Lazy Journalism

OK, it's that time that I again that I lazily write out some of the text message conversations I have had recently.

Ninjasaurus Rex is the subject of this latest tirade. He sent me a picture of a toy church he'd bought and included the message:

Him: My new toy. A sixties style happy clappy hippy church. I'm looking forward to burning it down.

Me: LOL, make sure there's a little plastic vicar in there when you do.

Him: I might use those PP nuns...

Me: Rape them first if you do.

Him: I'm too big for them to take.

Me: No, you're not. Don't flatter yourself.

Him: My wang is as big as an entire Peter Pig's nun's body, I'll have you know.

Me: No it's not, I've seen it.

Him: Your eyesight is far better than I thought then.

Me: It's microscopic.

Him: You giggy twat.

No response

Him: You four eyed nerk.

No response

Him: If you were a transvestite superhero, what powers would you have?

Me: Xray vision, invisibility and the ability to walk through walls. the only ones you need.

Him: I *know* that! I want superpowers that a transvestite superhero would want.

Me: A non clashing super hero costume?

Him: Is always being able to find an absolute bargain in the end of season sales a superpower?

Me: It is for Gok Wan.

Him: You know he's secretly straight, don't you? What a genius way to feel up loads of women and get away with it!

Me: I might try being secretly straight then.

Him: You could start by keeping your gay bear hair.

Me: It takes one to know one.

Him: You giggy twat.

No response

Him: The ability to coordinate any person's clothes with a single punch: Pow! Now you have brown shoes with your jeans!

Another one concerned He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named:

Me: Have you ever sat down and gave serious thought as to why it is that i absolutely fucking hate you?

Him: No, i hardly ever think about you.

Me: You do. You think about me all the time. Especially when you are touching yourself. There is a load of good films coming to the city screen this month. They are showing goodfellas on monday, you can crash here if you like?

Him: OK cool, I have booked my ticket, getting train down after work on monday and train back in the morning. This better be worth it or i'll kick you in the pancreas.

Me: I don't know where you are going to stay. I'm not here monday.

Him: Are you sleeping in the cinema?

Me: What cinema? I'm going on holiday on saturday for a week.

Him: Who is this?

Me: Your worst enemy.

Him: I hate you.

Then the next morning:

Him: Great. I walk into d----- for the first time since i got back. How long does it take till i see some student prick wearing a fedora? Two minutes. It isn't even term time yet. Fuck sakes. This is going to be a long year.

Me: Nail it to his fucking head. You need to make a swift and decisive statement to stop anymore of this shit.

And finally, I wrote the lyrics for this song about fourteen years ago, back then Johnny took them and changed bits and pieces so they fitted the music but they are still essentially mine and are just as relevant (to me anyway) today. Enjoy the 'Leaf.

Remove all the wheelblocks, there's no time to waste!

Those of you with memory spans that weren't wiped out in your late teens and early twenties by vast amounts of military grade amphetamines and industrially synthesised LSD will recall that in the last post I was wittering on about my early manoeuvres through the heady world of Heavy Metal. I got thinking about some of the other ridiculous things I did when I was finding my feet musically. I mentioned that my introduction to the world of Metal was through Kiss, I only ever owned one record by them and that was Dressed To Kill. It had been bequeathed to me by my uncle, he'd long since realised that they were just a bunch of 60 year old Jewish Grandmothers and off loaded the album onto me when I mentioned seeing them on Top of the Pops. This was the first LP I truly owned myself and I played it until the grooves ran out. I apparently loaned it to Al Sithee for a time, telling him that Anything for my Baby was the best track on the album. But besides this small interruption it was rarely off my turntable.

What the fuck was I thinking?

