jeffthelion

Like last year, most of the Top 10 could have been number one in other years, 2012 was a vintage year for so many reasons, here a few of them..!

1. Getting Married! – A beautiful venue, a wonderful holiday leading up to it, a week of fun afterwards and marrying the best person I’ve ever met afterwards, it doesn’t get any better :)!

2.Honeymoon/dream holiday – The honeymoon was as you’d expect, if you want some kind of voyeuristic insight, fuck right off!

To get the chance to experience my dream holiday made me feel so privileged and lucky, the locals were lovely and friendly, the weather was sporadic and unpredictable and the island itself quirky, a gate about the size of a Toddler to protect an airport, for example!

Getting to visit islands that have been left largely as they have been for hundreds of years, to see ones seemingly untouched by human hands and to walk casually around giant tortoises was unbelievable!

3. Getting a flat! – It took a fair bit of finding, partially helped by the Estate Agents’ website not mentioning which area it’s in! Now we’re settled, I genuinely love the place, the neighbours are lovely and it’s a real community, they look after our cats when we’re at Festivals and in Summer the communal garden is wonderful!

4.Losing 2 stone/improved bowels! – Toni encouraged me to slim down for the wedding and despite my cynicism, we undertook the Weightwatchers Diet combined with exercise, 2 milkshakes and a full meal a day... and it worked! I dropped 2 stone and now wear medium, not large t-shirts!

A nice by-product of this was passing excrement considerably less, from 4 guaranteed poos a day to 2-3 at most, was a huge change for the better!

5. Toni getting a Masters – It was a great day and a fitting tribute, as Toni deservedly claimed a Distinction for all her efforts, in spite of her harshest critic being herself, she really made some great films and I firmly believe she will be extremely successful in making documentaries. Plus we got to eat a lot of meat afterwards, nom!

6. Stag Weekend – Three gigs, two clubs, one meal, driving some mad buggies and shooting stuff, it was a fantastic weekend of very drunken antics! Plus I threw up into a pint glass at 8.30 in the evening in an upmarket Manchester bar, at which point my Best Man Neil calmly went “It’s his Stag!”, at which point the Bouncers shrugged “Alright!” Classic stuff!

7. Maintaining a full time job! – Against the odds, in a recession, I’ve managed to hold on to a full time job, not snap and scream obscenities at some numbnut and actually be good at it!

Personally, I reckon I’m one of the nicest people you can get if you phone up our Council about Council Tax (unless you are rude, in which case, it’s hard not to go through the motions, isn’t it?)

8. Nude swim to island! – Cracking last night of freedom, with Ed and Stevo on The Seychelles. As it was very hard to drink more than 5 beers, we just had a couple and were going to swim naked to the nearest island (about half a mile out.)
As the tide was out, we ended up walking waist deep to the island, in very visible sunlight and sat bollock naked on the beach having a Heineken (of all things!)

When we heard dogs walking back, we assumed that we’d need bailing out in the morning but instead it was local dogs and we continued into one of the hotel pools where a perplexed German bloke who looked like Paul Worthington spotted us!

9. Getting asked to be an Godfather/Best Man – I can’t really put into words quite what it means to be asked to do one or either of these roles, that’s what I suppose I’ve got to do over the coming weeks, when I put together the plans I’ve got into a Best Man speech!

And no, I wasn’t trying to be one by having three Best Men myself!

10. Hundred Reasons/HIFH ‘Final Show’ – This could easily be perceived as a negative, two bands who were the first proper ‘rock’ bands I struck out from my childhood group of friends and decided to like even though they didn’t, a final tour.

It felt appropriate though, rather than fading away into obscurity, five or six of their favourite songs, then ‘Ideas Above Our Station’ in full, oh and ‘Remmus’ to boot, marvellous!

Hell Is For Heroes also played the sterling ‘Neon Handshake’ in order followed up by ‘Folded Paper Figures’. In truth, the sound quality wasn’t great but I think Fran enjoyed it, at least!

Oh and did I mention, Toni agreed to re-arrange the wedding so we flew out to get married the night after they played Manchester, I don’t think I’ll ever find a way to thank for that, especially since it meant missing a Pulp gig booked shortly afterwards while we were away...

