What's Going On?

Yesterday was Dad's graduation day and it was fun filled. Actually it was pretty good, not too long, a couple of interesting speeches and it made me realise that Dad's qualification is fairly legitimate, as I was sort of questioning how regular it was before yesterday. One of the highlights of the day was the speech given by the Chancellor, whose name, I think, is Ivor Connely. He was a great speaker who was concise, clear, amusing and very musical with that Irish accent of his. Apparently he used to be the CEO of Guinness.

One of Dad's fellow graduands, and the only other person from Australia, is the CEO for the Europe divison of T2, who apparently make alot of games, including the successful Grand Theft Auto series.

This is a very dull post and I apologise for it.

Things have settled down since my last out pouring of bile, but things can still be pretty funny at times. We're in Cambridge at the moment. I think that we're heading north from here, but don't know where to. Apparently we've got a barbecue lined up in Scotland with a baron. The story goes that one of the people associated with the creating of Dad's university is an orphan. He is also incredibly wealthy now, having set up a publishing house. So what do you do if you've got no parents and no real family history to speak of? Buy a baroncy. Which he did. And if you're a baron why would you have a barbecue? Because you can. Well, that and also back in the Middle Ages the Baron who was around at that time burned a few people at the stake, and there is only a couple of times a year when the witch's descendants can absolve the Baron from his guilt. Something like that anyway. I think that we are going to be gatecrashing the party.

Yesterday afternoon I harassed a few bar staff at the hotel, I also drank too many beers in the afternoon by myself and then passed out on the bed. I missed dinner unfortunately.

So, yeah, that's about it really. Cambridge is a nice sort of a place, I would have liked to go out last night, what with it being Halloween and a university town and all, but the place where we are staying is actually a fair distance from Cambridge itself. Oh well.

I hope to meet up with Andy and Callum this week, we'll see how things go. I'm pretty keen to get to Scotland, and believe it or not, I'm pretty keen to get home too. Weird, huh? Still, I think London is a cool kind of place, and may require further extended investigation.

I need a haircut soon.

Titles Are Over-rated.

One thing that I really really don't like is being sworn at. I am okay with swearing in general conversation and whatever, but it's not okay with me to be sworn at. I really don't appreciate it and can rarely find an acceptable excuse for it. It's really not necessary and should be discouraged.

In other news I am in the old university city of Oxford at the moment and can relate to you that circumstances of the Musgrave Tour of the Old Country are starting to degenerate a little bit. Whilst it is still all very interesting and whatever, I, and the other members of the crew, am starting to get a bit over looking at lots of old shit. It's all new, but it's starting to lose a bit of its exciting-ness if that's a word. If that's not a word I just made it up and it's now in use so deal with it. I think that everyone is starting to get a little tired, a little sick of our own company and a little bit bored with what's going on. In the last couple of days a routine has started to emerge, and it's one that isn't really going down to well.

An average day starts with us waking up after not getting enough sleep because of people snoring and not being in our own beds. From there we go down stairs and eat too much for breakfast. Every breakfast so far has involved bacon, eggs, toast, tomato, sausage, tea and sometimes baked beans. This is not good for long trips in the car. It hasn't been sitting too well in any of our bellies. We get in the car, drive for about an hour or so, often backtracking down a couple of roads (this isn't getting lost, it's just seeing a bit more scenery. After the hour we get out, have a bite to eat even though we aren't hungry and then get back into the car. We get somewhere old around lunch time and head out into the old cities and proceed to look at some old shit. Sometimes Stuart and I lose Dad, but mainly we stick together. We then have some sandwiches for lunch and get back into the car. Once in the car we head for a village or somewhere to pull up stumps. Sometimes we have a look at some other old stuff. Then begins the adventure of finding a place to stay for the night.

