garrypettet.com

I had a really good day yesterday.

I woke up around 08:00 and chatted via Skype with my brother, Danny, back home. I hardly ever seem to make time to chat with my family which I regret so it was great to talk with him. We caught up for nearly an hour. He’s just got himself a laptop and a mobile broadband connection (as has my sister) and he’s just discovered Facebook (finally!). Hopefully we’ll be able to keep in better contact from now on.

After I said bye to Dan I drove to Glenelg and picked up a pain au chocolat for Fi’s breakfast as well as a couple of coffees from Gloria Jeans (it’s OK Garry – it won’t be long until you can have a Caffe Nero coffee…). That earned me some brownie points.

We met up with some joint friends in the parklands in the city centre for a BBQ lunch which was great. We picked up some burgers and beer before driving into the city. The park has lots of gas-powered BBQ areas dotted around the duck pond (some of which even had power sockets so you could power your stereo!) which is a great idea. It would be nice if England did that although I guess, most of the time, they would sit unused. On the subject of weather, it was beautiful yesterday. The sky was blue and the sun was shining (although I think the temperature only reached 25 degrees). After food we played a little bit of cricket and frisbee. I’m fairly rubbish at both it would seem.

We drove back home at around 18:00 only to get a text from Anit telling us that some of our new friends from the UK (Holly and Murray) were going to the Belgian Beer Cafe in the city centre for some drinks and food and did we want to go. We thought that it sounded like a hoot and so got showered, changed and caught a taxi there. We had a good night and had some nice mussels and chips. Unfortunately Murray spilled an entire glass of sparkling shiraz down Fiona’s new (and expensive) Jigsaw dress. She’s cleaned it with soda water and soaked it today and it appears to be OK, thankfully. All-in-all though it was a really pleasant night.

I start nights again tonight (three of them). For some stupid reason, I have also volunteered to work New Year’s Day (a late shift), probably because Fiona is working it I guess. Even though I get 2.5x pay I’m regretting saying I’ll work it. This means that I will finish at 08:30 on New Year’s Eve and have to be back at work at 14:00 on New Year’s Day. I must be crazy. I’m trying to work hard to save my pennies because (as it stands currently) I have two interviews for jobs in Bristol but they’re not until early January and Fiona is currently facing six months of unemployment (there are some very complicated reasons behind that). Until I know I’ve definitely got work back home – I’m being cautious with my money.