1) Go to Josh & Richard's student flat. They were having a (slightly belated) housewarming do and I was curious to see how their digs compared to ours.
2) Go to Penarth. All the ex-Stanwellians were having a university send-off at The Railway, and who doesn't love the P-Town people?
It was a tough call, to the point where I couldn't decide and ended up doing both. So, after a somewhat hurried dinner of peri-peri chicken and potato smilies, Sarah and I headed for the bus stop.
We got to Penarth at about 8.45, having missed the bus we were aiming for. Our first bus decided that the bus station was too clichéd a destination and ended up somewhere near the library, which meant that we had to wait at the bus stop for half an hour while a drunk man told nobody in particular that he'd seen things they could never fucking dream of.
The Railway is a nice pub; even the bouncer who ID'd us was friendly and congratulated me on being from Liverpool. A few of the people present were a little sad at the prospect of losing their friends until Christmas, but the mood in general was fairly buoyant. I had a conversation with Frazer and Ollie about how good Green Man was, and I was shocked - shocked! - to learn that they didn't watch The Flaming Lips, opting instead to laze around in their wet tent. Such behaviour should not be tolerated at festivals.
After a sojourn to Tesco's where Sarah bought me a chocolate muffin (delicious if slightly stale having been on the shelf all day), the two of us went back to the pub to say our goodbyes before heading back to Cardiff. I bumped into my former music technology mentor James Clarke, who regaled me with his tales of music production in LA, and when we eventually left we took Hannah and Fone with us. The plan was to get a bus from Penarth to Cardiff Central, then another from there to my parent's house, which was just around the corner from Josh & Rich's new place.
That was the plan. We managed to get the first bus easily enough, with Sarah spotting the other two a fiver so that they could get day to go tickets. We arrived in Cardiff without event, but I soon realised that I had no idea where the other bus we needed went from. We waited, shivering, on Westgate Street for a good while, until a bald-headed club bouncer took pity on us and informed us that no buses would be coming that way tonight. We headed to another bus stop, but the timetable informed us that we had missed the last bus.
So we walked. Sarah and I were cold, and we were wearing jumpers, so I can only speculate as to how Hannah and Fone felt, dressed as they were for a night out.
Eventually we saw the lights of the YMCA, which meant that we were nearly there. And then, when our long journey seemed at an end...
...I managed to take us the wrong way. I should point out that this was in Roath, the area where I've lived for the last seven years. The error was easily corrected, but I felt like The Biggest Dick. If the incident with Tom on the way to Penarth wasn't enough warning, this should really hammer it home: do NOT allow me to navigate. Anywhere.
At any rate, we somehow found our way to the flat, and it is very nice indeed. More space than ours, and a lot cleaner. Having said that, there are only two people there at the moment, and the mess here is more than made up for by the sense of family unity. N'aaawh.
So yeah, it wasn't a house party by any stretch of the imagination, more a gathering, but it was nice. We had a healthy discussion about our favourite Bond themes (I'm not sure of mine but On Her Majesty's Secret Service is very cool), and there was a whiteboard for guests to doodle on.
The highlight, however, was the Man and WoMan Points charts that Josh made. They're up in my room at the moment and they look like this:
The competition is now on. Points will be awarded based on the whims of me and Pete and anyone else who feels the need to contribute.
Tim is already ahead for winning a game of Pretty Fuckin' Gayopoly last night, and Pete will be getting some points too for going all in on the Lottery space and, Rudyard Kipling-style, losing it all.
I'm already in the minuses for being appalling at Fifa '10.
Joel.
No comments:
Post a Comment