As previously mentioned, I was a rather fickle child and seemed to be only able to like one band at a time. When Ninjasaurus Rex learned of my interest in long hair and guitars, he loaned me Iron Maiden's debut album on cassette. Now, Ninjasaurus was already way ahead of me in the music stakes. He'd been listening to Hawkwind since he was in nappies, for fuck's sake. I had a lot of catching up to do. I'm sure he felt like he was doing me a great deal of good by opening my mind to new bands. Little did he know how fickle I was. The moment I heard Maiden, I rejected Kiss out of hand for the disco sounding stuttin' cocks that they are. Maiden was a band that was so metal they were creating new types as of yet undiscovered metal and adding them to the periodic table. They probably had a laboratory somewhere on the Rhine where they were synthesising alloys day and night. I made a copy of Ninjasaurus' album and with the lack of a proper album cover, I conceived my own, based on the original but drawn up in Biro and felt tip pens. Unfortunately this didn't survive the later Slayer cull and I don't have a copy of it anymore for you to laugh at. You just have to imagine the front cover of Iron Maiden's debut album as drawn by a retard armed with a spatula and a plastic bag full of tramp's sick and you might get the idea. Mind you, this is how Derek Riggs seems to paint all the Maiden covers anyway....

Needs more sick...

Anyway, The reason I'm telling you this is to emphasise just what was going on in my mind when I was a child. I have always been interested in making models, when I was a wee lad it was model aeroplanes. My bedroom was full of Spitfires, Messerschmitts, Focke-Wulfs and Black Widows. I was a child obsessed. I loved aeroplanes and when I first heard Aces High by Maiden, it blew my tiny fucking mind. Here was a band that were more metal than anything I could ever imagine and they were performing songs about aeroplanes! They even referred to Messerschmitts as 'Me-109s'. They knew what they were talking about! They weren't just making this shit up! I fucking loved that track and I got so obsessed with the song that I looped it over and over again on one side of a C90 cassette so I wouldn't have to keep rewinding the tape at the end of the song. Forty five fucking minutes of Aces High. This was back in the days before CD players and programmable repeat patterns. This was old school. The analogue way of doing things. I would sit for hours at my modelling table, listening to an endless (for forty five minutes) loop of Aces High, whilst inhaling a heady mixture of Humbrol enamel paint, polystyrene cement and white spirits. There's no wonder I turned out like I did.

I FUCKING LOVE THIS, ME!!

As I said, I was a fickle child, even stripping down my musical obsessions to the bare bones by repeating one song over and over. This theme actually continued when I discovered Slayer. I borrowed the album Reign in Blood from the Rovrum Library and this shit literally melted my fucking face. As soon as I heard those opening bars of Angel of Death nothing was the same again. It was like I had been held down on the living room floor by intruders intent on causing me serious aural damage. This was no longer playtime. The big boys had arrived and they had knives. (Now I can just sense I will get a load of abusive comments about South of Heaven being a better album than Reign in Blood. This is simply not true. South of Heaven, although fantastic, is the lesser album. The band were hardly speaking to one an other during the recording of South of Heaven and this disjointed approach comes through on the album. Reign in Blood is perfection. The fact that the themes of the final track (Raining Blood) can be heard building in crescendo through the two previous tracks is just one example of the brilliance of the album. The whole album holds together far better than South of Heaven, which has great tracks amongst its numbers, but feels like there is a lot more filler on South of Heaven than on Reign In Blood. I play it now and it is still as fresh as it was in 1988 when I first heard it. There, that's why it's a better album, if you disagree you are in error.)

It just is. Deal with it.

So I recorded the album, but my dislike of rewinding tapes reared it's ugly head once more and I recorded the first two tracks of the album at the end of the tape and to this day (I still have my original cassette recording of Reign in Blood) Angel of Death still bursts forth when Raining Blood has finished. This is not the only relic of my past that is encased on this particular tape. The tape I used to record Slayer on was the Aces High loop cassette. It was probably my way of wiping out the past. A stepping stone, if you will. A closing of a chapter, some might say. The problem is that Reign in Blood is only about thirty minutes long, even with two extra songs tacked on at the end, this only adds up to about thirty five minutes of recorded material. To this day, as I play the tape in my car, the end bars of Piece by Piece are replaced by about four looped recordings of Aces fucking High.

