Bear blog

Just been to the cinema to watch Run Fatboy Run. A film with no punctuation.

The film itself wasn't great; being a reasonably trite, colour inside the lines, watered-down for Americans, Simon Pegg good idea gone bad type of thing. It was agonisingly predictable and lacked the furious satire that Pegg is best at. The only saving graces were Dylan Moran being a slightly less sweary version of himself and a couple of half funny on-the-hoof television reporter lines right at the end that made me crack a smile. For the most part it was distinctly average.

Which is fine. You can't win them all.

What made the experience completely terrible was the cinema environment. I don't know whether you've ever been to see a 12a rated film on a Sunday afternoon in an out of town entertainment complex with easy links to the local council estates, but it's not a particularly pleasant thing to do.

To be fair, only a few of the swarming spotty teenagers (who incidentally weren't accompanied by an adult and looked distinctly *under* the age of twelve) had the affront to wander in and out of the room chatting amongst themselves during the film, and there was only the one incidence of anyone carrying out a telephone conversation. What aggravated me the most was the ubiquitous fat slag sat in the chair behind me who felt the need to jiggle bits of herself mercilessly throughout the entire two hours of the film at a frequency of oscillation which I'm sure could only have been achieved through the act of violent (though thankfully quiet) masturbation.

The overall experience has left me rather disinclined to visit the cinema again for a while. I think I've certainly reached a point in my life that no 12a rated film, no matter how hyped, is worth two hours in a confined space with people I haven't pre-vetted.

I dreamed a had a willy last night. It was marvellous. Proportionately sized, in possession of a certain delicate, feminine charm, and with no silly extra appendages. And above all asexual, although I did put a condom on it and wander around the place. But show me a woman who wouldn't. I awoke in the midst of a contemplation of having been cheated out of something.

On a related note, the she-weeing is going terribly well. I have successfully ascertained optimum angle and trajectory and have begun to practice with trousers on. Wonderful stuff.  

A surveyor man came round today to measure up for our new windows.

We'd originally booked the appointment for 8 in the morning, thinking that way we'd both be in to answer questions and make decisions and would be able to dash off to work when he'd gone. Nah. He phoned up the other day to say that he'd be an hour late and that, oh by the way, it'd take him four hours to do everything.

Bloody hell.

He wasn't far off, either, although he did turn up on time I gave up on him and went into work after it'd gone half ten after assurances from Pete that he'd keep an eye on him. He'd only just got through measuring half the windows by then. He was the sort of man who looked like he still lived with his mother, too. He probably has an unhealthy relationship with his tape measure.

But it's done now. He reckoned five weeks till they're fitted. Which is, at least, five more weeks to scrape up the cash for them. Now I've just got to work out how best to make up my time at work. Short lunches or longer days? Or should I just keep my mouth shut for a few days and see whether anyone actually remembers?

Decisions, decisions. 

I just took this test to find out, based on my lifestyle n'that, what my 'real age' is, opposed to my chronological age.

Turns out I'm 9 and a half!

Which explains a lot, really.

(Cross-posted to the Yahoo Group) 

I've just been down to the Brite Centre to talk to the woman who runs the room bookings there. She showed me round their hall and it was nice. Light, bright, airy. Tall ceilings, open space. Infinitely better than Mirage, at any rate. And I reckon it's big enough to get us all in there with suitable elbow room on a decently-busy night. (By decently-busy I'm talking ten of us).

But, of course, it comes at a price.

• The building shuts at 8 o'clock at the latest, so our session would have to start earlier than we're used to.
• The lighting was provided by spot lights in the ceiling and as I looked round at 9 in the morning whilst the sunlight was streaming in through the windows, I couldn't say whether or not they'd be annoying to juggle under.
• There's a booking fee.

Now, the usual rate is £8.75/hour, plus a 50% extra charge for being there after 6 o'clock. So lets call it £15 for an hour's session. But they do cheap rates for Braunstone groups. If I could wangle it that me or Pete paying for the session constituted us being a Braunstone group (and I reckon this is quite possible. The woman I talked to did seem open to a bit of negotiation) we get the cheaper rate of £5.75/hour plus the 50% extra after 6pm charge. So that'd be about £9 for an hour's session.

Which I personally don't think is too bad, especially on a good week. We'd be looking at paying a quid each or there abouts. Of course, the real question is are people prepared to pay significantly more than this if only a few people turn up?

Questions to consider then:

• Do people want a better space than Mirage?
• Do people mind paying for sessions at the above rates?
• How long do people want the sessions to be?
• Are people able to do an earlier session (if people want a two hour session we'd be looking at starting at 6pm)
• What day/s are good for people?
• Are we talking all year round with this, or just vacation times? The room would be good in summer at any rate because of all the natural light that gets in there. No need for dodgy ceiling spot lights.

