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Yesterday (or today depending who you ask) me and my girlfriend Amy celebrated our 3 year anniversary.

Awwwwwwwwwww.

We’re not married as such, but you know, as a couple you celebrate things like your first date and whatnot. And ours was three years ago yesterday. Or today. Three years on we both still disagree about whether it was the 15th (that’s what Amy claims) or the 16th (which is my claim).

This year we’re both pretty skint. Amy started uni two years after me so she wasn’t quite aware just how cash-strapped she’d be (yeah, we’re not going to Barcelona this summer, are we Amy!?) so we had to settle for zero presents, and making each other cards.

After showing me her new student house, we both sat in silence making each other cards.

I settled for a blank red card with an inside message of “because sometimes less is more. love you. rob.” which I think we can all agree is very funny. Amy’s card was much better.

After this Amy took me out to Jesmond Dene, which is a big park in Newcastle near where she lives. Given that we both have hayfever this probably wasn’t a great idea in the summer, but we suffered together. I was amazed when I got there because the place is full

of

animals

like

goats

and shit

Me and Amy are all about the animals.

After running around like children for an hour or so we retreated to Sunderland for a nap (children get tired in the sun you know) and then a meal at a nearby Indian restaurant called ‘Bengal Dream’ (the name still makes me laugh).

In hindsight, isn’t a Bengal a kind of tiger? And if so, should I feel bad about eating a bengal naan bread? … **A quick wikipedia search reveals that Bengal is actually a geographical region in South Asia near Bangladesh and India** … well there you go. Glad I wasn’t eating tiger bread.

This meal was followed, as it usually is, by a DVD or two. As we consider stupid humour to be the foundation of our relationship, Anchorman was an obvious choice. And then today Semi-Pro came out, so we dashed out to HMV - bought it - watched it - and then Amy went back to York.

Fun times. 3 years on and she still doesn’t like her picture being taken…

… 3 years on that’s still funny.

Amy turned 19 today, and we celebrated in Newcastle last night.

I know what you’re thinking and no, I didn’t buy her lessons in how not to take blurry camera photos.

I got her a ring, a necklace, ear rings, nice bath stuff (we love our bath stuff) and took her out for a nice meal/drinks. I had to step my game up after she blessed me with an Xbox 360 back in January (which consequently opened up the door for me to get my hands on GTA IV).

Happy birthday baby :).

Me and the Mrs celebrated our third Valentines day yesterday with a meal in Newcastle.

Rather unusually for us we hadn’t planned anything in advance. I was expecting to be working so we didn’t really have any intentions of doing anything and just headed into Newcastle for a meal and a film at last minutes notice.

You know you’re not in for a good night when you pick three possible films to watch (Definitely Maybe, Jumper & Over Her Dead Body) and the following happens… only a few places away from the counter a customer announcement is made over the tannoy… “Customer Announcement - the 8.45 showing of Definitely Maybe is now sold out” … “Customer Announcement - the 8.50 showing of Jumper is now sold out” … “Customer Annoucnement - the 9.00 showing of Over Her Dead Body is now sold out”…

You gotta be kidding me?

And we’d booked our meal for 10.30 so we had just short of two hours to kill. Thankfully this wasn’t, and isn’t, a problem for the two of us. Especially when there is alcohol in reaching distance.

The meal was gash too. My meal was in a bucket of grease, and we were packed in so close to the other diners that we could tell you the courses they had and the major talking points from their meal. I hate that.

Oh well. We still had a good laugh. Hope you all had a good valentines day and that you had someone special to spend it with.

Amy: I’m starving.

Rob: I got some yoghurts in the fridge if you want one?

Amy: Which ones?

Rob: Fruit Corners.

Amy: Which ones are they? The ones with the fruit in the corner?

No shit sherlock. This came the same day that she flooded her flat by leaving a tap on. I do love her.

As of this weekend, me and my girlfriend have been together exactly two years.

I can hear your collective “awww”s. Thank you, thank you.

She (Amy) decided to take the bull by the horns and organise our anniversary activity this year. Her final decision? Camping. Camping near Scarborough/Bridlington (two coastal towns in North Yorkshire, not too far from where we live). Sounds like a laugh - and I was relieved that we got to do something cheap anyway. £3.50 a night, you can’t really go wrong? Well. You can. But a £40/50 meal followed by more activities could also go wrong. And I know which idea my wallet is fonder of.

Allow me to take you on a photo tour of our weekend:

Guess who got stuck with putting the tent up? No instructions, just a bag full of random sheets and pegs…

Amy decided to sit this out, what with her not wanting to get mud behind her nails and all…

Not. going. well.

Got there in the end though \o/…

The tent is an absolute palace inside. When did tents get this big? There’s two rooms and a hallway inside this beast. What happened to the days when tents were shaped like pyramids and you struggled to fit two people inside them? We had a bedroom, a kitchen and a landing in this tent! You could sleep five people comfortably in this, why does it need to be so big?

The camping site itself was just a farmer’s field. You parked up at the farm, paid your £3.50 and camped whereever you wanted. That kind of took the gloss off the experience for me. I was always under the impression that camping was a solitary experience where you’d head out into the wilderness and erect a tent in the middle of nowhere. This place was an empty field full of caravans and other camp-goers. Felt like a holidae inn for tents. I didn’t like that. Another thing that creeped me out was that this place was full of empty caravans. It was like a caravan graveyard…


Dirty, empty caravans everywhere.

