what a pavlova

Well yesterday was a bit of a to do.

On Thursday my new, snazzy phone decided to go tits up, so yesterday afternoon went back to the phone shop to get it replaced. Apparently though I was 8 days outside of the 28 days that orange arbitrarily set, so they wouldn't replace it. Well, at one point they said they would, but then changed their mind again. All of this, sadly, took 2.5 hours of waiting in phone queues and so forth.

All of this was going on whilst a ton of snow was falling outside. I normally completely disregard all of the hype and paranoia about snow, but yesterday the folly was very much on me.

Finally escaping the mobile phone shop with a non-working mobile, I found there were no working routes out of the city. I also found that my favourite pair of boots fail specatularly on two counts: non-leakability and stay-upability. So went to Stead and Simpson (the only shoe shop still open) to purchase a new pair of boots that passed both the previous tests. The bloke in the shop was ecstaticaly happy, he took so much money yesterday afternoon.

Actually, I did make a small purchase before I bought boots: two bottles of quite expensive wine (to compensate for dead phone. that'll show orange!)

I then went on a gentle stroll for about 3 miles past lots of stuck traffic, the occasional bus sliding backwards down a hill and so forth to impose myself on a work colleague. Had a very nice evening drinking quite a lot of wine and talking nonsense.

This morning, all the roads completely clear. A few cars around but nothing even half approaching the kinda-hoped-for post-apocalyptic scene. No cars of fire, very few zombies. Quite dissapointing.


I've had the battery out of the phone now for about 15 hours. Plugging back in: my phone now works perfectly. Obviously that's a good thing, but it does mean really that yesterday was COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY.


Still, gives me something to blog about and I do have a new pair of boots!

Nothing like a nice bit of culture

I'm sure there used to be something involving Pauline Quirke that involved culture being pronounced like there were at least 7 "H"s in it.

Anyhoo, went to the ballet last week (in fact exactly a week ago).
Had an away day to Plymouth to see Matthew Bourne's adaptation of Edward Scissorhands. Absolutely genius stuff.

Very much in his usual vein, not classical style in any shape or form. It took the story off into some new directions (some of which weren't really dealt with again) but it was brilliant. The Edward that we saw (he's played by two different people) was bloody brilliant. He had such a prescence, really worked the naive, slightly bewildered aspect of Edward. Very sweet, very funny.

I saw the performance with my sister. Part way through she confided that she was enjoying it but that she really wanted to see some more, proper 'dancing'. Turns out what she really wanted to see was a classically trained ballerina climaxing on a spin-dryer as she started laughing like unto a drain at this point (anyone ever seen a drain laugh???)

We decided to make a proper break of it and booked a hotel so that a) I could drink through the performance and b) didn't have to drive back that night.

The hotel was perfunctory but good. The only downer being the insane amount of air-freshner and bleach that they used; and I guess the breakfast.
After just dropping our bags off, which took about 10 minutes, I could already feel my throat closing over. Nice.
Breakfast was as good as you find in a lot of hotels the country over, namely: bacon, tinned tomato and a deep-fried soft meat tube.

Have decided that this whole 'not working' thing is something that I have to repeat more often throughout the year. Tying it in with some general culture, such as 'your good old theatre' could be very good as well.
Finally saw where Tanners' Restaurant is in Plymouth as well. Looked really good but didn't serve at theatre-friendly times, so we went to Cafe Rouge (effectively next door) instead which was very good. But I'd love to go back and try Tanners' at some point soon.

Anyway, that's enough of a ramble for now. Nothing to do with the best part of a bottle of pinot noir and the fact that i've just finished giving my adult ed classes until january. hurrah!

spooooooookkkkkeeeeeeeeee

Trying to avoid getting any work done today. Doing a damn fine job of it as well!

Just seen a trailer for a movie that could be rubbish, or it could be an excellent movie, very much in the same vein as Tremors. Got Nathan Fillion in it as well which usually bodes well.

Check it, if you would.

hat trick

and to really go nuts with posts this evening:

Recently bought a paperback version of eats, shoots and leaves by Lynne Truss.
I read this when it first came out many moons ago, but it was good to get it from Tesco for only 3.73.

What this has mean't, though, is that I am starting to use lots more punctuation than usual; in fact the most common over-use of punctuation now seems to be the semi-colon.

