Snooker and Inauguration

Ok well first of all I have to say sorry for not doing my blog for the last couple of days, but to be honest I haven't really done that much.

Ronnie O'Sullivan won his 4th snooker masters on Sunday, much to Matt's delight, it was a cracking game.

On Monday we went to Margaret's, the local snooker hall, to have a game or two, unfortunatley I am absolutley terrible! I am so bad that the only time I could make the cue ball hit any other ball (which was very rare) the other ball would shot off in completly the wrong direction, leading to me not scoring any points. I'm also vertically challenged so being able to reach some of the shots on such a big table was really hard. Matt very kindly took me home after about 45 minutes as I couldn't bring my self to carry on playing, well actually I flatly refused. When I look back now I can kind of see the funny side, but at the time I just wanted the earth to open up and swallow me!

The problem is I find things so embarrasing, evreryone tells me I shouldn't that I should just carry on and not let it affect me, which sounds easy but it really isn't. I really wish I didn't feel like this but it's just so hard. When it happens I alwys feel like I want to drop dead, melodramatic I know but thats how it makes me feel. I hate the thought of people laughing at me and Matt tells me that they aren't and to just ignore how I feel, which I know again sounds easy but honestly it isn't. I know when I look back that people aren't laughing at me it's just so hard to control at the time. I really wish I could explain it better as no one understands when I try to tell them what it feels like.

Well after that we came back to the flat and bummed around for the rest of the day. Mum emailed me Lisa's Christmas thank you letters, so I finished off mine and sent them back to her, now we can get them printed and sent off.That night we watched a program called Big Chef takes on Little Chef, it's about Heston Blumenthal taking Little Chef back to it's former glory.

Everything about the higher management screamed out Woolworths, which I think rather annoyed Matt as he was sat there trying to watch it and I kept saying Woolworths this and Woolworths that, OMG I sound like Triggy aargh (a woman we worked with who did everbody's head in). The top man of Little Chef wants to change everything completely but he's not listening to needs or wants of his customers or staff (they don't even have some sort of pan to cook scarmbled egg in they have to cook it either on a griddle or in a microwave!), to be honest he was a complete idiot, which seems to be a general job description for higher management!

The more we've watched it the more it seems Little Chef are using this as some sort of advertising ploy, but I personally don't think it's giving them the sort of publicity any company needs, as I think they are just showing their customers that their opinions dont count, but hey that's just my opinion.

On Tuesday morning I got woken up by my phone going off, which scared the living daylights out of me. It was a lady called Ellen from Age Concern, who runs the events department, phoning about the voluntary work that Amanda from Edutainment had set up for me. So I start on Thursday, I can't wait it'll be great to have something to do. I just hope I get a paid job soon as I really can't wait to be earning some money again. There's just nothing around at the moment, unless I want to be a carer, which I really couldn't do, and I have a lot of respect for those who do those jobs.

After prising myself out of gorgeously warm and comfortable bed, and then out of a beautifully warm bath, I watched a couple of films. The first one was Spiderwick Chronicles, I got it free in May when I went on an Entertainment Roadshow for Woolworths. It was quite a fun day out, no general public for one thing, it's a shame there won't be another one.

I had volunteereed to drive, as the roadshow was up in Reading. On the day I met Carrie from Newport, Emma from Shanklin, Shapla from Ryde and Kathryn from Cowes at the end of Ryde Pier, it was really nice to be able to put faces to the names and voices I had often spoken to over the phone. We took the Fast Cat over to Portsmouth and then made our way to the Portsmouth store where I had a hire car waiting, paid for by Woolworths. It was a lovely new black Vauxhall.

Once we had managed to get in the car,as there was no key hole, and then slowly negotiated my way out of the car park, I really didn't want to scratch it and who ever had parked the car in the first place had parked it right in front of a Bifa bin and someone else had parked stupidly close at the other end, we set off for Reading. The car was certainly differnt to drive, for a start it had 6 gears and the indercators were on the opposite side to my Corrola, which I didn't find out until going round a round about with my windscreen wipers going and people honking their horns at me. The stalks where also touch sensitive, so you only had to tap them to get them to work, I'm used to having to pull and push mine, so that was a bit of a problem to start with.

Now I should say that my only other experience of driving on the mainland (other than the one time I had a potter around Portsmouth with Matt), it took me half an hour to get out of Southampton. After taking the wrong route, due to talking to much and not paying enough attention, then ending up in the city center continuosly missing my turning and subsequntly leading to Mum having to get out and asks some blokes in a garage for directions.

