Scunthorpe - its better than it sounds
Jul. 14th, 2003 09:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chrisvenusThis weekend I have mostly been in scunthorpe.
I decided last week to come up and see![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
huggyrei and taigne here in scunthorpe. It seemed like a good plan.I had not much else to do and thought it'd be nice to see them both. I was right.
Last thursday Igor (boss dude at work) told me that he was away friday to tuesday so he wouldn't be able to give me any new work. As a result I might not be needed beginning of next week. In the end we decided it was only today that I was not needed so I was able to extend my stay up here a bit.
Friday - work, driving and arrival
Friday at work was early finish day. Some slight muppetry at the end of the day meant that I left there later than intended. Got a call from my sister that delayed me a bit more and then got home to pick up some things that I had forgotten to put in the car. Headed off via petrol and it was still only 4:30 so I thought I might miss the rush houron teh way out of oxford. How wrong I was.
The trip up was evil. After looking at my clock and realiseing I'd been driving for an hour I looked at how far I had gone. 17 miles. :( It was solid traffic all the way to the motorway and not much better on the motorway. Fortunately it got a bit better not long after that but still very slow moving. Eventually after 2 and a half hours driving I stopped for a break at some services and somebody was kind enough to remove all the traffic while I was there so the last half of the journey was great.
So when I got to scunthorpe I was expecting to see Rachael and her friend Amy that rachael had explicitly warned me would be there. So I parked outside her house and rachael rushed out to meet me and after some hugging another person came out (ash I think but I knew nobody at this point so I could be getting confused). I was told Briony was upstairs too and so I wandered up and found about half a dozen random people in the spare room playing on all the computers.
Said hello and got a quick round of introductions. Remembered some of them. People were playing driving games and it was truly a special treat to be able to watch Briony driving rally cars. The whole story is told by the beginning of the race... "3...2...1...Go!" there was a pause for a couple of seconds and then the car starts accelerating. Backwards. Having hit the wall behind the start line she then works out which of the two pedals is the accelerator and proceeds with her game of Rally pinball, the noble art of bouncing from tree to rock to fence as you proceed down the course. It was truly special (and you know it, Briony).
Anyway, I was advocating going out for a drink. After a day at work and then three and a half hours driving I felt I could do with one. So seven of us went to the pub (myself, Rachael, her parents, her friend Amy and Ash and Briony). I had a couple of drinks and a bowl of chips and felt really quite tipsy. It definitely went to my head. :)
We headed back to Rachael's via dropping off Amy and chatted there for a while. At a little gone three Bri decided to head home so I jumped in the car and whisked her back before taking myself off to bed on the nice double lilo in the lounge.
Saturday - Late mornings, bacon sandwiches, swings and a Barbeque
Saturday I woke up late for staying round somebody's house. Usually I'm awake really quite early but I was up at about 11 or so. Rachael was still dead to the world so I plonked myself on the internet for a while with the help of her dad (pointing me at where bits and pieces were). I took the opportunity to properly catch up on e-mail and to start planning some more ideas for various character concepts. I'm quite busy with that at the moment and its nice having a couple to switch and change between. Talked to a few people via MSN an generally did stuff.
Rachael's parents got back at just gone 2 and I helped them unload the shopping for the Barbeque and then retreated back upstairs again where I was demonstrated "Command and conquer - generals". Looks quite fun and has a slight novelty in a kind of Experience points style advancement system.
Not long later bacon baps appeared which were rather nice. I thoroughly approved. :)
I think it was about this point that rachael and I headed off to swings for a bit. Chatted and stuff, played on the monkey bars (they used to be easier, I'm sure though having to be careful to keep my feet off the ground probably wasn't helping). After a bit we then headed to the shops to buy vege food for some of those coming to the BBQ.
