Ciaran’s Omnipurpose Blog

Last Friday, I rocked up to York University to go to the 46th Annual Samaritans Conference and hooked up with my friends from my branch, who were already up there.

We spent the rest of the weekend at plenaries and seminars, which were often thought-provoking and informative. It was also very nice to meet lots (about 1,100!) of other volunteers from all over the place and get a new perspective on a couple of things. The food, accomodation and booze were all very nice too!

We were sponsored by a tea company and ended up carrying almost 1,000 tea bags home with us. Unfortunately, our train home was cancelled and we lost our seats meaning we had to stand from York to London, although we made camp on the floor with some good cheer, occasioned by the presence of some very nice cakes from the Betty’s Tea Shop in York.

Click here for photos.

My dear friend Nick, who’s stag we celebrated in August (See previous post) got married on Saturday to Jenny in Birmingham Cathedral.

I was supposed to be an usher at the wedding, but came to within a gnat’s crotchet of being too late. The M6 was closed. Not only that, but we got lost getting to the hotel to drop off the car. Tom at the Holiday Inn in Birmingham was a lifesaver! He stayed on the phone for 20 minutes and guided us in.

Thankfully the Cathedral wasn’t far, so with a four weddings and a funeral level of cursing as we pulled on our best outfits, we ran out of the door to the Cathedral. In the nick of time, I was given my buttonhole and started to usher people in.

Midway through the service, a couple of American tourists wandered in. I got up, greeted them and invited them to sit if they wanted. They sat and watched through the service.

The choir was fantastic. It lifted the roof in fact. This was in no small part due to the fact that Nick himself is a chorister and this choir was his own!

It was also good to go to a service where the vicar actually had something relevant to say about the person(s) involved. I remember some time ago going to a funeral where is was painfully obvious that the priest had no idea about the man he was burying. In this case, though, the vicar was a friend of Nick’s.

So after 45 minutes, with vows exchanged, Nick and Jenny were married!

The American tourists got up and asked the other Usher, Jim, what the name of the film was that we were making. They had a hard time coming to terms with the fact that they had sat through a real wedding.

Rebecca’s mum had warned us to get some food in before the wedding since it would be a long time before we’d eat. She was right, but we were too late arriving to get fuelled up. We were starving even before the photos. It must have been the stress of getting to Birmingham through all that traffic.

The photos themselves were taken in the Cathedral Square. The photogenic nature of the the occasion was marred somewhat by the fact that a load of goths had decided to wrestle amongst the gravestones. I’m a bit puzzled by what brought them out into the sunlight in the first place…

We managed to work up even more of an appetite by walking through the streets of Birmingham and across a large overpass to get to Lasan, the venue of the reception and “Curry Banquet”.

We were fortunate to be seated with some lovely people. In fact, everyone at the reception was lovely. Special mention goes to Nick’s Mum who was definitely one of the coolest people there. Music was provided by a three-piece jazz band and someone’s iPod later on when the innner lunatics were freed from their cages of sobriety.

So yet another one of us leaves the ranks of batchelordom. Who, if anyone, will be next??

Full gallery is here http://www.hanway.co.uk/wp-gallery2.php?g2_itemId=1827.

Saturday night was meant to be a quiet one with Nev and Lee, two friends from school (See previous Blog entry). I’d just come through 2 stag weekends and a boozy trip to Wiesbaden, Nev and Lee had their own alcohol horror stories to tell.

Nevertheless, things went wrong fairly quickly. There’s a simple equation to this: three good friends + pub + buying rounds = hangover.

The Venue was the Castle on Harrow on the Hill, my local. The food and drink here is very good and what’s nice about it is that the pub has a nice “villagey” feel.

There was none of my favourite tipple at the Castle, a beer called Honeydew left, so I settled down with my two good buddies and a pint of Staropramen.

Then she walked into my life and with a casual wave of her fleshy arm changed my life forever.

Next to my pint lay the pub menu. The pub menu stuck slightly off the edge of the table we were seated at. The girl toddled past our table and waved her arm into the menu, which slid against my pint, which tipped into my lap. It was all rather like a game of MouseTrap.

So I went home and got changed. It was only five minutes around the corner.

Amusingly, the family of the girl in question made no attempt to leash her and she happily toddled around the pub on her rampage. I did get some evil looks from her parents who assumed that I had loutishly spilled beer all over the floor.

The evening progressed very well - we always have a laugh when we meet up. I did feel a bit of regret when I realised that my trip to Wiesbaden had coincided with Lee’s 30th Birthday and that I had forgotten to wish him a apppy Birthday. In a gentlemanly attempt to redeem the situation, I leaned over the table to shake his hand. As I sat down again, my sleeve caught my pint and spilled my new pint into my lap.

So I went home and got changed. It was only five minutes around the corner.

Into my third set of clothes, I got back to the pub, in fear of a toddler, and we continued. The evening was rounded off with some teenage misbehaviour in the streets of Harrow and an excursion to the fields overlooked by the church on the Hill. Usually full of goths, it seems that we were out too late for them this time.

Perhaps they just heard us coming…

The next morning my hangover was severe. I’m lucky 20% of my drinking ended up on the floor before it got anywhere near my mouth. Nothing a fry up at Tony’s couldn’t fix!

The full shocking photographic evidence can be found here!

