Three Peak (Or should that be Twin Peaks?) Challenge

Right. Been a while since a decent post, so this one is going to be mammoth. Prepare yourself for a sore bum. Or just stop reading and do something useful.

Last weekend (29 April), 4 of us set off to the west coast of Scotland to attempt the 3 Peak Challenge. For those of you not in the know, the challenge requires you to climb the highest peaks in Scotland, England and Wales (Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon respectively) in under 24 hours, including all traveling time. To give some scope, that's about 475 miles driving, something over 20 miles of walking and over 3000m (12,000ft) vertical climbing! There wasn't much reason for us doing it, mostly to prove our manly prowess, but towards the end Christian decided to raise money for this mission trip to Lithuania and suddenly there was more incentive to make sure we completed it.

Anyway, what follows is a relatively full account of what happened. Before I left I read someone else's blog of their experience and found it pretty useful, so who knows, maybe someone will google it and come up with me!

The day didn't start amazingly well. I played football in the morning (which we won), but 2 minutes before the end, someone slid in on me and landed right on the bone on the inside of my foot. Ow. And then we had agreed to leave no later than 2pm to get to Fort William and I, as usual hadn't pact properly, so it was pushing 2:30 by the time we got away. The original plan was to leave the car park at Ben Nevis at 5:30, so we could be off the summit while it was still light, and have as little as possible to walk in the dark. But ultimately, Thom, Christian, my dad and I finally ended up leaving the car at 5:57pm, setting off at a fast pace, quickly noticing that we had accidentally parked at the main carpark, not the recommended one by the Youth Hostel that might have shaved 15-20 minutes off our time.
The Start. Me, Christian, Thom and my Dad (he's the old one).

The climb was pretty straightforward, and included lots of showing off and impressing all the people coming down who couldn't believe we were starting to climb so late in the day, by describing our mammoth task. It got a little harder when we hit the snow about 40 minutes from the top, but fortunately it was not the middle of the afternoon and the soft bits had hardened up a little. About 20 minutes from the top we met another group doing the 3 peaks coming down. They looked very professional with 2 walking sticks each (we had 2 between 4 of us) and fancy map holders. But beating them gave us something to aim for and we pressed on and reach the summit in 2hrs 50, which was 40 minutes ahead of what we'd been told to expect. The descent was super fun, and we were able to leap and run down the snowy bits (until dad hit a particularly deep bit and nearly twisted his knee. We also managed to leave the head torches off until half and hour before the bottom although, me being the organized type, had forgotten his and had to rely on my bike lights (which I'm sure were brighter than my torch anyway!). We hit the bottom in 2:10ish, giving us a total of about 5 hours, which we originally thought was an hour ahead of schedule, but turned out to be about on time.

The best bit had to be walking up the west face as the sun went down. Completely clear days on Nevis are rare, and to be climbing as the sun goes down was something pretty darn special. Words can't really do it justice.

Dad on his way to the top.This was where it got hard

Lochaber from near the top.We're the highest people in Britain!

So as we continued on our journey we made our next mistake. We wanted to get some hot food (super noodles not being particularly appetising after 11pm) and Dad due to his ethical stance didn't want to eat at the McDonalds which I'd heard (on other 3 Peak sites) was open until 12. So we parked up in Fort William and walked down the main street looking for the chip shop. Unfortunately, due to Fort William being a typical Scottish backwater town and not at all set up for tourists (despite currently hosting a huge Superbike festival and the annual UK Mountain Bike championships, not to mention thousands of walkers), and every thing shuts at 9. Except for the pubs of course. So we went off to find McDonalds, and guess what? Yep, that was closed too. So advice to people planning to do this challenge, don't rely on civilisation to pull you through, cos you'll waste 20 minutes doing so.

So instead we cracked open the sausage rolls I'd thoughtfully bought from Tesco the day before (after a trip to the aquarium with Beth. A great day incidentally) and settled down for some sleep. Dad drove to Glasgow and Christian took over as far as the services on the M6 at Penrith. Somehow, in my dazed and confused state at around 2:30am, I was persuaded to purchase a 'MOTO traditional breakfast'. To anyone else in this position, DON'T! It was turd. And I had to forgo this month's rent to pay for it. So after wasting another 20 minutes greasing my stomach and refueling, I gallantly offered to drive.

