Bonjour everyone.  I have returned from my holidays intact.

I've had an intensely busy 2 weeks - we've visited Mother In Law, been visited by Father in Law had a weekend in Sunny(ish) Wales been to Alton Towers, watched many many movies and I'm expecting my little brother to arrive from Nottingham any minute.

Now I expect what you really want to hear about, though is my Alton Towers trip, so I have prepared the following missive for your perusal and perlustration:

So Me, Stead and the Vickster went up to Alton Towers for the day, since the weather forecast (from, I should point out, several different sources) promised bright and dry conditions and the chosen date did not fall in school holidays time - no children! A recipie for joyous times.

After some poor choices, routewise and about 4 hours in the car, we made it. The weather was not exactly as advertised, but it was mild drizzle, so we decided to live with it - more to the point, Vic had begged and scrounged to get the day off and we'd just driven for four hours to get there - we were determined to have a fantastic time. Fantastic, I tell you!

Now, I should tell you at this point that neither Vic nor I had been to a major theme park before (Paultons Park notwithstanding) so this was a first for us. I, myself was somewhat nervous, being a bit of a girlie wuss. Still the first ride was easy. Actually it was the monorail from the car-park to the main entrance.

After negotiating the suicidally miserable lady at the ticket booth and her identical twin in the resataurant at which we grabbed our all-day-breakfast we made our way to our first proper ride. The runaway minecart.

WOOOHOOOO!!!! It was great. As was the Haunted Mansion with the guns - I scored twice as much as Stead and Vic - thrashed them in fact. Then we went on the boat swingie thing. Cool.

Then we tried the Airsaw.

Which was horrific. I will never go on that again. It was horrible, nasty and downright mean. It also wasn't working properly, so after several false starts which involved us dangling upside down at a great height, we finally suffered the true horror and, finally, got off. The worst was yet to come, however.

After trying several great rides - Air was fantastic but short, the log flume was girlie (but got Stead soaked!) the Pinball Wossname and the Black Hole were terrifying (in a good way), Stead suggested Oblivion.

Oblivion.

A sheer 300ft frop at around 70 miles per hour. It's over in about half a second. But... it's a sheer 300 foot drop. At 70 mile per hour. Not a chance. Fortunately, Vic seemed to have the same opinion so I made a deal with Stead. If he could persuade Vic to go on it, I would. And guess what. Vic decided to give it a go. So here's me, scared sh*tless of any height over about 3ft about to go on Oblivion. Which, I would remind you, is a sheer 300ft drop at around 70 miles per hour. That's down. Really fast.

I tried many excuses. After all, who in their right mind would want to be dropped 300ft at 70 miles per hour? Not me. I tried to convince my comrades that I was only 1.1 meters tall - 10cm under the minimum height restriction, but that didn't was. It said 'No Smoking', so I told them that I'd just started. There was a sign that said I couldn't go on if I had a heart condition. I explain that if I went on Oblivion, I would have a heart condition. Stead just told me to stop being a Lady.

Anyway. I went on it. I didn't die. And I'm never going to do it again. There's a very comical picture of me screaming like a little girl and emptying the contents of my bladder into my pants, which I'll scan and put on here when I get to a working scanner - probably Monday.

The final thing to mention about the day was the weather. Rather than being bright and dry, it was cloudy and very, very wet. Very very very wet. It rained. A lot. On my head. We were forced to buy waterproof ponchos. We looked stupid, but we were dry.

Just as were crossing the huge, huge car-park to get the the car, it started hailing. And when it finished hailing, it dumped a volume of water on us equivalent to that contained in the North Atlantic Ocean. Many roads were flooded on the way back, but Vic's skillful driving got us home safely. And, considering were were negotiating treacherous roads and moronic drivers who had decided they didn't need to adjust their driving for the terrible, terrible conditions, it only took about 2 hours.

In conclusion, then: we had a fantastic day. Apart from Oblivion. I have palpitations just typing the word. So I won't.