The Adventures of Matt (in Leeds!)

Major news: Got back my second essay. This one was a group essay, and if I’m honest, we didn’t put tons of effort in. The guidelines reccomended we each wrote a full 1500 word essay, then took the best parts of each members’ contribution and combined into one 1500 word “super essay”, if you will. We were far too lazy for this, so each wrote 350 words and just combined it. I embarassed myself by emailing my contribution to Leon, a group member, so we could edit it together on his laptop. Embarassment ensued when we realised I had not clicked ‘Attach’ so I had sent a blank email. This, of course, was after me showing off about my computer skills. Subsequently, I emailed it to everybody later that day just to prove I could. We assembled the essay back at my flat, and in the final stages, shoved in a table with some information, since we’d been told that English Language essays can and should include graphs, tables, lists and charts. We filled it up with some dashed-off sentences and then I changed the font of the whole thing to the pleasant Verdana (which I use for all my essays), explaining to the group that I refused to hand in anything with my name on it in Times New Roman font, the default font, which I despise.

When we got the essay back last week, it was with trepidation. We were all muttering darkly about our seminar tutor who marked it, predicting Thirds or below for it. We were surprised then, to see a big 67 on the front: not only a 2.1, but very nearly a First! Surprise turned to laughter as we opened the essay and the very first comment was one stating that Times New Roman font is preferred. Once again, Matt is the butt of all jokes..

In all seriousness, I was both happy and sad with this score. Obviously a 2.1 (or “near First”, as I like to think of it) at this stage is good, but I felt it took away from my 61 in Prose, since I wrote all of that, and put significantly more effort in. Secondly, the essay was unassessed, meaning it won’t go towards my final grade. I guess the real payoff will be in a few weeks, since last Friday I submitted my second Prose essay (on Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway), and I’m in the process of finishing my second Language essay, about discrimination in language.

Also annoying last week was that I booked tickets to see Melt Banana play at Joseph’s Well, then fell asleep upon getting in from uni. When I woke up I did not feel like going to a gig at all, and ended up just sitting around feeling crap. I can’t decide whether I would have gone had I not had the nap first.

Speaking of sleep, it’s becoming more and more difficult of late. I keep pretty late hours anyway, but my flatmate Ben, whose room is opposite mine, makes me look like an early bird. Some nights he just doesn’t sleep, literally, which is cool, he can do whatever he wants, but not when it keeps me up! He plays on his Playstation at 5am, so as I’m trying to fall asleep all I can hear drifting across the (not-very-well soundproofed) corridor are gunshots and police sirens. Hardly soothing. That actually made me almost miss a seminar this morning. It started at 11, so I normally get up at 9 in order to shower, dry my hair, get some food and catch the bus at either 10:05 or 10:25 depending on whether I got up at 9 or not. I woke up today at 10:30, with the next bus not arriving till 10:45 (too late to get me in on time). Swearing vigorously I showered, dried my hair and dressed in under 5 minutes, grabbed the notes for my presentation I was due to make (on Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory) and ran for the bike shed. I got on my bike and puffed off down to the uni, in the biting cold, alternately sweating and freezing.

I got there at 10:58, stepping off my bike as my joints cracked and my hair wisped around me, half frozen and half soaked from the damp air. I made it upstairs to the seminar room and remembered that as I had got up late, I couldn’t check out the internet for a summary of the chapters of my book I hadn’t finished (Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior), and had forgotten the book as well. 1/10 for preparedness.

Despite this, I made some good points in the seminar and enjoyed it, as I usually do. Andrew, my tutor, made a reference to Terry Eagleton and looked at me a lot, so I was expecting him to then follow up by introducing my presentation. He didn’t, so I waited it out, then realised we’d came to the end of the seminar. I mentioned to him and he laughed and asked if I’d noticed he’d forgotten his lesson plan. I said I’d do it next week and he said that was fine, which I guess, given the circumstances, is probably better, I was still gasping for breath for the first half of the meeting, unfit person that I am.

Christmas impulse buys are bad. In Asda the other day we saw miniature Christmas trees with fibre optic lights. We bought them, I eagerly opened mine and inserted the batteries, only for it to fizzle out pathetically over the course of a few hours. Still, my room felt christmasy for a short while. We also decorated the flat, DIY style, with paper chains in the corridors and kitchen, and “snowflakes” in the kitchen along with new posters, and magnetic alphabet letters on the fridge. These were put to good use; first declaring “MATT = FUNKY”, which was then surreptituously edited (probably by Ben) to, well.. something that rhymes with “muck up”. This was then modified by, err, me, to say “BEN = COMMUNIST”, so all was well.

