smells like fun: 07/01/2005

Thursday, July 21

Copycat Bomber Jerks

Thanks to some copycat bombing jerks, I am once again keeping clear of the London public transport system. Seriously, bombs are sooo two weeks ago. Any jerk with internet access and a Mitre 10 or B&Q hardware store around the corner can bring the entire tube system to a halt these days.
Jerks.

Interesting Stalking Experience

I'm having a very interesting internet stalking experience.

A German person who seems to be obsessed with the movie Picnic at Hanging Rock managed to find my email address and connect me with my cousin Jane through a genealogy website, who played one of the girls that went on the afforementioned picnic and disappeared. She sounds a bit obsessed and is probably a goth (the German, not my cousin), but I shall converse with her and see what happens:

From: "Sandra "
>Subject: JANE VALLIS
>Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 16:54:50 +0200 (MEST)
>
>hi
>
>my name is sandra and i comes from germany. im a very big PICNIC AT HANGING
>ROCK fan and too from the actress JANE VALLIS. She play MARION in this
>movie. many people have tell me that she died in 1993 ( cancer ) and she was
>very yong. I search the cemetery who this actresss is and many pictures
>ffrom his grave. I must dedicated a memony Site for JANE but i cant find
>the Cemetery who she rest in peace. oh please help me. the producer of
>PICNIC AT HANING ROCK was PETER WEIR in 1975 i have send you too a picture
>of JANE VALLIS in this MAil. i hope that the resting place of JANE VALLIS is
>in Australia. The movie of PICNIC was made in AUSTRALIA and peoples have
>tell me that the actress JANE was live too in AUSTRALIA. i hope this.
>in the PICNIC movie JANE says "Surprising number of human beings are without
>purpose, though it is probable they are performing some function unknown to
>themselves."
>i not can say that this is the actress JANE from PICNIC AT HANGING
>ROCK. in the PICNIC movie in 1075 JANE was very young, 15, 17 o 18 years
>old, i dont now. this JANE is very older. please help ne. what is the name
> >from the cemetery wo she is?
>greatings from germany
>
>--
>5 GB Mailbox, 50 FreeSMS http://www.gmx.net/de/go/promail
>+++ GMX - die erste Adresse fï¿½r Mail, Message, More +++
><< pic4.jpg >>

Wednesday, July 20

Scally Translation

If you're confused by Jen's mention of some strange movie called Rita, Sue and Bob Too, because you've never heard of the movie before, let me translate it for you.

On the weekend during my loverly stay in Manchester, Jen forced me to sit in her comfy lounge chairs and watch this insane old movie about this grotty old man who gets it off simultaneously with two chavvy slaggy babysitters. The mullets were incredible - a 'must-see' for any mullet conniseur. Think Puberty Blues set in the slums of 80s Northern England. The worst bit is, I can't stop singing the theme song.

Even during the Magical Mystery Tour in Liverpool, where I was force-fed Beatles history during a 2.5 hour tour on the original Mystery Tour bus, with Beatles music blaring over the speakers, and our Liverpudlian tour-guide getting everyone on the bus to sing along, I still had the Rita, Sue and Bob Too song in my head! Eeewww!!

By the way, I thoroughly recommend the Magical Mystery Tour. The funniest bit was when we pulled up in front of John Lennon's childhood home on a rather busy main road, and there was a crazy man standing out the front of the house, holding a cardboard sign painted in fluro orange paint, proclaiming that John Lennon sponsored the IRA and was responsible for several murders in Northern Ireland. He got more photos taken of him than the outside of the Cavern Club on Mathew Street, and the Penny Lane sign put together.

Harry Plopper

Finally finished Harry last night. JK has done it again, with all the surprise twists and turns. **SPOILER WARNING** But that bit where Ron gives Hermione crabs was terrible. **END SPOILER WARNING**

Saturday, July 16

Jen is in da House

It's too much pressure to perform. Like Bob felt in the film - Rita, Sue and Bob too. Umm. Oh God. I don't know. Have you written about the sights, the sounds and the smells? God. Oh Jesus. Umm. I can't think. I'd like to tell you all about how Rachael's been watching Big Brother. In fact, she even asked if it was on tonight.

The pressure. That's it. I can't think of anything.

