Things what Phil does

Home Alone

2009-07-11T23:55:00.002+01:00

As usual i've become slack at updating this mofo, but I'm going to try my best at keeping it reasonably up to date and soon enough it'll become habit.

I'm home alone at the moment, Kelly has disappeared off to Houston for a week to study oil rigs and booze (not necessarily in that order) so i'm all on my lonesome. I dropped her off at Heathrow this morning and have been a lazy bum for the rest of the day.

I often thing what I would be like living on my own; i've never done it before but it's something i'd quite like to experience. I have of course had my own room at University Halls and lived with mates, but the last two years have been spent living with Kelly so i've never had to live on my own. Some people I know do it and love it; I imagine there is a wonderful sense of freedom and the thought of not having to worry about how your actions will affect somone is probably quite nice. I am quite fortunate in that I am perfectly happy with my own company so I don't think i'd get lonely, though there is always the option of getting a cat/ferret/hamster/snake or some other animal to talk to - cats are the best though cos they talk back and I like to think I can hold a reasonably good conversation with a cat. Twinkle and I used to have fascinating chats.

I have been in my "crap friend" mode for the past few weeks; there are so many people I keep thinking "I must get in touch with them" about but I never do - mostly Uni friends who I haven't seen for about a year, but also other people who either live far away (Hi Leah!) or I just don't see any more like old school or family friends. I go through phases of getting back in touch with people but then leave it 6 months before any other kind of contact, which is a bit silly.

A while ago, in my other blogs, I used to do this thing where I summed up the highs and lows of a month and year. Seeing as we're now out of June and into July, now would seem like an appropriate time to have a juicy summary of what happened in June:

June Highs

Playing a couple of excellent golf days with work pals and reigniting my love for the game - hopefully I can keep on playing this time.
DOWNLOAD FESTIVAL - simply one of the best weekends of my life, meeting people and making new friends, seeing some excellent bands and just generally having a brilliant time
Taste of London - getting to sample food from some of Londons bestest restaurants. As someone who enjoys my food (I don't get this figure from eating salad) I love going out for dinner, and now I have a whole host of new places to try out!
BBQs
Camden
Paying off my credit card debts from the last 5 years
Getting back down the gym
Getting High Definition telly!

June Lows

Not having much money (just a short term thing though as now i've paid off my credit crd debts i'll have more cash to play with from now on)
That's about it!

All in all June was a good month. July is shaping up to be a corker too, lots of fun and games planned. HOORAY!

Oh and another thing...

2009-05-02T00:23:00.002+01:00

Today I bought "Planet Earth" on Bluray! I love the TV show, and the thought of seeing it in high definition glory makes me wet my pants with excitement.

Pigs

2009-05-02T00:07:00.003+01:00

Today was a glorious day. One of those days when everything feels good, there's not one thing that's getting me down or worried or anything like that. I decided to take a walk at lunchtime and I ended up in Leadenhall Market, which is just over the road from where I work. It's one of those places that you can't help but like; it's got character (it's about 150 years old), there's plenty to do, lots of nice little cafés and restaurants with people sitting, eating, drinking and talking outside, pubs with people mingling and laughing, market stalls selling little arts and crafts and foody bits, chaps shining office workers shoes, and today to top it off, there were morris dancers. It's one of those places that makes me love London, and definitely somewhere I would love to show visitors.

Not even all this talk about pig flu can get me down today. Sure its a nasty bug that's doing the rounds, but with the exception of Mexico it doesn't seem to be very serious and everyone that's had it so far has or is making a full recovery. Sounds like normal flu to me. The mdeia or course, is blowing things well out of proportion and telling people to wash their hands, be vigilant and not to go into work if you have any symptoms - but surely that's what you should do if you have normal flu anyway?! I had normal flu a few years ago and it was probably the worst thing I have ever experienced - I couldn't get out of bed for about 5 days, I felt truely awful. So obviously it's not the nicest thing to catch, but I don't think it's the killer virus everyone is making it out to be. Bird flu on the other hand...

I was thinking the other day how humans are defying the laws of nature. By inventing medicine, welfare, benefits etc., from a purely scientific/genetic point of view, we are actually weakening the species as a whole. In nature only the strongest survice - if a killer virus sweeps a habitat, only the ones who build up an immunity will survice, who in turn will pass that on to their kids and so on, thus ensuring the species has protection from that disease going forward. And, if we took this pigflu thing in the same way, thats what should happen to us. But because of medicine the people who are genetically weakest will still survive, meaning the overall strength of the human race is somewhat diminished. This is a pretty dangerous path i'm walking down as the same could be said for stupid people, disabled people etc...and I suppose that's where morality comes in; as humans we have evolved past the survival of the fittest and everyone should have a chance to survive. But think how much better off we'd be if all the chav scum on benefits were slaughtered - the average intelligence of the nation would increase by about 50%!