Gassed Like a Badger

As I mentioned previously, Friday was the last day of the Summer school excavations for the First Years of the archaeology department at York. Five of my team of ten turned up with a special treat for me. They'd made t-shirts with my face and phrases emblazoned across them. Obviously I'd made some form of impression as Myles went around all day saying 'cunt' for no reason. It was quite touching, really, it's amazing what Stockholm Syndrome can do:

Bless

Along with this, Meg also wrote me a really nice letter of thanks, she also included this photo she'd taken in Japan of a heron by the side of the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto. She named it 'Pensive Heron and Tree' in an incredible flash of inspiration:

Mind you, all this didn't stop me passing out the poisoned cookies I'd prepared. Speaking of which, I notice that the Rapture passed by with very little significance. As a committed Christian I would have assumed that I would have been beamed up into the heavenly spaceship to be zoomed off to see Jebus and God and Uncle Peter and all the rest of the gang in Heaven. It didn't happen, so I celebrated by driving out to Sheffield for a visit to Triples with Ninjasaurus Rex and Dino Los Diablos. The usual suspects were there, ie; overweight, sweating middle aged men. The smell of stale farts and body odour spread a  heavy miasma and it was a relief to emerge back into the fresh air. Actually it's quite refreshing to go to a Wargaming show, as sometimes I feel I may be putting a bit of weight on then I see these fine specimens of humanity and realise I have nothing to worry about at all.

Weight Watchers ain't got nothing on this for keeping the weight off...

There was also a fine example of Hitler's Ubermensch wandering about with a SS Leibstandarte t-shirt on. He looked about 58, stooped, skinny, wearing bad fitting jeans and clutching a bag full of  Thracian Feathered Elvish Warships he'd bought from the bring and buy. The defence of Vienna will be in safe hands! But, seriously? A fucking SS t-shirt? It had 'tour' dates on the back and I don't think he was wearing it ironically. The only place this kind of shit is acceptable, unfortunately, is either at a BNP meeting, an EDL rally or a fucking wargaming show...

'Have you got one with a more prominant swastika?'

Continuing the celebratory feel of surviving the Rapture, I met up with Vin for a few drinks and promptly ran into Logan Josh mid rant in the Golden Slipper. He'd been drinking since Tuesday, it would seem, and abruptly turned his attention on Vin's hat. The rest of the night is lost in haze of drink, but I recall meeting up with the knife man and the armourer before stumbling through the cold and lonely streets of York to home...

Come Die With Me

I've been watching a lot of Come Dine With Me of late. It's the sleeper hit of 4OD. I don't watch it for the cooking, I don't watch it for the party tips, neither do I watch it for the competition. I watch it because of Dave Lamb, the narrator. His caustic remarks could strip the paint off of a fence. I sit watching it wondering why the fuck anyone would put themselves up for such public humiliation? It's been on telly for over twenty series, surely the cunts that go on it know what they're letting themselves in for? They must have seen it before they sign up for it. Do they delude themselves by thinking Lamb will not pick up on their strange habits and ways? Do they think he will take them into his heart and be nice to them? Whatever the fucking idiots think he generally kicks them when they're down. He's my hero.

Did you ever know that you're my hero?

It got me thinking, all this Come Dine With Me viewing, what kind of party would I throw if I ever got on the show. Well you get a budget of £125 to spend on your meal, this I would pocket and try to do it as cheaply as possible. Crisps are a nutritious (when enjoyed within a healthy diet) and tasty snack, so they could be the basis for my meal. As a starter I would serve a few bowls of Prawn Cocktail crisps. I would write it on the menu as 'Crunchy Prawn Cocktails!' so the fucking idiots that came round would be none the wiser. Next up is the main. Again, bags of crisps can be very filling, maybe some Bacon Flavour Wheat Crunchies mixed up with Quavers would become 'Cheesy bacon surprise!' For the vegetarians amongst the diners I would provide them with 'croustilles de fromage et l'oignon'; a packet of Cheese and Onion Walkers. The pudding is more tricky, but I would serve several bags of Boots Own Brand Yogurt & Mint Crisps. Bam, Yogurty pudding right there! All washed down with a four pack of Stella! A definite score of ten all round!

'I FUCKING LOVE CRISPS, ME!'

Anna came round last night and forced me to exceed my bandwidth by making me watch more CDWM. This wasn't the only time she's been round this week. Last Tuesday she rocked up at my doorstep demanding to be fed. Thankfully I had some food on the go already so gave her the lion's share of that before blows rained down on me. Saturday was little different, I had cooked a curry and she'd got wind of it. Before you could say 'Chicken Jalfrezi' she was banging on my door and screaming that she wanted my 'fookin' food, you four eyed cunt!' I dutifully invited her in and she insisted on me helping her drink two bottles of wine and half a bottle of Sailor Jerry's rum whilst watching Gorky's Zygotic Mynki and Hawkwind videos on Youtube. How could I refuse? I am in fear of what that girl could do next!

