Bluebird Blog

300

2008-01-28T15:07:00.000Z

This is my 300th post on Bluebird. By rights it ought to have come a long time ago, but as has happened with many a blog, the fervour appears to have petered out a little, and I so rarely have a decent period of time in which to write any more. I used to apologise for not posting for ages, but this time I don't think I will. It makes me a little sad that I don't blog as frequently as I used to, and it makes the fact that the blog has been alive for nearly 4 years seem a little bit of a cheat. But all the same, I won't apologise. I blog when I have time, when my mind isn't fried with history trivia, when I'm not drowning in rehearsals, or organising trips for large numbers of people to Copenhagen (22 to be precise). Not that I don't like being busy, I absolutely adore it. Without busy-ness there is boredom, with it there is joy and fun and occasional stress which makes the later fun even better. I wish I could post more often, but I can't really. So from now on, from this 300th post, I won't worry about posting frequently. I hope people will still occasionally glance at the page and notice that something has been written.

There are multitudes of interesting blogs on the internet, and I hope they all reach their 300th post, and then keep going, with lots to say and exciting issues to relate and discuss. And I shall potter along slowly, as I tend to do.

Have a lovely day chaps, now I need to go and drown in another rehearsal. Hurrah! xxx

Nearly done

2008-01-16T15:50:00.000Z

Hurrah! My long essay is at last nearly ready to be handed in! The deadline is Friday, high noon, and I am definitely going to finish this afternoon, so that is marvellous. Whether it is of great quality I am not entirely sure, but I definitely think it's enough to get me at least a reasonable 2.1. We shall see, shall we not? Either way, it is nearly done, and then it will be taken away from me, and the world shall immediately become a better and more shiny place. Yay!

In other news, Rex Futurus seems to be toddling along happily: it is the 'other' (by which I mean not CULES) production that I am in this term. It is very weird being in a play that requires real rehearsing, although it is still lots of fun. And at some point I will be given a song to sing, and that will be nice. For those of you in or near Cambridge, you should definitely come and see it: it's in the Round Church between the 5th and the 9th February and it will be brilliant, if I do say so myself.

I have to organise the choir tour to Copenhagen this term: I am quite terrified. However, I have been reassured that it will all be fine, and I have all the places to sing in organised, and an almost definite place to stay, and I know which company does the cheapest flights. So it will be alright I am sure, and I won't go crazy with stress.

The next post will be my 300th on this blog, and I will have been going for absolutely yonks. I don't know that I'll think of anything vastly interesting to say, but I shall do my utmost. For now, everyone, have a lovely time wherever you may be xxx

Home! (briefly)

2008-01-07T16:25:00.000Z

Hello! I am in London! I didn't die on the airplanes home, nor in the car from the airport, nor on the train to Leeds, nor on the way back from Leeds. I am doing well! There are now about 250 photos of Australia on facebook if you would care to look. I understand the number might be vaguely intimidating... It gave me an excellent means of procrastination though, as did putting lots of photos (real ones) in photo albums (real ones). Despite this, I am at last writing the conclusion to my long essay, which currently stands at 4900 words. It may be slightly long, but a bit of editing should fix that alright. Quite frankly, I think I rock rather.

Leeds was fabulous. We didn't do much, given that I spent large periods of time half asleep. We did however go to York for New Year's, which was great fun. Fiona's mother cooked us an incredible and very large meal (down Calvados after the main course and you'll have a whole lot more room than you thought you did), and then we went off to a pub for a short while, and then to the minster to say hurrah, and then back to the pub and then home again. It was all very jolly, if quite cold. Although, having said that, I did end up carrying my coat and unzipping my jumper. I think I am probably insane though, so no one should pay any attention to that.

On Friday I saw Emilia, which was lovely. We had lunch and went for a massive wander around Hyde Park to feed the squirrels and see the Christmas markets. Gluehwein and German sausages are both excellent ideas. Then on Sunday Adam was in London so we had lunch (I do that a lot) and went to see I am Legend (very good, if horrible), then came home for dinner and Scrabble. He won, but not by THAT much, and we both did very well given the hideousness of the letters. Oh and I watched Sense and Sensibility (the new one) and it was pretty good, though no one is attractive enough. Tuh.

Ooh and I have a new laptop! It isn't quite as pretty as the old one, but I am sure it will be marvellous. I'm not switching it on until I go back to Cambridge (probably Wednesday), but then I can update you from its very own self.

Anyway, now I am going to finish the first draft of this damn essay, print it out and scribble all over it. Constructive scribbling of course. xxx

Hanging around

2007-12-28T04:16:00.000Z

Hurrah for airports with free internet connections! I am currently sitting in Sydney airport, finally at the end of my holiday, waiting for my flight to start boarding. In about twenty minutes I believe... And then I shall be home in England in just under 24 hours. I have had a marvellous holiday, and when I get home I'll write up properly what I've been doing for the last couple of weeks. There has been much to do, and Christmas of course :D. All of my family were most lovely and fed me enormous amounts of food and took me to interesting places, so that was good. Oooh and also for Facebook there will be my approximately 250 photos. So that'll be something to look forward to no? *giggle*

Love and hugs, from Australia for the last time (for now)

xxxx

Catching up

2007-12-13T22:57:00.000Z

It occurs to me that my last post was shockingly, for me, inadequate in length and detail. I am therefore going to attempt to put in a little bit more detail about the trip so far (still awesome!) and then when I get back there will be multitudes of photos to prove it all was true and amazing. So...looking back... *floaty music*

Wednesday 5th:
I arrived, after a looong time on aeroplanes. In fact after travelling on an Airbus A380, which was very shiny and new and monstrously enormous. My dear aunt came and picked me up from the airport with Cameron, my cousin's little daughter. Then we drove to her house where I stayed all day and slept lots, due to jet lag-ish tendencies. The evening brought take away and Cameron's Christmas carol concert in school, which was very cute. And then I came home and fell asleep. An unexciting day I feel.

Thursday 6th:
I got up nice and early and went into Sydney on the train. I went and gazed at the Opera House and the Bridge and said oooh and aaah in a loud voice because that is of course what you have to do. Then I went round the botanical gardens, which were very beautiful, and the grounds of Government House, where I met six very cute little ducklings and their very protective mother. Then off I went on a ferry across the harbour, when all of a sudden the sun started blazing. I arrived in Manly and wandered around the beach and ate copious quantities of ice cream and got quite impressively sunburnt. Stupid weather fooling me into thinking it was going to be cloudy and then burning me... Ah well, it has mostly gone brown now :). And then the ferry back again, and I wandered off into the Rocks, which are very attractive and right under the big bridge, and then into the city which is very much like a financial district, and then off home for a fantastic BBQ next to the pool. I love the hot winter weather...

Friday 7th:
My aunt and I drove for seven hours from Sydney to near Walgett, to my cousin Jonny's farm where, as I mentioned in the last post, it was 42 degrees. And Jonny was out in the sun fixing a bulldozer. Insane. We went and sat in the air conditioning until it cooled down a bit, whereupon we lit up the anti-mosquito flames, sprayed ourselves with anti-mosquito goop and went and sat in the BBQ pagoda thing for another cook out. Which was actually divine, Jonny had been soaking the steaks in red wine sauce for two days. Mmm... And we drank lots and lots of wine and ate lots of food and watched two incredible thunderstorms on either side of us, with lightning every five seconds. Just a shame none of the rain came and fell on Jonny's farm, since he hasn't seen much for the past five years. And then the stars came out and they were more indescribably beautiful than you could possibly imagine. Never before have I seen stars like that. It was amazing.

Saturday 8th:
Off to Lightning Ridge with us, to see the opal mining communities. They have completely destroyed the land around there, it is barren and full of white mounds of dirt where no one has returned the waste to the shafts. I contributed to the destruction by buying a couple of opal necklaces, and then we drove around the place looking at the tiny art galleries and strange houses (you'll see what I mean when the photos go up...I mean really strange...) which were around, before having lunch. Then back to Jonny's farm for a drive around in the landrover. The farm is absolutely huge, and completely amazing. If dry as a bone except where the special dams are. And there are 4000 sheep and 1000 lambs. Is amazing. Oh and some cows, and wild goats. In the evening we went out to a funny pub in the middle of nowhere and then a restaurant where various young men who clearly hadn't seen a woman in months came and tried to chat me up. It was fun. We saw multitudes of kangaroos.

Sunday 9th:
Out on another drive so that Jonny could fix something with his tractor, and then I drove the landrover home. It was very exciting. I nearly killed Jonny's friend James by driving on the wrong side of the track (I wasn't expecting another car to appear!) but apart from that I think I did pretty well. Particularly considering that the gear stick was so huge and so stiff I could barely move it. It was great fun barrelling along though. And then Jonny took me out on his quad bike (which he uses to round up sheep!) to show me the shearing shed and we chased some emus. Poor things, they are very silly. We followed them around and they ran all over the place and crashed into each other and generally looked a bit foolish. And then Auntie Marguerite and I drove the seven hours home.

Monday 10th:
Back into Sydney and to the zoo, which I said a bit about last time. It really is an amazing zoo, and you get to take a boat there and it is great. And not TOO expensive, considering how lovely it is. And I saw a free flight bird show, which was just amazing, they had eagles and condors and hawks and pink cockatoos and galahs and many a thing. And all the animals were divine, koalas are practically too cute to be real, and I saw a joey in its mother's pouch and oh it was all very wonderous. Photos there will of course be on facebook. In the evening we went to bed early for rising ridiculously early the next day.

Tuesday 11th:
Arose at 4:30am in order to catch a flight to Cairns. The flight takes about 3 hours. This country is too big for its own good. At Cairns airport I was met by my cousin's wife Sandy and their two children, Jessicka and Daniel. And yes, that is Jessicka with a k. I have no idea why. We went to the shops for a bit and then came back to see their very nice house. Everyone here has a pool! Is amazing! The afternoon was one of relaxing a bit, and then in the evening we went out to the Boat Club (like...yachts rather than rowing...) for dinner and I tasted kangaroo (basically the same as venison) and had divinely delicious king prawn linguine. Oh, and got bitten by lots of mosquitos. Horrible things that they are.

Wednesday 12th:
I went off to the jetty in Cairns and got on a big boat which took me out to Green Island, a tropical paradise on the Great Barrier Reef. It was utterly beautiful, and boiling hot. This time I was sensible enough to smother myself in sun cream. I had a bit of a wander around the island and then went to the beach. I walked into the sea, and it was warm. Properly warm. It was amazing. And so, so clear, and the beaches were white and it was basically completely idyllic. And not too busy, because it isn't really tourist season yet. And then we went out on a glass bottomed boat, which was absolutely amazing: we saw sharks and corals and turtles and giant clams and thousands and thousands of fish. And then I returned to the main island and walked through the rainforest for a bit. In fact, I walked around the entire island in about 40 minutes. And then back on the boat and heading for home, where we had a very nice Chinese meal from the shop at which Daniel works.

Thursday 13th:
Another day full of busy. I got on the Kuranda Scenic Railway with Daniel, and we wended our way up the mountains and through all the rainforests and across the Barron Gorge to the village of Kuranda right up at the top. The views were absolutely amazing. In Kuranda we looked at the many tourist shops and Aboriginal art galleries and beautiful clothes shops, and we went to a butterfly sanctuary. The butterflies were absolutely glorious: the Ulysses was enormous and bright, irridescent blue. *sigh* You don't get bugs like that in England. Oh and Daniel bought me a very pretty shell necklace. For a twelve year old he is remarkably unobnoxious. In fact, he is very sweet. Also, I can't believe it's only 9:40am, I've been up for ages... Anyway, then I went back down through the rainforests on the cable car, which was even better than the railway. I got off at a couple of stops to wander through the forests and read the information given. I went right from undergrowth to upper canopy. It was truly glorious. And in the evening we went off to the cafe where Jess works and had a very nice dinner, before returning home and watching Better Off Dead. Which was pretty funny, if a bit silly and very predictable.

Friday 14th:
Today. There hasn't been much of it yet. The general plan is some relaxation before getting the aeroplane back to Sydney this evening. And then tomorrow I am driving (well my aunt is driving) to Canberra, where I will stay put for a week and a half before returning home. My life will probably be less hectic and I might even get around to sending some Christmas cards. Anyway, it will be great. I shall attempt to write another post at some point, but my aunt doesn't actually have internet (Dark Ages!) so it might not happen. We shall see!

Much love xxx

Down under

2007-12-10T08:26:00.000Z

Hello my lovelies! I am having an absolutely marvellous, marvellous time in Australia. Today I found out that a baby platypus is called a puggle. A puggle! That quite frankly made my day. I spent today in Taronga Zoo, which is absolutely fantastic, and of which I have many photos. I saw kangaroos (including one with a joey in its pouch!) and emus and elephants and giraffes and wombats and multitudes of other beautiful animals. And this weekend I was in the outback and I saw lots of wild goats, and my cousin's ENORMOUS sheep farm and I got to drive the landrover and I went round on his quad bike and it was all magnificent. And when we arrived it was forty two degrees. When it got to Sunday I thought it was quite cool given that it was only thirty two. Ooh and Sydney is an utterly beautiful city.

Tomorrow I am going to Cairns, where it is currently thirty degrees and sunny. Hurrah! And that's on the Great Barrier Reef. And then I'm going to Canberra to see yet more family. Hurrah! It's hot...and December...bizarre...

Love! xxx

Going to distant lands

2007-12-03T11:54:00.000Z

Hello my lovelies. And so the end of term has come, and I am at home. There are multitudes of photos on facebook to document my various doings, and it has indeed been marvellous. And I am not in London for long, for tomorrow I disappear to the wonderous land of Australia for almost a month! It is most exciting, if somewhat terrifying. I shall be visiting Sydney, Canberra, Walgett and Cairns, and flying on Singapore Airlines. I am certain that it will be fantastic, if somewhat exhausting. It is also the reason that I will not be posting for quite a long time. I get back from Australia on the 29th and go to Leeds on the 30th, so if you do not hear from me until well into January, I apologise.

I am currently reading up on things to do when I get there. I am very excited. Talk soon! xxx

Birthday

2007-11-23T16:44:00.000Z

Tomorrow is my birthday! Yay! I am highly excited. Although I am going to be 20 (TWENTY!) which is a bit crazy. Never to be teen again... But it should be jolly. Emilia is coming all the way from Exeter to visit for Saturday and Sunday, and I am having a big dinner with many a friend and then a party afterwards and it should all be very lovely. Even if I am practically going to be ancient.

Birthday!

Yay!

Love xxx

Stolen phone

2007-11-18T15:38:00.000Z

Well last night my phone was stolen. *sigh*. And yes, it was stolen rather than lost. Some people are not nice. But anyway, if I appear to have been ignoring you, or if my phone seems perpetually off, this is why. At some point, when I have a new phone, I will attempt to contact everyone with its number. So yeah, no phone and no laptop. I'm practically living in the Middle Ages! Entirely uncontactable... *sigh*.

Love to all xxx

Good grief...

2007-11-17T12:29:00.000Z

...it's nearly the end of term already. This is very odd. It has all gone ridiculously quickly. It does, however, mean that I only have two essays left to write. Hurrah! And one of those will be disappearing tomorrow. Woo! Although, given that tonight is the CULES annual dinner (even MORE woo!) and there will be enormous amounts of food and large quantities of drink, it may not be the best essay I ever write. Also, I have to read in church tomorrow morning. Perhaps I shouldn't drink too much after all...

On a completely different topic, I'm thinking of being a lawyer. Who thinks this is a good idea? It sounds pretty interesting, and it certainly keeps you busy. Plus, in all the firms I'd like to apply to, they fund your law exams, pay you a minimum of £36,000 a year while you train, and then a minimum of £60,000 as soon as you qualify (after two years). So. Who thinks this is a good idea? If it were ONLY selling my soul for the large amounts of cash I wouldn't do it. Probably. As it is, I think it all sounds rather marvellous. Of course, there is the whole issue of getting INTO the job in the first place, which is ridiculously competitive, and probably dominated by law students. But still. I can give it a go, right? I'd be a solicitor, so more with the building up the cases and negotiating with clients and things than standing in court booming out in a loud voice, but research is my thing and it seems to involve a lot of that.

Ooooh also, I bought a pretty dress. Yes, yes, another one. I know, I have far too many clothes. But I needed a new dress for the annual dinner! Is black tie! And it is very pretty, dark brown and very swooshy. There will almost certainly be photos up on facebook in the very near future.

It's my birthday in a week exactly. I'm quite excited, although it is vaguely crazy that I am no longer going to be a teenager. It will be nice to have a party, and to see my dear Emilia who is trekking all the way up from Exeter to visit for the weekend. Also, I'm going to Australia in two and a half weeks. That is not very long. I am also very excited about that, and am, at some point in the near future, going to book myself a tour of the Sydney Opera House. I wanted to climb up the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but while I think it would be utterly amazing, I do not currently think that it would be $220 amazing. *sigh* Well, when I'm a hotshot lawyer I can go to Australia again and do aaall the expensive things. Having looked at the weather in Australia at the moment, I realise I may boil to death. Well, probably not to death. But it will certainly be pretty damn warm. Yay! Although, how weird is it going to be to have a warm Christmas? I think we might have a barbeque on Christmas day. Bizarre...

Love to all xxxx

I...can...make it...

2007-11-11T16:56:00.000Z

Okay I am now getting really quite ridiculously hungry. And it's only 5 o'clock. That is silly, I had both breakfast and lunch. Mmm breakfast and lunch. However, I am proud to report that I have now written a grand total of 2,217 words, so I'm well on the way to completing the essay. Sadly I don't think I'm going to get all the information I wanted to in, but that is often the way. I shall do what I can. Also, Ireland in the medieval period is a pain, there aren't enough sources and there weren't any towns. How do you compare urban development when there aren't any towns? Grumble...

Procrastination

2007-11-11T16:15:00.000Z

Well...everyone does it once in a while right? And I have now written a whole 1591 words of my essay. Although this does mean I will probably write at least 1200 more. *sigh*. I won't procrastinate for very long, honest. I will get the essay done and it will be great. Well. Possibly.

Ooh I managed to get some photos up on facebook at long last! They are all very beautiful, and I highly recommend you go and look at them all and comment lots and make me laugh. Because then I get lots of emails and can therefore almost legitimately procrastinate a little bit more. I am determined to get the damn thing written by 6 o'clock. It may happen. Then I will be hungry and wanting dinner, and I really don't want to come back to it later... But yes, photos!

Yesterday was the choir party I eventually got around to organising, and it was lots of fun, although I drank slightly silly amounts of wine on a not very full stomach. But I am not hungover, so who cares? :D. Soon, however, I will be twenty, and everyone knows that once you hit that grand old age alcohol starts catching up with you and you have to go to bed at 8 o'clock every night. I must enjoy life while I can!

Okay, essay. On with it! Ooh also, Snow White is going beautifully. Did I mention before that I am in Snow White this term? It is lots of fun, although I do spend about twenty minutes lying on the floor not moving. It's sad being dead... Also, I have a solo in chapel on Monday. I am absolutely terrified. I may cry. Love to all xxx

Photos

2007-11-05T15:30:00.000Z

Well...I came to the Turing Room today in an attempt to finally put at least some of the 175ish photos I have on my camera onto Facebook. However, the computer won't let me do things with my camera unless I am an administrator. Which I am not. Therefore, there are still many photos on my camera and none on Facebook. At some point this will be rectified, though quite when I can not be sure. They will be good photos though. In one I'm having my head chopped off.

In other news, autumn is divinely beautiful in Cambridge. I went for a loooong walk today, almost to the CMS (maths faculty) and then back through St. John's, and then to Downing to hand in an essay and then back to King's, and everywhere is filled with glorious autumnal colour and leaves swishing everywhere and it is all highly exciting. I hope it snows in January again. That would be exciting.

In other news, I checked the weather in Australia today. It is currently in the high teens/low twenties in Sydney and Canberra, and a little damp, and in the low thirties and incredibly sunny in Cairns. In none of these places is it anywhere near the height of summer, as it will be by the time I arrive. I may boil to death the instant I step out of the plane onto Cairns soil. My cousin who lives somewhere out in the bush lives near no large enough town for the BBC weather centre to recognise.

In other news, it was my first anniversary with Adam yesterday, which was very lovely. I spent the afternoon writing an essay, which was somewhat unfortunate, and he grappled with Graph Theory, but in the evening we went to Varsity, which was great. We ordered the Cyprus Meze, with the full intention of getting dessert afterwards. Given that we were then served three enormous courses of random Greek dips with houmous, salad, fish, cheese and meat we changed our minds. It was all highly delicious, if ridiculously filling. Then we went back to his and falumphed in front of a couple of episodes of Angel. It was good. Also, he gave me a book which I wanted, a pair of very pretty earrings and three lots of chocolates from Hotel Chocolat: one with my name, one called 'amour' and one with lots of alcohol. Mmm...

In other news, it is fireworks night tonight! We intend to go to Midsummer Common and watch the glory that is the Cambridge fireworks. I look forward to it. Hurrah for celebrating the death of a man who didn't really have anything to do with a plot but was a scapegoat!

Love to all xxxx

BOO!

2007-10-30T10:39:00.000Z

Lookit! Lookit! I am posting! I apologise for not having done so for so long, it is much more difficult when there is no computer in my room and the only time I actually use a computer is when I check my email on Adam's or wander on down to the Turing room to write my essays. *sigh* It is looking likely that I will be getting a new laptop for my birthday though. Woo! So...only another three and a half weeks to wait hopefully... Anyway. Enough on the sorry state of my technological affairs.

I am having a marvellous time, as I tend to do, with far too much going on to actually say something about everything. The major recent highlight was the Buffysoc. Hallowe'en party on Saturday, which was fantastic fun. The theme was 'Red, White and Black: the Republic of Buffysoc.' and people came dressed up in beautiful ways (I was the white stripe of the flag, with hair straightened and lots of make up and aaaaall dressed in white; very sexy) and we ate delicious themed food and drank delicious themed food and had a huuuuuuge flag stretched across the wall. It was great. We don't have parties often enough any more, we should do so more often. Also, I am drinking far more sensibly this year. It is odd. Also, ONE day in the future I will actually get around to putting the 160ish photos on my camera onto a computer. I currently can't due to the fact that I very intelligently left the cable at home. Silly Helen.

Soon (Saturday) it is Adam's birthday and just after that (Sunday) it is our first anniversary, so this should be an exciting weekend. I am also planning parties for choir, formals for history, dances and many other things. It is good. Now, however, I have to look at my long essay and hopefully write a bit of it. And not decide that what I have already written is rubbish. That would be nice. See you all soon lovelies xxx

It nearly worked...

2007-10-17T18:34:00.000+01:00

Well. I have had a very lovely couple of weeks, despite lacking a laptop. And then I took said laptop down to London, and it was fixed! And it worked! But then blogger decided my blog was a spambot, so it wouldn't let me post to tell the marvellous news. Now, however blogger has let me back and that is marvellous! However, my laptop is dead again. You know what? The world of computers has something seriously against me... At some point when I'm not just about to go out to dinner, and when I have a computer/am not sitting in someone's room ignoring them by using their computer I shall post properly xxx

Laptop update

2007-10-06T14:44:00.000+01:00

We are now fairly sure that my laptop is well and truly gone. I am almost certainly going to have to get a new one. *sigh* This means I currently lack both internet and music in my room, and am going to have to spend hours in the library/Turing Room tomorrow writing my essay. I don't like writing my essay in places that aren't my room! Grrrrr. Stupid technology, it's all out to get me. Oh well... I shall return with hopefully more cheerful news, for life is fairly cheerful when not concerned with the computer xxx

cry

2007-10-03T23:32:00.000+01:00

My laptop is dead. Completely dead. It won't turn on. At all. I am crying inside. I probably won't be able to blog for a while, or get on MSN- I am currently stealing Adam's computer briefly. xxx

Toodle pip, and a plea

2007-09-28T00:06:00.000+01:00

I probably won't have time to blog again before going off to Cambridge (hurrah!) and things tend to get a bit busy when I'm actually there, so I am not entirely sure when I shall next appear. Therefore I come to say goodbye, and have wonderful times wherever you are. I have now done lots of packing- three boxes, one bag and a laundry basket completely filled, and a suitcase nearly entirely filled. I am doing well. Though I seem to have mislaid my basque, which is highly irritating, because it was pretty. Anyway. The packing is nearly done, and I also managed to write 922 words of my essay, so that is good. Tomorrow I intend to write at least 1078 words, so that I am up to 2000, a satisfyingly comforting number. I think this is quite possible, because today I spent hours and hours trying to write a decent and not ridiculously long introduction, whereas tomorrow I am putting in facts and thoughts and things, which tends to be easier. So wish me luck! I guess it doesn't matter terribly, as is only a first draft, but still.

And now onto more serious matters. I'm sure you all know what is happening in Burma at the moment. If you don't, then read or watch some news. There are people protesting for rights and a way of life which we more than take for granted. These people may be killed, or imprisoned, or they may just disappear. They are brave, brave people, fighting for something they believe in. So if you could, please sign one or more of the many petitions which are floating around the internet, particularly those on the government website. I don't know if it will help, but at the moment there seems to be little else we can do. Please help in any way you can xxx

Boxes

2007-09-24T20:07:00.000+01:00

I just made a box, and am in the process of making another one. I even managed to put some books into the first box, and am choosing books to go into the second one. You know what this means right? Ah go on, you must be able to guess. Yup, you are correct. Nearly time to go back to Camland! It is now nearing the end of Monday, and I am going up to Cambridge on Saturday. That means there are only four full days of not being in Cambridge left! Yay! It would be difficult to describe just how excited I am coherently, so I'm just going to go with 'eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!' and be done with it. Also, it turns out that I am singing with choir at matriculation dinner on Saturday, which means not only do I get to sing and see people have joy, I also get a free three course dinner with booze included. Hurrah! And Adam is coming up on Sunday, which will be yet more marvellous.

I actually did some work today, I was very proud. I have now done all my reading and organising of notes for my long essay, and I even started making a basic plan. For an essay which is due in on the 18th January next year, I think that's pretty good. My intention is to finish the plan on Wednesday and have a stab at actually writing the first draft on Thursday, and possibly Friday. Then I can tweak it over the term and the time I'm actually at home over Christmas. What organisation!

Anyway, I should get back to my boxes now. They are calling xxx

A Wedding

2007-09-22T23:28:00.000+01:00

It occurs to me that I don't care what anyone else thinks in the whole world. Weddings ROCK. I haven't had so much fun in ages. Well. I have had lots of fun, but not that very specific sort of fun. I had forgotten just how much I love dancing. And when the older members of your family are dancing too it doesn't matter WHAT you look like and it is all wonderful and fun and full of jollity, and my uncle Ken actually smiled for long periods of time and it was amazing and I'm quite hyper now as you can probably tell from the extreme length of this sentence. Anyway. It was great. The ceremony was very pretty, and now I want a nice white dress for myself, and then the dinner was very nice too, and then the party was lots of fun and I actually got to talk to some of the cousins I so rarely see.

Next term I am determined to do more dancing of the crazy random disco type. I shall be in the cellar bar more, I am certain. I shall have to find some people to take along with me... This may require some plying with drinks first... But no matter, it will be great. And I already promised to go clubbing with someone, so that too will be marvellous.

All in all I am as happy as pie, and I should really get to bed at some point in the not too distant future, because I have to get up in the morning, but right now I am full of joy and goodwill and general loveliness and won't sleep for ages. And I love you all very much, and am fully aware that this is even more saccharine than my posts usually are. But I don't care, so ner. And I'm totally going to get married some day. And I'm going to have the best dress ever :D xxx

Leeds

2007-09-17T22:41:00.000+01:00

I disappeared completely from the world of the internet for a whole four days. Crazy no? I'm sure you can hardly believe it. However, I had a very good excuse for so doing, for I was in the far distant lands of the north, in the Danelaw some might say, in the frozen wastelands which make up the city of Leeds. Okay so it wasn't THAT frozen. Well. Today was a bit chilly, and the wind was crazy cold, but it wasn't frozen as such. Either was, it was utterly lovely. Adam lives in a nice suburbany bit of Leeds, so there is lots of green and there aren't too many cars, and he has a wood out the back of his house through which we walked on a day more clement.

Anyway, we did many things. On Friday, the day I arrived, we took the bus from the station to Adam's house, whereupon we collapsed in a minor form of exhaustion for a short while, before heading out to Roundhay Park via a place which sold the most enormous sandwiches I have ever seen. We had a meatball sandwich between us, and it was plenty. The park itself is highly beautiful, we sat on a hill and watched the world, and we went to visit the lake and a castle folly and we walked and walked and walked. And then we went to a tropical animal centre place, which was small but very nice. If ridiculously warm in places. We saw snakes and terapins, mice and tarantulas, iguanas and parrots and many other pretty things. And then we went home via the woods, and Adam's mum cooked us a very nice dinner, and then we went to a pub in town to meet with some of Adam's friends, all of whom were very lovely and we drank lots and watched England get slaughtered at rugby and it was great.

Saturday held the delights of York and Fi who resides there. We saw the minster, which is exceptionally beautiful, if sympathetic to Nazis if the floor patterns are anything to go by, as well as the ruins of St. Mary's, which some foolish young teenage girls climbed up and jumped off with abandon and cans of beer. After sitting in the park awhile we wandered down the Shambles and to the market, where Fi bought some fish, and then we made our way to her house, where much chatting and laughter and general civility was had, and then a bottle of wine was produced, in prelude to, as Adam and I were astonished to find, an exceptionally delectable three course meal, with sparkling wine as accompaniment. I am greatly of gratitude and happiness, and we wandered home absolutely full and even more satisfied with the general joy of life.

On Sunday Adam was kind enough to take me along to Temple Newsam, a divine Tudor-Jacobean mansion house, where I oohed and aahed appropriately at each of the thirty rooms which are on view to the public. It was really a most magnificent place, and I swooned frequently at the general magnificence and wonder. Then we went to the cafe and had a little snack and some pear juice/tea and then had a wander around the extremely beautiful grounds, which are open free to the public. Though don't tell, because it would be sad if they got over run. The walled gardens were glorious, if rather fading from their summer heights, and the 'natural' landscaping of Capability Brown (best first name ever!) was beautiful. On return to town we went to another cafe, where I had beautifully rich hot chocolate, and then we went to a lovely Chinese restaurant for dinner, where we ordered food far in excess of what we could eat, all of which was scrum. Then homewards, and since it was not too late, we cracked open a bottle of wine (booze happened quite a lot for such a short space of time...), listened to lots of music and then watched some Scrubs. (Elliot. J.D. This time? Just don't do it. Really. BAD PLAN).

