Rumours of my demise have been greatly exaggerated...
...but they're not that far off the scale, as I have been extensively ill on an occasionally epic skill since, ooh, just after PolyDay! So, yeah, more than 6 weeks. For those who haven't already heard the story, I got taken to casualty on Wed 8th with a very nasty UTI and, while that seems to have cleared up and I wasn't actually seriously ill with anything as unpleasant as appendicitis or pylo-nephritis, it hasn't helped my ongoing bad cold thing much. Bleh. So I'm afraid that's why I've written sod-all lately.
Of course, my general health has gone up and down a little, so I've still managed to do a few fun things in the course of all this ill, tho they've been a bit more low-key than usual. Some of the things I did are as follows, in the inevitable mammoth post.
Oct 21st was the Anarchist Bookfair, which was very good fun. I bought lots of paper and ate the inevitable lovely vegan cakes from the Veggies stall outside. It was a bit more rushed than I'd like, but I still got to see braisedbywolves, ofiwriter, fluffymormegil, m00nsquirrel and his friend R(WINOLJ, AFAIK). There were far too many good workshops to attend but alextiefling and I managed to get to a very good one on ID cards and the information database, and (inevitably!) a very busy one about religion, where we felt definitely in the minority of anarchists taking the "baby/bathwater" approach (as opposed to the "all religion is bad, we mustn't tolerate it" approach). Afterwards, we headed off to janieluk's Hallowe'en party, which was inevitably very busy and had the nice touch of a big sheet in the lounge with an accompanying pot of paint, allowing guests to paint their own suitably-themed doodles. Accompanying doodles on the kitchen units were done in lipstick (and are still there, including the stick-figure blowjob, as of this Saturday...). I was pretty tired so I went for the low-key costume of huge white nightie and veil as a ghostly/corpse bride, but most people seemed to think I was Miss Havisham, which wasn't bad either. I spent most of the evening reclining regally on the sofa (which people may have thought was me being in character!) but still got to chat a little with some_fox, werenerd, babysimon and got lovely hugs from a Buffy trishpiglet on my way home. alextiefling showed off by being topless and winged, but he can get away with it, so I think he enjoyed himself.
On Mon 23rd, I felt just about well enough to drag myself into court, and was very happy about giving an unfeasibly good presentation and getting my client out of court without any sort of possession order made. Everyone was very complimentary about it and that made me feel very good in a way I don't usually manage. This was fortunately sustaining, as I was sufficiently ill that I didn't manage to do any paid work at all before leaving for Whitby, which means I managed 2 whole weeks without pay and one week where I made about £100. This current week is looking similar...:¬(
Thu 26th saw us leaving for Whitby after hellish packing while I was totally lacking in energy. I hadn't finished sewing my boots and was still not better after what I thought was a ridiculously long time - little did I suspect what the future would hold! The train journey (I've never done Whitby that way before, only by car or coach/bus) was ridiculous and alextiefling and I spent most of it bitching about the destruction of the East Coast mainline 30 years ago. We were also convinced that there must be an easier way of doing it, and indeed there is - an Arriva bus from Scarborough takes only half an hour, and they run every 30 mins too. I'm doing it that way next time. I don't think I can possibly cover all the Whitby stuff without making this huge post unreadable, so I'm just going to stick to the salient points.
Highlights
+ Really lovely guest house. We thought it might be too far for comfort as it was all the way over past the end of the West Cliff, but the walk (illness aside) was lovely, especially at night, and our host was a lovely man and very accommodating. Even though it's a little way out, I'd consider staying there again. Breakfasts were huge, I think I really overdosed on eggs though.
+ Bands. XYkogen were very amusing and put on an enjoyable show (despite being some way away from my preferred musical genres), not least because they enjoyed their rapport with the audience. Vampire Beach Babes were tight, professional very good at what they did - that's not quite the damning-with-faint-praise it sounds like as I found them to be great fun and would definitely go see them again. The Damned were, well, The Damned! No surprises there but a nice comfort blanket and, even if they didn't play "NeatNeatNeat", I still bounced quite a bit. For my money, though, the best band of the weekend were Katzenjammer Kabarett, who were fantastic. They seemed like a particularly good amalgam of such desirable artists as The Dresden Dolls, Tiger Lillies, The Deep Eynde, Switchblade Symphony and Rozz-era Christian Death, but were first and foremost very much themselves. They also have a joyously diverting manifesto, which includes the great line "We do not fear our influences. We SWALLOW them!". I feel quite compelled to buy their album when I get some cash, and you should too.
