alexsarll: (bernard)
Alex ([personal profile] alexsarll) wrote2012-01-29 02:11 pm

Partied out

London life appears to be cycling up again, the diary filling and the weeks of temperance (through illness or lack of event, not some talismanic fool belief in detox) coming to an end; if doubt remains, then you always know for sure that it's kicking off again once you're stood in the back room of the Wilmington watching giant robots fight off space dinosaurs with the help of indie rock. Back to the clubs and pubs and dinner parties - and back to Kentish Town. Did ever a district combine side street charm with high street horror to such an extent? Four places I wanted to go before Ale Meat Cider - one simply failed me, and three were on unscheduled shutdown (one by the fire brigade). In the meantime, I've been reading, and putting the new Necron list throught its paces on the tabletop*, and relishing Gregg Araki's Kaboom, which mixes his usual polymorphous perversity with apocalyptic conspiracy and creative swearing, and less so Arrietty which is, like every non-Miyazaki Ghibli film I've seen, faintly disappointing. The visual richness, the gardens into which you just want to melt, are present and correct - but the characters and the plot just feel a little...conventional, up until an ending which is at once conventional and not even a logical conclusion of what has gone before.

And, most importantly, I've been to the Isle of Wight with [livejournal.com profile] xandratheblue. Yes, it's still definitely England, even if it's not Great Britain, but it's my first time overseas in years, or with her. So we meandered around the island on a bus that seemed to be the equivalent of the Circle Line if it had a view and was faintly reliable, and saw clicking owls and cartwheeling monkeys and a Roman mosaic of a cock-headed man (NOT LIKE THAT), and stayed in a hotel on a lake, and because she's a city girl she seemed almost as excited to have rabbits and sheep pointed out from the train window as to travel on a hovercraft. Though it was noticeable that the other passengers were a lot more subdued on the return trip, presumably because of the Costa Concordia footage on the screens in the waiting room. I don't know why, given we were using a totally different means of transport and the captain wasn't Italian. Though in his shoes I wouldn't have been able to resist a loud 'Mamma mia!' or two within earshot of the nervous travellers.

*With most pleasing results, except against Blood Angels.

[identity profile] green-badger.livejournal.com 2012-01-30 01:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Ooh, when were you on the Isle of Wight? I was there on the 21st. xxx

[identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com 2012-01-30 06:17 pm (UTC)(link)
My comment appears not to have wanted to be a reply...

[identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com 2012-01-30 06:16 pm (UTC)(link)
Ah, a week after us, then.

[identity profile] green-badger.livejournal.com 2012-01-30 06:29 pm (UTC)(link)
Would have been most odd if we'd bumped into you! We were just there for the day though and pottering around the east coast on the train. xxx

[identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com 2012-01-30 07:30 pm (UTC)(link)
We tootled along some of that on the bus - very lovely.

[identity profile] thermaland.livejournal.com 2012-02-06 11:04 pm (UTC)(link)
A flurry of emails from LiveJournal has arrived lately. I regret to inform you that LJ's policy of purging dormant accounts has resulted in a severe culling of the Sarll family.

[identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com 2012-02-11 09:33 am (UTC)(link)
Tragic times. Are their contribution to comment threads eslewhere, at least, preserved for the ages?

[identity profile] thermaland.livejournal.com 2012-02-11 11:18 am (UTC)(link)
A crack team of historians on crack has been dispatched to find out, and then make sure no one else does.
Edited 2012-02-11 11:18 (UTC)