I can hear Big Ben from my bedroom. I kind of like that. I discovered it last night when I heard it strike midnight. It's the timeless regularity and reliability of that bell and clock amongst the chaos of London that appeals. And, to me, it's such an icon of Britishness. I particularly like way that the pause between the melody and the first strike is slightly too long, almost as if it's saying, "Pause for a moment, wait for it..."

GR.

Check out this website: http://grouphug.us. It's a genius idea. I wish I could come up with ideas like that.

GR.

I gave a woman on the street £2 earlier. I can't work out whether that makes me a helpful compassionate human being, or just a fool. She was quite old, appeared to be crying and said she was diabetic and urgently needed something to eat. However she insisted that she wanted a sandwich and that she would need about £2.

I half felt like going and getting her the sandwich just to be sure that that was was really what the money was for, but it was a bit of a walk back to the shop, and she was quite convincing (with an original plea) so I just gave her the money.

I really hope I wasn't conned. There's too many people who blag money under false pretences, so it's a bit of a boy who cried wolf scenario for those few who aren't going to spend it on booze. If I was religious I'd probably say that 'I'll be rewarded in Heaven', but I'm not. Maybe I'll get some good Karma credits instead.

GR.

So, (I keep starting with 'So...' don't I?) no more Concorde eh? I'm a bit gutted that I never got the chance to Fly on it. Today was the last flight for the British Airways Concordes. They landed three of them in quick succession within five minutes at Heathrow this morning. Maybe it's a bit geeky but I get into that sort of thing. And it was a pretty awesome plane, especially considering how long ago it was designed and built. Almost brought a tear to my eye today....

The spending plan's going well. Not sure if I'm saving anything but at least I'm more aware of where it's all going. I've spent £80.14 since Monday and that's being careful! I wish numbers wouldn't add up so readily! Tomorrow could cost a lot, and it will mostly go on beer, though that's fine as I've not done much boozing this week. I've stayed in tonight too, which will help. Right now, I'm off to bed anyway. Goodnight!

GR.

Money - Gah! My account is down to approximately zero pounds and zero pence already, and it's still more than a week until I get paid. I do have an overdraught facility but I've been dipping deeper and deeper into it over the past three months. I suspect that buying random crap may have something to do with it. That and beer, anyway.

So... I've resorted to keeping a spending record:
- Small, Indiana Jones-esque, notebook with me at all times.
- Pen
- Spreadsheet

So far it's kind of worked. I only spent £7.50 yesterday, and £5 of that was travel costs. In a kind of my dad way, it's quite satisfying. Hopefully this way I'll be able to sort out my rather large credit card bill...

GR.

Sorry it's been so long but, to be honest, I've not done anything noteworthy all week. I discovered a local Jazz night on Friday. I went down with my bro. It was pretty cool apart from the fact that lots of people were talking over the music so the musicians started to look a little pissed off. My housemate's brother and some of his friends, AKA "The Dogs", turned up later that night along with the usual excessive amount of 'stuff to smoke'. Yesterday was pretty much written off for me beacause I had a few tokes on a phat one first thing in the morning. We then went to a cafe to the pub to watch the rugby (England beat South Africa 25-6). After that we met some other friends had several more beers and some food. I was home in bed by 21:00 (such a wuss).

Today I'm going to meet an old mate from uni. Not called him yet but I'd quite like to go and see Finding Nemo or Kill Bill. Failing that, I would imagine beer and food will be involved at some point. God, gotta start going to the gym again...

GR.

I'm at it again: time wasting. Just spent half an hour brightening up this blog's colour scheme, instead of working on my brother's website. Anyway, it was all shades of grey, but I thought that might give the wrong impression of my personality, so I've gone for this kind of orangey-yellow.

It's a closely guarded secret, but as this is semi-anonymous, I'll let you know: I'm actually red-green colourblind. I hate the name 'colourblind' because everyone's first reaction is, "Ok, what colour is this ?" (pointing at some grass, for example). I've had tests and I'm about 30% deficient in GREEN sensitivity. This does actually impact quite a lot as most colours contain a mixture of red green and blue light, so the balance of all colours is offset. Dark blues are the worst - I can't tell if they're pure blue or whether they're tending towards purple or turquoise (i.e. whether it's mixed with red or green). The reason why it's a closely guarded secret is because I'm a designer. I get round the problem by sticking to colours I'm confident with, and by checking the numerical RGB values on the computer. I don't think some of my big name clients would be best pleased if they new that a visually disabled person had designed their website.

GR.

Football today - England v Turkey. I've never been a massive footy fan, but it's been growing on me over the last few years. Apparently they've never scored a goal against us, but then again we've not played each other for years and Turkey are pretty good right now. Anyway, that's about the extent of my football knowledge.

Watching the match in the Pub at 6pm then going out to a couple of clubs with friends. Hopefully it'll be a bit more sensible than two weeks ago...

GR64.

Well, Mr Richard D James turned up allright (that's Aphex Twin, for those who don't know). He was appearing under the name Bradley Strider, one of his early pseudonyms, and as a result it wasn't too rammed. I think half the people in there were just randoms who had wandered in off the street.

It was quite weird seeing him behind the decks in a small bar at a fairly low key night. He did his set off a laptop computer, I assume mixing mp3s or something similar. I didn't recognise any of the tunes - it was 80s tinged electro-ey kind of stuff. I couldn't work out whether it was his own music or not; perhaps it was some of each.

