1 May 2007… Well peeps what a glorious day it is, looking across the city man what a view. I’ve never seen such a green city centre. I think back to London and yes there are parks in and around the centre, like Regents Park, St James Park, but essentially the place is just building after building, but this city centre is mainly green, which is just cool, but alas not many if any parks, but we do have a canal running through with many places where you can sit out and enjoy the sunshine. The weekend just gone was pretty much a weekend of chilling out and channel hopping with poor Virgin Media menus, be honest someone needs shooting over these menus. Over the weekend I caught a great advert with Mr T, for you youngsters…. Mr T was and still is an icon of the 80’s and starred a TV show called the A Team and also starred in a Rocky film as a character called Clubber Lang…. Mr T had some quality catchphrases like… “Shut Up Fool”, “Stop your Jibba Jabba” and “I Pity the fool”, anyway, I caught a snicker advert with him over the weekend, and having not seen him on TV for a while I was killing myself, you have to look out for the ad, and as a tribute to him, the quote of the week comes from the very same advert, so check out the Home page to see what the quote is.

                            

Yesterday….. what the hell is going on with this world man...? The Kate Moss collection…. At Topshop… what couldn’t she afford to place her collection anywhere else due to spending her cash on some white powder or some such thing…? I read that the first person in the queue was some 16 year old girl, with her mum… I’m sure yesterday was school day… her mum was reported to have said, she gave her daughter permission to take a day off school, one day wouldn’t hurt cos she is an A Grade student….. I wonder what reason she gave the school for taking her daughter out of the school, cos I’m sure she didn’t say “You don’t mind if I take my daughter out of school for the day, because we want to head down to London to start queuing at Topshop for 1230pm so we can be the first in the queue to be allowed into Topshop at 1700hrs and be given 20 minutes shopping time”…. Cos if she had asked that I’m sure the school would have said no. Yep you read correctly, they were only given 20 minutes shopping time, then they had to leave the store…. So people queued for 5+ hours to do 20 minutes worth of shopping…. Though most attached men have to do that on a payday Saturday when their partner wants to go shopping and goes to the every shop in town then buys the first dress she tried on……….. Oh the picture above of the dress is a sample of the Kate Moss Collection…. All I’m saying is huuuuummmm.

Last night was 10 Pin bowling…and I had a good day, with a great score of 187 first game, but then reality came and I knocked in a 129, but I picked it up a little and scored a 135 in the third game we pulled off a good draw. I got talking with the opposing team and the female was a really nice person, we’ll call her SSH for the blog purpose, she was telling me that she was made redundant by her current job so was glad she was bowling to get rid of her anger. She’s into procurement, so if anyone has a job floating out there holla me and I’ll pop you her CV which she sent to me last night.

Today has been pretty chilled, had a great day in the office, and this evening my me day was brill caught CSI which was really good, but I’m a little gutted about how they got rid of Keppler the very same week Grissom comes back, I’m sure they could have written him into the series, it was pretty good with him on board. Also caught a program about Angels and Demons, but I’ll discuss that next time as got a bit to say on that. So catch yawl later peeps and remember Peace Unity Love and Having Fun to yawl…..

4th May 2007… Right peeps how you all doing? The other day I mentioned Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. On Channel Five just before CSI they showed an hour show about Angels and Demons and were interviewing historical people and what was getting me was that these people are so boring and up themselves about their chosen subject (apart from one dude). These people were getting so angry with Dan Brown saying he delusions of grandeur and was a fool because he was making out that his book was fact, when actually he had said it was based a fact, which in my books (sorry for pun) means there are facts in the book that inspired him to right a fictional story. The premise of Angels and Demons I gathered from this show is that a group of people set out to destroy the Catholic Church by bringing down the Vatican literally, and the story follows Dr Langdon (character from the Da Vinci Code… though the book is set before Da Vinci Code) in his attempt to save the church. But the one expert who I thought was cool summed it all up right at the end… when they were asked to sum up Angels and Demons the book… all except him said “That Dan Brown was a heretic and had no scruples for distorting the facts for financial gain… the one guy just said… “Angels and Demons, it is a great work of fiction, read it and enjoy, it’s a great read”

The rest of the week so far has been pretty good, on Wednesday I went to a J D Weatherspoons to try out their guest beers. I start out with Mr Wendell and en-route we kinda got waylaid and ended up in a bar called Ipanema on Broad Street… it likes to think of itself as the home of Salsa in Birmingham, on a Thursday they hold a Salsa night, from 8 – 10 they hold Salsa lessons then from 10 – 2 they do their thing, but we went in on a Wednesday… let’s just say we won’t be going back… Mr Wendell bought 2 pints of Peroni and it came too….. £7.60…. yes £7.60… that £3.80 a pint…and on top of that the beer wasn’t even cold… we took out time drink those babies dude, as we savour the glass they had been served in, and a very nice glass too… didn’t quite fit in my bag at those prices they should be giving glasses away dude. We eventually got to the J D destination and in there I tried two half pints of guest beers….. arrrrgh so glad I’m a cider and lager drinker…. In the JD pub we hooked up with T W House and The Mag, we had a couple there. Mr Wendell had to shoot off as Wednesday is his chip night and whilst we were in Ipanema Mrs Wendell had given him a call and no doubt gentle nudge that he better be home at a decent time or his chips would be in the dog….

Yesterday was a bit of a landmark day, since joining the gym www.virginactive.co.uk I had promised myself that I would try at least one day a week to get to the gym twice in the day, well I did yesterday… at lunchtime I went for a swim, knocked out 400 metre (which is good for me when you consider 8 weeks ago I could just about managed 25 metres) then in the evening I did 30 mins on the bike level 7 and 30 mins on the cross trainer level 7… I felt good afterwards. Then I went to see Curse of the Golden Flower, review is here (http://www.musicwithtc.co.uk/28.html) on the way home got a message from an old pal who we’ll call VdaC for the purposes of the blog, and that brighten my day no end, and was made even brighter as had a brief text convo with the lass from Leeds I mentioned recently. Gym must have really taken it outta me as I feel asleep on the train and when I got home went straight to bed which must be a first.

Today has been pretty quiet in the office, I’ve been doing quite a bit of web work for out test system and I really enjoyed that and I made the gym at lunchtime, and did 25 mins on the bike… the plan is after I finish updating the site, I’m heading to the gym, watch this space I’ll let you know if I make it.

8th May 2007… What a weekend of major chill out zone. I made it to the gym www.virginactive.co.uk  on Friday night for second time of the day and did a bit of work out on the bike and cross trainer, I headed home and just chilled, that said I was in bed pretty soon after getting in.

Saturday I got up pretty early and headed to my town’s Virgin Active gym…. And I must say I was very very disappointed by the standard of the gym and the equipment, yes they may sponsor me to a degree but they really need to sort out this particular gym, compared to the Birmingham gym the machines were very very poor quality, get size, more than enough pieces, great spa area and wonderful café and library area, but the machines just seemed beaten up. I’ll use that gym again but only if I can’t get to Birmingham for three or more days.

In the afternoon I popped round to a pal’s house and we just sat around chatting, drinking and he was showing me the delights of the X-Box 360, and I was very impressed by the media centre and all that you could do with it. The graphics were pretty cool too. The walk home was interesting, I was quite sober, but seeing the drunkards trying to get from the pub to the club was amusing to say the least. Packs of girls walking down the street obviously on a hen night singing… sorry wailing some track that didn’t even make the top 30 out of tune and at the top of their voices… packs of blokes on stag dos dragging there knuckles on the pavement, dribbling and trying to attract the singing girls attention….

Sunday morning wasn’t a good start, I’d made the error of not turning off my daily alarm, so at 0630 I woke up with a start to beginning rift of “Stop that crazy thing” by Coldcut…. and was thus wide awake so what to do and a major lie in day…. Well I went online and sent some messages to various people seeing how they were, though they were probably all asleep at that time... after a bit of that I went to watch Match of the Day, but discovered that wasn’t on till 9.30am, instead was MotoGP presented by Suzi Perry… but when the show started it wasn’t the lush Suzi but some old dude, apparently Suzi was tucked up in bed with flu…. So reverted to washing the dishes that I’d been putting off since Wednesday… well at least Wednesday… Once that was done, I played a bit of PS2, then I headed to the cinema to watch Spiderman, review will be on site soon… in short a very entertaining film…. In the afternoon I cooked a ruby for consummation later in the day and then I just channel hopped.

                        

Sky Action/Thriller Channel was doing a Comic Book Hero weekend, so I watch The Phantom (http://www.kingfeatures.com/features/comics/phantom/about.htm), which was again entertaining, though I wasn’t upset that I’d missed it in the cinema all those years ago when it came out. One thing I did watch and found very amusing was A Town Called Eureka (http://www.scifiuk.com/eureka/) , the Sci-Fi channel was showing the first five episodes back to back, I would def say if you can get plugged into it, it reminded me of Twin Peaks the series, which was aired a few years back. I had a really good convo with MSN too.

Monday was pretty much a chill out day, had planned to go to the dire gym in my town but no buses were running out there…. Unfortunately….. not… so it was finish watching Eureka and then chilled a bit. I had a chat with Leeds Lass before heading to a mate's for dinner and some gaming and drinking. Whilst at my mates we plugged in to Channel Five which was showing a program called Hidden Lives: Obedient Wives (http://www.tvthrong.co.uk/documentary/documentary-on-five-obedient-wives-hidden-lives-monday-may-7)  …. what the hell… it was a documentary about women who had decided to become surrendered wives… so basically they gave up their choice to make choices and decisions and all that was done for them by their husbands…. Apparently there is some book on the subject… I was pretty shocked, especially the wife who when they were going out to eat. Let her husband pick her outfit and also when they got to the restaurant actually picked what she was gonna eat…. Did anyone else see this show, feel free to send me your views, if I get enough I’ll open up a debate… I did text a pal of mine about it and he replied with… “The wife isn’t watching it as she’s busy doing the ironing” …. a comment which did tickle me.

Well folks in the last week of the Premiership, what will people do with their spare time, guys will have to make up to their missus’ for the nights in over the last nine months, females on all the dating sites and stop pretending to like football just to get a date and the BBC may employ a few more female commentators…. Did anyone see that Match of the Day where they showed off their female football commentator…. I’m not saying women can’t commentate on football, but this one didn’t exactly ooze personality… she was no Brian Moore and he died long ago… I feel some work is needed… and you’re right I could not have done better, but hey everyone complains about the England manager and none of them could do better.

10th May 2007… Well just got back to the office after watching Next, the latest film from Nicholas Cage, and I have to say was am sitting here really disappointed with the film, but I’ll post a review hopefully by Saturday morning.

Well what has been happening in Camstar’s world? First things first, Badgrannies is back in their brand new stall… what and who is Badgrannies, well it’s the best eatery in Birmingham as far as I’m concern… well not quite but it’s up there. On the Fiveways Roundabout there are two fast food stalls one is your usual Burger and sandwiches stall and the other is a West Indian Cuisine place, this is Badgrannies, the food is home cooked and traditionally West Indian and to boot it is very very cheap, so get yourself over there and tell DJ TC sent ya.

Tuesday was my ‘me’ night which was pretty cool, just chilled at home and channel hopped and started to sort out the Myspace site I had got back in August last year, the plan is to use the Myspace site to archive my Blog, Pictures and reviews and also to put on videos and to also have forums as I hope to get a bit of a community going, but at the end of the day I actually do this whole site and blog thing to put my thoughts out there, but if it wasn’t for you guys and some of the feedback I get the site would not be as big as it is, so don’t go walking off the myspace keep coming here as this will still be the main and up to date site.

