February Already!

Good Evening!

Ooh February! Can't believe that one month of 2004 has gone by already! I was planning to update my website yesterday, so that I had at least one update in Jan... oh well! Just means that I have tons to write about now!

I last wrote just before Christmas. Christmas away from home is quite strange - there was only 3 of us for xmas day, so twas quite quiet. Kylie did a top job on the turkey! We sat around and had a really relaxing day. It was quite interesting arriving there - on xmas eve I went out for lunch and dinner, and in between went to a xmas carols service at Royal Festival Hall - it was really good! I expect I was singing a bit too loud, I'd already had a few glasses of red wine by then! (It was a bit of a sign of things to come, because it seemed that every day for the next week everyone was drinking!) So, after having a huge day on the 24th, I arrived at Kylie and Ashleys, and the first thing they offered me was mulled wine! I was rightly pickled in the stuff.

Consequently, I slept until 10am on xmas day - which was quite annoying, as my family at Gran & Pa's for lunch had already left! At least I'd called them on Christmas eve to say hi. After a big cooked brekky, I tried to ring my Dad's side of the family (at my Auntie Pam & Uncle John's place), who were outside saying goodbye to each other and didn't hear me calling! Arghh! Was really frustrating! At least I was able to talk to quite a few rellies in the couple of days after xmas (when my mum was in Adelaide for her birthday).

All of my housemates were away during xmas, off at their own relli bashes. I spent quite a bit of time with my old housemates (who are travellers) so that was nice, and spent the rest of the time shopping! Last year I bought clothes at the post xmas sales, and didn't need to buy much more for the rest of the year - this time I tried to do the same, and at least half of what I bought was a bargain... I'll have to see if I wear the rest of the clothes to see if they were worth the cash! I bought some CDs and tshirts over the Internet as well, and that's a first. In addition to breaking the £25 barrier for t-shirts and finally purchasing my long awaited fantasy novel continuations, you could say I've been spoiling myself a bit!

So, here's a bit of a list:

• A wok from Dad


• A nice bluuey jumper, from Kylie and Ashley

... and the rest from me!

• A "revolution or death" shot teddy t-shirt (errr... yepp perhaps my taste is getting weird! It's got a couple of teddys in cuban army hats, one with a gun, and a third one's been shot! All in black-and-white and sketchey.)


• A "Captain Caveman" flying-through-the-air t-shirt


• A "Yosemite Sam" tshirt! I'm always looking for these, but they're hard to find. I ended up getting it through the net, it has his head, and just a line suggesting where his hat is, and two "floating" guns. :-)


• Three dodgey, cheap cartoony ties - 3 for a fiver! I have *way* too many ties now, and too many crazy ones to be even semi-respectable! At least my year 7 students appreciate them!


• I finally succumbed to modern fashion, and bought some pre-worn jeans! Now I seem to wear them all the time too! Don't know who invented button up flys though... grrr!


• And the basics - Two long sleeved t-shirts (good for regular coldish English weather) and a grey woolen jumper from Next, two short sleeved shirts for £8 at some bargain shop, and a black and grey v-necked jumper from around the corner in Lewisham


• My fancy filtered kettle! Water here is really quite hard, so the kettle filters the water before boiling it. Cost more that $100AUD though, a bit steep really. And now I've locked myself into paying for filters every month! Cups of tea are noticably nicer though.


• Some new CDs, both bought online - I bought Nittin Sawhney's Human from play.com, and it was much cheaper than going to the CD shops here (thanks for the tip, Sarah!). Even though he's a UK artist, it's hard to find his CDs in shops. If you think of Deep Forest as Africa-meets-pop, this is India-meets-pop. Interesting :-)


• Jamie Oehlers' Velocity I had shipped out from Australia (ChaosMusic). Perhaps not as good as Strut (but then I've been lovingly listening to Strut since I bought at UWA's Acorn cafe all those years ago!). I thought it was really new, but it was recorded a couple of years ago? I'm wondering if this means there is soon going to be a *third* album... will have to check it out. Mum says that Jamie's moved here, so will have to look out for some gigs.


• And then my fantasy books! They both shrank to small paperbacks for Christmas! The 10th book in the World of Time series by Robert Jordan Crossroads of Twilight and Robin Hobb's second book in her newest series The Golden Fool. I've finished them both already! Now... the world of fantasy fiction is quite strange. If you're like me, venturing there will have you continually interested, and never satisfied! It seems I wait for a whole year for the next book to come out in a series, then stare at it for 6 months on the shelves until it shrinks to a small paperback, then read it, and be so into it so I finish it in a week! Then the cycle continues... so there's about 70 or 80 weeks of annoyance for one week of enjoyment! Grrrrr!!!! I could write tons about both of these authors, but I'd better not start :-) At the moment I'm reading Ash - A Secret History my Mary Gentle. Dad tried to read it, but couldn't get into it. Mary's novels *are* harder to get into than most others, but are quite unique and interesting when you've read a bit. The Orthe book is really good - not often that fantasy books are written in the first person!

OK, that was a bit longer than I intended. As you can see, I did go a bit crazy... and I'm supposed to be saving up for when I change careers! Will have to make a concerted effort to save in the next couple of months.

So for the New Year - I went with Phil and Lee to The Electric Ballroom in Camden for NYE - it was quite a good night - dancing to cheese the whole time! But in the end it was really frustrating... they lost my coat in the cloak room! Their system was really bad, and they ended up admitting people to the ballroom so they could find their lost coats. We handed over our three tickets, and only got Phil's coat out! We had to wait until everyone had left the club, and then Lee and I went in to check for our coats - we found Lee's but not mine! The most annoying thing was that my glasses were in the pocket! Grrrr.

