narshada

Ok, my round up of the year, or what I can remember of it due to having a terrible memory.

Last new years I was sat in a pub with my ex and her mum, who had come over from Provence. We had a good evening.

I got a pay rise after my first year at work in April. Not massive, but what I was promised.

My ex and I broke up because she was moving to London to start a career as a teacher. We remained friends.

Moved half of my company to a new site. I was responsible for all IT & phones. I had to set up a new network from scratch, including servers, routers etc. I worked for 3 weeks solid without a day off, up to 12 hours a day and had help from another IT guy for only 3 days. I got a bonus for my trouble though.

Summer in Bristol was great this year. I went to the organic food festival with E, which was the first time we'd met. (She's now one of my best friends.) We basically wandered around trying various cheeses and organic wines.I went to the Harbour festival, which was cool and had live music. I missed Ashton Court, which was a bit of a shame since it was the last one, but it was rained off, so maybe not such a shame really. I went to the kite festival, which was cool and I also went to the Jazz festival with some guys from work. We sat in the park, listening to Jazz whilst drinking and smoking weed in the sunshine. I've had worse days.

I had a new tattoo done. It's a slightly modified version of the Fenchurch logo on my right calf.

I finally got diagnosed with IBS, after having symptoms for up to 20 years. After reading up on it, I've changed my diet and I'm better than I was. It's an odd condition because no one gets the exact same set of symptoms and some foods that will cause an attack one day might not affect you the next.

I ended up going on holiday with my ex for her 30th. We'd arranged it while we were together and decided to go anyway. It was difficult at times because we both still had feelings for each other, but knew there was no point in doing anything about them. In the end it went really well. In a strange bit of serendipity, on the coach back from the airport, our song came on the radio. To me that was kind of like a full stop in things - the relationship was over and the holiday was over. Time to move on.

Which I did by developing my social life more and doing things. I went to the St Paul's carnival with E & S and got amazingly pissed and ended up staying over at S's after we lost E at some point around 3am. S and I ended up doing naughty stuff due to our drunken state, which eventually became a bit of a casual thing between us for a while.

Then I met a girl, kind of through work and we chatted for a while at a work meeting. She was into the same sorts of music as me, as well as lots of other things. I'd met her briefly the year before and remembered thinking she was cute. We continued to chat online and the more we chatted, the more I liked about her. I'd previously decided that it was unlikely that I would ever meet my 'perfect woman' but it seemed to be going that way. We decided to go to an Alexisonfire gig together in Manchester, but then she decided she couldn't wait to see me and decided to take a sickie from work and come down to visit. She came down on a Wednesday night and we went for a meal together, (she was also veggie - another box ticked,) and we had a great evening before retiring to bed. We got up late the next day and had a wander into Bristol and generally had a great time. We said our goodbyes and I got a text about 10 mins after she left saying she was missing me already. Sweet. She was due to come down again a week later at the weekend, which was a week before the gig. I texted her on the day to see what time she would arrive and got a message back saying she was confused and thought it would be better if she didn't come. I knew she had a bit of a situation with her ex, but they'd been split up for a while. Anyway, she chatted to me less online and over the course of the next week, stopped altogether. I then noticed on facebook that she was suddenly 'in a relationship', only it wasn't with me. I assume she's back with her ex, but she's not spoken to me since, so I don't know. Ouch.

I went to see Alexisonfire on my own in Bristol and they were fucking awesome.

I joined SG, got into SGUK and went to two SGUK meets, the first one in Bristol, the second one in Manchester and had an amazing time at both. I met some awesome people, had drinks and managed to hold on to most of my dignity, barring the whole 'chest penis' thing. (You had to be there. Actually I was there and I still don't know how I got myself into that.)

I'm sure there's other stuff that I'm missing, but I think that covers the major points. It's been a good year overall, despite relationship ups and downs. Hopefully next year will be even better.