Archive for the ‘Friends’ Category

Having being partying for three nights in a row, I managed to pull myself out of bed in time for Christmas dinner which had been skillfully cooked by my housemates. It was a nice meal indeed and featured all the expected trimmings laid out with a set of plates and table dressings kindly proved by Norm’s mum.

Having spent three hours eating and a can of 24 later I headed upstairs to squeeze in the normal Sunday workload (which unfortunately is still going but I have some free time to catch up on Thursday lol) before heading out to my mum’s birthday shindig at 7:30.

It turns out my mum is rather popular. I thought I did well getting 19 people out to my birthday do on a Sunday but apparently, I was very much beaten by the 20-30 people that turned up to the pub to wish my mum a happy birthday.

Finally having spent a few hours catching up with friends and family there I dashed over to the Crusader to catch the end of the pub quiz and arrived just in time to find everyone leaving. But no worries as it just meant moving on to get food so all was not lost. In the end, I ended up getting to bed at a reasonable time too, not bad for such a packed day.

Having driven back up to Leeds on Saturday we set about preparing for a house party of our own to celebrate Liz and Sarann’s birthday (to which the latter is today, happy birthday Sarann!). As to be expected it was a night of drunk antics enjoyed by all who attended.

Importantly, the night included chicken. Kate mentioned that her Nando’s voucher, from when she found a brain in her chicken, expired in a few days so we headed over to Nando’s to get some take-out, which it turns out, they do indeed do.

It seems to be becoming somewhat of a tradition to go out and get chicken as our previous house party saw myself and Kieran disappear off to get KFC. I have to say, it’s a tradition I could certainly get used to.

So, Liz is now officially a lesbian.

So, Zoltan is now dating a 15 year old.

They’re both great openings so I’ll let you pick which one you prefer.

This weekend was of course Atheist Society’s Weekend Away 2008 and with a total of 22 people we headed down to London on Friday afternoon. We arrived shortly before 4pm and checked into the hostel without much problems. I managed to get some work done on the train down there which was useful.

We first headed out to Smithy’s, a local pub which used to be a blacksmiths and retains many of the original features and character. We ended up on two seperate tables, the other table ended up getting kicked out. They claimed it was because people weren’t buying any drinks though I suspect it was because Tom was far too drunk and his renditions of Oasis songs were distracting other customers 😉 .

I left with that table to guide them to another pub only to find that the table I had just left got kicked out soon after because Nicola started causing trouble by throwing candle wax around. So after a quick stop at the Euston Flyer we made it down to Pizza Express for dinner. My meal was quite nice though I have to say Nicola’s meat feast looked even more appetising.

Afterwards we headed out to Sin City at the Electric Ballroom which was absolutely amazing! It took us a while to find it, I ended up having to phone Leeds Nightline to give us directions lol but we made it there in the end. Unfortunately Jenny took a blow to the head near the end of the night and had to go home but I had a brilliant time, they played such a fantastic playlist, every song was good.

Myself, Mike, Gaz, Sophie and Jon made it to almost the end of the night and had an interesting walk home running into a crazy Irish man who insisted on telling us lots of jokes while he was “raising the price of a hamburger.” We also found a phonebox full of prostitute adverts so picked up a few as you never know which way these weekends will go 😉 .

Meanwhile Rich and crew headed to the gay club Heaven. Yep Tom, John and Heini were at a gay club until 5am. And not particularly quite when they got back in either, Rich burst into our room with “I don’t know what the fuck you were doing, he was a gay man.” Apparently Nicola had pulled when a guy mistook her for a man in drag.

Downstairs Liz was apparently even more loud on her entry waking most of the room up which wasn’t exactly helping matters as Norm and Michelle had already made Zoltan cry by not letting him go to sleep. As I mentioned in the intro, while Liz hasn’t explicitly come out, staying at a gay club till 5am has to be the final proof really.

Saturday
We kicked Saturday off with a visit to Conway Hall where we meet Tessa from the NSS as they prepared for their AGM. We then headed over to the Natural History Museum with a quick stop for lunch in which Heini managed to work his way through a large big cheese and bacon meal (the new Big Tasty sized promotional burger) as well as another big cheese and bacon burger on top of that!

The Natural History Museum wasn’t quite as good as I was expecting but never the less still good – the Darwin exhibit we were booked onto was well worth a visit and we got plenty of good pictures so I’ll count that as a victory.

Just as it was closing I finally ran into Kieran so we got a quick chance to catch up then. We got seperated on the underground however and by the time I made it to the pub we were meeting at there were only ten minutes before we had to go for dinner so in the end I only got about 20 minutes to chat to Kieran. Still, I’m sure we’ll get chance to catch up at new year.

Dinner was courtesy of Nando’s and despite half the group bailing on it, the staff were friendly enough towards us and it was a damn fine meal. Unfortunately we didn’t find a brain this time but there is always next time.

After dinner we headed down to The Big Chill which Norm had managed to wangle us free entry to. It was rather disappointing when we got in there, it was rather packed and music was blasting out – not exactly chilled out, at all. Never the less it was a good place to grab a few drinks in, heading home about 1ish, once again with myself and Mike being the last people there along with John and Liz in tow.