We had a good turnout in the end. There were some of the people I'd met previously (ash seemed to be almost part of the family, then there was the family and Briony who was kind enough to let me make the most of my time to actually see people I knew) and more people that I hadn't met but were pretty cool. We picked up gemma (who I met when she came to oxford) and Des and some other people. Many of them I had in fact met when they came down to oxford for Rachael's birthday but I couldn't remember them that much. I do now though I think. :)
Anyway, many people and we had good food, good company and good fun. The evening was marred slightly when a few people went to play on the swings (we split the party) and ran into some trouble. Bunch of 14 year old thugs started for now reason and smacked James quite hard. He got back and people were understandably quite shaken. It put me in one of my fairly rare "Must hurt" moods because such senseless violence as theirs is one of the few things that makes me want to respond. Luckily those moods aren't that bad, just involve me plotting how best I would hurt them if it wasn't such a stupid idea. :)
The other memorable moment of the evening that I feel needs recording and sharing was the idea we had for a fan video for hulk/shrek. As anybody who has seen the hulk trailer knows the hulk is in fact shrek on steroids. So somebody (Des I think) came up with the idea of the hulk swinging tanks around by their gun barrels and the shrek voiceover of "Get out of my swamp" and other such ideas. I reckon it could be truly glorious. Same I have no talent to do it. And apologies if I've ruined the film for anybody now. :)
So the evening wore on, brief road trip out at one point to take Gemma home (yeah, like I was going to let her walk after a friend just getting lamped). Singing along to buffy musical goodness on the way back (can I embarrass Briony by publically saying that I think she is a really good singer?) was fun. Must listen to more buffy on the way home. Tis good.
The evening got more sedate after that. I ranted and raved about exalted at one point. I tried not to but somebody said "I'd heard it wasn't that good" and, well, I'm only human. :) People played computer games too. Oh, I forgot to mention earlier in the day earning my keep by fixing the computer networking by getting the computers to talk through the hub to the router. Not that hard. Think the hub needed some slight resetting maybe. Not sure really, but I got it working. :)
I drove Briony home again a bit later and then got back where it was just Des and Michael (rachael's brother since I don't think he's been name checked before) playing games. I joined them and chatted and stuff for a bit before deciding to head off to bed. Noticed Rei had her light on still so after a whispered check established she was awake and wandered in to check she was alright (she'd headed off to bed a while before). Much chatting later we had discussed a lot as well as attempted to stuff sardines into a can, another puzzle and had rachael talking to a slinky that I wasn't talking to at all in any way shape or form. Was quite late by the time I eventually went to bed.
Sunday - Roleplayers, games, the never ending story, the steel works and table football
Sunday started off much the same as saturday. I pulled myself out of bed, crept out the room (des was on the couch) and came up to play on the computer for a bit. People turned up and there was a sunday roast. Been ages since I last had a roast so the chicken went downa treat. Cauliflower cheese and roast potatoes as well as several yorkshire puddings. Lots of other stuff and it was in general all very nice. Mmmm... The numbers of people eating rapidly increased before lunch. I think originally it was going to be 7 of us (family, me ash and des) but we got joined by a couple more later making nine of us have lunch.
After lunch some people were doing D&D (the reason for so many people having come round) and so I stayed clear of that and instead had a go on Generals for the first time. It was quite fun and the cut scenes beginning and end of missions are fun and done in engine which is nice. also the comments of "I need some shoes" and other silliness that I forget made it quite fun to play.
After that I sat and read a book for a while before we found the never ending story was on TV. To quote the simpsons: "Mr. Simpson, this is the most blatant case of fraudulent advertising since my suit against the film, 'The Never Ending Story'." And in all honesty the film isn't too bad apart from the unmitigated pap that was the ending of the film. The book is actually not bad but the film ended on such a disney ending "bullied boy gets revenge on tormentors by flying a f**king dragon through new york and terrorising the population". I was praying for USAF interceptors to shoot the thing down. Another to add to the list of "miss the last 10 minutes" films. :)
After that we went out for a short drive. Rachael needed to be shown were to pick her brother up from after work today so we went for a drive around the steel works (big thing in scunthorpe and where most of the family are working at the moment). It was really interesting to drive around there and apparently they do tours so next time I'm up here I will definitely plan to be on one of those tours. The sheer scale of the place was quite astounding really. A whole lot more than the simple diagrams you look at at school really shows you.
