The Delayed Catch Up

I wrote this a couple of weeks ago but just haven't had a chance to post it yet.... So here is a, slightly delayed, blog catching things up a bit....

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Happy Wedding Day!!!

Blimey, I realised the other day that it’s been a while since I have written one of these things. There is no way I am going to remember everything that has happened so I will just have to do my best on that one. Lol. The biggest thing to happen since the last blog was my cousin Dan getting married, which happened last weekend. It was a brilliant day and I will get on to that later – but with every wedding comes a stag do, and that is where I will start. 

At the beginning of June, 19 lads headed up to Newcastle to check out the local nightlife in honour of Dans Stag Do. The majority of us got the train up on the Friday, which was brilliant by the way - apart from the fact they ran out of nice alcohol before they got to where I was sat as the trolley passed a couple of tables of the other guys first. We got there, checked in, got changed and headed out to the pub, as you do. The Friday evening was pretty heavy in the end, with shots being taken left, right and centre and just general late night binge drinking. Well I say late night, I had to make a quick stop off at the hotel at about 12:15 to take Dan back to our room as he was as drunk as I had ever seen him, haha. I went back out and we partied until the early hours of the morning.

Saturday was a different story though - Dan was feeling fine, but I was feeling like death warmed up! I think I managed to eat half a slice of toast and a tangerine at breakfast before feeling like I was going to throw up. Not good considering we were going go karting that day. Off we went to the go karting track and it was excellent, a great little indoor track with really fast karts and a good set up to keep people moving on and off track quickly in a grand prix competition. There was another group there as well so there were 34 of us in the competition all in all. We all had some good races, some bad, then the final came around and 5 of us had qualified from our group for the 8 spots available. I was starting fourth behind Andy Shannahan in 3^rd, one of the other guys on our do Steve in 2^nd and one of the guys from the other stag group who was starting 1^st. Starting 4^th I wasn’t holding out much hope as it was really hard to overtake on the track with how fast the karts were. The race started and on the second corner Andy Shannahan crashed into Steve who crashed into the bloke in first place so they all got tied up which left a nice little gap for me to sneak around the outside and take the lead. I managed to win the whole bloody thing!! Steve came 2^ndand Andy came 3^rd so we had all the podium places haha! Awesome. I think a couple of the other guys in our group came 4^th and 5^th as well so we dominated the final in the end. Haha. Saturday night we went out again but it was a little quieter than the night before, although we still had a great fairly heavy night. On the Sunday we made our way back on the train again, feeling hungover and tired.

Dans Wedding

Page Boy & Best Man

Lara and I at Hampton Court for the Wedding

If there was a stag do that means that there was a wedding coming up, which happened on the 23^rd June. It was a brilliant day and I didn’t lose the rings which was handy. Seeing Dylan as the page boy was also brilliant, he walked down the aisle with Dan and Helens little girl Ella and they just looked so cute! There was one point in the ceremony when Ella was running about and everyone was trying to get her to stand still but couldn’t – Dylan just held out his hand and she came straight over and sat with him! As the Best Man I had to make a speech which I was nervous about all day. Lara managed to record it though and here is the link – (I did plan to put the link to it here but until I figure out how to rotate the video it will have to wait, anyone have any ideas?).  I think it went pretty well and the practicing definitely paid off. The evening went really well too and there was a lush hog roast to keep us topped up with food. All in all, one of the best days I have had.

Other than that I don’t think I have done a massive amount lately, although I had my tattoo finished yesterday and it now looks amazing. 4 months, 3 sessions and 15 hours later my arm holds a piece of art that I am extremely pleased with.

The Final Tattoo

I haven’t seen many movies at the cinema lately although I did see Prometheus which I was really disappointed with at first but have slowly started to come round to and really am starting to like how they did it all now. It’s a film that makes you think, and at the time I didn’t realise that there was going to be another couple of films to follow it up. But after realising a few things which I didn’t when I first watched it, it’s a pretty good film.

I also saw Thor last weekend at home which I was really surprised about. I thought that it would be ok, maybe even good, but it was brilliant. I loved it. I would definitely recommend checking it out, even if you aren’t a fan of comic book movies.

I finished reading Michael McIntyre’s book – Life and Laughing which I really enjoyed. I was reading it on my iPhone which made things a lot better as in parts of the book it would mention about a set that he did or a particular song and the words would be linked to the video of what he was speaking about or the song on YouTube which really added to the whole reading aspect of things.

