IPOD
RADIO
Well hello friends and neighbours, I have been a bit quit haven't I. Well in terms of blogification I suppose I have been anyway. Just a quick note to say apologies to anyone who got a weird text from me on Friday night, I was a bit booze full and down at one point of the evening but I got over it and all was and is for the most part well with the world. Going to be a long one this.
So Wednesday I went off to Wolverhampton. Got up at 3am to get showered and ready and boy was that ever fun. Showered and got myself out the door to meet my taxi that got me down to the station for about 6:05am. Now this was a bit early for my train but I can never be sure with taxis even though this company has been on the whole very reliable for me in the past.
Stood on the platform singing to myself until a bunch of people turned up and then I just dived on the train and got myself across to Manchester. Of course once I got there I had the fun of getting over to Piccadilly, I have never walked over to the station and I'm not exactly 100% on its precise location so I hopped the tram to find out the tram wasn't going to Piccadilly. Had to get off and try to get a replacement bus that as it happened was impossible to find.
So I dived on the nearest bus and interrogated the driver who politely informed me the station was no more than two minutes walk down the road. So a vastly frustrated me turned around and stormed off to the station and lo and behold it was in fact that easy to find. Stupid Geoffrey! Anyway I grabbed myself some extra rations from Burger King (icky but hash browns are always good as is bacon) and dived onto my train.
Arriving in Wolverhampton I thought as I don't know my way I had better grab a taxi. So £3 and about 200m later I was at the Uni, more fool me, I will have no problems walking next time lol. Had to trouble getting to the room as I bumped into Christos from UWE and Ian Cooper our external evaluator so we had no trouble puzzling it out together. It did however prove a bit amusing that the woman at the main reception couldn't seem to figure out how to spell Metropolitan so I just told her to put Leeds Met.
The meeting got kicked off to a good start and I feel we at the CKE are I na strong position for this year. I was a bit wary of the new folks from UCLAN as they are a bit standoffish and are very new in their roles. I'm sure they will integrate well eventually but it will just take a bit of time. But yeah the meeting was fine and we got a lot of things we needed to get discussed out of the way. Then of course we moved on to more important things.
Lunch of course lol.
We headed down to the restaurant after leaving bags and things in Dave's office and settled in for lunch. I sat with Dave, Ian and Christos and we had a great chat about some random things. The UCLAN folks sat on their own and I didn't feel they mixed well at all, we even had a group discussion about music and whatnot and it was decided that we should make a Project Coordinator band as John from London South Bank is a big keyboard player and I'm bass and vocals etc lol. The food was pretty good, Chicken Supreme in a creamy mushroom sauce and a lovely chocolate dessert with bits of orange in it.
Anyway I acquitted myself well in the meeting and feel I can actually be justifiably called a Knowledge Transfer professional now. It saves me the awkwardness of trying to define what in the hell it is that I actually do. I got out of the meeting a little before the end and easily found my way back to the station. The train was a little delayed so I sat around and read for a little while. I was trying desperately to find out if anyone wanted to get together while I was in Manchester on the way back. So I sent off aw bunch of texts.
Got on the train when it arrived and read and texted all the way to Manchester and basically discovered that nobody seems to want to meet me for food. Some people had a good reason, others were unavailable and others seemed to be simply ignoring me which is a little annoying. So I waddled over across Manchester and got my bum on the platofrom to wait for a reasonable train. This was a touch annoying as the previous one was there and was packed to the nines so I didn't bother with it. I wouldn't have been able to get a bus on the other end in any case.
But eventually I got myself home and settled in for an evening of pretty much fuck all really, just making plans and whatnot as I usually do.
Thursday for the most part was mainly a standard working day until it came time to go to Uni. The lecture was once again pretty interesting and I am quite enthused about the subject as a whole as it requires a certain amount of thinking outside the box. It went through pretty quickly though I had been a bit of a silly monkey and not thought about getting adequate food provisions sorted out so I was bloody starving all the way through the session despite a rather rushed packet of crisps and a coffee.
An intriguing anecdote of the day was when my boss came in to see me and tell me about some stuff he wanted me to be getting on with. I took notes and got everything he wanted me to do down and ready in my head so there was no problem whatsoever. Then he started asking me again and it really threw me and I thought he was asking about my trip off, he wasn't and it left me a little perplexed.
Anyway Friday rolled around. I came in early to make sure I had everything ready. I needed to go off and see some students at a session in a computer lab to get them signed up for the site visit I'm running this coming Friday. I had immense trouble finding it as despite our otherwise amazing sign posts at Leeds Met not one of them tells you that to get to the first floor of Leslie Silver you have to go through the library. Cue 10 minutes of me wandering around looking lost. Such fun. But I got there and got a few students signed up which was good.
Next on the agenda was taking some photos wandering around the local building sites. This sounds easy thinks I, of course I was proved wrong as is often the case. I took some fantastic pics and it turns out that my camera actually has no memory card in it. One of my 4gb memory cards has disappeared off the face of the earth and its proving a little annoying to say the least. Luckily I had my second with me in my wallet so I managed a quick changeover and nobody was the wiser.
Got back to my office and had to deal with the fantastic annoyance of Finance again as my boss had been called by the head of a company to say he hadn't paid his fees for a conference. Now having spent weekend bollocking around with this I know those fees had been paid so I dived back in with Finance and got it proven. Of course they hadn't paid the £20 that was owed so I ended up chasing that up again. This basically stopped me enacting my good food plan for the day which had been to go to the sandwich shop and get a couple of nice sandwiches. Of course by the time I go there they were too busy and I no longer had any time so I came back.
I went up for a brief lesson in Photoshop batch processing which was interesting but Ian was basically dying making the whole thing rather awkward and a little confusing. I still also don't think he gets how often I use Photoshop and similar software in my tog work outside of work. Despite me telling him several times that this was the case, but anyway I got it sorted and as soon as I get all the software packages on my work Pc I will be able to start on my new task.
Anyway I then toddled off for the train. It was going to prove a long journey this time let me tell you and I was just about as prepared as I could be. Well that's not strictly true, I had to get a burger from Burger King, that left my stomach a little unprepared if you know what I'm saying. But I managed to get on the train and to my seat with relative ease so there was no problem, just a bit of shuffling around. The journey itself wasn't too bad down to Birmingham New Street though we were getting a bit delayed and I was getting very worried.
Of course in typical fashion once we got in the train was on the complete opposite end of the station so I dashed along and actually made it in plenty of time thankfully. Got on the train and it was rammed and an old couple were in my seat. I asked them about where they were getting off and it turned out they were only going too stops. The old lady moved even though I didn't want her too and so I sat and kept the old chap company and listened to his stories. I still feel a touch guilty about this but I am calmed a bit by the fact my foot was really hurting at this point. I will go into that later.
Got into Southampton and got my bum off the train relatively easily. Wandered across to the loo as five hours without really fills you up lol. Then I found my way outside and was a little shocked to not see Tiggie anywhere, of course then I turned around the corner and found her with two of her colleagues, Jane and Jon busily having cigarette time. Introductions were made and remade (I had actually met Jon before) and we all toddled off to a pub called the Avondale or something like that which was one of the Scream chain.
Upon arrival I hastily ploughed a pint of Guinness down my neck much to the shock of all. But hell I was thirsty damnit. We played pool for a while and alternated between being outside on cig company duty. I really should start being more awake sometimes as Tiggie told me something and it totally didn't register and she ended up telling me again not too long after. I played Jane at a game of pool and looked like I was about to lose catastrophically but in the end pulled a win out of it when she pot the black.
After another pint I decided it was time to be off for food and persuaded everyone else it was quite a good time for a trip to Bella Italia. Now I have never been to one before so I was thinking this would be a good opportunity to try it out. Got ourselves settled in and we got some lovely red wine, Montepulciano di Abruzzo, curse my spelling! The food was lovely, especially the cool little garlic bread baton thingies and the tiramisu I had for desert and split with Jane was delicious. I also flirted shamelessly with waitresses; I will have to one day figure out how it is that I do this as I can't seem to manage it anywhere else.
Anyway after this we made a flying visit to Jon's flat to drop off bags and shit and then headed off to one of the local pubs The London Hotel. This seemed a nice little place and we got ourselves settled while listening to the amusing attempts by some people at what I assume was supposed to be karaoke. We had a few drinks and it was becoming plainly obvious that I was the only "single" person in our little group so things were a touch awkward. But I spent a good part of the evening talking to Jane.
In fact I spent a lot of the evening trying to convince Jane of how lovely she is. This is either my weirdest ability or one of my pet annoyances that women who are blatantly good looking constantly nit pick the tiniest little things or have negative self image. Now I know some people will happily cry hypocrite on that one as I am one of the worst people in the world for thinking less of my looks and body but nerr nerr this isn't about me shockingly.
It only dawned on my after about an hour or more at the pub that it was a gay place. This I noticed when some guy started eyeing me up from the corner. Well the other indicators were there evidently I just don't notice this sort of thing. But okay now the only attention of that type I have ever noticed anyone giving me is from a gay guy. Fucking hell, where are all the women when you need them or at least the woman who will in anyway find you attractive?
I rounded out the drinking with a shot of Jack, mainly as there wasn't any Jager which was disappointing and prompted me to declare "what kind of gay bar doesn't have any jager". I actually don't know what the answer is but it was funny at the time. After this we toddled back to Jon's to gather our gear and then got Jane home and headed back to Tiggie's. I think we went in a taxi, I actually can't remember and it is kinda freaking me out, if Tiggie could help me out here I would appreciate it my dear.
We moved past the ensuing hordes of dogs including a newbie called Yogi who is basically a cross breed with a bear and had a lovely chat with Gemsy and I played with Didz and Floyd. Jon wasn't evidently used to the dogs so this was a little amusing to watch but I'm not heartless fiend he did better than I did when first confronted with that many dogs. After general chattingness and finding out about the open mic night on Saturday and whatnot we retreated to our respective beds. I stuck my headphones in for safeties sake and drifted off to a deep sleep.
Saturday morning I woke up stupidly early as usual but with the added fun of a massive cramp in my leg as the bloody window was open and the cold had done me in. Anyway I managed to play bring yourself slowly back to life and dragged my bum downstairs. Gemsy appeared after a short while as I was stealing the internets to post my previous rather confusing blog. She kept me company for a bit as it was plainly obvious I wasn't going to be seeing Tiggie for some time. Gemsy gave me a cookie and a coffee which was the only thing that sustained me for some time.
I should add in a brief explanation of the previous blogs bit about not breathing and the open mic thing. After I had woken up I was so bunged up I started coughing but my nose was blocked too and it took about a minute to clear but during that minute I couldn't breathe at all so it was a bit freaky. Added to this the cold had fucked my voice so I was sat around for ages in the morning desperately trying to sing my voice to some viable level of musical ability.
After bumming around for ages doing various levels of not a lot Tiggie eventually appeared and Gemsy departed to walk the dogs so we ended up preparing the days activities. Which basically consisted of me and Jon going to various holdouts of communal geekery while Tiggie went to get her new contact lenses. So we wandered off and got the bus into Southampton and did just that.
Starting off at Forbidden Planet Jon picked up a load of comics. I was tempted by a lot of things namely a rather cool looking Iron Man tshirt and a couple of graphic novels but my overwhelming sense of Yorkshire kicked in when I looked at the price and walked out having bought nothing. However we then went to HMV where I had a distinct shopping agenda. I picked up a copy of Monty Pythons Flying Circus for Gemsy on DVD as a present. Then while wandering back I saw Nightmare before Christmas (which I still haven't seen) as a collectors edition so I snarfed that too.
While walking around I also took a few pictures while playing about with my camera filters. I still am officially in love with my Sepialight filter and got some really cool pics using it. Jon and I talked for a bit as we wandered about everything from raging geekery to some personal stuff which needed to be said, even if I didn't want to. So we are in a good position. Tiggie bounced up to meet us and then Jon left us so we went up to the shopping place to try and find food. I was in the mood for Nandos but it turned out the shitty little Nandos there was so damn full we couldn't even contemplate getting a table.
So we toddled back out and went to Pizza Hut, that was busy too but not excessively so. We settled in and ordered some lovely food. Once again I seemed to be flirting a bit much with the waitress and tried to maintain a Geoffly level of conversation. Tiggie of course was knackered and kept spacing on me and also grinning without realising a lot. I love seeing her happy like that. But it detrimentally affected the conversation so I some times had to repeat some stuff.
Some weird kids came in and sat at a big table near us, they kept looking over and acting all weird and watching me. They even seemed to be trying to take pictures of me at one point which was incredibly odd. One of them was so gay it wasn't funny. But the others were just odd, I mean I would have sword they were like 16 year olds or something but one of them was drinking a Stella, a silly thing to do at Pizza Hut, but irrespective it was odd.
In the end we went for a little tour around the camera shops to have a look for the Nikkor lens I'm after. Neither had it in their cabinets but Jessops did have one strapped to the D90 which looked rather nice. We then dived on the bus back to Tiggie's. We had however gotten on the long winded bus and it took ages to get there. The day was also getting really warm too so by the time we arrived back at hers the only viable plan for the rest of the afternoon was just go bleugh o nthe couch or whatever else.
Tiggie gave up on her plan to cook food and instead we al ldecided to get ready. Which to be honest for my part consisted of lying on Tiggie's bed playing with her broken eyelash curlers and making them talk in a German accent. Not that I'm easily amused at all let's be honest but it was funny. Tiggie took them off me after a while. But while they were both getting ready Gemsy was dancing round the house and after this level of merr can't be bothered movingness I dragged my bum up and went and changed into my shirt.
