I’m typing this several days late, as unfortunately, three days of work interrupted the normally smooth progress of my normal blog entries. I don’t apologise for making this post excessively long.

Anyway, Tuesday saw a hastily arranged trip to York, with Chris. York’s a good place to go as the people are friendly, no chavs, and there’s always the opportulity for a photograph or seven.

We’d arranged a couple of days before to go to York on Monday, but thanks to certain aspects (mainly me finishing at 6AM on Sunday morning, and not waking up at any time sensible, this was put back until Tuesday. Chris had came over on Monday night, and a good sup was had. Chris bought over this… stuff. I can’t remember its name, but apparently it must have been in Netto on special offer. He said it reminded him of liquorice.

We discussed a few places, and after pissing ourselves laughing at some of the train prices on certain websites for places such as London, we decided that York was cheapest. And easiest. Something which he said was very, very, very, very, very important was that we first went to the “Headland Gate” (formerly the Il Ponte / Bridge Hotel) to get some photos before another pub is wiped off the Hartlepudlian landscape.

Chris poured himself home, and I went to bed, knowing that Tuesday would have to start as early as possible. After the afore-mentioned sup, I awoke at 7:30, though I knew that Chris wouldn’t be alive again until at least 9.

At 9:30, I rang him to make sure it was still going ahead. It was. Hurrah, etc.

I arrived at his house at approximately 10:42, and we took the short walk over to the Headland Gate…

We took the walk to the Co-Op, a short distance down the road. This was for two benefits, firstly to get money, and to stock up on refreshments. Thirdly, the Co-op is over the road from the bus stop. Fourthly, it meant that Chris could avoid someone who he didn’t like.

We got on the bus. Turns out the number 7 no longer stops off at Christchurch, instead it stops off at Wilkinsons. Remember that, paupers.

So off we walked to the train station. It’s not much of an extra distance, probably 100 yards or so. Turns out the bus driver ripped us off to. Arsehole.

We got to the train station, and Chris examined the timetables . Turns out the direct train (the Grand Central) wouldn’t get us into York until approximately 2PM, and by this point, it was about 11:30. It was decided that we’d take the same journey that me and Coatesy took almost a year ago here. Hartlepool, Thornaby, then York.

Turns out that Coatesy mas made a reappearance on flickr, after posting a photo of himself with that bloke off the post office ads with the northern accent before Wendy Richards pegged it. I’m sure he’s done other stuff, but I’m too lazy to google it.

Back to the subject in hand, we had to wait in a queue whilst some woman discussed the finer details of some voucher she was given. I gave Chris the responsibility of purchasing the tickets, as he knows about them more than me. Turns out the price was £11.00 each instead of the £9.50 I’d paid only 12 months earlier. Sigh.

This revised schedule still left us with about 45 minutes of wait time. Hartlepool Station is the most depressing place in the world. They’ve done the front portion of it up, so the ticket office no longer looks like something from ‘28 Days Later’. Unfortunately, you enter the platform, and find it’s a state, with rusting metalwork and more pigeon shit than you can possibly imagine.

EVENTUALLY, the train appeared, and we embarked on another shit journey to Thornaby. You get to view the delights such as the Seaton Carew landfill, and the various abandoned factories along the way. It wasn’t long until the carriage began to stink of fish for the rest of the journey to Thornaby. You couldn’t inhale without feeling the hairs at the back of your nose curl up.

Halfway through this journey, I felt the flies on my jeans come down. OK, that occasionally happens if the locking mechanism of the zip doesn’t fall into place correctly. Imagine my horror when I felt that the zip had totally broken. Yes, my jeans were fucked. Grrr. I spent the rest of the journey trying to pull my jumper over the broken fly, and watching Chris piss himself laughing each time I moved the jumper.

We left the train behind, hoping that my sense of smell wouldn’t be permanently damaged. Thankfully, it wasn’t as the smell of Thornaby station became instantly recognisable.

Six minutes we waited there. It felt like a lifetime. Eventually, the train to York turned up. I liked this part of the journey. Modern train, no noticeable odour. Flip-dot display and LED combo giving the train’s final destination. Nothing unpredictable happened, except I kept noticing that the clock on the train had an extra LED lit up whenever it showed the number 2. I thought it was faulty.

