Matt's at Manchester Pride this weekend, London was drenched in lovely sludgy sunshine yesterday.
Andy and Jo came round to nick all our MP3s – they ate flapjacks with Mouse. Jordan and Phil came round and nicked all my drugs. What's a guy to do, eh?
Random great drunken night yesterday. Matt and I met up with Sneh for a film at Leicester Square. We didn't like the look of anything on though, so we went for a drink at a pancake cafe place on the square, then decided to pay £5 and go to one of those comedy gigs they advertise around that area every evening.
So we did, and found ourselves in the Thistle Hotel nearby, with a load of random tourists from all over the place. We too felt like tourists, delving into a different side of London with this collection of middle aged holiday makers, backpackers and very young people.
It was really fun. Our comedian was Inkey Jones, who had an expectant wide eyed delightful face, and his style was to work with any material he could get out of the audience. He found out where everyone was from and made predictable but quick witted jokes around national sterotypes, he homed in on funny voices and big beards, and he totally laid into us as the gay couple, fixing particularly on Matt, who invited it, showed he could take it, and kept throwing him lines. He was more cautious with me, perhaps because in one of his opening lines he accused me of being from "another planet" and I looked at him so blankly that he probably thought I was. But once we had all warmed up, he was calling me a fudge packer like an old friend.
We ended up in the bar, drinking excessively in the way that having Sneh there guarantees, along with Inkey Jones and a random youthful wildlife photography student called Andrew.
We didn't leave till after 2am and then fell asleep on the nightbus, with the driver waking us up at Archway, where we slunk home in shame, burping up the McDonalds we should never have had earlier...
Matt and I went to a lovely champagne picnic in St James Park on Saturday afternoon to celebrate Jon and Rose's engagement. Met Jon's parents again - hadn't seen them since our plane arrived in London from Harare ten years ago - very good to catch up.
Got quite pissed, then met up with Sara so we (she) could drive down to the Eden Project for work. We have a stand at their Towards The Edge exhibition all through August.
We were staying at Sara's dad's flat in Falmouth, and we arrived quite late, met up with dad for a few drinks in one of the many marvellous real ale pubs that seem to be all over Cornwall, and finally Sara and I went out on a 2am mission to walk around Pendennis Castle. We were actually aiming to get to the castle, but ended up circumnavigating it instead. We couldn't work out any way to get past the extremely deep moat to the castle itself. It was dark, and we were drunk.
We were working at Eden Project all day Sunday and Monday. The weather had just turned the corner and it was lovely and sunny. The Eden Project has come on such a long way since I was last there a couple of years ago. It has really filled out, all the banks and slopes are bursting with vegetation, there're wonderful sculptures and projects all over the place, and as ever, you wander about the place feeling relaxed, positive and happy. Though you are surrounded by information reminding you that our world is hurtling down an unsustainable path to ecological disaster, you are also surrounded by solutions, alternatives, visions of a better way to live. It's like a little version of how the world should be, nestling in an ex-quarry in the depths of Cornwall. Marvellous.
Matt was trying to teach me how to say "stamps" earlier. I was on my way home dropping in on various little shops trying to buy stamps. I have a real problem saying that word though. I miss off the "S" from both ends, and they think I'm asking for a "tamp".
Can I have some stamps?
What?
Stamps.
What?
Stamps. You know, for post.
Er, no.
And I'm never quite sure if they just gave up on me, or if they actually did have stamps all along.
Along with saying "espresso", saying "stamps" is something I really try to avoid...
Kornelia's had an operation on both her feet and so is confined in a pair of big plaster casts and crutches. Paul is also away for six weeks with the cricket, so all her friends are making pilgrimages to Ealing Broadway to assist her with the recuperation process. I went round last night after work with a couple of bottles of red wine. Michal came round an hour later with gear. Matt arrived about 11pm with pink fairy cakes.
It was a great night - a rare Polish session in which I got very drunk and we accidently stayed up till about half two in the morning.
Me and Matt headed to one of those temporary shops selling fireworks on Brecknock Road to get a big box - "The Imperial Selection!" - of fireworks today. Then as evening fell, we headed over to Al's flat, taking Mike of the Marinsky with us, as he was staying the weekend on the way back to St Petersburg.
At Al's house, we were joined by James A and James G, and later by Jo and Andy. We climbed up on Alex's roof to light the fireworks, armed with mulled wine and a torch.
It was gloriously fun, if a little dangerous.
I almost got caught when one went off sooner than I expected...
We started to do battle with the nearby magnificent spire of St Luke's, aiming our rockets at it and missing again and again...
Finally, Andy used his superior mathematical ability to line up the aiming tube, giving us a glorious impact on the very final rocket we fired!
Rather fun drunken night out last night. I met up with Simon and Benjie at the Porterhouse for a couple of fruity beers, Fruli and Banana Bread beers in my case, then the three of us headed up to Old Compton Street to join Matt, Phil and Kat at that gloriously bright pink camp Thai experience - the Lion City Restaurant. We ate various exciting hot Thai dishes, Simon lectured me on Thai customs such as not putting your fork in your mouth, Matt challenged the well plucked gay couple at the table next door to guess whether he or Ben was younger, Kat threw up her hands at the shallow bitchiness of the Gay Male Nation and Phil ate a lot.
We headed down for a quick drink at GAY Bar and were joined by James G. Next, we split into two groups for a freezing cold hired rickshaw race down to Player's Bar, opposite Heaven. Our rickshaw won!
