domdavis.com

For some reason I’ve been quite tired of late. I think it’s got a lot to do with the amount of caffeine I drank on Friday. I’ve also had a weekend of carrying kids about, carrying lots of heavy camera equipment about and lots of fresh sea air. Net result is I slept for over 13 hours last night, woke up at lunch time and am now waiting to find out when my new desk (which should have arrived days ago, but due to problems processing the order - not the payment, mind you, just the order - I was expecting today) is actually going to arrive. The lateness of waking up and the lack of desk arrival has really thrown today into disarray. Now I need to decide if I waste the rest of it playing Oblivion, or if I retire to the bedroom and read my book on CSS (my comfy reading sofa has all the stuff that should go on the desk piled on it). While the latter option is more productive, neither of them are going to help me sort the 2000+ photos from the weekend that I need to go through. I guess the other option is to be a real doley and just go back to bed

You know you’ve probably lost the plot entirely when you find yourself explaining to a rather irate puma (she’s always irate) that if she doesn’t relax she’ll have a heart attack before she’s middle aged. Still, you’ve got to try My attempts were simply met with hissing, growling, spitting and lunging for me (2 fences in the way, bwahahahaha!). Since the cats came from Austria I decided that perhaps their English wasn’t so great and I would try mime and whenever they stalked me, I stalked them looking all serious and mean and then pissing myself with laughter when they went for me. They failed to see the funny side. I swear I’m first on Blacky’s list if she ever gets out

So I’ve spent the day getting rained on, climbed on (niece and nephew are here too) and generally blown about by the wind. Still I did get to spend some time with a pair of jaguars (who are driving the pumas nuts), go in with the coati and watch them mob the keepers for food and generally take advantage of all the joys of having a zoo in the back garden of the family home brings. There’s nothing like a load of ruddy great big cats to take your mind off the fact it’s raining.

And they’ve been hammering in the morning. No doubt they’ll be hammering in the evening. All over their flat. I really don’t care if they’re hammering out danger, or if they’re hammering out a warning because at 08:30 this morning there really was no love between my brothers and my sisters, all over this land.

So last night I went out in the t-shirt I made for last Sedition (the theme was Fantasies and Fables). Midway through the night I was approached by someone who wanted to know what the front said (they’d been reading the back). Once they read it they decided that it was all very deep and meaningful, that we shouldn’t get attached to things and did I follow the philosophies of Buddhism? Erm… no. Still, I didn’t want to disappoint them by telling them I had it printed because I found it vaguely amusing, it was a good way to get people to talk to me and, hell, might even get my a sympathy shag for my ‘tragic outlook on life’ Instead I just sodded off to the bar and showed CBT the glowing iDuck I’d bought out (they work very well in Guinness by the way as it’s quite conductive). Of course, after his second attempt at drawing me into a conversation about ‘not getting attached to things’ it became abundantly clear that he actually just wanted a glow bracelet. I really should ask Brendon if I could set up a stall in the pub and flog them to people. The amount drunk people are willing to spend means I could easily make a few quid on weekends :

Parents, read this: Tonight was fun, I went out for a few hours, had a few waters and then went home at a sensible time after eating a healthy mixed salad. I said my prayers, donated some money to charity and then went to bed content that my life was a happy one. The end. Now stop reading.

Everyone else: OK, so part of the reason I stopped drinking is that my surfeit of kidneys meant I could process alcohol FAST. They had to work hard, and in combination with smoking they ended up producing stones, however, a single nights drinking isn’t a problem. Yes, I’ve probably produced a small stone but we’re talking grit here and it’ll pass harmlessly in the next week or so. It’s only when I place the kidneys under constant strain that we produce the 11mm x 8mm x5mm monstrosities that I’ve had in the past. 23 drinks (2 WKD blue, 5ish vodka redbulls, many apple sours, a lot of them doubles) I got to drunk, bordering on wankered. That said I did cheat. I had a half of water before hand, 2 pints of water during, a half of water directly afterwards and 3 pints before bed.

