Not a spectre yet

I fixed my monitors so that I now have some sort of ridiculously high-tec CTU setup in my room, with the press of a button I can switch between the 360 and secondary PC monitor with sound from both simultaneously playing through the same speakers. Loading up Forza 2 as I browse through my Initial D soundtracks collection with everything so perfectly laid out is not something I believe I will get used to soon.
I took the useless splitter back to Stevenage yesterday, my brother wanted to buy some things so we bounced between GAME and GameStation, the queues were so ridiculous that we must have ended up spending about an hour queuing in about three shops alone. I came home with Just Cause though, so I did gain something from the ordeal.
I was also reminded that the Emperor does watch over us all, as I stood outside something white flew over my head and landed right at my feet, so close that at first I thought it was a little screwed up piece of paper that rolled over my hat. But upon closer inspection I discovered that it was bird shit, which must have flown millimeters from my forehead. It may not sound like much, but the distance at which it flew past my face was so absurdly close that only the hand of the Emperor could have possibly shielded me from that.

At home I am falling deeper into the world of Mass Effect, and I couldn't love it more. The sheer depth of the game is amazing, with codex entries explaining the back story and providing additional information about every possible object and feature you come across, giving it more depth than many books of the same genre. Mass Effect also gives you more than enough to occupy yourself with, it clearly outlines what you need to do to progress the main story, but beyond that you remain completely free to talk to the many inhabitants of the galaxy, most of which will have their own personal problems and issues that you can either completely ignore or go out of your way to involve yourself in. This is one of the best parts of Mass Effect, all of the characters you meet have very individual personalities and all have excellent voice actors, along with the fantastic graphics you can happily walk around having brilliantly immersive conversations with people for hours on end.
The game does unfortunately have its downsides, most of which seem to be in the awkward and bug ridden combat. It is nicely streamlined with infinite ammo (explained in the codex) and automatic retrieval of items from downed opponents, meaning that you aren't left looting bodies for five minutes after every battle, and once the enemies are killed you are immediately free to move on. Even with the lacking combat sections all is quickly forgiven once you are back in the busy cities, when you get back into the negotiation mindset and begin involving yourself in all the adventures and dramas that the plethora of characters have to provide, you will quickly find yourself up until the early hours always going to do 'just that little bit more' unable to put the controller down.
Mass Effect is everything I hoped it would be and so much more, I can easily see myself years from now looking back on ME with the same fondness as Knights of the Old Republic. But for now I never want it to end.

I finally had another driving lesson today, and I find myself quickly getting used to driving. I am of course still not completely used to it and have a lot to learn, but I feel as if I am making quick progress and already find myself limited by the 30 speed limit in some of the area I am driving around. One thing I think I need to do is calm down with the gear changes, while I don't drive too fast or recklessly in any way, I do shift gears like I'm on the Nürburgring.

Soap and Shepard

I once again, missed my driving lesson. Which was entirely my fault for not getting up, and I really need to make sure that I do not fall back into my old sleeping pattern, not after this work has made me appreciate all the free time I have thrown away.
While I did not spend any of Christmas Eve on the roads, I did spend much of it playing Halo with Neil, and was spurred further into the seasonal spirit as we, the Americans, and various other worldwide Live gamers wished eachother a Merry Christmas at the end of each game. Even the internet hate machine seemed to be putting aside some of its differences with itself and be a little more polite than usual.

Christmas day hit with me struggling to pull myself out of bed, once I did presents were had. My two best presents were a Motorola Z3 and a 19 inch widescreen monitor, the phone was unfortunately missing a battery, and the monitor missing an adapter needed to connect it to the 360, the situation would have to be rectified the next day with a trip to Stevenage. I could still connect the monitor to my computer, and with a little third party support Vista was convinced to run dual screen, which does look absolutely fantastic and comes in extremely useful. Other than that I mostly got books and that sort of thing, all good stuff.
Meanwhile my parents kept themselves occupied downstairs by placing a freezer bag too close to a candle and playing around with the resulting fire, a little smoke inhalation mixed with what tasted like highly toxic plastic fumes were science's gift to my family this Christmas. Thankfully a fire extinguisher was on hand and damage to the base is minimal, we're just lucky it was caught when it was, before we became another statistic.
Christmas dinner was had at my brother's place this year, with much of our family and many of his girlfriends. Many of his girlfriend's family members that is, he's not into polygamy or anything like that. Everyone had chipped in a little something to make up the meal and things went very well, especially considering that it was the first Christmas dinner Zoe had prepared, and she put in a lot of effort that definitely paid off.

