Last weekend saw Atheist Society’s annual summer camping weekend, this week hosted by Dalesbridge at the far end of the Yorkshire Dales near Austwick and Ingleton.
Despite it throwing it down with rain for days beforehand the sun came out once we got there and beyond the odd shower it was generally good weather which made for an excellent time all around.
It was a mix of walking and drinking which is what you want on any camping holiday. There is something brilliant about starting the day at 8:30am with a bacon sandwich and a beer.
In between drinking on the site and checking out the local pubs we also made it round the waterfall trail, white scar caves and even a rather large mountain climb all the way up to the base of Penyghent 😉 .
Myself and Zoltan had an appointment at HSBC today to get our community bank account up and running. It was rapidly turning into the AHS dragging on and on with them never getting in touch with me except for a torrent of letters saying they were trying to get in touch with me but couldn’t (I got them to check my contact details – they have them correct).
Anyway we went down to the branch today, Zoltan was late of course, and got it sorted there with amazing ease – we were in and out in 10-15 minutes and the account is now open!
As such I thought I would mention a positive experience I have had with dealing with a bank, especially given they are becoming even more rare these days (as if that were possible 😉 ).
Put up my tent to make sure it all worked.
Put it up in about 5 minutes. Took me 40 minutes to get it back down lol.
Tuesday saw the usual A-Soc meetup at The Library, which is our new home for the moment due to the fact that they serve food and I prefer not to wait until like midnight to eat on an evening. And for pretty amazing prices too, I got a beer and a burger for £3.50 though it did have a notable lack of dressing.
Most of the evening was spent planning the oncoming society camping trip to the point were we even have Lil coming – crazy times!
Sunday evening I met up with Felix and Craig as usual. Unfortunately Zoe had to work the next morning so couldn’t come and Becky’s too far under Leanne’s thumb to dare come out without Leanne’s permission so it was just the three of us.
Not that, that really brought things down as it meant we had a bit more freedom in where to eat and so went for a nice predictable choice 😀 . We ended up at Nando’s at Kirkstall so me and Craig could get some more loyalty stamps – indeed Craig had made it as a far as a free quarter chicken. Only seven more to go until the whole!
Having met everyone at The Library for our usual Sunday lunch fun – including a suprise guest appearance by Rob and Jewish Dan, I headed off with George to move some of his stuff back to Rochdale.
It’s an, interesting place, shall we say. Though it does have a very nice business park on the outskirts which if a second company was ever to take up some of the many arces of land available there would really brighten the place up.
I went round Oakwood drive-thru on the way home to grab some food last night and noticed this notice in the window.
If you can’t read the notice it says…
For the Safety & Security of both our customers and staff this restaurant is remotely monitored with a direct contact to the Police.
This means that they have a security office somewhere monitoring the cameras to make sure there isn’t someone up to no good. My question is though, what is a “direct contact to the Police”? I mean, that implies to me they can contact the police directly.
But, I can do that. The Police gave me their phone number too. I would imagine most people have it actually, it’s quite easy to remember, it’s only three digits.
Having got the night off on Saturday and Kate being bored as well we decided to hit the pub along with Norm, Liz, Oli and Si. Not that any of us live near the Deer Park any more but I still really love the pub and most of us drive these days (not like back in the day) so it seemed like a good enough choice.
Afterwards we headed into town which has always seemed like enemy territory on Saturday night – full of angry drunken locals, many of which I probably know and choose not to associate with for good reasons. Still Bourbon is always a good place to be as it wasn’t overly busy but there were enough people there to keep it lively.
OMG.
I mean, you think you’re doing alright, you’re cruising through life, got my car sorted, getting my house sorted, got through the first week of my new job. And then something like this happens.
I think we can all agree that there is a a hole in all of our lives. Whatever you thought of Jackson (who was found innocent of course) his music was universally loved, he was rightfully refered to as “the king of pop” and his album Thriller remains arguably the biggest selling album of all time.
If anyone else is planning to fly out for the funeral, let me know and we can organise something.
