Category: Life

Quick house sale update: We had a viewer and they liked the house. They are waiting on receiving offers on their place though, but still, progress! Exciting! And other exclamation mark worthy statements!!

One thing I’ve been starting to do over the past few months is get out more. Meet up with people, even just for a coffee or a drink, or just spending time wandering about Glasgow meeting random people. People like Svetlana.

But I’m not going to talk about Svetlana (don’t worry I’ll introduce her to you all soon*).

I’m a pretty confident guy and share the ability to talk to anyone with my sister, although admittedly I can’t quite match her words-a-second ratio (I can only presume she’s mastered circular breathing as she can talk for minutes WITHOUT ONCE DRAWING BREATH!), so I’m quite happy sitting in a bar on my own or chatting to shop keepers and the like.

It feels good to be out and about in the city, and I can’t wait to move into it (or at least to the edges of it) and whilst I know there are drawbacks, it’ll be good to at least feel a part of something.

Clubs will be next, as in joining some, not battering baby seals to death. I’ve a couple in mind which should keep me out of trouble, add in joining a local gym and I’ll need to remember to leave sometime for just chilling out and reading books.

Speaking of which, have you ordered a copy of Dance Your Way To Psychic Sex yet? It’s avery limited print run of an excellent book, well worth the money! I’d also happily recommend Sex and Bowls and Rock and Roll which WILL make you laugh, guaranteed!** I’m reading it at the moment and have been asked to stop laughing so much!

And yes, it is a COMPLETE COINCIDENCE that both books have the word SEX in the title (Hello Google!).

* she’s not a person

** not really but it really will make you chuckle!

Have I mentioned the tour of the brewery from last weekend? I don’t think I have.

Was a company thing, a tour of the WEST brewery in Glasgow, which follows strict German brewing guidelines, followed by a BBQ of German meat products (and some salad stuff) and lots of free drinks.

LOTS and LOTS of free drinks. So many that, to our eternal Scottish shame we didn’t even use all of our free beer tokens! (I’m expecting to be excommunicated soon).

It’s safe to say I was quite merry. Quite merry indeed.

In fact, it was only on Tuesday that someone reminded me that, in amongst several pints of a delicious amber nectar called Munich Red, a couple of rounds of shots, we’d also quaffed a few jugs of cocktails. THAT’S how merry I was.

It was a bit silly of me, considering I had a surprise afternoon tea party the very next day, but you know how these things go. Best intentions soon go out of the window when the beer starts to flow and the laughs certainly help distract you from both the amount you are drinking, and just how fast the clock is moving. Ohhh the stories I could tell, but I won’t.

I mean it wouldn’t be fair to point out that someone got so drunk they fell over (not big, not clever but double-trouble funny as he took out another guy on his way down). And I certainly wouldn’t mention who it was that happily accepted £1.71 to eat a slice of sausage that had been on the floor, dunked in dregs of beer and other such ‘garnishes’. And there is no way I’ll bring up THAT conversation with THAT guy which really only confirmed some suspicions and left me pondering some aspects of myself.

It was a good afternoon/night.

And the best bit? The best bit was probably Sunday morning. Wakening up slowly, waiting for the pounding headache to kick in. AND NOTHING HAPPENED!!

It was a miracle! A MIRACLE, I TELLS YA!!

Normally, even though it was spread out over a many hours, and there was some hearty eating in there too, I’d still have woken up with a bit of a ‘head’. I think it’s down to the beer I was drinking being brewed fresh in the building, with no additives or chemicals.  A very pleasant surprise indeed.

It’s almost enough to make me join CAMRA.

Weeks and weeks of lies and devious activity are over! (well, for now).

My soul feels much cleaner now, and my poor simple brain is much happier as it’s not having to filter every single conversation for THINGS I MUSTN’T MENTION. Such is the burden of organising a surprise party, which is what my sister and I managed to do yesterday to help my Mum and Dad celebrate their 40th Wedding Anniversary.