This is all rather philosophical for a friday night. Kelly has been out on the lash with a couple of friends who she hasn't seen for a month or so, so i've had a rather pleasant evening to myself and i've had time to think about this kind of thing. I also think the only thing thats pissing me off at the moment is this fucking computer, which seems to freeze every 30 seconds or so.

Tomorrow, Kelly and I are looking after Kelly's cousin, Josh, who is 5. We are taking him to the zoo. I am excited, I love zoos and going with a 5 year old should make it even more exciting! We will do a packed lunch and have a picnic somewhere if we can have a break. I am looking forward to seeing the lions and tigers and bears. Oh my!

Pah

2009-04-29T00:25:00.002+01:00

And they say men can't multi-task. Sitting on the loo and having a shave at the same time? Now thats the kind of multitasking that would put most women to shame!

On reflection I have decided not to post every single meal I eat on here, simply because:

a) I probably won't always have internet access
b) my memory is pretty pants so i'll probably forget
c) if some stranger reads this blog all they'll find out about me is that I like to write about food. And there's much, much more to me than food.

This evening I have updated my mp3 player, as the last update was about 6 months ago and I'm now bored of the stuff i've got on there. So there's about 500 new tracks on there, from such artists as Iron Maiden, Faith No More, Eric Clapton, Mastodon, Opeth and much, much more. That should provide my ears with some pleasure for the next couple of months or so.

It's time's like these I realise that 1) I would never like to be deaf, and b) 8gb is not enough!

Question

2009-04-28T00:33:00.001+01:00

Of course the big question is, will anyone else view this page and if they do, will a list of my daily food intake make for interesting reading?

One to mull over during sleepytime tonight methinks.

Only a year and a half since the last one

2009-04-27T23:33:00.003+01:00

Not bad really. As with all things when it comes to me, I get these fabulous ideas that I embrace fully for about, 2 weeks, then they fall by the wayside as I become bored and/or distracted and/or I find something else to do for two weeks.

Anyway I decided to restart this thing for a couple of reasons.

Reason the first: A long, LONG aim of mine has been to lose weight and get down to some sort of sensible size. I've been podgy for too long. The main trouble with me is not necessarily eating unhealthy stuff (i'm the first to admit my diet could be better, but I dont stuff my face with cake), but more the quantity of food I eat.

Instead of diets, which are just a fad and a con to get you to spend money, i've learnt it's just about being sensible. The best way I have found to be sensible is to write down my meals for the day. Writing for me has always been the best way of getting my brain to work; be it revision for exams, reading reports at work or trying to eat less crisps. It's only when I write stuff down it actually gets in my head, and with respect to the food thing, it's only when I write down what I eat that I realise just how much I eat during the day. So, i'm aiming to write down what i've eaten every day so I (hopefully) get a bit more sensible.

Reason the second: I just like reminiscing about times gone past. I sometimes read my other blogs from years ago (I started in 2001; remember Leah?!) and I enjoy reading them. I've sort of got a record of memorable events and stuff i've done and thought about for the last 8 years somewhere here on the internet, and i'd like to keep that up. So there we go.

First thought of the day: Fucking Howard Webb needs to be shot in the face - how he can award a penalty for that tackle is beyond me, and when a player decides to criticise the ref in the press they get summoned and have to explain their actions. Nothing like that for the ref though, he gets to go about his normal day without having to explain why he fucked up a game that Spurs would otherwise have likely won! What a tit.

Great t-shirt slogan

2007-09-09T23:23:00.000+01:00

I just saw a picture of a t-shirt with the following slogan:

"Damn right i'm good in bed...I can sleep for days!"

haha, quality.

Phils Adventures part one - Random is the bestest

2007-09-09T22:37:00.000+01:00

Ahh, the first in the new series of "Phils Adventures". My previous blogs have covered such adventures as gigs in Manchester and London, nights out here and there, and probably other things too. So what better than to carry on with a familiar topic and talk about my latest adventure, in which, as with most of my adventures, drinking is the main theme.

Friday was the birthday of Danielle, one of Kellys friends who i've gotten to know over the last few months. The plan was to go to the pub at lunch for some drinkypoos, then head to a bar/club (I always thought a great name for a place would be bar stroke club) for some happy hour cocktails and shenanigans on the dance floor.

