Random Day Off

Hooray! Rose tea, McVities plain chocolate digestives and Frasier repeats.

Bollo's Audition

Brilliant.

Cat Alarm Clock

My friend George sent me this ages ago and I only just got around to watching it, and it really made me laugh...

Circle Line (ish)

We braved the infamous Circle Line Pub Crawl (warning; offensive design) in celebration of Richard's 30th on Saturday, which was lots of fun until we flaked quite rubbishly. Richard seemed to like our t-shirts, which I was quite relieved about, but of course I was scrutinising the printing. I think I should've made the superman bit purely block colour and it would've printed a bit thicker.

It just so happened to coincide with The Lord Mayor's Show which was interesting, although I'm not sure I'd bother making a special trip to see it without the distraction of a pub crawl. But then I'm not hugely into marching bands or unidentifiable fancy dress (despite what some of you may have seen on facebook). We had a nice leisurely start in Westminster's The Red Lion (?) and on to Embankment's cute Ship & Shovel and Temple's cavernous Walkabout, in between taking some photos of the bands and floats preparing to start.

Then on to The Blackfriar at, erm, Blackfriars, lunch at Wetherspoons at Tower Hill, a slightly scary place in Aldgate, a gin bar at Liverpool Street, a 60's concrete box at The Barbican, The Castle at Farringdon, O'Neills at Kings Cross, and our final was a really nice place around the corner from Euston Square, but fairly inevitably I can't remember what it was called. It had nice beer though.

Who did this creepy child grow up to be?

Seriously, this must've been Photoshopped, right? I mean that's a SCARY child. Mind you, bit of a scary grown-up too.
See this one and more here.

Sightseeing Weekend

Mom, Dad, Any, Mandy and Vicki, originally uploaded by ant217.

We had Ant's parents, sister and her boyfriend over to stay last weekend, and as Mandy and Andy had never had a proper walk around London before we took the opportunity to do lots of touristy things. We did possibly underestimate the sheer distance we were going to be walking but it worked out ok, with a pub stop at the Tattershall Castle along the way and the goal of a curry at the end of it. So after a quick run around the Science Museum we jumped on a bus to Green Park, had a nice Autumny walk down to Buckingham Palace, on to Trafalgar Square (where we saw lots of people protesting to keep the NHS free, whilst standing outside pubs drinking and smoking... hmm) Whitehall, the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, the pub, a walk along the South Bank down to Tower Bridge, and a curry. Phew. I feel exhausted again just typing it. It was really nice to see everyone at once (not to mention unusual!) and we didn't even get told we should be buying a house too many times. And Chris was nice enough to help fix my poorly car which had seemingly had an argument with it's clutch cable. All made up now.

Idlewild

This week I got to see Idlewild play a fantastic gig for the second time. The first time was when they were touring their second album, nearly ten years ago, and it was my first gig (I think!) - it was a bit shoutier than their more recent albums but then I think I was too. I got to Wolverhampton Wulfrun with my friends in time for the doors to open at 7pm, and I think we were a bit confused by the fact they didn't come on 'til gone 9. I still have the t-shirt I bought too, although I think it might be right at the bottom of one of my wardrobes with a lot of other things I don't wear but don't want to throw away, like my V99 t-shirt and my bright purple Garfield t-shirt with 'Florida!' on it (should probably point out that that's quite a bit older...).

But anyway, back to the subject, they were fantastic, and as they're now touring their Greatest Hits (hope that's not an omen - apparently more to do with their parting ways with Parlophone before making Make Another World) they played a huge range of stuff, some which I'd forgotten I even knew, as my Captain and Hope Is Important cassettes wore out, oo, about 8 years ago and I never quite got round to replacing them (rubbish I know). And I'm pretty sure they played it better than they did last time. They do seem to have evolved into almost 2 bands now though - one that's more connected to how they started, more, well, shouty, and one that's a bit more... Virgin Radio I guess. They do both really well, but I thought they just looked like they were having far more fun jumping around shouting. And they even brought their own little carpets in order to make the jumping around (with no shoes on) a bit more cosy. Which is nice.

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