sexy water

This is across the road from me, more or less.


It turns out the blue watery squiggle is in fact the letter "m". But we won't let that detail spoil my enjoyment.

No, I don't know what the mound or knoll is, but from the satellite image, it has no obvious snippers secreted about it.

shopping

Ah ha ha ha. But now the tragedy.
You see the Scotch was funny, but whilst I wasn’t laughing at that, I was cringing my way around the store to the music that was being played. Now, I’m not sure what was more tragic, the fact that they were playing a trumpet only version of the Scorpions track “Still loving you” or the fact that I recognised it. Somewhere out there is a photo of me, at Donnington Rock Festival, wearing a Scorpions T Shirt. The shame! The shame of it all.

Also, I found McVities Digestives! Also baked beans! Both of these items are reassigned to luxury status as both are more expensive than steak, although, I am not convinced of the quality of the steak animal.

Favourite quote of the week; “Revenge is a feast best served immediately” Ka D’Argo, Luxan Warrior, Farscape.

Ah ha ha ha ha ha

I saw this...

I mean really, €4.35 a pop, I was tempted, at least to use it as toilet cleaner.

Pain and angst

So, new flat etc. Last night I had hauled 10 kg of burnables to the pad and fuelled the fire. This eventually worked well and the room was soon toasty. After a while, a little too toasty. I think I also scorched the seals where the chimney meets the roof. but not sure about that. I mean surely...
The dog downstairs was barking its bloody head off and finally, about 3 am I had to go see. It´s not its fault, it only wants out to poo, but conspiracy against a pooch carries less penalties than those against a human. Having said that I will not be painting cars with meat paste to encourage it to chase vehicles, but you have to admit, it is genius, twisted genius, but hey....

It’s Wednesday already.

I feel like I blinked and whoosh… Here I am.
I don’t actually mind feeling like that from one point of consideration to another. My biggest concern is the rate of progress in between. Otherwise all I am doing is killing time, which is pointless.

Did that whole in one end of tiredness and out the other. So last night it was a bit of a relief to finally get some sleep. The dog downstairs is I fear a relative of the buggers from the seminary. It would periodically bark, howl and whimper (very loud whimpering) throughout the night. This made me consider various ways of dispatchment of the creature. I don’t mean killing, I mean sending it somewhere else. Seems fewer people want to touch it alive than dead. So perhaps I could sedate it. Some pills for travel sickness introduced to a nice biscuit to calm it down. It’s a thought. I don’t want to harm this one, but it really needs to STFU, before dispatchment in a very real and permanent sense becomes an option.

Feeling a bit better today. Chris II is sitting up and looking out of the window just now, he likes his new clothes. It’s weird how he looks identical to Chris I, smells more like the Badgercat though.

it was carnival here in Portugal

I looked like this...

Music: Neurotic Fish - No Instruments

Hell damn it bums

Not so great today. So much is just camoflage.
I miss D a lot and know where I really should be. I decided not to just listen to teh rather controlled music source of my MP3 player and found myself being subjected to Whitesnake, Wham and then that terrible Lily Allen track. That was just too much and I had to switch it off. Such is life.
Hurrumph

and again...

so, check in. I had cunningly found a desk which allowed me to weigh the baggage and both were just under the appropriate limits. Although the hand luggage was not weighed, the people in front of me were given hell for being a few kilos over...
Through the security gate and whilst my case is happy to fit in the Ryan Air guide the one at the gate was a how tall is your case competition. Mine failed, I am shaving off that top handle. I had seen other people being turned back, but again I was allowed to proceed. Then it was weighed. Ha ha! I was one step ahead! So I am sitting here at the gate, a few metres from a gaggle of khaki wearing imbiciles whom, in the street, you might mistake for adults. So as they sit there nudging each other as women walk by and make farting noises I sit here, waiting for my battery to passout from the excitement of having been in the vicinity of the bastard drafted off-spring of Benny Hill. Oh look! it's a cat falling into a toilet.... FFS!!!

