Disaster!
Before Xmas the land that my stables resides went up for sale, and land prices being what they were went for nearly 2 million pounds, well beyond the price limit of the lady who rents the land and runs my stables.
So far she's not heard anything about the person that owns it, but it stands to reason that if you pay that much for land you'll wanna build on it, and its a good few acres, enough for several houses, shops, god knows what.
Which leaves the question of, what will happen to the 30 odd horses and ponies that currently reside there.
Its a worrying thought, some of the show Arabs, and other horses that compete will be kept obviously, for breeding and she does own a little bit of land to which to keep them on, some of the others would have good homes, if she put them up for sale, but then there's the worry of what kinda homes they'll end up in, at least at the stables, they get retired off to a small holding when they get too old to work to live out the remaining years in peace.

But what about the likes of little one-eyed Captain? He's well into his 30's, he came to us from the RSPCA after kids attacked him and his constant companion Chelsea with bows and arrows, he's cheeky and full of fun, but far too old really to go and start life over again. What about little Charmer, tied up and beaten with an iron bar? He's still scared of men and cant be used for riding and the laminitus in his feet means he cant be used for a companion pony out in a field.
BamBam too, Manny, Pod, Trooper, all live on painkillers, would someone be willing to pay out masive vet bills for a pony you cant even ride?
And the people that I've known since I was 6 years old and working at the Stables is all they've done from School. What will become of them?
Horses that have characters and are as real to me with personalities as vivid as the people who care for them, will they end up as glue or dogmeat?

So here we are again. Now it seems like my New Years start here, another Year without my Dad.
This year the anniversary has been so much harder to deal with, or maybe last year was like that and I blocked it from my head.
I've been struggling with it all week, the worst thing in work is that there is simply nothing to distract you and stop you thinking about it, and i've brooded on it, and been simply rude and awful to some people that haven't deserved it, I even played a cruel, horrid trick on Welshy New Year's Eve, for no reason other than I felt the need to take it out on someone.
Bless him to pieces, despite my insistance that I'd be fine and the fact that I'd not see him, he insisted on coming down, saying that he'd feel better being only 40 minutes from me, rather than 4 hours away if I needed him.
I took him and his friend to the Cup Game, and we went for a drink in Greenwich afterwards, I shall have to buy him a present or something to say thank you.
and now its the day itself, and I think i've exhausted myself through not being able to sleep for the last two weeks, or sleeping very badly if I have done, and I've spent a great deal of this weekend asleep.
We didnt do much for the Deathday anniversary itself. Brat took himself out and away from us, and Mum was loathe to do anything without him, so we've both moped about the house a little all day.
On Wednesday we're going to see Spamalot for his birthday, and I think he'd have approved of that.
I miss him. I miss him terribly and constantly. And I have no more to say about today than that. And I hope he knows that, somehow.

I absolutely hate this time of year, everything comes flooding back, everything that I more or less manage to hide the rest of the year.
I hate pretending to be normal, happy, bouncy, fun Charbs at work, I hate being in company, but I hate being alone more, cos thats when it hurts more, at least in work I can distract myself because i'm acting so hard to hide the pain.
I hate it. I hate the wrench in my heart as that date gets closer and closer, I hate feeling like I'm going to break down in tears any moment, sometimes I do, luckily always alone and no one knows about it.
I know I have people to fall back on, people who'd be more than willing to help me, but I can't, physically can't bring myself to tell them how much it still hurts
(shit I'm crying now)
Welshy last night, he offered, he's there. I know, he's a good boy. but I snapped at him, told him that I was fine and to leave me alone, that I didnt need his help, although I do, but I still prefer to keep these things to myself, to deal with them on my own.

Anyway. Its time for my usual end of year review.
Its been a good one really. There was New Zealand, I can close my eyes and I'm in the bush, I'm watching the sunset and stars over the Kaikoura mountains. I'm crawling under or through four tonnes of blue ice looking at the bubbles imprisoned in it on the glacier. I'm seeing the baby dolphin play against the waves of our boat, I'm standing on the edge of the bridge, shit scared about jumping off, feeling the fear as my feet dangle out of a plane. I hope the memories of that stay forever.

