So! A couple of posts ago I asked you all for some music help and because you’re kind and lovely, I received much of it. I made a little Spotify playlist of my faves that I might post in a few days, but I can tell you that a lot of your recommendations went down terribly well, most notably Brand New, Blind Melon and Arcade Fire. I now feel well on my way to regaining the tiny bit of music taste I had all those years ago.
I was in Cambridge over the weekend, which was as fun as ever. I made a lasagne in a microwave, we turned a melted Ben and Jerry’s into the richest milkshake ever to be known, I branched out and ate in another college (less Hogwartsy, more threatening. I learned how it must feel when Harry Potter is unfairly targeted by Snape when a scary small man syndrome guy in sunglasses told us off for laughing.) and then subsequently got ill. I did manage to become the head of a pool team though *thumbs up*.
So yeah, everything’s fun blah de blah boring boring what-I-did-over-the-weekend. What I really want is to have a picnic and eat ice cream under a tree with a good book, but that will have to wait. My mum asked me what I wanted to do for my 21st and I’m tempted to say that.
But you know when you see something and it’s perfect and if the world was good and righteous it’d be yours?….
You know what? I need musical guidance. It has taken me a long, long time to get to this point of self-awareness, people, so be proud, but the fact is my music taste has gone from pretty bad with some redeeming features to absolutely and unforgivably non-existent. So let me pick your brains and tell me all your melodious secrets; I’m thinking heart-breaking tunes, poetic lyrics, emotion, passion and something that will touch my little coal heart. This definitely excludes Cascada, whiny generic (read: boring) indie bands and anything that may be even slightly affiliated with X Factor and Cowell, the hysterically wealthy Prince of Darkness. I know some of you out there are connoisseurs of the music world so hit me with some recommendations and expand a young person’s brain. Hey, I might even actually start listening to the stuff again – my eyes definitely need a rest.
It’s so odd, thinking about how things just carry on. We have a calender in our kitchen here that we kept on the wall at Park Village. On it we wrote almost everything that happened in everyday life, right down to the club we went to or when one of us went home for the weekend or even when someone threw up because they were too drunk. And now, when we eat at the table, we look at what we were doing this exact day last year and constantly say: ‘Oh my God, was that a year ago?!’ over and over. It’s true though, was it really a whole year ago?
This time last year was kind of full with every emotion you could think of (but definitely not at all entirely negative – many good things have come out of my tumultuous 2009). It was one of those times that you think will stretch out over the entirety of your life because it’s so powerful and things will never change and they’ll never get better and they’ll never get worse and the strength of it will last forever. Of course that’s completely false and we obviously can’t keep up that level of consistency. It’s odd, looking back, how different and the same it is now – one year on. I would have never believed you if you’d have told me.
Like who would have guessed I’d be having a lecture on neo-classical economics, and reading books about ivory, saints, satirical prints, Georgian corpse snatchers and the city, and trying to organise (with varying degrees of success) trips to Edinburgh, Istanbul, Cyprus, and sitting in bed eating an orange in our own little house. Wonder what I’ll say of this January next year? Wonder what I’ll even be doing next year? (My bet is on one of my two dissertations – life is hard..)
In simpler areas: I am cabin feverish and itching to move. Thank goodness for proposed trip to Cambridge next week! I am also thinking of coming home in the next few weeks and, while the money holds out, a daytrip to somewhere Just For Fun, maybe London or Hastings or something. Anyone have any ideas?
P.S. I am mourning the loss of pretty much every bookmark I have ever owned unfortunately at the time when I am reading four / five books at once. Boo hoo my life.
I do not miss the snow. Although everything is ugly and grey and drippy today, I like seeing green again, even if it is that browny dank green that comes when grass has been covered by ice for weeks. It was also nice going out last night 1) Not skidding all over the place and 2) Not wearing my wellies.
Campus last night was odd. We took a walk round Park Village and my stomach felt heavy and weird. Not sick, but tight and a bit painful. I think it was the nostalgia, and the rush of happiness from remembering how it was when we were there, and some kind of irrational affront at somebody living in *my room*. Envisioning the inside I just saw how it was Before and it was disconcerting to realise that’s all gone now, and it’ll never be like that again. Hence the clenched insides. It was kind of nice in a masochistic way to go back, but I don’t think I’ll do it again.
The night was fun though – of course it went from not drinking to playing pool without a cue ball slurring our words. Hamish was excellent, everyone seemed to be having fun and I got back later than I do when I go out clubbing. Worth it though, and worth it to spend the night with a large crowd of people instead of having the usual, insular nights out. I spent my gym money on wine, heh.
Now – essay.
