Festival checklist and hungry touts

There really wasn’t much to prepare, the only last minute thing i brought were my spotty wellies that I used for Reading Festival 2006, my bag consisted of a poncho I got from the filmfour somerset house show (mmm scarface), a hoodie in case i got cold, tickets, maps to my hotel, a notebook (containing writing instruments, post it notes and other bits and bobs), and my lovely dslr camera, dont think I bought a book for this trip, in festivals you simply assume that you’ll lose everything you own. plus i loved the idea of packing and ensuring that things were at it’s bare essentials. Once the packing it was time to put on a lovely pair of green converse chucks and hit the road. The train journey was boring as ever, but nothing internet on the phone or music on the ipod won’t kill (i actually find them to be the ultimate time killing combo, you can either read the interweb or write blogs and random entries with the lovely qwerty keypad). I eventually reached Wolverhampton to meet up with kev. He had arrived pretty early and found time to kill by asking touts how much they’d pay him for his additional V Festival VIP ticket, the story was pretty hilarious as the tout originally offered £20 which kev immediately thought “forget it” and left him, but obviously that’s how touts roll, insist that the first offer is their lowest and simply walk away, they know how to bargain (they probably try haggling at McDonalds when they order their happy meals (assuming they eat happy meals, there’s very little happiness in the life of a tout)). Kev had ignored the touts but found them to be slightly aggressive nearer the end when they kept pestering him and asking him for an offer, but obviously kev wasn’t intending on selling it. Once we met up we immediately waited outside at the shuttle bus stop place where the shuttle buses roam. There again the touters were there ready to offer kev money he cannot refuse (but did). From £20 they simply asked him how much did he want, kev asked for £100 and the tout reluctantly started to unload a few twenties from his pocket ready to hand to kev, but kev immediately changed his mind and said “nah”. Man did kev know how to piss the touts off. Kev eventually offered the ticket to a fellow muser once we were at the box office area.

Why wellies were your best friend at v festival

On the shuttle bus we talked a bit about Marley park and other bits and bobs, once we were close to the arena we donned our wellies (kev was ultra proud that he could make use of the wellies once again since he only bought them for the purpose of Marley which really wasn’t used much). Upon walking up to the box office we met a few folks, including dip. Conversation then began and slowly but surely we got our passes, and was in the arena where we met up with Stu. I think this is the point where we finally realised how important it was to wear wellies, it was just as important as our festival tickets (well not really but saying that makes it important). The fields outside the arena weren’t too bad but as soon as we saw the entrance, man how glad were we to have wellies. The v in v festival really stood for mud; rain, fields and loads of festival goers never mix. Of course having wellies on instantly had that sense of feeling as if you touched a gold star in super mario and was invincible to it’s thick and miserable aura the thick brown mud gave out (and if you listened hard enough you probably could hear the invincibility theme tune in your head as you started stamping onto the mud, killing mushrooms and turtles).

Oh did I mention about dip? he was all kinds of awesome and it was fun meeting him, it turns out that everybody including myself love dip, got to love a bit of emo. He’s in quite a few of my photos since he was “hanging out” with the folks and kev gave his VIP pass to him so he was able to chillax with us in there too.

A burger and chips stall called “burger and chips”
Not long we met up with everybody, I think from then on there was a lot of chillaxing involved, we were told that the VIP area had a Nando’s in it which got both me and kev pumped, however our dreams were immediately raped silly when all they served were nando’s burgers. You couldn’t even go “fitter with a chicken on the pitta”, nonetheless, it had to be done, me and Stu bought a nando’s burger (no idea what burger number stu was on hehe) and whipped on the extra extra extra hot sauce and feasted on the hot piece of chicken wrapped around this cold floury bun. I never liked eating food that had two temperatures at the same time, usually buns are heated up to compliment the burger but hey, we’re in a field i suppose, it reminded me of eating salmon nigiri’s where the fish was nice and warm (in the melting kind of way) however the rice was cold, these things require delicacy. Anyway, that was me on the food, I eventually spent the rest of the evening food wise having lovely “gourmet” bbq jumbo sausages, and they were bad at all, definitely had that lovely bbq feel to it and not that mass produced festival food feel. The stalls in the festivals were pretty hilarious, I was constantly pointing out the names of the stalls, going “HEY LOOK, THEY HAVE A PLACE CALLED BURGERS AND CHIPS, AND THEY SOLD BURGER AND CHIPS”, evidently stall owners assume all people are retarded and have to be pretty clear of what a stall is saying before venturing out to buy some beef tacos, noodles or whatever they fancied, though I suppose calling it “Johns Stall” really didn’t help one bit (we later on discover that this wasn’t just inside the festival, there was a kebab place called Doner Kebab in town). That’s the food commentary sorted, lets think of some more things that happened.

The special place

The VIP area was pretty nice, but somewhat lame at the same time, the bar tent had a DJ playing thumping dance music but with nobody dancing to it, it’s probably a DJ’s worse nightmare playing music to nobody, you could definitely feel the energy once you’re in there but the lack of involvement with other people was an immediate turn off, I did manage to dance for a bit when another person started dancing, but that didn’t last too long, the area was simply empty if you exclude the 3 girls who were actually using the dark dance floor as an area to get changed (weirdos). There were lots of lovely tents and seats in the guest area too, the toilets were of a better variety than the ones in the arena (obviously) and I believe kev was able to swot out a hollyoaks cast member (bless). Another good thing about the VIP area was the fact that the grass wasn’t muddy as it was out there, you could actually lie down and chillax the entire day, but that really wasn’t the point of the festival, we had like… 2 bands to see (haha). At one point we were playing buckeroo with some guy who was actually sleeping in the arena, it was pretty fun until someone poured beer on him, bad form and sleep man!

“Nobody plays you because you always win”

After heading off to go see Sugababes we went to the guitar hero tent since inn wanted me and kev to battle it out, the tent was a bit lame since they were playing thumping rock music meaning people couldn’t hear the songs they were playing, it was all about eye coordination and guesswork. We were given cute little guitar hero badges and waited around the booths for people to finish playing, the booth we were waiting for had two kids playing, one of them was obviously whooping the other kid, for his last he picked “Through Fire and Flames” by Dragonforce, if people have played Guitar hero 3 you should all know about this song and how painful it is to play. My heart however started racing because that was the most exciting song to play and I didn’t mind giving that kid a run for his money, the losing opponent left knowing he was most likely going to lose and so I stepped in and challenged him to a battle of guitar hero, dragonforce style. Of course we picked expert mode and then we were off. The needle indicating who was winning stayed on my side and eventually I defeated the kid, he shook my hand and then left whilst kev stepped up to battle it out on guitar hero. We picked the most obvious song on the list (Muse - Knights of Cydonia) and began rocking out (silently mind, still couldn’t hear the song and all). Now kev has actually played guitar hero a lot longer than me so I was pretty scared that he would win, but fortunately the guitar controller was shite, and kev wasn’t a fan of tremolo picking, that’s where I got all my brownie points from and defeated kev hehe. People were obviously cheering kev on more because as inn says i “always win” hence noone really wants to play me, oh cruel video gaming skills how you curse me with the lack of opponents.

After some guitar hero’ing i believe we did more lounging about, meeting up with random people, chillaxing back at the tent, and then meeting people some more, it was quite a tiring day and there really wasn’t much to watch due to the lack of good bands, it really was more about the social part of the festival where we were all together and chatting away though, and good company is usually hard to gather around since they only respond to muse gigs haha. Near the end we went off to check out Stereophonics and then found a decent spot to see Muse. That was pretty much it (the gigs will be explained on part 2 obviously).

Birthday stories and post it notes

We met up with a few musers and then went back to the campsite, halfway through we decided to take a toilet break so he headed back to the VIP area and used the nicer toilets (by this time most people were using the golden wall to relieve themselves, it’s quite a horrific event so I’ll simply skip that chapter altogether). Once settled me and kev paid the camping people a visit to celebrate Gem’s birthday. The last bus supposedly was leaving at 11:30am so we had very little time to hang around, once there we began counting down the time to Gem’s birthday, I had already given Gem my presents to her which consisted of a pink bag (because she likes pink), a fairly big cow model (because she likes cows), and a Joseph CD (because she likes theatre). I also gave everyone post it notes from that post it note project and everyone was happy to read what it said. Gem and Ste remembered to bring their post it notes to me and it was amazing seeing them, I’ll most likely update the post it note section and show you what they wrote. After pulling some party poppers and singing happy birthday to Gem (not to mention attracting some drug dealers at the same time) it was time for me and kev to depart the camping world and return to the world were beds had mattresses and showers were a mere facility and not a luxury hehe (man we did rub it in quite a bit with the hotel dwelling). I wasn’t keen on camping on the last days anyway, the last time that happened I had to sleep through toilet banging, fires, and people screaming, not to mention the ubiquitous drunk man who opens up your tent to pee inside it whilst you’re there (is it ubiquitous or is it just a mere myth that i devilishly inserted to make things interesting? alas, most likely the latter (but i’m very sure it does happen for the unfortunate ones))

