I haven't quite decided yet whether I'm just a sad case or if it is the most natural thing in the world, but I have spent the last few Saturday evenings watching the National Lottery's Come and Have a Go without any lottery ticket and without actually playing the game. Why? Because I'm such a Julian Clary fan that I desperately needed to watch the last few programmes he was in in this series. He's such fun and it turned out that his assistant Emily what's-her-face, whom we're much more used to seeing as our local news anchorwoman, has got a wicked sense of humour as well. All in all it has been a terrific series and I may be a sad case indeed.

The weather's nice today - going up into the mid twenties, I heard - and we're planning on paying Covent Garden a little visit. I quite like it around that area, as long as I end up finding a quaint little café after a round with the massive amount of tourists who seem to just apparate from thin air and stay and multiply forever. I need my coffee then.

We still haven't got through unpacking half of our stuff yet, so we're battling cardboard boxes wherever we turn. We've also got the old fridge - the replacement that we got and that didn't work - in the middle of the kitchen, so we've got that to climb as well just to get to the cereal. Wednesday will bring us harsh weather, I heard, so hopefully we will be able to unpack a lot during the mid-week. We seriously need to. It's cramped but I can't afford paying a million pounds just to put half of my things in storage either. My MasterCards are starting to bleed.

I hope you're having a lovely time, wherever you are!

---

I was going to post all that yesterday, but then we went to the pub instead because I needed to be somewhere a bit more quiet, in case my phone rang. The pub was quiet, until the resident drunk Kate rediscovered the jukebox and found a few songs she wanted played at max. By then we'd already sat there for about two hours and it was time for us to leave anyway. At least Kate didn't sing a long.

The phone did ring while I was at the pub; it was my estate agent telling me there had been some activity on the sale of my flat lately and that I had had some offers earlier in the day. We exchanged a few conversations during the next two hours, bid flew everywhere and then she said "we've had an offer of this much, it's a thousand pounds below the asking price, will you take it? The bidder said he was sure the flat would go for this sum because you can't afford another round." This made me really cross and I went into Vengeance Mode (TM). "No, thanks, he'll have to come up with the asking price (the little bugger), or I'm prepared to wait another week." (I wasn't.) "OK, I'll tell him that." The phone didn't ring for two hours after that and I thought "shit." There was a lot of money at stake and it was all mine and not part of some computer game where you can just start over if you lose everything. But when the phone finally rang, my agent told me one of the other bidders had taken up on my request and bid the asking price. Hah, the little bugger couldn't afford it after all. Tough shit. I know for a fact (because he was stupid enough to tell my agent - note the expression: My agent) that he'd been looking for a small flat for weeks and couldn't find anything else and he had to have it by the beginning of July. Good luck, you miser. You do not fuck with me and my money. (Pardon my French; I am inspired by the local vernacular.)

OK, so today we will be going to Covent Garden, then. There's going to be rain and thunderstorms starting tomorrow, so we'd better go today. That way we can unpack and go to the cinema tomorrow (the local cinema shows Kung Fu Hustle, which I'm eager to show to my flatmate). We watched The Eye again last night; this time we were in the same room as opposed to the last time when we watched it separately and ended up giving ourselves the creeps. I would recommend this gem of a film to everyone who likes a good horror flick. But it has to be seen in a dark room and preferably on your own for maximum effect.

Before we watched The Eye, we spent hours on the sofa looking through several Have I Got News for You videos that I own, as well as one of my Julian Clary shows (as the Joan Collins Fan Club - don't ask). I love HIGNFY and I've been kind of a fan of Angus Deayton since having seen KYTV during the very early nineties. A few weeks ago we saw Paul Merton's name (which is "Paul Merton", in case you were wondering) on the bill for the Comedy Store and I thought "hey! We should go and see! He's funny!" - but then I remembered it's Paul Merton, after all. Increasingly irritating throughout the evening and ends up saying something he would have regretted had he been a bit more down-to-earth. He's got a quick wit and a sharp tongue which crack me up frequently, but sometimes he crosses that line where he should have said "sorry, I didn't mean that" and then surges forward. The childish hassling of Angus after his tremendously stupid romp with a prostitute and some drugs proved too much for me and I haven't liked him since. Not that he cares, I'm sure.