When we were all ready I carried Gemsy's big arsed Roland keyboard out to the van and we got everything settled in all comfy like or so we thought. We headed off with a loud clunking sound which when investigated proved to be the amp that had fallen over onto the keyboard so I sorted it out and we continued on our way. My foot started killing chronically at one point, I think I will need to go back to the Doctors about, repeated stabbing pain in the foot is never a good thing.
But it was a nice drive with lots of Rammstein over to Gemsy's sisters pub where the open mic was. It is worth mentioning at this point that Tiggie had borrowed my Jay hat and put on a tshirt that was in l33t speak and about if you can read this you need to get laid.
No fucking kidding.
But anyway I sat around trying to decide on something to do for the open mic night and in the end I decided I would sing Turn the Page. I know it's a Bob Seger song before anyone says but I like it because Metallica covered it and it was awesome. See below:
While trying to remember the words, now this is amusing, I have a weird sort of stage fright thing where by I forget the starting lines of the second verses of songs. I remember when I need to but it drives me potty right up until that moment. So I was listening to it desperately on my mp3 player to remember, I think Tiggie thought I was daft.
I stuck the PA system on after a while and had a little bit of a laugh singing bits of various songs just to test it out. Gemsy messed around with me as well playing along on the keyboard for a few random things and trying to figure out if we could perform anything together. It came to a bit of a no in the end as Gemsy couldn't find the chords to do any of the songs I really knew well. But we thought it would have been funny to do System of a Downs song Deer Dance.
After all this however we settled in to a general routine of beer and chatting while waiting for other people to arrive. I did try playing a bit of left handed acoustic bass which I borrowed from Gemsy's sister. Turned out I could play a lot of the things I wanted to but I doubted it was worth it in case the confusion of playing wrong handed caught up with me and I bollocksed it up.
Various number of Tiggie and Gemsy's friends and family arrived and I was introduced to quite a few new faces. All lovely people and we all sat around watching the various acts that came on before Gemsy and me. I had brought my camera down and decided looking at the low light environment this would be the perfect environment to try and figure out the proper use of my flashgun. Of course the stupid thing is rather knackered which is pretty annoying. Basically the on switch is a bit catchy and doesn't recognise fully if you aren't careful. But irrespective I got some great pictures.
Eventually after some cool acts it came up to Gemsy's turn. I was a little annoyed to be honest at the people in the pub as they were constantly talking and actually drowned out Gemsy for a good part of her set which was a touch annoying. I reckon one of the videos will probably have me saying that on it. But Gemsy did really well even if she did get the giggles a little bit at first. She played three songs which were all pretty good; she is a really good pianist.
After this it came round to my turn. So I dutifully got up and went over to the mic, I apologised for the a capella performance as in my own words "I can't play the song for shit myself" So with my leg shaking a bit I broke into the song and gradually warmed up more and more to the song as I sang it through. I left the microphone to a furious round of applause. I was a little bit stunned, they really liked it. I had half a dozen people coming up to me and congratulating me on an awesome performance.
I dragged Tiggie outside to review the video she had recorded. Well that was the plan; some faux pas has made it so there was no video of my triumphant moment. I was a little disappointed but nearly pissed myself laughing at the sheer daftness of it. Instead I dealt with it, went back and spoke to James the guy who was organising it and asked for two more songs.
We bummed around putting Guinness away and chatting a lot while listening to the other acts perform, some of who were quite impressive. In the end it came to time for my next go but I needed to get another pint and make sure Tiggie was ready with the camera. So I went out and performed firstly Sixx AM's Pray for Me. Now this turned out a bit shit as in my nervy state I went a bit higher than strictly necessary on a couple of the notes so I won't post that video.
But for my second song I decided it would be cool to do Deer Dance on my own. So rather than romancing the mic stand I took the mic off and launched into the song. Now this video I will include even if the sound does come off a bit crappy, as everyone was really getting into it and singing along. I do pretty well sometimes lol.
Here's me...
But anyway I really need to learn, on a slight segue here, to take compliments better. When people were coming up and complimenting me or yelling encouragement at me all I could really do was say thanks in a very coy manner and look very embarrassed. I'm just strange that way. But everyone loved it especially the System sing along. Apparently I am better at a capella then I had once thought possible.
For the most part the rest of the evening was a fairly standard night out time with some good acts on again and plenty of drinking. I am really disturbed how even on an empty stomach I cannot get drunk on Guinness its rather disturbing. You would think without regular flexing my alcoholic capacity would diminish but no. We gathered everything up and had chats with various folk before saying our goodbyes. Then Tiggie thought she had left her bag so they went looking for that while I nipped to the loo.
I had to dive back out again when I heard everyone singing the Jay rap from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. After this we of course had to finish it off by taking it into the realms of the Jungle Love part too. That was fun even if I did have to run out of the loo to take part. Then we dived back in the van and rocked our way back to the house while listening loudly to Bowie. Dropping off the van we headed across the road to the burger van and loaded up on greasy goodness. We got me a half pound burger, Gemsy a quarter pounder and Tiggie some chips
We then retired to Gemsy's bed to watch Monty Python's Flying Circus, eat food and drink lemonade. To be honest it became apparent in my satiated state I was getting knackered so after one episode it was bed time and I bid all adieu and went off to my bed.
Come the morning I once again awoke rather early, not as usually early but it was still definitely pre 7am. However this morning I was really feeling a case of the murr can't be arsed moving bed preferable. So I lay there for some time before I could actually drive myself ot get out of bed and go have a shower. It's always a nice experience a shower in Southampton, not only because Tiggie has a ridiculously powerful shower but she also has a stock of Lush stuff. I abused myself of this lovely gear once again though I was caught with a bit of a quandary in that I had no hair brush and nobody else was up to borrow one.
So I brushed through my hair with my hands dealing with any and all tangles. I think this worked well but my next hair washing session will really tell how that went down. Of course this will have been posted by then so I will put in an addendum. Anyway I had a lovely shower and came out to have a nice comfy lay down on the bed and dry off. I read a bunch more of Return of the Crimson Guard and eventually decided it was time to go downstairs to pilfer some internets.
The dogs had been in fine fettle again that night weeing and pooing everywhere. Tiger in the lounge had left a massive trail of poo in the back corner that I didn't immediately notice. Gemsy came down not long after me and cleaned it up but there was a lot to clean up. This is the main reason I do not like dogs that much, too much cleaning up after them. But that's how it is. We ponced around for a bit and eventually traded up on the internet again.
I tried to resurrect Tiggie, which worked the first time and she claimed she would get ready. She didn't appear and I went back up again to find I'm pretty sure she was asleep again as I knocked and talked and got no response until I came back again later. xZombiePrincessx called me and so I chatted to her for a bit, this made the second visit to Southampton I have made where I didn't get to see her and this was proving rather irritating I will be honest, it's been 5 months after all. Anyway she wanted a word with Tiggie so I took the phone up and gave it to her humming all the way which xZombiePrincessx found amusing.
Tiggie finally managed to summon up the will to get herself dressed and shortly afterwards we tried watching some of the vids from the night before. Then we gave that up as a bad idea and decided it was time to bugger off and go get some breakfast. We headed off in the van to a nearby café called the Jackpot Café which I was informed had gigantic breakfasts. Well it was alright but it was one of those awkward situations where I hate trying to order something and taking things off it.
So after a minute or so of indecision I eventually erred on the side of just order what you want. So I got two rashers of bacon, a sausage, some fried bread, and two slices of toast with scrambled egg on. I could have eaten more but I wasn't in the mood to bugger about trying to get more. I paid for breakfast too to stop anyone else doing it, mainly as Gemsy had sorted the foodage the night before and its unfair of me to not take some of the bills.
We got back in and watched a bit of the videos from the night before and laughed at how comical some of them came out and crap in some cases too. But we enjoyed them over all. Then we settled in for a good while and watched a load more Monty Python. Then it came round to time for me to be packing up so I gathered all of my associated shit and put it back in my bag. I was quite amazed to be honest that I could even fit any of that shit in there really lol.
Tiggie laughing herself off the couch...
Gemsy game me a lift back down to the station in the van and Tiggie came too. Once we got down there I declared group hug before dragging my bum out and grabbing my bags. Off I went to get on the train. It was already sat there so I dived on without really checking which one it was but I asked the shop manager and he checked it was in fact the right one and would you believe I had already hit the right carriage too. Score!
The journey back at first was fairly dull, I just settled back with the old mp3 player and chillaxed for a good long well. Only really noticeable part of the ridiculously long journey was a stupid pillock in the seats opposite me. He was sat in someone's reserved seats with his 3 year old, when one of the seats occupants came along he suggested in a forceful manner that she sit somewhere else as there were other seats available still. Then the other occupant came along and that's when it got interesting.
I only noticed as I had been changing tracks and it had hit a quiet starter. The guy started having a go at the woman about how he didn't give a shit and he had more right to the seat and how he wasn't moving. She went and got the train manager and was told he had to vacate the seat and there were in fact 6 other carriages of unreserved seats. He then started having a go at the manager about threatening his son. He had a go at the woman again when she tried to reason with him,
He told her to fuck off and basically kept ranting and railing that he had been on a train and it had been rammed full of people and he wasn't ever going to let that happen to him again and he had paid all this money. She tried to reason with him and he did the oh what are you going to do arrest me are you a copper. Turned out she was and she got out her warrant card. Then in the end after nobody backed down he stormed off ranting about people having nothing better to do than threaten three year old boys.
What a fucking mentalist, its not like its freaking hard to book a seat on a train. In fact they make it even easier as all you have to do when you get on is explain your circumstances to the manager and they will help you find a seat. Some strange little foreign woman tried diplomacy "surely you can let him stay, lets be human about this", human my eye, how about one person stops acting like a twat who thinks the world owes him something. That would help a lot.
Any rate we got back into Leeds after the long journey and I got out to find that there were no trains to Halifax as nobody had reminded me that they weren't running. I managed to find where the rail replacement bus was going from to find out that in fact it was only once an hour, so I had a 40 minute stand around outside the station. Then I sat on the coach listening to the drivers shit excuse for a music taste for an hour. Got back into Fax and headed straight for a taxi to get me the fuck home.
Got in, drank some milk, chatted to the rents for a bit and then dived into bed with my laptop and caught up on everything in net world. One annoying point is I swear I feel very insulted by something that I read on someone's blog. Recently they asked for something, I offered my help and now they are fucking off from the site without even so much as a no thank you and in such a way that it implies it might be my fault to me.
Sleep was had then.
Monday morning I got up ran round like a looney and eventually managed to sort myself for work. Read a bit on the train and then needed to rest as I was feeling thoroughly wrecked once again. At work today I have been sorting lots of things. Thankfully managed to get enough people together for my student site visit and may have secured a contact for another few visits and some more collaborative work in the future.
Been staring googly eyed at lots of things as it's nearly pay day and I have a hankering for some retail therapy. First port of call I think will be Lush as I am seriously craving some sexy scented soaps and whatnot. I'm also quite tempted to see if any of those special blond ones can do anything to keep my sun imbued blondness going a bit longer when it arrives.
My hand has been giving me a lot of pain today though, I think it might be wise to when I go to the Docs about my foot to get him to have a look at my hand as well as I'm pretty sure it should not be hurting this much at all. So we will see how that pans out. The armouries tonight is going to be rather painful I think but we will see how I get on and if it hurts too much well then obviously I shall call it a day. Obviously as I'm writing this Monday I will update it on Tuesday as to the events of Monday night lol.
But yeah it was at a couple of points rather awkward but at other times a thrillingly amazing weekend. So there you have the tale.
Okay now for the Monday update. I am a fucking idiot, so those have you that got that text on Friday night it would appear despite my other thoughts that it has now been proven true.
I think I am developing a problem and as stupid as it sounds I think I'm getting addicted to my own adrenaline or whatever it is that keeps me buzzing when I theoretically should be dead.
It's getting so bad that I haven't been eating, it's been acting as an appetite suppressant. I just go along with people when they decide they don't want food even if I'm hungry and it's bloody stupid of me. I spent all day yesterday drinking water as part of my usually cleansing ritual and only had a little chocolate and some tic tacs to last me all day. Water flushes out the crap now when there is only crap in you this leaves you a little empty.
It came to a head last night, I found out something that really upset me, I am tired honestly of giving my trust and love away to people for free. If I name you friend its for a reason and that is no small thing for me, I see it as a bond of both trust and loyalty. So then why do so many people seem to be spitting in my face (metaphorically) lately.
The trouble of being wired on your own adrenaline is that it gives you a massively intense level of focus. In this case my mind is capable of putting together the pieces of otherwise ridiculously complex puzzles and I figured out somewhat of a conspiracy of people who seem to have disowned me as a friend despite me having done nothing wrong that I know of.
This proved to be the nail in the coffin as you know the funny thing about adrenaline, it stops working after a while. You know what that leads too, a breakdown.
Yes folks I completely lost it, all my self control evaporated in about 20 minutes from a combination of that and the loss of my adrenaline and I was left confused on the edge of tears and completely unable to think straight.
To add insults to injury guess where it had to happen too, at the Royal Fucking Armouries, sword in hand. So I fucked that up and lost any and all focus and had to leave, in full fucking view of all my peers. Now I know many of them care, including Dan who asked me to email him to let him know how I had gotten. But the shame I felt washed over me and by the time I made it outside I was on my knees crying and just falling apart.
