saturday 31st march
alex is happy that i have taken up snowboarding and i'm happy because of both.

dolby digital 5-channel surround in our living room. the beach has never sounded more picturesque. dog's golf ball in lock stock zwapping across the room, the arrows whistling past you in gladiator and bridges hurtling overhead as mission impossible goes hollywood, causing your lower back to rumble. these are all truly awesome experiences. aurail massage, i call it.

this symbol is now a bearer of technological bliss and could mean even less frequent trips to the cinema:



friday 30th march
8 hours sleep in 60 hours isn't enough. plus the inevitable. and a studio visit from westminster. then launch - will it come back again? these are very bad things.

driving home in sunlight - with no lights on - windows down. even in london it's a great feeling to have the wind in your hair. always good to have your flatmate back, too, from far away places, ie egypt. with stories, a tan and a great willingness to relax. excellent.

fluff's mix cd turned out to be a possible pholio contender, the best hip-hop hour you ever heard. nev, you'd better do me another, the summer's coming.

thursday 29th march
judgement day for the students in nottingham and the last day of being a teacher this year, but we'll definately be back. some amazing work from a really personable bunch. and they're as proud of us as we are of them according to the personal assesments. *smile*

they took us out for the evening. revolution, lizard lounge, trainer shenanigans and loud-mouthed antics despite the b-side mutiny! heh. ade's girlfriend-avoiding looks were hilarious, tom loves his girlfriend so much it's brilliant and oh, everything. even slinky dancing and gun shops. laters, fluff.

wednesday 28th march
happy birthday, sis!

recent stuff that has been going on goes something along the lines of "here you go then, skip matey me ol' flapper. the very very best of luck to ya and i do mean that sincerely", "when did they stop making mars bars in paper wrappers? grow up, stu, like, '82", and the infamous twenty states of gurn. oh, and carol. aaaargh.

a day of undead flash coding skeletons rising from the outbox to an inquisition into how someone could so have the things i wanted. ...tyler?

what i said to steve after a conversation about yesterday's funky entry: "...he's a beautiful person." so the honour you thanked me for was mine.

tuesday 27th march
today is bad. like the subatomic particles in your body explosion thing they talk about in ghostbusters. the plans afoot have been shot to bits; now they're practically indistinguishable from shit that just lies there on the floor. and it's fucking raining again. so instead of me sitting here grizzling all over your screen i'm letting my very close friend, funkstar deluxe, take over for one day only. he's a nice guy and he has a very big heart, which on a day like today i coul dreally do with. over to you, phil...

"a voice in my head is telling me that if i ever want to improve my boarding (like we've been doing) we will need to continue with regularity and consistancy. it says have two more sessions at tamworth and then you're ready to show those who doubted us back at milton keynes.

we could never have got up to our standard if we hadn't gone every week, our bodies would have just forgotten. now were on the brink of that delicious grace of living, breathing, carving.

it's the same voice that tells you "you're now ready to leave the beginners slope"

p.p.s. a few weeks ago i had an amazingly profound dream. a dream which uncovered a real memory which my conscious mind had forgotten. well you can't remember every memory can you? this real memory validated the dream to even more real. in it i was shown that tracey and i had met before when we were kids. i awoke immediately after this dream and because i did i recalled every detail. i was in tears for hours, not from sadness but from love, gratitude, and understanding, it was the closest thing i have ever had to a religious experience. like a benelovent force had shown me my destiny. it was too beautiful - i was shaking. i phoned my mum to ask her if the memory that I thought was real, really was - she remembers it too, this left me reeling.

our unconscious minds are our greatest legacy.