Lynne Truss was going on about no-one knowing about any of the punctuation marks; I think being slightly anal but also a programmer means that I'm more familiar than some with the various marks (given that they are used all through-out coding).
I do often have to explain to people when teaching them web-design exactly what is a colon, semi-colon and hyphen.

phones, everywhere

After many months of wanting to replace my ageing mobile phone that generally took several attempts to get it charged, I splashed out and bought a fancy motorola razr in black. Well the company bought it really, but that's another matter.

This weekend, turns out every man-dog and his son has exactly the same fricking phone. Not that I'm particuarly bothered about one-up-man-ship, but it would have been nice to wallow in the feeling of having an exclusive phone a smidgen longer. But no.

At least my ring tone is very good: the theme tune of green wing courtesy of James.
When my phone kept going off on the train home this evening (due to rather dodgy reception) I saw a couple of people smile, rather than the usual grimace that a ringing phone can induce.

Return'd tiumphant

Well I survived Reading then.
Got to see some of the 'nicer' parts through a 30 minute trek through some of the really nice bits of the city. Found out later that Oxford Road isn't _that_ bad. There hasn't been a shooting there for about 9 months; and that most of the drug dealers have been moved on so it's only the prostitutes who are left.

Nice meal though. And having been without a cat for a long time, re-discovered the joys of trying to sleep with a cat on your feet. It's amazing how often one tries to move through out the night, and this is never more keenly felt than when every move is met by a miaow.

Rather chuffed by the fact that, of the two cats there, the very timid one who doesn't like strangers and whigs out a bit with new people in the room, jogged across the lounge, jumped on to my lap and climbed up my chest so she could be scratched under the chin for 5 minutes.

Beautiful cats, brother and sister. Very long fur, tortoise-shell-ish, although the girl had quite a bit of ginger as well.

Got back this evening and, generally catching up on emails and trying to plan the next week suddenly had the realisation that a meeting i'm not looking forward to going to on Tuesday morning at 9am is actually _tomorrow_ at 9am. Still, guess it's better to work this out now rather than at some point tomorrow!

Off to see the wizard

Well not quite.
But I am going somewhere.

This is quite an occurrence for me, as usually I do nothing much at all. Ever.
Seems that no matter how long it is since I last saw someone, when we meet up and do the whole "what's been happening" thing, I've never really got anything to say.

Well not after this month baby!!

Sorry, bit carried away there.

I'm off in about an hour to go to Reading for the 30th birthday of a mate of mine from Uni.
Then next week I'm going to the ballet in Plymouth (a rather unlikely pairing of words there). Matthew Bourne's company is doing a version of Edward Scissorhands. My word.

Then next weekend hopefully a rather drunken luncheon in Truro (if we can get all the players together)

AND FINALLY just before Chrimbo going to London for a few days.

Being rather anal, I've ordered all of the train tickets and stuff on line.
They are now all pinned on my noticeboard in their envelopes. Makes it look like I have ever such an exciting life.



Though that should probably do it for a while. Need to have a lie down.

Tomorrow

Ah, there is always tomorrow!
Annie may have had bad hair and an inappropriate relationship with a bald man, but she knew what she was talking about when it came to the progression of days of the week.

Tomorrow i'm "doing a meal" for sas, james and jen (who really should be some sort of folk music line-up with that collection of names). I'm doing roast shoulder of pork, crispy roast potatoes and loads of veg, followed by a dessert that should be so rich even bill gates would get jealous( basically butter, chocolate and chestnuts - whipped). Should be very nice. And hopefully take my mind off there being far too much work for far too short a time and the fact that I don't seem to be able to do any of it. Not that it's hard, just that I don't seem to be able to just "do it". V frustrating. I think I need a month or two in a tuscan villa somewhere, eating delicacies and draining someones cellar (and that is not a euphemism).



Actually, I don't think Annie ever said any more than "i love ya" tomorrow; and it only being a day away (which isn't really quite true. At the time of writing it's only 4 minutes away so up yours annie). Still, i'm not going to re-write the post now.I can't even be bothered to go back and properly capitalise all of the 'I's that I've missed. Talk about louche.

I think that should be one of the morals sisters that we've long debated, Iz. Can you remember the rest? Slovenly Morals, Louche Morals; possibly Questionable Morals. All members of a country and western band, who possible also solve vampire related crimes along the way.

just a thought.

Well quite

Can't remember where I saw this now, but I saved it to my hard disk ages ago, and just found it on the desktop.

Rather makes you sad for the demise of the empire, or the type of ambassador who used to do more than mince about with a tray of ferrororororo rocher (hard word to know when to stop typing, like banana).