And then was today, and I packed my bag and we wandered into town for the last time. This time on the itinerary were the Royal Armouries, which tell you and show you lots of weaponry and armour (surprisingly enough) from throughout the ages and in various parts of the world. It was all very interesting, and we got a nice display of swordsmanship from a couple of chaps who used the word 'now' far too frequently. And then we went to another cafe for hot chocolate and refuge from the cold, and then we had an early dinner, and then I had to come home.

A lot happened in a veeery short space of time, and it all went far, far too quickly. Faster than any other part of my holiday. But I had a marvellously lovely time, and I thank Adam for it, despite the fact that I know he doesn't read this. Now I am somewhat sad, and should probably go to bed, because in the morning there is work. Photos shall go on Facebook at some point. Love to all xxxx

Squildish

2007-09-13T16:17:00.000+01:00

Squildish is the language spoken by the Squilds of Squilden. It is a very fascinating, though rather complicated, language, and I think you should all take time to learn it. I believe Richard knows where you can attend classes. The Squilds have a rich and interesting culture, and their daily lives are generally busy and productive. Squilden is a land not too far away, but not all that near, and has a small population of approximately 20,000. In Squilden, every one knows each other's name. There is basically one small city, along with a couple of very tiny villages. Despite it's diminutive size, Squilden has an extremely strong economy and the quality of life is high for all. There is little poverty in Squilden, but few people are super-rich. Everyone is very comfortable.

Doesn't it sound like a delightful place to live? One day I think we should visit. They don't have an airport, but if you take a flight to one of the Scandinavian countries, boats are readily available and organised ferries leave frequently.

In other news, I'm going to Leeds tomorrow. Hurrah! I cannot wait. I will be gone for four days and will be indulging myself in large amounts of history. Woo York! Hurrah for the Adam and hurrah for the Fi. In other other news, Richard is leaving on Saturday. This is very sad. I mourn. But I must not end on a sad note after such a happy post. What other other other news is there? Hmm...it's sunny! And warmish! And marvellous too. And I'm soooooo nearly finished work it's great xxx

Size Zero

2007-09-08T23:26:00.001+01:00

The size zero phenomenon is horrific. It isn't a particularly new topic, but it was brought to my attention relatively recently, by the unlikely but magnificent source, Mitch Benn. He has a song about a size zero model:

'Well she's up on the catwalk twice nightly
Wouldn't say she's as skinny as hell
But it's true that she makes Keira Knightley
Look a bit like the late Orson Wells.
And the press wonder if she's bulimic
And if she's ever eaten or supped
But you know what they say in this business:
Whatever goes down must come up.

She's a size zero
With a midriff the size of her wrist
She's a size zero
If she gets any thinner she'll technically cease to exist.

Well they call her a dreadful role model
In the papers but also we find
They complain that the kids are all too fat these days
How I wish they would make up their minds.
Fashion writers blame fear and anxiety
And call her condition obscene
But they won't be caught dead with a fat bird
On the cover of their magazines.

So she's still a size zero
'Cause this year it's hip to look dead
She's a size zero
Or she could be a normal sized girl with a really big head.

She's a size zero
She's almost translucent it's true
She's a size zero
And if beauty's skin deep, she's beautiful all the way through.'

It's a good song. I recommend it, and many others of Mitch Benn's creating. But what he says is true. These girls, size zeros, do in fact look skeletal. That's not attractive, right? Please, all sane men and women out there, tell me that that is not attractive. But you know, if we think that's going just a little far, we could go for the slightly fleshier look. You know, ribs always were my favourite feature in a woman. They really bring out your cheekbones. According to Wikipedia, an American size 0, or English size 4, is a woman with a bust of 31 inches and a waist of 23 inches. The waist measurement was actually slightly larger than I was expecting. My waist is about 25 inches. Then, however, it occurred to me that when you take 2 inches off a circumference it's actually quite significant, and that most of these women, being models, will be about a foot taller than me, and should therefore be proportionally wider. But no. Because apparently looking as though a child could snap you in two is beautiful. Showing off the delicate nature of your bones through your skin is attractive. Having knobs instead of curves is intensely sexy. I just don't get it. I thought breasts were supposed to be sexy? I think they are anyway. And none of these women HAVE breasts any more. Because if they did, they wouldn't fit into size zero clothes any more.

And this terrible trend in society, I just realised, is even affecting me, albeit in a very minor way. I weigh myself pretty frequently, and get quite distressed if I go over 9 stone. That is a bad thing. I also, above, was going to write that my waist was 25/26 inches, but I stuck with 25 because goodness, 26 doesn't sound quite as skinny as I would like to be. This is also a bad thing. I know perfectly well that I am slim, and reasonably attractively so. I do not need to be any slimmer than I am. In actual fact, I'm pretty happy with what I look like, which makes me unlike a lot of girls I know. And yet, even so, despite the fact that I have rapidly grown in confidence over the past couple of years, there is still that gnawing little feeling in the back of my head that I really ought to try a little harder. Luckily I like chocolate and cheese far too much to ever let that little voice get its way. But really, it shouldn't be there at all.

I was pleased to see that the Madrid Fashion Week 2006 refused to let any model with a BMI of under 18 participate. 18 is damn skinny. But it's a start. A start that was triggered by two deaths (Luisel Ramos, 22, died of a heart attack after trying to survive on a diet of Diet Coke and lettuce leaves, and Ana Carolina Reston who died of renal failure after attempting to live on only tomatoes and apples), but at least a start.

Sleepy

2007-09-05T20:52:00.000+01:00

I am so, so tired. It is vaguely silly. I'm at that stage of tired where you don't get hungry any more, and you get headaches, and you are pointlessly emotional. Stupid tired! But it is only 9 o'clock, so I can't go to bed yet or I'll wake up in the middle of the night. Also I am very concerned that, as has happened for the past three nights, I will suddenly get miraculously unsleepy as soon as I get into bed and eventually fall to slumber at 2am and have another 5 hour night.

*sigh*

Stupid tired.

Paper shuffling

2007-09-03T15:14:00.000+01:00

You know how people say that working in an office is just moving paper around? It's so true! This morning I spent four hours with seven separate piles of papers, taking one sheet from each pile and putting them into envelopes. This I did with approximately 150 envelopes, or possibly a few more. *sigh* Surprisingly enough though, envelope stuffing was not nearly as dreary or as soul destroying as I was expecting it to be. Nor did it make me fall asleep, despite the fact that I got a grand total of about four and a half hours sleep last night. Stupid sleeping patterns. It DID give me a rather sore shoulder, but apart from that it was the sort of activity that allowed to me to sit and let my mind drift. You can get a lot of thinking done in four hours. Also a lot of silent singing. It would have been outloud singing, only there was another person in my office.

The reason for all this paper? Admissions. You would not BELIEVE what a stressful time is had by the people on the other side of the university system. So much to send off, to sort out, people withdrawing, people changing their minds, people doing resits, syallabuses to work out, timetables to get sorted, professors to shout at... It's a busy, busy world. Anyway, I hope the students who receive their welcome packs in a couple of days damn well appreciate it. Speaking of which, Chris, your friend is doing Mechanical Engineering. I sent him a letter today. I know where he lives...mwahahahaha.

Sorry, that was a little weird. Anyway, paper shuffling is only in the mornings. Every morning. Woo! Afternoons are still taken up by computering- making answer sheets more beautiful is the order of the day. So to that I should probably return now. Tonight I am going to Rose's to make modern art and have my hair cut. But not much. If anyone can tell it's been cut, it means it's too short. I'm very protective of my hair... Love to all xxxx

Ye olde

2007-08-30T19:09:00.000+01:00

'Ser Herry Inglose is passed to God this nygth, hos sowle God asoyll, and was caryid forth this day at IX of the clok to Seynt Feythis, and there shall be beryid. If ye desyer to bey any of hys stuff I pray you send me word ther-of in hast'.

'Pepyll of this contre begynyth to wax wyld, and it is seyd her that my lord of Clarans and the Dwek of Suthfolk, and serteyn jwgys wyth hem schold come down and syt on syche pepyll as be noysyd ryotous in this contre'.

'Send me word how ye doo of yowyr syknes that ye had on yowyr hey and yowyr lege; and yff God wol nowt ssuffyr yow to haue helth, thank him ther-off and takyt passhently, and com hom a-geyn to me'.

Extracts from three letters written by Margaret Paston to various relatives in the 1460s. All perfectly legible right? I don't understand people who say that medieval English is nothing like the modern tongue...

After Edinburgh

2007-08-28T21:38:00.000+01:00

Edinburgh was absolutely, utterly, marvellous. I had a fantastic time. And everyone managed to catch the trains! Woo! This was something about which we were all slightly concerned... When we arrived it was absolutely chucking it down, but we all strode through the rain and there was a considerable amount of singing. It did mean, however, that we didn't want to do anything except eat large amounts of pizza and drink wine that evening. Luckily Rose's flat, as is appropriate for student living, was perfect for such activities, and we ate and drank convivially, and readied ourselves for the week to come. Which was great.

I went to 17 shows, almost all of which were extremely good. There were the two Two Shades of Blue shows of course, which were fantastic. Comedy and Cake, which I hadn't seen before, was hilarious and beautifully done. And people can tap dance! I was so impressed. We also saw ICE in their new guise as TPC (Triple Point Comedy) twice, one time of which was James' last show and was particularly good. Then there was Luke's uncle, Nick Pynn, who played some great atmospheric music on all sorts of exciting instruments in a teeny tiny venue, throughout which Adam sat in a tree. Sort of. Of course, there were also multitudes of people we did not know. In the 'real theatre' set were The Importance of Being Ernest (very good, very funny. Full of whimsy :D), The Racket (about the war from two points of view, a one man show) and Macbeth (though not as you will ever have seen it. Flames and stilts and very few lines). Sherlock Holmes we saw by the Flaming Redheads, who took us around Edinburgh on a magical mystery tour. Pick of the Fringe gave us a couple of new ideas, Mitch Benn was fantastic in his music show, while The Gently Progressive Behemoth and Rock and Roll Penguin made for amusing times. What have I missed? Get up, Stand up we saw twice. The first time it was absolutely fantastic, all the comics were very good and the music was also well done. The second time was fairly dismal. Although the music was still good, the comics just weren't...well...funny...

That seems to take me to fifteen... What have I missed...? I appear to have lost some tickets. Bother. Ah well, I remembered most of them. When not at the theatre we discovered Islam, went into the Scottish National Gallery, ate, drank, were merry, and sat happily in the sunshine on the Meadows, which were just across the road from the flat and were generally very contented people. It was all lovely. There are lots of photos on facebook. I urge you to take a look, and comment freely. When facebook is alive again that is.

After Edinburgh ended life was somewhat sadder. Adam has now vanished off to Leeds, so for only the second time (the first being when I was in Italy) in four months I have to go more than three days without seeing him. This makes me sad, but I am going up to Leeds in two and a bit weeks and that will be exciting and lovely. I spent most of Sunday and all of Monday at Luke's house watching an entire series of Scrubs and doing very little else. Well. On Sunday night we drank three and a half bottles of wine. But apart from that... But it was nice, and friendly. But now Luke has gone back to Cambridge. *sigh*. However, today I saw Emilia, tomorrow I am to see Kirsten, Thursday I go to the library, Friday I see Richard and Saturday I see Fan. So I am keeping busy. And then my parents will be back from Yorkshire, so I won't be on my own in the house any more.

Also, today I bought myself a very attractive black lacy bra and matching underwear, and some very cute pyjamas, so that made me happy. Love :D xxx

Edinburgh

2007-08-18T12:24:00.000+01:00

Today we are off! Hurrah! I just finished packing and I have tickets and directions and other important things like that. Hurrah! I am looking forward to it muchly. No work, lots of friends, lots of comedy, lots of theatre, the CULES, those in ICE etc. etc. It is going to be marvellous. Have a fabulous week my darlings! xxx

A levels

2007-08-16T10:29:00.000+01:00

Today the A level results come out. 'So what?' I hear you cry. 'How does that affect you?'. Oddly enough, this year it does affect me, working as I am at Imperial (still going marvellously by the way, I am officially a computer genius. Well...sort of...). Today and tomorrow I shall spend my days answering the phone and telling people whether or not they have any chance of getting in. So far I have had a variety of calls- one young chap who didn't quite make his grades but is actually being reconsidered so has hope, one guy who couldn't get at his results but got in and was quite ecstatically happy and one girl who almost certainly DIDN'T get in but sounded rather desperate on the phone. *sigh* I'd forgotten how stressful it all was. Poor dear chicks. There have been other calls too, at varying levels of stress/exhileration/desperate hope. I'm sure they'll all be fine in the end. I want more of the people who actually got in to call, it's much more fun talking to them.

All the people applying here seem to have incredibly complicated names. The best so far had 10 letters in his first name and 15 in his second.

But apart from the phones, I'm not officially having to do anything today, so it should be fairly relaxing. Edinburgh is happening the day after tomorrow, which is extremely exciting, and we shall all jet off (steam off? What does one say for trains these days) to that great city and have a marvellous time.

Insects seem to be hopelessly in love with me at the moment, and I am actually covered in bites. My top count was 18, but now some of those have faded away and are only being replaced at a lesser rate, so at the moment I have about 12. Mostly on my arms. At least they've had the decency not to munch on my face just yet.

Yesterday Adam and I both had days off, so we went to the park and had a hot chocolate/green tea in the cafe, and then watched A Clockwork Orange. Which wasn't nearly as horrible as I was expecting it to be. It was good, though the sound on the DVD was terrible, and you could barely hear the dialogue over the music. It was very, very odd. We also watched 'Robbie Coltrane: B-road Britain' which sounds remarkably sad, but was quite good fun. He went and saw all sorts of strange festivals and traditional events in the country side, which...well...they were very...British. Oh and I discovered the pure joy and pleasure of google maps, the satellite version. It's fabulous! I've been looking at places all over the UK. I might check out where I'm going in Australia next.

Oh and I point you all to a Guardian article which Adam showed me on the website. The URL is http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1231089,00.html and it is quite good evidence of the current madness of America. I'm glad I'm flying via Singapore in December rather than LA...

Slave labour

2007-08-14T09:03:00.000+01:00

Yesterday I worked the WHOLE day. Like, from 9am until 5:45. Without stopping except for lunch. That NEVER happens! I demand compensation!

Okay so the task wasn't that hard. And yes, they pay me quite well. Very well. And I could listen to the ipod the whole time. But still. I'm not used to doing that much work! And today I have to learn some crazy mathematical programme. Hmm... Wish me luck!

Salad and sandwiches

2007-08-08T09:35:00.000+01:00

At the moment, mostly sandwiches, but one minor occasion for salad. That sentence will make sense to about...two people. Possibly including me. But basically, life is good. EXCEPT that last weekend I went to church, and we had a replacement priest for the day, because our parish priest has disappeared off to the north to do important things. Anyway, this priest, a very nice chap, made a very good, very interesting sermon. Apart from one little bit which irritated me then and irritates me still. He was talking about our priorities in life, and how many people seem to have got their priorities all wrong. 'If you asked a son, 'what is your father's main priority?', would his response be 'his family' or would it be 'his business'? And if you asked a daughter, 'what is your mother's main priority?' would it be 'her family' or would it be 'I don't know, but it certainly isn't her family'?'. Now don't get me wrong, I understand the point he was making. However...why couldn't the mother have a business too? Not only was she not given the option of a business, but the priest couldn't think of a single other occupation which a woman might happen to prioritise over her family. Gah! I'm sure he was trying to make a good point but still. Gah.

Apart from that, life has been moving along reasonably swiftly and nicely smoothly. The reason I am blogging now is not that I am slacking off work. I would be doing my work, were I given the tools so to do. However, I need a password to get into the programme I need, and I don't yet have said password. So here I sit, blogging happily, looking forward with joy and anticipation to the mass of paperwork that lies ahead. I finished off all the diagrams and equations. Tomorrow I might be putting furniture together. That would be fun. And at the end of next week is Edinburgh! Hurrah! I should probably warn people to bring sleeping bags and blow up mattresses...I'm not convinced there's going to be a lot of room...

I have been quite busy recently, in lots of pleasant ways. Saturday, as can be seen by the photos on facebook, held a magical mystery tour up the Thames to Greenwich, where picnics, observing, cafes, markets and museums abounded. It was very lovely, and the weather was utterly amazing. Then on Sunday, Adam, Fan, Luke and I went to the prom at the Albert Hall, which was very excellent. The Enigma Variations, which I absolutely love, were played, so that was nice, and the oboe concerto was fabulous, both for its beautiful music and for the absolutely hilarious soloist. He was one of those who seems to believe that music can only be beautiful if accompanied by great flourishes and deep breaths and rollings of the eyes. Marvellous. Yesterday, Monday, I went off to Cambridge again to visit the UL, and have now finished my original bibliography for my long essay, and have sent an email to my supervisor asking for more to read. I'm not sad. Honest. And lay literacy in medieval England IS interesting damn it, no matter what anyone might say. In Cambridge I did not only find books, but also a Kirsten, and we had a very nice picnic lunch (with chocolates courtesy of Toby, we love you Toby) in Bodley's Court, watching the punts go by. That evening, back in London, Kirsten and I both travelled to the realms of Clapham to see Rose, which was absolutely great, since we hadn't seen each other in ridiculous periods of time. And we ate home made hamburgers and home made ice cream with home made chocolate sauce, so the world was a place of deliciousness and joy.

Tonight I prom once again, this time just with Adam, and we go to see Cleo Laine, magnificent woman that she is, sing in a jazz prom entitled 'From Bard to Blues'. I like Shakespeare, Adam likes jazz, what more could we ask? xxx

Camland

2007-07-30T21:42:00.001+01:00

Not that I wish to brag, but...

'Politics is most highly rated at Oxford and Durham comes top for English, according to today's guide to British universities. Cambridge towers above the rest and Oxford appears to be losing its edge, though it still commands the second-highest entry grades'.

Ok so I do wish to brag. Yay for Cambridge! Also, the picture next to the article was King's :D. Also, in the abbreviated table of subjects they show, Cambridge is top for History, Maths and Philosophy, which everyone knows are the most important. By which I mean, those are the subjects my friends take which actually appear on the table.

'Oxford is top for the proportion of good degrees it awards and the low drop-out rates but 107th for staff-student ratios. It is rated 10th for graduate prospects, behind Cambridge, Imperial College, and the London School of Economics'.

Food of the exciting

2007-07-25T09:31:00.001+01:00

Last night, it being the birthday of my dear uncle John, my parents, uncle, aunt and other aunt traipsed off to the Forest Hill area (about two minutes away from Kirsten in fact) to an Indian restaurant called Babur. But this was no ordinary Indian restaurant. It was in fact the most interesting Indian to which I had ever been and, according to my uncle and aunt, who were both brought up in India, easily the most authentic. The food was absolutely fantastic. Deeelicious. Not particularly cheap I don't think, but made up for by the fact that at the end they gave us two £22 vouchers with which to come again. Not bad I think.

I started off with sandelwood ostrich. Mmm ostrich. It was the first time I had tried it, and it was the most tender meat I have ever tasted. I put that down, at least in part, to the skill of the chef. For my main course, I indulged in rabbit, the exact description of which I can't quite remember, but that was delicious too, if a little spicy for my ridiculously intolerant taste buds. With it we had poppadums, with a choice of four different types of chutney, exceptionally tasty naan, plain rice, the best pilau rice I have ever tried, lime and cashew rice, a spinachy thing, aubergines and green bananas and crispy potatoes. Needless to say, by the end of it I was absolutely filled to the brim. My mother had sea bass, my aunt red snapper, and my uncle chicken with an exciting pancakey thing made of rice dough. Or something. Anyway, it was lovely, and most unusual.

Not only was all that marvellous, we also had some very nice Indian wine. None of us had ever encountered any wine actually made in India before, but it was lovely, and went extremely well with the food.

On top of the £22 vouchers, we were given a taster at the beginning of the meal, sweetmeats at the end, and chocolate with the bill.

Go there! It is wonderous! Now back to equations and desperately ignoring Harry Potter.

Tracking

2007-07-19T16:07:00.000+01:00

The tops of many buses are white. The tops of all buses have a number printed on them in large black font. This is so they can be tracked more easily by helicopter and camera. I find this vaguely unnerving.

I just quit from the Reed agency. Lovely people as they are, my job here (Imperial) is nice. They pay me well, I can take days off whenever I want to, they have now decided they have enough work for me to stay as long as I want, and half the time I get my own office. Also, they actually worked out not to tax me silly money, and my parents pay for my travel and lunch when I'm here. As Adam tells me, it is an incredibly cushy deal. Also I'm on blogger. But I don't do that very often. I'm just rewarding myself for having done a ridiculous number of equations today.

Speaking of Adam, he is no longer residing at our house, which is rather sad. But not THAT sad, because he is now living with Luke, whose mighty abode is a mere ten minute trot from my door. I've been reading a lot of Jeeves and Wooster recently. Can you tell?

Life has been most jolly recently. In the recent past I saw a Beth and a Roisin, after they had seen Harry Potter, and we had a drink in a pub pretending to be Irish near Kings Cross. There is little else at Kings Cross. Apart from the British Library of course, to which I went on Monday. It was fabulous. Seventh heaven one might say. I'm going back again next Monday. This whole four day working week thing is rather a good plan I feel, I might continue it. Unless I decide I need more money *bathes in the glories of not having to work unless she feels like it*. Anyway, what else have I done? Adam and I went to see Harry Potter too. We rather liked it: it was good fun, although I had forgotten the book dreadfully. Luna was great: as Richard says 'an Emmie with Rose's hair'. The scenery was as beautiful as ever. Daniel Radcliffe has sprouted muscles, possibly in order to make up for the fact that he is shorter than both Rupert Grint and Emma Watson. Grawp was incredibly sweet. I wanted to cuddle him. Apart from the fact that cuddling him would probably result in being severely squished.

On Saturday, Adam, Fi, Mike and I met up, after some degree of confusion, and went off to the Science Museum. We had a great time, we looked at the rockets and the launch pad and the ships and the cars and...and...the plastic exhibition and...lots of things! Mike decided very little of it was science, but I didn't care. Who wants a museum for its educational content? We spent a huge amount of time (around half an hour I think) attempting to construct a suspension table. We failed miserably, and then decided we should tear ourselves away, or we might end up glued to the spot forever. Oh and Fiona and I tried to strangle each other, resulting in some excellent pictures. Speaking of pictures, I need to put mine up on Facebook. Coming soon to a computer near you. And then we went for a drink with Duncan and Tom, whom I had never met before, and that was also very nice. Mmmm the joys of life. They are multitudinous.

That is a word I first heard in Macbeth. So on to Shakespeare. Yesterday my mum and I went to see Othello at the Globe. We definitely chose the right day on which to go- the sky was blue, the birds (read: aeroplanes) were tweeting (read: soaring overhead) and it was warm and delightful. And the play was great, beautifully acted, and with, as is usual at the Globe, very little scenery of which to speak. Iago was played by Tim Whatsit, who plays Darling in the Blackadders. He was fantastic, although after realising who he was I found it the tiniest bit difficult to take him seriously. I think possibly the proof of how good he was lies in the fact that, despite consistently calling him 'Darling' in my head, I still thought he was an evil, slimey, twisted maniac. It was great! A good Iago is everything. Oh and Desdemona was beautiful as well as being able to act, so that was nice.

That's most of the news I think... Tonight I am going over to Luke's for dinner, while my parents go and indulge in Potter-mania. We shall probably watch lots of episodes of Angel. It's the new thing. At some point we're going to run out, and then I'm not sure how we're going to cope... We're going to need a displacement show certainly. Any ideas anyone? Ooh I saw adverts for Heroes the other day. Exciting! xxx

Hello my chickadees

2007-07-12T11:03:00.000+01:00

How are you all? Are you all marvellously vibrant, beatifically happy and generally at peace with the world? No? That sucks :(. Are you reasonably content with life but vaguely mourning the fact that it is now July 12th and we still haven't seen much sun or any temperatures over about 21 degrees? Me too. I'm vaguely contemplating making a complaint to someone, if I can think of who to write the letter to. Perhaps the Times. The editor there is the general master of the universe right?

Life is rather like the weather at the moment, though possibly slightly less dull. Adam is still living with us, which naturally makes the world a generally better place, and today is my mother's birthday. I bought her two pairs of earrings and Bill Bryson's 'Notes from a Big Country', which I then proceeded to bring to work with me and have now read up to page 114. I needed a break from Dante you see- I've just got to the end of Purgatorio, and thought a bit of fluff would be nice before entering Paradiso. Heavenly as I am sure that will be. Pun entirely, entirely intended. I'm a little bored.

Work is alright, if mildly unexciting. Actually, there is no way I should be complaining. They pay me £9.02 (yeah I know...it's weird...) an hour to sit at a desk all day, sort post in the morning, put post in envelopes in the evenings, and occasionally write a couple of letters. The rest of the time, they don't seem to mind at all if I read my book, play silly games on the internet, or blog to my heart's content. It's nice. And the people are nice. But I am desperately looking forward to Monday, when instead of paid work I am going to go to the British Library for the first time, get myself a reader account and settle myself down in one of their many vast reading rooms with the large pile of books I pre-ordered from them. It is going to be marvellous, partly because I am going to be in one of the most wonderfully amazing libraries in the world, partly because I am going to be delving into the world of medieval books once more, and partly because I'm actually going to be using my brain. I can't wait.

Yesterday it was my Emilia's birthday, and we went for dinner at a nice restaurant in Kensington. It was quite jolly, the people were nice, the food was good and plentiful. Possibly rather too plentiful, since I not only consumed my own starter (lobster bisque with a lagoustine raviole) but also Charlotte's starter (dark chicken liver parfait with a raspberry jus) and the remains of Sophie's starter (seafood salad). I then had sea bass with new potatoes and baked vine tomatoes, and then a large slab of chocolate cake. All of this was topped with possibly the best house white wine I have ever tasted (although at £4.40 a glass it should have been...) and sips from everyone's cocktails, which comprised Mojitos, Martinis, Raspberry Mules, Rasputins and a couple of others. I woke up at 4:30am in absolute agony, with my stomach screaming various insults at me. It still isn't entirely happy, but the prospect of lunch is a far less painful one than that which breakfast presented. I didn't have breakfast. I would be less annoyed if it was an alcohol hangover, but no, it is a chicken liver pate hangover. My poor stomach isn't used to such riches. Tonight we are going to Cafe Rouge for my mother's birthday. I intend to eat less. Although the chocolate fondant will probably prove too difficult to resist. Maybe I shouldn't have lunch after all...

Last weekend I went up to Camden, and indulged in the pleasures of the company of Adam, Luke, Chris and James. It was great. We did shopping, and James bought me a crazy PVC and corduroy coat for £1. He maintains that it was the best £1 he ever spent. I maintain that it is exceptionally cool, but I will very rarely actually be cold enough to wear it. People still don't seem to understand my thermostat. I have also decided that James should take me shopping, tell me things to try on and I will just do it without thinking 'Argh how scary I would never look good in that'. I think it will result in my wardrobe being much more interesting. After Camden we went back to James' room in Leytonstone. It is a nice room, despite the crazy landlord, who appears to think James, with the help of his friends, is going to destroy the world. Rather than fulfilling this dread prophesy we ate very nice curry, read silly things on the internet, watched Trapped in the Closet on Youtube (watch it! watch it! Make sure it's the original) and generally chatted. Oh, and drank gin. It was all highly jolly, and the journey home wasn't too hideously difficult.

Hmm...11:25. As yet, neither of the solicitors who actually gives me work has come in. They are probably at court or something. This means I am not currently obliged to do anything. How very exciting. However, if I make this post any longer it will bore you all half to death, and will result in my being ridiculed. Only by me, but still. So, for now, love and hugs. I may do some foolish internet quizzes to find out what sort of sweet I am. xxxxxxx

At a different work

2007-07-06T14:31:00.000+01:00

Now I am at work again. But not at Imperial. Now instead at a solicitors' in Camberwell. It is quite jolly. They pay me a reasonable amount of money and ask me to do very little work. Seriously. Hence the blogging. Although today I did spend an hour doing photocopying. That was fun. It was many many articles, about which I should probably not write. I'm sure there's some sort of confidentiality thing floating about somewhere. I also do audio typing, which is good fun- each solicitor has a dictaphone, and they record little tapes, and then I listen to the tapes and write letters to magistrates and barristers and clerks and police stations, or I write briefs or attendance notes etc. etc. Some cases are really rather fascinating. Everyone has such odd problems.

Anyway, I still haven't written about Italy. This is very bad of me. What can I say that you couldn't get from the photos? Not a lot I guess... I went up lots of towers, and lots of domes, and got lots of marvellous pictures. Florence was divine, and I spent most of the time in raptures over statues of Dante (you say no one reads past Inferno? I'm on Purgatorio, and intend to reach Paradiso. So there) and various Medici men. Oh and we went to the Uffizi. It was amazing. Really, you should all go there. Never before have I walked into so many rooms and just stopped dead because on the wall opposite was some painting, the copies of which I have seen frequently since I was tiny. Goya, Rembrandt, da Vinci, Titian, Botticelli, Tintoretto, Uccello, Giotto, Rubens, Raphael, Michelangelo... It was incredible. I saw the Three Graces! And the Birth of Venus! And lots and lots of other marvels. It was great.

Urgh my wrist just went crunch in a very strange way. Silly wrist.

The cathedrals in Italy are amazing. You want a cathedral built, go to Italy. They are good at it. They are HUGE. And quite frequently stripy, which is nice. Although it tends to look as though they had lots of fun decorating the front and then forgot about the inside. Apart from St. Peter's which is uber decorated all over. Oh, and the Vatican Gardens are gorgeous, but they don't let you into them. Grrr. However they DO let you into the Sistine Chapel. That was exciting. If ridiculously cram packed. In case you ever go to Rome, go to the Vatican on the last Sunday of the month. It might be a little busier, but this will be because everything is open for free, instead of being around 10 Euro entry.