The criteria for an inn is that the room must sleep three and be reasonably priced. This normally takes about an hour. Once we find a place we head in, Dad whinges about there being too many stairs in England and we have a bit of a break for an hour or too. We generally have some cheese and biscuits or something and Dad looks for some coke to have some scotch with. Generally we don't find any.

Once we've become a bit more civilised we venture out again and find a pub for dinner and a couple of pints. After this we retire to the room and sleep. Then we wake up and do it all over again.

Now, I am probably whinging a bit here myself, but it's wearing thin. Now that that's out I can tell you a bit of detail about what's been going down.

After the last post we found a pub in Bath and had a reasonable enough meal. This pub was called The Saracen's Head and was actually a watering hole of Charles Dickens' when he was around. Apparently we are only 200 hundreds years off having a beer with him. In this pub we were talking to one interesting fellow who, after befriending us decided that we were actually good enough mates to show us a movie on his phone. This clip was of a pig having it's head cut off and spasming for a minute or so. It really helped the digestion. Great quality picture though.

We then headed up to another pub near our place and had a couple more beers. It was a very smoky pub which wasn't very cool and Dad got talking to some freak. He was a freak. When told that Dad was graduating from Cambridge he asked what college as apparently he was also an alumni. It had to happen.

The next day we went somewhere and looked at some old shit. I can't even remember where it was at the moment, I'm sure when I see the photos of Stuart and I standing in front of yet another cathedral it will come back to me. We finished up at Tintern Abbey which was actually quite lovely. This place was actually a ruin and pretty neat. It was on the banks of the river Wye and we stayed in some lovely accomodation there. It was probably the pick of them so far. Even had yoghurt for breakfast which was terrific. And I just remembered where we went that day too, Cardiff, so we were in Wales. They love their rugby down there. Wales really is some lovely countryside, rugged sort of stuff. I also forgot that we went to Cheddar Gorge which was quite impressive, we bought some cheddar from Cheddar too which was neat.

Today we went to Stratford Upon Avon which is the birthplace of Shakespeare. Is there an e on the end? I don't know. Unfortunately there was a bit of miscommunication here and Stuart and I lost Dad. It was a nice place I guess, lovely weather and lots of people making the most of the school holidays. After this we went to Warwick and looked at the castle there which is apparently the best example of a Medieval castle. This was pretty cool, lots of kids on holidays though. Stuart and I climbed the ramparts, Dad decided there were too many stairs. I guess 530 is quite a few. Now I am in Oxford and have gone on a bit of a walk to get some fresh air and solitude. I've had a bit of trouble navigating around as there are lots of bends and hidden streets and things like that. Someone is smoking reefer in the doorway to the cafe.

Just so you know Tim, I'll try my hardest.

Tomorrow we go to Cambridge and have a bit of time there for Dad's graduation ceremony so it will be nice to break the monotony. Get some rest or something. I'm sure there'll be too many bloody steps though.

Big Bottoms

Okay, okay, okay. Here we go. It's been a big few days and I'm pretty sure that I won't be able to get all of this down, but i'm going to try to anyway.

To begin with I'll let you know what happened after I last posted. I headed into Piccadilly Circus and met up with Richie Finnila, Bill Bjurstrom and Brian. At least I'm pretty sure his name was Brian, but he introduced himself to Stuart as Steve, so who knows really. Unfortunately Rowan had already headed home, and after arriving I think that it was probably a good move. I met up with Richie, Bill and Brian at an Irish pub next to the hostel where they were staying. I believe that they had been drinking for a couple of hours. Five minutes after my arrival Richie unexplicably dropped his pants and started dancing around a bit. He had a very nice pair of Australian flag boxer shorts on. After pulling his pants up he tried to dance with a couple of girls who were bopping around a bit, he took them both by the hand and tried to lead them in a bit of a jig. Unfortunately I think that they had seen Richie with his pants off minutes earlier and were a bit worried about what they were in for if they stuck around with that wild man.

