Fresh Fish to Fry

It's official.
I am. In fact. A. FRESSSHHHEERRR!!

This past week plus a bit has been the most manic and bonkers week of my life, with more highs than anyone on illegal substances! I have had two nights in since last Sunday... one of those being right now, where I am chilling and supposed to be catching up on sleep, ready to party hard tomorrow night. I've drunk way too much, partied till my feet have bled and forced me to go home, seen my favourite music live (hed kandi), been to the beach several times, met amazing new people annndddd..... SURVIVED! (so far at least)

Now, I knew that Uni would be a challenging, interesting and above all fun experience, but I don't think anything can ever prepare you for the degree of which all those things present themselves.

The adrenaline that pumps through you when you realise the key in your hand is the one for your OWN (kind of) house, that it is your key to your house! Bizzare feeling.
That you realise your not at home, this is now home. That you get to know, and first meet your housemates, the fellow freshers... your new friends... and to start with your only friends.

It's a strange moment when you realise that the washing up surrounding and consuming the sink in the kitchen wasn't the spew of some evil kitchen nightmarish monster but it is in fact the mess and destruction caused by your own vain attempt at cooking a decent enough meal. It's also annoying when you realise it's you that has to clear it all up afterwards, and again the next day, and again, and oh did I mention, again the next day!?

I love how in my first week here, reality hit hard. I wash my clothes a lot at home... now, not so much. I have to wear a top more than once before its accepted to the pile of filthy laundry that desperately needs to be a, picked up off my floor, and b, actually washed, dried and put away. I have one simple solution.... NAKEDNESS forever, and therefore never creating clothes to be washed (I don't think this plan would work though)

I'm finding it strange to cook things for the first time without someone else to lean on and ask strange questions to. Example from last week, my housemate decided that in order to make chilli con carne, baked beans were a key ingredient! The chilli then was too big for just one person so the rest was stored in a plastic container in the fridge... for 5 days. The chilli then decided it had made some serious enemies in that fridge, that there wasn't enough space for all the food we'd bought and it wanted out, or everything else out for some more homely space. It decided to start decomposing, in our fridge. Nice. the smell of putrid chilli started wafting throughout the kitchen, until it became the first thing you noticed when opening the fridge door! Luckily, we discovered the chilli trauma before it was too late and my housemate decided the strange bean-rotting-meat combo would make a tasty snack.... we chucked it. Thank god. However, another trauma and realisation resulted from this... bins need to be actually emptied. Where is our outside bin, what is the bin day? Where shall we put it if it overflows? We need to buy bin bags. What if someone (some very odd someone) tries to steal our bin from us!?

This week in my often blind panics and strange new moments I have discovered that freshers week is when you figure out EVERYTHING.... not just that your tolerance level to wine and vodka combined isn't as high as you think and that those pictures you took last night hold no place in your memory and really don't look that good... but that stupid and embarrassing experiences, lead to realisations of how things in this world actually work. To get to the rainbow you have to stand the rain (quote stolen from a friend's facebook status but I feel it holds true for this)... the rain being all the stupid, disgusting and weird mistakes made along the way, the rainbow being when it finally dawns on you not to mix whites and colours in the washing machine.

I wonder what the rest of this week has in store...

Letting Go

Now, I am a teenage girl. And, as you may or may not know, teenagers are very VERY busy bees... lots to do, always rushing around, people to see and places to be. Socialising is of course on the top of the list, as is tidying my room (don't make me laugh!).


It appears to me recently that there is always an unfinished task, something I haven't got to, someone I haven't gone to visit in a while, something I was supposed to do aggeeess ago that I still haven't done. But never did I realise in my own business that I have been letting go...


Of myself!!


I haven't plucked my eyebrows in weeks... in fact I don't even remember the last time I did it! Probably when I wrote New Discovery... Of The Most Odd Kind when I plucked the living crap out of my face and ended up looking like an angry red faced grump with no upper facial hair for 2 weeks. Luckily, nobody noticed my lack of co-ordination and precision when armed with tweezers, clearly my large fringe is a gift from God and hides my mistakes/'reconstructions' well. 


Oh how I wish I could say the same right now... my fringe has outrun my nose in the running race and is exposing my eyebrows. 


From now on, just call me bush baby. 


That is the only name I can now answer to.


I can't win! My efforts to tame the fluffy monsters last time resulted in teeny slugs wiggling across my face, and now, in all my important business of being important and very busy, I have forgotten all about them, left them to flourish and grow back into their enormous usual selves. 


And the reason for noticing my random transformation into bush child? Recent photographic evidence. The camera never lies... and those babies are pretty damn hard to hide! I do not wish to be mistaken for a man. Not until at least I reach old enough age when I'm too grumpy, deaf and blind to care. Then, and only then, is letting go in such an appalling manner acceptable! 


Good day!

Love Without Wings Can Be Twice As Nice

I've just returned home after a meal out with some friends and it has literally just hit me what amazing people I'm leaving behind.