On reflection this was somewhat foolish, but someone had to do it. I'd had about 2 and half hours of semi-sleep, which I decided was enough to take on the roads of the lake district. At least the curves kept me awake. After a couple of hours of unmarked hairpin bends and fox-avoidance, we arrived in Wasdale Head somewhere shortly before 5. We quickly kitted up and charged up the hill (I don't really want to call it a mountain).

Off again.

Personally, I found the middle section the hardest part of the whole trip. I couldn't really get into a rhythm, the grease of the rubber sausages was sloshing around my gut, and I hadn't had any chocolate for a while, and I was trying to keep up with Christian who was marching off at such a speed that Dad was asking 'what country he was invading'. It wasn't much fun. Making it particularly tough were the songs going round my head which I couldn't remove. First on the play list was the Numa Numa song (with the fat guy on the webcam), followed by the Indiana Jones theme and then the worst f the lot, Wannabe by the Spice Girls. This last one wouldn't budge and also reappeared on the way down Snowdon. Eughhh.


And then came our next mistake. Most advice will tell you not to take a certain route due to 'severe erosion'. I had read this but duly forgot, and so we found ourselves scrambling up vertical scree to reach the ridge, blinding the person below us in the process. It was tough, but probably still quicker than the other path.

unfortunately the picture doesn't quite convey the angle of the scree...

The summit was conquered at around 7, and was marked by the calling (and waking up) of various friends and family members. Indeed was a beautiful moment, to be virtually the only people up the mountain at dawn, with spectacular views all around.


Summit view

So we climbed Scafell Pike in around 3hours 20 (1:50 up, 1:30 down), a good 40 minutes ahead of the guideline times. With Wasdale Head being at the end of a very long cul-de-sac, we were determined to get out before all the bank holiday weekend walkers arrived and so had to abandon Dad's plans of making porridge in the car park. Thom took the driving reigns and we charged off towards Wales.

It should be noted that as we descended, we came across the other group of 3 peakers, climbing up, with one man down. I've no idea where we overtook them, especially with our prolonged stop in Fort William, but we managed to overturn what was probably a 20 minute advantage to them into a half hour advantage for us!
Christian gets some 'quality' sleep
The journey from Wasdale to Llanberis (where Snowdon is) is supposed to take about 4 and a half hours, and for the first time, I started to get a little nervous about completing the challenge. The traffic on the A55 was horrendous and for half an hour we were barely making it over 40 miles an hour. Anyway, we made it to the start of the Watkin's Path with the clock running at 21:40, meaning we had a little over 4 hours to make the climb.

To those of you who know Snowdon, you may e wondering why we took the Watkin Path. Indeed, it is also advised against for this challenge due to the last 200 vertical meters being steep scree and therefore knackering and unsuitable for climbers who've had no sleep and already done 2 mountains. The advised route is the Pyg Trail, starting at about 360m above sea level (meaning you have much less distance to climb). As our luck would have it (typically), the car park was full (one of the reasons a recommended driver is recommended is so that they can drop you off here), so we had to carry on round to the start of the Watkins Path at a majestic height of 76m. Its pretty depressing actually, because as you pass the car park, which sits on a ridge, you see the valley just drop away from you and you know you have to climb aaaall the way out.

So we pressed on and on. Accompanied by the Spice Girls the pace was fast and not at all demoralised by all the people who kept telling us we had miles to go as they were coming down. My personal favourite was the gadget freak who glee fully told me as I scrambled up the big rocks and scree "Don't worry, you're very close, only 160m to go!". Right. 160m. That's in vertical height, which works out at about 16% of my total climb, all of which is up this flipping death trap, and you say I'm very close?? Needless to say, I wasn't happy, and was indeed still a good 20 minutes or so from the top, which when we reached the summit in 2hr 20, shouldn't be regarded as very close. Close, but not very close.
What I orginally thought was the top. At this point we were on the wrong path next to a rather large cliff. Notice the German woman in red with exceedingly large pack, who had persuaded us that this was the correct path.


