-The pictures and musings of James Purves
Archive for November, 2003
2003-11-30 18:47:00
Nov 30th
Just updated the pictures at the side of each page to show the latest gallery and 5 random ones from the growing list.
Hope you enjoy,
Jp
2003-11-30 18:45:00
Nov 30th
Christmas party was good but not the brilliant night out of yester-year, I had fun but seemed to spend most of my time looking for people. A bit of a disaster afterwards as we tried to meet up with some of the managers from work who fancied going to Tiger-Tiger to celebrate an award for eSPEAR (the IT project I work on). After waiting for a taxi in the freezing cold with my kilten knobbly knees knocking together I headed home, dropping Lorna and Mark on the way. Hardly saw any of the folk I wanted to but saw some who I hadn’t seen in ages and was good to catch up!
Friday was very quiet, had the day off so spent it in bed and watching Cannonball Run. Went to see Intermission at the cinema, really good film, fun to watch and interesting. If you have a UGC cinema pass and are bored of an evening, definitely go and see this. Can you spot anyone from Trainspotting?
Saturday night, Stuart and I headed over to Ian and Alan’s from uni for a belated house-warming and early Christmas party. Kate turned up later with her new boyfriend, Andy. Kev who I met at David Gray, Simon and Helena from barclay’s were also there and we had a good laugh just drinking copious amounts of stella and celebrations chocolates. I think I over-stepped the mark with a volley of maltezers so large apologies to Alan and Ian! I’m sure they’ll be finding them around the flat for ages. Watched Road Trip and Back to the Future while Ian snoozed.
2003-11-27 10:26:00
Nov 27th
Christmas party this evening, its a black-tie “Russian Christmas” theme, whatever that means. Its in a big tent near work with a huge number of people invited. Should be a really good laugh and I’ve even dragged the kilt out for the event.
Day off tomorrow too to recover so might have to really make the most of the free-bar and food.
Jp
2003-11-24 20:49:00
Nov 24th
Hey I’ve just added photos from the weekend to the pics section. Add some comments if they take your fancy or even if they don’t!
2003-11-23 14:56:00
Nov 23rd
THE hangover from HELL this morning! And I was at work by 8.30am on a Sunday.
Nev, Alan, Vicky, Parminder and Jim came down to London yesterday and went out to celebrate Jim’s birthday. We started by heading into town to the O’Neils on Waldorf Street near Leicester Square for some beers and a pie and chips. Had a bit of trouble getting in apparently 6 people was too many but once two of them are girls its OK! Jim’s ex from Uni Vik and her new man were there, was nice to see them, I don’t think I’ve seen her since Maths at Uni.
We were sitting next to the live three-piece Irish band which was a bit annoying at first cos they were playing their own songs, they weren’t bad just not brilliant. After a short break they came back out to drown out “Sweet Chariot” with the classic selection of favourites. Starting with “Whiskey in the Jar” was the best idea all night and that got the bunch of us all singing. Sure enough we were the only ones singing and the only ones clapping!! After a couple more classics of Wiild Rover and Dirty Old Town we managed to encourage the rest to sign along. The band finished by giving us a quick mention and thanking us for our “wailing”.
Mark (Finlay) and his sister turned up and to give us a hand with the signing and the drinking!
As planned we moved through the pouring rain on to the Porters House Bar in Covent Garden and starting chatting to a bunch of Ozzies and drinking Carlton Cold’s like they were Irn-Bru. Thankfully the dancing hadn’t quite taken hold but the singing was definately in the blood. The 8 of us drowned out a bar-full of English with “O Flower of Scotland”, “Waltzing Matilda” (with Ozzy support) and finally “You can stick your £**king chariot up you arrr$e”. A couple of hugs from huge comical giants dressed in White and Red we made a sharp exit!
Elbowed Nev in the face while pretending to miss, don’t think I gave him a shiner but I did give him a good clout! Some might say he deserves it and they’d be right but didn’t mean to. Honest??
Somewhere between walking out of the bar and going home we took leave of our senses and ended up going to possibly the worst and most expensive club in London coming out with a shortage of pounds and pennies. We even payed £10 for the privelidge of entering the establishment – Las Locus!!!
