A Yorkshireman displaced

Saturday and housemate Dan aquires "Trump – the boardgame". It’s a magnificently self-aggrandizing boardgame about billioniare Donald Trump in which you have to make lots money. Remember to make millions it takes brains, to make BILLIONS it takes TRUMP.
Contents: 1 board, lots of fake money with Trump’s face printed on it, several game cards with various game altering effects printed on them (my favourite being the "You’re Fired!" card, and several plastic counters representing properties). It plays a lot like Monopoly with a slight gambling twist and was pretty good (albeit kitsch) fun.

Sunday: a wirlwind of church, pub and more boardgames. No lasting images imprint themselves in my mind on days like these and I can’t help but feel disatisfied with the day.

Monday: Waking up in the back seat of my friends car on the way back from a daytrip to the lakes. Looking across the motorway and seeing all the lanes on the other side of the central reservation are closed except for one solitary car. Its engine is aflame and there is no-one nearby but the air reeks of burning petrol. There is something mildly post-apocalyptic about the sight of burning cars and in my foggy state of mind I find the situation a bit disturbing. There is no evidence of a crash and I can’t help but wonder what happened. Then I am asleep again and I wake up in Liverpool wondering if I dreamt the incident.

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Here goes:

1) Visit the seaside

2) Watch videos late into the night with friends / Play videogames late into the night with friends

3) Get a friend who happens to be housesitting to invite some people over (including you). Then turn it into a crazed party, knowing full well that aforementioned friend will have to pick up the pieces.

4) See a band

5) Go to a gallery

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Yesterdays citywide ebullence has evaporated like cheap vodka in the night. For those unaware, Liverpool lost 2-1 to Milan and as predicted, I was one of the few who didn’t spend the evening weeping into a Stevie Gerrad pillow-case in a drunken state. In fact it wasn’t just my co-workers who were in a sorry state. When I went for my lunch the whole city was locked into a collective frowning hangover. I guess that’s the price you pay for following a sport.

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Sorry kids, hard at work today (or I was).

It’s Champions League Final day, so Liverpool is full of singing drunkards (I’m guessing Athens is as well). I wish I could join in the fun but for my sins I’m a Leeds or York city fan (depending on my mood – but strictly a glory supporter so I don’t really count). There’s quite a carnival atmosphere though which is nice but I bet there’s going to be a few missing co-workers nursing hangovers tomorrow.

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The basis of today’s office based conversation was: "what things do you want to do before you die?" Suggestions ranged from the silly to the ridiculous to the vaguely sensible. One of my co-workers wanted to drop a water melon off a high building and film the impact. I wanted to smash a building up in a JCB (or set fire to one) and stay awake for 72 hours. Someone suggested throwing a cream pie into the face of a total stranger was something that everyone must do at some point in their lives.

We all decided that throwing a cream pie into someones face was impossibly cool (provided they didn’t attack you and you had an escape route).

My list of "Things to do before I die" currently stands at (but is not limited to):
1) Do the Trans Siberian railway
2) See Machu Picchu in Peru
3) Write a novel
4) Set fire to or otherwise destroy a building (possibly illiegal)
5) Cream pie a stranger (also possibly illegal?)
6) Write a song
7) Learn to juggle
Read War & Peace, the bible and all those other long books which are apparently worthwhile

On an unrelated note: the set list for my DJ debut is in the comments of the entry below

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On thursday night I had my first ever DJ gig at a bar in liverpool (well I was helping friends out so I wasn’t exactly headlining). I managed to pull off a decent enough set though (I play proper music rather than nasty hard-house-annoying-repetitive dance-music).
The strangest thing about the evening was that celebrity football pundit Alan Hanson turned up. Either he drinks in that particular bar anyway or maybe I have celebrity fan. I’m guessing the former on the basis of the fact that he seemed oblivious to my virtuoso song-picking talents and didn’t make any requests.

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I do apologise for the fact that I’ve been unable to blog recently.
I having an existential funk (again), hence the Kierkegaard qoute below.

I’m thinking of doing this:

http://www.seat61.com/Trans-Siberian.htm#longest%20train%20ride

as a way of shaking in myself into action.

Take care people.
(also I turned 26 this weekend – I didn’t do any of the things on my list of "Things to do when you are twenty five" so I need to make up for lost time)

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"And when the hourglass has run out, the hourglass of temporality, when the noise of secular life has grown silent and its restless or ineffectual activism has come to an end, when everything around you is still, as it is in eternity, then eternity asks you and every individual in these millions and millions about only one thing: whether you have lived in despair or not."

-Soren Kierkegaard, "The Sickness Unto Death"

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