8th January 2011

The birds are singing :-) The thaw is definitely on with temperatures expected to hit double figures in much of Germany today. It's wonderful to feel that we aren't confined to our houses and wake up listening to the birds all getting excited because they think it's Spring.

We had a visit today from two men about fixing our oven. Some idiots, when making the oven, thought it would be a good idea  to fix the internal window with plastic catches. They melted, obviously. It sounds like a few people in the surrounding apartments have the same problem. They are going to get onto the manufacturers for us. At the moment we can only use the oven with the door slightly open so that the external window doesn't smash.

Shock of the year and probably my life!!!!!!! Agnieszka is pregnant!!!!!!!!!!! She came back from the stable and told me. I didn't believe her so she showed me the pregnancy test she had done that morning. We thought she couldn't have kids! Apparently she has tried for 18 years in previous relationships, never taking precautions in her life and has never managed to get pregnant. I come along and   she's pregnant after a month of living here. We are guessing that she's about six weeks gone but we need to get to a doctor to have everything confirmed. It is the last thing I expected and I don't really know what to think about it but seeing how happy Agnieszka is has made me think this could be a good thing.

Tomas was the first to know, even before me!! Eileen seemed excited and very shocked. I emailed my mum, dad and Craig with the news but none of them replied today. I'm dreading what they must think, three children with three different women isn't the best track record is it. Sussie wasn't impressed and after having a go at Agnieszka in German about it, Agnieszka quickly snapped and told her to stop spoiling our happy day. Things quickly calmed down and were ok again. I noticed Sussie talking German for most of the time she was here. I think it's a plan of hers to help me learn German but it won't help. I can't have a conversation with someone if they are insisting on talking in another language. Tomas is the same, he insists on speaking Polish around me all the time yet he can speak perfectly good English.

I started smoking again today :-( sorry. As soon as I heard the news I had to rush to the shop to get some cigarettes to calm me down.  I got one packet but plan on stopping again once they have gone.

Agnieszka surprised me tonight saying she was taking me to see Manchester United V Liverpool tomorrow. I'm so excited :-)

Agnieszka and her new vibrator.

7th January 2011

After a slow start to the day I soon got cracking. I have been in a spring cleaning mood for the last few days now and I finally got a bit done. Agnieszka had a visit from some insurance man so I took that time scrubbing the kitchen tiles and hob. They've never looked as clean. As for the toilet, well, that was the first thing I noticed when I came here. The bottom of it was disgusting but just wouldn't clean. I finally found the guts to throw my hand down there with a Brillo pad and its certainly looking much better.

We had a marathon of This Is England today, watching the film followed by This Is England 86' TV series. I wasn't that impressed with it considering how much people were raving about it back in England. It was just a poor attempt at recreating Shameless as far as I could see.

There's a new rule starting in the house tomorrow. If you're not sleeping you wear a bra!! Why walk around all day holding your boobs up with your hands and hurting every time I happen to bump into them? There's no sense in that is there? I told Agnieszka I was sick of tripping over them because they were dragging on the floor, luckily she saw the funny side.

I'm starting to feel the effects from not smoking now and not all for the good. The cravings are much less but I'm near the end of my cold so the constant crap I'm blowing out from that and the phloem from my lungs is all adding up to a pretty disgusting sight right now. On top of that each cough is starting to hurt the lungs. I'm sure it will all be worthwhile in the end.

It was rumoured that Roy Hodgson was going to be sacked by Liverpool today. I was really hoping he would be and Kenny Dalgleish given the job he deserves. It turns out that Kenny isn't in the country till next week and Liverpool haven't even got a Managing Director at the moment so there's no one to make the decision!! So he still has the job for Sundays huge game away to Manchester United in the F.A. Cup 3rd round. I can't believe I'm going to miss it. I'm truly gutted. I have been looking forward to this since the draw was made but we have no money and I respect that so I'll just have to miss it. I wouldn't mind so much if I could hear it on a radio or something but I'll have to settle for updates from BBC sport on the Internet. Oh well, just make sure you win Liverpool!!!

6th January 2011

Happy Three Kings Day!! I've never heard of it but I do know that it means all the banks are shut over here today. It must be like a bank holiday. Today is also the day we have to take our Christmas trees and decorations down, I wonder if there's a connection. That's exactly what I did anyway, I took the tree down. It didn't look good when we got it and it certainly doesn't look good now with it's droopy branches. It was only about 3 foot tall. After taking the decorations off it I put it outside on the balcony to see if it comes around at all. Next year I'm choosing the tree.

