February 7th: A nine-year trip into my memory

I was lying in bed last night, and I was musing on places. Every memory I have happened somewhere, and when we leave those places, at least for me, it's like they freeze the way I remember them in my memory. If I search for a memory it 'plays', but it seems like most of the things I don't actively search for within my mind are still images, and that also seems to be the case with the places they occurred. I would love to look inside the human mind, see what's happening in there... not all the blood and brains, I'll leave that to the neurosurgeons; but the actual processes of memory (and speech, of course, but that's another story).

But as I was lying there last night I was thinking about how all those places are still there. Sounds obvious, I know, but... every town I've visited on a random day with my family, every foreign country I've been to, every hotel we've stayed at on long journeys or en route to university open days... I can't possibly remember every place I've ever been, but I can dredge some of them up from the depths of my mind and it feels very strange to think that right now, they're home to thousands of people, rushing around living their lives, and I may as well never have been there at all.

The strangest ones are the things I remember from long ago. When I was nine I went to Tunisia with my family  and I bought this belly dancing outfit, as all self-respecting nine-year-olds do. I remember getting back to our hotel and trying it on and dancing around our room in it, swishing around feeling like a princess. I remember buying nougat from the hotel shop; I remember riding camels (well actually they were dromedaries but close enough); I remember the dinosaur-shaped bush outside the pool that I named 'Dino' after Tunisia's currency; I remember walking around a walled city; all the wild cats wandering around; Freddie buying a dead scorpion in a box and the shopkeepers trying to persuade my parents to sell me to them for a thousand camels. I remember the massive storm that pretty much destroyed the beach (that's what you get for going to Africa in January)... all that was nine years ago and I have hardly given those particular memories a moment's thought since, but... I'm pretty sure that room is still there, maybe housing another little girl swishing around in a princessy outfit. I'm sure that beach has been destroyed by many more storms and those camels ridden by many more people, and I'm sure those shopkeepers are still trying to flatter people into buying their stock by making you think you're worth a thousand camels. That place is a three hour flight and a nine-year trip into my memory, but there are people there right now, living their lives. That hotel doesn't remember that I was ever there, and it continues without me, but I remember.

Maybe I'm failing to get my point across and you're all musing upon what a weirdo I appear to have become, but I genuinely find it strange that everywhere I've ever been is still there, carrying on exactly the same, as if I was never there. Not that I should have changed it by being there - I'm nowhere near important enough to do that - but at least when you meet a person, they register you. You are, at least for a little while, the focus of their thoughts; they register your voice, your appearance, the words you're saying, and they respond. You make an impression. They engage with you, and there is always a remote possibility that you might just change them in some way.

But places don't engage. You leave a place with memories that you may or may not remember, but they're there. Places can't do that. They can't remember you. They can change you, but you can't change them. You can visit somewhere for ten days or you can live somewhere for ten years and ultimately the place itself won't remember you when you leave. But the people will. Right now I can imagine exactly what my family is doing, at home, the house just south of Reading that I have lived in for thirteen years. That house has watched me grow since I was five; it has seen me sculpt my personality into the person I am today. But now my room lies dark and unused (except for when the cat poos on Freddie's bed and he has to sleep in mine instead) and apart from the fact that it's still mostly filled with all my crap, it makes no difference to the room whether I'm there or not. But it makes a difference to my family. My brother once told me the house seemed brighter when I'm in it... and I don't think I'm ever likely to forget a comment like that.

And this is why people are so important. I know this is kind of a theme with my blog posts, but that's only because it's such an important thing to remember. To be honest, though I've obviously made friends since I moved to York, I think it's actually the bonds with my friends from home that have been cemented... there's nothing like living a couple of hundred miles apart to test a friendship, but so far, we're doing pretty well.

I just hope that all the people in my life who are really special to me know that they're really special to me - but hoping isn't always enough. These people aren't mind readers. Tell them they're special to you. After all, what have you got to lose?

Molly x

January 19th: Moving even further forward

The process of applying to university was so intense, so busy and fraught with worry and anticipation that it felt like a journey, the end of which was arriving at university itself. It felt like uni was a way-off achievement that could only be attained by overcoming all these different obstacles... and so we overcame them. But because it was such a long process, it ended up feeling to me like uni was the end of that journey.

That's ridiculous, of course. University is not the end of a journey - it's the beginning of one. It was literally the beginning of my 'adult', independent life. But last week I sent off my application to study in Spain for three months from September and now I can only hope (very, very, very hard) that I get in. I'm so excited! It's weird though, thinking about it - after all the time that I spent considering which university I should choose here in England, after all the preparation; studying the courses, looking at the website, going to visit - it's weird that I've just looked at the seven study abroad options available to people on my course, picked the country I wanted to go to, Googled it, had a quick look at the list of modules and sent my application. And yes, okay, there was more to it than that - we had to consider accommodation (both home and abroad), and whether it would affect our student loans, and whether their modules were relevant to our courses, and we had to get approved to apply by our head of faculty, and then we had to write the application itself (which took bloody ages... why does everything need a personal statement these days?) and now I have to renew my passport and I'm taking extracurricular Spanish lessons because literally all I can say in Spanish is "I don't speak Spanish", "woman", and "you are very important to me"... which are of course the most important things one needs to know when moving abroad. Second, naturally, to "where's the pub?"... I'd better get on that.

Despite the fact that where I'm going they actually speak Catalan rather than Spanish... but uni doesn't offer a Catalan option and teaching yourself a language is haaaard. Trust me on that one.

But if you think that's a lot of preparation for something that may not even happen, it's nothing compared to the mountains of preparation and paperwork and time it took to apply to and get ready for university itself. It took me a year and a half to get everything organised for that and now here I am, thinking of shooting off abroad to somewhere I've never even been. Admittedly it's different when it's three months rather than three years, but the point still stands!

When I was choosing which unis to apply to, I made sure there was a study abroad option because it was something I just really wanted to do, so even when I started doubting that it was a good idea, I just thought, "Well, you're never going to get the chance to do this again, and you basically chose your uni because of it, so why the hell not?"

And why the hell not indeed. This may be a scary opportunity, but it is just that - an opportunity. A big one. And though I know I'll be terrified if it all actually comes off - I'll be lying there in bed the night before, just like I was on the 16th September last year, the day before I moved to York, having a massive spaz about the idea of moving abroad - I can't remember the last time I was this excited about something. And it is for that reason that I have to give this a go, even if it doesn't happen. Wish me luck!

This is the time in our lives that we can make changes like this, because "why not?" is a good enough reason right now. We've got plenty of time to be dull and boring when we grow up and life demands it of us; there's no reason to give in to it as early as this. Life isn't about boredom and suffering through something you don't find fulfilling; it's about moments like these, about having the courage to take your life into your own hands. That's why they call it "life", after all - we're supposed to feel alive! Have a dream, get excited, follow it through. How often do we actually get the opportunity to do that, and why not make the most of it while we can?

Go kick some ass!

Molly x

December 31st: The year of the eighteenth

(I know this says January 1st, but I wrote it yesterday. So there.)

(FYI: all the hyperlinks in this post link to relevant posts written throughout this year.)

Well, 2011 is almost over, and here we are about to enter the year that will mark my third anniversary here in the blogosphere.

For a lot of people I know, 2011 has been a really big year. For me, it's probably been the biggest year of my life. Around this time, people always post Facebook and Twitter updates along the lines of 'new year, new me'... but people rarely realize that the changes the new year brings are a lot more subtle - and take a lot longer to occur - than that. There are, of course, the changes you can see coming - the ones you've seen coming for months, or maybe even years. I started this year knowing it would mean me turning eighteen and moving out, but 2011 meant so much more than that, so I got curious about exactly how much happened in my life this year...

