Off to the Lakes

Thought I'd stick another expedition-type picture here seeing as I'm off on this course thing tomorrow, there are a couple of others going from down here (although I don't know them yet) so we decided to travel together and make it into a road trip. Should be fun, we're allowing all day to get there, and thankfully my car should be ok as he passed his MOT this morning without any problems. So for a treat I took it to the car wash for its annual wash, although by this time tomorrow I expect there will be motorway flies all over it and it'll be filthy again.

Have not been the best organised person and am only just starting my packing, but shouldn't take long as the kit list consists of "outdoor clothes, waterproofs etc". Obviously I won't be able to blog from there, probably, but I'm sure you'll manage. Am always amazed when people admit to reading this drivel, but apparently they do, the most recent new convert is my friend Nic from uni who I think I originally knew when we shared a music stand in the orchestra. He was reading this when on nights the other week in ITU at the interestingly-named Monkeyglands hospital, which begged the question from me as to why it was so called. I thought it might have had something to do with some crackpot French doctor who in the 1920s, grafted bits of monkey testicle into humans in a bid to revert the ageing process. And they thought Botox was dodgy! Anyway, I was reliably informed that this has nothing to do with Nic's current workplace, so my second guess as to the origin of the name was whether monkey glands was the daily special dinner served in the canteen? Wrong again, the real answer is really boring and is simply that the hospital is called Monklands which sounds amusingly a bit like Monkeyglands. In the same way that the Heath hospital in Cardiff where many of us worked is known as the Heap, rather apt due to its 70s multistorey car-park design similarity. While I am name-checking various friends, I ought to mention Stu who is doing his triathlon next weekend all for a very good cause - good luck!

I spent last weekend rearranging furniture in my spare room - the large desk is now on its end on the landing and I built the new smaller one which I can't dump rubbish on. Gradually getting sorted, and was made to feel slightly better by seeing a picture of Simon's lounge at the moment as he's fitting a new kitchen in his flat and the lounge is full of appliances and tools. Makes my house look positively minimalist! He's got the problem of having to get the gasman in to move the gas supply for the cooker but can't get time off work to do it, so I've volunteered to house-sit on one of my mondays off just so he doesn't have to wait for half term to get it done... my ulterior motive however is that he will help me do my lounge floor in return!

Going to go and finish packing now as was out last night and got back later than expected, then woke up at about 7am today which was rubbish, decided to get up anyway as car had to be in at 9 so no point going back to sleep. Maybe I'll get a small lie-in tomorrow.