Er, hi.

I could add a comment here about how long its been since the last post, but I am sure you know how that goes by now. As usual I completely forgot this thing existed and when I occasionally thought "hmm, maybe I should write something..." when something interesting happened then I had a new problem - "Ooh better not put that, someone might see!"

Haha! Yeah I am getting a bit worried about prospective employers and other people who hold my career and paychecks in their hand disagreeing with some of my opinions (and possibly my complaining loudly about colleagues and my job) so I have decided to keep schtum just in case.

So what is different from July?... Hmm.

I am sure practically everything but its sort of hard to know when it has been so long! One thing I definitely have to mention is that I plan on buying myself a christmas present this year : )

I meant to get it last year, but money was a little tighter and so the money I got for christmas went in to the bank because I felt guilty about spending it! But this year? Oh nononononono![Churchill face]

Despite the fact that we are in the beginnings of a recession, and that by the end of my uni years I am supposed to be super broke, I actually have more money now than I have ever had! Not even counting the money from parents for tuition fees, all my hours at Mcwork and my general tight fistedness means I had enough money to live on for the year in September! In fact I completely forgot that Mr Brown is very kindly giving me £3000 this year! As a result I am having driving lessons now, have been on 3 holidays this year (on a shoestring naturally - I do have Yorkshire and Scottish blood), and have developed a taste for sushi and Sakushi - the local japanese sushi bar. My bank balance is still going up. A lot!

I think its time I got myself a treat : D

and so...

"Errr. Its a little keyboard with a lamp on it."

Noooo! It is TEH KOOLZ! It is called a Microkorg and it is awesome. A little synth, complete with vocoder (voice changing capabilities) and look at all the twiddly knobs on it! Squeeee!

I have actually wanted one of these for years, I love the technical geekery of keyboards anyway. I have to be the only person in the world that bothered to use the synth feature on my trusty old Casio WK1800. While others were round town blagging their way into clubs and discovering the interesting things you can do with solvents I was fine tuning the decay envelope of tone T202. No I wasn't somebody with a whole lot of street cred in my school...

Anyhoo I have developed a bit of a taste for electronica in recent months. Ladytron are a great band that I ended up going to see live at the new Carling Academy (The old Roxy Disco) in the city centre. In the words of Simon Cowell, they had the charisma "of an onion". Luckily their songs are awesome and being electronic, their songs are best heard live when the dirty low waves make your chest cavity vibrate - you can quite literally feel electronic music. I can't wait to be doing the same with my groovy little Korg. I should start thinking about names...

I am also totally obsessed with Robyn's most recent album. Its been over a year since I have bought any music, let alone an album which probably says a lot about how much I wanted it! I haven't been this into an artist for a long time so its great to feel enthusiastic about music again. Also, her haircut is ice cold.

Speaking of which - my hair is currently cosmic blue! Its not nearly as blue as it sounds, in fact its more black with a blue rinse, I can assure you that the dye itself is very blue. I dyed the bath, the tiles and myself blue for several days. Hell when I was rinsing the stuff about of my hair, it left blue streaks all the way down me where the runoff had been! At least it covers the pink from Megan's hair history....

Well despite the brevity of the this post I had better go. It is 9pm, I am in the library after a long day selling burgers, it is nearly christmas and for once I need to stop being such a bookworm.

Hopefully I can write something more around christmas, but I had better not make any promises...

Post 100!

This should be a momentous occasion but is actually an afterthought. In any case, it all started in this blog back in 2005 when I was a wee lass of just 17... Yes I know I am only 20 now, but it seems like an absolute age ago. A lot has changed since then, and I hope I have changed too. I am sure I have, but it is so had to tell when the change is gradual...

When I started this post is was partly out of the want to write something, and partly because of good old fashioned peer pressure as two of my uni friends are starting up their own (genuinely interesting and vaguely themed) blogs. Bella is already up and running, and will surely have lots to say about her year in Deutchland. I on the other hand feel woefully inadequate with my occasional posts complaining about work and babbling about things that are most likely unimportant to anyone but me....

But lets press on anyway! This was a blog set up specifically for me to waffle and vent in so I shall waffle and vent on!

I have to say when I clicked on "write new post" underneath the line saying "99 posts" I felt completely lost for what to write about. In my short ramble however, I decided that like an old sitcom with a run of 26 episodes and a budget for 25, I should go with recycling old stuff, and have a little look at what has changed since that fateful day in November 2005.

I don't know what exactly compelled me to start up this blog on that day, but I do know that I felt like I had a lot going on in my life at the time. It was that funny time during your later teenage years when you suddenly have this bombardment of both knowledge about the real world and your first real responsibilities. I felt I had a lot to talk about, what with suddenly being aware of everything from politics and the workings of society, to interacting with adults properly for the first time and having a 'real' job.

I really was quite angry about all sorts of things wasn't I? Although I do sometimes feel strongly about moral and political issues now, I do think I have mellowed in how ideological I am. Like my parents always said I would, I am now much more in the centre ground - politically wise and don't immediately jump to liberal extremes when it comes to an issue.

I guess where I stand upon issues and decisions about life and beyond has become a real theme in the past few years which have helped me to realise things about my personality. I guess the more you examine and explore yourself, the more you see through the 'hats' you put on and distinguish between your true nature and that which you present to other people for various reasons.

I guess what I have really learnt from all of the exploration of morals, opinions and questions is that it is OK not to have a strong opinion. There is no need to pick a 'side' and stick to your guns, defending your position to the end. To say that I have always felt I am rather good at empathising and seeing all sides of an argument, it took me a long time to realise this. Perhaps it is the fact that I cannot stand to be wrong that made me take so long.

Whereas before when asked a big question I would leap to the side of freedom or liberalism and argue my position until one of us was shot down in flames, I am now much happier to say "Hmm, well I am not sure its quite difficult isn't it..." I guess its kind of a way of acknowledging that it is OK to hold your hands up and say 'I don't know'.

It has been said that to know that you know nothing is the first step towards enlightenment. While I don't think I can aim quite that high yet, it is strangely satisfying to live in a world that is almost entirely gray and not criss cross with harsh and divisive black and white lines. In many ways then, I guess I am more accepting of every bodies views now and so maybe, I am a little better at empathy? We'll see I guess.

Perhaps one of the biggest U turns of opinion I have had is on that of McDonalds. What started as hatred and barely contained rage for the company and the store that I worked at has now turned into a kind of acceptance of the place that is actually now quite pleasant to work at. It certainly helps that McDonalds has really cleaned its act up - making the food healthier and better quality, stocking free range and organic dairy products, supporting local produce and even becoming one of the greener retailers out there today. Apart from that, it doesn't hurt that I work at a damn good store with staff that I actually have plenty in common with.

To be honest, I don't really have any beef with the company at all anymore, instead of a quiet sort of grudging feeling, knowing that despite all my past scorn, the company has saved my bacon on more than one occasion.

Of course one of the other big things that has changed is my career path. When I began this blog, I was going to be a journalist or die trying. Everything I did at school and many of the things I did out were all geared towards giving me the biggest boost I could manage into the journo game.

Now nearly 3 years later, after getting what I wanted - a place at Sheffield Uni on their prestigious Journo course, I realise that journalism probably isn't for me. It's not I can't do it, more that I can't do it without seeming to have to put more effort in to it than most people - not in a physical or academic way, but in a motivational way. Nearly every other journo on my course is on the student newspaper, or has got something published on a website or local paper, or has had some amazing work experience, or maybe just hates journalism and is trying to avoid all of these things at all costs. I on the other hand would like to do these things, but don't really have the motivation and confidence to just throw myself out these and do this stuff.

It's not even that I wish I could do it but can't, but I do not have any burning desire to do so. I think about all the places that are available for work experience and am not really enthusiastic about any of them.

I love the learning, the acquiring of skills and the simulated news gathering and production, but when it comes to the real deal, I just don't really feel like I have any sort of passion. It is this and the fact that I will be paid a pittance to work on the Nowheresville Weekly for a few years before I even start advancing my career that makes me think: "Well actually there are so many other things I could do..."

So that's it basically and I plumed for PR after investigating what else was open to me with my qualifications.

Challenge - Check
A different day at work every day - Check
Capacity for individual flair and input - Check
Promotion based on merit - Check
Ability to input creativity into tasks - Check
A salary that you can actually live on - Check

It is everything that journalism is, but slightly easier to get into, better paid and I actually really want to do it. Sorted then. Well until the stress of job hunting...

What else has changed then?...

Well for one thing I have tested many of my limits in these three years (and incidentally learned that all figures under 11 should be written as whole words - thanks Tony Harcup!). So many of them just basic things - How long can you get by on four hours sleep before it gets too much? How much is too much alcohol? Do you really need a sleep pattern? Can you get away with cooking a three course meal without ever having attempted the recipes before? What happens if you stand amongst the smoke of people getting stoned? Do people think you are weird if you try to start a conversation in the bus queue? Is it lonely to live on your own? How long can you stay awake? Is that thing really as unpleasant/painful as it looks?

