Last weekend of June

Quiet weekend with the folks, did little except eat, drink a few beers, and visit the local Aldi. Car made it fine up and down the M6, which is very good. Now have a car stereo too, but it is too complex for me to fit (hmm, I don't seem to have a panel light wire, I wonder if that matters, etc...)

Trip to Majorca is being planned. Looking forward to some sun, sangria, sol, siesta, sea and um, stuff.

Shame

Just eaten something shameful...

Saturday Night Party

The proposed shindig at Clougha was rained off, so people went to the Brit instead to drink more alcohol than is sensible and listen to one-chip-tatty play. At 8pm. I mean, these days, who goes out at 8pm? *and* the had a late license for some reason... So that's 6 hours of drinking time. *sigh*. I started quite well, in the beer garden, as the pub was jam packed and I didn't feel for that much. I sipped bitter, avoided spirits, shied away from rounds. But in the end the time gets to us all. By 1am I was sloshing them back with everyone else, but things didn't get out of control. Not really. The police came, of course, but just to investigate a noise complaint from the usual irritating neighbours. When the police arrived there were three of us sitting outside, quietly smoking our cigarettes. The police looked nonplussed. The wife and I didn't want people back to ours, the sheer amount of people and the excessive alcohol made the prospect vaguely bad. So DrC and the Colonel pimped out their house for the evening. Off we go then, I get carried away and invite more people along on the way out. It takes the Grue and I some time to get to the party as Tintin is feeling belligerent, but we manage, in the end. Things start to get a bit more hazy at at the party. I talk at people quite a lot, then simply sit in a chair and interfere with the music for a while. Then it's 5am and time to go. All manner of interesting things occur after we leave, of course... Sunday was a write-off. A non-starter. I padded around the house all day, read books, took a bath, ate, little else.

Friday night in

A night in, oddly, for a Friday. Chilled out with the Colonel, played some Go, drank some beers. Cooked a Thai curry with mock chicken and sticky rice. Pudding was made, but didn't set due to arrowroot amount issues. Tried to watch a DVD but it died 20 mins from the end, very frustrating.

Now it rains. All night, all day.

Full Thursday

We managed to cram quite a lot into that Thursday - first I went to Morecambe and back to drop off the Nissan Micra for Bay View Cars to check out, then drove home the long way in a large, shabby Purgeot (which was full of left-over food, the windows don't work, had no petrol). Then we went to eat Tapas at the local bar (great, happy hour meant £20 meal for 2 inc a bottle of Mateus(!) rose - the Orzo was fantastic). Then off to watch Persepolis at the Dukes (pretty good, worth seeing for sure) whilst sipping a rum and coke (good old Dukes). And finally to the Brit where a birthday gathering was happening, where a few pints of Bomber were drunk. A good day...

Vist to the vets

Yearly cat vaccinations seem to be quite contentious these days. We decided to go for the 1-year booster and then wait for a couple of years before the next one. We took the car, one of the last uses we'll get from it before it is scrapped, so, sombre on the way there. The vet, however, was a very jolly, big man - his huge hands pulling the jaws of our little cats open is oddly disturbing. They get weighed, peered at, injected, wormed and then the wonder flea-dirt test which I have serious doubts about - they pull a very fine comb through the cat's fur, then peer at it on some tissue paper. 'Ah yes, there's some flea-dirt there.' Which means, your cat has fleas, you should buy our de-flea lotion at only £27 for 10 week course... Ah... We have some flea lotion that costs £24 for 3 months (this is for 3 cats), and the vet said 'Sounds too good to be true, speaking as a vet.' *sigh* I always feel like the vets are trying to extract vast sums of cash from us, no matter how pleasant they are. They try to sell us worming tables, and usually some extremely expensive food (after telling us that cheap food will give your cat all manner of illnesses). Anyway, £120 lighter, we bring the groggy cats back, who then sleep furiously for several hours. Just like me.

Medium Sunday

Cleared out the back yard, loaded the little car up with smelly and / or heavy bags of rubble, garden waste and more and drove them to the ever-busy dump. The wife then drove about for a while, practising roundabouts. Home to a magnum in the yard, looking at Loot to try and replace the little car. The little car's days are numbered - it failed its MOT and will cost too much to get put right, so is being scrapped on Saturday. Quite infuriating, as we only bought it 6 weeks ago. Very angry with being ripped off, but trying to remain calm. No cars caught our eyes. Evening meal was momo-fillings inside steamed won ton dumplings with soy and chilli sauce. Great. Blade popped round a a Guinness for a couple of hours, then it was suddenly late, though still light...

Tibetan night

A 4am finish, or so, from a Tibetan evening round with DrC and the Colonel. We had thenthuck (my meal), momos (the wife) and 'greens' (the Colonel). DrC kept us supplied otherwise whilst we cooked. Great, simply great food, we stuffed ourselves, but not to the extent of the Thai evening last week. 18 bottles of beer, two bottles of wine, the end of some Port and a bit of vodka later (plus whatever else we could find to consume) we called it night. But not before the start-at-midnight pudding which involved boiling carrots in milk and sugar to make fudge. Simply fantastic, at 3am, when in a terrible state...