I got out today...yay!! Only to Netto lol but at least it was out. We had no food so it was nice to get some bits in and stuff ourselves all day. My cravings aren't as bad as they were and my grumpiness seems to have mellowed a bit so hopefully I'm over the worst now. When I get a craving now I just have a Rivita cracker bread with potato salad on it or my latest joy, sticks of pretzels. You know the type, them pretzels you get at Xmas with bits of sea salt stuck to them about 1.5 inches big but these are just sticks about 20cms long. I'm treating them like cigarettes and smoking about 200 of them a day when I can. They are only 35 cents a bag!!!

It looks like the temperatures are starting to rise and the big thaw is on. They are predicting huge flood problems which I think must be inevitable given this is the largest amount of snow to fall in 120 years. I think it will be months though before these huge mounds of snow at the sides of the road disappear.

5th January 2011

I Didn’t sleep too well and woke up with my head feeling swollen and full of cold. At least I'm man enough to say it's a cold, quite a mild one at that. It's not man flu that's for sure.

It's been a very uneventful day today. I've been in a bad mood from not smoking, my cold has peaked and reached its worse. We just watched Starsky & Hutch and Rocky and got an early night.  I should say Agnieszka did. I was up until 1.30am changing this diary from Wordpress over to Blogger. They say there isn't much between the two but I'm finding that you have far more options to personalise things here on Blogger.

4th January 2011

Well my bloody cold has become fully blown today. Getting lots of crap out of my system though so that can only be good. I can’t help wondering if it is related to me stopping smoking though. Agnieszkas pumping me lots of tablets, I have no idea what they are but they do seem to work for a few hours afterwards.

I remembered a picture of my Great Great Grandad James Lamb from the days of doing my family tree and was desperate to find it online where I may have put it on a website in the past. It had a horse in the picture and I wanted to see what the horse was like now that I know a little more about them. I found the picture (below) and the horse was huge!! That's the best photo I’ve ever found, I love it  .

Great Great Grandad James Lamb cc1890 Thornton

Agnieszka made me laugh again, one day she’ll think before she does something lol. She rang to order some straw for the horses and after talking on the phone for 5 minutes and getting rather annoyed at the guy on the other end of the phone for not knowing where to get the straw from that he was supposed to deliver, she realised she’d called the taxi company by accident.  What must that poor man have thought ha ha ha.

Sussie came today, she says she’s in love but he’ll probably be married or gay, bless her. It sounds like she doesn’t have the best of luck in love, maybe this time.

I spent quite a long time on German learning today. I found quite a useful set of German lessons on You Tube which I’m going to try and a good hour or two reading my GCSE German book. I try, I really try, but It just doesn’t seem to be sinking in. I learn something and within a few hours I’ve forgotten it again. Then I have Sussie and Agnieszka having a go at me because I haven’t learnt anything. I just seem to be fighting a losing battle. I am going to try harder this week but I just don’t think I can ever speak German without some proper lessons or help.  They expect me to be going to a job interview in two weeks. That is never going to happen at this rate. I won’t be bullied into going and making a fool of myself again. I will make a fool of myself when I’m ready to do so. I really have to get this language sorted though so I can work and integrate with everyone. I feel like an alien sometimes.

3rd January 2011

O.k. well waking up today without a cigarette was very hard, the hardest it’s been. I’m hoping the worst is almost over and it starts to get easier soon before I start shouting and smashing things.

When Agnieszka got back from the stables we watched a bit of Ski Jumping. They are mad for it over here in Germany and Poland. I’m guessing that’s because they are pretty good at it. I think England have had just one jumper in history..Eddie the Eagle who was famous worldwide for being the worst jumper ever.

Things are pretty desperate here at the moment. I just finished the last boiled sweets and have realised there’s nothing to eat in the house. We had a lovely meal today, a goulash made with buckwheat groats which apparently is an eastern european thing. They have them in Cornwall too. They were nice, didn’t taste of much but were a nice texture, a good alternative to rice and very good for you. Anyway, after eating that and then finishing off the rest at the end of the night with pasta I think it’s safe to say that we ain’t got anything left to eat!! Fingers crossed for a miracle tomorrow. When I stop smoking I turn to food and if I haven’t got that to turn to then I don’t know what I’m going to do.

I watched Agnieszka eating an apple earlier. The core was eaten!! The entire core!!!  I presumed she didn’t know because she wasnt watching what she was eating but after telling her, she said that’s where all the goodness is….yuck!!!

