He looked like the man from The Human Centipede. The first film. So I had to draw him (see below). Obviously the drawing has a weird twist and he didn't look this scary. No, he was a sweet, friendly, centipede and always well dressed. One of my favourite moments was when we were going out for street food with Dale Don Dale and him and Alison turned to me and exclaimed, "Angel is wearing a SUIT" So us, in our trainers looking like shit, a suited centipede and a dolled up Dale don dale (She's actually a beautiful 25yr old Mexican) went out for tacos. We arrived at a very nice restaurant and then realised it wasn't street food we were going out for. Oh. Fine. Suit allowed.
Over dinner we decided to ask Nallely and Angel if they could please explain about the EYE, GUTS and HEAD tacos that are available. Yes, Nallely said, it's normal. She then started saying about when she was in Morocco she ate sheep's brain. Alison was like "HAHA DID YOU TAKE YOUR TACOS WITH YOU AND MAKE IT INTO A BRAIN TACO HAHAHA" - they luckily appreciated the stereotyping and we all had a giggle.
At the restaurant, Alison was cold, as always, and her arm hair was standing up on end. Due to her 4 months of Caribbean travel it has been bleached by the sun and it's fluffy, like a caterpillar, which our Mexican hosts couldn't resist pointing out so we were talking about caterpillars and centipedes came up because the words are similar. Sigh. Why does the jokes god do this to us? Trying to not laugh whilst having dinner in the presence of the centipede. Then we were talking about why you get scorpions in the bottles of mezcal* and then she started telling us a story about when she got stung by a centipede that she had thought was a scorpion but she didn't know the word in English for 'sting' so she kept saying 'PUNCHED'. "So I looked on my arm and the centipede had punched me and I had to rush to hospital in the car with my father and I was crying about the punch and the doctors and nurses were trying to fix the punch because if a centipede punch you it can be very bad" lol punched ya, did it? Caught a right hook to the cheek, did ya?
We were loving living there, using the gym - trying our best not to be fat shits. Knackered after one rep. One day I went out to meet an old friend and we ended up sat in a square drinking beers in a square called Plaza Garibaldi and listening to the many Mexican bands - Mariachis. They play at ALL hours of the day and night. So I could not believe my eyes when, no joke, at 4am about FIFTY instrument-wielding formally dressed, slick-backed-hair Mexican men, all together, started serenading a beautiful senorita, including dance moves, who just sat there like 'Yep, cheers guys'. And then the bunches of roses started. A MOUNTAIN of roses appeared in front of her. I was given a bunch of roses (thankfully, or else I would have demanded to speak to a manager) and decided to freak the shit out of an Australian by telling him I was a witch and eating an entire rose head before his very eyes to his complete disbelief. Also he was the only one who saw me do it and I timed it so that his friends didn't believe him each time he tried to claim what has happening to them. "Guys! Guys! Look!" They look... and my mouth is closed and my expression remains neutral... but as soon as they had given up looking and only his gaze was fixed upon the spell unfolding, the petals were ravenously chewed and an open mouth showing a red petal mush was freakishly displayed at which he put his hands on his head and probably checked his drunk levels. Wua ha ha ha ha. That night we met a lovely guy called Libre who is an artist and I connected him to Alison.
A couple of days later we met up with Libre and his friends (one of whom also looks like a centipede) and we drank some mezcal and tequila with him and went back to his art studio/flat. In the flat were two cats which when you stroke them your hands get covered in black filth because of how smoggy this city is and a large black dog, which was his actual colour - he wasn't a smog dog. The dog kept jumping up at me. I was like "Awww, he wants to hug!" and I put his arms around me and gave him a full hug. They were like 'No, he is a very "hot dog" as in he wants to fuck. But I checked and his lipstick wasn't out. Soon after, we realised he was BORN TO DANCE. Yes, Alison wanted to hug him and he put his front paws around her waist and they danced the salsa together for a while. At one point he had his paw on her bum and even tried to go in for the kiss. Quite the mover. A strong contending pair for Strictly. The next time they saw each other however it was awkward and they couldn't make eye contact. A shameful night of dance passion never to be spoken of again.
We left the party and went home via Oxxo to get food. We got some pizzas but we couldn't work the microwave OR the oven to save our lives so, naturally, we FRIED the pizzas, Alison claiming she "does it all the time" (Who even are you?) and went to bed.
