Hello folks,
It’s been rather a long time since I sent out a group email so here’s one now to reassure you that I’m not dead as of yet. It’s been an interesting year in all with both dizzying heights and bottomless lows, well not quite but please allow me to exercise my sense of drama.
What have you been up to Kyle? I hear you say. Welllll, as I can’t rightly remember when I sent the last email, I shall begin just after my summer trip back home last year. It was a messy, expensive and thoroughly enjoyable excursion and on my return I must admit to being somewhat sad to return to the land of the not-so-familiar.
The most notable event of the year in my mind would be the removal of a fist-sized lump of flesh from just above my arse crack at the end of March. Like my brother, I had been afflicted with something called a pilonidal cyst, basically a nasty abscess about the size of a tennis ball caused by an ingrown hair. Women who have had this condition have said that when it ruptures, the pain is worst than childbirth, and even with myself being of the male gender, hence it being totally impossible for me to ever qualitatively compare these events, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that it’s worse. Childbirth? I’d piss it J You’re just a bunch of whingers ladies! :P
So, I decided to get the unsightly growth sorted out. I went to get a referral from a doctor and six days later was staring at a pillow with my arse in the air, (a position I haven’t much experience with before you wags get any funny comment ideas), on an operating table. One general anaesthetic and three hours later, I awoke feeling exceedingly hazy and drugged up. I spent the rest of the afternoon pumped full of morphine drifting in and out of sleep, it was rather pleasant until it came time to go home and I saw the bed/butcher’s slab that I’d been lying in all afternoon. Horrific.
They gave me a rather fetching pair of cotton mesh underwear and a pillow sized dressing to go home in under my jeans. I looked like J-Lo. Over the next eight weeks, I would have to go daily to a surgery to get my dressings changed. That evening whilst trying to relax on plastic sheeting on the sofa, I noticed I was bleeding through my three inches of dressing. This prompted Michelle to send me into the shower whilst she’d try to change the dressings. It was then that I saw the extent of the butchery. Christ… It looked like someone had taken a huge ice cream scoop to my lower back. I sent Michelle off to buy super absorbent sanitary towels, tenor lady plastic pants, anything, I didn’t care, the blood running down my legs was freaking me out.
On her return she lined up three maxi pads and sellotaped them together and stuck that down the back of my pants. That seemed to stem the tide and slightly less panicked, I managed to get some sleep.
The day after my operation I hobbled down to the surgery for the dressing change. In preparation for this I had to take some rather strong prescription drugs to dull the pain. It didn’t dull it enough. The nurse on duty wasn’t the most experienced and pulled the packing out like a ham-fisted navvie, ripping two stitches while she did it. This resulted in me using the whole spectrum of colourful language and leaving teeth marks in my lower lip. She now proceeded to stuff me like a Christmas gobbler. The blood went straight through the packing. She removed the packing and did it again. Same again. A third time, same again. At this stage they told me to go casualty. I called Michelle and she left work to take me there.
Waiting in triage for twenty minutes, I finally got seen and immediately whisked off to a small operating theatre. There I waited with Michelle for almost three hours face down on a device that looked like a modified dentists chair whilst every so often a nurse would come to scrub down my flanks and undercarriage. Oh dignity, where art thou? Finally, the surgeon came, with two young attractive female medical students naturally. So, with me lying prostrate, humiliated, with my business end being inspected by three people, all the while with nurses coming and going. It turned out that the nurse who changed my packing had ruptured a small artery and required three more stitches. So three excruciating injections directly into the cavity then stitches later, I was free to go home.
Two days later, this happened again, however, nowhere as bad as the time before, only necessitating a cauterisation, basically a pen shaped object with a hot filament at the end. Fuck me that hurt…
Fortunately now I’m all healed up, I have a new respect for the ability of the human body to repair itself and the proud new owner of an elongated ‘crac des fesses’.
Hmm, what other major things have happened? Oh yeah…
Just before my UK trip last year, I saw the necessity of a car whilst living in this massive sparsely populated province. Québec is six times larger than France and the public transport outside of metropolitan centres is comparable to deepest darkest Powys. i.e. A turgid bag of shite. My girlfriend and I settled on a new Toyota Yaris, exceedingly sensible and practical, almost depressingly so. There was a tiny part of me that wanted to adopt the North American way of thinking and buy an oil fired power station on wheels but with petrol prices now exceeding 50 pence a litre! (Smug aint I?), I’d have felt like a bit of a polluting penniless twat.
