The Shipton Sessions.
Jul. 4th, 2005 12:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hirez[ In which I over-analyse and/or wander about like a space-idiot assuming he's the only one this happens to. And indeed employs the patented grammar-mangle and sentence-press. ]
Up at half-six on Saturday to beetle into work so we can shut down the entire building. Things go swimmingly and I'm back in bed at about the time I'm usually crawling out on a weekday. Sunday was a slightly later start (nine) and not all the boxes came back. Several of the Beardian machines had been updated w/o running LILO before reboot. Oops. (Useless fucking toytown imitation of a real OS that it is.) Even more tediously, the lack of a proper breakfast, being basically knackered and having to sit at a funny angle due to half the lights not working triggers a migraine. I kick fuck out of a howling (no, really. It was. The re-power voltage surge had cooked it) KVM and sod off home in a foul mood for coffee, a full english, a handful of ibuprofen and Le Tour.
I can just about watch it, as long as things aren't moving too quickly. I'm also turned into Mr fucking tourette's, which was a great shame because modulo the getting up early it's been an interesting old weekend.
Two weeks ago, I'd been in receipt of a (presumably) drunken SMS from Chainsaw Ed Price. 'Ahaha, I'm up at Andy Mustoe's' (or somesuch) it had gone. Since I was festering in a tedious hotel room and bored enough to start playing with the Corby, I wrote back along the lines of 'Bastard. I wish I was too'. The next thing that happened was that Price rang me up and handed his phone to Mustoe, who asked me if I fancied pitching up at a barbie he was having in two weeks. It sounded like a top idea, and the fact that I'd entirely forgotten about the site power-down was largely irrelevant.
Y'see, some ten years ago I briefly shared a house with Andy, located in the startlingly picturesque village of Shipton Olliffe. It had belonged to his auntie and had changed very little from when she moved in just after the war. (I think at that time he was driving around in her old Morris Traveller) It was a particularly weird sort of time and I'd carelessly lost touch with the chap. I also had this stupid idea that I should escape from the mob of Stella-hoovering layabouts and bloody Inepte and a life that I could only cope with by drinking seriously every night to blot out the tedium by buggering off to London to seek my fortune and mix with the urban(e) types who were my notional subcultural peers. (Or something a lot like that. At the time, I think, it made absolute sense. Something one had to do if only to discover it was the wrong thing, but at least one knew. Like the previous year's attempt at the psychology degree.)
In that ten years, Andy had about doubled the size of the cottage. Where there'd been a single-person kitchen there's now space for a Rayburn (bastard!), mongo gas-range with wok-rocket (bastard!), Belfast sink (bastard!) and n-person kitchen table (double bastard with a twist of lemon!). There's a random sort of sun-extension thing with a dead Wurlitzer juke and his piano and guitars, and the garden now has two barbies (one for veggies, one for carnivores), a pond, two sheds, most of a deck and a bantam. And, rather than the slab of Stella and bag of Tesco Value veggie bangers I was expecting, there's Andy and a couple of his mates brewing up the sort of food that would make Martha Stewart shit herself with hatred and envy.
People turn up. Beer is drunk and food is consumed. I end up taking to a bloke who works at Badlands and is in a PeelBand (Longstone. They're on Ochre records and are very good in a much less annoying than Warp manner. I'm more than a little annoyed that they've managed to pass me by thus far.) before I'm dragged off to Shipton village hall by Mustoe to help him set things up for the band. Band? The daft bugger's gone and rented the village hall, got in some mates from Stroud to play and bunged a barrel of Jouster and two dustbins of nasty lager at the back of the hall for all+sundry to get stuck into. And indeed they do.
It was a shame to leave. I was having a lovely time with a couple of people I'd not seen for (mumble) years and several more complete strangers.
Some months ago, I was wondering out loud about social-life maintenance. That's how to do it. Andy's a muso by leaning (and a landscape gardener cum builder by trade) so I guess he thinks in muso terms. That was his version of a Vicarage Tea Party. I'll be along for the next one.
