The Duck Pond
Friday, December 19, 2003
Well the first phase of Operation: Get Liz a Social Life Again was most successful, depite me getting scarily tipsy on 1 and a half pints. Frightening coincidence of the woman who gave me a lift coming from where I come from in Wiggin (about 4 miles away). I'm really looking forward to going diving and things and the people are all very friendly. The guy who gave me a lift back to mine had been to Aber so it felt very strange talking about all the pubs there.
Tuesday, December 16, 2003
My onion bhaji packaging says "grab and go on it". I could nick it and sue them for false advertising.
It's difficult being 180 miles away from the one you love.
Monday, December 15, 2003
I wrote all this last night but didn't have a phone line with which to connect to the interweb to post it.
Chicken flavoured Walkers crisps are vegetarian and cheese and onion aren't. It's a funny old world.
Mini-Christmas went well except the bloody DVD player that I bought for Matt didn't bloody work, bloody typical. Ate, drank and was merry, ho ho ho and all that gubbins. No mince pies \o/ no silly crackers, paper hats and bad jokes \o/ no arguments and different family regiments at loggerheads \o/, just all the best bits of Christmas extracted - the tree, presents, good food, great company and a muntworthy bottle of baileys. I got a DVD of Dogtanian and the Muskehounds, which we managed to watch half of before the DVD player decided to give us the o_|/. I don't really remember it from my younger days but I remembered really loving it. Anyway as I said, we smirked through the first 5 swashbuckling episodes, especially at Dogtanian who we reckon Wesley Crusher in Star Trek was actually based on: "SHUT UP DOGTANIAN", "GET THIS PUPPY OFF MY BRIDGE" etc. The Cardinal's guards are almost the equivalent of the Borg too, they actually said "Resistance is of no consequence" or something very similar - I cannot actually be arsed to go through the episode again, just to check that was the exact wording. Anyway from these two flimsy bits of evidence, I hereby conclude that the whole of Star Trek TNG was based on Dogtanian and the Muskethounds. QED. ICMFP. A splendid present anyway.
Well I'm back in Newbury again, for a week this time, before I go back oop north to visit the related ones. They say a change is as good as a rest, and if this is so then I must be one of the most laid back people in the world by now. However I'm beginning to think this only applies when "change" == "big fuck-off alpine ski holiday" or suchlike. I'll test it out: A big fuck-off alpine ski holiday is as good as a rest. Yup, works for me.
Hope I can find the offices tomorrow.
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Well I've been meaning to blog for days but I never seem to get up early enough at the moment. It also seems that no matter how much sleep I get, I just feel more and more tired in the morning.
This weekend gone we decided to, bah humbug, do some christmas shopping and bought and put up some decorations. I'm not quite sure how Stuii managed to spend hundreds of quid buying decorations from scratch as think ours in total only came to about 50, including the tree. Then again Stuii probably bought lots of uberposh, fancy decorations to fill the whole of his gorgeous flat whereas we only bought some pauper stuff from B'Wise and Cheap Charlies and bunged it in the bedroom. The tree looks really nice and it's weird because I've never had my own tree before. I half-heartedly bought some baubles and tinsel last year but never put them up as I didn't really do the Christmas thing.
Later that evening we went for a curry with some people that Matt works with. Matt got to see his boss ratted which is always a bonus and I had a good time and ended up boogie-ing in the Glen which is one more thing to cross off before I leave "properly".
I also watched Edward Scissorhands for the very first time. It was a great film but incredibly sad and I was blubbing through pretty much the whole film. Johnny Depp is brilliant in it and his character is almost heartbreaking. Not sure I could watch it again, maybe if I bought a really big hanky.
This weekend coming, because we won't see each other now probably until the new year, Matt and I are having our own Christmas. I'm actually really looking forward to it, I have much less of a cynical bitter attitude towards it all this year but that's probably because I don't watch telly any more so I don't see as much of the commercial rubbish. My basic principles still stand. Last night there was a brass band playing carols and Matt said "It's odd how this brass band makes it feel Christmassy, even though I've never seen one before at Christmas". We worked out it was because they're always in these cheesy Christmas films you are forced to watch because you couldn't possibly move after all that mince pie.
Friday, December 05, 2003
I moved this weekend sort of. I'm still in Aberystwyth at the moment for work reasons but all my stuff is in Newbury (makes me a bit nervous). The move was great fun. The van we got didn't have a lock in the back so rather than packing up on Saturday night and leaving whenever we needed to on Sunday we had to pack on Sunday morning and hope we got it all packed up to set off at a reasonable time which we almost did. After lots of running round like headless chickens, we set off.
Do not EVER trust directions given by the RAC route planner site. No doubt the directions were correct but they were so ambiguous that we ended up thinking we were lost twice when we weren't and then actually getting lost for about an hour because we took the wrong turning. We got to see lots of nice scenery though which of course was very comforting. We finally got to the M4 and were sailing along, making good progress until we got to about 12 miles outside of the horror know as Swindon. Oh my. Bloody horrific traffic jam for several miles because they closed a lane for a mile. At one point some cheeky sods were driving up the hard shoulder, going round a service station and pushing their way in much further up the queue at the service station exit. Obviously people were reluctant to let them in but didn't have much choice really. Bastards o_|/ Hope someone had got out and sprinkled broken glass on the hard shoulder/at the service station exit. If only I'd thought of that at the time.
Anyway finally arrived in Newbury a mere piffling 3 hours late, to the absolute joy of my landlord certainly, to get lost again thanks to the directions again. Unloading in the dark was great fun although I did eventually find my bike light which made me remember that I left my bike in Aberystwyth DOH. Saw poor Ricey and Cathleen off who still had to get back to Leicester and it was probably after 10pm at this point. This is what you get for being kind and helping people :) Realised I was starving so was going to call for pizza and got really excited about this idea until I realised I had no phone credit and no way of getting any at that time and as I didn't want to wander round Newbury and get lost in the dark I couldn't really go and find anywhere. I instead did a bit of unpacking and arranging then collapsed in the bloody uncomfortable sofa bed.
Next day woke to all the weird new noises in the flat, not knowing where the hell I was, naturally. Always bloody scary that. Waited for the Tossco delivery which came just as I had given up waiting for them to arrive with something decent for breakfast and had made a jam sandwich instead and did more unpacking. Managed to go round the shopping centre in Newbury and back without getting lost which was damn amazing considering how much I got lost when I lived in Swindon briefly. I did lots of other moving related stuff which I can't be arsed blogging about. In the evening I got a curry delivered (got phone credit yay) and was mildly amused and somewhat horrified to find one of the tubs labelled "vag pathia".
Tried to get up the next day and couldn't move. Damn weak muscles. Eventually made it to the train station and back to Aber.
And I'm spent.
