Back, rested and back to work...
Bummer...
Enough of the moaning already!! I have just spent one of the most amazing weeks of my life with some of the most special people I know and I'm riding high because of it. So what have I been up to? Funny you should ask...
I got tattooed. It's been a long time coming (somewhere around 15 years) but I finally found something that I would be happy spending the rest of my life with. I had often thought about the usual stuff, things like band names or other pop culture icons that would instantly tell people who I was or maybe even something a little out of the ordinary. At one point I had the idea of combining the lot and having a barcode tattoo which would actually be the barcode of my favourite album. The problem there is that opinions change as does technology, barcodes will become obsolete and I would be left with the equivalent of a tattoo that reads two-and-sixpence!!
Inspired by the lovely Ms Hamstera I went to a tattoo parlour to get myself an eyebrow piercing (something I have also been thinking about for a good long while). We had to wait for a while because the woman who does piercings had gone to lunch but it gave me a bit of time to browse through the designs. A few days earlier I had seen a picture of an oriental dragon which I thought might translate well into a tattoo so I had a quick look to see if there were any of those already available (yeah, duh!!). I turned out there were loads of them but one really caught my eye so I bit the bullet and made an appointment to have it done. To say that Che was apprehensive about it would be an understatement but the truth is that having a tattoo was an inevitability for me and the design that I found was exactly what I was looking for.
I am not new to tattoo places having had to wait for people who were being tattooed so I have spent hours flicking through designs in the past but nothing has ever grabbed me in the way that my dragon did. So here, in an effort to show off, is the finished (and a little flaky, sorry) product:
Did it hurt? Well, yeah. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be though and, apart from the occasional twinge when I bumped into things, it remained pain-free too.
Having been painted we went into to town, grabbed a well deserved coffee as well as a few traveling essentials and hit the train for Exeter (insert whoops of sublime joy here).
It turns out that Che is a great traveling partner (although this will probably be the first she'll know of it). The entire journey was a piece of cake with only a VERY minor hiccup - When we got to Brizzle Park Way to change trains Che bumped into her lecturer. Now, generally this would be a happy coincidence but it was the lecturer whose lecture she had skipped to be with me whilst I had my tat done!! Fortunately, he was in a good mood as he was off to see loved ones for the weekend so we got away with it (insert further whoops of joy). Despite the second train running slightly late we made good time and hit the station only a few minutes late. Lee was there waiting with a huge smile on his face and I could tell straight away that we were in for an amazing weekend. We checked in to The Helliers guesthouse which, contrary to popular belief is the hottest place on Earth. It is said that the migrating rocks of Death Valley are simply trying to get to The Helliers for a warm break. We checked in as mentioned, threw our bags into the room and then hit our first snag - Mrs Lady the Landlady wanted the cash up front!! This was a bit of a surprise for me because my experience of B and B has always been services first, cash to follow so I did the usual human thing of looking in my wallet in the vane hope that the wallet fairy had deposited the requisite amount of cash into it - alas no. Fortunately Mrs Lady gave me a few hours grace and we headed off to Lee's (less than) humble abode for drinks, laughs and Most Haunted!!
We walked back from Lee's house (not very far) via the cash point and then back to the guest house. By now it was getting of for 2am and we had to be up for the latest serving of breakfast - 8:30am!! I was going to try to negotiate a later breakfast but the demonic look in Mrs Lady's eyes made me back down VERY quickly.
Somehow we managed to get up in time and munch our way through a fairly passable breakfast. Then we set a precedent for the weekend by returning to bed to get some sleep. Unfortunately I couldn't sleep so I spent an hour or so reading comics and finding fun things to do in the hottest room on the face of the planet. The rest of Friday was spent shopping, drinking White Hot Chocolate in the Boston Tea Party (a rather swanky stundenty coffee house) and chilling with Lee. A wonderful day on the whole but, once again, we didn't get back to the B+B until after 2 and then we were up again for breakfast - This was already becoming a chore.
I don't think that we had planned it this way but we seemed to spend VERY little time in the guest house and it was quickly becoming the low-light of the whole weekend. Not only did we have to keep getting up at stupid hours to eat food we had to suffer the assorted warblings of Mr Lady (the landlady's husband) and the occasional throaty vocal stylings of Mrs Lady. It was soon becoming apparent why it was named the HELLiers.
