A Weekend Visitor
Recently Witho and I had an old friend, J, round for the weekend. He was the common connection who originally brought us together. I went to school with J and she worked at [insert company name here] with him. We had a nice meal on Saturday afternoon and played some computer games as the weather in Taunton was absolutely quite wet. Then we watched the scousers (red) beating Charlton, who I was supporting both in my anti-scouse ( because he is a Liverpool supporter even though he actually only just grew up on Merseyside and probably lived closer to three or four clubs than them) and pro-South East London capacities. Then we had a nice curry and sat down for a marathon film watching session with Koyaanisqaatsi and Powaqqatsi on offer this time round - Witho and J had both seen Koyaanisqatsi before and raved about it, while I was new to it. I always have liked getting a look into someone else's crazed view of the world and for this reason do find myself a bit bemused by people claiming that they know how the film should have gone, better in fact than the person who wrote (or whatever) it. Isn't the whole point that it is about letting yourself into someone else's world to see what they think, rather than finding yet another way of egotistically imposing yourself on a world that doesn't need it? Anyway Koyaanisqaatsi was really interesting with a vast number of images in it which seemed to be making a coherent point though I was not quite sure Powaqqatsi was so successful - I wasn't sure what point it seemed to be making. By the end we were all falling asleep - who knows what we might have missed - so we just headed off to bed.
This morning we went into town at a respectable hour to show J the sights before lunch and J's departure before the big match. The sights were still there and The Crown and Sceptre did a very nice roast dinner - certainly much better than I remember their food being before, though before was probably as many as five years ago. Then we played a bit of pool before J headed off and we went back home to see the match which United won 2-0. Get in! Hopefully this will be the start of a vast improvement in form.
Anyway J was our first overnight guest, doing somewhat better then our previous guests who stayed for literally minutes on end, possibly as many as five. It was good to see J and behave like the eleven year olds we may always be around each other.
Going over to The Dark Side
I have finally realised that I will never be a Jedi Knight. I give in to anger and frustration too much. For example, I have recently decided to invest in contact lenses because I am getting sick of using my inability to see as an excuse for not being able to hit the ball properly when I play tennis. So I got the lenses but found them very difficult to put in. The optician put them in for me the first time. Then what? Well, I couldn't get them out! I took several hours of howling frustration trying and got what I thought was one and a half of them out but had to give up on the last half because it looked as if I had torn that lense in my efforts to remove it. In the end it turned out not to be there, as I discovered when I went back to the optician like a pathetic schoolboy the next morning. I came to put some more in today and once again the rage at my inability to do this came back with a vengeance. The stupid thing is that I seem to get more angry the more beyond my control the thing in question is.
The other irritation recently was my boxers which took offence at being required to stay up as I was walking to the supermarket today. It really was annoying feeling them sliding as far south as they could manage until they got lodged against the gusset of my trousers. Obviously I wanted to pull them up as I was going along and not being able to do so because of all the other people on the road just added an extra dimension of annoyance. The whole experience gave a truly disconcerting sensation of being naked as I was walking down the street.
T shirts
I have offended one of my best friends. At J's wedding this weekend I revealed that I had thrown out a lot of my ancient heavy metal t-shirts. My friend K went into a state of (mock?) mortification, the like of which I have never seen. He refused to talk to me at least for a short while, possibly until the prospect of the further consumption of porcine products wore him down, and fair play to him, who could resist chopped, sliced, grilled, minced or otherwise damaged and then heated bits of pigs. Is this really such a big deal? I have after all not given up on all manner of evil music, I just don't wear the t-shirts any more. Don't know what else to say - have I really sold out? I think I know myself better than that - gnothi seauton, one of the Greek proverbs of the theatre at least appears to be one of the standards by which I live my life. Anyway I didn't get it - that's what I meant to say.
Incidentally, has anyone got any idea how to get Greek letters into a post or comment box? I have tried copying and pasting from word in both normal mode and compose and got nothing.
Oh and I have been listening to evil this weekend, mostly to protect my ears from the insane drivellings of the cretins travelling around us, especially after the incident with the hen party and the dildo rings *shudders*. I listened to (I have remembered that I did say I was going to post this stuff, even if it took me until after I had published once to remember it) Somewhere in Time by Iron Maiden which has a fantastic bit of soloing on The Loneliness of the Long-distance Runner. It took me back so much that the hairs on my arms stood up, even though I have now been listening to that album at regular intervals for 18 years. I know it's not the one 'people' think is Maiden's best but it's really special to me. I have got this theory that the first bit of music you listen to by a particular artist tends to be the one you come back to again and again. Certainly this is true of Metallica (Master of Puppets) too. Not the most perfectly formed theory in the history of the world but I was happy with it. So there!
