With Just A Dash Of Formaldehyde

What's weirder than things that are weird, are things that really should be weird, but aren't at all. Apparently, cutting up dead bodies falls into this category.

If you ever get into a dissection room, a few things to bear in mind:

Nipples are creepy. For some bizarre reason, you don't seem to register that it's a real human being until you see their nipples.

Don't get a fat person. Fat is a) scary b) impossible to get off.

Try not to remember Halloween while you've got a corpse in front of you... poor timing much?

And...

It isn't a lie, the first & only thing you think of at the end is "Need. Food. Now." Formaldehyde really kicks off your appetite.

The most striking element of the session was handling the brain. It's so small. To think that the world is run by so little mass, & such a seemingly randomly ordered bunch of cells is mind blowing. It's stunning at both extremes; just how much electricity is shooting around the brain every split second, & then to think of how many thoughts its owner must have had in their lifetime, what just an innocent looking lump of pink could have imagined, envisioned, could have done & given to the world.

Dude.

Things are good, winter is close, we're still spinning eastward.

Orchid

Pink

If i were somebody else, i might fall in love with me.

I listened to 'Nicest Thing' today & it made me cry; i don't think it made me sad, just pensive. 

I wore grown-up clothes to my interview today, but i may as well have been 5 years old, feet too small in my Mother's highest heels & her pinkest lipstick all over my skin. As soon as i'm home again, i'm going to go fruit-picking, by myself. 

Hopefully it'll be raining.

I don't want to leave this until i look like the insane lady who goes fruit-picking by herself thinking about the world, &, i guess, stuff. 

I'll do that a lot before i'm not allowed anymore.

Last night was good, i gave up trying to find people with similar interests to me so i went to a gig at Ronnie Scotts by myself, & made friends there. Might even see them again. The word 'duh' came to mind when an A&R guy & i realised that if he is obligated to go to certain gigs & ends up going by himself, & i want to get to know the scene here better & nobody at uni does, we could work as a team at this (:

Orchid

Tally

It's quite intriguing to watch peoples' behaviour more carefully, once you realise that a bunch of kids removed from the real world respond similarly to inmates of a chaotic prison; everybody seems to be dipping toes across the border separating the norm from mild insanity. Some people have been thrilled to discover that they can fold their own ears into themselves, others now find it mandatory to creep people out with their new-found talent of eyelid reversal, & the talent show winner has to be the whistle-hum. To top it off, for the past three nights, talking to different people into the early hours of the morning has ended in the classic question: 'So would you ever eat your own placenta?' I wonder if i too am about to crack, or if i have, when, how?

Maybe the fact that i'm now apparently logging everybody's moves is my answer.

Oh well.

Orchid

FM

I feel really shiny (:

Not in a gross way, i feel sunshiny, starshiny.

Shiny.

In short i had our room to myself today, & managed to fix my radio & had all my notes organised from last night's mindless filing. The result? I could make really useful notes that i really understand, while dancing around to awful chart music, with the sun glaring through the window, while in between adding to my wall collage.

Yeah (:

I haven't been able to do that in almost a month now. Well, i wouldn't have missed the work, but nothing in the world is as good as a little Sunday radio dancing with absolutely nobody in the world to see how ridiculous you look in your Sunday Worst.

It's letter-writing time now.

Dear whoever...

Orchid

E.T.

When i saw my mother last Sunday, she said to me 'Just look forward. Oxford is still there, all the people are still there, they're all getting on with their same old lives, it will still all be in tact while you're not here.'

Within 24 hours this week, i found out that one of my friends is single & pregnant, another two have broken up, & one of my best friends has been hurt beyond what should ever be allowed, & worst of all by another one of my friends. I can't count how many times i've said 'i just don't know what to say, i just don't.'

Conversely, life is good at my end. Along with dissections, debates, & drama productions to look forward to, i have a job interview coming up... let's just say it'll be quite liberating. 

It's good to feel at worst, okay, for once. Even though everything has panned out now so that events don't waver far from the so-so, right now i'm cool with not having any AMAZING times, if it means i don't feel lower than low either. Halfway through last week i got halfway through packing everything up to leave, quit, whatever. I was warned against going home, but i just had to; i certainly saw the results. Things have to get worse before they get better. I don't know at what point i saw sense, but i'm still here so something must have clicked. I think Ciaran must have called me at just the right time, thank you.