York approached, and we left the train. The first thing that became apparent is that we were both starving, and that a Greggs simply wouldn’t cut it. It was either an Indian, Chinese, or a pub meal somewhere.

After a short walk, Chris triggered his homing-pigeon instincts to the “Tourist information office”, and while he received a map with some places circled, I stood outside, trying to stop my stomach rumbling enough to rupture a tectonic place deep under the ground I was standing on.

We ran like chindren in a playground to the first location, only to be presented with a shitty looking doorway above some shops, complete with scary 1980s vinyl lettering, and an appearance that the place hadn’t been cleaned since that lettering was installed. We gave it a miss, and headed off to another one of the circled locations, though expecting they’d all be of the same type of establishment.

After a short walk in the direction of the next location, I peered down a side street, spying a pub that served meals. They served “Curry of the day”. I was sorted. Chris was happy to choose whatever he wanted from the menu, and I was happy I’d be having a curry at some point.

I went for the chicken vindaloo, Chris went for the Tikka Masala. I spent the time waiting for the meal, watching one of the games machines crash, with the “DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER” message. The owners powered it off and on again, which fixed it for about 10 minutes before it crashed, then rebooted with the same message. Oh dear. I must be the only person in the world that takes notice of stuff like that, and I was tempted to pull out my phone and take a photo. I thought better of it, despite my love of public computer failures.

Shortly after this computer failure, the meals arrived. My curry was indeed very nice, though I thought the portions were a bit small for the price paid. Still, the food was eaten and enjoyed.

We left the pub, and headed off back into the streets of York. This was not before I left my own little calling card with the few grains of rice that had spilled from our plates…

Chris told me he had another pub to show me. I hadn’t originally planned for the trip to be a tour of pubs, but hell, why not! This particular establishment is noted with one of those blue plaques as the birthplace of Guy Fawkes, visible here. It was an odd place. Expensive beer, gas lights, odd people who don’t carry cash – everyone who came in paid by card, even some woman who bought a glass of tonic water that she didn’t want, just so she could pay by card. I listened into the whole conversation, as I’d fallen in love with her accent. I should have asked her to buy me a pint. I didn’t.

Some guy walked in with what could only be disguised as a wolf, on a lead, asking is someone had arrived to stay the night, as the place also had hotel facilities.

It suddently got quiet, so I recall me and Chris discussing random stuff. Our conversation was rudely interrupted (literally) by some guy butting in, saying he was giving a talk about Guy Fawkes in the back room in approximately 6 minutes. We nodded politely, drank up and left.

I got the camera out, and took some photos of York Minster. I already had loads of these, so I took a couple at a jaunty angle, this being one of the best…

Okay, it sucked. I wasn’t really interested in photographing something of which I already had good images.

We walked along the river. Not literally, but the footpatch beside it. This turned out to be the most photographically acceptable part of the whole journey…

Firstly, there was the bridge over the river…

You know, I really should consult something such as Wikipedia and give these structures their proper name. Either way, it reminded me somewhat of the bridge near the hotel in Berlin. Again, I’ll have to look up the proper name of that…

We walked along the river, to the next bridge, which happened to be closed for repairs…

Wait, hang on, if they say that the bridge works, how can it be closed? I’d be happy to see a sign that says that the bridge works! That way I knew I wouldn’t fall into the river half way through crossing it.

I suggest that this sign is altered to say “CAUTION: BRIDGE IS FUCKED”. Everyone would understand it then.

We went up to the fucked-up bridge and back, but not before I took more shit images, including this…

You know you’re an adult when you can see “Often Licked Never Beaten”, and can’t think anything but dirty thoughts. I turned my attention from the ice cream van, and to the ducks. It seems that every time I go somewhere that has a waterside location, I take more photos of the ducks than I do of anything else.

I like this particular photo, even though it appears that the duck is either blinking, or it actually has no eyes…

We headed off back to the station at this point, only to find there was about an hour to wait before our train to Thornaby. Some guy missed his train by seconds, and I had to laugh at myself as he karate-kicked it as it left the station. I decided that there was no way I was going to sit at York station for almost an hour, so I announced my plan to either walk about, or find a pub to settle into for the remaining time. Chris followed, and we headed… er… east, I think.

The first pub we entered was literally deserted. Not even any bar staff, so we made a sharp exit, even though I forgot where the door was, much to the bemusement of Chris.

