Madness in March

There is just too much going on at once for a dedicated post of each event that March has thrown my way so far, its madness, madness I tells ye! Thankfully, possibly related to the quantity of hours being put in at work, there has been a silver lining (or in my specific case, a giant glowing hourglass in the sky!) to all the rushing about. Though there have been far too many early mornings and late nights. A busy schedule has led to some nice photo opportunities, photos of things I would perhaps have missed had I not been moving around at funny times of the day, and here are a few of them:

It all kicked off on the 1st March with Crusaders first game live on Sky Sports and first game under our new floodlights at Seaview. The game was the kick start for a run of good results getting our season back on track with a guaranteed top 6 finish due to the league split after 33 games. Leeds sadly haven't got their act together and didn't look great this Monday just gone. In fairness though injuries aren't helping either team but there is still plenty of season to go though and its never dull when it comes to Leeds or the Crues.

Next up was part of Norn Girls birthday weekend and a trip to Dundonald and more specifically a Sunday afternoon trip to the Pirates Adventure crazy golf by the Ice Bowl. It's great fun and we've been a few times now. We prefer the course to the right because of the wet musical hole (that sounds wrong), but both are great. None of us won a free game token at the last hole but it is possible!


We also made it to two restaurants, one occasion was a trip to Gingerroot on Great Victoria Street and the other a trip to the Bellevue Arms on the Antrim road up near the zoo. 2 completely different types of food but both very, very nice. Gingeroot is the best place I know of in Belfast for a curry, though for any big heat in your curry be sure to ask for it. The flavours are yummy though and the set meal was huge! The Bellevue was great even though they were out of pineapple juice last thing on a Sunday which was disappointing as we were eager for a cocktail or two. The food itself more than made up for it though. I had the roast beef and it was perfectly cooked for a joint. Delicious and only to be equaled by the all you can eat carvery we headed to for mothers day at the Clarion hotel, the only shame there is that you have to go easy on the first 3 courses to be able to manage to sample the vast array of sugar loaded deserts.

The all you can eat was a bit like the mad hatters tea party but with cups that hold fluid and another outing we went on was a trip to the Yorkgate Moviehouse cinema to see Alice in Wonderland 3D. I hadn't made it to see Avatar whilst it was out so this was the first 3D movie I'd seen with real actors included on screen and I really quite liked the mix. I think the enjoyment was aided by the familiar voices of the computer generated characters, many of whom I didn't realize had actually been in it until the very atmospheric credits were growing and rolling.


As with the story in the movie whereby Alice finds herself at an engagement party, I found myself at my first ever engagement party. Not my own mind you (we couldn't nor really wanted one), we were invited to one of Norn Girl's friend's celebrations. The celebration was a nice evening out in the end. It was held at the Malone Rugby Union social club and the happy couple were eager to show everyone a great time. That was echoed by the performers of the live entertainment. They had a lead singer who was very eager to get audience participation. The crowd was quite young (or at least young at heart) and the tactic of joining the audience if they didn't come to you seemed to work well. I managed to escape the dance floor but had a really nice time never the less. It reminded me of a wedding reception which confused me a little but if that's the warm up, who knows what their wedding reception might be. Good luck to them in their build up to their wedding.

We had turned up a little later than we had hoped to the party that night. We had gone into town to change buses, but instead of the 6A we found David Coulthard being interviewed. He then proceeded to jump into a Red Bull F1 car and drove up and down in front of Belfast City Hall making an awful lot of noise in the process. As our bus stop was now part of a mock up race track for a one man piece of exhibition driving with hundreds of people swamping it. We realised we had to head on somewhere downstream of the event going on to some place where we might happen to find our bus. We eventually found the one of it's later stops on the bus route and the bus, thankfully, wasn't long. We sat down in seats that looked a lot more comfortable than the multi-million pound technological play thing that was wearing down its tires performing spins just down the road. One car traffic jams, whatever next.

After that, I invented a new form of sandwich or wrap, taking 2 slices of 50/50 bread and using them as a condensed wrap... any ideas of a name for this delicacy?

The Wedding: Part 2 - Writing the speech the day before

I got thinking but the fact that I've always been on the not so good side of poor when it comes to public speaking was nagging at me in my mind. It's no underestimation. Even when feeling confident about what I'm saying, about a minute or two into a speech, if there are more than around 10 people in the room, I don't know why but my hand starts to quiver and then the situation heightens. I get self conscious that people are listening to my tone and wording and whatever confidence was there just drifts away like a demon leaving the body of a host in Supernatural.

I usually end up mumbling plenty of disjointed sentences to an unsuspecting audience. Anyways, the point is, my speech was hardly going to be the fitting tribute to my bride that she so very much deserved but what the hay. I thought I'll give this my best shot and just went down the personal route, and tried to put down in words something meaningful to my bride disregarding whatever anyone else might think.

