My weekend was rather uneventful – nothing of amazing interest took place…
On Friday I went to the pub with Chris from work for a few well-deserved pints. The evening’s activities were somewhat more refrained than my previous night out with work friends. There were no fights with swans, ducks, or any other animal for that matter. After drinking, I made my way home, cooked burgers in my George Formby Grill, and spent the rest of the evening watching TV, courteous of Channel 4 – remembering to turn off whenever Big Brother came on.
Nothing much happened last night either. Mr. Watkins did manage to make it down to Bath before his night shift, so we met Simon in town. Watkins, who had been sleeping all day, insisted that we visit Nandos so he could have some PeriPeri chicken for breakfast. Not wanting to disappoint, Simon and I agreed.
There was much ribbing towards Simon, a Gooner, on the subject of Terry Henry leaving Arsenal. Watkins, who is not a football fan, came out with the best insults on the situation. I simply suggested that I’ll be getting “HENRY” printed on the back of my Barcelona shirt. Simon believes Tezza’s absence will have absolutely no effect on the team, and confidently predicted that The Gunners will finish 2nd in the league next season. I don’t believe this for one moment, but am posting it now in order to remind him of our conversation next May.
After Nandos, Watkins drove back to Sky HQ (AKA “Hell”) for his nights work, while Simon and I went back to my flat where we watched a bit of TV. I later kicked Simon out of my flat and into the street (in the politest possible way) before going to bed, tired after my long, hardworking day.
Yesterday, I went to the cinema with Dan (who is staying in Bath for the weekend) to see the new James Bond movie, Casino Royale.
Dan and I are both massive James Bond fans and were highly anticipating this latest addition to the series and eager to see how the new 007, Daniel Craig would perform.
After enduring FORTY FIVE MINUTES of advertisements, the film begun. Good job too, I was becoming rather frustrated and on the verge of running down to the cinema screen and starting a protest by shouting “START THE MOVIE, START THE MOVIE!”
Anyway, I found there to be positives and negatives about this latest film…
– The film was very dark, although I am lead to believe this is reflected in Ian Fleming’s original novel. In places it reminded me of Timothy Dalton’s, Licence to Kill.
– Having watched numerous Bond films lately, Casino Royale did not seem to have the charm seen in any of the previous titles. Something was most definitely missing and CR came across as more of an action film than a classic James Bond adventure. If Ian Fleming was alive today, he would not be amused.
– There was very little of the humour, innuendos or light heartedness, commonly found in the previous Bond movies.
– There were aspects of the film which bared similarities to George Lazenby’s Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Lazenby is of course, a Bond you either love or hate. Like most true 007 fans, I hate Lazenby and OHMSS.
– The Bond girl, Eva Green was lovely. Without giving too much away, I was a little displeased with how “involved” Bond became with Green’s character. In the end, it worked out for the best though.
– At times, I thought Bond was a rather crude. He has always been a no-nonsense character, but I thought one particular line, where he asks his adversary to scratch his testicles, was going a little too far even given the context of the situation.
– Casino Royale is a very good film, but at the end of the day, it’s an action movie.
– Daniel Craig is a great actor and despite appearing in a disappointing Bond movie, has a lot of potential. I think giving the right script and production team Craig could make some real classics. Sadly though, Casino Royale is not one of these
After the film, we both went to meet Simon for Nandos. At this point, Simon did not know we had already seen the movie and was getting ready to watch it this evening with us!
As I had promised Simon I would watch it with him, I had no problem with watching the film again. Dan was a little more objective however, and broke the unfortunate news to Simon when he had a mouthful of Peri Peri chicken.
Needless too say we did not watch the Bond movie again and I was unable to use the humorous blog title I had planned of “You Only Watch Twice”. Instead, Simon and Dan came back to my flat where we drunk coffee, ate cake and watched a proper Bond film – Octopussy.
It’s just a shame that the care and love which went into producing Octopussy was missing from the latest 007 film.