At 9am on Sunday morning, my mother called me, telling me to come downstairs... to find her, two of her friends & my sister standing in the foyer with bags of stuff for me. That's dedication (: We went to the Hair Show, a London Fashion Week equivalent for salons, which was amazing. I adore being in that kind of high powered environment, seeing so many driven people with their 'skinny lattes' & heels clicking, & watching it rush past me. As long as i don't have to be one. As long as i can still be a small town girl in the big City, as long as i can hold doors open, smile at people on the street, all the people on the street, as long as i can spare a few seconds everytime i walk down a street to look up; nobody ever looks anywhere but straight ahead, the line of fire here. As long as i know what i want to give, & who i am, nothing else matters.

Does it?

Orchid

Ruby Red

10th-11th October 2009

The best weekend ever.

There's no place like home
There's no place like home
There's no place like home

Orchid.

Salamander

I'm currently quite obnoxiously restless; i'm just so happy to be going home & at the same time, everything is just so good here... maybe more so because i know i'm not stuck here for the weekend. I'm getting really good & efficient at domestic stuff like cooking. Last night i did uber cheap shopping at Sainsbury's then made dinner & prepared the pancake mix for this morning, at the same time as doing the washing up. Maybe i am a 'real girl'. After years of being pushed to my limits & beyond academically, i'm finding note-taking in lectures far easier than everybody else, & i can write so fast... i get my kicks...

Oh & guess who's at, currently, the fourth best university in the world, ranking above Oxford?
Personally, i'm not buying it, numbers & figures don't really mean much to me here, i highly doubt we're doing better, but it works out, so nobody's complaining here.

I've been really indecisive about when to go back, partly because i have a lot of work to be doing, partly because i really want to see some friends when i'm back (which will be difficult if i go home first as my Mom will keep me at home for as long as she possibly can, & feed me as much as i can possibly consume) & partly because i have a feeling there have been quite a few arguments at home & while i want to be with my family for as long as i can, i also don't want to get caught up in what i've been trying to get away from; i have enough to be dealing with as it is. Especially if they're not going to let me help.

Had a jam last night, a boring geography lecture this morning, & a really interesting anatomy lecture straight after, especially the embryology division of it.


Salamanders don't have lungs, they breathe through their skin.



Orchid.

Hole

Leaving the library yesterday, i rang Greg. We talked for over an hour, bye-bye minutes, hello massive phone bill, but it was all for the greater good. Or so i thought. Being on the phone, for the first time in far too long talking to somebody who actually knows me, who doesn't even need to hear the words to know what i mean (although sometimes i come out with things that are so bizarre i wouldn't be surprised if nobody in the world understood) made me feel really happy.
It's amazing how 2 seconds after hanging up i felt far, far worse than i have done here so far; in fact i'd been in a pretty good mood for a while. Bumping into people i guess i would call friends by now, & i'd laugh, dance, but as soon as i'd be by myself again i'd just collapse back into isolation. This all ended in calling my mother for the third time yesterday, when i realised i don't just miss her, i was almost pining for her; i was reminded of the chicks i had when i was younger & how, if you put them apart in the grass, they would run, run, to find each other again, or how if they were outside & i shut the door inside, they'd chirp to the point where it'd break your heart not to open the door & pick them up. They'd instantly fall asleep in my hand afterwards. I cried a lot down the phone. I guess i've been trying to see how long i could hold out for, trying to force myself into dealing with not being at home, after all, it's immature & childish to feel homesick, right?
I'm going home as soon as possible.
Adam on my floor dragged me away from my statistics (as if anyone needs to be dragged away from that) and we had a little jam in his room, a lot of Red Hot Chilli Peppers. You always seem to forget that overplayed mainstream bands are sometimes overplayed & mainstream for a very good reason.
And today is a gorgeous day, had my first geography lecture with a gorgeous lecturer (; having done some housework in the morning. Hey, check me out. Washed all my clothes by hand, don't you know. The geography lecture was awesome, i think i'm really going to enjoy this module. It's basically human ecology but takes a little more anthropology & philosophy into account. I then had a statistics lesson, & now i'm about to go food shopping, followed by a lecture given by a man who used to be a refugee & is now a judge of refugee law.

Crazy stuff.

Orchid

And you'll sleep til May...

Wow.
The view outside my window defines the word bleak.
It's bizarre because i usually love rain, especially when it pours, but concrete really does seem to extinguish the beauty of it. My life would be so much more fun if i wasn't so moved by things like the weather & the first song i hear in a day, but hey, it's a creative head-start in any case, as was just proved by a chalk drawing i did absent-mindedly, which turned out to be quite beautiful.

