Wednesday 2nd March: shopping, going to a "club"

No lectures this day. I decided I had to buy some things. After getting some lunch I walked into the city. On the way I stopped at some kind of arts performance venue which is located on the campus. A few days previous I was listening to the amazing Jan Garbarek album Solstice with guitarist Ralph Towner on it. I decided to see what sort of touring he was up to and then found that he was coming to Nottingham in just a few days time. Amazing timing. He's performing at this arts venue on the campus with a trumpet player. I bought a ticket for 9 pounds. Then I walked the rest of the way to the city.

I found the store Wilkins, which I was told about last Sunday while rambling. It was said that they sell a cheap thermos that probably also works. I found one. 2.5 pounds, hooray! I also got some shampoo and a single fitted bed sheet. Up until now I've been sleeping in this sort of sleeping bag that is just sheet material. It's made for hostel travelling where the sheets might be really gross. It's fairly uncomfortable to sleep in every night. This store is pretty cheap.

Then I walked more into the city to the O2 store. I got a phone. 10 pounds for the phone and then 10 pounds for some credit. No obligation to pay anything extra, or any kind of contract. I thought it would be more expensive than this. The features of the phone are this: you can call people and send messages, and it has a game called jewel quest.

Then I went to the tourist place to get another city map. I asked the guy if he knew where any guitar stores were. I didn't think this would be the kind of information that a tourist helper would need to know, but amazingly he knew the locations of five in the city! I think these were all the guitar stores in the city, so he did pretty well. He marked their exact location on the map for me.

Two upcoming concerts. Awesome.

This pin up board is really useful!

I went to look at three of them. The first one, according to the website, is supposed to give you a guitar "experience". So as well as selling guitars, they also sell the clothes that I'm supposed to wear while playing the guitar. Hmm... The first one didn't really have any cheap guitars. The second store had some cheap ones but all the guitars were cabled onto the wall with alarm systems. At the third store I played a 40 quid/pound acoustic guitar. It was okay. I tried a 90 pound beginner accoustic guitar pack. It was made by ibanez. Slightly better quality. Then I decided to try some electric guitars. There was one by Washburn. 150 pounds and it has a floyd rose style bridge. The neck felt very good. It was a kind of shredding style guitar and I don't own anything like that. I played through a Laney Cub 10 amp. The guy said it was similar to the Laney LH amp, except stripped down, lower wattage, without reverb or anything. It sounded okay, but not quite good enough for 220 pounds they want for it. I wasn't really sure if I wanted to buy anything, so I left.

Got home, had the evening meal.

Marion had invited some people to her house tonight. Paolo and Charlotte were also going. We decided to meet at 8:30 to walk there. I managed to squeeze in clothes washing before that time.

We got to Marion's and it was nice. I met another australian. He is from Sydney and is doing something post-graduate in economics. There was also a girl from France whose mother comes from Brisbane. She felt some kind of ties to Australia. I drank something that was on fire. It was horrible tasting. Had absinthe on the top. Gross. Some of the people at the party had been to Prague the previous weekend so they brought it back with them.

Originally, the idea was that we'd be at Marion's house for a while and then head to a club where they had a 'sensation white' thing where we were supposed to all dress in white clothes. But most people didn't have white clothes and a few people were hoping to save money for their upcoming travelling plans. So Matthias, Frederic, and Charlotte were heading off somewhere to watch a movie. But some others said that I should come out with them. They offered to loan me a white jumper since I had nothing white. I decided I should, since I've not been to a club in England yet.

We caught a taxi to the club. I think that at first I had some fun. There was a guy doing strange things on the stage with fire. But eventually I got really tired of the generic music and loud noise and felt fairly bored. I had to stop back at the people's house before getting home so that I could get my jacket. So I had to wait for them all to be finished. It kept going until 4am. The last hour was really tedious. I don't really enjoy going to clubs usually.

We got a taxi back. I got my jumper and jacket and then walked home.

Walking home at 4:30am. Nice deserted streets.