Time for another blog I think, so lets go back to last week.
Last Wednesday we needed to finish stripping the ceiling as we were having the plaster fixed that evening, we spent all day scraping bits of rough cast off only for it to look the same after about 6 hours. Eventually the decorator phoned saying he’s on his way and that he’ll get the rest off, he managed it all in about 10 minutes, I’m not sure how and frankly I don’t care, the main thing is that we don’t have to do any more.
Wednesday also saw Dean finally go home, he’d been here almost a week and I think he was starting to not only get on our nerves, but my sister’s nerves too. She came home saying ‘if he rings tell him I’m in bed ill’ so it was starting to look like we’d seen the last of him…despite all his laundry being here.
Thursday morning the decorator came round at about 8am to paper the ceiling, we expected him to be here all day but he was done by midday. The ceiling looked really good once it was finished, we’d been meaning to get it done ever since we moved in 8 years ago, plus we had a whopping great hole in the corner of the ceiling too which the plumber made by dropping a pipe though while working upstairs a few years back. We’re going to try and get the rest of the lounge decorated now although knowing us it’ll probably be all finished by 2015.
Thursday evening, we sat down to look at our lovely new ceiling (there was nothing much on TV), suddenly a big van reversed onto our neighbour’s drive, they sold their house a few weeks back and they were moving out. They spent the evening filling up the van while the rest of the street watched from behind the corners of their curtains, they were moving just round the corner, weirdly enough it‘s the house next door to where my dad used to live. By Friday afternoon we had new neighbours, I still haven’t seen them to speak to yet but they seem ok.
Friday evening the phone went, it was Dean, he was standing down the road with a dozen red roses for my sister. Lisa however was out with the people she works with so he chose to stand down the road and wait for her (Yeah, if you think that this behaviour is weird then you’re in for a treat). Dean stayed until Saturday afternoon, I was in the lounge talking to my mum and we heard a noise by the front door, my sister walks in and says…
“I’m off to Dean’s house now…” “Oh, will you back tonight?” “Probably not…Bye!…” “Hang on where’s Dean…Are you taking him with you?” “He’s just gone down the road to be sick.” “Oh…er…Is he ok?” “Yeah, he’s fine…Bye!”
…He’s just gone down the road to be sick…what a lovely image. Although god knows why he had to go down the road to do it.
That evening I went bowling with Gaz, Adam, Carl, Marcus and Jenny. With there being 6 of us - the games lasted ages and were much more fun, I think I came 3rd and then 2nd, I also managed to get my 2nd ever turkey in the 2nd game too.
Sunday was the Tolkien thingy at Sarehole Mill, we go most years although it seems to have less and less to do with Tolkien each time we go. It had the usual elves and hobbits walking round and I’m pretty sure at one point I saw somebody dressed as a Klingon. After a while we saw all there was to see and headed off to the drawbridge for a drink in the sun.
As we were sat there slowly getting sunburnt somebody said how nice it would be to have a barbeque in this weather. Carl then reminded us that we still had loads of stuff at his house still from the last barbeque a few weeks back. We necked our drinks and jumped into the car, as soon as we got to Carl’s house we set up the barbeque.
After a while we were all full up so we set up the Wii for a game of WarioWare. Now this game is the most random thing I have ever seen, but at the same time it was really good fun, although I was total crap at it, in fact here is some exclusive footage of me crashing and burning…
…Yeah.
The next day was Monday, in the evening we all went to wetherspoons for a drink and managed to get to sofas at the front…that was the highlight of the night.
Fast forwarding to last night now. I phoned Gaz in the evening and he said we were all going to Carl’s house to watch a DVD or play on the 360 or something, so I said I’d bring my hard drive along so I could show them the demo for the new Pirates of the Caribbean game. When we got there we played the demo for a little while and then looked through which videos I had, Adam asked me about the Halo 3 video…
“What’s that Halo 3 video like?…” “It’s ok, it’s basically a video about how you can…CARL YOU HAVE CRACKDOWN!!!!”
In case you didn’t know, Crackdown is a game that let’s you play the Halo 3 beta, but because Carl didn’t have an Xbox live account he couldn’t use it…but I do!
After a moment of pure retardation jumping around like a kid on Christmas morning and hearing Jenny make a comment about none of us having girlfriends, we downloaded the beta and waited…and waited…1% complete. So we decided to watch a bit of Family Guy while we were waiting, it was the Stewie Griffin untold story and it was hilarious. Eventually Family Guy finished and we checked the download…100% complete!
Now if you’ve never played Halo before then you’ll probably not appreciate how big this is, but Halo and Halo 2 were easily the 2 biggest games of the last 10 years. We were hoping it would live up to everyone’s expectations and it easily did, it even has a new big red laser which has to been seen to be believed. Halo 3 coincidentally comes out the week before my birthday so I think I already know what I want.
