Having spent the last 3 and a half months off work I`ve watched quite a number of films. Some good, some terrible. In an effort to convince myself that I was using my time constructively rather than just wasting my life away eating doritos here are my top 10 horror films, in no particular order

The Ring
The Grudge
The Exorcist
The Descent
Last House on the Left
The Terminator
The exorcism of Emily Rose
Event Horizon
The Hills Have Eyes
The Hole

Honourable mentions go out to The 6th Sense, Severance, Final Destination, Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen and An American Werewolf in London.

So there you are. I`m sure most of you will disagree with most things I`ve said, but its my blog, my list … deal with it.

On Tuesday I arrived back in England signaling the end to my stint in California which started in May 2007. Its been a lot of fun.

Already now I feel a stragner in my own home country. It turns out that shoes bought in California do not cope well with walking in rainy England and after spending half an hour walking around ASDA shopping I know I am capable of mass murder.

Its not all been bad though. On Thursday I went around to my best mate’s house just to catch up and have a few beers. It was good.

After an hour or so Chris got a call from Pykey. A friend who we both went to school with and who I had not seen for close to 10 years. Imagine all the stories we`d have to tell each other.

I was quite excited.

Then the big moment. Pykey walked into Chris’s bedroom with his hair down to his hips looking fairly like Rubeus Hagrid from Harry Potter.

Then the first words he’d said to me for nearly a decade.

‘Hey guys I`ve just been mauled by a dog’

huh?

He looked alright……. I mean, he didn’t look like he’d been mauled by a dog.

‘What?’ I amanged? ‘where? what dog’?

‘Just outside the house, its a golden labrador.’

I paused for a moment to make sure he was being serious.

He was.

I couldn’t hold it any longer.

I spent the next 10 minutes rolling around on the floor throwing out huge belly laughs while Chris helped Pykey clean up his ‘wounds’. I dont think Pykey was too impressed, even Chris told me I was being ‘insensitive’.

A Labrador? really?

Then Pykey decided he wanted to head over to hospital. Chris said that he would drive him there but that he’d have to get a taxi back home as we wouldn’t be waiting. I just said that he should tell the doctors that it was a werewolf or a tiger which got him otherwise they might not take his injuries seriously - a bit like myself.

Pykey agreed, but had no money for a taxi, Chris agreed to lend him a tenner so we stopped at an ATM on the way over to the hospital, Chris jumping out the car, getting cash then pulling up at the hospital stopping the car in just enough time for Pykey to get out and for me to jump into the front seat.

We drove away at speed.

Taking with us the tenner that we forgot to give to Pykey.

We of coure only realised this when we got back home and got a call from Mr Pyke himself who did not sound too pleased.

He was even less pleased when we told him that we couldn’t go back to the hospital to give him the cash….

…. because we`d already drunk all the beer he’d brought along with him and left at Chris’s house.

So there you are. If you are reading this Pkyey thanks for the beer. I look forward to seeing you again in another 10 years.

Walking past a set of shops earlier I came across a salon with this sign on their front door:

Just how hard must a massage be for it to turn your teeth white?

Thats got to be one hell of a massage.

I`ve spent more or less every minute of my spare time in the last few months either reading text book after text book on subjects I claimed to be an expert on during my recent run of interviews and masking it up big time at the gym, ripping it up, showing all the weeds of southern California how its supposed to be done, generally just being amazing.

Oh and I`ve also been putting on a little weight.

About 25 lbs in 8 weeks.

Panic not, despite putting on the lbs I`ve even managed to reduce my body fat level even further. I`m now currently at just under 5%.

I have however been overindulging in the local vitamin shops.

You see over here in California more or less everyone goes to the gym to bulk up, hardly surprising considering this is the home of Hollywood and one whole length of the state is a set of beaches normally only found in the Mediterranean.

So the gyms here tend to be a bit on the good side. Pretty much the opposite to those found in Paris which tend to be on the crap side.

Either way, you work with what you`ve got and I have been taking full advantage of not having to go to work each day and spending as much time as possible in The local gym.

And getting through 5 tubs of Muscle Milk in 6 weeks.

I`m going to try and have a few tubs of it shipped out to Belgium for when I`m over there considering the only source of protein I`ll get over there are rats and eggs.

The problem is though that this muscle milk is so effective that I`m starting to think it might actually contain steroids.

Lets put it this way. When I go to the gym for a chest session now I`m warming up with the weights that 5 weeks ago were my “max” weight.

And my previous maximum weight was at least twice what 99 percent of what anyone else in the gym would lift.

So if my shipment from California to Belgium gets stopped by customs then I know for certain why.

Now I`m off down the gym to mash it up.

After I`ve had a shot of Muscle Milk of course.

Not being able to drive means I do a lot of walking. I walk pretty much everywhere. When I`m in europe this is generally not a problem. Its pretty easy to get one one place to another using just your legs, and even if its a long distance its not hard to find a bus or train to get you where you need to be.

America is another story altogether.

If you dont drive its because you are either too poor to own a car or you have lost your car after losing a bet in Vegas.

Put simply, not much thought goes into people who may be using their feet as a mode of transport, particularly here in California.

For instance I was walking along a ’sidewalk’ the other day and was a good 2 miles down the road when I was greeted with this:

Yep, the sidewalk just stopped and I was a good mile from where I needed to be - and no there was no sidewalk at all on the other side of the road.

Such things are not uncommon though so in the past 2 years I`ve learned that you have to take short cuts to be able to get where you need to go by foot. Often this means walking through fields, marshes and all other kinds of uneven terrain. This does not really bother me.

Or I should say that it never used to bother me.

Wondering back from the pub the other night, a bit wobbly I had to take a short cut through some overgrown wasteland to get back to the apartment.

The next morning I was wondering back over the same route and saw a sign:

I couldn’t quite make out what it said so decided to get a bit closer:

SNAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I ran so fast all the snakes would have seen was a Marc shaped blur.

I think next time I`ll just walk down the middle of the road to get home. Its likely to be just as scary.