Oh dear...

Me, Chris, Jessica and Leanne...



The true sign of a good snakky session...inappropriate embraces

Lunt - these proof enough that I am not an imposter?...

Shane and me. We'd had a few drinks by this stage you know...

And the award for most drunk goes too...

Me and Leanne showing off her and Jessica's medals. I wasn't planning on giving it back easily...

Who the devil are you?...

Me and some random Disco Stu character...

Textbook v's...

We moved on to the Dogs Bollix to listen and sing along to a couple of guys playing guitar.

Then on to a bar where my arm wasn't stamped so I've no idea what it was called. More beers/shooters/cocktails here and by about 3 it was time to stumble in to a taxi and go home.

Chris, Si and my ever so funny self...

Snakky beneath the St George...

There was only one proper way to celebrate the girls' achievements - Snakebite Sunday.

We started with champagne and soon moved on to the good stuff. Several vats later, the 4 of us were joined by Shane (Leanne's brother) and Chris (Leanne's cousin).

Shane being the legend that he is brought more ingredients with him and the snakky b's continued to flow.

Here's me excitedly tucking in my next glass...

Mad swimmers...

It was an early start on Sunday as Leanne and her friend Jessica were competing in the King of the Bays ocean race. Leanne finished the 1k race in around 17 minutes and Jessica did the 2.8k in 54 minutes. Unbelievable times if you ask me, especially as it was pretty choppy out there...

A chimp...

Zoo time...

We were turfed out at 10am the next day, and the only option we had when feeling that ropey was to go and look chimps.

Si and our beast of a car...

The leftovers...

Game on

What an action packed weekend. Let's start from the very beginning, a very good place to start...

I met up with Si after work on Friday and we headed off to Hamilton in our hire car. We were expecting a little corolla but ended up with a pretty sporty Mitsubishi Lancer.

I'm not sure what the old couple running the hostel thought as we walked in through the door with a couple of carrier bags of booze as our only luggage. But here was our challenge, and a pretty daunting one to boot.



With virtually all bottles drained we headed in to town. We were out for what must have been about 6 hours but it felt like about 10 minutes. Probably due to the nastiest shooter I've had - the ingredients were Bacardi 151, Jagermeister, Aftershock and Tequila.

Don't really have much else to tell I'm afraid, other than the collection of teen disco stamps on my arms indicated we went to Axces, Bahama Club, Outback and Monkeyfeather.

Cocktails and Dreams...

My CV took a turn for the diverse last night - I did my first shift behind a bar. Despite not having the first clue what I was doing I managed to muddle through. Thrown right in at the deep end too with my 2nd order being 2 kilkenny's, 4 murphys red, 4 murphys and a Celtic. If you hadn't guessed already it's an Irish bar.

The Jim Beam promo girls swanning around also made it an enjoyable experience.

All that vodka and redbull so close at hand....ahhhh the temptation.

Still, only a couple of hours till me and Si hit the bars of Hamilton. Expect a messy tale and some equally messy pictures by the end of the weekend...

The birthday boy does it in style...

Got sent this picture from the Heyes birthday celebrations...I think he's on his arse, at the bottom of the stairs.

Good work Heyesie

Notices

Happy Birthday Heyesie...

Again I'm missing out on the celebrations, which will no doubt look something a little like this...

Notices

Happy Birthday Dad!

Sorry that I'm not there to celebrate it with you. The best I could do was a "hilarious" card and to put this family picture up on the net. Enjoy the day...

Happy Easter

When Jesus gave up the fags for 40 days and 40 nights then stuffed himself to bursting on chocolate eggs he probably didn't know we'd still be celebrating it a couple of thousand of years later.

Have a great few days off work everyone...

(Sorry for this post Mum. To make things worse I've only got meat in the fridge for dinner)

Relax people...

I bought booze in yesterday, so I'll be able to spend Friday night watching the rugby (yawn) with a few bottles of Becks (yippee).

In other news, Si had his head shaved the other day after about 4 months of growing it. Fortunately I managed to get this picture on my phone of his sumo do before it disappeared....

It's the weekend...

Well, I've finished reading the 72nd best book in the world. I enjoyed it. Not sure why though, it's about an awkward, socially inept character who's good at maths. Hmmm.

Anyway, Easter is upon us. 4 days off work but some strange licensing laws over here are trying to dictate it to be a dry weekend. On Friday and Sunday Pubs/clubs are shut and NOWHERE sells alcohol apparently. Which also means everywhere shuts at midnight on Thursday and Saturday.

Disgrace.

Notices

Dan Lane, one of the Staffordshire University gang, has done what social services would have recommended he shouldn't had they seen him hunched over a littlewoods catalogue with a pair of scissors that time...he's become a father.

Here is a picture of young Joshua who weighed in at 9lb 9. Congratulations to the Lane family!...

