Saturday Evening

So incredibly tired BUT today was *productive* in that I bought three lovely items of clothing :)

I am annoyed at the lack of hot water (which was taken by NON-RESIDENTS who also kept me awake last night with the noise of them in the process of taking the hot water rattling through the pipes.)
I also watched the Sound of Music yesterday with Kate, who is educating me in the ways of films. (I still maintain my Disney-packed repertoire is perfectly acceptable, and that forgetting who Julia Roberts was isn't such a crime.)

Tonight is parties and sausage sandwiches, and tomorrow is catching up with German - I am dropping it next year to rescue my sanity - and sleep. Saw my first bee!

BB, Lucy
xxx

Thursday Afternoon

Hullo hullo. So, life? An essay, mostly, and not a pleasing one either. I live for that satisfaction you get stapling it together and handing it over to the office-lady, but it never came. Bah!

(I'm sorry but it's necessary: there are crocuses now! And primroses - which happen to be my favourite flower after tulips [remember this :P] - and which remind me of my first and only potplant in my bedroom. It only went and died on me when I planted it in the garden, heart-breaker.)

I'm used to golden-yellow and lilac crocuses, a la Mason family front garden, and the ones in the bed here are this purple colour:
















Pretty things!

Ignoring flowers for the moment (:P) I am living in a state of perpetual excitement right now, which is always nice. It is a good feeling when you wake up, smile and think 'mwaha! I have endless amounts to look forward to! Take this, monotony! Take this, mildly draining life!' Also, today I awoke grinning over my dream. I wasn't myself in it (am I the only one this happens to?) and basically it was such a sweet love story between a (chavvy) girl, who I was seeing it all through, and a guy she met in a carpark. She was called Stacey, and he was called Gavin and they shared a chuckle over their names, and he forgave her all the lies she told him when they first met, and when her (really chavvy) mum started giving birth in the train station, he stayed with her despite only meeting her an hour or two before. He also supported her when she quit her job because she was being bullied by some horrible girls who called her a lesbian.

Quite possibly an over-active mind :P

BB, Lucy
xxx

Tuesday, waiting for pizza to cook

As you can see from the title, I am in a particularly unhealthy, comfort-food mood. This is because I *hate* my seminar topic. The only redeeming feature is that it makes me doodle Victorian dresses on my notes, and fantasise about wearing crinolines and corsetry whilst gliding through the roses of an English country garden at dusk, or running through the grass of the estate barefoot wearing only a slip and an expression of extreme emotion. Too much of this:? (Personally I blame the Colin Firth version of Pride and Prejudice) (For everything)

As Usual, A Monday Afternoon

Because little quizzes seem to be the trend at the moment, and I am nothing if not fashionable :P
(And also because this one is cute, and I have done all the others, and to distract you all from the fact I have not written a Flash for two weeks.)

The One-Word Meme

1. Where is your cell phone? Guidebook
2. Your significant other? Unique
3. Your hair? Tangled
4. Your mother? Home
5. Your father? Perfect
6. Your favourite thing? Bed
7. Your dream last night? Realistic
8. Your favourite drink? Squash
9. Your dream/goal? Peace
10. What room you are in? Mine
11. Your hobby? Art
12. Your fear? Secrecy
13. Regrets? Forgotten
14. Where were you last night? Sussex
16. Muffin? Unappealing
17. Wish list item? Spine
18. Where you grew up? Suburbs
19. Last thing you did? Talk
20. What are you wearing? Jumper
21. Your TV? Absent
22. Your pets? Beautiful
23. Friends? Diverse
24. Your life? Fun
25. Your mood? Calm
26. Missing someone? Always
27. Car? Train
28. Something you’re not wearing? Hat
29. Your favourite store? Paperchase
30. Your favourite colour? Orange
33. When is the last time you laughed? Yesterday
34. Last time you cried? Yesterday
35. Who will resend this? No-one
36. One place that you go to over and over? Stocken
37. One person who emails you regularly? Andy
38. My favourite place to eat? Picnic
39. Why you participated in this survey? Society
40. What are you doing tonight? Essay

Of course instead of the essay, I should be going to Carnage. I don't want to talk about it.
I do, however, have a doctor's appointment to find out why I can't go to Carnage. We'll see.