Soon we’re supposed to be working out housing arrangements for next year, as the househunting season begins at the end of January, apparently. I initially said I’d live with Ben, James (the other guy in my flat) and John, a guy who lives here but not in our flat. Since then I’ve been having second thoughts though; Ben’s late night habits and messy ways teamed with James’ solitariness and annoying drunk persona (read: “wrestling” with me at 4am and headlocking me on the bed - not cool) are less appealing. I could exist quite happily living in a one bedroom house, haha.

I really don’t know what Christmas is going to be like this year. In a sense I’m in no hurry to go back, but I want to see my friends/family and play with the band and have a break from cooking and bus rides and money and restless nights. Hopefully it’ll do me good.

I guess the major thing that’s gone on since my last update was getting back my first essay for my Reading Prose (literature, essentially) module. I’m not sure how much it makes up of my total score for the module, but it was apparently marked at third year standards.

I got 61 for it, which works out at a (low) 2.1. Most people I spoke to got 2.2s (the grading for UK universities goes, in descending order, first, 2.1, 2.2, third, then after that is a fail). Ideally I’d love to get a first for my degree/this year of the course, so to get a 2.1 now is encouraging. What really pleased me though were the comments by my tutor:

“I would say that your prose is so clean and fresh - that you’re already writing so well - that you can afford to let yourself go … Build on this great start.

Matt - You’re a gifted writer … without eroding the impressive fluency of your prose. Keep going, and thank you very much for writing such an enjoyable piece of work”.

I also had a meeting with my tutor to discuss this, where he basically said I should be very happy with the essay. When I explained that I didn’t reference many critics/theorists in my essay because I feel it takes away from my own work, he really agreed with me and said he didn’t think I needed to rely on that kind of thing, and I could just work it in a little more, but not to the level that other people are doing. We then ended up just chatting about novels and creative writing, which was cool.

I’d been worrying about money a little before that. My loan is paying my accomodation. Here’s how it works out:

Loan: £3100
Accomodation: £2850 (+ £80 for internet)

Incoming
Loan: £1100, in 3 instalments. Next one is due in January.

Outgoing
Accomodation: £360, in 8 instalments. Next one is tomorrow.

My current bank balance is about £350. I have my £1000 overdraft to cover me, but I also have another instalment to pay in a month, so I’m gonna be around £350 in debt (on top of the loan, haha). I’m not too worried about this, though, as most people I know here are coming to the end of their overdrafts. Also, the average figure for a student leaving university is about £11,000 of debt or so, so I’m probably, if anything, below average.

I have another essay due on Friday which I’ll finish off tomorrow (he says). Add to that another essay for Language, Text and Context (I’ll be getting my unassessed group essay back for that module this week, too), and my second computer programming coursework, and my workload is slighly heavy.

In more pleasant news, I won a domain name/free webhosting for a year! Without going into the fairly mundane details, I entered a contest, came 5th (out of 30 or so) and won a runner up prize (everyone who entered did), which was a year’s hosting for my own domain (the contest was with a webhost company that I use for scenepointblank.com). I chose threechords.org, a name I was looking at getting a few years back (I still have old layouts somewhere that use that name.. in fact, yes! Here’s one now.) I’m not sure what I’m going to put on there, probably some kind of web design “business” since I’m doing quite a few band websites now. It’ll just be a nice internet storage place really.

I had a lot more to say but I lost my enthusiasm for typing this about 3 words in, so I’ll see you back here sometime soon.

Matt’s comin’ atcha with a long-due update! I won’t feel right till I’ve typed this, so here goes.

I guess you could presume from my lack of recent updates that I’ve been so so busy that I haven’t had time to sit down at the computer. While this isn’t strictly true, it does take me a while to type these things up, which usually puts me off. I guess I have been pretty busy too recently, so let’s recount:

2 weeks ago, my awesome friend Joe (of Joesus fame) came up to Leeds to visit. Here’s a rundown of the day, in bullet-point form for your convenience.

