Wil posted this link over at www.wilwheaton.net, it's one of those personality quizes that go around offices via email on a Friday afternoon.

Which Superhero are you??

I came out as the Green Lantern, which is cool as he is one of my favourites and a comic that I get every month.

Interesting aside; I got meet Green Lantern artist Joe Statton when he did a tour of the UK back in the eighties. He was signing stuff at Nostalgia and Comics in Birnmingham, If memory serves he signed my copy of Green Lantern 196 that introduced Guy Gardner;

Pretty cool huh?

Ah, you geeks where I'm coming from.

www.thesuperheroquiz.com

Y'see, it's more like a feather floating gently down from the top of the Empire State building.

''Have you found anywhere to live yet?'' I ask Paul.

With my impending move to London I need to find tenants for the house.

I have one, a colleague for whom I have almost infinite patience. He's a good lad, young and loyal.

''Well I think so..'' he starts '' A girl working in conference and banqueting has a room''

''How much is that?'' I ask.

'' £350 pounds a month''

I look at him.

''But Paul..'' I say ''You ccan stay here and share for £300 a month

''I know but I think I should be independent...''

The penny will drop eventually and when it does, it'll be a feather.

I stil haven't told my BOSS that I will be leaving on Feb 2nd.

I was going to tell him last Friday during the HOD dinner but he was too sober.

My cunning plan to wait until he was hammered to tell him went tits up.

So now I need to do it as soon as possible.

But with him it's important to pick the right moment, which I will do, as I am quite good at that.

He'll be very supportive I know.

He's a good man.

Humph.

I'm sitting at me desk on Christmas Morning, getting emotional after just reading 'G' 's email sent from the ship.

I love him and I miss him.

To anybody out there who visits this little blog I thank you and wish you a very Merry Christmas.

''My, hasn't Accrington changed!! shouted the great and powerful demi-god that is Morrissey.

We cheered, every one of us, all of the faithfull, all of the newbies, all of the disciples (Morrissey's term not mine).

He then launched into 'Panic'

Cue ten thousand brown headed heads bobbing along to a good selection tracks old and new.

He was good.

Really good.

As he strutted across the stage he reminded me of a seasoned performer that you would find in the cabaret halls of Las Vegas.

He was confident and a true showman, punctuating each song with a witty comment or small story.

The show was slick, the lighting very effective sound was incredible, sometimes intense, the bass rippling through the floor of the auditorium from him to me.

He ended the show with ''Please,please me'' but subtley changed the lyric from ''Let me get what I want this time'' to ''Let me have who I want this time'' that indicated a new openness about his sexuality.

'bout time.

As I walked back to the hotel in the cold Mancunian air, I couldn't believe I almost didn't go to the gig, that I had it in the back of my mind all day to give the ticket to somebody else.

If I ever do that again, you will kick me won't you?

We had a good time.

As a Head of Department team we work together quite well.

We have our moments of doubt and disagreement but on the whole we do okay.

No blood is spilt.

So last night we went out for our annual Christmas Dinner and we went to a pretty good restaurant.

The Grill on the Alley.

Google it.

Late on in the meal the Chef stood up and began his little award ceremony that he had planned along with the HR Manager.

And I have to say, they were both very amusing.

All of us received an award.

I won the ''George Best Award For The Most Embarassing Drunken Moment''.

I guess I deserved it after the incident at the new Hilton hotel a couple of months ago.

I was quite chuffed.

''You want to pull one of me cracker's??'' shouts Pauline across the other diners sitting at her table for the staff Christmas lunch.

As she says it she holds her breasts out.

The main banqueting suite is full of all the hotel employee's enjoying their annual festive lunch. In time honoured tradition we - the hotel managment team - are serving.

I elected to be wine waiter.

A prime example of the right man for the right job.

I smile to Pauline but make no response.

Pauline is in her sixties and and a true Mancunian.

Which means her sense of humour is as crude as it can be without actually being offensive, but this is offset against a heart of gold.

She works in the hotel linen room.

It's a tough job.

After lunch I return to my desk and there is a little square of tin foil laying there with a small post-it note that reads;

''For you, to be enjoyed on Christmas day and Boxing day and not before. From the Christmas Fairy''.

I know it's Pauline.

Bless Her.

When I blog things like ''I'm gonna miss G terribly over Christmas'' I don't do it to make him feel bad.

Truly, I don't.

I want to have a good time with his family, to have good memories of them to carry with him through life.

But no matter how hard I try to be selfess about it there is a small corner of my heart that is totally selfish where he is concerned.

I am going to miss him.

