it was the night before christmas and im at work

So here I am working till 9 ish on Christmas eve, then I have got a bit of a drive before I get to relax and enjoy half a day before I'm back in the car for a few more hours. This is what I lave about Christmas, the things you will do just to make sure you get round and see your family and friends on this one day of the year without fail. It would have been a bit easier if I had some of the evening free tonight but its not like I'm driving to Scotland. Not Christmas day is a bit of a rush as I have 2 parents to get round and then a lovely girl friend and as anyone would expect they all don’t live on the same street and it will take more than an hour to get to each one so there will be a large part of Christmas day in the car but I have planned! Got an awesome playlist to go, going to keep warm, got my headset if I want to get in to radio competition, what else can you do if you’re on your own in the car?

But right now I have about an hour before i can get out of work and get back to the flat, get everything in the car and get on my merry way with my fingers crossed that the roads are clear, last year I should have turned back when I started to pass cars on their roofs but I managed to get through, just. So back to the flat and get gone. Even tho I'm looking forward to the next few days there is a small part of me which would be just as happy to get back to the flat, crack open a bottle of wine and enjoy what Christmas eve tv has to offer, may be its the chance to enjoy the time for myself but that's not an option and the road is.

I did get all my xmas shopping done in one day and the only gift I had planned and ordered from Amnesty international didn’t come! The only one planned and not just picked up as I walk around in town looking at everything. I could have done without that day but I did go ready for shopping so close to the weekend, so rap/rock angry music on the mp3 player and I ploughed through town only giving way to old people and prams. Don’t get me wrong I was not just hitting people I was walking around like I normal do but when you have a line of people coming at you with no gap for you to walk through I was quite happy to make my own. (I do come across as a rude person don’t I?)

Well 34 mins and another 10 on that and I'm out of work, until Friday but that's just half a day or so.

Well all I can hope is you all have the Christmas you want, if its driving to see everyone or you have that bottle of wine I was talking about I just hope its a good one.

i dont feel too good

So my friend got back from a long trip the Asia yesterday so we had a night of drinks planned to catch up and what not. Now getting older you would think that you get wiser when it come to the old drink or two, you know like have something good to eat and don’t go out for a night of drinking when you have only had a sandwich for the entire day, I wish I had followed the rule. So only after a few hours drinking and may I point out a few hours of heavy drinking I was not the best and then started to feel not too good. So I gave the international recognised look to my girl friend that I wanted to go and up she was saying good bye and covering me by saying she had to at work the following day (which she did and is right now). So the walk back was only 10mins but my situation worsened and I didn’t feel well at all and I was quickly put in bed with pain killers, water and a bowl just in case.
I like to think I trust a lot of people but trust is not a simple as black and white, I feel there are so many types of trust for many different aspects of your life but when you have someone who you trust for every aspect of your life its a wonderful feeling, no matter how stupid you are or look or what secrets you have or the things you want to keep from some people you know as you want to have a good appearance its not very often in life someone comes along and you can open up your heart and soul and feel safe at the same time. I think we all want to feel safe in some way not matter how old you are.

The day I touch a cloud,

So today I had the wonderful pleasure of touching a cloud. Think how often you have seen clouds in your life time, think how nice they look some days and think of how many interesting things they can resemble. Have you ever touched one? If you would like to touch a cloud all you have to do is get someone to take you up in a micro light and fly in to one which I did today. Now like most people I tend to think that the bigger planes are more safe and more of a smoother ride and I was expecting for my day in the sky to be a scary and bumpy one but this was not to be. Once getting to the air field (no thanks to GPS, I didn’t think a farm would also do flights) I was expecting a 20/30 min lessen in what not to do when up there but after getting out of my car it was 2/3 mins before I was kitted up and sat in the motor bike of the sky. After a few “don’t do this” lessens we say at the end of the air strip and waited for clearance to take off, now these little things are really like motor bikes of the sky. You ever seen a motor bike at the lights? As soon as the light goes green they are off with this is the same for micro lights, as soon as he got the ok we shot down this grassy runway like we were being powered by a rocket and within seconds we were up and up and up. I think most people have been on a plane and for me take off is one of the more interesting times, not good just interesting so I did expect the same type of feelings but nope. It was such a smooth flight as we went out to the cost of Liverpool. as we got there, there were some clouds which he was going to fly under as the last thing both of us wanted to see was a easy jet flight up close and personal but as we start to go under we flew straight through one which I did reach out and touch (with permission) we flew down the beach passing Formby (location of the lovely picnic last year) and then down until you could just make out the Liver building, then we heeded back in and passed over Magul before turning back for the air field. While up there I chatted to the man flying who was telling me how easy these micro lights are to fly at which point he took both hands off the controls, at this point I did close my eyes waiting for the noise of the quickly approaching ground but after a few seconds this was not the case and the micro light just flew its self, even with a bit of turbulence. So after about 20 mins we were back at the air field and starting our decent at a fast rate, with in mins we were quickly approaching the ground and in the blink of an eye we were down and moving back to the safe area.

