Monday 13 December 2010

One Week, Seven Days and Hundreds of Hours of Fun

I am currently at home, sat on my bed, a cat next to me, and Devendra Banhart playing in the background. To be stationary is quite a novelty after the week I've had.


A few statistics.

13 Trains
9 Buses
30 or so friends I don't get to see very often
10 or so people I've never met
2 Christmas markets
4 Big cities

1 Amazing musician

1 Favourite band
1 Very great God.

Living in Bournemouth, 2 years longer than a lot of my friends of the same age has both its perks and its drawbacks. I love being near my family, I love that in my job, I get to share my life, my knowledge of Bournemouth and because I'm fairly stable I can help those who aren't and I love the expectancy and excitement when people come home for a visit. 

However, I know I'm not meant to be here long-term and so every so often I get itchy feet, the urge to escape and I massive desire to go and do something crazy. FP is amazing in that every month or so I get to escape for a few days to Bristol, a city I love, full of grand buildings, narrow streets and a team of people guaranteed to lift your spirits, your head, and refresh you. 

This time I went a little further than Bristol though. I spent four days in that lovely city, learning several lessons, from the Doctrine of God and the Trinity, to learning styles, how to respond to people in need, and further lessons in courage, faith and honesty. And I can assure you, not all of that was lectured on. Training weeks are always a growing experience, a challenging one and quite often, a chilly one as the building tends to be freezing. Praise God for giant heaters that have recently been installed. 

From Bristol, my travelling continued, as I headed further north into the East Midlands. A close friend of mine lives in Nottingham and so after a year and a bit of her staying there, it was quite fitting that I should go and pay a visit. Due to short time and such, I didn't get to see that much of the place, it was dark when I arrived and we left the following afternoon on part 2 of the travelling adventure.

Liverpool was destination 3 of my week, and a visit to another friend, a pretty wonderful gap year buddy who kept me company and sane for much of the past year. She has left, and now lives so far north I hadn't seen her in three months, so to check out her city, her halls, and her friends was very fun. We concocted a dinner with no oven, and managed to eat some microwave rice and some sausages we cooked on a stolen grill. There was a distinct lack of plates and cutlery as they live in catered halls and so Bridgette ran up and downstairs scrounging crockery and shouting as us to make sure we didn't set the fire alarm off with the sizzling sausages. Fortunately for all we didn't. 



That night we went out on a bit of a bar crawl, and then into Liverpool city centre. It seemed to me that we ended up in several local's pubs, in that they had quite an odd mix of people who seemed they'd been sat in booths and at tables for their whole life. Definitely a possibility. It was very funny, especially in one place where they were playing a mix of classic Queen and Christmas songs. Inevitably there was dancing. 
For one who doesn't go out very often, the whole thing was a little surreal, especially after the four days I'd had at training, my billion train journeys and my general lack of sleep. 

We ended up in a place called Baa Bar, which was probably only funny to me, but I did giggle to myself. I had a mince pie flavoured shot. Quite possibly the highlight of my trip...well not quite, but it was definitely exciting. 



We headed back to halls with a pizza in hand, and snatched a few hours kip, before heading off to Manchester the following day. By this point I'd been tortured by friends trying to  'flood' out my fear of feet by  continually putting feet near my face and my bag was broken. 

The train to Manchester was entertaining in that I got a Nero coffee that didn't taste of coffee, but apart from that, it was a fairly short trip and I was soon in City number 4 of the week. 

Another little trip to Nero for lunch, Jon was picked up from the station and we had a little wander around the city looking in some cool shops before heading to Sam's halls and crashing for a bit. 
THEN

we made t.shirts.




We gobbled some McDonalds for dinner (seriously nutritious) and then lept on a bus back into the city centre for the gig...which if you hadn't realised by T.Shirt designs, was ARCADE FIRE!

I saw them live about 3 years ago, and we went to London and they were amazing and to see them again with even more friends was SO GOOD. They're one of my favourite bands, and probably my favourite band I've seen live because they do such a good performance. They tend to have a billion people on stage, and they're constantly running around playing different instruments and dancing. A little like this...




The venue was huuuge and the music was phenomenal and there was lots of dancing, and some face paint and some crowd friends who then also wore face paint... altogether it was amazing. (If you hadn't picked p on that already)

With a little hyperactivity and excitement in our veins, we went and grabbed a cocktail after the gig, and then watched 500 days of Summer before crashing at around 4am. 

The rest of my time was spent rather sleepily before a 6 hour trip home, leaving Manchester at half 4 and getting back home to Bournemouth at half 10. I am still a little tired, and as a result this blog is majorly rambly. 

Hope you'll forgive me.
Can't wait to see people over Christmas. YAY!
xxxxxxxxxxxx

No comments:

Post a Comment