Just as planned, went out bowling with Mister Pink at the Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes, as it's relatively cheap if you're not playing during peak hours, and is within spitting distance of Chez Pink. While I wouldn't suggest that either of us are particularly good at it, we're both roughly as not-good-at-it as one another, so it's generally a close run thing. Managed to begin the game with two strikes for my first two frames, and then... well, I didn't manage to keep it up for long.

Considering that I'm usually hanging out with Mister Pink on a Wednesday, as a precursor to Wednesday Night Gaming at his place, I might suggest making it a weekly thing to do. However, we both agreed that it'd be better with one or two extra people - one on one games seem to fly by quite quickly.

Spent most of this afternoon and evening going "erk" and listening to my own heart-beat, then ended up watching comfort film (The Big Lebowski) and subjecting Mister Pink to the Armando Iannucci Shows. Tomorrow, Pink and I are going to go bowling. Oh yes...

While I shall not spend too much time celebrating that I came first in my lane on the first game, and second in the second game (losing out to the erstwhile Mister Pink), I'll gladly say that I had a good time, with socialising, bowling, food, drinks and then some table football. I'm determined now to try out bowling a bit more often, although things such as "when" and "where" are yet to be decided...

Having one of those moments where I'm going "being in London is awesome" - been out to see the Decemberists, went out for a not-so-great-but-at-least-we-went-out gig at the Borderline, spent time gaming with folks, going to see Bill Bailey in a few weeks and finalising plans for the Changeling LARP. There are some downsides, of course, it's still a Big City With Lots Of People... but, at the moment, things just seem to be looking up.

And bowling tomorrow! Eeeee!

Edit: Oh god. Bear-chucks + water bears = win. I think.

Not exactly a fantastic gig, due in part to two less-than-great warm up acts and a numpty working the sound desk. I really like the band - their tunes are catchy, full of energy and especially good played at loud volume - but the gig just felt disappointing. The Borderline is a cosy little venue (sort of reminds me of a smaller version of the Cavern in Exeter, in fact), and at least it was nice to go out for a meal with Sprog and Pink, and spend a while chatting about fairly silly things.

Plan for tomorrow is, most likely, "wake up", followed by "have brekkies", followed by "do stuff", followed by "play games", followed by "fall asleep with dribble coming out the corner of my mouth".

Intending to spend a few days, possibly more, staying over with Mister Pink in Belgium* in order to save my brain-meats from exploding all over the place and ruining the carpet here. The rough plan is that we're going out this evening, with Sprog, to see Fight Like Apes at the Borderline, which should be fairly easy to find. And maybe some motherloving Wok In A Box. I am still a sucker for food in boxes.

Normal service, or whatever passes for it, should resume towards the end of the week. Bag is packed, just need to finish this mug of warm brown, then I'm off...

* May not actually be Belgium.

Mister Ash - what is the Immaculum?

Had a whale of a time. The set, as promised, was the entirety of the Hazards of Love album (which sounds fantastic live, and made me teary at a few points, because the songs The Wanting Comes In Waves and The Hazards of Love 4 have a tendency to make me sniffly), followed by a round of other songs. Was happy to hear 16 Military Wives and O Valencia! being played, and having The Mariner's Revenge Song as their encore act (complete with audience participation) was... um, good. Really good.

Embarassingly, Sprog and I managed to miss the supporting act because we took a wrong turn as we left Elephant & Castle tube station, and spent about half an hour walking around going "wait, this probably isn't the right way?". Hobbling back home was a problem, while there wasn't much opportunity for dancing, standing up for that long has made my back and knees ache.

As Martin has pointed out, my body is going to hate me in the morning.

Armed with a few hours of sleep, I'm going off to a Decemberists gig this evening (along with malky_moo). Time to work out the best way of getting down towards Elephant & Castle, I guess...

The only reason I've not deleted this is because, frankly, it's four o'clock in the morning and I'm so tired I can't tell whether what I've got here makes much sense, or whether there's anything that's worth keeping and using for something good. I either write fiction when I'm wide awake, and I'll delete it almost straight away because I can't stand the sight of things I've created, or I write when I'm so tired that I can't focus on anything, which turns my writing from "vaguely structured" to "where is this going I don't even-".

Maybe it's time to try and sleep again.

( Pending! Deletion! )

Suffice to say, no, my sleep patters are nowhere near fixed - I've spent the last few days snatching an hour or two of sleep where I can. So while I curl back up to try and sleep, listen to this. It's now stuck in my head...

Like those pesky gremlins, I think I shouldn't eat anything after midnight. I think the fajitas we had last night / this morning are disagreeing with my stomach. There's some fairly long post forthcoming about books, the power of positive thinking, a re-review of a game and some gaming thingies.

But, for now, I'm going to lay down, remain fairly still and wonder if I'll ever learn my lesson. No more spicy food after midnight!

May or may not have spent the last hour or so, still wrapped up in pyjamas and duvet, playing with Sprog's puppy. The awesome thing about puppies is that they're always pleased to see you.

Now all I need to do is get my lazy rear end up, grab myself a cup of coffee and get back to the tricky business of relaxing and coaxing my shoulders down from around my ears.

Looking at the clock, I have spent the best part of two hours writing, deleting, rewriting, editing, deleting, writing, deleting and then writing this post. I don't know what to say, or even whether this is the right place to be saying it. I'm tired of feeling lonely, sick of feeling betrayed and would like nothing more, right now, than to fall asleep without getting upset, or wake up without feeling alone.

Like everything, this too shall pass, but I just don't know when it will. Yes, normal service shall resume at some point, but let me apologise in advance for being stand off-ish, upset, annoyed, mopey and generally unpleasant to be around. The air needs clearing, and damn it, I want my say on things, so I can get it off my chest, and move on.