Dogonastring

A night at the Dogonastring, as we used to call it all those years ago. The usual suspects drifted into and out of the beer garden, the heating light was pressed by numerous fingers, drinks were poured over knees, into shoes, too much alcohol was drank too quickly - the usual sort of affair. I was talked into a Jagermeister by Dnt , who said it tasted like dentist mouthwash. 'Not like Listerine, but you know, kind of antiseptic.' I relented. It is served in a test tube, and the colour is not one found in nature. Why a test tube, we wondered? So you have to drink it right away and can't put it down perhaps. I drank most of it. It tastes a bit like the absinthe I made. It's not all bad. Half an hour later, I feel drunker than I was, a kind of head-crack drunk which makes everything thick, like wading through water all the time. I blame the Jagermeister. I talk to a man who seems to take a perverse pleasure out of the fact that he's barred from most of the pubs in town, I never work out quite why, he seems so mild-mannered. There's then the usual outside-the-pub dither as people hope for an after-party, but no-one was in the mood to have a gang of drunken strangers trashing their house until 5am tonight, it seems, so we splinter and many head to the Lounge, which often refuses me entry for some reason. So I wander home instead.

Placenta and a buffet

Another party, and another late night loomed. The talk at Vulcan and Xo's place was of placentas, mainly, with Xo being pregnant and all. There were a range of terrible things done with after-births - freezing, eating, burying etc. 'The after-birth is very psychedelic,' says Fiddler. Xo agrees - 'Men are more interested in the placenta than the baby.' I find this fairly hard to believe, but who knows - strange changes come over people the minute they experience birth, so it seems. The talk wanders to all manner of other gory talk, as we eat the bountiful buffet they laid out (including odd but interesting elderflower fritters) - to a cat that ate its own testicles after having them removed (and finding them in a sink shortly after coming around); the act of sex to bring on labour; the child-birth video that was shown last night (see previous entry); and another after-birth story about a guy who accidentally defrosted someone's afterbirth whilst looking for a meaty snack (better labelling discipline was required, we decided). Wife was driven home by such chatter and the need to record Grey's Anatomy. I followed, thankfully, early.

Thursday 12th June

Deathly tired today after a medium-late night with DrC. We started at the Gson for the latest anti-evil event, which was a surreal affair featuring a slideshow of adders and a graphic birth video (which I missed, thankfully, being outside). DrC was in jubilant mood after landing his new job, so ordered unwise whisky chasers with every pint. Something I joined in with, but with less gusto, somehow. Afterhours there was the usual angst and panic over the prospect of returning home, going to bed, and hastening the next work day, when all that is really desired is more consumption. So we head back to our gaff and crack open the wine and beer and smokes. The whisky combo soon has an effect on DrC though, and just slightly over the music we can hear the sounds of violent diaphragm action upstairs. So, night cut short, just as well, given the morning I'm having...

Buzzing noises

A few things, okay then, a lot of things, can wake me during the night, being such a light sleeper - the wife's phone, dying on the kitchen table, forlornly in the early hours; the cats playing with a spider near my feet; rain; wind... You get the idea.

Last night at 3am a buzzing noise woke me from a deep, deep sleep. I immediately dismissed it as a text message emanating from my jeans across the room, and turned over. But the damage is done. Woken from a deep sleep, there is rarely any return for me. So I lie awake for an hour, turning with large sighs, cursing the person who texted me at 3am.

I fall asleep again, only for the same thing to happen at 5am. 5am is a horrible time. If you are awake at 5am then you are either up too late, or up to early. There's no reasonable reason to be awake. This time I'm awake until almost 7am, when I have to get up, feeling awful.

First thing I do is check my phone to see who I shall spend the day hating, but there's nothing there. No messages, no missed calls. Likewise on the wife's mobile. What it was remains a mystery...

Monday morning, again

Feeling truly awful this morning. An entire weekend spent in bed, or snoozing on the sofa, coughing and self-medicating with red wine, codeine and Benylin. Head feels like it is being squeezed with a large, troll-sized hand. Eyes hurt when I look anywhere but straight ahead. Sinuses burn with each breath. I should really take the day off sick, but think I'll try and do a little bit anyway, as I'm ever-so-slightly behind in my current project schedule.

Also not helping is the fact that we were woken up at 6am by Nimba who brought us a little brown mouse from the garden. Cue some early morning shrieking as I catch the mouse.

'Eeee! There's another one!' Cries the wife. But it's just a curled up stereo earphone set.

I drop the mouse out of the bedroom window, fully nude as I stand on the widow ledge, and it drops down into the kitchen gutter and twitches on its back pitifully.

'Ah.' I say.

I try to get back to sleep, but feel a bit guilty about the twitching mouse outside. Especially after yesterday... I'll get to that in a minute.

At 7am, the real time for getting up, I have another look in the gutter, and happily the mouse is gone. I'm still ill though, but stagger downstairs to prepare breakfast anyway.

