Hi Everybody! (Yeah, you may reply with “Hi Dr Nick” if you wish!)

So yeah, welcome to my blog! It’s here that you’ll be able to read about the up and down sides of being a journalist, the relationships I build up with the people I work with and the little jokes that get thrown around.

You haven’t heard from me since the end of last season, as I haven’t been at any rounds yet to do the write ups, but I promise that I’ll be around more often now…and as there’s nothing to write about my experiences from this season yet I will fill you in on what mischief I’ve been getting up to since the Superbikes final at Magny Cours in 2007.

Right, so let’s start where it all kicked off – the after party. There were three girls in the team at Magny Cours, so by the time we’d all got ready and come back to the track the party was well underway and everybody was well and truly drunk. Especially James. Then again, you can’t blame him – he had just won his second championship at the still young age of 27, and it was his birthday weekend.

Sadly I didn’t manage to join in the drunken celebrations, it wouldn’t have been fair on our editor to have to drive a car of drunken people back to the hotel, and there was no alcohol left. (Wonder which one of these had the most bearing on her choice... - Ed) I ended up watching James and his best friend Matt skipping Morecombe and Wise style and being slightly confused as to if I was seeing things or not.

So party ended and it took a long time to say bye to JT, not because there was a queue, but because he was in a very emotional state and was being very nice and cuddly and thanking me a lot, although I’m still not sure what for. We were going back to the car when we saw (No names, no lawsuits - Ed) looking very out of it and leant against a pit truck, so we ended up taking him back to his hotel whilst he dived on the three girls in the back of the car so that he could fit in, which I think he might have enjoyed but we didn’t enjoy it as much!

Next day we had a relaxed breakfast and drove back to the land of Billy S and red buses, but I wasn’t dismayed as the weekend after we were going to be partying hard once again, but this time at Butlins for the weekend.

The week went by quickly and soon I was on my way up to Skegness to watch Toseland’s band ‘CRASH’ do their thing, once again. I have been so many times that I could recite the play list, and they know it! This weekend was a lot like the Magny Cours party, in the sense of me watching James and his friends get completely wasted and laugh at the absurd things they did – but luckily the alcohol hadn’t run out there!

On the Saturday we had to come to the huge bar known as ‘Reds’ in fancy dress. It being my good friend Shanna’s birthday weekend the girls all went down wearing tiaras, but I added a cowboy hat as another group of friends were coming as cowgirls. I was quite lucky to have two things, as there were a load of weird men dressed as Buzz Lightyear, and one of them cheekily borrowed my hat for the night. Well OK, when I say weird men I mean Toseland’s bunch from Sheffield, and it was James who borrowed the hat whilst I ended up recovering all of their wings as they fell off during the night. It was a good night out though, and it was nice to be in a crowd that were used to hanging around with a top racer so that they weren’t in awe and I found myself joining in with affectionately making little pokes of fun in JT’s direction. Safe to say that for most of us the next day was spent recovering. For James, however, he had to be at Brands Hatch by nine the next morning and got flown there by helicopter. Well, the illness was self inflicted so none of us did feel that sorry for him!!

That was sadly the end of my 2007 nights out or racing weekends with people whom you are likely to know of, and it wasn’t until the sixth of January 2008 I saw my friends from the paddock again. Shanna (again) had arranged a very good gig with the money going to the Chris Jones Riders Fund, and CRASH were going to be the live band.

James was back in training so there were some nice sober conversations as we were driving back that night, and I will once again congratulate Shanna for making the night one to remember.

Then there was the JT send off in February, I didn’t get to talk to the man himself when I went, but it was another good night with some good music from CRASH.

The day after was when the Superbike season re-started and the weekend after was the first GP round…and by Monza you will be hearing from me through race reports as I will be properly back at work!

Hope you all had an amazing break and that Christmas was spent how it should be, stuffing your faces and then feeling sick! Happy New Year to you all...

Lots of Love,

Laura xxx