Pushing people into trees

I've spent a whole weekend in London. The trip that wasn't supposed to happen, turned into a day which turned into a weekend which has turned into 'a few days'. It's Monday and I'm still here.

It seems that the lure of London is too strong for me, I really should be attending more social engagements but instead I have to slope off back to Devon because I'm rapidly running out of clothes. It's been a funny jolly back to London with the Hitchcock Blonde, we went to a gig (the band were awful, but the venue was amazing) ate dim-sum, looked at art and went for walks in the park and kicked leaves while trying to push each other into trees.

Well that last bit makes a bit more sense if you were there.

Whittington

I'm in London today, I didn't plan to be but well I'm here. I'm only supposed to be here for a single day but I've brought clothes for a few days, and some semi-formal shoes. You know, a chap should be prepared for any sort of emergency especially one that requires brogues.

I'm trying to finish off one of the projects I've been working on, if I can do that it would be spiffing. So with that in mind I'm going to go back to working on it.

A dedicated follower of fashion

I'm a big fan of vintage stuff. Modern fashion leaves me rather cold, or at least I feel it's got a bit tired. The thing is clothes get interesting when something non-fashion related gets chucked into the mix like new material that lets you do things you couldn't do before or if something that requires specialist clothes catches a designers eye.

If you think about it most clothes, especially for chaps, have a route somewhere in a sport or failing that war, jackets tend to have echos of something else. The humble leather jacket comes from motorbikes which in turn was born out of pilots in world war 2. It's all like a clothing evolution.

When there isn't this injection of something new to freshen up the mix we are battered with a tired combination of 'tartan is back' and 'bright colours in the summer' and so on. Which is what we are in now. Boring boring boring.

Where am I going with this? I'm not sure really. I think I had a point, but it was lost in the second cup of coffee when I got distracted by a goose.

Oh we do love to be beside the seaside

Isn't the seaside lovely eh? Bracing fresh air, all the rocks you can throw and lots of lovely salty water. We went for a Sunday trip to the beach for a walk, it was delightful and actually rather warm. I didn't go swimming as that would be silly, but the amble along the shore was jolly pleasant.

We played the now almost traditional game of silly questions. I asked my little brother if a talking fish dragged itself out of the water and said 'kill me' would he do it?

Debate raged for ages, to only be usurped by a even fiercer battle over which was the best flavour of ice-cream which in turn was replaced by a slightly more bizarre debate over which colour of ice cream was the best indicator of a pleasant taste. Yellow seemed to do well, but brown gave a strong showing and so did purple. By the end of the walk the matter still wasn't settled.

Outbursts and insects

I was going to apologise about the slightly ranty outburst yesterday but after finding out more about what this evil woman has done I feel it was entirely justified. Let me just say that yet again, I was shocked by how unpleasant that woman is. Anyway, I shall never have to deal with her again so that is the end of the matter.

In other news I'm waiting on cheques, very over due cheques. Massively overdue cheques. It's a good deal I'm home at the moment because otherwise I'd be surviving on a diet of crickets and my own body hair.

Ha, in your FACE

I've finally got my inheritance from the second wife, I also managed to get my little brothers inheritance collected at the same time. Which now means the evil witch of a women who had such a negative affect on my life can now completely and utterly bugger off.

I hope she dies in a horrible way, I really do.

Stepping out

The Hitchcock Blonde and I have been stepping out together quite a lot. My chums has suspected as much for a while but it was officially confirmed a week or so go.

I expected my chums to be pleased but what caught me slightly off guard was the rave reviews the Hitchcock Blonde got. I've never been out with someone so approved of, perhaps I should try and get the Hitchcock Blonde to run for office? Or maybe my friends are just taken back by me seeing someone who is just lovely.

Either way I'm going to have to change my stand-up routine, hmm.

Wonking, continued.

Well the toe is dewonking on it's own so that is good. I've been going for gentle walks with it protesting mildly but it is starting to relent. I think that the wonkeons disperse as I walk along through a process known as Wonkmosis*.