• 11:00 am: Joe texts me to tell me he’ll be arriving in Leeds at 5:30.
• 3:00 pm: I go to my lecture from 3-4, deciding to do some work in the library for an hour, in order to catch a bus at 5 to the train station.
• 5:00 pm: I’m about to board the bus to the station when Joe texts me saying his train has been delayed and he’ll be an hour late.
• 5:05 pm: I consider the implications of this, realising that had I known in advance, I could have got the bus home. I reason now that as it is 5pm, rush hour traffic will take me an hour to get home, so I have no choice but to sit around the university some more.
• 5:10-6:00pm - I wander around, reading a newspaper and comfort eating.
• 6:00 pm: I get on the 96 bus, which I believed would take me to the train station.
• 6:20 pm: I have moved around 100 metres on said bus, crawling through the traffic.
• 6:30 pm: The bus pulls in at the bus station, and the remaining three passengers besides me get off. I nervously follow them, realising the bus is at the end of the line.
• 6:31 pm: My hopes that I am actually around the back of the train station are cruelly dashed when I realise I have no idea where I am.
• 6:32 pm: Joe calls, his second train has been delayed. He doesn’t know where he is, but his train is due soon. I tell him that I have no idea where I am either, but not to worry.
• 6:45 pm: Through a mixture of luck, vague directional abilities, and circular routes through the city centre, I arrive, somewhat bewildered, at Leeds Train Station. Joe texts me and his train is due in ten minutes.
• 6:52 pm: I pay 20p to get onto the platform, and meet Joe. We hug, in a manly way.
• 6:55 pm: We wait a long time for a bus to show up. When one does, I realise it was the 95 bus that calls at the station, not the 96. Oops.
• 7:45 pm: We arrive at Oxley (where I live!). Joe drops his bag and we almost literally turn back around and go out again to get the bus to …somewhere, to see MINUS THE BEAR play!
• 8:05 pm: We get off the bus near the university. In the few minutes we spent in my room, I checked Google Maps for the location of the venue. My only memory once we arrive on the soaking wet streets of Leeds, with a huge downpour going on, is that it’s south of the Metropolitan Hospital.
• 8:15 pm: We ask approach a man who I address as “mate”, presuming him to be about our age. Upon closer inspection he appears to be about 35 and I feel a little stupid. He gives us directions to the venue.
• 8:25 pm: We arrive at Joseph’s Well, the gig venue. The bouncers seem, against all traditions, friendly and jovial. A good sign.
• 8:30 pm: I wring out my hair and collect our tickets, and we head inside. A few minutes after we put our coats in the cloakroom and buy some drinks, the first band start. Nice timing!
• 8:40 pm: Joe buys me a beer (OMG!!) and we watch the first band, who are “OK”.
• 9:00 pm: The second band start and we leave after about 20 seconds, thoroughly unimpressed.
• 10:00 pm: MINUS THE BEAR take to the stage! Joe (and latterly, me, but not as much) becomes a figure of comedy to a group of (hot) girls in front of us. In typical Joe fashion, he oversteps their comfort boundary for comedy several times, and they look a little bit weirded out.
• 10:00-11:30pm: MINUS THE BEAR play an awesome set, Joe sings his arse off and loves the entire thing. I regret not knowing their stuff better.
• 11:35 pm: We buy shirts, Joe bums cigarettes off strangers, and we somehow make it back to the city centre and get the bus home.
• 12:00 pm: We order pizzas, kick back in my room and watch Futurama.

The rest of Joe’s time in Leeds was cool. I took him down to university with me the next day and he snuck into one of my lectures, which was not particularly exciting, sadly. He seemed pretty impressed by Leeds itself, as well as the uni campus, and I made him promise to come up for a weekend so he can really see the place. We get the bus down to the station, and I wave him off on the train. I contemplate running alongside the train, waving, like in those war movies, but realise the chances (knowing my luck) of me falling into the path of the train and being mangled by it as Joe leaves Leeds are very high, so decline to do so.

The day after Joe’s visit, I was going to be back at the station again myself, this time to go back to Nottingham. I hadn’t mentioned this in past entries as I didn’t want my sister to find out until I was there. It was her 18th birthday party that night, and she really wanted me to be there. I’d already called and told her I couldn’t make it, since I had commitments the next day. Although this was still true, I wanted to be there, and figured I could miss them, so I sneakily bought train tickets.

Being back in Nottingham was weird. I got off the train and there was no instant “I’m back home” feeling, nor was there at any point during the visit. I met an old school friend in the square who arranged to pick me up, and as we were walking away, some crazy guy started yelling at us, saying kids should be in bed after 6. Welcome back to Nottingham..

We got to the party venue and I quickly located my sister. I walked up behind her and tapped her on the shoulder, and just said “Happy birthday” when she turned round. Her reaction was priceless; she turned back around for a few seconds and then turned back and gave a kind of double take and then just started crying and hugging me. My Nan, who didn’t know I was coming either, started crying too at this. My sister then made me go and fetch her makeup bag from the table so nobody saw her smeared mascara, so she could go and re-apply it in the toilets.