And I have Welshy. I'm glad, that I found him, glad that I have his friendship, perhaps sometimes I do take him for granted and his willingness to always be the one who takes that godawful 4 hour train journey so we can see each other. I'm very glad too that I realised before it was too late how much he means to me. (I wont get any more soppy and girly, he reads this sometimes!! - and it sickens me!)

I have my job too, I hate it and love it equally, I hate always being poor and bored, I hate the fact that again its nothing degree related, but I love how easy it is, I love the people I work with.

The only real downside to this year, is my Mother's continued attempts to keep me here forever and losing Chris.

So my New Year's ambition is to get a real job doing something I'd love, something degree related at last!

And now to Wish you all a very Happy New Year!!!

My Holiday was great fun! We saw Stonehenge, something I've always wanted to see and one day i'll see it better than just chuntering past in a slow traffic jam!
We hunted for the Wild Dartmoor ponies on Xmas day, eventually finding ourselves up a massive tor looking at an old church, we got lost (thanks to SatNav and her insistance to take the senic route) in several country lanes and once even a farmers yard!
We went to the Eden Project and Plymouth! It was great!

I've been on a bit of a bender lately.
On Wednesday I had to go to some stupid meeting thing at work, talking about how to give talks to the public, we played some silly bonding games, like WinkMurder, I was the only one who knew this game, but I was also the only one there under 40 so maybe its a new game!
Anyway, we then had to do this exercise of telling our life stories.
Urk. I hate telling mine, I hate the idea of sympathy. People at work know my past but only in a throw away sense.
I was gonna give the much edited version of it, when the guy who was leading this exercise interrupted the start of it "I was born in Greenwich Hospital, just 10 minutes walk from work"
With: "Oh so you're the boring saddo who's never left Greenwich in their life"
Which upset me greatly, fuck it still rankles, and the only way to deal with that was to go into heavy stupid detail about listening to Dad die, to having him threaten to hit me, when he went insane and the horrid smell of death and every horrid, pointless to share little detail, about how I tried to get my life back on track again and then got stuck here after my Mams car accident.
I hope I left him feeling a little abashed and ashamed of himself. God knows I'm not here still through lack of trying!
Anyway, this effected me, maybe its the time of year as well, but I started drinking heavily that night, cried myself to sleep and then prepared for our work xmas party the next day, where again I drank stupidly heavily, danced in bare feet across the Great Hall, screaming "I PREDICT A RIOT" to the office staff, trustees (including a peer of the realm!) and curators, who were until then quietly enjoying mulled wine, mince pies and quietly piped carols.
Ooops.
It had a pretty great night, I went with 3 other lads that I work with, who all took it in turns to be my perfect date (one even stole me a rose from the table decorations, didnt have the heart to say I don't do flowers) We got hammered on cheap drinks, danced like loons and I have several drinking injuries to prove it was a good night!
I got up and went to work last night, still sulking over that stupid comment and how shit I viewed my life to be, went to the pub (AGAIN!) with guys from work, and set about drinking heavily again, the lads that I'd been out with last night, were sipping coke and suffering quietly and there I was drinking two drinks to everyone else's one and it all ended dramatically when I suddenly got an attack of the Girly Weepies, disappeared subtly (I hope) to the toilet, cried heavily for a couple of minutes, drunk-texted Welshy with a very dramatic "My life is shit" text and then returned to drink some more, with people none the wiser!
Hurrah! Luckily sanity has resumed today and I'm having a sober day!
We're escaping London tomorrow to go to Devon, no one wants to be at home for Xmas so I'm having a sneaky sicky and we're staying there till the day after Boxing Day. It'll be remote and quiet and peaceful and not a trace of christmas about!
Bah Humbug!
Hope you all have lovely Christmases' and I'll be back on Friday!