"I think you haven't enjoyed a book until it's been dropped in the bath, left in the rain, thoroughly mangled."

BB, Lucy
xxx

Sunday Evening

I had a brilliant night last night, and for the first time in ages a huge, *genuine* grin came unsummoned to my face.
Downsides? I had the hangover to end all others, and have literally broken my back. (OK so that's a lie, I'm sorry. I haven't broken it. It's just incredibly sore.) :(

Tonight means cheese on toast, essay-writing and resisting the urge to blog about primroses.

I must learn to write proper blogs.
I must learn to write proper blogs.

BB, Lucy
xxx

Saturday!

I'm not generally a fan of zoos, especially ones in the middle of cities. However, it does always make me feel a little less squirmingly uncomfortable when the animals, despite being in captivity, bear young that may not have survived in the wild. As with everything, not always black and white:




















And I know meerkats are hardly on the same level as the giant panda or something, but aren't they cute :D

Going for fish and chips today, and retail therapy. I need a guidebook for RomeRomeRome. (I have holidays on the brain right now: last night I had a dream in which Dominic and I went to Germany, and the people there spoke too fast for me to keep up. We went for pizza. It was pretty realistic.)

BB, Lucy
xxx

Thursday Afternoon

So many things to do, so little time. Such a mountain of tasks!

Instead, I'm writing letters and arranging to watch Titanic with Kate later. Also I am wary of this blog becoming a bit like the Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady, so no more on trees or irises for a while. I am thoroughly motivated and enthusiastic for Rome now though, particularly after seeing the scrap/workbooks of the people who went last year. Eep!

Tuesday, just after midday

I remember putting on here that I saw a crocus..I was wrong! On further inspection it was a purple one of these.

BB, Lucy
xxx

Monday Afternoon

I do love London, but it always makes my ears and nose and hair dirty.

Today will be definitely spent reading: for fun, for work, for expanding my mind. It will also be spent washing off my weekend and shopping (unfortunately for food - after walking through that shopping centre in Cambridge with its polished floors and subtle lights and shiny shiny consumer promises I have the retail bug. I also have the need to dress as a fairy / Alice in Wonderland character again. I also have broken shoes.).
My enduring memory of the past few days is being disappointed in myself - why? it wasn't my fault the trains were slow. - and then realising I didn't actually have anything to prove to you, it was simply enough to be myself. That was good, and comforting, and btw I am still sorry I was too sleepy to talk.

Hmm is there anything else? I am officially going to Rome, and am excited :)

BB, Lucy
xxx

Nearly Tomorrow, Again

Man and I don't know what it is, but the last two episodes of Skins I just watched really cut me deep :| a tear!

Friday Lunchtime

I really enjoyed German today. I don't know why!
I may watch Goodbye Lenin! tonight so I can return it to Dominic tomorrow. I am bodily exhausted. And deaf in one ear... :|

(And at the rave I realised: we're the mess-ups, in some way or another. We're the constant disappointments, the let-downs, the persistent under-achievers and unconvinced perfectionists. The outcasts and the misfits, the societal rejects who scuttle underground at sunset. We're the desperate girls, the rejected guys, the examples of hidden low self-esteem and awkward intelligence. The pierced and dyed, the tracksuit and hood, the backcomb in ultra-violet. And to fill those gaps left by broken homes and broken hearts and broken dreams we worship the four silhouettes outlined by strobes and indigo light, united by the bassline and our artificial highs. Anti-social, unsociable, outwardly perfect we lack goodness, goal and God [But some of us aren't entirely godless - no! - we just don't know in which god to believe.] Abandoned by traditional family values, or distrusting of the path that was chosen for us, the problem children, the top and bottom ten percent, the exceptional, the perceptive, the abstract minorities and the teenage statistics, we search out the common ground and the pack mentality that can only be found through the throb of the beat as it restarts our hearts. And it is music that keeps us all alive.) After all, didn't human language originate from song?