This evening Simon and I went to Nandos. I decided to go for a different dish than my regular choice of half chicken with two sides and ordered a double chicken burger and fries. I was not impressed. The bun was very hard, in fact it tasted stale. The meat was not much better and appeared to be very overcooked and dry.
I also made the mistake of asking for Hot Peri Peri sauce. It was indeed hot. Very hot. So hot that I had difficulty eating the meal. As the meat was so tough, it was unable to absorb the hot magma which had been generously splashed all over my dish, therefore making every bite a painful experience on my tongue.
This meant that I had to take regular trips to the Coca Cola machine for drink refills and slowing down the speed of food consumption in the process. After a while I could tell that the waitress was becoming increasingly inpatient at the fiasco and begun hovering around our table like a vulture circulating a dead animal carcass.
We eventually left, displeased. I noticed that there was a lot of new staff that I had not seen before working this evening. I hope that by my next visit they have learnt some cooking skills, manners and patience.
The walk back to my house was hard, mainly due to the extreme, Arctic light climate which has suddenly struck England. You would have thought that with a belly full of red hot sauce, I would not feel the cold – wrong, in fact the contrast in temperatures seemed to make things worse.
When we did eventually make it back to my flat, I stuck on Pro Evolution 6, a game which I bought this week from Play.com. I know I have slagged off Pro Evo in the past, but I thought I would give it a go. I have been finding Fifa 07 far too easy. When you can beat Barcelona 6-0 playing as Leeds on the hardest difficulty setting, you know something is not right.
I was awoken this morning by Mr. Hobart yelling at me. “Massive c**t!” and “Lazy bastard!” were two of the profanities thrown at my sleeping head along with his fist. Of course, Dan isn’t that psychotic, he was quoting Sir Ben Kingsley’s character in the film Sexy Beast.
Dan did however want me to get out of bed and make him a coffee. Fearing Dan would start boiling water himself and accidentally burn the house down, I thought it would be a wise move to do as he asked.
Yesterday was a good day, albeit nothing much was achieved. The afternoon consisted of watching Maid Marian on DVD, the new episode of Lost, eating pizza from the local takeaway (Mr. Pizzarella, you have surpassed yourself once again) and playing classic Sega Mega Drive games.
Streets of Rage 2 brought back many memories and the synthesised music and dodgy sound FX played at high volume reminded me of summer days at the Weymouth Pleasure Beach amusement arcade.
After an hour or so of intense retro gaming, Hobart and I came to the conclusion that most Super Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive games were very erratic. The flashing, high speed graphics and migraine inducing sounds are enough to make anyone go crazy. Not to mention the bizarre gaming scenarios – a super fast blue hedgehog, collecting gold sovereigns and jumping on trampolines conveniently located in palm tress.
After a mini meltdown, brought on by Lotus Turbo Challenge 2, we watched the England/Macedonia game. That’s 90 minutes of my life I will never get back. All I heard from the commentators was the name Panda, probably a Macedonian and not in fact a panda bear.
After that game (and many other performances), I really couldn’t give a shit if Fat Frank Lampard, Rooney the Chav and Stuart Downing qualify for Euro 2008. I will shortly be buying a Northern Ireland replica kit with HEALY 9 ironed onto the back.
Upset, hurt and angry by England’s display, Dan, Mr. White and I walked into town. This is where a slight confession is revealed. Mr. White, if you are reading this prepare to get mad. As you were unlocking your bike, Dan and I decided it would be rather amusing to walk in the opposite direction, down a side street and avoid you. That is why you were unable to find us both. The joke was on us though as this detour took us an extra 15 minutes, a little pointless really.
Upon arrival in town we stood in a group outside Sainsbury’s like chavs, waiting for Simon to finish work. For somebody who is supposed to clock off at 8pm, he was annoyingly late. While waiting, the most violent battle broke out. Blood was spilt. It was like something out of West Side Story, only without all the singing.
