Birthday Update

I was so tired after Saturday that I couldn't find any will to update this blog at 1am. Yesterday I just forgot...

Saturday was a really great day. I gladly accepted James's offer of a free ticket to a Battle Of The Bands competition in the Róisín Dubh, presented by Jack Osbourne. The bands who played had a lot of guts, I'll give them that. You'd be hard-pressed to get me up on stage with my guitar. For the first fifteen minutes-or-so my eyes were transfixed on the singer of the first band. She was absolutely gorgeous!

The second band came a little unprepared. The lead guy wore a funny hat, which he took off for the second song. That left me with an empty feeling inside.

Next up was who we referred to as the "all-girl band". In actual fact, there name was "Full Moon at Noon", which promised something big. They were awful. But, as I said previous, I bowed my hat to them. They were the only all-girl band in the competition and that's no fun. My biggest chunk of pride goes to the lead girl, who had to play the whole first song by herself, just her petite voice and three power-chords to play with.

Next up was a hardcore punk band. Their tradition is for the crowd to shout out that "they suck", which of course we all did without reluctance. The main-man was the drummer. He had a punk attitude which got him into more trouble than it did get him admirers. Everyone thought he was a bit of a tool. His place in the band, besides being the only "punk" guy there, was debatable. I had meant to inform him that being a "drummer" doesn't just involve hitting the closed hi-hat at 1,000bpm. Still, they were good fun and the only band whose music I could relate to...

Last on the stage was the local favorites, "Trans-fucking-gress". "We are Transgress, we are from Loughrea, and we play rock n' roll music" *insert over-the-top guitar riff here*. They were meh, but James liked them and he has more of a taste for this stuff than I do.

I learned one valuable lesson that day. I don't like mosh-pits. My one little threat to Andrew now seems a little harsh, "I swear Andrew, if you push me into one of those I will punch you straight in the nose". At 4.45pm, I left the Róisín Dubh to go meet Paul off the train, which it turns out was delayed until 5.15, so I had plenty of time to go get a cup of tea, a jelly donut and play some Lux Touch on my iPod. Paul's train eventually arrived in at bang-on 5.15. When I saw him, I walked up to meet him, only to be blocked by that stupid barrier gate at Ceannt Station, but I saw him go out a side exit, so I ran outside to greet him. As far as Paul was concerned, a man with a blue-and-white striped shirt and unjustifiably short hair was running towards him waving and calling his name. When he realized that this was, in fact, Aaron with a horrible hairdo, we lovingly embraced with open expression; "hey", "hey", "squareyes?", "yeah".

We had just missed Jason, ohnoes! Not to worry, Christian gave us Jason's number and I texted him about the birthday soirée. We agreed to meet out in City Limits at 7pm, what an oversight...

Paul and I took the bus back to Newcastle, where my family greeted my buddy with open arms; "Paulhowsitgoingwillyouhaveacupofteayoumustbestarvingafterthetrainjourney
areyousure?". Good old Irish hospitality as Jason would say, and who are we to contest it? Rory refused to answer his phone on three occasions, so when he eventually did call Paul and I just screwed with him for ten minutes. Paul put on a Dublin accent and I played my harmonica into the mouthpiece. Next, Brian called down, so we hopped into my dad's car, collected Rory and drove to City Limits, where we were greeted by the angelic mugs of Eoghan, Andrew, James (who organized their own lift out, thanks again!), Jason and his girlfriend Mairéad. I payed for an hour of bowling spread over two lanes and the fun began!

As there was nine of us, the groups were uneven, so (thanks to Eoghan's advice) I decided to put Jason and Mairéad on the same lane, which made it seem less unbalanced. The groups were: Eoghan, James, Paul and I, & Jason, Mairéad, Brian, Andrew and Rory. I think that's right, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong!

Jason (being your typical American) mauled us all at bowling. But it didn't matter, we all had fun. Paul's philosophy was "If I'm not going to win, then I might as well lose looking as stupid as possible and having the most fun while doing it." I'll savour that forever Paul. You found out the hard way that "backwards bowling" doesn't work as it well as it could.

At some stage during bowling, after all the cards had been given out from my school-friends, Jason and Mairéad surprised me with a gift which meant so much to me. They had baked pumpkin bread and decided to give it to me. Andrew was first to exclaim, "All right, hash cake!", which gave everyone a good laugh. I hadn't expected anyone but my school associates to give me gifts, so the gesture from Jason and Mairéad meant more to me than you could possibly imagine. Thanks again guys, the pumpkin bread is amazing!

After we finished bowling, we spent about thirty minutes walking around City Limits playing a few arcade games. On three occasions I failed in Ghost Squad by killing too many hostages. Oh come on, I only shot three of them! Paul, rather abruptly and with no pre-emptive warning, had to leave. It made me sad, because I thought were would all be going back to squareyes together for some dual zombie bashing in CoD5 and Left4Dead. We did eventually go back to squareyes, due in part to Mairéad offering lifts in her car to three of the guys who had been stranded for reasons I am unwilling to discuss andrew. Brian, Eoghan and I went to get pizza up in Ed's, where I was given a warm "happy birthday" by all the staff. That place really feels like home now. Brian, James and I played Guitar Hero World Tour, while the others played some CoD5 and L4D. No party poppers for me Greg? Poor show...

Thanks to all those who turned up, I hope you had a great night!
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Now playing: R.E.M. - Orange Crush
via FoxyTunes