And all the lights that lead us there are blinding...

Nine days ago, I wrote about a series of interesting events. Nine days ago, in the evening, Ray and I sat outside in my garden and watched the Perseids whizz past above us at speeds I cant even begin to imagine. You all know about the Perseids by now, Google even changed their logo for them! I love a logo change. It was amazing. NASA claimed we'd see 60-80 meteors an hour, which isnt exactly what happened, but we did see quite a lot, more than I'd ever seen before anyway. We bought some cider, and sat on the hill, all wrapped up warm with cushions and blankets and hoodies and looked Northwest. I've never seen anything like it. Then Ray was violently sick and we went to bed. I've never seen anything like that either.

That weekend, two exciting things happened. The first was that I got a saturday off work, and the second was the reason for the day off, Ray's 21st birthday. Now she'll tell you that I didnt get her a present, which I suppose is true but it's more that I havent got her a present yet. You see, I'm making it. And when it's finished it is sure to be excellent, it's just I havent exactly started it yet. She has reason to doubt me to be fair - both Ray and Mel are still waiting for their Christmas presents. I said I'd take them to Wicked (the untold story of the witches of Oz) when I could afford to buy the tickets, which I now can BUT we still havent organised it. Mel has a job, Ray broke her ankle, the website is incredibly complicated, you know how it is. It will happen. And the birthday present will be made, and we shall all rejoice. Obviously I'm now on a serious time limit because next Monday, my new life begins. Terrifying, actually.

Ray's birthday party was excellent. I wore stupid stupid shoes which I vowed never to wear again, and then wore two days later. We danced and we played saucy charades, which is an excellent game, made much better by the fact that our team won. We are Ray, Jess and the Charlie's, and we conquer all! A strange boy turned up and then fell asleep in the middle of the room, Pookie gave some champagne to a goat, Cheesy told everyone in sight what legends they were, it was all just excellent. Most people went home, or to bed but the Hardkore Four (Ray, Cheesy, Me and Jamie) stayed up til probably about 4am, and then got no sleep at all because the sun came up at 6am and woke us all up. Ray says I giggle in my sleep, which I think is surely very cute indeed, but Ray says is creepy. I see what she's saying, because if you wake up in the night and there's complete silence all around and then the silence is broken by manic laughter, it would be quite scary. Jamie sleeps on his front. He shouldnt do that. Hopefully he is happy now, I suspect that all he wants in life is a named mention on my blog, so that surely counts! I could tell you something interesting about Jamie, but I wont because to be honest I dont see his name in the title and I feel that I've talked about him quite enough. He went on holiday, and when he came home he checked his Facebook, then his emails, then my blog. He is very sweet.

Now to more recent matters. On Monday, I loaded up my little Micra, picked up Cara, picked up Ray, and set of on a Journey. Oh yes. This journey took us through many counties, over many miles and it was many hours before we reached our destination. We saw a man with a mattress on the roof of his car, and an old woman and a dog in the back, we noted (with interest) that although the Warwickshire county sign says 'Warwickshire - Shakespeare's County', the symbol is a picture of a large bear. Cara saw a dead badger and a dead fox, taking her to 14 points and securing her win of the dead animal game. By the time we got home, Cara had accumulated 20 points - a champion's score. I had a fairly respectable 15, and poor Ray was trailing with 10. After 5 hours, we reached our destination - Old Broadway, Didsbury. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Manchester.

Our friend Kay lives in Manchester. She is at uni there but she has a job up there and things so she tends to stay during the holidays. Kay completes the Five. The most important thing to mention about the drive up, is that we didnt go wrong once. We cruised straight from Sussex to Manchester, no problem at all. We had to stop many many times for Cara to pee, and once or twice for petrol, but we didnt take any accidental detours. Ray and I once drove to Keele University, to visit Mel, and all was going fine until we spotted a large sign bearing the legend 'Welcome to Wales'. We did a swift u-turn, but it added 4 extra hours to the trip.

Manchester is excellent. Have you been there? You must! It's lovely, and big and modern and clean, and Oasis come from there. Kay's flat is excellent too. Have you been there? You must! It's lovely, and tiny and classic Kay. Covered in photos, and pink fluffy things, and trinkets. And a lot of mirrors. We squeezed into it, turned the whole place upside down, covered every spare inch of space in clothes, and makeup, and all the sort of things you would expect a group of girls to have. The food in Manchester is excellent. On our first night, we had probably the best burger I've ever eaten, and for lunch on the second day we went to the Hard Rock Cafe, which I loved because a) our waiter was such a hero (Leroy, we salute you) and b) there was Oasis memorabilia everywhere. I liked that.

Cara works for the Hilton in Brighton, which means that she gets 50% off at Hiltons around the world. The Hilton in Manchester is the tallest building in the city, and the Cloud 23 bar is located on the 23rd floor. We went there and had cocktails. Ray, Kay and Cara all had cosmopolitans, Ryan (Kay's GBF) had a daiquiri, and I had a margarita. I love margarita. It's all I ever want to drink, ever, for the rest of my life. All salty and delicious (ooh err) and truly excellent. Sadly, they dont do them in my local. Or yours, probably. We didnt see any footballers in the Hilton, which is fine I suppose, but it would have been nice. Not that any of us would have recognized any of them actually, so there might have been some there!

We came home on Wednesday, so we only had 2 nights and just one full day in the North, but they were a great 2 nights and one full day. We shopped, we dressed up, we went out, we had wine, we got free busses, we laughed and danced and ate too much, we sat and we saw and we played the wink and kiss game. Cara loves the wink and kiss game, more than sunshine, chili chocolate and shoes.

Sadly, I hate that I have to tell you this but I do, we didnt get home with quite as much ease as we got there. It's my fault, I was dreaming about a sandwich and not paying attention to the M40, which is how we ended up on the M5. We werent off course for very long at all, maybe 40 minutes so that's alright and in that time we drove through, actually through, Stratford Upon Avon - home of the Bard himself. To dilute the mythos of this, we also drove through about 17 speed cameras. It was on this detour that I spotted my lucky badger (or not so lucky, actually) which boosted my score. Most importantly, if we hadnt taken this little deviation from the route, we would never have met Clio Boy.

Clio Boy was excellent. He drove a blue Clio, and for about 100 miles of M40, once we found it again, we played the overtaking game. I play the overtaking game a lot, I find it entertains me on long journeys, but Ray and Cara had never played it before. What makes Clio Boy so special, is he knew I was playing it. He didnt just overtake me every now and then, he understood the game. In fact, he understood the game so well that he'd overtake us on the downhill, so that my turn came on the up. My car doesnt enjoy the up, but what goes up must come down eventually, and soon we'd be ahead again. It's a great game. Sadly, Clio Boy had an exit to take, so we waved goodbye and continued on our way. I wonder if Clio Boy will read this, put two and two together and drop me a line. Now that's a love story for the modern age.

Right, some of us have jobs to get to (I mean you, not me). Laters.

The Dead Animal Game - point structure.

Birds - 1 pt (this is all birds, I dont care if it's an eagle or a sparrow)

Small wild - 2 pts (rabbits, squizzers, etc)

Reptiles - 3pts (a crocodile is a reptile. Sorry)

Domestic - 5pts (this includes dogs, cats, also farm animals such as cows and horses)

Medium wild - 7 pts (badgers and foxes)

Large wild - 10 pts (this usually only counts for deer, but if you play the game in the New Forest you could claim a horse on a technicality. Also camels, if you play in the desert)

Human - 25 pts (automatic win, but it's up to you if you want to claim them or not)

You can not claim the points if you kill the animal yourself.