In Hoose Entertainment

let’s round up the week!

Thursday:

Met a couple of blokes in a pub about their band, they seem alright, but the practices would be really difficult for me to get to as they’re in Stockport.

It’s times like these that I really wish I had a car!

Friday:

Had a busy day sorting the house out and then popping into town to pick up some bandages for tomorrow’s party. Also managed to pay my tax rebate into the bank, always nice.

Went to the Maths halowe’en party, mostly due to the free booze there. It wasn’t very interesting so I left after a couple of glasses of wine and some free food.

We then popped down to Alsion’s party, which was pretty good fun.

We played a game of “Werewolves” which involved us all falling asleep, werewolves waking up and picking their victims etc etc… It was pretty cool.

Left around 1am and got a free lift home from adrian. Which was nice.

Saturday

Played hockey but not too well. I think our midfield hold the ball up too much (which allows the opposition to all get back and reset their lines - thus restricting our space in the attacking third).

We lost 0-3 to the top of the table team - which, if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know is an improvement.

Got home, welcomed Pam, who was up visiting from Cheltenham, and then went out to the mugss halowe’en party.

Got a cab over (I went as a mummy) and had a pretty decent time chatting to loads of people and eventually leaving at 4am (old time, the clocks went back!). Upon getting home Pam, Mahinda, Rosy and I watched “Shaun of the Dead”.

You’ve got red on you.

Went to bed sometime after 6am (old time)

Sunday

For some unknown reason I woke up at 845am (new time) and couldn’t get back to sleep. this spells tiredness.

English Breakfast as cooked by me. yum yum.

Spent most of the day chatting with Pam, who has *just* left (it’s half 4 now). Later I’ll be going to Lindens for Mahinda’s sunday evening meal.

Which should be pretty cool!

A rather sedate start to the week for me, I shall sum up briefly;

Monday:
Stayed in and watched Sheff Wed v Brighton. (1-1). I had played football earlier.

Tuesday:
Was umming and ahhing about going down to the Sale hockey training session or watching the Liverpool game on tv. Being soaked to the skin on the way home (I literally caught the worst of it and became absolutely drenched!) decided me.

So I watched Liverpool lose to Palace. Rubbish.

Wednesday:
Went to the didsbury training session which was pretty good. I stuck my hand up when they asked which of us were strikers which turned out to be The Right Thing To Do.

I especially enjoyed the shooting training and the 4 on 4 (in which we were by far the best team, winning 6 drawing 1 and only losing 2 of our 9 games)

that is all.

Surely that’s the nadir?

So that was a decent enough weekend.

On Saturday I got up early only to find out that the hockey match had been cancelled, but that the 6’s were “A couple of men short” so the three of us (Rosy, Jon and me) decided to go anyway.

The match was in Ormskirk, which is just north of liverpool.

When we got there it turned out that the team was definitely *not* short of any players (we had 15!) and the opposition, who intially requested a couple of our players, ended up padding out their team with some ringers instead - they were a bit good.

Rosy, Jon and I were all substitutes, this being only my second week and the other’s first. I didn’t mind, particularly, as long as Rosy and Jon got on the pitch for a fair whack, and I got 10 mins or so to justify the journey (I’ll be expecting a full game next week for the 7’s though!).

The first half none of us came on.

and the opposition overran us into a 4-0 lead. The main problems seemed to be:

1) The defence failing to clear the ball with any haste, thus leading to losing the ball within our third and therefore never easing the pressure
2) The keeper losing heart when it went to 2-0.
3) The midfield playing far too deep, mostly due to (1), meaning whenever the ball went up we only had 1 or 2 men forward and they were quickly surrounded by 4 or 5 defenders, thus giving away the ball and putting us straight back under pressure again.
4) the oppositions ringers, who were damn good players!

the third and fourth goals were particularly poor :/

We were 5-0 down by the time Rosy and Jon came on, and I made an appearance 15 mins from the end, shortly before conceeding the 6th (I went on at Left Back, which is not exactly my natural position (I’m a striker) but I still made a good stab at it I think). I almost saved it too, after he beat our two centre backs I came in to cover, but he got the shot off a microsecond before my stick intervened. Got a nice astro turf burn as a result.

