Second to none.

This will only be brief, but I just wanted to quickly highlight the malleability of our perceptions of the world around us. I have recently read a fair few articles celebrating the life of/mourning the loss of the great Christopher Hitchens, and the most successful by far – in its apparent aims and achievements – was Ian McEwan in the Guardian; ‘The consummate writer, the brilliant friend’. Unfortunately, everything I read subsequently seemed inadequate in content, language and reflection. I read one that quite frankly gave the impression that the journalist just had nothing better to do with their time. Similarly, Attenborough’s latest television hit, ‘Frozen Planet’ made it very challenging to remain objective. I could not help but marvel at the ability of a production team to manipulate my emotions so strongly. If I see baby polar bears first, growing up and getting hungry, I completely understand and can utterly justify their need to consume baby seals (they’re not that cute when they grow up anyway). But show me the seals first, striving to grow strong and learning to fend for themselves, and suddenly how could these torturous, beastly, ghastly, grizzly bears tear up a baby seal with such ferocity and then stand so proudly with blood-stained fur and pose in an air of arrogance for the camera?

As much as I understand that the adult mentality should try to remain objective, and see every aspect from all angles, it’s not always that easy. So this is just a note of recognition for all the things you see second. I salute you for bearing such prejudiced opinions thrust upon you by bad journalism and television producers.

It's beginning to look a little bit like Christmas

I never thought I’d say this, but Christmas does actually just get more stressful and less interesting the older you get. Parents always used to say this to me and I’d scorn at such blasphemy. But this year, maturity is creeping up on me. I am well past the age of even slightly believing in Father Christmas, as are both my younger siblings. I am beginning to appreciate what a chore it is having family to stay; weeks of cleaning in anticipation, providing enough food for a small, but incredibly fussy country, buying things for people other than yourself, always maintaining an air of politeness even when you really can’t be arsed. I am actually dreading the year I decide not to go home for Christmas because that will be the year my parents start coming to me. As well as this, with age, the things you want for Christmas cannot be bought at ToysRUs. My current Christmas list consists of: 4000 words of English essay, a boyfriend (he doesn’t have to perfect yet, just something to pass the time), however I’d also like more time because there never seem to be enough hours in the day, if petrol prices could deflate that would be fantastic, if I could mentally simulate exercising from the sofa and lose weight that would also be very helpful, and quite frankly I’m surprised that no one has come up with a Matilda-esque device so I can be the ultimate sloth and not get up for anything. In short I have come to the conclusion that the older you get, the more you wish that Father Christmas did exist and miracles could happen. I think I have more hope now than I did ten years ago. I am not sure that this bodes terribly well for the future, but hey! At least I’m getting into the Christmas spirit.

Best before:-

Food shopping. Most paradoxical emotion-inducing exercise I have to deal with in my tough life as a student. Firstly there is never a good time to go. Supermarkets are always busy; have you ever tried to squeeze between a precarious stack of toilet roll and a mum-trolley-small-child combination? Impossible. And you can’t go before you eat because you’re too hungry and risk purchasing enough food to feed a small colony of dinosaurs for three days. On the other hand, you can’t go after you’ve eaten because very often you (although maybe just me) are then too full to even contemplate looking at food, and come away having purchased only a bag of lettuce and can of diet coke.

So, having established there is never a good time to go to a supermarket, I recently tried my hand at online food shopping. Tescos claim you can shop until they drop. Well I can tell you one thing; I may not have been physically tired, but my brain was well on its way to melt-down and I was just about ready to launch myself out of my bedroom window after this experience. You have to know precisely what you want in order to search for it and add it to your virtual basket. So after two and a half painstaking hours of imagining I was walking round a supermarket in order to remember what food I wanted to buy, I finally had a full basket/the cost was beginning to soar, at which point I decided to call it a day. I selected my delivery slot, entered all my personal details, created various accounts, almost blocked my online banking in the process, only for the site to crash and the contents of my basket to disappear. So back to reality and a three-dimensional supermarket, whereupon I decided it wasn’t so bad after all. I went armed, ready with my super-duper bags for life to make the walk home as pain free as possible. Had a surprisingly successful shop, basket was moderately healthy and not too heavy. Next stop, check out. PAINFUL, but quick, and if you’re paying by card, the experience is soon forgotten, like removing a plaster, getting out of bed in the morning or the first shot of vodka of the night. Last hurdle, or so I thought, was getting home, which, with the aid of my serious bagz 4 lyf was made relatively easy. I will not even begin to discuss the trauma of unpacking your shopping once purchased and home. But it just so turns out, that the last and quite unexpected hurdle was the most challenging of the lot. I was caught off-guard, and suddenly, despite my gold-medal deserving performance thus far, my shoelace came un-done, and needless to say, it was all downhill from there. I had forgotten to check any of the sell by dates, which meant that after all my hard work of budgeting and finding healthy food that would last me a week or two, I had to eat almost half of what I had bought by the following day. I had a difficult task on my hands. That night I had a meal consisting of an entire pot of hummus, a packet of thinly sliced ‘chicken’ (god knows what it actually is), a loaf of bread, five Fox’s chocolate bars, a bag of potatoes and four pints of milk. I decided that I could leave the mushrooms for an extra day.