Back to civilisation

It was now me and kev heading back to Wolverhampton, as kev said earlier on (Wolverhampton is shit) haha, we were misguided twice by incompetent festival staff for where the shuttle buses were and I was at a point of running to the bus stop in fear that we might miss it, strangely I still had a lot of energy left whilst kev wasn’t having any of it, he said he’d rather get a taxi than run to the bus stop hehe. Nonetheless we arrived at the bus stop and was able to board the freedom shutter bus back to civilisation. It was pretty tiring at this point, we eventually changed back to our normal shoes and sat there talking about the show and the entire day, it was a pretty nice day, nothing hectic and intense as most meetups generally are, just having one commitment (ie seeing muse at the end) was enough to make the entire day nice and relaxing. It was around 1am and we were finally at the Wolverhampton bus stop, we went to a Doner Kebab place called Doner Kebab and ordered a can of coke each, man it’s refreshing to drink some sugary water after an intense day of mud trotting and jumping up and down during Muse, all drinks are amazing when you’re thirsty enough. Once the moment was over we eventually spoke to the cab driver who was suspiciously parked right next to us in his “nonchalant” way (granted we were standing near the taxi rink) and asked him how much it was to drive us back to our separate hotels, it came out to a mere £10 so we entered the vehicle and was transported to our hotels, kevs first (grr). We agreed that if one of us wasn’t able to check in because of the time we’d taxi it to the other’s hotel and stay there. Fortunately both of us were able to check into our hotels and begin the arduous task of cleaning our wellies.

Hotel antics

I was greet by a kind lady and man at the door, they seemed very friendly and helpful, they were well aware of the festival goers so it wasn’t out of the ordinary to have people coming into their hotel all muddy and bloody, it turns out I was the last person to check in (damn toilet break for stalling time) he gave me my card key and directions to my room, I was able to catch the other staff members chillaxing in the living room, it did have that homey feel, and boy did the place smelt of “quality” teehee. Once inside my room I unpacked my bag and threw myself into the soft cuddly mattress, you suddenly realise how aching you are when you meet comfort once again, anyway, lots to do before I head to bed. I only cared about the wellies (and poncho to some extent) and used kev’s method of cleaning them which was to run them in the shower and have some scrubbing fun. The process was pretty quick but I did make a proper mess of the room. Grass and mud were all over the place which I immediately rinsed out to avoid any hotel faux pas. Once that was done I took a shower, wrote in my notebook for a bit, and began taking photos in the room, I had an urge to write a post it note to the cleaners since I was in a post it note mood so I sat at the desk and scribbled a quick message to them. Whilst all of this was happening I was texting kev back and fourth in regards to his status of cleaning his wellies and stuff, that was sorted for him but his task now was to clean up his jeans, he didn’t want to go into town (and subsequently) and Birmingham with mud all over him so he tried washing off with a the shower head. The next task was making it dry, he used the hair dryer to dry up the thing (i had a trouser press but I couldn’t be bothered with cleaning my jeans since I was going home immediately). He texted me back saying the blow dryer broke hehe, so he was stuck in wearing the jeans wet whilst sleeping *shudders*. That was pretty much it, it was a tiring day so eventually I turned off the lights and went to bed.

You can never have enough bacon.

The next morning was the best bit, I tend to wake up dead early when I’m not sleeping in my own bed or sleeping somewhere where I’m most comfortable, today I did just that, enough time to exit the room and head down for Breakfast of the buffet variety. I usually get my money’s worth at breakfast buffets. A lovely full english breakfast was exactly what I needed after an exhausting day of the yester variety. The food was pretty good for a 3 star hotel and the buffet obviously enticed me to order more than I can handle (no caps this time at least, once I was capped for ordering too much bacon :(). There were a few customers who were obviously at the festival too, intently listening to the news about the what happened at the festival last night, there was the ubiquitous review of a festival goer who sounded more like a chav being interviewed in the street than a music lover. Once breakfast was over (mmm lovely croissant) it was time to check out and head off to Wolverhampton station. With the post it note ready i left it at the most obviously place, packed my bags and vacated the quality hotel. I asked the receptionist to order me a taxi and spent three lovely british pounds for my transport to the station, the driver didn’t appreciate my constant headphone mode but I didn’t care. Once at the station I was able to say hi to kev for a wee moment and then I was off, back to the city of London. The rest of the day was spent chillaxing and making stuff.

Part two, the gigs

stuff you might also like

• The ultimate Muse Wembley Stadium Weekend (Sunday)
• The ultimate Muse Wembley Stadium Weekend (Saturday)
• Muse Meetup 23rd November 2006
• The ultimate Muse Wembley Stadium Weekend (Friday)
• New Years Eve at Stu’s

Now what happens next? Do I upload them all? Now if all shots were unique then hell yeah, upload them all, but this is from one gig. A magazine doesn’t show millions of photos for one gig so neither should I. It’s only best to strip out all the similar but not as epic shots and only keep the epic ones. That means comparing them against one and another and SLOWLY killing the photos off. It usually takes hours to do and is a toughie when the photos are all sharp and presentable. I do have a few rules of deciding which photo goes through, usually judging on how interesting the lights are, and how dynamic the musician’s pose is. Once we’ve declared the winners, we start killing loads of photos that are simply “bad duplicates“.

Once all that is done, next thing is mining out rare gems. Sometimes you can take perfect shots and they require very little photoshopping or editing to make it good, but there are cases where you actually need to crop or “black and whitify” the photos in order to make the photo nicer, usually killing distractions or focusing into the musician, and sometimes these cropped or edited photos beat those natural ones. It’s more apparent with gig photography since you need to immediately focus people’s attention on the band so sometimes it’s important to get that kick and draw nailed.

So yeah, an example is this bad boy.

It’s a nice shot, but the background is quite distracting, it’s wide because when shooting, I wanted to shoot him and his foot on the pedal. But when it came on the screen, it wasn’t really that interesting, and when zooming in, I discover that the shot is pretty sharp so I was able to actually crop this and focus on just the top half of Matt, and here’s the end result.

You’ll notice that this photo has a better impact since it focuses on the subject more. The crowd is quite distracting but meh, they’ll stay for now haha. This crop was done a day after uploading the photos, I was slowly swotting down photos that people weren’t keen on looking at to keep the photo count down, but this one seemed like one of those “hmm, if i cropped it, perhaps it will look better”, and it really did. It’s definitely tough work post processing these bad boys, at the end of the day I tend to stick with about 20-30 photos (the amount you can take with the disposable camera usually) I broke the boundries with Muse but hey, it’s Royal Albert Hall :p.

So yeah, when sorting out photos, it’s a pain, but if you put the time and effort you’ll yield excellent results. I hope you all enjoyed the photos, thanks for commenting on them and all.

stuff you might also like

• The v stands for mud: V festival 08 1/2
• The ultimate Muse Wembley Stadium Weekend (Sunday)
• The ultimate Muse Wembley Stadium Weekend (Saturday)
• The ultimate Muse Wembley Stadium Weekend (Friday)
• Muse Meetup 23rd November 2006

Anyway, before and after the event me and Alice had our time off together, Alice wasn’t too happy about leaving her job but had to so she could go travel. Hopefully that all pans out right. We were able to prepare loads of stuff since Alice was leaving very soon. On the duck day me, Alice and Inn met up a wee bit for some random browsing and whatnot. Alice wanted to do a makeover with Mac but that backfired when booking was required, same with Body Shop, shame because it would have been fun watching! Inn also got some food before the duck event. We then chilled out at a starbucks where we met up with Gem and Paul.

After getting a wee bit impatient we decided to just go red chilli and chill out there. We managed to get ourselves a big table that had a lazy susan in the middle. Was a good thing since there was quite a lot of people eating and spinning food around was a good idea. (it’s ALWAYS a good idea). After some bantering kev and her sister finally arrive. We began the ever so painful process of choosing food and eventually we picked a few starters and that duck (whole variety)

The duck was epic, granted Inn wasn’t as chuffed but man it was epic haha. We had a lovely soup too and the others had spring rolls and, some cake and a hot and sour soup (all for kev, though he shared). The main course was a lot nicer than I thought it would be, I ordered the hot pot, kev ordered the sizzling beef, paul ordered some chicken and spring onion dish, alice ordered some chicken dish too and inn had to be alternative by ordering some braised pork trotter (which was some slowly cooked pork so the meat is soft (but salty).

The chicken dishes were highly accepted as well as the sizzling beef. Food was slowly but surely consumed and we even cracked a bottle of champagne (well I did, hardly anyone could drink because they were all driving or didn’t want to drink too much! Rats). I got it from work and had to find a way of using it, not going to just sit on my own and guzzle it haha.

So yeah, we got some nice orange wedges to finish off (everyone ruined their oranges by not eating it the right way (bit like eating sweetcorn too)) and boom, the bill. It was a lot less than we expected which was good and I paid almost half of it since it was meant to be a treat as well as me helping to pay Alice’s portion.

