Growing up gracefully

Growing old is quite daunting for a number of us. It has come to a point where many of us third year students have to start making decisions about what the fo' we're going to do with our lives-Masters? London? Travelling? Dole? Of course you naturally lose track of time and we forget that we've actually evolved from freshers to third years. Last night like old farts, some friends and I sat around pre drinking and reminiscing about the past 2 and a bit years. Curiously I thought what best to talk about whilst we're on the subject of uni memories: first impressions.

My first impressions on everybody I met in my first year have obviously changed. If a person hasn't matured in the slightest since being at uni, then there is someting fundementally wrong with them if they haven't learnt a single thing about adulthood. But my friends and I have definitely all changed in some way. For me, I'm better with money (call it an improvement)and I simply don't like going out as much. Last night I sat still with a full glass of vodka and cherryade after 20mins. Firstly, why the hell haven't I got through my drink already, secondly, come 11pm I just want to crawl into bed and watch TV. I'm a far cry from who I was in first year.

First year was mental...absolutely mental. I lived up to James Dean's quote 'dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today'. I didn't really care if I went into uni or not, granted I would feel guilty, nothing a game of pool wouldn't lift the gloom away. I lived in a house in first year with only 3 lads, as you can imagine the bathroom was horrendous and the kitchen was a never ending cesspit of takeaways from the night before. First impressions of us: complete indie kids. The way we dressed, the only genre of music we listened to seemed to be a broken record of indie rock, and our obsession with jamming in our living room. Roll on summer of first year and we come back and things had completely changed. Friendship groups were slowly parting right under our noses and things became really chilled. We started believing that going out was just a fad, 'fuck going out' was our new thing.

Come a year later and we're in that same position of deciding whether or not to get absolutely sloshed. It was Valentines last night so I guess it was appropriate for my single friends to find a nice girl and settle for a romantic dance and whatever comes after. So we're dancing away, I'm becoming increasingly aware that I'm among loads of freshers and I begin to feel quite...old. Between my friends we have established that once you get to third year that 'freshness' and enthusiasm is kind of diminished like a 90 year old granny's libido. I'm not saying we don't have fun, but we don't have as many 'effortless' fun nights that seemed to have occurred every night in first year.

Suddenly one song came on and teleported me back in time to my first year in that same club singing along to the foals. And there we were, my one and only house mate (that managed to go onto second year) howling 'cassius its over, you're second best, cassius its over, you're second best, second best second best'.


Everything was rather cheery after touching familiar grounds. The Foals, The Killers 'Mr Brightside', Black eyed peas 'I gotta a feeling' and Dizzee Rascal 'bonkers' summed up the music in first year. M83 a new band apparently got everyone in high spirits, and I caught a sudden realisation that I haven't kept up with indie music since first year. I fell in love with this from the first time it came on. I can't really expplain why this song makes me feel all sentimental, but some songs just replace the words with music to extract certain emotions.



I guess that in my last year I've learnt that growing old and leaving uni is scary, daunting, but exciting. I should enjoy the time that I've got left and relish the good memories. I don't need to chase after the past nor live up to my 18 yr old antics, just chill and accept that I can't stomach £1.21 Sainsburys cider any more nor not wearing a coat to save a quid on cloakroom. Now that's growing up gracefully.

Snowy Leicester

The snow started to fall on Saturday whilst I was still mooching about in Morrisons, It wasn't until today that I saw how deep it was.

I absolutely despise snow for many reasons: 1)its just a nuisance. 2)its too cold. 3)by the next day its all just slush that turns into ice. Thats probably the worst thing about it all. Everything then becomes a slippery mess with ice patches aiming to make you surrender and fall to the ground like a bag of shit in front of everyone. Bitter? Only slightly.

However, snow makes brilliant landscape photos, so I took my slr on a snowy day trip around the park.










Welcome to the slush...

A fortnight in a nutshell vol.2

Please pardon my laziness again. Yet again I've not made time to update my blog, but I'm going to make this one reasonably long to make up for it. (Although I think it would be best if I do weekly summaries and midweek shorter posts?-would that be better?)

To start things off, my body is in actual pain. I joined the gym last friday and I've been going to a different workout classes nearly every evening. Ive been finding aerobics and BTL (bums, tums, legs) bearable, however, I may have over did it on a thursday body blitz session. I was told I won't break sweat, just intense toning; so I was like okay, I could do with toning...bad f**cking idea. As a beginner into the world of exercising, this workout was way too intense. I'm recovering though, with the help of Neal's Yard Ginger and Juniper warming oil. Its a really nice oil rub to soothe all those stiff and tired parts. The smell is quite strong: juniper smells for me in between rosemary and lavender. I got this for my mum a few years back for when she gets achey after a summer's day gardening, but she's neglected my £11 a bottle rub so I've taken it to uni where it won't go to waste.



Secondly, my knees are a mess, not so much in pain anymore but damn it's horrible to look at. I travelled to hilly hilly Sheffield last weekend to visit my best friend who's at uni there for a night out. Of course this ended badly as we decided to treck home in the early hours of the morning, in our heels, holding doner meat and chips that followed a sequence of me falling over about a dozen of times in the club and then the streets. Hence this is why my knees looks like this...


I've said before that I "live to eat". I love eating anything and everything (I'm chinese-theres not much I don't like). I'm going to post daily nom noms and meal deals here; here's a showcase of what I've discovered this week:

Macaroons! They are quite expensive in London and even in Starbucks, ranging from £2.50 to £4 a single macaroon! It was considered a 'food holiday' for me, you sort of need to save up for one when you could get a whole cake for less. But I've solved this predicament now as M&S do 12 macaroons for only £5! It's brilliant. I can't taste much difference from M&S and Ladurée. Except for the loss of Ladurée's pretty packaging you're left with yummy macaroons that won't hurt the bank.



This probably isn't news but Tescos sell Red Velvet cupcakes: 2 for £1.60 I think. However, regardless of the price, they never seem to have any everytime I go in. But this time I managed to snag the last box. Verdict: delicious sickly goodness.



When I'm not lurking about in the reduced section of M&S you'll find me roaming about in Morrisons. I popped into Morrisons over the weekend for a lookabout that ended up lasting 1 and a half hours and £40 down. But alas, I came home with a new hand held blender and a 2 course meal with a bottle of wine for 2, for only £10.





This meal deal is the same offer in you can get at M&S: you get a main, a side, dessert, and a bottle of wine. As much as I love the M&S meal for 2, Morrisons taste slightly better. Maybe becuase we got something different from what we normally get; we got pork belly with cider jus rather than the repetitive chicken and steak mains. For dessert we got tiramisu and sherry trifle with a bottle of red.

If you're near a Morrisons this deal is definitely worth a try, as M&S don't always have £10 meal deals for 2 on everyday.