Last Day in New York

So the last day in New York started early; I woke up on UK time and spent a few hours sorting photographs and blogging before breakfast. After breakfast we packed, checked-out and took a walk down Fifth Avenue to the Empire State Building. We’d walked past it on Saturday and the queue stretched out of the front doors and around the building. This morning there was no queue so we headed in.

It turned out that there was a queue – and endless miles of zig-zagging rope lines – but we still made it to the top in only about forty minutes, constantly shepherded by uniformed attendants who either wanted to tell us how exciting the SkyRide was, or wanted us to take the elevators on the left. The visibility was fairly good so there was a view across the island and beyond; not much noteworthy though from that height. I got the obligatory pictures of the nearby Chrysler building, long shots of the Brooklyn Bridge and Financial District and a semi-obscured view of the park looking very un-green.

After all the photography and freezing winds we found it a lot faster to get out of the building than get into it, although we still had to queue. We took the tube up to the Rockefeller Centre in search of lunch and more holiday snaps. After lunch we carried on along Fifth Avenue towards the park. The first stop was Tiffany’s, for Brett to buy a ring, then on to the Abercrombie & Fitch store. We didn’t buy anything there (too crowded, dark and noisy!) just marvelled at the décor. They have a curious mural running the height of their staircase; done in a quasi-religious style (even to the extent of it extending over the ceiling – very Sistine Chapel!) of lots of guys in a kind of 1920s gym setting, all wearing simple white shorts and working out on ropes and bars; kind of stylish and certainly in keeping with their increasingly homoerotic advertising styles but, frankly, nothing to do with their products…

After Abercrombie we carried on northwards and called in at the Apple Store (a Louvre-esque underground store beneath a glass cube) and the nearby FAO Schwarz where I found some fascinating magnetic-mecano kind of stuff and spent ages playing with it. I very nearly came away with a box, but restrained myself to just noting down the manufacturer’s URL so that when I get home…

From there we went on into the park. It seemed appropriate for the last half hour; we just sat and enjoyed the moment in the wintery sunshine.

And then we were travelling again; back to the hotel to collect luggage and change clothes, into the shuttle bus, through the rush-hour (at 4pm!), then check-in (fast-track again, oh yes!) and into the lounge.

We luxuriated a bit here, making sure to book into the Molton Brown Spa as soon as we arrived we both had a nice relaxing facial scrub and massage, followed by a laze on their recliners sipping green tea. Then a light snack from the buffet and reading before our flight was announced.

The return flight was clearly more heavily booked than the outbound as, when I had checked-in the previous day, most of the seats were already occupied and I couldn’t get us the cosy central seats. Instead I booked us a pair of adjoining seats on the upper deck which seatguru reports as quieter and with better service than the main deck.

Sure enough we had a pleasant flight; the flat-bed is a definite plus-point and I slept for all of four hours – which isn’t bad on a seven-hour flight considering I took full advantage of the two meal services.

Heathrow was busy on our arrival; lots of queues in immigration, but fortunately not much waiting at this side. I was through in twenty-minutes and once again, Brett was waiting for me on the other side. The luggage took forever to come through – there were several announcements asking us to forgive how long it was taking…

Then, at last, we were through Customs and into the car, heading for a relaxing day in our own home.

Pictures of the Trip to New York

OK, if you want to see pictures of the New York trip, here they are!

A Chorus Line on Broadway

Today has been another long but good one. The benefit of being on London time is that you can wake up as usual, have a couple of hours’ lie-in and still get up in time for a 06:30 breakfast! The hotel includes a continental breakfast that isn’t bad so we have been taking advantage of it.

This morning we didn’t have any firm plans and decided to spend the morning doing some photography. We headed down to Battery Park on the far south-western tip of Manhattan and I got out my long lens to see what I could make of the Statue of Liberty. (Not a lot as it turned out.) From there we took refuge in a Starbucks for half an hour to recover from the bitterly cold wind before walking up the east side of the island to the Brooklyn Bridge, which we’d originally intended to be at for sunrise as you can apparently get some spectacular shots of the city at that time in the morning. Because I confused the hours of sunset and sunrise we were too late for that, but I figured we could still check it out for a visit tomorrow and maybe get some nice pictures before the sun went too far around to the west.

This we did (I’ll not post them until I get home – to many to sort through!) and then caught the subway back to Chelsea to have brunch in a café-bar recommended in the Out Guide to New York. They did indeed have lovely food and a welcoming atmosphere and, because it was Easter, they were all wearing bunny ears: Great fun.

From there we went on to the theatre where the revival of A Chorus Line is playing. They have a lottery for cheap tickets a few hours before the show and Brett won us a couple of tickets for $22 each. (Not bad, considering the normal ticket price is in the $80-120 range!) So for about £11.50 we got to see a second Broadway show! Unlike Company though, I understand that little has changed in this revival production from the original one and, while it was enjoyable enough, it didn’t grip or stir me nearly as much. Sitting on the front row though, gave you a really up-close and personal view!

Tom met us again after the show and we had a snack in the Edison Hotel Café a few blocks from the theatre before again heading home to bed.

Company on Broadway

Wow! Company was riveting; an excellent production. The set is quite austere and open; lots of Perspex and crystal, there’s no orchestra; the cast play all the music, but the acting and singing is superb. Raul Esparza as Bobby knows how to use silence and deadpan and Heather Laws, who played Amy, did a stunningly clear job of ‘Not Getting Married.’ The show felt modern, it was engrossing, it was serious and fun and heart-wrenching at times. I started to well up as Bobby sang ‘Marry Me a Little,’ to close the first act. If you get a chance, go see it – even if you have to fly to New York for it!

So that was the highlight of Saturday and it definitely justified the trip. We had spent the morning in Central Park just strolling from north to south and taking occasional photographs. We finished up at the boathouse restaurant where we each lunched on a truly delicious roast beef and cheese sandwich. I’d been thinking of a fairly fancy lunch but we decided we weren’t really dressed and didn’t have time for a full lunch so settled for sandwiches from the café area instead and it was an excellent choice.

From there we went to the theatre for the show and afterwards met up with Tom, an old university friend of Brett’s who has a play due to open in June. We went for Tex-Mex at Chipotle and they did some catching up over dinner.

After dinner though we were both pretty weary, having decided to stay on London time for the weekend it was past our body clocks’ midnight, so we said temporary farewell to Tom and headed back to the hotel and bed.

Arrival

JFK was extremely unwelcoming when we arrived. In the immigration hall the non-US citizens’ queue consisted of several hundred people and was serviced by four officers. The queue for US citizens never exceeded fifty people and was serviced by twenty officers; every booth on that side of the hall was staffed. I spent an hour and a half watching Americans arrive and breeze through the process whilst we all edged our way past posters telling visitors how the immigration service pledged to offer us a fast, efficient service and a cordial welcome. The disparity in numbers servicing the two queues wasn’t even because the immigration people on that side of the hall were unqualified to deal with foreign visitors; when the US queue was empty the next person at the front of our queue would be directed along – but only until the next Americans came along. Clearly it is no longer the US Government’s view that all men are created equal – and it was made abundantly clear to the rest of us who the unequal ones were.

When I had finally been processed (no cordiality or welcoming at all, merely a demand for my two index fingers and to look at the camera) I found Brett sitting on our luggage waiting for me and we went on through customs. I hadn’t booked a transfer at this end as all the services I could find online were hideously expensive even by London standards, so we got a yellow cab into the city.