11. Olympics/Paralympics - Despite my initial cynicism, I rapidly became drawn in to sports like rowing, archery and canoeing. Canoeing in particular, I wish was on TV more regularly!

Then came The Paralympics and with Channel 4 doing a superb job of mass promotion of the entire fortnight. Even the intro song didn’t get tiresome, it was a tremendous time for British sport and the nation.

That’s before we get to Danny Boyle’s marvellous tribute to the NHS in the Opening Ceremony for the Olympics and George Osborne getting a stadium-full of booing for presenting medals at the Paralympics after his savaging of disability Benefits.

12. Marriages and childbirths everywhere! – In the space of what felt like days, we got invited to Neil & Katie, Paul & Kerry, Paul & Anna and Jane & Damien’s weddings and associated parties, it’s good to be around so many happy people doing this.

Maybe it’s our age but there seems to be kids everywhere, besides Neil and Katie’s Imogen, Hannah has given birth and Pam & Colin, Cara & Gethin and Katie Royle (a second time) are on their way!

13. Festivals - There was the ‘Beachball Incident’, during a band called Pure Love, they released several giant white balloons. They predictably got smacked and bounced around down the front before one of them headed to the side, Stevo did try to warn Toni but she thought we were taking the piss.

When she finally did turn round, it was timed perfectly to hit her square in the face, cue hysterics from me, Stevo, Jim and Dan H, marvellous!

After perhaps feeling overawed by doing 4 festivals in 2012, the 1 Leeds Festival in 2012 was great and with decent weather and fantastic company, it reminded me what I love about festivals!

14. New friends! – Perfectly wholesome activities like making murder documentaries in our flat has meant spending more time with Nine Lives folks like Ali and Jonny, our new neighbours Ralph and Nicole who are happy to look after the cats mean we are living in a proper community and folks like Dan Heaton, who we’ve got to know gradually have all been lovely additions to our groups of friends!

15. Obama in for term two, most importantly, none of those Neo-Conservative, gun-toting, 1% Millionaires such as Mitt Romney, managed to get in for the Republicans, thank you, America!

And here was 2011's tasty prawns and pizza! - http://jeffthelion.livejournal.com/223023.html

So, on 28th November 2012 at 2PM (4 hours ahead of GMT) I married Toni on Mahe Island in The Seychelles! Of course it rained just before the ceremony but being Mancunian we prevailed! It was wonderful, having a 2 week family holiday/honeymoon now and it's not rained since we wed 4 days ago!

Hope you're all well and to catch up on my return!

So, life has been a tad busy of late..! thelma_viaduct's working round the clock at the moment, after the first murder reconstruction partially filmed in our flat was canned due to a London Police PR "bitch"!, another one had to be cobbled together. Somewhat ridiculously, it will be broadcast in 25 days' time and will feature another spoken part from me! Details to come on this! This is also why she is filming in the Manchester cold till 2AM tonight, folks!

After the decision to give up her Saturday job, this means that we can do more socialising together, for instance last weekend incorporated 2 parties at Pottsy and Claire/Fran's, Neil's 30th birthday at Sankey's and a trip to London for the NFL!

The parties were both good (and we ended up staying longer than planned at both), I doubt we would have agreed that 4 hours sleep before a 300 mile drive (we weren't driving!) was a sensational idea!

Sankey's, although it had excellent music and sound system, the people in there were largely annoying pillheads and one accidentally concussed Toni.

The NFL was great, although the game wasn't amazing! We had some fun around it, Stevo ended up ruining his jeans on some inflatable assault course outside Wembley, leaving his balls pretty much hanging out of his pants and following one especially borderline picture with a child running round in the background while he did a lunge, it was off to Asda!

In Asda we then met a guy singing the 'Chim Chimerney' song from Mary Poppins!

It was a day of good singalongs, as the beer flowed and the New England touchdowns mounted up, we sang this Simpsons classic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9-7JbSV2tg

to total bemusement from all around us!

However, the capacity crowd and apparent knowledge and appreciation of all those watching was evident, I doubt the Patriots have ever been boo-ed when winning 45-7 but the English fans wanted to see 50 points and for them to not take the knee at the end of the game!

How was everyone's Halloween? We watched this last night:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7Uh5L8zDVA

Anyone else seen it? What horror films (if any), did you watch?

