Nostalgia ensues

I used to think that nostalgia was a type of nausea that you got sometimes. It’s an interesting word. In the last week I think I’ve found the real meaning of nostalgia: remembering fragments of the past that give your current situation or direction a new meaning or purpose. A bit deep I know, but there’s nothing like a bit of nausea to give you a new perspective.

On Tuesday me and Lauren went climbing in Mile End, now a common event. It’s pretty much my only exercise (except Guilfest) nowadays. We’ve also got into the habit of exchanging money for chips at the local fish & chip shop  (just to counter all the exercise we’ve just done). In the evening I met up with Matthew. Wow, now that was a blast from the past. We went to a pub with loads of his mates and caught up on everything we’d missed since our last encounter at Christmas. I think he’s one of my friends who’s definitely changed in the last year. I find that comforting because I think I’ve changed too and we then have so much more to talk about. I’ve also managed to coerce him onto the boat trip for a few days which will be banter.

On Wednesday I did something you should never do, go back to my sixth form college. I’d been back before, but this time was different, it was the last time I’d return. Met up with Ben & Kevin at the station and we walked to school like the good old days. Ben & Kevin are two of my friends who have definitely not changed in the last year, which I’m not sure if I find comforting or difficult. It’s comforting because I know what to expect, but at the same time there’s nothing new.

We saw our old form tutor, Mr Sims, and our old, old form tutor, Mr Brown. It was great to catch up and talk about how the school has changed since becoming an Academy, a lot worse apparently.

Victoria invited mum, dad and I to dinner which was very welcome and I got a peak at Victoria’s music collection ^_^ She also had ample supplies of cider for which I am very grateful :)

I have to complain about mobile phones at some point, but I’ll save that for next time. Speak to you all soon, bye!

• Happiness.8.5 out of 10
• Tiredness. 3 out of 5
• Last Meal. Full English Breakfast at a service station in Preston
• Song of the day. The King Blues – I Got Love
• Thought for the day. “Look! Black sheep… oh, their cows…” (Mum in the car)
• What I’m Doing Now. Travelling to Scotland in the car to see my cousins who I haven’t seen literally in years. More nostalgia will ensue…

PS come back tomorrow for more mash & cider

Special Post #16: Mash & cider

when I first wrote this post it was very long, so I’ve spit it in two. You’ll get the first part now, and then come back for part two on sunday. Also, to make up for the long gap without a post last week, there will be another post tomorrow entitled “nostalgia ensues”. What can I say, I’ve got lots to say!

Guilfest is an annual festival held in Stoke Park just east of Guildford town centre. It is very much a family festival with camping facilities available. There are two main stages for bands to perform on. This year headliners were the likes of Motorhead, Brian Wilson (former Beach Boys), The Happy Mondays and Will Young.

Every year University of Surrey Stage Crew (USSU) help run the smaller stages. They provide equipment and operators. Overall about 70 stage crew helped out this year, from driving trucks to and from the union, rigging lights and speakers to helping setup bands on stage and operating lights and sound. My job as video equipment officer was pretty moot at Guilfest because there was no video. Instead I spent the weekend rigging lights on several stages, then once the festival had started, I helping with changing over bands on one of the smaller stages (Surrey Advertiser Stage). I also did the sneaky bit of light operating which was good fun because I don’t usually get to operate for bands.

We stated work about a week before the festival testing all the equipment that was going and putting it into piles according to which stage it was going to. Gibbo and I first went down to the union on Tuesday evening to help out. Tested a few cables and got the plan low-down for the week.

On Wednesday it was an 8am start to move all the kit to the smaller stages on site. We then spent the day rigging lights. I got the job of putting lights in the roof which meant using a 2-storey scaff tower, very fun. In the evening we all had Nandos in town and Gibbo showed me that if you lay a ketchup bottle flat horizontally then when you come to use it, the ketchup just falls out. Amazing! If his pulling advice is as good as his ketchup advice, we’re onto a winner! After getting back from Nandos, the cider was out and we stayed up until stupid o’clock chatting about random things.

Thursday was another 8am start. Bad times. But the thought of going up a 3-storey scaff tower soon woke me up. I spent most of the day rigging lights on stage 2, which did take the whole day. Once the sun had gone down, I helped focus some lights on the smaller stages before going home to more cider and another night of endless talking.