Oh, I'm totally knackered and really not up for the every man for himself boarding style. How can this be good practice? Don't care how much it is, next time I'm flying with something which wasn't spawned from Darwinian principles.

still at stansted...

so here I am at stansted. only the only major spelling errors I think you will see with be the occasional typo involving the word "the", bad typing, and some lack of capitalisation, lazy.
I had written some stuff I wanted to blog on the flight over to the uk but haven't had time to put it live and can't be bothered right now. I have a comfortable (not really) spot in the airport with some benefits, no one needed that vending machine anyway. it's weird, there are so many people wandering around. I thought about this earlier, and considered the analogy of this with homelessness. but that doesn't work as they don't seem to smell of wee. So it's more like spending the night in a haunted shopping mall, particularly as no one really acknowledges anyone else. I can't complain, yes I can, I'm warm. check in is in around 3 hours. So I can kill time by watching Top Gear or Farscape. Although I have also, rather quaintly brought a book!
Amongst the many satisfying pursuits of my return to the UK I spent some time making the head dress for my Anubis costume, but given the last six weeks of my comfort eating & drinking I will be a Fat Anubis. which makes a rather less grandoise statement.

airport intenet

s, i'm at the aipt ad usig e of those mtl keyboards. if ever yu e inasimilar sitution, writ it down. it's not wrth it.
I'll type stuff tomorrow.
look at the time go!!! I don't think there are anmal o arth can count own so quick. theguynetto me waarring aan unfssable mount of brown seems fine. maaybe it's me.
I have 3 mins left but really can't be rsed.
enjoy filling in the missing letters
later
xxx

chist almighty......

Good god!

I had my blog of teh flight all prepared, but I hadn't prepared for either my computer still not working, nor to be fleeced like a mad being fleeced thing by this machine I am using
Mayday mayday send coffee culture!!!!
horrible coffee
the great escape was a farce! thet clever Nazi would never have caught anyone out with that English speaking routine!!!
it was a fix.
or more satrical

Last night's ramble

It’s 1.10 and I just can’t sleep.

Firstly, last night was the final of staying at the seminary and it has had all the inconvenience of a hotel with none of the benefits, except perhaps it was cheap, although considering the conditions, not cheap enough. And, they only take cash; now why would that be Father Ted?
Thursday morning I fly home for the weekend, and that’s the one keeping me awake. My heart and mind are both set to explode and I can imagine the levels of impatience when I get to London, I have a few hours to spend there and will probably combust when I get to Glasgow, although that is probably not the sort of language we really should be using in regard to flying these days.

Now why would I want to escape?

Brace yourself, this is a bit of a ramble.

When I got back to the seminary I was all set to relax, watch some “Top Gear” and pack some stuff into the largest case. Previously, I had considered taking that down to the new apartment, so when I saw the “please get out as soon as possible you filthy infidel” note on my door, I was spurred (like that phrase!) into action. So, I headed out, ballasted with the aforementioned case. You know the size, the one that you see lumbering along at baggage pick up and you start praying that it wasn’t sitting on top of yours. It wasn’t completely full, so “only” weighed about 20 kg.
My plan was cunning, I would head up to the road and it would be easy to just roll along the path to the apartment. Problem, the direction I went did not in fact lead to the road. It lead up to a rather formidable fence. The path had also run out of any form of road metalling by some 30 metres when I noticed this, and I didn’t want to turn back.
I decided to head through the wood to the back entrance. Now, if this sounds like an unlit dirt track I might be taking, it wasn’t quite that well established. So lumbering across rough terrain, with 20 kilograms of bulky case, in the dark, through a wood, with guard dogs barking, in the rain! I felt a little like one of the doomed escapees from Nazi internment. I quickly considered my clothing, it was convincing enough as a local peasant type, my forged papers would seem in order, but I would be betrayed by my complete lack of language skills. The moment they asked me anything, my look of blind confusion would give me away, I was bound to get caught, after all, I am British. I dodged the guard and finally made it to the gate and before I knew it, I was strolling (in the rain!!) passed uninviting cafés and half bombed (ok, half built) residences. Following the instructions of my GPS; made from saved matchsticks, a Red Cross sardine tin, some shaved wool and a fork, smuggled from the mess tent, for the aerial, I eventually made it to lower ground and the safe house. Here I was fed strong broth and spent a number of hours refluxing this warming concoction. Finally, after further offers of food and drink, and the invitation to marry a yak, I fled back to the camp and managed to sneak to my cell.

