Archive for the ‘Friends’ Category

For this year’s group trip, we headed to the north coast of Anglesey where we had a villa booked in Cemaes Bay. As you can see from the photo above it is a beautiful location and the villa was situated right on the coastal path. A short walk down from there and you could find the nuclear power plant.

Unfortunately, they did not have a visitor’s cafe. Local attractions were not that important though: we were mostly interested in the hot tub. The weather was good for us and after an entire day of drinking in said hot tub, pretty much everyone except Elina and I were horribly sunburnt.

Not a bad effort for the first 24 hours we were there. The rest of the week consisted of barbecuing, more hot tub time, and occasionally going to the pub.

We also had a look round Beaumaris Castle.

As ever, it was a super chance to catch up with friends that we see too infrequently. Roll on 2017…

Last month we met up with Craig, Zoe, Becky and Charlotte for some food at Cattle Grid. In a surprise twist, I had the ribs (to be fair, I did once get the steak. It was lovely to catch up with everyone, not to mention the generous baby gifts we received, including a little Superman outfit, complete with cape!

Afterwards, we headed to BrewDog for a drink and found that they had a GameCube with Mario Kart on. How I have missed that game. I am sure that if I actually had it, I would get bored of it pretty quickly. But the memories soon came flooding back as we dodged sandworms, bowser shells and banana skins. Maybe I should buy the baby a GameCube now, in case they stop selling them…

A few years ago, while I was working up in Harrogate, my friend Alan and I refined the art of pub lunch. At Buzz, Jason and I achieved pub week, which was no mean feet. However, we could only dream of the system Alan and I put in place. Sometimes with other colleagues, sometimes not, we got it down to a schedule.

This went on for months. We managed two team lunches in my current team this week. That was great, but I can only dream of the glory days…

Back in January, James left us, like a traitor, for a research job in South Korea. To commiserate is leaving we went for a meal at Red Chilli. I’ve only just found the photo on my camera.

Earlier this month we visited Chris & Cara in Warrington. The darkness, rain and fog literally put a dampener on the journey. Between the weather and the traffic it took us two hours to get there. More and more it seems difficult to get anywhere without allowing for significant margins due to the traffic. Coming home was much improved though, making the journey in less than an hour and a half.

One of the advantages of Warrington is that even with the apartment blocks right in the centre you can find parking. They also have a Toby Carvery, so what more could you want in a town? Dinner was excellent, as was the company. Well worth the trip.

For what I loosely described as a stag do, I headed down to Wembley Stadium for the Jets v Dolphin NFL game.

The seats were okay. We were in the premium club. I have previously wondered whether being in the lower tier would be better, but you do actually get a good view and can see the entire field. The only issue was that being on the north side we had the sun in our eyes, so being on the other side would have been a lot better. That disappeared after the 4th quarter though, and the view improved.

The merch was not run very well. We got there several hours early and they had already closed the NFL shop saying the queue was too big. Why they could not just run it throughout the entire game was unclear. They had other merch shops inside, but they had all run out of caps, missing an opportunity to make a significant buck out of Norman and I who were not prepared for the sun making an appearance.

The game itself was pretty good. It was nice to follow a game I did not care that much about as I could relax and enjoy it. Last time I saw the NFL at Wemeberly it was the 49ers v Jaguars. Obviously, it was the Jaguars, so no chance of the 49ers losing, but it was still a little tense. It got very exciting when the Dolpins looked like they would make a forth quarter comeback but sadly it was not to be.

The food was good too. I had the world’s longest hot dog, which itself was covered in pulled pork. I couldn’t finished it.

A good day all around. Thanks to everyone who came to keep me company, especially my dad who drove there and back!

Last month we popped down to Burbage for the weekend to visit Hugh & Anna.

If Hugh was not a middle-aged man trapped in a young man’s body before, owning his own house has only increasing this vasty. They are like proper grown up people with furniture, and a garden, and a plan for where their lives are going.

Worse still, it is infectious. Hugh took me to the driving range at his local golf club and it was actually quite a lot of fun. I’m 28 years old, golf should not be fun!

They also have two new additions to the family, of the feline variety.

It is difficult to take a good picture of a creature that insists on licking your camera lens.

Those of you who did computing with me at Leeds will no doubt remember Jack Kelly, also known as Aussie Jack. He spent August doing a world tour to catch up with friends and dropped my Leeds for some food or conversation.

Having had my wallet battered by a week of Finland we ended up having lunch at the Cuthbert Brodrick. A place where you can buy a meal cheaper than you can buy a pint in Helsinki. We ended up having lunch at Wetherspoon’s again the next day – this time at the train station – to meet up with Sarann and Chris. Some might worry this would give off the impression that we’re just alcohols that spend all our time at ‘Spoons. However, Jack was here for a year, so probably had us down that way anyway.

In the evening we held a small gathering. I managed to cook a reasonable amount of food (as opposed to way, way too much) and a good time was had by all. I even went out of my way to not be a grumpy bastard and joined in the card game, Love Letters, which turned out to be a lot of fun.

Earlier this month we visited Hayfield for a weekend of catching up, relaxing and enjoying the British summer, such as it is.

Massive success.

Thanks to the hearty contributions of savoury from Anna and sweet from Elina and GabrielÄ—, we were treated to a rich variety of treats from across Europe. I would have taken some pictures but thanks to the Instragram-generation, you’re now a complete dick if you take a photo of your food.

Instead, here is a picture of a hamster: