June 21st - July 5th

So, first "section" of my summer. June 21st i remember rightly, sitting in a Physics exam with like 25 mins to go, with most people finished and starting to party. And so my GCSE's ended and at the minute i can't remember at all what i did for the next 4 days. I'm guessing i just got about the place, chillaxing to the extreme and taunting everybody who still had exams/was still at school.

Oh yea, i haven't forgotten the "All nighter" on Xbox live with Jamie & Stevie. Play starts at 1am, ends at about 5am. The whole plan was to watch the sun rise, except it was crap, because it was cloudy, and so it just got light at 4.30am. So at around 5 we decided to stop, and so i went and fixed myself a snack, and began watching 24. It was a fun night anyways.

Around that time i also embarked on a completely random trip to Dublin with Anne & Stevie. You see, i'd been to Dublin lots, but never really in the centre. And so we went round the place for a day, took the bus tour, saw plenty of place, including that random spike. Grafton street was the best, and i will go back there one day to busk. Oh yea, we also got nicely sunburnt.

Then there was also our B'day party at mine on the 25th. That was great fun, and i got many lovely pressies, even though i didn't ask for any. Thanks!

Again, for the next 5 days i don't have a clue what i did. I probably just hung about and had fun. On the 28th June i went to see Joesph & the Technicolour Dreamcoat at the Opera House, and how good it was. It got a standing ovation (on the 2nd night), which apparently is rare in the Opera House, and it was full of good music, jokes, and fun. It was the best musical i've seen to date. Not that i've seen many.

Now we're getting to times when i know what i was doing. July 1st was Summer Madness time, and this year kicked ass. We arrived early afternoon, & helped set up the Youthlink tent, as well as scoring pitches on the staff site! (we were supposed to be on concrete :P, so i'll thank JP for getting us out of that one).
Funny bits i remember from that day were Scotty climbing 2 metres up the tent & standing on a pole while trying to tie stuff together. Up comes the Chief health & safety guy, who says:

"Do you realise you are breaking just about every health & safety law possible?"

Scotty replies:

"Yes!"

That was him told. Bloody health & safety. Of course Scotty ignored him, and went on to doing plenty of "dangerous" things.
Our living areas consisted of 3 tents, one for the Bergins, one for Jamie, Phil E & myself, and Scotty's tank of a tent for Bemerson. Matty was also in another of the camps, living with the one and only Goggles! and James Magill!!
Our Telecommunications Device also must be noted. It stretched between two tents, so we could communicate at night. (It was basically a tube). Genius it was.

Now, if none of you knew, Jimbo and this guy from Ohio called Shane were running a "Comedy Club" from 10.30 - midnight every night in the Youthlink Tent. It was basically Xtreme, and it was awesome. It's the most popular i've ever seen it, and all the nights (especially the first two) saw the tent packed to bursting, and we certainly did love the stuff that went on. This was also the fist appearance of "Hanz und Franz"! I'm proud to see i've seen every single performance of them.

So the next few days were all SM, living on scraps of food & generally having a full on hoot. By day 2 our tent was a full on tip, as everything we used was just dumped behind us into the tent. Like we cared though. We were never bored.

One guy who has to be noted is Tre Sheppard. Also a Yank, he hailed from Georgia, and talked in the big do's in the King's Hall in the evenings. He always had a funny story to tell. Whoever was there will fine well remember him doing an imitation of his dad. "I'm going out to see the storm". He never imagined he'd get struck by lightning. But surprise surprised, that night as he stepped outside, he puts his foot in a puddle and holds onto the doorhandle while the house gets struck. And so he gets frizzled, which Tre said he found halariously funny, coz it was coming to him. Also worth note is the story about when they were burning trees, and decided to chuck a hell of a lot of petrol on it.

One of the best things to happen however was on the Saturday night. Everyone was hyped up, and they got this group on stage to represent peace in Northern Ireland. On one side was a Bodhran player, on the other a Lambeg Drum player. In the middle was a line of African Drummers. And so the Bodhran & Lambeg Drum exchanged passages, playing on and off, until they merged together with the beat of the Djembes, while pics flashed in the background of Nationalist & Unionist related stuff. It was bloody unbelievable, and it's one of the greatest things i've ever seen. The crowd went friggin wild & Tre got all emotional! The man himself then proceeded to make a point of everybody shining like lights, then got all the main lights turned off, and got everybody to get their fones out and shine them. Oh my god, that couldn't be put into words, it was amazing. After that one of the other guys decided to get the band playing again (we were way over time), but Tre interrupted and told us to get out and get partying, and so everybody did. It was electric.

Other things we did at SM was take part in a MakePovertyHistory thing, watch Live8, went to seminars about peace in Ireland, ate pizza, went to comedy clubs & had a general laugh. One Sunday afternoon i spent the entire time jamming with a group of African Drummers and percussionists, which was great fun. Of course we had our late nights, especially myself, Phil & Matty. I got my acoustic guitar in on the Sunday, and spent the next few days jamming all the time, with whoever i could find. There were quite a few late night blues jams & the likes of that! So it was all a full on 4 days of fun. I'm pretty sure that Jamie, Phil, Rach, Helen, Matty & myself (& Bemerson, when he appeared) had a great time in our lovely campsite. Of course so did Niall Stevie & Jimbo, but they chose to be unhardcore and sleep on sofas inside coz they were helping Youthlink. We also met a bunch of people from Sligo, who were really cool. Oh, and another good thing was one night when (i think) me, Phil Matty & Jamie were walking down the side of the King's Hall at like 2am, to discover a group of people with a huge catapult, firing waterbombs into the middle of the SubCamps!! So it was all good, plenty of fun and late nights, and we all loved it.

I ended up leaving at about 1am on the final night, as i had to head to America, and if i'd stayed, i wouldn't have gone to bed, and ended up screwing my body clock to the full as i was going to go back 5 hours.