Last Sunday Roast

Sunday I went to the parent's house. The place I used to refer to as home. It still is home in some sense, there'll be the odd time I'll say I'm going home, when what I mean is I'm going to see the parents. This was the last time I would go as they are due to move house shortly to downsize. It's been a great home and full of plenty of memories. Christmases, spectrum computers, lego, washing up liquid bottle water fights, snow, hurricanes, pets, friends. But really none of those memories are tied to the bricks of the place, rather the items and people that were in them. I loved living there and the rolling views, the ability to walk off the end of the garden and pick up a footpath and head up to Ashover, but it's not a place I've called home for a long time now. It was nice to gather as a family, eat and reminisce. I helped with a few chores before taking away the last few items that belong to me. It'll be a bit strange not to be going back there again, though my mark has been made. I scrawled on a number of the walls at various ages as the wall paper had been stripped :)

Nostalgic weekend

It's been ages since I've blogged, I seem to spend most of my net time on scrabulous these days. Anyway, thought I'd blog about some stuff, so I'll start with a few weeks ago, though I'll set the post date to match the time it occured.

Saturday afternoon I headed to Bolton to see the wonderful monkey swallows the universe and I gave a lift to ag to help with transportation. JT and his girlf came down too, so it was a good opportunity to meet up with them and introduce them to the live sound of mstu. The venue was actually quite nice, a little pub with small band stage and a huge video backdrop, that for the most part of the evening was playing anime. It was pretty strange to watch mstu with some futuristic japanese backdrop. As always I enjoyed the gig, despite a few technical problems with the mikes and mixing desk. Oh yes, the other really exciting part about the set was that I had been asked to put the songs on their set list into a running order. So the song order was in the main part how I'd picked them. A few changes had been made due to instruments required in the songs. The weather had turned for the worse so on the way back i decided to go via the m62, ag played dj on the iPod and we were making good progress despite the driving rain. As we came down the M1 the variable message signs were informing 'pedestrians in road' 50mph. We dismissed this as foolish, suggesting that surely they meant workers in road. A couple of miles later and out of apparently nowhere some guy was thumbing for a lift right in the hard shoulder. It was crazy, what on earth was he doing there!
Sunday afternoon I spent going through the numerous boxes of stuff I'd picked up from my parents a few days previously. I'm rubbish at throwing things away and I was faced with the quandry of what to do with a pile of smash hits from the late 80s, piles of school books, and boxes of old birthday and christmas cards. In the end most got sealed in boxes ready to go into my loft. I did come across a few interesting things. A class project on how to keep warm in winter was full of lots of useful advice, though I seemed to get sidetracked and talked about playing He-Man. I was Battle-Cat. Also a bit strange to read John's entry, even back then he got a mention for his beloved Liverpool FC in the scarf he wore. Reading through my creative writing journal was also tinged with sadness as I read many 'famous five' inspired adventures where me and my friend John would solve some mystery or other. I'm sure if John was still here he would've taken great delight in reading them now. There was another piece that described the things I liked and was amused that the things i liked when i was ten pretty much still stand: Reading, maths, walking.

More tips on how to keep warm in winter can be found here

Heathrow

My parents asked me to go and pick my sister up from heathrow today as she is flying back from the states, she doesn't enjoy flying and is usually ill, so I agreed to help out and pick her up. Flight due in at 1030, so I set off around 0645, and made good time getting to the terminal by about 1000. The flight was early, so I read for about 20minutes and then stood by the entrance from the arrival lounge. People went by, and I kept looking out. An hour went past, maybe she's not too well and had to have a lie down. Ninety minutes elapsed and I've now seen thousands of people wandering through. Do I go to the info desk - chances are she'll come just as I'm away and then not be able to find me. Another ten minutes, she really is late, best go and ask at the info point: That flight came in nearly two hours ago, does she have a british passport. yes. well she should be out. But she sometimes gets ill, has she perhaps been taken somewhere to recouperate, was she on that flight? I can't tell you that, because of data protection, are you sure she's on this flight? That's what I'm told. It's just that it's an overnight flight, there's another tomorrow with the same flight number, it leaves on the 18th and arrives here on the 19th.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Unbelievable, rang parents, are you sure she's on this flight. That's what we've got down, I'll give the place she's staying a ring and call you back.

Yes - she's still in america.

How annoyed am I to waste my last free saturday before going off to Jordan!

After five min calm down, I thought about going to see a friend in oxford, having driven all the way down here. Thankfully s was in and I was able to spend a pleasant afternoon with him and his family. So not all bad!

You'd have thought that being an avid fan of 80 days around the world with Willy Fog an error like this wouldn't happen.

Paintings

Popped over to see my m+d this afternoon for mothering sunday. They've been busy 'down sizing' and my mum had come across a bunch of paintings that me and my sister had painted whilst at nursery school. It was quite amusing looking through them, but I was quite impressed with my abstract work, with the vivid colours and expressive brush strokes. I don't think they would look out of place in the tate! My sister's paintings tended to be mainly pictures of the family and cat. It was possible to distinguish what the characters were, and they were generally anatomically correct. Which may be all impressive for a three year old, but they weren't worthy of the tate modern, they looked like kids paintings. Mine on the other hand.....

you can check them out on flickr here