Utter farce.

Right! Need to get my blog started again as it's been ages since the last update and I always intended to write something every day. What a complete joke that became. I will talk about the last two months of my life and what a ridiculous joke my life became after moving to Brighton for an internship.

Just before I finished exams I saw that The Student Room was offering an internship to help upgrade the website to the newer version of their software. Considering I was applying for anything I could I thought that I might as well go for it, even though it was advertised as a graduate job. I got rejected by KFC, Subway, Next, so naturally I got this internship after being told I sounded really promising and that my interview was fantastic. It required me to move down immediately. This is where the trouble started.

I loaded myself with as much luggage as a Beverly Hills rock star and started the journey down south. The train was diverted via Leeds, where I had to sit about before being allowed to approach London. By the time I got there I was already late, and the tube journey under the capital was fairly eventful. On the Victoria Line, some loon started running up the carriage, blessing everyone, before collapsing into a heap on the floor. At the next stop he legged it, and then between Warren Street and Oxford Circus everyone began to smell the acrid burning of crude oil. By the time we got to Green Park, we were all evacuated without reason given, and allowed on the next train to Victoria. Can't help thinking something was being covered up.

Anyway, fastforward a week and I'm doing the same journey again. This time I get dropped off in Sheffield by the train without much explanation and have to sit there for an hour or so. Nice city, hadn't been before.

Then all goes well for two beautiful weeks, I enjoy the job, I love living by the sea, and generally everything is good. Couple of mates come and stay and then Ray makes his way down to Brighton. This really does spell the beginning of the end. We have a good couple of days, betting on a lot of the football, losing a lot of money, playing each other at Pro Evo and so on. But on his final day I get up to go to work and he says he'll leave soon after me. Turns out the landlady finds him, goes a bit over the top, and kicks him and me out immediately. I can't persuade her otherwise and I'm out on the street. No fun. But Warren (my immediate superior at work) lets me crash at his place whilst I search for somewhere new.

On Monday I move into a posh little apartment in Kemp Town, owned by a really angry gay Irishman with a playboy bunny-logo'd necklace and playboy bunny-themed phone. There's nothing in the flat in terms of possessions though, which is taking minimalism far too literally. I pay him money and he goes out on a 27 hour bender. Odd. On his return, he brings a toy boy. Then the next night he brings two toy boys. This is all getting rather queer. Anyway, I decide to sit and watch football with him when he eventually has a night off, and win some money, yay. I mention this and he asks to borrow £40. "Sorry, as your tenant I don't feel comfortable lending my landlord money, and considering I pay the rent next week anyway, is it completely urgent?" comes out as "Urm, you can have £20?" Ffs Michael.

The next day I return to London for a weekend of debauchery and football. I get back on Sunday night and find that the landlord's done a runner and someone else has moved into his room. I get chatting to this guy, who is under the impression that he was moving into an empty room in a house owned by a live-out landlord. I get really suspicious and chat to the guys at work about this the next day. General consensus is that he's a sub-letting crack addict with loads of personal debt. Wahey. Asking for £40 = buying a gram of coke? No possessions = pawning them? God knows, anyway, I decide to move out, so I go back that lunchtime to collect my things, and find him there asleep on the sofa! He'd been out all night and came back to sleep while the other guy and I were at work.

I spend the next few weeks on various peoples sofas and floors, living out of my suitcase and generally having no luck finding a place to live. The landlords are all absolutely off their faces mental. I get one bloke who wants me to chop wood for him in his back garden as he's away all Summer. Another woman wants me to look after the nine kids in the house. A third wants to sleep on the floor of the room he'll be letting me. A Chinese dude says he'll bring me takeaway in bed each morning. None of these are acceptable examples of humanity I trust myself to be in ther presence of for three months. I have to keep rejecting people and as time passes it only gets more difficult as no landlord wants a super short term tenant.

