Persistent

It’s my wedding anniversary.
Today I have been married to my lovely wife Rebecca for a whole year. I have been living with her for about 13 years prior to that, and for 13 years I made various reasonable (and not so) excuses for not getting married.

Now that I am married I find it a lot easier to admit to her that we should have done this sooner and she gets to make me squirm with shame by saying that it’s ok.
What she really means is that for the last ten years she wasn’t sure my reason were valid, (and of course they most certainly were not), which is why its so annoying that she takes it so well every year when this conversation comes up.

Now I have to sit here and realise that instead of our first anniversary this could have been our 5th or our 10th, and of course I only realise it because Rebecca is being so good about the whole thing. 
I mean, what could be reasonable about not marrying the gorgous woman in that picture.
I am such a worm :)

Catching up with myself

One of the nice things about living in a small village by the sea is the opportunity to sit and reflect. Jason recently wrote of the same thing in his blog, and as I live in the same town I decided this evening to take some time out from the family and to sit beside the sea and contemplate life the universe and everything.
Actually that’s been done, so I just thought about whom I was and the decisions that made me who I am today.

There is lots of talk about what makes us who we are. Some say genetics, others say circumstance. I think a lot of it is picked up by example in our younger days. I find that when I sit with my father I have the same mannerisms as him, yet when he isn’t there I don’t. There is a lot of my father in me. I have his ability to fix things and to create new things. I have his patience with machines that don’t work when they should and I have his temper which is great and loud yet very short lived and manifests very little. I have his eyes, and my son has his eyes too. That’s quite nice.

There are a lot of things I think that guide us on the path to who we are at this particular moment in time, but at the age of 42 as I sit here at my laptop I feel that the cynical, slightly prickly, sometimes grumpy but overall honorable chap that I am has been created more by my experience of life than any other factor.

I left school with two qualifications in Art and Music and was destined for a career as a painter of pianos.
I spent my teenage years telling my mum that I was going to be R&F; that’s rich and famous for those that don’t know. I think most of us had that particular yearning at some point. After a while I realized that R&F was better with just the R so I tried to concentrate in that direction. You can keep the fame, all that gets you is tabloid press.

I have had so many great experiences in my life, and here are just a few:
I have lived in a haunted house (and had some weird frightening experiences)
I have toured with a rock band singing my heart out to large crowds
I had many years of freedom before marriage/settling down (that’s an important one)
I have met interesting and famous people (the two don’t often go together)
I have ran my own business (and still do)

That’s not a long list, but it’s only some of the things that I have been lucky enough to do, and when I talk to people I often find that somewhere in a story someone will say “I always wanted to do that but never had the opportunity/chance/time/will” and every time that happens I always say the same thing. “I never planned it”, it’s true, I never planned any of it, I have always let life take me wherever it wanted me to go. It’s a bit like riding a river, but my only secret is that wherever it takes me I take every advantage to follow whatever dreams I have. There have been times when taking that advantage meant hard work and sacrifice, but they are/were my dreams and they say never miss an opportunity, so I decided fairly early to make sure I never did.

At the minute things seem to lurch from one crisis to another and back again, but as far as I’m concerned I’m still on the river and as long as I don’t get off it will carry me somewhere. I don’t know where, but I still have a long wish list of things that I want to ‘do’ and to ‘own’ and to ‘experience’.
All of the past decisions and experiences have made me who I am and I’m looking forward to finding out what kind of person the directions that I take today will make me in the future.
I would say that since I stopped smoking, I am grumpier. But on the bright side I have more lung power for that temper when it lets itself out.

OK, its day one again. Let’s see what happens next

Sent to Coventry

I have been away in Coventry fro the last 2 days.  Its quite a place is 'Cov'  it is most famous for its strategic battles with Luton to see which of the two  will win "most boring place in the UK" again.

