The words contained in this here journal may not make much sense and they may not bear any relation to reality but one thing is for sure, they'll contain the word pasty.
Friday, May 30, 2003
So “what did you actually get up to in Portsmouth?” I hear you cry. Well to tell you the truth I did just about the same kind of thing I do at home consisting of messing about in the sun, playing computer games, playing snooker and going out to eat curries. The only thing worth note was the fact I managed to beat my brother 4-1 at snooker! For once I actually beat him at it without having to rely on his fouling a lot or being drunk. Unfortunately he got his own back the day after by beating me at crazy golf on the Victory trail.
Copious amounts of sunshine on both the days I was there means that I have started to turn brown for the summer. I’d forgotten that the sun actually does something in the south and in fact managed to lightly burn my chest, knees and neck much to the amusement of my family and most likely you lot. Just you wait until I see you next Capps, I may only be slightly brown by my standards but I’m going to make your skin look very pasty (yay!).
What this fine weather also means is that I have worn shorts for three days running. Some people seem to think that there is a problem with wearing shorts, my friend Julian seems to have a particular aversion to them and will bring into question the sanity of anyone caught wearing them. And so I did the day after for a treasure hunt around town. The treasure hunt itself was all rather fun, if a little easy, with all the running around and the shouting at each other. Unfortunately I had to leave halfway through to watch the F1 but some things are just more important than others.
Thursday, May 29, 2003 South and the City I, a northerner, have spent the last two days of my life in the south with trips through our nation's capital along the way. I’ve never been overly fond of the South in general, apart from the westcountry which is just special. It’s flat, it’s expensive and it’s very, very dull. And nor do I like cities. I’m not one for rushing about and having activities thrown in my face one after the other, I need a breather from time to time to keep my head in check, so when I go to the city I feel like I’m drowning in information with no time to digest it. As odd as it may sound to just about anyone but me it seems there are actually too many things to do, too few places to do nothing. No time to sit and talk. No time to think.
Standing in Waterloo station I was just amazed by the fact that everybody else was racing around, weaving furiously between one person and the next, their eyes fixed solely on their destination. Half of them were talking into mobile phones actually explaining their attempts to reach their destination, most having to shout in the constant and ironic battle to overcome the background noise of the hundred other shouting mobile phone users. Just like the feedback through microphone and speaker, it left me with a loud ringing in my ears. The other half, probably due to lack of charge or lack of credit, were instead trying to think of the most time efficient way to grab a bite to eat, how best to tackle that hunger and lose least time in the process. The sandwich bar here? At the next station? A chocolate bar from the trolley?
As I watched them busily scurrying around I was struck by a thought. I know it’s a terribly old cliché but they really did look like ants running about purposefully in a colony, and when that thought struck I had a sudden and very urgent impulse to shout at them all. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING!? SLOW DOWN! LIFE ISN’T A RACE! RELAX AND ENJOY YOURSELVES FOR A WHILE!”.
It’s probably because they do only stop to queue, because they do only sleep six hours a night, that people down south are generally more unattractive, except for a few notable exceptions, than northern folk. I’m not an expert on what makes men attractive but they all looked like right ugly gits to me. And the women? There was, as Jono would put it, a far lower “chicky quotient” in the south. I’m generally pretty blunt and I feel I have to say it, it IS one of the things I noted most during my trip, people from the south just aren’t as pretty. Sorry.
Tuesday, May 27, 2003
I must apologise for falling so far behind with my journal. Tomorrow I head south to visit my brother and I haven't even written about Sunday yet! I could do a very brief summary right now I suppose and fill in the details later:
Sunday - Pine and roast
Monday - Pine and curry
Tuesday - Pine and chilli
Monday, May 26, 2003 Saturday Saturday - So good they named it twice This day was always destined to be a special one, not only was it to occur on a weekend and within close proximity to the Traditional Cornish Pasty Shop but I was to be meeting a clump of mostly special people, one in particular being especially special.
Due to Capps' inability to cope with the sheer complexity of British Summer Time we woke up a good ten minutes after Danny had arrived in York. I think it's worth note that on this special day I spent a whole FIVE minutes making myself look semi presentable! That's a whole month's quota of tarting up where I'm concerned. So we toddled down to the station, stood around admiring the quite astonishingly wet rain and conglomerated into a cluster of people whose deeds and actions would be known throughout the land. Cast in order of appearance:
Me
Capps
Jono
Danny
Wend
Liam
Paul
Vicky
And so it came that this band of eight fine men and women traversed the city of York via public transport to a place of great mystery, a cinema. Filled with strange lights, uniformed staff and a local delicacy known as "pop corn". It seemed to me that the primary use for this pop corn was its employment as ammunition in the pre-film games, the merry goings on that distract cinema goers from the advert on the big screen. Watching them just causes further expenditure. It turns out though that this pop corn can also be eaten! Isn't it wonderful what the human race can do these days with modern technology?