Book worm

I was just in Whitcoulls (the NZ equivalent of WH Smith's) and discovered that I've only read 7 of their top 100 books of all time (numbers 2, 11, 21, 25, 27, 46 and 91 if you were wondering).

That's a mere 7%. Pretty poor, I'm sure you'll agree. If only I was a Harry Potter fan I would have near on doubled my tally.

I've been reading quite a lot since I got here so decided to get a new book. I was torn between "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" and "Birdsong". I've recently read quite a depressing, but excellent one (The Lovely Bones) so decided to leave the WWI book for now and throw $25 at the weird dog one.

I knew I should have nicked that from Acres' house when I had the chance.

I have in my hand a piece of paper...

Actually, I have several and they all grant admission to the Arctic Monkeys gig here in July.

The tickets are for standing in a venue which holds no more than 1000 people. I presume I'll be about 10 years over the average age there, but bothered, I'm from Donny so will have more in common with the band than anyone else there I reckon.

I need to be drunk enough to start a "Don-cast-er, la-la-la" chant.

OhMyGod OhMyGod OhMyGod OhMyGod OhMyGod

Artcic....Monkeys.....St James Theatre.....Auckland......Friday July 28th......

Actually, I'm curious - how is this band doing over in England? I'd guess that they're being played constantly on radio and tv and in the papers all the time. So, pretty soon, everyone will be sick of them and have moved on to gossip about the winner of Celebrity Shower Karaoke.

As far as I'm concerned some catchy tunes and fantastic lyrics. Best album I've heard in ages.

The bloodlust dies down for a moment and a more docile Floyd relaxes with Matt and Ryno.

Floyd bites and yaps at anything in site...he's just let go of Kat's boot and now has his sites firmly fixed on her necklace...

This little fella is Floyd - the new puppy of Matt, who is the boyfriend of my flatmate Liz. He's a crazy little dude but aint he a cutie?

I finally got a good lesson in Auckland weather this time of year. The bad weather at the football cleared so me and Kat went for a run, setting off in sunshine with my washing drying nicely on the line outside.

After a couple of k's the clouds thickened up and an unbelievably stormy storm hit, and hit hard. It was lashing down and the sky was greyer than a grey man's cape as far as the eye could see.

We took shelter for a few minutes, then out of nowhere the skies cleared and the rest of the run was fairly pleasant.

Crowded House weren't kidding.

The guys I play football with had the tournament they've been training for today.

This was a national tournament organised by their company (Danone) with the winner flying to Sydney to play off against the Australian champions. The prize for the winners of that game is entry in to the Danone World Cup which takes place in Portugal.

Obviously my input during the training games helped as Fraser (Si's mate) and the lads won a tense final 1-0 and fly off to Aussie in a few weeks.



Don't think this picture does justice to how bad the rain was

Si, myself and Leanne enjoy a very continental evening meal. Are we capable of posing pleasantly for a picture? Are we buggery.

New photos

Follow the link for a few NZ ones and a selection of pics from my leaving do...

I'll be adding a Donny boys and Watson Wyatt section soon. Excited?

Behind the scenes...

This post is for all you doubting thomassessessessess. I got a call from the production company on Saturday afternoon, asking if I was free for filming the next day. God damn right I was. So, at 7.30am I rolled up to the old Union Fish Company building in the city and reported for duty.

The brief was business people walking along a London street, so I was decked out pretty dapper and armed with a rain coat. I put myself forward for the first scene and got picked! No mean feat as there were only 12 of us for this shoot and there were 80 extras in total, most of which were attached to agencies. Get in.

We had to walk down the street in the rain, looking up at the sky and acting naturally. My slant on this was to talk into my mobile - this went down well and to cut a very long story every so slightly shorter, I ended up walking right to the camera and getting a lot of exposure. After each take I was talking with the director and getting some, well, direction. A lot of fun, and at the end the AD (assistant director for the laymen) took my name as if they use this shot I should get a bit of airtime...AND MORE MONEY. Totally worth getting soaked to the core.

The afternoon started really well as I got selected along with another guy to play the security guards in the airport scene. However, I wasn't in shot much in this one and essentially stood in the same place for about 4 hours.

I had a really good day all in all, drank lots of tea, ate some biscuits, had a really nice lunch and chatted to quite a lot of interesting people. The one downside though was I didn't have my camera with me - a common mistake for the novice blogger.

A DATE FOR YOUR DIARIES....THIS AD GOES TO AIR IN THE UK ON MAY 21ST DURING CORONATION STREET.

I shall be posting several reminders and probably sending several emails - wouldn't want any of you to miss my big moment now would I?

Notices

Someone within Watson Wyatt has seen it fit to promote this man...



...David Acres.

Congratulations Dave, who has made it to Band 3. This won't mean all that much to non-WW people, and probably not all that much to those who work with him.

I'm kidding Dave, I haven't met a more conscientious, hard-working, goal-oriented champion of the pensions industry. This promotion is well deserved and long overdue. Ahem.