i came closer than ever to start looking for flights back home last week. the idea of fleeing back to more comfortable climates and cohorts has constantly danced in my head since moving here, but something broke last week - oh yeah, it was me. the forest received a request to cater a festival in north wales and i decided to take it head on. i didn't think much of it until i started planning the damn thing - feeding 200 people who are camping 7 hours away is no easy task. most everything came together in a haphazard way (though i was in a similar state as woshunda seems to have been before his callbacks), but it did come together until our driver (we rented a van requiring a 25+ y/o to drive/sign up for the car) bailed on us with about 16 hours until we were set to leave - FUCK!

this began a frantic calling of everyone i (and everyone else associated with the wales trip) know who is 25+ and can drive. guess what? here in the UK, especially amongst the hippie-ish circle affiliated with the forest, this is FUCKING RARE. bastards. none could be found so we formulated a backup plan, a backup to the backup plan, and the ever prevalent PLAN C (the backup to the backup to you guessed it the backup). argh. as we resigned to this endless scheme of backup plans a call was received. duncan, our saviour, our hero, our 25+ licensed driver, called to hem and haw over his decision/or not to come (and drive). after much deliberation we got him on board with the promise of last minute driving lessons - needed as the dunc hasn't driven in something like 10 years. ?!?

my fellow kitchen manager took the forest car to administer the late night lessons and i went home. disaster averted.

for now.

the next morning we trudged our asses to work and prepared the gear for transport. i went with dunc to the car rental place and everything went well...until we pulled out of the car rental parking lot. well...i should say tried to pull out. duncan did great getting the stickshift van going, his main concern. instead, the turning out of the lot became the issue. one tightly turned corner resulted in a few mega gashes along the right side of the van. awsome. well, not so much, but exciting nevertheless... being less than 100 feet away from the rental office, the guys ran out and all things considered, were uber nice and dealt with us very well (in that it didn't seem like they were 'dealing' with us at all).

finally we were on our way. save the occational accidental pulling into reverse and unneeded pre-roundabout stopping dunc did a fantastic job getting us where we needed to be - north wales. once we arrived i knew everything was going to be okay. we pulled into the campsite and were greeted by an incredible tent for us to use as our cafe (two gas stoves and a wee fridge - pretty good for the middle of nowhere) and a hugely helpful group of excited people. we set ourself up and the weekend went pretty smoothly. i met some proper pikeys, got fed up with people dealing hippie crack, overdosed on museli and made loads and loads of chickpea curry. the tent was made into a cool space by adding fun contests (we gave free tea or coffee, but you can have 10 mateo points for this one - who is salt n peppa's dj?) and lots of booze.

the rain didn't really let up until the morning we were set to leave, leaving us all muddy and (thanks to alex's great grocery bag idea) happily not miserable. when the rain did let up we were left with a beautiful valley with lake and mountain friendly sheep. hooray. a great way to lead up to a long drive back home.

next day was spent driving to manchester, roadieing for the very. manchester is great. i can't believe that sash & nate actually left the city. i fell in love with my 8 hours there and determined i want to live there at some point. since i was the driver i we didn't hit the road until midnight. by about 3am i was officially exhausted and pulled over for a nap in the car outside a roadstop. super. got back to e'burgh by about 5:00, crashed, woke up 3 hours later, returned the van, played some tennis (awsome. not done that in AGES), walked around like a zombie for a few hours, avoided sleeping so as to not fuck up my sleep schedule and generally had a nice day to myself.

----------

shit. all that was written over the last 2 weeks with my computer dying in the middle. fortunately my computer has miraculously (sp, i know) returned to the living and so has my blogging - sorry for the drought. also, i've been updating the crochet blog pretty often and my fingers are a bit mashed from all that...or something.

-----------

the jimmy eat world lyric, 'if i don't let myself be happy now then when?' has been swimming in my head FAR too much lately. my music hasn't met my mood lately, not enough bitter emo crap, too much happycore fun not punk-punk. the social awkwardness i've been feeling has been lasting way too long. i feel like the bloke in 'girlfriend in a coma' (the book, not the song) who went off to wander in vegas and all over the southwest. 'his soul is glue' i think was the quote someone said about the guy.

will i ever feel love?

------------

i'm currently obsessed with emo softcore heads american analogue set. check them out.

rock it.