It all started several weeks ago… a crafty plan was drawn up, invites were designed, with an accompanying set of instructions – DO NOT PARK IN FRONT OF THE HOUSE – Aunties were pressganged into action, helping bake cakes, and setting out a veritable feast of diabetic inducing deliciousness. Decorations were delivered elsewhere, requests for additional chairs were sent out by carrier pigeon and, whilst Jennie and I whisked my parents off for a nice lunch (both as part of the celebration, and to give the 30-odd people a chance to sneak into the back garden whilst we were gone) the Aunties and Uncles leapt into action, setting up chairs, laying out food, decorating the house and generally doing most of the hard work for us.

And my parents didn’t have a clue!

The rest of the day was a bit of blur, fizzy stuff was popped, wine was quaffed, tea and coffee runs were made and no matter how hard we all tried we just couldn’t eat all the cakes and nibbles that were laid out. Suffice to say the day was a huge success.

And I’m not organising another one for at least 10 years.

Friday night, beer, an ex-colleague. He remembers me, I can’t for the life of me remember his name.

In my happy drunk state I just flat out said that I’d forgotten his name, I don’t think he was offended or at the very least he was polite enough not to show that he was. Turns out he has a very memorable name (one of those forenames that is more normally a surname).

Shame on me.

Still, Friday night was a good laugh, good food, good company, good beer and I even managed to get the last train home so was a good Saturday morning with only a little bit of fuzzy hangoverness to take care of (a can of Irn Bru sized bit).

Saturday lunch featured something very tasty and delicious, thick wedges of smoked Yorkshire ham, then a few things wot needed done got done (more on that later) and then through to see the olds which ended up with a nice chicken balti for dinner.

And today? A day of quiet pottering and thinking back over good parts of the weekend in an effort to lock them away in my memory, with a side helping of ponderment on the future.

Yes, I think I’ll mark this weekend up in the WIN column.

How was yours?

Dear reader, there is some risk of spoilers if you keep reading. So, if you want to your forthcoming viewing of Inception or Toy Story 3 to be sans spoiler, stop reading now.

I’m now going to continue writing and presume that at least one person is still reading. It’s a vain hope but a familiar one.

Inception first then. The mind-bending thriller directed by Christopher Nolan, featuring the new Robert de Niro (except he’s not really new now, is he) Leonardo di Caprio. It’s a story about people who can influence and enter dreams (by and large) and has lots of levels and is really confusing.

Except it isn’t. Well I didn’t find it all that confusing, and in a way I was a little disappointed as I was expecting something akin to a Memento/Donnie Darko type experience with added BIG HOLLYWOOD BLOCKBUSTER THRILLER scenes. It certainly delivered on the latter with some genuinely stunning special effects, the fight scene in the hotel corridor was superbly done and thankfully didn’t rely too heavily on the fast-cut edits that seem to have become the norm recently.

It’s an excellent thriller, don’t get me wrong, and the premise is a clever one, well executed I just think I got a bit caught up in the hyperbole surrounding it.

Top tip: what age are the children you see? do they sound that old on the phone?

Definitely a movie to see on the big screen but, for me, I don’t think it will enter the hallowed halls of the ‘cult’ movie. Or maybe I just need to go watch it again.

Toy Story 3, on the other hand, is already assured a place in the box office hit list. It’s the franchise that can do no wrong and, once again, the team at Pixar deliver a smart, well written movie which allows kids to have fun, whilst adults nod along and may, or you know, may not, shed a tiny tear or two… I couldn’t possibly comment.

Dealing with the reality that Andy has grown up, Woody has to come to terms with how his life is changing (given my current circumstance it was oddly familiar in a way). On the way, due to various circumstances, he ends up leading a daring rescue mission to save all his friends.  Story wise it’s simple enough, but managed to have me laughing along and genuinely on the edge of my seat at one point.

We actually saw the 3D version which was good but Pixar don’t overuse the technology, preferring to simply allow it to offer some depth without going for the “oh my god it’s coming out of the screen at me” moments we saw in Ice Age. I don’t think you’d be losing anything seeing the 2D version (and you’d save yourself a couple of quid).

I know await the Bluray boxset of the trilogy and part of me really hopes they don’t succumb and do anything more with this franchise. Time to let Woody, Buzz, Jess and all the others retire peacefully.