domdavis.com

So, Saturday night at arround 19:30 I was feeling distinctly nauseous. Why? The Fear. I get The Fear rather a lot and it’s mainly to do with the fear of the unknown. This particular case was due to me going to a new club, by myself and no knowing if I’d get in, if I’d like it or a whole host of other things that could go wrong (you know, normal, every day rational things like everything goes fine just up until the point of the last train when a bouncer spots you, decides you don’t really fit in and kicks you out leaving you to wonder the streets of London for 7 hours while waiting for a train - hey, it says ‘deranged mind’ right there at the top of this page, what did you expect?). 30 odd minutes later I was in and had forgotten all about my irational panicking and by 1am I was having a whale of a time. Next time I go there will be a smaller panic (’Will it be as good?’, ‘What if they don’t play that stuff every week?’) and by the third time I’ll be walking in as if I own the place (see previous point about derranged mind). Good thing really as I find it very easy to find things to worry about and if I didn’t have other stuff dropping off the list I’d be a nervous wreck

Anyhoos, given I’ve got a lot of the clubbing frustration out of my system I’m beginning to think if I can be bothered with The Betty Ford Clinic next week. I’ve got a busy weekend afterwards so perhaps I should just spent the night in the Hole and get a [relatively] early night. There is another part of me that says I’m just rationalising The Fear now that some of the people I knew were going don’t seem to be going any more although I wasn’t planning on going with them, I just knew they’d be there and even if I was going with people I still suffer The Fear with new clubs. After all, up until this morning I was really looking forward to going. Daft thing is that I haven’t failed to have fun at any of the clubs I’ve been to this year so you’d think The Fear would just take a running jump. Na-ah. I don’t even need molehills to make mountains

As we know these after clubbing posts van be just a little incoherent due to exhaustion, sleep deprivation and the fact I tend to write them just to keep my brain going. When I crash I crash hard and I need to be at home, in bed otherwise god knows where I’ll end up.

Today has been longer than usual. Sedition was out of house at 9pm, club at 11, leave at 5, home in bed for 7. This has been out of house at 5:45, club for 8 and leaving at 6. Problem is I meant to leave at 7. A combination of being knackered and being lysdexic meant I thought it was 7 and only realised my error after I’d left the club (no re-admission) . Since it’s a Sunday trains home don’t start until 7:30 meaning i’ve got over an hour to kill in Liverpool Street Station. All I can say is Thank God For The iPhone. Once I’ve done whittering at you lot I’ll watch a few episodes of Babylon 5 to keep me occupied.

So, the night. I went early as entry to Slimelight requires you to be a member or to be signed in by one. Not knowing anyone there I wasn’t too keen on loitering outside waiting for someone to take pity on me. Thankfully if you pay to see the bands you get into the club afterwards. So from 8:30 to 11:00 I got to watch three reasonably good live acts all with very cute singers (I seem to be developing a thing for female post-cyberpunk vocalists, either that or I’ve just been lucky with the 10 or so bands I’ve seen this year. In the two and a half hours that went on for I also astounded the bar staff with just how much lemonade I can drink on a night out to the point where they started just giving me pints instead of the small glasses.

At 11:00 I headed into the main club room and people watched for a bit before diving on the dancefloor and waving my little arms about like a madman. At about 1am a couple that my next door neighbour know found me (he’d told them I was going and gave them my number). This meant I now had people to intoduce me to other people and a couple of members to recommend me for membership. Result :-). Between 1 and 4 I alternated between the main dancefloor and talking to my new found friends. I also started dancing with a VERY cute girl who reminded me of Chuggabopps when she was young, innocent and stupid enough to date me. Unfortunately cute girl was whacked out of her brain on something so I contented myself with just dancing with her.

I also befrended James, the guy on the main bar. He was also astounded by just how much liquid I consume in a night so we got talking about my broken kidneys.

Between 4 and 6 there was dancing with randoms (I have absolutly no idea when women are interested in me unless they’re blatant so nothing happened. I really need someone to fly wing who can spot these things) and I started wilting. I was just getting a second wind when I thought it was 6:45 and time to leave. Of course, in my addled state I’d misread my watch. Still, I got a huge hug off cute girl when I said I was leaving and it sounds like she’s a regular so no doubt I’ll see her again. Also got goodbyes from the bar staff. The others I’d met left at 4 so I’d already said my goodbyes (and claimed my hugs) to them.