January
A less than welcome start in the form of the January exams, but I also visited Shakespeare's Globe and saw The Lion King musical, so all in all, a pretty good month!

February
I started driving lessons (on Valentine's Day), won Oxford music festival with Octava (who cares if we were the only group in the category?), went to Devon to look round Plymouth uni, hung out with Cora in Denmark for four days, met the fabulous Julie, who we know from YouTube, in person, and saw my favourite musical (for the fifth time) in a language I don't speak.

March
We got the dreaded results of the January exams... and that wasn't a great day, but you know how it is. Onwards and upwards. Octava had our last concert at Goring Unplugged; I visited Brighton, UWE and Bangor universities in the hope that I'd hate them and would be able to cross at least one uni off my list, but they were actually pretty awesome. I also drove past a pub called The Cock... nuff said.

April 
Four fifths of my friendship group turned eighteen... Lauren kicked the celebrations off with a bang with her fancy dress party, for which I was Aleksandr Orlov (the meerkat from the Compare the Market adverts) for a night. Zoe followed with her red-themed meal at Cafe Rouge, and then Becky and I brought up the rear. On the 20th I realised love at first sight was real - though with a city, not a person. This was the day I visited York for the first time and decided right then and there that it was the one. This was also the day I met Fran, who has become one of my closest friends at uni. On the 21st I went up to London with my family to see Betty Blue Eyes (very strange musical). On the 29th, everyone got a day off for the royal wedding and my road had a street party, during which my elderly neighbours took full advantage of my new found adulthood and got me drunk.

May
I accepted my offers! York officially became my number one choice. On the 5th Cora came to stay with me and I took her to college (where she made me go to all my lessons... rude), and then we went to Oxford and to the British Library and the Doctor Who Experience in London. This was also the month of a momentous day; the 27th was our last official day at Henley and the start of study leave, which spanned the crazy exam season until...

June
As of the 16th I was free of college exams... I still had my grade six singing exam to take on the 31st, which I did and passed. My friends and I also had our end of exams celebration meal at Old Orleans (oh! How I miss  it!).

July
I spent the days from the fourth to the twelfth in Denmark with Cora, hanging out on the beach and watching crappy vampire movies and doing all the other stuff you do with your best friend. I also did my very first car boot sale, went to an open-air concert, had my first proper night out, snogged a Danish guy, got bitten by said Danish guy, got home at three in the morning and woke up with ridiculous bruises on my arm. As always the time passed too quickly, and soon it was the 23rd and I was heading down to Southampton for my mum's surprise birthday weekend. I also wrote her a song about how I was leaving home in September.

August
A good start to the month - on the second I passed my theory test; first time lucky! On the fourth I saw Ghost in London with my mum; I also went to Fuerteventura for two very eventful weeks with my family, during which I got a standing ovation singing Mamma Mia on karaoke night, saw a lot of nudists, got flirted with by a lot of Spanish shopkeepers, kissed a Spanish lifeguard who spoke no English (we communicated by writing notes translated by our phones), got stranded in the middle of nowhere because of an illegal hirecar, and, because our stay happened to span the eighteenth (results day), got into York St John University. Hell yeah!

September
On September the first I popped up to Scotland to finish recording the song I started last year. Amazing! Realised I'd taken eight flights in nine months. Ridiculous! The tenth was the day my friends and I visited Old Orleans again, this time dressed as different countries from around the world. I was Spain and wore the flamenco outfit I bought in Fuerteventura. This month brought another big eighteenth; the 18th being the day I moved up to York. I met a hell of a lot of people - including the fabulous Louise, my other close friend at uni -, fell in love with phonetics and went to my very first barn dance.

October
Came back daahn Saahf to visit my family, failed my driving test, and had my very first visitor in York. Got chatted up by a scientist from CERN on a train. Freddie came up to see me. I took a phonetics exam, pulled my first all nighter doing an essay and got drunk on Halloween.

November
Got a first in the phonetics exam! Wrote god knows how many essays, drunk far too much wine, realised I'd spent nearly every Saturday since September in the library, cooked fish fingers for the first time, realised I'd actually settled into the student lifestyle, and then went home again. Saw Breaking Dawn with Becky and Zoe and had a sleepover with my friends during which we had a very deep conversation. <3

December
Went house hunting for the first time! Oh, how grown up I felt! Becky came up to visit; we went sightseeing, warmed up cider on the hob, had a fire alarm (it wasn't the cider), snooped at the fire engines outside the building opposite, heard the people upstairs having sex and got kicked out of a pub for bringing chips inside. I took a grammar exam and got another first (yay!), got drunk with Louise and snogged a random guy in Yates', went to a carol service in the Minster, came home for Christmas and passed my driving test!


Every year has its bad points, but we need the bad so we can appreciate the good. This year and last year were two of the best years of my life, so I leave you now with a quote I found on Twitter:

"May the best of your past be the worst of your future."

Happy new year!

Molly x

December 16th: Three years

I was just looking through my ridiculously full email inbox that I never clean out and I stumbled across some emails from three years ago. Three years almost exactly, actually - October, November, December - and, as I've said many times before, everytime I find stuff from then it startles me. I was a completely different person then. I looked different, I acted differently... but up until a couple of months ago I didn't feel that different.

In October, November, December 2008 I was fifteen. I was a child. I was the age my little brother is now, and god knows he seems young to me - or perhaps I should say 'seemed', because I'm pretty sure the months since I moved out have caused us both to grow up more quickly than we ever have before in such a short space of time. Being at uni has really made me think about my life - maybe it's the whole leaving-everything-familiar-a-bloody-long-way-away-and-buggering-off-up-North thing, but it's made me remember all these random long-forgotten moments, all these elements of my childhood and my life to date.

On my train journey home I pass a power station fairly soon after leaving York, and it reminds me of all the years I spent alongside another power station - Didcot, of course, a landmark with which everybody from that area will be familiar. It was one of the first things my grandparents ever heard me say; driving that sunny road to Wallingford, sitting in the back of the car, laughing with my family, eating bits of French bread and sipping that apple juice my dad always bought from Waitrose, and Didcot power station was happily puffing away outside the window. I remember picking asparagus with Nana and Grandad that day they came to the school fete - oh, the school fete itself! I remember Becky's bright orange inflatable rucksack and all the games we used to play... I remember the very first day I met Zoe, sitting next to her on the bus on the Langtree taster day... and more recently, sitting in our various corridors eating lunch and laughing. I remember all these moments of the life I used to lead, and every time I look back, there aren't many memories which aren't bathed in sunlight. I look back on my young years and I remember them as brightly lit, happy - they are remembered in yellow, many happy hours playing in the garden, or Christmases at our house or Auntie Ruth's... families intertwined, as they should be, and how I want that lifestyle for myself!

When I look back on these old emails and I notice the date and remember what I was doing on that day this year, it always makes me think about how three years ago I had no idea what I'd be doing three years in the future, and that in turn makes me wonder what I'll be doing and where I'll be exactly three years from now. If my fifteen-year-old self had looked into the near future she would have seen herself seeing the first Twilight movie with Zoe and Christina; meeting Cora in person for the first time; leaving Langtree, going to prom, joining Henley... that girl, that version of me, had never been to Denmark, never really looked into learning the Danish language... she didn't know Lauren... she'd never even heard of linguistics. There are so many people and elements in my life now that weren't there then, and looking back now that seems very, very strange. How is it possible to become someone completely different in only three years? It's not that long, is it?

