crazybobbles

Right, instead of hiding from the fact that I had an godly time on Friday, I might as well start blogging the damn epic event! It’s strange when you blog, you feel obliged to do it but you hate spending ungodly amounts of hours doing it yet you don’t wanna miss out on any detail! So yeah, I’ll just get down to it. I don’t think I’ll put times and all since my memory for times that weekend is very poor! So anyway, enough bantering, hear it is…

Getting ready for the ungodly/godly weekend

Some random time in the morning I’m posting on the message board telling people I’m suppose to meet everyone at 1.30pm and how it was 12.30 and I was still in my underwear. I wasn’t really taking packing up seriously! Probably due to the fact that I did live in London so if there was something that was missing I could easily come back home and pick it up, it also means that travelling isn’t as hectic as everyone else (I can get to Victoria station in just 30 minutes mm). Around this time we’ve established that Kiernan has flown from America to Dublin and to London to visit everyone. She was staying at Kazzie’s the entire weekend and was at her place at the time, Inn was heading off to meet Kev and Stephie at their hotels and all, which sort of leaves me and Popey msn’ing about and posting on the board. So yeah, right now our meeting spot was Yo Sushi! at Victoria station at around 1.30-2pm, the rule was, at 2pm, we eat! I better get ready!

I had packed myself the bare essentials, clothes for all days (had to look sharp and all!), a wiimote for 4 player wii, gamecube pads for smash brothers action (I managed to reduce the load by asking inn and popey to bring a pad as well, as well as Max bringing a wiimote so the amount of stuff I brought was minimal). As well as that I brought my DSLR camera, my 55-200mm telelens (its Wembley Stadium so it made sense) and various chargers for batteries and phone batteries etc. With clothes I decided to be a bit retro and dress up with the same clothes as I did last week, I wanted something stripey so the white and blue went well, I made sure I wore my crazy big cuffed shirt and mask to ensure I could ninja my way around and all! The rest were just a simple cardigan and two scarves to vary from hehe.

I had to make a quick detour to fetch my camera before I made my way to Victoria. I think I was slightly delayed from all of this and people were getting quite nervous that I’ll be late once again haha (but fashionably late). I think was about 10 minutes late from it all so it wasn’t too bad.

Yakitori and peeping popey

I finally arrive in Victoria Station, I immediately head up to Yo Sushi and look around for everyone, I immediately catch Inn’s attention, she already had her camera ready snapping away so I retaliated with some fast action snapping. I immediately reach to them and out pops stephie! Was quite a surprise considering… no actually it wasn’t really a surprise, it made sense since Inn did pop around the hotels that kev and Gem were staying. Her voice was disturbingly high pitched! I comment on that immediately and she explains how she gets all high pitched when she’s nervous.

We immediately get ordering, I decided that the bar seating area wasn’t really a cool place for us lot to sit since it was a bit antisocial so I opted for us to all move to the seats with tables and all which everyone did. We all started ordering like made, Popey just told me to pick stuff up that he fancied whilst Inn ordered bits and bobs. I ordered chicken yakisoba and some prawn tempura, I was really addicted to the tempura lately! Oh some time later on Stephie’s voice returns back to it’s normal self when she’s less nervous, I did imitate how Stephie should sound and did a really deep irish voice hehe.

At one point Stephie orders a mushroom dish in which the waiters had no idea what it was, I later on find out that she wanted a mushroom nigiri, I started banging on the table and telling the waiter about how embarrassed I was with my friends lying to the waiter, I then had a proper lecture about how there was this bond of trust between the waiters and customers and how stephie totally destroyed that bond haha. It was pretty funny, I got both the waiter and Stephie embarrassed 😀

Sooner or later Kiernan and Kazzie arrive on the scene and Inn once again does the Stephie hiding trick! Everyone was happy seeing Kiernan arrive (as well as Kazzie) and we all got down to food ordering etc. Kiernan tried some yakitori to see what the fuss is all about and I think I bought Kazzie a chicken yakisoba to try out (she had firecracker rice last time). I managed to persuade both of them to come by promising Kazzie that I would buy her a chicken yakisoba since she was poor and had very limited amount of spending money and all, Inn was actually impressed of how easy it was for me to persuade Kazzie to goto yo sushi! I literally told Inn to put Kazzie on the phone and after a quick chat I persuaded both Kazzie and Kiernan to come along.

The food was lovely per usual, I’ve only noticed that Yo Sushi! in Victoria has two conveyor belts going at opposite directions (Picadilly’s one only has 1). Inn started ordering some green tea on top of her unlimited water since she loved it so much and it got to a point where the waiters just gave us the entire teapot to help ourselves with (last time was crazy). Stephie tried some miso soup too but kept saying it tasted of wood (the spoon), I personally loved it. Inn ordered some sashimi to try out whilst Kiernan ordered another Chicken Yakitori, the portions were quite small for Kiernan and she said could have eaten about 50 of them haha.

