h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

yay, congratulations on the flat. presumably you are all settled in and are getting a sense of how the situation is going to work out. hope it's all been good.
so, the last week in brief: i sat through my mind-numbing 6ish hours of graduation, got my diploma (though i don't actually know where it is at the moment) ate, drank, and was more or less merry, then moved out and came home. and here i am in lincoln. arrived around 1.30 AM, and the drive was fairly pleasant. it was nice to have lenna along, for one thing.
and now the aimless weirdness begins. today i slept til 2, got up, thought about unpacking but didn't, attempted to follow up on the radio job but no answer at the office, played with my grandma's accordion, drank coffee, got on the internet. am kind of anxious to establish what i am going to be doing with my days, i guess i like having a routine. but i should just be grateful if i have to do without one for awhile.

Yeah, sort of been proper busy, so no posting, although have kept up with your adventures on JL. Am in netcafe in Camden while Anne minds the stall. Supposed to be shopping, so had better get on with it. Normal service will resume next week.

thanks for checking in. i myself have nothing going on, so may as well not be posting myself. yet here i am. well, i will say that taking up an instrument has been great, since at this stage of the game, every time you practice you are like twice as good at it by the time you stop practicing as when you started.
still no idea what i'm going to do for a job. well, ideas i have, good ideas-- not so much. it's hard to get up the momentum necessary to actually lift a finger in the direction of getting a job when it's going to be something like reception work, or selling books, or groceries, you know.

Hooray! http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/photo_galleries/4593569.stm

Other than this, just too busy to post. In the middle of packing my stuff and trying to run the business. Will be glad when this week is over.

... although this, from last week, was one of the maddest games ever:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/photo_galleries/4580271.stm

... ah, one day, West Ham:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/photo_galleries/4582755.stm

Aha! A parade of our very own, admittedly with a far less important trophy: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/photo_galleries/4597757.stm

Just packing. This is exactly like leaving Reading, staying up all night putting things into boxes. I have eleven hours to do everything, which, really, should be plenty. Tired though...

just thought i'd come in and say hi while my internet is still working... conditions may finally have stabilized on that front, though who knows? because machines always turn on you in the end.
saw in LJ that you have Spitalfields Sunday at last. hooray. i'll look forward to hearing how that goes. is it actually much different from a regular day, aside from being nothing but clothes? liked the lesbian shirt idea also.
i have been relearning how to ride a bike. and remembering why i forgot in the first place. it's like learning to drive, feeling myself to be an extreme hazard, but in this case rather than being a danger to others, the danger is that i will simply veer into whatever obstacle i find and kill myself. i remember how terrified i always was on bikes when i first learned, how i can't steer one-handed etc. etc. but dammit, i've got to get over it. so, more riding around and around and around my block in days to come.
went out drinking and dancing with joe and some of his friends last night. it was fun. i had my first McEwan's Scottish Ale and kind of fell in love with it, and got quite drunk on it, and then danced like an idiot for a couple hours. this had to have been my first time dancing at a club in lincoln. pretty sure i was slightly hung over this morning but slept through it and was fine by 9, when i got up and watched a couple hours of the remake of Around The World in 80 Days. and there you have it.
also, have been learning to tune and repair pianos, i seem to have sort of a knack for it.
well, i'll get around to a serious LJ update later, but right now, as usual, it's time for lunch so i must be off.
good luck on everything.

Well, here I am pretty much settled into my new Kentish Town home. I really like it; the move was hectic but not overwhelmingly so. The interweb came up yesterday, so now I am fully geeked up.

Anyway. I now have a fully functioning t shirt printing factory in the flat, at my immediate disposal. To whit, one thousand labelled shirts, a vinyl cutter, a heat press, and various design software. Hooray! It's a real company at last. All things being equal, it will be able to support me. Cool, non?