I tried calling people to talk but most people didn't pick up until one did. I won't tell you who it was but let me put it this way I had to pull myself back together sharpish because my trivial bullshit is nothing in comparison to what's happening to her. So I basically forcibly beat my mind and body into a working state and was there for my friend. I put my issues aside and stayed on the phone with her for the better part of an hour and a half talking to her and trying to help in any way I could.
Granted my own problems in this case are near enough of my own making but I would like this to go on the fucking record that no matter whatever the fuck is going wrong with me I will always be there for you. If I name you friend this is what you get, my loyalty, my love and as much of my time as I can give you to help you out in whatever way you need. I won't betray you so I ask that you not do the same to me.
After I stopped talking to her for a bit I sat back on the train and tried to put all the pieces together and the massive and obscene protest from my stomach started to put the pieces together. As the adrenaline completely wore off I felt all those nights when I had been unable to sleep and the complete lack of any chemical energy in my body finally catch up with me.
So when I got in home I immediately set about correcting this, I filled my stomach as quickly as I could with some crackers, cheese, turkey breast and a large strawberry milkshake. Then I took the pills for my foot that I haven't been able to take because I haven't been eating right. Therefore you can see I am trying to set myself right.
I regret that it had to come to the head that it did last night but I am glad in a way as its forced me to get a hold of myself and not run myself ragged so much. I mean for fucks sake how did I ever think it was sensible to go for seven and a half hours without so much as a drink of water while I was in Manchester at the studio. It can be truly said at the end of the day you are your own worst enemy.
So here I sit on Tuesday morning at work. I need to write this and people need to read this. I am dealing today with what can only be called withdrawal, I feel like shit, I'm shakey and my head is a bit achey. But I made sure I ate a good breakfast, I have brought a reasonable lunch with me and I plan to eat a wholesome tea.
So there is my confession, if you think less of me by all means do to be honest I should stop caring. But I made this situation for myself by consistently pushing myself beyond the realms of sensible physical limits and I am paying the price for it now. For those of you who remain and care, thank you.
But anyway its high time I got my shit wired and took care of a few things this morning. First on the agenda is emailing and apologising to Dan, it will be hard to go back to The Armouries, to fail in one of the few places you feel any fulfilment is a hard thing for anyone to cope with but I will as I have to.
It isn't all bad though, now I have gathered myself together and kicked the shit out of my own arse for being so stupid I can resume normal Geoffly service but I ask if in future when you are with me and I say anything about being hungry or feeling a little drained smack me round the head and make me do something about it.
So to all my friends who bothered to read this far and those who actually bother about me in the slightest I say again.
I love each and every one of you and sometimes don't deserve you but I hope that I do enough to and will continue to always try to be the best friend I can to all of you.
With that I leave you there, enjoy the happy times work through the sad times and at the end of the day always remember that Life is Beautiful, you only have to look and see it.
Toodles
G
So Wednesday I went off to Wolverhampton. Got up at 3am to get showered and ready and boy was that ever fun. Showered and got myself out the door to meet my taxi that got me down to the station for about 6:05am. Now this was a bit early for my train but I can never be sure with taxis even though this company has been on the whole very reliable for me in the past.
Stood on the platform singing to myself until a bunch of people turned up and then I just dived on the train and got myself across to Manchester. Of course once I got there I had the fun of getting over to Piccadilly, I have never walked over to the station and I'm not exactly 100% on its precise location so I hopped the tram to find out the tram wasn't going to Piccadilly. Had to get off and try to get a replacement bus that as it happened was impossible to find.
So I dived on the nearest bus and interrogated the driver who politely informed me the station was no more than two minutes walk down the road. So a vastly frustrated me turned around and stormed off to the station and lo and behold it was in fact that easy to find. Stupid Geoffrey! Anyway I grabbed myself some extra rations from Burger King (icky but hash browns are always good as is bacon) and dived onto my train.
Arriving in Wolverhampton I thought as I don't know my way I had better grab a taxi. So £3 and about 200m later I was at the Uni, more fool me, I will have no problems walking next time lol. Had to trouble getting to the room as I bumped into Christos from UWE and Ian Cooper our external evaluator so we had no trouble puzzling it out together. It did however prove a bit amusing that the woman at the main reception couldn't seem to figure out how to spell Metropolitan so I just told her to put Leeds Met.
The meeting got kicked off to a good start and I feel we at the CKE are I na strong position for this year. I was a bit wary of the new folks from UCLAN as they are a bit standoffish and are very new in their roles. I'm sure they will integrate well eventually but it will just take a bit of time. But yeah the meeting was fine and we got a lot of things we needed to get discussed out of the way. Then of course we moved on to more important things.
Lunch of course lol.
We headed down to the restaurant after leaving bags and things in Dave's office and settled in for lunch. I sat with Dave, Ian and Christos and we had a great chat about some random things. The UCLAN folks sat on their own and I didn't feel they mixed well at all, we even had a group discussion about music and whatnot and it was decided that we should make a Project Coordinator band as John from London South Bank is a big keyboard player and I'm bass and vocals etc lol. The food was pretty good, Chicken Supreme in a creamy mushroom sauce and a lovely chocolate dessert with bits of orange in it.
Anyway I acquitted myself well in the meeting and feel I can actually be justifiably called a Knowledge Transfer professional now. It saves me the awkwardness of trying to define what in the hell it is that I actually do. I got out of the meeting a little before the end and easily found my way back to the station. The train was a little delayed so I sat around and read for a little while. I was trying desperately to find out if anyone wanted to get together while I was in Manchester on the way back. So I sent off aw bunch of texts.
Got on the train when it arrived and read and texted all the way to Manchester and basically discovered that nobody seems to want to meet me for food. Some people had a good reason, others were unavailable and others seemed to be simply ignoring me which is a little annoying. So I waddled over across Manchester and got my bum on the platofrom to wait for a reasonable train. This was a touch annoying as the previous one was there and was packed to the nines so I didn't bother with it. I wouldn't have been able to get a bus on the other end in any case.
But eventually I got myself home and settled in for an evening of pretty much fuck all really, just making plans and whatnot as I usually do.
Thursday for the most part was mainly a standard working day until it came time to go to Uni. The lecture was once again pretty interesting and I am quite enthused about the subject as a whole as it requires a certain amount of thinking outside the box. It went through pretty quickly though I had been a bit of a silly monkey and not thought about getting adequate food provisions sorted out so I was bloody starving all the way through the session despite a rather rushed packet of crisps and a coffee.
An intriguing anecdote of the day was when my boss came in to see me and tell me about some stuff he wanted me to be getting on with. I took notes and got everything he wanted me to do down and ready in my head so there was no problem whatsoever. Then he started asking me again and it really threw me and I thought he was asking about my trip off, he wasn't and it left me a little perplexed.
Anyway Friday rolled around. I came in early to make sure I had everything ready. I needed to go off and see some students at a session in a computer lab to get them signed up for the site visit I'm running this coming Friday. I had immense trouble finding it as despite our otherwise amazing sign posts at Leeds Met not one of them tells you that to get to the first floor of Leslie Silver you have to go through the library. Cue 10 minutes of me wandering around looking lost. Such fun. But I got there and got a few students signed up which was good.
Next on the agenda was taking some photos wandering around the local building sites. This sounds easy thinks I, of course I was proved wrong as is often the case. I took some fantastic pics and it turns out that my camera actually has no memory card in it. One of my 4gb memory cards has disappeared off the face of the earth and its proving a little annoying to say the least. Luckily I had my second with me in my wallet so I managed a quick changeover and nobody was the wiser.
Got back to my office and had to deal with the fantastic annoyance of Finance again as my boss had been called by the head of a company to say he hadn't paid his fees for a conference. Now having spent weekend bollocking around with this I know those fees had been paid so I dived back in with Finance and got it proven. Of course they hadn't paid the £20 that was owed so I ended up chasing that up again. This basically stopped me enacting my good food plan for the day which had been to go to the sandwich shop and get a couple of nice sandwiches. Of course by the time I go there they were too busy and I no longer had any time so I came back.
I went up for a brief lesson in Photoshop batch processing which was interesting but Ian was basically dying making the whole thing rather awkward and a little confusing. I still also don't think he gets how often I use Photoshop and similar software in my tog work outside of work. Despite me telling him several times that this was the case, but anyway I got it sorted and as soon as I get all the software packages on my work Pc I will be able to start on my new task.
Anyway I then toddled off for the train. It was going to prove a long journey this time let me tell you and I was just about as prepared as I could be. Well that's not strictly true, I had to get a burger from Burger King, that left my stomach a little unprepared if you know what I'm saying. But I managed to get on the train and to my seat with relative ease so there was no problem, just a bit of shuffling around. The journey itself wasn't too bad down to Birmingham New Street though we were getting a bit delayed and I was getting very worried.
Of course in typical fashion once we got in the train was on the complete opposite end of the station so I dashed along and actually made it in plenty of time thankfully. Got on the train and it was rammed and an old couple were in my seat. I asked them about where they were getting off and it turned out they were only going too stops. The old lady moved even though I didn't want her too and so I sat and kept the old chap company and listened to his stories. I still feel a touch guilty about this but I am calmed a bit by the fact my foot was really hurting at this point. I will go into that later.
Got into Southampton and got my bum off the train relatively easily. Wandered across to the loo as five hours without really fills you up lol. Then I found my way outside and was a little shocked to not see Tiggie anywhere, of course then I turned around the corner and found her with two of her colleagues, Jane and Jon busily having cigarette time. Introductions were made and remade (I had actually met Jon before) and we all toddled off to a pub called the Avondale or something like that which was one of the Scream chain.
Upon arrival I hastily ploughed a pint of Guinness down my neck much to the shock of all. But hell I was thirsty damnit. We played pool for a while and alternated between being outside on cig company duty. I really should start being more awake sometimes as Tiggie told me something and it totally didn't register and she ended up telling me again not too long after. I played Jane at a game of pool and looked like I was about to lose catastrophically but in the end pulled a win out of it when she pot the black.
After another pint I decided it was time to be off for food and persuaded everyone else it was quite a good time for a trip to Bella Italia. Now I have never been to one before so I was thinking this would be a good opportunity to try it out. Got ourselves settled in and we got some lovely red wine, Montepulciano di Abruzzo, curse my spelling! The food was lovely, especially the cool little garlic bread baton thingies and the tiramisu I had for desert and split with Jane was delicious. I also flirted shamelessly with waitresses; I will have to one day figure out how it is that I do this as I can't seem to manage it anywhere else.
Anyway after this we made a flying visit to Jon's flat to drop off bags and shit and then headed off to one of the local pubs The London Hotel. This seemed a nice little place and we got ourselves settled while listening to the amusing attempts by some people at what I assume was supposed to be karaoke. We had a few drinks and it was becoming plainly obvious that I was the only "single" person in our little group so things were a touch awkward. But I spent a good part of the evening talking to Jane.
In fact I spent a lot of the evening trying to convince Jane of how lovely she is. This is either my weirdest ability or one of my pet annoyances that women who are blatantly good looking constantly nit pick the tiniest little things or have negative self image. Now I know some people will happily cry hypocrite on that one as I am one of the worst people in the world for thinking less of my looks and body but nerr nerr this isn't about me shockingly.
It only dawned on my after about an hour or more at the pub that it was a gay place. This I noticed when some guy started eyeing me up from the corner. Well the other indicators were there evidently I just don't notice this sort of thing. But okay now the only attention of that type I have ever noticed anyone giving me is from a gay guy. Fucking hell, where are all the women when you need them or at least the woman who will in anyway find you attractive?
I rounded out the drinking with a shot of Jack, mainly as there wasn't any Jager which was disappointing and prompted me to declare "what kind of gay bar doesn't have any jager". I actually don't know what the answer is but it was funny at the time. After this we toddled back to Jon's to gather our gear and then got Jane home and headed back to Tiggie's. I think we went in a taxi, I actually can't remember and it is kinda freaking me out, if Tiggie could help me out here I would appreciate it my dear.
We moved past the ensuing hordes of dogs including a newbie called Yogi who is basically a cross breed with a bear and had a lovely chat with Gemsy and I played with Didz and Floyd. Jon wasn't evidently used to the dogs so this was a little amusing to watch but I'm not heartless fiend he did better than I did when first confronted with that many dogs. After general chattingness and finding out about the open mic night on Saturday and whatnot we retreated to our respective beds. I stuck my headphones in for safeties sake and drifted off to a deep sleep.
Saturday morning I woke up stupidly early as usual but with the added fun of a massive cramp in my leg as the bloody window was open and the cold had done me in. Anyway I managed to play bring yourself slowly back to life and dragged my bum downstairs. Gemsy appeared after a short while as I was stealing the internets to post my previous rather confusing blog. She kept me company for a bit as it was plainly obvious I wasn't going to be seeing Tiggie for some time. Gemsy gave me a cookie and a coffee which was the only thing that sustained me for some time.
I should add in a brief explanation of the previous blogs bit about not breathing and the open mic thing. After I had woken up I was so bunged up I started coughing but my nose was blocked too and it took about a minute to clear but during that minute I couldn't breathe at all so it was a bit freaky. Added to this the cold had fucked my voice so I was sat around for ages in the morning desperately trying to sing my voice to some viable level of musical ability.
