Still around

Well as you all have noticed and come to expect, i've been a bad blogger...

what will surprise you is that today i come to you with an actual post, with my tail between my legs (well if i had a tail it would be!), it's just that longer you go without blogging the harder it is to sumarise what has happened. but i'll do my bst to bore you all with much of it!

my last few posts have been some what brief, mainly due to the fact that where i was/am working has no internet on site, and apart from being able to access email at certain times during the day i've had little access.

shall i begin at the begining...

way back on the 22nd July i headed from Edinburgh down to the city of Preston. (my agency described it as a city just on the outskirts of manchester..) little did he know, that it's a good hour from manchester! outskirts my arse!

arrived around 3pm and caught a taxi to the hospital where after a good half hour of trying to prove i was who i said i was, they relinquished the keys to my new abode.

as i wandered through the hospital grounds trying to make sense of the roughly drawn map, i stumbled upon a giant man made lake, full of evil swans and ducks.. who proceeded to follow me all the way to the door of the accomodation.

up 3 flights of stairs and i was home.

anyone that's stayed in hospital type accomodation, will know that it's basic...

as in you get a bed, desk, and a shelf.... my room here has an added bonus of a sink as well! and also a lovely view of the lake.headed out in order to pick up some food for dinner and breakie, and had a hard time finding anything open... so used to the long hours of trade up in scotland, i'd forgotten of the normal hours on a sunday...

managed to find a service station, and a got a few things before trying to catch the bus back...

thankfully the bus does stop in the hospital grounds... less chance of actually missing the hospital this time around...

had dinner at the hospital cafe...

before heading back to my box.

work was interesting, back doing CT scans (or CAT scans as some like to call them) thankfully they have a similar model machine to what i trained on back home so at least i know how to use it.

first impressions were that people were nice... the initial "what can you do"/ what cant you do? is always the same where ever you go...

feel a bit out of it not being able to cannulate patients, as it's not something we do back home, yet at this hospital it's up to the radiographer to do it.so i cant help in doing that, i'm not meant to supervise injections either but i have done!

met the other Locum Amit, who's from Brissie, and is lovely

decided to head out for a walk around the hospital after work, as there was nothing else to do!

and within 5mins had already had things thrown out of the window at us! seems we've come to a classy city alright... i think i'd put it up there with mt druitt!

got lost but eventually found our way back to the hospital.... got to love the sounds of

ambulances to lead the way back

decided to hit the town the next night, to see for ourselves what was on offer...

Not alot it would seem

had a hard time finding anywhere to get food, as most pubs/restraunts stop serving food at 4pm...

asked a local what they do of a night, and he was like not alot!!!

eventually found a pub that was still serving food (one of 2 we eventually found out)

and had a nice dinner in an almost empty pub...

it was a strange quiet....

wednesday brought me my first visitors, Bev, aileen, and trish decided that they'd come out for one more night of amusement before they head back to canada, and caught the train from manchester out to preston...

i don't think they got a good impression at all!!!!

lol they did take bets on how long i'd last...

found the local pub "the black bull" and headed down there on friday night, of course i got stuck talking to these weird locals and poor amit was mortified, and we had a hard time getting away.... it was amits fault for going and getting another drink, that we couldn't escape earlier!

headed up to Glasgow that weekend to pick up my laptop and random things i'd left behind from nesrines, and had a good catch up with a few of those from work, before heading back to preston late sunday.

the roster here is that people are rostered in the same place for a week, and they change weekly...

so the next week saw us with new staff, and the whole getting to know everything again..

it's part of radiography i tell you that you need to do everything different, and be totally set in your ways...

it's annoying when you're trying to learn the ropes and everyone does things differently..

escaped to london on the weekend, and relished in the fact that i was in a living city!

monday saw amit, michelle and i head to the black bull for the pub quiz, and lose dramatically...

you shouldn't take 2 aussies to a british trivia!!!! lol though it was a fun night.

with our new found friend in michelle, we headed to the movies on wednesday with amy a radiographer from upstairs, 2 for 1 night!

and saw hairspray...