Boxing Day comes and it's time to do some shopping, so me and my brother drive into Stevenage to get stuff done. That's with my brother driving, because at this point I would probably drop the ball on the motorway and PIT maneuver myself into the armco.
We sidled into the Carphone Warehouse to grab a battery and a 2GB SD card, quickly fixing my phone problems and enabling me to take plenty of good quality pictures and easily throw them onto my computer. I still had to sit bluetoothing pictures and copying phone numbers for about two hours once I got home, which was the hight of tedium.
For the first Christmas in quite a while I didn't get any vidyagames, so I had to rectify the situation by buying Call of Duty 4 and Mass Effect with the swiftness of a startled fox. I have also been considering buying Just Cause for another £13 and Naruto: Rise of a Ninja if it drops in price (a lot), for the moment I think CoD and ME will keep me nicely occupied, but for such low low prices Just Cause will not escape me for long.
Maplin had one of the two adapters I needed, my brother having the other at home, yet annoyingly enough things have not gone quite as smoothly as I would have liked. The splitter I am using was designed for two computers to run on the same monitor, but I am trying to get it to switch between a secondary monitor and an Xbox 360. As it is, when switched to the computer the secondary monitor does not display, and when switched to the 360 I cannot use the keyboard on the computer. So I have to switch the sound, picture and keyboard wires every time I want to play the 360, which makes me want to go up to Gerard Butler and describe the situation with the words 'blasphemy' and 'madness'.

Today has been spent almost entirely playing Call of Duty and Mass Effect, with a little cleaning in preparation for the arrival of yet more family later in the evening.
Early on in the day I realized I hadn't actually bothered to look at the display settings on the 360, and what a fool I was for that. First I set it to widescreen so the picture wasn't just being stretched, and then I kicked it up from the ridiculously low 640x350 resolution to a higher resolution that has made the picture so brilliantly sharp it feels as if it is physically cutting my cornea. This new level of quality will not only make my new games fantastic to play, but even reinvigorate some of the older titles, so I am sure all of my friends on Xbox Live will have me readily available to kick reason to the curb and surpass the impossible whenever they want to play any games online.

The subtle knife

Only in Death has finally arrived, twice. I think that's a Merry Christmas from The Book Depository.com to send me two copies of a hardback book and only charge me for one.
I haven't really been able to get stuck into it yet as I've been quite busy, but that can only be a good thing as I would just rush through it otherwise, and to finish what is going to be a fantastic book so soon would be a crime.

Christmas shopping on Friday was relatively successful, I got a couple of presents which I think are very good finds, but I really struggled on others, and one I think the person I bought it for might already have. I eventually got the last present much later in the day, and if anyone does already have what I got them they can always take it back and get something they definitely want. So once that was done and dusted I could absolutely relax and look forward to Christmas.

Saturday night was spent at a party at Bertie's, which was especially good as everyone was there, all back from uni and off work, with all the gaps filled in with Cassie's lower 6th former friends. Although I had to spend a bit of it looking after a certain someone that really shouldn't drink as much as she does, not that I have any problem with that, just that it makes me worry about her and the thought of the times when I'm not there, as she definitely drinks much more than she should, and worrying seems to be more forte in recent times.

I went to see the much discussed Golden Compass earlier today with the family and wife, but cannot claim to have been greatly impressed. Throughout the film you get the very distinct impression that you're being violently rushed through it, even without having read the original book I found the butchered remains of what was once its depth all to easy to see. I imagine this will be amended slightly by the subsequent two films, but this will always remain a tale that I believe should have been left in the literary medium. Not to say that I didn't enjoy it, but I certainly won't be watching it again.

I also missed both of my driving lessons again this weekend, but will be having one on the eve of Christmas, yay.

The ghost of Jacob Marley

I took a look into the world of rallying for the first time since the championship ended yesterday, to find two excellent pieces of news.
The first is that Suzuki has confirmed its drivers for the '08 season. They entered their new machine late into the '07 WRC purely to get it to ground and really see what they can do with it, and as they refine their design the SX4 is going to be a completely new factor to look out for next year. The lead driver has been revealed as none other than Toni Gardemeister, the privateer I mentioned all the way back at the beginning of September for his incredible drift skills will be returning, this time trading in his Evo for what could be a much more suitable SX4, which being smaller and lighter should play perfectly with his talents.
The second, and most fantastic piece of news is that Latvala will in fact be joining the BP Focus team next year. This is truly brilliant news as he really has nowhere to go but up, and with a killer duo of Hirvonen and Latvala tearing it up behind the wheels of the best Focuses on the road, next year is guaranteed to have me following it every single step of the way.