Some random time later on Max and Aino arrives on the scene, they sort of sat behind me and Inn and talked to everyone, they also paid Kazzie her Wembley Tickets money in which she immediately waved about, Stephie took her money out (which she flashed earlier on) and waved the amount of notes she had with her in comparison to Kazzie (Kazzie wasn’t pleased hehe). There was another point where I took a photo of Stephie and Popey where it looked like Popey was looking down her top hehe. Classic!

Near the end I decided to eat some Beef Raymond (I mean Ramen) haha. It was lovely hehe, nice and spicy. I loved the fact that you can just order random bits of food and try it out, the portions were small enough for you to experiment. I think after that (as well as Kazzie ordering some more fruit and wanting to drink some of my green tea) we were ready to pay the bills and depart for Trafalgar Square.

Quick Krispy Kreme break

Before heading straight to Trafalgar Square I also managed to pop by to Krispy Kremes for some doughnuts, originally the girls wanted to go to lush but all the guys overruled this, the key point being that only the guys knew their way to Trafalgar Square so it meant that they had to follow hehe. I ordered a dozen of Krispy Kremes since there was quite a lot of people about and all so we’d save a lot of money, well I did anyway. I charged everyone £1 for them haha! Anyway, onwards to embankment! We have some muse fans to laugh at!

Lion climbing and running away from Sylvie

The trafalgar square encounter was surreal and funny at the same time, as soon as we arrived we immediately saw the muse fans congregating around the stairs at Trafalgar. What do they look like? They were so easy to spot, just look for a Muse T shirt, one of the most original things to wear during Muse meet ups, singalongs and gigs. They were everywhere! As if looking emo wasn’t enough, you had to really join the pack and wear a Muse t shirt to say you’re going to a Muse singalong, you know… in case people didn’t know (haha). Though I suppose you’re supposed to be recognised at the singalong rather than acting all ninja like me and the rest.

I hate posed shots, not to mention the fact that two of them are wearing Muse t shirts…

We decided to climb the lions and just lounge around the square for a bit whilst the Muse fans sat and melted. Btw take note on the terms I use, “muse fans” are the people who turned up at the singalong for a sing and wear muse t shirts whilst “musers” are the sane (sane not same) type who aren’t singing and don’t wear muse t shirts (except kazzie, she’s a bit of both!). I began dishing out the doughnuts (for money of course) and we started getting into photography mode.

I look epic here haha

I was lucky to bring my 55-200mm lens for some proper photo action of the muse fans, couldn’t be complete without a telezoom lens eh? It felt like taking photos of the wildlife. I was using that mainly to check out the people from afar, occasionally taking photos to spy who’s arrived and who hasn’t. I think at this point it had become tiresome and I decided that it would be funny for us to just walk right behind them (since they had no idea who we were) and started posing before dashing back to our spot. Kiernan noted that she was going to visit the group soon since she had to speak to the muse moms. So yeah, the afternoon was spent tempting fate and running right into the lions den (more animal related metaphors) to get photos taken haha.

I was pretty ninja about it since I ran right around the entire square to make sure they had no idea where I was heading back to and all (they probably knew though). Eventually Kazzie got in some of the action too and started posing right behind the musers (see her in the photo above?). It got funny until I had my second go and Sylvie managed to spot me lounging about! She called out my name and instead of responding I legged it! She was about to chase me but gave up hehe, oh yeah! The whole thing was caught on camcorder so it was a pretty darn funny looking back at it hehe. This was around the time where Kiernan was actually over there talking to people too, she was asked many times where she was hanging and who she was hanging out with but Kiernan was cool enough not to crack 😀

Sooner or later it was time for us to move out, our spot was going to be the place where they were going to sing and all so sitting there wasn’t a good idea, we tried moving into some cafe tables which was right next to the steps that they were sitting on but eventually we got broken up, Stephie Inn and I were sitting on the table with some old ladies whilst the others were approached by other muse fans. We immediately cheesed it to find a better spot since we didn’t really want any confrontation with so many muse fans and all. Eventually we found a little corner above the stairs which was perfect for ninja photo taking and spying!

*tap tap*

I turn my head around and find that Gem and Cara had found us! Of all people, they couldn’t find the massive mess of muse fans congregating on the stairs, she found us ninja’ing about in some corner. Chances are Gem spotted my hair again :(. We explained our situation of why we were in hiding and then they join us with the hiding too. Sooner or later we managed to spot kev in the area! He too has been caught with Popey and the rest of the gang (well he probably found them and approached them). We would have joined in but we were sticking to being ninja about it all. Eventually when the muse fans started to head to the square we decided that we needed to get kev’s attention without him luring a bunch of people to see us. Everyone tried calling him and luckily Cara was able to phone him up. It felt like the Matrix when Morpheus was phoning up Neo and giving him directions, we told him to just turn around and walk straight on and he’ll eventually meet us hehe, and that he did. We managed to meet up with kev and all and had a lovely chat.

