Mike and Joey get older

This week has fortunately been a productive week in terms of uni work. I now have two projects finished and one project folder complete. I’ve been into uni this week (monday to be precise) in order to hand in my DPR report. Hand it in early no less. Of course this proved impossible because at this ‘not at all imporant time in general uni life’ they’ve decided to move the office into a different building. Not too bad you’d think, especially as i turned up between 1:30 and 4:30 to hand in my work, as the notices say the old office will be open to take in work at that time. Only they weren’t open. Nor could i find where the new office was supposed to be, so i gave up. While i was there I heard off Mike and offered him a lift home as he’d just finished college, on my way past the student union (where there were a load of people sitting drinking in the glorious sunshine) i bumped into Chaz and had a quick chat. Now i thought i was up the river without much in the way of a paddle but it turns out i’m not actually doing too bad. Chaz has only finished one project, not started the other two and has no documentation done. This surprised me because Chaz is an organised kind of guy when he’s not out all night drinking or playing the dohl (indian drum). What’s even worse (or better) is that Chaz informed me that Jig was in an even worse state, with no finished projects or documentation at all. Well, as much as i felt sorry for the guys it did lift my spirits a bit to realise i wasn’t doing as badly as i’d thought. Just as i was talking to Chaz i spotted Stu walking toward me and we got chatting while Chaz rushed off to find lecturers. Turns out Stu’s luck is even worse - his PC has died, from a suspected virus. All three of his HDD are corrupted, and he’s lost nearly all his uni work, which means he’s got to take his PC in to the uni to see if they can recover anything, and if not he’s got to file for extenuating circumstances and has till august to re-do everything. What’s particularly bad is he’s an animation student, so much of what he’s been doing will have been slow painstaking stuff. smiley icon: sad

Having left Chaz and Stu at uni to get on with their respective tasks i dashed over to pick up Mike, who by this time had been waiting a good 15min longer than anticipated (sorry mate!). We got half way home (via an alternate route as the A50 was traffic ridden) and were discussing whether or not to go to the pub early while the sun was out. As we said that i noticed that right in front of us the sky was very very grey. Thunder storm grey. About a minute later we saw the first fork of lightening touch the ground and both released a ‘weeeeyyyyy!!!’ of manly delight at it and the accompanying rumble. Seconds later it started raining. Hard. Then it rained very hard, my wipers couldn’t keep up with it and i had to slow down to a crawl. Then it threw down some more lightening and as we got into Cheadle itself the rain stepped up a gear. The roads were no longer wet, they were flowing. As we made out way down Butlers Bank Mike got his phone out in a desperate attempt to capture the scene around us. We crawled down the road only to see that the wall on the right which supports the hill (the road is a cutaway) had turned into a waterfall. We came to the road next to the potter, and by this time it was flash flood ahoy - the water was so deep you could no longer see the pavement, it was all covered with rushing water. The cars in the Potter car park had water halfway up their wheels. Needless to say we drove around in this, and my urge to wheelspin and send waves of water flying up proved too much. It transpired the day after that Cheadle had experienced a very very isolated flash flood, where half a months average rainfall fell inside two hours, and most of that inside the first hour.

Monday was also of course Mike’s birthday, and once Kate and Myself had delivered him our present (a print-on-canvas of a lighthouse scene) we ended up at the Spotgate for a drink. While there much fussball was played, and at one point i hit the ball so hard it flew off the table and behind the bar. Later, when Chris and Joey arrived i was informed that in a ‘real’ game of fussball spinning is not allowed, you have to keep hold of the rod and not just spin. Turns out it’s a fairly hard habit to get out of. It was good seeing Chris and Joey again, especially as i’ve not really seen either in what must be getting on for a month or more, A relaxing night was had, and right at the end i realised that the Tuesday would in fact be Joeys 20th. woops! After the pub Matt, Kath, Mike, Kate and myself went to get food, we then dropped Kate off at home as she was tired, having been up since 5am. Matt went home as it was work in the morning and Mike and myself stayed at mine for a little while to watch an old Transformers video. Man original transformers were cool! We watched the birth of the HeadMasters. Ahh, sweet memory. smiley icon: wink

Tuesday night Joey, Chris, Daws and Kath were at the Red Lion for a drink, and at 10:30 i eventually joined them, having finsihed up one of the last sections on my folder and finally gotten to have a shower. I enjoyed the night, and it was good to just chill out and get to talk to everyone. I have a horrible suspicion however that i never did wish Joey a happy birthday, i dont remember saying it, although i do remember talking about what she’d had. smiley icon: worry A belated and extremely apologetic ‘Happy Birthday Joey’ if that was the case.