Crawley

It has been, like, a whole week since I saw my girl. I’m meeting her today in London, which is making it a little bit hard for me to concentrate on much else, because I really love her.

This Friday I was going for lunch with a couple of colleagues - a guy from project management and a woman from HR. The HR woman was quite busy and kept telling us to wait “two minutes”, until we eventually went and camped out by her desk. “How typically female,” said the chap. “How do you cope when it is two women?” he asked me. My girl and I haven’t been doing much exciting things and aren’t going to for a few weeks yet, so it isn’t a huge problem at the moment....

But there are lots of other things going on. F1 is the normal circus of glamour and shenanigans which keep it entertaining despite the rain. England, in their new home kit, beat Norway on St. George’s day, which was a great result because Norway aren’t exactly a small team.

Eni Aluko vs. Norway. The new England home strip is basically just plain white, because Umbro just can’t be arsed to design things. The Vikings looked a lot prettier.

And there is go-karts as well. Our company has three offices - Crawley, Cambridge and somewhere else - some tiny irrelevant village somewhere. Being run by me means that the Crawley event is the first - or rather was the first, the event was last Friday. No pictures because the photographer couldn’t find the track and so went home in a huff, and then there was a powercut during the second heats, meaning only half the drivers got to drive the full 30 minutes. The event is now rescheduled for the 1st of May.

Now I am going to get out of bed, go to my hairdresser, and then go and meet my girlfriend in London.

So how was your Easter? Mine was good.

I went camping in Yorkshire with my girlfriend. I’m told the scenery there is breathtaking. It looks like this:



And so on, but I’m not really a moors person, I’m more of a forest girl. We stayed in some forest campsite, luckily, so we were both pretty happy with where we went to. We went out walking mostly, which was nice but pretty couply so I shan’t go into the details too much. It was nice to spend the time with my partner, although frustrating to see all these other couples out doing couply things hand-in-hand, while we have to be more discreet. Oh well.



There were hordes of other tourists up there, mostly from the North part of England, although we weren’t the only people who had come up from the South.
I can’t really write enthusiastically about this, I had a great time but after 6 days with my girlfriend I’m now back home and missing her a lot. I feel a bit like Dana, here:

I don’t often get quiet weekends at home, and this weekend was pretty typical.

Friday night: out for a friend for a quiet drink. Unfortunately, said friend is a Geordie, and they don’t really do quiet drinks. I woke up early the next day with a hangover.

I was working in the Finnish church this weekend, so having a hangover is par for the course, really. I was in the kitchen, which means some fairly basic food preparation, some carrying things up and down the four flights of stairs between the kitchen and the staff restaurant, and a lot of dishwashing. But it is fun, and it is for a good cause, I guess. This is the first one I have done where I didn’t go out drinking afterwards, which was refreshing, I guess. I’m getting too old for hangovers.

Normally I’d stay at the church (they have a hostel), but this time I came home on Saturday - this is why I didn’t go drinking this time. I had to be at home Sunday morning for the Australian Grand Prix. And I’m glad I did go back - it was a good race.

There are new rules this year for GP. I shan’t name them all here, suffice it to say that the cars have had a bit of an overhaul, and the GP pecking order has been jumbled up a bit. Out on top has come a ‘new’ team - Brawn GP. Actually, that is the Honda team with a new name. They started work on the new car in 2007, before anyone else, and as a result they won the first race, taking first and second positions.

They look like toys in this picture. I think that the new Brawn GP colours are pretty cool. But then, the old Honda was quite a good looking car, too. Also really nice looking is the new McLaren car. One of the McLarens crashed in the first lap. Lewis Hamilton managed to get his McLaren to the end of the course undented, finishing 3rd from a starting position of 18th: not bad going.

My girlfriend is not a huge fan of F1, and not a massive Finnish obsessive either. Consequently, this is the first weekend since December where I haven’t seen her at all. But I think it is probably healthy to have the odd weekend apart, at least, it is at the moment.

I love my girlfriend. I love going to see her, and I love it when she comes to see me. I love that we spent weeks on dates doing very little, and I love that now we are starting to discover shared interests. i love that the more I get to know her the more I like her.

She makes me feel inadequate and special at the same time, but I guess that's normal for people in love.

Anyway, we had a quite weekend at my house. Stayed in Friday night and watched a Brit Flick with a housemate (Rise of the Footsoldier, gory and possibly a bit opaque if you aren’t from South England).

Saturday we went shopping in town. We got hiking and camping supplies (we are going camping shortly), and generally did very little except enjoy being with each other. We spent the evening with a friend in Brighton (PVs, r-bar and Chales Street). This was the same friend who I used to go out on all night drinking sessions in Brighton when we were both single, he’s now also newly coupled up, which was sweet.

Long cuddle in bed for Sunday, then we went out running in Tilgate Forest. It was kind of strange running round the paths which I rode around a lot last year. The forest is different in the winter, and you see more when you go round slower.We saw two roe deer in the forest, which was cool.

So that’s a few shared interests which we explored at the weekend. Shopping, camping (well, not camping yet but soon: we’re both outdoorsy types), dancing and friends, forest and running.

A Tilgate forest picture from last year. I didn’t take my camera with me. Nothing to carry it in. It’s not that much different though, just less bracken.

Went to girlfriends. Went shopping. Went to the zoo on Sunday.

We went to the Cotswold Wildlife Park. It's the first zoo I've ever been to which you can take your dog too, and we went round with her dog, a boxer called Dana. My favourite exhibit was the meerkats - I've never seen an actual meerkat before, but they are totally adorable. For further information see here:

Right here.

Monday was a chilled out morning followed by an interview for this company in the afternoon. The interview went OK but was a pointless exercise: the frakking recruitment consultant had sent me to a job which I wasn't even elligible for, doubly annoying becuase I went to great lengths to check that I was eligible - the company are a defence contractor (they make the radios which British soldiers carry). I can't work in defence because I haven't lived in the UK long enough. So that was a day wasted.

But at work on Tuesday there was some good news: the one project which most made me want to leave has been cancelled. Well, technically, not cancelled, but transferred to another part of the company. I was so pissed off with the project because the engineering just seemed so... not bad, more half-witted. Presumably they've found some better engineers elsewhere to fix it.

THEN a couple of hours later I had a phone call from another company. I'd sent them my CV once already, and they'd already said "thanks but no thanks". They called out of the blue with another position, which sounded cooler. So that's good. As ever I have no idea what the future holds for me, but really, who gives a fuck? I think it you can keep your designs flexible enough you are good for most things. If my colleagues felt the same then that project wouldn't have been canned.

Dana at the zoo. I went back to my woman's house on Monday, and stayed a bit late. We had one of those frank, open conversations which can change the way you see someone if you have it with the wrong person. Luckily, I'm the right person, so things are still good.