Did Jason really Do Lulu?

yes, its Friday night and I've stayed in, not because I'm lame but because I tried to tackle the nightmare that is Oxford Street in the fortnight before Christmas. I've never seen anything like it. I try to avoid it but my mother's present of a Topshop gift card was burning a hole in my pocket and there was a dress I had to have. I still don't like taking the tube but I'd rather not pay £8 congestion charge, even though I end up spending roughly the same on public transport. Ken Livingstone and NCP are not getting my hard scrimped cash. Oh no.

Anyway, to anyone who's confused by the title of this entry, allow me to explain. This evening, lying on my bean bag, smoking my joint (god, aren't I a cliche?) I watched Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, well, flipping between that and Jimmy Carr on Channel 4 to be honest. The first couple of guests didn't really interest me, I was waiting for the big guns, Take That. Ooh I used to love them. Not in the screaming, jumping up and down, my face covered in eyeliner tattoos at sweaty stadium tours kinda love, no. Thank God, at the time I was still too young for all of that. Anyway, I digress. So there they all are, crammed onto JR's ugly-beautiful sofa like a bunch of good looking sardines when and I'm not entirely sure how (that would be the weed) but the topic of Lulu came up.

The (much) older singer had released a single, relight my fire with them many eons ago, back when I was still in pigtails. For years there were rumours that one of the guys from the group had slept with Lulu but noone ever really knew for sure who precisely it was. Tonight, after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing between Jason and Howard, it was revealed that it was in fact Jason. I'd always had money on it being Robbie, but fair play.

Finally, as many of you may have noticed, I haven't been posting in the last week. This is because I am back in London. This directly hinders me in all internet activities as:

1. I am on dial-up and I am not a patient person. AOL likes to send me broadband literature but will they give me broadband? No.

2. The only computers that AOL will allow onto the internet are the two macs in our lives, my mother's laptop and the new pretty G5, which for all the speed I'm seeing on my connection may as well be one of those monstrous beasts from the 80s. I also hate macs. I was raised on windows and damn it, I'm forever enslaved to Bill Gates. The keyboard is weird and feels too small, there's no right-click button on the mouse and... my list of complaints is endless.

For these reasons, you probably won't hear much from me over the festive season as it takes me about three times as long on this thing than it does on my lovely little Toshiba laptop. There is the possibility that we may acquire broadband over the course of the next few weeks but I doubt it.

Enjoy the holidays.

Explosions at dawn

This morning, back at my London home, the boyfriend and I were woken by the sound of a muffled explosion. Whilst I simply rolled back over, momentarily stirred, the boyfriend heard what sounded like tiles falling onto or off the roof. Dazed by the noise, he told himself it was nothing and went back to sleep. It was still too dark to see the plume of smoke gradually emerging somewhere off in distance out of my window.

The source of this plume of smoke was the oil refinery in Hemel Hempstead blowing up bit by bit after what's currently considered an 'accident'. Throughout the morning, my family and I watched the big grey cloud drift slowly over most of West London. As we drove back down this afternoon, I annoyed my boyfriend by constantly marvelling at the massive plume and remarking on the rather spectacular sunset that was the result of the smoke.

Apparently, the blast was heard as far away as the Netherlands. Not really surprising when there's 150,000 tonnes of petrol, diesel and aviation fuel as your accelerant. We certainly heard it 20-odd miles away, but can you imagine living two roads over from this giant factory? Your patio doors would be ruined.

They're predicting that the fire will carry on for a few days until the fuel's burnt away, so here's hoping for a bit of rain over the next few days.

I can't believe I'm saying that when I have to drive to London again tomorrow.

why are pirates, pirates?

Because they arrrrrrrre! I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself. As I've mentioned before, yesterday was my 22nd birthday as well as the final essay deadline day. To mark the occasion, I decided it would be fun if we all dressed up as pirates. Never have I seen people take to fancy dress with such enthusiasm, especially from the twentysomething males of the group.

So, plastic swords in the air and eyepatches affecting our spacial awareness, we hit the town to wreak some havoc. I don't think there was any property damage, unless one of my friends managed to graf somewhere whilst I wasn't looking. We narrowly escaped being hauled over by the police who were managing the simultaneous chucking out time of a gig and several bars. Our plastic swords apparently looked a little bit too realistic.

Let's just say I'm a little bit too hungover to type much more, so I'll leave you all with a picture from the night:


girls make better pirates

The secret's out.

I've been found. I thought that to all intents and purposes, I was fairly anonymous in this enormous web universe. After spending my formative teenage years posting at ubbs at sites such as narcissistic.org and abuse over at roadrage, I thought that owing to being two computers down the line, as well as several sites, I thought that student was relatively untouched and overlooked. I don't promote, I'm not really bothered.

But someone else has.

And they are in possession of a very dubious mp3 of my friend Hannah and I singing our drunken classic 'Let Me Lick Your Face'. Please, Shiny McShine, get in touch and send me a copy of that mp3, it's been a long time since I had a copy of that. Also, please identify yourself. Who are you? How did you find me? Why can't chickens fly?

