Aidan Williams - High Acuity

A gallery, a theatre, a restaurant - very civilised.

I haven’t seen my girlfriend in three weeks for many reasons and it definitely has been taking its toll on me and even started affecting my work – not very professional I know.

All I’ve ever needed is someone to love – it just so happens I was lucky enough to find someone absolutely incredible to fall in love with and take care of. She’s also one of the only people who can keep me in check.

Unfortunately she hates my work ethic with a passion – understandably – since it keeps us apart for most of the week and the fact that we don’t live together right now doesn’t help either.

We met early this Saturday afternoon and began walking around central London. We stopped at a gallery in New Bond Street exhibiting works by Graeme Wilcox – a Scottish Artist who paints incredible portraits. I wish I could find some pictures online that accurately represent his latest collection – it’s a lot more dark, intense and impressive than any of his previous works. Unfortunately I can’t personally afford the £2K – £7K price tag for one of his paintings just yet.

We had a quick lunch near Piccadilly Circus before going to the London Comedy Theatre where I booked tickets for my girlfriend and myself to see Boeing Boeing – A 1960s French Comedy originally by Marc Camoletti. I decided to pick something different that neither of us had heard of or knew anything about. It’s a brilliant play with a stunning cast and, well – I think TimeOut’s review says it best:

“… Matthew Warchus’s stylish revival of ‘Boeing-Boeing’, a creaky old French comedy recreated as something approaching sublime thanks to a crack cast on tip-top form.

The premise is deliciously reprehensible. Bernard is three-timing a trio of air hostesses, and meticulously plotting their comings, goings and near-misses with the help of the air-traffic timetable. Then one night his country bumpkin comes to stay, and Bernard’s scheme starts to veer off its flight path.”

It’s a fantastically enjoyable piece of light comedy that spans across a single day in the lives of the characters. It’s so fast-paced that it really does feel as though they’ve crammed a full day into two and a half (with intermission) and the storyline is a lot of fun.

After the play, my girlfriend and I went to Café Apogee in Leicester Square, where she had this week’s special: lamb with saffron rice, and I had the Apogee Special – lamb, chicken, beef, salmon and king prawns, also with saffron rice. The décor of the restaurant was interesting – interesting in the respect that we couldn’t quite place it, or fully decipher whether we were in a French restaurant or not – it seems a few of the online restaurant listings are a little confused as well. Never the less, the food was excellent and we will be going back there.

After a short evening walk around central’s back-streets close to St James’ Place, we headed home. It was a great day and just what we needed.

At my company we’re currently working on our new website. It’s an incredible experience to see what I believe to be such a fantastically talented group of people all vying to give their input on something that will represent us all to the rest of the world.

We came to a point recently where we had to make a final decision on a vital part of the website in terms of accessibility VS design. As a producer and the head of my department, I was fighting for accessibility, while the two Swedish designers in my company (who are, to be fair, f**king talented), were fighting hard for the design.

The major point for me is that this website has to represent every department as best as it possibly can. And if I’m going to be talking about accessibility in the media, then our website has to have the highest level of accessibility, combined with design, xhtml, development, etc – or we’re going to get laughed at. Also – any potential employees for my department have to come to our website and realise that this is the level of code we’re looking for.

Anyway – I’ve made quite light of this whole event as it actually spanned a couple of weeks, since we were all so busy with other things, and the designers (who I have a lot of respect for) and myself had a few arguments about it.

By the time we had the last meeting about it and one of the directors made the final decision, we were all a bit exhausted – we’re all so passionate about our individual areas of expertise, that each of the three of us who really cared about this point gave it our all. So this morning, I sent them both this email:

—
Hi guys,

I’m sorry we couldn’t work out a solution that we were all happy with for the navigation problem and I hope you know that I wasn’t just doing it to be stubborn and I certainly don’t think that I ‘won’ anything - I/we were just trying to find a solution. I think we’re going to find lots of times in the future, from now on, where we’re going to be challenging each other - next time – bring your boxing gloves - b*tches!

Take care.

Aidan

PS – I win – you lose!
—

… about thirty seconds after I sent it, one of the two designers in question burst out laughing at his desk, looked over at me and said “You f***ing c**t! and the other sat quietly and unresponsive and sent me this email:

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I was raised in the Bronx. My mother raised me on water and b*tch slaps. I don’t give a sh*t. Avant Garde however, that’s my niggah right there.
—

And I sent this response:

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I’m considering putting on some traditional Irish music and doing a victory jig/dance – but I thought that might be taking too far – it still might happen though!

Watch this space!

Aidan
—

At my flat we’ve always got someone staying in the spare room in the attic – usually one of our friends who’s just moved to London and we let them stay with us till they get a job and/or find a flat.

On Friday night after work I came back and met my brother-in-law’s brother Will who’s going to be staying with us at my flat for a few weeks. I took him and my flat mates back to the studios where I work and introduced them to my work colleagues.

After a few games of pool and a few drinks my 19 year old Australian work mate David, Will and myself set off home and ended up having to walk most of the way since we missed the last tube.

We arrived back at around 4am, Will went to bed upstairs and David slept in my bed with me. The next morning Chorna was coming to visit me since we hadn’t seen each other in a while and was going to surprise me and my flat mate let her in – expecting to find me in bed with another girl, she opened the door to my room, saw David and myself in bed together wearing nothing but my boxers and David in nothing but his tighty-whities. With the funniest shocked look on her face she shouted “Oh my god!!”, walked out of the room and closed the door. I started sarcastically shouting “Chooorna!” a few times and she finally came back in, and didn’t look at either of us, so I said “David, Chorna, Chorna, David… David and I have been having lots of sex together.”. Chorna said “I bet you have! I’m going to go and say hi to the guys upstairs!” and left.

It’s really annoying that she completely missed David putting on the most camp voice you’ve ever heard and saying “Oh who’s this, Aidan? You didn’t tell me about this?? Who’s this b*tch!?”.

Funniest Saturday morning ever… Although I think what I found even more funny was when I spoke to my dad on the phone later that morning, told him the story and he said “Well, supposedly everyone in London is bisexual these days.” And I think he was fishing, so I replied “No, Dad, I’m really not, don’t worry.”.

After doing some work I spent the rest of Saturday morning at Borough market with the other David I know and Chorna, where I bought bagels, brie and coffee. David and I spent the rest of the day at his house cooking (or he cooked and I mostly watched and ate). I watched ‘Slither‘ with his flat mates while drinking South African cider. Slither is absolutely classic and perfect brain candy.