I have an aversion to pregnancy and small babies, it seems. I met up with a friend of mine for a quick bit of lunch earlier, and she’s seven months pregnant, blooming and pretty big.
I quite enjoyed chatting about the ins and outs of how it’s affecting her, but when she asked if I’d like to feel the bump and the movement coming from inside her, I politely declined. Well, in truth I think I made a face and said something “gross, no thanks”, but it’s all the same.
It just doesn’t appeal, feeling something that’s not quite alive moving around inside someone else. I’m not usually squeamish about many things, but that’s one.
And it’s a similar story once they’re out in the world: a colleague stopped into the office with her four month-old girl yesterday, the first time we’d seen either of them since she went off on maternity leave. Whilst she was very cute, and I liked making faces at her and her grabbing my finger, when it came to being offered to hold her, again I politely refused.
This time, I used the excuse of the girlfriend never forgiving me if I went home and told her that I’d been holding a baby, but in reality it’s more a case of me being really, really nervous about doing something like dropping the damn thing.
Seriously, I wouldn’t trust myself to hold onto a baby. I’m not clumsy, but I would definitely have a million “what if” thoughts running through my head, and by the time I’d hand her back I’d be in a state of panic with all sorts of horrible scenarios already played through to conclusion in my mind.
Maybe it’s best if I don’t have kids for a little while…
The friend I made a video for has had her entry accepted for the Barclays small business competition. Please go vote for her and help her make it to the top of the pile!
And I apologise in advance for spamming Tumblr and Twitter with this over the next few days.
My friend Heather is setting up a business selling gourmet cupcakes, and long-term, she is planning to open a coffee shop/patisserie, ideally in Wimbledon Village.
She’s entering a competition run by Barclays bank which is awarding grants to start-up small businesses, and asked me to make a short video for her entry.
I shot a load of footage of her making the cakes, and serving them to a load of our friends, as well as a brief interview describing her intentions. I then edited about 60 minutes of footage into the 90 seconds you see her, and am really pleased with how it turned out.
Hopefully she’ll do really well in the competition, and as it’s a public vote I’ll post her link here as soon as I have it.
A friend of mine is in the process of setting up a cupcake business, so the girlfriend and I went round tonight to take some videos of her baking, to enter into a competition. They really are tasty cupcakes, and she’s ridiculously talented in the kitchen. This photo doesn’t do them justice.
Two of my best friends got married on Friday, and it was an amazing day. I’ll write a bit more about it later, but somebody has already put the video up of their quite fantastic first dance.
I never knew he had the moves in him!
Oh, and that idiot on the right who is also filming, then fiddles with the camera and gets his beer in the way? That would be me.
I’ve spent the last hour going through photos from the year I lived in Heidelberg, Germany during 2004-05, and it’s made me realise that I suck at staying in touch with people. I made some amazing friends during my time there, from all over the world, and there’s very few that I still speak to regularly, and even fewer that I have physically seen since we all went our separate ways.
I saw one particularly funny photo and emailed it to one of the girls, along with some general catch-up news, and she just happened to be online. An hour later, chatting, and it seems like only yesterday that we were saying our tearful goodbyes in Heidelberg.
I think I’m going to upload a batch of those photos to facebook, and start a tagging frenzy, just to get back in touch with a load of people. I’m too lazy to write 100 individual emails at the moment.
I’ve heard a rumour that a reunion is planned for some point this summer, as it will will be five years since we were all there. I would love to go, and it’d be great to see some familiar faces once more. I never should’ve let them get away from me, but at least I can try to start talking to them again…
We had a few friends round for dinner last night, and between the eating and the Wii golfing, one of them commented on my renewed facial hair. It makes me look like Edward Norton, apparently.
Usually, that’d be no bad thing: he’s a handsome chap, quite striking and I’d be happy for that kind of comparison to be made.
Unfortunately, the Edward Norton she was referencing was his appearance in American History X, where he plays a violent, racist neo-Nazi murderer with a swastika tattooed on his chest.
I spent yesterday evening in my absolute favourite watering hole in London, Gordon’s Wine Bar. It’s a tiny little place down by Embankment station, run by a French family, and serves nothing but wine and sherry.
It’s underground, with some tables in a really dark, small, cramped, cave-esque hole that you can see in the third picture, behind the couple that were eating each other’s faces all night long. Somehow, we booked a table for eight, and ended up in what was pretty much a cage at the end of the room, which was brilliant.
The wine there is fantastic, and we got through a stack of bottles between us. A particularly good Malbec was my favourite, but then I really like Malbecs in general. We also had a few plates of some great cheese, with some awesome brie and a good chunk of gouda.
I met a friend after work yesterday, and rather than doing our usual thing of just finding a bar and shooting the shit over a few drinks, we decided to do something a bit different. We ended up in Vibe Bar on Brick Lane, where there was a small art gallery opening, where we, erm, shot the shit over a few drinks.
The exhibition itself was tiny, to be honest, but pretty cool. I especially liked this one print/painting which was a view directly upwards from right underneath an electricity pylon, mainly because of the geometric symmetry. I’m a bit of a mathematician at heart, and in art especially I really like lots of straight lines and shapes.
There was also a cool painting of a heart, as in the organ not a logo. I’m not sure if I could cope with that on my wall 24/7 though…
It was good to see my friend, who I met when we were both studying Germany a few years ago. Despite us both living in London nowadays, we don’t see enough of each other. She hasn’t even met the girlfriend, which is crazy because we’ve been together nearly two years now (which in itself is crazy). Hopefully we’ll remedy that situation next month.
And I did enjoy going somewhere a bit different too. I seem to always end up in Covent Garden to meet people, because it’s near my office. But I’ve done the pubs and bars there to death, and it’s getting a bit boring now.
Having said that, I’ve been to Brick Lane loads of times, and have probably eaten in half of the curryhouses on the street. Usually with a good few beers in me first!
About
Londoner, thinking and writing far too much about far too many random things. Wannabe photo-/videographer of my life. More likely to be found propping up a bar somewhere.
