(no subject)
Jan. 9th, 2006 01:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hathycolI should be revising by now, but, well, I'm going to update my LJ first, because I have been missing for a weekend and I like to pretend that you lot care or something. There are also ne and shiny people on my flist, so I feel they should appreciate the wonder that is my haphazard writing style. Speaking of the new people - hello! I am Colleen, I am a student, I talk about starving to death and not working a lot.
But that is not this post. Today is a discussion of my travels across the Wrong Side O'T'Pennines and even a somewhat intellectual concert review. Go me! (And for those that don't remember - I live with Katie, Derya and Sarah, I am engaged to Simon and I went to college with Liz. Get it? Got it? Good.)
It was a crazy night. Katie and I are both suffering from fucked up sleeping patterns, so spent our Friday night in front of the TV. Several enjoyable brain killing hours later - Celebrity Big Brother, My Name Is Earl, The Friday Night Project with Billie Piper and Jason X later, I was still trying to pack. Apparently, a single quilt will not fit into any kind of rucksack owned with house 27. Eventually, I had the crap blanket covered by a quilt cover, a pillow, my sleeping bag seperate, and about two t-shirts. This was irritating, given my bag was fit to burst. I then tried to sleep. This failed.
Five hours later, I was awake and stumbling around the house in the manner of a zombie, cursing existence and generally wishing I had the foresight to get up earlier the day before.
For those that don't know my little town of St Andrews, it is just that. A little town. We have no bloody train station. Fortunately, I have a car, so can drive to the train station at the RAF base down the road. Go me, and so on.
Saturday was match day. (No idea who was playing - Scottish football? I think not.) And the train had two carriages. And it's an RAF base train station. Are we getting my gist here? People, seriously. Lager at 10.30am is Not Cool. There was also a distinct lack of seats, so I ended up squished standing between what I think was a day out of Motherly Types, all of whom loudly discussed goths around me (wtf? Okay, I have eleven piercings and was wearing black nail varnish, but I was wearing colour and no make-up) and whatnot. The train down to Leeds was much better. I had a seat the entire way, and read the Guardian rather than do real work. Oops.
Met Liz at the train station, who took me shopping in the patented Liz fashion. It consists of wandering around going "Right, I think I know where I am" before asking passing strangers where La Senza is. She is, however, something of a homing pigeon, and managed to find her way home quite easily. I approve of Liz's student pad very much, and her housemates are fab. Even if one of them is the big sister of a girll I went to school with - very fab.
Regular readers might ponder why I chose three days before my first exam to actually be a good person and do what I've sworn to do for a long time, i.e. visit people. I may have had an ulterior motive. You see, the National Youth Orchestra was playing in Leeds Town Hall. I am not exactly the worlds most intellectual music listener. I like classical music - I even technically have a qualifcation in playing the cello, presuming that a grade D in music GCSE counts as thus - but normally I just listen to whatever crap is on the radio. For example, I'm currently listening to a remix of the Baywatch theme tune - no word of a lie. For those that don't know him, though, Simon is an intellectual music type and plays the piccolo for the NYO.
Having never seen him play the flute or piccolo despite them being his main instruments, I figured the time was ripe to actually get my arse to a concert. (I've seen him sing many a time, but, well, I don't know if drunken renditions of the Elements Song counts.) So I did so. I pre-booked tickets, phoned Liz to sort out somewhere to stay, got her to come with me ("The program is really good! And I'll pay! He has fit friends! Something, anything, please come with me!" Apparently the good program won it) and generally organised as well as I could.
But not well enough to be on the right bus to the Town Hall. Liz and I staggered our way to the concert to discover that the doors were shut and staying that way until the end of the first piece. We looked sheepish and so did some assorted parental types outside of the door as we all listened out for the people we knew. The thing is, the NYO? Is depressingly good. Given it's full of people from the age of 15(I think) to 20, they are amazing and I felt briefly bad for being crap at music.