Well, the first part of this plan went alright. Danielle turned up at the pub already slightly worse for wear as her cheeky work colleagues had been plying her with alcohol already, so she was a bit squiffy but that just made it that bit more entertaining. Kelly and I had some delicious food (Kelly had a coronation chicken sandwich, I had some spicy chicken things with salsa stuff in a pitta bread and chips, mm) and a drink. I bought Danielle a bacardi and lemonade so I can proudly say that I contributed to her drunkenness! (not sure if that's spelt right, or even if it's a word for that matter). Tunes were played on the jukebox and gifts were handed out, and that's about it really. Kelly and I left at 2 to head back to work, and left Danielle in there with her work chums.

Fast forward about 3 hours. The afternoon is dragging and all we want to do is get out of the office and get some delicious cocktaily goodness into our stomachs. We received an email from Danielle saying something along the lines of "I've had four double shots since lunch time - but i'll be ok when we meet up later". I thought nothing of it and had a hearty chuckle (complete with shoulder wobble).

5:30 came and I waited outside for Danielle to arrive whilst Kelly slapped her face on. 10 minutes had passed and no sign of either of them...15 minutes, 20....25...30 minutes had passed and still no sign! Kelly then called and said "guess what...Danielles too wasted so she's going home!". Nightmare of nightmares! The birthday girl had to bow out and miss her own party! The other people going all decided to sack it off too and do their own things, so it was me, Kelly and some money, all in the mood for boozeage. We decided still to go out and have some drinks, so we headed to a pub for some pre-going out drinks to decide where to go out. An hour or so, a couple of drinks and a pleasant chat later, I had a sudden brainwave as the word "REFLEX" came into my head. Reflex is a chain of bars that specialise in 80s music, with a bit of 70s and 90s thrown in for good measure. Basically, they play cheese all night. As someone who doesn't like most clubs, this kind of place is perfect as i'm a huge fan of cheese. So anyway, it was decided, a cab was hailed and to St. Pauls we went!

The only hitch being that we forgot where the club actually was. So we found a bar down a random street to have a quick drink and, using the magic of 63336 (a texting service that answers any question you send it), we found the address for the club and ventured forth when our glasses were empty.

10 minutes later and we'd found the club, only a tiny queue outside and we were there! By this time it was about 9:00 and the place was already packed, I think we arrived just at the right time before people start coming out of pubs looking for somewhere to throw shapes. We headed straight for the bar, I can't remember what we had first but for the majority of the night I was drinking Jagermeister and coke with random shots thrown in here and there for good measure. Kelly was on Vodka with lemonade and lime (I think!), and shots involved included Apple Sours (or sourz?), Aftershock, and probably more too. As is usually the case with me, it takes a certain level of drunkenness (there's that word again) before I can commit to spazzing out on the dancefloor. I could tell Kelly was in the mood for some dancing so I downed my drink, went to the bar for some more, and then I was in the mood for dancing. Unfortunately I missed Jason Donovan's "Too many broken hearts" or whatever it's called, but they played some classics after that so all was well. Highlights of the night included The Quo, Bonjovi, Spandau Ballet, Bryan Adams, I think they even played the Grease Megamix, and there were countless others that I can't remember, but I knew I threw shapes and the air guitar even made an appearance! Good job I remembered to pack it.

The only downside of the night was that me and Kelly got seperated for about half an hour and couldn't find each other, but by that point we were nicely hammered and it was time to head home so we found each other outside, got a taxi, and headed back. A £30 taxi ride and some greasy sausage and chips later, it was time for bed.

The night was totally random and unplanned, and i've always thought that those are the best kind of nights. Usually when a night out has been planned for weeks it can be a bit of an anti-climax, but random nights are great as there's no expectation and you can just go with the flow. Finding cool bars down side streets, heading to random clubs, drinking previously undiscovered booze, all make a random night out one of the best!

Hurrah!

Oh, the hangover the next day was pretty bad though. I still have a headache even now, 2 nights later. Hmm.

Stay tuned for more of Phils Wacky Adventures! (TM).

Pretty colours and stuff

2007-09-05T21:54:00.000+01:00

I can't decide on a template to use, so it will probably change every day or so until I find something dead sexy to use.

The highs and lows of August 2007

2007-09-05T21:30:00.000+01:00

This is something I used to try and do fairly often in my older blogs, so I thought i'd carry on the tradition and sum up the month just gone in a delightful array of bullet points, under the headings "highs" and "lows". So here we go.

