The Two Point Apology Affair
I think it's been a while since I update, and also a while since I've read anyone's journals. So I apologise on two counts for being rubbish.
So yesterday was Valentines Day and Facebook treated me to the usual cynical "It's a Hallmark holiday", "It's there just to sell presents" rubbish. Of course, it's true, Valentines is a massive commercial exercise, but it's only as commercial as you want to make it. Take Christmas; I'm completely non-Christian and LOVE Christmas. I pick and choose the bits I like of the holiday and celebrate them, all the cheesey pop songs and the Santas and the tacky lights, and leave the religious stuff for other people. If you think Christmas is too commercial and not enough about Jesus, then celebrate it in your own way. It's all good.
Valentines is the same. Me and Karen had agreed only to spend a fiver on gifts as she is unemployed and skint. What she bought me was a guidebook for Cairo, something we'd have bought anyway before we go to Egypt in October, which came to a fiver and then made her own card. The card had the rose design from Depeche Mode's Violator album on the front, and a TARDIS on the back, and featured the message;
We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love
Now that is the loveliest card I've ever received, and really means a lot to me. Especially the co-opting of the DM logo, since DM is a band that means a lot to me and nothing to her. So Valentines Day, and all the commercial purveyors thereof, made nothing from Karen for the day, yet managed to touch me so much more. So people shouldn't gripe about having a day set aside for romance; that's a lovely idea and it's only as crass and commercial as you choose to make it.
(If I have one gripe about Valentines Day, is that couples have co-opted it and it's now perceived as being about people in relationships going out on dates and rubbing their love in the faces of the single. I don't think this is necessary, as couples have every day to go out on dates. I think Valentines would be nicer if it was a bit more old-fashioned and was about single people sending cards and flowers to people that they fancied but had never really told. I've never received a Valentines Day card unless I was going out with someone*, and it would have been nice to have got one from an admirer. In fact, I did once do this properly and sent a bunch of flowers anonymously to someone who I knew didn't fancy me just because I knew they'd like that. That's what it should really be about.
*This is not strictly speaking true, as I got one in 2007 from Dan who wrote the touching verse
Before I met you I never knew how touching and tender a real man could be
I love you with my heart and soul
Now bend over and show me that hole
inscribed inside.
Last weekend was a good un. Me and Karen headed down to London to meet up with some family and friends, although in the end all of my friends blew it out. This was especially annoying in the case of Jess, as we were due to be spending the night at her's, so we had to book into a hotel in King's Cross for the night instead, as Sarah and Steve were also away that weekend. I would not have expected to ever reach a point where I would come down to London and end up meeting family but not friends!
So, we met up with family in the overpriced but convenient Old Thamesside Inn, and had a bit of a catch-up. Had an awkward conversation about spirituality with Lorraine and Mel. Lorraine is one of those people who claim not to believe in God, but follow the basics of Christianity such as Christenings and the desire to get married in a church "just in case". This kind of annoys me, because it's people like that who put down "Christian" on census forms when they've never set foot in a church except weddings and funerals, and thus continue the Church of England's hold on our moral way of life. Mel is a staunch atheiest, which surprised me as he's also staunchly Conservative, and I always think of the two as going hand in hand. Lorraine asked me, when talking about spirits and the dead and such, "So you don't think mum and dad are together now?"
Kinda harsh to say "no" to that one, but of course I did. Even as a kid it never made sense to me that people get reunited in heaven. I was in a long-term relationship from 2004 onwards, and in love; suppose I'd got hit by a bus during that time? While I was up in heaven waiting to be reunited, my girlfriend would have found someone else and gone on to be really happy; probably happier! So what happens then? I'm going to be mightily pissed off if she died aged 102 but wasn't interested in spending eternity with me cos she'd spend 70 years with the true love of her life, that I'd not been allowed to find. Or is Heaven like Mastermind, so God only accepts your first answer and makes her spend eternity with me while her true love has to sit on his own. Like all religious things, once you take the idea to it's logical conclusion, it falls apart.
Speaking of weddings, or at least love and shizzle, my niece Nikki is getting married in October and has asked me to read something for the wedding. Apparently this is my choice, which is quite scary. I don't know where to start finding something! The only limit is that, as it's a registry do, I'm not allowed to say anything religious, but as I obviously wasn't likely to do that anyway, that doesn't really cut it down for me. Scary biscuits!