So, with my new conveyance, did I explore the great wilderness? Chase caribou? Hunt beaver? Fnarr… Did I bollocks.
The first few months were spent getting used to driving on the wrong side of the road whilst operating the gear stick with the wrong hand. I refused to get an automatic like 99% of the rest of the continent as I wanted something more than a half ton bumper car. I didn’t have to take any tests either, not even an eye test, before I got my shiny new Québécois driving license. I think this driving license exchange relies on the principle of the immigrant being a practiced competent driver in their origin country, big mistake. Now most of you know that I was somewhat of a sponging git when it came to motoring back home, so since I passed my driving test back in 1997 I had barely driven at all, maybe a few times to Brecon and back before University. So, essentially, I shat myself every time I got behind the wheel and made numerous comical errors which fortunately never resulted in any deaths. Just lots of arm shaking, French profanity and spittle.
After this learning period I started to visit Montréal more often, the first time to see DJ Shadow at the Metropolis, fucking brilliant gig. Montréal is only 2.5 hours down a practically straight road which in Canadian terms is just round the corner. This is a seriously cool city, kinda hard to describe really, like someone threw Paris and New York in a blender and poured the cultural mess onto an island in the St Lawrence River. Everytime I came to the Montréal I left with a feeling that I really needed to move here. So I did, six days ago to be precise. We hired a sixteen foot truck and bombed down the Trans-Canada highway with our worldly goods. Unfortunately the day we decided to move was 30C and ultra humid. Carrying North American size appliances up and down stairs in these conditions was far from pleasant, my blood being far too thick for the Montréal summer. I was past pouring sweat, more like a torrent. I looked like I was going to have a stroke. However, we persevered and after a day of toiling, finished the move. I was quite fortunate being able to just transfer my job from Québec to Montréal, no questions asked as the company I work for has offices in both cities. I haven’t had much of a chance to really explore this place as of yet but I’m pleased to say that my accent is even more loved here than in Québec city. It’s amazing what you can get away with when people hear your British accent. I still correct them when they ask where in England I’m from, but it does get tedious explaining where Wales is over and over. I keep a small map in my wallet now to facilitate this.
I’m still DJ’ing and spending silly amounts on vinyl, too stubborn to accept the digital revolution. I had a semi regular residency back in Québec but the market for quality music was somewhat limited there, I should be getting gigs regularly soon here in Montréal, need to get those mix cd’s out around the bars and clubs.
Other things, I’ve got a spare room here if any of you would like to come and visit. I guarantee you’ll enjoy it and accommodation will be free. I emigrated two years ago now and I’m still waiting and hoping for my first visitor. Ya cheap bastards!
Right, I’ve waffled for long enough, I’ll be back in the UK for September, I’m in Europe for three weeks and intend to visit Paris and Prague also. Let me know if any of you are interested in coming. I should be back for Christmas as well, it’s been three years since I went to the Maesllwch on Christmas eve. Gotta be done.
As they say in Llandow, Ciao for now.
Kyle
Back in the UK in four weeks!
I am updating the site as we speak. I've changed the login system for far greater functionality. The photos page has been changed and updated tomorrow. Address book this week.
Happy Birthday Dad.
Dydd Dewi Sant Hapus & Happy Birthday to my Mum
Happy 2006 to all, lets hope it's a better year globally than the last one, maybe even getting King chimp impeached.
Although to be perfectly honest, 2005 was a pretty good year for me...
I emigrated to another country, made shitloads of new friends, made significant progress in a foreign language and finally moved in permanently with my girlfriend, although this was counterbalanced by edging over the halfway stage to 50. Bah
New Years Eve was pretty cool, I went to a gig called Itinérance (Homeless) which is a monthly night in Québec City with no fixed abode, I knew a fair proportion of the regulars so there were plenty of people there I knew. Not overly messy, although some people I knew were in a shockingly mongoloid state, when I finally get aound to updating my site i'll post a few gargoyle pics ;). Got home around 4ish with a few friends, went to bed around 7.
And so as we sit on the eve of a new year, lets hope the next one's generally better...
Hurrah! It's pelting down with snow outside, the first fall of this season.
Probably going to be well pissed off with it in a couple of months :)
It's been another mighty weekend.
