Well it was a weekend of little sleep (I’ve caught up now :-), but much good stuff and some bad. Mostly to do with a certain large public transport provider here in the capital of the UK.

On Friday I went to see Mouse on Mars, Four Tet and others at The End with Miles and Fran (Lad and Squid of Hype fame). There was a derailment at Baron’s Court on the Piccadilly line and it took me an extra hour to get into the city (not bad really, considering). It was OK though as the night didn’t start until 10, we sat and drank in a little pub around the corner from Holborn tube, near both the End and the college where Louise is having lots of fun doing her photography course.

The End is smaller than I expected and it was packed. It wasn’t death star loud either. Obviously it was wicked loud, but my ears didn’t instantly start hurting (Miles’s did though). When we got in the door somebody I should know was playing. I knew the track from a Tigerbeat compilation, which is odd, because it was a Domino Records birthday bash. Hmm. Still, they were cool, they finished with a Tigerbeat-esque rendition of So Long, Farewell from The Sound of Music.

After a “quick” trip around the club to find ear plugs and to the bar to get booze (they take plastic! they do cashback!) Mouse on Mars started. They were ace, playing a really cool dubby bass-heavy set, which dipped in and out of mashing electronics. Some really energetic set pieces and loads of sequencers with flashing lights. At first I thought they didn’t even have a computer. But then I realised that they did, but they weren’t really using it. It was really good to see them. I recognised nothing that they played and they gave off a feeling of being really creative.

Next up was Four Tet. He was really good too. He played stuff from Rounds, the latest album, and some older tracks as well. He played a version of one of the tracks from Rounds (I forget which one), with a jungle break on it (Amen for the technically-minded) and it worked pretty well. About half way through the set he played Everything Is All Right and I just lost it, I was already dancing really hard, but I think I may have broken my wrists air-drumming along to that, one of my favourite tunes.

Four Tet’s set was really good and people were really excited by it. The booth where he was playing was in the centre of the room and he was surrounded by a sea of happy faces. It was quite something to watch. He finished at about three and I swear half the people left there and then.

Afterwards we hung around to see Manitoba DJing for a bit, he played a crazy combination of tunes, a bit of Roni Size, some old funk, I saw Zep III at one point, but he obviously decided against playing any of it. We decided to go home about 4:30. That was when my real transport fun began.

We walked to Tottenham Court Road and split up, Fran and Miles having to get a bus from nearer Covent Garden and me from Oxford Street. I got a bus down Oxford Street to the right end. Then I spent half an hour finding a bus stop, then half an hour waiting for a bus, then asked a policeman when the tube opened, only to be told that the gates were already open. Then I found out that an open tube station is not necessarily one with trains. The first train wasn’t for half an hour. I was trapped in the station. After walking around for a bit I finally settled on walking up the down escalators as the most interesting thing to do. It’s hard work. Especially when you’re so tired you’re practically hallucinating. I finally got home just before seven.

On Saturday we went to Miles’s housewarming party in Wimbledon, taking 24 beers (£7 for 12 bottles of Pilsner Urquell in Budgens - bargain) and bottles of Margherita, White Russian and Port between me and Charlie. Louise made some biscuits from the copy of How to be a Domestic Goddess that I bought her for her birthday. They were incredible, really really good. I think she’s destined for goddesshood.

It was a good party, big enough that I didn’t talk to everybody. Ben, Miles’s housemate seemed pretty nice and the other people were cool. Kate was there and we chatted for a bit about family members and stuff, always funny. I also had a long discussion with Miles’s friend Duncan who is a computer scientist as well. Much more successful than me, having ported GDB for Cray and worked for Sophos as well as beginning a Phd at Oxford. We chatted about languages mostly, a subject that he was quite knowledgeable about. He tried to convince me to learn Haskell. I may do so, but I think I’ll wait until after I’ve learned Lisp.

Then yesterday I had to redesign one of the sites that I’ve been working on with Arena. It took me ages because a dynamic version of the site has already been built and any major changes to the HTML would just have been impossible to accommodate. Strangely enough, the customer was the same organisation who had such a hard time taking me out and bringing me home on Friday.