I know it didn’t last for long but I can tell you that is an amazing thing to do, its not what you expect and is a smooth, worry free, beautiful flight in a wonderful place. I would recommend it to any one

the start of 2 weeks off

So I now have 2 weeks off, 2 weeks one after the other. I have never had this amount of time off in one go, ever. I'm now day 3 in and I'm enjoying it. You know I have not reall come up with any master plan for my time away from work but I have a few things I would like to do. I need to plan more.

So last week with work we went on what I thought was going to be a team building day, you know the one where you all work together outside of work which brings you together,.. well we went paint balling! And it was great.

I finally got my micro light thing booked for next week, its about time as I have had the thing now for the last year or so but now I'm going. You know you go up 1500 feet, I'm not too sure on how high that is but I have a funny feeling its high. But I'm sure I will be fine and I'm sure it will be fantastic.

Now Tuesdays is a big day as its my girlfriends birthday. Now I do wish I could do something wonderful like you hear of, you know someone taking someone away on holiday, or a hot air balloon ride, or a really nice expensive meal but I'm still on a semi tight budget and I cannot afford it. I could just afford to get her a SLR camera which she really likes, its not that I'm bothered about not having the cash but it does bother me that its not just me it affects. Now I know if my lovely girl friend was hear she would say that none of this matters and if it was the other way around it would not bother me in the slightest but I think we all know that you would want to buy the world for the person you love if you could

Superbad Premiere

We had the premiere of the new film from Seth Rogen called Superbad, I got chance to watch it last week and I have to say I did enjoy it. We last saw him in Knocked up which was a good film but I think Superbad was better. Anyway we got to do the premier with a Q&A after the film with the 3 main actors from the film (Jonah Hill, Michael Cera and Christopher Mintz-Plasse) and the night went well apart from some stupid question and a bit of a broken Mic.

Well after we did a good job we got some tickets for the after show party and after a long day it was a welcome idea to go get a drink so off we went. Once there we got 3 free drinks which was nice and what was even nicer was another 3 free drinks half way through the night, after 2 hours and 6 pints I was done especially as I had to be back to work in 8 hours and god did I feel rough the following day, rough but well worth it.

I think Cinemec had a good night with the Zoo Girls!

camping!

Ok back to blogging after I may have forgotten about if for a small amount of time. Sorry!

Got to go try out my new tent in a pre festival camping trip up to the lakes last week, and what a nice trip. Jump in the car with all the things I thought I would need, spend 1 ½ hours on the motorway and then another 50mins in some of the smallest, winding but beautiful roads I have been on. I tell you any one could go without a GPS unit on the motorway but I thanked god for having it when I had got up there. There are so many small winding roads with no signs for miles and miles. Anyway once up there tried to camp next to Windermere (which we had just crossed on this cool little car ferry) but as you may expect in school holidays it was full so we heeded off another 8 miles to little Langdale (I think) which is sat in this beautiful valley. Having been in the city for some time now I was more than happy for people to look and point at the ‘City folk’ (hay I didn’t need a water proof coat just a brolly) and after putting the tent up in good time might I add we set off for the one thing I knew would be round the corner. The pub! After that things become hazier the more I think of them.

So after not the most comfy night sleep (dam the air bed) we set off to spend the day doing some sightseeing stuff, so back in the car, GPS on and away we go, headed up to Ambleside for some breakfast and then on to Grasmere for some traditional short bread and then on down to Windermere for a coffee or two. It was fantastic and a beautiful day to walk, talk and drive.

So had my review last week! How did it go? It went good, I think I did a good job and didn’t fall short in any areas. For every question they had I came back with all the info they needed, one of the bad point about doing well is they give you more to do and now do i. some things are easy and others are going to take a little more work. So after the last statement you could possible understand why things are not to good as after a good review, working hard for the last year I'm (at the moment) getting paid less that 80% of the team I manage, yep that would be right I have heard nothing about my job, a lot of chatter but no contract and no pay. For the last 8months I have made less money that the last bloke in this job and it look like I'm going to stay here, forever. It’s like the people who make these decision don’t mind its taking so long or that I'm now a little pissed off and earning less that the team I'm supposed to manage. I also have a feeling that the money they are going to offer is not worth it for the job, I know there will be some room for negation but I don’t know, I have a full feeling that it won’t be much more or less that if I was getting paid per hour. I don’t know, only time will tell.