So the moral of the story is, eating is cool. Me and alice took alice’s family to go eat at Red Chilli again so we were able to enjoy a double heaping of duck! They were chuffed about the food too since we ordered some epic dishes (including soft shell crab mm).

stuff you might also like

• Week in Halifax with Alice
• Honey I’m home, 2 weeker in halifax
• Leeds Festival 2007
• The ultimate Muse Wembley Stadium Weekend (Sunday)
• The ultimate Muse Wembley Stadium Weekend (Saturday)

After work I took the train from Charring Cross to Canterbury West where Stu and Inn were there to pick me up. They had already spent the night there and had Xmas dinner ready, the previously mentioned that they WILL get a xmas turkey cooked to cheer up Karis’ gloomy xmas. They all decided to wait for me to arrive before eating (which was nice of them!) and once the party was all ready, we were ready to party. I was curious as to why the turkey was so tiny when I saw it but wasn’t really in the mood to question it (was more in the mood to eat tbh). Once at the table I made sure everyone was following strict table manners and regulations to ensure we had a formal and respectable dinner. I was quite impressed that they managed to prepare a pretty beefy amount of things to go with the “turkey”, they had the chandberry sauce, sweetcorn, peas, gravy and even pigs in a blanket. We managed to take turns with toasting the new year and Inn made me be the last person to give the toast to really sum everything up, I turned my toast to a business meeting agenda and yeah, lovely toast. I was also able to do my usual bit of asking how was everyone’s days. Stu managed to shock Karis some more by popping out of the living room dressed as Santa, we all god Karis presents and everything (mine was pretty impromptu but I got her something in the end). She seemed pretty chuff, but not because of that too…

It appears that Karis was able to find love in the meetup. Michael (Originalboywonder on the museboard) was at the meetup and before I arrived they managed to “hookup” (OH YEAH! haha) so yeah, this is where it gets interesting, we all took turns to tease the hell out of her. Including an extended long game of “I never” as well as that game where they stick names on your head and you have to guess who they are. It was pretty fun of an evening. New Years eve was celebrated with some lovely paper burning, I can’t remember what I wrote so yeah…

When the clock struck 12 we let loose some party poppers and drank some super cheap champagne (took a LONG time to open). We then played a few “t00ns” on Stu’s laptop and raved for a bit. The night fizzled down with everyone going to bed with me and Inn going online via mobile and ds lite respectively. I slept on the hallway since every room was taken, which was fine since I could sleep anywhere (including the stairs), I could have slept in the living room but Karis and Michael were there… I took the essence of the sofas and made a lovely mattress to sleep with. Later on the evening I kept getting woken up by Ste snoring at a disturbingly high decibel, I tried recording it on my phone but sadly it didn’t pick it up too well

The next day began with me waking up nice and early and having a lovely shower. I played some soothing classical music to wake everyone up which was quite hilarious, inn found it funny this time instead of enraged since the music was fucking awesome haha. I was glad I didn’t sleep in the living room either because the next day it had a very strong stench of crotch smell, and like what Stu said, “it’s only nice when you’re smelling your own crotch”. We thought the best breakfast would be a trip to Nando’s haha. I had already had nando’s with Alice but what the hell, nothing else nice in Canterbury haha. Karis got a bit antisocial at times with Michael and it was pretty hilarious watching them not being able to sit next to each other haha (young love and all that). After eating more chicken we all parted ways, I was dropped off at some train crossing and had to walk to the station in the rain, the train left a few minutes before I arrived so I had to wait an entire hour for the next train and spend another hour and a bit on the train (thank god I was able to phone alice for the entire journey!). All in all a good way to start the new year.

I don’t like making resolutions so I’m simply going with the flow. Life is awesome at the moment so I’ll just stick to what I have.

stuff you might also like

• The v stands for mud: V festival 08 1/2
• Stuart’s birthday and Alice weekend
• Canterbury
• The ultimate Muse Wembley Stadium Weekend (Sunday)
• The ultimate Muse Wembley Stadium Weekend (Saturday)

The visit was slightly crippled though, mainly due to the fact that Alice’s job requires her to be at the office about 7-4 odd. Which meant that I would be spending most of that time on my own (that’s a lie, her family will be in the house most of the time). This is where productivity will see a massive boom as I ensure that the time spent when Alice is away isn’t gone to waste. I made sure that I finished blogging everything as well as start finding jobs around the end of the second week. We also had a day where we were going to spend with kev, inn, gem and paul for sushi and bingo (sushi being just with kev and inn). So yeah, quite a lovely one visit hits all plan. How could one refuse to go? (especially when Alice is living up there haha)

The journey up north

The journey this time was quite alright since I once again woke up nice and early for the day. Packing up was once again with the bare essentials (I wanted to bring my wii back down so I needed room and all). Tickets were about £23 this time since it was on a Saturday but it was the best way to maximise our time together (right after job centre haha). Anyway, once I was there we strangely popped by to Yo Sushi! and got some takeaway fish, the place was packed but nonetheless we still got some sushi action and all.

Sunday Roast

I really enjoy sunday roasts at Alice’s place, you get all sorts of yummy meats and just pig out on it. I can’t actually remember what I had this time but nonetheless it was amazing. Out of all the roasts, I believe the duck was the best however hehe, though I did enjoy the pork roast! The scratchings in particular, it was funny listening to everyone crunch through the scratchings while they eat (I did the same too). During one of the meals I started mentioning about what I was doing staying up there for two weeks and how I was going to call this one of my last visits up here before I started finding a job (Alice already had a job as an admin assistant so it was definitely time).

Honey I’m home

The rest of the weeks were mainly me sitting around at Alice’s place whilst she was at work, it was pretty funny! The first day when she was off I started to clean up her room just so a) she didn’t need to worry about having a messy room and b) I didn’t need to worry about working in a messy room haha. Anyway, cleaning up was fine since her room was pretty much tidy anyway but I wanted to make it so her desk was cleared up completely so I can set up my laptop on her desk and work from there (it’s nice lying down with the laptop but it’s always better when it’s on a desk and all). Once the cleaning was done, I was pretty much doing all sorts of customisations on the PC, namely updating Ubuntu on my laptop. I managed to install all sorts of fancy things such as AWN so I was able to have a dock like thing on the bottom. I also went a bit nuts on customising my foobar settings. It strangely took up the time until Alice arrived. I felt like a proper housewife hehe. So yeah, this was pretty much what I did for the weekdays, I also managed to get my delicious account sorted as well as try out a lot of things, blog like crazy and also pop into town with Alan to give Alice back her ID pass.

Bingo, and how much I wanted duck the entire evening

On saturday we managed to meet up with inn in Leeds since it was where we were going to celebrate her birthday with a super sushi platter at SiSushi. It took a while to decide on what to get platter wise but disturbingly we ended up with two platters! Zero Fish and Sushi Party 2! It was quite an ungodly amount but nonetheless we were going to do it (twas inn’s birthday afterall (well the day coming to her birthday anyway(sorry I like using brackets (kinda reminds me when I code and have to ensure that there were enough closing brackets( that was fun haha))))

The waitress was a bit reluctant to take the order since they were going to be busy and it was quite a lot of sushi to purchase, she told us that it will take around 1.5 hours but we were fine about that, we eventually popped out to do a bit of window shopping as well as buying some firefly drinks for the sushi (they were a perfect combo (since yo sushi sold them and all) (and they tasted nice (very nice (so nice that we almost buy it everytime (since we discovered it anyway (hehe more closing brackets (I get the feeling I might have missed a close bracket) (that’s not a good thing since it would mean those who are computer minded would throw an unexpected error!))))))

During our random wonder around the city (of Leeds) we went into a Currys Digital (RIP Dixons) and found some lovely Canon EOS 400d caps! Now I’m not a cap person but DAMNIT I wanted one! We tried to talk the sales assistant in giving one to us but they said that I needed to buy a camera in order to get one. Eventually someone actually purchased one and gave me the cap so woo! haha. Alice tried on the cap and strangely she looked awesome in it, she would do a good job as a Canon model.

After some more street wondering and some guitar hero at PC World we eventually went back to Sisushi and picked up our food, man there was a lot! Going back was a scary journey since we were scared about dropping £75 worth of sushi! We headed back to kev’s place with sushi and some japanese tea that we bought (thought we’d make it as authentic as possible).

Once there, we pigged out! End of haha. Kev was nice enough to stick a candle on a sushi so we could sing happy birthday to her. I managed to try out all the sushi available and loved the spicy chicken iso in particular. After that meal we played a bit of tetris and eventually headed out to Mecca Bingo to play some bingo! Alice had her bingo vouchers which meant free panininininin and drink!