The cab driver was so exactly what you expect a New York cab driver to be that he was almost a caricature! He had the broadest accent, drove like a maniac and swore roundly at anyone who got in his way. After the interminable frustration and injustice of the immigration hall it was rather refreshing and helped improve my sour mood somewhat.

After checking-in at the hotel, we headed upstairs to explore the roof terrace only to find it is closed for renovation. We gave up and went to bed.

Proposal - Part Two

21:50 GMT/16:50 EST

Actually, I expected being officially ‘engaged’ to be more earth-shattering.

Instead there’s just a warm glow of rightness and the world is a very contented place.

If you, the reader, have done this properly, you will already have read the post I composed back in January and published just before this one. If you haven’t, go back and read it now before I fill you in on what has happened since.

So, I booked a hotel not long after writing that; it was a bit of a fuss as there are so many hotels to choose from in New York and hence many variables in the decision. I decided not to splash ridiculous amounts of money on a fancy suite overlooking the park – we’re only there for a few days and most of that will probably be spent out and about. However the mid-priced, midtown hotel I picked does have a roof terrace with ‘fantastic view of the Empire State Building, one block away’ and is close to a number of Metro stations for getting around.

Since then, work has gotten a little crazy and I had to be prompted to invite people to dinner and then realised that I was fast running out of weekends when I was free to go ring shopping.

In the end I spent a Saturday along Old Bond Street with Ping. I think we walked the length of it at least twice, going into the various jewellers to check out their offerings. It’s amazing how many variations there are on ‘a simple, classic wedding band in platinum.’ In the end, when I got to see them in person, it turned out that I didn’t really like the designs of the Cartier rings and they had a fairly limited stock. It came down to a decision between almost identical rings by Asprey and Tiffany and in the end I plumped for the Tiffany one and came away with an incredibly camp looking little blue/green bag containing a gift-wrapped ring box.

The camp bag rapidly got disguised in a Boots carrier bag and shortly thereafter was secreted in my desk drawer at work, ready for retrieval last night.

Again because of work, it turned out that I gave very little thought to the actual proposal until the morning of the big day itself when it suddenly crystallised in my head that today was The Big Day and I should get something lined up that would bear repeating and not sound too much like a moron stumbling over expressing his feelings. In the end the fates were kind to me; Thursday afternoon was lovely, sunny and warm so, as I rode the train home from work, I determined I’d propose going up to the Common to enjoy the last of the sunshine and celebrate the start of the long weekend. Brett was not averse, having spent most of his day at the computer, so we headed out towards the village.

He did throw one fly into the ointment; he’d lined himself up with an informal interview for Friday at noon in the Liverpool Street area – exactly the time that the car was booked to collect us from Wimbledon. Nothing was going to stop the juggernaut of my best laid plans though so I hoped that, for an occasion such as this, a telephone interview might work or a rearrangement could be had.

Anyway, we strolled up the hill and picked up some fruit juice at Tesco’s. I spotted they had fresh strawberries too, so I grabbed them and popped some thick double-cream into the basket. We picked a spot on the Common not far from the pond, laid down on the jackets we’d brought (primarily because I had the ring in the pocket of mine!) and enjoyed the moment.

The strawberries were nice, but it turned out the fresh pineapple chunks that Brett had bought went better with the cream, so we worked our way through those until I found a suitable moment to say ‘I love you.’ I followed up with telling him why, and how I felt we fit so well together and ended up presenting him with the box and asking if he’d marry me. He said ‘yes’ and we kissed and then just lay there in the afternoon sun, eating pineapple and cream and feeling good.

We talked a bit about ceremonies and dates but didn’t come to any firm conclusions. It turned out that the proposal was not totally unexpected; Brett had felt some kind of marriage vibe from me when we were back at my parents’ place for Christmas – which is indeed when the whole proposal plan was coming together in my head.

We couldn’t spend too long lingering on the Common though as we’d invited people for dinner and needed to get ready.

The dinner was excellent; Lydon’s does do good food and they had champagne on ice for us when we arrived. After it had been poured but before we’d gotten around to toasting anything, I admitted that I had something else to do and handed Brett a plain envelope for him to open. It contained the confirmation of our tickets for ‘Company’. He didn’t spot the date though, so asked when we were going to New York and was quite blown away when I said, ‘tomorrow.’ It definitely had the desired effect.

The rest of the meal went well; both the food and wine were excellent and the company was congenial – although to be honest I have limited recollection of the over dinner conversation beyond occasionally wondering what Rod and Jess were making of some of the more explicit gay banter. (I didn’t get much chance to talk to them as they were sat across the (round) table from me, so I’ll have to organise something smaller when we get back.)

This morning started just right; not too early and not too late. We got up and breakfasted, did the usual morning routine of checking emails, reading the news then showering and dressing, then started packing. The timing was perfect and we were sorted just a little ahead of the car arriving.

Things went smoothly at the airport. Despite my fears to the contrary, Brett didn’t spot the fact that the boarding pass said ‘Club World’ rather than ‘World Traveller’ and accepted my explanation that I’d splashed a little extra cash to get us into the lounges (which was actually perfectly true.) We missed the complimentary facial at Molton Brown’s because we needed to reserve a time and didn’t go down to investigate until too late, but we still had the luxury of fast-tracking through security and a comfortable place to relax and enjoy refreshments before boarding.

Just as planned, Brett was gobsmacked again when we boarded the plane and got directed to the left rather than the right.

British Airways have recently started refitting their Club Class seating and, sitting in the central two seats, we are virtually in our own private cabin. We accepted the pre-flight champagne and toasted ourselves while settling into our little cocoon. In the end we were especially glad of our luxury, as the plane went technical before we pushed-back and we were delayed for three hours while they replaced an engine management unit on the number two engine. As we waited we helped ourselves to sandwiches from the Club Kitchen and the stewards served drinks while we enjoyed the new onboard entertainment system; a wide selection of video and audio on demand.

We were airborne exactly three hours after our scheduled departure time but I really don’t feel any the worse for it. I’ve watched a documentary on the Incas, they served us dinner as soon as we were up (oh, yes, fine cuisine it was too!), we’ve spent a while reading and now I’m blogging away as Brett reclines beside me.

Life is good, enveloped in that warm glow of ‘rightness’ and I am contented with the world as I hold my husband-to-be’s hand, 38,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean.

Proposal - Part One

Saturday, 27 January 2007

Okay, this is probably not going to be published until April when all the surprises have been revealed, but I wanted to blog it now, as it’s happening, as it is the run up to one of the pivotal moments of my life.

I have long had a bit of a fear of commitment; I am quite cynical of human nature and how people change over time and so am wary of promising anything absolutely. Hence Brett and I have been living together as partners for nearly three years and I have never felt comfortable proposing marriage to him.

Sometime before Christmas that feeling changed. I can’t really say when, how or why it happened, it wasn’t the result of a particular train of thought, rather there was some kind of subconscious emotional shift where it began to feel right to say ‘Yes, I expect to spend the rest of my life with this man and I want the world to officially recognise that fact.’

So that’s how it began.

I have something of a reputation of an all or nothing man that is not unjustified. If something is worth doing, it is worth doing well. Any actual marriage celebrations will be a joint project and I have seen enough of them to know that the day is far less for the bride and groom than it is for their guests. So I wanted to make the proposal a special, hopefully romantic event that we will both look back on fondly in the years to come.