It's still a bit wonky but far more manageable which is excellent as a wonky toe would reduce the amount of fun I can have. I'm always amazed how little I wonk myself up while doing dangerous things for work and yet manage to build up dangerous levels of wonk to the point of injury during normal life. By the way the process of increasing your wonk levels is now known as Wonkosynthesis.

*Discovered by Swineshead

Wonky

I'm working on a piece about cars today, classic cars. Hurrah for writing about subjects you don't know really quite enough about. Luckily I used to be quite into aged cars, so I've had to dig out some old books and re-read them, it's amazing the things you forget, isn't it?

Aside from that I've not got much else to report, my wonky toe is still wonky but perhaps slightly less wonky than yesterday. I'm not sure how one scientifically measures wonk? With a Wonkometer I assume, or perhaps a wonkoscope? What are the units of wonk? Does one talk about wonkograms? Wonkatude Or Kilowonks?

Learning through injuries

It is amazing how often I pick up injuries. For example, just yesterday I managed to do something awful to my toe (it might be broken, how does one tell?) and mildly injure my knee. I also have a mark on my head, although that seems mostly cosmic. The cause of these injuries, well lets just say that I lost consciousness for a while and leave it at that.

As side from the injuries it was an excellent weekend, The Hitchcock Blonde was down in the West Country for a few days and so we went for walks, ate far too much and sat in front of log fires with books. We also played billiards, a sport which I am terrible at. Actually it's beyond that I'm absolutely awful but during an evening of furious drinking I seem to have got pretty good suddenly. I'm not sure if it was the slightly out of date banana beer or the blow to my head but now I'm not bad.

Perhaps I should inform the Olympic committee so they can introduce head injuries and out of date novelty drinks into their training regimes?

Birthday Kebab

Well my birthday is rattling around again. I'm not quite sure what to do for it. It's a vaguely significant birthday because, well to put it bluntly the last year has been a pretty rubbish one. Oh there were some good bits, don't get me wrong but in balance I think it was one to skip - I think all the fun bits can be condensed into a week that would mostly involve motorbikes, spiderman costumes and Hitchcock Blondes.

So yes, hopefully this age will be over. I think I should have known that it was going to be slighty iffy when my birthday came around.

I'd not had a birthday with a girlfriend, well for a terribly long time so I had no idea what to expect. Actually, thinking about it before then I'd always been single for birthdays. If you are a regular reader you will know that I was in quite a serious relationship at the time, we were living together and everything.

For my birthday I got a kebab. Yes a kebab, a chicken kebab to be exact. Now I wasn't expecting anything huge but something a bit more significant that a meat-based snack would have been, well nice. It wasn't even a sit down meal, we went to a kebab shop.

Days or so later that my girlfriend returned from shopping absolutely laden with presents. I mean she could barely hold them all, and I got a little bit excited. No mention was made of the gifts, and after what seemed like hours I politely enquired who they were for and she said she had decided to get some presents for her Aunts just because.

I didn't even get a card until a few days after that and the reason given was 'Well you seemed all grumpy so you didn't deserve it.'

It's not that I wanted a diamond waistcoat or golden pants, I just wanted something with a bit of thought in it that didn't come with a risk of food poisoning.

Still I suppose that at least I won't have to try hard to improve on it. I mean the bar has been set very low.

Winter Hats

It is jolly cold here. In the interests of reducing the Carbon Brogue-print we are trying to avoid turning the heating on as much as possible so other methods have to be employed to keep a chap warm.

