Sorry It's Been So Long

Hey guys, sorry it's been such a long time since my last post, I've had exams and goodness knows what else.
If anyone out there in Internetland is still reading this, here is a quick rundown of the last few months:

- Exams. I had four, I think. They were so long ago I've forgotten. For these, I had some short questions (what the history students call) "gobbets";  reciting chunks of information on automatic recall, some grammar questions and several essays and overall I was happy with the way they went.
- End of term preparations and celebrations, including the URN Boat Party, as well as various other bits. Possibly my favourite part of the last few months, as this included visits from my Grandad and his friend Jean, and Matt, the aforementioned Boat Party and several meals out and meeting ups with various people.
- Results. Happily, I passed my first year at uni with a good enough average for me not to be disappointed in myself. Thankfully, this means I'll be back in September in fabulous Nottingham!
- New House. We moved into our new student digs for next year at the beginning of July. As expected, some work needs to be done to make it home, but a trip to Lidl went some way to improving things...
- Phatpocket. Once again I return to work under the "watchful" (absent) eye of Scott, and am merrily reunited with my friends and colleagues, including the elusive Dannii, who returns for another summer. And Matt, of course. He's there too.

So my main pondering for this post, given the changes that have occurred since the last one, and the fact that I'm sitting in the departure lounge of Heathrow, is travel. It's strange how we often describe life as a journey, but so many of us spend the majority of it in one place. Whilst it is not the most ecologically friendly thing to do, I fully believe that people become fuller and more well rounded individuals through travelling and experiencing different cultures and societies. It really does change your perspective of things, even if only in a small way.

However, now that I'm going through what I'm sure I will consider one of the greatest transitions periods of my life (when I look back in years to come), I'm beginning to realise what people mean by "the journey of life". You may well spend your time on this planet all in one place, but that doesn't mean you don't travel incredibly far from what you have been.

Especially in a time when, as a young adult (and I don't mean that in the patronising way parents and teachers always use it, I mean it in its most literal sense) things such as bill paying and part-time employment have entered my sphere of consciousness. It's easy to forget that things some people take for granted, such as setting up utilities accounts, travelling by means other than one's own feet or parent taxi, and deciding whether or not our house actually needs a TV licence under the current confusing guidelines, especially if you're old enough to have been doing those things for ten, twenty, or even thirty years. When you step onto that path, it really is a new and confusing world, and probably one of the biggest ways in which we travel as we mature in the "journey" of life.

Thanks for listening to my semi-philosophical, semi-confused-and-talking-to-myself ramble. Hopefully it won't be as long until the next post. I wonder if anyone is still reading this anyway?

Do Dogs Know They're Dogs?

No, seriously. Do they?

Why Does Everything Have A Double Meaning Nowadays?

Ok, so you'll have to bear with me for this post; it's meant entirely innocently and not at all in the way most people between the (mental) ages of twelve and twenty will take it. It's something I've been pondering for a while and I will try my best, as ever, to translate the slightly addled thoughts of my brain into a coherent pile for you to pick through at your leisure.

Actually, that's a great tagline....

Right, back to task in hand. And hands, interestingly, are what this post is all about. Sort of. Let me see if I can explain this to you without putting my proverbial foot into my equally proverbial mouth.

Think about all the people you meet and interact with from day to day. For the purpose of this, I'm not talking about strangers you see on the train or people you pass in the street; I'm talking specifically about those who frequently have an impact on, and a specific role in, your life. Just think about them for a second.
Think about the people who are your "inner circle"; you probably see them every day and chat with them, or even talk about the more serious things in life, such as the future, or what's for dinner.
Think about the people you see fairly often, but with whom you don't quite share the same bond as those close friends and family; the work colleagues, the estranged housemate, the neighbour...

Now here's the bit where I'm going to be (deliberately or not) misunderstood.

Think about how many of these people you've never had any physical contact with. Just let that sink in for a minute, because I'm assuming you will be surprised at this. Think about how many of the people who play significant roles in your life you've never physically touched. Obviously I don't necessarily mean "touched" in the way in which it becomes heavily implicit of a much different relationship, I just mean think about how few people you've ever shaken hands with, or patted on the back, or even high-fived, who you would otherwise consider important, or at least significant, people in your life.