I went to left wing and shouted my head off for some attention, but the ball generally drifted out to our right, which was irritating. I played alright though. We generally pressed for a goal, but they scored on the counter for the final one.

a slightly unrepresentative final score : 0-7.

Pub after where a rumour quickly developed that there were no sarnies for us. unhappily we work at a few pints and make to leave… actually going into the car park and opening the car before Rosy rushed out to inform us that the sarnies had arrived!

Gleefully we tuck in and then rush back as Ads is late for the last-night-performance of Kiss me Kate.

Some food at home is followed by Jon, Rosy and I moseying down to the Scu for the KmK After show. Which was pretty good fun I think.

We played twenty-one for a bit - Jon is very bad at it - and talked and drunk and got home about 3, bed about 4.

Sunday started around 11am and before long we were on our way to adrian and Emma’s for Emma’s sunday lunch. Which was very nice!

We headed back to ours to watch the football and have dessert. Adrian brought Risk with him so about 530 we started playing.

Before starting we had a straw poll “World Conquest or missions?” Adrian didn’t care, I said “Missions” though admited I didn’t care, Rosy said “Missions” and Emma said “Conquest”. We played “Conquest”

It lasted for 5 hours and 20 minutes.

Rosy was out within the first hour and what ensued was something of a stand off between me (N.America) Adrian (S.America, Africa) Emma (Most of Asia, Australia) until I finally instigated a bit battle between Adrian and myself, leaving Emma to pick up the pieces and win.

watched Gladiator and some footie, finished off fridays wine and went to bed.

that’s it!

It really isn’t, but that was one of the songs in Kiss Me Kate, which I went to see on Wednesday night.

It was pretty good (for a musical - not my favourite genre) and I knew a few people in it so definitely worthwhile.

Afterwards we went down the Scu and had a bit to drink.

I missed the Liverpool game, but we beat Anderlecht 1-0, which is nice.

Thursday was a nice night in playing guitar and stuff.

Friday went by pretty much unannounced as well. I did a bit of work and then watched “Last Man Standing” and had a good bottle of wine to accompany it. early night.

Stayed in most of sunday apart from a brief trip down to A+E’s for some decent sunday scran. Watched the footie and probably some film or other, but I can’t remember.

Monday was same old with the regular Jeff meeting and some work here and there. I did go to the Cricket training, however, which involved an hour of fitness stuff followed by an hour of cricket stuff. It’s not as good though because I’m not getting enough time in the nets. I’ll have to find someway to practice my bowling away from the training cos I literally bowled less than 10 bowl’s and didn’t get to bat at all. Not Good - though I did - on the whole - enjoy the training. Went home watched Scream.

Tuesday, stayed home late to see if my book would arrive (it didn’t) and then went in to teach my bunch of first years how to do Conic Sections (quite hard for first years!). Returned to the office to check my e-mail before going home and Jon txt’d me to say him and a bunch of math’s lads were down the Lass, so I popped out for a few.

Jon, however, neglected to mention that he was leaving pretty early to go and bench press (his actual excuse!) so I left after two pints and Rosy and I decided to go and watch Wallace and Gromit - very funny (4/5) - worth seeing.

Got home and watched the champ league highlights before calling it a night.

Today I stayed home late again to see if my book arrived, and it did! This is the book in question: “A Feast For Crows” it’s the latest in a series, and frankly this one has taken an age to come out. I’ve read the first chapter, and it’s pretty good.

The Ashes arrived too (on dvd!), it’s 8.5 hours of footage, so I’m thinking “Drinking game marathon” you with me?

and now I’m at work.

Right well I did, in the end, choose to go out for a few beers on Thursday.

I picked up a cornish pasty and a mars bar (eating well, you’ll be glad to see!) and then popped down the sand bar, briefly, and then the Lass.