Well this time we did take the wrong route out of Portsmouth, but after asking some guys at a petrol staion, who had very strong Indian accents, for directions we found the hotel. The next problem we had was that we had to park in a car park in a shopping precinct, and we couldn't find our wait out from the shops, so we had to ask a member of staff for directions in there as well! Can you tell we don't really leave the island much, lol!

Thankfully there was still some breakfast left, the hotel had made us croissants with cheese and tomato, very yummy, and much needed coffee, as to be able to get to the meeting, which started at 9.30, we'd had to be up at 4 am!

Well it all got under way. There where Ent. Spec's. there from 3 differnt areas and one of the first thing Andy, the souths EUK rep, did was to give an award to the best Ent. Spec. from each area. Cowes won from our area. They got t-shirts and dvd's, everyone was rather jealous of the free dvd's.After a lot of boring chat we broke up for lunch, provivded again by the hotel. I had Cottage Pie, veg and olives, weird mix I know but I love olives, and a fruit cocktail for dessert.

After lunch we spoke to a rep from Nintendo, who was useless, his response to anything we asked him was "it depends upon the demand", I'm not to sure if he realised that the demand for anything Nintendo is huge.We also spoke to a rep from EA games, he was great, he could give us decent answers to all our questions and gave us a free demo of spore creature creator. Then just before we left Andy handed out a goodie bag of dvd's to each person there, well except those that had won the award for best ent.spec. as it was the same dvd's! We got 27 Dresses, Spiderwick Chronicles and Gavin and Stacey season 1.

Well the journey back was terrible. We got so lost it was unbelievable, and to make matters worse we'd had a phone call half way through the day to say the ferries had been cancelled as the weather was really bad!I still don't know how we managed to find our way back, we just kind of stummbled across differnt places we recognised and ended up in Porstmouth!We dropped the car back off at the Porstmouth store then went back to the Fast Cat, where thankfully they had resummed service. Back at work the next day when telling Cat about what happened and what we came away with well she wasn't to happy. Cat had gone to the roadshow the previous year where they didn't get any food and only came away with a catalogue!

Anyway back to Spiderwick Chronicles, I think Freddie Highmore (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Finding Neverland) is a fantastic actor. He plays Jared and Simon Grace, twin brothers, and if I hadn't looked it up on IMDb I would still think that he had a twin in real life, even Liam thought it was 2 people, which I think shows how good he is. I hope when Daniel Radcliffe can pull it off when he has to do it for Harry Potter. I also watched Penelope with James McAvoy (Chronicles of Narnia, Atonement) who I think is a great actor and very good looking.

Around 3 o'clock I made my way over to Mum's, driving down to the high school and back first just in case Elena was still walking up. When I got in however Elena was sat on the settee and had been for about 10 minutes! Mum was watching the latest episode of House, and had also just put some washing on, the previous night Dad had fitted some new shock absorbers as the old ones had had it. It was still rather load when I walked in but once it had got more into the cycle it quietened down loads.

We were supposed to go to Newport today, Mum had invited me in her last email, but I hadn't read the email, which was sent Monday night, until Tuesday morning, so I took the tomorrow in the email being Wednesday. We have now decided to go on Wednesday after Elena finishes school, just so we have a bit more time.

Elena made me some of Dad's wonderful chicken soup and homemade bread, it was so tasty. We sat and ate it whilst watching Poirot, one of my favourite tv programs. Dad came in just after 5.30 and I asked him if I could get a lift in to Newport with him on Thursday morning, as parking is quite expensive, well not as bad as on the mainland, and I have no idea about how long I'm going to be there. I had a quick look on the Cineworld website to see if we could go and watch Inkheart after Dad finsihes work on Wednesday, only to find out that it's only playing at 4 cinemas on the mainland now, I'm so gutted as I really wanted to watch it and I know Dad did too!

When I got back home Matt had made tea, chilli con carne, and we watched the next installment of Big Chef takes on Little Chef, which was even worse than the previous one. Heston has actually walked out now as Little Chef won't commit to anything he asks, furthering both his and my thoughts that it is just a marketing scheme, but we'll see on the next episode, perhaps they'll prove me wrong.

Tuesday also saw the inauguration of Barack Obama, I hope it goes really well for him, but it's not as if he can do a worse job than Bush is it!?!

Well that's it for now, I really need to go and have a bath and get ready to go shopping