The great thing about uni is that in a place full of people with the same questions, who like you have never had the chance to answer them before without the social constraints of family and people with expectations about your behaviour before. Uni is all learning - in the lecture theatre and out. As many students will say (although many of them for reasons involving intoxicating substances...) the actual university course is a small part of the university life. Its sort of like being on a plane for the first time: the ride is so very exciting because everything is brand new. You know you are there for a reason - you are going somewhere - but somehow, at the time, the ride becomes more important than the place you are going. And those lectures from the air hostesses are just a necessity.

That analogy sounded much better in my head, but I am sure you get the drift...

So where to from now? Well I have one more year to go at Uni before the big bad world and it looks like it is going to be an interesting one. I have to spend a lot of time getting my CV well padded out and spending a lot of time working off my own bat instead of working to millions of deadlines as I grapple with a dissertation and at least 2 other semester long assignments. With my cramming tendencies, neigh, impulses, this could be one of the greatest tests yet...

Hope that was worthy of post 100 and that it wasn't too self absorbed!

As much as I would like to continue writing, it is starting to get light. Not a good sign before you have gone to bed...

Thanks to all of those that for one reason or another have read this blog. It's a great comfort to know that you can all read this and still see me as the same person, inside and out.

Here's to the next 100!

^_^

Time for a quick post.

I am in the newsroom at the moment, feeling like a moron. The weekly lecture on Web Journalism has just ended, and I wasn't there. Why? Because I was convinced it was Thursdy and I should have a broadcast workshop. DUH!

Luckily it was a lecture that was handy rather than important.

Todays news - The Independants political poll ndicates that the Tories are 11 points ahead of Labour giving them a projected majority of 34 should there be an election tomorrow. Ooh er. A bit unnerving. If you aren't a Conservative that is.

I have noticed more and more recently that my political views are becoming more and more central and that the ideological view of the world that Mum and Dad assured me would dissapate, and that I assured them it wouldn't, is being slowly eroded.

Like everyone else, I now feel entirely free to poke fun at the Communist Student society and their ever futile attempts to get a student officer, ANY officer on the committee. Bless.

I always wonder just how communist these communist students are. As far as I can tell, their revolutionary agenda seems to consist of trying to make Uni education free and complaining about oil companies. Its good that they care, and that they are trying to do something, but... well it doesn't seem particularly likely does it?

Various student factions stand outside of the union all the time and ask me to sign petitions to the government that demand making education "free for everyone". Personally I don't have a problem with tuition fees. At the end of the day, it costs money to run a university. The money has to come from somewhere whether the student or the tax payer.At the moment it is a mix of both and the burden on the student is not particularly massive. Yes there is a loan to pay back, but its peanuts compared to gettign a mortgage or whatever. If you can afford to buy a new car (which I suspect may uni graduates will do at some point), I am sure you can afford to pay a minimum fee every month.

The Union have also decided to abolish the post of "Womens officer" and replace it with "Equality officer". Seems to make sense to me. Does the union need a full time salaried person [woman] to make sure women are represented? Personally, in 2008 I don't think so.

There isn't a whole lot left to reform to be honest. There is still a pay gap between men and women, but this is modtly due to women choosing to have a career gap to have children. Although it would be nice for there to be more stay-at-home dads, this is surely an individual choice and not some grave injustice of society.

The womens officer does provide a really handy Womens minibus for late night getting home. You just pay £1.50 and a nice man delivers you to your door and provides baby wipes for when the girl next to you throws up on your arm (as happened last year!). Poor blokes however have to walk home on their tod or pay £5 for a taxi. Statistically men are more likely to get attacked anyway! Inverse sexism anyone?

I think perhaps we need to stop worrying about having a neat cross section of the population in faculty of every organisation. Does it matter that most Phycisists are guys? Frankly, No.

I-art-mightyer-than-thou rant over.

In other news! Its the McDonalds christmas party tonight. Yes I know it is February but nobody wanted to go on a trip to Alton Towers so it had tobe cancelled. Crazy people! Instead we have a room booked at Varsity - a club on West Street. Apparently there will be free food and drinks and a kareoke. It could well be interesting...

Also, two fab bands are playing at Fuzz this Thursday. Hiem (a dance troupe not a million miles off being an electro Artic okeys), who I saw last year and really liked and 'extra special guests': "The Dead Eyed Bitches". Thnks to Uni being the gossip shop of the world, everyone knows that "The Dead Eyed Bitches" are actually Sheffields Indie super-group the Long Blondes. Although not that into Indie, songs by the Long Blondes are always played at union nights so the atmosphere is bound to be amazing! I wonder if the poor security guys will have to catch the crowd surfers thrown at them again...

Journo is stepping up again now it is getting towards the latter part of the year (in February! What ever happened to real hard work?). As all of my modules this year are coursework assessed (apart from French in which the exams are in lesson time anyway), I believe I finish on May 22nd. How wonderfully ridiculous. I guess I should sort out some work experience for the summer (and by Summer I mean late spring to mid autumn as Uni starts in October).

Things are looking good on the PR front. I talked to a man from the PR chartered thingummie at the Student employment fair and explaine my plan of action with work experience and Journo stuff. He said that I would be "well set up" for a career in PR. Yay! I also talked to the Local Government reps and they said that they emply graduates straight from Uni and training on the job. Yay! With so many local govs around the counrty things are looking good. : D

I guess the summer also lends itself to excessive McDonalds working. Kerching! I am not sure if I will be in Doncaster or Sheffield yet though... Also. Holiday!! I fancy going somwhere a bit further afield this time if possible. Even if it's just to spain or Germany or somewhere, I would really like to go somewhere new. AS most of my Journo friends are from far flung places, and I work with some many foreign nationals, I have felt a little cocooned recently... Ah well. One day I will get to Japan when I have a real job with real working hours...

This has been a bit of a rambly post today hasn't it?

I am at abit of a loose end to be honest. I do have a Web Journalism workshop in 30mins however. Hopefully when I have learne a little more HTML I can make this blog a little more fancy. Mmmm yes. Sounds fun : D

Well I think I will stop rambling now before I bore you to death.
Toodles : )

Only 5 months since my last post. An improvement. Just.

So yeah. In the end I gave in my notice and spent a week avoiding people saying "Staaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay. Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease!?"

On my second to last shift Gavin appeared looking as insanely cheerful as ever. "Lottieeeeeeee! Just the person I was wanting to speak to. Catch you on your break. I'm not letting you get away that easy!"

Oh buggeration.

Gavin had been extra fab and considerate since hiring me when I was in dire need of a job. The last person I want to explain that I have had enough of burgers and being demeaned by half-wit customers, was him. I was adamant at that point that I wanted to leave. I didn't have enough time to do anything at the weekend, I already had enough money and I just wanted to work somewhere different before I had to get a real job someday.

The man drives a hard bargain though.

He proclaimed exuberantly that he would "bend over backwards" to have me stay and probed every reason why I wanted to leave. I mentioned that I thought it was a good idea to get some other experience of work to enhance my CV. Then, something extrordinary happened...

--------------------------------------------

"I can enhance your CV beyond your wildest dreams!!"

"..."

"I know the editor of The Star and I am sure I can get you some work experience when I tell him what a wonderful person you are!"

"..." [Good but I can already get that through Uni]

"... and I can get you experience in the PR department. I know the regional head of communications and I am sure she would be happy for you to shadow her.

"..." [Oooh. Interesting]

"...and I have connections in the Council. I am sure they would have you too."

"Oooh"

"So. Have any fixed shift you like. If you want three weeks off or whatever just say 'Gavin I want three weeks off' ....... Your still going to say no arent you?"

"Well..."

-------------------------------------

So I stayed. How could I not? I now basically work when I want and am due some work experience at easter. Kerching! : )

Since then I have looked in to PR and I actually am very interested. Interested to the point where it actually looks a lot better than Journaism... In fact I have decided to pursue a career in PR instead of Journo!

To be honest the prospects of Journo had been weighing on my mind for some months. I still do like the idea of being a journalist, but am not as prepared to do all the crud I need to do before I get to where I want to be as before.

If I leave and somehow manage to get a job on a local paper (fairly tricky in itself), I will earn £13000 for 2 years until I have the chance to get my NCE (proffesional qualification). Now the NCE is notoriously difficult. Only 40% of people pass! This, although possible would require me to get my 100WPM in Shorthand which would take a real gruelling slog to do. In the event that I somehow managed all of this I would recieve a pay rise of around £3000 a year.

£16000 a year after 5 years of training? Where I would go from there would depend on getting noticed, but mostly luck and making connections in high places.

