On the 17th of January 2013, i woke up to discover two unexpected gifts.
I didn't see this coming.
I didn't even think Armin Mersmann would have any knowledge of my blog - it's so little - let alone take the time to write me such a thoughtful, honest and above all, supportive message.
I think i forget sometimes that i'm not the only artist in the world.
That sounds incredibly narcissistic but it's the simple fact that i live with myself every day, i'm only capable of knowing how i feel at all times and i'm not one to share.
I'll put it all over the internet, however.
More making of the sense that is not, my speciality.
I regret not talking to my university friends about the feelings of inadequacy that were debilitating me while i was still in education.
They were probably feeling just the same and would not have been able to fix my problems but perhaps then i wouldn't have felt so small and so alone in my situation.
To be a Fine artist in a contemporary art school is not easy, thus why i fled so spectacularly.
This year i'll be receiving my Ordinary Degree, after 4 years of the university kindly holding my space open so i could complete with my Honours.
Which i can do whenever i wish.
Hopefully they'd reaccept me but i'm not entirely sure DOJ is the place for me.
I'm not even sure if art is the right choice for me and until i know that i won't be returning to any institution of art.
It's really rather hard for someone like myself, who's ultimate goal within university was to receive a 1st and couldn't even bring themselves to start their final year.
It's all i wanted but i was a mess and it shouldn't have been what being an artist at art school was about.
I should have just wanted to create, instead i wanted to win.
Unhealthy but understandable.
I still want that 1st, i think i always will but if i go back to complete my degree, i just want to produce something that touches people.
Something i'm proud of.
But not too proud!
So, thank you Mr Mersmann.
I can't tell you how much receiving your message meant to me and how much it's given me to think about.
Happy Birthday for tomorrow and please keep producing your sublime works of art.
They may leave me timid but they are truly wonderful things to behold.
Also, to anyone who is currently at art school or even doing it solo and finds themselves in the same situation as i, message me if you'd like.
I can't fix it but i can empathise.
With bells on.
My other gift of the day was from my Mum.
It's always nice to wake up to a present, especially when you are utterly undeserving because of the ungodly hour you've finally dragged yourself out of bed to attempt functioning like a normal human being.
I won't tell you the hour but it was pretty bad.
The sun was going back down.
Shame, shame on me.
Thanks Mum.
You may be the only one i have but i still kinda think you're the best one.
Feel free to make barfing noises behind your computer screens at my unabashed soppiness!
I care not!
Listening to: Seamonster 'Bed of Roses'
Thanks Lilly. I'm sure things will work out, but I'll take the air hug :)
Is everything okay with you?
Would you like to read about what I'll be doing on Thursday and Friday up in Brae?
http://www.shetlandarts.org/ignitionperformances
No, I have no idea either.
Have another hug, for good measure.
What the what what? Why are doing this Ignition thing again? Did they trick you, Dex? Those wile monsters.
I was supposed to read that so I'd have some idea what it was all about. I still have no idea!
I have to tell you Lilly, I am slightly freaking out. I saw a rota for when/where I'm supposed to be on Thu & Fri. They put me in Brae Hall, by myself. There is no-one else for that venue on the rota!
I can't even say they tricked me. I just felt bad for them that they were really struggling to find volunteers. Looking at that rota, they weren't kidding.
It's a good thing you gave me another hug. They actually make me feel better :)
Watching anything at the moment? I'm glad you've found something to help you get over Being Human :)
One more thing cheered me up today - Camera Obscura, new album, 3rd June :)
Ugh!
My internet crapped out on me there. It does that sometimes. Only just regained life now. Gave me time to do the necessary nightly ablutions however, as i need to sleep now if i have any chance of being up in time for the doctor!
And don't fret about the event thing. Useless thing to say because i know you will but just remember that i shall be thinking of you and sending you happy vibes and hugs to get you through it. And afterwards you'll have done something worthwhile with two days of your life. That's always cool :)
I'm gonna head to ye old bed now and hopefully wake up to some happy Dex talk.
Get some sleep yourself, dearest one. It's good for you, or so i've heard :)
Night you
Ps. I'm watching Dexter Season 3 and it's awesome as per usual. What you watching just now? American Dad or Fullmetal Alchemist? Or something i haven't heard about?! Sneaky creature.
Pps. I'm actually kinda excited about Camera Obscura as well :)
Night night Lilly. I'm so happy I have a friend like you. I hope the doctors appointment goes well. Will be thinking of you, as always. And some of those thoughts may make it onto here :)
You're the sneaky creature! You totally surprised me with your lovely goodnight message last night. I thought you'd fallen asleep. I had to rush my last reply so I caught you before you went to bedfordshire. These things matter :)
I even forgot to tell you what I was watching last night. Whose Line Is It Anyway? I'm such a loser. I keep meaning to start my American Dad marathon, but it always takes me so long to get around to starting these things. I'm kinda saving FMA for the holidays, when my parents are away. Then I can geek out in the living room without fear of interruption :)
Even though I didn't call it this at the time, I do remember having a Frasier marathon at university, when I need cheering up, which was pretty much all the time. Does it count if you stop half-way. I don't have much time for Frasier after season 5, unless Derek Jacobi or Patrick Stewart are guest starring.
Have you started your Buffy marathon? And GoT with your family, is that still going on?
I feel a bit guilty having kept you up until 3am. I was so excited to have my banterrific buddy back that I'd completely forgotten how sleepy you must have felt. You weren't staying up just for my sake, were you? Just say you were, I'll give you another fragment of my soul :) Are the other fragments still in the mason jar, living off the fantastical stories on your shelf?
I didn't work my way through any more of the list of music you gave me this weekend, but I haven't forgotten. It's actually something I really like doing. And you're taste in music, no matter what direction it veers off to, is never I disappointment. You just listen to the music you want to (as if you're going to do something different!) and there will always be some nice surprises for me amongst it all :)
Or the photograph snapping of my hometown. It's not that I don't want to, it's something I really want to do for you. I'm just a bit worried that you'll think they are kind of crap. I'm terrible at taking photographs.
Hugs and happy vibes sent your way for your visit to the doctor. I hope it's not too cold outside. What do you wear when you go out into the winter weather, Lilly?
One other nice thing happened the other day. I met my favourite Shetland person walking along the Clickimin Loch. She works at Mareel, but I don't see enough of her. She was walking her dog. You know, the kind of person I can greet with the phrase "fucking dogwalkers". They're the best kind of relationships :) Move up here Lilly. I want to hurl insults at you from close range.
A few other random things:
My favourite Bond song. I could just tell you what it is, but where's the fun in that?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TZXw45V9CE
Was it what you were expecting?
And the finest moment in any Bond movie!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N_WrYHUq0M
Hehe, I'm such an idiot.
And Whose Line Is It Anyway, series 6 of the UK version is the finest thing to ever make it onto television. I'm not a loser, I'm awesome :)
I so don't deserve you. Leaving you a message about 'Fright Night', best decision I ever made :) Y'know what, sod it. I'm buying a camera this week. You deserve to be bored to death by awful pictures of where I live.
Speak to you later Lilly. You know I'm always thinking about you (well, when my thoughts aren't being interrupted by unimportant things like work). You're my buddy. I know I keep saying that, but I like reminding myself how lucky I am :)
P.S. - How are you today?
Very much replying to this later but right now i've got my some humanising to do!
Totally stayed up to speak to thee :) Consider a soul fragment nabbed.
Ps. Eternal Summers - adore you for them. Yessum.
Hi Lilly - here's a list of films showing next week at Mareel. You know I need you to choose for me :)
Cloud Atlas
Side Effects
Beautiful Creatures
Monsters Inc.
No
Oz The Great & Powerful
Arbitrage
Stoker
Jiro Dreams of Sushi
Gambit
And I almost don't want to ask this since I like being adored by you, but Eternal Summers!? Did I suggest them? Maybe you should be adoring someone else :(
My parents have asked to borrow my laptop this evening, so I might be a bit late in replying. Just in case you start to wonder what's happened to me :)
Speak to you later Lilly :) Did your appointment go okay?
Okay, so you didn't directly tell me about Eternal Summers but they were one of the suggested links from the Field Mouse video you sent me. So really, you are responsible for my love therefore i love you for them! That made perfect sense. Don't you question it :)
Film-wise i would suggest seeing:
Side Effects
Monsters Inc.
No
Stoker
Jiro Dreams of Sushi
I didn't know about Jiro and it just looks so damn special. I might have a problem with some of the sea creatures however. I saw an octopus :( I'm octophobic. For reals. Well, actually that's a phobia of the figure 8 and i'm actually really fond of the number 8, it's my favourite multiplication table but there's not an actual term for fear of octopods! So octophobia will have to suffice. Or cephalophobia! I'll be quiet now.
...
Nah.
My appointment was fine but the doc's given me homework. I have to be up at 9am every day and asleep before 12am. The latter is so not gonna happen without a fight. So we may have to have our movie night a little earlier in the evening. That okay?
I'd like to have Frasier marathon with you. I miss that show. And i'm so with you about post season 5 Frasier being pretty pointless, bar the appearance of Patrick Stewart. Love him. He was the narrator of Ted and it was the best part of the movie.
Haven't started the Buffy marathon yet, decided on some Dexter and after that i'm gonna watch Season 2 of Archer. Then perhaps it'll be Buffathon time but maybe not, i'm fickle when it comes to what i want to watch.
"You just listen to the music you want to (as if you're going to do something different!)"
I really like that you said that. I sometimes worry i'm being a musical sheep.
And i really really like that you want to hurl insults at me :) Does that make us strange? Nah. That makes us awesome, surely?
How come she's your favourite Shetlander? Does she have magical powers? Would i beat her in an awesome-off?
Did you know they're bringing back the american WLIIA? I know it's not your preferred version but it does have Wayne Brady back on board and he's a wonder. If he was mine, i'd make him crack jokes and sing all the live, long day!
Ps. Carly Simon? Aw, Dex :)
Pps. Don't you dare buy a camera because of me! They're expensive!
Oh Lilly, I'm so sorry for disappearing this evening, especially now you have to go to bed at 12am, but it couldn't be helped. Damned family members commandeering my laptop for their own nefarious porpoises - preparing a slideshow of their holiday snaps to show to people :( And now I have to make them tea!
Speak to you in a very short while, Lilly. Promise :)
Your family sound so very sociable. My parents would never do that. But we don't socialise, so who would we show?!
I wonder if you could make my tea just how i like it. No one can but i'd say you're something with a good chance :)
Dex! I found out today that the mystery neighbourhood pugs actually live on my street! It's so tempting to ask the man that breeds them to let me play with them.
Hehe, I'm totally taking credit for Eternal Summers :)
Lilly, I'd happily take a day off work just to watch movies with you. Even if they were the most utterly craptastic movies you could find, it would be a day well spent. That's the long way of saying yes, earlier movie watching on Saturday is fine. I'm really looking forward to it. Of course, it is Bowfinger :)
It's funny, I'd been at Shetland Arts for about a year and hardly ever spoken to my verbal sparring partner. Then we both got very drunk at the Christmas Party and discovered that we both like giving and receiving verbal abuse of a highly personal nature, and don't feel the least bit bad about it :) Happily, we also discovered the day after that we feel exactly the same way when we're sober.
But she's not my evil twin :) For a start she's about 10 years older than me, has a partner and kid, and has written a nature book. Here's a link to her book if you're interested:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Skomer-Portrait-Island-Jane-Matthews/dp/1905582587/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1363732012&sr=1-1
And I don't miss her nearly as much as I miss you. And I sometimes go for weeks without talking to her.
So no more nighttime conversations for a while then :( We will still talk plenty during the day, won't we?
Do you make chai lattes at home? What's the secret to making you a cup of tea the way you like it? I must master this skill!
Oh, and you should ask him to let you play with the pugs :) I asked that girl in the sweetshop if she had any pez - "do you mean those things with the mickey mouse heads?" :(
Your friend's book has puffins inside...i'm sold. Pretty cool knowing someone who's written a book. I wish i did, then i could emotionally blackmail them into letting me illustrate it!
You like me better and we've not even met. Don't deserve you matey :)
We will continue to talk, of course and there is always the chance that i won't be able to sleep early at all. I've got no choice in the early rise though. The doc says to try my best and it'll get easier. I don't believe her but what's the worst that could happen. And with the time in the morning, i could send you silly messages to make up for the lack of nighttime talk. Yessum.
I'm so not getting to sleep early tonight. No way. But i'm gonna be in my bed, all washed up and reading by at the very least, 1am. I've made a pact with myself. Lets see if i can keep it. Do you read at night Dexterous?
Did you enjoy your day off?
Chai lattes at home involve a teabag, foamed milk if i can be bothered and lots of sugar. I've made my sister hide the teabags from me and only let me have a cup when i'm really desperate. It's working out so far. I don't think you can learn to make me the perfect cup of tea alas, i'm real fussy and more often than not i don't even like what i make!
The best chai lattes come from Cafe Nero and i only get those when i venture outside which really isn't often, as you know. Shall have to remedy that soon however. Wish it could an adventure with Dexterous one though :( Hrumph.
How can your sweetshop lady not know what a Pez is? That's absurd. They're legendary!
I really do think you have to buy online to get decent ones though. You only get rubbish disney ones in the uk. Not that Disney is rubbish. Definitely not. I'm a diehard fan but they always use the crappy characters and that's just not cool.
Would it be wrong to buy Pez sweets without the dispenser? It would, wouldn't it?
It was a pretty uneventful day as usual, Lilly. I did go to Mareel in the afternoon to pick up a film leaflet and buy a hot chocolate. They didn't have any chocolate pretzels. They said the ones they had were thrown away because they were out-of-date, and that I was the only one who ever bought them. I don't think they'll be stocking up on more.
I haven't read at night for quite a while, which is a shame because it used to be one of my favourite things to do. I must try and get back into the habit.
Shall I let you go about midnight then, just so you have time to do the things you need to do before 1am?
What's your favourite Disney film Lilly? I know you find these 'favourite' questions impossible, but I still keep on asking :)
I still get excited thinking about the two of us running a cinema together, or visiting bookshops, or even just having a cup of tea at Mareel or watching Cartoon Network :) I'm silly, I know.
You're not silly, you're wonderful.
Sorry for disappearing, yet again. I had me some pre-sleep dillydallying to do and now i've got some more but they can be done in front of the computer for a while.
My favourite Disney is definitely The Little Mermaid. Always has been, always will be. I still know all the songs by heart.
The new Disneys just aren't the same, they're too shiny and no scary enough. I remember being petrified of characters like Ursula, Madam Mim and Maleficent when i was little. Madam Mim still kinda scares me!
You got a favourite Dex?
No more chocolate pretzels? The bastards!
I thought you might be following Doctor's orders :) I was just on the verge of posting something for you to wake up to in the morning.
The Little Mermaid is something I used to watch all the time. My mum was a childminder at home from as early as I can remember until I was well into my high school years, so I got to watch cartoons with the children all the time. Of course, I didn't want to. I was just helping my mum to look after them.
Yeah, that didn't sound convincing, did it? :)
I don't know if I had a favourite Disney. The Little Mermaid & The Jungle Book were probably the 2 most watched, but I wouldn't say there were my favourites. I'll just be a film snob and say Fantasia :)
Maybe I should let you go soon, not that I want to. Not at all :) But first tell me if your sister or anyone else has been baking for you. I like to know these things.
Nope. No baking whatsoever for little old Lilly. I'm thinking of baking muffins though. Haven't decided on a flavour yet though. I think i wanna go down the fruit road though...
I shall be heading off to wash the old face in just a minute but i'll check back in once i'm done and say goodnight :)
Haven't watched Fantasia in years. I don't actually think we even have it on dvd.
http://youtu.be/jsXZTgKvYIo
Will remain one of my favourite things to my dying day. I routinely get it stuck in my head. S'loverly :)
You will tell me about the muffins when you've baked them :)
Here's some of what I was going to send earlier for you to wake up to. Try not to vomit :)
"You like me better and we've not even met. Don't deserve you matey :)"
Lilly, I've haven't felt this close to someone in a long time or liked someone so much. Y'know, years before we started talking I was visiting your blog regularly, not just because I liked your taste in music and films and art, but because of the random things you posted and the way you wrote about them. I could just tell you were one awesome girl. It was so obvious :)
I know I send you way too much rubbish, but it's so easy :) I can talk to you in a way I can't with anyone else. And that makes you pretty special to me :)
Oh yeah, and because I thought you were so wonderfully talented. I still do.
Aw Dex, i run off and take ages to get myself settled for the night and you write me a lovely message like that.
I reiterate, i do not deserve you.
And i'm about to run off again! Surely you must not like my elusiveness?
Anyhow, i will leave you with this thought, if you haven't already been sensible enough to go to bed by now!:
You, my Dexterous friend, feel like someone i've been missing. Someone i knew was out there but i didn't have yet and now you're here :)
You make my days brighter and it's always the first thing i check when i wake up, whether you've left me a message yet. I actually check...then go back to sleep. I have no shame.
If only you lived next door, or down the street, or in the next town over. If we'd gone to school together, i reckon we'd already be trying to start our own small cinema, even if it was just showing films in our flat to selected people we like. And yes, we'd so be flatmates. But i'm happy to share internet space with you right now. Really is :)
Now you try not to vomit.
Night Dexterous Epistolean, i'd glomp you if i could :)
Err..that was meant to say:
"...right now. It's enough. It really is :)"
Sigh!
Sensible? Me?
But I'm going to go to bed now and not say another word because there is no way I could feel better than I do at this moment :)
Night night lovely Lilly. I think I like you just a little bit too :)
Good morning Lilly
I just wanted to send you something to wake up to.
"...it's always the first thing i check when i wake up, whether you've left me a message yet. I actually check...then go back to sleep."
Glomp :) I honestly don't think I can like anyone as much as I like you right now. I so don't deserve someone to feel this way about my words. Actually we both keep say we don't deserve each other. That means we both totally deserve each other :)
"I saw an octopus :( I'm octophobic. For reals. Well, actually that's a phobia of the figure 8 and i'm actually really fond of the number 8, it's my favourite multiplication table but there's not an actual term for fear of octopods! So octophobia will have to suffice. Or cephalophobia!"
Because something so fantastic deserves to be posted more than once :) No wonder I miss you so much when you're not around.
I think this post contains more of your words than it does of mine! I'm so tired I can't think of anything to say :( I wish I had Wayne Brady type energy levels. I bet he doesn't even have to sleep.
I think my laptop's being commandeered again today, but I'm working at Psych 2-5pm so I can send you another message from there :)
I'm sorry this is so random & that I haven't asked you any questions. Ugh, my brain. I just wanted to send you some hugs and happy vibes and let you know I'm thinking of you even though I'm ridiculously sleepy (actually I've woken up a bit since I started). Please send me anything you like, whenever you like. You know that it makes my day come alive just to hear from you. That's why I hate having my laptop commandeered :(
Speak to you later Lilly, my lovely buddy :)
P.S. - I like your elusiveness :) Thinking that you've disappeared only to discover you've sent me another message is a wonderful feeling. And I like that you still correct your spelling mistakes even though it doesn't make the slightest difference to how your words make me feel. But I do like that you still do it, it's part of you awesomeness :)
Oh, you're awake! And it's after 9:30am! That last message took me ages to write, even though half the words were yours :)
And you've even posted some stuff on your blog. I know exactly what you're trying to do you sneaky creature. You're trying to make me like you even more, aren't you? It's so not working...okay, it is :)
But you must still be pretty tired. You just reply whenever you like. You know I'll wait an eternity (well, quite a long time at least) to hear back from you :)
I suppose I'd better get myself ready for the day.
I was indeed awake but not yet able to type fully formed sentences. A skill i will have to work on. Stayed awake though and i'm still going. I even had breakfast! Does a banana count as breakfast? I'm counting it. I'm very much craving fruit just now. I think it's your doing :)
I love that you're entertained by my inane rambling. That's what i reckon proper friendship is about. Not being 'cool' and getting drunk, partying and whatsoever. For me, it's about being on the same bizarre wavelength and spouting nonsense to each other whenever possible. Which is just what we do! Stop living in Shetland :(
Psych stealing you away again my dear? At least i'll get to hear from you while you're there. I'll be sure to check my emails from 2-5 especially :)
I don't know how but i've managed to make myself a cup of tea that tastes like medicine. Blargh. Special skill of mine, making my second cup a rubbish cup. Do you think i could put that on my passport?
Actually, what would i put as my occupation? Artist? That seems silly. I think i'll put hermit. That won't make me suspicious in an airport. Not at all.
Why do i keep drinking the medicine tea? What's wrong with me?!
I'm going to run off now and see the rentals back from lunch. Engage in some banter i haven't been privy to in months and then i must attack clothes mountain. It's getting absurd. I'm sure there's a small army of clothes-hoarding creatures making it larger at night. Sneaky devils.
Have a good'n Dexterous :)
Tell me stories later.
Hi Lilly
Bananas count as breakfast, definitely :) Good luck with clothes mountain. Most of my clothes are piled up on my piano.
At Psych, I get stuck with awful tea all the time. People are so nice, bless them, offering to make me tea, and I can't refuse. But half the time it is pretty dire. And I have to say thank you and drink it with a smile on my face :) I honestly think that you could make me a cup of tea the way I like it.
Question :) Did these crazes spread around you school like they did mine? Computer Pets, Pokemon cards, & Pogs (!). Did you get involved?
I love what you call your 'inane rambling'. I don't call it that. I call it Lilly's awesomeness :) Mine is kind of crap in comparison. Just read what comes next:
Tots TV - I remember the girl spoke French.
Rosie & Jim - visiting places on their barge.
A programme I can't remember the name of but it had a middle-aged woman who flew a small plane to places, and had a dog called Pippin.
Bernard's Watch - he had the most powerful device in the universe, that could stop time, and he used it to do practically nothing.
Bodger & Badger - The woman they were always annoying was obsessed with cheesecake, but the cheesecake looked like shaving foam!
Art Attack - Neil Buchanan, what a guy! Did you know he was in a heavy metal band? And also presented Finders Keepers, that game show which was just an excuse to tear up a house to find things. Super fun :) And he was Smarty Arty in Zap!
Get Your Own Back with Dave Benson Phillips! I know someone who uses his face for their profile picture :)
Fun House, it's a whole lot of fun, prizes to be won. Pat Sharpe and the twins. And those go-karts.
Chip N Dale, Rescue Rangers: One of them dressed like Indiana Jones, the other like he was going to Hawaii, and there was a smart girl mouse mechanic and Monty (cheese!). And Fat Cat, of course.
Fireman Sam - Trevor the bus driver was a legend, the Lothario of Pontypandy :)
The Chuckle Brothers, obviously. This sounds too ridiculous to be true, but the man they were always causing trouble for was a Chuckle too. Actually there were 2 of them, identical twins! Crazy!
Biker Mice From Mars & SWAT Cats - were those cartoons as odd as I remember?
Raggy Dolls, The Shoe People, Animals of Farthing Wood (the most tragic, violent & depressing cartoon ever made, one of the characters got shot by a farmer and eaten for dinner!)
And this is the most important thing I want to mention - Inspector Gadget. Specifically the computer book that Penny had - did you want that as much as I did?
Sorry you had to read all of that!
I came into work an hour earlier just so I could write this :) The internet was down at home when I left :( I sometimes worry (I say that a lot, don't I?) that you'll not be able to get my ridiculous replies and think I've stopped caring as much. But it's just a bad internet connection :) I just hope it is back up and running by the time I get home.
Goodness, i feel like i've been hit with a nostalgia bubble! I'm all warm and happy inside, thinking about all those wonderful kids shows.
And i so didn't know Neil Buchanan was Smarty Arty in Zap! Where do you store all this information Dexterous?
It's weird, i was just talking about Bodger & Badger a few weeks ago. My mum even sang me the theme tune because well, she's awesome. Badger used to really scare me. He was a fucking lunatic! I do appreciate his love for mash though.
Do you remember Samurai Pizza Cats?
http://youtu.be/bXiJYcK4-GU
And holy crap i'd completely forgotten about Come Outside. I was obsessed with that! And Pippin of course. He was a legend.
Wasn't her plane covered in polkadots?
Penny's computer book? Hell yes i wanted it. I would have used it to jam everyone's computer systems :)
Didn't Penny have a dog as well?
See these awesome woman and their canine pals. That's so what i'm missing. That and a cape.
Not much of the working day left for you dearest. Has anyone made you a truly awful cup of tea yet? I bet i could make you a superior cup of tea. You may go into a sugar induced coma however. I'm kinda heavy-handed with the old sweet stuff in other people's drinks. I think i overcompensate in the fear that i won't put enough in and it'll taste rubbish!
Earlier i made my sister a cup and her first reaction was, 'You've made me sad tea'.
Which is when she's blue and i put extra sugar in her tea to cheer her up :)
Ugh, still haven't got to clothes mountain. I shall tackle it now and hopefully not get devoured by some Betamax Bandit type creature, just replace the tapes with oh so many jumpers!
I blame 15 years of watching CBBC and CITV with the children my mum looked after. I just realised I launched into that list of children's programmes without any warning at all. I missed out a whole paragraph! And how could I miss out Samurai Pizza Cats?!
