The short version

I went to Nodnol, to meet up with Bryn, visit Smill, meet up with Soppygit, see Screaming Banshee Aircrew, Scary Bitches and The Ghost Of Lemora, and attend Slimelight.

Bryn and Alex met for the first time. They seemed to get along ok.
Smill and Soppygit also met for the first time. They got along brilliantly.
All three bands were fantastic.
I saw loads of people I haven't seen for ages.
I had a good time.

Work has been better recently. I've been busier, which I prefer, and I got to talk to a woman with the most byutiful Scorttish accent on the phone today!


The stupidly long version, for the over-enthusiastic students of Zed's existence and the bored

Friday

Dreamed I was taking an exam and hadn't done any revision for it. Could my subconscious please acknowledge that I never have to take an exam again if I don't want to? I probably will anyway, since I'm a masochist fond of supervised learning, but that's neither definite nor probably happening until I'm able to afford a mortgage and a regular supply of metal CDs, while in full-time education: i.e. once I'm stupidly rich, a situation I don't see myself landing in any time soon.

Our customers have been particularly pikey today. If you place an order for over £150, you get free delivery, and three out of the first four orders I looked at were for 150 pounds something.

No brilliantly named customers (although canadanne might be interested to know that I took an order over the phone from what I believe was her old school), but I read Terrorizer on the train down to Nodnol, and there was a band called Silent Scythe mentioned! ("As opposed to scythes that can't shut up, presumably," quoth the reviewer.)

All day, I've had poems I've written for Bryn over the years going round in my head, yet it took hours before it hit me that it's his birthday tomorrow: ergo, I have to write another one. The weakest of my compositions yet, I shall still reproduce it here for posterity:

Oh angst and pain and suffering, oh agony and sorrow!
I have to write a poem, as you turn twenty five tomorrow!
What fresh abuse can I bestow upon my favourite geen?
I would enlist fair Ibid's help, but that might get obscene.

I would say that you're getting old, but that dig is so tired.
I'd start on about your driving*, but that would be uninspired.
I'd mock your lack of girlfriend, but I'm somewhat glad of that.
And I would need much more arsenal, just to call you a right prat.

The trouble is that I haven't heard much from you of late
So if you're hoping for a decent poem, you're going to have to wait.
I'd promise one for next year, but by then you might be dead:
Of old age, boredom or foolfacedness. For now, happy birthday! Zed.

* Despite him taking his most recent test on 28th September, exactly four years after we got together (sort of), he didn't get lucky that day this year.

Naturally, I wrote out a meticulous copy on the train, and promptly left it (and Terrorizer) on board (and then automatically spent two pounds on a zone 1 ticket, only to realise I needed to go to zone 3). Still, when I got to Smill's, she gave me some funchie paper for me to rewrite it on, of which Bryn ended up approving.

Smill, for the record, was one of my closest friends at school. She graduated last summer (with similar angst to mine - she got 68% and her coursemates with 69% earned first class honours) and is now working for a large engineering firm. She's living in a large flat that her parents own but don't inhabit (all right for some!) I've stayed there twice before - once in 1999, when Twi came to Nodnol, and once in 2000 to escape from Cumbria.

Speaking of which, argh, I can't wait until I can leave! I've agreed to work for my parents' shop for a year, but I've been doing as much overtime as possible, so my days' work are covered sooner.

No, honestly, I do like Cumbria in some ways. When the sun's out, it's so pretty and comfortable, somehow, and when it's grey, I appreciate its empty wildness. But - quite apart from the fact that it feels so limited - the library's only open for about two hours a week and even when in my most normal attire, people look at me as though I'm an alien - it's too flipping far from everywhere! I can't attend 90% of the gigs I'd like to go to, and those I can get to require me to take the flipping train. Trains to London can be cheap enough (this trip's only costing £20), but arrrrgh, sitting on one for four hours straight? Half way through my outward journey, I was in excrutiating agony. As for other places? I tried to book a ticket to the three-times-as-near Edinburgh before I left (where Ibid's currently doing a Masters course), and was told it would cost more. Gaaaah.