Do I want to be a respected journalist who breaks groundbreaking stories ?= yes
Do I want to be put through all that for a slim chance of it? = no

Of course if the PR doesn't work out then I might give it a go, but I am not sure I have enough determination to succeed in such a cut throat business anymore. Meh.

Now then. PR is also very competative and cut throat but there are a wealth of jobs out there. Everyone from biscuit factories to Councils have PR departments. With journalistic training and knowledge about Media and copyright law and politics, I am sure that I could do well.

I have looked at what sort of jobs I could get on leaving. Starting as a junior PR hack I would Earn around £13000 again, but would get the chartered status in 1 or 2 years! This would quickly bump up my salary to something you could realistically live off and get a mortgage with. Phew.

As much as I am a champion of "It doesn't matter about the money so long as you can live on it if you enjoy your work", I do not want to live in a mouldy old bedsit on the outskirts of London for the rest of my life as is likely if I take up Journo.

The stupidest twist in this story is that aside from giving me the money to live on for my first and second years at Uni and getting me vital work experience, McDonalds may AGAIN save my bacon and change my life with their graduate training scheme. They have a fab training scheme based in Machester where the very office where I should hopefully get work experience trains you for a year and pays you £13000 for your trouble. Essentially it is a year in industry after my degree. If I could get on the scheme then that would have me made as a junior PR exec. Hooray!!

Ah McDonalds. Hate or Love you, you always seem to save the day. Bah.

Anyway, back to the present.
Know where I am right now?

On a big rock.
Overlooking a stunning sunset across the whole of the west side of Sheffield and the surrounding rolling valleys. The valley is all misty and mysterious. Thinking about it, I think the distant hills are the Peak District. Very pretty they are too.

It really is very beautiful.

I decided to come here today because it was such a lovely day with blue sky and lots of sunshine. It looks like spring is here already from all the flowers that have come up and insects getting in my cous cous and on the lappytop screen. Squee!

This place is in a really random spot. Just the other side of Crookes road where Tapton is and just the around the corner from Veronica Hardstaff who I interviewed last year. None of the other students seem to know that this place exists. Nice really cos it means the only people here are dog walkers and the occasional school child shouting "Mummy! Why has that lady on the rock got a computer?" To be fair its not only children giving me funny looks.

But never mind! It is very worth it : )

I am used to getting stares in my general direction now since
A) I wear a skirt and heels to court and bus drivers pass by every few minutes
and
B) I go places with Megan and THE hair

Megan has been trying to get red hair for ages. I have personally dyed her hair 3 times various shades of purple and red with results varying from brown with a hint of purple to blonde streaks. Therefore when we had a nosy round the local Blue Banana [goth shop] clone "Rocky Horrors" she spent an unnerving amount of time looking at the super luminous colours behind the counter.

Well. She bought the stuff. 2 Packs of bleach and power bleach and a pot of "tulip" colour ( "Colour may vary at the manufacturers discretion. Do not apply to eyebrows. Risk of Blindness" etc ). From the samples the colour was red with a hint of fuschia. Very nice.

Thursday night after Meg's last exam and before the appointed end-of-exam bash outing to Fuzz, it seemed only appropriate that we were to do the deed then.

Out comes the bleach and powder. When mixed it looks blue. Hmm. I tentatively put it on hoping that it will turn just the right shade of blonde like the tester. Halfway though.

"Ooooooh it itches!"
"Don't worry not long left."
"How long?"
"........50 minutes"
"Oh Fuck."

Somehow she endured the itchyness and I watched her hair go from a dark brown root with reddyness from the previous dying.. to something not a million miles off Gewn Stefani. With red streaks.

Time to wash it out. The result is pretty startling. The once brunette Meggle is now a bimbo. She attempts to comb her hair but it is incredibly knotted. She looks worried. I insist on taking a photo of her blonde and try to get ther to go out like that. She has better judgement however.

On to the redness!

The stuff is so easy to apply and really takes to her hair (and face and ears). The paste looks a little pinker than was hoped but then the orange-red dye I used to use started out purple. So what do I know?

Time to wash to gunk off. Woah. This is some ultra colour. Good job she does physics. Its looking really pink.

Time to dry the hair. This will inevitably make it brighter as all hair is darker when wet. God. What is this going to turn out like?

Done.

Holy Guacemole.

Megans hair is positively neon in its hot pinkness.

"WOW!" Rachel comes down from her room
Lizzie giggles and says "Oh my God!"
Indeed.

The hair goes down a storm and but attracts surprisingly little attention from the Fuzzters. Probably because its dark, but maybe because they are all SO ALT3RN4TIVE DOODZ.

Since then randomers keep on talking to her. Within 5 minutes when she was stood outside of McDonalds 2 people talked to her. One to ask her where the local rock club is and another to ask for a light. Yep. Sounds like she looks like a proper physicist!

n.b. Here is a demonstrative photo. Looking directly at the hair may damage retinas.



Well. My hands are like ice it is getting really freezing (and a little dark) so I guess I had better get home. Hopefully the next post will only be in 4 months time...

Must.......write................stuff.......

Hello again.

Sorry it took so long for me to actually get back into actually writing something but at first I had nothing to write about....then I had one or two boring things.....then I had LOADS but couldn't be bothered....then I had left it so long I felt I should have a reason for writing something and decided to wait for one....then I completely forgot about this blogs existence....

You know how it is. Maybe.

Anyhoo. I thought I would make a bit of an effort and have a bit of a clearout of the right hand bar of all the slightly-naff-but-was-once-amusing stuff. You now have the privilege of browsing a few tasty morsels of randomness and geekery hand picked from the dark murky underworld of nerds. I spoil you : )

So....
A lot has happened since my last proper posts in which I didn't really say that much about life in general at all so heres a superfast [ha as if I could do concise!] breeze over what has been going on:

• I finished finished the year and did my exams. Got a 2:1 overall woo! Even passed the NCTJ Politics tests : 0 No sign of a shorthand qualification yet though : (
• Moved out of Tapton back to sunny Donny with the intention of getting a job for the summer so I actually had money for this year.
• Nobody wanted a worker just for the summer. I was reduced to crawling back to the old dungeon of misery and torture but even they didn't want a summer worker. The cheek! I even passed Dean on the way in but strangely he had legged it by the time I turned around. I guess he is still a bit awkward about the shortlived datingness...
• Decided that as I had an empty house sat waiting in Le Sheff (a house! MY house! Ooooooooh!) I may as well make use of it and look for a job there. There had to be a job in an entire city. Surely....
• After the initial headache of sorting out bills and getting used to living on me lonesome I bombarded the place with CVs and applications.
• I even handed in a CV to the high Street McDonalds. Well I had to earn some pennies somewhere. What if nowhere else would have me?
• 15 mins later whilst I was just about to harass KFC I get a phone call...

------------------------------------------

Man: "Hiya is that Charlotte?"

Me: "Yes..."

Man: "I'm Gavin from McDonalds High Street. I am VERY impressed. I just phoned up your old store and they said you were brilliant and I should definitely hire you. Where are you?"

Me: "Erm. Just down the road at KFC."

Man: "Fabulous! Do you fancy coming back for a chat?"

Me: "......Yeah sure I'll be there in 5 mins"

Man: "Fantastic! See you soon!"

----------------------------------------------

This guy was unbelievably enthusiastic and cheerful. How could I say no to a chat? More to the point, how did the place of hell get even more unrealistically pleasant about me than before? Oh well can't complain : ) Off I went...

5 minutes later I had a job with as many hours as I wanted for the hols and a job in term time to fit around my timetable. AND the people seemed really nice and mature, AND they all seemed to be enjoying what they were doing, AND everything looked in working order and in a reasonable state of cleanliness. Wow.

• Started work and things were just like I hoped. Everybody worked hard, the equipment was fab, there was no drivethrough (Woooo!) to stress about and I actually got the hours I requested and no random ones during days off. Dare I say it, I actually enjoyed work some days or at least didn't mind going in.
• It finally dawned on me that actually the company is a good one. Yeah so you get payed minimum wage but you do get flexible hours and good training if you actually work at a decent [i.e. not franchise as in place of hell] store. Turns out Gavin used to work at that place and the first thing he said was: "God that place is a shithole! It was the worst time of my life! Its full of twats and chavs!" So glad it wasn't just me then. I had also realised by this point that Gavin is genuinely a flamboyantly enthusiastic and happy person.

Example:

Scene: A quiet crew room with 5 staff members softly munching their burgers....

*BANG* - Door flies open

Gavin marches in, slaps Alan round the back of the head, grabs Azad's hat, throws it at the floor, stamps on it then charges into the boys staff toilet.

*pause*

Gavin: "FUCKING HELL! What have you been doing in here??"