But no matter. We listened out at the door for the first piece before being ushered in. I thought perhaps I could get away with it, but oh no - Simons parents were at the exact place me and Liz walked in. Typical.
Looked up to stage to see Simon leaving it. Whoops.
Anyway. One concert later (he and and the rest of the Non-String orchestra came back on) I was thoroughly impressed. More importantly, I got to see Simon after it. This is a thing of goodness, given that I will now not see him until the end of January if I'm lucky. We went back to Liz's, and Liz and I tried to describe the weirdness of our college to him. You know, college was weird and I miss it. I nearly cried with laughter describing some of the media exploits.
Unfortunately, Liz has exams and assignments, so she chucked us out about 2pm the next day. We wandered merrily around Leeds for a little while, eating Subway and talking and trying not to remember that I had to go back to St Andrews.
I hate train stations. I hate having to leave when I know it's going to only be 20 days until I see him, but that's 20 long days and I miss him a lot now. My room doesn't even smell of him anymore.
However, that is morbid and I'm looking on the bright side that at least I saw him for a day, and finally saw him play the piccolo! w00t etc. I'm not sure if this makes me an NYO groupie or not. I'm going to say it does, because that amuses me.
I arrived home to find washing up, Katie looking delighted because her bloke is coming back tomorrow ("I'm going to DRA and his double bed, I'll see you in two days) and watched Ghosts of Mars and fell asleep in front of it. Zombies! On Mars! If that can't keep me occupied, you know I'm tired.
Now? Revision. I will be quiet for the next few days, because I have hordes of work to do, exams start on Thursday, and I need to learn 850 years in total as well as completely re-learn the Spanish language. Oh god I'm absolutely fucked here. And to make matters worse, I'm all here and he's all there so I'm just feeling very blah at the moment. Oh well. Yay for the end of exams! Which is quite soon, I suppose.
~Hathy_Col~
But that is not this post. Today is a discussion of my travels across the Wrong Side O'T'Pennines and even a somewhat intellectual concert review. Go me! (And for those that don't remember - I live with Katie, Derya and Sarah, I am engaged to Simon and I went to college with Liz. Get it? Got it? Good.)
It was a crazy night. Katie and I are both suffering from fucked up sleeping patterns, so spent our Friday night in front of the TV. Several enjoyable brain killing hours later - Celebrity Big Brother, My Name Is Earl, The Friday Night Project with Billie Piper and Jason X later, I was still trying to pack. Apparently, a single quilt will not fit into any kind of rucksack owned with house 27. Eventually, I had the crap blanket covered by a quilt cover, a pillow, my sleeping bag seperate, and about two t-shirts. This was irritating, given my bag was fit to burst. I then tried to sleep. This failed.
Five hours later, I was awake and stumbling around the house in the manner of a zombie, cursing existence and generally wishing I had the foresight to get up earlier the day before.
For those that don't know my little town of St Andrews, it is just that. A little town. We have no bloody train station. Fortunately, I have a car, so can drive to the train station at the RAF base down the road. Go me, and so on.
Saturday was match day. (No idea who was playing - Scottish football? I think not.) And the train had two carriages. And it's an RAF base train station. Are we getting my gist here? People, seriously. Lager at 10.30am is Not Cool. There was also a distinct lack of seats, so I ended up squished standing between what I think was a day out of Motherly Types, all of whom loudly discussed goths around me (wtf? Okay, I have eleven piercings and was wearing black nail varnish, but I was wearing colour and no make-up) and whatnot. The train down to Leeds was much better. I had a seat the entire way, and read the Guardian rather than do real work. Oops.
Met Liz at the train station, who took me shopping in the patented Liz fashion. It consists of wandering around going "Right, I think I know where I am" before asking passing strangers where La Senza is. She is, however, something of a homing pigeon, and managed to find her way home quite easily. I approve of Liz's student pad very much, and her housemates are fab. Even if one of them is the big sister of a girll I went to school with - very fab.
