1999 - The Happy Flat - Jo

September: there had been a period of time when Jo and I saw nothing of each other. Then one night I went to a gig in Cheltenham with Derek T from the Agency, to see a punk bank called the Cardiacs. Of all the places in all the world for Jo to turn up... but there she was, and soon she was coming round to the Happy Flat every few weekends.

1999 - Ashley Road / Bristol - Sonja, Zed, Matthias P

September: the main couple had moved out and Matthias P had moved up to occupy their room(s). A massive space that was perfect for Mr Vega$.

It is around now that Matthias picked up the nickname Vega$... to counterpoise his nickname for me: Joey Enigma.

Matthias began to perfect the art of Sunday roasts... and so Ashley Road became a regular haven for all of us over the next few months.

1999 - The Happy Flat - Andy C

October: first time I ever saw Andy C I thought I wouldn't like him; he was driving a Ferarri Spider with a personalised lisence plate, he was wearing hand-tailored suits and had this larger-than-life attitude. I'm not quite sure what I expected him to be like, but I never expected him to be the warm-hearted, cold-fronted, shrewd judge of character, amazingly generous friend he turned out to be.

Andy was working for the Agency when I first met him; he threw a lot of parties, and there seemed to be a clear divided mix of people... those who were there because they found Andy to be a lovely bloke, and those who were there because Andy bought lots of drinks and treats. Maybe I'm wrong, but that was just my perception.

One night back at Andy's pad I was complaining about the state of my computer, a 486 I'd bought back at the end of 1995... it was a dinosaur. Andy took me through to a spare room in his pad and dug out what was to him, an old PC, but was to me, a brand new steam-engine...

...he drove me and my new goodies back to the Happy Flat and helped me set everything up.

The following weekend I decided to totally revamp my website; using some proper web-design and image manipulation software. So Friday night I bought a ton of food, a bottle of vodka, a crate of red bull and locked myself away until Sunday night... until it was done. LTJ Bukem Logical Progression Sessions became a soundtrack for the moment.

1999 - The Happy Flat - Djr, Zed, Nice Guy Tony

October: we had some great times this year. But Sonja didn't help my perception of the situation... after a conversation she had with me in her car driving back from Glastonbury one evening... it lit a spark on a train of thought grew and grew in intensity.

1999 - Cheltenham

October: Nice Guy Tony and I headed over to Cheltenham to join Russel and Kelvin for a night out... and some roleplaying, of course.

1999 - Ashley Road - Djr

October: I shaved off my floppy bleach blonde hair and became a Jedi.

1999 - Ashley Road Days

October: One of Matthias P's creations.

Matthias was currently working in the call-centre of a big telecommunications company. It's around now that one of Matthias' mates decided to emigrate to Australia, and left a whole load of goodies with Matthias. These goodies included a mountain bike, and a pair of roller-blades.

MOUNTAIN BIKE: Matthias was peddling along Stokes Croft one afternoon, coming back from work...he bunny hopped the pavement, came down onto the seat, and found the handle-bars were still in his hands but no longer attached to the bike. There was a crash.

ROLLER BLADES: Matthias woke up one morning and realised he was seriously late for work. He threw on his suit, grabbed his heavy satchel that hung across one shoulder... and was about to barrell out the front door when he spied the pair of rollerblades lying in the hallway. Aha! He thought.

Yanking off his shoes he stowed them into the satchel, adding more weight, meaning he had to lean hard to one side to counterbalance... and then slipped on the rollerblades. There were some curiously shaped plastic wedges left on the floor, but he couldn't fathom what they were for... and besides, he was late, he didn't have time to f@*k around.

Clambering precariously to his feet he began to pull himself along the hall, down the steps, into the street, and leaning, slim arms flapping in random directions to maintain balance, Matthias managed to half-skate, half-stumble forward, and make his way to the huge underpass of the Bear Pit. Rather than take the steps Matthias figured it made more sense to roll down the sloping access ramp. So he started rolling, and picking up speed... at the bottom of the ramp, the route took a hard 90 degree turn around a solid wall... picking up more speed Matthias thought back to those curious bits of plastic he left behind. Brakes. Yes, he was now hurtling forward, waving his arms, unable to stop. Matthias struck the wall with the whole front of his body. His kneecaps took the worst of the blow, but his ribs and face took a bashing too.

1999 - The Happy Flat - Djr

October: I was still clubbing but nowhere near as frequently as previous years.

1999 - Cyberspace - Darklight

I was becoming more and more involved in online worlds. This is Darklight, a fiesty little thing.

