Back By Popular Demand!

Well, less of a demand and more of a prompt. And a growing sense of undocumented life events building up. And unreplied-to emails... *points to self* I suck. Man, it's a good thing overdue blogposts aren't like overdue library books or I'd be looking at a hefty fine along the same lines as Meejin's (£10.35). 

So.

Life has been rather charming recently. I’ve met some really inspiring people and lovely seeing-eye dogs called Milo and experienced lots of quirk with cherries on top. Sure this year has thrown some curve balls, but everyone is dealing with them with lots of fortitude and optimism and moxy. I like it. I like this year’s vibe. I was going to try to describe it in words, but I’d be describing a picture that I could much more easily show you, so:

(I like piers.)

Anyway, I apologise in advance for the total lack of cohesion in this post. It’s just as though I inhaled the heavens and spat the stars back out onto your screen in the form of a paragraphed summary of Life, right?

So, second year drawing to a close this week (yikes) means exam season is right around the metaphorical corner (fuck). And I SURVIVED Reading & Writing Week. Reading & Writing Week? you ask. Yeah, you know, the twice annual 5-day extravaganza wherein I misplace my sanity, have multiple meltdowns and generally end up sitting in a corner, rocking back and forth, eating my hair? What can I say, it’s a tradition. But I lived to tell the tale, so it’s not all bad. Also, remember when I compared double English to running a marathon with weights, and the added onus of Classics to a fat man on my back whilst I ran said marathon? (Just nod.) Well, happily I am still running the marathon and either through endurance or littering I have ceased to notice the weights. The fat man that is Classics is still on my back, but he has awoken from his slumber and now tells me interesting facts about Imperial Rome in an Italian accent, so it’s all good.

Another dollop of good news is that my formerly ill Nanny is no more! Ill, that is. Turns out her brain has super spongy powers and like sucked all of the leakage back in. And after a looooooong hospitalization she’s finally been allowed to go back home. Catch is, she has very bad (read: zero) short term memory, so after 75 days of my dad and uncles reciting over and over WHY she was in hospital in the first place, she still can’t remember, and they have gone slightly doolally. Ironic, eh? One good thing that came out of that whole episode was that my uncle came over from Australia for a month and he’s kind of legendary to me. The highlight of his trip had to be getting to second base with a marble statue of some naked chick in the Art Galleries (picture to come).

Know what’s really nice about life right now? That every time I run into someone from high school one of the first questions that comes up in the conversation is ‘SO HAVE YOU BEEN WATCHING THAT KEVIN BRIDGES THING?!’ And then we jump up and down and squeal and generally gloat over the fact the guy went to our school (both if you’re one of the St. Mary’s crew like moi!) and that our little town and our little school which no longer exists has national recognition. Seriously, everyone is so proud to be Scottish right now, and more specifically Clydebankian.

And now for magical bulletpoints because I’m bored of trying to paragraph my nonsense:

v  I have given up Coke for Lent, and possibly for life.

v  Lying in bed with someone at 3am whilst dancing to Mambo Number 5 is one of The Funnest Things Ever.

v  I officially began reading The Hunger Games in a hotel room in Coventry*, and so far I love it! It’s kind of nice to be on this side of a phenomenon as opposed to the other more feral side that comes with the bastardization of something you are unhealthily possessive of and obsessed with love passionately *cough* Twilght.

v  Because uni turns me into a vegetating zombie for 22 weeks of the year, I have taken to renting lots of movies so that my vegetation time holds some approximation of purpose. The highlights so far have been United 93, The Road, Tyrannosaur and Peeping Tom with a special shout-out to A Single Man.

v  Also, I think I have become a little obsessed with Wolf Creek. Texting your nocturnal friend during all hours of the day about it seems to suggest so (sorry David). In fact, I have to confess, I am watching it even as I type. BUT IT IS JUST SO DAMN GOOD.

v  My favourite lecturer for English Lit was giving only one lecture this entire semester so I was determined to go because he like, blows my mind. (It was a great lecture.) But at the end he shocked me by giving a valedictory speech. I couldn’t believe he was retiring and wouldn’t be there for Honours to inspire me about Victorian literature and Shakespeare and all those things I don’t really get but love to dig my teeth and my nails and my everything into! Paraphrased, he said ‘I’ve so enjoyed teaching you and watching you go from 1A to 2B and I wish you all the best in the future. And if I may be so unpolitically correct as to tell you my favourite book, I will tell you it is the Bible.’ And then my heart broke in two. Seriously, I think all 400 of us were choked up.

v  Speaking of, yesterday Dr Fox gave the final Classics lecture on the beginnings of Christianity in Rome, and I kind of had to restrain myself from jumping him the whole time. You know those people who just have natural magnetism? Yeah. Describing him will do no justice to his potent sexual allure, but FUCK. < And that’s all I’m going to say on the matter.

v  And last but not least, I have A Purpose in life. Starting in May I’m going to be volunteering a few shifts a week at the Save the Children charity shop in Partick along with Possibly Gay Josh & Gandhi and some others whose names I don’t remember but who are all SWELL. Also: tea.

So, that’s life recently, in a nut shell. The last thing I want to say is this: it’s an incredibly satisfying and liberating thing to be able to say that last year, and the year before, and for the tail-end of 2009 I was deeply, deeply unhappy (I liked the way Nicole Kidman said this in an interview relating to her part in The Hours!). But I’m not anymore. I had this strange notion that in order to be legitimately unhappy, I had to commit to it, or I didn’t deserve that description. Which is bullshit. People are changing all the time—that’s part of what makes them so beautiful, that you can never really define them. Sometimes they are happy, and sometimes they are really genuinely unhappy and they need help. Just because someone is able to pull through something shouldn’t diminish or invalidate whatever unhappiness they were previously experiencing. It seems like a really obvious thing, but it’s something I had to learn. I don’t feel indebted to that unhappiness anymore. I am ALLOWED to feel good, and I do :). And so should everyone.

*I fucking want a double bed.

Word of the day: smirr (it’s different from ‘drizzle’ – rescue the Scots language by dropping it into awkward weather oriented conversations!)

Catch yeez x