Nails and New Year's Resolutions

I don't make New Years resolutions or even like the concept of New Year's resolutions, but I coincidentally painted my nails just before January 1st, repainted them a few days later, and subsequently haven't bitten my nails this year. They have now grown to disturbing, unprecendented levels (very slightly past my fingertip). To me, this is the equivalent of having talon-like claws. I have bitten my nails probably ever since I started growing teeth. I bite them whenever I am bored, anxious, or simply notice that they are getting long. For many years I have unfairly scorned the concept of manicures, nail files or any kind of nail maintenance at all*. Whenever my parents have criticised me for biting my nails I haven't really seen a problem. They're my nails, I'm not harming anyone, I don't find it to be a disgusting habit compared to nose picking or public urination (I couldn't think of many common disgusting habits.) 

So now my nails are getting disturbingly long, and soon I'll have to file them for the first time since, I'm guessing, 1999. As I refuse to consciously stop biting them, the only way to actually stop myself biting them is as a by-product of painting them. Today I discovered that I have thirty-six bottles of nail polish, given to me as presents over the years, presents that I have completely ignored, thinking 'oh great, nail polish' and then put in my designated nail polish box. It was this year's nail polish intake that prompted me to paint them. Of the thirty-six bottles, I threw away eleven for being too old or too hideous. Now I suppose I will have to start being one of those people (i.e, many, many women) who paints their nails. What next? Hair dye? (No, my hair is too dark) Massages? (I prefer not to be touched by strange humans) Dental floss? (No). 

This is all because my first sort-of New Year's resolution didn't work out. I was hoping to rediscover the music I liked when I was twelve, but then after listening to Avril Lavigne's debut album I was disappointed, mostly because the genre came up on iTunes as 'pop' and not 'radical alternative indie skater rock' as I had previously imagined when I listened to it in 2004 on my CD walkman. Never mind, I still enjoy the music I liked when I was a much more tasteful seven-year-old (ABBA and the soundtrack from Tarzan). 

So until I am too lazy to put on nail polish, end up in a nerve-wracking situation and bite them again, welcome to the new me. 

*I obviously do not bite my toenails. I'm not revolting or flexible enough. 

Why I Hate New Year

It's time for another blog post to acknowledge my least favourite of all holidays - New Year.

So, birthdays are a bit of a let down. I think the only reason I enjoy birthdays is because I share them with my twin brother. If it wasn't for him, I would probably feel like my birthday is an artificial celebration. Yes, it's the anniversary of my birth, yes I'm a year older, but what difference does it make? Nonetheless, I get to celebrate my twin's birthday and I get presents, so the whole day isn't a complete waste of time.

The same can't be said for New Year. Other than the new millennium, which was actually pretty impressive, New Year is a pointless, false celebration of nothing in particular. Nothing happens, time just passes. The number of the year changes. This isn't special; the day changes every day. The time changes every second. It's not a big deal. It's at this time of year that I regret being too old to spend New Year asleep in bed and too young to spend New Year looking after a newborn baby or sitting in a retirement home. I yearn for the day when someone will look to me for New Year plans and I'll say 'Sorry Mildred*, I'm spending the day with my grandchildren.'

I hate how everyone feels an immense social pressure to be out and drinking. There is nothing shameful about a night in, alone, on literally any other night. It's only on New Year that it actually matters. This makes any night out inevitably shit, because the entire world is out trying to have a good time. What makes nights out enjoyable for the rest of the year is that everywhere isn't horribly crowded. New Year is the worst time to try and go out. I actively stay in, but even so there's always a huge amount of social juggling trying to make sure everyone is doing something.

It's not a question of not having plans, it's a question of everyone having to have plans, to the point where plans are impossible, After the happy, familiar routine of Christmas we have to suffer this chaotic mess. There either needs to be an enforced religious celebration in which every New Year is spent with family, or everyone needs to treat New Year like a regular evening. Why the hell are we even celebrating the onset of January? January is the second worst month, after February. Lets put an end to this repulsive madness.