now both amy and i loved it...

amit had a look of horror on his face the moment she started singing in the opening scene... then fell promptly asleep!

michelle slowly sunk down in her chair in horror and also tried to tune it out by sleeping!

needless to say by the end of the movies, the two of them had a hard time standing!

lol i think half the fun was their facial expressions!

and amits "OMG that was the worst movie i've ever watched" rather loudly at the end!

needless to say he was mocked for the next few days at work!

we both headed down to london that weekend... managed to catch the 5:40 train by chance, and it was completely packed.... but got us to london by 9pm!

had a lovely weekend...

amit managed to miss the train back and ended up sleeping on the station in birmingham!!!

with little more than a shirt... it was just a little cold...

but somehow managed to make it to work on time... though wasn't much use due to lack of sleep!!!

they'd blown up the tube on the scanner over the weekend, which took the next 3 days to fix, so we headed down and learnt some MRI, which was a change...

magnets are good value!

headed to the movies again on wednesday, and saw Evan Almighty.... it was ok, i like Bruce almighty better though...

amit tried to convince the lady at the box office to refund his money for hairspray, and would leave until she'd said that many people had asked for it back... hahahah but said it was his own fault for agreeing to watch it!

hahaha

spent the weekend in liverpool

decided to head to the trivia night again, and dragged along michael the german student DR that's also living in our block...

who we proceeded to get totally trolleyd and who was no good at the german history questions as he kept missing the questions, and was more interested in his beer!

ahaha learnt a few german words, many will never be repeated though!

and we got 19.5/60..... not a bad effort for a bunch of tourists!

went on a mission to find ASDA (a giant supermarket) that's open 24hrs... decided against catching the bus, and dcided to walk it... would have helped if we had some idea as to where it was though! we ended up walking around for hrs!!! but eventually we found it...

and went a little mad.... it was like a giant coles/kmart combined, and it was huge!

got a little excited and bough the scrubs season 4 dvd to watch!

decided to catch the bus back to the hospital and almost missed the stop!

they all laughted at us at work when they found out how excited we got at going to the supermarket! but hey it was our excursion for the night!

Amit decided to quit, instead of heading back after his trip to spain... a bit sad really...

so had one last night at the black bull with him...

Hired a car for the long weekend just gone, and headed off after work on friday to the Lake district where we stayed at cockermouth.... got a bit confused trying to find the hostel as there was this sign pointing down this narrow overgrown path... and we ummed and ahhed before taking the plunge... i'm pretty sure the hire car didn't like it at all! bumping and scraping all the way down, but ended up finding the hostel neslted down the back, complete with it's very own sweet trickling river...

a few interesting people to be found there..

anyone noticed the types of people that you seem to get at YAH hostels... they're from a weird breed! hahaha but do provide a fair amount of amusment!

Saturday found us driving through the lovely little towns that make up the lakes.... it was so quaint... but you have to laugh every now and then they've got pull over sections where you can stop...

we tried a few times to stop and take pictures... but found that every pull over section was surrounded by huge 4m high hedges... go figure!

stopped a few times just randomly in the middle of the narrow road to take pictures, and almost got run over too!

ended up going right down to gleaston and visited their water mill, before heading over to munster castle, where we went to the owlery, and got to see some of the harry potter owls!

i love owls... i love their huge round eyes...

spent a few hours there just looking around, and relaxing in the gardens, before thinking hey it's getting late we should try find our next hostel!

i managed to get us to the next hostel with no trouble (fluke but don't tell him that!)

it was this delightful old Fort, on hadrians wall.... full of children of all ages...

and i can happily tell you i've been put off them for the next few years, after being left with 3 screaming 3year olds... hahaha yaniss so wasn't impressed! the parents must have though we looked trustworthy as they vanished for a few mins!

we were quick to escape the moment they came back though and went out sheep hunting along the wall...

it was so peaceful here, we didn't see another sole as we walked along the wall for a few hrs...