Anyhoos. CBT claimed not to be scared of me. That changed by the end of the night Got three hugs off her. My friends are all brilliant. Even the ones who didn’t turn up. I seriously wish Sedition was on tonight. Got to wait for the 6th and the Darkside in Leeds. Oh, and I’m no longer caffeine immune, but I’ve had an awful lof lot of redbull so me and a pair of glowsticks are going to dance the night away in the spare room until I get tired and fall asleep

Tonight is bought to you by:

• Grendel
• Blut Engel
• Carfax Abbey
• Combichrist
• More Grendel
• Ultraviolence
• Fear Factory
• Dulce Liquido
• Threat Signal

It has been said that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. Nice party trick, but it wasn’t his greatest trick. No, that was to convince the world that ironing existed. It’s a little known fact that ironing didn’t exist until 1994 when it was created specifically to annoy me. Before that there was no such thing as creases and clothes would come out of the washing machine crease free. People’s memories of ironing previous to this are these just to perpetuate the myth that we need to iron. True Story.

Todays SoTW is a little different in so far as you may have even heard of it Galaxia, by Ferry Corsten [wikipedia] from the album L.E.F. [ITMS] pretty much sums up today for me and it’s a great way to start your day. Scott would have loved it

So what is d-day? (No, not the Normandy landings, that would be a capital D and far more important than this). I don’t drink. It’s not that I don’t like drinking, it’s just that I have funny kidneys and drinking puts them under strain, which causes them to produce stones. Stones hurt, therefore I don’t drink. Except I do:

• At a wedding I will have a mouthful of champagne to toast the bride and groom.
• On new years eve I will buy a [normally half] bottle of champagne and toast in the new year with a mouthful. The rest is then drunk by one of more designated drinkers.
• At a funeral or wake of someone I know I will have one drink.
• On d-day I get drunk. Not pissed, just swayingly refreshed.

d-day used to be the 28th of May and was quite simply an act of remembering one of my best friends on the anniversary of their death. If you knew Scott you’d understand that toasting him with a glass of lemonade just doesn’t work. Instead it was a can, or pint (depending on if I was at the pub or not) of Stella. I hate Stella, but that’s not the point. Also, we’re not talking riotously drunk here, it’s simply that I drink so little that a can of beer is plenty to get me nicely sozzled.

May has a few more anniversaries in it now, not least of which is the death of my best friends father. Getting drunk once a year isn’t a problem. Getting drunk several times in one month is, so I decided to formalise d-day and place it on the last bank holiday of the month (the idea being that I wouldn’t loose my weekend with it being a long one).

Now it may sound like d-day is a bit morbid and depressing. It isn’t. It’s a celebration of life. The idea is not to get shitfaced and mope about, the idea is to toast two great lives and keep their memories alive. I also use it to celebrate the fact that I quit smoking, mark the anniversary of moving into my new house and, this year, celebrate getting a massively long paid holiday and a whole raft of other stuff.

So there you go. You know now and can stop asking

So, in conjunction with the critically acclaimed Shirt Watch I present to you: Flower Watch.

I have two tall vases on my dining room table which are pretty much permanently filled with cut flowers, (mainly bought from the supermarket as they cost less and last longer than the flower stalls I’ve tried), plus a small round vase that sometimes gets pressed into use. The vases add some structural height to that part of the room and a nice splash of colour.

For the last couple of weeks I’ve had one vase filled with some flowers bought from Liverpool Street station. They were supposed to fill both vases but I didn’t get enough. Since having a ‘lop sided’ table was driving me nuts I bought some tulips for the other vase. They have since passed their best

These have now been replaced with some roses and some…er…other flowers (I buy based on if they look nice, I really don’t care what they’re called ). My flower arranging leaves something to be desired but they look OK.

Of course, I would be walking home with these when I encountered my first ever swarm of bees. There I am, happily walking along listening to my iPod when all of a sudden I notice the sky is rather full of black shapes flying all round the place. Took my a while to realise what they were, however, before I could say “I’m covered in bees!” they’d flown off.

Might go for lilies again next time.