About a beer later it was decided that this Irish pub wasn't quite big enough to hold us and we burst onto the streets of London in search of the home away from home for all drunk Aussies, the Walkabout. We managed to find, and be allowed entry into, one on Shaftesbury Avenue. It was a pretty wild sort of a place. It reminded me alot of the Transcontinental Hotel from back in the day, but ten times bigger. I proceeded to drink several Snakebites and generally have a reasonably good time getting pretty drunk. Somewhere along the line Stuart showed up, at about the same time Richie disappeared. I still don't know where he went. The night ended with Stuart and I taking the bus home at 3 in the morning and getting off the bus about 2 kilometres before we had to. You live and learn. Somewhere in the pub Stuart worked a bit of his magic on a red head, and Bill (also known as Mr X) worked a bit of his. In all, I'm glad I went to a Walkabout because it was a good time, and I can now say that I've been.

The next day was a pretty early start, thankfully I wasn't feeling too poorly after the previous night. Dad, Stuart and I headed down to the Portobello Markets in Notting Hill. It was reasonably lucky that we got there a little early because it started to get pretty packed. There were all sorts of treasures to be found at these markets, and they went on and on and on. They really were massive. Old stuff, new stuff, broken stuff, fixed stuff, unwanted stuff, collectable stuff and even a little stuff down this one alley that I'm pretty sure was stuff that was missing from someone's place. Stuart and I lost Dad, and pushed onto into the markets. We found out later that he went to Churchill's bunker and had a great day, so good on him. Stuart and I, however shopped til we dropped. One of the things that I was a bit excited about was a stall that was selling deep fried prawns, crab claws and mussels. You got quite a big bucket of them for £3. So I lined up, got some, a couple of pieces of bread and some sauce. I was very disappointed. It seems that for £3 you don't always get what you pay for. The "prawns" were actually just sea food extender in the shape of prawns, and I didn't try any of the crab claws. The mussels however were the real deal, and pretty okay. The bread was probably the best part.

So Stuart and I shopped and shopped and shopped at the Portobello Markets. At some point Stuart got into his head that he wanted to pick up a pair of tight black jeans and some big old school style high top basketball shoes. Unfortunately the Portobello Markets didn't have the selection we were after so we were pointed in the way of the Camden Markets. This was an eye opening experience. It was massive. Stuart said that they were the biggest markets that he's ever seen, and he's done a bit of travelling through Asia and stuff so I guess he's been around a bit. Still though, it was amazing. Very interesting people watching as well. Lots of goths, lots of black dudes, lots of "interesting" types of people. Hundreds and hundreds of stalls, thousands and thousands of pre loved articles of clothing and heaps of new stuff too. It was wild. One store was basically a club for Candy Kid raver type people, but it wasn't just a dingy little corner store hidden away, it was this huge thing that took a couple of minutes to walk from end to end in. The staff there were right into it, one dude even had those "horns" grafted onto his skull.

Stuart ended up picking up his pair of jeans here, although we've since decided that they are actually girl's jeans as they are heavily elasticised. He also picked up a pair of pretty neat 30th Anniversary Adidas boots. I'm not so sure about this look that he's trying to cultivate, but if you want to wear whatever you want then London is probably the place to do it.

Now unfortunately there is alot more stuff to talk about here, but so much has happened in the past few days that I must press on. One last thing about the markets though was Stuart and I were both offered what I thought were scones the first time but quickly realised was skunk about 10 times each. Also, after 9 or so hours of shopping I didn't end up buying a thing. I'm a bit pissed off about this now. I think that I had some sort of fear that if I bought one thing then I would go crazy and just start buying things that I didn't want or need.

That Saturday night I did go a little crazy though. I met up with Sarah out at her place and went with her down to a bar, then onto a club afterwards. I had a wonderful time with Sarah and a few of her friends, then Danica and Dave Honour came on down. Separately. It was a great night I had alot of fun. Had a few drinks, talked to some pretty girls, did some of these ones. In all a tops night. It ended back at Sarah's which was pretty chilled out and nice. Taking the bus home at 6:30 in the morning wasn't as nice. Nor was packing and getting out of London, but that is what had to happen that day, and that is what happened. Still, it was a bonzer way to finish off the week and I am very glad that I did.

