Monthly Archives: August 2008

I spent most of this afternoon in a meeting with Emma and Emily, two of my fellow Trustees of Live Life Then Give Life.  I say fellow Trustees, what I actually mean is my superiors – as Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the charity respectively, they’re far more important than me.

Anyhoo, we spent a good few hours pouring over the construction of a firm business plan for the charity, something that Emma has been pushing for us to do for an age, but which all of the Trustees have been unfortunately lax in organising and offering in-put for.  I’ve been one of the worst offenders, knowing how important it is, but never setting aside the time to think about it properly.

Being locked in a room with the girls made us focus properly on the bits of the charity we needed to focus on and work out our strengths and weaknesses, where we’re good and where we can improve.  It also gave us a chance to analyse where we can best fit in with the rest of the transplant charities in the UK at the moment.

Obviously, still being very much in the planning stage (the other three Trustees have to look at and approve our ideas, for starters), I can’t really go into a lot of detail, except to say that I think we have finally identified what we do best of all and are now hoping to commit ourselves to rolling it out as our “thing” which we can use to promote organ donation in this country without treading on the toes of everyone else in the Tx community.

One of the key things we have identified with Live Life Then Give Life is our fantastic standing and relationships with people in the transplant community, both transplant professionals, people affected by transplants and other charities themselves.  Because of this we all saw it as being vital that we strive not to replicate, but to complement other people’s work.

Too often in the charity sector you see organisations compete with each other for the same people’s cash, the same people’s time and the same pots of money and in the end it can be counterr-productive.  Live Life Then Give Life’s core aims are to promote organ donation in the UK, so if working alongside other charities suits a project best, that’s what we’ll do and if we can see that another charity does something better than us, we’re not going to try to replicate their work, but attempt to support them however we can to achieve the same goals that we are.

So the plan is coming together and the potential for Live Life Then Give Life as a charity is huge.  I can’t wait to be part of it.

This week we have been rudely invaded by the real world.  After 10 months of existing in a perfect little post-transplant bubble, the time has come to look at things that people out in the big wide beyond have to spend time looking at.

With K off to uni in 3 weeks and counting, she is, naturally, going to have to give up work.  The full-time commitment of the course, coupled with the 3-hour daily commute is going to sap every last bit of energy she has, making weekends a time for rest and recovery and not for the usual kind of student money-making that normally earns the bookworms a crust.

So it falls on me to start winning the bread for the house hold.  It’s a very strange position to be in, seeing as I haven’t been in paid employment since I left Northampton Theatres in April 2005, nearly three-and-a-half years ago.

One thing I’ve learned from friend-of-the-blog Emily is that returning straight into a ful-time job post-transplant is a bit of a no-no.  Although I now have more energy than I think I’ve ever had in my life (barring, maybe, my early years), that doesn’t automatically equate to being able to put up with the stamina required for a full-time job and the stresses and strains that go along with that.

Instead, I’m going to be looking for something smaller and more part-time, but then I hit the thorny issue of benefits.

At the moment, I’m still covered by incapacity benefits because I’ve been under doctor’s orders not to work.  The idea of incap is that in order to help you return to work, you are allowed to do a certain number of hours of paid work per week without incurring penalties on your benefits.  The trouble with incap is that once you pass the 16-hours-per-week threshold, you lose everything – there is no middle ground.

And it’s not just the incap that you lose.  Incap comes tied in with an entitlement to various other benefits including Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit, which basically means my rent and council tax are paid for me as my income isn’t high enough to cover them.

So, all-in-all, the loss of benefit will cost us in the region of £800 per month.  That’s an enormous gap to try to cover between working 16 hours per week on benefits and finding the rest of the money once you cross that line.  In effect, it means that you are forced to jump rom 16 hours per-week all the way up to a full-time 30-40 hour week with no middle ground and no safety net, beyond returning to incapacity benefit.

It sounds easy enough to try out full-time work and use the Incap as a fall-back option if you can’t cope, but that’s forgetting the psychological impact of going back to “illness”.  Everyone I know post-transplant has faught an incredible battle to get themselves back on their feat and rebuild new lives in the wake of a truly life-changing blessing.  What all that effort means, however, is that none of us want to return to the perception of “illness” that dogged us for years both before and initially post-transplant.

So the search for so-called “gainful” employment begins.  Where am I going to end up, who knows?  As long as it pays the bills, I have to be happy with it, but I would much rather have an opportunity to do the things I want to do with writing, filmmaking and educating than have to sit in a call-centre 37-hours a week.  Hopefully, the 16 hours I need to start off with will enable me to carry on with my personal projects and find a way to make them pay.

