Well, I have been summonsed by Glen Adrian of Obscureinternet (change your avatar, ffs!) to write a detailed review of my 30th birthday. I’ll start from the day, because it was a much better and more exciting day, for you see, I went bowling!

The first part of the day was spent watching stuff that had been collected on the Sky+. this involved several episodes of Countdown. Unfortunately, there wasn’t going to be a lot happening in the early part of this particular day, as the car was in the garage after it snapped a spring or something, thanks to the state of one of the local roads.

Onto the night, then. Plans had been made with most of the people from work to attend the bowling alley on Brenda Road. It was the first time I’d been bowling since November 2005

I arrived at approximately 7:30, to find that the place was absolutely packed, but I was the only one there out of the proposed group. Oh, great. Things start going through my mind, like “Am I on my own? Is anyone else turning up?” I decided to wait outside, just in case anyone was going to ring my mobile. It was noisy inside.

Thankfully, the cars did indeed start pulling up, and before long, we had a group of about 16 of us. Unfortunately, Tuesday is apparently semi-pro night, so we had to wait until about 9 before we got a game. The price was £3 for the hour. It closed at 10, so we’d just got in. It was at this point, I began to fling my camera around in the hope to catch some epic shots. Unfortunately, this failed miserably, though I did think Matt got a good strike here:-

Unfortunately after I got home and checked the video, he hit the rail first. So technically, it didn’t count.

I finished last, as you can probably gather, though I did manage a strike. I might have to start going there, if I can find someone to go along with. there’s no point playing on your own.

After the bowling, we made our way to Lloyds, in Church Square. And yes, I really did wear this shirt…

Some random barfly stated that I looked like Timmy Mallet. Out of all the times I’ve worn that shirt, it’s the closest I’ve ever gotten to a compliment. Unfortunatelty, there’s a button fallen off it, so that’ll give me an excuse to never, ever wear it in public again. Awww.

After sharing a jug of some odd drink bought by Matt (possibly to celebrate his non-strike), it was time for everyone to begin departing. Some people had work in the morning, and some people wanted to attend the Indian. Guess which category I fell into.

So, the initial group of 16 had dwindled down to 4, and we headed off to the Dilshad for a load of grub.

As usual, the meal was delicious, and just as we were finishing, the clock struck midnight. Yup, I was now 30 years old. Daddykins sent me a text.

The second person to wish me happy birthday was Wayne, at an impressive 2 minutes past midnight, though obviously I didn’t get it until I got home. His email made me quickly realise how much of my life had disappeared…

“You are now twice as old as you were when we had our first talk on CB”.

He was right. The CB days were now half my life ago!

The 4 of us finished our meals, and headed off home in our respective taxis, and a good night was had by all. Well, certainly by me, at least, and I made my way up the long, winding gravel driveway of Mercuryvapour Towers at 1:13.

And now, onto the day itself. It started off early, around 5AM. This was mainly because I could feel the vindaloo on the move, and it was only a matter of time before it was indaloo (actually, alloverdaloo would be a better description). So, I was wide awake after only 4 hours sleep, and with an arse like the flag of Japan. I logged onto Facebook, and watched the happy birthday messages scroll past. Thanks to all of you who left a message, and for those who tried to talk to me, Facebook Chat is being a tart at the moment, and although I can see who sent me a message, I can’t actually see it. I’ve gone back to an earlier release of Firefox. That might help it.

Anyway, the morning consisted of my usual “Woo! I’m off work!” ritual – lie on the sofa and watch “Homes Under The Hammer”, followed by “to Buy or Not To Buy”, then “Cash In The Attic” (as long as Jenny Sodding Bond isn’t presenting it), followed by “Bargain Hunt”. Andy The Iridium Fan popped round during the preceedings, and dropped off my birthday card. He stayed for a few hours, and was amazed to find that he also liked amplifying the ends of songs just to get every last note out of them. An “interest” of mine which I thought nobody else shared. A bit like streetlights. He also helped me dispose of the large boxes that Beastbits2 had came in.

ATIF stayed for 3 hours, 22 minutes and 45 seconds, and after that I began watching some more stuff that had accumulated on the Sky+. I was absolutely knackered, as I’d only managed a couple of hours sleep, and decided to go to bed “for an hour”. This was at 4PM. Next thing I know, it’s 10PM. I must have been more knackered than I thought. The day was finished off with the obligatory “few cans”, and I headed off to bed some time around 4ish.

So, that was the story of my first full day of being into my 4th decade. Not bad going considering I wasn’t actually going to blog about it. And now, I’m off to take photos of a pothole, or I might wait until the chippy is open, and kill two birds with one stone. Pothole photography and chips. Being 30 is AWESOME.