To me romance is not the Valentine’s Day commercialism of red love-hearts, chocolates or flowers and a candle-lit dinner, it is doing something together that you know your partner is going to love for no other reason than it makes them happy. I don’t claim that my motives are entirely that pure though, as I am certainly going to get an amount of selfish enjoyment out of springing the series of surprises on Brett, but I justify myself with the knowledge that they are all going to be pleasant surprises for him and should provide both a happy and enduring memory of my proposal to him and the days thereafter.

The first thing I considered was the ring. After scoffing a few months back at John & Rich’s suggestion that one could easily expect to pay £1,000 for a wedding ring, when it actually came to buying a ring for Brett there was no question that I wanted to buy the best I could possibly afford for him. I looked at Garrard’s and Asprey’s websites but they are first and foremost jewellers rather than metal-smiths so, while they do some exquisite ladies’ engagement rings, they don’t do plain wedding bands. In the end I came to the Cartier site and found a number of rings I liked the look of.

The Stephen Sondheim musical, Company, has figured often in the development of our relationship; I first really noticed Brett when he sang the solo as Bobby in the title song of the musical at my first Chorus Concert. Another song from the show, Marry Me A Little, describes how I think marriage should be; a close and committed, considerate partnership but without any subsumption of the individuals’ identities. I think he and I have managed to build that kind of relationship these last few years. The show’s finale, Being Alive, while not an especially romantic number is just heart-rending and whenever Brett sings it, it brings a tear to my eye.

Company has recently been revived on Broadway and we’ve spoken several times of going to see it. So I figured I would surprise Brett, first with a proposal of marriage and then by flying him to New York to see the show together. As it’s a special occasion I thought we should take advantage of my (our) accumulated loyalty miles with British Airways and get upgraded seats on the flight (after all, Economy class seats are hardly intimate or a good venue for romance!) Then, as Brett is close to his family and we were going to be Stateside anyway, I thought it would be worth pre-warning his family to see if any of them could be in New York to hook up with us while we were there.

The whole idea was nearly still-born; after looking up rings, I started planning the trip to New York and balked at the price of upgraded flight seats. Alternatives, such as a weekend in Paris were considered, but none of them really felt as good as Company in New York with his family around. It was ultimately a lunch with Oz that spurred me on; he reminded me of my own oft given piece of advice about seizing the day because you never know what’s around the corner, so I went back to the BA website and played around with options and eventually took the plunge and booked theatre tickets and Club Class flights to New York over the Easter weekend 2007.

And that’s how you find me today; I haven’t booked a hotel yet, or organised transfers, but I’ve got the flights sorted, the show tickets are bought and Chris C has been charged with the mission of briefing the family and co-ordinating any family trip to NYC in complete secrecy. If all goes according to plan, we’ll have dinner with friends on the evening of Thursday 6^th April where I will do the actual proposal and reveal that we are flying to New York the following day. I won’t tell him about the Club Class seats until we board the plane, although he may well guess when we make use of the BA Lounge and Spa before boarding. Hopefully the presence of the family in New York will be a final surprise on arrival.

I am still undecided about whether to do the actual proposal over dinner or before. While I am fairly certain he will say yes, it is not the kind of decision one should feel pressured into and, being surrounded by his friends (who will all be expecting him to say yes), would certainly count as pressure. Maybe I should do the proposal before we leave for the restaurant so we have time to talk some before joining the group. That should ensure the integrity of the decision. (I know that doesn’t sound at all romantic, but if for any reason Brett isn’t entirely sure he wants to marry me just yet, I don’t want him to be forced into it by circumstances that I’ve arranged.) When he says ‘yes’ to me I want him to be as sure of the decision as I am.

Gilgamesh

We dined with Ping, John & Rich tonight at Gilgamesh, a themed restaurant in Camden Town. It’s a bit overwhelming visually but I didn’t dislike the endless carved-wood frescos and ornate inlaid furniture as much as I’d expected; it should be an assault on the senses, but isn’t. The food and drink was all good – although I think somewhat overpriced for the portion sizes. That said, the portion sizes were just about right and I came away feeling full but not stuffed. A good variety of cocktails and a superb wine list complemented the simple menu. I’d go there again – but probably only for special occasions.

Early Morning Confessional

Okay, I’ve been a bad blogger. I haven’t published in weeks. It’s not that I’ve not had the energy, more that I’ve been so busy, that there have been so many demands on my time that, when I’ve had time, I’ve not wanted to give part of me away.

Work is busy and stressful at the moment for lots of reasons I won’t bore you with. It probably won’t calm down until towards the end of April. On the up-side Rob S, a close colleague from my previous job, has accepted the role of my deputy so I’m looking forward to working with him again. On top of all that I think the new role I find myself in is forcing me to grow as a person, which is a good (if somewhat hard) thing. It’s only when I look back now I realise that I’ve been in something of a rut for a while at work. So here’s looking forward to a Brave New World!

Socially I think I have been even more out-of-touch than usual. Several times lately I’ve dropped out of events at the last minute because I am so drained when I (eventually) get out of the office. My birthday (a week past already!) was enjoyable precisely because we didn’t “do” anything for it; we stayed home, wandered around the village and indulged ourselves a bit. Brett wrote me the most lovely, touching message in my birthday card. I love him so much.

And now it’s almost time to get up and start in on another week. I ate rather too much at dinner late last night. Consequently I woke up around 4:30am and haven’t been able to get back to sleep; not a propitious start for the week ahead, but at least I do feel ready for the challenges it will no doubt bring.

Rejuvenation

Well Friday turned out to be quite productive; all the problems had either solved or been worked around so I was able to get on with being productive again and boy did it feel good!

The weekend has been fairly photographically orientated. I spent a fair amount of Saturday processing the pictures I took last weekend on the Out Photographers’ walk around The City – actually none of them were much good. Brett and I headed out around town in the afternoon and ended up watching Hot Fuzz – excellent fun; imagine an all-action Hollywood blockbuster shoot-em-up movie set in a quaint, slightly caricatured English village… I’m surprised they didn’t nuke the vicarage before they were done!

We had a bit of a cosy evening afterwards though.

Today was more mucking about with the camera – actually more time was spent trying to make the dining room function as a studio than was spent with the camera, but what can you do? – as I followed up my recent photography course with some practice.

Life is a Cabaret, Old Chum

How long has it been? I don’t know; I’ve lost track.

It’s been a crazy week at work following work at the weekend following a busy week at work; I’ve been interviewing, I’ve been budgeting, I’ve been doing open heart surgery on the network (well, okay, replacing the central firewall!) Am just back from the second session of a photography course I’d booked myself onto, which was well worth the £90 it cost. Was out for the day on Sunday with a group of guys from Out who are forming a photography club (not as cheesy as it sounds, honestly!)

When I got back tonight, Rosie was in a lather; she’d been talking to one of her friends who’s just thrown her husband out of the house for allegedly having an affair. However, while the husband is certainly hot enough to be prime affair-having material, he’s actually always struck me as far too devoted a husband to do that kind of thing and too honest to deny it if he were and was confronted about it. But then, what do I know!? People are surprised about the depths of depravity that go on in my mind because outwardly I’m such a straight-forward guy, so I guess you can’t always judge by appearances. Either way, the evidence in this case sounds highly circumstantial so I hope they can work it out.

Brett is out at a Chorus meeting tonight but has hopefully spent the day finishing off a ‘code test’ he had to perform as part of his application for a job. I hope he gets it, if for no other reason than I think the cabin fever is really getting to him and these last few weeks we’ve hardly seen each other.

We went out to see Cabaret last night; Brett had been in town for lunch with Ping and had stopped by the half-price booth in Leicester Square afterwards. It’s been on our list since it opened but after the first half I was rather indifferent. The second half though was much stronger and the ending struck deep. I was pensive all the way home and just wanted to keep Brett close to me.

