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06/11/2002 Archived Entry: “more awake”
So, it seems I was a little tired when I wrote the slightly short entry last night – so here’s the long form.
I went home for the weekend on Friday – well, for Friday afternoon and Saturday – sadly my dad is getting rather depressed – mostly due to the anemia and the difficulty he’s now having thinking about anything complex – which is probably the thing he values most about himself. He’s always been incredibly intelligent and… well… Anyway, hopefully the iprex, or eprex injections will improve that soon – and my mum’ll be nagging him to keep going in the mean time. Although it really brought home to me that he’s still ill seeing the sharps bin in the bedroom.
So, anyway, saw my little nephew John again – although he’s now big enough that I did my whole uncomfortable “how the hell do I hold this child” pose, leading to my sister taking him off me for a bit until we’d managed to sort out how to hold him. For once I’ve not come away feeling maternal – possibly because I can see how much work he is – in some ways he’s quite like me, and in others not at all.
He’s quite like me in that he doesn’t want to be left alone at all, but not like me in that if you give him a doll he smashes it against you, the ground, the walls, chairs, anything he can reach, wheras according to my mum I’d sit and cuddle the doll. So there you go.
Anyway, so, john, my sister, her husband, and his parents came round for a few hours, which was really nice. Yes, yes, I know terrible word, my english teacher would kill me.
So, then I spent a relaxing saturday morning mooching around Marlborough with my parents – waiting for the Peugot to be MOT’d (it passed this time). Picked up a new photo album – the old ones, ‘cept the “holiday” album are all full – side question; Why is it that they can’t keep the same design of photo albums for long enough for me to actually buy matching photo albums? I mean, okay, the old ones are all binders full of the self adhesive stuff – and they’re fairly hideous, but then there’s 2 batches of WHSmith albums, 3 now, and *they don’t even slightly match*. Actually this one is at least the same height as the previous ones, just a different colour and different design on it. Grr.
So, yes, back to whatever it was I was talking about. Yes. So. Spent saturday afternoon sorting through bits and bobs in the garage – chucking away enormous amounts of crap that I, well, made my parents drag from one house to this one (well, to be fair I was at uni and didn’t really have time to sort through it). A couple of years worth of Practical Classics went in the bin, well, to be recycled, Select and Q magazine….all gorne. Various other bits and bobs…it’s a bit job – not made easier by the fact that quite a lot of my stuff is fairly inaccessable.
Then there was Sunday (see, I said I did lots this weekend). So, I went over to Aylesbury to see Peter, stopping briefly on the way to take some photos and break the film in my camera (grr – I’ll know if the photos survived later today). Let’s just say something about Aylesbury, it’s EVIL.
So, I manage, eventually, to navigate to near peter’s house, I say near, because on the map you’ll see the road joining another road. Unfortuately, in reality it’s blocked off by a big set of bollards. So I sat in the car and I looked at the map and had this weird realisation, I couldn’t actually see how to get to peter’s house. It seem to exist on a set of roads not linked to by anything. However, there were definately cars the other side of this set of bollards. I went and looked. They looked real, and it seemed unlikely that people had them airlifted in – and so I wandered over to Peters house (little did I realise how dangerous this was) – and he showed me the more modern map which shows the interdimensional rift, and the portal:
And then using the pgm beamed us back to where I’d left the car (crossing into the rift via the old portal is very dangerous, which is why they’ve blocked it off) and we re-entered the area using the new portal (the PGM it appears can only open portals large enough for a couple of people).
However, my journey was only barely begun, for we had to pass through the Watermead nightmare. This area was put in to test the strength of character of would be travellers; weird child-like visions assault your senses, while roads which would appear at first site to be main trunk roads lead, in fact, to double garages…. Strange, bright colours and impossible buildings appear before you.
With Peters guidance we managed to make it through, although it seemed to me that we would not make it at several points – and we arrived safely at his house. After which we had to cross through it again as we headed out into the centre of that town known as “Aylesbury” – where we went to watch a film and eat crap food.
Nachos. Yes? We all know what nachos are? Little triangular things, yes? No. Apparently they’re very, very small bits of triangular things – with a dip called “cheese” which tastes of mustard and a dip called “salsa” which is water with red colouring in.
Despite the food the film was excellent, well, I liked it, but then we know what my taste is like. Spiderman, is the film we saw – which I won’t talk about in case there’s anyone reading who hasn’t seen it.
So then we met up with Lauren, after some minor crime, and we went bowling.
We went to Hemel to go bowling, and to watford to pick up Lauren. This was all *very* weird because neither of these places seem to change much (although I’d forgotten that watford’s main shopping centre was built by someone with no spirit-level, it’s the only shopping centre where an escalator can actually end up on the same floor you started on) in the 5 years I’ve been away.
Hemel particularly. I mean, Leisure World (or Le u e o r d to give it it’s correct name) hasn’t changed at all – apart from the movement of a few of the games. It was very weird to be back there – but it helped me face some of my demons and I did it with my friends there.
Although peter hustled us when we went Bowling.
“Oh, I’m crap at bowling” (scores 0, 3 in the first two goes), and then, and *then* he gets two strikes in a row and ends up beating both Lauren and I by miles. Crap at bowling, uh hu.
We also all crammed into one of those portrait machines – leading to a really really bad picture.
Now, I’d stop now, but I still haven’t finished.
We decided to head back to aylesbury to get food, and on arriving there I suddenly thought “let’s see if James is about”. So we popped over, and I fear we interrupted a nice romantic evening he was having. But we had a really good time (and I got to meet his girlfriend properly – which was cool), until I realised that it was “getting late” – at which point we hurtled out of his house, which felt rather rude given that we’d only just finished dinner (James stood up to look at desert possibilities and I saw the clock….).
Anyway, we then headed back, and when we got back (after traversing the portal another two times, I hope it’s not bad for you…) found Carol and Ruth had come to visit. Which was both good and bad. Good in that it was really nice to see them, bad in that it was already midnight and they were heading off fairly soon after we got back. Ah well.
Then there was yesterday – when I stuck the new downpipe on my motorbike and did, with help from Lauren, loads of work on the back garden (which is now merely grass and gravel away from looking like a garden) – and with Laurens persuasion had a go at the front garden – which after she’d done lots of work now has some much neater edging, and short grass. It looks way better, indeed, some might mistake us for a respectable household.
And then, then I went to bed.
Today, well, today’s another busy day – but it’s all going to get done *after* lunch :-)