If I get enough interest, then I'll go back to the woman and see about getting the reduced rate and find out what days we can get the hall (I did ask her this today, but she didn't have the necessary piece of paper in front of her at the time). 

I also got the name of the duty manager up at Braunstone Leisure Centre who I'm informed is the woman to talk to about booking rooms there. Will chase that up next week when she gets back off holiday.

Such is the way of things these days that in order to buy ourselves a house, we had to pick one that was in a semi-dodgy area. Knowing this, we consider ourselves rather lucky that the owners of the house we're attached to turned out to be a very nice young professional couple in the same position as ourselves. It gives us someone to commiserate with when the neighbours on our other side exceed our expectations of their scummy, chavvy, lazy and ignorant natures by deciding that they want to clear their garden.

Fair enough, yes. It's nice to see a spot of home improvement going on, and it's high time they actually got off their fat collective arse and did something constructive with their time, rather than spending seven hours a day standing in their front gardens shouting at each other and eying us suspiciously as we come and go FROM OUR JOBS. Where we EARN our money.

Unfortunately, despite their best efforts, and chavs being what they are, the neighbours have decided that it's much more convenient for them to throw their newly cut down garden waste over the fence into the back of our garden. Under other circumstances, I could be quite blase about it and say that, well, our garden is rather an overgrown tip at the minute, they probably didn't realise they were dumping their rubbish on a part of our property. But having had them stand gawping at us as we cleared and shifted and hacked and hefted our own garden waste to the tip, I'm feeling slightly put out by it all.

Thusly, I'm now playing with the internet, looking at stuff like this. And this. Ooh, and I like the look of this.

All pretension of socio-political understanding I may once have portrayed has now been blown completely out of the window. 

We went for a quick jaunt round Carsington Reservoir on Sunday with Stu. It was the most abismally unpleasant and displeasing ride I've ever been on. And I wasn't even on a unicycle.

I thought reservoirs were meant to be flat. This one decidedly wasn't. We started off along a long open stretch of path that ran along the side of a wide expanse of jaggedy looking rocks leading down into the water. And it was windy. Windy enough for me to fear the expanse of jaggedy rocks, at any rate.

But having fought our way through the side-winds we got to the end of

the path. A bit of snappy-snappy camera action and then we were off again. And it was fine. For the first minute or two. Before the hills got us.

We were outnumbered. They were everywhere and we had nowhere to hide. Our only option was to carry on straight into their ranks. They made me their bitch. The rest of the ride was spent panting, wheezing and complaining in turns.  The unicyclists, meanwhile, were doing very well. P in particular was just cruising up and down without really stopping for breath. Oh he of the gigantic manly thighs. 

Just before we got halfway round Stu, Lizzy and I stopped for a geocache. It was my first one. We had to trudge through a bit of brackeny undergrowth to find it but it was shiny and filled with goodness. Lizzy left a lizard puzzle and a porcelain duck. We took a peg and Stu took the travel bug. I've decided geocaching is a good way to periodically get rid of all the tat that builds up in the house.  

After that it was back on the road. Alan was feeling rough and was worried that his car was going to get rained on so we bikey ones raced off ahead and left the others to their own devices. They eventually appeared back at the visitors centre, slightly sweaty and worse for wear, but not before we'd sat down to chocolate and chips and had to put up with hordes of screaming middle class children. Shudder.

We stopped off at the Knockerdown for a pub lunch before heading home. Alan gave up at that point and returned to his sick bed. The rest of us chowed down. P ate about three pounds of meat, Lizzy paid for an £8 meal with a £10 note and got £6.10 change from it. I had steak and chips. Nyum nyums.

I'm never going back to Carsington again. It's a horrible place designed for fit and active people.  

We went to Reb's first birthday party yesterday. It was rather tedious but we passed the time with some juggling and  Reb seemed to enjoy herself.

I made friends with James who is a rather hyper and poorly disiplined little boy. He is surprisingly good at juggling for a four year old though. And he has a wicked little ride-on car thing that can hold up to 18 stone. Pete and I tested it. The claim was good.

And I met Will who is a one year old metrosexual Boris Johnson lookalike with poor social skills. He was wonderful. I wanted.

Then we took my parents back to Sheffield (mother is invalided with RSI at the minute) and went out for Thai at Siam Inter on London Road. It was alright. I had fish cakes which weren't as good as Siam Garden's and sizzling beef which was rather tasty. The phenomenon of good Thai places letting themselves down with crap processed puddings continues to plague us though. We didn't bother.