Even as a very tactile person (when appropriate) I was shocked to think about how many people who I would consider good friends with whom I have never been in physical contact. I know this is a strange thought, but there are people who I see almost daily but who I have never had the need to touch for any reason, and this is strange. It's like finding there's a whole experience that you haven't shared. Which is essentially what it is, in a weird way.

Anyway, yeah. That's my thought for today. As always, you can comment on this and tell me what you think (not that people do that very often), or tweet me (on Tweeter) @EmPernilla (not that people do that very often either). Sorry for the generic post ending, but there isn't any massive conclusion to this thought; it's just something I've been pondering for a while. Thanks for reading, much love xx

The First Baloo

Hi again guys, you must feel truly blessed to be inundated with so many updates... My pondering this week looks at how great it is to be compared to a beloved childhood character.

One of the perks of being a Cub Leader has been choosing my own name, although it's not been made as public as it eventually will be. For those of you who don't know, the tradition for Cub leaders is for them to take the name of a character from the Jungle Book. There is a long history behind this, but basically it stems from the friendship between Rudyard Kipling (the author of the Jungle Book) and Lord Baden Powell (founder of Scouts.) The idea behind leaders having names is, I think, to create the distance between the leaders and the children which would be suitable in such a situation. This is a similar way of doing things to how teachers are only known by "Mr" or "Mrs" at school, except less formal.

As I think I said on this blog about two years ago, I decided upon Baloo. This is almost entirely because he's good at singing, and is loveable in the Disney film of The Jungle Book. However, when I started my Assistant Leader training about this time last year, I decided that I should read the Jungle Book (as in, the actual book), in order to properly educate myself as to what it was really all about. I'm assuming that most of you haven't actually read the Jungle Book; it's really weird. It's split into shorter stories - some are about Mowgli and his adventures in the jungle, there's one about a mongoose called Rikki Tikki Tavi, and one about a seal called Sea Catch (I think - there's lots of seals.) For a children's book, I wouldn't really recommend it for children, to be honest.

I'm just glad they don't call me Rikki Tikki Tavi.

Having read the book now, I do agree that I made the right choice with Baloo. He's not as fun-loving and easygoing as he is in the Disney film, and I like that. I like that there's two sides of the character which work together or separately. It makes it seem more real, more... Like me. Maybe.

The first time one of my Cubs called me Baloo was at camp the other weekend. It was one of the best feelings I've ever had. Like, for once, I was more than just another person; I had a specific role in this child's life and it made me feel important. It made me feel grown up.

I guess that must be what being a parent feels like.

Why Is There So Much Good Music?

Hey folks, here's another procrastinatory ponderance for you!

Why is it that there's so much excellent music out there? I'm currently listening to Roger Daltrey singing "Giving It All Away" - listen to it if you get the chance, it's beautiful - and I've started pondering how there can be so much powerful and moving music in existence. Whilst revising today I've had the four and five star music on my iTunes playing and there's such a variety of music here that it makes me wonder how such amazing music can cover so many genres and styles.

I know my music isn't all going to be everyone's cup of tea, but I've got all sorts of stuff playing today; heavy rock, soft rock, glam rock, Alice Cooper (whatever he counts as - mildly sadistic hard rock?), ballads, soul, reggae, pop and electric, acapella, ska... and something my Dad has listed as "Woody's Chinese Takeaway" (I don't want to know - although it refers to Hong Kong Swing by Cruella DeVille, which is a great song). The list is (at least, it might as well be) endless. And the Wurzels hasn't even played yet! The point is, Wurzels aside, there is such great music out there in every genre that people can enjoy. That's what I love about music, it's just so remarkable, regardless of where its inspiration lies, or anything like that.