+ The Goth Eucharist. Turned out to be an extremely nice church service, with extremely nice regulars. Despite not being an obvious church-goer by persuasion (go figure!), I found it to be quite a moving experience and would be quite happy to go again some time. Very relaxing, despite having to climb the 199 steps to get there.
+ Bell-ringing with matthewp. Sadly, my shoulder was too knackered to have a go myself, but I did get to enjoy the special status of being right there and enjoying the ringing from inside the circle, as it were. When I am well and not working late on a Wed, I shall definitely join him in Hampstead some time so that I can try it out.
+ Shopping, natch. From the divine to the very, very earthly. I didn't get to spend quite as much time looking round the trillions of stalls as I'd like, partly because of genuine floppiness, but I did find a few nice things and didn't go entirely mental with my limited cash. Successful acquisitions were a long and (according to voodoo_canape, "very nu-metal") skirt which can cleverly be made into a short skirt, a slightly expensive kilt, a very cheap smart skirt for court with a pretty polka-dot pink lining, 2 zip-up cardigans for warmth (one a slashed red Punkyfish one), another pair of functional stompy boots, some fun hair clips and, well, that's about it. alextiefling was made very, very happy by finding a divine Mandarin-style jacket with fuschia lining, fake leather trousers, a collarless shirt, some super-practical DMs and a pair of twisty faun-like horns which look very sweet. So, we both did pretty well in the end.
+ People. This pretty much goes without saying. You know who you are, I hope, and you're all great. Thanks for being good even though I was a bit out of it some of the time.
+ General niceness of having a romantic weekend away, even if we didn't get to do all the explorations we'd have liked, such as a trip on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. Always more stuff for next time!
But inevitably there were
Lowlights
- Illness. This was the big one. I spent a large chunk of my time there being too unwell to do the things I wanted to do, or to enjoy them as much as I would expect to when I was managing to do them. I was so out of it on Sunday that I missed the entire second half of the day and had to spend it alone in bed reading "Arbella: England's Lost Queen". Thank heavens for charity shops! Groo, as janieluk would say.
- GNER. There will probably be another post about the appalling, exploitative and possibly illegal (IMHO) way that GNER handle their lost property now, as it made me incredibly angry and still does, to the extent that I have bitched quite a bit about it to everyone I've spoken to since. Suffice it to say that I'm not done with them yet! Loss of the hatbox was an annoyance though.
- Poor Whitby organisation. The website was pretty unhelpful as it didn't even have proper information about their regular features (eg no rules list for the Bring and Buy stall, no approximate running times for bands), and had absolutely nothing about one-offs. The mess with pink bands on the Saturday night didn't really surprise me, though the serious lack of branding on said bands did - or had the organising team just read 'No Logo' and taken it very seriously indeed?
- Restricted ovo-vegetarian food options. To be expected but a shame nevertheless. Gods, I love living in London.
- alextiefling's phone mysteriously not automatically updating as usual, so we got woken up an hour early on Sunday morning and didn't actually realise this until we were up the bloody steps and waiting outside the church in the freezing wind. This may have contributed to my collapse later on.
- Being too ill to dress up much or wear make-up. This sort of comes under illness but is also a distinct annoyance in and of itself, I feel.
Upon return, I remained ill and didn't manage to drag myself into work again until Thu 2nd. On Fri 3rd, I went after work to Fopp to buy the newest Decemberists album and ran into Stix! So we pottered off to enjoy a bit of lunch together and catch up on events. Treated myself to tasty veggie sausage baguette and enjoyed the opportunity to hang out with someone I don't see enough of these days. Later that evening, I took my mum out to see julietk's sister perform in concert. She enjoyed it quite a bit, I think (especially the Holst), and my evening was only really marred by my annoying shoes - the same shoes I raved about not so long ago! Saw uon and dogrando too, which was good as I don't see them very often. alextiefling talked again about arranging another trip to see the Oriana choir, possibly after Xmas, as another treat for my mum. She and he also tentatively arranged a business deal whereby he helps her with computer lessons if she does some gardening for him.
