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And finally the last in the new shirts, white with thick purple stripes. I now have what can only be described as ‘a quantity of shirtage’ which I shall no doubt wear to death for several years before finally capitulating that, yes, my clothes are falling to pieces and, yes, I really should go out and buy some. Keep an eye out for special editions (my Metallica shirt, for example, or my posh frock shirts), however, this will be the last in the [semi] regular series for now

I’ve been a bit remiss with my shirtwatch postings of late. The photos had been taken, I’ve just been a bit busy and hadn’t got round to downloading them off the camera and uploading them to the internet web. Anyway, here we have a nice blue and purple striped offering (linen, worn out as per the advice given by my readers and my dear brother ).

It’s disturbing to think how rapidly technology is affecting language. Normally I try to fight the onslaught, although too much ironic use of l33t has left me being able to read and write it fluently (and if you don’t know what l33t is be very very thankful), but even with my limited adoption of internet acronyms and emoticons I find myself making assumptions and using words for their [very] modern meaning.

Take, for example, last night. I put in an email that I was ‘chatting with some friends’. To me that would imply talking to people via an instant messaging program and adding the qualifying ‘on the internet’ would simply be a redundant tautology. It took a few hours to dawn on me that someone might construe that as me having some friends physically round my house [don't laugh, it has been known to happen ] as, to be fair, that is the proper meaning of the word. Hopefully the line in question is innocuous enough that either interpretation doesn’t matter. Still, at least I never use the constructs [as these are certainly not words] ‘10q‘ (thank you), ‘plz‘ (please - and where the hell did the ‘z’ come from?) and ‘ne1‘ (anyone) which are my 3 biggest interwebnet pet peeves. Anyone feeling as though they should be using any of those, or similar, I only have one thing to say to you: lrn2type

So, apparently, by dressing myself (doing up all the buttons on my shirt, doing up the cuffs, tucking my shirt in) I’m making myself look ’square’ and should we walking around with my shirt in a state of half undress. I put it to you to decide (and ignore the fact I’m wearing shades in one image and not the other, I usually wear them regardless, but my brother, who was the instigator of this advice, wanted to skew public opinion to his way of thinking). So, which one will attract the laydeez? Smart or scruffy? (For the followers of Shirtwatch it is a new shirt but its identical to an already featured one, I just liked it so bought another one).

So new shirts mean we need to iron (I never used to iron my old shirts, they never really needed it). To date I’ve probably ironed about 3 shirts in my life (OK, so it’s more than that, but all the other ones I have done have been declared ‘rubbish’ by various women and redone) and I’m not exactly good at it. So, the good news is I’ve ironed about 7 shirts and I’ve got quicker at it (5 minutes for the last one versus 30 minutes for the first), the bad news is I have two burns on my hand (looks like I need to be careful when getting the iron of its special base) and I’ve discovered just how crap my ironing board is. We’ll be getting a new one this weekend me thinks. So, ironing sucks but now we have photographic evidence of me doing it (in a new shirt incidentally). Enjoy.

So my brother spent this weekend charging round the country to visit various people. I spent it charging round the South East picking him up, dropping him off and also visiting the same various people my brother was. We think this may well have been the first time my brother has been on a train by himself, certainly long distance. Of course I wasn’t on that train so there are no photographs but I did take a few on our way to Haslemere. Given my brothers broken leg I got him a disabled seat on the SW Train. Probably overkill but it gave him room to stretch. His pot comes off tomorrow so he’s pretty mobile. And yes, we are related .

First stop was our step brothers house (which is where we also slept Saturday night) where much curry and BBQage was had (including a great BBQ round thier neighbours house). Funnily enough most people thing my brother and my step brother are the related ones .

Next stop was to visit Dad and my uncle who was visiting from Miami (first time I’ve seen him and his family for 16 years). Dad was looking well despite having come out of hospital recently.

