The late shift, the first weekend home and a musical Saturday

So now I'm running a good 2 weeks behind on this.... bugger... this is either gonna need to be very brief or very rambling and over long... maybe both...

Right, well, first week of late shift... shift starts at 4pm and goes on until everyone else in the building has gone home. This could be by midnight, could be half 10, could be 7am the next morning. You stay until its done.

I intentionally screwed by body clock up over the weekend by staying up late so I could lay in on Monday and feel fresh for my shift. Got up around middayish, headed in to work around 2pm so I could do some training before the start of my shift.

The next area of the building I'm aiming to work (I dont intend to be a runner for any longer than I have to be!) in is the Machine Room - this is where the support team work from, basically doing all the data grunt work for all the vfx ops in the rest of the building. Support prepare the suites in the morning, ensuring that all the needed art, footage, files etc... is on the relevant machines, once a job is done Support are the guys who quality control the output (making sure it meets all legal requirements for broadcast and whatnot), they handle any encoding needed ("this needs to be sent here as a broadcast-able file, here as an email for approval, and here as a master backup copy"...) and at the end of each day they stay late to archive all the work that was done that day so that, should anything go wrong, nothing is lost.

The first thing they've started training me on is the use of these machines. Basically they're fancy VCR's, but these are what record all of our work off to tape. Its important to be precise with everything that you do, its all attention to detail with these bad boys!

Training went well and off I went for my first late shift.

Where as on a day shift you have the lunchtime rush, nights get the dinner rush, staff working late get a £9 meal allowance each day and its our job to go get it! Mostly there will be maybe 1 or 2 ops working late, but the majority of staff left after 6pm are the support team (usually 3 or 4 guys by this time) doing their evening work.

There are quite a few options for yer £9 meal allowance, but my first option was the much revered "Balans Burger" - This thing is legend among runners in Rushes and those who finish its mighty beefy core are champion. (yes, i finished!)

Evening/night runners also have to tidy the rest of the building, making sure all the suites, client areas, and all departments are clean, clear of stuff and ready for the next day. Basically a whole bunch of carrying dirty cups and glasses followed by a whole lot of washing up... luckily our dishwasher is working again!

The basics of my whole week were; get up, go train for an hour or so, get a few dinners then clean and tidy til I got to go home! Monday I got out at half 1, Tuesday was half 11 (an early one!), Wednesday was midnight on the dot and Thursday was another half 1.

One comedy thing of interest this week, mid clear up I opened a cupboard door only to have the whole thing leap off its hinges and literally fall in to my arms... Could've been a lot worse, but luckily ReeceWithDrill was on hand to fix all - even if the only fix was to put it back on the other way up!

The last jobs before leaving are to order cabs for the last few members of staff (yourself included), and then lock and alarm the building. The first time doing this is NERVE RACKING to say the least.... Hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of equipment in that building and if you screw up the locking up it stands a chance of being compromised! little intense to say the least!

Wandering round the empty building gave me a chance to snap off a few quick photos to show you more of where I work:

The Roof Garden.

The Film Storage in the basement!

One final thing I achieved with this week was completing what is so far my proudest and most fun photoshop project to date! - I found a tutorial on how to create a steampunk style picture from just a regular portrait so I got Robby (a big fan of Steampunk) to send me over a few shots of himself for me to play with and I ended up with this:

Friday I had booked off - The Associates had a gig booked down in Folkestone and it'd been a full month since I'd moved away - a much needed trip home and a good long weekend to enjoy!

I'd not finished til half 1 on the Thursday, so I didn't end up home and asleep until around 3am... I was back up at 9 to catch my train home - I wanted to make the most of the long weekend!

(Brief Version of weekend home.... GO!)

I got back to folkestone around middayish - headed to Kate and Jordo's and had a coffee and some lunch, about 3ish Ellie finished Uni so I went to hers for a few hours and then we headed back out around 6ish to go to the gig. Booze was bought and stashed at Kate and Jordan's for the after party (of course) and then the drinking began. I had a few pints before we went on, and was handed a shot of Jager literally as we walked on stage... As far as I can remember the set went well, I know I went nuts! Lots of friendly faces turned out for the show, including one or two who I wouldn't have expected to see that night which was really nice.

After the gig I stuck around with the rest of the band, Ellie and her friends and we watched the rest of the show, whilst everyone else headed to Chambers... They all came back around 11ish when the final band finished and we all piled back to Kate and Jord's to continue drinking... From this point I cannot remember any more....

