Ok, just like Faith No More, I care a lot. Still, some force seems to be driving the state of the world and the state of my life in opposite directions.
I went to York at the right time. When I left work on Friday afternoon, I was thinking, "The puddles don't usually get this deep." The next thing I heard, Carlisle (the nearest city) was under TWENTY FEET of water! When I got home this evening, having been collected from a train station thirty miles away, we had no electricity. Luckily, it's back now, since my psychic updating powers haven't been working lately, and spending half an hour being forced to listen to Radio Cumbria (through lack of anything else to do), was torture enough. But honestly. Melting roads, tsunami, locusts and now this. The end is nigh!
I had a pleasant weekend in York nonetheless. I was a bit wary as to how it would turn out, on the grounds that:
a) I was staying in Alex's spare room.
b) Alex is Rather Fond of me.
c) Fond as I am of him, Not Like That*.
d) He was at Slimelight while Stuff Was Happening.
e) He claimed to be Rather Angstful with regard to this.
* Despite popular opinion. All weekend, people kept assuming we were a couple. If my hearing serves me correctly (which is doubtful), Vicky said it was because we looked alike. ??? Apart from the similarities only going as far as us both being young, white and black-wearing, since when do couples look like each other? Me and Bryn did actually look like a two-headed monster for a while, but then people took us to be brother and sister.
Nonetheless, it was all fine, from my point of view anyway. We spent Friday night getting wasted to point of "be still, my inanimate objects!" Despite my renouncement of alcohol, it seems to be turning into a bit of a lush year by my normally-teetotal standards - I've been in seven drinking establishments and drinking in three of them.
On Saturday, we went shopping, which was in all ways a success, apart from Noctule, the goth shop, being closed as it always is when I visit York. Not to do it down - it's a great place - but I'd like it better if I got to go inside occasionally. But:
a) I acquired that trip's quotient of black jelly bracelets.
b) I got Fair Trade Fudge.
c) We didn't spend a ridiculous amount on CDs like we did last time we went shopping - I got the latest Red Harvest album and that was it.
d) I had a pleasant conversation with the bloke in the metal shop, who offered me guidance through the confusing world of old skool black metaaaaaaal! (Which I spent my train journeys reading a book about. I was delighted to learn Burzum means "The Darkness".)
e) We went into the new goth shop. Because it was all empty and silent and we were being watched and we weren't going to buy anything, I politely asked the assistants how business was and we ended up talking for about half an hour, getting onto topics like fish food being made of fish. (I know! I've kept tropical fish for ten years, and got flakes everywhere, and to find out a few weeks ago that they're not just called fish flakes because you feed them to fish - that really messed me up.)
We round to my former classmate Penny's house for a few hours, where she entertained us with tales of her boiler-obsessed Dad and similar. Int evening, we went to the goth night, which was a bit quiet, but livened up on the appearance of Fraggle, on account of him wearing rollerblades, while looking even more cyber and insane (in a very good way) than usual.
Today we met up with Wendy and saw "House Of Flying Daggers" at the cinema. Despite being overly soppy in places, it was brilliant. I love ridiculously choreographed fight-scenes anyway, especially when it's a woman doing the ass-kicking, but an ultra-demure-looking Chinese one? Excellent. Further, it had brilliant set-pieces, beautiful cinematography (as someone who's tried to make films myself, I have no idea how they did a lot of it), great costumes, a nifty story, and it kept you thinking, as you could never decide who to sympathise with. Highly recommended.
So yes, I'm still very happy with 2005, even though it looks set to end with plagues and famines and all sorts (the mingin' liquorice variety) in the next week or so. I've even just gained five completely unrelated livejournal fiends in the last nine hours, and two fiends who've been missing in action for months have posted again this weekend. Bring it on.
Monday 10 January 2005
No electrical lights at work, but enough daylight that skiving wasn't an option. Blarg.
Why exactly did I allow myself to move down south? Living up here, my gig-going was limited to weekends. Now there's nothing stopping me from going to ALL the metal gigs in London. So all of a sudden, I have tickets to see Napalm Death, Arcturus & Enslaved & Red Harvest & then some, Megadeth, Nightwish, Kreator, DRAGONFORCE!, The Haunted and Nile, and a bank balance of Oops.
Online friend Sarah Yoj sent me an e-mail a few days ago asking why I left Cambridge University (which I did over five years ago). I answered it this eve, and then about half an hour later, I got a phonecall from a random second year Law student at Cambridge asking the same question.
