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.

I didn't mean it, I just want you back for good

Sooooooooooooooo......17 days since a post and two people have begged me to blog. And I mean literally begged. They got down on their knees and threatened self harm if I didn't write. So rather than further burden the weakened back of the NHS with attempted suicides, I thought i'd best write.

By the way, in case you have any expectations, I doubt anything will be particularly interesting but who knows what might come out of my head?

So Christmas was fun. Lots of sleeping and playing old computer games. I managed to get a new highscore on every table of Pinball Fantasies on the old Amiga, which had stood for a good few years which gave me a good sense of inflated achievement. And then, as many of you know, I went to Wengen in Switzerland from the 26th to 2nd of January. Quite simply it was probably the best snowboarding trip I've been on (rivalling Tignes last Easter).

The snow was pretty much perfect with fresh poweder 4 days out of 6 and although it was apparently very cold (minus 17 C) you never really felt it. The powder meant I was able to keep Dixon (and his bother and my dadat bay for the morning) I rode with him, leaving them eating my proverbial snowy dust. Seeing my dad and Andy flounce around in knee deep snow was a sight to behold!

The people we went with we're also great. We were travelling through Oak Hall, which for those who don't know, is a cheap Christian holiday company. It is also particularly infamous for being a place for women scared of being left on the shelf to pick up husbands, leading to the alternative name, Bloke Hall holidays. Don't worry, I wasn't picked up, but what it did mean is that there were lots of fun people to hang out with. Most the people there were groups of friends in their late 20s (or my family), and it made for lots of fun.

The highlight of the whole week, however was not the discover of a real life Fawlty Towers, but of Shaun, the "professional" musician. He can't ski or snowboard (probably due to the lack of balance caused by his overhanging beergut), but he lives in a ski village, where he does nothing but do his work as a muscian. To be found in Sima's Pub almost every night, he'll belt all sorts of classics including Sting's Englishman in New York, James Blunt's You're Beautiful and Eric Clapton's Wonderful Tonight, and if you're lucky may even play most of the notes and not leave it all to his clever machines ("EasyJet charged me £180 to get this gear accross!").

Unless of course, he's drunk. Then he'll play Sting twice in a row and get bored and leave the stage. This however, leaves his guitar free for much fun to be had playing Perfect Day, Back For Good )featuring special duet from Shaun) and (this took balls frinm Ed) Beautiful One. Equally beautiful (in my humble opinion) was the certain character belting out Eternal Flame to rapturous cheers from the crowd. What a bar. Viva Apres Ski!

8 and a half hours sleep total over new years eve and the next night interspersed with 6 and half hours boarding wasn't much fun, but making fresh tracks in the powder was worth it! and now I'm back in beautiful Edinburgh. We had crazy fog weather on Wednesday which made the most grogeous sunset at dusk around the castle, but I didn't bring my camera (and had even held it in my hand before deciding not to take it out! grrr), so I can't show you how amazing this city is (again). And now it's so cold I can't type, so I'll leave you with pretty pictures.


Andy and Jason - Oak Hall stalwarts!

New Year flares

Clan Lindop

To the person who suggested it, we're not gay! Just happy

p.s. Does anyone else think Dry County is a flipping AMAZING song? How rock should be. 9:51 minutes (12:10 in the live version) of genius epic (November Rain falls in the same category).

So this is Christmas...

Okay...so Derby officially sucks. As a city that is. Derbyshire the county is gorgeous. The city however, just depresses me. Granted, the older bits are sort of nice, but for the most part nasty glassy shops/bars have been squeezed in and the place looses its character. Then there's the indoor markets, which whilst being fun and cheap (I wish edinburgh had one) to be honest, are full of teenage mums and unemployed people (not counting the people who work the stalls), and at this time of year shelves and shelves of Christmas tat. I mean, who buys a plastic santa with a bulb stuck up his bum that will sit in a corner and glow ominously? Actually, I know part of the answer to that question, because I've seen the windows of the houses of the people who hoard them. Now I just need to find out who actually lives in them.

And for my final rant on this topic, i present the German Christmas Market. The one in Derby touts itself as 'The Original German Market'. But how original does it have to be to be original? It can't mean 'original' as in 'the only one' because every city I've been in this month has had one (Edinburhg, Liverpool, Birmingham...). Does it mean the first market? Surely thats in German?? Maybe it means 'the first market to come and slum it in the centre of some dreary city for a month'. But if it was the first market to come here, then surely they would manage to find a city more presitigious and less slumy than Derby?