Friday was the first day of the festival. It didn’t start until 12pm which was enough time to finish programming the lights and checking the sound worked. What ever would we do if it didn’t work? Luckily we didn’t have to find out and our tent started showcasing bands at 3:45pm. Tonks and I we’re the primary changeover crew for the Surrey Advertiser, which I found worrying since neither of us had ever done a changeover before. Needless to say that after our first one we were 15 minutes behind schedule :S

We soon got the hang of it though, and with the help of a cancellation we were right back on track. We had to do a changeover every 45 minutes and they we’re supposed to take 15 minutes. That gave us loads of half hour chunks to wander around the festival, eat, watch bands or sit backstage and relax.

more mash & cider coming soon!

Everything but Guilfest

Where we left off… After moving into the house the rest of Sunday was spent sussing out the local Chinese, the first of many visits me-thinks. Phil came round to share the joyness and we had a good time chatting well into the night.

The next day I visited the local co-op, good, but expensive is the verdict there. Better off going to Tesco, but you’d be in for a 40 minute walk, with shopping, and it would probably start raining at just the wrong moment. Monday evening Will cooked Fajita’s and we watched Top Gear. What more could you want.

On Tuesday I got up quite late thanks to another late night talking to Gibbo about the world. I’ll be honest, I see Gibbo as a different person. I think this goes back to the fact that everyone puts on a persona when you first meet them which is a guard to who they really are. I think the most interesting part is peeling back those layers and finding the person underneath is actually very different. Me and Gibbo had a lot to talk about and it was really good to get to know him as more than just a member of stage crew.

So, yea, on Tuesday we went over to the union for the first time to see the progress on preparing the kit for the Guilfest festival.

The union was a bit of a state. Anyway, we ate in Channies (good to be back, albeit the food hasn’t got any better). In the evening mum and Victoria came over and helped me unpack more of my things into the house. We also went shopping… and got cider :)

Wednesday was an early start for Guilfest, but I’ll mention all of that in my Guilfest special post, coming soon.

• Happiness.8.5 out of 10
• Tiredness. 3 out of 5
• Last Meal. cereal :)
• Song of the day. Michael Jackson – Man In The Mirror
• Thought for the day. 1 in every 4 people suffers a mental illness. If your closest 3 friends are ok, it must be you…
• What I’m Doing Now. Getting ready to go climbing with Lauren in Mile End

PS:: HAPPY BIRTHDAY EILEEN!!

Special Post #15: Accommodation, Part 8 – Part 2

Let me explain that… it’s part 8 of the accommodation series, and the title of this part is ‘part 2’ because it’s a follow on from the post I did yesterday. Got it? never mind…

On Sunday I had the mis-pleasure of not having the car to carry my life to the house. Instead, I'd worked through a compromise. I took what I thought were the essentials for living in a house for a few days that had no cutlery or plates or anything. Sleeping bag and a saucepan should do it. Then Mum would travel down on Tuesday with the rest, at witch point I could stop living in the house like a homeless tramp.

So i bore the journey to the house using a Bombay mix of public transport, finishing the journey my foot. I was welcomed with my landlord fitting a new toilet seat and his wife cleaning the kitchen. Good times. They showed me around (probably my 4th showing by this point) and I moved my ridiculously small suitcase into my new room.

A few minutes later, Will arrived with his girlfriend. We took another tour of the houses (but who’s counting?) and then chilled in the garden. Then Gibbo turned up. Gibbo isn’t one of the housemates, but he’s staying while GuilFest is on.

We looked in the drawers of the kitchen expecting to find bare wood, but instead found an IKEA of cup, plates, bowels, cutlery, pans…everything! Then, after giving us the obligatory speech about when the rubbish is collected and where the breakers and meters are, the landlord left.

Get the grand tour of the house in 60 seconds (ok, 80 seconds… but we tried)

What’s that? You want to see pictures detailing every last inch of the house? why, of course!

 

my room

the view of the garden from my room

Viv’s room

 

The upstairs corridor

Josh’s room

 

the rest of Josh’s room

Will’s room

 

garden

 

Anne’s room downstairs

 

Living room

 

the amazing kitchen

 

the other end of the kitchen, with Gibbo taking a picture. Behind Gibbo is the toilet

the door to the garden

the house from the garden (excuse the pile of leaves)

in my room :)

I love the house! The only problem I’ve found with it so far is the shower. It spits out small splashes of water, and the ones that are lucky enough to find your body cause 3rd degree burns. It’s a very intricate art to find the balance between smoulderingly hot and freezing cold. One I'm yet to master…

Part 1: Wicked & Good Citizen

The last few days have been brilliant!