The next morning I woke up at Ellies and couldn't really remember getting there (or indeed where I was for a few seconds!) Saturday was then filled with a trip to Mums for a breakfast, a clear down and disposal of an old PC, a quick mow of the lawn and to retrieve my car... Then a swift drive to Ashford took me and Ellie to see Dad, the car was left here (he's taking charge of selling it for me) and then back to Folkestone for a viewing of Avengers Assemble at Folkestones finest cinema! - WHAT A FILM!

Sunday was a far lazier day, I saw a few other friends while Ellie had some work to do and then came back to hers in the late afternoon to cook a roast for all.

Bank Holiday Monday I also spent in folkestone, again a very lazy day with time in the evening to go and watch Ellie perform in one of her friends musical theater assignments - I was very impressed despite her insistence that her bits went wrong.

And then Tuesday morning was my return to London and return to work. My shift didn't start until half 1 in the afternoon (this week I was assigned the 1.30-9.30pm shifts) so I figured I'd make the most of Folkestone and stay until I really HAD to leave!

This week has been an odd one.... The 1.30-9.30 shift is weird as when you arrive you catch the tail end of the lunch rush... so you dont have to go out to get anything, but theres a tonne of washing up to do... and then you get the evening dinner rush and the beginnings of shutting the building down - but have none of the responsibility of ensuring everything is finished when you go!

Being another 4 day week it has flown by again, barely giving me time to think, I've been heading in early again to continue my training in support. I've got a good grip on how the tape decks work now, and have had a go at encoding, uploading and a variety of their other day to day tasks. I intend to keep being there for at least an hour or so each day until a job comes up there at which point I will hopefully be able to escape the kitchen!

Only thing of real note to happen this week is the insane scolding of my leg.... I had a couple of rough nights sleep where I was waking up coughing up a lung, so decided to get up a little earlier one morning and steam my head in the hope of clearing my self out... I picked a suitable size bowl, boiled up the kettle, took all upstairs and got myself in position - cross legged on the floor with the bowl infront of me (I'm still in my dressing gown at this point). In goes the water and a reach up for a towel to sling over my head and BANG, the bowl explodes from the boiling water and my leg is drenched... I leap back and up on to the bed and quickly take stock... I'm burnt, theres shattered glass everywhere, and a puddle on the floor in my bedroom.... That didn't go well.

Friday I'd swapped shift with someone so was on the 4pm-close instead of 1.30-9.30 - This was fine as everything was done by 11ish for a change! So I got out nice and early - Win!

Saturday was a good day for music in London! The London Symphony Orchestra were playing for free in Trafalgar Square and Kent band Feed The Rhino were playing a show in Soho. Both were ace in their own way, and you cannot much further apart on the musical spectrum!

I snapped a couple of cheeky videos of the two events, as I think it'll probably be easier than trying to explain!

London Symphony Orchestra playing the Final Hymn from the Firebird Suite - any prog rock fans will know that this is the section of music that Yes always come on stage to!

Feed The Rhino opening their set with The Butchers at The Borderline in Soho - the place went NUTS...

Well - we're back up to speed, next week I'm on 12-8's and plan to continue training!

The Swine

Well this past week sucked balls due to the second cold I've caught in 3 weeks of living in London!

I guess working many hours and lots of travel on the tube adds up to a weak immune system and lots of germs flying around!

Around about half way through Monday I felt my throat go - and it was a down hill ride from that point!

I was on Early shifts which means I was opening up the building in the morning. Going round, checking all the lights are on, making sure the place looks nice and making everyones coffee... 

Took a few cheeky snaps of the Resolve suites on my way round, this is where the colour grading is done... basically creating a "look" for any adverts or music videos that come our way. Check out here for some examples!

Before I'd got sick on Monday I'd signed up to do some training in our Media Transfer/Library department - as I was on earlys I was getting in at 7.30 and my day was done by 3.30 so it wasn't too much bother (or so I thought while I was healthy) to stick around for a few more hours to learn some more about the business. I managed to train Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday night, but by Thursday I just couldn't face another 10 hour day so I went home after I finished my shift and got an early night.

Thankfully that worked and I woke up Friday feeling much healthier - Funny pic of the day, I was sent over to Soho Square to go to a restaurant called EAT to get some lunch for someone and found these lovely statues in the middle of the square...

So, feeling better on Friday meant I was full of the energy I'd been missing all week - I got contact from Natalie Durkin from Folkestone that her and Nai would be up in London that evening and were wondering if I'd be game for meeting up (damn straight I was, any chance to see a familiar face will not be passed!) and I also needed to get myself some new shoes as all the running about had literally worn a hole in the bottom of my trainers!