I hope everyone has a reasonably pleasant Wednesday night. But if you don't, don't worry. It's just one night out of 365.

*I imagine that when I am old everyone I know will be called Mildred.

Sad Dog Films

I have never had a dog, or any pet in fact. I like dogs. I will happily see a dog and think 'oh, that is a cute dog.' If somebody has a dog I am mildly interested, but not as interested as I would be if they had a miniature, talking dragon. I have friends (and my mum) who will go crazy whenever they see a dog. They will immediately feel a strong emotional connection to the dog and want to pet it. When I watch adverts with my mum if there is a dog she will say 'Aww what a lovely little dog,' but when I once pointed out an adorable baby in an advert she said 'Nah, I don't really like babies.' Great, thanks Mum.

So at Christmas I saw Marley and Me, which is supposedly a really sad film. I saw it with a grown man (and former dog owner) who cried. I also watched it in the company of the most pitiful dog I had ever met, who was blind in both eyes, had strange growths behind his ears, and whined whenever he wasn't lying down. The main thing I got out of Marley and Me was that being a newspaper columnist looks like a fun job, and that Eric Dane played the exact same character he did in Grey's Anatomy. Given the hype about how sad the film was, I was expecting Marley to die saving one of the children from drowning. When (spoilers!) the dog died- and I don't mean to sound callous- it was kind of an anticlimax. Marley was old, he had a good life. Dogs aren't immortal.

Recently I watched My Dog Skip, which was more interesting because it was a coming-of-age story set in the American South with 15-year-old Frankie Muniz managing to play a convincing 9-year-old. I did cry a bit at the end of that one, mostly because (spoilers!) I thought Skip was going to die when the evil alcohol smugglers, or whoever they were, hit him with a spade, but then he actually died of old age when Frankie Muniz was off at university. Also, to be honest, Skip was a nicer dog than Marley.

I cried when Simba's dad died though. And Nemo's mum. Not Bambi's mum, though. I once painted a picture when I was three which is either 'Father Christmas Walking Through The Woods' or 'The Death Of Bambi's Mother'. I'm not sure if the big red splodge is Father Christmas or the blood of a fallen doe. I'm probably a terrible person.

Secret Badassery

One morning recently I was going to wear a white t-shirt to do work experience in an office, but I decided that I am, in fact, an anarchist, so I wore a black t-shirt instead. My subtle rebellion against the establisment was ignored. I was not stopped at reception by a bouncer saying 'You can't come in here young lady, that black t-shirt is far too hardcore for the office environment.' Once again, my secret badassery is so stealthy that nobody has caught on to it yet.

Sometimes, if I am feeling particularly tired or grumpy, I consider putting on eyeliner, as if that would be a noticable statement against authority and would frighten people on the train. 'Imagine,' I sometimes think, 'If I wore nail varnish, that'll show everyone that I am wild and out of control.' I seem to have made up completely non-existent uniform regulations so that I can mentally rebel against the adult world without actually rebelling. If I listen to angry teenage-girl music while wearing boots I somehow assume that this is it, this is the revolution. I am the Mockingjay. 

In truth, I respect authority. I used to cry when I got told off in school, apart from when I was sent out of maths for laughing because that was ridiculous*. I obediently follow instructions. Sometimes I automatically refuse cups of tea because I feel like I don't want to waste time and resources, then I have to awkwardly backtrack and say that I actually would like a cup of tea, please, thank you, if it's not too much trouble. All my memories that involve actual bad behaviour are followed by even stronger memories of tearfully apologising. The toughest, most rebellious thing I have ever done was put glitter gel in my mum's facecream, when I was eight. I tried to say it wasn't me, I tried to blame it on my dad, or on my brother, who can't walk, and who in the unlikely event of gaining the use of his legs probably wouldn't think 'At last, I can make her go to work with glitter on her face, that'll show her.' Then I admitted it was me, cried, and was sent to my room. 

