Alcohol, Transvestism, And Murder

Again, apologies for the gap, but I’ve been trying to make something legible out of Saturday’s events. I couldn’t mention it here before, but we had a surprise murder mystery party for Timo’s graduation. Due to a lack of enough women to play the female parts, I volunteered to cross-dress for the evening. I took this seriously enough to shave my legs, under the instruction of Jen. I don’t think I ever realised how long it takes to shave legs. I also learned that makeup makes me much, much, prettier, though.

The party itself went very well. I wasn’t the murderer or the victim, and almost succeeded in all my goals. After the game had finished, this party, like all the others, turned into a drunken epic. Unlike all the others, I actually made it to 5:30 in the morning, and got drunk enough to reveal some of my hidden angst to at least one housemate. Hooray for vast quantities of Becks!

Sunday was spent nursing a hangover and apologising to Ned for going AWOL after promising to join him on some cultural events. We’ll find Karl Marx’s grave some other time.

New housemate Barbara, from Austria, has just arrived. We already like her, ‘cos she brought us Austrian chocolate. I also just found out that Vicky from college will be coming to London soon, which is cool.

Socks, Film, And Sellotape

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, due mostly to my oh-so-busy metropolitan lifestyle, but at least that means I now have something to say.

I finally managed to get three chapters of my dissertation typed up, just so that I could entrust them to the Greek island postal service. Posting them would have been far easier without my usual level of incompetence. I mean, buying envelopes that are too small? Failing to check the size of the envelopes before sticking the labels on them? Having to arse about in the Post Office with new envelopes and scissors and labels and sellotape? To think they gave me a degree…

On the plus side, Ned has returned from New York, so we were able to get very drunk in the UCL Union for the first time in months. I find that being the drunk guy on the tube means that I don’t have to worry about the drunk guy on the tube.

Progress has also been made on the film front. Me and Emily The Housemate now have a basic skeleton of events for the script. We managed to accomplish this with only one “difference of opinion”, about the contents of a cupboard. She won.

I would be going into London now, but all of my socks are in the washing machine. Y'see what I mean about the lack of competance?

Reporting An Absence Of News

I haven’t posted anything for a bit, so its time for me to justify my existence. I’ve now finished another chapter of the dissertation, and will soon be entrusting it to the vagaries of the Greek postal service.

Last night I got my face slapped in our local pub. No, its not as interesting as you think.

Where are all the Nottingham people? Since I set this Blog up and told people about it only The Evil Medic has responded. Pete, Andy, Jason: tell me how crap it is.

Conspiracy Theorists, Start Your Engines...

Well, last night I finished reading “Pashazade: The First Arabesk”. I rather liked it: the cyberpunk parts worked very well, and didn’t resort to anything ridiculous. The detective parts were far less good, being somewhat linear and telegraphing a villain a couple of chapters too early. Overall, though, I’d recommend it to anyone interested in SF.

The power of the Blog grows! It provoked an e-mail from someone I haven’t seen in two years and haven’t heard from in one year. So I count that as a bit of a result.

So, how about those current events? More importantly, how long before they become the basis for an episode of “Spooks”?

NHS-Induced Surrealness

I’ve just got back from today’s eye-clinic appointment. A Nigerian Nurse with tribal scars anaesthetised my eyeballs and dilated my pupils, following which a Greek Doctor shone extremely bright lights into my eyes, while simultaneously interrogating me about the Greek Bronze Age. Afterwards, I walked home under an overcast silver sky which was painful to look at. Actually, it was painful to look at anything, which made crossing the road highly interesting.

The upshot of all this is that there is nothing wrong with my eyes. Nada. At least it’s an answer, but why am I having symptoms if there’s no cause? Perhaps I’ll make medical history: “O’Brien’s Syndrome” has a nice ring to it. And has apostrophes in amusing places.

The World Responds

Well, my sending an e-mail yesterday to tell people about the blog has paid dividends. So far I’ve had three responses: one person liked it, one person responded by pointing me at their own blog, and one person questioned my sanity. Thanks for that.

Today, work continued apace on my dissertation. Fortunately for my state of mind I’ve now finished the first bit of demography I have to do, and have moved on to the technology of warfare, which is far more exciting and, coincidentally, involves far less maths.

Me and Emily The Housemate may also have finally come up with an idea for a film script we could write. I’ll post more if we actually make any progress.

And So My Problems Did Begin

Well, here it is, the first post. Unfortunately I don’t think there’s a maudlin piece of bugle music to commemorate the event, so I’d best just get on with it.

I've set up this weblog to let me communicate better with my friends all over the world, and also with random strangers who've arrived here by mistake. It'll be a fairly mundane account of my life, but many people who've taken part in my life seem to have found it quite amusing, so it should work out just fine.

Oh, and don't expect to find every detail of my life here. With any luck I'll be a wealthy and famous person one day, and it'd be a shame if people were able to look at these posts and say "He did what with a spatula?" Those who need to know that sort of detail will get an e-mail about it.

Well, that's about it for now. Don't forget to come back!