it was Christmas

So after finishing work I set off down the motorway to get over to my dads which involved going over Snake pass which is not the nicest road in the uk, as I started to make my way up the start of snake pass I spotted a bloke hitch hiking. Now it was pitch black and teaming down with rain, not a nice evening to be out. So I pulled over and asked who he was and where he was going, I may never have picked up a hitch hiker before but I don’t care and we are doing it my way, so I was waiting for any answer that would have pointed out to me that he was some killer or something. But he was just a homeless bloke and was trying to get over to Sheffield, now think its Christmas eve at about 8:30, it dark and raining and it very cold, if you were in that position how much would you have been wanted to be picked up? So I did and we set off over snake pass, so after chatting I found out his name was Dan and he has been homeless for 8 years or so, he came from Manchester but has only been back there recently, he has been travailing around the uk. He has a family but has not contacted them for years and expected they had stopped looking. I have to say he was such a nice bloke, I real down to earth person. This also made me value what I had this Christmas. After dropping him of only a few miles from Sheffield I tried to give him a little money, nothing too much just the change I had on me but he dint want any which I respected. After dropping him ff I did thin about trying to find out where his family are and just letting them know I saw him and he is ok, I must admit I don’t think a phone call however short would have been that hard to do a Christmas eve.

So down to the exciting bit of Christmas and that would be what you get, lets be honest we all like to see friends and family but you cant say the gifts just don’t matter, I think I did very well this year, the big one which I'm really going to look forward to would be the track day down at Silverstone, I get to drive a F3 car round the track for the day, Cool. I also got a nice new bag for my laptop, which is perfect when in just going to and from work. I have a few more gifts which I love but we may be here for some time if I talk about all of them.

Well that's the xmas thing done for another year and sitting on the end of this festive time I feel like its been a wonderful time even if I thought it was going to be just a normal day, even with all the driving and having to run around at speed it was a very good Christmas.

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.

abut time

After living outside of Manchester for many years I was one of the people sat in their cars in the longest traffic jam you have ever see most mornings and even with the extra time I could have had in bed I do like driving, living closer to Manchester, well in Manchester, I don’t drive as much but my lovely corsa had a list of problems and with 129,000 miles on the clock it had had its day, it didn’t look the nicest but after nearly 6 years it had been a good car for me and I was never late due to it not starting or breaking down on the way to work and with a car that looked like it did people didn’t really want to break in to it. But with all the problems and the amount of money I would have to spend on it to get it back on the road with the MOT getting closer and closer I decided to get an upgrade. Now having a look at what cars are out there and what I wanted it for and that I would want something nicer that what I already had I started looking at golf’s and the SE in particular and after a few weeks of looking I found one and it nice! I could have gone for a GTI or a GTTDI but with insurance groups around 14/15 it would have cost me a lot to insure but with the 1.6SE its group 6! I’ll be honest it doesn’t stand out and looks like any other car on the road but don’t forget im the one sat in the thing not watching it drive by so I don’t mind, it has all these little things that make driving easier which most car now have as standard but not in the 97 corsa days, all I have to do is get my mp3 player hooked up and im done!

Now this was one of the many many things I wanted to get sorted out after finding a flat so it so nice to get it sorted out and get rid of the car which had cause me a few problems if you have followed my posts and now its done! So on you wonders through Manchester if you spot a silver Golf driving down the street have a look to see who is driving, does it look like a animal? May be a monkey? Well hey that’s me!

old

New

Keeping on the topic of cars and the many times I had been sat under my car trying to fix something or even sat on the side of the road its good to see that its just the lower class cars that have such problems as you will see in my photo,

Now if you are sat there thinking there is nothing strange about this photo let me take a min to point out the bloke pushing his Aston Martin DB9 back in to his parking spot

Now I have make a great step in my wonderful relationship with my beautiful girl friend, it was something I thought I would never do and never even thought about doing but can without question recommend it to everyone out there, what could this magical thing be? Well for a friends art exhibition she need an imprint of how couples sleep so I got to paint a very very sexy girl friend with paint (naked!) so she could lie on the bed sheet and she got to paint me so I could do the same. Now I thought it would have been fun and it was but god dam not that much fun