Fuckoff Huge Update

Ok, so I'm never one to take shit for long - although, on the other hand, I am one for stropping. Anyway, the determined fuck you I ain't taking shit from no one side of me won out over the stroppy side and I decided last night to make a marathon effort at retyping what I lost and then finishing the entry. I only got to the end of Saturday before something else caught my attention and as Anne so rightly pointed out there are more important things than diary updates. Anyway, without further ado...

Friday

Friday was hot and lethargic. It's the hot bit that makes the difference, Fridays are always lethargic. It was so hot, that I cast aside my geekiness (Oui, je suis un geek. Mais je suis un geek executive, un geek d'actione), left my computer terminal for the lunch hour and went and sat outside. I never do this. During lunchtimes I am glued to my web connection, trying not to order stuff that I usually can't afford, or writing diary updates, or writing fic (this involves a web connection more than you'd expect, given the amount I usually check back on other stuff I've written, or look stuff up on BuffyWorld. Sitting outside in the sun was incredibly relaxing. I did a few texts, but mostly just sat there contemplating life and the number of thunderflies that were landing on my arms.

I left work early. This was partly because, with everyone but my top boss already having gone, I couldn't be arsed to stay, but also because I wanted to get a slight head start in getting to Wales. Now, the last time I did the journey straight from my office to Alison's, I coulda sworn it took only 50 minutes. No such fucking luck today though. An hour and 10. By which time I was feeling decidedly hot, decidedly parched, and decidedly tired. Needless to say, Alison took the first shift on driving.

Since I did the second shift, rather than getting to drift in and out of a relaxing doze, I was a little worn out and the worse for wear when we arrived at my Nan's, mostly due to tiredness and the heat, although there was probably a little bit of hypoglycaemia in there too. In fact, all things considered I was a bit of a mental case on Friday. This all made it a little harder to cope with seeing how much frailer my Nan had got in the 18 months or so since we last saw her. She seemed to sag a little every time she stood still, and that wasn't something that was easy to watch. On the brighter side though, once she got talking she was still able to tell the same old stories without pausing for breath (I swear she can do circular breathing ;-)) It can get tiresome at times but I'm sure if she suddenly stopped telling the same old stories we'd all think there was something wrong. It was, at least, nothing like when I saw my grandad a month or two before he died and he asked me the same question three times in the space of five minutes. That was perhaps one of the most distressing experiences I can remember, other than my own personal demons.

Anyway, that was Friday.

Saturday

The first thing I wanted to do on Saturday was find out who won Big Brother. You might think this was an easy thing to do, but no. Over Breakfast my Nan had Classic FM on, and the news on there was just a list of all the bad shit that had happened overnight, followed by the cricket score. So I went and put C4 on, and looked on teletext (note for younger readers: teletext is to the internet what a pocket calculator is to a PDA). I swear I went round in circles for a while. Then I tried ITV text. After all, BB was an ITV/C4 programme, right? Well, look, for fuck's sake, how hard can it be? Now, anyone with an ounce of sense and Britishness will know that the best place to get news from is the BBC. Yes, after 10 minutes of pissing about with the text from the independent channels, I found out that Kate had won. This is fantastic news. With any luck she'll eventually do a photo shoot with one of the 'quality' male magazines (ie FHM, loaded or Maxim), although she does seem a bit savvy to getting caught in the publicity machine, so it might not happen. I can dream, I suppose. As long as Jade doesn't end up taking her place *shudder* we should be ok. Sorry, bit of laddish behaviour there, I must apologise.

We then made a foray into the depths of Cardiff City Centre, and hit the shops. Well, not literally, obviously. I had three shopping goals in mind, which ranked in order of expected difficulty, easiest first, were: 1) A copy of the Attack of the Clones soundtrack CD for my Nan. 2) The New Recording of The Planets done by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, of which I'd heard Mars on the Classic FM chart over breakfast. 3) The Lifelines single from A-ha (the title track of the latest album, as regular readers will no doubt be able to guess). Some spectacularly weird turn of events meant that it was goal 3 that I actually accomplished first. The other two were done in one fell swoop once I worked my way along as far as WHSmith. The trip to Forbidden Planet was as usual disappointing. However, it was a hot day... and we all know what hot days in a busy town centre are like, don't we? (No Anne, don't play the innocent with me) Yes, the Cardiff totty was out in force. But it was hot, although not quite debilitatingly so. It was also crowded, and I don't do well in crowds. Well, I do okay most of the time, but occasionally I just notice it a bit more than usual and find myself needing to get some space. It was kinda like that then.

I took my Nan home while Alison stayed to shop for the rest of the afternoon. I attempted to carry on with Anya vs. The Bunnies while Nan listened to her new CD - I did too, of course. After a while I decided that there's only so much indignant Anya you can write in one go, particularly when you're at a relatively low ebb, and instead got caught up in reading Rebel Stand.