Anyway, the most demoralising thing was to reach the summit and discover, munching on their sandwiches, the other 3 peak group, who had just triumphantly climbed the Pyg trail. Evidently the man down had become the designated driver and they'd been dropped off at the car park. My indignation at them beating us resulted in the declaration that the Pyg trail is for girls, and in fact, they hadn't climbed the whole mountain. We did it the manly way. So there.

The descent went smoothly, apart from a near disaster when Christian and I toyed with the idea of cutting a huge corner in the track, which would have probably involved us falling into a crevice, ending up in a black hole and being dumped at the top of Nevis or something. Anyway, we still had enough energy and adrenaline flowing round to run the last kilometer or so. This was the most satisfying part of the whole thing, running past the people who'd been descending whilst we were struggling to the top, especially that guy!

And so it was that we completed the challenge in a triumphant 23 hours and 22 minutes (Dad and Thom coming in around 23:35). I'm convinced that if we'd not faffed around in Fort William, been stuck in traffic on the A55 and taken the Pyg trail, then 22 hours would have been easily achievable.
Lets do it again...

All in all, it was an awesome experience. A great way to see creation at it's finest, and lots of fun male bonding. Probably the hardest part was waking up in a petrol station at some stupid time in the middle of the night, realising I wasn't in my bed and wondering why on earth were were driving to another mountain. Its fair to say my motivation was pretty low then.

If I had to give advice to people doing it, I'd first suggest not to bring any sausage rolls, unless you eat them straight away, because they STINK. And the smell wont go away. The best bit about having a designated driver is they can cook stuff for you, meaning you don't have to stop in dingy service stations for crap food. And you can do the girly route up Snowdon if you want. Apologies for it being so long. If I was any good at web design, I would have put each mountain on a separate page. Oh, and compedes are a lifesaver!

God is Faithful.

And what is this phenomenon about The Notebook? Someone please enlighten me.

He's going for distance, he's going for speed...

My social rant is still pending....However, I have more pertinent stuff to write about. Originally this would have been about my diving trip at the weekend - beautiful scenery, great weather and pretty good diving. I could have regaled you with stories of the wood cabin we stayed in, the stories round the bonfire and the awesome 'first barbecue of the year'.







But I don't want to write about that anymore. Last night I experienced this.

Now I've no idea what 'hives' are, and I was spared the diarrhea and vomiting, but I got a full quota of the rashes, itching and nausea. Basically last night I went out for dinner with my Granny and my cousins, and having spotted mussels on the starter menu, munched my way through 25 or so of them. About half way through the main course (a tasty Calzone pizza), I noticed2 or 3 of what seemed to be bites on my stomach and legs. Passing them off as spiting of the fleas which I must evidently be carrying, I soldiered on with the meal. However, by the coffee, the itching had got worse and I thought I was going to hurl. A visit to the bathroom did not manage to procure any vomit (maintaining my record of not throwing up since my infamous incident at the White House in 1999), but did confirm that my body was now covered in a red and white blotchy rash.

To cut a longish story slighty shorter, we visited my aunt (a doctor) who confirmed that it was an allergy, despite me never having a reaction before, reassured me that I wasn't going to die and suggested I had a cold shower to reduce the burning pain from the itch. So I went up to the bathroom, where upon I very nearly passed out (ever had that feeling where everything closes in and you cant see any more? It's great!), and promtly returned downstairs. Ultimately I ended up sleeping (sort of) on my grandma's sofa, valiantly trying and failing to stop itching. And during a trip to the bathroom at 2am, I nearly passed out again twice.

In all, not a lot of fun. And the worst bit, despite my cousin repeatedly telling me how red and puffed up my face was and that I should take a picture, I didn't get any pics to show my devoted readers (all 4 of you). C'est la vie.

