Long time, no updates. Why? You decide:

a) I have been hiding out in my secret underground bunker for fear of the swine-flu epidemic, trying to suck tinned beans through the nozzle of my home-made respirator, and smacking people with my emergency shovel when they try to coax me out.

b) I have been working very hard on everything I've promised people I'd do, such as preparing a portfolio for university, getting a job, drawing up requests, and finishing the final (awesome) chapters for "Take me to the autopilot."

c) I've become stuck to one of the sticky leaves of my butterwort plant, and am being slowly digested as I write thisdfghgjhkghfgdfsfh...

OR

d) I've been having a wild weekend in Blackpool with three friends, nicknamed XL, Whoppers and Chicken Royale. (I'm Ocean Catch...)

Thursday:

Spend 7 hours on the coach, chatting, listening to our iPods and poking Chicken Royale, before arriving at our B&B. It's a very nice place, run by some very nice people, and we're put up in a pair of standard rooms for the first night. Me and Whoppers have two beds in our room. XL and Chicken Royale have to share.

Thursday Evening:

We dine at Yates. This will become our dining spot for the rest of the weekend, which will be spent exploring their "two meals for a fiver" menu. Following this, and some cocktails, we go for a dip in the sea, visit the fair, and try out the "world famous Blackpool eye." This ferris wheel is unervingly open, and staffed by a surly looking man who takes delight in stopping the ride for five minutes with us screaming at the top. We also discover the latest craze to hit Blackpool: Smelly Balls. Yep. They're just what they say on the tin, balls covered in fruit scent. They're for sale everywhere, along with hats shaped like traffic cones, fast food, oversized toys, and Micheal Jackson memorial rock. We retire to bed for a quiet night, ready for the Pleasure Beach in the morning.

Friday:

A lovely fried breakfast in the morning (Although McDonalds loyalist Chicken Royale nips off for a Sausage Muffin...), followed by a wander down the seafront to the Pleasure Beach. Along the way, we find more Smelly Balls, and vast amounts of fortune tellers. All of them are genuine romany gypsies, and have helped numerous celebrities with matters of fate. Despite this, all of them live in tiny booths filled with glitter and old curtains.
Inside the pleasure beach, we exploit the quietness of the theme park to ride everything twice. Hightlights include the Big One (It is, big. But Whoppers says she's seen bigger...), Valhalla (The viking afterlife is apparently a logflume ride. An awesome logflume ride.), the Big Dipper (The original creaky wooden coaster.) and the Tango Ice Blast. We dine at Burger King, which is where we gain our sandwich-related nicknames. We leave just as the ambulance arrives to remove a whiplash-victim from the dodgems.

Friday Evening:

Chicken Royale hurt her neck on the Big One, so stays behind. The rest of us go to Yates again, where we win a bottle of bubbly for our dancing, although XL and Whoppers are far better at it than me. (Although the DJ calls me a "Sexy secretary". It must be the glasses...) By 1am, we're a little bit unsteady (My first time out drinking. Ever.), which is how Whoppers ends up smashing her head on the pavement. The moral of this holiday is "Don't drink and get a piggyback off someone who is also drunk."

2am

Whoppers has been sick all over the en suite, and crawled into bed. We are awoken by odd gurgling noises. Turns out that concussion is pretty much indistinguishable from drunkeness. Until they start twitching and gurgling.
XL and I put our first aid training to good use, and call an ambulance. As XL is her sister, she travels in the ambulance. Chicken Royale and I follow in a taxi. I feel guilty for not spotting it sooner.

6am

We finally get to leave A&E, after spending the night in the waiting room with an assortment of other drunks. Whoppers is much better, but has to stay in until midday for observation. We get a miserable breakfast in McDonalds, during which Chicken Royale considers going home early. XL talks (ie, gets very offended) her out of it, and we crawl back to our vomit-filled room to sleep. (Chicken Royale forgets, and ends up putting her foot in it. Literally. *Squish*)

Saturday Evening:

Whoppers returns to us, and we spend a quiet day in our room, aside from the massive cleanup operation required to make our bathroom usable again. Whoppers stays in and rests, whilst the rest of us go out for dinner at an Italian Restaurant, ringing her regularly to make sure she's still alive. (We would have gone to a bar, but there are bouncers everywhere, and two of us have forgotten our ID...)

Sunday morning:

Whoppers much better. We sleep in and miss breakfast by an hour, although our lovely hosts get us some leftovers. (Our hosts were also lovely about the whole "soiled bathroom and ambulance in the early hours" situation.) We spend a quiet day pottering around the shops and in our room.

Sunday Evening:

We all go out, for the first time in our holiday. We get our drinks free, from a group of guys. I'm "fiddler on the roofie" for the night: I ever-so-subtly follow the guys to ensure they don't slip anything into our cocktails. (They don't.) We perform our star turns for karaoke: XL and Whoppers sing "Don't stop believing", Whoppers performs "Life is a lemon (and I want my money back) very well, and I butcher "Hotel California" and "Moon River".

Monday:

Seven. Hours. On. The. Coach.
The most eventful thing that happens is that XL loses her phone, and the lavatory door on the coach flies open whilst I'm using it.

Good times.