A few bits and pieces won’t work for a while until I get round to sorting it all out. Sorry about that :]

I’ll preface the story with >this link<. Better you read it first, it’s not very long.

Despite what the story would have you believe, I was up last night playing computer games (2:30am, bad I know) when two housemates returning from mad ravez in the city caught my attention by throwing stones at my window. I fluffed the curtains at them, but they were not appeased, and the stones grew larger. I thought it was a joke at my expense when they said there was a ‘massive fire’ down the road, so sluggishly put clothes over my PeeJays.

Rolling back in time a bit, earlier in the day I’d borrowed a mid-range video camera from uni to try to learn how to use it, just overnight. I got some silly shots of housemates and some thrilling sequences of water dripping into mugs. Truly I have reached my creative pinnacle.

Skipping forward again to me being dressed, I grabbed the video camera and my stills camera and headed off. Turns out it wasn’t a joke at my expense, and much filming ensued! Quite an epic blaze, the biggest fire I’ve ever seen up close. All the firemen were very helpful, telling us where to get the best angles and shots. And as we were following their advice, wading through the acrid smokes and trying to stay out their way, some NHS folks approached us. ‘Who are you?’ he said. ‘John’, said I. ‘That’s not good enough’, said he, at which point he said that he didn’t know how we got here but if we didn’t leave he’d call the police. As tempted as we were to tell him how we got there (walking up the road, receiving directions from firemen) we left. I wonder who I should have been that would have been good enough? Attila the Hun, perhaps. I digress.

It seems some firetrucks are actually imposters. One was just an oversized tea-wagon, with a stove and an army of kettles behind the red shutters. Most of the fifty firefighters at the scene seemed to just be there for the tea. I’m sure it was all part of their strategy, never fear.

Anyway, this morning I went back to the scene, only to overhear a reporter from the BBC. I told them who I was, (and was surprised when she didn’t say ‘That’s not good enough’) and… to cut a long story short. Some of our photos and a chunk of my video is now up on the BBC website. And a blink of video was also shown on the regional BBC news in the evening ^^

Funny how sometimes the pieces of a puzzle just fall into place. Just so happening to borrow the video camera, housemates deciding to go out at the last minute, me waking up late and going later than planned past the scene where I met the reporter…

Seems that life just boils down to dumb luck

_{And if my video production tutor asks ‘But where’s the concept?’ I’m going to stuff the miniDV tapes down his gullet.}

Merry November everyone.

I’m really enjoying cycling still, a few more near misses to add to the tally but that’s all part of the game eh? Besides, I look very fetching in my helmet and ankle straps…

I’ve done a couple of photography jobs recently. One was for a reenactment of Ruskin’s lecture, which didn’t go amazingly but shh, don’t tell the client. The other was assisting at a wedding for our ‘Work Based Learning 2′ module. Yup, our work experience modules have their own sequels. Like most sequels, however, the first one was better (read as easier). The wedding went really well actually, got a few nice shots and feeling a lot more prepared in the wonderful and white and whirling world of wedding phwotography. Also picked up quite a lot of ‘what not to do’s from the guy I was assisting

Week 5 nearly over already (at least at our uni), scary how fast time is going. This weekend is an anime expo in London, which I shall be going along to. Most of the anime society is dressing up. I, however, will not be. Sorry to dissapoint. I will, however (again), be taking lots of photos of people who did dress up. No doubt some of them will be hilarious(ly bad), and others could well be genuinely impressive. I’ll need all the luck you can spare to navigate the broken tube network though. Also, I’ve found and joined a wargaming and roleplaying society (will the geekiness never end?), but have yet to convince my housemates to partake of some roleplaying. Although I did hear someone say the other day, ‘John’s always trying to convince us to play these weird and crap looking games, but when we actually play them, they’re pretty good’. So that’s encouraging….. I think?