Unfortunately I drank too much Red Stripe and felt obliged to go and congratulate Richard for generally being very talented and for having written the tune Come on you Slags. He said thanks. I've never grown out the habit of slightly embarrasing myself at clubs by drunkenly insisting on shaking hands with DJs I admire. Never mind eh? I'm sure they're used to it.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I got back here with my housemate, scoffed pizza and then we got into one of those weird 'open' drunken conversations, not dissimilar to the one I had with my brother a few weeks ago. This time I was on about myself and self confidence. I can't remember how I got onto the subject. I'm not sure what came over me; maybe there was something in the beer.

Seriously though, I seem to have some surfacing issues. I think it could be the fact that I'm writing about myself fairly openly in this log that's making me more self aware. I suppose the fact that this is now all coming out is probably a good thing, as I've always been one for keeping things to myself.

I'd say one of the pressing issues (or symptoms?) is the fact that I've been single now for 14 months (since August 2003) and I've not really had any successes with women since then, except for getting off with a girl on New Year's Eve. It just doesn't really happen for me, and to be honest it never really has. I've only ever had one serious girlfriend (we lived together for thirteen months), and second to that my next best innings was two months.

Something must be missing in my approach but I'm not really sure what that is. It illudes me. I'm quite good looking; I'm not overweight; I have fashion sense; I'm intelligent; I'm funny and I'm still young (25). It just doesn't happen. I think it's first impressions. I don't think I make a good one. People often don't remember meeting me at all, which is really annoying. It's something I need to work on. My housemate reckons I should try homeopathy. He's tried it and claims that it's turned his life around for the better. He says he feels much better about pretty much everything since going for a few sessions, and taking one herbal tablet. It sounds crazy, but I think I might give it a shot. After all, it's only cost him about £100 and that's a small price to pay if it really works.

Anyway, I was back to my jolly old self today. I got quite a lot of work done for a couple of clients, and they were both really pleased. Unfortunately I've failed to make any progress on my brother's website this week. Maybe I'll do some tomorrow. I stayed in tonight and watched Dragnet on video. It's a cheesy 80's cop movie with Dan Ackroyd and Tom Hanks, and thus was quite entertaining. I wish the PS2 was working again though, missing the DVDs and SSX Tricky.

GR64.

Tonight I'm going out to see Aphex Twin playing at The Social. Apparently it's a semi-secret event as he's playing under a different name. I suspect, however, that it will still be packed and / or he'll not turn up, as it's something that I've heard about through the grapevine. Still - fingers crossed - I'm really looking forward to it because I've only seen him before in a large festival arena, and The Social is really small.

GR64.

I didn't start work until 3pm yesterday afternoon and as a result finished at about 12.30. I have to do something about my habit of putting things off... So - just a short entry today.

I just washed my stricken foot for the first time since 'The Incident'. My God, it felt good! For nearly two weeks I've been showering with my bandaged foot held out of the way, tied up in a plastic bag. It's a bit of a balancing act and I've nearly lost that balance a coupld of times.

Popping out to get some supplies (reaping the benefits of not being at work) then it's straight to work on my bro's website. Honest.

GR64.

I'm back at my parents' house, relaxing. They're actually out at the moment, walking across the low-tide sands at Morcambe. I'd be doing it too if it wasn't for the foot (it's an 8 mile walk and, as you might expect, very wet). I've just removed my bandage for the first time since it was put on last Wednesday. It's not hurting as much as it did, but it sure don't look too great. It's still kind of skinless and the flesh underneath now has imprinted on it a criss-cross pattern from the dressing. I'm hoping that an hour or so with it in the air will do it some good. Unfotunately they neglected to supply me with a replacement for the innermost part of the dressing so I'm going to have to put that bit back on (erk).

It's nice to be out of the big city for a few days. My flu-like illness seems to be abating as a result. I saw me old mate 'T' last night and am seeing some more friends later today. It's a bonus not to have to worry about work in the morning tomorrow.

It's also been nice (note to self: must use better adjectives) seeing my family. I've been taking photos of my bro playing his keyboard, with my new digital camera. They've come out really well. I'm going to make him a website when I get back down to London next week.

Bye for now!
GR64.

Yes, I'm still alive!

My lack of updates this week has been due to feeling really rough all week. After writing Sunday's entry, I started to feel really ropy (Friday night catching up with me) and my foot really started to hurt. I hardly slept that night and awoke early in agony. My foot appeared to have further blistered and looked, well, pretty grim. Not having a GP, I decided to go down to the hospital. I waited the customary few hours and finally got it seen to. It's a 2nd - to - 3rd degree burn.

I went back on Wednesday to have a re-dressing. The blisters had gone to reveal a largely red and outer-skinless foot. Ouch. Therefore I've been hobbling around and STILL have a huge bandage on my foot. This, combined with apparently having some kind of weird virus, has made for a pretty bleak week so far.

On Tuesday I went to a bar to discuss doing them a website, also an old friend came over from his city of residence to see a few of us. A friend of his (who I had met a few times) died a few days ago, and he had been to the funeral with some other people who lived in London. It was good to see him and catch up. He said the whole thing had made him realise how long it had been since he had seen us (i.e. me and everyone else from back home), and how it had reminded him not to take old friends for granted.

Anyway, I'm knackered so need to go to bed. I'm off back to my hometown (I'll let slip where it is one day) tomorrow night and I need to get my stuff together before I go to bed tonight. Sorry there's not been much in this week's blog, but basically I've spent the whole week feeling shit at work with a burnt foot - which would hardly have made great reading anyway.

Goodnight,
GR64.