The Day I Was Home
Added at 6:08pm and filed under awesome, bff, family
So we’re back. Wait. Did I tell you I was going?
Friday I exchanged my trademark cool, calm difference and became a tourist for the weekend in London. Yeah. Seriously. Me. Walking around London with a camera around my neck like . . . well, someone who doesn’t live there.
I did live there. Lived there for a little over three years, actually. And I love that place – LUUUURVE it, like I love mugs of steaming hot tea and men wearing nothing but white coats. It sounds pathetic, but I actually get a physical sensation when I step off onto the train platform when we reach Paddington. It’s like I’ve come home . . . which is stupid, considering I don’t live there anymore.
Lots of people hate it: the noise, the busyness, the dirt, the insanity of the place. I have numerous friends who talk about how cool it is to visit there, but how they’d never stay. Me? I’ve never been like that. It’s such a gorgeous place; five hundred year old buildings nestled side-by-side with great glass monoliths, huge swarms of people and vehicles and history all wrestling for space. Much like I fell in love with Hong Kong the moment I stepped off of the plane, London has always had this insane intensity about it, and while my commute back and fore Selfridges (worked there for a little over a year in the ladies shoe department. I SUCKED) used to try and kill me on a regular occurrence, I still fucking loved it. No wait – I mean LUUUURVED it.
But there was none of that this weekend. We – M, S and I – jumped on the train on Friday morning and spent a long weekend with our friends who flew in from France doing family-stroke-touristy type things which included visiting the British Museum (crap), a boat trip down the Thames (surprisingly awesome) and S and his BFF visited the HMS Belfast with their respective Daddies for about three and a half minutes before, TERRIFIED at the dummies on the ship, they came screaming down the gangplank as though . . . hmm. I have no ending for that sentence as I have absolutely no comparator to the sight that met me. Heh. (Edit: as I was sourcing a photo of the wax dummies – since I had none – S wandered over to my computer and caught that photo of the butcher. He freaked. Silly boy).
Yes, it rained (check out previous entry for photographic evidence of that) and it was bitterly cold, but it also kind of rocked. I miss France Friends so, so much, so to spend an uninterrupted three-and-a-half days with them was bliss. :) (BTW, did I tell you that they were moving back to the UK again? How happy am I?!) The hotel was, without doubt, the best hotel I’ve ever stayed in in the city (which is saying something – I’ve sampled a LOT) and although we ended up spending an arm and a leg – about a limb and-a-half more than we’d budgeted for – it didn’t matter. Spousal arguments aside, we had a fantastic time, and the intense hands-on time with S was just priceless. I heart him so bad it hurts.
The entire set will be uploaded to Flickr shortly so you too will be able to see the majesty of the architecture and the beauty of the skyline. Regrettably, there are no pictures of the dummies on the HMS Belfast – S made me delete them the MOMENT he stepped off of the ship.
If you live there and you see this crap everyday, feel free to check out my photo of Derek Shepherd some more instead. Yummy.
Comments: (10)
The Day With the Victory
Added at 10:41pm and filed under Geek Speak, awesome
No, it isn’t a new cube. And no, I didn’t pull off the bloody stickers. Perseverance, baby – that’s all you need! Well, that and an insane amount of farce, luck and numerous online guides. (Look, it’s not cheating – Stephen Hawkings himself would struggle to organically solve this motherfucking thing. And considering most of the tutorials I found were more complex than the cube itself, it’s still a feat and – cheat or not – I’m chuffed, ‘k?)
Next step – to memorise! This – along with my dancing matchsticks – has to be my new party piece.
Edit: My hands do not look like the small, dainty affairs I’ve always envisaged them to be. The words ‘sausage’ and ‘fingers’ spring to mind. Hmm.
Comments: (9)
The Day After Christmas ’08
Added at 9:48pm and filed under Offline, awesome, family, gaming
HAPPY CHRISTMAS!
What do you mean I’m late?
You know, I’ve barely even looked at my Mac these last few days, let alone attempted to sit down and write anything on it. When I jumped on this morning I had over 400 accounts to review at CodeGrrl and nearly 50 accounts to approve at SHHF, and I don’t think that the numbers ever reached that high even when I went to NYC, or Spain for a week. It’s weird because I never felt all that busy even though I clearly have been. I finished work on the 19th and besides making mince pies with S (yum) sometime that weekend, I don’t recall what the hell I did until the 23rd arrived, bringing along our friends from France with it. They stayed overnight – drink! Chinese food! Playing games! Yay! – and then Christmas Eve we went to my parents for Christmas dinner which was lovely, even though the goose-fat potatoes and gravy kicked off a gallstone attack at half five Christmas morning. We left around six that evening, came home, and then I realised that I hadn’t wrapped three boxes worth of gifts in the garage. I wrapped presents for what felt like a gazillion years and then – fuck me – it was Christmas Day. How did that happen?