We've just got back from a lovely sunny weekend staring at shiny vans. It was good. Having failed, yet again, to meet up with anyone to convoy with, we trundled down on our own and were going well until we got just outside of Malvern and decided to stop to buy a drink. And then the van wouldn't start again. Bugger. So Pete got on the phone to Roger who told us he could come and sort us out but that he was at least an hour away, especially considering that his brakes had just failed. But then the man from the camper parked up just behind us came over and gave us a go on his battery booster. 'Huzzah!' we cried. But no. It didn't work. So Pete phoned Roger again. I could only hear half the conversation, but it went something along the lines of:

-Roger, it's not the battery. Whaddawe do? Whaddawe do?

-Ah, it'll be your starter motor then. Have you got a toolbox?

-Yes. It's at home.

-Ah. What do you have then?

-One spanner.

-Is it shiny and metal looking?

-Yes, it is.

-Get under the van then, and shove it about a bit between other metal looking things until you hear a fizzy-bang-pop sort of noise. And then you'll know you've fixed it.

To his eternal credit, it actually worked. Something to do with sparks and solenoids or something. There was a terrible crackly-bang sort of sound, but Pete emerged unscathed and off we trundled onto site.

Vanfest was busy this year, so before we could get into the queue to pay we had to sit in the holding area for about an hour. But it was fine. The sun was out, and people were chillin' n'that. Everyone had opened up their vans and were lazing around the place drinking and playing with barbeques and stuff. So we did a spot of juggling, and before we knew it we were camped up with the Colligan brood. And then a bit later Roger&Connie appeared, having successfully bodged their brakes. We sat around for a bit and had a barbeque and the Baxters turned up and were funny and northern. I may have accidentally, inadvertantly called Joe a cock-rider, but he didn't seem to mind that much. We missed seeing Showaddywaddy through sheer laziness and poor organisation. I may never know what their top-ten hits were now.

Saturday was spent buying crap. We had decided beforehand that all we were going to buy was three washers that we've needed forever. But it didn't work out like that. We did a tour of the trade stalls and came back up to the van with one washer, a new interior light, some new door panels for the cab, a shiny new t-shirt for me, and some rags. But the rags we made use of straight away by T-cutting the van to try to get some of the hideous scratches and scuffs out of him. It worked a treat. He's all shiny again now. Very handsome.

We spent the rest of the day alternatively lazing around the place and wandering about a bit. I fawned over all the nice dog-dogs, and we saw my doppleganger. She was more stylish, and slightly more emo, and she obviously had a professional haircut and was a bit less doughy around the hips than me, but she had the same mannish charm as I have. The resemblance was uncanny.

We all met up again in the evening. The enigmatic Keith turned up (although I never did get to see his fire-engine van) and played about on unicycles. Roger has a very girly pink trials wheel which is too sickly even for me. He's a big fat woman. We gathered for another barbeque and the tat competition. Tat being decidedly slim pickings this year, we failed to find anything that could live up to Miark's exacting standards and thusly were put on the judging panel with Roger and Joe. Wendy won with an exquisite porcelain chaise-lounge photo-frame which scored extra points for a) being bought with a straight face and b) being sold by a man who reportedly said 'yeah, that's lovely, that is'. After the tat, we went and saw The Commitments play, timing our arrival perfectly to hear Mustang Sally. We boogied heartily.

But then it was Sunday and after a quick ice cream and a trip round the Show & Shine to see some posh looking vans, we were packed up and back home. The cats were pleased to see us though. And we get to order pizza for tea because we're far too chilled out to think about things like cooking.

Yesterday was our second anniversary. Thank you to the people who sent us cards and well-wishes. We went to Terracotta to celebrate n'that.

It was good. Although we were sat right by the toilets, it put me in prime position to watch people get up for their food. Funny looking people I spotted included an enormously fat man who waddled over to the puddings counter, heartily slapped his big fat belly, and then proceeded to pile about six different puddings into his bowl. There was another enormously fat man who looked the image of Phil Jupitus. I wanted Pete to go up and ask for his autograph but he wouldn't. The spoil sport. There was also a regular from the library in there. She comes in every few days to borrow DVDs. I don't think she's got any friends (I certainly didn't see her talking to anyone in the restaurant). She'll be in tonight, taking out four films. I guarentee it.

About half way through the meal a big group of girls came in for a birthday celebration. Sigh. They sat right next to us and proceeded to giggle and scream at each other at the tops of their voices. I wouldn't have minded so  much if they'd  been young exuberant things, but they weren't. They were decidedly past their prime. With jowls and everything. Most of them were overweight, all of them were mingers. And they did that stupid double kissing thing all the time.

It was alright though, cause we just did surrupticious v-signs at them and tittered to ourselves.