Alan: (mumbling) dunno

Gavin: "You are dirty bastards aren't you. I don't know you are a bunch of scrubbers.... Fucking hell...."

Gavin makes for the door, turns

Gavin: "See you later darlings!!!!!"

*BANG*

Exits

Gavin is a dude.

• So I worked 5 or 6 shifts a week till term came around again earning plenty of wonga. Suddenly I had as much money as I had before I started Uni. Wooooo!
• Uni this year is pretty cool. So far its all been Law [101 ways to write things, be annoying to the judge and not get sued], broadcast [101 ways to get ignored by the general public in the street] and.... French.
• It is quite odd to be doing French again but it is quite satisfying. After all half of the people at work are overseas students or just full time workers from some exotic places [China, Zimbabwe, Ghana, India, Turkey, Iran, Yemen, Portugal and er, Ireland] and so speaking just one language makes you feel rather ignorant. All being well, by the end of the year I should be A level standard in French. Yay!

Well I think that about sums up what has been going on.

Right now things have just started to get up to speed in terms of actually having a reasonable amount of things to do. Tomorrow for example I have to go out at 9.30 with a marantz [groovy reporters mic and recording thingummie] and do a vox pop which basically is getting loads of peoples opinions on tape.

I was going to do that this morning but I felt a bit rough and so put it off till today. It took me ages to come up with a decent subject - "Halloween, frightfully dull or a bit of fun? Are you trick-or-treating tonight or are you hiding indoors?" Ad infinitum. Of course I realised on the way back from my lecture that tomorrow this is hardly current and worthy of comment. Hopefully I can ask the question in the past tense and edit it together as the present :s

I did try and do my voxpop at the beginning of last week however finding a place to grab people for a second was nigh on impossible. The shopping area was already dotted with preachers, salespeople, big issue sellers, buskers and the like so getting a decent spot that was a fair distance away from any of these people and not near a road or that bloody trumpet player was tricky. I eventually found the perfect spot only to see Brett and Lesley from Journo move into it.

I tried to grab a few people and got a handful although they didn't comment on anything. Apparently nobody is bothered (least of all the black lady I asked) that the police have been told to actively target young black boys to stop and search last week. Well I guess I got an answer to my question. Unfortunately apathy does not lend itself well to being edited into a 3 minute package for radio.

Such is the way of Journos I suppose....

I also got thinking yesterday that maybe I should quit my job. I am just bored of it to be honest. There are only so many times you can clean things in the same order between 4pm and 2am and not go insane. Also it does mean I get less time to study which actually seems to be a concern this year. I have so far been fairly successful in being proactive in studying (wow) and having 1 day a week in which you also have to revise for tomorrow's law test and do the washing hardly allows for quality study time.

On the other hand the hours are handy (although preposterously long) and I am earning a lot at the moment and not feeling really worn out or anything.

On a third (and genetically unlikely hand), If I could get a different job it would inevitably pay more per hour and probably offer normal length shifts and not 10 hour marathons of ajaxing and somehow transplanting all the grease off the machines onto myself.

But will I be able to find another job?

There are certainly a fair few vacancies but will they hire me? Hopefully I will find out. I have drafted my resignation letter and filled in a application form to work at the Union Studio Shop. If I somehow managed to get a job there I would get paid an hour more to serve a handful of customers and look at all the cool stuff for sale, occasionally unpacking a box or two. Sounds amazing.

Well I have enough money to last the year even if I can't find another job so I think I should take the risk. If I hand in my letter on Friday then I will leave on the 18th Nov which means I get my birthday off. Hooray! Done and Done.

Byebye McDonalds!!

Again...

Well I think I have waffled enough for today. Hopefully the next post will be a bit more exciting. I feel I should leave you non students with a fab example of what us yoofs call "randomness"....

Lottie is watching television

L:"Oh my god Patrick Stewart has a moustache!"

Megan: (from the kitchen) "Oh. Cool!"

L: "AND! He's playing a Nintendo DS!"

Megan: "What?!"

L: "WITH JULIE WALTERS!!!!!!!!"

Megan: "OH MY GOD!!!"

(Clattering of pots in the kitchen as Megan abandons the washing up)

L: "Hurry up this is a televisual event!!!"

M: "I'm coming!!....... OH DAMN!"

TV flicks from Patrick and Julie to an advert about tile cleaning

M: I can't believe I missed that! Oh I hope it comes on again...."

I spent 15 minutes this afternoon looking for that advert. I am nerd.

Ok this is going to be a complete stream of random consciousness today as I have seen all manner of groovy lilttle bits and bobs that I just have to share with... well anyone that will indulge me really.

First of all may I just point out my incredible sense of trashy mag feature smell. Why on just Sunday I was on the bus back from Donny where I passed a road name sign unfortunately titled "Butt Hole Lane" and I thought to myself: "That road must have got its name a looooong time ago because nobody could be dense enough not to see that one" and made a mental note to stick it on this blog.

Now I bought a completely trashy magazine today (or rather Megan bought it and I nicked it) for a whole 40p. It is called "Love it" and seems to be aimed at really bored housewives. To give you a taste of the tone, the cover stories are:"I left my babies for my wrinkly lover" and "I'm paid to watch porn while I do the ironing". Yeah I know. But really, these trashy reads are very entertaining. Plus I can call it "research". Ahahahaa!

Anyhoo. I opened the mag and what is on page 4?

"I couldn't resist taking a photo of this road sign in Doncaster. It really made me laugh - but it must be a bummer for thise living on the road! - Melanie King, 36, Sheffield "

*[Note to self. Remember to turn safesearch on when looking for shadily named roadsigns. Really.]*

Kind of unlikely no?

In other news, is this not the coolest car you have seen in a long time?

Wow! It was parked outside of the Hicks building so I just had to take a picture.

Just a few minutes later a TVR Tuscan in metallic blue/green came rumbling past. :o !!!!! For those few of you that may not know, this is in fact my exact dream car! Yaaaaaay! I was very excited in a quite scary way.

----------------------------------------------------

I went to Scarborough with Tina, Tom and Becky at the end of the easter hols and we had a right old time. The crappy sea front shops were the subject of much amusement:
Appropriately named "Tina wig". So what if they meant Tina Turner! This was clearly meant to be. Also, why isnt it available in a Tina Turner colour? Odd.

"Includes:

• Jumpsuit"

Why does this require a bullet point? In fact why does it require mentioning? Would it not be easier to take a photo of a kid doing the live-long-and-prosper hand thing that putting a very cheap prop in his hand and having ot explin it badly below? Also, why does the jumpsuit not fit the kid remotely well? Come on guys advertising!

Just incase there is every a nun related emergency. Comforting.

I am lost for words. "Ever popular" ?????

What?!

I would have liked to have taken a lot more of these but at this point the cashier had noticed my camera clicking and me going "Hahaha! This is so funny I am going to put this on my blog!" and told me very shortly that picture taking was NOT permitted in the shop. Oh well.

Ooooh but what about this?

I want one! This surpases even the monumental attention seeking of the tiger golf.

--------------------------------------------------
I have befriended a new Journo Buddy called Ingrid. She hails from Estonia just at the border with Russia to the East. Because of this she has an interesting mix of the two cultures and a damned cool accent. I was talking to her about Doncaster as she had mentioned she had been to The Dome before. I asked her if she was aware of the concept of the chav.

"Are they the ones that wear scabby clothes?" she said.
"Yes." I said "Yes they are." Oh and so much more....
She menioned that she found it really interesting how the different areas of England were so different from each other. She found the way Sheffielders speak rather funny.

"They are like. ' Its mee buh-er' . First of all it is my, not me. And there it a 't' in butter!"
(Imagine this in an estonian/russian accent)

Hahaha! Oh Ingrid you legend...
--------------------------------------------------------
Journo stuff is going rather well at the moment. I have actually done some practical journalism :0

For my patch in Walkley I have to find and write 4 stories off my own bat. This is actually pretty tricky as not much seems to happen in Walkley. So I figured I would try and go for the unusual. Well. I really found that in a little shop on the main road.

"Spooktacula"

It is so fun! This shop does and sells everything unusual and unexpected. From second hand goth clothing to teddy bears in coffins, cups of tea to wicler wands, scalextric cars to magic potions. You can get it all here. Anyhoo. The shop is owned by a medium (who incidentally used to be in Take a Break which is pretty cool) called Brenda, and this shop is apparently haunted by a ghost.

A story hooray! I went in and arranged an interview. She was really nice and gave a me tea and biscuits. We talked about the ghost, apparenty a farmer from the 1600s called Adam. I have to say the room did seem a little creepy in the corner where he supposedly seems to hang around but then, I guess it would seem that way when you have been told about things moving on their own and coins appearing for no particular reason.

Brenda told me about the council being all picky with 'A' boards outside of shops too which should hopefully turn into a story when i do a bit of digging.

