It was only last week that I emailed hasbro, the board games company, whilst at work. I was curious to know if the reasoning behind the rule where you role 3 doubles in a row in monopoly and go to jail is because this represents speeding down the streets of London. I did get a courtesy email in reply saying that my email had been forwarded on to the necessary people but since that, nothing which is a shame.

Before that, just after the world cup I emailed the sea life centre in Germany where paul the octopus was being kept. I asked them if I could challenge the psychic cephalopod to a game of heads and tails. All I asked is that I flick a coin 7 times and if the octopus got it correct I would happily admit it was psychic. Unfortunately on that occasion I didn't even get a reply.

So today I got a chance to email a member of my HR team for a genuine reason. The company had put out its quarterly news letter and right at the back there was a competition to guess the weight of a fish caught by a member of the HR team on her recent holiday.

Oh how I excited I was, this would be the most fun I had all day. So as soon as I got back to my computer I searched the internet for a rough estimate at the weight of the fish and then I sent me an email. It read as follows:

"To: 'Pam.Chapman@serco.com'

Subject: Marion has been up to something fishy

I would like to guess the weight of the carp. Using my limited knowledge of the fishing trade I will guess that the fish weighs 26.7lbs.

Thanks for what I think has been a great competition.

 Anthony Draper

Super Duper Cleansing Trooper"

Notice my 'hilarious' sign off, again I point out I get bored at work. This though wasn't enough for me and after a long discussion about fish with a colleague of mine we decided that we should include more fish puns in his email. The subject line read "I CARP believe Marion caught such a big fish" again how we laughed but still this wasn't enough for me and so eventually I decided to send the HR department another email to thank them for the great competition:

"To: 'Pam.Chapman@serco.com'

Subject: Fish Competition

The sole porpoise of this email is to thank you for the opportunaty to win the twenty five squid voucher. I have had a whale of a time and I am now breaming with confidence

Bassically that is it, although I am a bit Pirahnoid that you might think my time has been eel spent taking part in this competition.

Best Fishes

Anthony Draper

Super Duper Cleansing Trooper"

I count no less than 10 fishy puns within that email and tomorrow I will see if the HR department within serco enjoy bad humour as much as my colleague and I. If not then well.. who knows.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

It turns out HR do have a sense of humour, who would have thought. They are now my favourite people in the company

To: Draper Anthony

Cc: Marion Eynon

Subject: RE: Fish Competition

We must congratulate you on what a dab hand you are at writing such a brill amount of flounder regarding fish.  We just haddock to reply.

You caused a great deal of snorkelling this morning which was like a ray of sunshine but not very tunaful.

Once we winkle out a few of the sprats we will weever our way through the shoals of entries to find the supreme snapper.

Plaice accept our apologies for not roaching your standards but your barbel was well received!

Pam-eel-a  and  Marlin-ion

from the Hook office

In a perfect world this blog should have been two seperate entities, the first a positive outlook at Hares a band made up of an ex-Holloway and some Musical Differences and the night that ensued. The second would have been a more negative tail of the fall from grace of my 2nd all time favourite band, the Holloways. But considering my scarce blogging in recent times I think having one to cover the both is more than you as readers deserve.

So onto my first adventure into Camden on Tuesday of this week. I had taken two half days on Tuesday and Thursday in preperation for my Camden Nights and this would mean being pushed for time. At first I thought that I would be going with my sister, in the end it became me, Ross and Leabder without Caroline but that is neither here nor there. I ended up in Camden at around 9pm already fueled up on a mixture of Cheap Cider and decantered lager and the 3 of us made our way to the Flowerpot.