Everyone started to split up and all and it got a bit confusing as to what happened, I eventually decided “what would be the best place to sit that would prevent me from being caught, and I can enjoy watching the muse fans sing?” what better place than sitting right in front of them all and enjoying the best view on the top bit of Trafalgar square! Thats right, the place everyone will be looking and all! I decided to go Ninja mode so I wore my mask at all times, though it didnt hide much, I did believe it kept me pretty ninja at times (though I did get recognised afterwards haha). When things started to kick off I just sat there with my doughnuts and camera in one hand taking photos of the action. It was pretty surreal since they didn’t really have the right to clear people away, the mics and PA was illegally set up (tut tut) but it was good that they had some PA system since none of them could sing in key haha.

Who’s horny?

Kev, stephie and inn later on joined me and thanked me for picking such a glorious spot to watch people sing, to the muse fans we could have been some random people who happened to pass by and watch them all go at it, but noo. I joked to kev at the whole hierarchy of the seats, and how admins and mods are sitting at the highest part of the square whilst the muse fans were at the bottom singing to him haha. The seats were lovely, you could capture the entire crowd and its perfect for photos too!

I think the others (Popey and co) were standing where me stephie and inn were originally hiding. We tried being cheeky and took photos of each other standing right behind the event, it was pretty surreal haha.

Eventually I met a few people there, including a photographer for NME and Tom Kirk’s brother, we had a pleasant chat about everything and talked a bit about cameras too haha. I kept stealing inn and kazzie’s lens to take some proper wide shots of the crowd and all. At one point the NME photographer got everyone to cheer at her direction so she could take a wide photo of everyone. I eventually ventured in that too and told them I wanted to take a photo so I got myself a money shot too. Just with a wider lens than both photographers hehe (sometimes the kit lens was useful!). Everyone waved and cheered and I took a couple of shots just in case. I think they sort of introduced me as crazybobbles! My cover was sort of blown! haha but just to ensure I’m not going down on my own I sort of told everyone that kev was there too and pointed him out to everyone, oh yeah 😛 (to be honest I don’t think they heard the person announcing my name and all) About then everyone was about to rock! There were two people who brought acoustic guitars but you couldn’t hear a thing since they had a PA system set up. Imagine the chaos if they didn’t have one, you’d be getting a lot of out of tune muse folk singing muse songs for an ungodly amount of time! (Microcuts!! GARGH!)

The singing began, they kicked off with Hyper Music. One of the things that I wasn’t anticipating was the fact that they had a PA system as backup, and this was what probably saved them from being a massive flop. The performance wasn’t too bad! Afterall, the actual music was being played so the actual singing from the crowd wasn’t that audible if you ask me. The stage performance was a bit.. uhm.. I’ll just explain it, you had Jordan, the main organiser wearing white jeans and t shirt with black braces, some other dude wearing the exact opposite colours and someone else. Jordan was carrying a blow up silver guitar and basically air guitaring along to the tracks and occasionally they sang into the mic and all (not the best singing and all, bit of a laddish sort of sing).

They had setlists and all but tried teasing them by not handing them out just yet, they even thought it was funny by handing the setlists to people like us since we were “random” people hehe. We chuckled and read the setlist.. boy it was long, no way were we going to catch the entire show! The setlist was almost longer than Muse’s setlist haha, the songs they picked were quite bad in places. The worst choice of song would have been “Microcuts” a crazy full on falsetto song! Oh how much I would pay to see them sing that without backing! They would sort out the pigeon problem in Trafalgar Square by howling like lunatics and forcing the pigeons to explode (if not by the emoness of the song than by hitting their natural resonance and exploding)

Most of the time I would just stroll around the stage and take photos, there was a time where there were a bunch of chav kids loitering around the area, they had a stick and all I was worried things were going to get messy, luckily the police came and stopped them (and the stick) haha. It would have been a climax though if they had started a fight, chav’s vs emo: live at Trafalgar Square. At one point Roger Kirk said some words about the charities and really did his part in raising awareness and funds for the charities. Kazzie was really enjoying the music and moshed totally on her own on stage in front of everyone, I was hoping she’d stage dive but she didn’t haha, would be a bit painful if you landed on the concrete though haha.

There were times where I’d get the people to wave their ridiculous banners and flags so I could take photos of them, they were really responsive to a person with a DSLR camera which I found pretty cool. After a while we got bored of the entire thing and decided to leave, I tried to keep it cool and gave everyone a \m/ sign before I jumped off the platform thingy and left, the jumping was… well.. hmm… basically I managed to land on my feet, but since it was quite a high jump, my bag sort of weighed me down and bam! I fell on my arse 🙁 Oh the shame! the shaaaaame! Oh and like any self respecting person, when you fall over, you leg it, so thats exactly what I did. The shaaaaame haha, during my run someone chased me up and gave me something attached to my bag that broke off during the fall. I took it and continued running off to the direction the rest were at. We did a bit of talking and then Stephie caught up to tell everyone about my dramatic falling on my arse incident haha. Grr. I was doing so well and all too 🙁

Not feeling satisfied about how I exited I decided to come back on stage one last time and really give them what they wanted, a proper musewiki related speech (filled with other bits and bobs). I asked everyone if I could do it and they were pretty encouraging of it so off I go, back in the wild lands of shame (still using animal metaphors here) where I was going to give a speech to all the musers and effectively revealing who I was.

