The Adventures of Matt (in Leeds!)

It’s really weird here now and even harder to explain it to someone who isn’t living in a similar situation (which is: a block of 4 flats, each with 5 residents).

Essentially, term ended on Friday so most people in M block (my home) have gone now, besides 4 of us. I’m the only person left in my particular flat, making walking the corridors and kitchen a slightly eerie task. It’s weird to find the place silent and deserted, normally there’s people around at (literally) all hours and it’s rare that the only sounds I can hear are the ones I’m making myself.

There’s been drama and disasters going on in the past week or two. Holly, one of the girls in the flat opposite mine, is leaving Leeds, mostly due to her not being happy with her course. She stopped going to lectures weeks ago, but stayed on here until the end of the year. As the week progressed she got more and more emotional, culminating in a tearful (and drunk) Thursday night. More on that later..

Also leaving is Sarah, a girl I’ve come to be friends with who also lives in Holly’s flat. Essentially, she never really gelled with the other girls in her flat, and all her friends live in a different residence very close to Leeds University itself, so she’s moving there. It’s weird right now to look out of my window to their kitchen and see it empty, but it’s going to be even weirder next year when there’s two people missing.

In terms of academic stuff, it’s been going well. I handed in two essays since my last entry, and I’ve had one back, scoring a 66. For reference, I scored a 61 on the first one. I was happy with it, an improvement is obviously a good thing and a 66 is not far from being a First (69 is a borderline), which is encouraging. I found the comments useful, although apparently I’m reading the wrong people; I referenced Marx when my tutor commented he would have loved to have seen me talk about Freud. Still, I found it helpful. The other essay was for English Language, and was on discriminatory language. It was really interesting and made me look at the concept of sexism in a new light. I’m not sure how I did on it yet, but I was pretty pleased with the end result. Finally, I had to hand in my computer programming coursework for marking. This was the second one; on the first one I got 14/17. This one I got 17/17, full marks! I was very pleased, especially since I beat a lot of people who are actually Computer Science students, while I’m merely a lowly English student.. ha! Sadly, the coursework marks don’t go towards the end grade so neither of them mean all that much.. bah.

Last week I was due to make a presentation in a seminar on Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory (summary: Literature has replaced Religion as the upper class’s way of controlling and influencing us working class stiffs. Good essay!). I awoke blearily at 10:32am, with the latest bus I could catch leaving at 10:26. Damn. I normally get up at 9 for this seminar. Swearing and stumbling into an icy cold shower, I dressed in seconds, grabbed my presentation notes and ran for the bike shed, jumping on and pedalling through the frosty morning to uni, 4 miles away. Made it in at 10:58, alternately sweating and shivering, and went inside. Not once was I called on to give said presentation, and when I approached my tutor at the end he admitted he’d forgotten his preperation notes and forgot I was supposed to do it. We agreed I’d do it next week and I left. Needless to say, this week’s seminar, I once again prepared my notes and showed up on time, but he didn’t ask so it didn’t get given. I’m not sure if I feel relieved or annoyed, but either way, I have a 6 minute presentation on Eagleton’s Literary Theory to give, if anyone’s interested.

In this final week we (the entire block, mostly) went out for a christmas meal together. It wasn’t as successful as it could have been. In what is appearing to be a disturbing pattern, I almost missed it due to getting a shower at 7, when the taxis arrived, having been told by Ben that they were coming at 7:30. Luckily, the fourth taxi didn’t show up so me and some other people who didn’t fit in the first three got another and made it there on time. When they seated all 14 of us, they split us off into two tables so we didn’t really feel ‘whole’ during the meal. The food was passable but small portions (for the price), so we ended up going back out once it was finished, and heading to a small club called The Reformat, which was really cool. It had a very similar atmosphere to Nottingham’s Rescue Rooms, but much less indie/cool/scene. It had some amazing music playing and we just had a good time, and afterwards we grabbed some bad takeaway food, in time-honoured tradition.

The next night, it was time for the fabled Otley Run. For non-Leeds residents, this is a 16-pub crawl down Leeds’ Otley Road. There’s a nice roundup on interstudent.co.uk, although we’ve never heard of #10. The Otley Run is tradition for most Leeds student, and along with this, it’s customary to do it dressed up somehow. Of course, it being Christmas, we got with the season and did it in awful cheap Santa suits.

