Blog - 23rd May to 18th July (2010-07-18)

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23rd May to 18th July (2010-07-18)

Category: Diary. Posted: 2010-07-18 23:43:47 BST.

23rd May: I spent the afternoon with Bird. It's always nice spending time with her at weekends, because we both have more time.

27th May to 1st June: Dive trip to Northern Ireland.

3rd June: I popped into Slough Scuba on the way home to buy two new torches. I'd lost my back-up torch in Egypt in February, and my main torch wasn't working very well, and was in the back of Rob's car, so I couldn't try to get it working. I packed my stuff for the weekend, because going out for dinner with Bird at The Toby.

4th to 6th June: Dive trip to Pembroke.

7th June: I met Sarah in the Mad Bishop. Wanting to revisit some pubs I'd been to with Rach and Scary, we went to the Monkey Puzzle for dinner and the Youngs pub that Scary and I had got free beer at a few months ago. This was good, because there were two lesbians snogging at the next table! Back at Paddington, I had about 40 minutes to wait, so had a sneaky pint at The Isambard before catching the train to Langley.

8th June: I went swimming this evening for the first time this month. It's going to be difficult to go 8 times this month, because I won't have time to go again until 13th June at the earliest.

9th June: After work, I went to Gimmer's house to make sure his laptop's security was up-to-date. Once I'd sorted that out, we went to the Kings Head (sic) for a bite to eat and some beer. There was a quiz night on, so we joined in. Initially I didn't cheat, but when I realised that all 6 women on the table next to me were using their iPhones, I checked with the bloke running it (who said it's OK), and then used my HTC Desire. Proving that the HTC Desire is much better than the iPhone, we scored much more than them (Google Goggles and Shazam were very helpful). Gimmer told me the quickest route back, and he wasn't wrong.

10th June to 13th June: It was my brother's stag weekend in Aberdeen this weekend. He and I caught the sleeper up on Thursday night, and the day train back on Sunday. His mates travelled up on Friday and back on Sunday. We had a really nice weekend, including clubbing until after 3AM on Friday and Saturday nights.

Tuesday 15th June Gimmer kindly offered to collect my cylinders from home, drop them off at Slough Scuba, collect them from Slough Scuba, and drop them off at work. Top man. He said he'd come round to watch the football tonight. I didn't really want to watch the football, but when I realised that Brazil was playing, I was looking forward to some totty supporters. I was in a good mood having seen some bikini clad totty in the pool, but I was disappointed when the football started and I realised that the Brazilian supporters were all wrapped up against the cold. Oh well!

Wednesday 16th June
It was a bit late, but I gave Bird her birthday presents and bought her dinner at Browns tonight. As usual, we had a lovely evening, and Bird was looking gorgeous.

Thursday 17th June
It was going to be difficult to swim 8 times this month, but I'd swum on Monday, Tuesday, and tonight, so that made things easier. I got most of my dive kit together while watching Question Time, before having a relatively early night.

Friday 18th to Sunday 20th June
Diving in Portland. When I got back on Sunday, I went for a quick swim before going to get a Chinese. The Chinese take-away didn't answer the phone, so I had fish 'n' chips instead. I ate them while watching last night's Casualty and last night's Doctor Who. They didn't record very well, so I watched them using the iPlayer instead.

Monday 21st June
I had to work late. By the time I got home, I was too knackered to go swimming, and too knackered to wash and dry my dive kit. I can't remember what I did instead....

Tuesday 22nd June: I woke up early this morning and washed my dive kit down before leaving for work. With the warm sunny weather, it was fairly dry by the time I got home, so I packed it away. I had intended to watch Holby City, but there was some football match on BBC1 instead. This gave me time to tidy up a bit, and make a pile of things I'd need to take to my brother's wedding tomorrow.

Wednesday 23rd June
When I started putting things into a bag, I realised that I only had one spare pair of pants. If only I'd put some washing on last night! Not wanting to take my bike on the train this evening, I caught a bus into work. At Slough, I popped into Tesco to see if it had any pants (it didn't) and into the train station to collect the tickets that I'd booked yesterday.

As I was getting ready to leave work, I got a text message from FGW saying that all trains between Reading and Paddington had been delayed because some idiots had stolen signalling cable at West Drayton. I got to the station, and was surprised to find that there weren't many people waiting to get on the train. Maybe this World Cup malarkey is good for something. After a few minutes, a delayed fast train to Paddington arrived at about 16:30. I was pleased to see that there were plenty of seats on board. It waited for a while before leaving Slough. If only I'd remembered to bring a bottle of water with me. I was wondering how long I'd got without knowing the score of the England World Cup match, and some bloody American just announced that England have [sic] won and are [sic] through to the next round.

[23/6/10 17:09 The train's just left Langley. It's going to be a long journey. To be continued.....]

17:18 Iver.

17:24 West Drayton.

I eventually arrived at Paddington about 2 hours after leaving Slough (the journey normally takes 15-20 minutes). The rest of my journey to Bishop's Stortford went OK, and my brother collected me from the station, and took me to the Swan Hotel where we were all staying.

Thursday 24th June: It was my brother's wedding today, and we had a wonderful day. Apart from me crying during the ceremony, and during the speeches (not brilliant, because I was Best Man), it was a really really lovely day. So much happened during the day, I don't know where to start writing, so I think I'll keep this day in my memories.

