In Hoose Entertainment

FACT.

So I went to me grandma’s and spent nearly a week with the whole family, it was pretty darned decent.

We ate well (& Lots) and we drunk well (& Lots) Loverly.

Christmas Dinner was, as usual, fantastic - a Capon and all the trimmings… we also had a roast beef thing on boxing day.

I also aged a whole year, I’m now 27!

My main christmas prezzie was a golf set so now I’ll have to get out there and play, am quite looking forward to it! Also recieved quite a few books, and items of clothing as well as a cool hip flask from Anna.

I can’t be bothered going into more detail, so I won’t. Suffice to say it was Excellent.

I just got back home today to find that my cold water storage thingy is irritatingly leaking. grrr….

With Advent coming to a close and me about to scuttle off to Stafford (Tomorrow Morning) I thought I’d update you on the rest of the week.

Tuesday
Had Emma and Adrian over, exchanged presents and the like.

I cooked a wonderous feast of Trout \ Salad \ Chips with a french stick.

After food we munched a few mince pies, watched “Dragon’s Den” and then settled down to a dvd of Shaolin Soccer (4/5)

Shaolin Soccer is one of those silly films that immediately stakes it’s claims by using such film machinery as naming the bad guys “Team Evil” and having a very very very optimistic lead character.

It was very well done though, a pretty decent film!

Wednesday

Followed Ed around for 6 hours or so… (I think only two people will “get” that)

I started the day by watching England win a game of cricket against Pakistan - a tense game we never looked like winning until the end!

Got a haircut and cleaned the house then went down to the Red Lion for a few bevvies with Ed & Linden. The Arsenal v Doncaster game was on (a game Arsenal were very lucky to win on penalties).

we moseyed into town and settled down in “The Pub” for a few more whilst watching the end of the game. Lots of people joined us including Mahinda, Alsion, Jon D, Luc, Mark etc etc…..

Linden, Ed, Mahinda & I decided to take the fifth and headed on down the Garrett (a pub next door to the Fifth with late opening) whilst waiting for Mahinda to change into proper clothes (he’d come straight from squash and was wearing shorts etc).

There we had vodka (Mahinda had Tequila) and each got a sofa as the pub was fairly sparsely populated.

onwards into fifth avenue. It was a top night and I’ll use Mahinda’s summary of highlights as sent in an e-mail today (I’ve left it in Mahinda’s perspective)

* Pete being handed a passport that blatantly wasn’t his. Unless he’d become a weedy-looking chap with glasses.
* Finding Steph (whose name I couldn’t remember until Linden asked “Is that Stephanie?”)…and then finding her passport on the floor.
* Bumping into (almost literally) Hannah, one of the dancers from the Altrincham panto. My first words to her? “How old are you?!” Ooops. Think I scared the bloke she was with. 17, but keep it quiet. It makes me feel old, to be honest - seeing someone in 5th Ave who you remember as a 14-year-old in a leotard.
* A bloke and girl offering to buy my round if I ate a whole cigarette. Looking back, maybe I should have done it - I was really close to going for it. Talked to the girl a bit, later on. Turns out that they found someone who managed it, to much general amusement.
* Inflatable evil snowman.
* Top Christmas tunes.
* Generally happy vibe (except for one fight).
* Pete dropping kebab juice all over his jeans and the floor of the bus.

Top night out! - we left when it closed (just after 2am)

the kebab on the way home was pretty good, though inadequately wrapped. I had to give in, and eat half of it at home, in the end!

Thursday

Today!

Hungover (does anyone actually follow my links?) for most of the morning, things started to happen around 1pm.

I ate and stuff and then went into the university where I libraried it and collected all my “work for over the holidays”

Tonight will be dull stuff like packing and cleaning.

Tomorrow I’ll be off to Stafford

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Wednesday:
We all went down to Hardy’s Well for a bit of pre-christmas drinking.

When I say all I mean Me, Linden, Rosy, Adrian, Emma, Ed, Sam, Justin, Some Random Bloke, Alsion. I think that’s everyone.

We:

1) Drunk

Mostly O.P.

2) Played Pool

Linden and I teamed up to devastating effect, winning 3 games in a row before being paired on seperate teams. I made it 4, much to the Wint’s disgust.

3) Played on a quiz machine

On which money was lost, as per.

