Chris Worfolk's Blog

I spent last Saturday at Spice Quarter, catching up with Si and Sarann.

A few things became apparent throughout the evening. Firstly, all you can eat buffets attract an interesting crowd. It is just packed with chavettes wearing what they consider to be high class outfits. I’m still not quite sure why.

Secondly, Si needs to move to the city centre. He is clearly wasting away out is Guiseley, and who cam blame him? There is nothing to do, nothing to see. He clearly needs to move to the city centre and live it up before he is too old. Oh when will we see the return of Crazy Party Si?

Despite his 11pm curfew, he certainly managed to exert his bad influence as both myself and Sarann went home rather drunk having worked our way though a number of jugs of cocktails at Ha Ha until we eventually got kicked out at closing time.

After the success of the Enquiry 2010 Conference in Birmingham last year, we’re pleased to announce that Enquiry will be returning for a second year!

Enquiry 2011 will be taking place April 16th-17th and this year will be taking place in the beautiful city in Edinburgh, during the Science Festival. The event is being run in association with Edinburgh Skeptics and speakers already confirmed include Professor Richard Wiseman, Professor Paul Braterman, Jon Ronson and others.

Registration will open shortly, you can find out more details on the Enquiry Conference website.

Blackhouse, along with River Plate, fights for the title of best steak restaurant in Leeds. So when we heard that they were doing 50% off food throughout January, there was only one thing to do – book a table and cash in on the offer by ordering two steaks each!

So on Monday myself, Norm, George and James returned to Blackhouse for some more amazing steak. The food didn’t disappoint, nor did the wine, and given the relatively cheap cost, it was a great night.

Last Sunday I went over to Jason and Sarah’s house for Sunday dinner.

It was nice to take a break from working as despite being out for a heavy night the previous evening, I was up and ready to work at 10am and didn’t finish until gone 2am. Dinner was excellent too, the food was delicious, especially their secret recipe for roast potatoes.

Having seen the house a few months ago when they had just bought it and were beginning renovations, it has really come along. It now looks like a real family house, in the suburbs, just round the corner from a school – it seems to me to be only a matter of time before we hear the pitter patter of tiny footsteps from Little Jason.

With only ten days to go until Galileo Day, we’ve finally launched the new Galileo Day website along with a new downloadable pack for local groups and societies – this includes a whole host of resources including handouts, posters, a talk and more. You can download it from the website.

I’m what you might call a fan of swearing. I don’t swear more than anyone else on average, but I support the concept of swearing – why shouldn’t we be able to use these words in public, they are just words after all. If I use the word fuck in conversation, it isn’t offensive, it’s just language. It only becomes offensive if I am it at some one – calling someone a “fucking idiot” for example, which is hurtful, but no more hurtful then calling someone a “stupid idiot” – the offence is in the personal insult and the malice rather than the word itself. We should be able to swear in public without fear of offending silly people, and to be honest, I imagine we will be able to in 20-30 years time when the current older generation are gone.

Given this view on words then, it is strange that I, as many people do, still choose to place so much value on the L word. You know, love.

But then, it really is a big deal. It’s a bomb shell when you drop it. Perhaps for good reason, to say you are falling madly in love is a big claim to make. Certainly, not a claim to be made likely. I’ve always thought less of those who nievely through out such a claim early in a relationship – you really need to put the time in before you can see you’re in love.

But time makes fools of us all, and recently I’ve found myself in this exact situation.

I confess. I did it. I used the L word.

As many of you know, I’ve recently begun what I consider to be a new chapter in my life. It’s amazing; it’s everything I hoped for. It’s magical and it feels like such a rush, I never want this feeling to go away.

The reason I said it, it plain and simple. I genuinely am in love. I kind of always dreamed I would feel this way but to actually experience it, first hand is an amazing feeling. I feel like I have been waiting so long for this, indeed I’m sure I have been waiting years for this moment and it does not disappoint.

Everything about this is perfect. The speed and elegance, the front facing camera, the Retina display. I love you, iPhone 4.

The other day I was catching up with one of my friends who was in Leeds for the weekend. I fancied a drink so I went into the McDonald’s on Briggate and ordered a medium coke.

We went just outside the restaurant and continued chatting, while I was drinking my coke, though after about half the cup, I had had enough, so I gave the rest to my friend.

As he started to drink, the restaurant manager came running out of the restaurant and yelled “what do you think you are doing? If you want a drink, you have to buy your own! You can’t have the rest of his!”

That story isn’t true.

Of course it isn’t true, that would be mental. And yet, when I parked up in a car park in Sheffield city centre last week, I was asked for my car’s registration number, to make sure that I couldn’t pass the parking ticket on to anyone else.

In other words, Sheffield City Council were deliberately preventing me from passing on parking time, which I had already paid for, and of which they offered no refund for the time I didn’t use, to someone else. But how is that any different to sharing a coke?

Last night we headed out to say goodbye to Craig, as well as welcoming a few new faces to the company. We started off at Cuthbert Brodrick which was crazy busy but awesome as always before heading to Red Hot World Buffet.

Even though our table wasn’t booked until 9:30, they didn’t get us sat down for over twenty minutes and then once we were sat down, they had the cheek to tell us ten minutes in that they would be closing the buffet at 11! Despite the food being excellent, this kind of service simply wasn’t on so after a quick chat with the manager we also found ourselves with a free round of drinks, which went quite a way to making up for it.

Afterward we hit Selabar followed by Smoke Stack, both great bars that I had never actually been to before and thanks to Rebecca’s contacts at Smoke Stack we managed to miss the queues and get some amazing drinks too – it’s quite nice having some Old Money in the office 😀 .

On Friday, the first session of Perspective 2011 took place with Robin Fishwick talking to us about the Quakers.

On Tuesday, James delivered the first Leeds Atheist Society talk of 2011, on alternative medicine.