Basically: beware me. I may never have had a detention, I may have had a nightmare last night about being late for a lesson because I left my bag in another classroom, but I am a RECKLESS, UNTAMEABLE BADASS.** 

*I was forbidden from smiling for the rest of the lesson, as if it's illegal to actually enjoy maths. 

**Perhaps not. 

The Return of the Anne

After a two year hiatus, I have decided to re-start my old teenage blog.

This is for several reasons. Firstly, I can't remember why I stopped blogging. Perhaps the sad news story that I read on the 15th March 2012 was so harrowing that I suffered some kind of brain lapse, and subsequently repressed the memory that I ever had a blog. Perhaps I was overcome with university work. Perhaps I took a deliberate leave of absence from blogging to focus on my personal life. Maybe I just decided to tweet everything instead. I will never know.

Secondly, my parents found this blog one night in 2013. From the sound of it, they sat up for most of the night reading it. My dad then printed off my Christmas-related blog posts and stuck them on the labels of my Christmas presents. While I found their enthusiastic response encouraging, I was pretty embarrassed. They didn't create me and raise me to adulthood so they could Google me. Nonetheless, my dad seemed disappointed that I no longer had a blog, so maybe I'm restarting this as a desperate cry for further approval. Hi Dad? Dad? Are you reading this? Dad?

Thirdly, I think of things to blog about all the time. I enjoyed blogging. I miss blogging. When I tried to blog about my time in Indiana it eventually failed, because I was tweeting everything I blogged, I was extremely busy watching every season of Grey's Anatomy, and I got acclimatised into America so that it stopped being as much of a novelty. People stopped mispronouncing my name. They asked me the same questions ("Do you watch Sherlock?" "So do you, like, drink a lot of tea?") over and over again. Now I have new things to blog about. A lot has happened since March 2012. I am a real grown-up, even though I'm currently reading the most recent Percy Jackson book and I still can't drive.

So, to the hopefully at least one person who is actually reading this (Dad, turn off the computer and go to bed), expect more blog entries in the future.

News Story

Today I read a sad news story, which I thought I would share with anyone who reads this blog. I know this is cruel of me, because it was one of the most depressing articles I have ever read and this kind of needless tragedy makes the world seem like a harsh and devastating place.

So basically there was a teeny tiny baby bunny rabbit in Germany that was born with no ears. This is already a deeply emotional and heart-wrenching story. It gets worse. Here is a picture:

See? It's tiny and cute and also with a tragic deformity. As if that wasn't bad enough, it's now dead. I just heard the sound of your hearts breaking. I'm sorry, I wish it wasn't true. This rabbit was set for global fame, when a TV cameraman stepped backwards, onto the bunny, which died.

He (the bunny, not the cameraman) was only 17 days old. Imagine if you were 17 days old and born without ears and you couldn't even hear your imminent death coming before a cameraman trod on you. I might as well mention while I'm here that Father Christmas isn't real and one day everything will be dead. But hey, the weather was lovely in Kent today.

(To clarify, I do not google anything related to baby bunny rabbits, I was grabbed on the Guardian website by the headline 'German Celebrity Bunny Crushed To Death By Cameraman)

Two Born Every Episode

So at the recommendation of my friends who study Biomedicine and enjoy a good cry, I decided to check out the Channel 4 fly-on-the-wall documentary 'One Born Every Minute,' which is part horror film, part soap opera and part sitcom. In fact, I can't quite believe it's not a sitcom, sort of like 'The Thick of It' but with a maternity ward.

I think part of the reason why this programme has won BAFTAs is because it covers the full spectrum of human emotion. While watching it I alternate between covering my eyes, wincing, saying "Stop being a dick Steve" to a husband who keeps blowing up the rubber gloves and throwing them around the room, crying and getting annoyed at the woman who decides at the last minute that she doesn't want a baby after all and needs to go home and water the plants.