It's amazing what growing up in a small Welsh village mixed with a parent's 70's vinyl collection and handfulls of magic mushrooms can do...

I awoke this morning eerily without a hangover. I'm writing this still waiting for it to kick in. It still hasn't and it's freaking me out. I was up early to collect Ninjasaurus Rex from the station as we were to attend Nerdfest 2011, also known as Vapnartak. It's a big wargaming event here in York. I'd not been to it for ten years and back then it was in the Merchant Adventurer's Hall. It had three trade stands, four display games and a man dressed up as a Fallshirmjager brandishing an MP44 at the public. It was unrecognisable today, it has grown out of all proportion, like a Lovecraftian beast taking over the Racecourse. There were even Jousting reenacters galloping around the paddock to tilt at one another as they passed every five minutes. There was about a million games in progress, four trillion trade stands and countless numbers of fat balding middle aged men panting over 15mm high toy soldiers in Einsatzgruppen B uniform. Logan Josh and Anna were both dragged along to make up the numbers. Both suffered terrible shock at the mass of Nerdism on public display. Josh was stunned into silence (for once) by the horror of it all. He was all excited about it when I mentioned it a few weeks ago. Now he will wake up screaming at the memory of grown men arguing about the correct buttons used on the coats of French Voltigeurs during the Battle of Borodino. Anna took it much better, she was a willing participant in finding out why Peter Pig is called Peter Pig. She even bought some figures; King Alfred and his burnt cakes or something. Mr Rex and I are much better versed at these events and took it all in our stride, engaging the nerds with chats about new figure ranges and fat Americans wearing tiny t-shirts. I came home, nerdy but happy with a bag positively brimming with a game, a t-shirt and some plastic Russian tanks. Happy Days.

Oh God! The smell! The smell!

Let's create a social impetus for enjoying wearing our national dress

There has been little to report since my last entry, except I went to see Shutter Island, Martin Scorsese's latest film. As you'd expect from Scorsese it is well made, brilliantly directed and acted, the scripts were good, but it left me wanting. I felt the film wasn't as good as it could have been. It was let down by a couple of very unnecessary scenes and I felt as though half an hour's (at least) worth of cuts could have been made and it could have been an altogether tighter and gripping movie. It seemed slightly over indulgent and plodding. Not one of Marty's best. But it brings me to conversation Ninjasaurus Rex and I were having over another romantic lunch date about Scorsese's films. He said 'when I think of him, all I think of is Gangster films.' I protested and to shove it further in his stupid face here is a list of films directed by Scorsese with a 'G' to mark out the gangster films:

1. Sinatra (2011)
2. The Invention of Hugo Cabret (2011)
3. Untitled George Harrison Documentary (2010)
   
4. Shutter Island (2010)
5. "Boardwalk Empire" (1 episode, 2010)
   
6. The Key to Reserva (2007)
7. The Departed (2006) G
   
8. No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005)
9. The Aviator (2004)
10. Lady by the Sea: The Statue of Liberty (2004)
11. "The Blues" (1 episode, 2003)
    
12. Gangs of New York (2002) G
    
13. The Concert for New York City (2001)
    
14. Bringing Out the Dead (1999)
15. Il mio viaggio in Italia (1999)
    
16. Kundun (1997)
17. Casino (1995) G
    
18. A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995)
19. The Age of Innocence (1993)
20. Cape Fear (1991)
21. Goodfellas (1990) G
    
22. Made in Milan (1990)
    
23. New York Stories (1989)
24. The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
25. Location Production Footage: The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
26. Bad (1987)
27. The Color of Money (1986)
28. "Amazing Stories" (1 episode, 1986)
    
29. After Hours (1985)
30. The King of Comedy (1982)
31. Raging Bull (1980)
    
32. American Boy: A Profile of: Steven Prince (1978)
33. The Last Waltz (1978)
34. New York, New York (1977)
35. Taxi Driver (1976)
36. Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)
37. Italianamerican (1974)
38. Mean Streets (1973) G
39. Boxcar Bertha (1972)

Hmmm. Not many there really is there? Five in fact, five out of a list of nearly forty. A list that doesn't include his really early shorter works. So Rex, STFU! And please don't try to tell me that Taxi Driver is a Gangster film, it's not, it's a vigilante film.