We walked across the road to a pub which, if I remember correctly, was called “The Punch Bowl”. Unfortunately, the effects of the vindaloo were kicking in at this point, so while Chris necked a whisky, I retired to the toilets. It was one of those “I wish I was dead” moments. The toilets stunk, and as I closed the door to the toilet, it turned out I was sharing my experience with a pair of shit-stained underpants on the floor, which must have been there for some time.

I almost took a picture, as I had my phone in my pocket, but I think the important part was simply getting out there as quickly as possible.

We drank up and left, and walked back to the station. Thankfully, there was no waiting time, as the train pulled in as we got there. The journey back seemed to take longer than the journey there. The time was passed by someone leaving a paper behind. I plugged my phone’s headset at this point, in order to allow my phone to scan for nearby radio stations. Turned out there were none. The only thing my phone managed to pick up was general interference given off by the train. Not good. Eventually, the phone picked up some stations, mainly just TFM, which happened to be playing Shakira. At this point, I disconnected the headset.

We arrived back at Thornaby station, hoping to get the connecting train back to Hartlepool. Unfortunately, despite what the message boards said, it had left just before we got there. Fucksticks. That meant that there was yet another 45 minute delay before we headed back to Hartlepool. The sun had gone down at that point, and there was no way we were sitting there for 45 minutes. Off we went to, yes you guessed it, another pub. This particular one happened to be in the shadows of TFM Radio.

I’d have hoped this pub would be good. It wasn’t.

We made our drinks last as long as possible, then headed off back to the station. Thankfully, the train was due, we boarded and they all lived happily ever after.

Yes, even I reach a point where I dn’t be dicked typing anymore!

Technorati Tags: train, york

Ok, this is a slightly late post, rather shutting the stable door after the man dressed up as a horse has bolted.

I didn’t stay long on the 2nd day. I ‘d pretty much seen everything I’d needed to see, and most of the stuff going on was a repeat of the first day. Still, I stayed for a couple of hours, snapping away as usual…

After I’d taken these photographs of the 2009 Hartlepool Beauty Pageant (giggle), I moved slightly to my left, and took photos of the juggler, whose name escapes me now (Defying Gravity, perhaps?).

Well, that’s what is says on that sail thing anyway. Unfortunately, that particular act only gripped me for the same amount of time as it took for me to focus the camera lens and take about 3 shots.

Off we went for a walk over to the food tent. Once again, they’d been cooking something with fish in, but they were about to demonstrate the “smoothie bikes”. A clever conception. Strap a blender to the back of a normal bike. Stick a dynamo to the back wheel, and connect the dynamo to the blender. You can then pedal your way to a healthy, if slighty disgusting looking drink! Of course, the slight drawback is that you have to get someone to hold the lid on the blender whilst you pedal like fuck, mashing the fruit into oblivion.

I was hoping, at the end of the demonstration, the ‘chef’ would remove the lid and say “Smoothie Smoke, don’t breathe this!” Unfortunately, there was no smoke and so, no hilarious end to the demonstration.

We left the tent in time to see an amusing spectacle. Apparently, we’ve “grown out” of hanging monkeys here, instead, in the 21st century, we prefer to hang dogs…

Well OK, hang a bloke in a dog suit. This particular character was Barry The Beagle from Real Radio. And, apparently, he wasn’t any worse off for his ordeal…

I was hungry, and thirsty by this point, so it was time to refuel from one of the eatery vans dotted around. After having a (rather disappointing) tray of curry and chips the previous day, I decided to have a jacket potato, with a choice of topping. Naturally, I went for the chicken curry. This set me back £3.50 but I must admit it was one of the nicest things I’ve ever had from a mobile eatery establishment.

So, at this point Andrew decided he could hold off no more, and headed off to the sweetie stall. You see, placed right in the middle of the main area was a tent selling sweets, sort of a pick ‘n’ mix, but in a tent. While I waited, Andrew chose come confectionery. I asked him the price it came to.

£5.30

I thought he was joking, but clearly wasn’t. Five pounds, thirty pence. I almost fell backwards off the chair I wasn’t sitting on at the time.

At this point, there wasn’t anything else going on. Everyone was getting prepared for the big show in the main tent. This was of aboslutely no interest to me, so I phoned Daddykins to pick me up. This was one of the very rare occasions where he hadn’t had a drink on a Sunday. The phone call was interrupted by some people on stilts. I would class that as being one of the more peculiar moments of the two days.

