Dead Blogger

So, it appears I have been dead for sometime now. However, as with all dead things, the circle of life turns and we all come back as something we didn't really expect to... like Polystyrene containers.

I read the Bee's blog for the first time in an age today and it was so nice to catch up on all the things she has been doing (even though I see her three or four times a week now at rehearsals which is nice) so I thought I would return the favour.

Good lord, so much has happened since I was last on here that I don't know where to begin... I am currently rehearsing my first proper musical which I have written the music and lyrics for with my director/writer friend Fiver. I have been putting the tremendous cast through its paces with the music and am so pleased with how everything is coming along, after initial worries of "Oh, Lord. What have I got myself in for?" I am really starting to enjoy what people are coming up with and how they are characterising the songs. The Bee is in the show of course, she is playing (strangely) a girl named Bea, and she sings and acts and everything and it's lovely to see, though occassionally we argue about how to sing bits of the songs that I have written... we are over that now though.

It's lovely to see my friends and new people enjoying rehearsals (especially as for many this is their first time singing on stage).

So that's going well.

What happened with Trouble? Well, she moved to the other side of the world, we are still in contact but only very occassionally and I have found myself thinking about her less and less over the past few months especially now that a new, lovely young thing has appeared on the scene... let's call her Rose.

How did we meet? Well, interestingly, about eight months ago, my ex girlfriend, JDFK was down in London town for a visit and we met up with her and the young lady she was staying with called Boom. Boom is very much into theatre, being a talented actor and writer with a particular interest in childrens storytelling theatre. We got on extremely well from the get go... me with my interest in story telling songs and we got talking about a project on which we might collaborate. About 5 months later the Boom got in touch to talk about said project that she was writing with her friend (Rose). They were going to meet the producer and asked if I would like to come to play everyone a song I had written for the show. I said yes.

It turns out that the Boom couldn't make it that evening and so I was to meet Rose instead at the station. And meet her I did. Not until a few minutes before I saw her did I even contemplate that I was about to meet a girl who could perhaps be interesting and attractive. Then I started contemplating it, and then she appeared. And she was interesting. And she was attractive. And very smart with just the sort of sense of humour I love.

So... physical description... she has:

Brown Eyes with lovely eyelashes
And Aquiline nose
Lovely teeth and smile
Red hair
Big boobs
Lovely hips and a nice bum

She dresses immaculately, has a fetish for watching her favourite rugby team, is training for a marathon, was overtaken by a man in a giant badger suit in her last half marathon, has excellent grammar and makes me laugh alot.

But enough about her... how did I ask her out? Well, moving on from my painfully shy days, I decided that I really liked her and asked her if she wanted to go out some time. She said...

"Yes, but I need to check something first"
"Huh?"
"I need to check with the Boom, because she quite likes you too"
"Huh?"

Now that has seriously never happened before. Two beautiful girls clearly out of their minds.

Well, long and short we are now seeing each other as much as we can which is not enough in my opinion as I rehearse for the show five nights a week and she is training alot.

Never the less, I am very happy.

I have discussed Rose endlessly with the Bee, who has been wonderful (apart from ginger jokes) and I went round for Roast potatoes with her on Saturday and had a lovely time shooting the breeze... I feel very lucky to have such a wonderful friend.

So. Life is good at the moment. It has its down moments sure but on the whole, I'd say life is great.

Catch up again soon.

Burger

I was out. And drunk as usual with my flatmate Maloney. We were in Clapham, while we were standing innocently outside a Kebab shop a woman came and took a bite out of my friends Burger. No asking or anything... what sort of world are we living in...

No sex, fights, writing and pigcheese

It's been a little while since I had sex. Once upon a time a little meant "it's been a year since I've had sex." Fortunately this is not the case anymore and "a little while" has had a number of months whacked off it (no pun intended though the amount of whacking off in said months has increased exponentially. It's a hyperbolic curve.) So there has been no sex, Trouble has not brewed on the horizon for some time and while I still think about her sometimes it isn't as depressing as it once was. Where as once it was like having a cactus in my trousers (ie hard to ignore and painful) it's now more like a feijoa in your favourite pencil case (you can pretty much ignore it, until it gets squashed in your bag and all your pencils get feijoa on them. You know what I mean.)

The reason I haven't had sex (and it's a valid one I keep telling myself) is that I've been writing lots. Not blogging I know and I must admit I have been remiss on this point. Bad kiwi. But I have been writing a musical with a friend of mine, we'll call her Farley for consistencies sake, which is going to be performed in December. We are writing the story together and I am doing the music and lyrics. We have written successfully before and I must say it is a partnership I really enjoy as it is extremely creative and inspiring. Problem being I'm doing little else at the moment, what with working all the time as well. I'm not saying I don't enjoy it, because I love it, but I do get tired.

So now is how I'm going to justify it in terms of sex. Well, I figure chicks dig creative writery types. But in order to be a credible creative writery type you have to write something first. Once I write the thing then the girls will see and I get to put my sausage away. Oh yes. It's the chinese Year of the Sausage.