You talkin' to me?

This post went a little away from the topic I was going to write about, North Korea, so that will have to wait for another time. One final thing, I forgot to mention Young Matt's blog in previous posts. It's one I read and once you get past the atrocious grammar and spelling it's rather funny. Read it HERE.

Do Ye Know Ken More?

It seems I have been spending a little bit too much time with Ninjasaurus Rex over the past week. I don't think there was a day where we didn't have a liquid lunch, shopping trip or general get together over World War One terrain. It all culminated on Thursday with lunch together and then a trip to the cinema. In very different circumstances it would have been considered a lovely romantic day. However he is a 36 year old man and I am a 35 year old man and I find the idea quite nauseating. It's not because I'm a homophobe, cos I'm not, but you haven't seen what he looks like... I haven't seen him since Friday afternoon since I think his wife, Sarah, was getting suspicious and made him stay in for the weekend. The film we went to see on Thursday was The Hurt Locker. It comes very well recommenced and it certainly deserves its Oscar for best film. Which is also great because it was up against Avatar, so the win was a two fingers up to that steaming pile of shit and the Directer James Cameron as The Hurt Locker was directed by his ex-wife, Kathryn Bigelow.

Boom! Boom! Shake the room!

I went out last night with Mainy, Linzi and Joolia to celebrate Joolia's birthday. T'was a good night and I bumped into many people I haven't seen for a while. I got hideously drunk and ended up in Renoirs... Again. It's Mainy and Linzi's influence I tell thi. I awoke this morning with the fear that the house had been broken into at some point last night. Well that would be the only explanation as to why it felt like a tramp had shat in my mouth...

With only hazy memories of last night, this is how it easily could have ended. I'm not quite sure...

OK with not much else to tell you, I'll give out a few plugs to some blogs that I'm reading at the moment. First off is Logan Josh's seminal work on the fractious nature of humanity. That is when he's not writing boorish and drunk posts. Al Sithee is still harping on about Iceland. Please God will it ever end? Tarquin Sheen's blog is always very good once you get through the usual racist rhetoric. Owen updates about once a week, it seems to be less nowadays since he got himself a bird, but it's rightly amusing when he does. Hildemaus NEVER UPDATES, EVER! And neither does Mithraea. Ashley's updates are fairly regular and his stories are good, as are his descriptions of sleeping rough in the woods... And finally, this is not a blog but I haven't mentioned it before, here is the New Pylon Cafe. Run by the evil mastermind Darren Rea, it is a revamp of the much loved and much missed original Pylon Cafe. The original site's forum has now been turned into a Book by Danny Salter of which there are about six million different editions.

I Don't Want To Set The World On Fire

With nothing better to do on Sunday night I went to see the film The Road. I asked Ninjasaurus Rex if he and his wife would like to accompany me, but their response was something along the lines of 'fuck off you loser, we've got REAL friends coming over for dinner. We'd have invited you, but we both think you're a cunt. So die.' Then the phone line went dead. With their words ringing in my ears, I wept all the way to the cinema, ALONE.

'Then I told him to Fuck Off! I could hear him crying as I put the phone down! Cheers!'

There will be a couple of small spoilers in this next paragraph, so skip to just beyond the picture if you don't want to know them. The film was good, it had come recommended by Herr Doktor Clay. He'd told me it was depressing film with an uplifting end. I later asked him how he could call the impending bleak future faced by nuclear war survivors as an 'uplifting ending'. He said the guy didn't rape and eat his kid so that was uplifting in his book. It's a pretty depressing film throughout, not really a date movie, but damn good except for a few small points. Which I shall sum up for you now: Towards the end the man (non raper) and boy (non eaten) 'befriend' a kindly blind old man, who is white. A little later they are then robbed completely by a black man. I thought this to be slightly playing up to racial stereotypes a little. Mind you, I would probably complain if it was the other way around saying the PC brigade had had their hands all over it. There was also a scene where the man (non raping non cannibal) is shot in the leg by a bow and arrow weidling survivor. But the scene just doesn't go anywhere, except to add further complications to their quest.

