tuesday 30th april
dads's first day of retirement and he's got no frineds to play with it
seems. so what does he do? he takes a shot of mum crashed out in the new
conservatory back in cambridge and emails it to me. so here's one of me,
taken pretty much at the same time by the qrcam.
monday 29th april
materialism all the way i'm afraid. that's what work does to me.possibly
the best way to appreciate weekdays is when you work weekends. everyone
else is at work, especially those in retail around the liverpool street
area. at lunch i walked over and treated myself to a new dvd of an old
film and the first crash game on a non-sony format. new stuff. you can't
beat it.
sunday 28th april
more work. and on the sabbath? jen would go mad you know...
saturday 27th april
work, but at least i wasn't burgled. saturday traffic in london's about
as good as you get so i took the bus to work, partly to spend more time
waking up, partly to avoid having to press, push and move things which
is simply too much effort today. when i sat down a notice-board style
ticket was jammed under the seat in front of me, so i gave it a friend.
lucky i kept it considering the inspector asked to see it just passed
the bank of england...
friday 26th april
work today, work tomorrow, work the next day. and the day after that,
and the day after that... and so it goes for me for a while.
thursday 25th april
half asleep, still slightly unsure of which clothes you eventually decided
to put on as you rub your eyes and stretch out sleep-locked hands, you
close the door and lock it before autopiloting down the stairs. there,
in the middle of the mat propped against the door six feet away from you,
right-way up with the label facing forward almost as if it's presenting
itself to you is a gift, or rather, the gift. there are ten new curve
tracks to get acquainted with, and that's a situation i've only experienced
three times before, and a long time ago. how should i do it? listen to
them all? and before you realise it you're awake and, for the first time
in ages, eager to get to work.
wednesday 24th april
this post reminds me of alison's
wrist.
tuesday 23rd april
i'm getting really fed up of this sore throat now and need: more sitting
in the sun, hours in the day, laundered clothes, rest, walks in the park
and less deadlines, talking, traffic jams waking up at night and pain.
alternatively this week chumpy has mostly been eating posh chicken burgers
at lunch. with breadcrumbs, divent yer knaa?
unfortunatley for some, it's there.
monday 22nd april
saturday night finally arrived cunningly disguised in sun and sleep this
afternoon as i just lay on the sofa answering the mobile phone as it rang
intermittently. some people asked me things, the others told me things,
i just lay there, sinking in and out, in and out, occasionally moaning
along with billy crystal who still, like me was using only the one side
of the bed.
sunday 21st april
well, well, well... what have we here then? a twenty-ninth birthday, a
jib-fest of railsliding proportions, beginners, borrowing trousers, cars
full of robs and prices and elliotts, late deluxe chicken, herb peri peri,
bear claws, whilst maps, headphones, in short a road trip.
"now that's a poster." i say excitedly, pointing straight-armed
at the wall, grinning like the imaginary sexist pig i'm impersonating.
"you're right, it is..." rob replies in his south african lilt
as he becomes lost in a daydream stare, "i've been sitting here for
half an hour and didn't even notice it."
"bloody typical" says holly after turning round
"you men. sad." tracey agrees, as steve turns to see
what the fuss is all about, "wooaahh..! mmmm, that's nice.
where can i get one? that would look great on my wall"
"it's not sexist; it's art" i tell them, knowing full well i
won't get away with it despite the men outnumbering the women two to one.
saturday 20th april
we took an easy drive into town this morning over lambeth bridge, past
the labour party headquarters, the houses of parliament, horseguard's
parade, and trafalgar square, then through piccadilly, up regent street,
over oxford circus then left into the warren of streets behind the shops,
all in glorious sunlight, with the 'roof down and the hip hop (mark b
and blade's 'the unknown', should you be wondering) whumphing along. minutes
later we found a spot near what seemed to be a university hospital, pulled
over and proceeded to roll up windows, remove minidisc panels, secure
steering wheels. people were milling around as they do in london, always
focussed on where and what, hardly noticing each other as they self-importantly
bumbled along. we fed the meter with more gold than silver coins then
snaked our way east and south to the virgin megastore on oxford street.
we entered, laid a deposit, then turned left as we left onto tottenham
court road. it took two hi-fi shops to find what i needed and what i hoped
funky would love.
paul received two mobile telephone calls while i paid paperchase for a
birthday card (which read 'rock and f**king roll!' on the cover) then
we walked back to the car, undoing our previous actions, this time turning
right onto the mall after piccadilly, en route to the food shop via buckingham
palace. the boot was empty. damn.
friday 19th april
this is good. but
not as good as the big long tube
with all the creative madness it brings. today it got labeled and another
piece of fancy equipment turned up.
thursday 18th april
the queues are so bad in london that for the next few weeks i shall be
taking the underground to work. it's hot, smelly, unsociable and expensive
but i don't have to think or press or move anything with hands or feet
so the tradeoff's more of a gamble than i would have liked and next year
they're stopping cars entering zone one so it definitely won't get any
better than this.
wednesday 17th april
they locked us in the park tonight. we're such naughty kids sometimes.
tuesday 16th april
locked in the park before impromptu babushka beer and games: i guessed
i was the queen mum in three, engineered by an unknown kevin spacey, although
we did have pieces of paper to write down whether we were alive, female,
in entertainment or whatever. it's fair to say we were pretty hammered.
then oooh, police vans.
monday 15th april
all i can say is that something small happened.
sunday 14th april
badminton with changes at each end. you win a few, you lose a few but
either way, you're still there doing something good for you.