I'm sorry your sister's feeling blue. At least she has you around to make her 'sad tea'. That's just so lovely. Even to a cynical fellow like me :)
How are you, Lilly? Have you been busy around the house today? Watched anything? Drank copious amounts of tea? No-one offered to make me one today :( or :) depending on how you look at it.
Did you watch The Simpsons? It hasn't been good for about 15 years, when it was this good :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAkz3Wwr9NQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnuHO0IoHZc
Please be patient with me tonight, Lilly. What with laptop thieving parents and a temperamental internet connection, it might take me a while to reply. Don't think I've forgotten you :)
Oh well, home time. Speak to you soon my evil twin.
And be sure to take your toy LOTR sword with you when exploring clothes mountain.
P.S. - Brain was the name of Penny's dog. He was an all-action kind of dog :)
Lilly, I'm really upset. I might not be able to speak to you tonight. It's just that the internet connection is still down at home :(
And I have this Ignition thing tomorrow night in Brae :(
I'm at Psych at the moment because the internet connection is working here. I'll be here 9am-5pm tomorrow as well. Please say we'll talk then. I don't care how busy I am, I'll always make a lot of time for my favourite person :) And please don't be upset with me for abandoning you tonight.
And I will tell you all about 'Ignition' when I get home tomorrow night (if the internet is back up and running). If not I'll come down to Psych again just so I can talk to you :)
I'm gonna go home now. I'll keep checking the internet throughout the night, just in case it comes back online.
Night night lovely Lilly. There's no-one I miss talking to so much in my life. All those nice things I say about you, I mean them all. I'm really am so lucky to have you as a friend :)
I finally conquered clothes mountain! Now it's only clothes hillock. I may stick a flag in its cotton-made belly :)
I have this feeling your laptop has been commandeered by the parental beings, so i shall just have to sing Dr. Zaius to myself until your return.
This is weird isn't it? That i basically know very little about you, not even your name (don't tell me! You're Dex and that's final) and it feels like you're my closest friend. And you're so far away :( Damn the internet for this. Damn it to hell! But not for letting me know of your existence. For that, it has my eternal gratitude :)
Dex, i know i can't make you one but would like a cup of tea? With plenty of sugar and Lilly magic? Yes, my tea is magical.
Gosh darn it, i knew i should have checked for messages before posting that message. Can't believe you're at Psych, just so you can talk to me and i've been buried under clothes for the past few hours! Guh! Sorry mister and of course we'll talk tomorrow. Hopefully i'll be awake early again so i'll leave you incoherent messages. I've got to go into my dad's optician's to do some clerical work in the afternoon but i'll make sure to get a message to you.
Have fun with the ignition thing! Yeah, i know, i don't believe my enthusiasm either. I'll be singing the Inspector Gadget theme in my head all night long because it will totally vibe it's way to you and get you through the night :)
Poor Dex, your internet must really be playing up. I hope it rights itself tomorrow.
I'm away to wash off the day and read some more wondrous tales before i let sleep take me. I hope you're doing much the same and not waiting around for the internet to start again just so you can hear my nonsense.
Until tomorrow then :)
http://vimeo.com/1534862
Night dearest.
Nudge :)
You didn't just stay up until 2am in the morning just to see if I'd reply, did you? :( I'm so sorry, Lilly. Will a lot of hugs & happy vibes make up for it, or are you determined to nab even more of my eternal soul :) If it makes you feel any better, I woke up at 2am to check the internet, and again at 6am.
My internet connection is still off at home. I was so upset yesterday that going down to Psych at 9:30pm just to sneak post you :) wasn't even the silliest thing I did.
I went to Tesco and bought a mobile phone, because the thought of not being able to talk to you kind of messed with my brain!
Of course I got home and it didn't work, so I went to Tesco at 8am this morning to get a replacement SIM card and it seems to be working fine. Would you mind if I sent you my new number? I mean, you don't have to send me yours. It's just that I didn't like it being 1am in the morning and not knowing if you needed someone to talk to :) At least you could always send a Dex Text if you needed someone!
Lilly, if I could be anywhere in the world right now, it would be with you just so you could make me a cup of your magical tea (hmmm, sounds suspiciously like it's drugged). Someone actually just offered to make me one here at Psych, but I said no. I want Lilly tea!
Please send me a message telling me how you are. even just one word would sustain me for a little while.
And just so you know how much you mean to me - cartoons! Apologies if I've posted this one before:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PuKM-oZxLk
And music! One of my favourite songs even though it's not strictly speaking the original version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5UK40sSo8I
I want to glomp you so badly at the moment :)
And it gives me a warm glow inside to know that we'll both be doing pretty much the same thing this afternoon. Pity it's not in the same place. We could make paper planes out of the things we were supposed to be filing.
Currently listening/watching to Until Tomorrow (discreetly) :)
Why did I say yes to Ignition, Lilly? There must be something wrong with me :(
P.S. - The Inspector Gadget theme. I knew there was some mysterious force helping me cope until the morning.
Do you really think of me as your closest friend? You do know that I feel exactly the same way about you :)
I was so unhappy last night, I had to start my American Dad marathon just to cheer myself up. It was okay, but still couldn't make me forget how much I missed talking to you.
The internet connection at home has actually been really good the last couple of months. Before, it used to be okay in the morning, but would get slower and slower as the day went by. It went off for a couple of days in January, not long after we started this Brobdingnagian conversation. That caused me to have a mini breakdown too :) but it wasn't so bad because we were just sending 1 or 2 epic replies to each other every day at that point and I could send those from Psych or Mareel. They must have been doing an upgrade or something, because when the connection came back, it was really really good all the time.
I just hope it comes back on tonight because I want to tell you about Ignition, something I'm sure you're dying to hear about :) And I fear for the safety of anyone in the same room as me when I found out that it's still not working.
Actually, the thing that bugs me the most is that I can't read your messages, read your blog, see what you've been listening to...well, pretty much everything you share with me. Telling you about my boring days and ridiculous opinions on not very important matters actually doesn't seem like such a big deal in comparison, except for the fact I can't tell you how much you mean to me or how fantastic the stuff you've told me about is.
I hope I haven't freaked you out with the mobile phone thing. It was ridiculous that I didn't have a mobile anyway, so I kinda needed a push to get one. I don't have to give you my number if you don't want it, which is why I asked first. I'd totally understand if you didn't want it, and I'm not expecting you to phone or text unless you really wanted to :) I suppose the reason I haven't had a mobile phone for ages is that I've never really met someone I've wanted to be able to contact me anytime.
And there's actually only one reason I haven't told you my real name, and it makes me seem like the most shallow individual in the world. If you type my name and Shetland into the internet, you're extremely likely to come across a ghastly photo of me shaking hands with Tavish Scott! Seriously, that's the only reason. But it's just such a ghastly photo, I can't stand the idea of that being the image you have of me in your head. I'm seriously thinking of writing to the people who run that website and ask that they take it down :)
Anyway, I know your real name, and I still call you Lilly :)
When the internet comes back on, I'm so gonna make it up to you, I promise :) And I wanna listen to Lilly music so badly at the moment but I can't :( Damn these other office people and their mainstream radio stations. Am I incredibly silly to still absolutely love 'Girls Like Me' & 'Don't Save Me'. I'm sorry for being so 'poppy' :) But I need to work my way through the stuff you've been listening to the last few days. I'm starting to have a backlog of music piling up :)
I'm still claiming credit for Eternal Summers. Although I still think I should be the adoring you for them. Oh well, I adore you for a million other things :)
Have fun at the opticians. The same kind of fun I'll be having at Ignition :) Actually, I'd rather be helping out at your opticians, since it is supposedly the finest opticians in the land :) And I read on your sister's blog that the new window is up.
P.S. - So you conquered clothes mountain and turned it into a clothes hillock. You are a warrior! I shall immortalise your quest in a book. You can illustrate it :) What would be the symbol on your flag?
Ack! I've got about two minutes to write this and then i've gotta go to work.
Had to leave you a message though. A phone? A mobile phone?! You crazy boy but i'm well, extremely flattered. I don't want you to let loose your number here for any old person to see so i'll set up an email address for you to send it to later. But now i must dash! I've never dashed in my life.
Have fun with Ignition. Try not to pull a Carrie on everybody there!
Aw Lilly, you didn't have to leave me a message, especially since you're in a hurry. Very glad that you did, though :)
And that was very close, I almost sneak posted you again! I think I'll wait until it's closer the time to go home before I post this, otherwise I'll probably be tempted to write another one before I go :)
Don't worry about tonight, I can always come back to Psych or Mareel to use the internet. I'm really gutted I missed your message last night by about 4 mintues :( I would have happily stayed at Psych talking to you. Then again, my family would have probably wondered where I was :)
And don't think it went unnoticed that you listened to 'Ceremony' & the entire 'Power, Corruption & Lies' album this morning. I thought it was really sweet :) Honestly, you don't have to do these things just for me, I couldn't like anyone any more than I like you. 'Age of Consent' & 'Your Silent Face' are my 2 favourite songs from that album too :)
Did you ever stay up late at night to watch the BBC Learning Zone? I used to love to do that, especially for the ones on foreign countries. I can't be very bright, or I was very tired, but the only detail I remember is that they eat a lot of cakes in Germany and that Black Forest Gateau isn't really Black Forest Gateau unless it is made with kirsch. More cake! It never occured to me before, but that's probably why I remember it so well. I think I have a problem!
Also, I really don't mind spending money on a camera, even if it is just to take terrible photos for you :) Like a mobile phone, it's kind of ridiculous that I don't have one of my own. And I don't want to borrow one because I'm quite private about the things I do, and I don't want people to know or see what I've taken pictures of. Not that I'm gonna be taking pictures of anything 'bad'! I'm sorry, I don't make a whole lot of sense sometimes :)
Also, I'm gonna buy some cinema tickets today or tomorrow for the films you suggested. I'm gonna be quite fussy about when I go, because some of the screenings are bound to be quite crowded, so I might not see them all. I'm gonna be very geeky and study the cinema attendance figures for the last few weeks :) You should actually give yourself a pat on the back for making me get off my arse and do some things I'll probably enjoy.
Apart from octopus', sharks & flying, do you have any other phobias?
Have you ever written any stories?
Anyway, I really hope I get to talk to you later and that you're having a nice day :) I'll think of you humming my favourite cartoon themes to get me through Ignition.
I'm sorry for flooding your inbox with long messages before I've given you chance to reply. I guess I'm a little bit apprehensive about the internet still not working when I get home. And I probably won't be home 'til late as well. Anyway, like I said above, I'll drop by Psych or Mareel if I have to :)
Speak to you later, Lilly.
"I love you Dr Zaius!"
I would very much have liked to have been making paper planes out of the filing i had to do with you instead of making sure everything was in its rightful place. I did get to try on all the spectacles in the shop though. That was fun. I really must get my dad to test my eyes because either i'm just really sleep or everything's getting blurrier.
What did you think of Mr Harcourt? That's one of my favourites and he's just brought out a new album! Yay! I shall be listening to that tonight methinks :) And of course i was gonna listen to New Order after you sent me Ceremony. I'd forgotten just how good that song was. And the rest :) Are you gonna get their new album? I fear it. It sounds mighty dodgy in the advert that's being shown just now. Some bands just need to know when to stop! Ahem, U2. Never know though, it may be a masterpiece!
You so haven't freaked me out with the phone thing. Your reason is the reason i got a phone back in high school. I really didn't want one but then my, lets call them my 'high school Dex' came along and i wanted more immediate contact. It was a little blue nokia and all i really did on it was play Snake. I even sucked at that :)
When you report back to me about Ignition i'll set up a temporary email and you can send me your number and i shall torment you with more inane chitchat! I must warn you though, i have terrible phone etiquette. I hate to talk on the phone and i forget to reply almost all the time but i'll try to be better with you :)
Oh, and i won't try and track down you and Tavish Scott unless you say otherwise! Mighty intrigued though. Shaking hands with an MP, Dex? Shameful.
I forget that you know what i look like. You found me through Myspace didn't you? My silly face plastered all over the internet but funnily enough, when you type my name into google i don't appear even in the slightest! It's great. Adds to my elusiveness :) Not so great for potential purchasers of my future work though...Hmm. I may have to rethink this elusive game i'm playing.
I hope you're doing okay at Ignition. Is it torture? What're you actually doing? I should have asked that by now but y'know, i'm rude :)
i think you deserve tea and cake when you return home. I'm sorry it won't be lemon drizzle cake and Lilly tea but maybe one day! When we run that cinema and share a flat with many, many cats! That's such a nice thought. I almost wish i hadn't thought of it cause it has a high percentage chance of never happening. Hrumph!
Phobias? Oompa Loompas. I know. That's just stupid but i'm terrified of them. Especially when they sing :( No problem whatsoever when the munchkins appear in Oz but Jackass' Wee Man dressed up as an oompa loompa on a skateboard? Nope. Freaks me the fuck out. My family know this. They use it against me. The bastards! I will exact my revenge! Oh, yes!
I wanna go to the cinema with you :( Tell me how everything is and don't hold back on anything. Even Stoker. I must know if they're worth the money!
Talk to you in a bit Dexterous. Tell me all your Ignition stories :)
Lilly, the internet is still down. I could break down in tears, I'm so upset :(
I really wanna stay here at Psych and talk to you, but my family will be wondering where I am.
Please don't disappear Lilly because I've gone 2 nights without talking to you.
Can we talk tomorrow? I'm at Psych 9am-5pm.
I'll send you my mobile number as soon as you've set up the email. Promise :)
I'll be checking my internet obsessively throughout the night, but just in case:
Night night lovely Lilly. You're my best friend and I feel like I totally don't deserve you just now :(
Please don't reply just now, Lilly. I'll be gutted if I miss your reply by about a minute like last time.
I'm sorry if I'm causing you a ton of stress at the moment, but we won't have to worry about this again once you have my mobile number :)
You mean so much to me, I'd hate you to think I didn't want to talk with you. I want to talk with you all the time :)
Dex my dear, you really must calm. I'm not going anywhere, so a couple of nights of not talking is not going to be the end of your world. I promise you that. There will be days when we won't talk. There will be holidays and busy times. Deadlines, other engagements but we'll still talk. Who else would i want to talk endlessly about nerdy things with? No one on this planet. Not even in this universe. You and i? Buds for life.
So, in the immortal words of Douglas Adams:
'Don't panic.'
Your internet will return and we will continue this epic conversation but i need you to calm down a little, you're worrying me.
Here's something soothing and familiar and tremendous:
http://youtu.be/ahJ6Kh8klM4
And something nostalgically wonderful:
http://youtu.be/iB3K7eFFXHE
Have a not too stressful night buddy.
Hi Lilly
I'm a lot calmer now, despite the internet still being down. Sorry to worry you last night, I was actually okay when I got home and you'll be glad to know I went to sleep soon after rather than staying awake to obsessively check the internet.
Internet being down aside, I'd had a rather stressful day anyway. Loss of internet connection does not normally turn me into a crazy person. I know deep down that you're not gonna just disappear :) There was just a lot of other stuff on top of that.
Anyway, I have little choice but to be calm today. I feel absolutely shattered, and I've still got a full working day and another night of Ignition still to come. Need to conserve energy.
Nightswimming & Poddington Peas - Thank you :)
Hugs & happy vibes being sent your way. I'll tell you all about Ignition a bit later - the keyword was 'cold'!
Did you have an okay kind of day yesterday?
Speak to you soon Lilly. I was happy this morning to see a ton of cool stuff had been posted on your blog :)
2 more things I have to thank you for, that I had completely forgotten about but found through The Poddington Peas video - 'Penny Crayon' and 'Stoppit & Tidyup' :)
I wish you were going to the cinema with me too. I'll work out my timetable today and share it with you :) Would that be cruel? It's not meant to be.
You'd be amazed at the situations I've found myself in because of my inability to say 'no' to anything. Shamefully shaking hands with MPs, taking children horse riding (and having to wear a ridiculous purple and green head gear), completely freezing on stage when giving a speech. There's no beginning to my talents :)
I have to warn you, my phone etiquette is terrible too. I'm extremely mean to people who call my house. I always let them know that they're bothering me :) Then again, they're never for me.
Do you like the sound of your voice? I don't like mine. People always say that no-one likes the sound of their own voice, but I can't imagine Patrick Stewart or Alan Rickman have this problem. When I had to read out loud in English class, I swear I could hear a drone emitting from me. Hehe, I just remembered you telling me about reading a play (was it Romeo & Juliet) out loud in school, and working it out so you got the lines you wanted, and then the teacher gave them to someone else. What was it you wanted to do to him again?
Oompa Loompas. I totally get that :) Not that I'm scared of them, of course. I am a man without fear. Except of sharks in swimming pools!
I know you don't like sharks, but would you go to an aquarium with me? I think I could happily spend a day in an aquarium :) It's funny when they have restaurants in them that serve fish.
I'm sorry, but it's been difficult with no internet to find you some fun new things, so here are a few more of my favourite songs, not that you have to listen to them :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxnpACZUu4s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Am8Rm_k6-c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYTl1YA_uHQ
And one of my childhood favourites :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnrcg7Yx5xE
And I haven't even told you about Ignition yet!
How come you got to wear all the glasses? Was that work of play?
P.S. - lemon drizzle cake, Lilly tea, a cinema, a flat and cats. That's such a nice thought we have to at least try and make it happen. Maybe even with a house in the country too :)
Okay, Ignition, now that I'm on my lunch break.
Well, I got a lift up to Brae, and struggled to make a conversation with the driver. I did learn that in Mississippi they recently had a hail storm with things the size of baseballs falling from the sky, severely damaging houses and cars. I didn't think he was the kind of person who wanted to talk about Thundercats. "So, didn't Mumm-ra used to scare the hell out of you". Obviously, I didn't say that out loud :)
And just so you know, Mumm-ra still scares the hell out of me!
Then we arrived at Brae Hall, just in time to hear the 'actors' get their pep talk, before someone with a voice like a sgt-major ordered them out the door. I was sent to a place called the Delting Boating Club.
Okay, so this is what it was all about. Drivers pick up the 'actors' like they were hitchhikers. I so wanted to make a Rutger Hauer joke when I found this out, but I didn't think anyone would appreciate it. All I was thinking was "I wish Lilly was here". Then the hitchhikers tell them a 'car' story while they are being driven to a specific location to watch an outdoor theatre performance. And one of the locations was the Delting Boating Club.
All I was really doing was making sure the cars arriving for the performance knew where they were going and that they waited outside of the performance space until they were told where to park. Exciting, huh?! But not too difficult. Except for the fact that it was near-freezing and I only had my coat (and a high visibility vest that despite making me looking stupid, did stop me from being run over...just. I had a few close calls).
There was also a convention of grumpy middle-aged men taking place in the building next door and I don't think they were too thrilled at being stopped by an idiot like me asking if they were there for Ignition.
I did get to see the performance though :) I didn't really get it. There were 2 sets of couples dressed in white (the men looked like Colonel Sanders, one of them even had the same kind of facial hair) dancing like they were at an over-60s social club. At the same time there was a bunch of young folk doing some parkour thing to a car. You know what I mean, basically just jumping all over it. All the while, there was a strange narration and some music that I couldn't really hear because I was standing next to the light generator.
Then the drivers swapped hitchhikers and drove to another location. At the end, they all ended back at Brae Hall for some homebakes and tea/coffee! I wanted to go home after the performance, but the guy I was with wanted to go to the hall, so I just said okay. Anyway I got cake :)
I also found myself in the midst of a sing-a-long of various Shetland songs :( I did not join in, although I did smile and tried to look like I was having a good time! Especially since I ended up sitting next to the woman who had devised the whole thing, and another woman who got really (and I mean really) into the singing. I told you, I find myself involved in the most ridiculous situations because I just can't say 'no'. To be fair, some of the songs were quite sweet, and I may have enjoyed them if I'd been there with someone I like.
And there was 'The White Wife', a young woman who's been collecting 'car' stories from people. She talked for a little bit, and sang an ever so slightly lovely travelling song. That was about the highlight of the night!
So 8 hours of clerical duties, an awkward car journey, an hour and a half standing freezing in a car park, a sing-a-long, no-one to laugh at my Rutger Hauer joke, and coming home find home the internet still off. Is it any wonder I nearly had a nervous breakdown? :)
And I have to do it all over again.
"I know deep down that you're not gonna just disappear :) There was just a lot of other stuff on top of that."
Now that does worry me. You okay, Dex?
Ignition sounds...i can't think of a word! At least it didn't bore you to tears, sucks you got trapped into socialising though. I would hated being where you were. Especially next to someone loud. Ugh. I like people who can take charge of a conversation and do most of the talking because i very much lack the skills but some loud people are just too much!
I must prefer to be sat with them in a corner, enjoying the atmosphere but being far enough removed to nerd out with a friend like you!
Sad i wasn't there to give you a smile when you cracked your Rutger Hauer joke :( Am i the only one that appreciates your awesome humour? Can't be true. Just can't!
What kinda cake did you get? I haven't had cake in days! Just overdosing on Mini Eggs. I'm gonna make myself sick, i don't have your sugary stamina!
You know Stoppit? My sisters compare me to him. I'm a little menace that makes angry, grumbly noises a lot. Pretty accurate really :)
I get compared to lots of cartoons:
Boo from Monster's Inc.
Ducky from The Land Before Time.
Lilo & Stitch. Yeah, both of them.
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b276/Biajon16/Lilo.gif
http://i609.photobucket.com/albums/tt178/elegantlywasted/lilo.gif
http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lqquwpLT5P1qid9ybo1_500.gif
http://25.media.tumblr.com/e8c1a653a4ec0cab735cda6890473fe5/tumblr_mj2oy5kxlP1ruoor3o1_500.gif
Sums me up pretty well, don't you think?
I think i have to go watch it now, yes yes yes.
Mr Duncan, the wretched teacher that stole my Shakespearean thunder. I can't remember exactly but i do believe it went along the lines of bludgeoning him repeatedly with my copy of R&J :)
That was 10 years ago and i'm still pissed about it. Grumpy Lilly.
I don't mind the sound of my voice in my head but when i hear it recorded it makes me cringe. It's always so much higher than i expect. I always wanted a cool gravelly kinda voice. Like Emma Stone or Zooey Deschanel but alas i'm stuck with my middle of the range, not very scottish voice. Would be kinda awesome to sound like Patrick Stewart. Or James Earl Jones! When i say i woke up one morning and wanted to swallow the sun, it somehow just doesn't sound as good.
I actually like aquariums. But i would spend the whole time worrying the glass would break and a watery, creature-feature death would ensue. I can swim though, so that's a plus!
How you doing on the sleepy front buddy? I hope you're not too tired for your second helping of grumpy old men and out of control singing. You'll probably get cake again though :)
Ps. Mumm-ra scared/scares me too :)
Pps. I'm such a goof. Leave me your number in a separate comment and i'll just not publish it. I overcomplicated things! Hrumph.
I didn't even ask how you are today :( I'm sorry, Lilly, but you know that's so important to me. I must be too wrapped up in my own problems. But don't worry, they are not very serious. I just feel like I don't have enough time to myself at the moment. I wish I was just staying at home, watching my favourite things while talking to my favourite person. That's all I really want to do this weekend.
But with no internet, and being guilt-tripped into going for a meal on Saturday night, it makes me a bit grumpy. But reading your blog just now made me smile :) I'm sure I'll be fine tonight.
And I'm not sure how long the internet at home is going to be down for. Here's the problem:
http://www.shetnews.co.uk/newsbites/6505-broadband-outage
The joys of living on an island.
But I've been cheering myself up this afternoon by totally raiding your music on last.fm. I hope you don't mind. I like Fridays because I'm the only one in the admin office, so I can listen to Lilly music. And there was so much I liked, I actually don't want to leave work :)
Do you really go around biting people, pulling their hair and punching them in the face? Why am I even asking that? Of course you do :)
Hehe, I was gonna mention sending you a separate message with my number that you could just delete, but it sounded too easy :) I still have to put credit in my phone, but I'll try and do that as soon as I leave work. Not that I'm expecting you to text/phone me tonight, unless you want to :) I don't think there's much of a signal in Brae and I won't be home until maybe 10-11pm, but it's up to you. Seriously though, even though I always want to talk to you, I'm really not expecting you to call tonight so please don't feel like you have to.
And you never know, the internet might be up and running by tonight or tomorrow. Maybe :)
I'll say bye for now Lilly, I'm off to Ignition. At least there's tea and cake :) Not lemon drizzle or Lilly tea though.
P.S. - I'll send my number first.
Hrumph, so i may not get you back for a while then? Rubbishness. Although i do enjoy that we've gone back to epic messages again. Especially when i receive three or more even before i'm awake! :)
You can raid my Last.fm anytime you wish, you know that :) Did you find any unexpected musical surprises? I hope so. That's always a great old feeling.
Dex, if i could give you more hours in the day, i most certainly would. I feel exactly the same and i don't even do half as much as you. You should take a day. Just for you. If possible. Doesn't even have to involve talking to me. Just a day that solely revolves around you and what you need. I call them duvet days. You deserve one. And Lilly tea and cake!
I have never punched anyone in the face but i have bitten my foes on occasion. I've got teeth, may as well use them for evil-doing! Fanged Lilliputian :)
Ever punched someone, Dex? I bet you haven't. Not because you couldn't but because you're quite possibly the nicest human in existence. Or is that just to me? Are you really a mean old meanie?