After most of the family left we had a few drinks with Nikki and Jay and Lisa and Dan. When we left the pub, Karen and Dan tried to get on board the pirate ship that's moored near the pub, which was hilarious but caused a bit of atmosphere as Lisa's not really into that sort of frivolity and got a bit cross with Dan. Then me and Karen headed to McDonalds, where she thought it would be hilarious to blow the paper sheath off of the straw into my face, but as I moved to pick up my bag, it sailed passed me and hit an unsuspecting late night diner straight in his face :D
We got to the London Stone for Electric Dreams eventually and had a great night dancing. I said we'd leave at 2am cos I thought that's when it finished, but managed to convince Karen to stay til 3 o'clock as it was a really terrific night, music-wise. Although I was pissed off with Jess for forcing us to pay for a hotel, it was actually really nice to get the bus back to Kings Cross and be in bed with a Subway relatively quickly rather than the usual 2 hour trek home.
I am very excited for my next two trips to London; the first one is for Bedsitland and for once I'm bringing quite an entourage down with me. Lisa had asked a while ago if she could come down to one of these synth nights I spoke of, but after that most of my trips had been to do with dying relatives, so this was the first one I'd been able to organise. Karen asked Tim, so we had a friend each and no-one felt like a spare wheel. Then we asked Adam who was in London from the day after for a business meeting anyway. So we're staying in the plush appartment me and Sam stayed in at Christmas 2010, going to Croydon for some drinks in the afternoon before catching the train up to Bedsitland. I am looking forward to seeing Kid Kasio, for loyalty to the amazing and much-missed band The Modern, but I am most looking forward to seeing Car Crash Stars, who I really enjoyed during that Christmas 2010 trip and are now fronted by Livejournal's own sam_tom_sam.
Then I'm down again in May, which I have to be sneaky and call in sick at work for. After a bank holiday. With my favourite band playing their only two UK dates in that time. Won't be suspicious at all. Apart from meeting up with damnedhalo for dinner before the gig at the O2 on the Tuesday, we'll also be going to Electric Dreams' afterparty on the Wednesday.
This was all we had planned, but then I found out earlier in the week that Riverside Studios in Hammersmith are screening the new remastered and High Definition copies of the two 1960s Doctor Who and the Daleks films on the Sunday. Now these films are nowhere near as good as the TV series they spun off from, but they have a cheesey charm of their own, and it is through endlessly rewatching my VHS copies of these when I was a tiny child that set me off on the path of being the massive Doctor Who geek that I am today. I've wanted to see them in the cinemas for years, and I think they should look rather lovely in HD. So we extended our trip there by two nights! Exciting biscuits!
So yesterday was Valentines Day and Facebook treated me to the usual cynical "It's a Hallmark holiday", "It's there just to sell presents" rubbish. Of course, it's true, Valentines is a massive commercial exercise, but it's only as commercial as you want to make it. Take Christmas; I'm completely non-Christian and LOVE Christmas. I pick and choose the bits I like of the holiday and celebrate them, all the cheesey pop songs and the Santas and the tacky lights, and leave the religious stuff for other people. If you think Christmas is too commercial and not enough about Jesus, then celebrate it in your own way. It's all good.
Valentines is the same. Me and Karen had agreed only to spend a fiver on gifts as she is unemployed and skint. What she bought me was a guidebook for Cairo, something we'd have bought anyway before we go to Egypt in October, which came to a fiver and then made her own card. The card had the rose design from Depeche Mode's Violator album on the front, and a TARDIS on the back, and featured the message;
We are all a little weird and life's a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love
Now that is the loveliest card I've ever received, and really means a lot to me. Especially the co-opting of the DM logo, since DM is a band that means a lot to me and nothing to her. So Valentines Day, and all the commercial purveyors thereof, made nothing from Karen for the day, yet managed to touch me so much more. So people shouldn't gripe about having a day set aside for romance; that's a lovely idea and it's only as crass and commercial as you choose to make it.
(If I have one gripe about Valentines Day, is that couples have co-opted it and it's now perceived as being about people in relationships going out on dates and rubbing their love in the faces of the single. I don't think this is necessary, as couples have every day to go out on dates. I think Valentines would be nicer if it was a bit more old-fashioned and was about single people sending cards and flowers to people that they fancied but had never really told. I've never received a Valentines Day card unless I was going out with someone*, and it would have been nice to have got one from an admirer. In fact, I did once do this properly and sent a bunch of flowers anonymously to someone who I knew didn't fancy me just because I knew they'd like that. That's what it should really be about.
*This is not strictly speaking true, as I got one in 2007 from Dan who wrote the touching verse
Before I met you I never knew how touching and tender a real man could be
I love you with my heart and soul
Now bend over and show me that hole
inscribed inside.
