Snowboarding!

Firstly, happy new year to you all! I previously documented my escapades in adult gymnastics and rest assured I shall be pursuing that further this coming month in preparation for my backflip. I will also be stepping up my training for the half marathon next month. It has been alright thus far but took a bit of a hit over Christmas as can be expected.

Already I am nearing the half way mark for my year out, which is mental, so expect a bit of a summary in the next few weeks and further exciting plans for the new year. However, I need to write about the manner in which I brought in the new year, namely my holiday to France, specifically Les deux Alps. This is where I was introduced to the awesomeness that is snowboarding.

I could get carried away and ramble on for page after page about every little detail but I will make an effort to condense things. First things first, it looked like this...

Now I'd never been skiing or snowboarding before so I had no idea what to expect. Needless to say, there are very few places that I have been that could rival the location. Tick. So, I thought I would try my hand at snowboarding following various recommendations from a number of individuals. Turns out me and snowboarding got on quite well (unlike some people - you know who you are). I am now completely hooked. Another tick.

I should probably mention here that, although I managed to avoid wiping out anyone on the slopes, it wasn't entirely uneventful. Picture the scene... I'm a day or two into it, feeling a bit more confident, on a relatively steep part of a beginner slope. It's narrow and there's an instructor teaching around a dozen small children how to ski just below me as I'm making my way down the slope. Naturally, one slows and, in this case there being literally no where to go, I came to a stop.
  All fine so far, feeling relaxed and with a bit of time to kill. Now I'm not proud of this, but I am a firm believer that one should not break wind in an enclosed public space if they can help it, so what better place to do it than on a mountain surrounded by fresh air? With this in mind, I deployed my fart, satisfied that no one would be bothered by it. How was I to know that at that exact moment, another small girl was careering out of control directly towards me on her skis? As she ploughed into the back of me, she caught the full force in her face. To add insult to injury, I flew into the air and landed right on top of her. This became known as a 'Will Special'. I did not make this phrase up and I do not condone it.

I should make it clear, she was okay, albeit probably a little mentally scarred but these things happen. Anyway, crude anecdotes aside, this was one of the best holidays I have ever been on. I can think of countless reasons why... the location, scenery and existence of snowboarding among them but most of all it was the company that I went with and also the people that we were lucky enough to meet when we were there. Big shout out to all of the Chalet Ruby inhabitants! 

As well as that, everyone was happy. Be it drinking beer and watching strippers halfway up a mountain at 3 o'clock in the afternoon while listening to loud, avalanche inducing house music, or in the bars and streets of the village. Simply a cracking way of life.

But all good things must come to an end (for now) and I have been revising for an exam all this week. Then I'm back on the wards next week. So must go. But mark my words, this does not mean I stop, for I will be recommencing my weekly tasks, effective immediately. This coming week while I am grinding out some proper work, it shall be mastering the rubix cube.

I leave you with the result from the combination of a delayed flight at Bristol airport and a display model of an ipad foolishly left at the mercy of the public. 

Gymnastics

I've been working nights this week so I'm a little drowsy now but I'm out the other end and playing at a friend's wedding tomorrow. I'll be off to the practice studio as a result in a bit to brush up on the set.

However, I feel it is necessary to document my experience as a gymnast. I turned up at the venue, admittedly slightly hungover, expecting a state of the art gym complete with lifesaving safety equipment to help me from not breaking my neck. I was met with a small door in an arch underneath a railway bridge. Here's me looking 'up for it'.

You may or may not be able to see the scrawl on the door in chalk denoting the name of the premises. As you can see, a pretty professional enterprise.  I would also like to thank my friend Michelle for coming with me. I would have been 100% more awkward turning up to a majority female activity on my own.

Anyway, on entering I was actually slightly lifted (not literally), as the place at least had a toilet. We were all then subsequently put through our paces in forward and back rolls, hand stands and head stands. Verdict: It was actually pretty fun and as a result of the stretches at the start I was able to touch my toes with ease for the first time in a number of years.

Took me a while to bring up the issue of the backflip, but when I did at the end, the fact that our instructor Amelia didn't laugh in my face was encouragement enough. So, the game is on. I have £20 riding on this.  And that's a flipping lot of money.

Rather disturbingly though, on my way out, Amelia called out with the words, 'hey, are you guys cheerleaders?' Now on the one hand, in her mind it is plausible that I have the capacity to be a cheerleader. On the other, it is plausible in her mind that I have the capacity to be a cheerleader.

See you next time for my Christmas update.

Playing the Wine Glasses

This week has involved music, food and fun. Simple as that. After the hammer blow of the lock picking saga, I think I have just about managed to regroup. And it helps that it is becoming more and more festive. Indeed the decorations have shot up with a vengeance in the house. See below.

Now, before I get to the main task, I also managed to contribute to one of my other tasks by way of my culinary adventures in the kitchen. By this I mean that I cooked the first of what will be seven key dishes that I can reliably deliver at will, with devastating skill should the need arise.

Contrary to what you can see, it was actually quite tasty. And it had Hollandaise sauce in it which is generally understood in chefs' circles to be exclusively for the big boys.