So, to the club itself. It’s a dive. But then these places at meant to be. It would be no good if it were too posh. The venue isn’t as cool as Seditions but the music is good and the crowd is excellent. I think I’ll be going there a lot despite the fact I don’t get home until 9 the next morning. Once I’ve got my membership card I’ll be able to pitch up after the bands so it won’t be quite such a long night. I think I’ll also set the phone to tell me when it’s time to leave rather than relying on my ability to tell the time after 6 hours of dancing.

So yeah. In Liverpool street with another 40 minutes to go. Watching the pidgeons shit all over the people sat next to me was fun though. I think I’m going to hunt down a cup of tea and go for a wonder before embarking on the epic journey home. The air will keep me awake.

So this weekend was just a little unplanned and didn’t really fill me with any great joy. I think a whole load of my mates are away on holiday this week and I was full of general apathy. Still, I go a bit funny if I don’t talk to people regularly so I forced myself to get ready and head out. Given I know all the bar staff and quite a few of the regulars it wasn’t like I’d have no one to talk to. I decided to treat myself to a bit of sashimi on the way up. which is becomming a regular feature. I tend to eat before hand and have a ’small’ £18 plate with 2 portions of salmon and 2 portions of tuna on it. Yummy. The alternative is between £50 and £100 worth of food which is lovely, but not really viable for a weekly thing. They’ve come to know me in that resteraunt too, mainly because the amount of sashimi I can eat impresses even the chef (he’s come out before because he didn’t beleive one person ordered that much ) but then I’ve always been a sucker for dead raw fish.

Anyhoos, got to the pub and it was dead so I sat at the bar with a friend of mine had a bit of a chat and then spotted a rather cute girl walk in who spoke to the bar tender and I swear uttered the words ’still single’, which I assumed to in relation to her and how she was but I could have been wrong. She proceeded to sit at the end of the bar with no drink in hand so me, being a sucker for cute girls, decided to say hello and offer to buy her a drink. Transpires she was a poor student who had come out on the offchance her friends were comming out. She also appeared to be not single but that may have been for my benifit. I was happy enough to just buy her a few drinks and chat.

The pub eventually filled up and as darkness fill the glow came out Cute girl seemed to like the glow straws (in fact, everyone did, big hit there). The 10″ glowsticks were a bit dissapointing so I wont be bothering with them again, the glow earings were popular so I’ll need to get more of those and as usual the 4″ pendants and 6″ clubbing sticks went down an absolute storm. Turns out I’m a legend in my own underwear as a couple of people came up and asked ‘Are you the glowstick guy?’, something that appeals to me overinflated ego (especially when you get told that one couple will name thier first born after you in honour, not that it’ll happen, but the sentiment was there).

The rest of the night was spent talking to various people who I don’t normally talk to much which lead to an interesting revelation. I’ve always been a bit confused as to who lives in the ground floor flat below me. I was sure it was one guy, but then I kept seeing another couple coming and going so decided I must have got it wrong and they lived there while the guy visited lots. Nope, turns out they all live there The guy moved in first the then couple gradually moved in over time. Since the guy is the DJ at the new rock club in Colchester it means I can run downstairs with CD’s full of the crap I like and beg him to play it. We’ll have an electro/EBM/cyber/industrial set before long, even if I have to DJ the damn thing myself

To top the night of we had a big greasy kebab with chips and I went home to eat it while watching an episode of House. Pure bliss.

My blog is one year old today So what’s happened in the past year?

Well, the blog started exactly a year ago (to the minute, I’ve automated the posting of this to be sure ) as [another] attempt at getting a home page going.  I introduced the world to the idea of operation sock, then I proceeded write lots of random drivel and before getting dumped, and going on about shirts and my new flat in a big way. My new commute, lack of friends and lack of girlfriend had me not getting as much sleep as I should and I was constantly bemoaning how tired I was. There was the brief flirtation with online dating and I bought chickens. Who’d have known I’d no longer be in contact with their namesakes a year down the line.

August saw me going out more and more in a desperate attempt to make new friends and generally be around people. It was also the start of my health kick down the gym and some insane purchases for the house. September I was quite quiet about what was going on in my life with a few random posts. It was also the last time I got to see sprog. I still miss her.

October was more upbeat with my sock fettish rekindled and some big nights out planned. I’d started to make friends in Colchester, but I still wasn’t looking after myself. Oh, and the rants about Christmas started… interestingly I then went and bought a shed load of very sharp swords. I discovered my local and finally went to the doctors about my problems sleeping.