Oh and the food... Oh the food was amazing. I had the best ice cream I have ever tasted, and I had it at least six times over the course of the week. Mmm... Also, huge pizzas. Not just big pizzas, but absolutely gigantically enormous pizzas. With the thinnest crusts I've ever seen. Scrum. Ooh and I tasted eel, which was quite exciting. And scrummy, which surprised me somewhat. And the local fish, corigone, also yum, if rather bony. Lake fish are skinny compared to sea fish. Ooh and I tried the local cheese, which is made from sheep milk. Mmm... I should stop talking about food. Just the wine...mmm...so cheap! And really good! And made about 2km from where we were staying!

Oh dear I should stop typing... I am concerned that I will get noticed... Love love xxx

At work

2007-07-03T09:27:00.000+01:00

So obviously not actually on blogger at all. Honest. I promise. It's just that I've just been given my own office and it's all rather exciting. Very shortly I will go back to second year electrical engineering notes, and that will be my morning. This is pretty much why I haven't written about Italy just yet. I spend all day, 8:30am until at least 5pm, occasionally longer, at work, and then Adam is staying with us at home and it seems somewhat impolite to sit and type at my computer when he's sitting there looking bored. Tomorrow we are going to see 'La Vie en Rose', a film about the life of Edith Piaf. It should be good, if very sad. Lots of excellent reviews. You know what is quite dull? Typing bazillions of equations into word is quite dull. Also, apparently a wiggle with a straight line under it ISN'T the same as a wiggle with two straight lines under it, but IS the same as two wiggles. I love maths...

Right, now I must to work. Have a lovely day all, enjoy the non existant sunshine. Hopefully at Wimbledon today they might actually get through more than one match before the rain comes thundering down. This is NOT July weather! I protest! I may have to write a letter to someone about it. Argh electrical engineering calls. Love love xxx

Back but brief

2007-06-27T19:58:00.000+01:00

Due to my enormous popularity (by which I mean that I want to talk to people on msn, and put things on facebook, and look up library open times and things) this is going to be quite a short post. I keep doing that don't I? Bad Helen. However, this time I must talk about Italy at some point, so there will be a proper post. For now, suffice it to say that it was most marvellous, though I missed everyone horribly and desperately wished to be in Cambridge. Oh and it was very, very hot. Like...38 degrees hot. Melting hot. Was quite nice, though a shock when we got back to England and it was cold and rainy... Our fault for going away just before Wimbledon I guess. It can't NOT rain when it's Wimbledon. Oh and also, there are lots of photos on facebook, and will soon be more, so if you can't be bothered to read about my trip, that's the place to go.

Since Italy I have been working lots. Paid working, as opposed to academic working, although tomorrow I am going to the library, which will be divinely lovely, because it's a fabulous, if tiny library, and I miss history dreadfully. So tomorrow my day shall be filled with lay literacy in the 12th to 15th centuries. Yay! Although I am very annoyed because I can't seem to get into JSTOR. Stupid not being in Cambridge to be on the network. And I'm going to have to go to Cambridge at some point anyway, all the books in the world are there. Plus yay for the UL. Helen like the UL. Oh and yesterday I saw Adam for the first time in aaaaages (well...ten days...) so that was exceptionally lovely, and we ate good pizza (yeah...after coming back from Italy...and?) and watched The Constant Gardener and then Adam had to get up horribly early to get to work on time. Silly far away work.

Anyway. Popularity (msn, facebook, libraries etc.) calls, so I must tiddle xxx

Packing again

2007-06-15T15:52:00.000+01:00

Every time I pack, it occurs to me that I own far too many clothes for my own good. And then I remember that I don't really mind that, and go shopping again. It's great. I'm leaving Cambridge tomorrow. This saddens me a lot, but at least I am leaving it for Italy, which is currently extremely hot and extremely beautiful, and should be lots of fun. And then I shall be in London, and much meeting up of good friends is going to have to happen, because otherwise I will be sad once again.

The bumps are incredibly exciting. We are doing ok: not outstandingly or anything, but today we were absolutely fantastic. Seriously. You should have seen us. We couldn't even SEE the people behind us. Fuck history, I'm a boatie.

Anyway, I should get back to packing. I just wanted to warn the world that I was going to be far far away for a short period of time. Have joy and sandwiches. And good luck to Richard in Once a Catholic. Rock that Christian boat my lovely xxx

P.S. When I say 'fuck history' what I in fact mean is 'I love history, I really do, more than anything, I would never desert you. Sorry history'.

And because now I've got slightly addicted

2007-06-05T12:03:00.000+01:00

And also this one makes me giggle:

You scored as Rocker, Mosher, Your A Rocker!

Rocker, Mosher

50%

Trendy

40%

Prepy

35%

Goth

25%

Emo

15%

Chav, Townie, Rude Boy, Ned, Kev

Skater

What Group Are You? What Group Are You? Chav, Rocker, Skater, Emo, Goth, Trendy, Prepy Ect
created with QuizFarm.com

Yup. That's me all over. Definitely. I am currently waiting for an Adam to come out of his first exam. It should have finished about five minutes ago. Then we shall wait for a Beth to come out of her exam, which will be in forty minutes or so. It's all very exciting. I may be the only one who actually thinks this, but no matter. Everyone seems very exam filled at the moment. Apart from the people who have finished, but everyone hates them. And you know what? This morning the weather was a bit grotty but now it has got marvellous again, which fills me with happiness. The past few days have been rather divine. Ooh and I went to Strawberry Fair. It was great fun, we wandered around among many a drunk/stoned person and I bought a very attractive skirt and a deeeelicious smoothie and we laughed at all the odd things and 'herbal highs' to be had, and Adam K. bought a tiny baby Venus fly trap, who we have christened Trevor. He is very sweet, and probably won't eat many flies as yet, as he is about three centimetres tall.

Today we are going to the Mitre for lunch. I like the Mitre. Mmm...food...I'm so hungry. This week I wrote an essay on Florentine civic humanism. I don't think it was a very good essay, but I shall find out how to make it fabulous in about four hours, when I have my supervision, and get what will probably be my final essay of the term. Time is going way too fast...I can't believe I'm already at the end of my first year at university. Craziness! And summer holidays are soooooo long. Just as well I suppose, for I will have much to do. I will go to Italy, and to Edinburgh, and I will do paid work, and I will do Cambridge related work (I have a long essay to write. Which is actually examined. Eep!), and I will meet up with many fabulously wonderful people and it will all be great. I look forward to this summer. I hope the weather remains divinely beautiful.

In Evensong yesterday one of our pieces was in Russian. It was...interesting to say the least. It was a very beautiful song, but surely no language needs THAT many consonants?? xxx

Because Hannah did it first

2007-06-05T08:14:00.000+01:00

And obviously I always do what Hannah does. It's her birthday today by the way. Happy Birthday Hannah! She's old now...:D. Also good luck to all my lovelies who have exams.

You scored as Carrot Ironfounderson, You are Captain Carrot Ironfounderson of the City Watch in the greatest city on the Disc â€“ Ankh-Morprok! A truly good natured, honest guy, who knows everyone, and is liked by all. Technically a dwarf, but only by adoption. Youâ€™d rather not be reminded that you are the true heir to the throne, but that does explain why people naturally follow your ordersâ€¦

Carrot Ironfounderson

88%

Gytha (Nanny) Ogg

88%

Esmerelda (Granny) Weatherwax

63%

Death

50%

Lord Havelock Vetinari

50%

The Librarian

50%

Commander Samuel Vimes

44%

Rincewind

31%

Cohen The Barbarian

25%

Greebo

19%

Which Discworld Character are you like (with pics)
created with QuizFarm.com

sighs contentedly

2007-05-28T11:17:00.000+01:00

You know what? Johnny Depp really is a very beautiful man. And also? Orlando Bloom is a very beautiful man. Particularly when he dresses up like a proper pirate and wears a bandanna. And thirdly? Keira Knightley is a very beautiful woman. Although they really should have bleached her eyebrows to match her hair. Completely spoiled the soppy scene... By the way, pirates really know how to do sop. And I really want to learn how to swashbuckle properly. Which requires a sword...damn...*plots*. And then all I need is a ship, a crew, some beautiful people and a few unlikely scenarios and I'm all set. Hurrah!

It's raining. It's raining quite heavily. And has been doing so for quite a while. This is mildly upsetting, because none of my shoes are waterproof. I possess flip flops, which quite clearly aren't waterproof. I own two pairs of nice shoes, both of which are made from suede, and are therefore highly ineffective against rain. I own a pair of trainers, which were probably waterproof once, but have been worn frequently for quite a long time and so are now rather battered and full of holes. I get the feeling I may need to buy some new shoes at some point... But my trainers are so comfy! Gah.

I had dinner with Fan a couple of days ago. It was very nice, we chomped on good food in a very nice pub and I went ooooh and aaaah over his nice new gadgets. I want some new gadgets. One day... Tomorrow Richard is coming up. I'm not entirely sure what we're going to do, given the rain. Hmm...the Fitzwilliam Museum is supposed to be nice...and the Pepys Library sounds fun....*grins evilly*. And then Chris should be coming up next Saturday to play cricket. *prays that the weather is better for the match*. Woo for all my lovely men! I'm half way along to having a pirate crew already. Oooh and Richard actually has a sword. Or at least used to. *plots some more*.

I have to go soon, as I am meeting Kirsten for lunch at the Unhappy Place. All this seeing of friends is very exciting, it doesn't happen nearly enough and then four come along all at once. Who am I to complain? It is utterly fabulous.

You know what? The word 'discourteously' does not get used in nearly enough songs. In fact, it doesn't get used nearly enough generally. Neither does the word 'harridan', which is an utterly fabulous word, though I think I would rather it wasn't directed at me. On the whole. Occasionally it might be rather fun. I think I'm going to have to make a big list of words that I like and try to start using them more frequently.

My last essay was about the expansion of Catalan-Aragonese influence in the Mediterranean through the thirteenth and early fourteenth century, and who benefited from said expansion. It was reasonably interesting, but a vile essay to write. I'm not sure why. It may have something to do with the fact that my supervisor praised my last essay roundly, and so this one has an awful lot to live up to, and I'm not entirely convinced that it's going to manage it...

This is a group of very short paragraphs. I don't generally do short paragraphs, but today it seems to fit in with my mood. Quite what that means I shall leave you to work out. Ooh and as a last thought. Yesterday in church, one of the bidding prayers went along the lines of 'please help everyone revise sensibly and may they not forget to read all the questions before they attempt to answer any of them'. It's the first time I've been in church and a bidding prayer has raised a giggle. I love Catholics xxx

And to continue...

2007-05-21T10:45:00.000+01:00

Well after that wonderful exhortation of rowing, which clearly made every single one of you want to be as boatie as ever possible, I have some exciting news. I'm rowing in the Bumps! Eeee! It is vaguely terrifying. Oh. It occurs to me that few of you will actually know what the Bumps are... Well, they take place in Lent term and Easter term (or spring and summer...whichever you wish to call it) and according to Wikipedia...:

A bumps race is a form of rowing race in which a number of boats chase each other in single file; each boat attempts to catch ("bump") the boat in front without being caught by the boat behind. The form is mainly used intramurally at the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford. It is particularly suited where the stretch of water available is long but narrow, precluding side-by-side racing. Bumps racing gives a sharper feel of immediate competition than a head race, where boats are simply timed over a fixed course.

So basically, you attempt to crash into the boat infront of you without letting the boat behind you crash into you. Did that make sense? I think so. Doesn't it sound exciting? I get the feeling we may die. Particularly since we will be rowing with four people who haven't been in a boat all term and we are currently lacking a cox. Eep. Ah well, it doesn't matter too much, it would be exciting if we bumped someone, but not too shameful all considered if we didn't. Also, today we had an absolutely fabulous outing (yes, yes it is 10:50 and I have already been away for five hours...) and we wound up to a rating of 38 which was VERY exciting, and we managed to hold it at 33 which is more than ever before. Yay! Admittedly that was only for 500m, and if we don't get bumped the race is about two and a half kilometres, but still. It's a good start. None of this means anything to anyone does it? I do apologise... I shall try and talk about normal people things for a while...

The past couple of weeks have been reasonably full. The essay I wrote last week was extremely interesting, about the Sicilian Vespers, and the reading list was reasonably weeny so I was happy. This week however the reading list consisted of 18 books (18!!) so I spent ridiculous amounts of time in the UL. At least it wasn't sunny I guess, that would have made it horribly depressing... My supervisor is still fabulous and lots of fun, if terrifyingly probing. And this week the volume of reading is going to make it very difficult to answer any questions which aren't extremely general. Ah well, 'tis of little note.

I found a quote which made me laugh in the book I am currently reading (The Stories of English by David Crystal): 'And lastly, following the coming of St Augustine in 597, the influence of Latin-speaking monks must have grown, with Latinisms being dropped into speech much as they still are today, as a modus operandi which adds gravitas passim to one's magnum opus, interalia (pace Orwell).' I feel it says something about me that I found this so amusing. However I quite like what it says about me so that's alright. *giggles to self in geeky little world of words and history*.

Today I will be reading in chapel. I find this very exciting, the King's Chapel is an awesome place in which to read. Anyone's voice, as long as they speak loudly enough, can sound booming and rolling and echoey and wonderful. However, I am reading the tale of Balaam's ass. It's a good story, lots of fun in the telling. But it means I have to say ass in chapel without giggling. Several times. And at one point the ass speaks. *sigh* Why couldn't they call it a donkey like normal people?

*cue obligatory paragraph about the weather* The weather is being weird. For ages it was rainy and drizzly and fairly depressing. This followed weeks and weeks of dazzlingly beautiful sunshine (which I admit probably weren't all that fantastic for peole who needed to revise...). Now it keeps trying to be sunny but failing rather, and either the sky is filled with total cloud cover, with occasional drips of rain, or there are normal clouds but too heavy to be normal clouds. Okay that was possibly the worst description of anything I have ever given. It made sense in my head. This is possibly not something I should be admitting. I'm sleepy damn it, five hours remember? At the moment it's in cloud cover mode, which is a bit miserable but not too cold. Which is good. It's May for goodness' sake!

Right, now I have to go and rescue my washing. And then I might snuggle down with The Stories of English and chortle to myself. Then will come lunch, after which I will go to the shops and maybe buy myself a new book. It might even be a terribly worthy book like Dante's Divina Commedia, of which I have only read Inferno so far. It was on my reading list. How cool is that? And a postcard for a person of specialness. And then will be choir and I shall sing the rather complicated bits and pieces we are doing this week, and then will be dinner, and then dancing, and then I will come back, have a shower and collapse in a heap on the floor. It's going to be a good Monday xxx

Something from the Boathouse

2007-05-15T08:53:00.000+01:00

Boaties are psychos...

You could never understand what it is to make inanimate machinery sing in perfect harmony with your body, or to dance and have it dance with you in perfect step. You could never understand what it is to give your heart and soul to this, to push your mind to the very edge and yet know that it's gone that far and still hold it there for the fastest race of your life despite every stroke and every revolution telling you that you need to stop. And why do I do this?
It's not about the pleasure.
It's about the pain.
It's about making the next guy suffer because he's not good enough.
Be careful what you do.
Be careful you don't become the next guy.

And we know what we're getting ourselves into...

Choose rowing,
Choose a crew,
Choose a cox,
Choose a fast boat,
Choose training at dawn,
Choose blood blisters, pain, frozen extremities,
biting cold,
Choose broken equipment and random collisions,
Choose splash tops, lycra and awful unisuits in a
range of BAD colours.
Choose rowing with a hangover and wondering what the
FUCK you're doing as you VOMIT over the boat.
Choose sitting on an erg, feeling shit, whilst your coach
yells random abuse at you,
Choose failing your degree because you're always on the
river.
Choose breathing your last, wanting to die as you sit
in the boat, nothing more than an embarrassment to the
normal life, people and sleep which you used to know,
Choose your sport,
Not rowing...

I chose not to choose life.
I chose rowing.

But we're lovely people really. Honest.

Length

2007-05-08T16:47:00.000+01:00

And so here I am, with an hour to spare. This doesn't seem to happen very often at the moment... In reality I should be having a nice afternoon nap, since I have already been awake for...11 hours. Isn't that ridiculous? Oh well, that's what I get for being a crazy boatie I suppose. Rowing has been happening large amounts recently- it has been decided that we will be going out four times a week; three mornings and Saturday evening. This is fine, it just means I spend certain periods of time three days a week in a zombie-like state. Today hasn't been too bad, although if I make my legs do any more work any time soon they may well just give up on me and run away from home. Rowing is generally quite nice at the moment, the weather isn't as cold and icky as it was last term and the term before. Apart from yesterday, when it chucked down with rain and I shivered my way home dripping wet. But even that wasn't too bad. Thank goodness for Andy is all I can say.

What else have I been doing? I now have a new supervisor, Peter, who as far as I can tell is awesome. He is extremely enthusiastic, offered me tea/coffee/water upon my entering his room, swung his legs up on the desk to get comfy and spent the hour telling me how to write better essays and asking terrifyingly probing questions about the middle ages. It was great. Also my next reading list is nice and short so hopefully won't involve excessive amounts of work like last week's did. Well. I say excessive. I understand that as a historian I have no right to use the term, particularly in the first year. But it's all relative you know?

Chris came to visit. That was great fun, I went and watched a debate in the union where two teams from the College were debating, and there were crazy Irish people who seemed most jolly. At lunch we went to The Mitre, which is a very nice and very reasonably priced pub, and Chris drank illegally, and then in the evening I found us a fondue party to go to, which naturally made me very happy, and Chris drank illegally again. The fondue was scrummy, with strawberries, raspberries, grapes, marshmallows etc. to dip in the chocolate goo, and the wine we drank with it was...well...drinkable anyway. The second bottle was possibly rather better than the first. And the punch was tasty. Yay for underage drinking! And then we went to Adam's and watched...er...that film... Oh yes, Fight Club. Of course. Which is a fantastic film, if rather violent. Though that was unsurprising. This took us to about 3am, after which time bed was the order of the day. In the morning Chris woke with something of a headache (I did my job well) and we went to the Copper Kettle to have a very tasty bacon filled breakfast, and then off he set London-wards. It was marvellous.

I had dinner with Adam at Strada again. I love that place. This time I had divinely delicious gnocchi with tomatoes and mozzerella and other yummy things, and Adam had some ridiculously enormous pizza, and we had very good wine, and I had a plate of chocolate goo for pudding. Hurrah! I also went out to dinner with Roisin and Arun at Clowns, which was as tasty and as filling as it always is. We went just before dancing, so Roisin spent the next couple of hours feeling slightly ill...Arun and I, as is our way, digested extremely quickly and feasted happily on brownies in the interval. Speaking of which, dancing is, as always, utterly fabulous. We are doing lots of very fun dances, and last week there was a live band, which is always rather exciting. Oh bother, I've been told this blog is terribly sugary, and now I can see why...shall I try to be miserable for a bit? Hmm...nah, I don't think that'll work terribly well...

Choir also has been good, I am now the secretary and so am frantically organising readings lists and garden parties and other such excitements. I like being secretary. It lets me feel superior, without putting too many demands on my actual time and stress level etc. Ooh and it was Beth's birthday. These two things have absolutely nothing to do with each other, but I decided that that paragraph was too short on its own. It was a fun evening, we went and ate huge amounts of curry at a curry house called The Curry House, expertly recommended by Hane, to whom we are all deeply indebted. Oooh it was tasty...yummy papadums and even yummier naan bread and deliciously tasty curry and rice. And not even particularly expensive. Yay! Although it was on a hill...the single hill in the whole of Cambridge and it manages to be at the top...tuh... And there were many of us and it was great, because gatherings don't happen enough these days with those silly 'exam' things looming.

Hmm...I don't think I told of the week before I came up to Cambridge did I? How very remiss of me, it was full of good things too. I went to Rose's twice, and cooking and chatting and sleeping over and other exciting things happened. It was great to see Rose again, and Kirsten too. Just like the old days one might say if one were feeling particularly revoltingly reminiscey. I also saw Fan, who brought with him the joys of DDR, which we played for a while, Dr. Who which we watched with my parents, and Skins, which I got completely addicted to, stole the rest of, and have now seen every episode of. *sobs* And drinks in London with some of the wonderful Student Cross crowd occurred, where we ate drank and made very merry for several hours. And then missed the last train home, so had to run to another train station to get that one. Oh wait, we didn't run, we took the tube. That makes more sense. Thank goodness for Sarah being able to focus on the map is all I can say...

Okay so that happened. I also did work at Imperial College which, while unexciting, certainly paid well, and could have been a lot more tedious than it was. Lots of unpacking very expensive electronic equipment and inputting details into a computer. Thrilling I know. It did mean I got to see Emilia a couple of times though, since we had very long lunch breaks and she lives nearby. That was fun. Oh wow it has only just occurred to me just how long it has been since I said anything of note. I think it dates back to Student Cross. There is no way I can talk about everything I did since then in any sort of detail, so in no detail at all: dinner at a Thai restaurant, Sir Spamalot, St Bride's Printing Library, Sarah's house, Cambridge, Hayfever at the Churchill, Within Temptation at the Astoria, the house of my Great Aunt (capital letters entirely intentional. Trust me, you'd understand if you met her), tests at a temping agency (76wpm. Score!), singing lessons, exams, meetings, sitting in the sun, sitting in the sun some more. I think that's vaguely it... Photos for some on facebook!

Love and hugs xxx

Brevity

2007-04-30T13:16:00.000+01:00

All of my posts seem to be rather short at the moment. I apologise for this. Or perhaps it is a good thing...I can't tell... However. At some point I will do something lengthy and rambling and horrendously saccharine, and you will all know that normality has returned to the land of Helen. At the moment essays and things keep happening, which frankly is rather inconsiderate of them. I am currently about 3/4 of the way through one essay, and have started the reading for another, so it shouldn't be too terrible. The exams were equally inconspicuous, not dreadfully awful, but probably not brilliantly fabulous either. I'll find the results out in an age and a half and let you know. At the moment the sun is shining, so while I am writing all about the production of medieval books and their distribution I shall pretend that I am in fact sitting in a punt with a glass of pimms and some cake, being read poetry by a beautiful man in a boater and a white jacket.

Love and hugs xxx

Exam update

2007-04-24T21:22:00.000+01:00

Ok so in my extreme excitement of the last post I didn't mention that I happen to have exams at the moment. However, I did two of them today (six hours!) and so have only one left (three hours!) tomorrow. Hurrah for being two thirds of the way through! The ones today weren't too horrendous. I don't think I failed dismally or anything. I mean, I probably didn't do stunningly brilliantly either, but who does in prelims? Therefore, my plan for the afternoon tomorrow, from 12 o'clock onwards is:

Woop excitedly with as many friendly historians as I can find.
Eat lunch, continuing to woop excitedly.
Go shopping and splurge not too much money on some presents for myself. And possibly other people...
Begin drinking.
Continue drinking.
Be drunk

It's going to be fabulous :D. Love to all, must back to revision and things xxx

Guess what?

2007-04-21T18:28:00.000+01:00

I'm in Cambridge! Isn't that divinely exciting? The sun is shining and the birds really are singing and there is blossom on the trees and people are here and it's all marvellously wonderful. Plus I actually unpacked and made my room look nice, so it's all very cosy and homely at the moment. I wonder what I've forgotten... xxx

Continuance

2007-04-15T21:51:00.000+01:00

The absolute and utter wonder of the Rev. H. Barrie Morris. The man is a legend. Seriously. Out came that accordian and off we went with the fantastically happy clappy 'God's not dead, he is alive!'. It was a great song. It basically kept us going for the rest of the week. Also, incredibly good food at that stop.
Walking along the vile, vile road, with very few people on cross carrying duty. It's quite a scary road. Last year we had a minor crash. This year it actually went alright, and very speedily. We rock! Also, we got about half a mile and got a ring from the support car saying 'Does anyone have the car keys...?'. They were in the leader's pocket.
Bea Butcher. She is a wonderful, wonderful woman. She restores my faith in humanity absolutely. Her husband died last year, but she still carries on, baking us 200 cakes, providing numerous cups of tea, quietly giving whatever we request and barely coming out of the kitchen. She is incredible. And she cried when we said thank you.
Methwold. Crowding into a tiny, tiny barn. It was really very cosy. From me, at one end of the barn, to the door at the other there was literally no floor space. Perhaps the odd centimetre. Not more. And that is in no way exaggerating. Ask Sarah. Also, Sarah's 18 month and 37 second shower.
Learning how to colour in at the church. Simon taught me :D. One day maybe I'll get to be a geographer.
Lots of nice things. I quite like Thursday. It's jolly. Watching people cross the ford (loads of people did it this year) bare foot is always fun. Especially when they get to the middle and suddenly realise that it's so cold that it actually hurts.
Castle Acre! Awesome night! Absolutely fantastic! Great foot washing service (pretty pretty feet :D), beautiful mass with Northern, absolutely brilliant night in The Ostrich with much drinking and much singing to be had. Northern completely different this year, which was mildly confusing. Evening rounded off in the traditional manner, by which I mean climbing up to the castle, rolling down the hill, drinking whiskey and chatting to complete strangers in complete darkness. And no one got shot at this year!
Waking up was less fun. No hangover but...well...poor Ed :D. Oh and the highlight of the morning...FRUIT! We stop on the side of the road and are given melon and pears and bananas and grapes and apples and oh it's so glorious. Vitamins! You don't know how much you miss them until you overdose on cake.
Swaffham. Good food. But mostly Swaffham because I made Sarah laugh, went off to get food and water, came back five minutes later and Sarah was still laughing. At the same thing. Just because the old ladies have a tendency to lie to me... And be a little militant...
Arriving at Walsingham. How could that not be a highlight? Walking into the Slipper Chapel, carrying the cross and singing with all our might. And then floods and floods of tears when you suddenly realise it's over. It's the weirdest feeling of joy and sadness ever. And all those people, more than 200, all having just finished an epic walk, all laying down their crosses at last. There is really nothing like it.
Walking the Holy Mile barefoot. Weird I know, but I love it. The road might be a little spiky, but you get to air your feet, and no one looks at you strangely, and it's all just great. *sniffles somewhat in remembrance*.
Friday night in the Black Lion. Another night of singing, but this time with gazillions of people. Plus I chatted nicely with the barman and he remembered me, so he gave me my usual free drinks.
Saturday was just generally full of awesome. Breakfast with Ely Leg, a lovely service in the Methodist Chapel, and a brilliant trip to the beach. I built a kingdom! And dug a hole. And lots of people went off for a walk and built a VERY impressive castle. Photos on Sarah's facebook. And other people played rugby. It was all marvellous fun.
The Easter Vigil was as beautiful as ever, and now in a very shiny new church. With solar panels, and underfloor heating and things. It is very new, only completed a few weeks back. Utterly gorgeous, though confusingly modern. The candlelit procession was gorgeous, and the peace was the best ever, I hugged at least sixty people. And, as usual, I got completely drenched in the blessing with the water. Thanks a lot Ben...
The Paschal Party was great, everyone did beautifully, and we sang our wonderous leg songs. And then I went and watched the sunrise with all the survivors, cleared up the dining room, had two bacon sandwiches, had a shower and then got ready to embrace the day. Sleep didn't really come into it.
Leaving really sucked. Just as well I had a Cambridge to go to. And three people came to meet me at the gate! Love to Adam, Luke and Mike who made the leaving Student Cross a lot less painful than it might have been. Also to Beth, who I saw a little later on. Even if I did just sit in a chair in her room and gradually fall asleep while watching the Wii. Sorry everyone...

Many things have happened since the end of Student Cross including breaking and entering, theatring, giggage and aunt visiting. I shall elaborate at some point in the near future... xxx

Flesh on the bones

2007-04-13T23:18:00.000+01:00

Doesn't that sound icksome? Appropriate however. Well, not really THAT appropriate, since what I am going to say has nothing whatever to do with either flesh or bones. Unless we're talking about the weariness of said body bits. Aaaaaanyway get on with it woman. I think this year I will do a 'highlights of Student Cross' post, rather than attempting to write about each day in turn. It should be jolly. If I can remember anything. If it all sounds very weird, that's because it probably is quite, and if it isn't funny, well that's your own fault for not being there. So ner. Okay, so onwards:

Friday evening, meeting all the folks from last year and those new walkers. Especially Yealin, who walked in, looked aghast at the large wooden cross reposing on the floor and asked, in absolute horror, what exactly it was doing there. No one had quite explained you see... Also, the absolute AGE that it took to fix the cross together. See, last year I did it and it all went much more smoothly...:D
The 'approximate timings' in the songbook. Last year I requested that we were given a vague idea of the distance between stops, in order that I might not eat too many cakes in one go. We were therefore presented with a spreadsheet with such timings as 'Departure: 0953', 'Rest: 1147'.
The woman-eating cat. It sat on Ann-Marie and refused to move, before beginning to nibble energetically at her tshirt. And then dribbling everywhere. And putting its tail in the biscuits.
Roydon, the awesome new lunch stop. We were told to expect 'at least the ingredients with which to make sandwiches'. We arrived to garlic bread, jacket potatoes, soup and multitudes of chocolatey things. Ooh and grapes. Mmm...was so good...
St. Edmund's, and much table football playing. I think I won at least a couple of games... Also, much guitar playing and singing along, and then chattering until the early hours. Which hurt someone rather more than me the next morning :D. Particularly when combined with gin and cider.
Beautiful Palm Sunday service. I was Pontius Pilate. I'm still feeling a vague sense of guilt... Especially since SOMEONE made us late...(this is the same someone as before by the way)
Rather wonderful homemade hot cross buns at the Swan Teashop. Also, a very nice stay in Royston with a nice old lady, in which I out-ate a rugby player, much to my pride. Also, Sunday is always good. Only 13.5 miles!
Yummy sausage rolls at Fowlmere (do you ever get the feeling I base things around food quite a lot?) and actually meeting a parishioner under the age of 65. I think he was 16. It was exceptionally exciting.
Cambridge. All of it. It was wonderful. We had a beautiful penitential service. Which, randomly enough, included a story about bees... And the weirdest vegetarian option for dinner EVER (two onion bhajis, new potatoes and peas). And then going to King's with Sarah and seeing Beth and Adam and probably COMPLETELY bewildering them as we laughed hysterically for twenty minutes. I think we may have sung at them... Oh dear... And then an evening with Adam, which was marvellous.
Walking along the towpath and saying 'oooh at this point there's only 300m of the race left!' 'oooh this corner is horrible' etc. Yay for rowing! Plus I was back traffic, so no cross carrying. And due to the fact that it was a tow path, no traffic. Woo!
Chips! And smoked salmon sandwiches! And amusing photos! And ULTIMATE pegging! Pegging was great fun. You should get me to tell you about it one day. Photos on facebook...
Burwell once again outdid itself on the cakes front. Utterly gorgeous. Plus a roaring log fire. And such very friendly people! And we met the nice farmer who grows the potatoes for our dinner, which is always rather exciting.
Fordham, listening to the work in progress on that year's leg songs, which were frankly wonderful. Hurrah for the Taylers! I shall probably publish some of the lyrics at some point. They were mostly about cake. And ibuprofen. And blister plasters. These things are important to a pilgrim! Also, racing Sarah up the hill. Never before have I laughed so much at a reaction to running...