I entered the platform thingy through the side just so I wouldn’t get shamed again haha. I managed to get someones attention and asked if I could do my speech and all. They agreed and said I could have a quick moment with the crowd after the song (Darkshines). The speech was pretty godly, I was asked how I would like to be addressed as and I said “a representative of musewiki”. I got my introduction and all and came on stage with my mask on to an ungodly amount of musers ready to listen to what I was going to say…

It was pretty nerve racking, but I was pretty used to talking to so many people on a stage (after all I did do a breakdance in Royal Albert Hall before, and that wasn’t even a performance, I just invaded the stage and did it!). So yeah, some of my performing arts A level skills were used here haha. I did a quick bow to everyone and approached the mic… the first words… “hello…” then I dunno, I sort of lost it as to what I was going to say. I introduced people but told them I wasn’t Crazy_bob, I then told them to go to Musewiki because it rocked, then I get a lovely primitive crowd roar response (animals). I then sort of joked around with Musecast and said “and if you’re bored pay Musecast a visit, its an alright site” couldn’t be more condescending haha (but Popey found it funny). It was pretty good, so I decided to go all out and get the crowd going with..

“WHO’S HORNY?”

I have no idea why I said that, I was suppose to say “who’s ready to rock?” but I have no idea why I said who’s horny. The crowd cheered and it seemed like everyone below me was horny haha (that or they had no idea what i was saying and just cheered). So yeah, my next line was “who’s ready to rock?” (the word rock was sort of dragged out in a rock and roll kind of way) and the crowd was estatic at this moment! So I thought I’d end it properly by making them spell muse.

“Give me an M” “M”

“Give me an U” “U”

“Give me an S” “S”

“Give me an E” “E”

and to cheese it off, I asked “And what does that spell?”. Sure they were going to know what that was going to spell haha. And to reallllllllly realllly end it off I quickly went “SMELLS LIKE LUNDUN” I knew somewhere, an Inn and Popey were laughing their arses off at that line! I exited the stage from the right in case I’d fall off my arse again haha. Only after the speech did I realise that I have publicly asked everyone in Trafalgar Square (not just the musers and muse fans, everyone) if they were horny. It was quite a speech, I felt I really ended in style. I knew I did a better job than the other 3 hosts :p I should have been the host really haha.

After that I met up with everyone, more people were about this time including Beast Bob, Lauren, Jon, Ste and other people . I discussed my speech to the musers and sorted out car arrangements to head to Kazzie’s place, it was a bit hectic so I just told everyone to go to their allocated drivers, that seemed to work. Off to kazzie’s we go! I ended up going with Inn, Stephie and Kev. We were to head off to Harrow on the Hill where Inn’s car was parked and also meet up with Kev’s friend Leon. I had no idea who this Leon was but after seeing Inn’s reaction, he sounds like fun! The others took different routes, Ste had his Car parked up in Brent Cross and Jon had it parked somewhere else. We were going to buy food and stuff on the way but meet up at Kazzie’s place in the end. The food shopping wasn’t too planned but nonetheless we continued with the journey.

Yakitori shopping and the unlocked house

Upon arriving at Harrow on the Hill we met up with Kev’s friend Leon. He was fun (as prediected)! He wasn’t shy or anything so immediately he was talking to everyone and all. We walked up to the hotel and paid a quick visit to Kev’s room, it was an ok room and all, Kev was talking about how long it took to press his trousers and all. We also laughed at the retro radio he had, Stephie went back to her hotel where we told her to wear a less revealing top. We left the hotel and saw Stephie heading our way, even from a distance we could see that Stephie’s top wasn’t covering much up! Stephie explained that this was her only top that wasn’t revealing haha. I think kev joked about how long it took Stephie to find a non revealing top haha. Our next thing to do was to head to a local Tesco’s (at Harrow on the Hill) and shop for BBQ stuff. We parked up at Tesco’s and immediately got busy with the food shopping.

Inn rang up the others to see where they were and surprisingly, they were all behind us (not literally), they weren’t at the stores (though they were going to go to another Tescos) yet so we were the first one’s to go shopping. We sort of allocated them the burgers and stuff whilst we bought the weird odd bits of the BBQ including the chicken yakitoris and the chicken wings. Shopping was quite fun with a load of musers, everyone kept disappearing and coming back. Kev took ages trying to pick out some food since he was allergic to wheat, he looked at every kind of kebab only to find that they had wheat in them hehe. At one point he dashed off to find the food for people with special diets (picky people). We bought quite a lot of stuff, including 2 boxes of chicken wings (hot and spicey) , 2 boxes of yakitoris, nando’s marinade and sauce, pringles (watching stephie reach the pringles was gold!), dorito’s, nando’s salsa, normal salsa (boring but Leon insisted we needed one), an onion (Leon brought a red onion so I had to fetch a white one grr), a red pepper, some WKD, some scotch whiskey for Leon? and some cheese. I think that was all, we sort of split the bill in a weird way. I only paid for the Yakitoris and the onion whilst Kev paid for the chicken wings and some other bits, kev got a bit arsey that I only spent £4.18 on the shopping hehe (I paid a lot last time :$). Once the shopping was done we packed it all in the boot and headed off to Kazzie’s place.