November I retreated from the world, left facebook and the online dating sites, got angry and got an iPhone (the two events were unlrelated). I also decided the whole ’smart with shirts’ look wasn’t me and went straight back to black cliche where I’ve kind of stayed. I stayed angry through December and basically shouted a lot about Christmas before keeling over with a seriously bad kidney infection.

January started well, saw the official unveiling of the flat. I was still ranting but I was a much happier bunny. In February I tried a new project over at my somewhere random domain which ultimately died a death but which was borne out of iPhone joy, which I had in great abundance. Pancakes were had and our crush on CBT started. Oh, some 8 months after the idea was first mooted Operation Sock finally went live. Not everything went to plan though.

In March I met up with a whole load of you, went clubbing lots, discovered sedition and calmed down sufficiently to reintegrate myself with the world… or facebook at least. April saw a couple more setbacks, but nothing major, and despite those I was a lot happier. I think the holiday helped. I relaunched somewhere random, got my biting sarcasm back and promptly keeled over with another kidney infection. I also started doing SoTW (Song of The Week) which is something that I’ve been doing with a few friends for a while now.

By May I’d really started to sort things out. My social life was good, I was toying with the idea of doing something funky with my hair and I got told I was being made redundant (not necessarily a bad thing). It’s a bit of an odd month for me so it was nice to be in a good place to start with. Was still devoid of girlfriend, but was having fun at the pub each weekend. d-day passed without incident (and was really quite fun) and I got back in contact with someone who I’d desperately missed for 10 years.

June has been a funny month and I’ve been a bit up and down, although more up than down despite lifes best efforts to derail me. Where I go from here is anyones guess but I’ll do my best to take you all with me.

It’s funny but I can look back on all the posts, no matter how vague, cryptic or random and remember what I was doing, and why I put the post up. I’ve always tried to keep the blog upbeat and happy, or at least that’s what I thought I was doing, but having reread everything in a sitting it’s quite clear, to me at least, when I was really down (which seems to be an awful lot). Becoming single in a strange town put paid to a lot of the ‘happy happy, joy joy’ in the beginning and it’s only really in the past few months that I feel things have started to turn around for me. Hopefully the next year wont be quite the headlong charge into the unknown that this one was. I’m certainly a lot calmer than I used to be (honest). Of course, from your point of view, this might not be a good thing as we’ll be returning more to the random drivel with less of the juicy gossip I’ll endevour to maintain high levels of biting sarcasm (which, ironically, I do better when in a good mood) for your reading pleasure. In the mean time I’ll leave you to speculate about the 90% of my life (yes, really, I’ve left huge chunks out) that I don’t blog about while I go find something banal to write about.

God I’m a miserable bugger

I’m completely out of whack today. Got rudely awoken this morning thinking someone was banging on my bedroom door (was actually my bathroom door rattling in the wind) and it’s all been a bit off kilter since then. I keep thinking it’s later than it really is which is confusing the hell out of me for starters, but hey, I get more of the day to play with.

Anyway, I’ve decided to take a good friends advice and actually relax for a few days so I toddled up to Colly highstreet for to be buying a few bits and bobs.

First off was a trip to the post office. I hate the post office. There are always queues because they’ve shut all the local ones and everyone needs to go to the main one. Then there was a trip to Game (I’m a card carrying memeber) where I traded in a whole load of old games for a copy of The Orange Box and £17 odd on a gift card (got £50+ for the old games which is better than a kick in the teeth, plus walking out of Game in profit is not something I’m used to). I shall be playing that over the weekend methinks.

My next stop was TK Max to look for some new shoes. I walked in, took a look arround, walked straight out again and vowed never to go back Got my shoes from Free Spirit instead. Replaced the old pair of Vans which were squeeking and annoying me and got a second pair so I have a choice. While my shoe collection has become larger of late I still don’t undertstand womens fascionation with new shoes. I’m now looking at a couple of weeks of wearing them in until they stretch to fit my feet whereas my old shoes fit me perfectly now. New shoes bad, slightly worn shoes good

I completely forgot to take my Halifax account book from Bradford (some 10+ years ago) which I found recently as the £50 in that will probably be nearer £55 what with interest and everything I also found a picture framing place and I have a characature of me that I want framing so I think I’ll be going in again tomorrow. Oh, I also had to get a new hairbrush as my old one had died. I now have a purple and black one

My life is just so exciting.

So now I’ve got my stats up and running I’ve realised that I get rather a lot of hits every day, some from bizarre sources, and what’s more, people seem to actually read stuff when they get here. Just so I look a little bit more professional I’ve gone and sorted out a favicon (look up in the address bar, you’ll hopefully see a little picture of me ).

