Creepy Feckers II: Michael Jackson on a Camel, and Myself

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I was thinking back over the strange and terrifying people i have met over the past decade, and the first one in tonight's blog is the first one I met, or at least the first I met when traveling. I was 16.

I was on a Team Challenge Expedition to Northern India, and this particular story takes place in the middle of the desert in Rajasthan. We decided to go on a camel trek to watch the sunset in the desert. The man who was leading my camel, whose name i honestly don't think i ever knew, was as softly spoken as Michael Jackson. When we were riding back he sat behind me on the camel and we talked about... something (i don't have my India diary to hand, so i don't know what we talked about). Near the end of the trek he suggested i stay with him in the desert as his wife. I pretended not to here. He pushed the subject. I pretended I couldn't understand what he was saying.

That's pretty much the whole story.



My second entry in this section is me. It is a strange feeling when you look back at your life and discover that there was a time when you were probably a little bit creepy, and should probably hunt down the poor soul you creeped out and apologise.

Firstly i would like to thank my sister, who endured an hour or so of this madness and has rarely brought it up since. Secondly, i apologise to the poor woman dressed in period clothing, handing out fliers in a park in Dublin. And thirdly, i would like to lay the blame for what follows on the softscoop icecream gentleman, who i shall call 'Mr Vippi'.

A few years ago, my sister and I went to Dublin on holiday. We checked out various distilleries, breweries, museums, and touristy spots.

The incedent occured shortly after a particularly creepy museum which was stuffed full of taxidermy. We went for a walk in the park and a it down. On the way into the park we saw an icecream van, and this is where it all started to go wrong. There are certain icecreams i have a strange reaction to, 'Mr Vippi' is the worst.

It is always the same: uncontrollable giggling that lasts around an hour. I once missed an hour of class at sixth form, and once scared my flatling when she found me in the corner of the kitchen.

We sat down on a bench in the park and there was a particularly funny pigeon, which caught my attention, and i began to giggle.

Out of curiousity, if you saw a mad looking woman, on a park bench, laughing manically at pigeons, would you, dressed in victorian clothing, go up to said person and give them a leaflet for a museum? Even more; would you try to engage that person in conversation, and refuse to give them a leaflet unless they promised to go to the museum?

Dubliners are weird.


Anyway, after about an hour, the laughter turned into a brainfreeze style headache, and we set off for this museum on the other side of the park... Which was pretty good.

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