The weekend just gone Lara and I headed down to the New Forest to stay with my mum and Roy for the weekend which was really nice. The Saturday we went to Southampton for a bit of shopping, Lara bought some things but I stayed purchase free this time. On the way out we were up on level 9 in the car park, and everyone must have been trying to leave at the same time as the cars were at a standstill for a good 25 mins. I decided to have a wander to see what was going on and it was just carnage, there was about 2 or three cars getting out of the car park every minute because of the traffic outside which made things slow, then add in cars trying to get in to the out queue on each level on the way out and that meant that basically all the cars above level three were not moving, let alone the level we were up on!! So I hatched a plan, by wandering to the other end of the car park (where the up ramps were). I walked back up to our car on level 9, which still hadn’t moved at all, and said that we could be cheeky and go down the up ramp as it was empty! Lol. Roy didn’t really want to do it so I jumped in the drivers seat and off we went. I got down to the level above the exit before thinking it would be enough and joined the out queue from there. We were out after about 10 mins from that and saved loads of time. Then we had a lovely meal at a pub round the corner in the evening (with the biggest puddings in the world). On the Sunday, Katie and the kids came over so it was great to see all of them. Archie was smiling away, Mia was talking away and Dylan was playing away so it was great.

But that’s all for now I think. I shall leave it there for now.

G

Tattoo Update and The Easter Bunny Is Mad

Mia on her egg hunt!

Blimey, it has been a month already since the last time I wrote one of these things! Where in the hell is this year going?? Seriously?? It’s almost third of the way through the year already…. How is that? haha. Anyway, as the last post was a bit of a serious one I thought I would give an update on Muamba – as of this week, he was discharged from hospital showing pictures of him smiling and words of thanks he has given to all the assistance he has received to be where he is now. Its absolutely unreal that his heart stopped beating for 78 minutes and he is still around to show off a smile! Incredible news.

Well what has been going on in this cauldron of chaos that was the last few weeks of my life, lol.

Old Mates In New Places

Over the last month or so I have met up with some people that I hadn’t seen in ages, and I mean ages. I met up with an old mate I played football with from about age 11-16 Rob George down in London, where we had a nice Thai curry and a bottle of wine (I will come to wine later as well). It was great to have a catch up after not seeing him in about 12 years. The last time we saw each other we couldn’t even drive, now Rob is getting married later this year and we are all grown up, mental. One thing I found funny, and interesting in a way, was that when I was going to meet him I was driving down a road and recognised instantly from distance that it was him just by the way he was walking. He doesn’t have anything odd about his walk or anything I guess that it’s just another specific thing we do that we don’t really know. I think I could pick a few people that I know out by the way they walk now that I have thought about it, lol.

Then a few weeks back one of my friends Kevin from New York was over on a business trip which meant he was staying down in London for a while. We met up and had a good wander around London from Marble Arch to Piccadilly which was cool. We had some awesome burgers and then headed to a sports bar where there were about 10 football matches going on at once. It was great to catch up with him as I used to go to New York a couple of times a year a while back to see stay with friends, back when they were all around from college and it was basically party season which was great. Hopefully I will get back out there at some point soon but everyone is all over the place now. So yeah, overall it was good to catch up with old friends.

Tattoo Is Taking Shape

After Main

Before

After Inside

So last Friday I was in for my second day session with Jammes at Woody’s tattoo shop in High Wycome to get some more work done on my left arm. It was pretty much a solid day of tattooing with me sitting down at 10:45 and finishing at 5:20 with only a 20 minute break for lunch in between. It was all work on shading and detail and now I only have a couple of hours left of highlighting and a little bit more shading before it’s done. I can’t wait.

Other than that there has been Easter which I spent down at my mums with Lara, my mum, Roy, Katie, Tom, Dylan, Mia and Archie which was awesome. There was an Easter egg hunt which we did for Dylan and Mia and it was hilarious, they were running around picking up eggs with Dylan saying ‘The Easter Bunny has gone mad!! He's Gone Mad’ and Mia saying ‘Lot-Lot’ which was her version of chocolate for every egg she picked up. All in all that was a fun day.

Dylan while the Easter Bunny was going MAD!!

Future Wine Connoisseur

Now, I mentioned wine earlier and here’s why. I have always disliked wine growing up so never really thought much about it but lately I have developed a bit of a taste for it - I think I mentioned about it in my Paris post a while back. I think it’s because I only ever tasted wine at parties where it was bought in bulk and not very good stuff. I went out with some friends and we had a couple of nice bottles of wine a while back and I realised that I quite liked it. Then when I was in Paris I drank enough wine to kill a donkey but enjoyed it all too. So I have decided that I am going to open up a bit to wine and try a few to try and get a bit of an idea about things. Strangely enough there is a wine shop in Ampthill about 2 minutes from where I live, which I either haven’t noticed before or its new (I think its new), so I went in there yesterday and bought four bottles of wine – two red and two white. I have a Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand (Marlborough), a Sauvignon Blanc from Chile (Casablanca Valley), a Pinot Noir from Chile (Casablanca Valley) and a Pinot Noir from France as well so I can compare a couple, lol. I will let you know how it goes.

Other than that I think that’s about it. I have my second concert of the year coming up on the 28^th April. It’s completely different to Rammestein and Im going with my cousin Matt (@TheTilley) and another mate Ahmed (@Ahmedozman) which should be awesome!

Take it easy.

G