I spent some time just talking to my grandparents, and a few family friends who were there, then hung out for the remainder of the night with my friend from school. The party itself got boring for me after a while, mainly since everyone there was my sisters’ friend, and I didn’t know most of them.

The rest of my time there was spent being spoiled by my mum, mostly. She’d cooked all my favourite foods and I woke up both mornings to smoothies, breakfasts, and various other stuff. She also took me out on the Friday and I got some much-needed new shoes, and a few new clothes too. We even went into Selectadisc, the record store, when I joked about buying some new records. I complained about not being able to find Punk Planet zine in Leeds, and she spent a few minutes reading a copy they had in the shop while I browsed.

I also spent a night at my Dad’s new place while I was there. That was the hardest part of the weekend for me; coming home to find it not being home. Dad wasn’t there and it was really weird seeing the house without any of his things in it anymore. Similarly, a lot of my stuff was gone from my room, posters, magazines, and my desk, which made it feel weird and strange when I slept there. I even reflected as I fell asleep in my old room that the bed in Leeds was much more comfortable.

Staying at my Dad’s was good in the sense that I got to spend some time with him, although he did end up nodding off to the movie we watched. I discussed money with both parents, and we sorted out some issues regarding that subject, which I was glad about.

On Saturday night, I’d arranged to meet up with my friends to go bowling and then hang out at Rich’s house. I was sad when I arrived to hear that Nathan couldn’t make it due to illness, but it was good to see the others.

After the initial part wore off, it was same-old same-old, as we ordered pizza and watched bad game shows together. I was glad to see them and I miss them, but I’m glad I chose to move out, having been back and compared our lives. Most of them aren’t living away from home and haven’t really had the same experience I’ve had, and I think, on reflection, I prefer mine.

I got the train back to Leeds after saying goodbye to my parents at the station in Nottingham. It was weird, the two of them talking in the car about money and bills and letters, but there was something different there now, it wasn’t my parents talking as husband and wife anymore, it was two people who’d known each other a while instead. I didn’t feel right till I got off the train into the watery sunshine at Leeds, and got a bus home.

Moving on, this weekend has been the great British celebration of Bonfire Night / Guy Fawkes’ night. For the benefit of non-UK readers, it’s basically a night of the year when we let off fireworks and build big bonfires in celebration of the failure of a 17th century Catholic’s attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament. A group of us decided to go to the famed Roundhay Park fireworks, which apparently attracted crowds of 250,000 last year. Until we got there, I believed this number to be an exaggeration, but I couldn’t believe the size of the crowds when we got there. I’ve never seen so many people in one place in my life. We ended up arriving late so we only saw about 15 minutes of fireworks, before heading for the bus home, but it was a good night.

Last night was another night out; a group of us went to see Saw II. The movie wasn’t bad, very gory in parts. We all bought big boxes of sweets and nobody touched them, meaning we all had a huge amount of sugar to consume after the movie.

In academic terms, I’ve submitted two essays and a piece of coursework in the past few weeks. The first essay was for my Reading Prose module (essentially English Literature), about Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. I was quite happy with the final piece, I’m interested in how my tutor receives it. The other essay was a group essay for English Language, but I’m less concerned as a) only 400 words of it were written by me, and b) the essay is unassessed. When editing the piece we did have to remove some rather critical sideswipes I made in reference to Britain’s notoriously reactionary newspaper The Daily Mail. See, I even did it then.

The coursework was for my elective module, Introduction To Programming. Basically, we had to write a program that would take a set of numbers (exam grades) entered by the user, and then produce information based on them (average grade, number of passes/fails/distinctions, etc etc). I got 14/17 for mine (I lost marks for my code mostly, some of the methods I used were not standard, although they worked). I was happy with this, and the points I lost were justified because to me, they were mistakes you learn from. I’m enjoying that course a lot.

In a few weeks I have to make a presentation on the Marxist writer Terry Eagleton’s Introduction to Literary Theory. The essay is really interesting, essentially he suggests that literature has replaced religion as the ruling class’s method of controlling and influencing the working class, almost distracting them from the crapness of their own lives by focusing them on the lives of the classical literary figures. I also have another essay due for Reading Prose, which will be a challenge.

I think we’re off for our regular Sunday night drink at The Three Horseshoes (Harry Potter fans: I always find myself thinking of this as The Three Broomsticks), so I’ll end here, with the promise of more frequent, less bulky posts. Also coming up are some photos from the fireworks, and as promised, some pictures of where I actually live. Bon voyagé!