Day 3

Have I mentioned that morning people whistle, they astound me they ability to annoy people. I tried to mentally block them out by hiding under my blanket, but the only problem is that the beds smell like 12 different people. For breakfast I selected a manufactured apple strudel, it only tasted a few months out of date which is a plus looking at other people’s ‘pastries’.

We gathered up towels and swimming shorts and headed towards to town. We took a short cut down a steep pebbly path, not the brilliant when you are wearing flip flops. We went into the local supermarket, Tesco hasn’t invaded Northern Italy yet, there was a small selection of crisps next to the wine, water was next to toiletries. We must have lapped the store multiple times just to get water, bread, cheese, crisps and fruit. The apples were in a basket which was at an angle, an apple was removed and time slowed down as apples cascaded from the top of the pile, luckily they didn’t splat on the ground, they don’t like that in Tesco, and they definelty wouldn’t like that here.

We caught the bus to this secluded beach, there was a small gap in a roadside barrier which led down to the beach. For a few hours it was just us on the beach. When I first went in the lake every step I took the water rose higher and higher up my leg until the level made me gasp, after that I was fine to pludge. The day started off cold, and Amy said that there wasn’t much chance of getting a tan due to the clouds. Fast forward to now, she is sitting on the bottom bunk burnt red. She has white skin covered in bright red burnt patches.

Quiet Beach

The day seems to speed along, but when living the moment it is going extremely slow. Time is so strange to be, I waste to much time thinking about time. What I am trying to say is that the day speeds along and all of a sudden it is 12:37am.

I spent a tiny bit to long in the sun with only a tiny bit of sun cream on, I’m not as red as Amy “savaloy” Pearson, but I’m pretty burnt. Tomorrow I shall make sure that I have lots of sun cream on so I am the same colour as Casper the Friendly Ghost. In Casper you have to presume that all ghosts are nasty apart from Casper since he is ‘the friendly ghost’, but I think that Nearly Headless Nick is pretty friendly, maybe there are more friendly ghosts in the fictional ghost world than people realise.

I’m supposed to be writing a post about Day 3 (hence the title) in Italy, and somehow I end up witling on about ghosts. After getting roasted on the beach we headed back to the town and got some Ice Cream. This time was Melon and Mango flavour, both excellent. Ice cream over here is not as rich and dairyfied as England, it is more flavoursome. Went back to the hostel up the steep pebbly pathway, that would have burnt of all the yummy ice cream!

I somehow managed to have a nap whilst four people stood around me, but if I need my sleep then I shall sleep. Their conversations seem to affect my dreams, or I think about the people. I spend a lot of time thinking about sleep and what I brain thinks about whilst sleeping. It would be great if you could Sky+ your dreams and watch them, in high definition of course. Being around me before, during and after sleep is dangerous. I am either drug like, talking about crap, mumbling more than I usually do and generally fall about. Or I can be the opposite and be Mr Mega-Moody. This evolves the odd swear word at Mr Kind, and lots of grumbling and moaning.

I sleep in awkward positions

Mike found out in the morning that there was free WiFi in the hostel. A smile erupted of my face, this meant emails, twitter, news, youtube, facebook, blogs galore and Google. Goodbye Italian Lakes, hello MacBook! First of all I was extremely happy to be able to get on the internet, but soon I realised that it could be a burden. People wanted to check their emails, update their facebook, chat to people. I am not going to be twittering lots, I’m not going to write on anyone’s wall. This is a holiday, it is bad enough that I am an absobloff for information and current affairs, but a holiday for me if to get away from people.

I’m going to do what I done with my last two entries, write loads for small events, and quickly type a sentence or two about other things all because this is getting rather tedious and I want to check my emails, twitter, facebook and the BBC News. See it was a bad idea to get the internet.

So I had a nap, watched a bit of the Harry Potter premiere in the lobby with some strange middle aged Italian men. Then wandered around directionless to Mike’s Grandparents. From now on I shall not follow Trevor, he will get is lost. Went for dinner, got pizza, Eric thought we were in Germany, walked along the lake front, got more Ice Cream (white chocolate and mint chocolate). Now we are back at the hostel, covered in after sun and insect repellent. Everything has a small layer of grease/chemicals.
Beuno Notti (1:05am)

Day 4, 5 and 6

For the past for days we have come back from exhausting days out, that is the feeble excuse I am going to use for not writing anything these past few days. To reduce any confusion I shall write in chronological order.