I stay in Warren's place for a week while he's on holiday and one of the most horrendously slapstick events of my life occurs. I pop out for some chips, walk under some scaffolding, and at that precise moment a bag of cement powder/mix/whatever the fuck it is overbalances, splits, and cascades all over my head. Fuccccccck offffff.

A trip up to Lichfield beckons for Liz's birthday that weekend. I'm so pleased to get away from Brighton! But on the train there Coventry station catches fire and we're delayed 30 seconds away from it watching the fire brigade not put it out. Doesn't help that I'm sat next to some neurotic spastic who keeps running away to vomit out of fear. Eventually we reach Lichfield where I get utterly hammered and lose my railcard, meaning the trip back costs £65.

Anyway, long story short, I didn't find anywhere to live for the two weeks after that and had to move back home in the end. I'm in London now for a few weeks and I'll see what fate befalls me next. I've almost definitely left some disgusting portion of bad luck out of this story, but I reckon my mind's censoring itself so I don't explode in a spontaneous ball of self-pity and hatred.

Life goes on. I'm looking forward to Belgium even if Laurie can no longer make it, and I've got a trip to Italy booked with Mohamed and Jess. I'll be spending my 21st birthday in Milan, which is incredibly awesome.

How I learnt to stop worrying and love self-improvement

Recently I've been reading more again, which is a damn good thing, but that's only one part of what I'm referring to when I talk about self-improvement. The major change in my life recently is that I'm actually getting a decent amount of exercise and spending a normal amount of time off the internet, so perhaps I can be excused for not updating this blog!

Liz has signed me up, pretty much, for a fifty five mile charity walk so I've decided that I need to get fit for it and train a lot. This involves daily walks of at least twelve miles, and while I haven't been brilliant at that so far I've tried my best and I feel great because of it. Along with working last Saturday morning for a removals company and then playing football for several hours I'm actually feeling physically better than ever. Tomorrow's walk will take me to Hyde Park, around the park, and then to Kensington.

I intend to keep up this level of activity, and need to somehow fit things in even on days when usually I'd be too busy to fit other things in. On Wednesday I'm going up to Hull with Mohamed in the car early in the morning so I'm not entirely sure how I can fit in an exercise session unless I wake up really early and go for a run around Acton Park. This can be done though, and I must overcome laziness.

Over the last few days I've read a book about apartheid and how sport played a major part in overcoming it, particularly focusing on the inmates of Robben Island, the Alcatraz-esque prison upon which Nelson Mandela, amongst other famous political prisoners was incarcerated. In the early 60s, when the first prisoners were sent to the island, there was no recreation at all, and even board games were outright banned. For almost four years the prisoners protested in the form of simple requests for football once a week, and were often beaten or punished merely for asking. Eventually the International Red Cross intervened and the men were granted the right to play football (this is a very watered down version). They organised an entire league system, with three divisions, in which nine clubs fielded an A, B and C team. The prisoners began as disunited as they were from the warders, each belonging to totally different political factions, but sport, particularly football brought them together and gave them the power to eventually acquire a multitude of rights, and by the early 70s they had an Olympic Games as well as rugby, tennis, degree studies, music, films and much more. Even the warders came to see the men as humans, and picked football teams to support. Nelson Mandela obviously never played as he spent his entire stay in solitary confinement, but enough news was smuggled to him for him to support a team and become interested, as well as developing an understanding of sport as crucial to the bonding of a nation.

Of course, it was not only the sport on Robben Island that highlighted the failings of apartheid; the all-white international cricket, football, rugby and Olympic teams were all banned from international competition, and opponents of the white South African players in individual sports pulled out of tennis and other individual sports events in protest at the regime.

Many men who are now members of the South African government found a great source of not only enjoyment, but political organisation and activation as a result of the games held on Robben Island. Jacob Zuma is the president of the African National Congress and was influential in SA's bid for this year's world cup. "Terror" Loreto was appointed Minister for Defence in 1999. When entering the prison, neither of these men had the negotiation or political skills that they picked up during their stay. That all the men imprisoned over the years speak incredibly highly of the organised sports effort yet negatively of every aspect of their stay speaks volumns. Players cried when they had to leave the island, as it meant abandoning the clubs they'd come to support as much as an avid fan of Manchester United might if they were to be liquidated.

