Dance Routine.

Dear Ether,

I find that my life (but presumably not just mine) is dictated by routine.

I’m not sure how I feel about these routines. In term time, the ‘routine’ was always such a mixture of lectures, seminars, rehearsals and socialising that I never minded. If anything, routine can be comfort. I don’t think I could sleep if I neglected to brush my teeth before I got into bed, and that’s not simply out of compulsive dental hygiene.

However, the last few weeks have bred a kind of inside routine. I wake up (inside) and find I have no justifiable reason to go out. Milk is infinite, books are never-ending and the computer offers endless half-hearted entertainment.

I hate this.

Despite having my only exam this Friday, last night I went out with some friends and had a meal, then did the classic combination of conversing and dancing. I wasn’t drunk, I wasn’t (very) tired, I wasn’t worried. At the end of the night, stood in the street waiting for a taxi to pick us up and take us home, I truly felt alive.

I don’t think it was simply the pleasure of a routine broken. The fact that upon waking I began my morning routine without hesitation suggests I really am a creature of habit. Just one who occasionally needs to be out in that wild, wild outside.

Epitaph.

The walk to the park involves a cut through a grave-yard. .

I once walked through it alone on an evening in which the scrubby churchyard cemetery looked beautiful; the sun setting over the park turned the graves into mirrored monoliths, the silence gifted it a sense of solitude you rarely perceive in a city.

I can’t say whether I’d stopped walking to savour the moment or not, but with a sudden crash I was suddenly in the company of a small sparrow, writhing in the dust.

The bird was clearly hurt and scared, unable to fly. My instinct was take it back to the house and try and nurse it back to health. But I was a good walk from home and couldn’t possibly carry this flurry of frenetic energy across main roads all the way home.

It was a moment in which I felt truly helpless; alone in the prime of my youth, surrounded by the dead and confronted by the dying.

I eventually walked on, and ran through the park so hard it stung my eyes and crippled my sides.

Re-memorise.

Dear Ether,

a lost clip found:




A disheartening day's revision made this find all the more valuble. It's simply a quick pan around, but it's pretty precious. It is of me, Alex Morris, Alex Milward, Ellie and Sarah at some unholy hour continuing the Junk afterparty until dawn.

There are of course a plethora of stories which narrate this night (the Asda expedition at 4am in which Morris bought himself a top quality fleece, Ellie some fine boots, and Milward got turned away for attempting to buy alcohol free beer several times). The stories though are mainly buried in in-jokes and blurred with memory.

However, I think its real significance is that it's a clip of a memory which forces a smile out of me every time I think about it.

I hope I never shake that stupid smile, or those stupid friends.

a la prochaine. x

That Weekday Disposition.

Dear Ether,

‘I don't care if Monday's blue
Tuesday's grey and Wednesday too
Thursday I don't care about you
It's Friday, I'm in love’

So said the busker in Liverpool Town Centre. The one with the big hat who reminds you a bit of James Blunt. I believed him too. The sun on my face and the shiny bracelet I found on the floor made every alright with me.

The Friday Feeling quickly evaporated with a frantic episode of attempting to catch missed trains, and trying to convince two very scouse ladies in the ticket office that B-O-R-T-H was in fact a real place. Much sprinting up and down stopped escalators and a little flirting did eventually ensure L a safe journey to meet her family.

With the busker’s words still ringing in my head however, I picked up some beers and headed determinedly home aboard the hottest, foulest excuse for an 80a I have ever witnessed. The journey dragged. I resorted to translating my own thoughts into French to try and dull the ache of being surrounded by people for whom buses are not only a form of transport, but of entertainment. My stop in sight I snatched up my possessions and began excusing my way to the front of the bus when RIP.

Nothing died, the bag just split. Now clutching two four-packs of premium lager in my hands, I staggered from the station and broke into a jog, determined to put a halt to the rapidly increasing journey time. The beers made their own bid for a freedom half way home and I was left chasing eight individual cans of Carling down a main road. Bereft of dignity, beer and any trace of Friday Feeling a kind lady cautiously offered me another bag. I did my best airs graces and tried not to seem like a young drunk who had just stolen his night’s bevvies from an off license.

500 Days of Summer concluded the day. Our protagonist of the film loves Summer. Matured, he eventually however falls for Autumn. I cling to the hope that I can treat the days of the week the same way. When Friday offers nothing but frustration, I can but turn to Saturday for sensation.

RHYME.

a la prochaine. x

Adventure!

Dear Ether,

A new blog!

I’ve always loved empty pages. Mainly because my god-awful handwriting makes full pages look terrible.

New blog is new because the old one was already far too achingly self-conscious for any of you literary types to read. This one hopes to serve the much simpler purpose of being somewhere to document my happenings. I’ve got big plans for the next year. And then some.

Right now I’m in the depths of exam period, and old FB is brim-full with the woes of examinations. I However, have only one complaint. One exam. On the last day of exam period. WHY TIMETABLE, WHY?

Aside from that, I am so nerd-ily infatuated by the likes of Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley that it hurts me more that I’ll never get to meet their acquaintance than that I have to read their poetry.

Anyway, my real hope is that this blog will be about what’s to come in my life. So as my favourite film, Up, would shout at you:

‘ADVENTURE IS OUT THERE!’

a la prochaine. x