Wednesday, was pretty chilled too, though did get some great news, a book I’ve been keeping my eye out for, I got an announcement saying it is due for release May 11th, that is tomorrow kids.. the book is called “Fallen Heroes” and is being self published by the author Mr Barry Nugent and really great and exciting writer, this book is a must buy, trust me, I should get the link to the website where it is being sold, I’ll put the link on Hot News link on the home page. Also I started my studying for a Microsoft Administration qualification, I was studying Decimals, Binary and Hexadecimals… all very interesting, I think I got my head around it all…. Though I fell asleep with my head in a book.

One thing that kinda amused me, well to a degree. But let me set the scene. You’ve been there, you call your customer service department and the person answering the phone has a very heavy foreign accent, this usually annoys people, but not me, because the last day job I had did a massive change in the way we did our software testing, they called it Globally Sourcing Work, it all started when they decided to relocate 750+ jobs from the U S to India then they spread that ethos across the company globally, a lot of people I know lost their jobs, and now so many companies are doing and paying the local workers pittance and also they get these local people to sign 18 month contracts and as the Indian people are one of the very few nations where the working class have one major thing of value... their word. They will stay loyal to the contract. Right so with so many big companies coming into India, you would think that they would realise the local economy would be affected, it seems many companies have set themselves a healthy profit margin of 25%+ between labour cost and actual labour payment. The thing I found funny today was that is has come to light that yes with all these companies in town the Rupee as appreciated against the $ by 10%... which essentially is eating into these large companies profits, so they may well have to charge clients more money to provide the same service whilst keeping the same profit, that will teach them for the exploitation they are doing, the only thing is that they will charge us their clients the extra cost, bunch of fuckers.

Anyway people I’ll check out now, so Peace, Unity, Love and Having Fun to yawl….

15 May 2007… What a weekend, never made the gym www.virginactive.co.uk  on Friday instead spent Friday night on the phone till 4am... had to be up Saturday for Virgin Media who were coming to install my long awaited V+ (Four months of waiting) they were due to turn up between 8 – 12, as I said were due to turn up at that time....At Midday when they hadn’t arrived I was on that phone got some dude who informed me that they never had an appointment for me on record…. that was the worse thing he could have said, I was cussing and telling him about himself, like his' to blame for the inept performance of his work colleagues. 10 minutes into this cussing session a white van pulled up outside my house and out steps a guy wearing a Virgin Media top… I just hung up…. yep that’s right I didn’t even say good-bye. .... took them 30 mins to install it all. Then I had to go get shopping... got home about 1430.... fell asleep till 1930 on the sofa, must have been that talking on the phone till the early hours, got up, played around a bit on the V+ actually read the instructions…. and what a device, the thing is kicking it. I would say it is a must have. People have said to me what is V+, have you heard of Sky+… well V+ is the Virgin Media version… if you haven’t then V+ / Sky+ is a Personal Video Recorder (PVR) which records programs digitally onto a Hard Drive… It has your Sky or Virgin Cable TV tuner installed in the box so it essentially replaces your set top box and video recorder... you can buy PVR’s that plug into Freeview. With this box you can record (in the case V+) two programmes whilst you watch a third, my box has up to 80 hours of TV it can record.. also you can pause any show your watching and rewind, fast forward it… for example on the Sunday just as the build up to the Man U game started I felt the need to make lunch, late iknow but there you go, so I hit pause, prepped adn cooked a stir fry, took about 15 minutes I sat down to eat and I hit play and the program continued where I’d paused it, when I got to the adverts I fast forwarded by the time the game started I had caught up with the live broadcast so I never missed a thing. Also you can do series record, so I’ve set the box to record Heroes which is aired on Monday nights, also CSI NYC and CSI LV… so I don’t have to worry about setting the video each week and the PVR has an 8 day program guide so you can set it to record a show by the push of a button, none of the trying to find space on a tape etc etc…

Sunday was pretty much a day of being a recluse, as I said above I plugged into the Man United game and sorted out some Pics for the website which have been uploaded, there are some from hooking up with Mr G in London the other week and some from T’s birthday BBQ which was pretty cool. You might remember me mentioning a few weeks back about D7 getting that “I’m off to bed and you WILL be coming with me” look from his missus, there is a pic of him so do have a gander.

Monday was not a good day at all….Well apart from the ATM I used first thing in the morning crashing whilst my card was in it, thus retaining the card and therefore my card will be destroyed as that is bank protocol, apparently, when their not leaving people details outside in the street or sending the wrong information to wrong people,.... and with 5 – 7 days before I get my new card….. Monday was made better when Mr B told me a funny story... it went as follows… “There’s a bird here whose husband has just been on a stag do (to Benidorm of all places). Apparently, there were a few other stag dos out there. One of the do’s had dressed up as Smurfs, and another bunch had gone as oompa loompas (from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). Anyway, they were from towns not too far away from each other, and local rivalries took over – and apparently a brawl broke out between the two stag do’s.” and as Mr B rightly said “Can you imagine walking out of a nightclub and seeing 15 smurfs beating up 10 Oompa Loompas? You’d have thought your drink had been spiked….” I’ve put a picture on the website gallery of the smurfs getting down with Elvis before the brawl occurred….

18th May 2007… Well it’s been a couple hectic days of nothing much really, strange I know. Tuesday night I went to a J D Weatherspoons to partake of the Steak Dinner that all their public houses do, The Mag joined me and it was pretty cool. The steak was good, the company was great and the Perry was rather strong… I had two bottles of the stuff and it felt like someone was slamming my head with a Smart Car door…. Why a Smart Car… hey why not. Smart Car Roadster is my fave car, if I ever learn to drive I want to get a Smart Car, but Mr W seems to think I won’t fit in one…. Maybe one day we’ll find out.

Wednesday work was pretty chilled though. The morning was a little rough getting up so early after those bottles of Perry, didn’t quite make the gym www.virginactive.co.uk as had to do stuff in the office, but hey made it in the evening, when I got home my landline had been fixed as it was ringing and my mate Wren was on the other end… we had a good old chinwag which was cool, we were talking costumes for a forthcoming Fancy Dress 60’s party…. I’m in dilemma as who to go as... I was thinking Malcolm X http://www.malcolm-x.org/bio.htm , Martin Luther King Jnr http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-bio.html or a member of the Black Panther Party http://www.marxists.org/history/usa/workers/black-panthers and not forgetting I could go as a Klu Klux Klan member, but after talking to a few of the lads a good mate said the following… “KKK...I wouldn't personally advice that one. That might have worked in Bad Boys II but not sure you would pull it off in a party in London. Martin Luther King isn't really a standout outfit. You'd basically be in a suit and tie. Malcolm X had a certain hair style which along with his glasses was his trademark. That leaves a Black Panther member as the best option. It gives you more of a fancy dress look. Black glove, black trousers and roll neck and a black leather jacket with black sun glasses and a black beret. If you want to mix it up you can swap the black roll neck for an African Print top. That would be my choice from your list.”…So I’m going for the BPP member, job done….

Thursday, man I had a trauma I made the gym but forgot a vital bit of kit, I was distressed… I omitted to pack my Bandana as supplied by www.bandanashop.com it wasn’t good, when I was on the cross-trainer 26 minutes into the cross-trainer workout I was near enough drinking sweat… as you can see unlike you ladies…I don’t “Glow” or “Perspire” I sweat like a dog…. Funny thing happened whilst getting showered for a journey home… some middle aged dude comes out the shower with his towel wrapped round him… he walks up to the mirror and picks up both hair dryers.... a little unusual as most people would just use one but acceptable, apart form the fact the dude had a four strand comb over… you know what I mean by a comb over right, the man was bald, a mirror slap head accept four strands of hair, combed over this scalp to give him the illusion he had hair… anyway he uses both hair dryers to dry the wisp of hair he had from all angles… when he was done he then spins both hair dryers in his then hold them up and blows the ends as if they were smoking guns (like a gunslinger in a movie)…. Spins them again and slams them down into their holders… I was hurting trying to keep my laughter in as were about five or six other people in the changing room who had seem him doing this…. Class….

Today has been quite good, we got a F A Cup sweepstake going on and plenty of cakes going round…. All the gym work gone to waste. Well tonight I’m on the tap with peeps from work, we are celebrating T W House’s 40th… it is likely to get messy… I’ve been using it as an excuse to eat more than I should, cos I’m “Lining my stomach” …. that old chestnut…. Anyway folks have yourself a merry little weekend and we’ll touch base either Sunday or Monday…. By the way…. V+…… I’m Loving It….

21st May 2007… Well it’s mild Monday in Birmingham and I’ve heard the obligatory emergency vehicle siren so my day is complete. I’ve been working in Birmingham for a just over a year now, and a day has not gone by without me hearing an emergency siren in both the morning and the afternoon… that’s every single day I’ve been in Birmingham and I’m guessing weekends there are a fair few more… but I guess that happens in every major city centre… Friday not was an excellent night out, I hit Old Orleans on Broad Street with work colleagues, it was T W House’s 40th birthday and when he wasn’t being dragged off to the ladies by an ex-employee he seemed to always have a beer in his hand, which is how it should be. There were a few faces out that don’t normally come out, goes to show how much respect T W House commands in our office, his a top guy and his sister lives in the same town as me so we will be blessed with is presence bank holiday weekend. I made the last train just, but had the munchies and had to hit the BP Garage and get some bacon and rolls in, got home and slapped them on the Lean Mean Grilling Machine… think I had about 4 rolls…. Gannett I know…. .

Saturday was pretty much a chilled day, my pal Grovey was meant to come and spend the weekend with me but alas due to personal matter she never made it which was real shame as I ain’t seen her in ages, but the good thing was I got to have quality time alone catching up with V+, sorry to all those people who I had told I was busy but when I became un-busy I never told ya… and before you start having a go saying I lied… none of you asked me directly if I still had company you only asked how my weekend was… and if you check my replies you’ll see I replied “My weekend is chilled” which it was…. ;-) and if you get the hump about…. all I’m gonna say is get a fucking life…. Man I love V+ though I’m taping too much and haven’t got enough time to catch up, so looking forward to the week off I’m about to have, but that said I’m doing stuff most days and nights so it’s still gonna be awkward to catch up, but with the Bank Holiday weekend I’m sure I will.

Sunday I went to see The Magicians with my man DD, and he brought along his neighbour….. God damn man… what an absolute stunner, we’ll call her FF for now….. the second F standing for “Fit”…. I got to get her to come to my BBQ in August… see if she’s got any mates….. that should get all my home boys suddenly making an appearance to the annual BBQ….as for the film, I’ll try and get a review on site in the next couple of days… After the film we went to a new… ish restaurant which is basically a Buffet place but they do cuisine from India Spain, Italy, China and Japan... the food was lovely, it was cheap and very very filling, I’m def gonna check it out again, and I do believe DD and FF had a good time too, it’s a great place to eat esp if in a group as it would cater for all tastes, I must do a review along with that promised Nandos review too. Sunday was pretty much more chilling and it got to stage I had to hit the sack early for me and slept right through apart from my mobile provider deciding it would be a great idea to hold all my messages from the day and send them through all in one go at what seemed like some ungodly hour….. Muppets…

Today not done much apart from gloat about having a week off from Wednesday and also about the Wine Fair I’m going to in London on Thursday…. Free Wine Fair…. Starts at 9.30… bit early for me to be supping White Port… but hey someone has got to do it haven’t they? I’ll be off to bowling alley soon as it’s a single competition night so fingers crossed for me that I knock in a descent score though I have not actually bowled for three weeks now, so I’m def gonna be a little rusty.