...and do you know what? the freakiest thing of all was the dream came on the morning of our 1 month anniversary!"

monday 26th march
a great day at work with email randomness and humour and i was late in but got loads done. i have a good feeling about all of this yellow.

to kick off with, one of those har har emails that just seem to arrive when you're inbox is rammed. i received it from mum (who is surviving the extention work okay): you know you live in london when (me in brackets):

1. you say 'the city' and expect everyone to know which one. (true)
2. you have never been to the tower or madame tussauds but you love brighton. (true)
3. prostitutes and the homeless are invisible. (true)
4. you door has more than three locks. (true)
5. you haven't cooked a meal since helping mum with the turkey last christmas. (false)
6. you actually take fashion seriously. (false)
7. you step over people who collapse on the tube. (er...)
8. you call an 8ft x 10ft plot of patchy grass a garden. (true)
9. you've been to tooting twice and got hopelessly lost both times. (false)
10. you pay £3 without blinking for a beer that cost the bar 28p. (true)
11. you own hiking boots and a 4wd vehicle neither of which have ever touched dirt. (false)
12. the uk west of heathrow is still theoretical to you. (not really)
13. £50 worth of groceries fit in one carrier bag. (true)
14. you have a minimum of five "worst cab ride ever" stories. (false)
15. you consider eye contact an act of aggression. (only in london)
16. your idea of personal space is no one actually standing on your feet. (darn skippy)
17. you haven't seen more than 12 stars in the night sky since you were a kid. (true)
18. you can't imagine living anywhere else. (you wanna bet?)

why they have numbers i don't know, but hey...

working with gary at the ft (financial times) is good 'cos he sends me stuff like this. i was in tears of laughter until i found out where i lived.... plus this made me laugh, but it probably shouldn't have. anyone nervous about this? which poor schmuck has to test it?

thanks to the weather and stuff i drove home without lights in a clean car. everything has felt really summery lately although nothing's actually been summery. must be my frame of mind or the plans afoot. either way, i'm very pleased with this feeling. *grin*

sunday 25th march
there was a sign i saw on the m40 before we entered london painted on the side of a large fence containing a thick forest. each pannel had it's own letter, and it read: 'why do i do this every day?', presumably to make commuters think as they drove to work. it was like that times front cover that had 'morning lemmings' painted across a motorway bridge with this huge traffic jam beneath it. i got the point and i can't help feeling they're right. next week i'm taking a picture. stand by.

a day of good from far and far from good on the snowboarding front. but i did get the first bit of proper carving in just before that face plant. and i jumped a bit, too, which always provided the opportunity to scrape your hands in the snow while you're down there. nice one, funkstar. same time, same place?

nice to see the sun setting at a more summery time as we drove home. i can feel the difference already.

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

saturday 24th march
the car was hand washed while i bought fresh food and coffee from sainsbury's which makes it pretty much the best fiver i've ever spent. i woke up before the annual boat race, just. coming from cambridge (my sister studied at oxford so she's a traitor) i root for goldie who today won (go on, boys!) so we're winning by 8. it's an english thing. pictures of all this stuff are imminent.

so my bedroom has this amazing smell in it that you can only get from new hi-fi components. closest i can compare it to is the smell of a new car. this was a frivolous purchase - a great big sony surround sound a/v amp with about a zillion inputs and outputs to instill mass confusion and uncontrollable wire spaghetti. work owed me on the credit card and portsmouth paid for the mouse-wiggling distraction lecture so it's fine. i think. it rocks, quite literally of course; the remote control even learns other components' functions so instead of having three controllers on the bedside table i now have one. the lounge has five (not including the old tuner/amp i'm sellling to anna at onedotzero). but we're keeping that setup because it's too tempting to ask the nearest guest to change channel and see them suffer, flick over and then panic. my sister's sure she knows which piece is which, but she doesn't so we end up watching blank snow or terrestrial tv in mono. *wince*. now i have to swap all the old amp and tuner's plugs and have just realised that i used the screwdriver to tighten up snowboard bindings and fuck knows where i put it. it's around here somewhere... (disappears stage left, crawling)

oh, and smells:
18. i hate the smell of bleach.
19. i love the smell of petrol. it smells like the future.

this evening i impressed myself by making a coconut thai stir-fry from all-raw ingredients and even ate it with chop sticks. how london! ew! italics overboard!

i found the screwdriver. in the minidisc box. but where the hell's the attachment..? this is like some game show now.

friday 23rd march
this is confusing as hell and sure ain't me, icantellyou.

thursday 22nd march
hey all,

excuse the gush but thought you might like to meet baby taylor hanson. scan taken yesterday at 15 weeks and three days, baby th is floating upside down with legs, coincidentally, in the foetal position.