Highs

Going on holiday to Majorca. Spending 4 days in the sun, drinking beer and cocktails, eating good food, sunbathing, relaxing with great company. Just what I needed to clear my head of all things poo in the world of Phil.
Getting a suntan at the aforementioned holiday. It usually takes me a while to get a tan, or i'll just go pink and then back to my usual pasty shade. But this time I actually got a bit brown! Hoo, and indeed, ray.
Delightful birthday celebrations. A meal out with a big bunch of friends was a fab way to spend my birthday, I got to eat cake whilst wearing a big hat too. Back of the net!
Seeing old uni friends. Rob came down for the weekend after my birthday, and we quickly fell back into the student lifestyle of drinking beer (and Chateau Chaumet) and eating pizza. And curry.
BBQ times. Having a few people round for a BBQ was rather fun, the weather was perfect too. hooray!
Playing frisbee in the park. Despite living only five minutes from the park, this was only the second or third time we'd sat in the park, drank beer, and played frisbee. Good times.
Spending some quality relaxing time at home in the Harpo ghetto.
Getting back down the gym and eating healthily.

Lows

Holiday being far too short and being over too quickly (despite each day going really slowly when we were there)
Dad developing heart problems and needing surgery
Stupid gay passport checks at Stansted taking 45 minutes, meaning we missed our train back to London so we had to get the bus, then a taxi (boo-urns)
Going back to smelly gay work
Spending too much money
Noisy inconsiderate housemates (or housetwats as I like to call them)

And that's about it. All in all, a pretty good month i'd say!

Ahhh, fresh...

2007-09-02T00:09:00.000+01:00

I'm going to blame Leah for this. Back in early 2002 she persuaded me to get a blog so I could write stuff. At the time I was half way through my first year at Uni, so I had a fair bit to write about during the early hours of the morning when I should have been writing essays, or reading books, or sleeping. It started off with Diaryland, I wrote about 100 entries in 3 or 4 years, including the rather brilliant fictional works known as The Dave Chronicles.

One day I decided to start writing a book. At the time I was heavily in to reading and would get through a book a week, sometimes more, so I decided to give it a bash myself and see what I could come up with. The unfortunate thing with me is that I have a rather limited attention span so I need something to be really fun and interesting otherwise i'll get bored and give up, so rather than plan something with the traditional beginning, middle and end, I just made it up as I went along. Before I knew it i'd written 5 or 6 chapters of The Dave Chronicles, and if I do say so myself they're rather amazing.

As with most things though, I got bored and/or my attention was drawn elsewhere. Leah (see, it IS her fault) got a new blog on LiveJournal and persuaded me to get a new one on there (cos Diaryland was obviously not down with the kids). So I did, and I wrote some things on there but not very often and it was soon forgotten. However, I did resurrect The Dave Chronicles and wrote a couple of chapters to extend Daves adventures.

But, like before, I got bored and forgot all about it. Until now! Yes, Leah turns up in this paragraph too. She has got a new blog on this 'ere website, so I have got one too. I don't know exactly what i'll write on here, or how long it will last, but going from my track record I give it a couple of months before I forget about it again. I'll try not to of course, but I can't promise anything.

I find that I am one of those people who thinks a lot, usually far too much actually and I quite regularly get myself worked up over nothing. Sometimes I think to myself that I should really write down a lot of what I think, because a) then I can read back and realise how stupid I am sometimes, and b) so I can actually remember what i've thought about. I have an awful memory, and when people ask me "Hey Phil what have you been up to lately?", all I usually say is, "Well i've just been working really, had a couple of nights out here and there but nothing too exciting". This is actually a load of hairy bollocks, as I realised the other day that I do do a lot of stuff but I just forget about it all.

Over the past few weeks (or is was it a couple of months?) I was writing the longest email in the world to Leah (yeah, her again) with stuff that i'd been up to and random thoughts and stuff like that. And before I pressed the "Send" button the other day, I read back and realised that I have actually done a lot of stuff and written down my thoughts in a reasonably coherent way. So rather than forget everything I do between now and next spring, i'm going to do my best to write all sorts of things in here so that when someone asks "Hey Phil, what have you been up to lately?", I can say "check out my blog, yo - http://thingswhatphildoes.blogspot.com". Not only will it save me having to talk to a long period of time, freeing me up to do all sorts of fun stuff, but also i'll look like i'm home with the downies with all this technology and stuff: "Hey, Phil has a blog! Oh my god he's so cool, too cool for school".

Who knows, I might even carry on writing The Dave Chronicles, too. Stay tuned!