Now onto the wine glasses. It was well fun. However, my efforts pale in significance to some of the stuff on youtube. You may say I have too much time on my hands but some people have taken it to a different level. With minimal practice and some scarce and fairly shoddy glasses, here's what I produced.

If you liked that, there will be a version of Silent Night on my youtube page. Given more time I could see myself getting obsessed with this activity. Almost as addictive as lockpicking and balloon animals!

I have a busy couple of weeks in line now so I think my next task will have to span both weeks.This includes an adult gymnastics class for the end of the week to get working on my back flip. (No joke).  Any suggestions for  bumper Christmas week tasks to perform to redeem myself would be much appreciated. In the meantime, I had a bit of free time so I rather randomly recorded this cover of Stand By Me. Hope you like it!

Lockpicking!

As you may or may not be aware, my task for this week was to 'master lockpicking'. I'm sorry to say that it is my first failure. Turns out picking locks is well hard.

It became clear early on that practice would be the key. However, as the week went by, it became more apparent that a miracle would be closer to the mark. I tried a few things and even plucked up the courage to walk into a key cutters to ask if they had any lock-picking tools. I was promptly told this would be unethical in a place that sells keys and I was on my way.

I really tried. Honest. And I don't like admitting defeat. I could have picked an easier task but I'm sure yale all agree that would have defeated the spirit of my year out.

To cap this disappointment off, I was involved in a spectacular coincidence for this week's finale when I locked myself out of the house for the first time ever. You literally couldn't write it - although I literally just have.

When I called the locksmith out and he said he could either drill the lock in (£125 and drastic, considering my housemate would be back in several hours) or attempt to pick it, I jumped at the latter. Needless to say the jovial, plump little polish locksmith had no luck even with my practiced and experienced supervision and we had to admit defeat. This all tells me two things... One, our house is impenetrable and two, failure at picking locks is not such a bad thing.

Next week I shall learn and perform a song using wine glasses.

Week Off

I have to confess that this week I have failed to carry out a task. This is mainly as I was working in order to replenish some of the funds which is an unfortunate necessity in life. I went back up to my old stomping ground in Yorkshire and I actually thoroughly enjoyed it, got to see some old faces and there is promise of further work. Good times.

In other news, I hit Cardiff where I saw another set of old faces and took part in fairly aggressive go karting session. The large crash that occurred in our final session, I still maintain, was not my fault.

So, that's about it. I did see George Alaguya (BBC News presenter) in Westfield today which was pretty exciting but I think this week's task needs to make up for a taskless week. Therefore, I'm going to master lockpicking in just one week. Wish me luck and I'll leave you with my latest, albeit poor quality, evil face photograph.

Acting

Hello world. This week's task was a tad on the boring side, at least for those hearing about it. The aim was to learn about how websites are coded using html and css code and I actually found it pretty interesting. Quite some time was spent listening to fairly boring American accented chaps on youtube going on about stuff that was occasionally so complicated, I didn't believe that it was actually for real. Still, I have produced the site on the right from the bits and pieces that I picked up and just to prove how awesome I am, here is the coding that I had to type out from scratch. Well worth knowing about!
In other news, I was chilling out with James Corden and Julie walters this week. Those who don't know already (and I may have been going on about it quite a lot), I managed to bag some work as an extra. Chilling on set with the big guns was quality even though it was a film about Britain's Got Talent winner
Paul Potts. Hopefully my acting skills were noted and you'll probably be seeing me in the next Bond film.

The picture featured on the page by the way was from Gun Hill Riffs latest gig. Good fun it was too and thanks to all who came. Finally, I had wanted to get a more active task in for next week but I've landed some proper work which will be helping me pay for this year so it may have to be another smaller task. As such I'm going to leave this week's task as a surprise! Bet you can't wait. 

W

Times Tables

Well. The task for this week got off to a slow start. I won't lie, it's pretty difficult to get yourself motivated to learn your times tables. I tried various methods including printouts of the tables themselves, going down them in order but by far the saviour of this task was the times tables app I downloaded on my phone. Words cannot describe how addictive this is. It takes the form of a timed quiz and as a result of almost constant use over the last two days I am now well good.

When I say mastered it's all relative, exemplified by my mistake in challenging my father to take the test. He immediately beat my score and the gloating still rings in my ears.

In other news, our Halloween party occurred this past Saturday and a good time was had by all. I donned my Jedi outfit and in my opinion the force was with me.

It was also mindblowingly comfortable. This makes me think the record attempt for longest wearing of a Jedi outfit will be all the more easy.

Incidentally, I have recently had an increased number of people commenting on my likeness for a certain member of the Inbetweeners. Am I becoming him or something?! This is a photo of me...

This is the alleged lookalike (who unfortunately I must admit may have been the reason why a girl outside the BBC the other day looked over at me and barely managed to mask a massive grin (my flies were not wide open. I checked straight away))...

I think I look more like WWE wrestler The Miz...

I am not particularly pleased either way but that's life. Anyway, the tasks have been a bit bookish recently so I'm building up to an exciting one again once I have been boring for one more week. The task I shall be doing this week is learning about computers. Specifically html. I barely know what this is but I'm told once I know the basics I can pimp out my blog a bit. So the proof will be in the brand new look next week.

W