Better late...

Friday 18th of August ( I think…)

I’m blogging from the spare room at Bognor Regis. If all goes well I will be able to upload this at the next WiFi enabled Café I find on my travels (I may or may not be going back to London tomorrow night, I’ll see how much fun I’m having here in Bognor).

I think I didn’t actually post anything yesterday (Thursday), mainly because nothing worth talking about actually happened. Also because I thought I would go hang out in Camden in the hope of luring my friend Alice out for a Pint (I had sent an SMS saying ‘Hey Alice– I’m free tomorrow afternoon. May I interest you in a pint?’ the night before, lamentably receiving no reply). Arriving in Camden somewhere between half seven and eight in the evening, I tried calling the mobile number she had given me and got a message that her phone was switched off.

Interesting. I am pretty sure that she did actually want me to call her, since her parting words to me the last time I saw her were ‘Speak to you soon, Sweetie.’

Are those the words a girl uses when she really means ‘No really, don’t ever try to call me. I just exchanged numbers with you to throw you off the trail.’

Nevermind, I’m digressing. Even though I did do a nice wander through Camden on my Jacks (Jack Jones = Own, Jeez I’m so East End) and chilled out at some nice joints, including the Elephant Head, a corner pub with a Psychobilly flavoured clientiele.

But yes, Today (that being Friday, time travellers). Today I dragged my ass out of bed at the brutally early hour of ten in the morning so as to meet Mum and Dad on the Corner of Oxford Circus at 12. Of course, I did do the obligatory time-wasting stuff like iron some jeans, pack clothes into a bag that I should have packed the night before and the like.

But I was pretty much dead on schedule when I got to the tube station at 1130… and discovered that the Central Line Westbound trains would be out of commission for the next half hour. FUCK!

Since one of the things which seems to mark me as a thoroughly dysfunctional person, both professionally and as a boyfriend (when I am a boyfriend) is my incurable tardiness, and also that being late would probably put Dad in a lousy mood, this was not good.

Extra bad was the fact that every time I have to meet Mum and Dad at Oxford Circus I am always running late and the Central Line all three times the Central line has fucked up. It is worse than totally unlucky, it is totally uncanny.

Fortunately the line started running again sooner than expected and I arrived only 10 minutes late, to discover that Mum and Dad had only just arrived. Nice.

Quick run down of the hours that followed: Mum and Dad happy to see me and to see that I still haven’t turned into a totally crack-addict in the few days since they saw me last.

We hit the Mac Shop, since I mentioned that since I don’t have a vector drawing programme here, I was thinking of buying Freehand. So we go in and pick it up, present to me. Thanks Mum and Dad (I could also use one of the Lycra Socks for the laptop, but I thought that would be entirely too much).

We walk outside to find that it is raining (I’m feeling a little nervous about this because I have the laptop in my backpack (soon to be adorned with a patch saying ‘Relax, it’s not a bomb’) and I don’t want it to get wet, but at the same time I don’t want Mum to worry that I’m getting my Laptop wet. (strange thing is, over the past few days I keep having these funny little anxiety attacks… The real giveaway today was when I was having anxiety attack symptoms (feeling anxious, natch, faster pulse, nervy feeling in intestines) at a point when I had nothing to feel anxious about)

Back to the chase… the three of us want to find somewhere to eat, so Dad leads us down Regent Street, stopping in a some shops along the way (including a golf club shop) until we find a Garfunkels Café in a side street just off Piccadilly Circus (the theatre where Ewan MacGregor is doing Guys and Dolls was right next to us).

[Pearl’s Cat Minnie (or Monty, I forget which) just came in. I’m keeping a close eye on him/her this time. Last weekend when I was here as soon as my eyes were closed the filthy furball decided to take a drink of water… from the glass I keep my false teeth in!]

Two Spag Bols and a vegetarian something or other later and we are back on the move.

I can’t remember exactly what we did next, but I think that we decided to go check out the Tate Modern Art Gallery. With Dad Navigating we took the tube to Waterloo Station. From Waterloo Station we walked out, down, through a tunnel and then followed the Thames until we got to where the Art Galleries are.

[EDIT: I can remember now: we took a bus back to Oxford Street and went to the Waterstones Bookshop there, browsing around and picking out books of interest. I picked up a book of Rock Posters from the 1990s. Mum bought a book on Akido. I nearly bought a book on Soft Synths as well, but I thought I’d save that for another time. EDIT OVER]

And may I say that the Tate Modern is two things: Bloody Huge and damn good. The story goes that for reasons known best to themselves parties unknown decided, rather than redevelop the site into something as mundane as apartments or office blocks, the old power plant in the middle of London (a rather strange place for a power plant, but hey, what do I know about town planning?) should be instead gutted and turned into an Art Gallery.

And the result is a triumph of Neo-Brutalism meets Art Cool. Or Something. Fuck it, it is great. Huge space, something like five floors of stuff, a café, a shop selling all kinds of stuff and a Frida Kahlo Exhibition that I didn’t get round to seeing (maybe next time).

What we did see was an exhibition featuring significant works of art from nearly every important movement/style in Modern Art. Some of it was shit. Seriously: Living Sculpture, Electronic Video Installations, Abstract Art and Conceptual Art, Wankery All. But when it was good, I was great. They had a whole room dedicated to Posters from the old Soviet Repoublic, 1917 to the 1930s and 40s. That alone was worth going just for me. Constructivism, Socialist Realism, War Posters, Propaganda, all the good stuff that you want to see.

