helen-louise's journal

I have a new, absolutely hard and unbendable, deadline of 6th July for the work I was supposed to have got done by 4th May. Which is going to be tough because I'm still not brilliant with regard to attention span and concentration, and I'm also pretty sure I have more than 6 weeks work to get done.

I think I can get at least enough to pass done, but I need to start working over weekends and things. Currently my headspace is such that I find it impossible to work after Friday afternoon and before Monday afternoon. I also have a few events planned which I don't want to miss - I'm going to Leeds next weekend for Alex-from-Pokecharms' birthday party, we have the Download festival from 8th-10th June, and we're seriously thinking about going to Whipsnade to see the bears one day over the Queen's Jubilee bank holiday.

Well, I won't have any more students for a couple of months after Tuesday, so maybe I won't be so exhausted during the week, so I won't need so much downtime? Ugh.

I think I've figured out what we're doing on Bank Holiday Monday: the UK Wolf Conservation Trust (vaguely near Reading) is having an open day!

After having no cubs for ages, suddenly they have six - three grey wolves and three Arctic wolves!

I just wish the Trust had less sucky merchandise - it's almost all New Age hippy nonsense, or crap like the zipped fleeces where the zip runs right through the middle of one of the wolves. I wish they had more things that I wanted to buy.

Who's going to Brighton Pride this year?

I haven't decided what to do about it yet because they're charging this year for the first time. It costs £12.50 for adults living outside Sussex, if you buy the ticket in advance. There's no concessions whatsoever, so if you're a disabled person who needs a carer, that's £25 up front. I don't need a carer, as such, but I need someone to push my wheelchair when it gets stuck in a hole. Hrm.

Pride for me is about two things: 1) watching the parade, 2) seeing my friends. I don't care about the other paraphenalia. It's fun to see lots of queer people all dressed up, but you can do that in Brighton on a normal day. I'm not sure if I want to spend quite a lot of money just for the privilege of sitting in the park being deafened by music that I don't like - when it costs nothing to stand or sit on the pavement to watch the parade.

Does anyone know to what extent the ticket income is expected to fund the park event itself, and to what extent the income will be fed back into the community as donations to help run events that I do want to go to? Like quiet Pride events associated with queer books, and money being given upfront to run Brighton BiFest?

If I knew for a fact that £2 of my donation was going to pay for toilets, £2 for policing and other essential services, with £4.50 going to be fed straight back to community events, and it was only £4 that was going to pay for the bloody noisy sound systems - that'd make a big difference to my desire to pay the money; compared with a situation where it's £10 for the noise, £1 for toilets, £1 for policing and 50p going back into the community...

It is Campaign Cup time again. This is a 4 day paintball tournament in Crystal Palace, starting tomorrow. Richard has booked 4 days off work to play and geek (it seems he's ported his code from the ProMasters onto the Timmys [1], so he is even more famous than he was before [3]). As it's vaguely nearby (south London), he's got people coming to stay here. It seems there will only be one this time, not an entire house full, but I still have to get the spare bed aired out & the sheets washed. It *may*, of course, turn out to be an entire house full of sweaty paintballers come tomorrow night - this has happened before :)

Friday is my last day of evil summer school, so I'm anticipating a relatively quiet week. The weekend is, however, messed up for me as I'm tutoring some kids from a nearby public school who have an internal school exam on Monday (it's a "resit" of their summer exam which will be used for their predicted grades in the International Baccalaureate). So while I could otherwise bugger off and leave Richard and his paintballers with the run of the house, I can't this time. So I'm wondering if there's anyone who wants to do "something" late afternoon/early evening on Thursday or Saturday (I'm guessing that I'll be too tired on Friday). Theoretically, I could get anywhere in London, but central would be better - and/or you could come here. The advantage of coming here is there's likely to be cake, and I might be persuaded to cook. Anyone I haven't seen in ages (you know who you are) feel free to invite yourselves over. Also. if the weather looks ok on Saturday, people could come over and try the tricycle/s, or bring bikes over to go for an exciting novelty quest (route to be decided on the day) round north Kingston or Richmond Park.

Anyone bored & want to join me?

[1] The paintball gun called a Timmy is really called an Intimidator [2], but everyone calls them Timmys, ideally pronounced like the way the South Park character says his own name.
[2] One of these days, I'm going to write a quiz called "Paintball Gun or Gay Man's Sex Toy?". There's an Intimidator, an Intruder... it wouldn't surprise me if there was a Rammer, a Ballbuster or an Anaconda.
[3] fsvo "famous" that involves having famous paintballers that are in the magazines using your code.