Day 4 the sun rose and again the morning people were about. Today there was extra shuffling because of the anticipation of Marsh arriving. It was all pretty calm before Vicky arrived, I was worried that she would be Hurricane Marsh, and ruin what could be a lovely holiday. So far she has been argumentative, but that is in her character, so holiday not totally ruined.

Mike and Nick went to the airport to pick up Marsh, and transport her to Verbania. I was surprised to hear that she actually managed to get to Gatwick, check in, get through security and get to the plane in time. Marsh is a clever girl, but is absolutely useless. Some examples, she lives less than 5 minutes from school but is always late, whenever there is prep to hand in there is a chance she has left it at home along with her PE kit and her marbles.

The rest of us went to our secret beach, we managed to get the bus without using Mikes Italian skills. It was just a usual day at the beach; we ate our panini bread things, bottles of water and coconut macaroons. We swam to a boat and went on board, meaning that we sat on the steps of the boat. The Lake water is so fresh, and once you’ve dived in and got over the cold.

Sitting on a boat

Since I’m British, I’m not used to seeing so much sun, therefore I keep forgetting about suncream. Thust I’m a bit sun burnt, not burnt to a point where I am peeling etc, but more over red. I am the same colour as the creaky bunkbeds.

Day 5 onwards includes: Trip to Switzerland, flooding a kitchen, Island tour and a car covered in Post-Its

I managed to get a great standing place, edge of the stage next to some of the bands proud Mums.

The first act on was Stars of Sunday League, they were so sweet, you could tell they adored each other.
They were joined by a chap who played the ukulele and acoustic bass.

The next act were a surprise, they were awesome. Dry the River are made up of a drummer, lead guitarist/singer, bassist/glockenspielist and a guitarist/singer/organist. Really enjoyed their set, they are head lining at The Luminaire on April 1st, worth checking out.

The third supporting act was Alessi’s Ark who was an extremely charming and dreamful character. I thought she’s like a British Joanna Newsom without a harp. Alessi is supporting Laura Marling at The Palladium in April. You can listen to all her songs free on her lovely website.

Finally Broadcast 2000 came on the stage, all 9 of them! A guitarist/singer, singer, percussionist, 1st violin, 2nd violin, viola, cellist (who was extremely cool), percussionist/throwing-things-about and an enthusiastic glockenspielist.

They opened with Run which was featured on Apple’s advert for their green eco MacBooks. Then they played some songs off their new album including Rouse Your Bones, which has a magical Secret Seven feel about the video.

Broadcast also covered two songs, Justin Timberlake’s Like I Love You, and my favourite Regina Spektor’s Us.

Had a very enjoyable evening, and I hope the band continue to do really well because they were all such nice people and talented musicians.

Mockingjay is released on August 24th, which in my opinion is far to long to wait!

I’ve bought quite a lot TV boxsets over the years, but this is by far the best presented.

It is a large book containing pages that hold the discs, and printed pages containing things to do with the show, including the Atomic County comic.

When Ryan Atwood, a tough, guarded, fiercely intelligent 16-year-old, plunges headlong into the wealthy, privileged community of Newport Beach, California, he soon discovers that the ruling families of Orange County are every bit as territorial as the tough crowd with which he ran on the streets of Chino. For Sandy Cohen, the idealistic public defender who takes Ryan in; his wife, Kirsten, the linchpin of OC society; their awkward adolescent son, Seth; and the beautiful, troubled girl next door, Marissa Cooper–Ryan’s presence will forever change their lives.

I would write more, but I’m off to watch more. I’m averaging 5 episodes a day!

Vampire Weekend are a band from New York formed in 2006. Most of you will recognise their song A-Punk as the title theme of The Inbetweeners

The new album Contra has 10 funky tracks. Here’s a few of my favourite:

Cousins. You can watch the video in glorious 1080p!

Run

Horchata

There is a line in that last song “In December drinking Horchata”. I’d never heard of Horchata, so after a bit of Googling I discovered that it is a Mexican drink. Yesterday, with a friend, we made Horchata from a Jamie Oliver recipe, the ingredients of horchata are:

150g Long grain rice

1 litre whole milk

1 tsp ground cinnamon

4 tbsp soft brown sugar

1 or 2 cinnamon sticks

It was so yummy! Really refreshing and creamy.  Wahaca also sell it, so I can’t wait to try their versions.

