Went out to town last Friday with lots of the old resource planning gang from Crapita, including those of us who have moved on, and new boy Kieran, who disappeared halfway through the evening but seems a nice fella.
We started off in East 1 noodle bar off West Street, where we were served such enormous portions that none of us could finish (except Owen, who scoffed the lot!) and the quality was good, but the seating was that kind of wooden bench refectory-style which seems to be in fashion right now and plays merry hell with my back.
To our ever-lasting shame, nobody could work out how to split the bill equally nine ways, without using the calculator function of their mobiles. EXCEPT ME! Hahaha :-)
We then went on for drinks at a couple of pubs and then ended up back at Rhys' for a nightcap and an intellectual discussion about the merits of Shakira's videos. No, really. OK, it wasn't that intellectual, LOL. And once more I had terrible trouble getting a cab until I phoned Mercury, who have now moved to number one slot on my list.
Had to go into work on Sunday and Monday morning to run the [insert appropriate epithet here] reports in preparation for my holiday due to Mum coming to visit. The damn MI didn't turn up on Sunday, so that was a complete waste of a journey to work, although I did spend the four hours before I gave up productively updating Facebook, which I am now favouring over MySpace since it has far less spammers and security holes.
So Mum arrived on Monday afternoon, and then spent the next 24 hours cleaning my house. No lie. To be fair, I hadn't been able to clean properly for some time due to my back pain, but also (as all the world knows) I fucking hate cleaning anyway. So I was quite happy to get a free cleaning service! She even bought her own equipment!
So that took care of most of Tuesday, and on Wednesday we went out to Castleton with the intention of having a good walk, but unfortunately it started pissing down with rain, so after poking through the village for a bit (where i nearly had a wallet accident in a secondhand bookshop) and visiting the church, we decamped to the Plough at Hathersage for some lunch.
Waved Mum goodbye on Thursday morning and then into the bank for a review with my "personal account manager", a very nice lady called Helen who has managed to save me nearly £80 a month on my loan repayments by renegotiating it in the face of complete indifference from head office. Hooray! On a similar note, I got my Xmas bonus from Renderosity, and very nice it was too.
Caz came up this weekend for a girly night (well, as girly as you can get with us two, i.e. not very) which was great, as we haven't seen each other for at least two years. Went out and ate at Sheikhs, and made a fair dent in a bottle of Kahlua, and stayed up til after 4am yattering away about everything under the sun, and then carried on in the morning. Which explains why I had a sore throat the next day, LOL. We both said that we mustn't leave it so long next time!
And now I am at work, and it's just indescribably meh. The night out last Friday made me realise how much I miss having colleagues that I actually get on with. I even miss Owen's sarcasm and scathing remarks! I've just got nothing in common with the people I work with here. Well, the bloke I sit next to is a good laugh, but everyone else is just on another planet.
Nick said he missed my evil cackle, hahaha. And Liz said it's no fun in the morning there any more because they can't listen to my team fielding ridiculous excuses on the absence line!
Oh well better go, as Totalview has FINALLY generated the skill plan...
- Where Am I?:Carbrook, Sheffield
- Currently feeling:
blah
Spoke to Mum at the weekend and she said that she'd been in to see Grandma on the Friday and Grandma was in a right state, still crying and distressed. She also told Mum that she had been too upset to eat anything since the previous day, but when Mum took her down to the dining hall she repeated this and one of the nurses said No, she had breakfast this morning and ate the lot!
The trouble is, she is so confused in her mind that you end up not believing anything she says, which is what makes the elderly so vulnerable to abuse. I mean, if she tripped over and bruised her knee, for example, and then she told Mum or Sally that one of the care staff pushed her or hit her, we just wouldn't know what to believe. But thankfully this facility has an excellent reputation and Mum and Sally both feel very confident in the level of care she will get.