I definitely need to start posting to this more regularly as my memory really is starting to fail me; part of the reason i started this was because whenever people asked me what i did this summer i'd be a little lost, but i must've done something because i barely ever sit around doing nothing.
So what i assume happened on monday evening was that i went to the film soc opening meeting, attempted to go to two others but somewhere along the line, this failed. I also assume i bumped into a couple of people i'd met in freshers and had a nice conversation with them or something, because i distinctly remember thinking hey, this week is definitely looking up. Under the assumption that i'd go home & get a much needed early night, i became trapped in a rather fun but tame kitchen party. Our floor is a bit weird in that the general norm for anybody in halls anywhere, is that your floor-mates become your instant best friends, even if only superficially & for the first couple of weeks, however we didn't fit into this. We all just kind of banded together out of (slightly conservative) convenience, but i think i can truthfully say that our friendships aren't deep at all, but very genuine.

Yesterday was one of those epic (in the truest sense of the word) days when in your mind, it could easily have spanned to 3 days.
9 o clock anatomy lecture.
Private study in the library for a few hours.
Lunch.
Statistics.
Kitchen chats.
Timetabled sleep.
Labour soc welcome party.
More film soc.
More sleep.
Cooking.
Dinner.
Shower.
Get dressed.
More kitchen chats.
Long tube journey.
MATTER.
Walking to bus station.
Waiting for bus.
Trying to get on damn bus.
Bus driver kicks us all off & makes us form an orderly line.
Board. Flipping. Bus.
Hour & half bus journey.
Walking back to halls.
6 o clock sleep.
9 oclock lecture.

Phew.

Good lecture today, and i got more sleep afterwards. I woke up & dragged my heels to Model United Nations (why the hell did i sign up to so many things?) & had a freakin. brilliant. time.

I definitely, fosho, hands down, would love a job like that. And it turns out i can speak in public, and think fast enough to back/ tear apart someone else's argument, i just never thought i could because, frankly, at school i still would have been ripped to shreds by the rest of my year.

Found my calling, much?

Bread

My feet. Ow, my feet.

In the 24 hours before 12 pm yesterday, i think i may have walked approximately 15 miles. The tube map is definitely NOT to scale & you cannot gauge how long the walk will be by using your finger & thumb & multiplying/ dividing as required. We'll get to this later.


On friday night, i made a loaf of bread. I am now officially a domestic goddess, although admittedly Jo from my floor did save the dough a few times. That, & finding out that certain fish can change sex was hands down the highlight of my day.

On saturday, Chloe & Rupert came to visit me; we agreed to meet at Notting Hill gate, to go to Portabello Market. I walked there & back, & by the end of that i was ready to go to sleep at 8 pm. The day was really good, i did tear up a little as we parted, because i was reminded of how great my friends are & how i still haven't encountered anyone like them in the slightest. I mean, who else would appreciate 'Bepanthen Bird, cacaw, cacaw!' Oh man. When i eventually got back, i rang Harriet from the Slade (art school) to see if she was busy that night; i figured she'd be up for something low key. It turned out that her bike had been stolen, & she was feeling pretty 2 out of 10 so i started to make my way to her halls, in Camden. I felt bad for her when i heard about her bike, but even worse when i realised just how much of a trek it is for her to get to the uni & back by foot. We ended up having a wine & cheese party, gatecrashing a kitchen party & then returning to our cheese having discovered that the party was fairly lame.

I walked back from Camden in the morning, had a shower & then went to Waterloo to meet Caroline, a family friend & also Bison's sister (far too much effort has to go into me referring to him as Richard). South Bank is beautiful, i'm going to make sure to hang out there more often. The day was really really nice, probably mainly because i treated myslef to public transport, the first time i'd used it all week. It was slightly surreal though to be in the City, spending the day with a 'young professional' in such a high-brow corner of the world. But seriously, one of the best days i've had so far, it's just worrying that all of those 'best days' have been with people i already know. Oh well.

I had my first for-real lecture this morning, which i'd actually been looking forward to. It turned out to be however, something like '400 mph Chemistry for Idiots' as i knew it all & it was really easy, but if you'd never done chemistry before you'd be screwed because it was so fast paced. I'm slightly scared if that's what the rest of the course is going to be like :/

After bumping into Alice, which was great as i haven't seen her despite making countless plans for London adventures when we both got our offers, & getting free passes to Raindance Film Festival (WIN), & grabbing lunch, i headed to Oxford Street. Mistake.

I almost don't even want to ever speak of this again. In short, i hate shopping, nothing suits me & what probably would, i need a credit card to so much as look at it. Not to mention how slowly people in front of you walk... i'm pretty sure i'm only this restless & crappy because of the rain.

First Great Western is calling, i think i'm going to need to come back to Oxford for a bit very soon, & at the very least see some grass & pick up my knitting to calm myself down with. Alternatively, i might join the Buddist temple down my street.