Of course, there is no point having a camera is it’s not used to embarrass someone, so here’s a lovely shot of my brothers skanky swollen foot and another one included especially for the ladies

I bought about 6 of these tops last year when I had a minor style change (OK, so I needed new shirts, couldn’t find the ones I wanted in M&S, decided as it was summer I should get something short sleeved and found them in Gap, I can call it a style change if I want. There is a nice irony that its taken me a year to throw some of the old shirts out, and the other half will probably be kept for another year ). Anyway, it was hot this weekend and I hadn’t done any ironing so I threw one of these on. Given the number I have the may still feature a lot

I didn’t so much sleep last night as blink. I looked at the clock, it said 00:15. I blinked. It said 04:50. I fell sleep. My alarm reminded me that I wasn’t allowed to 10 minutes later. Its going to be a brutal weekend (out of choice mind you, I could just as easily complain to everyone that I am tired and I don’t want to go out) and next week is already looking like it’s going to be a long one. All I can hope is that Saturday morning happens a looooong way into the future and that Sunday morning happens even further away.

There may or may not be updated over the weekend depending but, if not, I’ll put together a full report next week (after I’ve caught up on my sleep, done my washing, ironed and all the other niggly little things that seem to take up far too much of my life).

My current biggest worry is that I do not know enough people who go out (or indeed anyone at all in Colchester). Because of this I don’t go out that much and, so the logic continues, this greatly reduces my chances of meeting someone (especially given that absolutely bloody no one seems interested from the online dating sites). I’ve been setting about remedying this by basically hassling everyone I know to invite me if they ever go out. It came as a tiny bit of a shock when, while discussing if the lunch time pool sessions some of my friends partake in ever happen after school, that one of them said ‘lets go tonight’. OK, so I need to be in work on time tomorrow for an interview and so I can leave on time to collect my crippled brother from the train, and I may have to throw out the pork I was going to eat for dinner, and my ironing still needs doing, but none of those really seemed like good excuses not to go. So I went

Initially it was just going to be me and Chris but I pestered Teaboy about his appalling performance last weekend (I wanted to go out after we had all been to the cinema last weekend, he wanted to watch the film and have a cup of tea, hence the nickname) and he agreed to come along too. Simon, someone who was added to my social circle at lunch time (I don’t hang about) made up 4.

[Chris, Teaboy and Simon]

While my pool skills are somewhat lacking much fun was had by all. I even had a lucky game that coincided with an bad game from Simon which ended up with me _almost_ winning. As you can see, I was denied the win and it was rather easy for my opponent to snatch victory from me.

I quickly returned to form and ended up being royally thrashed. Yes, that is a set of 6 stripes, all forlorn on the table with no spots or black to keep them company, just a lowly white ball. Bet you can’t guess what I was playing

Oh, and it turns out that, in a certain light, Teaboy looks scarily similar to The Hoff.

Anyway, looks like the purchase of the small, pocket sized camera has worked well, it would seem the pool nights are a good idea and, so I am lead to believe, if we do them on a Friday night there will be laydeez there too. Not only that but Chris knew some people that used to go to Colchester Uni so is familiar with all the student haunts (desperate I know, but hell ) so he’s going to come up and visit and we’re going to go cradle snatching. Real bugger that its the summer holidays at the moment . Enjoy the rest of the photos

The astute among you will have noticed  a lack of shirtwatch post yesterday. The reason for this is twofold. Firstly, I’ve run out of clean, new shirts that don’t need ironing (this whole having to iron shirts is going to be a huge pain in the arse) so resorted to wearing a regulation black shirt from the BC era [before colour] and, secondly, I forgot to take a photo. I had a bit of a hectic day, went out for team drinks, got home late and by the time I remembered I’d already got ready for bed and dropped the shirt in the washing bag.

Never fear, today I wore an identical black shirt from the BC era (as I’ve still not ironed) so today’s shot will work for both days I have bought a further 5 shirts today (although two are repeats on what I have already in a purple stripe and white linen as I liked those) so hopefully I will have enough shirtage to last between ironing sessions. Tomorrow will see a return to Glorious Technicolor but we will then be resorting to black tops (bought during my minor image change just over a year ago) due to me galavanting round the country this weekend and having to carry lots of stuff.

Anyway, without further ado, the shirt: