Civil War & Restoration Literature
This module is boring. I only chose it because we’ll read John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which I read this summer. Unfortunately, two of the books on the module are plays. I like studying plays, but in the past I’ve read them in groups with my classes, where everyone assumes a part and we read it that way. With these, I’ll be reading them on my own, which will be a bit more difficult. The two lectures we’ve had so far have been boring, I couldn’t stay focused even with the whole “start of a new year” novelty. Not got high hopes for this one.

Medieval Renascence
(Nope, I didn’t spell that wrong). This one is good. My personal tutor is amazing, he’s a pretty old fella but he’s hilarious. He criticised the School of English right away, saying how we spend too much time looking for “themes” or just reading 500 page novels every week, and forget to look at the detail. In his seminar we spent an hour looking at one sentence of Chaucer (admittedly, it was 18 lines, but still). I like this module.

Narratives of Witchcraft & Magic
This module is cool. I like the people doing it, and the teacher is cool too, very dry and interesting. We’re looking at a chapter of Harry Potter next week (in book #1) in relation to the topic. We’ve also looked at some historical accounts of witchcraft and anti-magic (”diabolism”) laws. It’s all very interesting.

That’s it for now. This week I got myself involved in the student newspaper. It’s pretty good, but they really need to proofread it better. The first issue was loaded with ads to get people to come along and join the staff, and one contained the word “cheif” (sic). Other headlines/articles had pretty poor misuse of apostrophes, and pretty cheesy typos. I’m completely anal about spelling & grammar; this is why I’m an English student, but they need to improve it.

Anyway, I spoke to the Features editor and the Music team, and suggested some articles I wanted to write. They liked the ideas and they’re gonna suggest them to the editor. Looking at the office there and the concept, I’d love to edit the student paper at some point. Tomorrow the world..

I have a job interview Monday! I felt great when I emailed them and they called me sounding pretty damn impressed, if I may say so myself. Here’s the position:

http://www.i-to-i.com/Home.aspx?tabindex=0&tabid=76&subtabindex=3&subtabid=380#ime

If reading that is too much, it’s basically web design. If I get the job, and get to write for the paper, I’ll be a really happy guy. Also, my new band up here is due to actually get off the ground. If ALL THREE things work out, and my luck is up, who knows, I might even find a girl! One step at a time..

So the next night I ended up at Rich’s. We went to Asda to pick up some snacks and then headed back to his place to just chill playing some games and hanging out. The ever-fantastic Joe showed up, and reminded me how much I’d missed him. I hadn’t seen him in a good few months and the whole thing definitely wouldn’t have been half as cool if he hadn’t been there, and I’m not just saying that because I know he’ll read this.

The guys had all got me presents, which were really awesome. Susie, Rich’s girlfriend, had gotten me this awesome little book she picked up at the John Lennon museum in Japan where she had been. It’s quotes from his songs, with the Japanese and then the English, all bound in this special soft paper. I didn’t even expect anything from her so I was very touched. Sarah got me book tokens which I exchanged for Bill Bryson’s “A Walk In The Woods” and Frank McCourt’s “Teacher Man”, and Rich got me a PC game, Command and Conquer Generals, an awesome game that we’d talked about buying so we could play online when I was away in Leeds. Finally, Nathan gave me a mystifying rolled up tube, which I unwrapped to discover an absolutely awesome manga-style drawing of my band, done by Nathan over 4 days. It blew me away, so much effort must have gone into it. We’ve never really been huge on presents, so to see something he’d clearly spent a lot of time on really meant a lot. The drawing itself is awesome, it’s very flattering to all of us, we look about 100 times cooler, slimmer, muscular and badass than in real life, but it’s really cool, he has me wearing an AFI shirt that I own, and even my shoes and jeans. I’ll get a photo of it (it’s framed on my wall) so you can all appreciate his awesomeness.

