Archive for the ‘Friends’ Category

Michelle dropped by last week in between her many travels.

We went to Blackhouse, the steak house in the city centre now located where Est Est Est used to be which I really, really recommend! I’m not convinced it was better than River Plate but certainly matches it and River Plate was amazing in itself. Cannot recommend it enough.

Afterwards we headed up to The Hedley Verity which is the new Lloyds No. 1 bar (essentially, a Wetherspoon’s with disco lights). That is located where Baja Beach Club used to be. I can’t say I spent much time in Baja because I didn’t start really going out and getting drunk until I was 18 and was therefore already three years too old to be hanging out in Baja.

What struck me though was how easily we all quickly slipped back into old times, arguing over socialist vs conversative politics and getting drunk. Good times.

Kate organised a gay night out last week (we’re not entirely sure whether this is her way of slyly trying to tell Steven something or not) and we ended up in The Viaduct on Lower Briggate.

As soon as we walked in there a guy with a good ten years on Steven asked him to get his penis out so he could have a play with it. Scary times. What is more interesting is the fact that it is almost acceptable – as Rich pointed out, you would never get away with that in a heterosexual environment if that is the right description to give, but it’s for some reason just acceptable in a gay bar?

This was soon followed by drag cabaret. This really annoyed me because of the obvious technical inaccuracies. For example her singing was coming out of the PA system but she clearly had no microphone, if you can’t even bother to pretend to be miming then it’s just a poor effort in my book.

And why where their sex catalogues, everywhere?

And somehow people still wonder why I preach the virtues of a relaxed night chatting in Wetherspoon’s.

I just wanted to make that clear for the record because I don’t really feel enough has been said about it.

Last week myself, Oli, George and Lil headed out for a night out which ended when Lil got really drunk, decided to attack a group of guys and earned Oli a rather beat up eye for his trouble when he tried to calm things down.

Still, spoils of war and all that, at least I got myself a nice new hat.

No, I’m not talking about the classic song by Poe which was featured on the Book of Shadows soundtrack.

Last night I headed over to York for a good old fashioned ghost tour. York Brights coordinator Ewan is one of the tour guides to invited us over and it sounded like a good laugh so I thought I would attend.

I had been forewarned to keep an eye out for sly skeptical comments in the talk and that there certainly was :D. Lines like “one of York’s genuine mediums – if that isn’t a contradiction in terms” and “she swore them all to secrecy about the elaborate array of hidden wires and sound effects she used that night” provided a good night of amusement and entertainment.

Afterwards we headed to Caesar’s Restaurant for a very nice meal indeed – although we didn’t get any free garlic bread as Ewan had assured us we were almost certain to receive. The food was never the less excellent though.

On Saturday I indulged my final act of hedonism before ending the Christmas amnesty on Campaign for a Debt Free Chris by heading to Browns for a meal with Kieran, Si and Sarann.

The food was good, myself and Si both opting for the Browns Bacon Cheese Burger which rose to the class the of the restaurant very well. The company was equally good too as we whiled away the hours reminiscing about back in day. Good times.

The decade is over and a new one has begun. So once you’re done clearing up from the wreckage of NYE parties and making arbitrary promises about how you are going to change your life, it might be nice to take a quiet moment to reflect on the fun and games we’ve enjoyed during the past year.

As usual the year began with January which was the month I got into Twitter just before it become cool. I also attended York Brights for the first time and launched Leeds Skeptics in the Pub. Meanwhile on the atheist front the bus campaign was in storming through and we officially won the Christmas vote.

The temperature dropped in February but there was plenty of emotional warmth as Perspective launched. We celebrated Darwin’s 200th birthday and Galileo Day with a traditional feast. Meanwhile down in London the AHS held it’s press launch.

It was a quiet month in March though with plenty of drinking of course including a RDF meetup. As part of my AHS work we began planning a society in Huddersfield and saw Durham through their first Reason Week. I also spoke for Humanism at the interfaith panel and launched the Humanist Action Group.

Most of our time in April was taken up by Rationalist Week 2009 whether it be planning, writing talks, gathering equipment or the week itself – and of course, being interviewed by the local press. This was shortly followed by the LAS AGM at which we elected Sophie as president.

Lighter nights resulted in be finally spending some quality time at the park in May as well as having a 4am post-close BBQ. It wasn’t all fun and games though as I set a new personal record with a 44 hour shift.

Summer was finally drawing near by June as Atheist Society celebrated with our End of Year Ball. The AHS held it’s AGM in Warwick and I worked my last day at Open Door Design. Meanwhile in the real world the BNP won two seats in Europe and Michael Jackson died.

Stress levels were running high in July as I battled with letting agents and finally made it in to my new apartment, not to mention swine flu running rampant. I celebrated 5 years of blogging and re-launched this website in preparation for the CWF website integration. Meanwhile Leeds Atheist Society went camping and HAG expanded our activities.

I kicked off the fun in August with a visit down to Swindon to visit Kieran and followed it up with a good warming of my house. We also said goodbye to Michelle and Rich went back in the closet meanwhile I got myself an iPhone and the Chris Worfolk Foundation was incorporated.

The arrivial of September saw the start of a new academic year but also resulted in us having to say goodbye to Felix. Elsewhere Si took another step towards becoming an alcoholic and Derren Brown correctly predicted the lottery numbers.

Change was afoot in the month of October as LAS got into it’s full swing for the 2009/2010 academic year. I celebrated by birthday, myself and Daryl planned the re-launch of Leeds Skeptics in the Pub and the Chris Worfolk Foundation held it’s first official trustee meeting.

Leeds was feeling the aftermath of the EDL protest in November as I filmed a debate for Ummah Channel and in a suprising twist attended a live sporting event in the way of the Four Nations Final. Leeds Skeptics rebooted at it’s new venue while the Chris Worfolk Foundation launched it’s new website, the Perspective leader’s guide and announced humanist communities.

Finally in December we won a huge victory in the form of Killing in the Name beating X-Factor to Christmas number one. I left The D after three years and tried to carry on my life under very testing conditions. Finally the year ended with a good old fashioned Circle party for New Year’s Eve amidst a very drunken weekend for myself and Kieran.

That concludes fun times ’09. Things will be no doubt be just as exciting in 2010 – officially the year of the Chris Worfolk Foundation, which I will be writing about later. And as if that wasn’t enough we even have a new Doctor Who as well! It’s all going on in the next twelve months.

In the true spirit of the holiday period there has been a fair bit of drinking within the past week.

Tuesday was Lil’s birthday and as such we went for our traditional Lil’s birthday celebration steak. She wasn’t there or anything because she was busy having a meal at some other restaurant but it was still excellent steak.

Wednesday afternoon Mike went on some kind of mission to get everyone to the pub for a few pints as it was the final time we would be in before New Year. I still had things to do however so I ended up going out for a drink and then back to work!

Finally Kieran arrived in the evening and we headed out for drinks on Call Lane with Rich and Tim. Fun times.

Yesterday Gijsbert returned to Leeds Atheist Society to deliver a One Life session on human needs.

I went down to the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire on Thursday to listen to Norm’s talk on student atheism. It was a good talk although oddly punctuated by an altogether not all their Christian who had randomly turned up and occasionally started talking about Jesus. Crazy times.

Tuesday saw Michael deliver his talk on Limits of Atheism. Suprisingly it was actually a fairly interesting talk, I’m not sure I learnt anything about what the limits of atheism are (presumably we can assume from that, that there are in fact none) and the philosophers in the room were looking very dubious, but it kept us reasonably entertained for an hour or so, so well done Money Bags!