Three years ago all I knew about my eighteenth year is that I would have moved out of home. Probably to university, but that wasn't definite (to be honest that wasn't definite until August this year). I just can't help wondering where I'm going to end up, but I guess - to quote a cheesy phrase which isn't mine - it's not about the destination, it's about the journey, and that's part of the fun.

And now I have to go, because I'm off to meet Fran and Louise for lunch to celebrate the end of the first semester of uni... wonder who I'll be meeting for lunch in three years' time.

Molly x

November 30th: Two years later

It's the first of December tomorrow.

Imagine that. One month until the end of 2011 and I'm still here.

Anyway. I'm Molly. I'm eighteen and a half years old and I'm in my first year at York St John University, York, UK, and loving it, where I'm studying English Language and Linguistics. I write, I read, I sing (got grade 6 in the summer), I create spoofs, I'm a complete grammar freak, I love music and musicals--

I'm going to go all Edward Cullen on yo' ass right now (yeah, okay, I can't pull that off) and tell you that I know what you're thinking.

"I know! I already know all this! Why is she telling me again?"

Or maybe,

"Did I go to the wrong page? Is this the first update rather than the latest?"

Well, dear bloglings... yes and no. Two years ago today I started this blog with those exact words (well, with a difference of thirteen, to be precise) and I just thought it would be an interesting experiment to go back and see exactly how much of my life has actually changed.

Oh, my life has changed since then. If you're a regular reader of this blog then you will already know how drastically it's changed - no need to go there again. But how many of the little things are different - the things that actually make me me?

I write. Check.
I read. Check.
I sing. Check.
I create spoofs, I love music, I'm a complete grammar freak... check, check, absolute freaking check.

How do often do we really change? The things that make us fundamentally us? According to Grey's Anatomy, every cell in our bodies regenerates every seven years (quite a cool idea, that; it's very Doctor Who); but we don't notice, which means that everything that is not physical, everything that's in our minds, stays the same. We know the same people, we like the same things, we keep the same personality. So how frequently do we grow in and out of interests?

I think it's different from person to person. Throughout my life I've always had little (or rather large) 'obsessions' - which were basically just exaggerated interests in things like TV shows (Doctor Who), musicals (Wicked) or people (David Tennant) - but they were always one at a time. Becky, on the other hand, tends to go through her 'obsessions' much faster than I do. I discovered Wicked four years ago and I've seen it five times now, but I'm not as obsessed with it as I used to be. Similarly, when I started writing this blog in 2009, I  had literally only just discovered English Language at college - I had no idea that linguistics even existed, let alone what it was, and though I've been a grammar freak all my life, I've only become more pedantic as the years have passed - which I now find is a bad thing for linguists to be! Oh, will my grammar obsessiveness ever be accepted?

Maybe we don't change. I like to think it's possible that we can, but maybe we don't unless we're forced to. Maybe being who you are is a bit like having someone in your life that you really love; just as people come and go, that one person - or people - is always there, and there are personality traits that we possess from the day we're born to the day we die. These traits grow stronger as we grow older, and maybe these are the things that define us; our likes and dislikes, our interests. Maybe these are the things we need to tell people when they ask about us - these can tell people so much more about you than where you're from or what you do for a living.

I firmly believe that the people you meet throughout your life make you into the person you become, and I would be very different if it weren't for the people in mine. We are who we are because of a series of coincidences - I mean, if my parents had never met and had each ended up with someone else, I wouldn't be me. I'd be one half of two other people. Isn't that weird?

We could consider all the things that make us who we are coincidence, but maybe it's not. Maybe it's destiny.

Molly x

P.S. I ended my first post by saying "I find it incredibly annoying that one can't indent these paragraphs whilst writing them."

Some things definitely never change.

November 26th: A post about happiness from the queen of depressing stuff

Deary me, back again! You lot are going to start missing updates if I keep posting this frequently... but of course I won't keep it up, because you know me and my highly unreliable posting 'schedule'. Basically I post when I feel like it and only occasionally when I don't, and it's so obvious which ones are the ones where people have asked me to write when I'm uninspired and I've just dredged any old crap up from the depths of my subconscious.

Just because it will annoy me: despite the fact that it says somewhere up there ^ that this was posted on November 27th, and despite the fact that that is technically true, as I haven't gone to bed yet it's still Saturday as far as I'm concerned. This is update number two of Saturday November 26th 2011. Suck it up.

Before you start reading past this point: right click on this link - right click! If you don't, you'll be directed away from the post, and I just want you to listen to the song while you read because I was listening while I was writing. Hopefully it'll set the mood.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HieNpwB3Eac

I was saying earlier today (yeah, that's right, today) about how you can't write some feelings down, but I think I was wrong. You can write feelings down - for me at least - as long as they're negative. I'm the queen of writing depressing stuff. I've got a million sad songs and poems and stories - and, as you know, blog posts (though they're censored a lot) - but only a handful of happy ones. I wonder why that is... my guess is it's because happiness is one of those things you can attempt to describe only if you feel it in every cell of your body, and even then it's difficult. Maybe it's because most of us have been sad more often than we've been truly happy - and that in itself is a sad concept.

I'm not saying everybody in the world is sad - not at all. There are many stages between happy and sad (in linguistics we call this gradable antonymy (or 'Grey's Anatomy' as I read it when I was writing an essay on it at half past two (2:30, to avoid confusion for my European readers) in the morning) and most people sit around the levels of contentment or satisfaction (not that kind of satisfaction. Get your mind out of the gutter). That's why you'd get a bit freaked out if you saw someone grinning inanely at you as they passed you in the street.

However, as creepy as a grin can be, a smile from a stranger can put you in a good mood for the rest of the day. While I was in town today, I literally bumped into a hell of a lot of people (it was very busy; I'm not just spectacularly uncoordinated) and only one of them apologized to me. I don't know, maybe they weren't British or something... some of you will be familiar with the concept of 'British politeness' (one of Britain's defining characteristics) in which we apologize pretty much whenever we can and most of the time when we don't need to. Excessive apologizing is certainly a habit of mine and I've lost count of the times I said sorry today, so it surprised me that only one person said it to me. People are rude, I was beginning to think; how can they think it acceptable to just barge past me and not say a word?

And then someone barged past me, turned round to look at me, said "Sorry!" and smiled at me, and I realised that however many rude people there are in the world, there are also so, so many nice people. For all the times we say "there are only two types of people in the world", we're basically talking rubbish. There must be millions of different types of people in the world.

I've made friends here in York, but I have no doubt that I'd have made friends wherever I'd chosen to attend university. I could go anywhere in the world and make new friends - as can everybody else. That means that wherever you go, there are people you consider 'nice'; people you'd want to spend time with; people like you. And there are also people you wouldn't touch with a bargepole, but they have friends too, right? Most of them, anyway. Consider how many different types of cliques there were in your school and then multiply that by whatever ridiculous amount of people currently live in the world and how many types of people does that mean there are? Way too many to comprehend. But imagine - if we could meet everybody in the world, imagine how many friends we'd have!

Everybody seems to be full of stories about how the world is full of evil - and yes, maybe it is, if you look in the wrong places. I once heard someone say that you find dodgy people in dodgy places and though he was joking, I think there's a certain truth to it. Just as there are people with whom you find yourself congregating, there are places where you and your you-alikes congregate. Similar people seem to like similar places, to a certain extent. So maybe the world has its evils, but it's not full of it. You can find magic too, wherever you look.

I'm lucky, because I have found so much more magic than evil throughout my life to date. Sometimes it doesn't feel that way, but that's only because the evil things have a way of sticking around, of being the most memorable things when really they don't deserve any more of your time or mental capacity than they demanded of you when they were happening. Somehow evil manages to push magic out of your head. But don't let it! Remind yourself of everything wonderful you've ever been lucky enough to experience; remember every person who's ever loved you; reflect on every random smile that's ever brightened up your day. Sometimes magic is huge and it hits you right between the eyes, and sometimes it's small, and you don't even notice it there until you have nothing else to notice. But it's always there. And the people who love you... so are they.