So Sunday was spent in the car. We went to Canterbury and Dover. I'm not entirely sure where we ended up I think that it was Hastings. It was pretty windy down on the coast. It had a pier and a very sad old bar that we had a couple of drinks in, but no food at because the food could only be sold to members of the Bingo club. I don't think that the girl behind the bar has smiled since 1997.

Yesterday was spent in Portsmouth, visiting the HMS Victory which was very timely as it was the 200th Anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar this past weekend. The boat was interesting, the weather was atrocious. Ah, what else happened. That night we went out for dinner, we ended up heading into the first restaurant we saw as the weather was that horrible. It was blowing an absolute gale and pouring down cats and dogs. What was funny was that it's school holidays here at the moment and there was an underage disco on. Now this in itself isn't funny, what is kind of funny is the girls and boys who were hopelessly underdressed for the conditions in which they found themselves. I mean, there were girls in short skirts and singlets! It was freezing! I had a shirt a jumper and a jacket on and was still cold! And these people live here! I think that I actually saw one young lass crying, but no sympathy. That's one thing that has happened to me over here, I now have a heart of stone! Ha!

So yeah, that's about it really. Tonight we are in Bath and it's a very historical town and very interesting. We went on a walking tour before that was very informative. The country side is all green and rolling hills and things. We saw Stonehenge this morning and the whole time I had that Spinal Tapp song going through my head.

That's about it really, hope you're all well, and sorry if I called you the other day and didn't make a whole lot of sense, I believe that I was under the influence.

Come Back To Me

Okay. It's Friday night and I'm feeling a little bit off because I smelt some rancid milk a couple of hours ago. I think that there is no worse smell in the world than off milk. It truly is disgusting. Since I last spoke to you a bit has happened, I've looked at a lot of things - most of them interesting. I've also seen a few familiar faces which is also nice. First of all was Rowan. I went out to his place, meeting him at Baker Street Station. He's still the same nice guy which is great to see, no sign of an accent at all which I'm not too surprised about. We shared a few Fosters and enjoyed a lovely curry cooked by his girlfriend, Sharon, who in addition to being a great cook is also a lovely girl. For a Kiwi. I managed to get through the night with a minimum of inappropriate comments although one of them is sort of haunting me. I'm sure no offence was taken, but with hindsight I probably didn't need to say it. One of those jokes that doesn't quite hit, or perhaps it was too close for comfort. Ha!

Yesterday was a pretty big day. Dad, Stuart and I packed a few sandwiches and headed off to the Tate Modern Art Gallery which was pretty nifty. It's in a converted power house, I'm pretty sure that they stole the idea from Brisbane. It was fantastic though. Now, I don't profess to like modern conceptual art, but some of it was pretty neat. One of my favourites was an oak tree that looked like a glass of water, another was IKB 79 which was created by an artist by the name of Michael Clarke Klein. I think. I could be very wrong, and I do have it written down somewhere. Basically though it's just a canvas with his own individual colour on it. A colour that has an international patent on it. There was a comment from the creator about how it was his ultimate expression of freedom or something like it. I think that's what I like about that stuff, it seems to me that a lot of it is people trying to have a bit of a giggle. People trying to take the piss a bit. They had a few of Jackson Pollock's pieces, none on the scale of Blue Poles though. There was also Salvadore Dali's Lobster Phone which was quite neat. I sometimes think that I'm a bit of a pervert.