Nai doesn't do small drinks...

So after starting at 7.30 I finished paid work at 3.30, trained until 6.30 (the department I was training in literally exploded with work when I arrived to start so I ended up actually helping out with work instead of just learning - a much better way to learn I actually find!) then nipped to Oxford Street and got myself a new pair of shoes! Home, shower and back out by 8 to go meet Durks and Nai in Camden for a cheeky Chinese take away from one of the stalls and then a couple of pints! NOICE!

Saturday was my first weekend shift at work. I had to be in by 8am so my Friday night out was cut quite short. I arrived a little early (7.30) as I didn't know what the tubes would be like at that time on a weekend and it was quite a good job too as the people I had to open the building up for turned up early!

Saturday shift at work was one of the oddest things I've ever been paid to do, I felt a little guilty if I'm honest! Basically I opened up the building, let 3 people in, one to paint a room, one to plant some plants in pots on our roof garden and the third to test some fire alarms...and then I sat there, watched some iPlayer, cruised facebook, played a few games, listened to the radio... At one point I nipped out and got lunch (which the company also pay for) and then when everyone was done I locked the building back up again and went on my merry! And for that I was being paid £9 odd an hour! Thats full of win in my book! Apparently some weekends aren't such a cruise, when we have clients and more staff coming in to actually work then theres more stuff to be done, but quite often it will literally be that quiet, not that I'm complaining!

After work on Saturday I still had a fair amount of energy and the rain was holding back so I wandered up Regents Street and visited Hamleys Toy Shop, I've distant memories of being there as a kid (it felt a lot smaller than I remember, but that could've been because it was RAMMED) but I wandered around with a childish grin on my face, there are a lot of staff doing demo's of the toys there, people literally getting paid to play with toys all day, seems like a fun place to job and was definately a fun place to visit! I found a Lego Sherlock which reminded me of Kate and Jordan so I took a picture =)

Sunday I had decided would be a lazy day, I intended to get up late, lounge around, play some playstation and be as lazy as possible.

Instead I woke up at 9, couldn't get back to sleep, sorted some washing, went shopping and spent the whole day photoshopping!

Next week (which is actually this week cos I'm starting to lag behind with writing these) I'll be training in the Support department, only doing a 4 day week (but on the late shift) and having my first weekend back in Folkestone since moving up here! All this and more to look forward to!!!

Mites live in coffee machines and dishwashers explode...

Apologies up front for the delay in getting this one written, it was a busy week and I'd intended on writing this up on the Sunday, but as you'll see stuff came up that made this not possible! As such we're gonna fly through it day by day!

Monday

My week started with reports that the 3d department had something wrong with their kitchen... At Rushes we have the main kitchen that the runners work from and where most of the staff come for lunch. But the 3d department is big enough to qualify for their own kitchen area. They have their own fridge, water cooler, microwave etc... and their own coffee machine...

The first people in to 3d on Monday noticed something odd about their coffee machine... where it was normally black it was now black with little white specks, which on closer inspection were moving.... The coffee machine had contracted mites... as had all the surfaces, and a cupboard too...

So my first job fresh from the weekend was to gut the 3d kitchen, throw away ALL the food (LOADS of it) and completely bleach and disinfect everything. I did about 2 hours worth starting with the worst hit areas, stopped for the lunch time rush and by the time I'd got back to carry on the mites were back and covering the coffee machine again. At this point we figured out they must be coming from that machine so we threw that out (storage for "big" rubbish is on the roof garden... more on this later) and went back to cleaning. The kitchen was finished being blitzed Monday, was fumigated Wednesday (for good measure) and was back in action by Thursday!

The other highlight of Monday was getting the rota for the next few months (up until around august). Needless to say, I didn't much like it at the time... I figured I'd be getting a lot of weekends off, so I'd be able to be popping home at least every other week (funds allowing)... BUT it turns out that weekends are covered by a MAIN and a STANDBY, so if you're on standby, even if you dont end up working, you cant leave london on the off chance that you're needed in work. This bummed me out a bit and by the time I'd gotten home I was in a bit of a down mood and wasn't loving life. I went through my calender, marked all my shifts and other commitments in and realised that I was only gonna be able to make it back to folkestone for 2 weekends out of the next 3 months... not what I was expecting.

Tuesday

The following day brought more headaches and bad vibes... I got 2 consecutive voicemail's from my old landlords from Folkestone, the first (rather arseily) telling me that "even though you've moved out early you still have to pay for your full months notice you know..." - which of course I knew... this is why I'd handed in A MONTHS NOTICE. DUH...