Bingo was alright, kev’s friend joined us at bingo (as well as Paul and Gem) and he, Paul and Lindsay won at Bingo. One of the highlights of that bingo session was when we bought a ham and cheese toastie! It smelt lovely (nicer than the micorwaved panini) and tasted awesome too! Afterwards we went to the pub where I kept going on and on about how nice Red Chilli was and how amazing the duck was! I tried tempting inn to go red chilli instead of sushi but they werent having any of it At the pub we were very close to popping out and getting a peking duck but since me and Alice had to head off in a bit we said no Alice cheered me up however by telling me that we will go red chilli one evening during the two weeker so woo!

The rest of the stay

After a lovely susushi and bingo fest it was Sunday again, which meant roast! I think we had chicken at some point but my memory is too poor ;( I didn’t really look for a job whilst I was at alice’s place, that plan definitely was a failure since I only got round to signing up on a few sites. Evenings with Alice was lovely, most of them involved playing Harry Potter trumps, watching V for Vendetta and playing lovely games of chess. At one point Alice did straighten my hair hehe, everyone kind of noticed that during dinner haha. It was pretty nice though, my hair was getting a bit too long and messy that a straightening was needed.

Red Chilli!

Thursday was by far the best evening for this visit. It was like our proper fancy date and all, it was to mainly celebrate Alice’s job and all as well as to satisfy my peking duck urges. Before we went to the restaurant Alice advised me to get her mum some flowers and chocolate since she was nice enough to let me stay over for so long. Originally I was going to buy some thorntons chocolates but they were closed by the time we were there and all. We eventually went back into Harvey Nicholls and bought her a nice box of dark belgium chocolate. We were lost with the flowers since most places were closed and all. Anyway, on to the meal

Man that was a good meal! Alice really enjoyed the atmosphere that was red chilli and we had the most amazing meal ever. We ordered a seafood soup, half a duck and a yellow croacker with sweet and sour sauce. It was pretty much alice’s call since she was paying hehe :$ (I said that when I got my job I’ll be paying that for meal so that was fair, plus I was super poor at that time). The soup was once again amazing, it was only £3 a bowl and you got 2 bowls worth of that soup (served from a bigger bowl and all) and to compare that with soups in other resturants that was definitely worth it (in London it was £3 for a basic bowl of chicken and sweetcorn soup, this one had prawns, scallops and other bits of seafood goodness)).

Alice was well pumped about the duck, I kept telling her how the duck was going to be cut by some fat chef in front of you so that was definitely going to the be the moment of the evening hehe. After some waiting our duck came strolling through and boy was it amazing! The cleaver work was amazing! That guy knows how to cut duck haha. Boy do you build an appetite when you watch someone cut up your duck you’re about to eat. There was a lot of pancake action! I think I had about 10 pancakes worth of duck! We were getting pretty full by then and was glad that we didn’t order two dishes for the main course

Everyone around us were proper n00bs at it. They all got the set menu which included a crispy aromatic duck. Boy that’s some shit duck haha, I’d feel sorry for the duck knowing that they were deep fried instead of hanging around some meat hook for an evening after having boiled water, vinegar and honey poured onto it for a 30 minutes and being slowly roasted the day after. Strangely two of the tables around us were gay couples o_O. After some bitching we got our final dish. It was a nice one but we were starting to struggle with it after that duck episode haha. Alice was a true eating soldier as she ate a fair amount of the fish and I finished off the rest of it hehe. So yeah, amazing meal! We thought a bottle of wine was in order so…

Crossgates and how you should check where a train is going before boarding it

After the meal we went to the Marks and Spencers in Leeds station to buy ourselves a bottle of wine, I also managed to find some lilies for Alice’s mum so the evening was definitely going well, well until we got on the wrong train and ended up at Crossgates haha. I think around then I managed to get into Twitter and that’s when I was telling people how lost we were from our date and all. Alice felt really bad in getting us lost but it was fine as long as we were together. We managed to pass time doing random stuff (tetris was involved).

Finally we managed to get a train back to leeds as well as the right train to Halifax where Alan was kind enough to drive us back home. We drank some wine and had the most amazing evening in my life. It was perfect, including the little episode of getting lost in crossgates, everything was perfect

Treasure hunt

I knew Alice was going to be sad that I was leaving the next day. The other times were fine since she knew I would be back but this time it seemed like it was going to be quite a while till I came back up north to see her. So in order to cheer her up when I left I started to go crazy on post it notes. Beforehand we would leave messages on her big pad every morning when Alice went to work (she woke up 6.30 every morning bless her and I just stayed in bed hehe). I managed to construct a long 17 post it note treasure hunt in her room, each one marking something I’ve noticed during our time together. It was quite a fun game, I kept things pretty cryptic and all and worked through the treasure hunt backwards haha. Once alice was back it was pretty much time for us to get ready to pack and go (me going anyway :(). I managed to give alice’s mum the chocolates and flowers and apologised for being so quiet all this time i was in the house (I hardly left her room :$ when alice was off to work). We got a a lift from ted and took the bus to town. It was really upsetting to leave but it had to be done… I needed to find a job.

stuff you might also like

• That damn duck weekend!
• Week in Halifax with Alice
• Leeds Festival 2007
• The ultimate Muse Wembley Stadium Weekend (Sunday)
• The ultimate Muse Wembley Stadium Weekend (Saturday)

12th July Arriving at Alice’s

Was the first time I’ve set foot into the Day household. I brought Alice a lovely rose (there’s a reason why it’s rose) and some white malteasers (don’t worry, the choice of chocolates get better in future haha!) since she’s never tried them. Other presents I got Alice included a Joseph CD and a little pot of lucky charms. Since I was anticipating that it was going to be a nice long week visit and I would be meeting up with other people (including Gem, Paul, Inn and Kev) I decided to buy some Krispy Kremes in Victoria station. They were pretty last minute and quite a burden to carry but nonetheless I brought it. The train journey was nice and I spent most of my time going online. I brought my laptop in case I’m left on my own or if we want to surf the web without using Alice’s house PC.

Immediately after seeing Alice my world started to light up, we headed straight back to her place and I managed to really make myself feel at home hehe. We initially wanted to go out to the moors to do some shouting and photo taking but the rain sort of got in the way (and I was tired from traveling). The day went pretty quickly and I was also able to meet most of Alice’s family who were really nice.

13th July: I’ll get you John McClain!

Today was a nice and chilled day at Alice’s place, I decided to venture in the Lucky charms I brought for Alice. We shared the pot and enjoyed the lovely sugar filled frosted goodness served with some nice greyish looking milk (got to love food colouring/dye from the marshmallows). Afterwards me, Alice and two of her brothers went off to Bradford to a buffet place called Annam’s. It’s been a while I’ve had a proper curry so it was quite a treat to visit the place. Immediately I notice a slight competition involved (maybe it was me) in how much food we can consume. I ate quite an ungodly amount and ended up going back about 5-6 times (it’s a buffet, that’s what you do haha).

Later on that evening we watched Die Hard 2. Not really a film to watch with the company of a girl but it’s Die Hard! One must appreciate that I didn’t get worked up and called people bitch right after the film haha.

14th July: Little Tokyo and Bingo

I’ve read Alice’s and Inn’s entry about this and boy it’s more detailed than mine, so it’s probably better to check theirs for details :p We were due to meet up with Inn, goto Little Tokyo to celebrate my results, then meet up with Kev, Paul and Gem and get into some good old bingo action!

Before meeting with Inn we went to Millies to buy her some cookies. I promised her that I’d get her some since she did encourage me a lot during my final year in terms of doing my work. Twas a little token of appreciation Of course the damn cookies were bloody tempting so I believe I did eat some myself (either before or after handing them to Inn). We met Inn at the Leeds Station carpark (slightly late) and got ourselves parked and ready to eat at Little Tokyo.

The food was pretty yummy one might say. Though I do feel like I paid far too much for it. I ordered a lovely prawn tempura bento box and enjoyed some lovely (and disturbingly meaty) prawn tempuras. I was quite jealous that the other two had loads of sushi to eat, it was a Japanese restaurant afterall hehe. I did do swopsies with inn on some sushi, she knew she was getting a good deal though since the tempura was just SO SO meaty hehe.

After Little Tokyo we went to meet up with Paul and Gem at Starbucks. We took a quick detour and went to Yummy Beads to see Katie in action haha. I had no idea why but hey, meeting people is fun so why not. Once there Alice instantly recognised her and pointed her out to me and Inn. We then acted a bit nonchalant (in a totally obvious way) and I decided that it was best for us to do some bead shopping. I always wanted to get a bumble bee bracelet made for myself so I thought now was the best time to get that done. I wasn’t too particularly keen on the yellow beads they had but nonetheless I asked Alice to make me one hehe. Once buying it inn approached Katie and told us who we were (before she started to thinking we were some weird stalkers haha). Twas a lovely chat (though I think I only said “hi”) and soon after we headed off to Starbucks.

