The One-Day Weekend.

Wow, it's really been a long time since I've done written anything dagnabbit. I'd love to use the excuse that I've been busy in the weeks since my birthday, and that would be vaguely true, but I've also been very lazy. Very lazy.

Also, there's been very little to write about. Not much has been going on, apart from the usual wok-eat-sleep-gasp at council tax-sleep routine, plus I've been broker than a clay hammer so I've had to curtail any form of crazy lifestyle and keep to a pretty strict budget.

I have been doing a bit of writing though. Not blogging really, but something that I've been chipping away at for a while. My little moleskine has taken a battering and I've got reams of poorly handwritten Irish notes to wade through, but I think I'm quite near to beginning. I've just got to stop myself from either procrastinating or getting evicted too much, and I should be good to go.

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So I was up visiting my friend Bunny on Friday. He's one of my buddys from home and I managed to get him a job at the office I work at, so we've been hanging out more and more. We were up in his flat, drinking very cheap beer, when someone suggested we go on Chat Roulette.
Now, there were about 6 of us there, just chilling out and watching TV, and the last thing I expected to see was a lot of cocks.

We saw a lot of cocks. And naked women. And groups of naked people.

It was a bit weird. Essentially the most action I've got on a recent Friday night is seeing a bunch of perverts jerking off down the blagonet to a group of surprised (and sorta horrified) non-perverts. Good times.



Then, yesterday I went on a date. Yes, a date with a female woman. From Australia.

I had asked her out before my birthday, and we had planned to go out that weekend (to the zoo...) but both ended up ditching the other. It wasn't on purpose, just a load of crossed wires, but I thought I had been stood up, and so did she.

So, on St. Patrick's day (St. Paddy's NOT 'St. Patty's') when I went to have my customary pint of Guinness and she served me, we shouted at each other for a few minutes, then agreed it was quite funny, and arranged to meet up.

We had dinner last week, both got very drunk (hangover at work FTW!) and arranged to make up for our lack of a zoo visit by going to the park. A less-expensive and probably less mental place to take a young lady.

So yesterday, we went to Hyde Park and walked about. I've only been there a few times before, but it's a really cool place, and we spent about 2 hours coming up with the latest new cop show that'll sweep the nation. It's called Davis and Spinner, and has a blaring jazz soundtrack. The first episode is going to be called 'The Jazz-Pasta Conspiracy" but I can say no more.

We ended up in the park by accident, as we were supposed to go to Hampstead Heath instead, and ended up soaked to the skin when the heaviest rain EVER attacked us.

I'm Irish, so walking through mental rain is a bit of a cakewalk, but she's an Ozzie, and doesn't feel comfortable in any temperature less than 'broil'. We made for the Tube, and decided food was necessary, so arrived back in my place, cooked a HUGE dinner of Tacos. Then watched two of my favourite fims; 28 Days Later ('eeeeek, zombies' *hug* nb: even though they're NOT zombies) and The Warriors ('you see what you get when you mess with the Orphaaaaaans!!') so that she wouldn't go home associating spending time with me with rage-infected monsters, but rather would spend the time in the taxi thinking I was cool, and probably in a New York street gang. It was a good day.


Now, I'm watching helplessly as the hours rush forwards mercilessly towards 5, when I'll have to go back to the old man pub and work again. Hopefully no-one will come and wave a rusty saw around tonight, as it's a Sunday, but you never know. Ah well, guess I'll stop being a 'sook' and man up. Yay for the one-day weekend!

Voice Work and the pleasure of one's own company.

The weekend! Huzzah!

End-of-days tiredness aside, this week has been pretty good.

I got promoted at work, which was cool. I'm now a Technical Delivery Consultant for the office stud (read: highest earner), Mack Daddy. MD's actually a really cool bloke, and is the old man (at 40) of the office, so he's a really laid-back guy and is helping me out. My new job is basically resourcing, and I spend most of my time either surfing the web on jobs boards (like Monster or Total Jobs) for candidates in the public sector. MD deals with social housing and social renovation, so the projects are sort of interesting, and vaguely in the 'I don't feel bad about my job cos people are getting jobs and building homes for people with no jobs' job spectrum of jobs. Jobs. Jobs. Steve Jobs.


Also there's a wee bit more money, which will help me buy heroin, and keep the struggling Drug-counsellor-and-methadone-manufacturer Sector afloat.

That's right, I'm saving the economy. Steve Jobs.


I also did some weekend work! Some videogame company had me in doing a bit of voicework (for v/activated software, not an acting role unfortch) so it was nice to be doing some of that without it being in the fuggy realm of soft-core audio erotica. Had breakfast at Borough Market in Southwark (near work) and then went home to spend the rest of the day writing.


So two wee anecdote-ettes about yesterday.
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1) I met a friend of mine in the Market, she's from back home and is training to be an opera singer. She's extremely pretty. Anyway, I was walking along, eating little free samples of everything from ostrich meat to passion fruit muesli, when I passed her in the queue.

Me: "Hi _____"

She: "Hi, Con, what are you doing here?