Its just great for us of course that we are doing business in both of those places. (You see me smile, but really Im just gritting my teeth)

There will be more blog to catch up later. To much driving at the moment.....need sleep

A bit of a break PT III Revenge of the sith-ter

It wasnt long before the sister returned. This time she was followed by a group of trainee nurses.
If a group of trainee nurses isnt already named a gaggle it should be from this point onward. They all came into my "cubicle" talking about all sorts of diferent things and then ordering themseves around my bed like a group of Apache circling the 7th cavalry.
When everyone had a good view sister started to talk.
"This is Ian, he has been in a motorcyle accident and is to be prepared for surgery to set the broken arm" (big ward sister breath)
"to  enable the surgeon to work we need to remove his leather jacket  and  any other  upper body clothing" (produces pointy scissors and does a snip snip motion to show all how scissors work)
"we have been warned in advance that this one has a sense of humour"
looks down nose at me
"but he will be assured that we will not be laughing with him today"

I was about to protest at the cutting of a very expensive leather jacket, more so when said jacket had just proved its worth by surviving the very kind of accident it was designed to survive. It was already to late, the very sharp scissors had sliced up the arm to the shoulder. It was when sister opened the leather that the nice petit nurse I had been admiring rolled her eyes and fell over.

You will have to take my word for it that compound fractures look worse than they are, but because they poke through and help to keep a hole open in the flesh they do produce an awful lot of blood. This had actually stored in the arm of my tight leather jacket and had only slowly seeped out of the cuff. When sister cut the arm it started to pour and when she opened it up the blood just fell out, it was like someone bursting a water balloon. It spread itself across the floor and then the nice nurse fell in it.
There was a lot of fuss now lifting a small nurse and getting her to a chair while sister tut tutted about a "little bit of blood and a bone"
I looked at my arm and my body decided it didnt have that much adreniline left.

When I woke up I was indeed naked to the waist and my arm was lieing in a curved recepticle that was supposed to keep it out the way. I had been put back onto a trolley and I was in a corridor. A man stood up and smiled at me. His hand was in a bandage.
I was covered by a white sheet, it had a label on it which had RAT on it.
The man noticed my fingers, "bet they hurt" he said I nodded "morphine helps eh" he said....I looked blank. My fingers were in agony, my arm hurt like hell, I was starting to get the feel of all the facial scratches, the bruised back, the bangs to the legs and the rest.
"Have they given you anything for the pain mate" he asked I shook my head, "Hey nurse" he waved an arm to a young nurse walking past, "this lads had nothing for the pain" she looked at me. She actually looked horrified, maybe I really looked as bad as I felt.She ran away into a side room I heard her talking in the room, a few heads came out and looked then 3 staff came out of the room and ran in different directions.

A few minutes later my favorite ward sister arrived and for the first time in my life I had morphine. It only took about 5 seconds before I felt myself levitate into the air just above the trolley. All my cares went away.
My dad arrived and was shown in. He asked how I was and I told him that I had just had morphine and everything was fantastic, great. Never been better in fact. Another nurse came in and gave me some more morphine. Ohhhhhh joy......
Dad started to look confused, but it wasnt until the third morphine armed nurse came in that he decided to take a view.
"He has had two already" he said.A few seconds later I told him how strange it was that throughout my visit to this hospital all the nurses kept getting stunned and horrified looks then running away.

Very very quickly sister came back and asked me how many injections I had. I told her that it was more than one, but the rest were a secret. She ran away too.

Now at last I got to see a real consultant. I knew he was important as he had a stethascope around his neck and a badge with his name on it. he calmed everyone down and told my dad that there was a theatre booked for me (I was going to see a play weeeheee) but that they couldnt give me an anesthetic now until the other stuff was out of my system. That would be about 5 hours. I didnt care 5 hours of floating was good for me.

Dad went to get my mum and I fell asleep. I woke up again in a bed it was being wheeled somewhere, they where taking me to theatre. A man introduced himself to me and my parents he said that he was going to set my arm. They took me into a room and then told me that they wanted me to count to 10. To help me to do this the most beautiful nurse I had ever seen was asked to hold my hand and help me count. I couldnt take my eyes of her, she was an angel, she will fill my thoughts forever, I could never ever close my eyes to the sight of her.... I got to 4 before I went under.

