February 23rd: Ageing, like a cheese

I've just been rereading some of my old blog posts, and it is the weirdest thing ever. Or rather, it's exactly what I was expecting it to be.

Confused?

This blog is like a time capsule. It's a collection of stories and feelings and thoughts from what I think will always have been some of the busiest years of my life. I sit here and I read all of these things I've written, and what I'm seeing reflected back at me is myself... but it's like I'm not quite complete yet, especially in some of the earlier posts. I write differently, I speak differently... I think differently. I've grown up - and I'm not sure when that happened.

There aren't many times in one's life when absolutely everything changes, but that's what happened to me last September. This time last year I was... probably in bed, considering that I was getting up at four the next morning to catch a plane to Denmark - but looking at the bigger picture, I was a seventeen year old student in my second year of college, just about to embark upon the final stretch of A levels. I had applied to university and received all five offers, but I hadn't chosen York. Hell, I hadn't even been to York! Now I sit here in a city I'd never been to a year ago, in a room that I pay rent for, with five more qualifications than I had this time last year. The walls surrounding me are covered with knowledge I've gained over the past six months; possessions I've only recently acquired; pictures of friends I grew up spending every day with and who are now, like I am, spending every day with other people.

Maybe when I moved to York was when I grew up. I kind of had to. But I can't help feeling it started earlier than that; a point which my blog posts prove. I only wish that I had started this blog earlier, because going back and reading through it is like watching myself grow into the person I am today, and this time next year things will have changed again. I'll be over halfway through my degree; I'll have lived in Spain for three months and been back home again for two; I'll be living somewhere different, with different people. I'll probably know different people (as well as some current people, of course). But as long as I keep writing it all down here, I'll look back at this post one day and remember what life was like back in the olden days of 2012 (either that or I'll cringe with embarrassment at what a pretentious idiot I sound).

I can feel these years I'm at university slipping through my fingers like grains of sand and I wish I could grab time and pull it back, slow it down. On the one hand I can't wait to finish my degree and start living my life, but on the other hand, when I leave uni I will truly be on my own. That'll be it. I won't be a student anymore - and the one thing I've always been throughout my life to date is a student. What will I be when I won't be a student? A linguist? A speech therapist? A teacher of English as a foreign language? Who knows? Maybe I'll get a Masters and a Ph.D and have a nice posh title. Maybe I'll become someone's wife and someone's mother. But all that won't be for quite a while. When I graduate from York St John in 2014, I will simply be a twenty-one year old woman with a linguistics degree and an eye-watering amount of debt. Big whoop.

But actually that is a big whoop. Because when I started this blog nearly two and a half years ago, I was nowhere near ready to go to university and now I'm sitting here talking about how I'm not ready to leave. Though the past seems a long time ago now, it was the present once, and I lived every single one of the days I've written about here on the blog. The future will come, as it always does, and there's nothing we can do to delay it. But isn't that sort of reassuring? The one thing you can always count on in life (besides death and taxes, or so I hear) is that time will pass. Though the phrase "nothing lasts forever" is usually used in a negative way, surely it also means that nothing bad lasts forever either?

Life happens, and all we can do is live it. Bring on the future!

Molly x

One of the new experiences I've gained since I started uni is going to nightclubs, and though I've only done it a few times, I'm astonished to find that it can actually be quite fun. Especially when you get absolutely covered in UV paint.

February 16th: Updates (brace yourselves, it's long)

Despite the fact that this has been one of the busiest weeks that I've had (socially) since I got to uni, I have somehow managed to write two new posts in two days. Wonders will never cease. I suppose, since this blog was originally supposed to be a way for me to document my life, I should expand a little on why my week has been so busy, so here goes:

On Sunday I got bored lazing around in my flat so I went out and had a mooch around town and got some shopping done (both food and clothes... oops). When I got back I helped my friend Emma move into her new room (she moved from a different halls of residence because she didn't get along with her flatmates) which just happened to be the flat that my friend Louise lives in, so that's pretty cool. Now two of the people I see the most at uni are literally two minutes away up a flight of stairs. Emma's parents thanked me for helping Emma move by inviting me out for a tapas with them, which was deeeeeelicious. And I do love a bit of Spain.

I have no lectures on Mondays, but I had to go to uni to put together a presentation. I'd missed a package from the postman in the morning though so I had to go to the post office to pick it up afterwards. I'd thought it was a textbook but turns out it was my Christmas present from my lovely college English teacher Hannah - she sent me three very pretty nail varnishes, so that's awesome! I also realised I'd left both my red heels and my black heels at home - nightmare since I was going out on Tuesday in a black dress - but I nipped into a charity shop and snapped up another pair of red shoes (gorgeous ones at that) for £2. Love charity shops.

Monday also saw me cooking meat on my own for the very first time - which doesn't sound much but is kind of an achievement for me since I used to really hate frying things, so woop for that!

Tuesday. Well. Where to start? Obviously I had to go into uni - three hour grammar and text lecture on morphology... don't get me wrong, it's very interesting, but it's three hours. Three hours. Of grammar. Exhausting. Anyway, later on Emma came down from the fourth floor and we had predrinks before going back up to her flat (for more predrinks) where I officially met all her flatmates - and lovely they were too! Strange really that I'd never met them properly before, since I've been friends with Louise since the first week of term. Still. We were going to a club called Revolutions... only my second time in a club but much more fun than last time! Before we left I went down to my flat and ended up snapping my key in half in the lock, therefore locking myself out of my room in the process and meaning that the flat door can't be opened from the outside. Not ideal at all, but they're going to fix it soon.