Starbucks was fun, spent making bracelets and taking photos. I did a few photo challenges with Alice only to be lashed once again by her composition skills. We then met up with Paul and Gem and I shared some of my donuts to them. After a lovely drink and chat we decided to head off and lounge around for a bit before meeting up with kev and going to bingo. We ended up in WHSmiths for a bit and Gem was approached by some guranga people. I’m usually not keen on them, though thats probably because the London ones are a tad vicious when they approach you (they were waving a big chunky book at me and said it was for free, then when I had it they said they needed donations, then when I only donated £2 they said “well since your donation is a small one, how about taking this smaller book!” My mind was set on the big chunky book that I was supposed to get for free, though in all fairness, I wasn’t actually going to read it anyway haha. Gem was a pro at all things guranga, she had loads of guranga mechandise and was always accepted when she started shouting guranaga at the folks hehe. I had no idea what he was saying but all I know was that I had no money (most of which were spent on Little Tokyo or going to be spent on a vicious Bingo session that evening). After a quick lounge and magazine browse inside WHSmiths we went to Mecca bingo to meet up with Kev and Lindsy to do some bingo

Once at bingo we got Alice a new card (since she was new to it all). I decided to get myself a new one too since my other one was addressed to Bob Spektor. The reason why it’s not a good idea to go into a Bingo hall as someone else is due to the fact that IF you do win one of the grand prizes, no doubt you will be given a cheque rather than a wad of cash so best not risk it, not that I had the chance of winning but purely on the fact that I was uneasy all of the time last time knowing that if I did win I would have to give the bingo ticket to someone else to call!

Bingo was probably a bit too intense than usual! Me and Inn did claim our free panini and drinks we got from our vouchers as well as enjoy a £5 discount from our bingo tickets. Inn had some really manky cheese panini (purely because i picked the nice looking one) and it looked like industrial rubber dyed yellow than cheese. Mine was alright, a bit chewy but nonetheless, when compared to Inn’s monster of a panini, it was definitely a blessing of a panini haha. Right now for the bingo; it was going ok until some lady gave us her remaining tickets for us to play. It is extremely painful to play with another set of vouchers, you really need to work on the vouchers as fast as possible as well as ensuring that you do not miss a number. I missed it several times (then passed it on to kev who also missed it so many times) and yeah, was just painful. To makes situations worse inn spilled coke all over Lindsy’s side of teh table rendering her tickets as useless! Gem Paul and Alice tried to salvage the remaining tickets by taking them apart but it was simply a mess haha. Not only did we have a bit too many tickets to play with, but we also had to deal with the antics of people panicing over the spillage. Damn inn and her exceptionally good luck last time, it was a disaster waiting to happen (which Inn did state several times).

I think that was about it after the game, Kev won a fair amount of money for us to split between each other £35 I believe which we then spent on drinks (instead of a nando’s meal haha) Me and alice headed back to the Fax whilst the others said their fairwells

15th July Real Authentic Mongolian Cuisine

This was an awesome day, inn was bored at kev’s place since kev was doing his work so I suggested she come and drive to Halifax and we can find places to eat (yes we love eating food haha). I intially wanted people to go for some peking duck action but finding that in Halifax was proven extremely difficult. All they had were cheap chinese buffets that obviously didn’t sell peking duck (good ones anyway). We were losing hope and motivation in finding a decent place to eat when we decided to phone up Gem and see if she could recommend a good place to eat (as well as inviting her to come). Turns out Gem had just the kind of restaurant we would want to go. It wasn’t a chinese restaurant selling peking duck, it was a Mongolian buffet place called Temujin. It was quite a unique buffet since you’d pick all the ingredients and take it up to a chef who would cook the food up in front of you with their trusty woks.

I was definitely pleased about this place, seeing how Alice was agreeing with Gem on the phone was pretty much the main reason why I decided to go in the first place haha. Inn quickly drove us there and we enjoyed our lovely buffet meal with the addition of Gem and Paul. Inn had previously arranged a curry night with kev this evening so she decided that she would only eat a bit. She got tiger prawns (which were Buy One Get One Free) and we began to feast. Loads of combinations of sauces, oils and garnishes to choose from. I picked the right ones for a nice black bean sauce with noodles and beef hehe. But yeah, food was definitely good, we were very keen on trying the random meats that you wouldn’t normally see in restaurants, today they were serving crocodile. Just tasted like chicken hehe but was nice in filling up your food portfolio in weird things to eat hehe. After a nice meal and some bill complications (mainly inn and her abusing the buffet system haha) we headed back home and enjoyed some lounging about with nice and full tummies. I think I ate about 6 bowls

16th July The Lucky Dragon and the hunt for the Golden Peking Duck

Today was probably the best food day out of the week. We were initially going to go Yo Sushi! to try out the rainbow combo (£10 for a dish of each colour) There was a slight problem however with the trains in Halifax which made me and Alice late, by the time we were in Leeds most of the stores were closed, we were contemplating on going on Nando’s when an idea sprung to mind. The legendary duck hunt! We decided to give that another shot and since it was Leeds it should definitely be a lot easier to find than in Halifax (which is riddled with cheap chinese buffets). After a nice walk we eventually end up in China Town (it’s a pretty lame excuse to be called that though since it’s just a car park with a sign saying China Town haha). We had a look in there and a further look around the area to find nothing but buffets and some restaurant called “The Lucky Dragon”. The menu’s did look pretty nice though, and they DID sell Peking Duck, but it stated that a 24 hour notice was required. In the end we went into the restaurant to see if it was possible to order one without notice. Luckily it was possible! (woo!) We ordered some other bits and bobs including some yum yum dim sum and some chicken feet (for the sake of Alice haha). It was pretty funny watching Alice eat them! Kev and Inn seemed to enjoy it pretty much (kev’s first time) and I myself loved it. The duck was definitely the highlight of the evening though. It was amazing haha! I couldn’t get enough of the thing! It was placed on a plate of Prawn Crackers (which was funny since Kev ordered some too haha) and another dish was made from the remaining meat of the duck. It was an amazing meal and by far the most valued for money (I think we paid about £12 each!).

After a lovely duck meal we headed off to play some dirt cheap Bingo, we were pretty late so we were pretty much there for a laugh. Didn’t win anything though. We then went to Dr Wu’s for some random open mic night action and ended around Leeds station to do some hardcore tetris DS’ing. We’ve finally discovered the powers of 4 player tetris and was finding it more and more addictive of a game.

17th July Yo Sushi! and DIE HARD 4.0

We agreed from yesterday that Inn would stay at kev’s place for another night so we can go eat at Yo Sushi! the following day. Me and Alice arrived at the place slightly earlier than Inn and Kev. We sat down and had some tea before ordering a few dishes. Once inn and kev arrived we went at it with the ordering. It was funny looking at Kev’s menu, he had designed it using WordArt and was hoping it was the perfect combo. Unfortunately for kev most of his selection was compramised and he had to rethink what he was going to eat. He used a Bingo dabber to rewrite the combo on the back of the paper. Kev tried to impress the waitress serving us (Karen Wright: Ace Yo Sushi! Waitress haha) but she didn’t seem too impressed haha.

Food was amazing. I had a Salmon Skin hand roll, yakisoba, crunchy prawn maki roll, beef ramen, prawn gyoza and assorted tempura. Unfortunately the assorted tempura this time didn’t include soft shell crab :(. We ate and took photos of our food, was quite a fun day, followed by a nice and aggressive amount of Tetris DS’ing. After that it was time to leave and all so kev left us with his other mates whilst inn drove back home. Me and Alice thought going to Halifax now was a bit silly so we decided to head to the cinemas to watch… yes that’s right… DIE HARD 4.0! The film was amazing! Really lived up to the other Die Hards, once again John McClain saves the day haha. Theres apparently a Die Hard 5 planned so lets hope Bruce Willis gets into tip top shape for that one haha. After that we went back to Halifax and lounged about.

18th July Lounging about in Halifax

Was quite a quiet day, made a cake though

19th July More Yo Sushi! and me going back

Today was where I had to say goodbye to Alice. We decided to head into Leeds slightly early and just lounge around for a bit. Once there we decided to actually have another yo sushi! day! We ordered very similar meals and had a lovely meal and several games of tetris. Then we headed to a Nero and sat around there for a bit. Eventually it was time for me to board the train and all. It was pretty sad leaving Alice, she was going to go France the week after which meant we would spend 2 weeks odd apart. We said our goodbyes and I went back to London.

The week was definitely amazing, I really love where Alice lived and will definitely pay more visits to the place :).

stuff you might also like

• That damn duck weekend!
• Honey I’m home, 2 weeker in halifax
• Leeds Festival 2007
• The ultimate Muse Wembley Stadium Weekend (Sunday)
• The ultimate Muse Wembley Stadium Weekend (Saturday)

More takeshi’s castle and crystal maze

Yup, when everyone wakes up at around the same time as everyone else, you just have to watch takeshi’s castle and the crystal maze . We did the same thing in terms of heckling the TV screen with lines such as “You could of had EVERYTHING!” and “AUTOMATIC LOCK IN”. I explained to Alice about the whole high death counts in both places and how they never really aired that stuff. It’s almost become a mandatory thing you do when you wake up at Kazzie’s house.