I finished my last day of work today, or at least until after New Year, but I won't hold my breath for shifts after then. I was going to work half a day tomorrow as I wanted to get off early to go Christmas shopping with Nicola, but the big boss man just told me not to bother coming in at all, with Christmas so close all of the shops have got their orders in, so the need for so much man power is gone and we're left with a lot of people with nothing to do.
The next few days are definitely going to be busy for me though, but I am very much looking forward to being able to relax through it all once I've got the shopping done and have nothing I need to worry about. I have been invited to quite a few parties and will be spending pretty much every night out at them, although I feel bad about having to miss a lot of people's stuff as there are simply too many for me to go to them all, but I guess that's how Christmas rolls outside of secondary school where you pretty much have one big circle of friends.
I will be spending the daylight hours of the weekend on the streets as my Dad imparts more tuition in the ways of the motorized vehicle, I am especially looking forward to this as I was too busy seeing Nicola to attend my lessons last weekend, not that I would ever imagine complaining about that.

Survival mode

The lads at work today were talking about the epic confrontation of species they had seen online or somewhere, crocodile versus shark, gorilla versus jaguar and the such. This got me thinking of a topic raised on a forum I post on quite a while ago, which was something along the lines of 'How many 9 year olds could you beat up?'
Think about it, at first you would think it an easy task to beat up half a dozen nine year olds, but if you raised the number there will come a point where you would simply be swamped by the horde and torn to shreds. So how busy would a playground have to be before you would look at it and think, 'those kids would beat me to a pulp if they turned on me'?
My personal estimation is at about twenty five. I reckon I could take around fifteen in a head on confrontation and even up to forty if my life depended on it. The one thing you simply can't do is underestimate nine year olds, they may be small but it would only take one latching onto your leg to completely compromise your maneuverability, and then a moments hesitation could see you under an inescapable mass of fists and feet. My tactic would be to keep on the move and have them chase after me, outrunning the group would be easy while your stamina is up, as the pack spreads out as they try to cut you off and the more sprightly ones separate from the fatties you could easily take out the isolated opponents. Then when their numbers and down and their confidence has been lowered after having seen their comrades fall, I think you could quite comfortably could go berserker on the remaining opposition and finish them off before they get a chance to rally themselves. I briefly considered the possibility of the children taking a defensive stance and gathering together forcing you to make the first move, but by length of stride alone I think you could take out the ones on the perimeter one at a time faster than they can react.
So, employing those tactics I am confident I could readily take on a playground of approximately 25 nine year olds.

Three hundred and sixty degrees

Xbox 360, probably my purchase of the year, although the car insurance is a close contender.
With the epic failings of the PS3, the 360 is set for a monopoly over the gaming industry that the PS2 held in the last generation. The Wii is fun, and for the price I am glad I bought it, but it remains very much a supplementary console that you buy after a 360. So for anyone and everyone interested in computer games, the Xbox 360 is your first and last port of call.
Just recently I hit 5000 gamer points, with most of that attributed to every achievement on Bioshock and all but one on DiRT. Not to say that I'm a gamerscore fag that obsesses with how high his meaningless number is, but I do appreciate the replayability that individual achievements provide. Assassin's Creed, Gears of War and Halo 3 have all been completed and have cashed in on most of their achievements, but there's still quite a few that I will be going back for, especially related to online multiplayer. I'm still trundling through the brilliant Forza 2, which I find is neither a game you can dedicate yourself to or to completely forget, so even as it was one of the first games I got when I purchased the 360, it still remains one of my most played titles as it sees steady action. All that remains is Dead Rising, which while fun has not had me going back for a whole lot more after I completed it.
My one gaming regret is that I did not buy Test Drive: Unlimited for the 360, but the PC, as I felt the need long before I was seriously thinking about buying a 360. I did play it absolutely loads and love it with a passion, but I did not complete it 100%, and with the lack of achievements I would find little satisfaction in returning to it to do so after such a long time. Although I imagine the other drivers of Oahu rejoice in my absence, as I was the undefeatable king of Quick Challenges.
Next I will be looking to add Call of Duty 4 and Mass Effect to my list of games. CoD4 being a simply brilliant title that I know will get a lot of game time, and ME being a very deep RPG that I am thoroughly looking forward to immersing myself in when I finish my current job.
I love my 360, it was worth it enough for all the single player games, but being able to jump into an online multiplayer game of Puzzle Fighter, Gears, Halo, Forza and so much more in a few easy seconds is a fantastic experience that will always keep me coming back for more.