Saturday 4th was the long-awaited Dresden Dolls gig, which was brilliant for quite a few reasons, some quite unexpected. Sadly, Jason Webley wasn't performing that evening, but a lot of excellent people were. The support act I'd been most excited about seeing, Edmund Ka-Spel, was well worth the wait, but the plethora of other musicians, dancers, actors et al (including, of course, Margaret Cho) made the evening fantastic. Delightfully, the Roundhouse also did v good food including apparently vegan wraps. I resisted the scads of enticing merchandise (I could easily have outspent my Whitby budget there) and was good, but I did wish I could have got a poster as a reminder of the evening. The gig itself was resoundingly brilliant, with guest performances from Ka-Spel and Nina Hagen as well as a virtual Greatest Hits - everything I wanted to be played, was, and that alone has to be good. The best live event I've been to in a long time. m00nsquirrel sadly had to leave early but also had a great time, and I was very pleased that ariiadne was there with us. Possibly the best thing about the whole event, however, was being unexpectedly recognised by someone I hadn't seen in 6 years - S., the son of my drama teacher and younger brother of my old friend from Copenhagen who, it turns out, had moved to London to study at Brunel after a year spent living in Portland, Oregon, only a few blocks from ariiadne's old house - talk about coincidences! Anyway, I invited S. out to B-Movie with us and the whole experience made me very happy.
The next week was spent working my arse off and thinking I had unexpectedly come down with cystitis, until the high drama of Wednesday's casualty visit. After Thurs was set aside for groaning recovery, we were greatly improved by the unexpected phone call offering alextiefling a brand new job less than 24 hours after his interview! I was very proud of him and the news perked him up almost immediately, so he was able to return to work the next day. I remained delicate but managed a gentle potter round the British Museum on Friday lunchtime with him, enjoying the "Power & Taboo" exhibition again - you really should go while it's still there, you know. I also managed a tentative appearance at B-Movie but obviously wasn't up to Electric Dreams, which was a terrible shame as I really fancied the possible extras from Mute! Boo. Still, S. also came to B-Movie with us and seemed to have fun.
Saturday was meant to be pottering with janieluk but I was still a bit too shattered and decided to save myself for the evening's hastily-arranged celebratory drinks in The Pommeler's Rest with Ms Sherlock, S., janieluk, matthewp, braisedbywolves, trishpiglet, babysimon, hazyjayne et al. We played Chrononauts, Werewolf and Fluxx, ate Wetherspoons pub grub and ambled home quite chirpy, if still tired.
Sunday, accompanied alextiefling to church for the Remembrance Sunday Service, which made me VERY ANGRY! He was quite grateful that I had enough self-control not to jump up and shout "bollocks!" during the sermon, but I clearly wasn't alone as there seemed to be a general negative feeling about it afterwards, so it's not just the fringe nutters (ie veggie anarchist pagans) who were unimpressed. Oh well, that's what you get from a naval chaplain, I suppose, though personally, I'd still have been disappointed even if I had been attending as a serviceperson! At any rate, the pre-arranged lunch at Pizza Express (yay for cheeseless pizza, tho that bit was distinctly NOT arranged!) and visit to the Courtauld Institute afterwards went off well, though again, I was shattered by 4pm and cut it a little short.
This week, I managed BU on Tuesday, which made me quite pleased. I spent a little time with voodoo_canape before is departure for littlemisslost's graduation ceremony. I managed no work Wed-Fri but was just up to dragging myself out for lunch with envoy on Friday and boy, am I glad I did! We went to Tas, on The Cut, SE1, right by Southwark College and one of a chain of the same name. I thoroughly recommend it - absolutely delicious Turkish food with really good choices, plenty of vegan options (if you avoid the set menus, which are still good for veggies). It was also pretty affordable, and I happily got to take a few leftovers home with me for dinner. Yay for doggy-bags! Also, having bought 3 Guardians for the pig wallchart, I discovered that they were giving away free tickets to 'Pan's Labyrinth' and in Greenwich too! So I rushed back through the rain to pick up 6 and came back to the Tesseract for a game of "Settlers of Catan" and some cake. Overall, I rate that as a successful day.