Upon arriving at Kazzies we had found out that the others are still behind us all (not that far behind thankfully). We sort of went up to the door and I immediately tried opening it and lo behold, it was unlocked! Judging from inn breaking into Kazzie’s house the night before I would have thought they wouldn’t lock the door once again. It was pretty funny unpacking everything at Kazzie’s house, Inn phoned up Kazzie asking is her mum around and we discover that she was, so we had to be extra quiet in case she thought we were house ninja’s (wouldn’t want Kazzie’s mum shooting Kev with a shotgun would we?). We tried being extra silent about everything but Leon kept making a noise so I kept shushing him up haha. I then told everyone it was best for us to just leave the house with the stuff inside and lounge around outside with our brews and drink until the rest arrive. We could have stayed inside but Kazzie’s mum wasn’t feeling well and was asleep so it wasn’t a good idea to wake her up and all.

We need two bags of charcoal! (No we dont)

Before I get started on this chapter, I think it’s best to establish who’s actually attending this bbq, since theres so many people involved, I can kinda miss out characters during the entry so yeah.. here’s the people who turned up at the BBQ:

Kazzie, Inn, Popey, Kev, Stephie, Leon, Ste, Jon, Beast Bob, Lauren, Kiernan, Gem and me! Hopefully that helps for those who werent actually at the BBQ, just so you’re not surprised when people just suddenly appear haha.

After some bantering outside, the sky turned pretty dark. Kazzie and the others arrive at the scene. Was funny how we were outside drinking tea / brew and everything. Kazzie entered the building and we got right into the BBQ. The food the other people brought was immense, they tried doing the same thing with the Nando’s sauce but apparently some bottles were smashed and was replaced with a milder sauce, luckily we actually had some spare! Ste also managed to buy two crates of beer (I originally had a typo here and wrote bear, imagine two crates of bear, terrifying) for the men to drink, it was funny because the entire night i probably drank about 2-3 cans haha, there were a lot of times where I was passed a can and i just left it there unopened (ninja), I didn’t want to wake up with a massive hangover plus I was meeting up with Alice the next day at 1.30pm, had to be on my best behaviour haha.

We later on find that the propane BBQ (which I renamed Hank (King of the Hill)) couldn’t be used because Kazzie’s mum didn’t get propane that she promised Kazzie. She was also sleeping upstairs which meant we had to keep quiet. Kazzie wasn’t too pleased with the situation, but me and Inn managed to work something out, we pretty much said that we’ll buy some new coal and stuff and just use little nigel (i didnt come up with Nigel’s name, Popey did, it sucks!) for the BBQ. People (well the guys) tried sorting out the Gazebo, I actually wanted to stay and do the Gazebo too but was roped into coming with Kazzie and Inn to buy charcoal and stuff for the BBQ. Kazzie’s temper was bad here, she sort of gave up and all but we made sure that this wasn’t a flop by getting the charcoal bbq sorted. The other problem was the noise since her mum was asleep, my suggestion was to just do it at a park and bring everything. I ordered (yes ordered haha, I was on a power trip :$) people to clear up the gazebo and get prepared to move out once me Kazzie and Inn got the charcoal and all. Gem cleared up the Gazebo since all the guys were too lazy to do it.

As well as buying the charcoal I bought some additional instant bbq’s just to ensure that we have more grilling area. It was all a bit excessive in retrospect but then inn kept going on about how it’s better safe than sorry, she actually wanted to buy another bag of charcoal (thank god we didn’t) the charcoal we had (well it was more wood to be honest) was ungodly and did a pretty good job!

48 gazebo poles, 5 confused men and one inverted gazebo flap

After arriving back to Kazzie’s house, we sort of calmed kazzie down, I think Gem or Kiernan went upstairs talking to Kazzie’s mum and she was fine about everything now. We have sorted the tension in the house and was ready to get the BBQ going. Kazzie decided that we can just eat outside the garden rather then going to the park, which was a good idea since I wasn’t keen on moving things about and theres a very high chance that we’d forget something. So back to setting up the gazebo and BBQ in Kazzie’s house. I was pretty much being team leader here since noone had a clue what they were doing, I managed to order Kev, Beast Bob, Leon, Jon and Ste to start rebuilding the Gazebo again, it was pretty funny since they haven’t seen the instruction so they were just stabbing in the dark (quite literally). At one point we quickly did some Star Wars light sabre battles, where at one point it was Kev (Yoda), Me (Darth Vadar) and Popey (Luke) battling it out, though kev didn’t really have a clue what he was doing so it didn’t look like a light sabre battle so I keep telling him to hit me, “go on! hit me! hit me!”…

.. and so he did..

ouch! I get whacked in the tummy by a gazebo pole by Kev (of all peoplpe) haha. Bastard! Though I was being pretty evil with the gazebo leading. I just kept popping over at the construction site and telling them how bad of a job they’re doing and how me and Popey managed to finish it within minutes. It was really demotivating but fun at the same time haha, they finally manage to get the Gazebo sorted and were putting the flap over the Gazebo when I told Kev (it was kev’s doing) that the flap was the wrong way round haha, I told him off real good that he went to the corner bless hehe. I had to flip the gazebo flap the right way round for him before he came back from the corner bless.

