I booked a well-placed day off last Friday. Combined with Easter and the May bank holiday, I’ve had four four-day weeks in a row. I hate that Christianity still has any influence on our public holidays but I welcome the break.
Coming from the music industry, I’m lucky to have been able to travel quite a bit and luckier that I get to see people from back home who are still travelling due to their jobs in music. I wouldn’t see many faces from my past lives otherwise. My cousin Andrew was in London for a few days earlier this week. He’s always been my closest relative outside of my immediate family. We met Wednesday evening and caught up over a few pints.
My old friend Drew was here on Friday, opening for Dave Hause’s tour. We got coffee and hung out in his dressing room (which was just the ladies toilet with two bags of Doritos and a case of beer in it) throughout the show. Drew is great with words and always leaves me hanging onto a few. This time it was while we were standing in front of Scala, watching people and traffic, talking about how far we’ve both come and how a lot of our friends from a decade ago didn’t make it very far at all. I told him I didn’t feel like I’d done anything special to deserve what I ended up with; “All I did was say yes.” He replied, “some people don’t say yes.”
The London CSS meetup started back up on Thursday and I went along with my friend John. On the bus ride there, I was telling one of Alana’s anecdotes about celebrities at the BAFTAs last year asking her for sandwiches because they hadn’t been fed. A woman beside us overheard me and told us a similar story from the Brit Awards that she was at because The Edge from U2 is her cousin. I believe her because no one would ever want to lie about being related to a member of U2. John and I stopped by Porterhouse before the event. I always remember that pub being better than it is, and I’m always let down. The meetup itself, at the Conde Nast office, was okay. The free food was amazing but the talks weren’t to my taste — more nerdery than practicality. I’ll keep an eye on the descriptions for the next one and give it another chance.
The Men’s World Ice Hockey Championships began on Friday. Since the developer beside me in the office is Russian and a big hockey fan, I’ve had to dust off my last bit of patriotism to stoke the rivalry everyone else wants us to have. I watched Canada defeat Great Britain 8–0 as I wrote this, so I’ll be able to arrive tomorrow morning without shame.
I have one of Drew’s songs stuck in my head. This is one he recorded eight years ago, long before he started doing solo stuff in earnest. One of his recent singles is below, too.