And just in case you were curious to see where my 'on-the-go' post was written this afternoon, I was sitting right there on the bench (the little brown bit near the left hand side of the photo).

I have a thing about ruins of buildings, especially ones like this. It's just the fact that stone is something that seems unbreakable, so solid and strong, and yet the weather, something everyday, something to which nobody really gives any thought most of the time, has done the impossible and broken it. Kind of makes you feel small, doesn't it?

That's why that's one of my favourite places in my beautiful, historical city. You jealous?

Molly x

November 26th: A perfect November day

I'm currently sitting in York's museum gardens, directly inside what would once have been a church. On one side of me the walls are mostly intact, crumbling a little, and on the other there's nothing there but the remains of the stone foundations in the ground. It's raining lightly and sporadically and the wind is rustling my hair as I sit here - in other words, it's a perfect November day, and it's exactly the kind of weather that inspires me most.


I've been stuck in my flat for the past couple of days doing work, and despite the fact that none of my friends are free today, I'd have gone insane stuck in there for another day. I'm taking the opportunity to have a wander around York on my own, as I've been intending to ever since I moved in. I can't describe how glad I am that I did it. York is ridiculously busy today; Christmas markets here and there, Christmas shoppers everywhere, but as I walk through its beautiful, historical streets, I can feel myself falling in love with it all over again. York is incredible. It's like being plunged into the past and yet staying right here in the present; it's a city and yet it's nothing like other cities I've been to (in this country at least). It's so easy to imagine the Vikings and the Romans and all the other invaders making their home here the way it's now becoming mine. I truly love it here.


I went to one of the markets I stumbled across and acquired a stack of plastic cups for a pound and three books for 60p... can't beat that! I'm tempted to go back for one of the cakes as well. Nom.


I can't help but think of Zoe as I sit here because this place is swarming with photographers... I even whipped out my camera and I wouldn't call myself a photographer under any circumstances. There are so many things here to take pictures of!


I don't really know why I'm writing this post. I just felt an inexplicable need to express the way I feel right now - it seems York gets under your skin - but I can't. As seems to happen to me a lot, words have given up on me just as I need them most.


Sometimes you can't write your feelings down. Sometimes you just have to feel them instead. I can't think of a more frustrating concept than that, but for me at least, it's often the way. The things that mean the most are the hardest things to describe, and whether you're writing or speaking isn't going to change that. Maybe that's why they're called feelings - because you don't describe them. You feel them, and that's all you can do.


Molly x


(Sorry about the gaps between posts; Blogger's clearly having a bad software day!)

November 25th: Language vandals

I realise it's unusual for me to post twice on the same day, but I have recently been stumbling across quite a few articles on language - which is, admittedly, not a particularly surprising occurrence for me. However, the articles in question have been getting on my nerves somewhat.

Whilst writing an essay for my e-communication class the other week (I know, another post inspired by that blasted class; I swear it's all I ever do) I found an article from the Mail Online, in which John Humphrys describes users of text messaging as "destroying [our language]: pillaging our punctuation; savaging our sentences; raping our vocabulary. And they must be stopped."

And who, I hear you cry, are the users in question? Who are these "vandals" who are doing to our language now "what Genghis Khan did to his neighbours eight hundred years ago"? It's young people, of course - young, impressionable children whose minds aren't developed enough to know the difference between what formality of language is acceptable in which situation. Is that really what you think of us now - that the future of your country lies in the hands of a bunch of imbeciles who can't decide when to add the letters "yo" to "u"?

Well, if that's the case, no wonder you're terrified. No wonder you accuse us of "sloppy habits" and call us "vandals". But to suggest that the responsibility of our language's grammatical collapse falls entirely on the shoulders of the younger generations is completely preposterous. Consider that we do not teach ourselves how to punctuate a sentence or spell a word. Consider that these are your children you're talking about - are you then holding yourself responsible for your child's inability to construct a grammatically correct sentence? Are you accusing your child's teachers of being inadequate? I don't think you are, are you? You think a piece of technology has the power to be completely detrimental to one's language skills. We're not born typing; we learn to speak before we learn to text and according to various surveys, most of us don't even get our first phone until we're ten or older, so do you honestly believe that a mobile can reach into a person's brain and undo all the good work? Can technology really rewire one's language?

To that question I am inclined to respond with a big fat "pfffft". It's bollocks. Abbreviations have been around for hundreds of years - believe it or not, they were around long before fingers could press keys to create them. Admittedly there are ones that are slightly over the top, but most of the abbreviations used in texts are simple and, funnily enough, more widely used by adults than teenagers. This is probably due to the fact that a lot of adults find phone keypads difficult to use - or, in the case of particularly technologically challenged individuals, still think that you're charged by the character rather than the text.

Yes, I can be pedantic about grammar. I do accept that language must change - of course it must, or it could never progress - but I will never approve of misplaced apostrophes or unnecessary capitalisation (Never Do This Or I Shall Kill You. Also, ORDINARY NOUNS DO NOT NEED CAPITALISING. ONLY PROPER NOUNS SHOULD BE CAPITALISED. REMEMBER THIS). Some errors are just so simple I wonder how much of an idiot you'd have to be to get it wrong. And yes, people frequently make grammar errors - but 'text speak' finding its way into real life situations is the least of our worries. Most people know which formality of language is appropriate for which situation and can adapt accordingly. How do you think we're achieving higher exam results than ever? Oh, excuse me, I'd forgotten - exams are getting easier, aren't they?

If you want some really horrifying examples of grammar, try these:

Funny - I don't know any teenagers who know how to "loose" a car. Do you? 

I also don't know anybody my age who would insinuate that J.K. Rowling's storylines are less than satisfactory.

It would seem that even the church isn't exempt from their share of (rather alarming, in this case) phrasing mishaps. Don't let worries kill you - let the church help? I may not be religious, but even I know that killing off your congregation isn't likely to get you to heaven. Typical; must be all those teenage vicars. Sort it out!

I am a teenager. I have always had an instinct for grammar. When I was younger I went through a stage of using 'text speak' but grew out of it (as so many do) and now I - and a great deal of my peers - ALWAYS, without fail, punctuate everything I write fully, no matter whether I'm writing an email or an essay, a text or a tweet, or, perhaps most surprisingly, a Facebook update. I have never used even the smallest example of 'text speak' in an essay. 

(Well actually, that's a lie, but I had to; I was writing about text messages! And examples were all they were. Blame e-communication.)

I suppose I'm lucky, because I am good at grammar; I don't ever really remember being taught it, so perhaps people whose talents lie in other areas find it more difficult. All I'm really trying to say here is that yes, we have a problem with grammar, but it is not purely down to the 'youth of today'. I am not particularly prescriptivist in my outlook, but if in the future I have to enter a shop to buy "cake's" and then follow it up with a trip next door to acquire "CD's, DVD's" and - worse still - "BOOK's", then you might as well make like that infamous panda who walks into a cafe, eats a sandwich, then whips out his gun and shoot me now.

You can read the offending article here. Notice how comments are no longer accepted on this article; clearly I was not the only one who was inspired to defend the "vandalism" of my peers.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-483511/I-h8-txt-msgs-How-texting-wrecking-language.html

Molly, who is deliberately including an imitation of prosodic features in the form of "x" to show that even fully literate university students are at liberty to use whichever bloody form of language we please. Suck on that, Mr Humphrys. X

P.S. Found this when I searched Google for some of the horrifying errors above and thought it was worth sharing with you. Guess those poor seals aren't the only ones with issues.

