Coraline.

We're watching Coraline. "Don't remember our names, but I remember my real mommy." I forgot how spooky it is. Alice is particularly scared :)

I Saved Latin.

What did you ever do?
Joshie came to see me this weekend. After a Northern Line disaster we had pizza and watched Rushmore. Good film, I do love Wes Anderson :)

Herman Blume: She’s my Rushmore.
Max Fischer: I know. She was mine too.

On Saturday we did nothing but eat and shop 'by the looks of things'. We went to McDonalds for breakfast and to Camden where we saw a man with a baby wallaby called Brucie standing in front of the station. I dragged my brother to a couple of stalls and to Oxfam DIY and Beyond Retro before we went to lunch at Bodean's and to Topman. I have my eye on this box of notecards. Pizza Hut for tea too. Yup, lots of eating and shopping.

On Sunday we went to Brick Lane with a time limit. I found my way from Liverpool Street by means of, 'ah, there's the car park from the Jack the Ripper tour' and 'oh, there's the church that Will snuck into on the Jack the Ripper tour'. We went to Spitalfields market first, which needs further investigation, then we went to the Sunday Up market on Brick Lane. I bought a domino brooch and some lovely Gemma Correll cards:


Outside we watched a performance called 'Mumbai Spice', which involved a large glass box, members of the public, white boiler suits and safety glasses and tins of brightly coloured powder paint. My research (i.e. my dad) concludes that it was probably in celebration of Holi, the festival of colours. We went to Rough Trade and played in the photobooth, then we walked to Shoreditch and played in the photobooth there as well. We made a nice little 'Mutti's day' picture while we were at it :) After a quick McDonalds lunch we very nearly made it to Euston on time, yet it wasn't to be - Josh was held up at the ticket barrier by a man from Glasgow and a bossy tfl lady and had to make do with the Crewe train half an hour later. Oh well, maybe next year :)

I ♥ NX.

This afternoon I went to a dissertation meeting in the Ian Gulland lecture theatre. I was deciding upon a topic area based purely on the supervisors on offer - along with everybody else in the room, by the sounds of things - when the Head of Department came along and said, "...the only people that don't need to be here today are the English and Media Studies students and the English with Creative Writing students." Damn it, and there I was leaning towards an essay on Victorian Children's Literature. Being a little wedged in and not one for drawing attention to myself during lectures I stayed put and I'm glad I did, rewarded with this gem of a quote as I was. "You have to remember that your dissertation is your baby, so if it's not going well it might be best to abort."

Right now I am sat in the Cambridge Engineering Department. Harry is building a robot and there are two boys in the corner debating non-stop about politics and the European Union. "If we were to become the United States of America...", "Let's say Labour abolished elections...", "Ironically the Queen has the power to dissolve any government..." So fracking Oxbridge.

Hey ho.

I'm back in London, but feeling a little bit homesick. I blame it on the copious amounts of work I decided to leave until the last minute - one down, two to go. It will get better soon, but for now I'm making do with mugs of soup and hot water bottles and camping down under cowboy sheets with Ernest Hemingway and old letters from my grandma.

I had a good reading week, mostly just relaxing home stuff. Among other things it involved scones and jesters at Port Sunlight, a girls-only Valentine's day meal at the Castle, pancakes at home, pancakes at the pancake house, Chester, new shoes at last, a one hour wait at Pizza Hut, a pub quiz, Steph's house and 'fallyfal' and orange juice, driving along scary icy roads, the Lovely Bones, Christmas money, Winter Olympics waffles, funny faces and chicken nuggets, Sunday lunch fraud and BAFTA dinners and an awful lot of comfort television with my mum. :)


♥

Introducing.

Hattie Spoon ♥ Coming soon to a skype conversation near you. Thank you Hannah :)

Choo choo.

I am at home for reading week, which of course means minimal updates and I am having a wonderful time, despite a small upset on Monday night caused by spontaneous impulses and the evil ways of travel agents. Now, on the one hand I am thinking a lazy Greek holiday might be fun. Big group, bright cocktails, multiple shenanigans, Turkey point two. On the other hand I'm debating (and if I'm completely honest leaning toward) 2010, year of the Interrail? Charlotte, Harry and I have talked about this trip for years and years now - I even found a very thorough list called 'Interrail Summer 2008' in a notebook the other day and Harry bought me 'Europe on a shoestring' for this very purpose. Big backpack, bright lights, multiple cities - Amsterdam, Berlin, Krakow, Stockholm, please? - Europe point one. I want to hop on trains and see where they take us. Oh and while we're at it (doing all those things we said we'd do but didn't) let's go to Bestival too.