Saturday, I ambled up to janieluk's for chat, hugs and tasty spinach & pepper plait. I then headed to Holborn for strawberryfrog's birthday celebrations in the Cittie Of Yorke (ridiculous prices for chips! and they weren't even nice! AARGH!!), then to Anam's cocktail bar in Angel for beingjdc's birthday celebrations. I was a little sad that I had to cut short my time at all the day's events, but still glad that I'd got to do everything.
Sunday was the very exciting free trip to "Pan's Labyrinth" at the Greenwich Picture House with ariiadne, janieluk, honeyjew, envoy and ippola. I'd been gagging to see the film ever since the even bigger Guillermo Del Toro fan that is voodoo_canape had raved about it to me some months back, and the flyers we'd picked up at Whitby had only whetted my appetite. It was as great as I'd hoped and expected it would be - beautiful, brutal, heart-warming, tragic (it made me cry a bit) and it made me want to watch it again with the poor boys who'd missed it due to being elsewhere. It also made me want to watch "The Devil's Backbone" again. I don't want to say to much about it here, I just insist that you make the time to go and see it because it really is a fabulous experience and I don't think I'm overstating the case to say it's the best film Del Toro has ever made - that I've seen, at least. The other nice thing about the day was the unexpected presence of honeyjew, up in London by happy coincidence for a party in Woolwich. A quick potter round the markets of Greenwich with ariiadne and janieluk was also enjoyable, despite yet again causing me to ponder the wretched question of why jackboots aren't made in smaller sizes, and the only really negative bit of the day was the fairly wretched lunch we had in Noodle Time. That place has definitely hit the skids, so I don't think I'll be going back again. My veggie soup noodles were just bearable but really, considering they're not even the only noodle place in Greenwich Square, I don't think I'll bother again. Oh well. The evening involved helping alextiefling carry the wardrobe back to the Tesseract (surly bus drivers aside), a task we accomplished with surprisingly little misery and fairly quickly, so we had time for leisurely dinner and to make him ecstatically happy by tidying his room up. Aww!
Well, that's 6 pages of rambling now, that should be enough for anyone. I've got more, of course, but then, haven't I always? Currently looking forward to 2 parties on Saturday and a FRU induction day + Sol Invictus/Andrew King the following weekend. Still, my mother found me a job to apply for and there are some pressing reasons why I should do that, so I think I'd better go make a start on it now, don't you?
Of course, my general health has gone up and down a little, so I've still managed to do a few fun things in the course of all this ill, tho they've been a bit more low-key than usual. Some of the things I did are as follows, in the inevitable mammoth post.
Oct 21st was the Anarchist Bookfair, which was very good fun. I bought lots of paper and ate the inevitable lovely vegan cakes from the Veggies stall outside. It was a bit more rushed than I'd like, but I still got to see braisedbywolves, ofiwriter, fluffymormegil, m00nsquirrel and his friend R(WINOLJ, AFAIK). There were far too many good workshops to attend but alextiefling and I managed to get to a very good one on ID cards and the information database, and (inevitably!) a very busy one about religion, where we felt definitely in the minority of anarchists taking the "baby/bathwater" approach (as opposed to the "all religion is bad, we mustn't tolerate it" approach). Afterwards, we headed off to janieluk's Hallowe'en party, which was inevitably very busy and had the nice touch of a big sheet in the lounge with an accompanying pot of paint, allowing guests to paint their own suitably-themed doodles. Accompanying doodles on the kitchen units were done in lipstick (and are still there, including the stick-figure blowjob, as of this Saturday...). I was pretty tired so I went for the low-key costume of huge white nightie and veil as a ghostly/corpse bride, but most people seemed to think I was Miss Havisham, which wasn't bad either. I spent most of the evening reclining regally on the sofa (which people may have thought was me being in character!) but still got to chat a little with some_fox, werenerd, babysimon and got lovely hugs from a Buffy trishpiglet on my way home. alextiefling showed off by being topless and winged, but he can get away with it, so I think he enjoyed himself.