( We're trekking across a desolate landscape in search of a Vault. Is this Fallout 4? )

Despite the numerous little problems with the game, it's still solid fun. It's pleasing on the eyes, it's got a sense of humour and it's not casual. Hopefully, a few patches for the game will come out, resolve the problems I've had and we'll be left with a game that we can look back fondly upon, ideally while reminiscing about the time we removed the head of a midget with a shotgun from two hundred feet away. Even without patches to fix the problems, remember this - at least it's not Damnation.

On a final note - Claptraps are awesome. Anyone who says otherwise shall be taken out, re-educated and then shot for good measure.

"Hunt [the shadow culture secretary] indicated that it was a matter of when - not if - a Tory government would tear up the BBC's governance structure. (...) Hunt, in an interview with the Financial Times today, said the BBC was "out of touch" with what licence fee payers wanted and was damaging commercial competitors in the media."

""We'd abolish BBC Trust, says Tory culture spokesman Jeremy Hunt," from the Guardian, 19^th October 2009

"The Conservatives are backing the total privatisation of Royal Mail and believe bidders will be more willing to come forward if the dispute ends with the union forced to accept modernisation."
"Ken Clarke, the shadow business secretary, has held talks on the sale of Royal Mail with potential bidders, and the party believes there is still a desire in the private sector to take over the company."

"Tories plan to sell off all of strike-hit Royal Mail," from the Guardian, 30^th October 2009

Eeep. What next?

I would like to go out and do some ten pin bowling, and also try ice skating again. Mister Pink has also expressed an interest in the "fuck it dude, let's go bowling" plan, and has also ventured that going out and playing some pool would be a fairly good, sociable group activity. He's not so keen on the ice skating idea (see: example of trying to teach Pink how to use in-line skates...), but has said he'd be willing to give it a try at least one more time. I think.

Anyway, um, if I can organise a time and a place to meet up and go bowling, or pool playing, or ice skating, would people like to come along? I'd like to have some kind of group social activity that doesn't involving rolling dice, throwing console controllers at one another or too much pointing and laughing at me. Also, any other suggestions are welcomed for "things to do".

Time to let my food settle (mmmm, tuna, mayonnaise, sweetcorn and mozzarella panini, nom), possibly have another hot drink and then head back to Stratford with the intention of playing the Left 4 Dead 2 demo until Borderlands comes out tomorrow.

Also: Sprog! Prepare to have this stuck in your head for a while.

OMG.

After deciding to put off making bobotie*, introducing Mister Pink to Little Big Planet and discussing how we'd make a Syndicate MMO**, Mister Pink and I sat down to watch last nights (OH GOD WHY IS IT HALF PAST TWO IN THE MORN-) episode of Question Time. One of Pink's acquaintances was, apparently, out protesting this evening against the BBC giving a platform to the BBC by allowing Nick Griffin on the show.

So we sat down and watched it, and interesting viewing it was too. I'm not that surprised that most of the program was spent with everyone tearing apart the frankly bizarre views of the BNP and, although I still find Bonnie Greer rather annoying at times, it was worth watching. It's one of the rare times where you can witness Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat party representatives coming together to agree. To me, this is one of the reasons why we should support a system where we give people who we disagree with - even people who would deny platforms to people should they get in power! - an opportunity to discuss their views. This gives people an opportunity to hear the leader of the Britsh National Party actually have to defend his views.

After this, naturally, we ended up talking about politics and - I'm not sure how, quite possibly through a discussion on immigration - in to a discussion about education, and the role of private schools. Me, being a rabid leftie on such matters, thinks that part of fixing the education system would have to involve the removal of private education. Mister Pink, being a sensible realist, disagrees. I think we spent about an hour and a half discussing this. Which is, incidentally, why I'm a big fan of Mister Pink -- we can have a frank exchange, with massively differing opinions, and that's a-okay. That's the beauty of opposing the no-platform policies. We might not agree with one another, we frequently don't, but I like to think we're both better off, and left with things to think about, after opening our opinions to one another for scrutiny.

Now, um, I should try and sleep. I've even got as far as putting my pyjamas on, getting my duvet out and trying to convince myself that, yes, I am ready for sleep. Yeah. Any moment now.

* After clearing out space in the kitchen to cook, and sacrificing a particularly tear-inducing onion on the chopping board, my will to go through with the cooking was diminished. The fact that Martin came home and went "I really fancy Food of Evil" didn't help matters. I'll finish off tidying out the kitchen tomorrow, makie it and it can live in the fridge for o'er the weekend.

** It's unlikely that the new Syndicate game mentioned earlier this year is going to be an MMO, which is a pity. We had some great ideas about how the game would work - profitability of your executive per week causes your executive to move up (or down) the corporate ladder, allowing the highest ranked executives to dictate corporation policy which in turn would have an effect on all employees, executive branches akin to 'guilds' in other MMOs (along with a process where Branches could bid for missions against other Branches, where they would bid a "we can get this done with $ X profit margin, highest bidded profit margin gets to do it, if they fail to generate the tendered amount of profit on said oepration, money is taken from Branch assests...). Who knows, the idea could work. After all, if Bullfrog floated the batshit insane idea of a game set in the Syndicate universe with the player "utliizing semi-sentient dolphins" to fight EuroCorp (so sayeth Wikipedia!, although I really should tag that with a citation needed...), then is a Syndicate-style MMO so unfeasible? Come on, EA, make it happen.

Woke up this morning with a feeling not entirely unlike the one you get after you've been punched in the stomach. I've since eaten some nibbly things, and it still hutrs, although reclining and standing up seems to make it more comfortable than sitting up entirely upright. The next question is - who has punched me in the stomach while I'm asleep?