Saturday

Didn't get much sleep, as me and Smill can talk for hours altogether too readily. Headed for my normal "meeting people in London" place (the cafe of Borders books on Oxford Street). Got there far too early, so I looked around, and Day Of Many Magazines commenced. I've been looking for the latest issue of Classic Rock a lot, as I'm still suffering from mild Guns N' Roses obsession and it has Velvet Revolver on the front, but I couldn't find it in Brampton or Carlisle station. But, in my quest for it, I stumbled across a tempting issue of Power Play, and later on, I ran into Mike and Nadine of Kaleidoscope magazine (rhyme!), and agreed to buy that too. Annoying, really, because all these magazines do is tell me about funchie music I can't (sensibly) afford to check out (given the uncertainty of my future but the likely need for savings).

Bryn gave me *my* birthday present (A Series Of Unfortunate Events #10). (His is a Cardiacs ticket for when we see them.) We wandered around the Oxford Street / Leicester Square area. Problem #2347023 With Mine And Bryn's (Now Former) Relationship: having spent far too long in one, and rather too much time being dragged around others to check out the competition, I hate musical instruments shops. Bryn, being male and into rock, loves them, and as it was his birthday, I had to let him wander. But I have to admit the basement of Virgin on Oxford Street is utterly amazing. It's huuuge and wonderfully rockin' (though I can't say "my" shop's in any way worse, because our clientele contains large proportion of old posh people and so has to look different).

An Asian girl asked to take a photo of us! Yay! Much as I hate being photographed by friends, I love being a tourist attraction / art project!

Beeping gothics that we are, we then went round Camden, then went to the cinema to see "Layer Cake". Good stuff: like Lock Stock, in as much as it was a complicated British gangster film, but what it lacked in humour, it more than made up for in terms of surprises and depth (there was an unusual amount of mental anguish).

After that, we went to the launch party / concert of The Ghost Of Lemora, Scary Bitches and Screaming Banshee Aircrew. Oddly, it cost us more to go to the cinema than to get in. Got to see loads of York goths for the first time in ages and Kent goths for the first time in even more ages. Sweeeet.

SBA looked fantastic, strutted about the stage like they played gigs this big every day, and introduced a fair bit of new material which I very much enjoyed. Everyone was saying that the sound was horrible, but I couldn't tell and it was probably my favourite performance of theirs I've been to. If they are not destined for greatness, then there is something much more deeply wrong with the world than I ever suspected.

As I'm only a part-time goth these days, I'd never wittingly heard Scary Bitches before, but they were totally mint! They looked ridiculous and great and sang, among other things, about the vampire that killed Jack The Ripper, "birds and bees" talks, double glazing salespeople, and what we can only suppose goes on in the heads of those scary trendy people who tell you "I used to be a goth!" Again, there were more complaints about the sound, but I didn't notice.

I'm sure The Ghost Of Lemora were good - Bryn thought they were the best band of the evening and we're nearly always in agreement about these things, but they sadly struck me as being a bit dull compared to the first two acts. I'd go and see them again though (if they were playing slightly more locally than London, anyway! My bottom won't stand for train trips any more regularly than those I'm already subjecting it to.)

Afterwards, me, Alex and Bryn went to the Devonshire Arms for what was supposed to be afterparty, but was really just a night dans le pub. More to the point, the pub was full, and when we left after a few minutes, we found SBA queueing to get in!

We then went to Slimelight. Twas Alex's first time; I warned him the toilets were unisex, and when he emerged, he said, "They were far more sex than uni!", a comment that sums up the Slimelight atmosphere pretty well.

The early part of the night was pretty good, but they didn't play much I knew for the last few hours and I got a bit fed up. The music wasn't stunning enough to simply be good to discover, and to a large extent, I've gone off dancing to goth music: with a few tracks, as with metal, it's just about the music and simply having to do something with the joy and energy it fills me with. But most of the time, I find myself focussing too much on how I'm dancing, which feels really pretentious, or zoning out and so realising I'd be better off somewhere else. The eyecandy wasn't at its usual level (well, at least, not the level I'm used to - I haven't been since March last year), and as for getting drunk, beep no. I haven't had a decent's night sleep for far too long, and was feeling really tired, dizzy and headachy as twas (and indeed had to "sleep" a bit (which is really just hallucinating, and so is disturbing but somewhat restful)). And meeting new people? I'm not good with smalltalk anyway, but especially not when I'm tired, freaked out, can barely hear a thing, and will probably a) barely see these people again and b) not have a great deal in common with them.

