Epic 36-day (part the second)
Well, I did warn you that thanks to NaNoWriMo it would likely be done in chunks. So here's the next set!
Day 09 - Your beliefs, in great detail
I was christened as a baby into the Christian faith, mainly out of tradition than out of much belief on my parents' part. It was also out of extreme forward thinking on my mum's part - at the time of my birth in the eighties, you needed to be baptised in order to marry in a church, which nearly everybody did given the crappiness of most local registry offices. Not being able to see twenty or thirty years into the future, where everybody would be able to marry wherever they wanted in a variety of exotic and luxurious locations, they decided they would also therefore christen me to make my life easier in future. I was also brought up going to church due to slight Christian leanings on Mum's part and perhaps also to teach us good Christian values. We attended a very traditional (and to my childlike eyes, boring) church, St Michael's, until I was about 8. This was also where my sister was christened - by then we had moved to Maidenhead from my birth county of Hertfordshire. At 8, though, my friend Jade had started attending a much more progressive church in our area, St Mary's, which was much more modern and had a kids' choir. I attended once with my mum and sister and since we all thought it was great we decided to continue going there. My sister and I joined the choir and continued to sing in it until I was about 12. However, the whole religious thing began to go tits up within the family at this stage as by then I had started secondary school, where a couple of volunteers, Kelly & Jody, came in a couple of times a week from St Mary's to run the school CU with a teacher usually supervising. However, one day the teacher wasn't there to supervise, and to cut a long story short, those of us present were led to believe we had witnessed the miracle of gold dust appearing on our hands as evidence of God's love, which we really did see during the meeting. I went home and told my mum because i was happy about it. She however went mad and stopped the CU from operating in the school as well as stopping my sister and I from attending church. There was therefore no church at all for me for about two or three years and I studied a lot on my own at home using Bible study notes gained from secret trips to Maidenhead's religious bookshop. I was eventually allowed to start going again but felt I did not really fit in there and so continued to study at home. I started to have doubts, though, when the CU restarted in school when I was 16 and the focus of it became more evangelical thanks to the girl running it. I did not realise the CU at Exeter would be equally evangelical and so left it after a year, although kept the many excellent friends that I made there, and joined the MethAng society instead, where I made many more marvellous friends. However, by my third year in Exeter I was feeling further and further from God and had many chats with many people on the subject. Ultimately, though, I felt I could not fit into the box that Christianity prescribed and so now no longer class myself as a believer, although I do still harbour certain Christian sympathies/leanings.
Day 10 - What you wore today, in great detail
It being Saturday and not having gone anywhere on account of the snow, I have dressed very slobbily. Purple sports trousers with a white stripe down the outside of each leg, and a fuschia furry sports top (both from Decathlon). I wore them both kayaking on October's school trip. Accompanying the white bra and pants are a pair of very fluffy red and white striped socks, which I was sent for free by Arbonne with their foot cream and foot scrub. GLAM.
Day 11 - Your siblings, in great detail
I have already mentioned my sister in the family section. Luckily I only have one sister, so this won't take long, hehe. She's 21 (will be 22 in March) and is studying for a medical degree at Cardiff University, but is currently intercalating as a regular BSc student in Neuroscience, meaning that when she's finished she'll have an impossible number of letters after her name. Despite no longer being a teenager she is ridiculously tiny and has been known to buy kids' clothes while no longer still a kid. I never know whether to think her clothing choices look amazing or whether they distress and confuse me. She is VERY on trend usually in every respect whereas I am just not. In addition to this she is popular, pretty, intelligent, a social butterfly, multi-talented and modest (she has had every opportunity to ram her various gifts and positive traits down my throat, but never does); not surprisingly this frequently leads to me feeling inferior to her, with or without good reason. She is also incredibly supportive (I can talk to her about most if not all things) and she always makes me laugh (she is great fun to be with). She is most often on my side and I am much more critical of her than she is of me (as far as I am aware at least); I don't know how she puts up with me at times, and I don't know what I'd do without her. Gem, you rule.
Day 12 - What's in your bag, in great detail
YIKES. This is not going to be positive.
Purse, passport, bank details from my old bank, makeup bag, my diary, a half-full box of blackcurrant Ricola, two pencil cases, one umbrella, a broken pair of ear muffs, a red leather notebook from the outlaws that I write poetry in, and God knows what other odds and ends.