Right now i'm listening to Beach House's album, 'Bloom' and for some reason it makes me think of you and Shetland. You know that little secret place you talked about? With the pond-like thing? Well this is the kinda music we'd listen to when hiding ourselves away there. Yessum. I've decided.
How's Ignition the second night running?
Maybe hear from you later?
I hope. At least.
Scampering away for family tv time. We're the epitome of the modern family and i loves it.
Nudge.
I like epic messages too :) But I don't know, they sometimes make you seem so far away. Does that make sense? Like we're pen-pals, which I suppose we are in a sense. When we're talking late at night, you don't seem quite so far away, and I don't feel quite as empty or lonely as I do at other times, like we're being a bit more intimate and all those things that I thought I was missing in my life, it's like I'm not missing them anymore.
I'm sorry to talk like that. I guess I just wish we lived in the same place. Would an anime trailer make up for it?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KAlFJMEGGE
I thought I might go and see Side Effects or Stoker tomorrow, maybe both, and Jiro on Wednesday. But it always make me a little bit sad to think of going to the cinema without you. Now even I know that is a ridiculous thing to think :) But that doesn't mean I feel any differently about it. It's just something we should be doing together. Like listening to Beach House in our little secret place.
While were on music, I really liked so many of the songs I listened to yesterday, but for some reason Prizma by Tamaryn really stuck in my head :) I actually had a slightly embarrassing moment at work yesterday. Someone asked me if the music I was playing was on the radio, or if I had actually chosen to listen to it. I told her I'd chosen to listen to it, and she said I blushed (!) and that it was the first time I had told anyone in the office about something I like! Then she called me an enigma :)
I suppose I am very coy about telling people about myself. You'd probably never have guessed that :) But just so you don't think I'm always the shy, quiet type I was sent this email the other day by someone at Mareel. It made me smile so much:
"...you are a tonic! Not a gin and tonic, just a tonic. What would we do without you to hurl abuse and brighten up the day..."
I like Mareel. It's full of people I can hurl abuse at! So maybe I'm not the nicest human in existence. I've never punched anyone though.
And I should have shared this with you ages ago, since you're such a word geek :)
http://www.shetlanddialect.org.uk/john-j-grahams-shetland-dictionary-intro
You'll be disappointed to know that I hardly use any of them. Bairns, spaegie & fantin are said quite regularly though :)
Epic! I had to split it into two :)
I might be going to Baroc, which is a Chinese Restaurant, tonight with some people from Psych. I missed the last night out, and I think they're starting to think I'm avoiding them. I really don't want to go, but I prefer restaurants to pubs, which is pretty much the only 2 options they give you in Shetland. It shouldn't be too late though and I'll take my mobile with me, just in case you want to send me a message. Hehe, we really are turning into a married couple :)
Can we watch Bowfinger when I get back?
Did you watch Diagnosis Murder? I'm ashamed to say this, but it was regular afternoon viewing in my house once upon a time. If only they'd made it like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYdRtBKuRlo
Dick van Dyke also played a murderer on Columbo. So did Leonard Nimoy & William Shatner (twice) Maybe that should be my specialist subject :)
I'm at Psych at the moment, because the internet is still down at home and looks like it could be that way for a while, but can we text later? I'd like that.
I know you said that you don't really like restaurants, but do you still go sometimes? Do you have any favourite places?
And you know I'm want to know how you are and what sort of day you've had.
I'm sorry that I sometimes struggle to think of questions, but I want to know all about you. Even subjects I have no interest in, I like hearing about when it's from you. You must have noticed that I don't need any prompting to talk about the most random things :)
P.S. - TV time with your family sounds awesome. It's something we just don't do in my house, ever. I'm a little bit jealous.
P.P.S. - A day just for me! That would involve American Dad, Camera Obscura & you. Especially you. I'm gonna go home and do the first 2, but I really hope that we'll talk later :)
Oblivion Island will completely and utterly (i type utterfly by accident there) destroy my heart. I feel bad enough about putting my toys in the loft! I must see it though. Must! And it's being released April 1st! Most excellent. I wasn't actually sure about the animation to begin with but the further the trailer went on the more it grew on me. Kind of adore your taste in anime, Dex :)
If only we could go the cinema to watch it together. They're not even showing Stoker here anymore. Gutted. So you must tell me what it's like! And Side Effects and Jiro! Especially Jiro. I'm gonna go see Trance with my sister. We're kind of nerding out about it. Hope it's good. It is Danny Boyle so the chances of being crap are slim to non-existent but you never know.
Don't be sad about seeing movies without me though. I'm totally there in cynical spirit. Shooshing you when you try and talk to me or make rustling noises - i will you know. Initiating thumb wars when the movie loses my interest completely. :)
You're an enigma alright. T'is why i like you so much. If you were one of the ordinary folk, i don't imagine we'd have got past 2 or 3 messages to each other. So your co-worker is mostly definitely right. And the one from Mareel. You're so a tonic to my days. I do believe i even called you a bandage once. Tonic's a nicer way of putting it. Yessum. I think i'm much the shame with the lack of sharing. I just imagine no one would be interested to hear all the silly, mundane stuff that's inside my brain.
Diagnosis was a lunchtime staple during college and uni. That and Murder She Wrote. And Neighbours! I've watched Neighbours consistently for 25 years. It's practically a religion. Yes, i'd rather worship Karl Kennedy than this so-called, God. Straight to hell. That's where i'm going :)
I cannot for the life of me remember the last time i went to a restaurant. They cost so much and i always feel guilty because i can never finish. I should really order from the kid's menu. They sometimes have better stuff anyway. Who wouldn't want a tiny pizza? I did used to like going to this place in Perth called Paco's. It has the best starters on the planet. Well, in a small town girl's opinion.
http://www.pacos.co.uk
They always play uptempo jazz and that's one of my fondest memories. PLUS! They had an oreo cookie sundae. Nom is the word, i believe.
Right, i'm off to choose a book for tonight's reading and watch something with the folks.
Hope you enjoy the movies tomorrow, Dexterous. I'm sure you'll tell me all about them. Well, you better :)
I wasn't sure about the animation in Oblivion Island either. I had to watch the trailer a couple of times before I decided to post the link. See, I'm quite persnickety about the stuff I link you to. Okay, I'm not:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3_uI86jxKA
And go to 2:48 to see just how much of a Transformers geek I am. That scientist is a fucking ninja :) I'm sorry Lilly, but I was just so delighted when someone pointed that out to me.
Speaking of Sam Rockwell, one of my biggest regrets is not going to see Moon when it was on at Mareel. You would never have let me miss that, would you? The number of amazing films I've probably missed out on by not having you in my life sooner :(
Hehe, Murder She Wrote. Don't you just love the ridiculous freeze-frames at the end of every episode? And one of my favourite things to do is count the number of Van Dykes listed in the opening credits of Diagnosis Murder and see if I can spot them in the episode :)
Can we go to Paco's? Those desserts! Nom nom! Why am I suddenly thinking of The Cookie Monster from Sesame Street? You did watch Sesame Street, didn't you? Do you remember The Cookie Monster used to present Monsterpiece Theatre under the name of Alistair Cookie? Fantastic! Sorry, but I just have to find you a link :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSiVZ524yW4
Karl Kennedy is indeed a legend, and he knows it. I haven't watch Neighbours since it moved over to Channel 5. Is he still together with Susan, or are they on one of their regular breaks?
And speaking of Australia, one of my guilty pleasures is Crocodile Dundee II. My brother and I can literally talk about it for hours :) It's so bad it's good. So much to enjoy, so many legendary characters, and so many fantastic haircuts. Rico, my favourite diminuitive South American drug lord. I'm really geeking out here, aren't I?!
I've been missing your blog so much these last few days. It's frustrating not being able to be at home at night and check on all the fantastic stuff you've posted. How unbelievably romantic was that story of the one minute silence? I love that these things happen in real life :)
And all the music I'm missing out on. Active Child, King Tuff etc. I'm actually looking forward to going into work next week!
I'm going to see Stoker tonight at 9:10pm. Side Effects is on at 4:10pm but I'm not sure about that yet. I might be a bit pushed for time, and Sunday afternoons at Mareel are usually quite busy. Jiro on Wednesday, hopefully. We're having roast beef and yorkshire pudding for lunch today. Jealous?
Oh, and please report back on Trance. I'm sure they'll be showing it up here sometime.
Thumb wars when we're sitting next to each other and throwing paper planes at each other across the cinema when we're not. Get up here now! :)
Last, and most definitely least :), how are you today Lilly? Are we going to watch something together soon? I hope so :)
P.S. - Last night's adventure was not very interesting. We didn't go to Baroc. Instead, we went to Monty's and had tapas, which was quite nice and quite filling, but they only offered you one choice of dessert and I wasn't in the mood for orange mousse. I wanted tiramasu!
Dinobots! Holy crap i'd forgotten about them. I really don't think i saw enough of the Transformers cartoon during adolescence.
Who was your favourite Sesame Street character? Mine was a toss up between Elmo and Grover and his worm Slimey. And The Yip Yips!
http://youtu.be/z_trSIBCgF0
We can most certainly go to Paco's. I'm terrible at ordering though. It's ridiculous how shy i can be.
I still hate even ordering tea, coffee, chai lattes etcetera at places like Starbucks. I am so tempted to give them a false name for them to put on my order, though. Something like this:
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9q8ukATmy1qk9ppso1_1280.jpg
I haven't seen Moon, we should watch that! I know i kinda flaked on watching Bowfinger but i'm so not getting the hang of this sleep early, wake early thing. Kinda messing with my time keeping. Maybe we should try movie during the day? Or i should just get my lazy ass organised!
Karl and Susan are currently divorced but very much gonna get back together and then inevitably break up again because Susan's being all high and mighty and Karl's impregnated another woman. Karl Kennedy, the Lothario of Ramsay Street. Who would have thunk it. He actually came to play at my student union when i was still there. I didn't find out 'til afterwards. I was heartbroken!
Do you ever feel like you want to stretch yourself apart? It's days like these i wish even more that i was a cat. When they stretch it looks so damn satisfying and i just can't quite reach that level of stretchy euphoria. I better come back as a cat in the next life. Or there'll be trouble.
So jealous you're seeing Stoker :(
And i love tapas! Damn you! But i do still have Tiramisu :) Buahaha. But if i helps, i read this message earlier and haven't been able to stop thinking about roast beef since. Goddamn we never have roasts in this house anymore! I need gravy :(
Vyalskit - the shetland word that best describes Fanged Lilliputians :) Yessum.
Well then, tapas at Monty's on a Saturday night is just another place we'll have to go when you come up here. I had an Irish coffee for the first time at Monty's the other night, to make up for not having a dessert. I didn't like it. Needed sugar :) The cream on the top was the best part.
I was thinking of something I'd really like to do with you, exploring the hell out of a city. Would you be up for that? What city?
How many rooms do you have in your house? What kind of rooms? Is that an okay thing to ask?
Have you bought your Easter Eggs? Do you buy your own, or do you exchange them like presents? You'll have to tell me what kind you get? The Chocolate Tasting Club sends us an Easter Egg & a selection box of mini-eggs. My parents are going to Philippines for whole of the school holidays, so I'll probably have to wait until they get back before I can get at them :(
I was reminded of something the other day, a cassette tape that I used to listen to in the car all the time on the way to Sandness - 'Stories For 5 Year Olds'. Is it embarrassing that we listened to it until I was about 15? :) But they were seriously fantastic.
There was Griselda the arrogant short-sighted goose. She thought she saw the gander of her dreams winking at her from across the road, but it turned out to be a set of traffic lights. Fortunately Hank with the honk, a Canada Goose was there to pick up the pieces.
Then there was a story about a boy who won a competition, and the prize turned out to be a small, grumpy Hippo who could talk. At the end, it turns out he got the wrong prize and he ends up with a year's supply of toothpaste.
Then there was a story about a girl who's unhappy because she's just moved to a new house. But she cheers up when she meets the 2 cats from next door, and they all have a tiny tea party amongst the bushes. I loved the voices of the cats, they were so cat-like, that's the only way I can describe them.
And my favourite, the one about the prince sent to rescue a princess from a tower. But the prince isn't so keen on the whole rescuing thing, and is far more interested in clothes. He sets off on his adventure wearing something extremely unsuitable that gets torn to shreds in no time. Then he meets a fierce dragon who starts laughing because the prince looks so pathetic. Finally, he gets to the tower, and finds it guarded by the Green Goggle, that can turn people to stone. He gives it something shiny to play with, and goes upstairs to rescue the princess. But she turns out to be an unpleasant sort, so he leaves and sets off on adventures with his new friend, the dragon :)
Seriously Lilly, why do you put up with me?
Here's some Patrick Stewart with hair :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dITMbk2wqA
Silly songs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzYzVMcgWhg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3t3IKlXqFU
And a not-so-silly song. I have to say I'm not his biggest fan, but this song is just part of the soundtrack to my life. You know, you hear something playing and it just seems to suit your mood so perfectly at the time, that it leaves a lasting impression and you can't quite get over it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnboZTs0ZXw
But end on a happy note, because that's how I feel right now :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZQz3dbn0Pk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqnXYXmAXq0
Getting into work to find the treasure trove of stuff posted on you blog is one of the nicest feelings. Sometimes it's good not having the interet at home :) Every cloud...
P.S. - And no, you shouldn't care. I'm 26 and I want those slippers too :)
Text later?
Oh, and vyalskit :) I had to look that up. I can't believe you just educated me on a Shetland word. I've been here for the best part of 26 years! Total word geek, you are :)
I forgot to answer the question about Sesame Street! Favourite character? Mr Johnson, who Grover was always irritating :)
And don't worry about Bowfinger. I've been out and about at night a lot during the last week, so haven't really had the time either. But movie watching, any movie you like, during the day would be nice too :)
Patrick Stewart looks so bloody weird with hair. It's just wrong. That is man that should always be bald. Yessum.
I didn't know you were a Garth Marenghi fan! I haven't seen all of Darkplace because the first time i bore witness to it was on a trip to London with the uni and we didn't finish it before we got there but it made a lasting impression. And just look at little Richard Ayoade being all sweet and such on a bicycle. I could just squish him.
You don't like Beck? Have to say i'm much the same but there are some songs that are damn fine:
Loser
Gamma Ray
Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometimes
Devil's Haircut
Novocane
Can't deny those. I always feel like i should listen to more of his stuff but i never seem to be in the mood. Love The Golden Age though. I imagine that's nice to have soundtracking your life :)
I can't find Bowfinger! Either i imagined my sister owned it or it's buried in the depths of her bedroom and i'm too afraid to ask her to find because you know what it's like. Someone asks you to find something lurking in your room and you make a total mess searching for it and then you're the one that has to tidy up! That sucks. But we will watch something. Even if it's a movie on the tv. Yup yup.
I want to borrow your Stories for 5 year Olds. They sound epic! Especially the Prince and the Dragon story.You've got good taste in unconventional fairytales :) I want a small grumpy hippo though. That's one of the best sounding presents ever.
Whenever i was going somewhere with my folks, we'd listen to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy on tape. I loved that. And The Chronicles of Narnia (The Silver Chair was my favourite) and The Lord of the Rings! I can't remember who narrated them but i remember being completely enthralled. I think i still have LOTR somewhere but not cassette player. Ucht. Bloody progression.
Can we explore Bruges? Do you have a good sense of direction? Can you decipher maps? Because i'm useless. I got lots in the college i went to once. I could not find the library. And this was a basic 'H' shaped building. I am directionally challenged.
Is there a city you'd like to explore?
My house contains 11 rooms and not one of them is empty. We're hoarders. I live in a bungalow that we've had extensions added onto, at the very end of a cul-de-sac in suburbia. Even though i live on an avenue, we possess no trees down my street. That's always made me a little sad.
How many rooms do you have?
Look at my bad manners! How are you dearest Dex? I hope work isn't boring you too much to tears and that the blog is helping you along. I don't know why i'm in such a blogging mood just now but i most certainly am. Look out for more stuff tomorrow or er today, i guess :)
Speak later buddy.
Hi Lilly, I'd ask how you were, but hopefully we'll text later & you can tell me then :)
I don't think I've ever counted the number of rooms in my house! It's a detached 2-storey house, I've noticed that much.
Downstairs, there's a bathroom, a living room that we had extended into a sun lounge a couple of years ago, the kitchen, the dining room (which we hardly ever dine in, we mostly eat in the kitchen), my brother's bedroom, and finally my room.
Upstairs, there's my parents' bedroom, another bathroom, and the music room, plus the attic.
We actually didn't have a front door for years, not until we built the sun lounge. The original front door was turned into a big window when I was very little. It used to amuse me to watch people struggling to find a way in, especially Mormons & Jehovah's Witnesses :)
Of course we can explore Bruges together. I think I'm okay with maps, although I did get a bit lost in Glasgow the one time I was there. I got confused because I didn't realise one bit of the map had been magnified, I thought it was a whole different part of the city (hmmm, this motorway shouldn't be here)!
I'm actually one of those sad people who buy Lonely Planet guides to places they will probably never go & make detailed itineraries of things they would like to do :(
Please don't demolish & put back together your sister's room just to find the cinematic masterpiece that is Bowfinger. This is all you are missing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlG3hzCuNj0
Hehe, I really do watch some silly things.
I think I'll be joining you in hell Lilly, since this is the book I have called my bible since I was a little thing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Heroic_Failures
It's still by my bedside.
Bank robbers discovering that their getaway car has been stolen, classic :)
And another thing from childhood:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5pOiyD4h6E
And some of my favourite toys:
http://www.retrojunk.com/article/show/2354/mighty-max-playsets
The best Christmas present I ever got :)
http://www.virtualtoychest.com/mightymax/mm_mnt_4_crop.jpg
Please Lilly, tell me about some of the cool presents you've got over the years.
And here's another secret about me. A more cheerful one :) You wouldn't figure me for the sporty type, but it's a law for boys in Shetland to have a football hero growing up, so I chose this guy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hriHFA1nv1s
I still think he's pretty awesome, and I don't even follow football anymore!
I don't know why I just shared that with you! Any odd childhood heroes you'd like to share.
Here's something else. I know they say you shouldn't meet your heroes, but I think Neil Gaiman would disagree (fast forward to about 4:00):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUJyU29XhSU
So much nonsense! You wouldn't have me any other way, would you Lilly?
Because it wouldn't feel right to be at work and not leave you something stupid (Luke Skywalker!):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb8fWUUXeKM
And do you remember this show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuNY5nYo0gY
Sonic cartoons:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6ofXo6l7dE
I'm sorry I can't find any new music for you at the moment Lilly to pay you back even just a little for all the amazing stuff I've found through your blog, but here are a couple of oldies:
My favourite Cure song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0N9yFcz4ho
And my favourite Rolling Stones song (not that I'm much of a fan)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKrr1cpSkwI
Dexterous, i should have replied to you by now and for not doing so, i suck. I'm quite tired - i know i just told you over text that i wasn't but i seems to have hit me all of a sudden - so i'm gonna leave responding until i can give it my full attention. I'm a loser, i know but i need sleeeeep!
Talk tomorrow, lovely.
x
^ That is very likely not gonna become a thing...unless i feel guilty. Heh :)
Aw Lilly, I don't want you to feel guilty for not replying to my nonsense, even if it does get me an x :) You take all the time you need. Remember when you were ill, you hardly left any replies for a few days and that didn't exactly discourage me from leaving my silly thoughts all over your blog :)
The internet was working when I left home this morning, so fingers crossed everything will be okay when I get home. Don't want to celebrate prematurely though:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FClsCA7DrLg
I'm at Mareel at the moment. Here are the films being shown next week:
The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
The Croods - 2D & 3D
African Cats
Grease (Singalong) - I will not be going to that even if you ask me to.
Madame Butterfly 3D
The Gospel According To Matthew
We Have A Pope
If you were up here in Shetland, is there anything you'd be dragging me to go & see, because I'd happily sit through anything that you wanted to watch. Please don't ever stop suggesting films just because you're worried that I won't enjoy them. I actually thought Stoker was okay. A bit odd, but good. I'd definitely go & see it with you again :)
And I just bought my ticket for Jiro tonight. I know I say this all the time, but I really wish you were here, if only to initiate thumb wars in the cinema :)
I'm going to Psych in a few minutes but here's a random question, because we don't talk about food enough :)
Do you like fish? Or pasta? We eat a lot of fish in our house (mostly haddock & salmon) and I really like pasta. Even just pasta, tuna & sweetcorn I find utterly fantastic! See, all these interesting facts you learn about me :)
I'm sorry Lilly I leave you so much rubbish to read.
I've got to go now & reply to a text from my best friend before I go to work :)
You don't need an x to tell you how awesome I think you are, you little CD thief.
Back online :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av8NTy5WkFc
Hi Lilly
I know we've been texting a lot lately, but I we'll still continue this epic conversation, won't we? I can't fit nearly as much useless information in a text :)
For example, today I thought I'd bore you with details about the routes I usually take from my house to my places of work (Psych & Mareel):
They both start off the same - down Westerloch Brae to Westerloch Drive, turn left and then take the path around Clickimin Loch (where there are usually lots of dogwalkers & joggers) until I get to Clickimin Leisure Complex, which I cut through to get to North/South Lochside, which is one of the busier roads in Lerwick. So busy sometimes, I have to use the traffic lights to get across.
If I'm going to Psych I will go up a pretty steep road called Hayfield Lane. Hayfield House, where the council's Education & Social Care department is based, is one of those buildings I really like, the kind that is just a maze inside. I like mazy buildings :) Then I cut through Bell's Road, which goes by Bell's Brae School (it can be quite busy in the morning when parents are dropping their bairns off), and then down through Montfield. Then I cut through Montfield Car Park to get to Burgh Road, then Union Street.
Here's a pointless fact. There is no permanent driving test centre in Shetland. The testers come up to Shetland & set up camp in the Islesburgh Youth Hostel, which is in Union Street.
Union Street also takes me by a place everyone in Shetland calls the flower park, which is just a big garden with a putting green & probably the only outdoor tennis court in Shetland, and finally ends up at the public library in Lower Hillhead. There are some stairs I climb to get from Lower Hillhead to Hillhead, and then I turn right and walk along until I get to a really small, steep lane called Bank Lane (probably called that because it runs down to the Bank of Scotland in Commercial Street). Anyway, Bank Lane is where Psych is based, near the bottom.
And Mareel, as if you haven't had enough by now :) Once I get to Lochside, I go up Robertson Crescent, along Haldane Burgess Crescent, then up Anderson Road to Gilbertson Road, then St Sunniva Street (which is where the galley shed is, the place where they build the galley for Up Helly Aa), Burgh Road, King Haakon Street, King Harold Street, then turn left at St Magnus Street.
It is a ridiculously long-winded way to get to Mareel, but I don't like walking along main roads unless I really have to. St Magnus Street does take me to Commercial Road (which is a main road), and I have to cross that and go down Brown's Road and that takes me to Mareel. Phew!
Aren't you glad I took the time to describe that :) I'm sorry Lilly, I know it's a pretty pointless thing to tell you, but I like telling you pointless things about my life. Is that okay?
I know I'm very boring, but I'd like to hear about your walks around Blair. I really would!
And Lilly, it has happened again :(
http://www.mareel.org/watch/cinema-listings/film-sightseers/
Why didn't you send out a geek-seeking missile to find me years ago?
Text later?
I know I just sent you a text telling you I was feeling a bit sleepy, but I hate to neglect your blog. And where else can I post random cartoon intros :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHLJDs9jAvk
Anyway, I might say have to go to sleep soon. I feel a bit guilty neglecting you though :(
Hi Lilly
I forgot to tell you I'd be at Psych today, 9am-5pm. I like you to know these things :) Then I'll be going home.
Haruki Murakami :) I don't know what to say.
Would you mind if I bore you with more pointless stories from my pointless life?
I never went to the cinema that much when I was in Edinburgh. In 1st year, when I stayed at the halls of residence, I sometimes went with a bunch of Shetland folk who were also staying there. I'm terrible at remembering the films I've seen at the cinema - The Grudge, Polar Express, The Manchurian Candidate, Man on Fire, Hero, House of Flying Daggers, Old Boy.
I remember going to see Man on Fire with a friend, jumping on the wrong bus, and ending up at an out-of-town cinema. We stayed to watch the film, but by the time it had finished we had missed the last bus, the place was shrouded in mist and we couldn't remember what direction was the way home. It was a very odd experience :)
After 1st year, I hardly ever went to the cinema (I couldn't really afford to) but if I did go, it was always by myself, and usually to the Filmhouse or the Cameo. I remember going to see Tell No One at the Cameo, which is a French film. Have you seen it? I remember it had U2's 'With or Without You' playing really loudly in one scene. Anyway, it was okay.
And I went to see those 3 Jacques Tati films over 3 days at the Filmhouse.
I suppose the main reason I didn't go to the cinema that much was because I just used to spend all my money on cds & dvds & books & Starbucks - the triple whammy of HMV-Waterstones-Starbucks :). I never got into music until I went to university. I'd never even bought an album before 1st year of uni. It was all so new to me. I remember going to the university library just to browse books in the music reference section just to read up on bands and albums.
