In which Jamie and Tinks go to York, and have a nice time

[supertinks]

Well, what a weekend. Let me update you fully on what’s been going on.

 

I haven’t been all that well most of the week – a very sore throat, dizziness, temperature all over the place, that sort of thing. On Thursday it got so bad I had to leave work early. I’d been trying for days to get a doctors appointment, but no-one would give me one, so Jamie took me up to the hospital to see if they could help. They couldn’t.
 
So Friday morning, I finally get an emergency appointment with my doctor. I had to wait for nearly an hour at the surgery after my appointment time before I got in to see the doctor! He took one look at my throat and declared that I had a very severe strep infection, and put me on antibiotics.

 

So we left the doctors, went home via the pharmacy, then packed our suitcase for the weekend and left again. We went to the picture framing place with Jamie’s double bass painting, so I can get it framed as a Christmas present for him. Then, to the dentist.
 
Where I had a root canal. Not pleasant at all. As soon as he said the words “root canal”, all I could think of in my head was Bill Murray in “Little Shop of Horrors” and I had Steve Martin’s song running through my head the whole time. Scary. Jamie didn’t enjoy it too much either cos of the excessive usage of needles.

 

Then came the nightmare 5 hour drive to York, through fog, and darkness, and traffic, and road works and the bloody M1.
 
But then we got there, and there was a nice hotel and a comfy hotel bed waiting for us. We had a quick snooze, cos we were very tired. And then went into town to meet up with some people in the pub.
 
Friday night’s entertainment was provided by Chris Meadows – he dragged a few people out for drinks and stuff. We met him in the Yorkshire Terrier on Stonegate, where he was waiting with Matt K, some American guy called Rob, some other students who I didn’t know, and Iain, Mark and Lissy. It was, for the most part, a bunch of Vampire LARPers. This meant they annoyed the hell out of Jamie a lot. Lissy was particularly rude to him, and Iain, Mark, Lissy, Matt (and the later addition of James Littlewood) behaved in a traditionally cliquey manner and I hardly spoke to them. We mostly chatted with the American guy, Chris, Jabba and the other bloke (possibly a Will).
 
We moved from the Terrier to the Lendal Cellars, where we had an amusing encounter with a very large, very drunk woman (although I use that term loosely) from Newcastle. My first encounter with her (I can only really say her because I first met her in the ladies loo) was highly entertaining, as I was waiting for a free cubicle in the loos at the time. She came in, started banging on both the doors, and accusing the occupants of having sex in the loos and God knows what else besides. It went on for about 5 mins. I just went to the loo and escaped as quickly as I could, although I did laugh when I saw the expression on the face of one of the girls when she came out of the cubicle, after having been subjected to this torrent of comedic drunken yelling.
 
I thought I’d escaped when I left the loo, only to discover this woman and her cronies sitting on the next table to us! She proceeded to keep talking to us in her loud, Geordie drunken slur for a very long time.
 
Then Chris et al decided they needed to go to Toffs for some dancing. Jamie and I politely refused, as it was getting late and we were tired. So they all went dancing, and we walked back to our hotel and slept.

 

I had a nice lie in the next morning, but Jamie got up early so he could go downstairs and stuff himself full of the breakfast provided by the hotel. We then set off to be touristy. We got the bus into town as we were feeling lazy, and wandered around the continental market for a bit, while I nibbled on a crepe and we woke up a bit. Then we went down to Coppergate, and round the Jorvik Viking Centre, which was much fun. After that, it was wandering round town over to the Minster, where we wandered around some more, and then went up the tower. Hundreds of tiny spiral staircase steps. It’s a nightmare. The view is worth it when you get to the top of course, but it’s killed my legs entirely.
 
After that, we went in search of food, and discovered the Festival of Angels. Now I knew this happened every year, and every year I lived in York I missed it. So it was a pleasant surprise to just stumble across it like that. Loads of ice sculptures in the street, and every shop turned out with a stall selling mulled wine, mince pies, beer, tacos, paella, burgers, soup, baked potatoes.. you name it. It was great! Photos are coming shortly.
 
Then we went to the pub and met up with Katherine, and proceeded to the cinema to see The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, which got mixed reactions from us all. I will talk more about films later.

Saturday evening’s entertainment was a small party at Katherine’s house. Present were: Katherine, Rosie, Tom Summersell, Laurence (plus weird American [?] girl), Minigoth, Sarah (MG’s gal), Nathan, Jeff and Andy. It was very entertaining, although unfortunately Jamie got stuck in a corner with Tom talking at him for several hours, which didn’t help all that much, as Tom can be a bit irritating and overly geeky. We left there at about 12ish, and went to bed.

 

 

Next morning, I was forced to go down for breakfast with Jamie, although I only had toast (eating breakfast makes me feel sick). We checked out of the hotel, and I drove us to Granny’s house. It was really nice to see Granny, she looked a lot healthier than I was expecting, since she’s recently finished her treatment for lung cancer and has bad legs – Mum’s report of her health last time she saw her was less encouraging than what I saw yesterday. She was very pleased with Jamie, as he did a wonderful job of being pleasant and interesting and engaging to converse with. We drove her to a pub called The Old Mill for lunch, where Jamie ate a very large steak pie, I had sausage and mash and Granny surprised me by wolfing down a huge lasagne. It was very reassuring to see her with such an appetite too.
 
After dinner, we took Granny home and then left to come home. No real trouble on the roads going back, although it did get very foggy around Northampton. We saw the signs on the M1 for its closure, but had no idea why - didn’t find out about the fire until we got home. It only took about 4 and a half hours to get back too, which was nice.

 

When we did get back, we lazed about and then Jamie made me watch “Aliens” cos I’d never seen it before. (more on films in another post)

 

 

 

All in all, I had a really enjoyable weekend. It was great to see York again, and it was equally great to take Jamie there and show him York, as he’d never seen it properly before. He really enjoyed himself too (except for the few times when he got really annoyed at some of my uni acquaintances). I’m all relaxed now, and although my legs are aching like hell, I still really enjoyed it all. My illness wore off very quickly, and my tooth didn’t ache for too long either. The weather held out, it wasn’t too cold, and it was nice and sunny. It didn’t rain. Oh yeah, and we saw Ronnie O’Sullivan.

 

We’re definitely going to do it again, do different touristy stuff next time. And I think we’ll go on the train, so neither of us has to drive, as we didn’t need the car while we were there. I was pleased with the guest house, it was very comfortable. Bathroom was a bit cold, but it is Yorkshire! It was just round the corner from where I used to live, and on the way back from Katherine’s I took Jamie through campus too, so he’s seen all my old stomping ground now.

 

I need to go on holiday more often.

Comments

[raphaelcentauri.livejournal.com]

Apologies for being crap and not going to Katherine's... was feeling a bit down and not in the mood to be around people, I don't think I'd have improved your evening any further and it sounds like you had a good time anyway.
Maybe catch you next time :p