You don't need no credit card to ride this train

I had an interesting rant to blog about, but having just returned from a staff conference, its probably more appropriate to talk about that, and leave you baying in anticipation for the next post (it's about the state of our 'yoof' ).

So Friday to Tuesday, I was down saaawf. Friday night I stopped off at my folks for the night, and my sister had driven up from London for the occasion, so we all went out to a local (when I say local, I mean in the hills in the middle of nowhere) pub/restaurant for a very tasty duck and lamb dinner, where the famed local (this time I use the word to refer to a regular drinker) who drinks with an owl on his shoulder failed to turn up. Anyway, the food was great, and it was most excellent to spend time with the family, even if at points the conversation descended into inquisitions about respective siblings' romantic lives.

The conference was also excellent. It's always great to hang out with the staff family. The food was tolerable (we were staying in Nottingham uni - makes you never want to be a first year student in halls!), but the program was ace! God challenged me on lots of exciting stuff and I got a lot of vision for the coming 18months. We had a commissioning service for our departing National Director, David Wilson (now to be a European Director) and the incoming guy Andy Atikins, where we all got to wear posh frocks (or at least the girls did. Actually, come to think of it, I can't remember anyone wearing a dress) and clap lots. Even Mr OM himself, George Verwer turned up! It was also kinda sad too because barring a day or so in June, the conference was the last time I'll see a lot of the yankedoodles working in Liverpool (yes, yes, I do have a soft side to my emotions), who are a heck of a lot of fun to be with.Schmoozing with our American friends. Don't worry, the facial hair has gone.

Thee food may be crap, but the campus was pretty.


I also got forced to acknowledge how soon the project to Lithuania is (6 and a half weeks to go) and how much I have left to do. Made a start and bought all the flights yesterday, making a £1400 dent in my credit card, so lets hope nobody pulls out!

What else interesting to talk about? The abortive attempt at watching the Back to the Future trilogy in one go,which ended up just being two Indiana Jones films because none of us actually had the Back to the Future Dvds? Or the farcical story of my losing my phone down a sofa? Actually, I'll talk about none of them and go and have my tea instead.

Zwanzig Centimeter!

To those concerned, I didn't travel with my face looking like that. To the disappointment of others, i shaved it off. However I'm toying with the idea of growing something similar for the Agape conference next week....

Anyway, the trip to France was great. Short, but a great way to relax and stop thinking about Lithuania projects and such things. It must be said that the weather wasn't great - indeed, the woman selling lift passes tried to fend us off "But monsieur, 'aven't you seen le weather report?" When we replied in the negative she shook her said and muttered stuff about cloud and no visibility. Well lady, thankyou for informing us. Seeing as the weather is so bad, i'm sure it's no problem for us just to nip back to Scotland until the weather improves a bit. Or, on the other hand, keep your negativity to yourself and sell us what we asked for!

Anyway, she was only half right. The cloud brought with it lots of snow, and at some points there was even beautiful sunshine. The off piste runs starting at the top of le Grand Montets in the Italian bowl (so named after the Italian's who died in an Avalanche a few years ago), past the avalanche warnign signs, through the trees and eventually arriving in Argentiere at the at bottom after a vertical drop of over 1200m (three times in a row) was the highlight of the trip for me.

Thursday was a wash out. By which I mean it was proper minging. Ski resorts are supposed to have snow, right? Not driving rain three quaters of the way up the mountain! This meant that only the very top part of the runs had nice snow, and the rest of it was like snowboarding through a half drunk slush puppy - you know when you've sucked out all the syrup and all you're left with is munched up ice. I have never been so wet on a mountain. Fortunately, after a couple hours you hit saturation point and stopped caring so much. By the afternoon it was literally only the British left on the mountian -all the French had gone home to their vin chauds and creme cafe cigars. We even overheard someone in the lift queue complain about the same lift pass girl trying to avoid a sale by giving another negative weather report. At least she was right this time. But us Brits are hardy souls, and cry's of 'watch out for that rock Rupert' and 'Oh, thats a lovely carve Tara' could be heard bellowing from the lungs of folk still having a jolly good time.

