Hooray! I'm Home!... *sigh*

This morning me and Darroch headed off to Rosslyn Chapel. This cued endless cynical statements about Christianity, the Knight's Templar and the Priory of Sion. One thought I had was to attain free entry to the Chapel, with my long hair I would just need a blob of red paint on each palm and on my left side. If it didn't work on the first attempt, I could laugh "Oh Thomas, you joker!" and walk in. A flawless plan.

After this we had lunch in a nearby pub before heading off to the train station. On the train we were sitting with a couple of really cool guys who were travelling up North from their University in Leeds in order to cycle from John O'Groats to Lands End. Certainly not my idea of fun but good luck to them.

Upon arriving home, I was distraught to discover that Inverness and Drumnadrochit are truly as bad as I recalled. One thing that really confused me is how I walked along Princes Street this morning, where there was literally over a thousand people in the same place, and not a single one bumped into me. On Inverness high street; wider than the princes street pavement; there was no more than ten, and we were being bumped into repeatedly. Is there something about Inverness that depletes a human's IQ to the point that they're incapable of negotiating their surroundings? Amongst many other more obvious things, this was one factor that made me very displeased to be back. This afternoon I heard about the Israelis attacking that ship carrying aid to the Gaza strip as there was a protest organised in town. Luckiy it was due just after our train was due in. I met Angus and we headed for Town House where it was set to happen.

There was literally 8 old people standing there looking pretty bored with flags.

Some may argue that it is free speech and democracy in action, but this so-called protest was in my opinon pretty damned useless and pointless. Suffice to say we didn't join in, as though we agree with their message, the actual event was nothing short of embarrasing.

I'm definitely not a robot.

This morning was a relax, sitting in Jamie and Tim's flat, where Linnhe and Guy also joined us. They are both people I haven't seen in years so it was great to catch up and apparently Guy is becoming pretty well known in his field of Linguistics which is very cool.

This afternoon me and Darroch headed off to Teya's flat, another person I haven't spoken to for ages. All her flatmates were there and it was a great little while; it is a strange occurrence when there's so many people in a room but I think they are all sound.

This evening was the main reason for us being in Edinburgh: Marina and the Diamonds. It was in the Assembly Halls, an incredible building. The support act was Spark, a girl singing atrocious music badly. Marina was actually better than I was expecting; the highlight for me was I am not a robot, which she did perfectly. I was also allowed to take my Digital SLR in, not having to fall back on my old camera, so I got some pretty decent photos. I'm far too tired to type any more, so I was going to supplement it with a photo, but blogspot is being a poof and won't upload one. Speaking of poof, the gig was full of them. Not in a homophobic sense, if a boy likes the boys I have no problem with it, but when the boy is a complete annoying faggot, squealing and making the surrounding females look butch, it really annoys me. There was a few of these in attendance of the show, but it didn't detract from the awesomeness.

Oh, it appears blogspot has changed it's mind about the photo, but I'll keep the above comment about it not working because it allowed a nice segway to the next topic.

PUT THE TROOPS IN PRUSSIA!

This morning I woke in the youth hostel, which I forgot to mention was a converted church. The night had been fraught by the neighbouring bed being occupied by a couple who spent a majority of their night having sex; it's quite unnerving to be sleeping literally inches away from a shagging couple who you've never met, all the time in a church. We were quite glad to be leaving the place, and we made our way to Darroch's brother; James' flat. I haven't spoken to him properly for years but he is ridiculously sound, along with his flatmate Tim. James works for Historic Scotland so we got free entry to Edinburgh Castle, somewhere I've never been as it is usually so extortionately expensive. It is an impressive castle to go around, with some amazing architecture. The crown jewels display was somewhat underwhelming as the main attraction of the crown actually looks tacky; I much prefer the old gold crowns as opposed to the modern fluffy, jewel encrusted, shiny, toy-like crowns. After this we proceeded to go around Edinburgh, where I bought MEAD and a new, good quality ukulele.

Dinner was a takeaway pizza from a place listed as Britain's Best Pizzeria: it was incredible. Lastly, we played Risk which me and Darroch had never played. Unsurprisingly Darroch and My team were defeated but it was a great game.

