Mood:  special

Our trip to London last week was more like a reunion of sorts! Marisa happened to be travelling through, as did Pearl and Damian, who happened to be staying with my cousin, Vanessa and her partner, Alex. Marisa, Pearl and Damian, I hadn’t seen since this time last year, and it was roughly almost 2 years since I’d seen Vanessa and Alex, so what a better excuse to spend a week in the capital?!

London… what can I say about London?! Most of you reading this may have already been there yourselves, so you’ll know what I’m talking about. London is big city, almost like New York. There’s people rushing everywhere at all hours of the day and night, it’s hectic, it’s chaotic, it’s fun and makes for a nice change from the lifestyle of Newcastle, up here where we live.

Newcastle Upon Tyne is about 600miles (1000km?) north of London, we’re probably the last city on the way through to Edinburgh, Scotland which is really only about an hour away by train. Newcastle is to London, what Newcastle, Australia is to Sydney, it’s smaller, less populated, has a slower pace of life and generally more like a big town then a city really… in fact come to think of it, I don’t think Newcastle even has any major high rise buildings!

Anyways I’m supposed to be talking about London! Lol

With all there is to see and do, and all the people to catch up with, myself, Clint and a friend of ours, Dave, headed down to London for 5 days, and what a busy 5 days they were! J We saw Marisa (who stayed with us at the hotel), Pearl, Damian, Vanessa and Alex, we saw a movie (I think it’s called Hippie Hippie Shake with Cillian Murphy and Sienna Miller) being made outside our hotel! We visited the London Bridge, the London Zoo, the Imperial War Museum, the O2 Arena (originally to try and get tickets to see Prince, but he was all sold out! L), the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, Soho and Leicester Square. We ate at the Hard Rock Café and Tokyo City (the best little Japanese restaurant in the entire city me thinks!) and we walked… walked… walked… walked some more…. And then walked a little more after that! Hehe I think in the short amount of time we were there, we must’ve covered at least 40 miles!!! And that’s even while using the tubes!! As much as they say the best way to see London is by foot (which is true!) I think we might’ve taken it a little too literal, but it all looked sooo close on the map!! Lol

For me, the highlight of London was catching up with everyone. I hadn’t seen Pearl, Damian and Marisa since this time last year, and as for Vanessa and Alex, well last time I saw them was when I stayed with them upon my arrival in England, almost 2 years ago now! J It was great just being able to chat about old times, and have a laugh over a pint or two – we even managed to find the perfect beer garden in a pub in Camden town, thanks to Vanessa’s advice… the weather in London was excellent, perfect for a lazy afternoon in a shady beer garden! J

And so that was London, 5 days of busy bliss, wonderful company and loads of good times… like it always does, good things must come to an end, and we had to say our farewells, check out of our cosy hotel and head back north, and back to work… Hopefully only until our next holiday, nothing planned as yet, but will keep you posted! J

Mood:  caffeinated

Eventually all the travelling had to come to an end, and after our week-long sojourn to Portugal, it was straight back to work, and straight back to the hum-drum life of trying to survive from one pay packet to the next. Although for Clint, it was straight back to trying to set up his photography business!

Clint’s a really good photographer. OK, I might be a little biased, but I think his work is excellent – he seems to take a photo and turn it into a work of art! I guess you could call him a photo artist! J Anyways I’m going off the topic…. So basically a month or so before we went to Portugal, Clint decided to pack in his unrewarding IT job with a law firm, and turn his hand to his photography. As becoming a photographer with his own business was a dream of his, I was (and still am!) happy to support his decision, even if it meant living off my piddly little salary…

I probably should point out here for those of you who don’t know that Clint and I still live with his parents. Sure, we would love to have a place of our own but up until this point it’s been impossible, even the cost of renting is just too much for us. Clint’s got a few loans to repay, and I racked up a ridiculous sized debt from travelling last year. So in a way, it’s to our benefit to be living with Bernie and Sylvia. They are both lovely which helps, although as you can imagine living with the parents/in-laws has its moments too! J

So Clint gave up his job and his focus became his photography, armed with a company name (CGLewis Photography), a good printer and some decent frames, his future business began to grow. With a couple of sales to friends and family, the ball started to roll… At the moment, we’re in the process of setting up a website that will be used as a gallery so that potential customers will be able to see his portfolio, and either chose a print they would like to purchase, or go on to commission Clint to take something more specific. We’re hoping to start selling his current prints at the markets in the lead up to Christmas too! It’s all really a work in process, and it’s still early days yet, but it looks promising, and it’s really nice to see Clint happy, doing something he loves.