Met a few new CAMRA types (I’m not really a member but I come down to the odd social) including some guy in a band called Dead Like Harry who may well be worth checking out at some point. (I actually realised later that the reason I’d thought I’d heard of them was because I saw loads of “Dead Like Harry” stickers around the DryBar when we went to watch “Misty’s Big Adventure” a couple of weeks ago!)

Anyway after the closure of the pub, around 1130, Mahinda and I popped off to join the Mugss people, currently reclining in the upstairs part of scubar (my first time there), and apparently some sort of quiz was about to take place.

I went round the room before sitting down on a giant quiz team named after some badgers and containing (amongst others) Linden, Mark, Luc, Leila S, Mia & Jen P. Leila was taking the quiz very very seriously… and so we ended up winning a truely frivilous prize of three musical DvD’s after coming first.

I stayed around to the end with a few beers and went chatting to some other teams in the inordinate gap between rounds. Eventually I headed home and watched a bit of the cricket before calling it a night around 330.

Got up Friday and did a bit more work. Considered going to watch the Ordinary boys but couldn’t be arsed. Partly because I’m not really into all these bands that sound the same and partly because I couldn’t be arsed.

I did finish work quite late again and only got home around 830, had some food and then headed out to “Pleasure” for a few more Valentine type bands.

The first was some random fella spouting of lounge-style lyrics over an electronic background. Rosy coined the term “Cocktail Rap”, or “CRap” for short, in a rare moment of lucidity.

The following bands were much better, Shmoo were chilled out nonchelance and quite good. The band after were two guys and reminded me of the guy off peep show and his mate “Superhands” very impressive, but not that listenable. (in my opinion each song was the same - a three note chordy bass riff overlaid by scratching and random ad-libbing).

went home around 12. It was incredibly busy in Pleasure, but those of you who know it will know that that is not hard to achieve.

It was the first time I’d been there since the first hattrick boozer breakfast by the way - over two years ago!!

On Friday morning I’d also recieved a text from Adam Hebden about playing hockey for the disbury 7’s on Saturday. I say yes, and so I bring you… Saturday!

Got up fairly late and got ready, picked up by Adam and went (via a few other houses) to Bury for the match.

Now, the seven’s were basically a rag tag bunch of hockey players dredged from wherever Adam could find them and our team included 3 players who’d never picked up a hockey stick before, 2 more who’s experience ran to less than 6 proper games between them, a 15 year old youth player and a thin smattering of people who knew what they were doing. I think 3 of the 11 had been to some sort of training session this season - so you can see we were more than a little green!

When we saw our opponents - who were organised and all fairly fit, we knew we’d do well to avoid a battering.

I was played up front, first alonside richard (the 15 year old) and later sleazy rich, the latter of which worked quite well.

the first half we pretty much fell apart defensively, but rescued some pride with a goal from … me! a nice run by sleazy and the ball was played across, I beat the defender to it and struck it home. I was very pleased. Half Time was 1-4.

The second half we were much more organised and played pretty well considering! we lost 2-6 in all and the second goal was scored by Ads after I set him up, 1 goal & 1 assist in my first full game (I broke my finger 15 mins into my only other proper match) quite pleased me - Especially as the strikers didn’t see much of the ball in the match! I’m looking forward to doing some training and improving too.

afterwards we headed down to their clubhouse for a few bevvies whilst watching the footie scores come in (including Chelsea 5-1 Bolton, Liverpool 1-0 Blackburn, Wigan 1-0 Newcastle and WBA 2-1 Arsenal) and then headed home.

Stayed in Saturday night and watched Match of the Day and Zoolander (3/5). nothing too strenuous. and that’s it!

hmmm.

I’m at work. It’s 845pm. There’s something wrong with that (there would be something wrong with it if it were 845AM too, admitedly).

The reason is I’m running some rather interesting (and by interesting, I mean intensely dull) Mathematica programmes to try and see if I can find a counter-example to an inequality I’ve been trying to prove.