More interviews tomorrow. And more budgetting.

Domestic Satisfaction & More Sondheim

I’ve been fairly industrious this weekend; lots of laundry done, dishes washed, shopping bought – I even spent an hour this afternoon cleaning the inside of the fridge! Alas tidying didn’t quite make the agenda, so the flat still looks like a bachelor pad, but I am feeling good nevertheless.

Saturday evening I was back up near Old Street, firstly having dinner with Brett and the rest of the cast and subsequently watching the show for a second time. Compared to Friday night there was a spectacular improvement in the quality of the performance; there were still some pretty severe tuning issues in a couple of places, but they’d got the amplification problems sorted out so you could hear better and several of the individual performers were much improved. Given the difference from the Friday night to the Saturday night, I can’t help but wonder what difference another couple of weeks’ rehearsal might have made!

John W & Rich C were there along with John’s ex, Edward. Also along for the evening was Mark G, another Chorus guy, with an old friend.

After the show there were drinks in the bar. Once the audience had drifted off, the cast and their significant others/hangers-on all headed up the Kingsland Road for some Turkish food and the typical round of self-congratulations and talk of the future. Brett and I eventually headed home around 2am in a taxi with two other south-of-the-river folk.

Avenue Q 4-1 Side By Side By Sondheim

You know you’ve seen a musical too many times when;

1) One of the leads walks on stage and you think to yourself, “Hmm, he’s lost weight since the last time I saw him,”

2) You get caught off-guard by the start of a song – but still know all the words,

3) You find yourself watching the audience more than the stage at the ‘good bits’ to enjoy their reaction to what you know is coming!

So Owen had some cheap tickets to see Avenue Q on Thursday and Rosie and I went along to see it. Still very enjoyable. During the interval we were sitting in the foyer eating our ice creams and nearby were a couple who, by their accents, were down from Liverpool: She was amazed that she was filling-up with tears for the puppet characters while he was exclaiming how he had been expecting The Muppet Show and “it so wasn’t!” More satisfied customers.

Thursday was also the opening night of Brett’s show, Side By Side By Sondheim, and he came home feeling fairly good about it; he’d gotten most of his words right and hadn’t made any major cock-ups. (He has great difficulty memorising lyrics.)

Friday I had a ticket for the show (with Rosie again) and we headed up to Old Street after work. John Mc and his new boyfriend, Richard, were there too.

I must admit that, when Brett had said that some of the cast members couldn’t sing, I had thought he was exaggerating, but in fact he wasn’t. I understand that most of the cast were suffering badly from lingering colds – just as Brett had been until recently – but even so some of the show was just excruciating. I feel guilty saying that, as I’ve met a number of them and they are all great people, but the show definitely needed more work.

Brett at least was in shining form. Other than in the Chorus and at parties, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him perform before and he’s always worrying about forgetting words and being nervous, so it was a bit of a revelation to see him so relaxed and confident on stage. Afterwards he said that he was still just as nervous as ever, but it certainly didn’t come across in his acting, dancing or singing. I was glowing all the way home.

I’m seeing the show again tonight, but having now seen it the once, I think I will be better prepared when tonight’s show is over to walk that treacherous fine line that will be the After Show Party!

Aboard the Flying Scotsman

The day has gone pretty much as expected; I spent a few hours in the office first thing and everything there was going smoothly. Left around 11am and spent an hour reading in the big bow window coffee shop in Waterstones before taking a stroll along to the station. The weather is glorious; sunny, clear blue sky and quite mild for February. From the office you can see right the way out past the Firth of Forth.

The journey has again been lovely; I’ve put away my fair share of the free tea and taken advantage of the onboard wifi to chat to Joe R and Chris C whilst developing another blog comment for one of my mental scratching posts.

A quiet night-in tonight I think, as Brett is rehearsing!

Release

So in the end the job that I expected to be done with around 8:30 lasted until gone midnight. The only small consolations were a call from Brett when he finished his rehearsal, chatting online to a couple of friends in between checking on the server and seeing Edinburgh Castle out of the office window in all of its illuminated glory, apparently floating over the darkness of The Mound; very picture-postcardesque.

A certain amount of schadenfreude knowing that they guy whose fault it was that this all happened was up at least as late as me making sure it doesn’t happen again. I think I am going to take advantage of the late night and claim back some hours tomorrow to relax around Edinburgh; maybe just pop into the office first thing to make sure they’re all okay and then spend the rest of the morning reading and drinking coffee in Waterstones on Princes Street. I can always catch up with the work email on the trip back… free wifi on GNER!

Destructive Urges

Right now I really want to smash something. I want to take something, ideally complex and intricate, and then throw it at a wall, then stamp on the pieces and grind them into the carpet. I am really, really frustrated at the moment and I want to take it out on something other than the HP Proliant server which is the cause.

Yes, once again, the stress in my life is being caused by a server.

I’m in Edinburgh to do an OS upgrade on the server here. Before beginning work at that kind of level, it’s usually a good idea to give the machine a reboot to refresh the system and make sure there are no outstanding changes that could interfere with what you want to do. As the server was starting up again from this reboot, I noticed it automatically installing a piece of software that it should not be… and that’s when my evening started wading through treacle.

I’m now three hours into the job and I haven’t started the ninety-minute upgrade I came here to do. I am still trying to uninstall this retched piece of crappy little software (produced, by the way, by a market-leading security company!) off of my server so it will start responding to me in real time again and let me do what I came here to do.

Fuck computers.

Déjà Vu

And the rest of the week was strangely similar to the first half.

Had a pleasant dinner with Joe R on Thursday evening over at the Earls Court Balans. It was the first time we’ve gotten together since New Year so we had some catching up to do. As well as the usual stuff, he had some interesting observations about some of his fellow guests at the party (none of which I am going to share here!)

Friday was tedious and long and I was glad when it was over.

Today I spent a little while at the British Museum, where a group of the Out guys were getting together to talk about forming a photography group. Interesting idea; some tuition, exhibition, criticism and organised shoots. Ironically, the first meeting proper clashes with one of the photography classes I already have booked. Nevertheless, at least I’ve got my name on the list.

Was meant to be doing a second portrait shoot with Graeme N tomorrow, but he’s got the ‘flu so I’ve got a day to myself. For all that, though, I’ll probably end up spending it reading CVs.

No gym today. I feel guilty.

A Quick Salute in the Admiral Duncan

Work was rather unsatisfying today; got very little done and had to deal with lots of interruptions along the way.

Chris C was in town though so we got together for dinner at Balans in Soho after work. We had a pleasant meal and did some catching up and then had a brief wander through Soho. He was quite unperturbed by the exotic delights of the Prowler Store (and I was disappointed that they don’t seem to stock the UK Firefighters Calendar, as I’m sure it would have raised a smile) but he was quite moved when we had a pint in the Admiral Duncan. (Through his job he has quite detailed knowledge of the bombing in 1999 and it felt significant to be having a drink in the rebuilt pub, which was busy even on this bitterly cold Tuesday evening.)

We went our separate ways along the Bakerloo line shortly thereafter and I was pleasantly surprised to discover it was only just 10 o’clock when I got home, as it had felt like quite a full evening.