Insha'Allah

Life has its ups and downs, you'd have to have some sort of freak existence for it not to. But as we hear constantly, when you're down you've just gotta pick yourself back up, easier said than done. This isn't one of those motivational seminars though, just a live train of thought I'm throwing at the keys.
I've had a pretty down time recently, really much through my own paranoid worries and the such, because no matter how logical I try and keep my life I always have the worst possible case scenario running around my head like a cracked up energizer bunny. But sitting around with these situations in a stagnant position is only going to make them fester and worsen, as I've experienced first hand. So you've gotta flush that shit out, get your life flowing again, because things can't go up if you don't push them to move at all. It may be hard to face, you may want to just curl up in a ball and try and pretend it never happened, but life isn't that easy, so man the fuck up and do something about it.
Also, you've always got to remember that you've never hit rock bottom, as Tyler Durden said, "Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken." Things can always be worse, and there are always going to be millions of people that have problems that make yours look utterly insignificant.
But the problem is that no matter how unimportant the problem may be in the grand scheme of things, how much it affects you is the only relevant factor, and 'buck up and deal with it' are often hollow words when things simply aren't that easy, and more often than not during the legitimately seriously problems things will never be the same again.
But that's life, it's hard as hell and for most people will have times when it pushes you to the edge just to see what you're really made of. But that's getting a bit too dramatic for my liking, I've had some very hard times recently, all because of some shit that at the end of the day was relatively meaningless and had nothing to do with me, but even so it didn't stop it driving me insane. No matter how much of a non-event it may have been, it still hurt me like hell, and that's what most of people don't understand when hearing other people's problems, they take them at face value, myself included in very recent history with another internet friend that was confiding in me during incredibly hard times for her, but it's not how bad the situation appears to be that you need to take into account, but how badly it affects the people involved.
I faced my problems today, and while things will never be the same, and while there is no solution that will make everything better, at least I've done something, changed the record and moved onto another chapter. Because that's life, there's no motivational promise that things will get better or that justice will prevail, because many things will never get a happy ending and you be sure that they won't be the last problems you see in your life. The only thing I guess I have to say is that just the way life is, maybe things can get better, maybe they can't, maybe there's something you can do about it, maybe it's out of your hands. Unfortunately life isn't as romantic as the religious story of god having a plan for everyone and all that bullshit, life simply sucks ass and you've gotta play the cards you're dealt. But no matter what situation you are in, no matter how bad things are, you always have choices, and it's not what you do with those choices, but simply the fact that you choose one.
Fortunately I live a very generous life, comfortably earning parents, no illnesses or handicaps, born into a politically stable country to be offered a remarkably blank slated life. I can't say I've made the most of it, acting like a complete idiot through my entire school life and throwing away my education, but I'd like to think I've learnt from some of the mistakes I have made and will play it slightly differently in the future. I'm looking at a mechanics or some sort of engineering apprenticeship, and as of last Sunday night I am officially in a relationship with the fantastic Nicola. From one light my life is a good one indeed, from another I could definitely ask for more, but whatever the case may be all I can do is deal with it as I encounter it. It reminds me of some sort of adventure game like Monkey Island, with a list of options in every conversation and situation, all you can do is choose one and see where it takes you.
But I do ramble on in this utterly unprepared and unstructured blog post, it feels like this recent slow blogging period is catching up on me. Hopefully things will continue to progress over the next few days and weeks, I can't say I'm completely happy with the current state of play, but as I said, that's just what I have to deal with. I'll look forward to another driving lesson on Friday, Dan the man's return and a session at his pad on Saturday, and another encounter with my (tee-hee) girlfriend on Sunday.
Will I lose all faith in the Imperium and kill myself, will I persevere and become the next world rally champion, or will Allah grow weary of my melodrama and cast me down? Stay tuned to find out.

A bad time, boy

Rally GB ends with a strong Hirvonen win and a championship title for Loeb, who is now equaling Tommi Mäkinen's record of four consecutive wins. Although Latvala did retire on day one he restarted on the second day to post fastest times on every single stage that day, reminding everyone that he may be out but he will not be forgotten. And while Gronholm concedes first place he still helps win the Ford team the manufacturers title with a blistering 212 points over Citroen's 183.
An absolutely excellent season overall, and I'm very much looking forward to next year's WRC. The only problem being that it looks like Loeb will find very little opposition with Gronholm's retirement, leaving Hirvonen and possibly fellow Citroen driver Daniel Sordo as seemingly the only other drivers capable of providing anything like a consistent challenge.