This means nothing to most people, hell, noone reads this, so it is only me, but I want that song. It's like something to throw in the scrap book from when I was 15.

Meh. I'm only getting so navel gazingly introspective because it's my 22nd birthday tomorrow.

Ooh Arr!

Oh ye gods, I'm bored. Everyone else still powering through their essays, noone to go into town with. I even cleaned the bathroom today, I was that bored. Not the washing up though, that seems to be quite contentedly growing. Besides which, I'm sure the flatmate will bugger off to her boyfriend's in due course and leave it for me to do, say, on my birthday- this thursday.

Thursday also happens to be essay giving in day so my social life is thus reborn on this day too. To mark the double occasion, my friends and I have decided to go on a jolly binge drinking jaunt dressed as pirates.

So, if you're in a seaside pub this thursday, I'll be the one with the eye patch and the cutlass.

The Ethics of a Flatshare

This year, I opted to live with only one person, after having lived in a house of 12 in the first year and a house of 4 in the second. In every dwelling, certain issues crop up naturally, and for the most part they're often quickly resolved, although there are some that are left to simmer, untouched, until someone upsets the proverbial pot or fucks with the oven.

The majority of time, I have no issue with my new flatmate. Bar a fight over the washing up two weeks ago, we get along well. But for the last two days I must confess, I have been plotting her demise. The reason for such a drastic move you ask? Her alarm clock.

The flatmate has one of those plug-in radio alarm clocks that doesn't require manual resetting (ie pushing a button) that a lot of alarm clocks have. It does however, have an incredibly irritating screech of a wake up call.

I think you know where this is going.

Despite the howling call of the alarm clock, my flatmate barely registers and usually just turns over, letting the wail continue until I am forced out of bed to shout at her. Whilst this sometimes has it's benefits, early start etc, it's not always the case.

For the last three nights, the flatmate has fucked off to her boyfriend's house, neglecting to switch off her alarm before she left. So, for the past three mornings including today, SUNDAY, I have been summoned out of bed by the screeching plastic beast in order to shut it up. Despite my best efforts of pressing a selection of buttons, I am unable to render the little bugger silent.

This morning, I almost managed to blank its cries out, except that it intergrated its ear splitting noise into my dream, culminating in me going from a very lovely cosy dream to a horrific nightmare where the noise was a bomb blast.

Once again, I stumbled out of bed, slammed the off button, narrowly missing the snooze - that would've been a disaster. Then I fell back into bed, exhausted in my semi-sleep state and passed out until 1pm. It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't a sunday. It wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't ill. It wouldn't be so bad if it hadn't happened for three fucking days in a row.

After much ethical/moral debating (okay, not really) I've decided that it's more than fair that if she doesn't come back tonight and deal with it herself tomorrow morning it's my hammer, not my finger, that I'm using to shut it up.

PS: it's come to my attention at dear old blogger.com has changed its format for posts and no longer has a manual setting for times posted. Some of my earlier posts may seem to have strange time posts, so in those cases, I believe its plus or minus eight hours. For this reason, someone out there sucks.

That's all the vitriol you're getting for now.

Filling your day, part one

So today, apart from doing laundry and going into town- only to be driven back home by arctic weather- I've managed to waste vast amounts of time online. Firstly, there was the excellent popbitch mailout, followed closely by Holy Moly! mailout, which threw up this gross little gem. When I say threw up, I believe I'm not far off the mark. The precise context of this image was as follows:

So, what shade is bin-nosed glamour slop Jodie Marsh exactly?

Photoshop says #BA7C4B.

Holy Moly says "Kebab".

I'm with Holy Moly on this one.

Other than that, I've also been simultaneously grossing myself out and laughing my ass off at the wonderful awfulplasticsurgery.com.

Go. Look. Laugh until you wet your pants at what people will do to themselves willingly.

Stick a fork in me...

because, ladies and gentlemen, I am DONE. As of 4 pm yesterday, I am free. My last piece of assessed work, the 2000 essay, is cosily settled in the arts department office. It's an odd thing, freedom. You spend so long hankering after it, salivating at the thought of that elusive lie-in, that when it comes, you're not entirely sure what to do with it.

It's strange suddenly not to have something hanging over my head. I am home yesterday after handing in my essay, put my bag down and tried to focus on what I had to do next to satisfy the little voice niggling at the back of my head. But I couldn't, because there is no more work. Everyone around me is still pumping out essays, grumbling about the lack of sleep and library cues, whereas I am free of uni burden.

And I feel guilty. I know I have nothing to feel guilty about - for the last two weeks I too have found myself becoming overly familiar with the library as the scramble for books reached its peak but I've also been reasonably lucky. Although it didn't seem like it at the time, my welsh presentation in week 2 was a god send. I would hate to have had yet another piece of work in the final two weeks of term, as testified by those whose presentations I've watched in the last week and the deep rings around their eyes.

Unfortunately, there's a downside to having no work to do. Like I said, everyone else is still slogging away, meaning there's noone to play with. So I will sit and twiddle my thumbs alone for now, filling my days with doing three weeks of laundry and generally sorting my life out.

Yeay.