Changes

Well. I know I say this every time, but I really need to start updating more, because I’ve got a hell of a lot to talk about now.

First and foremost, you may have noticed a new header and a new title for the blog. Wrong End of the Country was nice while it was relevant, but it hasn’t been for the last two months, and while I was listening to Minor Threat I realised that Out of Step still pretty much sums me up in handy quote form. So there it is! The blog has a new name. That didn’t take me long to sort out, did it?

But that’s by no means the biggest news. Remember Jess from the last entry, the poor lass who foolishly travelled over from the north-east to visit yours truly? Well I’m delighted to be able to say that I can now call her my girlfriend!

I’m bloody smiling again, even just writing that. We both readily admit to acting like 14 year old schoolkids around each other, basically the sort of people we’d generally retch at if it wasn’t us. Yes, we’re hypocrites. Yes, we probably sicken most people who see us. No, we don’t care.

It probably doesn’t take a degree in deduction to, erm, deduce that we’ve seen each other again since the last entry. This time I made the trip to Durham, for the bargain price of £43.30 thanks to the good people at National Express. Coach journeys still aren’t fun, for the record, and are still oddly tiring considering I was sat down reading Marilyn Manson’s autobiography or watching House on my laptop for the most part.

Commence the cuddly hypocrisy. I got to see her favourite coffee shop haunts this time, namely Caffé Nero (but in Durham, so it was new and exciting. Plus the frappés they made us were way too big so we got given cupfuls of overflow. AND we used my Nero card to get one of them free, so we basically got four drinks for the price of one! Longest. Parentheses. Ever) and Esquires, which I was reliably informed sold coffee by the bucket.

And the cooking we did. Oh, Lord, the cooking. As promised a few days earlier, Jess made her mutant pie, which I suppose is closest to a shepherd’s pie in taste and aesthetics, but this one basically involved whatever was closest to hand in the cupboard/fridge at the time. But in a display of inexplicable culinary delight not seen since Chris somehow managed to make corned beef, beans and mashed potato containing literally everything in his flat into a gourmet masterpiece, it was bloody brilliant.

The day after we somehow successfully made sushi, which I will prove with a picture to follow this paragraph. I’m quite impressed we managed it actually, I envisaged us ending up spooning a mess of sticky rice, soy sauce, mangled salmon and mutilated cucumber into our faces, but it worked a treat! And lasted right up until the next day when I made something involving chicken and noodles, which I’m told was also very nice.

Looks pretty good, if I do say so myself

Aside from cooking, a few other things to report about the trip. Durham in incredibly nice, and very similar to Lancaster in that it’s hilly as all hell and features a castle and cathedral perched atop a big-ass hill overlooking a river. This means I really like the place. And its residents, if Jess’ housemates (Alix, David, Evanna and Fiona, I really hope that’s everyone!) are anything to go by. Sadly, they’re not everyone I encountered.

Fast forward to Thursday night (day 3 of my trip, the night before I left) and we went out for a drink at somewhere called 24. For those several of you who don’t know, 24 is a student bar which seems to be in a hollowed out house, coincidentally number 24. Granted this wasn’t an all-night bender, we were only planning on being there for one drink before myself and Jess slunk home so we could get an early night before I had to catch my bus the following morning. Yeah, right. We stayed up for ages watching Paranormal Activity. Well, I say ‘we’. I watched it. Jess cowered under the duvet rather sweetly for most of it.

Anyway, there was a large group of rugby players already there when we got in. Not the salt of the earth rugby league players you get over here, oh no. These were posh boy rugby league players with greek letters on the backs of their team shirts and an unquenchable desire for Pimm’s. If that wasn’t bad enough, one of their mates, wearing RED JEANS, was passed out on the itBox. They managed to eventually wake him by chucking booze, pizza and straws at him, before he started wandering around in that sickening aimless way drunks do.

I was fairly sure he was going to be sick down our backs. What he actually did, after staggering in and out of the door three or four times, was walk past, pull a face that I think was supposed to be attractive, and stroke Jess’ hair! I’d been out in Durham for no more than 15 minutes and someone actually stroked my girlfriend’s hair! Luckily he pissed off and the rest of the short venture out was very enjoyable.

That slight hitch aside, yeah, great trip. If you can’t tell I’m absolutely made up, and incredibly happy to be able to say Jess is mine, all mine! Hopefully the feeling’s mutual. And all this over someone I met through Twitter. Suffice to say, social media never ceases to amaze me, and it would seem I owe it rather a lot now. Cannot. Stop. Smiling.

There are other things that I should be mentioning, I’m sure there are, but none of them spring immediately to mind at present, so rather than wrack my brains over them I’ll save them for another blog when they do inevitably pop back into my head. For now, I’ll leave you with one last bit of lovey-dovey trash, in the form of this picture.

Sickbags are placed to the right of your chairs
Kev