Trev's 40th wet one

The drive from Brighton to Trev's took less than 45 minutes which made a welcome change. The marque, bar and band was already setup. For someone celebrating a birthday, Trev looked rather stressed for the first time I've ever seen. By 8pm the place was rammed with a wide mix of family and friends. Met Trev's boss, Chris who doubled as Bob Hoskins and a lot of Viv's family who came from Norwich. The band, also from Norwich was great (of course) doing some quality covers including personal favourite 'I predict a riot'.

Torrential rain made the journey up the hill to the almost flooded summer house a slippery, brown staining nightmare. Trev even offered some protection for the brave under canvas wraps but not alot took him up. Some of the guests were content to kitchen conversations with the marque's red carpet soaking up the water. After two trips up the hill I was almost ready to quit as well as it was a long day. My mood was a mix quiet contentment, paranoia and pi$$ed-off-ness with the rain that dampened the mood. Spending time with my new loved one made up for it, getting to know each other better, having fun after turning her on, she really is a Japanese mistress of fine pixels. I love you Nikon D80!

The last memory I took with me was going to the toilet after a some couple had come out with shifty looks and giggles.

House viewings all day long

Getting fed up with Estate Agents. They're either too disorganised or rude as f*ck. Our viewing marathon started with a dump of place with zero parking and wrong details. During lunch we made sure that the Whitehawk estate really didn't have any diamonds in the council estate rough. The area of Hanover was next with 3 places to see. Nice places but one too many compromises. Raced over to Portslade for a comparison. A 3 bedroom place full of loopy dogs, an unwashed smell of animals and décor worth torching. The penultimate 2 places were a surprise with 'Bert & Ernie' showing around their love-in as they were retiring to Spain. The other had almost captured our heart but really needed a second look. The last house was the other side of town which meant the wrath of the wicked witch of Wyatt & Sons. Lovely area but just too small for us. We left Brighton for Trev's in a mixed, grey cloud of confusion and depression.

Let there be house movement

Image by MacQ via Flickr

Saw three places for big Brighton move last week Saturday. 1st was great with an amazing garden but under offer, 2ndwas in scabsville with views of teenage-chav smoking in an old garage, 3rd was a flat on the seafront but on 5th floor and pokey small rooms. Sunday was spent cleaning the place into showroom standard and house junior doctor, Kerry adding finishing touches.

We must have had more than a dozen viewers nose round our gaff without even seeing it on Rightmove.co.uk. Saturday morning was a 2nd viewing and by the end of the day we received 2 offers from the same couple. Wasn't until today we found out we made the price we wanted! Bit paranoid about the speed of turn-around and busily applying for jobs. Brighton houses are looking thin on the ground as well for a fair price.

Other than all this excitement, I dragged Kerry up to Milton Keynes bribing her with cinema tickets then subjecting her to watch me snowboard for 2 hours. Hot Fuzz - It's hard not to miss any promotion for this film but it was as good as I hoped it would be. With the cast as recognisable as any Carry On, it should have been called Carry on Nicking. Timothy Dalton nearly stole the show with the creepy, Somerfield manager. Nearly didn't recognise Bill Bailey as he played a pair of twins. Not sure this is right but one was reading Ian Banks, the other Ian M Banks. The gory effects were great especially the church murder.

Snowboarding went well. It was a level 5 lesson. With a bit more practice I could have been coming down the slope without any falls and wide turns. Snow was considerably better than last time.

Sunday was a trip to Poole to collect Kerry's left luggage from the station then headed down to the quayside for sausage'n'chips. Bit a stroll for whiffs of old fish and watching a mangey mutt pissing itself everytime its owner shouted at it as well as frothing at the mouth - very disturbing. Otherwise Poole was a bit of a dive.

Finally, my itchy, impatient wallet got the better of me as I found a Nikon D80 with 9 months free credit. I've literally been dreaming about it all week! Hope to have it ready for Trev's party.

Cooking breaks-fast

Beatbox Fame Game
Uploaded by loranger

The future looks Bright-on

Brighton has been a mute point lately and with all the excitement of sorting out the New Zealand holiday the new life plan was mentally shelved. Flights have been booked and paid and we’ve almost sussed where we’ll be during our 3 weeks campervan trip. Looking forward to the following highlights:-

• Helicopter trip and glacier hike
• Wearable Art show
• Whale watching
• Queenstown extreme stuff

The whole Brighton drive got rebooted after Kerry spotting some ‘affordable’ houses and the suggestion I continue to work in Southampton until I find a job. Today, it took on another potential opportunity that an estate agent said that demand is so high in our area we could sell in a week and get a lot more than we estimated. I’ll believe it when I see it but a sniff of hope just doubles the appetite. We’ve booked some Brighton house viewings for tomorrow. Watch this space for more news!

Obviously looking forward to Hot Fuzz next week as well as The Science of Sleep will be worth seeing - Michael Gondry’s imagination on full flow. Other film news is finding out that Sony will be making a Metal Gear Solid movie. Who will play Snake!?

Amazon has delivered Okami for some overdue gaming brilliance. The Japanese painting styled graphics have influenced the image above. More game related art from GuitarAtomik. The Katamari Damacy Video Girl is another favourite.

Anyone seen the cool skateboarding Nissan TV advert?

Kicking myself for not buying the Nikon D80 I saw it cheap on Ebuyer. It's the lens kit 2 (18-135mm) I've been dreaming about and about £100 cheaper with 9 months free credit. Changed my mind at the last minute and thought I'd do later in the week to read the small print then they sold out!

Brown-fingered arcade game

Here's a new game called Boonga I could see working on the Wii. Based on the Japanese school-boy prank called 'kancho' you have to surprise your victim by sticking your fingers up their arse! Strangely enough, Kancho is also the word for a karate master/big boss. You could say this the Jap version of a 'wedgey' though the only thing English kids ever get up to is kicking others in the bollocks or graffiti-ing knob images.

Here's some borrowed text I found to explain it:
"1. The Kancho. Nobody survives elementary school in Japan (even if you're white) without receiving a few kanchos on the way. To kancho, simply put both hands together as if in prayer, and fold over all fingers except your two index fingers. Keep the index fingers straight and solid, for these are your kancho weapons. Next, find a target. Any butthole will do, but I suggest going for those that are clothed yet easy to find. Approach the butthole slowly. Then, when the owner has his head turned, swiftly jab your adjoined index fingers up the butthole and say "kancho!" (We did this regularly to people going up the train station steps on the way home from school.)"

On the same webpage is another game for spanking arses! My imagination is running wild with sleezy possibilities for the Wii-remote and designing a strap-on. We may see Mario in Nintend-slags: Plumbing the Princess some time soon in my perverted universe.

Tried out the walking-boots Saturday for a tramp around Wiltshire. All very healthy, good stuff seeing a chalk-hill white horse and scaring sheep along the way. We did nearly 4 miles around Bratton and can be found on this website.

The health kick continued on Sunday with a yoga session around new friend's (James) flat. We also experimented with Reiki but I'm not sure I really felt anything.