Anyways, Mum has decided that me and her deserve a holiday, so we will be going away next year in the Spring, after Mum's sale completes. We could both really use one earlier, but so much stuff is not open until April, and Easter falls early next year, so we'd have to contend with school holidays. Also our Lucy is away through the middle of April on her charity trek, and if we're away during that then Mum will be fretting that we're incommunicado. So we're looking at the last week of April/first week of May.
So I've been looking around for nice holiday destinations and have been producing one of my famous shortlists (usually famous for being LONG, not short!) Our ideal destination will be somewhere that has nice sunny beaches, a pool, and sufficient shops, bars and restaurants without being overrun with sweaty English chavs. And we need to be within easy walking distance of both the beach and the restaurants/shops/etc. And we'd like there to be some local things of interest we can go see, like historical sites. Also, we want at least an apartment rather than just a hotel room, or for preference, a private villa.
I suppose that sounds like we want the moon on a stick! But even with my exhausting requirements, I've so far got 32 strong contenders spread across Cyprus, the Algarve, Menorca and Mallorca. I'm also considering Crete, but I'm having difficulty finding affordable flights. And I still haven't looked into Turkey, Malta, Italy or mainland Spain.
Feeling very bouncy and happy at the thought of sunshine, sea, sand and sangria! Realistically, I haven't had a good holiday since my honeymoon with Pat in 2002. 2006 - Mallorca with Pat and Simon, very stressful as we were at the point of breaking up; 2003 - Corfu with Pat, Simon and Eddie, and we all know how that one turned out. So I think both Mum and I deserve a good break!
In other unrelated news, I managed to completely destroy my beloved Bagpuss alarm clock. This was through total fuckwittery on my part which I am too embarassed to relate fully, but suffice to say Bagpuss ended up falling onto a hard surface, the display broke and the alarm was impossible to actually turn off once it had started going. Alas! So I have replaced him with a cheap and cheerful travel alarm, which I'm sure is far more adult and mature, but is much less friendly than Bagpuss waking me with his "*YAWN* It's time to wake up! And when Bagpuss wakes up, all his friends wake up too. It's time to wake up, you saggy old baggy old cat-person, it's time to wake up!"
Perhaps that will teach me not to be such a clumsy fuckwit in future, although I somehow doubt it, LOL.
- Where Am I?:Carbrook, Sheffield
- Currently feeling:
bouncy
I am sick of writing about, talking about, reading about, looking at and preparing for more of the Flood... so I will deliberately focus on something different: our Lucy's wedding to Rhandolph!
- Where Am I?:Carbrook, Sheffield
- Currently feeling:
calm
Went to see Pirates 3 last Friday with Oona. I've been looking forward to this since... well basically since the closing credits of Pirates 2!
I'll try not to give any spoilers during this write-up...
We met up for some food first; we were going to eat after the film but then I checked the running time and realised that it was nearly 3 hours! so we ate first, which was good, otherwise we'd have been paying silly cinema prices. We shared some tapas dishes at La Tasca, very good and reasonable as usual.
Then onto the flicks. I had booked tickets in advance, reasoning rightly that as it was a bank holiday friday, and only the second day of the film's release, that it would be packed, and I can't be having with queuing up for hours. The theatre was absolutely heaving and we ended up sitting right down in the front row, which meant I got a crick in my neck from staring upward.
The film itself, well, what can I say? Johnny Depp gets his shirt off within the first 5 minutes, which is always nice. Visual effects and action scenes are as stunning as ever. As the last film in the series, one gets the feeling that they wanted to tie up every last little loose end possible, and to this end we see lots of old characters brought back and learn what fate befalls them.
High points:
Shirtless Johnny Depp (obviously)
Keira Knightley in gorgeous oriental costume
Tia Dolma's accent has calmed down a bit
The battle between the Pearl and the Dutchman
Things that didn't quite work:
Multiple Jacks
I'd say it probably could have benefitted from another editing hand to trim 30-45 minutes off the running time. All the surrealist shit could go for a start. What I did find annoying was the constant repetition of who was looking for what and why. Although as Oona pointed out, Americans do have rather short attention spans so perhaps the director did this based on feedback from Pirates 2, which admittedly had the potential to be rather confusing about the characters' aims.