all's well and good, spine's formed, two arms, two legs, skull's all as it should be and baby th is already showing a mixture of my stubborness and matt's coyness (!) by refusing to cooperate with the radiologist and turn around to show us the full frontal.

gush, gush,

leoxxxx



wednesday 21st march
recently i've been: da kine, planet unreal, oxo, matt's bro's site, airport pics, sissy fight, dobi, the pool.

when ftping to the web uploading a file is quicker than downloading it. the server can therefore accept data more quickly than it gives it. it likes consuming more than sharing. what does this say about the web?

the filmfour party in the channel 4 building. i took some photos:



the interior lights, channel 4 building. natural blurs. mmm. the chairs, channel 4 building. red, trendy, comfy. laura, the stopforaminute.com site director. she's a mum. and she's cool.

oh, and plans are afoot. things are not running in the way i hoped, but they are still moving in the right direction. parallel?

tuesday 20th march
so. good things about my new backpack are (a) that i can now put my laptop in it and call it my back pack mac, (b) i can do this with it, and (c) i can also run with it on in order to avoid this.

the car heater dial has been set at 2 o'clock instead of the usual 11 for three days now which goes to prove how cold it is in england at the moment. and in march? sheesh! this is unheard of. oh, and it's b-o-r-i-n-g.

i got a postcard from a wonderful person in barbados today. i am pleased, it made me smile and i think i have a lovely new friend. i hope they feel the same, and i think that they do. thanks for sending it! yay! my turn to send you something. now let me think...

casualty is on silently in the background and this proves that i really am not watching the tv.

monday 19th march
today couldn't have been more different from yesterday. steve's dumb-n-dumber style running in the car whilst overtaking, the rage, the gems at college, small smiles, all round positivity and plans for thursday. should be good, could be bad.

here they are, our little lot watching the tv. we work them hard. not:



aren't they sweet? i think i can name about half of them. oh, yeah, and we tried. we really did. steve got out "my laundry's never been..." and i just exploded with laughter. nobody knew what the hell was going on, and that just made it all that much funnier.

i've only just realised the trainer thing. i bought an identical replacement set when my favourite pair looked old and worn. now the replacement pair are dirtier than the originals, so my plan has sort of backfired. instead of having a pair for different occasions and tasks i have in effect one pair. and they are dirty. i knew i should have thrown the old pair out.

sunday 18th march
an outline of myself.

it's 1.15 am (so technically this should be in monday's entries, but whatever), the kettle's brewing and it's time for me to write something. not for you lot out there who may read this at some point but for me just to get it out. in xx years time when i read this it will seem trivial. maybe that's why i'm writing this; double whammy catharsis. maybe i just want to get past this and to tell myself that i will get past this. at the moment i have the fear. if you don't know what that is (it may be a london clique thing, how would i know?) then i'm not going to explain. i have the fear. about, well, everything. the whole world is moving around me, doing stuff that i don't feel connected to. internal human remote control. you can sprint down streets for weeks but when you stop you have to catch your breath and look behind. but what if you're too afraid to look around? what if you brave it and don't like what you see? i know what i have to do, i know where i should be and when, who i should meet and what i should say. and i can do it, i'm sure, but when i do it doesn't actually feel like me. like it was the old me. and i can't shake this feeling. i want to partake but at the same time i conciously stop myself. like i'm only there in outline. i've been thinking about this for three days now, rudderless, so i know it's definately here and i do feel it. the world seems so big and so powerful and i feel like the washing machine powder dispenser, just thrown all around randomly and wet. but i'm here. my will is good and i do believe in all that's happening. maybe i just need time to let the dust settle over the last few months' (girlfriend, wedding, director buyout, teaching). is it possible to stretch a person so much they just need to stop?

anyway, we went snowboarding. again. i didn't fall for an hour and a half and then wham! full wipeout. head over heels three times with board attached. my arse cheek is killing me. but that's what it's about: sliding faster than you can safely go and taking the risk. and it hurts when you lose the bet at that speed, i can tell you. it's not about looking cool, having the right board and really enjoying it at all. although that obviously helps... and to make ourselves a little more positive and jovial steve and i made sentences the each other has to fit into the teaching we're doing tomorrow.

