Poetry, Procrastination, Problems and

I have been laughing myself silly all this morning.

Yesterday night, after blogging, I went downstairs to eat, and met the first of the other course members, a bloke called Dave. Turns out he spent a lot of time in my old home town - small world hey?

Anyway, this morning, I went down, booked a big taxi, had some bacon etc and spotted Dave in the breakfast hall. He'd already found another lady on our course, and offered a lift to the pair of us. Well, fair enough, so I went out and cancelled the taxi (was going to offer to share see) and got told a call had just come in, that someone was going to come meet us "soon". Well, of course, I asked how soon is soon. "uhhh, dunno." Ok.

So, I go back to where Dave and Julie are sitting, and tell them of this development. Being the practical soul I am, I hold up a letter with the company logo clearly emblazoned on it, and others on our course started heading over.

By 9:45, we start wondering - where's this person. By 10, I go ask if there's been any more information. No, we just have to wait in the foyer. Ok.

10:10 - there's been a call. No-one's coming to pick us up, and they'll meet us there.

Right. So that left us 20 minutes to pile into cars (fortunately, we'd been sat discussing for just such an eventuality) and try to drive there with the incredibly pathetic directions.

So, there's Dave, Julia, Gareth and I piled into Dave's car, and we're following the girls, because they've got GPS and have programmed the place into it. And boy oh boy. We switched lanes, cut people up, got a siren blast from a police car, went the wrong way, and made a royal hitch up of it, following them. And then we discovered there was no designated parking, when I finally spotted where it was we were supposed to be.

So we spent another 10 minutes getting each other completely lost, until Dave did the sensible thing and asked a local pedestrian. We ended up getting off in Number 2 Dolphin Centre Carpark, and arriving (8 of us) at the course, 45 minutes late.

Well, what can you do besides laugh? Our car were just falling about - we couldn't work out how to get across the road. The girls ran ahead and had fun trying to climb the fence in tights and high heels; when we finally stopped laughing long enough, Gareth pointed out the subway.

And it went from there - Dave's chair bust and nearly deposited him on the floor, and the icebreaker went badly wrong for Julie. We were supposed to describe our pets, and favourite colour. Julie described her dog as old, grey, whiskery and smelly.

Which was then that we found out this was a psychological thing, and was supposed to be the way we describe ourselves.

Well, I creased myself laughing (had to put my head on the table) and Dave was in hysterics, and Gareth was laughing because we were, which set the rest of us off even more.

I'd put "scaly, spiky and loyal" - which I guess is kind of appropriate, even though I was describing Kyle. Could be worse, I could have said cold-blooded and greedy!

And on the way HOME. Oh dear oh dear. Well, Dave took the lead back to the carpark, and I'm following them going "we're going the wrong way, we need carpark two. We're going the wrong way..." Guess what? We ended up at the top of CARPARK ONE. Hehehehe. What a surprise hey? We eventually managed to get back to ours, going the wrong way first and losing the girls, apparently they went off shopping for a bit so they didn't realise we had actually got lost (thank goodness).

And, because they were confident of the route and have the TomTom - we followed them again. We ended up cutting lanes, narrowly missing a people carrier, going round a roundabout the grand total of TWICE (I said as we approached "I bet we do an Arc de Triumph here..." Love it when I'm proved right) going the wrong way off the roundabout and having to go round ANOTHER one to go back ON the roundabout to go the right way (some comments were made about women drivers at this point, from Julie too I hasten to add...) and finally made it back to the hotel.

We found a lovely space, RIGHT outside the doors, and waited whilst the girls couldn't work out how to lock their own damn car. I had my hands on my knees gasping for breath by this point, as the lights kept flashing on and off, and they kept unlocking it every time. Oh yeesh...

And we got homework. I'm studying. Can you tell?

I gotta give another shout to my mum for being great and talking me through some issues, thank you. Here's one for Redline - you know what it is you want, and you can have everything you want, you just have to take that step. You've heard my opinion, get the books checked over first, and worry about the rest later. I'm with you 100% on whatever you decide, ok?

Today's most remarkable Quote: "That moment when you fall apart inside to something rare and so gifted, that golden chime of a heartbeat that races with the leaf as it floats to the ground in autumn, the parade of carnival spites the elements of a dark bank holiday monday sky...... enjoy yourself as doris day and terry hall once sang." - Jon. Dude... that's... wow.