To Nottingham Again

I was hoping to update this before I went abroad, but I clearly failed there.

On the weekend of the 21st/22nd August I decided to make a long-overdue excursion to Nottingham, having finally taken my car to a garage on the Thursday. It turned out that the air intake was full of oil/carbon/miscellaneous crud, which was why the whole thing was starting to sound like a tractor. There was also an irritating rattle and something wrong with the exhaust pipe, but apparently such problems could wait for another day, so they are doing.

The rainy Saturday lunchtime was occupied by lunch at the Sal with Andy (of the KDF persuasion), which involved much geekery and steak & ale pie and was thus excellent. I do miss Nottingham pubs and company sometimes. Fun fact: not one shop and not a single pub (there must be about ten) in Highgate sells Koppaberg. I've checked them all. One even asked me what kind of alcohol it was.

But anyway, from there it was a brief trip by bus back to Beeston to pick up the car, Leeanne, Simon, and Nathan, and then onwards to Peter A's spacious new house near the Lenton Priory. We there met Carl, Peter A, Peter S, and Ross for an delightful evening of Xbox 360, Cthulhu Munchkin, Thunderstone, and Chinese takeaway (though we got soaked retrieving the latter from Fortune Boy) until the early hours of the morning. Ah, Dinner 18, how I missed you!
I also got the added bonus of shoulder rubs from some of the very kind young men listed above, which alone probably made the trip worthwhile. Being able to crunch the joints in my neck and shoulders at will, whilst useful for scaring hairdressers and upsetting people in lifts, is probably not that good for me. I thus spent a large portion of the evening emulating somebody without a spine whilst my friends tried to push my vertebrae through my windpipe with their thumbs. Fantastic.

Moving on, I got to sleep in an actual bed at Leeanne, Simon, and Nathan's new house, which was bizarre.  I'm too used to crashing on couches or floors these days. Friends with a spare room? It's like we're turning into civilised adults, which is a terrifying notion.

Sunday was blindingly sunny, so the party from the night before (minus Nathan and Peter S) headed over to a field near Spondon to visit the Maize Maze, where Carl has been lurking this summer.

It does what it says on the tin - it's a maze, constructed of paths through a huge field of 7ft-high maize. The challenge is to locate all ten clowns within said field and get stamps of each of them.
Ross, Peter A, and I took it upon ourselves to succeed at this while Simon and Leeanne ate ice cream, gadded about, and caught up on their reading, having done it before. Carl stood upon his fortress of hay bales and kept an eye out for lost people throwing up red flags in distress.

 
It took us about an hour and a half to find nine out of the ten clowns.
It took us another hour or so to find number eight, which was placed in a manner devoid of logic or compassion. Our methodical search, aided by the obvious imprints of my inappropriate kitten heels in the mud, sadly fell apart in the face of such madness and we split up. I retreated for fluids and ice cream at some point in the last hour, and stole a map off Carl whilst I was at it. Then I MMS-ed an aerial picture of the damned thing to my comrades. We eventually got the bastard and entered our cards into the prize draw. Despite the cheating, I think we deserve to win on perseverance.

This needs to be at night, with flaming torches.

But this does not need to be more creepy.

From there I got in the car and headed back down the M1 to The Pit Known As London, thus ending a marvellous trip.
That said, I caught the underside of my car on a kerb on Saturday and now it rattles like it's trying to fly apart, so I shall have to take the wretched thing back to the garage and see if they can reduce the rattle from 'worrying & audible over loud music' to 'irritating, but ignorable' once more. Will it ever just work like a normal, healthy vehicle? Doubtful.

As an aside, my sister has gotten her A-level results and got her first-choice university place - at Nottingham. Huzzah! Now I have more reasons to visit and a no-notice-required place to sleep when I'm in town. Excellent.

Special Friends.

A clown, and Simon on a tiny tractor. Yes.

July Recap

So, having not posted anything for over a month, you will be spared the usual narrative. Instead, I shall recap through the medium of bullet points.

- I started my three-day-a-week internship at the British Museum Press a couple of weeks ago. It's pretty much what I was expecting – trying to create publicity for new books, reorganising databases, and thrashing about in Adobe Indesign trying to make flyers. I spent most of last week trying to find groups and publications who'd be interested in the upcoming title, Nomadic Felts. You'd be surprised at just how many societies there are for that sort of thing.
Anyway, it's exactly the right sort of experience to be getting. I do wish the environment was a little faster-paced (I work best when there's a pile of work growing behind me that needs keeping on top of), but it's a small niggle. 