Read More Than Just a Game: Football vs Apartheid. It's incredible. Absolutely inspiring stuff, and a strict lesson for any idiots who claim that football is a stupid game for the uneducated. I firmly believe that sports brings people around the world together like nothing else, even if hooliganism and disagreements are encountered along the way.

I've also found a great love for Derrida recently. His ideas on changing ethical and political action after the events of 9/11 are really interesting. His interview with Borradori particularly so.

What else? I don't really have a great deal else to say, other than that life is probably better at the moment than it has been for a very long time. I feel happier about myself than usual, confident and well. I feel as if I'm capable of becoming active both physically and mentally. I never feel these things.

A song of the week is very hard to choose this time, but I'm going to go with Alestorm – Keelhauled. It's just hilarious. Worth searching on youtube as well.

Goodbye, friends.

Hamburg: part one.

I’m going to write this report by going through the notebook I took with me chronologically, and seeing as I tried to write as much in it as I could so that I can look back on it in months to come (years would be quite optimistic) there’s going to be an awful lot in here that people will find very boring, but that for whatever reason I want to recall.

The trip started with me up all night in Manchester waiting desperatel y for the washing machine to finish cleaning my underwear – a trip with no boxers would be pretty terrible. Eventually, at 11am, it did, and I woke Liz up to get her to pack. No one apart from Bruce knew she was coming, it was our surprise. However, she decided to sleep instead, something that would become a recurring theme of the holiday. At last, her stuff was in a bag, the Moomin one I got her for Xmas, making me particularly proud of the purchase. We went to the post office to change our money into Euro, waiting about fourteen years for the bint to allow us anywhere near us – she was busy licking envelopes. £185 got me 200€, which isn’t brilliant, but never mind. It’d last me the entire trip.

The coach down to London was uneventful and we slept pretty much the whole way, next to a broken toilet that stank the whole bus out. When we got to London the first person we saw wasn’t actually coming on the trip: HCD. He didn’t know Liz was there as she stalked us to the pub, where we enjoyed a Hunter’s Chicken, as she sat behind him getting closer and closer. After a while he cottoned on. My mate Mohamed, the co-admin of the infamous Oversized Smoking Pipes turned up. Jo and Bruce were soon also present, and we just boozed for a while before the coach to Stansted.

Ellie also joined us then, and we spent the next seven hours sitting around at the airport, reading books, magazines and that sort of thing. Rhys purchased Bizarre, because it featured articles on such delights as fake hymens and villages inhabited solely by dwarves. It even has an advert for a call-line that recommends dogging hotspots. This kept us amused for a long time.

“I feel like the father half-arsedly watching his kids being incredibly embarrassing, but rather than intervening I’m just going to go back to my magazine.” That’s one the first quotes in the notebook, but I can’t remember what precisely it relates to. I suspect something Bruce and Rhys were doing.

The flight was uneventful although the descent through the tundra-esque clouds was utterl y surreal. It looked like we were landing somewhere approaching the north pole, but then we sunk through a cloud level that went on forever, which was very bright on top but pitch black underneath. Eventually we were close enough to see the ground, and the snow levels made England look positively tropical.

The most shocking aspect about the trip so far was that there’d been no hitches, we were all in one piece with no fines or disasters and were soon on the coach to Hamburg for only ten euro. The airport was just outside Lubeck, a small town about eighty kilometers from Hamburg. The snow on the way there was several feet deep, and the temperature about minus ten/minus fifteen. Very very cold. The plan was to get to Hamburg, then get the S-Bahn to Altona, where the hostel was.