Ah blessed internment. Last night’s music was supplied by Sigur Ros and the wonder full album “( )”

Last night, hardly any sleep. We had a storm here complete with Scooby Doo banging shutters and a deep metalic boom which would sound just as you got over the last one.

blogger move

big chicken that I am, I have avoided the moving of blog to the google thing. I have no idea what it entails and I don't want to know right now. Why do things have to change anyway? Pah and spit.
Missing home and D.
Hurrrumph.

Today: Raining cats, dogs and chickens.

House hunting, Think I've bagged one!!

Yesterday I think I found an apartment :o) nothing is of course perfect, but it is closer to perfect than current arrangements. Sort of 1st floor flat, hopefully with heat leaching up through the floor from downstairs in winter, and maybe some passive cooling in summer. It also has parquet flooring in those rooms that cold flooring is just too much of a shock to the system to be compatible with comfort (or indeed life). It has the usual kitchen/lounge type arrangement, but it’s big, so it might just become the bedroom. I know that sounds like a step backwards from maturity, but it has the best view. There is a big desk in one of the rooms, good maybe for a study. Also it’s not far from the university.

I would also like to say a big thank you to D for send me the custard mix and the jug in which to make it, and to Hiper Froize for the weird little carroty cake things that go so well with the aforementioned custard.

Tonight’s music is courtesy of:

Sigur Rós - n2 battery New batteries
Sigur Rós - Svefngenglar Sleepwalkers
Telephone (We are) - Ahead
Franz Ferdinand - Fade Together
ILYBICD - Lights
Laibach - God is God
Thrill Kill Kult - Universal Blackness
Thrill Kill Kult - These Remains
Neurotic Fish - Music for a Paranormal Life
Project Pitchfork - The Longing

And others…

Another classic supplied by the stripy one are the toasted croutons. The garlic flavour ones are fab, but not with custard. I belief the makers have a website http://www.merchant-gourmet.com yummy.

Finally, for sometime, a couple of months I have had a small lump on the back of my earlobe. Well over the past few weeks this has become quite cross and has enlarged and filled with, dare I say it, no I don’t. It was like a VERY low budget freak film (what the hell are freak films?). This morning my pillow looked like a pig had met his timely demise on that very site. A particularly globulous and diseased pig I should add.

Mother and earlobe are doing fine and resting.

'Ere matE, know whErE I can buy any E?

Vaguely harassed last night. Slight headache and calmed down and relaxed to the hypnotic sound of the extended version of “No Devotion” by the Revolting Cocks. A charming name and no mistake, but the sound and sentiment are in my heart. What I really need right now is a sound system with a decent subwoofer, something to make the walls reverb ever so slightly to the sound of the bass.

Last night's cuisine was courtesy Batchelors foods and is claiming to be chicken chow mein. Whilst not exactly what the doctor ordered, unless your doctor is Mengele or Shipman, it was actually ok. The ingredients however are a bit scary and Stephen King could easily have been called in to put it together. Reading through it, the list of E numbers was fairly extensive making it more like a chemistry set than a food product. I compared the list to the Tesco’s Cous Cous and the main difference was that I recognised the nomenclature of the cous cous from the larder and not from my chemistry degree course.

Guimaraes internment facilities

From last night...

So sitting here in my cell, with my Oolong, and bare in mind that as tea is bending the rules, the convenience of hot potable water is probably akin to witchcraft and this, from my knowledge of Monty Python, tends to elicit a harsh and disproportionate response. And whilst the tea is very good, I’m not sure about aligning myself with evil minor deities and eternal damnation in order to enjoy it.