In my own driving experiences I had my second driving lesson today, despite getting very little practice during my first lesson I actually found all the movements very natural and did everything without having to put much thought into it, I could even hold it stationary on a hill relatively easily with just the clutch control.
Things got a bit more complicated when I started tackling turning onto junctions with busy traffic, and I need to slow down a bit around roundabouts, even though I never break the speed limit or put myself in a dangerous position, I don't exactly hang around.

In theatre, I have recently been watching some Bond films. First off with the excellent and all time best GoldenEye, which is simply fantastic in every respect. That was followed by Die Another Day, which while starting out brilliantly, steadily worsens as the film progresses. Next up is the most recent and brilliant Casino Royale, although I would have preferred dropping some of the drawn out casino sections in favor of lengthening the car chase, which consists of an adrenaline pumping start before turning about two corners where he flips the car into oblivion.
I'm also going to have to watch Black Hawk Down again sometime soon, as I get excited about the possibilty of recieving Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare for Wintersday I have been put in a very middle-eastern military mood.

I also completed Assassin's Creed today, and as much as I enjoyed it, it most definitely had the worst ending to any game or story I have ever encountered, almost entirely because it just drops off into nothingness, ensuring that I will be buying the next game.

Ching wah

I stumbled back in from the Wales Rally last night, which was great, here's why:
The epic journey began at 5am on Friday, not long after hitting the roads Paul admitted that it was his first time on the motorway, fortunately I have no sense of self preservation so wasn't as scared as I should have been at the thought of how far we were about to travel.
At the first service stop I bought the latest issue of Redline and the newly discovered Banzai, the latter seeming to consist almost entirely of featured Japanese cars and import events, while it doesn't seem to be enough to stand on its own I think it will nicely supplement Redline and keep me more than occupied during my breaks at work.
The first sign of the rally was at a service stop just past Cardiff, what looked like some sort of display car sitting on the back of a trailer with its little convoy all decaled up got me pretty pumped. Not long later on the road a pickup truck sped past baring the full livery of my favorite team, the BP Ford Focuses, and that got me extremely excited and ready to roll.
The first destination was the shakedown, not far outside of Swansea, where the drivers will be speeding around and warming up for the real racing over the next three days. Fortunately the brilliant blue skies we had been experiencing on the way over decided to stick around, and things were very comfortable as we clambered through the woods along the side of the track and got our first taste of rally cars up close.
The machines are indeed amazing, you get an idea of how loud and powerful they are on TV, but only when you're standing as close as a meter away from the track and feel the rumble of the engine and the firework pops and bangs of the misfiring system shoot through you can you truly appreciate it. Not to say that you need to be that close, as you can hear the echo of the cars over the valleys and through the forest long before they actually reach you.
After that we head off to the service park down on the docks in Swansea, during this drive we get our first taste of how the south of Wales has pretty much turned into a giant Subaru showroom as every line of traffic and stretch of road had at least one scooby tearing it up, and if it wasn't an Impreza it was an Evo.
Once we reached the service park we jumped in to get our first proper look at the leading drivers machines, took a load of pictures, bought team caps (Ford Hirvonen for me, Subaru Solberg for Paul) and bounced back out.
We then made our way to one of the tracks were were planning on attending the next day, just to see how the travel time would be. Things took much longer than expected as we made our way up far into the Welsh mountains on smaller and smaller roads until we were actually driving on the same muddy routes that the rally takes place on, albeit much slower. Awesome views though.
It was then about time we headed over to Cardiff for the ceremonial opening, so yet more driving was made and after some inner city trawling we finally found the car park and rally area. We walked around taking pictures of some of the display cars and drivers for a while before we passed behind the stage to a long road where all the competitors had their cars parked in preparation for the ceremony.
I stood at a barrier that was so close to the cars I could literally lean over it and touch them, and as time moved on the drivers started getting in their cars. As my favorite driver Mikko Hirvonen walks over to get in his car I call him over to shake his hand, and even get a picture of me doing so with a massive grin on my face, which is a picture I will most definitely print out for epic memories. Not long later Jari-Matti Latvala arrives to get ready, not many people pay much attention to him as most of the people were watching the stage, and the people that were around me were mostly waiting for either Marcus Gronholm or Petter Solberg. I shout out to get Latvala's attention before telling him exactly how much of a legend he is, and how I'm totally supporting him, he had a massive smile at this and tried to reply, but I was too busy telling him that if he joined the BP Ford team next year that he could go all the way and that I was behind him every step. He genuinely seemed to appreciate this and not long later before driving away he waves to me and gives me a thumbs up, total win. The last person we watched get in their car before moving to the front of the stage was Solberg, and the crowd all leaned back like a shockwave when his Impreza started, rally cars are beasts as it is but those things are absurd.
We then watched the opening, which began with Colin McRae's car passing through the gate on the stage driven by his Dad, which was was cool, and then after watching some of the main drivers get interviewed and drive off we walked into the main high street to get some food. Returning at least 20 minutes later with a meatball sub in hand we saw the drivers were still passing through the gate, they then drive down the very long road in which all the spectator cars are parked and join the main road to head back to the service park in Swansea. Our car was parked right at the end next to the junction, and after turning it around to face the road we had the perfect seats to sit and watch the cars pass and stop at the junction as we chowed down, which was excellent.
We then rolled out to find somewhere to sleep, and not long down the M4 we found a delightful service stop and promptly threw the chairs back and went to sleep. I couldn't be bothered to do too much, so despite having a ridiculous amount of covers and sleeping equipment I was still cold, but as an Impreza estate driver at the same service stop said "Who needs Travelodge when you can sleep in the car?"

