wednesday 31st october
you and me
we're in this together now
none of them can stop us now
we will make it through somehow
you and me
if the world should break in two
until the very end of me
until the very end of you
you and me
even after everything
you're the queen and i'm the king
nothing else means anything.

or something equally scary.

tuesday 30th october
steve

monday 29th october
mum

sunday 28th october
by the time i'd reached work to check the timelapse movies from last night the clouds had disappeared and the computer had crashed. so i'd lost it all. nothing new but still a shame; not only did i miss yesterday's weather with its intermittent blue sky between scudding elephants but today just didn't want to being filmed. i left, went to steve's and whilst waiting for him to come home saw some trees.they've chopped all mine down so here's where we are, crispness-wise:



after an afternoon of inspiration from a calm hungover friend who's had a tough year in almost every aspect of his life, it's good to see how determined he is. the maths is working, the future's uncertain, but it's certainly bright, especially when you use maths. then a london autumn dusk through lbc's window. the soundtrack was a 28-minute version of orbital's the box.



as i was flipping through the previews, cleaning out the blurred shots i stopped, just before automatically tapping the camera's delete key, on the third image. it kind of jumped out at me with a mixture of questions. was it that similar to the photo funky gave me of manhattan from the brooklyn bridge? if so, is tower bridge in this photo it's london's equivalent? how come it looks like a city but not really london in particular? how come the lens distorted shape of the kerb in a nice way, for once? how similar is it to philip's desktop pattern despite him taking it in hong kong? how many hundreds of these out-of-the-car-window shots have i taken recently that i didn't think worked? how come the cranes are almost perfectly perpendicular? is it like a tree thing and the direction they fall? but strangest of all was the curious evidence of there being a small area of tower bridge pavement unpopulated.

october's been a good month. i'm pleased with what i'm doing here. what do you think? the weather will probably be like this in march, you know.

saturday 27th october
it seems this week has been much more about looking than talking. when i daydream or think about the project i'm doing at work, pictures are all i see. i've spent a lot of the week making time-lapse movies using the webcam, taking a frame every five seconds then watching the whole day before going home. this is good - i see clouds moving and the dusk turning to night - all in a few minutes. i catch 2 second rainbows. storms whizz by, evaporating. things dry quickly while light flashes and grey clouds that look like one big blanket move in layers. like i said, it's just me. looking.

friday 26th october
all the thirties:



thursday 25th october
this, on the product boys' wall, reminded me of the usual suspects:



wednesday 24th october
this is hugely underrated. and good. just what i need to wind down after these late nights.

tuesday 23rd october
first time writing the analogue from work whilst being simultaneously qrcammed. it feels very strange, in a how-much-more-of-my-life-do-i-really-want-to-put-up-here kind of way. and yes that is where i spend my life. in that very comfortable, very expensive designer chair. designed to make you work late, you know...



monday 22nd october
going to the usual supermarket when they've changed the positions of their produce is not half as much fun as going to a completely different supermarket. there, it's like they've changed the positions of... everything. this is a good thing; you're very unlikely to go home with the same food you always buy and you actually have to make decisions. instead of brainlessly sludging round the aisles you kind of stand up, alert and awake, looking. this is what i thought as i walked round my usual supermarket.

sunday 21st october
half a day of boarding, the other half of work. a surefire way to tire every part of you out. that and sleeping on the floor the previous night.

saturday 20th october
the realisation of leaving steve downstairs chatting to dad followed by laughter as i went on the web with mum. and the size of the unreal screen and that bass bin: bigger than steve and his amrchair together.



friday 19th october
how dare they? first thing i saw turning into lbc's road was a an aboreal person like mine's nightmare. what happens is they get on cranes and chainsaw them apart, then stuff them in the masher head-first to get minced and spat out, leaving nothing but death behind. all of this and they weren't even brown yet. i know it's for a reason. but it's still a tragedy.

thursday 18th october
three birthday celebrations in six days and dogs and babies and weddings and cats and houses and sometimes i feel like i'm getting left behind. it's time to do something. and have fun doing it would be a bonus. here's stu with his inextinguishiable candles that turned the room into a chimney:



wednesday 17th october
me: < turning round to look at what's on tv > 'woooouuggh!'
paul: what?
me: 'nature stuff!'