"So" I enquired at the end of last nights event. "What are you gonna do with all this bamboo?"
She shrugged. "Just break it up and bin it I guess."
"You cant do that!" I was horrified, I dont know much about plants but wasting them like that seems like a crime to me.
"I'll take one home!"
She shrugged at me again. "Suit yourself."
So that is how at 9pm last night I was struggling down the road carrying a 7 foot tall bamboo plant. I had right difficulty getting him on the bus, cos he's actually taller than a bus and got trapped a lot in traffic lights, over hanging trees, low flying aircraft, that kinda thing.
However he's now safely placed in a corner of my kitchen, awaiting a pot to live in.
I named him Brutus, he looks like a big masculine plant to me!

Hyde - its difficult to say what exactly is my Mum's main problem with Welshy. Mainly I think its jealousy, she's always struggled with the idea that she's not the most important thing in my life, and she's been totally reliant on me for a long time now. Fear of me leaving home is another one I think again because she's relied on me for so long.
I dont really know how to deal with it, other than to try and ignore her as much as possible.

I've been lost in a little daydream just now, remembering how cool it was that I used to be able to take huge 6 foot long strides, which gradually grew longer and longer until i was almost flying and hovering along, whizzing along the ground and I really missed how I couldnt do that anymore and then reality hit me with a huge bang and I feel geniunely sad that that was only a dream I had once and I never have been able to fly.

Still no backing down on the Mothership and her anti-Welshy Stance!

last week in my feverish ramblings I told my Mum about Welshy.
She reacted better than I thought she might.
Although, she refuses to use his real name or even bring him up at all if she can help it. She refers to him as "Your friend"
As in "Is that your friend texting you?"
We went out Christmas shopping with her best mate, The Agraphobic, who spent a great deal of time talking about her eldest sons Girlfriend, normally she'd use this as an excuse to compete against her but she kept stubbornly silent.
Today I happened to mention that I was going to meet him and stay out tomorrow night. I wasnt expecting an invitation for him to stay but I was expecting her to ask to meet him, instead it went as follows
Me "You can meet him if you want."
Her: "Do you want me to?"
Me: "Its up to you."
Her. "I wont then."

hehe, its kinda funny, I wonder how long she can deny his presence?

I have the flu. Proper doctor-diagnosed, signed off of work flu and everything.
I read a article once that claimed most people suffer from 2 colds a year. In my case thats probably about right, but they're always pretty mild and never stop me from struggling into work or getting on with whatever and they pass really quickly as well.
This flu has completely stopped me dead though. I have achey joints, my head hurts. I've gone from proper goose-bumpy, teeth chattering coldness, to having sweat pour off of me. I've had falling down bouts of dizzyness and for two days was unable to leave my bed, as it is, going to the kitchen is still enough to put me out for a good few hours.
I hate it. I hate being ill like this cos I can't actually or show whats wrong with me, so I feel like a fraud, I need like a limb hanging off before I'll give into to the idea that perhaps i'm not so well!
And being ill is so damn boring!
I'm getting strangely addicted to the shopping channels, especially GEMSTV, (although i never wear jewellery and wouldnt dream of buying the tat that they sell)
I'm probably the only person in the world who is still willing to struggle into a job they hate, rather than sit at home snuggled under the bedcovers!