Ah well. It could have been worse. It could have been a normal nightclub. At least I got to attempt to mentally draw 3D love polygons of all the dodgy goths. And Bryn and Alex seemed to get on ok, and Bryn, at any rate, was left with a good impression of Alex.

Sunday

Post-Slime, me and Bryn went back to Smill's to sleep for a couple of hours. Weirdly, when those hours were up, I felt better than I had the previous evening, and continued to do so for the rest of the day. We chatted for a bit; then Bryn left and I accompanied Smill on some errands. She lives in a truly multi-cultural area and it's funchie! We went to the library and half the books were in Punjabi!

Int evening, we returned to the city centre and met up with Soppygit (close friend from Kent, who also graduated last summer, and is now living with her parents in Walton-on-Thames (just south of Nodnol), working in personnel). We went for coffee, a meal and dessert. (As when we asked if we could have the dessert menu in the restaurant - which definitely had one - they said no! Geens!)

In spite of there never having been any impure thoughts involved in the Smill - Zed - Soppygit triangle (except for that one time me and Smill- nah, only joking!), I was more worried about introducing these two than I was Bryn and Alex. When I first met Soppygit, I was struck by their similarities, but as I've got to know both of them better, I've realised they're polar opposites in several ways. But Soppygit wanted to meet Smill, and Smill was also keen on the idea, so I went along with it, and they got along brilliantly, to the point where I could have wandered off and I don't suppose they'd even have noticed. (Not to say I felt left out, just that the third side of the triangle grew seamlessly and almost at once.) Yay!

Not for nothing do I call her Soppygit though! Me and Smill never talked about men when we were at school, as she didn't fancy anyone and I wished I didn't, but in the five years since we've left, despite me getting into my first long-term relationship and her entering hers almost as soon as mine dissolved, I can only remember the subject coming up once. Put Soppygit into the equation, and once the conversation turns to men, we can't talk about anything else for three hours straight, even after Soppygit goes home. Argh. I mean, it was fun, but I shall not turn into a typical twentysomething! If we three should meet again, I'm bringing Ibid, to keep the cynicism high and the conversation on higher matters, such as the meaning of life and the joy of bubble wrap.

I also watched a bit of TV with Smill, beforehand and afterwards. I never watch TV - I honestly haven't seen a minute of it since I got home (unless you count a bit of the "Filthy Rich And Catflap" DVD Noj bought me for my birthday) - but it really doesn't seem like I'm missing much. Why the hemp does Channel 4 give its valuable hours to tripe like "The OC", a program that seems to solely revolve around rich Americans having sex and going to exclusive parties and using the cheesiest dialogue ever? And we care why? And then we watched "Monarch Of The Glen", which seems to revolve solely around rich Scottish people having sex and moaning about where they live? While not quite as risible as the former, I couldn't bring myself to care about any of the characters. After nineteen years of fiction writing, I still can't say how a writer makes an audience do that, but I still think it's necessary!

Monday

Headed home. While I was in Melbourne, enjoying big city life, I was toying with the idea of moving one day moving to London, but I've since gone off the idea, and this did nothing to change my mind. It takes ages to get around; I had to get the Working People tube, which became increasingly horrible (until we reached Stockwell and a lot of people changed - tube, that is, not clothes - that would be scary); and the black snot of odd consistency just wouldn't go away.

Zed: Can I move to Melbourne? Like, for five or ten years or so? Please?

Immigration Website: Do you want to start a successful business there? Do you have the sk1llz Australian needs?

Zed: No.

Immigration Website: Sod off, then.

Zed: GAH!

Anyone in Melbourne want to marry me? That might help!

Ah well, I've got a back up plan now, that will still allow me to spend a while in Australia. I'm just going to have to earn about fifteen thousand pounds in the next year, on top of my wages, through writing and my new brilliant not-secret-but-I-won't-tell-everyone-in-case-it's-a-total-failure career! I've got my work cut out then.

When I got back, I went to work. It's been slightly better of late. It's not one of those jobs where you have an hour of actual tasks to do per day, and spend the rest of it furtively messing around on the Internet; I'm expected to work constantly, but for my first few weeks there wasn't much for me to do, so there was a lot of waiting / doing vaguely pointless bumph, which I hate. But one of the employees is off, my uncle's been bemoaning his workload, and the warehouse manager's just left without notice, so it's been all go.

School of the day: Smill's old school, who sent a payment. And they probably do that as frequently as I see Smill (i.e. twice a year!)