we're off on us 'oliday

bluddy hell.

things i have been getting giddy about this week

this week, i have mostly been getting giddy about getting an ipod shuffle.

the generous, beautiful people i have been working with for the past couple of months have made a substantial donation to my travel fund and thus enabled me to hold my head up high amongst today's yoof. yes, i have purchased an ipod shuffle. now cool trendy kidz like me will know that this is not the superest of ipods, having only 512 megabytes of memory. however, i know what my clumsy ass is like and therefore thought it more perspicacious to get the cheapest one so that it won't matter as much if i drop it in sand or get myself mugged.

but, how cool is this?! now i can ignore my travelling companions in a socially acceptable manner.

lesson #1

you would have thought that after booking the tickets we all would have been stratospherically excited about the whole thing. and we were. especially when it turned out that the fit bloke was in the shop. he recommended climbing 65 foot trees and killing rabbits in australia. though possibly not at the same time. and he seemed like such a nice person.

anyway, £2k later and we were all really giddy, giggling as we walked out the shop and collectively phoning our mams. so excited were we that we walked straight past the public house designated for the celebration so we had to turn round and walk back up the headrow once we realised where we were. it's like your head really does enter the clouds and you've no idea what's going on those couple of miles below on terra firma. in fact, i was so elated that, in some kind of tv moment, i blurted out to the bar man that we'd just booked a year long hol round the world and he gave us cheap beer in return. now don't tell me that that never happened in 'cheers'.

however, in a much more 'eastenders' kind of moment (duh duh, duh duh duh, duh-duh-duh), i discovered upon my return home that the train tickets to heathrow were going to cost £250 (wot, mr blair?!). euphoria popped, shattered, lay dying in a ditch (yes, mrs westley). trauma, distress and disbelief came a-knockin' at my door and with it a general sense of what the bluddy hell have we just done. it's not going to be 12 months of idyllic beaches, gorgeous buildings and a load of mind-expanding experiences. nay, it's going to be the trauma of the number 16 bus multiplied by a gazillion. the eternal question of how to get from a to b in the least traumatic way.

and then, like the number 16 bus, the enormity of the whole thing hit me. it's madness. what if i don't like it? what if i hate staying in hostels? what if we're never able to sleep comfortably? what if we just meet boring irritating people? what if i'm pissed off by rach and dever two hours into the flight? what if we run out of things to say? surely, it's possible in a year. (though maybe not with rach...).

but then the trauma passed. alternative (cheaper) options were explored and successfully secured. this was mainly owing to one of the best up-and-coming legal brains in the whole wide world. a guy who has tea with the attorney general, has interviews in paris, and also a lovely hair cut. (xxxxx).

and so the first lesson has been taught. it won't all be idyllic beaches and gorgeous buildings but someone or something will usually come along to make it better (than this).

audience participation

ooh! giddyness is reaching epic proportions. at 7pm tonight we have our appointment to finally book our flights. we shall be spending r i d i c u l o u s amounts of money but what a lark! what a plunge! we're going to get flight numbers and everything. with any luck it will be the fit bloke at sta travel that serves us again. i've him to thank for abandoning my idea to just go for three months. i told him that i was planning on coming back early for a job and his look of complete disdain convinced me what a really rather silly idea it was. i mean, a pokey office in liverpool or bondi beach: what would you do? plus, he was fit so obviously i just sat and nodded and giggled whenever he spoke.

i think we should collate a 'must do' list from our collective experiences. the plan is to head to the usa (and possibly nip into canada), fiji, new zealand, australia and thailand. if anyone has been to any of these places, please post a comment on good places to go and exciting things to do. we can make our own little travel guide, team.

come on. this blog isn't just a passive experience. i require those at the back to join in too or it's detention for everyone.

what have we done?!

there is an episode of red dwarf entitled 'backwards' where starbug crash-lands on an earth where time is going backwards. people walk backwards, spew out cream cakes, get younger until everyone becomes 'one glorious hole'. there is also the memorable fight scene where lister gets his ribs uncracked. genius.

anyway, i'm frequently led to think of this as i wake up in my old bedroom at my mum and dad's, am forced to ask my dad for lifts, and i get done for not tidying my room. i also face - on a daily basis - that age-old question favoured by parents everywhere.

what time will you be in for your tea?

aaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh.

still, gives me an excuse for smearing cream cake round my face. kind of.

keep on runnin'

right. you all have to demonstrate what marvellously generous friends i have.

margey from sheffield (nee preston) is rather heroically choosing (yes, choosing) to run 13.1 miles for charidee this october. margey is a lovely person. she and clarence are jointly responsible for teaching me how to go to the pub instead of lectures whilst we were all avoiding employment and doing MAs in the fair land of the seven hills. and, who knows, some of those 13.1 miles may involve hills which will make it jolly tricky.

so to honour this galant effort, i think it would be marvellous if everyone could go to her donation website and pledge a quid. after all, as prunella scales says, every little helps. and, as a reward, there is a comedy picture of margey doing her running and that.

go to www.justgiving.com/margerun

gone with... what?

forget your carol vorderman workout videos. the only way to get fit is to move house.

it was late may. it was bank holiday. did teen and rach do the usual and head to the dry dock to meet lil and sup a few sunny pints? did rach lead the conversation about her new bloke and illustrate her point with an extendable bendy straw?

no. this time we were much more grown up and spent the weekend packing rach's life into boxes and transferring them to her grandad's loft. this involved many heavy boxes and many traversings up and down flights of stairs and, at one point, getting covered in fish slime. which was nice. incidentally, rach's grandad IS spiderman, going from sunday napping to leaping up ladders in sixty seconds flat. clearly, that's how we won the war.

question: does one need a mustard pot? this was one of the many issues we faced as we decided what would go in the 'skip' pile, the 'grandad's' pile or 'palm off on other people' pile. also, rach proved that people other than b&b owners possess toast holders. call the breakfast police.

so all the carryings on did send us slightly delirious, resulting in a number of firsts. i did the lottery for the first time. this caused some confusion as we loudly pondered in the middle of morrisons which bits we were meant to fill in and then rach exclaimed at eamonn holmes in a panicked state 'did i pick six numbers?!' before the numbers rolled. (answer: yes, you dumbass). another first was our singing kate bush at top volume in the car down kirkstall road. (obviously we have sung other artists at top volume in the car but never kate bush). rach also saw 'gone with the wind' for the first time, as i subjected her to it on dvd on saturday night. rock 'n' roll, kids. the final line of the film is a motto to live by, i think, especially when you reach 8pm on a saturday night and your flat is a bomb site and you're covered in fish slime. ' after all, tomorrow is another day'.

yes, thanks, vivien.