Re: Your brains. An explanation

You may recall a couple of weeks ago I posted a very brief blog entry about being a zombie. And then I went to the pub.  Well it's explanation time.

Wish.co.uk (whose logo you can see splattered behind me) run a zombie apocalypse survival experience day, where you can go and spend the day in an abandoned shopping mall or old manor house, get given a shotgun, and are tasked with surviving against hoardes of rampaging zombies.  Now obviously until my research is complete there are currently no such things as zombies, which is why they require sporting (but slightly deranged) folk to dress up as zombies and take on the appropriate undead roles for the enjoyment of all.

Well it seems the zombie manor house (located in Warrington, just south of Manchester) is in need of new zombies, so on Thursday June 28th there were auditions run at Pineapple Dance Studio in London to find the perfect walking corpse.

It was a bit of a spur of the moment thing. I only found out about the auditions through Stephen Fry's Twitter feed on Tuesday night, but luckily was able to get the day off at short notice.  At this point I didn't even know if I could feasibly make it to Warrington and back every other weekend even if I got the job, but thought the audition itself would be a good laugh.  So through insane storms I trudged, and against all odds I made it to the doors of the studio in one (very wet) piece.

Seeing as I've never tried applying any kind of horror movie makeup before I just turned up as myself, and once I'd registered I was swiftly lead off to have some wonderful zombie touches applied to my face, and you can see the results yourself!

The actual audition only lasted a few minutes. There was a brief video interview of my zombie character (How did you die? What's your favourite organ to eat? Etc.), followed by a brief interview of myself (Where have you travelled from? Do you mind being shot at with ballistic weapons? Etc.), and then the moment where all of the zombie impressions at the pub finally paid off.  I was asked to leave the room and re-enter in zombie mode, and once I heard an audio cue ("Oh shit, it's a zombie!) I had to go into attack mode and launch myself at the audition panel.

Once that was over all of the zombies just milled around outside the studios, just chatting and following random passers-by down the street.  And when it was all over we were taken down the pub for drinks :) It should be noted that the pub was about a 10-15 minute walk away, and we all (roughly 50 of us at this point) stayed in character for the shamble through the streets of London. We got some strange looks, but it was all good fun!  Unfortunately I couldn't stay too late on account of the 4 hour journey home, but I enjoyed the post-audition mingle nonetheless.  And I stayed in makeup all the way home.

First corals

When I first set up my fish tank at the beginning of February there were only three things I particularly wanted for it; a clownfish, a cleaner shrimp, and a piece of coral.  Obviously as the weeks and months went on my ambitions grew, and my aquarium is now host to a whole undersea menagerie, but out of my initial wishlist the only thing still missing was some coral.  This wasn't down to any kind of supply problems with the store or anything like that - indeed they have an entire 10 foot tank filled with nothing but coral!  The simple problem was that corals need an established and settled tank to thrive in, and it's not recommended to add them into any tank until it's about 6 months old.

So on Sunday when I went in to get the salt water for my fortnightly water change I ended up picking up a couple of very interesting and beautiful specimens!  To be honest I went in hoping to get this elusive anemone for my clowns, but they were still waiting for stock to arrive so I ended up with my nose in the coral tank instead.  Here's what I ended up with:

I went with this two pieces of mushroom coral, which were together on this lump of living rock in the tank.  They're a type of soft coral and are apparently quite hardy which makes them well suited to beginners such as myself.  I've named the one on the left Sigismund, and the slightly larger one on the right Ahriman.

Then there was this guy.  I missed it to start with, as it was anchored onto a very small piece of rock, and is simply a very thin, green spiral, looping its way upwards.  As it didn't have a price on it and it wasn't like any other type of coral I've ever seen I wasn't sure what it was!  I asked the guy who I usually deal with in the store and he didn't have a clue, so he took the default option of offering to sell it me for £3 (whenever I discover strange and unexpected things in their tanks, they just offer them to me for £3 and I usually go for them!).  Obviously for that price I couldn't resist another new addition for the tank so I took it home, got it settled in and started Googling.  It didn't take me long to find out that this is a piece of spiral wire coral, which is a type of hard coral.  Since this photo was taken I've repositioned it to have a high up, central position in the tank, and it looks quite spectacular!

So there we are, my first three corals!  I may get another one in a few weeks, but due to the size of the tank I should probably leave it at that.  Now I'm just waiting for the anemone for my clowns, and a mandarin to round off the group.  Stay tuned for more pictures!