With that in mind, I'm astonished to find people slating the film on the grounds that it's "confusing" and "too hard to follow". Maybe if you went to the toilet twice or something, or if you hadn't seen Pirates 2. I suppose I've probably watched it at least 6 times, so maybe I'm not the best judge!
I was also shocked at some of the deaths, like noooo! But I won't say they were bad points because they were, you know, a necessary part of the film.
I'm looking forward to seeing it again next month with Simon and seeing if any of my opinions change!
...
In other news, it's been a wet and manky bank holiday weekend. I intended to get tons and tons of work done online, but a huge shitstorm blew up in the Poserverse - someone basically went completely looney-tunes and accused a whole bunch of people of copyright violation in the most insane ways. This would normally blow over, but on this ocassion a site owner made the mistake of throwing in with the accuser and dedicated their front page and newsletter to denouncing the accused. I guess he's probably feeling like a total prick since it's become clear just how whacked out the accuser is 
So instead of getting lots of work done, I got little work done and a lot of reading and headshaking and "she said WHAT?!" instead.
- Where Am I?:Carbrook, Sheffield
Went out for a pre-birthday meal with Rhys, Ellen and Liz last Saturday.
This meant I had to learn how to program my VCR to record Dr Who and Casualty. Amazingly, I managed this without having to dig through the "receipts, warranties and instruction books" drawer to find the manual, for which I was mighty thankful since it reads like it was translated via Babelfish from a drug-crazed rant in Japanese.
Yeah, so, we went out in Hillsborough, had some very nice food, then back to Rhys and Ellen's for a couple of bottles of wine and half-pissed chitchat. Rhys and Ellen were visibly flagging so I called a taxi at half twelve. Not before deomnstrating their cat's pantaloons, though, which I got a photo of and shall try to upload from my phone to my PC later (if I remember.)
I have bought myself a virtuous birthday present of a 3-month subscription to Slimming World. I've been doing quite a bit of research and this looks like the plan which will suit my tastes and lifestyle best. Started that yesterday and so far so good, including a workout plan courtesy of freetrainers.com (although the kittens certainly gave me some quizzical looks when I rearranged the furniture last night and started doing it. They were all like, "What's she doing, she's supposed to be watching Corrie and eating icecream at this time of day!")
Anyway I won't rattle on about the diet on here as I know how tedious it is listening to other people's successes (or failures.)
Mum sent me a parcel from my birthday which was packed into a very small box but managed to contain:
Handmade mango-scented candle
Body shop gift voucher
The Cat Whisperer by Claire Bessant (which I shall start when I've finished my current Rebus)
and a very soft and huggable Pooh bear (original style - not Disney), which I shall have to take a photo of and post.
Title line is from the much-missed Ian Dury's "You'll See Glimpses".
- Where Am I?:Carbrook, Sheffield
- Currently feeling: bouncy
Well, the server here at work has gone down, so I may as well get on with posting this!