On Mon 23rd, I felt just about well enough to drag myself into court, and was very happy about giving an unfeasibly good presentation and getting my client out of court without any sort of possession order made. Everyone was very complimentary about it and that made me feel very good in a way I don't usually manage. This was fortunately sustaining, as I was sufficiently ill that I didn't manage to do any paid work at all before leaving for Whitby, which means I managed 2 whole weeks without pay and one week where I made about £100. This current week is looking similar...:¬(
Thu 26th saw us leaving for Whitby after hellish packing while I was totally lacking in energy. I hadn't finished sewing my boots and was still not better after what I thought was a ridiculously long time - little did I suspect what the future would hold! The train journey (I've never done Whitby that way before, only by car or coach/bus) was ridiculous and alextiefling and I spent most of it bitching about the destruction of the East Coast mainline 30 years ago. We were also convinced that there must be an easier way of doing it, and indeed there is - an Arriva bus from Scarborough takes only half an hour, and they run every 30 mins too. I'm doing it that way next time. I don't think I can possibly cover all the Whitby stuff without making this huge post unreadable, so I'm just going to stick to the salient points.
Highlights
+ Really lovely guest house. We thought it might be too far for comfort as it was all the way over past the end of the West Cliff, but the walk (illness aside) was lovely, especially at night, and our host was a lovely man and very accommodating. Even though it's a little way out, I'd consider staying there again. Breakfasts were huge, I think I really overdosed on eggs though.
+ Bands. XYkogen were very amusing and put on an enjoyable show (despite being some way away from my preferred musical genres), not least because they enjoyed their rapport with the audience. Vampire Beach Babes were tight, professional very good at what they did - that's not quite the damning-with-faint-praise it sounds like as I found them to be great fun and would definitely go see them again. The Damned were, well, The Damned! No surprises there but a nice comfort blanket and, even if they didn't play "NeatNeatNeat", I still bounced quite a bit. For my money, though, the best band of the weekend were Katzenjammer Kabarett, who were fantastic. They seemed like a particularly good amalgam of such desirable artists as The Dresden Dolls, Tiger Lillies, The Deep Eynde, Switchblade Symphony and Rozz-era Christian Death, but were first and foremost very much themselves. They also have a joyously diverting manifesto, which includes the great line "We do not fear our influences. We SWALLOW them!". I feel quite compelled to buy their album when I get some cash, and you should too.
+ The Goth Eucharist. Turned out to be an extremely nice church service, with extremely nice regulars. Despite not being an obvious church-goer by persuasion (go figure!), I found it to be quite a moving experience and would be quite happy to go again some time. Very relaxing, despite having to climb the 199 steps to get there.
+ Bell-ringing with matthewp. Sadly, my shoulder was too knackered to have a go myself, but I did get to enjoy the special status of being right there and enjoying the ringing from inside the circle, as it were. When I am well and not working late on a Wed, I shall definitely join him in Hampstead some time so that I can try it out.
+ Shopping, natch. From the divine to the very, very earthly. I didn't get to spend quite as much time looking round the trillions of stalls as I'd like, partly because of genuine floppiness, but I did find a few nice things and didn't go entirely mental with my limited cash. Successful acquisitions were a long and (according to voodoo_canape, "very nu-metal") skirt which can cleverly be made into a short skirt, a slightly expensive kilt, a very cheap smart skirt for court with a pretty polka-dot pink lining, 2 zip-up cardigans for warmth (one a slashed red Punkyfish one), another pair of functional stompy boots, some fun hair clips and, well, that's about it. alextiefling was made very, very happy by finding a divine Mandarin-style jacket with fuschia lining, fake leather trousers, a collarless shirt, some super-practical DMs and a pair of twisty faun-like horns which look very sweet. So, we both did pretty well in the end.
+ People. This pretty much goes without saying. You know who you are, I hope, and you're all great. Thanks for being good even though I was a bit out of it some of the time.
+ General niceness of having a romantic weekend away, even if we didn't get to do all the explorations we'd have liked, such as a trip on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. Always more stuff for next time!
But inevitably there were
Lowlights
- Illness. This was the big one. I spent a large chunk of my time there being too unwell to do the things I wanted to do, or to enjoy them as much as I would expect to when I was managing to do them. I was so out of it on Sunday that I missed the entire second half of the day and had to spend it alone in bed reading "Arbella: England's Lost Queen". Thank heavens for charity shops! Groo, as janieluk would say.