Hey a big shout goes out to my man Monts... who some of you might remember did that program on Channel 4 about The Last Slave http://www.contactmusic.com/new/home.nsf/webpages/thelastslavex20x02x07 and is also 50% of our friends The Geek Syndicate… http://www.podcastingnews.com/details/geeksyndicate.libsyn.com/rss/view.htm I spotted him on MTVBase in a music video of a song by some dude called Example… http://www.mtv.co.uk/overdrive/musicvids/id/33102  it’s an old track as in it was made in February but it's the first time I’ve seen it not a bad tune but Monts puts in a great appearance shades of Wyclef Jean meets Will I Am… cool man, keep it up Monts, we love you man….

29th May 2007…Oh people it ahs been a week at least since I touched base with yawl and what the hell has been happening… well firstly I want to say officially Matalan is a place to shop. I caught an episode of the Clothes Show 2 on my V+ box, and in the section where they get a person to dress for their shape they had this 6ft bird sporting a pair of Matalan sandals… so it’s a high street of note worth going too apparently… and I have to say I’ve bought quite a few items from there in the past so along with them you should shop at my sponsors www.bandanashop.com who supply my head gear, I need to contact them to see if they got an metallic bandanas in, as metallic is the in theme this year trust me…..
Last week Tuesday I had a date with Charls for Leeds, very nice lady, though a little mad which was good we had a great time having a few beers at the mailbox and ate at Zizi where we had good food. We spent about 4 hours together and we got on quite well. I liked her, but as I told her I’m not sure I could cope with the trek from Northampton to Leeds every weekend or even every other weekend. My profile on Soulmates did state my boundaries of London to Birmingham… Leeds is outside that brief, but as I said she is a personable lass and doesn’t have a problem communicating. All you who know me know that I like lots of me time and this is an issue Charls and I have discussed, I’m just not used to having to tell someone everything I am doing when all I’m doing is chilling out or up dating my website, after all I don’t even talk to my brother weekly and I love him more than anything else in the world.
Wednesday was my first day off from work for the next 7 – 8 days cooooooool… in the end what to do when everyone else is at work… so I thought I’d head to Corby to hook up with my mate…. Nickname is Nina as met her a web a while ago and we’ve kept in touch and she has been going through a bad time with her estranged hubby and she tried an OD of Paracetamol so I thought I’d actually go and see how she was doing, and she was on form. We went for a coffee or two and had lunch at a pub which was cool. We had a great chinwag, despite being in Corby… My man the Captain comes form Corby so it has produced a great product in him, but Corby… sorry man... but there is nothing to do there, to be frank I wouldn’t have stayed so long if I hadn’t been meeting a good pal in Nina. I’ve been to Corby before and that was to have a coffee and lunch with the Captain… not much going on in Corby except Avon Cosmetics….
Thursday was pretty chilled…. Actually that’s a lie it ended being quite active. I headed to the International London Wine Trade Fair, a free event to those involved in the Off and On Trade, a chance to taste many many new new wines and also spirits and anything else to do with the drinks trade, I love going to this event, it actually runs for 3 days but I normally only just go for the last day as often you walk away with a few free bottles and/or get some cheap deals… and this year was no different. After the wine fair I went to Camden Town to hook up with Pat Sharp, The Faceman, Monts and Mr G for a few beers, which was very entertaining. Mr G and I stayed the longest and in the end we went to Chiccos on Camden High Street for some food… and I had my usual Calzone I end up having at any good Italian joint, the meal was very until the end. Now they have on the opening hours sheet that they close at 11pm… so at 1030, Mr G and I are just sitting there chatting and staff are putting the seats up on the table, then one of the staff comes over to us and asks us to leave. It was 2245... I was gonna cuss but decided just not to leave the blue lady tip I was thinking of leaving, they can fuck right off. What is the pint of saying you close at 2300 then 15 minutes before that time you are asking people to leave, bunch of wankers. I won’t be rushing back there. Yes the food was good but hey customer service dudes. I recall a story that B told me about when he and a few mates went out for his birthday for a meal at Garfunkels about 15 years ago. He said it was about 1130 and they were still in the zone in terms of drinking and chatting and they suddenly looked around the restaurant and all the chairs were up on the tables and the staff were sitting around in their coats ready to go home…. Difference here was the staff didn’t come up to them and ask them to leave…. The result, we still go to Garfunkels every now and then. Mr G and I headed out I got to the train station and headed homeward, we got about one stop form my home stop to be told we had to go by coach, though I did know this was due to happen. Anyway we’re on the bus home, I’m sitting right at the front and suddenly this bird comes up to the driver and asks him to stop cos she’s gonna be sick… she promptly goes outside and chucks up.. we sit around for about 10 mins while she sorts herself out, in the end she gets back on the coach and turns to her mates whilst looking at me and says “You know I’ll feel a lot better if I can sit at the front and see where I’m going” … carries on at me like to say can I have your seat…. I just looked at her and raised my eyebrow in that Mr Spock fashion... in the end she walks away. You might think I’m a toss pot for not giving her my seat. By why should I… she went out drinking with her mates, and the fact she was on the same train as me I assume she knew she’d have to get a coach for the last leg… so why drink to the stage where you were gonna be sick on a moving coach…. Go on, fuck off and suffer fool….
The rest of my time off I’ll just put in summary as it was kinda long and I’m sure you want to end this…. So Friday I essentially chilled at home though went for an eye check up, my man Lord Soth turned up at mine around 6ish, where we cracked open the first can of the night… and we plugged into Star Trek the original series as they are showing it on Sci Fi Channel at 1pm everyday and I V+ it… great viewing… you got to……. Love….JamesTKirk…. the way he….. stops….. his speech…. In short spurts…. Thenspeedsupandsaysit….. all… in one….. breath…… quality TV man…. Lord Soth was in my town to watch New Zealand All Blacks play the Canada in a friendly rugby game… I think the final score was 54+ to 18…. A little one sided I feel, also joining Lord Soth at the game was Pat Sharp and his missus Betty Boo along with her play The Mare…. Who is far from a Mare…. Yet another top drawer bird comes into The Camstar’s world. After the game we all headed into town along with Ju, B and Monts, it was like old times at The Buzz Bar on Panton Street…. It was really fun night and I even got set upon by some bird who recognized me from my DJ days at Chicago Rock Café… picture will be on site soon. After the drinking we came back to Cam’s Boom Boom Room where the bar got a caning…..
Saturday morning I was up to make Brekkie for everyone who had crashed over, with Lord Soth and Pat Sharp going head to head on Fifa 06… think Lord Soth got a whooping… Betty and Mare never surfaced till about Midday….. After their departure I had to sort myself for the next guest… it was Fi Fi’s 40th birthday party and it was a 60’s theme, I went as a Black Panther Party member and my mate Wren, she went in a Micro Multi coloured mini with knee length white boots and she wasn’t the only one in Knee Length Whites, there were a few of those pairs of boots floating around including the birthday girl. Pics will be on the site soon. It was a mad very very binge drink fest… a true rendition of the summer of love. What made it better was the fact everyone who turn up dressed up so that was cool. The DJ was…. Hummmm ok I guest, but didn’t play many tracks from the 60’s.
Sunday was much the same as Saturday in that I was up to make Brekkie… but once the guests were gone I chilled in front of V+… well after I managed to dig up an old novel I had been planning to writing. After being inspired by the author of Fallen Heroes – Barry Nugent (http://stores.lulu.com/fallenheroes). And truth be known I chilled much the same on Monday and Tuesday so not much to add there…. So people Peace, Unity, Love and Having Fun to yawl….. I def won’t leave it so long next time… even I was drifting whilst typing this up, hence the summary at the end….

1st June 2007… This weekend I’m heading to Gloucester to spend some time with Wren who came down for the fancy dress do last weekend and to see her new house she’s been raving about, to facilitate this weekender I bought my train tickets yesterday evening, which brings me on to the question of the moment…. Can someone please tell me why people who are travelling by train on a journey they don’t usually do decide that when they go to buy the ticket they have done no research at all about the journey. I went to the ticket office and the four people in front of me were just clueless, each of them took about 10 mins to buy a ticket, I stroll up and because I’d done some research I bought my ticket within 90 seconds or less, and all it took was a visit to www.thetrainline.co.uk so for all you people who don’t use the train that often, make a note of this website, it annoying for us seasoned public transport travellers, it’s the equivalent to you drivers of a “Sunday Driver”….
Yesterday I never really got up to much, had to go to the Doc’s a check up on my knee, he gave me another course of tabs and told me to take it easy on the exercise and no high impact stuff, I got home and had a chat with Wren to finalise the Gloucester details, then it was chow down time and I ordered in. My local pizza place does a really great to share starter called a Tex Mex... it consists of Mozzarella Sticks, Bread Jalapeño Peppers with Sour Cream, Chicken Nuggets and Potato wedges…. Mmmmm nice and healthy….. not, but it’s really and it even fills me, so def value for money. I plugged into Virgin Media Catch up TV and watch Dr. Who…. Really good two parter… I’m warming to Virgin Media... still think there customer service is poor though.
Today has kinda been ok, but I did have to break the news to Charls (again) that distance was gonna be an issue and it would be best if we pursued just a friendship…. It didn’t go down too well… the line “You knew where I lived before we started talking”…. Which is true, but that said my profile on Soulmates did state I was only really looking for a person who lived along the Birmingham to London (via Coventry, Rugby, Northampton, Milton Keynes) train line….. she lives in Leeds……. but I thought I’d be polite and give her a call and we got on really well, thing is she is a really nice lass and the fact I was willing to go on a date with her is testament to that… but from day one I had always told her distance was gonna be an issue, but maybe I’m being stubborn but as much I as do like her, I really wasn’t prepared to make a commitment to travel up to Leeds on a regular basis so we could have a relationship… I’m a chilled kinda person and just don’t fancy sitting on a train every other weekend for 3hrs + and then facing engineering works on a Sunday getting home, I would not have been in a good mood and it would have just been unfair on us both, hopefully one day she’ll see that and maybe we can communicate in the future. Even if I could drive it would have been the same outcome. So I’d like to give Charls a massive shout out and say sorry babe and hope you fully understand, and I’m glad we met and remember what they say in New York…. “You know my friend, you never know….” Anyway folks best dash as got to get the train to Gloucester and after the poor service on the trains this week so far, plenty of leeway is needed… so Peace, Unity, Love and Having Fun to yawl…. touch base Sunday probably…. I might even take pics of Gloucester….

4th June 2007… What a glorious weekend it has to be said, well despite the shocking train journey the poor film and prices at the nightclub…. But all in all, a great weekend. I had volunteered to help move the furniture at Wren’s now home, but it looked so good in the conservatory it just stayed there for another weekend, after all the sunshine was absolutely brilliant. Friday caught the Central Train to my destination station and I should have known that being Central Trains it was gonna be a poor poor journey, the train departed at 1835… 5 minutes late and we should have pulled in at 1923… but instead we pulled in at 2015ishm which I guess was annoying but no point in making a major fuss and spoiling your weekend, so I’ve sent them an email of complaint to request a refund, watch this space and I’ll let you know what they say….. though I suspect I know the answer already. After getting picked up at the station and we were back at the house we decided not to hit the cinema that night to watch Pirates, instead we sat outside and ate supper alfresco… two bottles of wine later and numerous Rum and Vodkas we were pretty pissed and it was just nice to chill and enjoy a some what pleasant night.

