The Red Heart Ball held to raise funds and awareness of Worlds Aids Day was probably not a success, unless it filled out in its later hours.
It was empty at 9 when we arrived at Koko after warming up at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, and still pretty much not busy at all when we left at 10.30 and headed out to DTPM to cut our losses, before I even had a chance to climb and lick the stage Madonna had tread upon just over a week before. I kept staring up at the glitter ball, large enough to hold her, maybe she was still trapped in there and I could go save her and we would become friends and go heartlessly kill pretty doe-eyed does together.
Well, in the end it was worth going to have a look at the sumptuous venue anyway. A good lick of (red laquered) paint and several (faux) crystal chandeliers did wonders to the former Camden Palace, but it was not enough to make us resist the temptation of going on to more peopled dancefloors.
One quick phonecall to one of my friends who joined us with eight half-price entry passes to DTPM, and we were crossing the doors of the palace of naughty Sunday night clubbing.
Musical highlight: hearing some sort of instrumental mix for Hung Up. All you could make out was the distinctive strong bass line, and possibly a muted, muffled hint at the ABBA-borrowed loop. It works.
Surreal highlight: being dragged off the stage from the above friend who wanted to talk business and introduced me to a guy who desperately needed a developer to build a website around a 5,000-entry SQL database – in two days!
I checked the website last night, it actually announces it is being launched on 30 November. Did he not know you should never say when you are going to launch something online, because something always goes wrong?
This guy gave me his card with a hopeful look and said that the agency who was working on the website pulled out saying it was too complicated and they did not have enough resources, and so he was desperate. Funny how you can always trust a gay man to dance his tits off in the face of adversity.
I politely declined to help and wished him to quickly find someone who could. Looking at the state the people in the club were in, I doubt he found them there.
Totty highlight: spotting him off the telly I like a lot. The one I once mentioned had a blog.
It was either him or a very convincing lookalike who should totally take advantage of the resemblance to bed as many sad star-strucked stalkers as he could.
I left the club at four and went to bed at 5.30, via a very long bus ride to Leyton and back, just because I thought it was within walking distance from home. It is not.
And as I said, I slept for two hours, went to work and spent the day writing multi-step forms in ASP. It was quite a disappointment to realise that my job was so undemanding.
Dr B. alerted me upon the fact that the advertising poster for Adrian Mole and The Weapons of Mass Destruction contained a typo. Ah yes, our autumnal evening dinnertime chats are so exciting!
I checked it, and it says exactly this:
Richly comic… Stuffed fall of humour, tragedy, vanity, pathos and very
occasionally, wisdom. Guardian
Stuffed fall of humour. Is this a take on the fact that The Guardian's frequent typos have earned it the unflattering 'Grauniad' sobriquet?
'Gary Barlow, Howard Donald, Jason Orange and Mark Owen announced at a London news conference on Friday that they are reuniting for an 11-date arena tour starting in April.'
I'm trying to come up with something really really nasty to say about this, but the truth is that I'm really chuffed for them.
I think I gave it away when I ran across the gym earlier today to plug my earphones into one of the step-machines-cum-tv that was broadcasting the press conference on Sky, to find out why Gary Barlow was looking so grumpy (well, wouldn't you? First they praise you as the most talented new songwriter around, and ten career-less years later you end up reforming like cheap ham).
Had he not died twenty years ago, my father would celebrate his eighty-seventh birthday today.
I feel old.
By the way, this is not a photo of my dad. I have a few with me in photo albums I took from my mother's house over a year ago. The idea was to scan them all and return the albums. They still sit there untouched.
The hunk in the picture is Robert Taylor, the actor my mother had a major crush on. She was fifteen when Waterloo Bridge came out.
And now I feel ancient.
Success! I made a dent into my month-long gym hyatus by using my secret weapon: Confessions On A Dancefloor, quite possibly the greatest workout album ever produced.
At 56 minutes and 28 seconds, it covers exactly the duration of my average session, from initial warm-up jog (Hung Up) to final cool-down stretches (Like It Or Not), via an unsurprising peak of bicep curls (I Love New York), an unexpected second wind doing alternate rows (Jump) and winding down with ab crunches (Push).
Either the image of Madonna's 47-year-old toned butt made me go the extra mile, or I have not lost that much strength in a month (around 5%, I'd say).
This morning I am aching all over, and yet I cannot wait go to back.
I have not gone to the gym in one month. Not a terrible catastrophe in itself, I know.
