I’ve got quite a lot going on at the moment but took a break for a couple of things this weekend. Lyndsey turned 23 on Friday (Happy birthday!) so a couple of us met up on the quayside and then hit one of the rock clubs in town (Legends). There was actually a very good hip hop band/dj playing in the ska punk room at the end of the night so we ended up jumping around downstairs for a bit.

Jon, Joe, Natalie and Lyndsey in Pitcher and Piano.

Me and Jon. Jon’s from Sunderland - you can see it in his eyes!

Joe and Natalie.

Lyndsey in Legends.

Caroline moved house last week, so Saturday was a housewarming party. I bumped into Pete from work on the way there so we decided to go buy some bottles and then remembered we’d had some extra bottles of wine left after the meal on Wednesday eve and had conveniently stashed them in a hedge really close to the party - a short detour later and we were set. As soon as we got there we both spotted the cream carpet and knew red wine wasn’t the smarted thing we could have brought… Yes, lots of red wine was spilled, including a glass I was holding getting shattered by a stray spinning bottle in a vicious round of spin the bottle. I did learn that when you go to bed with a hand full of glass splinters you really shouldn’t lie with your hand against your face. The highlights were I found two very cute siamese twins and there was an exceptionally large amount of talk regarding ear porn. The ear photos aren’t going on the internet though, don’t worry

???, me, Laura, Caroline and Fran.

My siamese twin and I.

Naima, Pete and Joe.

Caroline.

Laura, Fran, Naima, Pete, Caroline and Joe @ the house party.

Naima and Joe.

Caroline and Emily.

Jonny in a cupboard.

Meeting my parents for dinner @ the Cluny in a minute. It was supposed to be the whole family but Kate went out on a big night yesterday and is still M.I.A. somewhere in the north of England lol.

Since Liz Towers and I are both leaving Newcastle this week and there was nothing on at the cinema for our usual Orange Wednesdays, a couple of us decided to go have a final meal at Francesca’s (great Italian restaurant in Jesmond) and then chill in Osbournes.

Well I’ve not updated this in a while… Since I last posted I’ve moved from Heaton to West Jesmond with Liz Ashforth. But now I’m moving again! The last couple of weeks has had me running all over the country with job interviews. All of them went incredibly well which was pretty cool - more on that below. I’ve only just found my camera again after the move so not many photos to add. There is a bit of family wii tennis:

And a couple of rock clubs with some friends who came over from Germany for the weekend…

Anyway, job news. After basically living on trains and making Kings Cross my second home for the last month I’ve been offered quite a lot of jobs. Every company I applied for took me through to the final round of interviews and I’ve now been offered positions by each company (except one). Most of the companies got back to me this week so i’ve been on the phone all week! Despite actually paying the lowest starting salary (by quite a long way unfortunately) I’m going to accept a position with Imagination Technologies. There’s something about the company I just like - they do some very interesting things and they have so much potential. So, the scary part is they want me to start on the 24th of September i.e. 16 days from now!!! That means I have to find a flat, move to Kings Langley/Watford in 2 weeks time (where I know absolutely noone) and be in work on the Monday. I am also due to be in Amsterdam the weekend after I start the job and I’m flying out mid day on the Friday… I’m not really sure how I’m going to manage that one yet and how bad an impression it would make to take a days holiday in my first week… I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

For now I better get to the airport, hire a car and head down to the lake district for my little sister’s 25th birthday/house party.

On Friday, Beccy got her BA in fine arts so we went out to celebrate in Sunderland. Congrats again Becs, really happy for you!!!

Beccy @ her graduation party.

Lyndsey, Matt, Aimye, Rich and John @ Beccy’s Graduation Party.

Matt and Aimye @ Beccy’s Graduation Party.

Aimye and Rich @ Beccy’s Graduation Party.

Matt and Beccy @ Beccy’s Graduation Party.

Lucy @ Beccy’s Graduation Party.

Beccy, Lucy and Lyndsey @ Beccy’s Graduation Party.

Danny and me @ Beccy’s Graduation Party.

