Sometimes even I wonder how I manage to live 3 lives simultaneously with minimum crossover, as I do. I always take the time to sit down with these people and tell them what I really think of them. Anyway if you know me you'll know i'm not one to do unnecessary things. By that I mean that if it's not interesting, funny or required then I rarely tend to leave my bed. To save you reading an article about australian chickens or pentagon shaped pencil erasers I have decided to documentate a day in the life of The Online Net's heart and soul; the creators.

Some time between 10:00 and 11:30: Waking Up
Jay (that's me) is suddenly awoken by a fat man entering the room and mumbling something about someone being in the vicitiny, not one to turn away a groupie, unless they refuse to pay, I decided to climb out of bed and do my duty.

You can imagine my surprise when it's not a starving mongolian sitting on my sofa, but infact the one and only big man himself: the Robe. I revelled in my height advantage whilst he was seated until he rose and i sank into the depths of nothingness once again. Glancing out of the window I spotted a single loyal TON fan who had been standing there for at least 10 minutes, it was time to meet and greet.

11:18 AM: Meeting the fans
The usual fans of The Online Net are reserved and prefer to withhold their indentities, true feelings, names and pretty much all their personal details incase we steal their wives and burn their crops. This single fan standing outside my abode was one of the special ones, after treating him to some of my legendary wit and signing some body parts I agreed to let him get on the bus and go on his way. The job satisfaction of working at TON is unmatched.

11:30 AM: Departure
As I tried to remind the Robe multiple times between 11:29 and 11:30 we could have easily stayed in and worn ourselves out playing SSX on the old PS2 but he wasn't having any of it and was determined to tire me out before lunchtime. We grabbed our Harley Davidsons and set off on the open road, speeding off into the sunset - a look of content settle on my face and I knew I was one of the lucky ones. We were going on a magically tour of mystery, a trip of a lifetime and one that was keeping me from my sleep. I had only been awake about 30 minutes and it takes me two hours to wake up so I wasn't paying much attention to things at this point...

11:31 - 11:45AM: The Twilight Zone
I dont recall what happened between point A and point B but i lost three pints of blood, my rear bike light and my dignity and gained four pounds and a packet of jameson's chocolate covered peanuts... (?)

???: Destination Mockery
Ipswich Town Centre has always been a place where we have felt like outsiders but today we learnt something about ourselves and our town and came out as better people. the Robe agreed with me when we were discussing generation trends, and the new millenium has definately signalled the decade of Grebo/Nu-Metal culture, the signs are all around you and Ipswich is no different to any other place around the country in this respect... "and they had green hair... imbeciles"

11:45 onwards: Doing stuff..
Describing why we actually went to town in the first place would ruin an otherwise fantasy story of love and lesbians, so i'll keep it simple and leave some room for the conventionalists amongst us to judge me accordingly. We were armed with a Camera, Clipboard, Pen, Map, £6 and our imaginations, I would've traded all that for a Sony Wega but I didn't think we'd manage to carry it back on bikes. The first thing we decided to do was walking to a library, well THE library, Ipswich County Library, we asked for a map and recieved, the Robe puzzled over it like a gypsy on heat before throwing it down and running off screaming of treason. I browsed momentarily the short stories shelf, picking up probably the only copy in the world of "The Mammoth Book of Lesbian Erotica", unfortunately time and decency restraints forced me to put it down and leave before i could have my mind willingly corrupted by this glorious work of fiction.

After that gargantuous waste of time we made our way to the high street which I estimate we walked up and down about twelve times in total, luckily we're not cripples and could handle this walking lark fine. We decided to count people, counting requires excellent concentration and perplexity and we handled it like professionals, the Robe counted people walking from right to left and I from left to right, adding these two figures together at the end of a 10 minute intensive session we had a total which we noted on some lined paper on the clipboard. This counting nonsense was hard work so being the expert photographers we are, we grabbed the 24 exposure and legged it down the road through the crowd, we got pictures of local fast food chains such as McDonalds Restuarant and Burger Kind, and the Robe managed to get some paparazzi style shots of myself enterting and leaving an unidentified women's clothes shop. Enough said about that already.

For a future article on this very day written by the Robe we also decided to get some visual aids to help our story, the Robe being completely soft accepted many leaflets from drop outs on the streets including those persistently annoying Liquid slaves in silver puffer coats. We also got pictures of some Goths, the Ipswich Buddhist preachers featured in a snap shot with the Robe donating 4p to the cause. By this point the town was saturated with low intelligence so the only way forward seemed to be to drop to their level, to do this we bought a McDonalds.. 4 Cheeseburgers, split 50/50 gave us two each and our brunch. After indulging in the opitomy of fast food we were witness to the start of a protest rally along the high street, a march of veggies dribbling on about killing farm animals or something,this was exciting stuff. Here we were minding our own business putting on weight as you do, when suddenly we were thrust onto the scene. This was front line journalism at it's best, I crouched to take some photos along with some establish photographers I recognised from my time at the Evening Star back in '98, and it was all good.

Ending on a high note, I'd like to thank:-
Craig Shimmon and girl, Lewis Osborne and Melissa Tokley, Chris.. something, the Purple Shop, McDonalds, Burger King, the Hot Sausage Company, Popcorn and Nuts Ltd, West World and the businesses of Carr Street, Ipswich, Ipswich County Library, the Robe and myself and various other people.

Article Written by Jay -
jay@theonlinenet.co.uk