Mancunian Mopings

Rar, so that’s it, I have returned!

I’m back from Manchester, and am glad to be home, well kinda anyway – which in fairness is about as good as it usually gets at the moment hehe.

I am not enjoying the delights of gin this evening as I took my bottle over to the party on Friday and so have ran out. Well, I say that I’ve run out… I have another bottle of even stronger stuff that my Manchester colleagues gave me back in June when I moved – but I think I’ll save it for another night. I have, however, got Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (in C Major) on at the moment and have just cracked open a HUGE tin of Party Rings that I was given for Christmas! Yummy!

Yeah, so Manchester…. fun, but less so than the last time I went up (hence why Manchester Mopings – mopings is as in to mope, not to mop hehe!). Bit annoyed really too as a lot of the people who said they wanted to hook up for coffee and whatnot all bailed on me whilst I was up there. Grr at them, though yay as always for Danny F for keeping me entertained over both evenings (drink on Sunday, Film on Monday). Work laptop was a blessing as it kept me entertained during the frequent lonely spots (albeit at £10 for 24 hours – and NO not like that hehe); so thanks to anyone who made the effort to chat on MSN and other profile sites whilst I was away *hugs*

Stayed in the 4 star Thistle Hotel Manchester on Portland Street and I actually thought it was very nice and that the majority of staff were very helpful, despite the negative reviews that it seems to get on TripAdvisor. They couldn’t find my booking when I checked in, though they were quick to make the necessary changes to their system to accommodate me, and I found emailing their reception team to be very useful and efficient way of contacting them. Breakfast there was gorgeous! I had a full English for the first time in months!! (NB – I think some of you guys need to invite me round for breakfast some time and cook for me please!!).

Here’s some links to pictures of the hotel room (once I re-size the pics, I’ll re-post directly). Do please take time to note the telephone in the bathroom  (God only knows what that was there for!), the creepy note that was left on my pillow (!) and the ancient demon TV (It was switched on, hissing static and knew my name when I got into the room, despite the hotel not even knowing my name 2 minutes earlier – though it was incorrectly spelt hehe)

Thistle Manchester - Room

Thistle Manchester – Demon TV

Thistle Manchester – Creepy Card

Thistle Manchester – It’s the Bath-Phone!

Thistle Manchester – Complimentary Toiletries

Thistle Manchester – Room (softer lighting)

Work was work and managed to stress me out as always – my current workloads seem impossible in the time-frames given (in amongst other problems I have). I think I may try to talk to my manager this week to let her know how I’m feeling, as I was so exhausted after the other week that I nearly ended up at the doctors. It was nice to catch up with some of the Manchester folk I used to work with, especially Sheila and Ryan.

The one thing that made me giggle for quite a while whilst up there is shown in the below picture…..

Slippers of Doom!

No, I have no idea where the owner is, no I have no idea why they’re still in situ as if being worn and yes, I do strongly suspect The Dark Lord is to blame and is swiping Muggles again – oh noes!!! hehe.

The train back was uneventful and busy. Some weird man was sat next to me (and yes, he genuinely was weird… he was wearing leopard skin pants ffs! heh) and had no idea about the concept of personal space. That meant I couldn’t get my laptop or Attitude out, as he was looking over my shoulder the whole time and encroaching on my space with his personal effects. Both the tube and bus took ages to get me back home too.

So there you have it, my Manchester adventure. Not much to write home about as  a twist on the old saying goes, so figured I’d write it all down here so you lovely folk could read it instead P

Thanks for reading xx 

A Hazy Weekend

The time is currently 09:24 and I find myself sat on a train back home to Manchester. All that I can hear around me is the Mancunian accent; all that I can see are shabby looking students and unkempt old men. The smell of last night’s alcohol fuelled binging hangs in the carriage like a cheap hooker’s perfume the morning after the night before. Oh… the lady sat behind me may be the reason for that. This train certainly is Manchester bound!