The second voicemail was from the inspector who'd gone to view the flat and assess how much of my security deposit I was allowed back...  he basically listed off a whole bunch of stuff before telling me that if I wanted any of my deposit back I would need to get it all sorted BY TOMORROW otherwise he would be taking over half of my security deposit.... needless to say I called both back fairly swiftly, told Mrs Pay Your Notice that I was still waiting for a bill to my forwarding address (Oh, I just sent that to your old flat... even though I knew you'd moved) and told Mr Inspector that I'll be taking until the end of my notice period to sort it all thankyouverymuch... Bastards.

Couple of things did happen at work of note - I was sent to the bank by our finance department to change £300 from twenties to fivers... I got to the bank and was told that they had no fivers left... I simply said "but you're a bank" and the guy huffed, got off his chair, walked off and magically came back with a wad of 5s... stunning...

I also went on a run to a place called Randall and Aubin, basically a posh nosh place in soho, and check out who served me!

Not many places brave enough to employ The Hulk!

Tuesday ended with me buying a webcam on my way home so I could finally skype properly (instead of from my phone) - I got home, set it up and upon taking my first skype call with it realised that the camera I'd bought was utter rubbish and was breaking up image quality every 30 seconds of use - the only fix being turning the camera off and on again... I gave up and went to bed moody... I was not having a good week at this point!

Wednesday

I decided as I woke up that the only way to be in a good mood was to force it for a while and see if it caught on. So I trundled off to work with the words Joie Do Vive bouncing round my head (wise words to live by!). I got to work and was told that my first job was to assist the Building Manager in clearing the roof garden of all the rubbish (told you we'd get back to it).

Now, as we're based right in the middle of soho, where all the roads are relatively small, disposing of big, awkward stuff like computers, monitors, wheelie chairs and the like can be a bit of a pain. Especially when the building is a rat maze of stairs and corners. So all our big rubbish (stuff the council wont take) is dumped under a tarpaulin on the roof and once every few months we have a guy who comes to collect it from the back. So between me and the building manager (lets call him Robin... cos thats his name) we took all this crap, lowered it down a floor, from roof to a lower roof, then again from this lower roof to yet another lower roof, then stacked it all neatly ready for the guy to arrive. Then we lowered it down again to ground level and threw it all in the back of his van. All this, outside, in the rain, with lots of heavy lifting and carrying. Fun! Joie de fuckin vive!

I was not to be put off my quest for a good mood tho, I had plans that evening to meet Chester, a friend from Folkestone who also now works in London. So after work I headed to Angel to meet him, we had a pint and a catch up and just the simple fact of seeing an old familiar face helped lift my week. We went to Pizza Express for dinner - I get 2 for 1 through Orange on a Wednesday which is cool, and as the meal came to a close Chester made the silly mistake of gambling who pays for dinner. The deciding factor was to be who took part in the first TLC WWE wresting match... I knew who it was, chester thought he knew who it was... The idea was proposed by him, I told him he'd loose the bet and I gave him plenty of chance to back out... but he ended up going through with it and after a quick mobile based interweb search he paid for dinner!

We went for a final drink at The New Rose, the pub Andy Wintie used to work at when he lived in London for a spell - and I managed to locate his MegaDrive above the bar:

Thursday

Thursday was BUSY at work, under normal conditions it wasn't actually too bad, but a couple of things made it seem worse, for starters we had a big meeting downstairs that we had to set the table for - no biggy, but the meeting room is 3 floors below the kitchen so you end up literally running up and down stairs many many times in order to set the room up as such...

Then, the dishwasher blew up... we have a restaurant style dishwasher - nothing too wonderful, but it makes life a lot easier when it works. When it doesn't the whole kitchen ends up looking like a bomb site for the lunchtime rush... not fun! What's funny is when I say "blew up" I actually mean it went with a visible flash and audible bang!

I ended Thursday very tired and was cheered up no end by a video call from Kate and Rob - made me smile a lot, I knew I missed my friends from Folkestone, but seeing them and their stupid faces made me realize just how much!

Friday

The end of the week came and my joie de viving was working, firstly I was handed free breakfast on one of my first runs! BOOM!




Secondly our dishwasher got fixed! This made life a lot simpler... for about half hour... when it went bang again. Oh well...

Rest of the working day was pretty standard.

I managed to organise myself some training on Smoke after hours, which was cool. One of the VFX artists showed me the process of adding name titles to video... doesnt sound that interesting written out... and probaby isnt... but still - Was good!