Anyway, the whole holiday was great. I would rather had more time in the board park (my attempt on Thursday in zero vis led to me crashing, taking a wrong turn and having to climb out of a gully in thigh deep snow). French food is indeed excellent, and despite being rather tasteless, baby octupus was fun to eat (although is that ethically sound? Can the Octopii maintian sustainable populations if we're eating all their babies??).

Flippin Soaked

No idea what this cross was doing. I just hope it wasn't marking a grave.


Who's that sexy guy?

The top of the 'Italian Bowl'. Everybody heading down was praying against avalanches (of which the chances of one occuring were 4/5)
Mont Blanc. Highest mountain in Europe. Doesn't look it, does it?

Oh, I'm not ashamed at all

Off snowboarding for a few days tomorrow, so no posting from me. I know you're upset, so to make up for a lack off my astute and candid observances on life, have a chuckle at some pictures that were taken on Friday.

DTRs? no ta

Nothing interesting is happening in my life, so hence no regular or itneresting posts, unfortunately. I currently seem to spend all my time doing admin for the trip to Lithuania I'm leading (in only 10 weeks time...aarrgh!) and fielding calls that my boss can't take because he (well, his wife really) is having a baby. But I'm going boarding in Chamonix on monday for three days, which will be some welcome escapism! So to make it worth your while having read this far, I've picked the 3 most pretty pictures I could find in my photo album for you to stare endlessly (or at least for a couple of seconds) at. Actually, i would have done if blogger worked. But I'm too lazy to delete the last sentance so i thought I would spend more time writing these two instead.

Oh, and if anyone fancies buying me this book, I will love you forever!

Its March. STOP SNOWING!

Are the men in yellow unfarily treated?

I thought I would leave this post for a while and allow all the other folk to get in their blogs about how exciting the snow was last friday, so that when I finally write about it, it keeps the excitment going just that little bit longer.

So no snow through January, or February, and then on March 3, by which time we're supposed to say goodbye to all the crappy weather and early darkness, we get a whole dump of snow. Snow is only as exciting as the stories that accompany it and this blog is no different. My second favourite story of the day was walking through the meadows and seeing some guys build the biggest snowman I have ever seen with my own eyes. When I passed, it was taking 3 of them to even move the ball they were using for it's body. I returned later and had a cheeky picture taken with the giant.

A story that is indeed not funny in the slightest, but at least made for some intersting pics.






A story that is actually funny happened further up in town. Me and my mate Pete spied an irate woman arguing with two traffic wardens who were in the process of giving her a ticket. Normally hilarious in it's own right (indeed, what is funnier than a grown woman stomping her feet and throwning a hissy fit at someone who clearly couldn't give a rat's ass), this incident was made more amusing by the anticts of a passing family.

Walking along the other side of the road, suitably attired in a chav uniform, the Father, Mother and Son trio strategically picked up snow and started hurling snowballs at the woman, her car and traffic wardens. Unfrotunately for the story's sake, they were awful shots, and none of the victimized partied appeared to notice, robbing the woman of a chance to direct her spittin poison somewhere else. However, to make up for this, the small child (who could barely make his snowballs pass the middle of the road) stood jumping up and down on the curb laughing in a manical manner. Why, I wouldn't be suprised if one day he grows up to take over the world.

You're not leaving!!......SLAP!

This is what you're waiting for. I hope I didn't build it up too much.

At the weekend I had a most enjoyable weekend scuba diving in the town of Oban on the west coast of Scotland. Whilst the rest of the UK took cover from sleet, snow, high winds and baltic temperatures, we enjoyed two days of what can only be described as summerish weather. If you were in the UK this weekend, observe the photos and gasp in wonderment. I even got sunburnt!






