Saturday

0515: Alarm goes off. Drag myself out of bed and head for shower.

0600: Start finding things to put into rucksack. Change of clothes, shoes, drum sticks (1 pair), Oystercard, diary, keys, tissues, Star Trek piano music, sleeping bag… no, that doesn’t fit, and I won’t be sleeping anyway… oh alright, just in case. Get other (bigger) rucksack, transfer stuff to it, add sleeping bag. Right. Have I got everything?—oops, look at the time!.

0630: Arrive at agreed meeting point and hop in car to go to Stevenage. Slight dozing in car, but not real sleep.

0745: Need coffee, but the only place that’s open is McDonalds. Oh well, that’ll have to do.

0810: Turn up at random school hall and set up drums while brass players make a racket. Find tea. Someone has bought jam doughnuts. Mmmmmm, doughnuts.

0845: Run through test piece.

0910: Find that we’ll be the second band to play. Gets it out of the way nice and early! But we have to pack up and get to the competition venue asap.

1015ish: Play. It goes ok but everything sounds weird in that hall.

1030: Return gear to cars. The bass drum is heavy!

1100: To the bar for a pint. Text Mat to find out if he’s free this afternoon. He is; make vague arrangement to meet.

1130: Catch train to Cambridge.

1220: Arrive in Cambridge and meet Mat. Dash round shops to get food. Back to Mat’s house, eat food. My first experience of Nintendo Wii. It’s fun! Quite tempted to get one… when they become easier to find!

Afternoon: Wander into town to buy Mother’s Day card. Check out what games they have in the Magic Joke Shop, buy 2 small Carcassonne expansions (River 2 and The Count). Return to Mat’s and play Carcassonne using river 2 but not the Count because it’s confusing! Bit more Wii, then pizza.

1930: CULES shows! First “Something of a Pickle” which is a little difficult to follow, because (i) the plot is bizarre and (ii) the cast is changing accents rather frequently. Nevertheless, very entertaining. After this comes “Babes in the Wood” which is, without a doubt, the best and most polished panto I’ve ever seen CULES do. I take credit for helping to choose a couple of the songs :) but basically the script is very clever (some truly appalling puns) and everyone sings in time and in tune to words which actually fit the tunes! Followed by after-show party at the House of Light Entertainment. I have very little to drink because I need to be prepared for…

Sunday

0230: Head to New Hall, where the G&S society is part-way through Act II of “Iolanthe”. Many people leave after this, and it is at this point that I seat myself at the keyboard to accompany “Ruddigore”, “The Grand Duke” (crap) and “Utopia (un)Limited” (for this one I only do half the work—play one hand each with Theo).

0800: Time to go home. Walk into town, find a cab near Christ’s, allowing me to reach the station in time for the 0828 train back to Kings Cross. I reach the train before realising I haven’t got a ticket, so rush back to buy one from the machine, then rush back to the train.

0828: As train begins to leave, I go to sit down and am hailed by Grace, a friend from college. Go and chat for a bit, then make my apologies and explain that I need to go and sleep. Settle down to sleep, but am interrupted by ticket inspector Revenue Protection Officer. He points out that my Young Person’s Railcard has expired, and he’ll have to fine me. Bugger. 10 minutes and £36 later, I can go to sleep, but not before realising I don’t have my Oystercard. This is because it’s still in the other rucksack.

0930ish: Am woken by other passengers as the train is at Kings Cross. A bit bemused, I head for the Tube, buy a ticket, and hope on the Victoria Line. Get off at Oxford Circus, only to find the Central Line is not running. Arrgh! Go via Victoria and Ealing Broadway (which is at the end of its branch of the District Line, so I can safely doze). Finally, the E10 bus takes me home. Trudging up the hill to my house, I look forward to going to bed.

1030ish: Once inside the house, I notice I am treading something unpleasant into the carpet. It smells bad. Check outside the front door… fox-turd on the path *$!@£$!$* Clean carpet, hose shoes, go to bed.

1530: Wake up, go downstairs, discover dinner is nearly ready. Give card to mum, eat dinner, relax.

2130: Bed.

I’ve been watching some of the Comic Relief stuff on TV this evening. It is quite a remarkable thing, really. In 2005, Red Nose Day raised £65m. That sounds quite a lot, and it’s great. But what gets me is this:

Olympics budget rises to £9.3bn and the government is forking out £6bn. That’s £6,000,000,000 which I find simply staggering. This, for some sports. Yes, yes, redevelopment of the East London area, benefit to the country blah blah economy and all that bullshit. Whatever. SIX BILLION POUNDS.

£20bn for renewing Trident. Twenty thousand million pounds. And this for devices for causing death and destruction on a grand scale. Devices which should never be used, which is apparently why we need them. That’s one hell of an expensive insurance policy.

It makes me so fucking angry.

Another totally inadequate post.

I saw Avenue Q this evening. I find myself unable to come up with words to express just how amazing it was. Just… wow. The actress/puppeteer for Kate Monster was just fabulous. In fact, all of them were. And the “Sesame Street” video moments were hilarious. Also, I only realised when I got home and looked up the cast on the website, that Christmas Eve was the actress who plays Toshiko in Torchwood. Cool! :)

Right, time for bed now.

I haven’t written for ages. I will get around to it properly at some point.

