The Sharpest Lives

So, there was a party in my block of flats last night, a proper BLOCK party at that. The occasion was Guy Fawkes day, there wasn't a bonfire but a shitload of fireworks and every single flat in the house (9 in total) had people over for a get-together. I'd only managed to get one of my friends down, but flatmate had a few local friends over, there was booze and food and even some poi spinning because that just seems to happen when I'm involved. Ended up crashing the downstairs neighbours party after midnight and proceeded to get quite drunk and stumble back into my own flat around 3am. I'm a tad hungover today, the second time this week which seeing that I don't really drink that often (which means if I do I get drunk really fucking fast) is a bit of a record.

I went to see The Fields Of The Nephilim on Wednesday with Kenneth. Now, I've tried being a goth for about 3 months when I was 15 and mainly because I had a crush on the token goth in my year. It wasn't a particularly successful endeavour because I'm generally a pretty happy person and while I do like wearing black, I'm useless at doing elaborate make-up and like my music hard and fast (that actually hasn't changed that much over the years). I encountered the Nephilim a few times in my gigging life, though, mainly a supports for bands I was following or at festivals. To cut it short, I only really know one song (Moonchild, a true goth marvel) but thought I'd tag along for good ol' times sake and to potentially laugh at some goths. It started out with a few drinks in the pub because we decided that we don't need to see the support act and went on with more drinks at the venue. By the time Nephilim came on I was just a little bit shitfaced and probably giggling way to much to pull off any remaining goth-ness, but seeing that we were on level 3 (I didn't even know it existed) of the Shepherd's Bush Empire that didn't matter too much. It actually was a pretty good gig, there were attempts at moshing which deserve kudos for dedication to the cause because the music is not really fast enough to pull off proper moshing and Nephilim were solid in terms of sound. What made it awesome was watching my friend, a closet Nephilim fan for most his life, get into the music. He was air-drumming! And singing along! I was impressed and seeing him so excited made me go all excited. It was really, really good.

Work the next wasn't all that great, I'm not used to being that kind of hung over but managed to pull through.

I'm now gearing up for THE USED and WARPED (very, very, very likely including THE USED) next weekend, which will be beyond awesome (I hope. I'm pretty certain it will be.)

Oh, and I've published a story again! The crazies are somewhat coming back, huzzah! Unfortunately it wasn't one of the ones on my WIP list, NO, I had to go adopt a stray bunny from a newly discovered community, but I wrote the shit in two days and I'm finally making progress with teh words in some of the WIPs now.

Did I mention I'm excited about next weekend? Did I?

IMGOINGTOSEETHEFUCKINGUSED!!!!!

Here, have a picture:

*squeeeeeee*

Catch! Up!

I've been living in my head quite a bit in the last few weeks. I usually have AWESOME ideas for blog posts when I'm in bed and trying to go to sleep, but they're usually gone in the morning. I probably should just write them down, I've got a writing pad near my bed in case a story hits me, because stories are way more annoying than ideas and thoughts and THEY DON'T GO AWAY until I write them down. Hasn't happened for a while, unfortunately, but it could any minute which is why I also lug a writing pad around in my backpack when I'm on the train because rolling a story around in your head for an hour is really exhausting.

But I think a catch up is in order, because I've actually done stuff in the last few weeks that was pretty cool.

Like going to the Hide & Seek Weekender in the Royal Festival Hall. I've tried to drag friends along but they were their usual flaky selves, so I just went on my own. I unintentionally arrived when they had just started, so I got to take advantage of not having to battle to get into a game. Played Killer Queen, which was a lot like capture the flag but not, with food (balls), swords (for sending people back to their base), a bomb (which you could use to blow up your opponents base) and a queen (with 3 crowns, aka 3 lives). It was awesome and a pretty good workout as it involved frantic running around to grab food, kill people and drag that bloody bomb along. I then waited around for half an hour, catching my breath, and got to play Alien Encounter where I was a monster looking for food and trying not to get killed by the agents. Also got to play Searchlight, which was totally rad. I didn't get to punch the custard (was just what it said on the tin) because there was a queue and I was hungry. So, yeah, really good afternoon, although I've got the feeling that the Hide & Seek guys are going to go back to doing evenings as they were slightly pissed off about all the parents dumping their children at the games.

Then there was Beardyman, who done a gig at the Koko last Saturday. I was a bit surprised to see it went from 9pm to 3am, because that's a fucking awkward time frame for a gig, but bought a ticket anyway and then proceeded to try and convinced people to come along. Managed to talk my flatmate into it (by showing her loads of Beardyman stuff on youtube) and we rocked up at Koko at 10pm. It was no re-entry, which is always a bit shit, and it was even worse when we saw the running order. For reasons unknown to mankind, Beardyman was on last at 1.30am. He had 2 DJs and one DJ crew supporting, which could have been fun but wasn't really because they weren't all that great. But, hey, my flatmate was buying me drinks and there were guys to look at (even though I didn't want to take any of them home) and Beardyman was actually pretty cool. Judging by his facebook page some people were annoyed that he didn't do more beatboxing and/or stand up, but it was a club gig and he usually does sounds & looping stuff when he does those, so I was pretty ok with what surfaced. Could've done with it not going all that late because by the end I was somewhat tired (and a bit tipsy, I'm a total lightweight). Flatmate fell asleep on me on the nightbus, but all in all it wasn't too bad getting home (1 hour and 2 busses, which is pretty good for London standards).

I also caught up with Cherelle and got the latest on her new boyfriend. Haven't met him yet, but will next weekend. The boy might be useful and Cherelle is happy and all is good.

Last night I went to South Bank for a friend's birthday. He doesn't run with my usual crowd, so I got to chat with loads of people I don't hang out with that often which was cool. We went for dinner at Ping Pong and I can confirm that I still don't particularly like dim sum. I just don't see the point of sticky dumplings that aren't seasoned well enough. Give me sushi any time, but drop the fucking dumpling.

Coming up is a Burning Man planning session (second attempt) and a long weekend without the flatmate. I've got Friday off because I had to use the day or lose it (I'm NOT losing any holiday, fuck no) but no plans. I'm sure I'll find something to keep me occupied, tho. I always do.