I got another story from my patch by nosying around the Sheffield Council website. I looked for the councillors of walkey and who was up for re-election on May 3rd and founf Veronica Hardstaff. She and the other Councillors have rather bravely put their phone numbers on the website.

*Yoink*

I phoned her up and left a message on her answerphone. She was kind enough to phone back (I mean I doubt I would have bothered for a journalist, let alone a student one) and we arranged a meeting. Yay.

She was really lovely and her house was all shiney and new. The view from her balcony was fab too. We talked about things life Private Finance Initiatives and Electoral Systems and I made notes with my now reasonable Shorthand. It was rather good really and just goes to show how easy this can be if you look around and are generally nosey. Just need 1 more story for my patch then. :D

-------------------------------------------------
I went to my assigned Council Planning Board meeting yesterday and yes it really was as boring as it sounds. It took about half an hour for the councillors to decide what should be done about these few trees that had accidentally been cut down during building a new house or two. The council had given an order that the trees on a certain site could not be cut down. Turns out they gave the order for only one of the two sites with the trees by mistake and about 20 were cut down. Ooops.

A mistake yes and certainly worthy of a discussion but this argument just went round and round. After the initial few quotes I got down it just turned into

"Chair, may I just clarify this point... blah blah blah, witter, yadda..."
As Ingrid described her planning meeting:
"I could hear the flies dying"

And I didnt have a chair so the circulation in my legs was grinding to a halt as I sat on the plushly carpetted floor, seemingly to the distaste of the Chariman. Luckily it is my civic right to attend these meetings and make the place look untidy.
--------------------------------------------------

Have you seen the new cravendale ads? Oh I love them! Here watch them now:





Oh I have seen these so many times and yet I still find them ridiculously entertaining :)
"Milk miiilk" is becoming a bit of a catchphrase of mine. The advert really works you know. Despite it being 10.30pm I still felt compelled to go down the road to buy some milk I wanted some that badly.

Oh and while I am here, this is another fave of mine at the moment:


Heehee!
If you haven't seen the other Harry Potter Puppet Pals videos, I recommend you watch them along with paying Rathergood a visit. ("My Cats got Knees" and "Looking for My Leopard" are faves along with the highly immature "Buffy Swears")
-----------------------------------

Well I think that is about all for the moment as I should probably get back to living my life now. I do spend rather a long time doing this blog for no particular reason. Hmmmmm....

Well. Back to Farscape. I am only on episode 9 of season 4. We can't be having that!

Tootley pip for now :D

So.

Having now both researched a two stories and written them all on my big grown up self, am I officially a journalist now? Ooooh how exciting!

Yeah I have been assigned my patch (which is the one I requested Walkley) which means next year I only have to go outside the front door (or rather back door - people dont use front doors in Sheffield apparently) to get stories. Yaaaaay!

Last Wed I was assigned a Council Cabinet meeting to go to where I had to get 2 stories and follow them up so I could write some copy and hand it in for marking today. I looked up the agenda in advance on the t'internet and guess what? They were going to make a decision on the Myers Grove/Wisewood schools! Oh what gold!

For the vast majority of you that either do not live in Sheffield or don't care about local news enough to notice, there are two schools in Sheffield that have falling pupil numbers. One is a pretty good school called Wisewood and one is a bit run down with rather poor results. The Council can't keep both schools open because the lack of pupils would mean a reduced curriculum and a decline in the standards of teaching.

The Council (I keep on wanting to write the shorthand symbol for council but then remember I am on a computer!) want to build a new state-of-the art-school with a vocational training academy for the pupils that have low attainment so that they can get some job skills. Sounds fair enough to me.

The problem is the people that go to the schools (particularly Wisewood) are understandably a bit upset about having their school knocked down and are finding any excuse they can to tell the Council they are making a massive mistake. Hum.

Thing is keeping open both schools would cost loads and do the kids no good. The government wants to give the Council £28 million for a new school so long as it has some vocational stuff too. Fair enough. The Myers Grove kids could do with something like that because it is quite a deprived area and attainment is low.

Try telling this to parents of Wisewood kids though.

Ah well I might well feel the same if somebody wanted to merge say, Hungerhill with Armthorpe in a big new academy thingy. But thats why we have councils - to do what is best not what is popular.

Anyhoo. I thought I would get my vox pop out of the way (you know when you get loads of opinions from people) as I had to do one this semester and if this wouldnt get people talking then nothing would.

Sooooo. I got out my A to Z and set off in the direction of Myers Grove. I thought I would make a bit of an occasion of it and get dressed like a journalist with boots and a skirt and stuff :D I popped into the hairdressers on the way because I have wanted to get my hair cut for a while and the hairdressers (one of about 10 on my road. How random!) looked empty.

I was served by an extremely camp Scot with the most fantastic neck hair you have ever seen. You could actually see the line where he stopped shaving! He was very talkative, in fact I could hardly get a word in so I asked his opinion on the schools and off he went.

Quote number 1 :D

Btw this is what I showed him as a reference for how I wanted my hair:


and this is what I got:


Not quite the same but I still rather like it. IT is refreshing to have hair the same colour as my eyebrows for a change. Well for now anyway I am sure I will get bored in the not too distant future and have some random urge to dye it orange or something. It actually has millions of layers in it for once too- something I ask for but never seem to get. Having said that I do normally go to the ultra cheap place in Donny....

Again, I digress.

So there I was going down the most ridiculously steep roads you have ever seen in your life in high heels on my way to the school. I live on one side of a valley so there is a fab view on the way down and a pretty stream at the bottom which was nice to see when you are used to tall buildings and tarmac. Getting up the other side was somewhat more effort but luckily, the benefit of being a girl wearing heels is that they kind of level things out up hill and make it like a normal flat walk. Hooray!

I finally arrived at Myers Grove. The streets were deserted. It started to rain. Woo.
So I trundled up the road and sat in a bus shelter waiting for home time when I could pounce on unsuspecting members of the public and pressure them via embarassment and uncomfortableness to speak. Yay!

I waited for a while.....

*******************************
Oooh someone is coming. This is my chance!
"Excuse me madam could I have a moment of your time"
*looks slightly uncomfortable*
"I am a student journalist with the University of Sheffield. Are you aware of the merger plans for Myers Grove and Wisewood."
"Oh god yes. I work there in the kitchens actually. The school does need a lot of work some of the classrooms are disgusting and....."
*Yaaaaay good quotes!*
*******************************

It was really quite easy. Just act all confident and people feel they are on the spot and that they have to say something :D

I couldn't ask the kids anything when they came out unfortunatley as they have to be over 16 or have their parents permission. Oh well. I tried asking some teachers but they wisely declined to comment so I stuck to bothering parents and a grandma stood at the bus stop. She didn't half get angry about the schools....

Six good quotes woo! Now just to get home. Er... somehow. The journey home took a lot of consulting of the A to Z. Going back up the way I came was not really an option unless I actually wanted to die of exhaustion and dehydration so I found another way home and hoped that it wasnt quite as steep.

Well it was really steep actually. I may as well have just followed the steepest roads and I would have got home. Murphy's law eh? After about half an hour of trekking up what seemed like a mountain of mining villages I saw the 52 bus. Hooray!!! I am saved! I got on happily only to find out that I was about 10 minutes from home. Oh well being a student sponger it only costs 50p.

I was home. Whats more I had harrassed members of the public, got some decent quotes and lived to tell the tale. Hooray!!

I spent all of today writing up that story and another that started out about the Council planning to build new old folks estates but turned into how they were demolishing loads of old ones because they dont meet basic standards. Kind of lucky I noticed a bit in this mountain of Council report paperwork boringess saying that several properties were under "Decent housing standards". Ho hum.

I did a bit of digging and found a phone number that went.... somewhere. I rang it anyway and it turned out it was an info line and that the "Decent housing standards" were actually a government initiatives. Therefore.... I got to write about how the council was to demolish 6 housing estates because they are not up to government health and safety standards and they dont have enough moneyt to do them up. Wahey! How incriminating....

Well I handed it in today. The deadline was 4 and I was there at 3.30. Of course the office had closed mysteriously till 4.30 so I made a makeshift cover sheet and wanged it under the door only to hear it to be blown across the office. Probably in several bits.

So yeah my assignment is now somewhere around the journalism recpetion desk I imagine. I thought it best to E-mail Amanda the receptionist to check that she actually found it. Oh god I hope so or you lose 10 marks and that is hardly fair because they decided to swan off randomly when I was told to go!

Anyways.

Moving on....

Ah the post saga I mentioned in my last post. To cut a very long story short, Keith started sending me all sorts of random junk mail through the post as a laugh. It all started with a chess piece catalogue which I admit was rather amusing. But after we found sites on the internet where you could sign each other up to recieve an array of junk of up to 30 at a time it got a little out of hand.... Roy the porter now looks at me in an entirely different way after sorting several "adult interest" catalogues into my pigeon hole....

