I actually went to bed at 12:20am, Monday night. That's pretty damn early for me, but because of this, I arose from my slumber feeling perfectly refreshed, even if it was 7am in the morning and still completely dark outside. To that end, I got rather disorientated and thought the clock on the PC was telling me lies.
I made my way to college as usual, walking up that horrible hill. I made myself walk slower than I usually do, though and because of that, my legs didn't hurt half as much by the time I got to the classroom and I was very glad of that.
Bronek was surprised to see me. I apologised for being off and I got on with what I had to do, which was to draw a storyboard of someone walking into the room and incorporate an "establishing shot", "close up" and "medium shot", along with five shots of my choosing. Fairly straight forward. After I had drawn it out, I was to go and shoot it with the aid of Sean, who also had to do the same as me. Everyone else had done it. However, Bronek informed everyone that this was the last week of the Biennial and after asking who had actually gotten some research on it, the response was one person out of the class (not me, by the way).
He made it clear that at some point this week, we'd have to go and get some research done at our chosen Biennial site. This really confuses me though. I don't know exactly what I'm supposed to do for the research part of this project, as for example, one of the Biennial sites is/was Jill Magid's "Retrieval Room". This piece was located at FACT and the Tate. However, while the exhibition itself is an interesting concept, there's nothing that you can actually take with you from it. That is to say, there is no kind of advertising that is specifically for that exhbition, like leaflets and whatnot. In addition to this, you're not allowed to take photos or film any of the art on display.
Now when I asked Bronek "what do you mean by research? What do you actually want?", his answer was to get as much information as possible about the Biennial site in the form of leaflets and whatever else, but there are none. There's loads of stuff promoting the Biennial in general, but nothing that covers one specific place.
I overheard a few people saying they were going to go around town to the exhibitions, so instead of filming my storyboard, I decided to join with them and go into town instead. Bronek seemed very much unsure about who was doing what exactly and so did I, which is why I chose to get out of there as quickly as possible. On my way out with the rest of them, I said that "I guess I'll have to do the storyboard another time" and he looked a bit worried and confused that everyone was suddenly leaving his class to go into town. Regardless, we did that and we got a DV-cam and went.
On the way into town, we discussed how we all thought Bronek was pretty damn annoying, the way he was so hyper all the time about everything and how he makes things difficult for us all. It's nice to know I'm not the only one who thinks so.
The group consisted of me, Rob, Joel, Will and Sean.
Our first stop was FACT, where we filmed the outside and then Rob asked inside if we could film in there as well. He came out, saying that they said we could film inside, but none of the exhibitions. We did a little bit of filming in there, along with taking some pictures and then moved on to the Biennial shop, where we picked up a load of advertising material for it.
After that we went to the Open Eye, took some pictures, again not of the actual work and then made our way back. However, we had all already decided that we weren't going to be going back to lesson after lunch, as Tony's lesson is too boring. Instead, we intended to just stay out all of his lesson and only return when it was 4pm and say we'd been out 'researching'.
For lunch though, I joined the rest of them in a bar and played pool. I played two games, I lost both. I'm pretty damn crap at pool.
At 1pm, we returned into town, this time to Lime Street Station, as there are giant flowers in there as part of the Biennial. As we walked in, I joked, how the large, silver metal case which the DV-cam was in looked as if I was carrying a bomb. Joel then agreed, adding that I even had the leather gloves on to look the part.
Once in the station, Rob took some pictures and I commented to them that it would be a good idea to film the flowers, as well as the station itself and they agreed. However, the strangest thing then happened.
As Rob and Will were taking the tripod out of its bag, from behind, I heard "Excuse me lads, have you got permission to be filming here?".
We all looked at him and one another for a second, confused and perhaps even a slight bit scared, since he was of course station security and he looked very serious.
"We didn't know you needed permission", I said to him.
"Well I'm sorry, but you can't film here. I'm gonna have to ask you to stop filming and can you leave the station please?"
We were kind of shocked.
"We just wanted to film the flowers", Sean said to him.
"I know, but you've gotta have permission to film in here. These new terrorism laws."
Wait, what? We're supposed terrorists now?
"Where are you from", he asked, "uni?"
"No, college", I replied.
"Well what you'll have to do is get your tutor to give the station a call and then you can film. I mean we'll even give you a guided tour, but you have to let us know first."
And so, we packed the camera tripod away and the digital camera, all the while the security guy standing right there watching us do so. Then while leaving, Sean apparantly still had the camera on or at least the security guy thought he did.
"Can you turn that off please?", he said to Sean.
"It is off"
"Well what's that light then?"
Talk about paranoia. All we were doing is filming some flowers! I might as well of been carrying a bomb if he's going to be like that towards five college students just doing as they're told by their tutor.
On our way out we were all pretty pissed off, not with the security guard, but moreso with Bronek and the other tutors for telling us to go and get research when we're not allowed to film or take pictures in pretty much every place where the biennial is being held. We all agreed that we thought Bronek and the rest had not thought about this project very well and we were paying the price for it.
It was only 1:20pm or so when we had just been told to leave the station and the only option now was to go back to college and sit in Tony's lesson. I didn't feel like doing that though and decided to go home instead. I said goodbye to them and went home.
I called Rod at about 5:30pm to see if/when we were meeting today. I couldn't remember if we had sorted anything and he then said that it was actually today we were supposed to of met and again, that meant that I had left him there waiting for me. I'm sure he was annoyed at me for doing it and I could only apologise once more. We arranged to meet next Tuesday at 12.