Day 2 had us wake to an ominous cloud cover, we pushed on and headed out to the first track, but our arrival was diverted by a police officer informing us that the car park was full and suggested heading to the next course. Determined not to have our progress halted by the po-po we ditched the wheels nearby and headed out on foot, but not far up the road a returning driver tells us the rally is miles up the road and that people are getting turned away at the end anyway.
Police 1 - Civvies 0
We return to the car to find a couple of other vehicles parked next to us and a bunch of lads gearing up to make the same expedition, we started chatting with them and told them what we knew and what we thought we should all do, they seemed to think we knew what we were talking about enough to follow our advice so they all jumped back in their cars and sped off to the third stage, honking and waving as they went.
We made after them and eventually arrived at the third stage with what seemed like perfect time to spare, it was so high up in the mountains that we were actually in the clouds and visibility dropped quite drastically for a while, but things cleared up enough for us to see the rally cars perfectly and it turned out to be the best part of the trip. The spectator area stretched around a simply excellent selection of bends with plenty of different angles to view them from, with the final one having the cars crash very spectacularly through a big puddle on one side. We got loads of videos and pictures before heading back off to the car to depart to the fifth stage of the day (the stage we visited the day before), with the second three all being repeats of the first three of the day.
Things took a turn for the worse and started raining quite heavily, we persevered and pushed on to the spectator area, as we waited for the stage to start the rain worsened and winds picked up to such ferocity that my umbrella imploded and had to be discarded. We only stayed long enough to watch the first few cars before heading back to the sanctuary of our own wheels, absolutely soaked through puddles began forming in the car.
Arriving back in Swansea I quickly got changed, and after removing my wallet from my no longer waterproof coat I had to actually peel apart the money inside and dry it over the fans.
At the service park we walked around for a while and watched the crews tear apart the cars with astonishing professionalism and efficiency. I managed to shake Marcus Gronholm's hand in passing in classic grumpy Gronholm fashion with him not sparing the crowd a second glance, such a clear cut businessman is he. Unfortunately I turned on the Stobart Ford team to see Latvala's car with a massive dent in the side and his name not even in the top seventeen positions, tragedy.
We busted outta there and pulled over at what just so happened to be the same service stop we saw the first rally car parked at, not long later we fell asleep to be only moderately warmer than the night before.
The next morning we headed back into Cardiff to get something good to eat and do some shopping. I stopped off in River Island and Burton and got a couple of shirts, and as a gift for someone got a very nice handmade necklace in a rather arty marketplace. We then wandered around for a while longer before heading back home, which proved a much wetter and more dismal journey than the one in the opposite direction two days prior.
Overall it was a fantastic trip in which even the worst parts contained nothing but laughs. I'm very much looking forward to next year, in which I will be driving in the Focus.

Speaking of the Focus, I have finally been insured and received my first driving lesson today, in which I think I did rather well, no tofu drifting yet though. Unfortunately my Dad is only available on two days over the next two weeks, but after that he's absolutely free over the Christmas period, and I will most definitely be on the road at every available opportunity.