Wednesday 29 October 2008

Indigo2.

Michael McIntyre is a funny, funny man. A brilliant birthday present if ever there was one. (:





+ My friendies Hannah and Vicki are coming to stay tomorrow.
All in all a good week. ♥

Sunday 26 October 2008

Oxford.

This weekend I went to the Ford of Ox to convene with my family and to catch up with my best friend, who is at Mansfield studying Maths. ♥(:

Friday: After an eventful bus ride from New Cross Gate (which involved bearded ladies and drunken Scousers, to say the least) I took the Oxford Tube from Marble Arch. The journey lasted some two and a bit hours and involved multiple games of Tetris on the DS, but I reached Oxford in good time, considering it was a Friday evening. At 6:30 we went to the Natural History Museum for the opening of Ian's photography exhibition. The pictures on show were amazing and there were plenty of nibbles on offer, so all in all it was a good evening. My mum and brother arrived at 8ish and we collected my dad from Heathrow at 9:30. It was so very nice to see them again.

Saturday: I met up with Charlotte in the afternoon and we went to a cafe for hot chocolate, carrot cake and a chat. It was raining so we were forced to postpone our moseying plans and after a quick and unsuccessful hunt for a copy of Beowulf we made our way over to the college. I explored Charlotte's room upon arrival and after watching a couple of episodes of South Park on her laptop we went down to the Hall for tea. Later, following Charlotte's after-dinner nap, we went across to the college bar for an Open Mic evening. Then, along with a couple of fellow Mansfield freshers, we adventured into the centre of town, where we danced and, more importantly, Charlotte assassinated Will! It was lovely seeing CH again and I wish I had been able to stay longer. Next time I suppose..

Sunday: We left Oxford at 11:30 and set off on a rainy Greenwich adventure. We ate lunch at an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet restaurant, then went for a walk, where upon we discovered a delightful covered market. My mum and I spent many a minute wandering through the various crafty stalls, our mouths agape in wonder. In the end we left empty-handed, but with big plans to return, and made our way towards to charred corpse of the Cutty Sark. Covered-up with a large white tarpaulin there was little to see, so instead we ventured into a lift and down into a tunnel, which passed directly under the Thames.

Eventually, my parents took me back to New Cross. My mum helped me to change my sheets before they left, and my dad hand-washed a pair of my jeans. They gave me lots of snacks and tins of beans, which, although lovely, were not quite enough to replace them.
Never mind. We have Tuesday afternoon too. (:

Wednesday 22 October 2008

California Dreaming.

This evening I stumbled across a folder full of holiday photos on my computer that I didn't realise were there and as a result I'm now feeling nostalgic and pining for the summer and my family and my home-life in general.

We went on a hectic, eclectic mad-dash of a roadtrip; from Long Beach to Los Angeles to Barstow to Williams to the Grand Canyon to Las Vegas to Death Valley to Yosemite National Park to San Francisco to Salinas to San Luis Obispo to Monteray to Santa Barbara and all the way back to Los Angeles. Utterly exhausting but absolutely worth it. ♥

Goodnight.

There's something completely infuriating about University life and its many self-imposed contrasts and contradictions. For example, a note on a loaf of bread or a carton of milk that reads 'Please don't use', will automatically become, "If you're feeling peckish, please feel free to eat me" in the eyes of a drunken flatmate. While the prospect of an early night gradually grows fainter as the clock hands tick through twelve, one, two, etc. In short BBC iPlayer and 4oD should not be this compelling at three o'clock in the morning. Snore.

[EDIT] I hasten to add that I am neither bread nor milk thief and nor is anybody else to my knowledge. This was simply what a spot of midnight munchies brought to mind.

Monday 20 October 2008

In place of Ovid.

As a student of English Literature it seems only right and good that I should include this here.

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them. ^^

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I've only italicized the books that appear on my current 'To Read' list, but I'm sure I would happily read or re-read any of the above.

Sunday 19 October 2008

Cambridge.

