foolfillment: the blog

As pointed out by Steve Strowes on GUFF, the registry have anounced the exam timetable. As a teaching student I have it really quite easy on the exam front, I only have three this year. Before I can think of them though I have to navigate my way through three weeks of Easter Holiday. I need to find a job for that time but looking for a job is rubbish.

After Easter I have a little time then exams. After that I’m aiming to do the 6 weeks of industrial placement I have to complete for the degree. I’m not looking forward to arranging that, it’ll be worse than finding a real job

And them after all that I get to go away! 4 weeks in Peru with Morven, fantastic! Not only that we get to have lots of jags and pills.
We went to get mumps boosters on Friday because that’s been doing the rounds, but we also need to get jags for Hepatitis A, Typhoid, Diptheria, Tetanus, possibly Yellow Fever and then - the bit that isn’t so good - we go on nine weeks of malarial tablets - nice.

no more distractions please, I have some reading to do.

I started last night with a bowl of Alpen with lovely soya milk but the real thing started today.
Some toast with jam for breakfast, sandwiches with ham and pickle for lunch followed by an apple and some crisps (where I fall down - the salt and vinegar crisps contain whey and lactose, ready salted from now on) and the plan for tea is some nice pork and apple stew - lovely, no milk there.
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I went and had myself tested for food intolerances today, with the idea that it might turn up something I hadn’t thought of and I could just remove from my diet without much bother. I suppose it got the first bit alright, I never expected to be intolerant of dairy products, after all I’ve practically lived off meals made up of milk and cheese my whole life. Not only did it turn up cow’s milk and cheese, but also goat’s milks, sheep’s milk (I didn’t even know you could buy that), orange (as I suspected). It also showed mild intolerances of yeast (beer!) and chocolate.

The next step is to cut out the offending foods for a month and see how I am, if I like I can re-introduce some items one at a time.

I don’t really believe it. I’ve eaten everything except mushrooms (which I’m also intolerant of it turns out) my entire life and never had any problems. My suspicion is that when I’m at home I have a better diet and my body deals with the problems foods but when I’m away from home - like at uni - then my diet doesn’t provide enough balance to cope.

When I’m Sixty-Four I reserve the right to be grumpy like a teeneager, as I do for tomorrow when I turn 20.

I’ve never been very good at birthday’s. Most people seem to place great importance on them, ‘oh no, I’m a year older than I was yesterday’, well, no you’re not, you’re a day older. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy them and all of the things they bring, but in the same way I enjoy going away on holiday, they make a nice change for the day but things will still be the same the following day. There are exceptions of course, like turning 17 and being able to drive, but even turning 18 wasn’t much of an excitement, it just meant that if I was going to be thrown out of pubs they’d have to think up a new reason.

It was different when I was younger, the whole day people were going to have to be nice to me, I’d get whatever I wanted for dinner, maybe a lift to and from school. And presents too, and lots of chocolate.

Latterly though I’ve found it hard to get excited about them. Tomorrow morning I’ll no longer be a teenager but I’ll still be exactly the same person I am right now, except I’ll maybe need to shave again. The bit I am excited about is this weekend, my birthday gives me a reason to go home and see all of my family and that doesn’t happen that often so it’s something to really look forward to.

Birthday’s are good in that they give you a reason to be cheerful but the things themselves aren’t that special.
Apart from the presents, they’re good, I liked almost not being able to get in to my flat when I got home today because of all the post behind the door.
Oh, and the drinks, if anyone sees me in the west end on Thursday night feel free to buy me one.

I got this in an email from my Dad today I thought I’d share it with you:

The builder starts on big bruv’s loft on Monday so I spent yesterday morning
re-positioning the pipes away from where the new stairs are going. Also
removed the power socket from the wall that is being knocked down ….. but,
in doing so, trapped their cat under the floorboards until they got home
later at night.

A bit of a shame, he’s ok now I trust?

Your ideas not forthcoming, some answers : Triberg was the town we stayed in, it is the home of Germany’s highest waterfalls and we couldn’t get out of the train because the doors were (of course) locked.

