Scrapping Back Into Contention..!

With an unexpected win at Keighley and a couple of losing bonus points, the season was coming to life, a win over Doncaster was a must... and so it happened!

This was also the first game where I got to see what it was like to use the live-update software under Sportstat who have replaced the Press Association (that's where I update the scores you can see on the www.skysports.com website among others!)

It's much easier using the mobile phone to update on the Wifi rather than calling all the time, plus we now get paid £25 a game instead of £15, so plus the £27.50 for the written reports from League Weekly and the Press Pass meaning that I now get in free to games, I'm essentially earning £67.50 per home game, yay!

Here's the League Weekly copy:

( SwintonVsDoncasterCLeagueWeekly2013 )

Evil Easter..!

The aforementioned renaissance could have come to a grinding halt, with an intimidating Easter schedule, the game at Batley last weekend, was called off, as Mount Pleasant is halfway up a mountain and the snow predictably enveloped a really open ground.

Then the Easter games saw us at home to Leigh (2nd last season) and away at Featherstone (1st last season), the latter was a 18-38 defeat. So not too bad really and a good chance for me to get some more driving under my belt! The former was even better, a bonus point off Leigh was more than I thought likely!

Here's the League Weekly copy:

( SwintonVsLeighCLeagueWeekly2013 )

Party Post..!

First, the happy stuff, last weekend was an odd mix of two parties, so completely different from each other, it almost feels untrue. Me and Toni went to my mate Hobson's 30th birthday first, we got there and were the first people there, which was nice as we got time to talk life and cats with him and Terri, which isn't too frequent as we live on different sides of the city!

As I was driving, I didn't drink a drop of alcohol while I was there (I know you can but personally I'd have the limit for alcohol to be zero, it's a lot more transparent system...) Despite that I was not once short of conversation or felt shy, to have that reassurance in a group of people and to feel that comfortable was tremendous!

Also, oddly I had a conversation with Kingy, now me and him have never as her put it himself "seen eye-to-eye", I think a more accurate description would be that we both thought the other is a nobhead since school but to have a discussion about life, London and the Benefits System and not completely disagree with what he was saying and even enjoy it, was a revelation. People can change, and it can be for the better, cool!

Then, we had to go to a party on the same night at our old house in Chorlton, so we drove across Manchester and parked up, this party was the opposite of the relaxed conversations of the previous place but enjoyable in a completely different, lose-your-mind type of way!

There was a live band called Hawk Eyes (who have headlined the Unsigned Stage at Leeds/Reading Festivals!) playing in the basement, there was a 'pit and a fire mid-gig when some lights set on fire!

Upstairs, there were many people who we didn't know but also plenty we did, much drink was drunk, I was supping a bottle of red wine out of the bottle, there was dancing on the furniture and loud tunes as Mackle tried to DJ to a crowd on an improvised Idock plugged into a speaker!

Then Toni nearly convinced me to drink-drive home as it was so cold, thankfully Mackle and the two of us decided against it and we picked up the car in the morning, all in all, an ace night and weekend!

It's just nice to commemorate these things once in a while, I've been fortunate enough to have had some outstanding and bizarre weekends for many years now, something to look back and smile about, if a few drunken memories fade away would be nice!

Painful Week Post..!

After such a good weekend, this week has been a massive ballache, long tough shifts in work, normally I don't whinge about this, particularly as my job is explaining this to people:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21991953

Particularly the bits where I tell people that they are now paying FULL Council Tax on Empty Homes they own or that unemployed people now have to pay 8.5% of their Council Tax bill. Lots of unhappy and confused people race in, we've been taking 2,200 calls a day, only 50 work in the call centre, it's been ridiculous!

Couple that with a pair of relationship arguments (both now resolved), the resultant lack of sleep, a groin injury I can't seem to fucking shift and trying to decide where to get Neil's stag do going to, it's been a stressful week!

Then... the new cats got ill! Angel was bleeding out of the mouth over the flat on Thursday night and we had to take her to an emergency vet, who discovered a tumour in the mouth we didn't know about but let us take the cat home.

She went to a vet on Friday and stayed overnight into Saturday, where she was given blood tests and we were threatened with bills of us to £1200, which having just paid for a wedding, and paying to go to/stag weekends for others, is not ideal.

Fortunately, she's safely back at home with us and Blue and the Cats Home promised help with ALL medical bills. We are insured so hopefully, it won't be too troublesome... For a while though, it was very worrying.

Although it has had good parts, spontaneously townsley_89 decided to check out The Gaslight Anthem in Manchester on Wednesday, so despite him being based in Leeds and neither of us having any tickets to a sold out gig, he secured some on Seatwave and...

I'll try not to make thelma_viaduct or 27needles too jealous but we were rewarded with the best performance I've seen them give! They even played every not-completely-obvious song we wanted them to play - 'I'da Called You Woody Joe', 'We Came To Dance', 'The Patient Ferris Wheel' plus 'Too Much Blood' (in the encore), tremendous!

That and a whistlestop trip down to London, to hang out with Ed and his housemate and see the amazing Found Footage Festival:

http://www.foundfootagefest.com/

With further hilarious and mental videos like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_TGMO0WHZ8

before going back and drinking in his new place was a great Saturday night that we both intend to repeat. Sad times that Toni had to stay at home though...

Oh and finally, a hello to a newbie, how do dr_brainwild ?