Friday, June 29, 2007

Wet in all the wrong places!

What a week! Terrible weather, terrible! I'm so glad I don't live in Sheffield anymore, for the readers who live overseas Sheffield was one of the worsed affected cities and came to a complete stand still for a few days with hundreds of people needing shelter when their homes were flooded. I did give ex flatmate a call and thankfully my old flat is fine, though. So at the weekend I went to see my mother and the rest of the family up north. Had a lovely time as there was a celebration party in honour of my degree result on Saturday night and everyone came and got slightly drunk and spent the evening singing and dancing around the living room very loudly, the poor neighbours. I honestly have a wonderful family and they all couldn't stop telling me how proud they were and my aunty started crying and said, "I can't believe you've moved to London, I couldn't do it!" I got cards and gifts and all the kid cousins were there which was lovely, as I haven't been home in about three months to see everyone. Sunday mother and I were very hung over and didn't really get moving until the afternoon. We went shopping for a new suit and blouses and shoes for me, and only came back with the shoes, so somewhat unsuccessful.

Monday I was supposed to go to Alton Towers with Sean who came over from Sheffield to my mother's house, but what with the terential rain it never happened and so we went in to town instead and had lunch and did some shopping. Sean got stranded with us overnight as Sheffield station was closed due to the flooding, so he stayed over and we both left in the morning, he to go back home and me to go on to a small little town near Wales where I did my a-levels. Baby G and I were asked to go back to give a talk to the students about university life and why "they really should go!" So we spent Tuesday and Wednesday there which were quite enough! It was lovely to see all the staff though and I've exchanged eamail addresses with them and so that was nice. By the time I got back to London on Wednesday I was too shattered to go to the discussion group and so gave it a miss and went to bed instead. Yesterday I timed and practiced the route to work again with the dog, and then had a singing lesson in the afternoon which I thoroughly enjoyed. I'm not doing a lot today, it's peeing it down outside so I'm intending to stay in and hunt for a new home on the net. DL is coming over later because we're going to pride tomorrow and then she has a school reunion in the evening which she wants me to go to with her. Oh and I got lost for the first time this morning taking Una to the vets. It's ridiculous! I can get all the way across London with no problem, yet I get lost taking the dog five minutes up the road!

Monday I start the new job, aaaah! Very very nervous! Then in the evening I'm seeing HBS, haven't seen her since April so that's very exciting, plus she made it quite clear what she's coming over for so hopefully I'll get some much needed attention! Tuesday evening I have another singing lesson and on Wednesday it's group, so I'll be shattered by Thursday. Will try to write more next week though and make it more interesting to read, rather than just a list of what I've been doing.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Degree result just in

2:1, 2:1, 2:1, 2:1!!!!!

Fuck Yes!
I think I should celebrate with a shag! lol. Line up line up.
Then again maybe a great result plus a shag is too much to ask for in one week.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Getting in to it

One week and counting, and I'm loving every minute! Last night I had a conflict of interest because my friend O was cooking me dinner and there was a lesbian meet at a cafe in town which I really wanted to go to, but as I'd not seen my friend for ages I decided to opt for that and go when I'm free. I stood at the tube station waiting for O and it was so surreal! It's been just over three years since we last saw each other as we lost touch for a while when I moved to Sheffield. I wondered if he'd be any different, what had changed in his life if anything and where to start when telling him about my stuff. We both sort of did a double take when he walked up to me, and then hugged for ages while Una looked on like "what the fuck? Why is he so special?" He's exactly the same and once we got talking it was like we'd never been out of touch at all. He has a gorgeous house in a nice area and while I was there I begged him to rent out his spare room to me which he uses for proffessional massage at the moment. I told him I'd pay him as much as I could and he said he'd think it over, although he's off to LA in September. We spent all afternoon in his garden sitting on the grass chatting until my hey fever started getting really bad and then we retreated to the lovely cool airiness of his lounge. In the evening he cooked pasta with tiger prawns in garlic, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, chilli, spinach and corjet which i can't spell. It was delicious, and afterwards we had strawberries and chocolate brownie ice cream, and then I curled up on the sofa wrapped in his dressing gown while he lounged on cushions on the floor. It was so lovely to see him again, he's one of very few men that I feel completely relaxed with. He's in his forties and he's gay, and he's just so lovely and kind. He couldn't get over the size of my breasts and kept saying, "they're fabalicious!" which made me giggle. He's inviting some of his lesbian friends round to dinner sometime soon so that I can meet people, he called one of them up while I was there to see if she was free for dinner, and he said, "there's a new gay girl in town and she's got fabulous breasts!" I told him to shut up, I won't be able to face her if we do meet. Anyway O and I are meeting up on Friday afternoon for coffee and cake and in the evening we're all going out for Baby G's birthday drinks and dinner I think.