As I was out of the country for both of my housemates birthdays last week, a couple of us went out for a meal in Newcastle (Zizzi’s) and then caught up with everyone at Mr Lynch followed by one of the bars next door to Poppollos. I’ve got to say I’m enjoying the UK’s smoking ban. It’s so nice to come home and not automatically have to jet wash all of your clothes. Even better, all of the bars/restaurants are sorting out proper seating and heating outside and there seems to be a more relaxed attitude to taking a glass with you (as long as you stay within a few feet of the pub). I have a funny feeling it’s probably illegal to be stood outside with a glass/bottle in the city centre but noone seems to be worried and people aren’t causing trouble. I was on soft drinks on Saturday but it was nice to be able to just wander outside and chat to people in the warm or move back inside at will. God knows what happens when the winter hits but for now it seems to be working nicely.

Update: It seems John rolled his car about 5 mins after he dropped us at home on Friday night. He’s fine but the car didn’t fare so well as it finished on its roof and is probably a write off (pic).

A 3000 mile round trip from Newcastle to Monaco and back - crossing France, Switzerland and Italy in a car costing less than £200? Do it in 6 days, with 99 other cars, raise a ton of money for some very worthwhile charities and you have the crumball rally (and the reason I was so hard to get ahold of last week). After fixing a massive hole in the exhaust, rewiring the front half of the car, stopping the engine stalling at 50+ mph and replacing a frankly useless battery we grabbed the Ferry from Dover and arrived in France at 1am on the morning of the 5th. With nowhere to stay we bumped into some other Crumballers in the car park and crashed on the floor of their hostel room. The next morning it seems that most of the 100 cars actually made it to the start line in Boulogne, yet even those had suffered a couple of knocks, missing parts and blown tyres.

Andy and I on our team car (Team #47 - Veni Vidi Volvo).

British Merc complete with sound system playing the Italian job, damnbusters and the national anthem at maximum volume..

The A-Team.

Team Emergency-Paralytic.

Ambassadors of the Sovereign.

Team Burt Reynolds.

Golf course car.

The Shark!

It was at this stage that the odometer on our 17 year old Volvo clicked onto 260,000 miles (it has had a hard life lol) and we made our way for the first day’s challenge. While we were parked up and collecting our days challenge packs the only really serious accident of the entire event happened. We had around 20 cars all parked up in one of the stopping areas and one of the teams was towing another car. The car being towed was turned off and the steering lock suddenly came on (meaning the driver couldn’t turn the wheel). With no control it hit the back of one of the cars, that car jumped forwards and crushed one of the drivers legs. The cars came away with only broken lights but the poor guys leg didn’t fair so well and had snapped. He was destined to spend the rest of the trip in casualty - get well soon man!

We did some champagne related challenges and made our way to a bar in Besancon. A few drinks later and my team went back to the campsite to catch some sleep but I fancied staying out with one of the other teams. We headed out into the wilds with fairly limited french which mainly consisted of us asking ‘ou est les femmes?’ and when old women started appearing we tried adding age clarification ;). We decided the only solution was a club so we asked some locals, a tramp and some people in a bar, but the nearest club was about a half hour walk from where we were. Luckily we found a guy walking through the middle of the city carrying a rifle and after we got talking he gave us a lift to a club called the Astoria.

260,000 miles on the clock!!!.

Partying in Besancon.

Partying in Besancon - condom machines on every corner.

Clubbing at the Astoria in Besancon.

Sometime between 4 and 6am I lost the guys in the club (they were wandering around trying to find me lol) so I started talking to a group of French girls who used to do english in the UK and ended up going for after hours drinks/party with their group. At 8am things were dieing down so I set off thinking I’d just find something I recognised. Unfortunately I’d been out for about 12 hours by this stage and when we left it was daylight. We’d been driven half an hour outside of the town centre and then walked to a party further away. It was at this stage I realised I had no real clue of where I was, was over an hours walk from anywhere I’d been the night before and didn’t know what the campsite was called. Everyone was leaving for Italy in 2 hours and my team would assume I was getting a lift with the guys I’d left in the club earlier. Luckily I had a photo of the campsite on my camera and in what can only be described as ‘pigeon French with hand gestures’ I explained to a taxi driver who recognised the photo and took me back - just in time to climb in the car and join my team towards Switzerland. See, everything works out if you’re lucky Thank god I didn’t have too much of a hangover as today was the day we were driving over St. Bernard’s Pass - an incredibly long, steep and winding route up and over mountains. It was expected to destroy most of the cars but amazingly only a few blew up/caught fire.

Sara and Andy @ Lake Geneva’.