it was CL's wedding over the weekend to UDOBF (who ever expected that one to last?!)
It started pretty badly when on some bad advice i left getting my train tickets to the last minute and had to spend 95 quid to get up there! Ouch! and it took ages for MH to pick me up and find our way back to the hotel.
we dumped our stuff in the hotel room, and headed to the bar - yes we have our priorites sorted! To find a pre-wedding drink going on and I found myself introduced to UDOBF's family, who are all from Denmark and speak such good english it puts mine to shame! although I was a little put out to find they all spoke with an american accent!
I was chatting to his Danish Nanny and younger cousin for ages, his Nans awesome, she was telling me that last year she went backpacking about Europe!
MH pissed me off a little, by telling me that i should be careful of "getting overfriendly with those lads in case they see it as being more than it was" what a lot of nonsense! it was like she felt she had to be Welshy's watchdog for me. Boo to her, she made me quite paranoid about it all.
Saturday and after an iffy start - honestly who has a wedding in November?! It all went off without a hitch and then we had the aftershow party.
We were joined at our table by the two danish cousins and for some reason chatted to them about sharks and the mighty Dennis Rommedahl and the older one told me this was the first wedding he'd been too, let alone the first english wedding and they seemed a bit bemused about the toasts.
then after the meal it was time for the party and first dance and after that apart from the kids the dance floor was empty, apart from the kids messing about so with a few drinks inside us me and MH hit the dancefloor alone, although she got shy so we retreated to the bar after "Living on a Prayer"
After which MH got an attack of the nerves and didnt wanna dance alone on the floor, so i danced on my own pulling some really silly moves to get a laugh out of her and then decided to find a new dancing partner
I found the Danish group sat in a corner and harassed them until one gave in and came and danced with me, poor lad, didnt know half the songs, and I had to explain the concept of cheesy songs to him but after I demonstrated how to do the "Timewarp" and the silly dance to "I will walk 500 miles" He seemed to be really enjoying myself and in my drunken state I attacked him for his bowtie which seemed to alarm him slightly. I guess having a slightly drunken english woman suddenly launch herself at your throat is pretty scary, especially with no prior warning!
MH had found herself to Rock/goth type lads to chat to, one of which was hanging his head in shame at the awfully cheesy music, so i dragged him up with me and the Dane to "hips dont lie" by Shakira and tried to get them all to attempt belly dancing with me, which went as badly as i feared it might. And the three of us danced for a few songs until it was the end of the night and the obligatory slow songs came on, I danced by myself for one of them, with my imaginary partner before begging my two real dancing partners to come play and the Dane came and we had a very proper and formal slow dance.
The party closed so us three MH and another rock/goth lad she'd found headed to the other bar, where she made some comment about always wanting to dance on the table.
"Come up and have a go" invited the barman, she declined, but as if I was gonna let a chance like that down! So I clambered onto the bar, danced alone to music that wasnt there and then clambered over onto the otherside to serve drinks to our new friends.
So we sat up chatting and playing silly beggers till 3am when we decided the most obvious thing to do was decorated CL's car with loo roll and toothpaste and after that I realised that MH and the rock/goth guy she'd pulled had vanished and me and the dane were the only ones left!
so we headed up to his room, me worrying about being homeless and sleeping in a corridor, decided to wake me other dancing friend so i could sleep with him if i couldnt get into my room (The dane was sharing with his brother so that was out) but MH was done and ready to go by then so I gave the Dane a hug goodnight, thanked him for being a gentleman and a fun dancing buddy and headed to bed and luckily woke this morning hangover free!
The only downside of my ace weekend was not remembering to get either of my new friends emails or facebooks so they're lost to me now forever!
Back to work tmorrow! Boo!

christ why am i so tired all the time lately? i think that bug i caught scuba-ing has really wiped me out and i'm struggling to recover from it.
Anyway, my job interview, last wednesday. The Brat was hit by a sudden attack of kindness and offered to drive me up there. which was nice, but also meant leaving at 5am!
Fuck that for a box of spiders.
We did alright really, we only got lost, erm.. what... three times? on what is basically a straight route up the m11, a11, a14 and then some B1065 or sommat. who knows? either way it was basically a straight line up the road to Norfolk.
And we made it on time so who cares?!
i was supposed to spend the day on shift with them, which i was really looking forward to! I met the other applicants for Wednesday, i figure getting through to the final 12 (over two days) out of over a hundred applicants has to be good!
Anyhow I spent my morning in a funky white paper suit helping to clean and weigh some of the millions of injured hedgehogs and birds that had been brought into the centre.
Lots of scrubbing things involved in this job, which i suppose is fair enough, what with the risk of cross-contamination, then we had a quick break, and I helped to catch a seal in one of those slingy things, heave it onto some scales to be weighed prior to release (it was too skinny still so will be kept in a bit longer) and then shifted it into another pen.
We then helped treat and clean some more hedgehogs who had ringworm and it was time for my interview!
It went ok i think, i dont like to say it did or didnt in case it didnt go well. Hopefully i answered all their questions ok, although there was a moment on panic when they asked me to name 10 garden bird species! which normally i can name in my sleep. But when under pressure my mind went a little blank, but we got there in the end.
I spent the afternoon helping to clean out a loosebox that a badger had been living in (more scrubbing!) and was introduced to a cute little muntjac deer before The Brat came and found me and drove me home without us getting lost this time! Huzzah!
And now we play the waiting game. Never one of my favourites! i'm too impatient!