Another excellent day, and tomorrow is a dead cert at being a continuation as we are seeing Marina and the Diamonds. HUZZAH.

Weetabix!?!?!?

Today I got up ridiculously early in order to go to Edinburgh. I have been here now for about half a day and I do not want to go home on Monday. The train journey was not banterific, but not unpleasant either, but as soon as we got to Edinburgh I was hit by a wave of awesomeness. Me and Darroch made our way to Red Dog Music, a music shop unsurprisingly. It was incredible: a massive shop with instruments EVERYWHERE. I went in to look at their Ukuleles as I am considering buying a new one, but I was soon drawn to their piano section, where I played a £4,500 digital piano. If I had that money in my account I would have very likely bought it as it was amazing. After this we headed to our Youth Hostel, which is a bit of a dive, but will suffice for a night's sleep. We left to go and watch Prince of Persia at the cinema, which was awful. It has fantastic fight scenes, but the direction, script, tone and pacing are all horrific. 3/10. The film raises from a 2 purely because of Gemma Arterton's presence. After this we went to a burger bar which, being a vegetarian was okay; my bean burger was nice, but theres no escaping the fact it was nothing but a bean burger. Lastly we headed to a pub called the Jekyll and Hyde. Words cannot describe how much I love this pub; it is entirely themed like a gothic mansion, there is metal playing across the establishment and they serve cocktails based on the seven deadly sins. Tonight I sampled Lust, Wrath, Sloth and Pride. All but Pride were lovely. We sat there for a good two hours and I was a little distraught at leaving because the barmaid was incredibly pretty and seemed to be talking to me a lot. Suffice to say that I plan on going there a couple more times this weekend to sample the remaining deadly sins *wink wink, nudge nudge*.

Oh, to explain the title, we have noticed that Edinburgh smells a lot like Weetabix.

Bleh.

Today was a pretty dull day: I spent my time at work feeling very tired and bitter. The customers I dealt with were mostly friendly, and the couple of wingey ones I just stood there pretending to listen to their nonchalant whittering, slowly slipping away into my own dream world. I floated around the shop for most of the day in this euphoric yet contemptful manner for most of the day, until it turned 6 o clock and I left. My foot was killing me all day so I have previously called for a taxi. That was twenty minutes late, so I felt lucky to have gotten to the bus station in time for the 6:30 bus. I turned up and the bus was there, but all the passengers were still in the shelter. Turned out the driver (the same bearded fool that I have previously mentioned) has decided that he wanted a break, so had gone to the chippy. He sat there munching his dinner and smoking his cigarettes, a fact that I was so gutted I missed out on at the time: had I realised what was happening at the time I would have informed him that smoking in a bus shelter is a criminal offence. Finally, he granted us entry to the bus, departing the station twenty five minutes late. Sounds petty, but I get really wound up when things are late.

I spent the evening preparing for the weekend in Edinburgh with Darroch, and discovering how great Enya is. I knew her for contributing to the soundtracks for Gladiator and Lord of the Rings, but actually listening to her music on it's own it's beautiful.

Uneventful day, and I am ridiculously excited about the weekend ahead, combined with being ecstatic about being away from work for four days.

The creeping darkness.

Today work was not a particularly bad day: it was not very busy but there was a few things needing done so I kept busy most of the day. Come the end of my shift I discovered that the new rota system has definitely cut me to twenty hours a week, which meant I left in a horrific mood. To worsen it, I got to the bus station to find my bus was being driven by the same guy with a massive beard that I had the altercation with a few weeks ago. He chose to be a complete ignorant arse to a young mother instead of myself. She had loads of big bags around her, clearly wanting to put them in the luggage hold. The driver had to make a big deal of it, stomping out of the bus, yelling "Are you getting on this bus or not?". A girl I know who lives in Drum also was waiting for the bus and she's apparently had dealings with him in the past as she was nervous getting on. I was too, as I could not be bothered with an argument. Luckily he was no more than offish to me, not going out of his way to make my journey unpleasant.

This evening I went out to Drew and Robert's house; a main reason being Robert is home from Uni. We headed off to a supposed camping party at "the rock" (Queen Mary's Rock). We met Darroch, Alan, Joe, Kirsty and Kirsty, later joined by Shaun. It was far better than sitting at home stewing in my self-pity and anger about work, and it turned out to be a fairly good time. We left the campers to it and I went to Drew and Roberts house where a half-hours Kitchen Banter ensued before I cycled home, discovering it to be far more efficient than walking.