Im fairly sure I dreamed of her, but when I woke it was my girlfriend holding my hand. I decided that now was not the best time to break the news so I went to sleep again.
I woke again and sat up suddenly I said something stupid along the lines of "I will have 3 black ones with holes in please" The man in the opposite bed laughed at me and told me to go back to sleep, it was just an after effect of anesthetic. I thought that was a great idea, so I did.

Three days later I was released from hospital. I drove the nurses mad. My little bottle of fluids was renamed rover because it folowed me to the toilet when I refused to use a bedpan.
I complained that boiling various vegatables until they were all the same shade of yellow was not classed as good tasty cooking, and I decided that as i was ill, and young that I would not recognise the nursing staff by their faces. One of the nicer ones actually said to me "I have a face you know" and I replied "Im sure you do"
I was the worst patient in the world and its probably about time that I apologised for it, so at the end of this little story I must say sorry to 36A, 42c, 28b, wobbly and  droopy left one for the awful way I treated them.

A bit of a break Pt II

How can we refer to a trolley with curtains around it as a cubicle. A cubicle is something that at least has some privacy to it. A trolley with see through curtains around it and big gaps between the joins really isn’t great.

I have often wondered why on earth our NHS has curtains with such awful patterns on them, was there some point in the 1960’s when someone in government said, “I need to buy some stylish curtains to last our NHS into the new millennia” and they ended up with a job lot of off cuts from a market stall in Peckham.

Its also strange that no matter which hospital you go to in the

UK these curtains all seem to be the same shade of yellow/green.

 

So there I lay, looking through the thin yellow/green curtains into the cubicle next door and waiting for the skilled nursing staff to come and treat me…….and waiting for the skilled nursing staff to come and treat me…………………and waiting…..

 

As I lay there I noticed a young man who seemed to be doing a lot more running around than anyone else, every time he passed my gap in the curtains I would nod at him, and he would smile and nod back.  He took away the lady in the next curtain and replaced her with a mother and crying child. I could have predicted that this would happen when ten minutes earlier a miniature blacksmith had started to make a set of horseshoes in the middle of my brain. He was just reheating the furnace for another round of heavy banging when a nurse came in and said “Oh”

“hello” I said, “have you come to treat me” I showed her my fingernails, or lack of them. At this point I hadn’t really realised that there was more wrong than that, after all, that was where the blood was coming from.

“Oh” she said again, then she turned and ran away. I was stunned, I had been oh’d at twice and shown the curtains, I was leaking on the floor the blacksmith had just discovered that he had to tools to make large artillery weapons and there was a crying baby next door. The thin curtains where doing nothing for privacy and I was starting to really hurt now.

 

An older woman put here head around the curtains; she followed this with her body which was clothed in the dark blue of a ward sister. “Are you Ian” she said “Hmm” I said. I followed this with a nod. “Oh good” she said and stick a little white paper sticky label on me, I looked at it, it said R.A.T

I puzzled over this for a moment and while I was doing this the busy young man came in. He looked me over, weighed me up and checked my sticky label “Hiya mate, Road Traffic Accident eh” he took a guess “Motorbike was it” I nodded

“It says RAT” I pointed out, “Yeah he said, Mary in the office is dyslexic, she had printed 200 of em before we realised”
“There’s a dyslexic woman doing my hospital records” I asked in disbelief, “No mate, she just helps out sort of thing” he replied. Well that made it better didn’t it, she was helping out and without going anywhere near my records she had turned me into a RAT.

 
I was moving again, my trolley was being pushed by a very busy yet very happy young man who didn’t seem to have a care in the world. I don’t know why but I liked him, I felt sort of safe in his care and I knew that he wasn’t one of these people who talked to the injured or the elderly like they were children (its always been one of my pet hates).

It seemed that I was being taken somewhere else, and in the end I was taken to a bed that was surrounded by curtains instead of a trolley that was surrounded by curtains.

I was told to stay on the trolley while he got some help to lift me. I offered to walk off the trolley and over to the bed, but apparently this wasn’t the done thing. I had to lie there and be transferred over the proper way.