Oh and I *need to start work* on this essay, but the University of Sussex could not have put me in a less stimulating seminar group. Victorian Collecting at 4-6pm.?

BB, Lucy
xxx

Wednesday Morning

As always, ditto Andy. My blogs are so very very negative, I constantly moan, I constantly feel ill and my Flash is practically Eastenders right now (it will get better, honest). So, in the spirit of the guy who has always been one step ahead of me, a list of positive things! May this trend continue :D

• Amazing dreams. Like the ones where you know you're dreaming but being a friendly flying vampire in a school play (I kid you not, blame Twlight and Being Human) is the funnest thing ever.
• Eating cereal from the box.
• Feeling ill, and then realising if you just STFU about it you feel surprisingly better.
• The sun! Those days when you can see a yellow glow through your curtains as opposed to grey dishwater light, and go outside to vivid colours and not depression in weather form.
  
• When you get extra food than necessary in the packets. 31 biscuits? 7 mini Jaffa cakes? Oh yes.
• That feeling you get when you put a book down that is so fantastic you feel as though you've actually just stopped real life, not a novel.
• Those days when you look in the mirror and think 'Man, I am *good-looking* today'.
• Related to above, but wearing That Outfit that you feel shit-hot in.
• Co-op's own orange squash. Mmyes.
• Remembering those amazing times passed and how you laughed!
• Going for long long walks, coming back feeling accomplished, relaxed, refreshed, and as though walking is surely what humans are meant to do all the time.
  
• Realising people are thinking of you (in a nice way), and the small things people do, even in unexpected situations.
  
• Gossip. Can't beat it.
• When you hear that someone completely random has said you were pretty or really nice or sweet. *glow*
• When you find out someone you are convinced for years hated everything about you actually doesn't.
• When you're with all your friends, and you're all slightly tipsy and telling each other personal information? That little burst of love you have as you look at their familiar faces through the descending mist.
• Peace. Inside and out.
  
• The final full stop of an essay. The final full stop of something you're writing. The final brush stroke. The final note. The sense of satisfaction.
• My mother's roast.

There are so many more, but this really cheered me up :|

BB, Lucy
xxx

Tuesday Night

I feel ill :(

Tuesday Lunchtime

I am so desperate for summer now. Although the sun is out and it's clear-skied and beautiful (andand I saw the first crocus yesterday - yay!) it's collld and I want to feel warmth on my arms that isn't artificial, and to get goosebumps from a summer breeze NOT the inside of my house. This weather gives me a permanent frown and that suits no-one. And my tree looks bare and sad :(

Anything else? I have been filling myself up with easy-listening folk music, which warms my heart and fights the depression the download of Stadium Arcadium brought with it. I have in turn been craving The Outdoors (in particular the days at base camp before we started walking) and The Indoors - snow brings out the desire in you for comfort food and fire and sitting around with a family who has never sat round like that before. I am also unusually uninspired with many things, including my work. In short - feeling quite lacklustre!
And hungry, bah.

BB, Lucy
xxx

Nearly Tomorrow

And I am in love with this song:

And it's open
For distraction
You found all the words you need
Well I found nothing
I just grumble
'cause I don't know what I feel

The moral to the story goes
Never leave your heart
Never leave your heart... alone

Run for shelter
An umbrella
Fights the rain but not the wind
And I'd be silly
To start preaching
'cause I don't know which point to make!