Then there's the receptionist who at one point says on the phone: "Gotta go, darling, we've got an ambulance in here. No, not an actual ambulance, that wouldn't fit through the door." Just now (I'm on episode three, not sure how much more I can take) I thought that the midwife was genuinely about to rip off a baby's head. Most of it, however, seems to be focused on the weird things people say under stress. The greatest moment of the show (and possibly of all television) so far was a woman complaining that childbirth was hurting a bit and the midwife responding with: "It's meant to hurt, you're at the ring of fire." The Ring of Fire???? This isn't that bit in 'Finding Nemo' where Nemo has to swim through the volcano in the fish tank.

Even better, in the next episode, based on the preview, there's a couple having a debate about whether it would be amoral to name a child 'God.'

People are so weird.

Things I Do Not Want To See On My News Feed

I fully understand that the son of family friends was trying to raise awareness of animal cruelty. I completely agree that it is wrong to be cruel to animals. This does not mean I am prepared, early on a Thursday morning while feeling a bit under the weather, to see a picture of an Alsatian with it's face blown off by a firework. It was horrific. When I scroll through Facebook I expect photos, people commenting on their lives, amusing Kent uni memes, but NOT THIS.

It was right underneath a photo that my crazy, frequently drunk Canadian friend from Sydney posted of her crotch (in shorts, steady on). I thought 'jeez, the stuff people put on Facebook' and then I saw the dog. Canadian friend, you can post as many gratuitous crotch shots as you like if it spares me from the sight of dead animals with blown up faces.

If I ever see anything resembling a dead human with a blown up face I will be deleting my facebook and renouncing the internet. I will become Amish and never look at or think about technology ever again. I mean it.

Poetry Seminars Continued

I've had a really good week, and then came the poetry seminar.

We were lulled into a false sense of security at first, re-writing 'Row Row Row Your Boat' in different poetic forms. I thought "this is ok, this is a bit like primary school." How wrong I was.

For next week we have to write sonnets. That's fine, no problem, I can learn how to write a sonnet. Then we were told we had to write love sonnets. I thought that I could probably do that at a stretch if I made it deliberately vague, fictitious and light-hearted (I mean, not only do we have to write it down on paper but we have to read it out loud to other humans.) Then it got worse.

It became, 'Love and/or Eroticism' which then became...sex poetry. Sex poetry. We are all terrified of having to write ANY poetry in the first place, let alone sex poetry. We have fourteen words we have to put in to our sex poems (one for each line of a sonnet) including 'fuck', 'thrust' and 'scratch.' I like, can't. A few people were planning on being mysteriously ill next week, but I feel the braver option is to write a poem, sticking to the rules of a sonnet and using the key words, about how much I don't want to write and read out a sex poem. So far all I have is:

'Fuck, I don't want to write a sex poem
I'm going to thrust over to another university'

It's a work-in-progress, admittedly. Sex poems were not mentioned in the course booklet. We were not forewarned of this at the open day. I feel this is quite a dramatic and sudden jump from 'Row Row Row Your Boat.'

Poetry (Don't worry, not actual poetry)

Narrative theory last term was pretty scary. We occasionally had to write stuff and read it aloud in front of other people. That is nothing compared to the sheer horror of this term's poetry module.

If there was a module called 'Nudity Theory and Practice,' in which a group of us went to a seminar room, took off all our clothes and talked about what we look like naked, it would be only slightly scarier than having to write poetry and show it to other people. Ok, I exaggerate, but there's a reason why if I write poetry it is funny and rhyming.

First of all we had to find our way to the seminar room, at five o'clock in the evening, in the dark, through a winding maze of corridors. The seminar room has three glass walls, so we are completely surrounded by darkness. We all just kind of sat there not looking each other in the eyes, as if it was Sex Addicts Anonymous (it felt worse than alcoholism) or as if we were all about to play a completely sober game of strip poker.

Then the seminar tutor asked us to raise our hands if we ever read poetry for fun, in our own time. It was literally just me and some guy called Nathan. Then we were asked if we were all scared shitless (not her exact words) about writing poetry for this course, and everyone raised their hands and giggled nervously.