Friday 25th June: My brother drove us all back to London, and I caught the train back home. Back at home, I made the most of having two days off work, and took it easy.

Saturday 26th June: My brother and (I'll get used to this expression eventually) his wife arrived at my place at about 07:30, and then drove to the airport. After they unloaded their stuff from his car, I drove back home. I took advantage of having a car for 2 weeks, and drove to Slough Scuba to collect my twin-set, and drop off a stage cylinder for O₂ cleaning. Darrren, Joanne, Christopher, and Marie came to stay. We had a take-away curry from The India and a few beers.

Sunday 27th June: We went to Tummies to have breakfast with Bird. It was a gorgeous sunny day, so we ate outside. Unfortunately, I was feeling rough, but Bird gave me some pills when we went back to hers. Back at my place, Darren, Joanne and the kids left, leaving me to take things easy. Once I'd shut the front door, I got as far as the living room, and decided I couldn't face another flight of stairs, so slept in the living room for a few hours. I then had the energy to go upstairs to my bedroom, and slept for another few hours. I did go to the pool for a quick swim, but didn't have the energy to swim once I'd walked there.

Wednesday 30th June: I dropped my bike off at home, and met Sarah at Paddington. Sarah had made some food, so we had a bite to eat sitting next to the canal. We then went to Cafe Ritazza before going to the Mad Bishop and Bear. I knew that there was a long wait between Langley trains from Paddington between about 22:00 and 22:50, so wanted to get onto the concourse by 21:50. Unfortunately, Sarah had other ideas, and I just missed the 10PM train to Langley, so caught the 22:10 train to Slough. Fortunately, trains into London were still being delayed, so I caught a delayed stopping train from Slough to Langley, so Sarah was forgiven!

Friday 2nd July: I was going to be getting a train from Slough to Bristol after work, so caught the bus into work in the morning. At Bristol Temple Meads, I bought two pasties and a cup of tea before Jon Hayhurst collected me. We drove via Bristol Airport to collect Suzie, and then down to Barnstable for Becky's wedding. We popped into her parents' house to see her for a quick drink, dropped off Suzie at her hotel, and then checked into the Travelodge where we were staying. After checking in, Jon drove us to The Wrey Arms before calling it a night.

Saturday 3rd July: The coach taking us to Becky's wedding wasn't due to arrive until 2PM, so we had plenty of time to gimmer around. This included going to Sainsbury's Cafe for breakfast. It was nice to go to a wedding where I had no responsibilities. The coach was on time, the ceremony in the church was lovely, and the reception was brilliant. While tea was being served, Jon suggested I hang around the tea stall to see if I could offer the vicar a cup of tea. Unfortunately, this never happened. With two weddings in two weeks, I wasn't sure I'd last the whole day, but I did, and had a lovely time.

Sunday 4th July: Before heading back to Bristol, Jon and I had breakfast at Sainsbury's Cafe again. For some reason, my phone didn't want to get a GPS fix, but this didn't really matter, because the M5 was signposted from Barnstable.

Tuesday 6th July: After work, Bird was going to come round to my place for dinner. As an alternative, she suggested that we go to the Zaman of Datchet for curry, and I give her the steaks for her to eat later. I've never been know to turn a curry down, so said "yes". It might seem a bit silly that I gave the steaks to Bird, but they're expensive organic fillet steaks, and she would appreciate them much more than me, so I wanted her to eat them.

Thursday 8th July: I met Gimmer for a few beers in the Moon and Spoon, before heading back home to meet [CENSORED].

Friday 9th July: Back at home, I thought I ought to check that my brother's car still worked, so drove to Slough Scuba (to collect my stage cylinder) and to Sandhu Food Store (to buy 20kg of rice).

Saturday 10th July: After collecting my brother and his wife from Heathrow (thanks for the present), I gimmered around a bit at home, and then caught the train to visit my parents (thanks for dinner and the beers).

Sunday 11th July: After going around Blackheath Farmers' Market, and buying a few things from Cookery Nook, I caught a train from Blackheath to East Finchley because Sarah had invited me to her new place for Sunday lunch (thanks for the lunch and Stella). Back at home, I was too knackered to go swimming.

Wednesday 14th July: After giving blood at Colnbrook Village Hall, I met Gimmer at the cinema in Slough. We joined the queue, and sent a text message to get an Orange Wednesdays code. Unfortunately, the text message didn't arrive by the time we got to the front of the queue. We went to Dragon King (which was our original plan), and the text message arrived. By the time we'd finished eating, the film that we wanted to see (Predators) had started, so we watched Get Him to the Greek instead. After the film, we went to Wernham Hoggs for a quick drink before calling it a night.

Friday 16th July:I spent most of the evening cooking lots of curries to freeze. I finished just before 10 o'clock, so watched the BBC News, followed by the last Friday Night with Jonathan Ross.

Saturday 17th July:I got carried away sorting things out at home, and forgot to go swimming in the morning. After getting a lot done during the day, I bought a Chinese take-away and 4 cans of Stella (Stella 4, of course), and settled down to watch Casualty, Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow, BBC News, and This Is Spinal Tap.

Sunday 18th July: I remembered to go swimming this morning, and continued sorting things out at home, including updating my website. I'd hoped to watch Countryfile while eating my curry, but there was a golf match on instead.

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