Oml – can I live here please?!
I would like to be all of these things, so I am going to try to read as many of these as possible (why oh why do I do these things to myself?! Such unrealistic goals.)
In other news I have just finished the worst essay of my life. Woop woop.
EDIT: I have minused two because I have neither children nor a small business, and 50 is a nicer number.
I can’t seem to shake this odd mood. It’s definitely not a bad one – I am as happy as ever – it’s just there, skulking about just out of earshot. A sense of something getting ready to happen.
I’m home again now and can once again sit fully clothed in bed all day, however sickly it makes me look (I’m not sick anymore, just to confirm). The journey home was fluid and easy; the sky was crystal clear and I’m sure that made everything as bloody freezing as it was, no doubt. I had to sit for twenty minutes at the station in the cold so I watched the feeble, watered-down light bounce off the trains and played the ‘If I was a film-maker…’ game with two chattering squirrels. It had snowed up here in t’North – not nice thick snow or dirty slush but fake-looking powdery stuff that went ‘pfft, pfft’ instead of the usual, satisfying crunch when you walked on it. Everyone here is ill now, because of me. Oops.
Have huge mixed feelings about getting back to uni, too. I want to be back because I know I’ll love every second like I always do, but I also want to stay here and have everything like it is right at this moment and to continue being lazy and luxurious. And most of all, I do not want to do this infernal train journey all the way back with my giant case of doom, which is now 100% confirmed. If anyone wants to break my monotony and meet for city lunch on Friday, let me know. And to all you beautiful Birmingham friends of mine: I am available for a limited time only. Catch me while you can. I will miss you guys!
It’s really quite odd not blogging from my own laptop but I’m supposed to be writing my essay (1 of 2) and after some garbled, pretentious introduction type thing I am fed up to the back teeth of it and felt the need for some procrastination time.
What to talk about other than New Year’s Eve? It was nice, fun. I stayed much more in control of my own faculties this year (not my own choosing, mind) and can remember everything with minimal embarrassment. It was a smaller affair, quieter, less manic and sharp-edged which was lovely lovely but odd. The problem with repeat events is that there’s always a few more layers laid down in the previous years and however much you are loving the evening ( I truly did: it was easier and softer) there are always the ghosts of last year’s you hovering in the corner (‘Do you remember when…?!’) and you can’t help but compare. 2009/10 me is much more different (and infinitely less neurotic) that 2008/09’s, which made it even more disorientating because we were walking the same floor with the same people and entertaining the same thoughts. It was a perfectly lovely way to begin a new decade though (‘a decade I will make count’ is what I want to say but very probably I will end up doing the same things and being the same person and after all, doesn’t everyone say this? And, deep down, as I said to S an hour or less into 2010: there’s that kind of heavy, disheartening feeling that it will be exactly the bloody same as the year before. Disheartening maybe [I was feeling particularly melancholy and a bit frustrated at this point, I remember] but actually full of silver-lining relief: I will not be disappointed if all I can manage is to be happily, averagely and driftingly myself.).
So what do I want to accomplish this year? I had a list of five resolutions but they flew out of my head a couple of days after conception. The only one to stick was to get to know my dad’s girlfriend better, so I’ll keep that in mind. It’s kind of odd for me, the whole dad + girlfriend thing because he kept her quiet for so long (and I know why, I do, it was just a shock to know that even my mother knew before me) and some other, Lucy’s mind things. It was definitely jerky and confusing to visit her and my dad in her home (it’s so near!) on Boxing Day, meet her children (do they know more about my dad than I do now? Stupid things like what he had for dinner last night, when he is next working, what new clothes he’s bought, his favourite TV show of the moment?), sit on her sofa. She’s so, so lovely too, and still shaky at meeting us – I didn’t think an adult would ever be nervous to meet a girl fresh out of her teens – and obviously makes my dad happy, which is the only thing I ask for when the subject comes up. The thing is, I guess, is that up until now my dad has existed in a sort of abstract, floating time and space, somewhere ‘not-home’, somewhere not with me but nowhere really in particular. I never saw his flat. Now he lives in a home I have seen, a house with walls and doors and windows and a HD TV, without me. Although he left a good few years ago and *I* then left a a year or so after, it was still massively disconcerting to realise my dad is fully living without me, with a house and a family and a partner. He doesn’t just drive back into oblivion when he drops us off at home. It made me miss him again, I suppose.
“They are not brave, the days when were are twenty-one. They are full of little cowardices, little fears without foundation, and one is so easily bruised, so swiftly wounded, one falls to the first barbed word.” - from Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier (because sometimes I am just that little bit emo.)
Lucy