It's like I'm moving away from the bright centre to my universe, in an eliptical orbit that will carry me away but bring me back again.

Or rather, bring him back.

This is really the last hurdle we have to jump before the home stretch toward spending our lives together so in a way I welcome it.

And everything has fallen into place pretty easily.

The job, a tennant for my house in Manchester.

Even our families are fully accepting of us.

So it's all good.

But there will be a few moments over the next couple of weeks when I will feel incredibly lonely and long to just be able to give him a kiss or a hug.

I'm not looking for sympathy as there are a million people worse off than me and really I have no right to winge.

I'm just confessing the way I feel.

If your so inclined, if you have geek blood pumping through your veins, pop on over to your local comics store and pick this amusing comic up.

Geek blood, is of course, blue like a Vulcan's.

'natch.

It's a tale set after the apocalypse, the earth is populated by zombies and marauders, but a few humans remain and so does the belief in Santa.

In issue one the marauders find their way to the North Pole and literally waste everybody, the elves, the reindeer...and Mrs Clause.

When Santa returns he gets a bullet to the head.

But doesn't die.

Unable to deal with the grief of losing his 'Gumdrop' he tries many ways to kill himself, drowning, covering himself in booze and setting fire to himself.....even trying to hang himself with a set of fairylights.

But it doesn't work.

Y'see, as long as one person still believes in him, Santa cannot die.

When he realises that only a little boy still believes, he decides to go find the lad.....

This is going to be one of those great comics that is still sought in years to come, every page is stuffed with visual humour (like the elves stuffing Santa's unconcious body in to the belly of a deer saying ''We saw this in a movie once..'')and the artwork is more reminiscent of the cartoon pages found in the Sunday Newspapers than regular comics, but thats okay as it's relevant.

Sometimes comics are just too serious, just to grim.

So it's great to find something like this that reminds you that comc's are supposed to be fun.

Go pick up a copy already!

I'll be seeing the hotel at Canary Wharf for the first time on Thurs and I am excited about it.

A few weeks ago 'G' and I had a walk down to the site but could not go in - for obvious reasons.

We walked the perimeter and looked out across the Thames to the Dome.

I hadn't yet been offered the job as I was in a kind of limbo, ''You'll get it'' he said ''I know you will.''

He was right of course.

I knew also I think,but past disapointments have made me cautious.

I was constantly weighing the chance of an unexpected curveball against the feeling of knowing that this was right, that in someway the universe wanted us to be together.

Like I said, he was right.

From what I could see at the time, it looked like a fine little hotel.

Y'see, hotels -true hotels- are unique.

They each have a personality, an intangible quality that is imprinted on the decor and those that work there.

Don't believe me?

Let me paint by numbers.

One hotel I worked in London was a sleeping monster.

A huge, 330 bedroom sleeping monster. Control it and it would snooze away quite happily, loose that control and it would wake and growl angrily, causing more than a little chaos.

Another was a true feisty underdog.

Looked down upon by the whole company as being the smallest and the most worn. Time and again it proved it's worth and value in terms of revenue, it did more than it was asked.

Yet another was a flirtatous party girl, with a Covent Garden address and an inviting wink to those who passed by.

Yes, I'm romanticisng, but what's wrong with that?

I'll get to see more on Thurs when I wander around the interior, and granted it won't be more than a shell and the imagination will have ot be tapped to imagine the finished product.

Tapping into the imagination is easy.

Still, when I made the trip to Manchester three years ago to see the hotel and meet the BOSS, I couldn't quite grasp the geography of the building and how it would all come together.

And when it did, it was amazing.

The hotel has been good to me, almost benevolent and I am grateful.

When the time comes I know I can say goodbye to the hoteland the people with a glad heart and a sense of pride, and go forward with 'G' at my side, holding my hand.

And we'll both pop back occasionally to see how things are getting along.

But they'll be fine.

I know they will.

With 'G' away over Christmas I have elected to work.

I'll be on duty pretty much the whole time and plan to stay in the hotel too.

I've done this before and a strange kind of comraderie develops amongst everybody who is not with their loved ones at this time of year, you try and have a good time anyway, even though you have a job to do.

I know in private I will be missing 'G' terribly but will make sure the rest of my colleagues enjoy themselves and don't work too hard.

But no matter what happens.

The hotel could be on fire.

The hotel could be falling down....

Hell, the zombie apocalypse could be hapening outside the front doors,but at 7pm on Christmas night I will sit down and watch the Christmas special of Dr Who.

And nothing will distract me.

''Do you have a moment' said the BOSS

I was walking through the lobby of the hotel and he called me into the bar that was currently closed.

