Our last day in Kennington

So, Sarah and I decided to get married, quit our jobs, move out of our flat and go to India for a while. I'll skip over parts one, two and three and move straight on to the fourth bit, because that's where we're at now.

It was the last week of October and we were still reeling from both the wedding happiness and the packing stress. We rose early to catch our flight - but it was hard to tell whether the man who controls the sky was pleased about this or not.



And then, we were off... Goodbye, big city, friends, flat OHGODWHATAREWEDOING&$%*&



More pictures will surely follow. You may have guessed this.

Atherton rides again

Long-term readers of this blog may remember my failed attempts to organise a film festival in my flat in Stockwell dedicated to the films of the actor William Atherton (Die Hard, Ghostbusters, etc). It was with much delight on my wedding day I got to hear a special message from the man himself (or at least someone who sounded very much like they could have been the man himself) - all thanks to my best man, also called William. For your listening pleasure, dear reader, I've posted it below. Damn right the happiest day of my life!

Message from William Atherton by willparkhouse

(Posted with apologies to the real William Atherton and my wife for the comment above. Wife! It still sounds weird.)

And finally... Minehead

(For MBV's ATP, though, so I still win.)

Then, Hamburg!

First, Venice!

What's in the lunchbox?

Apart from the time one of the entrepreneurs from Dragon's Den personally delivered a customisable voodoo doll to my office, I haven't really had that many nutty free promotional gifts (although a colleague did once receive these in the post). On Tuesday night, though, at a screening of the Sci Fi Channel's upcoming US import, V, I became one weird object richer.

The lunchboxes, lined up in shiny rows like Stormtroopers as a trio of grinning PR people looked on, were really light; I assumed they would just contain a two-page press releases banging on about how V was going to be the greatest TV event of early 2010, like, if you've got a decent satellite or cable bundle and can be bothered to spend an hour a week staring at Americans with the most distressingly perfect teeth ever (NB snarking aside, the show is actually pretty decent - I guess you could say it's V. good, hahaha). But I was wrong.

*Applause*


Update: More on V this way

Return to the End of the Road

Oh, it really is the best festival there is, and I've been to them all (NB: I haven't). Yes, End of the Road rolled around again and the weather was peachy, the cider appley and the company bananas.

Who did I see? These ones: David Thomas Broughton, Emily Barker and the Red Clay Halo, Dirty Projectors, Herman Dune, Sarah Benetto, James Dowdeswell, Robin Ince, Josie Long, Darren Hayman, This Frontier Needs Heroes, The Boy Least Likely To, The Acorn, The Broken Family Band, Okkeril River, Fleet Foxes, the Richard Hawley-Jarvis Cocker DJ set, Whispertown 2000, the Where Is My Mind? pub quiz, Dan Sartain, Neko Case and The Hold Steady. I saw a lot, missed a lot, danced a lot, drank a lot, forgot a lot, whamalot bamalot.

Here are the snapshots.

What happened last year?

Friday night lights

It's a Friday night and although I felt like a drink, no one else did, or at least not with me, so, sensing that I'm set for at least one spell of boredom this evening, I thought I'd write about the view from my bedroom window. It's our bedroom window really, but Sarah's away touring the landmarks of Stockport, so for the moment it's mine (unless our landlady emails later to demand a retraction).

About five minutes ago, the sun was shining through the clouds and actually creating that Ascension into Heaven effect you see in old Italian paintings, but it's one of those fast-changing September sunsets and the black clouds have hustled in, as if to say, "Nothing to see here." They're doing a shoddy cover-up job, though; the sky is still dazzlingly bright, at least for my sensitive retinas.

It's a mess of a skyline, frankly – green-netted scaffolding seems to be growing over every other building – but there are some interesting details: you can see the switched-on floodlights of the Oval to the south-west (or "left", if we're being panoramic); the reflection of cars going past in the tall windows of the large office opposite, its roof perfect for a Hong Kong action flick's gun-pointing tableaux; a distant flag blowing in the wind, which could even hail from north of the Thames; and, closer by, one of Westminster's towers tantalisingly just visible behind the large lopsided Sycamore, which has recently been garlanded by small blue lights which apparently only come on between 9 and 10pm. We often stare out at them, wondering why.

Hay fever

Perhaps this is a little strange, but within five minutes of arriving at Hay-on-Wye for the books festival, I was thinking, "I need to come back next year." The place emanated immediate good feeling.

Books - and copies of The Guardian - were everywhere, although the sponsorship and presence of Sony, who were attempting to flog their e-reader, provided a vague challenge to such paper-based gaity.

Providing my brain with exercise were, in this order: James Marsh (director of one of 2008's films of the year, Man on Wire) and Adrian Chinn (producer of etc etc), Graham Swift, Chris Patten, David Simon, Kate Summerscale and Simon Schama. Hey, Swifty, can you sign my digitally downloaded copy of Last Orders, please? Just scratch your name onto the screen with this scalpel, it's fine.