Arrival at Hamburg Hauptbahnhof was swift due to the incredible speeds one can travel at on the Autobahn, then it was a simple matter of working out the S-Bahn – v. easy. 1.30€ for a single ticket to Altona – a similar journey without an Oyster card on the tube in London would cost £4. Liz looked completely dead, she was trampling about in bloodied boots and clearly in desperate need of sleep. I just wanted to get to the hostel then explore the city.

The hostel proved easy to find, so another potential hitch was avoided easily! We’d all booked separately, but the guy behind the desk spoke very good English and we were able to sort it out so that everyone but Kieren and Sophie were in the same dormitory – and as they were arriving over the next two days that was fair enough, really. Liz was going delirious, just leaning wide-eyed against the desk, muttering “beautiful” and some stuff about escaped Amish rapists.

Having arrived we sat down for a drink in the bar, but I decided to explore the city instead, and went for a walk. We had unwittingly set up base in the red light district, and also incredibly close to the Millerntor, St. Pauli FC’s stadium, as well as to the cafe I was due to meet Sophie in on Saturday morning. The streets weren’t icy despite the levels of snow, due to a very effective gritting method, which is obviously needed far more in Hamburg than anywhere in the UK. I was impressed. Upon arrival at the Millerntor, I was greeted by the following sight.

Only without all the people, obvs. I should have taken someone’s camera with me really. In the window on the left hand side you can see all the trophies and things St Pauli have won which is quite cool, and I went into the shop at the right. Not only was it full of St Pauli gear, but it stocked a lot of Celtic stuff too, the link being something both clubs are very proud of. I bought a shirt to add to my collection and moved on.

For some reason it’s legal to turn right through a red light in Germany, something I’ll never be completely comfortable with.

The Bismarck memorial was the next thing on my lists of things to see, and was pretty much impossible to miss. It’s huge, and instantly recognisable.

I walked through a park beside the memorial and came out just past the Hamburg museum, but didn’t go in because I reckoned it might charge me. Instead I headed over to the huge church, St. Michael’s, which made me feel particularly important. It was probably a Catholic church in a previous life, but now it’s Protestant. It was very grand inside, bedecked in gold with sweeping white marble balconies.

My slight error came in walking in at half past twelve, directly as a service was beginning, so I decided, against everything in my nature, to sit and take it in. Naturally I didn’t understand a word of it, but the smatterings of organ music were very nice. The only overtly religious image within the church (no stained glass!) was a painting of Christ surrounded by angels, just below a statue of Christ flanked by golden angels.

Kunst and Vater were the two words I heard repeated over and over during the sermon, so it was about a father who paints.

Instead of going further into Hamburg I decided to go back to the hostel and see what everyone was up to, but they were all fast asleep in the bar. No one seemed to care. In the room both Bruce and Rhys laid amazing shits in the toilet, making them no-go zones for the rest of the evening. Some bloke called Sam knocked on the door, and, realising that we’re young, English, and students, offered us a pub crawl. We said no, opting instead to go for a wander down the Reeperbahn, which is Hamburg’s biggest street for going out on, completely packed with sex and neon lights.

We walked down the Konigstrasse, which is a lot less majestic than it sounded, basically being nothing more than a road through the council housing that surrounded the main city of Hamburg. Where we were staying, Altona, isn’t actually in the City of Hamburg, more of an Uxbridge to London connection. There was much moaning of distance and hunger, particularly from Ellie, who wanted to sit in a restaurant about half a second from the hostel, but I wasn’t having any of it. Eventually we decided upon a place called Joker, and had great food. My “African Chicken” wasn’t jollof rice, disappointingly, but it was still very good indeed. With it I had a pint of Duckstein, which tasted alarmingly similar to its name. Everyone else had cocktails, but when in Rome (Hamburg), etc.

Next we went to the Jolly Roger, an Irish pub Ellie picked for its Singstar night. I was excited to see that Blackburn were playing Villa on the big screen in the first leg of their Carling Cup semi-final. Ther were only five minutes left though, and I just watched Villa see out a 1-0 win.

