"I'm sorry for the short delay, it was due to a sheep on the tracks..."

"Don't follow my career plan. My career's buggered!"

"We like your tie"
"Thanks. My producer thinks it looks like the end result of a car wreck."

When Ellie asked me two weeks ago if I wanted to go to a Careers Day in Cardiff, I said yes, not because it was a Careers Day but because it was Cardiff, and given my slight obsession with all things Welsh and the fact that the last time I was there I got quite drunk and ended up with 'James' stamped on my forehead, I felt a need to salvage my tarnished reputation. Later I discovered that the Careers Day looked really good so decided I should go rather than wander round Cardiff, which was only an option for about five minutes after hearing it was in Cardiff.
After getting over the slight shock of getting up at half six, that is before the Radio 1 Breakfast Show even started*, we were on the train playing the vocab game. The vocab game consisted of bits of paper with French words on one side and English on the other and at this point I should probably stress that I don't speak French. At all. So it was pretty much a guessing game, except I didn't even know some of the words existed. After I failed to get metallurgy, we concluded that Ellie had grabbed all the hard words I had no hope of getting and settled into listening to iPods since the vocab game clearly established that we weren't going to do any work on the journey.
On our arrival, we discovered that wandering round and attempting to pronounce all the Welsh words was highly entertaining but we were clearly failing miserably when we told the ticket office we wanted to go to Cathays and had our pronunciation corrected only to forget by the time we got to the platform thus being corrected again. This didn't stop us, or maybe it was just me, attempting to pronounce every Welsh word we came across whilst Ellie put on a Welsh accent.

Once inside City Hall, we had to split up because we wanted to go to different talks. I went to one on the Radio industry with Ron Jones, a sports commentator for 5Live, Bethan Elfyn, presenter for Radio 1, and the MD of Real Radio. It was really interesting, not entirely useful but interesting nonetheless and at least I lasted the whole time, Ellie walked out of hers.
They had exhibition halls where I procured a BBC bag and a Radio Cymru pen and then Ellie made friends with the man in the sports commentary room who was extremely interested in her short movie of lesbian love, which I found highly amusing until once more we had to split ways whilst I made my way to 'In Conversation' sessions with Jamie Owen, BBC Wales and Bethan Elfyn**, Radio 1. I always find it slightly frustrating that everyone tells you how they got into the industry but no one's story is ever the same and half the time they end up doing something they hadn't set out to do in the first place. Nevertheless, they were both really good at the Q&A sessions, Bethan was really sweet going round everyone in the group to find out what we were doing and what we wanted to do and Jamie Owen was entertaining in his anecdotes. After I found Ellie in the Avid [editing] room, I was ready to wander round town and be a tourist. I confess I love being a tourist, even in London and I live there!
First photo was of Ellie's sign, which consequently found me standing dangerously close to the edge of a very busy road:

Whilst we were wandering around, it rained the whole time so we decided the pictures would document 'Ellie in Cardiff' and the fact that it rained. I have been to Cardiff twice before [three times if you count when I was little and don't remember] and it's never rained. Therefore Cardiff must be allergic to Ellie.
Once we found daffodils, we decided to be creative and get daffodils in the photo as well as the castle in the background. Genius one might say.

Next stop was the Millennium Stadium and we discovered it was build between 1995-99 and that their gift shop was open.

Lies we got told:

• After asking the bloke in the rugby shop how to say, 'it always rains in Wales' in Welsh, we got told something which did not have the word Cymru in it, so we have no idea what he told us but it definitely wasn't what we asked.
• WRU is a word. No - it stands for Welsh Rugby Union.
• To use a debit card we'd have to spend 4,285 dollars.
  

Consequently, we made our way back to the station, almost done with being tourists, and after the obligatory Platform 0 photo got on our train back to Birmingham, where it was also raining.

When can I go back?!


*I switched on my radio and spent five minutes in complete confusion as to why it wasn't JK & Joel before realising they were covering drivetime and Ellie refused to switch on her radio til Chris Moyles was on because she maintained she shouldn't have been up that early.
**Plus I resisted the urge to ask her what is was like to work with mine and Corinne's future GBF, Aled on the Welsh version of Pop Idol...