Meanwhile, two things.

1. I passed my piano performance diploma, so I have DipABRSM. :)
2. xkcd: “Bored with the Internet” and xkcd: “Grownups”

Last Thursday I went to see Little Shop of Horrors at the Menier Chocolate Factory theatre near London Bridge. It was very good indeed, and the new Audrey II looks like this (end of show):

The show is due to transfer to the West End in March, but I’m glad I saw it in such a lovely little theatre. I may well go again when it’s moved, though. :)

Last week I was drumming for a pantomime version of Treasure Island. It went as well as could be expected, but I wasn’t impressed with the choice of songs. It also took up the whole week: tech on Sunday, Act 1 Monday, Act 2 Tuesday, full dress Wednesday, then performances Thursday, Friday & Saturday (x2).

Today was quite strange, though not in a bad way. Last week the Chairman of JLP, Sir Stuart Hampson, turned 60, so someone decided to hold a little surprise celebration for him today, and then someone asked if members of the Cavendish Singers (our chamber choir) could sing “Happy Birthday” at this event. However, our conductor was away today, so he asked me to lead it. He couldn’t find an SATB arrangement of the music, so guess what I did on Sunday?

So, this morning I remembered to wear my suit and tie, and at 1.30 we assembled in Sir Stuart’s office along with most of the board of directors, ready to surprise him when he arrived. It was all a bit surreal; though why should I feel out of place just because most people in the room were at the level of my boss’s boss’s boss’s boss?

Then, after work, I met up with my mum and sister near Oxford Circus, then dad joined us for a meal at Efes (on Great Titchfield Street). Good food, and plenty of it. I split the bill with dad, which felt very grown-up!

Well, the concert on Thursday was fantastic. The playing was superb; I cannot express it any better than that, I’m afraid. The venue was pretty good, but it was hard to overcome the instinct to become irritated at the noise of the fan, or the occasional sounds floating down the staircase from the door to the restaurant upstairs. The single complaint I had was about the price of the drinks. Now, I don’t often—no, make that “very rarely”—go to clubs; I prefer a pub. But £7.50 for a gin & tonic?! Appalling! Anyway, I learnt my lesson. It was brilliant to catch up with Amy, and we plan to try and go to more concerts and gigs.

I had a marvellously relaxing day today. I played Tikal with my parents, who always get impatient while I’m explaining rules, but once the game got underway it became clear to them (as it had to me when I read the rules) that the gameplay mechanism is actually very simple, with very few exceptions or special cases to consider. It took quite a while—must’ve been 2 hours—but dad pointed out that it was our first time playing it so we were bound to be slow. I take this as a positive sign: normally he’s not all that keen on games, especially if they’re long, but I think he must have liked this one! It does look great as well. Next time I play, I might even take a photo of the endgame state. I know that would be really sad, but don’t care. Board games are great.

Tomorrow I am going to a “Virtuoso Violin” concert at The Gardening Club, Covent Garden. Unusual venue for a classical gig, I know! Violinists Simon Hewitt Jones and David Worswick and cellist Tommy Hewitt Jones are headlining, and I’m going because it sounds too cool to miss. Also I know Simon and Tommy from my days at RCM Junior Dept. I’ve arranged to go with Amy, a friend from 6th form, so it will be a great chance to catch up with her as well.

Also, played Torres with mum and dad this evening. Dad won, I think to his surprise as he was learning the rules as he went along! Tikal looks amazing; can’t wait for a chance to play it.

First day back at work today (since 2006-12-21) and it was ok, but last night I had a headache (which is rare) in the evening, had difficulty getting to sleep (rarer still) and at 4am I awoke with headache much worse (unprecedented). I suppose it could have been due to eating half a box of Guylian chocolate shells while watching the last episodes of Torchwood season 1.

A few days ago, I gave in to temptation and ordered both Gipf (BGG) and Tikal. They arrived today and I’m hoping I’ll able to try Gipf tomorrow evening with mum. Although, we played Torres on Monday and she liked it this time round, so might play that instead. Still pondering Pirate’s Cove.

I had a lovely New Year’s Eve with friends in Enfield, which involved an excellent meal, various wines (including excitingly-flavoured fizz) and several games (Carcassonne, Stratego, Balderdash and Zèrtz). The night before that I visited the House of Light Entertainment in Cambridge, which also involved an excellent meal, wine and a game (Carcassonne). So, a very successful trip, and I even got some more of a database frontend coded whilst on the London-Cambridge train.

Must sleep now. More soon (perhaps tomorrow).

Apparently this means the second day of Christmas, in Greek. Thanks to Wikipedia and Unicode (or at least UTF-8) for making this possible. (yes, I realise it’s the third day by now, you pedant)

Good day. Woke, decided that getting out of bed was a bad idea, stayed in bed, woke again at about 11am and decided that it was probably ok to get up at that time. Did so. Sorted out Granddad’s computer (rather more than 20 minutes, mainly because he’d mucked about with things since it went wrong). Had lunch. Taught dad to play Zèrtz and played 3 games. Watched “Q Who?” from the Borg collection. Went to uncle’s house, where wine was drunk. All in all, nice and relaxing. Tomorrow will be an even-lazier day: the rest of my family is going to Kew Gardens, and I’m not.