Last weekend was a good un. Me and Karen headed down to London to meet up with some family and friends, although in the end all of my friends blew it out. This was especially annoying in the case of Jess, as we were due to be spending the night at her's, so we had to book into a hotel in King's Cross for the night instead, as Sarah and Steve were also away that weekend. I would not have expected to ever reach a point where I would come down to London and end up meeting family but not friends!
So, we met up with family in the overpriced but convenient Old Thamesside Inn, and had a bit of a catch-up. Had an awkward conversation about spirituality with Lorraine and Mel. Lorraine is one of those people who claim not to believe in God, but follow the basics of Christianity such as Christenings and the desire to get married in a church "just in case". This kind of annoys me, because it's people like that who put down "Christian" on census forms when they've never set foot in a church except weddings and funerals, and thus continue the Church of England's hold on our moral way of life. Mel is a staunch atheiest, which surprised me as he's also staunchly Conservative, and I always think of the two as going hand in hand. Lorraine asked me, when talking about spirits and the dead and such, "So you don't think mum and dad are together now?"
Kinda harsh to say "no" to that one, but of course I did. Even as a kid it never made sense to me that people get reunited in heaven. I was in a long-term relationship from 2004 onwards, and in love; suppose I'd got hit by a bus during that time? While I was up in heaven waiting to be reunited, my girlfriend would have found someone else and gone on to be really happy; probably happier! So what happens then? I'm going to be mightily pissed off if she died aged 102 but wasn't interested in spending eternity with me cos she'd spend 70 years with the true love of her life, that I'd not been allowed to find. Or is Heaven like Mastermind, so God only accepts your first answer and makes her spend eternity with me while her true love has to sit on his own. Like all religious things, once you take the idea to it's logical conclusion, it falls apart.
Speaking of weddings, or at least love and shizzle, my niece Nikki is getting married in October and has asked me to read something for the wedding. Apparently this is my choice, which is quite scary. I don't know where to start finding something! The only limit is that, as it's a registry do, I'm not allowed to say anything religious, but as I obviously wasn't likely to do that anyway, that doesn't really cut it down for me. Scary biscuits!
After most of the family left we had a few drinks with Nikki and Jay and Lisa and Dan. When we left the pub, Karen and Dan tried to get on board the pirate ship that's moored near the pub, which was hilarious but caused a bit of atmosphere as Lisa's not really into that sort of frivolity and got a bit cross with Dan. Then me and Karen headed to McDonalds, where she thought it would be hilarious to blow the paper sheath off of the straw into my face, but as I moved to pick up my bag, it sailed passed me and hit an unsuspecting late night diner straight in his face :D
We got to the London Stone for Electric Dreams eventually and had a great night dancing. I said we'd leave at 2am cos I thought that's when it finished, but managed to convince Karen to stay til 3 o'clock as it was a really terrific night, music-wise. Although I was pissed off with Jess for forcing us to pay for a hotel, it was actually really nice to get the bus back to Kings Cross and be in bed with a Subway relatively quickly rather than the usual 2 hour trek home.
I am very excited for my next two trips to London; the first one is for Bedsitland and for once I'm bringing quite an entourage down with me. Lisa had asked a while ago if she could come down to one of these synth nights I spoke of, but after that most of my trips had been to do with dying relatives, so this was the first one I'd been able to organise. Karen asked Tim, so we had a friend each and no-one felt like a spare wheel. Then we asked Adam who was in London from the day after for a business meeting anyway. So we're staying in the plush appartment me and Sam stayed in at Christmas 2010, going to Croydon for some drinks in the afternoon before catching the train up to Bedsitland. I am looking forward to seeing Kid Kasio, for loyalty to the amazing and much-missed band The Modern, but I am most looking forward to seeing Car Crash Stars, who I really enjoyed during that Christmas 2010 trip and are now fronted by Livejournal's own sam_tom_sam.
Then I'm down again in May, which I have to be sneaky and call in sick at work for. After a bank holiday. With my favourite band playing their only two UK dates in that time. Won't be suspicious at all. Apart from meeting up with damnedhalo for dinner before the gig at the O2 on the Tuesday, we'll also be going to Electric Dreams' afterparty on the Wednesday.
This was all we had planned, but then I found out earlier in the week that Riverside Studios in Hammersmith are screening the new remastered and High Definition copies of the two 1960s Doctor Who and the Daleks films on the Sunday. Now these films are nowhere near as good as the TV series they spun off from, but they have a cheesey charm of their own, and it is through endlessly rewatching my VHS copies of these when I was a tiny child that set me off on the path of being the massive Doctor Who geek that I am today. I've wanted to see them in the cinemas for years, and I think they should look rather lovely in HD. So we extended our trip there by two nights! Exciting biscuits!