However, don’t be confused dear reader, for it is out of affection for my hometown that I can confidently pick up on and knowingly expect all of it’s flaws, and in fact is part of the reason for my love-affair with all things northern/Mancunian which has shown itself since moving away in June of 2007 with the aspiration of setting up a better life for myself in London.This is only my second time back after leaving the city behind me, the last time was only two weeks ago. There is a sense of adventure about me, and despite the early hour, I am excited.

But I jump ahead of myself. How do I get from lesbians on the BBC to a train bound for Manchester? And did I have a fun time getting here? Of the latter, of course I did – I always do – and of the former, I will relay the tale back to you now. Have you a coffee, a nice biscuit and the soothing sounds of Macy Gray on in the background? You have? Then I shall begin… 

Friday was the last day of my holiday time for 2007-8 and was a day that I had been looking forward to for weeks. Tom had very kindly invited me to his house party and I was both nervous and excited. As some people may be aware, I am painfully shy at times, especially around new people, and this was the first house party invitation that I have ever accepted! I arrived early in order to help Tom get set up (I don’t think that I have ever seen as much pop in one place as in Tom’s fridge – what would the collective noun for all of that drink be and isn’t it a jolly good thing that nothing exploded?? That would have been disastrous and caused a crater about the size of the O2 Arena!)

We went up to the Tesco at Lewisham in order to pick up some tonic water (I know! How do you forget that you need tonic water? Pfft! Hehe) and I must say, it was an ‘interesting’ place. Outside the Tesco we encountered a gang of teenage mothers encircling their pushchair bound babies like a pack of rabid dogs. All of the girls were effing and jeffing loudly whilst smoking and covering the children in ash. There was so much nylon and polyester there that I’m surprised that that one spark from a lighter didn’t set the whole lot up! The assistant at Tesco was painfully moronic and took to smashing the bottles of alcohol that we were trying to buy against the security tag remover thing as heavily as she could, whilst managing to bark ‘ID’ and grumble about her break time to the checkout girl opposite at the same time. It was a relief to get back onto the DLR and to Tom’s to be honest! Lewisham clearly wasn’t made to be Gari-friendly.

On reflection, I think I managed to hold myself rather well at the party. I was fine at first when meeting a chap called Alan, and then Alex N, his Italian friend Valerio and Robin were the next to turn up, but I did get rather shy when other people started to arrive, and notably I ended up standing quietly by the kitchen, slowly taking the atmosphere in, until Tom came by in a whirlwind and literally threw me into the middle of the room and forced me to socialise. Best thing he could have done really, and I’m very glad that he did it as it made me get over the shy thing and hopefully made a few new friends through the course of the evening (my Facebook contact list has notably been expanded somewhat). I did end up drinking far too much (I even ended up on Singstar doing R.E.M’s Losing My Religion against Alan and I only missed out on winning by a couple of hundred points – I had like 3700 and he had 4100) and so I hope that I didn’t come across negatively to anybody. My sincere and humble apologies if I did! Mogwai and Scott arrived quite late in the evening and though I hadn’t really had chance to socialise with them much at previous social occasions, it was nice to see familiar faces and get to chat to people whom I don’t always get chance to keep up with. I can remember Scott showing me his iPod thing and I was VERY impressed with it. No, iPod thing is not a euphemism for a man’s doo-dah! P

I think Tom deserves a medal for his efforts at the party. He was the perfect host throughout and everyone that I’ve spoken to since has said what a wonderful time they had. He still seems to have a mountain of pop to get through and so I think we’ll be seeing a very bouncy, hyper-happy Tom for a number of weeks to come!!!On Saturday I didn’t end up getting out of bed until 3pm (so a nice 12 hour sleep – woo \o/) and instantly regretted doing so – the hangover was excruciating!! I mustn’t have been on the gin all night (we ran out of tonic) otherwise my head would have been fine, I’m sure hehe. I was introduced to the delights of Eddie Izzard once I’d managed to drag myself to the living room, and despite the hangover I even managed to giggle once or twice.  The Simpsons movie followed, as did Family Guy and X-Files. Watching QI was a lot of fun as always and I now come away desperate to find a copy of the soundtrack that I can download. We even treated ourselves to fish and chips (I did offer to cook!) which were fabulous, especially as they were so reasonably priced. In Muswell Hill you normally pay £5-8 for a good bit of fish, whereas in SE London you only seem to pay £3 max.