Sunday
We had to check out Sunday morning so a bit of an earlier start which we then headed over to Speakers’ Corner to see what was going on. There were quite a few good speakers there, neither Mary or Jay Smith showed up but a number of other good speakers were there and I got a good crowd when I got up on my ladder and started talking about the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

So much so in fact that everyone left the Muslim speaker to come listen to me at which point I added a rather cheeky “where is your god now?” in his direction which I’m not sure he appreciated too much 😀 . He also turned down the opportunity to have a debate with me but there you go.

Afterwards we headed over to Blackfriars where the Church of Scientology was and found a nice pub to grab a few drinks before our appointment. I decided to walk it and found myself going down Fleet Street and past the Royal Courts of Justice which are some amazing buildings and then down onto the waterfront which was fantastic.

After a quick drink or two in the pub we headed down to the Church of Scientology where we were shown round the building and exhibition centre which explained about Scientology and what they do. I picked up a copy of Dianetics which I am looking forward to reading 😀 .

Afterwards we decided to split up to find somewhere to eat as we weren’t booked in anywhere. We found a nice pub that I believe was just off Farrington if that sounds like a real street in London, myself and Gaz tooked into some very nice rib eye steaks meanwhile Nicola decided to have meat balls in flat bread.

Continuing our history of running into random people I know down in London, while we were in the pub Hind Hassan, formally equality and diversity officer at Leeds University Union spotted us.

As we were leaving Norm was elsewhere checking train tickets and realising that the train in fact left at 22:10 not 22:30 😀 . So after a bit of a mad rush back we safely made it onto the train and back to Leeds. It was scheduled to arrive at 1:30 and Liz was so confident of this she proclaimed she would perform a sexual act on the platform if it got in an hour early. It got in at 12:30…

We didn’t half get round last night. Unfortunately, it wasn’t in that way.

We started the night with a stop at Co-op to get a sandwhich. But they didn’t have any. Well, they had one egg and cress or some crap. Certainly not the kind of sandwhich you would ever actually eat. So we headed over the road to Sainsbury’s. Who didn’t have any either. So we ended up settling for a bit of a random assortment of food.

It was then off to Xscape for some bowling which is where things started to go wrong. Having found Charlotte hanging out with her 50 year old friends she proceeded to somehow beat us in the first game. Hang your head in shame guys 😀 . Luckily some sense of normality was restored and I won the second game.

Next stop was Hunslet McDonald’s as Craig was on the close over there. It didn’t feel as traitorous as exprected to go elsewhere but then they didn’t have any M meat so was it really worth it? We finished the night by heading back over to Colton Mill as to not disappoint Becky. How nice are we? 😀

It may have been a little late but Si’s official birthday party finally took place on Monday night.

We met up in The Deer Park for a steak dinner which was rather good, especially once we got on to dessert though I fear it may be my last steak for a while as I really need to cut down on my spending (the drugs and the hookers are really starting to add up).

Si also turned up in the end which was quite a nice addition. Good times.

Another Sunday night having rolled around we met up in The Crusader car park (which is looking dangerously like it’s never going to re-open given there is now a housing builder banner across the front of it 🙁 ) and headed off to Xscape for another exciting night of fun.

Despite Steph’s best attempt to bring the atmosphere down with her attitude problem, a guest appearance by Miss Pickles and a fair deal of alcohol (given we weren’t on a bar night) kept people in high spirits throughout the night and as usual provided one or two classic pictures. Becky even managed to stay on her feet for the whole night though the same couldn’t be said for Charlotte 😀 .

I managed some fairly average scores not much over a hundred, worthy of second place and first place on my lane respectively but the real victories of the evening was Craig’s overall win of 148 and Zoe being particuarly on form scoring 120-odd, doubling her usual total.

Having escaped work at about 1:30 I headed over to Sophie and Jon’s house party which was still in full swing. What I found was an orgy of drinking, sex and hedonism the like of which only atheists can truely practice.

Liz making out with random boys, Michelle making out with random girls, everyone drinking some kind of mixture that looked far too much like sewage water and all of this culminating in a human pyramid which made for some excellent pictures.

Good party guys, well done!

Having finally made it home just before 9 last night we setup for podcasting to have a rant about the evening events. After only two or three months of Norm saying he was definitely going to be joining us this week, we finally got him involved in the two shows we recorded last night.

The real miracle, and I think this stands testament to how annoyed everyone really was, was that we managed to stay on topic for the whole of the first show. Crazy.

So much for the awesome fireworks display happening outside of my window, it was hidden behind the houses next door. Gutted.

Not that anyone else seemed to actually make it down there, despite many promises. Rumour has it Si was too busy getting his birthday present from Izzy too? 😉 .

I was very impressed by the Roundhay Park bonfire though it’s been literally a decade, probably longer since I’ve last been but they started building it last Wednesday. Last Wednesday! It was like a wooden pyramid by the time they had finished it.

Anyway, happy birthday Si.

Good news girls, Norm is back on the market.

Discussing last night with my housemates I mentioned everyone had bailed on me at Nicola’s party (because they’re all rubbish). What I didn’t know is that Liz hadn’t actually home last night but had instead gone over to Oli’s despite having a taxi waiting to take her home.

Perhaps some context is required. Being back on closes last night I had work in the afternoon which due to the fact nobody turned up for work yesterday, took far longer than it needed to and I didn’t end up getting out until about 2:30.

Having finally got away I headed over to Nicola’s party which was still loving along with about ten guests or so remaining. I was a little too sober to really join in the festivities at this point though and given everyone else had left, I went home after about an hour. I did get the amusement of watching Zoltan try to play Twister however 😀 .