The reason that Spitalfields on a Sunday is a reason to be cheerful is simply because it is heavingly busy with people wanting to buy stuff. A *lot* of companies started there, and it is *the* place to be for small design companies at the moment. Basically, there are three big markets in London: Camden, Portobello, and Spitalfields, all of which come and go into and out of vogue periodically. Right now, Spitalfields is the hot ticket, and Camden is dead. It'll all change in time, of course.

Filming continues unabated, blah blah.

Both my old dear and Anne's old dear are coincidentally visiting the flat on Saturday, which should be fun. My family are far more pragmatic and robust than Anne's, but it will be a good mix.

You know, I *never* got on with McEvan's. Not really an ale person. But anything that makes one dance like an idiot is good.

Just ride the damn bike, Rachel. It's the easiest thing in the world. I cracked out 40 miles yesterday, my first significant ride for ages and ages, and I loved it to bits.

40 miles, la dee dah. you've got it all wrong, my friend: it's CUTE that i'm helpless and slow and a hazard on the road. makes me appear more feminine. god knows i need all the help i can get.
but yeah. cycling is definitely the ticket. i'll get it.
so the new printing equipment has been officially inaugurated and PGJ launched on the high seas of financial solvency. well, yeah, that is tres cool. glad the new Kentish Town location is working out. i need to think about moving again as well, though in the future i plan to possess nothing but a table, chair and mattress. just like the Van Gogh painting. i'll never know how many times that image flitted through my mind while i was shifting all my crap out of my poorly air-conditioned new orleans apartment for the last time.
also, i really need a damn job. though i was warned by an old friend from highschool i encountered today in the grocery store that straight jobs are a great way to slowly kill yourself.
going to Kansas City for the piano technicians convention tomorrow. always fun. desserts, drinking, jazz, and weirdos. though as i'm not affiliated with the guild i can't attend any classes, at least not without paying upwards of $500-- five pianos' worth of wages!

Yeah, any kind of straight job is basically a forty year suicide. I wouldn't want to go back.

You are presumably in Kansas now, so good for you. I am recovering from a busy weekend: had the first Sunday at Spitalfields yesterday, and, although I'd like to report that it was a huge success, it was a rather mixed experience. Certainly worth doing - I shared a pitch with a bloke called Jerry, another East Yard urchin, so the rent was very low, but didn't sell any more in terms of volume than I would do at Camden on a Sunday. However, it is certainly easier: very few tourists, and I can happily charge £12 per shirt versus £10 at Camden. I have redesigned Gay Sharks as well (now that I can do pretty much whatever I want with design and printing) and that went down well. So it's exciting, as I have a load of new t's and revamps of existing ones that I can now do. Also, we were tucked away in an obscure corner of the market, instead of on a prime location at Camden, so in terms of bang for the buck or whatever, Spitalfields is better. Nicer atmosphere, too. Need to find someone to run the Camden branch on Sundays, now. Probably get Gaby to do it.

So, today am just catching up on admin. It's a lovely day here in NW5, so I might go and sit in our little garden for a while and pick vinyl.

yep, kansas city. which is actually in missouri. i don't know why.
so how goes the vinyl picking? i should check in on the PGJ website. assuming there's tons of new and revamped stuff to look at. perhaps a 360-degree java/whatever tour of the new in-house printing facilities will be the next addition. anyway, glad spitalfields is paying off decently (or was 6 days ago at least). and look, it's sunday again. hopefully this week the experience was less mixed and more triumphant.
nothing big here. am back in town til thursday, when i go to chicago for my cousin's wedding but mostly to visit corrie and eat ethiopian food.
meanwhile, i am encouraging lenna to enter the garment business, though she won't be in competition with you as she'll mostly be making pretty things for girls, starting with me. plus this is the lincoln, nebraska market we're talking about, not much of an issue for PGJ. has the website made any sales in nebraska thus far? besides my nebraska-based credit card, that is.