The diving was great, as was the company, and I saw many exciting things:
A conger eels
Mermaids purse (shark egg)
Starfish feeding frenzy (yep, those critters can go crazy when there's a tasty crab to be eaten!)
Gary Glitter (not quite, but someone looking a lot like him)
A girl riding a bycycle down a very narrow single track road next to the sea with a snowboard on her shoulder. (maybe she was going to use it for wakeboarding)


Watching Scotland beat England at the rugby was particularly entertaining. This weekend also saw the annual Scottish Young Farmers conference decend upon Oban, with 400 young muscley types who sweat beer painting the town red, and we watched the game in a partizan pub full of them. There were probably only 4 or 5 England fans in whole place, and they got a lot of abuse. And Scotland won (for the first time in 8 years or so and deservedly so) -cue much dancing on tables and hugging of complete strangers. Comeon!





Saturday night the whole group of us had an 80's themed fance dress party. My costume was supposed to be Magnum PI - you can decide for yourselves how successful I was. I don't know how many of you ever tried to drink with a fake moustache on, but it aint easy. The hair had a knack of soaking up the beer before it reached my lips, and unfortunately the accumulated moisture was too much for it in the end and it breathed its last and feel off my face after a mere couple of hours.



Anyway, a very strange night ensued. We had planned to go to a few bars and end up in Oban's only club, but then we discovered the juke box in the first pub had an astonishingly wide selection of 80s classics which immediately got pumped full of small change. However, this was NOT the kind of pub you would go to under ANY normal circumstances. It was a locals local, small, very busy and full of people with no teeth, large women with moustaches and tatoos and several lonley alcoholics in severely inebriated states. I was VERY scared as we walked in. I'm guessing that had we been in normal attire we would have been immediately piocked up and hurled back through the door. As it was they seemed to appreciate our choice of outfits and welcomed us with open arms, slurred words and gep-toothed smiles and we stayed their for several surreal hours. (We did make it to the club eventually, but it was so pap and such a waste of £6, it's not worth mentioning)


And finally, my favourite story of the weekend. On Friday night we tried to get into Oban's only 'classy' (note the inverted commas - i say classy because it had a bouncer on the door. and an alleged dress code), only for the bouncer to turn me away because I was wearing tracksuit trousers. On reassesment of my outfit (trackie bottoms, blue hoodie - chosen for comfort on the 3hour car journey), I realised I'd never looked more like a ned/pikey/charver/scally/chav (choose your colloquial term appropriately) on a night out in my life. As we were debating what to do next, one of the guys decided he would have a word with the bouncer. A short conversation followed, after which the bouncer went inside, only to reappear and let us in. But what had Dougal said to make him have a change of heart?

"We're all member's of Edinburgh University Sub-Aqua club, and that guy you're not letting in is a devout Christian"

Evidently, my faith gives me license to wear comfortable clothes and not be a threat to the management or other customers! As it turned out, everyone had much more to worry about with the young famers turning up and throwing bales of hay around....

"It's ok, he's a devout Christian..."

Hold your breath for a fantabilocious post soon to come. It's so great, I can barely wait!

11-4. My word.

Parkour, or free running (for the less culturally suave) is a sport originating out of France involving running around town, jumping over, through and off stuff. A more technical description can be found here at Wikipedia, but essentially its having a body stacked like a machine, wearing lots of trendy 'urban clothing' and acting 'street'. You also have to have fine poise, balance, technical ability, flexibility and most of all lots of balls (which isn't to say grils can't do it, I've just never seen them) to make sure you avoid landing on your head.

To see what I'm on about, check out these 'traceurs' (prakour practitioners) in action. They're flipping amazing!

So why do I mention this interesting, but slightly random sport? Well, walking through the university campus last week, I spotted 3 young whippersnappers aged between about 11 and 14, fully decked out in urban clothing, running throuhg the campus. But as I looked to see who was chasing them, I discovered that they weren't just running, they were FREE running!! Only they were rubbish at it. For the most part they were too short to properly vault barriers, and they weren't able to leap far enough to cover the gap between walls. But still, kudos for them for having the balls to face ridicule in the face and give the sport a shot. But they've a looong way to go.

In other news this week was the universities Christian Union's missions weeks. Edinburgh put up a huge parquee in the meadows and had a ton of events and stuff going on. It was a super week and loads of really cool things happened, not least the sports day event on thursday afternoon, comprising of a medley of egg and spoon and sack races etc. Tres fun, especially as we won and the prize was a 3 man catapult capable of throwing eggs 150feet (it's supposed to be water balloons but we only had eggs. Fortunately we missed the old lady walking her dog.)!