By the time we got there it turned out we had already missed the first act and were already half way through the second, a band called Patch William who for some reason I had heard of previous. I wasn't too bothered by this though as it wasn't for the warm ups that I had come to this free gig, no it was for the main act of the evening, a band by the name of Hares. We milled around in the bar for a while being served drinks by the one and only Dave Danger, another ex-Holloway who it turned out was now working there. Hares took to the stage at aproximately ten pm and started strumming away into ther night. They play a fairly relaxed folk inspired indie music which although a lot more mellow does not venture too far away from The Holloway based routes. From the single release Pink Radio to the older tracks such as Found the Sound they treated the crowd to a good set which eroused a good atmosphere in the room. It turned out that this was to be the last gig of Bassist Slinky Winfield's last performance with the band. On research it seems Slinky has been around a bit playing bass for the likes of Laura Marling, the More Assured and of course the Musical Differences as well as a number of TV presenting and acting roles. Why have I done this research? You might ask. Well you have heard the expression Life and Soul of a party, whereas Rob Skipper (the initial ex_holloway that I talked of) is the soul, Slinky most definitely is the life. He was a non stop bundle of energy running up and down the stage and provided the vocals for found the sound. I fear for Hares, if they don't find another bassist to replace this energy they may struggle to produce anything with any real commercial appeal.

Anyway the band finished at around 11 or so if not a tad earlier and Leander left soon after but me and Ross being the party animals we are stayed later and danced to the selection of music dealt to us by the DJ, from Good Shoes to Michael Jackson it provided a backdrop to a beautiful night of dancing and drinking. The offer of a vodka monster for just £2.50 (it doesn't get much better than that in trendy London as you will see later) was heavily taken advantage of as we boogied away. With the liquid confidence running through my veins I initiated conversation with not one but both of the ex-Holloways that graced the room with their presence. I first got a photo with Dave at the bar, then went on to chat to Skipper on stage about how I knew of Hares and how I would be going to see the Holloways later in the week. He said that he too would come to watch them which made me think 'hoorah they are all still chums and who knows they might all get back together'. This may have largely been the drink thinking. I then went on to talk to Dave again, asking him if he would be coming on Thursday, he wasn't he was working. He then unprovoked went on to say how dissapointed he was that Alfie and Bryn (other Holloways) didn't come to this gig, especially considering that the now homeless Alfie was staying at the pub rent free. My feelings dropped, maybe there wasn't as much love as I had hoped. I still left in a jubilant mood.

Got home remembering very little of the tube journey, fried some eggs with Ross and watched the highlights of Arsenal's 4-1 thrashing of the Tottenham scum. Nice end to what had been a near perfect evening.

Onto Thursday and the second act in my Camden Nights adventure. I was to be seeing the Holloways, ahh the Holloways what a band. This was to be my 13th viewing of the band, the 12th having ended in rather unsavoury fashion with my arrest after being wrongly accused of kicking a girl in the head. Anyway I had high hopes for my first Holloways gig of 2010.

So me, Caroline and Ross got on the tube at 7:30 and headed to Camden Town station. I was dressed as a complete knob as is acceptable in Camden which came back to haunt me as my lack of coat did not help when faced with a down pour at the other end nor was my beautifully styled hair very rain proof. Anyway we marched up to the stables like there was no tomorrow and eventually after a slight detour via a cash machine and a slight misjudgement in direction on my behalf we got into a very empty proud galleries. Considering this was a good hour and a half after door opening I didn't think my timing was that bad but apparently the fashionably late is the way it is done in these parts.

What else is there to do in an empty club apart from go straight to the bar? so that is what we did, I bought myself a bottled beer.. £3.60.. for a bottle it was a disgrace. Caroline bought a single vodka with cranberry, £4. From that point I knew it would be an evening without too much alcohol. We went and sat down with our hideously priced drinks and before too long the first band appeared on stage. They were called Milk and immediately announced that they were just filling in as a band had pulled out. This didn't surprise me as they weren't particularly talented with the high point of their lyrical talents being 'I like music, you like music, lets have a party' but nevertheless I did not complain as the band did comprise of a man and two semi naked women. They though were soon over and we took our seats again, despite my better judgement I headed back to the bar for another bottle and after 45 minutes or so the next band came on, Sissy & the Blisters. They were a fairly generic indie rock band complete with oddly shaped guitar and a lead singer off his face on drugs. None of their songs stuck in my head and there were no scantily clad women on stage so their set largely passed me by without too much attention.