The remainder of my journey passed uneventfully save for the complimentary drinks and biscuits, and I met up with
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lucy_pointycat at about 12.15 in Victoria. We had a brief sit down then toddled off to our very posh hotel, the Park Plaza. Extremely upmarket and swanky, this is a relatively new build with lots of art "installations" and very nice rooms. We had a very large room with the nicest bathroom I have ever been in (hotel or otherwise) - a huge bath (with separate handheld shower attachment - an absolute godsend for me and so rarely seen in hotels), separate wet room shower, all glass fittings and for some reason, a phone by the toilet. WTF? I could understand having a phone by the bath, but who wants to make a call while they're having a shit? I'd asked for early check-in, so we were able to dump our overnight bags before setting off to the shop where we intended to buy Lucy's outfit. She already had the top half (corset) so we were looking for a skirt to match. We got the Tube over to Camden and after a few tryings on, Lucy had picked her ideal skirt out. Being advised by the staff that the employees at the other branch in Spitalfields were total thickies, we decided to order the skirt in the relevant material right there rather than trekking across town on what might be a wild goose chase to find one in stock. This also meant that we wouldn't have to then drag the skirt (which I can say is a very full affair, without giving too much detail since Lucy doesn't want
rhandolph seeing the ensemble until the day) all the way back to our hotel and then back to Brighton on the Megabus with Lucy. So we stopped for a spot of lunch, which was marred only by being accosted by a drunk Dutch punk asking us for money (I assertively told him to go away) then spent the rest of the afternoon poking around the shops and stalls in Camden market. I had never been there before and had no idea there was so much of it. It's very much the alternative hangout and I encountered some slightly strange looks as I stood there dressed from head to foot in Matalan, haha.
We stopped for a drink since we didn't fancy our chances on the tube at 5pm, but even at 6.30 the tube was still heaving. We made it back to the hotel where we investigated the Executive Lounge where we got free booze and snacks, and I had an unfortunate glass-breaking accident. Then upstairs to our too, where I had a lazy bath while Lucy virtuously went to the hotel gym and sauna.
I'd booked us a table at Chez Gerard for 9pm, which is just around the corner from our hotel. We skipped starters and went straight on to the main course - medallions of beef for me, and a tomato and mustard tart for Lucy. They were both absolutely spot on, and well washed down with a bottle of rosé. We shared dessert - a fruit sorbet with crushed meringue and raspberry coulis, and paid the very reasonable bill, then meandered back to the hotel, where were brought back down to each with a bang after ordering a large glass of wine and one bottle of Woodpecker and being charged over £18. Outrageous! It suddenly become clear how the hotel can offer such great rooms at such a reasonable rate - by making up for it in the bar, where the majority of customers will be on expenses and won't begrudge paying such a price!
The following morning we went down for breakfast, where we stuffed ourselves silly, before catching the tube over to St Paul's. Our intention was to go to the Tate, but we decided to take in St Paul's Cathedral on the way, since neither of us had seen it before. It's massive! Honestly, the sheer scale of the thing quite takes your breath away. We were going to go in and see the interior, but on discovering the entry fee of £9.50 each, we cried "Fuck that!" and went off to find the Tate, where they may ask you for a voluntary donation, but don't actually make you pay it.
We walked over the Millennium Bridge (which is quite impressive) and took in one exhibition, which was all we had time for. Well... I'm not one of these "I may not know much about art, but I know what I like" types, but frankly, there were only 3 pieces from the whole exhibition (over 40 pieces) which I would have wanted to own. And only in a "Hmm, I wouldn't mind that" way - there was nothing that made me want to steal it. There were another couple of pieces in which I could see the artistic value without in any way wanting to own them, but the remainder was just... well, it wasn't the pieces so much that annoyed me as the pompous plaques next to them, drivelling on about "the juxtaposition of the fragility of modern life and the erosion of traditional values creates a paradigm of shifting consciousness" and other such bullshit. There were loads of art students earnestly taking notes and studying the pieces with something approaching religious veneration, and I had to restrain myself from shouting, "Oh for god's sake, it's all a load of bollocks! Stick a paintbrush up my arse and it could produce something equal to that pile of rubbish!" (In fact the Tate would probably eagerly display such a piece and call it a "ground-breaking hommage to coprophilia" without even a trace of irony.)
Anyway, it was time to get back to the hotel, as Lucy's megabus was leaving at 12.40. We took the Jubilee line back, discovering that it was a lot "posher" than other tube lines; that Soutwark tube station is very attractive and was named "Building of the Year 2000" and that Westminster tube station is more artistic than anything we saw in the Tate.