1999 - The Happy Flat - Djr

October: with Heist/Dante's Fool out of the way, after two years of effort, I entered a sort of empty void come-down. But I remember filling it with the online chatroom, and playstation. Matthias and I had bought these cool spider-chairs, with a sheet of tough fabric stretched between multiple legs... it could be folded up like an umbrella and stowed in a corner without taking up room. These were the days of G-police.

1999 - Ashley Road - Matthias P

October: Matthias finally got himself a PC, finally entered the digital age and rapidly began to demonstrate his formidable creative talents.

1999 - Ashley Road - Matthias P

Halloween: when Matthias moved up into the new rooms, he had to find a replacement for his basement room. He found Ed, a cheeky chappy who was in a band. Matthias threw a Halloween party and I don't think I've ever seen one where so many people turned up, who had made such an extreme effort.

1999 - Ashley Road - Djr

Halloween: I'd spent a night scooping up dead leaves from outside, then stapled them to a broad expanse of muslin, bought some theatrical make-up for my hands and arms, and got this fantastic pumpkin head mask.

1999 - Ashley Road - Jameson

Halloween: Jameson looked fantastic, and was carrying around this huuuge fire-axe, which was thankfully only made from plastic.

1999 - Ashley Road - Anne

Halloween: one of Jules Ms Scarlet's mates, who once had some fun with me in a cupboard in Steve Stalkers place...of all places.

1999 - Ashley Road - x

1999 - Ashley Road - Jules Ms Scarlet

Halloween: Jules just slipped into one of her SPANK outfits, smeared on some blood and she was ready.

1999 - Ashley Road - Djr, Jules Ms Scarlet

Halloween: by the end of the night people started swapping bits of different costumes. I'd found this huge black wig that made me look totally ridiculous.

1999 - Ashley Road - Russell

Halloween: I'd brought along the Game players, Russell and Kelvin. At the end of the night, we all jumped into a car to go and see a midnight showing of Blair Witch Project, at the showcase cinema. Somehow, between Matthias' house and the cinema, everyone else had got changed into normal clothes without me noticing, so when we all stepped from the car outside the cinema I was the only one wearing blood-stained clothes and looking like a freak. The guys found this hysterical.

I got my own back inside. Standing in the queue I realised that Russell was wearing one of my T-shirts. My property, I thought, so I can do what I want with it. I grabbed hold of Russell, he struggled, but couldn't stop me as a I literally ripped the T-shirt from his body... I shredded it into pieces. He was left standing there, topless, bare chested, like some out-of-place sunworshipper ... except it was midnight, and we were standing in a cinema.

1999 - Ashley Road - Djr, Frederiko

Halloween.

1999 - Ashley Road - Djr, Jameson, Zed

Halloween: Zed looked absolutely evil... she had blacked out her two front teeth, and kept displaying this grim smile with her bottom teeth jutting out.

1999 - Ashley Road - Djr, Zed

Halloween

1999 - Ashley Road -Russell, Jameson, Kelvin W

Halloween

1999 - Ashley Road -Zed, Djr, Jameson

Halloween

1999 - Ashley Road - Kelvin W, Frederiko, Djr

Halloween: one of my favourite moments was stepping out of Matthias P's house and heading across the road to the local store. The guy's face was a picture when we all started filing in... many of the locals just didn't realise it was Halloween.

1999 - Ashley Road - Jameson

Halloween: imagine it, you're staring at the bottom shelves trying to find the thing you want, then you hear a growling sound, look up to be confronted by this on the other side of the shelf.

1999 - Ashley Road

Halloween

1999 - Ashley Road - Jules Ms Scarlet, Djr

Halloween: fancy a bite?

1999 - Empire State Building / NYC - Djr

November: a few days later I'm back in New York. This time I flew with Virgin, which was awesome. Grabbed the taxi ride from JFK to Manhattan, this time knowing what to expect but still feeling a flutter and a thrill of excitement. This time I had friends here. Raymond Fx had moved here permanently, from London, and Ramona lived just over the river in New Jersey... I'd not met her in realspace since we'd struck up a close bond on-line, but I'd told her I was coming over and we both thought it would be cool to meet up.

I checked into my old freind the Gershwin Hotel, and found myself in a shared room with 4 double bunk beds...

1999 - Manhattan - Djr, Ramona

November: I arranged to meet Ramona in Zido's cafe...my regular haunt from last year, on 23rd and 3rd. I didn't know what to expect but I was pretty confident she'd be cool... my main worry was she'd be nothing like the woman on the photo she'd sent me.