Okay I got up to Tuesday. I shall continue at a time when I can remember more...xxx

Back at last

2007-04-11T11:49:00.000+01:00

Well, I have returned at last. And an utterly, utterly wonderful week and a half I have had. I shall go into more detail at some other point, although probably not quite so much detail as I did last year, since that took up about 4000 words. Which was probably slightly excessive. However, 179 of my 203 Student Cross photos are now on facebook should you care to peruse them.

I walked lots. No blisters or aches though. Hurrah! I sang lots. So much so that by the end of the week I had lost my voice. I ate lots. Though not quite so much as last year. I even got an award for eating. I prayed lots. As I suppose you might expect on a pilgrimage. I posed lots. And got into the newspaper woo! Also, am on the BBC website. Exciting or what? And I did many other things. Today I shall be going to the library about books and seeing Spamalot with a multitude of wonderful people. So life is still looking up.

That was a lot of very short sentences. Love to all xxx

Student Cross once more

2007-03-30T01:14:00.000+01:00

This time when I don't blog for a while, there will be a reason behind it. This reason will be that I will be wandering around the countryside with 20ish like minded people carrying a large wooden cross. It will be marvellous. I know this for a certain fact. Or at least, as certain as you can be with thirteen years of prior experience. Next year I will be walking my 15th Student Cross, I will be 20 years old, and I will be striding through my 1000th Student Cross mile. Quite a year :-). So this year I have to make it extra good so it doesn't feel bad about the momentousness of next year. Hurrah!

Plus this time I will be walking through Cambridge, so not only do I get SX joy I ALSO get the joy of getting to see extra lovely people for at least one night. I was in Cambridge this week in fact, visiting Adam and the libraries, and all the other beautiful people who are still residing in that fair city. It was very marvellous. I libraried appropriately, stayed in bed far too long each day (oh the glories of a true lie in!), went for a gorgeous walk along the river with Adam, had a picnic, sat on back court and realised just how divinely lucky I am, ate yumptious food, sat in the bar with lovely people, watched Pan's Labyrinth, saw the wonders of the Wii... And all in three days :-). What a busy bee I was.

And today I tried an entirely new type of occupation, at Imperial College, doing all sorts of thrilling administrative things. Oh well. It can go on my CV, and it pays reasonably well, and I guess those are two important things. I was so tired earlier, and now I've woken up. One day my body will realise that it really needs to sleep before 3:30am on occasion...

Love to all, I shall return in some number of days xxx

And some details...

2007-03-22T23:53:00.000Z

Hello my beautiful ones. I can't quite work out where I finished on that last post. It was all a bit of a jumble. A collection of occurrences rather than a careful narrative. Rather as my essays are supposed to be. Grouped into nice neat, coherent paragraphs, rather than one long ramble. Or at least that's what I attempt to do...whether it works or not is rather a different matter... Anyway. I haven't quite decided whether narrative or grouping will be the mode of story this time round. Though I do seem to be doing particularly well on the pointless ramble... I loves me some good rambling, so I do. Anyway. When shall I start? February 26th seems to make sense I suppose. So, let us delve into the deepest depths of the past three weeks or so... *twirly spinny music commences*

*twirly spinny music ends in discord* Actually, I just attempted a narrative and it was boring and rubbish. So I shall see if I can go for the other option. *twirly spinny music starts again*

So what shall I start with on this epic journey I wonder? I think...picnics, and their recent proliferation in my life. Or at the very least, the habit I got into of lazing about in the sun. On both the Wednesday and the Thursday of the week beginning March 5th I took myself off to Bodley's Court to sit upon a bench in that glorious sunshine which now seems to have been overtaken by clouds and snow. On the first occasion I finished reading 'Watching the English', which I heartily recommend, and on the second I finished 'Timothy's Book', which I also recommend, particularly if you are a fan of tortoises. According to Fiona I looked most romantic on that second time, particularly when my phone suddenly started playing classical music at me... I have also, on two occasions, had the joy of picnic lunches with Adam, once in Bodley's and once on the riverbank, where we were constantly gazed at by curious ducks and passing tourists. It occurs to me that, if it was any easier to capsize punts, we would have an awful lot of very, very soggy tourists wandering around the streets of Cambridge. The first picnic was rather an impromptu one, but the second was a full blown affair of French bread, pitta bread, grapes, bananas, humous, chicken and so on. Mmm... Also, we took a blanket, so it was truly a proper picnic.

Next I shall move onto...the world of music. King's Voices has continued its onward tred, with Thursday rehearsals and Monday evensong, but on Sunday 11th March we were able to dazzle the world (or at least the small proportion of the world which came to watch) with the glories of the Bach Magnificat in D Major. It was utterly marvellous, I adore singing in the chapel, and lots of lovely friends came to watch, and Bach is oh so very twiddly... Hurrah! Actually that might be all the music that has been in my life...so...on to other sorts of performances! We went off to see ICE at the ADC (ICE being Improvised Comedy Ents for the uninitiated amongst you) and they were as fabulously wonderful as they always are. Plus I was front of housing so I got to see it free. Plus I was being official photographer, so I got to sit in the front row and snap away the whole way through. Marvellous fun! We went to see them again, with a different and rather smaller cast, at the CMS (maths faculty) the next week, where various of the jokes were maths related, but not to too great an extent, and throughout which I was able to eat my dinner. Comedy, good food, and good company, what more could a girl ask? What more indeed? We went to the ADC once again, this time to see something of an altogether different sort. This time it was 'Copenhagen', a play about the discovery of the physics necessary for the creation of the A-bomb. It was an absolutely brilliant play, beautifully acted, very interesting, very dramatic in parts. Even if I didn't understand every bit of physics mentioned...

And then...ah yes! There was what was clearly the most important performance of all. The one I was in :D. For Cinderella, that which we had for so long been looking forward to and rehearsing so hard for (*snigger*) finally came about. We performed first in Fulbourn Hospital, where the audience was most appreciative and laughed in all the right places, as well as the places where we forgot our lines, or wandered on stage when we weren't supposed to... Then came the Sue Ryder Nursing Home in Ely, which is for people between the ages of 18 and 65 with degenerative diseases, so this was a rather quieter audience. But seriously...I know it sounds terribly cliched but...their smiles were totally worth any lack of clapping. You could see the appreciation in their eyes. And afterwards they all wanted their photos taken with us. It was just lovely. And then...the rather different...Student Performance! And yes it does deserve the capital letters. And it was great! Even if we did suddenly have ten entrances instead of one. Including an upstairs. And lots of running up and down to the balcony. And possibly some line forgetting. And prop forgetting. But this audience was very noisy in its appreciation, which is always fun. Plus it contained my parents and about eight good friends, and that makes any audience a marvellous one. And then of course there was the after show party. Richard joined me for the festivities, and he didn't go into too much shock, so that's good. It was great fun, there was drinking and singing and chatting and piling up on sofas and all manner of other joyful things. More photos on facebook :D.

Now, I feel that since we have had song and acting, we should move onto films. And my, I have seen a lot of them recently. Many people seem to think I am somewhat ill educated in the film world, so have been building up my collection. I saw (admittedly for the second time) Phantom of the Opera with Beth and Adam, and that was, quite rightly, marvellous. I hope I wasn't too irritating...I have a tendency to sing along with that sort of thing... I also so Memento, which is a fantastically good film, I would recommend it to all. It is mildly confusing and rather violent in parts, but is beautifully put together, and resolves itself brilliantly at the end. Then there was Starship Troopers at Mike's, which was good fun, if far too silly to take in any way seriously. Plus the violence is so ridiculous that you don't get shocked, you just sit there going 'eew...gross!' and then giggling merrily to yourself for the next ten minutes. And then there was Becoming Jane, which was a lovely film, if entirely fiction. So long as you took it as a nice costume drama, and not an accurate representation of Jane Austen's life it was great. And latest of all, Lady and the Tramp with Richard. Watch it! Everyone! We alternately aaawed and giggled throughout. Marvellous fun.

Okay what next...the Highland Ball I think. Arun, Roisin and I made the long and wending journey on the X5 to Oxford to join the celebrations of the Annual Highland Ball. We were staying in the room of a very, very kind friend of Arun's (another Richard, just to confuse things), and it was good fun. We had a rehearsal in the afternoon, then went for a bit of a wander around Oxford, before getting changed and going out to dinner. Arun wore a kilt! I am of the firm belief that ANY man looks better in a kilt. Seriously. Kilts are amazing. Everyone male reading this should buy one. The ball itself was lovely, we danced as many dances as we could- they were neither called nor walked through so we had to rely in the main on the goodwill of our partners yelling instructions at us for most of them. Everyone was beautifully dressed, and there were two lovely displays, one of country dancing and one of the exceptionally exciting highland sword dancing. Very pretty, and very complicated, and swords! (Sorry the picture is so dark...)

The evening, however, ended in tragedy. One of the girls we had got to know on the minibus, Liz, sat down during a dance, feeling unwell. She collapsed, and despite the efforts of a doctor, and Arun, and several other people attempting to revive her, she never recovered. It was a horrible end to a wonderful evening. On that rather unhappy note, I have other sad news to impart. The 26th February saw me travelling to London to attend the funeral of the father of one of my closest friends. We celebrated the life lived, and grieved that it had been taken away while he was still so young. Sometimes life doesn't seem fair. All my love to my friend once more. We won't forget him.

Those two occasions were the saddest of the past three weeks. I shall attempt to move back onto more cheerful topics. What is the most cheerful thing I can think of? Hmm...parties! There was of course the CULES party, but there was also, after ICE at the CMS (far too many TLAs) we had a fabulous party in the room of Luke. As far as I know there was little reasoning behind it, we merely felt we had not gathered in a long time, and that this must be rectified. Oh yes, and Adam's brother and his friend were up from London. It was great! We partied beautifully. I seem to remember sitting on the outside ledge of a window at some point. That was good fun :D. I was, however, horrendously tired for some reason (I'd probably been rowing that morning...) and so retired at a comparatively sensible time, along with Adam who was ill. The other Adam, not the one whose brother was in Cambridge. Gosh how confusing it all is. Other parties...oooh there was Fiona's birthday. That was great fun. We had curry, and then pizza and then we made cocktails! These were special cocktails you understand. They had been planned for a long time. Buggery on Ice: baileys and vodka and lemon juice and things, which tasted alright as long as you drank them before they curdled... Love with a Cousin: gin, cranberry juice, golden syrup and tinned fruit salad, actually surprisingly yummy. Odd what combinations taste good... If you can guess the reasons for the ingredients I'll give you a prize :).

And finally (or at least, I really hope finally...) I have seen lovely lovely people. I saw Fan when he came up to Cambridge, and had lunch with him. He came to see the dress rehearsal of Cinders, which was even more full of mistakes than the performances (I believe he has some photos on facebook :D) but was very enjoyable. I twirled around in my skirt lots. I had dinner with Adam (yes I know, I see him lots, but still, I had to get it in somewhere) at Strada, which is an Italian restaurant of utter divinity. Fabulous food, even better desserts, a lovely atmosphere, very attentive staff, free bottled water... We should all go there and feast. I also, after my return to London, had dinner with Chris in Pasta Brown, which is another wonderful Italian. I love Italian. Mmm... We also went for a wander around the place, ending up in Waterstones once it got too horrendously cold... We got snowed on! In March! Madness! And then yesterday I went to Richard's house for a day of wonderousness. I arrived, we went to Sainsbury's for some essential ingredients, and then we baked cupcakes. They were SO tasty! Mmm...chocolatey goodness. And we had pasta with pesto for lunch, which can really only be a good thing.

AND we learnt how to knit, as is graciously modelled by Richard there, AND we watched Lady and the Tramp. It was fantabulous. Oh yes and today I went to the St. Bride Print Library and sat in blissful solitude for three hours, consuming book after book about medieval book production. Mmm...

I don't care if I missed anything. I'm done for today :) xxxxx

Home again

2007-03-20T11:44:00.000Z

I am home. London home, rather than Cambridge home. It is very odd. But not quite so traumatic as last time I think, which is good. Shorter holiday, more work to do, Student Cross to look forward to. Plus going back to Cambridge for three days next week helps...:-). I got back Sunday evening and spent the rest of the day drifting about uselessly, not entirely sure what to do, but now I am slightly more back in the swing. Even if I did get up an hour and a half later than I had intended. Ah well... So far I have made huge long lists of past paper questions for my exams at the very beginning of next term, and this afternoon I intend to attempt to make a start on answering them. Goody :D.

At some point I shall update on life. It has been pretty good. There have been dinners, and plays, and films, and all manner of other jolly things. Adam has been ill, which has sucked lots, but now he is getting better, and that rocks lots. I have seen a Richard and a Chris, which I hadn't done in yonks, so that was particularly lovely. And now I'm going to go and eat a very early lunch before settling down for an afternoon in the middle ages. Mmmm...heavenly...

Love to all xxx

The weather

2007-03-10T17:55:00.000Z

As an English person, it is of course my place, indeed almost my civic duty, to talk to you about the weather. Normally I wouldn't do this at any greater length than 'nice day today, isn't it?'. However, the weather recently has been worthy of note. Finally, English weather seems to have got it just right. It might be a little chilly, but it's only March, we can expect little else. Other than that, Cambridge has, for the past few days, been bathed in gloriously beautiful sunshine. The sky above has been as blue as blue can be, only occasionally decked out with little white clouds. It has been divine. Twice have I taken a book to Bodley's Court and sat on a bench for two hours, basking in the glory. And in the night time, at least twice, it has chucked it down with rain. What more could we ask? Not only am I happy with the sunshine, the gardens and spring flowers are not being deprived of their watering. It's amazing. I am truly in awe of the weather at the moment.

That was the most random post ever. It might be to do with the fact that I didn't have any lunch xxx

Er...hmm...

2007-02-25T17:08:00.000Z

I realise I haven't done a proper blog in rather a long time. Which means an awful lot has happened. Which means I might not exactly have time to say in a lot of detail what has been going on. But let us try to remember basically what has occurred in the past...er...oh dear lord it's a month...

There was Burns' Night, which happened twice. Once formally, and once at the house of Hane and Toby. Both were rather fabulous celebrations, both included delicious haggis and neeps and tatties, and good alcohol, one involved bagpipes and the other the ocarina, one involved the Ode to the Haggis and a Scottish toast, the other involved divinely delicious cheesecake and masterly piano playing, one involved around two hundred people and the other involved six people. Photos are available on request, or on facebook (yay facebook!) but I shall try and keep those to a minimum or this post will end up looking terrifyingly long.

I have also been going to the Reel Club nice and regularly, as well as two of the Round Ceilidhs, which have been absolutely fantastic. I absolutely adore dancing, it gives you the most marvellous feeling. The first ceilidh was ridiculously packed, and had the best band EVER- they had a hurdy gurdy, and an electric violin, and various weird and wonderful instruments I can't remember. I'm sure Hannah would be kind enough to remind me of their name. There was also a salsa demonstration which was pretty cool. I'm not convinced my body could bend in anything like the positions they twisted themselves into... At the second ceilidh, the Reel Club displayed, Schiehallion (how in heaven's name DO you spell that??) and Mairie's Hangover, and they were absolutely awesome. Truly a sight to behold. The ladies all wore nice white dresses with pretty tartan shawl things, and the men were all kilted up, with smart jackets and sporrans and the right shoes and socks. Beautiful!

Various films have occurred. Wyrd Sisters, which was naturally fab, it being Terry Pratchett and all. And yes, I had seen it before, but who cares? It's a great film. I also saw the King of Scotland, twice (once with Fan, once with a multitude), which was exceptionally disturbing but also very, very good, and Requiem for a Dream, which is also good but ridiculously depressing. On Chinese New Year we got together and made a massive stir fry, including egg fried rice made with goose eggs, and then watched Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Well. Most of it. The download managed to cut out a massive chunk in the middle but it was a while before any of us noticed... As well as films, various play related happenings have gone on. We went to see The Seagull, by Chekhov, which was nicely put on, but rather unfortunately Chekhov. I guess that wasn't really the actors' fault... Many Cinderella rehearsals have been happening, and I know some of my lines. Honest I do. I'll learn them a bit better tomorrow I promise...

Various parties have occurred, mostly in the rooms of Olaf and Luke, because you know, that's where parties have to be. Actually...maybe just Olaf's...I don't seem to remember having been in Luke's this term so far... Anyway, they have been great fun, with lots of drinking and chatting and dancing to bad music, and singing to bad music, and various card games and other games and jollities. At the one last weekend Sarah was here, as were Toby and Kirsten, so that added greatly to the joy of the evening. In my diary, I have marked occasional things as 'parties' and others as 'gatherings'. I think what went around my mind was that a party had to have some sort of point to it, a birthday for example, whereas a gathering can happen at the drop of a hat. Yay hats. I want to buy a hat. In Easter term, I'm going to buy a white dress and Adam is going to buy a straw boater, and we're going to take a blanket and a picnic to the park and lounge around by the edge of the Cam. Idyllic or what? I'm going to pretend it's actually the nineteenth century and I'm being courted. As well as parties there have been CULES pub meets. Well. I've only been to one *looks slightly ashamed* but that was excellent fun, and there were gazillions of marvellous people to talk to.

Speaking of CULES, one of the most recent happenings has been the CULES annual dinner and after party, which took place on Friday. It was absolutely fantastic- black tie, so I got to wear my beautiful ball dress once more. Everyone looked terribly snazzy, and we started the evening with Pimm's before moving along to wine and port and other such niceness. The food was divinely gorgeous, we started with Caesar salad, before moving onto supreme of goose with juniper berries and seasonal vegetables, and finishing with chocolate truffle torte and fruits of the forest. Divinity itself. And then we had a speech from a highly amusing person called Ed (or Genry, if you are the KGB) and lots of singing, and then I realised I couldn't possibly go home before the party, so off we went to the House of Cool (as opposed to the House of Light Entertainment, which is slightly further away). There, rather unexpectedly, I was sacrificed. It was terribly excited. I had my hands bound, and I was lain on the floor and then given a sleeping draught, and then I got stabbed in the heart. I got to scream really, really loudly. Several people thought it had gone horribly wrong *snigger*. And now I'm officially a priestess, which is mighty exciting. And I got to wear such a pretty white dress, but I didn't get to keep it...*sniff*. Once again, photos are there to view on facebook.

What else has happened? Ooh one day I went to Bury St Edmund's with choir, and we sang in the cathedral there, which was exciting. And then I came home and went to Newnham, where Hannah fed me gorgeous gorgeous food. Real food! With lots of ingredients! And gin and tonic! We had a huuuuuuuge shepherd's pie and then ice cream with home made chocolate chip cookies. I felt like a very, very contented pig. Seriously. Make her cook you shepherd's pie. It is to die for. The company was pretty good too :).

Rowing has also kept happening, occasionally with alarming frequency. Last week I was out four times in four days. It was supposed to be five times, but one outing unfortunately got cancelled...*coughcoughahemcough*. All that was because Friday saw the Getting on Race for the Lent bumps, which was very scary. We sadly didn't get on, but I'm sure we have a very good chance next term. And if I'm entirely honest, while it would have been awesome to get on I can't say I'm too dreadfully sorry about not having to race every day next week... Just so long as they decide which crew to put me on and stop making me row for both it'll be fine :).

I also had the joy of seeing my parents (I'm using the word also far too much in this post) as they came up to watch me sing at evensong last Monday. It was a particularly good service I have to say, so I'm glad they were here to see it. Also it meant I got free afternoon tea and free dinner, which is not something to be sniffed at. I think I might actually be nearly done now... Hurrah! I've been to the union with Adam a couple of times, to watch the debates, and at the last one I met Miss Helen Browncross, with whom I am sure you are familiar, and Miss Charlotte Thomas, with whom you are probably not. It was lovely to see them however, and I found out that Charlotte will be up here with me next year. Even if Helen is going to the other place. Grrr... We love them really. Honest. They were there for the semi finals and finals of the...er...England Schools' Debating Competition I think. Sadly we didn't see them debate, but I am firmly convinced that they would have been better than the girls' school that did get into the final.

Work has been tootling along as usual, I am still adoring the course with all my heart and soul, although I have rather less time to read this week due to certain unforeseeable circumstances (which is obviously why I'm blogging...) so it may get a wee bit stressful around Tuesday time. No matter. All will be well and lovely. I hope your lives are busy and fulfilling. I'm really hungry. Damn giving up snacks for Lent... Love you all :) xxxx

Dear Secret Admirer,

2007-02-23T18:16:00.001Z

Thank you.

Dear Secret Admirer,

2007-02-20T18:55:00.000Z

Thank you ever so much for the lovely chocolates, they were greatly enjoyed. I hope I don't seem presumptious, but would it be at all possible for me to get two tickets to the St. John's May Ball? Or Trinity, that would also be nice. If you could just pop them in my pigeon hole (429) it would be much appreciated.

Thank you again, it's really very good of you,

Lots of love,

Helen

*crosses fingers and waits in anticipation* By the way, I will post properly soon, honest...

Secret admirer.

2007-02-14T13:08:00.000Z

Apparently I have one. Three days ago, I got a package in the post, which told me not to open it until Valentine's Day. Being the good little girl that I am, and showing the most fabulous self control, I adhered to this ruling and did not open it until this morning (admittedly 12:30am but still). More self control, because I didn't even open the card, which I thought would tell me who sent it. So this morning, I was greeted by an utterly gorgeous box of pink champagne truffles from that house of utter divinity, Hotel Chocolat.

So I am happy. Really I am. It's a lovely gift. However...I want to know who sent them! Far from helping, the card just made things more confusing. Inside, all it said was two lines of a sonnet I wrote about a year and a half ago. I thought someone had done their research on my blog, but Richard tells me my sonnet is not on my blog. Anywhere. So someone, someone remembered that sonnet. It's driving me insane! Whoever you are, it's a divine gift and an utterly gorgeous thought- I've never had an anonymous valentine before. But who are you??? Please! It's driving me mad!

CULES

2007-02-10T17:16:00.000Z

I love CULES. I have learnt from them two new songs. The first is sung as a round, to the tune of 'I like the flowers' (or something like that):

I like the leather,
I like the whips and chains,
I like the handcuffs,
Sado-masochism reigns.
Come on and find me, take me off to bed,
Singing, 'I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you,
I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you'.

Isn't it beautiful? *giggles* The other one is slightly less random, and rather more about CULES, to the tune of Rock around the Clock. Here it is:

Now the show is ended and we're off to the pub
Our energy's expended and we're off to the pub
We hope you weren't offended but we're off to the pub,
We're going to the pub tonight.

We've trod our hour upon the boards
Sung off key notes to random chords
Now this is the final song,
The dance is shaky and the words are wrong
But we're off and we're gonna get drunk in the pub tonight...

We've pulled the script to smithereens
We learnt our lines between the scenes
The second song we missed a verse
And the whole first act we forgot to rehearse
And we're off and we're gonna get drunk in the pub tonight...

The props were made in half an hour
With staples and self raising flour
The costumes all look nice and new
But they're held together with string and glue
And we're off and we're gonna get drunk in the pub tonight...

We hope you all enjoyed the show
But we really think it's time to go
We're going to the pub tonight
Drink gin and tonic 'til the broad daylight
And we're off and we're gonna get drunk in the pub toniiiiiight....

GIN

Hurrah!

I woke up for the second time...

2007-02-08T17:35:00.000Z

and what did I see? Snow! Yay! Snow everywhere and still falling! Oooh it was all divinely gorgeous. Yay! Mmm Cambridge in the snow. Happiness. Apparently I walk downstairs in a conspicuously happy manner. This makes me laugh. Yay!

Just in order to say....

2007-02-08T06:13:00.000Z

Buttercups are beautiful.
Frost, too, is fabulous.
An late-ish frost on early buttercups is utterly heavenly to look at.

If the time on this thing is correct, you may notice that it was published at a particularly stupid time. If not, it's currently 06:15. I should be rowing soon. Only I'm not. Grrr to a lack of organisation :). So soon I shall be jumping back into bed. That is a good thing in so many ways. Yesterday on the river it was -7.7C. That's cold...

While I would love to continue, my bed is now calling me rather urgently, and I can't ignore its sad cry. Have love, and joy, and laughter, and hugs. And don't watch Requiem for a Dream (fantastic film) unless you want to be quite seriously miserable.

Joy and sandwiches...

2007-01-27T16:02:00.000Z

...is my new definition of life. It makes sense to me. And the people I've explained it to I guess. Well sort of anyway. You know when you sigh in a 'oh dear why does the world always have to happen to me?' sort of way? That sort of sigh is known as salad. And you know when you sigh in a 'mmm life is bliss' sort of way? That is known as sandwiches. It's an excellent plan. You can confuse many people. Also, salad totally sums up that sort of feeling. Trust me on this. In my extremely mini health drive, which still includes plenty of chocolate and occasional boxes of chips from the van, I eat salad for lunch or dinner every day. EVERY day. It pains me.

Anyway. Onwards to actual events and things. For I promised them long, long ago and did never bring them forth. Also, this seems the best way of avoiding reading those three books I got out of the library. I'm a good girl, honest, I already read five, and those three are the last I need. So I am good, promise. By the way, if anyone feels like buying me a quite extravagent present I am in desperate need of (read: I really, really want) a silk dress. Seriously. I may have to rob a bank if I don't get one soon. Don't ask why, I have no idea. Silk is calling to me from it's beautifully soft lair... Oh bugger this isn't events. Let's start a new paragraph and see if we do any better shall we?

It occurs to me that many things have happened since I last posted in my ramblingly ordinary way. So we shall have to do a very speedy run down. *fishes out diary*. Woah I haven't said anything since I came to Cambridge... That's shocking! Right. So. I can't remember when anything happened! Term officially started on Tuesday 16th January, while lectures and so forth began on the 18th. At some point, I think before then, was Olaf's birthday party. It was his 21st don't you know. *oooh aaah*. Wow everyone's getting so elderly... Anyway, it was marvellous fun. Lots and lots of us met up and wandered over to a very nice restaurant which goes by the name of Don Pasquales. Italian dontchaknow. We ate and drank and made very merry, although it was ridiculously hot and I went rather flop. Adam seemed not to mind however, getting through his starter, his pizza and the majority of my pasta... Many items, including roses, the table, food and Adam were claimed in the name of the Italian flag (they stuck lots of them in the olives). I was a conqueror. Yay! Anyway, after that scrumptiousness, we moved off to Market Hostel, for the next bit of the party. Which was also lovelisome. Many beautiful people, too much to drink, marvellous music and bits and pieces to chomp on. What more could one ask? Oooh yes, photos:

That first is the slightly disappointing, but hilarious, ceremonial opening of the whisky. We did give him the Glenfiddich back afterwards, honest. The second is general joy and sandwiches (Richard says I look stunning. Or stunned possibly) and the third is just party goodness.

After that came the lowest point of the term so far, when I found out that my grandma died. On Friday my dad picked me up from Cambridge to make the epic journey to Durham. You remember the day with the crazy winds, when lots of people died? That was the day we were travelling. The usually four hour journey took over nine hours, and we saw huge numbers of lorries on their sides at the edges of the roads. It was quite terrifying. The weekend was spent seeing huge numbers of family members who I hadn't seen in a long time, which was nice, if sombre. The funeral was too short to pay proper tribute to my grandma's life. She was amazing. I also remembered just how huge my family is. Grandma had eight brothers, six children, eleven grandchildren and, already, five great grandchildren. And at some point she took care of every single one of us. Anyway. It was sad. But she wasn't young, and she hadn't been that happy since my grandad died.

Hmm. On to happier things. On Saturday evening, after I got back to Cambridge, I met Toby and Kirsten in the bar and we had a lovely long natter. Adam and I also half participated in a pub quiz. By which I mean we answered the questions but weren't actually officially in it. It was a nice evening. Toby bought a bottle of wine. We love Toby. On Sunday afternoon I auditioned for CULES. In fact I found out my part just today. I'm Cinderella. I am now officially terrified. But apparently I don't have to sing. That's something I guess. But soooo many lines to learn. Argh! It's only because I'm blonde. Anyone want to come see it by the way? Everyone is welcome. I can't remember what else I did that day. I'm sure it was all good fun.

Monday was a day of quite busy-ness, but not as much busy-ness as I had feared to begin with. I was supposed to have rowing, and so got up on time, but then the flag was yellow so we couldn't go out. So I went back to sleep for aaaaages and it was lovely. I had a lecture at 11am, and one at 2pm with lunch in the middle, and then I had a meeting with Dr. Sonenscher at 3:30, where he told me that my essay was good but I failed to counter argue. I had completely forgotten to counter argue anywhere in the entire essay, so that was fair. I didn't have choir because Simon let me off due to aforementioned circumstances, so I spent the afternoon with Adam doing as little as was physically possible. After dinner was the Reel Club which was, as always, marvellous fun. Although we were slightly terrified with the remembrance of the huge number of dances we have to learn for the Highland Ball... And then the bar happened, and then bed.

