A Room With No View

So there I was in the cinema last Thursday night. I hadn't been for a WHOLE week, so was, quite naturally, starting to feel withdrawal symptoms. So I went along to see The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift (nice short franchise title there!)

As it was, so long as I was there for some high octane, volume turned up to 11 car action and not expecting anything other than a plot that a five year old could write, then I'd be fine. I enjoyed it as a entertaining, leave your brain at the door, popcorn movie.

It was on at the largest screen in the local and despite being numero uno in the UK charts, the screen only had about a dozen other people in it.

So there I was, waiting for the ads to start, all settled in with my coke and munchies, a few people in front of me and few behind, the rows in front and behind me, completely empty, when this guy walks in, chooses the row before me and plonks himself right down in front of me!!!

Right, it's an empty row....And he freaking sits in front of the one person in the row behind him....WTF?! What kind of a wanker is he?

My view of the screen now consists of this:
[Left quarter of the screen - back of stranger's head - right quarter of the screen]

Now, I could have moved but for some reason the principle of what he had just done REALLY pissed me off. I thought about asking him why he had sat there but then resorted to something that I had never before done in my life.....

I started kicking the chair he was in!

Once....twice...three times...But he doesn't react.

So then I pull by leg back and really kick the chair HARD. He turns around, "Is something wrong?", he asks quite calmly. "No," I say back, just as calm.

He faces forward....I'm annoyed now. I wait a few seconds and kick the chair HARD again. The kick causes my coke in the holder to pop its top and spill about a tenth onto the floor.

"Is something wrong?" he asks, now annoyed. "Hmmm, same question. He's real imaginative," I think to myself.

"Sorry, I just spilt my coke." So much so that it's now rolling down the inclined floor towards his feet. "Ah, that was an unintended side-effect," I think.

But he's stubborn, so I recommence kicking. After three more, he gets up and sits one seat to the right, out of my eye-line.

*phew* I'm glad that's over. My feet were starting to hurt(!)

But I'm happy now and about 20 minutes into the film, the coke reaches his feet and he gets up and moves to a completely different part of the cinema!

Now why would someone sit directly in front of someone else when so many other, equally good seats are available?! I'll never understand!

And I now realise the lengths that I'll go through to defend my view!

England 1 - Ecuador 0

And they're all happy....I think!

Snap!

The weather is wonderful, it's Queeny's 80th birthday and the fly-by in her honour went over my house on it's way. This had never happened before, so I was a bit caught off guard and scrambled to find my camera.

Where the hell is it???!!! I missed the first wave, found my fricking camera, caught the second and third and that looked like it until after an unexpected delay the Red Arrows turned up. So I didn't get that on camera either *sigh*

Walked down to Shepherd's Bush expecting to catch a train into London only to find that the Central Line wasn't running this weekend. Damn! I'd forgotten about that! So with the help of essential Snapple replenishment I carried on walking up to Notting Hill and into Hyde Park to chill out in the shade under a tree and grab a sandwich. *phew*

There's a lot going on in London today. The Foo Fighters were on in Hyde Park. The tickets still hadn't sold out and the queue for the box office was phenomenal. There's a West End Live event going on in Leicester Square this weekend with casts of London shows performing out in the open.


Also going on was a London Motor show promotion. I took a few pics of an MTV Pimp My Ride UK promotional car being shown off, the minis from the Italian Job, and even the Pink Panther's car!

Then off to Trafalgar Square where a big Sri Lanka food, dance and music event was going on...

Blimey! And boy is the weather just perfect for all of it!

I just LOVE London when it's buzzing like this!!!

Not all was quite hunky dory though.

I got home, dumped my stuff off and popped out to do some grocery shopping. But the key snagged in my front door and after I pulled it out it snapped in two!!!

What the f***!!!!! I looked at my front door key, now in two pieces.

At least it hadn't broken off in the lock. Then I would really be screwed!

So a five minute trip to the local supermarket turned into a ninety minute round-trip back into London (from where I had just come), to get the spare set of keys that I have at work and then back home...

Whatever next!? Nothing, I hope.

Fingers and toes crossed...

They're back.....though not for long.

So there I was earlier on in the week, in my bathroom, just changed, getting ready for work.

I pulled the plug out and grabbed the spongy scrubber thing that I use to wipe down the bath after I use it. (No nasty rings around my bath, don't you know!)

It was in my hand when I noticed that something was crawling on it. Instinctively I dropped it. It bounced off the edge off the bathtub and plopped into the water.

Where it had bounced, and all around the edge of the tub there were now dozens of fricking ants!

They were back :(

Where the sponge has landed, in the water, there was now an expanding circle of dark, frantically squirming but thankfully drowning nastiness.

Ergh!

I use the sponge every day, so in just 24 hours a whole colony of ants had moved into it!

I grabbed the shower head and aimed it at the ants on the edge of the bath, taking great pleasure in blasting them into the bathtub proper.....to drown. Ha!

