Some Entertainment

And now I will provide you with this deep and meaningful picture of....um........this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(look closely between its legs for a packet of nuts to go with the beer and cigarette)

Ahh yes, the sweet and innocent balloon giraffe!! not so innocent now are we??? no I didnt think so.
This animal was created whilst watching the ashes last night and had deflated by the end of the night, presumably by drinking too much and passing out on something sharp....or maybe because its brain was full of air! oh yeah the jokemaster is back ;P

Ashes Time

The Ashes have begun, and what a beginning! go the mighty aussies. I hope that everybody back in oz feels sorry for me having to watch the game at some stupid time in the morning like we did back at home last year, at least its the right time for you this year!!! I'm sure i'll watch some matches straight through the night but maybe not when work begins too early.

Now here's a random picture of my hand with some lolly halves on it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And here's an idea of all the leaves we need to sweep off the pavement every morning....this tree is guilty, guilty I tells ya!

Well that's all for today, time to catch some sleep so i can witness ponting and hussey both smack double centuries later on tonight.

A week in Ireland, Day 1

The first day, well the first day wasn't really the first day for those of us who were starting the trip from London. We had already caught the bus from London Victoria at some silly time in the morning on sunday and spent 12 hours travelling via road and sea to Dublin in order to begin our adventure.

So day 1, the journey from Dublin to Derry in the north. Once everyone who was staying at the paddywagon hostel overnight had been sorted into their separate tour buses we set off with a small drive around Dublin before leaving the city. We had a look at one of the worlds only completly square bridges where there was a camera continuously feeding images to a website so you could call someone overseas and they could actually watch you through a website while you spoke to them, too bad we didn't stop there though. The next stop was a national park which had a whole bunch of deer and a really big cross were the pope offered mass to over 1 and a half million people in 1979 so it was quite a big grassed area, would have been a sight to see.

Now moving out of the city we popped into an old style graveyard where there were some really old towers that monks used to live in and also doubled as a defensive position during war. Here's an example of some of the crosses that the monks used to worship around. On some of them you can see where the rock has been worn away as the monks walked around the cross reting their hands on the stone. Here you can see Eric our tour guide leaning on the cross, otherwise known as 'shrek'.

A church with a head was the next stop on the trip. An actual dude's head from a long time ago was sitting in a glass cabinet in a gold decorative thingo, well i'll just put a picture of it here for you. When you look closely you can see some hairs still attached to the head. There is a story behind this head of course and probably once a body under it but i forget it now, all i can remember is that the english killed this fella in London for something or other and someone smuggled the head back to Ireland and kept it hidden until it was safe to bring into the public.

nice set of teeth!!

Once we hit the city of Derry we found one of the local pubs, had some food took part in a piece of drinking and the group started to get to know each other in preparation for the week ahead.

Day 2

Today we travel from Derry to Belfast. This was the most scenic of all the days of the tour....we started with a walking tour of historic Derry.
Our walking tour guide (not the regular guide) first took us to a grassed where i took this photo.


From here the guide took us to a walled of section were 600 people live who belive they are still british. In this area you can see british flags flying and even the curbs are painted blue white and red symbolising the union jack. Strange place.

Now we headed along the coast and to one of the seven natural wonders of the world, The Giants Causeway. Very briefly the story goes that a giant came from across the ocean by building this causeway and for some reason or another he had to destroy the causeway across the sea and so we are left with this very intriguing rock formation. The scientific view is something like there was a glacier that got blown up by a volcano and somehow left the rocks the way they are.

So here you go, a small piece of the Giants Causeway

I've made this picture a little larger so you can see the detail in the background as well as the foreground.

You cant really appreciate this place without actually going there because it is on such a large scale and has quite a few different attractions like large rocks formed in recognisable shapes the pipes in the wall, the chimney etc... one of the shapes is a camel might i add! To get around the whole thing you need around an hour and a half, you take the low road there and look back at the views on the high road back to the carpark.

Now we ventured to the Carrick-a-rede rope bridge that was built by the fishermen to get to their little island which must have been a good place for fishing, but i cant relly see the point because the island is only a very short ways further out in the ocean! Luckily we were allowed to cross the bridge because they shut it after we finished due to high winds.
It was quite a pretty place but you'll have to put up with a picci of me on the bridge (obviously it had been recontructed since the original)

Look 'no hands'.

From the island which is in the direction the photo was taken from we did see a dolphin on the right so i guess there may have been some decent fishing in the area and maybe the old guys actually new a thing or two.

After a big day visiting the the sights we arrived in Belfast a little late so we checked in and went off to one of the local resteraunts and had a feast and a couple of drinks followed by a relitively early night.

Day 3

Today we travel west from Belfast to Galway. Because we arrived a little late into Belfast yesterday we postponed the 'Black Taxi tour' until this morning, so we were up early ready to take in a bit of history in the troubled city of Belfast.