There was other stuff that was cool, but I can’t remember what it was, and I don’t want to burn battery time trying to remember (I was sure that I packed the power cable, but it seems that I didn’t).

Mum and Dad had a good laugh at the silly stuff while enjoying the good stuff, and the view through the windows across the Thames was fucking great as well. Next time I go there I’m just going to sit on one of the upper floors and sketch the buildings across the river.

After that we crossed the Millenium Bridge, where Dad told me the story about how people protested that the bridge swayed but the Sun (the Newpaper, not the massive ball of fire at the centre of the Solar System) proved that it didn’t using the ‘talents’ of a page three model.

Walked up to Saint Pauls, and down to St Pauls tube Station, from whence we took a very crowded ride to Victoria.

At Victoria I reminded Dad that I didn’t have a ticket yet, which necessitated a fifteen minute wait in a queue to get one. That was okay, Mum got drinks while we waited. Then onto the train.

The train ride was okay. I read another chapter or two of Elric, trying hard to shield my face from Sun, hanging low in the sky over the West of London (and the adjoining countryside). By this time, note, I was feeling pretty damn tired (roughly seven in the evening, what a lightweight!).

The best part of the train ride was seeing all the bunnies in the fields next to the tracks (surprisingly many, really) and the worst thing was a young family near us consisting of a Totally Non-Control Exercising Mother and her two hyperactive brats, both of whom seemed to have been sucking down Nitrous Oxide and amphetamines before getting on the train.

Little fuckers. I hope your X-Box explodes and electrocutes you in the process.

At Arundel Station Dad retrieved the Hatchback Hire-Car that he had parked there this morning and we drove to a Fish and Chips place on Elmer Road. The most interesting thing about that was that while we were waiting a girl who worked in the kitchen turned up and waited outside the gate until the kitched staff let her in. While she was waiting she did this weird thing of shifting her feet and shifting her weight as if she was a model and there was a camera pointed at her. She wasn’t bad looking, it just seemed like a curious thing to do.

Then it occurred to me… is that what I’ve been doing all my life? Bizarre.

After we picked up the fish and chips we headed back to the house at Elmer, where we discovered Pamela and Katie already there. They had just arrived back from France and were getting here early for Pearl’s Birthday Party tomorrow.

Katie’s friends kept messaging her to come to Fabric in London to see Death in Vegas play, saying her name was on the Door. Funnily enough, that’s a gig I would have loved to go to, if I wasn’t down here (not that I am grousing… tomorrow I get to see some folk I haven’t seen in months, and before that, years).

Anyways, Mum, Dad and Pamela planned their end of the Logistics for the party (apparently Mary is the Queen of organising a family shindig, but she wasn’t coming til tomorrow (Saturday)) and I chilled out.

After watching Foyle’s war I retired up here to chill out, read some of the Poster Book and compose my Blog.

And with that, I Sign Off.

Over and Out.

Hey Everyone.

I'm blogging from the Mac Shop on the Laptop.

I tried to blog from the Starbucks at the Oxford Street Borders, but instead of providing a free network the T-Mobile Wireless thing they have there is actually some kind of Pay As You Go thing that you need to set up, and that kind of thing gives me a headache. Plus I had already paid two pounds for some kind of yogurt drink, and I didn't feel like paying more.

Pearl's party was actually really good.

Alan, Sue, Becky and Tory (and their babies) were there, as well as Tory's fiance. Jacqi, Mary Thomas and Wassername (Marr's red-haired kid) had come along from Brighton (Steve was still in France) and from the North was Pamela, Nigel and Katie. Even Caroline made it down.

Here's some news: Caroline now live in Kensington (she says that most of her pay goes on rent, something which doesn't surprise me), her job title is 'Productivity Analyst), which means that she spends 18 hours a day in front of her Laptop looking at figures in Excel and she is desperate for some time off. And she drives a Black Mercedes Kompressor.

That's right, miss Kicked out of School Twice now drives a Merc. She probably hires it, but goddamn. I always said that I would drive a Merc by the time I was thirty. So much for that.

Anyways, despite my apparent bitchiness I am impressed that she has moved up in the world. I'd just like to move up as well. Time to pull my finger out, I guess.

Anyways, it turned out to be a really good day. I ate so much food that I had to sit down and let it settle (I should have made myself some sammiches out of the leftover chicken, but I didn't think to) and everyone just chilled out, no arguments or static, just everyone being cool. Try that at an old school MacCarthy family get-together. (although given that there aren't any of a certain generation of MacCarthys left, that is a purely academic point).

At about five-ish Dad drove me to Arundel Station for me to catch the next train to London. Right now I should be hie-ing it back to Leytonstone so I can dump my stuff and get the next train to Mornington Crescent, but I'm not going to hurry too much. (I want to go to the Koko to see The Grates play, possibly review them for Fasterlouder).

The I nodded off a bunch of times on the Train ride up (ie no reading done), but there were no brats pissing me off. Swings and roundabouts.

I got talking to a cheerful bloke with a pile of books in the Borders, then packed up my shit and came over here.

Once I'm done blogging I think I'll check my mail and go.

Hmm, over on the WiFi page it sez that there are places where WiFi-ing is totally free. Cool. Next time I'll try a Proper WiFi stickered place.

Anyways, it is time that I signed off properly.

Over and Out.

J