Then she made me laugh again. I started with a bit of a cold and my nose was running all afternoon. I was a bit worried about how much toilet paper we had. I explained that I needed 9 pieces per number 2 (4 x 2 folded pieces and one for the front) which she found odd that I have the same amount of paper each time I go. So she went on to explain that you only need 1 piece, she got one, stuck her finger through the middle of it and said that you stick it up and then wipe your finger as you’re pulling it back through the whole.  I laughed but I really do hope she was joking and doesn’t actually put that into practice!!! YUCK!!!

After watching a documentary on The Real Rainman who the film was based on (very interesting guy), the internet decided to stop loading films. We must be up to our connection limit for the month, very annoying!!  So an early night tonight, very early.

2nd January 2011

So today I was up early and went to the stables with Agnieszka. It’s the first time that just the two of us were there. Both Tomas’s were off today. Old Tomas because it’s Sunday and young Tomas because he worked yesterday whilst we were in bed with a hangover.

I was reluctant to go because I am now down to about 15 days worth of contact lenses which is scaring me a little. I will NOT leave the house without contacts and need to sort some new ones out urgently but we just haven’t got the money right now.  It was nice though, just me and Angieszka. I spent the whole time (about 3-4 hours) taking horses to and from the paddocks where they could have a run around. The rest of the time I took my favourite three horses to the field which is bigger than the paddocks and gives them more room to run around. It also gives me a great chance to take pictures and videos without any distractions.

I mentioned my favourite three horses so I guess I should go into a little more detail. Firstly there is Maximool. I rent him along with Agnieszka. He’s my first horse so he is very special to me. Everyone else in the stables seems to have a problem with him saying he can be naughty and jumps at them sometimes but he’s never been anything but lovely to me. I think I might be too soft with him but I don’t care, he’s lovely. Maximool is a baby, just one year old. So is my other favourite who is a beautiful chestnut horse called Baron. He is tiny so I hope he will grow quickly because he has a lovely temperament as you can see from the video below where he is having a good run around. Then there’s Mumboo who started racing last year so he will be two. Everyone loves Mumboo, he is just so soft and gentle, everyone thinks he’s a bit gay. So they are my favourites, all three of them stallions and fingers crossed, all three are going to win us some money this year or next.

I was in a bad mood when I got home. No reason for being that way, just not smoking. Things only got worse too. After watching a few films about serial killers (a common interest Agnieszka and me have) and then a very gruesome Sweeny Todd the laptop broke down! Only the second day into the new year and Agnieszkas favourite toy broke down on us!! Gutted!!  So as of tomorrow we are stuck on my old laptop which is a sorry sight. It has a big crack across the screen making it very hard to work on or watch anything on it and on top of that the disc drive doesn’t work.  The only consolation is that the computers are almost the same model so we just might be able to make one good one out of the two. Agnieszka’s has had it. It just went completely dead.

Maximool

Mumboo

 

Baron

 

1st January 2011

Happy New Year!! Not that it is a very happy one. It’s not that I’m unhappy as such, it’s just the fact we are skint right now, hung over from last nights partying, and It’s the start of the usual January 1st ritual…stopping smoking!!!!  I don’t know why I try, it always ends in failure so why put myself through so much pain before finally giving in and lighting up again? Maybe this year will be different. Maybe this time next year I can honestly class myself as a non-smoker again for the first time in 21 years. Things are on my side this year, I have zero money, zero chance of getting any in the next week or two and my girlfriends stopped too. She seems stronger than I am and is being very understanding about my mood swings.

Anyway, why am I here? Well I needed a project. I get these ‘must have a project’ feelings quite often, but January 1st seems like as good a time as any. So what exactly am I doing? Well, I’m not sure yet. Firstly you are a diary, I want to record this year and fill it with all my years adventures, pictures and videos. I think I should concentrate on that for now and ho knows, if I keep up to it, maybe there’s a book in it at the end of the year. We will see, it might turn into a very boring year yet!

Not much to comment on today. As I say we are both struggling with a hangover. The house was a total mess when we woke up with a pile of dirty washing 3 feet hight and 6 feet wide but Agnieszka, the girlfriend, has been slowly wading through it and it should be gone in a couple of days. I keep tidying little bits each time I get up so we are slowly getting there, rather than having a cleaning session its a gradual thing.

What else happened today? Hmmm…..Oh…a Liverpool win  2-1 against Bolton, that always brings me a smile. Then there was the phone call Agnieszka got from her mum saying how much all the family liked me! Agnieszka was told that she has to start doing more cleaning around the house if she wants to hold on to me. Ha ha ha, Go mum!!! I don’t think Agnieszka will ever be a tidy person but I do think I’m very slowly starting to get her to think about what she’s doing rather than just throwing things on the floor.

Our washing!!!!!!!