OK, the decision has been made, and action has been taken.
I have handed in my notice at work, my last day at work is on the 28th of January 2011, I am now going to work as a freelancer. This is quite a scary prospect as there will be no regular wage at the end of the month ! I am currently the head audio visual technician in the RBS conference center, Edinburgh, but I hope to work with companies such as M.C.L., Metro, Production Bureau, West End Studios, S.E.C.C. Glasgow, etc at events all over the UK and abroad. I am already booked to work for nine days in March in Barcelona with West End Studios.
I hope to have more pub and drinking news for you next week as I am planning a day in Edinburgh reviewing some new pubs, probably this weekend. One of the pubs will be the Guildford Arms. This is because I was in contact during the week with the author of www.GoodBeerGoodPubs.co.uk, which is an excellent site for finding good pubs in England, and he was appalled that I didn't have a review of it on the site already. This will be sorted out this weekend.
It's the second day of the New Year and I find myself locked away in my garage, thinking about the last few days.
My garage isn't that bad, I probably forgot to mention that it has a small bar, a digital progector, screen and 5.1 surround sound system and a lock on the door to keep my children out. This is where I usually write this blog, work on the web site and generally hide from the world.
The last few days have been a mixture of really quiet, too much drink, large crowds of people and family get togethers.
On boxing day we, (Christine, my two daughters and me), headed to Christine's family farm for a few days and spent time there eating too much, playing with lots of nephews, playing board games and watching lots of TV. On the Monday I decided to leave the farm and go for a walk, so I headed into the local town, Howwood, and met up with a old friend of mine, Andy. As you have probably guessed, we went for a few beers. We went to The Railway Inn, there is a review on the pub page, and settled in for a few drinks and a catch up. Unfortunately I didn't have much to eat before walking down to Howwood so the drinks went to my head almost straight away, you can probably hear me already begin to slur my words in the video below.
Unfortunately thats not the worst of it.
I then decided to try and walk off the drink by walking back to Howwood, by castle Semple Loch, by the river, through the trees, along a completely ice covered cycle track, in the dark. As youve probably guessed, this didn't go too well. I got lost quite quickly and ended up in some fields, got stuck on a barbed wire fence, (completely ripping my jeans), and was very disorientated. Luckily I saw a land mark that I recognised, (it was an old folly on top of a hill), I knew that this was close to the track I wanted and I was heading in the right direction as it is also close to the Howwood road. At this point my phone went and it was Christine asking where I was, I told her, at first she went mad at me and then she calmd down and said she would drive along the road towards the cycle track. Half an hour later I was in the car being taken back to the farm, where I was sent to bed. The following morning I had a lot of apologies to make, I also had a hangover that could kill a horse.
We left Howwood on the Wednesday afternoon and headed home. We had a restfull day on the Thursday as I was working on the Friday, hogmany. I am an audio visual technician, but I also work occasionaly as a camera man at large events. Edinburgh has the largest hogmany party in the world and I was working as camera operator No1 on the Waverly stage. There were four bands on this stage including "The Coral" and "Newton Fauklner". I love working at this event as I think I get one of the best seats in the house ! Check out the video below, this is how I brought in the new year.
It Is a great way to bring in the new year and I really enjoyed working at this event. Although, I didn't get home till about 3.45 am and was tired on new years day.
With the festive holidays nearly over and people starting to get back into a working frame of mind, I decided to go for one more night out. In my home town of Broxburn, at my local, The Masonic. Check out the video below, which was filmed at closing time just as we were leaving.
Have a great start to 2011 !!!