Last night I had a house party to celebrate New Year instead of doing the usual pubcrawl and the place is a tip today. The last guests left at 4:30am and then it was off to bed for me. There’s been very little tidying up done yet and I’ll save that for tomorrow and today is a day for resting.

The dining room is a bit of a state.

I hope you all had a good New Year’s Eve and hopefully 2010 has started well for you.

On Saturday I went out for my Birthday meal at Churchills Tavern, Ramsgate, and I had a great time, so thanks to those who came along for the meal (Emma, Ian, Paul A, Phil, Emily, Paul F, Dan, Adele, Chris, Emma, Tom S, Jonny, Ben, Pip, and Anton) and those who came out after for drinks.

It was great to have lots of people out and that was one of the reasons for choosing Churchills which I find to be one of the most welcoming and relaxing venues in Thanet. Going to a restaurant in a big group can sometimes be more trouble than it’s worth so somewhere like Churchills was ideal where it’s easy going,  the food tastes great,  is good value, and more importantly where they serve good ales! I opted for the steak and ale pie (the most meat in a pie ever! official!) and also supped on the Chocolate Stout and had a few pints of Touché. There was even a band on that night (the Slug Pixies) who were pretty good, but as they got louder we decided to move on into town and headed to the cafe culture for somewhere a little quieter where we could all have a chat.

Gadds Beers

Now I’m not really one for wine bars as the main problem is that they’re usually pretty expensive and they usually don’t serve pints, but my view of Miles’ Bar has changed sinced they started serving Gadds ale. For example a bottle of lager (330ml) costs between £3-£3.50 but now you can get a 500ml bottle of Gadds Dogbolter or Gadds No.3 for the same price so I’m more than happy to go there now. After a few pints and some lounging upstairs we made a move to the Belgian Bar (which was very quiet for some reason), and then headed back to mine for drinks.

After thursday’s 2am bedtime, I followed this up with getting to sleep just after 6am, and then having to drive to London at 11am. To say I was tired was an understatement but I pulled through and had a great few days to celebrate my 29th.

Next Up: Planning for New Year’s Eve.

NYE 2003

For the past decade New Year’s Eve has consisted of going on a pub crawl in either Broadstairs or Ramsgate whilst in fancy dress such as Morris Dancers, Mr T’s, Nerds, etc but to be honest I haven’t enjoyed the past couple of years as much as I have in the past. I guess the main factors are that I’m not getting any younger and that it now costs quite a bit to go out, so I decided that this year I would be having a house party instead.

I broached the question to my friends and they all agreed that this would be a nice change and it would also mean that those with children would be able to come along (even if only for a few hours) without having to worry about babysitters and I really wanted to make it possible for everyone to come and have no excuses.

I’ve off to Calais on the 15th December (using the Eurotunnel £15 deal) and will stock up on alcohol in preparation for the party and will try and do a few more bits to the house between Christmas and New Year, but it certainly won’t be as much of a rush as it was getting the place ready for my housewarming.

Cripes, what a good weekend and I’m feeling it now, although less than I was feeling it yesterday! This weekend was Tom and Nicky’s wedding  and yet again I was happy to see two good friends get hitched.  The whole day took place at the Grade 1 listed Chilston Park Hotel near Maidstone and the venue was something very special and dare I say it, somewhere like I would like to get married some day.

Tom and Nicky

I couldn’t think of a better weekend, friends, food, drink, dancing, etc all added up and getting to bed at 5am is a sure sign of a good night, as is the hangover I woke up with on the Sunday morning. Yesterday was a day on vegging out and trying to recouperate but even though I’m still tired now it was definitely worth it.

Cheers Tom and Nicky, I couldn’t be  happier for you both.

I love pool!

I’ve been playing for the Wheatsheaf pool team for the past season and a half, and last night we won our division! We play in the Thursday Thanet Pool League Division 4, and next season we’ll be playing in Division 3 which means we get to visit more Thanet pubs!

I really do enjoy Thursday nights as it’s a good time to catch-up with mates in the team, play pool, have some beer and food, and just get out on what would normally be a night indoors as it’s a ‘school night’. I wouldn’t say I’m that great at pool but I do enough to get by and usually win most of my games, and it’s nice to see that as time goes by my game does improve and I’m playing shots in different ways.