Saturday we up for 10ish, I knocked Brekkie for all, bacon sarnies all round…. here’s an interesting fact… fried bacon tastes better than grilled…. By a long long way, twas then a chilled morning, we decided to head in the Cheltenham to go watch Pirates….we did some shopping en-route the only downside of the afternoon was the quality of the Pirates film, they didn’t even show any trailers….. but I’ll put a review on the website later. The saving grace for Cheltenham is that they got a Nandos…. More shopping was done en-route back to Wren’s pad as we’d decided we’d hit the town, and she felt that she needed a new outfit…. And a very nice outfit she did buy costing £15, lesson learned ladies you don’t need to be spending £’000 to make yourself look good. The one bit that did amuse me was the saga of Wren saying she had no shoes to wear with her outfit, but when we got back she trawled out about 6 pairs of shoes some she’d only ever worn once. We sat around in the garden enjoying the sunshine of a pleasant evening. That was after having alfresco and taking Dom out to get some air. We headed to Kacy’s in Gloucester at about 2250 which was a good idea, at the end of the day why pay the earth for drinks in a pub when you can have your own drinks at home first. We also played name that tune. Wren got out her old classic 80’s and before albums and she’d a track which had to be guessed before the chorus started. Kacy’s on a Saturday night, entry was £4 and they let me in wearing my black bandana, supplied by www.bandanashop.com …. but that hope of a reasonably cheap night was shot to hell when I purchased a Vodka and Orange at the tidy sum of £6.10….”This is Gloucester,” I told the barman, “not London, that’s a little steep isn’t it?” to which he shrugged his shoulders and apologised… at least he didn’t give my change on a small silver dish….. why do venues do that… their a bar, their service is to serve you drinks, for which they charge the earth, then they give £8 worth of change in coins and small denominations and put on a small silver dish expecting you to tip them for the poor service they are giving you cos they have two people on the bar serving a room that hold 300 people. You know I want do when they do that… I stand there and leave the change on the silver dish, then when spot the dish is still there and full of change, I pick it up just as they reach for it and I poor the change into my hand, pick up my drinks and walk away. I shall do a small review of Kacy’s… or was it called Lanson’s….. shall try and post it on my site this week. It was a good night all in all... man I ain’t danced so hard of ages…. To be honest we were tired, think the late night Friday and early Saturday along with the drink and heat wiped us out; we left the club an hour before closing and essentially hit the sack once we got back to the house.

Sunday, we kinda surreal as we were up and having Brekkie before 8am, again in the wonderful conservatory and in glorious sunshine, I even went to the shop to get the Sunday papers. Sunday morning was literally spent just sitting around chilling; not much talking was done to be honest. The train home was vastly different from Friday, it left late as usual... it’s Central Trains you don’t expect it to leave on time do you? But it was a smooth journey to New Street and the train home was pretty smooth too. Sunday evening I didn’t really do much constructive apart from ironing shirts and using some fresh veg to make a home made Tomato and Mushroom sauce for pasta… it turned out quite well too. Gloucester is a nice place, would def go there again, might even offer to house sit for Wren whenever she and her family go off on holiday….

Anyway folks, bowling tonight so Peace, Unity, Love and Having Fun to yawl…

7th June 2007…Well yesterday was a good day, as I was on a Web Design course all day so that was pretty chilled, though a little pretentious. Monday evening as you know I bowled, but my partner in crime “Digits” was off ill so I had to bowl with a blind, whenever this happens you have to at least not get battered 8 – 0, so the first game I was fully focussed and I guess it paid off. I scored 169 and the total pin count (which includes my handicap) along with my blind was 399… the opponents scored 398... so I beat them by one, but the next two games I only scored 139 and 122 (not including handicap) they played better than me for those two games, so the final score was 6 – 2, so no whitewash.
Tuesday I awoke to the national uproar over the new London Olympics 2012 logo, which quite frankly looks poor and this look is made worse when you find out it cost £400,000 to commission it’s design. Now I’m all for non conventional, but please £400,000 for what essentially are the letters used for that old Saturday programme TISWAS… I could have knocked up an Olympic logo in about 10 minutes and I would have only charged them for two tickets to the last day of the Olympics. In fact I’m gonna design a little something something and put it in the picture gallery as my unofficial Olympic logo… In the evening it was miller time in The Camstar household, so V+ got a hammering as did the PS2 and I had pencilled in to start sorting out the Myspace site but never got round to it. One thing I did do was enter The Clothes Show design a print competition; I used one of the logos I have in my shop. The design is for First Friday and the logo is available on hats, T-Shirts, Cups and Mousemats…. here is a link to my shop but I am in throes of designing the 2007/08 logo designs….
Last night on the train home I encountered three stunning Irish birds… actually make that two as the third one kept bringing up flem and then swilling it her mouth and swallowing it… I guess at least she didn’t flob it on the train floor… anyway, these three birds seem articulate enough as they chit chat, then the train pulled out and then they decided to take turns in reading the Metro….. out loud…. I was embarrassed for them, they literally could not string a sentence together, and they must have been aged 20ish…. That’s not a good situation, especially when we got to Coventry… there is a sign made of flowers and it says “Welcome to Coventry” …. Between them they could only manage the word ….. ‘to’ …. it was such a shame cos they seemed like really nice lasses… but me thinks they could well have been part of the travelling community. When we pulled in the destination station, some dude who had been sitting near us, strolls over the birds and says “Where is your accent from?” to which they tell him Northern Ireland, he then tells them he’d never heard that accent before, to which they ask him where he was from…. To which he replies in his clearly to me Birmingham accent…. “I’m from Sri Lanka” ….. then came the quote of the week for me….. said by the eldest looking of the three girls……..

“Sri Lanka…… which part of England is in…?”

I promptly sped up trying not to make contact with the dude as realisation hit him, that these birds he was clearly hitting on were not the brightest bulbs in the box… when I got out the station I glanced back the hat the dude had been wearing was on the head of one of these birds…. So I guess he pulled….

Well folks, better crack on with my day, got lots to do, people to see, things to design, website to create for day job and film reviews to write, also need to find time to hit the gym… www.virginactive.co.uk so to yawl all I say Peace, Unity, Love and Having Fun…..

11th June 2007… Well after a chilled weekend, it’s back to the grindstone and what a glorious morning it is today, I actually woke up at 0430 this morning, but that could be because I woke up at 1130 yesterday…. I’m sitting here still shaking my head in shock….why I hear you ask….. Virgin Media… as most of you know who read my blog know I’ve had issues with Virgin Media and how inept they can be…. well Thursday last week I get home and there are two letters for me, both from said company, I open the one that doesn’t look like a bill and it’s a letter apologising for the delay in them writing to me about my letter dated 5th June… bearing in mind their letter was sent second class and arrived yesterday… so I’m guessing was posted to me on 5th June…. that date of my said letter…. alarm bells ringing yet people or are you thinking super efficient….. well here’s the biscuit….. I never sent them a letter dated 5th June; in fact the last letter I sent them was back in April….. So on to the second letter from them, it looked very official and bill like, you know the type of letter that is an A4 sheet folded in half and has been fulfilled by an automated system….. well maybe a little too automated… why do I say that… well the second letter was Virgin Media threatening to restrict or cut off my service because my bill was overdue…. yes you’re right to say, “but Cam if you owe them money then you got to pay up,” and yes I agree with you, but surely esp with the cat fighting between Sky and Virgin, there comes a point where you say, it the cost of recovering the fee FAR exceeds the debt, then just waiver it… or in the case of a utility provider add it on to the next bill….. The amount my bill was overdue was the bank breaking, causing a company to go under amount of….. wait for it…… go on take a guess…. here’s a clue… The was a film years and years ago staring Yul Brenner, Steve McQueen, a young Robert Vaughn and was inspired by a cult Japanese Samurai film…… you guessed it yet…….. here goes…. my bill was overdue by…… £0.07 …….. yes you’ve read that amount correctly…….
Friday was a pretty chilled evening, apart from the shocking train service provided by Central trains, I’d slipped out the office early to get the 1645, to be home by 1800…. The train screwed up and we ended up getting to my station at 1825… so home for 1835…. I was pissed off to say the least, but in the end I treated myself to some smoked salmon and mature cheddar toasted rolls…. very nice indeed, the rest of the evening was spent watching V+ and thrashing Rainbow Six….
Saturday I was up at the crack of dawn and headed to the market, in fact was helping the stall holder set up it was that early, I was done and back home from the market by 8.45am, then I tucked into so Beef Sausages very nice too, but it’s sad to say I spent most to the V+ and Rainbow Six playing, though I did some housework and clothes washing and also did some work on Myspace which should be up and running very soon.
Sunday was a very late one, I woke up at 1130 and hit Plenty Of Fish to catch up with a few mates online, and I also put the feelers out for a DJ slot at one of the POF meeting coming up in London, so watch the home page to find out if I’ll be playing… it will be an exclusive gig and the only way you’ll be able to come to the gig is to become a member of Plenty Of Fish, which is actually free membership. Went for a walk around town on Sunday afternoon, came home and had a conversation about the Emily Big Brother situation and the N’ word… in my opinion her saying the N’ word was not needed in the situation that she was in, yes it appears she was joking but after the Celeb BB she was a little silly to say the word, but I think the issue is really with society in general, what with rappers using the word thus making it come across as acceptable, when in fact it’s not, but that said, if Channel 4 are gonna evict Emily for using a derogatory word then they need to clamp down on all derogatory things, like calling slurring fat people, blind people, deaf people, old people etc etc … But bottom line in my opinion BB should have been shelved long ago, it’s had it’s day, it’s time to think about creating some other kinda show.. how about a proper reality show, as opposed to a staged situation, it I want reality I watch shows like Booze Britain, Cops, Car Wars and the like, they are far more entertaining and they are actually real situations.
Today has kinda been mundane, I’ve been creating a website tree for my day job, it’s taken most of the day but now it’s done it kinda satisfying because you can see the end result of the shell of a website. Just need to input all the information, go live date is 22nd June, but I’m not in that day as heading to Brighton with Mr G for some RnR and to see if we can get into a club without being asked for ID… one of the great things about today was I dug out a class CD and have been listening to it whilst I’ve been working, the five songs that have been played a fair bit today are… Londonbeat – I’ve been thinking about you, The Pasadenas – Tribute, Colour Me Badd – I wanna sex you up, Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeff – Summertime and Tupac – Changes… man been a good day for music…. And on that note I’ll bid yawl Peace, Unity, Love and Having Fun, as bowling in a minute or so.

