Another inevitable catch-up post
As is so often the case, I've not managed to update in ages, so here follows a quick summary of what I've been up to in the last month or so. Hardly anyone posts to LJ any more, it seems, so I'm not going to cut this. Feel free to scroll if you get bored...
Towards the end of July, A and I trekked out to sunny Brentwood one Sunday for a party at the cricket club to celebrate my niece's fifth birthday and my nephew's christening. It was a bit of a weird day, all in all. First, the strap on my tasteful summer dress (bought about a year ago but never previously worn) broke on the escalator on the tube journey there and needed to be knotted back together, and then both heels of my (admittedly ancient) sandals-for-wearing-with-non-black-outfits fell off before we arrived, one being long gone before I noticed and the other crumbled off into pieces on arrival at the train station! Once we arrived, it turned out that I'd mised a memo on dress code: it seems that in that part of the world, children's birthday parties and christenings currently require heels higher than any I own, even for clubbing, and knee length frocks - what a time to be limping around in knackered sandals as flat as if I were in bare feet, and a romanesque long dress. ;) However, there was tea and cake, and a children's entertainer to keep my niece's entire class from school out of the way of the grown ups while we had a chat, so it didn't turn out too hideous a day in the end.
The first half of August was, of course, taken up with dealing with work, and with management's clever ideas for avoiding the anticipated Olympic transport chaos. For me, this meant half of the first week in Cardiff and the whole of the second week in Birmingham. The Olympics managed to stitch me up good and proper in Cardiff: due to the Olympic rugby, all the hotels we usually use in the town centre were full, and they had to book me somewhere out in the arse end of nowhere. Better yet, a good share of the rugby fans also had to trek out that far post-rugby, and them returning to their rooms kept me awake 'til about 3am with talking and doors slamming etc, which is not what you need when you're getting up for work at about seven.
The week in Birmingham went a bit better - the main drama was our hired hearing rooms being right over New Street (the main shoppping street, for those who never lived there/visited), which meant we had pretty much constant people-noise and I had to go down at one point on the last day and persuade a busker to move on (I think my opening by asking him whether he had a licence was most likely the thing that did the trick). Central Birmingham has gotten a lot posher in the decade or so since I moved to London, but I was pleased to discover that the big alternative clothing/stuff department store, The Oasis, still survives, as does Swordfish Records, albeit in a new location. On the first night, I also took a trip down to our old favourite student curry place, Manzil's, which seems to have changed only in that it has flock wallpaper on one wall, now, not all of them. On the second night, I went with some colleagues to another curry place on Broad Street, by the name of Blue Mango, which was very nice. I don't know if it existed when I lived in Brum, but it would have been well out of my price range in my student/teaching days - hurrah for work expense budgets!
I've had the last week off work, which has meant a chance to catch up with a mountain of tedious things which needed doing plus time to do social-type things.
Last weekend I headed up to Becky's in Northampton for her birthday celebration part 2. On the Friday night, she and I went to an indie night, Propaganda, at the Roadmenders. Having not listened to radio in over a decade, and having stopped reading the Melody Maker not too long after that, I didn't recognise the vast majority of what was played, but there was drinking and dancing and general catching-up chatting, which was fun.
On the Saturday, Magsey, Rick, Matt and Karen arrived, so it was a bit like a reunion from the era when I used to go to Reading Festival every year. The original plan was to go to a thing called the Umbrella Fair, which Becky and I did on her birthday last year. We ended up in the wrong park, though, so we started the afternoon with some very teenage-nostalgic drinking on park benches - although, admittedly, I don't recall drinking pink sparkling wine from plastic champagne glasses in out teens and twenties! We did eventually make it to the Fair before it closed, in time to see a really bad grunge covers band and a not-quite-so-bad folky/Irish band ...and, I later discovered, to get horribly, horribly covered in insect bites. I counted nineteen on Monday, and I reacted badly enough to them that they're still red and raised over a week later and I haven't been able to give blood this week, as I had originally planned.
Highlights of the week off itself have included:
-finally seeing the (no longer new) show at A's work, One Man, Two Guvnors, which was quite funny
-meeting up with diana_molloy the same evening for dim sum and cocktails
-going to the 'Abney Park steampunk gig' on Thursday.
