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A Punk Rock Porcupine
Jul. 30th, 2017 07:26 pmIt's been a very busy few days, starting on Thursday when we joined Adia, Soma and Taneli at the former's house to watch 'Sing'. We had been meaning to do this for a while, with our first attempt aborted due to Wolfie's trip to Chester overrunning. We were more disciplined this time though and after munching our usual assortment of junk food for dinner, we did get round to seeing the film. It certainly wasn't the greatest film I had ever seen, but it was very enjoyable, and I did like the weaving narratives of all the characters throughout the film, which culiminated with the giant concert at the end. It was only throughout Friday, upon reflecting on the film, that I started to develop a really strong crush on Ash, the punk rock porcupine in the movie. This has only intensified over the course of the weekend and has a number of different roots, closely aligned with my own ambitions. After getting my first guitar on my 18th birthday, I still haven't got around to learning it, while her punk rock look and attitude is something to which I strongly relate. As this crush has developed, I have bought a range of Ash merchandise already but primarily, I am going to use my love of her to motivate me to do the one thing I have been unable to do in sixteen years - learn to play the guitar. On Thursday night I reinistalled RockSmith and have devised a schedule to learn, largely tied into evenings after I go to the gym. Keeping this routine should help me while I am also thinking of having singing lessons too. I hope I can stick at it.
Friday we went around to Stray and Luna's for a Jackbox games evening, which proved to be a very enjoyable affair. Upon walking up to their house, in the pouring rain, I witnessed a road traffic accident involving one car pulling into another without indicating. It was really weird to see this up close although it became entertaining when the two sets of chavs from each car started to berate each other in the middle of the street. The woman in the passenger seat of the rammed car was particularly amusing with all of her effing and Jeffing. The accident wasn't serious and everyone was fine, so that was something. The evening itself went well, with Arc and Taneli also there. We had brought three growlers of beer from Shuffledog as they had had a Prancing Pony tap takeover - a brewery from Adelaide - and we had drank most of these before the pizza had arrived at about 10:30pm. I struggled early on with my mood, having been somewhat down for a few months now, but once the games began I managed to shake it off. It was an excellent evening all-told, with us leaving at around 1:30am by taxi. As soon as we got home, Wolfie went straight to bed while I spent the next four hours sat at my computer watching Ash over and over, along with listening to some Linkin Park, a band I have increasingly gotten into since the sad suicide of frontman Chester Bennington a week last Thursday. It was past dawn by the time I went to bed.
Saturday was a rather quiet day with little planned until the evening, meaning we got to complete a number of odd-jobs around the house. After this, we headed out into Leeds to meet Brett and Jo. We had thought it would be like the opening weekend of July when we all headed out quite late and stopped out, but our friends had hit the city by 5pm and so were already on their way when we met them at Shuffledog nearer 9pm. We sampled the two remaining Prancing Pony beers and a couple of others in a flight taster tray, and chatted with our friends and two of their local friends we had met at their wedding last October. Unfortunately, in the middle of this about half an hour in, one of Jo's contact lenses broke in half in her eye, causing her a lot of discomfort. She did manage to remove it eventually in the mirror but this resulted in her being unable to see, and thus she had to go home. With us having tried all the beers here, we headed off with them, dropping off at Whitelocks/Turk's Head for their American Craft Beer Festival. This was absolutely rammed, but we did manage to get a seat, settling down for a 13% Founders beer as our first. Frustratingly though, it took over fifteen minutes to attempt to order our second beer, and we saw the bar staff were giving preferential treatment to their army of friends, who had arrived at the bar after me. There were a large number of them, perhaps around eight, and after being ignored for a while longer, we decided just to leave. It was the worst bar experience I have ever had in Leeds.
We had intended stopping out, but as the city was busy and it was now only us, we decided to get the last bus back. This meant we dropped in on little Brewdog for one as we just had time, although this was curtailed by our discovery that we had forgotten the artisinal bread that Brett had bought us in Whitelocks. Wolfie went back for it and I ordered the drinks, with us being tucked away in the corner near the Mortal Kombat machine. The story of the artisinal bread gained traction on Twitter, which was odd to see, while once Wolfie had returned we were moved out of the way by a stag party who wanted to play the game. I let them move in, but after two minutes of play, they gave up and adopted the whole space for their friends. It was all very disappointing and so we left the bar and headed home after one of our poorest Leeds bar experiences in memory.