After bumming around for ages doing various levels of not a lot Tiggie eventually appeared and Gemsy departed to walk the dogs so we ended up preparing the days activities. Which basically consisted of me and Jon going to various holdouts of communal geekery while Tiggie went to get her new contact lenses. So we wandered off and got the bus into Southampton and did just that.
Starting off at Forbidden Planet Jon picked up a load of comics. I was tempted by a lot of things namely a rather cool looking Iron Man tshirt and a couple of graphic novels but my overwhelming sense of Yorkshire kicked in when I looked at the price and walked out having bought nothing. However we then went to HMV where I had a distinct shopping agenda. I picked up a copy of Monty Pythons Flying Circus for Gemsy on DVD as a present. Then while wandering back I saw Nightmare before Christmas (which I still haven't seen) as a collectors edition so I snarfed that too.
While walking around I also took a few pictures while playing about with my camera filters. I still am officially in love with my Sepialight filter and got some really cool pics using it. Jon and I talked for a bit as we wandered about everything from raging geekery to some personal stuff which needed to be said, even if I didn't want to. So we are in a good position. Tiggie bounced up to meet us and then Jon left us so we went up to the shopping place to try and find food. I was in the mood for Nandos but it turned out the shitty little Nandos there was so damn full we couldn't even contemplate getting a table.
So we toddled back out and went to Pizza Hut, that was busy too but not excessively so. We settled in and ordered some lovely food. Once again I seemed to be flirting a bit much with the waitress and tried to maintain a Geoffly level of conversation. Tiggie of course was knackered and kept spacing on me and also grinning without realising a lot. I love seeing her happy like that. But it detrimentally affected the conversation so I some times had to repeat some stuff.
Some weird kids came in and sat at a big table near us, they kept looking over and acting all weird and watching me. They even seemed to be trying to take pictures of me at one point which was incredibly odd. One of them was so gay it wasn't funny. But the others were just odd, I mean I would have sword they were like 16 year olds or something but one of them was drinking a Stella, a silly thing to do at Pizza Hut, but irrespective it was odd.
In the end we went for a little tour around the camera shops to have a look for the Nikkor lens I'm after. Neither had it in their cabinets but Jessops did have one strapped to the D90 which looked rather nice. We then dived on the bus back to Tiggie's. We had however gotten on the long winded bus and it took ages to get there. The day was also getting really warm too so by the time we arrived back at hers the only viable plan for the rest of the afternoon was just go bleugh o nthe couch or whatever else.
Tiggie gave up on her plan to cook food and instead we al ldecided to get ready. Which to be honest for my part consisted of lying on Tiggie's bed playing with her broken eyelash curlers and making them talk in a German accent. Not that I'm easily amused at all let's be honest but it was funny. Tiggie took them off me after a while. But while they were both getting ready Gemsy was dancing round the house and after this level of merr can't be bothered movingness I dragged my bum up and went and changed into my shirt.
When we were all ready I carried Gemsy's big arsed Roland keyboard out to the van and we got everything settled in all comfy like or so we thought. We headed off with a loud clunking sound which when investigated proved to be the amp that had fallen over onto the keyboard so I sorted it out and we continued on our way. My foot started killing chronically at one point, I think I will need to go back to the Doctors about, repeated stabbing pain in the foot is never a good thing.
But it was a nice drive with lots of Rammstein over to Gemsy's sisters pub where the open mic was. It is worth mentioning at this point that Tiggie had borrowed my Jay hat and put on a tshirt that was in l33t speak and about if you can read this you need to get laid.
No fucking kidding.
But anyway I sat around trying to decide on something to do for the open mic night and in the end I decided I would sing Turn the Page. I know it's a Bob Seger song before anyone says but I like it because Metallica covered it and it was awesome. See below:
While trying to remember the words, now this is amusing, I have a weird sort of stage fright thing where by I forget the starting lines of the second verses of songs. I remember when I need to but it drives me potty right up until that moment. So I was listening to it desperately on my mp3 player to remember, I think Tiggie thought I was daft.
I stuck the PA system on after a while and had a little bit of a laugh singing bits of various songs just to test it out. Gemsy messed around with me as well playing along on the keyboard for a few random things and trying to figure out if we could perform anything together. It came to a bit of a no in the end as Gemsy couldn't find the chords to do any of the songs I really knew well. But we thought it would have been funny to do System of a Downs song Deer Dance.
After all this however we settled in to a general routine of beer and chatting while waiting for other people to arrive. I did try playing a bit of left handed acoustic bass which I borrowed from Gemsy's sister. Turned out I could play a lot of the things I wanted to but I doubted it was worth it in case the confusion of playing wrong handed caught up with me and I bollocksed it up.
Various number of Tiggie and Gemsy's friends and family arrived and I was introduced to quite a few new faces. All lovely people and we all sat around watching the various acts that came on before Gemsy and me. I had brought my camera down and decided looking at the low light environment this would be the perfect environment to try and figure out the proper use of my flashgun. Of course the stupid thing is rather knackered which is pretty annoying. Basically the on switch is a bit catchy and doesn't recognise fully if you aren't careful. But irrespective I got some great pictures.
Eventually after some cool acts it came up to Gemsy's turn. I was a little annoyed to be honest at the people in the pub as they were constantly talking and actually drowned out Gemsy for a good part of her set which was a touch annoying. I reckon one of the videos will probably have me saying that on it. But Gemsy did really well even if she did get the giggles a little bit at first. She played three songs which were all pretty good; she is a really good pianist.
After this it came round to my turn. So I dutifully got up and went over to the mic, I apologised for the a capella performance as in my own words "I can't play the song for shit myself" So with my leg shaking a bit I broke into the song and gradually warmed up more and more to the song as I sang it through. I left the microphone to a furious round of applause. I was a little bit stunned, they really liked it. I had half a dozen people coming up to me and congratulating me on an awesome performance.
I dragged Tiggie outside to review the video she had recorded. Well that was the plan; some faux pas has made it so there was no video of my triumphant moment. I was a little disappointed but nearly pissed myself laughing at the sheer daftness of it. Instead I dealt with it, went back and spoke to James the guy who was organising it and asked for two more songs.
We bummed around putting Guinness away and chatting a lot while listening to the other acts perform, some of who were quite impressive. In the end it came to time for my next go but I needed to get another pint and make sure Tiggie was ready with the camera. So I went out and performed firstly Sixx AM's Pray for Me. Now this turned out a bit shit as in my nervy state I went a bit higher than strictly necessary on a couple of the notes so I won't post that video.
But for my second song I decided it would be cool to do Deer Dance on my own. So rather than romancing the mic stand I took the mic off and launched into the song. Now this video I will include even if the sound does come off a bit crappy, as everyone was really getting into it and singing along. I do pretty well sometimes lol.
Here's me...
But anyway I really need to learn, on a slight segue here, to take compliments better. When people were coming up and complimenting me or yelling encouragement at me all I could really do was say thanks in a very coy manner and look very embarrassed. I'm just strange that way. But everyone loved it especially the System sing along. Apparently I am better at a capella then I had once thought possible.
For the most part the rest of the evening was a fairly standard night out time with some good acts on again and plenty of drinking. I am really disturbed how even on an empty stomach I cannot get drunk on Guinness its rather disturbing. You would think without regular flexing my alcoholic capacity would diminish but no. We gathered everything up and had chats with various folk before saying our goodbyes. Then Tiggie thought she had left her bag so they went looking for that while I nipped to the loo.
I had to dive back out again when I heard everyone singing the Jay rap from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. After this we of course had to finish it off by taking it into the realms of the Jungle Love part too. That was fun even if I did have to run out of the loo to take part. Then we dived back in the van and rocked our way back to the house while listening loudly to Bowie. Dropping off the van we headed across the road to the burger van and loaded up on greasy goodness. We got me a half pound burger, Gemsy a quarter pounder and Tiggie some chips
We then retired to Gemsy's bed to watch Monty Python's Flying Circus, eat food and drink lemonade. To be honest it became apparent in my satiated state I was getting knackered so after one episode it was bed time and I bid all adieu and went off to my bed.
Come the morning I once again awoke rather early, not as usually early but it was still definitely pre 7am. However this morning I was really feeling a case of the murr can't be arsed moving bed preferable. So I lay there for some time before I could actually drive myself ot get out of bed and go have a shower. It's always a nice experience a shower in Southampton, not only because Tiggie has a ridiculously powerful shower but she also has a stock of Lush stuff. I abused myself of this lovely gear once again though I was caught with a bit of a quandary in that I had no hair brush and nobody else was up to borrow one.
So I brushed through my hair with my hands dealing with any and all tangles. I think this worked well but my next hair washing session will really tell how that went down. Of course this will have been posted by then so I will put in an addendum. Anyway I had a lovely shower and came out to have a nice comfy lay down on the bed and dry off. I read a bunch more of Return of the Crimson Guard and eventually decided it was time to go downstairs to pilfer some internets.
The dogs had been in fine fettle again that night weeing and pooing everywhere. Tiger in the lounge had left a massive trail of poo in the back corner that I didn't immediately notice. Gemsy came down not long after me and cleaned it up but there was a lot to clean up. This is the main reason I do not like dogs that much, too much cleaning up after them. But that's how it is. We ponced around for a bit and eventually traded up on the internet again.
I tried to resurrect Tiggie, which worked the first time and she claimed she would get ready. She didn't appear and I went back up again to find I'm pretty sure she was asleep again as I knocked and talked and got no response until I came back again later. xZombiePrincessx called me and so I chatted to her for a bit, this made the second visit to Southampton I have made where I didn't get to see her and this was proving rather irritating I will be honest, it's been 5 months after all. Anyway she wanted a word with Tiggie so I took the phone up and gave it to her humming all the way which xZombiePrincessx found amusing.
Tiggie finally managed to summon up the will to get herself dressed and shortly afterwards we tried watching some of the vids from the night before. Then we gave that up as a bad idea and decided it was time to bugger off and go get some breakfast. We headed off in the van to a nearby café called the Jackpot Café which I was informed had gigantic breakfasts. Well it was alright but it was one of those awkward situations where I hate trying to order something and taking things off it.
So after a minute or so of indecision I eventually erred on the side of just order what you want. So I got two rashers of bacon, a sausage, some fried bread, and two slices of toast with scrambled egg on. I could have eaten more but I wasn't in the mood to bugger about trying to get more. I paid for breakfast too to stop anyone else doing it, mainly as Gemsy had sorted the foodage the night before and its unfair of me to not take some of the bills.
We got back in and watched a bit of the videos from the night before and laughed at how comical some of them came out and crap in some cases too. But we enjoyed them over all. Then we settled in for a good while and watched a load more Monty Python. Then it came round to time for me to be packing up so I gathered all of my associated shit and put it back in my bag. I was quite amazed to be honest that I could even fit any of that shit in there really lol.
Tiggie laughing herself off the couch...
Gemsy game me a lift back down to the station in the van and Tiggie came too. Once we got down there I declared group hug before dragging my bum out and grabbing my bags. Off I went to get on the train. It was already sat there so I dived on without really checking which one it was but I asked the shop manager and he checked it was in fact the right one and would you believe I had already hit the right carriage too. Score!
The journey back at first was fairly dull, I just settled back with the old mp3 player and chillaxed for a good long well. Only really noticeable part of the ridiculously long journey was a stupid pillock in the seats opposite me. He was sat in someone's reserved seats with his 3 year old, when one of the seats occupants came along he suggested in a forceful manner that she sit somewhere else as there were other seats available still. Then the other occupant came along and that's when it got interesting.
I only noticed as I had been changing tracks and it had hit a quiet starter. The guy started having a go at the woman about how he didn't give a shit and he had more right to the seat and how he wasn't moving. She went and got the train manager and was told he had to vacate the seat and there were in fact 6 other carriages of unreserved seats. He then started having a go at the manager about threatening his son. He had a go at the woman again when she tried to reason with him,
He told her to fuck off and basically kept ranting and railing that he had been on a train and it had been rammed full of people and he wasn't ever going to let that happen to him again and he had paid all this money. She tried to reason with him and he did the oh what are you going to do arrest me are you a copper. Turned out she was and she got out her warrant card. Then in the end after nobody backed down he stormed off ranting about people having nothing better to do than threaten three year old boys.
What a fucking mentalist, its not like its freaking hard to book a seat on a train. In fact they make it even easier as all you have to do when you get on is explain your circumstances to the manager and they will help you find a seat. Some strange little foreign woman tried diplomacy "surely you can let him stay, lets be human about this", human my eye, how about one person stops acting like a twat who thinks the world owes him something. That would help a lot.
Any rate we got back into Leeds after the long journey and I got out to find that there were no trains to Halifax as nobody had reminded me that they weren't running. I managed to find where the rail replacement bus was going from to find out that in fact it was only once an hour, so I had a 40 minute stand around outside the station. Then I sat on the coach listening to the drivers shit excuse for a music taste for an hour. Got back into Fax and headed straight for a taxi to get me the fuck home.
Got in, drank some milk, chatted to the rents for a bit and then dived into bed with my laptop and caught up on everything in net world. One annoying point is I swear I feel very insulted by something that I read on someone's blog. Recently they asked for something, I offered my help and now they are fucking off from the site without even so much as a no thank you and in such a way that it implies it might be my fault to me.
Sleep was had then.
