Ride the spiral

So today I had a pretty shite day at work. I had to spend the morning taking several trains to whoop whoop to get a national insurance number which is this tedious thing you must acquire to avoid maximum tax blah blah blah. Anyhoo I get to work and lame lame boring boring but the story goes, I'm disgruntled, Liz messages me and says "hey lets go to an acoustic & poetry night". I'm thinking no, I'd rather go home and get drunk and watch tv. Anyway McGee convinces me very quickly that we should go out, it's Wednesday and all, no point letting a mundane job get me down. So I'm up for it at this stage. I get to Brixton by tube, it's packed with people wearing Tool t-shirts. Now I'm well aware that Tool are playing today. I know this because I tried to buy a ticket over a month ago, but it was sold out, both shows. I get to the station and wait for my friends, feeling more and more horrible as I sit on the steps watching more people with Tool shirts walk towards Brixton Academy. Sucks but I couldn't get a ticket and I can't afford it. A scalper comes up to me, I ask him out of curiousity as he quotes outrageous prices for tickets. I've dealt with the fact that I ain't seeing Tool this time round. Anyway Jezz gets there and asks why I'm looking upset.
Me: Yeah I'm sorta upset watching all these people going to see Tool. Because I can't go.
Jezz: Oh right. So you wanna see Tool?
Me: Yes but we can't afford it at those k-razy prices my friend.
Jezz: How bout you do 15 minutes of camera work and not only do we get to see Tool but we get VIP passes?
Me: ......

After lots of man-hugging we go to the awesome Brixton Academy, probably the most classy venue I've ever seen and we do 15 minutes work of video-ing the support band. Then we go to the vip area complete with private bar and awesome view of the stage. Also, Kelly Osbourne is there.

Tool were wicked, best time I've seen them. They played Wings for Marie + 10 000 days. Totally bitchin'. Friends huh?

Pictures tomorrow probably! (PS Matt and Brendan expect a present in the mail, weathered by the London weather I had to power through while carrying said presents).

House hunting continues...

DJ who?

I was looking through my phone-happy-snaps and found some pictures I don't remember taking at Lovebox. Anyway, this is DJ Bumper Car. He as DJing while operating the bumper car rides and aparently I walked up and took a photo of him as he leaned out of his booth/vip club room momentarily. He was operating the ride, crankin' the music and talking to the patrons. He was playing this awesome set of late 80s & early 90s hits. Everyone who initially knocked his abilities ended up groovin' to the tunes. Well done DJ Bumper car. When success rams into you, slide awkwardly backwards and slam on the accelerator.

Nothing much

24. Fuck it.

I'm turning 24 and I'm realising that I miss my friends a lot, so to make myself feel better and acknowledge my aging I'm going to list the things my favourite people have said to me that I think about on a daily basis, that makes me chuckle. Ode to my friends. Here we go.

"So you need to decorate this one with the stickers because it's your guitar in spirit" - Matt
"You know what could be really funny, if I was a good actor and I did it like this" - Tom
"Nah how about this - fuck you buddy I want to be the splinter" - Brendan
"I don't want to throw it away because you know.. it's always there for me.. it's reliable old beige shirt" - Dava
"You and Barbera are always you know doing what you do.. policing" - Jeremy
"Well if we're not going to sleep, then we might as well keep drinking, I'm going to make a drink right now who wants one?" - Sarah
"Oi I've played this game a million times and I've never seen this level before hey no shit" - Baker
"Do you guys need Powerade? Because I've just put a whole bunch back in the fridge. Seriously if you need Powerade guys, they're in the fridge. Cold." - Maynard
"That noise is the most beautiful thing I've heard in the whole world" - Pete
"I'm gonna get so drunk, get in at least 3 fights" - Brant
"Nah Davs I'm not cool with that aye" - Amy
"Hey lady what's your name?... Yeah you're not on the list. Get out" - Liz
"Damn it Nook, don't pretend you don't know what I'm here for" - Emma
"It was a disaster" - Clare

Sweet delicious beer

Due to an 'incident' of some kind, my journey to work was severely delayed because a major station had to be shut down. 'Incidents' cover everything from bag left somewhere to guy jumped on tracks to there's some leaves on the tracks. Anyway this allowed me to get further acquainted with Meteos; my current favourite game on the DS. It's seriously decent portable puzzle action, I highly recommend it. Like reverse Tetris. In space.

I'm taking a long weekend to celebrate my continual existance and it begins tomorrow down at the pub. Saturday will feature a visit to the Great British Beer Festival. The £5 admission fee gets you a stein which you take around Earl's Court sampling the approximate 2500 beers. It's things like these that make me miss my drinking team. It'll be like Spring in The Valley except with beer! And hopefully without the making-out-in-toilet displays. It's probably going to have that and worse. Still, 2500 beers and 'beer-related-food'.

My awesome cousins are throwing me a house party that evening which will feature pizza, cards and more beer. Followed by two days of recovery. It'll be odd not celebrating a birthday with friends and family, you'll all be missed so have a drink for me.

Slow news week

It's okay mum, I'm not dead. I've been working a fair bit and McGee and I have been looking at a bunch of rental houses with our housemates-to-be Liz and Jezz. That process is pretty much how you'd expect it to be except compared to back home, there's actually heaps of places to look at. Loads. We're trying to meet up after work every day and see a place, and it's going well. There's lots of flooding happening, lots and lots of houses are now underwater like those decorations you can get for aquariums that I've always wanted to have. Maybe the fish might go inside it and I could say "hah, just like people do" but we never got one. I haven't actually seen any of this crazy weather though, apart from in the papers. It is really bright and sunny here in London. Every day. A little humid too. Great pint-of-beer weather though. It gets sunny at around 5am and starts to get dark close to 10pm. I'm finding it a bit difficult to decide when to call it a night. It seems too early to go to bed an hour after it's gotten dark.

Wish I could get the pictures from Lovebox but Liz and cousin Tash still haven't sent them. So instead, here's some visual documentation of a lazy weekend. Hope everyone at home is doing just awesome, miss you loads.

[Click here for photos]