Aidan Williams - High Acuity

The last few weeks have been pretty hectic to say the least. Let’s start with the week at the beginning of this month:

I decided to be slightly more romantic than usual by planning a date with my girlfriend. As part of the plan I was a bit of a bastard and told her I wouldn’t be able to see her at the weekend. I ordered a bunch of roses to be delivered to her on Friday with a note giving away that I would see her on Saturday and a hint that we’d be going on a date.

The only problem was that Interflora had other plans and decided not to deliver the flowers on Friday at all and therefore, not let my girlfriend know that I would be seeing her at the weekend and that we’d be going on a date.

On Saturday morning I went into Oxford Circus, tried and failed to find roses in two places before finding two long-stem roses left in Selfridges – my saviours. I bought the flowers, bought some lunch and went and met her at her work (she’s working seven days a week right now).

While she finished work I spoke to a couple of old friends on the phone, Lynton and Remy and then my girlfriend took me to the roof top of her building to stare out over London.

We walked down some back-streets of central for a while, ordered a couple of milkshakes from Haagen Dazs and then went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest in the West End Odeon Cinema where it premiered.

After that we were both pretty exhausted but we shared a passion fruit and apple martini and some Dim Sum in a restaurant near Oxford Circus.

The day wasn’t anywhere near what I wanted it to be, but she was happy, and so was I.

Last weekend, my company has done so well in the last six months that they decided to take all of us away for our yearly ‘Vision’ meeting – we went to Biarritz in the South of France and it was absolutely incredible: sunny, chilled, beautiful, fun, fantastic food, and only an hour and a half away by plane.

On the first night after we ate, a few of us went down to the beach and myself, one of my fellow web producers and a designer stripped-off and went swimming in the sea – it was beautiful – completely clear sea water to the point that you could see your body lit by the moonlight in the water, so we stayed for a while, floating and starring at the stars.

On the second day, after the vision meeting, some of us went surfing… most of us for the first time – damn that’s a tiring sport! No wonder surfers are so ripped! And you really have to concentrate on everything you’re doing in order to get up on the board, although I’m sure it becomes a natural reaction after a while.

In the evening we all met up for a meal and some laughs before some of us went off clubbing and others went skinny-dipping in the sea. Can you guess which group I was in? I wouldn’t have minded doing either, but decided I can go clubbing any time in London, so went down to the beach and, with one short break back at the hotel which was right by the beach, ended up staying on the beach till 5am.

It was an incredible couple of days and felt like we crammed so much in there. I definitely want to go back sometime soon.

Last Monday I went to get my passport renewed for a couple of trips I’m going to be taking. Having heard a few horror stories, I expected it to take a couple of hours but the whole thing took a total of roughly ten minutes! I cued to get scanned, was given a ticket number, waited upstairs and went to the desk when my number was called, she asked me if it was just a renewal, I said yes, we shared a couple of laughs, and she gave me a receipt to go and pay!

A train ride and an iced tea later (it was pretty hot) and I was at my sister’s place, along with my brother in law, helping her move into her new place.

On Saturday I had two birthdays to go to; my sister’s and a colleague’s. My sister’s birthday was a barbecue held at my older sister’s house, along with my mum, brother, and a few guests. The weather was blazing, the Underground was running terribly as usual on the weekends, but the company was fantastic, the food was incredible and I had a great time.

At around 6.30pm I met up with Sanj and we went to the party for our work colleague at the Bar Fly in Camden – it was excellent! We watched a brilliant unsigned band called Zero Point Field play – we tried to get an encore, but the management wouldn’t allow it as the next band had to come on. We spent the rest of the evening dancing (or my attempt at dancing) downstairs to some 50s & 60s music and we had a great laugh with our colleague and her friends.

This morning John and I had breakfast in Starbucks in Angel before walking into the centre of London, Taking pictures along the way.

We ended up walking to St Paul’s Cathedral and some of the parks in the area before meeting up with my girlfriend and David, and going to a restaurant called Auberg in St Christopher’s Place just off Oxford Street, where I had a gorgeous steak sandwich.

For the rest of this evening I’m going to chill out and watch Murder At 1600 which I bought for £2.99 at HMV.

I also had my appraisal at work last week: we have half year and end of year appraisals every six months. I had mine with one of the directors and it went very well. For the third time in a row I got the highest percentage of bonus in the company, everything is going well and everyone’s really liked my accessibility document so far.