Purple-phreak

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I feel like I'm knocking around in an old empty warehouse, I need to go somewhere where I can read more stuff, I will keep an eye on platform27 though :) 

This weekend was hopefully the turning point in my recent month long hangover style funk. Yesterday I woke very late in the afternoon and emerged from my bedroom to find the Wizard and Jon pottering about. I took my time getting ready and spent the rest of the afternoon slowly tidying up and sorting my washing out.

In the evening various people came over to chill. We ended up spread out throughout the flat; with Guitar Hero 3 in the lounge, poker in the hall and some space shooty game in the kitchen. I worked my way through the majority of a bottle of port... not the best idea, but because of its very sweet taste I couldn't guzzle it and ended up with a nice comfortable level of pished all evening.

Vikki turned up after the pub and managed to keep making me crack up by just being herself and coming out with some of the mad crazy stuff that she does. I'm now going into London with her on Tuesday for a makeover and photo shoot (the second in as many weeks... I'm not letting them cut my hair again though or there'll be nothing left!) because she was sleep shopping. Some representative sales-leech type rang her (probably not stupidly early but she is a student) and she managed to agree to the shoot, find her credit card, pay £6 each for something he told her was free, and then fall asleep again. She woke a few hours later and realised what had happened, but didn't get around to trying to cancel it until it was too late. She's a daft one :)

After some reading (almost at the end of Fear and Loathing), giggling, nattering and drinking everyone slowly tricked away until there were only a few of us left and I was starting to feel that perhaps I should have stopped drinking about an hour ago. I got myself a huge glass of water and stumbled to bed feeling warm and relaxed, there's nothing like spending a relaxed evening with friends to recharge your batteries :)

Yesterday's night out turned out to be as good as I had hoped. We arrived at the venue and were directed to the bar and cloakroom by a steward in Medieval dress. On entering the vaulted cellar a serving wench handed us each a complimentary glass of cider. We were left for a while to order drinks at the bar before being ushered to our long table.

The table was dressed with large pewter plates and small glass flagons. Pitchers of red and white wine and beer were placed along its length and were refilled if you held them up in the air and called for one of the wenches bustling about. Shortly after we were seated, a Beefeater called for our attention and then announced the arrival of King Henry VIII. The actor playing him was excellent, pitching the king as a slightly letchy scoundrel.

Throughout the evening we were entertained by dancing and singing wenches, bards, the beautiful voice of Queen Catherine (we're never told exactly which Catherine it is), a juggler, a gymnast, sword fighters, and a constant tirade of banter between the various actors that kept the evening's entertainment moving along.

There was also a lot of audience participation. The first thing we were told was that there would be a lot of toasts, and that every time the King proposed a toast he would shout 'Drink ale!' to which we were all to reply 'Wassail!'. This would be repeated another two times as we held our glasses aloft and then we would drink. Before each course we were asked if we were hungry, and told that if we didn't say yes loudly enough they wouldn't feed us! Everyone was quite reserved to start with, but as the night moved on and the drink flowed people started to lose their inhibitions and soon the hall was ringing to yells of 'Wassail!' and the thunder of fists hammering the long tables in appreciation of the nights entertainment.

Several individuals were picked on for different aspects of the evening too. My colleague, Dave, was dressed in a long cloak and named Lord Mark (it was supposed to be our boss Mark but he 'delegated' the job) for the evening. He had to get up a few times to oversee various toasts. The entertainers also got different people up at different times to participate in the acts or to dance along with them. Everyone took it in good humour and it really did add to the fun mood of the evening.

Once the feast was over the Beefeater announced that they would leave us now and we would be returned our own time for the rest of the night. The actors paraded out, the lights changed, and a disco started up to see us to midnight when the venue closed.

I would thoroughly recommend the Medieval Banquet for a group night out, it's laid back, fun, silly, entertaining, and the food's not half bad either! Hopefully I will go back there sometime soon with my lot.

Tonight looks to be an interesting one. I'm going to a Medieval banquet with my team from work as part pf some team recognition thing. The banquet hall is at St Catherine's dock in London, and the website promises 'a regal banquet and an exciting array of live entertainment by flickering torchlight in the vaulted cellars of Ivory House... Join King Henry VIII and his special guests who will perform a show of festive pageantry'.

The office politics are in full swing this morning as a result of tonight's plans. 2/3ds of the team are coming, the other third have been quite vocal about the fact that London is too far away and that they want the money that would have been spent on their meals in vouchers. I think they're being selfish assholes. Firstly, you can't please everyone, majority rules; secondly, it only happens once a year so who cares if it's a bit of a trek? Thirdly, if you can't be bothered to make the effort to come out for a team event, your cut of the budget should go into the pot to be used that night. You can't reject something and then demand something else like it's some sort of right, it's just selfish and it could encourage others to behave in a similar way, then no-one would ever go out and we'd all just have the vouchers and be unsociable.

Oh well, hopefully it'll be a good, different night out in a new place. I did think about dressing up in Medieval clothes, but no one else was up for it and I wouldn't have been able to get an outfit sorted in time anyway. If it turns out to be as good as it sounds I might try and get some friends up there one night to do it properly!

Breaking news... I've just found out some people have dropped out and now the Wizard is also coming, huzzah!

On the apathy front:- I'm still feeling quite zoned out about everything. I still have that unshakeable niggling feeling that something just isn't quite right... but I can't put my finger on it. I'm choosing to just ignore it and get on with things, it will either go away or my mind will eventually stop being cryptic on me and I'll be able to face whatever it is head on. Until then, there's not much point moping eh?

Something isn't sitting quite right with me at the moment, but I can't for the life of me figure out what it is. It's the same funk that I feel I've been stuck in since the beginning of January, maybe it's because this is such a boring month.

Today I awoke in a groggy state to the sound of the alarm on my mobile phone rudely announcing the day. I put off getting out of bed for another half an hour and as a result had to find a bandanna to wear to work so that I didn't scare people with my runaway hair... Here I go again, writing a bunch of useless and boring trivia that I won't want to re-read and certainly no-one other than me would want to persevere with further than the first paragraph, oh well, I guess I'm on my own by now anyway.

I have to keep writing though, because I fear that if I stop now I won't start again for months and months, and every time I take a break from trying to use my imagination a bit and excercising my language skills I feel like I have lost a little piece of it, like my literary abilities are melting with every step I take further away from my school English classroom. I had great hopes back then, I was determined that I was going to write, something. I have been reading avidly ever since I learned how to and always aspired to create something of my own one day, something I could pass bown in my family, a legacy.

But the years have passed and I've lost my inspiration, what would someone like me have to talk about anyway? The only ideas I can come up with sound more like the plot to a bad teen angst series than a book, I could probably write some trash novel that appeals to the sort of people that rush out to buy Jade Goody's autobiography... Though I'd probably lose interest halfway through like I always do when I try to commit myself to something, I'll put it off 'til tomorrow, that fabled place where we are all going to get organised, get fit, eat healthily, and generally be better people.