Anyway, I still love the countryside out here. Its beautiful and smells of country and afternoon walks when its cold and the sun is going down and the mud is still hard and frosty are great. I wish I had my car with me (or my parents weren't using theirs for work), so I could escape further into the hills and see all the places I was forced to go for walks under duress when I was a kid.

So what actually have I been up to since I've been back? Mostly nothing. And it's been great. I've walked the dog a couple of times, I've slept in until midday a couple of times, Ive read some books, I've acheived some new highscores on old Amiga computer games I haven't played for 10 years, and I've even been out drinking in the afternoon with an old friend.

And this mornign I ventured into town (which sparked the rant above). Bus prices have gone up, they've even re-painted them from a tasteful burgendy to a kind of vomit/tangerine mix. Nando's have even managed to put in a restaurant since I was last here, supporting my theory that they're challenging Starbucks for world domination (to my knowledge there's still only one in Derby).

But probably the most exciting (and not very at that) moment was being stopped in the street by a guy about my age asking "excuse me sir, do you have a sense of humour"? When I answered that I thought I was very funny, he then asked me if I liked dirty jokes. Which I found odd. To my mind, dirty jokes aren't really associated with a sense of humour, rather they indicate a lack of a sense of humour, because the only thing you can laugh about is smut and inuendo. But then, maybe I'm a snob. Anyway, apparently this guy was a student selling a christmas book of dirty jokes for £2 (roughly the price of a pint - I'm not suspicious) to support his student loan. I duly declined, and walked 10 yards further on, only to be stopped by another guy doing exactly the same thing.

I hope the sheer length of this ramble has gone someway to making up for my lack of posting recently. Congratulations if you've made it this far! And apologies for the lack of photos, but I really can't be bothered uploading any through a dial up connection.

will write something new and exciting sooon, I promise. I'm back home in Derby, so who knows what excitment I'll get up to..... (spot the sarcasm)

Calm down! Calm Down!

Well here are the usual apologies about not posting for ages, but I have been away in Liverpool for a week. May I take this opportunity to thank the guys there for looking after me so well. I had an awesome (insert fake American accent when expressing this word) time!

Anyway, with so many stories to relate, where do I start? Well I must mention that I now truly believe Liverpool has it's own evolutionary culture going on all of it's own. I may disagree with it's European Capital of Culture 2008, but it's certainly scoring highly in an attempt to go for British Capital of weirdness. In a mere 6 days, I saw more things I wouldn't expect than I might in 6 months somewhere else.

In no particular order, here's a list of unexpected stuff I can remember (and haven't already banished to the 'please don't ever remember me' part of my brain):
Santa Claus being driving down residential streets blasting out hymnal music
A man in a wheelchair wheeling himself down the middle of a road
A blatant transvestite at a black tie screening of Narnia
A midget and a giant gay couple (sort of - there was at least 2 foot difference between them)
The random meeting of friend from school I hadn't seen in 4 years. Twice. In 2 days.
Scallys (OK, not unexpected but still repulsive)
Beatle's songs greeting me as I arrived on the train (should have been expected, but I hadn't imagined it could be that tacky).
John Prescott at the Maritime museum (For those of you who are American, he's the Deputy Prime Minister - the equivalent of Dick Cheney)

N.B. in case my musings leave you with the impression that I think negatively of Liverpool, let me reassure you that I actually quite like the place (some of it anyway), and had a great time there!!

Highlights of the week included sock wrestling, at which I believe I was overall champion, seeing as the second bout should be declared void due to certain participants cheating. Also up there was persuading the majority of the Americans to eat haggis (this one was 33% pork lung, 21% pork liver and 1% pork heart - mmmmmmmmm) and seeing them actually enjoy it. Oh, and if you ever get the chance to play SingStar, do it. You wont regret it.

The rest of what happened to me is probably not especially interesting to most of you, so if you want a more detailed report of Al's Campus Project to Liverpool. And briefly, Manchester, let me know.

Worthy of not however, is the fun I had on Saturday and Sunday, traveling down to Coventry and then Bristol to catch up with Ed, Chris and Lucie, some of my best friends from uni. We hadn't seen each other together for a really long time, so it was really cool to catch up. We ate in one of my (now) favourite restaurants ever, and on the flight home, you could see the fire continue to rage at the oil depot, 150 miles away, which was pretty surreal.

Here are some photos of the fun I had.


Turns out even Liverpool can be pretty sometimes!

There are things everyone has to do when going to Liverpool....

Boy, that maritime museum had everything - pretending to be naval officers and nurses, old school phones, and even a slave exhibition that smelled of poo

The scary thing is that Kevin almost suits it