girlofprey

Hello. I did actually come back from the Nottingham Riverside Festival. Do you want to hear about my TMI adventures? YOU KNOW YOU DO. ( My TMI adventures )

Since then I have mostly been freaking out over or working on my ESA assessment questionnaire, which the DWP or ATOS or whoever needs back by next Tuesday. But I discussed it with my counsellor, and then discussed it and did most of it yesterday during/after an appointment with my employment coach. Well, I did all of it really, because I thought I had a bit of extra space at the end to finish an answer, but that turned out to be a space for a completely different question, so I sort of had to stop short. I'm worrying that I wasted my space with stuff that was less relevant than the stuff I didn't get to put in, but I read back over my questionnaire and I'd put some of that stuff in answers to other questions. And I only had so much space. And if they want me to go into more detail, they call me for another assessment, I'm sure. Even though I massively hope that doesn't happen. But anyway, I put down everything I could think of that was most relevant, and that's all I can do really. So I signed it and posted it off this morning, and at least it's done now.

And now tomorrow, my parents are going away with my two oldest nephews. So I'll be in the house on my own/looking after the house on my own. Usually I massively enjoy that though. It literally just occured to me that my sister might decide that it would be a great opportunity to come visit me though, since she lives just up the hill now. I sincerely hope that doesn't happen. Although she'd probably bring the baby. I can just talk to the baby if she comes over. Maybe.

A nice thing, I suppose, about Livejournal being down for everyone all at once is that at least when it comes back it doesn't take forever to catch up on your flist. Not that I'm condoning this kind of behaviour. Bad form, LJ.

Anyway. The post I was going to make on Monday was about how I had two goals for myself to achieve that day, and I did both of them! Hurray for me. One was to photocopy my sick note and letter and get it sent off to the DWP, and the other was to go into Santander, hopefully figure out my ISA details and transfer some money to my normal account so I could pay my mum back for the Slightly Expensive Necklace she got for me in Prague. Accomplishment. It's awesome.

Other things that have happened or been happening in the last few days:

• Eastenders got SUDDENLY GAY again. It's kind of a shame, because Eastenders is still rubbish - the men who acted nice but seemed like they might later become sinister are now indeed acting sinisterly. And the men who don't like those guys seem to be awful as well. BUT. There's a character in it called Michael, who came in a while ago. At first I'm found him annoying, then his dad came into the show and it turned out Michael thought his dad had killed his mum and hated him, and it seemed like he might get interesting. Then he decided he liked his friend's wife, tried it on with her, and when she turned him down he tried to ruin her life, and I hated him again. However, when his dad came in, he came in with a brother of Michael's, and then this Monday another brother turned up. And unless I am very much mistaken, the minute Michael saw this brother he stood up straighter and was looking over. And the minute the brother saw Michael he started giving him lingering, yearning looks. Then he came over and started talking about some conversation he and Michael and their dad had had two years before, which Michael didn't remember, but which was obviously quite important to his brother. It was about goal-line technology. I decided to look online to see if we'd been given any more information on this new brother (Anthony), and on the first page of results was an article about how "Anthony had been corrupted by Michael at a young age". And went on to say that Anthony was probably the quietest of the three brothers, and would probably be focusing on the business for a bit and wouldn't be interested in girls for a while. And if anyone doesn't believe me about this, it's here. It's quite special.
  
  So I might be giving Eastenders another go, for a little bit.



• I quite like Sugartown, which started on Sunday.



• I love George Gently, which was also on on Sunday.



• I went to a corn maze with my nephew and mum. The corn was only about waist-high, but you had to get to workstations in it to complete a worksheet/quiz thing, and in some ways that made it more infuriating, because you could SEE them, but you couldn't GET to them. It was fun though. Later I got stalked by a duck and nearly bitten by a horse, and it turned out I'd managed to get soil all up my legs inside my jeans, but we did have quite a good time.



• I have been watching 666theheartless666 long play videos, after someone referenced him on fandom secrets. Partly because he did Fatal Frame, one of which I looked on long long before I got any kind of game console. It was both hilarious (his commentary) and terrifying (the actual game). He's worth a look if you like that kind of thing though, he's quite funny.