Watch this space!

Today Dad turned Really Old.  Not specifically a number, but considering he was old last year, that makes him older this year.  And let’s face it, I’ve been calling him an old man since I was about 3.

Anyway, it was his birthday again today, so we had a day of doing Daddy things.  After I dropped K at work, I headed over to the ‘rents and we all shipped off to the Bedfordshire Golf Club to play nine holes on the par 3.  I used to be quite keen on golf, although I never had the strength or power in my arms to hit the ball very far.

Playing today reminded me that it wasn’t just the power in my arms that affected my game; it was also the fact that I’m rubbish at golf, which was a bit of a hindrance.  Still, I persevered and managed to not get myself in a completely foul mood (very easy for me with something as frustrating as golf – I don’t have the world’s slowest temper), which I was pretty proud of.

I was not proud, however, of my score, which was just the wrong side of diabolical.  In fact, I went round a 9-hole course with a Par of 28 in the same number of strokes as the course record on the 18-hole full-size course.  Now that’s rubbish.  I did, however, get more points on my scoring card than anybody else.  Sadly I don’t think that’s necessarily a good thing.

After golf I toddled home to collect K from work and we welcomed the little niece and newphew over with their mum for a bit of fun and frolics.  I managed to get myself jumped on on the bed and also squished beneath both of them in our armchair.

Once they’d gone and we’d recovered showered and dressed for dinner, Bro picked us up (he had borrowed my car for the day) and we headed over to the ‘rents to shower Dad with his present.  Birthdays seem to get much less bountiful when you get older, but Dad had his new driver so he was happy enough.  (That’s a golf club, by the way, we haven’t employed someone to fery him around).

Talking of ferrying peope around, I then drove us all over to The Birch in Woburn, where we once again had one of the nicest meals I’ve ever eaten at a restaurant.

(For the foodies out there, I had Pumpkin and Sage ravioli to start, followed by Saddle of Lamb Wllington, both of which were absolutely exceptional.  For desert I had Pannecotta, which was a first for me, as had everything been, and it was very nicely presented and seemed pretty perfect, although not entirely to my taste)

I genuinely can’t recommend it enough – it’ a beautiful restaurant with great fresh, seasonal food and the owner/proprietor is a fantastically friendly, chatty guy.  All the staff are exceptional and they made Dad’s birthday meal really special without resorting to silly hats and group-singing.

We eventually dropped the drunkards home around 11.30, which gave us just enough time to get home and hit the hay before midnight.  Great day.

Having spent the majority of the day with my cousins yesterday, today was catching the flip side with a trip down to K’s cousin in Harrow.

Before we left, I asked K if she lived anywhere near her Uncle’s shop, Sorrell and Son, in Harrow.  She assured me that she didn’t and that it would be best to follow the AA route-planner’s instructions to get there.  Without wishing to draw out a story that you all know the ending of, after spending half-an-hour getting lost in and around Watford, Bushey and Harrow, we eventually ended up on our intended road to SP’s place, gliding straight down the high street past Sorrell and Son.  Fab.

Luckily, we’d left plenty of time for getting lost, so we actually arrived 2 minutes early, to find SP whipping up a storm in the kitchen.  K’s attention was easily diverted to the lemon meringue pie that was just being pulled from the oven, until I reminded her that she had to be a good girl and eat all of her main course first.

SP is one of those hilarious people who cook and amazing meal and then declare themselves disappointed with it.  She almost apologised for it, at which point I let her know that if that was a bad meal, I really, really wanted to come round for a good one, as it must rival the best grub in the poshest restaurants.  So here’s hoping for another invite.

We eventually left in the early evening and toddled home to chill out on the sofa.  We threw on a DVD that SP had leant us, Personal Services.  Starring Julie Walters as a prostitute/brothel owner it’s brilliantly funny, albeit slightly bizarre and wacky in places.  She ostensibly plays a madame who owns and operates a “fun-house” for kinky old men who like doing peculiar things for their kicks.  It’s very much not the kind of movie I expected to see with Julie Walters in, but she was excellent and so was the film – with the exception of a truly bizarre and completely dreadful score.

No sooner had it finished than K and I were tucking ourselves up for the night at the earliest time we’ve been to bed for nearly a month.  It was, I have to say, a treat and a delight to be nodding off at a sensible hour.

