I’m actually getting increasingly worse at updating this. As I said though in my previous post, it doesn’t help that there is more excitement in a pot of Yakult than there is in my life.
Well, first of all, I had my holiday! Which was fun, sort of. After much hassle with updating the SatNav with French roads, and me desperately resisting the urge to purchase for it the voice of Yoda, the family set off late Thursday evening much to my joy. Me and Ed celebrated with much singing, guitar hero, and fish and chips.
However, the reason Ed was over was to help assemble a flat-pack wardrobe from Homebase. A seemingly good quality wardrobe judging by how the two boxes each weighed the same as a small truck, but then which turned out to be the most ridiculous wardrobe ever. For example, the manufacturer had drilled about a thousand holes into the wardrobe, yet only about thirty were needed. HOWEVER! Throughout the instructions, it constantly popped up with the following message; “PLEASE NOTE: There are no pre-drilled holes for screw C”. So, for a flat-pack wardrobe we had to borrow a drill and make more additional holes to the thousands there already were. Brilliant! However with the help of Ed, then the following day, Paul, the wardrobe was finished and is now standing proudly (just) in my room.
The Friday evening, at about 1a.m in the morning, I then drove to the Aylesbury Tesco store to buy things for my party the next day. Somehow I ended up spending just over £100; please don’t ask me how, not sure myself. It involved many bottles of alcohol, many crates of beer, and lots of glasses to put said liquids in. I was there for longer than I planned to be, partly because I spent so long trying to find a worker who spoke English to ask for assistance, and mostly because when I eventually did find an English-speaking person, he decided I was his new best friend. No shit, he wouldn’t let me leave the wines and spirits aisle for about half an hour. Only when he started talking about his life at school did I make an excuse to get the hell out of there, in case he wanted to write down his number or something.
Saturday kicked off with Ed waking me at a ridiculously early hour, but then regretted it when I told him he had to help wash the patio. Guests arrived in various fashions. Some walked, some drove, some catapulted themselves over my back fence. Luckily the weather stayed moderately warm, so barbeque was still cooked. Sadly, everyone else were boring sods and didn’t seem to want to get as ridiculously drunk as I did. This was unfortunate when I dared to mix up my drinks with a bottle of cider, and soon afterwards was collapsed in the corner of my living room, worried that I was about to become the first and only person to make a fool of himself. Thankfully I sobered up again after a little while, although that didn’t stop me from staying awake all night, or stop me from feeling hung over the next day.
Just after lunch my friend Alex appeared, and it wasn’t too long before we were thinking of what we could do. I suggested visiting the village of Turville, about twenty minutes drive from me, which happened to be the village where ‘The Vicar of Dibley’ was filmed. I knew there was meant to be a lovely pub there that sold dinner, so a plan was made to wander around and then eat.
For anyone who lives in the Thame or surrounding areas, I highly suggest visiting Turville when it’s a nice sunny weekend; it was such a beautiful place. Tiny; it would only take a couple of minutes to walk from one end of the village to the other. The buildings were really old, possibly Tudor era, and even had more horses than villagers (complete with shit on the road) to add to the awesomeness. We saw the house that belonged to the Vicar in the show and took pictures of it, and took pictures of it (probably to the owners annoyance), and saw the church that was used too. At that point we both noticed a windmill at the very top of the hill, and next to it what looked like a gravel road leading up to it. We then discussed how, no, it could not possibly be a road as no vehicle would ever get up a hill that steep, as it looked almost vertical. At which point Alex said “let’s climb it.”
By the time we were a fifth of the way up, I think I was more out of breath than I’d ever been in my life. I’ve jokingly been grumbling about it ever since, although I did enjoy it really. Firstly because the view from the top was fantastic, and secondly because he fell over, I did not. Win! Sadly we couldn’t actually reach the windmill itself as the dirt track just disappeared into barbed wire and nettles. We did however take some pictures up there (of which can be found on my facebook) before we carefully made our way back down to the pub.
We sat in a small side room of the pub first. I like to think it was because they weren’t serving food yet so went somewhere quiet, although the real reason is because I was too retarded to open the door into the restaurant area. It was while sipping our drinks, that an American film crew approached us and asked if we knew the area. Apparently they were doing some filming of the village, especially the windmill we’d just climbed to as it was the same windmill used in the opening to the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang film. We reacted with awe and horror; awe because this was new information to us, and were quite pleased we’d seen yet another landmark used in British television/film, and horror because neither of us had taken a single picture of the windmill while we were up the hill. At the time I noticed a picture of the windmill, so just took a picture of that (although a few days later I went back to Turville and did take a picture of it). We then had very yummy fish and chips while sat in the pub garden, although the weather did keep threatening to return the fish back to its natural habitat.
That night we rented the film ‘Four Lions’ and if you have not seen it already, I highly recommend renting it as soon as possible. The film is about four very useless suicide bombers in their Jihad against the British public. According to the back of the box, it’s a funny film, and it proved to be very funny indeed.
Next morning was an insanely early start, by which I mean 9am. However it was made up for by Alex introducing me to ‘Eggy Bread’ which I had neither tried nor even heard of before that weekend. It was delicious, and I have made it twice since that day. We then went to Towersey festival, something I have attended numerous times but was the first time for Alex. Disappointingly it was a lot smaller than last year, two stalls I particularly missed; the wooden sculpture stall which sold magnificent wood carvings of vehicles, animals, humans, and giant male genitalia, and a jewellery stall where the owners had a remarkable memory for me and gave me bigger and bigger discounts each year. All was not lost though, I was given permission (yes, that’s right, I needed permission) to purchase a large wooden staff with an evil skull on the top of it, continuing my tradition of buying useless shite and then forgetting all about it when I get home. Although Alex very nearly bought a Trombone, which if he’d carried through his intention to purchase, it would have eclipsed every impulse buy i’d ever made (except the Degus… I do not think i’ll ever make a worse impulse purchase)
Sadly after Alex returned home that evening, the rest of the week went by without much excitement. Tuesday and Wednesday I continued to enjoy an empty house, with the highlight of Wednesday being an elderly lady I walked past as I entered Sainsbury’s. She looked like she was barely able to stand herself, but strapped to her front in a specially designed fabric carrier was a baby. I was tempted to say something, but she didn’t seem to be falling over and faceplanting the baby, so I carried on with my day.
Wednesday night the family returned to much noise and mayhem. It has made me realise just how much I need a house/apartment for myself. For 51 weeks a year, the house always has at least one other family member present, meaning I cannot have a group of friends over to socialise. The peace and quiet was valued more than you can possibly know. I actually made sure (with the help of Jo, thanks Jo x) the house was incredibly tidy, and all housework was done while they were away. Naturally within 24 hours the house looked more untidy than before I’d started. Unfortunately, I’m going to be in my current job for at least another year, possibly University but it will depend on how well I do in my latest attempt for promotion. So I’m probably not going to be in a financial position to move out for another four years. I may lose my hair and develop some sort of psychiatric condition before then.