There's a Song in my Head

Why do songs get stuck in our heads, playing over and over? For months I’ve had the tracks of Avenue Q appearing spontaneously, then at the weekend John & Rich had ‘A New World’ on one of their playlists and that became the new theme-to-my-day and now, after last night’s rehearsal, I’ve got ‘I Just Wanna Dance’ from Jerry Springer The Opera going round and round behind my eyes. Are there any psychologists or neuroscientists out there who can tell me why these things keep sticking in my head??

'Round An Unexpected Bend

Hmm… I think there was a weekend in there somewhere.

Saturday we got up late, watched an episode of Grey’s Anatomy and by then it was lunchtime. Brett and I did a bit of shopping then spent an hour in the gym before lunch. By the time we’d finished lunch there were only a couple of hours left before we had to leave for John & Rich’s party so we pretty much just lazed and read.

The party was good, although as ever I drank a little too much too early and then spent the second half of the night sobering up. Good food too (and a chocolate fountain!) The house is lovely; spacious and in a nice setting although it looks a little sparse at the moment as they are still furnishing it. It was an entirely Chorus and WAGs affair but was social enough for all that; not too much Chorus politics (although there were a few sharp words between Brett and John G but they kissed and made up afterwards…) Didn’t get to bed until four-ish.

Was in fairly good shape this morning; hung out with Raman until John came downstairs and we began some clearing-up. Eventually the other over-nighters, Marc & Roddy emerged and we all had some toasted muffins before departing. After dropping them off close to their home, Brett and I continued up to Walthamstow to drop him off for his rehearsal. I eventually made it home a little after 2pm and pretty much napped my way through the afternoon.

Now suddenly it’s Sunday night and the weekend is over.

Imagine No Religion

At a time when people of religion are out attempting to kidnap their brethren to behead online or lobbying the government to protect their own intolerance, perhaps we should all take a moment to imagine how it might be without the irreconcilable, dogmatic “certainties” that afflict such people.

I thoroughly recommend Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion as a compelling discussion of why we don’t need God or any of his trappings in our universe.

A note from a table at Starbucks

Done the gym thing, not time for my train yet; just sitting here, drinking my coffee and watching the world go by in the low-slanting says of the morning sun. Life is good (so far!) today.

On the Treadmill

I am planning to join a gym. I’ve been thinking about it for a while; since I’ve stopped cycling to work I’ve been putting on weight and just generally conscious of getting no meaningful exercise. I’ll probably start cycling again once the clocks change and I can cycle both to and from work in the light and avoid all the faffing about with the lights, batteries and chargers, but I’m also looking for something which helps with the fitness but takes less planning on a daily basis.

Brett is a member of the local Esporta, although he very rarely goes, so because it’s very convenient (between the flat and the train station) I thought I’d check them out to see what the costs were and if their membership terms were any less draconian than gyms I’ve joined in the past. It turns out that they are not. The only good thing about it though is that the membership manager agreed to limit my minimum commitment to six months if we change addresses –something which we are highly likely to be doing in May.

So that’s the plan; having pondered some more overnight, I’m heading down this morning with Brett (joint membership is marginally cheaper than two singles) to sign the paperwork. We’re even going to get a permanently-allocated locker so that we can leave essential kit instead of having to have it with us and then, in the mornings, instead of me sitting on the sofa surfing for a couple of hours before work while Brett lays in bed, we should be getting some cardiovascular exercise in.

I know that I have pretty miserable amounts of willpower, so I’m planning the whole concept around making it as routine and easy as possible to do; doing something every morning means we get used to getting up earlier, we can leave trainers and washbags there so I don’t have to carry it to work with me or take a detour back home, keeping a supply of shorts, t-shirts and socks at the gym will mean it’s also something that I can do on my way home from work if I feel the urge (because I know that if I have to go home first, I’ll sit on the sofa and not move again all evening!)

Reading over what I’ve just written, it does sound rather like an over-excited child, but hopefully if we really can establish a low-maintenance routine we will stick with it and do ourselves some good.

Watch this space…

Youth Group Reunion

Okay, so I guess I just always expect the worst from people. I shouldn’t.

The reunion was great fun actually; not dissimilar from the get together we had at our parents’ place just before Christmas, but with more people. Just a big nostalgia-fest really. No aggressive one-upmanship. Most people hadn’t changed that much, some had a bit more weight or a bit less hair but mostly they looked as I remember them from our chaotic teenage years. Nigel, the organiser, is going to send round a CD of the old photographs that he had printed out and stuck on the wall and I may publish a few of them on here for you to smile at; there’s lots of teenage attitude and 80’s fashions. For all that though, tonight I feel like an old man pining for the golden days of youth. I’m also annoyed with myself at being so reticent to talk to people; I hardly spoke to Kirk & Craig B, Janice N, Colin G and the whole idea was to catch up with people. Ah well, maybe I’ll just have to organise another one in five years time.

What is a Better Life?

No serious crises at work this week. In fact it felt rather good; getting to grips with the planning of some upcoming operations, completing the job-specs for the two people I need to recruit and starting to plan our projects ready for the next financial year. At one of our lunchtime seminars I also got to hear about how the work on the 2012 Olympics is going; in amongst the inevitable politicking between agencies there’s some really quite clever ideas being used to get the extra tens-of-thousands of people around London on time every day.

Apart from Monday night, this week has been fairly quiet socially, with me coming home and sitting on the sofa for the other weeknights. I haven’t exactly been doing nothing, but then there’s not much to blog about either.

Brett had an interview with a company not far from our office yesterday: a small start-up company looking to take on a couple of full-time Ruby programmers. At lunch afterwards he seemed generally pleased with how he performed but won’t hear until Tuesday whether he has got the job.

Today at lunchtime I’m on a train up to my parents’. I’m off to my old youth group reunion tonight. Not really sure what I’m expecting from the event. Of the list of forty-six adults who’ll be there, I recognise less than half the names and, of those, there are few that I either am not in touch with independently or whom I don’t remember much more about than their names.

I think there’s a certain one-upmanship at the back of my head though; I want to go back home and amaze all these people with how much better my life has been than theirs. That’s not a particularly edifying motive but I think it’s a strong underlying stimulus and in a way it’s rather therapeutic facing it; I'm only recently realising how insecure I was as a youth. Comparing my state of mind then and now, I am happy with the person I’ve become. (Well, apart from the teenage-insecurity-revenge-desire I’m clearly still carrying around…)

Whether my life has turned out objectively ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than those of my teenage peer-group is academic when most of them are effectively strangers now and I have a very comfortable lifestyle with a loving partner at my side and good prospects for the future.

I’ll be able to tell of foreign travel, exotic locations and performing with major celebrities, others will have their own stories to relate and their families to show off. I imagine Chris C will carry the kudos stakes though with his action-hero anecdotes. I am going to simply try and enjoy the hot-pot and apple pie and the happiness of others (even though I know that, at the back of my mind, some part of me will still be keeping score.)

What Is The Truth?

Maybe this is the truth. At least that's the experiment.

(Hat-tip to Pharyngula for the link)

Tonight

Why is organising travel never as easy as it should be???

An Unexpected Invitation

An interesting email popped up this weekend; I’ve been invited to go to the reunion of the church youth group from my teenage years. I may have to re-jig my diary, but I think it’s probably worth the train fare and time to see what’s become of people – although I fear that it may be more driven by prurient curiosity than by a genuine interest.

The youth group happened at a difficult time in my life; In my mid-teens I wasn’t at all comfortable with my sexuality and really wanted being gay to go away so I could just fit in and be like everyone else. Not knowing of any way to make it happen, I tried to turn to the only power that anyone ever mentioned that might be able to change me; god. I never really believed though (which in retrospect was probably the better option for my sanity) but I prayed earnestly enough, went along to the bible study sessions and the Sunday services - and of course the youth group social evenings. After a few years though I realised the futility of wanting to have faith without actually having it and drifted away from the group activities.

