Getting Round to the Written Word

We had Jamie staying over last night and I wanted to extend the hospitality a wee bit so I got everyone some bakery pastries for breakfast. My attention is being drawn towards best man duties ahead of Mark's wedding next weekend. It's mostly speech writing which I naturally will spend far too long on (because I care too much about it). It only needs to be short but I want it to be the full emotional rollercoaster. I'm also catching up on my LetterBoxd review backlog. I'm sticking to my guns on trying to write a short piece to consolidate my thoughts on each film I watch, trouble is I'm watching so many films now that I have a glut of reviews to write which takes up almost as much time as watching a film! 

There's a theme here if me spending too much time in writing... 

Le Stag on Le Boat

Slept hilariously well on the boat, especially since there was apparently a group of ravers who started listening to drum and bass music after 1am - I slept through the whole thing while poor Dan could hear it through his earplugs. Regardless, we hit the water again after a quick pastry breakfast and made great time heading downstream. We even carved out a lunch slot for a cheeky board game session before cruising back into the boat hire place.

And ongoing mission I started was 'lets all try to beat Dan's Tetris highscore' which gained a lot more traction than I expected. I have a little Gameboy which I passed around to the group as we chased for spots on the leaderboard, if we all got a bit more practice then no doubt we could have gone toe-to-toe with Dan, but his skills were too mighty for us.

We all hugged goodbye at the end of the weekend though. It's been a long time since I've been out on a canal and the experience was even more lovely than I remembered. We did it all with a good gang with a great shared attitude, we had a bonafide romp. 

Stag Cruise

Dan drove me across to the outskirts of Oxford to meet up with Mark and Co so we could all hop onto a canal boat together. It's Mark's Stag and we spent the day opening both locks and beers all while cruising upriver and marvelling at the countryside. We ate very well (my early research did us well there), we finished the evening off with some board games before crawling into our teeny-tiny beds, then we get to do it all again tomorrow.

Beers in the Baggage

Packed my things ready for the stag weekend out on the boat. I watched the mandatory health and safety video that heavily dissuaded people drinking while operating the boat. As a result, I moved all the beers out of their boxes and moved them into my personal luggage, rolling them in with my clothes. 

For the record we certainly won't be irresponsible on the water, but I just don't want the hiring company to get the wrong impression if we roll up as a bunch of lads with a few beers too many to seem sensible. 

Resuited

With a wedding looming in the distance and a bit of free time on my hands, I decided it was time to refresh my attire a little. Last year I was at two weddings, and each time I noticed how little I liked my waistcoat and trousers - the materials and colours didn't match eachother and they didn't fit super well (the waistcoat I bought almost 13 years ago). Well I headed into town, found a few winners and spent far too long in the changing room umming and erring. I left with admittedly the same colours as before (I'm a navy man at heart) but I did give a brighter blue a shot. I feel ready now though, already can't wait to get on the dance floor.

5K, at What Cost

With breakfast still not far behind me, I laced up my running shoes and aimed to push myself. In spite of the hot day I managed just under 5k. Turns out I pushed myself just a bit too hard though and I was panting when I got back. Still, it gave an ample excuse to enjoy some chocolate without worry. 

The only other thing I wanted to do tonight was crack down on some more movies. While my annual watch figure isn't too dear to me, I felt an inner urge to see some more stuff. So I got through two new ones, John Woo's A Better Tomorrow and the old Western 3:10 to Yuma. Both little 90 minute romps that were not the most cerebral, but enjoyable in the moment. 

Bloody Soaked Script

I've been cooking up another Dungeons and Dragons style cowboy campaign for a group of friends, yesterday I announced that it was basically ready to play and we should get a date in the calendar. Everyone said today worked for them which gave me precious little time to add the finishing touches to it all. I even had to make a little prop for it - a big element of the story is our heroes get mistaken for a pair of actors (the original pair have been shot in a ditch by outlaws). The dead pair have their script pages on them which I hand-wrote and added a little bullet hole and blood splatter for good measure. The extra effort was appreciated by my group though! We sat in the park in the sun rolling dice and laughing at the funny scenarios we wound up in. The weather was so good too, days like this it feels great to be unemployed.