Fights. Well. This was a little fight between myself and the Bee. The Bee gave me a call late in the evening on Friday and we got to talking about something she had just been to about the suffragettes. Somehow the conversation got around to Margaret Thatcher. Now the Bee was in a rather full on mood, having just seen something which stirred up her feministic tendencies, perhaps now was not the best time to mention that my 2nd Cousin had worked with Mrs Thatcher as an MP for 20 years and knew her and her husband very well. He had mentioned to me that he thought Denis (husband) was the brains behind the operation and Margaret was the figurehead. Now, I don't know enough about this stuff to say one way or another if this was even a remote possibility, but when mentioned the stance taken by the Bee was that this was an absolute impossibilty, completely implausible and without any grounding in fact whatsoever. Now she maybe absolutely right. The thing that annoyed me and set me off was the fact that the possibililty was not even entertained for a second. The thing that pissed her off, was the fact that I didn't have a strong opinion on the matter. Well, as I have a very limited knowledge of the subject I didn't feel qualified to have an opinion. Sure I have an idea on what is right and wrong and I would like to think that the Bee's description of how the Thatcher government was run was correct, but the fact is I can't argue for or against whether what my uncle said was true because I knew NOTHING about it. Surely I would be an idiot to agree with the Bee just on the facts she was giving me. Facts I don't even know the veracity of. And surely I would be an idiot to agree with my 2nd Cousin, given that I know barely anything from his side of the story.

The argument strayed into various things, with constant misunderstandings (economics and politics!) and eventually ended. I can't remember how exactly it ended but there were raised voices. It was a good argument. I think we both thought it was about something different than it actually was. I think the Bee was trying to convince me that Women are equal to men (of which I need absolutely no convincing at all) and I was trying to argue the virtues of seeing something from the other side. These two arguments kind of melted into one confusing mesh of argue. But it was good to blow the cobwebs out of the other side of my brain. Anyway, I'm glad we had it. I think I learnt much more about the Bee from that argument than I have in a long time. That she has strong opinions and really knows how to argue them and that she has very strong views on equality.

PIgcheese. Speaks for itself really. Anything that sux is pigcheese. I just wrote a song which incorporates a torturer singing about how much he loves dancing. Heaven preserve me.

Erratic

On the way home from Gay Paris this evening, I once again marvelled at the wonders of the British Transport system. After having enjoyed a faultless travel experience across the ditch with our Frenchy friends, we returned to a suicide on the tracks at Surbiton. Now it would be rude of me to blame the person who did this... but I'm going to anyway. Seriously, could there be a more inconvenient way to top yourself than jumping in front of a high speed train and delaying every train from London to Woking from 6pm till 9pm on a Friday night? My questions to the person who did this are as follows...

Was this a final act of vengeance on the transport system that has failed you (though not in this particular case) so many times before?

Was it an attempt to get people to feel sorry for you? if it was, let me just say I ain't feelin it.

Was it an attempt to piss off every person on platform five at Vauxhall wanting to get home on a Friday Night?

If the last one applies to you, I must say you have succeeded brilliantly in your final act. Well done you. I'm not usually an angry person. But that just pisses me right off.

Well, I'm home now and that's the important thing. My mother and I did not kill each other during our 3 week stint in each others company. In fact we had a blast! I got the lowdown on my mum and dad's divorce and all the particulars (it makes fascinating reading!) and mum learnt that she should never ask me questions about drinking, London, kids, sex, pets or marriage ever again. Apparently the answers have scared her.

I have seen countless gardens, for all you gardening fanatics I'm going to reel them off here. For all you non gardening fanatics I apologise in advance. Just ignore the next bit.

1.The Lost Gardens of Heligan (now have been found... and conveniently signposted)
2.Tregrehan Gardens (walled garden with a tennis court that predates western civilisation)
3.The Eden Project (looks like something out of Total Recall... I almost expected Arnie to start toting his machine gun through the Rainforest Biodome)
4. Jim and Bel's Garden (Friends of the family, absolutely loaded and lovely to boot!)
5. Monet's Gardens at Giverny (You know, the impressionist dude with the beard, really good food here)
6. The Gardens at Versailles (It's no wonder the french wanted to kill Marie Antoinette. If you see where she lived, the utter decadence of it nearly made me sick)

This is an erratic post. My head is all of a muddle at the moment. Trouble still pops in and out occassionally but it seems for more short term visits than the long term invasions of yester year. I can't decide whether that's good or bad... Good I suppose. I'm sure the Bee will approve of my efforts to move along. Ooh. I also had sexual relations with someone at a party and didn't say I would call her. This is the first time for me. She seemed about as pleased about the not-calling thing as I did. How fab is that!?

Relapse

Shit. Relapse. Total relapse. Turns out I'm still Troublised. This evening was the AGM for the show I was in and we watched the DVD they made of the show (which turned out to be not nearly so awful as I imagined). So there was Trouble on the big screen in front of me for a full two hours. I miss her too much. This is dangerous.

