Chris Worfolk's Blog

Having spent Monday in bed recovering I managed to make it to the outside world on Tuesday which worked out quite well with A-Soc’s end of term no-brainer meeting, a screening of Evan Almighty.

I hadn’t seen it before but it turned out to be a good movie, it wasn’t quite as funny as Bruce Almighty but certainly had it’s moments. It really got me thinking how much I appreciate non-Hollywood movies these days, a break from the standard feature film format really has become something of a treat in this day and age but adds so much to the movie.

Last Friday we ran our inaugural sports night at A-Soc. IT was very much targetted at the needs of our society members – sports included Scrabble, Magic: The Gathering and Monopoly (what, those are real sports!). We tried out best to keep physical sports out but a few crept in, in the form of pool and badminton.

To round off the evening Carl also turned up and after narrowly beating him in a game of pool (the man is a shark, we rarely get such a challenge from fellow A-Soc members though I am yet to play Moz) we sat down to talk about the Gospel and do some faith healing on Nicola. She informs me the bruising hasn’t gone away though, which it normally should have done naturally by now, so I’m not sure what is going on there.

In any case it was a good night on the most part and one we’re hoping to repeat soon.

I’ve been stuck down with something, so much so that I took my first ever sick day yesterday. Which I don’t think is too bad given that I’ve been working, albeit it part time some of the time) for about two and a half years now.

I’m getting back on my feet now though and hopefully should have caught up with everything by the start of next week.

There having been much talk about Thursday Night Dogging as a house activity when we first moved it and it being so highly requested when we passed round the A-Soc sports sign up sheet we finally got a dogging evening going yesterday.

Despite the cold weather some people were still braving it and all that attended had fun so I’m going to count this one as another victory in terms of events. Good times.

I went for dinner with my parents on Wednesday. It was going to me with my grandparents as well but you know old people and snow. I mean it’s not like my dad was already at my grans so it wouldn’t have really been much of an effort of that my parents have a Nissan X-Trail designed for rough terrain in any weather 😉 .

But then that just means more chicken for me really so who’s complaining?

Atheist Society last night composed of a meeting regarding whether Richard Dawkins had been a positive or negative influence. There were some excellent speeches and obviously we concluded that he was but it was a very worthwhile debate to have none the less.

The real debate point though is why so few committee members made it to the social. Norm, Nicola, Charlie (which makes up all of the exec) along with Sophie and Liz were all missing, it’s a damn fine job we have dedicated members like Rosie to come and get things going even if she was only there for a few drinks.

Kate spent her usual evening flirting with the DJ and I spent most of the evening bragging about London to those who didn’t come. We also had a few new faces at the meeting which was great, indeed, Johnny joined up there and then. He’s clearly a man who knows where the party’s at.

Being rather exhausted after London, I spent most of Monday sleeping. And it was good 😀 .

Unfortunately I had some work to catch up on from the weekend (though I’m not fully caught up on it yet even now) but I almost managed a day off, like a proper one with nothing to do or anything. Good times. Especially as it doesn’t look like I’ll get my final day off from work due to how busy we are.

Apparently I really needed it though as I was still exhausted on Tuesday though awake enough to make it into work without sliding my car into a fence, a task not quite achieved by everyone in my office 😀 .

So, Liz is now officially a lesbian.

So, Zoltan is now dating a 15 year old.

They’re both great openings so I’ll let you pick which one you prefer.

This weekend was of course Atheist Society’s Weekend Away 2008 and with a total of 22 people we headed down to London on Friday afternoon. We arrived shortly before 4pm and checked into the hostel without much problems. I managed to get some work done on the train down there which was useful.

We first headed out to Smithy’s, a local pub which used to be a blacksmiths and retains many of the original features and character. We ended up on two seperate tables, the other table ended up getting kicked out. They claimed it was because people weren’t buying any drinks though I suspect it was because Tom was far too drunk and his renditions of Oasis songs were distracting other customers 😉 .

I left with that table to guide them to another pub only to find that the table I had just left got kicked out soon after because Nicola started causing trouble by throwing candle wax around. So after a quick stop at the Euston Flyer we made it down to Pizza Express for dinner. My meal was quite nice though I have to say Nicola’s meat feast looked even more appetising.

Afterwards we headed out to Sin City at the Electric Ballroom which was absolutely amazing! It took us a while to find it, I ended up having to phone Leeds Nightline to give us directions lol but we made it there in the end. Unfortunately Jenny took a blow to the head near the end of the night and had to go home but I had a brilliant time, they played such a fantastic playlist, every song was good.