Waking up at 7:30 this morning for a 9:36 train was something of a chore. I was feeling all happy and snugly and so the last thing that I wanted to do was to get up and ready. Still, I managed to tear myself out of bed, introduce Tom to Millicent and Henry and hurriedly get ready in good time to be on the DLR to Lewisham; the 08:23 to London Bridge; the northern line to Euston; and park my bottom down onto the train where you currently find me.As I am on expenses, I ‘treated’ (note the loose terminology) myself to a Burger King breakfast thing – it was basically a whole English breakfast on a muffin! In the station, I was sat right next to Jamie and Violet from Coronation Street – I was quite star struck I must say hehe! I just sat there in subdued awe and may possibly have been drooling… I am not sure… it’s all a blur! P

So yes, I’m very excited about going back home to Manchester, despite the weird collective of people on my train, but to be frank, if I may, I’d much rather start this day over again, if only so that I could be all happy and still snuggled up in bed.

Thanks for reading xx

Dawn Goes Lesbian

Oh my giddy Aunt!

I have just watched something on BBC Three that has somewhat broken me!

Had a lovely night in with my housemate, Lauren, this evening. We went off to the chippy and then we sat in with the TV and ended up watching a programme called Dawn Goes Lesbian. From the title alone we knew that it was going to make crap TV, but it was the best of a bad lot, so, as you do, we thought “why not?” hehe! The synopsis is below…

Dawn Porter immerses herself in the world of `women only’ and investigates what it’s like to be a lesbian. She adheres to a set of strict rules including an enforced `man ban’ and throws herself into Soho’s gay scene, even taking a job at one of London’s busiest lesbian bars. Plus, Dawn speaks to experts on female sexuality, and a scientific probe measuring sexual responses throws up some surprising results.

The gist basically being that this Dawn woman wants to try being a lesbian for a month to see if she can do it and to see if it’s possible for her to renounce the need for a man etc.

Rather than see this as a serious programme, we could do nothing but giggle as it really was done in poor taste and at some points we were in hysterics! Key moments included…

• Watching Dawn put some vaginal proberer thing up her chuff that an old man gave her so that they could monitor sexual desire towards men, and then towards women. (Yes, the man was an older guy, quite portly, and seemed to specialise in vaginal pokings).
• Dawn tried to bag herself some fanny by heading on to GaydarGirls - the only image that the TV show gave us from this site was of some 50 year old woman stood butt naked on her balcony, with her shrivelled boobies forced through two circular holes in her iron-work fence! It was CLEARLY a very cold day. (I daren’t post it on a public blog, but do have the screen-cap if anyone wants it? LOL!) This was the moment in the documentary when I broke!! Lauren and I were rolling around on the floor for a good ten minutes hehe!
• They went to a “drag king” bar in Brighton and they asked one of the revellers there “what’s your cock made out of?”;  ”a lemon and a strawberry” came her serious reply hehe!
• Dawn also went into a “lesbian sex shop” and Lauren and I both spotted The Cone - VERY scary bit of kit hehe!

I also noticed that some of this show was filmed downstairs at Ku on a Ruby Tuesday so I was racking my memory quite rapidly to make sure that I hadn’t been there at the same time as any camera crews had been hehe.

On a serious note, I felt that this documentary/programme was flawed on so many levels. It seemed to be reducing the idea of ‘gay’ down to novelty entertainment, which I guess isn’t new in UK media, but at the end of it, Dawn renounced the whole thing as a waste of time, and was right back onto men the second she left the lesbian house-share that she’d been put up in for the month. Dawn at one point also commented on the style of clothing of her housemates saying “wow, you don’t dress at all like lesbians”.  Perhaps I’m being a little funny about all of this, but to me, it just didn’t sit right.