However, once you understand where I come from, you will agree that this can be very dangerous: I was a chubby baby and a podgy teenager. I grew into a borderline bulimic young adult and then a body dysmorphic disorder-afflicted chain-smoking thirty-something. I was all set to turn things around and become a fit daddy, and now here I go all yo-yo again.
It all started on the eve of our weekend break in Dublin (12 stone 9.5 pounds), as a carefully planned (and often recommended) week off training.
Upon our return (13 stone 2 pounds) I thought I'd shed a little weight before showing my face again at the gym. I also had an increased load at work, with two hot-potato projects passed on to me, and very little time for extended lunch breaks on the treadmill.
A week later (13 stone 1.5 pounds) I learnt that dieting while not exercising can be a very slow and not very rewarding process. I am mister instant gratification. I was not impressed.
Two weeks later (13 stone 1.5 pounds) I started taking a different route to work to avoid walking near the gym. Hardly worth going back, with another long weekend break just round the corner.
Back from the Isle of Wight (13 stone 5 pounds) with aching knuckles and thumbs from three days of regular bread making. Look, I was in the most charming old mill with the aga cooker of my dreams, forty people had to be fed, it was a birthday weekend. The baking just happened. The things I do to feel appreciated, eh?
So, I am definitely, absolutely hitting the gym today (13 stone 6 pounds) before my stomach sticks out so much I can balance the tub of ice-cream on it while doing that potato thing on the couch I do so well.
Only this time, I know it is going to happen. I have a secret weapon, and I can't wait to try it out.
(Americans and metric folks can hover on Imperial weights to appreciate the full extent of my balooning)
This is the Harry Potter movie I have enjoyed the most. Not surprising, given the conditions in which I watched the previous three.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001). Had not read the book. Was sitting behind a ten year old who kept stage-whispering to his parents what was going to happen next. Spent two hours lip-reading and translating the dubbed Italian version back into the original English.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002). Still had not read the book(s). Was trying to stop smoking and had purchased my own weight in sweets at the cinema shop. Felt dizzy: sugar rush, or possibly the effect on me of my cinema companion (I'd gone to see the movie with a guy who I'd just met and that I was quickly growing very fond of). Almost three years later, said guy is now asleep in the next room and will most likely grumble as I slip in bed next to him after I finish writing this. And I have not smoked for two years and nine months now.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004). Saw it on the gigantic wraparound screen of the IMAX – a breathtaking experience that overshadowed the movie itself. Also, it did not help that I had finished reading the book that very week. Spent more time mentally listing the sub-sub-sub plots that had been sacrificed, than actually enjoying what was there.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, tonight. Now grown attached to the characters, book read ages ago but not forgotten, and the hundreds of pages very skillfully condensed into 150-odd minutes that fly before you realise it. Smuggled popcorn and drinks from the corner shop (old habits never die).
A very good illustration of how gauche, dark, and emotional adolescence can be. With scary fights and death hovering throughout.
I cannot remember Doctor Who being in the book though.
A songwriting hub. Sometime during Summer 2005.
Songwriter A: 'So, we have these three catchy refrains that have got absolutely nothing to do with each other but no songs to stick them to. What can we do?'
Songwriter B: 'Why don't we paste them together into the first
three-refrain-and-no-verse song ever?'
Songwriter A: 'Ok. [dials] Hello, Louis? Hi, Xenomania here. Girls Aloud's new single is ready.'
Aerial, Kate Bush's latest release, has been on repeat ever since it entered my household upon its release, but only now have I realised that one of the verses in Prelude is sung in Italian, and only because it was pointed out to me.
The more I listen to Aerial, the more layered, complex and surprising it gets.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Madonna's Confessions on a Dancefloor, the album with my personal shortest burnout time:
I am told that my excitement and anticipation at getting acquainted with a newly-regenerated Doctor is not uncommon. It is just the first time I am given the privilege to witness it.
So, the first full-length scene between David Tennant and Billie Piper. It kind of works. One more reason to look forward to the Doctor Who Christmas special.
All the money and the power in the world cannot buy you the gift of carrying a tune. The proof: Madonna on Children in Need.
Are you wondering if it is worth making the switch from IE to a standards compliant browser (you can tell I'm biased, can't you)?
The Web browser security summary helps you make up your mind by comparing number of security threats in Explorer, Firefox and Opera (present and history), and average time for patches to be released for all three browsers.
The results: Firefox is still much less vulnerable than Explorer. Opera is even safer, but by little.
Go on, ditch the blue E.