We’ve had a good break though and as always, it was pretty low key. This year it was just the three of us, as our in-laws had been pre-booked to go to M’s sister’s for the day, and so we enjoyed a small but perfect lunch squeezed around our tiny dining table, spruced up with festive linen and crowned with the bunch of flowers S insisted on buying me – bless. :) The lounge, however, was a different story. It looked as though David Tennant had thrown up everywhere, the entire room littered with figures and games and stickers and props and toiletries all along the Doctor Who theme. For example: my parents bought him this insane remote control Dalek, which – when it’s not careering into your shins or smashing into your coffee table – tells you that you’ll make a good Dalek before, as contrary as a WAG on Rodeo Drive, it turns and tries to exterminate you. Awesome.
‘We’ bought S the Leapfrog Tag Reading pen, which he loves. I’m so, so chuffed. There’s very little about me that I think should be passed on to other, mouldable human beings, but my love of books is probably the one thing I hope he inherits and takes into adulthood. We bought three books to go along with it – SpongeBob, Cars and the Kung-Fu Panda – and he’s lapping them up, reading them utterly unprompted and unassisted and periodically throughout the day. Yay. Other than that, mostly everyone gave him Doctor Who goodies, which means I have had to clear out one of the trays from his toy unit in the lounge solely to house his DW figure collection which – and I wish I was making this up – sports NINE Tenth Doctor figures. That’s right – nine. And of those nine, six are IDENTICAL! I’m just so relieved that I bought him two Nightmare Before Christmas playsets to balance it out. :)
As for me? Amidst the wonderful plethora of books (Hornby, King, Tropper), CDs (Take That – woot! – and Snow Patrol) and DVDs (Blackadder Collection – although even though he lives in the same house of me and has done so for twelve years, M didn’t know I’d already had it) I had GHD straighteners – which I’ve been coveting like a fat girl in a cake shop for ages – and a new hairdryer which puts my current circa-1987 one to SHAME. I also received Lips, which I’m enjoying in a this-is-fun-but-serves-no-purpose kind of way that makes Guitar Hero look like a Mensa entry exam. Coupled with family gifts – which includes my early XBox 360 guitar, a mic stand and a guitar tree – it looks like a recording studio in here. A bad one, admittedly, but a studio all the same. And now that I can wield the axe and sing the lyrics at the same time, I know you’re jealous of my awesomeness.
Oh, and before I forget – special love and kisses to Claire, Raq and Sharon who never fail to make me feel loved and appreciated this time of year. You guys are just as awesome as I am. Seriously.
Of course – and as always – about 2.4 seconds after S unwrapped his final gift I suffered crippling post-Christmas spending guilt. It’s a cliche but CHRIST I feel bad when I see the excess of paper and wrapping and food. I started out so well, too; because of the current climate, and me not knowing if I’m going to have a job in six months’ time (fixed-term contract expires – bummer), we had strict spending limits on S and on each other, but then as M’s total crept up – which was probably because the total for my gifts did first – and then I felt bad for S, who by mid-December we’d spent the least on, and kept adding to his pile, too. So in the end we spent a gazillion pounds on things that, whilst lovely, seem silly and overpriced. It’s hard to regret it when your kid is beaming and I know we can kind of afford it but … meh. You know, it’s just as well I’m utterly faithless: I think if I did believe in God and Jesus and the whole nativity thing, I’d be devastated at what a fucking mess Christmas has become.
Anyway. Shall I move on?
To summarise: Christmas was good. Kinda quiet, but good. Between you and me I’m still a little badgunkified, but all that’s going to be regurgitated within the safe confines of a password-protected entry in the next few weeks. It’s just me being me: a miserable, moany misanthropist who probably needs to learn how to calm the fuck down and unclench. Heh. In the meantime, make me feel better. Talk to me! Tell me your best present and worst of the year and the readers of FA.com can vote for the best and crappiest gifts of 2008!
Hope your Christmas break – no matter how/ if you celebrate it – was peaceful and fun. May your 2009 be all you deserve it to be. :)
Comments: (6)
The Day with the Crap Day (6)
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The Day With the Craptastic Procrasination (8)
I’ve been rushed off my arse lately. June’s always one of those months when I’m all over the place, attending meetings and conferences across the UK, and this one’s been no exception. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks zig-zagging my way across the country and I’ve become oh-so-familiar with the failings of a takeaway [...]
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