Aidan Williams - High Acuity

A couple of weekends ago I met up with an old school friend, Jon, at Borough Market for what was supposed to be a brief meeting for coffee in the morning, but ended up being an entire day of catching up and walking around central London.

I hadn’t seen him in seven or eight years and it was great to catch up again. He’s one of those genuine, kind, funny, intelligent people you’re always happy to meet up with. I’ve also yet to meet anyone who enjoys walking as much as my old friends from Hereford do – aside from lunch and a break in Saint James Park, we were walking pretty much solidly for eight hours.

My girlfriend has graduated from university! She had her graduation ceremony last week – congratulations baby.

She and I bought unlimited passes to our local cinema a few weeks ago. So far we’ve seen The Bourne Ultimatum twice, Knocked Up Twice, and I saw 1408 with my flatmate Oleg the other day. Knocked Up is a lot of fun – well worth seeing. 1408 – well, you’ve pretty much seen it all if you’ve seen the trailer, to be honest, but if you like a fright, go for it.

Oleg and I spent the day walking around London with the aim of going to the Apple store to check out the new iPods. The new Shuffle colours are nice, the Classic is a good update, but the Nano is far more impressive in the flesh than I thought it would be. They’ve really put a lot of effort into the software this time and the screen looks brilliant. It’s a shame the iPod Touch isn’t released in the stores sooner – we’re obviously most interested in seeing that one.

It’s been a hectic and great couple of weeks.

Last week I finally booked my flight to Cape Town towards the end of the year to visit my brothers, my niece, my nephew and to just have a nice break. The last holiday I had was a trip to Cape Town after my operation. In honour of that, here’s a photo that didn’t make it into my Cape Town post last November.

Last week my business partner and I interviewed three accountants. We went into each interview with the plan to be ostensibly knowledgeable and hit each of them with our twenty heavily-researched and well-advised questions, while in reality, aside from the research we’d done, we were both pretty much clueless, although I think we did enough to be sure we made the right decision.

I met up with my mum, who I haven’t seen in six months, and sister for lunch in Soho last week. They both almost fell over when they saw me in my smart clothes (I’ve avoided a suit for the last five years after having to wear one every day throughout school) and general new look, with various blasphemous exclamations and laughs – they assured me their shock was a good thing. After lunch we went clothes shopping – something I’m usually not all that interested in, but the sales are in their final phases right now and all the shops are seriously slashing their prices. I picked up two very nice £60 shirts for £11.50 each.

I tore a tendon in my foot on Monday – I went into hospital the next day as I thought I’d broken my foot – yes, I am in fact a complete wuss – and the nurse informed me that it was a torn tendon that can feel worse than a broken bone – but I think she as just saying that to make me feel better. After a few questions, she told me that it probably happened when I was running in my tapered dress shoes. She also said it could take three months to heal fully and may get worse before it gets better. Well it certainly did get worse for a few days but that was probably because I just couldn’t stop and had way too much to do around the city.

The film of the year is here! My flatmate, my girlfriend and myself went to see an early preview last week and I will be forcing her, or someone else to see it with me again now that it’s been released this week. This film is awesome – I love the Bourne series and this is a brilliant addition.

My girlfriend gave me this angel made out of my birthstone this weekend.

Late on Friday night, my girlfriend and I took a walk through St James Park, past Buckingham Palace and into town to meet up with one of my friends.

This is the Queen Victoria memorial fountain outside Buckingham Palace – it’s 8pm but still sunny.

Buckingham Palace from the bridge across the lake in St James Park.

We met up in Soho Square and chatted with some random people for a while.

We went to the cinema to see the French thriller ‘Tell No One” – you have to see this film if you get the chance – the atmosphere, story, plot and characters are all stunning! Before we went into the film though we spent some time in the bar – it’s probably one of the only cinemas in London where you can take alcoholic drinks into the film and also one of the only bars in central London that wasn’t packed on a Friday night. It’s a great place, too – filled with sofas, low coffee tables, some nice lighting and it was cheap! Well cheap for London anyway.

After the film, at roughly eleven thirty, my friend who works at one of the biggest film visual effects companies in the industry and I had a stealth mission into his office so that he could show me some shots from a few of the films he’s been working on recently. We had to sneak past the guard, up over the walkway through the atrium (they have a garden inside their building!) into his floor, using his electronic keycard – but as soon as we walked in there, we heard people talking – it was nearly twelve at night, and they were working late – or chatting in the kitchen at this point, so we had to sneak past them too. My back story was all worked out – I was Reginald Postlethwaight – a student from the Bournemouth Computer/Broadcast Animation Masters course, looking to possibly join.

I truly wish I could tell everyone about the incredible clips I saw from some amazing AAA movies that won’t be coming out for a while, including one particular film that has a fantastic amount of secrecy surrounding it, but I can’t. I love movies and it was an absolutely amazing experience though.