Anyway the last programme just finished running (it ran 53,499 examples, and couldn’t find a C-E (which is good news, fortunately)) and I’m now trying to decide whether to go home for food, or to the pub for beer (which is why I decided to come and type in here) What do you think I should do? (reply through comments, and don’t worry that I’d have decided by the time you read this).

Anyway, I’m currently listening to Idlewild, in case you were interested. they’re pretty good.

Last night we watched the England game down the Victoria, which was quite quiet, except for the fella (who *may* have been one of the owners) who was very very drunk and kept shouting at the screen. Resident Drunks, every good pub needs one!

Anyway, having watched the best England performance this year we travelled down to King Cobra in a couple of cars and had the end-of-hockey (it’s too dark now!) curry.

It was quite nice, as was the company - My section of the table contained Rosy, Jen P., Leila S., and Si Glass. Luc was also there and gave both rosy and I football stickers, which was fairly random, but quite welcome (cheers!). lots of other people there, I’m not going to name them all.

Tasty curry, but not as tasty as Saturday. Then home around 1am via a bus.

My flu’s pretty much healed btw, it’s turned into one of those cough’s instead. I’m still taking things fairly easy, but I don’t feel bad. which is nice. It appears that I’ve passed it onto a few other people though…

I had a bit more time so I went back and put a few pointless links in through the entry.

Now; Pub or Home…. hmmmmm……..

I’ve not done much the last couple of days due to recovering from this flu…

On Monday I trapsed down to sainsbury’s - proving to myself that the right decision was made in abstaining from work since this completely naq’d me out!

I stayed in and watched “Enter the Dragon” (4/5) which Mahinda had leant me.

Went into work on Tuesday and took my class, decent enough though I was flagging towards the end - I went back to the office to finish off some work and then stayed in watching the England v Poland U21 game, ’til Mahinda called and I went down to the “Old House at Home” for a swift one with Mahinda, his housemate Lynda and Kate_s.

Today I came in early to see Jeff then went into town to try and get the Inland Revenue to give me back my money, 4-6 weeks apparently, so that should be a nice pre-christmas boost

That’s probably the shortest entry I’ve made in a while!

tarra!

Eeep, not updated it for a while! time for a bit of catch up, whilst I’m currently sat at home sniffling away (yup, I finally got my annual dose of freshers flu!).

Anyway, on with the show!

Thursday:
A normal day at work followed by a swift trip down to Alti, where Mahinda was waiting with his car.
A BK burger later and we arrived in Knutsworth, which is one of those places you always think you’ve been too when you actually haven’t. I put this down to the Junction 19 services on the M6 which is my reminder to turn off for Manchester…
Anyway, the reason we were there was to visit a cricket\hockey shop. It was quite expensive so I didn’t purchase any hockey stuff, though I got a nifty pair of gloves and a few cricket balls which I’m looking forward to using in my next nets session (which won’t be for another week since I’m ill today!)
Went home and chilled out.

Friday:
Another standard day at work followed by a trip down to the cinema where we watched “Serenity”

Serenity - 4/5 - a decent fluffy action sci-fi romp, a nice bit of Friday night entertainment, no brain gearage required.

Then we popped down to some bar down grovesnor street (can’t remember the name) for a few pints and then onto the scu bar where Mahinda and I ended up talking to Mahinda’s housemate and the quietest dutch girl in the world.

Got home fairly late, after a quick visit to the Canadian Charcoal Pit. Yum.

Saturday:
Rushing around all day today. First went into town to spend yet more money on:

1) tracksuit bottoms for cricket (and hockey if I ever start playing that properly!)

2) New CD’s! -
Ian Brown (Greatest) - I’ve always quite liked his stuff, but never enough to buy a full album. “The Greatest” is right up my street in that case. I’m listening to it right now - it’s good!