All being well, I will try to put together some kind of review for the show and the gig tomorrow, but A (who has been off on a jolly in Brighton today with work colleagues) should be home soon, so I'm going to stop here for the night...
Towards the end of July, A and I trekked out to sunny Brentwood one Sunday for a party at the cricket club to celebrate my niece's fifth birthday and my nephew's christening. It was a bit of a weird day, all in all. First, the strap on my tasteful summer dress (bought about a year ago but never previously worn) broke on the escalator on the tube journey there and needed to be knotted back together, and then both heels of my (admittedly ancient) sandals-for-wearing-with-non-black-outfits fell off before we arrived, one being long gone before I noticed and the other crumbled off into pieces on arrival at the train station! Once we arrived, it turned out that I'd mised a memo on dress code: it seems that in that part of the world, children's birthday parties and christenings currently require heels higher than any I own, even for clubbing, and knee length frocks - what a time to be limping around in knackered sandals as flat as if I were in bare feet, and a romanesque long dress. ;) However, there was tea and cake, and a children's entertainer to keep my niece's entire class from school out of the way of the grown ups while we had a chat, so it didn't turn out too hideous a day in the end.
The first half of August was, of course, taken up with dealing with work, and with management's clever ideas for avoiding the anticipated Olympic transport chaos. For me, this meant half of the first week in Cardiff and the whole of the second week in Birmingham. The Olympics managed to stitch me up good and proper in Cardiff: due to the Olympic rugby, all the hotels we usually use in the town centre were full, and they had to book me somewhere out in the arse end of nowhere. Better yet, a good share of the rugby fans also had to trek out that far post-rugby, and them returning to their rooms kept me awake 'til about 3am with talking and doors slamming etc, which is not what you need when you're getting up for work at about seven.
The week in Birmingham went a bit better - the main drama was our hired hearing rooms being right over New Street (the main shoppping street, for those who never lived there/visited), which meant we had pretty much constant people-noise and I had to go down at one point on the last day and persuade a busker to move on (I think my opening by asking him whether he had a licence was most likely the thing that did the trick). Central Birmingham has gotten a lot posher in the decade or so since I moved to London, but I was pleased to discover that the big alternative clothing/stuff department store, The Oasis, still survives, as does Swordfish Records, albeit in a new location. On the first night, I also took a trip down to our old favourite student curry place, Manzil's, which seems to have changed only in that it has flock wallpaper on one wall, now, not all of them. On the second night, I went with some colleagues to another curry place on Broad Street, by the name of Blue Mango, which was very nice. I don't know if it existed when I lived in Brum, but it would have been well out of my price range in my student/teaching days - hurrah for work expense budgets!
I've had the last week off work, which has meant a chance to catch up with a mountain of tedious things which needed doing plus time to do social-type things.
Last weekend I headed up to Becky's in Northampton for her birthday celebration part 2. On the Friday night, she and I went to an indie night, Propaganda, at the Roadmenders. Having not listened to radio in over a decade, and having stopped reading the Melody Maker not too long after that, I didn't recognise the vast majority of what was played, but there was drinking and dancing and general catching-up chatting, which was fun.
On the Saturday, Magsey, Rick, Matt and Karen arrived, so it was a bit like a reunion from the era when I used to go to Reading Festival every year. The original plan was to go to a thing called the Umbrella Fair, which Becky and I did on her birthday last year. We ended up in the wrong park, though, so we started the afternoon with some very teenage-nostalgic drinking on park benches - although, admittedly, I don't recall drinking pink sparkling wine from plastic champagne glasses in out teens and twenties! We did eventually make it to the Fair before it closed, in time to see a really bad grunge covers band and a not-quite-so-bad folky/Irish band ...and, I later discovered, to get horribly, horribly covered in insect bites. I counted nineteen on Monday, and I reacted badly enough to them that they're still red and raised over a week later and I haven't been able to give blood this week, as I had originally planned.
Highlights of the week off itself have included:
-finally seeing the (no longer new) show at A's work, One Man, Two Guvnors, which was quite funny
-meeting up with diana_molloy the same evening for dim sum and cocktails
-going to the 'Abney Park steampunk gig' on Thursday.
All being well, I will try to put together some kind of review for the show and the gig tomorrow, but A (who has been off on a jolly in Brighton today with work colleagues) should be home soon, so I'm going to stop here for the night...