The night took a turn for the worse after that, though. Me and Joe were sharing a double futon downstairs since bedspace was limited. Before everyone left us to sleep, there were tons of jokes about me and Joe fucking, which Joe helpfully exacerbated by climbing on top of me and humping wildly. After more jokes about us having a gay experience at night, they left us. We just lay and chatted in the dark for a bit until Joe left to go and smoke with Thom and some other people who’d just got back from a night out somewhere. This was when the fun started for me.

Thom (the singer in my band, he’s gay) had a friend over from Ireland. At about 2am, he got into the bed with me. I was half asleep and thought it was Joe, until he shook me and I looked round, right into the close-up face of a drunken, sweaty-smelling Irishman. Here’s a transcript, for ease of reading/mocking:

Him: Hey, mfffffggghhhhh, youuuuuu alriiiiiiiight?
Me: Whoa! Uh, oh, yeah man. *makes obvious “going-back-to-sleep” gesture*
Him: Cool, fsdkhfselksffs6rh… *shakes my shoulder* Hey, roll over a bit, we can cuddle *indicates to the side so I should lie with my back facing him*
Me: *trying to keep calm* I’m alright thanks, I just wanna sleep, seriously. *goes back to faux sleep*
- five minutes later -
Him: Hey, fssfdsdffsdfsdfsdfsddssdsdsdrrrrrrrr *starts to stroke me under the covers on my chest, working slowly down*
Me: *pushing his hand away* Leave it, man, I’m not interested. I just want to sleep.
Him: Okay, okay.
- He begins to do what I can only describe as “chewing his teeth”. Imagine a loose tooth was rolling around his mouth and he was biting it and rattling it around. He was also making eating sounds with his lips. Add to this an overpowering smell of stale beer and sweat being directed almost directly into my face from him as he sleeps -
Me: *tries vainly to fall asleep; fails*

After he laid his hand on my shoulder again, I gave up and just got out of the bed and moved my cover onto the couch and slept there. The couch was a good foot or two shorter than me, which made for one of the least comfortable night’s sleep ever, but it was better than rejecting a wasted dude. He still spoke to me, first asking me to come back, then ominously asking if I’d “ever been to Galway”. I hoped this wasn’t some gay euphemism.
In the morning I told Thom and asked him worriedly if the guy was actually gay. I’d rather have had a gay guy come onto me than a straight one thinking I was a girl, admittedly a girl who’d really let herself go. To my relief, he was actually homosexual. He was also high on several Class A drugs, not to mention drunk, and had no recollection of the incident in the morning. I told Thom not to tell him.

When I woke up, I felt absolutely awful, and not for the above reasons. I was sick after drinking some fresh orange juice, and felt an awful stomach cramp. This didn’t subside for a whole week afterwards, which, put bluntly, saw me spending most of my waking hours either writhing on my bed in pain, sleeping and having the weirdest, trippiest dreams, or sitting in the bathroom wishing I was anywhere else. Not a fun week.

A few weeks ago I ended up going out alone just to kill the boredom. Everyone else was at work (or in Hayley’s case, out with her friends) and after texting a few people to ask if they wanted to see a movie, I just went on my own. I saw Little Miss Sunshine and quite enjoyed the solitary experience. It beats sitting around in the house waiting for life to happen., anyway.
My student loan arrived in my bank account a few days ago, which was a happy day. I went out and picked up the books for the first semester of university, a sweet £100, and that’s only half of the ones I have to buy. Damn English degree. University itself begins tomorrow; I feel I should be preparing myself for it better than sitting online typing long diatribes that about 4 people will read, but such is my life.

I think this year (as in my 20th year, and my second year of university) is going to be good. The last few years have sucked, I got rejected from tons of universities, had my parents split up, and just didn’t achieve any of the things I wanted. I’m thinking positive and things are gonna get better. Can’t hold me down! ]]> http://www.scenepointblank.com/matt/uni/thoughts-musings/feed/ http://www.scenepointblank.com/matt/uni/lees-birthday/ http://www.scenepointblank.com/matt/uni/lees-birthday/#comments Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:02:06 +0000 Matt Uncategorized http://www.scenepointblank.com/matt/uni/lees-birthday/ We went out a few weeks ago for Lee’s (my housemate) birthday. He beat me to 20 by 4 days. Here’s some of the photos from the night:

Me looking “pensieve”. Yes, I only own one shirt.