On the way back we stopped off for family business. Rachael's aunt and great aunt I think it was. We stayed there for a while and then headed home and made tea of nice ham and coleslaw baps. mmmm... :)
After tea (and after watching ash create 200 fighter-bombers to take out one small half completed bunker in generals) we decamped to the pub for a bit. I drove there and remembered how much I like power steering. We had a few drinks and played table football (me and ash against rachael and Briony). Three games were played in this epci confrontation, the first saw the boys take the lead and the girls fight back to a 5-5 draw. The second saw disaster for the boys as they spent a long time two goals down but finally crawled back up to 5-5 again. The final deciding match saw the boys with a bitmore alcohol inside so playing like champions. The girls fought well but the bacardi that Bri was drinking was clearly a bit of a girls drink and so didn't help her football half as much as the lager helped mine. 7-3 and the boys took home the trophy. :)
While at the pub we did also manage to soundly avoid the karaoke. Well, mostly. We were sitting outside for a bit and listening to some. There was some not too bad (good version of ironic) and some awful (electic 6 - high voltate or danger or whatever) that we couldn't even work out what they were until half way through. We sang a bit to ourselves outside but there was nowhere near enough alcohol to get us up and singing. :)
We came back here and chatted and things for a while longer. It was of course a school night though so there was a relatively early night at about 12:30-1ish. The conversation had been interesting covering a lot of topics including history and wars and I ended up reading an interesting account written by Rei's grandmother of her experiences in the war. These things are always interesting because of the small touches that make it seem so much more real. Primary sources are great. :)
Monday - time to go home
And so that takes us to monday. Everybody was working today so I got up early to say my goodbyes. People duly headed off to work leaving me alone in the house. I had been hoping to see Briony today since she said she might not be needed for work but she was after all so she was kind enough to text me to let me know. Poor briony and her job from hell (though I suppose if it is that would mean hell has frozen over).
Now I have finished this I think I will head home. rush hour should be long in the past so the trip home should be a lot better than the trip up was. I'm expecting to be able to cut at least an hour off. hopefully more. Having said that though I am bound to be court in the biggest traffic jam ever. :)
Well, that was nice and long as an entry. Apologies to those who felt the need to read through all of it. With LJ entries this size I feel like I'm turning intoquisalan. :)
I decided last week to come up and see
huggyrei and taigne here in scunthorpe. It seemed like a good plan.I had not much else to do and thought it'd be nice to see them both. I was right.Last thursday Igor (boss dude at work) told me that he was away friday to tuesday so he wouldn't be able to give me any new work. As a result I might not be needed beginning of next week. In the end we decided it was only today that I was not needed so I was able to extend my stay up here a bit.
Friday - work, driving and arrival
Friday at work was early finish day. Some slight muppetry at the end of the day meant that I left there later than intended. Got a call from my sister that delayed me a bit more and then got home to pick up some things that I had forgotten to put in the car. Headed off via petrol and it was still only 4:30 so I thought I might miss the rush houron teh way out of oxford. How wrong I was.
The trip up was evil. After looking at my clock and realiseing I'd been driving for an hour I looked at how far I had gone. 17 miles. :( It was solid traffic all the way to the motorway and not much better on the motorway. Fortunately it got a bit better not long after that but still very slow moving. Eventually after 2 and a half hours driving I stopped for a break at some services and somebody was kind enough to remove all the traffic while I was there so the last half of the journey was great.
So when I got to scunthorpe I was expecting to see Rachael and her friend Amy that rachael had explicitly warned me would be there. So I parked outside her house and rachael rushed out to meet me and after some hugging another person came out (ash I think but I knew nobody at this point so I could be getting confused). I was told Briony was upstairs too and so I wandered up and found about half a dozen random people in the spare room playing on all the computers.
Said hello and got a quick round of introductions. Remembered some of them. People were playing driving games and it was truly a special treat to be able to watch Briony driving rally cars. The whole story is told by the beginning of the race... "3...2...1...Go!" there was a pause for a couple of seconds and then the car starts accelerating. Backwards. Having hit the wall behind the start line she then works out which of the two pedals is the accelerator and proceeds with her game of Rally pinball, the noble art of bouncing from tree to rock to fence as you proceed down the course. It was truly special (and you know it, Briony).
Anyway, I was advocating going out for a drink. After a day at work and then three and a half hours driving I felt I could do with one. So seven of us went to the pub (myself, Rachael, her parents, her friend Amy and Ash and Briony). I had a couple of drinks and a bowl of chips and felt really quite tipsy. It definitely went to my head. :)
We headed back to Rachael's via dropping off Amy and chatted there for a while. At a little gone three Bri decided to head home so I jumped in the car and whisked her back before taking myself off to bed on the nice double lilo in the lounge.
