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.