StewBlog

Call us misers and all that, but we decided this evening that rather than being hounded by trick or treaters, we'd nestle in the Dolphin with a few beers and a board game! We played boys Vs girls trivial pursuit, except I had to be a girl (Grrr...) We all got our wedges/cheeses/segments before racing to the centre of the board only for the boys to snatch victory - damn it!

Bought one of these things today, which I can highly recommend! The touch display is amazing and perfectly intuitive - You don't really need to read the instructions to figure out how everything works... I was a bit worried about the capacity, but 16gb will be more than enough for now.

After prizing myself out of bed, I packed absolutely nothing for the journey up to Yorkshire to celebrate Lisa's 30th birthday... A litre of water and a croissant helped out my hangover a little as I settled on the Canterbury to London train. I bought Lisa a birthday card, met Annie and Gary at Kings Cross station and after a quick visit to one of those fast ticket machines, and M&S for snacks, we were ready to board the 14:30 service to Leeds. It was a pretty nice train, broadcasting wi-fi, but I had'nt managed to purchase an iPod Touch by then so I couldn't make use of it. Instead I wrote some limericks in Lisa's card, which, at some point, I will try and remember and jot down here. Gary had been rather forward thinking and had with him a nice bottle of white wine and some glasses, so we eased into the second half of our journey sipping grapey goodness. On arrival at Leeds we made a quick change onto the train for Dewsbury. From there, we needed a taxi to get to Lisa's house and I can honsetly say, the oddest couple I've ever seen were manning the taxi office at the train station... The bloke came out of the office specifically to inspect me from head-to-toe before gurning horrifically as if he could smell the Southernness on me... Annie and I almost made maps of Africa in our pants. Our taxi duly arrived and made haste to Roberttown where we met up with Lisa and the other guys at the house. Lisa shuffled off with Gilly and her carefully compiled playlist to the Star down the road to set things up, while the rest of us watched MTV, or something like that... We all met up later at the Star and started on the beers! Once all had arrived, we went upstairs for pie and peas - something which I'd not come across before, but consists of a sizable, hot pork pie served with mushy peas all covered in mint sauce! Very nice, I must say. More drinking ensued and Lisa got hold of a microphone and began to sing despite the absence of music... At some point in the wee hours we all went back to Lisa's and eventually crashed out...

After raiding my fancy dress box in the loft for random (scary looking clothes) I went round to Jonny's to meet he, Andy and Adem. Jonny and Andy were already in very impressive Clockwork Orange garb (the main theme for the evening). I left it a bit late to get an outfit so ended up with an odd collection of clothes on and a white face with darkened (sunken) eyes... A cross between a zombie and an evil elf maybe? Adem painted his face with a variety of colours and put on a wig which I thought made him look a bit like the devail character played by Dave Grohl in the Tenacious D video of the song Tribute.
We went on a little pub crawl calling in at the Cherry Tree, The Westgate Inn, The Hob Goblin, The Old Brewery Tavern and ending up in Chicago Rocks... I was sozzled...

Met Jonny and Matt H (Nuala and Matt T joined later) in the Cuban for a few beers. Bumped into two leaving parties from work in there as well, so it felt a bit like being at the works restaurant...

mj dropped the Pizza!

I hopped on the train to London to visit Annie in London. We went and had a look in John Lewis on Oxford Street as they have a brilliant new Waitrose food hall. We found a little place to get some tea and snacks before heading to the Apple Store on Regent Street to muck around with stuff - Took a picture in Photo Booth (see above)! We also had a look in the ground floor of Liberty's where I bought a birthday for my mother and picked up a few free samples from the Keil's counter. We went for a few beers and then onto a branch of Masala Zone (Same people who own the legendary Veeraswamy) for dinner, before looking for somewhere to watch England Vs France in the rugby world cup semi-final. We ended up in the Slug and Luttuce on Wardour Street, which Wasn't great to start with but as the game went on and the drama increased the atmosphere heightened in the pub, so it turned out pretty exciting, with England winning! We moved on to meet Gav and Kyle in a downstairs bar at the top of Old Compton Street, which had many barbie dolls, in various positions stuck to the ceiling - interesting... We all got on the 73 bus home.