Monday morning I got up ran round like a looney and eventually managed to sort myself for work. Read a bit on the train and then needed to rest as I was feeling thoroughly wrecked once again. At work today I have been sorting lots of things. Thankfully managed to get enough people together for my student site visit and may have secured a contact for another few visits and some more collaborative work in the future.
Been staring googly eyed at lots of things as it's nearly pay day and I have a hankering for some retail therapy. First port of call I think will be Lush as I am seriously craving some sexy scented soaps and whatnot. I'm also quite tempted to see if any of those special blond ones can do anything to keep my sun imbued blondness going a bit longer when it arrives.
My hand has been giving me a lot of pain today though, I think it might be wise to when I go to the Docs about my foot to get him to have a look at my hand as well as I'm pretty sure it should not be hurting this much at all. So we will see how that pans out. The armouries tonight is going to be rather painful I think but we will see how I get on and if it hurts too much well then obviously I shall call it a day. Obviously as I'm writing this Monday I will update it on Tuesday as to the events of Monday night lol.
But yeah it was at a couple of points rather awkward but at other times a thrillingly amazing weekend. So there you have the tale.
Okay now for the Monday update. I am a fucking idiot, so those have you that got that text on Friday night it would appear despite my other thoughts that it has now been proven true.
I think I am developing a problem and as stupid as it sounds I think I'm getting addicted to my own adrenaline or whatever it is that keeps me buzzing when I theoretically should be dead.
It's getting so bad that I haven't been eating, it's been acting as an appetite suppressant. I just go along with people when they decide they don't want food even if I'm hungry and it's bloody stupid of me. I spent all day yesterday drinking water as part of my usually cleansing ritual and only had a little chocolate and some tic tacs to last me all day. Water flushes out the crap now when there is only crap in you this leaves you a little empty.
It came to a head last night, I found out something that really upset me, I am tired honestly of giving my trust and love away to people for free. If I name you friend its for a reason and that is no small thing for me, I see it as a bond of both trust and loyalty. So then why do so many people seem to be spitting in my face (metaphorically) lately.
The trouble of being wired on your own adrenaline is that it gives you a massively intense level of focus. In this case my mind is capable of putting together the pieces of otherwise ridiculously complex puzzles and I figured out somewhat of a conspiracy of people who seem to have disowned me as a friend despite me having done nothing wrong that I know of.
This proved to be the nail in the coffin as you know the funny thing about adrenaline, it stops working after a while. You know what that leads too, a breakdown.
Yes folks I completely lost it, all my self control evaporated in about 20 minutes from a combination of that and the loss of my adrenaline and I was left confused on the edge of tears and completely unable to think straight.
To add insults to injury guess where it had to happen too, at the Royal Fucking Armouries, sword in hand. So I fucked that up and lost any and all focus and had to leave, in full fucking view of all my peers. Now I know many of them care, including Dan who asked me to email him to let him know how I had gotten. But the shame I felt washed over me and by the time I made it outside I was on my knees crying and just falling apart.
I tried calling people to talk but most people didn't pick up until one did. I won't tell you who it was but let me put it this way I had to pull myself back together sharpish because my trivial bullshit is nothing in comparison to what's happening to her. So I basically forcibly beat my mind and body into a working state and was there for my friend. I put my issues aside and stayed on the phone with her for the better part of an hour and a half talking to her and trying to help in any way I could.
Granted my own problems in this case are near enough of my own making but I would like this to go on the fucking record that no matter whatever the fuck is going wrong with me I will always be there for you. If I name you friend this is what you get, my loyalty, my love and as much of my time as I can give you to help you out in whatever way you need. I won't betray you so I ask that you not do the same to me.
After I stopped talking to her for a bit I sat back on the train and tried to put all the pieces together and the massive and obscene protest from my stomach started to put the pieces together. As the adrenaline completely wore off I felt all those nights when I had been unable to sleep and the complete lack of any chemical energy in my body finally catch up with me.
So when I got in home I immediately set about correcting this, I filled my stomach as quickly as I could with some crackers, cheese, turkey breast and a large strawberry milkshake. Then I took the pills for my foot that I haven't been able to take because I haven't been eating right. Therefore you can see I am trying to set myself right.
I regret that it had to come to the head that it did last night but I am glad in a way as its forced me to get a hold of myself and not run myself ragged so much. I mean for fucks sake how did I ever think it was sensible to go for seven and a half hours without so much as a drink of water while I was in Manchester at the studio. It can be truly said at the end of the day you are your own worst enemy.
So here I sit on Tuesday morning at work. I need to write this and people need to read this. I am dealing today with what can only be called withdrawal, I feel like shit, I'm shakey and my head is a bit achey. But I made sure I ate a good breakfast, I have brought a reasonable lunch with me and I plan to eat a wholesome tea.
So there is my confession, if you think less of me by all means do to be honest I should stop caring. But I made this situation for myself by consistently pushing myself beyond the realms of sensible physical limits and I am paying the price for it now. For those of you who remain and care, thank you.
But anyway its high time I got my shit wired and took care of a few things this morning. First on the agenda is emailing and apologising to Dan, it will be hard to go back to The Armouries, to fail in one of the few places you feel any fulfilment is a hard thing for anyone to cope with but I will as I have to.
It isn't all bad though, now I have gathered myself together and kicked the shit out of my own arse for being so stupid I can resume normal Geoffly service but I ask if in future when you are with me and I say anything about being hungry or feeling a little drained smack me round the head and make me do something about it.
So to all my friends who bothered to read this far and those who actually bother about me in the slightest I say again.
I love each and every one of you and sometimes don't deserve you but I hope that I do enough to and will continue to always try to be the best friend I can to all of you.
With that I leave you there, enjoy the happy times work through the sad times and at the end of the day always remember that Life is Beautiful, you only have to look and see it.
Toodles
G
Feeling pretty WTF!?! right now. Want to do open mic tonight but my voice is a bit fucked thanks to the cold. Hell I couldnt breathe when I woke up this morning.
Have this to keep you going.
and this
I love Dan Baird.
Now I will go die in a depressing fashion over in the corner.
Toodles
G
Have this to keep you going.
and this
I love Dan Baird.
Now I will go die in a depressing fashion over in the corner.
Toodles
G
Well here we are its hit Tuesday once again and this time I'm not too tired to keep up to my blog schedule, though by the end of the day I might be.
So the weekend…
Saturday as I posted the blog you know what my general plan was, pretty much just sit around and die in a very general fashion while watching DVDs. This was pretty much all I did I will have to be honest now until about 1 o'clock, I sat around on the couch watching The West Wing and trading comments on Model Mayhem for kicks. Once again got some really good feedback and I was quite pleased.
At 1 I dragged myself up and got some food as I was getting perilously hungry. I wasn't in the mood for anything too complex so I simply shoved some soup on and shredded some bread in a bowl. Now it was Oxtail soup which is not the best for doing this, the best by far is packet Asparagus, which is just yummy!
The afternoon proceeded apace about the same as the morning until around 6 when LostSoulParry arrived. I finished off the episode of the West Wing I had been watching while twittering on my laptop and to him. This might seem a bit rude but I needed to as someone I desperately needed to talk to came online for the first time in ages.
In case you were wondering this was Tiggie, so we sorted out what we were doing next weekend to a point but I was a touch disappointed to find out she hadn't booked the tattoo appointment, so no tattoos for Geoff. But I still am really looking forward to seeing her on Friday, hopefully xZombiePrincessx will come to hang out too as I haven't seen her since May and I misses her.
Anyway we jammed in Nacho Libre as LostSoulParry hadn't seen it can you believe. As this was going on we had sorted out ordering food using JustEat.co.uk which was something new for me. We couldn't get it from where I wanted so in the end we went with the second option rather regretfully, LostSoulParry wasn't too impressed with them from the start but I gave them the benefit of the doubt.
While we waited and waited and waited for the food I got a call from EvilTony. He was lost on his way to us and so I tried to give him directions to us. These didn't work and a few minutes later we got another call and after some more attempted directions he realised where he was and was in fact nowhere near us whatsoever. He got it reversed and arrived a short while later amongst much hilarity.
The food arrived a short while later and so we got down to some serious eating and chatting while rounding out the end of the film. It had taken ages to get here the food had and to be honest I wasn't terribly impressed as it was a bit naff over all. The pizza was a little cold as it had taken ages to get here and on top of this the chips were going cold by the time we got to them.
But anyway I stuck on Garth Marenghi's Darkplace as neither of my compadres had seen it the poor sods. While this was starting up I quickly dashed into the kitchen to put the chips in the oven for a bit. Stupid me of course didn't know that the packaging would melt in the oven so one batch of chips got chucked away right off and then I had to use the other batch. Well they were shit anyway so it wasn't much of a loss and we struggled to eat the others. Notes for the future don't whatever you do buy food from them.
Anyway both the guys loved Darkplace but we only watched one episode through as it was now clearly time for some rocking out. So me and LostSoulParry dragged the bits down to play Rock Band. I gave LostSoulParry the microphone, I took guitar and we let the virgin (EvilTony) break himself in on the drums. Now this might seem a bit harsh but we are pretty secure in our band roles in Ph@llus so we had to go with what we could. We worked our way through some pretty fun songs too.
I'm mightily impressed with EvilTony he is a pretty damn impressive drummer for a first timer. We played through about six songs before we ever came near to requiring the use of the overdrive to save his arse. He gave the best first time performance on the drums I have ever seen and this from a guy who claims he is rubbish and can't do it. I don't ever want to see what he can do at something he is good at, by the gods he would destroy us all.
EvilTony toddled off home at a point later on and we watched some more Darkplace until it came to a clear point that we were getting too far into mucking about on computery entertainment and SG Chat. So we packed up and headed for bed where I stayed on chat for an hour or so and eventually called it sleepy time, or lung coughy outy to muchy time and rolled over for sleep.
Come the next morning I dived out of bed raring for action. Well lets be honest that's not strictly true, I lay there until I could be bothered to get up and do something truly effective. So I managed to drag myself up and drag myself downstairs. Not a lot I could think of doing, too lazy to put another DVD in and so I just picked up Rock Band again for a bit and played on that for a short while rather loudly belting my way through some of my favourite songs.
When done I went upstairs for a short while to sort out some more net related business and then lo and behold LostSoulParry awakened so we came downstairs and got into some serious Rock Band. Onto career mode we went and we rocked our way through several venues. We worried a couple of times on the random ones but we usually managed to carry it off which was cool. We even survived the "Scenester" one which I thought was gonna be full of all the crap songs and turned out to mostly be Weezer and the classic punk tunes.
We kept this up for a while and then turned our loving attentions to food and the quest for enlightenment. Well maybe not enlightenment per se but we certainly watched a large mess of Nick Frost's Danger 50,000 Volts. It's such a fun show and there are some absolutely cracking bits. I made us some lunch of chicken in a creamy sauce with pasta that really filled me up something chronic and we watched the special extra Danger 50,000 Zombies that was made to accompany Shawn of the Dead.
Now this was just bloody hilarious with Simon Pegg as some special Zombie expert from Australia who is basically completely nuts. This also makes them both look incredibly gay let me tell you as they kiss at one point and then walk off together holding hands and talking about how amazed they are to have found each other. Thought the Zombie advice was practical and as a person who has a Zombie Apocolypse plan it really helped me hone my ideas.
LostSoulParry bounced off a little while after this as he had to get home to his loving fiancée. Thus leaving me to deal with my rampaging parents and feeling pretty shitty, so I retreated to my room and watched the end of Sin City while tea was on the go. Chatted to a few models to try and finalise what I'm doing a week on Saturday with my big shoot in the hotel, I swear they are gonna wonder what in the hell is going on when I descend at this small family run hotel. But I think I have a good roster now. Two models who are doing standard shoots for the project and one model that is going to work on two nude studies for the project with me.
I think it's about time to get some decent nude work in my portfolio, I have to be honest back when I first started getting in to this I will admit a lot of my photo's were crap as I hadn't learnt what I know now. Not saying I'm perfect now but I will say I know I can make a damn better effort at it. I would even be tempted to shoot an SG set or two but I know of nobody that is near me who wants one or should I say that would want me to shoot one for them. C'est la vie.
Anyway tea was grand, nothing like a large pile of Yorkshire Pudding to keep any red blooded Englishman happy let me tell you. So I went upstairs happily ready to cough my lungs out for a while which I naturally did. Anyone who may at this point disbelieve me can take heart in knowing that there are witnesses to my cough as I had my mic on at one point in Chat and everyone heard it. But that was fun for a while except Mark_Plus_Beer's audio nearly killed me as my mic is too close to my speakers for that to work.
I decided after some rather amusing time in chat the time between my lungs making reappearance and going back in again was getting too short for comfort so I eventually rolled over and once again went off to bed.
Monday was a bit of slow day. It was the first day officially in my new office and I was a bit wary of this at first but I was getting on pretty damn well with Bob which is always good. I mean I know I can talk to anyone about anything as its one of my peculiar gifts but we were having a right old conversation about photography as he uses the same camera as me. I was still a little miffed about the key issue but it wasn't such a big thing at this point and I just dealt with it.
The day picked up immeasurably when I found out that I had in fact been granted another 6 months on the job so I am now in secure employment until July 09, hopefully this means I can ride out the recession safely and if we go the way we hope we will get more money in and I can stay here for the time being which will be excellent. I may complain but at times I really do enjoy my job, it has the right mix of politics, creativeness and relatively un-tight deadlines to suit me to the ground.