My evening plans for Friday involved going to see one of the guys from work play in his band The Hounds -  I went and got a maccy D's after my training and then met some of my colleagues at a pub just off Old Compton Street. At this point my week REALLY improved - I got a call from my girlfriend:

"Hiya baby, what you doing?" I say "Aint you supposed to be in your Tech session at Uni?"

"Yeah, that got cancelled" she says "Where are you?"

"I'm in a pub just off Old Compton"

"Oh, Ok, Come outside, I'll be along in a moment!"

Stunned silence punctuated with multiple instances of "What?" was pretty much the best I could manage! My wonderful woman had come up to London to surprise me and surprise me she had!

After meeting and hugging it out in the middle of the road we headed back to the pub and had a drinky before heading over to the gig venue and watching a load of very fine live music. The first two acts were very folky and really fun - the second band especially had a lot of Flogging Molly style energy but without the irish!

The Hounds came out third and really knocked me out - They're a straight up rock act with overtones of blues - a bit Them Crooked Vultures if I had to compare to anything, with a good solid performance, nice and loud, some really techy drumming, great guitar tones and some corkin song writing - I highly suggest you check em out if you like that kinda thing.

The 4th and final act were an electro pop act who wanted to be Erasure I think... 2 synth players and with a very shiny looking old dude in a suit jacket singing... By this point we had drunk our fill and really needed to be heading home!

Saturday

Another gig! But this time I gets to play! I'd been looking forward to Saturday all week, as I was getting to see Kizzy, Wilson and Andy, play some music and generally relax for an evening with some familiar faces. The fact that I had my woman with me now too made life even sweeter!

We headed to the venue which was in Stockwell at around 4ish... when I say this place was shonky you need to understand just what I mean by shonky... There were more boarded up flats opposite this place than there were habitable ones... it was not a nice place! PERFECT for an Associates gig though! We did a sound check which sounded great, the function room had a decent PA and some good house cabs, we were handed a crate of lager as a rider... it was looking to be an awesome night.

8pm rolls round, we've drunk our rider, 9pm rolls round and the first band, Insult, go on... but there is still no paying customers in the function room. Ho hum....

Then the landlord breezes in to the room and starts throwing around all the empty cans of lager and snatching all the full ones from everyone and storms straight back out the room. Turns out the promoter hadn't thought to clear it with him that he was bringing a rider for each band in to the room... and since no-one had turned up to the gig he hadn't earned any money yet over the bar... This was all made even more hilarious because the promoter (a guy from folkestone around 18-20) had earlier decided that the best thing to do would be to write COCK in permanent marker across his forehead and draw a curly tash on his face for good measure. Watching him try and calm down a very angry looking landlord was really quite entertaining!

We didn't have a fancy banner like Insult, so we made our own out of A4 paper and chewing gum...

Anyways - We played our set to an empty room in London instead of the standard half empty room in Folkestone - which is better? you decide? Either way I got to play with the guys again which was awesome, it'd been about 3 weeks since we'd done a practice properly, and about 2 weeks since I'd last picked up my bass - we'd all had a few drinks so it all went smoothly!

The evening finished up with me and Ellie heading away with Kizzy and Kelly, we went to their parents little place near Oxford Street and had a few more drinks - sleeping was put off in favour of chatting and catching up and lights out didn't happen until 2am... which made the getting up at 7 all the more horrid!

Sunday

7am Hurt... We got up and went back to my flat and slept til 11... 11am hurt less so we got up, showered and met my dad at Charing Cross - Sunday was London Marathon day and one of dads old photography clients was running so we went to a cafe, ate, and then headed to St James park to find a spot near the finish to watch from.

After an hour or so of watching people run Ellie and I were both knackered again so we headed back home and went to bed.

Week 2 done. Sorry for the rambling length! I think splitting the week in 2 may work better as its shorter... but its finding the time! I like telling stories too much I think!

The first week ends

Well this is the end of my first week (albeit a 4 day working week) as a runner and woooooo! I can tell ya... this is one knackering job! The picture above is the kitchen, this is basically where the runners operate from. The guy you can see at the far end is Reece, he was standing in as head runner this Thursday and Friday as Kirsty has been away. So thats where I work! I'll try and get a few more pics of other areas as time goes on, give you a full virtual tour!