The application is called Freedom, and it is a free app that disables your internet connection for a set amount of time that you decide.

It is simple to use, simply open the application, enter the number of minutes you wish to disable the Internet, enter your password and that’s it!

I’m ever so slightly addicted to the internet, for example I automatically check my emails in my sleep. This is helpful for me at the minute because I’m supposed to be studying for my A Level exams this week and next week.

Click on the applications icon below to visit the site and download it for free. It is only for Mac computers, sorry PC users, but you should have got a Mac.

A History of the World in 100 Objects’ is written and narrated by the British Museum Director, Neil MacGregor and produced by BBC Radio 4. The 15-minute programmes will be broadcast in the key timeslot of 09.45 from Monday to Friday (repeat at 19.45).  Each programme will focus on one object from the Museum’s extensive collection and will include additional voices from a range of contributors including Bob Geldof, Wole Soyinka, Grayson Perry, Madhur Jaffrey and Seamus Heaney – and many others.

The ‘A History of the World’ website not only has information about each of the 100 objects in the radio programmes but about historical items in your area and where you can go see them.

The British Museum is my favourite museum every time I go there I go straight to the Egyptian section, it is just amazing. Then I run around staring at anything and everything, and the Reading Room, oh the Reading Room <3

I am very much looking forward to seeing the 100 objects after hearing about their history.

The programmes begin on January 18th, with the first episode being Making Us Human (2,000,000-8,000BC)

I’ve always wanted to write down my dreams because they are detailed, and more imaginative  that anything I could come up with consciously.

Friday Night ( Written in the evening, so forgotten some details)

I was on a train the was passing through the old Kings Cross Thameslink station, and I jumped off with a friend to explore. We headed down the stairs that used to go to the tube platforms, but they were now used as secret tunnels. After running up and down these tunnels we saw sunlight and ended up in a green house with Ian Hislop.

Second dream. I was in Dubai in a very long corridor with lots of shops selling big things. Actually, everything was huge and vast in the dream. I went to the loo and used the hand drier (Freud wannabes interpret that!), when I came back I took all these people outside onto the beach. All I can remember is the beach being really wide and long, and all the buildings were huge and hidden up in the clouds.

Monday

I was forced to swim in a moat and I was was really scared of not being able to touch the bottom. Also there was lots of catfish and carp swimming around which really freaked me out. Next thing I know is that a long slimy thing swum past me, I jump out of the lake shouting at everyone telling them that there is a huge catfish in the lake. They all start laughing and tell me that it’s just a sealion, that is now on the bank laughing at me as well.

Tuesday

I went picnicking with my friends in this Country House garden, then a helicopter appeared in the sky. It was a Thameslink helicopter (Thameslink is my local train company), when it lands I grab my friends Lumix look-a-like camera and take pictures of the person coming out of the helicopter. It was the QUEEN! She was wearing a mauve dress, and the first photo I took a choir boy got in the way, but I got a few more snaps of her.

Second dream. My friend took me to her dining room to show me her awards and yearbooks. One award included Bournemouth’s Biggest Caller (she had used the most amount of call time on her phone). Also, inside her yearbooks in every picture of me she had replaced my eyes with red LEDs, at first I thought it was terrible red eye, but then they started flashing.

Sorry if I’ve scared any of you off with those dreams. Any interpretations of them are welcome below:

Day 1

So after seeing Mike and Rhiannon writing a diary I have decided to jump on the  writing bandwagon, but since I’m “techno Joe”, I’m going to type mine.

A little info about this trip, on the trip is Amy, Trevor, Rhiannon, Tim, Nick, Eric and Mike. The rest of the year has gone to Malia, and the inbetweener crowd has gone to Italy.

There has been months of build up, we booked the tickets back in January, and the thought of this trip has helped us from going insane during exams. This trip is the light at the end of the exam tunnel.

Going away didn’t really settle in until we got on the train to Gatwick Airport, we dominated the train carriage with our bulky bags and our loud conversations, which included singing the Family Guy theme tune. As usual there was banter, senseless but brilliant. This is why I love these guys, I feel comfortable around them and I’m not scared of judgement, and I always find myself laughing.