Anyway, I’m sure that’s plenty enough from me. Time to get back to the work! Hope everyone is well, have a good All Hallows Eve next week, and Ghey Forks Nyte the week after! I leave you with this marital scene…

_{Edit: had to be a small photo to protect the identity of the ‘participants’! Also it’s come to my attention the photo uploader bit isn’t working. I’ll upgrade Wordpress once I get a spare while to do so.}

I’m in week three of term now and everything’s going pretty well…I’m not liking the huge amount of work we suddenly seem to have as second years, but managing to get by. I’ve had a few musicy things going on - did a concert last week with the symphony and wind orchestras, which went reasonably well. My french horn is at the doctor’s at the moment because the trigger is broken but my lovely friend Michael has been lending me his in the meantime. My friend Genny, who is a very busy and important lady, president of the warwick drama society and directs lots of shows, is directing an Opera this term (Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas? Anyone know it?). Anywho I thought it might be fun to try out something knew with singing, and all my best friends here are involved in it in various ways too, so I auditioned for that on Monday (not for a principle part or anything, just chorus). I’d unfortunately lost my voice on the day of the audition, but luckily the musical director is a friend of mine too from choir, so he’d heard me sing lots of times before and said he could offer me a callback based on that… so I did my callback on Thursday, and this morning I found out that I got a part in the chorus So that’s snazzy. The show will be at the end of November in various venues in Leamington, Warwick, Birmingham, and it’s also going to the actors’ church in Covent Garden which is quite exciting. So if anyone’s around then do come and watch, Genny’s got so many awesome ideas for it so it’ll be accessible to all - opera-fans and opera-newbies! Also, it’s Purcell, so it’s in English!

In other news, my good friend Ingrid who I met in France and went to visit in Barcelona over the summer is coming to England to visit me and Joel in ten days’ time! So that’s really exciting For those who don’t know (I can’t remember if I wrote about it in my blog about France), Joel does French at Warwick but I met him in France on our vacation residence. So this afternoon I went round to his house for tea and biscuits and to plan our week of awesome funness with Ingrid We’ll hopefully do a day trip to London, an evening trip to Birmingham and take her to all the good places around here. There’s this cocktail bar that Gen told me about that I really want to try out…it sounds weird but apparently it has this open-air section with beds that you can lie on and look at the stars…hehe!

Other than that I don’t really have any news…it’s just been the usual work, library shifts, music and various nights out. Some really good ones actually. Wootzorz… oh yes, and the new house is pretty good, we’ve had some hiccoughs involving a leaky roof and general broken stuff, but all has been fixed. There’s an alarm that’s been going off in the hall since Thursday but our landlord said we have to wait for the battery to run down so he can replace it, which is proving quite wearing! I really love my room, which is nice and big this year. I’ve taken some photos but it won’t seem to let me upload them, so just imagine quite a big room with a frame around the bed and lots of photo collages on the wardrobe. Yay!

I better get on with that work now…hope everyone is well, enjoying the second year / fresher year (noob!) / work and college! Over and out

Also I’m very excited about the new series of Stictly!!

Glad to hear that everyone seems to be settling into another year of uni.

Toodles.

x 

 

Hello everyone! Hope the various movings-in are going well. I have heard of several problematics with internet and moving in and whatnot, so I hope those all get sorted out swiftly and your new places are perfectly cromulent.

Things are good here, I’m starting to learn how living in a house makes some of the inhabitants more annoying than previously. We’re all starting to complain about how it’s just us who does the cleaning and tidying up. No falling out yet though! On the bright side we have amazing internet and overpriced TV. That’s what you get for not being in the house over the summer when other people are! The downside of this is its fairly expensive, but the upside is I don’t have to look after any bills and there’s so many channels that Friends is always on at least one of them… yay?

My room is a little more homely now also, with a large plant purchased. Photo slightly enhanced through the magicks of Photoshop.

I’m in the second week of lectures now, so projects are starting to get underway and the realisation of another year of work is slowly dawning.

Anyway I’m sure I had more to say than this, but to save you all from drivel I shall depart!

Good luck with the moving in and courses starting and and, well everything else you might be up to.