Keiths Mum got a bit annoyed when I sent some womens underwear catalogues to Keith. She seemed a bit suspicious too hehe. Here is the total collection of general pants recieved through the mail for me:



Speaking of pants, I got a "free sample" of some frilly knickers in an underwear catalogue. I hung them on a slightly drunk corridor mates door of course. Just to confuse her a little bit in the morning....

Some of the catalogues were actually hilarious. Here are a few good slogans:

• "Making light of lighting"
  
• "The worlds leading supplier of dolls houses and miniatures" In this Dolls House Emprium catalogue are several amusing demonstrative pictures with captions such as this one: "Samantha was so proud to show off her new home to Mark". You couldn't make it up really...
  
  
  
  
• "Your watering problems solved"


• There was one that seemed like a pretty boring catalogue until I got to the back: "To celebrate 35 years of inovative and engaging tours for gay men and lesbians...."
  Ah right.
  
• "Aquaplancton. A natural product that works with nature.
  
  
  
• "The mantis garden tiller is now available at a REDUCED PRICE!!!"
  
  
  
• "Dear Miss Boyle, thank you for your enquiry about the range of ALTON'S FINEST CEDAR GREENHOUSES and FINEST SUMMERHOUSES"


• "The designer choice. Paving, aggregates, edging, walling and driveways"


• "Dear Dr Boyle, thank you for your interest in HSS and for visiting our website" This one was actually quite fun! Lots of courses about learning to use cranes and flourescent jackets and stuff!


• "Chilstone have been established for 50 years and have perfected reconstituted stone with a texture virtually indistinguishable from quarried stone."


• I also recieved 5 "adult" catalogues. *shudder*
  

So there you go. Oh yes. I did take the time to post Keith a lemon. Meg and I found this website on which this American guy posts all sorts of random things and see if they get to their destination. His lemon failed so I thought I would try....

We checked the royal mail website and it all complied minus a Perishable notice which we soon rectified:



Unfortunatley it didnt get there. Maybe the adress wore off or maybe the postman decided that he would feel a bit silly delivering a lemon. As a first class perishable item Keith would have had to sign for it. I was dying for his mum to be the only one in....

Anyway. I have talked quite enough for one day. This has taken me a good 1 1/2 hours and I am sure I have typed enough today. Tatty bye for now :D

So. Yes this is a real post. A REAL post with writing and stuff. Wow!

Its hard to say why I havent posted for ages. I guess the chrimbo holidays and my complete lack of any interesting activity didnt really lend itself to interesting discussion. Plus, I havent really felt the need to vent my spleen at all recently. Things are rather damn good actually :D

The past couple of weeks have been very eventful as uni life always is. Keith seems to be practically living at my pad haha. I have seen him about 4 times since being back which is of course fab. Why else would we call him "Mad Keith" if he didnt do riciulous things?

So yeah. I went around DOncaster for the first time and found out that it actually is really good. It is stupidly cheap, perhaps even moreso than the Union (£1 drinks and free entry to the Che Bar!). I was also introduced to "Central Park" on this glorius outing which boasted a cocktail bar complete with slightly overconfident waiters that lobbed around bottles before making the drinks. Groovy.

We all took a look at the menu. I say we, there were a few of us this time around - Me, Keith, his girlfriend Sarah, Mike, Weezy, Her boyfriend who I really should have learnt the name of by now and from Uni Megan and Lizzie. The others opted for various things - strawberry martinis and odd concoctions with ginger in them amongst other things. Me and Megan however (being both female and chocolate lovers) were drawn to something called a "chocolate monkey". Made from milk, tia maria, vodka, baileys, cream, chocolate, more cream, cream, cream and sprinkles it had to be good. We got a pitcher as it was only £2 more than a £4 glass. The guy said that you probably got about 1 or 2 more glasses out of it. Ah well that would be fine then.

Chocolate Monkey aquired. The cream on top was immense! It took us a good 5 minutes to eat our way through the squirty cream before we even got to the drink and it was gooooooood. The drink itslef tasted like a creamy chocolate milkshake with a hint of coffee and whiskey. Just a hint mind which made it rather easy to drink. As for the pitcher, we actually got about 3 glasses each from it. I didnt really feel anything but very hyper, presumably from the sugar but Megan did appear a smidge wobbly.

We have since aquired the ingrediants to make our own monkies and do so when the occasion calls. Mmmmm.

Keith and Mike are back on Thursady which will be fun. Luckily my lectures start at 12 on Friday....

Speaking of academic stuff, I volunteered myself to participate in a study of "inquiry based learning". No I am still not 100% sure what that is either. Basically I go along to an interview, two group, one individual, which are taped or videoed. I get asked to talk about my learning experiences at uni and then get some cash for doing it. Yay!

I went to my first one on Thursday and it was really quite enjoyable. I arrived early and was given a cuppa by the nice receptionist lady and talked to the guy doing the study - a really nice bloke called Bob. Bob just moved here last year from Tenessee so we talked about the correct way to make tea and how Doncaster Sheffield Robin Hood International Airport is a very misleading name and such.

I talked with Bob and 6 others for a few hours about how we like lectures to be structured, our favourite learning experiences and other such things. We were told that as long as we agree, the organisation doing the study - CILASS wants to follow us all the way through uni. Coooooool. This is the first study of its kind and is apparently going to be fairly influential and if successful could have fairly far reaching implications. Sounds rather exciting no? It is actually very exciting for me in a geeky way as I spent the last 2 years in sociology learning about how sociological experiments are carried out and the ways in which they can go wrong. I was sat there thinking "Hmmm I bet this study is going to really suffer from sample attrition" and "good thing they are mixing group with individual unstructured interviews, don't want to compromise the validity with peer expectations...." To be part of one of these studies is really facinating to see what it is like for a subject.

So yeah. £10 an interview and £50 bonus for sticking with it for a year. Yay!

Lectures are going rather well at the moment. I actually loved one of the ones we had the other day. Loved. I know! It wasnt even like it was light or anything. It was in a new module - Current Debates in Broadcasting. This basically concerns the theory and study of the broadcast media and the economical and sociological implications it has on society. For some reason I really love Media Theory. In fact last year in Media Study I was the only one that went "Yay!" every time we were told by Miss Hollywood (our name for Mrs Gail)that we would be studying news values that day.

I reckon if this Journalism thing didn't work out, I could be happy being a Media Theorist. Well, providing I could ever get a job of course.

The lecturer in this module is a total dude also. She is called Jackie Harrison and looks just like Sian Lloyd. She has an amazing line in stripey jumpers too. She kept asking us the whole way through the lecture if we liked the way she was doing things and if there was any other way we would like her to do things. Heck she even said that if any of us had any questions or would like to discuss things further we could do it over a coffee! We all love her and I have made a facebook group in her honour.

One of the required reading books for this module is one of her books and I actually can't wait for it to arrive so I can read it. Crikey.

The other new modules are pretty cool too. I also do Ethics and Journalism (contrary to popular belief there actually are some :p ),Public Administration (as boring as it sounds but at least I get a NCTJ qualification from it) and Researching and Reporting :D

We are still covering the basics of R & R like the structure of local government and such but in 3 weeks we are out there on our patches. Yay! Ooh that reminds me, I must e-mail my lecturer to request the Walkley patch....

We sepnt the last R & R session (3 hours!) looking at a Sheffield council financial audit. It was sooooo tedious! They werent lying when we were told that Journalists provide a service to the public by making the things in official papers public knowledge. If I didnt have to learn how, or if I wasnt getting paid, there is not much that would make me look through another one of those bad boys! I cannot see any member of the public going to the trouble of requesting one of these monsters and then reading it for fun. After two hours I was actually finding it hard to stay awake so I went for a 5 minute walk. I did manage to get a good story from it about how the Council was in £40 million of debt when it had £38 million uncollected tax from the poll tax (This was an audit from 1993 may I point out!). Gotcha!

There has been a ton of snow for the past few days. It has just about melted now which is rather disapointing but I had a good mess about last night with Megan, Rachel and her boyfriend Jo(e). Rachel is a snowboarder so she took her board with her and had a go down the hill opposite us. I had a go sitting on it which was fun, but riding on the tray we found was even more fun! We then went on to Roselyn road (very steep for those that dont know it, it is almost impossible to walk down in high heels) for some good falling over action :D

After eating an alarming amount of snow when out and about, Megan suggested we should try some with some blackcurrant. Um. Ok then. So we got a container from inside and took the top off the freshly fallen snow on a wall. After voicing my concerns over eating more than a bit of water that had fallen out of the sky, Megan reasurred me that rainwater is practically pure and that it is only bad for you if there is loads of pollution in the air. Hoping that there was less pollution in the air than your average city I watched Megan forget all about blackcurrant and pour two caps of tia maria in to the snow to make a satisfying slush.



