umbrella graveyard: Back in black (t-shirt)

Ah, the long awaited post. The technical difficulties I was experiencing just after Christmas have now been resolved; in fact, they’ve been resolved for quite some time now, but I’ve been far too busy/lazy to write anything.

Until now. Except, I’m still quite extraordinarily lazy; so instead of anything of literary value or worth, you’re going to get a brief review of the last three months of my rubbish life.

If you’ve some deep-seated aversion to bullet points, I suggest you look away now.

Christmas/New Year: Was all quite drunken, and therefore bearable in the extreme. Mum bought me a nice coat that was entirely appropriate for a thirty year old man looking to make a career for himself in engineering; fortunately, she kept the receipt, and so I was able to callously refund it and spend the money on entirely inappropriate metal CDs. Ungrateful? Perhaps. I’m just not quite prepared to start dressing my age. My new year started with me mullering my left foot whilst capering about in a drunken manner at Matt’s house. The following three days were bleary and full of sweet, sweet painkillers. Nice.
The Pub: From now on it shall be known only as The Pub – names have been changed, partly too protect the innocent, but mainly to protect the guilty. It’s working out okay: we’ve gone almost a whole month without anyone getting glassed. Living above a pub is a little bit like living next door to a house that’s always having a party. Mostly you just learn to block the noise out; and if that doesn’t work, you can always go downstairs and get smashed. The only other problems are mostly to do with the fact that it’s an old building, with a convoluted system of plumbing that has been added to and modified numerous times throughout the years; so whilst it is apparent that there is some kind of leak in the system somewhere, no-one can figure out exactly where it is or how to fix it. The basic upshot of this is that all the hot water disappears completely once per week, and standing underneath the shower is not entirely unlike being weed on by four kittens strung together just above your head. Despite all this, it looks like we’ll be staying for a while; Dozer has passed his three month probationary period, signed his contracts and is now officially landlord of The Pub. So as long as he doesn’t get caught doing something stupid, like sub-letting to his old housemates, or paying his bar staff in cocaine, he’ll be alright.
Housemates: Much the same as they ever were, except we’ve now got a new one. He’s a ferret. He has cute whiskers, no sense of balance, and a musky scent so pervasive that once you’ve handled him you’re best off burning any clothes you may have been wearing. He does not have a name – suggestions on a postcard, please.
School: Has been all a bit frantic, with lots of deadlines piling into each other in a most undignified manner. Still scrabbling about trying to find a placement to do in three/four months time… I’ve got an interview coming up with a company called MBDA, but all in all I’d rather not work in the defense industry; and whilst with a company like Airbus, to whom I’ve also applied, there is some grey area (since they make commercial aircraft as well military wotsits), MBDA make missiles, and guided missile systems, and that’s it. No grey area there, unless there are applications for guided missiles in other industries that I was previously unaware of, such as agriculture, dentistry or childcare. As Jeff “Hammer Of Thor” McDeath quite rightly pointed out, “there’s only two things you can do with a missile: blow things up with it, or have sex with it. And you’d have to be some kind of crazy twisted fuck to do at least one of those things”.
Work: I put on my Big Gay Department Store costume, pull the right moves and make the right noises. They all think I’m great… though my patience was sorely tested in the run-up to Christmas, when we were given special scorecards with funny words and phrases (‘Christmas Pudding’, ‘Christmas Cracker’, ‘Amy Winehouse’, ‘Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining’, etc.) that we had to try to work into conversation with customers, to make everything more ‘fun’. Enforced Wackiness = Suck My Balls.
Gigs ‘n’ that: Been to a few of those. On one glorious night I got to see Taint (legends), Kylesa (two drummers – bludgeoning) and Baroness (bearded prog-doom-space-rock). The day before that I saw Henry Rollins (ROLLINS) doing stand-up; and a few days after, Gay For Johnny Depp (homoerotic hardcore sodomites). I saw Earth a week or so later, a drone band most (in)famous for the fact that their frontman, Dylon Carlson, was the guy who bought Kurt Cobain that shotgun. They were awesome. And then a few weeks back, The Boy and I went to see Mea Culpa (shouty, and apparently now defunct) at The Junction, along with The Death Of Her Money (surprisingly good, although very derivative).