Today I went in to work for an induction and was very relieved to make it all the way there without getting lost. Actually I was twenty minutes early, and the other new starter was late, and he can see! Very amusing. All my team seem lovely, and by the sounds of it I'm being given quite a big project to do as soon as I start, which although is scary will be quite exciting and challenging I think. Tonight I'm trying to sort out going to a group that meet on Wednesdays, but I'm not sure if I'll pull it off yet.

I also wanted to mention the latest book I've read. It's called The Lollypop Shoes by Joanne Harris, and is the sequel to Chocolat. If you haven't read Chocolat, read that one first and then The Lollypop Shoes, but those of you who are Harris fans won't be disappointed with this one. It's just as magical with a dark and sinister side and is narrated by three different people which also holds your interest really well. Definitely worth reading, and it's fairly light if you're after something that's not too taxing. Bye for now.

Monday, June 18, 2007

Settling in

I'm settling in to the new house rather better than I thought I would, and I'm learning to adapt to the new living arrangements quite nicely. On Thursday night I went for dinner with friends in Earl's Court, some of whom I haven't seen in absolutely ages, and although the food wasn't great, it was good to catch up with what every one is up to. Over the weekend DL came and we sorted out bits and bobs around the house and I cooked us dinner on Saturday night. I've also been having intensive orientation training with the dog over the past few days, and I've discovered that I've possibly chosen the worsed place in London to live in with regards to getting to work. It's going to take me just over an hour and a half to get there and it involves busses, tubes and walking, lovely! That'll certainly wake me up in the morning, especially travelling during rush hour. I popped in to the office today while I was in the area, ahead of my induction day on Wednesday, and my team all seem lovely and friendly, and I have a feeling I'll enjoy working there. I also really like the woman who's helping me with the dog, we spend more time chatting than we do anything else, and she says that her brother has a really lovely house much closer to my work and is possibly looking for a new flatmate. Tonight I was supposed to be meeting up with some friends for dinner, but the woman who was organising it, one of my ex house mates from my first year at uni has been stranded in Nottingham and so has cancelled, so I'm going to open a bottle of wine instead. Tomorrow I'm meeting up with a dear old friend of mine, O, who I haven't seen in just over three years. We lost touch and reconnected recently and we're both very excited about the meet. If there's anyone who can help me get on to the gay scene in London, it's him. I've also been in touch with a couple of gay groups and will hopefully be going along to them some time soon.

My mother is still haveng kittens, and keeps calling and saying things like, "you're too far away, I can't just drive for an hour and see you anymore," and, "I don't like the thought of you living in London, it's so big!" Which is quite amusing and I've told her to calm down. I think she's hoping I'll hate it and miraculously want to go back to the home town I left five years ago, not gonna happen mum. I'm off to cook some dinner and open that wine...

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Day three in the new London house… (adopts Jordy accent big brother style).

Well, I’m here. Actually at the moment I’m at Baby G’s house using her internet, wonderful friend that she is. I’m still waiting for the wireless at my house to be set up, and I’ve spent the past few days trying to connect to some one else’s wireless, somewhat unsuccessfully I should add. Monday was spent waiting for my parents to come to Sheffield with the van, then driving to London where we arrived at the house at around seven. One of my house mates, M, had cooked us a lovely meal which was greatly needed and very much appreciated, and after we ate DL went home and we started unpacking. My room isn’t the biggest in the world, in fact it’s the smallest room I’ve ever had. Most of my stuff has gone back to my mother’s house, I can’t really store it or unpack it until I get a bigger place, so right now I have the essentials and not much else. My parents left on Tuesday afternoon after we’d gotten everything sorted out, and I had a long hot bath because I was covered in grime and feeling very durty. Luckily I had the house to myself because M and L were both at work.

As yet I don’t really know what I think about the house or the people living in it. The house itself needs a hell of a lot of work doing to it, and although it is a work in progress to put it plainly, I could do a better job at the DIY stuff than they seem to be doing. It’s hard to describe, but everything is in the wrong order, the kettle is in the lounge for example, the microwave is on top of the fridge, the sink has no draining board next to it to put clean dishes on, there are plant pots on the wash basin in the bathroom which I had to move elsewhere so that I could put things like toothbrush and soap there. Those are just some of the oddities about the place, plus the back garden is, well, like a building site to say the least, oh and did I mention the spare toilet is full of bricks?… As for the gay couple who live there, that is M and L, they are lovely and friendly, but a little too open, and that’s saying something for me to say that. They’ve already mentioned several times that they have very loud sex and joked about me getting ear plugs, we walked in to the lounge when we arrived to find a used condom sitting in a plant pot, and I’ve already discovered they are inan open relationship and sometimes have people over for threesomes. Oh my lord, I mean come on I am quite liberal, but I do get the impression I won’t be making this my permenant home.