It’s weird, since this is normally the kind of thing I’d hate, but it was really good fun, even though I wasn’t drinking. Once I joined everyone else (I’d came late from a lecture, everyone started around 4:30) and got the damned suit on, we just got into the spirit of things and had fun. After a while, you tend to forget you’re wearing a stupid costume, so the stares from people become interpreted as complimentary, until you remember they’re probably wondering how uncomfortable that itchy-looking fake beard is.

We finished up around 2 am in the Dry Dock, a boat that’s been converted into a pub. Most of the drama kicked off here, with various people crying and shouting at one another, and Katie losing her purse with all her cards and money in (it turned up the next day, unsurprisingly). Of course, once back at the flat, we ordered pizzas and sat around for hours enjoying them. Next morning I was up at 8:30, after going to sleep at 5, for my final Language seminar, which was not worth getting out of bed for, in all honesty.

And now, some photos, mostly of the Otley run, but a few of some of my friends on the English course, when we went for a drink after our last lecture.

My flatmates Ben and Alanna in our corridor.

Laura and Stevie from the downstairs flat, who didn’t dress up for the occasion, the spoilsports.

Holly and Katie from the girls’ flat opposite mine.

Laura, James (another of my flatmates) and a bit of Stevie.

Vikki and Sally from Laura and Stevie’s flat.

Lucy and Laura. Lucy used to live in Laura’s flat but moved out to be closer to her friends.

Ben, James and myself, towards the end of the night. My eyes are weirdly closed in most of the photos, dunno why.

Alanna looking terrifying.

Ben being licked by Alanna.

Alanna, Kathryn (my fourth flatmate) and me, eyes closed again.

Back: Caroline and Jon
Front: Vikki, Kirsty and Holly

Stevie, wasted, wearing my bag since I’d just got back from uni. Hey, she offered to!

Laura, with the balloon she somehow acquired and spent most of the night drunkenly hitting people with.

Us outside a pub (The Packhorse, I believe), just after I gave Stevie my coat as she was freezing.

Stevie, Me, Laura and Ben

Kathryn in Ben’s hat.

Ben, James and me again, with uncomfortable moulting beards on.

Lee and Annabel (his girlfriend) looking pensieve. Lee lives in the room below mine, poor guy.

Annabel looks shocked and I examine the bill.

Hayley (who, co-incidentally, went to school with a ton of people I know) tries on the beard.

Lee bearding it up

Annabel looking good in the beard.

Me with Incredible Hulk-esque fists

Me looking pale and thoughtful.. maybe.

Merry Christmas!

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!

The discerning reader will note that I haven’t updated this page in a couple of weeks. Don’t be too quick to presume this means my social life has prospered, though, it’s more a matter of being too apathetic (read: lazy) to update this.

Speaking of lazy, I managed to sleep late and miss my 11am Reading Prose seminar. Not cool, especially since I really enjoy said seminar. The reason for oversleeping? Against all odds, it was because my 9am lecture that day had been moved to Fridays. The extra sleep meant I thought I had longer than I did, and woke up at ten to 11, with no chance of reaching the university by 11. I swore at myself angrily as I got dressed, and arrived to my next lecture early so I could locate someone from my group and find out what I’d missed, which turned out, luckily, to be little. Even so, I was angry at myself, so stuck a sign reading “GET UP! IDIOT!!” under my CD player, which serves as my alarm clock of a morning. So far, I’ve seen it when I get out of bed to shut off the music, and managed to resist the tempting call of my bed.

I emailed my tutor for the seminar straight afterwards and he was alright with it (although I didn’t admit to sleeping in, instead opting for a not-untrue story about my timetable confusing me). No plans to miss any more.

I’ve been reading frantically these past few days, this time with Dicken’s masterpiece ‘Great Expectations’, which I found myself really enjoying. Despite my English student status, I’d never read any Dickens until now, and definitely want to explore his work more after this introduction. I found his writing much more engaging and readable than Henry James’ ‘The Turn Of The Screw’ which we had been reading before this, despite the fact that Dickens was writing a half-century before James.

The one problem with the book is that despite the enjoyable nature of it, it’s very heavy going, at least, for me. It’s been taking me an hour to read 50 pages, and the book was just short of 450 pages. I spent almost 3 hours in the epic grandeur of the Brotherton Library, burning myself out by reading continuously. I felt mentally drained afterwards, but finished the book the next day in time for my seminar on it, during which I spoke for my group and made (if I do say so myself) some excellent points.