It's funny, but the music I bought back then, I hardly ever listen to now.
I think I've told you this already but before Mareel opened late last year, there was no cinema in Shetland. The Garrison Theatre would show films occasionally, but they were always so crowded. I did go and see Toy Story 2 though :) It was a very long time ago. I remember I almost missed it because I thought it started an hour later than it did. I was absolutely mortified because I was supposed to be meeting friends there and I thought I wouldn't be let in because I was late. I almost didn't go, but my mum convinced me to and she drove me there in double quick time. I was very glad I went :) I also went to see the first Harry Potter film because my mum wanted to see it, and she didn't want to go on her own.
And 2 cartoons that scarred me for life when I saw them as a child:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ_TfuhzTP8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tlkf6zUcpg
I must come across as so self-centred because I seem to talk about myself all the time. I'd much rather listen to you tell me stories about your life.
I hope you manage to find some courage, Lilly. I really do :)
You must think i'm a complete dick for not responding to so many messages. I promise i will. I just don't seem to have the concentration to do so right now. But i am reading it all and growing to believe you are the most awesome person i've ever had the good fortune to know. Truly. There are people from my past that i thought i had a strong bond with but when i compare them to our friendship, they all seem somewhat superficial. Nobody else would call me the coolest girl in the world after hearing my slippers routine. No one! Thus, you're the best one. Yup.
I will send you an epic response when my brain feels less like grand central station. You deserve comprehensive, thought out responses. Not whatever this is...
Probably text you later dearest and thanks for being so nice to me today. I needed some kind Dexterous words :)
I'm going to our living room now to be forced to watch the last LOTR. None of us even like it, why have we watched them all this week?! My family makes no sense.
Hope you're doing something fun with your rentals being away. Get up to no good, Dex&Lilly style. You know what i mean. Overconsumption of tea and watching documentaries on Tetris :)
Hi Lilly
I'd actually written this before I read your latest reply :) And no, I don't think any less of you for not replying to my ridiculous ramblings on your blog. I think you're very sweet to put up with me. Please Lilly, you just reply to whatever you like, whenever you like. You're still my favourite person and that's not going to change. Anyway, it's not like we hardly ever speak to each other :)
I know it doesn't help much, but here are a few things that make me smile when I'm down. I know you might not be in the mood to watch any of them, but they are here if you want them. I guess it's my way of showing you that I care :) I just didn't want you think that I only care about you when were talking:
This cartoon played a big part in my childhood. I like it so much we actually have 2 copies of the entire series on DVD! The dog in this episode is one of my favourite characters ever :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0JLccrjFw8
Then there is this song that we had to sing along to in French class. I wasn't particularly good at it, but S5 higher French was possibly my favourite class to attend in high school.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeVJbhXuRek
And some dancing from 2 gentlemen I still quite enjoy watching from time to time. I'm so cheesy :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-84jOEmCf4
I still can't believe they only made 14 episodes of this. Then again, I always did seem to end up watching the same one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adDc9Vo-h_U
And a song that is a guilty pleasure. Acutally, I don't feel any shame at all :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmG7NfCdaCo
For some reason, I've loved it ever since I heard it in this film:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rw-1z9BFTU
And saving the best for last. Learning can be fun :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x88Z5txBc7w
I know we might not get to talk later, but I just want you to know that I'll be thinking about you, and that I hope things get better. You're the Maggot to my Fungus :)
Hmm, I think I wrote 'were' when it should have been 'we're' :)
Hi Lilly
I just like leaving epic messages for you to read when you open your blog :) I'm always thinking of stuff I can tell you about myself. I know I get carried away sometimes & hardly give you a chance to reply. Forgive me?
I don't have much on today. I have to go to my mum's nursery to feed the goldfish while she's away on holiday. According to Google Maps, it's 1.8 miles from my house to the nursery. Anyway, it takes me about an hour to walk there and back, along Sletts & The Knab. I'll tell you if I see any seals sunbathing on the rocks :)
I might pop to ye olde shops a bit later too with my brother. It really depends upon whether he's up for it or not. I don't really need any food, just an excuse to do impressions of Carl Grisson from Batman. That's always where our conversation leads us when we walk to the shops :)
"Is that you, sugar bumps"
"Maybe we can cut a deal"
"You are my number one guy"
"Jack, I need someone I can trust"
"Don't forget your lucky deck"
"Get me Lt. Eckhardt"
"Smart move, that's the way to go"
"I want you to personally handle this operation"
Okay, they only really work when saying them in Jack Palance's voice, but I haven't quoted in a while :)
Are you still sure you want to go for walks with me?
But no matter how much amusement I get from Carl Grissom, I will always think of Jack Palance as cinema's purest form of evil:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWnDVW07_1c
Favourite western ever :)
"So you're Jack Wilson"
"What's that mean to you Shane"
"I've heard about you"
"What've you heard Shane"
"I've heard that you're a low down Yankee liar"
"Prove it"
Just perfect :)
Sorry, I got carried away.
Important questions:
Favourite David Bowie song? Album?
Do you like Star Trek? What series?
There's quite a few to choose from but I'll be very dull and say 'Heroes'. Has to be the full length album version though, sod the single :) Hunky Dory for my choice of album.
I'm not much of a Trekkie to be honest, but I'd definitely choose Next Generation (well, from Season 3 onwards).
Did you know that every Sunday, Jingu Bridge in Harajuku is full of people dressed as anime characters (cosplayers)? I'm still thinking about that Haruki Murakami story :)
Do you want to know something silly? Well, I'm going to tell you anyway :) Calvin & Hobbes used to make me sad. I remember visiting your blog all the time & hoping that Calvin & Hobbes wasn't the first thing to appear because it meant that you hadn't posted anything new.
Your blog has been a part of my life since I was at university. It's just something I've done for years, checking your blog first thing in the morning to see if you've posted anything new. Even though we talk all the time now & I'm frequently hanging around your blog until the early hours, checking it for new stuff is still one of the first things I do every morning.
And I always have your blog open in one of my tabs at work because I know that if I'm feeling down, I'll always find something on your blog, or your Last.fm page, or your Deviant Art, to cheer me up.
When you disappeared for such a long time, it felt as though I'd lost a friend, even though we'd never met. I suppose that even though I loved exploring all the cool stuff you posted, one of the reasons I liked your blog so much was that I thought you were someone I could have been friends with in another life. When I was writing stories, you were the one person I wanted to share them with. I used to think it would be so cool if you posted one of them on your blog :) But I never made anything good enough.
I think that was probably why I never sent you a message. I thought you were just so cool, and so well read, and so knowledgable and so passionate about so many things, and so talented with your drawings, that I wondered why someone like you would ever want someone like me. I still feel that way about you. But I've learned to accept that, for some reason, you quite like me :)
I'm so glad I asked about 'Fright Night' :)
P.S. - I hope you know that even though I post all these things, I don't feel let down when you don't reply. I know you have a million other things to do in your life. Of course I'd love to hear about all the things in your life, and about all the things you've done and all the things you want to do, but I would never demand that you take the time to tell me. It's enough to know that we're friends :)
I'm glad you asked about Fright Night as well :) Super glad. How would i cope without my Dexterous to talk to all day? I wouldn't, that's how.
I hope all the blogging i've done over the past while has made you reconcile with Calvin & Hobbes because they should never make anyone sad. Never ever. They're too damn special. Like Pinky & The Brain and Fungus & Maggot. They should only bring dastardly cheer. Hopefully i bring you some dastardly cheer as well. If not, i'll up my game. Goldfish Boy :)
I still want to read one of your stories. You're not a good judge. Just like i'm not a good judge of my art. You should definitely let me see some. But if you can't, i understand. I only post the stuff i deem good enough on the internet. Not the drawings i cringe at. Nuh uh. That would be too brave! And we both know i'm a total wimp.
Did you know - of course you wouldn't, i've never told you! - that i was terrified of Urpgor from The Dream Stone when i was a kid. Zordrak was a fluffy bunny in comparison to that bespectacled madman!
Speaking of bunnies. Without even thinking about it, i put my rabbit sheets on my bed a few days before today. Easter.
http://images.anorakonline.co.uk/images/products/zoom/1341349167-17072800.jpg
I always seem to do stuff like that. I once turned up to uni in a white shirt with red polkadots on it. It was Red Nose Day. I only realised after i got home. I must have looked like such a nerd!
Ever done anything like that m'dear?
Dex? This is selfish but can we start anew with the messages. I feel like i've got too much to catch up on! Plus we talk all the time and our never-ending conversation has moved on since you left me all these lovely messages. So, is that okay? I doubt we'll lack for new things to say :)
I would like to hear more about Lerwick and the different routes you take to get places. For some reason i really enjoy hearing about it. I'd explain Blair but it's so not scenic and pretty like Lerwick sounds. It has some pretty good views from up the steeper points of the town but not much else.
I did see that they have finally torn down the old cinema. I was really sad to see the bones of it.
http://www.d-luxwebdesign.co.uk/quinns/history.html
http://mycancerousbeloved.deviantart.com/art/Midnight-Coward-71989333
It'll be flats soon. Wish it was a cinema instead. I mean who needs a place to live when you've got movies?!
Oh well, maybe i'll get to show you what they've made it into someday. That'd be cool :)
Talk to you later Dexterous.
Ps. Why in the world were you afraid of Pingu?! He was the bomb :)
Pps. Listening to Black City Lights :)
So you wear checked pyjama bottoms & a blue american school school sweatshirt, and sleep in a bed with rabbit sheets. You are the coolest girl I know :)
I once brought a tennis racket with me to a cinema in Edinburgh to watch the film Wimbledon. You see, we were originally going to play tennis but it started to rain, so we decided to go to the cinema instead. It never even occured to me until I got back to my room just how ridiculous it must have looked. I still cringe at the thought.
Quinn's Picture House looks like it was a really nice building. Did you ever manage to look inside? I hope you don't mind me saying that your drawing looked like something from the graphic novel 'From Hell'. That's a favourite of mine, especially the drawings of London's architecture.
Oh Lilly, you lovely creature, of course it's okay to start anew with the messages. You never did have anything to catch up on. I only left all those stupid messages because I care about you. I mean, you're so far away & I don't know how you're feeling a lot of the time, if you're unhappy or upset, or you need cheering up. I suppose that in my silly little brain, I thought that it might make a difference to see that I'd left you a message. I'm sorry I left so many.
P.S. - It wasn't Pingu who scared me, but the sea lion in his dream :)
P.P.S. - You bring me more dastardly cheer than anyone else in my life :) I honestly don't know what I'd do without you. I don't know how you could possibly up your game. Maybe by moving to Shetland & sharing a flat with me :) And I've totally gotten over my issues with Calvin & Hobbes, ever since you came back to your blog :)
Hi Lilly, just because I like to tell you these things...
I'm going to the nursery soon to feed the goldfish. I forgot to tell you their names. Nemo & Spotty. Nemo is a monster, and he's turned almost completely white. He looks like a ghost fish :) Spotty is smaller. He used to have a black spot on his head, hence the name, but that's disappeared.
It's a really nice day again in Shetland. If you were here, you could have come with me to feed the fish. It's a nice walk along Sletts. You see a lot of the sea. I'll take a photo. Sletts is just a small path. It's not even on Google Maps. It starts just before you get to Brevik House (which is where my dad used to work for the health board) and ends up at Breiwick Road. So the path takes you along the waterfront on the south side of Lerwick and around the back of Brevik House, the Lerwick Health Centre & the Lerwick Hotel. I'll always remember that the house by the first gate used to have a dalmation that would bark and frighten the life out of me :)
Then I'm going to Psych. Actually Psych is not just the Psychological Service, but also the Sensory & Communication Service too, working with the visually and hearing impaired children. It's really quiet over the school holidays because most of the staff only work during term time. Usually there's about 12 people working in the office, but in school holidays it's just 4 or 5.
So that's quite a round-a-bout walk. To get from the nursery to Psych, I walk down this steep road called Gressy Loan, then along Twageos Road, so more sea :) This time looking east to the island of Bressay. I used to work on Bressay, at the school.
Anyway, sorry to bore you with my travels around Lerwick. I'd never get all that on a text :)
I know we text all the time, but do you mind me still leaving messages on here? Maybe we could still talk on here from time to time, like when we're watching films together. Are you still up for that? I'm think I'm gonna go on a small Amazon shopping spree tonight :)
I know we can't do it all the time, but I really enjoyed last night :) Text later?
P.S. - I'm sorry you had trouble getting to sleep last night. I could recommend some videos. Okay, maybe not :)
P.P.S. - Otis Redding & I Like Trains. Still working through that list :) And practicing taking photos with my new camera.
Is it okay if I still link you to anime that I think you might like? I'm much better at finding anime than I am at finding music.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ8JRfsurt4
If your last.fm page is anything to go by, you'll at least like the song playing through it :)
So proud of you dearest :)
Of course, while you were busy drawing & being the most awesome creature I know, I was repeatedly watching & listening to these 2 music videos from Donora:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cas6q0FFNQk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKaFX_mQBhU
Maybe you'd be better off finding someone cooler to hang out with.
Hi Lilly
I know you don't feel like talking to me at the moment. That's okay. I'm not upset. I miss you when we're not talking, but I think I understand. Well, as much as one person can ever really understand another person's feelings. I just don't want to lose you. I'll keep sending random messages until you realise that it's okay we're best friends :)
Did I tell you that we still have our old Sega Master System? It's in Sandness, in the spare bedroom (my bedroom when I'm there, which is almost never, although it doesn't have a bed. It does have a sofa bed, but that remains permanently in sofa form because I used to prefer to bring my sleeping bag and sleep on a mattress on the floor). Anyway, the old console is still plugged into the small tv and still works as far as I know. The two of us have to go there and play it. Add that to the list :) And I still have all my old games for it. Obviously 'Alex Kidd in Miracle World' because it is built into the console (I don't think I ever completed it. My dad did. He wrote down all the info needed to defeat the bad guy's henchmen at the end of every level. You see, you had to beat them at a game of rock, paper, scissors before they would let you pass and it was always the same combination. But we lost the bit of paper he wrote it all down on. I remember the henchmen had hands for heads, shaped like rock, paper & scissors).
And a ton of other cool games :)
Shinobi, which was the first game I ever bought. It has a ridiculously easy cheat to access all the levels. Press down + button 2 at the title sequence! Hah, old controllers - a direction pad and 2 buttons.
Dynamite Duke, which was the first game my brother ever bought, at the same time I bought Shinobi. Mum & dad let us pick one game each :)
The Ninja - friggin' impossible.
Air Rescue - helicopters rescuing hostages while terrorists aimed rocket launchers at you :)
Afterburner - a bit like Top Gun.
Alex Kidd in Shinobi World - Alex Kidd as a ninja. Fantastic :) It was much shorter and easier than Miracle World
Sonic, of course - I used to love the level where all you had to do was jump up a massive waterfall. It had really catchy music :)
Sonic 2 - which I hated. You were expected to use these hang gliders, and I never got a handle on how to operate them. I kept crashing and dying. Grr, it still makes me mad.
Taz-Mania - fantastic, as you'd expect :)
Mickey Mouse & The Castle of Illusions - I loved that game. It only had six levels but I remember them all: the forest, the toy factory, the chocolate factory, the library, the clocks, and the castle.
Asterix & Obelix - I preferred to be Obelix :)
The Terminator - based on the first film so you had to be Kyle Reese.
Double Dragon - I loved playing that with my brother. I was always the red one. Did you know they named the bad guys after characters from Enter The Dragon. I bet you're glad I told you that :) We came up with our own names for them: Whip Lady, Big Bad Bobo etc. At the end you had to fight each other for the girl, but it turned into a race to kill ourselves as quickly as possible because the one left alive had to kiss her. Yes, we really were that immature :)
Still best friends? I'll let you play on my Sega Master System :)
Hi Lilly
I'm working at Psych today until 5pm, then Mareel from 5pm until whenever. Just letting you know. Old married couple talk again :)
But that won't stop me from bothering the hell out of you. Hehe, I'm like that Archer clip. Lilly, Lilly, Lilly, Lilly, LILLY! This is the really catchy music from the Jungle zone in Sonic for the Master System. Well, I like it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJQyydpX7fU
More to follow, you poor girl :)
Right, just before I get down to doing the BORs (Box Office Reports), here are the films showing next week:
Trance (have you seen that yet?)
Finding Nemo
The Croods
Mama
5000 Fingers Of Doctor T
Broken
What do you think, my go-to-girl for just about everything? I feel slightly melancholic going to the cinema these days, wishing that you were here to initiate thumb wars with me :)
Text later?
Hmm, i'm gonna recommend:
Trance (even though it only got 'okay' reviews)
Finding Nemo (but only if it won't bum you out too much to see it without your LMM)
Mama
and
Broken (oh my goodness, that just looks wonderful)
I adore the Sonic Music but i can't bear to hear videogame music when i'm sitting next to someone. My sister plays on her iPad and i just wanna kill her when these twinkly, 8-bit noises start appearing out of nowhere and i'm trying to watch something. But when i'm playing, it's a different story! :) I like my double standards.
"Still best friends? I'll let you play on my Sega Master System :)"
Ucht, you are just my favourite person. Hands down.
And you send me awesome Anime to look at that has my absolute favourite song of Florence's from Lungs, which totally means you pay far too much attention to what i like. You crazy, loveable boy! You are extra good at finding anime though. I might have an amazon accident this month and quite a lot of it will be the anime you've told me about :) Awesome, Dexterous.
I think we should resurrect the epic messages we leave each other on here. Okay, i should because well i've been pretty poor at it lately but you're costing me a fortune with all this texting! Not that there's anyone else i'd rather spend my money on so we could talk nonsense through the early hours but guh, how will i ever buy all my nerdy t shirts to make you jealous with if my phone gets all my money?!
Did you work two jobs today, dex? I have this feeling you did. Yeesh. The most i did today, was do the laundry and go for a walk with my mum after she got home from work, which was extra nice. I forgot that i live in a nice place AND that if you go out at the correct time, all the dog-walkers are out and we both know how much i love the canines of Blairgowrie and indeed, the world. No pugs though. I was a little disappointed. I wanted to see them waddling down the street with their funny wee stumpy legs and chubby tums. I'm still tempted to ask the owner if i can play with them every now and then. Canine therapy. That's what it'd be. Totally legit.
Are you still jealous of all the goodies i got for Easter? :) Buaha. That'll show you for having Pop Tarts and Rich Tea Biscuits all the time!
My sister actually gave me some more easter chocolate because everyone at work got a Lindt chocolate bunny...i did not because well i'm never really there but hey! i'm on the payroll dammit! So my sis bought me a bag of mini malteser bunnies (NOM) and a kinder egg. If i don't get as cool a toy as you did, i'm gonna be pissed.
Now i want something sugary.
Ps. Don't listen to I Like Trains on a regular basis. They're the most depressing band i have ever some across. Ev-er.
I just realised I don't like walking around Lerwick so much in the school holidays. Too many people getting in my way. Too many children, and mums pushing prams. I'm such a grump :) You should walk on the path around Clickimin Loch with me. It's full of dogwalkers. I'd actually love to have you there to deflect all the attention away from me. I get a little bit nervous when dogs come up to me.
Have you ever seen sausage dogs? At least, I think that's what they're called. I might be wrong, I frequently am. But the dogs that are sausage shaped and have really short legs that you can't see so that when they are walking it looks like they're floating along the ground.
That was nice of your sister :) I hope you get a Tron bike from your kinder egg. A different coloured one (mine was blue). Then we can have races. I'm sure the kinder egg toys have improved since my day. I actually had to assemble the bike that I got!
Did you play Pooh Sticks when you were younger? The game where you race sticks by droppping them in a stream.
I did do two jobs today. I was at Psych from 2pm until a little after 5pm. Then I went straight to Mareel and was there doing the BORs until about 7:30pm. And I stupidly volunteered to help out at another event :( I wasn't even asked! I just heard Amy saying she was struggling to find people to help out at some events, and these are my exact words:
"I don't mean to sound a like total crawler, but if you're struggling to find people you can always ask me".
So a week on Saturday I'm helping out a Pink Floyd tribute gig until 1am and I only have myself to blame.
I haven't played a game console since the last time I went to Sandness. The last console we had that I played regularly was the Dreamcast, and even then it was only Sonic Adventures & Dead or Alive 2. I sometimes wish I'd got an N64. GoldenEye and Mario Kart are 2 of the best games ever made. We had an N64 in the 6th year common room in high school and would play those 2 games all the time. University too. A friend of mine had one in his room. I probably should have studied more and played Mario Kart less.
Hehe, the texting was costing me a fortune too. But it all seems worthwhile after talking to you until 3am.
I did the laundry today too :) Well, I washed it last night & hung it outside today before I went to work and brought it in again when I got back. Exciting stuff! Did you hang your washing outside? Have I ever asked a more pointless question?
I'm very jealous of you and your easter chocolate :) I didn't get any easter eggs this year. Next you'll be telling me that your sister has just done more baking. My mum was right not to trust me to eat sensibly while they're away. Today I had a Cadbury's flake for breakfast (yes, you read that right), some M&Ms & sour skittles for lunch, and free damaged cheescake for tea. I should be ashamed of myself, but I'm not :)
Do you know I've grown a little bit fonder of my town because of speaking to you? Trying to describe it to you has made me realise that there are quite a few nice places we can go :)
You've also turned me into a total cat spotter :)
Would you believe that there are some days when I struggle to think of things to say on here? I love talking to you, it's my favourite thing to do, but it's the days when you don't feel like talking that I try and make an extra effort with my blog postings, like I have to do the talking for both of us :) It's the least I can do for you when you're down. I just wish I could do more.
I'd like to walk around Blair with you. I'm glad you think you live in a nice place. How are your knees?
Of course I pay attention to the stuff you like. I spend my days at Psych raiding your 'loved tracks' on last.fm to help get me through the day :) That's how I know you love that Florence song and why I was so happy when I came across that clip. I know I link you a lot of random stuff, but I have moments of inspiration :)
Thank you so much Lilly. You've totally got me looking for new stuff again. I thought I'd lost that feeling forever.
And just because I like you so much, we can have pets when we live together. Any pets you like :)
P.S. - I want a bag of mini malteser bunnies. Why doesn't my sibling bring me these things?
Hi Lilly, it's my lunch hour here at Psych so I thought I'd write you a short message, let you know what's going on my head at the moment :)
Do you know what Shetland lacks, apart from my favourite person of course. A really good hotel. In Lerwick there is The Grand Hotel, The Lerwick Hotel, The Shetland Hotel & The Queen's Hotel. Not that I have any experience of staying in any of them. But there's nothing above a 3-star rating. I've been to the Shetland Hotel a couple of times in the last year to eat in the restaurant with people from work. I remember we had our Christmas night out there last year. I had a car and was the only one not drinking so I ended up driving them to the pubs afterwards. It's no fun ferrying drunk people around. I've said this before but it 'bears' repeating :) Pubs in Lerwick are fucking awful.
The Shetland Hotel is on Holmsgarth Road, near the boat terminal (where the boat to Aberdeen sails from). You drive past it on your way out of town if you're going north.
The other hotels I have almost no experience of. The Lerwick Hotel I was in not that long ago for lunch and had a really nice soup :) The Queen's, not been there for ages, not since we shoved a relative there who we didn't want staying with us. And the only time I've been in the Grand Hotel is when delivering film leaflets for Shetland Arts, not my favourite job in the world.
Anyway, none of this matters as you'll obviously be staying with me :)
Here's a something random: almost everyone in Shetland calls mainland Scotland 'down south'. So if someone asked me where you lived, I'd say you lived 'down south' :)
And here's something useful if you'd like to know what kind of art and craft things we (well other people, not me personally) make in Shetland. http://www.shetlandartsandcrafts.co.uk/Craft-Trail-2012.pdf
P.S. - and how are you today? :)
I almost forgot to say thank you for Miracle Mile & Lavish Hush. Totally made my morning :)
And here's another anime. It's a bit different to the others. I'm not sure how you feel about comedy anime. I'm sorry if it's not your kind of thing.
Ouran High School Host Club
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRmCeI0zNF8
Here's the ridiculous thing I was talking about. I really am the world's biggest loser.
Bleach
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKp6htvbCLs
D. Gray-Man
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgQcqJMJVkk
Soul Eater
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfTytHVNhGE
Honey Pie reminded me of a funny incident that happened in Edinburgh. The Beatles albums were just about the first ones I ever bought. They seemed like an obvious choice. So I bought Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt Pepper, The White Album, Abbey Road, & a 'best of...' cd. Anyway, one morning I was approached in Princes St. gardens by 2 homeless men. I was a bit apprehensive about what they wanted, but then one of them said "what's your favourite Beatles album?". I gave an honest answer and he turned to his friend and said "okay, so that's 11 for the white album" :)
Do you want to know my favourite songs from the white album? Tough, I'm going to tell you anyway:
Dear Prudence
The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill
Happiness Is a Warm Gun
Martha My Dear
I'm So Tired
Blackbird
Rocky Raccoon
Sexy Sadie
Revolution 1
Honey Pie
Cry Baby Cry
I also bought a lot of David Bowie. I bought cds of Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, Low, Heroes, Scary Monsters and another "best of..." (no wonder I never had any money to go to the cinema) Was the documentary last night any good? I was obviously watching Family Guy :) Random opinion alert. Teenage Wildlife is an underrated song.