Lee and his friends from college. This was taken in Fab Cafe, a cool little bar with a ton of geeky scifi stuff everywhere. They had model TIE Fighters and X-Wings over the bar.

We both look pretty bizarre here, our eyes look crazy. I need a haircut and a moustache trim.

Lee was wiping beer foam off his mouth here, great capture by me.

Lizzy and Sarah, Lee’s friends.

Lee and Fay, not sure who Lee was shouting at.

My expression here is amazing, I think I was shouting/realising something. The beer wasn’t mine, I grabbed it because Lee grabbed my coke and his beer.

Everyone (minus me, taking the photo)

Annabel decided to pose head-to-head. My expression expresses (ha) the pain.

My faux-flamboyant pose with the others.

Lee and Annabel.

Be warned, there’s 47 pictures under the link below. I compressed them as much as I could so you could still see the detail but not wait forever to see them, so enjoy! Also, don’t judge too harshly! It’s not a palace but living with friends is where the enjoyment comes from, much more so than having a great place.

Welcome to Harold Terrace! On your left you can see the taxi place…

And on your right, the beginning of the estates. See that black car over the road? That’s where my amazing neighbour works all day long. I’m amazed he wasn’t there when I took this; must’ve been the rain.

And here we are, number 68! Not really sure why half of the house is bricked in a different colour. It’s nicer inside, I promise. And yes, the width of our place is just from that door to the next one.

The entertainment area. Gamecube, TV (+ cable) and DVD player. See the Resident Evil box? I completed it yesterday, it took me 13 hours. I’m a slacker, but it scared me.

The DVD shelf. We combined all mine and Hayley’s movies for this. Mine suck, they consist of the 3 Lord of the Rings boxsets on the right through to the end of the shelf on the right. On the other hand, almost all of Hayley’s movies suck, whereas my emphasis is on quality not quantity. Yeah.

The front door and couch.

My awesome neon guitar clock that makes our house look like some kind of musical red light brothel at night. Note the overflowing fruit bowl, as filled by me.

Door to other rooms; my shoes.

Noticeboard at the foot of the stairs. My comics are on there (the little ones are called “ROCKY THE FUCKING HUGE EAGLE”, about, well, a fucking huge eagle. On the left are some bowling scores from when we all lost to Hayley. At the bottom is a note left by Hayley about the geographical origins of Robin Hood. Lee claims that Robin Hood was born in Sheffield and thus he was a Yorkshire lad, not a Nottingham one like me and Hayley agree (slightly biased, though).

The kitchen. The blind is broken so at the moment it’s down because to put it up we have to stand on the side and roll it manually.

The back door.

View from the back door. Our yard is probably the nicest in the area.. ouch.

Back into the house…

Microwave, Toaster, George Foreman, cooker, dirty plate..

My washing. We have a washing machine but no dryer so it has to hang up there until it gets cold enough to start using the central heating and the radiators.

Foods!

The scary basement. You have to stand with your back to this when you wanna use the fridges at the top of the stairs.

Looks fun! My darkroom projector and stuff. The white box on the table is photographic paper. I’ve already printed and developed some photos in here at night.

Our meters are on the left, no idea why there’s traffic cones or a door in this little room in the basement.

My bike, and the washing machine.

Back to the relative comforts of the house! The stairs to the first floor.

The bathroom. The suitcase on the right has been there since we moved in, nobody can be bothered to move it.

Bathroom. We had to wait 4 days after we moved in to get that shower curtain, and it wasn’t even new. It has vaguely suggestive words on it like “steamy” and “hot”. All the cleaning products were supplied with the house, probably so if we don’t clean up, the landlord can say he provided us with the materials.

The stairs up to the Floor Of Awesomeness, aka mine and Annabel’s floor.

Weird attic thing that I vaguely want to explore. It’s high.