November 25th: Free lemons

Well, this is probably going to be a very disjointed and not particularly interesting post because I don't really have much to say today, but Charlotte requested a blog post a few days ago and as I love it when people show an interest in my blog, I'm going to do my best to oblige.

First of all (since this blog was set up to record my "school" years... technically college and university but let's not get fussy) I should mention that I got the results back from that test I wrote about a couple of posts ago and totally got a first! This makes up for never getting an A in English at A Level because it totally shows that I'm kicking some arse. Long may it continue!

Last week was reading week and I went back to the... er, glorious area from which I... am. Does that make sense? Probably not... anyway, I went home. It was really nice to see my family again (and really nice to eat something other than pasta; I mean, much as I love it, I'm getting to the stage where I never want to see another piece again as long as I live). I also saw my friends for the first time since we all started uni; Becky, Zoe and I went to see Breaking Dawn Part 1... and before I get a deluge of abuse for being a Twilight fan I must point out that we only watch them because they're so bad that they're amusing. Also, having read all the books and seen all the films to date, it's just sort of a given that we'd see it.

Charlotte and Lauren, not being Twilight fans, joined us for a sleepover at my house, which was great. I was worried that being at university would have a negative affect on my old friendships, but I think I was wrong. We're doing a pretty good job of staying in touch so far, and when I saw them on Saturday it was like we'd never been apart, though I could see the difference in them already. It was like we've all grown up, even though we've literally only been at uni for two months... but it was the first time that we've been apart, living our separate lives, and then come back together. We had our own separate stories to tell, rather than knowing all the day-to-day details of each other's lives, and to me we seemed older.

We stayed up pretty much all night talking (except Zoe, who got back from Prague that morning and fell asleep on my bed about ten o'clock... adorable), and though we've been friends for years, it's really the first time we have ever talked like that, together, about those things. I don't know what made us feel like we could; maybe it's the fact that we're around different people everyday, around people we maybe couldn't tell those things to... that can really make you miss the people you can talk to. But we all have 'deep' stuff, and they say that you don't really know someone until you can see their depth, and if that's true then the bond between my friends and I just got a whole lot deeper. It's very easy to drift apart when you're not together everyday, but I think that as long as we keep making the effort, uni will be the making, not the death, of our friendships.

And Becky (and hopefully Charlotte too) is coming to visit me in two weeks... yay! And then the week after is the start of the Christmas holidays, so I'll be home again in three weeks' time and that's the end of the first semester. Blimey. That was quick. It's scary how fast it's going... it feels like I've been here practically all my life and yet no time at all. I only moved in nine weeks ago on Sunday! Ridiculous!

In other news, we started our grammar class (yay!) on Monday and I've already marked myself out as the nerd... what can I say? I just love grammar. Strangely there aren't too many other grammar geeks in my classes - I would have thought there'd be more, considering we're all language nerds - but then again, there's a lot more to linguistics than grammar. Besides, I kind of like my obsessive-grammar-Nazi status. My ability to spot a misplaced apostrophe from a mile off is pretty much my unique... was going to say 'appeal' then, but I doubt many people find it particularly appealing. It's my incredibly annoying but extremely satisfying talent.

Hmm. A tip for grammar geeks everywhere who are just itching to correct someone who won't mind: find some foreign friends. I've found that some of them actually appreciate it. Imagine that!

I found out this morning that Old Orleans, the restaurant in Reading that my friends and I frequently attend, is closing in early December. I'm going to miss it greatly... it was the place we went for Becky's seventeenth birthday and our end of exams celebration - twice; where I went when I passed my theory test; where we had our fancy dress meal the last time we all saw each other before we all left for uni! It's been quite a big part of our time at college and it feels to me like the end of yet another era. Eras are ending all around us these days! I guess that's the thing about growing up... when I look back on my life when I was little, it was nothing like the way it is today. The clothes I wore, the places I went, the people I knew, the programmes I watched on TV... everything was different then, and now everything is changing again, and I can barely remember the specifics of my day-to-day life nine or ten years ago. I don't mind that, because that's normal, but I don't want to forget about my life before I came here. It was pretty good, as life goes.

Change is normal. Change is good. Change happens so frequently that sometimes we don't even notice it, and I guess it's only when we do that it becomes the scary thing that people try so hard to avoid. Good things bring new experiences, and new experiences are things you've never done before, and things you've never done before are scary... but you only have to do it once, and then it's not so scary anymore - and you get some pretty kickass moments out of it too.

In the wise words of a Facebook group: when life gives you lemons, keep them, because hey - free lemons.

Molly x

November 10th: A portal from your world to mine

Right now I'm researching a project I'm doing for my e-communication class on interactive advertising, and I stumbled across a video on YouTube which started me thinking. The video starts with these words:

"Once there was a time when we knew where people would be and how to reach them - with messages that would be heard and signals that would be seen.

We'd broadcast what we had to say, secure in the knowledge that somebody, somewhere, was listening."

Well, isn't that exactly what I'm doing here with my blog? Putting my message out there so that people can read it?

I didn't start this blog so people could get inside my head. I started it so I could get out of it. I needed somewhere to express myself and I can't do that here anymore - isn't observer's paradox a bitch?

But in some way, am I not glad that I'm not making all this effort for nobody to bother reading it? Am I secretly looking for an attentive audience?

The video then continues, "We took what we had to say and we said it in the most public way. We took our messages into people's homes at a time that we knew they'd be most receptive."

These days, time both is and isn't an issue. People are always talking about the increased pace of modern life being confusing and frustrating and the way that being constantly reachable feels like you're trapped - but is it? Let's envisage a scenario. You own a smartphone. You are used to having everything you could possibly want at your fingertips all the time - all your emails, all your work, your friends, your family - and you go out for the day, and you forget your phone. You could think of this as an opportunity to relax, create a bit of space between you and the rest of the world... but do you?

Maybe you do. If that's how you choose to see a day without your superior communications device, congratulations. You're a stronger person than I am. Because, despite once being one of those people who thought being glued to your phone was pathetic, that version of me disappeared almost the minute I got a BlackBerry. I feel naked without my phone, unable to stand the frustration of not being able to know everything now. I might be missing something really important!

I realize now that I'm in this culture that people aren't addicted to their phones; they're addicted to the ease with which they can access their entire lives from wherever they happen to be; they're addicted to the freedom - not captivity - that their phone brings; they're addicted to the people they're talking to. We can know whatever we want whenever we want - anything, anywhere, anytime. With the fast-paced nature of modern life, mobile everything-devices are timesavers, not timewasters. What's wrong with that?

And to say that using a mobile phone is anti-social is ridiculous - mobile phones are the very antithesis of anti-social behaviour. Isn't that why they call them social networks?

I received my first anonymous comment here on the blog last week and though I eventually found out who it was, for a while my brain went into overdrive. An anonymous comment? Who is this person? Why do they like my blog? What are they doing poking their nose into my life?

You see, I hardly ever give any thought to the fact that everything I write to this blank, white screen is out there for everyone to read - and who owns it then? When you upload a photo to Facebook, Facebook owns it; same with YouTube and video ownership. But surely writing is different? Writing is individual. Writing - and speech; the way we play with words - is the way we as people construct our identities. Nobody can place words or construct sentences in exactly the same way I can, and nobody will derive exactly the same meaning from these words as you will, so how can Blogger possibly own something as personal as my - MY - writing? Wait, so the internet owns my identity now?

The YouTube video "An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube" describes vlogging as "somebody watching where nobody is". Same with blogging. I've got people from all over the world reading everything I'm thinking and I don't have a clue who any of you are, and that is the most brilliant yet terrifying thing I've ever really thought about.

