Lyon Memories

It's 51 weeks today since I left Lyon and ended my year abroad. As this time last year I was getting ready for a trip to Rome and enjoying my last days as an Erasmus student I can't help but compare it to my life at the moment which consists of revision and the odd trip to the gym.

So, in honour of my year abroad I thought I would share my top 5 Erasmus moments! I don't think photos can really do it justice but I'll give it a try:

The day we met Jesus at Fourvière.

Fête des lumières and celebrating surviving a trip on the Ferris Wheel of Death.

A night of broken chairs, show-tunes and shots.

Last night out with everyone. 

Trip to Rome!

Nostalgia beats revision every time! 

Le Week-End

I am now over half-way through my exams, so last night to celebrate I went to the cinema to see ‘Something Borrowed’, an activity I’ve had planned for the past three weeks, highlighting yet again that I really do need to get a life. Fortunately, it seems it was worth all the build up and I thoroughly enjoyed it, partly because of John Krasinski but also because of the lack of thinking involved, something that I have been doing way too much of lately. The cinema was also accompanied by wine and ice-cream, a move that I regretted this morning, particularly as I managed to drop the majority of my chocolate ice-cream on my brand new cream scarf.

As I now have a bit of a break between exams, and weekends in Reading can be quite boring, I decided to go to Liverpool for the weekend to get my fix of chips and gravy, cheap clothes shops and to see family, of course. However, just in time I realised that my surprise visit would coincide with a wedding to which I am not invited. Whilst I quite like the idea of crashing a wedding I wasn’t sure the bride would, especially as the last time I 'crashed' a wedding I was dressed in shorts and a t-shirt having just jumped out of a paddling pool – I was about 5 years old. So, as my plan didn’t quite come together I’m having to think of other things to do in order to put off revision for my last two exams. One of the ‘fun’ activities I've come up with is writing a ‘Things to do Before I’m Thirty’ list, which is likely to include such gems as: building a tree-house; getting a dog and naming it Derek; creating my own library complete with a slide-y ladder and opening a tea room. Hopefully over the course of the weekend I’ll think of other, slightly more exciting things to add to it. But seeing as I’ve got less than eight years in which to achieve all these things I should probably get a move on!  

The family pet, unfortunately not named Derek. (Photography courtesy of Lottie Buckley)

Muggate

This week sees the start of my final year exams. Eek. However, I am trying to forget this fact, so instead I will focus on the curious case of the missing mugs, more commonly known (by me) as Muggate.

My story starts in October when I moved back to Reading to start my 4th year of studying French and English. I remember move in day well, I had come straight to Reading from Aberdeen, bringing with me, amongst other things, two mugs, one bearing my name and the other one being a present that had been sent all the way to Lyon. For a month or so everything was going quite well and I enjoyed many cups of tea, sometimes a hot chocolate, happily alternating between the two mugs. Then suddenly they both disappeared! I searched the entire kitchen, friends searched the kitchen and I even inquired at reception, yet there was no sign of either mug. Thus I consigned myself to a life without them and in time I learnt to love my new mugs. Then last night, whilst making a revision break cuppa, I looked in my cupboard and as if by magic the mugs were there!  

The mugs at the centre of the Muggate scandal. 

How they got there nobody knows. While it all remains shrouded in mystery I am just pleased that a bit of variation can now be added to tea-breaks! Perhaps the fact that I am so excited by this is a sign that I should probably get out a bit more, but for now I am just enjoying this reunion of a girl and her mugs. With this Osama Bin Laden business it’s unlikely Muggate will make even the local news, so if anybody has any ideas as to the whereabouts of the mugs between November and May, then please do let me know. I’m hoping I’ve watched enough Poirot and Miss Marple to solve this mystery. 

Easter

Yesterday, I finally printed my dissertation; an activity that I thought blog worthy! I’m so relieved that after 2 whole years I can finally forget about it, although now that I can’t actually change anything I’m more worried than ever, a major concern being that it is in fact rubbish.  In the past week I have also set myself to reading 6 novels, which unsurprisingly hasn’t gone too well, so far I’ve managed 3 and a half... And despite many exam related nightmares and sudden panics that I’m going to fail, I still don’t seem to be able to sit down and concentrate for any longer than 20 minutes at a time!