I was talking to V at work today, up in the observatory.
He's one of the FOG's (Funky Old Gits) there's 6 or 7 of these guys who have worked there for the past million years and have a combined age of 1 billion or something, seriously. The youngest I think is at least 54.
They're quite good fun really, and are all completely insane. I think its a combination of the isolation of being up the hill and the high altitude that's done it.
(its quite funky the hill being that high, meant I had a good view of this all day!

For example none of them seem to bat an eyelid that V is married twice, or claims to be. One of his wives is his Belgian Mamma who is 30 stone (i've seen the pictures of them, its proof enough for me).
Sometimes it means I have to endure conversations about "the good old days" or listen baffled while they write long and complaining letter to The Radio Times complaining about the Smug look on the faces of the teams on Eggheads, and as I spend a lot of time up there I'm an honourary FOG and an adoptive granddaughter to them all, they all call me "bub" which slightly irriates me, but they're harmless and it makes my day happier.
Which is nice, I seem to spend all my day getting hugs from them all.
Anyway.
I was positioned out in the cold today, after listening to an almighty rant in our morning brief about them all getting cold. (they tore our manager for the day a new arsehole, it was simply fantastic!)
And I was talking to V about my forthcoming interview (wednesday, i demand good luck messages!) when I was assaulted!
I'd been figdeting with my coat sleeve and making it rustle and somehow a squirrel had snuck upbehind me and assumed that the rustle meant that I was hiding food from him and proceeded to climb up my trouser leg to inspect what exactly it was I was hiding in my sleeve!
cheeky sod!

I didnt even see my attacker creep up on me! It was a unprovoked attack!

Remember the days when i used to complain about being bored? do ya? huh?
well i think i've gone in the extreme the other way! i worked it out the other day that the last day i had some time off to do absolutely nothing but sleep in, watch daytime telly and slob about the house eating ice cream was the 16th of september.
since then i have been just maniacally busy, theres' been work, overtime, events that i've worked out, scuba, football and trips to the pub, there's been visiting the Lizard and going to Bristol for CL and applying for about 50 million jobs and keeping in touch with Welshy.
Its no wonder that i'm slightly run down, blogging had to take a back seat and i'm fighting off a stupid cold (every time i cough, i utter the words, argh stupid cough!) anyone that'd think the cough'd learn from that that it's not wanted and sod off.
And its still not finished, my next day off is saturday, friday night i'm going to a friend from works leaving drinks, Welshy is down so i'll be *ahem* entertaining him the rest of the night getting up, rushing back home for football, doing some of my mums coursework and then getting ready for work, before i go to bed tonight i need to have booked all my stuff for the trip to norfolk next week.