So, it started a decent day, the last events of work would have ruined it all, but my friends were the perfect solution to this, turning it back into a decent evening. It's gone 1am now and I'm leaving for work at quarter to nine, so it's probably time to sleep a little.

I'm Spartacus!

Today work once again outdid itself, being the most boring day yet. By just before six o clock, we were standing there with not a single customer in the store. It had been very quiet all day, but this was a new low. It never picked up either, with no more than a single customer in at a time until closing at 8. I'm also pretty dismayed with work just now because a new rota system has been introduced which automatically writes out a timetable rather than the manager sitting there scratching his head to figure out the sudoku puzzle every week. I love the idea, but a test run for the current week churned out a 20 hour week for me: the bare minimum of my contract, where I usually end up working 35 hours a week. Also me and a couple of other people who started around the same time as myself discovered that the promised pay rise after 6 months of employment was completely inaccurate, and that any chance of a pay rise won't be until the reviews due around November. At this point, it is up to the manager to send down some names and figures and see what Head Office think about us being paid more. All in all I am gutted about this, and unless I can sort something out for my hours, I shall be investigating alternative employment in the coming weeks.

This massive downer means that I am looking forward to my weekend in Edinburgh even more, as it will be a fantastic escape from the crap that's happening.

Tonight I saw Spartacus: Blood and Sand. I don't have a clue what to think of it so far: the visuals are pretty impressive, how they've gone all out in making it look like a real-life cartoon; I especially liked the scene where the spartan-esque guys are leaving their village in the sunlight, with the green scenery all tinted to look like a painting, and golden leaves falling all around. The plot is fairly basic thus far; nothing new, but nothing too annoyingly cliched. The script is the source of a massive amount of unintentional comedy, with foul language being rife in their vocabulary: "Where the fuck are the Romans?" a soldier cries mid-battle; and a commander hears of enemy troops getting past them, to which he dethrones them as "slippery cunts"; my particular favourite was the general's description of the enemy land as "the land of piss and shit". On this basis, surely it's not a great place to conquer? The script is not helped by the assortment of accents displayed in the cast; some characters even manage to change accent halfway through a scene which can be disorientating and annoying. However, the true importance lies in the fights, which are pretty damn good; blood and limbs everywhere, 300 style speed changes, and ridiculous leaping and such. All considered, it's a trashy comedy of a drama series, but a lot of fun. It goes noway near filling the void left by Lost's departure, but entertains nonetheless.

A pretty dire day has been had; I'm not in too much of a bad mood after Spartacus, so at least it's not ending on bad terms.

"The end of an era" and all that nonsense.

Summation of the day: Work was very quiet. It was boring.

AND NOW THE IMPORTANT PART. LOST FINALE. It goes without saying that there's massive spoilers here if you've not seen it yet.

Angus came over tonight to watch it, and it proved a fantastic ending to six years of religious following of it. I absolutely loved the whole episode. I was entertained by the OTT scenes of Jack vs Flocke on the clifftop, filmed just like an anime stand-off, and the plane taking off amidst the ground crumbling beneath it. I was gripped by the twists carefully revealed, especially the fact that the "side flashes" weren't at all that; they were flashes to the aftermath, where they are in some sort of perfect afterlife. The ending may disappoint some fans to start with, but if you think about it, there is not other logical way to have ended it without reverting to atrocious "it was all a dream" techniques, having some sort of horrific, depressing ending, or worse still, a big cliffhanger. It wasn't until half an hour after it finished that me and Angus both admitted that we were both very close to crying at the final scenes in the church, and the beautiful finishing and closing given by Jacks eyes closing, in parrallel to the very beginning of the pilot. There are those who are now saying "OMG I knew it was purgatory at the beginning", but they are wrong. I'm ridiculously tired, so I'll copy my summation from facebook:

If you consider it to be purgatory you are either a) grossly misinformed (i.e. by the nonchalant arse-minded saps at Radio1) b) Incompetent at deciphering anything more complex than the mystery of postman pat's missing mailbag or c) Haven't watched most episodes, and just want to have an opinon.