these documentaries on lions and coral reefs are good at the moment. a welcome break from comedy reruns; there are only so many times you can sit through that episode without something bad happening to your brain.

on the tube to work i shot this, realising later the sign behind us was ironically appropriate:



tuesday 16th october
steve: ...'that's your birthday, then.'
me: 'urgh... ...okay stay there. wanna do my cards with me?'
s: 'go on then'
m: '...right. this one's from my sister. it'll be funny. okay, hang on...
< sound of tearing paper across the phone >
m: 'happy birthday happy birthday it says on the cover and on the... ...inside it says: 'welcome to the dark side.' excellent!'
s: 'yup. you were right'
m: 'urgh. ahh, oh god. it's not funny.'
s: < mafioso accent > 'wotcha gonna do, uh?'

and that's how today started. i went to bed, slept then woke up and opened my door to a beautifully designed mooks bag stuffed with the best comfort jumper a flatmate could buy. the hood is resembles a pillow; another good start to the day.

the defining qr moment of the day, and the most memorable of the year, was when steve walked annja, philip and i down the pool stairs to all my friends (with the exception of peejay, who's working abroad) yelling 'happy birthday'. i turned round and simply couldn't believe my eyes. there they were: al, brad, paul, matt, jen, lou, neil, shane, sophie, funkstar deluxe, miss forrest, ann, anna, sam, rob, ben, layla, rich, claire, claire g, charlie, paul, giles, with stu, timmy and paul turning up shortly afterwards. think i shook for about an hour, eyes wide and amazed. people were asking me if i was all right but seeing all the different groups of people i share almost every defining moment with was difficult to digest. it seemed like everyone was there to watch me getting drunk, but it turned out closer to everyone having a laugh and nothing at all going even slightly wrong. all good things. and it was all down to this man who i have to thank, along with everyone who came. nice one, folks.

if you were there tonight i was the one running around going 'i got a webcam! i got a webcam! coooool.' and it is and i wasn't. dodgy dancing.

even harper, at only a couple of months old came in to show his tiny face:



monday 15th october
with a friends-filled lounge and wide-ranging conversations like 'how does the fingers of fudge advert music go?' things towards the empire humorously turned. matt and susie came round to join us with funkstar deluxe in a bottle of champagne and to just sit around playing tetris, socially. i tell you, that suse is an addict.

writing a cheque for the easy option delivered thai meal almost had me writing a cheque dated a day less than thirty years ago; an easy mistake considering the date. and for the first time in ages time went fast.



sunday 14th october
time ticks by filled with only a little work, a little energy, a trip to three service stations in search for an operational car cleaning device and that rusty feeling only a hangover can create.

saturday 13th october



today stu and timmy threw a 70s party to celebrate their 30th birthdays that i have been dreading due to compulsory fancy dress. being uncomfortable is not my idea of fun. after meeting woogie, stu and lou's boxer puppy - who chewed everything in sight whilst repeatedly disappearing with the brush - we re-rendevued at the costume shop and the ridiculously immature character swapping, masochistic, street-cred ruining hilarity it offered. jen's margo from the good life, peejay's ironic jean-paul sartre inspired literary toff and artful dodger and my glitter queen and limahl from kajagoogoo all had us in stitches. sometimes looking like someone else is fun.



i played the hippie card all night - the 'cool / far out / groovy / peace' count through the roof, my cheeks sore from the nylon hair. laughs all the way, though, and on the way to a toilet stop every group of people stopped me and said something inane to which i replied something at least equally inane.



during my random stumble home i remembered how i used to love the anonymity of london and thought about how strangers don't care about you and that their numbers innumerably outweigh friends. mind you, i was pretty trashed. i may not like dressing up but i love being a hippy!

friday 12th october
i find it how the nissan (renown for making on the whole pretty duff cars) advert begins with the words 'keeping up... is hard' strangely ironic somehow.