- GNER. There will probably be another post about the appalling, exploitative and possibly illegal (IMHO) way that GNER handle their lost property now, as it made me incredibly angry and still does, to the extent that I have bitched quite a bit about it to everyone I've spoken to since. Suffice it to say that I'm not done with them yet! Loss of the hatbox was an annoyance though.
- Poor Whitby organisation. The website was pretty unhelpful as it didn't even have proper information about their regular features (eg no rules list for the Bring and Buy stall, no approximate running times for bands), and had absolutely nothing about one-offs. The mess with pink bands on the Saturday night didn't really surprise me, though the serious lack of branding on said bands did - or had the organising team just read 'No Logo' and taken it very seriously indeed?
- Restricted ovo-vegetarian food options. To be expected but a shame nevertheless. Gods, I love living in London.
- alextiefling's phone mysteriously not automatically updating as usual, so we got woken up an hour early on Sunday morning and didn't actually realise this until we were up the bloody steps and waiting outside the church in the freezing wind. This may have contributed to my collapse later on.
- Being too ill to dress up much or wear make-up. This sort of comes under illness but is also a distinct annoyance in and of itself, I feel.
Upon return, I remained ill and didn't manage to drag myself into work again until Thu 2nd. On Fri 3rd, I went after work to Fopp to buy the newest Decemberists album and ran into Stix! So we pottered off to enjoy a bit of lunch together and catch up on events. Treated myself to tasty veggie sausage baguette and enjoyed the opportunity to hang out with someone I don't see enough of these days. Later that evening, I took my mum out to see julietk's sister perform in concert. She enjoyed it quite a bit, I think (especially the Holst), and my evening was only really marred by my annoying shoes - the same shoes I raved about not so long ago! Saw uon and dogrando too, which was good as I don't see them very often. alextiefling talked again about arranging another trip to see the Oriana choir, possibly after Xmas, as another treat for my mum. She and he also tentatively arranged a business deal whereby he helps her with computer lessons if she does some gardening for him.
Saturday 4th was the long-awaited Dresden Dolls gig, which was brilliant for quite a few reasons, some quite unexpected. Sadly, Jason Webley wasn't performing that evening, but a lot of excellent people were. The support act I'd been most excited about seeing, Edmund Ka-Spel, was well worth the wait, but the plethora of other musicians, dancers, actors et al (including, of course, Margaret Cho) made the evening fantastic. Delightfully, the Roundhouse also did v good food including apparently vegan wraps. I resisted the scads of enticing merchandise (I could easily have outspent my Whitby budget there) and was good, but I did wish I could have got a poster as a reminder of the evening. The gig itself was resoundingly brilliant, with guest performances from Ka-Spel and Nina Hagen as well as a virtual Greatest Hits - everything I wanted to be played, was, and that alone has to be good. The best live event I've been to in a long time. m00nsquirrel sadly had to leave early but also had a great time, and I was very pleased that ariiadne was there with us. Possibly the best thing about the whole event, however, was being unexpectedly recognised by someone I hadn't seen in 6 years - S., the son of my drama teacher and younger brother of my old friend from Copenhagen who, it turns out, had moved to London to study at Brunel after a year spent living in Portland, Oregon, only a few blocks from ariiadne's old house - talk about coincidences! Anyway, I invited S. out to B-Movie with us and the whole experience made me very happy.
The next week was spent working my arse off and thinking I had unexpectedly come down with cystitis, until the high drama of Wednesday's casualty visit. After Thurs was set aside for groaning recovery, we were greatly improved by the unexpected phone call offering alextiefling a brand new job less than 24 hours after his interview! I was very proud of him and the news perked him up almost immediately, so he was able to return to work the next day. I remained delicate but managed a gentle potter round the British Museum on Friday lunchtime with him, enjoying the "Power & Taboo" exhibition again - you really should go while it's still there, you know. I also managed a tentative appearance at B-Movie but obviously wasn't up to Electric Dreams, which was a terrible shame as I really fancied the possible extras from Mute! Boo. Still, S. also came to B-Movie with us and seemed to have fun.