Another busy weekend beckons, it's my Stag Do, which apparently will be spread over Friday, Saturday and Sunday! If I survive, I'll report back on it. Jager at the ready!

Finally, hello to another newbie and fellow Seahawk, truthtakesaway !

My underarms are on fire!

As some of you may already know, I suffer from a mild skin complaint under the arms, commonly known as 'skin tags':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrochordon

When they last flared up a few years back, the NHS kindly paid for them to be (literally) barbequed off my arms! That was a fun day, I never thought I'd be comfortably sat there smelling parts of my own body cooking! Thanks to a local anaesthetic, it wasn't murderous!

Now they are back, I'm at a new doctor and the NHS is now of the viewpoint that they are cosmetic and hence we should go private and pay. Fortunately, there are other options and with thelma_viaduct working part time in Holland and Barrett, alongside her researcher duties, she suggested trying Tea Tree Oil mixed with a little water...

After three days of use, so far so good, the left arm's pestilence was shrivelling away rapidly and the right arm's resistance looked a bit nervous too! However, tonight I put a wee bit too much on the cotton wool, methinks!

I must love her very much (and do!) to put myself through this for her and the wedding, I can't sleep at this moment in time, although splashing water on it has improved things somewhat!

I suppose I shouldn't complain too much, as this is working plus if it's burning skin, it'll be burning the skin tags too!

It's kind of like launching a napalm strike on your own underarm; hopefully the flames will die down in a bit!

That would be a plane full of people dying in a plane crash on a nervous flyers' course, fortunately for us, we were told exactly how unlikely that was! It's about as regular as a hippopotamus appearing in your cup of morning tea! Or in your bath! Or to be caught shagging your partner, that was the crucial thing.

We all know that there is an inherent danger in everything, in eating nothing, in eating everything, in eating the right amounts but being poisoned by pesticide in a one in a billion event, though that doesn't stop us eating food, does it?

On the first weekend after we moved into our new flat, which was three weeks ago (oh how time flies, boom boom!) anyway that's when I went down to Manchester Airport (hungover as fuck, I might add!) to do the course.

The morning of the course was devoted to telling you how well trained the pilots are, that planes as an entire brand can and will be all scrapped if there is one fatal flaw in them and also, that they test propellers from the dangers of flying birds by throwing roast chickens into them at full pelt!

So far, so good, we have a briefer lunch than expected, as the Captain has gone on a bit with himself, I speak with a fellow sufferer, a teacher called Vicky from Nottingham, who is mercilessly mocked by her friends as I am by Toni, she also foolishly let her kids know she was doing it...

The afternoon session was a positive thinking discussion, which also threw in statistics, in case the cynics at the back (like my Dad, who was also doing it due to his claustrophobia!) thought it was all hippy nonsense when the breathing exercises began!

The facial exercises made little difference but the distraction-breathing-relax muscles- visualisation plan worked wonders and later on when I was dreaming of seeing Toni on the beach in The Seychelles or thinking of all the other flights which HADN'T ended in disaster, it worked a treat!

And on to Terminal 3, where after a couple of people had been assisted off weeping, we were ready to go on a quick 45 minute jaunt in the air.

Obviously, this doesn't happen in every flight you'll ever board but the commentary emphasised the points made earlier about when the wings are banking, it was not heading into a nosedive and that the feeling of falling during ascent is a delusion played by the brain.

I made a pact with myself to not grip the arms of the seat during the flight, which I did not, this was arguably the highest achievement of the course (even better than the certificate received!) Me and Dave, a guy who also ironically used to work for the airport and a Manchester local wandered up and down the plane and looked down out of the window at the ground below

Genuine progress has been made, which is part of the reason why I'm doing this post, I had a bad dream involving an air crash the other night, as also explained on the course, people with active imaginations are frequent bad flyers (see Charlie Brooker for one.) I need to draw the line between reality and fiction in this scenario, even if it's only when I'm on a plane when I do this.

So, before I forget:

"There is a 1 in 0:03 million chance of being killed while airbourne, that figure includes military aircraft flights in conflict, hot air balloon trips and dodgy Russian flights in winter and snowy conditions."

In this case, I need to let the facts do the talking.

Posts at the moment are actually information about my life, rather than haphazard glimpses into what I may have been thinking about at that moment in time, what's going on with that!?