Tuesday was a day of essay writing, as it is always wont to be. In the evening, however, we went to see ICE (improvised comedy ents) which was absolutely marvellous as always. Chrisjim, Rich and Olaf all shone, as did a new guy called Paul, who was about three times the age of the rest of them. There was much laughter to be had, and the place was absolutely packed out, which is always a nice thing to see.

Wednesday came along and was lovely. I rowed, and it snowed, so I rowed in the snow and it was all gloriously beautiful and exciting. Yay! Between 11am and 1pm I had my first themes and sources class, which basically involved wandering around the divinely beautiful Wren Library looking at even more divinely beautiful, 800 year old manuscripts. Helen heaven. Then I was veeeeeery tired so I sat about in the bar looking wistful, before being good and digging out my notes for copying up. It took rather a long time. But no matter. Then in the evening was the 20th birthday of Arun. 20! Everyone's so very elderly. Sorry Arun... Anyway. it was great fun. We went to Yippee! which is the best name for a noodle bar ever, and I ate huuuuge amounts and it was all great. Marvellous company, chopstick fights, good wine, good food. What more could a girl ask? Afterwards we went to Olaf's room to continue the party. Sainsburys were stupid and would let Helen and me get alcohol because Chris, who wasn't drinking any of it, didn't have ID. So we went home, Chris got ID and we were successful. And we got an apology, which was sweet. And then the party continued as these things do. We ate brownies, and Arun enjoyed all his presents (DVDs, a cookbook, a photo of him and Roisin, a bottle of gin) and we drank drinks and were jolly. Photos again!

That first is Luke. Enough said really :D. The second is the cuteness which is Arun and Rebecca. The third is one of the best moments of Luke's life (he's under Adam...) and the last is the best cup EVER, showing off some of Olaf's Viking ancestry. It was a damn good party.

Ok, I haven't actually put photos for Thursday on the machine yet, so that will have to do for now. Next episode, coming soon :) xxxxxxxx

Perfect

2007-01-25T16:40:00.000Z

I am in the perfect mood. I actually don't think it's possible to be happier than I currently am without bursting at the seams. Isn't that sickening? I was walking down the hill from Fitzwilliam College and looking around, and suddenly I felt imbued with bizarre, beautiful, blissful happiness. I looked out from the hill and realised that the tallest building in Cambridge is not some vile 60s monstrosity, nor is it a great glass skyscraper. It is in fact St. John's Chapel, which, while not as glorious as our own darling chapel, is rather beautiful. And then I noticed the sky, which was blue as blue can be, with light fluffy pink clouds floating about. And I realised that I am possibly one of the luckiest people in the entire world.

I have wonderful, wonderful friends. I am at a fantastic university, in a beautiful town, in a lovely part of the country. I adore my course, love the research I have to do for essays, enjoy my lectures, have a brilliant supervisor and have just started learning about medieval books. Heaven! Not only this but I get to row, act, sing and dance with lots of beautiful people, I am going to the Burn's Night formal tonight which sounds truly fabulous, I'm going to a Highland Ball at some point in the near future, I have chocolate and choir later this evening. On the way home from my supervision I found a shop which sells AMAZING t-shirts with such gems as 'I may be small but I'm influential' across the front, which I will of coure be purchasing at the nearest possible opportunity.

I'm sure this mood can't last long. It isn't normal. But I will treasure a small part of it in the back of my mind, to look to when I'm less happy, and remind myself just how gloriously lucky I really am.

Please don't hate me.

Hello dear children

2007-01-23T15:35:00.000Z

I do apologise for the dreadful delays currently occurring in the world of this Blog. Busy-ness seems to be the order not just of the day, nor of the week, but possibly the entire term. I promise I will be good and blog as soon as I can though. I would do it now but I'm officially writing an essay...I'm 354 words in...this may take a while... The problem with this essay is that it's too easy. Do you ever get that? The sort of thing where you are convinced that it has to be more complicated than it sounds... Anyway, as I said, life has been very hectic, as Cambridge life is rather wont to be. I shall give full accounts in the next post, but let it be said that the past couple of weeks have been filled with both great amounts of joy and great amounts of sadness. We have had the loveliness of several birthdays, and there are yet more to come, as well as general random parties, seeing wonderful people again and so on. On the other end of the scale, I spent last weekend in Durham, attending the funeral of my dear grandmother.

And of course there has been work. Always work :). Speaking of which, I should probably get back to it. It confuses me writing anything quite this short. However, monasticism calls, and I must answer. Ooh yesterday I won a lolly. It has a sticker with a spelling mistake on it. Yay! Helen love Luke.

Hugs and kisses to all xxx

Dislikes of Helen

2007-01-16T02:56:00.000Z

I hate when people are casually nasty to other people and don't even notice. Or just don't care. Either way.

I hate when people die. Especially people you love.

Packing

2007-01-12T14:27:00.000Z

5 dresses
8 skirts
9 pairs of trousers
29 tops
7 jumpers

My conclusion: I own too many clothes. And yet somehow I could always do with more. Sigh...

Because all the cool kids did it

2007-01-11T01:27:00.000Z

Look at your Facebook Wall and then take the names of the last twelve people who have written on your wall. If they've posted more than once, only use their name once and skip to the next person. Got it?

1. Richard Stewart
2. Katy Wyatt
3. Arun Advani
4. Fiona Mozley
5. Adrian Coveney
6. Emily McCarthy
7. Beth Colman
8. Rose Mackworth-Young
9. Pete Newbon
10. Arabella Fiennes
11. Olaf Davis
12. Roisin Ellison

Now answer these questions:
Q: Have you ever kissed 7?
Yes

Q: What's the best memory you have of 9?
He's my grandad, we go way back. *giggle*

Q: When's the next time you're gonna see 4?
Hmm...probably Saturday if she's coming to Luke's.

Q: Is number 8 pretty?
Utterly, divinely beautiful. I'm really jealous. Damn her and her Scandinavian good looks.

Q: What was your first impression of number 10?
She was shorter than me. Quiet. This was when I was about 9, I don't remember much.

Q: How did you meet 3?
Freshers' Week. We were probably quite drunk at the time. Apparently he insulted Catholicism.

Q: Is 11 your best friend?
No, but a magical person nonetheless.

Q: Have you seen 5 in the last month?
Yup. At Adam's party. It rocked.

Q: Do you think 2 has a crush on you?
If she does, she hasn't told me :D

Q: When was the last time you saw 12?
January 4th. Ice skating etc. Awesome!

Q: Have you ever been to 1's house?
Yup. Lots of times. Going again tomorrow.

Q: When's the next time you will see number 10?
No idea. Haven't seen her in 8 years, so it might not be very soon...

Q: Are you really close to 3?
Yes, very much so. You may have seen the photos :D

Q: Have you ever been to the movies with 4?
I don't believe so. We should one day.

Q: Have you ever gotten in trouble with 2?
Nope. Maybe I should.

Q: Would you ever go out with number 6?
It seems unlikely, since I've never met her, since she is friends with Adam, and since she is female.

Q: What do you and number 3 talk about the most?
Good grief. Anything and everything.

Q: Do you even know 9?
Yup. Like I said, he's my grandad.

Q: Would you give number 3 a hug?
I very frequently do.

Q: Are you in love with number 12?
Hopelessly. She will tell you herself, I take photos of her ass to keep me company.

Q: Do you know a secret about number 8?
Yup. A couple.

Q: Describe the relationship between number 9 and number 5.
As far as I know they have never met.

Q: What is the best thing about your friendship with number 10?
It started a long time ago, and seems to have reappeared slightly.

Q: Have you ever danced with number 7?
Probably quite drunkenly at parties :)

Q: How long have you known number 12?
A term and a holiday. Though naturally it feels like forever.

Q: Have you ever been in a fight with number 8?
I actually think I never have. Which, after eight years, is fairly impressive. Not even a talking fight.

Q: Would 2 and 4 make a good couple?
Erm. If they suddenly made much better friends and turned out to be gay.

Q: Have you ever wanted to punch number 2 in the face?
Nope. She has a lovely face.

Q: Has number 1 ever met your mother?
Yup. A couple of times I think, if very briefly.

Q. How did you meet number 6?
I didn't. Hehe.

Q: What would happen if you put 10 and 11 in a room together?
Olaf would look down at Arabella from a great height and then they would have to try and think of interesting conversation.

Q: Did you ever accidentally physically hurt number 5?
Nope. At least I don't think so.

Q: What is the best memory you have with number 1?
Good god. There are way too many. It is actually not possible to choose. In his words 'my brain has 15 filing cabinets dedicated to best memories with you!'

Q: Do you live close to 7?
No, very sadly. She lives in deep and distant Norfolk grrr.

Q: What is number 2's favourite food?
I have absolutely no idea. This isn't the most exciting of quizzes is it?

Q: Out of your top 12, which one would you say is the funniest?
Richard. Or Rose, in her own special way.

Q: Who is the most flirtatious?
Richard. Or maybe Arun. It's all in good fun :D.

Q: If you could change one thing about number 8, what would it be?
I would make her have got into Trinity so she would be a five minute walk away, instead of a many hour train ride.

Q: Say something nice about number 11.
Olaf is a wonderful human being, has awesome hair, throws fabulous parties, kisses beautifully and is generally a magnificent person. Even if he does do maths.

Q: Which one lives the farthest away?
In term time, Rose, other times either Pete or Emily. Both in Leeds.

Q: Which one do you hang out with the most?
Hmm. In term time Arun, out of term time Richard.

Q: The quietest?
Er. Arabella? Katy? Not sure really.

Q: What kind of car does number 12 have?
Roisin, do you have a car? Do you even drive?

Q: Have you traveled anywhere with number 8?
To Paris, and to Edinburgh. And to Germany. And to various assorted parts of England. So yes, quite a few places. All of which were absolutely amazingly fantastic.

Q: If you gave number 3 £100 tonight, what would they spend it on?
Saving the world through SIFE. Isn't he a lovely person?

Skating and other such joy

2007-01-07T00:44:00.000Z

Hello! I was right, this has been a good week. Although I have been told that my blog is disgustingly cheerful and shouldn't be allowed, so I feel I should make some sort of an effort to be miserable. *cough* Ugh my feet hurt I have to work too much I'm fed up now. Okay that's all I've got. Well I did my best. Anyway. The week. It has generally been as disgustingly cheerful as my life generally seems to be. Although now it turns out that lots of people are going back to Cambridge tomorrow/the next day and I am VERY jealous. Oh dear lord and now Streets of London has come on. I may cry.

Oooh look I nearly did genuinely miserable just then! Now I can get on with the post proper. Monday was work from 12 until 8. That shift sucks, because it means you aren't properly free in the morning OR the evening. Grrr. Then Tuesday I worked 6-1. I think I spent most of that day fast asleep in bed. I was ridiculously shattered. Oh and I remember, my feet stopped hurting at about four in the afternoon. It was a wonderful feeling. Plus my shift was great, I spent the whole time being expectantly happy about the next three days, which promised wonderous marvels and joyous times. And indeed I was not disappointed.

Wednesday dawned bright, but not too dreadfully early (actually I lie, I got up at 9. That time doesn't usually exist) and I took myself to Oxford Street. Oxford Street! Yay! Be warned, tales of shopping lie ahead. I met my Emilia, which was fabulous of course and we nattered away about everything and nothing for the next seven hours, while perusing the wonders that are the sales. Oh yes. You heard me correctly my friend. Seven hours. We really know how to shop. Anyway, it was good fun, and yielded much. I got a gorgeous twirly skirt, another slightly less twirly skirt, a nice brown lacey strappy top, a lovely red fitted shirt, a pair of slightly sparkly corduroy trousers and a pretty, casual-ish dress. Then we went to Harrods (Harrods!) to look around and pretend to be posh. They were selling water at two bottles for 85p, so we got some. However, this did not leave us with a Harrods bag to sport, so we decided to look at the clothes sale. The cheapest item we found was £30 and not very attractive, so we thought maybe socks would be cheaper. We failed to find socks. Gah! However, I did find a very nice bra which was terrifically reduced, so a Harrods bag was at last obtained. Yay! How many men shied away from that sentence because it had the word bra in it? *giggle* Then I had to rush off to Kings Cross, due to the fact that I was already slightly late for meeting Adam, so farewells were bid, tears were shed (well not really) and hugs were dished out bountifully by both parties. And then Adam was there and happiness ensued. We went to Fire and Stone, easily the best pizza restaurant ever, and had wine and good food and amazing puddings. Mmm... And I utilised my 'you are a wonderful customer' card and got 10% off. Yay! And then we went home and faffed around with the various random books that exist in my room (some of which have very interesting facts contained within) and eventually went to sleep.

The next day dawned too early again, but this time there were pain au chocolats, so it was mildly better. And we left slightly late (totally Adam's fault...he had tea...) but didn't arrive too dreadfully tardily at Charing Cross, where we met Arun, Luke, Roisin, Fiona, Jenny and Jordan. We did NOT meet Adam, because he was late. Not just a bit late. VERY late! But we met him eventually, in Covent Garden, and we wandered for a while around the beauteous place (psst, it is now two days later. Apologies for the delay) before going into Chinatown and finding a very lovely Japanese restaurant in which to have lunch. Yeah...so it wasn't Chinese...no matter... Jenny and Jordan I assume had already eaten, for they disappeared off to do worthy, cultured type things. The food was scrumptious, and very reasonably priced, Roisin learnt how to use chopsticks, and there was both a green t-shirt and green tea, which made me happy:

After that we sent Adam (Bull rather than Kessler) off to find Jenny and Jordan, as he didn't want to participate in the next bit of joy, which was...skating! Yay! I absolutely adore skating, despite the slightly sore feet and legs that tend to go along with the activity. Also the fact that I tend to suck completely for the first ten minutes and have to cling desperately onto the side until the blades on my boots feel even vaguely straight. Ah and it was marvellous. You should all go to Broadgate, it's a nice enough ice rink and far cheaper than the other outdoor places (£5 for two hours instead of £12 for one), and also you can have lots of joyful giggles trying to work out and break as many rules as possible. Which of course we did. It all started with me being told off for taking a photo while on the ice, which I thought was a stupid rule, and continued as we broke the following rules:

No mobile phones
No food
No sitting on the sides
No kicking the ice
No chasing each other at top speed
No conga lines
No sharing someone else's coat while they are still wearing it
No applying make up while skating
No reading Hume aloud to an avid audience

Very irritatingly, I seem to have forgotten the last one we got. Gah. It might have been quite funny. We also found out that it is allowed to skate through people's legs, lift people, dance, sing at an irritating volume and do crosswords while skating backwards. Hehehe. They must have been so glad when we left...

That second photo is Luke reading to us from Hume. I can't remember what was said. I do remember laughing hilariously though. I didn't think Hume was that funny... The first is just a group photo I thought was rather pretty. There are other photos of us looking terribly athletic and/or doing crosswords on facebook.

Next we re-met Jordan, Jenny and Adam back at Leicester Square, where sadly Jordan and Jenny had to leave us. The rest of us took ourselves first to Sainsbury's in Brixton and then to Luke's house (ten minutes walk from my house! I love coincidence) for general eating, drinking, and merriness. Featured in the evening were Roisin's 10 mega pixel camera, a didgeridoo, a banjo, the film 'Adaptation', one handed press ups, sit ups, gin and tonic, vodka and orange, wine and the wonderful sense of being among friends. It was very joyful. We had some odd conversations. Some enlightening. Some worrying. Some just funny. Some, I believe, may even have been vaguely intelligent. All in all, a good time.

I love that last photo almost entirely for the expression on Luke's face. He claims he has no idea how it got there. Arun, Roisin and Adam left late-ish that evening, Adam and I on Friday morning and Fiona at some unspecified time after that. I first took Adam back to mine and then sent him off on the train back to Leeds, and then work occurred. It was the end of a lovely three days. Work was insufferably busy, but we still finished on time, and Mark bought us all a shot each, and Lorna and I were allowed two double vodkas each. So I drank rather a lot rather quickly, but it was all in jollity. Saturday was work followed by church and dinner with the parents. Sunday was work preceded by Richard, who had a dreadful time getting to my house due to a complete deficit of trains. We spent a long time watching the 100 greatest (ha) film soundtracks before going on a long trek to find the house of Dave's uncle. The trek would have been shorter but...well...never get Richard to remember a road name for you. It won't work. Then we watched some of his pantomime on DVD and then off we both set. Then it was today. I worked too much, but it was very quiet so it didn't matter too much. And I had great fun lighting approximately 65 candles all over the pub. I'm easily pleased.

Love love xxxxxxxxx

Happy New Year dears

2007-01-01T21:52:00.000Z

Gosh. Once again it has become, rather suddenly, a whole new year. This one is 2007, which makes sense really, all considered. How did you all spend your evenings? Actually, for many of you I know, but I figure it's good to ask anyway. Personally I was working, but that is no matter. It wasn't as bad as it might have been, it wasn't particularly horribly busy, and Lorna and Rachel were there, and we got ten (which may slightly have stretched to twenty) minutes off at midnight to watch the London Eye fireworks from the staff room, and rapidly get rid of the triple vodkas I concocted. It slightly depressed me that my new year's kiss was a very chaste peck on the cheek from my boss, and another from a customer who'd been dared by his mates to kiss all the barmaids. But then I suppose I stocked up on kisses at the Christmas formal. And then after work I had another reasonably rapid triple vodka and then ran away home. Or at least, I attempted to run away home. In actual fact I ran to the bus stop and then had to wait an hour and a half before a bus came that would actually stop. Grrr. And it was jam packed. Admittedly with mostly very nice people, but still!

Anyway. Apart from that. I appear to have lost my diary, which is really unhelpful, particularly as it has all my lectures for next term in it, as well as things I've done in the past week. I must try to find it. Okay I've found it. You can't tell but it's now ten minutes later. Yay! So, now armed with my timepiece (sort of), I can tell you what I've been doing. It has mostly been work really, again with happy highlights once in a while. Last Tuesday, otherwise known as Boxing Day, my father kindly drove me to West Wickham (no public transport), where I met, unsurprisingly, Richard. We had a marvellous day of impromptu photography, eating and film watching. The photography started when I decided to take a picture of the rather magnificent Christmas cake:

and continued in the usual fashion, with both of us attempting to get photos of the other without that one noticing. Did that sentence make any sense whatsoever? No, I didn't think so. Anyway, examples:

Aren't we pretty? Anyway. The food we ate generally consisted of turkey, and icing, and other such Christmassy delights. The films we watched were Amelie, provided by me, and The Wicker Man, provided by Richard. Amelie was utterly lovely, completely bizarre, but marvellous. And oh so very sweet! The Wicker Man was...well...The Wicker Man really. I knew vaguely what was going to happen, but it still made me cry rather. Especially since they didn't just burn him they burnt a load of innocent baby animals too! Gah. So yeah. It was good, if also weird, but nasty at the same time. And then Richard's mother kindly drove me home (still no transport), from whence I got a bus to Charing Cross to meet a Simon. Simon from Student Cross. We went to a new pub, just off Trafalgar Square and had several drinks, and a chocolate puddle pudding. Mmm...chocolate puddles... We nattered none stop for a large number of hours (four I think), before we were summarily dismissed from the pub (we weren't barred honest, the pub closed) and we went off to our respective homes. It was an extremely good Boxing Day, one of the best I've had.

Then Thursday appeared, and so did Fan. Four hours late, but at least he got here :D. Apparently he overslept. Things really don't change, do they? *giggle* Anyway. It was marvellous, because I hadn't seen him in absolute yonks. Seriously. Months. Was ridiculous. We exchanged presents- I am now the proud owner of 'The Book of General Ignorance', and cannot wait to get down to reading it. I also got some catapultable pigs. They look fun, if significantly dangerous. And we watched Doctor Who, which Fan had very kindly downloaded for me. It was marvellous, even with Catherine Tate in a lead role. She was actually pretty good. I was surprised. And Fan ate a sandwich which titled itself 'Breakfast'. I wasn't convinced, so fed him some fruit as well. And possibly chocolate too. Anyway, it was all very jolly.

On Friday, after work, I was joined by large numbers of my family. My mother, father, uncle John, aunt Margarethe, aunt Bonny, cousin Caroline, cousin Andrew, cousin Sylvia, and cousins once removed Julien, Alena and Caelan. I hadn't seen the three kids or my cousins in absolutely ages, so that was most lovely. They are, without doubt, the most beautiful children in the world. Seriously. You probably have to meet them to get it, but they are amazing. If I let myself, I would continue waffling for the rest of the post about them, so I shall restrain myself. We had a very nice dinner at the pub, with much laughter and chattering, reminiscences, and generally being a sickeningly perfect happy family. Photos, photos, before I say far too much and you all get even more bored:

They had to leave reasonably early due to being little and having to fly to distant places the next morning, which was a shame. But I will probably be going over to Minneapolis in the summer, and Caroline is coming over from Germany again in February, so hopefully it won't be too long before I see them all again.

On Saturday Richard arrived on my doorstep at the rather impressive hour of 11am (by impressive I mean that when I get to his house at 11 he generally has to jump out of bed when I knock...) and we spent a happy six hours doing really very little. Well. We watched Being John Malkovich, which was incredibly weird, in a different way to Amelie, but also very excellent. And apart from that...I have no idea how we managed to fill the rest of the day... Ask Richard, I'm sure he remembers. And then yesterday, before work, I visited my aunt Bonny and we chatted for an hour and a half or so. She broke her leg a year back and still finds it very difficult to walk, so visiting her is the easiest. Especially nice when the conversation includes a promise of a trip to Australia next Christmas... Woo!

And now it is today. And nearly tomorrow in fact. This week is promising. Too much work, yes, but Adam is arriving on Wednesday, and I am carousing with a bunch of Cambridge people on Thursday, so that should be joyful. Love love, a happy and prosperous 2007 to you all xxx

Merry Christmas

2006-12-26T01:53:00.000Z

Merry Christmas my darlings. I understand that I am about two hours late in this greeting but ah well. No matter. It's the thought that counts, right? I have spent the last two days in blissful peace and quiet, not doing very much at all. There has been the moving of books and furniture into my room, which is now almost completely finished. It feels weird not having posters covering all the paint, but I suppose they had to go sometime. And all my teddy bears have been rescued from the shed where they were so callously dumped by my cold hearted parents, so they are once again surrounding my bed. I also read a book all about illuminated manuscripts, which was very interesting, and I made many a note. So now I just have one more book and an essay left. The book I will read this week definitely, the essay I will do as soon as time permits. On Sunday I went to Christmas mass, which was very lovely. Preceded by some carols, and then was nice and carolly all through. And the little girl I used to babysit read a reading, which was very exciting of course. And a little boy arrived dressed as an angel and a girl as a shepherd. Stomp on those gender stereotypes my children! So yes that was fabulous.

And then today (well, yesterday) was Christmas, and it was also lovely. I awoke at about 10:30 (gone are the days of jumping out of bed at 6am :D) and opened presents with my parents. I got a very nice cardigan, necklace and earrings, several books, a new scrap book book and 'Amelie' on DVD. I think that was everything. The books were 'Thunderbolt Kid', 'The Virgin's Lover', 'The Pedant's Return', 'Timothy's Story' and 'The Time Traveller's Wife'. I look forward with great zest and happiness to reading them all. I also got 'Being John Malkovich' on DVD, 'The Amorous Antics of Old England' and some pretty socks from Emilia, wonderful friend that she is. So that was all very exciting. Then we set off in the car for Emilia's house, where we were having lunch. The time spent there was wonderful, we ate heartily and plentifully, we talked lots, we played Upwords (Emilia and I won! By one point! Very thrilling), we watched the last five of the top Christmas films and generally had a very jolly time. Then we made our way to the house of my aunt and uncle, where I discovered that my darling cousin Caroline was here from Germany for Christmas. It was fantabulous, I haven't seen her in absolutely ages. So we all talked and talked, and consumed food and wine in reasonably large quantities. Yum! And I shall be seeing them again on Friday, with two other cousins and their three children in tow. Yay!

And that was a nice brief post, so I shall do as I threatened and give you all some terribly exciting facts from the wonderful, wonderful book that is 'Schott's Original Miscellany':

Some nouns of assemblage: a malapertness of pedlars (genius!), a murmuration of starlings (glorious), a doping of sheldrake (giggle), a wilderness of monkeys, a pontification of priests (giggle again), an exaltation of larks (well known, but beautiful), a drift of swine (snigger), a fall of woodcock (poor things) and a drunkship of cobblers (what does that say about shoemakers?).

Some quotes from that man of men, Doctor Johnson: 'As peace is the end of war, so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of being busy', 'Always, sir, set a high value on spontaneous kindness', 'He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him great', 'Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye' (not true), 'All intellectual improvement arises from leisure' (yay!).

What do these sentences have in common? 'Waltz, bad nymph, for quick jigs vex', 'We promptly judged antique ivory buckles for the next prize', 'Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz'.

I love you, in several languages: 'Ek het jou lief' (Afrikaans), 'Ik hou van je' (Dutch), 'Se erotao' (Greek), 'Aishite imasu' (Japanese), 'As tave myliu' (Lithuanian), 'Kocham cie' (Polish), 'Ndinoluda' (Shona), 'Iniibig kita' (Tagalog), 'Ikh hob dikh lib' (Yiddish), 'Ngiya kuthanda' (Zulu).

Some phobias: batrachophobia (amphibians), keraunothnetophobia (fall of satellites), pteronophobia (tickling with feathers), coulrophobia (clowns), chromatophobia (colour), xenoglossophobia (foreign languages), doraphobia (the skins of animals), aurophobia (breezes), philematophobia (kissing), chionophobia (snow. Wow. Philematophobia would make me very unhappy.

Postal acronyms: SWALK (sealed with a loving kiss), BURMA (be upstairs ready my angel), MALAYA (my ardent lips await your arrival), HOLLAND (hope our love lasts and never dies), ITALY (I'm thinking about loving you), BOLTOP (better on lips than on paper).

Amazing palindromes: 'Sums are not set as a test on Erasmus', 'Go deliver a dare, vile dog!', 'Madam, in Eden I'm Adam', 'Dogma: I am God', 'Are we not drawn on, we few, drawn onward to new era' (that one is fantastic), 'A man, a plan, a canal: Panama' (also great).

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. Wow that was fun to type. Longest place name, right? It was made up just to draw the tourists. I've been there. It's really only worth the photo of the train station sign :D

Love you all my darlings, sleep well and sweet dreams xxxxxxxxxx

Bits and pieces

2006-12-23T23:36:00.000Z

Hello my lovelies. I have just changed to this new fangled version of blogger, only I haven't actually noticed anything different just yet. Oooh apart from that little thing saying I can label the post. Is that exciting? I have no idea. Maybe I will discover other interesting things as I go along. Oh and there's a thing saying post options. I might investigate that at some point in the near future...

Anyway. Life. It has been carrying on mostly as usual really, for a holiday. A general haze of quite niceness, though unexcitingness, with occasional rays of the glorious sunshine of friends and fun. Work has been occupying much of my time, rather too often from early afternoon to early morning. Ah well. I suppose at least it means I'll have some money by the end of this holiday. Although, having said that, the January sales will be popping along quite soon... That could be dangerous... I shall be sensible and good. No, honest, I will. I'm a good student saver these days don't you know. Most of the time anyway. So yes. Work. I have been seeing many of the regulars I got to see over the summer, have been propositioned a few times and have been bought many a drink. Also, yesterday I realised after being bought the third drink that there was no way I was going to drink any more than that after work, so I began (slightly illegally) taking my drinks in cash instead, and in that way made about £21. Not bad, eh? That's a total of about thirteen drinks, which is pretty good for one evening. One of the few downsides of working at the pub (another of which is the seriously sore feet) is that I will, very sadly, be working New Year's Eve. This means missing out on parties and happiness, and having to serve increasingly drunken people alcohol which I would rather drink myself. Gah! Ah well. At least I get double pay I suppose.

Anyway, onto the more joyous aspects of life, those rays of sunshine which I mentioned earlier. *gets out diary*. Last Friday, after working rather late, I dashed off to Kensington to have an even later dinner with my dear Emilia. We went to a pub to which I have not been for absolutely ages, which serves utterly delicious Thai food in an attached restaurant. We ate with enthusiasm and speed for the food was divine. And we remained entirely non alcoholic, a fact with which I was rather impressed. After dinner we went back to hers and chatted about...I have no idea what we chatted about. Anything and everything I should think. And we watched Miss Congeniality II *giggle* which was good fun, and we ate many a snack, and ended up going to bed horrendously late. The next day we ate more and talked more and continued with the jollity until I had to, once again, disappear for work. It was a nice evening, if mildly tiring...

Next nice thing... Ah yes, that came on Tuesday. At 11am (ish) I appeared on the doorstep of a certain house in TMON, where I was greeted by a Richard. Who was laughing at me because I had spent the previous five minutes attempting to circumnavigate a rather elderly pair who were walking down the road at about two and a half miles a year. On arrival we immediately left, in order that I could get alcohol and money on oyster card, and so that Richard could get his fix. I'm sorry honey...that makes it sound so much cooler than it actually is... Then back again, to watch The Shawshank Redemption. It is a fantastic film. Really. If you haven't seen it you should. I want to watch it again. It is beautifully acted. And had bits which made me laugh, and bits which made me cry, and bits which meant I had to hide behind Richard until they went away. Any film that can do that, and leave me smiling, has to be pretty damn good. After that we had cheese and bread, and then some more cheese, and then some more bread, and then we set off down the road towards the house of Jon, where we met many a many a people, most of whom seemed extremely disappointed that we weren't a Wii. What a welcome... Hehe. But it was of no matter. I spent the next two hours eating the chocolate of Steve (thank you Steve) and watching people play various computer games and Pokemon cards and horrendously awful kids' programmes. Oh and Top Gear with a helicopter. It was a fun afternoon :-). And then back to the house of Richard for half an hour, before I disappeared off, bags in hand, to get to East Finchley. I slightly missed the first train (it was pulling out when we arrived. Gah!) but the second was not too far away and off I set.