Somehow Dad and I managed to lose Stuart whilst exploring the building, so we left him. Dad and I went to the Globe theatre which was actually a bit of a let down, I'm sure it would have been much better if there had been a performance. We then adventured back across the River Thames to St Paul's Cathedral. There I climbed all of the steps to the top and was rewarded with a wonderful view of a lot of London. It was a beautiful clear day and it felt good to get the legs pumping and to feel the sun on my face and the wind in my hair at the top.

Dad and I returned to the apartment after that, and thankfully Stuart was there, with the backpack. I was a bit disappointed. I headed out directly from there to meet up with Sarah in Notting Hill and got there with a minimum of fuss. It was great to see Sarah again, as well as Danica. I also met Sarah's boyfriend, Simon, and found him to be a pretty cool dude. We drank some Scorpions in an American themed bar, then headed over to a pool hall called The Elbow Room where I enjoyed a couple of 2 for 1 beers. One of the beers I sampled was Budweiser, not Budwieser. I think that there's a difference in spelling. I know that the slogan for one is The Beer of Kings, and the other is The King of Beers. Either way it wasn't the American one. I still didn't rate it though. Definately not a XXXX, so obviously shit.

It was a pretty quiet night really, we made some plans for the weekend, maybe do a few of these ones. Possibly those ones too. Could be a bit wild.

Today was spent looking at shops. I found this to be tremendously depressing as there was a lot of clothing that I would have liked, but with the exchange rate and also the reversal of seasons it just wasn't practical. It also made me feel like an ill kempt slob, and although I am quite probably always an ill kempt slob, I don't often feel like. Saville Row, Fortnum and Mason, Harrods - all fantastic stores where I could easily spend thousands of pounds. Very depressing. I think that when I get home I'm going to have to buy a pair of shoes/boots to make myself feel better about it. Kinda pointy toed ones.

As I said earlier, tonight is Friday night and things could get a bit loose. I received a message from Rowan to say that he and Richie Finnila are in Piccadilly Circus having a couple of beers. I'm pretty keen to see David Honour too, but that off milk is still haunting me. Maybe I just need something to eat. Hmmm.

In a side note, I bought a book today in Harrods. It's actually 4 books in 1. They are all by John Fante. In this I discovered that the book from which I took the inspiration for this blog is actually Wait Until the Spring, not Wait For The Spring. Oh well, you live and learn, and I mean a half arsed effort is sort of what you expect isn't it?

A Rookie's Mistake

It almost happened. I almost did it. I had the intention. I was on the way. You know, of course that I didn't make it, but it wasn't my fault. Not really anyway. What I'm talking about is getting down here to post. I'd gotten home from a big day of sight seeing with Dad and Stu and was ready to write it all down when Stuart offered to make me a drink. I couldn't say no. So he made me a very nice Absolut Kurant and soda in a tall, narrow glass. It was so nice, in fact, that I decided to have another one on the spot. Then another. Then I thought that I'd have another one, and by this stage they were disappearing so fast I was able to recycle the ice cubes. I finished that last one and was feeling pretty happy with myself when I said to Stuart that maybe we should go and get some groceries to cook some dinner, then I'll go do my thing and he could cook dinner. It was a good plan, the only thing stopping us, it turns out, was the pub between the hotel and the delicatessan.

Seeing as Stuart and I hadn't had a pint in a pub yet it looked like a golden opportunity to grab a quick one as Dad was asleep. We headed in, ordered a couple of San Miguels and sat down. At this stage I was starting to grin to myself and leer at the girl sitting at the table opposite. She ended up moving. We had a beer, then I bought my round then we headed off to the delicatessan. I wasn't really too interested in what we bought and had my heart set on picking up a bottle of Irn Bru, a drink that had been reccommended to me by a couple of Scottish people I know. Stuey bought some ingredients, I headed over the road and bought some Irn Bru and cigarettes (I had been smoking reasonably heavily at the pub, always a dumb move) and then we headed home. At home I thought that I'd better have a glass of water and a bit of sit down. All thoughts of posting had gone out the window. So I sat down, had a glass of water and held on. For some reason I wasn't feeling too crash hot. I thought that I'd better have a bit more water, which I did. This too did not help. I couldn't get comfortable on the couch, I tried lying down, that didn't work. I tried leaning on one elbow, that didn't work. I tried facing the back of the chair, that didn't work.

