The Cheerful Insanity of Me

St Albans is one of those places I seem to have been a number of times, but not actually seen any of.

As I was heading up that way for the Notorious contra, it seemed a good excuse to rectify this. I managed to enlist morganmuffle to show me around and she took me on a tour of the car park (it must have been good as we went around twice).

In no particular order there was:

• 6 pots of tea (well, I said "in no particular order", but these clearly are most important and must come first)


• waffles and pasta (not together)


• earspoons and keyrings (both of which clearly need to be reintroduced into society, although I'd imagine that later might actually sell better)


• lots of mosiac floors (I'm sure the Verulamiumish people must have just spent their whole lives sticking little pieces of tile to the ground)


• dead people (there were plenty of alive ones in St Albans too, but they weren't on display in the museum).


• flagons and dragons and bears, oh my! (ok, I'm fairly certain there were flagons and I know there was a dragon, but I don't actually remember seeing any bears)


• the ruins of a theatre and a cinema (I have a feeling it wasn't a roman cinema though)


• a really exciting road junction with pedestrian crossings going diagonally across it (we need these in London, although preferably with the green and red men the other side of the road for the benefit of those of us without eyes in our elbows)


• and a partridge in a pear tree (well, ok, not actually one of those, but there were Christmas carols!)

As for the contra, it was fun, but notorious seemed a little tame and sedate for my liking. Not sure I'll be rushing to see them again in a hurry.

I've also had an idea: They should run a railway from St. Pancras south of the river to places like London Bridge and Elephant. It would link the two sides of the Thames and would have been very useful. I wonder what it should be called?

Note to self:

Willows and wizards are entirely different and there is no need to get that tune stuck in your head everytime you walk down Willow Walk.

Then again... What if they are?

I can see it now all those willows casting their wicked spells.

It wasn't me that put the pigs near the willows. No. *shakes head*

It's all a conspiracy between pig farmers and willow trees. A master plan for world domination.

We're all doomed! Doomed, I tell you!

*laughs maniacally as the nice men in white coats carry him off*

It's clearly going to be one of those weeks

IVFDF was generally a good festival this year, but I seem to have found myself nit-picking about it all weekend.

I was looking forward to the beginning of the Festival, because the Glorystrokes were playing for the Friday evening ceilidh and they had been amazing when we saw them last year at Warwick. Being Metal, you'd expect it to be loud and it didn't disappoint in that respect.

However, what I did find disappointing was that all I could hear was the base. Everything else was completely inaudible. Not sure if it was a problem with the sound mixing or whether in making it loud they made it too loud and my ears just lost their sensitivity to high pitched sound as a result (or even if that happens and my ears are particularly sensitive to it - although I could hear them perfectly well at Warwick and it's not a problem I've ever noticed before). Didn't hear anyone else complaining about it though, so maybe it was just me.

After that, I went to the Eurodance with Janiveer (basically Jabadaw under a new name) instead, which was very good (and perfectly audible) and the contra the following evening with Vertical Expression was just amazing with stacks of energy which went a long way towards making up for the disappointment.

I think the bad start to the festival just made all the little niggling things that are bound to be in any event more noticeable during the weekend and left me nit-picking about all of them.