Living in the real world

Ha.  Awesome weekend.

Saw Peter, Bjorn & John on Saturday night and despite some last minute friend-dropping-outage I managed to find an old frined from Uni who was around and willing and we went along.  Annoyingly missed the first 20 mins as they came on ridiculously early but no matter as they were amazing.  So much energy and they looked like they were having so much fun up there (at different points both of the front men fell over during big rocking performances as they were so excited!).  Ha ha.  Plus, they really did something new with all the tracks which made it a little more special.  They really rocked it.  Mucho happy.  Lots of random people I know also turned out to be there so some drinks after went down well.

Then Sunday night!  Bizarre.  I went out with two of the girls I’ve got to know, first for food and then back to the Concorde for a club night.  All we knew was that it was ‘Rock & Roll’.  So it turned out to be a northern-soul/roackabilly night where most people in there were a good decade older than us (and one couple were in their sixties at least), fulled dressed up to the nines – guys in full suits and hates, girls in early sixties garb.  It was amazing!  We danced like crazy people till 4 at which point I had to stop moving (couldn’t last through to 6am) and then spent a while laying at the waters edge watching the moon on the water.  Very nice.  I love being back in Brighton.

Slept most of yesterday.  Ha ha.  And now to work. 

So on Tuesday night I saw Battles at the Concorde 2.  And they were AWESOME (excuse the shouting).  Seriously, they were storming.  Considering their style of music they were so tight and so electrifying I have no idea how they held it together that well.  The whole thing from start to finish was intense and relentless and their drummer seriously deserves an arms of steel award because he must be a machine.  Atlas was great but I really liked Ddiamond.  They played most of Mirrored with some of the EP stuff.  Nice work.  Supported by Math Class who seemed interesting but we only caught the last 3 tracks.  After getting upset at not blagging myself a ticket anywhere my mate managed to get a ticket off a tout for a bargain so I ran down and was subsequently very happy.

Then last night I got to see the Bourse Ultimatum and it was every bit as good as I wanted to it to be.  One of the most entertaining and thrilling films I’ve seen in a long while.  The tension at times, in fact, the whole way through was, well, intense (English not working too well today).  Really gripping and a real connection to the character.  Matt Damon again demonstrates why he’s a great actor.  Add that to Harry Potter and Transformers and we’re having a late resurgence of the mostly crap summer season.  Now on the distant horizon I’m left waiting for Iron Man, The Dark Knight and Hulk (along with a few others that aren’t based on comics).  Oh yeah, Northern Lights (don’t care what you say – it’s called Northern Lights, not the Golden Compass).

Anyway, got to go.  Enjoying Brighton!

My three day hang-over last week pretty much did me in.  I think I reached a cumulative level of drunkenness come Saturday.  Thursday night was really fun but messy, Saturday night was unexpectedly heavy and all the better for it (good friends) and then Saturday night I met up with an old friend from school.

We realised we hadn’t seen each other for 10 years!  A decade.  Fuck me.  Scary.  He’s been married for 6 years and has a kid.  Actually, Phil and I used to be good mates so it was really good to see him again.  Life seems to be treating us both rather well and it’s strange how some things work out for the better.  Spent a lot of time reminiscing about our school days and remembering all this random shit I’d forgotten.  Incidents, fights, entire years. 

Bizarrely I remembered that for a while my school persona – I was know exclusively as Maus from soon after starting right through to my penultimate year, to the extent that even teachers called me it and some newer guys didn’t know what my real name was – developed into a little gang with a logo and badges, plus a rival gang.  Weird!  No-one can still quite remember why I was called Maus (two guys called Jamie and Dan started it and a while back they thought it was because I was really small and had a ‘furry face’.  Maybe that’s a hark back to early beard pretensions..?).

Anyway, we mainly came to the conclusion that school days were pretty damn good for most of the time, few worries, much amusement etc.  We did realise what little shits we all were collectively though and some rather shameful behaviour on reflection.  Locking our young female teacher in the stationary cupboard then pelting her with rubbish when we let her out, rampant bullying and homophobia that we were all part of, either actively or passively.  If only we knew then…

Still, it was a fun night to see him and nice to know that he’s done alright for himself.  There’s a few other guys and girls I’d like to catch up with one day but we shall have to see.

Got to go.  Trying to sort out this whole mess of two separate email and computer accounts between the two sites meaning I don’t get any of the emails about work/teaching/deadlines/social events.  You know, the important stuff.

On inspection of the email/internet usage policy I am allowed to use the internet for personal use on ‘designated break times’ so that’s better.  There is also a clause about not commenting on the Trust, work or your collegues on ‘blogs or podcasts’.  Hmmm.  Trust and collegues fair enough but work?  I think it’s ok to talk about work in a vague way as your thoughts realting to the general aspects of your work and how you feel about it are your own to share.  As long as you respect and in no way break patient confidentiality (and lets face it – if you do then you should be disciplined and labelled as a complete idiot) then I can’t see why it should be a problem.  However, as someone who’s had a mishap with blog related mistakes (somewhat of an understatement though with hindsight, accurate) I’m going to be careful.  I don’t want to get struck off!