It’sa wii, warioo! HA HA HA

We also played some wii, we did the lifeline game where everyone would complete a level and at the end you had to cut strings up and kill off characters, I don’t think I won at this game, ah well. We then started playing wii sports, now THAT was funny! I was a god at wii boxing, I proved that point when I defeated Adam a while back in just one round with him doing very little damage on me, after that I have been playing that more and more and have got to pro status on it. This means bad news for everyone else who was facing me. People were literally taking turns and getting knocked off immediately each time they played me. I usually killed them off on the first round and everything but it gets pretty vicious, Popey and Inn were the main contenders but I managed to destroy them in one round nonetheless hehe, Inn did get very jabby but I kept dodging them and unleashing some godly combo’s straight back at her, ah good times.

Then we started playing games where anyone can win! Wii baseball, me and Popey went head to head on baseball, I’m not too good with the swinging so eventually I lost to Popey. He was well chuffed about it, I think I stopped playing afterwards since I was hogging the console too much and I had to get ready to go and all (not because I lost haha). I think Blee played with her friend Sarah a bit on the wii and afterwards we were once again ready to leave. Quick huh? Internet was mashed up in Kazzie’s place all weekend and she was dying without it, she was on the phone all morning trying to book an engineer to fix the problem. It was funny how mad Kazzie got whenever she was directed to a call centre in Bangalore.

Ste is a bad man, a very baaaaad man

I think Inn and Kiernan sort of drove off in advance while the rest of us were split into two cars, Kazzie took in me and alice whilst Ste took Popey Blee and Sarah. Inn had left Ste the maps to the hotel so it was ste who was leading the way whilst Kazzie tailed behind him. Ste and Popey were slightly cocky about how last night they managed to get to Kazzie’s house based on man instincts rather than maps and stuff, so I think they were doing the same thing a bit this time they drove around.

Occasionally Kazzie would swear at cars who went between Ste and her car. Me and Alice were just sitting there calm as hindu cows. However, during one point, we see Ste take a sharp sharp turn left, which Kazzie couldn’t do since it was far too abrupt and basically ste just drove off! haha. Kazzie was not pleased. Ste was supposed to be leading Kazzie, not driving off without us. Later on, I asked Popey why Ste didn’t stop and wait for us, it really sounded like Ste didn’t do it purely because he was in a “moment”, a rush and all in his head that made him go “YEAAAAARGH I’m driving fast! RARRRGH” or something. Back in our end, Kazzie was absolutely pissed off of what Ste had just done, we tried phoning them up and they gave us rather crude directions of how to get back to the hotel. We would have probably been fine if we had some directions and all but nooo, Ste had that so we were on our own haha.

Eventually Kazzie was lost, lost lost. The kind of lost when I was stuck at Wembley Stadium, only with less people, with cars involved, and we’re not in a stadium (so technically its not really like me lost, but its nice how we use comparisons to determine that it wasn’t really like that haha). Sooner or later I whipped my phone out and used the TomTom software to sort of find maps and routes to help the journey. Kazzie was rather impatient about it all so it made me give her random directions when she said “left or right?” haha. Eventually I got her to stop at some road so I could of used the advanced planning to sort out a route back to the hotel. We had phoned up Popey and managed to establish that we needed to get to Pinner Road in Harrow on the Hill to find them all. Eventually me and Alice tried to use the TomTom as a map to navigate Kazzie to Pinner Road, I wasn’t too good with map reading but Alice did a pretty awesome job. We eventually got to Pinner road but saw no sign of everyone, then we just continued to drive on finding the hotel but eventually got lost AGAIN. We were stuck at Pinner Station (quite a way back from Pinner Road!). We initially thought we’d wait for them to pick us up but they had no idea where Pinner Station was, so back we went to Pinner Road (which was slightly more confusing to find our way back to and all). Everytime I would have a weird sense of dejavu when we went passed the roads and all, it was freaky. We eventually found a place to stop at Pinner Road and just parked there waiting for them to search for us, Pinner Road was a looong road and later we discover that there were two Pinner Roads which was why they couldn’t find us!

I got out of the car to see if I could spot Ste and co who were out hunting for us and eventually I hear Inn screaming my name from a far far distance haha. I quickly get on their car and we immediately drive our way back to the Hotel del Harrow, I told Ste that Kazzie was going to kill him for driving off without us and he was well aware of it and was willing to take the beating (bless him). Once we got back to the hotel Kazzie got out of the car immediately and started to jump on him! He deserved it haha.

Upon approaching everyone Kev and everyone started giving me a big round of applause. Kev even took the liberty to shake my hand as well. Kazzie actually thought the applause was for her haha bless, but nooo, it was for me *glares at kev*. No idea what he said to everyone else, grrr. I think we immediately took off, we said our goodbyes to Blee and Sarah since they were only there for the Saturday night.
We were apparently disturbingly late for Nando’s, Max had already got the seats and all and were waiting for us to arrive, it was mainly due to Ste getting Kazzie lost and all. Here we managed to meet up with kev, Gem, Leon, Stephie, Paul and Kiernan so add them all to the list of people who were ready to travel back to Wembley Park to get our greasy chicken. Inn was somewhere else eating stuff on her own because she wanted some time by herself (chances are she was avoiding big events so she didn’t have to blog about it later on!). I think at some point Ste leaves us too to meet up with Aneta.

Eassy journey to Nando’s

Heading to Nando’s was breezy, we just took the tube and arrived at Wembley Park Station (second time again *shudders*) I was initially going to go Wembley Central but that was slightly longer so we decided to walk to Nando’s once we get to Wembley Park station. Paul seemed to have lost his Oyster card so he had to buy a new one and all (think he just got a paper travel card and all) Alice had to buy herself a travelcard too since she didn’t have an Oyster. Most of the cool kids had Oyster and were all topped up ready to go. Upon arriving at Wembley Park station I sort of led the way to Nando’s, it was pretty funny because I usually found my way to nando’s via Wembley Central but now I was a bit lost, Popey knew the way a bit so we eventually got there without getting lost

Piri piri chicken?

We walked passed another chicken restaurant that was situated right next to Nando’s and sold “piri piri chicken” even the logo looks very similar to Nando’s haha. We walked in and said that we were with Max and all but we discovered that they had to reduce their seating since they were there so long haha. Picture the episode of friends where Pheobe is having her birthday with her friends but people were late so they were forced to sit in a smaller table. Yup, people do that when you start hogging so many seats and not use them for several hours. Though the guys were pretty friendly and all and were keen on ensuring that we would get some seats as soon as possible. I reserved the table under “bob” but the guy misheard me and said “Paul?” so I said yeah why not, we had a paul haha.

We sat outside for a bit and talked for a while, eventually a table was ready and we were ready to queue up and order our food, the table wasn’t next to Max’s table but we were able to shout out stuff if we wanted to. Gem was keen on using her Nando’s reward card to get her free chicken. I managed to get Kiernan to use my reward card to order so we can have multiple goes on the card (kinda didn’t bother at the end hehe). I ordered some extra hot chicken wings this time since I wussed out with hot last time. I didn’t bother with anything else since Alice was buying chips with her chicken pita so I could of shared with her and Gem had a whole chicken which I was actually going to eat most of (I initially was going to share it with Popey and Max but later on Popey was full so only Max had some of it). So yeah, for lunch (its too early for tea) I had 3/4 of an extra hot chicken, 5 wings and some peri peri chips. It was a lovely meal, though it took ages to finish off haha.

I got a phonecall from Inn asking for directions to get to Nando’s, I gave her some rough directions and she was fine with that and vowed to find the place on her own with minimal guidance, and she did just that. Quite a lot of food ordering and consuming during the whole time and a lot of banter was made, shame we weren’t sat next to the other table otherwise it would have been fun. We however saw Leon trying to smuggle Sprite from a glass into a bottle via the use of a straw and some good old fashioned plumbing techniques hehe. Alice ate quickly (well not quickly, I just ate slowly) so she was able to borrow my camera and take photos of me eating as well as other people.

At some random point Inn suddenly arrives at Nando’s and catches up with everyone, she sat on both tables talking to Kiernan and other people, then she gets called by Ste asking how to get to Nando’s so she sort of volunteered to meet them and take them up to Nando’s. I can’t remember most of the conversations to be honest but I do remember still eating at this point (not an easy task eating so much chicken). This is why I ordered chicken wings prior to having full platters and whole chickens whenever I’m at Nando’s, with wings you know which bits to eat and how to eat it quickly. With a whole chicken you have to really mash the chicken up to get some meat out of it. Ste and Aneta arrive on the scene and sit on the newly attached table on the right which we asked some staff to join and all. Ste sort of quickly introduced Aneta to everyone one by one, I managed to do my usual hand shake thingy which was fun, afterwards they sort of sat on the far end and talked to each other.