So I don't die of extreme (well mild) cold I am working on a plan to stay warm, here is it so far.
1) Grow some smashing facial hair to keep the face warm, ideally whiskers that you can wax while thinking on problems.
2) Burn everything you can in a 'fire'. These 'fires' are jolly hot an excellent for heating up rooms.
3) Take up pipe smoking, this means you can have a 'fire' near your face to work with the whiskers to keep it warm. Of course the wax on your whiskers might catch a bad case of being on fire from your pipe. Which while providing short term warming of the ol' noggin and a very dapper look may cause a bit of light scarring, actually why not go for it anyway.
4) Stuff cats inside you waistcoat. These little purring chaps throw out a lot of heat and come in a range of excellent colours and patterns.
5) Drink a bottle of brandy every 4 to 6 hours, this will make you have a healthy glow and also allow you to enjoy even the most drab of conversations.
6) Ensure that you share your bed with company, girls are not ideal for this as the tend to always have cold feet. Maybe a girl whose feet are ablaze would work...

How to miss your train, part 2

Well I am still in London, I was suppose to leave yesterday but I was having far too much fun, and lobster to want to go away. This puts me in a troubling position I was hoping to not enjoy London quite this much so leaving it wouldn't be too much of a trial. This didn't happen, I've had a spiffing time, absolutely spiffing and now I don't want to go but as I came up with a terribly limited wardrobe I have to.

There are other reasons why I have to return, like work things - I made the rather brave move of leaving my laptop behind which I don't regret but it means I can't really work up here. Silly chap eh?

I've been thinking a bit about the places you end up in, what I mean is how removed where I am now is from where I was say, five years ago or ten. Actually even a year ago feels like an entirely different world.

So perhaps it's time to go shopping for a new suit to usher in this new period? Yes, I think it's time but time for what? I've got more than enough tweed and velvet and that wouldn't be quite right, maybe a safari suit? Or something equally strange like that.

How to miss your train, part 1

Ah, Soho. It's a special part of town, you can have evenings in Soho
that you just can't have anywhere else.

You can have whole days of nonsense there too. Yesterday was one such
bash, twelve hours of the sort of antics that would have Oliver Reed
saying 'steady on old bean'.

People were ruined before The French House was suggested as a post
party venue and when we started on the iconic half pints things got a
bit more messy.

London

After careful thought I would like to say that I think London is excellent fun. Where else can you see a chap in a smashing white frock when you pop out to get some over-priced lunch? You just don't get the same quality of cross dressing in Devon and so far my various meetings with people have gone jolly well, jolly well indeed. Hurrah for travel.

I have started drinking already, and now I am viewing the afternoon through a pleasant wine induced blur. We had post-lunch cocktails at a club (the one that Piqued goes to a lot but is still excitingly new to me) and now I'm drinking in the office. In a moment we are going off to another office where we will be drinking vodka with someone in drag and taking photos of this event.

To say it's a slightly different Friday experience to what I've been enjoying recently is a bit of an understatement.

London

I'm having and excellent time in London, although I did get ticked off
for skipping. It seems that I'm not really serious enough for the
capital anymore.

Maybe if I wear some sensible shoes that will help me get in the right
mood.

Projects, Projects, Projects

That's what I'm involved in at the moment, I've got lots of things going on. Many irons in the fire or what ever that silly phrase is. The net affect of this is that I have lots of reasons to spend hours frowning at my phone waiting for it to ring or tell me I have a new email.

Perhaps I should do something useful like reorganise my cravat collection or see which gloves go best with my new jacket. Yes that would be a more productive use of my time.

Short posts for short people.

This is what today is mostly about.



Actually it's not really, I just think this sketch is brilliantly on the money.

I say Top Hat old bean

Yet another surprising turn. I'm going up to London this week, tickets have been booked (by the people who want me in London) looks are being compiled and plans are being formulated. I'm really rather looking forward to it, which is strange, but perhaps Wales can have that effect on a chap.

I've been doing a bit of the ol' soul searching over the past week, mostly about if I should keep this blog chugging away, it's been good to me and so I should probably continue it, plus it's where I can write absolute piffle and that shouldn't be underestimated.

Every piffle has it's place.

Passing.

I had a bit of a quiet Sunday. I needed to recover after the weekend and my little brother and I decided to mark the passing of our father so we had a look through the old photo albums and talked about things. It was important to do something even if it wasn't something massive.

Anyway, I'm going to take a few days off this blog. Toodle pip