So now it’s today…Thursday…my sister has the week off work and decided to go into Solihull to pick up a few things, before she started out Dean rang and I had to pretend she wasn’t here, he said he’d phone back in half an hour which he did…and then rang again…and again…and again.
When my sister got back from Solihull she asked if Dean had phoned, at that point he’d phoned about 20 times so we chose to ignore it again the next 10 times it rang before eventually unplugging the phone…only for him to turn up at the door a few minutes ago.
…where’s that big red laser when you need it?
I’ll leave you with an Halo 3 episode of Red vs. Blue…
I’ll start this blog where I left off - last Saturday. Not long after typing up my last blog I decided to look up my old house in Wythall online because it’s up for sale again (Ok, I confess - I did this on the Thursday, but I forgot to include it in my last blog so it’s in this one now).
Now ever since we moved out 10 years ago I’ve wondered if it looked any different at all, and to be honest I was very tempted to book a viewing just to be nosey. When I viewed the website I was shocked to see a photo of the lounge, at first I thought it was a photo of somebody else’s lounge because it looked so different but on closer inspection it was the same room.
Further down they had photos of the kitchen and garden, both looking completely different too, it feels strange to think I spent the first 15 years of my life there, in some ways it still feels like home.
The next day (Sunday, not Friday) I got a call off Gemma asking if I fancied going to the Frank Turner gig at bar academy that night, without hesitation I phoned the academy to see if I could get tickets on the door although they were no good, so after phoning about 4 different places and then deciding to buy them online and collect them when we get there I got them sorted.
Gemma and Woody picked me up in the evening and we set off into Birmingham, after collecting my ticket and joining Gemma and Woody back upstairs I only find them talking to Frank bleeding Turner!
Gemma bought his album which he signed, I'd already downloaded it so I decided I’d say hello instead, but what I didn’t think about was that this is Frank Turner, the lead singer of Million Dead - one of my favourite bands EVER. Normally when you get to speak to the singer from one of your favourite bands you think about what you’d say beforehand…not me…
“Hey!” “Hey!…um…so what CDs have you got to sell?” “I’ve just got my album and some CDs of the support bands…” “I’ve already download…er…bought the album” “Cool, what do you think of it?” “Yeah, it’s great! Do you have any copies of your EP?” “Nah, I only managed to get my copy yesterday, it’s in the shops tomorrow though. Here have a free CD!” “Thanks…er…could you sign my ticket?” “Yeah, sure!”
And here is my signed ticket. The free CD was an album’s worth of tracks from a band called Blah Blah Blah and they’re not bad.
Anyway, on with the gig…
First up was this guy who went by the name of Jay Jay Pistolet, he came on with his guitar and looked nervous from the word go, not only did he make eye contact with everyone while he sang but he stopped mid song at one point to pick up his plectrum which he dropped.
The next band were called Captain Black and were quite good, they were a bit Irish sounding and very lively, I was tempted to do a jig at one point but then I realized that it would just look stupid.
After what seemed like an eternal wait - Frank Turner finally made his way on stage. He played most of the songs off the album including some new and untitled ones, he also commented on how this was probably one of the warmest gigs he’s ever done, so warm in fact that it caused 2 of his strings to snap mid-song.
After the gig I went home to find there had been a gas leak in my road which meant having the road dug up until 4am. Also when I got home my throat started to feel a bit tender, knowing my luck I’d wake up the next morning with a cold starting.
I woke up the next morning with a cold starting, I really wanted to go out and do something seeing as it was bank holiday Monday but I felt too bad.
Wednesday was interesting, we got to meet my sister’s new boyfriend for the first time, my sister is always very shy about this kind of thing so we didn’t know much about him apart from the fact that he’s 29 and his name is Dean.
As we were waiting for them to turn up we were trying to guess what he’d be like, not that it mattered, as long as he wasn’t a 6ft6 cigar smoking cage fighter…then the doorbell rang, it was my sister, she introduced us to Dean…a 6ft6 cigar smoking cage fighter.
Now I have a slight problem with all of this, when my sister first brought him over she asked if he could stay the night, that was fine by us really seeing as it would only be one night, but…
…IT’S 6 DAYS LATER AND HE’S STILL FUCKING HERE!!!!
As you can probably tell I’m not his biggest fan, and neither is my mum anymore. He seemed ok at first, he was very outgoing and chatty, but that was on Wednesday night, he hasn’t spoken to us since, he just sits in my sister’s room all the sodding time. He’s even lost his job since he’s been here but he still won’t go home. I’m so stressed out now, I can’t stand another minute of this!
Anyway…
Saturday I met up with Gaz, Adam, Marcus and Jo in the woodmans (or the woodhouse as Jo likes to call it), we were all going to have a meal before deciding that the black boy would probably be better for food. When we got to the black boy and we had our food we all decided that we should go for a walk along the canal, after taking 2 steps though it started raining so we all got back in the car.