Today was the wedding celebration for my cousin and his new wife after they got married in a low-key ceremony back in January and decided to wait to celebrate properly in the summer. I love my family to pieces and was so unbelievably happy to be there and celebrating with them, as well as meeting some relatives I’ve never met before and some I haven’t seen for years.

But my biggest problem was that I had people constantly moaning at me that I’ve let my blogging slip since my op. So this one is for everyone at the party who berated my lack of updates. And I would promise to update more often, but we all know it’s not going to hold any water.

Today started, rather incongruously, with a two-hour stint spent at the Rockingham Motor Speedway in Northamptonshire, just North of Corby. Way back at Christmas, bro and I had been bought a day’s introduction to single-seater oval driving, today being the first day we could synchronise our diaries to get it done.

Reading up on the event beforehand, I read this about it, which slightly deflated me. Following a pace car around a track didn’t seem like a whole lot of fun to me and 15 minutes didn’t seem like a huge amount of track time.

We got there plenty early and grabbed a cup of coffee to caffeine us up for the morning’s work, before being taken to the in-field paddock area and briefed about the cars, which were sat tantalisingly in front of the garage in the pit lane. We were a small group of just 4 drivers and 2 spectators, including video- and photographer, K. After our briefing we headed out to get kitted up and then wandered out into the pits to be assigned our cars.

Jumping into Number 13 was petrifying – not because of the number itself (I don’t hold any truck in superstitions), but simply cocooning yourself in something so small. It was quite claustrophobic to begin with, but luckily I had a few minutes to get myself settled after they’d explained the controls before we headed out.

We were split into two groups of two and I was directly behind the first pace car. Coming out of the pits and accelerating to modest-to-high speeds I may or may not have crunched the gearbox a little. It’s easy to do, what with the clutch being so heavy that I pushed myself further back into my seat every time I pressed it. Luckily, the beauty of an oval is that gear changes are non-existent save for when you’re coming in and out of the pits.

Following a professional driver, we lapped at a steady-but-fun pace until the orange lights started flashing around the track to signal an incident and we came back into the pits to collect the other two cars from the second group. It turns out that the front wing had flown off the second pace-car coming through the final turn, only just missing my bro in the process. I was quite glad it was him and not me.

On our next run, the pace gradually got quicker and quicker as the pace car brought us up to somewhere approaching race speeds. Had I not been following him, I’d have sworn it wasn’t possible to go that fast round the 4 turns of the oval, but being in prime position behind him, I got a perfect view of the lines he was taking and realised quickly that if his car did it, then my identical car would, too.

In fact, I was rather chuffed to see that the others couldn’t keep pace with us, dropping back so much that the pace car had to slow down to collect them again.

20 minutes in the car later, I was beginning to feel to exertion take its toll on my shoulders and arms from the forces involved in holding a steering wheel in a turn at over 100mph. Although the speedos were disabled in the car (to keep you focused on where you were going), we were told that the average speed of the runs would be approximately 120mph. It was unbelievably awesome and I love every minute of it. Far from my initial fears, I soon realised that I actually went faster behind the pace car than I would have gone on my own. And I certainly wouldn’t have driven that close to the wall.

Adrenaline rush done with, we jumped in the slightly-less powerful Mazda 6 we’d driven there and headed South to Shoeburyness, where we arrived at A&A’s place for the celebrations. My Mum’s brother were there as well as a cousin of hers, introducing me to my second cousin, whom I’ve never met, and her gorgeous pair of daughters.

My cousin’s brood (not A&A – that one’s still in-coming) all took a shine to K quickly and to me, too, after a while, although we have met them before – but when you’re 8 and 5 it’s hard to remember people, especially when you’re also trying to cope with the overloading of the senses brought about by an influx of people you’re never seen before. Their youngest, however, wasn’t so keen on us and would start crying as soon as she was handed over to anyone other than Mum, Grandma or Granddad. I did managed to have her for about 30 seconds at one point, before she realised that Mum had used the food-distraction method to fob her off on Uncle Oli and she cried foul.

It was such a great afternoon and evening. My family are all wonderfully close, even if we don’t see each other for long periods, we pick up where we left off. It’s always a joy to spend time with them all and catching up with those I hadn’t seen for years made me so happy. It’s wonderful to be able to properly share those family moments again.

