The longest February (i)

I must apologise for being so lax on the blogging front. I haven't written in here since the 31st of January for crying out loud, what could be more important??!! Well I've been rather busy running around doing stuff and I'm going to try to tell you about it all with as much detail as my memory allows.

It all started when I lost my job at the end of January. I still keep looking under the sofa to see if its turned up there since the last time I looked but no cigar on that front. Looking back, I had a wonderful time working there and met some truly lovely people but the time came for me to move on and therein came a change of scenery.

Ahhh Nottingham! A home from home! I had already planned to spend time with the wonderful OLH (OLH obviously isn't her name, I just feel its more respectful to peoples privacy not to tell all and sundry who they are if they aren't keen on the idea) and she was obliging enough to allow me to stay at hers. So with accomodation and travel sorted, along with the promise of an incredibly exotic drink (more on that later), I set off.

Got to Nottingham at around 5 on the Monday and within my first hour back in the city, I was annoying people. I'd forgotten OLH's flat number, so after some liberal experimentation with the buzzer system at her building, had a wonderfully brief conversation with a woman who could, quite blatantly, not have cared any less.

Me: Hi is OLH there

Unwelcome neighbour: Theres no OLH here

Me: Sorry, I may have got the wrong flat, its the one on the second floor on the right? What number is that one?

UN: I don't know. Bye

Turns out, she did know. She knew because she lived right next door. Upon learning this, I shouted "FOUND IT" into the hallway before entering the flat.

Tuesday we chilled out for most of the day before heading to revs in the night. I don't recall any major events of note at the moment but it was just lovely to spend time with OLH and her flatmates.

Actually, I've just remembered that I had lunch with the SU President and the Vice President, Student Services. A brilliant lunch in which I found out about pretty much everything thats gone wrong this year and yet still came away feeling jealous I wasn't still living up there being a part of it all.

I believe that that Wednesday will now and forever be known as 'kid in a candy shop' day in OLH's memory as she witnessed my regression into an adult sized child. We'd been out and about shopping in Nottingham when she mentioned a sweet shop that had appeared opposite zavvi, The Barley Twist if your interested.

This is THE old fashioned sweet shop of my dreams. Walls covered in jars full of sweets, of every size, shape, colour and texture imaginable. We debated how we would go about creating our own mix and asked the woman whether she'd help us. Unfortunately, she was not inclined to follow a wild Welshman as he whirled around the shop at a dizzying pace, so instead we were to bring the jars to her.

This seemed pretty fair and we were all set to do this until the proprietor of the store, an old man with a twinkle in his eyes, appeared from the back of the shop to the counter. I felt I was in the prescence of a true disciple of Mr. W. Wonka. The good one played by Gene Wilder, not the eerie Johnny Depp one.

Not content to stand and watch, he followed me everywhere as I gave crucial instructions. "5 of those, a couple of those, 2 no 3 of those, how many of those do you want? ok we'll have 4 of those". Occasionally, my new hero would recommend various products, only so as to give him an excuse to sample their delights himself. How he wasn't a fat, toothless wreck I will never know!

Occasionally, members of my family may read this and so I shall not disclose, dear reader, how much we spent in the Barley Twist that day but never fear! One day, when I'm a fat, toothless wreck I'll still say it was worth every single penny!

That night, OLH persuaded me to watch The Notebook. We'll watch three dvds, she reasoned, one sad, one funny and one weird. So it was that we watched the notebook, russell howard live and coraline that night.

Blogs are about honesty. They are about opening up your very soul to the outside world. Therefore, in the spirit of being brutally honest, I will admit that I DO NOT cry in films! I didn't cry when bambi's mum died. I didn't cry when mufasa died. I came close when Boo got really scared in Monsters Inc. but as a rule I don't cry in films. A fine record spanning over 20 years! (I had no control over the films I watched during the first 2 years of my life but rest assured I was pretty stoic throughout) This fine record however, came to an abrupt halt ten minutes before the end of the Notebook. As shaming as this is, and as crap as the first 113 minutes were, the final 10 were real heartbreakers and I tried very hard not to show any sign of emotion. I failed, epically. Ever the superstar, OLH laughed at me and told me I was being a sissy which, as she later pointed out, if she hadn't done, I may have dissolved in a pool of my own despair. As it happened, I was able to recover quite quickly and proceeded to cry tears of unbridled mirth at the hilarity of Russell Howard. Coraline was weird and we didn't really watch it all. I think we fell asleep at one point.

Thursday I met up with Hermano for a drink and some food. I took him to the barley twist and he loved it.

In the evening, myself, OLH, V for Vendetta and Cpt. Loom (How I come with some of these nicknames is quite brilliant, honestly!) headed out to a bar in the lace market called Coco Tang. Its a great big basement bar which serves, as a main attraction, this!

Please, please, please trust me when I say that this drink is pretty much everything you already think it is.

TO BE CONTINUED....