Alison was completely bed ridden the next day with hangover so it was my turn to be Jeeves. I concocted her our usual daily homecooked meal of fried eggs and plantain. We love this meal because the egg yolk and oil that its fried in makes the plate into a yellow slime trough when you're done. I washed the slime trough like a good Jeeves and put some washing on. ALL the washing machines here have a song. They sing a full tune when they are finished. It's like SHUDDUP with your music just open the door already. They also shrink the clothes so one of Alison's beautiful jumpers she bought for 10p at the market got shrunk to the size of baby wear and then machine proudly sang it's song afterwards to announce the shrinking. Not now, Adele, alright? Put a sock in it. (Pun intended)
On the subject of music, another thing we love about this place is the hilarous English you find on t-shirts. They say things like "Call me a taxi!" Er, OK. But the best one is one that says: "Don't be sad... just Beyonce" lol
After a thousand (non-head) tacos we decided it was vegan day and ate vegetables but it was only after I had posted all over social media that I'm having a lovely vegan day where I'm eating veg fried in butter that my good friend Anoush pointed out that butter isn't vegan. Oh yeah. Later, Alison announced that one of her favourite sounds is the sound of the meat cleavers on chicken street hacking the carcases of the chickens up. Another time we decided to be vegans after watching a documentary and then got sushi within 12 hours - just completely forgot. So probably best to stop trying to be vegan.
The day before Christmas eve we decided it was time to go to the witches market. We put our best witches costumes on and walked for an hour to get there. On the way, we saw a sign for a road that is called JESUS MARIA but in my head it just reads as an angry person who's really annoyed with Maria who's actually just going "JESUS, Maria!"
We arrived at the market and it was instantly overwhelming as fuck. Just so much stuff everywhere. EVERYTHING YOU COULD EVER WANT EVER. Beautiful coin purses, which I had my eye on, as I've mostly just been carrying my money round in an old Norwegian Airlines earphones pouch. Alison said she just resorted to just keeping her change in a plastic bag. Lol. Potions and lotions and skulls and dried snakes hanging and splayed rats and weird nativity stuff and Santa Muerte statues and feathers and bones and crazy cucumbers and bags of abundance mix and packets of wood and then we saw the animal section. First there were puppies. Awww puppies! Cute at first but then I realised they were doped. They had to be. Many many puppies in tiny pens. NOT COOL AT ALL. Then we saw the rest of them. Chickens pressed up against the cages absolutely packed in, goats, sheep and pigs all in the same pens tightly packed in. Snakes, rats, mice, birds, parrots, cockerels, piglets, ahhhhh so overwhelming. "Quieres un animal amiga?" No, no thanks. I felt like Ross Kemp with a raised forehead vein and we got out of there, sharpish.
On Christmas eve, Alison went into the kitchen to Jeeves us a coffee and was met by a very unusual character. Standing at 6ft tall, adorned in a multicoloured poncho was a man. His head topped with a beanie balanced at the bottom of the face by a thick, bushy beard and in between both resided a large nose pierced with a bull's ring, atop of which sunglasses sat. Santa!? You've...changed. Alison said he looked like 'Boris the animal from Men in Black' Alison believed him to be another Air Bnb guest and started making pleasantries but was swiftly cut short when he chimed in wanting answers about who the FUCK we were and what the FUCK we were doing in HIS FLAT. Que weird Christmas episode of Eastenders (GEDDOUDAMYPUB!) Yes, it turns out Dale Don Dale was subletting her flat without her landlord knowing and he had to GEDDOUT on Christmas eve. SLING YA HOOK!
So we mostly spent all day finding new accommodation, drinking tequila and soda water that squirts LIKE A JET out of this really cool pressurised soda bottle with a lever ...and packing, like snails. We decided to leave a biro drawing of the owner, who was due to come back the next day, on the kitchen table just to freak him out/as a lovely Christmas gift. And we also left the poetry book in the fridge next to an egg and some orange to maximise our trail of surrealism. For Christmas eve we trailed the streets which were all closed except for a clown doing a show on a soapbox. The MILLISECOND I got my phone out to snap a pic, he caught me and the entire crowd turned to look at us and he tried to get a convo with us going. Now, this is clown number 5 or so and an on a scale of one to clown, clown being 10, Mexico city is an 11.
Smiling, we ducked away and eventually found a restaurant serving a cold buffet of peeled tuna cucumber mix, pasta, beans, mystery meats, wet slops and other slimes for us to fill our gullets. They had sombreros for people to wear though, so we did the tourist thing and ate our weird Christmas eve dinner wearing a heavy hat.
We returned to our hotel room to drink tequila, eat a DELICIOUS WHEEL of LOVELY MANCHEGO cheese we stole from the Air Bnb as compensation (She wouldn't have been home til' the 8th...it would have gone off...right?) and then welcomed Christmas in by drinking loads of beers in bed and listening to house music periodically popping down to reception to buy more beers. At one point I was embraced by the Receptionist with "Err, excuse me, the guys in the room next door to you have complained that your music** is too loud"....but when faced with my firm (festive) stare, "OH IT IS, IS IT?" he backtracked and scratched his head and said "But, I mean, when I came upstairs I couldn't hear anything haha and you are welcome to come down here and keep me company anyway haha" GOOD AND STAY OUT. SLAMS DOOR.