So what is the moral of this story? There are many; don’t go food shopping a) before eating, b) after eating, c) when mums are there, or anyone else in fact, d) online and e) without bags for life. And when you’re there, think to the future; about paying – quickly- leaving –quickly- getting home –quickly- unpacking –quickly. But not so quickly that you forget to check the sell by dates.

Spatial awareness (or lack thereof)

Two rather annoying forms of this disrupted my life today. Firstly, the -quite frankly- ridiculously small size of the pair of trousers I decided to wear. They made even most docile and simple, yet somehow (as I discovered) essential movements, near enough impossible, unless I was prepared to give innocent passers-by an untoward and frankly inappropriate view of my behind. The material of said trousers, is somewhere in-between a pair of leggings, jeans, tights and bin-bag. Awfully tight, awfully shiny, and really, I have to admit, a size too small. You can imagine how these things do not bode well for a day of vigorous walking in the cold. This, I take full responsibility for. My second complaint, however, I shall not. I’m sure you have all entered a gym changing room at some point in your life (if not, I am sure you can picture it, at the very least). There are over two hundred lockers in the female changing rooms at the gym I attend, and PLENTY of space to cater for everyone. So why, I am forced to ask, do fellow gym users insist on changing RIGHT NEXT TO ME? This is not the first time this has happened. Frequently there are at least two whole benches (big enough even for the larger members of the gym) completely free, yet, for example, today I returned from the showers to find someone had put their belongings right next to my gym bag, so extremely close that firstly I questioned if it was in fact where I had been changing at all. When I had established that they WERE my possessions, and my new friend was practically changing IN my gym bag, I was forced to shuffle down the bench. To me, there is no logic in this. On entering the changing rooms, I immediately cast my eye over the room, locate as quickly as possible the emptiest space, furthest away from anyone else, and get changed as fast as humanly possible. I do not walk into the changing room, locate the nearest bag, and start removing my clothes/modesty RIGHT NEXT TO IT. Yesterday, someone was so close to my bag that her things didn’t even fit next to mine and she ended up leaving a bag on the floor at the end of the bench. Might I just point out that, unsurprisingly, there were vast, unoccupied quantities of bench on the other side of me. I’ll let you know when I discover why changing next to me is so appealing…

procrastino, procrastinare

Great news. I have loads of work to do before the beginning of last week. Why is procrastination such a large and unwholesome part of my life? Some days I wake up and feel enthused about life and truly believe I can read two books, write an essay and complete two Latin assignments before night descends upon us (or at least by the early hours of the morning). Unfortunately today wasn’t one of those days, and unfortunately those things are defining features of my to-do list for today. So naturally I am blogging as a form of procrastination. I am unsure of how many locations across the UK the sun has been shining mercifully upon over the last few days. Personally, it has been of great use to me, not necessarily just to bask in the sun and top up a tan. No no, it is a well-known fact that sunshine is actually an excuse to avoid work, spend money and drink alcohol. As a student this suits me terrifically. The last few days have been spent doing absolutely nothing with complete justification. Today, however, I decided I would stay indoors, so as to avoid the sun/procrastination. As you can see, my day has not necessarily gone in the direction I had originally hoped. I expect, dear reader, supposing you are still reading, you are in a similar state of affairs as myself.  Unfortunately, the catalyst for this post was procrastination, so I in fact have nothing else to add. No longer may I distract you from whatever it is you are avoiding, but you must now return to your trivialities, whatever they may be, and complete the task at hand. Perhaps there’ll be a new post awaiting your return, or perhaps I’ll listen to my own advice and save the next post for a rainy day.

Window(s) Shopping

Oh the woes of student life. The benefits of having an overdraft are all fun and games until your overdraft runs out, and I have had to hide this fact from my parents for basically the last 4 months, living in the constant fear that they are going to bring up money/how much I (don’t) have/how much I owe them. When I suggested to my mother only last week that I thought it was actually rather impressive that I had survived all summer living out of my overdraft with no others means of income, I was met with a very scary pair of eyes and a tone of voice that in turn suggested to me that she was in no way in agreement with this, and terribly shocked that I was so thrilled with such a realization, no matter how willing I was to justify myself. I must admit, the confidence I had instilled in my argument was somewhat thwarted about three seconds into the conversation (if you could call it that).