I've just got back from Cambridge and I am utterly exhausted. The weekend consisted of two badly-timed train journeys, a lot of aimless wandering about the city centre, a great deal of shopping on a budget, breakfast in bed, a scattering of films, a splash of wine, some students in a cage, hats with ear flaps, not one, not two, but three cakes, a spot of daylight robbery, late late nights and lazy mornings, holding hands, autumn leaves, spare change and buskers, blu-tack and posters, the unfulfilled promise of punting and two hefty meals, made all the more delicious by the fact that they were homemade and free! As expected it passed far too quickly, but I had an amazing few days and I can't wait until next time. Love ye Harry. ♥

Selwyn College

Friday 17 October 2008

Rothko and Cake.

So. Yesterday was my birthday, and in the end it was a lot more enjoyable than I thought it might be. Being my first away from home I worried that I would feel isolated and forgotten, but thanks to a visit from my auntie, a tea-party with my flat-mates and a great big pile of post this was not the case.

The day began with a fluttering of the letterbox as cards and parcels flopped noisily to the floor. With great excitement I opened the door to find the postman counting out even more brightly coloured envelopes, so I happily informed him that it was my birthday and, unbidden, relieved him of his pile. My auntie arrived around 11 and after a one-(wo)man rendition of 'Happy Birthday' and a slice of cake I gave her a quick tour of the 'Smiths' campus. An hour or so later we caught the train to London Bridge and the tube to St Paul's, where we proceeded in looking for a Pizza Express. Our search took us as far as the Eye, where we were forced to conclude that we had been misled and heading back towards the Millennium Bridge, we settled for lunch at the Gourmet Pizza Restaurant at Gabriel's Wharf.

A pizza, a bowl of olives and a glass of Coke later we arrived at the Tate Modern, where we visited the Mark Rothko exhibition. The paintings on display were largely taken from his later series of work and thus tended towards a darker set of colours; reds, maroons, blacks and greys. It was an interesting selection and our borrowed headphones added a wealth of detail that was not to be found in the free booklets or on the scattering of wall plaques.

After a quick drink at a Cafe Rouge my auntie and I parted company and I made my way back to New Cross. I went to Sainsbury's where I bought a selection of party goodies and a birthday cake (a sad experience, it must be said). Then I made my way back to Halls where I set about preparing my own party tea. After a few initial disappointments the night was something of a success. We ate food, watched the Royal Tenenbaums and I opened the remainder of my presents and cards. In the end I went to bed feeling happy and looking forward to a weekend with Harry and a second birthday with my family in a week's time.

[EDIT] Incidentally, I found the Pizza Express the other day. We were walking in completely the opposite direction. :/

Monday 13 October 2008

Brave New World.

University is such a surreal experience. I honestly can't believe I've been here for three weeks. So much has changed in such a small space of time, yet I don't feel that I've done anything worthwhile or even particularly new since I've arrived here.
Don't get me wrong, it's an enjoyable experience and the people here all seem very nice, but I don't believe that I've really, truly connected with anyone or anything beyond the area itself. My flatmates are friendly, but often unavailable or preoccupied and my coursemates, though I've met them fewer times, seem likewise. It's as if I'm not quite cut out for University friendships; I'm too awkward, I don't say the right things, I'm not a big drinker. All in all, I'm destined to remain forever on the outskirts.
I miss my friends, I miss my family, I miss my dog. & what makes it even worse, I'm in London and my camera is broken. ; _ ;

Of course three weeks is three weeks, and one would be naive to expect things to fit exactly into place in so short a space of time. Furthermore, there are more than enough positive aspects to University life, and I always find little things to distract me or to brighten up a miserable day. I love London; there's so much to explore and as mentioned my only regret is my blatant lack of camera. I like my Halls and my room no longer feels like a hotel suite, but rather a place of comfort, a home away from home. My course is interesting and by no means demanding (although I'm sure that will soon change) and I relish dedicating my time to reading and writing, my two favourite past-times. I only hope that to these things I'll soon be able to add a solid group of friends and an abundance of happy memories.

In other news I'm off to Cambridge on Friday to visit Harry for the first time since he moved in. It'll be the perfect way to spend my first birthday weekend away from home, particularly if our planned Currys trip proves successful and my camera is repaired!
I thought at first a long distance relationship might be something of a hardship, but although it's been a little difficult at times our late night conversations have been nothing less than a pleasure. I'm really looking to seeing him again. ♥