Today was one of those days which, when you’re getting used to the idea of having new lungs and a new life, really remind you how special and wonderful a gift it really is. I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing the racing I’ve done today this time last year and the family day would have worn me out completely. Driving home from Southend tonight gave me pause to think about how little I’d have been able to do after nearly 6 hours at someone else’s house, playing and chatting and eating and drinking (nothing alcoholic, I must add, in case you were worried). I’ve never have managed it and a drive home, too, and certainly not when I’d been driving fast cars in the morning.

The gift of life is the greatest gift anyone can give or receive. It is the only gift that bears out the cliché of the gift that keeps on giving. I am blessed in so many ways and so grateful that I have so many opportunities to remember it.

I hadn’t actually realised it’s been nearly a week since my last post.  In fact, I was just sitting at my desk doing work-y things when it occurred to me that I hadn’t done anything for a bit and wondering when it was that I did.  Anyway, if you haven’t read the Duck Race entry, do it now then go and sponsor a duck then come back here.  I promise I’ll still be here.

I’ve had one of those weird weeks where I can’t remember what on earth I’ve been doing other than the fact that I seem to remember being quite busy.

My main occupation over the last two days (that’s Monday and Tuesday) has been attending Business Link’s free courses on how to start your own business.  They come in 3 flavours, as well as a general introduction session that I did late last month.  So on Monday afternoon I did a three-hour session on planning a business, writing a business plan and doing market research to be able to justify the idea in the first place, swiftly followed by a three hour evening session on Marketing and Sales, which was unbelievably helpful and taught me a huge amount of stuff I didn’t know before and has really helped me with some techniques and strategies to follow should I decide to go down this route.

Then after a day of rest and brain-recovery, I did another three hours on Tuesday night on Managing Money – all the financial aspects of running a business including book-keeping, tax and national insurance and other important financy-things.

What surprised me the most about the whole thing was that I actually really enjoyed being in a learning environment again – being taught things, learning things, using my brain to try to grasp things I’d not fully understood before.  It really was great fun and really, really helpful.

As a side note, any of you who think you’d like to start a business or similar, I can thoroughly recommend Business Link and their services and courses.  Everything they do is 100% free and you can do the open workshops like I did as well as talking to a Business Link Adviser, who are all bona-fide business people who really know what they’re doing.  I’ve been really impressed by them and would definitely use them again.

Beyond my courses the only other thing of note I think I’ve done is attend a show produced by my old MKT boss at the Grove Theatre in Dunstable.

I’m not one for hyperbole – ok, I am, but I’m not one for giving undue praise, so it should be noted that the Grove’s Wizard of Oz is without doubt the best Youth Theatre production I’ve ever seen.  It was utterly remarkable and even more so for the fact that it was put together as part of a two-week summer school.  That’s just 2 weeks spent working with a professional director that got the kids involved up to a standard superior to some professional productions I’ve seen (no names mentioned, Yellow Wallpaper).

I was thrilled that TJ invited me to come and see it and gobsmacked at the standard of performance from the entire cast, but particularly by the four leads, who blew me away with their voices and their physicality.  I really can’t congratulate the cast or the guys at the Grove for such a spectacular show.

I’ve got a busy weekend of fun coming up this weekend and I promise to blog in full detail about the whole thing on Monday, provided I don’t forget again…

Everyone at Live Life Then Give Life is bouncing with excitement at the moment as we’re going to be taking part in this year’s Great British Duck Race along with hundreds of other UK charities – and you can, too.

The idea is a bit mental, but brilliant at the same time.  People (that’s you) can adopt a small rubber duck for £3 each (£2 going to the Duck Race and it’s official charities and £1 to Live Life Then Give Life), which is then set free down the Thames on Sunday 31 August over a 1km course from Molesey Dock near Hampton Court Palace.  The first duck to complete the course wins £10,000 for its adoptive parent, with another 30 top prizes to pick up if you lead the field home.

It’s a great, fun way of supporting us as a charity as well as running a chance of winning big.  This year the duck race is aiming to beat it’s own world record of 180,000 ducks floated on the Thames by hitting the 250,000 mark – a quarter of a million ducks all swimming at once.

Supporting us couldn’t be easier – simply go here (http://www.thegreatbritishduckrace.co.uk/charitypage.php?charity=543) and click through to our purchase page.

We’d love to have your support and love it even more if you managed to win the race and raise our profile.  Go get a duck and have some fun!

Today’s been an awesome day, celebrating K turning 25 – quarter of a century old and heading off to Uni to do the thing she’s most wanted to do all her life.  People seem to see me as somehow admirable, but as far as I can see it, I just survived – K is doing something altogether bravery and more worthy of admiration than anything I’ve done (with the possible exception of the time I went on that Pirate Ship ride even though I was terrified because my Godson wanted to…).