What about the BBQ?

Whilst all this Gazebo drama was happening the BBQ was doing really well! The wood we bought was pretty cool and we were able to get the BBQ going very quickly, with the help of Popey’s frisby. We did a lot of fanning on the gazebo and I managed to take some nice long exposure shots of the sparks and all.

I think the first things we put were the burgers, we also had the other instant BBQ going and were cooking Yakitoris. I think Aino was cooking something else too, it was wrapped in foil so it was probably her brownies or something I dont know. Strangely it wasn’t really about the food that night though, it was strangely more about the chips and dips (and drinks). There was a lot of sitting around and crisps eating. I tried the Nando’s salsa sauce with some salted doritos and absolutely loved them hehe. Leon preferred his generic salsa shit as well as Lauren. Lauren was a bit tipsy looking throughout the night since she kept falling all over the place haha. Leon then started to have a food fight with Lauren and cover her face with Salsa and hummus, not a pleasant sight. I kept giving evils at Leon for creating such a mess at the party (which I later on had to clean up) and for smothering all the girls with salsa sauce (he even got Kiernan a ginger beard).

The BBQ was kind of left abandoned after the first batch of burgers was cooked, Popey gave up his BBQ role and people were cooking steaks and stuff (I managed to nibble a bit of steak hehe). I think around now I stopped taking photos and had to charge my camera battery using Kazzie’s charger. Inn was still snapping away! (God so many things happening at the same time).

The death of the BBQ and yakitori

The BBQ died out for a bit and then we started to make another one but this time cook the sausages and yakitoris (this is where a part of me cries inside). Since Popey had left his role, the food were just whacked on and were left to cook. Now during the Leeds weekend we learnt that shoving sausages into a BBQ was a bad idea, they’d spit like crazy and char the entire thing up! Since noone was maintaining the bbq most of the food were left burnt. I think during this time Inn was driving Kev and Stephie back home. Kev was feeling tired around midnight and wanted to go home and rest up for Saturday and all. Inn was being proper sportsmanlike and drove them back to their hotel rooms, she knew that she would also need to make another trip to drive Gem and Leon back but was cool about it.

A quick sidetrack from it all (though I’m only doing this because I was sidetracked from writing this bit, I was watching an interview with Bruce Willis about Die Hard 4.0 haha) was how kev and stephie received giant hugs from everyone. We’re talking a proper group hug, more chaotic than tellytubbies hugging. Was quite fun with kev, with stephie, since she was vertically challenged it was like we were hugging nothing haha. Inn instructed us to leave her some food from all this travelling, but since the food was all burnt we could only provide her with burnt sausages and some steak. I think the BBQ was quite a flop since people were more interesting in socialising then taking care of the BBQ, it would have been nice if the food was cooked though, I was actually starving the entire evening :(. Ho hum.

People did try eating the burnt yakitoris but it just tasted like ashes haha. The bottom piece of chicken on the stick was alright, it was the least burnt down bit of the stick haha, I couldn’t even pick up some of the sticks too! It was that bad! Leon tried clearing out some of the yakitoris by feeding it to people, again… food fight, bad form! Food is not fun! It should be eaten, not toyed around and thrown about! Before Popey talks about how if starving children want it they could come and get it, I was hungry 🙁 Though to be honest it was getting pretty late/dark for anyone to bother with the food. I think that was the problem. Ho hum.

Muse singalong part 2

During the evening Kazzie got the guitars out for a singalong. I was in charge of the guitaring since kev wasn’t about and we basically sang and played the songs Kazzie could play along to, which was Time is running out and Supermassive Black Hole. We did a pretty good job I must say. I was surprised that people were actually singing during the singalong but it was pretty fun. Though take note that I couldn’t hear any bass going on, evening when it was amplified. Though it was open air i suppose, ho hum. Lauren managed to film the entire singalong on her camera and it was a great laugh, Ste tried to get me to play some Manics songs but it was pretty limited because I needed the chords with me to remember what was going on haha. The singalong was definitely better than the Trafalgar Square purely because it wasn’t just someone playing the CD really loud with some background grunts and moans, you could actually hear people singing (because it was a more smaller but live rendition). Eventually we stopped when neighbours and Kazzie’s mum were telling us to pack it in haha, it was pretty late!

Nobody won, honest

Ooh I forgot to mention Aino and Max, I think some time during the BBQ they called it a night and went off sleeping in the living room, occasionally I would wonder into the living and just give them a confused look as to why they were being antisocial in the living room (they weren’t really sleeping, just lounging around in the living room). It was pretty funny how later on they tried sleeping in the living but was interrupted to much that they just had to go upstairs and sleep in Kazzie’s room (apparently a few musers walked into Kazzie’s room to find them inside their sleeping bag, with the bag sort of ruffling about, chances are they were having sexy beast *shudders* (though Kazzie is more mortified since they were doing it in her room!)).

