Ok so

Right, so my upkeep of this blog has been nothing short of abysmal. I now realise I was completely stupid to think I would update it every single day. However I did think I'd manage to post something in the space of...3 weeks...

Anyway, I was away up North for a couple of days at the weekend. A nice sunny weekend in Elgin/Inverness/Aviemore (those words can't be placed together too often surely).

I worked in Elgin for 18 months before moving back to civilisation. It's a decent town...or Cathedral City if I'm being proper and correct. I enjoyed staying there initially as it wasn't Shetland and I didn't have to get on a boat to go to the Cinema or a Football match. But then I realised that driving for 40ish miles just to go to decent cinema was actually a pain in the hole. Add into the fact that I knew nobody there, it was time to shift south...thats where Edinburgh, the Tree House and the Shed came into my life.

Inverness shouldn't really have been included on my list as I did only spend about 2 hours there, and I'm sure you don't want to hear about me sitting in a coffee shop for 2 hours waiting for a train.

Aviemore is a place I've never "properly" been. I used "properly" as I've passed through it more times than I care to remember. But it slotted into my criteria of having a railway station and a Youth Hostel so it seemed good enough destination to escape from the Shed for a couple of days. It's a strange town, perhaps the closest Scotland has to a "Tourist Town" given that it's within touching distance of a couple of winter sports areas. The population is around 2500 but I would guess there are enough hotels and guest houses to easily double that during some winters.

I went up the Cairngorm Furnicular on Saturday morning, and given the financial state that place is apparently in, I'm glad I did before anything happens to it. For having little money, the place is still in good nick. You aren't allowed out onto the mountain at the top during the summer, but the viewpoint gives some cracking views out over Moray and the Highlands.

The rest of the day was spent lying on the grass in the sun reading books and newspapers. I could have very well done this in Edinburgh, but where is the fun in that?

FAIL!

Ok, so my intention to update this piece of nonsense daily has clearly died on it's arse. I am sure, however, that this is simply a minor blip.

G is off to Munich for a few days, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't mad jealous. Germany has always interested me for one reason or another, mainly because I like sausages and beer.

I have to say that Western Mainland Europe (Blighty aside) hasn't featured much in my travel history apart from a trip to Italy when I was about a year old (which doesn't count) and a 2 hour stopover in Amsterdam (which, again, doesn't count...although I did knock myself out...). Prague would be the Westernmost place I've had the pleasure of visiting, which was in 1999 on a School exchange thing and just before it became really popular with tourists. I'd love to go back to Prague, the city is amazing, and it would be good to go back so I could (legally) enjoy some of the beers. I'm not sure just how "touristy" Prague is now, given it's a capital city you can't expect it to be all Cathedrals and Castles with no Starbucks.

When I were a lad, I can remember feeling really jealous towards most of my classmates at school when everyone was talking about their Summer holidays. Whilst they were talking about going to Tenerife, Lanzarote and Disneyland, I was going to Gairloch, Lochinver and Orkney. To an 8 year old kid, you can guess what the more attractive destination was there. However, we did go on one "Summer Sun" holiday to Cyprus when I was 12 or so. Whilst we all enjoyed the holiday, it did get pretty boring just sitting around by the pool all day. After than I came to realise that I would never be one for beach holidays and that, despite my previous pangs of jealousy or whatever, I wouldn't have swapped those holidays in Gairloch, Lochinver and Orkney for anything...well, maybe the Gairloch one, I got the shits.

The Dr. Lapdance Theorem

Do you think that pub quiz team name sounds like a late 80's American Prog-Rock band? or is it just me?

Tonight was one of the better pub quizzes I've attended. The only real point of contention was the entire pub picking Bob Barker as the answer to "Who presents the American version of 'The Price is Right'?" and then being told that it is now hosted by Drew Carey. You may ask why a pub full of students knew who the host of that program was?..

"The Price is Wrong, bitch"

Anyway, the whole thing finished ridiculously close with 6 teams being spread over 1 point. The Dr. Lapdance Theorem finished joint 3rd, and won a box of Cadbury's fingers for their troubles. It's not quite as good as winning Spiderman masks, but very little is.

At least I went outside today...

A marked improvement on yesterday if I do say so myself.

Today was spent mostly sitting listening to the football on the radio. None of this fancy streaming of games on the web for me. Don't get me wrong, I love watching football and I do make use of the whole streaming thing at times, but watching live football on a Saturday afternoon (unless I'm at the game) just isn't right.

I think listening to games will always hold a certain appeal to me. Something to do with relying on another person to tell you whats happening and only being able to judge the game on the reactions of the commentator and the crowd (which always seem louder on the radio than on TV), and of course never really knowing whether that shot went in or slid past the post until the commentator regains some composure. And, of course, you would never get THIS on tv, would you?

Aberdeen are brilliant.

The lost art of doing nothing at all

I've done nothing today. Absolutely nothing. It's not a bad thing as I didn't plan on doing anything, echoed by my lack of any alarms set this morning. I'm not even planning on leaving the shed today.

Given the weather today, I probably should have ventured outside as it looks almost like summer out there...so I've probably cursed Edinburgh to a weekend of shite weather, my bad?

I think everyone needs a day like this now and again. Just a day to close your mind off to absolutely everything, everything that I could have done today will still be there tomorrow, and I've even got Monday off aswell (thanks to this crazy system of having 2 long weekends in May...and then nothing until September...).

Enough of this, I've got Lost and Peep Show to watch tonight. Peace

A brief glossary

I thought I better do a quick glossary of some of the stuff I'll be writing about, because it saves me from doing it later...

• The Shed - This is my flat. It's not a shed.
• Shetland - Where I spent my formative years.
• Edinburgh - If you don't know where this is, then I question why you are reading this in the first place. I also live here.
• The Tree House - My work place. It's not in a tree.
• Nelly, G and Co - My 3 flatmates.
• Ghostie, Mousey and Johnson - My 3 other flatmates that may or may not be figments of my/our imagination
• Roy Beer - My home brew
• Aberdeen FC - They hold my heart, and regularly kick the shit out of it.
• Hollyoaks - One half of the Twin Pillars of Early Evening TV
• Neighbours - The other half of the Twin Pillars of Early Evening TV

There will likely be more, I promise to explain as I go along.

The night...begins...

Ok so. I'm gonna try this blogging malarky again.

Why?

Well, truth be told, I've been thinking about starting it again for a while but the main reason for not bothering my arse to do it was that I didn't really know anyone else who blogged, so it seemed pretty fruitless. However, in the past couple of weeks, a couple of friends (Paul and Simon) have started/restarted blogging (links to the side). So I think I may give this a decent push now, I figure if I force myself to update this (almost) daily for about a month (it seems fitting that I start on the 1st of May) then I might actually stick at it this time. In an ideal world, this will be a roaring success, I'll turn it into a book and make millions from selling the tv rights to ITV2.

So, in this blog, you can expect to see me talking about are (but not limited to):

• Whatever nonsense I have been watching/reading/listening to
  
• My musings about the latest disaster to hit Aberdeen Football Club
• My severe dislike of tabloid newspapers, and my related addiction to buying tabloid newspapers (and that includes the Metro)
• General computer game stuff and about how amazing I am at them. All of them.
• Public transport

Sod it, I can't be bothered outlining anymore stuff that I "might" talk about. Hows about I write it and you read it? Deal?