I was at the whisky society with burge tonight. She drank this whisky. It was fucking fantastic, and I wanted some. I especially wanted some for myself, because I think it would have gone fucking brilliantly with a good cigar.
They’re sold out.
I’m going to crawl into a corner and cry, now.
(Anyone fancy drinking a few good whiskies in the next week or two?)
Well, it’s December, so obviously, it’s time for the heavy drinking again. Spent the first part of Thursday night at Albertine in Sheperd’s Bush. Bit full of BBC types, but after three quarters of a bottle of Australian red (the name of which escapes me, which is annoying, because I’d happily buy it again) I cared a lot less. Might try and get back there – the wine list looked interesting, and the food sounded like it’d go well with the wine…
Quiet night in Friday night, and then out for drinks with davebushe, daveman23 and seanazz last night, which were just what the doctor ordered, I think. Sadly, the slight hangover combined with the first trip to the gym in a couple of weeks has left me more or less unable to move.
I rewatched the first episode of The Prisoner this morning. It’s dated very strangely, that show – it’s unmistakably of a certain era, but because of the very stilted and stylised atmosphere in the village, it gets away with it surprisingly well, and it sort of feels like the sixites/seventies decor is just another part of the strangeness of the setting, rather than a sign of aging. Why do I suspect that the upcoming remake won’t be half so clever?
I have had a very pleasant and relaxing weekend. Just what the doctor ordered. Many thanks to all the lovely humans that helped me unwind.
My brains get no such thanks.
I had hoped to wake up this morning refreshed and ready for another week of work, but no. Whatever I was dreaming about, it cannot have been good. I woke up, half an hour early, curled up in staggering tension. Not in fear, or panic, or anything one might get from a nightmare, but rather the kind of tension that you find yourself in when you know something is about to kick off, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it, that tense, wary, ready to hurt something tension that you can feel up and down your spine and across your shoulders.
So much for relaxed and refreshed. Still, if anyone tries anything on the tube, I’ll be ready.
Bastard brains.
Home alone. Bored. I really should do some bloody work, but I don’t want to. Someone do something amusing, please.
And also to flatmates and anyone else that it might be useful for (Londoners, really).
I have been pointed in the direction of Firezza as a basically fucking excellent delivery pizza place.
Certainly the toppings sound good, but most importantly: a) you can order on-line, and b) by the meter. I mean, come on, who hasn’t wanted to order up a couple of meters of pizza at some point?
Tonight I got home at a bit after seven. Since I have no food in the house, I planned to go to the gym about half eight, and then pick up a sandwich or something on the way home. So I thought I’d use the hour or so I had in hand to get a bit of work done. Specifically, some data modelling for the Programming Project That Will Not Die. This will teach me to try and build a web app of LJ-level complexity on my own, in my spare time. If anyone fancies learning Ruby/Rails along with me, and wants to pitch in, speak up. (And if anyone’s got any experience of building calendar/scheduling type apps, please speak up, because I need to pick your brains.)
Anyway: It is now a bit three hours later, and I have just looked at the time and realised that I have forgotten both to go to the gym and indeed, to eat. So I’m going for a walk around the block to blow the cobwebs out, and then, in the absence of dinner, I shall drink a beer. Beer is still food, right?
Despite having had a very chilled out weekend, I am shattered. I spent yesterday walking all over town, and then today, I have spent time continuting the Programming Project That Will Not Die (I’ve now got the point where I had to spend an hour this morning writing a rough spec, despite the fact that I’m the one making the requirements up, just so’s I can keep track of my own thoughts), going through yesterday’s photos (and continuing with the job of photoshopping some of my older ones into shape, and god, doesn’t photoshop make this sort of thing so much easier), visiting family, and seeing a flat that sounded better on paper than it did in the flesh. Moral of the story: if it sounds too good to be true…
But all that means that I’ve basically been wearing myself out. And now, I am tired.
And so to bed.
I’m not seeing Nick Cave this week, so to cheer myself up, I have been buying tickets:
autosmile, alexdecampi, papamoomin: Tickets are booked for Flogging Molly at the Astoria on the 2nd of November. I’m pretty sure you all said “yes, sort me out with a ticket”, didn’t you? Turns out it’s some kind of big tour thing with a bunch of other bands – headline are a bunch of scandinavian pop-punks that sound like they’ll be a laugh.
I’ve also booked myself a ticket for The Alabama 3, also at the Astoria, on the 11th of October. Anyone who was thinking about going last time, but didn’t get around to it: you should come this time, because the live show is cracking.
And, so’s I don’t forget, I’ve also got Garbage at the Hammersmith Apollo on the 17th of October.
Now all I have to do is wangle photography passes to any/all of the above. Wish me luck. :)
I am a very, very fortunate man indeed.
Andrew presented me with a card this evening. The card contained a list of names and a cheque, and an instruction to “go out there and buy a new camera”.
Circumstances had dictated that I be told that my friends were having a whipround “behind my back” as it were, but never, in my wildest dreams did I think that so many people would chip in, or that you’d all raise such a staggering amount. You’ve raised more than enough to buy me a new camera and to say that I am both touched and grateful is an understatement of some magnitude, but if I attempted to convey the depth of my gratitutde here, we’d all be horribly embarrassed.
So, the plan is this: In the next few days, I am going to go out and buy a new camera, and very importantly, some iron-clad insurance. If anyone so much as looks at the camera funny, I’m going to be claiming dammit!
And because a number people responded to my own plea for aid (which was taken down when I was told so as not to cause embarassment, but not before a number people responded to it), come payday, I am going to match what they donated via paypal and by purchasing prints, and donate the resulting amount (around the 250 pound mark – more details when I can get the money out of paypal and photobox, minus their processing fees) to cancer reseach.
I’ll say again: I am hugely touched, and unbelievably grateful to all of you who’ve helped me out.
At 4pm today, most of the line managers in my company were called to a meeting. Not, however, my boss. (This may be because we’re in a tiny satellite office – my company’s equivalent of Siberia, and tend to get overlooked, or it may be something else, I don’t know.)
At 5pm today, when they returned to their staff, they were instructed to give out a message to their staff: “We have made some people redundant already. We will be making some more people redundant next week, but we can’t tell you who right now.”
Am I then only one that things that telling your workforce at 5pm on a Friday that you’ll be sacking some of them next week, but not telling them who, is a stonkling poor piece of management, to say nothing of a basic failure as humans to have a regard for the mental states of those you employ?