green fingers

i got me a plant for my desk!

a bit of greenery to remind me its not natural to sit at a desk all day...

a houseleek i believe, i wanted a cactus (low maintenance) but the store didn't have any and this was pretty so...

one day i'd like a place where i could grow some tomatoes, i love the smell of the vine, but when it comes to gradens i find them a bit boring... i prefer the park, i guess i like company! haha

when i was at uni i decided my philosophical statement was (apart from i drink therefore i am) that 'god is a tree'... i know you can hardly bear the deafening clarity it has brought to your day! hehe

the idea was that since the earth needs trees to clean the air, cleansing the world of its sins? they're everywhere, just liek the big guy, and look pretty (i hear looking on natural things in a stressbuster in modern life), created in his own image?!

it stands that god is a tree!

theological? moi? i'm more into Socrates personally... it may show from the above nonsense... but all this green fingery stuff was kicked off when one of the managers at work boguht a load of plants for his team and i've done nothing but eye them enviously since!

hence the houseleek...

you either dig QT or you don't

went to see the Tarantino film this weekend with my man.

originally part of a double-bill with Planet Terror directed by pal Robert Rodriquez, Death Proof is a homage to C Movies of old.. but because the american cinema goers couldn't hack the double bill over in Blighty we don't even get a chance to see the fake trailers featuring Nic Cage as FuManchu hehe, ruined! roll on the DVD!

i am a big fan of QT but as time rolls on it seems he's like marmite - you either dig him or you don't! my man seems genuinely irritated by his style, yet is a fan of Pulp Fiction... he complained fo the new film "it's just a series of sketches; you probably like it cos it's like a load of ads all spliced together"

talk about rude! haha what was Pulp Fiction if not a series of sketches? maybe my man has merely 'out-grown' Tarantino while I'm still in the love-haze...

what was great about the lastest addition to the QT anthology was waht is great about all his films... the dialogue... the music... the casting... what was Pulp Fiction if not a beautiful dialogue; cast and soundtrack?! the casting of Death Proof is even better with the C-Movie-acceptable 'normal people' casting... sure there are a few beautiful girls, there are in life, but i loved the 'ordinariness' attempted by QT with his girls in this movie... only chicks will notice and they'll love him more for it... so thanks Quentin for being the kind of director who put normal people in the movies!

a sense of sound

over the last two saturdays i took an introduction to singing course in Liverpool organised by a group called Sense of Sound...

we learned about the vocal chords and how we make sound, learned some vocal warm ups, scales and suchlike (the lip-trill is particularly amusing!) and sang in harmony with a bunch of people we'd never met before, which is quite a thrill actually!

the reason i took the course was to improve my confidence in my own sound... to learn some technique to make my voice stronger... all of which i think i achieved, hurrah! but it was an interesting crowd... some youngsters, some oldies, some inbetweenies like me... some people who didn't turn up to part2! i wonder what happened to them! i asked my mum if she'd like to do the course too and so she did, but i think she enjoyed it less because of the early saturday morning start, and don't get me wrong, saturday morning is something i don't normally see myself but i guess when you get to a certain age its a chore to get up and sing on a saturday! haha*

i recorded some of the songs we sang and wow we sound pretty impressive for a bunch of beginners! i guess the course is what you make it! and we were up for it! hehe

its amazing to think about how much work your voice does and this course certainly made me appreciate those little flaps of skin a whole lot more!

so watch out world - me and my vocal chords are a-coming! hehe


*you asked for it ma!

animal instincts

i love it when i catch myself acting or reacting to my most basic of instincts...

for example last night and fresh bedding made me feel all content and relaxed - like a bird in a new nest of twiglets haha and it occurred to me that it was quite strange to feel as such just cos of some fresh sheets...

i genuinely feel that when you feel modern life is rubbish just thinking about back-to-basics stuff like how healthy i am, how lucky i am to live in this country, with education and clean water the norm not a luxury, with a cinema outside my house and facebook to poke my friends thru the week! hehe

sure i don't have it all (do i even know what it all is?!) but really life could be a whole lot worse and is for many many people...

at a meeting today i joked with a client about how weird it would be if humans mated liek the nature world - like just once a year in a specific month etc, so you'd look in your diary and say 'nope, mating in March, how about June for a holiday Norma?!' hehe

i'm migrating south in November me! (i wish! haha)

i think we could learn a lot from the animal world if we stopped being the big-i-am of the planet for 5 minutes.. haha, grooming amongst chimps etc is rocknroll, whats not to like?! tho the gang bumming of lower rank chimps is a bit much... they can keep that one hey?! hehe

i'm off to read the rest of that man-watching book by desmond morris my man lent me a year ago! haha

