The Prince Who Relied Upon Their Words

And another week has gone by; this one just as crazy as the last.

Monday, as ever, was Chorus; sectionals this week. Still doing the part new/part familiar repertoire.

Tuesday I was up early to catch a train out to a supplier’s offices for a seminar on Software Asset Management. It was an interesting day but principally reassured me that we don’t have a need for that particular area of products. On the way back into town I met up with Mikey for a coffee. When he’d suggested meeting it had sounded like he needed to talk some heavy stuff over, but in the end it turned out to be a purely social visit. It seemed a little strange since we’d only seen each other the previous evening…

Wednesday at work was mostly taken up with hassling users about the rapidly dwindling disk space on our London file server. In the last two weeks, we’ve added more data than we added in the whole of 2005; even with Moore’s law factored in, that’s really excessive growth I’d say!

In the evening I was out at the Gay Photographers Network meeting near Vauxhall; listened to a lecture about Yukio Mishima, a photographic pioneer in Japan in the ‘50s, showed off a few of my own recent pictures and then came home.

Thursday was all about disk space again but we all left work a bit early to go to the Comedy Café for our (very late) team Christmas jolly. We had a good evening despite being sat right in front of the stage and getting picked on by each comedian. We’d booked a party package (meal + show) which meant we got party hats too. We were the only ones in the room with party hats. They didn’t get worn.

Friday was just an obstacle to be overcome to get to the weekend.

The night wasn’t great though as Brett heard back about his audition for FFK – he didn’t get in and was quite brought down by it since he suspects secondary criteria might have been put ahead of primary criteria in the decision. It seems to have crystallised his thinking a little about what his interests really are though and he’s reassessing his priorities now.

Saturday I spent a while working on the Sri Lanka itinerary and then we headed out to the new Westfield Shopping Centre near Shepherds Bush. I needed a lightweight summer jacket (my old one, which never fitted properly anyway, has developed a tear under one arm) and some trainers. Ping joined us on a whim and we had a good wander round. The place has something of the feel of an airport about it but still works well as shopping mall. I achieved a first by buying something from UniQlo (the aforementioned jacket) and then went on to Top Shop to buy cheap t-shirts to go with the jacket; one of the more unusual shopping combinations I’ve ever tried…

We had been planning Sunday lunch with Rosie, Mikey, Ruth & Chris but the latter two declined the invite early in the week because Ruth had a girlie weekend organised, Mikey called Saturday evening to bail out because he had essays to write (his unreliability is beginning to try my patience!) and Rosie spent Saturday with Ruth being girlie, so we cancelled lunch with her so she could carry on with their weekend.

Instead we arranged brunch in Wimbledon with Rod & Jess for late Sunday morning after they’d done their morning rides and had a very pleasant catch-up with them. In typical London style, we are seeing them more often now that they live further away!

This afternoon I spent processing the photos I took of Jerry at the session last week and there are some nice shots there, so it was a good day.

Am contemplating having a year along the lines of the one John Windle had a few years back; doing all the things I never did when I was young that everyone else seemed to. If not exactly that, then at least making a deliberate effort to push the boundaries of my existence.