I think most of the musers were about now, we were only missing one more person… kev. I think this is where Kiernan, Stephie and Inn sort of stand outside waiting for kev, I quickly got Alice to take a photo of them 3 waiting outside for kev, it was almost like groupies or fans waiting outside of the back of a venue for their favourite musician so they could say hello and scream into their ear about how much they love them. Kev took his time bless him but eventually made it to Nando’s, I don’t think he went inside to eat, he had a box of something and a drink in his hand so he seemed fine with the food (Nando’s without kev? Yeah I noticed, he didnt have any the entire weekend whereas Alice had two (and that was the only thing she ate bless her!)). I think after a long banter inside and outside of Nando’s we decided to head off to Wembley Stadium….finally haha.

Back to Wembley Stadium!

Today was special, all the mods and admins were guestlisted for this night which meant we would split up with Kiernan, Inn and Kazzie since we were assuming we’ll be getting seating tickets and all. Kazzie was a little upset since she was promised a guestlist spot from Leon (since Leon felt like standing for Sunday) but eventually found out that Leon wanted to sit down again (because he had a job interview in Wimbledon). Kazzie was also sad that tonight Adam wasn’t going to be at Wembley Stadium with her, actually she was sad throughout the day to be fair and quite a lot of people came to cheer her up from it. So yeah, it got to a point where the standing people went to see what’s left of the gig (My Chemical Romance) whilst we went to the guestlist area and got our guestlist stuff sorted. Kazzie handed me her bag and asked if we could look after it for her (as well as her camera) since she was going to be standing and all. We were worried about the camera so we decided to smuggle it inside Popey’s sleeping bag, as for her camcorder and stuff, we just left it there (bit weird eh?). I handed the bag to kev because I was carrying a bag of my own too (plus it was a ladybag and it suited kev more haha). During our walk kev did a lot of Stephie arse pinching being the charming man that he was (he wore a Blazer for today’s event (that he got from a charity shop) just to be fancy hehe).

Once we were at the guestlist area we had to wait around a bit since Gem needed to wait for Cara since she was her plus 1 guest. Everyone was fine to wait to be honest (well apart from Kev and Stephie who really wanted to see My Chemical Romance hehe ;)) so instead of heading in we decided to wait around with Gem. Gem was really mad at Cara since the entire weekend Cara has been leaving Gem to see other people. We suggested to Gem that we could leave Cara’s name in the guestlist and have her tell her name to the guestlist people for her pass but Gem insisted that we’d wait for her since last time she did exactly that and Cara wasn’t able to get in (no idea what gig it was). So we decided to sit around and just wait for Cara, we weren’t in a hurry anyway. Kev quickly went to the guestlist people to check if we were on the guestlist and all and it turns out we were (thats the biggest fear of going into gigs with only a name, otherwise it’s pretty awesome going into a gig with just a name, if that makes sense).

Eventually Cara arrived on the scene and apologised for being late, we immediately queued up in the guest area and lo and behold, we see Tom Kirk’s brother and Morgan hanging around here talking to each other. I instantly told Popey that Morgan was about and immediately he was star strucked, never before have I seen Popey’s eye’s stretch so wide, he was Morgan’s biggest fan, and was always mad that he never gets the attention he deserves and wanted to meet him in person and tell him he was his number one fan. I’m not too sure whether Popey was joking about this or not but I played along with it! It was funny, Popey could have just walked up to in and started a conversation to the man he wanted to meet the most but he didn’t, he was too busy with his mouth open just staring at him! Bless. (This is where I constantly mocked Popey afterwards with lines such as “YOU COULD OF HAD IT ALL!”) I managed to approach Tom’s brother once again and have a lovely chat with him and all, we talked about the gig yesterday as well as speculations as to whether or not they’ll be doing anything different for Sunday, he assumed that it will all be the same since not all people are going on both dates and that the first night was a bit too spectacular for them to just do something completely different, I agreed with him and suddenly out of nowhere I saw the entire Kirk family next to me (apart from Tom). They recognised me doing my speech at Trafalgar Square and said hello to me hehe. It was cute since I didn’t recognise them at first.

What the? Standing tickets?

Once that was done we were in ready to unleash our names and get our tickets etc. We were entering the “Club Wembley” entrance where everyone was dressed up nice and fancy. Even the bag searches were slightly more fancy than the normal entrances (since we were asked to sit our bags on the table whilst they did their search). It was pretty fun how they didn’t find two DSLR camera’s in both me and Popey. Tut tut. They didn’t really search for Popey’s sleeping bag so technically he could of smuggled a gun in that! Having said that he did have quite a lot of bags with him (since he was going to leave straight after the gig). Once in the reception area we had to give our names again so the receptionist would find and hand us our tickets. Immediately you could feel the wristband so we already knew that it had a special pass of somesort. However the surprise is that we discovered our tickets were…standing. It was strange because we were the only ones to have special Hospitality Suite passes but with standing tickets. We were slightly confused, we didn’t know what to do so we asked someone and was later escorted to the hospitality suite where they served free soft drinks. The problem now was to be able to get passed the security guards who were checking for tickets to make sure people had the right tickets and not just a VIP pass.

Kev approached them and explained the situation and they told them that we could simply stay in the suite but had to go back to standing since we didn’t have seating tickets and seats were reserved. We were a bit annoyed at this since it meant we couldn’t really enjoy the VIP area haha, so we tried the other exit to try our luck and hope they just let us in. Whilst kev was explaining the situation again to the guard I was able to just walk passed the guard and actually get to the seating area. Though being only me I decided to step back again haha (I just find it funny when one person distracts the guard, the entrance is practically an open invitation for anyone to just walk in haha). I even spoke to the other security guard about whether or not there were spare seats last night which she replied yes. We were then directed to some lady who explained the situation to us that we could not have seats purely because we had standing tickets, she said she’d gladly escort us to get standing passes (since we got through the area where you exchange your tickets for passes) and direct us to the standing area blocks, but we could stay around the VIP area for a bit if we wanted to. We decided to quickly stock up on a glass of soft drinks before we went back to standing. There wasn’t really much for us to do to be honest.

During the walk, Leon kept talking to lady, it felt like he was going to get her phone number just like he did for every female muser this weekend! (it was funny watching his list of female numbers build up). We were slightly disappointed that we didn’t get seating since we were all tired and all but we were also glad in a way since we were able to meet up with everyone who were standing. I managed to quickly use the toilet in the VIP area, apparently when I was in there kev managed to catch Tom and tell him that our tickets were standing, he quickly responded with “Standing is better!”. I think I heard that one at Shepherds Bush Empire hehe, but he was right, it was better… if we had golden circle passes *grovels*. We tried to ask the lady escorting us if we could get golden circle passes but that didn’t work too great either, ah well.

Meeting up with Kazzie and co again!

Once back in the Stadium we were able to meet up with Kazzie and everyone, I managed to give Kazzie back her camera (which was inside Popey’s sleeping bag still) and soon after, Alice needed to use the toilet (she should of used the VIP area hehe) so I went with her on the quest to find a toilet (it was going to be hard since My Chemical Romance JUST finished so all the guys and girls were rushing to the toilets and all). The normal toilets weren’t really an option for Alice since the queue was loong. We decided to get back to the VIP area and use the toilets there since there would hardly be anyone in need for the toilets there. So we went on a crazy trip finding our way back to the VIP area, we had to get a security guard to take us to the outside area and all, he only took us halfway but we managed to find some vacant toilets and all on the 2nd floor. After that we had to jog back down the stairs and get back to where everyone was standing and all since Muse were about to start very soon, we dashed the stairs a bit too much since we hit the basement level and had to dash back to the ground floor again. Finding our way back was pretty easy and we managed to find everyone again! Phew (not like my bathroom break tragedy the night before one must say).

We were all lounging around the middle area again, this time, being prepared to find Muse bobbing out of the grey box again so we can take photos of it, since everyone had compact cameras and all they were either taking a few shots or a clip of them ascending from the box, I went slightly oldskool and used the telelens to do a burst shot of them coming up so I could use it as a gif! I was told by Kazzie that we were cool to use our DSLR cameras because it seems like they weren’t too fussed about it! This was why I took the big daddy DSLR camera out as well as the telezoom lens! (Wish i knew that the previous night though :(). This meant photos were going to be a lot more nicer and all!

Suddenly the music stops, Muse were about to appear from the box again, it was funny how there weren’t many people hanging around in the centre area after knowing that Muse will be coming out from the box, and like last night they came up posing. The funny thing is how they couldn’t keep a straight face this time, probably because everyone knew they’d be coming out from there, everyone mentioned how Chris couldn’t hold a straight face when he was rising up. I was at it with my camera taking burst shots until they full ascended from the box, the confetti was a bit annoying now since the focusing kept focusing in on the confetti so now the band was blurred, though having said that there was so much confetti this time that you couldn’t really see the band anyway. Here’s the gif of them in action!

