Barbarism Begins At Home

Guildford can get pretty rowdy on a Saturday night, but I wasn't prepared for what happened at the weekend. After a few rounds of Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars and washing down some chocolate orange cookies with half a litre of fiery ginger beer, my friends and I headed into Guildford. Being the non-drinker, I drove with a car load of friends and parked up in the highstreet. This was about 10:30pm, so the night was still young and most of the lout population were busy downing sambuca shots to reduce the already low number of brain cells floating in their thick heads. Or so I thought.

We were walking down a shopping street on the way to Wetherspoons, I gazed lovingly at the Apple retailer as I stroked the bulging pocket of my drainpipe jeans, the home to my new iPhone 3GS. I usually have my wits about me, but that evening I was just a little too relaxed and was paying more attention to my purple shoes than anything else around me. I knew two people were approaching our direction, but I didn't think anything of it. I should have though, for a second later one of the men had lunged towards me and hit me square and hard in the chest with his shoulder. I fell to the floor like a sack of limbs, I didn't even see the face of my attacker as he and his companion walked a few paces before stopping to see what would happen next. This was a surreal moment, it was silent, I picked myself up off the floor, slightly shocked I glanced to see who had attacked me. I still don't remember their faces, but I acknowledged that they were of the dodgy type so I made the decision to not take action. Instead I told my friends that it wasn't worth any more trouble and I started to walk away in a daze.

"Will, here are your glasses". I hadn't even noticed that my specs had flown off my face in true geek fashion and landed on the pavement. I carried on walking, as did my friends, we didn't hear from the two thugs so I was sure they had too walked away. It wasn't until Monday that I realised my glasses had actually been scratched, a trip to Specsavers confirmed the worst, it would cost £69 to replace the lenses. So not only had I been attacked, but my favourite glasses had been ruined by some brainless, meat-headed, alcohol fuelled barbarian who decided to relieve his pent-up idiot aggression on someone who hadn't even laid eyes upon his brutish, square face.

And what did he prove? Nothing. I'm still sure I made the right decision by walking away. People like that only do these things to get a rise out of people, their lives are so painfully dull that they turn to violence to liven up their evenings.

Like Miyagi-san used to say in the Karate Kid, "fighting is never good".

Happy Halloween

A bit early, I know, but I'm busy this weekend.

I actually took this two weeks ago in Japan...shhh

kidrobot is coming to London

Next month, 1800 hours Thursday 19th November to be precise, kidrobot are throwing an opening party at their new store in London. What's particularly awesome about this news is that one of my favourite designers, TADO, will be attending the event. TADO are a British design duo who specialise in super cute character designs for toys and other nice things that I like to buy. Recently I bought their amazing imagining of Tokyo in print form, titled 'SUGOI!'. As soon as I find a nice frame suitable for 594 × 841mm of colourful goodness, then it shall hang on my wall.

17-85mm IS USM Sadface :(

My favourite lens is broken. I need to send it away for repairs. Get well soon 17-85mm.

Yoko - Nendoroid & Revoltech

Robert Pattinson is my James Dean

Little Boots

Turns out I was sitting behind Little Boots on the flight back from Tokyo. I could tell the group of 6 young trendy-types were a band of some sort when they first sat down in the seats in front and behind me. I don't really keep up with the music world these days, so I didn't recognise her or any of her bandmates, I actually found them quite annoying. I thought they were very loud and ignorant, so I wasn't looking forward to the next 12 hours I would have to spend with them thousands of feet in the air. They must have been pretty tired though as they kept quiet, leaving me to watch Moon and Year One in peace.

It wasn't until I was queing up alongside them in Customs when we got to Heathrow that my curiostity got the best of me and I asked who they were. The lanky fellow with a keyboard was closest so I asked if "you guys are all in a band", to which he replied "yeah" so I continued with "oh, so you've been playing in Tokyo?". They had been in Japan for around a month and by the sounds of it, it had been quite an exhausting stint. Each of them had various festival admission wristbands dangling from their limbs and luggage, on one of them I saw 'Little Boots' scribbled, so I guessed that's who they were. I asked Mr Yamaha and he confirmed it, "This little girl here", he said, pointing at the singer, "and we're the band".

I'm not a fan of Little Boots so I wasn't all that bothered. My only exposure to Little Boots prior to sitting behind her on a Virgin Atlantic flight was in one of those pesky Spotify adverts that so rudely interrupt Sacred Heart by Cass McCombs or Get Innocuous! by LCD Soundsystem - that's all I'm listening to these days.

Special Note: Little Boots had grey hair. She reminded me of Sophie from Howl's Moving Castle. Maybe she was inspired by Miyazaki while visiting Japan.