christmas...

is pretty much officially over. phew. crazy random stress creating pressure has gone away...

not to say that i didn't have a lovely day although i made the mistake of getting randomly very drunk on Christmas Eve and crying over absolutely nothing (never ever will i move a place setting ever again!). And then had to deal with constant Christmas day hangover and tiredness while being constantly reminded that "It's Christmas!" and so therefore you have to be at your happiest ever or the whole day has been a complete failure.

however, the food was amazing and it really was nice to spend some quality time with the family and with mathew and his family too. yeah and i LOVE presents, hello to the nicest thing i have ever owned in my entire life!

and so the fun and games continue with there being 12 of us round the table for dinner and then the very best of friends coming round tonight. breaking tradition is something i'm quite excited about.

and then tomorrow, back to work. back to revision. possibly back to my "town house." oh i'm going for some more trifle...

snow is falling...

ahh the first snow of the year in liverpool. absolutely beautiful. and it really did bring about that first tiny tickle of christmas feeling. it's cold, i have a 10hour shift tomorrow, my house is empty of people and food and i am still feeling exhausted but today reminded me of what its all about. it's about friends coming away from far away places and getting warm together and watching AMAZING hannah montana films at each other's real life houses :)


on a more philosophical note, these little quotes struck me today. maybe if this was something that i could actually accept and acknowledge then certain things would be easier to deal with...

"... what makes us angry are dangerously optimistic notions about what the world and other people are like... we will cease to be so angry when we cease to be so hopeful."

Bah humbug?

both sides now.

The Nyaya Hindus argue that there is no such thing as pure happiness. Even if you achieved it, you would always have the continuous fear of losing it and so it could never be achieved.

I actually worry that this is my life.

hormotional.

ah i have most defintely been putting off this blog. post-show blues is making its usual appearence, very rudely and sneakily to be honest.

the show itself, in my eyes, was an absolute success. we pulled it off big style. i was so proud of everyone. we had all put so much time and effort and energy and emotion and other alliterative words in that it was so lovely to hear that people genuinely enjoyed watching us all prance around. i will always be gutted that my body wouldn't let me shed real tears on la stage but i think the boys wept enough for me and them included. i met some of the best people, i have been so lucky, i just hope we keep it all going without the Crucuble cement to keep us all together...

its funny, really emotionally involving scene on stage fails to produce tears but one tiny bit of a film that reminded me of something like 10 years ago can have me filling up in a few cheeky seconds.

and so i have been trying my hardest to stay a busy bee, living in a seemingly permanent state of drunkeness or hangover, awful naughty cycle which randomly becomes very acceptable around this time of year...

such distractions have involved after show party, family meal, work meal but tonight, all planned festivities cancelled. apparently living in a house with people, even after sharing the flat experience a year previous, isn't all fun and games. and when housemates think its fun to bring their friends back at 3 in the morning and continue their night out in the room above you, separated by a floor as thin as paper, things can become slightly tense and you find yourself arguing like children but with the issue of sounding like the elderly, complaining about "disrespect" and "unacceptable behaviour and level of noise"...

i wish i had somewhere gorgeous to go over christmas. somewhere that isn't liverpool and somewhere where christmas represents all the things it used to. and not revision and work.

oh MY, whinge whinge whinge bla bla bla! let me sleeeeeeeeeep for a month or two.

First night...

NERVOUS BLOODY VERY EXTREMELY NERVOUS NO LINES IN MY HEAD.


and a man on the street called me fat.

NERVOUS PLEASE COME AND WATCH BUT IT MIGHT BE SHIT BUT I HOPE IT'S NOT.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

moving....

very swiftly onwards. i was very tempted to delete the last post, it's just all a bit gross. my "drama queen" was on a rampage and could not be stopped. ahh ups and downs, ups and downs. i really love him, i absolutely do. i don't think i would get as upset if i didn't love him or care half as much as i do. but maybe this internet medium isn't the right place to be airing ones dirty linen in public and therefore, more caution will be exercised in the future....

and so the last week begins. vom.
we have the potential to do SO well. so so so well. i just hope we don't let ourselves down.
all i want is for my lines to come out of my mouth in the right order. the idea of forgetting them makes me vommy.

i saw this and loved it. a weekly inspiration.

every time you let me down, i realise that i could do it all without you. i don't want to but every time you fuck up, every time you act like a coward, every time you say you are going to do something and you don't, every time you fail to support me... well, i just know that i am stronger than you think i am, i deserve better than you think i do and i would be able to do it all on my own.
oh look, it's the blog you always ask for. completely focused on you.

ahh but that would be contradicting previously made points of argument.

rehearsals this week have been very much a rollercoaster. some have been just brilliant, one in particular, where everything seemed to click and we were all just so focused. and then, ugh ugh ugh. the not so good ones. we know our lines, they sometimes just get a bit sticky in our heads and refuse to come out. and we are all just SO tired and the focus died.
BUT bad rehearsals can be brilliant for scaring people in to those last minute line learning frenzies. aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh like 4 more days!!!!!!!!!!!

and so i have returned home to the crosby home. my cough has turned into quite a nasty death rattle (pah!) which is apparently only a pathetic untreatable virus so i just get a cough with no decent drugs or anything. BORING.

oh dear, what a load of angry self-pity.

naughty...

ahhh nobody's perfect.