After a crazy night of bbq’ing we took the fun into the living room, for some wii and smash brothers action. Though the energy was getting weaker and weaker as the evening went on. We had a few games of smash brothers and wii, Inn managed to come back for some wii action and tried completing the single mode in order to get multiplayer mode going. But yeah, I think everyone was lacking the energy to play really. It all came to a halt where people just went to sleep. Oh and in case Popey thinks i’m going to hide it, we did have another smash brothers 1 on 1 battle, I didn’t take the battle too seriously but he once again gambled cupcakes for my 400d camera. The beginning was once again quite a sight, I keep whooping him and all, but near the end, I got a bit too cocky and decided to fall off the stage and lose all 4 of my lives, I was initially going to lose 3 of my lives, then mash Popey up a bit until he was definitely going to lose, but he managed to tempt me to fight him one on one with all our lives ready and all. Bad mistake. Lets say some proximity mines were thrown in my direction and I was unfortunate to die at the last life 🙁 Ah well. Its still mine :p I managed to have another game where I was playing against 3 players, Popey, Jon and Kazzie I think. The beauty of this match is that I wasn’t time wasting anymore so I just got down to it and whooped all 3 of them haha. Take note it’s hard beating 3 people, you have 5 lives and you have to defeat 15 lives off your opponent, but sometimes… I just do it :p Oh some random sideplot includes Lauren breaking her camera, the lens sort of gets stuck and she’s doomed haha, thats what warranties are for 😀

Uhm.. yeah, the wii appeal died soon after and Inn had to drive Leon and Gem back again. Kiernan accompanied Inn on the trip Inn would be going back to Kazzie’s house on her own so some company was needed (plus Kiernan wasn’t tired). It was sleep time.

I’m not sleeping outside, peanuts got a mouse

When things died down I immediately stole the duvets available since I was the one sleeping outside (initially I took inn’s one, was snatching it off Lauren and Bob but then inn said they were actually hers so I had to give it back :(). It wasn’t a pleasant place to sleep in. Last time we were playing games and partying till 4am which meant the sky was a nice light blue so it was actually easier to sleep (and I was so tired that sleep was definitely required) this time it wasn’t so late so sleeping was actually a problem. Not only that, pollution was another factor of crippling my sleep! Both the air (from the bbq) and the noise! (coming from inside! damn people chatting away). Popey was initially going to join me and sleep on the trampoline but later on he moved back inside because it was wet. So I was pretty much on my own trying to get some good nights rest on the deck chair type thing (which I only knew how to make it go down near the end). It was actually disturbingly warm and cosy! I was hot from the duvet and chair cushion, but I couldn’t sleep. I was a proper insomniac at this time, everyone else were just wannabes since they all went to sleep pretty easily haha. The mumblings and laughter soon began to die out inside and it became silent. Occasionally you would hear someone crack a joke but most of the time it was dead silent.

About an hour has passed by and I’m still wide awake outside. I couldn’t really get a comfortable position on the deck chair and it wasn’t as nice as a mattress. Suddenly I hear a loud thumping noise, it was peanut, and eek! it had a mouse in it’s mouth, beforehand I already caught it fighting with a mouse but now it’s pretty dark and I’m trying to sleep, so there’s actually a slight chance I could wake up with a dead mouse on my lap, or I could wake up at the sight of peanut holding a dead mouse in its mouth. That was a risk I wasn’t going to take, I decided that the best thing to do is to just go back inside, surrender at the godly thought of being able to sleep outside under the gazebo, it was a really good idea last time, but with the smoke and all, it really wasn’t a good idea this time.

The snoring competition

Now ninja’ing my way back into bed was fine, Popey was actually awake still so that was good (someone to talk to), I managed to find myself a little spot on the foot of the mattress that Kazzie, Beast Bob and Lauren were sleeping (ain’t Beast bob a stud haha). I think I should draw a diagram to explain the sleeping arrangements.

Popey got right cheeky and stole the essence of my deck chair (watch Friends Season 3 if you dont know what I meant about essence of a chair), which meant he technically had a mattress now so I’m sort of sleeping on the floor with no pillow listening to everyone snore. Eventually Popey did go to sleep and boy did he snore! As well as having Ste snoring right next to me, I also had Kazzie and Beast bob kicking the crap out of me (occasionally on the face) when I’m trying to sleep. So picture it, a snore fest with Ste and Popey, followed by some lovely kicking. Sleeping heaven! :/

Sooner or later I was sort of saved by Kiernan and Inn who had just came back from driving Leon and Gem back to their hotel (Leon was sleeping on the floor mwahaha). They were pretty giddy and all, Kiernan randomy just went up to Popey and started riding him, calling him seabiscuit and everything, it was hilarious. The funny thing is how we were whispering everything so it sort of added to the fun! Kiernan did it everytime she went down, just riding Popey. Not sure how to explain the whole riding thing, but basically Popey was sleeping on his back (I think) and Kiernan sort of squatted over and and assumed the horse riding position, occasionally doing some whips as well :p. Definitely made my evening haha. Once they had left it was back to the snoring again.

