Posts Tagged ‘michelle’

On the last Saturday of 2017, we headed over to Manchester to see Michelle. She was stopping there on her way back to China. I don’t have a photo from the event, so here is a stock image.

It went well. The trains ran on time and Venla was reasonably well behaved. She had a lot of fun shuffling around Manchester Piccadilly station but was not a happy baby when I told her shuffling time was over.

Most of all, it’s nice to spend time with old friends and that while life circumstances and locations may change, the things you love about each other never do.

We had lunch at a place called LEAF. It was very good; recommended if you’re in the area.

The February event of Sunday Assembly Leeds was hosted by Dermot. He picked a theme of wonder and arranged an excellent combination of talks and readings on the subject, as well as having Michelle get out all her meditation gear. A great time was had by all!

Professor Richard Dawkins talks about the anaesthetic of familiarity. We forget the every day wonder, he beauty all around. The same applies to friends. It is great to see someone you have not seen for years. But when they are living in your house in December, and January, and February, they quickly blend into the every day.

Of course, I mostly said that for dramatic effect. It is technically true that Michelle was in my house for those months. But she arrived New Year’s Eve, stayed for two weeks, then went home and then came back for half a week. Not quite the imposition that Alan Partridge would inflict on people.

Turns out that visiting Leeds in January is not a great time to come. Tropical World closed for a month for refurbishment and the Thackray Medical Museum was closed too. Luckily the last visit even fell on a Wendy House, so it was back to old times.

Michelle is now heading off to China to teach English for a few years. Hense the title of this blog post – see you soon!

The good news is that my blog is not blocked in China anymore. What more could you possibly need to read?

Photos from our trip to Jersey.

With Michelle back in town, we headed down to 51% Bourbon for some drinks.

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.

Michelle dropped by last week in between her many travels.

We went to Blackhouse, the steak house in the city centre now located where Est Est Est used to be which I really, really recommend! I’m not convinced it was better than River Plate but certainly matches it and River Plate was amazing in itself. Cannot recommend it enough.

Afterwards we headed up to The Hedley Verity which is the new Lloyds No. 1 bar (essentially, a Wetherspoon’s with disco lights). That is located where Baja Beach Club used to be. I can’t say I spent much time in Baja because I didn’t start really going out and getting drunk until I was 18 and was therefore already three years too old to be hanging out in Baja.

What struck me though was how easily we all quickly slipped back into old times, arguing over socialist vs conversative politics and getting drunk. Good times.

Saturday night was Michelle’s leaving do before she heads off to Lancaster, on purpose, to do a PGCE to convert her useful highly paid high potential career progression computing degree into a teaching one.

Having started the night at Little Tokyo we then headed to Cuthbert Brodrick, Fab Cafe and finally Wendy House. Wendy was pretty good as turnout was low but Stylus was closed which resulted in there being plenty of people in Mine but there still being tickets left, the perfect combination.

In any case, I hope we managed a reasonable send-off. It was 4am by the time we made to bed which is respectable if not quite all night.

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!

When I left work on Wednesday, it was dark.

Though that was mainly due to the fact that I didn’t leave work until 21:45. That was a long meeting. Dean said it would finish around 6 when we first planned it. Of course none of us actually believed that it would ;).

I headed over to Napa to get in a quick drink for Michelle’s pub thing before finally grabbing some dinner and going home to get some work done. Managed to get to bed at 2am which wasn’t going to result in a good night’s sleep. Still as long as the podcasting session the next day didn’t go on too late…