While I waited for the team of people to come and move me I went and lay on the bed. After a few minutes 4 large male nurses marched in like a little army troop, did something very snappy and clever that involved crossing there arms under me counting to 3 and saying “hruuumph” together and lifted me back onto the trolley. They marched back out again, probably going to the top of a hill or something. When they left I got up and walked back to the bed, I was at least pleased that they had done what they needed to do, and that I was doing my bit for full employment within the NHS

My busy friend came in and admired me on the bed….”better now” he said, I nodded.

 

NOTE

I never intended that this become some sort of trilogy, but there seems to be so much detail that I need to get in. last part to follow soon.

A bit of a break Pt1

I was reading Sandys blog earlier today. I like her blog, the writing is good and she seems to have this knack of holding your attention. However like all Americans she cant spell doughnut and I’m sorry Sandy, but all of your American English arguments will fail when I ask you if they are made out of dough or do.
Anyway, language arguments aside, Sandy was blogging about a bad hospital experience that she had a while ago and it reminded me of one of my own, so I thought that I would blog it for posterity. This is quite a story so I may have to do a couple of parts.

My story goes back to when I was 22 and I rode my Suzuki 125cc motorbike to and from work every day. At the time I was a baker and I started work at 4am every morning. On this particular day I was heading home at about 1pm having finished my shift. 
My plan for the day was to end the relationship that I was in because I had been chasing another girl for a while and she was just starting to take an interest. I have always been like that, I don’t like the idea of playing games with two relationships at once. So even as a young man I would leave one before moving the Cinderella search to another.
I was visualising the end of this romance to myself and not paying full attention to the road when I suddenly realised that I wasn’t on my bike anymore, I was actually on my back on a hard road. And flying toward me like a targeted rocket from the sky was my Suzuki 125.
It was all in slow motion, I remember trying to roll out of the way but I couldn’t because I was sliding on my back I clawed the ground with my fingers, to stop, but then something hit my left arm and I don’t remember anything for a few minutes.

My next memory is the man punching me in the chest, for some reason I thought I had been asleep in bed and was being woken up by a burglar who was punching me. I remember shouting 'f*ckoffyoub*stard' then I lay wondering why I had woke up on a main road. The nasty man who had been hitting me shouted 'oh thank god' then sat on the kerbside and started to cry.
There was a woman with one of those two wheeled shopping carts walking backwards and forwards saying "I saw it I saw it", then she would sob and say " I heard the bike hit him" then she would walk up and down again repeating the whole thing. The crying man was being comforted by a young woman and I suddenly realised that I was the cause of all the fuss. Not only had I had some sort of accident, but I did it in such a way that I ended up being attacked by my own bike.
I actually lay on the road and said "wow". Then I started to take stock, it was fairly obvious by now that there was no one in the area who was going to come and talk to me, there was a long line of cars and lots of people driving past the accident, I could hear the cars, but I knew that there was one thing I was not to do, and that was move my head to take a look.
My biggest worry as I lay on the road was a broken neck. I knew that I couldn’t trust my bodys feelings, if you break your neck you can say 'oh I will move my feet' and you could feel them move, but they wouldn’t actually be doing anything. This being the case I would actually have to visually see my appendages move. So I lay on the road, on my back, in my helmet and lifted my left leg straight up until I could see it. There was a scream from the trolley lady. I was relieved, but I think she was reliving day of the dead.
I was over the moon, I was so happy I started to giggle, I had lifted my leg and seen it, so just to make sure I lifted the other one.....there was another scream. I started to giggle even more and I decided to sit up very very carefully. Its all down to adrenalin, but I sat up a lot faster than I meant to. I looked at the crying man and said, "necks good, backs good" then I went to push myself up using my left arm.
There was a scream and it didn’t come from the trolley lady. Mark Twain once said something about profanity providing a release that prayer couldn’t. That being the case I released my pain into the atmosphere with a string of words that I never used again until the bungee jump. (but that’s another story).
When I had finished I was sweating, I walked to the side of the road and sat down next to the crying man. He couldn’t stop sobbing, there was no point asking him to get my ciggys out of my pocket .
I only had my right arm working and my ciggys and lighter were in the top right hand pocket of my jacket, the entrance to this pocket seemed to start just under my right armpit, so using my right arm in a tight leather bike jacket I started digging for nicotine.
The trolley lady started to shout " he’s having a fit" and I had to shout that I was ok and just wanted a smoke. I noticed the crawling traffic and the nosey motorists who were slowing down past the accident to look at the blood, then I realised the blood was mine so using my good arm I started to flick it at their cars in a large overhand gesture. The traffic speeded up for a while, but then everything stopped when the police arrived.