The thing that I dread the most is if someone in the seminar had a traumatic childhood, writes a poem about it, reads it out, and then cries. I can see that happening. Particularly after I've just read out something jovial and Dr Seuss like, and the seminar tutor's like "Thanks for that Anne, and now on to Caroline*, with her poem about sexual abuse."

I suppose I'll see next week.



*There is no Caroline.

2012

Well, 2011 was fantastic. Backpacking around Australia, starting university, all that was really very good. In fact it was the best year so far (not in recorded history, I heard 1969 was pretty good, I mean in my life.)

It may be because 2011 was so great, but I am not yet warming to 2012. I personally don't believe the world is going to end, but so far there have been moments when it felt like it might. For example, yesterday I didn't feel particularly well, and then the internet died for no reason. I began to sharpen my weapons for the apocalypse.

Today I went to the dentist, because I had some really important top-secret information which needed to be tortured out of me by some sadists. "This should be your normal teeth cleaning routine" said the dentist, as he tried to extract as much blood from my gums as possible. "You should do this every night for the rest of your life."

Not only was I subject to this torture ("Are you alright?" the dentist asked, as he and his evil assistant cleaned my teeth using what felt like a cattle prod and a vacuum cleaner. He'd numbed my gums and I was unable to answer with anything other than "Aarrghh") but I have to subject myself to this every single night, sometimes at university, while drunk. There is of course, a chance that I might die. I could lose several pints of blood and collapse, a limp corpse, into my sink, surrounded by floss and interdental brushes. Forget zombies, floods and plagues of locusts, this is the end of the world.

Tomorrow I'm going to the opticians. Maybe they'll tell me that the way to achieve 20/20 vision is to, every night, stab myself repeatedly in the eyeballs.

Controversy Bingo

Normally I love people, but not on the 23rd December (except for Laura, because it's her birthday).

Today is the day that we have some relatives over for lunch, who arrive, freshly botoxed, from the South of France*. Then from midday until four they sit and play a really fun Christmas game with the grandparents, called 'Who Can Make The Most Controversial Statement,' or 'Controversy Bingo'. Some gems so far include:

1. Cousin Emma is thinner than Anne. I mean, she looks thinner. (My Mum counteracted this one with "Emma has a bonier face.")

2. That word 'gay', once such a lovely, wholesome word meaning 'happy' or 'cheerful' is being tragically misused nowadays. What a pity.

3. Boys are better at singing than girls.

4. Anne's necklace is too long. Never mind what Topshop say, it could do with being about six inches shorter.

Once we reached the annual 'Global Warming doesn't exist' discussion, a Christmas tradition as normal in my house as the tree and presents, my Mother and I retired to the kitchen in order to be angry in private.

I expected the usual round of homophobia and misogyny, but the cousin Emma comparisons are going a bit far. I mean, we've already established that Emma, a genuinely lovely person, is more polite and hard-working than me, and that she has a perfect boyfriend and never expresses anger, but now thinner? Also, this is not the first time I have recieved fashion advice from my grandfather, who is 87, and, to be honest, not an expert in this field. If he was Giorgio Armani himself I would listen.

My parents and I coped with the afternoon by happily counterbalancing the game of 'Controversy Bingo' with a game of 'Has She Had a Facelift?,' in which you summon members of the family into the kitchen under the pretence of getting them to lay the table, and ask their opinion on the matter.

In the mean time, I adopt the following personality:




I think its important to get all the ill will and general wankerishness out of the way in time for Christmas Eve, when we will all be full of the joys of the festive season.

*I think they're in London for Christmas, they just talk about their villa in the South of France a lot.

Love Actually Isn't All Around

For some reason Blogger wouldn't let me comment on Harry's excellent blog on being single at Christmas, so I am writing my own.

Every year, inevitably, I am single. This comes with questions from my grandmother along the lines of "Your cousin Emma has a lovely boyfriend. Do you have a boyfriend Annie?" I always say "no" while my parents deliberately change the subject. However I'm tempted by creative excuses, such as:

a) No Granny, I'm too busy having casual sex with total stangers.
b) No Granny, I am a lesbian.
c) Yes Granny, his name is Chad and he's my drug dealer.