And why was I going to East Finchley? Why, for a party, naturally! Hence the aforementioned alcohol. This party was given by a wonderful Adam, for his parents had departed for a holiday somewhere. When I arrived I found, to my slight surprise, that there were about...twenty people of the male persuasion, and none at all of the female. There were also a few people rolling about on the floor, apparently as a result of the inhalation of laughing gas. It was great! I settled in with speed. Wine was drunk, laughing gas inhaled (bear in mind how much I giggle anyway. It must have been an interesting sight), getting to know people was rapidly got on with. At some point the wonderful Arun arrived and the evening brightened. A bit later Beth, Luke and Jenny arrived and the evening brightened even more. And Shellie tortoise appeared and made himself (I think he's a him...) known and loved. Ooh and there was the exciting flame thrower, made up of a lit menorah and a deodorant can. Oh, and the Smirnoff Ice bottle filled with deodorant and set on fire was also thrilling. What else happened...? There was pizza, and singing of the Rocky Horror (yay!), and the reading of large books, and laughter at crazy, silly things. It was a fabulous party. Adam, if you have discovered this blog, I would like to bow down at your feet and sing praise and lauds to you for being a most magnificent host of a fantastic party. Here are a couple of photos:

That first is me on laughing gas. The second is the beautiful Shellie, held by our almighty host. The third is general party goodness, and the last is the amazing flamethrower, with Adam visible in the background. The deodorant is being wielded by his brother. Marvellous :D.

I went to sleep at about 6am. I reawoke at about 9:30am, to leave half an hour later for work. I am insane. After work I went to the theatre. This should prove to you that I am insane. I was so tired... The theatre, however, was great. We went to see Much Ado at the Novello. They set it in 1950s Cuba, which worked surprisingly well. The music was marvellously bouncy, great for keeping me awake, the acting was generally excellent, there were some moments of comedic masterpiece, and it was all beautifully Shakespearian, despite the rather interesting setting. Also I discovered that Owen, from the party the night before, was sitting in the same row as me, about fifteen seats down. Coincidence no? So we had a nice natter through the interval, about the party...university...facebook...all the most important aspects of life :D.

On Friday, since I was beginning work at 6pm, I went up to Charing Cross to meet up with the lovely Chris. We went for a nice wander around Covent Garden, Soho, and their environs, before making our way along to Goodge Street, where we indulged in lunch at Terra. Oh it was magnificent. No free dessert this time, and we were upstairs instead of down so the lighting was rather less atmospheric, but the food was still utterly wonderful. I had almost the same dinner as last time, but without the wine, and with seafood risotto as main course. Chris had duck liver for starter (delicious sauce!) and steak for a main, and said that both were scrumptious. Then we wandered once again, holding many an intelligent and worthy conversation, and then to work I had to go once more.

Now I am on my first of four days off work. Heavenly! I spent the day asleep until 11, then went Christmas food shopping with my parents (I may quite possibly die from over eating), then came home and put books into my room (books! On shelves!), which is gradually getting refurnished. Yay! I will have a real room again! I think there are now between 800 and 1000 books in my room, so it is feeling cosily happy. I also went to church, and out to dinner with the parents. It was nice. It felt like pre-university days again. Tomorrow I will do history work, help put things in my room, and go to Christmas mass.

I probably won't blog again before the great day arrives, so I would like to wish you all an incredibly, wonderfully fulfilling Christmas, joyous times, lovely presents, happiness with families and perpetual blessing. Love and joy xxxxxxxx

Living the London life

2006-12-14T01:39:00.000Z

Check that out for some mighty alliteration. Good lord, I can't believe last time I blogged I didn't even get up to leaving Cambridge. Toooo much happens! And now I've been home for a week and a half! Craziness. Anyway, I shall once more desperately attempt to catch up. At some point I want to do an exciting post about things I discovered from Schott's Miscellany, fantastic book that it is, and the Meaning of Liff, but I figure I probably shouldn't do that until I'm actually up to date with life, otherwise I'll have EVEN MORE to catch up on. Anyway, why am I justifying myself? This is my blog damn it! And now I'm just waffling. It's late at night. Well it's quite early morning in fact. By which I maen it's 1:42am. Good gods woman, get a move on!

So, Saturday 2nd December. Wow that was an awfully long time ago. I can't remember a lot of what I did. My parents arrived at midday, at which point I seem to remember I was just getting into the shower. So I met them about half an hour later, before sending them off to explore Cambridge so that I could have lunch with people. And then I think I packed. And then...I have no idea. At 6 o'clock I met the parents again for dinner at The Eagle, which is a very delightful pub almost opposite King's, and then I ran off hastily to Christ's College to get ready for the student performance of Aladdin. First, of course, was the Matrix, which was absolutely marvellous. The beautiful Hannah was in it, which of course meant it could only be first class. Especially since she spent a considerable period of time groping the equally beautiful Saf, who was in rather an impressively tight black PVC catsuit... So that was marvellous, and I giggled happily along to the songs, and joined in where appropriate. Then came the interval, where I dashed off to get ready for Aladdin. The performance was utterly wonderful, rather different to the school versions, with rather more sexual innuendo. And undressing. And an extra proposal. And a FANTASTIC kiss between Rich (the Evil Azarius) and Keith (Widow Twanky). It was fabulous. And seemed to go down wonderfully with the audience. After that we walked for miles and miles, or so it seemed, to the house of Cat, where we indulged in alcohol and good food at the after show party. I got rather tiddly and then started thinking rather too much about the fact that I had to leave the next day and so was, for almost the first time in my life, rather a miserable drunk. It doesn't happen often, honest!

Sunday dawned slightly too bright, and far too early, as I dashed up to find my parents waiting for me outside my room. We hurriedly shoved all not yet packed things into suitcase and bags and carted them out to our waiting vehicle. I handed in my keys to the porters and waved goodbye to King's, before going to church with my dad. It was nice. I like mass in Cambridge, there is much singing. Then came lunch in the Cambridge Blue, where I realised that I had left a load of stuff in Adam's room the day before so this was followed by a return once more to King's (I bet they thought I'd never leave...) to pick up bits and pieces, before the long (ish) drive back to London. It was rather sad. It felt very odd to be in a house with no particularly interesting neighbours, no friendly faces down the hall, no bar two seconds down the corridor. And no furniture in my room! Gah! At least it's finally got wallpaper on all its walls now...

On Monday, to gently ease me into my holidays, I had a 6pm-1am shift at the pub. Ugh! It was probably just as well though. It got me out of the very empty feeling house. But never, never before have I more wanted to write an essay. Or read a book. Or do something, anything, even vaguely involving thought. While I love my job whole heartedly most of the time, it isn't the most academically challenging of tasks, and after the intensity of Cambridge...*shudder*. But it was nice to see everyone again. And to meet the new people of course, of whom there are several. And we finished reasonably on time, so I was home by 1:30am. Tuesday I had a stupidly short shift (try saying that five times fast) from 12pm-3pm, after which I came home to my darling mother and we nattered, watched a bit of TV and cooked kedgeree. Real food! With real ingredients! It was amazing! Then Wednesday came. I can't remember what I did during the day. Probably slept quite a lot. And pottered around the house a bit. Oh and I blogged, that probably took a while :-). And then I worked (I do that way too much...) from 6pm-1am again. Wow, work makes days go really fast in the blogging world...

Thursday was rather more exciting, as I wended my way all the way up to Stanmore, at the very top of the Jubilee line, to visit Arun. I slightly missed my original train, but wasn't ultimately too horrendously late, so I spent an extremely pleasant day chattering away gaily. Seriously...I swear we did very little other than talk for the many, many hours I was there. At some point we had lunch, for which I ate far too much. This is the downside of eating far quicker than everyone else. Or is it a downside? It was all very scrummy, so maybe a good thing... Yay! And for dinner Arun cooked a delicious mush of things- potato and cauliflower and sweetcorn and lots and lots of cheese. It was scrumptious. And we saw his mother off to Dubai- lucky thing! And then I had to jump back on the Jubilee line and return to Tulse Hill, having had a marvellous day. Then on Friday was another divinely lovely day, as I went to West Wickham to see Richard. What did I do there? Oh yes, Sarah was there having a rather late breakfast, so we watched her do that, and then she had to vanish off to work. Then we nattered for a bit, and at some point watched lots and lots of Stoppit and Tidy Up which is just pure GENIUS frankly, and then we investigated a theatre, and then watched Finding Nemo which is one of the best films in the whole world. And then I had dinner and Richard had to disappear back to the theatre, and then Lewis, Julia and Dave arrived and WE all went to the theatre and...phewph this is exhausting! Once there we met Rachel, and all took our places in the front row to watch 'Cinderella: the Sequel'. Richard, as Prince Charming, was clearly by far the best, suave, sophisticated, and utterly gorgeous, resplendent in purple velvet, with a cane and silver buckles. His chat up lines, all to do with genetics, had us in raptures, and he strode around the stage in perfect princely fashion. *giggle*. He was fabulous. The other people were alright. Hehe. The fairy godmother was cool, and liked my hair so yay. And Cinderella's dad gave me chocolate, so we like him. And Cinderella was oh so American. It was quite amazing. And it was all jolly and good fun, and Rachel and I got up on stage to dance the macarena, and we oohed and aahed in the appropriate places, and then all of a sudden it was at an end. We went to the bar to celebrate with the thespian types, before returning to Richard's house, where my parents were waiting with the car to take my weary self home.

On Saturday my shift at work was vile and repulsive, being from 5pm-2am, but I just about survived, albeit with horrifically sore feet. Then Sunday arrived, bringing with it a 12pm-8pm shift, which is generally horrendous on Sundays, but actually wasn't too bad. However it did result in my feet hurting so much that I could no longer walk without a limp. Argh! And then I came home to a gorgeous roast dinner, courtesy of my darling mamma, so all was well with the world.

Oh wow I'm up to Monday, how exciting is that? And it's only 2:08am now, I'm going reasonably quickly today. Though I admit this must be rather a marathon to read... Apologies! It can't last much longer! So Monday. I arose far too early, but for excellent reason, for I took myself back off to Cambridge. Oooh it was wonderful. I love that city. Anyway, upon arrival I made various voyages around the shops for Christmas type things, and then I went into King's, my beautiful college, to meet aaaall the people in the world. Well. Not quite. But I met Adam, and we went for lunch where we saw Pete, Mike and Matt. And probably other people too... Beth was dead at the time and so sadly unable to join us. I spent the afternoon...doing very little I think. Just pootling about in the happy knowledge that I was in Cambridge. At one point Adam and I went to buy salad. That was about as exciting as it got I think... Then at 7pm we got Beth, who was alive again, and went to the room of one Emily, who was very kindly cooking us dinner. We had a veritable feast of garlic bread, pasta with pesto, our salad and biscuits. I was well and truly stuffed by the end of it, and on a high of good company, conversation and food. Then we departed for Market Hostel, where we found an Olaf, a Luke, a Jenny, a Jordan and an Iona. Luke and I went to Threshers to stock up on supplies (read: alcohol) and we drank and chatted happily, watched Sea Lab (bizzarely odd) and Eddie Izzard (magnificent as ever) in a general daze of joyous warmth. Then back to King's proper for sleep.

Tuesday only really began at 1:15 in the afternoon. While I very rarely sleep that late it was oh so comfy and oh so warm and lovely. And I had that blissful realisation that I was under no obligation to do anything at all. Mmm :-). Then I got a call from Olaf, summoning Adam and myself to the Granta for lunch, so off we set. Lunch was lovely, we met Luke, Jordan, Olaf and Arthur and partook of delicious pub fare. Then back again to King's, where I again pootled (such a useful word is pootle), before realising that I should probably get on a train back to London so that I could arrive in Dulwich in time for a most important event. Adam followed me to King's Cross as he had a grandmother to visit, and then I did, indeed arrive in Dulwich for the JAGS Christmas concert, starring (ish) our own darling Emmie. They were all absolutely marvellous, especially Emmie of course. There was the best rendition ever known to man of the Twelve Days of Christmas. We will pass over the Utopias quickly. It wasn't their fault, the music was dreadful. Really. Ask Emmie. The Bach was also lovely, and had many a delightful soloist to make it even better. I met many a teacher who said oooh and aaah, and then Frankie's mother kindly dropped me off at my house and I came in and went to sleep.

And golly, Wednesday, that's today. Today I worked from 12pm-8pm, which was rather hard work because we had mahoosive Christmas bookings. Forty people in one party! That's just ridiculous! But I suppose it made the time pass, so it wasn't so bad. And I guess every hour I work is a little bit more of a contribution towards next term's expenses...

Right. That is that. It is now 2:21am and I think I am done. The rest of this week will be taken up with far too much work to be thought about, and possibly some nice history work too. I shall keep you posted. Also, I realise that this post has no photos. Therefore I leave you with the news that I have an awful lot of hair at the moment, and some of it is pretty damn ringletty. Love and hugs xxxxxxxxx

Home again

2006-12-06T12:05:00.000Z

I realise today is not tomorrow or Friday. But I was busy damn it. And now I am home, and therefore have far less to do. I can't understand all the people who are so desperately longing for their holidays. Not that I'm not glad to be back near you lovely people again. But if I could pick you up and transplant you into Cambridge and just stay there for much longer periods of time then I would be happy. I apologise to those of you who are still in term time and are stressed. That is nasty. Maybe I just want to be in Cambridge with all its delightful people but not necessarily in term time. That would be cool. Anyway! Enough complaints and misery! Onwards with the story of my life...

Oh good lord I haven't written about anything since my birthday. That's terrible! *Runs to catch up*. So, Friday 24th November. My birthday. I started off with the usual three lectures (aren't I a good girl?), then lunch, then work in the library for two and a half hours (seriously, be impressed), then my German lesson, at which my German teacher gave me a big poster of Casablanca (the film) for my birthday present. Isn't that sweet? After that the day got more fun, as I whizzed off to the train station to get on board the express train to London. There to meet me at Kings Cross was Fan, and we wandered off to Euston to have coffee, or orange juice in my case, before the main event of the evening, which was dinner at Terra. And oh my it was glorious. I recommend it to absolutely anyone. The food is just divine, the service great and the prices good. For starter I had grilled goats' cheese topped with cranberry sauce on a bed of rocket (gorgeous), for main course I had seafood mixed grill, which was two skewers of immaculately cooked swordfish, king prawns and salmon on a bed of saffron rice with seafood sauce (amazingly delicious) and for pudding they gave me a free chocolate bombe smothered in sambuca and set alight which I shared with Fan, after which we had a beautiful chocolate and raspberry tart. All of this was accompanied by a bottle of very good Pinot Grigio. In the words of Chitty Chitty Bang-Bang, truly scrumptious.

After Terra I took me home to my parents, where I was greeted with some lovely presents- a watch, a necklace and earrings set, chocolate, scrolls from Egypt and another necklace. And then I went to bed. On the sofa, because my bedroom is currently in a state of no furniture. On Saturday I got up at a reasonable time and took myself to West Wickham to see Richard. That was fun. We watched Rocky Horror with all the extra bits, and some Smallville, through which I totally didn't fall asleep. Frankly I think I was entitled to fall asleep. It was Smallville damn it! Then I had to go home for church, which was nice too in its own way. All the little old ladies were happy to see me, and I got asked at least 11 times 'How's Cambridge? Are you enjoying it? Are you doing well?'. In the evening was dinner with the family- mum, dad, uncle, aunt, other aunt. It was very lovely, we nattered away genially and I completely forgot to take any photos, much to my parents' disgust. I also came away some money, two boxes of chocolate, a pack of cookies and a tray from New Zealand richer, which can't be bad :).

Sunday saw my return to Cambridge for a dress rehearsal of Aladdin. It was good fun. We, the chorus, entirely forgot our dances and so had to arrange an extra rehearsal, but apart from that it was all most successful. I also got given my beautiful CULES hoodie, which keeps me warm, snug and happy. In the evening I probably ought to have done lots of work. Instead, I took the money my darling aunt Bonny had given me and bought with it a gorgeous red dress. Seriously. I am in love with it.

And then I did some work. Honest I did. I read through three whole books. And then my brain told me it hated me and I told it I hated it and I went down to the bar. I think that may have been the day we watched Princess Bride actually. Isn't it a lovely film? True love and battles and pirates, and beautiful men and beautiful women and ooooooooh it's wonderful :). So that was a nice ending to the day.

Monday...Monday was alright I think. Well. Slightly stressful in places, and lovely in other places. I didn't go to my lecture but instead went and spent three hours solid in the library, going through books. That wasn't particularly fun. I think I got through about seven books that day, so I was pleased, if shattered. After lunch I had a dance rehearsal for Aladdin, then came choir, the last service of the year, which was very beautiful as usual, then dinner and then the Reel Club which was gloriously exciting and involved much more food than usual. We did exciting highland steps which I wasn't enormously good at, and the eightsome reel, and some other dance which I can't spell but I'm sure Hannah will oblige us with. It was all beautifully good fun. Tuesday too was a mix of stress and joy. I again missed my morning lecture in order to spend two hours in the library, before dashing off to the train station to meet CULESy people and go to Ely. Once there we were picked up by two mini vans which took us to the first of our three school trips. This time was Harbour School, for boys with behavioural problems... They were lovely though, and laughed and shouted at all the appropriate places. And they didn't seem to mind that our music completely failed and so almost the entire pantomime was done to the strains of a kazoo. I love kids :D. On my return to Cambridge I was met with a looming essay, which I then proceeded, most studiously, to write. It took me until half past nine, the latest I have ever worked, but it was worth it. After that I knew for a fact that i had NO MORE WORK! Yay! And then I went to Adam's with a few people to watch Gattaca. It's a brilliant film. Really. Watch it if you haven't done so already.

Wednesday brought the glorious realisation that I actually had nothing to do. No one was going to make me read things. No one was going to make me write things. I could just pootle about happily. So I pootled to the shops to buy a secret santa present (I LOVE Whittard) and then off to Clowns for a very leisurely lunch of pasta and hot chocolate. Not together obviously. Then I met up with CULES once more to go to Castle School, a school for special needs children in Cambridge. And oh they were so lovely! Once again they clapped and cheered, and really got into the story. At the end we got a standing ovation and one of the sixth form boys came to tell us how fantastic we were and how in love he was with the princess. All this despite the fact that the difference in entrance (it was on the left instead of the right) completely threw us and various things were forgotten or patched together hurriedly. Again. I love kids. After the performance I walked home with a princess and a slave in time to get all ready for the joys of carol singing and Christmas formal. The carol singing was in the chapel and was great fun, we got to belt out all the old favourites, as well as listen to Richard (the chaplain) sing a less well known one in his beautiful bass voice. After that came the formal. Oooh it was gorgeous! The food was pretty damn good, and it was all decorated beautifully with crackers and red roses and a penny in every glass...

There was also much kissing under the mistletoe, which naturally was the cause of great merriment. And then, after formal, we went to Jenny's room as it was her birthday at midnight, and she decided she wanted me to kiss one person for every year of her life. And so I did. Thank you to those twenty people, it was a memorable experience. The after party was most joyous, and from my secret santa I received a feather, a satsuma, the book of Darwin Awards (hilarious) and a mini rubber ducky set. Cool no? I love people.

On Thursday I woke up at 10:05 and realised in horror that my supervision had started five minutes before. I dashed into suitable clothes, raced over to Trinity and leapt up the stairs in a panic. I was there by twelve minutes past. And my supervisor didn't mind at all! I do love her sometimes. She just said it always happened at the end of term. And then we chatted about my essay, then I went back to King's to grab some food, and then off to the train station to Ely again, for the last school performance. This one, at another special needs school called Highfield, was the best of the lot. The children were incredibly responsive, nothing went wrong, they clapped for so long we had to come back on stage to say goodbye and we got massive hugs at the end. It was simply lovely. You know that warm fuzzy feeling you get when doing something worthy? Multiply that by about a gazillion. And then we walked back to Ely station, happy and sad at the same time. Quite what I did that evening completely eludes me. I would assume I sat happily in the bar and talked to people.

On Friday I rose at 9:15 and set off for my Themes and Sources meeting. I am doing 'The influence of the book in European society'. Isn't that wonderfully me? I can't wait to get properly started! I got given a big fat file of things to look at, and set some holiday work, and then back to King's I returned. I then had a tutor meeting which lasted all of two minutes, since it consisted entirely of 'Are you happy?' 'Incredibly so' 'Is it more stressful than you expected?' 'No, much less' 'Are your finances alright?' 'Absolutely fine' 'Well you seem to be a happy undergraduate. We made the right choice. Off you go'. Then I bibbled about for a bit until lunch time when I had lunch (duh) and talked in the bar until 2:10 when I had a DoS meeting, which again lasted about three minutes and consisted of 'Well Dr. Webber says you're doing well' 'Oh good' 'As you can see from your report you're predicted a first in that paper' 'Well that's nice' 'Have a nice vacation' 'You too'. Then Adam, Roisin and I went to an internships fair, which I believe was helpful for Adam since he is the right age and does the right subject. We stood there feeling rather silly until he was done and got pounced on by a scary Morgan Stanley person. The rest of the afternoon was spent pretending to pack but in fact bibbling around. I like the word bibble. It makes me happy. Then, at 7:30ish, we (many, many people) went to Dojos and ate scrumptious noodles and talked for absolutely ages, before heading off to see ICE (Improvised Comedy Ents) at 11pm, which was most jolly, as it always is. Olaf was, naturally, magnificent, as was James, and all the others present were also most amusing. After that, much hide and seek was played in Market Hostel (Beth found the best hiding place in the history of the world. Seriously. It took us about 40 minutes to find her) before we entered Olaf's room and the drinking of port and other such beverages commenced. At some point I went to bed. It was quite late.

Well. I got up to Friday. I think that's reasonably impressive. Now I must tootle off, for soon I am meeting the beauteous Emmie, and I should probably eat at some point... Love hugs and kisses xxxxxxx

Pantomime! Story of somebody from afar...

2006-11-29T16:33:00.000Z

Good lord life has been busy. As was probably evident from the rather hurried previous post. Now though there are no more lectures, no more essays, no more work at all really. Just a supervision tomorrow and a DoS meeting and tutor meeting on Friday. Hurrah! The title is to do with the other thing which is taking over large portions of my life at the moment, namely Aladdin, one of the two CULES pantomimes of this term. More of that later however, I shall now attempt that at which I am never very good- a quick rundown of events. The slight problem being that I have two weeks to remember, so I probably won't. But no matter :).

So...Sunday 19th November...slightly pitifully I have absolutely no idea what I did. I would assume I went to church. And then I probably spent the afternoon attempting to avoid work. Sundays aren't really the most exciting days of the week are they? Oh wait, in the evening I went to A6 with Adam and watched Platoon. It was a good film, but scary due to the fact that it was a war film and many people died. I can't even remember how happy or sad the ending was. There was lots of blood. And a fire. And someone got their arm blown off. It was about Vietnam. I couldn't force myself to watch every scene. The best bit was when they were all happy and stoned and not fighting.

Monday was a Monday like most others. Oh, we couldn't row due to the fact that it was a yellow flag I think. That wasn't too bad, I just got up, saw it was a yellow flag and went straight back to bed again until about 10am. Then off to my lecture, before an afternoon, as far as I remember, spent in the library. In the evening, instead of reeling merrily as I usually do, I went to Clare to watch the comedy. It was pretty good on the whole, and I met my dear friend Johnny, so that was exciting. There were five student comics, four of whom were excellent and one who attempted to make jokes about Auschwitz. Then was the 'professional' who was quite funny, but the cellars just got too hot after a while so I had to run away to the bar. I walked across the front court of King's and looked up to the sky, where stars shone the brightest I've ever seen them, when suddenly the organ in the chapel started booming out music. It was gloriously beautiful. I went to bed in a state of serene happiness.

Tuesday was, as Tuesdays tend to be, a day of lecture and then essay writing. And wow my head hated me after that essay. It was quite a long one, at about 2700 words, and my brain just decided to completely shut down afterwards. I have absolutely no recollection of what I did in the evening. I probably just sat next to someone in a daze and pretended that work didn't really exist any more. Wednesday was, as Wednesdays always are, lovely. I rowed in the morning and then spent pretty much all of the rest of the day half asleep in the bar. Generally, as far as I can remember, listening to people talking about maths that I didn't understand. I also did useful things like laundry, but that's unexciting. Oh and in the evening was a panto rehearsal, which was fun.

Thursday was, to start with, not such a fun day. I woke up in a not particularly good mood, stomped off to my lecture, raced to my supervision, found out that my new essay was repulsively difficult and required the reading of ridiculously huge numbers of books (I ended up reading 16). However I then went to my pigeon hole and found a lovely card from my uncle and aunt and a beautifully illustrated birthday letter from philosopher Adam, both of which cheered me up immensely. Then off to the boathouse for my first race! Eep! It was for the Clare Novice Regatta and was hugely exciting. We Kingsfolk got ourselves all war painted up in glorious King's purple, which clearly meant we were better than everyone else, or at least more interesting than anyone else, right from the start. I wish I could show you the photo of me but I have no idea how to put photos from my phone onto the computer yet... We also put lots of good music like 'Another one bites the dust' and 'We are the champions' on Charlotte's phone and blasted it through the cox box on our way down the river. It was hilarious. Everyone else was womanfully working their way through 'heads, shoulders, knees and toes' and we came along and owned them all. We were up against Selwyn. Unfortunately, due to mistakes on the part of the marshalls the race was begun before we were ready so we got the worst start in the history of the planet and spent the rest of the race catching up. We lost by about two seconds (literally rather than figuratively), which was unfortunate, but rather impressive all considered. And it put me in a fantastic mood, so that was ok.

The evening was even better. I raced off to the library, complete with war paint (thus gaining a few strange looks) to get out a couple of books, before going to choir. Then I met many a people in the bar, from whence we moved to Pizza Express in celebration of my birthday. Yay! Ah it was fabulous. There were, I believe, 13 of us and we all ate and drank most heartily. The conversation was wide ranging, the company wonderful, the food delicious, the wine perfect. All in all the meal was a resounding success. A couple of photos:

From Pizza Express, and the lovely presents you see above (I adore my friends) we moved, after procrastination, changing and make up adding, to the room of Luke in Market Hostel, in order that we might watch that work of genius which is the Rocky Horror Picture Show. You can see why I love my friends right? First they gave me a beautiful, huge chocolate cake on which to munch while we watched, then everyone waved candles at the appropriate moments, timewarped beautifully enthusiastic and drooled on demand at the appearance of the sex god that is Frank. Well. For the last bit it might just have been the girls. But still! And there was a guitar and a mandolin, played by Emma and Pete respectively, and more wine, and it was all beautifully magical. I had the most wonderful time. More photos:

And yes, I do know that I look fat in that photo. We can live with this fact, just about. The film finished at about 2:40am, so after a bit of banter everyone wandered off to their respective rooms for sleep. I think I eventually nodded off at about 4:10am, which was interesting since I then woke up again at 7:10am in order to go and order my Christmas formal ticket.

While I realise I have actually written very little, and not got very far at all, I think I may have to leave you now and continue either tomorrow or on Friday. Tonight I have Christmas carols in the chapel, followed by Christmas formal, followed by a brief look in on a Secret Santa party, followed by gate-crashing the Christmas anti-formal. Yay! Love and hugs

Apologies of the most profuse...

2006-11-27T15:43:00.000Z

...for being so dreadfully slack at blogging at the moment. Life is ridiculously over busy at the moment. I promise that after tomorrow, when I no longer have any work to do, I shall rectify my misdemeanour. Hugs and love

Try again :)

2006-11-19T17:13:00.000Z

I have a little more time now so this post might prove vaguely more successful than the last. Hurrah! Okay so I was talking about last Saturday right? So yes, rowing was cancelled *sob* so instead I took myself off to the University Library for two and a half hours and got lots of reading done. Aren't I a good girl? I then returned to King's with the full intention of having some lunch, but instead got waylaid by some lovely people who demanded that I come punting. Apparently if I had said no it would have meant I automatically sucked, so naturally I had to go along. Beforehand I pinched some of Beth's spaghetti bolognese without spaghetti (it's all about the Italian tomatoes) to tide me over until dinner, and then off we sent. And marvellous it was too. We had adventures with a duck, crashed into the wall a few times, got smashed into by the psychos from the professional punting companies (once so hard that we spun all the way round in the water), Beth nearly fell in, Luke nearly fell in, Olaf nearly fell in, Iona got damp, I got damp etc etc. It was very fun. Here are a couple of photos:

That first is Olaf with the duck. It was a nice duck. He tried to leave it in a pipe, but Beth womanfully threw herself almost overboard to rescue it again. In the second you may notice that Adam appears to have grown himself an extra head. The third is Beth attempting to board another boat. There was reason behind it. And she did get back on our punt again afterwards. Anyway. After punting I...actually am not entirely sure what I did. Probably went and sat in the bar, or came here, or did something similar. Until 9 o'clock that is, when I made my way over to Market Hostel, to the room of Olaf, with several other insane people, to partake in the Withnail and I drinking game. Do you know it? I mentioned it before. You drink along to the characters. Never let anyone persuade you to play. While I would whole heartedly recommend the film itself, because it is great, the game is just dangerous. Here is the amount of alcohol we bought for consumption by eight people, and the eight people in question:

There are four cans of cider, two bottles of beer, three bottles of sherry, two bottles of whiskey, a bottle of gin, two bottles of wine, a three litre box of wine and two bottles of vinegar. I think that's it... Now I feel that is a considerable amount of drink by anyone's standards really. Anyway. It was a very jolly night. We managed to get about two thirds of the way down the drinks list before we got too drunk to follow the film properly and just drank happily along to our own rules instead. There were three minor casualties, one of whom I am afraid to say was myself, the other two being Adam (Bull as opposed to Kessler) and Olaf. At the end of a very cheery evening I got put into Dan's bed (it didn't have Dan in it) and went off to slumber. To wake up entirely clear headed, much to the chagrin of everyone else. Hehehehe. A couple more photos just for fun:

I told you Saturday would take a while. I think Sunday was rather quieter. I was supposed to go to a rehearsal but it all got confuzzled with changing locations and what not, and I think I ended up just sleeping instead. Occasionally surfacing for such useful things as food and a shower of course. And then I probably went to the bar in the evening and completely avoided alcohol. Yes, that sounds about right. No alcohol that day. Even I know when it would just be silly. Well. Sometimes...

