Well, I’ve recovered a bit now – so I might as well list the activities…

Saturday dawned bright and early (don’t you just love not sleeping?) so I pissed off to the train station. For 7.45 in the morning. Caught the train – well, actually the train that should have left 75 minutes earlier, but with Virgin being their normal cuntish selves it was late before it even started, so I got the 6.30 train to Oxford, starting at 7.45. Go figure.

3 and a halfish hours later, I got into Oxford. Not bad journey all things considered. One of the “nice” new Virgin trains, the Voyager (I think – could be the Enterprise, or even the DS9 *shrug*) and it was OK – better than the old sheds anyway. Plug sockets for laptops and mobiles, decent seats, quiet trains, no guards to check the tickets – it’s all an improvement. Not even too many knobheads on the train – I think they were still in bed, as opposed to previous journeys although it was still populated by one incredibly smelly person…

Anyway, got to the parental home just in time to help them set the place up for the first of the parties – a bunch of 25 friends. Had this been mentioned prior to my arrival? Of course not. Hey Ho. Still, a trip to Chiltern Brewery netted some decent beer which would help the weekend float past. Leaving the blackberry liqueur @ the parent’s wasn’t smart, but then again I never did get IQ awards…

Anyway, the party went well, and ended up with my father asleep inside while everyone else was still drinking outside.

Sunday was much quieter, involving a very hungover father (I wonder why), and seeing some friends, which was pretty cool.

Monday involved 30 members of the family. What a joy. Honest. I can’t deny it, I fucking hate most of them – in fact, pretty much all relatives. If I could, I’d do the kenny everett method, round ’em up in a field and bomb the bastards. But I can’t, so I have to put up with them. So all I can say is “thank christ for alcohol”. I won’t go into details of the day – they’d only mean anything if you’d met the family members, and I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.

And then back up to Manchester on the Tuesday. To 600ish emails. I’m exhausted, but it’s been OK.

Oh, and it was good to get a letter from a friend in Oz today. Posted on the 26th August, so that’s not bad at all, really. Not a patch on email, but there’s still something about receiving a letter rather than an email.

Ah well, time to be travelling…

Right well, I’m now off to Nottingham to have a weekend with friends instead of family. Sounds like a much better deal, to be honest. I may get more chance to bung something on, but don’t hold your breath.

I’ve made a decision to not worry too much about missing days on occasion from the blog, it’s not like it’s an enforced diary or anything, so what the hell. And because of that I may or may not write stuff. So there.

Utterly shite day – lack of sleep leading to hallucinations all the way through work, which is never a particularly good sign. It’s left me completely shattered, yet now it’s quarter to midnight, and I’m wide the fuck awake.

God has a sense of humour, and at the moment is pointing at me and laughing.

OK, there’s now a new comments system in place. It means the Facking Northern Monkeys have lost all my earlier comments, so my apologies to anyone who’d left them up til Bank Holiday Weekend, but they appear to have dived into the ether…

And thanks to my brother for reintroducing me to the phrase “Facking Northern monkeys” from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. It’s an expression that’s kept running through my brain since I got back to Manchester.

I also used it in conjunction with the comments system, which appears to have gone tits-up. Joy.

Crap Towns – I’ve lived in a few, and visited even more.

But for me, Coventry is still the out and out winner, with Bedford coming a close second.