The battle was all over where we shout eat. My personal preference (and one I knew Simon would back me on) was Nandos. White wanted a curry and Dan, not wanting to offend, sat on the fence and agreed to eat anywhere as long as we did eat (which we were not doing, hence his anger). After many nose bleeds and limb breaks, we all decided that Garfunkles would be the best choice.
Our fight outside Sainsburys bared many similarities to Streets of Rage 2
Garfunkles was excellent as always. After we had eaten and had yet another fight over the bill, we caught a taxi home and White disappeared into town to wash down his burger with a pint or six.
While back at my crib, Simon and I played a very entertaining game of Fifa 07. Well, very entertaining for me. I played as Barcelona against Simon’s Arsenal and beat him 9-2 (what the score really should have been in that Champions League final).
Simon was not happy with what he described as “shit and unrealistic game play”. Well, I like Fifa, mainly because I can score 9 goals against Arsenal. Simon is a Pro Evo man and will be bringing it round on his next visit. I have no doubts that when this happens there will be another 9-2 score line, but I will be on the losing side.
OK, here is that promised blog from Wednesday, albeit a day or two late…
Wednesday evening I went to the cinema and Nandos. Unlike the previous week, we went for our Peri Peri Chicken pre-cinema, therefore being able to enjoy it at an earlier time.
The nice waitress was there again and during the meal I had one eye on the chicken and another on her. There was another guy doing the same, but one of his eyes was glass, so he couldn’t really help but stare.
After chicken we went to watch Crank at the cinema. The film starred Jason Statham, from Lock, Stock. Statham seems to have been appearing in a lot of films over the last few years and is fast turning into the British Bruce Willis, although he’s a better actor of course, being British :o)
Without going into all the usual film review bollocks, Crank has a similar plot to Speed, but instead of a bomb on a speeding bus, a poison is injected into Statham’s body, causing death upon relaxation.
And that was Wednesday over. Of course, you all know about Healy Hobbit Feet’s great game against Spain.
Thursday. As I also mentioned the other day, I am looking for a new flatmate. Somebody came to look round in the evening. Oh my God, what a fucking freak. I don’t want to sound cruel, but there is absolutely no way I would want to share a flat with this guy…
He must have been about 40 (not his fault, everybody is ageing), but he dressed and talked like some comic book geek. He also stunk. You know when you pass a group of tramps in the street and notice an unpleasant odour in the air, well he smelt of tramp. He also wore a raincoat – it was a clear, sunny, Septembers evening. He was just weird… too weird. Not this time, not this fucking time, etc, etc, etc…
Friday. I nearly fall flat on my face at work. Wandering down a corridor I noticed that I was standing right above a massive spider. In a desperate panic to escape, I performed a kind of leap/sprint/dive out of the way. The idea that “spiders are more scared of you than you are of them” is just an old wives tale.
Watkins and Simon also came round for a few games of GoldenEye. Once again the playing conditions were very hot and humid. The neighbours and local psychiatric ward were also treated to an array of screams, yelps and shouts of abuse from the three of us.
Never mind all that drug and hyperactivity bollocks that Jason Statham had to perform in Crank to keep himself alive. All he would have had to of done is played a few rounds of GoldenEye with us. That would get the old adrenalin flowing very nicely.
About Me
So you stumbled across my blog. No doubt after searching for something bizarre on Google. Before you hit that 'Back Button', why not stay and have a read for a few minutes?
If you are after a website which gives advice on how to hack an iPhone X, download the latest Steven Seagal movie, or view nudy ladies, you've come to the wrong place and may now press 'Back'.
However, if you would like a lifestyle blog, written by a 30-something chap, living in Bath (England), feast your eyes on this.
You won't discover how to copy PlayStation 4 games. What you will find is a blog, covering life in the West Country, the highs and lows of supporting two unsuccessful football teams, while sharing a house with a wife and rabbit.
All written by a man, somewhere on the sanity-scale between normal and eccentric.