Then a dash to Victoria coach station for Lucy and a leisurely checkout and joruney to St Pancras for me, followed by a thankfully non-eventful train journey back to Sheffield, although I did discover halfway home that I still had three pots of jam in my handbag that Lucy had asked me to appropriate at breakfast.
And back home to my kittens, who were less than impressed at having been left with the cat sitter, and mobbed me the moment I came in the door. Bless :-)
- Where Am I?:Carbrook, Sheffield
- Currently feeling:
chipper
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lucy_pointycat. It all started rather inauspiciously...
I had decided on Thursday night that I would catch the bus to the station rather than a cab, as a) it would be a lot cheaper and b) my experience with cabs in this city has been somewhat patchy... i.e. half the time they don't turn up at all, let alone on time.
So I set off to catch the 120 at 7.24, which should have got me to the station at about 8.05 - my train was due at 8.27, so this would give me plenty of time to collect my tickets, get a bottle of water, etc.
I was at the bus stop for 7.20, but no 120 turned up by 7.30. The 41 came along, and I thought, shall I get that, but then decided not to, as it doesn't stop at the station and I'd have a much longer walk down the hill. Anyway, I thought, the 7.34 120 should be here any minute.
Of course, 7.34 came and went with no sign of the 120. At this point I was starting to freak out and thinking, should I just phone a cab now? but hampered by that dilemma of "If I do, the bus will turn up immediately, plus the cab will get stuck in traffic and we'll probably end up following the bus into town..."
Finally a 120 turned up at 7.42. I don't know if it was the 7.24 really late, the 7.34 eight minutes late, or the 7.44 two minutes early, but I didn't stop to ask. I am guessing it was the really late 7.24, because we then picked up multitudes of passengers at every stop, to the point where we stopped taking any more passengers at Manor Top because the bus was full! So of course that slowed us down again.
Eventually we got to Pond St at about 8.20, so I forced my way to the front, jumped off, and legged it to the station. Of course, there was an old geezer in front of me at the FastTicket collection machine dithering over the buttons, but the good news was, the screens were showing that the 8.27 to St Pancras was standing at platform 8. The bad news was the platform 8 is the furthest one away.
Finally the old geezer finished dithering and I swept him aside, banged my credit card in the machine and punched in my reservation code. The machine spat out three tickets - my outbound, return, and receipt, I assumed, so I thrust them into a pocket and legged it over to platform 8.
Of course, by the time I'd finished barging people out of the way, the platform was empty. I went to the Information kiosk, where I was informed that yes, I had missed the 8.27, but not to worry, there was another St Pancras service leaving at 8.36. Just one small problem - my ticket, being an advance booking, wasn't transferrable. I would have to buy another ticket. Argh! With the prospect of having to spend about another £100 or so, I asked if there was anything they could do. The nice information lady advised me to speak to the "train manager" when the St Pancras train arrived and see if he would let me travel.
So a couple of minutes later the Train Manager was examining my tickets and looking at my earnest, pleading face. "First class, eh? Alright love, on you go," he said, which was frankly amazingly lucky! I scrambled on and plonked myself in the plush first class carriage (first time I've ever been in one) and tried to catch my breath.
The train set off, and about 10 minutes later the train manager came round to collect the tickets. He asked for mine (even though he'd already seen them) but then said, no, this is your return ticket, where's your outbound? Puzzled, I searched my pockets, but lmew I'd already given him everything the machine had given me. I said, "But there's two tickets there, aren't there?" It turned out one of them was my seat reservation and the other one was my actual ticket.
I worked out afterwards what it was - the reservation service had given me two collection codes, but when I'd put the first one in, because it spat out three tickets, I of course thought that it was being intelligent and had given me both. And being in a mad panic to get to the platform, of course I didn't check them all over.