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Labels: comedy, film, julian clary, personal, TV

By the way, that incident the police were here about? Murder. Nice.

So Ali came to my door yesterday as I was playing Chrono Trigger and stood there for about ten or fifteen minutes going on and on about how amazingly cheap his electricity company was in comparison to mine. He was a smooth-talker and a fast one at that, so I never got the chance until the very end to tell him that I wasn't the only one living here and I couldn't make such a decision on my own. I was lying. He was stupid enough to show me the form I had to fill out and I thought "he'll need to come inside in order to fill all this out and my sitting room looks like a complete mess". We haven't quite unpacked yet. It's like the boxes multiply during the night. I'm also getting fed up of IKEA Edmonton (the one where they had to close down shortly after the opening because of all the commotion). It's a nice place, but it's a hassle getting there and we don't have a car so we have to order home delivery. Which is a bitch if you've forgotten something, like we did.

Something spectacular happened here yesterday, though. I got up, had a shower and when I came back to my bedroom I turned on the radio and listened to Jonathan Ross live. After more than two years of listening to his show (religiously, every Saturday) through the internet, I was finally able to listen to it on my own radio, and in the right time zone, even!

I feel I have to mention two things off the telly. Yesterday I watched Holiday Showdown on ITV2 as per usual (nothing like watching a good row while having supper), and every week those people increase my blood pressure. First of all, the producers naturally put together people who are as farthest away from each other when it comes to hobbies and interests as humanly possible. So when the chavs go on holiday with the posh, there's bound to be a lot of clashing. Now, this is very important: It doesn't matter how high-brow you think you are. One: They only pick the most extreme families for the programme. You're weird no matter what. Two: Let's face it. You can't be very high-brow since you watch ITV. Stop pretending.

The other programme I want to mention is The Girl in the Café, a new film by Richard Curtis which was shown on BBC1 last night. I thought the script was really good, but then I'm inclined to like whatever Curtis does. The comedy part of it was delivered wonderfully by the immensely talented Bill Nighy - top-billed for once, probably because they've realised he steals any scene his in anyway - and Kelly MacDonald was spot on as the slightly bewildered "girl in the café", looking worried and whispering her lines most of the time. As you may or may not know, this year's G8 summit takes place in Scotland in the beginning of July, as from what was discussed in the film it is pretty clear that Curtis is very much involved with the Live8 concerts and the whole idea behind it. It's a bit of an extension to his already well established Comic Relief in that the BBC gives him a prime time slot in order to plead for Africa. However, the day the leaders of the UK, Japan, Russia, Canada, Germany, France, Italy and the US want to waiver all debt, increase the aid enough for the poor African countries to actually have a real future and trade with them in a fair manner is the day when the rest of us spontaneously combust out of amazement.

On a happier and sillier note, I had a fantastic dream the other night. Apparently, I was the student vice president at some high school and was about to turn thirty (so this'll probably happen in a few years). We were planning a huge concert with people from all over the world performing traditional songs and dances, but this was all a cover-up of the real concert, which was in my honour (megalomaniac much?). My friends had put their lovely heads together and come up with a long list of my favourite performers (most of whom were actors, strangely enough, ahem...). All of them had accepted the invitation, even those who were sick. Kevin Kline was the first one out, and he had broken his ankles and hurt his back, but still he found the energy to hop around singing some song while frantically trying to find me in the audience (he had obviously only been told where I was seated, and I had moved when I found out it was a surprise birthday celebration). I want to extend my apologies to Mr. Kline right now. Unfortunately, since I live in a rather noisy neighbourhood, I woke up just as they announced the host for the evening (a certain Mr. Quast), so I don't really know who else was on the long list of performers, but I know the whole thing took place in different arenas and that even I had to have tickets for each show, one of which was the world premiere of Dogma...hmmm...

