Replenishing the Coffers

Good afternoon!

I start work tomorrow - eek! Will be good to get back to doing productive stuff! I start at 9, so it's an hour later than I used to (try) to get to Langley, but now I'll have to contend with peak hour traffic - at least until I work out how long transport will take I'll probably give myself nearly 1 1/2 hours end-to-end (although if all connections work it should only be about 40 mins door to door).

Daylight savings ended last night, so we're now switched back to GMT. It did mean I got an hour extra sleep (a good thing!) so today I'll have time to do some shopping for food, and perhaps for work clothes? Working in a "smart casual" environment will be quite annoying - what, I've spent the last two years collecting nearly 30 ties and now I can't wear them??? Haha I think my cartoon ties should be locked away anyway, so that I'm not too much of a shock to the conservative city establishment ;-)

So I've had many lets-celebrate-cos-Sam-will-soon-have-money dinners and outings. Last Friday I played football with my ex-colleagues (ouch! was hurting after 3 months of not playing!), then went to a few pubs. On Saturday I met up with Katie and Steve, and we had nice Turkish food at Sofra in St Christopher's square. I zipped off at about 8:30, and was on my way to meet Simon for his birthday drinks when I bumped into Pete heading *away* from the party - the crazily loud and squashy atmosphere at Zigfrieds on Hoxton Sq was a bit much, so I can understand Pete's preference for quieter places. So I grabbed a drink with Pete for an hour or so, then headed over to Zigfrieds to meet up with Simon and his friends. Hoxton square is a bit scarily trendy (err compared to dress-down Greenwich!) but was nice to be dragged to a new bar. We ended up at 333, even though I was *completely* against going there - but it was quite fun in the end... I guess the group you're with always matters more than the place, although there did seem to be better music there this time around. I ended up dancing till 4, and night bussing home to crawl into bed around 6am.

Last weekend Tracy and Richard came to London to visit - it was quite odd as I knew about 5 months ago that they were coming, but hadn't heard anything since! They called on Sunday, and I planned to meet them on for dinner. I walked them to Leicester Square, and then along to Covent Garden. We ate at Sarastro, another Turkish restaurant (arghh two nights in a row!) but it was worth it for the live string orchestra and opera performances! Although, Tracey seemed more interested in the erotic wallpaper!

So I was able to relax a bit last week. Neil invited me over for lunch last Tuesday, we caught up, ate pasta and I checked out his electronic music studio setup (ohh many gadgets!). Then Wed morning I went up to Birmingham to visit Claire. She toured me around on Wednesday, then we went back to her parents place at Kings Winford in the evening. On Thursday we looked around the Black Country Living Museum (err a bit like Sovereign Hill except they were mining coal, not panning for gold!!). It was a little chilly, but was interesting to see all the old buildings that they'd saved from around the area. It seems to still be growing - they've acquired a whole street worth of shops from around the area somewhere... must be a nightmare to dismantle, transport and reconstruct the old buildings! It's interesting how solid the buildings are compared to the timber? built Sovereign Hill ones from around the same era - It would be interesting to find out if the need to be sheltered more thoroughly in cold climates was the reason people from colder regions developed more technology centuries ago?

I arrived back in London just in time for my rehearsal on Thursday, and slept very soundly! Thursday was also Shannon's 29th birthday, and I had suggested we go to Souk in Litchfield St for his dinner on the Friday. I took my new housemate Andrea along, and Shannon had assembled a group of 9 people at the restaurant by the time we arrived. It was a great evening of tasty moroccan food, meeting Shan's sister and friends (properly this time, not just them staring at the back of my head at the theatre) and drinking fancy beers at the Porterhouse. Of course we finished with coffee and dessert - I led the party to the Gelateria "Ciao" just by the octagonal travel agents. They have scarily huge icecream-cake-topping-fruit-chocolate-liqueur monstrosities! It ended up not being too late an evening.

Yesterday I managed to catch up with Kylie and Ashley (my cousins). I hadn't seen them since proms in the park (a couple of months ago) so it was good to chat and find out what they've been up to. They saw Rufus Wainright on Friday, and last night went to see Franz Ferdinand. Today they're moving house! So perhaps I'm not spending too much money, compared to them! I took them to Carluccios in St Christopher's square - it's just opposite Sofra that I'd been to the week before. Dining out for lunches *is* cheaper than dinners, and the food was quite tasty!

Yesterday was Denise's 23rd - I forgot she was young enough to never catch up to me! She's working as a full time stage manager now in Singapore, so doesn't perform too much magic any more. It's been more than a year since I spoke to her, so was nice to have a short chat. Wish I wasn't so bad with this long distance communication stuff! Anyway she's going to head over to the US sometime soon for a month. Hope holidays work out so I can meet her there for a week or so - roaming New York with crazy Denise? Now *that* would be fun!

Haha all this fancy food, and today I feel like eating Burger King! If you've visited the Lewisham branch (and had to deal with the homeless-almost-residents and ridiculously bad customer service) you'll know why that's not a very good plan. Although a Nando's burger would go down quite well too! I *need* to be taking packed lunches to work for the next month!

Off to chase bargains and food - catch you soon!

Posted by Sam at October 31, 2004 12:35 PM