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…

I am too traumatised to blog about what happened yesterday. It is the morning after the night before, and once again, good old alcohol made a reappearance, which slowly caused my world to collapse in on itself.

And no, I wasn’t the one to get so palatic that I “tripped over” a seven foot stepladder in the kitchen and had to be picked up by two of my mates. Oh, no siree. That wasn’t me. It was Daddykins.

I really cannot describe how I feel at the minute. I’ve not spoken to him since the incident, maybe because shortly after he went to bed and has yet to surface.

He suffered a considerable gash to his left arm which may, or may not require stitches…

In other news, which normally would get a blog on its own, I popped my septic finger yesterday too. Pus spurted about 6 foot across the room, and I think I went into shock for a bit.

SO, that’s the news. I can’t put into words how shit I feel at the minute. It truly feels as if my world has ended. Lovely depression, here we go again!

Ahh, now we’re starting to get into the swing of things. We knew where all of the eateries were, and we knew where we can stock up on supplies, we knew how much it was to get into at least 3 of the attractions.

Today was the day that we’d all planned to get up early and attack the Eiffel tower queues. It looked as if you really had to get in there early, or not bother getting in at all. Now, I knew, if we were going to attempt this, we really WOULD need supplies. Definitely water, for a kick off. Thankfully, Shoppy came in handy again, and I picked up three bottles of water. We also had the breakfast this morning. Now you may remember yesterday I mentioned La Terasse, where we’d stopped off for something to eat on the night. Well, that’s where we went for breakfast too.

I forgot to mention we also went for breakfast here on Day 2. I think. See, my mind doesn’t record every single detail on mornings. I just remember getting confused over the following…

Me: “Parlez vous Anglais?”
Him: “No, only French.”

You will just have to imagine my face at that point. No, in fact, imagine my face about 30 seconds later when I got his “joke”. Anyway, one awesome breakfast later, we head off to the Eiffel tower, and joined the queue, at 9:43, and didn’t get into the actual tower until 10:29. There was then a 7 minute wait until we got into the cable car at 10:36 to take up up to the first floor. The question was, would the view be worth it? I don’t think I’ll bother answering that question, as I can assure you, the views are absolutely amazing. Oh, wait. I just answered it.

Seriously though, it’s not until you get up to a high point that you realise how big Paris is. Here is a view of the hotel we were staying in, from the top…

See that “wedge” right in the very centre? That’s where the hotel is.

We stayed up there for ages. It was surprisingly warm considering we were on the top of a ~1,000 metre high structure. After spending quite a while at the top (mainly because there was a queue for the lift approximately a mile long), we went back down to the second level, and began the long walk down the stairs to the 1st floor. It was less busy than getting the lift, obviously, plus it offered a more entertaining view.

The first floor is a lot different to the other two floors, as it has bars, exhibitions, etc. After a quick look around them, we settled for something to eat and to drink. I went for the croissant and a “pint” of Heineken. And although it was reassuringly extortionate, must say, it’sn the most picturesque beer I’ve ever had…

Edit: oops, correctified image.

The chairs, however were a little bit “rustic”. They were made entirely out of old bits of tree, and not very sturdy at all. I think the person that was on the chair behind me almost went arse-over-tit because of them.

Anyway, we ate up, drank up, and began the descent via the stairs again. Unsurprisingly, there were once again vast swaithes of souvenir sellers trying to sell you stuff from their big black bin liners. Sigh.

We headed back to the hotel temporarily for some reason, and headed off to the Arc De triomphe. Now, it’s only 1.4 miles from the hotel On our previous trip there, it certainly didn’t feel like it. It felt a hell of a lot more. Therefore, we decided to use our €16 ticket on the boat again. Now, the only slight flaw in this plan, was that in order to get up to the Champs-Élysées, the boat had to make its way all the way along the touristy parts of the Seine, and then back again This was something that took 90 minutes.

Meh, it gave me an excuse to break the camcorder out, but by the end of it, even I was all camcordered out.