Well, I probably promised you pictures of my new place - here's about one sixth of my skyline at night:




Current track: Morrissey & Siouxsie - Interlude

Labels: bill nighy, current affairs, dreams, film, humour, kevin kline, personal, philip quast, radio, TV

So our things finally arrived yesterday. Only by the time the two handymen we'd hired and the freight container turned up, our lift had been out of order for three days and it didn't look like it was going to be fixed anytime soon. The two handymen, increasingly annoyed by our trouble understanding what they were saying (sorry, I don't know that particular Punjabi dialect), couldn't help us bring the stuff up to the flat if there were no lifts available. They were genuinely angry when they left. We didn't think we'd be able to carry all our heavy stuff up the stairs to the tenth floor, so we had to tell the driver to come back some other day. Unfortunately, the shipping company needed our container to be emptied by four o'clock, so we eventually had no choice but to start unloading it. The driver, a very nice man called Mark, decided to help us, and with that extra pair of hands we managed to move about half the stuff into the ground floor of our building. We had rung another removals company (the first one didn't want to speak to us any more) which had promised us two handymen to help lift the things, but no one would of course bring it up ten flights of stairs. It was a tremendous help, especially when the lift engineer suddenly turned up and they said they would carry the stuff up to our flat if the lift was fixed in another hour's time. It was, and by half five we had all of our belongings with us in the flat. I discovered I'd been without most of my things for three and a half weeks and went searching for my duvet and pillow (my beloved bed had already been put in place). We were thoroughly surprised that the lift was working all through our move, and my flatmate said "I'm glad I only had to walk up stairs twice today". I told her "wait and see; by the time we're finished, the lift is stuck again." After a shower and something to eat we went to the pub. The lift was stuck.

Three hours later we went to a local pizza place (for some reason all the restaurants around here serve halal food, hmm...) and bought a pizza (quelle shock!). As we went up the stairs we quickly realised there was no way in hell we would have been able to carry even a toaster up to the flat, so we were really happy that the lift had worked for a few hours.

The rest of the evening was spent planning for our IKEA visit today (must have shelves) as well as my rummaging around my boxes looking for my PlayStation games and memory cards. No luck there.

Then again, we haven't had any luck at all since the move three weeks ago. The only thing that worked with no fuss whatsoever was the Freeview decoder we bought. We just plugged it in and it worked (and gave us a few more channels to watch). The fridge didn't work from day one. "It worked fine when we tested it," the lettings agent said. As if. The bloody thing wasn't plugged in, you daft sod, and we had to have two men over to remove the fridge in order to plug it in again. Then I took a bath and noticed that there was a leak from the tub, after I was done, so there was a wet patch on the carpet for days. My loo is leaking, too, but I can't be bothered. The lettings agents probably hate us, the phone company don't contact us, the electricity company never replies, we can't open a bank account without their help and we can't get a mobile number without them either. It's been three very long weeks. But at least we've got our things now. Only...where to put it all?

Current track: Nothing.

Labels: humour, personal, TV

The extremely happy weather people on the BBC have been telling us all week that we should be expecting a heatwave right about now. And they were right! Bastards. Fortunately, we keep our blinds down and so the sun doesn't hit us that badly. And we finally got our fridge in working order a few days ago! Yay! All it took was a phone call. So why the bloody lettings agency hadn't done that before is beyond me. The only reason why they did it that day was that we visited them for the umpteenth time, looking grimmer every time.

I had a job interview on Tuesday which I basically fucked up, but then I was redeemed because David Thewlis walked past me near Covent Garden and it was such a beautiful day that I wandered around the city for hours. So all's well that ends well, nicht wahr?

The customs have finally decided to release all our rubbish (i.e. stuff) and we should be getting them on Monday. Who knows if they'll have survived the trip over from Norway. Let's just hope so, because I can't afford buying all that stuff again. And I miss my dear Playstation 2. I have been playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance on my Game Boy Advance for the past three weeks and I'm sick of it.

We're off to the pub (they've started recognising us, which is a very good sign), and then a long trip up the stairs to the tenth floor, since our lift is out of order. Great.