The moral to the story goes
Never leave your heart
In a box
Locked up
With cold cold ice
Never leave your heart
...Never leave your heart... alone

Am I frozen?
But it's summer!
Is that rain or is that me?
Yes I'm melting
Please be happy
One day soon
We might just swim

The moral to the story goes
Never leave your heart
In a box
Locked up with cold cold ice
Never leave your heart
...Never leave your heart
...Never leave your heart alone

Monday Evening / Flash

(Excuse me! I am offended about Being Human's jibe towards Art History. I am in love with George, though. I wouldn't mind that he was a werewolf.
A man smiled at me on the Tube escalator today, and another offered me his seat. I must look friendly, or pregnant.)

Prompt? I saw an advert for Flashdance on the bus in which most of the 'dance' had been ripped off. It was definitely a sign.

-

We haven't said a word about it. We haven't even looked in one another's eyes since I realised, I can't even glance over and see - so searingly sharp, so clear, so soulful - her thoughts on me. I can't invest my protected heart to her, and risk it to be broken by a volatile straight girl who needs me - and don't deny it, I know! I know! - to get over the real love of her life. Most of all, I can't bear to dwell on these months of missed opportunities, how convinced I was it was Just Another Crush and that if I ever acted on it the whole beautiful fragility would twist and shatter and I would lose that spun-glass spindle of hope I had so carefully wrought. And now I am fantastically practised at keeping it hidden - I must say, I was better than you - and I have forgotten what to do next, how to treat her when the whole revelation was so painful and such an aching trauma. And this promised, weight-off-shoulders relief? My only respite now would be for the whole messy entanglement to just be smoothed, for even my plaintive pining was at least simpler than this awkwardness we have created, this dance of the personal space in which we avoid eye contact, physical contact, verbal contact and yet both inwardly, instinctively!, yearn for it all. And yes, Helene, my body calls for you just as yours does to mine and I *know how you feel*, but what can we do? It sounded too much like an unhappy ending, it is all too unsafe and too unstable and fundamentally, too wrong. And what of him, Helene, what of him?
For I know the truth, and this is why I want to return to those infinite and semi-erotic days of knowing that I craved you like my own salvation, but knowing where my limitations lay and where my boundaries had been built. But now I know of your love for me, and what am I do to, knowing that if I allowed myself the chance to look in your eyes and if I allowed myself to see only you and you eternally, you would see him as a phantom behind me? How am I meant to feel, knowing that this! This! That this is just temporary until that man you surely ache for behind the image of Me, until he comes back and asks you to come away and leave me behind, and how this would break me, Helene, how even just a hint of you in my house (a second mug in the sink, an echo of your scent on my clothes where you hugged me goodbye) is better than the void without you in my life, at all, forever with him.
Oh and it is for these reasons I said what I said, I did what I did. And I am sorry, with all the heavy, sluggish love that gathers in my deepest core. I cannot live without you, Helene, I cannot pretend that my life without your stupid little notes and fussy eating habits and wet towels on the floor is a life at all. And this, this is the most frightening thing and I am the most selfish - I cannot live without you, Helene, thus I cannot live with you. I can't give my heart to the person who stole it. I am sorry I left home, Helene, and I'm sorry I told you I lied.

Saturday, in bed

Last night I got drunk - unintentionally - with my mum, which feels quite geeky..

I was in Euston Station at rush hour (idiot), and my train and the train to Manchester were delayed. The funniest thing ever ever is watching a mass of suited and booted business people run with full enthusiasm and full energy, arms flaying and briefcases brandished, across the platform with hilarious panicked faces. I was sneaky and have done that journey so many many times, so went 20 minutes early (with a Burger King - bad idea) to 2 so I was at the front of the heaving mass. And didn't I laugh as people sped past me. Out loud. Like a fool :D
And no, I didn't run. My reasoning was anyone in a pink coat and floral neckscarf cannot run without looking like a sort of flustered Mary Poppins. And I had just had that damn Burger King, eugh.