anyway, perhaps if i'll get time in the next century i'll fill you guys in with the Mothership situation, its not good. I'm worried about her, I fear she might be suffering from some kinda depression. I dunno. But that's another day!
Because! I promised to tell you guys about Scuba and tell you about Scuba I shall!
Again JF proved herself to be an utterly awesome person by volunteering selflessly to be our own personal taxi and took us the 25 minutes out to the wee village of sapcote, where our B and B was near to Stoney Cove which is really cool and has all sorts down there, like a submarine! and a helicopter! and a bus! and a plane cockpit!
(and then taking us to the pub for a meal on saturday and then home again on Sunday.
Like I mentioned it was an utterly fucking freezing weekend and I still havent mastered the art of dressing in a wetsuit.
nor have I mastered the art of effortlessly heaving around a 12l tank of air, 8k of weights and putting on flippers, mask and snorkel without nearly overbalancing and falling flat on my face.
as much as i hate to admit it, i'm only small and fairly weak, so after one dive all my muscles were shaking and i barely had the energy to climb up and undress.
So I had to do that twice on the saturday and after that I was attacked by the Cold Virus!
All my nose blocked up and my voice grew hoarser and hoarser until it vanished!
So I tried to make it better when we went out by eating a fuckoff icecream.
Sunday I felt absolutely rotten and we were always told not to dive if you had a bunged up nose, ear whatever because of the problems with equalising the air spaces in your body and not having ears/lungs/head explode.
so sensible thing would be for me to not dive and postpone my final until april or later on when it was warmer and i was better, but as we all know i have a stupid stubborn streak and ignored all ssensible advice told the Evil Cold Virus to fuck off and went down anway.
so we went down and instantly i had problems equalising, i'd never had so much pain in my life in my ears, i really thought that my eardrums had burst, and funny thing was it was just in one section, of the lake.
once i was deeper it was fine, but it also so happened to be the place were were doing some of our dive proceduures, which i managed to cock up spectacularly, while sobbing in pain into my mask.
but i struggled through until the last dive, by which time i'd mastered the art of coughing underwater without spitting out my airpipe (always a handy skill!) and i had to take all my stupidly heavy gear off, and put it on again. and by this time i was utterly exhausted, freezing cold, and utterly pissed off with the entire thing. In fact I was virtually incapable of putting my gear back on, I just had no strength left to keep me upright in the water let alone put my gear on.
And I was on the brink of telling my examiner to "fuck the fuck off, i didnt care about his poxy exam and i didnt care if i fucking failed or not"
But again my stupid stubborn ness won through and i somehow managed to heave myself back into my gear, sobbing with frustration all the while and with more than a little help get dressed again and make it to the surface where i was helped out of the water and onto the shore and then had to spend 20 minutes recovering before i could strip out and warm up!
but! i qualified! hurrah for me! even if i have spent the last week struggling to get better!
Here I am on a slightly happier Saturday!

I am now a fully qualified scuba diver!
i've spent the weekend in freezing leicester in an even more freezing cold lake. The fish were amazing though and I swam near a submarine and a airplane cockpit.
i might tell you more and show you a pic or two tomorrow, i'm dying from exposure/hypothermia as well as my cold and sheer utter exhaustion.
Oh and i have a interview! for something degree related! finally! Huzzah!

So I'm back from Bristol, where I had a fab weekend, introduced Welshy to MH and CL, I think they liked him, I hope so, and he reckons he likes them too.
We all went out (well except Welshy - he'd just look daft dressed as a bunny girl) for CL's Hen Night, met her bridesmaids, gate crashed a wedding party - Imagine the co-incidence for that!
ate a ridiculous amount of take away and drank a reasonable amount and then came home to the room I was sharing in the Travel Inn with Welshy only to be interrupted by a guy knocking on the door at 3am asking if we had any cocaine we could have!
Its been a hectic couple of weekends, and up next weekend is my final part of my scuba exam in Leicestershire!

I'd asked for this friday and sunday off (I already had cleared the saturday agess ago) so I could go to CL's hen night (she wants us to be Bunny Girls! How on earth did she dream up that one? I refuse point blank to be one) In Bristol, I even convinced Welshy to take Friday off of work and spend it with me in bristol and then wait for up for me on Saturday.
So the little man gave me the time off and all was going great, until this weekend when I found that he couldn't do it! AARGH! I'd already spent fuckloads on travel and accomodation, it was a hairy few hours until two kind friends decided to take pity on me and swap days off around so I can still go.
I promised to bring them both back a present, they're nice lads. I'm sure they'll appreciate a Bunny Girl or something equally tacky from Weston's numerous tourist tat shops.
I was also in for DayTime OverTime, expecting to be put into a gallery, and at least given a role, even if I had no actual work to do, in stead I roamed aimlessly all day, talking to people and then decided to go home at half 4. Hurrah!