Who else?

Matt’s room!

My awesome hat. I wore this when I got back from Spain and gave everyone little souvenirs. I had about 4 world maps in my old room just because I kept getting free ones.

My to-do list. I haven’t updated it in a while since the eraser isn’t very clean and I can’t scrub stuff off anymore. The “get a job!” has been up there for about 6 months..

My drawers, “vanity unit” mirror and wardrobe type thing. Those drawers are shit, they all stick and creak and shake everything.

My sweet leather jacket that I never actually wear but used as a “punk” costume for a 70s themed gig we went to that we had to “dress 70s” for.

My awesome shoe collection.

This is where I do my major work: pirating music and avoiding actual interaction.

My bed. I love it, it’s really low to the ground but I’ve never had a double bed before so it’s still a novelty. Note the psychedelic green rug which came with the room and gives it its only real colour (we’re not allowed to paint. Technically we’re not meant to have posters either, but fuck that noise.)

My badass Fugazi poster.

Skylight! .. which leaks onto the floor if I have it open during rain. Doh.

My noticeboard, made of 4 pieces of cork stuck to the wall. Classy. Those drawings, you ask? They’re diagrams my friends did of “Matt’s ideal girlfriend” (their idea to draw, I stress).

Lee’s drawing. Not sure where the “cafes” interest comes from. When he says “space” he means it like personal space, not stars and planets and shit.

Hayley’s drawing. The speech bubble on the right says “Hello, I’m aloof and like music that’s cool, not really cool, just individual”. Her name is Antigua.

Becca’s drawing. I was wearing a Ramones shirt the day these were drawn, that’s the only explanation for the constant references in the drawings.

Annabel’s drawing. She’s kinda cute!

My record player and vinyl collection. Those CDs on top of the turntable are free promos I got from my website.. I need to review them.

Where the magic happens. That’s the Death By Stereo logo, it’s awesome.

Books! I’m not doing an English degree for nothing. That stack of stuff at the right end is my zine collection, including half a year’s worth of Private Eye and a good few issues of Punk Planet, MRR, Last Hours, Heart Attack and others.

The infamous OBLIVION SWITCH, plus my wah-wah pedal and of course the ubiquitious Marshall amp.

• Reading Poetry
  • 2 hours long, 2 questions. One was analysing an unseen poem which I prefer since it involves less memorising of poetry like the second question. I felt like I did a good job with this one, even if I made a slightly over the top connection between a line reading “like a star”, which ended up with me making references to astronomy and the nature of space and light years. Without going into too much detail, it did have some relevance to the poem, I promise. The other question was a choice of about 8 which were broad questions about the nature of poetry. I picked one that began with an Emily Dickinson quote (”Tell all the truth, but tell it slant”) which asked about the use of imagery and sound in poems. The stuff I’d learnt seemed vaguely applicable and I was fairly pleased with it.
• Exploring Medieval Literature
  • 2 hours long, 2 questions. Not looking forward to this one as the first question was on the medieval religious lyrics and plays we crammed in right at the end of term, which I wasn’t very confident with. I chose to do an analysis of an unseen lyric for the first question, rather than try to write about them from memory, which was a good decision since I really didn’t know much about them. My second question was about the theme of dreams and visions in medieval literature, which I think I did justice to, ending with a sweeping statement about modern society’s lack of faith and cynicism.
• Introduction to Programming - Exam Paper
  • This was my elective module in computer programming, and was very simple. It was open notes, so we were allowed to take in our lecture notes and slides. I took printouts of the slides we’d had in the lectures and referred to them about twice, leaving the exam half an hour before the end. I was confident with the paper and found it straightforward and interesting.

Still to come:

• Introduction to Programming - Lab Exam
  • This one involves writing a program from scratch rather than commenting on a pre-written one like in the above lab exam. It’s 4 hours long which is good in the sense that I’ll get plenty of time, but bad in the sense that the mock exam took me 1 hour and that was sitting in my room playing music, not in a silent computer lab. I won’t be able to leave early so it’ll be a boring day, but my 12PM on May 31st I’ll be officially finished with the first year of university. It’s gone so fast.