Manchester - the sights; the sounds; the smells

Well here I am in glorious Manchester, staying with Jen in the outskirts of the city centre. I've had a lovely couple of days off from the bad karma of London and the bombs and shit. The city is really cool with lots of red brick and the scally accents. And today, we've got a special guest blogger at 'Smells Like London' - the lovely Jen.

Yesterday we went into the city for a bit of shopping and to sample the v v cool bars. I'm getting used to the warmness of the beer. Jen is rather a connisuer - conniseur - a conisseur - she likes beers. So I've been trying a few of the regional largers. Once you do get used to the idea of a beer being at room temperature, you can start to appreciate the like, taste and stuff. It's all rather posh, this connisuerr beer stuff.

I also got to see the fantastic Thomas Heatherwick sculpture froim the train as we went into the city - B of the Bang. It's an amazing huuuge sculpture of an explosion type thing that is out the front of the Manchester Commonwealth Stadium. I'm a bit of a fan of the old Thomas and his multidisciplinary designs, so I was quite chuffed.

Sunday, July 10

Freaky Shit

Well it sure has been a weird last couple of days, to say the least. I was asked to stay one more week working, and I postponed my trip to visit Jen in Madchester for a week whilst I wrote my draft report on the future of hygiene for a very huge company who have to remain nameless (let's just say they are not just very huge, they are fricking huge).

Thursday morning started like any other. Except I had this really weird dream on Wednesday night that Kate Browne was getting married and was having a wedding on the beach but it started raining and the marquee drifted out to sea with the band still playing on it. I turned up at Angel station at 9am to be told that the station had been shut down due to a 'power surge'. So I got the shits and decided to get the bus to Aldgate via Liverpool Street.
Everyone was laughing on the bus and saying stuff like, 'Oh well, we've got the Olympics now, they can't take 'em back off us,' and 'It's okay, we've got seven years to fix the tubes', guffaw guffaw etc.
By the time we got to Liverpool Street the traffic was chaos and it was rather obvious that something was wrong. The bus driver told us there'd been an explosion on the underground. Then someone else said that two trains had collided. But the pavements were packed at Liverpool St and there were police everywhere and they were cutting off streets left right and centre.
Then the bus managed to crawl towards Aldgate, and there were people everywhere. The bus driver told us he'd been ordered to pull over and terminate on the side of the road, and we were told to get on the bus behind us. So we managed to crawl towards Aldgate East through the traffic, and we still didn't know what was going on. Aldgate East tube station was closed again, and the surly man at the gate said the same thing about a 'power surge'.
It turns out that 'power surge' was a rehearsed code word for 'terrorist action', according to someone I was speaking to at work who for some reason seems to know about this kind of thing. I managed to get to work at around 10.30 - an extra hour due to sitting on a bus in traffic. We didn't have a radio or television to watch, so everyone was looking at the online BBC reports, which were crappingly slow at being updated. Then we heard about the bus blowing up in Tavistock Square, which is in Bloomsbury, about a 15 minute walk from my house, also pretty close to Kings Cross station. Needless to say, it was a bit hard to concentrate on work. I was getting lots of text messages, but then all the mobile phone systems shut down and didn't work for several hours. For some reason, I was able to send sms messages to Australia but I couldn't even manage to send a text to Jeff in West Hampstead to let him know I was okay.

Anyhoo, one of the guys I'm working for is Irish, so he was being totally blase about the whole thing and kept telling us, 'For god's sake, stop sitting about and being melodramatic, only two people have died, it's not like it's a huge thing or anything.' That didn't really help me feel better. But the future of hygiene waits for nobody, so I had to keep working.

I walked home on Thursday, and again on Friday even though most of the trains and buses were running again the next day - even the number 30 - I almost had a heart attack when I was on my way to Sainsbury's on Friday evening to get some food for dinner and it drove past. Everyone is madly determined to push on with life and get back to normal, and I feel like I'm being melodramatic because it took me until today (Sunday) to go back to Kings Cross station and get a train to Jeff's place, and I freaked out the whole way. There were police everywhere, and lots of photocopied signs all over the station of people who were missing. It was so sad that I felt sick.
So I'm definitely going to Manchester this week to get out of here for a while.

smells like fun

Thursday, July 21

Wednesday, July 20

Saturday, July 16

Sunday, July 10

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