Danced like an loon!! Sang like a loon!!
Byrney, Alan and Nicky headed home early leaving the happy hardcore lot to soldier on till half 2. Managed to get a minicab back to Stratford pretty quickly which was nice considering its been raining for 4 days non-stop (hence the London-wide flood warning).
Back at the house I took one for the team and sacrificed my bed for Parminder. Slept on the Byrney’s floor and managed to ignore the snoring for most of the night. Up at 7.30 and managed to get in the shower after tripping over several bodies in the lounge and blinding some moles by turning on the lights. OUt of the house by 8 leaving loads of drunken idiots behind to cook themselves breakfast.
Managed to be in work for 8.30, which is close to being the earliest I’ve ever been in. Stinking hangoer but after a Benjy’s fry-up and two cans of bru I was functioning enought to realise that the deployment I was in to work on was now 13 hours behind schedule and slipping further and further behind. Nice start to the day.
There’s only so much stuff on the web to surf and so many paper-clips to count before you get bored enough to do some work! just found out Byrney has bough the extended Two Towers so that’ll be getting watched tonight,
Jp
2003-11-19 23:12:00
Nov 19th
So close NOT!!!
I think I was lured into a false sense of security! Having bought “follow your team” tickets for Portugal 2004 at the princely sum of £800 and then seen Scotland not only rally to beat Lithuania and then whip Holland 1-0, I thought we stood a chance of scraping a draw in Amsterdam and going through on away goals!
I was and the rest of the Tartan hopeful were obviously fooling ourselves because low and behold we lost 6-0 tonight! I have never seen any team I support lose in such a dire fashion. All the years of supporting Scotland and Aberdeen I was yet to see such an under performance! 2 shots on target (none of which were any good) and none in the second half.
I’m quite glad I was watching it in a packed pub because for half the game I couldn’t see the screen and could only tell Holland had scored cos of the groans!
Ah well there’s always the 2006 World Cup to look forward to and at least I’ll get all of money back for the tickets (minus the £50 extrotionate booking fee!).
Jp
2003-11-16 14:33:00
Nov 16th
Dancing with Loons has moved! I was sick of all those silly adverts that Lycos kept giving me so I forked out £25 and bought a name and hosting.
Hopefully things should be faster, more reliable and people will remember the name a little bit easier!
No other major changes planned but you never know…
Jp
2003-11-16 00:13:00
Nov 16th
Still haven’t made it to the gym despite of the boredom of this weekend… errr hang on a minute… did we just beat Holland 1-nil???
I think we did!! Hang on let me check….
Nope I did sit in the pub today and watch a Scottish team not only beat one of the best (on paper) sides in the world, but actually deserve to win it. No hang on I really need to go and check it actually happened…. Its one big conspiracy I tell you! I reckon I’ve been smoking some of Holland’s other favourite export.
OK, need to stop looking it up otherwise I’ll jinx us for Wednesday! Portugal here we come!
In other news this is a pretty dull weekend but I’m enjoying the laziness of it all! Lori seems to have found this site and left a nice note in the guestbook, not really sure what to make of it really! Have I done something stupid (daft question – something more stupid than usual)? Has one of my many sordid secrets been leaked to the press? Or was it one of those can’t think what to say so… I’ll try to email him tomorrow to catch up cos I haven’t heard from him in ages!
Also discovered Kerrang digital radio on Freeview (digital terrestrial TV in the UK) which is great rocky background music. Much better than the usual Smash Hits pap!
Early nite for me, gym tomorrow (yeah right!),
Jp
2003-11-13 00:11:00
Nov 13th
Have you seen this???
Looks like the Olympics Grand Stadium (if London win the bid) will be about 2 minutes walk from the flat, I sh!t you not!
2003-11-13 00:09:00
Nov 13th
Wow I managed to get in for 8 this morning, miracles do happen!
Off to see the Matrix tonight and its Simon “George” Lucas’ birthday, so much for that fabled trip to the gym!