In the meantime, we were finding that our money just wasn’t lasting… and with Marisa, Pearl and Damian all happening to be in London at the start of September, which of course meant a trip south, it meant that Clint had to return back to his IT work for extra income. He’s now working as an IT contractor by day and photographer extraordinaire by night… Weekends now mean trips here and there taking photographs of our region, not that I mind at all! I’m usually out there by his side, armed with a little camera of my own! J Can everyone say awwwwww?! Hehe

Mood:  on fire

Almost a year to the day since travelling to Portugal with mum, Clint and I returned to the sunnier shores, this time with our friends Scott, Suzanne, Karl and Lorraine in tow.

Not only was this a summer holiday, it was the perfect way to celebrate Clint’s 32^nd birthday which happened to fall on the Saturday after we arrived. And boy did we celebrate it in style! J

The style started with the accommodation, we couldn’t have had it better really! Between the six of us, we’d managed to hire a 3 bedroom villa with pool and aircon, about a 500m walk away from the strip (the strip being the main drag of albufeira – where all the tourist watering holes are to be found) The villa was a perfect home away from home, in fact it may have even been a little better then home! I mean after all how can a terrace house in cold, wet Ashington compare to a 3 storey villa with pool, in the heat of the Algarve?!?!

After settling in, and trying out the delights of both the pool and the air conditioning, we set about on the walk to the strip to discover the culinary Portuguese delights awaiting us… it was at this point we discovered our local bar slash karaoke joint. Cheap pints (€1 = $1.50) of decent beer plus great entertainment… what more does a holiday maker need??? Hehe Ok, Ok, so some nights WE were the entertainment (a few pints = plenty of karaoke singing!) and I was even serenaded with a love song by Clint on one night too (he’s actually got a pretty decent voice!) but all in all, this became our most favourite pub, and often required a visit both on the way to the strip, and then again on the way home. J

Every day was spent relaxing in the sun, drink in hand, book in the other. Occasionally the pool provided cool relief from the heat of the sun, but that only lasted for a few minutes before it was time to sun-bake again. On the odd occasion, if we were feeling a bit energetic (occurring usually either after lunch or the 5^th beer) we managed to play pool volleyball. Although even this was a little difficult, not coz of the alcohol but rather as the depth in the pool went from really shallow to extremely deep very quickly. No matter how much we tried to even it up, those playing in the shallow end always seemed to win, funny that!

Every night was spent going out, but only after another drink and a few nibblies first! Sangria and flavoured corn snacks became our favourite start to the night, and often our favourite end too as we’d often end up having more upon our return home at night! Most nights we ended up on the strip, via our favourite pub, sampling restaurant after restaurant, although funnily enough, I don’t recall having gone into any of the clubs whilst we were there, the karaoke bar must’ve proved too appealing! Hehe

For Clint’s birthday, we spent the day doing our usual pool side reverie, and then after opening gifts (one of them was a pogo stick which proved great fun, especially after a few drinks!) and eating cake (no thanks to my can’t-blow-them-out candles! Lol) we managed to drag our sunburnt butts up to Wild and Co, the restaurant serving the best steaks on the strip. After gorging ourselves on food and plenty of great Portuguese wine, we made our way home, once again via the karaoke bar, where even our rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody was well received… must’ve been deaf persons night me thinks! Hehe

And so pretty much the holiday was going well, although very sedate… which was great, but some excitement was needed to be had, so we booked ourselves in on a Zebra Jeep Safari! A must do for anyone who visits this part of the world! We had SOOOO much fun, and had such a great time that we were all a bit disappointed to be dropped off at the villa at the end of the day! The jeep safari is pretty self-explanatory, it’s kinda like a guided tour through the Portuguese country side in a jeep, although I should probably emphasise that the majority of the safari is spent standing up in the back of the opened-top jeep, hanging on for life, trying to avoid any low-hanging trees (Oi, Oi, Oi!), getting covered in dirt from head to foot and taking loads of blurry photographs in the process! Ok, it might sound a bit dodgy but it’s not, it was probably the best laugh we had all holiday, and it was a great way to sample the scenery off the beaten track… literally! J