Wednesday and Thursday were very similar to Tuesday, nothing particularly interesting to report from work or evening time! On Wednesday I saw Noel Fielding as I was on a run, but was carrying burgers so couldn't exactly stop and strike up conversation, and apparently the following day one of the other runners spotted Barbara Windsor around Soho too, so apparently you never know who yer gonna walk past!

Probably the most exciting thing from my working week is my current favorite choice of lunch venue. We get a £5 lunch allowance each day and the runners have a good recommended list of places to go to get the most bang for yer buck as it were! Out of all the ones I've tried so far I Camisa is definitely in the lead, out of the 4 days I was working this week I ate from here twice!

The reason?

LOOK AT THIS SAMMICH!

 Spicy Chorizo, Rocket, Tomato, Pesto and some form of deliciously strong hard cheese who's name escapes me - all in a fresh Ciabatta... bloody lush!

I've been spending my evenings doing a fair amount of photoshopping, just because I feel like the more practice I get with that then the easier I'll find it to learn that side of Smoke/Flame - which are basically the same but with moving pictures instead of stills... I really enjoy it and end up with some nice results sometimes too =)

On Friday night I came back from work, quickly showered and ate and then headed straight back out to go see Ellie before she heads back to folkestone. I'm starting to learn that trains can be a lot less reliable than I'd like as the one I needed to get to Richmond was delayed by half hour. However it didn't seem to matter too much as my train eventually arrived and as I pulled in to Richmond Station Ellie and her sisters arrived in a car to come pick me up! After a quick trip to Tescos to get some booze we went to "Greyskull" (basically Ellies friends flat!) where Zombie Drinking Games were the order of the evening!

We watched Night of the Living Dead and Day of the Dead all the while drinking whenever anyone on screen drank, smoked, got bitten, killed a zombie with anything other than a gun, engaged in physical violence with another human... etc etc... basically we drank A LOT during the two movies and by the end of the second film a very sauced Ellie and I made our departure!

Saturday brought sad times as Ellie was leaving to go back. She had a party for one of her flat mates to attend in Sevenoaks before heading back to Folkestone on Sunday. We spent the morning lazing around, watched Labyrinth and then I was dropped back at the station by her very kind mother. It was an ace morning, but I hated leaving knowing it would be another 2 weeks at least before I see my lady again...

When I got to the station it turned out that the train I needed to get back has been closed for the weekend so I had to take a different route going through central. After arriving at Waterloo I decided to go on a bit of a wander as I had nothing else planned for the rest of the day! I strolled up to South Bank where I found another batch of street performers (none as good as what you find in Covent Garden) and I also found the site for the Udderbelly Festival - the e4 sponsored comedy festival thing.

 There seems to be loads of good acts on at this, but all are paid events, and from what I can find online all the really good acts are already sold out (no Tim Minchin tickets left at all!)

I wandered up to Charing Cross and started my tube journey back home but instead of doing a straight switch at Baker Street I decided to pop back up to ground level and see if I could find the residence of one Sherlock Holmes!

Its not as I'd imagined it, but then again I'm not quite sure what I was expecting to find. Looks like quite a good museum though and at £6 entry I'm sure there is quite a bit to see inside. 

Saturday evening comprised of sitting around in my room finding stuff to do, I couldn't be bothered with Photoshopping, and the PS3 didn't appeal so I ended up playing silly games on my phone whilst watching the entire first series of Red Dwarf!

The highlight of my night was putting my first wash of clothes on in this new flat... Took 15 minutes of swearing at the machine until I realised the damn thing wasn't plugged in...

My finding of 221b Baker Street helped me decide how to spend my Sunday, I would go on a Geek Pilgrimage to find the locations of two of my favorite british comedy's, the shop from Black Books and the house from Spaced!

Leigh Street - just round the corner from Russell Square station. Sadly the shop wasn't open so I couldn't go for a look inside, but was still fun to find!

On my walk back to the Russell Square tube station I wandered past this which I had to take a photo of... I didn't realise my uncle had his own pub, or that he was now a Lord!

23 Meteor Street, or infact 23 Carleton Road in Tufnell Park - the location used for all the external shots of Spaced! The guy you see out front lives there and looks nothing like Tim or Brian... I was most upset - although probably not as upset as he was that I was standing outside his house taking pictures!

After finding these two comedy landmarks I started back home, stopping off in Camden for a wander round the markets and then again at Primrose Hill where I'd been told to check out "the best view of London". Sadly my phone camera does this no justice, but I can agree with the statement - the view from the top of Primrose Hill is magnificent.