Monday was the organised day that it always is, with rowing early morning, then a bit of extra sleep, then onwards to a lecture, then lunch, then library before choir. Then of course came the Reel Club, which was, as always, fabulous, although the divine Hannah sadly was unable to grace us with her presence. That made me sad, but these things cannot be helped. Then Tuesday happened, bringing with it a lecture, the writing of an essay, the meeting with our DoS and the discovery that all history really comes down to property eventually. Being eternally proud of my achievement in the writing of my essay I spent the evening...well...in the bar probably... I forgot to write down what I did, so I actually have very little idea. Wednesday was glorious, as all Wednesdays are wont to be. I really do love them. I row in the morning, then go to my lecture, then go to sleep, all in the wonderful knowledge that I have no work to do at all. I woke up for the second time at lunch, ate, sat peacefully in the bar for a while, and then headed off to Adam's room to watch House, since he apparently had no work to do either. And thus was my afternoon spent. In the evening I had a CULES rehearsal, which was incredibly entertaining. We were learning a dance to 'I just can't wait to be king' with different words. Fantabulous. I love CULES. It is the cause of huge amounts of hilarity. After that I met people and nattered, and then took myself off to bed.

Thursdays are also rather nice generally. I have a lecture of course, then I can be relaxed and happy until lunch, and then comes my supervision when I get set work and the whole week starts over again. Ok so Thursdays aren't nearly as good as Wednesdays. But still. They're almost there. In the evening I had choir, in which we learnt some crazily difficult piece which seemed entirely bent on breaking our voice boxes, and then I went off to the union to watch the debate. This week it was 'This house blames American foreign policy for terrorism'. I voted against. While I think American foreign policy is horrendous, and has certainly caused a rise in terrorism, it can't be held responsible for every act of terror in the world. It was a good debate though. All controversial and exciting. And the emergency debate beforehand was 'This house would rather be at Oxford than St. John's', which was naturally hilarious. St. John's beat Oxford, but only just, which says something about both places...

Then came, as is usually the case, Friday. Friday was a reasonable day, despite the dreaded three lectures in a row. They were, as usual, fairly interesting, so I kept scribbling notes frantically until the end. Then lunch, then to the library, then in the POURING RAIN to German. I got DRENCHED. That bit was NOT fun. I was not impressed by that weather. By the time I got there, after a seven minute walk, my hair was dripping everywhere, my bag was soaked through and when I sat down my jeans creaked because of the damp. Grr... The lesson was alright though. Just a bit chilly. After German I ran home in the rain, got changed into warm happy clothes and then avoided doing anything until my rehearsal. Again, lots of fun, again lots of dancing.

Is it Saturday today? No it's Sunday. I knew that, silly Helen. So what happened yesterday? I woke up, did a bit of work, had brunch and got ready to go rowing. Rowing did not, however, happen, due to a lack of people showing up. Grrrr.... It was a really nice day as well. Grrr... So instead I avoided doing work by sitting in the bar with Fiona, Adam and Luke until 2pm when I went off to yet another rehearsal. It's really just as well I enjoy rehearsals, or I would have had a horrific week... We did a run through of the whole panto, and practiced a couple of the songs. It seems to be going pretty well. I'm glad I don't actually have any lines :D. Being in CULES seems to have given me enormous amounts of confidence which weren't there before. It's a nice feeling. After the rehearsal I met Fan and we went off to eat delicious pasta in Clown's. Mmm...and the hot chocolate...mmm... And then was a concert involving much Beethoven. Let's see if I can remember what it was... First was the Coriolan Overture, then the Triple Concerto, in which Emmy was a soloist, and then one of the symphonies...can't remember which...I'm sure Fan will let us know. That was all very lovely. Though Trinity Chapel is seriously inferior to that of King's. Tuh. And then off to a party, once again at Olaf's (it's a really good room!). It was a good party. I didn't get horribly hammered, but I did get nicely merry. And I danced around joyfully, and nattered to many lovely people. It was very happy. Here are a couple of photos to close:

Eep!

2006-11-18T11:20:00.000Z

Good lord, where on earth did that week and a half go? It seems to have been a whirl of reading, drinking, parties, essaying, dancing, debates... I promise I will get around to blogging again soon :-). Suffice it to say that I am still having a marvellous time, despite health scares on the parts of certain delightful individuals, the shocking forgetting of a very important birthday on my part (sorry Emmie sorry Emmie sorry Emmie) and the general appearance of work. Today my day is full as full. I just read a book, soon I will go to eat brunch before dashing off for a couple of hours rowing, before dashing back to be slightly late for a three hour rehearsal, before meeting Fan for dinner and a concert, from which I will dash slightly late again to a party. Ah the life of a social butterfly *giggle*. Maybe I could do a super quick rundown (how likely is this to work?) of the past week and a bit before I go to brunch in ten minutes. Let's give it a go:

Friday 12th: 9am lecture, 10am lecture, 11am lecture. Now that's just wrong. I'm a historian. I did not sign up for having three lectures in a row damn it. Just as well they were quite fun :). Then to lunch, then the library for two and a half hours, then to a German lesson, then dinner, then a rehearsal for Aladdin, which was, as per usual, hilarious. Then fun and joy in some way which I don't remember.

Saturday: I can't actually remember very much. Oh wait yes I can. It occurs to me that this day requires large numbers of pictures and will therefore take up lots of time. Botheration. Hmm...when shall I blog... I will do it soon! In glorious technicolour! With pictures and words and things!

Love and hugs m'dears, brunch calls.....

Time flies...

2006-11-09T15:51:00.000Z

when you're having fun. And I am, lots, And time seems to be speeding along at a ridiculous rate, with which I am barely able to keep up. I get set an essay, I finish it, I have a day free and all of a sudden that's another week gone. I can't believe we're in sixth week already! I'm only in Cambridge for three more weeks or something! Scariness. This is the reason I keep getting left behind in blogging. I think perhaps two days has gone past, then I look at the last post and realise it's been over a week already... Plus I have no memory whatsoever, so apart from my diary I am very stuck for what's been happening. And my diary tends to contain serious, work related things rather than the joyfully spontaneous things I do in the evenings. But we can give it a go nonetheless.

So looking back it would appear that the last day I talked of was Wednesday, so moving on from there... Last Thursday... Well I did the usual things, a 9am lecture, which I think was reasonably interesting, then a supervision in which I got set a particularly complicated essay, which I proceeded to read incorrectly, thus spending the next few days researching the wrong title... Oh well. I got the essay done anyway, it just wasn't quite so brilliant as other work I might have handed in. Although I had another supervision today, and she said it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought, I just got a bit confused with the Celticness. Which to be honest is fair, because the Celts were damn confusing. The Scots lived in Ireland, the Irish lived in Scotland, everyone spoke various versions of P-Celtic or Q-Celtic, one of which derives from Brittonic and the other from Gaelic etc. etc. And the sources SUCK ultimately. Except for Ireland where they are brilliant but possibly incredibly biased. Dear me it was confusing. This week I'm back to the good old Anglo-Saxons, so I am happy and breathing a sigh of relief at the fact that now I might actually be able to pronounce things again... Later on came the joy of choir, which was nice although we were doing plain song, which is vaguely confusing because of the way it's written. It sounds good though. Very ye olde and churchy. And I have no idea what I did in the evening...I didn't go to the debate... Oooh I remember I went to hustings. People were telling us why we should vote for them for KCSU (King's College Student Union). Some were amusing, some less so, some knew things, others did it. It was fun. And then I watched some very variable music for a long, long time and then went to bed.

On Friday I started the day with three lectures in a row. Three! In a row! This is unprecedented in the history of arts' students! Well not quite but still, it was something of a shock to the system. And I got really hungry... In my second lecture we learnt all about some guy getting bubonic plague in LA a couple of years back from kissing a dead ground squirrel. You learn some weird things doing medieval history... After lunch I went to the library for a couple of hours (seriously, how studious am I??) and then off to my German lesson. After that I met Fan, for a somewhat cataclysmic event. I'm not sure how many of you know, but I suppose you're bound to find out at some point in the future. In short, we are no longer together. The evening was spent somewhat sadly, naturally. Let us not delve too deeply.

Saturday I stayed in bed for as long as I could, before jumping out with enthusiasm and vigour to make my way towards the boathouse for rowing. It was, definitely, the best outing I have ever had. It was actually brilliant. Our coach was strict, but extremely good; he made sure we kept in time, got us up to rowing in an eight for long periods of time, told us we were the best novice boat on the river etc. etc. It was really great, I could tell how much we improved over the two hours. I love rowing. It's great. Gods I'm so Cambridge :D. I'm not sure how I spent the rest of the day. It is all rather a blur. In the evening however I met for a short rowing meeting, in which new crews were drafted. I am rowing at 7am on Mondays and Wednesdays, and at 12:30pm on Saturdays. Heavenly :). The early mornings aren't nearly as bad as you might expect. And, considering the nice amounts of free time I tend to have, I can always go back to bed after lectures :D. Later that evening were the Midsomer Common fireworks, which, though short, were very impressive. It is a shame I didn't take my cameras, they were really gorgeous. It was also incredibly crowded, so afterwards we hurriedly retreated to the bar with chips and drink, and spent a convivial evening there.

On Sunday I have absolutely nothing written in my diary. That is not helpful. Well at 11:15am there was church, which was rather exciting, because we were honoured with a visit from the Papal Nuncio. I was pleased about this, because he went to my church last month, but the day after I left for Cambridge, so I missed him that time. For those of you who don't know, the Papal Nuncio is basically the pope's representative in Britain, his diplomatic person for the crown and the Church in England etc. etc. I'm going to stop being religious at you all now. Other than that I actually have no idea what I did all day. I assume some work. Er. I'm sure I did fun things in the evening... Oooh oooh I remember one thing. I bought new trousers. And new socks. Yay!

On Monday rowing had been cancelled, so I was able to lie in. In fact, since one of my lecture courses had finished, I stayed in bed until after 9am. After 9! Gosh it was glorious. Then I realised I still had rather considerable amounts of research for my essay so I jumped out of bed and headed down to the library. On my arrival there I realised I had brought everything apart from my booklist, so I walked back home, picked up that rather essential piece of information and then hurried back again, to do half an hour's solid reading before having to go to a lecture. Okay so it wasn't the most organised of mornings. What are you going to do? So then lecture, then lunch, then reading in the library, then choir and evensong, and then the Reel Club. Wow. I have such timetabled Mondays, it's brilliant. The Reel Club was fabulous of course, and I actually managed not to mess up too much on the dances. Oooh they were fun. I like Postie's Jig. It's easy and you do lots of spinning. It is a happy dance.

Tuesday I don't think was vastly interesting. I had a 9am lecture, then sat and wrote my essay. I was quite impressed, with two half hour breaks it still only took me between 1:30 and 5:30. That may have had something to do with the fact that I was fed up with the horrid thing and trying to get it out of the way as quickly as I possibly could. At some point dinner happened, then I think the bar. Then about 14 of us went to Adam's room (it's a good size room. It felt like a very cosy cinema with a rather small screen. And Apple Macs, while dreadfully confusing, are damn sexy machines) to watch Labyrinth. Apparently it had David Bowie in very tight trousers. I wouldn't know, since I managed to fall fast asleep within the first ten minutes, only re-awakening in time to watch the credits role. At this point I realised I was damn tired and took myself off to bed.

Wednesday. Yesterday. Oh wow if I go much further I'm going to have to start talking about tomorrow! How cool is that? I just realised that this post has no photos. That makes me very sad. I do apologise. It is not a pretty post. Next time I will try to do better. Anyway, Wednesday. I toddled off to rowing at stupid o'clock and then raced back for my lecture at 9am. I was only two minutes late! She hadn't even started talking yet! I was so proud. Then for the rest of the day I was joyfully happy in the knowledge that I had no work. None at all. It is such a gorgeous feeling. I spent practically the whole day sitting in the bar and reading. A non history book. It was lovely. In the evening I went with Adam and Olaf to Sainsbury's, where we bought three bottles of bourbon, two bottles of beer, a bottle of wine and a bread knife. We didn't get any funny looks at all. Honest. On returning to the room of Olaf, Adam and I consumed the wine and Olaf began on the bourbon. Not all three bottles. Obviously. Some of that is for the 'Withnail and I' drinking game taking place on Saturday. Oooh I can't wait... I shall explain better when I've actually done it. If I can remember it...

Then today happened. I had a lecture today. Then I relaxed in the knowledge that I didn't have any work, then I went to my supervision and got given some work. *sob*. It's really weird, here I feel like such a slacker, but when I talk to anyone who doesn't go to Cambridge they groan in disbelief at my workload. They should meet the medics...

Anyway, I appear to have run out of things to say. Have lovely days all xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I hate...

2006-11-01T08:00:00.000Z

...the wind. You know why? This morning I arose, almost bright eyed and sort of bushy tailed after a grand total of five hours sleep, at 5:45. By 6:15 I was raring to go, so I wandered out of college and met Veronica. Together we walked to the boathouse, chatting happily. It was cold, but the sun rose beautifully and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Upon arrival at the boathouse we found we were the first to arrive, and so sat down to wait. Several other people arrived, but by 7:10 we were getting edgy. No coach, not enough rowers. We then got a phone call. The yellow flag is up. The wind is too strong and we cannot row. We walked home again.

At least this way I won't be late for my lecture on the Crusades I guess. And at least I only have one lecture today, and then I can go back to bed, due to my fantastic rush of an essay yesterday evening. After 10am I will have been up for over four hours, and I will have nothing left to do. If the lecturer is at all dull I will probably fall asleep in my chair. I love rowing :D.

I actually do though. It's a fabulous sport, despite the occasional ridiculous rising hours. Plus, even if I'm still rubbish at the end of this term I'm still going to officially be a senior, rather than a novice, rower, and that sounds excitingly grown up.

I do apologise for my complete lack of posts recently. I seem to be leading a rather incredibly busy life at the moment. And then even when I'm not that busy something pops up. There are nice people in the bar, or online, or there's that book of which I just wanted to read a few more pages... This makes 8am a very good time to blog. There is no one online, because all normal people are still in bed, and there is no one anywhere else for the same reason. So I can sit in peace and tranquillity, occasionally gazing out at the glorious sunshine which has befallen Cambridge this morning, and type. Maybe I will attempt to do a super quick rundown of what I've been doing. With no details or anything. Do we think it will work? Will I actually be able to summarise a day in under 100 words? We can but try.

Friday 20th:
9am lecture, 11am lecture, German lesson. Probably some fun filled things in the evening too, but I can't for the life of me remember what they could be. It all seems so long ago...

Saturday 21st:
I don't appear to have anything at all written down during the day for this. Which makes no sense, I must have done SOMETHING. I get the feeling I spent most of the day in the library, or in my room writing notes. Gosh how exciting... The evening, however, was rather more exciting, as it involved lots of good food, courtesy of Hane and Toby, and I got to see Kirsten too, which is always lovely. We ate a yummy Burmese chicken dish, and an delicious aubergine dish, with utterly scrumptious coconut rice. Hane told us what the proper Burmese names are buy needless to say I have forgotten. Maybe if we ask nicely enough he'll tell me again. Following this came a fantastically wonderful chocolate and cherry cheesecake, made by Toby. Mmm...I had a huge, huge slice. It was great. We also had nice wine society wine and ataxa. Or however you spell it. Here are pictures:

Sunday 22nd:
Even more exciting, as I voyaged down to London town. I got a train sometime in the morning, and was met at Kings Cross station by Fan who waved enthusiastically from platform 9 and three quarters. Thankfully he managed to restrain himself from attempting to run through the wall. The rest of the day was spent with Fan and my parents at home, where I ate proper bacon sandwiches for the first time in ages, and a proper home cooked roast dinner for the first time in even longer. I also watched TV for the first time in a month, and went in car. It was all most thrilling. I'm not used to such luxury here :D. In the evening we went to the theatre to see 'Grumpy Old Women Live' which was absolutely hilarious and had Rhona Cameron and Jenny Eclair, and some other lady whose first name was Annette but whose surname I do not know. They were truly fantastic and a great giggle throughout. Then came a long drive back to Kings Cross, I hopped on a train, and back here I was again. I was going to say 'back home again'. It does feel like home. It's amazing.

Monday 23rd:
Rose's birthday, for those of you who didn't know. Isn't she elderly? 9am lecture, 11am lecture, lots of work of various types, rehearsal for King's Voices followed by evensong, the Reel Club. Which was, naturally, awesome. I love dancing. It's fantastic. Not only is it brilliant fun, but you also keep reasonably fit AND meet loads of lovely, lovely people. What more could one ask?

Tuesday 24th:
9am lecture, followed by the writing of an essay. Or at least, the beginning of an essay. After lunch I officially had a three hour lecture about our themes and sources paper, but since I fell asleep for two of the presentations in the first half I felt it was doing me little good and so went and bought cake from Sainsbury's instead. I proceeded to eat the cake in its entirety with a little help from Adam and Arun. Ooh and I had strawberries, I love strawberries. I think I'm going to have to go and buy some more later... After that I finished my essay like the good little girl that I am.

Wednesday 25th:
I woke up at stupid o'clock and went rowing. It was a pretty good trip as far as I remember. I do like this rowing lark, despite the fact that it meant that I had to race home (I'm using the 'H' word again for King's) at ridiculous pace and was still late for my lecture. But only a tiny bit. I caught up quickly. Must get a bike... So yes, 9am lecture, then back to bed for a bit. I spent the afternoon doing something, no idea what, then went to see a free preview showing of the new Borat film in the evening. Don't go and see it. It is not funny. In fact it is almost certainly the worst film I have ever seen, and that's saying something. Then onwards to the bar, and then to bed.

Thursday 26th:
9am lecture followed by a nice lazy morning. I think I may have done some laundry. At 1:15 King's Voices did a recital in the chapel, which was lots of fun, and I managed not to cough too desperately badly. Arun came to see it, which was very kind of him, and he thought it was pretty good so yay. 2pm supervision. At 7:30ish (bit later actually...more like 8:30...thank you Hannah darling) I went off for a CULES pub meet in The Mitre, which, though I couldn't stay long, was absolutely fabulous. Many wonderful new people, and a nice pub too. After that I returned home, realised I had lost my EPOS card, sobbed bitterly for a while and then went to listen to exciting ska music, first in the bar and then in the cellars. It was great fun. I danced muchly and managed to forget my lack of EPOS card. Thinking of which I should probably get a new one quite soon...

Friday 27th:
9am lecture, 11am lecture, German lesson at 4pm. We finished translating the Othello passage! Woo! In the evening I'm guessing I probably hung about in the bar with all the lovely people who are there to be found. I might have been doing something more exciting. I wouldn't know. I don't have that sort of memory damn it.

Saturday 28th:
My intention was to go to the library after rowing, which officially finished at 2:10pm. However I eventually left the boathouse at 3:20, and since the library closes at 4:30pm on Saturdays I didn't get vast amounts done. I didn't mind though. Rowing was FANTASTIC. Three hours worth! We went as far as is physically possible on the river and had the proper coach take us for a while. We got really good, it was fabulous. We did, rather unfortunately, hit the wind and a traffic jam on the way back, but who cares. It was great! But yeah...library and work type things didn't really happen. In the evening it was the KCBC cocktails, for which you pay £5 and then drink to your hearts content. Dangerous or what? I believe Fan nearly died when he went. Thank you Hane for your quick work in saving his life. The cocktails were interesting to say the least. I drank plenty of them, so it didn't matter too much what they tasted like by the end of the evening...

Sunday 29th:
Church at Fisher House, which is always beautifully uplifting, and keeps me happy for a considerable period due to all the singing and joyfulness. Oooh it's All Saints today, must remember to go to church. Thanks go to the blog for reminding me. I probably did a bit of work after that, then at 4pm went to my first Aladdin rehearsal at Jesus. It was good fun. I did little, only being in the chorus, but got to watch the hilarity that was everyone else. Plus I got to give the baddy a frappucino. You can tell the quality of the panto just from that :D. At 6:30 I went and enjoyed a lovely dinner at Clowns, with the dear people that are Hane and Toby. We had long and interesting talks about topics which were so intensely interesting that I have now completely forgotten them all. Hehe. It was a lovely way to spend the evening. And good grief they give you big portions. After that was a trip to the Great Hall to watch a concert consisting of Delius' 'Two Aquarelles', based on how it feels to sit on the Cam with Pimms and fruit cake, and Dvorak's eighth symphony, both of which were gorgeously lovely, and both of which I spent the rest of the evening humming. Then I went and drank too much wine in the bar, and then to bed.

Monday 30th:
A trip once again to the boathouse at 6:45, for what was a pretty good outing but one which resulted in my being slightly late for lectures again. No matter. 9am lecture, 11am lecture, King's Voices rehearsal and evensong. Very sadly I couldn't go to the Reel Club since I had managed to completely bugger up my hip and my foot (they're better now), so I spent the evening nattering to people in the bar and watching comedy with nice people. It was good fun.

Now I must tiddle off to my lecture. Lookit lookit, I'm only TWO DAYS behind now! I rock. So do all of you, particularly if you read all this. Love and hugs xxxxxxxxxxx

Chocolate cake and strawberries...

2006-10-24T18:47:00.000+01:00

...are a match made in heaven. I should know, I have been munching on both for most of the late afternoon and early evening. Mmm...Helen love Sainsbury's...well come on, 74p for a decent chocolate cake! Bargainous I tell you. Anyway, on to the exciting events of many many days ago. To Saturday 14th of October in fact. Fan was here that day, it was good. In the morning we went to have breakfast with his friend Ian, who was very nice. I ate a reasonably normal sized breakfast, consisting of bacon, sausage, egg, baked beans, toast etc., while Fan and Ian had basically the same but twice as big and with two drinks included. Insane. And I went rowing in the afternoon which was very lovely. Apart from that I don't remember much of what we did. Oh we watched lots of Frasier, and ate huge amounts of carrot and houmous. Which I assume means we also went to Sainsbury's at some point. Pah, whoever said details were a necessity... Hehe. In the evening I remember what happened however, we went off to a party with many lovely people. The party was in the room of Olaf (good name no? Apparently his dad suggested as a joke and his mum liked it) in Market Hostel, which meant a nice big room with a lovely sticky outy windowy bit. I forget the technical term. There were roasted chestnuts and lots of alcohol, cake and good company, bubbles and dancing. In fact I believe I may have some photos...

On the left you see general party people nattering. Note all the nice non alcoholic drinks on the table. They made good mixers for the rum :D. On the right is me with the cyclops teddy. He had an excellent name, which I have completely forgotten. It was some kind of fruit. He also had four legs, and was extremely cute.

That on the left is Olaf himself, dancing to Britney Spears. He is wearing a geeky but very cool tshirt which says 'A wizard has turned you into a whale. Is this awesome? (Y/N)'. On the right is a fantastic photo taken by Fan of a guy eating bubbles. He did not look impressed by the taste. I personally am not surprised. Doesn't it look fun? We left at about 2am, just after Olaf had gone to half die in the loo somewhere and just before the ketamine got handed around. We are intelligent people. Well. Adam stayed and I think took some, but there's no accounting for taste.

On Sunday I went to mass at Fisher House at 11:15 and then had to say goodbye to Fan as he was having lunch with the wonderful Hannah. That was very sad. Not the lunch, the saying goodbye. Obviously. I'm fairly sure I did other things too that day. Maybe I just did work...actually I did do work, it was most impressive. I was proud of myself. And then we were going to do fun things in the evening but everyone else wanted to do work so I think I just hung about in the bar. Oh yes, first with Hane and then with Adam. That was nice, if quiet.

Ooh a Monday about which I have something to say. I started off in a lecture about Anglo-Saxon politics, then went to the library, then went to another lecture about something else Anglo-Saxon related. I believe I then went and did some work until 4:15 when I had a rehearsal for choir in the chapel, and then evensong in the same place, both of which were lovely. Even if we did slightly mess up the end of one of the pieces. Just the sopranos, so I don't think anyone noticed. And the rest of the music was great. Naturally. Then came dinner, and then off with Helen-who-knows (it's a system. It makes sense if you know the system) to the Wesley Methodist Church for the Reel Club. Oooh and fun it was! I met many a lovely person and ate chocolate and danced and danced. I can't remember any of the names of the dances, but they were all joyous and fun so it matters not at all. I love dancing. Even if I'm not great. I may be on the way to being rather addicted to it. At least it's a healthy addiction I guess :D. After that I helped Helen flyer the pigeon holes for her friend's play, and then something and then bed.

Now for Tuesday. Also a nice day. Morning lectures once more, including an archaeology one which made me decide not to go to archaeology lectures any more. While fascinating I didn't actually understand very much of it. The lecturer kept talking about things like 'plastic embellishments' and I'm sure they didn't have plastic back then... At 2pm I had a meeting with Dr. Sonenscher and all the other King's first year historians. We talked about an article which I had forgotten to read, so I didn't make much contribution. Next time however I shall read the article and then make intelligent and lucid remarks. Or at least I'll make some remarks. Quality in quantity and all that :D. In the evening I had a 'family dinner' with my college parents, my college brother, and my adopted college brother and sister. If you want names they are Andrea and Vince, Andrew, Michael and Siobhan respectively. It was a very lovely dinner, we had wine, houmous, pizza of various kinds and yummy cake. The conversation flowed nice and comfortably, and I met my college grandad who is a graduate and therefore ancient but very nice. We finished up eventually and then I did...something...

With Wednesday arrived Richard, which was very lovely. His coach came in at about 11:45 (late! Late I tell you!) and we returned to my room for the obligatory tour and dumping of stuff. After general chatter and 'wow I haven't seen you in so long's we went and flumped in the bar and then went to Sainsbury's to buy provisions. Or did we...I know we did that at some point... We also had lunch at some point...well...I had lunch. Richard had twelve pieces of pasta. Anyway, we spent much of the afternoon wandering around the beautiful city that is Cambridge slightly aimlessly since I'm not great with the whole sense of direction thing. I did point out some of the more beautiful colleges however, and we saw the round church and went into the King's chapel and did other things that tourists are supposed to do. Albeit without a camera. That came the next day :). Um. At some point in the evening I went to collect some bike keys from rower Helen and returned to find Richard asleep, so I cooked dinner as quietly as I could and then woke him up and we feasted on egg fried ice (good times) and spring rolls. Next came a drink with Hane, in a bar of which I cannot remember the name. It was very nice though, very swish. Plus Richard kindly paid for my drink so that made things nice and inexpensive :D. After the drinks we dashed off to Robinson to watch the Medics' Revue with Adam, as advised by Hannah, and very amusing it was too. Some utterly dreadful puns, some rather Cambridgey in jokes and generally many giggles and much joy. It made me happy. As did the chips I had afterwards :D. And then to bed, ready to get up at stupid o'clock.

On Thursday I arose at the ungodly hour of 5:45am, and unfortunately woke Richard up in the process. But I left at 6:30 so I am fairly sure he got a bit of sleep afterwards. Particularly since he was then in a bed rather than on a floor, which is generally more conducive to restfulness. I, on the other hand, was cycling like mad towards the Kings' College Boathouse in order that I might see the sun rise over the Cam (divine) and go rowing. Yes, yes tell me I'm mad, tell me I'm crazy, but it's pretty good fun. At that point it's so early in the morning that it doesn't feel early in the morning, and I rowed along happily for an hour and a half before belting back to be five minutes late for my 9am lecture. I was so nearly on time...if it wasn't for my stupid bag I would have been fine... Anyway, it wasn't a vastly exciting lecture so it didn't really matter too much. After that I returned and woke Richard up and we named lots of music on my machine before being booted out by my bedder, who wanted to clean my room. Off, therefore, for some sightseeing with a camera in tow. A slightly shorter tour this time, but nice nonetheless. I think it was sunny. When I remember it it was sunny anyway, and that's all that matters. After very nice sandwiches at the Unhappy Place it was nearly time for Richard to depart, a very sad time. I accompanied him to the coach station and waved goodbye before racing off to my supervision. Which was pretty good actually, my essay was alright and Dr. Webber seemed pleased. Later came choir, in which I discovered, much to my dismay, that I was rather ill. Coughing all over the place I left choir and went to watch a debate at the union- 'This house believes that religion is the opiate of the masses'. It was a good debate. I left unconvinced of the motion, but pretty glad to have gone. Adam and Arun then met me in the union bar and we went off to the ADC, accompanied by rather more coughing, to watch Art, which was absolutely hilarious, and extremely well done for a student play. It did however finish rather late, so I ran off to bed. Which was rendered rather pointless by the fact that I had a hacking cough all night. I'm not bitter. Honest. :D

Anyway, enough for now. I am now under a week behind. Maybe this is a good way of blogging. It means I always have lots to say. Gosh...lucky you...:D Love you all xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Will I catch up now? Probably not...

2006-10-19T16:05:00.000+01:00

...but let's give it a go anyway. I believe I finished last time on Sunday. That means the logical progression would probably be to Monday, which I believe was the 9th day of the fine and fabulous month which is October. Is it fine and fabulous? I think so. While a little cold at times, the leaves do begin to do beautiful things and everything starts looking nice and autumnal. Anyway, procrastination, something I've always been immensely good at but which in this case would probably be rather counter productive. So, Monday. I started off, as per usual, getting up for a 9am lecture, which as far as I remember was reasonably interesting. Another lecture followed at 11am, also interesting (I promise I won't bore you with any details :D) and then I think I spent the afternoon finishing my essay. Aren't I a good girly? Then at 4:15pm came a rehearsal in the chapel, and then my first ever evensong. Well, the first evensong I've ever actually sung in anyway. It was rather exciting, we had a reasonable sized congregation and the music all went very well. I was happy. It makes your voice soar, no matter how quietly you sing. Yum :D. Later on, Arun and I went to St. Andrew's Church and indulged once more in the glorious excitement of Scottish dancing, at the Reel Club Ceilidh (caylee is how it's pronounced). It was absolutely fantabulous, I danced every dance for the whole three hours (I'm not saying I danced them particularly WELL...but I danced them all!) and a fabulous man in a kilt taught me to polka and thought I had done ballroom dancing before. Ah it was great. Twirly and whoopy and wonderful. I want to go to lots of ceilidhs lots and lots....*goes into reverie*.