Oasis (Don’t Believe the Truth) - I really like “The Importance of Being Idle” so I bought the album as it was on special offer in HMV. It’s really good! their influences come through pretty strongly with a late 60s, early 70s feel to the whole album, whilst the typical stomping Oasis beat is present on many songs. It’s no “Definitely Maybe” or “What’s the Story…” but it’s good.

Yeah Yeah Yeah’s (Fever To Tell) - Quality album. absolute nutter lead singer over a nice alternative bit of punky \ rocky guitar and all fuzzed up. Really good stuff.

I’m quite pleased with my purchases.

I then went to the pub to watch the England game. I’d arranged to meet Emma & Adrian there, but when Rosy and I arrived at the Footage we found that it was very very busy! so we trapsed down to the Jabez where we managed to source a sofa to watch the game.

Was quite pleased with the match, since it qualified us for the world cup. Thought we were in control til Beckham got ridiculously sent off - but hey we’re in Germany so who cares!

A brief visit home was then followed by a trip out to King Cobra where we met up with Linden, Matt_B, Kate_s, Kate, Rosy, Adrian, Emma & Alsion and had “The Best Curry Ever” (Lamb Badum, I’ve had it before, but it was superb tonight!)

After finishing up (I was very very full at the end of the meal) Kate & Kate went off to Ross’ party and the rest of us headed down the Fab Café where we ended up playing drinking games, including Mats, and then noticed that Willy Wonka was being shown on the screens in there (the original version).

A drinking game was quickly invented which included;

Linden having to drink whenever Kids were on the screen
Me having to drink whenever stripes were on the screen (lots of times)
the old vertical\horizontal movement stuff.

etc etc…. Amusingly a random bloke (friend of a friend) sat down with us and immediately got stuck with having to drink whenever someone with facial hair was on the screen.

It was all pretty good (except for the cider ending up in beer…. guess who was responsible!).

Other things I remember are deciding that Pam & Mike are everyone’s grandparents (I’m not quite sure how this happened, but it was around about the time that Matt_B asked how long Linden and I had been married….. which was funny in itself!) And me accidentally calling Matt_B “Rich” after deciding that he looked like a tall Richard Hammond (he does though) and then having to explain to everyone why I called him that. He still pops up in my mind as “Rich” before he does as “Matt” I’m quite happy for it to stay that way considering the number of Matt’s I know.

We left around 130am and decided to get a taxi before actually getting on a bus. The bus was quite funny though took the longest I’ve ever seen a bus take ever (I’m sure I could’ve walked back quicker)

people on the bus included:
Bloke next to Alsion, who seemed to have his head screwed on and talked to us most of the way back. Still no idea what his name was.

Two chavvy lasses who tried to pull anyone who came on the bus til an equally chavvy fella took them up on their offer…

two other lasses who took serious offence to a guy telling them that their ring tone was “Gay” and upon leaving the bus turned around and called us all a bunch of miserable wankers… the juxtaposition being completed by the fact that pretty much everyone on the bus was rolling about laughing by this point at the argument they were having with this other lad. Very amusing.

Finally got home around 330am. (yes the bus really did take that long!)

Sunday:

Spend most of the morning putting my songs on my iPod before tidying the whole house.

Just had enough time to creep to the supermarket and Rosy cooked some steak, which was nice.

Chilled out the rest of the day as I started to get ill, Mahinda came round and we watched “The House of Flying Daggers”

The House of Flying Daggers - 2/5 - A real disappointment. It was, in essence, a very simple tragic love story which they tried to add a bit of background into - whilst pretty much failing. Some nice stuff in there, but essentially a bit of Asian cinematic fluff that had it been American would’ve scored 1/5 (the style of the film scored it slightly higher). The main shame was that the background story was pretty good, so if they’d gone for a multi-threaded story then it would’ve been much better. As it was it was pretty crap :/

Went to bed fairly early (midnight or so)

Monday:

Woke up with a heavy head, sore throat and blocked up nose. Instantly decided not to go into work. I’ll not be able to make cricket later either, which is irritating cos now I’ve started playing I want to play regularly so I can get back into it properly. Maybe I can get a bit of practice in down the park at some point… we’ll see.

that’s it so far.