So, as I disappeared off into the distance, Andrew stayed down to watch whatever was going on in the main tent. I got home, and laid on the couch whilst watching Wimbledon. Predictably, I drifted off on the couch, only to be awoken at approximately 5:30 by a thunderstorm. Wooo. I was hoping it would blow over by the time I’d planned to set off for the night’s festivities, which I’d planned to set off for at 6:30.

Thankfully it did, but I decided not to take my chances walking over, and instead got the bus down. Turned out, it would have been quicker for me to actually walk than to get the sodding bus.

By the time I got there, the queue was about half a mile long. Joy. Thankfully, Andrew had got there early, and was about 6ft away from the entrance. I “tagged alongside”. We were guaranteed awesome seats, and we got those. Second row, just left of centre.

In fact, I can be clearly seen in this picture. Obviously, it’s not my photo, so there’s only a link. Just look for a huge slaphead on the right hand side.

Unlike the music night, I was overjoyed with the three acts that performed on the main stage that night. The host himself was awesome, very quick witted. After some heckler shouted out something random, he replied with “Shall we get you some crayons? Do you want the blue ones because they taste like the sky?” Oh, man, I really did think I was going to fall off the chair at that point.

Sean Lock was predictably brilliant. I did get photos. Obviously, you weren’t supposed to take cameras in, but nobody said anything about cameraphones. Sadly, the images are currently “locked” into my phone, as I have no way to transfer them over. I’ve lost everything to do with my phone’s data transfer abilities. Whoops.

So, anyway, another brilliant night took place, and I can personally hail the 2009 Hartlepool CockDockfest an absolute success.

Technorati Tags: 2009, dockfest, hartlepool, hartlepool dockfest, ivan brackenbury, marina, me, Photos, sean lock

Yesterday was Saturday, and instead of treading the carpets in the vast halls of Mercuryvapour Towers, I decided to go on a hastily arranged trip to Durham, with Chris. On Friday, we had a few beers whilst ficking through the TV channels, doing our best to avoid anything even slightly “Comic Relief” related.

On Saturday morning, whilst I was enjoying my weekly viewing of Saturday Kitchen, the phone rang. It was Chris, sounding rather confused…

“Jamie, was I pissed lat night?”

“I replied negatively, as he seemed OK to me. Mind you, I’d been on the Stellas, so my judgement may have been slightly clouded by this fact. He explained how he’d tried to phone someone, and couldn’t remember who. Apparently, whoever it was, had been trying to phone him all morning, on a withheld number, and he couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed and answer it. Ah well.

As I settled back down to catch the end of the afore mentioned early weekend cookery programme, the phone rang again. It was Chris again, asking if I fancied a run out to Durham. Well, the weather was nice, and my camera needed an airing, so I wholeheartedly agreed.

To stretch my legs, I decided to meet him half way, and then we’d walk back up to mine. Great stuff. Daddykins wanted some pie, so I stopped off at the bakers on the way back and got him some mince pies, at the extortionate price of 95p each. I also bought the local rag newspaper, which seemed even more devoid of interesting news than usual.

After returning back here, I had a quick shave and wash, and we left, with me clutching my camera. The first stop was an uneventful walk to the cash machine at the Shell garage. This is on the way to the bus stop, so we lost nothing by talking this short detour. And I’ve probably lost a couple of readers by statiing that totally unnecessary fact.

We arrived and checked the bus timetables. According to the timetable, we’d just missed the bus to Durham, so we whiled away the time reading the graffiti adorning the bus stop and the wooden fence to the back of it. As far as I know, Hartlepool is the only place in the world that has such badly spelled graffiti. For example “CARL IS A FUKEN RARF”. A “rarf”, is purely a Hartlepudlian expression, meaning a gentleman/lady of small mental capacity, and I’m not even sure if it has an official spelling.

Luckily, it turns out that the Durham bus was incredibly, incredibly late, so we managed to get that a few minutes after we arrived at the bus stop. Bimler.

Up we went to the top deck, only to find that the prime positions at the very front of the bus had been taken by someone else. This meant, that while I’d normally be snapping away, taking photos of everything out of the windows, I had to hold off, until the fuken rarfs left the bus. They did this at some point in Peterlee, which means we immediately grabbed the prominent position. I managed to get some shots of the now increasingly rare gear-in-head Eleco Goldenrays, which would have been installed at some point in the 70s. I won’t bore you with the pictures, as I haven’t put them on flickr and I can’t be arsed opening GIMP and resizing one.

