Tired and Crabby.

Ugh - I've not been sleeping well. I've been taking ages to get to sleep, and then I seem to spend the entire night in bizarre, vivid dreams. Daytime I've been spending feeling like a zombie, then night comes and the process repeats (though, oddly, I feel nearly alive come evening - how useless is that?). I'm afraid I've inherited the Schultz crappy-sleep gene (esp given that I remember, when very little, sitting up half the night and crying b/c I couldn't sleep). Yay.

Anyway, we're just coming to the end of Bank Holiday Weekend, which has been, exhaustion aside, generally not bad. Saturday I hung out with Paul (discussed the world, gossipped, la dee dah) and then headed to a Eurovision Song Contest party on Saturday evening. If ever there was a gay version of the World Cup, that is it.
So many silly people singing terrible songs, and so much overtly political voting - it's fab! Anyway, imagine 25 people, mostly gay men, packed into a small room, shouting at the TV. Like I said - the World Cup for gay men.

Yesterday I cycled a nice 70 mile ride out to Ashford, off through the hills and hop fields of Kent - it was a perfect day for it - sunny and breezy (at my back - I'm not dumb), and took the train back. And today I hung out with David, Avi and Robin - went for pub lunch and had a generally useless time at the bike store (took it in for a tune-up and they were missing two parts - have to take it back Friday - for the third time. Useless).

Last weekend it was a ride out to Bicester (pronounced 'Bister' - OF COURSE!), off through the Chiltern Hills, and the week before that I spent doing the most boring thing I have ever had the displeasure to do - a week-long, PRINCE2 project management course. Ugh, pulls my eyes out with spoons! It's definitely time to get out of local governemnt - just have to find somewhere to go...

I think this is a Hindu temple - it's in North London. Very multicultural, eh?



I just thought this was pretty - it's about 25 miles northwest of central London.



The Chilern Hills - ooh, glacial hills!



Some dead ivy going up this tree...



Pastoral - sheep in Chiltern meadow... Moo! ;-)



It's the town of Quainton. No, I am not making up the name. It's quaint, ain't it?



Bluebells and beech.



Hills and hop-fields of Kent. There's vineyards in there as well - English wine, believe it or not.




And a few of the local London residents - just a normal weekend way wandering around central London (and these are on two completely separate occasions!).