Last night was Göran’s official Carphone Warehouse (CPW) leaving drinks. I left Carphone Warehouse in June 2006 but stayed in England. Göran’s leaving and going back to Sweden with his lovely young wife Monica and even younger son, Isac.

So as is usual at CPW, drinks were had at the Castle. Göran (big hair, left) and I are sitting with some PATNI contractors, to whom CPW’s IT department is outsourcing a lot of its key systems. They’re nice guys, but I don’t think this is a wise move for CPW.

Afterwards, I dropped Göran off home to say goodbye to Monica and Isac. Isac can walk and make noises and spill food everywhere but his calculus is pretty shocking. Here’s the little chap playing with Göran’s goatee. How cute!

I’ll be sad to see them go. Göran stayed with me and Rebecca when he first came to the UK about two years ago. He and Monica have been very good friends to us.

On a self-indulgent note, it made me think: People are moving on with their lives, coming and going, and here I stay.  

Bon Voyage!

I’m absolutely starving this morning! I trained pretty hard at the gym last night and even though I had a big bowl of muesli for breakfast, I was still craving something.

My good friend Craig, whom I met during my time in Berlin, works just around the corner from me and we shamefully have never managed to get together for lunch! So it was nice to spontaneously meet him for a coffee and bagel this morning at the cheap and cheerful Rosie Tate cafe.

I asked Craig if he ever read my blog and he said he didn’t because there aren’t any pictures of him on it. So Craig, this one’s for you:

A rainy saturday morning greeted me as I leaned out of bed to look out of my window. It was overcast and miserable. Not only was the climate outside unfavourable, but the climate inside my skull was also inclement; a week of late nights and drinking had taken their toll.

Still, I couldn’t miss out on celebrating Nick’s impending wedding in a truly traditional manner: helping him make a fool of himself and getting him very drunk. He was my best buddy during my time in Berlin, after all!

I was supposed to arrive in Bath between 12 noon and 1230 and check into our hotel, but in the end I got a little lost and arrived in Bradford-on-Avon in order to avoid the traffic jams snaking into bath. I didn’t see a single Salwar Kameez in what has come to be known as Bradfordistan. (Note to pedants: This is a deliberate misunderstanding)

Finally, after much faffing and changes of plan, including getting rescued by Nick’s brother from Bradford-on-Avon, I hooked up with the main group of people at a bar in Bath. Downing our pints, we headed off to Bradford again for more drinking and merriment over a game of cricket. Highlights of the match included:

• Tom bowling like a demon: I think he bowled the most wickets.
• My Samurai/Maori fusion of batsmanship, including the one-hander of death.
• Nick behaving like a chimp on a methamphetamie/ laughing gas cocktail.
• Every player getting a can of bitter to hold and drink from whilst batting/fielding/bowling.
• A random dog off its leash coming to the pitch and trying to field.
• Another random dog joining the first random dog and kicking off a doggy altercation.

I think we finished the game after the beer ran out. Got back to the hotel and changed and then met in the hotel bar, where Nick’s traditional humiliation was to take place:

He took the dressing up like a brave girl, though, and we trotted off for a curry at the Eastern Eye. En route to the restaurant, Nick was fortunate enough to get lots of admiring glances and smirks from the residents of Bath. Nick was a true sport.

A massive set menu and some beers later, and we were off to the Pig and Fiddle for a pint of the nastiest, soapiest lager I think I have ever drunk.

The evening ended in Cadillacs, which has been saluted by ItchyBath.co.uk for providing a public service to Bath, “If it were ever to close then the bunch of misfits who go here every week to vomit all over their shoes would be free to infiltrate any of the better clubs in Bath at will.”

Highlights of this part of the evening included:

• Warm beer
• Nasty looking hen night parties
• Awful music
• Nick pogoing to Belinda Carlisle
• Nick streaking through the rugby grounds near the Bath Canal from one end of the pitch to the other, hurdling the sprinklers. He was congratulated with a cheery handshake by the groundsman, who was zipping up after his own “Saturday Night Special” in the stands with one of the fine ladies of bath.

The casualties met the following afternoon for brunch before heading home. All in all, a successful send off for Nick, who departs these shores for the Island of Matrimony in early September.

Bon Voyage!

An excellent selection of photos and videos from the site is available at greghawkins.net. Somehow I’ve managed to avoid appearing in any of Greg’s photos!

So I hit the Great British Beer Festival on 4th August with some old and some new buddies. I got there a bit late after drinks with a client, but was looking forward to some QT with some good old friends. It was horrendously crowded, with 30 minute queues for the cashpoint, beer stands and toilets. Basically, you couldn’t get a drink without queuing, couldn’t take a leak without queuing - these are the most frequent things you’re likely to do when you go drinking, so when will you ever get a chance to actually talk to your friends (except in the loo queue)?

This beer festival is one of those things that you realise is much better as a memory. I first came to this event in 1993, when I was seventeen and thought drinking for the sake of drinking was cool (I had yet to discover the evil cider revenge that we all go through).

The best thing about the festival was seeing Lee, Dunk, Nev and Cas. Next best thing was observing the “Real-Ale Enthusiasts” or “Beer Hobbyists” as they waddled around the festival; with socks, sandals, breasts (men included) and beards (women included). It was also nice taking a little walk and a crafty smoke through the madness of Earl’s Court afterwards.