I knew where all this was heading, and I didn't like it. I thought to myself that I may as well try and get it over with, and maybe have some of the dinner that Stuart was cooking up. Up the stairs I went, one at a time, being very careful. Then I closed the door and waited for it to begin. And begin it did.

I puked up once, twice, three times. That felt like that was that, and I would be okay from then on. I poured myself a glass of cold water and went back downstairs. No sooner had I finished the glass of water, when I had to get back up to the bathroom again, and up it all came, again. This time was interesting because I remember the water feeling cool in my mouth on the way back out, as opposed to the other stuff that was down there which was still pretty warm. I ended my night passed out on the floor of the bathroom where Stuart found me an hour later. He also found me there again 15 minutes later after I failed to move.

It didn't really take all that much to get me to throw up, but I had had a fairly big day of walking around, I hadn't been drinking enough water and I hadn't eaten for a while before hand. Also I'm not really piss fit at the moment (for lack of a better word). In all, a fairly embarassing evening really.

Today I felt a bit crook, but soldiered on out to the War Memorial which was interesting and then onto Piccadilly Circus. I'm meeting Rowan in an hour for dinner at his house which will be nice.

Congratulations go to David for getting his license. I'm amazed at how many people here in England don't speak English.

Disco Stu bought a very flash pair of boots in Turkey.

If Your Time Expires The Computer WIll Shut Down

Hey there,

Well, here I am, I made it. I'm intact, I'm tired, I'm a little lost, I'm jetlagged but I'm excited. I was going to do an update from Singapore as they have free internet in the airport, but it was a little slow and my patience was running a bit thin. That was before the thirteen hour hell flight into London. Let me say that 13 hours sitting in close confines with my father was an experience that I am not keen to relive, but one that I am sure to on the return flight. One thing I learnt though was that apparently if you have diabetes and it's playing up a bit, then your sweat can have a distinctly sweet smell. Lovely.

The first leg of the trip to Singapore was actually quite nice, my dad and I had a seat between us allowing us to stretch out a bit. The food was nice, the beer was cold and I wasn't too bored yet. I read a bit of my book, listened to a bit of the new Franz Ferdinand album and just sort of kicked back. My dad kept commenting on the stewardesses. They were quite attractive and their uniforms were quite striking.

Hanging out in Singapore was a bit of a pain, Dad was on a mission to find a shower, which with hindsight we both could have used. I picked up a bottle of vodka and read some more of my book. Getting on the jumbo for London was okay, but that's where things stopped being okay. That trip was uncomfortable. I really fucking detest people that feel a need to put their chairs back ALL the way ALL the time. Do they know how much of MY space they take up? Too much. It makes it almost impossible to see the screen on the back of the chair and makes even doing little things like picking your nose uncomfortable. Plus having a father to the right of me who puts up his armrest so that he can fit into the seat is not cool. It is not cool. Fortunately though I managed to get a couple of hours of shut eye in, although I don't think that it refreshed me. It just stole me away from the waking nightmare that was that flight.

We arrived in Heathrow tired and dishevelled, but it wasn't quite over yet. We were lucky enough to have our bags chosen to close the show on the luggage carousel. That was a nice touch. It only took an hour. After that though Customs was a breeze. As was getting the train into London, a bargain at only 14 pound each. We managed to get to our hotel with a minimum of fuss which was surprising considering our state. We stowed our luggage at the hotel at 9 o'clock on the Sunday morning, and only had to wait until 3 for the check in time. Bonza!

Actually, if I'm making this sound bad, it really wasn't too bad. I'm not making up the shit about the flight, that was pretty bad, but the rest of it was okay. I was glad to be on the move and getting to where we wanted to go.

