On the day that marks the end of three years of military action in Iraq you guys have probably just got in after a night out of celebrating one of the other great moments in history, me passing my driving my driving test.

March 19th 2002, I passed my test at the second attempt, making me the first person at the Lakes School in our year (lower sixth form) to pass their driving test, which quite naturally made me feel rather special. It was pretty close run because Swainy passed the same day, but in the afternoon.

Since then I’ve done pretty much 10,000 miles a year, as the trusty 206 that I’ve had from the begining passed 40,000 miles on the way back to Leicester last Monday. I’ve never driven anywhere other than England (not even Scotland or Wales) and I’ve never driven much further south than Birmingham.

I’ve had many near misses (my instructor once said “people keep trying to kill you”), I’ll admit that some were probably my fault, but like all men I know I’m a good driver, so it was usually the other person. I’ve only ever had one crash, but it occurred at the embarassingly low speed of about 10mph and I still maintain that it was the other persons fault, because she stopped when there was an ambulance on the other side of the road…

I’ve also driven in pretty much every type of weather and surface possible, the mighty 206 will take on anything that Langdale can throw at it, snow (as was proved last week), severe rain, mud, floods (water. on. the. bonnet…), glorious glorious sunshine, and the freezing freezing cold.

And the road trips, Leeds, Newcastle, Manchester, Nottingham, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Tamworth(ish!), Warwick, Leamington Spa, York, Donington, Whitehaven, and probably a lot more good times with good friends that I’ve forgotten about.

Last thing, how young do I look in that picture? Lots of things have changed since then, that sonnetti fleece jumper is gone, I’ve quite clearly got a bit wider, the gate behind me has gone, as has the shed. Oh yeah, explanation of that title, the first song I played in the car when Mum and Dad brought it back from Manchester after they bought it was Buck Rogers by Feeder, from a free CD that I got with a Q magazine.

No, it’s not a blatant plagerism of some of Bone’s past posts, but these 2 things have unfortunately played a big part in my life at the moment!

Like Bone said, the snow was scary!  Luckily I just managed to get back from York in time & spent all of Sunday at work staring at the cars attempting a big hill in Bowness & abandoning their cars half way up.  I sure earned my wages that day!  We knocked off work early & Katie & I hid from the blizzard in the Angel.  We had to, honestly!  Fiona & I headed down to the Lake a few days later & ran around like headless chickens in the snow, it was great fun!

In regards to head lumps, I’m pretty sure I’m off to have mine lobbed off.  Naturally, I am scared, but I’ll be glad to stop worrying about it.  I’ve had it all my life & it’s never bothered me, but recently I’ve been hearing stories about head lumps being things with hair & nails on it (erm, my friend’s EXTREMELY rare case, belongs on body shock & the likes…), so I’m biting the bullet & going to the doctors.  Oooh!

Had a great time in York last week, nice to see everyone, drunk & ate so much it was unbelievable!  I’ll be there again in October, I have a new posh house, I got a place on campus, but turned it down to live with my friend, Gruf, (not her real name, silly!) & my other friends.  As a 21 year old, I’m not sure I could hack living with Freshers again.  I’d probably just try & pull them anyway!

Sorry for the title, I promise to never reference Robbie Williams again…

Turns out Dave Gorman has a Flickr account, and he’s actually pretty good. Unlike most people he has the ability to declare his love for Flickr via a column on Guardian Unlimited.

Dunno why I’m posting this really, but it is interesting that in a culture where celebrities constantly complain about invasion of privacy, whilst at the same time relying on the ‘pavarotti’ (don’t judge me because I remember old Kevin Federline stories) to keep them in the news that someone who is a popular comedian and fairly well-known figure on TV is willing to share his pictures to such an extent. Bravo Mr. Gorman!

(I’ve added him as a contact to my list, I doubt he’ll reciprocate)

Oh, if you’re wondering where the models of the London landmarks available from, try your local Muji store or Muji Online.

Photo credit: London In A Bag… In London

Originally uploaded by Dave Gorman.

Maybe I should spend less time referencing the O.C. in blog titles and more time researching essays.

