A fun weekend and more trepidation

Pardon the lack of update for a few days, I've been busy!

Was down in London as of Thursday evening, with the primary intentions of going to the Bonobo gig, viewing potential new houses and generally getting to see the London crew. I'd planned the weekend long before the imminent move date became apparent, and though it was great fun, it was also pretty badly timed. I've just got so much to do at the moment!
Thursday was nice, went out for a meal with DT (after he didn't meet me in central London >.<) and then back to the house before departing Pubward. Got a bit drunk and returned home for Top Gear and snoozing.

The whole collective managed to drag themselves out of bed for a (reasonably) early house viewing in Alexandra Palace. It was quite a nice place, somewhat marred by the lack of effort the current tenants had made in doing ummm... any cleaning whatsoever. With a lick of paint and a bit of TLC it could be a really nice home. We also managed to find a quality greasy spoon nearby, which is another big tick on the list, although the local pub situation is yet to be assessed.

It's looking like I'm going to have to put off moving the vast majority of my stuff down south for a little while, since there's such a limited amount of space to store things in the Barnet place. Living in such a tiny room with DT for a couple of months is going to be a bit of a strain and I'm wondering how I'm going to deal with the sudden lack of personal space, something I value highly. I think this, combined with my 3 hours of commuting a day, is going to make my initial settling in somewhat traumatic, rather moreso than I had hoped.

Anyway, I digress. Friday night came around and (after leaving him outside The Forum for 30 minutes, sorry dude!) we met up with Bruce. It turned out that we were still waiting for a good 45 minutes before the first act came on anyway! Said first act was the actually rather cool Dextro (www.dextro.co.uk), just one guy with a few synths and a drumkit. It was a shame that the bass in the venue was somewhat lacking definition and ramped up to the point that a lot of the subtlety of his tracks was lost. Check out his live set on the website for a better idea of how he should sound.

The second support act were unintentionally hilarious. Higeo Miyagi (I think) are a 3 piece "band" from Brighton or somewhere. Their music, as described by Bruce, is like "Underworld on Valium, sans talent." They seem to have eschewed the concept of having a lead vocalist and instead chosen a lead whisperer. I think the guy was trying to sound cool and edgy, but he just ended up sounding like a complete tool. Combine this with the keyboardist who's primary job seemed to be pressing the Bossa Nova preset key on his Korg and then dancing like Johnny Two-Hats for the rest of the song and we were all pissing ourselves by the end of their set! Sorry guys, but having your first song's lyrics be the name of your band 50 times is not a great way to win over your audience!

Bonobo were fantastic, obviously. They played a blinding set, although most of it was from 'Days To Come' (Not complaining, awesome album!). The girl doing the vocals had a fab voice and I was privy to the most mind-blowingly awesome drum solo in the history of the universe. Kudos to the drummer who managed it with a broken foot!

The rest of the weekend was also a lot of fun, Saturday in particular was a good day as myself, DT, Miyabi and Makali all headed out to the cinema to go see Hot Fuzz (Quick Capsule Review: Just go watch it, now.) and then headed off for the pub. We played Shithead for a few hours and I got absolutely blitzed by the end of the night, passing out in DT's bed while they went and played some Poker until 4am!!

Sunday was reasonably uneventful, watched the end of Man On Fire (at last) and then headed off home. Got back in time to chill with my Sheffield crew for a while before heading off to bed, discovered Fleet was drunk & handing out Tramadol like skittles to all and sundry. Went to bed after a chat with Fangkit, thinking about how much I'm gonna miss that little foxy when I don't have him upstairs to talk to anymore...

Jesus Christ this post has gone on a bit... sorry about that. Will try to make the next one somewhat less epic.

Butterflies in the stomach...

Okay, well you should know who I am if you've read the sidebar, and to be honest you probably wouldn't have found this page without me pointing you to it, so lets skip the introductory crap.

After recent turbulence on the home front and the prospect of a looming redundancy, I started seriously looking for jobs in London. Miraculously, this process was virtually painless and I got interviewed for and offered the job of my dreams within 3 days of sending my C.V out to people. I wasn't really prepared for this, expecting a painfully long job hunt as I was.

What this means is that suddenly it feels as if someone stuck a brick on the accelerator of my life, chucked me a tatty A-Z and told me to drive. Don't get me wrong, I'm not unhappy about the prospect of moving to London, I have loads of awesome friends down there and a fantastic job to go straight into. I think cautiously apprehensive might be the phrase.

I think it's reasonably natural to be second guessing myself a lot in this situation. I've lived with my current housemates for 6 years now, and I love them all. Of all the things I'm leaving behind in Sheffield, they'll be the hardest. Its true that you don't appreciate the value of something until its removal is impending, and now I know I wont just be able to come home and wander into Chris, Rick, John or Martin's room for a sociable smoke and a bitch about my day, it's rather jarring and I'm having lots of waves of "God... what am I doing?"

One thing is sure, I'm not gonna be cutting them out of my life, and I will be back to visit regularly. ('Fraid you wont get rid of me that easily guys! ^.^) I can't imagine life without any of them and one day I'll point them to this blog and they'll know that. I love you all and I'm gonna miss you like crazy, make sure you do actually come visit me!

At the same time, the logistics of moving to another city are spinning my head. I'm lucky to have a friend with a big white transit van whose services I've procured for a day. Now I just need to pack my life into a series of small boxes and actually do the move.

To any of my London friends who are reading this, I am looking forward to being nearer you all and the associated social life. But I'm gonna need you to be there for me while I settle in and understand if I get a bit homesick at first!

I promise this wont be an emo-blog... at least not most of the time!