Remembering all the cds I bought, I suddenly realise how much I'm gonna miss HMV :( Is Fopp still around?
More boring Shetland stuff!
The public library in Lerwick is in a converted church. It's not quite like the one in 'Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade' :) It's on my way to Psych. I sometimes drop in to read the encyclopedias because we don't have one at home. Do you have an encyclopedia?
And the Shetland Museum is a really nice building. It's right next to Mareel, on the waterfront, and has a nice restaurant called 'Hay's Dock'. The library and the museum used to be in the same building, a rather unattractive place next door to where the library is now.
I place I used to go a lot as a child is King Harald St play park. It's opposite the flower park. They both lie in the space between St Olaf St & King Harald St, separated by King Erik St. Do you have a play park near where you live?
Anyway, I'll give it a rest now. But I have to leave you something silly. You might not like this show, but I hope you like the clip because I don't know anyone who loves words more than you :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOSYiT2iG08
I forgot to mention that in Family Guy last night, as well as Stewie calling someone an apple-john, in the other episode Peter did the Judd Nelson fist pump at the end. Hard to believe there was a time when I didn't know what either of these things were. I'm a better person now, for sure :)
A week on Saturday I will be volunteering at this event in Mareel:
http://www.shetlandboxoffice.org/whats-on/macfloyd
I suppose it could have been worse than a Pink Floyd tribute act, especially since it says they'll be playing the entire 'Dark Side of the Moon' album. I'll be there from 6pm-1am :( but I'll take my mobile with me so we can indulge in some sneaky texting if you like. That'd cheer me up.
After we said those things to each other earlier this evening (which meant a lot to me, I want you to know that), I dusted my room, hoovered or vacuumed the hallway (which do you say?), and had a shower to get rid of the smell of unwashed boy :) I bet you just love hearing about my exciting life.
You'll be happy to know I've been drinking copious amounts of tea since my parents went away. I think I'm on 6 cups a day. Is that nothing to you? And eating a lot of rich tea biscuits. Talking of biscuits, do you remember party rings & those pink waferish biscuits (I can't remember what they're called)?
I've also been thinking about parties I went to when I was a child. Most of them seemed to be in swimming pools and we always had ice-cream floats for dessert. I think it's just ice-cream in coke. I miss party bags! And I miss the burgers at Clickimin cafe. Shetland doesn't have a fast food chain store, but the burgers they used to have at Clickimin were just the best :) The cafe is still open, but they don't serve burgers anymore. Pity.
I'm taking over this conversation again. Sorry! You know I don't expect you to answer my silly questions. I just like leaving things for you to read, and it's nice to think that someone doesn't mind my ramblings.
P.S. - I'm watching Heat too :)
Hi Lilly
I don't know if you're still asleep. I quite like writing to you, so you have something to read when you open your blog. I hope you don't mind. I say that a lot, don't I?
Would you like to know some more things about me? :)
At Christmas, I used to go to a place in England called West Kirby. It's somewhere near Liverpool, on the coast. You can see Wales across the sea. We used to go there because that's where my dad's side of the family lived. Only my uncle lives there now. But we used to spend Christmas with him, my grandmother, & my dad's sister's family. They lived in Hoylake, which is right next to West Kirby. I don't know if we'll ever spend Christmas there again since veryone apart from my uncle has either died or moved away. To be honest, I was never that fond of staying there. The house was a bit small for all of us, and 2 weeks is a long time. I think we all got on each other's nerves by the end of it :)
But it was okay, even quite nice sometimes. I used to go for a lot of walks by myself in Stapledon Wood, being starved of trees in Shetland :) There's a viewing point there that has this sun dial that tells you what you can see if you look in each direction. On a clear day, if you look NE you're supposed to be able to see the Isle of Man, but I never saw it.
West Kirby also has the man-made 'Marine Lake' that you can walk around. I also used to walk to Hilbre island. You see, when the tides are low you can walk across to the island, but you have to be careful not to get trapped by the high tide.
I used to go to Liverpool a lot when I stayed in West Kirby. It's only half an hour on the train. I pretty much only went to Waterstones, HMV & Forbidden Planet, which was exciting for a boy who lived in Shetland with none of these things. Sometimes went with my dad and uncle to the museums and galleries. My mum once sent my brother and I to chinatown to buy some stuff from the supermarket there. We ended up carrying this 10kg bag of rice between us through the streets of Liverpool :) Also ate a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, an interesting experience.
At the house, we did a lot of crosswords (usually the Guardian crossword). I'm terrible at them, and my dad and uncle were so good at them, so I only ever guessed a few words. I also got to hand out the presents because I was the youngest, and they used to send me outside just before New Year because it's supposed to be good luck to have someone with dark hair be the first person to enter the house! I hope they got that right, otherwise I spent 5 minutes in the freezing cold every year for no reason.
From West Kirby, we sometimes went to Chester Zoo. It has a bat cave :) And I once got very excited when I saw a tiger from really, really close up. They also had a leopard (or it could be a jaguar) in an enclosure, but it was like Jurassic Park. I couldn't see a thing. Actually, I think I did see it once, from very far away.
I'm sorry Lilly. All these things must make me seem like such a ridiculous human being. Probably because I am. You know I'd like to know so many things about you, it's just difficult to think of questions sometimes.
Hehe, I meant to say that if you looked 'NW' you were supposed to be able to see the Isle on Man. No wonder I couldn't see it if I was looking 'NE'. My stupid brain.
And I never expect you to follow my links, as they invariably lead to something not worth anyone's time, but I like leaving them anyway, just in case you need cheering up. Well, they cheer me up. They probably annoy the hell out of everyone else :)
Asterix, because the cartoons & comic books were very much part of my childhood:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtEkUmYecnk
And a silly cartoon that I never knew existed before today - Spliced:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyhwVEz8jSU
Talk later?
Would you be interested in seeing a photo of me from about 5 years ago? I found it on an old friend's facebook page.
Here you go :) I don't like this photo either but it's probably the only one anyone has of me on their facebook pages.
I'm the one on the right, with the dark hair. The guy on the left is Scott. He was one of my best friends growing up. The other guy I don't know so well, although you wouldn't know from the way I was leaning on his shoulder :) And the guy who's page it's on is not in the photo, but his name's James (or Jimmy according to his facebook). He used to live up the road from me in Westerloch Brae. His family still live there.
I think this was the last time I went out with my old school friends. It was taken in Edinburgh at a birthday party.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=522735317681&set=a.506020229851.2077514.61012051&type=3&theater
I know we texted at 10am this morning, but I still like leaving stuff here for you to read :)
I never did get around the watching American Dad last night. I ended up watching The Mummy, Taken & Family Guy (I absolutely love the Star Wars episodes). The Mummy was a film I saw in the Garrison Theatre years ago. I almost always watch it, or part of it, when it's on, which seems to be pretty much all the time. Taken I watch because I kind of like kidnap films. Not depressing kidnap films, but kidnap films with a lot of action & the victim always being rescued at the end :)
I mentioned this ages ago, but Breakdown with Kurt Russell is one of my favouritist things ever :) A kidnap film set in Hitcher country. Yay!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRCKKlTNxt8
Hush too. Have you seen that? The guy who plays the trucker who you never see is played by Andreas Wisniewski, who played Necros in Dalton Bond film 'The Living Daylights'. Bow down to my geeky wisdom :) I'll even link you to TLD even though I know you don't like Dalton Bond. That's the kind of guy I am :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZTrb49wi3o
I've gone through some odd phases in films over the years. There was my Steve McQueen phase. Bullitt is still fantastic, and I love the title sequence. It's so 1960s:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S__L_OQe6NE
And my Arnold Schwarznegger phase. Commando is maybe the movie I quote from the most. I can't believe I haven't mentioned it before:
"Let off some steam, Bennett."
"Remember when I promised to kill you last. I lied."
"I eat Green Berets for breakfast."
"Don't disturb my friend. He's dead tired."
"Hey girls, wanna see me kick some ass?"
"I'm not going to shoot you between the eyes John. I'm going to shoot you between the balls."
"Cutting a little girl's throat is like slicing through warm butter."
"Why don't they just call him Girl George."
"You fucking whore."
"Do you know what today is Matrix? Pay day."
"This place used to be good for hunting slash."
Classic. And the accents. Haha! Just fantastic. It even has Dan Hedaya as a South American dictator :)
Ugh, FFS, do I really watch all this stuff? Will you still talk to me?
I thought I'd at least try to find you something nice so you'll like me again after all that. I know how much you like Edgar Wright and his cornettos. Did you watch a series called Look Around You? Here's Mr Wright experimenting on ghosts:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk1ELdPIN4A
Best friends again? Text later?
Oh, and I realised that yesterday I wrote "I ate a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown, an interesting experience." Yes, that would have been an interesting experience :) Of course, it should be "...ate at a Chinese restaurant...". Why do I make so many stupid mistakes? :(
Just because I like you. A lot :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUXPsxNQNgA
Aw man, i fricking love you Dexterous.
Right back at you, Lilly :)
Wizard rock. And anime, of course. I think it's pretty obvious why I chose to post this :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOETp2yrazE
I know I'm at work, but I came in 1/2 and hour early, so I could take 1/2 an hour off later in the afternoon to write this. You're probably wondering why didn't I just stay at home and write this and go to work at the normal time. Because I'm crazy :) You like my craziness though, don't you? Anyway, it's really quiet at work.
I'm taking next week off. Do you want to do something? Like watch a film together, or I could go around Lerwick with my camera and we could text at the same time :) Is that a stupid idea? Spending a day together going around Lerwick, despite one of us not really being there.
I thought I'd go and see Broken on Wednesday night. I missed Mama. They only showed it on Fri and Sat night, and there was no way I was going on my own. I'd only go if you went with me. I'd like to see a horror film with you on a Friday night at Mareel :) Not sure about Finding Nemo. I've seen it plenty of times before and I might be too sad to see it with my Maggot. Can we have a Pixar season in our cinema? Trance, I'm half-tempted to go tomorrow afternoon.
Would you like to hear about foods I don't like? Well, I'm going to tell you anyway :) Hah, I think I say that about every second post.
Celery - can't stand it.
Ginger root - although I don't mind it in baking and I love those really thin ginger biscuits (I think they're called ginger thins). Ginger beer, on the other hand, is one of the most disgusting things ever concocted.
Onions - although I'm much better at dealing with them these days. One of those things I just wouldn't eat as a child. I like onion rings though, and I don't mind red onion. No, I don't understand it either :)
One of the things I used to hate most in the whole world when I was a child were burgers with onions mixed into them. I used to peer very closely at any burger I was given. Didn't care for onions on my pizza either.
Fish sauce - The smell is just appalling.
Dried fruits, specifically raisins and its close relatives. I can just about manage raisins in bread & butter pudding (call anything pudding and I'd probably eat it, I even eat Christmas pudding even though I can't stand it. Bizzare). Tiffin is maybe the worst dessert ever invented. Having said that, bad memories from school dinners may play a part in that. Someone brought some baking into work a few weeks ago, and there was something with raisins in it that might have been tiffin that I happily ate 4 pieces of. Hmm, this isn't turning out to be much of a list. It seems I'll eat just about anything these days.
Egg sandwiches - actually, Zlotys put some egg in their tuna salad rolls and I like them. Umm...
Mince and tatties - used to have to eat that every week at school. The dinner ladies would send you back to your seat if they thought you hadn't eaten enough. You used to have to try and sneak past them.
I used to really not like butter. When I was really small I used to really liked toast with melted butter, but for some reason I went totally off it. Back on now though :)
And back onto travels around Lerwick. There's a place near where I live that I used to go with my mum and the children she looked after, to feed the ducks, but I can't remember where it is :( I think it might be somewhere near the Kantersted Rd / Seafield Rd area. Something to look for and take a photo of.
Do you usually buy Blu-ray, given the choice?
Back to work. I hope you're okay and still comfortable. Text later?
"...too sad to see it with my Maggot". Ugh, every time :(
"...without my Maggot". That just had to be corrected.
Hmm, you learn something new every day.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=eiffel%20tower
Do you remember the chess painting in Anouk Griffioen's photograph? It's by an artist named Rinus van de Velde.
You're smashing :)
Oh well, it didn't take much skill to find out his name. I just emailed Anouk Griffioen and asked her at 12:00am last night. She emailed me back at 4:01am this morning. I thought that was ridiculously nice of her, I didn't even expect to get a response. She even used a :) That's her daughter in the photograph.
Aw Dex. You did that? For me and my crazy need to know? Where in the hell did you come from and what did i do to deserve a friend like you? Seriously. You rule.
Well, I couldn't find any anime music videos :)
I'm a loser. I've watched Cowboy Mmmbop about 20 times!
That doesn't make you a loser. That makes you infinitely cool in my book. My book may be a book of losers though...
Well, you're the only one I tell these things to. It's weird living somewhere for the best part of 26 years and not having one friend you can talk to about the things that make you happy.
Well it's lucky you spoke to me then, cause i'm all for the things that make you happy. Especially when they come in anime/90s pop packages!
Yeah, I give you anime/90s pop packages, in exchange for all the stuff on your blog. You're not exactly getting a good deal.
I think it's a pretty sweet deal, thank you very much.
I think you're pretty sweet :) Did you just throw up all over your laptop?
Repeatedly :) It was horrific.
Was that 'spending the day going around Lerwick together despite you not really being there' a stupid idea?
Uh, no. But it might be a little difficult as you have the whole 'walking and texting' dilemma.
I'd still like to :) If you didn't think it was too ridiculous a thing to do.
Go for it bud. We talk all day anyway! may as well get some scenery out of it.
You don't mind all the talking, do you? I must seem a little bit needy :(
If you're needy, then i'm needy. Don't fret so much dearest.
I love your blog and your artwork, Lilly. I know we're friends, but I'm still a fan too :) Finding out the name of that artist was the least I could do for you.
You know i was thinking about this little blog of mine just a few days ago and thinking how now's the only time i've really enjoyed doing it. I think i was too concerned with coming off a certain way. A way that wasn't me. If you look back, it isn't as unashamedly nerdy and i didn't talk like i would normally. I was trying way too hard! And that's kind of me in a nutshell with the general public but this is my blog. Emphasis on the word 'my'. I don't have to impress anyone and that's very freeing. Who knows, it might get nerdier around here as i get older :)
I'm glad you enjoy doing your blog. That makes me happy too :) I still read everything that you post.
Everything, everything? Do you still shake your head in dismay at some of the things i post? :)
Hehe, I think our opinions differ on some things. And everytime that happens, I like you a little bit more :)
Well that's a strange but welcome reaction!
Right, Dex. I'm off to bed. Some serious sleep needs doing. You should do the same. I insist.
G'night buddy :)
Night Lilly :)
Hi Lilly. I know I should be working, but I don't want you to think I've forgotten about you :) And I forgot to thank you for 'Lose Control'. Just fantastic!
I think I've mentioned this before but I didn't link it. This is one of my favourite things, a live version of Joy Division's Atmosphere:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShL-160gCkM
One place I've been once before, that I've always wanted to go again, is Bath. I know it's not very exciting, but can we add it to our list? I don't even remember doing anything particularly memorable while I was there, only that it was really quite nice (the hotel, the architecture, the fact that I was allowed to wander around the city by myself). I thought that it was the best thing in the world when I was kid, to have a hotel room to myself and watch Cartoon Network all night :) Our Cartoon Network holiday, we're still on for that, right?
I really haven't been to that many places in England. I've only been to London once, when I was very young. I don't remember much about it, except that I think I had to sit through a pretty boring lecture in the Tower of London. My cousin (the one who lives in Aberdeen and whom I did not have any intention of marrying in the grand old Shetland tradition) goes to London quite a lot because her husband's family live there. Pointless information :)
My cousin and her husband used to live in Swansea, then Cardiff, before they moved to Aberdeen. I once visited them in Swansea on my own. I travelled there from West Kirby, where I'd just spent a hellish 2 weeks looking after my grandmother because my uncle (who usually looks after her) was away on holiday. She was so critical it was unreal. I spent every night on the phone to my parents, complaining about how I was being treated. They still apologise for sending me there. I had to escape to Liverpool almost every day, just to get away from it all for a few hours. Not that I hold a grudge :) And I'm sure she was only so critical because I really was so useless at everything.
Anyway, I travelled to Swansea from West Kirby by train. I was there on my 21st birthday. Was involved in a car crash :( Not great. Wasn't too serious, though. And I still had a fairly nice time. I like my cousin and her husband. And they seem to like having me around, which is nice :) They were both working on my birthday though, so I spent the day on my own. I went down to the beach, rolled my jeans up and went in the sea. Not quite sure why I did that. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. At night, we just got pizza and watched tv. They did offer to take me out drinking, but I was pretty much the same person then as I am now :)
It's nice that they live in Aberdeen now, because I can visit them whenever I want. Of course, being an exceptionally lazy individual, that has only been once in the last 2 years :) I stayed with them for about a week. I didn't do much, went to HMV, Waterstones & Starbucks (yes, I know, that's pretty much all I seem to do when I go to a city). I can't stand the high street in Aberdeen (Union Street). It's horrible, but there are some okay places just off it. I went to a really cool second hand bookshop. Y'know, kinda maze like, on several floors, books everywhere.
I should go back soon. I could always drop down to Blair for the day and visit you, if you'd like :)
P.S. - I wish it was August 27th soon. Can we just designate another day as 'Lilly day'? Then I'd have an excuse to give you presents :)
Triple-whammy of awesome songs. You're totally soundtracking my day :) Adore you buddy.
Even though you hate me, you'll still be my go-to-girl, won't you? Please.
Here's a list of the films on at Mareel next week:
Jack The Giant Slayer
Charlotte's Web
The Paperboy
Identity Thief
Robot & Frank
For the love of God don't go and see Identity Thief. No no no. I love Bateman and McCarthy but that's gonna be a piece of shit.
See Robot & Frank instead and maybe The Paper Boy but i'm not sure that's worth the money. More of a home buy.
And i don't hate you. I hate that you have pancakes and i don't. Hrumph.
I know I mentioned it last night, but Broken was fantastic. I wouldn't say it is a sad film, but it's definitely emotional. The girl sitting next to me certainly thought so. It's a funny feeling, sitting through an emotional film next to someone you don't know, and then you make eye contact at the end and give each other a slight smile because you've just shared the same experience. I really wanted my Maggot sitting next to me :)
I have a feeling I'll be going to the cinema quite often on a Wednesday night. I think that's when they show the less mainstream films.
You should come up to Shetland for the Screenplay film festival (31st August - 7 September). You could stay with me and we could go to the cinema everyday. As I've found out from your blog, they've shown some pretty awesome films at the last few festivals that I've completely missed. And if they are not showing anything we want to see, we can just stay home in bed and choose our own films. I'm being totally serious :)
Hehe, I remember Goosebumps. Scary as fuck! The episode I'll never forget is 'Stay Out Of The Basement' with the plant dad. Did you get the books from your school book club? I'll tell you something I always got from the school book club, 'Mr Majeika' books. Do you remember him? He was a teacher & a wizard. And his adversary Wilhelmina Warlock. And, of course, Hamish Bigmore :)
I'd completely forgotten about another story in 'Stories For 5 Year Olds'. The one with the children who live next door to a giant, who's not very nice and has a doting mother. The children kick their football over the wall by accident and he refuses to give it back. Which gives rise to a line that I still use today :)
"What's yours is mine, what's mine's my own".
But it turns out he's pretty lonely, and they all become friends at the end :)
Anyway, here are a couple of silly things :)
Another anime music video. I'm sorry, did you just let out a groan? :) Hah, I actually look on your last.fm page before posting these to see if you like the songs. But I didn't find this one, so you might hate it. I really hope not:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXhqAgPxUNA
And just some another really stupid Transformers video. I must have a twisted mind, because I always thought I could see something sexual in most of these clips too :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aT1GfPlKNfo
I do apologise, most sincerely.
Text later?
P.S. - Adore you Lilly, for recommending awesome films, for brightening up my day with your blog, and for having a last.fm page that I can raid while I'm at work :) Oh yeah, and for letting me call you Maggot.
P.P.S. - I can't help feeling that I'm just talking about myself like a really self-centred person :( Should I be asking more questions?
You must think there's something wrong with me, that I keep posting here, telling you pointless details about my life and linking you to rubbish things that I like.
But it's the only thing I can do for you. That's pathetic, isn't it?
But here's something that I thought was brilliant - 20 obscure movies. I'm particularly fond of the Samurai Cop clip :)
http://www.totalfilm.com/features/20-awesome-obscure-movies/samurai-cop-1989
And a song you've probably heard before and can't stand - Sea Birds by Burning Hearts:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJVYNu9-QVQ
P.S. - My internet is down at home again :(
This may seem quite random, like most of my replies :) It's okay if you don't have time to read them, I'll keep leaving them anyway. Just because :)
A place we used to go when we visited West Kirby was Cheshire Oaks. According to wikipedia, it's a designer outlet, but I always called it a shopping village. Apparently, it has 145 stores. One of my favourite memories is of walking past a couple of gentlemen having a conversation and hearing the line "she's my mum, leave her out of it". Fantastic :) The Blue Planet Aquarium is really close by. It may be the only aquarium I've ever been to and I think I've only been there once, but it must have made an impression. For some reason, I really want to spend a day in an aquarium. I know you don't like octopi, and probably a million other sea creatures, but would you go with me?
Another memory I have of West Kirby, is of walking to a pub/restaurant with my family on Boxing Day. It was miles away, and when we got there we discovered that it was fully booked. I was so pissed off you would not believe :) On the way home, we stopped at what I thought was a pretty grotty establishment (although that opinion probably had something to do with my mood) and got something to eat, but I was so miserable I didn't order anything and then ended up stealing everyone's chips. I was a horrible little sprog :)
I think I've told you before that I've been on holiday to Norway & Sweden. We should go there too :) Norway's just lovely, with the fjords and mountains and valleys. That's definitely the best part about it. I have relatives living in Norway, so we had somewhere to stay. There used to be a boat from Shetland to Norway and you could take your car across, but that has stopped now. When we were driving through Norway, we used to stay overnight at these cabins in camp sites. As usual, one of the most vivid memories I have is of something so stupid. White eggs! I don't think I've ever had white eggs anywhere else. I also remember my Norwegian uncle making us venison meat balls, and that he had a huge collection of antique radios.
We also had to sit through my auntie and uncle's wedding video, which was so ridiculously OTT, that my brother and I were thrown out of the house after laughing all the way through the first 5 minutes :) I remember we went for a nice walk down to the marina instead. A lot of people in Norway seem to spend their summers painting their wooden houses!
In Sweden, we stayed with a teacher who had visited us in Shetland. That's where we had the cloudberries for breakfast :) We also stayed with a dentist (being the bunch of freeloaders that we are), who's from Sweden but lived in Shetland for a long while. I remember the rest of my family went to visit a taxidermist who had a massive collection of stuffed birds (Psycho!) that he had to keep in a secret location for fear of vandals. I didn't go, just because I wanted some time to myself. We also went to visit the dentist's old family home, which was a little bit depressing. It was so neglected and there were these old cars everywhere, turning into rust.
This is terrible, but I also can't remember the name of the city in Sweden we visited. I remember that it looked very clean and that it was full of students. It wasn't even that long ago (2004).
And a couple of silly clips:
Patrick Stewart & a cat :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyfCprHXRE0
Hamlet in Frasier
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43ilXxZz1RU
And does it make me a complete loser to see something on your blog, go to your last.fm page to find a song, then go to youtube to find some anime? :(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1Fs20C9ACE
Hi Lilly
More randomness :) - I have a soft spot for Cary Grant. Here are a couple of clips from a film I like very much - Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZwOGVWqHAw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32JWUyd1Fw0
Other films with Mr. Grant that I have in my collection:
Bringing Up Baby
His Girl Friday
The Philadelphia Story
Arsenic & Old Lace
North By Northwest
I know I'm so fucking useless at this, but I've been trying to find music for you tonight. This is the best I could come up with:
Ume - Sunshower
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjjWa2koGzA
Dex, i wish you wouldn't put yourself down as much. You just introduced me to a song i'm going to have to listen to on repeat, which i may not have done without you. That's an epic thing to do for someone in my opinion. So quit with the self-deprication or i'll ban you from receiving my wondrous texts.
I won't make excuses. I'm not replying to your lovely messages because i'm truly fucking lazy right now. It's a shameful way to behave but i'm too lazy to do anything about it. Hah. You should ban me from your wondrous texts!
I'm gonna try and get some sleep now. And by sleep i mean 'read until i'm exhausted'.
Never forget i think you're the greatest, buddy.
Night night lovely Lilly
You know I don't think less of you for not replying to my messages. I just leave them in case there's some small chance they might make your day a little bit cheerier. That's all :) It's no big deal. Save your energy for more important things.
