Thursday night until right now.

I've been posting quite frequently lately because it's all I can do, but I'm aware most of them are two lines long and I haven't actually written about what's going on so I thought I'd take a minute to do that.

On Thursday night during an msn conversation with Charlie (and after a few glasses of wine) I decided I would go down to London for the 888 gathering NSG set up and named 'Vlog in the Park' having almost settled on not going by Thursday afternoon.

On Friday morning I got a train to London and met Mr Coollike. We went to the Apple store and filmed a video he was too tired to do that morning and I sent off a few emails telling people I would be late doing things because I had left home for several days.

Then we headed over to Hyde Park and looked for a lake. Charlie thought he saw it but it turned out to be some grass. Then I thought I saw it but it turned out to be the sky.

We did find it and went to get some outrageously expensive salad in a little cafe just by the lake. It was there that we met Alex, Mhazz and Lucy. More people came and about 10 of us headed over to where we thought the meeting place was. On the way we met Tom and his friends. Tom only found out there was a gathering the day before when I was talking (typing) to him about youstage. I'm glad he found out and joined us because it turns out I love him.

We found a suitable place to gather and people found us over the next hour or so and we stayed there talking, playing music and drawing on cheekychen's postcards until the sun was setting, at which point we went over to the lake and did much of the same until people had to leave.

Little side note to explain cheekychen's postcards. You probably know mr chen (who will henceforth be called Paul because that's his name) from the youtubes. He did that 'Make Art' thing? Yeah there you go. Well he is involved with the running of a website called tailcast, which is a place for artists, musicians, writers, etc to share their work with people. He's just had 5000 postcards printed which are basically plain on the front apart from a logo and on the back they explain the concept, which I will do now. You take one of the postcards and draw on it. Anything you want. Then you stick it up somewhere in a public place so people see it, then take a photo and upload it to their site. I think it's a great idea as did everyone at the gathering and we made hundreds of them. It's a really positive form of advertising, not throwing an idea at people but involving them in a creative way yet still there's the possibility of generating a lot of word of mouth promotion for the website. So yes, expect to see some videos involving the postcards, and a whole lot of people drawing things at youstage! AND AND! If you're around London and you see one then yay!

So anyway, where was I? Friday evening, people were leaving. Some went to a hostel, I went back to Alex's with Charlie and Mhazz and we chillied out all night. That included doing Charlie's blogtv which was basically just us four sat around in Alex's little computer room.

Saturday we did nothing. The furthest we got was 100 yards down the road to get food. That includes going passed a hilarious sign at a Church which reads "Do not listen to any man who does not listen to God" I think that's exact but I may have paraphrased. In any case it's beautifully Christian don't you think? So much for loving thy neighbour. Anyway for the rest of Saturday we watched dvds and talked and Ed and Jasmine came over for the night.

On Sunday we got up early... midday. I went into London with Plant and Coollike and we met Cheeky and filmed ourselves sticking a load of the postcards up around Covent Garden and Trafalgar Square. Then I got a phone call from the rents saying they were on the way so I had to go. I was sad to leave, but so happy I'd decided to go when I was so close to staying at home. I filmed one final postcard which I stuck on the window of my tube carriage. Then got picked up and we carried on to my Aunt's house.

I ate some good healthy food which I loved having been on fast food for a couple of days, watched a film and went to bed. I was told in order to use her computer I would first have to fix it, so having helped Dad move a shed (that's the reason we are here really) I fixed it. I have no real understanding about how to fix computers but I always seem to be able to do it.

And so that is where you find me now, in my Aunt's study trying to keep on top of emails and websites so it's not totally out of hand when I get home.

Well so much for the short entries!

 

iBye.

p.s. note to self: but Conor Oberst's new album.

p.p.s. note to everyone else: Buy Tom's album.