A university friend of mine was recently accused by another friend of 'always being in a relationship.' She protested that this wasn't true, and she had actually been single for four months before her current relationship. It's difficult to avoid a bitter, sarcastic internal monologue going "Oh poor you. Four whole months, that must have been so hard." I try not to be bitter though, as some people just have relationships more frequently than others. I propose relationship communism, where love is divided equally amongst everyone. I could be the Chairman Mao of relationships.

As Harry said, however, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Statistically single people will not be single forever, and the general feeling of loneliness is due to songs like 'Lonely this Christmas.' Try to imagine a house that's not a home, try to imagine Christmas all alone.I like to think that refers to people who don't have families, rather than single people. After all, we all have people we love and who love us to spend Christmas with right?*

It's not like any of us would be spending actual Christmas day with a boyfriend or girlfriend anyway. It's just the build-up that's the lonely bit, particularly as for me that build-up takes place in Canterbury, a beautiful, historial little town full of twinkly lights and buskers singing 'All I Want For Christmas' outside old-fashioned sweet shops.

But it's important to remember (without meaning to sound cheesy, except, inevitably, this will sound cheesy) that we are not really alone. I'm not walking around Canterbury by myself, I'm with friends. We all have friends and family.** Think of the starving children in Africa. Do they know it's Christmas time at all?***

Well, I hope that put things in perspective. Remember, no matter how depressing the build up to Christmas can be, that's nothing compared to how catastrophically shit New Year is.


*As far as I'm aware, everyone who follows my blog has parents/guardians. If you don't, I'm really sorry.

**Again, I'm really sorry if you don't. I'll be your friend.

***If you're reading this, and you're a starving child in Africa, then it's Christmas btw.

Rebel Without A Cause

Last week I had a dream that I was Lady Sybil from Downton Abbey. I was all set to abandon the aristocracy and run away with Branson, the politically radical Irish chauffeur, when, regrettably, I woke up.

Ever since then I've had a slight feeling of dissatisfaction. This is partly as I'm not actually about to elope with a fictional character portrayed by a man voted the sexiest in Ireland, and partly because it is very hard to rebel against anything nowadays. My views (men and women are equal, gay people should be able to get married, we should narrow the gap between the rich and the poor) were radical in 1912, but not so much now. This is, of course, a good thing; it shows that the world has generally improved.

Rebellion nowadays is a bit...lame. It's completely impossible to rebel against open-minded, liberal parents who I completely agree with on all major issues. I wouldn't want to. I like to think if I were actually a member of the Edwardian aristocracy I would be a bit radical, but you never can tell. If I wanted the disapproval of my parents, I would get an offensive tattoo, date someone from The Only Way is Essex, a programme I have mercifully never watched, and join the BNP.
Reading 'How To Be A Woman' by Caitlin Moran, hilarious and insightful though it may be, is not going to cut it. My mum wants to read it after me.

In the good ol' days they could rebel with style. Please take a moment to do a Wikipedia search for Jessica Mitford. She was, in my opinion, the coolest person of the 20th century. Her family were aristocrats, and they were all completely and delightfully mental. One of her sisters married Oswald Moseley, the head of the British Union of Fascists, another sister fell in love with Hitler and then killed herself when Britain declared war with Germany, while Jessica became a communist and ran away to join the Spanish Civil War at the age of nineteen. There's a picture of her (which I have in a book but can't find on the internet) as an old lady playing boggle with Maya Angelou. What a badass.

It seems the way to cause controversy nowadays is to go backwards. This can only be another sign that the world is improving. My cousin's fundamentalist, homophobic, majorly conservative views are met with far more concern from my grandparents than anything I believe ever could be.