P.S. Just to clarify, this is a picture of Marilyn Monroe. Not myself just documenting my recreational drug habits.... Silly vet. x

71....

7171717171717171717171717171717171717171717171717171717171.....


71 aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
the best i have ever done.
and i am not one to blow my own trumpet (pah!) but seriously, i was so nervous about these essays, especially after working my ass off for average results last year.
so i am really happy and a little gloaty.
fingers crossed for the other essay.


tonight i have just been given tickets from NYC's new "indie pop" band "The Pains of Being Pure at Heart." One should never look a gift horse in the mouth and I intend to go and bop along but I'm a little bit fussy and hard to please so we will have to see...

Also, on a slightly more mundane note, my boyfriend quite often buys me a present every time we go to ASDA. It's quite an expensive gesture (we have been going out for over 2 years so that's quite a few trips to ASDA...) but very appreciated. Today I have been presented with a lemon meringue pie (aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!) and I gave him a Star Wars advent calender (carefully chosen from the selection of EMPTY shelves...)
And in the words of a comedian who isn't Peter Kay but whose name I will never remember...
"It's not the trips to Paris, it's the walnut whips on the pillow..."

Student food..

I am a good cook. I am, I really am. I make gorgeous spag bols, I can make soup and curry from scratch, I can make cakes, I can make sauces and rissottos, I can make bloody roast dinners!
But, leave me in a house on my own in a grumpy mood and I manage to have this for my tea...


absolutely vile.
I think I must try and eat more like an adult and not just fish fingers and chips...

Drama.

Ah what a weekend of drama it has been.
Went to see Liverpool University Drama Society's performance of "Junk" on Friday. I have to say I was dubious at first. I mean, how much realistic heroin taking can appear on stage? However, the cast put on a fabulous interpretation of said play, it really was amazing. Full of love and drugs. yummy.
Saturday was a trip back to the old school, rather literally. Slightly different play, "My Fair Lady". Ahhh it was lovely, if only to see how you never forget the place and just how little time you have to spend there to feel like it is yours again.

All this drama has, however, made me quite nervous. In only 10 days (ohhhh my, 10 days!) another section of LUDS will be performing "The Crucible." I am nervous. Very very very nervous. I am scared of forgetting my lines, of laughing on stage, of forgetting to come on, of walking on stage naked, of just being generally shit.... but to be honest, most of all, I am scared of losing contact with all the amazing people I have met. I love performing and I love the play and the role I have been given but all of this wouldn't mean very much except for the wonderful cast around me. Really lovely people.

But here begins another university week. Christmas seems to be rudely thrust upon us via adverts and lights and pressurising shops and their winter wonderland displays but university seems to be lagging far too far behind and the holidays seem very out of reach....


HELLO! I WOULD LIKE TO TELL YOU HOW PROUD I AM OF RACHEL HELEN PRESTON. One of my very very best friends has just been accepted into a group to go on a Himalayas expedition next year. They are so very lucky to have her. I have such pride worthy friends :)

christmas...

surely doesn't have to mean sequins...
i work in a lovely (ish) shop and all we seem to be selling now the winter months have appeared is bloody sequins. this year i absolutely refuse to be drawn in by the glittery side. sequins hurt and they fall off and you can't just stick them in the washing machine, apparently.
work is long, my cough is now verging on hacking and my new eye make up remover is a tad on the oily side, so right now everything is veeeery blurry, as in 2 bottles of wine fuzzy.

today we had a spider in our bathroom. it took 2 girls and 1 boy a very large amount of screaming until any one came and rescued us....

that might just be the most boring thing every written. ugh BED. cough cough.

reconciliation...

over food = a much happier ruthy. thanks to all who have been amazingly supportive, i literally would have jumped out of a window without you.

learning lines and referencing. that will be my night. woop woop.
bring on this tomorrow please please please please please.

and then... well then i can watch this man all i like without feeling guilty...

all talk...