Bye!

Wednesday provided yet another day with little work done, again mostly due to having to sort out money matters (I finally got my cheque!) and then having to go home early to get all Rosy’s sporting equipment ready after he’d left them at home.

Admitedly it was also slightly my fault since I stayed at home to watch the disappointing denouement of the World XI v Australia game, which didn’t finish til after 12. .

Anyway after arriving home it wasn’t long ’til mahinda came along and gave me a lift to Platt Fields for the last hockey session of the year…

It was a good game, I thought, cut short by light. There were a decent number of people there, and the rain held off (unlike last week!) afterwards we popped down to Hardy’s.

I meant to only stay for one.

But then I always say that!!, Adrian called just as I was finishing off my first pint and said he fancied a swift one, so I decided to stay for one more (Most people had left for the Celidh by this point; I’m still of the opinion that Celidh is “Not My Thing” though I may give it a go at some point in the future).

About halfway through my second pint (With Adrian now in residence) Si Glass called me and sold the idea of coming down to the retro bar to watch some bands (Si works for a mini-label called Valentine and this was one of their nights) Well just earlier that day I was musing over the fact that I’d never been to the retro bar (which seems weird to me, I mean I’ve passed it so many times, and they have bands in there!) and it sounded like they needed a few more bods to turn up, so I said yeah.

Seconds later Rosy called to say that he’d missed his bus (or rather; his bus hadn’t bothered turning up) and so couldn’t make it to TKD, I suggested he popped down to Hardy’s and then to the Retro.

Adrian couldn’t be convinced, mostly because he’d driven down (I had thought he’d cycled!) despite the offer of free entry and a free coke! but he was engaged in the task of “Giving us a lift” which was nice of him.

Rosy and I watched the three bands that were playing:

Band 1 :
Tight and talented, good vocal harmonies, but they had no songs. At all. result : Not very good.

Band 2:
Si introduced them to us as, only just 18 and pretty good. That’s a good description. They have a few rough edges (the bassist looks scared of his bass and the crowd, the rhythm guitarist styled himself like the lead guitarist and vice versa) but then they’re only young. The lead singer is a star and they could go far if they sort themselves out a bit!

Band 3:
A few technical hitches meant they started late and by the time we left I hadn’t realised they’d actually started playing again. Electronica really, and pretty good stuff (very chilled out stuff) but it was sending me to sleep and I was very hungry by this point so went home.

Went home, had chilli, watched “The Office” and went to bed around 2am.

that’s it!

What did I say last week?

ah yes…

It’s often said that you can only improve by playing with people better than you, and I agree

Yeah, well, that’s true, and I found today that I’d improved quite a bit over the course of the week, and I played quite well.

Despite the fact that only 10 of us turned up (It turned out that the *main* practice *isn’t* at 8pm on a Tuesday, but at 7pm on a Monday and it *isn’t* at the Armitage, but at Manchester Grammer … directions gratefully recieved) we had a heavily involved two hour session.

Batting : I could see the bowl well and was getting well into my stride padding away the spinner and hitting quite a few of the others. Then two Lancashire U21 players turned up, he softened me up by bowling an off spinner for his first, so I decided to watch the second ball to find out which way he was spinning it (the first one hadn’t moved much and I wasn’t expecting a spin delivery for the first one, to be honest) cue an 80mph ball that went straight through me.

This is when we discovered that he was a lanky u21 player. the three guys bowling at me at that point were him, his mate (slower, but still quick) and another guy who was quick but wayward.

And when I say wayward I mean beamers.

I got hit on the chest by one, still painful, and on the palm by another, also painful. I ducked the most dangerous one!!

Bowling : Of course batting is not my main thing when playing cricket and I found my leggies working a lot better than last week. A good line a good length, and towards the end I upped the speed and spin a little. Got to put all 4 together and they’ll be pretty decent. Still having problems with batsmen who constantly pad them away, or batsmen that come forward (though a nice quicker ball often sends them back into the crease) Going to work on the googlie next, that’s a tough one to master, but once I get that, the flipper and top-spinner in my armory I should be a good bowler. still not good enough to make the uni team, but useful enough to play for a club side… I reckon.

