day off woot!

Had a great day yesterday doing some geocaching with Will, Sarah and Llion. One of the containers was the shape of a skull as shown in picture. Its great when people do these little unexpected things to make the whole experience more fun.

The Sunshine over here has been unbroken for a day now which I'm sure is some kind of record for August. Recently at least. It was a warm clear day and perfect for walking through the woods above Abergele as you'd catch some sun and then shade all the way through the paths that wend there way around Gwrych castle. There were more tourist around but that's what happens on a bank holiday. Whoever is in charge of the castle had put more walls and metal hatches up barring access to certain places I could walk freely in last time I was there. Its a sobering reminder that it is kind of trespass.

What's fasincatating about the site is that as it's not an authentic castle (Only a couple of hundred years old) it's not owned by Cadw/English heritage so its been sort of left to decay and now looks more authentically broken down than some of the actual castles around here!

I'm off to Conwy today for lunch and they have a magnificent castle there that has been superbly kept and maintained as a ruin but it feels much more sterile than the broken down ramshackle look of Gwyrch. At Gwyrch you feel like there are still tales and stories seeping out of the stones. In Conwy the paths are so well trodden you feel like everything has already been discovered and the castle is just a shell.

Or maybe its just me!

So we geocached all around that area which was great fun. We went from the hills down the the beach which made the walk back to the car a bit longer than we'd have liked I think!

Not much else has been going on. I got a double distinction for my two part payroll course, which was nice. Going on to do the advanced stage this year which starts in two weeks, it'll probably be a bit more challenging than this year but it'll be a great thing to pop on the CV.

Right off to visit my old workmates in Conwy. They say you can never go back, but maybe you can, as long as you're bringing chocolates.

Here be Tangents!

Its been an odd week. in the space of 3 days we went from 'no-ones looked at our house in months' to 'We've sold our house and are buying a gorgeous place in Denbigh' to'The goits have pulled out and now we're back where we started'.

It was a funny old time. To have your dreams pulled out from under you like that was very cruel. but at least it was at the start of the process and not as has just happened to our friends, one week before completion.

I'm ready to move now please. Theres nothing wrong with this house its cosy and big enough for us . but we both know that we can't take it any further. Em has told me on more thn one occasion its a house and not a home. I disagree but that's because I've always had her here with me so my home is with her where-ever she may be (bleugh! sorry I'm feel a bit soppy today).

Anyways we're back where we started with a house no-one wants and unable to move without the capital invested in it. We could retn this place out and buy the nice place in denbigh. We do actually have enough money to do that but with the proposed ublic sector worker cuts one of us may loose our job and then we would be scrwed.

BTW why is it that the private sector fuck-up the economy and the public sector takes the hit for it? Just thinking outloud. Oh, and why has no one pointed out the millions if not billions spent fighting a fake war in the middle east might have had a small contributory factor to our economic decline? Or do I not understand economics to get why no one else has made the correlation.?

Woo hoo! Rambly soapbox morning! Anyway back to houses. We're fine where we are but occasionaly it gets to me that I'm still in Rhyl. I know Denbigh is hardly the paragon of quiet living, but it is a metric tonne better than Rhyl. I found out last night that someone got beaten up for being Gay in Rhyl not 2 weeks ago. It makes me very sad and not a little angry to think that kind of thing is going on. I keep thinking we're evolving as a species and then some backwards fucktard does something like that.

Tangent again. Sorry about that.

Anyways we've got a very quiet weekend planned just going out for a meal tonight with some of ems friends, and thats about it. so I'm going to spend some time writing and reading, and not buying the new lara croft game. It's £10 and I will be able to affrod it next friday with the money I specifically put aside for books and Cds and other ephemera. £5 a week for my fun fund seems to be the right way to do things. Espically as I'm spending over £40 a week on fuel at the moment.

Anyways, we will move eventually, but I had made so many plans that crashed to dust the second they pulled out of the house buying.

Dreams on hold but not dead. Never dead.

End of a long day.

Day off win!

Because sometimes I forget I live in a country where castles are still alive.

Sat down sitting.

Spent the last four days house sitting for friends in a super-rural location where there's about eight people in a mile radius from the house. It's a quiet that you can rarely find on these crowded shores. It's deeply peaceful here.

Of course in the dead of winter when it's dark all the time I might feel different. But now in August it's beyond lovely.

The nice people here have cats and chickens (Not kept together obviously) and its the first time I've spent any extended time with a pride of cats and they're great. The personalities really start to come out after extended time together.

There's one cat I've nicknamed 'Bateman' because you know beneath that poised exterior he's actually a Grade A Psychopath. The next one I call Ackbar as everything I do she treats like "IT'S A TRAP!". There's no nickname for the third one as its just the most affectionate lovely creature and all my nicknames are slightly cruel.

Em might be a little smitten with a kitten. A little, but her heart lies with the hens. They've got six in a coop out the back and they're all rescue hens. So far they're laying between four and five eggs a day which I'm sure is more than the recommended daily intake! I think they're going to have to start selling them just to keep up with the volume.

One of the good things about saying here is that its shown me I can quite happily commute from here to Wrexham, it's knocked about ten miles and ten minutes off the journey. Admittedly some of the route is single track lanes hedged on both sides which might be fun in the dark but as my route at the moment is a boring stretch of motorway I think it could be a step in the right direction.

Had a crazily quiet Friday. The boss has been away Thursday and Friday this week so I worked my arse off on Thursday and by lunchtime Friday I'd run out of stuff to do. This doesn't often happen in payroll. One of the things I love about it is there's always stuff to do. If I'm not busy I'm bored.

I'm sure there's stuff I could have done but I haven't been there long enough to predict what those things could be.

So I had a very boring Friday afternoon which actually took longer than if I'd been busy, but as was pointed out to me the other week, I actually enjoy my job which I supposes says something psychological about me.

Eds BBQ last night was aces as ever good to catch up with some lovely people that I only see once a year. The costumes were in full affect as well which is great to see. Its a nice tradition which I love keeping up.

In other news this is a deeply amusing Jeremy Clarkson beatbox video which I heartily recommend.


CLARKSON

Huzzah!

There are lots of reasons to write but my main one is to come up with an idea that makes you go 'Holy F**k! Where did that come from?!' you could be just doing the dishes or a spreadsheet at work whilst idly considering a plot or character or device and out of nowhere this idea just appears fully formed as if its always been there. Philip K Dick, of 'Bladerunner' fame said ideas were sent via an information rich pink laser beam directly to his brain.

Although he was on a jaw dropping amount of drugs at the time it does sometimes feel like that. As if someone has serupticiously implanted a box fresh idea in your head. I know its the interplay between the concious/unconcious parts of your brain part of me want to belive Mr Dick.

Anyways, a new idea to add to project Y that turns a run-of-the-mill story into a staggering achievment of human endeavour. Not quite but you get the idea.

The Flying Crane