The Great Court at the British Museum

I've got my security pass now, which means I can wander round the museum largely unchallenged (and I now possess the secret door-code to get into the staff canteen, which is actually quite good). This grants me access to the maze of tunnels underneath the public parts of the museum; tunnels which have no directional signs, a large number of mysterious locked doors, and seem to be constantly deserted. I spent a good twenty minutes lost in them on Thursday evening when I tried to cut through to the bookshop to drop off some flyers. I somehow managed to finally emerge on the second floor on the other side of the museum. Naturally, the bookshop was closed by the time I got there. Such is life.
Still, I'm enjoying it very much. It's odd to have to walk through the museum proper at least twice a day (I actually work in a smaller building next door that faces onto Russell Square), and it's very surreal to think of it as my place of work for the moment. I'm sure I'll get over it soon enough.

- Chloe is temporarily living in London whilst she does her own internship. In fact, she lives directly on the path that I have to walk along to get from the British Museum to my bus home. I see her quite a lot as a result. This is nice.

- Dancing continues to be enjoyable. I've moved from the beginners' class to the intermediate one, which is considerably more complicated and harder work as a result.
Last week I took a chunk of skin out of my foot when I stood on my own foot. I also accidentally hit one man in the head. I am a classy and well co-ordinated lady and I shall take offence if anyone says otherwise.

- My sister came to visit me for the better part of a week, seeing as she is now free from school and not yet in residence at a university. We didn't do all that much due to me being a creature of poverty, but we managed to get to the National Gallery, eat ourselves silly at the Breakfast Club on D'Arblay Street in Soho, and go see Inception at Westfield.
I really enjoyed Inception, by the way. Of late I've struggled to sit through a whole film without thinking 'Just how long is this film?' about two-thirds of the way through, but Inception easily kept me engaged throughout. Also, I would like to see more zero gravity corridor fight scenes in the future.
That said, Laura and I were mildly horrified when we watched 10 Things I Hate About You a couple of days later, and realised that the one of the men we had been gently sleazing on in Inception, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, was in fact the teenager on screen before us. Sometimes I forget that the nineties was quite a while ago now.

- Laura and I met up with Robin and Ellie and friends for a day out at the Ben & Jerry's sponsored Summer Sundae event a couple of weeks ago. There was, amongst other things, as much free ice-cream as you could want, a petting zoo, and a merry-go-round. There were also bands playing throughout the day, including Idlewild, who were enjoyable as always. The main achievement of the day was me discovering a 'sun intolerance milk' that actually stops my pasty flesh from burning in direct sunlight. Now I can go outside in the summer! Mind you, it's been raining a lot of late and the temperature has definitely dropped, so hopefully winter is creeping towards us. Then I can break out the coats and scarves again. This will make me happy. 

Awesome hair.

Robin and the greedy goat.

Laura, multitasking.

- I have been all over the BBC's Sherlock like a rash, possibly because I was reading the Holmes short stories once again not that long ago. I very much enjoyed it, and heartily approve of the casting and how they've worked the modernisation. That said, I've not been watching it for the plots, as I thought them a bit lacking. The first episode was cripplingly obvious, not in the least because there was a taxi in the background of almost every outdoor shot. Yes, I know you film a lot of it in Cardiff, Moffat, but sticking black cabs in every street scene is not the solution! A nice attempt at throwing in aspects of A Study in Scarlet. Not sure how well it went, but I don't much like that particular story anyway, so I'm not too fussed.
The second one was better, but a little weak and entirely too dependent on ninjas. The third was the best, I think. I liked Moriarty's casting.
Though I have a pet peeve that cropped up, common to many televisual/film detective stories, which I would like to air. In the last one, it was obvious that the lady's brother had murdered her MI6 husband from the moment we first saw him. Why? Because our meeting the brother served no discernible purpose. And as there is rarely room for unnecessary characters, there must be some purpose for him existing, and thus he must have done the murder. It does get on my nerves. It's more subtle in books, I think; it's easier to lose such meetings in a mass of words then it is on screen. They managed to get Moriarty in as 'Jim from IT' quite nicely, as we were allowed to assume he was there for another reason. But just happening to bump into an unnecessary brother on the doorstep? No, that isn't going to cut it. Try harder next time.
Still, I enjoyed it mostly for its characters, and look forward to the future episodes that the BBC has promised.


In other news:

- Laura has been to Mexico for a week. She is quite brown now. I hear there was tequila on tap.

- I read the rather good Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, and liked it a lot. I was so engrossed  in it that I didn't anticipate the twist, which really should have been obvious. I guess that's good writing. Though I'm not sure I'll be reading the rest of the series. I like the story as it is.

- I have started watching True Blood. I quite like it, despite the slightly grating accents. I do not think I will be productive in the near future.

- The flat is actually clean and tidy. The end is nigh.

- I am sure I have done more this last month, but I simply cannot recall. Ah well.