It was a perfect rendezvous. We drank coffee, chatted, then ended up in bar near Grand Central station...

...the first time I went back to her place, we caught the van from Port Authority, rode through the Lincoln Tunnel and suddenly I found myself in a new experience... away from the regimented streets and avenues of Manhatten... this was more organic... the van climbed a hill, swung round a corner and then my jaw dropped and hit the floor. To my right, stretching as far as they eye could see, across the river, was the length of Manhattan, row upon row of sky scrapers... it was an utterly mind boggling view. In fact, most nights I was there I simply stood outside Ramona's pad and stared across the river at such an awesome sight.

I met Ramona's brother, David; and two of her closest friends, Linda & Tracey. Everyone was lovely and great fun. Delicious lamb cutlets from Beyti Kebab, and I experienced the amazing food-court in the huge electronics and entertainment corporation Ramona worked for.

1999 - Manhattan

November: I eventually saw this production three times. Simply unbelievable how good it was.

1999 - Enroute to Boston - Djr, Ramona

November: I had a map of New England covering several hundred miles around Boston. I had a copy of a fictitious map of Lovecraft country. I transposed the two maps together and had a rough idea where the fictional Dunwhich might be... I was curious to see if the landscape matched Lovecraft's descriptions.

I was stunned how far Boston actually was from New York... when looking at the map it was a tiny fraction of landmass... it took longer than a drive from Bristol back to Newcastle.

We parked in Boston, had a wander through a fruit stall where some guy shouted at me, "Anything for a buck you fuck," then into a bar where we found two guys in vests punching the shit out of each other on top of the pool table... eventually found a pretty chilled area and had some amazing seafood in a place that looked as old as Boston itself.

Next day was a massive breakfast in a roadside diner, and then we ploughed directly West for a few miles before gently angling Northwards... by mid-day I found myself in pure Lovecraft country, it was perfect...

... drove back to New York that night.

1999 - Manhattan - Djr

November: Ramona created a fantastic dimension to the New York experience, she was a lot of fun, had a massive heart and made a lot of effort to show me places.

My second reason for being in New York was Raymond Fx. I caught up with him in his new pad in Brooklyn... and this was the night I discovered Sushi. Oh boy, did I discover Sushi... it became a life long passion from this point on.

Raymond had found a cushy routine, employed by several night clubs to talent-scout bars in the early evening: this involved him moving from place to place, looking for attractive people, approaching them, suggesting they go to this club-that club, and handing out tokens that would buy them a couple of complimentary drinks. Later, Raymond would stand on the door of these places, alongside the bouncers, and if he saw any of the people he'd talent scouted stepping into the line, he'd grab them out and rush them through like VIP's. All very shallow but great fun to watch.

So several nights I rode shotgun with Raymond cruising and schmoozing, until well after 2 A.M. at which point we hit the clubs ourselves, everything on comp...

...Raymond had become a vampire. He got home just before sunrise and he spent all daylight hours sleeping and recovering, before doing it all over again.

1999 - Ashley Road / Bristol - Matthias P

November: Around the same time that I met Ramona on-line, Matthias met somebody online. She will never be mentioned here, other than to be labelled a liar... she came to visit Matthias in Bristol.

Mathias continued developing his artistic style, as in the three panels below:

1999 - Australia (photo from) - Dan, x

November: Dan, the young lad I'd met back in NYC during my first trip of 1998, had gone across to Oz to learn how to become a dive-master. I spent the next few months getting some excellent E-mails from him as he progressed through his courses.

1999 - Arctic (photo from) - Age

December: I'd not been to Norway for 10 years... but I still maintained some strong links with my family there. Age began E-mailing around now, which was great, and developed a friendship that went above the simple bond of "cousins". This picture shows him proudly in front of a large number of dead things.

1999 - Jesmond / Newcastle - Lucille M

December: Lucille is Alex M's mother. She was our neighbour when my parents first moved into Jesmond from Heaton back in 1980. It had been some years since they moved out, but she and my mum were still very close friends. So Lucille came to spend this Christmas with us.

1999 - Jesmond / Newcastle - Dad

December: Dad put on my black hoody, North Face jacket and amber shades... is this a picture of me in my 60's?

I stayed in Newcastle for New Year's Eve, saw the new Millenium in with Ciaran at World HeadQuarters, with Tommy Trent laying down cool track after cool track until well after 4 A.M.