Orchid

Green Man

The first thing i properly learned here was that the Green Man lies.

As a road-crossingly-challenged human, i have to go to great efforts to cross at designated crossings, & i figured in London this is especially important. Alas, i dutifully wait for the traffic lights to change, & two seconds later the Green Man, a fabulous escape artist, has been fleetingly replaced by its Red counterpart, and cars jump into action, returning to the ultimate goal of innocent-pedestrian homicide.

The second thing is that cars here will NOT stop for anything, & that the speed limit is an arbitary term, apparently.

Things have definately improved; on tuesday i did something i rarely do, & that was to mope around. I had a little cry & then decided i needed a distraction, so i phoned Al from school. We have never really been friends as such, but we chatted occaisionally if we bumped into each other at school. I had never been happier to see anybody in my life. It turned out, we were both having a pretty crap time at freshers, & that although we'd have fun, it would all boil down to crap again. Afterward i went to a photo session & in the que i managed to get to know a few people on my course. I think i really am going to enjoy lectures with them, which was confirmed by the course social later that evening. I'd had tickets for Egg that night, but boycotted it & followed my course people to a different club, the Roxy, for their indie night. It turned out to be an awesome night due to decent music & the company of people who are actually willing to dance. Before the event i'd taken a walk in the same area, which is basically my street, & by the end of the night it did feel a little like my own neighbourhood. The day had improved rapidly from when i left my room; the only thing to taint it was my growing frustration at how trendy the people on my street are, & how it's really obvious that my clothes are cheap & my style sucks in comparison, whereas back home i would have considered myself reasonably individual. The area is full of PR girls & rich indie kids & vintage junkies & suave businessmen & it really is a bit of a culture shock.

I came back home & i have a feeling i spent hours in the kitchen afterwards, but all of those sessions have merged into one, so who knows.

On wednesday we had more induction things, & again i can't be precisely sure of what i did for the rest of the day but the evening was definitely a lot of fun. I went to soho for dinner with Marie (my roommate) & i went on a hunt for cheap dinner in soho, which was really good. In that time i got a few phone calls from people to come out/ stay in with them (& stay in means kitchen party) but the last one i got was from Ophelia, the girl i walked back with from Koko. I figured freshers week was still negative fun for her, & as i still haven't forgotten just how much it can suck, i lied & told her i had no plans & met up with her instead. We went to the main uni quad, which looks a hell of a lot like Washington, & sat on the steps & talked for ages. I can see why she's not been having a whale of a time; she's on a totally different level from the average young person, & far more interesting.
We realised after a while that we'd got locked in, so having found security man, we returned to our separate halls, & thinking i'd just go get some water from the kitchen, i ended up doing an all-nighter talking to Alex from my floor when everyone else went to bed. It's amazing how after one night of deep conversation, the type that you can only achieve at that point in tiredness where your thoughts are shockingly bizarre, how much more you can get to know somebody.

I got to the morning lecture on time, in which i fell asleep, & then followed the people from my course to the biochem meeting- i LOVE our lecturer. I aspire to be like her, honestly.
Having trudged through freshers fayre (biggest in the country apparently), signed up to about 20 societies (all the political ones for the hell of it, all the art ones to refill the hole where i used to hold painting & photography so dear, & a few others) & bumped into the people i'd met on the first night (they apparently don't hate me & have really missed me), i returned to my room to finally unpack properly & eat. I had nothing to do & literally everybody had tickets for this parent-approved-style rave, so i rang up Katherine, who went to my school & is in second year here. She's been giving me loads of advice since i got my offer, but i hadn't seen her since the move, so it was great to go to her new apartment. I hadn't been in a home for ages & it was really quite awesome to just sit in her room talking with her housemates & her. We then went to the union, which isn't half bad actually, & finally brought her & Rebecca (the italian, awesome ousemate) back to my halls. We made hot chocolate, which is always win. What is even more win, & doubt much else could be more win than this, was breaking out of the 7th floor & climbing onto the roof. You can see all of London from there, it really is breathtaking.

Today i got a lot of much-needed sleep, followed by a tour of the library. On the way to the next lecture, i bumped into Harriet from the Slade art school in UCL & got her to come along to our lecture- "what sex really means". It was SO amazing; it reminded me why i love science & that, at least academically, university iswhat i've always wanted.
The gallery we went to afterwards with one of her friends from her foundation course was really, really cool collection by Ryan McGingley. We went for coffee afterwards & now i'm back doing this. I'm about to go food shopping because i realised as soon as i tried to cook, that i have a hell of a lot of good food in the cupboard, but absolutly no combination of ingredients i can make anything out of.

I'm not looking forward to this... XD

Orchid