I have no real idea of timescales to this point, but I imagine it only being in the region of 5 minutes or so.
The local constabulary were on the scene pretty quickly and one of them came up to me and took my ciggy off me just before I lit it. "That will kill ya" he said I started to laugh, I found the whole thing farcical. "No" he said, " you been  in the petrol mate, if you light up, that'll kill ya" he was right, there was a strong smell of fuel. I was also wondering about the burning on my hands, but when I looked it wasn’t fire, I had pulled most of my fingernails out on both hands when trying to claw my way to a stop on the road. It hurt more on the right hand than the left, but the left arm was a strange shape anyway after I had leaned on it.
I suddenly felt like a child who had fell over in a park when there was no one around that I knew, the only person who might help me was wearing a blue uniform, I held up the bloody stumps on my fingers to show him "I cant get my helmet off, can you help me please" He carefully removed the helmet and then started to look around. Free of my helmet I started to look around too. My bike was about 50m further down the road. The second officer was dragging it to the side of the road, the front wheel of the bike was touching the back wheel, it looked absurd, I started to giggle again. "Have you been drinking" the officer asked. "No, just finished work" I said "I have to get to my girlfriends to finish her" I sparked up, it was all so unreal, it was like I was waiting for him to say, 'ok you can go now'.
The ambulance arrived, I stood up ready to go but the officer sat me down, "you will get the next one" he said, until that point it had never even occurred to me that someone else may have been hurt. The first ambulance took the driver of a transit van away. I wasn’t sure what was going on, I asked the officer what had happened. "That’s the driver of the van you went through" he said "You gave him a mild heart attack"
Me, how could I... I wasnt well and I was covered in blood, but no one seemed to be stopping me doing anything, there was a crowd, but they were only interested in watching me, I was the centre of attention, the chief puppet in the show. I kept looking at my fingers, I showed them to the crowd because I wanted to ask if anyone had a bandage but they turned away, then they started to walk away, there was so much blood. And without my audience I wasnt sure what to do. I walked to the back of the van and saw the small window that I had gone through, I noticed the hole in the glass windscreen on the front where I had come out the other side. The nice policeman came and sat me down again. "As you went through the van your bike went over the top" he said. "The two of you met up again on the other side, when it hit you it broke your arm" he looked me right in the eye and said "I have seen smaller accidents where we scrape the biker up, when I pulled up here I was looking for your body"

I started to giggle again,it was hard to stop and it all seemed so strange. The next ambulance came, "Anyone else before me" I quipped, but no, this was mine.
They put me in a wheelchair and got me into the ambulance, then while travelling they lay me on a trolley to wheel me out the other side. There seemed to be some fuss but I wasnt really sure what it was over. There was somthing new though, there were parts of me other than my fingers that were starting to hurt.
In hospital they asked my name and I told them, I couldn’t quite remember my full address, but I could remember my dads work phone number. They said that would do and wheeled me into a cubicle.

A dream of Jelly Bellys

After a long hard day at work,  I was delighted to return home to find that the 1.8kg pot of Jelly Belly jelly beans that I ordered from ebay had arrived.

mmmmmjellybellymmmmmm

The nice thing about 1.8kg is that there is more than enough time to re-aquaint yourself with every flavour of bean. After a long gap even the few flavours that you seem to remember not liking too much are a bit special.
This is the first time since I stopped smoking that I have jellybellied to excess and I intend to enjoy every sugar soaked minute of it.
Let those of you who preach dental health, preach to those without 1.8kg of Jelly Belly beans for I say to you that we shall not listen to your health ridden wailings and we will gobble our beans until they are all gone, and whats more we may not even share them....unless you are really nice and say please, but even then we may only let you have the banana flavoured ones.