I think that was all.

Afterwards we went for a curry in Shere Khan’s (the average price on that site is rubbish btw!).

I thought the food was quite nice, but it was quite expensive and the guy pretended not to serve me beer when I got there which I didn’t like at all.

Thursday & Friday

I did lots of work to finish off a tricky little problem I’ve been working on, this involved working till almost 10pm on Friday so I had little time for anything else.

Saturday

Saturday I got up a little later than I intended and then headed off into town to do all my chrimblemas shopping.

I started and finished in HMV and took in the delights of several other places, travelling as far as the mythical “St. Ann’s Square” and took in the delights of “Ye Olde Foode Courte” along the way.

That out of the way I returned home and wrapped before heading out to the FAB café where I found Ed, Linden, Two new people, Alsion and a (small) pile of mats.

Drinking games ensued.

personal highlight was the 21 rule of having to say 17 in a foreign language, though a different language to any that had been used before.

Having used up my one language in which I know 17 (Spanish) I planned to say “Hurdy Gurdy” the next time it came to my turn. The nice thing is that that would’ve counted under our rules for the game.

got up and danced a bit to some classic cheese and then moseyed on home.

Sunday

Goonies Christmas Day!

After watching liverpool unluckily lose to Sao Paulo in the World Club Championship (admitedly a bit of a white elephant) I had myself picked up by Linden and transported to the supermarket.

There we spent oodles of money (a fair bit on booze!) and went round Lindens house to cook.

We all got involved; Mahinda was the main cook, Alsion took care of plenty, as did I, Linden was the host and Rosy chopped and scraped lots of stuff.

4 other people were there, Justin, Ed, Emma & Dan from Alsions house.

Starter was Paté (Great!), Salmon (Good!), Cheese (Decent!) & Freshly Baked Bread (Great!).

Main course arrived around 6pm and involved far too many things to list, but was lovely.

Pudding arrived much later and involved christmas cake, brandy creme & mince pies.

We watched Stand By Me a film which every girl I’ve ever met seems to love (except Alsion) though I think it’s fairly average. Enjoyable and not-naff though (3/5).

We exchanged gifts, I got a rather cool clicky thing!

we talked about random stuff… Like a Dog Blog!

we all wore silly hats! and told bad jokes! and … well there was lots of other stuff, but my memory is fairly hazy.

Later I got home to find that I’d won my Hattrick game 1-0, which means that I finished 2nd in the whole of England (out of 10,000, so that’s pretty good). I was quite chuffed by this.

Monday
Stayed at home and sorted a few things out. Played Football for the first time in ages (because Cricket has been getting in the way) I was a bit rusty, but scored and had a decent game.

I should mention I bought one of these little fella’s over the weekend:

Boss GT-8

It’s tasty, very tasty indeed and means I can play quite loud with some nice effects.

All of which means I’m fully tooled up to go and play live again (well; except for a car :/) so that means it must be time to really push this band thing on.

Pretty much nothing going on at the moment.

Monday :
Had a meeting at work, went and played cricket - lots of nets (which is nice) and then watched the end of Spurs v Pompey.

Tuesday:
Worked late due to assessing first years. Played guitar for a bit.

you see; nothing.

Thursday: spent about 8 hours trying to get tickets for Liverpool v Newcastle. Failed.

Friday: went into work! hurray!
Then went to the cinema to watch the new Harry Potter film. unfortunately it was rubbish (2/5) not quite awful, but it’s poor. The book really didn’t get a very good treatment and it felt very very rushed with no time for character development etc… a disappointment.

Saturday:
Went to Hull to watch Hull 1-0 Sheff Wed it was a decent game of few chances. Overall probably deserved to be a draw, but if any team had the better of it, it would’ve been the home side.

I was in the away fans section which was a bit odd. It was surrounded by a huge metal fence to keep the home fans away, and everyone stood throughout the game. Decent atmosphere and I got to watch the liverpool 2-0 Middlesborough game before kick off.

After the game we headed on into Sheffield were I met up with Anna and Alan and we went to the “Porter Brook” on Eccleshall road.