Never eat yellow snow? Actually it was rather nice, particularly when baileys was added. So we sat eating snow out and alcohol out of a box with a spoon whilst watching Xena Warrior princess on the internet. We are that cool.

Speaking of the internet, I must urge you all to go to www.alluc.org right now! There are hundereds of tv shows on there that you can watch. Wow! So far I have watched all of sugar rush, a large portion of the X Men cartoon series (yeah I know but it was my favourite as a kid), a couple of films, Bill Bailey shows, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, QI and others. Woo! Many of the series' are complete too which is fab. Its not illegal to watch them either, simply illegal for the brave fools that post the vids on the net. The site is even legal too as it only has links to the videos on other sites. Could it be better? Well no actually, I saw 12 episodes of the Family Ness back to back!

I have just realised that I have neglected to mention what is probably the most important thing that has happened recently which is that I HAVE A HOUSE FOR NEXT YEAR!!!! Wooooo! Not only that but it is amazing!

It is the second house that we looked at and it is simpy immense. It is clean and in excellent condition, there is everything you need - a new fitted kitchen, a fridge freezer, a hoover, internet in every room, a patio, an AMAZING view of the south hills aaaaaaaand it is only £45 a week! OMG! That is amazing!!!! The ones in Crookes are £55 for a crapy house that when we viewed it looked like it had been ransaked it was that messy and it had a big bong and some hash on the table. Tasteful.

But this is a dream house in a lovely area with a lovely local pub down the road (with the all important pool tables and quiz nights) and the landlord is really nice. Megan knows one of the people that lives there at the moment so we can easily interrogate her at some point.

We signed the contract the day after we saw that house hehe. It is quite possible we would have lost the will to live if somebody else got in there. We did look at another house that day just to reassure ourselves that our house (for that is how we were referring to it at that point!) was actually the best student house in Sheffield. It so was. We had assigned bedrooms before we had even requested the contract!

So there you go. About 1 months worth in a post. There is more to come however about a rather comical abuse of the postal service that I may post tonight. It will be a biggie though as it has about a ton of photos to illustrate the story. So yeah. Toodle pip for now!

For the sake of the sheer amount of things to write about here, nanowrimo beginning wednesday and just my general laziness I have decided that for a little while I shall post in bullet point the random things that have happened to me :)

I have a hefty backlog here so brace yourself!

• Dancing tango/thrash moshing style with a 50 something, sweaty, bald man at the fuzz club
• Eaten the best burger in the world. Ever. From the stand just outside of the union after fuzz. Mmmmm cheeseburger with barbeque sauce...
• Danced wildly with Robyn at fuzz and laughed at the "headline" band who played one monotonous note at a time, looked truly stoned and danced with nothing but their elbows...
• Gave blood on the spur of the moment as "something to do and a cheap rush"
• Ordered a bottle of grolsch thinking it was a regular size the day after giving blood. It was actually half a litre and i had only 30 minutes till closing time...
• Tried to get home with Megan from Doncaster inly to find that the bus had gone 1 minute early, then traipsed home looking rather silly.
• Decided to get the top of my ear pierced finally and then bled more than the piercing woman had ever seen. "Nobody has ever dripped before".
• Had 5 hours of sleep for more than a week and not felt bad.
• Pulled an all nighter to see what would happen and then couldnt read or remember any of the random things i wrote in shorthand the next day.
• Signed up for nanowrimo - a challenge to write 50 000 words in a month because i can and it seems like somthing new to do...
• Fall asleep in the corridor at 3am whilst keeping megan company.
• Claim and wear a T shirt from the laundry that had been there for over a week.
• Get woken up between 4 and 5 am by the fire alarm and subsequently having to trudge outside. Twice.
• Falling asleep at 6pm, dreaming that Megan and Ellie were in my room, thinking it happened and then going and having the same conversation in real life.
• Dreaming that Megan had her hair tied back and it looked "awesome", telling her this, her tieing it back and it actually looking awsome.
• Bidding on random items on Ebay when you discover you have a few spare quid in your Paypal such as a plastic lobster!
• Deciding at 6.47pm that you are bored and should go down to the Arts Tower to ride the paternoster over the top and down in the pit just for fun.
• Spend a long time researching the wherabouts of a street piano , walk for 2 miles to get to it, play it for about 10 minutes, beging breathing again and walk back, taking the time to get lost.
• Go to a mantra meditation session, get given a load of free Hare Krishna stuff and get mistaken for a Hindu.
• Rush to a 7.30pm lecture only to find that it is tutorial week, although a fab shiney black Yamaha is sat invitingly in the corner. Proceed to play for 1 1/2 hours.
• Get 58 on your first assessed story woot! 2:1 methinks

80th post yay!!

Ok this will be a very hyper and random post. So many interesting things have happened but for now I will stick to recent events...

Last night I went to Fuzz with Megan (Mgn or Meggy Legs), Gemma, Ruth, Lauren and Lizzie from my corridor and had a fab time. We watched a band called Chinkina (I think) that were all electro and very polished. Their band consisted of a guitar, drums and two synth players, therefore I really liked them :) The synth solos were imense, I really enjoyed it. After the band had finished and we had danced for a bit, we elected to move to Bleach the room next door playing metal, skate and the like.

I should explain at this point that we were having a competition to see who could get the most random person to dance with them. I believe I won hehe! No sooner had I stepped into the room than a bald 50 something man came up and said

"Would the lady care to dance?"

What on earth was he doing in the student union? Surely somebody must have signed him in as a guest but who would? Anyhoo I did and therefore won the competition yay!

After we got the nicest burgers in the world from the uni van outside, we went home and in true 1D style waited for Ellie to come home so we could be greatly amused by her drunkeness. That girl makes me laugh so hard. She is hilarious when sober so when she has had a drink or two you can guarentee that you will not be able to breath for the next hour!

The corridor came back in dribs and drabs. Most had been to gatecrasher - the big local nightclub which I have yet to visit, although, it may not be my thing as it largely involves getting drunk. Perhaps going along to watch Ellie would be well worth while however...

Megan (who I had spent most of the night with and who I am good friends with) started on her maths homework which had to be in at 10am today - at 1am. I sat with her to keep her company and just for something to do as I didnt quite feel like going to bed yet. It got later, people came and went (including the hilalriuos Ellie) and Meg worked away, despite getting very stuck several times on some evil quations. Somehow it got to 4.40am....

We got talking and decided that we would feel terrible when we got up the next morning (which was infact today). To combat this we came up with a cunning plan - why not just not go to bed? We would only have 4 hours anyway... gradually we warmed to the idea, thinking about how fun it would be to smile cheefully at people in the morning as they mooched out of their rooms at 7am. We would be able to say that we had pulled an all nighter, and just generally see what it would be like.

That was that then!

Meg worked some more, we talked about particle physics, herbs and Harry Potter before we made todo lists so that we could use our extra time ocntruvtively. I did my shorthand for the next day, some revision and tidied my room. Mgn did pretty much the same. After a shower it had got to 7am.

Oh how odd...

We amused ourselves at www.pimpthatsnack.com (brilliant) before cheerfully greeting all those on my corridor that had just crawled out of their pits. Irritatingly for them, they were like the living dead but Meg and I were up and about and cheerful and bouncy hee!

We went doen to breakky and ate quickly. We were starving!!

We then came up and had a Lottie coffee special - no mean drink! It consists of 2 and a half heaped teaspoons of kenco extra rich, 2 sugars and just enough milk and water to dissolve it. Then down the hatch for maximum caffeine effect!

Meg was zipping around in no time. I indeed felt mighty fine too until I started writing this blog hehe! All this typung is making me sleepy so I will say bye bye for now. I will go to my shorthand now then come back and sleep yay!

Yaaay I got ot 80WPM today in teeline woooo! I supressed the urge to bang my hands down on the table jump up and shout "Wahey!!!!!". Just.

It made all of this skull numbingly dull work feel like it has a purpose other than to keep crow lady happy (this is what I have somewhat harshly labelled our tutor who is really rather nice). It is a bit tedious spending 1-2 hours a day in teeline lectures and then doing another 30/60 mins for homework. For some reason though I felt suffieciently enthusiastic to attempt to note down a conversation I was earwigging outside the union. I wrote down one half of it that a nice Chinese man doing bible studies was saying as his english was slightly broken and therefore a bit slower so I had a chance. Lets have a gander at what he said...

Actually lets not as I cant really understand what I wrote! I think I got a bit behind and or/confused with many of the outlines. He seemed to be talking about singing and god though so meh.

Anything random happen today?...