15th June 2007… Today was a mare at the beginning, a little bit of water and people lose their fucking minds man… I’ve always noticed that when it rains things in this country change for the worse, I mean it’s not like it don’t rain weekly. You’re on the motorway it rains and suddenly people lose all ability to drive, yes I know with water one needs to slow down, but some people just become plain dangerous. Well this morning Birmingham New Street had boards and boards of arrival and departure filled with the words CANCELLED or DELAYED… I was on a delayed train, was due in at 0735, we pulled in at 0845… due to “adverse” weather conditions… what a bit of water on the line… that said I did take a picture with my phone I shall post the picture in the gallery over the weekend.
It’s been a bit of a surreal week to be honest, it kinda started on a high in that I had my bowling session and did pretty well knocking in 164, 149 and 121 which should hopefully see me through to the quarter finals of the singles competition as my game was against the top player of the league, but due to my handicap and me hitting a good series I have hopefully knocked the main man out, but I’ll find out next week Monday…. Then that high was destroyed with being told the Matriarch so to speak of my Dad’s side of the family died… Uncle Rupert or The Bear as we called him passed away, it’s kinda a bit of a reality check for all my uncles and aunts. My dad is 1 of 9… The Bear was the eldest and what with my dad falling ill earlier in the year, I guess they are all now realising their own mortality, so yeah bit of the surreal week. Will be touching base with pops over the weekend, though got some shopping to do as off to Brighton next weekend with Mr G just to chill out and hopefully catch some sun and some jokes. Should hopefully hook up with Pat Sharp and Betty Boo whilst we’re down there. Big shout goes out to Ju who is moving house this weekend, hope it goes all so smoothly for ya.., his move leaves Monts home alone…. But I’m sure our second MTV Superstar will enjoy some quality time and being able to stroll around swinging in the wind for a while… A massive shout goes out to Nita, VdaC and Charls hope you are all well and please do enjoy your weekends. Also sending a massive BBHUG to Fruit Jelly whose Nan passed away on Sunday too and it’s getting a little complicated so all the best darling to you and your family. She actually has a date this weekend with some dude who’s flying into the local airport to whisk her away on their date….. flash git… all you guys out there... follow that…. he lives near me apparently…hummmm I wonder if it’s The Capt….
As for the rest of the week, not much to dwell on… The Pirates film review is out there, link is on Hot News page accessed from home page. I’ve been to the gym www.virginactive.co.uk 5 times this week, even did two full workouts on Wednesday, also y pal Wren who is running the NYC marathon in November has started the Slimming World eating plan, so I think I might do the same as I am miles away from being where I need to be if I want to do the London Marathon 2008, which I’m doing in aid of the Stroke Association in memory of my mother. I need to lose about 98LBS… there are probably some of you who actually weigh that much…. If there is… you need to start eating it’s unhealthy to be that light… well that’s my excuse…. Anyway people bidding yawl a great weekend and Peace, Unity, Love and Having Fun….

18th June 2007… Firstly got to say Central Trains are such a bunch of fucking tosspots… yes that’s right… yesterday I was heading home, never good on a Sunday as since moving to my current location in July 2003, that hasn’t been two consecutive Sunday’s with no Engineering work in and around my train line, so yesterday as usual we had Sunday engineering works somewhere along the line, so we had to change at Coventry to get a replacement bus…. Now the average coach/bus holds 50 – 60 people… the average train carriage holds 92 seated people… so on a full train 4 carriage train, you’d expect how many coaches/buses as a replacement…?.. granted on a Sunday you are unlikely to have full carriages….. well I get off the train and walk to where the pick up the coaches… as myself and about 15 other people get to the pick up point, we see a coach pulling away and go past us and you can clearly see the coach is full… we suddenly realise there are no other coaches… we turn to the guy in the Central Trains jacket asking when the next coach is due…. He goes 1 hour around the same time of the next train… before I could get in there, a couple were having a massive go at him… yep reading in between the lines… for a FOUR carriage train (92 seated in each carriage if full) they ran ONE, fifty-two seater coach…. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a logistics worker for Central Trains, but surely the minimum amount of coaches per train should have been 3, just in case… and if one didn’t have anyone then it could sit and wait for the next train, it seems Central Trains really don’t care about their customers, bunch of good for nothings….. I was not happy, and then it got worse, when I eventually got the coach, I had some annoying bird who thought it was cool to sit and play her phone MP3 aloud and tinny through the speaker on the phone. It so annoys me when people (kids and adults) do that… look people it ain’t cool and it just spoils the song and you come across as obnoxious, so get yourself some decent headphones from a good or a rubbish electrical shop. Man she thought she was so cool, sitting in the back row wearing her skimpy shorts which were riding up in her crack and her high heels leaning back with her legs planted on the head rest of the seat in front…. It just looked like she was having a smear test…. and if looks could kill I’d be dead, cos I was on the phone to Mr G, and as I ended the call I said to him “I’ll have to sit here now for the next 20 minutes listening to some fools' shitty tinny dance music cos they can’t afford clothes or a pair of headphones”.. and yes I said it loud enough for her to hear… I could feel her staring daggers, but she was quick to turn away when I turned to her and gave her the Spock (Star Trek original series) eyebrow raise…. Muppet….
Rest of the weekend, well Friday I was out with work, but only The Mag and TW House come out to play, we hit The Figure of Eight on Broad Street followed by Lloyds Bar, twas a really cool night, and very alcoholic with a bit of dancing thrown in, and despite all the rain we had Thursday and Friday, my train was on time and I got home in good time, which was cool.
Saturday I woke up at 5.30am with a start, always happens when I’ve had a skin-ful, can never have a proper nights sleep, so I got up and did what I had to do around the house, then I made an early start and touched base with pops esp with it being Father’s Day weekend and with Uncle Bear passing away. In the afternoon I ended up going shopping had to get me some smalls…. It was pretty fascinating watching the world go by and seeing how many similar fashions were about and some fashions that should seriously be left at home firmly in the closet… there were some shocking sights. At one stage I ended up in some trendy surf shop where I bought myself record case style bag, which happened to be half price but would never have full price for it… the design of this bag is that is looks like it’s had some serious wear and is about 3 or 4 years old, which seems to be one of the fashion trends, bit like back in the day when people would pay the earth for a pair of jeans with tears in them…. I felt almost 15 years younger with my new trendy bag, shall be taking it to Brighton this weekend. Saturday evening I spent chilling with Wren and we plugged in the DVD of The Phantom of The Opera, now I’m not one for musicals, Grease was a good at it got, but I have to say PotO was pretty impressive, it must have been awesome to see on the big scene, it was very dramatic and the music was very powerful. For me the film had shades of V for Vendetta there is a scene in Vendetta where the hero/villain depending how you perceived him, took the heroine to his hideout and there was lots of interplay and development of their relationship, which was very much like the scene in PotO when the Phantom (hero/villain) took the female star to his pad. I have got to go and see this in the theatre, and I’d say if you ain’t seen it you should plug into it. It’s well worth a watch.
Sunday, despite the journey home was pretty chilled, I plugged into V+ and PS2 playing Fifa06, then I had the pleasure of touching base the Fruit Jelly, who had told me on the Saturday that Fly Boy hadn’t turn up and hadn’t even called her, what a wanker, dude just doesn't know what his missing, as she is one top bird.... so we spent a couple of hours on the phone putting the world to rights….. Well folks as I always say… Peace, Unity, Love and Having Fun to yawl……

20th June 2007… Last night was kinda an odd feeling for me, it's a feeling I ain’t had in a long long time…. now I love my own company….. hey someone’s gotta love to spend time me.. so why not me…. But last night whilst tucking into what will be my last Mex Tex take away for a while…a sudden depression hit me…. I suddenly realised I was feeling lonely, now that ain’t happened in years and even after plugging into the PS2 I still couldn’t shake the feeling, stayed up pretty late last night feeling like that, but hey at least I’m top of the Brazilian League with Tevez my top scorer with 35 goals in 27 games… 9 games left…. 30 points clear…. as Moby from SSX would say “You’re looking at a winner baby” …..
As most of you know I bowl on a Monday night at Fiveways in Birmingham and it’s my first season with the league. On Monday night it was the quarter final of the singles competition which I’ve managed to stubble into, I bowled like a pussy, knocking in scratch scores of 121, 137 and 114… plus the handicap of 59 per game, giving me a score of 549… I was playing the 5th rated player in the league, who I had a 27 start on for each game…. he comes up to me at the end of the game and says he thinks I beat him cos he also had a bad game and only scored a scratch score of 447, so with handicap his total would be 543….. I won’t find out till later in the week if I beat him, but if I have, then I’ll be through to the Semi Finals but I’ll confirm that with ya….. so if any of you fancy it… I know it’s a Monday night in Birmingham, feel free to come up on the semi final night and give me your support. We commence bowling around 7.30, usually finish bowling around 9ish…. remember I’m only winning these games cos my handicap is so high, not because I’m some fantastic bowler…
Yesterday during the day whilst I was feeling myself... as in emotionally not physically... wayhey...  I got in a conversation with a couple of people I know about the dating game. It was a pretty interesting chat, it kinda opened up two sides of the game, one person who is a Marketing Executive was saying…”your job is to make sure your dates with her are the best and any other guys need to seriously bring their ‘A’ game to compete. NOT help them out. What's wrong with you man. Its a dog eat dog game” I actually found this quote very amusing, esp if you think about programmes like The Apprentice and Dragons Den… it kinda proves the whole ethics of the Marketing world, whereas I’m in a more chilled environment of IT and I’m more a “hey give the other guy a fair crack at the whip and if he fails I’ll be standing in the wings” bit like those people who try using a computer program or a process to get a job done and will settle for that, when in fact there are better programs and processes out there….
Another bit of dialogue which amused me today was an article about a console game called Manhunt 2 being banned, the reason given for banning the game was an I quote "Casual Sadism and an unrelenting focus on stalking and brutal slaying using double barrelled shotguns, nightsticks and razors"… when it’s put like that, you can kinda see why the game has been banned… anyway peeps… Peace, Unity Love and Having Fun to yawl, will touch base soon….

26th June 2007… Well on the day when jailbird Hilton got let out of prison early, talk about star treatment, just not on I say… today is my second day of Slimming World and quite frankly after a cracking start yesterday, I ain’t done too well… have had a few handfuls of nuts…. Wayhey…. and a mini Mars bar, my slimming partner Wren won’t be happy with me, but I can safely say I could get to the office toilet blindfolded now, I’ve been so many times today, I’ve had so much fruit. Well tonight will be Chicken and Salad followed by Muller Light Strawberry poured over a couple of handfuls of cherries.
Back to work today after my little jaunt to Brighton with Mr G, and it was a pretty good weekend, we got some jokes. But I shall reveal all later in the week, just thought I jump on and say Hi how you doing. Also I heard a rumour which appears to be true, my old DJ venue Liberty’s has closed down, so at some point this week I’ll be deleting the info about them on Frisky Friday and Soulful Saturday links… it’s such a shame that place was such an institution and had taken years building up an awesome rep…. but oh how the mighty have fallen as they say. Anyway Peace, Unity, Love and Having Fun to yawl… will touch base very soon….