Anyway, besides revision I’ve not really been doing very much, hence the fairly lengthy gap between posts. Highlights of the last week have been: watching Arsenal vs Liverpool at the pub (my favourite bit being when Kenny Dalglish swore at Arsène Wenger), drinking wine at regular intervals, listening to ‘every number 1 of the 90s’, seeing a man who looked a lot like Ian Beale and going to see Red Riding Hood. I’m extremely grateful that the film version of the story wasn’t the one that I was told as a child! I have also continued with cooking as a means of procrastination, this week making a couple of quiches. The next thing I plan on baking is a chocolate and Diet Coke cake, which sounds so wrong but as they are two of my favourite things I’m seeing this marriage in cake form as being only a good thing. However, as it is still Lent I can’t actually make the cake yet. So, come Sunday morning, in between Easter egg hunts (yep, I am 22 and we still do this) and eating as much chocolate as is humanly possible, I will be baking this (hopefully) delicious cake. I’m assuming nobody else in my family will even be willing to try it, so I will no doubt be taking the rest back to Reading for my extremely lucky friends to try. Something for them to look forward to!

Books and Chocolate. Still not sure why my mum bought 12 Easter eggs.

A Productive Afternoon

Sometimes the lengths to which I go to put off doing work surprise even me.  I do such pointless things that require so much more effort than it would take to just sit down and do some revision. With this in mind I thought it the opportune moment to share some of my top time wasting tips:

1) Spend stupid amounts of time on Wikipedia. I am now an authority on Kevin Bacon, Ally McCoist, Angela Lansbury, Stephen Fry and colour blindness.

2) Look for holidays, even if you have no intention of going anywhere. I've taken to looking for ‘UK getaways’.

3) Go for a daily stroll to the shop, even if you don’t actually need anything. I came back with 2 x 4 pints of milk the other day... Apparently we drink a lot of tea.

4) Cook. Doesn't even matter if you’re not hungry. I find that you get a great sense of achievement from baking a nice cake, so if you’ve not achieved anything revision-wise at least you've got that to fall back on!

5) Make elaborate post-exams plans. So far I’m making a gunge tank, going back to Lyon, visiting all the places in Reading I've always wanted to go to but never have i.e: the casino, Great Expectations and The Granby, and reading all the books on the BBC's ‘The Big Read' book list – only 75 to go.

And if all else fails, start writing a blog! Genius.

Bird's-eye view of my desk. Just to prove that I have, in fact, been doing some work.

The Bennets, the Brontës and the Buckleys

With exams fast approaching I thought it about time I gave into peer pressure and jumped on the blogging band wagon. After all, I do love a bit of procrastination. I’m not entirely sure what I’ll be writing about as, to be honest, not much happens in my life, but seeing as I’ll probably have a grand total of about 4 readers I think it’ll be ok...

As it’s the Easter holidays I’m back home in sunny Croydon, which means I’ve being seeing quite a bit of my family. We had a family dinner this week – cooked by me, with the review: ‘ooh, there are lots of different flavours... It’s certainly not bland, anyway.’ Thanks, Dad. So, during this dinner my mum pointed out an article that she had read that day saying that families in which there are four daughters are the most trying. And for those of you that don’t know, that is in fact my family. Anyway, my parents and my eldest sister (not entirely sure when she became an authority on this) agreed emphatically with the article, which got me thinking.

When I tell people that I’ve got three sisters I normally get one of two reactions, the first being that of sympathy for my father and the second, more common, the impression that our childhood was one never ending sleepover. To the first reaction, I’d say that I suppose I feel a little sorry for my dad too, and to the second, I can assure you, this was not the case and at times we fought like cats and dogs; there was even, on one occasion, an incident of knife crime! (Not as bad as it sounds, but we did grow up in Croydon after all!) But, despite these things there were so many good times, good times that I often neglect to reflect on. Some of my favourite memories are of us building dens out of furniture, throwing water bombs and doing three-legged races in the garden during summer, excitedly waking each other up on Christmas morning with cries of 'he's been!', midnight Pizza Hut orders and car journeys singing about Cecil the caterpillar. We’re all pretty much grown up now though, ( I say pretty much, when in actual fact  what I mean is a lot grown up: one is married and another engaged) and although from time to time we still bicker, I find it amazing how easily we all come back together and fall back into our roles as sisters.

So, despite what this article said and my parents agreeing with it (really, they’ve only got themselves to blame!), I wouldn’t change things for the world. And, although I spend a lot of my time complaining about them (especially ‘the baby’), my sisters are some of my closest friends, they know just what to say to make me laugh, to make me cry,  to make me see sense and, most importantly, to annoy me...

Right, I’ve rambled on long enough for my first post. Just so you know, future posts won’t be anywhere near as sentimental as this, thankfully! But I’m sure now I’ve finally got a blog I’ll be chatting on about rubbish on a fairly regular basis.