So my week so far consists of doing loads of hours so I can have some time off to go to lowlands over in Amsterdam and I go Thursday and come back Monday and I'm soooooo looking forward to it.

Knowsley Featival

So this weekend I managed to get hold of a few tickets for the Knowsley festival through work for free, I got to pick Sat or Sun but seeing as The Who were head lining on the Sat night there was no other day I could have wanted to go to. So the plan was to get the train to Liverpool and then the buss to the festival have a few drinks, enjoy the music, get the buss back to Liverpool and then back on the train (sound so simple in my head)

Myself, my girl friend and my roommate and his girl friend all set off and getting there was fine and was a nice trip over, thinking the event had only been on that day we hoped the fields would resemble as such with grass and everything and for the most part it was, we found a nice spot just down from the main stage and set up camp. Now trying to get a drink was just impossible, the web site said ‘ample bars’ but this was just not the case, people were waiting for a beer for what must have been 40mins so I opted for the next best thing Coffee! The weather was on and off, there was a good 10mins where I managed to get full use of my sun glasses but I hate to say I'm not one of these people who would keep them on once the sun has gone in.

We got there as The Thrills were playing and it sounded good, I’ll be honest I'm not up to date with their song but there were a few I sang along to, then we had The View and after that The Coral who were both fantastic. At this point it was starting to get cold so we had a walk and got ready for the final act. And at about 8:30 The Who came on and what a show, it was fantastic even though at this point the havens opened and our hops of a mud free exit disappeared (at this point I realized a piggy back was going to be in order and my girl friend was wearing jellies) but even with the rain it was awesome. Getting back to the bus stops was interesting as it must have been 6 inch deep mud and that’s where the piggy back came in as jellies don’t keep the mud out, so girl friend on my back, she had the brolly to keep us dry as I wade through the mud to the exit!

So the trip back we had 3 option.

Option 1 was to go back to Liverpool and get back the way we had come, but there was a replacement bus service which would have taken us 1:45 back from Liverpool.

Option 2 pay and get the buss back to Manchester but there were only 3 and we may not have got on seeing as we didn’t have tickets for that trip.

Option 3 get the bus to Warrington and get the train back to Manchester.

We left at 10:30 ish and got in line for Warrington just to stand there for ages as there was only a small road for all the busses to come down and most of the Warrington busses were at the back, while waiting one of the busses managed to get stuck on the side of the road in the mud which kept us entertained as it tried to get out which made it lean more and more to one side. At one point the easiest option to get it out of the way would have been to push it over in to the field. So finally our bus get to us and on we get after a speech from the driver on how its his bus and he want it clean just for him to try and get round the stuck bus, take the corner to wide and get stuck on the opposite side of the road next to the stuck buss. So now you have 2 busses both stuck next to each other blocking the only road for all the busses to get out. Now we have to get off and wait for someone to get both busses out of the mud. After 30 mins and most people thinking they could push a bus out of the mud a tractor came to our rescue and after 20 mins we were on our way with no chance of getting the last train. Bus stops, hand in air ‘TAXI!’, £40, back home! What a great time! Really! Fantastic day and would do it again

I want i want i want

To go here, Lowlands

A year this summer

I have an anniversary coming up in the next few days and it made me think back to about a year ago around this time, from what i can remember i was still tiring to sell my house and spending most days working, painting or drinking. It was a very difficult time in my life and i had to go through some things which i never thought possible. One thing which I did learn is how many people cared about me and what was happening, I like the saying ‘friends are like stars, you may not always see them but there always there’.

One thing which I do truly regret is my cats, I had 2 cats. I had a boy called Indi and a girl called Toffee and to this day I miss them. I do often think of what I gave up to have the Manchester life style but I tried to find somewhere where I could have cats but I don’t think it would be fare for them to be stuck inside or in a big city.

Around a year ago after spending all day painting I was relaxing in my garden (before I started work on that) when Indi came out of the house in a very playful mood. At the time I had made a few videos and it was something I was interested in getting it to as I enjoyed it so I took some footage on my phone to see what I could do with it. I did end up with something and I liked it, the quality is not up to much and it is something you have to stick with when you watch it but none the less I think it captured the type of cat Indi is.

The cats are the only thing I do miss and I am truly happy with me, my life and who surrounds me. I would like to thank all the people who helped me to this happy place. Thank you