The resolution has taken quite a while. I had to call a few times, in the end the ballroom said they'd reimburse me £30 for my coat and £70 for my glasses. While not *happy*, I was quite surprised that they offered me that much, as I'm not sure if they are legally responsible for the belongings in my coat. At least it shows that if you maintain your integrity and tell the truth, things do work out OK, if not exactly well. So I went and had my eyes checked yesterday, and will pick up two pairs of specs (buy one, get one free) next weekend. I'll probably start wearing contacts as well, as my eyesight is getting worse! Only a smidge though, as I've only gone from being 0.5 to being a 1 (short sighted in both eyes). Getting to the stage where I can't really lipread what the students at the back of my classes are saying, which is quite important while they're quiet little ones!

So, I guess my verdict on The Ballroom is that it's OK to go there, but not to go anywhere near their cloakroom!

There's a couple of NYE pics below. We did meet Debbie there, who's far left in the pic of Phil and the girls. I popped in to see her at "The Jordan", the pub around the corner from here where she works... it's in between a hospital and an undertakers! *cheery* :-) Check out her friend licking Phil's earlobe in the photo! Hrmm he does seem to attract the weird ones!

This year - well there's been all manner of interesting events! There was Lisa's birthday party, which was really fun. I've never been to a house party at my old house, and Phil and I left at 3am, so it must've been quite good! You can see the cheesy photos below! Will have to ask Phil to place a comment about the Lesbian kiss! :-) I think Tim had quite a good time too :-)

I've started Salsa dancing as well! Lisa dragged me & Mrin there two Mondays ago, and I went with Lisa and dragged Lee last week. I'm going to try and go every second week from now on - I usually need to catch up on sleep on Monday evenings! It's in Catford at The Green Man at 7:30, and only costs £5. Let me know if you want to come along! The teaching is really good and it's quite fun. In some ways I think Ceroc is better - you can dance to more styles of music - although because it's partner led you still probably need to be dancing with someone who is used to a jive style anyway. At least salsa is salsa (well, more or less I believe).

This weekend has been really relaxing - just what the doctor ordered! Last weekend was a doosie though. On Friday night I went out with all the Centenary company people, to The North Pole (the fancy upstairs piano restaurant part). The food was nice, and I chatted to Katie for ages, which was great, but as usual I was really tired after work. I didn't even really mingle much... the centenary rumour mill will be turning even though there's nothing going on at all! *sigh* the story of my life, these days... But I don't think this is the place to start ranting about frustrating & confusing women! On Saturday, I went and had lunch with Lee in Neil's Yard Cafe (a really cosy place - probably where I'll bring most... or should I say... ANY! ...visitors I have... *blatant-nudge-get-organised-you-people!*), then we went for ice skating at Somerset House - which I won! I guessed that there were 73 sweets in the jar, when there were really 74 for one of the Palmer sisters fundraising events. I took Katie, Lisa and Lee, and we skated for an hour. None of us fell over, and I managed to go quite fast, but still haven't really learned to stop! Must sort that out sometime! :-) I didn't take any photos, which was a bit disappointing! We then had some cocktails, then went to a greek restaurant and met up with Beth, and then went to The Porterhouse for drinks... hrmm bye-bye cash! At least the skating was free!

I thought I must be missing something - perhaps I am, or perhaps I've just been reading too much! That's probably it.

Well, I have a bit more time, cos I've pretty much stopped watching TV. Now I won't turn it on as soon as I get home. These days I usually fix a cup of tea, do some dishes, thaw out some dinner sooner rather than later, talk to housemates... read... umm... yeah perhaps I waste as much time reading as I used to watching TV. But at least I can't read when I'm brain-dead-tired, and I sleep more. I *can* watch TV for hours in that state.

This has brought about a new problem - yo-yo sleeping! I'll be dead tired one evening and sleep at 8pm, then I'll be really alive the next night, will have to catch up tons of work, and end up getting only a few hours sleep, then I'm back to being really dead again! Not such a good pattern, Sammy... I suppose it beats being tired all the time. I think bad sleep patterns are par for the course as a UK teacher though! Especially this week, as I've got a parents evening which will keep me at school till 8pm or so. And this is after going to see "Never Mind The Buzzcocks" (think, Good News Week but more musical) being made on Tuesday, and seeing Neil and all his gadgets performing with some year 10 girls in the school cabaret on Wednesday. Arghh! I suppose the last two are of my own making... but you've got to live, right? haha.

So OK. Going to sign off now. I'll try and write to you at least once more this month. On the horizon is meeting up with Richard! He's come back to his birthplace (he left here when he was 10). He's in Ormskirk now, and will be down in London *sometime* soon? And I'm supposed to be cooking a dinner for Tim and Katie (except Tim doesn't know yet, and Katie's too busy. Tim also doesn't know that he's probably going to help me to be social secretary for Centenary next year, even though I'm too busy and don't really want to do it! *arghh* such is life!). Hrmm weird note to end on.

Hope you are well! Keep smiling.

Your mate in London, Sam.

PS. Yes, Australia day was quite strange here. I went Salsa dancing! So not really part of the Australians-in-London culture at all. I guess a couple of times a year that annoys me, but most of the time I'm happy being Australian in my own way... hopefully by showing a different attitude to life, rather than just showing how to drink lots and be loud! Hrmmm... I guess it's hard to define what makes you Australian... but I'm not losing any of it!

... till next time folks!

Posted by Sam at February 01, 2004 08:01 PM