and no trousers. as well as, all fur coat and no knickers. these two phrases have two very different meanings. If you feel that you need to know the difference (as I did!) then all you need is the Barry Household. A wonderful source of knowledge, love, food and warmth :) It's so nice to go round to people's houses, their proper homes, it feels very old school and there is nothing more comforting that being with friends, watching films and eating far too many sweets.
Comforting, yes, but also a massive distraction from the looming essay deadlines. This weekend I have done my very best impression of someone running very fast and far away from the horror of work. I didn't realise how much pressure there would be this year, from friends and family and lecturers and tutors, but also from myself. I think a little bit of pressure is good and from previous experience, I know how to manipulate pressurising situations to my advantage, learning to thrive from it. But this time around? I feel absolutely crushed by it, it is very much a destructive force, one that I most need definitely to overcome. Because this really is my last year to get it right and to do myself justice.
ugh sickening thoughts....
one step at a time though. so right now, I am going to open my blinds, listen to Lady Gaga (will this new obsession ever die?!) and just try to write a very little bit on the joys of atomistic impersonality and moral responsibility. I think the Buddha might have been a bad man....

Isn't it funny when you don't hear a word used in forever and ever and then suddenly it is absolutely everywhere. The dear word of choice....karma. Oh yes. Now, my definition of such a word right now is one of boredom and hatred as my essay on Indian Philosophy is centred around the concept of karma where it has a slightly different meaning to the way in which we use it in every day language, but for this little blog's sake, i will assume it means something along the lines of "what goes around, comes around," and "you reap what you sow."
Now on first glance, it seems a little bit far fetched for me. Who would dole out this karma and decide who had done good or bad things and reward or punish them? It appears to us that bad people do bad things all the time and get away with it just as regularly as good people have bad things happen to them. Maybe karma is just something we look for? An introduction of regularity and structure in an otherwise moral void?

Hmmm. Maybe not. But isn't it lovely when bad things happen to stupid little people who treat people badly?! Just a tiny little dose of their own medicine.


Last night, we managed to leave the house for a grand total of about an hour and a half. BUT had so much actual fun, haven't laughed that loud in so very long, just very silly amounts of fun.

I could have stayed in that hotel room today all my life.

Yummy plans for tomorrow involving Legs being randomly home for the weekend, pasta bake, log fires and big socks, apparently, CANNOT WAIT :)

After The Storm.

"And there will come a time, you'll see, with no more tears.
And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears.
Get over your hill and see what you find there,
With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair."


Ahhh beaut-i-ful shit.
Tonight is about sexy drinking. Hopefully without hangover tomorrow because I must make the most of my full weekend off work. But tonight will be about getting out favourite dresses and sexy little boots and eating pizza and drinking wine and all those amazing cliches which we love because they do have the effect of making us feel better.
Let's genuinely hope, in all senses, that the storm stays away tonight.

BadRomance.

apologies for the title theft but i feel its rather apt. and i actually can't stop listening to it.

so rehearsing yesterday and we get on to the subject of heartbreaks. after numerous awful stories about just how terrible the end of relationships can be, my friend alex pops up and says something very simply, very plain but something that within seconds had 3 girls wiping tears from their eyes...

"a boy on my course asked a girl if she wanted to have dinner with him. and she said yes."

granted then tonight i discovered that she then called him to double check they were just "going as friends" but still, there was something so very lovely and touching about a simple dinner request. maybe we were just all in a very fragile emotional/hungover state of mind but there seems to be something wonderful about the idea of being taken out for dinner. and someone having the courage to ask you to go with them. yummy stuff but the stuff of dreams at the moment.



I CAN'T WAIT FOR TOMORROW NIGHT.
"just go home and in to your room and listen to music really loud and don't let your body stop moving...."
<3

erm...

so today i felt rather poorly but made better by the opportunity to go to chester to see the college of law. i know i can't do it right now or next year, nope nope nope, a girl has to rest at some point. so 2011, hello chester. i really loved it. i really think it is what i want to do. scary.

on a lighter note, i popped off to the library for a brief visit yesterday. i sat down with all the very best intentions and purest buddhist thoughts when the desk i was frequenting was absolutely COVERED in drawings similar to the ones featured above. I took a photo of one of the more explicit sections. shocking stuff. horny naughty students.

and then....

everything changed. and fell apart.
so i got really really drunk. what will i do without the raz when i'm all grown up?!

pie...

of the lemon meringue variety. last night i finally gave in, pictures to follow. amazing stuff.

i hope everyone feels better soon. i am feeling more grumpy than normal today. grumpy and upset. with not a slice of bread in the house to make cheese on toast with.

ugh.

1,500 words is all I am doing today. 1,000 tomorrow plus Buddhism reading.
Essay writing is depressing and boring and it really does give a sense of real panic that it is impossible to rid yourself of until the very moment that the awful things have left your computer and flew via the interweb to your tutor who will, in return for all your hard work, give you a relatively average grade and highlight all those flaws that you KNEW were there in the first place.