And in case you wanted to know what the search terms were:

These are terms people used to find your blog.

Today

Yesterday

(Copied direct from the stats page)

The butt plugs one is to do with this little spat here and seems to feature regularly. “I am tired but can’t sleep at night. bra” intrigues me, although I’m not too sure I want to delve too deeply into the ins and outs of that one.

Oh, and for the bloke (because it’s going to be a bloke isn’t it) looking for Kebabs by Liverpool Street station: you’re out of luck. Closest place is on brick lane. Good donner, but if you want anything else you’ll need to head to Old Street up by Golden Lane where there is a fantastic place (well worth the 10/15 minute walk). If you can cope with chicken kebabs then there is a place near the back of the station, but it might only be open weekday lunch times. Failing that go to fuzzies grub, it’s not a kebab but it’s damn good. Drop me a comment if you want directions to any of the kebab places

Now, which one of you lazy arses is googling for “dom’s blog” rather than just typing in the url?

It’s coming up to be the blogs birthday (Friday) and it turns out I’m on my 500th published post (there are a few more I didn’t publish for reasons of me not quite sharing everything with you lot). There have been ups and downs, twists and turns, good times and bad. I’ve got over 40 registered users (some of which actually come back once in a while), had nearly 2000 comments (although a good percentage of those are from me), other people have linked to this blog from their blogs and I’ve made it onto quite a few blog rolls. I’ve even met some of my readers in real life and formed friendships with them. The blog is also in the top 500,000 blogs on technorati (460,360rd). All of which begs the question: Are you mental?

Seriously, I spout drivel. Lots of it. I take photos of me in new shirts and go on at great length about it, I get excited about a pair of trousers that hold glowsticks and you lot seem to lap it up (incidentally, I bought another pair of them I liked them so much). It does surprise me the posts that get the most reaction though. Things I chuck out there as mere throw away comments generate loads of debate whereas other posts get totally ignored (I so thought someone would bite with that one).

The one time I did drop off the face of the planet you all bitched like hell about the lack of posts and there was near panic when the blog disappeared for a few hours. Still, you feed my ego, justify my god complex and don’t half make me laugh sometimes (goron, you comment on day socks still makes me chuckle to this day) and I love you all for that.

I’m a firm believer in the fact that relationships fail due to a lack of communication. Yes, there are a million and one reasons why the relations appear to fail, but at the end of the day it’s all down to lack of communication. I got proved right [once again] today. I ‘heard’ something and made an assumption that could have lead to me damaging a good friendship had I acted directly on that assumption. Thankfully I spoke to the person involved and realised the whole thing was just a silly misunderstanding. Friendship intact, pride slightly dented for being such a spoon but that’s my own fault. I dread to think how it could have turned out. Instead I just have another story to add to ‘The Evils Of Facebook’

I don’t know what’s wrong with me today. I’m just constantly eating and it’s not as if I’m all that hungry, but I’m not exactly full either. I had 4 slices of toast for breakfast (at about 10:30), then a roast dinner at the pub at about 2, then pudding, then another pudding, then a treacle pudding because you’ve got to really, then a third… er… fourth pudding (the apple tart was absolutely lovely ), then 4 peperamis, if not more. Now I have a serious desire for a large mixed kebab and chips which is absolutely ludicrous because I can’t finish one of them even if I’m starving. I’m going to cook up some spag bol that’s been defrosting, watch the last two episodes of Lost and see if that calms the munchies down. Hopefully it’s just the body restocking after Wednesday nights unpleasantness.

I think we can safely say it was food poisoning. It’s not man flu (I don’t do man flu) or a cold, it’s certainly not anything kidney related and if it were norovirus I’d still be feeling pants and dancing the toilet 3 step (you get three steps away from it and… ). The only other thing I know that can make you that ill, that fast is bad seafood and if you consider I’d had 70 quids worth of sashimi, tempura and grilled beef (some of it almost blue) for dinner a pattern begins to emerge.

Still, we can take some positives from all this:

• I’ve discovered that the restorative effects of Shreddies are nearly as good as those of Coco-pops which means all you freaks out there that wont or can’t do Coco-pops when ill have a viable alternative.
• I’ve not annoyed my neighbours all day with my plastic drum kit.
• I’ve almost caught up on my sleep.
• I’ve finally watched the Bourne film that’s been sat in the PS3 for over a week.
• I get to call chuggabopps early tonight as I’m not going to Tai Chi

Normal service shall be resumed tomorrow.