Still, I had a good time with the people I met; they were pretty much all representative of the better aspects of Christianity and I guess there are worse places I could have gone to hang out with friends as a teenager – I’ve never thought of that before; where might I have gone to spend my evenings and weekends if I hadn’t gone there? Probably I’d have just stayed at home reading science fiction, these were the days before the Internet and I doubt I’d have had the enthusiasm to go out and find a group of people who shared any of my interests. I can’t really see myself getting in with a ‘bad crowd’ – I was never that cool a kid that the bad crowd would want me!

So anyway, I’ll at least make an effort to go to the reunion and say hello to everyone again. If nothing else, it should make an interesting post for you all to read.

Reviewing A Life On Hungerford Bridge

Still clearing up after the Leeds debacle at work. Now also beginning work on shutting down our Adelaide office which closes at the end of next week. Lot’s of stuff going on at work at the moment.

Socially it feels like I’ve been busy when in fact I’ve not… I think it’s just that I’ve been working late a lot and then when I’ve had evenings in, I’ve been processing the new members of the Chorus.

Last night though I joined Ping for the David Hockney retrospective at the Portrait Gallery which was quite enjoyable; some of his line drawings are spectacularly perfect in their execution and he has an ability to capture a person’s expression. He also did some interesting things with collages of photographs, sometimes building up a single image by photographing a scene in small sections and sometimes creating a more fluid image, where he collages a single scene but uses multiple pictures of an expression or a hand doing something to give the central theme more movement or depth. I rather want to experiment with the technique in a digital form. So many possibilities…

Today has been a pleasant relax at home. It’s nice to have Brett around – I miss his company and just his physical presence the way our respective schedules have been recently; we seem to be ships that pass in the night as often as not but today I’ve had my quota of hugs and kisses.

Wind

Well, quite a day yesterday with the weather. It brought a tree down behind our flat – the tallest one too, so although I’ll miss it we now get to see more sky in the summer. Our office in Leeds, which is towards the top of a skyscraper lost connection for a while when the power went out in the telephone exchange providing their internet circuit. The building was swaying too apparently, which I thought would be rather fun, but reportedly just made people seasick. They got sent home eventually as the police closed off some of the town centre.

Nothing that remarkable in London, although the gusting wind kept pushing the two laser units carrying network traffic between our two buildings out of alignment so, after much frustration for the users, we eventually switched them over to the backup wireless system. The regular ‘Health and Safety’ emails from our Facilities team proved an unexpected source of light relief though.

I understand from my sister that getting home by public transport last night was a bit of a trial but I rather lucked-out; I stayed late because we had (typically!) last-minute problems arise on the email server which had to be solved before I could leave in good conscience. Consequently I was an hour later than usual leaving the office. Waterloo was busier then that it would be at my normal time (18:45) and there were only four trains on the board but one of them was for Wimbledon, I hopped on it and two minutes later it departed. Synchronicity!

Flip-Flopping

Bugger. Chorus tonight; a new intake so I was busy through the first half of the rehearsal. After break though I went and sat and listened to them starting to rehearse Bohemian Rhapsody. Within about ten minutes I was wanting to join in again. Do I really want to take a break or was last week just a particularly bad week? Hmm.

The Chorus 'Christmas' Party

Had a nice relaxing day today; lazed around, blogged, read through a few other blogs, added a comment along the way, lazed around and read some more. Before you know it, the day is half over and it’s time to go and have a Christmas Party. Yes once again, because we are so busy putting on shows around the end of the year, the Chorus had its Christmas party in January.

It was the same format as last year; there was a cabaret in which various members showcase their vocal talent, a magic show and the now traditional visit from the crazy Jewish grandmother (drag act) Mentl Plotkin. After a short break, the cabaret was followed by the annual Chorus awards; a partly serious, mostly light-hearted review of the high’s and low’s of people’s behaviour over the year. My website got nominated in the ‘best online presence’ category again, which again surprised me; the website is pretty static and rather outdated (By the way, a big ‘hello’ to any Chorine’s who have found their way here for the first time by following the link from the website! Sorry, no cock-shots here either…) What photo galleries there are haven’t been updated in a while as I post most of my photos to Flickr now and I should probably update the biographical stuff too. Ah well.

I tend to be the wandering photographer at the Christmas party and this year was no different. The only problem was, because the venue (The Black Cap) get’s quite crowded, I’d taken my old Fuji point-and-shoot rather than the nice, new (but expensive) Nikon. As a result, I kept missing the good pictures because of the delay between pressing the button and the picture actually being recorded; really annoying. Next year I’ll take a risk on the DSLR. (BTW, watch this space for a link to the photos tomorrow…)

We didn’t stay terribly late – I’m still pretty weary from the heavy week. Rosie arrived home not long after us and was enthusiastic about the show she’d been to see; an innovative production of Faust in Wapping where the audience don masks and wander through a large warehouse as the action takes place around them. She’d been dubious about the whole concept before going, but thoroughly recommended it to us afterwards.

Crises and Pictures

According to one of my readers, all of the crises in my life revolve around servers. If I stop to think about it they are probably right, but I don’t believe that’s a bad thing; I’d rather have the crises at work than at home or in my social life. Servers can be fixed, data can (usually) be recovered so, although there is always stress and late-nights involved in a server crisis, in the grander scale of things they are quite bearable.

I mention this to save me having to give you all the gory details of my week. Suffice it to say that there was a crisis in Leeds that managed to conflict with me having a solid diary of working with a pair of consultants to construct a couple of new firewalls for our organisation.

I did manage to join Ping at the National Portrait Gallery on Thursday though and we spent an hour or so wandering around the fairly small gallery of the best entrants to an annual photography competition, discussing almost every photo. At the end we both picked out one that we would like to hang on our wall and I think I surprised myself as well as Ping at my own final choice; a colourful group of four people at last year’s Notting Hill Carnival. My choice would probably have been different if I had been choosing on different criteria, but that would have been the one I’d hang on my wall.

Friday I was quite exhausted but got through the day and even enjoyed a drink at a bar near the office to say farewell to one of the guys from finance who was leaving that day. It turns out that Rosie’s office was having a leaving do of their own in the same bar, so she was there with her colleagues and I was able to check out the guy she has her eye on.

I didn’t stay too long though, being both tired and hungry, and sloped off home after half an hour or so.

Pictures and Song

So last Sunday I had arranged with Ping to use his flat as a studio to do some photography for John Mc. The weather turned out to be very grey and overcast so the light was really very poor – which showed up my lack of experience with the camera – but we still got some nice pictures. (John #1-4 here for some of them.)

Whilst discussing some of the pictures after the shoot, I apparently surprised Ping by displaying an ‘aesthetic sense’ that he hadn’t suspected I had. Well, what can I say? It’s nice to be able to surprise people every once in a while…

At Monday’s Chorus rehearsal, we were starting the repertoire for the new season. The concert is to be called Bad Boys (it even apparently has a blog!) and we’ll be touring in Scotland as well as the usual performances in London. The first tranche of music includes Bohemian Rhapsody and We Are The Champions by Queen both of which I’d quite been looking forward to but, when we actually came to sit down and start learning it, my Chorus-fatigue came to the fore again. I am not going to sing in this concert; time to take a break I think.

Appeasing and Angering the Gods

Haven’t blogged much because I haven’t had much to say. Work has pottered along, not too busy, not too dull. Next week everything is going to pick up again as we get back into the swing of things.