Day 13 - This week, in great detail
Truth be told, it hasn't been good. I had a beautiful moment on Tuesday morning when I woke up and for about five seconds thought it was Friday. On Tuesday I had to attend a disciplinary committee for a student whose consistent catalogue of bad behaviour over the past three or four years has finally pissed everyone off enough to have him put on probation. On the brighter side, on Tuesday I also went to a concert of Mussorgsky music, accompanied by Kandinsky drawings, which were projected onto the screen during the performance. On Wednesday I met with the photographer who will do the photos for our wedding, which I thought would not come off at all after we had sat on opposite sides of the café for half an hour not recognising each other. On Friday I went to my old bank to shout at them, as well as getting our printer cartridge filled up near my old work and going to our old favourite supermarket to check out any new additions. I also finished NaNoWriMo on Tuesday, 'winning' at about 6pm. Apart from that I suppose nothing significant really happened - same shit, different day...
Day 14 - Your favourite foods/drinks, in great detail
I love proper hot chocolate - not the thin and watery kind, and definitely not the kind where you are just given the hot milk and a block of chocolate to stir into it. BOY if you want to suck the romance and specialness out of ordering hot chocolate in a café that is definitely the way to go. The best hot chocolate I've ever had is at A Priori Thé, a café in the Passages Vivienne in Paris. It is just soooo thick and creamy and frothy. They also do scones to die for, which I suppose would lead me to one of my favourite foods. Afternoon tea is just brilliant: the tea, the dinky little sandwiches, and the traditional scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam. Beautiful.
While I have become more of a tea connoisseur over the past few years (favourite? possibly Lapsang Souchong), I still ultimately prefer coffee, and have become increasingly fussy since the acquisition about a year ago of our €300 coffee machine that grinds the beans for you. Best €300 we've ever spent, frankly.
In terms of alcoholic drinks, I'm a big Sauternes lover, which is a drink that also holds sentimental value for me since it was the first wine JM and I ever drank together. It's an incredibly sweet white wine which to me is just like godly nectar. For reds I like a good Langedoc or Rhone valley wine. I can't pretend to have great experience of wines from other countries, although Zinfandel is also a good choice usually.
As for foods, I love Thai sticky rice, and just about any Italian or Indian food. Gazpacho is another favourite of mine. I am mainly a desserts girl though and this sweet tooth could explain the extra pounds I carry around with me. I have never met a biscuit that I didn't like. Cake as far as I am concerned is a slightly lesser entity, although if we're talking about Dundee cake that could change things a bit.
Day 15 - Your dreams, in great detail
I wouldn't say I dream frequently but they tend to feature people in places where they shouldn't be, for reasons of time or geography or just general plausibility. They also are often completely off the wall, which might explain some of the wacky sleeptalking my fiancé and family get to hear. Luckily for me I rarely remember any of this.
Day 16 - Your first kiss, in great detail
It was from Will, a third year at Exeter who dumped me after a week "to concentrate on his work" (read: to find someone who'd sleep with him more imminently). He had walked me back to my Lafrowda flat after a LitSoc pub crawl, which I believe had ended at Timepiece. For some reason when we got back we ended up in the kitchen of my flat, and he ended up giving me my first kiss in front of a sink full of dirty washing up. Romantic eh? I don't actually remember very much of it apart from not really knowing what to do. Thankfully, if anything came of that 'relationship', it's that we did so much kissing over the few days it lasted that I soon got the hang of it.
Day 17 - Your favourite memory, in great detail
The day I finally met JM in person for the first time. I know this says "in great detail" but I think in this situation it's important to keep some details for me. I remember feeling impatient all day, thinking during my lecture that the next time I sat there I would have met him. I remember tapping my fingers and feet during Latin, waiting for the moment when I could dash out of there. I remember walking to Exeter station in the snow. I remember the plane was delayed and we seemed to circle in the sky for hours before landing in Paris. I remember wanting to get my luggage off the carousel as quick as possible, and actually waiting at the wrong one for a bit (not that it mattered - by the time I got to the right one the bags still hadn't started coming through anyway). I remember, once I had my bag, practically running to the exit, turning right and seeing him standing there waiting for me. We kissed and we talked and we held each other. It was perfect.
Day 18 - Your favourite birthday, in great detail
I am so lucky to have had so many amazing birthdays. My mother is a cakemaker extraordinaire and I always had an amazing homemade cake, including a Faraway Tree cake with characters traced onto rice paper, coloured in with edible colours and stuck on. I've had the traditional birthday parties - bowling, Laser Quest, church hall and so on - but also have had the good fortune to spend quite a few birthdays on holiday away from home, including in Brighton and in Florida. So my most memorable in this respect is perhaps my 21st, in Florida - that day I was of course also legal to drink in the States and managed to blag a free slice of birthday cake with my first legal cocktail. We went whale watching and then in the evening went to a restaurant with an outdoor terrace and its own little waterfalls. I also share my birthday with my mother so all of my birthdays are memorable for this reason too.
