Silverstone!

I can't find the words to describe what I experienced yesterday. I am in search of a new life dream - let's just leave it at that! Come follow me down the Grid Walk!!

Pole sitter and eventual winner Vettel arriving at the coveted front spot.
Former Champion Kimi doing his pre-race preparations:

Fellow Ferrari driver and very close runner up last year, Massa:

And a final treat - Double world champion Fernando Alonso. Can't wait for his talent to be released on a half decent car!

So many men...

...so little time...

Having spent the last 3 weeks of May planning my post-exam social calendar, I am now completely exhausted. I'm not complaining, but I wish I had had the foresight to pencil in some time to sleep!

After a week of university reunions, tube strikes and wine tastings, Friday night was my night out with the short Ribero del Duero man. To put the height thing to bed, I wore my usual heels just to see how odd we would look and arrived fashionably late to our rendez-vous. He had been really excited about taking me to a bar he knew, and being a man in the wine industry, I naturally had high hopes. He showed up even later than me wearing the same clothes he had been wearing the first time we met. We walked round for ages as he wasn't quite sure where we were going. He finally found his bar and my heart sank - it was Waxy O'Connors. I had lost the will to argue by then so just went in and asked for a house white. He then proceeded to talk me through the noses and bouquets in my glass of house wine from Waxy O'Connors. The whole while I was looking down on him thinking my life had reached new lows. The last time I had been here was 12 years ago for my first under-age alcoholic drink. It's a funny old life...

After this car crash of a foray into dating, my friends and I were out for someone's birthday on Saturday night in South Kensington at one of those nouveau bars where you hope someone else is picking up the tabs. As usual with these places, the heating was up high to encourage alcohol consumption so I was driven to stand outside for a while with the smokers. There was quite a commotion as an American banker had refused to pay his bill and the waiter had taken him outside to get the money. Now, the waiters at this place are known for their guns - the house special is a watermelon martini where the fresh watermelon is put in a shaker with ice and broken down into liquid from vigorous shaking alone. There were punches thrown and the police were called. There was quite a crowd gathering and an American man started chatting to me about what was going on. The incident was resolved, the banker's friend paid his tab and his friends started to drag him down the road. He then turned round and yelled out for Brad. Turns out that whilst the banker was being hit by the waiter, his best friend, who is a lawyer and could no doubt have been quite helpful to his cause, was hitting on me! What a great guy - I have all the luck!

Fort Frick

Once upon a time there was a young man called Henry Clay Frick who vehemently opposed all organised labour unions. Dubbed the worst CEO in American history, Frick was so unimpressed by the steel unions that he went face to face with the rioting masses back in the 1890s leading to several employee deaths and an assasination attempt. I don't know if this led to him lending his surname to grade 2 insults but he's generally regarded as an unpleasant being.

Well, I wish he were here now to sort out the sorry state of London Underground. For 2 days now we have had no underground metro system. Doesn't sound very scary I know, but it took me 2.5 hours to get to work this morning because I ended up walking the whole way! I don't mind a spot of exercise but not at 6:30am and certainly not if there is a whole day of work awaiting me. The journey back has been no less enjoyable.

What is making the underground workers so miserable I hear all you labour-friendly people ask? Well, in the middle of a global recession which has left most stones thoroughly turned, the underground union is demanding a 5% pay increase and a guarantee for no redundancies. I never make out like I am anything but a heartless capitalist but this is too much even for me. I would rather walk 5 hours a day than see them get job security ahead of the rest of the economy. The underground union have replaced Gordon Brown on my dartboard. Long live Henry Frick!

Completely unrelated but check out the amount of moolah being moved around in Spain - a so called bust economy. Now that's a dream team!

Dongle mania

Better late than never - I am a child of the noughties!

I have bought myself a laptop and a dongle - it seems to make everyone laugh but they really named it that! Apparently it is because the brains behind it didn't have quite enough creativity to give it a geeky name so just named it dongle. Anyway, it gives me mobile broadband which can only be good.

Just a quick one today but here is my keepsake story. This summer I am funding the O's first holiday abroad. Both my parents worked very hard to send me to [what they thought were] the best schools so I am very happy to be able to do this. It's not that we haven't all travelled separately but we have never had the time or money to all go at once. Our annual summer holiday used to be a Sunday trip to the seaside setting off at 4am but we always had to be back in time for them to go to work at 6pm. Then my brother and I became teenagers... This is a big milestone for me, but obviously I am not yet mature enough to let it go as an unsung act of greatness. Maybe next year I will be big enough to do a good deed and keep it to myself - although I wouldn't put money on it!

The Fear

... is here

400 hours and 40 minutes til exam day - calculated using my overqualified Texas BA II plus which can apparently do much more useful things such as tell me the time value of a dividend today relative to a capital gain tomorrow. The joys...






As an aside, during my week off, it has come to my attention that the greatest slacker film of all time is selling a little bit of real estate. Sub prime spares no one - click on the photo if you have a spare $2.4m and want to be Ferris Bueller