Conference

Oh, if tired was a place, tis there I would be. Stuffed into a cave made of duvets in the heart of pillow mountain. How does one arrive at a state of such exhaustion? Well. In my case, it usually has to do with one of three things... shows, alcohol and women. Not necessarily in that order. In this particular case it has to do with all three of these things mixed into one wonderful sleep-inducing cocktail. I'll rearrange the order as well... alcohol, women and shows.

So. First alcohol. What generally happens when I am outside of London is that I find the alcohol to be rather more affordable than its London counterpart. And if its Lancaster, and a university bar that I am at the affordability verges on the ridiculous.

I have finally discovered what conferences are for. Whilst the sessions tend to be rather pointless and vague, the accomodation singularly cell-like, the food rationed like a prison camp and the lanyards depressingly red, the great thing about conferences are the people.

"I find myself ill-qualified to recommend myself to strangers" Mr Darcy said it in Pride and Prejudice, and I believe it is true if myself. I find it difficult to strike up a conversation with a stranger, though the Bee has been coaching me on this... anyway, I managed to talk to some people who introduced me to more people who eventually introduced me to Conference Babe.

CB is lovely, she is a dude. A babe. She is also moving to Vietnam, which is kind of perfect really. She doesnt expect anything from me and I don't expect anything from her which meant that we could just have a good time. And we did. We had a very good time. We drank and we talked, we shared our love of Billy Joel, and talked about bollocks (my favourite thing to do) and she kicked my ass at Pool and we had a snog... this is how it happened...

Her: "Ok, give you a chance to redeem yourself, you play this game and win"

Me: "Ok, what'll you give me if I do?"

Her: "What do you want?"

Me: "I want to kiss you."

Her: "You know what? I'm so confident you're not gonna win, I'll give you anything you want."

So you can just guess what happened next...

I didnt win.

Balls.

Fortunatley after a further three hours of talking and drinking and dancing our drunken asses off, I was walking her back to her room and said, "so you know how I lost that game earlier?"

Her: "yeah, I-"

Then she didn't get to say anymore because I was kissing her. It was lovely.

We hung out the next day (skived our sessions and caught the train back to London together). She was so lovely after Trouble. A sweet, funny, quirky attractive girl, with sparkly brown eyes and a lovely smile. We have texted a couple of times.

I hope I see her again.

You know those times when the word "Hangover" just doesn't cut the mustard? Even if you prefix it with "Horrendous," "Hideous" and "Horrific"?

If hangovers were like battles, this would be my Waterloo...

So this week has been a long'un and a tough'un. I am responsible for Graduation at the music college that I work for and Graduation was yesterday. Needless to say I have been looking forward to last night for about three months. No more endless list checking (though I must say that towards the end it was one of the only places that I found comfort), no more students with questions about things they've been told a million times before. Well, it was a great success. A fantastic success by all accounts, everything went very smoothly and my boss was very pleased... so I deserved a drink didn't I? A couple of drinks?

On my journey to Hangover Land (a mythical place where everything sucks), I travelled through the Champagne Forest, visited some friends in the White Wine Wood, swam across the Lager Lake, crossed the Red Wine River by way of the Beer Bridge and ended up in the Vale of Vodka. Looking back it's no surprise that I feel like shit. And that's just what I can remember. That takes us to 11.00pm Friday night...

Given that I didn't arrive home until 8.45am Saturday morning, this leaves a large portion of the night unaccounted for. This is worrying. Fortunately for me (and incredibly unfortunately for her) The Bee was able to give me a run-down on the remainder of the evening due to the fact that between 12.00am and 8.45am this morning I apparently rang her 16 times, and somehow she was able to discern what I was doing despite being completely incoherent and (allegedly) crying most of the time.

These are the facts as I know them to be...

1. I've lost my keys
2. I've lost my debit card
3. My credit card has been locked
4. When I started drinking yesterday I had eaten the sum total of a chocolate covered strawberry all day.
5. I was due for a complete blow out.
6. At one moment of lucidity I awoke in a ditch.
7. I spent a good deal of time walking around a train station looking for a bus.
8. I have thrown up several times.
9. At some point I visited Croydon.
10. I have no idea where Croydon is.
11. I am officially blown out.

The Bee has filled me in on the following...
I called her and cried to her about Trouble, I called her and cried to her that my card wasn't working, I called her and cried to her that I didn't know where I was or how I was going to get home. This cycle repeated itself endlessly throughout the night.

I am unaware of anything awful that I might have done and feel like a complete idiot.

I don't know what came over me as I am usually quite sensible, but I suspect everything with the Graduation, the fact that Trouble is moving away, my application for film school all are happenin this week may have fuelled my blow out.

Eeerrrgghhhhhhhawwwwwww.............

That should be a new word for Hangover.

I love the Bee. She is the best and I would like to thank her publicly for not hating me at the moment!!

Thanks BEE!