by Paul Carr
And whenever I get bored with San Francisco, I know I can just hop on a plane. Thanks to the secrets I’ve learned these past twenty-four months, I know I have my pick of fully staffed accommodation in every major city on earth, a fleet of luxury cars at my disposal night and day and year-round access to villas in the Spanish mountains, and across most of Europe.
For me, none of this is a break from the pressures of my normal, everyday life – a nice birthday treat before returning to the rat race. This is my normal, everyday life.
And all I had to do to start living it was to make one simple, life-changing decision.
The golden rule of the blagger.
I had to decide when to stop.
Acknowledgements
There are so many people to thank and so few pages left in which to thank them, but first an important disclaimer:
Everything you’ve read in this book is true, to the best of my recollection. It is impossible to overstate, though, how much alcohol I consumed in the past few years and so it’s inevitable that my recollection is more than a little fuzzy in places. Wherever possible, I’ve checked the stories with the people involved or with the official police record. I’ve also relied on the half-dozen notebooks that I filled during my travels, plus emails, blog posts, Twitter updates and all that stuff. Inevitably, though, there will still be mistakes. Mea culpa. Email me at [email protected] and I’ll be sure to fix them in any future printings.
In almost all cases I’ve used real names for people featured in the book. A couple of names have been changed where I’ve wanted to avoid embarrassing people, particularly girls who have been misguided enough to become involved with me. There are no composite characters though: everyone in the book is a real person …
And so, to the thank-yous …
Thanks firstly to every single person who agreed to allow me to write about them. In particular, Michael Smith, Michelle, Zoe Margolis, Scott Rutherford and Ruth Fowler. A special additional thank you is due to Eris, Hannah and Kelly. I still have no idea what you saw in me, but I’m glad you saw it, however briefly. I’m ridiculously grateful that we’re still friends.
Thanks also to those who were fortunate not to have been included in the book, but without whom much of it wouldn’t have been possible: Oli Barrett, Richard Moross, Sarah Bee, Stuart O’Connor – and in particular Olivia Hine for always having a better idea.
Thank you to Charles Arthur and Michael Arrington for being the two best editors in the world. Your patience, support and encouragement are appreciated more than I can say.
Speaking of patience, thanks once again to my parents for continuing to hide their disappointment at the path their eldest son has chosen for his life. I owe them everything.
Thanks to my agent, Robert Kirby at United Agents, and my editor at W&N, Alan Samson, for believing that I had a second book in me. I have no idea if you were right, but here it is. Thank you to Rebecca Gray for continuing to humour me even though you’re still not convinced I had even a first book in me, let alone a second. And thank you to Bea Hemming for once again doing all of the things required to turn a pile of electronic pages into this real live book.
More than any of the above, though, thank you to my best friends, Robert Loch and Sarah Lacy. There simply aren’t the words to thank you for staying with me for the ride, even when I threatened to swerve off the road. Without you I’d be dead, emotionally and probably literally. This book is dedicated to you both.
www.kingsoftheroadclub.com
Copyright
A Weidenfeld & Nicolson ebook
First published in Great Britain in 2011
by Weidenfeld & Nicolson
This ebook first published in 2011
by Weidenfeld & Nicolson
© Paul Carr 2011
The right of Paul Carr to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, without the prior permission
in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated
in any form of binding or cover than that in which it is
published without a similar condition, including this condition,
being imposed on the subsequent publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978 0 297 85930 7
Typeset by Input Data Services Ltd,
Bridgwater, Somerset
Weidenfeld & Nicolson
An imprint of the Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
www.orionbooks.co.uk
* If I didn’t, at this point, urge you to read that book for that whole sorry saga then I wouldn’t really be doing my job as a whore.
* As demonstrated by the fact that this is the second time I’ve mentioned her.
† Google it. I’ll wait.
* Takeaway pizza: expensive as one meal – a bargain as two.
† … thlink.
