In conclusion, the blood game was better.

Yesterday I had the honour of attending a public carnival.



Where is the honour in that, you say?

It was so badly advertised that I was one of ten people not actively participating in the event that got to see it.

You see, York Council gets so much money from tourism that they can decide at any given point to throw a celebration in honour of the residents, but by this point we are bored and disinterested so it's always a blow.

My sister had been invited (as part of the local youth club where they tame the thugs of tomorrow) to join the carnival so my mum and I got some peace whilst contemplating what the hell had happened on the street the night before. It became a game, follow the trail of blood, five points for every ten metres you follow and fifty for any bodies. Sadly, I never found one. That would have been the icing on the cake.

When the carnival started it was a bust of four-year-olds screaming and banging drums. The 'carnival' started to stream past The York Minster but then... Nothing. It stopped. The whole procession was all of ten metres long.

We still followed it. We followed it all the way around as it got stuck in traffic and shouted at for making too much noise on a Sunday morning. After almost an hour of hearing the same repetitive BOOM BOOM WOOT WOOT, we wound up in the city centre, at which point I sank to my knees and yelled THANK YOU SUPERMAN.



It really was terrible. I cannot even begin to describe how bad it was, so instead I'll leave you with a pictorial demonstration.



I later heard that they gave pole dancing lessons on stage in the city centre.

The little quirks really make up this city.

The one where Nicole gets marooned. On camera.

[So yeah, sorry about yesterday. I was in a Robin Hood-esque bubble all day. This is what was meant to for yesterday:]

I have this weird new constitution where I have to find the best part of each day and make a big deal about it.

Do care to witness my mum's attempt at parallelogram parking. That was the corrected version.



This week I figured I'd earned my right to leave the city for a few hours, go to the coast or the middle of nowhere and just STOP.

Instead we went to Bridlington.

Bridlington is just the same as York to me. It caters for tourists but is in fact a hole. So yeah, it wasn't so thrilling, but it was still a change.

First and foremost, I got stranded. Happily I caught it all on camera.



The actual town was marginally better. The weather was awful, but then again Yorkshire is one of the few places in the world where the weather forecast has no bearing on whether or not a person takes off on some great outdoors-y escapade.

The other highlight of the day would have been seeing the flag of the USA in the most irrelevant place ever.



(I'm allowed to look fugly, it was cold)

Generally, it was a day of stupidity. I went too close to the sea when the tide was coming in, I went to the coast in gale force winds, I woke up at eight o'clock. The whole sha-bang.

I think if I were to send a postcard to my this-morning self, it would have looked something like this:

This is not an act of procrastination.

I am not stalling what has the potential to be a very long night of drama portfolio-related torment.

I am not in bed.

I am not extremely angry and confused when it's best that I'm neither.

I am not listening to Avril Lavigne on full blast.

---

All of the above statements are about as true me saying that I won American Idol last year.

Regardless, I'll go do my portfolio in a moment or two.

I had a plan today. Wake up, do drama portfolio, sigh a big sigh of relief and sleep for the rest of the day.

Yeah, I should be so lucky.

Instead, my brother broke into the house, I got dragged halfway across Yorkshire and had my dreams brutally crushed - so much so that I might actually die of internal bleeding at any given moment and you'd never know.

Ever.

---

Rach did some scouting on Google Earth today.

This is what can be seen in/around my house.



The great thing is that I actually know that guy.

Hitting home.

I posted last week about my home here in Blighty, but I just discovered some of Facebook's golden nougats on the subject of my hometown, York, which my local followers will surely appreciate...

You know you're in York when...

1) you meet up at the fountain.
2) you know the name of all the "bars" (Walmgate Bar, Micklegate Bar, etc. Not the drinking places).
3) you pass the Minster every weekend but have never been in it.
4) you promise yourself you'll go on a ghostwalk but probably never will.
5) you wonder how many foreign people's photos you're in.
6) you know what a "snickelway" is.
7) you've got pissed on the moor or knavesmire at least once.
8) you start getting pissed off with people in walking boots and wearing backpacks, because you know they're FUCKING tourists.
9) you act pissed off when a tourist asks you for directions (but you secretly love it).
10) you know you shouldn't, but always find yourself eating at Jumbo's.
11) you know Plaggy Terry and/or have a photo with him.
12) you've seen "Janice Church" written somewhere... (who is she?).
13) you know the only decent cinema is a thirty minute buss ride away.
14) you still get excitred when seeing the squirrels in the museum gardens.
15) you don't go to the back of the Museum Gardens because you know, invariably, you will be stabbed.
16) having Vikings, Romans and dead people walk by you has become a matter of course and you don't give it a second thought.
17) you've seen EVERY single buskers act in the WHOLE of York, but you'll still stop every now and then to watch it again.
17 (cont.) you deliberately walk behind the Zombie to make him jump at you and then act as if nothing's happened, JUST to impress the tourists.
18) you act as if you dont care when the river floods to the tourists, but when no one's looking, you rush over and have a look.
19) you think you know all the "shortcuts" in York, but tbh, they're always clogged up with shitty tourists.
20) you wait ALL year for the ice rink and you get excited, but once it's here, you realise how shit it is.
21) you dont realise a good thing till it's gone... Woolies (R.I.P). [And The Banana Warehouse...]
22) you stop and listen to the Christian preachers... not because they have anyting valid to say, you just fancy some cheap laughs.
23) you get pissed that the only Facebook network you can add is shitty "Leeds".
24) you cringe when the free hugs guy comes near you.
25) you always buy a bag of mis-shapes from the cadburys store when you go to the outlet.
26) you always complained about the York Wheel being an eyesore, but now you're sad it's gone and you never rode on it.
27) you miss the smell of the sugar beat factory.
28) you know the best chippy there is, is Ebor Fisheries on Bishy Road (ask any Millthorpe or All Saints student).
29) you miss the smell of the sugar beat factory.
30) you've had one of the best sandwiches you've ever had from Mr. £andwich!!! [I disagree! The one in Heslington by the University is best by far!]
31) you miss the little Christmas tree, atop the sugar beat factory.
32) you used to stand near and call the phoneboxes outside Odeon and near the fountain to see who would answer them.
33) you're sickened by the toilets in Parliament Street. [*shudder*]
34) you still dont understand why we have 3 pizza huts and 4 subways? [and 8 Starbucks! But I'm not complaining about THAT...]
35) you chose to eat at Caesar's, just to have faces made at you by the ghost walkers. Love them kids. [Haha... That happened to me once... I love that restaurant...]
36) you remember the peacocks that used to roam unhindered about the Gardens.
37) everytime you walk past MacDonald's, you're bound to see a loada kids sat on the window sill for some reason. Have they nowhere better to be? [Uhh, no. York has nowhere for ANYBODY other than tourists.]

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And this was second thing that caught my attention...

I joined this group:




And scrolled down to see this:



Now, I think it's slightly ironic that I should scroll down a group called 'Everyone knows everyone in York' to see that I knew practically everyone shown to be part of the group.

Look, even Tabitha is there! I share a blog with her!!

York's a tiny place really, I've just proven it.