The driving blog that should have been....

It has been on my mind for a while that I should have started to blog again so as to chronicle my learning to drive experience and after passing. Every time I drove for the first few weeks something would happen and I thought 'I should blog that'. Suffice to say it never happened!

Today I drove home from work in the dark and rain. Both are awful but together they make life so much harder! You can't see the markings on the road properly, I worry about my stopping distances, you have to NOT watch the windscreen wipers as they swish, but you have to switch them on, faster, slower, faster again in accordance with the strength and ferocity of the rain.

Also today I gave my friend a lift home from the garage after following him there in separate cars. We have very different driving styles and I have tried to make an agreement with him to appreciate our differences and not give each other grief about it. Neither of us can stick to it. Today, on the wet roads, in his noisy car,  my friend did and excited wheel skid and charged down the road. I laughed and rolled my eyes thinking 'what will the neighbours think?'!! But he is an essential tool and great friend when I am having difficulties with Geoffrey. Thats my car, Geoffrey: GFV.

upsidedown

i feel like the universe is really trying to knock me on my arse at the moment. bad news coming at me left, right and centre. i am swinging wildly between falling apart and being the inner monologue of reason. there is not much in the middle.

a merica.

Its thursday. I leave on tuesday.

I keep juggling everything I need to do in my head and only some of it gets written down; hopefully the more important things. Left to do....

hand washing

washing washing

pack

wax

notify the bank of my travel plans so they don't cancel my cards

calm down

get currency

read the rest of my NYC guidebook

oh and a little of the organising in NC.

do i need to take sun glasses??

some days i'm lonely.

some days i'm just alone.

american dreams

I have had 3 bad dreams about my America trip so far he first two were that I got there and realised I had forgotten to bring my camera. Then last night I had a dream that my whole family (including gran) flew over and then my mum, dad and gran left me and Simon to travel around together. I had a real sense of abandonment at that point and we were left with a car that neither of us could drive and nowhere to sleep, though I think now... why didn't we just sleep in the car?! Then the next bad bit was I was on a minibus coming home from the airport with some of my friends from Cumbria who also had been travelling in America and I was trying to tell them about my trip and I couldn't remember ANYTHING to tell them about. I started crying because I couldn't remember anything and didn't have any memories of my trip and then I looked at my emails on my phone and found emails I had sent that showed me some of our activities. The main one that featured in the dream was that we had been to the office and gallery of this website that took two famous people and made pictures of what their kids would look like!!!

I hope I have some funerer things to do when I go for real!

and on to 2011....

This year is going to be great. So far on the agenda....

5 week trip to America, stopping in NYC, Portland, Denver, Madison, Asheville, Wilmington, DC and back to NYC. Seeing all my favourite people that still have hands and fingers that enable them to write back.

I think i'm going to Wales in May with mum, dad and Si.

We've already done one trade fair with Emily's Ark which went really well and we have another one in a week.

I just bought some great new boots.

I am expecting two engagements this year, both of which I am finger crossing for maid of honour duties. Not that I'd know how to do that.

2010 was the year that...

My second degree came to an end, we had an auction night in the Tyneside Coffee Room, an exhibition at school and then and exhibition in London at the AoP. It was all a bit of an anti-climax and I left it feeling the same way I did the first time, dispirited and disappointed. Though I did just squeeze a 1st. Since then I have done very little to nothing and barely kept in touch with people from my course. In fact I just deleted some of them from FB.

The housing situation changed; Rhys, Lex and Kerri all left and Orla, Markus and Mandy all moved in. We're still at 95 in a damp mould ridden house with faulty heating and less drain pipes since the snow.

Snow! There was lots of it and I loved it. It just kept snowing and snowing. I walked in the park and grinned at the sky and blinked the flakes out of my lashes. Amazing fun to walk in the snow, even if it was just to and from bus stops.

My great uncle Norman had his 80th birthday and there was a large family gathering to celebrate. Our family doesn't really gather and it was great to feel a part of something bigger than just us Perrys. I tried to maintain contact but I failed, he only lives in Witley Bay but not near any public transport so I was reliant on him for lifts to and from which meant I had to play by his schedule which discouraged me greatly.

I had a lovely birthday with friends from home and Newcastle and a meal at Bruges in Jesmond followed by drinks at the Cluny.

I got a second job. It started as an unpaid internship but after 2weeks I was offered 2days a week paid so I jumped at the chance. I was working 7days a week for a while but now I'm back down to a sturdy 6! Emily's Ark is a small creative business designing and hand crafting teddy bears and other animals. I learnt SAGE and a bit about marketing and made a very good friend in Tor Fenton who I desperately miss since she moved home to Brighton. We did a number of Xmas Fairs and I attended the Country Living on in Glasgow. It was bit of a bust business wise but great fun to be there. I also helped to gain us some exposure by sending Vincent the Elephant to Dannii Minogue and she tweeted about Emily's Ark.

The restaurant is failing quite miserably, the Metro Centre is designed to take business away from us. I got a promotion so I am the In-Store Trainer but we have had few new recruits and what we have had are shit. We have a new guy who I think will be really good, if they would just let me train him instead of having him as a food runner. I need to put my foot down. Although we have been busier over Xmas and New Year its still not really enough.

Xmas was lovely, I got 4 days off!! Lovely to see my family and have everyone together. Brilliant to see Hazel and her family. Hearty hugs from friends and people I generally miss. Why can't everyone just move to Newcastle??

New Year was a funsome event. Me and Kerri went for lunch and then to see Burlesque starring Cher, Christina Aguilera and Stanley Tucci. We were then planning to just have quiet drinks, which we did. Until we got to revolution. At which point we looked knowingly at each other and then dove head first down the rabbit hole. NY was spent in Perdu and then when Kerri left I headed to WHQ to meet up with Tor, dragging with me some poor scottish guy I made out with at midnight. Three days later I realised I'd lost my leather jacket and had to return to the scene of the crime to pick it up. There were two other people there to do the same.

and that, roughly was 2010. Add in some drunken nights and kissing of boys yet lack of anything of any meaning or consequence. Some general correspondence. A lot of shopping. And then a lot of saving of money because 2011 shows promise....