A pretty good day
Like the header says, today's been pretty good.I started with a trip to the Alternative Bring and Buy Sale, where I had a nominal budget of just over £30 from what was left of money I made selling old stuff I just wasn't wearing. After a little over an hour, i came out with the following:
This meant that I was able to get to the cabaret I mentioned in my last post by about 7pm, just as the first set of acts were finishing. As is often the case with this sort of thing, the event started with some amateurs who demonstrated more enthusiasm than skill, but the quality improved pretty fast. Highlight of the cabaret acts proper was East End Cabaret (a duo who sing and play well, and were genuinely funny, not least in their closing song about secretly masturbating in public). The main reason I went, however, was Andrew O'Neill, 'comedian, transvestite metalhead, amateur occultist and all-round show-off'. His set was a combination of bits from the long video on his website and other stuff I hadn't seen, and it was very good indeed.
The well-at-least-it's-ironic bit of the day came with the raffle. I bought a couple of tickets, partly because the event was for a good cause ( the 'Queer Alternative' - making queerness more visible in alternative culture and weirdness more visible in gay culture), partly because it's much less boring sitting through a draw if you have a stake, and partly because they had a couple of good prizes. And so it began, with the compere saying 'A bottle of Champagne...who doesn't want another of those in their fridge?' 'Me', I thought, as A gets given so many bottles of various stuff in a work context and we had two bottles of bubbly already taking up space in ours. So guess whose ticket was immediately drawn?
'So, give it to me!', do I hear you cry? No can do. The lottery gods had obviously heard my ungrateful mutterings. Juggling my bags on the way out of the venue as I was putting my coat on, I dropped the little cotton shopper I'd put the bottle in, and smashed it to smithereens on the pavement, meaning I had to cart a dripping bagful of broken glass home. ;)
And it's now approaching 1am, which means (assuming he managed to catch his scheduled train from whichever godforsaken town he dropped angusabranson and the hire van off in after Games Expo), A will be home from his travels pretty soon.
- two CDs (one definitely for me, one which may end up as part of A's birthday present)
- a plain black short sleeved shirt (mens' 2XL, so very big on me, thus a good 'dress' length for wearing open as a bit of a cover-up with vest-tops and short skirts)
- a summer dress (long at the back, short at the front, with a decal of a heart made of bones, so will almost certainly accompany me to AltFest)
- an oversize black and white leopard print 'fur' coat (jury's out on whether to wear it open as per aforementioned shirt or get it taken in at the waist to actually fit me - it was so ridiculously cheap I figured I could afford to work that out later...).
This meant that I was able to get to the cabaret I mentioned in my last post by about 7pm, just as the first set of acts were finishing. As is often the case with this sort of thing, the event started with some amateurs who demonstrated more enthusiasm than skill, but the quality improved pretty fast. Highlight of the cabaret acts proper was East End Cabaret (a duo who sing and play well, and were genuinely funny, not least in their closing song about secretly masturbating in public). The main reason I went, however, was Andrew O'Neill, 'comedian, transvestite metalhead, amateur occultist and all-round show-off'. His set was a combination of bits from the long video on his website and other stuff I hadn't seen, and it was very good indeed.
The well-at-least-it's-ironic bit of the day came with the raffle. I bought a couple of tickets, partly because the event was for a good cause ( the 'Queer Alternative' - making queerness more visible in alternative culture and weirdness more visible in gay culture), partly because it's much less boring sitting through a draw if you have a stake, and partly because they had a couple of good prizes. And so it began, with the compere saying 'A bottle of Champagne...who doesn't want another of those in their fridge?' 'Me', I thought, as A gets given so many bottles of various stuff in a work context and we had two bottles of bubbly already taking up space in ours. So guess whose ticket was immediately drawn?
'So, give it to me!', do I hear you cry? No can do. The lottery gods had obviously heard my ungrateful mutterings. Juggling my bags on the way out of the venue as I was putting my coat on, I dropped the little cotton shopper I'd put the bottle in, and smashed it to smithereens on the pavement, meaning I had to cart a dripping bagful of broken glass home. ;)
And it's now approaching 1am, which means (assuming he managed to catch his scheduled train from whichever godforsaken town he dropped angusabranson and the hire van off in after Games Expo), A will be home from his travels pretty soon.