Apparently, and I’m surprised, this is a series and I’ve caught episode 2 of 4, and so god knows what the other episodes will be like – I for one won’t be catching any more of them. Tonight’s episode is on BBC iPlayer for anyone who fancies a giggle at Dawn and who doesn’t mind her stereotypical view points and general ditziness.

This reminded me of another programme which has a title that seems quite apt to mention having just endured what I have… “Fear of Fanny”!!! When it comes to talking about ladybits, I’m definitely glad to be a gay! hehe.

Thanks for reading xx

Lunar Eclipse – 03:01/03:59 21 Feb 2008

OK, so perhaps it’s time I let you guys in on a bit of a secret… deep down at heart I am a complete geek! What? Not a secret I hear you cry?! “PFFT” cries I in your general direction! P

So, as some of you may know, I was rather excited about the prospect of a lunar eclipse this morning. It’ll be the last one that’s visible from the United Kingdom until 2015 and they are classed as “rare” by experts. There was a partial eclipse last year that I can remember viewing from my balcony in Manchester, but I’ve never ever seen a full one.

There was a HUGE event set up for this on Facebook (over 1.5 million people invited, hundreds of wall posts per minute during totality) and it’s kinda awesome to see people posting opinions and pictures of it as it is happening. Right now, billions of people could potentially be looking up at the skies, united together under the image of the same blood-red moon etc (romanicised and flamboyant imagery that I’m drumming up, I know). A humbling notion, maybe; a cool ‘once in a lifetime’ spectacle, if you get the right view, definitely!

Typically, Muswell Hill has been a sea of mist and fog for the past two weeks. Seriously, it’s not lifted during this period! Unfortunately tonight is no different and so I’ve not been able to take any pictures, as although I have my new wonder-phone, it cannot perform miracles, though it does have a wonderful way of helping me control those little voices that sometimes pop into my head after a weird ringing noise hehe.

Therefore, for your viewing pleasure, here is a stock photo of a lunar eclipse. Lets all ‘oooo’ together shall we? ‘Oooooo’ )

Kinda glad that I didn’t arrange some kind of gathering for this event now or decide to plan a trip up to Hampstead observatory as one would presume the cloud and fog would have made it just as difficult to see properly.  The fleeting glimpses that I have managed to catch in between cloud breaks have been fabulous enough to satisfy my curiosity and make it worth staying up for, though here’s hoping that 2015 brings with it some clearer skies!

Thanks for reading xx

I was almost sucked off whilst on the tube!

Why do you stare at me with blatant open-mouthed disbelief? I speak the truth! Gits!

Last night I was riding the northern line down to drinks, and despite the carriage being deserted, I was perched on one of those little cushioned ledges next to the doors instead of sitting in steerage/cattle class.

Anyways, we get to Mornington Crescent, and some chap in his 20’s gets on, squeezes past me on my ledge, makes eye contact and then goes and sits down at the far end of the carriage.

The train pulls out of Mornington Crescent and starts to go full pelt down the dark tunnel to Euston as fast as it’s little wheel-things can carry it… and that’s when it happened… that’s when I nearly got sucked off!

All of a sudden, the emergency interconnecting door between the carriages flew open and this big vacuum of air enveloped me and I was left holding on for dear life to the nearest pole (no pun intended… this time! ) whilst we were hurtling through the tunnel at speeds in excess of 40mph, with all manner of filthy tube debris getting blown and kicked up at me, and there existed a genuine danger of me getting hurt. What was worse was that I couldn’t move to close the door as it was physically impossible, so I had to wait two minutes or so for us to fly round a corner so that the door slammed shut again! The guy in his 20’s was absolutely no use whatsoever!