The fabled prize

Team victory!

Kelly Clarkson believes WHAT?

So the weekend. Aston Villa lose the football, Scotland lose the rugby. Everthing back to normal then. Last weekend (with Villa and Scotland both winning) was blantantly an anomaly. It also was a stormer of a weekend in other respects. 720 miles driven, 700 or so folk having the oppertunity to hear the gospel, and 3 people comign to Christ. Yep, it was Agape's stonking National Studnet conference. We drove the 6 hours down to Kidderminster with 20 or so students and had an ace time. I had the fun (and simple task!) of leading a seminar on God's sovereignty in evangelism, which was a great experience, and just gerenarally had a great time gettin to know students better. The guys from Edinburgh really loved it and gave a testimony to what had happened in the CU on Friday night, which to be honest, could have done as the main talk, the spiritual content was so good! Man, it got me pumped! For a full run down of events, check out Andy Dixon's report here.

This was followed by the now annual Vellacott Super Bowl party - a late night extravaganza of hot dogs, cookies and other strange american snacks, and of course spending 2 hours trying to understand the intricacies of American Football. Home at 3:30 and then spending the next 2 days feeling rotten because of utter exhaustion. Fun times.

And so the rest of the week has been uneventful. Edinburgh for once has failed to provide me with unusual sites. The Hari Krishnas are still farting around the royal mile and there is still the people standing outside the 'mind school' on north bridge, but I've got used to them now.

One remotely intersting thing of note is that I have manged to keep to my new years resolution of going to somewhere new every week (thankyou to Antica for the suggestion). Indeed I have so far discovered several funky spots. So far my favourite has been the honeypot, a little bistro hidden underneath George IV Bridge. Crammon Island I'm sure would also be a favourite if we hadn't had to hide out for half an hour in the car waiting for the rain to die down. Today's new place was Cafe Roma, an italian restaurant that had a cheap lunch deal. Nothign special to be honest, but I guess I couldn't have hoped for a hit every time.

Anyway, i'm spouting rubbish now, but I relaised I hadn't posted for 10 days, so thought I would give you some semi-amusing drivel to pass 3 minutes. The pictures are from the weekend

Team Edinburgh

Team Seminar!

Team National Team!

Who's Job Is It Anyway?

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Why is it that every time I come to write a new post, I want to start it with a big-text based sigh? I resist most the time, but this time I couldn't supress it. Tomorrow sees the start of Agape's National Student Conference, probably the biggest event of our annual calender (with the exception of summer projects), and a wonderful 6 hour drive to get there, encompasing all the delights of the M6. The weekend will be awesome, but the drive will be tedium. And if I can't stay awake it will end in post mortem.

So, this is my 50th post on here. Cue whistles, bells and party poppers. Or actually, you don't really care. What it really shows is that I'm an ego-manica who has nothing better to do with 20 minutes periods of his day than write fluff about himself. Oh well, at least I still think I rock. Go me!

And so it turns out that I have nothing interesting to write about, save for the good old emergency British topic, the weather. On Monday and Tuesday, it was the coldest I've ever felt in Edinburgh and in the evening on Monday, we were treated to a rare spectacle of freezing fog. To be honest, this was pretty darn beatiful, with ice crystals suspended in mid-air drifting in the breeze, but I didn't have my camera with me so you'll just have to believe me.

And to brighten the post with pictures...I was thinking about my degree today, so here's some memories from it.




Someone needs to give me something interesting to write about.

I can breath for the first time....

Friday night, I ventured into Quentin Tarrantino's favorite cinema. Well, they claim it's his favourite cinema. And he definitely went there to see their first screening of Pulp Fiction. And I'm pretty sure he's called it the most beautiful cinema in the world or something. Anyway, safe to say it comes highly recommended by one of the most cult directors of my generation. And it's only 10 minutes walk from my flat. I think that's pretty cool. So it's the Cameo cinema in Edinburgh and you can also read lots of fun information, including substances to my statements, about it here.