Oooh no but yesterday there was another fire alarm at lunch time. We figured some people were just arsing around again but as I stood there in the wind I noticed wisps of smoke coming from one window. Turns out some lass had set her toaster on fire! Apparently there was another alarm I missed in which somebody else set their toaster on fire too!

Ah yes and also yesterday was the freshers fair at which many a fine company comes to shamelessly plug their wares at students. Fortunately for us this involves giving us bags full of random crap!

I recieved a make your own cardboard coach, 2 coasters, a flashing shot glass, some tissues, about 6 pens, lots of sweeties, a ton of paper, several job aplication forms and some cider - ironically from the responsible drinking stand!

There was also the mother of all freebies outside. As I came around the corner of the union i saw a white stand looking rather like a food stand slowly materialise. As I came further and further around the corner the word "free" began to be revealled. Understandably I became rather excited at this. But then the imortal word was there after the word free on a food van:

"chips"

Oh my goodness! You have never seen a cue like it! Hungry and poor students in need of some cheap form of culinary satisfaction stretched as far as the eye could see. Ok they didnt but it was a bloody long cue. It took me at least 30 minutes to get mine and the queue was miles longer than when I joined poor people! Unfortunatley they stamped everybodies hand to make sure we didnt come back for seconds. Me and Emma reconed we could lick it off but for the sake of our sense of self respect, refrained.

Well I have things to do, or rather things to procrastinate from doing and then bodge at the last mintue. Byebye for now!

Just got in from my first day of lectures so I thought I would use this 1/2 hour to write somthing before tea. It has been a slightly random day (as always), I am sure that every day is bizzarre in Sheffield what with dissappearing levels of buildings and rooms saying "no entry dangerous plants" its like a cross between being John Malkovich and Little Shop of horrors!

I went to bed last night at 1am thinking that 6 and a half hours sleep would be fine (which I am sure it would). I set all three of my alarms to make sure I would get up quickly to give me time to have a shower and get down to breakfast for 8. Unfortunately my nights sleep was not to be as peacful as planned...

It began quite well with me having my first dream (at least that I can recall) since I arrived, even though it was a bit random. Why oh why would I dream about watching an episode of Blue Peter in which Katy Hill leaves? That was about 8 years ago! Anyhoo, as I was watching my dream TV I heard a sudden, piercing and unpleasant noise. My first reaction was that it was one of my bizzarre nightmares in which a loud and frightening noise (usually my burglar alarm, hence the wierd phobia) tortures me and I cant make it stop. I appeared to be awake, but then I always do in these dreams.

I figured that I had better take more notice just in case it was real so I jumped up and tried to work out what the hell it was. Was it my alarm clock? Clearly not but maybe it was in this dream.... no didnt feel like it. I thought about things for a moment longer and looked around the room. Seemed real enough...

I saw the detail of the room and the light under the door. Hmmm this really seemed quite real. Were those idiots that harrassed us late at night back for antoher prank? If they were I dont know what they were doing...

After all of this had passed through my mind for about 10 seconds I began to have a feeling what was going on.... Weird claxon thing... Doors slamming.... people going down the corridor.... no way....at this time? It had to be about 1.30 or 2....

A fire alarm!

Bugger!

I bimbled around for a few seconds thinking about what to do. Ok. Coat. I would have to go outside, right. Ooooh hang on some trousers would be a good idea. I was stood in my nightie. Right out the door. Oooh wait! Lock the door! Find keys, lock door.

By this time only two people on my corridor were left! I followed them hastily with shaking legs. It still was probably a dream and I felt pretty weird. I wobbled down the stairs and down the corridor to get outside. This took rather a lot longer than I am sure it should, at least 5 minutes. I was one of the last out of the building and felt rather dazed and confused by the whole thing as i stood in the drizzle.

I glanced at my phone that I had hastily grabbed on the way out. 3.49am?! Surely they wouldnt be as harsh as to do a drill at this time... A couple of more minutes passed and two fire engines arrived. Had some fool jammed summat in a toaster? The firemen just wandered inside without much of a sense of urgency suggesting that it wasnt an emergency.

[Taking a break, have to go to tea!]

[Back from my 7.30 lecture]

Ok back. I will continue hehe.

After about 10 minutes we were allowed to trudge back in and rather blearily to our rooms. We got back to find a passing fireman had opened them all to check there was nobody inside. Rather tetchy and somewhat half asleep Ellie from down the hall threw a wobbly and started rantign about how anybody could have nicked our stuff. To tired to care a went back in to my room, removed my extra clothing and fell back into bed rather dazed from the whole shenanigan.

Yes uni is clearly quite different from home....

In other news today, the songwriting lecture was rather fun. We are a motley crew made up of rock and emo young heads like me and old seasoned rockers, geeky jazz guys with thick rimmed glasses and a comb over and even a bloke who makes music for mobile phone games. We spend most of the session introducing ourselves but then got straight down to it and deconstructed some songs. Now I am sad enough to do this to any song I listen to becuase I enjoy it so this was heaven : )

We are expected to carry a notebook at all times to jot down ideas (I do), write when inspiration strikes (I do) and evesdrop on peoples conversations for ideas (Oh yes indeedy I do hehe). In short this course is going to be ace! We are going to start work on writing music to a set of words shortly and complete it as a project for christmas. Cant wait!

In other news, Tina is a genius. Again.

As I have posted before sometimes she just says the most profound things from nowhere. Tina you legend! This time I was talking to her about how things get tough sometimes and that I was in an awkward position that there is nothing I can do about. She said to me: "As long as there is hope then nowt is lost". Where does this stuff come from??? She is absaloutley right and made me feel so much better. One day that girl is going to come out with a way to make bread fall butter up or the equation to take us pst the speed of light or something....

Well as much as I would like to write some more I have to be up at 7 to go down to breakky with Beth and Emma. Sees you later :)

Well!

That was one crazy night out! Fuzz club was awesome! Me and Beth (who is now officially a legend) met up at her place and began the punking up process. She chose to apply shitloads of groovy eye makeup and I was presented with a pot of shockwaves extreme style clay to do my hair. As Beth talked to her mum on the phone I stood in front of the mirror pulling my hair up in to a mohawk.

It turned out really well and I was well chuffed! (Yay Doncaster saying!) I did get Beth to take a photo which I will stick on here soon when I see her tomorrow - I am sure I will as we seem to be getting on really well :D

We set off on our merry way to the union and entered the club. We sat in the lounge for a while and had a drink whilst waiting for the bands to arrive on stage in the other room. We met a couple of nice girls (although I have no idea what they are called despite them telling me!) and chatted about courses and being a fresher and so on. Before long it was time to go to the stage...

Me and Beth got another drink (I had a pint of coors after it was revealled they dont sell bottles whilst live bands are on in case they get thrown). Me and a pint! Thats new! I felt like a woman from the nineties with a pint in my hand! We made our way to the front where inexplicably, few people had thought to gather. As a result we were right against the front barrier only a couple of feet from the bands.

First on were the 747s, a seemingly up and coming jangly nice band which rocked every now and again. It was soooo loud! I could feel my ears straining as they played the first notes but was in to it sufficiently to put my concerns aside. They played,we cheered, I tapped my hand on the coors glass and split beer down my arm, beth nodded. It was good :)

After the 747s had dissapeared and we had waited for the stage to be set up for the next band who were called.... something. I cant quite rememeber what. It was like the untouchable B----s or something. Anyhoo. They came on and began to play. Reeeeeaaally loudly. Every now and again I could feel my eardrums pushed to maximum capacity. They did rock ass though. Some of it was pretty heavy. They even did one guys request that he shouted out.

In the heavy bits there were crowd surfers. And how! Sometimes 2 deep, sometimes several at a time were throw over the fornt fence on to the security blokes who had to catch them. I noticed some people did it more than once! As the gig progressed a mosh pit began in a small bit in the middle at the front and gradually grew until Beth and I were right by it. Beth looked scared. And rightly so!

At the end of the last song (which was awesome) the bassist chucked his bass down and launched himself over the fenced gap and security guys on to the crowd. Woo!!
It was really cool :)

After the band had finished and I had lost my hearing and gained a smiley wobble, we progressed to the room that was playing metal classics. With the lack of shame now beign felt due to the mysterious pint of Coors, I danced. Really danced. And I mean, really, really!

I was proper going for it smashing my head around, stomping and punching my hands up in the air. It was really quite liberating but I undoubtedly looked am arse. Nevertheless this seemed to attract the attention of a group of guys who came and danced with us. One got a bit too close for comfort. I seem to recall him attempting to play me like a guitar. Me and Beth went for "a drink" ie legged it!

We caught the night bus home, a very good invention in which a nice old man drives girls home to their door for a quid. Nice man he was too.

Beth and I said our goodbyes and I sloped off up here to eat monster munch and blog. Yay!

I think I should really go to bed now. I need time to get over the shame! Haha!