BB was pretty fun in the evening and I had a good old laugh with the lads though had to shout a bit as a couple of them were misbehaving. Had aw good old chat with Garry as he is a bit incapacitated at the moment due to having a knackered knee. He was saying he thinks I've lost more weight. Not sure I have but I know I'm now holding steady at 17 stone and I for the most part like the new me thought I'm not entirely sure its going to help me with any of my major issues.
For example I still hate my skin, this is one of the reasons I want to get some ink to cover the worse offending parts of my body that I really despise. I mean for example my ugly back that is covered in pock scars from having seriously bad spots as a teenager. As much ink as possible to cover these I think. But I digress this is only one of the issues I'm concerned with as you all well know.
But anyway the night ended on a stressful note as I got a call from Big Bad Jon of Vague in Manchester as I was needed to help him sort some things out with the Wargaming as Perry is proving a bit useless at it and he wanted my input on the key issues. I've also been sorting out my photography duties at the Nationals, basically I will tog it all the way round getting pics of all the sessions as they are ongoing and pics of all the closing ceremonies and whatnot.
Today has been a relatively full and busy day. Started off with my frantically trying to edit my scenarios to send to Big Bad Jon for the Nationals. Which I did, then I had to run around and check on the preparations for the meeting at 10, then I bumped into Tim our visitor and chatted to him a bit before dropping him off in the room and rounding up all the attendees and getting some extra chairs. Despite what they said I think they had forgotten.
The meeting was good and gave some good points but when the food I had ordered arrived it was fucking terrible. Not even close to what we had actually wanted and I couldn't eat anything. So I'm sat here now at nearly 6pm and I've had nothing but a biscuit or two since 7am. I am so fucking famished its not bloody funny. I put a complaint in about the food as I'm fed up with being fucked over by Leeds Met catering, wankers. They charge enough you think they could get it right.
Finished out the rest of the day sorting out some more shoots for a week on Saturday and organising tomorrow. I'm off at 6am for an all day meeting in Wolverhampton. Going to be long as I have to take three trains to do it and go through Manchester. But I will survive I think. Might see if any of my Manchester pals fancy coming and meeting me to get some food on the way back. Gonna finally finish Preacher tonight as I started reading Alamo on the way back home, its good!
In other news I'm trying to work out what I want for Christmas, now I know its a bit in advance at the moment but I need to work on these things so I can get it right in my own head. I'm thinking I might treat myself to one of the rather tasty new Nikkor 18-105mm lenses shown here:
Otherwise I'm at a bit of a loss and will need to think on it. I can't even seem to figure out what I'm going to get for my parents or brother. Well I might paint some models up for my brother, depending on whether he fancies doing the nationals again. He mentioned Cygnar and I really fancy making a Jermiah Kraye with custom gun slinging Sentinel. Might look into it for a laugh if nothing else. If I'm not careful I might end up buying some Khador and I can't have that, I should in fact be getting rid of models not buying more. Bad Geoffrey.
But I love this model:
Anyway I will leave you there and I shall give some more thought to present wrangling this week in between my massive photography planning. I mean hell I'm up to a minimum of five models to work with in the next two weeks alone. I'm a busy boy.
So what would you all like for Christmas?
Toodles
G
So the weekend…
Saturday as I posted the blog you know what my general plan was, pretty much just sit around and die in a very general fashion while watching DVDs. This was pretty much all I did I will have to be honest now until about 1 o'clock, I sat around on the couch watching The West Wing and trading comments on Model Mayhem for kicks. Once again got some really good feedback and I was quite pleased.
At 1 I dragged myself up and got some food as I was getting perilously hungry. I wasn't in the mood for anything too complex so I simply shoved some soup on and shredded some bread in a bowl. Now it was Oxtail soup which is not the best for doing this, the best by far is packet Asparagus, which is just yummy!
The afternoon proceeded apace about the same as the morning until around 6 when LostSoulParry arrived. I finished off the episode of the West Wing I had been watching while twittering on my laptop and to him. This might seem a bit rude but I needed to as someone I desperately needed to talk to came online for the first time in ages.
In case you were wondering this was Tiggie, so we sorted out what we were doing next weekend to a point but I was a touch disappointed to find out she hadn't booked the tattoo appointment, so no tattoos for Geoff. But I still am really looking forward to seeing her on Friday, hopefully xZombiePrincessx will come to hang out too as I haven't seen her since May and I misses her.
Anyway we jammed in Nacho Libre as LostSoulParry hadn't seen it can you believe. As this was going on we had sorted out ordering food using JustEat.co.uk which was something new for me. We couldn't get it from where I wanted so in the end we went with the second option rather regretfully, LostSoulParry wasn't too impressed with them from the start but I gave them the benefit of the doubt.
While we waited and waited and waited for the food I got a call from EvilTony. He was lost on his way to us and so I tried to give him directions to us. These didn't work and a few minutes later we got another call and after some more attempted directions he realised where he was and was in fact nowhere near us whatsoever. He got it reversed and arrived a short while later amongst much hilarity.
The food arrived a short while later and so we got down to some serious eating and chatting while rounding out the end of the film. It had taken ages to get here the food had and to be honest I wasn't terribly impressed as it was a bit naff over all. The pizza was a little cold as it had taken ages to get here and on top of this the chips were going cold by the time we got to them.
But anyway I stuck on Garth Marenghi's Darkplace as neither of my compadres had seen it the poor sods. While this was starting up I quickly dashed into the kitchen to put the chips in the oven for a bit. Stupid me of course didn't know that the packaging would melt in the oven so one batch of chips got chucked away right off and then I had to use the other batch. Well they were shit anyway so it wasn't much of a loss and we struggled to eat the others. Notes for the future don't whatever you do buy food from them.
Anyway both the guys loved Darkplace but we only watched one episode through as it was now clearly time for some rocking out. So me and LostSoulParry dragged the bits down to play Rock Band. I gave LostSoulParry the microphone, I took guitar and we let the virgin (EvilTony) break himself in on the drums. Now this might seem a bit harsh but we are pretty secure in our band roles in Ph@llus so we had to go with what we could. We worked our way through some pretty fun songs too.
I'm mightily impressed with EvilTony he is a pretty damn impressive drummer for a first timer. We played through about six songs before we ever came near to requiring the use of the overdrive to save his arse. He gave the best first time performance on the drums I have ever seen and this from a guy who claims he is rubbish and can't do it. I don't ever want to see what he can do at something he is good at, by the gods he would destroy us all.
EvilTony toddled off home at a point later on and we watched some more Darkplace until it came to a clear point that we were getting too far into mucking about on computery entertainment and SG Chat. So we packed up and headed for bed where I stayed on chat for an hour or so and eventually called it sleepy time, or lung coughy outy to muchy time and rolled over for sleep.
Come the next morning I dived out of bed raring for action. Well lets be honest that's not strictly true, I lay there until I could be bothered to get up and do something truly effective. So I managed to drag myself up and drag myself downstairs. Not a lot I could think of doing, too lazy to put another DVD in and so I just picked up Rock Band again for a bit and played on that for a short while rather loudly belting my way through some of my favourite songs.
When done I went upstairs for a short while to sort out some more net related business and then lo and behold LostSoulParry awakened so we came downstairs and got into some serious Rock Band. Onto career mode we went and we rocked our way through several venues. We worried a couple of times on the random ones but we usually managed to carry it off which was cool. We even survived the "Scenester" one which I thought was gonna be full of all the crap songs and turned out to mostly be Weezer and the classic punk tunes.
We kept this up for a while and then turned our loving attentions to food and the quest for enlightenment. Well maybe not enlightenment per se but we certainly watched a large mess of Nick Frost's Danger 50,000 Volts. It's such a fun show and there are some absolutely cracking bits. I made us some lunch of chicken in a creamy sauce with pasta that really filled me up something chronic and we watched the special extra Danger 50,000 Zombies that was made to accompany Shawn of the Dead.
Now this was just bloody hilarious with Simon Pegg as some special Zombie expert from Australia who is basically completely nuts. This also makes them both look incredibly gay let me tell you as they kiss at one point and then walk off together holding hands and talking about how amazed they are to have found each other. Thought the Zombie advice was practical and as a person who has a Zombie Apocolypse plan it really helped me hone my ideas.
LostSoulParry bounced off a little while after this as he had to get home to his loving fiancée. Thus leaving me to deal with my rampaging parents and feeling pretty shitty, so I retreated to my room and watched the end of Sin City while tea was on the go. Chatted to a few models to try and finalise what I'm doing a week on Saturday with my big shoot in the hotel, I swear they are gonna wonder what in the hell is going on when I descend at this small family run hotel. But I think I have a good roster now. Two models who are doing standard shoots for the project and one model that is going to work on two nude studies for the project with me.
I think it's about time to get some decent nude work in my portfolio, I have to be honest back when I first started getting in to this I will admit a lot of my photo's were crap as I hadn't learnt what I know now. Not saying I'm perfect now but I will say I know I can make a damn better effort at it. I would even be tempted to shoot an SG set or two but I know of nobody that is near me who wants one or should I say that would want me to shoot one for them. C'est la vie.
Anyway tea was grand, nothing like a large pile of Yorkshire Pudding to keep any red blooded Englishman happy let me tell you. So I went upstairs happily ready to cough my lungs out for a while which I naturally did. Anyone who may at this point disbelieve me can take heart in knowing that there are witnesses to my cough as I had my mic on at one point in Chat and everyone heard it. But that was fun for a while except Mark_Plus_Beer's audio nearly killed me as my mic is too close to my speakers for that to work.
I decided after some rather amusing time in chat the time between my lungs making reappearance and going back in again was getting too short for comfort so I eventually rolled over and once again went off to bed.
Monday was a bit of slow day. It was the first day officially in my new office and I was a bit wary of this at first but I was getting on pretty damn well with Bob which is always good. I mean I know I can talk to anyone about anything as its one of my peculiar gifts but we were having a right old conversation about photography as he uses the same camera as me. I was still a little miffed about the key issue but it wasn't such a big thing at this point and I just dealt with it.
The day picked up immeasurably when I found out that I had in fact been granted another 6 months on the job so I am now in secure employment until July 09, hopefully this means I can ride out the recession safely and if we go the way we hope we will get more money in and I can stay here for the time being which will be excellent. I may complain but at times I really do enjoy my job, it has the right mix of politics, creativeness and relatively un-tight deadlines to suit me to the ground.
BB was pretty fun in the evening and I had a good old laugh with the lads though had to shout a bit as a couple of them were misbehaving. Had aw good old chat with Garry as he is a bit incapacitated at the moment due to having a knackered knee. He was saying he thinks I've lost more weight. Not sure I have but I know I'm now holding steady at 17 stone and I for the most part like the new me thought I'm not entirely sure its going to help me with any of my major issues.
For example I still hate my skin, this is one of the reasons I want to get some ink to cover the worse offending parts of my body that I really despise. I mean for example my ugly back that is covered in pock scars from having seriously bad spots as a teenager. As much ink as possible to cover these I think. But I digress this is only one of the issues I'm concerned with as you all well know.
But anyway the night ended on a stressful note as I got a call from Big Bad Jon of Vague in Manchester as I was needed to help him sort some things out with the Wargaming as Perry is proving a bit useless at it and he wanted my input on the key issues. I've also been sorting out my photography duties at the Nationals, basically I will tog it all the way round getting pics of all the sessions as they are ongoing and pics of all the closing ceremonies and whatnot.
Today has been a relatively full and busy day. Started off with my frantically trying to edit my scenarios to send to Big Bad Jon for the Nationals. Which I did, then I had to run around and check on the preparations for the meeting at 10, then I bumped into Tim our visitor and chatted to him a bit before dropping him off in the room and rounding up all the attendees and getting some extra chairs. Despite what they said I think they had forgotten.
The meeting was good and gave some good points but when the food I had ordered arrived it was fucking terrible. Not even close to what we had actually wanted and I couldn't eat anything. So I'm sat here now at nearly 6pm and I've had nothing but a biscuit or two since 7am. I am so fucking famished its not bloody funny. I put a complaint in about the food as I'm fed up with being fucked over by Leeds Met catering, wankers. They charge enough you think they could get it right.
Finished out the rest of the day sorting out some more shoots for a week on Saturday and organising tomorrow. I'm off at 6am for an all day meeting in Wolverhampton. Going to be long as I have to take three trains to do it and go through Manchester. But I will survive I think. Might see if any of my Manchester pals fancy coming and meeting me to get some food on the way back. Gonna finally finish Preacher tonight as I started reading Alamo on the way back home, its good!
In other news I'm trying to work out what I want for Christmas, now I know its a bit in advance at the moment but I need to work on these things so I can get it right in my own head. I'm thinking I might treat myself to one of the rather tasty new Nikkor 18-105mm lenses shown here:
Otherwise I'm at a bit of a loss and will need to think on it. I can't even seem to figure out what I'm going to get for my parents or brother. Well I might paint some models up for my brother, depending on whether he fancies doing the nationals again. He mentioned Cygnar and I really fancy making a Jermiah Kraye with custom gun slinging Sentinel. Might look into it for a laugh if nothing else. If I'm not careful I might end up buying some Khador and I can't have that, I should in fact be getting rid of models not buying more. Bad Geoffrey.
But I love this model:
Anyway I will leave you there and I shall give some more thought to present wrangling this week in between my massive photography planning. I mean hell I'm up to a minimum of five models to work with in the next two weeks alone. I'm a busy boy.