Hilarious. :D

BB, Lucy
xxx

P.S. There are some real stupid people in the world, like this pair on Living in the Sun. I love Living in the Sun :D

Wednesday Lunchtime

This is stolen from Facebook and is distracting me from important, educational miscellanies. I am supposed to write twenty-five facts about myself out on Notes, tag 25 people in it and kinda force them do it back in a nosy manner. I don't think 25 people check my Facebook!

1. I study Art History and am fully aware I'll never get a job out of it. I'd love to though.
2. I love sandwiches. Like more than anything.
3. I can't stay in one place for more than 2 weeks, and love the fact I have a legitimate excuse to come to London whenever I feel!
4. I can't count, write threes or sevens and have trouble understanding the value of coins.
5. I don't smoke or do drugs but I am addicted to Ribena.
6. I would die without my paper diary.
7. I blog and have a written journal, and couldn't do without either.
8. Sunshine on my skin is the best feeling.
9. Grammar and spelling are important. Please correct me, else I'll never learn.
10. If I admire someone, or am in awe of them, they can never do wrong.
11. I am aiming to learn as many languages as possible. I admit, it's going slowly.
12. I am in love with Germany.
13. I adopt trees as my own. I had one at school, have one at uni and of course one at home. They're practically my family.
14. I ruined my eyes through reading too much, but will continue to do so.
15. I have a crooked spine, and bad joints. I am basically an old lady.
16. I miss everything I gave up, including tennis, flute and French at school.
17. I'm hardly ever angry. But when I am, I'm really, really furious.
18. I love letters, sending and receiving.
19. I have a genuine problem with eggs. And masks make me cry.
20. I end up getting the reputation as the sensible one wherever I go.
21. I am amazing at Cluedo and Mastermind.
22. Getting a question right on University Challenge when the universities don't makes me so happy.
23. It's surprisingly hard to make me laugh.
24. I love meeting new people.
25. I wish I had an amazing fashion sense!

BB, Lucy
xxx

Tuesday Evening

I made it back!
Today was one of those days you narrate in your head as if you're writing it down, or dictating it. It was a poetic day, and this I blame on the snow (that in Cofton was still thick and white and virginal). The prize for the best snowmen seen from a train window goes to South London, with a ninja snowman, a macho muscular snowman and - my personal favourite - a snowman stealing a TV!
On the train back to Brighton, the boy opposite me smelt of tents and dogs and had a huge bag. He opened a notebook (it was Moleskin, like mine), put '3rd Feb 2009' at the top and started writing writing writing. I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep to give him some privacy. Another man across the carriage leant him a pen when his run out.

I am still feeling distinctly odd. The solution, as ever, is to read and sleep and spend a lot of time daydreaming and reaching solutions.

Oh and I have a new coat! I maintain that it makes me look like a prostitute, and I don't like it much. New buttons will help.

BB, Lucy
xxx

Monday Afternoon

It is often funny how things happen, and Friday evening lying on my mum's sofa watching trashy TV I would never have imagined this is how it would be. And yes, I am newly suspicious, newly hurt and newly untrustworthy (very newly!), but also happy. Three days of numbness is three days too many, and I have a future to look forward to! [And my, wasn't it fun? ;)]

So yes, it's snowing! I've always been a bit unfeeling about snow - I am not a cold, wet person and firmly believe it should be looked at, painted, mused over and not touched. It has also stranded me in Birmingham (without laptop! Be thankful for technophile brothers) - I could get to London but not out (unhelpful) and I think Brighton has become an island. So no education for me right now, and Dominic has braved the winds to make it back to *his* education, much to my newly-invigorated sense of rejection :P (I jest). But I must admit it is beautiful, if unforgiving. Deceptively soft.

Anything else? Ah yes, happy Imbolc/Imbolg, St. Bridget's day, Feast of Bride or Candlemas! Sacred landscape for a sacred day, no? Agh and my hotmail has frozen *again*
And I haven't prepared a Flash Fiction - obvious excuse - but will see what I can come up with soon, promise.

BB, Lucy
xxx