One of the (many) things I love about K is how amazingly special she makes special days for all those around her.  She works tirelessly to make sure that her friends and family have a great time on their days – be it birthdays, anniversaries or celebrations.  Because of her unending dedication to others’ enjoyment, I wanted to make sure that this time, just for once, she had an amazing day of her own to lodge in her memory bank.

I didn’t tell her anything about what we were doing all day – perfectly aware that she doesn’t like surprises (they scare her slightly) but knowing that 1) it would be good for her and 2) it would make the day that much more special (or so I hoped).

So I started with a lie in for her and an early morning for me.  As it happens, I didn’t actually sleep all night anyway, so the early morning part wasn’t too hard.  I got up and sorted out her big bag of presents, laying them all out nicely on the coffee table in front of the sofa with all of her cards.  That done, I headed down to Tesco to pick up some fresh pain au chocolat for breakfast, one of K’s faves.  Then I watched the Olympics until she got up.

As soon as she was up and about, I made tea (always a requirement) and she got stuck in to opening her small mountain of gifts.  She received some really wonderful things – very pretty, very individual and very K – and then we broke off for a bit of breakkie after she’d spoken to her sister on the phone.

After breakfast she got back to the unwrapping and got to her Wii.  She’s been lusting after the Nintendo Wii almost ever since it came out, but certainly since last year when the two of us played on her brother’s.  Now she’s got one of her very own (which she’s actually playing on right this very second) and loves it to pieces – a good choice, it appears.

Once we’d unpacked it all and set it up, in between showering and me doing the washing up, we played a few rounds of various Wii sports before heading to the flicks.  This was the only part of the day in which she had any say – 27 Dresses was showing for one showing today, which is one that she missed when it was first out and I know she was keen to see it, so I gave her the option of catching it while it was on the big-screen today.

Post-flick, we headed over to Deanshanger to stop in on our sis and niece and nephew, who’d managed to fall over hard yesterday and give everyone a fright that he may have broken his leg.  Seeing him today, it looks like the hospital were right when they said it was just badly bruised/sprained, but he certainly wasn’t himself – he’s normally running around like something that runs around really a lot, but today he was much more subdued and only wandered about the house to find one of us and plead, “More horrid.”  (That’s his way of asking for another episode of Horrid Henry from the Sky+, not a request for us to treat him badly, just in case any child protection officers happen to be reading…).

After checking in on them (and picking up the birthday card from K’s ‘rents that we’d (sorry, I) left there on Saturday, we headed up the road to stop in on K’s ‘rents, the most important part of said visit being, of course, the birthday cake.  With a fairy on it and everything.

After munching cake, drinking fizzy pink stuff and waking her dad up from his nap, K opened up her various presents that had been dropped at her ‘rents, including the one which had originated from there – a mini (and I mean mini) dictation machine that she has wanted to get for Uni, as it’s apparently a great way to revise the day’s lectures, by listening back to them and typing them up as an aide memoire.  It’s a great little thingy, which records very clearly from quite a distance and then downloads directly to a computer.  Fab.

Once we’d had a cuppa and some fizz and opened all the extra pressies, we popped round to another family friend to say hello and thank her for the present she’d left for K.  After a quick stop, we carried on out and went back into town for dinner at Brasserie Blanc (or brassiere blank as we’ve heard it called recently).  K’s wanted to go there since it opened, so it seemed like the perfect treat.

As you may guess from the name (unless you think it means White Cafe), it’s a part of the Raymond Blanc empire, recently arrived in the newer, upmarket area of MK known as The Hub.  Rubbish name, yes, lovely place, though – full of really nice eateries with a wonderful European open-plaza style to it and much more of a communal atmosphere than many places in the UK today.  Brasserie Blanc is on the outer side of the square (away from the main hustle and bustle) and it has to be said it is absolutely exquisite.

It’s expensive there, but it’s one of the few restaurants where I really don’t begrudge the prices they charge.  The food was absolutely beautiful.  It was hands down one of the best meals I have ever eaten in my life and certainly in the running for the best meal I’ve ever had in a restaurant.  I had a rack of lamb so succulent and juicy that chewing was optional.  K had a fillet steak, which was similarly top-quality and we finished it with two heavenly desserts which I couldn’t finish (although K polished hers off).

