Weekend in the Wirral

Last weekend involved a trip to the North-West of our fine isle for the stag weekend of a mate of mine, Richard, who is marrying Philippa this coming weekend. Philippa and I were friends at school and she and Naomi are good friends from Oxford, and Naomi and Richard had been friends for a year before either me or Philippa had come up to Oxford, so I've always appreciated how well we get on as a group. Anyway, that's the preamble of how I know the bride and groom-to-be.

I arrived quite late on the Friday evening. I was supposed to be working a half-day at work, but a computer problem kept me there for a few hours extra while I sorted things out. Then I came home to pack some clothes from the weekend, and David was in the house, so I stopped and had a cup of tea with him. I eventually made it down to Euston some time shortly after 7 o'clock and irritatingly had to wait for an hour or so because I'd missed the train I'd been hoping to catch (I can't count how often I've done this!). Once on the train, staffed by authentic scousers - you have to love that attention to detail on Virgin trains - I tried to while away my time on a selection of games on my Gameboy Advance, listening to some Bloc Party on the trusty iPod. All was not serene, however. A couple sitting on the opposite side of the carriage were having a barely-contained argument, with the scouse woman being unbelievably venemous in her treatment of her Irish boyfriend. I don't know what he'd done to deserve it, but she was really dishing it out, in that threatening whisper that some people seem to do so well. Meanwhile, a pair of teenage girls sitting behind them chatted and laughed loudly, oblivious to the rancour ahead of them.

Another couple sitting ahead of me also broke into an argument shortly before we reached Crewe. From what I could gather, the young man had mentioned to his girlfriend that he was thinking of having something done (I'm guessing it was a tattoo or a piercing of some sort) and then later in the same journey had actually revealed that he'd had it done already. Thankfully I didn't have to listen to too much of their argument before they alighted.

We reached Liverpool around 11pm, and I jumped on the Liverpool equivalent of the Underground, going out to West Kirby where Richard's relatives own a house we would be staying in. I arrived to a scene of poker, copious spirits and mostly-uneaten containers of chinese food. I don't actually know how to play poker, so I just watched each player get wiped out by the formidable force of Richard and the other two Dixon brothers. The evening then progressed to drinking games, and I did my usual trick of passing out through a mixture of drinks and exhaustion.

The next day we went paintballing. As well as our group of 8, there were another couple of stag parties and a contingent of about 20 pot-smoking scousers there for a 21st birthday party. The paintballing itself was a blast, but made more difficult by the fact that the scousers kept removing their masks, each time threatening to hasten a 'Biker Grove' incident. And there was very little authority to prevent this, the games being marshalled by teenagers. One of Richard's mates, Alan, got so hacked-off with this situation that he refused to play any more, and returned to the cafe in a bit of a huff. The paintballing games were fun, and quite varied. The final one was one where the stags and their best men had to run from the remainder of the participants who were trying to hunt them down. With no easy way of identifying each other, this melee ended up with me being mistaken for a stag/best man and shot repeatedly. Those pellets really hurt a surprising amount!

That night we went into Liverpool itself, for a meal, and then later on to a club. I don't feel there's any need to detail the evening fully, but suffice it to say that Richard emerged at the end of the night with some scars. These were added to when, after returning to the 'flattic' we were staying in, Richard insisted on going over to Hilbre island, staying there on his own in the middle of the night, and nearly triggering some sort of coast guard alert. He also fell over in some rock pools, hurt his back and broke his phone. A good night was had by all.

I took charge of an enormous fry-up operation the next morning, myself eating two full English breakfasts rounded off by kippers. As we nursed hangovers from the previous night, wolfing down congealed food was about all we seemed to have energy for that day!

Foreign lands

Incidentally, Naomi went on a choir tour to Argentina this week (Tuesday). It's not a pleasant feeling knowing that a loved-one is on another continent, and that we can't have our usual daily phone call to say goodnight. This is going to be the case for the best part of three weeks, which I'm sure will get me down!

Anyway, I promised Naomi that I'd keep a decent, regular diary of blogging going for the rest of this month, so she can check up on me from time to time when she encounters a cyber cafe.

Naomi, if you're reading this, I hope you're safe, and I love you.

My banning list

Donning my Victor Meldrew beret, I'd thought I'd write that I've been thinking for some time about a list of things I'd like to ban. I will probably update this list as other things occur to me.

- Outdoor patio gas heaters: How on earth can it be possible for these things to exist in this age of environmental awareness and concern about climate change? You're pointing a gas fire straight up into the sky and burning fuel for the sake of it. People in the UK are going to have to realise that you can't expect to sit outside for most of the year because our climate doesn't permit it. Wasting precious fuel on a heater that's for the most part ineffective is, frankly, sickening and disasterous.

- Heat magazine and the like: horrible, horrible, horrible. I can't actually believe that this kind of celeb-obsessed literature sells. Week in week out it's the same tawdry tale of infidelity and weight loss. A developed society can well do without this rubbish.

- Personalised numberplates: an ugly form of self-aggrandisement for the nouveau riche. Personalised numberplates say to me that the owner has money to waste and wants you to know it. I'm not sure if I can think of a better example of why conspicuous consumption is crass.

- Microsoft Windows: when did the computing experience become about trying to fight for control of your computer? A computer should be an appliance device like any other, but Windows is so poorly-written that it's like an old lady walking through a bad part of town in the dark. You know it's going to end in a mugging. Not so with Mac OS.

OK. Rant over (til next time) :-D

Escape velocity

I had a meeting that went really very badly this morning. I'm not willing to let this happen again, and it's endemic in what I do professionally. I think this is going to be the spur i need to make me escape my inertia.