Curtis was in town today, en route back to Melbourne having spent the Christmas holiday with his mother in South Carolina and then had a short sojourn in Barcelona before coming back to London. He’d enjoyed Barcelona and sound like he wants to do more European city culture in the coming years.

After we’d bade him farewell at the Wimbledon Station, Brett and I headed down to the Odeon where we watched Apocalypto, the new Mel Gibson film set against the end of the Aztec empire. I’d heard good reviews about it, but in the end I was disappointed by a standard Hollywood plotline which left me none the wiser about the fall of the Aztecs: Just as gruesome as The Passion and just as pointless.

Spent most of the rest of the day mucking about on blogs. Finally completed a lengthy comment on HIV and the delights of biblical morality. You can find it way down on this post (when Mark finally gets around to approving it!) and then, to cleanse my palate, enjoyed reading these two posts by a couple of articulate atheists and got halfway through composing an entry of my own on the evolving use of the word ‘gay’ which I’ll put up when I think I’ve said all I want to.

Tomorrow is a photographic day as John M and I are heading up to Ping’s place to take advantage of his white minimalist tendencies to do some portrait shots for his (John’s) various online presences.

Clean and Tidy

There is something very satisfying about a tray of freshly washed wine glasses. Half an hour ago they were covered in greasy fingerprints and the dregs of last night’s merlot but now they are bright and sparkling. Lovely.

Last night we had a party to see in the New Year (hence the wine glasses) which was quite enjoyable – albeit a little short of people (which serves me right for leaving it so long to organise; most of the invitees had already made other arrangements.) Nevertheless a good time was had by all.

Another good thing about hosting the party was that it really focussed us to tidy the flat up. I’d come back from an otherwise enjoyable week at my parents with a bit of a feeling of time wasted because there was so much work to be done here. Over the weekend though we managed to get it all done and we are, at long last, in a fairly tidy flat – albeit one with a very large TV that we have no home for…

Now I’ve got to face going back to work after all this time off. Hmm.

New Year, New Look

So I am into my fourth year of blogging. Okay, so that's calendar years; in reality I’ve only been at it for a little over three years, but it looks good on the Blog Archive to have four years showing. I never thought I’d last this long. In the past when I’ve kept diaries, they tend to fade out after a few weeks or, at most, months. I think there’s something about having an audience, no matter how small, which keeps me at it.

As you’ve probably already noticed, I chose the New Year to upgrade to the new version of blogger (hence the refreshed template and clever expanding/collapsing widget for the list of previous posts.) I did consider an entirely different look and feel for it, but decided in the end to stick with the parchment background rather than going for some sleek and striking ultramodern template. I think the parchment is in keeping with the feel of a written diary.

Probably nothing much more will be changing here, maybe more talk of photography and probably a bit more commentary on current affairs to add to the mundane journalism of my life. Thank you for reading me this year, I hope you still find it interesting enough to keep reading through the year to come.

How To Contact Me

To contact me by email please use THIS LINK.

Do not change the subject line or, chances are, your message will get missed in amongst all the spam that this address receives.

Christmas Begins

We’re at my parents’ place now and doing our best to relax. The drive up was long, but we managed to avoid the worst of the stationary traffic (and it looks like things would have been a worse if we’d travelled yesterday as the roads are badly overcrowded as a knock-on from so many airports closing due to the fog!)

Instead, yesterday I was up surprisingly early and took a stroll around the park. I did some snapping of the birds on the lake and came away with a usable shot of one of the mute swans. After breakfast Rosie and I headed into town with my dad (poor Brett was still bed-ridden with a stomach bug) to shop for the weekend. Rosie and I had a look at some lenses for my camera but didn’t buy anything.

The bulk of the weekend shopping was for a get-together we are organising on Sunday for a few of our old friends from school. In previous years we’ve spent several days of the holiday period trying to visit everyone we know and we inevitably only ever get to see a few. I really didn’t fancy all the time and travelling this would involve this year (I really AM after an easygoing holiday!) so instead we invited people over to the parents’ place for lunch; we’ll lay on a buffet, everyone will come to us and we can catch up with everyone at once, they can all catch up with each other too, and everyone should be happy.

Well, I say everyone should be happy, but once again we seem to be having difficulty reaching Jon A. I’ve now left two messages on different phones trying to reach him and haven’t had a reply from either. Conventional wisdom is that he has a very controlling wife and that seems to fit with the observable facts; whenever Jon runs into someone in town he is always very chatty and wants to spend time with you, but usually gets told that he has to leave by Ann (his wife). Ann seems not to like any of his old friends very much; she is always quite short, verging on the abrupt, when talking to any of us and seems to try to prevent any contact with the old gang, or to limit it as far as possible when it is inevitable. It is rather sad, but that is the way it looks and, yet again, events are bearing out the theory.

I spent yesterday evening mucking about with my websites; I’ve now got my photographic domain name pointing to the commercial site where I’m putting up the stock photos for sale. I got those few (four actually) of the photos I’ve taken with the Nikon to date uploaded and available. I’ve also put a few more into circulation on Flickr to hopefully get some feedback from other photographers.

Today? Who knows? Probably a run out to Billinge Beacon to see how the view has changed. Maybe another walk into town. This evening drinks at Chris and Michelle’s place.

Christmas at the Barbican 2006

Exhuasted.

Exhausted is the only word I can think of to describe how I feel right now. It’s a good feeling though; feedback from tonight’s Barbican show was good and I’m now in bed and don’t have to get up in the morning…

Hooray for Holidays!

Christmas Spirit

Sunday was a busier day.

Up earlyish (for a Sunday) for brunch with Brett in the Village and then straight on the train to work to upgrade some switching firmware. (Our London Office network is now reaching a size where it becomes an entity in itself and in need of more care and attention than in the past, and this was the first stage of that.)

Around 2pm I set off for Islington where Jim G was hosting a farewell get-together for his friends before finally leaving the UK to move back to New York next week. The venue was The Green, a long and narrow but bright and comfortable pub. It turned into a bit of a meeting of old friends too, as John Mc, Richard H, Shane C & Joe R were all along too.

By coincidence, the Chorus was also doing a gig there in aid of the Terrence Higgins Trust, so I indulged in some charitable mince pies and listened to their set…

Unfortunately, we don’t often rehearse these ad hoc small groups before gigs like this one and in this case it showed rather; very shouty singing, forgotten words, dodgy tuning and no-one smiling. Most of the audience didn’t seem to mind, although I did wonder what Shane C (a musician and composer by trade), who was sitting less than five feet in front of the group, must have made of it all…

Alas I didn’t get a chance to ask him as, shortly after the first set was completed, I had to move on. The next venue on my list was Southgate in the Northeast of London where I was to meet Brett and his musical company.

It turned out that I got to the station where we were to meet up about half an hour before they did and I spent a while lurking around the ticket hall waiting. It’s a circular building built probably early last century and with quite a few of the original Art Deco features still remaining. Unfortunately it’s very run-down and grubby now and looking at it I was reminded of the scene from the start of the movie Titanic, where the camera is moving along the deck of the sunken liner when suddenly the music picks up and the murky grey decay dissolves into the clean new lines of the same deck back at Southampton docks before the ship sets sail. I wished I could do the same to this station, even for just a few minutes, so that I could see it as the clean and bright Edwardian original that it must once have been.

Anyway Brett and his crew turned up eventually, I was introduced around and we walked the few hundred yards to the home of Jo where dinner was to be served.

