It's been a while...

Flip my laptop open, it flickers into life. A couple of whirring noises, the Windows start-up sound flitters through the air. Type password in, easy, simple, anyone could guess it. Or maybe that’s the point? It’s so simple that no-one would think of it immediately. The screen’s only been on standby; Google Chrome displays a range of different tabs, Facebook, Twitter, 4OD, a couple of online journals (probably JSTOR) and a page that displays Brazil’s election results.

I check Facebook to see if I have any notifications, oh, look, I’m popular! The red box over the notifications button invites me to click it. Disappointing. An invite for a game I really don’t want to join, some event notifications for student nights out I don’t plan on going to, and if I’m lucky, someone has messaged me to say hi. My favourite message at the moment is a group one entitled ‘Jess drank pee.’ Don’t ask.

I then flick to my work pages. I frown at the PDFs I need to download from JSTOR, and my mind draws a blank when I try and decipher the stats on the page for Brazil’s legislative elections. Would someone like to tell me when I signed up for a mathematics degree? Never mind making a table out of my results, I can’t decipher the initial statistics I need to put together.

I press the minimise button, and my university work disappears. I turn the volume up to maximum on my iTunes, and press play. My shuffle chooses Kate Nash. I have admittedly bad music taste in general, but this one is good.

I hate seagulls,

And I hate being sick.

-          Kate Nash, I Hate Seagulls

I am so ready to pack my things up for Easter and clamber aboard the First Great Western to London Paddington. I want my train seat back, my pull-out tray, the window to my side. I want to stare out at the Welsh hills and make up stories in my head that I will one day be a pro-explorer and camp there, buying myself a patterned tent and co-ordinating camping gear, with a compact little camping stove where I can toast pink and white marshmallows until they go all gooey. Sugar rush.

"Toast Meeeee"

I feel so stressed out right now. For once I’m on top of my work. Yes, I know. Miracles do happen. I've rekindled my on-off library romance, and we are now officially back in a relationship, after spending at least three long days in each other’s company. So that’s not a problem. I am mostly on top of my exercise regime, apart from my recent ‘man arms’ pandemic where a dodgy Wednesday night picture showed me looking a little bit too muscly for my liking. So that’s not a problem, either.

I want things to be back to normal, please.

I’ll let you in a little secret. I’m not quite as confident as I sometimes pretend to be.

Big love, xo

Monday Morning

Busy weeks, lots of gym work, lots of lectures, time wasted on Facebook, library sessions, living at the marina, spending too much time on rivers, discussing a lot of rowing-related topics, discovering more blisters on my hands and feeling very masculine, eating my weight's worth in food and now coping with a jelly belly, driving to London and getting stuck there, thinking about people that are no longer in my life (love you Grandad), calling up my Mum because she is amazing at reassuring me, having an amazing group of friends, writing an essay, getting very interested in African proverbs and getting a little bit too distracted, eating porridge and drinking tea, sitting in my pyjamas and typing away on my laptop.

So when my essay is finished, I'm actually going to make the effort and write a real post. But I'm having far too much fun writing about postcolonial literature at the moment.

Big love, xo.