Tag Archives: Barbecue

Half-day well spent!

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Yesterday I took half a day off work because my shoes were falling to pieces and I needed new ones ASAP. I mentioned shoe shopping to Cheryl and she jumped on the chance, so we met by the lions on the market square at just gone 12.

The first stop was lunch at Café Rouge, and then the shoe shopping began. I picked out a few pairs that I liked in a few shops, and then we went to Schuh. I picked out some fairly plain black Vans and tried them on. I liked them and was going to buy them. Cheryl had wandered off and found some other nice K-Swiss ones while I was waiting for the right size and so I tried those ones on as well… They were way more comfortable so I bought them. I went outside and changed into them and threw away my old ones in the nearest bin. 🙂

We took a trip to Waterstones where Cheryl bought 3 books including one of my favourites: Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger. Then we wandered through the Victoria Centre and I bought some A&W Root Beer, and some Gobstoppers for Cheryl (with the obligatory joke)!

After that we just generally hung around for a while. It was nice and sunny most of the time, so that was good. It was so much better than being stuck in an air-conditioned office all afternoon. There’s plenty of time for that when it’s raining outside. 🙂

Once I got back to Mansfield I went over to Dave and Hayley’s new house. I helped Dave carry some heavy things like the washing machine and stuff and then we decided to have a bit of a barbecue. Unfortunately the charcoal wouldn’t light, so we resorted to the disposable barbecue that Dave had discovered from before they moved in. He lit it and waited while smoke kept coming out. It didn’t really get hot enough to cook on in the amount of time they were willing to wait, so Dave cooked the burgers under the grill instead. He made the mistake of putting the barbecue on top of the dustbin…

While we were inside eating the burgers Hayley jumped and pointed out that she could see fire through the curtained back window. Dave ran out to extinguish the bin and Hayley shouted at him for being stupid. Such is the life of Dave and Hayley. 🙂

They kindly gave me a lift back to Crown Street and picked up some more of their stuff while they were there, and then I went to bed and fell almost straight to sleep.

A good day! 🙂

Rhiannon’s birthday, Adam’s stag party, trip to Cleethorpes

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On Friday I met up with Len after work to kill some time before meeting up with Rhiannon, Katy, Helen, Danny, Jake, and a whole bunch of other people to celebrate Rhiannon’s birthday. The vast majority of us went along with the wig rule, and it was pretty funny to see everyone mixing with the public.

Len wearing my wig

At some point after leaving a bar I wandered off with a bunch of people I’d never met before who wanted to go to a different place. At some point in there I gave my wig away to a guy who was going to be getting married over the weekend. Shortly after that I abandoned those people and somehow got into a conversation about Ethiopia with a girl outside a bar. After the topic changed to something I have forgotten her friend came out and brought us both inside the bar (no idea what it’s called). They were playing really good music though, including the Beatles. I’ll have to try and find that place again.

After talking to them two girls for a while I got a call from Rhiannon so I wandered outside to speak on the phone. When I realised I could see Rhiannon and Jake I just abandoned the girls in the bar without saying anything, dropped my phone on the floor, picked it up again and ran over to people I knew again. From there we caught a taxi back and I went to bed.

I woke up at about 1:30 in the afternoon on Saturday and spent a while just moping around the house watching TV episodes and trying to shake a bit of a headache. when 5pm rolled around it was time to head down to the Modhu Mitha to meet up with Adam and everyone else who was going out for his stag party. We had a nice Indian meal and then headed into town. We didn’t end up going into The Swan for a couple of reasons, and we also didn’t spend much time in Mets Bar because it was pretty awful. We did, however, spend a great deal of time in Riley’s. There was an epic game of snooker that went on for somewhere in the region of ten million hours, many games of pool, and a lot of drinking for Adam. Once we were ready to leave we got Adam outside and then he got in a taxi and went home to Milly. I don’t envy her.

Adam playing the longest game of snooker EVER

I walked back home and got to bed at about 2am. I woke up at about 4:30 for some reason, but went back to sleep again until it was almost time to get up and go to Cleethorpes with Krystina, SJ, and Corinna. Shortly before Krystina arrived I decided to go to the shop so I could get some alcohol for the rest of the day without having to go to another shop on the way. Sadly, when I got there I was told that I couldn’t be served alcohol at 8:25 in the morning! Haha. I bought a Solero instead and started walking back home.

Krystina spotted me on her way to mine and performed an amazing parking manoeuvre to give me a lift home. I picked up my stuff from the living room and we set off to collect SJ and then Corinna. Along the way I decided to go with shorts and sandals instead of jeans and socks/trainers. It was a vast improvement!

The journey to Cleethorpes went pretty quickly. When we had found a parking space we walked along the sea-front with the girls watching the boys go by. We walked back to the car along the beach to fetch some things from the boot and then chilled out on the beach for a few hours.

Krystina and Corinna in the sea at Cleethorpes

At one point there was a stunt plane flying over the beach, which was fun to watch. I recorded a video on my phone, but someone else recorded a higher quality one with their camera, so I’ll show that one instead. 🙂

We went for a wander around the arcade and we bought a bag of 2p coins to use on the slots. Sadly I didn’t win a meerkat. 🙁 I did win the hammer test-of-strength thing, but not as convincingly as I’d like! Corinna posed for a picture with a rather scary-looking clown.

Corinna posing with the strange clown

Krystina and Corinna had a go on a dancing machine, but SJ and I kept well away from that. 🙂

There was a bit of a fair on the beach so we decided to have a go on the big wheel. It rocks quite a bit more than I’d like, but it was fun. For some reason they have it facing towards Cleethorpes rather than the sea…

Cleethorpes from the big wheel

When we got hungry we took another trip to the car to get the barbecue items. We picked a spot on the beach and got the food cooking. 🙂 Other than one sausage and one burger being thrown overboard (girls can’t barbecue) everything went well with the barbecue. No injuries were sustained, and after a little rest we tidied up where we’d been sitting and set off back for the car, and home.