The World Cup is taking over my life

I don't know about you guys, but I have been glued to the World Cup. Over the past week I have been working short days so it has meant that I have made it home to see on average one and a half matches of football a day. Quite how I am finding enough time in the day to then fit in both Neighbours and Home and Away is pretty amazing! To top that all off, my evenings have been culminating in adding the day's football results to my BBC wall chart - I really must get out more!

My stint of nursing is actually over for now, I did my last shift yesterday. I start my real summer job on Monday. I will be taking foreign students around the sights of Edinburgh and London. After my initial three days of that I will be heading Fife-wards to immerse myself in the joys and sorrows of graduation. I got a phone-call the other day from my Granny wondering how easy it would be to get 2 extra tickets for her and Grandpa. Bloomin' 'eck! As if there isn't enough faffing about to be done this week, I have to go and scavenge for two extra graduation tickets as well. Why couldn't she have shown some interest sooner?! Personally, I think she was waiting to see if she had any bowling fixtures on the 23rd before settling for coming to St Andrews! What a woman! I am now being woken up by dreams of my Granny trying to hold a conversation with someone like Dr Gratzke! If that dream does become a reality it'll be well worth seeing!

I'm off out again tonight. I am once again sacrificing Casualty for a night out in Edinburgh. I wouldn't mind except that dad broke our video recorder the other week and I can't even tape my beloved hospital drama. As I said earlier though this is a case of 'I must get out more'. It's Fiona's birthday so we're heading into town for a jolly evening and it's a chance for me to catch up with school mates that I haven't seen in ages.

Three week void

What are you supposed to do in the three weeks between finishing exams and graduation? There's only so much 'celebrating' my liver can take, I'm skint, and I'm not really up for full-time employment either. Here's my compromise...

On the weekend after I finished my exams I took the train down to Manchester to meet up with Fiona and then we drove down to Cardiff to do a recci. We booked into a swish hotel and then headed out for the night. Our quest was to mingle with Welsh people! We ate at a yummy Italian restaurant where we were serenaded by one of the waiters - he definitely wasn't welsh though. Then we went to a groovy 80s themed bar where they had a cardboard cutout of the man himself...David Hasselhof!!! (pretty sure he hasn't got any welsh blood) As we began striking up banter with guys who we thought were locals we noticed a certain twang missing in their accent - they weren't welsh at all, they were ENGLISH! By an awful coincidence, we were in Cardiff over the same weekend as the Division Two play-off between Grimsby and Cheltenham and the bar was full of sorrow-drowning Grimsby supporters! Once we left the cool 80s bar, me and Fiona (with Grimsby supporters in tow) were lured into some seedy late-opening club. We happily danced the night away, semi-ignorant to the state of the place and the state of the clientele. Here we met our first bona fide Welshman called Geraint (see photo!). We finally made it back to our hotel at around 4:30am.



The next day we got up in time for breakfast - this did manage to settle the stomach but did nothing for the sleep-deprivation. Afterwards we somehow managed to haul ourselves around the uni campus and suss out the accommodation possibilities before driving back up north to Manchester.

Since then I have been filling my days with shifts at my local hospitals working as a care assistant. More often than not I start at 7:30am - quite a shock to the system! I have a number of jobs, ranging from serving meals to emptying catheters. The other day we received a new patient onto the ward where I was working. She was a lovely old lady who was very nimble on her feet and had a big appetite. As the doctor carried out her preliminary assessment on this old lady I overheard the doctor asking her 'can you tell me what year it is?', to which the wee old lady replied '1908'! I thought it was so cute!