The worst Nuclear Winter since records began

One final, quite minor point (not a spoiler), but enough to wind me up, was that every skeleton that they came across was fully articulated. The rib cages standing up and all the bones connected by invisible tendons. This happens so often in films and it really winds me up. Once a body has decomposed there is nothing left to support the bones and they collapse in a heap. As an archaeologist I probably see this more than most, but I would have thought it was obvious to the layman as well. I know in films it's done for dramatic effect, but it still looks pretty fucking stupid. Besides this minor infraction the film is a frightening, depressing and realistic portrayal of the aftermath of a Nuclear Holocaust. It also has Charlize Theron in it, which is always a good reason to see a film.

Helloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Other than that I have moved into selling guitar pedals, well, buying two off Dave and selling them on at a profit. It works out well for both of us. He gets cash in hand to throw at strippers and I get money for when I need it. In a similar vein I have been trying to track down Colin to buy some books off him, but getting hold of Colin is akin to mucking out the rocking horse stables. Despite an email, a text message, a answer phone message and even sending Lauren after him, he has failed to emerge. Tomorrow is another day and hope springs eternal in the quest for the Magical Golden Mane. I might just fill his inbox up with abuse.

'Colin! Answer your fucking phone!'

We. We. We. We. We. We Are Floating In Space

I was asked by Ninjasaurus Rex for dinner on Friday night and for a game of his Starship Combat game Captain Ferk III (it was under the guise of 'playtesting' but I know full well he's only doing it to make me play SciFi games...). As he knows a thing or two about cooking I politely accepted the offer. It was either that or CHIKEN TIKKA PIZZA from the Punjab (the takeaway, not the region. The delivery cost would be astronomical to have a pizza flown in from the sub-continent of India). Although I've always been suspicious of the Punjab takeaway (they do curry, Pizza and Kebabs all in the same place, make your minds up lads), Sarah recommended the CHICKEN TIKKA PIZZA and they have been commended by Whiston's local Snooker 'celebrity' Shaun Murphy. At least that's what the portrait shot of him on the wall says. In the event Ninjasaurus Rex made a lovely Rogan Josh curry and then I lasered his face off in deep space. It was just like the Return of the Jedi, but with less Ewoks.

'Everyone to the life rafts! This has gone to rat shit!'

On Saturday I was graced with the presence of Justin and Lucy. They were on their way home to Brighton from Scotland. The pair of idiots had decided to go to Scotland for a two week holiday in the depth of the ICY WINTER OF DEATH. With just an ancient camper van to sleep in the foolhardy pair reached Oban only to break down on New Year's Eve in Tesco's carpark. The snow fell, there was nothing open and even the gas in their heater froze. Cutting their losses the pair retreated to Lucy's parents, with their heating and food, and called in on me on their way home.

'try it in third...'

I immediately dragged them out for a walk down Whiston meadows but not before Justin had become worryingly obsessed with the Cliff Richard Calendar and Card that Lauren and Herr Docktor Clay had respectively given me for Christ's Mess. Justin wanted to see Ulley Reservoir as it had featured quite heavily on the news a couple of years ago, when it threatened to breach and sweep all of Whiston away in a flood of Biblical proportions. Fortunately it never happened and my building of an Ark was all in vain. When I say Ark, I mean a massive cage which I was planning to herd all the Rotherham female population into.

'I promise you, it's for your own safety. I'll let you out when this is all over...'

So we walked over hill and dale, and over another hill and into another dale. Ulley was further than I remembered, so our plucky little band turned off up a snow covered road and back on ourselves before night fell and the wolves came out. Justin had not only become obsessed with Cliff Richard, he had become obsessed with having a curry as well. We took a taxi down into Rotherham town and after trying a few places (one was no longer a curry house and another was closed. At 7pm on a Saturday night? I ask you!) we plumped for Akbar's, yet another taxi ride away. We had to wait in an extremely loud bar area while the waiter's built our tables or something, but we finally got to eat. It was good, but the meal was crowned whilst waiting for our taxi home. A young lady came teetering on six inch heels onto the snow with two massive fireworks. Intending to set them off to celebrate her mate's birthday the expensive one failed to impress or even go off and the one that cost the least was akin to Akureryi last year... Finally back in Whiston I showed J&L the pubs of the village until getting drunk and collapsing in my bed. A great weekend.

