Man it's been so long and I really find it hard to find the motivation to string together coherent sentences for no one to read but hey this is here for me so here we go.
I was looking forward to this weekend since I got invited, because who doesn't get excited about a barbecue on the beach with great people.
Arrived at Claires bout 10 past 6 after my GPS had me spinning round and making me dizzy for 15 minutes only to figure out her house was literally round the corner. Her and Robs house blew me away it was right on Saltburn seafront up the cliff you could step out their door cross the road and look down on the beach what an absolutely astonishing place to live.
When the others arrived we sorted out the gear we needed and swiftly headed down to the beach. We arrived at the beach after going down an inordinate amount of stairs dodging the occasional dog shit, which Andy would announce with his Irish fervour.
Beers were opened, barbecue was lit, burgers were cooking, sun was out. It was brilliant we ate drank and laughed until the sun started to set. At this point Rob wanted to get some wood to start a fire so we rounded up the lads and headed off into a nearby forest which was surprisingly dark.
The forest was behind a hill which cast the forest in shadow. Rob, Mike, Andy, Titch and I followed the path into this foreboding forest in search of wood. We came a across a small tree which I quickly climbed into and snapped some branches off, but we were in search of much bigger game. Rob went ahead while I was still monkeying about. He slid down of the path and found a massive collapsed tree which took us two a good 10 minutes to rid of ivy and bring down to the path. There was another good tree but it was too large for us to move even when I snapped one of the large branches by swinging from it. This resulted in me landing on my ass sliding down the slope clumsily. We gathered up the firewood and headed back to camp passing by another bunch who's fire looked like it was going to be nothing compared to ours.
We started up the fire and time just seemed to fly by. Rob would light up a Chinese fire lantern every hour or so, paraffin was spilt and facial hairs were scorched and a joint would be passed round occasionally. We set the last three fire lanterns off at the same time which turned into an amusing race of red VS blue VS late blooming blue. Needless to say it was a two lantern race. We packed up at about 3 in the morning and headed back to get some sleep.
The next day we headed round town had a look round a flea market where I saw a Lord Of The Rings limited edition portrait poster from the early 70's which I regret not buying. I ended up buying a nice wood carving of an elephant from the hippy shop as we called it. I hope I still have it when I come back to read this. We then decided to have a look at this art gallery which had a steel exhibit on.
There was some really special pieces at this gallery particularly the human steel structures which had objects embedded in their heads, my favourite of which was a rose. One piece that really caught my eye was a simplistic painting of ships from a top down view it reminded me off the art style the Studio Ghibli 'Ponyo'.
After leaving the art gallery Claire and Rob gave a few of us a lift back home after what was an enjoyable weekend.