Obviously still alot of rough edges to smooth off (only my second nets session since 1997!) but looking more promising.

I also took control of the session at the end when a few people left (organising the bowlers, the putting of stuff away, the timekeeping and teaching somebody else how to leg-spin (consider this is only my second week doing it!)) I think responsibility suits me. Nah, I *Know* responsibility suits me.

Anyway. that was tonight.

I spent most of the day trying to get the university to pay me. It turns out they’re paying us by cheque, which they don’t have yet. The upshot being I’m not getting paid til next monday at the earliest. Bummer.

Had my demonstration class. Enjoyed it. I like my group of students, they’ve got a good sense of humour about them (gallows at times!).

Got no work done due to the combination of the above.

Met with my supervisor on Monday and had to present some work that my predecessor had done… It turned into more of a discussion after it turned out that Jeff hadn’t given me all the information I needed (there’s no way I could’ve known that too! he was trying to lead me in one direction and I went the other, due to the lacking info!)

so was very busy on Monday. Did nowt in the evening though, after footie (in which I didn’t play too well) I was naq’d so sat down and chatted on my newly installed MSN to people. Alternativeley arranging myself a drummer, and getting PeteG to turn up to the go-karting in November with Lou (yay!)

Have I said what I did on Sunday? I find it unlikely since I did mostly nothing!

and that’s you up to date with me. leave comments.

now where did I leave you?

did I write anything about Thursday? If not then nothing really happened so you’re not missing anything.

Friday:
Went into work fairly early and started to sort out a presentation that I have to give to Jeff on Monday. Which should be fun…

Turns out that half the stuff I’m presenting (it’s someone elses work that I’ll be following on from, but it’s unpublished and therefore very very rough) is incorrect so I have to prove three or four things, which I do and that makes me happy.

This did, of course, mean that I had hardly any time to actually prepare the presentation, so that’s an early start on Monday for me!

After working fairly late (630 or so) I headed home and before long I was on my way to Mahinda’s for a night in with beer, music, pizza and a game of risk.

Mahinda is never one to underestimate the size of his companies stomach’s and shortly after arriving we’re greated by pizza-a-plenty. Gratefully sated we played a 3 hour game of risk (I won, I think that’s the first time I’ve ever won and it largely came about because no-one bothered to attack me) and we had music, alternatively good\bad in the background.

People:
Linden, Mahinda, Rosy, Kate_s, Howell & Myself for the risk with two of Mahinda’s housemates until around 10, one turned up later, drunk, with a broken shoe.

went home around 3 I think after Kate_s prediction of how long a taxi would take proved woefully inaccurate (if only because it didn’t actually turn up at all!)

Saturday:

Got up and found that the university had, predictibly, failed to pay me.

Ignoring such, I trapsed into town to meet up with Linden and Matt Lees and we popped into the dry bar for bands a-plenty. (Rosy turned up around 5)

starting around 3pm and finishing around 12am, with a one hour break for lunch in “Simple … in the city” (Paté and a cheese\bacon\brie wrap thing) most of the bands were decent, though most of them were very very similar.

one’s that stand out in my memory are The Hair, New Graffiti, Hanky Park, The Bette Noires, and the outstanding “Misty’s Big Adventure”.

The latter involved a man in a suit covered in hands dancing like a mad Bez on stage and in the crowd. very amusing, here’s a picture though he had a blue face yesterday.

oh, and we all got free bacardi’s & cokes and offered free tickets to Sankey’s Soap (which we passed up)

It was a pretty decent day in all, though afterwards we went to a party where I knew no-one, which is all well and good if you get there early enough that everyone isn’t already talking to people. I got bored but fortunately we left fairly quickly and I went to bed.

Sunday will be a relaxing day I think.