People are also saying that the skill of multitasking is a huge benefit of all the modern technology we have access to these days, but - again - is it? Can we really complete more than one task at once or are we just spreading our minds too thin, resulting in an inability to really get into detail in any one topic? From experience I can say that I almost never sit down to write a blog post and finish it however much time later having done nothing else. My brain is all over the place, flitting from one topic to the next, starting new paragraphs in the middle of old sentences, especially when I'm inspired-- and coincidentally, as this was exactly the point I was about to make, my phone has just started flashing and my brain is screaming, "No! Not now! You're on a roll, don't answer it! Don't answer it!"

But of course I will, because who can resist the pull of modern technology these days? Who can ignore the red flash of a BlackBerry, the call of the social group - the disappointment when it's only a spam email or a text from your service provider. And, of course, if I'm checking my phone, I might as well have a peek at Facebook as well. And I can't ignore Twitter, can I? And ooh - what if I'm missing a really important email?

I'm not a sociologist, but this is an area of sociology that I do find interesting (which is lucky, because this particular topic is almost exactly the same as most of the second year of my media studies A Level). The internet seems to be one big circle which we can never truly find our way out of - because (like sex, or so I've heard) even the lack of it complicates things. We are travelling through a million different portals every day, in and out of the lives of strangers without them even knowing you were there. The internet is a scary place, but god, it's so brilliant too. 

You may find it interesting to know that I was in the middle of the aforementioned project when I became inspired to start this blog post. What project's that then? You can't remember, can you? And is that because you stopped reading this post to do something else and then came back, or are you just thinking about too many things to remember what you read five minutes ago?

Molly x

(Now I'm going to go and see to my Facebook notifications and my ever-vibrating phone. Because yes, I ignored them. Your applause is appreciated.)

Videos referenced in this post:

"Nokia Interactive Advertising"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zkmi_AXACw

"An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPAO-lZ4_hU

And, because my e-communication lecturer referenced this as 'essential reading' for our 'create your own LOLcat' assignment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi8VTeDHjcM

October 23rd: Good mood gurglings

Greetings, bloglings. I come in peace and am, as the (rather ominous) title suggests, feeling strangely happy today - but then I've just got my first big uni test over with, my brother's coming up to see me at the weekend and my oldest friend, the gorgeous Becky, just booked tickets to come and visit in December. So life's good!

...And I shouldn't have started this post that way because now I have no news with which to fill the rest of this update. Oh well, I'm sure I'll manage. If I really get stuck for content, I could just go all pretentious writer on yo' ass and inflict upon you all those up-myself ramblings to do with subjects I really know nothing about.

Alas!

I'm currently listening to Cee Lo Green's Forget You, which I now associate with Becky and Charlotte because of many a Skype or text conversation spent ping-ponging the lyrics back and forth through our respective internet and phone networks. Hearing this song always makes me happy because, though it wasn't a particular 'thing' of ours before we left college, it reminds me of all the other little in-jokes we've shared throughout the last few years, the ones that made the time I spent with them so pleasant; the ones that made me feel like I was part of something. Mornings and lunchtimes laughing in the language corridor; reading the Metro and revising for exams together; sunbathing or Starbucks-ing when we should have been working; complaining our way up to Rotherfield; Picnic Wednesdays and deep conversations; even doing coursework together in the Student Learning Centre.

There was many a time when it felt like our days at college would go on forever, and yet here we are. The exams came and went and the summer did the same, and now I sit here in my room at university wondering where the last three years went. My little brother is in year eleven now, and for me the first few months of year eleven really sucked, and him being the same age is really making me think about just how fast the time has gone. Then, I would have done anything for a completely new start, but college changed that, and somehow I became happy with the life I had before I left for uni. I have spent my whole life wishing I could change things, and to not want things to change was an alien concept for me, but things have to change. I have changed so much from the person I was three years ago and if someone had shown fifteen-year-old me my three-years-hence self, I don't think I would ever have seen this me coming.

But here I am. And I did think about it, a lot; the future, the way I would turn out - which leads me to wonder if that's the reason I found it so hard to settle in to York when I first moved here. Yes, I had over a year of preparation time, but we can never predict the future, can we? No matter how hard we try to foresee what's coming, or how well we think we know what to expect, life still has a way of shoving unexpected situations into your face.

As I write this I'm listening to the instrumental of Wicked's Defying Gravity, which I think is an extremely appropriate song to reinforce this post. Having been severely lacking inspiration for a month, I can now feel my writer's instincts taking over; here I finally find myself again. Because I have been feeling lost. Moving to university is a huge deal and I have been feeling it very deeply, kind of drifting along in my new routine without properly engaging no matter how hard I tried. But I'm finding my way now, and I'm finding new friends, new family to surround myself with, and though those people I left behind will always be the ones with whom I grew up, they have to do the same. That's how life is. And alongside it all my constant companion is linguistics. I was right about it being my future... I suppose, to quote One Tree Hill, it is my first love, and you don't forget your first love.

The thing is, no matter how drastically everything changes, somehow you always manage to get back on your feet. I know a couple of people who have come from overseas to live here in England, and I used to think that leaving home was leaving home no matter how far you go, but now I realize that's not the case; if I get homesick, I can't just pop home for the weekend (mainly because of the price of the trains... blimey, they're expensive) and if it's difficult for me to leave everything familiar five hours South of here, I can't imagine how it must be for my foreign friends to have so far to go back home.

But if all the faces of your life are far away, after a while the new faces become familiar too. You find routes and short cuts across your new city; you find favourite places to be; you learn the balance between work and play and you realize that now it's up to you. Your life. And now our lives really are ours to live as we wish, and hope that one day we really can follow our dreams.

So if you care to find me, look to the North East of England. I've cut and retied my strings - and if I'm flying solo at least I'm flying free. It's time to try defying gravity and one of these days, someday soon, I will find my way, and I will match them in renown. I will be the best I can be.

We don't have to choose anything right now. We're young and we have our whole lives ahead of us, and here we are - unlimited.

Molly x

October 20th: Not dead

Well, I must admit that I've never shirked my blogging responsibilities quite as drastically as this before... tomorrow it will be a month since I last posted here. That's ridiculous! Admittedly I have had no internet for the past three weeks and posting long updates from my phone gets on my nerves, but nonetheless it is very rude of me not to have written even the tiniest of hellos.

Still, I'm here now. I wonder if this will be one of the rare posts that actually makes it out into the blogosphere... i.e. one of the posts I can actually be bothered to finish. Somehow I doubt it (though I was obviously wrong if you're reading this). I mean, we've already established that I can be something of a lazy poo when it comes to writing here and how am I possibly meant to condense the happenings of the last month into a blog post that is short enough to avoid boring you all to death?

So, since I last wrote... well... blimey, that was halfway through the very first week. I have got a lot of catching up to do. Okay, well... I started proper lectures (obviously); I fell in love with phonetics (I discovered that I have an aptitude for phonetics and people keep asking me to 'model' my voice in the class because I have a Southern standard English accent and you need that for transcribing things into the phonetic alphabet); I met a Danish girl on my course who lives on the floor above me (so awesome, to have a real live Dane in the immediate area); I've made quite a few more friends (as you would expect after living here for almost five weeks); I went home for five days to take and fail my driving test (but I'll ace it next time)... and so much more!

I don't really have anything more than that to say right now and I have a phonetics test (yay!) on Monday so I'd better do some work, but I shall leave you with this semantic joke:

There are 10 types of people in the world...

Those who understand binary and those who don't!

Molly x

September 21st: Adjusting

Well... blimey! I thought it was time I updated you 'orrible lot about what's occurring in my new life, but where to start?