To be fair, I don’t really talk about work much anyway.

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So despite exhaustion bordering on coma I went out with my flatmates last night and we drove into the country to a place where you could not only see the dark night sky but also stars.  And more stars than I’ve seen for a while. It was beautiful. Made even more so by the annual Perseid meteor shower. Yep – lots of shooting stars.

The hill on Ditchling Beacon was wonderful (I’m going to have to go there in the daylight) and it found the 4 of us lying on the bonnet of the car looking up into a deep blackness with a sorounding rim of clouds.  It truly was stunning – the Milky Way was really visible and we made out quite a few satellites whizzing around (something I don’t often notice).  Just lying there watching the night sky was remarkably peaceful though when we stood up from the car after lying bent backwards for half an hour my back was in agony. 

I think I’ve found the place to go when I want to escape for a while. I’m just hopping it’s not a dogging site!

So after almost 3 weeks I finally manage to get internet access at work.  And it turns out that though I can access Facebook, iGoogle plus feeds and indeed WordPress itself I can’t access my gmail account.  Which makes perfect sense.

So I can genuinely waste my time but can’t actually do anything useful.  And of course because I’m conscientious (and because it’s actually in my favour to go home after 6 until I get my bloody parking permit sorted) I don’t use it during work hours.  Just in case I didn’t make that plain enough – not during work hours.

Back = covered.

Ha, an unexpected and increadibly pleasant weekend.  A worry about where to park my car and whether I should go home to avoid the temptation to buy stuff turned into randomly bumping into new friends on the sunny streets of Brighton and being invited along to a 24hr suburban festival in someone’s garden (a house party with more effort).  Not a difficult decision to make.

So, lots of random friendly people, a hand built stage, a variety of outdoor entertainments of the music/band/acoustic/electronic sort (even an attempt at some stand-up), a show-stopping 3 year old who clearly outshone anyone else there with her stage presence, and a fuck load of alcohol.  Bakingly hot sun, interesting people and an amusing 24hrs.  Also randomly met a guy there who knows my friend Sasha from Malta (I realised he was Maltese, asked him if he knew her and further confirmed that everyone in Malta knows everyone else!).  Even stranger, he knows one of my friends.  Small, small world.

Spent the night sleeping on a sofa in the garden and exceedingly pleasant it was.  So, a lot of alcohol, not much sleep yet surprisingly perky.  We came back a few hours ago, ate Sunday lunch and then parted ways.  I’ve thankfully found free wireless at a local pub so am completely abusing that and drinking yet more coffee.

Pretty damn happy right now despite the massive money worries currently interfering with my sleep.  I’ve now been given on-calls as one of the SHOs can’t do hers so I know have a considerable (and necessary) pay hike for the next 4 months.  After that it will all be ok again (no life due to hours = amply money for bills and food).  So much has gone on but I haven’t the time right now.  New job and new place are making a good new life.

Sporadic internet access is making things a little tough but I’m working on it.  If I do blog, I’ll be uploading batches at the same time.  Catch you later.

A new day, a new place and new people.  And it’s gone well. 

Well, aside from them not knowing where I was supposed to be all day.  I got rung up at the last moment and told I was supposed to be here in Brighton for the general induction and not in Hove for the psyche induction but I’d anticipated that so was already here.  Then I found out I was supposed to be in Hove as the whole day is geared up to cover all the basic job stuff I need to perform my duties.  But I was also supposed to be here to do all the admin.  No-one was quite sure what was supposed to happen and the direct quote from the educational supervisor was, ‘we’ll have to cobble something together’.  That just fills me with hope!

So, yeah.  So good, so dull.  Health and safety, diversity, occupational health, lots and lots of forms.  The usual.

There are a lot of old George’s people here which is strange.  Some I haven’t seen in a while.  Got talking to a bunch of nice people and there seem to be a decent mix.  We’re all going out for a social tomorrow night but I met some guys and girls who turned out to be a friend of someone I knew at Uni and I’ve spent most of the evening and night with them.  One of the guys has a boat in the marina so the night culminated in a speed up and down the seafront, round the pier and then a bit of wakeboarding (not me but I’m very keen for next time).  I haven’t got the words to describe how beautiful Brighton looked from sea as the sun went down and the light gradually disappeared.  All the colour and the lights, shimmering on the water and the almost flat sea turning that vivid, unreal slate blue as the natural light faded.  A perfect and unexpected end to the day.  It’s certainly different to the pond we had at Redhill (though that did have greater crested newts).

I am off to Hove tomorrow for a second day of induction stuff for psych so will see how that goes.  No parking anywhere, may seriously have to sell my car.  My room is still buried under 3 feet of possessions and clothes in random piles.  And we don’t have an iron so I have to wear a jumper to hide the creases.  Oooh – no ties!  We don’t have to wear ties as they’re an infection risk.  That’s a whole new level of awesomeness (ok, so I’m easily pleased).  And I haven’t even begun to marvel about the canteen overlooking the sea!

Got to sleep