The last of the water drained down the plug hole. I peered in at the damage done.
There must have been about a hundred waterlogged ants and result!, three large queen ants!

"Get away from my flat....you bitches!" (crap rewording of Aliens classic line) I said as I aimed my shower head at them and flushed them down to their doom.I then chucked a load of bleach onto the sponge and down the plughole (just to make sure.)

And you know what? Since then, for the past few days, no more ants! Fingers crossed that they won't come back...Though I wouldn't bet against it...

PS: I thought about getting some cool drowning ant pictures (as there were such an amazingly large amount in such a small place) but I'd rather the memory just fades away.

Hell is cooler than my flat

So I spent Wednesday to Friday feeling sick with a high temperature. It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that we are now going through a freaking HEATWAVE!

So there's me in my flat and the temperature is at 29 degrees C and I'm thinking "Why me?!"

A friend managed to drag me out on Saturday evening where after a few cans on lager chilling out down by the river in Richmond, I started to feel better.

Now why hadn't I thought of that earlier?!

We watched a pissed old man think really long and hard about whether or not he would jump into the river to retrieve a football he'd been kicking around. Everyone around us was silently willing him to do it but our collective telepathic powers were, unfortunately, no match for his sense of self preservation.

On Sunday I tested my recuperative powers by walking down to Holland Park, hopping on a train to Titanium Court Road and then walking back to Shepherd's Bush (bush bush bush). I got a bit hot but managed to get back in one piece. The streets were quiet and the parks full. Even the pubs were steaming full with people watching the World Cup.

So I dragged myself into work today and despite flagging a bit near the end of the day, I survived. Got my barnet chopped in the evening (which, let's be honest, doesn't take long for me) , did the much needed food shopping that I had been putting off all of last week (no more pot noodles for me!) and then watched the footie in the evening after a refreshing shower.

PS: Was only joking about the pot noodles. I'm not THAT desperate!

It's a scorcher! And something big starts today...

Fire!

Summer has arrived and I am off sick with a freaking cold!
I'm all bunged up with a lovely runny nose, sore throat and high temperature. I'm not sure how effective staying at home is either, as the thermometer in my flat tells me that it's 26 degrees C!

Anyway, so it's quite hard to sleep at night but there I was last night just nodding off in the early hours when I heard a loud bang followed by the sound of breaking glass.
"It'll just be the kids off the local estate setting off fireworks," I thought to myself but then there was a strange, unfamiliar crackling noise too.

I looked out the window and.... "Bloody Hell!", there's a fire outside the building opposite.
It didn't look too large but they all start small don't they and it was generating a plume of smoke. So I looked for my phone to ring 999 but then could hear through my open window that a few hours where already doing so. Either they've all got woken up or I'm not the only insomniac in the block tonight.

Sure enough, far off in the distance I can hear the sound of a siren, though this isn't a rare thing as both my local police and fire station are within two blocks.

Whilst waiting for the local fire fighters to arrive I spotted someone down below, seemingly out for a stroll. They were creeping up to the fire to get a closer look. Next thing I know, they've gone around the corner, come back and chucked some liquid over it.

Okay, now this could either be a clever, or very stupid thing to do...

The fire did seem to flare briefly when they did this. If they'd been a local drunk chucking their can of beer over it then things wouldn't have gone well, but lo and behold, it must have been water, the fire fizzled out.

And just then the fire brigade arrived, inspected the ex-fire, reversed and drove off!

All the excitement did the trick for me, as in so far as I can remember, I fell asleep straight after this.

Alleluiah! Summer is here...

So, unlike last weekend when I was out and about all day, every day, I had a nice quiet weekend to myself this time out. And the weather was perfect. Last weekend, in between moth fighting sessions, I managed to get soaked by the wonderful English weather three times! That'll teach me to leave home without an umbrella. After all these years, you'd have thought that I'd know better!

So this weekend was spent strolling around London, bumping into version-3-point-1 (momentarily), and taking a few photos here and there. I hung out in Trafalgar Square for a while, (mad) people and (evil) pigeon watching. I ended up chilled out, lying in the grass, in Hyde Park before walking home as the sun set through Notting Hill, Holland Park and Shepherd's Bush. I was knackered after all that!

Today, I went to the cinema to see United 93, the film about the hijacked 9/11 plane that didn't make it to its target. It was one of the most intense, emotional films that I have seen since Schindler's List. And more so because of how close to modern times it is. I take planes all the time and some things were too close for comfort. I could relate to the ordinariness of the flight before all hell broke loose. I could hear a few people sobbing through the movie and I could feel tears well up in my eyes at one point. Needless to say, everyone left in complete silence.

Oh, and I booked my holiday the other week. I'll be flying into Beirut, then from Lebanon into Syria and finally making my way down into Jordan to visit Petra and float in the Dead Sea. Three months to wait before I go though...