The night did pick up slightly though as once we had got back to Pudsey, we had just enough time to call in at the Manor Inn. Outside there was a lovely whippet puppy called Lily while Pip, the owner's dog, was also snuffling inside. Both dogs wanted to say hello and there was some very good real ale on tap, so we decided to hang around. They even had Neopolitan Pale from Northern Monk, and I do hope this branching into craft beer continues. We were glad we did drop by in the end as the people there were really friendly and the conversation was good, making for a nice ending to the evening at least. We really should go there more often we thought as we headed home, the last to leave the premises, and I am pretty sure we will.
Friday we went around to Stray and Luna's for a Jackbox games evening, which proved to be a very enjoyable affair. Upon walking up to their house, in the pouring rain, I witnessed a road traffic accident involving one car pulling into another without indicating. It was really weird to see this up close although it became entertaining when the two sets of chavs from each car started to berate each other in the middle of the street. The woman in the passenger seat of the rammed car was particularly amusing with all of her effing and Jeffing. The accident wasn't serious and everyone was fine, so that was something. The evening itself went well, with Arc and Taneli also there. We had brought three growlers of beer from Shuffledog as they had had a Prancing Pony tap takeover - a brewery from Adelaide - and we had drank most of these before the pizza had arrived at about 10:30pm. I struggled early on with my mood, having been somewhat down for a few months now, but once the games began I managed to shake it off. It was an excellent evening all-told, with us leaving at around 1:30am by taxi. As soon as we got home, Wolfie went straight to bed while I spent the next four hours sat at my computer watching Ash over and over, along with listening to some Linkin Park, a band I have increasingly gotten into since the sad suicide of frontman Chester Bennington a week last Thursday. It was past dawn by the time I went to bed.
Saturday was a rather quiet day with little planned until the evening, meaning we got to complete a number of odd-jobs around the house. After this, we headed out into Leeds to meet Brett and Jo. We had thought it would be like the opening weekend of July when we all headed out quite late and stopped out, but our friends had hit the city by 5pm and so were already on their way when we met them at Shuffledog nearer 9pm. We sampled the two remaining Prancing Pony beers and a couple of others in a flight taster tray, and chatted with our friends and two of their local friends we had met at their wedding last October. Unfortunately, in the middle of this about half an hour in, one of Jo's contact lenses broke in half in her eye, causing her a lot of discomfort. She did manage to remove it eventually in the mirror but this resulted in her being unable to see, and thus she had to go home. With us having tried all the beers here, we headed off with them, dropping off at Whitelocks/Turk's Head for their American Craft Beer Festival. This was absolutely rammed, but we did manage to get a seat, settling down for a 13% Founders beer as our first. Frustratingly though, it took over fifteen minutes to attempt to order our second beer, and we saw the bar staff were giving preferential treatment to their army of friends, who had arrived at the bar after me. There were a large number of them, perhaps around eight, and after being ignored for a while longer, we decided just to leave. It was the worst bar experience I have ever had in Leeds.
We had intended stopping out, but as the city was busy and it was now only us, we decided to get the last bus back. This meant we dropped in on little Brewdog for one as we just had time, although this was curtailed by our discovery that we had forgotten the artisinal bread that Brett had bought us in Whitelocks. Wolfie went back for it and I ordered the drinks, with us being tucked away in the corner near the Mortal Kombat machine. The story of the artisinal bread gained traction on Twitter, which was odd to see, while once Wolfie had returned we were moved out of the way by a stag party who wanted to play the game. I let them move in, but after two minutes of play, they gave up and adopted the whole space for their friends. It was all very disappointing and so we left the bar and headed home after one of our poorest Leeds bar experiences in memory.
The night did pick up slightly though as once we had got back to Pudsey, we had just enough time to call in at the Manor Inn. Outside there was a lovely whippet puppy called Lily while Pip, the owner's dog, was also snuffling inside. Both dogs wanted to say hello and there was some very good real ale on tap, so we decided to hang around. They even had Neopolitan Pale from Northern Monk, and I do hope this branching into craft beer continues. We were glad we did drop by in the end as the people there were really friendly and the conversation was good, making for a nice ending to the evening at least. We really should go there more often we thought as we headed home, the last to leave the premises, and I am pretty sure we will.