Not much else to say really. We went to look around the house we’ll be moving into in July. It was smaller and (if I’m honest) less nice than we remembered, but I think we’ll make up for that ourselves just by having fun. I’ve been enjoying living in the current flat less and less as the year’s progressed just due to the lack of social atmosphere. I get on with everyone, but we don’t spend time together and there are little annoyances (noise, mess) that don’t make it always fun, so living in my own house with my friends and a communal atmosphere (like, having a TV and couches we can sit on together, or eating meals together) will be really fun. I can’t wait. We also drew lots for the different rooms and I got the one I wanted. It’s on the top floor of the house and has a skylight, and a cool little wardrobe that’s pretty big, not that I need it. I’m looking forward to moving in there and getting everything set up like a real home.

My plans for the summer are like this, very roughly:

• Next Thursday: back to Nottingham for a month to see family and friends.
• At some point in June, have a few band practices, maybe play a few gigs, and definitely finish the recording of our new EP so I can get closure.
• Apparently camping at some point with Joe and Rich if it works out.
• Holiday to Spain with my Dad and sisters, if it’s still going on, in August.
• Move into our house around July 1st and spend the rest of summer getting a job and working off my substantial debt/s.

Speaking of jobs, I finally had an interview (ie, more than just a flat-out rejection or lack of response) with the BPP Law School in Leeds for a job in their library. It sounded ideal; 5-8pm, monday to friday, £7.50 an hour. I’d be making over £100 a week and even though the position was temporary, I’d be able to work off half of my overdraft. I didn’t get the job, but the feedback they gave me suggested they liked my answers. The person who got the job has a degree in Library Studies, so I guess I couldn’t compete on that level. Ah well, hopefully somewhere will decide I’m hireable. Incidentally, they’re opening a Wagamama (best Japanese noodle bar on Earth. Or at least, the UK) in Leeds so I’ve emailed them and asked about work, since I have a good 8 months experience in a similar environment at the Chinese restaurant I worked at.

Last night a group of us went out and went to a fairly cheap and cheerful Chinese buffet restaurant then went on to go bowling. At the restaurant we probably annoyed people by being loud and stupid, culminating in Hayley smuggling a prawn into Lee’s melon and ice cream at my sneaky suggestion. Lee responded by putting the soggy prawn all over her cake, and feeling guilty for being responsible, I helped Lee by adding soy sauce in large quantities to Hayley’s cake and ice cream. The waitress looked less than impressed with our bizarre leftovers.

After the food we went on to the bowling place, where last time I came last in a disastrous match that saw me barely score 50. This time I did much better and came second in two games and a close 4th (out of, er, 4) in the third game. Hayley used to be in a bowling team so she came close to 150 each game, so I was quite pleased for vaguely keeping up. Justice was done with Lee playing as badly as I’d done the previous time, coming last in two of the games. Ahhh, karma. ]]> http://www.scenepointblank.com/matt/uni/26/feed/ http://www.scenepointblank.com/matt/uni/modules-and-essay-grades/ http://www.scenepointblank.com/matt/uni/modules-and-essay-grades/#comments Sat, 06 May 2006 22:32:01 +0000 Matt Academic Social http://www.scenepointblank.com/matt/uni/modules-and-essay-grades/ Okay, so two weeks into the haircut, I’m getting used to it, and quite liking the results, so all is well. Unfortunately, I foolishly chose to shave off several months’ beard growth on Monday, losing my wonderful facial hair that everyone except me so hated. I regretted it instantly, partly because I looked about 12 years old afterwards, and partly because I gashed a chunk out of my face with the razor by accident. I remember thinking “damn, that’s going to hurt” as blood began to seep over my lip, and here we are almost a week later and there’s still a visible cut. Thankfully, stubble has reappeared now and I feel a tad more manly.