Day 09 - Your beliefs, in great detail
I was christened as a baby into the Christian faith, mainly out of tradition than out of much belief on my parents' part. It was also out of extreme forward thinking on my mum's part - at the time of my birth in the eighties, you needed to be baptised in order to marry in a church, which nearly everybody did given the crappiness of most local registry offices. Not being able to see twenty or thirty years into the future, where everybody would be able to marry wherever they wanted in a variety of exotic and luxurious locations, they decided they would also therefore christen me to make my life easier in future. I was also brought up going to church due to slight Christian leanings on Mum's part and perhaps also to teach us good Christian values. We attended a very traditional (and to my childlike eyes, boring) church, St Michael's, until I was about 8. This was also where my sister was christened - by then we had moved to Maidenhead from my birth county of Hertfordshire. At 8, though, my friend Jade had started attending a much more progressive church in our area, St Mary's, which was much more modern and had a kids' choir. I attended once with my mum and sister and since we all thought it was great we decided to continue going there. My sister and I joined the choir and continued to sing in it until I was about 12. However, the whole religious thing began to go tits up within the family at this stage as by then I had started secondary school, where a couple of volunteers, Kelly & Jody, came in a couple of times a week from St Mary's to run the school CU with a teacher usually supervising. However, one day the teacher wasn't there to supervise, and to cut a long story short, those of us present were led to believe we had witnessed the miracle of gold dust appearing on our hands as evidence of God's love, which we really did see during the meeting. I went home and told my mum because i was happy about it. She however went mad and stopped the CU from operating in the school as well as stopping my sister and I from attending church. There was therefore no church at all for me for about two or three years and I studied a lot on my own at home using Bible study notes gained from secret trips to Maidenhead's religious bookshop. I was eventually allowed to start going again but felt I did not really fit in there and so continued to study at home. I started to have doubts, though, when the CU restarted in school when I was 16 and the focus of it became more evangelical thanks to the girl running it. I did not realise the CU at Exeter would be equally evangelical and so left it after a year, although kept the many excellent friends that I made there, and joined the MethAng society instead, where I made many more marvellous friends. However, by my third year in Exeter I was feeling further and further from God and had many chats with many people on the subject. Ultimately, though, I felt I could not fit into the box that Christianity prescribed and so now no longer class myself as a believer, although I do still harbour certain Christian sympathies/leanings.
Day 10 - What you wore today, in great detail
It being Saturday and not having gone anywhere on account of the snow, I have dressed very slobbily. Purple sports trousers with a white stripe down the outside of each leg, and a fuschia furry sports top (both from Decathlon). I wore them both kayaking on October's school trip. Accompanying the white bra and pants are a pair of very fluffy red and white striped socks, which I was sent for free by Arbonne with their foot cream and foot scrub. GLAM.
Day 11 - Your siblings, in great detail
I have already mentioned my sister in the family section. Luckily I only have one sister, so this won't take long, hehe. She's 21 (will be 22 in March) and is studying for a medical degree at Cardiff University, but is currently intercalating as a regular BSc student in Neuroscience, meaning that when she's finished she'll have an impossible number of letters after her name. Despite no longer being a teenager she is ridiculously tiny and has been known to buy kids' clothes while no longer still a kid. I never know whether to think her clothing choices look amazing or whether they distress and confuse me. She is VERY on trend usually in every respect whereas I am just not. In addition to this she is popular, pretty, intelligent, a social butterfly, multi-talented and modest (she has had every opportunity to ram her various gifts and positive traits down my throat, but never does); not surprisingly this frequently leads to me feeling inferior to her, with or without good reason. She is also incredibly supportive (I can talk to her about most if not all things) and she always makes me laugh (she is great fun to be with). She is most often on my side and I am much more critical of her than she is of me (as far as I am aware at least); I don't know how she puts up with me at times, and I don't know what I'd do without her. Gem, you rule.
Day 12 - What's in your bag, in great detail
YIKES. This is not going to be positive.
Purse, passport, bank details from my old bank, makeup bag, my diary, a half-full box of blackcurrant Ricola, two pencil cases, one umbrella, a broken pair of ear muffs, a red leather notebook from the outlaws that I write poetry in, and God knows what other odds and ends.