Revs were doing a Valentine's day event called a 'lock and key party', where the girls were given locks and the boys were given keys and you had to find your match. I discovered a couple of new drinks - no idea what they were; Emma and Louise's flatmate Ed got them for us. The boys disappeared then and we just danced for a while, and then a Spanish guy called Pepe, who apparently knew Emma, appeared and ended up dancing with me... So things continued like that for a while until Emma texted saying she'd gone home, so I left too to make sure she was okay, which she wasn't, because it turned out she had kissed Ed and was in varying degrees of guilt over her boyfriend (who hadn't even bothered to text her to say happy Valentine's day, so it was quite understandable). I ended up sleeping on her floor (because I couldn't get into my flat) and we'd just got comfortable when we decided we quite fancied a McDonald's, so at half past three in the morning we did the fifteen minute walk each way. And it was so worth it.

We woke up on Wednesday morning after about three hours' sleep; obviously I skipped my lectures (including presenting the presentation we'd written on Monday) due to the fact that I was still wearing last night's clothes because I was locked out of my flat (and my pens and notes were locked in). Around ten o'clock the postman came and dropped off my textbook and my AMAZING phonetically written t-shirt:

(For those of you who can't read phonetics, it says "If you can read this then you've spent an exceptionally long time staring at my chest". BRILLIANT.)

and I was told to come and collect my new key at twelve so that I'd be able to get into my flat. This was also the time that both Emma and I received an email from the study abroad office telling us that we'd been given offers to study abroad and that we had to come into uni to collect them... but we had to wait for my key first! After waiting what felt like years but was actually about an hour and a half, we got the key and set off to pick up our letters, which ended up looking like this:

Wow. It was a crazy morning. After that I spent most of the afternoon at Louise and Emma's flat, hanging out in the kitchen with them and Simon, and then I went to bed with an episode of Glee about nine o'clock. I'm not really cut out for the student lifestyle... too exhausting!

Today I had a phonetics lecture at nine, immediately followed by two hours of Spanish at ten, and then a phonetics seminar, during which we were studying trills (the kind of growling noise you make when you roll your 'r's and the brrr sound you make when pushing air through closed lips)... so that was fun. Tonight Emma came over again and we ate pizza and ice cream while watching Easy A and recording the vibration of our vocal folds. As you do.

Tomorrow my family is coming up for the weekend, and before that I've got to clean my entire flat and do some work, so I'd better go to bed. However, to cut a long, long, looooong story short, assuming I pass this year, I AM MOVING TO SPAIN IN SEPTEMBER. OH. MY. GOD. This is something I've wanted to do ever since I've realised it was possible, and having been attracted to Spanish culture for as long as I can remember, I can hardly believe it might actually happen. Of course it's not definite yet, but it's a hell of a lot more definite than it's ever been before and I am going to do everything in my power to make sure I go. Holy crap.

Remember that post I wrote last May about my list of things to do before you die? Living in a foreign country for a while is one of them. So is learning a language. To think that at least one of my things may actually happen so soon is beyond my capability to comprehend - such is the force of my excitement. I can't even express right now how happy I am that I got accepted... this is why we should chase our dreams, people! There's always a possibility that they just might come true.

Molly x

February 14th: A Valentine's post, sort of ish

What is the most beautiful phrase in the English language?


Would I be correct if I said the phrase "I love you" springs to mind? Most people would agree with that, I think. I. Love. You. Three small, separate words but carrying so much power and such immense meaning that it's hard to get your head around it. I mean think about it. I, an ordinary person, nobody special, feel love - and all its entailments; respect, pride, trust - for you, another individual. I feel so strongly about you that I am willing to spend my life cohabiting with you; I am willing to allow your presence in my life to change my way of living; I am willing to share life-changing decisions with you; to become less of one and more of a half; to create an emotional weakness through which anybody could hurt or enrage me by interfering with you or with our relationship; to become unable to function to my full capacity without you.


I have never been in love. Perhaps that's obvious. Despite this, to me, "I love you" is kind of amazing. I mean, put yourself now in the shoes of the person hearing this delicious phrase. Yes, "I", the person speaking, am an ordinary person, nobody special, but to you, if my love is requited, I am not. To you I am the whole world. How can one person mean so much to another person? How?


Amazing, yes. But the most beautiful? Perhaps not. If I had been in love, perhaps I would agree with all those people who would plump for "I love you"... but to me, the most beautiful phrase in the English language is "I know you". Because if somebody can show you that they know you - really know you -, that they can get right down inside the depths of your brain and know what you're thinking, how you're feeling, and what that says about how much they care about you to know how to do that; that seems pretty damn beautiful to me. To me, "I know you" entails "I love you", along with a lot of other things. Most human beings don't open up to just anyone; there has to be trust, so to truly know someone they have to trust you with everything. And of course I'm not just talking about romantic love, but all sorts - family love, friendship love... platonic love. That is something I have experienced, as have most people... a loving family or true friends or, if you're lucky, as I am, both. They say friends are the family you choose, but like finding romantic love, not everybody you meet will be right for you. Friendships, like relationships, end all the time - but I once heard a phrase saying that everybody who walks out of your life is just making room for someone better, someone who truly knows you, whatever that may entail - and loves you for it.


So to all you people who don't have a special person to celebrate this Valentine's day with, I say who cares? You may be single today, but who knows where you'll be a year from now? Don't worry about it. Love's kind of a big deal... to find someone to spend forever with means you've got forever to find them, so don't rush it. It'll happen when it's meant to, and until then, there is nothing wrong with being (as Becky once put it) single and ready to mingle!


Molly x


(P.S. Once again sorry for the gaps between the paragraphs! Believe me, they annoy me just as much as they annoy you, but I've just spent the last half an hour trying to get rid of them, to no avail. Alas!)

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