Well, it's busy. Good but busy. And confusing, and overwhelming, and brilliant, and a little bit lonely in the moments when I'm not busy - but the more friends I make, the less I get that feeling. But it's crazy! I mean, besides the obvious stuff about doing a degree, there's the cooking, the cleaning, all the stuff to which I gave no thought before... like how long after the best before date can you keep bread, or whether you can convince your flatmates to move the toaster because it says in the manual you can't put it under cabinets or next to heat sources (and ours is under a cabinet next to the oven)... or remembering to lock your flat when you leave (admittedly of my three flatmates and myself, I'm the only one who hasn't broken or forgotten my keys yet. We'll see how long that'll last.)

But it's occurred to me that I've been here for three days now, and I haven't starved to death yet. Before coming here I hadn't really fed myself for more than one day at a time, and now here I am, "cooking" (cough cough) or at least surviving fairly well. My room is still tidy (three days is practically a record for me), our kitchen is spotless, I've done the washing up more times than I care to think about because we're all still getting to know each other and none of us want to leave it to build up in case the others think we're not doing our bit, so we're all washing up after every meal (actually I tend to leave mine for two meals otherwise it's such a waste of water). I hardly see my flatmates though really except the one who lives next door, because we've all got stuff at different times so we don't eat together - but we're living here for the next academic year so we've got plenty of time to mess the place up. Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that we're adapting pretty well (though our oven doesn't work and apparently the people upstairs burned something yesterday sticking it under the grill because theirs doesn't work either). But hey.

One of the things that is nice, though, is that I can basically do what I want. After my lectures yesterday I went home with a friend and then I brought her back to mine and there was nobody to ask, no permission to gain... I could come home at three in the morning if I so wish (though I might regret it when my alarm goes off at seven the next day). It's also a bit of a novelty for me being able to walk everywhere - I can leave the flat and be in the centre of town in ten minutes! Incredible, considering I come from the middle of nowhere and am used to relying on either irritating infrequent buses or the good old parents.

It would be highly irresponsible of me to post pictures of my room on the internet where any old person could see them, so I'll show you some pictures of possibly the most historical town I've ever been in instead. York's been populated by every invader England has ever hosted - and of course our own indigenous people as well - and apparently they're all buried under the city itself, so you're basically walking on thousands of years' worth of dead people. There is also apparently an ancient law which has never been changed, which states that it is perfectly legal to shoot a Scotsman inside the city walls (I know - a walled city. Could this place be any more awesome?) on condition that it's not a Sunday or after dark and it has to be with a bow and arrow. And they do actually have a shop that sells bows and arrows so... Scotsmen, watch your backs!

No, I'm not actually a creepy weirdo interested in all this death stuff. However I did attend a "Ghost Walk" last night, during which we walked through the city listening to York's ghost stories and watching our guide (this guy - he was on stilts and in costume) -->
pointing out all of York's haunted areas. Apparently my new home is the most haunted city in the world, and with the enchanting and grand Minster right in the centre of the city walls, that's easy to believe.

(I'm quite proud of this picture. I was an idiot and forgot my camera last night but my BlackBerry did itself proud on this one... though no picture can ever capture the incredible building that is the Minster and certainly not the size of it. If ever you come to York, just go and look at it; it's truly awesome.)







At the moment York city centre is covered in marquees and stalls because the York Food and Drink Festival's on, and whilst walking back from the Ghost Walk last night, my flatmate and I stumbled upon a free charity acoustic concert, so we went in and had a nose. It's fantastic to actually live in such a beautiful city with so much going on!

On a random note: I was also pleased to discover that my Student Union bar sells my favourite cider:

but unfortunately not my favourite flavour. Oh well, can't have everything! It's exciting nonetheless.

OH and there's a very short street, literally one or two shops, one with the fabulous name of "1 1/2 Whip Ma Whop Ma Gate". I'll try to get a picture. Brilliant!

In a minute I'm off to the Freshers' Fair, and I'm going to chew a stick of that "mouth watering berry" gum that I got in my freebies when I moved in... just because I can.

Molly x

P.S. Sorry again for the gaps! It seems Blogger dislikes posts with pictures in them. Oh well, it'll just have to suck it up.

September 17th: Reasons why I shouldn't write in the night

The house is dark because everyone's in bed, and, as appears to be the norm around here of late, I am the only one awake. I realize that it's slightly strange to update one's blog to pass the hours when sleep is being an evasive bastard, but alas, here I am. If, that is, I can remember the correct email address to send this post to.

Tomorrow I'm leaving. Leaving the familiar comfort of the South, leaving the area where I grew up and the faces that punctuated my daily existence. These places have been the setting for my story so far - they've been home to every turn my life has ever taken and every development it's ever put me through - but stories have to move on, and so does life... and so do I. So to the North with me! To York! Let me fly the nest and land on my very first voyage five hours upwards from here.

I must be crazy. Five whole hours? That's such a long way! That's 300ish miles. What if I don't like it? What if I want to come home? - These are the responses I've had from people upon learning where I've chosen to attend university, but as far as I'm concerned, being away from home is being away from home. There's still the effort of going to the station, buying a ticket, sitting on a train for a while; does it really make a difference whether it's one hour or five?

Not to me. So I thought, at least. But I haven't even left yet and I'm lying here unable to sleep, which has to say something about my emotional goings-on at this particular moment in time. I never thought it would feel like this. I never thought it would hit me this hard. I've always been the girl who doesn't show emotion; the girl who doesn't cry - but trust me, I feel it, and now, while I don't feel sad exactly, I feel overwhelmed by it all. I feel like there's something pressing down on me. There's been such a huge lead up to this that you'd think I'd have had a chance to get my head around it by now - and so I thought I had - but apparently, no matter how ever-present it is in your thoughts or how much preparation you do, you can never really leave your childhood behind without it hitting you right between the eyes. Oh, we're growing up all right, but that skin of childhood we're shedding wants to make its presence felt while it still can. That's why we doubt ourselves and our choices. Because the future is always right around the corner, and we are constantly being told that those who don't give it 100% probably aren't going to succeed.

Well, maybe that's true. But if you really love something, you give it 100% without even trying. You give it your everything because that's what you feel it deserves. The future is never secure, but I do believe we end up where we're meant to be - and all I have to do is think about the feeling I got when I stepped out of York train station back in April; the feeling I got when I saw it for the first time; the feeling of rightness, of 'yes, this is where I belong'. I think about how that feeling grew, about how York and its university offered no pins with which to puncture it - unlike the other four unis on my list. I think about how much trouble I had deciding on a uni in the first place and then how easy it was once I'd chosen York St John; how wonderful it will be to have fallen in love with a place and actually get to live there; and most of all, I think about that day in September 2009 when I sat in an English Language lesson and somewhere inside me, something seemed to click into place.

I don't doubt my choices, because all I have to do is think about all of that and I know everything is going to be okay. What I'm feeling is a combination of nerves, excitement, tiredness and irritation at not being able to sleep - and it's normal to feel all of that. Especially the nerves and excitement stuff.

This is a prime example of why I should not write in the night! I'm always that little bit more unhinged when it's dark and it feels like I am the only being on the planet. It's dangerous for me to have a phone with an internet connection really... who knows what could happen if any of my less-controlled moments got into the hands of the interweb?

Seriously though. And just because it's now twenty past one in the morning and there's a new, creepily accurate horoscope awaiting me courtesy of my DailyHoroscope app, I'm going to insert it here to finish this post, because it is... well, creepily accurate. Not that I believe in that stuff. It's just my guilty pleasure. Only when it's good though.