Still on the search for accommodation proper and have started looking for flats. I went to see a place tonight and I really don’t know where to start.
In even the darkest recesses of my being I am sure it just didn’t have to be so weird. Remember I am from the UK. So perhaps these conditions are normal, but to what end does one really need a very large door big enough to drive a truck through? Am I living in a country entirely built on the now receding art of haulage? The buildings have all the outward appeal of anything I have seen in the older cities of Italy, but I didn’t get into them, did I?
Through the big door was, I imagine a hallway. Except it had more of the ambience of a decorated (sparsely) garage. It was also completely lacking any evidence of heating. Lots of undressed stone.
We had a very nice staircase which as you ascended had scary paintings of the undead. On each landing there was a dresser with photographs of mortals that had perished in the hundreds of years or so that the owner had lived in the property. These were surrounded by candles in remembrance, which would under normal circumstances have made me sad. but here just creeped me out. It was also gravely cold on the steps and the multitude of plates which punctuated the decaying portraits evoked a paranoia preventing me from walking too close to the wall. Probably for the best, something could have grabbed me. The rooms were barely whitewashed and more frugally decorated than that of a 16th century pauper. And I hate to harp on here, but heat? Maybe it had nipped out for a coffee. It was colder that the vacuum of space and less inviting as a place to spend a few months.


This is all tragic for many reasons. The building was beautiful, and the owner was very nice, I assume so anyway, I couldn’t really grasp a word. The ceilings were quite low too, this would have made life difficult when I had spiked my hair. I also imagine me dressed all in black leather looking like an evil Bart Simpson would not have gone down well. I would imagine my not smoking and my “kind face” would not have been enough to see past the red wine habit, constant use of the kitchen, Industrial music and eyeliner.

I'll keep looking.
It's raining here today and it's nice :o)

Sunday ramble, might think of something later

It’s Sunday and I have to admit this is one of the first days where I actually feel at ease. I guess this is due to feeling a bit more able to ask for things, albeit rather clumsily. Also, in two weeks I will see D and that is the biggest weight off my mind. Went out in Braga last night and before going on to the bar/club “Insólito”, we went to “The Celtic Knot” which was having an 80’s night. Thankfully the guy who DJs there prefers the better stuff from that sometimes dubious decade so we got: The Mission, The Smiths and The Cure, rather than some of the other hideousness that usually surfaces at “80’s” nights, Wham was delightfully absent from the playlist. At Insólito I got talking to a few industrial goth types. This was good as even though they weren’t playing any industrial there, it was nice to meet a few like minded souls who can guide me a bit in finding the clubs and venues in Porto. Today, despite it being another insanely late night, got the first bus back to Guimarães and have only had about 4 hours sleep, I feel much better. It’s warmer here than it has been, still cold though. It does mean I can get from place to place without needing a 4 inch thermal barrier to prevent heat loss. I kept getting told, it’s not that it was actually cold, it’s the humidity. No guys, it’s bloody freezing! at night, monkeys of a metallic nature would not dare to step outdoors for fear of emasculation.

I can't think of a title

Yesterday was fun. I decided to try wearing my grown up shoes and that didn’t really work. Hiking down from and back up to the seminary was a bit precarious and I may as well been wearing 4 inch stiletto heels given the grace of decent on the way to the university. The floors which had previously seemed so firm and forgiving under foot were slippy and uneven, and I nearly killed myself on at least four occasions as I attempted to change direction without stopping completely.

Managed to get a power lead for computer, Yeah! And it cost €9, Boooo!

Coming back early to the seminary backfired as there was a middle aged woman waiting to tell me about a room she had to let. She told me a great length all about it, unfortunately, she told me in Portuguese. So I understood not a word. Actually, to my ears it sounded like one very long word with pauses for breath. I am less than enthusiastic about a room in a family home. I also don’t think that no communication on either side is a recipe for a happy living environment. We’ll just have to see…