The film seen was A Cock and Bull Story which is very funny indeed. If you've ever seen any Alan Partridge, you'll find it hilarious. If you're American, you probably won't find it funny at all. Although Gillian Anderson is in it. But then she's Canadian, isn't she. Anyway, the cinema sat a sum total of about 70 people and the screen was probably only about 4 times the size of a 42 inch plasma TV. I guess the best way to describe it was earthy, although I've no idea what that really means. But it was much more atmospheric than the multiplex, and when the audience laughed, the whole placed buzzed. Which I liked.




OH, and the Demon Barber (to the right of the cinema)? It's great

What is it about extreme tiredness that makes me very good at it? I have resigned myself to a perpetual state of it for the rest of the term, but I sure hope it isn't always gonna be this bad. Maybe finally the weight of responsibility is catching up with me. Anyway right now, my head feels like it's at the bottom of swimming pool filled with treacle and is fighting to get to the surface for air. I was supposed to go to a birthday party tonight, but I would either be completely unable to converse with anyone, or would just end up making someone cry. And one day, I'm going to get the bottom of this narcolepsy thing.

Anyway, the last 5 days have been immensely fun, and probably been a major contribution to my current state of mind. When I have more mental virility, I'll write about it.

Sorry for the turdish nature of this post. It isn't funny (some would say I never am), but is merely a stop gap to keep those people who complaing when I don't post happy. enjoy

I'm Already Dead. Think About It.

So it seems I'm getting more inconsistent. Another 10 or more days since a post. Mostly because I couldn't be bothered. Christmas seems to have squeezed all inspiration from me. Or maybe nothing interesting happens in my life these days. I haven't even taken any pictures recently. And its raining outside. Probably. hmmm what a depressing load of rubbish I'm writing.

Happy thoughts
So at a certain request (unfortunately my lack of imagination means I finally have to bend and inflate her ego by writing about what she wants). Her chosen subject is "Candy".

Apparently this is the correct spelling of the word, although upon first hearing the word, I thought she wanted me to talk about "canned ee". A quick Wikipedia search for EE turned up things about electrical engineering, Estonia and bra sizes. Even with my extensive imagination, I can't imagine any of them really being canned, and the B-ster is hardly a hardcore pillhead, so it's unlikely to be canned ecstasy.

However, think about that for a moment. If you know Brittney (If you don't you can find pictures of her here (I'm not invading your privacy Britt, just increasing your traffic!!)), just for a few seconds imagine her at an illegal rave in a warehouse in Macclesfield. Wearing a yellow PVC jump suit, with a whistle surgically attached to her mouth and cyalume glow sticks being waved in an elaborate fashion above her head, she dances the night away to pumping happy hardcore whilst grinning manically at everyone. Ok, it could never happen, and I've never been to a rave, so I don't really know what peopel really look like, but the idea made me smile for a good couple of minutes.

Anyway back to the point. Canned Ee. So the letter E? More Wikipedia searches fascinatingly tell me that the HTML code for E is "E". Brilliant. Apparently in the Romanian language it is also a symbol for parthenogenesis. A can full of rat embryos?? In fact the only logical conclusion I can conclude with is that she is talking about Vitamin E. You know how health concious Americans are. That must be it. But why on earth Brittney wanted me to talk about a can of vitamins, I've no idea. I know nothing about nutrition. Let me leave you with some pictures instead...






Ohhhhhhhhh. She was talking about sweeties? Why didn't anyone say earlier?? Got some cross-cultural issues there. Well my favourite sweeties? A tie between Aniseed balls and Jelly Babies. Favourite chocolate bars? Boosts with guarana. And anyone who says american 'candy' is better than British is clearly Amrerican or lieing. Hersheys tastes like cardboard that someone's covered in brown paint. Reeses Cups and Butterfingers are specifically designed to make you sick or die of obesity in the space of two weeks, which ever comes first. Give me a liquorice allsort anyday.