I also passed my diving theory and confined water dives! Next weekend I'm heading off to Leicestershire to do the proper open water part! Fingers crossed!

So this weekend started off on a bad note, when i managed to get to Kings Cross just in time to see my train pull out of the station. Curses!
So i tried to swap my ticket onto another train which normally I can do at St Pancras without any bother, but instead I was harassed but some stupid jobsworth cow who demanded to see proof that i'd been held up at blackheath, when I couldn't prove it, she claimed that it'd be a waste of her time to phone up the station and check it and made me buy another ticket! at 30 quid! ouch! I was really pissed off when she started lecturing me about how I should buy the tickets on the day at the station and not have that problem again.
Well if I could get the same deal and pay 12 pound to go up instead of 30 quid I would! Stupid Bitch!
So I was late heading up to see the Lizard and my new train meant I ended up spending two hours sat in Grantham train station, which really isnt as exciting as it sounds, although they make fucking nice ham and cheese toasties!
Finally however I made it to Skegness and met Lizard, who's still as batty as ever, she took me to the beach, and to Boston to see Ratatooie, which is awesome and we both got over excited about ice cream and fizzy frozen drinks and then she made a special detour to drive me past a place called Jolly Farmers Lane, honestly! hurrah for funky place names!
On Saturday we went to Natureland to visit the seals for feeding time and then we had chips on the beach, as is the law when you go to the seaside and then she drove me to Mablethorpe which is a place that I've had on the brain ever since my Seal Field Trip way back in uni, i dunno what it is about the name, it just sorta draws me to it, so she drove me there (past a place called the Jolly Common! I think its the law to be happy and jolly in Skeggy!) and we played in the sand dunes and made a sand dolphin and examined a fish skeleton that we found and then came home and made cakes!
and then went out for drinks, now Lizard is 5 foot nothing and is as skinny as, she weighs about 6 stone soaking wet, so it dont take much to get her drunk, let alone cocktails and sambuca.
So we got drunk, danced to cheese, watched a great drag act, before retiring home and deciding to walk up Lizards' stairs and dance about her floor pretending to be a chimpanzee.
And then the obvious and logical next step from that was to drunkenly call Welshy and MH and leave them voicemail messages explaining that we were chimpanzees and they were invited to Skeggy to roll on the floor mimicking chimps too.
So all in all it was a pretty ace weekend! despite the inevitable fallout the next day as we were informed of our drunken escapades!

tomorrow i'm scooting off to Skegness to see The Lizard, it's pretty exciting, she's just got herself a cushy number teaching in an environmental education centre, so i'm off to the coast.
its time to move on at awork, nearly all the people i get on with, and go drinking with have left to go to other better paid and more interesting jobs or go back to uni so i'm left with all the old fogies, who to be fair are really nice, but still, i dont wanna get in a rut there.
so i'm still job searching sigh.
and Welshy has himself a job, go him, although this is a huge bitch as before he just pottered down whenever i had two days of in the week, now everythings all based around my one weekend off a month.
big boo.
still! away to Lizards! yay!

today at work. i pretty much spent the day breaking open Sweet Chestnuts that fell from the tree and either eating them or feeding them to squirrels.
Its nice to know I earn my money!
Also I overheard this snippet of conversation:

"Of course, the food tasted better there as its a smaller house"

What the hell?! where and how does that work? and how do you work out what a small house is? do you do it by number of rooms? whether its a flat or bungalow? or by cubic feet?

Yesterday I went for my first scuba diving lesson!
It was dead exciting! And its so odd and a little creepy being able to breathe under water! Its just wrong!
We had to do masses of home work before and then go over it and then sit a little test which took about 2 hours and then an hour actually playing in the pool.
We did all the boring safety stuff, how to set it up and then we got in the water and we learnt how to clear our masks when they fill, how to share someones air supply, how to rescue yours when it falls out your mouth, how to inflate and deflate out BCD (buoyancy control device, dontcha know!?)
I kept laughing which made my mask move about and fill with water and you burp lots! I guess its something to do with the air spaces in your body adjusting and moving about!

I cant wait for next week's session!