We needed another plan so after a moment to think the rain stopped and we headed over to Earlswood. We walked along the lake and eventually found the playground, we all suddenly turned 15 years younger and went on the swings and climbed the tree there.
All that tree climbing was thirsty work so we walked to the reservoir for a quick drink. Afterwards Gaz went home and Marcus was meeting Steve for a drink so I went to Blockbuster with Adam and Jo and we rented out Talladega Nights.
I really enjoyed Talladega Nights, it had it’s stupid moments but it was still really funny, I’ll leave you a clip of the film in case you want to see it for yourself…
Well it’s now May, which means…er…not a lot really. It’s time for me to blog again so this will require me to think back a few days.
Ah yes, last Friday. Now anyone who’s been to my house recently would have noticed something missing in the lounge, some time ago my mum had the idea to get all the rough cast off the ceiling for when we have it decorated, however some of it wouldn’t come off so she left it…for a year. Only recently have we decided to finally get it done, only problem is we need to get the rest of the rough cast off first. Last Friday we decided to give it ago and it took all day, it certainly wasn’t easy and at the end of the day it looked no different, so we’d need to finish it off on the Saturday.
Saturday came and I couldn’t bare to strip any more rough cast off so I sat in the garden so I wouldn’t have to think about it. Only problem was the garden needed doing too, we had weeds everywhere and in all honesty it looked a bit of an embarrassment. After a while I got one side of the garden done and decided to get the mower out of the shed and do the lawn, unfortunately my family aren’t the most organized family in the world and the lawn mower was buried, so I spent the rest of the day clearing the shed out just so we could get to stuff easier.
By Sunday I was knackered and decided to put my feet up, in the evening I watched Nacho Libre and poured myself a couple of glasses of Jim Beam and coke, when the film finished I stood up and staggered across the room and looked at the bottle of Jim Beam with 3 quarters of the bottle missing, maybe I misjudged the measurements a little.
Monday morning I woke up with the first hangover I’d had in over a year, it always makes me wonder why people drink to get drunk, it’s not worth having to spend an entire day paying for the night before.
The next day was really warm and sunny so in the evening I went with Adam and Gaz to the drum and monkey, we sat in the beer garden and promptly froze our asses off, luckily it was nice and warm back inside so we went back in. As we sat down Marcus rang us to say he was in the packhorse if we fancied joining him, so without hesitation we all jumped in the car and met him and Jenny and co for a few drinks.
Nothing much happened for the rest of the week, my aunt came round on Thursday night, we were all talking about that massive cat that used to come into our house, I decided I’d tell her about the time it was sick…
“This one evening it came in and threw up everywhere, there was loads of it as if an adult had done it…” “That’s disgusting!…What colour was it?” “Um…it was just chunks of cat food really…”
The next thing I knew my aunt was creased up laughing, eventually I realized that she meant the colour of the cat…not the sick and I was soon in tears with laughter, I guess you had to be there really.
Yesterday morning I received a text off Adam saying about going to see Spiderman 3 that night in Solihull, I decided to come along, the only problem is not only I dislike Solihull enough as it is…Solihull of a Friday evening is my idea of hell.
When me and Gaz got into Solihull we were told to meet Adam in the barley mow because he was having some drinks for somebody’s leaving do and we had an hour to kill. When we went to walk into the pub though a bouncer stopped me in my tracks and said…
“Sorry mate, no trainers.” “Huh?…Why not?” “Dress code mate.” “What do you mean dress code?!…This is a PUB!” “Dress code after 8pm mate.”
I looked at the time…8:30…is Solihull really so pretentious that it has to enforce a dress code for people to go to a pub? We had an hour to kill, what were we meant to do? Sit in McDonalds? Do they have a dress code too? I was furious, I refused to be turned away from a pub for wearing trainers. Gaz jokingly said that I should take my trainers off and walk in…he didn’t expect I’d do it. I strolled up to the door again, this time with my trainers in my hand…
“Look mate, I told you we have a dress code!” “Yeah, no trainers…” “We can’t let you in.” “I don’t see this dress code written down anywhere, unless you can show me this dress code I’m making a complaint.”
At this point the bouncer opened the door to tap an A4 piece of paper stuck on the inside of the door saying about this dress code, the manager was stood there and said I can go in.
I find this absolutely stupid, it’s not as if the barley mow is some high class trendy bar…it’s a pub, it doesn’t undergo some amazing transformation once it turns 8, they just turn the volume and the price of the drinks up. I’m still going ahead with this complaint.
Anyway the film was alright, nothing terribly amazing really. I was never a big fan of the first 2 Spiderman films, the only different thing about this one was the fact that it lasted about an hour longer.
Anyway, I have more gardening to do now so here’s a video for you until next time…