The best news I’ve had all year came in the form of an essay result: my first First! For those of you not familiar with the university mark scheme, your degree/work related to it is graded from First class to Third (I think below that is a fail), and between those you have a 2.1 and a 2.2. I’ve gotten 2.1s for everything I’ve submitted this year, the closest to a First being my last Medieval Literature essay, a 68 (1 mark off the borderline). I got the second Medieval Lit essay back on Tuesday, and to my immense surprise, got a 74. I couldn’t believe it, I didn’t think it was better than my previous one, and didn’t even think I’d answered the question fully. Not that I’m complaining, I guess it’s good really. The best part was the validation, since I’d set a personal goal to get a First at some point in my first year, and I managed it right at the end. I’m due my second Reading Poetry essay next Wednesday, but I don’t have as high hopes for that one.

Speaking of uni, we’ve essentially finished now, it’s crazy. I have my Reading Poetry exam on May 17th, and the Medieval one on the 22nd or something, then two exams for my Computer Programming. They’re gonna be awful, the mock exam paper I did took me 15 minutes (it’s an hour and a half) and the computer lab exam took me an hour (we have 4 hours, and we have to stay for all of it to prevent talking to the other group who are taking it). By May 31st I’ll be done properly, although as of this week I’ve finished all lectures and seminars anyway.

We also had to enrol for next year’s modules online on Thursday. I was by no means averse to this, since at the start of the year I had to do this in person, which involved a ridiculous 3 hour queue for the sake of 2 minutes of actual interaction. This year, we had to pick from a list of core modules (2 for each semester), and pick an Option module for each semester too from a fairly long list. Here’s what I had to choose from (and what I chose):

Semester One

• 2012 - Civil War and Restoration Literature (I picked this since John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” is on the reading list)
• 2021 - English in Time (Didn’t pick this)
• 2013 - Medieval Renascence: Chaucer, Langland and the ‘Gawain’ Poet, The (Picked this because I’m doing pretty well at Medieval now, and I like the tutor)
• 2011 - Renaissance Literature (Heard this was poor so didn’t take it, plus it sounded boring)

Semester Two

• 2014 - Eighteenth-Century Literature (Didn’t choose this, was put off by Jane Austen’s presence)
• 2020 - English in Space (Picked this, sounds interesting. I hope I can do some kind of study on language use on the internet)
• 2015 - Literature of the Romantic Period (Chose this, sounds just as bad as 18th Century but Lee loves William Blake so at least one of us will have enthusiasm)

For my options I picked:

• 3213 Narratives of Witchcraft and Magic (Taught by Lee’s Medieval tutor who’s apparently cool, and includes Harry Potter for some reason)
• 32660 Creative Writing (Minimum effort course.)

I was pretty happy with my selections, and I’m quite looking forward to starting them in September. I’m less looking forward to buying all the stuff on the reading list.. bah.

Oh, and finally, we went bowling last night and I got absolutely destroyed. In fact, the whole day was a mess of my failures: we played pool first, I lost, then bowling, I came last (of 4 people), much to Lee’s pleasure, then I played Lee at air hockey and lost at that too. Not my day really. ]]> http://www.scenepointblank.com/matt/uni/modules-and-essay-grades/feed/ http://www.scenepointblank.com/matt/uni/24/ http://www.scenepointblank.com/matt/uni/24/#comments Mon, 24 Apr 2006 22:28:07 +0000 Matt Uncategorized http://www.scenepointblank.com/matt/uni/24/ Not tons to say, nothing major going on, except that, er, I cut all my hair off. Any of you who know me in real life or have seen photos know I have pretty long (approaching shoulder-length) hair, so it was something of a spontaneous decision to just cut it all off for the summer (as any guy with long hair will attest, it’s not fun in hot and humid conditions). Also, washing and drying it every day took far too long for how it ended up looking.

The cut itself was an adventure, I’d never been to a real salon, let alone a trendy looking city one. It was kinda sad to see strands of hair I’d come to regard as brothers, maybe even PART of me, being cruelly razored off and swept away. I almost asked to keep a lock, for old time’s sake, but it was the kinda place where such thing would be regarded as akin to voodoo magic.