There are those who say that there is more to life than the Jelly Belly jelly bean, but I am quite certain that when they say that, they are not, as I am right now, sitting looking at 1.8kg of beans in a tub with their name on it. They may in fact be that strange type of person that when talking about favourite foods say something stupid like brocolli and then they wonder why everyone goes somewhere else.
There is a reason you know that Jelly Belly dont do a brocolli flavoured bean, and those of us in the know are quite sure of the reason. Lets face it, if it was nice to eat then there would without any doubt be a Jelly Belly bean in that flavour and any other argument to the contrary is without any merit or justification whatsover.

Having such a large tub of Jelly Belly beans is one of the things that I can now cross off my
           'list of things that I want to own'
and now that the urge to have so many Jelly Belly beans of my own has been satisfied I can get onto working to cross other things from the list like the hovercraft I have always wanted and the very large boat and the Caterham 7.
Oh you may laugh at my dreams, but I remember a time when on that list was a line that read
"a big jar of Jelly Belly beans"
and who is laughing now eh, for now that dream of mine has come true.
Enough of this blogging. I have beans to eat before Jason reads my blog and comes to investigate my bean collection. There may only be a little time so I have to go......
I dont know who around this world reads my blog, but whoever you are....
may all your beans come true

Call me Mr Gates

I love working with wood. Over the last few years I have managed to build up a fairly substantial set of woodworking tools, and at weekends I like nothing better than to grab some timber and get stuck in making things.

Todays project was to make Jason and Toni a new gate. It seems that 50 years ago (that may be an exageration) when they moved into their house it was decided that the first job that needed doing was to fit a new gate. Poor Toni had been living with the horrific shame of this gate since that time, and I decided enough was enough and set to it with a crowbar.
On reflection.....it may have been sensible to let them know what I was going to do.
I think that there may have been some excitement in the Thompson household when someone started battering their gate down, but I think they decided to ignore it all when they found that there was a new one to go up.

In the end everyone was happy. I got to play with my tools and Antonia can once again walk the streets of Newbiggin by the Sea with her head held high. The shame of the worst gate in the town is now firmly at the bottom of my garden. However I hear it is sunny next weekend, and there is some wood left over.

Oh by the way, if anyone starts sending me those stupid emails about there once being a carpenter who became very famous, yes I know. I have heard of Harrison Ford.

Its been one of those runaround Saturdays. We have been waiting to hear confirmation that Rebecca could pick up her new car today. There has been some excitment around the house....well, Rebecca has been excited and it sort of spreads out.
No one in the house has ever had a brand new car. I have had to buy them for people at work, but no one at home myself included has ever had one.
Like everyone else we always justified this with the usual, "oh I would never buy a new car the depreciation is terrible" but y'know....when it comes down to it and its for the right reasons (and Rebecca is the right reason) you just say what the hell, and before you know whats happening Rebecca has a NEW car. :) and its wonderful.
Its got all the good stuff, air con, air bags all round, electric pack but first and most important, that dandy little mirror in the middle to do your hair in.
We have both had a little drive and I do admit to a small twinge of jealosy. She is enjoying driving it for any reason. Jason came round to borrow a cup of sugar and she bundled him into the car and drove him to Africa to buy some sugar cane, and I think she is in the bedroom now working on a plan to abduct the postman and drive him on his post-round.

Spaced in Wales

Its now Thursday night, and the last time I was in the house was Tuesday at 4am when I set off on the first of a 3 day run around various parts of Wales covering about 800 miles.
It always upsets me when I realise that over the last 14 months since I got my new car I have not left the uk, but in that time I have driven the equivalent of 5 times the diameter of the earth. It probably upsets the car more, as I dont seem to remember getting it serviced in that time. Maybe a stop at that nice garage in Abu Dhabi next time Im passing through.

