Psychoblog

i have had THE best weekend, and i don’t use capitals lightly. we took the tent and camped on a remote farm in the peak district, which had chickens and dogs. my brother and sister-in-law (chris and jill by their other names) camped with us and we spent the weekend geocaching in spooky disused lead mines and up cliffs and along viaducts. my legs need a break from moving for a while now. amazingly i only have one blister, although my calves moan at any hint of an uphill now. we also fitted in watching the villa match in a pub in bakewell. so should have won. and all you liverpool fans know it.

we cooked beans and saussies on our new camping cooky thing (uses meths, brings back bad memories of tom’s home brew wine). on sunday night found out that chris is the world’s worst barbecue cook (solid sausages anyone?) and that jill is a mean firestarter. never had a campfire before so that was cool in an oo pretty flames kind of way.

on my birthday (yesterday) we met up with mum and dad at chatsworth house and looked around the house and gardens. enjoyed this, but chatsworth is /so/ expensive and i wanted to go in the farmyard to see baby pigs but that cost more again. £3.70 for a pasty? very reasonable. there was a maze there that had me really excited for the first 5-10 minutes. after half an hour of being lost in bushes though i wasn’t quite so taken with it. unfortunately we had decided that the last couple to the middle would buy the first round at the pub. since me and carl made it 20 minutes later than everyone else there were no real arguments (i wish 20 minutes was an exaggeration but some kind soul timed it).

a-n-y-way, after chatsworth doings we went to matlock to munch and drink and have the grand present/card opening. got lots of nice and interesting things. cool candlesticks and candles and kenny to put in car and pretty wind thing for garden and pizza board/cutter (carl pleased) and weird/interesting/cool things from weird/interesting/cool brother and lego and money.

today is carl’s first day at work at the university. this is /so/ cool. he is a couple of buildngs across from me and so we are going to meet for dinner. i think he’ll be so much happier here than he was at experian. but then experian are especially bad employers (for anyone even contemplating working there, just don’t).

short week at work (hoorah for birthday bank holidays) and then back off to brum for the weekend. going to see how the reception place looks when it’s decorated for a wedding, going to church and going to have my girly night out. i’m so happy that i have found my friends again, after a long while of losing touch with them. going out with them is just like a sex and the city episode. i’m charlotte by the way. michelle is carrie (she has the hair for it), kelly is samantha (she has the reputation for it) and caddy is miranda.

so thinking about it, everything is pretty much perfect at the moment. great times with family and friends, planning wedding things with carl, jobs things going well and everything else seems to be falling into place nicely too (if only the monsters in the kitchen will leave us alone). the only bad thing about the last couple of days is that my other brother and his girlfriend couldn’t be there too.

–
had a fairly nasty dream a couple of nights ago. witnessed a robbery at the beginning and the rest of the night was filled with being chased by the bad people who were trying to shoot me. predictably they always caught me and shot me and then the dream would begin again. poo knows how many times i died in that dream. i particularly remember running through a huge dark room and in the floor was a coffin shaped hole. the hole was filled with thick, pus type liquid and there was a body of an old woman floating in it, obviously dead and the flesh was half eaten away. swimming around the body were huge maggot type creatures. never mind.

–
oh, i have missed out so much about the weekend. i forgot to say about the mirror carl bought me and the flowers and balloons and the millions of stars and the water vole and everything. ah well, suffice it to say that it were great and i am very happy.

just spent a fantastic 2 days in brum and now we have finalised the date for our wedding. we went to see the reception place, which is the old rose and crown on the lickey hills. this is one of those places i have passed millions of times before but never entered until now. i’m really pleased we are having it there. the lickeys has played a major part in my childhood and so i have lots of memories from there. it’s also very easy for my friends and family to get to so hopefully they will all come.

we met up with vicar nick too. he is ace. he came to the church to meet us wearing sandals, shorts and a leicester city top (no-one’s perfect). he is just the nicest person i have ever met. genuinely interested in us, our relationship and our lives, and so easy to talk to. not your stereotypical stuffy vicar. he went through the ceremony putting our names into the right places. that was a powerful moment because (like nick said it would) it really brought home what we were doing. i had tears in my eyes (soppy me) and carl said he couldn’t stop grinning. i think this is a good sign.

had a family get together down the social, which went lots better than i thought it might. wasn’t annoyed /too/ much and people are generally giving helpful advice but leaving decisions up to us. just how i like it.

also managed to fit in visits to my best friend and kids and my other good friend and her kids. spent hours chatting about wedding stuff since best friend has just got married and other good friend has set her date for a month before ours. we have arranged one of our girly nights out for next time i come down. really looking forward to it. be just like old times, we always had such a good laugh.

today i’m all sleepy. didn’t get the best night’s sleep last night, due to reading one of stephen king’s short stories before bed (was so scared) and getting something stuck in my eye /again/. this happens quite a lot these days. one eye just seems prone to getting things in it. so today i have a bit of a dicky eye which i’m sure makes me look funny (although carl said it was fine). paranoia strikes (dum-de-de-dum).

lots more stories to read in the stephen king book so prolly lots more sleepless nights. really shouldn’t read books like that, but there is some strange attraction to them. ah well, bridget jones’s diary is next on the shelf and i doubt that will cause any sleep disturbances (but then it does have mr darcy in it).

i was walking in the countryside, lots of other people around. some people started running past me. i turned around and saw something red seeping down the hills behind me, burning everything as it went. i started running too, but it wasn’t really something you could outrun. soon everywhere behind me was covered. i could see people in the distance who had reached safety and knew i wasn’t going to get there. there was a wooden platform in the air just ahead of me. i ran up the steps and stood at the top watching the lava licking at the supports for the platform. there was no way off. never mind, i didn’t get to see anymore of it anyway, thanks to sweep tap dancing on my bladder.

–

weekend was good. on saturday had a real life experience. we went to a really nice national trust place called clumber park, not far from us. it is a huge foresty park with a gothic chapel and a big lake and ducks. we hired a tandem to do the 8 mile circuit, with me on the back and carl in the driving seat. we thought this would be a good laugh, and it was to an extent, but i was /really/ scared most of the way around. i couldn’t see where we were going, could only see carl’s back, so every time we went round a corner or over a bumpy bit i squealed. carl thought this was either hilarious or annoying, depending on how far through the bike ride we were. it is hard to keep your balance when you have no idea what will happen next. i only came off once though. not seriously, although if i was male then it might have been. now i know why tandems never really caught on.

tomorrow we go to brum for a couple of days. going to meet the vicar and see the reception venue, so it’s all very exciting. mum is arranging a family get together at the social club for tomorrow evening so everyone can give us their advice on planning weddings. this will either be really helpful or really annoying. who can tell which way my mood will swing on the night.