Stand up, if your teams not here! (part 1)

(Saturday 9th April - Playoff Weekend in Nottingham, Day one)
(Part 1)


TOP L-R: me, matty, raj, sarah
BOTTOM L-R: lu, joyce (sarahs mum)

*phew* ok...where to start?!

Just back from the EIHL Playoff finals in Nottingham and, despite our team not making it to the finals, as always, we had a crackin weekend. Still wrecked and can barely remember my own name! I think I get less and less sleep at it every year...not that i'm complaining ;o)

I guess the best place to start is at the beginning...which would be saturday morning 3:30am. Yes folks this is when i crawled outta bed to make it to the airport for 5:30am. eesh! It would have been ok had I managed to get to bed before 1:30am!

For being such an eeevil time of the morning the airport was swimming with people and checkin line was 3 miles long. The bags were heavy...and yes i do mean the ones under my eyes...and the coffee was screaming everyones name...the only problem being by time we got to it, our flight was already boarding. I've never seen anyone shot double esspresso before =/

Our fight into Birmingham was short and smooth, although the plane had propellers which looked like they had to be started by hand. Not sure whether I was more worried about that or the fact that Lu thought they looked like bunny ears............strange girl...

A coach ride later and by half 10 we had arrived at the hotel. Checkin wasnt until 2pm, so all 40 of us dropped our bags in to a room belonging to another Giants fan who had arrived the day before, then Matt, Lu, Sarah, Raj and of course Myself, trundled off up the road towards the town. First stop was a shop called Two Seasons. It is a playoff tradition for me to buy a hat from here every year...but this time i decided against it. I'm not sure what put me off. Maybe there just wasnt anything that appealing, or it could have been the blood curdling scream and clatter that came from the third floor. We slowly edged out the door as the staff casually got on with their work...

We dandered round for a bit trying to pass some time before ending up draped over the sofas in Starbucks (or 'Barstucks' as Lu insisted on calling it). And it's a good job i picked the nice'n'hard non-descript-cloth covered ones....cause miss Lulabell almost had a panic attack at the thought that she may have stepped down the stairs only to find us sitting on the big comfy velvet covered ones! As I told you she is a strange girl...I once bought her a belly button thingy for her b'day which was housed in a little red velvet box...she had to get me to open it for her as she couldnt bring herself to touch the velvet...


Icing! (Matt's "breakfast" ..eesh!)

Aaaanyways...after the boys having various chocolate deserts for breakfast and us looking at them strangely, we dragged ourselves up and out. It was still only just after 11 so we dandered round some stores for a while. Lu and I broke a way to do some girly shoppin for a bit and when we regrouped in HMV, Sarah had been doin some excellent foraging on my behalf...she'd managed to find me 4 cd's that I'd been after, each for £4.99...rockin! ...and faarr better than a hat! ;o)

After a traditional playoff lunch in Squares, where Steve insisted on showing me a pic of himself with an afro and wearing, well, nothing more than a smile (which seriously guys, should never be seen around food), we went to check in...
It was a bit after 2 o'clock and yet there were a pile of fans standing in the hotel foyer with particularly grumpy lookin faces...

The rooms still weren't ready...

A girl from our supporters club committee gave them a telling off about how we used this hotel every year, had been traveling since 5:30, and had paid 60 quid for the playoff game tickets only for it to look like we would miss the first game which faced off at half two.

This made no difference...the cleaners were still doing the rooms.

Slowly people started to get moved into rooms, but half 2 came and went, and we were still standing in the foyer. At about 20 to, the girl at the desk checked us in and gave us our key saying it must be ready by now...but when we got there the cleaners hadn't even been in it yet and said it would be "at least another 20mins"! Holy crap like! Another 20mins! Grrrr...we left our bags in my parents room and I headed back down to reception, trying my hardest not to explode at them.

While I was standing there getting more and more annoyed at the prospect of missing a game, one of the guys on our trip, Craig, saunters in, puts his arm around me and says "here...sniff me...don't you think I smell sexy?"

Now I'll be honest...if it hadn't been for this, I may have killed someone! Despite how tense and irritable I was right at that moment, I just couldn't help it...I almost fell on the floor laughing! ...and incidentally, he did smell quite nice! lol!

We eventually got a room at 3:15...and by the time we got showered and changed, had missed the first game completely. Nice eh? ...it was just a good job Cardiff weren't playing untill the second game later that evening, otherwise there would have been hell to pay!

*takes deep breaths*

*cough* Anyway...all was much much better once we got inside the arena...