Same with texts. I know there are some nights when you're busy or just don't feel like texting. That's okay too. It doesn't make me think negative thoughts about you. Ever. I still miss you though :)
You waste far too much of your cool t-shirt fund on texting me anyway :)
P.S. - Please don't stop texting me because I'm so down on myself. It's really difficult not to be sometimes. I'll really try to get out of the habit though. Talking to you helps :)
I've been thinking (I do that sometimes). When you come to Shetland, we should stay in the house in Sandness. We could turn it into our lair and fill it with a ton of cool stuff :). I think my room in Lerwick may be beyond all aid, but my room in Sandness is crying out for a makeover. There is nothing in it except for a sofa, a small tv and a Sega Master System. Honestly, that is all that I have in my Sandness bedroom. It needs Lillifying :) Just think of what we could turn it into.
I like the house in Sandness, even though I hardly ever go these days. It's small but it has a cosy feeling, if you know what I mean. There's only 2 bedrooms, a living/dining room, a kitchen, a bathroom & a utility room. The view from the living room is really quite lovely. It looks out onto Norby loch, and in the distance Papa Stour (an island) and the sea. Because it's facing west you can watch the sunset. I'd like to watch the sunset with you in Sandness. We could go down to the beach or our secret place.
Anyway, I've always found the house in Sandness to have a really nice atmosphere. Even though there's not much stuff, it doesn't feel bare or cold. I'm sure we could make it even more homely :)
Then again, I don't know if you'd like to spend your summer with me in a small cottage in the middle of nowhere. We could always drive into town and go to the cinema if we ever got bored :)
There's also a small garden shed full of tools. Don't want to forget to mention that :) And a garden of course. A nice garden. A bit bare, but the kind of garden you can happily run around in like an idiot if the mood takes you :)
My uncle in West Kirby has a shed that has a slide back roof and a big telescope so he can watch the stars. He also has a big table with a train set up in the attic. I used to like playing with those :) And another telescope too. He's really into astronomy. And peeping into neighbours windows :)
I see they're having a sci-fi day on Film4 today and showing Nausicaa. It's a really good film, but I don't watch it was much as some of the other Ghibli films I own. I think maybe because it is quite a bit more serious. And maybe I'm the only one in the world who finds the child's voice in the theme tune a little bit creepy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zH6qN2dNZ0
One of my 'I always watch this' films was on last night, 'Clear and Present Danger', and I missed most of it :( Harrison Ford's Jack Ryan is the most fascinatingly dull hero in the history of cinema :) And I would watch the film for this scene alone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJlmYy-mAZY
What do you think of John Carpenter films? I think I could spend a weekend watching Halloween, Escape From New York, The Thing, Assault On Precinct 13. And I know it's not a Carpenter film, but throw in 'The Warriors' too. It's kinda his style:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqzyM155zEA
Speak to you later, Lilly :)
I just thought you might need cheering up. I'm sorry if they have the opposite effect :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvWfbIe4X_4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMRo5XCKddQ
Would you like to hear about my adventures at Mareel last night? Well tough, I'm going to tell you anyway :)
Actually there's not much to tell. I was at Mareel from 7pm until a little after midnight. At the beginning of the night I was on cloakroom duty, so not very exciting. As well as giving people a ticket with a number on it, I also had to write the number on their wristbands with a permanent marker. It's pretty useful when drunk people come up to you at the end of the night looking for their coats and have lost their tickets.
But most of the night I was on the balcony watching the performance. Have I mentioned that Mareel has an auditorium? I may have given you the impression it was just a cinema. Well, they have an auditorium too, where you can go to watch bands or other various things. Or you can watch from the balcony upstairs. So that's really all I was doing. I was supposed to be making sure that people weren't misbehaving, but there was hardly anyone else watching from the balcony, they were all downstairs.
The Pink Floyd tribute band were actually okay. They could have been much worse. I went in during the first half of the show and heard Welcome To The Machine, Mother, Young Lust, Echoes, Another Brick In The Wall, Shine On You Crazy Diamond and maybe a couple more, but I can't remember what they were. Then again, Echoes and SOYCD were pretty long so maybe there wasn't any more. Then I went on a break and missed almost the entire 'Dark Side of the Moon' :( which they played in its entirety. I came in just as they were playing Eclipse. But I managed to hear the last few songs they played (Pigs On The Wing, Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun, Wish You Were Here, Comfortably Numb). I was so tempted to call you during Wish You Were Here so you could have a listen :)
There were quite a few of them on stage. I think there were about 8 (3 guitarists, a drummer, a keyboardist, a saxaphonist, and 2 backing singers).
Afterwards, I just helped out in the cloakroom again, and then went home and made some pancakes :). The rentals (hope you don't mind me stealing your word) came home this morning on the boat so I went to pick them at 7:30am.
Here's some Aberdeen to Lerwick ferry info for you in case you're interested :) The boat either leaves at Aberdeen 5pm or 7pm & gets into Lerwick at 7:30am If it leaves at 5pm, it's because it's stopping off at Orkney along the way.
I've only been to Orkney once. You used to able to get off the boat and wander around for about an hour before continuing on you journey, but you can't do that now. All I remember is getting fish and chips in Kirkwall :)
Oh well, I've bored you for long enough. And I'm not quite done yet :) One of the things we always used to listen to on car journeys, apart from children's stories and classical music, was the 'Best of Peter Cook'. I think I still have Not Only But Also on tape somewhere. Anyway, here are a couple of sketches from that show. I wouldn't say they were hilarious, but there's something about them that I find strangely appealing.
The Making Of A Movie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfMZnhYfPWc
Bargo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGVcgZkMxWk
I don't know how you're feeling today so here's something that I hope will make you smile if you're feeling down :)
An anime about cats.
A song about cats.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4ULQIEF9ow
Just so you know, I'm working 9-5 tomorrow but I've taken the rest of the week off. I like to tell you my schedule :) I don't know what I'll do with my holiday. I really should make a start on Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. I hate saying that I'm going to take photos because I never do, but I will really try this time, I promise.
Hehe, I pretty much ate all the food in the house over the last 2 weeks. All that was left when my parents arrived back this morning was pancake ingredients. I think my philosophy on life is 'why go shopping for food when you can make pancakes'.
Have you been to 'The Hill of spells'? We could add it to our list.
I'm sorry I don't always check to see if you're okay. I feel a little bit awkward asking it sometimes, but you know how much you mean to me. You would tell me if you weren't okay, wouldn't you?
P.S. - Do you remember the crypt idea you came up with? :)
Hi Lilly. More randomness. I know it's mostly nonsense, but it really does matter to me that I leave you something, just so you know I haven't forgotten you. And considering all the amazing stuff I get from your blog and other pages, it's the least I can do. And I like doing it too :)
Do you ever use the word 'eppy'? According to the urban dictionary it means:
'Short for "episode" in the sense of an argument or a huge row.'
'to get very upset indeed and usually freak out at someone. A violent outburst.'
I only mention it because it's a word I haven't thought about for a long time, but I used to say it quite a lot. We used to have a depute-head teacher at the Anderson High School that everyone called 'Eppy J'. To be honest, I think it was a little unfair. I never witnessed her having an eppy.
I remember you telling me about the massive fight that broke out at your school, but I really have nothing comparable to tell you about the AHS. My time there passed by without much incident :) But I'll have a think, there must be something.
I always used to be one of the first people to arrive at school. My dad would give me a lift in the morning on the way to work, so I'd get there between 8am and 8.15am every morning. I was quite often on my own until about 8.30am when the school buses arrived. I never ever got the bus to or from school. I used to walk home every day. Sometimes I would stop by Brevik House (where my dad worked). Often he wouldn't be there because he was in a meeting or something, but they would always let me wait. "Is my dad in?" I would ask the girl in the office next door, and she was always very nice to me. And then I ended up working with her, years later at Shetland Arts :) And she doesn't look any older which seems a bit odd.
I used to go to the methodist church in Lerwick when I was younger. It was okay because my best friend went too. The children would have to sit through some of the hymns and a bit of the sermon, before being sent down the stairs to sunday school. I used to be very suspicious of what the adults got up to after we'd left :) And then I went to this after school club at the church with the same best friend. We did have to listen to a bible story at the end of it all, but most of the time was spent playing pool and table tennis. We used to play this game where you form 2 queues, one at either end of the tt table, and then you'd play one shot and have to run around to the other side and join the back of the other queue. Does that make sense? I'm terrible at describing these things.
Oh, and one of the methodist ministers used creep me out because he looked like the evil vet from Beethoven :)
Did you have sleepovers when you were younger? I used to, all the time. I used to go over to my friend's house and play Star Wars. He had a ton of Star Wars toys :)
I used to have a really close group of friends in my 2nd year of high school. A little gang :) We used to have a film night rota where we'd go over to each other's houses one night a week. I remember all the fizzy drinks and haribo :) We used to have tv football watching nights too for the big european games, although I was never really into football as much as the others. We used to play it all the time too, indoors at Clickimin or on any patch of grass we could find outside. A few of my friends were in Shetland football clubs (I never was). And football on the playstation too!
So a lot of football in my life. Especially considering the fact that I didn't especially like it. But there was more to it than that and it was quite fun at the time :)
P.S. You're always introducing me to songs that I have to play on repeat. Thank you :)
Signing off Tom Tucker style :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keBqXrihP8w
I discovered today that there's a place in Yell (an island in the north of Shetland) called Giggleswick, which means 'dangerous open bay with little shelter'.
It's ridiculous how little I know about Shetland or how little of it I've seen, considering I've lived here for the best part of 26 years. For example, I've never been to Eshaness, which is supposed to be the most scenic place on the islands. I didn't even know where it was until about a week ago! It's in the north west of the Shetland mainland. The north of Shetland is somewhere I'm really unfamiliar with. I've just never really had any reason to venture up there. East to west (Lerwick to Sandness) and east to south (Lerwick to Sumburgh airport at the very southern tip of Shetland) have pretty much been my only 2 routes of travel in all the time I have lived here.
I must have gone to more places when I was a child, I just can't remember them. Anyway, Lerwick to Sandness has quite a few places along the way. The route varies a little depending on whether you leave Lerwick by the south or north exit. If you leave by the south exit (which we tend to do because it's easier if you're living in Westerloch) you head towards Scalloway, which used to be the old capital of Shetland.
Actually, Scalloway is somewhere I've been quite a lot. I used to go to the swimming pool there all the time. I remember that it was quite nice. I've told you before how much I like the country swimming pools :) Before Clickimin swimming pool was built, the main swimming pool in Lerwick was near the Town Hall, and I didn't like it at all. It's a car park now. Everyone calls it the swimming pool car park.
My parents used to have friends in Scalloway, and we went there for dinner quite a lot. They had 2 children, so I had someone to play with :) Actually, my most vivid memory of spending time there was watching Aliens for the first time (my parents never did care about video certificates), and then playing Aliens in the park afterwards. Y'know, running around pretending to shoot stuff :)
I remember pointless things. At the swimming pool I remember hearing a total father and son conversation:
"Lion bars are good, aren't they dad?"
"They are indeed, son."
And I didn't have any money to buy one :( I think it was after swimming lessons. Random!
Other Scalloway memories:
We used to get fish and chips there sometimes, on the way to Sandness. I think it's a chinese takeaway now, but I have an inkling they still do fish and chips too.
Scalloway has a castle, the only castle in Shetland as far as I'm aware. It's not terribly impressive. Maybe because I've been there too many times.
I went to Scalloway Hotel for a meal not that long ago. I worked in a school on Bressay for a little while (an island to the east of Lerwick, about a 7 minute ferry journey) and that was kind of a leaving do. They gave me a watch.
Just so you know how my mind works, I only wear my watch when I'm going out somewhere that I need it. The rest of the time I keep it switched off, so I have to set it everytime I want to use it. Saving the battery :) You see, every watch I've had I've stopped wearing when the battery has run out because I can never be bothered to replace it. I'm a crazy person!
Um, this was supposed to be about the journey from Lerwick to Sandness, wasn't it? I somehow managed to distract myself. The route doesn't even pass through Scalloway, unless you're going to get fish and chips. You usually turn off just before you get there. Anyway, I'll save it for another time. I've bored you for long enough :)
P.S. - I'm sorry about last night. I hope I didn't abandon you. I hate when I'm feeling down, I seem to forget about the people I care most about. You're okay, aren't you?
Text later?
I'm sorry, Lilly. I'm totally lacking inspiration tonight when it comes to finding interesting things to share.
I don't know why I thought this would be a good idea. Maybe just to show you that flying to Shetland isn't so bad :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzERXet6PoM
And here are a couple of clips from one of my favourite films, The Maltese Falcon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfLGmqXu_P0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yiq5Fkr3yX8
The first clip featured Peter Lorre. I like him because of his cartoon villain voice and because he does things like this (although the film he is promoting looks bizarre):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMhS4LnqaA8
And I might as well shove in a couple of random Columbo clips from one of my favourite episodes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4q7KJzSIis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3g3TARlQfU
Hehe, Donald Pleasance, Peter Lorre, I form attachments to the most random actors :)
Anyway Lilly, I just wanted to leave you something since we haven't been able to talk much today. I won't be offended in the slightest if you don't watch any of them :) Like I said, I was totally lacking inspiration tonight.
I'll text you a bit later to say goodnight.
I forgot to say that I like your new mug :)
I hope you're not annoyed with me :( I know I talk too much on here about nothing in particular. Just tell me if you want me to stop. I'd totally understand. I am very boring.
I might as well continue with my exceedingly dull description of the drive from Lerwick to Sandness :) I forgot to mention that if you exit Lerwick by the south, you come across a place called 'The Black Gate'. It's notorious for car crashes in icy weather.
And even though I went on and on about Scalloway yesterday, you actually turn right before you get there. I used to miss the turning all the time when I was learning to drive because it's quite a steep road and I'd be going too fast to slow down in time, so I'd have to drive into Scalloway and turn around at the round about.
So you turn right, and you drive along to the junction Brig o Fitch, which is a place where people from the country who work in Lerwick park their cars and get the bus into town. A bit like a park and ride, but a lot less obvious. It looks more like a bunch of cars parked in the middle of nowhere.
The you turn left and drive by Dale golf course. I've never played golf there. I think I've only ever played golf once, at the Knab in Lerwick. It didn't last very long. One of my friends got whacked in the face by a golf club about 5 minutes into it and we all went home. At the flower park in Lerwick there is a putting green and I've done that a few times. And they have an outdoor tennis court there too.
I used to really like playing tennis, but that's about the only place in Shetland you can play. I used to play short tennis all the time at Clickimin. It's a bit like tennis for children, but I thought it was fun :) The tennis club was about the only thing I joined at uni. But I kept smashing my rackets :) I had a friend I played against a lot, but his parents bought him tennis lessons for his birthday, and he got so much better than me that in the end I just gave up. I haven't played since.
I got distracted again! Back to the journey. Hmm, I never pay attention to road numbers. Apparently we're on the A970 at the moment heading north. Well, you turn onto the A971 which takes you past Tingwall airport. Shetland has a lot of little airports, just for inter-island flights. Some of the islands are quite far away. Take a look at a map and see where Foula & Fair Isle are! People actually live on Fair Isle. They even have a school. I've never been. Apparently, you can stay at the bird observatory and it's supposed to be quite nice. Can we add it to our list? :)
Back to the A971. You just keep following that. Places along the way include Westings Inn (I've been there a long, long time ago) and through a Whiteness/Weisdale, which is one of the more populated areas. I'm never sure where Whiteness ends and Weisdale begins. We sometimes stop at the shop and I buy sweets :)
I'm about to distract myself again, but if you turn right onto the B9075 (I'm sure it must have a better name than that) that takes you to Bonhoga Gallery, where they sell books about afternoon tea :) The area is called Kergord and there's a big house called Kergord House. I remember looking around Kergord house with my folks when it was up for sale.
But you don't go there if you're on the way to Sandness. You just keep following the A917 until you get to Walls. Well, just before Walls. You turn right onto the road to Sandness and it's about another six miles. There's no bus to Sandness, so you have to get the bus to Walls if you don't have a car. But the chances of someone giving you a lift if they see you walking the those parts are very high.
Text later?
Well, I just realised I totally skimmed through the second half of the journey.
Lerwick to Weisdale is about 13 miles and it to me about a million paragraphs to describe it.
Weisdale to Sandness is about 17 miles and I described it in about a paragraph. I've usually fallen asleep in the car by this point, listening to stories for 5 year olds :) I've sure I'll have more to say on it in the future.
I'm heading off to Mareel in about half an hour. Just to pick up a leaflet and have a hot chocolate. They'll probably give me a job to do, knowing them :)
You know you're still my best friend even though you're a little bit busy to talk to me at the moment. I know you can't talk to me all the time. I totally understand. I'll just keep on bothering you with my nonsense until...well, probably until forever unless you tell me to stop :)
Hi Lilly. I hope you're having a good day. I thought you might like to know what's showing at Mareel next week, since you're my go-to-girl :)
Oblivion
Night Of The Living Dead
Welcome To The Punch
What Richard Did
I've left out the 3D films as usual :) But I thought I'd better mention that they're showing Iron Man 3 3D at the end of the week.
What else? I did end up being given something to do at Mareel this afternoon, so I was there for a couple of hours. While I was there I bought 4 bags of 39p sweets. I can't resist :) And I bought 3 Camera Obscura singles off Amazon because I had a sudden desire to own the b-sides which aren't on the albums.
I'm just about to cook the tea. Wednesday nights are my turn, because my dad goes out (he usually does the cooking). When I say I'm about to cook the tea, I really mean I'm about to fry some already mixed stir fry and turn on the rice cooker. A trained monkey could do it :)
Hi Lilly. You're getting to know an awful lot about the small things in my life :) I'm always a little bit embarrassed telling you about my life because it's not been a very interesting one. I hope you don't find it too tedious.
In the hallway in our house there's a unit where my dad keeps some of his records. On top of this unit we still have a bunch of old videos from when I was a kid and from when my mum was looking after children at home. Some are mine, but I can't take credit for all of them and some are definitely not for children :)
The Fugitive
Die Hard
Tots TV
Adventures in Kettleland with the Singing Kettle
Tom & Jerry
Spice Girls: Spice The Official Volume 1 (wtf!)
Allo Allo - Flight of Fancy
Mr Bean (Unseen Bean)
A Taste of Paddington
Allo Allo - The Duel
Postman Pat's Big Video
Nursery Rhymes & Songs: A House Full of Fun
Children's Action Rhymes
Fireman Sam - The Lost Cat
Here Come The Teletubbies
Pingu 3 - Hide & Seek
The Brand New Adventures of Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends - Time For Trouble & other stories
Laurel & Hardy - Sons of the Desert
Titanic
Last of the Summer Wine: The Finest Vintage
The Terrible Tales of Mr Bean
Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends - Thomas, Percy & the Coal
Allo Allo - The Nicked Knockwurst
Pingu - Barrel of Fun
Wallace & Gromit - A Grand Day Out
Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog - The Quest for the Chaos Emeralds
Fireman Sam - Norman's Pitfall
The Raggy Dolls
Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends - Thomas, Percy & the Coal (ok, so we have 2 copies, never noticed that before)
Inspector Gadget
X-Men - Night of the Sentinels / Days of Future Past
Nursery Rhymes
Yoga Moves
Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles - How It All Began
The Very Best of Father Ted
Father Ted - The Complete 1st Series
Father Ted - The Final Revelations
Red Dwarf V - Quarantine
Red Dwarf V - Back To Reality
Nursery Rhymes 2
Bean The Ultimate Disaster Movie
Spider-Man: The Venom Saga
Allo Allo - The Early Years Volume 1
National Geographic Video - Wings Over The Serengeti
Thomas The Tank Engine & Friends: Troublesome Trucks & Other Stories
Thomas The Tank Engine & Friends: Thomas & Gordon & Other Stories
The Empire Strikes Back: Special Edition
Home Alone 2
Classic Bedtime Stories
Transformers - The Nightmare Planet
Transformers - The Revenge of Bruticus
An Instructional Video for something called Mantis (I have no idea what that is)
Transformers - Starscream's Ghost
Transformers - Dark Awakening
Transformers - Megatron's Master Plan
Transformers - The Key To Vector Sigma
Transformers - Desertion of the Dinobots
Transformers - Heavy Metal War
Transformers - Arrival From Cyberton
The Fugitive (another copy!)
A tape that hopefully has some cartoons on it recorded from the tv. I'll have to check.
The Shoe People
The Tale of Tillie's Dragon
The Seventh Brother (a cartoon about rabbits)
The Little Fox
The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh
Another Mantis video!
Those are all stacked up in the hallway in 4 piles. I hope you appreciate that I've not left out the embarrassing ones :) There's even more videos underneath them. I'll list them another day. Something to look forward too :)
Hi Lilly. Are you okay? I always forget write that down even though it's in my head :(
Just another random message. I do feel a little bit self-conscious posting so many because I feel like I'm becoming a bit pointless, if that makes sense.
Anyway, I must have first heard this song more than a year ago, but I'd completely forgotten about it. I have no idea why it suddenly popped into my head again, but I'm glad it did. I know you might not like it, but I used to play it quite a lot. It's odd how I tend to forget things I really like.
Emerald Park - At The Mall
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7pm4SLabaQ
Don't you dare stop leaving me messages. I don't deserve them, what with the lack of replying but i'd miss you stories terribly if they didn't appear every day :(
Sorry i suck so much right now, i'll get back into leaving messages soon. Promise.
And 'At The Mall'? Love. It. :)
That's okay Lilly. It's not about replies, even though I love getting them :) It takes time to write replies & you have other stuff to do, so don't you worry about that. I still think you're awesome, whether you reply or not. Besides, I get a lot from you anyway (texts, your blog, your deviant art page, your last.fm page and all the others). That's way more than I deserve :)
And it's not even about you reading the pointless stuff I've written or following the links (since they mostly lead to rubbish).
I guess I just like to know that it means something to you when you see that I've left you a message, even if you don't have time to read them.
Hmm, that sounds confusing. I'm sure there's a simpler way of saying what I'm feeling :)
P.S. - I've already read the first chapter of Heroes & Villains. It's making me really jealous :) It's just so frickin' good. I can't believe how good it is. Gonna read chapter 2 (& possible 3) tonight. I've missed that feeling. Thanks Lilly :)
School stories :)
Well, my head teacher in primary school was a man called Mr Spence, and my head teacher in high school was also a man called Mr Spence. A lot of schools in Shetland used to have a head teacher called Mr Spence, all of them related, all of them identical. It was fucking eerie :) And no, I'm sure they weren't all the same man.
I only went on one school trip out of Shetland, to Edinburgh in P7 for a week. I think I've told you about that before. It was pretty exciting at the time, being away from the rentals. And we seemed to do a lot. I really should get the school to organise all my holidays. I always end up doing nothing if left to my own devices.
In high school, I almost went on a school trip to St. Petersburg (yes, the one in Russia). I did Russian intermediate in 6th year. It was a really small class, only the 5 of us. But we didn't go, because everyone apart from me and one other boy pulled out for one reason or another. I've always regretted not going. Not that I've particularly had any desire to visit St. Petersburg, but just that a school trip to Russia at the age of 17 with just 1 or 2 other people would have been pretty awesome I think :) Anyway, I quite enjoyed Russian even though I've forgotten most of it. I probably can't even read the alphabet anymore :( But I liked the class as much as the subject. We had a Russian night at the classroom assistant's house (she was a Russian girl), and we all had to make one Russian dish. I made something like a trifle. I can't remember the Russian name. We were even allowed to drink vodka! Okay, so it tastes disgusting :)
I also did higher French. The boy who I almost went to St. Petersburg with was the same boy who sat next to me in higher Frence and wrote down all the insults I hurled at him throughout the year :) He was really smart, much smarter than me. Definitely one of the best people I've sat next to in a classroom. I bumped into him about a year ago in Osla's cafe. He still has the folder :) We had this crazy French classrooom assistant, Arnaud. He would sometimes come into class hungover and we'd always be hearing stories about what he got up to at the weekend (e.g. dancing naked on top of parked cars).
Another person in my French class was the girl I had a total crush on for the final 2 years of high school. Probably the only serious crush I had on anyone at school. She was from Whalsay, which is an island on the east of Shetland. They have a junior high school (up to 4th year) so she didn't come to the AHS until 5th year. She stayed in the hostel. AHS had 2 hostels for all the island bairns from far away places (Whalsay, Fair Isle, Skerries, Foula etc) to stay throughout the week, the Janet Courtney hostel and the Bruce hostel. I think they only use the JC now. I'm pretty sure the Bruce hostel became something else while I was at school.
I had to split this in two. Epic :)
Anyway, back to my crush, as if you want to know about these things :) Actually, now that I come to think about it, I hardly knew her outside of the classes we shared. Well, maybe just a little bit, but not all that much. Hah, I remember the first time I got drunk, we were at the same party & spent most of it talking together. But I got so drunk I had to be carried to the attic bedroom to sleep it off, and at school on Monday I discovered she had made out with one of my friends at the party. I've always been such a loser :)
I hardly saw her after high school. We were on the boat down together on the way to university, and I met her on the way back that first Christmas. But then I didn't see her again until last year along the street. I met her again at Mareel a couple of months ago. She left Django Unchained during one of the best scenes to go and get some popcorn. Apparently, she's just been to SE Asia, doing a bike ride for charity! So poor cinema manners and bike marathons. I don't think it was meant to be :) She still seems very nice though, just not someone I'd crush on. Funny how things change. Then again, it had been 8 years. 8 years!!!!!!!! I'm in so much trouble :)
I really am so sorry I missed your message at 4.45am. I wish it had woken me up. It's one of the nicest feelings in the world, being woken up by you :)
This will hardly make up for it, but I can tell you some more school stories if you like.