We all knew what was coming next, The Holloways. So we stayed standing after Sissy and danced to the selection of 80s music laid on by Bryn (holloways bassist) who was behind the DJ decks. Before too long the Holloways took to the stage as a 5 piece, of course Alfie and Bryn, the drummer Ed had been part of the band since the original split, a keyboardist who had played the last gig I saw and finally a new afro haired guitarist. I thought great, everyone likes an afro, this can only be an improvement but then they opened on a new song and unfortunately it just wasn't very good.. This is the first time I have EVER listened to a new Holloways song and had that reaction. I was already beginning to fear the worst. To be fair to them they did bring it back with a few old favourites such as PSB, happiness and penniless and of course Generator which I danced to like a mad man as usual but I was the only one dancing. It had become clear that the little fame that the Holloways once had was now well and truly over, their performance was met by people just politely bobbing their heads, none of the old passion. Towards the end of the set they played 2 more of their new songs which were a lot more hollowayesque than the first and in fairness were very enjoyable but in a disorganised shambles with a broken guitar they had to cut 'Alcohol' off the setlist due to lack of time, this upset me even more as it was my favourite song off their second album. They eneded as they always do on Fuck Ups which they played well but again brought no reaction from the crowd and thus when they left the stage a dejected feeling came over me and I knew that that had been the worst Holloways show I had ever been to. Yes, I am saying that I enjoyed the one where I got arrested more, at least I have a great story and a signed video as memories from that. A DJ called Wizzard Sleeve came on stage almost immediately after but I wasn't interested and so we just left. I sulked all the way home which included us missing the last tube by a matter of seconds and so having to get a couple of night buses.

The Holloways are and will always remain amongst my favourite bands and I know when I next see that they will be playing in London I will go and see them but I feel the end is nigh. They are just not the band they once were and unless they write a song on their third album (assuming it gets that far) that rivals the likes of Generator and Two Left Feet I think it will be their last. And on that depressing note.

END

Again it is not surprising that I haven't kept up with the blogging and so have missed several exciting events such as the general election, my performance in the local election, the Durham ball, middlesbrough music live, Durham graduation, The Hop Farm festival and I am sure many other things in between. Not to mention the world cup being on. I digress.

It was the hottest day of the year so far, a reported 32 degrees in some parts on the capital and so going to a house full of people and eating hot food didn't seem a great idea and if we (me and Rossen) had listened to the signs we probably should never have gone as on what should be a fairly standard 45 minute journey had many hitches. 1stly the Northern line was down, then my oyster card didn't work, then my debit card wouldn't work then we overshot on the train, then the hammersmith and city line was down and you get the picture. But eventually we got to Nicole's. We put our stuff down and headed straight for the beer as you do. We mainly conversed with each other with odd nearly conversation with randomers and some longer conversations with Hayley. I should point out something whilst I am here, I have only had 4 hours sleep and more than likely am still drunk so this blog is very sketchy and non-flowing but I thought I had to write it now or I would forget. So yeah me and Rossen drank 10 beers between us and half a bottle of whiskey each and partied the night away and we left at about 3ish. The aim was to get the night bus but that never happened and we walked into central as we could see the gherkin and used that as a guiding star. Got to the bottom of that, walked to monument and found a piano randomly sitting in the middle of the street. Half the keys didn't work but it was nevertheless an amazing find. We then decided on a path of mischief which including pissing in the thames, walking through a tunnel which said don't walk, climbed onto a bridge that said don't cross and other such atrocities. Then we sat on the embankment for a while and then went to waterloo, waited a while and then caught the first train back to Wimbledon. I got home at about 8am and now here I am.

END