Because I can't think of a sufficient way to finish this blog, here's a picture of Caitlin Moran with Sybil and Branson from Downton Abbey (Jessica Brown-Findlay and Allen Leech, because there is no point pretending that I don't always remember actor names)

Hugs Not Drugs

I've had a chesty cough for the past week, which is weird because I rarely have a cough, and I don't have any other symptoms. Interestingly, this cough began on the day that the three smokers in my hallway realised that it's possible to smoke in the bedrooms without the smoke alarm going off.

I couldn't sleep at two this morning, and I heard voices outside my room, so I went to hang out with two smokers in one of their bedrooms, which gradually turned into a weed den. As the night of listening to slightly pretentious Indie music on YouTube progressed, my voice became huskier and huskier until I eventually had to leave. I'd taken my duvet with me so I had to change the cover at four in the morning, because it stank of tobacco. My cough has worsened today, almost certainly due to the passive inhalation of both tobacco and weed.

The cleaners are turning a blind eye, which, in a way, is good of them because they also turn a blind eye to our new kettle which hasn't been safety checked, but I kind of wish the smokers would return to just going outside. I understand that it's cold in November and it's an effort to walk, but they chose the habit.

The more I hang out with smokers the less I understand it. These people spend about a third of their weekly allowance of cigarettes, while I spend about one twenty-fifth of my weekly allowance on the Strepsils which I need because of their smoking habit. They have to find people to supply them with weed. They can't walk from our building to the building where we eat dinner without lighting up on the way. Some of them need weed to write essays. I for one, keep a bag of chocolate Crunchie rocks in my desk drawer, which are cheap and I don't need to block the bottom of the door with clothes to prevent the smell of the Crunchie rocks escaping and setting off the chocolate alarm.

Oh dear, another complainy blog. On the plus side, soon I'm going to buy a hat with the proceeds of not smoking.

The Nightclub Issue

I feel I have blogged excessively over the past month despite in September thinking I had given up, but this issue persists too much not to write about. I briefly talked about hating nightclubs in Sydney where people go out with the sole intention of groping backpackers, but at least that was a cultural experience. At university, I still hate nightclubs. If they were all unexpectedly shut down tomorrow, I'd be wandering amidst all the protest riots saying "Oh well, never mind, why don't we just go to a nice pub?"

It's currently twenty past five in the morning and I had the lovely experience of fleeing the university nightclub at half one, by myself, in order to escape from Gropey 'Would you like to come back to my room' McInappropriatetouching. I was under the impression that I was generally feeling all right until I got to my room and cried out all the vodka. The thing is, it wasn't actually Gropey himself who upset me, it was the fact that I feel like I'm in the 0.5% of people who would not like to go back to his room because I don't actually know him. That's the problem with nightclubs, you don't actually know anyone except for the people you arrive with, because (mostly) everyone looks and dances exactly the same. Which is not to say that I never enjoy myself; if I'm with nice people and there's no expectation of groping and it's one of the rare occasions when I actually like the song then I have a good time. Except I had a better time last week, when I was in a slightly quieter bar and one of my friends suggested that we left at eleven, bought ice-cream, and sat in the corridor in our pyjamas watching Pulp Fiction.

Really, nightclubs combine a selection of the things that I hate: annoying, repetitive music which seems to be from an album called 'Songs to play in nightclubs about being in a nightclub,' people who make me feel like a Jane Austen character for thinking that emotional intimacy should, in an ideal world, come before physical intimacy, and pretending that I can dance.

I am, reassuringly, absolutely fine because just before escaping the nightclub I managed to find Catie and screamed in her ear (not because I'm rude, but because that's the only way to communicate) that I was leaving and the reason why, so no-one thinks I am a) passed out in a corner somewhere, or b) With Gropey McInappropriateTouching.

One day, hopefully, I will be thirty and nobody will ever expect me to go clubbing. That applies to both nightclubs and clubbing seals. Which is also bad.

Typical Quiet Night

Two friends of mine (both girls) just came into my room in their underwear, completely drunk, stole both my winter and my summer dressing gowns and put on my lipstick, and ran upstairs to go and watch porn in the public computer room.

I, of course, chased after them in my pyjamas with a giant red lipstick print one of them had left on my cheek, apologising to the students in the computer room who were actually trying to do work.