27th June 2007… I’m sitting at my desk crying with laughter…Last night a few of the regular blog attendees were at a meet for an old pal who had come back to the UK from the Lebanon, big shout goes out to Art Brown, shame I couldn’t make it dude, esp after hearing the mustard story. Right, Pat Sharp and guy called Micky Dutch (for the blog purposes) ordered some food, but the eating establishment didn’t have any mustard.... and Micky Dutch does like his mustard, so he left the establishment and went to the corner store and acquired himself a jar of the said condiment. He returned to his meal and he and Sharpy indulged in their nosebag with the newly acquired jar of the hot stuff. Upon finishing their meals and coming to the time of paying and deciding whether to give a tip…. Micky Dutch turned to the waitress and handed her the jar of Mustard informing her that was his tip…. A jar of mustard… that is just class, I so wish I had been there to take a picture of her face.
Well Brighton was good guys, I do love that place, I had Friday off work so decided to hook up with Mr W and Jules (the future Mrs W as far as I’m concerned), they have been together since about September 2005 and I had indirectly got them together, but I’d never met Jules, so nearly two years of them courting and I was only just meeting Jules. What a really nice person she is too, they have both made a good catch with each other, I’ll be getting measured up for a new suit soon I think, though that said I better hold fire, what with being on my third day of Slimming World…. Anyway we had a really nice pub lunch in one of the old pubs I used to visit when I worked in my previous day job. From lunch I got the train to Watford Junction and got on the direct train to Brighton, which is a really cool train, cos it seems not many people know about this particular line and the train is always pretty empty and it costs about £10 less to use as you don’t need to travel through London and it only takes 2 hours, when you think to get a train from London to Brighton is an hour, but you need to get to Victoria or London Bridge first, which can in itself take an hour, so yeah coming from the North, it’s worth getting the train from Watford to Brighton. When I got on the train at Watford it was full of rain clouds and “Light Drizzle (as said on SoccerAm)”… but getting to Brighton we were greeted with glorious Sunshhhhiinnnneeee… as Oasis would say… Mr G was in Brighton when I arrived though he was wondering the streets cos he packed a little light, so was trying to find himself a second outfit for the nights of hard partying ahead. After checking in the hotel we headed to the sea front and walked along the prom prom prom to partake of our first beer. We found a suitable sea wall to perch on, only to find we could not actually buy a drink from the bar as they only did table service. In fact it turned out most of the bars on the prom only do table service, which has its good and bad points, though in our experience the only good point was the fact that you got a table. The place we ended up at for our first beer was called The Beach; in fact we had been there before when we came down to Brighton for my birthday. That time there were seven of us, so table service was ok as we didn’t have to carry the drinks…. So we got a table right by the bar but right by the open door so we could see the world go by…. We ordered two pints of the lager… when it arrived 15 minutes… yes 15 minutes later (one of the bad points of table service) it went down pretty well until we got the bill for two pints in Brighton…. £6.80… yes you read that correctly £6.80 (another bad point of table service) …. I thought I was in Covent Garden for a split second. Suffice to say we only had one, then we headed to Varsity to grab a bite to eat, by this time is was about 8.45pm... so after eating we headed to Sumo, only to find it had changed it’s name to Kabuku / Water Margin … but the music was pretty much the same as Sumo was when we came for my birthday. Before coming to Brighton I had contacted a few contacts down there, one of which was Apple, a amateur model and I had meet when I was down for my birthday, well I got a text from her inviting Mr G and I to Horatio Karaoke Bar on Brighton Pier, so in the end we left Water Margin and headed to Horatio…. It was good to see Aps once again, Mr G and I had one drink there but we were soon back at Water Margin, leaving Aps and her group in Horatio…. Mr G will be doing a review on Horatio… and there I’m sure you’ll see why we were back at Water Margin…. It was pretty much a chilled night out, a fair few beers and a bit of dancing, then the walk home, which I’ll tell you all about in the next instalment… One thing I’d like to mention is...... Mr BO… there was this dude at Sumo / Kakubu who was a Glass Collector walking around in a vest….and boy oh boy did he stink… now I’m sure you ladies are into you man smelling like a man…. But please… surely you don’t dig a man who clearly smells like he don’t wash… he would walk past and his stink would just hang around (like a bad smell) … and he’d some back 5 minutes later with a handful of glasses just as the smell was dissipating and bang you’d be hit again, so essentially you had a constant smell of foul BO…. Nasty man nasty… anyway for the time being peeps I shall wish yawl Peace, Unity, Love and Having Fun and I shall continue the Brighton saga next time out.

29th June 2007… Friday, end of the week when Hilton receives a get out of jail free card, with talks of staying under house arrest…. Errr she is one of the heiresses of the Hilton empire, somehow I think her staying at home is hardly punishment, that just a joke…. Then also ole new PM Brown appoints Tony Blair as the peace envoy for the Middle East… hold up a second, didn’t Mr Blair send our troops over there to start a war, Tony Blair, Middle East and Peace are not words I’d put together, that’s just a joke…. Apparently Buckingham Palace is in need of repair and it would seem us taxpayers are scheduled to foot the £1M bill… hold up, isn’t that house the Queens home… can we walk into the her house as much as a robber can walk into my dad’s house.. piss off pay the maintenance bill yourself, you could have downsized at anytime, that’s just a joke…
Been a pretty good week as it happens, the Slimming World eating plan is going ok so far, quite getting into it, in fact I had a Chilli Con Carné served on Mash this week… the mash was made of Cauliflower… it was different but pretty nice… so roll on next week Tuesday when it’s weigh in day. Oh found out this week, I made it to the semi final of the handicap bowling competition, so I know it’s short notice but if you can, why not come along and see me play, cos I’m against one of the top boys so it’s likely I might no make the final. That's Monday coming at Fiveways Bowlplex, from 7.30pm...
Spoke to Charls this week, the bird from Leeds…. actually that’s a lie, she talked at me for about 40 minutes… sorry Charls but you know you can talk to England, in fact if an alien race come to Earth and the survival of the planet lay on one person's shoulders who had to talk the talk to save us…. I’m putting your name on the top of the list…
I haven’t been to the gym this week www.virginactive.co.uk  as I’m letting myself get into the Slimming World lick, but I’ll be back at it on Monday at lunchtime.
So Brighton, we left Kakubu at about 3am and we walked along the prom prom prom to our hotel, walking past all the pack Chip shops as we knew there was one near our hotel. We get to the Chippy to find some pissed bird talking to the only staff member on, trying to describe where the Isle of Wight was in relation to Brighton… it culminated in her taking a serviette and drawing a triangle, which represented the mainland and the a full stop which was meant to be the IOW…. huuummm looked more like the location of The Isle of Skye…. Saturday in Brighton was pretty good weather, I woke about 9.30am, but didn’t get up for an hour, headed to Brekkie, and surprise surprise Mr G never made it…. at Brekkie Pat Sharp rang to say he was feeling dicky so couldn’t do lunch in Hove. Must admit Brekkie was pretty good and wholesome. One thing about Saturday which was kinda odd was, Mr G and I spent the day walking to various places just so we could eat… we met in my room at 1230 so we could walk to "identity crisis hit" Hove and have lunch at Oblong, nice place, review to come. We had a main course there and good conversation. We left there about 3ish, so we could walk to The Terraces (review http://www.musicwithtc.co.uk/39.html  ) so that we could have desert. Again lovely desert, but no real improvement on the review above… we left there about 8ish to go and have supper at Grubbs Burgers (review to come)…. Got back to hotel just before 9pm, where we got ready for a bit of partying... which will be in the next instalment… Why is Hove Identity hit... well every street name had the word Hove under it's name, like you wouldn't know where you are... Anway peeps, seeing Silver Surfer tomorrow with Mr G and DD, so one of us will post a review over the weekend. in the menatime, Peace, Unity, Love and Having Fun to yawl (except Mr Blair of course...)

2nd July 2007… Well a massive shout out goes to our Fruit Jelly whose is celebrating her B’Day today, so many happies baby, though not sure it will be too happy after your weekend of partying hard so it will be a day of recovery for you babe. Well my weekend didn’t start too well; I left the office to go to the Doc’s at 1415… I got home at 1820…. I should have been home for 1550… but due to a failed freight train the whole railway system south bound form Birmingham came to a complete stand still for over 2 hours, then with all the backlog of 3 train load of people trying to get on a four carriage train…. You can imagine the chaos… now I know I said the railway system, but I should really say Central Trains, because Virgin Trains seemed to be running late but fine…. Central Trains, sort your damn lives out man. So after a nitemare journey home I chilled Friday at home, as I was going to see Silver Surfer with Mr G and DD…. As I said... was going to see, but it didn’t happen... it first started with a text from Mr G at 5.15am saying due to being up all night drinking he was not gonna be making my place for the cinema… come on dude.. you know you had to be up at mine the next day, I’ll for going out the night before and hooking up with old friends, but surely at Midnight you must have known the morning wasn’t happening for you, esp as you ain’t a morning person anyway…. You kill me man :-) … then we have DD… he was up for the cinema, but he had morning meeting and the person he was meeting with didn’t roll up until late morning / early afternoon... and left pretty late in the afternoon… so we deferred the Silver Surfer viewing. I now intend on going to see it this week….in fact I’m going to see the 1640 showing at the Cineworld on Broad Street, Birmingham, so if you wanna join me just holla me back and I’ll see you there…. I spent the rest of Saturday just watching V+ and playing on the PS2…. Whilst I was doing that, our running star Wren, was doing a half marathon and she knocked in a time of 2hrs 6mins, so well done Wren, you’re looking good for an awesome time in NYC in November for the big one…. Keep it going girl, training starts in earnest in a couple of weeks, but as we know your B’Day is very soon, so make sure you make up for the lack of drinking you’ll be doing once training starts proper….
Sunday, after the mare’s and plans of Friday being scuppered I decided to just stay at home Sunday with V+ and PS2… in fact I won the K-League and the K-League Playoffs… scoring 112 goals en-route… only losing one game…
Today was a late start for me as had to go to Doc’s due the mare on Friday, so today seems to have flown, but I got my semi-final game at bowling tonight, so fingers crossed I put in a good game. Hey tomorrow is weigh in day for my first week of Slimming World and I’m confident I’ve lost a few pounds… my starting weight was 21stone 13pounds… which is 307pounds… so watch this space… it could be getting smaller. Do not I haven't really been to the gym www.virginactive.co.uk this week either....
Brighton… the Saturday night we headed to Kabuku at round 9.45pm to see if Saturday’s were as good as Fridays…. and basically that would be a no…. nearly a year ago I went to place in Brixton called Plan B…. and it certainly lived up to it’s name… Plan B…. well this place was pretty much a Plan B place too… it’s a good place to start as they play some pretty cool jazz fusion stuff, but soon after getting there it went down the hard house route, so we decided to head out, and we went to a place recommended by our hotel proprietor Dillion… he suggested The Funky Catfish… we went there and I have to say it was a pretty cool and chilled place. The music was mainstream 60 – 70’s stuff and there were a fair few people dressed up, think it cost £6 to get in, but word of warning it was like being at a wedding, in terms of people were sitting around chatting around the dancefloor and there tables and chairs set out in the main room like it was a wedding reception, I liked it cos it gave a very relaxed atmosphere to the place. We left Catfish around 3am and headed up the prom prom prom and what a walk that was… the place was full of idiots who were obviously looking for trouble so it was a case of keep you head down and walk with purpose, we did hit our favourite Chippy en-route but thankfully there was no one trying to draw maps of the UK….. Sunday in Brighton we left from home at about 9.30am… as reliable Mr G had arranged a date in London for 1300hrs… nice sensible thing to do when you’re away for the weekend, but in a way it was good cos it was tipping it down, so you couldn’t have done much in Brighton that day, so in the end I was thankful as I was home for lunchtime and had a full afternoon of V+ viewing…. V+ you got love it man… anyway people, got to head to bowling so Peace, Unity, Love and Having Fun to yawl….