Eventually, we heard the words we wanted to hear… Next stop, “Champs-Élysées”. Awesome. This is where we wanted to be.

Off we jumped, only to realise that we were nowhere near where we wanted to be. In fact, we were still 1.2 miles away from it. Gutted. That means that we’d taken a 90 minute boat trip in order to save one fifth of a mile. I suddenly knew how this guy felt.

As we continued our walk down the Champs-Élysées, we walked past the preparations for the Wall-E premiere. It is unknown whether anyone famous attended, but there were a lot of security and cameramen about.

Eventually, after what felt like a fortnight, we made it to our final destination. It was €9 to get in, and no, we didn’t take the lift. Therefore, it is a climb of 284 steps to reach the first level, which is a sort-of museum. Unfortunately, this turned out to be very sparse indeed, with only a few exhibitions in it. I really thought they’d make more of a song and dance about something that looks so impressive on the outside.

So, after a quick look around, we went up yet more stairs and reached the top of the monument. Again, the view was great.

You also get a great view of the comedy roundabout while you’re up there. It looks even madder from above. I’m honestly surprised we didn’t see a major incident while we were up there, though there were plenty of brake screeching and blaring of horns.

We headed back down, and made our way along the road we should have came in the first place. Once again, we attacked The Shoppy.

Now, imagine the scene. you enter The Shoppy, and pick up a basket, only to find that one handle on it is broken. I attempt to place it back on the top of the baskets. Next, a small woman walks into the store. She thinks I’m actually getting a basket for *her*, and she takes the broken one I was about to put down… She thanks me with a cheerful “Ah! Merci!”… now, although I did French in school, we didn’t learn the words for “this basket is broken”, and I have the documentation to prove it

I tried to explain to her in sign language that the basket was well and truly fucked, and I was simply putting it back in order to get another one.

It failed miserably.

She looked away, and muttered “oh, non merci” under her breath as she grabbed a working basket. It was all so hilariously embarrasing.

First stop after the water aisle was, of course, the beer aisle. Now, you may remember the 7.9% beers I’d bought the day before. Well, I stocked up on these again, and got a few more to last me through the night. I did spy some 9% Leffe, but steered clear of this for the time being.

In our quest to find a cheap pub the previous night, we noted a few eateries to try out. It is unsurprising that we wanted a taste of home, and therefore resorted to choosing a Chinese.

As the night was getting on by this point, we retreated to our approriate rooms, and got ready for the night. On the way down, we had a special guest in the lift…. yes, a bloody wheelie bin…

We entered the Chinese, and found it to be a very nice place. the staff were friendly, spoke perfect English and it was overall a very welcoming atmosphere. You’ll be unsurprised to find that I ordered a chicken curry. Sorry.

SIDENOTE: I know I stated I’d eat horse while I was out there. I didn’t. Though, this was mainly because I could only find one place that sold it, and at €15, I didn’t want to risk that amount of money in something that may have been horrible.

Right, with that out of the way, back to the meal. It was top notch. Me and Chris had the chicken curry, and Jonathan had Chilli beef and noodles. it was all very nice, and although yes, the beer was still expensive, we didn’t mind paying it if we were getting something to eat.

After that, it was getting late so we headed off back to the hotel to talk about the days antics, eventually retiring to bed at approximately 1:30AM.

I do two things when I’m in a depressed mood. Walk, and blog. So, it’s unsurprising that this is my 4th post in two days, and it probably won’t shock you to realise that I’ve completed an 8.5 mile walk (well, if you want to be arsey, it was 8.41 because I measured it with Google Maps.

As menitoned before, Daddykins has been out at the pub all afternoon, so I didn’t fancy waiting around for him to come in slurring all over the place. OK, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, as he never really gets THAT drunk, I just hate to see him drunk full-stop. And yes, I understand that makes me sound like a hypocrite. Tough.

So, I headed off out of the door, with the intention of not returning until he was at home, and in bed. I took my normal route of King Oswy Drive, right up to the Clavering roundabout and back down the coast road. I took a detour to take in the delights of the King Oswy shops, and also to pick up a bottle of Cherry Coke.