Saturday - Late mornings, bacon sandwiches, swings and a Barbeque
Saturday I woke up late for staying round somebody's house. Usually I'm awake really quite early but I was up at about 11 or so. Rachael was still dead to the world so I plonked myself on the internet for a while with the help of her dad (pointing me at where bits and pieces were). I took the opportunity to properly catch up on e-mail and to start planning some more ideas for various character concepts. I'm quite busy with that at the moment and its nice having a couple to switch and change between. Talked to a few people via MSN an generally did stuff.
Rachael's parents got back at just gone 2 and I helped them unload the shopping for the Barbeque and then retreated back upstairs again where I was demonstrated "Command and conquer - generals". Looks quite fun and has a slight novelty in a kind of Experience points style advancement system.
Not long later bacon baps appeared which were rather nice. I thoroughly approved. :)
I think it was about this point that rachael and I headed off to swings for a bit. Chatted and stuff, played on the monkey bars (they used to be easier, I'm sure though having to be careful to keep my feet off the ground probably wasn't helping). After a bit we then headed to the shops to buy vege food for some of those coming to the BBQ.
We had a good turnout in the end. There were some of the people I'd met previously (ash seemed to be almost part of the family, then there was the family and Briony who was kind enough to let me make the most of my time to actually see people I knew) and more people that I hadn't met but were pretty cool. We picked up gemma (who I met when she came to oxford) and Des and some other people. Many of them I had in fact met when they came down to oxford for Rachael's birthday but I couldn't remember them that much. I do now though I think. :)
Anyway, many people and we had good food, good company and good fun. The evening was marred slightly when a few people went to play on the swings (we split the party) and ran into some trouble. Bunch of 14 year old thugs started for now reason and smacked James quite hard. He got back and people were understandably quite shaken. It put me in one of my fairly rare "Must hurt" moods because such senseless violence as theirs is one of the few things that makes me want to respond. Luckily those moods aren't that bad, just involve me plotting how best I would hurt them if it wasn't such a stupid idea. :)
The other memorable moment of the evening that I feel needs recording and sharing was the idea we had for a fan video for hulk/shrek. As anybody who has seen the hulk trailer knows the hulk is in fact shrek on steroids. So somebody (Des I think) came up with the idea of the hulk swinging tanks around by their gun barrels and the shrek voiceover of "Get out of my swamp" and other such ideas. I reckon it could be truly glorious. Same I have no talent to do it. And apologies if I've ruined the film for anybody now. :)
So the evening wore on, brief road trip out at one point to take Gemma home (yeah, like I was going to let her walk after a friend just getting lamped). Singing along to buffy musical goodness on the way back (can I embarrass Briony by publically saying that I think she is a really good singer?) was fun. Must listen to more buffy on the way home. Tis good.
The evening got more sedate after that. I ranted and raved about exalted at one point. I tried not to but somebody said "I'd heard it wasn't that good" and, well, I'm only human. :) People played computer games too. Oh, I forgot to mention earlier in the day earning my keep by fixing the computer networking by getting the computers to talk through the hub to the router. Not that hard. Think the hub needed some slight resetting maybe. Not sure really, but I got it working. :)
I drove Briony home again a bit later and then got back where it was just Des and Michael (rachael's brother since I don't think he's been name checked before) playing games. I joined them and chatted and stuff for a bit before deciding to head off to bed. Noticed Rei had her light on still so after a whispered check established she was awake and wandered in to check she was alright (she'd headed off to bed a while before). Much chatting later we had discussed a lot as well as attempted to stuff sardines into a can, another puzzle and had rachael talking to a slinky that I wasn't talking to at all in any way shape or form. Was quite late by the time I eventually went to bed.
Sunday - Roleplayers, games, the never ending story, the steel works and table football
Sunday started off much the same as saturday. I pulled myself out of bed, crept out the room (des was on the couch) and came up to play on the computer for a bit. People turned up and there was a sunday roast. Been ages since I last had a roast so the chicken went downa treat. Cauliflower cheese and roast potatoes as well as several yorkshire puddings. Lots of other stuff and it was in general all very nice. Mmmm... The numbers of people eating rapidly increased before lunch. I think originally it was going to be 7 of us (family, me ash and des) but we got joined by a couple more later making nine of us have lunch.