The tour took us into the peace sector a kind of no mans land between the conflicting sides. Throughout this area there were murals painted all over the sides of the houses, we were told that they are starting to get painted over so we had better see them while they were still there. These murals ranged from pictures in memory of 'soldiers' who had died in the conflict to symbols of each sector to people holding machine guns which seemed to follow you wherever you would walk.

Our machine gun friend

The taxi drivers told us that some people, usual local youths, would still cause some trouble here(evidence in all the smashed glass) but in general things had settled down. We drove on to see one of the tallest wall still in belfast where we each wrote our little message of peace for others to read.........then write over with their own message i guess. some funny old messages included this one 'you think you've got problems!! the Americans steal our FISH!' written by a Canadian visitor.

This is my message for the world, to quote from monty pyhton.

Peace from the Albatross!!

From here we visited some more murals including one long wall covered in about 10 or so which had a mural of george bush sucking all the oil out of iraq with the bodies piling up and the cash flowing towards him with the help of a british hook. It was titled 'Americas greatest failure'

Moving out of Belfast we crossed the border again into southern Ireland and back to the Euro. The scenery was quite beautiful in this heartland of the country. We stopped off at a waterfall and had a bit of a gander at the local scenery before heading into the party town of Galway.

Galway is a great little town, there were plenty of places to visit at night as we found out staying out until around 3 on a weekday i think. The website does say that its the party capital of Ireland.

With the conflict behind us it was now time to explore the south of Ireland....

Day 4

Here we go, today the journey fron Galway to the Randy Leprechaun in Annascaul (the companys' own pub/hostel) right by Dingle.
This days journeying was to take us from one type of landscape to a completly different one. The once green countryside was to change dramatically into a land of slate, rockwalls and fairy circles. during the famine times of ireland apparently the english monarchy gave them discounts on their taxes for every mile of stonewall they would build, so there are walls in this area which are of no purpose at all, for example we visited a row ofstone walls which went straight into the ocean, very weird indeed. From those walls we went to a to visit a fairy circle in a strange landscape which was split into squares for miles....like this.......

Moving on the land was turning green once again and we went to visit the cliffs of Moher. At the moment there is a huge construction project going on at the cliffs to build a new tourist centre under the ground in order to keep it invisible and encourage the natural landscape to rule the area, what i'm getting at is that some of the places were off limits, but we could access 80% of the area and it was still quite a good place to visit.

Me with a bottle of pepsi down my top looking like a malformed boob!

Hmm well you cant see the boob very well here at all

After the cliffs we jumped on a small ferry with our bus for a quick trip to the other side of the water...nothing to say here.

On the way to our destination we passed through a little town for and evening lunch in a rest/pub where some of father ted was filmed and you got to pour your own guiness. A couple of driving hours later we arrived at the Randy Leprechaun for a night of some kareoke, pool, food and a spot of drinking.

I'll leave you with this image of Randy for this days travelling!

How nice!

Day 5

Ah day 5, Dingle to Killarney. It was goodbye to the Randy Leprechaun and onwards to the Dingle peninsulawhich plays host to the most western point of mainland in Europe.

Here's the group on the tip on the mainland with the sleeping giant in the background (the island) which is in the local folklore proving a point that there really was this giant man who came to the land.

After circumnavigating the Dingle peninsula we spent some time in Dingle town for lunch and a bit of an explore. Then it was onwards to Killarney where we would spend our last night in a bit of a party town! After checking in to the hostel we were off on a horse and cart ride through the national park, we visited the local castle, some of the scenery and local wildlife, but the most interesting thing were the cart drivers, you could barely understand a thing they said! people with horses are usually bad enough but irish people who have lived around horses all their lives take the cake, these guys were local locals. On the way back to the town there were quite a few oncoming horse and carts but our driver didn't once set a wheel off the path to let others past they had to go overland, our driver must have been the boss or something, he was quite old and did keep saying the same things over and over again laughing all the time!

Right of Way

So it was the last night, we ate our dinner in quite a nice pub/bar then moved on to a place where our tour guide Eric (shrek, rounded body and shaved head) told us we could get 3 drinks for 10 Euro. It was only meant to be a stop off pub but we ended up staying there the whole night because when the pub closed they had a club upstairs which looked quite new and was more orientated to us youngsters as opposed to the pub. The night partyed on and everyone had a great time ending the night with pizza on the hostel stairs which everyone thought was a great idea, and it was, nobody was sick as far as i know. ahh pizza power!

Here's one of me dressed up as one of the girls from the tour group but it's ok i wasnt really drinking that drink!!

.....An early morning lay ahead! oh dear

Day 6

Well i've finally got around to sorting out and reducing down my pictures from ireland so now i can get posting. i'll start with this day, day 6 of the trip so that when you read the blog the posts will be in order from day 1 to day 6! ...except this message...

