life of benny

What kind of a person gets up and goes down to their boat at six in the morning and starts drinking and shouting and fishing? The morons opposite our boat, that's who. And three times a day the fecking gym powers up with some bloke shouting "GOING TO 120, TEN SECONDS, WORK IT NOW" over the top of Smack My Bitch Up (so that the fatties for whom the idea of eating less is more frightening than spending their precious free time doing Kaiser Cycle, whatever the fuck that is, can burn off some calories), whilst the local drunks join in outside. Round the corner, most of the year first year students from the nearby multistorey halls of residence revert to a primal state all year long, wordlessly but ear-splittingly howling and grunting and screeching, screaming, yelling and hollering at some unnamed gods or demons deep within them because their tiny minds don't understand what drinking is. Every half hour some booze cruise goes past full of people who think they're the first people ever to think it's a good idea to put on a shit pirate costume and go "WAHEY!" every time they have a swig of their fucking Bacardi Breezer, which is every single minute of their stupid, desperate lives. And I'm tired.

Wedding's getting very close now, two weeks off, eeek, etc. Sat down yesterday to try to write a speech and got nowhere at all, the only thing I have written is what Anne said on the phone which is "All you’ve got to do is do a little 5 minute speech about how great I am", which isn't a bad start. Still, at least I've finally realised, despite much resistance on my part, that my wedding speech isn't frankly the best time to find out that stand-up comedy was not a missed vocation - and that instead I should just be nice and pleasant without being mawkish, and maybe limit the one-liners.

Mark (that's you, Mark! he's one of my followers) came round last weekend to talk about speeches and stuff, but inevitably we just got pissed and laughed at the suggestions in the wedding speeches book, without making much progress. (However we did NOT feel the need at any point to go out into the street, throw back our heads and under a thunderous sky call out HWUUAAAARRRGHH!!! UUUUUURRRRRGHH!!! NNNNNNGGGGG!!)
We got a big curry in from Kathmandu, but regrettably after toilet visits in the morning one or both of my and Mark's Jalfrezi excrement broke the macerator, and we went to a bad place for much of the day. PTSD subsided a little now, but that sort of thing never truly leaves you. Full kudos to Mark for staying the course and bailing his own mess.

On Monday had a long day as I was co-organising a conference snappily titled "'Discussing potentials for inter-disciplinary research on ‘public engagement’ in science, technology and risk': A deliberative conference." Which astonishingly had quite a few people turn up. I tried to chair a speaker and stuff and it didn't go too badly.
Then on Tuesday I was thoroughly hoodwinked. AL from Bath had asked the other week if I could go to Bath and say a couple of things in a meeting about the research we'd been doing. I said I didn't want to, but he twisted my arm and I am a submissive coward and agreed. Then over the last couple of weeks it's emerged it's not a meeting, but a seminar, not a seminar but a series of talks, not just talks but talks at a launch event for the university's new environmental something-or-other centre, and not just that but a fancy thing with catering and such. So I arrive with my not very well-prepared talk and find 70 or 80 chairs, a big screen, a fecking lectern and that the other four speakers are all professors for chrissake. Funnily enough though, because I didn't have time to work myself up into some terrified frenzied state, it went alright. I think. I even said wise-ish things during the plenary. I think. My mate Steve was there, and he said I was very professional.

Went round O&S's last weekend, to see their nice new house and then drank booze in the local pub before coming home and spending hours searching Spotify for wedding music and failing miserably (as a man who honestly if pretentiously describes his musical tastes as Blip Hop I'm not really the person to track down crowd-pleasing music). Chatted to Gwyn for a while (Gwyn! that's you. He's my other follower. Look, Gwyn! You're on the internet!) though was rather far in my cups by then - nevertheless, and at the risk of labouring a point, I still at no point had an urge to go out into the street and scream myself hoarse.

I've managed to get some PhD done the last couple of weeks, though the end-of-year deadline is approaching fast and there's nothing like getting married to distract from the meticulous business of academic stuff.

Oh, and we found a house we want to buy. It's big and nice.

So, I said I'd put some gaps in this blog - sorry, this POSTING - and you don't 'do' a blog - and also a link or two. I know that I should probably put the links in the text, all like they're almost not there, but I forgot to do so and so this will just have to do instead.

Laters, taters