Well that concludes my first complete week in London! Its been a funny old week, I'm really enjoying my days at work, I'm constantly busy and in a really enjoyable environment (even if the actual tasks aren't that interesting). But my evenings are a touch boring, I miss my buddies and being able to see my girlfriend. I'm sure as time passes I'll get used to this, and once I start figuring out my cash flow over the next couple of months I'll be able to actually get out in the evenings and do stuff, but so far the "London night life" that I've heard so much about has yet to be seen!

Onwards ever onwards!

The Big First Day

Monday

The only set in stone plan I had was meeting my (soon to be) new colleagues from Rushes at 6pm for a night out drinking. I figured I would make the most of the rest of the day and had planned to venture in to Central early, work out my commute journey times and route on the tubes, and then spend some time finding some pretty parks, exploring, maybe visiting a few free museums and the like... This all got scrapped the moment I woke up and noticed it was raining... sod exploring in the rain... that would take the fun out of the whole experience.

Instead I lazed in bed with Ellie all morning and the early part of the afternoon. A much better way to start the day than wandering around getting soaked! By 4ish we had gotten up and ventured out to the shops, had had some lunch, and it seemed like the rain was letting up so I walked Ellie to her station and began my (rain delayed) adventure in to London! It quickly came to a grinding halt, my tube got one station before being stopped due to some form of accident or repairs further down the line... Time to make use of my "Tube Map App" and plan a new route...

My route took me to Baker Street tube station, somewhere I'm going to have to go back to for a proper explore, but for now I thought the decoration of the platforms was pretty sweet! The dots the picture is made up of are actually really tiny versions of the same picture as well - thought that was pretty cool!

After leaving the tube and re-surfacing at Piccadilly I wandered vaguely towards Soho to get my bearings and then aimed for Covent Garden, this was where I was to be meeting my colleagues later and also where I knew I'd find some entertainment to watch. On my wandering I passed this road... I seem to be passing places daily that remind me of Folkestone based local band members!

 

I then stumbled across Forbidden Planet, the geek inside me didn't take long to convince me to go look around. Soooooooo many cool toys, complete with a whole section of WWE toys, authentic Harry Potter wands, a MASSIVE range of books and comics and also a history of Dr Who toys! I will be back there many times over the coming months!

After getting my geek on I headed back out and found my way in to Covent Garden. I've always loved this part of London, so many cool shops and the street entertainers are always fun to watch. The first guy I came across was doing a magic act and although the 20 minutes I saw only actually comprised of one cup and ball routine his act was so quick and witty that it didn't matter that there was virtually no magic. The rest of the acts I could find around were mostly circus style; tight rope walkers and juggling, some really good, others not so much!

One main feature of Covent Garden at the moment (and a lot of the rest of London it seems) is the Egg Hunt - 210 individually designed and hand made eggs have been put all round London with the greatest concentration being here.

 

The one covered in chickens is most definitely my favorite! Although the silhouetted animals was pretty cool too, and the only one I could find featuring a giraffe... (for those that dont know, my girlfriend Ellie is (almost worryingly) crazy about Giraffe's!)

 

6pm finally rolled around and I headed to The Maple Leaf for drinks with the Rushes Runners! Despite the high price tag per pint the Maple Leaf was a really nice pub, made even better by Monday night being "Chicken Wing Night" - 20 wings with your choice of sauce for just £6.... Boom! Dinner sorted!

The chicken wing offer was used and abused by the lot of us, with our table eating over 120 wings in total. Topping the table however was our youngest member, Elliot, who tackled 40 on his own...

He only managed 39, one was dumped in to a pint of Guinness by Chris (far left on this picture) as punishment for one of Elliot's bad jokes... it wasn't wasted though, Paul (in the red hat at the back right) fished it out and ate it... Elliot finished the Guinness...

Here we see the mighty chicken wing warrior finishing the final two... we're considering getting a statue made in his likeness but probably wont bother!

For those that hadn't worked it out from the name, The Maple Leaf is a Canadian pub, staffed exclusively by Canadians and covered from back to front in Canada themed rubbish... the best of which was this stuffed bear which Paul and James took a liking too.

We finished up at the pub around 11ish, and I was home and in bed by midnight. The night was a really nice welcome to the company, although the chicken left my guts a little on the iffy side....

Tuesday

First day on the job! Weeeah! I wish I had loads to report on about how exciting today was and how exhilarating it is to be working in the busy media hub that is Soho, but, truth be told, the job of a runner isn't all that glamorous! I dare say that soon enough there will be times where some really interesting stuff happens, but for now the most interesting thing that happened was that I bought £145 worth of fresh sushi for some other people to eat!