''You look like you've got the hump!'' he continued.

''Well..'' said I '' I didn't enjoy the meeting yesterday. I found it ...hard.''

I was referring to the Head of Department meeting the day before. In the spirit of openness he had gone around the table, telling us what he expected of us individually.

I had recieved alittle criticism and I wasn't used to that.

Not in front of my collegaues anyway.

''Get over it.'' he said.

And he said without any malice, he was just telling to move on.

''I will'' I replied '' But I'm entitled to sulk about it for an half an hour first.''

He smiled.

We continued to chat and he reiterated what hehad told me many times before.

That I was very good at my job.

That I had won Canary Wharf on the strebgth of my performance.

I smiled too.

I got over it.

Y'see, we don't want something elaborate.

We want something meaningful and intimate, something that is romantic but masculine, individual to us, where we can celebrate the union of two individuals in a loving, nurturing and warm relationship.

Oops.

Delete the word 'relationship'.

Insert the word 'marriage'.

Or civil partnership if your so inclined.

In Rome I asked, and he said yes.

Thats right Binky, 'G' agreed to become my partner, my spouse..my husband, if you will.

Well, he is already the love of my life.

We had found a little restaurant in the Piazza Belini, we sat and had dinner.

It was Thursday 23rd November, my birthday.

We enjoyed the meal and toward the end I popped the question.

He didn't hesitate in saying yes.

The best birthday gift that anybody could wish for.

And it feels right, it feels like the right thing to do.

It's not an impulse action, it feels more like putting the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in their right places.

Making the picture whole.

And I embrace marriage to 'G' with an open and glad heart.

He rocks my world.

There is part two, but I need to have 'G''s blessing before I go blog crazy.

We walked.

Boy, did we walk.

We discovered Rome together, we wandered all over the city taking in all the sites and more.

'G' had booked it for my Birthday and we spent four days there.

Four great, relaxing,wonderfully romantic days.

We found ourselves wandering around the little back streets, past old buildings covered in vines with shuttered windows and peeling plaster, turning a corner and being astounded by the magnificence of places like the Pantheon, the Colisseum, the Trevi fountain, The Spanish steps, the Sistine chape, St Peter's..

All the touristy things.

I'm not going to bore you with the details, you can google them if you want to know more suffice it to say they are worth seeing and I'm glad we saw them together.

But.

I have three things that I will remember the city for.

The first and the most memorable, as mentioned above, I'll blog later.

The second was the Sistene chapel.

We queued outside the Vatican for perhaps an hour before we entered the Vatican museum and began to make our way through a mulititude of rooms that had many, many paintings of Popes from times past.

I mean, there were lots.

And I thought vanity was a sin.

It would be easy to describe the magnificence of the ceiling of the Sistene chapel, and it is magnificent, make no mistake.

We've all seen the images before and while that does not prepare you for the real thing, they are familiar images.

But what really caught my eye, what took my breath away with it's sheer beuty and complexity was a painting on one of the walls.

It was big, it took up the whole of the wall and if memory serves it was called the 'Judgement of God'.

In the centre is an image of Christ sitting in judgement, on his right the dead are being pulled up from their graves and either allowed to enter heaven or are cast down to hell.

It's an amazing scene, powerful and awe inspiring.

The second was just a small thing but neverthless it made my day.

It was a hot Saturday afternoon (20c in November)and we were walking toward the ruins of the Capitol.

We were walking across a park and we paused to check the map.

Afterward 'G' leant forward and kissed me.

''I love you and I don't care who knows it'' he said.

A little later after we had explored the ruinsa little, he slipped his srm into mine as we were walking toward the exit like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Well, for us, it is.

And I love it when he does that kind of stuff.

If you sprinkle when you tinkle, be a sweetie, wipe the seatie.

Wise words.

'G'and I found this little sign that is hung over countless toilets across the nation, (well the toilets of mostly old people who can hardly use the bathroom anymore, the irony is not lost.) in the toilet of the small bed and breakfast that we stayed in, in Howarth.

You remember Binkster, I told you about that scary nightmare place where Cuddly Toys Go To Die.

The BnB, not Howarth.

Anyway, while we there it became a little joke between us, we proclaimed it more than good toilet advice, we declared it a philosophy for life.

When we came back, I casually browsed the the pages of Ebay with the idea to buy such a sign and place it in the bathroom of 'G' s London pad.

But Goshdarnit! He beat me to it.

I now have the small sign displayed proudly in the bathroom.

So should you ever be invited over and you sprinkle when you tinkle, please be a sweetie and wipe the goddamn motherfucking seatie.