• Today on Hollyoaks Seth and Brendan had a scene together! None of you will probably know what that means! Essentially, Seth and Brendan are two characters I really like, who don't have much of a reason to have scenes together very often. But today they did. Although it wasn't so much a scene as Brendan whizzing by at the end of Seth's scene to steal his ice-cream and say "You snooze, you lose, kid!". But still. Contact!



• And I booked my hotel for the Riverside Festival in Nottingham. K got back to me and said she couldn't decide whether she was going or not until after she got back from Berlin and knew how broke/tired she'd be, so she might be there, she might not. But I am definitely going. Woo!

I think that's everything. YOU ARE ALL CAUGHT UP. And if you aren't, I will probably mention it in another post. OH.

• On Sunday night, while I was up on the internet not going to bed despite having stuff to do the next day, I came up with the idea for a Silent Hill Texts From Last Night tumblr. I still can't tell if this was sleep-deprived genius, or sleep-deprived craziness. Also, I'm weirdly into Silent Hill fandom considering that I've never actually played the games. I may yet one day though.

It think that's everything. And now I sincerely hope that this posts, although there seems to be some chance that it won't.

I did go down to Nottingham in the end, last weekend. It was lovely. I went down on Friday so I could basically go to some of the shops I don't have nearby anymore. I really wanted to go see Alys Power, but I ended up only giving her about two days notice before I came and it turned out she was on holiday last week anyway. But I managed to get to the Focus Gallery, which was lovely, and had some new artists in I'd not seen before who were kind of amazing. And I ended up buying one of their Alys Power pieces as well, so it all kind of worked out. I went a bit overdrawn, of course. But even that didn't turn out too awful, I think.

I managed to get a single room in a hotel quite close to where I used to live, for just £35 for one night, which given that when I was looking at Bed and Breakfasts in Cornwall the other year they were charging £25 per night I think that was pretty good. And it was all perfectly lovely. It was just me on the Friday, and then on Saturday my mum came up and we checked into the Britannia for another night. And I don't know what it was, my mum thinks it's because we checked in early and got one of the better rooms available, I think it might be because my mum booked a room there before and they noticed and decided to be nice to her - but we had, like, an amazing room. It was a double because there were no twins available, and I'm only really comparing it to the room we had there before, but it was massive, we had tons of space, it had a sofa, and sliding panels instead of curtains. And the windows didn't have mould this time! We were very impressed. We were kind of tempted to stay there for a bit, but didn't in the end, and got down to the Riverside Festival in the end. I love the Riverside Festival. It's so lovely, and such a lovely setting, and they really do get bands in from all over the world, and most of them are really great, and not like the music you normally hear most of the time. The only real problem with it is that you can't see everything at once - I had to choose between Latin American reggae and French swing, jazz and Eastern European gypsy folk. I HAD TO MAKE THAT CHOICE. Mostly I compromised by going to one for a little while, then on to my favourite option for slightly longer. But it was still lovely. And the weather was brilliant this year. I always wish I could buy CDs that the bands are usually selling, but this year I was pretty strapped for cash, and the bands I really liked were selling their CDs at £10 each, which I could not afford. But it was still great. My mum was pretty easy and basically came with me to whatever I wanted to see, and she seemed to like it well enough, I think. And because she was there and I had someone to get back with, I got to stay and watch the firework display they always have at 10.30pm on the Saturday. Which was a lot more crowded than I was imagining it would be. But was still good to see, and was actually really really good.

The next day mum had to work in the afternoon, so my dad came down and picked her up, which was good for me actually because I got to send my overnight stuff back with them rather than taking it to the festival with me. The second day was as good as the first, and included a really quite brilliant, quite lovely acrobatic troupe from Tanzania. Including limbo-ing under flaming sticks. I'll say no more. Again, I didn't get to see everything I really wanted to, but I saw more than enough, and really really enjoyed it. Then at about quarter to 6 I headed back to the train station to get the four trains I needed to get to get back to my hometown. And it wasn't even that dark when I got back. And I had had a great time, hurrah!