The guy behind the bar was very much a wannabe-America, and drawled “four bucks, please” at me, as I paid for my Schoffenhofer lager. It wasn’t very nice. I fell down the stairs trying to drink it, but managed to stay on my feet and retain most of the pint: SKILLZ. I say pint, but obvs they’re metric over there – it was in fact 800 millilitres of beer.

Rhys smoked his pipe happily, mostly because of the simple fact that he could smoke it indoors, and the realisation that this was an internet holiday became apparent when Bruce suggested we do Rick Astley for karaoke. Shots of Jagermeister, which was on tap, were drunk, and karaoke began.

Bruce was up first, doing Queen, and was actually very good, clocking up 9,046 points. Ellie and Liz then went and sang something or other by Erasure, and both beat Bruce narrowly, with Liz’s 9,596 points putting her top of the leaderboard. Then Rhys went up and crooned through something awful, getting a pub high score in the process: 9,628. I didn’t sing. Listening to a German girl singing Britney Spears was hilarious, it really doesn’t work in a German accent. Whilst other people sung, highlights of a 98 FA Cup match between Newcastle United and Manchester United were shown, and it was fascinating – Newcastle won 5-0! When I looked back Liz was singing again, desperate to beat Rhys, but her 8,618 was the worst score of the evening so far. Unlucky, son. We won a bottle of disgusted Prosecco for Rhys’ efforts though. The same thing happened again in round two, except that a German bloke had the highest score till I went up and tried to do The Ting Tings – That’s Not My Name with Liz. I scored an utterly pathetic 1,300 points. I cannot sing. I substituted Stacey for Jangra when singing though, that sort of thing ,which explains it. I’d like to think... Before leaving Ellie decided to suggest that the lot of us sing something, and bounced off to enter us. Minutes later, this announcement was read out: “And all the way from England, to sing Three Lions, it’s THE STUDENT ROOM.” FUCKINGHELL WOMAN, WHAT?! We won... it was shameful.

Back home to sleep.

Part two tomorrow.

Michael vs. Washing Machine [2010]

My life has come to this. I'm up at twenty past six in the morning having not slept and why? Not because I'm banging girl dem, pissed out of my head or enjoying a nice night of hilarity and food, no, oh no. It's because I'm having a fight with the washing machine. I must give you the back story of the last few days though.

Since I last updated I've moved in with Liz and this place is all well and good. I have a lovely little attic room which makes me feel right at home and I've spent a great deal of time chilling in the living room doing not much at all. Apart from rush around Manchester after Vietnamese, argue with landlords, sort out standing orders, apply desperately for essay extensions, sort out a malfunctioning laptop and stock up on warm clothes for my trip to Hamburg. It's minus twenty over there, apparently.

Today involved my second lecture of the new year which was very interesting, all about building walls through randomness - not really sure where we were going with that, but eventually shouted out some keywords, 'knowledge' and 'experience', and got the seminar back on track through utter chance. Then I stomped about in the slush for a bit, and eventually bought a scarf, a new coat and various other travelling essentials such as this sexy t-shirt. It'll be next season's must-have, and I have-it-now, making me the coolest pre-G in town.

Then we came home via my old flat where I passed the keys on at last, although the guy is still stuck in Vietnam, meaning I passed them onto the guy's girlfriend.

Got some food which turned out to be pretty much inedible due to the lack of a baking tray - they spent Xmas locked in the room of Liz Two, who gets back last out of all of us. So I spend the evening on The Internet, looking at various things, such as the :I face, demonstrated here by Liz One, the ugliest baby in the world that's not actually a Harlequin, and how we should treat babies, in direct contrast to my views on the aforementioned two.

Anyway, many hours later we ended up running around the house looking for Liz's passport, printing off flight and coach details, checking in for the flight and generally packing and going mad. After a while I realised I had no clean boxers due to Gross Incompetence, and so started my battle with the washing machine.

