Pointless.

Confession: Dan and I are massive Pointless nerds. Dan usually watches it while I'm getting ready for work, which often results in my getting v. sidetracked from the getting ready. If we've nothing to watch, we'll iPlayer an episode we've not seen. We might have secret aspirations to be contestants on there. In lieu of that, though, I managed to get us tickets to see it being filmed!

So on Thursday we headed up to London (with stops at M&Ms World and the Tate Modern along the way) to BBC Television Centre.

We were in the second row from the front so we had a great view. It was really quite a small set, bless it. I did take some photos of the actual set, but since we weren't technically supposed to, I shan't post them on here just in case I get an angry email from the BBC ...

The most interesting thing - for me (and I think probably Dan!) - was seeing how tall Richard is. He's a giant! 6' 7", I think the warm up guy said he was. Actual giant. He looks so normal sized in his chair (though I now understand why the chair is so imposing with its tall back!), then he gets up and BAM, huge human being.

We got to do lots of 'ohhhhh'-ing as the numbers on the column go down, and lots of cheering and clapping. It was rather good fun. Although it's a lot less tense in real life than it seems on the TV. I think this only fueled mine and Dan's desire to be contestants! Maybe one day ...

London.

I can't believe it's been a week already since I went to London to meet up with my girl friends! Seriously, where does the time go? I feel like time has been going by extra quickly since I've had a job. I measure my weeks by days on a rota, which runs from Friday to Thursday of the following week, so I'm all messed up. It doesn't help that my days off don't often fall on a weekend, and that I don't necessarily have two days off next to each other. Sometimes the only way I can figure out what day it is is by looking at my rota and thinking 'well, I wasn't in yesterday morning, so today must be [insert day here]'. It's quite the confusing work schedule!

I made the most of my (begged for) weekend off last weekend by visiting the Good Food Show with my mother and then on Sunday going to London to see some of my lovely girl friends.

I got to see Katie's engagement ring in the flesh (as it were) for the first time! She's been engaged since MAY (yes, I did just got allll the way back on her Facebook profile to check!), and I haven't seen her since before then. Isn't that terrible?

We went to the Forever 21 on Oxford Street, which I was super excited about because I have a gift card for the shop but ... I was disappointed. It didn't fill me with that 'OHMYGOD MUST HAVE EVERYTHING' feeling that the stores in the States do. Something was lacking. Hmm. I did come away with some earrings, though, so it wasn't a total loss.

Since I failed at finding a dress for my birthday while I was shopping in London, I did some online shopping instead. I acquired two LOVELY dresses from BooHoo.com that I'm super excited to wear. I might do a post on them. And the earrings. Ooh, you're all excited, right? Right?

P.S. For those of you who commented on my last post asking, I'm not sure you can call the things going on a 'good thing', but ... well, I'll save it for a proper post about it!

Cardiff Castle.

Last week on our brief trip to Cardiff Dan and I visited Cardiff Castle. Since I'm a Cardiff resident (well, sort of. My driver's licence says that I am!) I was able to get a card that gets me in for free - and we managed to get one for Dan too, so score!

The interior of the castle is stunning. If I had an awesome DSLR camera I could have captured it better, but these couple of pictures should give you an idea of how over the top yet awesome it is:

I can't believe that it's been 5 days since I last posted! Work has zapped my days away so fast. I'm only contracted to work for 12 hours a week, but already I've worked for 34! When I said I wanted to do overtime, I didn't realise that I'd be scheduled to do overtime! It's great because it means come pay day I'm going to have lotsa moneys, but the hours I'm working just aren't conducive to a 'normal' life. Dan gets home from work (he's done 2 days as a real proper secondary school Science teacher! I can't believe my boyfriend's a teacher!), and then an hour later I have to leave for work, to not get home until 11.30pm-ish. Not to mention the sometimes 7am starts, straight after a late shift. I've had today and yesterday off, which I really needed because I needed time to rest my aching muscles! I hope my body can get used to that feeling.

Go Ape!

Today we did something awesome. We went ape. On Go Ape. Yes. Go Ape is, to quote the website, "a tree-top adventure". You climb along ropes and wires and go down zip wires and up ladders and it's just a great adventure in the great outdoors.


It's something I've wanted to do for years, but I'd just never done it. When Dan, Kerys and I saw it at a country park the other day, we decided to go for it, so we went home and booked it! Dan's other sister Hannah decided to come too, and a good day was had by all.


Well. It was a good day once I got over the scariness. On the very first course, we had to jump off a platform, swing down and hit a rope wall thing. And I couldn't jump. I just froze up. Eek!
Obviously I had to do it (once you were up there, the only way down was to finish the course!), so I sucked it up and went for it. And, despite trembling hands, I made it to the next platform with all limbs intact.


Once I got more into it, it became a lot more fun. There were 5 courses in total, and by the third or fourth, I was really enjoying myself, and clipping and unclipping myself became almost second nature.