Saturday was a blinding day. We had decided before the trip that we were going to hit Exmouth for a few hours so that we could have a look round and take a few photos. Due to train times and other factors we didn't get to Exmouth until about 4pm and it was slowly getting dark. Thankfully we managed to get some great photos and a mediocre but HUGE meal in The Deer Leap pub on the sea front. WE got back to Lee's with JUST enough time for us to get cleaned up for our next adventure:
Lee's Dad, Phil, used to manage a band called "Dodgey Practice" who happened to playing a gig in a nearby pub (insert further whoops of ecstasy) they were truly great and reminded me of a good version of a couple of bands I used to be in (more on those when I can be coerced). All three of us got hammered in the best possible way and rolled out of the pub and back to Lee's for further shenanigans and yet another early morning arrival back at the guest house. At this point I was becoming worried that there were no obvious living quarters in the B+B for Mr and Mrs Lady and so my theory that they were insubstantial manifestations of evil was beginning to hold some water!
I'll be honest, I have very little memory of Sunday except that we went to town again and got back late again (these late night/early morning combinations had begun to take their toll). I'm pretty sure that the weather was awful but things always look darker with a hangover. We hung out in town for a while as I recall and went for a rather tasty Sunday lunch in the Hogshead pub. The night is a complete mystery to me but I know we tried to get a relatively early night because something monumentally bad happened...
Due to Che and myself being almost unbelievably tired we got a taxi from Lee's to the B+B. Now, as I mentioned earlier, this is not the greatest of distances but I still seemed to find enough time to lose my camera! We got out of the taxi, collected our stuff, watched it leave, grabbed the keys and then it struck me: Didn't I have my camera on me when we left Lee's house? To be honest I was a bit too tired to care to deeply about it but, as you know by now, cameras are becoming a bit of an obsession with me. I called Lee who gave me the number of the cab firm and (against all odds) I got the camera back about 20 minutes later!! My faith in humanity was restored. The big problem, however, was that the excitement had woken me up a bit and I didn't get to sleep for a while.
Monday morning was our final morning of torture in the Hellhouse and Che just couldn't take it. I dragged myself downstairs, made Che's apologies and chomped my way through yet more meat products. Stealing some toast for teh hamsta I ran back upstairs and set about lying around thinking about packing. We were supposed to be out by 10am, we actually got out about 10:30. The rest of the day was spent avoiding getting on trains. We met up with Lee and went into to town to do some more shopping (I dread to think how much I actually spent). Che picked up a lovely pink and brown O'Neills hat (which looks great and has solicited many comments) and a gorgeous corset-style top (drool). I on the other hand picked up DVDs and then some more DVDs before going for a coffee and then some more DVDs!!
The fight for a taxi to take us to the station was impressive. Taxis are universally bad at time keeping and are deeply aware of the fact. If they say they will be 10 minutes you can guarantee it will either be 30 minutes or 20 seconds. If you stipulate that you are going to catch a train they will ask you the time and then tell you it's not possible. You could have called on Tuesday for a train on Thursday but there is no way on Earth that they will be able to make it so they just give up and accept defeat. By some complete fluke we managed to get through to the Do-Or-Die Taxi Company who managed, through a combination of severe driving, rugby-based chit-chat and time manipulation, to get us there with scant seconds to spare.* Once we were on the train it was plain sailing (well training and taxiing) all the way home.
The rest of the week has been strange in places but otherwise a little less eventful than the Exeter experience. For information about a significant event that took place on Thursday I would read Che's Weebl blog and look for an entry entitled ":warning: :warning: :warning:"
Now for some pictures of the trip:
Finally, things may change around here pretty soon. I have bought my own domain (www.dibbie.com) so hopefully all this will be moving there when I can get 'round to coding the site.
Today's Word: Stifling
Today's Mood: Suspended - I'm just permanently happy at the moment.
*Well, it would have been scant seconds had it not been for the fact that we were dealing with the British rail system and the train was delayed by 30 minutes!!