Muse and the 55-200mm lens

Once they started heading for the stage we knew that was it, Kiernan told us to head down to the side of the venue so we just started following her. It was cool because suddenly the crowds became less packed around the sides, probably because you couldn’t see the entire stage from the side so you’ll be missing all the clips and stuff. It was fine for us since we already saw it last night so we were now benefiting from seeing the band at a much closer distance. It was still pretty far but I was able to take some pretty decent shots of Matt with my 55-200mm lens. I only noticed that Kiernan, Kazzie and Alice were about, the rest apparently managed to find seats to sit on to enjoy the gig and all. I was happy where I was standing because I was tall enough to catch all the action as well as take photos of them! One of the funniest sights however was seeing Kazzie go nuts the entire gig, at one point she had her arms up and was smiling as if she was gathering the powers of all her ancestors who were previously crazy giggers so she could go nuts at tonights gig. It was a funny photo hehe, I was then going nuts on the photography with the lens, occasionally Kazzie would ask to borrow my lens so she could have a shot at it but the problem was she wasn’t tall enough to get the money shots hehe. It was heaven for me :p

I think eventually Kiernan and Kazzie left the side which left me and Alice to watch the gig by ourselves. The best shots I took were when Matt stood on the side paths that had an amp for him to rock out on, he did that several times and from those times I was able to take some pretty sharp shots of him (see the photos in a bit). Alice was really patient with me and my photography, I was being a bit antisocial when I was taking photos of the band and all, however she was understanding of it all and allowed me to go nuts at the shooting, occasionally I would stop simply because I wanted to enjoy the songs with Alice. I gave up on taking photos of Matt when he played invincible and I didn’t want to take photos of him when he did unintended. It was a song for some good old fashion swaying and all, not photography hehe. It was the best night ever, being able to listen to Muse, take photos of them and be in company with Alice who was amazing throughout the show.

Some bullet points of the gig (heres the setlist found at Musewiki), though less since it was so similar to the previous night:

• Dan the trumpet man only played for Knights of Cydonia since city of delusion wasn’t played
• Blackout had the same girls, this time both me and Alice were able to take photos of them with the zoom lens!
• Alice was too short to take photos, bless! (though she did take some photos of the flying acrobat ladies)
• I kept shouting out the song names before they were played, you can instantly figure out a Muse song by a few seconds of song, usually you can hear echos of the guitar and just odd sounds that instantly prompt you on what song is going to be played next, I was annoying by telling everyone the next song haha, I did that both nights :p
• No more crazy hair lady jumping up and down next to us spilling wine all over the place
• We were slowly able to linger into the front of the stalls, go us! haha

I think that was it, the show was very similar to previous night but with a better photo opportunity for me as well as a few songs changed here and there. Near Take a Bow we decided to head off whilst it was playing, reason being I wanted to be able to exit the stadium as soon as possible by being closer to the exit as well as being able to take some wide shots of the stage, particularly when the flamethrowers were on during take a bow. Once that was done we were able to leave the place quickly. I was still buzzing from the gig, it was an awesome set like yesterday and was fun listening to them play live.

No flames

Flamesss

And then there were 8…

Once outside the venue, we immediately found the others outside waiting for us! We then found out that they were sitting down for the gig so were able to exit it easily. We were learning from our mistakes this time in terms of getting out of Wembley and getting to Wembley Stadium. Everyone talked about how mental Kazzie was and how much they ripped the piss out of invincible by using their bodies to illustrate the lyrics, I kinda wished I was there to see it as it seemed like they had a proper buzz from it all hehe. We said our goodbyes with people who were heading back home and all which included Popey, Ste, Gem and Cara (Ste was driving back up and was dropping off Gem and Cara back to Leeds). The only people left were Kazzie, Stephie, Kev, Inn, Alice, Leon, Kiernan and me.

There was a crowd still like the previous night but people were moving a lot faster than before, we were able to get to Wembley Park Station ok (I told people to make sure Kazzie was in front of us!) and somehow we were split into two groups, group A (me, Alice, Kazzie and Leon) and group B (Kev, Kiernan, Stephie and Inn). I had no idea why we were split into teams, I think it was just to make the journey back exciting as well as ensure that we’d move faster and not have to look out for everyone, just our team mates. Since me and kev were in opposite teams there was already a sense of mandatory competition and all. Don’t think we competed in anyway anyhow haha.

Kebabland or Curryland?

Once we arrived at Harrow on the Hill, we were stuck with the ultimate question, Kebabland or Curryland? We were standing on a subway path that forked into two directions, the left hand side led to kebabland and their friendly staff with funny accents, the other side there was a street filled with curry houses that kev wished to go! I think we kind of split paths in search for food, kev went to curryland whilst we went to kebab land. Though a few minutes later we see kev coming back and telling us the other path doesnt seem to be the path to curryland (haha) so we were walking back together as a group of 8. It was a Sunday so most of the restaurants were closed. Finding food at this time of the night was really hard! We walked passed kebabland but decided that we wanted to go to curryland.

We managed to find ourselves a burger king, though we weren’t going to eat there since the food sucks and we were all determined in going to curryland. However, Kazzie wanted to have a burger there since she was not fond of curry haha. She ordered her food whilst I ordered a bottle of fresh squeezed orange juice since I was parched. The juice was godly! So godly that I ordered another one! Kev found a burger king crown and wore that for a bit whilst Stephie saw a Stuart Little car ride and immediately got on it, from then on… things happened. I think they were trying to put money into the car but.. uhm.. well see for yourselves…

There was a really huge bee buzzing around the place which we tried taking photos of, but to no avail :(.

After the quick stop at Burger King we went back to our adventure in finding a curry house. I think the first two we went into were closed but eventually we found one that was still open and was taking orders. We were also able to eat in but we wanted to make use of the 20% discount and all so we ordered a Takeaway. The one thing we were missing however were knives and forks (I think Kazzie picked up a fork and handed it to me so I quickly shoved it in my bag haha). We quickly ordered our food as well as some popadoms to share (kev bought them for us). Everyone bought curry whilst I thought i’d be different and ordered seafood fried noodles on the Oriental Menu haha. After some bantering we got our food and all, they had given us our 20% discount as well as charged us less for the popadoms, I told kev to give him a hug but he didn’t so I gave the waiter a hi5 (kinda felt guilty for taking his fork haha). We went back to the hotel to eat our food, stopping by at a Kebab place to get some additional cutlery as well as a bottle of water for Alice to drink. The walk was long but we finally made it!

We went inside Leon’s room (since Kev’s room was small and it smells) and immediately jumped into the his bed! Mmm comfty beds! We were then munching on the food we had! Alice was once again not hungry so I didn’t force her to eat anything. My noodles was amazing, it was nice and hot still too! It had mussels, prawns and all sorts of seafood bits, I let inn have a taste and she really liked it. I tried a bit of her stuff but it was far too mild hehe. I wasn’t too sure about everyone else and whether or not they liked their food but they didn’t seem too pleased. The popadoms were nice too, I think Kazzie had some too since she had no idea what it was originally. Kev noticed that me and Alice were wearing matching socks, I explained to him that it was purely coincidental that we were wearing matching socks and he went awwh! During our feast Stephie knocked over kev’s food on the floor which was funny, and to top that off she got milk (not hers) all down her top and on the wall, it looked really wrong haha!

After that I think Kazzie was ready to head off, Inn followed us to the car park as well as she bided us a farewell and drove off back home (home home). So now we’re left with me, Alice, Kiernan and kazzie. We drove back to Kazzie’s place for the last time (with Kiernan giving directions) and eventually got back to her place in peace (Kazzie was getting more familiar with the route back now). I managed to smuggle the bed inn was sleeping and shove it in the living room to sleep in. Kiernan was sleeping in the guest room again and Kazzie slept in her room again. Not much talking was involved (really tired) and we all soon fell asleep, well most of us anyway… (me and Alice actually kept hearing these strange noises, it sounded like the cat or someone laughing, but the morning after we discovered that it was 2 air fresheners spraying their stuff at timed periods, grr). Oh and we turned douglas around because he was a creepy, pervy man sitting there watching you!

And that’s it, the morning after Kazzie drove us to Watford Junction and we took the train back to Euston where I left Kiernan to escort Alice back to Kings Cross where we had a nice long hug and said our goodbyes. I was a bit sappy and actually did a bit of platform running haha, haven’t done that in a long time. It was a nice and fun weekend, I dont think anyone disliked it, we all met each other and had a wonderful time together and when watching Muse play. Even two weeks after (and blogging this weekend) I still miss the weekend and wish we could relive it or have another one again. Ah well.

stuff you might also like

• The ultimate Muse Wembley Stadium Weekend (Saturday)
• The ultimate Muse Wembley Stadium Weekend (Friday)
• Muse Meetup 23rd November 2006
• The v stands for mud: V festival 08 1/2
• That damn duck weekend!

The godly sounds of the word…”godly”

The sky is now a lovely shade of light blue, birds are still singing and people in the living room are starting to show signs of lif