It was a BUSY old day for me on Wednesday. It started with a TEAM MEETING at work, and then I had to go over to Homerton Hospital for a CT scan to have a look at my SINUSES. I was expecting this to be a bit of a palaver but instead it was alarmingly pedestrian, as I went in, waited ten minutes, went into another room, lay down for five minutes on a BIG MACHINE, and then left. Hardly anybody spoke to me and I didn't even have to take any clothes off!
In the afternoon I went to a presentation about a system (I say "went to", I mean of course "sat on a Zoom meeting for") and then to a VERY interesting Keynote Speech by Professor Mick Grierson who is in charge of UAL's Creative Computing Institute. The talk was DEAD good, but at the end the questions were all a bit Arts Lecturers Who Don't Understand Computers - it was like going to a Fine Art talk and all the questions being "Do you have to make the paintbrushes yourself" - so I asked him whether the original b3ta board people were PUNK ROCK OUTSIDERS or a legitimate part of ART HISTORY and he seemed DELIGHTED to say "BOTH". Excellent!
After a day like that I could have done with a trip to the pub, and luckily that is EXACTLY what I had lined up for LO! The Pattisons were not only in town, but also in a pub just round the corner from my house. They were staying in a hotel for a couple of nights as part of their usual Family Half-Term Trip and were over in Leyton at a pub ably selected by Ms K Kennedy. It was The Leyton Star, and I was MOST impressed by their Covid Precautions, including an ORDERING App that actually worked - although many of us present had to call upon the help of Miss L Pattison, Designated Teenager, to show us how to use it.
We were sat out the back in the outside "terrace" area, which felt very FRESH and SAFE, also not too cold due to the HEATERS they had put up. It all felt surprisingly normal, and very quickly we were all SWEARING AWAY and slagging off the government just as we had been the last time we met, just before all this started. It was a LOVELY evening, with only TWO (2) minor stains. The first was that I got confused about which route The Pattisons were taking back to their hotel near Hampstead Heath, and loudly corrected everyone, saying that "The GOBLIN" was another line when of course it WAS the route they were taking (I still feel bad about this, it is the CARDINAL SIN for someone who lives in London to make this sort of error). The second low note was that BEER has clearly been changed since all this began. I imagine it is similar to the way that IPA used to FERMENT on the way back from India, because I only had a few pints but felt QUITE TIDDLY at the end, and can only assume that draught beer has been made MUCH STRONGER over the past seven months. There should have been a warning!
