h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As I said in my last entry, last week was set to be pretty busy. On Tuesday night a bunch of us went to The Walrus and Carpenter to say goodbye to my girlfriend’s housemate. I can’t remember if I mentioned it last time we went there (when one of the girls in my group passed her PhD) but it’s basically a cosy little restaurant with good food and lovely ambiance. We had a really nice time and went to a bar afterwards for an hour or so before closing time.

Then on Wednesday night my girlfriend and I went to a Ceroc dancing night. As I said before, I haven’t been dancing in a while and I had a lot of fun at Ceroc. I’m not sure if it’s because I now have “previous experience,” but it seemed easier to pick up than Salsa was when I first started going to that. It also seems like you can dance it to pretty much any music that takes your fancy. When we got back to my place afterwards we even managed to practice a little to some Bob Dylan!

On Thursday I had a 10K race in Nailsea. My Girlfriend was busy that evening so I ended up catching the train there. It turned out to be something of an ill fated journey. On the way there the train to Nailsea was delayed by about twenty-five minutes which meant that the hour I’d allowed to walk the two miles to the start was suddenly cut in half. I was extremely lucky to bump into a guy in the petrol station (while I was asking for directions) who was wearing a Bath Half Marathon t-shirt and who was also going to the race and managed to scrounge a lift from him. The race itself went pretty well. I came in 6th place, but was really pleased to have taken fifteen seconds off my personal best time to finish in 35:04.

Unfortunately the journey back was even worse than getting there. Straight away after the race finished I started to briskly walk back to the train station and was about three quarters of the way there before I realised I’d left my jacket behind. I’d jogged most of the way back to the race HQ before I decided I wasn’t going to make it there and back in time to catch my train. So I turned around once more and ran back to the train station at double speed. I managed to catch my train with minutes to spare and was glad to be able to finally rest my poor ill-treated legs.

I’d planned to call my girlfriend for a lift from the station once I got back to Bath, but unfortunately my phone ran out of battery during the evening and I ended up having to trudge up the hill to her house arriving there at about 10:45 with even more abused legs and a powerful hunger.

I think I mentioned last time that on Friday one of my housemates had his viva for his PhD. Well he passed, it took nearly three hours (which is pretty long), but I don’t think it was too hard going and they liked his thesis so much that they didn’t give him any corrections (very unusual). So, as is becoming the tradition these days, we went to The Parade for a few beers and then headed down into town to The Bengal Brasserie for a curry.

After all that I had a much deserved lie in on Saturday morning. In the early afternoon my girlfriend and I had a wander into town and in the evening we went for pizza and watched War of the Worlds. I have to say I wasn’t especially impressed with the movie. I’m quite a fan of the book, and it was a bit annoying that they gave it a bit too much of the “Independence Day” treatment. But then again, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been: true, they transplanted the whole story to New Jersey, but I guess that’s to be expected from Hollywood (no wonder Americans have no idea about geography on a global scale); and they did feel the need to introduce a couple of cute kids (yes, even the surly teenager was cute); but at least they kept the main character as just an average Joe, at least until he blew up one of the tripods in an act of desperate heroism, don’t remember that bit in the book? The visuals were stunning, of course, it’s a Spielberg film after all, but overall the whole film hung together like a series of set pieces with no real cohesion.

On Sunday I went out for a long run with a couple of the guys from the department and then settled down to watch the French Grand Prix (a much better race than in the US a couple of weeks ago). In the afternoon my girlfriend and I went for a walk along the river and ended up having dinner at a nice little pub.

I’m pretty tired out after all that activity over that last week and I think I’m getting a bit of a cold so hopefully this coming week will be pretty quiet. My girlfriend is starting a placement today at Astra Zeneca. It’s the same thing exactly as the four months I spent in Stevenage last summer, but she’s going to be based in Avonmouth and will be commuting. It’s quite a long drive, so she might be quite late back but at least I’ll still see her in the evenings and at weekends and hopefully she won’t find it as lonely as I did. I don’t have any real plans for the rest of the week. We will probably be going to Ceroc dancing again on Wednesday, but it would be nice to relax a bit this week.

Well I guess that’ll do for a while. I’d better be off.