Saturday was meant to be pottering with janieluk but I was still a bit too shattered and decided to save myself for the evening's hastily-arranged celebratory drinks in The Pommeler's Rest with Ms Sherlock, S., janieluk, matthewp, braisedbywolves, trishpiglet, babysimon, hazyjayne et al. We played Chrononauts, Werewolf and Fluxx, ate Wetherspoons pub grub and ambled home quite chirpy, if still tired.
Sunday, accompanied alextiefling to church for the Remembrance Sunday Service, which made me VERY ANGRY! He was quite grateful that I had enough self-control not to jump up and shout "bollocks!" during the sermon, but I clearly wasn't alone as there seemed to be a general negative feeling about it afterwards, so it's not just the fringe nutters (ie veggie anarchist pagans) who were unimpressed. Oh well, that's what you get from a naval chaplain, I suppose, though personally, I'd still have been disappointed even if I had been attending as a serviceperson! At any rate, the pre-arranged lunch at Pizza Express (yay for cheeseless pizza, tho that bit was distinctly NOT arranged!) and visit to the Courtauld Institute afterwards went off well, though again, I was shattered by 4pm and cut it a little short.
This week, I managed BU on Tuesday, which made me quite pleased. I spent a little time with voodoo_canape before is departure for littlemisslost's graduation ceremony. I managed no work Wed-Fri but was just up to dragging myself out for lunch with envoy on Friday and boy, am I glad I did! We went to Tas, on The Cut, SE1, right by Southwark College and one of a chain of the same name. I thoroughly recommend it - absolutely delicious Turkish food with really good choices, plenty of vegan options (if you avoid the set menus, which are still good for veggies). It was also pretty affordable, and I happily got to take a few leftovers home with me for dinner. Yay for doggy-bags! Also, having bought 3 Guardians for the pig wallchart, I discovered that they were giving away free tickets to 'Pan's Labyrinth' and in Greenwich too! So I rushed back through the rain to pick up 6 and came back to the Tesseract for a game of "Settlers of Catan" and some cake. Overall, I rate that as a successful day.
Saturday, I ambled up to janieluk's for chat, hugs and tasty spinach & pepper plait. I then headed to Holborn for strawberryfrog's birthday celebrations in the Cittie Of Yorke (ridiculous prices for chips! and they weren't even nice! AARGH!!), then to Anam's cocktail bar in Angel for beingjdc's birthday celebrations. I was a little sad that I had to cut short my time at all the day's events, but still glad that I'd got to do everything.
Sunday was the very exciting free trip to "Pan's Labyrinth" at the Greenwich Picture House with ariiadne, janieluk, honeyjew, envoy and ippola. I'd been gagging to see the film ever since the even bigger Guillermo Del Toro fan that is voodoo_canape had raved about it to me some months back, and the flyers we'd picked up at Whitby had only whetted my appetite. It was as great as I'd hoped and expected it would be - beautiful, brutal, heart-warming, tragic (it made me cry a bit) and it made me want to watch it again with the poor boys who'd missed it due to being elsewhere. It also made me want to watch "The Devil's Backbone" again. I don't want to say to much about it here, I just insist that you make the time to go and see it because it really is a fabulous experience and I don't think I'm overstating the case to say it's the best film Del Toro has ever made - that I've seen, at least. The other nice thing about the day was the unexpected presence of honeyjew, up in London by happy coincidence for a party in Woolwich. A quick potter round the markets of Greenwich with ariiadne and janieluk was also enjoyable, despite yet again causing me to ponder the wretched question of why jackboots aren't made in smaller sizes, and the only really negative bit of the day was the fairly wretched lunch we had in Noodle Time. That place has definitely hit the skids, so I don't think I'll be going back again. My veggie soup noodles were just bearable but really, considering they're not even the only noodle place in Greenwich Square, I don't think I'll bother again. Oh well. The evening involved helping alextiefling carry the wardrobe back to the Tesseract (surly bus drivers aside), a task we accomplished with surprisingly little misery and fairly quickly, so we had time for leisurely dinner and to make him ecstatically happy by tidying his room up. Aww!
Well, that's 6 pages of rambling now, that should be enough for anyone. I've got more, of course, but then, haven't I always? Currently looking forward to 2 parties on Saturday and a FRU induction day + Sol Invictus/Andrew King the following weekend. Still, my mother found me a job to apply for and there are some pressing reasons why I should do that, so I think I'd better go make a start on it now, don't you?