Dad and I went out, had a bite to eat, a bit of coffee and figured out what we were going to hit on our first day in London town.

Taking the Tube was a bit of a novelty, they announced as we arrived that half of the scheduled trains for that day had been cancelled, but it didn't affect us. We headed into Victoria station which is sort of a transport hub type thing. From there we decided to take a walk down to the Thames to find our bearings a bit and to keep on the move. Well, we hit the Thames walked out onto a bridge and had a look at a guide map that we had picked up along the way.

It was at this moment that the lack of sleep started to catch up with us. You'd think that two intelligent men like my father and myself would be able to read a map and figure out which way to head if we wanted to run into London bridge and all the sights along the way. Wrong. We walked two kilometres along the Thames in the wrong direction. Across on the other bank there was a fun run being held which was interesting. 4000 people wearing bright red shirts moving up the river in both directions. We also passed the Peace Pagoda. Whatever that is. It looked pretty cool though from afar, massive. Once Dad and I had realised our mistake we hopped onto a red bus and headed back into Victoria. Dad was feeling a bit pooped at this point and I must admit I was feeling a little on edge myself.

It was only about lunch time now so we had to figure out what to do. We ended up getting on a sight seeing bus which was a double decker job with the roof cut off. This was a fun way to get our bearings and see all the things we'd been hoping to see on our walk, plus a few more. It was a glorious day, blue skies, shining sun, a cool breeze. Dad was whinging that maybe it was a little too cool, but I thought that it was nice. At one stage an Italian girl sat next to me, and that was a highlight.

At the end of the tour Dad realised that he had lost the tickets which were valid for 24 hours, so we weren't able to go for a different one. We ended up walking down to Buckingham Palace and looked at that for a couple of minutes then headed back to the hotel to go to bed. For 15 hours. It was great.

Today has been a very interesting day. Perhaps a little too interesting as I'm sitting here feeling a little overwhelmed. We managed to go the Natural History Museum, the Victoria and Albert museum as well as the Science Museum. They were all very impressive, especially the Victoria and Albert one. Some truly amazing stuff in there, a highlight being a replica of Michaelangelo's statue of David which was very impressive. Also some tapestries and examples of Japanese, Chinese and Korean artworks.

I also managed to get in touch with Rowan and Sarah which was pretty cool and I'll be seeing them later in the week I guess. I'm going to head off now, but I hope to be back again tomorrow to do another update thingo. Disco Stu gets into town tonight, so that'll be interesting. I hope that everybody at home had a great weekend.

Oh, one last thing before I go, when I'm at home my phone rarely goes off, but since being here I've received like 5 random sms's. It'll be interesting to see how much they cost me when I get back. Unfortunately I won't be able to attend either Damien's last performance or Josef and Alec's housewarming this Friday night.

Bye.

Don't Take Five

Here. We. Are. Post number two, let's get down and dirty with it! I had planned to write tonight about some of the little things that annoy me a great deal, but for some reason they aren't springing to mind at the moment. Hopefully they will come to me. Something which has annoyed me a bit today is the roof of my mouth. The reason that this has been giving me grief is that I burnt it this morning on my breakfast. Today I had mashed sweet potato on toast for breakfast, and did not give myself enough time between taking it out of the microwave and placing it in my mouth. This means that for the next few days I will have to endure the agony of constantly tonguing the raw flesh that is now the top of my mouth. It has truly taken a lot of enjoyment I get out of life's simple pleasures. An example is today we had some sausages at work. Now, I love a good sausage, and these ones weren't bad, perhaps a little undercooked, but pretty good really. Today though, they did not please me.