This weeks run consisted of Newbiggin by the Sea to Lampeter, Lampeter to Cardiff and Cardiff to Newbiggin by the Sea. The trip was fueled by £220 worth of fuel, 6 cans of red bull, 2 packets of jumbo jelly beans and a Ginsters sausage roll that I am still regretting eating. ( but after I had subdued it with the tyre wrench I thought ...oh what the heck)

Wales (for those of you that have not been there) is one of the most beautiful places on the earth. It has the lush greenery on the mountains, the deep thick forests cut by silver rivers and streams and it ooooozes tranquility. If you have never been into the Welsh mountains do it, dont think about it, book it now.

My first stop was in Lampeter, a town of approx 2000 residents and home to the smallest university in Europe. It is a lovely town one of those places where the mixture of old and new seems to work, but mainly because they hide all of the new stuff behind the old.
I was staying in Lampeter overnight and was resident at the Black lion hotel. A nice clean hotel with an ancient horse barn in the middle of the car park, a most unusual feature I thought and very handy for passing highwaymen. I was most impressed by the stone steps that led to a long drop into the barn, these the locals humourously refered too as 'the tourists fall' though how they got that name I can only speculate.
I was quite interested in the area  as I knew my Grandparents used to have a farm nearby. During the business meeting I happened to mention this and was told that the location in question was only 20 minutes away, and whats more everyone knew how to get to it. Armed with lots of local knowledge and a postcode to put into the sat nav I set of to find my ancestral home.
Now there is a thing about Wales that you have to understand, yes its lovely, it is steeped in ancient history, it is also  steeped in mountains,and these themseves are steeped in, well, steepness and as yet Tarmac cant get a lot of the road building machinery up there. That means that there are quite a few small roads that are inevatably driven on by locals who know every twist and turn and travel them at 110 miles per hour in the opposite direction to the one you are going in. They also seem to know all of the local cars and seem to take extreme pleasure in targetting the tourist vehicles and making them ' hug the hedgerow'. In the space of a 10 mile run I was forced into the side by a large amount of untaxed cars that didnt look sound enough to be running the roads of a bad Brimingham housing estate, but out here were regarded as a tool to go very fast in, no matter how smooth the tyres were.
During the last phase of the run I started to doubt the Sat nav as it took me into the Welsh jungle, then suddenly at the end of the road the old farm itself.
The place is now owned by a London businessman who only uses it in the summer. There was no one in residence, so I grabbed some sneaky photo's and made my way back through the jungle and back to Lampeter.
It turns out that while being a very lovely town Lampeter is also THE most boring place in the UK, and by 6.30 pm everything had closed except for the odd empty public house. After about an hour of wandering the street (there is only one, and it takes 10 minutes to wander it down and back) I decided to hunt through my car to find some sort of mental stimulation. My saviour turned out to be 2 DVD's of the channel 4 series SPACED loaned to me by  Jason
So armed with Spaced dvd 1 and my laptop I managed to keep my sanity while spending an evening in Lampeter.
Next morning and after a very good english breakfast at the hotel it was off to Cardiff.
I had 2 very good meetings and then found my hotel for the evening.
I have stayed in Cardiff twice before, but have always beeen just slightly out of the city centre. This time I ended up with a room that overlooked the main street, and that was nice, except that in Cardiff the students really take the evenings seriously and do everything they can to strech it out for as long as possible. The main street doesnt close until about 3.30am and until then it was loud to the point where I gave up trying to sleep at 1am and watched Spaced dvd 2.
At 3.30am I started to settle down, but then the bin lorry comes around and they empty the bins, then after the bins have been emptied they have a fleet of very very loud street cleaning machines and they bring them out and 4 of them clean the street for an hour. They then let you sleep for 30 minutes before your alarm goes off.
My trip back was pretty uneventful, either that or I slept through most of it waking only at the points where the navigation system told me to turn left or bear right. There was the one bit of excitement when the Ginsters sausage roll got loose in the front of the car and tried to take control of the radio, but other than that, fairly normal.
Im just glad I didnt get the scotch egg.