Regular readers might ponder why I chose three days before my first exam to actually be a good person and do what I've sworn to do for a long time, i.e. visit people. I may have had an ulterior motive. You see, the National Youth Orchestra was playing in Leeds Town Hall. I am not exactly the worlds most intellectual music listener. I like classical music - I even technically have a qualifcation in playing the cello, presuming that a grade D in music GCSE counts as thus - but normally I just listen to whatever crap is on the radio. For example, I'm currently listening to a remix of the Baywatch theme tune - no word of a lie. For those that don't know him, though, Simon is an intellectual music type and plays the piccolo for the NYO.
Having never seen him play the flute or piccolo despite them being his main instruments, I figured the time was ripe to actually get my arse to a concert. (I've seen him sing many a time, but, well, I don't know if drunken renditions of the Elements Song counts.) So I did so. I pre-booked tickets, phoned Liz to sort out somewhere to stay, got her to come with me ("The program is really good! And I'll pay! He has fit friends! Something, anything, please come with me!" Apparently the good program won it) and generally organised as well as I could.
But not well enough to be on the right bus to the Town Hall. Liz and I staggered our way to the concert to discover that the doors were shut and staying that way until the end of the first piece. We looked sheepish and so did some assorted parental types outside of the door as we all listened out for the people we knew. The thing is, the NYO? Is depressingly good. Given it's full of people from the age of 15(I think) to 20, they are amazing and I felt briefly bad for being crap at music.
But no matter. We listened out at the door for the first piece before being ushered in. I thought perhaps I could get away with it, but oh no - Simons parents were at the exact place me and Liz walked in. Typical.
Looked up to stage to see Simon leaving it. Whoops.
Anyway. One concert later (he and and the rest of the Non-String orchestra came back on) I was thoroughly impressed. More importantly, I got to see Simon after it. This is a thing of goodness, given that I will now not see him until the end of January if I'm lucky. We went back to Liz's, and Liz and I tried to describe the weirdness of our college to him. You know, college was weird and I miss it. I nearly cried with laughter describing some of the media exploits.
Unfortunately, Liz has exams and assignments, so she chucked us out about 2pm the next day. We wandered merrily around Leeds for a little while, eating Subway and talking and trying not to remember that I had to go back to St Andrews.
I hate train stations. I hate having to leave when I know it's going to only be 20 days until I see him, but that's 20 long days and I miss him a lot now. My room doesn't even smell of him anymore.
However, that is morbid and I'm looking on the bright side that at least I saw him for a day, and finally saw him play the piccolo! w00t etc. I'm not sure if this makes me an NYO groupie or not. I'm going to say it does, because that amuses me.
I arrived home to find washing up, Katie looking delighted because her bloke is coming back tomorrow ("I'm going to DRA and his double bed, I'll see you in two days) and watched Ghosts of Mars and fell asleep in front of it. Zombies! On Mars! If that can't keep me occupied, you know I'm tired.
Now? Revision. I will be quiet for the next few days, because I have hordes of work to do, exams start on Thursday, and I need to learn 850 years in total as well as completely re-learn the Spanish language. Oh god I'm absolutely fucked here. And to make matters worse, I'm all here and he's all there so I'm just feeling very blah at the moment. Oh well. Yay for the end of exams! Which is quite soon, I suppose.
~Hathy_Col~
no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 02:34 pm (UTC)Strive for a five.
I know I should provide more encouragement, but honestly, looking back on it I wish I'd relaxed more in first year. Also, have just drunk half a bottle of wine and feel that this really is good advice!
no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 05:03 pm (UTC)This is encouragement, fear not. I'm really not too worked up as I could be.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 03:37 pm (UTC)If the Spanish is too scary and confusing, poke me, and I'll try and help.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 05:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-10 12:09 am (UTC)xx
no subject
Date: 2006-01-09 06:29 pm (UTC)*cares*
GOOD LUCK IN EXAMS, the bastards...
no subject
Date: 2006-01-10 12:11 am (UTC)xx
no subject
Date: 2006-01-10 12:15 am (UTC)xx
no subject
Date: 2006-01-10 01:07 pm (UTC)