Banana hammock

Feeling really sick this morning. Don’t know why. I hardly slept last night even though I was dog tired so maybe that has something to do with it. Think I’ll stick the air-con on and see if it helps. At this rate I’m going to have to give badminton a miss, and the meal that we’ve got planned after it.

I’ve been feeling a little depressed the last couple of days as well and I can’t place my finger on why that would be. Just got myself a general angsty feeling.

I said a lot of things on Saturday night that I know I probably shouldn’t have said but in a way I was relieved that I could get it off my chest. It’s the first time I’ve ever spoken to anyone about my relationship with Graham because I’ve never felt I could talk about what I needed to talk about with anyone who knows us as a couple.

It’s strange being at work totally on my own – the day actually seems to go quicker than normal. Not got a lot of work to do as usual and so it’s hard to motivate myself to do anything but the Spaced-Out crew have kept me entertained. It’s so difficult to resist the urge to get on the net and chat to people when you’re stuck in a place that you don’t want to be with nobody real to talk to.

Good things that have happened recently – went to the British Grand Prix and had a fab time. We stayed the night in the carpark and grabbed our seats by 5.30 a.m. so we had a good view of the track on Luffield corner. We were entertained by a GP2 race, a Porsche race and the Red Arrows before the proper race action kicked off. Button didn’t get anywhere close to winning but it was good to see him come a solid fourth and Kimi and Montoya, my second favourites, were up on the podium. I definitely want to go to another race. In fact, we are going to the A1 Grand Prix at the end of September – not quite the same but close enough and the racing should be closer since they are all driving the same cars.

Graham and I celebrated our fourth anniversary and 12 months since AOR – so we’ve only got another 6 months to go until we expect to hear something from the Canadian High Commission about our application.

Matt and Sharon’s wedding at the beginning of July was brilliant. It was such a nice day and I was very proud of them both. I spent a lot of time chatting to Becky and Pete who I have never really gotten to know properly before even though we’ve been on different sides of the same circle of friends for years now. Everybody looked fabulous and apart from a few mishaps with some of Sharon’s family I think it was a really happy day for everybody. They haven’t had the time to settle properly into married life yet as they have had Sharon’s Canadian relatives staying with them since the wedding - but now they’ve all gone back I hope they can appreciate the quiet times together! They bought an Xbox with the money I gave them for their wedding present, so they are well chuffed!

I just heard that Amber and Paul got married early in July as well, and Caz and Mark are getting married next month (I’ve been invited to the evening do). I think Tim was supposed to be getting married this summer as well – I’ll have to email him to find out what is happening there. Cousin Paul and Tracey also got married in Australia the other week – they make such a great couple and I’m so pleased that they decided to bring the wedding forward so that Auntie Maureen could be there to enjoy it.

Ashton Court festival was good this year. Graham and I went on the Sunday and were joined by Matt and Sharon and Sharon’s Canadian nephew Chris. It was sunny and the music was good and a chilled-out time was had by all – I finally managed to see Rob’s band The Mighty Stars play for the first time since 2001! And yes, they have improved, a lot. Highlights of the day though were bands called Think and Babyhead so I’m going to try and check out their CDs if they are available.

I’ve made a couple of new friends – we organised a Bristol meet on the Spaced-Out board. Went out for a drink and film and meal with James and Helen a couple of weeks ago, joined by Kerrianne and Tristan, and this last weekend Helen, James and his fiancée Jenny came round to my place for another meet and we all got on really well. They arrived at 9pm and didn’t leave until 3.30 a.m. I was more hungover and tired than Graham was when he got back from Cardiff the next morning having spent the entire day on a pub-crawl with his workmates!

I’ve joined the gym at uni. Not that I’ve actually gone to the gym gym yet. I was paying £4 a week to go to Tuesday night Staff and Postgrad badminton and then found out that staff gym membership was only £12 a month – which included access into the sports hall for badminton, the gym and the swimming pool. Last week I ended up playing badminton on three nights, and I’ve even managed to drag Graham into it. We played last Thursday with Kerrianne and then went out for dinner and drinks with her and Tristan, and this week Tristan is going to be joining in the badminton as well.

I’m not very good at badminton anymore though unfortunately. I think I really do need glasses. Sometimes I just miss the shuttlecock completely for no good reason, and I think it must be to do with my eyes not judging distance very well because only my good eye is working properly.

Bad things that have happened recently: Well, the London bombings, the loss of 52 lives, the fear of more attacks, the shooting of an innocent man by police, the constant suicide bombings in Iraq, the bombings in Turkey and Egypt. It’s a scary world we’re living in at the moment and everybody is talking about it ALL the time.

On the same day as the first London bombings we also found out that our house sale had fallen through. Our buyers’ buyers had pulled out, just a week or two before we were expecting to move out. It’s no great hardship but a little disappointing and means that we will have to take out a loan to pay the last deposit instalment for our Vancouver apartment and to pay my folks back. Hopefully we can sell the flat pretty soon though as although we don’t want to move out as we love it there, we need to have sold it by the time we get our visas sorted for Canada – so that we can move straight away and have all the money we need readily available to transfer into Canadian funds.

In 4 weeks time we’ll be in Canada, gawping at the scenery around Jasper. Lovely.
And you never know, we might be able to catch a Canucks game this time round as the NHL has stopped the lockout so the hockey season is back on. Woot Woot!