We had two hours sleep, rose at 9am to get the "free breakfast" and ventured still drunk into the feeding hall where a million despising eyes pierced our heads. THE CHRISTMAS BREAKFAST WAS JELLY AND BREAD. So we swiftly filled a cup of coffee, returned to the rooms, added a shot of tequila to it and then had the horrendous ordeal of FUCKING PACKING AGAIN UGHHHHHHH but it was fine because it was Christmas and we had a lovely Uber ride to our new gaff. We were greeted by the lovely Gabby (for real) and Alex, our hosts, who met us with an apologetic smile and told us our room would be ready soon. It's fine can we just fry some Merry Christmas bacon please? (still vegans) so that we did and then we were given a lovely apartment upstairs on the 4th floor.
Alison hung herself from the gallows and then we popped our Xmas hats on, prised our eyes open and ventured out to find ourselves a delicious "Merry Christmas Harry! Merry Christmas Ron!" Christmas dinner. BUT ALL THE STREETS WERE DESOLATE. It was like 28 days later, Mexico City style.
Apart from the petrol station which was pumping out bangers (Note to selves, return later if nothing else is going on) As luck would have it, we stumbled across everything our hearts could ever want, a sushi restaurant which sold elusive 'lovely bebidas' - by that I mean, not beer and not tequila and not the fucking oil.
Bebida after bebida was flowing. We're talking passion fruit daiquiris, martinis and everything the heart could desire complete with an late 90's/ early 00s playlist - hits such as "Tubthumping" by Chubawamba which, as you'll remember, includes the lyrics "I get knocked down" which was tellingly apt as during our 4th bebida or so, just after we had realised the catering staff were all centipedes and a lovely table of Mexican geezers had sat down at the table next to us to also have their lovely Christmas dinner, A BOOMING, SONOROUS alarm sounded.
A quick glance at the faces of the geezers' next to us told us it wasn't to be ignored. White sheets. The centipede kitchen staff hurriedly scurried out of the kitchen and beckoned us to follow. Everyone was flooding into the streets. Our initial thoughts were: Alison: We need to get into the street so Narcos can shoot us. Me: It's a lovely parade and we are all invited into the street to watch. The word 'Terramoto' was ushered a few times and then the fear it us. Alison tenderly clutched my arm, the first touch we have both had with each other in ten years. We were about to get knocked down! We were quietly gutted that the sunken bebidas weren't cushioning the fear at all (Refund please!) but a few minutes later after a few reassuring legs on our shoulders and kind smiles by the centipedes, it was back to lunch! Nothing to see here.
HI WE ARE ENGLISH GIRLS AND WE ARE EXTREMELY TRAUMATISED BECAUSE WE JUST HEARD THE EARTHQUAKE ALARM AND ITS CHRISTMAS AND THATS NOT OK FOR US
We had some lovely sushi, had a few more for the road and then ventured back to our abode, almost popping into the petrol station out of curiousity. I, of course, got Alison a bottle of oil for Christmas, so naturally, we got that out and started drinking it on our rooftop and that's when we met Andrew.
Andrew is a treat. A hilarious little babe who had us at 'hello'. Living in his little roof shed on the roof he had simply ventured out to go to his bathroom but had discovered us dragons on the way who insisted his plans and hissed at him until he poured us a prosecco. We got talking about life itself and then suddenly he had ordered delicious taco Uber eats (YES MEXICO!) and then it was bedtime.
You know when you've gone to bed pissed and you wake up and it's the middle of the night and all you want more than anything is a glass of water and so you look to your left and you're actually still quite fucked so in your blurry eyed haze you see a bottle of water, or what looks like water, and it's weird that 's got a spray top, but not that weird 'cos everything is weird here 'cos it's Mexico so it's a water with a spray top so naturally you just pick it up and without thinking just open your mouth and SPRAY IT IN YOUR MOUTH and then INSTANTLY REALISE it's the DRY OIL by Avon called "So soft" that your sister in law suggested you buy to take with you to cover your body in to avoid mosquito bites and now you've COVERED YOUR TONGUE IN DRY FUCKING OIL FOR FUCK'S SAKE AND ITS HORRENDOUS AND THERE'S NO WAY TO WASH IT OUT COS YOU CANT DRINK THE TAP WATER AND ALISON'S ASLEEP OR PRETENDING TO BE COS IN HER HEAD SHES LIKE SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU MAD WOMAN WITH YOUR MAD SPRAYING OF OIL INTO YOUR FUCKING MOUTH AT 3AM WHAT THE FUCK. So I had to wipe my tongue with a towel and then go and eat a piece of melon to take the taste away. Sigh.
Anyway back to bed for more winks that can't be had. The anxiety slurs in a Robert Kilroy Silk voice: "You're on the 4th floor, drunk, wearing just a t-shirt and pants, and you think you'll hear the earthquake alarm? And evacuate in time?"
So when we woke up alive on Boxing Day we listened to Merry Christmas Everyone by Shakin' Stevens to celebrate.
*If you get stunk by a scorpion you need to put alcohol on the sting immediately
**Theo Kottis - It wasn't meant to be if you're interested
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