Despite me having pointed out most of the negatives, I am ok, and I am managing to settle in. My room is lovely, with new carpet and furniture and I have my own friddge which I stocked full today with goodies from Tesco, good old home delivery. As yet I don’t know my way around the area and so I’m having to get taxis to wherever I need to go, but a woman from guide dogs is coming on Friday to start my orientation. The couple are also away for the weekend and I’m looking forward to having the place to myself to do some cooking. We do share with another girl who is german but I’ve hardly seen her and she’s moving out soon anyway.

Oh, and I decided not to go to Manchester for the job assessment because I just didn’t have time to prepare, so hopefully they’ll contact me again in September. Bye for now, I’ll write more when I’ve got the internet sorted.

***

Ok, I didn't actually manage to deliver that post at Baby G's because there seemed to be a problem with her internet too. I'm now at my place, DL has been here this evening, we had dinner and she tried without success to get me connected to the net. Sometimes I hate computers. But by pure luck I can get a weak signal by balancing my laptop on top of my stereo which is on my desk, and standing up to type, don't know how long it'll last though so I'll post this now. I hate not having the net!

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Say Hello, Wave Goodbye!

And already, it’s time to go…

I’ve spent my last few days in Sheffield flitting between meeting up with various different friends to say my goodbyes, and returning to the flat to pack an endless amount of crap in to boxes. I’m now sitting in my lounge and there’s not much left in here, save the furniture that was already installed before we got here. I have nothing to eat from as all the kitchen wear is gone, all my clothes are packed up apart from what I’ve left out for tomorrow, and everything else, cd’s, dvd’s, sterio etc etc is sitting in the multitude of huge boxes that are filling the lounge, hallway and bedroom. I shouldn’t have been leaving until Tuesday, but late this week I got an email from a graduate scheme inviting me to an assessment centre this Wednesday. Not the most convenient of times, and when I tried to call and change the day, the leader kindly informed me that this was the last assessment centre until September. I’m quite annoyed because they’ve only given me the option of this one, and it’s in fucking Manchester of all places, which really doesn’t help. So now I have to go to London tomorrow, drop all my stuff, go to my parent’s in Staffs on Tuesday and stay the night and get the train to Manchester on Wednesday morning, heading all the way back to London that same night. What a nightmare! I also have a presentation to prepare with a title that really doesn’t mean much to me at all, so I get the feeling I’m going to fuck it up good style. Really I should have waited until the September assessments, but obviously I don’t want to be out of work at all if I can help it and so the sooner I get something permenant sorted the better. So we changed the moving date to tomorrow and my parents are heading up with a van in the morning.

Thankfully XDL came up this week because we had tickets to go and see Beyonce at the Nottingham arena, so on Wednesday we spent the day there shopping and saw the concert in the evening. She was absolutely fantastic, I have to say, well worth going to see. I’ve also booked tickets this week to see Maroon 5 at Wembley in December. So XDL has been helping me pack, something which I’m very greatful for because there’s no way I’d have got it all done on my own. The downside is that we’ve been arguing a lot this week. She’s been in a really bad mood and I started the week with really bad PMT, not a good combination. She’s also gotten really depressed again and I’m not feeling at my most sympathetic, partly because I do think that she could do more to help herself, and so that wasn’t a good combination either. Added to the fact that while we were packing everything up we found some of her things that had gotten left out of the boxes I packed for her in January when she moved out. So she started ranting along the lines of, “if you’d just have let me pack my things myself instead of boxing everything up before I got here,” and I retaliated with, “well if you’d got yourself sorted sooner I wouldn’t have had to would I?” And you can imagine the rest. The argument ended with me shouting, “and you wonder why we are no longer together!” and she stormed out of the flat leaving me fuming. That was yesterday. Today she’s been sullen and not very talkative and I’ve tried to be nice. She also thinks that now I’m moving to London I won’t make time for her, and to be honest I think that not spending much time together might turn out to be a good thing because she really needs to get her head around the fact that we are well and truly over, and obviously seeing me isn’t helping that along any. So yes, while she’s been an absolute godsend in the packing up sense, the emotional side hasn’t been so good.