Anyways, I just thought I’d blog this little misdemeanour as getting it down on e-paper has left me feeling very satisfied… and I’m sure that it’ll be only the dirty minded amongst you (read, most of you! ) who are left feeling fairly dissatisfied by my tale of almost being sucked off on the northern line hehe

Tonight’s post has been brought to you by the following songs; “Fergie – Big Girls Don’t Cry” and “Kelis ft. Cee-Lo – Lil Star”; the letter ‘J’ and the number ‘8′… *sings the Sesame Street Theme* :o)

“Geri Daves” and the Pink Pickled Onions

Hi-de-hi Campers

First off, lets start with the traditional mood setting; it’s just turned 18:40 on a lovely February Tuesday. Lutricia McNeill is singing “Stranded” to me (beautiful song) – and I have a gin and tonic in hand, which I’m sipping through a green straw, as I am off out for a few drinks once I’ve posted. The song has just switched to Bryan Adams, “Cloud Number 9″.

Today has been quite a fun day, I didn’t even get out of bed until midday as I had been planning on doing lunch with Tom, however I fell asleep at the keyboard last night and so we didn’t set anything in stone (this isn’t as bad as it sounds…. my PC is at the bottom of my bed, so I’m lying here typing things). Anyways, I was just gearing up to watch Skins – Series 2, Episode 2 when Tom called and scheduled in lunch after all. So I’ve yet to have chance to perv at Maxxie, though I fully intend on fulfilling this desire once I get back from drinks this evening D

Tom ended up being a little late for our rendez-vous and so I figured that I’d test out my new N95-2’s camera – and I am VERY VERY impressed at the quality of images that it’s producing. Here’s two samples that I took today with the camera on it’s best setting…

Trafalgar Square- 19th February 2008

View From Waterloo Bridge – 19th February 2008

My camera’s stats are as per below if anyone’s interested in engaging in a bit of geekery!

Resolution: 2582 x 1944 pixels, CMOS sensor, Mechanical shutter:1/1000 to 1/3s, Focal length: 5.6 mm, F-Stop/Aperture: f/2.8, Focus range: 10 cm to infinity, Auto Focus, Carl Zeiss Optics, Flash, Red-Eye Reduction

Once Mr Tom had been located, we went to Wahaca in Covent Garden; I had a steak and Tom had a pork dish – both done in a Mexican style. We were both very curious to see what pink pickled onions would look like, and I was very disappointed to find that they had already shredded them up for him and that he wasn’t going to have to chase them around his plate hehe. A very enjoyable and competitively priced lunch I felt; will definitely go there again.

We then went up to the hair salon that I usually go to so that I could stock up on hair product (at £19.00 a pop, it’s lucky I only need to do this every two months) and so that I could book a hair appointment for Thursday. That turned into a bit of a kerfuffle when it took them ten minutes to find me on their database (as always) – this time it seems that I was on there under “Geri Daves” – PFFT!!! We all had a good giggle about it, but they didn’t offer to correct it I note!! I have an appointment with a nice lady called Zena instead of my usual Stephanie… I say usual, last time I went she was also unavailable and I had a chap with a cool name – Tommy Wang!

Went for coffee at perhaps the quietest coffee shop in London – Costa Coffee in Covent Garden (not sure exactly which one) – but it was lovely and deserted in there! We were served by a giant of a man though, I swear I didn’t even come up to his nipples hehe!

Just back home now and have been tempted out for drinks, despite my best intentions. Don’t think I’ll be out too late, though I am sensing an opportunity to take some more photos with my camera, yay!

I’m hoping that the camera will work quite well for tomorrow night’s lunar eclipse as it would be awesome to get some good shots, especially living at the altitude that I do – always beneficial for this kinda stuff!

Anyways, away with me, for the gin is calling to me like a siren to the rocks.

Thanks for reading folks xx

Weekend 15 – 17 Feb 08

Crumbs, I can’t believe that it’s Monday afternoon already! I’ve been meaning to post, but simply haven’t had time – bah!