It’s not just the food in there that makes it worth it (although I’d have eaten off the floor in a flea-pit for food that good), it’s the whole experience.  The setting is lovely – clearly catering for an up-market crowd, but without the stuffiness or coldness of many places along similar lines.  It’s warm, friendly and very comfortable.  The whole evening is topped off by, I think, the best service I’ve ever had in a restaurant.  A waitress who isn’t just there to take an order and shove it at the chef, but rather to help enhance the whole experience for the diners – chatty, polite, helpful and informative.  As I signed the cheque, I made sure to check which was the best way to pay the tip to make sure it went to her and wasn’t shared out.

(As a side note, tipping is very important to me.  I object massively to the accepted wisdom of a straight 10% tip for any waitress.  If I get good service, I’ll tip well, if I get average service, I’ll tip averagely and if I get poor service, I won’t tip.  But beyond that, I don’t agree with pooling tips and splitting them.  If someone gives me exceptional service, as was the case tonight, I want to reward them for it – not to find myself giving a tip to the not-so-good waitress who happens to be sharing the shift with my one.  If they’re good enough, they’ll earn their own tips, if not, they’ll learn they need to work harder.  The point is, if you want to make sure you’re tipping the right person, you need to check.  For instance, had I placed the gratuity on the card I was paying with, by typing it into the machine, then it would have been split.  Leave it in cash on the table, however, and it all goes to the waitress.  This is usually the case, but it’s always worth checking – and making sure you ask the right questions.  Asking where the gratuity goes if it’s put on the card, the waitress is obliged to explain the sharing policy.  She is forbidden, however, to inform you of the cash policy.  Only if you specifically ask can you find out where the tips go.)

Coming away well satisfied after a fine meal, we headed back home where we were met again by friends to help us Christen the Wii.  Two hours of constant game-play between the four of us later and we turfed the guys out to take ourselves off to bed and our much-needed beauty sleep for the return to the grind tomorrow.

I’m generally not one to get excited about birthdays – mine or anyone elses – but for the first time with K’s birthday today, I was genuinely excited about it and I’ve had an absolutely brilliant time.  I’m still buzzing from it and from the look of pure happiness on her face that hasn’t moved for the entirety of the day.  It just goes to prove, it truly is better to give than to receive.

On the Men’s synchronised diving:

“That’s a 3.8 degree of difficulty and the reason it’s such a high degre of difficulty on that dive is because it’s so hard.”

With K’s birthday mere hours away, she chose this evening to have a small gathering of friends to help her celebrate it before my rather secret plans for tomorrow become clear. (It’s not that exciting, don’t get lost in anticipation).

Rather than the usual pub or club night, or a trip to the flicks or similar, K opted instead for going down the old-school route of playing Quazar in the MK Megabowl.  Slightly run down, very “retro” – athough uninentionally so, it’s smply that it’s never been updated since it was first opened in the 80’s, complete with ancient BBC-stye computer scoring systems – it’s still actually a fun place to go largely on account of it being quieter both in terms of capacity and noise, allowing you to hold a proper conversation with everyone your playing with, not just th person next to you.  But more than that – it still has Quazar.

For the uninitiated, or the un-retro, Quazar is a form of warfare playe out with lazar guns in a darkened, UV-enhanced room within the bowling alley, including all manner of maze-like walls and passages.  It was one of my favourite pass-times when I was in my early teens and I would get incredibly excited whenever a friend chose to have a birthday party there.

The great news is, it’s lost none of it’s fun, nor frolics, and the six of us who made up the minimum number for the game had a cracking time runing around shooting each other and making our luminous lime-green and orange packs vibrate and shout warnings at us.

It would be remiss of me – particularly approaching her birthday – not to point out that K’s team won and my team lost, mostly thanks to one of our guys manage to score a phenominal -19,000 points.  To give you an idea of just what an achievement that is, the two best shooters on each team scored just over 12,000 each.  He managed to score a stonking 150% of our total against himself.  Not even he knows how.

After emerging from the Quazar depths sweating and giggling like small children, we set about bowling in the same teams we’d lazared in.  Sad to say, once again, that the Green team stole the win, after I managed to choke on the pressure of needing 9 pins in my last turn and managing only a paltry 4.  Truth be told, though, the game was lost in the middle section when I seemed to have trouble finding anything other than the gutter for the majority of he game.

An extra game later, we were all heading home and chilling out in the flat with two of the guys, who hung about till late before I quit for the night and hit the sack.