Well that pretty much sums up our time in Portugal… and if you ever get the chance to go, you should. It’s a wonderful country, the people are so friendly, the food is fantastic and the scenery is excellent (even from the back of a truck! Hehe). It is the perfect destination for a summer holiday, which explains why it’s so popular with the brits over here, and here’s hoping we’ll be back again next year! J

Mood:  suave

After much secrecy, and the pretence of not having anything planned, Clint whisked me away to Linden hall for a night… Linden Hall is a very old historic house, now converted to a luxury hotel, situated in the heart of the Northumberland country side, about a 30 minute drive north-west of where we live. Not only is it beautiful on the outside with lush green lawns and old oak trees, but it’s equally beautiful on the inside, with massive fireplaces and deep couches in the old bar. To make the experience even more memorable, and wonderful, Clint had booked us into a room with a 4 poster bed!! J I’d never slept in a four poster bed before, so it made for a nice surprise… although once it actually came to going to bed, having a canopy above the bed was a little off-putting – what if there were spiders up there? And what if they fell on me while I was sleeping?!?!?

Although the room was wonderful, I think my short weekend break was truly made by the dinner we had there on the Saturday night. It was excellent, top notch food, brilliant service, simply put, perfect! Funny enough, I can’t remember exactly what I had now, could be something to do with all the wine we had too I guess! ;) But I do remember it tasted delicious, all four courses of it – guess that’s what comes of a 3 rosette restaurant! J I’ve told Clint that he’s more then welcome to take me back there on any occasion… hehe

Apart from the wonderful Linden Hall stay, we spent most of the Sunday driving around the country side of Northumberland, around the penines, exploring little country villages and stopping to buy local produce from the farmers markets…. All in all, it was a really truly wonderful birthday. Thanks Clint! J

There was only one problem with having such a wonderful birthday present like that… how was I to top it when it came to Clint’s birthday?????? Hmmmm… I know! A trip for us and his mates to Portugal!

Mood:  hungry

After the fun of Borovets, there was little to no travel to be had, the finances needed to recover, and I was still looking for a permanent job!

From about November 2006 to April 2007, I was doing temping work as a receptionist for a company called Convergys. All well and good, until they caught wind that I was going for more permanent work (even though in an unrelated field) and so once again I found myself unemployed, or rather a lady of leisure (it sounds so much better albeit a little dodgy! Hehe) Eventually after a couple of interviews, I was offered a job as a data manager for clinical trials, to work at the RVI hospital in Newcastle but employed by Newcastle Upon Tyne University. I got the job, and this is what I now spend my working days doing!

It’s all pretty self-explanatory really, I’m a data manager therefore I manage data. J Actually it’s probably a bit more complicated then that, but basically The Clinical Research Facility where I work runs clinical trials for various sponsors (these include pharmaceutical companies like Glaxosmith Kline, Roche, etc) and for every patient in every trial, I look after all the data that comes in, making sure all the data is up to date, correct and valid before passing all the information on to a delegated company representative. Once the data has gone through to the company, I might get a few queries on it if things don’t make sense, and it’s up to me to be able to sort all these queries out with the help of doctors, patient notes, etc. The rest of my job is made of up filing, every single piece of correspondence, information, anything specific to that stuffy has to go into a study-specific folder (well doh! Hehe) and it’s up to me to do that too, although the amount of paperwork one trial can generate is ridiculous! I’m working on 15 trials at the moment, so go figure! J Needless to say I write this from among a jungle of lever-arched files….

So that’s what I do. Nothing exciting really, but it is very interesting. Plus there are some good benefits to working for the university, like the 38 days a year holiday I get! J Now just to be able to use them all!! Hehe

 So after a few chaotic first days of work, I slowly started getting the hang of things, oh yeah and I had a birthday too! J