My day consisted mainly of getting paperwork filled out and signed to ensure that I get paid, making a few cups of coffee and tea, getting the previously mentioned sushi from a very nice looking restaurant called Kyoto and doing a shed load of washing up cos our dish-washer had packed in!

Over the next few weeks I will be aiming to get myself in some training on Smoke, Resolve, Flame, basically anything I can get time on! But for now I need to get used to filling out petty cash forms and ending the day with achy legs! Still wouldn't trade my situation though... the future is looking too interesting!

The Big Move

Friday

 Friday came at the end of an exceptionally busy week. I honestly never thought it would have been possible to completely move my entire life in less than 2 weeks...

 From getting the call on Tuesday 27th March it took until Saturday to arrange a bunch of viewings for a new place to live, by Sunday one had been picked, by the following Tuesday I'd completed my last shift at Tesco and had most of my flat completely packed. Wednesday brought a trip to my new home to put down a deposit and collect my key and by Friday 6th April I had moved.

After a bit of a teary wave goodbye to my mum and Kate I went back to my new room and started unpacking. Before I managed to get much done Ellie, my lady, arrived which helped stabalise my emotions!

After a quick cuppa with Ellies mum we got back to unpacking, with two of us at it it did not take long at all and by about 5ish everything except my computer was set up. After a quick spot of dinner it was off for my first London adventure!

A friend of Ellies, Finn, was playing a gig at a pub called the Enterprise at Chalk Farm, just a couple of tube stops from my new place so we went and checked that out.

On the way there we passed a set of flats, I had to stop and take a picture, its not often you find a whole building named after the lead singer from Jairus!

 Turns out it wasn't just Finn playing on her own, a lovely chap called Max joined her on Bass and had programmed a load of drum loops and beats on a macbook. Made for a really interesting and quirky set. Found this on youtube to give you a sample of what they do, althought this is a completely different version how they sounded on the night!

Anyways, after the set there were many a drink drunk and then we toddled back down to my new flat stopping only to buy some nub nub for the morning!

Saturday

 

After waking up with a mild hangover and eating some very nice bacon muffins Ellie and I caught a train over to Richmond and we did another whole bunch of walking this time Ellie leading me on a tour of all the important points of "Twickers" (funnily enough one of the last places we went to were selling *This Tea Towel* which detailed all the points of my tour!)

The Naked Ladies of York House Gardens

After completing the tour and grabbing some lunch at a little cafe that Ellie used to go to when she was at school we pottered down to the Twickenham Rowing Club to watch the Oxford and Cambridge boat race. Now as I'm sure you already know I'm not massively interested in sports of any kind, but if you're gonna watch a boat race then a rowing club is definitely the place to do it! All kinds of abuse was being shouted when the idiot protester was nearly knocked out by the oars! However for me the best thing about this point of the day was finding a hand painted picture of Andy Wintie above the bar in the Rowing Club!

After finishing the race we wandered back to Ellies family home and were fed, however by this point my body was starting to fail me. 2 weeks of packing, planning and moving with so little sleep had killed my immune system and I'd started feeling a bit grotty. I wasn't about to let it ruin my night though so after a couple of flu tablets we plowed on, walked back in to Twickenham Town, headed to The Fox and had a few drinks. I was introduced to a few more of Ellies friends and much hilarity ensued! All in all another lovely night (even the quick stop in at KFC on our walk back home!).

 Oh! I did manage to find this lighter left on our table by one of Ellies friends, had to get a picture of it for Robby as I know Panda's are his life!

Sunday

 

Which brings us up to today where I have successfully done as little as possible! After waking up at Ellies and being treated to a lovely cooked breakfast we watched some of the new series of Game of Thrones, lazed around and then ate again before finally catching a train back to Hampstead in the late afternoon! I've set my computer up and finished off the last of my unpacking, Ellie has headed off in to Central to meet up with another bunch of her friends (I just cant take the pace of all this drinking, let alone the expense!).


Here are some pics of my new room

 














Really liking my new home so far, even though I've only stayed here one night at this point! The room feels cosy and I've brought enough stuff with me that it feels like home, but not too much so its cluttered. It is gonna take me a while to get used to the trains, if you take a look at the map you'll see how close it is to the trainlines (about 8 of them) but I've lived next to an ambulance station and Wilco's delivery bay, so how hard can it be to get used to something like trains eh?!

Tomorrow I plan to head in to Central to have an explore and then I'm meeting up with the rest of the Rushes Runners to have a social in Covent Garden, should be a giggle!