures green and yonder motorway. Luckily, it led somewhere, and I decided not to re-trace my steps to the M5, but instead to go via Bristol. Now, you may think that this is quite a silly state to be in when I could have gone the right way by simply doing a U-Turn earlier, but in fact I would disagree. The route via Bristol is not noticeably longer than the way we came in, and we got to see some more of the wonderful Avon countryside...

Anyway, we ended up in Birmingham, and I let go of Kira (Keera, Ciera, girl thing - short - you remember) and Matthew, and got some pretty scanty and crap directions out of Birmingham from Matt. Now, when I say crap, I mean REALLY CRAP. I mean crappier than those Oliver gave me to Bath (which were ok in the end due to signposting). This gave me a problem. I had no idea on how the hell I was going to get out of that wretched hole they call Birmingham - I call it shit. There are no signposts indicating North in the whole of the city. You have to KNOW where you are going, and I DIDN'T. I may have mentioned that you cannot turn round when you make a wrong turn, and so I ended up getting incredibly depressed and miserable and STUCK in Birmingham. This downward turn in the proceedings also led me to feel tired (I had been awake for quite a long while) and wish I was dead. I did not think I would get back to Newcastle - or anywhere at all.

However, after directions from a petrol station man, and a fair bit of guesswork on poorly signposted, poorly lit roads, I found a sign that said M42. This was good!

I got into Newcastle at 2am on Tuesday morning. I had been awake since 4pm on Sunday afternoon, and I had driven 670 miles in the interim. I think I was probably in the car for the 6 hours I predicted I would be on the return.

So, now I am back, safe and at my computer. As you probably gathered when you intercepted/interrogated Oliver's last letter from me, I tend to use my computer a lot when I send letters. This is because I am reasonably good at using my computer and word processor, and also because I tend to be able to write at the speed that I think when I have a keyboard in front of me rather than having to think about the shapes of letters as I slowly and boringly scrawl them on a piece of writing paper.

Now, this can lead to problems. People accuse me of being impersonal, or writing the same letter to everyone, but it just is not true. I use the computer because it is there, and because it is damned useful for the use which I use it for. That last sentence was sponsored by the owner of the copyright on the word "use" - "Use it more often, you's all know it makes sense".

Anyway, I digress - quelle surprise. I would like to point out at this stage that you did see me on a rather manic high. This is partly because I have manic-depressive tendencies, but partly due to survival. I remained awake for a while after I got back, and that allowed me to organise things and be reasonably conscious. I could not have done that without first indulging in the energy burst that I had in Bath.

I hope Oliver enjoyed his birthday. He is going to have to get used to having them at University... (little architects-are-on-a-death-sentence joke...). Actually, if you are giving him the pleasure of reading this, HELLO OLIVER. If not, then skip that bit...

I am still undecided about whether or not to enter that comedy festival thing. It is still dodgy whether or not I am funny. I don't think I am really. If I was I could try and start with all the Fat Kid material, but I don't think I will get round to it because I have not the time to write down an order of jokes and practise them. I work best spontaneously - 101 things to do with a wet rag, I will probably get to about 30 before I run out of gags.

By the way, this letter is coming on quicker than I thought. Here are some statistics at this point...

Number of words 1046 Time taken to type 21 minutes

Wow wee. Normally, my letters take a lot longer. I must have something to say in this one. I wonder how long it will be before I start looking round the room looking for inspiration for my next run of thoughts.

So, what can I tell you. Well, my mum is due to visit me today (I have to sleep and then wake up first - so they tell me...) along with my brother. It is half-term, and he is coming to look at the geography department (which is coincidentally in the building next to the computing dept.). My mum is also going to have a look at the flat which I am about to move into. You see, my address is currently number 5 Claremont Road, but as you will see from the top of this letter, it is listed there as number 9. This is because I shall be moving 2 doors down on Monday. This is, in turn, because the landlord has just done huge amounts of renovations on number 9, and wants to do the same to the flat I am in. He, therefore, wants to move myself and Ben (my flat mate). Now you are well up to date on that matter.

Funnily enough (or perhaps not) there is an area of Newcastle called Benwell. Since my flatmate is called Ben, I get to say "He's fine" when people mention that area to me... boy do I laugh my socks off?

So, I am a perverting force, turning people away from their studies in a flurry of laziness and fun-loving carefree pointlessness - gosh how can I take the responsibility. I do it with a song... (music starts in true 1960's saturated colour, flat background, tacky, hollywood musical film style)

Oh I'm fat, tra la la, tra la la 
And I have a blue car, 
car la la, car la la 
And I have fun, 
and stun, 
in the sun 
and I have a big bum, 
tra la la, tra la la

But there is one (one) problem (lem) with this (tra la) 
When you're driving you can't get pissed (piddledy dee)

So I grabbed the Rids, 
tra la la, tra la la 
'Cos I'm the fat Kid, tra la la, tra la la 
And we did drive, 
and skive 
and thrive 
On the way to Bithe, well bath, ha ha ha

And so my song (song) must (ard) end 
'Cos I have to, this letter, send... Boom Boom

Well, that was crap, but at least it filled some time in the writing which is important these days. 

So, what else can I say. I think that I am running out of time and ideas. I certainly must get to bed in the near future, and I must also wake up, because if I answer the door to my mother while I am wearing pyjamas, she will guess that I don't go to lectures...

So, until next time, I shall have to say a big bye bye (not big baby - that's me). Please do write back, and answer all of the standard boring old questions that people put in letters, and which I have not put in this because they are not worth typing, and will only bore the hell out of us both.

Bye the way, this is not atypical of my letter writing, the goodbye bit invariably ends up on the top of a new page due to bad luck, bad planning, and a malefactor of a deity. Perhaps I should take up origami.

Lots of love, and look after Oliver...

Ashley.