Current track: Nothing.

Labels: name-dropping, personal

How about that; I was minding my own business again when the doorbell rang and two police officers demanded...well, asked politely...if they could come in. I must have looked like a rabbit in the headlights, as the male of the two assured me there was nothing wrong. Apparently, an "incident" had happened up the road before the weekend, and they had some questions. To be honest, even though I was in all evening I didn't hear nor see anything out of the ordinary. Could this be the usual way the English welcome their newcomers? I think not; two hours later they were still roaming the building. We went down to Leicester Square.

After deciding we would not wait one and a half hours in the crowd by the Odeon, we instead went to have a late lunch/early supper at TGI Friday's. Great meal. Just the right portion; I was full by the end of it and still didn't need to send anything back to the kitchen with my apologies (which happens frequently).

By the time we were out of there the Odeon crowd had (naturally) grown even larger, and we just stood further down the road in order to see anything at all. It was the European premiere of Batman Begins, and who knew which celebs would bother to turn up.

The first one was the Batmobile itself. Many of us laughed as it drove past, because...well, it looked kind of silly, to say the least. We soon got used to it being parked right in front of us and noticed it only when the unknown driver revved the motor every time someone from the cast came by.

Some of the minors in the audience were a bit more updated on the first cast member that appeared than we were, but it could have been the young Batman/Bruce. We just don't know. The next cast member was Christian Bale, goatee and everything. He spent quite a lot of time signing autographs. But the lesser of the six top-billed cast members (Katie Holmes, who else) was the one who stayed on forever and ever in order to please the fans and eBayers. She came out of a car just as Tom Wilkinson had started signing bits and pieces, and I was much more happy about seeing him than most of the others put together. Morgan Freeman excluded. Seemed like no one had expected he would turn up, so the surprised "yay" by a collective crowd outdid any of the other shrieks from the audience. Apart, perhaps, from when Val Kilmer came walking down the road, an hour after Bale had come and gone, and was really nice to his fans by spending around ten minutes signing just about anything.

Other celebrities I spotted were Alexei Sayle, Rupert Grint and Sir Michael Caine, and then some boyband that no one seemed to recognise and hardly anyone bothered to ask for autographs. Don't think they'd expected that kind of a welcome, because they lingered on for a while before shifting inside.

More later.

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Labels: film, name-dropping, tom wilkinson

Yes, can you believe it; we were just minding our own business(es), trying to cross the road when a bobby grabbed hold of us and held us back. I mean, really! Just because some rich bitch and her whole court drove past in their fancy limousines! The nerve! We were standing there saying "I have a feeling we're supposed to know who these people are", but then we couldn't be arsed to found out. The fact of the matter was that we were off to see the wizard and the queen's guard, but by the time the high and mighty had driven past the whole trooping of the colours were over and we'd only managed to spot a few horses and golden hats. So we gave up and went to Oxford Street instead, hoping to beat the crowd, but no. This city is of course constantly bustling with people. Our flat not included. The noise outside it is, though. And we don't mind! This is the scary part. There are trains ever three minutes, buses, cars and lots of people everywhere. What the English call double glazing isn't even close. And yet we don't mind! Someone must have dropped us on the head. The view is spectacular (as views usually are). From our (fridgeless) flat we can see the Needle, the London Eye, the BT tower, the Millennium Dome and quite a few other landmarks and highrises. Pretty amazing.

I'm off to do nothing. Our stuff hasn't arrived yet and the lettings agents should be shot and hanged for not doing their job, but it's Saturday and we've got Freeview, so there.

Current track: Nothing.

Labels: personal, TV

Can you believe it; I'm sitting in an Internet cafe in order to update my blog! Preposterous. Anyway, since the move we haven't quite got Internet access yet, but it'll get there soon. We haven't got our computers either, for that matter. Takes a bit of time, obviously.

Will post more exciting news once I can be bothered. Waiting for all my things to arrive so that I can post some pictures of my new place. Or rather THE VIEW. Yum.

Current track: Nothing.

Labels: personal