It probably won't surprise you to learn that I was a bit of a goody 2 shoes in school. I wouldn't say I was a swat (I was far too lazy for that), just very quiet and the sort of person who doesn't make waves. In high school, I don't think I was given detention even once. Actually, that's not quite true. One time, the whole class had to spend lunch time in home economics because someone had stolen the teacher's truffles :) If you were really bad, you got sent to 'the tower'! Actually, it wasn't as sinister as it sounds. You didn't have to climb a spiral staircase to get there and the windows didn't have bars on them. It was just a room in the English department. The English department and library are in the oldest part of the school.
I think I've only been in the tower once, but that had nothing to do with detention. I can't remember why I was there. Sometimes a teacher would come in and look at me as if they were a little bit disappointed and surprised to see me there. They must have thought I'd done something bad. But I hadn't. Honest! :)
In primary school, you'd get sent to the dining hall if you were bad. I was sent there a few times :) I used to walk to primary school most days with my best friend who lived just up the road from me, and his younger brother. They would come down to the house a bit earlier, and we'd play the mega drive before going to school. It was while sitting there in the morning, playing computer with my friends, that I got that Herr Flick limp I told you about ages ago, that lasted for a few months. I used to sit in a most unusual way :)
Would you like to know something really embarrassing? Of course you would :) I can't tie my shoe laces like a normal person (y'know the whole one loop method thing). I never learned. I'm a bunny ears shoe lace person :) Oh, and I can't tie a tie either.
Hehe, I always get distracted. What was I talking about? Oh yeah, the walk to Sound primary school. Actually, it's not very interesting because I live very near to it. About 5-10 minutes, maybe 15 minutes when I had smaller legs :) And we were never in a particular hurry to get there. We just walked along Westerloch Drive, then cut through Murraryston. That took us to the main road (South Road) and the lollipop lady. And that's it.
We used to have a more interesting walk home. It's not on google maps, but there's a path that goes in between Baila & Fogralea that we used to walk home along. The reason we didn't usually go that way to school was because you have to walk up Fogralea to get there and it's quite a steep road. On the way home, you walk down Fogralea so it's much easier. I haven't been there in years. I'll have to take a photo. I hope it still exists.
I hope you don't mind me flooding you with words today. I just really feel like sharing things with you after last night. Well, I always feel like sharing things with you, but I kinda feel like you deserve my full undivided attention today. You poor girl :)
I'm on a bit of a school kick at the moment. I don't know why. You don't find it too boring to read about, do you?
Do you remember me telling you about the beanfeast, our annual christmas party at the high school? It's actually split into 3. There's one for the 1st/2nd years, one for the 3rd/4th years, and one for the 5th/6th years. I only ever went to it in 1st year and 6th year. 1st year to see what it was like (I must have not been very impressed since I didn't go to the next 4) and 6th year because the 6th years are supposed to put on a bit of a show. That's when I accidentally cut myself on stage. It was actually pretty funny. The audience thought it was part of the act :). Me: "I really am bleeding quite a lot". Audience: "Hahahahahaha". A bizarre experience :)
But I recovered sufficiently, after holding an ice pack on my face for several hours, to go to the after party. Yes, we have a Christmas party at the school, and then the 6th years go to an after party at one of Shetland's many halls. It was a bit of a tradition, but I'm not sure they do it anymore, mainly because no one wants to hire out a hall to a bunch of drunk teenagers.
I never did go out much when I was a teenager. Well, to parties and the like. There always seemed to be something going on at one of the halls over the weekends, like a local band playing, and I'd just have to hear about everybody's adventures on the Monday. I think I only ever went to a hall party once (apart from the Beanfeast after party), at Gulberwick hall. Gulberbwick is just outside Lerwick. In fact, it's almost part of Lerwick. I remember walking home with that friend I sat next to in French class. He hit a taxi as it went past and the driver got out and gave him hell :) Then I had to give him money for the ferry home (he lived in Bressay).
That's about it. I'm always left standing on my own at these things, and I'm always way too self-conscious to make an effort to throw myself whole-heartedly into the event, although I did get picked up by the crowd at one point! It sounds like fun. It wasn't. I'm such a grump :)
I think that when my friends started going to halls & house parties at the weekends, instead of watching films, is when we started to drift apart. I never did have any close friends after that. That's not as sad as it sounds, because I definitely did have friends, more than I deserved, just no one who wanted to do the things I liked.
Uni too, I didn't have that many friends. I did have some though, and that was nice. I was thrown together with some Shetland folk at the halls of residence, so I wasn't lonely during the 1st year. I don't know why they put up with me to be honest. I mean, it was a lot of time we spent in each other's company. Breakfast together, tea together, spending every evening together, going out everywhere together, cinemas, pubs, clubs etc. We even shared some of the same lectures. It was a pretty small group too, just the seven of us (4 boys & 3 girls). One of the boys had an N64 in his room. We should be ashamed of the number of hours we spent playing Mario Kart & GoldenEye :), but he left half way through the 1st year, which left the 6 of us with no Mario Kart :)
I was out for an hour and a half, and this is what I came back with. Ugh, embarrassingly I still look exactly the same as I did 5 years ago. Same haircut too :) And look, trees! This was taken near Seafield. I went there looking for the pond I used to visit as a child to feed the ducks, but I didn't find it. I did find the old path I used to take home from primary school, but it looks different, like an extended driveway. I thought it was grassy. Maybe it never was. My first photo was very nearly of a small cat that I saw in Murrayston but it disappeared under a parked car, and I did not want anyone to see me hunting for it :)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/95083192@N03/8665996724/in/photostream
Hi Lilly. These links were in the post I asked you to delete last night. Why let them go to waste :)
This is a film that was shown on Film4 a little while ago. I'm gonna buy you a bear costume like the one worn by the girl in the trailer :)
Kontroll - trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfhesbsFjXk
Kontroll - chase scene
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm-B81KDug8
And Mike McAlister from The Foot Fist Way. And Julio too. Just look at him in the first 2 seconds of that clip. Always makes me laugh :) Then again, I laugh at anything.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JO6P8NmkJqc
I didn't put this in last night, but I had a friend in 1st year uni who introduced me to this show. I don't remember much about it, except this one character, who's pretty hard to forget :)
Monkey Dust - Paedofinder General
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCywGhHQMEw
I'll write more later because I've got to be somewhere for 11am, but I don't want you to think I've forgotten about you :)
Reading about your weird love of lickable (!) sneakers, I thought you'd like to know a little bit about what I wear on my feet :)
I only have 3 pairs of shoes: A pair of old brown sneakers that are moribund, a pair of supposedly waterproof walking boots that have had their defenses penetrated (a bit like a spaceship that has lost its forcefield), and a pair of blue shoes that used to be smart, a very, very long time ago.
I need new shoes! Please don't judge me too harshly for my lack of stylish footwear.
Back home again. And, of course, the first thing I want to do is word attack you :)
One place in Shetland that I went to on a school trip is Mousa. It's a small, uninhabited island in the SE of Shetland. It has a broch. Exciting stuff :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broch_of_Mousa
It is much bigger than Clickimin Broch, the one down the bottom of my road. I haven't been to Clickimin Broch in ages. I used to go there all the time when I was a child, seeing as it was only 5 minutes away and it was a good place for playing catchy :) I don't think I was allowed, or maybe I was too scared, to go to the top of the Broch when I was small. You have to walk along this really narrow, unguarded path about half way up the broch to get to the top. Yeah, I was probably too scared :)
Another good place to play was in Sandness, on the top of bales of hay, when there's about 100 of them in a field all wrapped up and in a big square shape :) Jumping from one to another, trying to catch each other was tremendous fun, until the farmer who owned them put an end to it. Oh well, there are plenty of other places to play in the country. I'll tell you all about them someday :)
Sometimes friends would come out to Sandness & we'd camp in the garden. I think my only other experience of camping, other than in people's gardens, was when I went with a friend and his dad. I don't even know where we went, and it wasn't a memorable experience. In fact, I can't remember a single thing I did on that trip, except sleep in a tent for 1 night so I could say I'd been camping :)
Hehe, have I told you that I've been to a wrestling match before? You know, the kind of fake WWF wrestling that you see on the tv. They had an event in Clickimin when I was very young. With British Bulldog :) Not THE British Bulldog obviously, but someone calling himself British Bulldog, which is good enough when you're about 7 :) I have a signed poster of him somewhere! And they had a royal rumble at the end. And before you ask, no, I was not a wrestling fan. Still was kinda fun though :)
Even though I'm not a wrestling fan, I've probably watched more wrestling on TV than your average non-wrestling fan. One of my friends, from that close group I was part of in 2nd year, was a huge WWF fan. I remember one time, we thought his parents were getting divorced, so we all clubbed together to pay for one of those pay-per-view wrestling matches to cheer him up. And they didn't get divorced! I felt cheated :)
Here's something I learned the other week, which illustrates just how little I know about Shetland. There's a small island in the west of Shetland called Vaila. It only has one family living on it. The live in a place called Vaila Hall.
http://shetlopedia.com/Vaila
So one family living in a mansion on a small island by themselves. There's a horror / murder mystery film in there somewhere :)
I once went to a place in Shetland called Burrastow House for afternoon tea. Tea & scones & jam & clotted cream - that was a good day :) But that was years ago, they probably don't do it anymore.
Busta House is another place. I went there for a staff night out when I worked at the school. It was quite nice. The best part was having tea & coffee in the lounge/library after dinner. It's a really nice room.
Well, that was nice & random :) Text later?
P.S. - Sunday roast this afternoon. Carnivores! Jealous? :)
Hi Lilly
I think I'm getting worse at finding things for you :(
Bjork & Thom Yorke speak to Space Ghost (yes, you read that right).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZnjcFQUqJI
And a few more songs:
Moonbabies - War On Sound
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvKP5XsRvE4
Au Revoir Simone - Tell Me (Clock Opera Remix)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Gl54fVtlWs
Au Revoir Simone - Tell Me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rwc9TgZ6iEY
'Everything gets married. Even animals and spiders.'
Most excellent :) But what the fuck did i just watch?
I want to be Space Ghost so bad.
Oh, and Moonbabies? New happy band. Thank you!
I think i've got an almost perfect map of Lerwick in my head now :)
Hi Lilly. Are you okay? Had a nice day watching Doctor Who and doing other stuff?
Is it sad that I spent most of the afternoon and evening hanging around your blog & looking for things like Space Ghost?
I'm not sure what Space Ghost was. I only discovered it today. I think he was supposed to be a late night talk show host, but it was cartoon in space!
I have been describing Lerwick in a lot of detail, haven't I? I talk too much for someone who hasn't led a very interesting life.
I really do struggle to think of things to tell you sometimes. That's why a lot of it isn't very interesting. Or even slightly interesting. But it is very important to me to keep leaving you things to read. I sometimes worry that we'll drift apart if I don't :(
At school, our English class were given the opportunity to watch Akira Kurosawa's 'Throne of Blood', an opportunity that I grabbed with both hands :) I don't know if you've seen it, but it's based on Macbeth. We went to see it at the North Atlantic Fisheries College in Scalloway which sounds like an unusual place to watch a film. They used to convert one of the rooms into a mini cinema. They hosted the film club before Mareel, but I was never a member of that. Anyway, I'm not even sure I enjoyed
'Throne of Blood' that much, although I probably enjoyed not being in class and I can add it to the very short list of Kurosawa films that I've actually seen (Rashomon & Seven Samurai). I still think they should have shown Seven Samurai instead :)
I still have Seven Samurai on tape. It's sitting on top of my piano. I should probably get it on dvd, but there are too many other things I want. Besides, we still have a vhs player in the sitting room. We have a ton of video tapes in our house. We could probably get rid of half of them, but we just never seem to get around to it.
Back to the North Atlantic Fisheries College in Scalloway :) There used to be a restaurant in the college. Have a guess at what they served :) We used to go there all the time. Definitely the restaurant we went to the most when it was open. It was called Da Haaf. It wasn't very fancy, they didn't even come to the table to take your order, you just went up to the servery, but the food was nice. Well, the salmon was nice. I don't think I tried anything else :) In the lobby of the college, they have these fish tanks. I used to spend a lot of time staring at the them. Hmm, don't know why I mentioned that.
Do you have one of those aerial shots of your house? We have one on the wall of our kitchen, taken years ago. It looks so different.
We used to have a green garage door, but now it's blue.
The roof was grey, but now it's a reddish brown. I'm such an idiot :) The house used to have a chimney. I had to go outside just now to check if it was still there. It wasn't!
It must have been so long ago that we had the front door changed into a big window, because the big window is in the photo.
We have a brown, wooden fence that goes all around the front & sides of our house. It used to be a wire fence. We still have a wire fence at the back. If you look out of my bedroom window you see the garden, then the trees, then the wire fence, then a ditch, then another wire fence, then my neighbours garden. A gritter crashed into our fence last year and caused a bit of damage. We're grateful for any bit of excitement here :)
Back to work today (Psych 2pm-5pm)
P.S. - How are you? I may have shoved it in at the end, but it's always on my mind :)
Love that you had to go outside to check whether you had a chimney or not :) That's the kind of nonsense behaviour i partake in.
How could you not enjoy a Japanese take on Macbeth? How?! Saying that, i haven't seen it but i definitely have to now! Just to see how silly you're being. Have you ever read any Shakespeare? Or better yet, seen any?
I long for the day i can return to The Royal Shakespeare Company and watch some of old Will's work again. Their production of A Midsummer Night's Dream will stay with me forever, i hope.
A fact: We don't have a garage anymore. It got converted into my parent's bedroom. They have steps that go down into it. Always wanted a room like that but i'd hate to have a room at the front of the house. Too much exposure. I like my room all tucked away at the back of the house. I get a view of the garden as well and i wouldn't give that up. Nope.
Having fun at work? What a silly question. You're just about finished anyway. You may have noticed, if you've looked at my last.fm today that i'm completey obsessed with 'Soul On Fire' by LaVerne Baker. I demand you listen and fall as hopelessly in love with it as i have.
Off to spend some time with the folks. They just returned from Glasgow. What an exciting life i lead :)
Heaps of fun :) I took the car today. Gonna stay here a bit longer because I have to pick my mum up from the nursery and I don't want to get caught in heavy traffic.
Lilly, I try to listen to every track you 'love'. And when you listen to a song 10 times in a day, of course I'm going to listen to it too :) Is it from the film you watched last night?
Enjoy family time :)
P.S. - My room's tucked away at the back of the house too.
I didn't answer your question about Shakespeare. In school, we had to read 'The Merchant Of Venice'. I've read a few plays on my own. I used to read them quite a bit. It was my favourite thing to do on rainy days in West Kirby. Do you have a favourite? I don't. My dad's favourite is Julius Caesar.
I sometimes form attachments to random characters from the plays. Buckingham from Richard III, and Constable from Henry V to name but two :)
I feel incredibly deprived having never seen Shakespeare performed on stage. I'm sure that's already on our list of things to do. You've probably told me about seeing A Midsummer Night's Dream before. Would you mind telling me again?
You really have no idea how much I love your taste in music, or how much I depend on you to help get me through some days :) I sometimes worry that you find me boring because I don't talk about the things you put on your blog. But that doesn't mean I don't love the things you post. I often stay awake until the early hours just going through your blog, listening to the music, looking at the artwork, following the links. That's what I mean when I sometimes say I'm hanging around your blog. You really are my favourite person :) I'll tell you a secret: you were my favourite person even before you knew I existed.
I would like to share a quiet life with you. Maybe in a house like the one you described somewhere in the depths of this conversation. We can still go places from time to time and have small adventures. Like to The Minack Theatre in Cornwall to watch The Tempest :)
P.S. - 'Throne Of Blood' only uses the plot of Macbeth, just in case you're hoping to watch Shakespeare translated into Japanese :) I'm sure even I would have enjoyed that.
Hi Lilly. You didn't really think I'd let a silly thing like a job interview stop me from leaving you some more of my nonsense. You're not that lucky :)
I thought I'd bore you with more details about the history of my house :)
Well, first of all, my bedroom wasn't always my bedroom. I switched many years ago. We had a playroom in our house (which probably sounds more fun than it was). Really it was just a room for the children to play in. It had a lot of toys and games. Anyway, my bedroom used to be the playroom, and the playroom used to be my bedroom. I had Spider-Man curtains :) I guess my parents thought it would be better to have the playroom in a more accessible and brighter part of the house, rather than at the far end of the hallway. It suited me fine. I like being at the back and that nobody has to walk past my bedroom to get anywhere. And we don't have a playroom anymore. It got converted when my mum stopped childminding and became a dining room. A dining room that we never dine in, except when we have guests.
I know you're just desperate to know the floor plan of my house :) Well, as you come in through the back door, you walk down a long, narrow hallway. There are four rooms lined up on the right, which make up the back of the house: a bathroom, the dining room, my brother's bedroom, and finally, my bedroom. The living room and kitchen are on the left, looking out onto the front garden.
The kitchen isn't really a separate room. It doesn't have a door. You just walk half-way down the hallway, turn left and you're in the kitchen area. It used to be a separate room. The wall was knocked down at the same time we converted the front door into a big window. And the stairs are right next to that.
Sounds confusing, doesn't it? I'm terrible at describing things. Most of the room have undergone significant changes over the years. The playroom was converted into a dining room (it used to have a carpet, now it has a wooden floor). We had a sun lounge built at the front of the house that's really just an extension of the living room, so that was another wall that was knocked down.
Both the room upstairs have been totally redecorated in the last few years. My parents bedroom used to have a carpet, now it has a wooden floor (my house is gradually being taken over by wooden floors) and they had an en-suite bathroom installed. And the music room was totally redecorated to suit my dad's tastes (since it really is his room, kinda like the equivalent of a study).
The kitchen became open plan, I switched rooms, there's now a door half-way down the hallway separating the 2 bedrooms from the rest of the house. The downstairs bathroom was redone, but that was a very, very long time ago. The only room I can't remember having anything done to it is my brother's bedroom. It's too late now. I think it's beyond all aid :) He has piles and piles of books in his room (books from Japan!). I sometimes hear them come crashing down! I think that one day he's gonna end up buried underneath them :( Anyway, he has a ton of weird stuff in his room (don't ask). Some of it even found its way into my room when I was away at university. At least one of those things was a tv :)
Anyway, I know you probably don't find this stuff very interesting to read. You would tell me if I was talking too much, wouldn't you?
P.S. - I realise it would have been a lot easier to take photos of my house rather than describe it. I'll do that soon. I want you to get an image in your head first :)
Maybe the best and worst moment from my childhood all rolled into one classic scene :) Optimus Prime vs Megatron and wonderfully cheesy 80s music. I should be ashamed of myself. I'm not.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7GeisRaias
I know I should really grow up, but here's another cartoon. Did you watch Recess?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvRlyA3uUW0
P.S. - The Civil Wars - I've Got This Friend. I just don't want you to think these things go unnoticed or unappreciated. Adore you buddy :)
P.P.S. - They shouldn't touch your favourite 80s films. They just shouldn't.
Hi Lilly
Do you want to know how geeky I was as child? Warhammer! I was totally into that for a couple of years. You know, the little plastic and metal fantasy/sci-fi models. You're supposed to collect a particular type and form an army. Then you find someone else with another army and play a game - the game of war :) Actually, it pretty much just involves finding a large flat surface and rolling a dice.
I think I first got into Warhammer because my friend who lived up the road got Warhammer Quest, which was a kind of adventure board game. Pretty soon, most of my friends who lived in Westerloch had started collecting Warhammer. It's funny how these things happen. Actually, I think there were 2 types of Warhammer - Fantasy and 40,000 (sci-fi). We all collected Fantasy armies (pretty much Lord of the Rings type stuff). Here's a list of the different armies you could collect, as if you're interested :)
Brettonia (knights)
Chaos (demons)
Chaos Dwarfs (evil dwarfs!)
Dark Elves (evil elves!)
The Empire (men)
High Elves
Orcs and Goblins
Skaven (rats)
Undead (skeleton warriors and the like)
Wood Elves
I ended up collecting The Empire. I don't know why I chose them. I think maybe I just happened to be given something as a present and it started like that. I should definitely have chosen something better :) Chaos! That's the army I would have chosen if I could go back in time. Oh well, too late now. The Empire were basically just men. They had a lot of war machines you could collect. That was probably the best thing about them. The first thing I got, that might have been a present, was a steam tank. Of course, I just had to see if I could find a picture of it:
http://www.members.shaw.ca/robere-7/EmpireSteamTankA.jpg
And being called The Empire, it had an Emperor. Star Wars :) Actually, this guy rode a griffin and carried a big hammer!
http://i207.photobucket.com/albums/bb137/Fortress_miniatures/img485427ef9eaeb.jpg
In Shetland, the only place that sold Warhammer was Harry's in Commercial Street. Down south, they have these specialist Warhammer shops called Games Workshop. Unwashed boy territory :) Not only do they sell stuff, but they have these big, scenic table tops set up so you can go in with your army and fight :) You'll be disappointed to learn that I never did that. Actually, I didn't even fight against my friends that much either. It's a whole lot of work setting up for a battle :) It was more of a collection. You could even buy guide books that were full of things like maps, and histories, and stories. Of course, I bought the one for The Empire :) Geek!
P.S. - I was so hoping that when I clicked on that link, that it would lead to Sega's Mickey Mouse and the Castle of Illusion :) You will come up one day and stay in Sandness and play all these old games with me. Please.
P.P.S. - We used to have every episode of Buffy seasons 1 & 2 on tape. Do you remember those triple video box sets you could buy? We had a Watcher's Guide too. I really did like that show. I wonder why I stopped watching it :( Can we marathon it one day? Bring them with you to Sandness. Sega Master System & Buffy - I don't know how long we'll be there :)
Hi Lilly. Here are the film listings for next week at Mareel. Please let me know what you think.
The Place Beyond The Pines
Iron Man 3 2D
A very short list :) but those are the only new films.
They are also showing 'Dr Who & the Daleks' from 1965! And also 'The Artist Is Present', a documentary about Marina Abramovic.
http://stickyelbows.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/abramovic-and-ulay.html
Hehe, I love when I come across people and things that I would normally not think twice about, but that I'm suddenly interested in because I've read about them on your blog. You're my little knowledge monster :)
Cowboy Bebop & tea. Now I'm the one who's jealous :)
Firstly, a secret: I've always wanted to play Warhammer but couldn't bring myself to be that 'nerdy'. I'd totally do it these days. I could give less than a fuck about what people think of my taste, now i'm all grown.
Ugh, go see both those movies. I insist. Have you watched the trailer for them? Damn. I think i'm more excited about Iron Man though, so if i was to push you towards one it'd be Mr Downey Jr and his suit of iron.
Oh, and you lucky bastard. Go and see The Artist Is Present for me as well. Ughhhh, i'm so jealous! It's such a beautiful looking piece of performance art and she's just a legend. I've always been kind of obsessed a performance she did in gallery where she stood naked in front of a table. It had a variety of objects that could potentially physically harm her. It all depended on whether people were willing to use them on her. I guess she wanted to see just how far humans will go when put in a position of power. Kind of scary really.
Reminds of a film i love called Das Experiment. You should look it up, it's kind of sublime. I may even have to revisit it now!
I'm on the 4th episode of CB and i'm already hooked. I'm now wondering if Joss Whedon watched this. It's so much like Firefly, it's scary!
Ps. 'I love when I come across people and things that I would normally not think twice about, but that I'm suddenly interested in because I've read about them on your blog. You're my little knowledge monster :)'
What did you come across specifically? Did i miss something? I feel stupid.
Oh Lilly, there's nothing to feel stupid about. I should have been more specific. I suppose I was thinking about Marina Abramovic. It made me happy when I saw this photo of lady in a red dress on a film leaflet in Mareel, and I knew where I'd seen her before. I'm the stupid one. 'Abramovic and Ulay', that's all I know about her. I don't think I'll ever forget that story.
You tell me about so many wonderful things I've never seen or heard before. Thanks Lilly :)
Anyway, even this guy can be made to feel stupid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDUAtf9JLXY
Lilly, I have to share this with you. Sorry! Please believe me when I tell you it's hilarious. Well, I laughed like a maniac. Never a good sign.
Star Trek: The Sexed Generation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReOw_2f4lpY
Das Experiment - I must see this!
I'm glad you're enjoying CB. 'Toys in the Attic' & 'Pierrot le Fou' are probably my favourite episodes, just so you know :) I want to see Firefly now!
And you'll always be the coolest girl in the world to me. Tell me more secrets.
'There was a young lady from Venus...'
:)
I haven't watched it all yet but that was enough to see me through until tomorrow. Dirty behaviour!
I'm sorry i've been so quiet tonight. I've got somewhere to go early today and it's making me painfully anxious. I've had at least two meltdowns today already. So i'm not at my best and may still be not quite right tomorrow. So, if you could just bear with me for a couple of days, if that's alright? I'll probably tell you about it in text form, so this'll make more sense. I just wanted you to know that i'm not angry or ignoring you. As if that'd happen.