So yes, first of all, we did get that flat, we move out a week on Friday, which seems incredible and very odd. The flat is lovely and very cheap considering the location and how nice compared to most of the others we viewed.

In other excellent news, Manchester City Council, by pure coincidence, are offering the Masters that I wanted to do (with the added bonuses of them paying the costs and giving you a wage of £19,000 a year while you train), of course I applied but plan to do it next year when I'm married, as they doubted whether you could combine the two...

Speaking of marriage, the weight loss plan is going very well, I'm drinking 2 Slimfast milkshakes most days and even though I'm still drinking as much as ever and having the odd takeaway, I've lost 12 pounds in 7 weeks and Toni has also lost a stone plus!

"I went into a bank yesterday" are not usually the starting words of a funny story but after heading into the RBS in Chorlton yesterday, I happened to put my backpack on the counter the guy told me that he thought I was going to rob the place!

I wasn't holding a weapon, I didn't demand any cash out of the till in non-consecutive notes and I wasn't wearing a pair of tights on my head, so what the hell is going on in his head?! He must be scared shitless all the time as I can't be the only person with a backpack knocking about!

Our remaining housemates Russell, Louise, Pollitt and Jonny are having a stuggle finding a replacement, particularly as they are looking pretty much exclusively for a girl to stop Louise being a minority of one, so guess what the next post is going to be.?!

So where have I been? Apart from writing rugby reports that none of you want to read, eh!?

Well, we've been planning our wedding party for one, we've got a Manchester venue and a date in mind, I should be going down to speak to a lady there in about 15 and a half hours to discuss details, full announcement soon, anyone who wants to come on the LJ list is invited!

I say we, I'm pretty sure Toni feels like it is her doing it (she discovered the venue), as I do a lot of the day-to-day work around the house and thinking ahead for the next few weeks (she nearly booked to go and meet a friend the same night as we're off to see The Menzingers next Wednesday for instance!) and she is all about long term planning of things, we do seem to slip into these roles a bit too easily!

Anyway, I like to think I'm not being a complete bastard avoiding all responsibility about the wedding but I had to persuade her to let me go downstairs to send an e-mail with my contact number at around 12.30AM and post my writing on LJ as I hadn't had time as I'd taken bins out, done the pots and hung the washing up after getting in from football at around 10PM!

It's also nice to have a bit of time to myself, I am a Piscean after all and love that type of gubbins, the perils of living with an attentionseeking Leo, eh? Horoscopes - what do you lot reckon, anything in them? As we are both pretty stereotypical of our starsigns, hmmmm!

Oh and is anyone else on it (and using it!), the website Last.FM? Anyone who isn't already doing so fancy stalking my music taste, you know you want to..!

http://www.last.fm/user/jeffthelion

Right, goodnight from me and goodnight from the nighttime pixies! A proper post, gracious!

P.S. To all who wanted to know - ANDREW W.K. was great! Here's a clip -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0ijwuqlIgo

It's been a fun few weeks, one that has allowed me to again start writing some Nanowrimo chapters and be creative and have some fun, while I am now in a safe financial position, woo!

I've paid off £600 to my Dad that he leant me when I signed the new house contract as we were going to four festivals in the summer and I had a badly timed break from work as well as moving. This has shown that I am beginning to learn to budget to save, rather than spending every penny I earn. If I continue that, I can save money up for the wedding!

Speaking of which, a passport is now a priority as the location needs passports that have been valid for 6 months, I may do that on the day off I've got striking on Wednesday...

Frank Turner was as amazing as ever last night, to see him go from playing gigs to 200 people to 5000 while not compromising his musical quality is amazing! His new album was a grower and I reckon is one of his best two. The Human Pyramid we did in Jim's flat beforehand was an indication of how fun and silly the night was besides that! See the new Facebook pic those that can and are so inclined..!

My wrist piercing has been dodgy for a while now, Ander reckons that I got an abscess under the skin beneath the bar. Yesterday, I lifted the scab up and a goo that was half blood and half pus poured out, it looked like a rhubard and custard sweet, yum!

Despite this, I still have a yearning for another piercing and hopefully when I decide upon what's in it, a tattoo! Probably a calf sleeve... We'll see though, that's not a legal contract!