Learning Things

Evening all.
Being the nostalgic sausage that I am, I decided to look back on the things I learnt in 2015. And they're pretty much still useful a year on. With the odd adjustment here and there, they could easily be life tips. If what you wanted to do with your life was not annoy your housemates and avoid becoming Catholic.

But I've been pondering. Many of you will have seen my last post, claiming that I didn't learn much in 2016, and it's sadly true that there were no great revelations regarding pumpkin vampires, or locking the bathroom door. But did I learn anything in 2016 that contradicts what I learnt in 2015? Time to find out:


According to my flatmate, food (specifically a kebab) is better than sex
Said flatmate still believes this, as far as I know. The kebabs really weren't that good.

It's not the ringers that smell of the tower, it's the tower that smells of the ringersStill true.

Vegan cooking can be super easyThe key word here is can. It can also reeeeeaaaally easily go super wrong....

Lock the door when you're in the bath
Since learning this, nobody has walked in on me in the bathroom.
(I may have forgotten this once or twice, but Daniel is a gentleman, and still nobody has walked in on me in the bathroom...)

Tea and sympathy get you a long way
Just make sure it's the way you want to go.

If you reach the age of 30 in north Germany without getting married, you have to sweep the steps of the Rathaus until a young lady comes along and kisses you 
Well, we're going to find out this year, when Daniel turns 30...

"If it ends in 'e' it's probably 'die'" is a lie.
Still a lie.

If you lose one of your Beavers, they are probably in the tent
Still true.

You will get on better with your friends during a four day hike than you will ever in your life again. Ever.
I still get on better with these friends than I ever did previously. I think that working together like that makes it really easy to understand people. And everything we've done since then has been easy in comparison. So, I guess we're just stuck with each other for life now.

That's it I guess. Everything else on the list is either so obviously true it doesn't need repeating, or could possibly need reassessing in the future. But for now, I'm going to let sleeping dogs lie.
This is quite a short post, but I don't really have a lot to say. I just wanted to see whether I was still learning new things.



Emmatt update: Haven't done one of these in a while because there's very little to report. Matt and I are still together (3.5 years in February), and we're still making long distance work through a combination of phone calls, texting, and total, unquestioning trust. There's a plan in the pipeline to try and move in together once I've graduated, but money (as ever) is the key thing holding us back. And anyway, who knows what things will be like in six months' time?

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.

House Hunting

It's now come to that time in my life where I've had to start (and indeed conclude) a hunt for my first privately-rented property (how scary!) So, this led to me pondering the housing market and, well, just everything really.

For anyone who's interested, I am sharing as part of a group of five girls who will all be living in a two-storey house in Beeston; near the university. The property has five bedrooms, three bathroom-esque rooms (only one actually has a bath in it, the others have showers), one lounge, one dining room, one kitchen, a scrubby garden with a "bald patch" (Helen) and a "Bedroom", in which the bedroom furniture doesn't even fit. Needless to say, this will be used as an occasional overnight room for people staying (willingly or because they're unable to use their own legs...) over and (probably) a storage room.

Basically, this whole process has made me feel very grown up; primarily because I have been doing most of the dealings with the estate agents (as the one who was willing to make the phone calls on Monday) and this gives me a terrifying level of responsibility, but also because I now realise that next year I will be responsible for myself; all the payments of bills and rent will be down to me (probably not financially, but I will be in charge of organising it) and if I mess up, it will be my own fault, with no way to blame anyone else.

That's scary.

In addition, I have decided I would be a terrible estate agent. I would feel incredibly guilty for the amount of... not quite lying, but... 'smoothing over' I would need to do to sell certain properties. Did you know there's no patron saint of estate agents*? Somehow it doesn't really surprise me. (At a stretch you could say it was St Lucy, patron saint of salespeople, but I'm not sure that's the entire of the estate agent's job.)

To be honest, my main concern for next year is getting on with my housemates, who are all lovely girls. This may seem a silly thing to say, if they're all lovely girls, why would that be a concern?
Basically, because they're so lovely I'm worried that I will be the one who will annoy everyone to the point where we have an argument and they are no longer friends with me. Apparently there's meant to be someone like that in every house. I really hope we're the exception...

If it doesn't work out, I could always live in a yurt.

Emmatt update: I realised I didn't do one of these last time, so in case anyone's interested, I thought I'd let you know. Matt and I sent a lot of time together over the Christmas holidays, even though we both had a lot to do. We're both very happy that we've now (more or less) reached five months together and are making plans to see each other in a few weeks, just after my Birthday. I also hope during this time to introduce him to some of my other friends (the girls I'm living with, plus other people in my course), although he doesn't know this yet. Sorry Matt.

*P.S. Father mine, the patron saint of Bankers is St Matthew

Oooh, Look! A Blog Post!

So, I'm terribly sorry that there has been about a month’s gap between this post and the last but, seeing as how nobody even reads this, I guess it doesn't really matter anyway. I am currently on a train. This had made me ponder trains.

I don’t like the fact that there isn't somewhere on trains that you can keep your bag without losing sight of it; even when it’s in the overhead luggage rack you can’t really see it. Plus, you can’t put large bags there anyway, so it’s not helpful if you've got a small suitcase, which I have. Fortunately, I have sat next to very understanding people on both the trains I've had to sit next to people on today, so it’s actually been OK. J

Now, this is a strange thing to say, but I was going to make a post about things I dislike about trains. Except that I was going to do it on Friday when I was having to rush between platforms to catch my connections. Today I've had a short wait at both Stevenage and Grantham on the way back to Uni, so I've not really got much to complain about; I haven’t even had to go up and down a lot of stairs to get to far away platforms as they've all been across the platform from each other.

So, apart from an apology (what else would you expect?) for not writing for so long, this post will be rather pointless. Thank you for bearing with me whilst I settled in to Uni life and (almost) got on top of my workload. Much love xx

Emmatt update: If anyone is bothered, Matt and I are still very happy sharing each other’s company and we spent a fair amount of time together whilst I was at home this weekend. I am still waiting for him to realise just quite how crazy I am, but (mercifully) that time has not yet come.

I've Heard Of Looking On The Bright Side, But...

... This is quite ridiculous!

Hello internet folks and welcome to another thrilling instalment of my fantastic blog (which I just realised is basically a fanfiction of my life, but more true)!!! As many of you know, I have moved into Halls of Residence at my chosen university, Nottingham, today. Therefore, it will come as no surprise that I am currently pondering this.

My bedroom is orange. Very orange. Special orange. It's so orange that it's like living inside an orange. Or Ginger Chris, one of the two. I have therefore been unsuccessful with my colour choice for everything else, as my bedding is red and green tartan (with teddy bears) and my towels are coral, although I don't think I'll ever understand why that is the case.

Apart from that I have met some lovely new people, most of whom live in my building and none of whom I can remember the names of. Oh well, I will remember eventually. I have spent most of my time unpacking or at meetings, which seem to be the two most important things to be happening today.

So, to be honest, there's nothing to report as such, but I realised that I hadn't written anything for a while and should probably give you a metaphorical pulse, just so you know I'm still up and about. So, I think I'll call it a night now, goodnight internetty people!

P.S. For those of you who are interested,  Emmatt is still going strong despite the newly enforced Geographical schism. Whilst I have tried to dissuade Matt from wasting too much time and money coming to visit me, it would be nice to see him before December. However, that could mean me going to visit him when I am down seeing the family, rather than him spending all his life money coming to Nottingham by some awful bus/coach/whatever.