Which is why I can never have a show on URN.
Annoyingly, this is true. Because the music I love comes from all sorts of genres, era, backgrounds etc.  I can't therefore have an After Dark (specialist music) show; I don't have a specialism, my music is just stuff I like. I couldn't have a Daytime show because of the reliance upon and the requirement of the Playlist. For those of you who don't know, a certain number of songs in each show on URN are required to be from a preset playlist of recent song I've almost never heard of. If I were to do a radio show, I'd want to play endless awesome music which I could really enthuse about, rather than a combination which included some songs I had no idea about. That's not to say I don't want to include modern music in what I listen to, but if I don't know what it is, I can't be excited to play it.

Anyway, mildly pessimistic rant over; I'll leave you all now.

Emmatt Update: I realise there's not been one of these for a while, and for some reason people still care, so here we are. Matt and I were working together at Phatpocket again over Easter, if only for a week. We didn't see as much of each other as we'd have liked during the rest of my holiday back home (what an odd concept) because Matt had exams and I was still working for quite a lot of it. However, we're still going strong, having seen each other last Sunday when I was back home on a Cub Camp - the things I do, eh? - and there is a plan for him to come and visit me here after my exams finish on 4th June, although the exact date is uncertain at the moment.

If It's Twenty Four Hour Silence...

So Ancaster Hall is meant to have a twenty four hour silence policy, to allow students to study for their impending exams. However, although I am aware that I would be in serious trouble if I did so much as turn my music up louder than absolutely necessary, or watched TV online without headphones, I am also aware that there are several things stopping the silence. So my ponderance today is:
If Ancaster Hall is meant to be silent twenty four hours a day, then why...:

• ... Do large, very loud lorries drive past my room periodically between the times of 06:00 and at least 15:30?
• ... Is the idiot in the room below me allowed to play his ridiculously loud dubstep/club music so that I can hear it through my floor, when I can't even have my radio loud enough to be able to hear it in my own bathroom?
• ... Have the girls upstairs been throwing things out of their window for no apparent reason and then spending half an hour yelling at each other from the ground to the second floor trying to get it out of the spiky bushes that they know are incredibly spiky (designed to prevent intruders)?
• ... Have the aforementioned girls got very cross with me when I shouted out the window telling them to be quiet as it's meant to be silent?
• ... Are the boys outside allowed to stand almost directly outside my room and play (very loud) football? 
• ..., if all the above are true, am I not allowed to watch a film with my friends?

The Small Horse Identity Crisis Question

Hello there folks! Many of you will be aware that I have recently been pondering the following question:

Does a small horse ever have an identity crisis and wonder if it's actually a pony?

Or, on the other hand:

Do large ponies ever have identity crises and think they're really just very short horses? (In which case, do they get angry?)

However, the darling Amanda informs me that the only difference between a pony and a horse is the size*, apparently above the size 13 3 (I think this is in hands, but I'm not sure, she wasn't very explanatory) makes the animal a horse. So now my question has changed slightly:

Would a horse which was borderline pony-size consider itself a very tall pony? And if so, would it then bully smaller ponies and try and reign over them like some sort of King Pony? After that, would it eventually move on to try and take control of groups of larger horses in a sort-of Napoleonic way? And can we really survive another Napoleon-esque emperor? Especially one that's actually a horse and might not be sympathetic to human customs, or might even take out revenge for all its ancestors and their mistreatment by humankind? 

Oh the humanity!

Can you imagine how horrible it would be for that small horse/tall pony though? He'd never feel like he belonged anywhere; he'd be too tall to be friends with the real ponies, but he would be laughed at by the taller horses for him diminutive stature. How cruel would that be?

To be honest, there's a bit of a philosophical query here: should you want to be the best in your social group, or should you want to be the least educated and qualified in the hope of bettering yourself by being surrounded by those greater than you? I prefer the latter; a quote I try to live by is "If you're the cleverest person in the room, you're in the wrong room" - this is sometimes too difficult to judge, as lots of people are clever in different ways, but if you know more than everyone else in the room, you should probably try to move in greater circles. Unless you're a teacher, in which case you should be the cleverest person in that room. But even then, that's not every room.

*(This makes me wonder if you could actually have a Shetland horse. Because I really want one now.)