I was doing really well at saying goodbye to everyone, keeping very cheery and maintaining the “we’ll definitely keep in touch” thing, and it didn’t really phase me until I was sitting in my friend Simon’s garden this afternoon with a cup of tea. He was saying how much he’d miss me, and it suddenly hit me that I’m leaving tomorrow, and I’m not taking all of my lovely friends with me. And so I started to cry. Then he started getting tearful, and we ended up sitting on the grass and holding each other very tightly and I sniffled in to his shoulder while he tried to mutter words of reassurance. I can’t believe it’s actually happening now. It’s hard to imagine not coming home to this flat again, not seeing the people I love so much on a regular basis. I’m moving to a very big city and I only know a handful of people at the most, I’m starting a new job, I’m living with complete strangers and to be quite honest I’m starting to feel very, very nervous about the whole thing. Deep down I know I’ll be fine, but I also know that it’ll take me a while to adjust. And I’m very aware of the fact that I don’t want to lean on XDL too much for support because she’ll probably end up reading more in to it and that’ll start getting even more messy than it already is. So, if there are any warm and friendly sociable people reading this, preferably female, who live in London and who want to befriend an initially very shy, rather scared but very friendly gay girl in her early twenties, just shout!

So I’m going to make my last post from Sheffield, and I’m also changing the title of the blog as you may notice. This evening we’re going out to eat, and then going to the pub with my flatmate and the people from upstairs for my final fairwell drink. Then it’s all systems go in a transet van down the M1. Fingers crossed we A don’t break down, B don’t get lost, or C my separated parents don’t end up killing each other on the way. So long Sheffield, hello London!

Saturday, June 02, 2007

Peanuts and Pineapples

I well and truely shopped 'till I dropped today...

Didn't do too badly either, came home with two pairs of jeans, four tops and a new bra that makes my breasts look even more fabulous than usual. Actually
talking of breasts, that's where the post title came from. My mother and I were in the fitting room and we happened to be trying on similar tops. We were
comparing and she said, "god you look all chest in that top, imagine if we stood together side by side." Now my mother, bless her is somewhat more slender
than myself and my breasts are, well, slightly larger than hers to put it mildly, so we stood side by side facing the mirror and collapsed in to roarcus
laughter at the hilarity of how we looked. If I’d had a camera with me I’d have taken a photo, because as my mother quite adequately put it, “they looked like peanuts and pineapples” when they were compared. So, so funny. So I’m really pleased with my purchases, now my feet are killing and I’m wacked out, so I’m going to spend the rest of the evening curled up with a book, and NOT carry on watching big brother because it’s a pile of poo.

It's all over!

My God, I've actually finished uni. I don't quite know what to do with myself now, I got up this morning and felt a little lost because I didn't have to sit and work all day on essays or reading books that I don't really want to read etc etc. It is lovely to have time to myself though, and once I get used to it I don't think I'll miss it at all.

Yesterday morning I got up feeling sick at the thought of doing the worsed exam of my life in the afternoon. I had just come through to the lounge and was about to put the kettle on when the doorbell rang. Holy fucking christ almighty, it was only my mother, giving me a surprise visit on the worsed day she could have chosen. I couldn't believe it when I opened the door and there she was, my face must have been a picture of horror. Bless her, she thought I would be glad of the company, but it only served to make me even more stressed, because when I was trying to read through my notes for the last time she kept talking to me all the time. Neither of my parents have ever been in higher education and so they can't really grasp what it's like. They just remember their school days and of course it's quite different.

I don't really know how the exam went. I did struggle but everyone I spoke to afterwards said they found it difficult, so who knows. Fingers crossed I get a 2:1, that's all. After the exam was over we all met in the beer garden of a local pub and drank lots and ate good food. It was lovely to see everyone, there were about 8 of us in total, all close friends of mine who i'll miss dreadfully when I move. It's only ten days now and then I'm off, I need to buy some boxes so that I can start packing everything up now that I have the time. This afternoon my mother is coming over again so that we can go clothes shopping. I need to revamp my wardrobe, I've not been shopping in ages and so I really need some new summer clothes, and some dressy stuff to go out in too. It's all very exciting.

I want to try and include a section in my posts devoted to reading. Haven't quite worked out if I can incorperate it in to the template yet, but I'll have a look. I do lots of reading and it struck me the other day that I rarely mention books I happen to be reading. Last week to relieve the stress of revision, I read Triptych, the new novel by Karin Slaughter. If you like crime thrillers it's definitely one to buy, had me on the edge of the sofa and it's definitely not one to read after dark. Very, very good indeed. I've just started Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which is the second novel by the author who wrote the aclaimed Purple Hibiscus, which I read late last year. This one is set in 1960's Nigeria, and is about the civil war that took place there. It's told from three different viewpoints both before and during the war. It is superbly written with some disturbing scenes, a definite recommendation of mine.

This will hopefully be the start of my comments on various books, and if you've read anything that you feel passionate about and you think people aught to read, please share it in the comments section.

Now I'm off to go and dry my hair, and then hopefully spend lots of money I don't have on some nice new clothes.