Day 13 - This week, in great detail
Truth be told, it hasn't been good. I had a beautiful moment on Tuesday morning when I woke up and for about five seconds thought it was Friday. On Tuesday I had to attend a disciplinary committee for a student whose consistent catalogue of bad behaviour over the past three or four years has finally pissed everyone off enough to have him put on probation. On the brighter side, on Tuesday I also went to a concert of Mussorgsky music, accompanied by Kandinsky drawings, which were projected onto the screen during the performance. On Wednesday I met with the photographer who will do the photos for our wedding, which I thought would not come off at all after we had sat on opposite sides of the café for half an hour not recognising each other. On Friday I went to my old bank to shout at them, as well as getting our printer cartridge filled up near my old work and going to our old favourite supermarket to check out any new additions. I also finished NaNoWriMo on Tuesday, 'winning' at about 6pm. Apart from that I suppose nothing significant really happened - same shit, different day...
Day 14 - Your favourite foods/drinks, in great detail
I love proper hot chocolate - not the thin and watery kind, and definitely not the kind where you are just given the hot milk and a block of chocolate to stir into it. BOY if you want to suck the romance and specialness out of ordering hot chocolate in a café that is definitely the way to go. The best hot chocolate I've ever had is at A Priori Thé, a café in the Passages Vivienne in Paris. It is just soooo thick and creamy and frothy. They also do scones to die for, which I suppose would lead me to one of my favourite foods. Afternoon tea is just brilliant: the tea, the dinky little sandwiches, and the traditional scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam. Beautiful.
While I have become more of a tea connoisseur over the past few years (favourite? possibly Lapsang Souchong), I still ultimately prefer coffee, and have become increasingly fussy since the acquisition about a year ago of our €300 coffee machine that grinds the beans for you. Best €300 we've ever spent, frankly.
In terms of alcoholic drinks, I'm a big Sauternes lover, which is a drink that also holds sentimental value for me since it was the first wine JM and I ever drank together. It's an incredibly sweet white wine which to me is just like godly nectar. For reds I like a good Langedoc or Rhone valley wine. I can't pretend to have great experience of wines from other countries, although Zinfandel is also a good choice usually.
As for foods, I love Thai sticky rice, and just about any Italian or Indian food. Gazpacho is another favourite of mine. I am mainly a desserts girl though and this sweet tooth could explain the extra pounds I carry around with me. I have never met a biscuit that I didn't like. Cake as far as I am concerned is a slightly lesser entity, although if we're talking about Dundee cake that could change things a bit.
Day 15 - Your dreams, in great detail
I wouldn't say I dream frequently but they tend to feature people in places where they shouldn't be, for reasons of time or geography or just general plausibility. They also are often completely off the wall, which might explain some of the wacky sleeptalking my fiancé and family get to hear. Luckily for me I rarely remember any of this.
Day 16 - Your first kiss, in great detail
It was from Will, a third year at Exeter who dumped me after a week "to concentrate on his work" (read: to find someone who'd sleep with him more imminently). He had walked me back to my Lafrowda flat after a LitSoc pub crawl, which I believe had ended at Timepiece. For some reason when we got back we ended up in the kitchen of my flat, and he ended up giving me my first kiss in front of a sink full of dirty washing up. Romantic eh? I don't actually remember very much of it apart from not really knowing what to do. Thankfully, if anything came of that 'relationship', it's that we did so much kissing over the few days it lasted that I soon got the hang of it.
Day 17 - Your favourite memory, in great detail
The day I finally met JM in person for the first time. I know this says "in great detail" but I think in this situation it's important to keep some details for me. I remember feeling impatient all day, thinking during my lecture that the next time I sat there I would have met him. I remember tapping my fingers and feet during Latin, waiting for the moment when I could dash out of there. I remember walking to Exeter station in the snow. I remember the plane was delayed and we seemed to circle in the sky for hours before landing in Paris. I remember wanting to get my luggage off the carousel as quick as possible, and actually waiting at the wrong one for a bit (not that it mattered - by the time I got to the right one the bags still hadn't started coming through anyway). I remember, once I had my bag, practically running to the exit, turning right and seeing him standing there waiting for me. We kissed and we talked and we held each other. It was perfect.
Day 18 - Your favourite birthday, in great detail
I am so lucky to have had so many amazing birthdays. My mother is a cakemaker extraordinaire and I always had an amazing homemade cake, including a Faraway Tree cake with characters traced onto rice paper, coloured in with edible colours and stuck on. I've had the traditional birthday parties - bowling, Laser Quest, church hall and so on - but also have had the good fortune to spend quite a few birthdays on holiday away from home, including in Brighton and in Florida. So my most memorable in this respect is perhaps my 21st, in Florida - that day I was of course also legal to drink in the States and managed to blag a free slice of birthday cake with my first legal cocktail. We went whale watching and then in the evening went to a restaurant with an outdoor terrace and its own little waterfalls. I also share my birthday with my mother so all of my birthdays are memorable for this reason too.