Ok so day 6, the last day, always starts with the aftermath of the last night, at this point i'd like to say that i wasn't that bad on the last night i was in quite good control. The worst thing i did probably for the whole trip was on the last morning after lack of sleep, this is how it goes... earlier the day before one of the guys bought some bacon and eggs so we could have a feast on the last morning. In the morning he cooked up all the bacon and said help yourself as long as you cook your own eggs, so we did. I got a plate ready took some bacon oiled up the pan to cook my eggs. At this point there was a funny smell in the air but i figured it was just one of the other guys filling up the sink ready to wash up. Well the eggs cooked and i sat down ready to eat, when i took my first bite of the egg i just sat there withmy face over my plate thinking it didnt taste quite right, but then i remembered that we did have a 'few' drinks the night before and thought it must just be my taste buds as everyone else was enjoying their eggy breakfast...so i swallowed the first piece of egg still thinking it must just be me. I had another piece and decided that there was something not right! well something was not right indeed, instead of the oil i thought i was using it was washing up liquid (it was yellow washing up liquid) which explained the weird smell earlier when we were cooking! So for the rest of the last day everytime i burped i had the pleasant taste of washing up liquid in my mouth!! mmm mmm

The offending liquid

The journey on the last day was from Killarney back to Dublin with the main attraction on the way being Blarney castle where you get to kiss the blarney stone by dangling backwards off the top of the castle, not as dangerous as it sounds. Blarney castle was one of the more majestic castles' that we visited and in quite good condition, the grounds were also very nice and so green. Here's a happy snap for you.

From the Blarney stone looking down

A little further down the road we visited a Norman castle and had a bit of a guided tour, nothing too exciting, so onwards we drove past the rock where the King used to get crowned, through fields where some of the Braveheart battle scenes were filmed, we passed a whole bunch of peat farms (bog places really) and then into Dublin.

From Dublin the group split up as everybody went off in different directions, those of us who had to go back to London had a quiet dinner and prepared to board the bus which would take us back to the big smoke after we caught the ferry across the ocean again. I was lucky enough to sleep practically the whole trip back which was great! When i got back to the pub i got down to a whole lot more sleeping ahh thats the life!!

Christmas Party

hi guys,

well winter is in town now which causes nights out to get a little bit freezing and of course the enevitable cold, argh! damn boogers!
Anyways, on moday night just gone we had the company christmas party! wha hoo! being a pub company the party was held at one of their pubs and everything was free which as far as i'm concerned is great! When we arrived their was a champagne reception followed by shots been given out by some loverly young ladies, also available was the bar itself and a cocktail bar all ready for us!
Halfway through the night there were some awards handed out, we were nominated in a couple of sections but the telegraph was a little young yet. After the awards we were taken out of the pub and lead down to the Thames to start a river cruise. Food was provided along with more free drinks music and a piece of fake gambling. The boat took us under london bridge, past the london eye and also under tower bridge which is quite nice at night time as you can see.....

That's about all from that day except that i was in no condition to work my 12 hour shift the next day and we'll leave it at that.

A couple of things to note, I've booked my new years in edinburgh and will be staying in the hostel where iain works for 3 nights which includes tickets to the world famous edinburgh hogmanay party!! after those nights i'll be staying in a hostel right in the centre of edinburgh to check things out and see whats going to happen from there! (to be confirmed)

Plans for next year so far is the going to see faithless in march and to visit Poland in may

Hope everyone is well at home and away!!

Hello Stu

Firstly a welcome to stu who arrived in London abou 10 or so days ago. Secondly I did go to ireland for a week and will try to get a post up shortly, but for now here's a couple of the things that have been going on...

A big goodbye to some of the staff who have moved on in the last couple of months - Monika who has gone back home to Poland to get back to the studies, Johhny the chef in charge and reigning poker champion, Jatin, he'll always be up for some frizbee, Jay, well he has left work but you wouldn't really think so with all of the visits, Mark, we may be in Amsterdam soon, Shannone, good luck with the 'fox', Ilias half greek half australian and everyone else who has passed through eg Tom and Ed of course

Anyways, I did manage to meet stu at the airport at some silly time in the morning after being sent all around terminals 1 2 3 & 4 by the staff trying to find the correct flight, and you just dont know how big these places are...well their hugemungus.

Last week we managed to go to the pub to see australia play new zealand but we left early due to new zealands dismal scoresheet. A day at the pub was followed up by an expidition to see monty python's SPAMALOT at the palace theatre. The show was great, following the storyline of search for the holy grail and also adding some new twists and bends. I did have some nice pictures and films of the performance until my camera was confiscated and they were deleted!! ah well maybe we shouldnt have spent the day having a few drinks!

Yes stu, you do have a ticket

The next day a group of 5 of us headed to Thorpe park to catch all the rides before the park was shut for winter later this week. The day started with everyone waiting for me cause i had slept in due to lack of sleep over the past 2 weeks i must say. well it was bloody freezing espicially when your on rides which fling you around at great speed. The newest ride at the park is called steAlth and it takes you from 0-80 mph (130 kph) in 2.3 seconds, it really is quite amazing. On some rides we actually managed to go on them twice in a row because their were so few people in the park, it was great!

The top of this is where you end up after the 130kph launch off the starting blocks, the drop from the top feels quite pleasant after the initial burst. We went on this about 4 times and by the last ride we were pulling faces at the camera which catches you at top acceleration.

much fun.