The rest of the bus ride was particularly uncomfortable. The bus was a wreck. The side panel next to my seat was hanging off, and the bus had little/no shock absorbing capacity at all. And, considering the bus visited numerous ex-mining villages with terrible roads, it wasn’t a comfortable journey. “On the way to durham. Bouncy bus” was the way I described it via twitter.

After what felt like an eternity, we began to leave the uneven roads, and began to feel the smooth, smooth tarmac of Durham approaching. Awesome.

We arrived at the bus station, and in a repeat of the April 2008 trip, oddly blogged about in May, the first stop was to Peters the Bakery, in order to pick up one of their awesome pasties. I must admit, I prefer the Peters pasties over Greggs. The Greggs ones have gone really downhill recently.

The whole trip was simply an excuse for me to dust my camera off (more on the dust in a minute), so the first stop was to the cathedral. They still don’t allow you to take cameras in, so I had to satisfy my photo urge by taking exterior photos. This was one I was particularly proud of…

OK, so it’s had a bit of post-processing done to it, and normally that’s something I hate, but seeing as I always shoot in RAW format now, (2×16Gb cards = laaarvely) that’s something I’m more willing to experiment with now. And, onto the dust. You can’t really see it on the small size shown here, but in the very bottom left, you’ll notice a spherical object. It’s a dust speck on either the sensor or the mirror. Fark. The camera has its own dust deletion features, so I might go through that instead of resorting to cleaning the sensor. It’s not in an important place anyway.

After I’d taken photos of the grounds (and a pile of sick) we headed inside the cathedral. Now, back in my 2008 post, I mentioned about the chior and orchestra in there. Well, they were there again, and still as awesome as ever. I was walking around the place with the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end.

This time, I abided (abode?) by the rules, and didn’t take one photo. My current camera is slightly less easier to hide.

We left the cathedral, and walked along the river. I wanted to get a shot of that cross from the reverse angle, only slight problem is that you can’t actually see it from the footpath, as the footpath is approximately 30 feet lower down, and there’s a wall in the way. Bugger.

We continued to walk along the footpath, as I’d never been along that way before, and I was interested to see what was there. I’ll tell you what’s there. A Thorn Gamma 6, mounted on an old Revo Moseley column, that’s what! Oh, OK. There’s a footbridge that takes you across the river. I broke out the camera again, as a…. boat thing went underneath… (mental block… these things have names, yes?)

We followed the path all the way along, to see what was at the end of it.

A roundabout and very little else. Oh.

We turned back and headed the way we came, but this time along the other side of the river. It gave me oppotunity to take more photos, naturally.

So, after that, we went into the city part itself. It’s not particularly big, but there’s a market square, where there was actually a market. Not the good type of market, however, this was your “fruit and veg” market. Sigh. Not a CD or record in sight. I ended up paying £1 for a small bag of cola bottles. Gah. We walked a little futher round, and stopped off at the same paper shop we’d been to 11 months before, in order to pick up a can of pop, or smoething to drink. All of this walking was dehydrating!

68p. That’s 68p for a can of 7-up. Sixty Eight New Pence. Still, I like 7-up, and it was a small (well, rather large) price to pay. We left the shop, and began to head in a randome direction, back towards the river. There’s a smail set of steps here, that you have to negotiate. And, despite my almost 30 years expereince in negotiating sets of steps, unfortunately, this time I’d forgotten how to manage them, and misjudged the fact that there was still a step to go.

Down I went, like a bag of shit. Not that I’ve actually ever seem a bag of shit fall, but I guess it would look something like what happened to me right about there. My knees made contact with the “ribbed” paving stones, which have raised sections, and let me tell you, those raised sections HURT, especially when certain body parts are scraping across them at a considerable speed. What’s even worse is that my 68p can of 7-up was now half empty, on the floor. FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUU…

The whole time, some random passer by was staring at me, uncertain whether to laugh or cry. I just nodded at her, in the best way possible to say “Show’s over, bitch”.

