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08/19/2002 Archived Entry: “It seems like you’re a million miles away”
All up for a round of name that tune? This is what happens when I go home, well, used to happen. I’ve just brought my aged Amplifier back from Newbury to Brizzle to replace the one Jasmine is taking away.
Although it turns out she’s not taken her amplifier yet.
So, as you might guess I went home this weekend….and found some bad news awaiting me. I’d not correctly understood my mum’s rather confused phonecall after my dad’s scan. The scan is no-where near as positive as I thought it was. It was actually a “no change” scan. Nothing has changed, although the treatment seems to have got rid of the bloodclots (of which there were several), and thus my dad seems much more up and about…..but this means that although the chemo is stopping things getting worse, they’re not yet getting better….
*sigh*
Which is not really the sort of thing that goes well after, well, the misunderstood previous report. So. Anyway, spend the day meandering around the house, trundling my mum around Newbury and finally finishing the modifications to my amplifier that I started when I was at University. Yes. Another quality unfinished job by Kate, still it’s sort-of-done now, although it took me several hours to work out that I was right about which cables were which (it’s a hideous massive kludge in there, including some hardboard and a plastic bag….). It also took a chat with my dad to sort out the resistor values for the potential divider. After all these years he still shocks me… I ask him (he’s half asleep) what resistor values he reckons would be about right for this amplifier (bear in mind he’s only heard me describing the distortion I’ve got, becuase I was moronic and over tired and probably in a manic phase in which the quality of my work went down, but quantity went up when I started this job 5 years ago and I can’t be arsed to take it all to pieces.
Anyway, so, he answers and he’s right. And so I finish it.
And at the moment it works.
Anyway, before that we watched The English Patient – which I was suprised to find I enjoyed. Lots. I thought it was a beautiful film.
And having repaired the amp I watched Perfect Blue. Perfect Blue is the first anime film I’ve watched which has seriously disturbed me and had me jumping and nervous. It’s really, actually, unnerving. Deeply so. I loved it. But then I’m a twisted little person….
Finally, I crawled into bed, having done some more Norwegian – I will learn Norwegian if it kills me. Although I’m suprised to find that my (incredibly weak and lacking) knowledge of german is popping up and getting in my way. In that it keeps leaping in when I’m trying to think of Norwegian words. Damnit.
Frikin’ stupid brain I’ve got here.
So, I then wandered into Oxford to meet peter, again….! After some faffing we got parked and wandered into the town, calling in at the Odeon on the way in. Yes, having watched 2 films the day before I hadn’t managed to get *enough* film, so we went to see 8 Legged Freaks (after a brief Icecream and milkshake interlude). 8 Legged Freaks was excellent, it was silly, funny and had some really nice background touches (the Organ Donor sign for instance)….
We also went to Virgin where I resisted (impressively) buying vast quantites of stuff (stuff I actually quite fancy on sale! No! Ah, but I’ve got no money, that explains it). We meandered all over the place, actually. And after the film we went in search of a pub to play pool in. Now, you wouldn’t think this was hard…..but it was….
Finally we found a nice looking littlish pub….after trying about 7 others…..and this one had a pool room. Woo! we said, and I wandered off to get a drink. Everyone was really friendly, the barstaff were nice, chatty, etc. And downstairs I went. Now in the past I’ve been asked if I’d ever been to a ‘gay pub’. My answer’s always been “Not that I know of”. Well. Now I can say, prior to today I’m fairly certain I’ve not been in any gay pubs.
Because it suddenly became apparent that this was a gay pub. It took about 20 seconds. I was wandering down to the pool room when my eye was drawn to a magazine….with a nipple on the front cover. And then I started looking at the leaflets, which previously my brain had discarded as “probably ‘local attractions’ leaflets”. No, all about HIV, and various gay/lesbian support groups….
Of course, having twigged (there was no-one else in the pool room, but there were some people in the garden) I started actually taking notice of people. Yes. Definately a gay bar. Was interesting, in that there were many people who really did fit the stereotype of gay people. There were quite a few, particularly the older ones, who didn’t. Very strange. Still, nice atmosphere in there, very friendly. And I thrashed peter at pool ;-)
That’s not to say anything bad about the staff of o’neills who were also very friendly….
Mostly through him having some incredibly bad luck……oh, and of course my superior skill ;-)
And then I headed back….which brings us to now, as I swelter in our back room staring at a cheaparse 17″ monitor wondering what I should do….probably goo to bed….