At this point, I tried to phone Chris. he said he was coming round tonight, so just in case he turned up unannounced, I tried to get in touch with him to tell him I was out. In facft, I decided to walk down near his house, just in case he was in, and not answering his phone (as usual).

Chris is one of those people who rarely takes interest in his mobile, so no answer is a normality. I tried a number of times, and didn’t get through at all. I also tried to get through to Daddykins on his mobile to see if he was in yet, as I’d forgotten to hang my washing out.

After about 16 attempts to get though to his mobile, he phoned me. I answer, and whatever Daddykins said was drowned out by someone screaming “JAMIE”. Oh, joy. So he was still out. I terminated the call. He’d already answered all my questions.

So, I decide to ring Chris on his house phone, and his dad said he was asleep. Oh, great. So, I had nowhere to go, nothing to do, nobody to talk to, nothing. There was no point going home, so I just kept on walking, and ended up on the Marina. Did I mention I took my camera? Clearly not.

This is the only one I’ve bothered to upload to flickr yet, as a lot of them require rotating…

I shall post more photos on my flickr later, but now I have half a case of Grolsch to knock back…

Yes, once again, I am totally sick of work. I am currently on my days off, which I am not enjoying at all, thanks to not knowing what’s going to be happening on Monday. Will I be (badly) trained on a contract that I can physically and mentally NOT DO?

As per the usual, I am not going into the details of this contract, and why I cannot do it. Some people know, some don’t, and it’s not something I’m going to discuss on a public website.

Therefore, until Monday, my head is going to be going around in circles. I am already unable to sleep. I awoke at 5AM, this one issue slammed right into my consciousness. Joy.

Money is also another issue. Remember my jury service? I’ve still not been paid for it. I was led to believe that the money would be in my account within “7-10 days” of it ending. No sign. Not a penny. Not even £44 for the 10 days travel. So, I guess I’ll be on the phone Monday to them, then. Double sodding joy.

In a vain hope to counter this feeling of complete and utter shit, I am off to Seaham today. Allegedly, there’s a car boot sale at the Seaham Coast Road, wherever that is, so I shall go there and see if I can find it, and expand my record collection. Failing that, ‘m going to take my camera along and just take photos. I’ve not done that for a while. The last trip was to Durham, with Chris, the other weekend, which I totally forgot to document on here. Basically, it was a re-run of the trip I took with Coatesy last year. He has (once again) disappeared off the face of the earth, which is another thing depressing the hell out of me, but that’s a whinge for another day. Sigh.

Er. Anyway, I once again went photo mad, despite the fact the weather was cloudy and miserable. Warm, but crap, if you know what I mean. If you don’t, here’s a photo depicting such a day…

If you ever get a chance, go and visit Durham Cathedral. It’s absolutely stunning.

We went in, and there was a live orchestra playing. It’s just one of those things that will send a shiver up your spine. Looking around, taking in the architecture and the music. It was awe-inspiring.

Unfortunately, they don’t allow cameras (and with good reason, now that I think of it), so I can’t really show you exactly what it was like. I had to be really sneaky when I took this photo of the courtyard. No amount of laminated sheets with crossed out cameras are going to stop ME getting at least one shot! Ooooh, I feel like such a rebel.

We were going to go into the castle too, but that required an entrance fee of something stupid, so we gave that a miss. It didn’t look half as impressive as Edinburgh Castle anyway, but I did get a few shots of the daffodils…

After that, we went a pub for the traditional “have a pint in whichever town we end up in”, and the pub of choice was the hilariously named “Fighting Cocks”. I expected it to be a dive, but it wasn’t a bad place, and the chairs were probably the most comfortable I’ve ever sat on. Oh, you want to see a picture of the pint?

And that’s where I’ll leave it, because just to add insult to injury, it’s now absolutely pissing it down, so it’s looking very unlikely that I’ll be going anywhere. Triple joy.