Right, Tuesday. 9am and 11am lectures once again, except this time the 11am one was in the archaeology department, which was slightly crazy. It was interesting but a little technical...not sure how long I'll be going to those...(it wouldn't be bunking, honest. My supervisor told me to stop going to them when they started talking about 'plastic embellishments' and they did). What did I do Tuesday afternoon? I can't actually remember...oh I think I might have spent most of it doing washing, what with having finished my essay the day before. Gosh what an exciting life :D. In the evening I went to a talk at the union by Richard Dawkins which was alright but not great. For him it was pretty much a book promotion as far as I could tell. I did get vaguely amused once, due to the fact that some people started rehearsing a rather loud play right next door, which clearly involved a woman getting mugged or something because there were occasional screams of 'HELP!'. I thought it was rather obvious that it was a play, but various of the chivalric males surrounding me were clearly getting rather worried. Bless :D. Ooh and then Hane invited me to Clowns and I had hot chocolate and a plate of pasta (ah the joys of having two lots of dinner...) and I saw Toby as well as Hane and it was all marvellous and wonderful. The hot chocolate is divine. Go there.

Ooh onto Wednesday now, we're going well. I don't actually remember what I did that day at all...that's really quite shameful. I had a lecture at 9am and then...er...I think I went to the library and made random notes for a bit out of a feeling of guilt that I ought to be doing some work. Oh yes I also went out and bought Roisin's birthday present (a terrifying looking philosophy book, but the only one I could find with pretty pictures in it) and did other useful things like topping up my phone. I must have done SOMETHING. I probably hung about in the bar a bit. And at some point I wrapped the book in makeshift wrapping paper. It looked good damn it... And I assume I went to sleep at some point too :).

I think Thursday was vaguely more organised. Yes it was, much, and it was lots and lots of fun. I had a lecture at 9am and then I bobbled around happily for a bit, before going to lunch and a lunch time concert at 1:15. It was the choral scholars, and so naturally utterly lovely. There were a couple of basses, a couple of tenors and one counter tenor. They were all incredible, and they sang very pretty music (I think I have the programme somewhere about but I'm not sure quite where...). The counter tenor sounded pretty much like an alto, it was slightly odd hearing that sort of tone come out of a man's mouth, but it was beautifully pure and echoed around the chapel in such a way that shivers went straight down your spine... Then at 2pm I had a supervision, in which I found out that my first essay was pretty good and that the second essay was a lot harder...grrr... Next came, of course, choir, where we learnt another six new pieces of music at super speed. It's good fun :D. And after that we all (not the choir, other people, photos to follow) went to Nando's for the birthday of Roisin. It was good fun. We brought her a surprise cake so they brought it in with lots of candles and a hat to wear and we sang happy birthday. The food was scrum, I ate far too much and it would seem that I find even lemon and herb chicken just that tiny bit spicy...I have no tolerance whatsoever, it's really quite shameful. Anyway, photos.

Hehe what fun it all was. Then we wandered home in a full and joyful state and nattered to many a person in the bar and then went to sleep. Ah that was a good day. Joyous food. Eating out! I hadn't done that in a while... And doesn't the cake look divine? The lassie in the hat is Roisin by the way. If you hadn't guessed...

And now to Friday. Wow I'm under a week behind now! How exciting is that? And a very excellent week it was too, as soon you shall see. So Friday started at 9am, when I had a lecture, and then another lecture at 11am. Seems to be rather a theme developing there I feel... Then I did some work (shock!) and then went off to my German lesson, where I translated the beginning of a passage of a critical analysis of Othello. It was hard, but quite fun nonetheless. No rainbows or ducklings on the way back, but (almost as good :D) I met Fan just outside the King's bar, as he had come to visit me for the weekend. Hurrah! And what on earth did we do that evening? We went out to dinner I think...now where...oooh I remember, we went to Dojo. That was fun, nice big portions of very scrummy noodles. And eating outside is always lovely when it isn't too cold :). Then to the bar (another recurrent theme) where Fan met a load of people he knew and played lots of table football, and Emma, Roisin and I laughed at a man with a beard, much to the bewilderment of Hane. It was a fun evening. And we went to the Van of Life and ate chips. Actually, I was good. I didn't eat any chips, I just stole a couple :D.

I realise I didn't catch up. Well I didn't expect to did I? I never meant to raise any expectations, honest. Please forgive me. I'll get there one day. For now, I will leave you with thoughts of joy and happiness and hugs and love. And I have to go choir now :) xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Hurry up woman!

2006-10-15T22:43:00.000+01:00

The woman in question being, of course me, due to the fact that I have been completely rubbish and let time get away with me and am never going to remember all the stuff that has happened since...now when was it...good grief, the Tuesday before last. I guess at least if I don't remember much it'll be at super speed. If I stop rambling. Which I will do, right now.

So, the Tuesday before last. That was...the 3rd October I believe. Wow I really have no idea. I had my first supervision in the afternoon. My supervisor is called Dr. Webber and works in Trinity- she seems absolutely lovely and her office door is right behind a banana plant, which I find immensely exciting. We chatted about how everything works, and then I got set an essay, which was mildly less exciting. It was entitled 'What factors led rulers in England to adopt or reject Christianity in the period between the late 6th and the end of the 7th centuries?'. To someone who has never studied that period before (me) it sounded quite intimidating, but I found out in my next supervision that I did alright, and it was quite a good start to the year. So that was very happy. Ooh I remember what we did in the evening. Arun and I wanted to find out if we could walk all the way around the chapel, so we went out to investigate. Sadly there is grass in the way, so we instead investigated the side gate, and got picked up (not like that) by two Clare second years who whisked us on a lightening tour of the college (very nice) and then out for a drink (woo! Free alcohol!) and then attempted to convert me to Protestantism as soon as Arun wasn't there for two minutes. Hmm... They were very nice other than that...

Woo Tuesday done. Wednesday...what happened then...I had a sort of introductory lecture thing which was alright if unexciting. They basically just told us why we should do history at Cambridge, which I at least had already worked out. I guess it was nice of them to remind us though. So far I have found that if you do history you seem to get less work to do than other people (well...A LOT of reading...but that's not so bad) but you still have lots of 9am lectures. You also get lots of beautiful libraries to live in (I could quite happily adopt the King's library as my second home) and nice people who are just as obsessive about the subject as you are. That's nice. I'm sure I did something in the evening, but I currently have absolutely no idea what that something might have been. I'm sure it was a lot of fun anyway.

Thursday was the beginning of real lectures. Oooh *drumroll*. Yes, yes it was that exciting. I had a 9am lecture which as far as I remember was fairly interesting. I think they all have been so far so that isn't really saying much. Then I amused myself, probably reading various books, until 3:50 when I went back to my room to get stuff for the CULES (Cambridge University Light Entertainment Society) squash which began at 4pm. At 4:45pm I woke up again. Bless my sleepy little heart. Anyway it didn't matter, I still went to the squash and chatted to the amusing people and saw the fabulous Hannah and managed to completely avoid alcohol and party rings. Woo go me! Then was my first choir rehearsal. It was entirely sight reading, which I am now a lot better at thank goodness. We learnt six pieces in an hour, and at the end sounded pretty darn good if I do say so myself. After the rehearsal (look, get me remembering things! Okay so yes I have these written down in my diary...) lots of us went off to the union to watch the freshers' debate. First there was an emergency debate by students, about how lawyers have lost their appeal (yes please do roll your eyes at the hideous pun) and then the real thing, with the likes of John Sergeant (the broadcaster), Kev Sutherland (stand up comic), Diana Ingram (jeweller), Charles Ingram (author etc.), Jeremy Vine (broadcaster) and Nazanin Afshin-Jam (Miss World). The motion was about women being better suited to ruling the world. I was swayed by neither side (I sitll think that sort of thing can't be judged by sex, it has to be merit). Three of the speakers were great, three were reasonably abysmal. It was mostly fun, if a little squashed. I was incredibly impressed by Sergeant, who spoke for an entire half hour without getting boring. After the debate we decided we couldn't be bothered to wait for the result (we all abstained) so we went to get cheesy chips at the Van of Life. Good stuff.

Oh wow we're up to Friday. I'm really flying! Hehe. I had a lecture at 9am, sat in the library for an hour and then found that my 11am lecture had been moved to week 5. As far as I remember I did some more reading. I'm fairly sure I did something more interesting than that as well, but I can't remember for the life of me what it could have been. At 4pm I had my first German lesson, with a sweet old lady called Mrs. Mclean. She is actually German, I assume she married someone Scottish. Basically we just nattered in German for 45 minutes or so. It's amazing how it comes back to you when it has to. Then in the evening I did something incredibly exciting, and very fulfilling, which I have now completely forgotten. I'll ask someone sometime...I'm sure they'll remember more than I...

And Saturday. Ooh that was a fun day. I think I started my essay. No that wasn't the fun bit. Tuh. How silly. We went off to the boathouse for tubbing day, which is basically where they have a bbq and you eat far too much, and they put you in a boat which is very unlikely to capsize and you paddle about for a bit. It was good. Don't all sigh at me about being a boatie. At least for this term we're only doing afternoons I think, so no 7am starts. I simply aspire to having an oar to hang on my wall. And then a house big enough to look good with an oar on the wall. I think that's a reasonably respectable dream. My uncle John had an oar. He turned it into a lampstand and then it got stolen. And they say it's modern days that are bad... And now this is really bad, I haven't the faintest idea what happened yet again. Hmm...

Sunday I remember more of. By which I mean it's written up on my calendar so I can take a peek when I forget. At 11:15am I went to mass at Fisher House. It was an entirely sung mass, so took an hour and a half rather than the thirty five minutes I'm used to at home, but it was very nice. Absolutely packed, and everyone seemed very friendly. I signed up to do readings once in a while. After that I went and collected Arun and off we went to the house of Toby and Hane, where we met Toby and Kirsten. Not Hane yet however. He had better things to do :-). We made homemade pesto and goats' cheese, caramelised onion and puff pastry canapes. Here are some photos of the process:

We crushed and mushed and pounded and did other violent sounding things, and ended up with a huge (really huge) pile of deliciousness. We started off with six canapes each, then moved onto the homemade pesto, with pasta made by the fair hand of Toby (real pasta! Wow!) and then the most delicious homemade cheesecake EVER. It was toffee crunch or something similar. Oooh it was so good...I want some now... We took some home in fact and had a cheesecake, strawberries and orange juice party in my room. Emma played us some fabulous music on her lovely guitar and all was joyous.

Now it is late so I shall love you and leave you xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Beautiful day

2006-10-07T19:44:00.000+01:00

Yesterday the weather was foul and I got extremely cold and damp. Today the sun shone, and it was warm, and King's basked in the beauty of early autumn. By the way, I realise that in the last post I was most remiss and did not give you a picture of where I now live. I'm still not going to, but you can see the chapel. I don't think I actually have a photo of the rest of it just yet. By the way I just wrote 527 words of my essay, so I am not only feeling rather smug, but also quite eloquent. Which is obviously why I just managed to spell the word 'but' incorrectly twice. Anyway. Photo:

Isn't it lovely? And that is my particularly beautiful new dress by the way, which I am very much in love with. Ok so where did I get up to? Was it only Saturday? Good grief... Ok so what happened Sunday? It would really have helped if I'd actually written some of this down. Fan went home, I remember that bit. That was sad. Oh and we were supposed to go punting, but it bucketed down with rain so we just did indoorsy type things all day. I think I finished unpacking. How dreadfully dull it sounds...I'm sure it was far more exciting. In the evening there was a pub quiz in the bar, which was fairly good fun, even though our team didn't win. I think we did pretty well though. And then after that, at about midnight, we invited ourselves to a party in Garden Hostel, which was great fun despite the fact that I couldn't drink (the reason for this will become clear later). Arun drank for me and ended up getting rather hilariously wasted. We danced a lot to various different types of music and ate things and laughed a lot and generally had a lot of fun until about 2, when I decided returning would be a good idea before the lure of gin got too strong.

Monday I actually have things written down for! Not everything, but still. Ooh it was very exciting, I started off with a tour of the chapel roof. Now, you have seen the chapel. It's just up there, above the written bits. It has a fairly high roof. It was so cool! Lots of spirally steps, then we ended up between the ceiling and the roof, and then on the roof itself. The views were utterly breathtaking, as was clambering up and down the tiny little wooden ladders... We saw the Clare freshers getting ready for their matriculation photo, all neatly done up in gowns (snigger). I think I may even have a couple of vaguely interesting photos...

After that I did useful things like going to Sainsbury's and putting money on my EPOS card so that I would be able to eat in the future. At 2pm I had my first DoS meeting, which lasted quite a while but was reasonably helpful. We got given lots of pieces of paper and told how everything worked and so on and so forth. While useful, it wasn't very interesting, so I shall now hush. Oooh and then came the reason I couldn't drink the night before. I had the utterly terrifying experience of a King's Voices audition. Now, I dislike auditions at the best of times, but they're even worse when I really care about the result, I don't know the person to whom I have to sing, and I don't have a piece prepared but instead have to sight read what I'm given. To begin with my voice shook so much I couldn't even sing scales properly. However I gradually calmed down and the upshot of it all is that I am now in the choir. So I am very happy. Although it will never be quite the same as Chamber Choir, where I had the immense privilege of sitting next to Emmie each week (Emmie please send me your postcode...I suck and have managed to mislay your address). In the evening was the rather infamous pubcrawl. It was fabulous fun, although I rather used the fact that I hadn't drunk anything the night before to drink possibly a little too much. We went to five or six pubs, ending up in Kam Bar (rather expensive unless you buy wine by the bottle...ahem...) and had lots and lots of joy and giggles. And I didn't even spend that much, which was nice. Plus, I got to wear Hane's hat, which can only be a good thing:
Right, it would appear I have once more run out of time. After the pub crawl we went to the Van of Life for chips. And I'll have you know that I woke up with a head as clear as a bell. I was proud. On to the heady joys of Tuesday and Wednesday in the next installment...xxxxxxx

Rainbows and ducklings

2006-10-06T19:50:00.000+01:00

Gosh isn't that a gorgeously soppy title? Today I was walking back to King's from Cranmer Road, where I had just had a German lesson (with a sweet little old lady, bless her heart) and I was thinking and staring at the ground, when I suddenly looked up and there in the sky was the most incredible double rainbow I have ever seen. Not only was it a double rainbow, it was incredibly bright, and two full arcs. By which I mean you could very nearly see the pot of gold at the ends of each... I take this as an excellent omen. It made me very happy very quickly. And then I walked just a little bit further, and there in the grass was a tiny little duck pecking about. It must have been fairly young. That made me happy too. It was a good walk.

As you may have guessed I am now in Cambridge, and I am having a wonderful time. Although of course I miss all you lovely people intensely. By the way, for those of you who don't know I am now on facebook and would love to be a friend to each and every one...please...it'd make me feel loved... I'm not fantastic at using it yet, which is why I'm not going on friend hunts myself.

What have I been doing over the past week? Oooh an awful lot. I have many wonderful new friends (though no more wonderful than the old ones of course, whom I still love to pieces), an incredibly beautiful place in which to live, a nice room (which I have succeeded in making very 'me'. Or so I like to think) with an ensuite bathroom, a nice supervisor and DoS (director of studies) and...er...many other nice things. Oooh I just realised. You remember that photo I didn't have before? Here it is:Did you all imagine it correctly? I knew you would :). Okay I now realise I don't have that much time before I'm supposed to be running away to a ceilidh or some other such thing. So let us have a quick rundown of events, and maybe even some pretty pictures. If I can make the horrid thing hurry up. I arrived on Friday 29th September. Now what did I do that evening? It seems an awfully long time ago. Oh yes, there was all the general unpacking (with the help of my dearest Fan, who had so kindly driven me up since my parents had to work) and dinner, and sitting in the bar getting to know the multitudes of people around me. I get the feeling I went to bed rather late, but I can't remember why. Oooh I know. Wait no I don't. Okay it doesn't matter. :D. Sorry, Cambridge is clearly zapping my coherence...

Saturday I may remember slightly better. Ah yes, my parents came up to see me. We wandered around the town, and later on I went to chapel and a couple of meetings. Oooh but before that we matriculated. It would appear that no one else does this, so I shall explain. Basically we signed a bit of paper saying we would adhere to the King's constitution and be good little people in our years here. It also means that I am now officially a King's member until I die, which is both exciting and terrifying. I also went to a chapel service, where the King's Choir was singing, which was rather exciting because they are incredibly amazingly fantastic. The evening too was utterly lovely. After drinks with our DoSs we had matriculation dinner, which is beautifully formal, all the men in suits and all the girls in nice dresses. The menu ran as follows:

Vine wrapped goat's cheese with aubergine pickle olive crostino
Grilled sirloin steak, wild mushroom and tarragon sauce, fine beans and pancetta dauphinoise
Cappucino brulee with cinnamon froth and cantucci biscuit
Coffee and college mints

There was nice wine too, red and white. I'm convinced they spend a lot of time attempting to get us drunk... We weren't allowed to take photos in dinner, but I attempted a discreet one nonetheless...

Later on we went down to the cellar bar and danced insanely but happily through the night, to dreadful music. It was good fun :D.
I realise that now I actually have to go with haste, and I realise too that I don't seem to have got very far... However I will come back to you soon with tales of drunkenness and debauchery, hot chocolate and cheese, Doctor Watson and Irish dancing. Love love xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Packed and ready to go

2006-09-28T13:31:00.000+01:00

Just about here you have to imagine the following picture:

On the far left, a medium sized black suitcase with a bright pink corduroy jacket cast over it.
Next to that, three stacked boxes with 'Blisset Bookbinders' in blue on the front, all nicely taped up with brown tape, with a dark green coat on the top. Leaning against them on the left hand side is a green corduroy shoulder bag, and on the other side is a bright turquoise Jane Norman bag.
Continuing to the right there is a dark purple safe box with a lock, and on top of this sits a wicker laundry basket. Leaning against said basket is a poster of Le Chat Noir.

Now the reason you have to imagine this, is because I am terribly proud of my great organisation skills, for I am entirely packed and ready to set off to Cambridge tomorrow morning. I even took a photo of my great endeavour, and it is that which I have just described. Why, you cry, do you not show us this glorious picture in great technicolour? Because the necessary cable is in the bottom of one of those three nicely taped up boxes, that's why. Grr....:D.

So anyway. Illustrations done with I am fairly buzzing with anticipation and, it has to be admitted, terror, at the thought that tomorrow morning, at 11:50 on the dot I shall be setting forth in Fan's car, with about half of my stuff, to Cambridge. The rest of it is being brought the next day by my darling parents, who sadly couldn't get the Friday off work. We should arrive in Cambridge at about 1:30, giving me plenty of leeway (I have to be there by 3pm) and time to unpack and make things pretty. I'm not entirely sure what's happening for the rest of the day- there is a chapel service at 5:30 and I have a meeting at 6, but after that all is a mystery.... Fan will be disappearing off to meet Hane and Toby I believe, and then returning when orders come.

But so far that is in the future. I shall let you know what happens when I have the internet set up in my room. After exhaustive research and investigation (or rather, by counting while I packed) I have discovered that I am in possession of:

Six skirts
Four dresses
Seven pairs of trousers
Between 25 and 30 tops
Five jumpers

So why do I always feel like I have nothing to wear? It's ridiculous. However I do like having a large wardrobe, it is very satisfying. I'm such a woman...

In other news, I have had quite a nice week so far. However, I shall start my tale with an incident of less niceness. Last Saturday I was at work. It was about 11:30. I had just popped down to the cellar to get a fresh bottle of classic sambuca, since that particular drink seemed to have been flowing with exceptional speed. Coming up the stairs again I suddenly heard a piercing shriek. I ran up the rest of the stairs to find, on the other side of the bar, a man with blood pouring down his face. That man then grabbed an ashtray and smashed it into the face of the guy who had clearly punched him only minutes before. More blood. The second guy then picked up a lid from one of our condiments jars (large, heavy and glass) and threw it into his face. More blood. Mark (main boss), John (minor boss) and Danny (not a boss) rushed into the fray in an attempt to separate the two guys and got smacked in the faces and half strangled for their troubles. However after a great deal more struggling they managed to get the two guys outside, whereupon half the pub (customers, not the building) exited to continue watching. Once the people were out of our carpark and on the pavement they were no longer our responsibility, and I have no idea what happened next. The condiments jar lid was put straight into the wash, being covered in blood as it was. For the same reason, Mark had to leave and change his shirt, and John's tie went AWOL. It was certainly an exciting night.

Sunday was my last day at work. It was quite sad. I had a long, long and very amusing chat with Kim and Lorna afterwards, and then we all went our separate ways. I got home at about 3am...

On Monday I spent the morning not doing a huge amount and then in the afternoon went to tea with my dear friend Katherine. It was very lovely, I had hot chocolate, a scone with jam and a very fresh orange juice. She had a milkshake, a cupcake and a hot chocolate. We chatted for ages about many topics, ranging from university to P.G. Wodehouse, A levels to James Bond. It was very fun. And then she was sweet enough to treat me! Lovely lovely. Then Fan came over and we packed a box, ate dinner and watched Family Guy. It was nice in a quiet, rather domestic sort of way. Although we packed the box extremely full and I had great fun putting layer upon layer of tape on it just so that it stayed shut...

Tuesday was even quieter- I went out and bought my beautiful laundry basket and that was pretty much it as far as I remember, until the evening. Which was very similar to the evening before- Fan came round, we watched some TV, American Dad, had dinner. This time he had to leave rather earlier, so I watched Stephen Fry's programme on manic depression/bipolar disorder. Which, while absolutely fascinating, scared the life out of me, since it runs in my family.

Then on Wednesday I actually did something! I woke up at an almost reasonable time and took myself off to West Wickham to see Richard. First off we watched 'Airplane!', which, if you don't know, is a spoof of a disaster movie and is absolutely hilarious. *giggles* *giggles some more*. Poor Scraps... After that we went off to play Pitch and Putt golf. It was very fun, although I was reasonably hopeless. Well. Absolutely rubbish really. Although in the end I only lost by 6, a fact about which I was quite proud. I just need to learn to aim slightly better and hit slightly less hard. When we got home again we found a Rachel in a car, and in she came for a cup of tea. Amusement followed with cat feeding and conversation, until she had to disappear off once more. We ate dinner, looked at multitudes of random photos (and didn't you all look young? :D) and then went upstairs for giggles and so forth. It was a very excellent day.

Today I finished the packing. Later I will go riding and then go out to dinner at my pub. I shall speak to you all again when I next can xxxxxxxxx

Giggles seductively

2006-09-26T00:20:00.000+01:00

You Are a Natural Flirt

Believe it or not, you're a really effective flirt.
And you're so good, you hardly notice that you're flirting.
Your attitude and confidence make you a natural flirt.
And the fact that you don't know it is just that more attractive!

What Kind of Flirt Are You?

And don't you know it? Clearly I'm going to have to learn to curb my natural deliciousness. Otherwise you'll all have to watch out just to make sure you don't get seduced by my charm. *snigger*

Shakesperianianiania. And words.

2006-09-22T20:36:00.000+01:00

Well I did warn you after all. I promise I won't make the Shakespeare bit too long. It's just things I found out which I thought were sort of vaguely interesting. Well actually that's a lie, I found them extremely interesting. But to the average normal person they are probably quite interesting verging on less interesting :D. The word things are quite interesting though. Also, if you have read Richard's blog already I would like to point out that while I did, yes, look extremely foolish, he himself looked even sillier playing the boxing game. It's such a shame that it didn't get caught on film. ALSO I would like to point out that I was forced into it! I did resist but no was apparently not an option. Tuh. Was fun though :D.

Ok so first of all, my darling of literature:

Shakespeare wasn't actually born on the 23rd April. Well he was, but on the Julian calendar, not the Gregorian calendar which we use today. Going by our calendar Shakespeare was actually born on May 3rd. All because England was being Protestant at the time. Tuh. Always causing trouble...

Anne Hathaway (his wife) was a cradle snatcher, at seven or eight years older than William. Also, in his will he left her his 'second best bed'. It is a matter of great controversy who got the best bed....

Mark Rylance said, 'You need a good story in the Globe. If you're not wondering what's going to happen next you become aware that you're standing, or sitting on a bench'. I think this is very true. And Shakespeare is, of course, marvellous so it works. A bit of dried mango and some chocolate doesn't hurt either...

Shakespeare never lets the audience, or the other characters, forget the Jewish thing. In one scene in the Merchant of Venice, Shylock gets called by his name 6 times, and 'Jew' 22 times. That is a brilliant play. Although you do end up hating almost everyone. But Shylock's speech (you know, the famous one, 'if you prick us do we not bleed etc.) is incredible. Possibly my favourite bit of Shakespeare.

Shakespeare uses both 'you' and 'thou', and there is actually a reason. 'You' is like 'vous' or 'Sie'- it is either the plural, or the polite form of the singular (so you would say it to strangers or important people), while 'thou' is like 'tu' or 'du', so you say it to friends or relatives. See I thought that was really interesting. Now I always notice it.

A Shakesperian actor would never actually really know what the whole play was about. He would never see it, nor would he be given any of the script apart from the three words before his own lines. Also, they had no rehearsals. They spent the morning learning lines and practising fight scenes or acrobatics, and then they performed. Crazy!

You know the original Globe burnt down? Amazingly, no one died. One man's trousers did get set on fire, but someone close by chucked beer all over him and he was saved with minor injuries. Genius!

In Hamlet, the actor playing Laertes gets 20 minutes at the beginning and 40 minutes at the end. Remember that Hamlet is three hours long. Two hours in the middle with nothing to do! I would get such an urge to go out to the pub...

Speaking of pubs, I have an anecdote which amuses me. And then I'll shut up about Shakespeare for now. Junius Booth was a great actor of his time. He is said to have had a particularly eccentric nature, and was also something of an alcoholic. While playing the title role in Othello one night, he prolonged his character's death scene for as long as he possibly could, before jumping to his feet again and asking the audience 'Well, how did you like that?'. Hehehehe.

Okay actually just one more, because I think it's sweet. Alec Guiness- 'It is nearly eleven and I have neither shaved nor dressed, just shuffled around in my old, frayed, blue towelling dressing gown. It's comfortable, and warm enough. Perhaps it is the right day to read a Shakespeare with which I am not familiar'.

Well wasn't that fun children? And now a couple of words. This won't take long, it's just what they mean now compared to what they used to mean. I like that sort of thing.

Baffle. Now: defeat efforts, confuse. Then: to disgrace publicy e.g. 'I have been disgraced, impeached and baffled here'.
Table. Now: piece of furniture, arrangement of data. Then: notebook.
Mean. Now: spiteful, nasty, stingy. Then: of low rank e.g. (Lady Jane Grey) 'I am too mean to be your queen' (which also rhymes yay).
Mischief. Now: minor annoyance, irritating behaviour. Then: calamity, disaster.
Security. Now: safety. Then: overconfidence e.g. (Henry V on forgiving a drunk, abusive man) 'That's mercy, but too much security'.
Doubt. Now: be uncertain about. Then: fear, be afraid e.g. 'I doubt some danger is approaching' means that danger IS approaching, not that it isn't.
Nice. Now: agreeable, pleasant. Then: lustful, trivial, foolish, fastidious, uncertain....

Well. Who knew?

Okay, a brief summary of the main events in life since last weekend. Or whenever it was. Possibly two weekends ago. My aunt and uncle from Australia (well. One set of a few) came over, so we had dinner with them a couple of times, and afternoon tea once. That was nice. I have been promised an (almost) all expenses paid trip to Australia within the next three years. I have family in Sydney, Canberra, Cairns and the bush somewhere, so it should be a good trip. I'll probably go over Christmas. Although that will mean a BBQ on Christmas day...weird... There has been much work too, but that isn't that exciting. I'm leaving Sunday! So soon! Leaving work rather than London. But back I shall go at Christmas. Last Friday I had a lovely afternoon/evening with Emilia. We made (extremely good) pancakes (in a wok) with many great toppings, and later moved on to the pub where we met Ogi, Sofija and Dom. Much was said and much was drunk and in the end we all decided to have an unplanned sleepover at Emilia's due to the lack of her mother. It was great! We watched Spiderman II for some reason. It was fun. I went to sleep at 6:45am and woke up again two hours later. That was less fun.

My parents celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. Bless them.

I went to Richard's house. That was fun. We went to Jon's house and met many people and played lots of games I didn't understand (well I didn't play. They did) as well as Monopoly, which I do understand, but which Rob and I lost anyway. Well. We came third out of four. It was with credit cards! Hugely exciting! I can't remember what else we did... Oh wait yes I can. We played with Richard's eyetoy (he TOTALLY looked sillier than I did) and Richard fell asleep. Bless.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

A very brief update

2006-09-15T03:01:00.000+01:00

I now have no regrets from Paris. I have 'Le Chat Noir'. Isn't Fan great?

Bluebird Blog

300

Nearly done

Home! (briefly)

Hanging around

Catching up

Down under

Going to distant lands

Birthday

Stolen phone

Good grief...

I...can...make it...

Procrastination

Photos

BOO!

It nearly worked...

Laptop update

*cry*

Toodle pip, and a plea

Boxes

A Wedding

Leeds

Squildish

Size Zero

Sleepy

Paper shuffling

Ye olde

After Edinburgh

Edinburgh

A levels

Slave labour

Salad and sandwiches

Camland

Food of the exciting

Tracking

Hello my chickadees

At a different work

At work

Back but brief

Packing again

And because now I've got slightly addicted

Because Hannah did it first

*sighs contentedly*

And to continue...

Something from the Boathouse

Length

Brevity

Exam update

Guess what?

Continuance

Flesh on the bones

Back at last

Student Cross once more

And some details...

Home again

The weather

Er...hmm...

Dear Secret Admirer,

Dear Secret Admirer,

Secret admirer.

CULES

I woke up for the second time...

Just in order to say....

Joy and sandwiches...

Perfect

Hello dear children

Dislikes of Helen

Packing

Because all the cool kids did it

Skating and other such joy

Happy New Year dears

Merry Christmas

Bits and pieces

Living the London life

Home again

Pantomime! Story of somebody from afar...

Apologies of the most profuse...

Try again :)

Eep!

Time flies...

cry

sighs contentedly

Giggles seductively