Remaining upright.

Developed extremely painful cramp/spasm things in my calves last night while swimming, and my legs still feel a bit odd.

Am currently listening to a guy called Jason Webley, a friend of Fin’s mum’s who we went to see perform on Tuesday night, after Fin’s exhibition (which was impressive). He’s an accordionist whose style reminds me of Tom Waits, especially on tracks like “Graveyard” and “Devil Be Good”, and he really is a fantastic performer. There was an improv jazz bunch on before his, and half an hour of experimental improv jazz had me about ready to commit hari kiri, but fifteen minutes later, he’d got an audience, who’d been bordering on complete torpor before he came on, standing on their feet singing along raucously. He’s doing Glasonbury, and if you’re going, stop by the cabaret tent to see him, for god’s sake.

I’ll never understand some people…

Found this guide to vegetarian stumbling blocks via a comment in Lyssa’s livejournal. Now, without wishing to offend any vegetarians in the audience, d’you now think it might be going a bit far to refuse to drink whiskey, because it may have been matured in a barrel that might once have contained something that may have been treated using something that came out of an already-dead animal that was killed for it’s meat?

I’m just boggling that anyone out there would be that picky, y’know?

Plus ca meme chose.

So, this blogis three years old today. My LJ (at least as an entity that I post to) is coming up on a year old. On Thursday, it’ll be one year since ipoints decided that they didn’t love me any more.

What amuses me most about this is that I’ve flipped my life on it’s head in so many ways in the last three years, and especially in the last year. And despite that, I could still write a entry for tonight that runs “Went out to exercise, came back, made a banana smoothie, and drank it while watching the sun go down over Tooting. Candles are lit, and Tom Waits is on the stereo. Life’s good.”

Except that I’m in a different flat, and I’ve lived in two other places, and held two jobs (well, I’m still in the second one) in the last year. And, to my continued astonishment, I appear to be in a relationship with an actual woman. Looking back over the last year, is seems like I’ve done so much, and wound up back where I’m happiest. It’s been weird.

I kinda feel like there are people I want to thank for all the things they did that helped me get out of bad spot last year, and back to where I am now – the tech guys at The Internet Corporation, who were the only good bit of that job, my parents, my new employers, and the rest of my friends (and the ones who aren’t on that list, too) for putting up with me while I whinged and went gently mad, Jamie for conveniently getting a better job in Oxford, and letting me move back in with Andrew and Marysia, and Andrew and Marysia for letting me move back in, despite having lived with me before, and Fin, for everything.

So that’s done, and it’s back to work.

Downside of Livejournal

It’s great for keeping track of/finding people that one has lost touch with. One the one hand, this includes old friends, which is marvellous, and on the other…

There are very few people that have ever passed through my life that I hold a grudge against. Oh, there are some people I don’t see any more some by accident, some through acrimony, but most of them, I still wish well, even if I don’t really want much to do with them.

But there are a very, very small number people (less than five) who I vaccilate between wanting dead, because I think they’re a complete waste of food and oxygen, and wanting them to live long, painful lives, filled with misery, suffering and failure.

By accident, using a rather neat java tool that does relationship graphing and LJ-friends navigation (I downloaded and lost the link, I’m afraid) in the space of two minutes, I have found the LJs of two of these people, and they seem regretably happy.

My Bloody Girlfriend

D’you know what she’s gone and done? Do you?

Of course you don’t. Allow me to explain.

In addition to her many other virtues, she’s an Eddie Izzard fan. And he’s touring. He’s in London at Christmas, playing Wembley. So, I thought, it’d be a nice festive surprise for her if I booked tickets for the pair of us to go and see him. However, I know from bitter experience that if I want to do something on a specific date, I need to make sure that her family haven’t organised something, or that she doesn’t have something band-related to do. It’s not that she’s always booked up months in advance, exactly, more that her family and bandmates have a unique knack of planning something on a date when we were hoping to do something. Especially if I have a surprise planned.

So I send her a cryptic email, basically saying that she wasn’t to allow anything to be planned for the evening of the 22nd of December. Yes, I know it’s a hell of a long time in advance, but this time I wasn’t taking any chances. I wanted it to be a surprise, so I didn’t say why, although I hinted that it might involved going away, and said that she’d be back in time for Christmas, so not to worry.

Last night she came round, and naturally, demanded to know what the surprise was. And I refused to tell. As one would expect. After a short time, she gave up on it.

However, the next words out of her mouth were (approximately) “I saw an ad in the Evening Standard today – Eddie Izzard is touring. I don’t know when, but we should find out and get tickets.”

I’m a dreadful actor. Surprised ruined.

She swears blind that she genuinely had no idea that he was playing on the 22nd of December, that the ad she saw didn’t have dates on it, and that her mentioning it immedaitely after giving up on the surpise thing wasn’t some scheme to check if that’s what it was. It was a genuine, honest-to-god coincidence, and not a devious attempt to ruin my surprise.

Still I’m going to get my own back.

I’m going to take someone else.

Deja Vu Ain’t What It Habitual Exist

Dark Blackness is love substantive website incomplete Alasdair Watson, a Yellowness- bottom crossing- produce with writing. In the circumstances it’s whole dextrality among you, he’d relative be the cause of be negligent to the tune of love frequent loquacity, with elapse early be the cause of love be disjoined here you transfer man love means with good.

Going Deep Down

South, that is. I’m putting a short story together set is a fictionalised American South – a rural hick town, to be precise. I’m too worried about accuracy, but I’d like to know if some of the set dressing I’m using is halfway plausible, and I could use someone to bounce dialogue off, to check it for authenticity. Anyone out there willing to help? Drop me an email via the “talk to me link”, or leave a comment, if you’re seeing this on LJ….