Sometimes university is mental.

Universations

I have had a lot of bizarre conversations recently; far too many to write down on a long word document for Zanny to turn into a book. (Just an example of the sort of thing which might happen.)

Just now, I had a conversation which flowed perfectly from horrific sexually transmitted disease urban myths to James Joyce. Immature to pretentious in about ten seconds, which, thinking about it, is what every conversation throughout sixth form was like as well.

Earlier today, in my seminar, we learnt about Iambic Tetrameter, which is when there are four beats in a line of poetry. I was wondering why it was called 'tetrameter' and not 'quatrameter' and then had an epiphany, which I shared with the girl next to me and we sat there with our minds blown for the next several minutes. Tetris is called tetris because there are four blocks which make up each of the shapes that fall down. It is possible that no-one reading this blog finds that quite as exciting as I do, but never mind.

On Friday, a peculiar third year boy approached me in a club/bar-type place and then, without really any build-up other than a brief discussion about how bad the music was (they were playing Love Shack), invited me on what might have been a date to the library. It pretty much went like this:

"This is purely hypothetical, but I hang out in the library a lot, so if you ever come to the library, maybe we could get coffee." Then he went away and unsubtly spoke to his friend about me, complete with mouthed words and enthusiastic pointing.

I was left both confused and marginally depressed. Confused because it was a hypothetical date to an absolutely enormous library at some point in the future. That could not be vaguer unless I was asked out on a metaphysical date to the universe at an unfixed point in the space-time continuum (which, by the way, would be awesome.) I was also marginally depressed because I love coffee and I'm quite fond of libraries, but the guy in question did not know that, so I get the impression that he says that to all the girls. I think I may have been targeted because I was exactly the same height as him.

In other news, my conservative, incredibly religious, homophobic cousin has recently announced his engagement to a woman from his conservative, incredibly religious, homophobic church and they're going to have conservative, incredibly religious, homophobic babies. That's the depressing future of my surname, which originally belonged to Polish Jews and is now going to belong to the Church of Scotland.

That's all folks. Tonight I am going to a 'pub quiz' with a due sense of dread because apparently here 'pub quiz' involves clothes-swapping and blowing up condoms.

The Cure For Illness

I have freshers' flu. I kind of assumed that because freshers was the week before last I had miraculously escaped, but no such luck.

Aside from one seminar, I spent all of today drinking an endless cycle of tea, coffee and hot chocolate and attempting to read 'Oedipus the King' but having to have an hour-long nap every other page. Obviously I should have had an early night, but I couldn't sleep so I ended up walking to the other side of campus in my pyjamas with some drunk people, one of whom was just wearing knickers and a top. I feel like perhaps the fresh air did me good.

University is good so far.

Jet Lag

It is 4.18am and I am in Saint Albans.

It is both weird and wonderful to be home. Both my brother and my bedroom look completely different. My parents made huge, vast improvements to my bedroom as a nice surprise, and my brother appears to have aged about five years.

The flight, incidentally, was horrible. I had a cold, as did everybody else on the flight, so it was 24 hours of everyone's germs circulating around the plane. However it got me home, and I managed to stay awake yesterday by setting up my new iPod and going to see the neighbours. I didn't get to sleep until midnight due to the cold, and then naturally woke up at 3.30 and was unable to get back to sleep*. I therefore cannot promise to be coherent later today. Talking to the neighbours yesterday I found myself forgetting how to string words together in order to make sentences.

Anyway, it is very weird to not be in Australia. All the Melbourne relatives gave me lovely cards and a bracelet and saying goodbye was very difficult. Australia was amazing. It was the best and weirdest six months of my life. I met a lot of lovely people and a lot of weirdoes. I mostly went to beautiful places but I went to a few horrible places as well. I can't quite believe it all actually happened.

*By 'unable to get back to sleep,' I mean desperate to a) go on the laptop, b) listen to new songs on new iPod and c) Be awake before Laura and Jane show up in about four and a half hours.