Sooner or later I’m going to have to give a presentation in that seminar, which should be an interesting experience. Speaking of which, we had to do group work for last week’s English Language seminar, which went down pretty well. I ended up in a group with two girls (since there are only two guys in the 10-strong class, this was a pretty likely scenario), one of whom turned out to live only a few miles from me in Nottingham and knows people I know.. small world. We had to provide examples of texts that appealed to different social groups or genders, and also, texts that showed examples of slang and jargon. Our group came off as most prepared, and in my last email to my uni address, I got told that me and the girls are now in a group for next week’s group essay; a prospect I’m a little unnerved by - how do you write an essay in a group? Someone was saying that it’s simply a matter of each writing 1500 words and linking them together, but I can’t help but worry that this will look disjointed and poorly constructed. Even so, it’s unassessed..

I’ve really been enjoying the whole university experience lately. Having spent a month here now, I can really conclude how glad I am that this was how it all turned out. I really feel sorry for friends at home who either didn’t go, or chose to stay living at home and going to a uni in their own city. Doing it this was was more of a risk, but it improves the experience so much more. I love walking around the campus and now, having settled in, feeling like I belong there, instead of feeling like an errant teenager wandering on someone else’s property.

Speaking of other people’s property, there’s been some thefts going on here. I heard word when we were coming back from a quiet drink that all of the bikes in the nearby shed had been stolen. I hurried up to my room to get my key for it, and ran back down with a torch to find that my, admittedly cheap, bike, was still there, with its feeble lock still securing it to the post. However, none of the six other bikes that normally occupied spaces there were present.. and each of these was locked with industrial sized chains. After a bit of research it seems a guy in the flat below us had his £600 bike stolen from there, and I presume that others were taken too. If it was a question of ease of theft, my bike was probably the least secure of the lot, so it seems that the thieves have chosen to insult me by implying my bike was too crap to steal. It was quite depressing.

On the other hand, my bike is now the best bike in the shed. TAKE THAT, ELITISTS!

Yesterday I ordered a £30 bouquet of flowers for my sister’s 18th, since I can’t be there in person. I had no idea where the flower shops in Leeds were, so I wondered the streets after lectures ended at 4, knowing that most places would close not long after. I stumbled upon Interflora finally, and quickly arranged the delivery. The cheapest offer was £18 for a single flower (I wish I was exxagerating), so I opted for the next cheapest, a rather pretty (help, I’m becoming a woman) £28 bouquet. I dictated a message, almost forgetting “love from Matt”, and had to be asked if I wanted “XX” at the end. I blushed and said yes, and that was that, £30 please. I wasn’t sure if it was the best present really, since they die fairly quickly, and I dunno.. 18th birthday present = flowers? My faith was reaffirmed later today, though, when I got this message from her:

“You have made my birthday. That was so lovely of you. Made me feel like a princess. And made me and clare [friend] cry. You mean so much to me wish you could be here”.

Good to know that it was money well spent, then..

Life in Leeds has been mostly good. I’m struggling money-wise, a little, having used up all the money on the Asda card that my mum gave me in September. I don’t know where it all went, I didn’t spend much in one go, and I tended to buy cheap stuff. It’s kind of scary, money worries are keeping me up at night. There’s been some tension in the girls’ flat opposite ours, there’s been the usual female bitching and drunken comments which sparked off a bit of a divide between the louder group and the quieter ones, but apparently things are calming down now.

I went jobhunting last week; so far to no avail, but I have faith. I scoured record stores, music shops, computer related places, and other random establishments, and hopefully one of them will see the merit in my painfully forced CV (you try making 8 months of dishwashing establish you as a “dedicated team player”) and hire me.

Also of interest was my dad coming down to visit me last week. He was in the area through work and just dropped by. He came into the kitchen and asked me to make him a cup of tea, pointing out my shame to a laughing housemate Ben, that I had no real idea how to make the tea. I don’t drink it so have never made it, and just had to guess, although he did say afterwards that it was a great cup. He took me out for a meal, and we had a good chat and I was reassured to hear that he’s doing well and seemed happier. I gave him 10 (copied) CDs of stuff of mine that he’d always coveted, and some other things I thought he’d like copies of, consisting of:

• Bad Religion - The Process Of Belief
• Led Zeppelin - IV
• Simon And Garfunkel - Greatest Hits
• The Beatles - The White Album
• Johnny Cash - Unearthed [5 disc set]

He seemed really pleased with those, and I was happy to be able to give him something in return for the much needed pillows and fan he brought me. My room can get really hot, since my window has a bar to prevent it opening beyond 2 inches. As for the pillows, the ones I brought with me are far too soft, and thus uncomfortable.

My goal for next week is to get down to the aforementioned library and do some background reading for my upcoming Prose essay, which is quite the daunting task.

-Matt