We spent one night in Triberg then braved the trains again and made our way to Furtwangen where we found out that the bus we wanted to get didn’t run that day! Enough to make a man weep, but I didn’t though, I was just really grumpy untill we scrounged a lift from some nice lady who was in the tourist information office. Eventually we made it to Gasthaus Michelhof and set up camp for the next few days. After all our troubles with prison style trains and elusive youth hostels and disappearing buses we decided the best course of action was to not move untill we had somewhere firmly booked to go to. We read and did puzzles from the magnificent Puzzler magazine (an inspired purchase that kept us sane, I can naturally take the credit for buying that one) and were made comfortable by other overly generous campers.

Now, because nobody won last time, the prize rolls over. The person who answers this question correctly wins a romantic trip for two on the Paris Metro, what could be lovlier? That’s not the question by the way, this is: What is the correct response, when you are sitting eating cheese sandwiches with your girlfriend in a tent in Germany and a sweet old lady comes over to your tent, deposits EURO10, squeezes your girlfriend’s cheek says something beyond your comprehension of the german language and trots off back to the restaurant?

From Paris we went right out of France to Germany and the Black Forest. We stepped off our sleeper train onto Heidelberg Station at around half six and found a rather vague and useless map and made our plans of finding the river and having breakfast there before wandering along the river bank towards the old town with it’s castle and bridge (guarded by a rather fetching looking brass monkey) as it happenned we set off in completely the wrong direction for finding the river - exactly parallel with it - we couldn’t have got it much more wrong. By luck we were walking downstream and eventually ended up in the old part of the city and at the river where we finally got our breakfast lunch. Heidelberg proved to less camping friendly than we’d hoped so we hightailed it back to the station and got on the next train to leave. This is when things started to go a bit pear shaped. We used about 5 trains before we got to where we wanted to go, the first time we went through our intended destination we couldn’t get off and when we did get there we walked all the way up the hill to the top of town where the Jugendherberg is only to turn round, go back down and stay in a hotel because the hostel would have been more expensive and by the looks of things was full of screaming little pre-pubescent teenagers.

There is a prize of a ticket for the Paris Metro on offer for the person who gets these questions right : What is the name of the town where we spent the night, what is it’s main tourist attraction, and why did we not get off the train the first time we went through the town.

There will be no more of our tales untill someone gets the right answers. It’s a valid ticket mind, I’m not trying to fob off useless tat onto you and don’t worry if you don’t win this time, there’s more prizes left - look out for three more Metro tickets, 11 Czech Crowns (worth about 22p) and a handful of useless Euro cents. The Euros by the way is the worst currency going, stupid sizes and colours of coins, utterly impossible to count your money without getting it all layed out on a table, a fact that knocks on the head the retarded argument that joining the Euro would make things easier, as if that was a valid argument anyway, grumble grumble…

Answers in the comments box please

with no french whatsoever between us and had to find out way from Charles-de-Gaulle Airport to the hostel we had booked all those weeks before. It wasn’t actually too difficult but it did introduce us to the metro, something we grew to hate because of all the shifty looking people, each one seeming ready to rip the packs from our backs and disappear into the crowds. Neither of us like bustling places at the best of times but when we were tired with heavy bags and effectively deaf we really took a disliking to the whole city which was jam packed with people on holiday - it was the day before Bastille Day when we arrived.

I think the main problem with Paris was it’s size, sure there’e lots to do and see and it’s easy to get around and people do try to speak english when you are really stuck but there are so many other places that are just as nice but without as many people, and those places are much more pleasant to visit, as we found out as the month went on.

I think the rest of the french have it right when they meet someone from Paris, they say ‘oh well, we can’t all be perfect’ and for me that about sums it up, it could be good but it isn’t, there’s too much going against it for me to like it, let alone come back and rave about it like people seem to do. We did find a really nice cake shop though, and you do have to remember the important things in life don’t you?

as you can see for youself on nu-produkt , I am. Congratulations Lord and Lady.