So currently, I’m off work for the week and I am making the most of it by still being in bed! Currently listening to Kylie – Wow (video below). Got my Last.Fm feed working on here last night which is fab, it wasn’t the coding that I had wanted, but it’ll do for the time being! Yes, I am sad and do listen to a very eclectic and strange variety of music hehe!

 

It’s been a bit of a confusing weekend as a few of my personal relationships with people whom I’ve known for a while have turned themselves on their head and I have no idea what people are expecting from me any more. I’m sure that time will tell, and all will become clear. Things have ultimately changed for the better I’m sure, but I am simply a little uncertain of how to act at the moment or what to think or do. Plan is to see how things develop and then take things as they come – open discussion being the most important thing )  Brett will be happy, as it means that I’ll probably take him for lunch or cake or a drink or similar in exchange for him lending me his ear (I am very partial to the right one, the left one is quite positively wonky…. but at least it’s not as bad as his left nipple, which I discovered lactates London Mild whilst at OctoberBASH 2007 hehe).

HURRAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I have my new mobile phone!!!! I think I mentioned, but I plumped for the Nokia N95 – 8GB.

           

The mean people at 3 Mobile wouldn’t believe that I was eligible to upgrade, so I had to force them to call their customer service team to get them to confirm it! Pfft! – how dare they try to turn away my business heh! In fairness, had I not been stuck with the diabolical LG U8330 then I may have just left it until May to upgrade and gotten myself a better deal, but desperate times, desperate measures!

A few people think I’ve been swizzed on my upgrade offer, especially as I paid £125 for the handset, but I disagree.

• I am still on my old price plan; 1000 SMS’s, 300 Minutes, 50 MMS, 50 Video Minutes, £5.00 download – £30 per month. (comparatively, a new customer has to spend £30 on 300 SMS/Call Minutes – i.e. a mix of the two! – and a silly video minute pack to get the phone for free… so I think that I’ve done well by getting the phone on my old tariff! No other network could match my plan.
• I have upgraded my contract 3 months early, and have received an offer directly from 3 and not from the 3 store – thus bartering or shopping around probably wouldn’t have gotten me a better deal, as I was in no position to be able to threaten to leave.
• The £125 I paid for the handset works out as £6.70 extra per month for the life of the contract (17/11/09) - part of the interest on just one of my savings accounts alone covers that, so there’s no real cost!
• I get free services such as Live Messenger, Skype, Nokia Maps/GPRS and eBay on my mobile, so I can now stay in bed and chat to folk on my N95! Plus the device can connect to any wi-fi network it has permission too – again at no extra cost!
• It has 8GB of internal storage – so it means that I can have porn on the move!! Yay! P  It also comes with the Spiderman 3 film fully loaded on it and TV output cables!
• It has an excellent quality camera, and so this saves me spending £100 on a new camera….. so the phone has kinda already paid for itself!
• Many other reasons that I can’t think of at the moment hehe!

Was a little short for time on Saturday, so I took the phone with me so that the friend I went out with could have a geek over the technology and so I ended up taking it to the cinema still in it’s box - but I still found time to ring the insurance people and get it insured the second I left the store hehe!!! I’ve learnt from the last time, and I never ever want to see that LG U8330 again hehe!! Cos I was nice and lovely to the rather nice sounding chap who does my insurance, he even offered to waive the policy excess that had come up when he tried to change my phone over – yayness! I’ve not yet had a proper play around with the phone and so may do a proper review at a later date. At the moment it’s like discovering an old friend again as the interface is very similar to my old N73, and thus far I am VERY impressed at what this phone has to offer!!

On Saturday I went to see the film “Jumper” which is being pushed quite heavily on the tube at the moment. Quite a good little film, wouldn’t necessarily say recommended, but it’s certainly watchable. Trailer…

The cinema (the Vue in North Finchley) was full of disruptive and unaccompanied children running about and throwing things etc and frankly they started to get very annoying – thankfully they behaved a little better once the film was on, however going to the cinema when there are children about (especially at half term) seems like a really bad idea!