On Friday I went to Josh’s birthday BBQ at his house, i got to meet two of his long time friends who were really funny and great to talk to. We had a huge bonfire and lots of marshmallows.

I stayed over the night to avoid the havoc that ensued last time I left somewhere really late and didn’t get the last tube, bad times…

In the morning I was dropped off at the station and made my way to Victoria to see Sophie and get our tickets for Wicked.

The performance was the Matinee at 2:30 so in the meantime we grabbed some food (and Pimms). On our way back to the theatre it looked like there was a robbery happening at a shop, a guy ran out quickly followed by the police. The guy had gone down a back alley, but the Police didn’t notice. They we’re asking the small crowd “where’d he go?” so I pointed towards the alley not really thinking about it. They ran off. Then one of his friends who had been watching the whole thing (not a very good friend if they we’re just watching to be honest) then started lecturing me about what I’d just done and the fact that his friend would probably end up in jail. He was threatening to punch me in the face. Eventually he got fed up with following me and pushed me into a post. He said “I know where you live” and ran off back to his friend. I was quite shook up and really glad that we were heading away from home so he wouldn’t know where I lived. Sophie was really good at calming me down and my heart rate was back to normal in no time.

We managed to get some really great seats for Wicked on row X (I know, sounds far away) but we had a great view of the whole stage.

After the show, which was brilliant, we went a’ wonderin’ and found the queens house. We also stumbled into a couple thousand gays who were gathered for London Gay Pride in Trafalgar Square.

That evening (after getting home without a single sight of the guy who ‘knew where I lived’) I packed my bags and generally got myself ready to move into my house on Sunday!

stay tuned for part 2, coming very soon, to see the house!

Summer fun update

So I’ve been visiting my sister the last few days. Had a great time. We went to Drayton Manor on Sunday which was really good fun. Jordan overcame all her fears of rollercoasters and scary rides and went on them all! I’m a very proud uncle. You can see loads of pictures on the facebook album (http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2026050&id=1293892814&l=469b1faaf1) or I expect to have the pictures up on Flickr at some point.

On Monday me and Barry finally caught up with the rest of the world and saw Star Trek. I thought it was a good film, even though I hadn’t watched any Star Trek before, which shows they got the mix of mainstream to fanatic right. However, I thought it was a bit short, the plot didn’t have any twists, but I liked the inclusion of Leonard Nimoy.

Yesterday I went to London Dungeons with Lauren and Heather. The weather was fantastic and we made the most of it by having Pimms by the river and doing some other tourist-y things like Tower Bridge. We even managed to go to a free concert in “the scoop” where this kind of jazz/blues band were playing.

Today I’m going to Josh’s birthday BBQ (making even more use of the heat) and then tomorrow I’m hopefully going to see Wicked at the Apollo with Sophie. I say maybe because they issue a small number of day seats in the morning of the show for a crazy cheap price, so fingers crossed they’re not all gone when we get there!

Enjoy the sun peeps and speak to you soon!

• Happiness.8.5 out of 10
• Tiredness. 1 out of 5
• Last Meal. celebration cake!
• Song of the day. Toploader – Dancing in the Moonlight
• Thought for the day. First too cold, then too hot! Don’t say we had a rubbish summer!
• What I’m Doing Now. Getting things organised to move into my house in Guildford on Sunday!

Results: Part 2

First re-acquaint yourself with this post from May: Bad-arse!

<40%	40%	50%	60%	70%	80%
Fail	Pass (D)	C	B	A	S (super)

• Labs: 78% (below my 80% prediction)
• EDPS: 89% (joint highest in the year)
• Programming: 88% (i thought this would be my best module)
• Maths: 80%
• Electronics 1: 96% (highest in the year)
• Electronics 2: 89%
• Electronics 3: 73%

Overall: 84.1% (second highest in the year, highest was 84.7%)

So that means I can be happy to hear I’ll be a Surrey for another year yet, they can’t get rid of me that easily…

I’m sure Josh won’t mind me saying he got 74.3%, so we’re both very happy. The other people I’ve spoken to have also done really well, so fingers crossed I’ll be seeing more of everyone next year!

May this merely be the start of many celebrations…