Bummer...
Enough of the moaning already!! I have just spent one of the most amazing weeks of my life with some of the most special people I know and I'm riding high because of it. So what have I been up to? Funny you should ask...
I got tattooed. It's been a long time coming (somewhere around 15 years) but I finally found something that I would be happy spending the rest of my life with. I had often thought about the usual stuff, things like band names or other pop culture icons that would instantly tell people who I was or maybe even something a little out of the ordinary. At one point I had the idea of combining the lot and having a barcode tattoo which would actually be the barcode of my favourite album. The problem there is that opinions change as does technology, barcodes will become obsolete and I would be left with the equivalent of a tattoo that reads two-and-sixpence!!
Inspired by the lovely Ms Hamstera I went to a tattoo parlour to get myself an eyebrow piercing (something I have also been thinking about for a good long while). We had to wait for a while because the woman who does piercings had gone to lunch but it gave me a bit of time to browse through the designs. A few days earlier I had seen a picture of an oriental dragon which I thought might translate well into a tattoo so I had a quick look to see if there were any of those already available (yeah, duh!!). I turned out there were loads of them but one really caught my eye so I bit the bullet and made an appointment to have it done. To say that Che was apprehensive about it would be an understatement but the truth is that having a tattoo was an inevitability for me and the design that I found was exactly what I was looking for.
I am not new to tattoo places having had to wait for people who were being tattooed so I have spent hours flicking through designs in the past but nothing has ever grabbed me in the way that my dragon did. So here, in an effort to show off, is the finished (and a little flaky, sorry) product:
Did it hurt? Well, yeah. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be though and, apart from the occasional twinge when I bumped into things, it remained pain-free too.
Having been painted we went into to town, grabbed a well deserved coffee as well as a few traveling essentials and hit the train for Exeter (insert whoops of sublime joy here).
It turns out that Che is a great traveling partner (although this will probably be the first she'll know of it). The entire journey was a piece of cake with only a VERY minor hiccup - When we got to Brizzle Park Way to change trains Che bumped into her lecturer. Now, generally this would be a happy coincidence but it was the lecturer whose lecture she had skipped to be with me whilst I had my tat done!! Fortunately, he was in a good mood as he was off to see loved ones for the weekend so we got away with it (insert further whoops of joy). Despite the second train running slightly late we made good time and hit the station only a few minutes late. Lee was there waiting with a huge smile on his face and I could tell straight away that we were in for an amazing weekend. We checked in to The Helliers guesthouse which, contrary to popular belief is the hottest place on Earth. It is said that the migrating rocks of Death Valley are simply trying to get to The Helliers for a warm break. We checked in as mentioned, threw our bags into the room and then hit our first snag - Mrs Lady the Landlady wanted the cash up front!! This was a bit of a surprise for me because my experience of B and B has always been services first, cash to follow so I did the usual human thing of looking in my wallet in the vane hope that the wallet fairy had deposited the requisite amount of cash into it - alas no. Fortunately Mrs Lady gave me a few hours grace and we headed off to Lee's (less than) humble abode for drinks, laughs and Most Haunted!!
We walked back from Lee's house (not very far) via the cash point and then back to the guest house. By now it was getting of for 2am and we had to be up for the latest serving of breakfast - 8:30am!! I was going to try to negotiate a later breakfast but the demonic look in Mrs Lady's eyes made me back down VERY quickly.
Somehow we managed to get up in time and munch our way through a fairly passable breakfast. Then we set a precedent for the weekend by returning to bed to get some sleep. Unfortunately I couldn't sleep so I spent an hour or so reading comics and finding fun things to do in the hottest room on the face of the planet. The rest of Friday was spent shopping, drinking White Hot Chocolate in the Boston Tea Party (a rather swanky stundenty coffee house) and chilling with Lee. A wonderful day on the whole but, once again, we didn't get back to the B+B until after 2 and then we were up again for breakfast - This was already becoming a chore.
I don't think that we had planned it this way but we seemed to spend VERY little time in the guest house and it was quickly becoming the low-light of the whole weekend. Not only did we have to keep getting up at stupid hours to eat food we had to suffer the assorted warblings of Mr Lady (the landlady's husband) and the occasional throaty vocal stylings of Mrs Lady. It was soon becoming apparent why it was named the HELLiers.