At Player's Bar, Mark H was on the big Elton camp white grand piano, singing various glorious rock and pop songs as we all got more and more drunk. Around 1am we headed off home - me, Phil, James and Matt took a taxi north after buying some drunken snacks from Marks and Spencers at Charing Cross.
I attempted to eat a mini scotch egg in the cab, which flew out of my hand so I had to scrabble on the floor before I could eat it, to general hilarity. Phil polished off
a whole packet of wine gums, as well as a ham and egg roll, a packet of crisps and some pineapple juice...
Dan H has been masterminding a series of walks along the South Downs Way over various weekends this summer. Yesterday I joined him, along with Rob and Joe and a dozen others, for a very pleasant section of the chalk trail, from Cocking to Amberley. Having been sunbathing at Parliament Hill lido again the day before I was a little sunburnt, so I wore a floppy hat and suncream. Luckily, the sun was only blazing in the morning, and the afternoon saw more pleasant breezy cloud cover. We covered twelve miles in about five hours, and it was very enjoyable indeed. There is a lovely type of conversation you get when you are strolling along together. You can pitch in at any time, and stop talking too, since you have the walking to focus on. You can slow down or speed up to adopt different conversation partners, and the surrounding scenery is a constantly changing source of stimulation and interest. Makes a change from my usual urban metropolitan drug-fuelled disco pursuits anyway!
Sometimes I really love cycling to work. This morning it was so bright, chilly and hectic as I weaved down York Way. It really wakes you up as you are forced to scan everything around you, for vehicles and pedestrians, road works and bumps. I felt like an urban rabbit skittering and squinting down the road as huge clanking lorries, double decker buses and bright sunlight came crashing down around me.
Matt is working in Dubai this week. It's a crazy place - a kind of hyper capitalist dreamworld being built on the sands of a scorching desert. Like some kind of Baudrillardian hallucination of the real, they are investing their fast dwindling oil reserves in a vast complex of hotels and leisure facilities. The tallest buildings in the world; an underwater hotel; a collection of artificial islands shaped into a map of the world; animatronic dinosaurs; a ski dome where you can ski on snow and skate on ice while looking out through transparent walls at the 40 degree desert heat outside. It all looks quite astonishing - there's a good article here on its sinister glories.
On Wednesday night I went to stay with Katy and Dave up in St Helens. Travelling round the smaller train stations of Lancashire was great fun. Not just the warmth I encountered at every turn, compared with the somewhat frostier social atmosphere of London and the South, but also the more basic technologies employed at train stations. No ticket barriers! Ticket conductors looking up fares from one place to another in a big book! It costs the same to get from Lancashire to Cheshire as it does to cross Zone 1 in London!
This afternoon, I went to Macclesfield and met up with Michael P-F from Kings, as well as Gillian. He told me how the school has been getting on, and we immediately embarked on epic conversations about education, sexuality and the nature of memory. Just like old times!
Thursday evening I stayed with Ann H, who I haven’t seen for many years. We ate lots of food, drank many cups of tea and stayed up till about three in the morning trying to wash my tent – as the barn cat in Devon had weed on it – and discussing religious belief, sexuality, social change and which drugs are which!
Friday morning, Ann drove me to the train station and I headed on up to Edinburgh to check in at the MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY hotel with Richard and Romina. Two car loads of friends came up from London in the dead of Friday night, depositing Alex and Matt in my hotel room at 2am and 4am respectively.
Tom P and I met last night to start planning the creation of a board game based on the colonisation of Polynesia. Unfortunately it doesn't look like it's going to contain nearly enough conflict between players, but I suppose I can always force someone to play Diplomacy when I'm feeling violent...
Matt and I went down to Oxford at the weekend. We stayed in Magdalen College, in a nice room overlooking the main courtyard.
We were there to visit Angharad, his friend from school, Kate C and Adam and Kayla. It was all very pleasant.
We got pissed with Angharad and her friends on the Friday night, and had a classic Oxford kebab on the way back to our room. Next morning, we fended off the batty scout who had come to clean the room, left our luggage with the porters at the lodge (I remember now, they are all crazy), and had breakfast with Kate C in Queen's Cafe.
Then we visited the Museum of the History of Science on Broad Street, marvelling at the astonishing quantities of Nuremburg Sundials and finding out all kinds of interesting things about the medieval study of science.
After that, we journeyed out into the depths of East Oxford to see Kayla at their house. We met their long eared rabbit, Cooper, had a couple of spliffs and some cava, and sat giggling in their bedroom, and looked at various bits of Kayla's artwork. It was really nice. Adam was away that day at Blackboys with the family, but we did bump into him as we were leaving at Oxford station, and sat with him for a while chatting about this and that. It was good that we managed to see him too.
Andy came round at midday, and then Jim got here rather late around three. The three of us and Alex played an interesting four person game of Diplomacy. The trouble with four person games is that you get to play two countries each, apart from the player that gets England, and so there's less need for diplomacy and you tend to play a quieter game with few alliances being made with other players. For the next game, it definitely has to be a seven player job. The time has come!
Enjoying the sunny weather yesterday, Matt and I walked to the posh garden centre on Warwick Avenue in Little Venice to buy oregano, thyme, sage, rosemary, mint, and four little primrose plants. These have been planted in our little strip of dirt in our yard and hopefully the god of urban gardening will bestow his blessings upon them...