steve has to say:
1. i tell you - my laundry's never been so fresh.
2. i've never seen anythiong so cool... or as big as a cucumber.

what i have to say:
1. actually, it's not that cool and i think i need some help.
2. i've never danced so much in my life. i never knew i had so much soul.

basically, i'm a nerd gone wrong. and i can't stop feeling as though steve's lines i have to say are important to learn. he said them instantly, but his subconcious definately opened my eyes to how others see me - or how i should see myslef. am i over-analysing things again in my own inimitable way? am i a freak? do other people think these things or am i a total wakjobª?

"we have the feeling we're getting nowhere. and this is the feeling we'd like to continue. cos it's the j. u. r. a. capital s another s, i, c." and a cup of tea.

saturday 17th march
godzilla, star wars and american pie all in one sitting. are you relaxed? er...yeah?

i remember an ex-girlfriend of mine told me i was only allowed to think for three seconds each day. but why did i think that ten times today?

friday 16th march
try as i might i just can't stop singing "to disconnect will be my shelter. time... is running out on you. time... will be abused, abused, abused. if only you knew..." from this mp3. that's the best thing about curve - a new month, a new mp3 to copy, sing along with and just... submerge yourself within. mmm. this feels like home with no washing up and a phone that never rings.

and today i received this:
"somehow i don't fit inside my life. it's not that i'm unhappy with it or i want it to change - more like i've changed shape and the round bits are now where the square bits were. the problem is: do i reshape or wait and hope that my surroundings remould themselves?" ... We are very similar people. Very beautiful and open thoughts my friend. Keep breathing that wet and cold london air. See you soon. A good friend."

if anybody else wants to email me something nice then click here. i'll even write back! go on. you know it makes sense. and as a reward there's a naughty bit: see what i've been doing before they see it here.

thursday 15th march
i've thought of some more. well actually, i've not really thought of them so much as realised some truths:

16. i'm never far away from a nike logo.
17. i wear dark blue, black, grey, white almost exclusively. (what does this say about me?).

another realisation is the fast food repetitive twat order challenge. try it. walk into a burger king, kfc, macdonalds or whatever and practice your order before approaching the counter. you'll need to know which drink you want, whether it's to go or eat in, if it's a regular size or large meal if you're getting one. and don't forget if the drink's diet or not (this one has tripped me up a few times). tell the server person exactly what you want, speak cleary, slowly and firmly and miss nothing out.try to give them absolutely no excuse to ask you a question and see how many you get asked anyway. i tried it today and this is what happened:

"hi. can i get a zinger burger to take away and nothing else. just the zinger burger on it's own. to take away. thanks"
"do you want a meal?"
"no, just a zinger burger on it's own."
"eat in or take away?"
"take away"
"any drink?"
"nope. just the burger will be fine."
"so that's one zinger burger on it's own. no drink."
"yeah."

it can't be done. i'm telling you, and i've got market research on this. they can't help it. they have to speak to you. see how few questions you can get asked, i dare you.

wednesday 14th march
one photo made from two i took on the way to work - the first over london bridge looking east, the second the floor of the coffee shop:



tuesday 13th march
before i'd spoken to a single person today i took this picture for a friend and helped an old lady across the road. true.

monday 12th march
turns out he wasn't all right. steve was ill. ill i say. which made teaching pretty tough for him.

sunday 11th march
so this woman skiedover my snowboard, stopping right on top of it. i looked down and around, then up at her with, "oh! hello?"
"hello. all right?"
"yeah, erm... how about 'hey, don't scratch my snowboard?'" pointing down.
"oh, sorry..."
does she sidestep? no. she walks off, all the way across it. scratch scratch.

stayingin hotel rooms is weird. i'm trying to work out whether i like it or not. i mean, on one hand it's a bit of an adventure but on the other it's never as comfortable as home. i don't go away often, and after staying in the same hotel as last week - albeit in a different room - it was actually nice to look out of the window to see this. bluishorange enough for you?