'eating on court? what happened to the sunday roast?"
'sunday roast? that's the kind of thing you do when you're thirty"
"thanks a lot! i'm thirty -"
"no you're not - you can't be; you look about fifteen!"
i just look at him and he sees i'm serious.
'woah. i mean, you don't look it..'
saturday 13th april
mgs 2 finished.
friday 12th april
backwards writing gib yag regdab with the cheeser, who's close to getting
his own subsection in cuppa.
thursday 11th april
when the placement student's away it was inevitable. our dark sarcastic
side got the better of us:
and then, of course, jon the writer had to lower the tone in a solitary
word:
wednesday 10th april
student rob is working as a placement student for onedotzero
at the moment in between scrounging lifts from me in the morning and evenings
to save money but he's not very good at answering the phone. he's away
for the next couple of days which allows me to render files on 'his' machine
and as i set one off just now i noticed the post-it note he has stuck
on the top of the monitor. he's written himself a phone answering script!
plus we got badges and mine suits me all the way down to... wherever.
summer views from the state
roof terrace:
tuesday 9th april
i stole crash's kart. nicking stuff is way more fun than php scripts that
don't work because the server hasn't been configured properly and even
though that's not your job the person whose it is isn't there to help
and would probably put it at the bottom of his priorities list even if
he was.
monday 8th april
boy, did we clean the house this evening. softlad did battle in the kitchen
while i made a valiant effort in the lounge, loo and bathrooms. quite
astonishingly the whole place went from skank to palace in under an hour.
this was followed by a stint of cooking (garlic chicken) and the completion
of mgs2.despite the end being ridiculously protracted it was very good
indeed. i left behind fifty dead, used 50 saves and played for 13.55 hours
which i thought was pretty good until i looked on the net. dog tags are
a great touch.
steve caught
me only just awake and promptly woke me up the rest of the way with his
news of new york and his conversations concerning marriage, flying, operations
and best man speeches. so you don't have to ask whether it went well,
then.
'tis the season of family birthdays all right, so have a good one, mum.
sunday 7th april
almost only driving, talking and squinting. mum and dad were in good form
as we sat in the conservatory eating dinner and discussing kate's wedding,
self tanning lotion, dvd players, 60th birthdays (dad, next month), cars,
education, net curtains and anything else that seemed to slide into the
broad remit of floating stream of shared consciousness'. dad and i went
for a drive in lbc, kate and i listened to the jesus and mary chain on
the way back to london. thinking about it, today was actually much more
than almost only.
saturday 6th april
shopping for family presents and rob cruise's 30th. all the m.a. boys
barring matt
and brad, sadly. neil's grown the most amazing mullet i've ever seen,
rob is so happily in love it's sickening and philip insisted on buying
labour-intensive cocktails to celebrate being served with vindication.
friday 5th april
an eight hour day and 0.5k of work to do was the task -and oh my god holly's
coming over except for she got lost on the way home from work (..?!) and
is somewhere in sw1. she's a female alex
i reckon and lord help us all if i'm right...
thursday 4th april
steve flew
off today to new york and i can't help feeling the next few days are the
biggest of his life in some ways, or the ones that could determine his
whole future anyway. on his wings are all the luck i can lend.
wednesday 3rd april
seeing my old film studies tutor, joel, in our studio again was fun and
somehow, weirdly, reassuring. aspen's back now that the weather is clear,
warm and sunny although i fear there are too many people in the studio
for him; as paul said, 'cats don't like crowds'. when the season flips
over so quickly i can really feel the effect it has on me. i'm a different
person these days - how i remember myself that day on the way to college
- jumping around the studio again, talking too much and generally thinking
things can be pretty good for more than just soundbites of time.
i know the studio will be busy and hectic soon because onedotzero6
is imminent.
tuesday 2nd april
when i arrived home and opened the door i yelled 'cheese! how ya doing?'
and immediately heard him cursing above the noise of plates submerging
in washing up water. immediately i became curious. this was not the normal
'all right?'. it was hard to avoid noticing his new video camera set up
on top of a stack of dvds and ps2 games which in turn were on my rear
speakers, like some teetering jenga mountain of technology; it was at
eye level, focussing directly on the door i had just walked through. it
seemed he had a plan. on the back of the door was a sign which - in mirror
writing - said 'here comes one cheesy muther'. why it was in mirror writing
confused me at first until he explained that when the viewfinder display
is rotated to face front it flips the image horizontally. he presumed
it would flip when recorded which, as any normal person knows, it doesn't,
but he wrote what can only be loosely termed a 'prop' backwards anyway!
just think; all he had to do was press the record button and forget about
it. instead, i filmed him burping, which was just as amusing and totally
'prop' free. what a total cheeser.
oh, and he's been pretty busy in the cuppa section, too, rehtum yseehc
eht.
monday 1st april
mgs2 day with harriers, parrots and chaff.
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