"When a woman becomes pregnant, she has nine months to get used to the idea. She can take that time to think about the kind of parent she wants to be. She can look into nutrition and other aspects of care. She can prepare a nursery. She can arrange for babysitters and pick out clothing and find a pediatrician. And yet, despite having that time to get ready, she will still make mistakes. Just because you're about to enter a new adventure with little warning does not mean you will make more mistakes than someone who's better prepared. Go forward with enthusiasm and a happy attitude, and you'll do much better than if you enter your journey with fear and apprehension."

Molly x

September 12th: News, booze and kangaroos

Actually that's a lie. This post has absolutely nothing to do with kangaroos and not an awful lot to do with booze either (though it always helps), but I just fancied a rhyming title. Don't think I've ever indulged in a rhyming title before.

Well, since it's ten to four in the morning and I'm still awake, I thought I might as well use the time wisely, so here I am... bed-blogging. I warn you though - though I can't sleep I am exhausted, so this may not make an awful lot of sense. 

So, Scotland. It was cold and full of daddy long legs flapping about but I didn't go there for the weather and certainly not the lack of insects: I can't believe I made it back without a midge bite or two. I also made it back without kissing anyone, which is more than can be said for the other places I've jetted off to this summer. But that's another story. I went to Scotland for music purposes and developments have indeed been made! Here goes:

On Saturday I had an absolutely hilarious evening at Hannah's (the girl who plays the guitar) and with the help of two glasses of wine and the hindrance of two very overexcited dogs, we composed a new song! Hannah came up with some new guitar music and then we fit most of the lyrics to it. It's faster and catchier than our first one. Unfortunately we didn't record it this time as Hannah was working when we went to Steve's (the guy with the recording studio), so we'll leave it for next time. It's got a lot of potential though, so we're both excited about it.

We went to Steve's on Monday and At Last is now finished - at last! It certainly has taken its time. We did four recordings of it and then chose the best bits of each one, and then Steve edited it and sent it to us that evening, ready for when Hannah came over and we worked on our new song some more. I really hope that one day we'll get to record it properly, but at the moment I'm still in "Oh my God, I recorded a song! I'm doing another one! An actual live collab like I always wanted!" mode. It's such an amazing experience and I really can't believe I actually got to do it. It's crazy!

I got home from Scotland on Tuesday and on Saturday, my friends and I went out for our 'last

 supper' - a visit to Old Orleans, the restaurant that has marked several celebrations for us, such as the end of exams both last year and this - in fancy dress. Fancy dress, no less, in the theme of various countries' national dress codes. When I was in Fuerteventura last month I acquired a Flamenco outfit, so I wore that. Lauren was Hawaiian, Zoe was French (complete with moustache), and Becky and Charlotte totally ignored the dress code (but still made an effort) by pitching up in Hogwarts uniforms. We made an interesting sight, wandering through Reading dressed like that. It was a brilliant evening though, full of laughs - though we didn't actually get round to the whole goodbye bit, so we're having a last last... er, Starbucks on Thursday for that purpose. 

And perhaps the biggest news I have to impart is that time is drifting on and I will find myself, in six days' time, filling one of the many rooms in York St John's accommodation with a selection of the crap that has been accumulating throughout my life. (I went uni shopping on Friday and the spare room is now stacked with assorted bits and pieces that people have decided I need for my new life. I even have a rather fabulous spatula. And who'd have thought there'd be so many different kinds of frying pan?)


I have less than a week left here in my room in the oh-so-familiar, oh-so-endearingly-equally-filled-with-poshness-and-chavs South of England, where I have spent my entire life to date. I've never left it for more than two weeks at a time, I've never left my family for more than eight days, and it's only just dawning on me that it's really happening now. It's time. I'm really leaving. I'll have new people to meet, a new city to explore - I'll be living in a city! You can only truly understand the thrill that gives me if you, like me, have spent your entire life in the middle of bloody nowhere.


You know shit's getting real when you change your location on Facebook.

Seriously though. I'm leaving my family and I'm leaving my friends, and as Becky pointed out on Saturday night when we had a deep conversation in the stimulating comfort of First Great Western's Oxford-bound train, it will be the first time that either she or I have gone somewhere new without knowing anybody, as we've had each other everytime we've changed schools so far. I'll miss having people there who know me, and who are there for me, and who will listen even when things are hard to say. Who'll be there to recognise private jokes when they come up in conversation, or to spend ten minutes laughing so hard we can't breathe, or to reminisce about the past with? And who's going to be there to do five-way-"safe"s with? 



I wasn't nervous about going to university until a couple of days ago, but the closer it gets and the more people tell me it'll be the best years of my life, the more terrified I become. There are some things I find really hard to talk about and some times I really don't want to be alone, and the prospect of going somewhere where I will be alone scares me - because at least now I have people around me who know everything about me, and the things that are hard to say aren't so hard when people know. I don't cry often, but I have tears in my eyes now thinking about leaving my friends. I can't help wondering what life will do to us and whether our friendships will survive the next three years and beyond, no matter how hard we try. Life always has a habit of getting in the way, and the thing about old friends is that they've seen you grow up. The past is what makes you who you are, and my friends and I have seen each other become the people we are today. That's irreplaceable. So, Becky, Zoe, Charlotte and Lauren, whatever may happen throughout the next few years, you have been my childhood friends. We have shared so many firsts, discussed so many fears and had so many laughs and nothing will ever replace that. Thank you. 


Molly x


P.S. If you want to hear At Last, you can find it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHjr0wId-TE

P.P.S The gaps in this post are SO ANNOYING.

September 3rd: On the move

Since I created this blog, it's been a personal bugbear of mine that there isn't a Blogger app for BlackBerry, so I'm absolutely thrilled to say that I have finally worked out how to post to Blogger in the rare event that my arse isn't firmly fixed before my laptop.
 
Email blogging! Brilliant! I always knew it was possible to text-blog but my phone never capitulated, so this is the absolute shiz. Now I can spam my dear bloglings from wherever I happen to be! Aren't you just so pleased?
 
Well really. There's no need to make that face. At least now I'm less likely to leave you post-less for weeks on end.
 
Well, I have nothing new to tell you yet, so this is just a quick test to see if it actually works.
 
See you soon, bloglings!
 
Molly x

September 2nd: Posting from elsewhere again

Hello bloglings - I'm in Scotland!

I know, I've barely been back in England a week and already I've buggered off somewhere else. Right now I'm sitting in my grandparents' shop (it's closed, I haven't just invaded) and since I have the use of a computer (my BlackBerry doesn't work here; the highlands of Scotland are ridiculously signal deprived but so awesome it makes up for it) I thought I'd update you all on what's occurring in my once-boring-but-all-of-a-sudden-quite-busy life. I thought I'd have quite a calm two weeks before I leave for York, but it seems that things are getting more and more hectic as the days pass. There's just so much to do; getting all the finance stuff sorted, packing, buying all my kitchen equipment - and of course practicing for my driving test - so it's quite a funny time to come to Scotland but I've been trying to make time ever since I went last year and in the end I just figured it would never happen if I didn't force it to. So here I am!

Any new bloglings won't know this, but my grandparents have a friend called Steve, who owns a recording studio, and last year I recorded a song there which I didn't quite finish (but only in my eyes, it seems), so now I'm here to perfect it. Apparently I'm going to Steve's on Monday morning and hopefully I'll get it up to the standard I want it before I return to England on Tuesday. I'm SO excited! The whole recording experience is amazing (anyone who hasn't read July 21st's post from last year should refer to it now - it's ridiculously long but it's got all the information about this particular subject in there). I don't really have much to tell you yet but just you wait...

Just a quick update really, so I'll inflict the rest of my life on you next week.

Molly x