* And people from thirty-four other countries.
† And an off-licence.
* Somehow that defeated the object. Although it did lead to me wonder if I could get away with putting myself in storage for a year.
† We watched hotel room porn.
* There are two types of men in the world: men who look ridiculous in hats, and men who look great in hats. There is no middle ground. I am the former.
* I’m not sure who that would put in the pilot seat: Maya Angelou? Anne Frank?
* Yes.
* I have no time for those people.
† http://www.tripadvisor.com
* On a practical note, the mid-range chains also tend to be the hardest to charm for discounts unless you’re part of their loyalty programme.
* No one knows what it says on their own website.
* More on how I know that – and why I didn’t pay it – later.
† That sound you just heard was the death rattle of the golden goose.
* I would continue to refer to London as ‘back home’ for about another three months.
* When I told Michael I was writing this book, he insisted that I change his name to protect his reputation. Please, therefore, assume throughout that I’m referring to a different Michael Smith.
* Michael is all about strategy.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_404
* Hair care, probably.
* Once you’ve heard one hairdressing pun, you start to hear them everywhere.
* My best guess is that by ‘jar’ she means vagina and by ‘whiskey’ she probably does actually mean ‘whiskey’.
* So after Mandy and Sandi, you wouldn’t have believed me anyway.
* Train.
* You’re welcome, cheerleaders.
* Still, knowing such an exciting secret made me feel a bit like one of He-Man’s friends. Man-at-arms possibly, or Orco. Not the sorceress.
* Who has since got married and is now called Rebecca Gray. Congratulations, Rebecca!
† Not that I’d expect someone like you to know that.
* I was the proud inventor of most of these games, to the point where Robert quickly dubbed me the Gamesmaster. It was a title I wore proudly, even though I’m pretty sure it still legally belonged to Sir Patrick Moore after his TV show of the same name in the early 1990s.
* It’s equally possible that they were offering us some white sherry.
* Okey-dokey.
* Described in chapter three of the book when I’d managed to get myself thrown out of my own party there.
† I quote: ‘A fucking dive – a tiny sweaty nightclub where the drinks are cheap and the women are av
ailable on draft.’
* Six if you include the one that’s a few miles from ‘London Luton Airport’ which is in London like Belgium is.
† Revenue per Available Room: the hotel’s total revenue in a given period, net of tax and food, divided by the number of rooms available. The higher the better for the hotel. RevPAR is also a fun word to use casually when talking to hotel managers as it fools them into thinking you know what you’re talking about. The equivalent in the airline industry is Revenue per Available Seat Mile (RASM), which is much less fun to say.
* The email right at the front of this book? Yep, that was from one of her contributors.
* He’s also called Robert, but I’ll just refer to him as ‘my agent’ to avoid saddling you with another Robert.
* Actually, they should have signs like that in all airports: ‘Welcome to Riyadh. Are you here to be beheaded over a minor drug offence or for the highly paid jobs?’ Or: ‘Welcome to Nottingham! Arson or old lace?’
* Of course, with this book, that reader is you. Unless you find that creepy, in which case it’s the guy standing behind you. Don’t look!
* Nearly. Every time someone tells me that, actually, I’m wrong in describing Bringing Nothing to the Party as a business book when ‘actually it’s a love letter’ to my ex-girlfriend, I still want to run screaming from the room.
* A ‘ghetto upgrade’ in traveller slang.
* I blame the fact that I didn’t grow up without a strong father figure, and my lack of not having a decent education. School of soft knocks, that’s me.
* Contrary to what many believe, unless you’re a terrorist the police in Britain tend not to share criminal records with their American counterparts. All the Americans can do is ask for your permission to request the records before deciding whether or not to allow you into the country. Of course, if you refuse, they’ll deport you anyway. Freedom is fun.
* I shit you not.
† Really, I shit you not.
† I can’t emphasise how much I’m not shitting you.
* www.ispauldrinkingagain.com