You'll always be my Dexterous Fungus Epistolean :)
Night lovely boy.
Ps. How are you getting on with Heroes & Villains? Still engrossed?
I hope I did not wake you with my text last night at 3.30am. I'm so silly. I tried to sleep at 1.30am but I couldn't because for some reason I was a little worried about you, so I went on your blog sometime after 3am and saw the message you'd left. And even though I sent you a text earlier in the evening saying that I didn't want to bother you with too many texts, of course I do the opposite and I send another one and probably wake you up when you really need your sleep. Sorry :(
Would you like some more school stories?
This is such a random memory, but I remember going to art on the first day of high school, and being told that it was break time and I didn't need to be there for another 20 minutes. I don't know why that has stuck with me :) My registration class was in the art department for most of my time in high school, which was quite unlucky because it is right at the top of the school (A3). I think I've told you this before, but the main part of the school is split into 3 blocks (A, B & C), each with 3 different levels (e.g. A1, A2 & A3). I'll try and describe it to you, but it'll sound very confusing :)
The 3 blocks are all connected and at slightly different heights. C Block is the lowest, B is a little a higher, and A is the highest. There were 2 stairwells.
B1 (the computing department) was the starting point I suppose, because it's the ground floor and it's in the middle.
So if you start in B1 and go to the left stairwell and go up one flight of stairs, you come to C3 (social studies department), up another flight of stairs is B2 (business studies department), then up 2 more flights of stairs is B3 (modern languages).
And if you start in B1 and go to the right stairwell, you go up 2 flights of stairs to get to B2, up one flight of stairs to A1 (technical department), up another flight of stairs to B3, up yet another flight of stairs to A2 (maths department) and finally (phew!) up 2 more flights of stairs to get to A3 (art department)
I'm terrible at describing things. Because B Block is in the middle you can access it from both stairwells. You're probably wondering what happened to C1 and C2. Or you've maybe lost the will to live by now :) Well, if you're in B1, you go to the left stairwell and down one flight of stairs to C2 (science department). You have to walk through to the other side of C2 to get to the stairs that take you down to C1. C1 is really a nothing department. Just some spare classrooms. It probably took me 2 years to figure out where it was or that it even existed :)
There's also D Block (an extension of the science department). You can access it from C2.
I've probably told you all this before! I promise I won't tell you something so boring and pointless ever again. Well, I actually can't promise that :) The only point I was trying to make was that I had to walk up a lot of stairs to get to registration every morning. And one more boring fact. My registration class was in fact a maths class, even though it was in the art department. A2 was the maths department, but there was one maths class in A3, and another in C2. Yawn.
Hehe, I promise you I have been working this morning. But I really wanted to find something to cheer you up, just in case you were feeling down.
Darth Vader in Disneyland
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4_dZPVg8KI
I'm sorry to leave you so much today, Lilly. You don't have to read any of it, you know that. I'm just writing down my silly thoughts. I just leave them here so you know that I care about you :) I thought you might to know that just a little bit more today.
I was one of the losers who used to hang around the school library during break times. Just so you know :) It used to be horrible walking to the library during break times if you were a 1st year because you had to walk through the 5th year's common area and they would trip you up. I never tripped up anyone when I was a 5th year. Every year had a common area. Only the 6th years had their own room. We used to spend our free periods playing chess and Mario Kart.
Embarrassing secret: I once played a game of chess against someone and I was checkmated in 3 moves. I didn't even think that was possible.
I also went through a phase where I spent most of my lunch times in B2 (the business studies department) playing golf on the computer. I don't even like golf, to play or watch, and I've never owned a computer golf game. I don't know why I got hooked.
Every year, there was an activites week for the 1st and 2nd years, for the ones who didn't go on school trips out of Shetland. You could even choose a day of internet surfing if you wanted to. And I wanted to :) I think I spent most of the day reviewing films on imdb! Another activity I did was a walk in Muckle Roe in the north of Shetland. One of the few times I got into trouble :) I spent the day with 2 girls in the year above me and we got separated from the rest of the group (on purpose). Before I knew what was going on, they had taken out some cigarettes and were smoking. They offered me one, but I refused. I've never had a cigarette.
Hmm, I can't even remember the other activities I did. I'm sure we had to choose 3 for each week. They must have involved not doing much at the school, or I managed to convince my parents to let me stay home.
Board games. That was one of them. I remember. I was so lazy :) Even though I played football and other sports with my friends after school and at the weekends, I almost never played sport at the AHS except when I had to in PE. I did play a lot of football when I was in primary school. At Sound, they had a grass area we called 'the field', probably because it was a field :)
Hehe, I just got a little bit excited. At Sound school, in the classroom, we had an apple mac and we were sometimes allowed to play a game called Maze Wars. I found it on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2bRpS9kIAc
At home, we had Worms for the PC. Another game I played so much it was unhealthy.
And the one thing that made me an uber-geek. I made my own character index for Lord of the Rings! I'm so embarrassed to tell you that, but at the same time I kinda want to :)
I think the whole point of this post has been to illustrate that I've always been this way :)
P.S. - Of course I'm still engrossed in Heroes & Villains :) I stopped for a couple of nights when I was worrying about the interview, but I carried on last night. You really are my favourite person.
Hi Lilly
I'm still at Mareel :(
Here are 2 more silly things. Sorry I've not got anything better for you.
The old 'Dungeons & Dragons' cartoon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCSRPIgKZVk
I'm not sure if I've linked you to this song before:
Future Islands - Vireo's Eye
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oECMdFpMp-c
Text you later :)
Poor Dex. I hope you've left by now and are happily at home.
Bad Mareel for keeping you so long. I shall send them an angry later. Yessum.
Ugh, i'm soooo sleepy. Running on three hours sleep is just not good. Not good at all. And i slept for two hours this afternoon! Missed all the sunshine, gosh darn it.
I did have the most excellent cup of chai when i got back from my excursion though. I'll have to make you one some day. I'll give you sad tea, even if you're perfectly happy. I mean, how could you be sad when hanging out with yours truly? :) So full of myself. You'll probably run away from my social awkwardness and paint a scarlet A on my door.
Watching Masterchef right now. It's covered in Bond Girls. I think if i had to sit in a room with them i'd take up arms and gun them down. Groups of women make this certain racket that i just can't stand! It's like a gaggle of idiotic, cackling geese. Strike that. Witches. I sound so misogynistic! I'm all about women being awesome, i just don't enjoy being with them collectively. Much prefer m'boys. Like your fine self! Maybe it's the tomboy in me still trying to wear backwards caps and giant sneakers. You should have seen the size of the Vans i used to wear. They were two sizes too big.
Have you had a good day m'dear? Thank you for leaving all these fun facts today, it's kept me happily entertained and i needed that. Have you gone to see any of the movies you told me about yet? I watched the trailer for Thor a couple thousand more times last night. Definitely go and see it if it get shown at Mareel. I'll be going :) So much nerdy goodness coming out. Iron Man 3, Thor, Star Trek! I'm a happy Lillyputty. Love that by the way :)
I think i have to close my eyes for a bit now. They hurt so bad!
Speaks later boyface.
Of course I'll see Thor if you want me to :) Iron Man 3, I'm thinking Monday at 11am.
I had a very uneventful day, hardly worth talking about. Psych 9-5, Mareel 5-9. Hehe, you'd hate working at Psych. I'm the only boy. You'd just have to hide in the admin office with me and listen to music. That's what I did today :)
You don't really think I'd run away from your social awkwardness, do you? I might run away if you were in a bad mood with me, but I'd always hide somewhere you could find me easily and bring me a cup of sad tea :)
You don't have to tell me what was making you feel anxious today. Of course I want to know because I care about you, but I understand if you want to keep some things to yourself. Maybe you just want to talk about happier things, or not talk at all, depending on how you're feeling.
I'll text you later, because I miss you. You're my Maggot :)
Night night lovely Lilly. Please don't think too badly of my boring stories and stupid youtube links when I'm gone. Not that I'm going anywhere :)
"For your loyalty, your friendship, we offer..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn1ehKAo3ak
Hi Lilly. I'm at Psych just now. I know you might still be feeling that you don't want to talk so much, but I'll still leave you stories if that's okay. Do you really miss them if they're not here? I do like the thought of you opening your blog and being happy to see that I've left you a message. Almost as much as the thought of you wearing a backwards cap and giant sneakers :)
I was very excited last weekend to buy a bag of retro sweets from the Clickimin cafe. They were actually called retro sweets. On a less positive note, I was reminded of how much I detest parma violets. 2 purple foodstuffs I can't stand: parma violets and vimto. Not that I have anything against the colour purple. I wear a purple top from time to time. Hmm, distracting myself again. I was a bit disappointed with the actual contents of the bag. On the front, there were pictures of all these amazing sweets that I haven't had in ages, but inside it was pretty standard fare: mini refresher bars, drumsticks, double lollies, parma violets, those things that look a bit like parma violets but are multi-coloured, fizzy, and much nicer. I should have inspected the bags more closely. I bet the one next to it was full of fantastic things. I must go back and investigate.
I don't think I ever told you what I was doing last weekend. It wasn't very exciting. I went to Clickimin to play table tennis with a child someone had foolishly entrusted me to look after. Just in case you thought I was out on a secret date :)
Actually, I'm pretty good with children even if I do say so myself :) Probably all those years spent 'helping' my mum to look after them at home. I wasn't quite so lazy and selfish when I was younger. Then again, I had to do something for my pocket money :) I had a green money bank. I'd put the coins in the slot at the top and watch them roll down and sort themselves out into the different columns. Either that or they'd get stuck half way down.
Usually, I'd get home from school and I wouldn't be allowed in my bedroom because one of the smaller children would be sleeping in there, so I'd eat toast and watch cartoons with the rest of the children or play board games or go outside in the garden or play the mega drive or...well, this list could go on for quite a while. I don't remember ever complaining about not being able to hide in my bedroom when I got home from school. I probably did though, silently, in my head :)
We used to have a small tv in the kitchen, a larger tv in the playroom, and an even larger tv in the living room. Do you remember when 21 inch screens seemed big? :) The children weren't allowed in the living room, or upstairs, except sometimes when they were sleeping.
Hehe, sometimes I'd hear this sound coming from my bedroom and wonder what it was. Then I'd realise it was the sound of a child crying. They'd woken up :) Or sometimes I'd go into my room and not realise a child was sleeping in there and wake them up by accident.
Did I tell you I had braces when I was in high school? I hated wearing braces. And I had the full set too. I started off with the big chunky kind you could remove. It was horrible. They made my teeth ache. At night I had to wear something like this:
http://paulalovesmarla.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/lisa-simpson-braces-1.png
As if I didn't already look enough of a loser. Then I went on to train tracks. They were a bit better and a bit more discreet, but I still didn't like them. So no fillings, but plenty of adventures at the dentist :)
:)
"He's a ghost and he writes to us. Ghostwriter."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-NYK3dlgzA
Hi Lilly. It's so quiet at Psych. I don't mind because I can give you more of my attention, even though you probably don't want it :)
Let me tell you more about my shoes :) If it's not raining, I always wear the old brown trainers with the permanently tied laces. Well, they would be permanently tied if I had my way. They keep coming undone, even though I tie them in double knots. I like shoes that I can just slip on & off :) Lazy!
That's very boring, even for me. I'll tell you more interesting things. Well, I would if there were more interesting things to tell :) My mum's from the Philippines, which is why I have darker features. That's why my parents go on holiday there. They own a farm in a place called Bagacay on an island called Talibon. My mum's twin sister used to look after it for them, but that's a sad story that I won't write down here. It's now looked after by a family I've never met. It's not much of farm, just in case you had visions of endless fields of crops :) It has a nice garden though.
They used to have a lot of dogs on the farm. You have to be careful with dogs in the Philippines, but the ones my auntie owned were the best dogs in the world :) I can't remember how many there were (4 or 5) or all of their names. One was called Bulky. He was the youngest. My auntie used to spoil him and he was pretty lazy. You'd think we'd have gotten on famously :) But I preferred Copper & Champ. They were my guard dogs whenever I went for a walk. Utterly adored them :) I can't remember the rest.
I often wonder what happened to them. To be honest, I never did like the Philippines. It's too hot, there are too many insects & too many relatives, and it's too dangerous & there wasn't a whole lot to do on the farm. There were some good things. I liked some of the resorts we stayed at. I liked island hopping on little motor boats. And that's about it. Not really, I'm sure there were a few other good things :)
I went there quite a lot when I was young. Maybe 5 holidays by the time I was 16. So, even though I don't like flying, I've done quite a lot of it :) I preferred some of the places we visited along the way. We would usually stay for about 3 weeks in the Philippines, and then stay for another week in another country or countries, usually on the way back.
Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia. I'll tell you all about them someday and some more about the Philippines if you're interested, but it might make this post a bit too long :)
I went on holiday to the USA when I was about 3. I have almost no recollection of anything I did there, although there are some photos of me hugging Mickey Mouse at Disneyland :) I'm not even sure which parts we visited. I suppose I've been told, because I have asked my parents this before. California is the only place I can say for definite at the moment. And Hawaii. I don't remember Hawaii, but I have seen the 3 seconds of recorded footage we have from that trip :)
We have an alarming number of holiday videos where you can hear my voice in the background whinging about something, or being excited, or trying to get someone's attention. I was a spoilt brat :)
I'm sorry if I'm repeating myself. I fee like I am :(
http://www.flickr.com/photos/95083192@N03/8683365643/in/photostream
x
Kryten: "This is the inquisitor. He prunes away the wastrels, expunges the wretched, and deletes the worthless."
Rimmer: "We're in big trouble."
Me too!
You're none of those things! Rimmer is but you're definitely not. And i have final say because i'm the boss of everyone.
We're getting close to 1000 comments. I'm excited :)
"You're none of those things! Rimmer is but you're definitely not. And i have final say because i'm the boss of everyone."
You're the nicest boss I've ever had. You can boss me around as much as you like :)
Have some more boring stories as a reward for being so nice.
My dad used to go away on a lot of business trips when he worked for the health board (he's retired now). He would bring me back videos :) Usually sitcoms or Cary Grant films. Bringing Up Baby, that was one of the videos he came back with one time. I used to get very excited to see what he'd brought back. Sometimes I couldn't wait and I'd go rummaging through his suitcases as soon as he got in the door. That used to get me in trouble. But this was all back in the days of no internet, just Clive's Record Shop. That place was a rip-off. Didn't stop me spending all my pocket money in there.
Most of the videos my dad brought back were for the whole family, but occasionally he'd bring back something especially for me. Mr Bean videos :) They were mine, all mine, bwahahahah...sorry, I don't know what came over me. That was all I wanted to know when he got home, if he'd bought me a Mr Bean video. You should have seen my face when it turned out he hadn't. One time he said that he hadn't, but it turned out he had. Awful man :) I still have all my Mr Bean videos. They are in the hallway (you may have noticed a couple of them in that list I posted last week).
Please don't judge me too harshly, but I still love Mr Bean. Not the films, I don't hold any affection for them whatsoever, but my old videos. They all have titles but I just know them by their colour and what I order I got them in.
The Red video
The Green video
The Purple video
The Blue video
The Yellow video
I was obsessed with getting the blue video :) If he'd got them in order, it would have been the second one. But he missed it out. I had to wait what seemed like ages for him to buy it for me. It had the swimming pool and the sandwich making segments on it. Totally worth the wait :)
I'm sorry, but I just have to link you to something to illustrate my love of this show that so many people seem to hate, maybe you included :) It's very short, I promise you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwNUHimoL5g
Red Dwarf videos too. Although, they weren't just for me. I had to share. Grumble, grumble, grumble. Did you know Craig Ferguson appeared in an early episode? Look at those teeth :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK1v3sU3hW0
And here's Patrick Stewart talking about Red Dwarf in a documentary for RD's 10th anniversary. Red Dwarf night, I remember it well. Recorded the whole thing off the telly. Geek :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKw6Z0CCNtY
Too bad it was just about starting to suck by then. Red Dwarf 1-6, yes. Anything after, no.
Star Trek: The Sexed Generation
"In your position it's important to ask yourself one question. What would Picard do?"
Possible my favourite part of that whole entire clip. And yes, that's something I'll be asking myself in a lot of situations :)
P.S. - The David Wooderson gif is just fantastic :)
I don't know if you'll think any of this is good. Cheerful though. Maybe cheerful is good. Adore you buddy.
Moxy Fruvous - My Baby Loves A Bunch Of Authors
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRNCAGjSnv8
Summer Twins - I Will Love You
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Qrhm4rnA2s
Tijuana Panthers - Redheaded Girl
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDqTCWO2880
Hi Lilly. I'll keep being me and boring you with my stories :)
It sometimes frustrates me how little I remember about my holidays abroad. I've been to so many places that a lot of people would count themselves lucky to have seen, and I can hardly remember a thing about them. Of course I remember the unimportant, trivial things.
In Thailand, I had pancakes for breakfast in the hotel. The syrup was in a little glass jug. Yes, I went to Thailand and my clearest memory is of eating pancakes. For lunch one day, my brother ordered this spicy soup and I swear I could see a red glow coming from it. He wouldn't admit it was too hot for him, all I could see were his ears turning red :)
We were in Bangkok. There were a lot of beggars in the streets. There was a woman with a child. It was sad. We also went to a temple. I told you about the elephant. I think that was outside the temple. We were so lazy, my brother and I couldn't be bothered to climb the steps to the top. There was a man selling coconuts. The rentals bought us a couple to drink and left us at the bottom. We also watched some kind of acted sword fight being performed.
Embarrassingly, I visited Thailand on the way, or way back from, my most recent visit to the Philippines. I don't know what hope there is of my remembering details about the other countries I visited on previous trips. I remember the flights well enough, and the films I watched. Well, a few of them anyway. I watched The Untouchables about 10 times in a row. I kept falling asleep and missing the beginning.
Frustrating :)
I flew business class once. We got upgraded. I take full credit for getting my family the upgrade. You see, the rentals couldn't find my ticket when we went to the airport and it looked like they would have to leave me behind in the Philippines! Seriously, they would have left me behind. Okay, so they would have bought me ticket for a flight the next day, but I still hold it against them :) Obviously, being the brave little knight that I was, I started to cry. They eventually found my ticket and I'm sure we got the upgrade because of my tears making the airport staff feel sorry for me. "Poor boy, let's put them in business class" :) Or maybe it was just luck of the draw.
I don't know why I tell you these embarrassing stories about myself.
Anyway, I sat next to a complete stranger on the flight home. He kept making small talk with me. Then again, I was more talkative when I was younger. These days, I only really a lot talk to you :) It's much better flying business class. I'm never flying economy again, which probably means I'm never flying again, since I doubt I'll ever be able to afford anything better.
I've sat next to some interesting people on planes, like an old man with no nose! He'd even stolen my window seat. How do you tell a man with no nose he's sitting in your seat? You don't. You just sit next to him and concentrate on your book for the entire flight. Actually, I remember helping him to open a packet of biscuits, nice person that I used to be.
I've done so few nice things for people in my life, I tend to remember them. I remember staying in a hotel room abroad with my brother and for some reason he didn't want to share a bed with me. He slept on the couch with some blankets and I could see him shivering, so I got out of bed and told him we could switch. So I spent the night freezing on the couch while he was warm in bed. I have my moments :)
I'll end on a happy note. One time, my brother and I got locked out of our hotel room in our night attire :) I blame him. He was in charge of the key. I made him go down to the lobby to get someone to let us back in.
Hi Lilly
Ugh, I'm so poppy. I'm so glad I have you :) Still, I like sharing happy things with you.
Rosie and Me - Bonfires
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYz2LJNpQOE
Very Truly Yours - I'd Write You A Song (very early Camera Obscura like)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d81nG_7bM6U
Wake Owl - Wild Country (not quite so poppy, so maybe not quite so me :) I really like the chorus though)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87ou73Af-gk
'The Hunt' was another movie miss of mine at Mareel :( Before we were friends, the only movie I'd seen at Mareel was 'Chariots of Fire', and that was only because I didn't have to pay for a ticket. I think I'll go to see 'Iron Man 3' tomorrow morning, if I'm up in time. Working at Psych in the afternoon. I might only be working there for another 3 weeks! I was only on a temporary contract and that finishes on the 20th May. I might get a 3 month extension, I don't know. I don't know what I'll do afterwards. My parents think maybe I should move to Aberdeen and stay with my cousin for a bit, look for work there. It worries me when they talk like that even though it's probably a good idea. I wish I didn't have to work, or at least that I had a job that I liked doing. I sometimes think I should move somewhere on my own, and try to figure out what I want because I have no idea right now. For the first time in my life I can afford to do something like that, but it's a big change to make and I'll probably end up crawling back home to my family with nothing again. Anyway, my parents would be dead against me moving somewhere on my own. They'd be right too. I'm a total self destructive fuck up when left to my own devices, I really am. Sorry, I'm just writing what's in my head. I'm okay really. Just thinking about the future :)
One of my favourite lines from Batman:
"You ain't got no future Jack. You're an A1 nut boy and Grissom knows it." :)
I hope you get things sorted out easily tomorrow Lillyputty. I'll text you later to say goodnight. Adore you buddy :)
I will be going to see Iron Man 3 this morning at 11am. Then Psych in the afternoon. I just wanted to leave you something in case I don't have time later. Although I do always have your blog & last.fm page open when I'm at work :)
I forgot one of the things I really liked about the Philippines. The fizzy drinks. So nice in the hot weather. They seem to sell them everywhere. In glass bottles too. Is it my imagination or do fizzy drinks always taste better when you're drinking them from glass bottles. They only seem to sell three kinds in the Philippines - coke, sprite and this drink you don't get over here called a royal. It's basically fizzy orange, kind of like a fanta. But it's called a royal, which makes it taste a million times better :)
There's no airport on Bohol, the island where my mum is from, so we have to fly to a city called Cebu. I think it's the second biggest city in the Philippines, but I'm not sure. Then you takes the boat across to Bohol. It was a really big, really old boat & it always seemed to be crowded. And I'm pretty sure it's still the same.
Cities in Philippines are just awful. It's horrible when you get off the plane and the air hits you for the first time. It's so stuffy. I'm always glad to get back to Shetland and the fresh air :) My cousin, who lives in Aberdeen now, used to live in Cebu. She studied there. I didn't like it when she was in Cebu and I was in Bohol. At least when I was younger, she lived in Bohol and we spent most of the holiday together. I hardly saw her when she lived in the city. Hardly seemed worth going to the Philippines :)
She's actually the daughter of my mum's twin sister. She moved to Shetland when I was at university. She stayed in my bedroom, so really it's her bedroom too. I didn't have a bedroom when I came home. Then she got married and moved to Swansea, then Cardiff, now Aberdeen. At least I got my bedroom back :)
One of the things I remember about Cebu is the shopping mall. I kinda have a thing for huge shopping malls :) In Philippines anyway. I could spend my entire holiday there. Probably because it's air conditioned and outside it is so stuffy. In those days, I was probably only interested in toys and food though. Food courts :) No wonder I like 'At The Mall' so much.
We also used to go to this restaurant called the Viennese Coffee House. I used to look forward to going there. I suppose because it was more European. I wasn't that keen at all on a lot of Filipino food or restaurants. I think maybe I would mind so much now. Then again, maybe I would :) I don't remember the Viennese Coffee House being anything particularly fancy. Just a nice, quiet restaurant with a really cool sounding name :) I remember you could get an Irish coffee. I never got one. Wasn't allowed too because of the alcohol, but I always wanted one because I liked the way the cream sat on top :)
Let me explain why I did not see Iron Man 3 this morning. It turned out to be something called a 'Babes In Arms' screening, which means babies. Not on their own, obviously. Although a cinema full of babies watching Iron Man 3 is a happy thought :) But parents can bring babies along to it. They have all types of special screenings at Mareel. I'm such an idiot for not realising :(
Oh well, tomorrow at 5.30pm shouldn't be too bad. It's in Screen 1 which is the bigger screen, and 2D films tend to be a bit quieter when they have a 3D version showing as well. A nice thing about Mareel is that you can choose your own seats when you book. I'm kinda experimenting at the moment, seeing where I like best :) Where would you usually sit in a cinema?
I hope you got things sorted today. I would have wanted to buy you anime anyway, even if you were as happy can be :) But I know you probably don't want me buying you stuff. I could just send you anime from time to time, and you could post it back to me after you've finished watching it. I should start building us an amazing joint anime collection :)
I don't expect you to watch any of this, but I'll still post it because...well, I don't have a valid reason :) Only that it's the most watched thing from my childhood. By far. We've had this Transformers episode on tape for as long as I remember. My brother maybe even got it before I was born, we've had it that long. It's still in the hallway, in a red video case with no jacket. I love that we still have it. It's still the best one in my opinion, but then I would say that :)
Transformers - Key To Vector Sigma
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L89sk4rmTaA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VknLS-XEji4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-5GbWwkGaQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8uW2s6JEe0
I'll tell you an embarrassing secret. I still watch the old tape from time to time and I still think it's as fantastic as ever :)
P.S. - I'm leaving you to write the 1000th comment, even if it's just a one word comment :) I know it's silly to get excited about it, but I am anyway.
Nudge :)
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