Anyway - the very nice Train Manager obviously decided that since he'd let me on in the first place, and hearing my pathetic "But that's all I was given!" cry, that he wasn't going to worry about it, and with an "Oh well, never mind love" he went off to check on other customers' tickets!
As the attendant who served me my (free) tea a few minutes later put it, "I should count yourself lucky, love, because the train manager I travelled with yesterday would have definitely not let you travel!"
Anyway I will have to finish this later as the data I've been waiting for has just become available and I need to do some work!
- Where Am I?:Carbrook, Sheffield
- Currently feeling: cheerful
Just had a great weekend with Simon.
As we've only got a couple of weekend left together before his Dad takes him to live in Cardiff, I've been trying to pack lots of good stuff in before then.
So I picked him up on Friday and we went to have a professional photo session at Neo Photography. I got a deal through work for a one-hour session and 10x12in print for £25, which I thought was a pretty good deal. The photographer was really good and we had a lot of fun. We'll get to see the results this Wednesday when we go to pick out the shots we want. I'm hoping they will be really nice :-)
On Saturday, we decided to go over to Leeds and visit the Armouries museum. I love the Armouries because it is FREE! However, having to pay £4 for 3 hours parking across the road really hacks me off. Never mind.
Of course, what we were really trying to do was just kill time until !DOCTOR WHO! came on at 7pm. Wow! What a great first episode of the new series. I am almost ready to forgive the BBC for making us wait eight months for it. (Not including the Xmas episode, which was frankly disappointing.) Freema Agyeman is a welcome change from Billie "Rubberlips" Piper, whose increasingly-encrusted mascara'd eyelashes and Sahf Lunnun accent were really starting to get on my tits. Can't wait until next Saturday, although Simon tends to prefer the futuristic episodes to the historical ones. Anyway it's all good!
So on Sunday, a bit spur of the moment, we decided to go to Alton Towers. It's only about 90 minutes from here. This is the first time that Simon's been big enough to go on really big rides with me, and of course Pat hates them - can't even hack the Waltzer or the Big Wheel, so Simon never gets to go on anything. So we were dead set on having a real white-knuckle day :-)
We were incredibly lucky with the weather - beautiful sunshine all day, and pretty warm - we were wandering around in our t-shirts most of the day. But it's still very early season (the park only opened two weeks ago) so it wasn't too crowded - I think the longest we waited for any ride was 20 minutes.
I have been there before, but not for about 15 years - I went with Dave, Mick and Paul, the year we went to Donington Rock Festival. Time, beer and dope clearly took their toll on my memories, as I couldn't really recognise anything! I think the only ride that is still there now that was there before was the Corkscrew. Oh, and the Runaway Mine Train, but that was shut. And the flume, kind of, but that's been rebranded as the "Imperial Leather Flume Ride", which isn't as grim as it sounds. You still get wet, which is the main thing!
We decided to start our day as we meant to go on, with a trip on Oblivion, in the X-Sector area. Billed as "The World's First Vertical Drop Rollercoaster", this is probably the closest you'll come to bungee-jumping whilst being in a coaster car. The ride starts with the cars being pulled up a very steep 60ft incline... I don't know the gradient, but it felt as if we were almost laying horizontally. The car then rights itself, and moves forward a few feet, then tips forward and pauses a moment... over the 200ft vertical drop into the ground. This gave us all time to savour our impending doom and say a brief Hail Mary if we felt so inclined. Then without warning, the car plummets into the abyss. Dear god! The car travels briefly through the bowels of the earth before emerging again and braking to a stop, almost before I'd stopped screaming. Enough to turn your hair white! I loved it, but Simon pronounced it "tame"! I told him to come back in 20 years when he has some kind of understanding of his own mortality, and then see if it's still "tame"!