When Macca, my companion for the weekend, wasn't snacking on sugary treats - the man's sweet tooth, I discovered, was insatiable - he was raving about The Field. The Field was not, as you might have thought, David Simon's idyllic follow-up to The Corner and The Wire, but an actual field next to the festival grounds, filled with a host of golden, um, buttercups, several easygoing cows, and much peacefulness.

[Checks for udders.]

In the evening a light pointed to at top of this tree, making it look eerily like an enormous piece of broccoli. I don't like broccoli, but I liked this tree.

In summary, then: see you next year.

WWE, WTF?!

When Birdy said, "Let's go to WWE Smackdown at the O2," Dan, Jamie and I were all like, "Haha, you're an idiot, but yes, that would be amazing," not expecting him to actually reply a few hours later with an email that went, "Okay, I've booked tickets, we have four seats in my company's corporate box, transfer me £30."

As a result of the confusion, at around 8.30pm last night I found myself watching a dwarf dressed as a leprechaun appearing to beat the beejesus out of a large-chested woman with luminous pink hair and leggings to match. I'm so glad I wasn't fully sober.

With little to no knowledge of the recent developments in the grand soap opera that is ECW, I couldn't quite follow the plot, but according to some sentimental older dude in a green vest, his son - the little person - had been drafted and was heading off to fight overseas (like, Vietnam?) the next day. The pink-haired lady and her asshole husband were taunting him for some reason, which led to the fighting pictured above.

Against all the odds, though, the Oirish underdog won, and, in scenes reminiscent of Spinal Tap's Stonehenge interlude, he celebrated by dancing round with three similarly-sized children to the strains of some manic Irish folk music, apparently composed by a misty-eyed American tourist with cliché-filters turned down to minus-11. As your typical WWE commentator might say, "I'VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT!"

Still, epic arena, that O2, if distinctly lacking in a hot dog chute pointing directly at my mouth. These pictures are made even better by the fact that you don't have to listen to nu-emo songs that all sound like Evanescence at full volume.

Like a quartet of raddled old-timers, we all had bets on who would win each fight: The Undertaker or The Big Show? Triple H or Randy Orton? Dan managed to call every one. Luck? Probably not: he was surprisingly well-versed in WWE history and could easily foresee the narrative patterns. Although not even he was expecting the leprechaun.

The upshot of all this was that I woke up this morning and found seven mini packs of Sugar Puffs-like cereal in my rucksack; in my head was a nagging feeling of guilt for telling Birdy that wrestling is fixed.

A few more pics here

One random thing about me

I know it's been fashionable to dismiss the "25 random things about me" meme that's been viralling round Facebook by saying, "I really couldn't care less, you narcissitic chump", or words to that effect.

But I've actually really enjoyed reading these infonuggets - after all, these people are my friends, and uncovering a small part of a familiar person's secret history can be quite thrilling, even if it is something slightly mundane like, "I secretly fancy Stephen Mangan."

I started a list myself, but only got to 12 because I was starting to sound like Woody Allen, and not in a good way. So I'll just publish the first "thing about me" I came up with here. To be honest, it makes anything that could possibly follow it seem insignificant and futile. Ready?

1. Until 24 February 2002, I had never seen an episode of The A-Team. By chance, I ate the first bagel of my life exactly five years later, on 24 February 2007. Neither experience was particularly life-changing.

It ain't me, babe

Ah, hell. Listen, if you're Google-ing my name - and I'm sure you are, every second of every day, can I just say: this is not me.

He got Game (of Life)

Christmas: it's all about the boardgames. After a whizz through the Brewster's Millions-alike Go For Broke on Christmas eve, we tackled its money-making nemesis, The Game of Life, on Boxing Day. Despite the stickers peeling off the bridges, and one of the flags being broken, unbelievably, the spinner actually span repeatedly without flying off into orbit.

After I'd reached Millionaire's Mansion and my less ambitious opponents had settled down at Retirement Home, we totted up our money. Alas, Dad had so much cash, he couldn't be bothered to carry on counting once he'd reached £950,000. Then again, he was raking in the game's top salary - journalist, whose £20,000 wage tops those of teacher, physicist, doctor, lawyer and businessman. Mostly, I love this boardgame for its realism.

Caught bread-handed

Translates from the French as "truly irresistible big bastard". Said my Mum: "It's a bit big really, but I had to buy it with a name like that."

Rice precedent

I think I just got an electric shock from washing rice. Is that possible?

Cuba: part 6

Oh, that's it for Cuba really. After Maria La Gorda, we travelled back to Havana and had one last weekend, imbibing a number of mojitos and daiquiris and enjoying the hospitality of Mr Chris. He introduced us to the British Ambassador did I mention? She lives in an extraordinary house, where waiters bring you lobster canapés and it's hard to maintain an empty glass. There were no Ferrero Rochier, of course.

The man who took us to the top of the Edificio Bacardi to show us the view pointed out to me some feature of the British invasion from the 18th century. "Ah, sorry about that," I said, laughing, "Disculpe." He laughed: "We have forgiven." Oh well, we were only there a year, it wasn't that long. And two weeks - well, that's even less.

The rest of the pictures are here.