5th July 2007…It’s a nice week this week so far, it’s all good in the hood…Monday I played in my Semi Final of the 10 Bowling League and I won, it was pretty tight though, he beat me by Five in the first game, the second game I beat him by three, so needed to beat him by 3 in the third but and coming into the last frame if he’d got a strike then the fat ladies would have been singing, but he got 7… three pins left, if he’d got all three and then a strike it would have been a draw on the night by he would have gone through as his handicap is lower than mine, so his actual scratch game would have been higher, but alas he only got 2 of the 3 pins, which means I won by 14 pins in total… so The Camstar is into the final which will be played in a couple of weeks I’ll stick the date on Hot News Link and/or the SD Bowling link above.
Tuesday was an ok day, pretty chilled in the office, and I did buy cakes for the guys in the day job office but treated myself to some nice sliced lean ham as Tuesday was weigh in day for my new eating plan…so had the weigh in and had some good news. My starting weight was 21 Stone 13 pounds… on Tuesday I came in at 21 Stone 5 pounds… so I’ve lost 8 pounds in a week so I’m pretty chuffed and big thank you goes out to Wren, Ani D, JPar, Ice T and Aps for all their support… ahhhh yes talking of Ice T, now that is a blast from the past. I’ve known Ice T since the heady days of dancing in the Buzz Bar on Panton Street Leicester Sq. London, in the very early 90’s she turned up at the Buzz and tried her had at joining the dance troupe… she was ok, must be all the ice dancing she did, I had her card marked so to speak, saw her again a few month later and remember her flame red hair and her cheeky attitude, we got on well, swapped numbers and we’ve been in touch ever since off and on, nothing romantic unfortunately because she has always been loved up. Back then she was gorgeous and I have no doubt she still is… but it has been 11 years + since I last saw her, plenty of time for things to go south..... I gave her a bell this week and actually spoke to her for a couple of minutes. The first in 5 – 7 years, all other times we just talked via text, I actually haven’t physically seen her since the summer of 1995, I was still working at Unilever then, we meet for lunch and she was driving a White Escort XR3 I do believe…. man those were the days, reckless and fancy free man…. anyway I digress… so yeah lost 8 pounds and that was without really going to the gym www.virginactive.co.uk , so roll on next Tuesday as I’ve been to the gym twice this week already with three more visits planned before the next weigh in… though I have got that London gig on Saturday so no doubt a fair amount of drinking will be involved….
Wednesday, was a good day as the boss was out, but that said I still had lots to do in terms of getting things sorted for a meeting that is being held this week on Friday, for a website I’ve helped setup for my day job’s use. I hit the gym at lunchtime and had a bit of a chinwag with Spikey D as not really seen him in a while due to his shifts, my lack of gym attendance and his holiday in Dom Republic with the missus… but they never got married whilst they were out there. Actually LouLou his missus has recently started a new job so good luck with the love. Wednesday evening I went to see Silver Surfer review is here… http://www.musicwithtc.co.uk/28.html and is was a great film. Made the mad dash home so I could continue to sort some tunes for the up and coming gig on Saturday.
One thing some people have asked me is my opinion on the smoke free zone, which I’ll address tomorrow as I am getting ready to head out. I’ll def address it tomorrow before the Saturday gig as my opinion may change after Saturday. Anyway, Peace, Unity, Love and Having Fun to yawl….

9 July 2007… Well hello people hope you’re well and your weekend was good. Firstly I’ll address the smoking issue. I’ve been asked by a few people for my opinion as someone who has never ever actively smoked but have worked in an environment where my passive smoking has probably been equivalent to a light smoker if not more. I was reading a letter in the Metro last week from P. Roscoe and was in his corner about Anti-smoking Laws, but then he threw in the whole “people don’t understand smoking is an addiction…” line. Some may say my next comments are harsh or unfounded but I’m gonna say them anyway. Smokers choose to smoke. People say it was due to peer pressure, but I feel that is just a lame excuse to get out of your responsibility for yourself. I am proud to say that at 38 I have never ever in my life actively smoked, yep even as a kid I didn’t even say “Oh let me have a puff I might like, or I might look cool”.. nope never ever actively smoked…. but that said I have chosen to passively smoke on a regular basis as I’m a Club DJ, but I chose to do that line of work knowing full well I was going in a smoking environment, and I ain’t making excuses I made the choice and I have to deal with that, so don’t throw the “It’s an addiction” line…. here’s a comparison… forget drugs being illegal for a second…. if someone was sitting on a park bench on a Saturday afternoon whilst you were having a picnic with your kids, and they started “Chasing the Dragon” and they turned to you and said “Oh sorry it’s an addiction of mine, hope you don’t mind” …. But I agree with P.Roscoe smokers have been banished out of enclosed public places which for me is a good thing, but as a DJ it’s isn’t because no DJ likes to play to an empty dancefloor…. But that said I actually did my first Dj slot on Saturday since the smoking ban at 26 Smithfields, a really cool venue it has to be said, though not a club we had about 200 people in for the Plenty of Fish private do which was cool, I would say about 60 – 70% of them were smokers, and I have to say as a Dj I didn’t feel short changed in the fact that at anyone time there were 20+ people outside smoking, I got and kept a dancefloor which was pretty cool. So my opinion on the smoking is that I’m glad it has been implemented and think it should go further and should stop people from standing outside the front door of public places having a ciggie, if venues value their smokers that much then they should provide a well ventilated smoking area that is well out the way of us non active smokers and non smokers. 26 Smithfield had it all sorted, they had a roof terraces where smokers were allowed to go, but having gone up there to take a look so I could give an informed opinion, I felt a little for the smokers, the roof terraces was up seven flights of stairs from the basement, which to honest is a little cruel, but here there were a fair few people up there, so the walk couldn’t have been that bad. As for the actual event it was pretty good. I was only due to do 2 1 hour sets but in the end I did from 1840 straight through to 1045 so was loving it, was good to be back in the saddle, they’ve asked me to come back for next months do but alas the other DJ whose equipment they use has said he won’t be doing the next one because there were too many ungrateful people who were giving him grief after I left cos he didn’t have the song they wanted and did play it when they wanted it played….. Oh son I’ve been there so many times and yep it is annoying, very very annoying especially when you’re giving up your time so generously, but hey what can you do people are always gonna be like that. I do hope once his calmed down he will have a re-think as it is a good night out. A big shout goes out to Misty, Hams, Bonny Babe, Ladyloul, Morticia, Jack Matser, Mad Dog and my loyal pal and friend Mr G for all your support on Saturday night it was a really great night…. for me it was anyway…. Next one is around 18th August which kinda clashes with the School Disco night out I was gonna go on, but hey the London Meet cost a whole lot less and the night could well be a very good night. After party and Mr G's pad... with Sunday lunch in brixton the next day.
Sunday I got home from London at about 1.3Oam having to stand all the way home as the train was heaving, but was lost in my own world as I listened to my MP3 player through my somewhat funky headphones…. When I woke at about 7am I hit Plenty of Fish to pick up any feedback from the previous night and have to say I got some good feedback so am well chuffed about that, spent most of Sunday keeping an eye on the slow roasted Lamb that I was cooking for lunch and I have to say it came out pretty will considering it was a first time. Also V+ and PS2 played a heavy part in my day too, though I did catch a special Gamer TV which was about a new game coming out on the PS3 called Heavenly Sword… I have to say I was blown away by the look of the game and I have to say, it could be the first game on the PS3 where I’d say, “I’ll buy the console so I could play that game” so watch this space.
Today has been pretty chilled though I’ve slipped on the eating plan and had a few cakes today which isn’t good, but I’ll just have to get back on the wagon and prayer I still lose a few pounds tomorrow on weigh in day. Anyway, 10 Pin calls so a gonna wish yawl Peace, Unity, Love and Having Fun and we’ll comms later this week…..

12th July 2007… Not a bad week all in all, what with David Beckham sporting his new football teams kit, and it looks good… well on him it does anyway, then we got TinTin being accused of being racist.. hummmm.. I’ve never read any TinTin so before I start cussing or saying “Now come on” I’ll have to dig some out, unless someone out there has an opinion. Also this week see Heather Mills in court yet again saying some photo dude attacked her... he probably just took a picture and his camera shattered and sprayed her with glass, she’s such a drama queen. Rumours of Jordan and Pete splitting up, again will need to research that, and also the fantastic news that the X-Box Elite is now ready for pre-order at Play.Com, but I’m still swinging towards the PS3.

Heather Mills in Court again	Tin Tin a Racist apparently

One thing that did narked me this week is the price of hotel rooms, now I’ve booked a Condo in Florida for my 40th birthday celebrations in 2008, the price of this condo is £50 per night, and for that I get 4 double bedrooms, Sofa Bed in the rather large lounge, fully furnished kitchenette, Free internet access, Free Local calls, FREE.. yes FREE calls to all UK Landlines, access to 2 swimming pools, 2 spa pools, a Fitness Suite, Tennis Courts, a Laundry, Sunshine and Disney 10 minutes down the road…. yet I paid £60 quid a night a single room is some dodgy hotel in Brighton and lots of rain…. Rip off bloody England….

Monday night was a mare, I bowled like a pussy and essentially got a bitch slapping, my scores were 132... not a bad game... then it went all Pete Tong… 96 was the next game and then 112, I so hope I don’t bowl like that next Monday as that is my Final’s game and I need to at least put in my average score of 135 to have a chance to winning…..

Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty chilled for me, day job is going well, and in fact got to see an article about my old DJ venue Liberty’s… made interesting reading, though they were expressing surprise at the closure… which I have to say did surprise me, cos I saw the writing on the walls back in November just after Goose said to me.. “Get out son this place is going under”… did I listen errr. Nope, but I got out in the end, not quite the way I wanted to but I got out.

Hero or Villain	Captain James T Kirk

One thing I have to say to you people is get the video recorders out, unless you got V+ or Sky+ and make sure you start taping the original series of Star Trek being shown at 1pm on Sci-Fi channel, it has got to the funniest show on the TV right now, I think back in the day that show was the best thing since sliced bread, but seeing it now…. Dear dear dear… also get your recorders set, especially if you don’t have more than the 5 Channels, 25th July is the big day Heroes comes to BBC2, this is a must see show it is the next Lost or Prison Break, or 24 but in my opinion it is far far better, every week I see it on Sci Fi channel it just gets better and better, trust me on this one…. Anyway peeps time to say ciao, so Peace, Unity, Love and Having Fun to yawl and we’ll touch base in a couple of days no doubt…

16th July 2007… Hey I got a few of questions for ya, feel free to send me ya answers or ya quotes and any good ones I’ll think about putting out there….

Right Qu1… You’re sixteen years old some dude comes up to you and says… “hey how would you and a mate like to fly to Ghana for two weeks, we’ll put you up in a five star hotel and pay all your expenses…. then after doing that we’ll give you and your pal £3,000 each and all you need to do is carry this laptop back for me and deliver it to a third party…. Do you…

A) Say “no” and walk away and forget about ever meeting this stranger?
B) Say “let me think about and get back to you”, then tell your parents and then go to the police and get them to set up a sting operation?
C) Say “yes”, lie to your parents and say you’re going on a school field trip to France, head off to Ghana, live it up for two weeks, and then when you get stopped going through the airport and customs check the laptop bags and find 3KG of A class drugs in them, you say “I thought the bag was empty, this is a set up”?….. as the officials cart your narrow arse to prison for 10 years….

Qu2… You’re forty years old, you provisionally plan to go visit a good friend in three weeks time. Over the next three weeks, you stop contacting them everyday, and when you do contact them, you’re drifting off into sleep, lying in bed and the visitation never gets mentioned. The day before the visit is due to happen, your pal sends you a communication asking you what you got planned for the weekend and a question asking how your previous night was… Do you…

A) Completely ignore the communication and hope they don’t contact you again before the day is due, but if they do, you style it out and say you never got the original communication?
B) Respond to the communication but only answer the question about your previous night adding in some cryptic statement so the subject get’s changed from the other question in the communication?
C) Actually answer both questions in the communication and say how your evening was and also say “Well I was hoping to come and visit you is that still ok”?