So what would you all like for Christmas?
Toodles
G
Geoff be all ill my friends, I'm a bit disappointed too.
Now before some friends see that and think I mean you I don't I mean with me. I thought I was going to be having Snowdred, PsychoBettie13 and Deryn around this evening. Turns out Snowdred's birthday party has been moved up to tonight, hope they have a good time. I'm disappointed that I'm feeling like shit and haven't been able to summon up a solution to get me there and be well enough to enjoy it. So my weekend has gone a bit to hell.
Not been much going on the rest of this week really. Been organising my trip to Glasgow at the end of November. I posted a casting call on MM to ask for models to work with while I'm up there and I have already filled one slot at the studio. I have also booked the studio and got me a first refusal on the second day. Need to book my ticket which is getting difficult as thetrainline.com doesn't seem to like working today.
Been trading comments on MM and I'm liking what some people are saying about my new work, feeling quite bouncy, though I don't have the energy today to be very bouncy. Probably going to trade some more when America wakes up lol. But its looking good, getting some good pointers too from some more experienced photographers.
Edited to add that I had my first night back up at University. Was pretty good though I nearly didn't get there as the room arrangements in the Firth Street building are a bit off as 1 is ground floor not the first floor as it is in every other part of the universe. The lecture was good and the lecturer is cool we had a pretty interesting debate contrasting the accepted marketing theory in regards to counter and alternative culture. Just a little miffed that I don't get to fully chose my assignment but I'm hoping I can figure a way to make Consumer Behaviour work in my best interest.
Yesterday I had to move office from my cool one into a nice enough one which is basically the bloody store room for module hand books. The students who are annoying at the best of times are getting really fucking irritating. I mean for a start I'm pretty sure that this sickness is thanks to them, bloody freshers, but to top it off they keep bothering me in my office about module handbooks which are nothing to do with me. Then when I had to go and stick my name sticker on the door a couple of students started sassing me, I wish I had asked for their names but I was in no mood to be sensible and I nearly told them to fuck off.
Old office.
New office
Here is my new office door, yes my first name is Martin, Geoff is my middle name in case you didn't know.
Got home last night and sat around for a bit sorting a few things out. Sat on MSN for a while chatting to Sinope and tried to order pizza while I was doing it. Turns out my pizza place is closed or at least not answering so I gave up on it, then Sinope helped me to the decision that Dominoes was the way to go and so I got a tub of Phish Food with it. Well this was a good plan thought I and then I started drinking too.
This plan failed a little as I drank so much I was barely able to stay awake once I had finished the pizza so I still have the ice cream for tonight. Managed to sort getting LostSoulParry to come over to mine and might text EvilTony to see if he fancies coming round for a bit. Need to get some washing done today in preparation for going to Southampton next weekend and to you know have clothes for next week.
Speaking of Southampton where is Tiggie, haven't had any contact with her in over a fortnight and I want to know what's going on, she's supposed to be booking our tattoo appointment. Hopefully get to find out soon, plus you know I just really want to talk to her and find out how all the fun she has been up to has been going on.
Got a busy week this week despite the trip, got to sort myself out for a wonderful trip to Wolverhampton for a big meeting, got a load of work to finish prepping on Monday and Tuesday to make our 60 day deadline on final returns. But it should be cool, matter of fact I might do a bit tomorrow as I'm not sure with all the organising I have to do this week that I may have the time to sort it during the week. For the most part its just rewriting case studies but it shouldn't be a problem.
Anyway I'm too ill and rambly to be bothered with much more of this and I'm sat in my well prepared den with internet access and The West Wing in front of me. I also need a coffee so I'm going to get one now.
Bye folks, hope you have a better weekend than me.
Toodles
G
Now before some friends see that and think I mean you I don't I mean with me. I thought I was going to be having Snowdred, PsychoBettie13 and Deryn around this evening. Turns out Snowdred's birthday party has been moved up to tonight, hope they have a good time. I'm disappointed that I'm feeling like shit and haven't been able to summon up a solution to get me there and be well enough to enjoy it. So my weekend has gone a bit to hell.
Not been much going on the rest of this week really. Been organising my trip to Glasgow at the end of November. I posted a casting call on MM to ask for models to work with while I'm up there and I have already filled one slot at the studio. I have also booked the studio and got me a first refusal on the second day. Need to book my ticket which is getting difficult as thetrainline.com doesn't seem to like working today.
Been trading comments on MM and I'm liking what some people are saying about my new work, feeling quite bouncy, though I don't have the energy today to be very bouncy. Probably going to trade some more when America wakes up lol. But its looking good, getting some good pointers too from some more experienced photographers.
Edited to add that I had my first night back up at University. Was pretty good though I nearly didn't get there as the room arrangements in the Firth Street building are a bit off as 1 is ground floor not the first floor as it is in every other part of the universe. The lecture was good and the lecturer is cool we had a pretty interesting debate contrasting the accepted marketing theory in regards to counter and alternative culture. Just a little miffed that I don't get to fully chose my assignment but I'm hoping I can figure a way to make Consumer Behaviour work in my best interest.
Yesterday I had to move office from my cool one into a nice enough one which is basically the bloody store room for module hand books. The students who are annoying at the best of times are getting really fucking irritating. I mean for a start I'm pretty sure that this sickness is thanks to them, bloody freshers, but to top it off they keep bothering me in my office about module handbooks which are nothing to do with me. Then when I had to go and stick my name sticker on the door a couple of students started sassing me, I wish I had asked for their names but I was in no mood to be sensible and I nearly told them to fuck off.
Old office.
New office
Here is my new office door, yes my first name is Martin, Geoff is my middle name in case you didn't know.
Got home last night and sat around for a bit sorting a few things out. Sat on MSN for a while chatting to Sinope and tried to order pizza while I was doing it. Turns out my pizza place is closed or at least not answering so I gave up on it, then Sinope helped me to the decision that Dominoes was the way to go and so I got a tub of Phish Food with it. Well this was a good plan thought I and then I started drinking too.
This plan failed a little as I drank so much I was barely able to stay awake once I had finished the pizza so I still have the ice cream for tonight. Managed to sort getting LostSoulParry to come over to mine and might text EvilTony to see if he fancies coming round for a bit. Need to get some washing done today in preparation for going to Southampton next weekend and to you know have clothes for next week.
Speaking of Southampton where is Tiggie, haven't had any contact with her in over a fortnight and I want to know what's going on, she's supposed to be booking our tattoo appointment. Hopefully get to find out soon, plus you know I just really want to talk to her and find out how all the fun she has been up to has been going on.
Got a busy week this week despite the trip, got to sort myself out for a wonderful trip to Wolverhampton for a big meeting, got a load of work to finish prepping on Monday and Tuesday to make our 60 day deadline on final returns. But it should be cool, matter of fact I might do a bit tomorrow as I'm not sure with all the organising I have to do this week that I may have the time to sort it during the week. For the most part its just rewriting case studies but it shouldn't be a problem.
Anyway I'm too ill and rambly to be bothered with much more of this and I'm sat in my well prepared den with internet access and The West Wing in front of me. I also need a coffee so I'm going to get one now.
Bye folks, hope you have a better weekend than me.
Toodles
G
This was going to be a massive depressive blog but as far as it goes that all got turned around thanks to a few awesome people. I've been thinking of something awesome I could do with this blog for fun. I think I have an idea but my head is blagged as I type this so I will need to wait a bit.
Oh go and add Snowdred, Psychobettie13 and Eviltony they are all awesome
In the interim the tale of the weekend…
I can honestly say I feel like I've lived a whole week in one weekend, so much was crammed in!
Saturday morning I woke up at the obscenely early (for a weekend and even by my standards) time of 4am. There are times I honestly hate my internal body clock, to tell the truth. I mean I rolled over and growled it's not light out yet, then looked at my phone and swore loudly. I was pretty knackered still. But I grabbed up my laptop and proceeded to see what exactly had been going on in my absence. Not a lot it seemed.
Dragged myself for a shower and thus began the morning cycle. I went down for breakfast to discover there was in fact bugger all going so I ended up with coffee and some bad bad toast. This was not a good start to the day, following this I ran around like a loon trying to pack all my stuff to discover I had run out of space and needed to squeeze my clothing and camera in with the lighting rig. But I managed it and got out the door heavily laden and got myself to the train.
The train journey wasn't too bad aside from some pushy twat that made me drop my lighting rig bag and it hit my little finger bending it back and causing me to go into my high pitched yelp mode and swear like a kid on helium. But I got over it. Got into Manchester and dived in the first of many taxis for the weekend and got my bum over in an orderly fashion to the lovely abode of the charming Psychobettie13.
Now I had come down to Manchester with the intent of shooting about 6 models all told. This was to be the start of my big project based on The Heroin Diaries as you know. Well it shortly became apparent after we sat down and had a chat for a bit that it wasn't going to happen that way today. Snowdred and Deryn were a bit worse for wear and still asleep from the night before so they didn't end up coming round. But we pushed on anyway and descended to the basement.
The theme we were working on was Xmas in Hell. In a dark basement lit by candlelight we had a black gothed up Christmas tree with her in front writing in the diary. Now the candlelight though cool proved awkward and I mucked around with my filters until I managed to find a particular setting I liked and went with the flash option. The pics turned out great and it was super fun to work with her.
Here is the first preview of one of the edited pictures.
We popped back upstairs to relax for a bit and have another cuppa. While doing this Psychobettie13 filled in her pages in the Project Diary and I looked up some of the better pics on the laptop to show her. There are some really nice ones and I was shitting mars bars level of happy that I seemed to be living up to my dreams and potential with these photos.
I finished up at Psychobettie13's and headed over to Sonrisa's about 4ish. Got there and Ortus was already there and a few people I hadn't met yet. Got introduced and I put my shit away and grabbed a beer. Chatted about with a few folk and Ortus and then decided it would be a wise idea to try out the bouncy castle which was I admit rather fun. We mucked around on the bouncy castle and chatted for some time until food appeared from the barbecue. Man was I famished; I had nothing but two cups of tea since 7am so I was pretty fucking hungry.
After the main food stuff was out of the way we got to try the birthday "cake". I say this in inverted commas for the sake of artistic license, this thing was immense I mean there was enough calories in this thing to feed a third world nation for a year. Green sponge and lots and lots of chocolate and icing. It was nice just such heavy going and even I couldn't finish my piece but to be fair it had got an awful lot of white chocolate on top and too much of that stuff is admittedly a touch sickly.
We chilled on the bouncy castle taking pics for a laugh and then realised the time was getting on a bit so we had to get on with some last bouncing. This was awesome as I was like taking off by a few feet it was totally mint, then the bouncy castle folk turned up and so it was taken away. Ortus had made his exit by this point and so had a few others so it was just me, Sonrisa and her friend Ian. We settled in to the lounge and watched Peep Show while having little oddments of food like garlic bread which was lovely.
At a little while after 10 we headed down into Manchester and met up with another of Sonrisa's friends and TheMistress to head over to Caged Asylum. Now I had never been to Caged and was both looking forward to it and slightly apprehensive. The place has its own separate little lap dancing area and there is the rock and roll part of me and the lets be frank male part of me that loves this idea. But then there is the part that was nurtured by my upbringing and finds it all a bit seedy so you can see why I may have been a touch worried.
We got in and in what could be considered a fantastically good sign they were playing Metallica's The Day That Never Comes. I love this song and it was a good omen for the evening, however the drinks prices were not, I mean bloody hell £3.40 for a Newcastle Brown and I wasn't allowed to keep it in the bottle so it tasted shit in the un-cold glass. So I switched on the slightly cheaper and much more refreshing pint of Guinness.
They played some pretty awesome music (and some god awful ones too lets be honest) but we had a good old dance and I ended up dispensing with my jacket and un-tucked my shirt. Oh I should mention I had a cool white shirt, a tie, a suit jacket and my sexy jeans on lol. I also let down the old hair and had a bit of a mental mash up on the dance floor to some of my favourite tunes, such as Sleep Now in the Fire.
TheMistress "convinced" me to have a lap dance with the girl who was described as being "world class". Well it was fun and all and she was pretty good but I can honestly say though I have only ever been to one other lap dancing place in my life it was better there. Though I can now say I have done the whole Caged experience. It is a nice place with a nice friendly atmosphere. I don't think Sonrisa's friend Ian could deal with it too well, he ended up watching the girls a bit too much and wouldn't have a lap dance as he finds it sleazy.
We partied around in this general fashion for a while longer occasionally jumping up to dance to the odd song or two, especially me and TheMistress when 30-30/150 by Stone Sour came on, hell I nearly left a pint at the bar for that one. In the end though Ian was flagging so we started making preparations to leave, I bagged another lap dance which I will be honest was not exactly that impressive as the girl was new. But I'm not too worried. TheMistress had one too with a lass who looked like a ten year old but apparently was very good.
We headed off originally intending food and then waited with TheMistress to get a taxi that we basically forced her to have, I even gave her the cash for it. The wait in the taxi queue was long though and she kept dashing off to find a toilet which she managed in the end. But after a while food got taken off the agenda and Sonrisa, Ian and I just headed back to hers. We sat around for a few minutes then Sonrisa headed to bed and I was given the bits to make my bed up.
It was a big double airbed so in my manly fashion or at least how I do it when I usually have one I started blowing it up by lung power alone. This lasted a while and in the end I gave up and used the foot pump for a bit. Of course it turned out the foot pump was rubbish so I finished it off with lung power again, dropped the quilt over it, spent a few minutes looking at pics and mucking on the net and then drifted off into a sweet sweet sleep.