And the rest of the place wasn’t that well kept either. There was just abandoned tractors and machinery left out in the open. Had a bit of a chernobyl feel to it… well… if chernobyl was a camping site… and instead of radiation it was polluted with empty caravans… :/…

Then Amy decided to put on some stupid wellies and cook me some food…

Amy later fucked up this plastic fork. For some reason I find looking at this fork absolutely hilarious. At the risk of being un-P.C. and upsetting a lot of people… it looks like a retard’s hand… (imagines a hoard of people leaving this site and never coming back)

With nothing to do we decided to go for a walk… (very uncharacteristic of us I might add)

I was amazed at the holiday home villages. There were thousands of mobile/trailer/’i dont know what to call them’ homes. Thousands. It was like walking into a new world. No houses in sight. Just these random boxes dotted around creating this huge community. I referred to them for the rest of the trip as pod people. It took me and amy atleast 20 minutes to walk through this village. It was HUGE. Can’t believe this many people holiday near Scarborough/Brid. I mean what the hell is there to do? There’s a beach and thats about it…

We spent the next day in sunny Scarborough… (don’t laugh, all jokes aside it’s a nice pleasant town)

There was a random pirate ship floating about? … arrrrrrrrrrrr…

Then onto the beach for a sandcastle competition…

Let’s meet our contestants. Amy here is sporting a spade, which she bought minutes before the start of the sandcastle competition…

I decided to take an unorthodox approach to sandcastle building and opted to use only my hands as tools…

Here are our grids. I’ll be building on the left, Amy will be building on the right…

20 minutes later…

Lets take a closer look at Amy’s. Looks like a hill with a penis on top? And that can hardly stand for a moat? but then again i’m slightly biased…

Mine on the other hand was a fortress. Forget the castle, the moat and castle walls make this look a lot better than it is. So much so that random Asian tourists took photos and one man came over applauding my efforts (he didnt even notice amy had made a castle which she wasn’t happy about) and he wanted to take our photo. Amy declined. She was clearly upset at the media frenzy surrounding my collosal structure. It even has a drawbridge over the moat, and a road from there to the castle. It’s a work of art…

Great weekend. Hayfever killed me and there was a lack of things to do at some points, but you know what, it was better than sitting in and watching TV… or just having a 3 hour long meal… we got to spend the weekend together and have a lot of fun.

Still baffled that we’ve been together two years. Love you Amy…

(Maybe I should smile if I want her to believe that)

Today I finally booked a holiday. It’s been two years since my last holiday, and a further two years since the one before that. That’s one holiday in four years. After months of my girlfriend nagging that we should go away somewhere in the summer, and despite being a ridiculously poor student (£-1000 overdraft, ouch)… I’ve just booked a 10 day break in Barcelona. And I’m giddy like a school kid even though the holiday isn’t for another 6 months.

The last holiday I went on was a seedy, classless “lads” holiday to Magaluf. Me and three other lads spent a week in a god awful hotel and spent pretty much the whole time there trying to get as drunk as possible. Not that that is a bad thing, what else would we go to Magaluf for other than sun, beer and women? There was no culture or tourist value to that holiday at all - it was a glorified 7 day drinking binge, and an expensive one at that. The place was pretty dirty and during the day we found ourselves pretty bored. Needless to say I didn’t really fancy it again, and my girlfriend has a way of nagging me until she gets what she wants.

Perhaps what has really filled me with excitement is the hotel I booked. A four-star hotel on the suburbs of Barcelona, but still a short walk from the beach and a 15 min metro ride from anywhere we want to be (and the nearest metro stop is a few minutes walk). The hotel’s decor looks modern and stylish, which led me to think it would cost an arm and a leg but its only 50 quid a night for the pair of us… which is cheaper than most places throughout the whole of Barce… 2-3 stars included. Believe me when I say its a far cry from the tacky, prison-layout that I stayed in at Magaluf… I’ve read nothing but good reviews about this hotel, the Vincci Maritimo…

(more…)

Proof that women are impossible. First I tell her something funny, she won’t let me caress her breasts. Then I tell her something smart, she won’t let me caress her breasts. Finally I read her a poem, she won’t let me caress her breasts!

This is one of those roleplaying decision games you used to play as a kid - you make one decision then you’re faced with a new scenario and a few more decisions, etc. etc. although when you were a kid it wasn’t so much seeing pictures of computer boobs - more going through mazes, killing dragons and that kind of shit. The aim of this game is to nob ‘Ariane’. The game doesn’t work in firefox, so use Internet Explorer.

As sad as this all is, it’s very addictive. And also very Not Safe For Work (if you get far, or so I’m told, I can’t get out of the bloody house).

Virtually Date Ariane. Addictive once you get going. It took me about 20 goes to actually get away from “lousy” breast touching and french kiss attempts… the fool proof method is as follows;

- click the book (she’ll laugh)
- compliment her outfit
- kiss her on the cheek
- say you’re over 18
- go to another room

From there you’re on your own. (Backspace will come in handy)