I got back my first essay of the semester yesterday, it was a 56, I need 60+ to give myself plenty of leeway for a 2:1, I’m still well on the way to a 2:1, but it was a setback that I didn’t need. It certainly isn’t a disaster, this essay is 20% of 1 module out of the 12 that my degree is judged upon, so it’s 1.6% of my entire degree.

The annyoing thing is that I actually wrote a good essay, according to marking system my introduction was practically perfect, all of my writing was very good, my use of the evidence, line of argument ecetera, I just made one fatal mistake.

Content. It was my own fault, I took a rather dangerous essay tactic of focusing on two events from the period I was looking at, hell, I missed out an entire decade! In hindsight it looks foolish, because it didn’t work, but at least I can focus on the positive side that if I actually write about what I’m meant to my next essay should easily be good enough to even out the damage done with the last one.

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Quick post tonight of a few pics from my time in Cumbria at the weekend. Rob’s arse and some mysterious tree that I don’t remember not shown.

For those of you that don’t appreciate my style there’s plenty of pictures on the BBC Cumbria site of the weekend’s snowfall, including one of Tigg’s mum! (how random that I’d find that)

More pics after the jump
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My routine is kinda set when I go home for the weekend, I go out with the guys on a saturday night and I don’t drink, so I can drive home. but my new schedule at uni gives me monday off, so I can drink if I choose to. Last night I wasn’t really given much of a choice, Tyson forced me too, that’s right, forced me!

The following story is very I, I, I, me, me, me, but it’s my blog and I’m meant to write about myself so just read after the jump and revel in my pain.

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It’s been great fun.  I’m currently sitting on Helen’s floor, waiting for her to get back from work.  Been drunk every night since I got here, Toffs on Tuesday night was cracking, it wasn’t all that busy but I knew so many people out & saw all my old friends.  I faced a number of demons & even managed to hug them all.  Get me!

Going home for the weekend, hopefully it will snow and I can finally use the luge that my parents got me for christmas 2 years ago, the infamous Shaedler Rodel. My brothers already had a go on it and says that it goes so fast that we need to find smoother runs to take it on… fearsome.

But there’s blatantly not gonna be any snow there.

Went out last night for Pete’s birthday, good guy, but, he did nigh on force me to down my vodka red bull (”I don’t understand, I’ve been nice to you all, and you just want me to be sick!). Ended up in Red Leicester at the Union, and met so many people that I hadn’t seen for ages, like Dangerous Dave (who isn’t particularly dangerous), who was wearing an awesome t-shirt, so I was like “where’d you get the t-shirt?” reply, “eh, New Yoik!” It’s kind of an in-joke. And we revived some old sayings that we hadn’t used since the 1st year, including the bizarre “hey buddy, watch the legs!”

Totally forgot to mention that me and Richard went to Ashby de le Zouch on Saturday to visit the castle. Since there’s this university lecturer strike I’ve got no uni until thursday, so I thought I’d go somewhere and do something. Today was meant to be Skegness, but it’s raining, and I thought it would be even more depressing in the rain.

The castle was actually really nice. You could climb one of it’s towers. There was a cool underground tunnel. And many, many excellent photo opportunities. I had my tripod with me, as well as all my lenses but none of them ever got used because it was bright (perfect weather), and I just couldn’t be bothered carrying around an outstretched tripod.

We then spent a while trying to find a pub for lunch that wasn’t too local. Which took a surprisingly long time. And we drove around the countryside a bit, looked at a reservoir, looked at a couple of country houses. All in all, a nice day out.

More pictures of the castle after the jump. Lots more pics on my flickr gallery.
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I’ve scaled it back a bit from last times leviathan kitchen efforts. This time I’ve just cleaned every piece of cutlery that I could find in the kitchen. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it took 30mins to clean, as there had been a big build-up from people not cleaning all their knives and forks (including me, probably, we all forget from time to time), I’ve also put them all back into the cutlery draw.

Considering I have still left the backlog of plates and pans this makes me efforts slightly less detectable, and Tom cleaned the kitchen today, so people may think it’s him.

Same idea as last time, let’s see who notices, who asks who it was, and who thanks me.

(not that I do it for the thanks, it’s all about the social science)

EDIT NO.1: Richard is the first to notice, though he was also the first home.