I shoved everything in it, closed the door and the bastard thing just flashed its red light at me. I slammed the door harder and nothing. I leant my weight against it. Nothing. I tried to kick it in hard. Nothing. I went on a Rocky-esque training run around the area to get into training for this great fight. Basically imagine me in place of the guy in this video and transport the action to the snowy streets of darkest Moss Side. Essentially - put it into this video. Any volunteers to actually film me doing one of these at any point? So I came back home and used my new found skills. Nothing. Went a bit karate kid on it. Nothing. Eventually sort of wiggled it into place and tried to slot it gently as far back as it'd go. Brains over brawn. How sly, I thought. Nothing. So I pressed a random button on the console and the flashing light stopped and the process began.

Ha. Havvat thee, washing machine.

And so, the song of the day is Rotersand – Exterminate Annihilate Destroy. CHOON BLUD.

Two thousand and ten!

So it is, so it be. That's that out the way.

I'm back at uni now in a completely dead Manchester with a fuckton of snow. With no-one at all around I've taken to being a creature of the night once more.

The only things of note to have happened so far since my last update are finding someone to take my room, which is great and means I should be moving into the new place on Sunday as long as my Dad gets the guarantor form sent back to me. If not then I'll be legally homeless for a few days, but in truth I'll just move in anyway and sleep on the sofa till I can get access to my room.

The people who have looked round since I put it on the market have been an interesting bunch. First up was a Polish guy who never really told me his name, but it sounded like Bartozc when he answered the phone to people which was pretty much the entire duration of the viewing. He loved the place and couldn't wait to move in "the next day". So that was a bit difficult but I decided that I could always leave uni a week early, so he agreed to move in, then never contacted me again. The next guy, also Polish, again without a name gave me a verbal agreement to move in the day I moved out, so I signed the contract for the place I was due to move to, and he never contacted me again either. The it was the turn of Miranda, who drove up from Leeds one morning. I had to direct her through Manchester pretty much from the motorway, although she seemed to adopt a tactic of going in the opposite direction of whatever I said. She arrived eventually and also loved it and decided she'd take it. Didn't hear a thing more from her after she left either...

Then it was the success, a girl called Dzung whose boyfriend is flying over from Vietnam this weekend. We'll have about 24 hours to sort out the contract but that should be okay... She was very easily pleased and said it'd be perfect for him. Great. I only hope he thinks so too tbh. I also had a back up, but when she arrived it turned out she wanted her boyfriend to live in the same room, which is against the terms and conditions. Aaaargh. Then they gave me a Christmas present! Proper chocolate from Austria. Lovely people, but I can't help them.

I spent most of Monday sorting out my trip to Hamburg, which I'm really looking forward to. Need to get an essay on metaphysics done before then though, by far my weakest subject. It'll happen.

This isn't really a very good blog entry, more of an update on life as I feel guilty for not having blogged in about a week.

Song of the week is a bit gay, it's Name The Pet – Get On The Bus, but I love it.

Christmas and shit.

I have a follower. I'm touched.

Christmas has been and gone and so has my last shift at work of 2009. It was a little bit terrible, was offered sex by an older man, which I had to respectfully turn down, on the grounds that I'm straight. Christmas itself was also Not That Great, for the following reasons:

The family's all split up nicely what with a feud between my mum and aunt which leads to them not being able to coexist in the same room. The same is the case with my aunt and uncle. It was also the first Christmas ever without my Grandad so that managed to loom over us. We went to my Dad's house for it and he cooked a great lunch, which was steak and vegetables. Fuck you, tradition. It was absolutely delicious.

There was a great deal of awkwardness between my Mum's husband and my Dad and no presents besides lots of chocolate being handed around, which probably made it all a lot more bearable.

When Doctor Who finished Xmas was basically over, so we came home and I spent the rest of the day in bed gorging myself on chocolate and watching episodes of Dexter, which I've become utterly obsessed with, even if the third series is a pile of shit so far.

I have a wee choice for NYE, I can either go to a crappy club with one person I know, spend it with Liz's friends in London or go to Lichfield with Liz and Ellie. I am unsure which option to pick.