Yep, picking vinyl like a veteran. It's actually pretty dull, it's where you take out the bits of a design you don't need before melting it onto the shirt. And working for hours on end in a small room over a two hundred degree centigrade heat press when it is over thirty degrees outside. But it's exciting nonetheless.

It will be a good while before anything new is on the site; getting the site updated again is not the highest priority at the moment. Although the empire is expanding: I now have Jerry as an employee, as he is essentially bankrupt. This means that I can do Spitalfields and keep the Camden front active. Regular Sundays there will also be a while off. I wasn't there today, and will be happy with every other Sunday for now. You just have to go through the whole process of turning up, getting your company known, letting the management trust that you are a safe bet, etc, before you get an automatic pitch. It was the same at Camden, although it takes longer at Spitalfields as it is more popular with traders and also half the place is a building site, so there is not a great deal of space. Going to take a punt up there on Wednesday, just to see what will happen.

Reflecting, however, on a horrific weekend of trading. Just too hot to be on the tube, which means that very few people actually come out to markets. This was a real lull last year, too. Still, Guilfest in three weeks, which will hopefully prop up the mid-year slump. More general business stuff on JL.

No, other than you, nothing else from Nebraska. Texas is where it's at for pgj cells in the US. Strange, but true. Similarly, in Australia, all the orders come from Adelaide. Weird. The majority of UK orders come from London, closely followed by Cambridge. So now you know.

yeah, texas gets all the stats since it's twice as big as any other state in the union, aside from alaska, where nobody lives. ah, texas.
spent the afternoon tuning 1/3 of a piano, which was exhausting. the very idea of tackling all 88 keys in one sitting...
am about to do my accordion practice for the day. then going to an animation film fest with joe, which should be good fun.
last night went dancing with lenna and her sister which was also good fun, though i discovered i'm not that great at dancing to 80's music. any tips?

Just back from a late night shopping trip to the Kentish Town Road. It's a real gem, which seemingly seems to ignore trading laws, as there was were 24hr Portuguese, Turkish and Greek delicatessans open. I love Kentish Town. Have eaten more varieties of food than I care to remember, what with Anne's vast knowledge of the subject.

No real tips on dancing to '80s music, I'm afraid. It was all too horrific for me, at the time. Any of the House Party films should be a rich source, though.

So, today, did a few bits of admin, wrestled with Coral Draw with Simon, in order that designs can be scored into vinyl. Read Tarot cards in return.

So why the accordian? Perfectly legitimate choice of instrument, just wondered what rationale, if any, lay behind it. Myself, I have been listening to bagpipe music, for which I have a considerable soft spot, all day.

yeah, i like the bagpipes too. was pleased and surprised at the random appearance of pipers at my graduation... i was not aware of any celtic tradition whatsoever in my university.
as for accordion, the main reason i am learning it is that i happened to have one, which i inherited from my grandma. it has its advantages as an instrument. more portable than a piano, also it adds to my overall weirdness and uncoolness. and it sounds quite nice with lenna's cello as it turns out. the idea was for her and me to form an ensemble. we hope to eventually add a percussionist. it'll have to be something equally silly, like claves (wooden sticks) or cowbell.. yeah.
chicago was pretty great. though i had to spend one day sitting around with way too much family in an outfit i hated. the afternoon i spent with corrie was fun, though. it was kind of nice to wander around without my parents. there was really cool art everywhere. and i enjoyed riding the elevated train thingy. i should move there. it is a real city. new orleans is so, so tiny in comparison. whereas in N.O. you could spend oh, 20-40 minutes driving from one end of the city to the other, you can spend fckin HOURS and HOURS travelling on public transportation in chicago.

Yeah, I love living in cities. I feel *so much* more my old self, being back in London for the first time in years. I never feel self-conscious here, just feel, I dunno, welcome. It is odd, because even though I grew up here and have never lived that far away from it, I still feel like a tourist when I see St Paul's from the train or whatever, or hear Big Ben from Jon's flat. I just feel I belong here, really.