After the runaway success of the Superpitcher electro/prog night last weekend at Theatre Impériale, a proper civilised rinse out. An equally amusing time was had this weekend. It was the Halloween fancy dress party above the Metro on Rue St. Joseph. I should be able to dig up some painfully ugly photos from somewhere. Stay tuned, they'll be worth it.
I watched Crash tonight, not the arsey Kronerberg fetish wank but a new release à la Magnoia of which I had heard nothing about. I found it one of the most enjoyable films i've seen this year.
Watch it!
The cat managed to lock himself in our room today and left us a puddle shaped gift on the duvet. A lovely gift to welcome me home, especially after a hair raising day wondering whether I was the one of many who were given their P45's this morning.
R.I.P. Ronnie Barker
I'm pissed off. I've suffered from insomnia for the majority of my life but it's been an absolute bastard lately. It's so frustrating, being so tired you can't even think, yet still lying in bed most nights between 2 & 3 hours before finally getting to sleep. Half the time I can't concentrate and my memory is shot to shit.
Gonna have to join the Benzodiazopine nation if this doesn't resolve itself soon...
Sorry for the lack of update recently, i've been incredibly busy generally moving house, decorating, getting to grips with new job, taking language classes etc... and to compound all of this, my harddisk is on the Fritz. So if i've been lax in my email reponses, I apologise. New pics up this week I promise!
Well i've finally got round to writing some sort of update mail. The last few weeks has been somewhat action packed and i've been dragged left right & centre so apologies for the delay.
Anyway, it begins with a rather messy weekend leading up to my flight out of Blighty. After a mighty rinseout at a Jazzanova gig in Bristol, I went down to London on the Saturday on a hideously sweaty Megabus. After dragging most of my worldly possessions across London and scaring Jacob's new slighty odd flatmate with my unannounced and deshevelled appearance, I wandered over to Camden to meet some old faces at a house party. We then all went off to the Camden Underworld and got falling over drunk. Fortunately, Ferg chronicled this mighty night and the evidence can be found at the Photos page.
The following morning was highly painful. I woke up late, very late, for my flight which was at 12.30pm. After belting it to Victoria and jumping on the Gatwick Express I had bearly an forty minutes to check in, run all the way across Gatwick and get on the flight. Fortunately my twattish subconcious had confused my check in time for the flight time leaving me at the airport at a very sensible time indeed. My brain was trying less desperately to exit through my right eye socket at this stage leaving me the impetus to get some Duty Free.
Seven hours, an extra strength Nytol and several JD and cokes later, I was in Montréal. Landing as an immigrant was surprisingly friendly and very efficient, taking only 30 mins in the end. I almost felt cheated when the cavity search never materialised. Guess i'd have to land about 400 miles south for that...
After meeting Michelle in the departure lounge we boarded the final leg of the journey and pulled into Québec bus station about three hours later.
Only two days after landing I had my first appointment at my new place of work. Very very nervewracking due to it not only being a 'welcoming' interview, oxymoron?, but also conducted wholly in French. Gahhhh... That was successful and I managed not to offend anyone with my pidgin mutterings, due to me finally starting work today. I don't think i've ever felt so foreign as I did today and after reading a phone directory worth of forms, pensions, insurance and introduction leaflets, all in French, my brain was on the verge of collapse. I managed to make it to 5 o' clock and am steeling myself for a slightly more diluted experience tomorrow.
Other events of note... I bought a fridge and oven on the weekend. I'm moving into a new place at the start of July and decided to treat myself to North American half ton bundles of phat excess in Stainless steel. It's gonna take me three years on the never-never to pay the bastards off though. I reckon it's worth it.
Ha ha haha ha ha. Thank God for natural selection... ;)
New photo system has been installed so updates will now be a lot more frequent. There's a shed load of new pics for 2005 so go and take a look.
Also, my 25th birthday and leaving party is soon, heres the flyer
I'm finally updating the site, i've been without internet access for ages and snowed under with my new job etc...
Lots of new content after this weekend...
Big party coming up, flyers will be emailed soon...
Frightening
Well i've sorted out the cross browser problems now, it's still slightly off in ie so I recommend installing firefox, it's much better anyway,
New features: you can now add your own links when logged in via the links page, and any files uploaded to the pub directory via ftp or the files page will be immediately available for download through the files page.
Higher member functions such as the directory etc.. should be available next week.
Apart from that not a great deal has happened lately, still looking for work, Cardiff seems to be totally barren, i'll probably have to move to Bristol.