Now, let’s see. things happening. Norfolk Broads on a boat with Tammy back in July, that was fun with good weather most days and lots of pubs and places. We visited a candlemaker’s workshop and saw lots of different shaped candles and a huge mushroom candle that was big enough to sit on, and previously had been sat on to the point of cracking. drove the boat in high winds, through narrow and wide channels, and across Braden Water, pulling donuts to pick up a lost hat. Spinning!!

The job taht I did have at the pub was lost when the owner’s got bored of running the place and sold it. That was a bit of a bugger, but it meant i got to spend more tiem with Tammy (YAY!!). That happened at the end of july, so I have been really bad and not found a job since.

Went on holiday to Spain for 10 days in August. The secret party was great by the way, John. That was a really lazy holiday, staying with a cameraman my dad knows, spending most of the day sitting by the pool reading books. we did venture out to Madrid, other nearby towns, went off to do horse riding. It was good fun.

Saw Tammy lots and lots and lots and lots.

Was introduced more and more into the Discworld novels. Good reads, good fun.

There was the gathering of peoples at Tammy’s house, good to see you all again.

Went to the annual geek fest known as Gamesday. Lots of Warhammer on that day (now the looks of shame and malcontent lol). That was at the LG Arena, the Pavillion and Hall One of Brimingham’s NEC arena. While there got to see a huge wahammer tank, mwahahahahahahha!!!

Ahem.

that just about sums up the summer time (taht I can remember). Apologies for poor speeling and grammar. toodlepip y’all

I’m all moved in now, you might get some photos soon, but you’ve already seen most of what’s to see about the house in previous postings. My room is just as lilac as it was before and at night I’m bathed in the gentle glow of orange sodium lamps. Soothing. Posters have yet to go up to cover the walls. I opened my wardrobe earlier and the side panels fell away outwards, a rather comical event which has taught me to open doors slower in this house. Still, better than the drawer in the kitchen which you can’t open because a door handle is in the way! Who knows what’s inside.

Making the room more my own and looking forward to everyone else being here too and the course starting.

One of the more major points of this blog then is: I’m going to buy some tickets to see Hamlet in London in December. This would be the Hamlet with David Tennant in, and others like Patrick Stewart. I’ll be buying a few tickets on Friday for a performance some time between the 15th - 21st December. I know Mima and family were also thinking of going at some point, any news on possible dates on that front? Just throwing out the idea if anyone else wanted me to pick up a ticket for them when I book ^^

Otherwise I hope everyone is winding up to university well, and various other courses / work related things.

No more interesting news from my neck of the woods in the slightest I’m afraid! Hasn’t the weather been grim recently! I look forward to picnic-ing weather before Winter comes and snows all over us.

Oh! Of course, another major thing then. Who wants to come and see little old me in Cambridge? We can go punting and dance in the rain and the puddles. If a date can be agreed on then so much the better. Any time is fine for me. Somewhere between the 13th-21st September? Hope that’s not too short notice or anything. I can understand if people can’t come though, travel costs are not exactly cheap and things are getting busy this month.

Ttfn

So, folks, in no time at all you can expect to be scrounging for lifts from her

This concludes the public service announcement.

Well now I have found myself in bryon bay australia and find that there is only 2 days till I find my way back home which is kinda depressing but hey time to regail you all with tales of australia. Since I last blogged i’ve been down much of the east coast (to my mind the most fun part of australia). We started in cairns a name that will be well known to any who even considered backpacking in australia but to those who didn’t Cairns is a party town its a must for any and all travellers and needless to say I had a great time and totally pissed (I also happened to be wearing a glitter wig, sparkly clothes and fluorescent body paint but that’s another story). Still when I wasn’t drunk I have been snorkeling and scuba diving over the great barrier reef which is incredible. I went white water rafting which also involved just jumping out and floating down the rapids plus at one point an intentional capsize. I’ve jumped out of planes above mission beach and ran off cliffs at byron bay. I’ve been a cowboy and hearded horses, fed calves, milked cows and failed to drive a dirt bike. I have also found a tropical paradise on morton island and been sandborading in the same place while wearing a croc (read man-thong), a scarf, some flying goggles and not much else.

And now my time and memory have run out see you all soon.