With my pride, and my articulatio genus dented, I hobbled away. We walked in a long circle in order to arrive back at the cathedral. The sun, at this point, was breaking through the cloud, and I was able to get a good shot of the cathedral…

I still keep meaning to go back here in the summer to get some summer pictures. The only ones I’ve managed so far have been early spring photos.

After I had sucessfully captured enough photos for a 700Mb flickr upload, we headed off back to the bus station. There was still a few minutes before the bus was turning up, so we headed into the shop to pick up much needed supplies for the jorney home. OK, it’s not that far, but when you’re sitting on a bus, staring out of the window at vast swathes of nothingness, something to chew on is essecntial. I opted for a bottle of water, and a bag of McCoys.

We boarded the bus, and headed once again to the top deck.

This turned out to be a mistake, as directly behind us, we got some type of family unit, consisting of three kids, who had clearly been injecting pure sugar into their veins, and their poor, flustered mother.

“OHLET’SPLAYCOUTHTHEBLACKCARS! BLACKCARS! ONETWOTHREESEVENTHRTEEN”…

I looked at Chris, and signed. This was going to be a long journey.

“Count The Cars” officially got boring to them approximately three minutes into the journey, and instead they began swapping football stickers.

“DOYOUWANTOWEN? HE’STHEFANSFAVOURITE! WHATTEAMDOESDAVISJAMESPLAYFOR? DOYOUWANTDAVIDJAMES?TOUGH!

There was a brief respite, when one of the kids began to feel carsick, and thankfully shut up. Unfortunately, this soon passed as we arrived into Peterlee bus station, slightly earlier than expected. The driver switched the engine off and left the bus at this point, for some unknown reason.

“THEDRIVERSGONE! HASHELEFTTHEKEYSIN? LETSGONICKTHEBUS LETSGONICKTHEBUS”

Joy. At least there was only a few miles to go. The parent, getting flustered, beings shouting at the kids, as the sugar rush failed to dissipate, and was still causing them to do 100-metre style sprints up and down the vehicle. Eventually, the driver boards again, and we leave the rolling vistas of Peterlee behind. The day was completed, with the parent calling one of the kids a “doyle”. It was a perfect ending. Start with “rarf”, and with “doyle”. That’s the reason I love Hartlepool. Two expressions that would make absolutely no sense anywhere else on the planet. It was truly Elish.

Technorati Tags: bus, cathedral, doyle, durham, rarf

Top Gear live was bloody brilliant, as you would probably have guessed. That was two days ago…

(Quick edit… to the person who searched for “top gear live will it be recorded”, and found this site… um… I think the clue is in the name, especially the word “live”. I’m probably wrong. And to the persion who searched for “top gear live is shit”… well, I disagree, but you can’t please everyone I suppose.

As mentioned previously, Chris’s brother Jonathan had secured three tickets to go and see Top Gear Live. Now, some of you have thought I meant I was going to see the TV show being recorded. No, that’s recorded in Dunsfold Park, Guildford. This particular one I went to see was in Earls Court.

The day, as you can imagine for this time of year started off cold and rainy. You may remember in the previous “long” post, that I mentioned I’d been at a halloween do the night before… needless to say I was still feeling the effects of this. Anyway, after typing up that particular blog, I went for a shit. This particular fact has no relevance to the story at all, but it seems like an age since I’ve mentioned a bowel movement in this blog, and we can’t let a tradition die after 7 years and 365 days (leap year, anniversary tomorrow)…

Erm, moving swiftly on. We went down to Chris’s house, to pick him up. Our original plan of getting the train directly from Hartlepool was scuppered by the fact it was at about 7AM, so we were getting the 11:27 from Darlington down to Kings Cross.

The journey down to the station was unentertaining. Daddykins was playing one of the CDs he’d picked up while on Holiday, from some guy who may, or may not have appeared on the X Factor. He can do Ronan Keating spot on, but his Neil Diamond sounded worse than me on karaoke ^{[citation needed]}

So, we arrived in good time to catch the train, and had about an hour to spare.

Darlington station is very, very boring. There are a few shops there, including an anti-Tardis WH Smith. And by that, I mean, fron the outside, it looks huge, but when you get in there, it’s tiny.

Chris had booked the train tickets online, so all we had to do was visit a machine to collect them. Strange that these machines were called something like “Fast Track”, yet there was still a queue.