Anyhoo I need to get back on track, I am not Holden Caufield! Train to Gatwick, checked in baggage and then shuffled through security. We all hung around the South Terminal, trips to Boots for meal deals with spoonless yogurts. Then I resisted WH Smiths books, I had far too many books in one of my hand luggage bags. Picked up Wired magazine for the lasted internet nerdy stuff. It is strange with technology magazines, they have to report on the future developments rather than the present day because technology updates are only relevant for a few hours, not a month.

I’m hanging out in the dorm, so you’ve guessed that we’ve arrived, and I feel like I’m zip zopping all over the place. Reader I am very sorry if you feel like there is no structure, life doesn’t follow a straight series of events, well for me anyway. Lots of things and thoughts occur at the same time. I have a complicated thought process, sorry reader. Back to a wobbly structured story.

It was getting pretty close to our departure time and our gate still wasn’t annouced, and I began to get slightly frantic. Lots of reason why it was late flocked through my brain. Where’s the plane? Is it missing a pilot? Did it take a wrong turn on the runway and end up at the North Terminal? Was the plane a Deceptacon and turned into a giant robot and was terrorising central London? After waiting for felt like a googolplex years, our boarding gate was announced, gate 2. Once that small number appeared on the screen we all went into “hey-ho lets go” mode.

Got on the plane, blah blah blah, landed in Milan Malpensa.

Oh no no no. Is it ever that simple. We missed our flight slot, and the next one was in an hour. After the compulsory groaning and tutting, we just accepted it. The pilot also said that anyone could go see the cockpit. Amy, Rhiannon and I rushed down the narrow aisle towards the front. After asking lots of questions, including why are we going to be so late, we got to sit in the pilot’s chair. I made sure I didn’t touch any buttons so we didn’t crash into the Alps like in MI:II.

We eventually took off, Amy and I had three seats to ourselves, we watched a couple of episode of 30 Rock. We were the only people on the plane who stood up on the plane, it was like a game of musical chairs. Every five minutes there was a different person next to me. I also managed to get an obligatory nap in.

We landed late so we missed out minibus/coach thing. Whilst waiting for our bags was an intense moment, I was incredibly relieved when Dotty turned up. A smile erupted when that 17.6kg of pure dottyness came along on the conveyer belt. We eventually got outside into the pure heat, not just heat but pure hear. It was slightly unbearable, and that was at 5pm, goodness knows what tomorrow day is going to be like.

We jumped on a bus that took us away from Terminal 2 to Terminal 1, lots of falling around with Australia OAP’s, and Trevor opening wet wipes in a retarded way. We went and colonised a seating area, this is where we spent the most of our time. There was the book crew, Rhiannon reading Looking for Alaska, Tim reading some chunky book, Eric reading a book about Necrophelia or something like that, and I was reading my unpublished copy of Scarlett Fever!

I made a trip to the bathroom, I saw a sign with a man and woman and assumed it was a bathroom, not a weird mating room. I followed the sign, past the multiple restaurants and dodgy looking shoe shops. Past the hoards of familes who were fixed on the arrivals board. Then past nothingness until I reached a small corridor, did my business then walked back past the nothingness, past the hoards of families fixed on the arrivals board, past the multiple restaurants and dodgy looking shoe shops until I arrived back to our colonised area. Opposite this colonised area was a fudging toilet. At least I got some exercise, and went past multiple restaurants, you know the rest.

It reached 7pm, and half of us grabbed some dinner, and the others were being suitcase guarders. I grabbed a couple slices of pizza, whilst Nick, Mike and Trevor got some microwaved meals, Nick’s ‘meal’ loops like microwaved gloop with added mushrooms. I tried not to look at it, I didn’t like being 50cm away from it, poor Nick had to eat the thing.

Bloomin heck I’m a good rambler about non-sensical stuff. We managed to get a coach at 9:30pm, apart from an Italian dude on the coach, we were the only ones on the coach. It was an exciting trip, lots of awesome lightning lighting up the lake. We got a few glimpses of the Lake and some trees. I can’t wait to wake up tomorrow with a view of the lake.

I’ll right more shizzle about the hostel tomorrow because it is getting late and I’m starting to get bored and tired. More tired than bored, but bleh. I give up. Good night at 1:41am

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