At one point I went upstairs to use the toilet, after leaving the toilet I noticed Kiernan and Inn were still awake so they invited me in their room for a bit to chat, I think they were having a girly talk and all and was still a bit restless so I continued talking to them for a bit, eventually I left them to go sleep, Inn said I cant wake her up before 10am haha. I knew that wasn’t going to work! But yeah I went back downstairs to suffer the snoring wars.

…it was unbearable, you really couldn’t sleep with all this snoring, it was like a battlefield, people really need to clear their sinuses before they sleep or something, it was oblivious, occasionally Ste would let out some ungodly snores that made Popey and I burst out laughing but once Popey was sleeping on his back, he started doing the same. It just went on and on. I actually got bored at one point and started to record the ungodly snoring that is Popey. Afterwards I just had enough of the snoring and went back outside to the garden.

Back outside again

Outside, it was still chilly and stuffy, the air was still polluted with smoke from the BBQ, I quickly played back Popey snoring and laughed in the comfort that noone could hear me laughing outside. The snores were funny, at first I thought each snore was followed by a high pitched whistling sound, like his sinuses were so blocked that it emitted high pitched noises whenever he breathed out, turns out it was some birds outside (dang).

Running out of places to sleep I decided to take a shot at the trampoline, although Popey said it was wet, i was sleeping under the duvet (well i was wrapped around the duvet so there was duvet sandwiching me). The trampoline was actually alright, I didn’t find it wet as Popey had claimed (I think he was just scared of sleeping outside). So I decided to actually sleep outside in the end. It was pretty funny, for once it was actually comfortable sleeping there, I did get a bit of a draft coming from below (since it’s a trampoline and not a mattress) but other than that it was fine. Draft sooner or later became more of a problem as it was coming at all directions, this required more duvet positioning to ensure that I was fully wrapped in duvet and that I was draft free, this lasted for about 30 minutes until water started to drip from the sides of the trampoline and into the centre, damnit, so this is what Popey was on about. But it was too late to complain, I really needed my sleep, so the there was more duvet positioning to ensure that I could get some sleeping. Later on it got to a point where I was actually thinking about how your body falls asleep; is it in one go or does your limbs slowly fall asleep sequentially? It was one of those moments where you start thinking all kinds of crap to occupy your brain, somehow it actually worked. I finally got some sleep.

… about 2 hours worth anyway.

The morning after (or the 2 hours after)

Yup birds are chirping away, I have had the worst amount of sleep ever (you’ll see the nasty effects in the Saturday and Sunday blog I think!). Nonetheless I don’t think I could sleep anyway, the time was 6am and I felt like getting the day started. I picked up my duvets and shoved it back into the living room. I then began picking up the mess everyone had made, nobody cleaned up last night during the BBQ because they were all too tired and wanted to leave it for the next day. Rather then waiting for them all to wake up and clean the mess I decided to just clean the place up straight away so theres more time and all. It was a painful job, in particular picking up dorito’s on the floor that Leon had spilt. This was why I was a bit grumpy with Leon! The mess he made, so many stuff I found on the floor could have been traced back to Leon; the burnt Yakitori’s, the soft soggy dorito’s found on the place that was meant to store kindling, the salsa sauce still unopened with insects crawling in it and random bits of sausage. Food fights are not cool! (they’re cool if someone else does the cleaning I suppose). There were other bits of cleaning too including picking up beer cans and draining them out, draining random unidentified liquids (hopefully not body fluids) in glasses, throwing away ungodly amounts of food, and picking up all the beer cans that weren’t actually opened (my ones!).

Soon everyone was nice and clean, I forgot to mention that during the night I randomly woke up and went “THE YAKITORI’s”, frantically heading out to the garden to save the other box of yakitori by shoving it in the freezer haha (I didnt care about the rest). I was all dirty and messy from all the cleaning so I decided I needed a bath. I quickly walked up to Kazzie (still half asleep) and assassinated her. Haha, no wait, I didnt, I just gave her prod and asked her to use the bath, I said “could I use the bathroom to take a bath?” “an ungodly bath”, she just nodded away and said “yes”, to be honest, she would have said yes to anything. I think that was probably the time where I should of asked if I could have her L series lens, I could even record it on my phone as evidence (ooh thats a new plan!). I had my bath and wrote on the mirror “Oh yeah! I just had an ungodly bath” onto the condensation. I think a few people saw it.

Afterwards it was a case of lounging about, drinking tea and waiting for the others to slowly wake up. It was funny to watch people sort of wake up and go back to sleep again. Kazzie’s mum got up quite early and saw me downstairs and said do i even sleep at all? It was pretty hectic of me to just wake up at such an ungodly hour, so I told her I did get my sleep but she didn’t believe me that I had much (which was true). Banter was minimal so I just lounged around in the garden some more. Slowly but surely people began to wake up, it was a new day for all, and a new adventure awaits…

Saturday will be filled with random french people, abandoning people for nando’s, meeting an ungodly amount of people at weatherspoons, seeing the streets trying to get the crowd to say radio ga ga about 7 times, watch muse perform, and finding/losing kazzie about 7-8 times after a stamped of muse fans head back home.