Some of the crumballers who made it to the top of St. Bernard’s Pass.

Our team at the highest point on St. Bernard’s Pass.

Lake at the top of t. Bernard’s Pass on the Swiss/Italian border.

We crossed Italy without a map (which was interesting in its own right) but driving into Turin centre at 9pm on a Saturday night without one was pretty intense. The Italian drivers are insane, the city is packed, full of one way streets and there are no roadmarkings. My French had been good enough to get us by until now but not one of us spoke Italian so it took us a LONG time to find the bar. We got a little lucky when asking for directions as some of the words for directing people and counting are close enough to Latin that I could understand them but I couldn’t reply in any sensible way. We did arrive tho and some of the Crumballers who could speak Italian sorted us out a discount on a room in their hotel. In the morning we went to get the car only to find someone had tried (and failed) to break into the drivers side door with a screwdriver - so, we spent the rest of the trip climbing in through the passenger door.

We zoomed across Italy doing various tasks related to the Italian Job movie and pulled into Monaco as part of a giant Crumball Convoy with everyone hanging out of the windows, playing music and trying to park next to ferrari’s. After a bite to eat we headed over to Nice for the final awards ceremony and a hotel. The next morning we decided rather than going straight home we should go along the South coast to Montpellier so I could geek it up and see a bridge called the Millau Viaduct - not everyone’s cup of tea I know but it’s a very cool bridge :P. Along the way the car started breaking (overheating, exhaust snapped, car started stalling, etc) but we fixed them all and in a spirit of anglo-French relations we even stopped to fix a van belonging to some French guys who were stuck on the side of a mountain.

Partying in Turin.

Partying in Turin.

Partying in Turin.

Me and Andy celebrating finishing in Monaco.

Ferrari’s seem the norm in Monaco…

Fountain outside our hotel in Nice.

The most important ingredient in me fixing a car is a can of coke! (For anyone curious I was fixing the idling revs of the engine but it was so hot you couldn’t touch it without pouring water on at the same time).

Boosting Anglo-French relations by repairing some French guys van. They were pretty happy we did.

Crossing the Millau Viaduct.

Me in front of the Millau Viaduct.

Sara and Andy at the Millau Viaduct.

Awesome double rainbow (photo doesn’t do it justice).

All in all it was a damn good trip and I will definitely be doing another one. Hopefully next time we can get a few mates to run a couple of cars and go as teams (a few people have already asked about next year). It’s a good chance to raise a lot of money for charity and with a bit of notice we could do a better job of decorating the car, etc. This time round I’d only met the people on my team a day or two beforehand so it would be awesome to do it again with friends. Everyone who came along this time is planning on being back next year so it can only get bigger and better! A cheap holiday, lots of laughs, new friends and adventures while helping out some really good causes… Brilliant! PS: The rest of my photos from the event are up in my gallery (here).

Tonight a few of us gathered for a house party in Jesmond for Iain’s leaving do - he moves to Vietnam this week. There was some kind of an oriental theme thrown together at the last minute but that became more of an excuse to paint everything in sight than anything else. All in all it was a good night and a few of us ended up in the back yard with a bonfire until the sun came up - putting the world to rights and just enjoying Iain’s last night.

Liz, Mark, Jayne, me, ??, Ruth, Dave and Lyndsey after ‘face art’.

??, me, Emma and Stephen @ Liz’s House.

??, Liz, Jayne, Ruth and ?? @ Liz’s house.

Liz @ Liz’s House.

Dave, Richard and Dennis @ Liz’s house.

Jake, Caroline and Simo @ Liz’s house.

Fridge magnets @ Liz’s house.

Never get drunk at a party where I have props nearby.

Dodge fuelling the fire in Liz’s backyard.

Simmons, Iain, me and Dodge enjoying the fire in Liz’s backyard.

When the sun came up, Simmons and I decided it was time to head for pastures home… As there has been so much rain (Sheffield under water, etc etc) we found a new mini river had formed coming down a normally useless part of the parkland we walk past. Obviously, we decided to we had to go off road and see where it began and if it would lead us home. Eventually it did, but this involved walking up a small river, climbing walls and then crossing a water logged field full of 5ft high nettles. We did make it and have the nettle stings to prove it

Simmons starting the climb.

As the water rose we had to seek higher ground.

I’ve found the route home!

The final hurdle between the top of the river and home… nettles!