A few pints there were swiftly followed by a trip to Matt Lees’ house party where we stayed until 3. Had a good time - it’s much better being at parties when you’re not ill

Sunday:
Went home on a bus (rail replacement) and finally got back at 430. quickly showered and ate and went off into town to meet up with a bunch of people including Mahinda, Lizzie (1), Lynda, Linden, Ed, Justin, Sam, Lizzie (2), and some random people from Mahinda’s workplace.
No time for a pre-film drink and we went off to watch the much more impressive (than harry potter!) Chronicles of Narnia (4/5) a fun film where you all know the plot already. Well done though, I thought.

Afterwards most of us made our way down to Sinclair’s Oyster bar - A fine city centre establishment with cheap good beers.

we stayed until past closing and got a lift home. Bed wasn’t long in following.

oh yeah, and I’ve not had an alcoholic drink for a full week.

how unusual!

Did quite a bit of work on thursday and ended up going home quite late.

Friday I went into work but felt crap so didn’t do much. After lunch I went back home, had a lemsip and fell asleep for a bit. I’d started being ill!

I was supposed to go out to Jen’s Birthday party at the trusty Scu, but I passed it up due to feeling naq’d and ill so stayed in and watched tv (including a new peep show episode) instead.

Saturday rolled around and I woke up at 730 barely able to move. I crawled downstairs and figured I might stick the cricket on as that might distract me a bit from how I was feeling at the time, I switched on at 730. By 845 we’d lost 8 wickets for 41 runs and lost the game. hmpf.

By this point I was pretty sure I was not up for going to cheltenham as I could still barely move. However I decided to go up and get a shower.

Upon arriving upstairs I immediately collapsed on me bed and fell asleep. I woke at 11 feeling a bit better and with only half an hour before mahinda arrived.

Unsurprisingly rosy hadn’t started getting ready yet (and without a good excuse like being ill) so much rushing occurred and we eventually left around 12.

The trip to sainsburies was fun, as Mahinda and Rosy both bought a load of alcohol and I bought a load of lemsip & Lucozade. hmmm.

we travelled down south in convoy with Lindens car. We had Mahinda’s car to ourselves cos we wanted to listen to the footie (Liverpool 3-0 Wigan) and we had walkie talkies with which we communicated with each other.

arrived at cheltenham to find our hosts were down the supermarket. It wasn’t long before M+P did turn up though and we had a look around their impressive flat (including the drum kit in the back room) before heading out into town. By now I was still feeling shite, but I’d had a few pills and the like and I decided to stick to non-alcoholic drinks all night.

We went to some pool place.

Then some pizza place.

then back to the party. There were quite a few regulars there and much fun was had. Highlights include the random dancing\singing - and the sofa of wrongness. I stayed up til 4 and then went to bed in the spare room - which I got by virtue of being ill, cheers Mike, Pam.

The next day we all went down the pub for lunch. I had a tuna sandwich which was nice, I was feeling a little better again, but very very tired. I was glad to get home around 530 and chill out for the rest of the weekend. It was good overall.

Monday I was feeling bad again so stayed at home and ended up sleeping for the whole day except 5 hours in the evening and 1 hour in the morning.

Tuesday I went in, but only to teach my minions.

Wednesday I stayed at home, much better now but with some sort of sore throat. tidied the house as non of the reprobates I live with seem capable of lifting a finger in that department I’ll be back in work tomorrow!

I’m fairly ill and not feeling up to typing about everything that happened this weekend so I’m just going to say:

Solphadeine\Lemsip + Ibuprofen = Zoned out Pete.

and

“Germans, they make the wurst sausages”

So I went to Ceilidh last night, following much pestering from Mahinda, Linden, Alsion et all - and it was great fun!

Ceilidh is like a celtic version of country-dancing really, but it’s quite fast paced and good fun. Went along obstensibly with Mahinda and his housemate Helen and ended up dancing in every one except the first and last one (which I didn’t realise was the last one) and with loads of random people - including someone who I may end up teaching next year (which was a bit bizarre).

Ed danced for one song after Linden convinced him it would be a good idea. He remained unconvinced.

To sum up: I will be going again.

As for the other two days this week:

Monday : went off to cricket. good fun as usual - played something called diamond cricket which I did alright at.

Tuesday: Went off to Hockey with Luc, but as we arrived we found it’d been snowed off! got home and stayed in drinking beer watching Doncaster v Aston Villa - which amazingly finished 3-0 to the home side.

as for the third test…. uh-oh!