OK, they appear to be as common and non-rocking horse shit now, but I have 8 of these to give away. If you want to be part of something that’s… erm, not very good anyway, then please feel free to contact me.

But only if I know you.

EDIT: “Friends only” now, please. I’ve sent invites to the ‘genuine’ ones, and discarded the ones I feel might be spam, or not in English. If you haven’t received an invite from me yet, then you’re not going to, unless you email me a photo of yourself holding up a piece of paper with the words “I AM A WANKER” scrawled on it. Or “Google Wave” me it. Oh wait, that would defeat the object.

Mere weeks ago I’d have been hovering over the delete key, deciding whether to send one of Chad’s “cutting” comments to the big RSS feed in the sky. Yesterday, we met up for the first time in what must have been 10 years. The startling changes are his accent (which apparently gets mistaken for either Dutch or south African) and the lack of hair. In fact, both of my readers can now put a name to the face…

He flies back to Japan today, but he may return later in the year. Needless to say, he’ll be back posting slightly offensive comments here in the very near future!

I’m in a bit of a gloaty mood at the minute. Cold, but gloaty.

For several years, the heating system at Mercuryvapour Towers has been, at least, tempremental. The boiler was fitted in late 1994, and thanks to exactly 0 service visits by anyone, it has been hanging by a thread for several years.

Some of the radiators get warm, some don’t. For some reason the water pump would work, but the flame would fail to light. It appeared that the boiler would make no attempt to light it. More often than not, however, if you ran the hot taps for a bit, the flame would kick in and heat the water for long enough to pump at least some around the system. Usually, this resulted in the warmest room in the house being the bathroom.

I have known about the broken heating for several years, but have never actually taken matters into my own hands, and have simply requested that Daddykins phones someone to look at it. For several months, I’ve said to him “You know, at the first sight of snow, or at least cold weather, that boiler’s going to pack in entirely”.

As we aren’t a family for decoration in the slightest, we have left the pipes coming from the boiler exposed. No hiding them between sheets of MDF for us! Oh, no!

The pipe nearest the toilet carries the hot water from the system, to the radiators (or at least I think it does). Yesterday, I happened to be sat on the toilet. For once, this forms part of the story instead of me being foul just for the sake of it. I touch the pipe, and it’s clay cold. There’s normally a LITTLE bit of heat in it, at least. I think nothing more about it, as I was going to work.

During my work shift, we had the first substantial snow shower for several years. It was, in fact, so cold outside that the snow wouldn’t even lay, it would simply blow around the ground, and build up at certain points.

Anyhooooo, I return back to Mercuryvapour Towers. I notice there’s a nasty nip in the air. I think temporarily about making a racist joke about an incident which occured in 1941, but thought better of it. Instead I went out with the camera and began taking photos of the snow scene. It’s one of the reasons I got the camera.

I return home, and begin to fiddle about with the photos. Shortly after, I hear Daddykins awaking. He gets up, and walks past my room…

Him: “Are you still up?”
Me: “Yep”
Him: “Oh. Thought I heard you go out”
Me: “I did… went to take a few photos.”
Him: “Well, the heating’s fucked”

Did Daddykins just swear? I ask him to repeat his previous statement, in atypically Hartlepudlian way…

Me: “Y’Wot?”
Him: “The heating’s… knackered”

I see. He did indeed swear. It was a weird moment for me. Daddykins never swears, Unless he’s out, and telling a joke or something. The only other time I remember him saying “fuck”, sans alcohol, was back in 1987ish, when they modified the junction at the bottom of Church Street, and the bridges (which have now been filled in and replaced with a level crossing) became one-way only. Daddykins drove the wrong way down it. That particular “fuck” will stay with me for the rest of my life.

So, anyway. I begin to feel a huge amount of gloat coming on. After at least 24 months of trying to cinvince Daddykins that the heating may have a problem, there was a six-letter word that proved that I was right after all. I refrained from gloating any further. Instead, I returned to my room to begin typing this blog. Halfway through, I had to give up, and go downstairs, where the only current heat source (a highly inefficient gas fire) exists.

I don’t know what is going to happen from now. I have no idea whether I’ll convince Daddykins to get it fixed. I don’t know whether I should go “over his head” and get someone in. I’d like something sorted before one of us gets hypothermia.

UPDATE: I failed to mention that the boiler died on the first day we’ve had proper snow for about three years. Secondly, Daddykins has found some ancient heater which smells of burning dust. It is older than the heating system, I believe.

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…