And finally I'll just leave this here.

Homeward Shore

Here is the post I was missing last week, the one about Sarah and Mark's visit. Obviously they chose to take a holiday here in the middle of the madness, so that kind of overtook my weblog a little. Their fault, not mine.

It seems they had a pretty enjoyable time of it, although the only trips they took were around the Golden Circle and a horse ride through lava fields (I say 'only', but I bet the lava fields sure beats the Hell out of Whiston meadows for a pony trip...). The rest of their time was spent tramping around Reykjavik taking photographs of graffiti, eating Vegan soup and sitting in the hot tubs at my local swimming baths, seemingly.

I was unable to join them in these 'excursions' as I need to work all this month to make up money lost by time off at Christ's Mass and before when Justin and Lucy were visiting (they were much more adventurous and it was worthwhile taking time off to see parts of Iceland that I haven't seen before). But having said that, I was fully catered for each and every night. In lieu of paying for accommodation they decided to cook for me (and wash up afterwards). Knowing Mark is an excellent cook I obviously jumped at the chance. I wasn't disappointed either. It wasn't just hyperbole on his part. My only complaint is that they are both such procrastinators that most of the dinners arrived at my table cold. I generally like my food to burn my mouth like a flamethrower, so this was a minus point, a very minor one though as I would have had to cook for myself otherwise.

Donar's Oak

My computer died on Thursday, I brought it into work so Igor could have a look at it and he took it home for the weekend to test if it was just fucked or really fucked. Turns out it's fucked, so Hrappi took it into his local Computer repair shop Koporvogur, the cheapest one in Iceland, apparently. They didn't seem to understand the concept of the word cheap and told him (who told me) that it would cost approximately one hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds to repair. I think my response was somewhere along the lines of 'Fuck that shit...', so now I don't have a computer to while away my evenings with. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Roz and Duncan left for a week so I had the house to myself and I spent Friday evening in the company of General Atli (As he now wants to be known) playing Axis and Allies D-Day and eating Pitsa. I played the Germans and held the American forces at Omaha Beach, just like in real life, but eventually, airstrikes and lack of reinforcements led to an Allied victory with St Lo falling in the last turn to the Yanks. again Atli was the victor and I am beginning to think I am losing my touch. It's like the last days of the Reich all over again.

I drowned my misery with several cans of booze after Atli left and watched the rest of Seinfeld Series Eight. I awoke quite late on Saturday morning and headed into town to pick up some booze for Mark and Sarah's arrival. They were coming to stay for the week and the house was dryer than it was when the Jesus Freak ex-alcoholic lived there. I bought some booze and a Johnny Cash CD and a DVD in the sales at a record shop.

Mark and Sarah appeared Saturday evening and I showed them the local swimming pool; mainly the hot pots. Then we went out for a meal at the Indian place Margret had recommended before. Again, a great meal. A few drinks later we headed back to the house where Mark and I sat up drinking and talking shit about shit.

On Sunday I took the two of them round Reykjavik, I dropped them off at a Vegan Cafe, where we all had Vegan soup with bananas in it. Make your own mind up about this... I didn't really want to spend my Sunday afternoon tramping round Reykjavik, so I headed back home. Sunday evening was spent in the cold comfort of Icelandic TV. Mainly Britain's Next Top Model.

At work on Monday we found a Whale skull, the first I have ever seen, excited? I nearly shit. Today we found another one!! Holy crap. What is weird is that both are in association with dog skulls. I'll leave you to ponder on the meaning of all this....

STOP PRESS!! The opening of the Althingi today was interrupted with protests all round the building. The Icelanders took to the streets and made their voices heard!! It´s been going on since one today and is still showing no signs of stopping! Brilliant I say! get the people out on the streets, everyone is out making noise! I´ll post more on this tomorrow!