Anyway, since the only reason you’re still reading is to see the before-and-after pics, enjoy:

BEFORE

AFTER

(yes, the photos are ridiculous, but it’s so hard to take a photo of yourself and somehow pose at the same time).

It’s so odd looking in the mirror and being all “..WHO THE HELL IS THAT?!”. Also, getting a shower and not having my hair touch my shoulders/neck is scary and strangely exciting.

Every night this week, me and my future housemates Lee and Hayley have been watching a variety of TV shows or movies in my room, since I have the superior speaker set hooked up to my PC. We watched Napoleon Dynamite, which I’m still not sure about.. overrated but awesome, or just uninteresting and boring?

Today, Lee and I went on an epic quest for easter eggs. Since we’re spending the weekend here away from family, we figured we were due a treat and walked into town to get them. Unfortunately, nowhere we tried (of about 6 places) had any, so I had to settle for a mini Creme Egg and, unrelatedly, brioche. Mmmm, brioche.

I fashioned a plastic jug-like drink dispenser from an empty juice bottle yesterday in a bid to make cool liquids more rapidly available. I just cut off the top of a big bottle and it now resides in our fridge, making it look like it belongs to some homeless, juice-loving delinquent. But hey.. ice-cold juice at all hours.

I have two essays to write by this time next week and I haven’t started either, although I did do several hours of research for one today, which kinda counts. I also have an exciting new program 80% written for my Programming class, which I might be able to post up here to dazzle you all with my skills.

Oh, and in relatively minor news, my IAN MACKAYE interview is now online! ..if that name means nothing to you, I’m pretty disappointed, but you can repent of your sins here.

Finally, I have to make my module choices for next year pretty soon. All the ones that look appealing (”3321: Angry Young Men and Women: Literature of the Mid-Twentieth Century”) are reserved for 3rd year students only, bah. This means I have to take courses with words in the title that set off what I can only refer to as my “bullshit detector”, with names such as “cognitive”, “postcolonial”, “sceneography”, “modernity”, “deconstruction”, and unbelievably, “metatheatricalities”. I can hardly wait. One of the medieval modules includes reading Harry Potter (#1), though..

We pulled into Leeds and the sky instantly grew dark and it began raining… welcome home, hah. I got back, unpacked, and just chilled, then went shopping and cooked dinner for Lee and Annabel while we caught up and watched the Mighty Boosh.
Monday was good. I went to the student medical practice and got a checkup on my blood pressure. They took it in September and it was too high, so they told me to come back in 2 weeks to get it re-checked. Did I go? Hell no. But then they sent me a letter, so I decided I’d probably need to at some stage. Luckily it was back to normal, so I’m not about to explode. The real best part of today though, was going out on my bike with the intention of just exploring the area a little and getting some exercise done. Going along the roadside, I stumbled upon the entrance to a forest.. as you do. I went in and checked it out, and found to my delight a river running throughout the woods, dotted with little waterfalls and old stone bridges. It was beautiful. I biked around it, trial style, going down steep embankment and steps.

The best part was deciding to cross a shallow part of the river, which in fact turned out to be several feet deep. Alas, I only realised this once I got past halfway and it was too late to turn back, and obviously I couldn’t stop, so I had to keep going and got knee-deep in water. I just laughed till I reached the bank at my own misjudgement, and luckily nobody saw me, although some dude walked past as I was pouring the water out of my shoes. Converse shoes are not good at repelling water. In more crazy adventures, the front wheel of the bike got lodged in some really thick, squelchy mud and I was forced to leap sideways off the bike with a great cry of- well, what I shouted wasn’t important, but it was that or risk falling sideways into the quagmire. I got back covered in mud, soaking wet to the thighs, my shoes squelching with cold river water and my hair sticking to my face and splattered with mud, and I bloody loved it. It reminded me of being a kid again. I’ll definitely be going back.

Anyway, it’s time to start cooking my lasagna. Enjoy!