We then went on a fairly tame-but-nausea-inducing ride called Enterprise. This just involved being spun around and around, upside down to right-side-up for about two minutes. As the front person (Simon) is forced against the rear person (me) with pretty much every revolution, this was a fairly uncomfortable as well as nauseating ride. After a restorative cup of tea, we set off for the Towers area.
The Towers area is quite nice, and if you were going in a mixed party with some thrill seekers and some more sedate folks, this would be a good area for the quieter people to check out. The Towers were the original home of the Earl of Shrewsbury. You can walk through the building (which is mainly derelict but has been restored in some areas) and the manor gardens. There's also a new ride opened within the Tower buildings called Hex: Legend of the Towers. There wasn't much info available outside or on my map, so we reckoned it was probably some sort of ghost train effort. There wasn't much of a queue, so we joined the line and went in.
It started off with videos - and this is one thing Alton Towers does really well; the amount of video screens playing while you're waiting in queues is great. Most screens are showing a mix of footage of the ride and hammed up "warnings" about the ride, which is kind of Barnum-esque but still enjoyable. As the queues were so low, we didn't really see much of these, but I was glad of the ones we did. Anyway, the Hex videos were all talking about some workers finding a bricked-up doorway leading to some secret chambers in the Towers. All very E. A. Poe. Then we entered a room with a large screen showing a "Reconstruction" of the Legend, which was about the Earl being cursed by a wandering gypsy woman. Then we all trooped into a room where we were instructed to sit on benches, make sure bags were under benches and kids were on the benches and not on parents laps, etc.
Then, the actual ride part started and it was the wierdest ride I've ever experienced. It was like the benches were moving around and we started swinging back and forth (in the same way that the classic "Pirate Ship" type ride does.) But we were moving so slowly! Then we started swinging more and more, and I was babbling, "Oh god, we're not going right the way over are we? Please, no, I don't like it! Argh!" and other wimpish sentiments! Eventually we stopped moving and we all staggered off through the dark corridors to the exit.
Simon said to me as we got off that he didn't think we were the ones moving, he thought the room itself had been spinning and not us, and that it was a clever illusion. He said that when he looked at me when we were "upside down", my hair wasn't hanging forward in my face. I dismissed this at the time because I had felt so strongly the shift in my centre of gravity that I couldn't believe otherwise. But having just done a little searching on Google, he's right! It's the room walls and ceiling which move - the benches and riders stay perfectly still. This makes it even more impressive in my book, as the illusion was incredibly convincing!
It really is a great ride but not one I wanted to repeat that day! So we went for an explore around the Tower ruins, and then headed off to Ug-Land.
Ug-Land is the home of Rita, Queen of Speed, and we were absolutely ready for her. Again the line was pretty short; I think we only waited about 15 minutes. It's also got the best queue entertainment in the whole park - 80's rock classics through the PA system! I suppose that's quite appropriate since it's the Prehistoric-themed area, LOL. As we got closer to the track we could see the cars going around, and from our vantage point on the ground we were left thinking, "Hmm, it doesn't look that fast..."
Once in the cars, however, it's a very different proposition. The coaster is blasted out of the dock, reaching 100kph (62mph) in 2.5 seconds. The G-force is almost too much to let you scream (I managed it, though!) It goes rocketing above Ug-Land with some incredible twists, turns and drops before depositing you back at the station. We loved it, and rode it twice!
Also in the Ug-land section is the venerable Corkscrew, and it's showing its age. Very rattly and quite an uncomfortable ride compared to the modern Rita and Oblivion. Time to put the poor old girl out to pasture, I think!
After a quick hot dog and a slushy, we set off for the Forbidden Valley section, which we were planning to take the SkyRide to, since it's quite a trek, and the views from SkyRide are fantastic (or so they seemed to me in 1991, although I was quite stoned, so perhaps they're not anything special!) Unfortunately, the SkyRide was closed, with no explanation given. Never mind, we walked through the beautiful gardens instead, which really are very nicely landscaped, with lots of ducks around and some very big fishies in some of the ponds.
