Photo Diary : LDN

Visiting Kim and Brother-In-Law (weird saying that) this weekend. Still obsessed with Hipstamatic.

Mr & Mrs Manser

On a sunny and slightly breezy 30th May 2010, Kimberly Christa Rebecca Atkins married Sam Manser, forming what can only be described as Samberly, a visualisation & fancy dress expert with emo tendencies and a penchant for girly drinks (that's mostly Sam, to be fair). This of course means that both of my siblings have got engaged and married during Jen and I's protracted but perfect engagement.

Although they've been planning the wedding for well over a year (in typical Kim fashion, she's got through three wedding dresses in this time), the whole thing snuck up on me a little, probably because we live nowhere near any of my family and have had the luxury of avoiding involvement with what was surely lengthly and arduous planning. For this reason, the emotional weight of it all hit me randomly on the day, like a sack full of sweetly scented rocks. First was during my dad's amazing father of the bride speech and secondly was (admittedly after quite alot of drink) watching Kim and Sam dancing and holding back the man-tears. I blame Pixar's Up, before that film I hadn't openly cried since watching My Girl when I was 10.

I can only apologise that this well-intentioned post is sandwiched between reviews of 'Cannibal Man' and, in due course, 'Snuff'. As some kind of weak mitigation I came up with the following analogy: Life is generally a lot of rubbish with some wonderful moments in between. Kim and Sam's wedding was, and this is not hyperbole, perfect. Apart from everyone's inability to pronounce my sister's full name, the day couldn't of been better. Kim and Sam deserve it. It's clear how wonderful they are as both people and as a couple by the warmth of the family and friends that surround them.

One day like this a year will set me right.

2009, Week 8

To misquote the seminal work of the early 21st century's portentous rock poets Sum 41, this week is 'all filler, no killer', in that bugger all happened. This was, I like to think, by choice. As we have big plans for the next few weekends Jen and I decided to laze around the house, watch films, drink wine 1 and eat Jamie Oliver's Tiramisu2.

My new keyboard turned up this week. Stupidly, I didn't consider that it would be the same width as, if not wider than an actual piano. Because of this I've struggled to find it a permanent home. It's great though, and I wish i'd of got one when I started self-teaching last year. It's got USB MIDI, which let me hook it up to Garageband in minutes and take advantage of the great instrument sets such as 'Nature Sounds', 'Comedy Noises' and the must have 'Applause and Laughter'. I am the master of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I own that bitch.

As preparation for our trip to London Village in a few weeks I got a copy of the 'Rough Guide to London'. It's amazing how little you really see in a city without a guide book. I've spent many days aimlessly walking around central London yet upon looking at the guide book I realise that I've missed so many interesting things. For example, did you know that there is a lamp post near The Strand that is powered using methane collected from the sewage system? I thought not my friend, and you thought the Houses of Parliment are impressive? You fool!

Every so often I re-discover an album that I've bought and never really got into the first time round. Oddly enough, these albums tend to go on to become the ones I really love. I think this is because music that is initially difficult to get into or challenges the listener's conceptions ultimately has a greater pay off when you finally 'get it'. In the last few years this has happened with Midlake's 'Van Occupanther' (which I now adore) and Animal Collective's 'Strawberry Jam'. The last few weeks I've really got into the second Hot Chip album 'Made in the Dark', which I've had since release. I was initially disappointed with it, I think mainly because the lead single 'Ready for the Floor' was a bit too mainstream and that stupidly put me off the album. On reflection though, the album really is a funky bitch.

I've come up with a new nick name for Jen and it's a personal fave. I'm pretty sure in every relationship there are weird nicknames used to refer to either partners, which make absolutely no sense to anyone else. What is odd with Jen and I is that the names seem to change every month. For example, here's all the ones we could think of from the last few years: Jen, Jen-Meister, Jenny, Jennifer, Jennifer Jayne, JJ, JBoss, Abraham, JJ Abrahams, Jabraham, Jabraspam, Jables, Balls, Jables Power, Gorper-chov and my new personal favourite, J-Chops.

I'll finish with some wise words imparted from my soon-to-be brother in law.

Wise man say even crouching ginger can't hide because of his carrot topped shame

1 - Man on Wire (great), Strangers (not bad, first half tense but looses its way) and Hunger (brilliant, but really hard work)
2 - Not literally his, I wouldn't mess with the mockney chef. Him and his Toploader pals would beat me to death with drumsticks and then dance on my corpse in the fucking moonlight.

CNPS: 15

2009, Week 6

Good news! Somebody is reading this blog. In fact, possibly two people are reading this blog. I've always insisted that this is a personal exercise but now I have 'followers' I think I need to up my game and do more interesting things to write about. For example, the most exciting thing that happened this week was our bin being nicked by some Sulo stealing son of a bitch.

Sam, my future Brother in Law, has started blogging. You can read his Blog here. I hope he keeps it up. I think the more friends you have blogging increases the chances of having interesting intersections between blogs. For example I can blog about how funny I was when I last saw Kim & Sam and Sam can blog about what an insufferable twat I was when he last saw me. Light and shade, Truth and Lies, Sam and Dave.

I've started getting to the age where I understand the concept of nostalgia and given that most of the quizzes on facebook are nostalgia based (do you remember these 90s films? etc.) I think everyone else my age does too. I do think the internet ruins nostalgia though. It's great looking at the case of an old spectrum game, squinting at the tiny screenshots on the back remembering the hours you wasted trying to clear a screen. The problem is, with the internet you can boot up the game or watch a video in seconds and pretty soon you realise that Jet Set Willy really was just fucking annoying and that He-Man was a badly animated stinking pile of incoherent shit. Anyway, enough ranting. This week I stumbled across something that I never thought I'd see again, Chocolate Cigarettes. I was shocked; How is this possible in the politically correct 21st century? Should a post office of all places be selling such things? And 8 for 39p a packet! No doubt most of the 39p is going to Brown's pocket under the guise of funding treatment of chocolate based diseases on the NHS. Luckily, it was my brand (Coronation), so I bought a pack and had me some chocolate inhalation. Here's me doing my best Deniro


It was valentines this weekend. Jen got me a cool Robot t-shirt (see pic) and hotel chocolaté goodies. I've been overdosing on chocolate this week. Round Scott and John's we had some absolutely amazing chocolate from Mary, a Belgium based chocolatier. I never really believed the phrase 'orgasm in your mouth' before (well, wrt. food) and I think these chocolates are the closest I'll ever come to that. They are £79 per box if ordering online though, which is what I think you'd expect to pay for non-coitus chocolatey climax.


Jen and I were watching the funny 'Free Agents', in which they were talking about magpie based superstitions. There seems to be quite a few of these. In Free Agents it was that you had to hop on one leg whenever you see a magpie. Apparently on Jen's first day at work at her previous Job somebody walked into the room and saluted her, blew her a kiss, and then walked back out again. This threw Jen a bit, obviously, but it turned out that she wasnt saluting and blowing a kiss to Jen, but a magpie outside.

I watched 'Night of the Hunter' this week, another suggestion from the good but brief 'Rough Guide to Horror Movies'. Although I think the film went of the rails at the end with its Saccharin Hollywood ending, the cinematography was outstanding and genuinely creepy. I've been quick to write off older (i.e. pre 1970s) films as over acted, but I think that they were more about escapism then the hyper-real movies we are used to now. Night of the hunter was surreal, almost fairy tale like and some of the shots were enfused with the threat of the titular hunter. Check out some screen grabs i've found on the nets...





CNPS: 15