Arrriba.

On Thursday Alice reached the grand-old age of twenty-two, and so we celebrated the day in style, i.e. Club Sandwich and a Mexican house gathering (I still maintain the need for sombreros and large moustaches, but nevermind). On Wednesday Alice and Jenny curled my hair 'Jane Austen' style and we went to the Surrey Docks so that I could consume coloured liquids before venturing into New Cross. As usual, I took to my role as recorder of drunken antics, Alice made the most of birthday girl's rights and we partook in the age-old tradition of dancing around our handbags :) The next day Alice and friends cooked a mountain of Mexican food while nursing poorly heads. Our guests arrived at seven and we ate chili and enchiladas in the sitting room. While we ate we discussed the merits of Salad fingers (Oli hopes he will find peace one day) and I made a monster mask out of a tortilla. Later Gabby produced a fantastic Victoria Sponge from the kitchen and we watched the Breakfast Club. Mostly, we fell in love with the geeky boy and bemoaned the fact that the weird girl ends up kissing the meat head. '80's for the win.

National Fail.

I will write about the lovely weekend I had in a later post, but first I feel the need to document the truly awful journey I just made in order to get back to London. You know, a typically British post in which I moan about the transport system ;)

It all began so well. I took a later train, because it was my mum's birthday and I wanted to share in the gift giving and the merriment a little while longer. I had everything planned: arrive in London, dash on over to New Cross, meet Katie outside the RHB in order to collect lecture notes and then pop upstairs in time for my seminar. I left Colwyn Bay at eleven and arrived at Crewe without a hitch. I made a run for the Euston train sitting at platform 12 and then it happened: disaster struck. The power cables were down in the Milton Keynes area and all London trains were platform-bound and waiting for the off. So we waited and we waited and we waited. Two hours later my seminar plans were looking very remote as we were ushered off the train and over to another platform, where we spread out to wait for the incoming train. One man said to his wife, 'don't stand too far down there Carol, that'll be the first class coach'. Oh, if only. The train that chugged up a few minutes later was heading for Derby and consisted of two tiny carriages, into which we duly squeezed - that's the entirety of a Glasgow-London train, on an eighty-man light load commuter. I was lucky enough to secure a seat, but those that didn't had a long two hour stand ahead of them. At Derby we shuffled onto the busiest train in existence, whereupon I stood clutching multiple bags above my head for the rest of the journey. Then six o'clock, into St. Pancras. All in all? Seven and a half hours of travelling, only three hours late for my Victorians seminar. What an adventure.

(In all fairness to National Rail, this has to be my only complaint in the course of five years worth of train-travel. They didn't cut the power lines personally and I'm sure I'll get some money back once I send off my delays form). Grumble, over and out.

Paris, je t'aime.

I may have Paris fever. On the way to Cambridge I made a quick stop at St. Pancras and picked up our Paris tickets ♥. I gazed over at the Eurostar and tried to work out whether or not we will make our six a.m. train. In Cambridge I bought a set of rubber stamps (for essential scrapbooking, of course), a postcard and a dangly Eiffel Tower decoration from my very favourite shop. And this book arrived on Tuesday morning:

Right, following one three hour Hamlet performance (& Scottish gangster Hamlet at that) with another three hour Hamlet performance is not working for me, even if my BBC download does run out tomorrow, so to bed. Still, ♥ sulky David Tennant :)

We come in peace, shoot to kill.

Intergalactic greetings from Cambridge. I am making the most of this opportunity and partaking in a geeky sci-fi night while Harry does some maths papers. We watched Star Wars Robot Chicken with Domino's at dinner time and then I watched the new Star Trek film. At long last. Apparently I have the capacity to enjoy any space-based film? Because I've never shown a hint of Trekkie interest before now, yet I absolutely loved it. Especially young Spock and little Russian Chekov :) I'm threatening to learn Klingon and cut my hair like a Vulcan. The only problem is, I now have this song stuck in my head. Little bit of Hitchhiker's before bed? Don't panic.