Adam’s just left Eastleigh, heading to HM Naval Base, Portsmouth to get on his ship, HMS Kent, where he’s off at sea for three weeks. He’s only to Plymouth, but after my last post earlier today, you may have noticed my emotions are running a little high right now, and him leaving was almost too much.

He sails at 4pm. I’m almost contemplating going down to Southsea seafront to wave him off. Although he probably wouldn’t realise who it is.

I’m such a girl, sometimes.

The day gives the family of all the ships company (sadly apart from those working) the chance to come on board for the day, and get taken out to sea to see what they get up to. My mum,  Andy, his mum Karen, Sam and myself went.

We had a fly past of two fighter jets ‘attacking’ the ship, a helicopter came by and showed us some moves, there were tours of all the different areas of the ship – The Bridge (where they drive the ship), The ops room (radar/sonar where Adam works), The engine room, all the guns, flight deck and hanger, and more – mock fire fighting displays, and a chicken curry and rice or meatballs and pasta lunch.

You got to hang out with fellow seamen in the mess (where they sleep and live when not working), and see what life is like out at sea. It was a really good day. I really enjoyed myself. Maybe not enough to go down the Navy Careers office to sign up, but if they ever wanted a civvy to hang around on board for a week, I probably wouldn’t say no.

The problem I had, and often have when I really enjoy myself on a day or weekend out, is at night, when I lay in bed, remembering all fun of the day, and I get an overwhelming sense of depression and sadness that it’s over, and unlikely to happen again for a while (as demonstrated right now, as it’s just gone 9am, I’ve been awake for nearly 2 hours, home alone) and all I can do is sit around dwelling on the good day before, getting slowly more and more depressed that it’s not a daily occurrence.

Then I think, how long could I go having a day like yesterday, again and again daily, before it becomes tedious and boring? Then logically how ridiculously impossible it would be to do for than a few days in a row (Mum and Andy had a day annuals leave from work, and Adam said it cost in the region of £200,000 for the day, and even with all my free time now uni is over, it wouldn’t been the same going on my own)

I only had a small snapshot of what it’s like on board, and although I quite liked what I saw, I almost wish I could wake up tomorrow on board readily trained and with all those I met yesterday. As it happens, I would need to undergo nine weeks basic training, followed by another god knows how long being trained in my specialist area (Last night I looked at chef/catering, which was a 26 week course) before I’m ready for action, by which time half the people on HMS Kent may have moved on or changed and the dynamic of the ship could be completely different. And who’s to say I would be drafted to Kent, anyway? There are 87 commissioned ships in the Royal Navy right now.

I’m going to stop now and have breakfast, hopefully take my mind off my sadness…

I have been a VERY naughty boy.

My road tax ran out 30 minutes ago. (That’s not the half of it!)

I’ve been meaning to do it for weeks, now. But I’ve been so busy being lazy.. and moving house!

So, I was going to do it on Tuesday, but didn’t, then yesterday, but I helped Sophie and Sarah move into their new house, so I was going to do it in the morning. Then someone tells me I will get an £80 fine for not having a legal car between 00:00 and whenever I get to the post office. So I think fuck it, I read on the back of my renewal notice that it’s not illegal for me to drive without a valid disc showing (because it’s in the post) for the 1st five days of the month.

So on to direct.gov.uk I go.. putting in my details, next, next, etc, “Sorry, a valid MOT Certificate cannot be found”.. Oh shit I think, why not? So I go searching in my paper work… It ran out on MAY 17th!!!!! Oh fuckity-fuck indeed!!

I shat myself!

Quickly, I declared my car as SORN, to avoid any fines etc, only to find my facebook status filling up with comments like…

“Means you’ve been driving illegally and uninsured! You been a very bad, bad boy George!”

OOPS!

No TAX, No MOT, No Insurance!

I am a baaaaaad boy! But it was a genuine mistake! I didn’t do it on purpose!

On top of that, tomorrow, I need to phone the gas, electricity and water people to cancel, phone Sky to tell them we’ve moved, take stuff to the charity shop and recycle centre, phone the AA to cancel down to basic cover (although, not much point ATM!), get an MOT done, get tax sorted, fix some shelves, and unpack some more!

It’s DJ Earworm‘s mash-up of the Capital FM’s Summertime Ball artists. It’s called ‘Like OMG baby’, and it’s amazing!

And I thank each and every one of you, but I have a little bit of a rant to make.

I have 266 friends on facebook.

Now I didn’t ever expect all 266 to write on my wall. A lot of them probably have a life and didn’t even log in today.

I got around 70 wall posts and comments, which is great.

But around 10 of those were from obscure people I have added that I wouldn’t normally talk to on even nearly a semi-regular basis. And there were a good few people who I would have expected a birthday wish from, but didn’t.

I just thought it was a bit weird that the social networking site people know I am heavily (and more than that is healthily) involved in was one place they didn’t use to convey their message.

I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I’m not. I thank everyone who has made my day so special lots. Just wanted to point it out.

In other, but closely related, news.

I got:

A 32″ Flatscreen LCD TV
A £120 POLICE watch
A giant poster of a london/bus scene
Over £200 in cheques/cash
21 £1 lottery tickets
A clock/radio with time projector
A bonsai tree
and a book.

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RAG Week is a week of Raising and Giving (Hence the ‘RAG’ bit) money around universities around the country for charities.

Southampton Solent chose to raise money for Hampshire Fire and Rescue, in memory of the 2 fire-fighters who lost their lives in Shirley a few weeks ago.

There were three or four events that took place over the week, including ‘Take Me Out’ – a Solent take on the popular ITV1 dating show, and “Radio Sonar – Get me out of here”.

That’s where I came in.

Basically, Management at the station decided they were going to recruit 8/10 people to be “locked” in a box, and not released until we raised enough money.

This actually turned into the 10 people being split into pairs, each spending an hour and a half (the length of a radio show on Radio Sonar) in a Trampoline with the safety net on. The head of systems/tech set up an Outside Broadcast type thing, allowing Radio Sonar to be blasted across the carpark/outside seating area and two headphones/mics to allow interaction to the studio. And they moved a studio webcam to look out of a window into the ‘box’ and put the stream online for everyone to watch.

The whole idea was pretty good.

I kicked it off at 11am on Wednesday, with my normal show, occasionally ‘going live downstairs’ to talk to the guys in the box. And actually, as I’d managed to lose Andrew to the editing I should probably have been helping with, I thought it was one of the best shows I had produced all year!

We raised £87.57.

And I can’t decide if that was good or not.

I don’t know why, but I expected more. Not just more money, but more from the event. I mean, I never got to see the outside set-up before I finished my show, but I expected a lot more people to be hanging about. Especially as I had to set them a challenge whilst in the box (make up a dance routine to Five’s ‘Just Dance’), but when I got there, although the presenters had swapped, they hadn’t stuck around, and there was only one other member of the station there, and that was because we had a technical problem.

I mean, I know we all have things to do, lectures and stuff, but it was right outside the student union cafe/bar entrance, and although people were walking past fairly often, no one seemed to look twice.

Have your uni done any fund raising events that didn’t quite go to plan?

This morning, and in fact since I finished work last night, I have had this feeling.

And I don’t know why.

And I don’t like it.

—–

On the plus side – Hello May 2010!

And it was good. Very good. It was as though nothing had changed. I feel all good inside, and without a doubt going to sleep with a smile on my face