My day officially started at just after midnight, I suppose. I was with my friend, JAJ and we were rather ridiculously purched on a roof-balcony in Holborn, having tried and failed to see the fireworks over the Thames.
At about 11.00pm we walked, along with the other half a million or so people, in huge crowds down some of London’s biggest streets, marshalled by scores of police before bailing-out on after taking a policeman’s advice that there was no chance at all in us getting a good view by that point (as ever we’d left it too late). Instead then we duped a security guard into letting us trespass into a building… got to the 6th floor and found that luckily there was indeed a balcony and a toilet (both very hand on New Year’s Eve.). We finally manged to set some alarm off and so sharpishly got out of the building and back into the choas for a while.
Visited a bar / club for a while but got squashed and fed up entirely so decided to go home.
On the way home, had to tolerate some truly horrible, drunken people from Bethnal Green (fun place it seems) attacking single women on the bus before slopping off to cause general destruction to anyone and anything in their way and finally dissapearing into the night, to my enormous relief. It all rather delayed the journey home which eventually took a couple of hours. (Sometimes I don’t mind long journey’s, othertimes I abhor them)
Anyway, finally got home somehow in one piece , got in a good night’s sleep and woke surprisingly early – circa. 11am ; quite naturally. The alarm clock did go off at 7am (I must stop forgetting to switch it off when not needed) as I vaugely remember hopping across the room to thump it.
It was a slow start to the day and decided it was time to finally get back to the gym. I phoned and was amazed they were open on New Year’s Day – it being a bank holiday, of course.
Second pleasant surprise of the day came when I decided to read some of my mass-mailed-emails which I rarely check these days. I discovered the Barbican were showing the 2008 version of La bohème (in a film) today and that as a member I was able to secure a few pounds off the price of going along. Consequently, I went and saw that en route.
Whilst I was there and since I’d arrived early, I also visited Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Frequency and Volume at the Curve which was genuinely a pleasure to ‘take part’ in. Appealing to me technologically and culturally/politically. Often when artists write some sort of blurb to explain their work it strikes me as utter nonsense written for the sole purpose of securing some sort of funding / grant but this was different, interesting and clever and I think everyone visiting whilst I was there had a novel smile on their face in appreciation of the work. Highly recommended by me anyhow.
The film was pretty great but I think I was in the wrong mood for it – I fidgetted like a schoolchild and probably annoyed my nearer neighbours by stretching all of my limbs in every concievable direction.
I’ve started getting quite good at zipping around on the London bus network and so used that to finally get down to the gym late this evening where I spent a long time discussing my needs with a personal trainer. Save for me alone the gym was entirely deserted and that was great – I was able to do just as I pleased without others getting in the way or feeling daft. I worked on my arms, neck and back muscles as well as having a quick jog to burn a couple of hundred calories. tomorrow will be a jog with abdominals and obliques and Saturday will be leg muscles and some rowing. It’s a plan anyway, we’ll show how we actually get on.
I am obliged to be in work tomorrow for about 5/6 hours in the middle of the day so I’d best go and get some sleep. Thankfully I’m now a lot warmer in my room as I bled the radiator (again – it’s addictively satisifying), bought a higher-tog duvet and had a fleece blanket donated to me (the latter measure probably did more than anything else to improve my comfort at night, curiously enough).