The zip wires were probably the most fun part - at the end of every course, your reward for getting to the end was to go flying through the trees and feel the wind in your face. Lovely.

All 4 of us completed all 5 courses with all of our limbs intact, so we got a certificate each. Hell yeah.

Royal Victoria Country Park.

You'll all be glad to know that I have the job at the Holiday Inn! I rang on Tuesday, and managed to speak to the man who'd interviewed me. He'd been off for a couple of days (and to be fair to him, he didn't sound great on the phone!), but he'd got my email and has contacted my references, so hopefully I'll get my start date soon and can start making me some MONEYS. Seriously, I'm having serious eBay spending withdrawals. It's an issue. I want to buy pretty dresses for 99p!

As we're getting towards the end of our Summer of Joblessness© together, Dan and I have been making the most of our days by getting out and doing fun things. Since we enjoyed our walk around Manor Farm country park the other day, we decided to continue the trend and went to Royal Victoria country park.



It was really nice because there were three areas to it - a beach, a field and a forest.





We went for a walk in the forest that led us to a war cemetery. Dan had been to the country park quite a few times before and never knew that the place existed - because he'd never been into the visitor's centre and picked up a map! What? Crazy stuff! I ALWAYS go into visitor centres as one of the first things I do when I get somewhere! If you don't know what's there, how can you be sure that you won't miss something super fun/inspirational/silly/beautiful/[insert other appropriate adjective]?



Since the Royal Victoria was a hospital during the World Wars (the building above is part of what was the hospital - the rest of it was knocked down during the 1960s), most of the graves were of soldiers or prisoners of war, so it was really interesting to walk around.

I love that there's so many country parks around here! They're such a cheap (they'd be free if it weren't for those pay + display machines in the car parks, damnit!) yet fun day out in the fresh air.

Adventures with the Aged Parents. Part 2.

Continuing from Part 1, in which we went to Mudeford Quay, my mother, grandparents, great aunt and I made our way to Christchurch.

My mother and grandparents had been on holiday to Pontins there when my mother was little, so some reminiscing was going on here, of course. Apparently it was the first place my mother rode a pony (though she seemed unconvinced of this!).


There's also a priory there. I'll be honest, I'm not entirely sure what a priory is in comparison to a church or, you know, another religious building (can you tell I'm not religious?!), but it was a beautiful structure.


My grandparents and aunt went in, but my mother and I ran off to look in a couple of charity shops instead - things tend to get a bit embarrassing when my grandparents look around places like that so we thought it was safer to escape!

Afterwards we headed to Bournemouth. Unfortunately the Bournemouth Air Show was on (you may have read about the Red Arrows pilot who was killed today, which is so sad), which meant that we couldn't drive along the front as we had planned, and it was reeeeally crowded everywhere. We did eventually manage to find a place to park (albeit on double yellow lines, but everyone was doing it!) up on a cliff.



As you can see, it was very popular!
We didn't manage to get any (good) photos of the planes in flight, but the second one we saw was pretty impressive with its roaring jets and plummeting acrobatics.

After that we made our way back to my flat, and my family headed back to Cardiff.
It was lovely seeing my great aunt, since we only see her every couple of years. And my grandparents, of course, but especially my mother. I miss my mother a lot. I wish I could see her more often. Talking on the phone just isn't quite the same, you know?

Adventures with the Aged Parents. Part 1.

My great aunt (my grandma's sister) lives in Canada, and she's come over for a 2 week visit. So my mother drove her and my grandparents (the Aged Parents of the title's post - my mother's name for them, not mine!) down to visit me, and to visit a couple of lovely places along the south coast.

The weather on Thursday was AWFUL (it rained almost the whole day), so we only ended up going to Portsmouth and for a meal in Harvester.


My grandfather and I totally pimping out the Harvester.
The B+B we stayed in was surprisingly lovely. Usually my mother and I are a little wary of B+Bs because they can be a bit too 'intimate' for our liking, and we find it a bit awkward being in, basically, someone's house! But this one appealed to me straight away, because it was called The White House and all of the rooms were named after American presidents. Which, for an American history junkie like yours truly, was pretty much made of win. Except that my mother and I were in Carter (there was even a photo of him on the wall!), because, really, Carter's up there on the Not That Interesting Presidents list.


The English breakfast the next morning was delicious. There's nothing quite like a full English breakfast (and juice and cereal and toast and fruit!) to set you up for the day.
If you ever happen to be in the Christchurch/Bournemouth area for a couple of nights, I'd thoroughly recommend The White House.


As you can see, the weather the next day was a LOT better! There was no rain in sight, and it was almost warm!
So, off to Mudeford Quay we went!





I'll post the rest of the day's adventures, in Christchurch and Bournemouth, in Part 2. Bet you're excited already!



P.S. Thanks for all your helpful comments on my jobs post. I'll have an update on that in a few days, hopefully!