A couple of hours later, when I did go to get Alison... well. She had rather a lot of shopping, including a large Next bag. Shopping afficionadoes will be well aware that Saturday was the first day of the Next Sale, with everything having 50% off. She'd found a rather cool poufee there (which of course lead to the usual predictable jokes).

Then was the main point of the weekend.

We'd come to Wales to see the Last Night of the Welsh Proms. It's not one of these imitation Last Nights where you get a concert with some vaguely chosen programme in the first half and then all the traditional Last Night pieces in the second half, it is a proper Welsh version of what happens in the Royal Albert Hall every September. For some reason, I'm a little apprehensive at the idea of going to the Last Night of the Proms and waving a Union Jack around, but I have no problem with going to the Welsh Last Night and waving a Welsh Flag around. I've no idea, since I'm not Welsh. Maybe that's why. The orchestra for the night were the Royal Philharmonic. You could tell it was a proper professional orchestra straight away because none of the brass section played the Dallas theme tune or the Imperial March while they were tuning up.

The first really cool bit was the premiere of Karl Jenkins' new work, Tangollen. As the more lexically minded of you will no doubt have realised already, the piece is so named because it's based on a tango, and because it has Welsh connections. The fact that a Contra-Bassoon seemed to have been drafted in for this piece, mostly just to play a single note every other bar, was highly amusing. The first half ended with a load of Euphonium pieces (with orchestral accompaniment) played by David Childs. He was good. Alison was amused by the envious looks he was getting from the brass section (allegedly). He did Flight of the Bumblebee as an encore, and that was fantastic. Very impressive. Git ;-)

The second half was of course the flag waving bit. During the interval people started lobbing streamers about, creating rather a mess over the stage for the orchestra to return to. Some of the Orchestra seemed less than impressed about this, but nevermind, it's all good fun. The only piece that Albert Hall Last Nighters would recognise was Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance, which began the proceedings. The rest of the programme was all Welsh pieces, the highlight of which was Fantasy On Welsh Songs (yes, it's a Welsh counterpart to you know what) by Gareth Woods. Nan didn't like it so much but she's a bit too traditional for all this Welsh nonsense :-) She wanted Jerusalem, etc. Yes, she is Welsh. No, I don't get it either.

Sunday

Sunday was actually pretty active. We got up late (again), which meant that by the time we were all breakfasted and dressed and stuff it was time to go to my aunt and uncle's, where my Mum and Dad had been staying. On arrival we found that my cousin was there too, with her (almost) six year old daughter, and (almost) one year old son. Her daughter is, put politely, a complete spoiled brat, mostly because of her grandparents. She seems to have a certain amount of difficulty in coping with the amount of attention little brother is getting, and she can throw a paddy with unerring accuracy from one hundred paces. Well, anyway, I got to hold little brother for a bit, which didn't do the latent broodiness much good. The fact that the minute I was holding him my Mum went straight for the camera wasn't particularly subtle either.

The big event for today was that Alison and I were going to look at the house my parents are buying out near Chepstow. They were staying with my aunt and uncle because it meant they didn't have as far to travel on the day to get there. They'd hired a van to take all my Mum's potted plants up, along with as much other garden stuff as they could manage. So we followed them to the house, and... what we saw was bloody gorgeous. If the three most important things when buying a house are location, location, location then it's perfect. Marvellous views towards the Wye Valley, and towards the Brecons and the Black Mountains. Didn't see much of the inside of the house, because obviously the 'incumbent' occupants were busy packing all their stuff ready for the move on Thursday. Unloading the van was great fun (not), it's always good to get all sticky lugging heavy pots and crap around.

On the way home we also detoured into Broadway near Evesham, where Alison's parents had taken their caravan for a long weekend. They weren't expecting us, so it gave them a nice surprise, and we got the added bonus of sharing a barbeque with them. Chicken/Bacon/Pineapple kebabs. Yum. Followed by a small little wossname of chocolate cake after. But not very much, because sugar = bad, obviously.

And then we got home. Issue #40 of the Buffy Comic had finally turned up in the post - due to a long and convoluted series of events it's almost impossible to find in the UK, so I got a friend to order it in the US for me. Yay me! Yay friend!

Apart from that, I think that's pretty much it for the weekend. I started catching up with Anne after her week away, and I started typing up what I wrote while I was away of Anya vs. The Bunnies. I've not actually done any more of it since I came back, don't seem to be able to find the mood for it. I have however done a funky banner which will probably come out gross against the red background on here but never mind...

And as for what's happened since the weekend, well... yesterday wasn't much to write home about, and today there was a third installment of Fuckwittage, which naturally warrants an entry all of its own. Thank you for listening.