I got typing and surprisingly when I focused on Norn Girl herself and not what people would think of my words, I had a speech written, typed up in large print, colour coordinated paragraphs surprisingly quickly - the last part a great tip recommended by my best man and I was all set for the reception. All I had to think about now was the wedding itself and making sure all our best laid plans went to schedule.
My cousin and his girlfriend returned not long after I had finished. They had taken in a Sunday whistle stop tour of Belfast which is admittedly not the greatest day to do so due to a lot of things being closed, but they had gone to the Ulster Museum and returned with a mixed report. Apparently abstract art has crept in but they liked the café. A trip in the near future is no doubt on the agenda to compare the old to new. (And here is that very trip we took to the Ulster Museum in February).

The day seemed to fly by and it was soon the evening and time for us to head to Carrickfergus. We were all heading to the Clarion Hotel that night, not to see Norn Girl but to collect the rest of my family and Norn Girls brother as he was staying with my side of the family later. My dad, as always, was being a star and became taxi driver for the lot of us. We were soon at the Clarion and waiting for my sister to appear from her room, late as usual! Most of the family headed off the in car but those of us brave enough braced the cold and made the short walk to Carrickfergus harbour and into the Brewers Fare for a meal.

The party were all rather noisy, especially down the bottom end of the table where the oldest generation of our family were having quite a few beverages and becoming rather vocal. Us younger folk tried our best to join in but most of us were going t-total for the day and so it was all rather civilized down our end. It was like some kind of random role reversal. The meal wasn't the greatest but it was ok for the price and was filling enough to get us through the evening and into the big day. Before long we had to get going and left those of the family staying at the hotel to enjoy a few more drinks and those of us staying at my place headed back with me to Belfast in a taxi.

When we got home, I started to get prepared. In some sort of nervous double checking mode, I was simultaneously trying to make a check list for the morning as well as playing pro evolution on the PS2 with Norn Girl younger brother. Thankfully the later helped my nerves as it was a great distraction. In our games of football on the games console, there are 2 ways to win. First is the regular way, by scoring more goals than the other team. The second is by getting the most players sent off which is surprisingly harder than you might think when you are trying to do it. The ultimate victory is to have 8 men left on the pitch with your best goalie playing up front and win the normal way too. This very rarely happens and didn't in these games. On this occasion it was a win each time for the side with most players left on the pitch so a draw overall. It was soon past midnight and we headed to bed. With a full house I was on the sofa for the night, so I got the pillows set up and threw the spare duvet over me and that was where I woke on my wedding day...

...To be continued...

The Wedding: Part 1 - The build up to the big day

**The following was written last November in the presence of a warm soft breeze, a soothing environment and several cocktails in what can only be described as luxury. Having been broke for 2 years to make it happen, we were still feeling so very lucky to be chilling on our amazing honeymoon in the tropical wonderland of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean... more of that to come later**

Sat here writing with pen and paper in a pad rather than typing from my laptop, let me take you back 6 days, rewinding a 12 hour flight, a 3 day break in London and our wedding day. We've landed back in time the day before the big day. My best man and his girlfriend are present and staying over, they arrived on Saturday and the nerves or anticipation were starting to get to everyone was having to give a speech the next day. The big day was almost upon us.

Within hours of landing on the Saturday we'd disappointed both my best man and his girlfriend by taking them to a less than impressive game of football when we went to watch Crusaders Vs Glentoran, not a regular occurrence mind, just one of those games, it ended 1-1. Thankfully things picked up quite quickly.

It was soon Sunday and Norn Girl had been picked up by her mum and driven away to the Clarion Hotel in Carrickfergus (the location of our reception) where she was to hide out near Carrick Castle, the location of our wedding ceremony on the big day that was now just a day away. My best man and his girlfriend had taken the chance to head into town and see the sights. So there I was, all alone with my laptop, my new shiny shoes eager to be worn the next day and with my fish noming the surface of their water hoping for an extra sprinkling of pellets. My mission, with less than 24 hours before the event and the speeches to be given, was to write my speech for the reception.

I know, I know, I should have had it done ages before and I had tried so very hard. I had even taken my pad over on my stag party but time and events got away from me. On my return work was very, very, very busy (as it still is to this day in March 2010!) and I was rushing until the last day to meet future deadlines to ensure that I'd not miss them whilst I was away. During that same time in the weeks building up to the wedding day, Norn Girl and I were nervous wrecks operating on a mixture of adrenalin and auto pilot, always trying to think about what we still had to do and what we might have missed. Everytime I had assigned time, the time had somehow got away from me and so, with only a couple of hours to myself before it was too late, this was my last and only opportunity!

So I set my head to the task again, a task of trying to write something both personal and impersonal, affectionate (or as I had written at the original time of writing this - Effectivate, now there's a word - send your meaning on a postcard!) but not sickly, not overly waffley but also not too direct. This task worried me for about 10 minutes until in a moment of inspiration I came to the conclusion (aided by everyone I'd asked about this sort of thing too) that it probably wasn't going to make the slightest bit of difference. Sure, by chance I might have been able to write the perfect speech but this was me, even if I was to have had the perfect speech written down word for word it wouldn't come out of my mouth that way! It still had to be written though so what was I going to put in my speech?...

...To be continued...