I also popped down to The Yard (Rupert Street, Soho) for a few drinks with David R and Co. to celebrate his belated birthday – was fun to catch up with everyone – was a lil nervous as it was the first time I’d gone to a group thing on my own, but everyone made a lovely effort to include me in the raucousness, and I had a fab time, despite me not being able to go on to G-A-Y Late with them afterwards. Treated myself to a kebab on the way home from that Dinosaurus place (I know, I know… but I can’t remember it’s real name hehe) and was wowed to find that it was still piping hot when I got home (despite the 30 minute journey home in sub-Arctic temperatures) !! Cor!!

Sunday was a nice and relaxed day with not all that much to report about. Couldn’t sleep again last night though so ended up staying up until 6am – ouch! On Friday night I didn’t go to sleep at all…. surprisingly I was fine all day Saturday. Not sure how that works, but I’m not complaining!

Carlos kindly suggested I join him for tennis on Sunday morning, which I would have loved to have partaken in, as I’ve been saying for years that I want to take it up, but I couldn’t find any of my tight whites for playing in…. not the kind that are suitable for ball games anyway…. well…. hmmm, enough innuendo! At least nobody thought I was silly enough to believe that speedoes or similar were suitable attire for a game of tennis – I am almost dismayed that nobody suggested that now hehe!

Today has been fairly lazy, I didn’t wake up until 11am due to the late sleeping thing. Carlos has been teasing me as I told him that I was planning on getting some cleaning done today. (Tom suggested that I set up garidoesnudehousework4u.co.uk – to which I promptly suggested that he sets up tomroombashiswillynightly4u.ru as another cleaning orientated website – what do we think? Anyone game to host? hehe P). So Carlos thinks that I will leave all of this mess to be cleaned at the end of the week rather than today…. hmm….. I intend to make a decent start on it today but see no harm on spreading it through the week as there are things I need to go and buy – like a desk – and I need someone to give me a lift up to Ikea to get that…offers?? Plus I want to prove a point – to myself as much as Carlos heh.

And on that note, I am going to go pull on my marigolds and get cleaning! I should be at drinks on Tuesday so hopefully catch up with folk then if not during the week (still open to suggestions for fun things to do!)

Thanks for reading xx  

Random but largely enjoyable day

Tonight has been a rather random but largely enjoyable evening.  Very unexpected but very welcome.

Off to get my new phone in the morning – yay. Going to go to one of the 3 Stores in a nice area, such as Russell Square, in the hope that I get a better upgrade deal too heh.

Brought my work laptop home this evening; the bloody thing has been shocking me all day with static *cries* – it’s also a bit of a brick – not too bad width ways, but it’s depth is mighty! I will post a picture of it tomorrow )

Lunch  today was a departmental one and we ended up at Nandos, Soho for a few hours. I sat with my manager and the departmental boss and had a good ol’ chin-wag about anything and everything, though they seemed to focus mainly on my relationships, bless ‘em. I think it’s nice that people take an interest and they were clearly being genuine and looking out for me. There are far worse people you could work under than those two and I’m very pleased to have them as colleagues.

Managed to over-sleep again today (second time it’s happened in three days) but am very lucky that work are being so understanding  – I’m exhausted as have been staying back at the office until about 8-10pm each night as my workloads recently have been somewhat volumous. Fortunately I’ve managed to get everything done and can enjoy my week off, worry free – yay!

Anyways,  I am off to go and watch Torchwood (Skins season 2, episode 1 actually made me rather emotional the other night) and have a ponder. Mysteries and conversations under cloak and dagger are all very good for Scooby-Doo, but when you’re a confused and emotional northern boy they really don’t help matters further, especially when I keep on worrying my lil head over them in  the way that I do.

