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!