One thing that was better than usual though was my iced tea. I went for one of those Nestle Green Teas and it was fantastic. Very refreshing, very soothing, very nice. They do have a certain aroma though, when you first open the bottle. Sort of earthy, or something. Green. Hmm. Something that could be improved on those bottles though would have to be the lid. Everyday I buy one of these bottles, and everyday I struggle to open them. I mean, I'm no weakling, nor am I a muscle bound freak, but I (as I'm sure many men do) pride myself upon being able to open jars and bottles with a minimum of fuss. My mother always knew that if she gave a jar of spaghetti sauce to me to be opened, then it would be opened. These Nestle iced teas are emasculating me though. I struggle, I strain but I cannot for the life of me get these lids off without resorting to something other than just hand strength.

So yeah, as I'm sure you can tell, the last couple of days have been very exciting. I still haven't really gotten my head around the fact that I'm going to be getting on a plane in two sleeps time. It's a bit strange really. I have to write a few emails tonight to let some people know what's going on, and where I'm going to be and when. I'll do that next.

This blogging will take some getting used to I believe. I really need to do a mission statement or something for it. Something gay like that. Otherwise it's just going to be these meandering thoughts about nothing up on a screen, and that's never interesting for anyone to read, not even me. A while ago I was thinking about writing about all of the little things in the world that piss me off. I don't seem to have the anger though. Or the memory. Plus, every time I thought about that for a blog I'd start singing that Good Charlotte song in my head, and THAT I can do without.

But do I want this to be funny, do I want this to just be like a journal, do I want this to even make sense? I'll get the hang of it sooner or later, I think that for now I will just concentrate on actually doing it. Getting more than 2 posts out there.

I think something I would like to eliminate, or at least reduce substantially would be it all being about me. I mean, what goes on here is fun and all, but I think that I'd start to get a bit of an ego. We'll see how it goes. I'm going to finish up now.

Bye.

(oh, I thought that I'd mention that I'm currently listening to The KLF's Waiting for The Rights of Mu, and that could be why it's all over the place. This "soundscape" has absolutely no direction and doesn't stick to one sound any longer than you wait to cross the road)

Initial

I've got to say that the first line is always the hardest. You don't want to start out like a dork, it can only get worse from there, right? So your beginning should have a bit of a punch, a bit of spark, a bit of something. Or you can just get down into it, which I think that I may have done here.

I guess the purpose of this blog is to help me figure out some things that are going on in my world, and to give me a chance to practice my typing. Also an opportunity to work on my grammar a little bit and maybe even try and expand my writing horizons. It can't hurt to have a journal type thing, can it?

The short term goal, though, is to have somewhere that I can post while I'm away that people can have a look at. I'm yet to figure out who I really want to have a look at this, because there are some things that I would rather some people didn't know about. Baby steps to begin with then.

I guess I'll have to get a funny picture to go with my profile. Maybe something "arty. Maybe something "ironic" (I'm not sure if that is an ironic use of inverted commas there either. I used to remember the word for them, but have since forgotten). Maybe a picture of someone else. Who knows.

In case you didn't know, I'm going away this weekend. Heading over to the Mother country. The United Kingdom. I'm going to be over there with my father, and maybe even my brother if he shows up. It's going to be a very long way and I'm not really too keen on travelling for 20+ hours next to my father. If you haven't met my father he is what you could call a large man, and I fear that the airline seats will lose the battle to contain him. I am fairly sure that there will be a bit of spill over. I hope that this won't matter to me too much though, I'm a big fan of getting on the plane, having a drink, having something to eat, having another drink then passing out for the rest of the trip. In-flight movies are for wussies.

Man, I am going to have to get used to this blogging type stuff. I mean, I would like it to be fairly conversational, but I hesitate to write up some of the stuff that I say. I mean, until I tried to write it down alot of what I say can be extremely offensive. If taken out of context, of course.

So, Saturday I leave, it is currently Tuesday, meaning that I've got a bit of time between now and then. I might even try and post a couple of times before I go so I can get the hang of this thing.

I'm going to go hunt for that "ironic" picture now. Ha!

Bye.