"Friends are the family you choose"
"Friendship is love without his wings"

Never could two quotes make more sense to me and relate so well.
True friends will forever be there, no matter what the distance, obstacles or dilemmas you face between you. You can rack up the miles, tick of the days, weeks or even months since you last saw them and never question the magnitude of your friendship.
Bonds that are made between friends are the ones that leave finger, even footprints, over your mind, heart and soul - the memories you create will never leave you and will last a lifetime.
A lover can be an easier one to find, attraction will lead the way for you, making your mind up on first sighting. But a good friendship, a good girlfriend, is a harder thing to come across. There's no obvious attraction (well, not always haha), no obvious pointers that your souls could be linked, no obvious trademarks of interests, hobbies or topics of conversation... so how is a friend spotted. How are they made?

I think it's a beautiful thing how one small moment in life, such as holding open a door, or picking up someone's pen for them, can possibly affect the rest of your life. That person that you've glanced at momentarily could become someone so important to you, someone you lean on, someone you trust and someone you miss, and at that first moment meeting, you don't even know it yet.

So, friends are people you meet randomly right? No... I think it's already decided. The opportunity to meet them is presented to you, it's your decision if you take it up or not. You didn't have to hold open that door, nor pick up that pen. You didn't have to glance their way, you just happened to. You didn't have to bump into them again, or speak to them again at work, ask them a question, find out they are a lot nicer than you first judged, then realise you've made a friend... it was a choice, whether conscious or subconscious, it was a choice you made to persue that friendship... thus "friends friends are the family you choose".

It makes me sad that tonight I have only just realised how great the girls I've worked with for the last two years actually are, each individual with their own ticks and quirks, but that's what made me love them in the first place - it's only when I know I'm leaving it behind in 5 days time, that I truly found how much those friendships mean to me, no matter how close we are or aren't. Now I know I'm leaving it behind, I wanna grip on and never let go...

Thanks for the memories... <3

Ticking By...

Time seems to escape me.

I have no grip on it, no fix, no hold, no ability to slow it down or speed it up.
It feels like just weeks ago that I was sitting in a stinky, crusty green school hall waiting to hear my secondary school tutor group read out to me like I was in Harry Potter, gripped with nerves and waiting to see if I would be in sporty Ravenclaw or shoddy Hufflepuff (sadly, my tutor was the equal to the latter), hoping I would be paired with my friends and could escape social retardation for at least the next 5 years.
And now I'm here.
Limbo. Waiting, watching as the seconds tick by.
Summer came and went. The first girls holiday, the solo work experience, the last family holiday, the exam results, the car breaking down, the room being filled with new things, old things, ready-to-pack things.
It's all come, and its all gone, quicker than my eyes and brain could wrap around it to digest and take it in.
It feels like only yesterday that I was sat in that hall, aged 12. Now, I'm 18, and about to move out. Childhood is officially over. And it feels weird.

I can't decided if I'm unbearably terrified at the prospect of surviving this world alone, or if I'm excited.
Really though... will I ever be excited to cook my own meals. I'm hardly a domestic goddess, and know that on several occasions, the bad stomach wasn't alcohol related, it was a serious case of God-save-me-from-this-hellhole-of-a-kitchen-I-cannot-cook-beans-on-toast-to-save-my-life-I-have-actually-poisened-myself-AGAIN syndrome!
If I'm excited time will drag, I'll watch every second, feel every minute as if it passed like an hour, waste time thinking about how slowly time is moving. But I know if I'm terrified, it will come faster than anything I've ever known, and time will have flown by like a race horse on speed, and before I know it, I'll be there, without a cheese grater - much to the disgust of a million girl-guides who'll all tut at me under their breath 'be prepared'. ha!
I think I'm a happy (?) medium - excited about being terrified. Which, is actually a little messed up.

Fleeing the nest is actually a daunting task... it's time to either soar, or dramatically sink to the ground. And I think it's the fear of not knowing what it is I'm fearing that's causing me to fear fleeing. (You think that's a tounge twister... try unscrambling my thought process at the moment!). It is the fear of the unknown, plainly and simply, that's causing me to feel so confused.

So mix this fear of the unknown, the anticipation of finding out and getting there, with the next week of saying my goodbyes and farewells all together, and you receive a brain in a blender with a lid on it, ready to be packed into the boot of your car and unscrambled on arrival at destination Uni.

The time doesn't tick by so quickly when I sit here, like right now, thinking about how long is left of life as I know it. The seconds stretch and the minutes widen. But this last week, when I'm catching my last precious moments with my friends and family, it will soar into the distance blurring past me in the blink of an eye and a whirl of excitable terrified chatter, and before I know what's happened, I'll be alone for the first time, a butterfly escaping the cocoon, breathing the world in for the first time... completely alone, but starting the next chapter.

Back soon for more tickings of my oh so teenage mind <3