Anyway, I don't have much more to say at all really, so I'll leave you with Johnny Cash – 25 Minutes To Go - Live,

Icy football and foreign beer

I'm going to give up on updating every day. My life just isn't exciting enough.

Back to London yesterday which was generally enjoyable, with a shift at work. It was Members' Night, by far the busiest night of the year, and all the mentals were in tow. I shan't go on about it too much because you really have to experience it to understand it, but despite the level of complete lunacy at the club, it's a job I'm going to be sad to stop whenever I do.

Today I woke up bright and early and put on shorts, jeans, two t-shirts and a Brentford football shirt. Then a hoodie. It was time to go and play football with people from the internet. Slipping along the pavement towards the station I looked like Pingu on E or something, but I managed to get there eventually. Predictably the tubes were being crap due to coldness on the line, and I go to Baker Street Wetherspoon's at about fifteen seconds past twelve, meaning I couldn't have the customary pre-match fry-up. Fucking gutted. Had shitty ham, egg and chips instead.

People trickled in and we found a nice full size pitch with goal posts. Stripped down to my shirt and shorts, put my boots on and began to run about desperately trying not to die of frostbite. The game ended up being Nathan, Toby, Salim, Robbie, Rich and myself against Farhan, Carl, Pat, Ian, Femi and The Question (whose name I have no idea). It started very defensively with no goals in the first twenty minutes, a first for a football meet. Perhaps because it was pretty much impossible to kick the ball. Then two French guys turned up and joined a side each. We got the one who liked to run about a lot. He was wearing a Beckham shirt and was about an inch tall. Farhan's team got the more skilful guy who was so French he probably shat frogs. 1-0 to them v. soon. Then a whole bunch of other people came along. We had no idea who they were but they played for about forty seconds till the police turfed us off the pitch. We were allowed to use the pitch as long as we didn't make use of the goals. Because that makes sense in terms of what's going to become more damaged... so the six new randoms left leaving the French dudes and we relocated, at which point I decided to move to attack as there was no one there bar Nathan. We went 3-1 up, I'm going to take credit for one assist, one interception and one nicely thought out move that I had no part in but saw all the moves for.

Fucked about a bit. Stayed 3-1 for ages as our defence martialled by Robbie was excellent. Then it was 4-3 to us and things fell apart a bit, probably because we got bored of standing still in the freezing cold, and the defenders drifted a bit. Glen, Chris and some Asian dude named after the singer Beck rolled up. Farhan got Beck, we got the internet contingent. 5-5. 5-6. 6-6. Stayed six all forever, when Zak came along and joined them as well.

Our defence stopped bothering because defending is dull in these sorts of games, so I ran about hacking the shit out of everything that moved, meaning I have a bloodied leg atm. Still put it out for half a million throw ins and corners though, and chested one of the corners perfectly into the path of The Question to let him score.

Soon went 6-9 down and Farhan called for half-time. Twat. Ian called him up on this and we soon trotted off to Spoons for refreshments.

Kopi turned up which was excellent and we had foreign beers, including one served in a Buddha. She and I lost a fortune on the quiz machine, but felt quite proud of ourselves for answering all but the Very Important Question correctly in each game.

Most of the internet then left the pub and we were left with Sophie, Nathan, Question, Samina, Carl, Toby and myself. Chatted about various fascinating things. Eventually everyone fucked off leaving Sophie and me alone to miss the last train from Earl's Court to Richmond/Ealing Broadway and help some French people get to their hotel. Bus to Hammersmith. Got food. Kicked about a bit. Missed a few more buses. She got hers eventually and I found out about twenty minutes later I had no credit on my Oyster for mine. Sent plaintive texts out and Sophie called to keep me company for a bit of the walk home. She'd got home in seconds flat, it seemed. Home an hour later.

Now in bed cuddling up to a friendly bout of cramp. <3

Oh, and song of the day: Rage Against The Machine – Killing In The Name. Why not mark the day the campaign beat the X-Factor to Xmas #1?