thursday 11th october
i woke to the intermittent sound of click-clack coming from outside my window and took a while wondering what it was as i moved out of narnia (which consisted last night of trying to escape from a scarlet and yellow venom-spitting snake) and into my room. i came to only one conclusion and - call me sherlock - it was right. when i left the house there it was, a tin can sitting smack bang in the middle of the road, wafer thin and silver. what surprised me was the realisation that i can sleep through four lanes of constant traffic rumble but not four lanes of traffic rumble and one squashed soft drink can. unless, of course, if it's always there.

the meeting time was written in light on the wall, it went brilliantly which makes the late night almost worth it! and in case anybody out there doesn't know that american pie is at the cinema in london, here's proof. is there anywhere they won't advertise that film?



wednesday 10th october
today i worked on two fonts. everything was going fine until about 5 o'clock when the computer that i had to set up and use decided to stop saving files, generating bitmaps or truetypes correctly and generally act like a pain in the arse. annoyed and angry i gave up, went to play squash, broke a string, got hit by the ball in the back, went home, cooked, ate and started them again. by about 2am i was finished.

tuesday 9th october
steve and i needed something to look forward to so much today that we walked to liverpool street, destination travel agent. we're looking at val d' isere in the last week of february or first week in march, so we'll see you there. okay?

grandma phoned tonight to tell me not to worry about the age thing. she's 83, and with over five decades more than me to look back on, she should know. not letting it affect you is one thing and a long way from celebration.

monday 8th october
i'm still deciding whether or not to upload today's entry.

sunday 7th october
while we were happily slipping down slopes, legs repurposed and suspension-like, turning ourselves into blurs amid plumes of powder, the lime rocket occasionally pinging out of his bindings, mid england was busy destroying itself. signs had fallen across the motorway, water erupted across the windscreen from cars on the opposite carriageway, trees were all but snapping. two things came from this: less leaves to turn golden brown, acceleration the onset of winter and random road furniture to drive over. we managed an unavoidable three and were fairly pleased with ourselves. lbc wasn't so impressed with it all.

"so what's the verdict?"
"umm... (the peejay pre-answer) better than i expected - really good. i'd go on holiday with you, mind you, i'd go even if you were shit!"



saturday 6th october
on a scale of one to ten, i'd have to say these new trousers rate at about asbestos. i was surprised and a bit disappointed that the pair of 16-year old snowboard trousers i tried on for a joke actually did fit. something must be wrong here. 29 going on 30 going on 16. i'm too thin, obviously, or too old. but hey, tell me something i don't know. still, steve looked amazingly bad in his yellow junior goggles, silver star-studded body warmer and festival-style skiing hat so it's all just another days' shopping. and what's tomorrow? heh. road trip.

friday 5th october
if they don't stop running those claims direct adverts soon i'm gonna kill someone. which absolute twat is responsible for them, that's all i need to know.

thursday 4th october
chimpy's leaving drinks; two years done and the amount of people virtually begging him to stay clearly shows his position is in the 'needed' camp as opposed to 'waste of space'. nice to live with someone vital.

wednesday 3rd october
today is saturated in darkness and light, more than almost all other days. it's theme most definitely something about joining and combining and separating and leaving; my flatmate is leaving his two-year-old position with a large media agency, a certain someone flies home and back into my consciousness and all i see out of the window at work are darkened skies and illuminated buildings symbolising it all. against the black clouds and somewhere over there behind the spire is a rainbow shining it's rainy spectrum. i have yet to discover or manufacture a meaning for it because, well, some things you should leave as they are, unspoiled and un-overthought and in the time it took me to write this the sky has turned clear blue. catharsis?



and even on the way home:



tuesday 2nd october
imagine catching a cold.
from a baby!
trust funky.
and trust the baby boy to have fully recovered...
...already.

monday 1st october
the meeting went well. the long hours over the weekend paid off so i treated myself to two new lumps of music: rae + christian and kosheen. so far i'd recommend them both.

i wouldn't, however, recommend working weekends. or spielberg / kubrick's a.i. at points enthralling at others incredibly pedestrian. half way between epic and pathetic, i'd say.


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