After collecting our tickets, the walk to WH Smith was halted by frantic banging on the window, and a little kid running after us. Turns out Chris had left one of the seat confirmation things in the machine. Ooooooo. Lucky.

Off we went to browse both of the shops.In the end, I bought a bottle of water (to take my sodding tablets with later on), a packet of Quavers, and a copy of The Sun. Chris bought a coffee and a copy of Private Eye. It’s the first time I’d ever seen one of those “in the flesh”. A bit above my intelligence level, I’m afraid. Imagine that episode of Family Guy, where Peter’s staring at a comic outside a newsagent for several days, before saying “Aaaaah, now I get it…. yeah, can I have a copy of Jugs?” Unsurprisingly, I can’t find the clip of that on Youtube, so if you haven’t seen it, that’s tough.

On the subject of Jugs, after buying our merchandise, I noticed that someone had left a copy of the Saturday Sport in the waiting lounge. So, yes, I had a look through, but decided against keeping hold of it, for obvious reasons.

Eventually, after what seemed like an age, the train arrived. We located our seats, and found that we were, once again, facing somebody, just like that trip with Coatesy to York. These two people were clearly twins, which made it harder to even look in their general direction.

Shortly after the train set off, Chris went to the bog, and I didn’t see him again until we arrived in York Station. Amusingly, he got stuck behind the food trolley.

The rest of the journey wasn’t just mind numbing, it was arse numbing too. The only piece of excitement was the recogntionof somewhere I’d been before – Stevenage. On Boxing day last year, I went down to Stevenage with Daddykins and a few other people. I remember as we entered the estate one of the people lived on, we went under a narrow railway bridge, and the estate had particularly old, probably still mecury vapour, streetlighting. So, after a bit of a rummage through the archives, I’ve found the bridge, in Stevenage, where I have now been over, and under…

See, who said it’s pointless taking a photo of absolutely everything?

We arrived in Kings Cross at approximately 13:57. Everything was how I remembered it. Busy, mainly. The old mechanical destination boards, however, had been replaced with the now standard orange LED display. The announcements are also done by the same guy who does the announcements on the Weakest Link.

We were going to meet Jonathan at Waterloo station, as he already lives down south and so got a separate train down.

Chris’s pigeon-like sense of direction made sure that we didn’t get lost. Now, remember the tapdancing busker that we saw in Paris? The one that was actually quite good? Well, on the tube down to Waterloo, there was one that was really, really bad. And still, some people gave him money.

That’s it. I’m quitting my job and becoming a busker.

Eventually, we made it to Waterloo. It took longer than usual, as one of the lines (I forget which) was closed for maintenace, or as they like to call it, “service improvement. Most of the afore-mentioned orange LED signs were out of order, thanks to some type of software error. I’d have gotten a picture, but we were in a rush, and couldn’t get the camera out in time. It was only a generic preset message anyway.

Off we go to Earls Court. It was a number of stops away, so we braved the underground again. I say braved, because I really, really dislike it.

After what seemed like an age, we ended up at the Earls Court tube station. In my previous two trips down to the big city, the weather was acceptable. Today, it wasn’t. It was absolutely tipping it down. In the 100 yards from the tube station to Earls Court, all I could think of was “London Rain” by Heather Nova. I really like that song.

So, we entered through the huge doors and into the foyer. The tickets were scrutinised, and we entered into the huge display area. And I mean huge.

That photo doesn’t really do it justice, but unfortunately, none of the photos do the place justice! I only took my little Acer, as I wasn’t too sure whether cameras would even be allowed or not, It seems they were and I really wish I’d taken my Canon now, as I didn’t take one good photo of the show itself. Bah!

After a very quick look around the display area, we made our way to the entrance to the main “theatre”. I use quotes, as technically it isn’t a theatre. It’s a big building with temporary seating and a stage. We made our way through what was quite literally, the biggest queue I’ve ever been in. It was massive. Remember the one for the Eiffel Tower? Forget it. This one seemed to go on for ever.

Turns out we had really good seats. High up, and dead centre. Perfect.

A few pre-recorded car adverts looped through for about 20 minutes. One of them even broke down, turning the two huge LED displays random colours, and emitting ear piercing squeals. We thought that was part of the act, but no, it just appeared to be a technical glitch as the adverts looped through for another 10 minutes or so.

Then, the lights faded…

More adverts, but this time in the shape of live adverts on the stage.