Today has been fairly normal, up until about 8pm.
My mum was on her way to Gary's and she had opened the front door to wait for the taxi. I heard her commenting on the fact that there was a car blocking the driveway and she commented on that because Chris was coming around and it meant that he couldn't park on it. It emerged, however, that it was my mum's.
Time to give a bit of background information.
My mum is registered with a company called Motability. It gives my mum a car because she is disabled and she's allowed to nominate a driver for herself. She chose Michael, my cousin. He gets to basically have a car without paying anything for it and in return he's supposed to drive my mum around. This was like, three or four years ago though and that's how it's been since, but that's never how it's actually worked. I mean, he doesn't actually drive my mum anywhere, but from my understanding it was agreed that he didn't have to or something.
Since my mum has been with Gary now for quite a while, she and him decided that it would be better for Gary to have the Motability car instead of Michael. And then this is when the trouble started. Michael wouldn't give the car up. He began texting my mum, saying it was his when really it's technically neither his or my mum's, but Motability's. But, since he's had the car, he's changed the number plate - something which apparantly he's not allowed to do. He also has all of the documentation for the car - something which apparantly my mum should have.
Over the past two months or so, there has been an ongoing struggle to get the car off Michael. There have been texts from him, saying that he's hidden the car in a lockup somewhere. Chris went down in his car to Michael's house to see if he was telling the truth, but he wasn't. The car was still there. Gary has also apparantly approached Michael (this may not be right, since I only know these things from overhearing people), and offered him a four figure sum in return for handing over the car, but either he said no or Gary didn't/couldn't talk to him.
Since the situation wasn't going to be resolved easily, the next step was to inform Motability and that's where I'm a bit out of the loop. I'm not quite sure what happened with them, but I know that the police have been involved as well, but not directly with Michael. I know that there has been a guy from Motability who went to Michael's to see if the car was there and "if it's there, I'll pick it up", as he said so of course he must of been some sort of locksmith. That was about a month ago.
A day or two ago, when I put my sim card in my mum's phone to check my messages, I read a few from Michael. Things like "Do not come near my property again" and one of the most recent "The car has over 40,000 miles on it. That's _xamount_ over the limit and you have to pay 10p for every mile over the agreed limit. YOU will have to pay that. You agreed to it in the contract! I told you Michael would have the last laugh."
But then tonight, the car suddenly just appears in front of the house with all of its lights on and the hazard lights as well. No one had knocked on the door or anything to say it was there. When my mum seen it, she just thought it was someone who hadn't been very thoughtful about blocking our driveway, but when Chris seen it, he knew it was my mum's car because it had a disabled badge in it and it was the same model.
Chris and Laura were dealing with it more than me. I assumed that Chris and Laura were in her room, but at 9pm, when I went to my room, Laura was in there and Chris wasn't in the house. She said that she was talking to Chris online and sorting the car out. She'd also called my mum to tell her about the car and Gary had told Laura to call the police, but she said she didn't want to.
At 9:10pm, as I was sitting in the living room, the phone rang.
"Hello?"
"Hello, it's the police, someone called about a car?"
"Uh...hold on, let me get my sister, she's dealing with it"
Laura got the phone.
"Hello?"
"Hi, you rang about a car?"
"Yeah, it's in the front of our driveway right now and I can smell something burning."
"Ok, well I'll send a patrol car out and the fire brigade"
"Ok, but I don't think the fire brigade is needed"
"Well they'll just check and see if everything's ok with the car"
"OK"
Ten minutes later and I heard an "Oh my god", from Laura, as she looked out the window to see a fire engine outside the house. As I opened the door, one of the fire fighters was walking to me.
"Hi, you called about a burning car?"
"Well, it's not actually burning. Didn't the police tell you what was happening?"
"Well to be honest I wasn't really listening. What's the problem?"
"Er..You need to speak to my sister", I pointed to her, at the top of the stairs. Why she didn't come down, I don't know.
She explained, they had a look, they went. No police car though, I might add. While they were having a look, Gary called and as Gary seems to do, he overreacted and asked me if they were "putting foam on it", as if he thought it was about to blow up or something.
"Oh and also", he said "I need you to do a few things for me". I don't really take that to mean anything though, since he's already asked me that twice and even though I done work for him, he didn't pay me.
"You've said that before", I replied.
"Yeah, well I need something setting up on the computer in the shop"
"Ok"
"And I need a few other things doing as well"
"Like what?"
"Well I need something forging and a few other things"
"Forging?"
"Yeah"
"Uh..ok", I humoured him.
Meh, again, I doubt anything will come of his requests. I'll happily help him out, but he never actually proceeds with any of his plans he's set forward to me. And as for forging anything, I intend on staying very much legitimate in my line of work and anything illegal, I won't be doing.
College tomorrow and I have to explain to Brian and Daniel why I've been off. Hopefully it won't be too hard.
Also, Liam emailed me saying that IRCX want their logo redoing. I must point out that I created their first one too and already have an updated version ready, but when I asked for payment over a year ago, they said they didn't want the logo, but now they do. I spent last night creating a vectored version of it and tomorrow, I'm going to ask Brian what he thinks I should charge for it and then give Liam a quote to give to IRCX. Always nice to be chased up for my work.