Forbidden Valley is the home of Nemesis, Air, and Ripsaw. I'd already determined that I didn't want to go on Ripsaw, since it's a variant of the old Pirate Ship type, which I always find uncomfortable and not particularly thrilling. So we started queuing for Nemesis. Unfortunately... once we got to the station, I discovered that my arse was too fat to get into the seat (well, not without a crowbar...) Oh, the shame! Simon did not want to go round on his own, so he was well pissed off. Unfortunately, the same held true for Air, so we had to miss out on that one, too (although thankfully in that case they had a "test seat" at the queue entrance, so we didn't waste time lining up.) Simon sulked for about five minutes, but I promised him we'd come back another time when I was thinner!
It was now getting on for nearly 4pm, so we moved on towards Katanga Canyon, where we planned to do the water rides before setting off for home. On the way there we found a little section called Gloomy Wood, which had a ride called "Duel: The Haunted House Strikes Back". This is a neat little ghost train with a difference: you get a laser blaster to shoot the ghosties and ghoulies, and your car keeps score! I totally pwned Simon with my score of over 60,000, LOL. We went on that twice, too. (I beat him both times, hehe.)
Then we went off to Katanga Canyon for our last two rides. We started with the River Rapids, which is a white-water ride on one of those giant yellow round inflatables. Not really very thrilling, since the "rapids" are actually fairly slow, but good fun. I got wet, of course, while Simon, much to his disappointment, stayed more-or-less dry. From there, we went on to the Flume. I had fond memories of chilling out and sharing a joint on this ride, so it was a nice one to finish with. A bit more of a thrill ride than the rapids, and again I got wet while Simon was hardly splashed!
Then it was back in the car and off home, since it was past 5pm by this time. It's such a long way from the park back to the car that we were both knackered by the time we got there. On the plus side, this did mean that I had dried out in the meantime, and didn't have to drive home with squelchy knickers!
I let the satnav do the routefinding and it took me back through all the country roads, not touching the M1 once, which was nice (and probably quicker than the motorway... well, maybe. Depends on the traffic-to-kaz-speed ratio, doesn't it?)
As we were driving along, we saw a dead pheasant on the road. "Mum, a dead chicken!" Simon exclaimed. I explained it was a pheasant, not a chicken. He didn't believe me until a couple of miles later when I spotted a live pheasant in the hedgerow, and we stopped the car to watch it. We saw another couple of dead'uns a little further on. I explained to Simon about how you can't just take them, to wit:
- If you run over a pheasant, you're not allowed to take it home to eat (or do anything else to it.) That's classed as poaching.
- However, if you come along the road and find a dead one that someone else squashed, you're allowed to take it.
Of course, Simon was then determined that we find a dead pheasant and take it home to cook it. Luckily for me, we didn't see any more. I'm not really squeamish, but I wouldn't fancy plucking it, nor cooking something that had a tyretrack across it :-p
So it's been a really fun weekend, and I screamed so much on the rides that I was hoarse all day yesterday! Heehee :-)
- Where Am I?:S9
- Currently feeling: cheerful
( Life at Otto )
( Some recent socialising )
( It's the thought that counts )
( Simon's reverse-midas touch, and unfriendly pussies )
( Toys and Trips )
( My ickle kittens )
( Healthy eating, weight loss, and other piss-boring topics )
- Where Am I?:S9
- Currently feeling:
busy
Creepy taxi ride home, won't be using Mercury again...
Just thought I'd check in at Renderosity before going to bed, and learned the terrible news that a good friend, Sandy, has lost her home in a fire and her 5 year old grandson died. It seems he actually started the fire under the table in the living room and then ran upstairs (probably frightened that he'd get told off) and the house went up so quickly that they were unable to get him out.
God, I just... I can't even imagine what they're going through. This is just awful.
- Where Am I?:S12
- Currently feeling:
distressed
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