After lunch some people were doing D&D (the reason for so many people having come round) and so I stayed clear of that and instead had a go on Generals for the first time. It was quite fun and the cut scenes beginning and end of missions are fun and done in engine which is nice. also the comments of "I need some shoes" and other silliness that I forget made it quite fun to play.
After that I sat and read a book for a while before we found the never ending story was on TV. To quote the simpsons: "Mr. Simpson, this is the most blatant case of fraudulent advertising since my suit against the film, 'The Never Ending Story'." And in all honesty the film isn't too bad apart from the unmitigated pap that was the ending of the film. The book is actually not bad but the film ended on such a disney ending "bullied boy gets revenge on tormentors by flying a f**king dragon through new york and terrorising the population". I was praying for USAF interceptors to shoot the thing down. Another to add to the list of "miss the last 10 minutes" films. :)
After that we went out for a short drive. Rachael needed to be shown were to pick her brother up from after work today so we went for a drive around the steel works (big thing in scunthorpe and where most of the family are working at the moment). It was really interesting to drive around there and apparently they do tours so next time I'm up here I will definitely plan to be on one of those tours. The sheer scale of the place was quite astounding really. A whole lot more than the simple diagrams you look at at school really shows you.
On the way back we stopped off for family business. Rachael's aunt and great aunt I think it was. We stayed there for a while and then headed home and made tea of nice ham and coleslaw baps. mmmm... :)
After tea (and after watching ash create 200 fighter-bombers to take out one small half completed bunker in generals) we decamped to the pub for a bit. I drove there and remembered how much I like power steering. We had a few drinks and played table football (me and ash against rachael and Briony). Three games were played in this epci confrontation, the first saw the boys take the lead and the girls fight back to a 5-5 draw. The second saw disaster for the boys as they spent a long time two goals down but finally crawled back up to 5-5 again. The final deciding match saw the boys with a bitmore alcohol inside so playing like champions. The girls fought well but the bacardi that Bri was drinking was clearly a bit of a girls drink and so didn't help her football half as much as the lager helped mine. 7-3 and the boys took home the trophy. :)
While at the pub we did also manage to soundly avoid the karaoke. Well, mostly. We were sitting outside for a bit and listening to some. There was some not too bad (good version of ironic) and some awful (electic 6 - high voltate or danger or whatever) that we couldn't even work out what they were until half way through. We sang a bit to ourselves outside but there was nowhere near enough alcohol to get us up and singing. :)
We came back here and chatted and things for a while longer. It was of course a school night though so there was a relatively early night at about 12:30-1ish. The conversation had been interesting covering a lot of topics including history and wars and I ended up reading an interesting account written by Rei's grandmother of her experiences in the war. These things are always interesting because of the small touches that make it seem so much more real. Primary sources are great. :)
Monday - time to go home
And so that takes us to monday. Everybody was working today so I got up early to say my goodbyes. People duly headed off to work leaving me alone in the house. I had been hoping to see Briony today since she said she might not be needed for work but she was after all so she was kind enough to text me to let me know. Poor briony and her job from hell (though I suppose if it is that would mean hell has frozen over).
Now I have finished this I think I will head home. rush hour should be long in the past so the trip home should be a lot better than the trip up was. I'm expecting to be able to cut at least an hour off. hopefully more. Having said that though I am bound to be court in the biggest traffic jam ever. :)
Well, that was nice and long as an entry. Apologies to those who felt the need to read through all of it. With LJ entries this size I feel like I'm turning into
quisalan. :)![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
In my (rather pathetic and listless) defence
Date: 2003-07-16 01:09 am (UTC)Okay so I suck, it wasn't my fault the arrows confused me! And it's not my fault that all those trees and rocks got in the way either, if the track hadn't been so damn curvy I'd have been much better honest! Besides I was only 2 and a half minutes behind everyone!
*wanders off in a semi-awake not strongly caffinated enough confusion of this hour in the morning existing without the evil w**k as good reason*
Re: In my (rather pathetic and listless) defence
Date: 2003-07-16 02:25 am (UTC)