Christopher Hamilton

This last week has been an extremely busy one. Not only was I fantastically busy at work, the social side of my life was given a much needed boost.

With the Edinburgh International Festival, opportunities to do something different were slowly dwindling. It was one of the reasons I went along with my girlfriend, her brother, and his girlfriend to catch a play in one of the smaller venues around Edinburgh. We had no real idea what the play was about, who any of the actors performing were, and we weren’t entirely sure where the venue was. We found the venue without too many problems, but even with the programme in hand, we still had no idea what to expect from the play. I would like to say it didn’t disappoint, but that would be a lie. It’s not that it was bad, it was just….meh. It’s not something I would go and see again, and those sentiments were echoed by the rest of the group. We met up with a few more friends later that evening and had much more enjoyable time.

The following day was the last day of the Edinburgh Book Festival, and my friend Rob and I had tickets to go and see the William Gibson reading. This did not disappoint. It was a fantastic look into the creation of the novel, and the way in which William Gibson now approaches his work. I learned a few valuable insights, and afterwards had my copy of Spook Country signed. He also signed my Moleskine with a good luck message when he found out my aspirations to write for a living. That was so cool.

From there the week moved on as is it’s want, and I found myself sitting in my friends house on Wednesday evening playing poker. When we play, it’s essentially a single table sit-and-go with an option to rebuy once. The last two games, the host has beaten my heads-up, and I was determined not to let it happen again. After building a big stack, I took a huge beating from another player, and ended up heads-up with the host again, this time with a huge chip disadvantage. Needless to say, he won again, and took great pleasure in telling everyone that he was now unbeaten in three tournaments in a row. I’m going to have to do something about that. A fourth in a row is not allowed.

We spent the evening drinking a lot and having fun, and I think I had about four large glasses of whisky for the road. It left me scrambling the following morning when I realised how late for work I actually was. The day was spent nursing the worst hangover I’ve had for some time, before heading off in the early afternoon to the work summer party.

It was a tremendously fun day, once I’d drank through the hangover, and before there was some major drama involving a couple of my friends. That happened quite late, and it was after the period that I was chugging red wine from the bottle. Classy aren’t I? In my defense, I wasn’t the only carrying on in such a manner, although I was definitely one of the forerunners into drunken stupidity. It was a long day of drinking all round, and people were getting very… hammered seems to sum it up nicely.

After having to get up after those shenanigans and go to work on the Friday, I made a point of having a quiet evening. I sat in my livingroom, and watched an obscene amount of Battlestar Galactica’s Second Season. I got so invested in watching it, the early night I had planned, never materialised. Instead I switched it off in the early hours of the morning and stumbled to bed exhausted.

Saturday was supposed to be a quiet day, with no drinking and doing nothing too strenuous. It began that way, and then I decided to have a beer while I watched the football with my friend Keith. One turned into four, and then we came back to my place, met my girlfriend and drank a lot of wine while we watched the Big Lebowksi. It was a fun night.

Sunday… I’m going on a bit here aren’t I?.. Anyway, Sunday I met my girlfriend and a group of her friends, as we all had tickets for Princes Street Gardens to watch the end of festival fireworks. It was the first time I’d ever been in the Gardens for them, and it was much more enjoyable hearing the orchestra playing as the fireworks went off. It was more of a spectacle as the choreography made much more sense. Last year they looked good, but it lost a lot of it’s impact. After the fireworks we all went to our local rock/metal bar for a few beers. There’s nothing quite like going from classical music performed by an orchestra to the dulcet tones of Lemmy. It was a great, but strange transition.

All of which brings us to today. Hello!

Nothing much happened, except work, where I managed to resolve something that’s been irritating me for months. I was a happy man between that fix, and the next phone call five minutes later. Now that I’ve written this entry, and cleared out most of the mental backlog I had been building, I’m off to stick a few things up on eBay. I have to say, I really am enjoying getting rid of so many things that have been lying around for so long.

One last thing. Just before I went to post this, an India Arie song came on from my iTunes playlist. Her voice is just amazing, it’s so mellow and it just relaxes me so quickly. It always takes me back to the year I spent in Australia when my friend Chrissy first played it for me. That was such a great time in my life. I think I’m going to have to plan a trip back out there at some point.