The film, known as Matrix Reloaded amongst our circle or friends, was a little disappointing in that it wasn't mind blowingly good like the first film but it was still pretty cool none the less. Quotes for use in the DVD release advert:
"The best film I've seen at the cinema for ages!" - Gav
"Fucking Brilliant!" - Capps
"I came about twelve times!" - Liam
"That was just shit!" - Jono
Whether there is a link between Liam's comment and Danny slipping over on his way out of the cinema I wouldn't like to speculate, especially not with the belly full of curry I have. We left the cinema and made our way along to what passes for a bowling alley and proceeded to partake in just about every activity other than bowling. Played the dancing game against Liam, and lost. Played pool against Liam and lost. Had a headbutting competition with Jono, score draw. Played air hockey against Danny, a loss, some paralysing laughter and a cracked window (shhhhhhh).
So then it came to be, via a lot of complaining from Wendy, that we headed to an eating establishment or ye olde origins. I dread to think what the staff in the place thought of our kicking, tickling and footsie games under the table, the chip throwing competitions and building demolition courtesy of Capps but they obviously saw our anarchic ways a mile off as we had been tucked neatly away on our own. Well away from other patrons.
Following that I saw Wendy and Liam off from the station, went back to the flat and collapsed. I just hope that everyone else enjoyed the day quite as much as I did, as things go I don't think I've had such a fine 12 hours of existence for a long time. If I stopped smiling for just one second that day it was simply to give my cheeks a well deserved rest. May you live forever in our minds Saturday May 24th 2003, I for one will not forget you in a long time.
You know things are getting a little on top of you when cardboard chimneys start walking past the window, well either I'm starting to suffer the onset of madness or the village fair is on and people are trying their best to win a dressing up competition. The choice of a chimney seems an odd one though, it's normal to dress up as famous characters and, in exceptional circumstances, pieces of food but to dress up as part of a building just seems careless. I suppose as long as it's a costume they won't need planning permission though, something which is notoriously difficult to get in these parts. Requests for it round here are generally met by laughter.
Ooooo how festive! A float just went past with someone's rendition of war torn Iraq on it complete with run down car, proud looking army types and a few kids wearing tea towels. I'm guessing the soldiers are looking so proud because they've managed to blow the car up without harming the civilians. Either that of the UN mop up was more efficient than first thought. And now a parade of tractors! The excitement never stops up north don't you know?
Anyway back to the matter at hand, I'm supposed to be telling you about the things I've been doing this weekend. And as things go they were pretty damned fine.
Friday - To the brink of psychosis, to the edge of sanity, to the very end of my tether and right back again
People say start as you mean to go on, and if I'd listened to those people I would have spent the entire weekend screaming as things fell apart around me. The way I started the weekend was to have my computer throw a crashing paddy, mildly irritating but I'm used to it by now. Give it a few minutes and I decided to forgive the PC and get my journal shoved over into my BT user space. This didn't work. It seemed a fairly straightforward procedure but somewhere along the line I must have bogged things up, either that or the BT FTP service wasn't playing ball. Getting to the light angry trembling stage I decided to cut my losses and relocate my journal back to where it had come from on the blogspot servers. I was then politely informed by a machine that the "scillygav.blogspot.com" blogger domain was already in use, well durrr of course it is. BY ME!
AHHHHHH STRESS! Head starts to ache and I need to let off a little steam…. Killing people in Grand Theft Auto 3 usually helps. Then it crashed after about three minutes play. Then I screamed and decided to release a bit of tension in my journal. Oh yeah, that doesn't work anymore! Then just as I'm about to burst a convoy of BT vans drive right past my window and I shout. And I shout and I swear and I jump up and down and stamp my feet and I feel a little better for it.
One pair of great friends, one trip to Tesco and a night laid in front of the TV later and I'm back in the happy mood I'm normally in. Winding me up requires a great deal of skill and no-one, absolutely no-one, is better at doing it than my beloved PC. Its days are numbered though, I've been checking component prices. Mwahahahahahaha!