Myself, Mike, Gaz, Sophie and Jon made it to almost the end of the night and had an interesting walk home running into a crazy Irish man who insisted on telling us lots of jokes while he was “raising the price of a hamburger.” We also found a phonebox full of prostitute adverts so picked up a few as you never know which way these weekends will go 😉 .

Meanwhile Rich and crew headed to the gay club Heaven. Yep Tom, John and Heini were at a gay club until 5am. And not particularly quite when they got back in either, Rich burst into our room with “I don’t know what the fuck you were doing, he was a gay man.” Apparently Nicola had pulled when a guy mistook her for a man in drag.

Downstairs Liz was apparently even more loud on her entry waking most of the room up which wasn’t exactly helping matters as Norm and Michelle had already made Zoltan cry by not letting him go to sleep. As I mentioned in the intro, while Liz hasn’t explicitly come out, staying at a gay club till 5am has to be the final proof really.

Saturday
We kicked Saturday off with a visit to Conway Hall where we meet Tessa from the NSS as they prepared for their AGM. We then headed over to the Natural History Museum with a quick stop for lunch in which Heini managed to work his way through a large big cheese and bacon meal (the new Big Tasty sized promotional burger) as well as another big cheese and bacon burger on top of that!

The Natural History Museum wasn’t quite as good as I was expecting but never the less still good – the Darwin exhibit we were booked onto was well worth a visit and we got plenty of good pictures so I’ll count that as a victory.

Just as it was closing I finally ran into Kieran so we got a quick chance to catch up then. We got seperated on the underground however and by the time I made it to the pub we were meeting at there were only ten minutes before we had to go for dinner so in the end I only got about 20 minutes to chat to Kieran. Still, I’m sure we’ll get chance to catch up at new year.

Dinner was courtesy of Nando’s and despite half the group bailing on it, the staff were friendly enough towards us and it was a damn fine meal. Unfortunately we didn’t find a brain this time but there is always next time.

After dinner we headed down to The Big Chill which Norm had managed to wangle us free entry to. It was rather disappointing when we got in there, it was rather packed and music was blasting out – not exactly chilled out, at all. Never the less it was a good place to grab a few drinks in, heading home about 1ish, once again with myself and Mike being the last people there along with John and Liz in tow.

Sunday
We had to check out Sunday morning so a bit of an earlier start which we then headed over to Speakers’ Corner to see what was going on. There were quite a few good speakers there, neither Mary or Jay Smith showed up but a number of other good speakers were there and I got a good crowd when I got up on my ladder and started talking about the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

So much so in fact that everyone left the Muslim speaker to come listen to me at which point I added a rather cheeky “where is your god now?” in his direction which I’m not sure he appreciated too much 😀 . He also turned down the opportunity to have a debate with me but there you go.

Afterwards we headed over to Blackfriars where the Church of Scientology was and found a nice pub to grab a few drinks before our appointment. I decided to walk it and found myself going down Fleet Street and past the Royal Courts of Justice which are some amazing buildings and then down onto the waterfront which was fantastic.

After a quick drink or two in the pub we headed down to the Church of Scientology where we were shown round the building and exhibition centre which explained about Scientology and what they do. I picked up a copy of Dianetics which I am looking forward to reading 😀 .

Afterwards we decided to split up to find somewhere to eat as we weren’t booked in anywhere. We found a nice pub that I believe was just off Farrington if that sounds like a real street in London, myself and Gaz tooked into some very nice rib eye steaks meanwhile Nicola decided to have meat balls in flat bread.

Continuing our history of running into random people I know down in London, while we were in the pub Hind Hassan, formally equality and diversity officer at Leeds University Union spotted us.

As we were leaving Norm was elsewhere checking train tickets and realising that the train in fact left at 22:10 not 22:30 😀 . So after a bit of a mad rush back we safely made it onto the train and back to Leeds. It was scheduled to arrive at 1:30 and Liz was so confident of this she proclaimed she would perform a sexual act on the platform if it got in an hour early. It got in at 12:30…

So, straw poll time.

In the last, year let’s say, longer if you wish, I’m just wondering how many national organisations everyone else has co-founded that have Richard Dawkins coming to speak at their press launch?

Oh, just the AHS then?

😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀

While I will blog far more extensively when I return to Leeds, having finally got onto the wifi network at my hostel I feel the need to blog. London has been an interesting bag of tricks so far, the Natural History Museum was a bit disappointing but Sin City was amazing and I meet up with Kieran even if our catch up time was brief. Stay tuned for more stories.