Qu3… You’re in ya mid thirties but not overly computer literate, as in, a computer is a means to an end. You come across something new to you, a blog, which most people know is an online diary… a diary being something a person writes their thoughts and activities for each day in… remember it’s the first time you’ve ever read a blog and you only read three or four entries, which you feel have similar things written in it… Do you…

A) Contact the author of the blog and give them grief about the blog saying they have no depth of character and be quite nasty about it?
B) Actually go and read the blog from the beginning, get to know where the author is coming from and see that they do talk about their feelings and give opinions about numerous things?
C) Admit it’s the first time you’ve ever read a blog, then do B, along with actually finding other blogs to read to see if they are of similar style (i.e. a diary) and also try and find a blog from someone who might have similar interests as you… like music tastes, political views, even a similar job as you might empathise more with where their coming from?

Answers by email please… thecamstar@musicwithtc.co.uk  

My weekend guys was pretty chilled... actually it was very very chilled, I did nowt interesting… V+ and PS2 essentially, though I guessed I should have put some practise in for the big game tonight. One thing that did tickle me over the weekend was whilst watching a fashion show, they were talking about Ruffles… it’s the next in thing apparently and they suggested that every female should buy a particular blouse from Chloe which had like a Ruffle bow… the cost of this blouse was…… £415 a pop….

Chloe Ruffle £528	Chloe Ruffle £628	Fashion Closet £12.99

please but does the average Jane Dow really go and buy a BLOUSE for £415…. if you do, please do send me a pic of you in such a blouse and I’ll put it in the picture gallery… £415…. dang man…, just think, that money could go on registering with a Introduction Agency…and you’d still get change…. I say go to www.FashionCloset.co.uk and get yourself 15 of them for half the price. Anyway peeps, Peace, Unity, Loving and Having Fun to yawl and we’ll touch base during the week…

18th July 2007… The morning after the latest weigh in and for those of you interested I’ve lost another 3lbs so that’s 15lbs in three weeks, so it’s all going well on the eating plan front. An update on the 10 Pin side, I played my Final game and knocked in 131, 135 and 145 (not including handicap), so about my average, but the person I’m playing the final will not play her game until next week Monday. Thing is my handicap is 60 and her handicap is 75, so she has 15 on me for each game, so for me to have any real chance of beating her I really needed to bowl an average of 15 above my average score…. My average score is 135… so it’s not looking good, unless she has a shocker of a game on Monday.

What else has been happening with The Camstar, not much really, I have decided to investigate running the School Dayz event I tried to run at Libertys which got postponed due to a communication breakdown, but obviously won’t happen at Libertys as the place has closed down now. I’m also looking at trying to First Friday up and running again, we did manage a couple at Libertys but I def want to get into a stable venue. Finally I have plans for a charity night for the Stroke Association in memory of my mum, I’m due to have talks with a venue on Broad Street, Birmingham tomorrow so hopefully when I next blog I’ll be able to give you an update.
        
You know what I’ve started to do…. I’m drafting a screen layout…. not sure if that’s the right phrase, but I want to make a documentary about the dating game and the ups, downs, joys and pitfalls within the industry. A big shout goes out to a dear pal of ours who I won’t name who has joined an Introduction Agency to see if he can find himself a few dates and maybe his soul-mate. Me personally I’m not sure I’d join an Intro Agency as I think some f them charge far too much for limited results… there is one that my pal found in his research that essentially sorts you out lunch dates s you fit it into you busy City Slicker lifestyle… the price…. more expensive than a Chloe blouse… you pay £600 - £700 for a 6 month membership and in an ideal world you would get 6 dates…. In 6 months… that 1 date a month….. £600 - £700…. robbery in my eyes…

The Dating Game	Could be an expensive lunch

Tomorrow evening I’m thinking whether to go and see Die Hard 4.0 or shall I go to Aldi and check out bargain offer Thursday… you may laugh but seriously Aldi do great offers on a Sunday and Thursday, or so I’ve heard… was on the train the other day and there was some business man talking to a couple of other people sitting his table, I assume he knew them, but he was telling them how one Sunday in January he’d got up early to get to Aldi for 9am… it opens at 10am to join the queue as they were selling some NASA running PC… and when he got to Aldi, there were already 5 people in the queue… like you, the people on the train weren’t convinced, but if I don’t go and watch Die Hard 4.0 then I might go hit Aldi and get myself a top quality rucksack for £4.99 … hummmm and a pair of wrap round sunglasses for £2.99 …. hummmm not forgetting the top quality, quartz, Swiss timepiece for the tidy sum of £4.99….. even more hummmm…. Anyway peeps, Peace, Unity, Love and Having Fun to yawl… touch base soon…

20 July 2007… Just sitting here in the office at 1855, as my train's have been suspended, due to, adverse weather conditions.

Went to Apres in Broadway Plaza at lunchtime where they were giving away free pints of Carling C2…. I can see why they were giving it away free…. I mean it’s ok, but seriously what’s the point, if you choose to drive to a pub then bite the bullet and don’t drink any alcohol because come on let’s face it you don’t drink lager because it’s the nicest tasting drink in the world do you, it’s not like drinking Blue Mountain Coffee is it?
                                    
As most of you people who read this regularly know I’m on a new eating plan, which bought up a conversation this morning with C Mac Gee in the office, he also goes to the same gym as I do www.virginactive.co.uk and he mentioned that he would be clothes shopping at the weekend and the subject of cheap clothing came up and yep I admitted I shop at Matalan especially with the eating plan as I’m losing weight so no point forking out for a T-Shirt costing the earth just to wear it twice…. yeah I shop at Matter’s but I do take offense with shopping at Primark, please come on man, at least Matter’s accepts the fact it is cheap and cheerful and when you walk into Matters you know what you’re letting yourself in for, where as Prime is trying to make out it’s some kind of High Street fashion provider when it clearly isn’t, pleeeaassseee come on Prime… sorry if you shop at Prime but no stop it… It would be like Asda trying to make out it can take on Waitrose and win…. please…

What is up with the press today, I can’t believe with things like 189 dying in a plane crash in Brazil, they have headlines about members of our government being canni smokers when they were back at Uni surely dabbling in canni when at Uni is the norm for any good healthy smoker, now if they were peddling the drug that’s a different matter, but for private consumption and not harming anyone surely it’s not an issue.
              
This week has been reasonably ok, I was online surfing a few dating sites and came across one where people can add 30 sec videos which in my opinion is like opening a can of worms, because usually guys who join these sites seem to think it is really cool to stand in front of their webcam waving their manhood and grinning… so I’ve heard… hey lads esp you Jean Claude… it’s not cool, most women just laugh at ya and then when they have a girlie night they log on, have a look at your vid and have a good old laugh… trust me guys it’s not cool… anyway I caught a particular video by some bird in Swanley, we’ll call her heavy as she’s been told Heavy means Fit….. When you watch her video it is about 20 seconds long and the dialogue goes… “Hi, I’m Heavy, I,ve been on G D F F for far too long now…. I just want someone to come and save me… I want a nice, gentle man to take me away, can you help?” I was creasing up… it was all in the tone and way it was said, she sounded so cute… it reminded me of Penelope Pitstop…..
                                     
Plans for the weekend, well Mr G is… sorry says his coming up to my town to sit and chill… but we shall see I won’t hold my breath.. if he does get up to me, we’re gonna start putting together some stuff for the documentary…. Actually just want to give a big shout out to Allyse who has agreed to help me with my novel in terms of a continuity reader, just need to get a couple more…. Hey do you remember Miss Sept…. the one who said we could only ever mates…. Well I’m glad you do.. cos wish I could remember her…. Hee hee… as predicted contact has seemed to stop, but I have sent her a request to be a reader as she did say she wanted to be one… when she was talking to me….. I won’t hold my breath but it was be good if she did reply….

Sunday will my miller time and will just do house work and maybe do some ironing for a change pack my bag actually in the morning instead of at 1am Monday morning. In the meantime people, Peace, Unity, Love and Having Fun to yawl….. oh by the way my merchandise shop is due to re-launch with a new supplier and with some new Logo’s but the First Friday Logo will still be staying there as will Skool Dayz logo…. Will let you know when it has opened.

23rd July 2007…. Oh Friday what a night… now I could say it was because I had a night on the tiles…. and you know what… I wouldn’t be lying… because I did have a night on the tiles….. the Carpet tiles of my office filing room…. yep, trains were up the swanny... which left me High and Dry on the 15th Floor of my office block sleeping on the floor…. anyway, I had try to get to home, but on the way back to the office I had to walk past Waterstones….. and there I saw about 50 or 60 people queuing up dressed as Wizards and Witches, no doubt queuing for the Harry Potter book launch….. remember there was massive flooding in and around the area… which made me smile…. had this thought that a fair few of them would have left home saying… “Come Hell or “High Water” I’m getting that book on launch day”….. quite ironic I thought…. Anyway… talking Mr Potter… I have not seen any of the Harry Potter films really, though have seen quite a bit of the first two… now I could go and see the new film, but the film review I give it will probably be quite negative having not really got into Harry Potter, so I was wondering if anyone or more of you out there would like to write a movie review for the website for this film please. any volunteers?

The Coming of High Waters	Wizard acquires the magic book

Saturday I was up and out the office by 0510 to get the first train at 0545, it got me home for 0730… after all I didn’t want to give Mr G an excuse not to turn up. Hit the market and the got me meat, veg and fruit... it is so much cheaper to get this stuff from the market than the supermarket and I think most of it is much better too. Mr G turned up in good time and essentially we spent the day just chilling and talking about the dating game and channel hopping, we caught a must see show that I’d recorded called “Worlds most shocking behaviour”.. there were a couple of bits of note… funniest was when the priest who was anointing the head of a new born, lost his rag with a member of the congregation who was hanging around in the wrong place,, he cussed her threw a few drops of Holy Water her way.. she threw her handbag at him, and he then proceeded to hurl the whole jar of Holy Water at her as he ran at her and delivered a couple of left hooks Nigel Benn would have been proud of.

Best produce in town at the Market	Pouring Waters from heaven

Most stomach churning was when a dude watching the Superbowl with a few mates, got a little upset when his team started losing as his mates were giving him grief, whilst they were in the lounge, he came into the kitchen and he did that thing footballers do when they hold down one nostril and snot out the other….. he did that right into the Guacamole dip next to the corn chips… seconds later one of his “mates” came in dip into it with chip…. I was cringing… reminds me of an occasion at Spring Harvest in Skegness and a slice of Strawberry Flan……

Other dodgy behaviour was the bloke who used his flatmates tooth brush to clean around the toilet bowl, or the flatmates who abused a fellow flatmate by stealing money from his room, used his phone to do long distance calls, wiped bogey on his bed sheet and….. poured a glass of urine on his pillow…. the main culprit being the girl of the house…. and yes she was the one who did the bogey and the urine…. how can you hate a fellow flatmate that much and if you do, surely you confront them and say he/she has to go….

The intriguing behaviour was the activities at Spring Break and Mardi gras…. I got to get out there are some point man… Lake Havasu is meant to be where it’s out…..

A reason to go to Spring Break?