oh, and here's b-sideboy in a hotel room bed ill and trying really hard to get better for tomorrow. which incidentally turned into a case of "ha ha", "oh dear" and "are you all right?"

saturday 10th march
sometimes pottering around the house is exactly what you need to do, even if it isn't something you want to. so i locked myself in thus forcing myself to do just housey things like reading the digital camera instruction booklet (read: bible - it's over a 140 pages), working on the qr painting, washing up, burning minidiscs for the journey, cleaning clothes, avoiding the tv, and packing my bags for the snowboarding and teaching two-for-one sunday/monday combination extravaganza.

friday 9th march
a sad and a happy day simultansously. we said good-bye to mark. we all said it nicely. we got very drunk and i can't really recall getting home. although i can remember waking up with the bin next to my head. so it was a good night.

thursday 8th march
the only way is up, things can only get better, cliché cliché cliché. i should have the energy to move on. i believe i can.at the moment i just want to stop, for more than a minute, and just go straight back to barbados. or anywhere. or see the beautiful girl again. but i know none of those will happen and i have to be positive and powerful. hmm.

i told my mum i loved her on the phone this night for the first time ever.

okay, some things about me. get myself motivated again. exactly how, i don't know but here goes...

1. i didn't drink tea on principle for 28 years. (although yes, i know i probably was given a cup or two as a kid but whatever.)
2. i have a thin stomach and the most ugly feet you've ever seen.
3. i am five feet, nine and a half inches tall.
4. i love driving.
5. i sing loudly and off-key in the car.
6. i say i'm allergic to mushrooms but i'm probably not.
7. i whistle when i'm in a bad mood. (which i didn't know until someone told me.)
8. there is only one album that is guaranteed to change my mood from bad to good.
9. i think i have a very short term memory.
10. i really hate being late to meet people.
11. i am happy in my work.
12. i don't like wearing shorts.
13. i can say the alphabet backwards really fast.
14. i miss the countryside.
15. my favourite band are curve.

wednesday 7th march
a horrible day full of machines and people and machines:

first thing this morning i unknowingly drove half a mile with a flat tyre it until those highly conveniently placed abyss-like potholes on kennington high road informed me with an ear-shattering 'chunk'. so i was into kwik fit and out again 80 pounds lighter even before i got to work. and i was going to be early and straight into the next project (which is rare for me). plus, to top that, mark b, the third director of the company we own left today. it was full of sadness. the atmosphere in the studio was terrible, and in all but ten seconds my head went from clear and solid to blancmange. needless to say i couldn't really do any work after that so i fled the onedotzero preview event to investigate the myriad of menus on my new digital leica. bought, i'll have you know, from consolation money. and it is cool.

tuesday 6th march
portsmouth today (or pompeii if you live there though god knows why). with phil and myself - the sole survivng state directors - standing in front of 60-odd b.a. students explaining our work. seemed to go okay - ah, apart from when i was circling the mouse to keep the stupid gif animations looping on the damn dreamcast site which caused phil to lose his train of thought completely.

monday 5th march
so in two days i have become a snowboarder and a lecturer. it feels a bit weird. being dragged through a hedge backwards was never this much fun.

i can see through your eyes to the back of your mind. all you say is fiction, the blind leading the blind. or, at least, something like that.

sunday 4th march
chipped the snowboard. i think this is actually a good thing. at least now i can be reckless and careless with it now and it looks used. i just love the zen feeling it gives me. and it builds my shoulders up, inexplicably. drinks with 7 women, 5 of them strange and overbearing. ew!

saturday 3rd march
so when i met the married couple, funky and tracey, i was told to "choose wisely young jedi." which i have to say is exactly what i did. it's a sims enduro, 155, with orange ride team bindings and i carve it goofy, if you must know.

friday 2nd march
friday, oh friday. what are we to do with you? i can't think of what to say. actually, i can't remember what was poignant about friday and i'm writing this on sunday, so hey, who am i trying to kid?

thursday 1st march
today we made a movie for the project we're setting on monday. it's in the grey section. plus there's a barbados diary under analogue backlog.