Archive for the ‘Friends’ Category

I tried out my new lens at the pre-party. Unfortunately, I had to be in Donington the next day, so I was getting my coat out of the cloak room as people were still queuing to put theirs in. Never the less, good times were had.

Viv held her birthday party at Blackhouse, and despite having our photography course, we finally made it down there at 9:30 – still in time to order some steak! We both had the posh surf and turf, which was great, but I wish I had ordered a proper steak with hindsight.

You would think that having come from a photography course I would be able to take a good photo. But you would be wrong.

Last week, my friend Brett was up in Leeds. He wasn’t up for a particularly good reason, but never the less it was a fine opportunity to catch up, so we headed over to the Cuthbert Brodick to take advantage of more fortuitous timing – Tuesdays are of course steak night at Cuthbert!

It really did make me wonder why we don’t do steak night more often. It’s like £7 for a mixed grill and a drink! You just can’t beat that.

After, we headed over to Browns, to take advantage of their good range of non-alcoholic cocktails. Their menu seemed somewhat more limited than it has been previously, but maybe I just have a distorted memory of the good old days.

Due to Freshers’ Week, Wendy House was moved to a week earlier – which means Wendy House sooner, but then of course a huge gap between this one and October’s. It also should have landed bang on Norm’s birthday, but ended up seven days earlier – inconsiderate.

Never the less, we took quite a good crowd there – we booked taxis for 19 people and despite still not drinking, I made it to a very respectable 2am before heading home.

I couldn’t be bothered to take my camera to last month’s Wendy House. But we did enjoy a few drinks beforehand under threat of extermination.

Recently, we said a fair well to Rich, who is moving down to London to further his career in medicine. Rich has been a dear friend to many of us since we first met five and a half years ago, and I wish him all the best.

One of the most active members of Toastmasters is my friend John Fletcher who was working towards the end of his Competent Communicator manual when I joined and has since completed it and moved onto the advanced speeches.

His 10th and final speech of the Competent Communicator was about how he was not a big fan of his job and so had finally broken free and set up on his own. It was a speech I strongly identified with, having recently done a similar thing.

John now runs Leeds Maths Tuition, offering one to one tuition for anyone looking to improve their grades.

I took my recently acquired flash to Wendy House to see if I could get better photos. What I got was a mysterious floating head of Fonze. Which was pretty cool.

For the June Wendy House we had planned a mascarade ball for Michelle’s return. However, it turned out she didn’t get in to Leeds until way after it would have ended so it turned out to be some far more relaxed drinks before Wendy House. Not that that isn’t the start of a very enjoyable evening.

We finally made it into Wendy House just before midnight at which Fonze began partying the night away.

However, within 15 minutes of getting in the door, we were heading back out again to meet Michelle. Also Michelle is back! Hurray! Although by the time this actually gets published she will have actually gone again, but it was fun while it lasted.

Hey, do you remember SoBe? Probably not as it’s new. Well, forget about it anyway because it’s gone. It’s now called Hirst’s Yard. Confusing, it’s also located in Hirst’s Yard, along with a load of other bars.

Myself, Elina, Norm, George and Kat were recently out for post-Nando’s cocktails when we received a buy one get one free flyer, so decided it was worth a go. Perhaps they decided that the SoBe look was simply a bit too bright and happy for Leeds, but the essentials remained the same – quality, properly mixed cocktails, at reasonable prices (which changes to very reasonable when you have two for one vouchers).

It was reasonably quiet when we went in at around 9pm, though picked up soon after that, so head down early if you want a seat.

We followed that up with a trip to the ever-popular Call Lane Social where we ventured up to the tiki hideaway upstairs. You can question the wisdom of lighting drinks on fire when you have a tiki-style straw roof that is highly flammable, but we survived to tell the tale, so all is well.

At this point, myself and Elina left as we had to be up early the next morning, but I presume the night ended in a strip club.