Speaking of bands, Anne's brothers' band are on the verge of signing a recording contract, which has to be good news. And guess who will be printing all of their t shirts and merchandising.

The general running around has been going on since we last spoke; history was made on Sunday when pgj was in two markets at once, with me at Spitalfields and Gerry holding the Camden front. Good sales too. Bit of a nightmare with the vinyl cutter, as it can't cut curves small enough for what I need, however, I have just bought another one (due for delivery in 2.5 hours) which is state of the art. Horrible amount of money, but, you know, I don't have a business without one. Then Gerry and I have some seven hundred t shirts to print in a fortnight, before Guilfest. So, a lot of hot printing action down Kentish Town way coming up. I am skint now as a result of this unexpected extra purchase, however, Anne had the genius idea of applying to the bank for a small business loan. I should get it - I am a small business. I would probably use it for advertising, and, possibly, opening a small studio equipped to print just about everything. So I can do all the stuff I want to do with pgj - postards, artwork, etc - and have it as a design company in its own right. Probably call it Reckless Design. Both Gerry and Simon interested in coming in full time, and even Craig is excited.

Next time I send some stuff over, I'll put some bagpipe tunes in. I have a load of quite interesting stuff, including all the tunes that the pipers played in the infantry squares at Waterloo as the British soldiers endured four hours of cavalry charges and artillery fire. Admittedly, the context will probably not be of interest, but it does have all the famous Scottish choons, including the lovely lament 'Skye Boat Song'. This concerns the exile of Bonnie Prince Charlie. I should like to explain that the reason the 'foes stand by the shore/Follow they will not dare' was because the Jacobite cause had been so utterly annhiliated at the Battle of Culloden that there was really no need. More Scots fought on the side of the English than with the Highlanders, in case you come across any moist-eyed Americans with a tartan fetish. But it is a nice choon for all that: http://www.contemplator.com/scotland/skyboat.html

wow, yeah, all the reckless design and expenditure stuff does sound exciting. get a studio. it'll be the coolest place ever. i'll have to come over just to see it. just as printing band t-shirts is right up there among the coolest things ever. i've been out of school too long i guess, i don't know how else to express myself except to say 'cool,' but still. cool.
trying to organize another trip to chicago at the moment. did i mention this already? well, it's been in my LJ. it'd be a whirlwind weekend lark, where we will attend a music festival chock full of some of the most charming musical acts currently going. it'd be a cool thing to do. realistically, can i swing it? we'll see.
i don't know how i feel about cities. they intimidate me a little because i haven't gotten used to them so i doubt i could ever feel about chicago/wherever the way you feel about london. lincoln is a small place and i'm pretty comfortable here but really, you just CAN'T NOT want to be somewhere else, where things happen. it's a nice place for plotting your next move but ultimately you have to move. anyway, at this point i can't imagine where i *would* want to stay FOREVER.

Yeah, I'm quite excited about the idea of having a studio/workshop from which to do all kindsa stuff. But first things first: Gerry and I have over seven hundred t shirts to print before Guilfest next Wednesday, and the heat is very much on. It's a ludicrously huge amount of work, but we'll just have to get on with it. The next thing will be to get the website beefed up a bit, and then consider where to spend the bank loan, should I decide to take it. If nothing else, a base like that will mean I can develope pgj to what I feel is it's potential, and set up the assualt on the gay scene which is to be a huge part of next year. Basically, I can scale everything up.

Good weekend at Camden, Gerry held the Spitalfields front. It's good to see a great deal more of the money the company generates going back into the company instead of going out to Cavaliers. I'm still not seeing that much of it, but at least I have control over it.

I suppose it's what you're used to with living locations. I am a complete city person, I feel very comforted by the hugeness of London and being a tiny little speck in a vast metropolis.

i heard some bombs went off in london. hope you and yours are ok.