So Mathew is buying me tea and then are going for drinks in Formby. I have a funny feeling that the Railway will be feeling particularly lovely. Yes, you have to ignore the fact that people from Formby might be there (with the obvious exceptions) but right now, sitting under the disgustingly white lights of LJMU library (i know, not Liverpool uni, shocking!) I can think of nothing I would like more than to be sitting in front of that fire with a bottle of Jacques and a packet of McCoys.
Simple pleasures. Simple minds. Extended minds?! fuuccckkk offfff.

dear blog,

i so want to make you pretty. the day i finish these essays, you are my project and i will make you GORGEOUS.

so. the nhs. maybe not the most amazing or exciting blog in the world. when the nhs came under fire recently from our friends in the united states, the country was up in arms, all so quick and eager to sing the establishment's praises. after all, what would we do without them? however, there must be some important reasons why the NHS was described as "evil" by those looking in. me and my family have had a-plenty of experience with the good ol'NHS and we have all seen the good and the bad aspects.

Firstly, the bad. The staff are massively over-worked, the vast majority are underpaid. The hospitals can be absolutely filthy and the staff can be rude, arrogant and have no time for their patients. If you live in the wrong area, tough, you pay for your own IVF/cancer treatment. If you're a student, tough. You still pay the first £50 (i think!) of your dentistry work and if you have to have more than one appointment then carry on paying.

However, i have nothing but absolute love and respect for so many people involved in the NHS. I have just this very second made a phone call to NHS direct in a moment of fret and anxiety. Within about 5 minutes, Bob had me laughing and talking and sounding as if he genuinely cared, he made me feel so glad that i called. This, for me, highlights the beauty of the NHS. we have people who are willing to go out of their way for people they have never met, just go that extra mile to make them feel comfortable. I am no-one to complain for a second about the NHS when my family has benefited from extensive specialist treatment which, if we had had to go private, would have cost us literally tens of thousands of pounds. Yes, we have had horrible nurses but we have also had the best nurses. People all around the world should be able to benefit from such amazing systems of health care, no-one should be denied it on the basis of wealth or postcode.
yeeeeeaaaaaah.

i cannot stop thinking about you....

oh what i wouldn't give for either of these two. i am not sure where the obsession for puppies has come from or my absolute love and adoration for lemon meringue pie. i just can't get them out of my head.
distraction from very very very stupid and pointless essays? i think so.


oh and dear parents, please refrain from being sick in the future, especially in hospital orientated ways. we, as your loving children, like to believe you are a bit invincible and these little escapades of infection remind us that you are not. this is upsetting for all involved so please STOP IT. thaaaaaaaaaaaaaanks.


give me a few more posts and i might just tell more than 2 people this exists!!

EXCITED for fireworks tonight, piss off rain.

gaaaaaaaaah.

i am tired and i am stressed. i have so much work to do with so little motivation. i cannot wait for the day when i can do something that doesn't make me feel actually stupid on a day-to-day basis. it really is hardcore rubbish. one day i am genuinely going to be good at something, i really am going to have at least one original thought a day and not just a thought copied out of a book, written by someone else, looked up in a dictionary/on wikiwikipedia. ahhh if only i knew what....

hello charl and rach :) xxx

confusion on life.

so today I ventured to the Liverpool Graduate Fair. I knew exactly what it would be like, it would be too busy and too confusing and it would all be compltely business focused, using random huge umbrella terms, aimed at people with real life degrees and not degrees in Philosophy. I was yet again drawn to Law but now Mathew has decided to mention a year abroad next year. It is very weird to be at that age now where it is ok to make decisions with someone else. I could be putting off a whole year of my academic life just because he mentioned the idea of going away with him. Of course, that is what I want to do but I can't stop thinking of money, where to live while we save and when exactly did we all become so grown up. It is absolutely terrifying but i have the travelling bug now and it is all I want to do.
Hello Charl, the only one who knows this exists :)

I absolutely cannot wait to see all my lovely friends on Saturday where it does not matter if we are 14 or 40, I really think that these will be the people around for life.

my very first blog.

And so, I have created a blog. I have no idea why, apart from the fact that for the first time in a very long time, I actually have work and stuff to do and I just do not want to yet. And also because reading the blog's of others has made me realise that they do not have to be completely fashion based (all my stuff is from primark and the clothes that aren't have been donated...) but that they can be about other things which are really, if not much more, important. They are about friends, family, love. I am not 100% sure right now who will ever read this, I think it may be a very very priveleged and select few and I probably won't tell the truth very much and my spelling and punctuation and grammar can quite often be appalling. But (and I do start the majority of my sentences with non-beginning of sentence words such as "and" and "but") I hope that this will lead to some amusing anecdotes, important self reflection and a way for us all to stay in touch with our selves and our friends that little bit better.