Wetherspoon’s have now introduced their new menu, which while almost identical to their old menu, provided us with a good excuse to expand our options for Sunday lunch. I’m glad to say that after nearly five years of campaigning, we have finally got profiteroles on the menu. Win.
Last Friday saw the citywide Alpha launch event in Leeds which saw churches from across the city come together for a big launch event for the 36 Alpha courses which are apparently launching across Leeds this week.
The event began with a speech from Nicky Gumbel, the man behind Alpha who was a good speaker as ever though also, it turns out, a massively repressed homosexual. I wouldn’t know myself but Rich who was sitting next to me assures me he is gay, not only in spite of how much he mentioned his wife, but because of it.
Rich enjoyed much of Nicky’s speech too – or at least he did the first time he saw the material when performed by Jasper Carrott. Apparently the jokes aren’t as good the second time around.
After this we got onto the “celebrity guests” which were Cameron Stout the winner of Big Brother 4 and an apparently famous fitness video instructor. She did have some good advice though – the way to loose weight is to actually do some exercise. So at least she has some common sense when it comes to wellbeing, if not in the field of religion.
The show finished off with a few personal testimonies talking about Alpha, all carefully selected to hit each demographic. Flawless all the way.
Today was Lachlan’s birthday so the obvious solution was for everyone to sleighly leave the office, don fancy dress hats and accessories and then go back in singing “happy birthday.” I say obvious, it was certainly successful. This was followed by us heading over to The Box for a few drinks or two at 4:30. 5 hours later and we were all still there.
Given it was Nathan’s first day, we came very closing to telling him that every Thursday was Fancy Dress Thursday but as amusing as that would have been, we decided it was just a little too unfair in the end. Aren’t we nice people 😉 .
Tuesday saw A-Soc hold our 2009/2010 intro meeting. The meeting itself went well if a little poorly attended – well, I saw poorly attended, there were plenty of people there but a lot of them were old faces, it would have been nice to get some more new faces. We seemed to do an excellent job on the conversion rate however so it was far from a loss.
Afterwards we headed down to karaoke. It would seem a fair comment to say I got rather drunk. Rich was threatening not to sing It’s A Sin due to the price of beer required to get him intoxicated, which resulted in me having to buy a bottle of wine between us and that resulted in Rich having to buy one back, and after that I was buying drinks and after that someone else was buying me drinks long after I had convinced Nicola my archers and lemonade was in fact water so by the time I left I couldn’t really see too much and it was 2am.
Then I had to grab some food of course, which was delayed while I chatted to a very attractive randomer about A-Soc and then I had to get home and sober up before I could actually go to sleep as it always ends badily if you don’t. So it was well into the early hours of the morning and even with flexi I still had to be in work for 9:30 the next morning so by the time I made it in I was shattered. I ended up leaving shortly after 4:45 and headed home for a power nap before I could get anything else done.
Of course we managed to get the obligatory group photo and myself and George performed The Eagles’ Hotel California, not that I remember much about doing it, except of course that we completely rocked and for some reason look like we were doing a love duet in the photos.
In any case, a fitting start to the 2009/2010 academic year I think.
I finally made it over to the A-Soc picnic on Woodhouse Moor to find a rather nice turnout and, amusingly, A-Soc members trying to participate in sporting activities 😉 . We spent a while longer in the park chatting before heading over to The Old Bar for what we expected would be a few drinks – 10:30 in the evening, several drinks and a jazz band later and I finally left. Crazy times.
Sunday saw us hit Cuthbert Brodrick as usual for lunch but with one important change – George finally having been paid he could actually afford to eat this time! We also saw a guest appearance from Rich as well so it was a rather good afternoon.
Unfortunately due to a series of iritating events it took them an hour to get me a dessert, which resulted in me being quite late for the A-Soc picnic. They had a new lass working behind the bar who took 20 minutes to serve us and once we had done they lost my dessert and had to make it again!
Friday night saw us to take the street outside the union for all night debate in an attempt to talk to even more students and had out some free hot drinks to people in need of one. It wasn’t as fast moving as it is during Rationalist Week but we got some quite long quality conversations and chatted to some great people so it was well worth it.
Friday saw A-Soc hit Leeds City Museum to take a look round the exhibit, notably the first edition of Origin of Species. We spent a good hour or two looking round the museum before they kicked us out, which is enough time to get round most of the stuff anyway. Unfortunately we forgot to get a group photo on the steps but there will be plenty of other opportunities no doubt.
With the new academic year kicking off, A-Soc spent the week outside the union telling people about the society and trying to drum up new members. While we had some problems with being moved around, staff shortages and the usual problems you have to deal with, the week was overall rather successful and we signed up plenty of new members.
