1.
Stephen Fry has a podcast, y'all!2. I am back from my holidays, they were lovely. I took my photos in to be developed today and will stick a link to them here once I get them all uploaded and stuff, but until then, here are some words instead.
For the first week I went to Ystalyfera in South Wales with friends from university. The weather was frankly atrocious; it was tipping it down when we arrived (after a bit of a palaver trying to actually find the place which involved some rather hairy manouevring and asking several locals for directions) and it didn't stop raining for more than about half an hour until Thursday lunchtime, a shame, since the cottage came with about 20 acres of land to explore. But on the other hand, it was a great cottage and I was more than happy to spend the entire week playing games and watching DVDs, most of which I'd seen before, but never mind:
Hot Fuzz (we watched this on the second holiday too, heh),
The Prestige and
American Beauty, the only one I hadn't seen before and which I would quite happily never see again, pretentious codswallop, I felt, though to be fair it really isn't a genre I have any interest in at all. But otherwise, week full of joy and fab people that I don't see enough of and dingbats and racing demon and such.
For the second week I went to Swanage, one of my favouritest holiday places EVAH, with school friends; the weather was far better, no rain at all and we even managed to swim in the sea on the first day. (We also had a visit from Polly and Diege for the first night, which was all kinds of shiny.) It clouded over a bit after that, but we stil did stuff - we walked out to Dancing Ledge past Tilly Whim caves and the Large Globe (oh English place names, how I love thee), and took the steam train to Corfe Castle. Also lots of playing games, again, and there was SingStar! I was rather at a disadvantage due to a) not being a very good singer (I butchered Beautiful Day on purpose cos I hates it, 'kay?) and b) not knowing most of the songs, but it was still MAD FUN, especially the shouty bits in Parklife. And we watched Labyrinth again: as the trailer promised, it does indeed give you the Imagination of Jim Henson, the Wizardry of George Lucas and the Excitement of David Bowie.
Both holidays included an impromptu murder mystery and I got to do
three terrible accents (Russian, American, French) since my character in the first one unexpectedly turned out to be Secretly American halfway through. Hurray! We also ate very well on both holidays - if any of you are ever in Swanage I recommend
the Corner Restaurant - which I am trying to replicate at home, I made an apple cake earlier and now I am roasting a chicken for my supper, om nom nom nom.
And we even managed to spin out the last holiday by stopping in Bath on the way back. We wandered around in the sunshine (best weather of the holiday) looking at
the pig sculptures. Bliss.
3. In other news, I want to make some icons/headers/wallpapers etc. but am feeling terribly uninspired in terms of both content and style, so am now taking requests, general or specific, for graphicy stuff - I will happily have a go at making pretty much anything (within reason) though with the caveat that I won't necessarily be able to make something that's any good at all. And of course you would not be required to use whatever I did make :)
4. When I was thinking about this post yesterday I definitely had a fourth thing to say but now I have NO IDEA what it might have been. Le sigh.