By the end of last week i was definitely ready for my Ma to go back to work & my sister to school, having spent 24 hours a day with them for over a week, due to my issues with not spending time with them on the occasions they are free... & then there was snow.
The night it snowed in Oxford was like something from a strange dream. I'd started walking to Summertown with only a very thin layer of white on the ground, barely visible, barely audible under my feet. I wasn't paying any attention whatsoever to the real world, only to daydreaming, so reaching my friend's house & seeing myself soaking wet in the mirror outside, & looking down to see snow up to my knees felt like i'd missed out on an entire day of my life somehow. I stayed for a bit, met my other friend & trekked back to town & met our other friends at the pub. Oxford at midnight under a thick blanket of snow, untouched & untainted is something you really can't explain in words. The best thing about snow is how it puts everyone on the same level, regardless of age, regardless of culture, regardless of whether or not you know someone, it's like a present from the world to absolutely everyone. It took us hours to walk back, getting caught in crossfire here, being snow ambushed by total strangers there.
The worst thing about snow is that it means that once you do finally make it home, you're stuck there for good, your power cuts out for hours, & once it's fixed your heating decides to go A.W.O.L on you. And your driving test that you were SO going to pass this time is cancelled.
I never knew i would be this glad to be back- i really do love London & more than anything, my street. It's not a New Year's resolution, more a new term's resolution, but this time around i'm going to be more efficient, get work done fast, & then go to all the little niches of London i've been wanting to go to for so long, starting with sitting in on a Nickelodeon show because i apparently can, & going to more dance classes because i finally found the class i was looking for. I'm going to go through all my issues of Harpers Bazaar, all the back pages, because they always have really unique ideas of what to do with a morning, afternoon, night, hour, minute in London, things like a specific sandwich to take out from a specific food place & precisely which bench to sit on in the precise square while you eat it.
When i got back i went to visit my friend Olivia, who had just got back from Poland & had brought me back a beautiful classic eastern European scarf- i've always wanted one. We went on a walk & ended up on Oxford Street, which i hate but somehow always end up on. I spent the rest of the evening pretty much moping, much needed moping.
Yesterday i knitted about 5 inches of a hat for a friend's birthday present, did a little & nowhere near enough work, & made my costume for the software themed birthday party i was going to that night:
I'm Myspace (:
The party was more of a very fun gathering with cool people & music, & tuneless howling along to songs & surprising everyone with my extensive Tenacious D knowledge- Tribute is by far the best song to confuse people with if one person starts to play it, & while it seems to be a random weird song random people join in & also know all the words despite the fact that it is merely the beautiful ramblings of Jack Black. I hung out at my friend's flat (where the party was) in Stepney Green for most of today, & most of today was pretty depressing, what with today's bleak skies, graveyard & towerblock view outside the window & the very hungover or stressed remainder of the party people, while knowing that i'd end up achieving absolutely nothing today. Which is precisely what happened.
On the way back to halls though, i bumped into Tom for the first time since end of term, on his way to Oxford Street... needless to say, yet again i ended up trudging through endless people & Uni-Qlo, & being Tom's shopping slave. Which was fun (: Afterwards we went to Soho- again, sometimes you don't know what you've got til it's gone and you've got it back- & coming to say a quick hello to Tom's dad turned into going to dinner with them, & a major Chinese faux-pas on my part. Apparently if you finish your cup of tea, someone is stood right behind you, waiting for that precise moment to leap in & pour you more. And what's more, if you get to the end of the teapot, two seconds later you've got another one. Chinese hospitality, it turns out, dictates that if someone finishes their plateful/ cupful, it means they still want more. I did actually know that but i really never expected it to apply in a non-domestic situation.
I am SO tired now.
And starting to get quite excited about getting an apartment next year as i think i'll be trying to get a group together with Olivia, & i can imagine exactly what our place would be like- kind of like a trendy WI, with matching crockery & homemade curtains & lots of flowers.
Orchid