Then, we got the introduction. On came Clarkson, May and Hammond. Now, I’m guessing that most of the shows are going to be very similar, so if you’ve found this via Google, and are planning to go and see it, then I suggest you click the back button, or something… In fact, I won’t go into too much detail, just in case.

It contained all of the things that make Top Gear great…

First off there’s the challenges…

Then there’s the whole interaction with the audience…

You know when I said the photos turned out really, really bad? I clearly wasn’t lying.

Er, anyway. There was also the Cool Wall. An interactive version of it. You all get cards given when you enter. Red on one side, green on the other. A computer monitors the input from the camera, and can calculate the amount of red or green in the picture. Green = cool, red = not.

There’s also stunts and stupidly impressive car displays, as you’d expect.

You’d thinka stage of that size would also not be able to handle a game of Smart Car Soccer. and you’d be wrong.

The Stig finishes the show in another impressive display.

That’s all I’ll say for now. I’ve still got a load of pictures which have yet to be uploaded, these will get done today. This particular one is also a highlight for me, personally.

How cool is that? I managed to get my photo taken With Jeremy Clarkson……………..’s cardboard cutout! The rest of the photos need to be uploaded, so I shall do that and return with Part 2…

Technorati Tags: darlington, earls court, england, james may, jeremy clarkson, london, mph, part one, quavers, richard hammond, top gear live, train journey, twins, wh smith

Well, let me just start off by saying “Ow.”

I’m currently in considerable pain both because of the halloween party,and my infected finger. It OFFICIALLY can’t have came at a worse moment. See, I’m off work for a week.

Yesterday, after finishing a diabolically unimpressive shift at Employment Palace, I started examining the infection in the finger. It was getting bigger by the minute. “Oh, I’ll just stab it with a pin again, release some of that pus.

Great idea. In went the pin. Out came nothing but blood, and a string of expletives as I let out the loudest scream of pain I’ve ever done. Something wasn’t right.

So, off I go to the quacks. After sitting in the quacks waiting room for 45 minutes, I get seen to. It took no more than 4 seconds for the doctor to prescribe me some antibiotics and some cream to rub into it. What wasn’t awesome is the price the medication came to… £14.20. I have a job, what a mug I am.

I’ve just taken the first tablet. If there’s no change to it by Monday, I have to go to the hospital. Therefore, it means a week off work without any drink. LOL. What good timing. Apparently, one of the side effects of these particular tablets is fits. Things just get better and better. I just hope that they don’t turn my piss pink like the last ones did.

Last night, I attended a Halloween party, which is the reason for the bad head. I went in fancy dress as a Roman. Unfortunately, some idiot managed to delete all of the images I took from the camera. It was probably me and my big fat faulty finger.

What was even worse was actually getting to the party.

I’d arranged to meet at MS’s house. Now I’ve never been there before, so I didn’t know where he lived, so I got the address, and got Daddykins to drop me off. MS sent me a text…

“When you get here, just come in, the door is open”

So, I arrived, and entered through the front door. I was confronted with a woman, who had just got out of the bath, wrapped in a dressing gown.

My jaw dropped, and so did my arse. Turns out MS lived a couple of doors away.

The party was good, from what I can remember of it. Normally, I have my photos to look back on, but the only ones that survived appear to have been taken by someone else. I think it was when I accidentally downed 7 different varieties of schnapps, that things went hazy.

No, really. Accidentally.

I thought I was trying different varieties of alcopop, as I’d never had schnapps before, I didn’t know what it tasted like. Upon my realisation of this fact, I could almost hear Scott Bakula saying “Oh boy…” before the quantum leap credits rolled.

At some point I remember losing my bag containing my shoes and camera.

I honestly didn’t intend to get drunk, for today I’m off to London. Earls court to be precise, as Chris, via his brother Jonathan, has managed to secure tickets for Top Gear Live. Awesome.

Unfortunately, Chris has something planned tomorrow, so the original plan of getting down there, watching the show, then getting the train back the following day has been condensed into one day, meaning that I’m going to spend a hell of a lot of time on the train today. I guess it saves the cost of a hotel room for the night though.

Needless to say, I’m taking my camera. I shall return with photos tomorrow, presuming I don’t delete them all…

Technorati Tags: chris, drank, drink, drunk, embarrasing, halloween, london, ms, party, roman, schnapps, wrong house