The Book of Dool, Chapter 1, Line 1

I’ll be the first to admit that it’s taken an absolute eternity for me to finally purge the following jive out of my system, a sheer arse-load of time in fact. We’re not talking about any perky, slim, spandex, gym-going arse here either – this here is a big fat arse, an epic rump, an orcha time-space posteria if ever one existed. It’s essential that you feel the stressed conviction here. The following recap has been a bloody long time coming, and the time is finally nigh for me to pull my finger out.

Last year I went overseas. It was possibly the greatest and most amazing four and a half months of my life, an incredible, remarkable, sensational, wild, sweaty, and at times balltearing adventure. On April 12, 2006 I embarked from Tullamarine airport with nothing but a chunky, overfilled backpack, a Sax, my wits, my tits, and the rest of my bits. I, Cam ‘Dool’ Hassard opened myself up to the magic fabric of chaos, taking on the world head first, giving up the reigns to destiny and fate with the expectation that they’d lead me in the right direction. I left blindly and hoped for the best, and ended up settling for even better.

The trip was truly epic – trundling as far south as manic Morocco, as far east as glorious Turkey, hitting up every possible nook and cranny in between. Four and a half months later, on a chilly as all buggery August morning I found myself swept back home, the boomerang culmination, the end of an era, and the timely beginning of an even greater one.

Monty Python’s Michael Palin once declared to himself that it must be a small failure to let life go by without in some way documenting it. When I was overseas, I wrote a blog for each and every splendid day, an exercise that did not continue once I returned back to home soil. As a result of resting for five months with finger lodged ass-ward, a period of inaction after 115 consecutive daily European travelblogs, my bulging, neglected spleen is now choc to the brim and in dire need of some serious ventilation. Sure, the riveting accounts of windsurfing off the coast of a Greek isle, sailing the Turkish mediterranean on a gulet yacht and climbing Gaudi’s Dog’s Balls Cathedral in ‘Barthelona’ may well be dormant for the time being. But who’s to say that prose depicting day-to-day life can’t amount to the same echelon of interest as an action-packed European perambulation? I’m guessing a shitload of people would.
Regardless, here I am unveiling the arguably much anticipated home-based sequel to the 2006 Travelblog series, a random dog’s breakfast compendium of the minutiae of my life and times - ‘Life According to Dool’, a anthology of online bollocks for your procrastination-quelling amusement. For those readers who are currently asking ‘Who or what the hell is a Dool?’, this is my nickname. Despite my irrefutable Irish lineage, the surname ‘Hassard’ often sounds more like I evolved from the Persian Gulf rather than the rolling Green hills of Eire. Consequently I’m frequently reffered to as Camdoola, which is often shaved down to a lazy ‘Dool’. I trust that this clarifies.
Enjoy the bollocks.