Corrosive Shame

The last week has been one of horror - there was the horror of The Fog (Monday night) the horror of The Movies (over the last couple of weeks), the horror of The House (Sunday), the horror of Old Age (Saturday night) and the horror of the The Inquisition (on Friday).

I am still in pain. Not a large amount of pain, but pain nonetheless. On Monday, as I reported earlier in the week I managed to cycle into a small, unlit, unmarked skip in the fog. Fortunately not actually into it - as that would have been a matter for undertakers rather than A&E, but I threw myself and my bicycle out of the way and just managed to crush my knee (between the skip and the frame) and impale myself - probably on my pedals.

So, after this moment of adrenaline fuelled excitement I paused briefly to roll around on the floor and see what human nature is like in this day and age. Pleasantly I was surprised when a passing car stopped to see the fuss I was making - before getting back on my bike and cycling to pax_draconis/averylaterabbit's den of iniquity where I demanded petit pois for my rapidly swelling knee. Actually I demanded frozen peas, but being sophisticated they didn't have peas.

As I was slowly going into shock, they noticed how I was leaking and insisted on taking me to casualty where I met the archetypal "disinterested nurse" and "young cute blonde doctor". They x-rayed me as they couldn't see the bottom of my cut, shot me full of tetanus (~£800 I'm told) and then sat me down to stitch me up. Some people may be under the impression that the "legal high" I mentioned was drugs - but actually it was just my reaction to feeling someone squirt a jet of water into my leg then stitch it up "One should do it... no, maybe two.. oh look - I've fitted three in!". At this point she said "Are you ok - you look a bit ashen?" as I was contemplating whether to puke over her or not. Fortunately she finished before I could make my mind up. The "Oxford Handbook of Emergency Medicine" she was carrying around made me feel full of confidence in escaping alive too...

The stitched wound, despite being a little messy, is actually doing reasonably well - but the side of my knee is now mostly yellow and black. This makes such mundane things as "walking" and "climbing stairs" particularly painful.

In the last couple of weeks I've seen a number of horror films. This is rather odd as I actually don't like them - but Saw & Saw II have been viewed; then Dog Soldiers was on TV last night. All three were pretty smart, clever, not focussed on delivering content through SFX and, well, just a good diversion. Lost this week I liked, BSG from last night I'm a little more ambivalent about.

Last night, rather than go and be burnt at the stake in Edwards I risked, with _tonylee_ going to Paul Simon. I say "risk" because the PR didn't confirm as they had promised. Fortunately I managed to get in with no problems and then with the combined power of our blagging smiles a ticket for Tony appeared soon after. Gig wise - he enjoyed it and wrote a cracking review. I thought it was dreadful saga-entertainment but I'm always biased when the shoot is a crap one. In this case because it was three songs shooting from the mixer, 6000 people away from the stage. So I have loads and loads of the same slightly shaky shot. Bah!

Yesterday day was artw*nk. About IPR, property and whether you can sell photos taken at gigs. Actually the last bit is a lie but I'm still trying to find a lawyer and might have made contact with someone - hopefully. In the meantime - recommendations for cheap/free lawyers always welcome.

Friday evening was "The Call of Junkfood". Mmmm. Roleplaying at its best. No one has been beaten to death with a baseball bat and only 2 SAN lost. Hardly even worth mentioning. Friday morning was my job interview. Despite being 45 minutes early (a first for me) thanks to leaving the house at 7am, I managed to stay reasonably awake and think I did ok. But we shall see. Most interesting wasn't the interview but the results of the personality test.

Apparently I managed to be relatively consistent over it, and scored mostly 5s (average between "wallflower and psychopath") but had a few highs and lows. They couldn't let me take the results away - so instead gave me a paper and pencil so I could copy them down instead. So, for your entertainment - some of my extremes below:

• Outspoken 10/10
• Caring 2/10
• Data-rational 9/10
• Evaluative 10/10
• Conventional 3/10
• Innovative 7/10
• Worrying 2/10
• Optimistic 3/10
• Competitive 4/10
• Achieving 7/10

And Sunday? I've been tidying the house, giving old clothes to the rats and putting all my jumpers together so they can talk to each other. I'll never find anything again...

I could really do with a haircut before Friday. Ignoring the fact I don't actually have time - any ideas what I should do with my hair? Who knows, I might even do one...

I may even do a little poll later if there are enough suggestions in comments.

It's probably sensible to look at Thursdays now. Yesterday was my artw*nk class where we each had to come up with 6 words to inspire 150 words about our work. There was, as you might expect, a bit of a range from the mildly pretentious to the mundane. Hiding my light under a bushel as I do I was more to the former but the real winner of the evening was quirky which won a number of nominations from the cognoscenti. I showed some photographs which seemed to go down ok - though I really do need to edit down the couple of hundred prints I have to something a little more manageable with some narrative element. See - I can talk the talk now...

I missed this last Thursday because of a conference with work. Our annual national conference is normally a pretty tedious affair and while this one was slightly more animated I suspect it'll come to nothing. My self-appointed role in such gatherings is the King's Fool - a role I enjoy as those of you who know me will appreciate. I enjoy being a disruptive influence but this time I let myself become a little seduced with the idea that things might actually change which was, in retrospect, foolish.

Strangely for me I managed to get at least a little tipsy on Tuesday (in York on the way up with ant_girl,gothgrr, steer, foxy76 and the wonderful hostess ayrton_nix), Wednesday and Thursday. No wonder I was in a funny mood at the weeeknd.

This puts me back to the weekend before which I mostly spent on trains. Friday was STJ/Dreadnought and dinner overlooking the Thames - the former being expensive for drinks - and the latter being expensive for drinks. However, I really enjoyed STJ - especially seeing as at the last one I was feeling most crippled by a lead balloon in my stomach. The only downside was not being able to escape The Prodigy. One room I can understand - but both rooms at once - aaaargh! Hero of the weekend was of course childeric for being a most wonderful host and excellent company while waiting for the police at London Bridge station to remove a semi-comatose drunk off the bus.

Saturday was The Metamorphosis at the Lyric in Hammersmith. I spent the actual show being half impressed by the physical acting and the excellent stagecraft and the other half wondering what the hell was going on. Wikipedia tells me that no-one actually has any clue what Kafka was on about so clearly the key is to go "Hmm" and spout semi-credible rubbish when talking about it.

This I can do!

I did some other stuff at the weekend too of course, but that's between me and my conscience. And I include in that the rather middle-aged and slightly sad activity of ending up talking about accenture's withdrawal from the N3 contract at a birthday party.

So, that's roughly caught up. Oh, except for the Thursday before that weekend, which was pretty much like yesterday. In that I sat around with photographers and tried to work out where I can buy a beret...

“Round and round she goes… where she stops nobody knows!”
It's been quite an up and down week really. Distractions continue a-pace and doors keep opening and closing all over the place.

"May You Live in Interesting Times"
Some maybe-not-ancient maybe-not-Chinese maybe-not-curse comes to mind and if I don't trust myself, can I trust what anyone says to me?

"Be careful what you wish for"
Nothing is truer than that at the moment. Euphoria came and went, guards have come down, souls have been bared. Now all that remains is uncertainty.

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Shit, I seem to have turned into a teenager who has swallowed a book of emo quotations.

In better news, marks to IBM for having returned my laptop clean and working after only a week. I feel all empowered and in love with technology again.