Friday:
Went to see The Broken Family Band (and various other local bands) at the Portland; the BFB were excellent, and the gig was for charidee (the premature baby ward at the Rosie Maternity hospital) so all in all I felt it was a good use of £6. And I finally got round to getting a copy of the new album.
Support acts were... interesting. Bomb Factory did some "punk poetry", which I'm sure was supposed to be very angry and revolutionary, but I found rather endearingly naïve. An annoying bloke in a hat who called himself Um (and who compèred the evening very irritatingly) rambled a bit over some crap backing-tracks, at which point we went into the bar for drinks and a chat. A bloke who called himself Jazz played guitar and sang some reasonable songs -- nothing terribly innovative but pleasant enough to listen to. And The Pony Collaboration played some slightly samey alt-country -- I think they could actually have been quite good but they needed a bit more variety and a bit less dreariness. And they really, really needed to lose the girl who was singing flat backing-vocals and playing the glockenspiel.
Saturday:
Went shopping with
hoiho. Bought heaps of books, CDs, clothes, etc., but we saved money by not going to Fopp. Really! We'd have spent so much more if we'd let ourselves go in there. :-) The heat was a bit overwhelming, but Lakeland had nice air-conditioning...Went to
dreamingchristi's party in the evening -- nice to see a different group of people for a change, although a lot of the time I felt like I wasn't really taking part in the conversations that were happening around me. I think that was just because I was feeling spaced-out and heat-stricken though. Nice to talk to dreamingchristi, also good to see simont and lark_ascending, and to watch Owen (no LJ?) crash a Furby not once but twice. (They make very funny noises, and they're hard to reboot.) Sunday:
After getting back from the grading I faffed about a bit at home, tidied up a bit, had unhappy conversation with
sion_a, and discovered that crying a lot is even worse in this kind of heat. Then went to the pub and drank lots of Cassells. Note to self: however much drink and company helps at the time, hangovers the morning after do not help.Monday:
Got in this morning to find that Gawen is on holiday all week, and there are some things I really need to ask him about before I can get on with them. Of course, he didn't tell me he was going to be on holiday all week. So now I'm in a position where I have very little that I can usefully be doing, but if I don't have plenty of work to show at the end of the week he will probably assume that I've just been doing personal email and so on all week, and fire me.
Since they haven't given me a contract yet, though, I'm still freelance & therefore I think I will take Thursday off (unpaid) as well as my usual Friday. I'd rather lose the money than have the hassle.
...
Currently aching all over, feeling too hot and sweaty to think, and feeling generally backgroundly miserable about lots of things.
Looking forward to visiting my parents at the weekend. I really, really need a break from all this.