I'm vaguely planning to go back to Nottingham again in the next few months, if I can afford it. And pretty definitely planning to go back in December, because you remember how last year I was freaking out talking about the pantomime Gray O'Brien (aka Tony from Coronation Street) was doing a pantomime in Manchester and I really wanted to go see it, but couldn't really afford it? Guess where he's doing pantomime this year. The year after I moved away from there. Damn him. Except not really, because he is, in fact, doing pantomime again, yay.

Also, while I was in Nottingham on Friday night on my own, I passed some of the time going to see Knight and Day, the new film with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. ( Thoughts ) And there was surprise Paul Dano! Which I always am in favour of! Yay!

Basically because of that, I am now on a big There Will Be Blood kick. Also partly because my mum and I found There Will Be Blood on TV the next night, even though we didn't end up watching it, which I am cynically assuming might be something to do with the fact Paul Dano is in a new film at the moment. Although I could be wrong. Anyway. I love Daniel/Eli so much. In all it's terrible, twisted glory. I've largely been contemplating my idea from before for AU where they are in a slightly angrier, more violent version of The Princess Bride. And I've now moved onto to a modern AU where Eli is the teenage unofficial leader/priest of a community centre church and Daniel is a gangster boss who wants the building for it's strategic value in the neighbourhood. Both of which are very good places to be.

Also, I watched the last episode of Sherlock last week. ( Thoughts on 1.03, The Great Game )

I'm going away again, on Saturday, with my parents and oldest nephew, to Devon on Saturday, so I pretty much won't be around for all of next week. But I'll be back the week after that. So see you guys then, pretty much!

I love Gok's Fashion Fix. I love it so much. If I had any money at all, I would totally have a try at clothes. Even customising.

Things that are or were happening:

• I went to the Nottingham Riverside Festival last weekend. I mentioned to some people that I'd been by a riverside, and never really explained it. It was lovely, the weather was good, the river is beautiful, I never realised it was so pretty down there. There was music and street theatre and burgers from vans, and the only bad thing was that I kept getting there late, and didn't have much money to spend, and spent probably too much on arts and crafts. I didn't stay for the fireworks, because I didn't want to get home too late, but I enjoyed it anyway.



• HOWEVER - one band I quite wanted to see, but missed because I got there TOO LATE, was Sarah Savoy and the Francadians. I got there just as who I assume was Sarah Savoy was selling CDs after the show, and I didn't have the money anyway and wouldn't have spent £12 if I did, and especially not on a band I hadn't heard. But since then I have failed to find anywhere, on the entire internet, that sells her CD. Even her own site. I have fallen quite in love with that first song that plays on her/their Myspace page. But nowhere sells it. All I can think is that...I'm going to have to go to Paris. Possibly.



• On the way down to the Riverside Festival, I stumbled on an arts and crafts market, where one man was selling watch pieces for £2 each. It turns out that the insides of watches are the most beautiful things ever. I bought two. It made me feel a bit Sylar-ish. But they are quite lovely.



• Work has been mad. I'm back at the psychogeriatric ward, which is mental health for older people, and for two weeks two of the doctors were off on holiday together, because they are married, and this week the SHOs were finishing/changing over, so we had to get all their typing done before they left so they could sign it. Which didn't so much happen. Hmm.



• Then yesterday I had to go home early because of period pains. And today I went in late because of the same. Which was fun.



• Now I am hot, and I don't know if it's because of the weather or because my body temperature has risen slightly. Hmph.



• Probably no-one cares about Heroes anymore except for me, but a thing I didn't know: BBC2 are planning to air Season 3 as close to the USA airdates as possible, to counter the attraction of downloading. Which is quite nice, even if it does make me want to download a bit more. But it'll be on BBC iPlayer as well, which I find a lot easier to use than most streaming sites. So that's quite pleasing, in many ways.



• The Summer Sundae is on in Leicester this weekend. Adam and Joe are going to be there. And Roisin Murphy. I can get to Leicester with some ease, it's only over there. However, I'm probably not going to go. A) I have no money, and b) I have quite a bit of stuff I need to do over the weekend. Sadface.



• I recommend this week's Adam and Joe podcast though (here). This week they're doing songs for the new James Bond film, and there's a bit in one of them about wishing Roger Moore would come back. The actual songs start at about 17:50, the whole Song Wars section starts at about 12:54.



• I saw Hellboy 2: The Golden Army. Ha ha.