Unbelievably, I've actually had some time off...
So, while I'm actually sat down with a cup of tea, I thought I'd do a proper blog for once.
Life, as always, has been pretty crazy. The shop's been up and down and up and down and up... and down again this past week. It's so unpredictable at the moment, it frightens me a little.
More importantly, last week Ash & I did a quick trip up to Glasgow which was brilliant fun! And we kidnapped Kevin and brought him down here to stay with us for a couple of months before he goes off to college. I have been SO EXCITED about this, lately I just haven't had much of a social life so for one of my best friends in the world to suddenly be here is great! :D
Last week was the first time I've had some decent time away from the shop since the beginning of May, when Ash & I took the day off on the Bank Holiday weekend to go to the Sea Life centre, find that the "free parking road" was closed, and have to pay £9.60 to park for up to three hours in the multi-storey. I kid you not. Brighton is pretty much the worst place in the world for parking, I was so angry that I let myself be ripped off so badly.
Anyway, last week was great! It started off with THE MOST STRESSFUL DAY OF MY LIFE, when I got up and realised I had roughly 140439590284209 things to do before I left for work and approximately 2.3 seconds to do it all in. I managed to get a few things done, but I arrived at the shop to realise I'd forgotten to do most of them. At this point, I wasn't planning to go back to the flat and panic ensued.
Eventually, I decided we really didn't have to leave as early as we'd planned, so I'd had a teary breakdown for nothing. After work, and the 49.7 million other things I had to do, we were on the train (which we almost missed) up to London to begin our adventure! Which started with us being tourists...
TOURISTS!We literally walked for miles and miles and miles and miles. We started off at Buckingham Palace, walked down to Trafalgar Square, walked along past Downing Street (which I had never seen before... it was disappointing) to Westminster Abbey & Big Ben, across the bridge to the London Eye, popped into the arcade and won some sweets, across the other bridge back to Trafalgar Square, and back past Buckingham Palace to the coach station.
We then had an eight hour coach journey up to Glasgow... and arrived at the hostel at 8am to find we weren't able to check in until 3pm. Oh fuck. So I texted Alistair, who said he was in college until 3pm. UGH. So I decided to show Ash around the main parts of Glasgow, except I haven't been there for a year and had forgotten where most things were.
EVENTUALLY, it got to 3pm, so we got all checked in, couldn't work out how to use the shower, and Alistair turned up a little while after, so we sat in the bar, played pool (WHICH I SUCK AT) and then walked the long walk to the SECC to see the mighty Green Day!
They were phenomenal. It's the third time I've seen them, and they are still just top notch. All three of them are almost 40, yet they're still running around the stage for three hours every night, it's just mindblowing. They played 34 songs, THIRTY FOUR, and they played so many older songs, too. :D :D
238901 hours later, we were back at the hostel with the most painful feet and back EVER. The train station next to the SECC was closed, which is obviously a really good idea when hundreds of people want to use your service, but hey, their loss of a thousand pounds. And my loss of the ability to walk ever again. Needless to say, we pretty much fell asleep as soon as we got back.
The next day was spent doing more walking and a bit of shopping - I must have lost a bit of weight from all that walking!! - and then we discovered the amazing world of Hamley's.
After that exciting half an hour, we headed to the bus station to meet Kevin, went to the Apple store and left silly pictures zoomed in on the iSanitaryTowels iPads, went to the Forbidden Planet store and bought a Yoshi plushie (well, Ash did), went to Build A Bear to build a tiger called Rory (well, Kevin did) and got intimate with the Tardis (well... Ash did. :P).
I don't remember much else, except we went to Pizza Hut and decided that a large pizza with cheesy bites wouldn't be enough for the three of us, so we got a starters platter as well. Half way through the pizza, we seriously regretted our decision and spent the rest of the night waddling. Thankfully, Alistair arrived just in time to eat the last slice of pizza.
So we all headed to 'Spoons for an hour (passing a statue with a traffic cone on its head... I want to know how it got there) before waddling down to the hostel to collect bags, and then up to the bus station for one of the roughest journeys ever back down to London, hoorah. And then I had to work, because I think I'm crazy in the head.
Well, I think that's obvious.