I feel that this is a fairly concise demographic of those who may have such an understanding of the finale. Also, I don't see it as being religious; it's a fictional program which has featured massive polar bears, smoke monsters, electromagnetic holes in the ground and people who refuse to age for 2000 years. The thought of the characters meeting in a near-perfect afterlife is not contrived by any means.

All in all, it was a fantastic ending to a fantastic show.

Up we'll go, in white light; I don't think so.

Today turned out to be preicsely as uneventful as I had expected it to be. Work was completely dead again, not a surprise given that Sundays are not really a big day of late, and the awesome weather means no one wants to be trudging around shops. On a brief tangent, I say "awesome weather" but incidentally I hate it like this: I like the sun and warmth but in Scotland you only have that for one day maximum before it becomes all sticky and humid. It makes me constantly feel like my face is going to explode. My brief stint in Sweden with school was the sort of hot I like; really really warm but breezy and light.

Moving on however. I purchased a new lens for my camera which will allow me to take photos from less than five feet away; my current lens is 40-150mm so is effectively stuck on partial zoom. The new one is 14-42mm; much better for portraits and such. Also it has a larger aperture so it should be better for gig photos that I'll be doing in the very near future.

This evening I nearly collapsed laughing at Ross Noble wrestling Jonathan Ross on Firday Night with...; he's hilarious. On the same show I was disgusted to hear a chap by the name of Tinie Tempah (sic) mutilating the rap section of Clint Eastwood by Gorillaz. It's pretty shocking when it gets to the point that talent is so hard to find that even rappers are unable to keep basic time. Also he apparently kept stopping to consider the next line of his verse; another downside to a rap performance. The lyrics were vacuous self-appreciation, charting his and Gorillaz greatness in a completely ineloquent, drivelling manner, whereas the original rap in the album version is interesting, makes sense and had a degree of thought put into the words. FAIL.

I have also rediscovered Keane's awesomeness, getting hold of sheet music for Bedshaped which I shall hopefully learn in the next week or so.

ROFLYSST.

This morning I went down to the castle to get my perfectly timed bus that was introduced the other day. Fifteen minutes after it was due, I contacted Stagecoach, which was obviously a stupid idea as being the weekend they were closed. I then phoned the timetable info helpline as a desperate attempt to see where the bus had gotten to. They categorically informed me there was no bus until two hours later. I implored they reconsider, as I had the timetable in my hand, stating a Saturday bus due fifteen minutes previously. The reply was that the new timetable doesn't come in yet; that it is in effect tomorrow. I would have backed down, somewhat embarrassed and humiliated, where it not for two pieces of evidence:
1) The timetable reads "Effective from May 17th". This being May 22, simple numeracy skills reveal that the allotted switchover date has in fact passed.
2) The new timetable introduced a 6:30pm bus in the weekdays, which wasn't present on the old timetable. I used this bus to get home the other day, so if the timetable is not yet in effect, the bus I rode home the other day did not exist?
By making use of this logic, it was clear to me that I was right, at least in theory, as it didn't change the fact that my bus was nowhere to be seen. The woman's general response was "there's nothing I can do, the timetable here doesn't show this bus, there's one in two hours." Luckily I was able to get a lift from Dad, otherwise I would have finally gotten to work at about 1:30pm.

Work was another ridiculously quiet day, but I was only working 12-6 so it did pass pretty quickly. Literally nothing exciting happened during this time.

This evening I went to see Bill Bailey at the Craigmonie Centre (a.k.a. my old high school's theatre). It was fantastic; the show lasted a lot longer than he was booked for, mainly because he was destroyed by the oddness of Drum and it's inhabitants; by the end of the show he was going completely mad. In general the show was his usual mix of genuinely brilliant comedy, bizarre mind-trips, and music that is both hilarious and very talented. It was really surreal to see someone so famous perform in Drumnadrochit, but seeing him in such an intimate venue was brilliant: he spoke to me and Danny at separate points in the show, and James Redmond volunteered to assist him at one point. Incidentally, this proved to be a very awkward moment, naturally.

Today was a day that swung the preferred way: bad to good. And now I'm shattered.