Night folks x

… and the world is set to rights again

Well, it looks like Valentine’s is nearly over, for me it most certainly is as I’m currently lying in bed, just out of a nice warm shower, with a gin in one hand, and chocolate in the other and bregrudgingly putting one or the other down momentarily to type these letter-words.

Feeling much better than I felt earlier on in the day, which is a relief. I think that feeling tired, emotional and being at work are a very unpleasant combination and I think that something happened earlier at just the wrong time, which opened the floodgates and was just the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak (I say that as last time I checked, I was not a camel… though I guess things could have changed…. *checks mirror*…. nope, I’m still a Gari-lad… sorry!).

I suppose that today has actually been quite sweet on reflection;  I walked up to Charing Cross / The Strand earlier on my lunch hour to finally pick up a 1st birthday card for my lovely nephew Elliot (who I’ve now nicknamed Elli-Tot – woo, yay me!!)  and all I could see were people being all lovey-dovey, people getting proposed to and hundreds and hundreds of people carrying roses or bouquets – all in all very sweet, very romantic and very much my kind of thing in the right circumstance. 

Got back from lunch to find I’d been sent a valentine’s e-card after all, which was rather unexpected and cheered me up quite a fair bit. Camp Gari surfaced this afternoon and so I had good fun making smutty valentine’s jokes and the like – I am usually in good company for this at work hehe. I even started drawing valentine’s stuff all over my reconciliation work… which wasn’t bestest hehe! Below is a sample of one of the doodles I ended up doing whilst waiting for my reports to run… I have no recollection of doing these, so when I finally called it a day and finished work just after 8pm I was like ‘oh sugar, when did I do all that, and why is it all over my back-up?’ hehe.

Decided to ditch Bridget Jones tonight, there’s such a thing as doing tragic too well and it’s not a catagory that I think I fit into… though it’s tragic that I have to say that and not anyone else…. oh noes, I’m tragic!! Next I’ll be calling myself daggy….. hmmm!

So yes, in retrospect, today has turned out to be an okay day which has had some nice high points, and just the one real low point – so a successful day in my opinion D 

Looking foward, I have Sunday and most of next week to fill still - does anyone fancy going for lunch on the Sunday or perhaps doing something during the week?? As Mrs Dolye would say….. “go on, go on, go on”!  

On final note, subscription numbers to my blog are looking good (sincere thanks to everyone who has subscribed!!), I just figured I’d plug the RSS / Email subscription feed a lil more to those of you who look on an ad hoc basis as there’s no harm in doing so hehe!

I am impresssed…. my whole post has now been written and there’s not a sign of any chocolate or gin having been dropped or spilt – yay! More gin to celebrate me thinks! \o/

Valentines Schmalentines

OK, so I see no shame in admitting that I am finding today very difficult – and no, not because of “the usual” reasons that everyone has on a day like today; but more because amongst other things it’s kinda making me think about a few things that I’ve been happily supressing having thoughts about and making me all confused.

I was dealing with everything as just a normal day until about an hour ago and then suddenly quite a few things happened around me, few random people text and emailed me and whatnot and I’ve ended up working myself up and getting a lil upset.

All terribly cryptic I know, but I don’t want to go into detail at the moment whilst I’m feeling a bit raw, as no doubt it wouldn’t be as coherent as I would hope. Someone said something to me the other day which at the time pleased me – apparantly I’m like a rhino (no rude jokes please!) – basically tough outgoing exterior hiding a squishy inside. I was pleased to see that the perception of me being a jolly and happy individual had embodied itself so well and was relieved to think that my insecurities didn’t shine through to much – I don’t like troubling people with my worries and so happy and cheerful works well for me in social environments. Perhaps this blog will permit me to display a bit more of myself than I am confident in doing in real life. We’ll see.

Meh, anyways, I will see how this afternoon works out and whether anything good comes from it or not.

But no, I don’t want any valentines sweets, no I don’t want to come to valentines drinks, and no crazy lady, I do not want to read the 4 cards that you’re currently showing off about.