A jolly old time in Great Yarmouth

This is the first update in a while...
I booked a house in Newport, Great Yarmouth over the Christmas period for a group of NZers orphaned from their families back in Godzone. All in we had 17 people staying at the house for the full 4 days we were there. There were many different groups of people I know from different times/places, but as is the way with NZers there was generally only 1 or 2 degrees of seperation btween most people, often 2 or 3 different connections. I defy you to say that NZ isn't that small!
All in all we had a great time, the house was cosy, pokey and thankfully warm, especially when we cranked the open fire in the living room.

The guitar came out a few times

Wakey wakey! it's Christmas!

Steve looking pensive

Christmas dinner worked out well, we cooked everything pretty much from scratch which was quite the achievement considering it was probably the first time most of us had taken charge of xmas dinner!

Twister made an appearance...

Great Yarmouth itself deserved a walk around on Boxing day, well maybe it didn't, but we did one anyway.

the boys think they can make it as a boy band now

Things got a little leery later on!

James testing people's boundaries...

Post xmas, I headed up to Scotland for a nosy which will be the topic of the next post.

Oxford

[UPDATE - the photos are playing up on this post for some reason and the RH side is getting trimmed off, if you click on the photos you can see an enlarged view of the whole photo]

I have realised that I have been here in Oxford for about 2 months now and I haven't mentioned it at all on this blog!

Well, I'm living in a nice share house in the south of the city with 2 other guys and a cat. The place is nice and pretty cool but not overly exciting on the social front, those are the breaks I guess.

My work is working out really well, the company is really onto it and everyone is really cool. We're based in a small business park (or a petting zoo as Luke likes to call it) on the edge of a small village outside Oxford.

Here is a picture of my office:

and the view out the window:


Here are some pictures I took over the autumn:











I've met lots of cool people here now, I went to a pot luck dinner arranged through couchsurfing not long after I got here, now I know lots of people through that. We meet up fairly regularly for meals, drinks and the odd games evening. I've even found a few kiwis here too, they're everywhere!

That's about it really, I've been basically alternating weekends here and away lately, I could probably put more photos up but in reality I can't be bothered and you're probably not that interested!

I hope you are well wherever you are.

cheers,
Lucas

Trying on Tryfan

Last weekend Luke, Matt, Scott, Ricard & myself went to North Wales to climb Tryfan, one of the mountains - the first official event for PACMAN International.
Luke, Matt & I met in Bicester (where I work) and drove up to Manchester where we were staying at Luke's & met the other boys who arrived from Edinburgh & Bristol respectively.

After a relatively quiet Friday evening in (playing werewolf until 1am) we rose early and drove into Wales to climb Tryfan.
We were not quite sure what to expect - one of my workmates asked if we had ropes, a guy at a sports shop asked incredulously if Luke was planning on climbing with the brand new trainers under his arm (because "thank god - they are just not suitable"), to which Luke replied "no", which I think we all know was a lie.

The weather forecast however was good and we decided that we would climb within our abilities and if anyone thought it got too hard we would turn back.

Upon arriving at the base of the mountain - sorry "mountain" - we found it to be shrouded in cloud and distinctly not fine. After confirming that we were infact in the right place, we started up the hill at a sprightly pace, ignoring the jokes people were making about climbing in trainers as we powered past.

Scotty trying out his pensive pose

We made good time up the hill, picking some pretty good lines and only having to backtrack on a few occasions. The best thing about the mountain is you can basically make it as hard or easy a climb as you like depending on which way you go. We made it challenging.

Ricard got sick of Matt's posing and decided to push him off the mountain

Spot the goat

Ricard: "¿por dónde?
Matt & Luke: "That way"

We decided at this point to take a photo of us at "the top" just in case it got too difficult

After reaching the top we had some lunch, bantered with our Liverpudian climbing buddies, didn't jumping from Adam to Eve becuase of the wet & resisited the urge to scold the Czech guy who ditched his diabetic Mrs on the way up so he could go the hard way (we looked after her) we made our way back down the mountain. Oh, yeah, and we took some photos...

Luke celebtrating on Adam & Eve, well just Adam actually

Ricard living on the edge

After skirting a couple of bluffs and a few smelly billy goats we made our way to the bottom where we jumped into the PACCar (read: my Fiesta) which guided us back to Manchester, via a nice little pub with a lovely barmaid - who we taught how to play werewolf...

Back in Manc, we had a quick sauna at Luke & Sarahs before capping the weekend with a massive night out at a pretty darn good Manchester club.

All in all, I would have to say this was one of those perfect weekends, everything went like clockwork, there was good banter, good company & general good times. Long may it continue.

Reading Festival

Safely back in the cheerful clutches of England, I managed to get myself sorted with a flat and a car in Oxford, I also found time to once again attend Reading Festival (my third festival festival of the summer).

I went to this festival with my Welsh mates Dave & Jonny, and a whole raft of other people.

One of the best aspects of this festival was the '90's rock line up – recently reformed headliners Rage Against The Machine were the definite draw cards for me;other bands like Metallica, Tenacious D & Queens of the Stone age were the icing on the cake.

On the first night Cage The Elephant, an American band asked if they
could (and did) perform a live set in the middle of our campsite, we
got a free gazebo out of it too!

The wolfman turned up and tried to eat a roadie

Me, Georgia & Dave

A ginger-kid trying to steal himself a soul

Dave rocking out hardcore

We got creative and made a glowstick fire, it didn't keep us warm

Team photo

The aftermath

Despite the fun times had at this festival with our diverse group of people I have to say that the organisers could learn so much from Roskilde and other European Festivals! Simple things like having wider walkways through the campsite remove the problems of the scrum-like crowds that plague Reading.

Is that me being picky? yea - I'm such a Europhile!

Big Swede, little Swede

After saying goodbye to the sunny, sandy climes of Kefalonia I made my way back to Athens from where I launched myself across the continent to Göteborg, Sweden. The purpose of this part of the journey was to meet my recently new niece Penny, and my mum sister & brother-in-law of course!
Soon after arriving we made our way to the summer house to catch up with Clas' family, his brother Henrik is also a newly crowned proud father and it was time for the new cousins to become acquainted.

The proud mum

The proud mum

The proud uncle

I managed to time my visit impeccably such that I could go to Way Out West, a local music festival at which the Flaming Lips were performing. The Flaming Lips are a band I have wanted to see live for quite some time and I could not resist this opportunity.

The set opener, Wayne the lead singer crowd surfing in a giant blow up ball...

They also had a whole lot of people dressed as Teletubbies & a big green alien

I saw many other decent bands there, including the most excellent Neil Young.

Göteborg was the final stop on my European summer jaunt, unfortunately from there it was back to England and the looming concept of gainful employment...