Buggies in Bath

Last night I got back from me and Dano’s road trip to visit Bath Spa Uni. We set off 1ish on Sunday, with the plan to stay in my mate Sam's halls and then be up early for the Uni open day on Monday (yesterday). You may be asking how a cripple like me can be ripping up the southwest, touring cities and universities a mere 12 days after a major knee op. The answer is simple get yourself a caddie to drive you around, carry luggage etc (Dan served me very well). Secondly and very importantly use peoples sympathy to your advantage! I don't think I opened one door the whole trip don't underestimate the kindness of strangers!

The trip was very successful in the sense we did everything we went to Bath to do, can't truthfully say the road to achieving our goals was entirely bump free or pot hole free for that matter. Lets just say Bath is not a very car friendly city and after navigating the one way street, traffic light and difficult junction riddled roads for about two hours both me and Dan were about to pack in the idea of ever living in this automobile nightmare. You would expect the people of bath would ad least have a vague idea of the layout of there city, it would seem not.

After the initial madness it seemed to make sense (as we weren’t getting anywhere) to park up and await rescue. This was about seven and as Sam wasn't going to be in Bath until about nine, my mate Oscar, who also lives in bath, agreed to meet us and show us around. The closest place to where we parked (it had to be close due to my crippled ness) was a Weatherspoons, cheap beer just what we needed after the days stresses. It was great to see Oscar, very cool guy, and he filled us in on the places to be in bath, student life etc.

Sam turned up at 9 introductions and more pints, then after goodbyes to Oscar it was straight off to Sam's as we were all knackered after late nights and long journeys.

Arriving at Sam's without a hitch, the three of us were shocked by the state of the kitchen; we had entered a skag den. The bins were overflowing onto the mud covered floor, there was not a clean plate in sight. I'm not the cleanest of people but I wouldn't be able to spend 10 minutes in that kitchen. A fuming Sam led us into his fittingly spotless, tidy bedroom and we set out mats (far to thin) before falling into our deep well deserved sleeps we watched a couple of Heeelarious South Park episodes 'Pandemic' Series 12 soooo good! "I'm so startled".

Watch Pandemic Part 1

Watch Pandemic Part 2

The next morning we left Sam's with some directions to Bath Spa Sam had drawn for us. The directions were good but are tired brains took a while to find are destination, we were about 10 minutes late in the end after going right off course.
After an introductory seminar we were told to head up campus to the English and Creative writing buildings, I was offered a mobility scooter (hahaha) and after some deliberation I accepted. At first it was slightly embarrassing scooting around, a lot of hotties at this event and I felt a bit of a 4 wheeled prat! After the first few minutes I got into it though, offering rides, speeding up and slowing down to comic effect etc.
The Lecturers seemed pretty cool and the courses seemed as good as I had hoped.

After returning to the meeting point, me and Dan were given a private tour of the accommodation, by a lovely young lady, funnily enough from Truro (only half an hour away from Penzance - my home town) she was a little ditzy and presumed I had brought the buggy from home "yea took me four days to get here on the M5!"
The accommodation is brilliant; the kitchens which are shared between 8 people are massive! The girl showing us around said they had a party the night before with a band in the kitchen and over 60 people!! Crazy!
We got another campus tour to get in all the other sites, the castle, the SuBar... Our tour guide for this (another private tour) was another lovely young lady who liked to re-enact the civil war in her spare time - hmmm.

The drive back was uneventful, but it was sad that the road trip was coming to an end.
It was an enlightening trip and it has reconfirmed my decision to spend the next three years of my life in Bath Spa University. Speed on September.

Distractions...

I'm writing this to distract myself from the surgically created vagina on my leg, which is desperately trying to give birth to the springs and wires that have so rudely interrupted the peaceful, natural healing of my knee ligaments.

Dan, Me and Tegan Kasbar 9pm

How this annoyingly long term ailment 'popped' into existence was during a night of debauchery in the debauche capital Penzance. It was my lovely friend Tegans Birthday (yes we share the same name) and a good time was being had by all. Kasbar to Weatherspoons, to The Star for twister and pool, to Sportsque for rattler and finally Studio Bar for dancing and eventually ambulances.

I've had quite nasty pains in my knee before (probably should of gone to hospital but not a fan) so when I first slipped on the - pound a bottle - Carlsberg drenched floor I initially thought to myself "oh fuck here we go again" but when I sat down and inspected me knee what I discovered was fairly unnerving... my knee seemed to be sticking out at a very unusual angle. As my friends went into their drunken emergency procedure, calling ambulances and holding back the swaying inebriated throng of the dancefloor from my leg, I sat (I’d like to think patiently) waiting for that bastard ambulance. After what seemed like an hour but was probably nearer 15 minutes I could not stand the insufferable pain any longer and so decided to try and shove my knee back into position and it worked… sort of. I was later told, when in A&E, that I hadn’t put it all the way back in and was then given a lengthy and agonizing demonstration of how it is meant to be done.

Me in the ambulance 2am

It is now 5 days since the accident, nearly 2 days since the operation and I am presently living in our spare room living for the Co-codamol and playing Playstation – something that I stopped doing a long time ago but it helps keep my mind of my throbbing bionic centre of pain.