Glorious Towel Day

Happy Towel Day

Today is a very important day for me. Today is the 25th of May. Today I celebrate Towel Day and remember the brilliance brought to my life by Douglas Adams. The love I have for this author is immense and every year on this day I remember just what a shame it is that he didn't get the chance to write more. Do more. Experience more of the technological advances we've made in the last decade and a half.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is very different from other pieces of scifi I've read. Despite actually being dystopian, the Earth being demolished and all that, it's absolutely hilarious. It is so easy to identify with our main character Arthur Dent; a man who just happened to end up an intergalactic hitchhiker and isn't very happy about it.
I've read the books.
I've listened to the books.
They are fantastic.

Dear Old Fictional Friends

There are certain things that you should have done together with a friend that has put up with you and your weirdness for the last thirteen years. To celebrate ten years of firendship we travelled to New York City together in 2012 but despite both of us being huge Potterheads we've never been to London together. We felt it was time to rectify that.

Highgate Cemetery
One of my wishes for the trip was to go to Highgate Cemetery. Partly because the Cemetery itself is beautiful in its own overgrown way and I can be silly among the ivy and headstones (see photo to the left) but also because some of The Greats have been buried here since its opening in 1839.
Highgate Cemetery has two parts; East and West. We visited the East Cemetery, which you can do for free, but the West Cemetery is accessible by guided tours. It's more elaborate with catacombs, mausoleums, vaults and bigger monuments. Also, the West section was used in filming Dorian Gray (2009). We didn't go there. We found out there were some large, rare spiders nesting in the West Cemetery.

One of The Greats I spoke of before being in particular one Douglas Adams in my not-so-humble opinion. Adams is without hesitation my all time favourite author. He wrote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the books about Dirk Gently, Starship Titanic and some classic Doctor Who.
Forever loved and forever remembered.

Nerds, Adams is the reason You should always know where Your Towel is.
Join in on Towel Day on the 25th of May, because a Towel is just about the most useful thing an intergalactic hitchhiker can carry with them.

Everything is Harry Potter.
Our main purpose for this trip was to go to Warner Bros Studio Tours - The Making of Harry Potter in Leavesden. We've been talking about it since they built it years ago and we were definitely not feeling twenty-seven by the time we arrived at the studio. These books have been with us since we were twelve years old. We grew into adults with them. I, for one, cried tears of joy when I stepped onto Platform 9 3/4 and saw the Hogwarts Express.

We love the books but are not great fans of the movies. I'd say they did a good job with most of the story but nothing will ever be as amazing as one's own imagination. I've said it before and I'll keep saying it until my dying days.

We walked through the creative process from books to movies, hitched a ride with the Knight Bus, drank butterbeer (YUCK, by the way, yuck) and had a blast.

We certainly bought souvenirs to bring back home. I'm drinking coffee out of mine as I write.

I love being a nerd. It offers me a perfectly good excuse to act like a total weirdo when faced with things like scale models of fictional castles.

What else?
Being nerds meant that we simply had to go to certain places. But then we are also more than nerds so there were more things to do while in dear old Londinium.
We went to pubs because I like beer. We had some great food and some less than great food because we both love eating. I bought shoes of course (just one pair). We went to Ogre's Nest for board games and Forbidden Planet (twice) because awesomeness. We went to Oxford Street to find Disney Store but they didn't have much to offer us older children. We took a stroll through Kensington Park (and had a real party when we met a friendly and playful puppy). We went to Camden Town and saw the same shirts being peddled by a hundred different people at a hundred different prices.
As it turned out we found most of the things Harry Potter at other locations than The Making of Harry Potter though; PJ's at Primark, shirts in Camden and a passport holder at Forbidden Planet.

Trevor
It was a good vacation. The only thing that put a hamper on our good moods was that the cleaning staff at our hotel left a lot to be desired. We named the dead cockroach lying on the stairs Trevor. We felt brave to be eating the hotel breakfast every morning.

Cheers!

Happy Towel Day!

Must be Thursday

Thursday

Me neither Arthur, me neither... There's that thing about Thursdays that's intirely confusing so lets drink to that. Today has been tough, but according to calculations tomorrow should be better.

Happy Towel Day everyone!

Do all you hoopy froods know where your towels are?

Det där... eh... "livet".

Terminen börjar lida mot sitt slut och den allra sista slutspurten har påbörjats för de allra flesta universitets- och högskolestudenter i detta vårt avlånga land (alldeles för långt). Så även för mig. Vi har en hemtenta som lämnades ut till oss igår - då jag sprang runt i Borås och skyltade för RFSL Ungdom Borås' konstworkshop som hålls på lördag. Den hemtentan som ska in till skolan nästa onsdag - då jag åker på utbildningskursen i Stockholm för jobbet. Däremellan har jag jobb och sagda konstworkshop. Och styrelsemöte. Och en teaterföreställning jag lovat att jag ska gå på.
Det är knappt att jag känner att jag hinner med att fira Towel Day på fredag. Eller ja, fira och fira, jag kommer att sitta med min handduk och studera skallen av mig någonstans. Om vädret tillåter det så blir det troligen utomhus med min skräp-laptop som det varken går att spela eller surfa på (no distractions). Med en öl i näven i brist på Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters. Jag har hört att det finns en bartender i Norrköping som vet hur en bra Gargle Blaster görs. Någon som känner sig manad att slå följe med mig dit nästa år? (Och betala påföljande sjukhusräkning?)

Har äntligen fått tag i ett sommarjobb som inte har något alls att göra med vård och omsorg. Snarare tvärtom. Jag jobbar numera på Systembolaget. Det känns häftigt på något vis att äntligen tagit sig ut ur vård-träsket. Samtidigt är det frustrerande att vara ny på en arbetsplats igen och behöva lära om alla rutiner, jargonger och framför allt utbud. Jag vet inte hur många gånger varje dag jag måste förklara att jag är nyanställd och faktiskt inte kan så väldans mycket om vin. Eller öl. Eller sprit. Eller alkohol i allmänhet. Inte så att jag inte vill lära mig för det vill jag men det går aldrig tillräckligt fort i mina ögon. Nu kan jag nästan kassan helt.
Framsteg.

Men jag har fortfarande inget socialt liv att tala om. Jag hinner inte ens spela mitt svindyra nya spel.
Och Sverige är ett alldeles på tok för långsmalt land när två personer bor i varsin ände av landet.

Happy Towel Day 2011

You heard me people, it's that time of year again.

 You hold on to that towel now my friend. It can be the only thing between you and that carnivorous bird. Or starvation.

Book-oh-holic

Oh darn, I've gone and done it again.
I brought my American neighbour and Lucy along with me to a secondhand store (Gärdhem Secondhand, Dalsjöfors, Sweden) this morning and as always I dragged plenty of loot with me home.

I was unhealthily smug about the fact that I found the Swedish version of Douglas Adams’ Starship Titanic.


Beside books I found an old yet very well-fitting blouse, a belt and a clutch bag (size larger). But like I concluded in my last post I’m a bookworm and so even though I’ll have to stash away even more of my books to make room for the new ones I’m thrilled.

(Psst! I finally found Thomas Keneally’s Schindler’s List! Yay.)