We will get a trophy for this and it is the first time for ever that I’ve actually won something linked to sports as I’m generally a jack of all trades and master of none so I’m actually quite chuffed. The team did brilliantly this season so big-up respect to Windaas, GT, Chris, Tim,  Big Al, and especially to Si (the Wheatsheaf Landlord) who plays for the team, makes us lovely food, and makes the ‘Sheaf and great pub to go to.

I am now a Godfather!

Over the past week I’ve been doing the day job and then heading back home for a late finish to get the house completed, and on Saturday with a hour or so to spare it was done and I was ready for my housewarming party. It’s been a long slog and the last thing I wanted to do was have a party when instead it would’ve been great to go for a long sleep but in the end I had a great time.

Housewarming party

The weather was brilliant, I had a BBQ, there was plenty of food, the alcohol was flowing and the layout of the house proved to be great for a party. The party started at 3:30pm and the last guests left at 3:30am, so it was basically 12 hours of fun but I went through to the end (as a good host does), and then I finally got my sleep.. but not for long as I was awake just after 8am and I needed to get myself sorted for Sunday football (just like Tom). An easy option would’ve been to sack off football and stay in bed, but where’s the commitment in that?

It was really nice on Sunday afternoon to just potter around the house and not have to do any painting or decorating, and I didn’t even finish tidying up from the party! I tidied up the garden, put the bottles and cans in for recycling, threw away and leftover food,but I thought the rest could wait until this evening when I have some more energy!

There is of course some bits that I still need to do at the house but those can for now be put on the ‘to-do’ list for the future.

If you want to see some photos from the housewarming then click here.

Next weekend I’m off to Chichester and I’m really looking forward to it. I haven’t been down there since November, so it’ll be good to catch up with a few old faces.

The place really is a home away from home for me and although I’m going to a house party on Saturday evening I think I’ll get down there in the morning so that I can have a good old look around, maybe get a few photos and see if anyone is around during the daytime.

I’ve just been going through my flickr photos to see if there were any photos I could use to accompany this post and I found myself getting a bit nostalgic. Better put an end to that straight away!

I got back today from a weekend in London and have to say say that I had a great time. I’ve been looking forward to the weekend as I haven’t been out in a while having tried to stay in so that I had some money to go out with, and although I’m even more skint now than before, it was definitely worth it.

Annoyingly it is three of my friends Birthday’s on exactly the same day, 13th June, and so there is always going to probably be someone missing out. It was Steve’s 30th and he had arranged a party at the Spanish Galleon in Greenwich on the Saturday, and so Rachel put her 28th Birthday forward to the Friday night at The Miller in London Bridge, and the one to miss out on me as a guest was Mel who was having a BBQ on Saturday too, but as she is heavily pregnant this was the one that was less of a party.

Town of Ramsgate, Wapping, London

What was really good about the evenings was that there was so little hassle. I was staying in Lewisham and transport was really easy, the venues were really relaxed, and most importantly everyone had a good time. It was good to get out of Thanet and meet lots of new people, and it has put me in a good mood.

One thing that we did do on Saturday daytime was go on a little walk and we ended up at the ‘Town of Ramsgate‘ pub in Wapping. For those non-local readers, I live in the town of Ramsgate, and so I had to pop in, and we actually spent the whole afternoon there, sitting in the beer garden overlooking the river. Tim actually told the landlord that we were from Ramsgate and he didn’t look too impressed as I think a lot of people from our neck of the woods do exactly the same thing!

So it was back to Ramsgate this afternoon, and then work tomorrow…. how was your weekend?

After a bit of self-reflection last week I decided that I needed make the extra effort to be nicer and I hope that over the past week I’ve succeeded.

…lately I’ve looked at myself and I’m moodier, less helpful, short-tempered, put down people, and generally less fun than I used to be. I know I can’t be life and soul all the time but I sometimes think that I’m not always a very fun person to be around and don’t always give people the attention they deserve.

In retrospect I still have to agree with my comment and when I make the effort to ask how people are, engage them in conversation, and actually take in interest in what they’re doing then it becomes apparent. Previously I may have asked them how they are purely because they asked me, and it shouldn’t be like that. I shouldn’t need prompting but it’s easy to fall into that trap. It isn’t a chore to talk to friends so why act like it?

There will be times when I act like a nob, guaranteed, but hopefully those will be outnumbered by the better aspects of me.

Also.. My friend Tom has been blogging since the start of the new year and was complaining that he doesn’t get many visits on his site and so if you are a techie nerd then please head this way and maybe leave a comment.