Woke up fairly early but couldn't be bothered getting up for a while so I mucked about on my laptop for a while. Eventually dragged myself up and over to Burger King to get myself some food. Checked if anyone else wanted some of course but they weren't interested. So I had me a lovely bacon buttie and hash browns. To be honest I wish I had had a little more as I would later be very very hungry. But that's for later on.
Sonrisa was dying in bed so I said a quick thank you and goodbye before dashing off in a taxi to the studio I was shooting in. This is one of the biggest band rehearsal studios in Manchester and is quite cheap for the amount of time you can get it for so I was quite impressed once again. Had a little fun finding it as I couldn't remember exactly where it was as we came a different way to the one I had come last time. But I got there and got in.
Found I had been shifted to another room but to be honest I wasn't too bothered about that at all. I got in there and found a few cool bits and bobs that could be used as props and then started setting up where I could work from. In the end I loosely picked the three corners of the room (the fourth one having the door in it obviously). One had a cool large window, another had a little ledge above a cupboard with a giant amp and the last had a really cool set of green painted brickwork to play around with.
So I set up my lights and got my camera and laptop all set up too and ready to go. Had a bit of a play about and then when it came up to about 1 I went downstairs and stood outside waiting for my models to arrive. Well they didn't. In fact I stood out there for over 45 minutes waiting and ended up chatting to a guy who was waiting for his band to show up. Not having the models number but having given her mine I was a little annoyed that I hadn't heard anything.
But I went back in and twiddled my thumbs and after a bit longer got quite angry about it and then a little depressed. I called a few people including LostSoulParry and Psychobettie13 who sorted me out with Snowdred's number to see if I might be able to sort something out with her and Deryn. Seems they weren't awake at this point. I even begged the studio guy to let me steal his internet for a while to try and find a number to call the models on. Even went so far as to hack the connection across the road, didn't work as the signal was too weak though which was annoying.
So I started to think about heading home, settled my bill with the guy at the desk and went to pack up my stuff when I got a text from Snowdred. I immediately called her back and asked her if she could come down. She said she would check with Deryn and get back to me, which she did and they said they would come down. I told them to get ready and jump in a taxi and I would pay for it. So that's what they did.
Not having a time frame I almost went a little spare again waiting and was literally moments from packing my stuff up when they called to say they were nearly here. I mean literally my prayers had been answered so I dashed down, paid the cabbie and we went upstairs.
Intermission: Thanks Psychobettie13, Snowdred and Deryn you all saved the day with your combined effort. But most thanks to Snowdred for responding to that text. I really will make a tshirt that says "Snowdred Saved My Day".
Anyway I decided in the hour we had left at this point (I had been there for 4 on my lonesome) we could have a very rapid go at "Van Nuys", "Intermission" and "Girl with Golden Eyes". We got right into it and we had a great deal of fun chatting all the way including me doing my Cousin It impression and having a jolly good time. Snowdred took Van Nuys and Deryn had Intermission while they were both in Girl with Golden Eyes.
Here is the first preview from Girl with Golden Eyes.
The pics were really fun to shoot and both girls are awesome. We wrapped up in plenty of time and headed down to get a taxi. Now by this point I had nothing eat or drink since 10am so I was pretty much on my last legs so I was really glad when they suggested we go get a drink together. So once we got ourselves back into the city centre via taxi we headed off to the Oyster Bar. Had a lovely pint of stout and we sat around chatting about random stuff which was awesome.
By the time the drinks were done I had decided there was little point in heading straight home so I suggested we get some food so we all went off to Nando's together. I'd never been before but I have to say I was quite impressed by the options av
Oh go and add Snowdred, Psychobettie13 and Eviltony they are all awesome
In the interim the tale of the weekend…
I can honestly say I feel like I've lived a whole week in one weekend, so much was crammed in!
Saturday morning I woke up at the obscenely early (for a weekend and even by my standards) time of 4am. There are times I honestly hate my internal body clock, to tell the truth. I mean I rolled over and growled it's not light out yet, then looked at my phone and swore loudly. I was pretty knackered still. But I grabbed up my laptop and proceeded to see what exactly had been going on in my absence. Not a lot it seemed.
Dragged myself for a shower and thus began the morning cycle. I went down for breakfast to discover there was in fact bugger all going so I ended up with coffee and some bad bad toast. This was not a good start to the day, following this I ran around like a loon trying to pack all my stuff to discover I had run out of space and needed to squeeze my clothing and camera in with the lighting rig. But I managed it and got out the door heavily laden and got myself to the train.
The train journey wasn't too bad aside from some pushy twat that made me drop my lighting rig bag and it hit my little finger bending it back and causing me to go into my high pitched yelp mode and swear like a kid on helium. But I got over it. Got into Manchester and dived in the first of many taxis for the weekend and got my bum over in an orderly fashion to the lovely abode of the charming Psychobettie13.
Now I had come down to Manchester with the intent of shooting about 6 models all told. This was to be the start of my big project based on The Heroin Diaries as you know. Well it shortly became apparent after we sat down and had a chat for a bit that it wasn't going to happen that way today. Snowdred and Deryn were a bit worse for wear and still asleep from the night before so they didn't end up coming round. But we pushed on anyway and descended to the basement.
The theme we were working on was Xmas in Hell. In a dark basement lit by candlelight we had a black gothed up Christmas tree with her in front writing in the diary. Now the candlelight though cool proved awkward and I mucked around with my filters until I managed to find a particular setting I liked and went with the flash option. The pics turned out great and it was super fun to work with her.
Here is the first preview of one of the edited pictures.
We popped back upstairs to relax for a bit and have another cuppa. While doing this Psychobettie13 filled in her pages in the Project Diary and I looked up some of the better pics on the laptop to show her. There are some really nice ones and I was shitting mars bars level of happy that I seemed to be living up to my dreams and potential with these photos.
I finished up at Psychobettie13's and headed over to Sonrisa's about 4ish. Got there and Ortus was already there and a few people I hadn't met yet. Got introduced and I put my shit away and grabbed a beer. Chatted about with a few folk and Ortus and then decided it would be a wise idea to try out the bouncy castle which was I admit rather fun. We mucked around on the bouncy castle and chatted for some time until food appeared from the barbecue. Man was I famished; I had nothing but two cups of tea since 7am so I was pretty fucking hungry.
After the main food stuff was out of the way we got to try the birthday "cake". I say this in inverted commas for the sake of artistic license, this thing was immense I mean there was enough calories in this thing to feed a third world nation for a year. Green sponge and lots and lots of chocolate and icing. It was nice just such heavy going and even I couldn't finish my piece but to be fair it had got an awful lot of white chocolate on top and too much of that stuff is admittedly a touch sickly.
We chilled on the bouncy castle taking pics for a laugh and then realised the time was getting on a bit so we had to get on with some last bouncing. This was awesome as I was like taking off by a few feet it was totally mint, then the bouncy castle folk turned up and so it was taken away. Ortus had made his exit by this point and so had a few others so it was just me, Sonrisa and her friend Ian. We settled in to the lounge and watched Peep Show while having little oddments of food like garlic bread which was lovely.
At a little while after 10 we headed down into Manchester and met up with another of Sonrisa's friends and TheMistress to head over to Caged Asylum. Now I had never been to Caged and was both looking forward to it and slightly apprehensive. The place has its own separate little lap dancing area and there is the rock and roll part of me and the lets be frank male part of me that loves this idea. But then there is the part that was nurtured by my upbringing and finds it all a bit seedy so you can see why I may have been a touch worried.
We got in and in what could be considered a fantastically good sign they were playing Metallica's The Day That Never Comes. I love this song and it was a good omen for the evening, however the drinks prices were not, I mean bloody hell £3.40 for a Newcastle Brown and I wasn't allowed to keep it in the bottle so it tasted shit in the un-cold glass. So I switched on the slightly cheaper and much more refreshing pint of Guinness.
They played some pretty awesome music (and some god awful ones too lets be honest) but we had a good old dance and I ended up dispensing with my jacket and un-tucked my shirt. Oh I should mention I had a cool white shirt, a tie, a suit jacket and my sexy jeans on lol. I also let down the old hair and had a bit of a mental mash up on the dance floor to some of my favourite tunes, such as Sleep Now in the Fire.
TheMistress "convinced" me to have a lap dance with the girl who was described as being "world class". Well it was fun and all and she was pretty good but I can honestly say though I have only ever been to one other lap dancing place in my life it was better there. Though I can now say I have done the whole Caged experience. It is a nice place with a nice friendly atmosphere. I don't think Sonrisa's friend Ian could deal with it too well, he ended up watching the girls a bit too much and wouldn't have a lap dance as he finds it sleazy.
We partied around in this general fashion for a while longer occasionally jumping up to dance to the odd song or two, especially me and TheMistress when 30-30/150 by Stone Sour came on, hell I nearly left a pint at the bar for that one. In the end though Ian was flagging so we started making preparations to leave, I bagged another lap dance which I will be honest was not exactly that impressive as the girl was new. But I'm not too worried. TheMistress had one too with a lass who looked like a ten year old but apparently was very good.
We headed off originally intending food and then waited with TheMistress to get a taxi that we basically forced her to have, I even gave her the cash for it. The wait in the taxi queue was long though and she kept dashing off to find a toilet which she managed in the end. But after a while food got taken off the agenda and Sonrisa, Ian and I just headed back to hers. We sat around for a few minutes then Sonrisa headed to bed and I was given the bits to make my bed up.
It was a big double airbed so in my manly fashion or at least how I do it when I usually have one I started blowing it up by lung power alone. This lasted a while and in the end I gave up and used the foot pump for a bit. Of course it turned out the foot pump was rubbish so I finished it off with lung power again, dropped the quilt over it, spent a few minutes looking at pics and mucking on the net and then drifted off into a sweet sweet sleep.
Woke up fairly early but couldn't be bothered getting up for a while so I mucked about on my laptop for a while. Eventually dragged myself up and over to Burger King to get myself some food. Checked if anyone else wanted some of course but they weren't interested. So I had me a lovely bacon buttie and hash browns. To be honest I wish I had had a little more as I would later be very very hungry. But that's for later on.
Sonrisa was dying in bed so I said a quick thank you and goodbye before dashing off in a taxi to the studio I was shooting in. This is one of the biggest band rehearsal studios in Manchester and is quite cheap for the amount of time you can get it for so I was quite impressed once again. Had a little fun finding it as I couldn't remember exactly where it was as we came a different way to the one I had come last time. But I got there and got in.
Found I had been shifted to another room but to be honest I wasn't too bothered about that at all. I got in there and found a few cool bits and bobs that could be used as props and then started setting up where I could work from. In the end I loosely picked the three corners of the room (the fourth one having the door in it obviously). One had a cool large window, another had a little ledge above a cupboard with a giant amp and the last had a really cool set of green painted brickwork to play around with.
So I set up my lights and got my camera and laptop all set up too and ready to go. Had a bit of a play about and then when it came up to about 1 I went downstairs and stood outside waiting for my models to arrive. Well they didn't. In fact I stood out there for over 45 minutes waiting and ended up chatting to a guy who was waiting for his band to show up. Not having the models number but having given her mine I was a little annoyed that I hadn't heard anything.
But I went back in and twiddled my thumbs and after a bit longer got quite angry about it and then a little depressed. I called a few people including LostSoulParry and Psychobettie13 who sorted me out with Snowdred's number to see if I might be able to sort something out with her and Deryn. Seems they weren't awake at this point. I even begged the studio guy to let me steal his internet for a while to try and find a number to call the models on. Even went so far as to hack the connection across the road, didn't work as the signal was too weak though which was annoying.
So I started to think about heading home, settled my bill with the guy at the desk and went to pack up my stuff when I got a text from Snowdred. I immediately called her back and asked her if she could come down. She said she would check with Deryn and get back to me, which she did and they said they would come down. I told them to get ready and jump in a taxi and I would pay for it. So that's what they did.
Not having a time frame I almost went a little spare again waiting and was literally moments from packing my stuff up when they called to say they were nearly here. I mean literally my prayers had been answered so I dashed down, paid the cabbie and we went upstairs.
Intermission: Thanks Psychobettie13, Snowdred and Deryn you all saved the day with your combined effort. But most thanks to Snowdred for responding to that text. I really will make a tshirt that says "Snowdred Saved My Day".
Anyway I decided in the hour we had left at this point (I had been there for 4 on my lonesome) we could have a very rapid go at "Van Nuys", "Intermission" and "Girl with Golden Eyes". We got right into it and we had a great deal of fun chatting all the way including me doing my Cousin It impression and having a jolly good time. Snowdred took Van Nuys and Deryn had Intermission while they were both in Girl with Golden Eyes.
Here is the first preview from Girl with Golden Eyes.
The pics were really fun to shoot and both girls are awesome. We wrapped up in plenty of time and headed down to get a taxi. Now by this point I had nothing eat or drink since 10am so I was pretty much on my last legs so I was really glad when they suggested we go get a drink together. So once we got ourselves back into the city centre via taxi we headed off to the Oyster Bar. Had a lovely pint of stout and we sat around chatting about random stuff which was awesome.
By the time the drinks were done I had decided there was little point in heading straight home so I suggested we get some food so we all went off to Nando's together. I'd never been before but I have to say I was quite impressed by the options av