Sunday saw me getting just a little too excited as we headed over to alnwick to see the Harry Potter Castle!

i loved it...

they even had a tour showing all the movie locations, but yaniss was getting bored so we didn't stay for that (no worries i'll bring amy back up and we can go mad together!)

instead we went to get some sandwiches for lunch and after a few wrond turns we found the bridged with a lovely look out over the castle...

not happy with just the view, i made hime come a hiking through a paddock until we had a lovely view, and peaceful surroundings...

i got mocked for taking hundreds of pictures... and in the end had to resort to self portriats!

much to the amusement of others!

eventually we headed away from the quaint little town and headed south...

now here's where we came to trouble... yaniss decided he wanted to drive... but wanted to go his way, not the way i'd worked out...

so there we were just heading down the motorway for a few hrs, before he goes, ummm do you know which turn off will get us to scarborough...

and i was like um no!

instead of stopping he just carried on...

in the end after driving ages... i made him stop!

and got out and bought a map!

lucky i did, as where we were was the exit we wanted!

drove out to the coast and went to the fair in scarborough! i was excited!

before heading down to the town of beverly for the night...

this time we stayed at a priory, which was all nicely renovated

got into a heated discussion with some locals!

before bed

up bright and early on monday and decided to head west back towards preston, drove around York, before deciding to head to Blackpool...

having never been to Blackpool, but being warned it was tacky central, i have to say i was surprised by it!

it's like a huge Show like the royal easter show, only it's the city, and it's like that 24hrs a day 366 days of the year!... it was tourist central!

drove along the main street a bit, admiring the craziness of it all before dropping off the car...

it's funny after driving for so long, i actually got a sore shoulder!..

but i miss having a car to drive around, especially up here...

got to work on tuesday and was chatting to michelle about the strands of lights along the main street of blackpool, and whether or not they turn them on....

and someone told us that it was the lighting of them the coming friday....

and once amy found out it was david tanner (aka Dr Who) lighting them, it was decided that we would go...

headed over straight from work with amy, michelle and glenn, and then stood in the sometimes pouring rain and watched the BBCTWO radio concert... they had some pretty good groups on though i was happy to see natalie imbrulia (she was one of the bests!) had a laugh at theit MC FLY, but ghosts were good...

afterwards we played a pirates game, where we got to go around in a boat and shoot random targets... shamefully me and amy didn't have much luck in aiming department, we blame it on the guns that only worked after we'd gone past all the targets!

it was fun though...

walked back along the now illuminated street.... it was so pretty!

pictures really don't do it justice!

before heading back to the land of preston...

shell and i hit up the pub quiz again and bettered our score to 22/60 (and we didn't cheat!) not for lack of trying to cheat though... but the people next to us caught on early on and kept their answers covered! hhahahahaha

and now here i am in london town for the weekend

i don't think i mentioned my flatmate (if you can call him that...)

each floor here has 4 rooms, and while we each have our own room, we share the kitchen, and

bathroom...

there's just me and N on my floor... and N is driving me mad!

boys are messy... i know that.... but he's unbearibly so...

take a look at the pictures!

many days i arrive to see that he's had his dinner, and in the processed used every pot/bowl/plate in order to make it... yet he doesn't wash them up until he needs them again (sometimes days later!)

i disagree with having to was a pot twice! once in order to use it, and twice to put it back clean!

not to mention that he does his washing then leaves it hanging in the bathroom to dry (the washing line is directly over the bath/shower) and he'll do this around 6pm, and it'll be there for 4 days or so, until he needs a shirt...

so i've taken to unhooking the clothes line, and putting it on the floor, then re-attaching it when i've had my shower!

it's insane... but he's nice though...

yaniss just laughs... men!

as for the shower...

i cant remember if i mentioned the classiness of it...

the picture shows it all, no pressure, 1/2 m of length... leads to a delightful shower...

i've worked out though that if i want it to be warm, i need to have a shower after midnight!

i'm sure i could go on and on about the accomodation!

but i wont...

i managed to score a new job last thursday... so i'm out of preston at the end of this week, and heading back up to edinburgh, where i'll hopefully have the occasional access to the net, to keep in touch! just nede to tell them i'm leaving on monday....

should be fun!