Up at half-six on Saturday to beetle into work so we can shut down the entire building. Things go swimmingly and I'm back in bed at about the time I'm usually crawling out on a weekday. Sunday was a slightly later start (nine) and not all the boxes came back. Several of the Beardian machines had been updated w/o running LILO before reboot. Oops. (Useless fucking toytown imitation of a real OS that it is.) Even more tediously, the lack of a proper breakfast, being basically knackered and having to sit at a funny angle due to half the lights not working triggers a migraine. I kick fuck out of a howling (no, really. It was. The re-power voltage surge had cooked it) KVM and sod off home in a foul mood for coffee, a full english, a handful of ibuprofen and Le Tour.
I can just about watch it, as long as things aren't moving too quickly. I'm also turned into Mr fucking tourette's, which was a great shame because modulo the getting up early it's been an interesting old weekend.
Two weeks ago, I'd been in receipt of a (presumably) drunken SMS from Chainsaw Ed Price. 'Ahaha, I'm up at Andy Mustoe's' (or somesuch) it had gone. Since I was festering in a tedious hotel room and bored enough to start playing with the Corby, I wrote back along the lines of 'Bastard. I wish I was too'. The next thing that happened was that Price rang me up and handed his phone to Mustoe, who asked me if I fancied pitching up at a barbie he was having in two weeks. It sounded like a top idea, and the fact that I'd entirely forgotten about the site power-down was largely irrelevant.
Y'see, some ten years ago I briefly shared a house with Andy, located in the startlingly picturesque village of Shipton Olliffe. It had belonged to his auntie and had changed very little from when she moved in just after the war. (I think at that time he was driving around in her old Morris Traveller) It was a particularly weird sort of time and I'd carelessly lost touch with the chap. I also had this stupid idea that I should escape from the mob of Stella-hoovering layabouts and bloody Inepte and a life that I could only cope with by drinking seriously every night to blot out the tedium by buggering off to London to seek my fortune and mix with the urban(e) types who were my notional subcultural peers. (Or something a lot like that. At the time, I think, it made absolute sense. Something one had to do if only to discover it was the wrong thing, but at least one knew. Like the previous year's attempt at the psychology degree.)
In that ten years, Andy had about doubled the size of the cottage. Where there'd been a single-person kitchen there's now space for a Rayburn (bastard!), mongo gas-range with wok-rocket (bastard!), Belfast sink (bastard!) and n-person kitchen table (double bastard with a twist of lemon!). There's a random sort of sun-extension thing with a dead Wurlitzer juke and his piano and guitars, and the garden now has two barbies (one for veggies, one for carnivores), a pond, two sheds, most of a deck and a bantam. And, rather than the slab of Stella and bag of Tesco Value veggie bangers I was expecting, there's Andy and a couple of his mates brewing up the sort of food that would make Martha Stewart shit herself with hatred and envy.
People turn up. Beer is drunk and food is consumed. I end up taking to a bloke who works at Badlands and is in a PeelBand (Longstone. They're on Ochre records and are very good in a much less annoying than Warp manner. I'm more than a little annoyed that they've managed to pass me by thus far.) before I'm dragged off to Shipton village hall by Mustoe to help him set things up for the band. Band? The daft bugger's gone and rented the village hall, got in some mates from Stroud to play and bunged a barrel of Jouster and two dustbins of nasty lager at the back of the hall for all+sundry to get stuck into. And indeed they do.
It was a shame to leave. I was having a lovely time with a couple of people I'd not seen for (mumble) years and several more complete strangers.
Some months ago, I was wondering out loud about social-life maintenance. That's how to do it. Andy's a muso by leaning (and a landscape gardener cum builder by trade) so I guess he thinks in muso terms. That was his version of a Vicarage Tea Party. I'll be along for the next one.
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no subject
Date: 2005-07-04 12:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-04 08:51 am (UTC)The 300+ year old farm house we used to live in out there was sold last year for excess of £300,000 and it had no central heating or modern perks, but it was beautiful and had a view to die for.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-04 02:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-04 10:28 am (UTC)http://www.primelocation.com/estate-agents/details/id/HUBW00305/
£475k !
no subject
Date: 2005-07-04 08:23 am (UTC)