Saturday was a blinding day. We had decided before the trip that we were going to hit Exmouth for a few hours so that we could have a look round and take a few photos. Due to train times and other factors we didn't get to Exmouth until about 4pm and it was slowly getting dark. Thankfully we managed to get some great photos and a mediocre but HUGE meal in The Deer Leap pub on the sea front. WE got back to Lee's with JUST enough time for us to get cleaned up for our next adventure:
Lee's Dad, Phil, used to manage a band called "Dodgey Practice" who happened to playing a gig in a nearby pub (insert further whoops of ecstasy) they were truly great and reminded me of a good version of a couple of bands I used to be in (more on those when I can be coerced). All three of us got hammered in the best possible way and rolled out of the pub and back to Lee's for further shenanigans and yet another early morning arrival back at the guest house. At this point I was becoming worried that there were no obvious living quarters in the B+B for Mr and Mrs Lady and so my theory that they were insubstantial manifestations of evil was beginning to hold some water!
I'll be honest, I have very little memory of Sunday except that we went to town again and got back late again (these late night/early morning combinations had begun to take their toll). I'm pretty sure that the weather was awful but things always look darker with a hangover. We hung out in town for a while as I recall and went for a rather tasty Sunday lunch in the Hogshead pub. The night is a complete mystery to me but I know we tried to get a relatively early night because something monumentally bad happened...
Due to Che and myself being almost unbelievably tired we got a taxi from Lee's to the B+B. Now, as I mentioned earlier, this is not the greatest of distances but I still seemed to find enough time to lose my camera! We got out of the taxi, collected our stuff, watched it leave, grabbed the keys and then it struck me: Didn't I have my camera on me when we left Lee's house? To be honest I was a bit too tired to care to deeply about it but, as you know by now, cameras are becoming a bit of an obsession with me. I called Lee who gave me the number of the cab firm and (against all odds) I got the camera back about 20 minutes later!! My faith in humanity was restored. The big problem, however, was that the excitement had woken me up a bit and I didn't get to sleep for a while.
Monday morning was our final morning of torture in the Hellhouse and Che just couldn't take it. I dragged myself downstairs, made Che's apologies and chomped my way through yet more meat products. Stealing some toast for teh hamsta I ran back upstairs and set about lying around thinking about packing. We were supposed to be out by 10am, we actually got out about 10:30. The rest of the day was spent avoiding getting on trains. We met up with Lee and went into to town to do some more shopping (I dread to think how much I actually spent). Che picked up a lovely pink and brown O'Neills hat (which looks great and has solicited many comments) and a gorgeous corset-style top (drool). I on the other hand picked up DVDs and then some more DVDs before going for a coffee and then some more DVDs!!
The fight for a taxi to take us to the station was impressive. Taxis are universally bad at time keeping and are deeply aware of the fact. If they say they will be 10 minutes you can guarantee it will either be 30 minutes or 20 seconds. If you stipulate that you are going to catch a train they will ask you the time and then tell you it's not possible. You could have called on Tuesday for a train on Thursday but there is no way on Earth that they will be able to make it so they just give up and accept defeat. By some complete fluke we managed to get through to the Do-Or-Die Taxi Company who managed, through a combination of severe driving, rugby-based chit-chat and time manipulation, to get us there with scant seconds to spare.* Once we were on the train it was plain sailing (well training and taxiing) all the way home.
The rest of the week has been strange in places but otherwise a little less eventful than the Exeter experience. For information about a significant event that took place on Thursday I would read Che's Weebl blog and look for an entry entitled ":warning: :warning: :warning:"
Now for some pictures of the trip:
Finally, things may change around here pretty soon. I have bought my own domain (www.dibbie.com) so hopefully all this will be moving there when I can get 'round to coding the site.
Today's Word: Stifling
Today's Mood: Suspended - I'm just permanently happy at the moment.
*Well, it would have been scant seconds had it not been for the fact that we were dealing with the British rail system and the train was delayed by 30 minutes!!
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