Yesterday I was summoned to the dining room by some frantic shouting from the wife. This time it's Enki who has a prize - a tiny brown bird. It is still alive, but barely. Most of its feathers are gone, chewed away, it has blood under it's throat and it seems to be able to twitch just one side of it's body in a rhythmic, non-too-healthy kind of way.

We spend some minutes wondering what to do. It's going to die pretty soon, we think it should be put out of its obvious misery as soon as possible. But how to do it? I suggest drowning, via the toilet and flush, but the wife wants the neck-break or head-bash instead.

Now, I'm a vegetarian, so have little call or experience for killing animals. I have killed some fish in my time though, as a boy angler, and remember the technique seemed quick and fairly humane - you would take the metal 'priest' and bang the fish's head with it. Simple as that.

So we take the twitching bird into the back yard and place it on a stone slab. I find a suitable, heavy rock and take aim, warning the wife to look away.

Okay, sorry bird, but it's for the best. BANG!

I wasn't prepared for the splat really. Bird heads appear to be a lot flimsier than fish heads. The head basically flattens and some unpleasant matter spreads out around the area. The bird now starts writhing with some energy.

'Shit.' I mourn, and hit it again, twice. Messy, nasty, it finally stops twitching.

Was that a painless, humane death? Sure as hell didn't look like it to me.

SuperNoodles are horrible

In desperation, in the madness of hunger, I found a packet of SuperNoodles at the back of my cupboard. Sweet and Sour flavour...

Into the pan they went, I forgot to measure the amount of water, but just slooshed some in. After a few minutes I tasted the brew - oh my god, wtf is that? Chemical sensations linger on my tongue for a few moments and then fade, leaving merely a sticky, tacky, metallic one. I actually shudder at this point.

What can we add? What can we add? Ah! Here we are, soy sauce! Splash! And chilli sauce! Splash! Cook, cook, taste, shudder. Hmm, I know, some cheese, I like cheese. I imagine a thick, rich cheesy sauce with noodles in it. Chip chop! In the cheese goes. Cook, cook, taste, oh my god, it's bad, bad, bad. The cheese seems to have separated into thin yellow liquid and sticky solids... Not good.

Must thicken sauce up to make it into the delightful cheesy pleasure I imagined. In wades the cornflower. Not one to pussyfoot around, he adds himself liberally (after mixing in a little cold water of course! Ha, I've done that trick before) and we Cook, cook, taste, shudder.

Well, damn it, I've invested too much in this now. So I eat it. Every chemically, cheesy, thick mouthful of it.

I feel a little ill...

Thanks, Batchelors SuperNoodles, what a great lunch. (The SuperNoodle catchphrase is 'you are what you eat')

A knitted village... Words fail me.

A knitted village... Words fail me. - Posted from http://mobypicture.com

Nimba says hello

Nimba says hello - Posted from http://mobypicture.com

'the orphans' first gig, stonewell...

'the orphans' first gig, stonewell tavern, Lancaster. Great! - Posted from http://mobypicture.com

Odd dream

I had this dream the other night, most vivid for a long time. After mulling it over for a while I know what it means now. Do you?

I found myself in a world where something terrible had happened and I was surrounded by Zombies. They seemed to be everywhere and all the un-afflicted people would have to be constantly on guard in case of attack. It wasn't too difficult to defeat these Zombies though, a simple whack on the head with any suitable tool would do the trick. But you always had to be on your guard, lest you were bitten as you slept.

After some time living in this world, I found my way to a large group of people who were not Zombies and had a long-term plan for the future. As I chatted to them an enormous rat-like creature, larger than an elephant appeared; roaring and snarling, its huge teeth gnashing as it ran towards the group.

I grabbed a phaser-type gun from someone and opened fire. The creature was stopped, but seemed to take a long time to die. It fixed me in the eye and said, 'Don't kill me, I have something important to tell you.' But I didn't believe it, and fired on. 'Tell me quickly, so I can stop firing before you die.' I said. 'Ah,' it replied, in agony, 'it would take longer than that.' And died.

At this point two huge unearthly swords appeared shooting up into the sky, one red, one blue, stretching from the horizon to above our heads. A voice from everywhere at once boomed, 'By your act, you have chosen the to have your world ruled by men, not by gods.'

I realised then that the voice was from a race of alien-like creatures, who had caused the Zombies and the rat, and that this was all part of some vast plan, unknowable for now.

The blue sword fell from the sky towards us, it's fiery blade flashing.

As it hit us the everything changed and found myself in a new world. The Zombies were gone, and all around were people, going about their normal business. All was as it used to be, but the architecture was strange, the people odd.

I lived in this world for a while, until one day I was in a recreational building, watching a group of men drink beer and banter. A feeling of deja-vu came over me as I listened to them. I realised suddenly that I had heard this before, word-for-word, in a sitcom from a decade earlier. This was scripted, all these people were fakes, nothing was real, or as it seemed after all. This was still part of the aliens' plan.

I wandered outside and awoke.

Moby posting

- Posted from http://mobypicture.com

Jubilee tower at sunset

Jubilee tower at sunset - Posted from http://mobypicture.com