The evening was absolutely lovely; I felt rather like Scrooge enjoying Christmas dinner with his nephew’s family and suddenly seeing all the best aspects of the Christmas spirit laid out before me. To start with there was good company; all of the group were easy going and fun to talk to. There was none of the group politicking that tends to go one when two or three Chours members are gathered together! It was all good natured banter and talk. Then there was the food; beyond plentiful, there was turkey and pork with quite literally ALL the traditional trimmings and no less than three varieties of stuffing, the main course was followed by a choice of Christmas pudding (topped with single-, double- or single-with-brandy-cream), two Christmas cakes to different recipes, a table full of chocolate crispies, meringues, mince pies and sweets and a massive cheese board. There was mulled wine and regular wine aplenty with which to wash it all down. Truly a tremendous table.

The meal was then followed with coffee and brandy and singing. The group are rehearsing the Sondheim show Side By Side, so there were a fair number of his tunes played (and Brett does such a gorgeous rendition of Being Alive!) but we also culled the best of Lloyd-Webber, Kander & Ebb, Abba and (ahem!) Barry Manilow, not to mention plenty of Christmassy songs.

By the time we came away I’d had a wonderful evening, really enjoyed the company and was feeling in good spirits. Even another nightbus journey (this time far less crowded) didn’t dampen them.

I think I’m just about ready for Christmas.

Now I’m looking forward into next week; tomorrow I have our team's Christmas lunch at work and later the dress rehearsal for the Chorus’ Barbican gig. Tuesday night is our company Christmas party, where I have to see if I can still fit into my kilt (as I don’t have anything else to wear) and stay relatively sober because Wednesday night is our big Christmas show. Once that’s done we’re off up north for Christmas week and then back to host as many of our friends as are around for New Year. As they say; a packed programme...

Spamalot

Well it’s actually been a lovely weekend; a couple of very late nights, but definitely worth it.

Saturday was pretty lazy – I spent most of the day sorting out how my email accounts are organised. (My domain name has been used by someone for generating spam email addresses so I’m getting dozens of non-delivery reports and out-of-office replies each day which are irritating and take up time and space.)

Once that was done, we were into town with Rosie to meet up with Rich (Brett’s former roommate from Austin) and his partner John. We started out with dinner at The Chinese Experience on Shaftesbury Avenue which provided a nice intimate booth for us to chat away. The food was very good Chinese fare and the service friendly and fast.

Then we were on to the Palace Theatre to see Spamalot, the musical written by one of the Monty Python team (and drawing heavily on the Python canon and style.) I had heard the soundtrack a few times and failed to be terribly impressed, but the stage show was quite a revelation and had me laughing out loud on many occasions; not quite your regular musical theatre experience, there were some of the better aspects of British pantomime in the mix as well as the zany humour of the Pythons.

After the show, which we all enjoyed, we did our usual ‘showing guests around London’ trick of wandering from one place to another in search of somewhere to have a quick drink and finding none of the places quite adequate for our needs and then ending back pretty much where we started an hour later. Rich was looking pretty worn-out by the time he settled into one of the deep sofas at Kettners for a few beers before parting.

Unfortunately we had left it rather late and by the time we left the comfort of Soho we had missed the last train and were reduced to the nightbus. Fortunately we found a seat fairly early in the journey. I spent most of the trip listening-in on the conversation of four students who were sitting next to us; two locals from London and two down for the weekend from Leeds. The two pairs of friends hadn’t met prior to this journey but they instantly fell into friendly conversation about all things studenty and/or Londony and chatted all the way through the forty-minute journey to Wimbledon (and presumably on to Kingston were they were heading!)

I don’t think that, even as a I student, I was ever that gregarious and I spent a while wondering at what formative experiences they had had that I had perhaps missed, or vice versa. Inevitably, at that time of night and with my slightly alcohol-befuddled brain, I couldn’t reach much of a conclusion and ended up merely mourning the lack of something I never had to begin with.

Because I can't sleep

Have a read of this:

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Gaydar

Maybe it just caught me off guard, but it had me laughing out loud in places. It looks like a rewrite of a cut-and-pasted Wikipedia article. Either way it amused me. Hat-tip to Slightly Lost for bringing it to my attention.

In other news; work remains busy but interesting; I'm worried I may not be up to scratch for performing with the Chorus next Wednesday evening - am planning on spending my saturday afternoon going over all the material with the rehearsal aides. Christmas still isn't even on the radar; no cards written or presents bought. Christmas will start next Thursday when I wake up on the morning after the show and realise I don't have to go into work.

Further highjinx can also be found here on my photoblog.

Watch This Space

OK, I know I haven't posted in a week, but life has been hectic so I haven't really had time to journal it. My sister has moved in with us again this weekend, resulting in a great deal of clearing out getting done which, while it's necessary and good, has also been hard given my waste-not want-not psyche.
Looking at my diary I doubt I'll be writing much here before I reach my parents' place on the twenty-first of the month. That's when I can finally relax and begin to enjoy Christmas. I haven't bought any presents - nor even given much thought to what presents I might want to buy - nor have I written any Christmas cards. The joy of the season this year is simply going to be a week or so with nothing to do but enjoy the company of friends and family.

Expecting A Bumpy Ride

Nature is really flexing its muscles tonight. I’m sitting in the corner of the BA departure lounge at Glasgow Airport and the wind is howling around the building – and into it! The door at the apex of the corner is rattling and occasional gusts are somehow finding their way through the ceiling to pick at the pages of my magazine and the napkin under my coffee cup.

To one side of the building, through the wind-blown rain streaming down the glass, I can see the wing of a turbo-prop bouncing up and down and to the other under the yellow sodium lighting the external ladder leading up to our jetway is rattling and swaying. People boarding the small plane at the next gate were having to lean into the wind as they crossed the tarmac to board their plane.

The landing here on Thursday was one of the bumpiest I have experienced and the weather has been very wet and windy all weekend. Sitting in the taxi on the way here, I didn’t miss the irony of the radio playing ‘Why Does It Always Rain On Me?’ The cabbie assured me that this was excessive weather even for Glasgow! I wonder what our take-off is going to be like tonight…

Glasgow Again

Yes, I’ve decided I do like Glasgow more than Edinburgh. It has at least as much great architecture but it has much more vivacity, much more atmosphere.

Glasgow

So the work in Glasgow went well; for once everything went smoothly with no unexpected problems. All I had to do was plug everything in and we had the link to the rest of the corporate network. After that all the pieces fit together seamlessly.

The hotel I’m staying in is a bit of a comedy of errors though. I’d booked a suite with a king size bed and requested an upper floor. I was given the key to a twin-bedded room in the basement. When I reminded them of what I booked they put me in the right type of accommodation, but one so far from reception that I couldn’t get a signal from the free wi-fi Internet which the hotel offers, so I moved again. The final offering was a room, rather than a suite, but it’s quite large enough for our needs.

The free Internet kept me entertained on Thursday night, but on Friday it had stopped working and it took until Saturday evening for me to bludgeon the staff into believing that the fault was with their systems rather than my laptop. Sure enough an half-an-hour later the problem had been fixed.

Brett arrived in Glasgow on Friday afternoon, having had to stay behind for a rehearsal of his show on Thursday, and today we’ve been exploring Glasgow some; mostly riding the tour bus and then stopping off at a couple of points to take photographs. The city is quite photogenic, but I fear it was not shown off at its best today, which was grey and showery. We both agree we should come back for another long weekend sometime in the Spring, when the weather will hopefully be brighter.