Withnail & I

Last night i went to see the classic british film Withnail & I, on at the cinema as part of the British Summer fo Film season... Having only discovered this movie in the 90s when it was already almost 10 years old the chance to see it on the big screen made me whoop with delight... (and whoop i did reader! hehe)

not only is a cult classic but its a very good movie! haha (you know how sometimes

that isn't the case) so it was a pleasure to watch having not seen it for a few years and the big screen dimensions highlighting the background like never before - example - a whisper went down my row of buddies that in Uncle Monty's flat there were cauliflowers instead of flowers in all the vases (what is the plural of vase?!) and some of the cinematography was gorgeous and you simply wouldn't notice on the tv...

as Withnail & I is about a couple of drunken thespians it was only just that i take in a bottle of red and some paper cups - as i'd gathered 9 close friends for the showing it didn't go far but that's not the point! the very idea that i was sipping some of the red stuff while watching Richard E Grant in his splendour is simply fabulous! And for my friend Belle who had never seen the film before - advising her that said drunken thesp played by a teetotal Grant (due to an allergy to alcohol not some former addiction mind!) made it all the more impressive a performance!

Actually Grant wrote a very good book based on his diaries at the time of filming called With Nails that i recommend to any film fans...

As you can tell i'm still very much in the flush of excitment from my evening of film nostalgia and vino! haha I only hope they show Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange next... now that would be a night out! Bowler hats a-gogo!

the black stuff

top of the morning to you - or should i say "szczyt od ten rano dla ciebie"hehe, the polish invasion continues!

was in dublin friday thru sunday, i drank lots of the black stuff - with and without tia maria and did the bus tour! hurrah! the thing about work holidays tho is they're an oxymoron! if you're with work you're not on holiday are you?! and as much as i like some of my colleagues very much it still felt like a work trip not a jodester trip!

i made the mistake of going into a guinness gift shop... i'm such a sucker for it! i now have a new guinness teeshirt and bought guinness pants for me and a pair for my mum! haha

met hardly any irish people while there which i have to say was a little odd... i've only been to ireland a few times and i don't recall it being that 'foreign' elsewhere... must just be the capital, tho the poles where in Kinsale ehwn i went earlier this summer... such is life... people get very het up about migration when its one of the most natural human instincts... and we certainly don't see the headlines complaining about the english hopping off to sunnier climes - it would be funny if they did tho - WHO DO THEY THINK THEY ARE? 1000s of Brits flee rainy island! hehe

i had hoped to get out the city for a daytrip to the less commercialised Dublin 'burbs but like i said earlier this was a work trip not a jodester trip so in the city i stayed! it was intresteing tho cos a band i love called The Thrills are from Dublin and i had a song called 'so much for the city' running thru my head all weekend... and the lady on our 2nd bus tour* was a dry wit - when we passed by the old goal she said they'll charge you to get in and they'll charge you to get out again.. hehe she was a hoot!

we went to a jazz & blues bar saturday night called Bleu Note and saw some great live music, the guy shaun jones was very talented and we bought his cd but sadly it didn't sound as good as on the night, and i asked the jazz lady downstairs whether she knew any Francoise Hardy and she looked at me blankly - shame on her! Hardy's a legend!

i did a bit of local history on saturday when we trooped to a restored Georgian terraced house museum complete with original decor and furniture - really cool tour guide called Micheal who really knew his stuff! On the way we passed by Oscar Wilde's childhood home and statue - amazing! i LOVE Oscar Wilde! That was pretty cool... what a legend!

blimey i'm tired out thinking about it all... Oh and if you do get a chance to visit make sure you go hug the biggest lapdancing pole in europe**! hehe its great for hangovers!


*one ticket two routes 24hr ticket baby yeah!
**a taxi driver said that was what the Millenium Spire was - hehe - them cheeky irish fellas!

nothing could've prepared me...

for jack passion!

He (bowler hat guy) is now the World Champion Full Natural Beard! And he's only 23! What will he do next?!

when i bought tickets to the World Beard and Moustache Championships for me and my friend there's no way i thought that it could be so exciting! haha seriously, these guys rock! Jack reckons its a primal thing - me and my friend were only allowing our natural instinct to take over, haha

the next WBMC is in 2009 and in Alaska - i'm definitely considering going - my man could grow a beard for the freestyle! i'm creative director ofcourse! hehe

you gotta have respect for any dude that grows for the show...

This guy is my new hero!