Money doesn’t buy happiness. A philosophical piece of shit we are all familiar with, I believe. Money is everything. Money and lack thereof, is what sites like Facebook THRIVE off. Everyone has something better to do than Facebook. Unless you don’t have any money, in which case it is pretty much the only thing you CAN do. Possibly the only thing more depressing than window shopping and refreshing your Facebook homepage perpetually, is what my sister referred to today as “Window(s) shopping”; the worst of the worst. And I am a frequent offender. When I can’t afford free parking (see previous blog), I am confined to the house making lists of all the clothes I would try on were I in a physical, 3-dimensional world. I could probably draw you pictures of all the dresses currently stocked in Topshop, so many times have I looked at that page in the last week. I have reached my pinnacle now though. The “New In” sections are no longer new to my eyes, reminding me most cruelly of my failing social life. Today, I even thought about starting to read the seventeen books I’m supposed to have read by next Monday. Naturally, procrastination –the little devil- got in my ear and instead of actually reading anything, I made a list of all the books and how many pages they had to try and help me decide which one to read first. I have now read the first page of three separate books and promptly gave up. I digress. This is beside the point. The point is that I need to find a way to either a) get money or b) get over money. Money is only everything if you are too lazy to make it nothing. Unfortunately, I am currently too lazy to make it nothing, but admitting you have a problem is the first step. That’s enough for today.

"Free" Parking

Twice in the last week I have been subjected to the efforts of avoiding paying for parking. And rightly so, to a certain degree. It seems that to park your vehicle within a 5 mile radius of Bath’s city centre you must be prepared to part with half your life’s savings, desperately scrabbling around on the floor of your car, in any crack or crevice, door pocket or glove box, for the last of your change. And when you realize that money isn’t reproducing in the dark under the passenger seat, you are faced with an even tougher challenge than finding money in the first place; finding free parking. I know of three locations now in Bath where I can park for two hours, no return within one hour. Unfortunately, I have turned into such a stingy old bat that I simply refuse(/cannot physically afford) to pay for parking anymore, to the extent that I seem to spend my life driving between these three free locations waiting for someone to leave and for the perfect opportunity to snap up a well-deserved parking spot. Which of course, always happens in the end. I wasn’t expecting it to take me thirty-four minutes though. By the time I had queued in the rush hour traffic a good seven times nipping to and fro between my potential parking spots, I realized the money I would be saving from parking, I was spending in petrol, thus making my expedition terribly futile. And just as I was giving in, ready to return home, I swooped magnificently round the corner and everyone else who had been super-scrimping and parking for free, had decided to leave and then suddenly I was faced with not only one parking spot, but a whole selection to choose from. I have yet to decide whether I think such an excursion was worth so much of my time, effort and unfortunately money, but were I reading this dilemma in Aunt Sally’s advice column, surely the reply would be either to keep an eternal supply of change in the glove box, or perhaps to just walk.

(Anti-)Social networking

I am a student.

Thus, as a general rule, spending infinite hours “surfing the web”, in opposition to achieving (or even attempting) anything remotely productive, is a priority. Similar to everyone else my age that I have encountered so far in life, with the exception of perhaps two people, I am a dedicated Facebook user, and I expect if you know someone who knows someone who knows someone who I know, I have “stalked” your profile already. It is safe to say that, no matter how many times a month/week/day Facebook is changing its appearance, the daily routine of waking up, reaching for my laptop and logging into “fbook”/”faceyb”/some other ghastly nickname that no doubt I too have employed myself in the past, is proving increasingly fruitless and unsatisfactory. Therefore, when I recently received a “VIP invite” to join Google Plus, a project aiming to make “sharing on the web more like sharing in real life” (pah), I jumped at such an opportunity and created my profile, despite my many other commitments as a student. As a relatively new social networking site (as far as I am aware), only two of my actual, real-life, living and breathing friends possess a profile, so my news feed is somewhat sparse to date. I have been desperately searching out desperate D-list celebrities, hoping for street cred in being the first to become part of such an innovative social networking site, to add to my “circles”. Unfortunately, on realizing how I jumped with such enthusiasm to create yet another social networking profile, and delve even further into a virtual world, surrounded by pictures of people I would never meet, and status updates so carefully composed craving attention and, god forbid, maybe getting a “like”, I found myself thinking perhaps I ought to be reading, socializing with real people, perhaps leaving the house every once in a while. But then my counter argument, less logical and certainly much lazier, rescued me from such a ridiculous thought. Of course one day I will have to pull myself out of this virtual rut, perhaps encounter a living being, be forced to communicate through speech, not Facebook chat, and who knows, maybe I’ll even work out how to use a library that isn’t Google Books.

But until that day comes hurtling into my life with reasonable force, I am quite happy sitting on the sofa, blogging about how I need to stop social networking, with the world, virtual though it may be, at my fingertips.