She: (looking around behind me) "Are you here on your own"

Me: 'Yup, I just came down for a spot of breakfast"

She: (unsure) "Oh...cool"

And soon after went on my way.

My question, is it weird that I like to spend a lot of time on my own? I mean, I go to the pub on my own occasionally, and like to eat at restaurants on my own with a book when I can, but is that one step away from complete loner-dom, or is it natural. What do you guys think?


2) I went in one of my favourite coffee shops, Best Italian, beside the market, because I'm secretly in love with the waitress there. She's French, and of course when I found that out, I spoke French, and made an idiot of myself. I went there with the Polish girl from my office (the Tank Commander one who taken on a big-sister role) and she almost frog-marched me up to the counter to ask the girl out when she saw me looking at her. I didn't go up, and somehow managed to stop her going up too, but when I went back in yesterday and saw her again, I wasn't sure at all, for some reason the entire vibe or athmosphere or whatever of the place and seeing her didn't lend itself to the pervy droolery of the day before. How variable is the old visual attraction these days? Wow. Obviously she's a stone-cold fox and out of my league anyway, so it just became a scientific observation, but it's interesting how a tiny set of variables can affect something like attraction.


ANYWAY:

My lil broheim is over a-visiting with his pixie girlf Beccy, so I've been showing them some of the sites (pubs) in WHamp and Kilburn. It's really good to see him, even if he is the annoyingly good-looking one and much much cooler than his older dearthair (he's studying to become a music producer and sound technician) it's nice to catch up. The three of us got absolutely shitfaced last night, then had a vid-chat convo with my girl Lopez. Good times.


I'm going to write a separate post about Valentines Day now, because I feel like ranting a bit.

Stay classy.

The Little Things

So after my last little, er...wobble on the board, I decided to try and chill and enjoy my time a bit more. This means getting a bit more sleep and to another, listening to the Jurassic Park overture before I get up in the morning to get all szhuzhed up...





...and ease back on the jittifyingly large intake of caffeine to which I've grown accustomed. I mean, much as I like my Starbucks wake-up juice (a venti white-choc mocha with two extra espresso shots) and enjoy the sensation of needing to pee every three minutes, I think it makes one rather tense. Work now doesn't seem all that bed and stuff. Plus, I've decided to just lean back and go with it, even if that does mean sticking the old head in the sand a bit regarding money and the looming threat of German invasion eviction or Council-tax flogging.

Anyway, I was coming home from work on Thursday night and decided to run and get my hair cut (because that's a mental night out for me) at a wee barbers were Spark and I got our scalps mowed before graduation. I went in, sat down and the (gorgeous...seriously gorgeous, but married to a scary-looking guy) tiny Romanian woman who had cut my hair before started chopping away, occasionally making small talk about the weather. Presently, she asked me whether I wanted my sideburns cut in and when I told her i didn't, she looked at me and asked me 'why'.

I didn't have an answer, I suggested that I might possibly grow out the beard again.

She shrugged, looking doubtful.

I asked her if she didn't agree. She shrugged again, and was silent for a moment before declaring 'your face is too long for a beard, you look strange.'

So the rest of the session was rather marred by the fact that we both dissolved into tears of laughter.


THEN when I was walking home, newly-barbered when I was stopped dead in my tracks. Breathless I stood there, like a fat emo looking at a new shop called 'Sensitive Cheeseburgers' as my eyes took in something that I have searched for in my time here in London but not had the luck to find. Now, as I was walking, a minute's stroll from my bed, I had been touched by the hand of good fortune and stumbled across a shop which dealt specifically in tobaccos, whiskeys and chocolates. Yes, an independent tobacconists, right here in my little niche of the world, West Hampstead, London, England, UK, Europe, World, Space.

Robert Graham (Est 1874) is a Scot outfit that deals in the good stuff in life and when I bolted into the shop and demanded 'How long have you been here?' the poor bemused woman behind the counter was rather nonplussed. We shook hands and chatted for a while, and I left with her card, having offered my services if she wanted any weekend staff.

God that would be sweet, surrounded by cigars and boutique cigarettes and pipes and whiskey and rare chocolates and.....well, I'm getting distracted here. I left, and went to the coffee shop at the end of my street where I had a 'diet' espresso (just the one) and ruminated and scribble in my little notebook. I went home, read and went to bed, all happy and smiley. It's the little things I suppose.


Now, it's Saturday, and I'm sitting in my bed listening to Classic FM and considering a bacon sandwich. I fucking love lazy weekends. I'm about to go and meet a blog-friend for his birthday drinks too. I'm rather excited tbh, as this fella's a top-notch bloke, and a great writer to boot. Should be fun!


Also, at this point, I realise that I have inadvertently completed another of my 101 things to do. Wow, I'm totting them up this week:

55) Find a nice tobacconists in London, with a nice blended pipe-tobacco to rival my favourite – Peterson’s Connoisseur’s Choice.





Not only were there many many different types of beautiful carcinogenic tobaccos to fawn over, but they had it...my favourite, the Connoisseurs Choice.

Yahtze!

Now I just have to find a racist to punch.


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