This shows why I shouldn't pay for things like Livejournal; I then don't have the net for months at a time and it is a waste of money. But I enjoyed looking back at my old entries. Conclusion: should post more entries, even if I am the only one reading them. Now it's written and I have to do it.  I have just signed up to go to a Viking Conference which I find novel and exciting.

Seven weeks since I posted, that's insane! Time goes by very fast, and I am turning lame-at-LJ again. It is Shamania VERY SOON! Several days of inebriation hippies tents cafes odd little shops dancing and HOPEFULLY HOPEFULLY sun. I don't know if I've jinxed that now; Matt is confusing me. Whenever I say "I bet it rains all weekend" he says "SHHH you'll jinx it," and whenever I say "it's sure to be sunny" he says SSSH DON'T JINX IT. So to cover all my bases, I maintain that it will rain all weekend and simultaneously be perfect cloudless weather. Ha, jinx that.

I have decided to try a picture-post- I don't know if I can even do that...The picture above is from sombrero-fest, the day me and Matt took my little brothers Simeon and Joel to the Royal Armouries and on the same day bought sombreros. My family kept asking me "what do sombreros have to do with the Royal Armouries?" the answer is nothing.



The best part of the place was the temporary exhibition of "weapons from the movies" which included a load of crappy movies and then LOTR!! I have had my geekery firmly confirmed to me by how excited I was by seeing Sauron's armour...it was very impressive though, they had even gone to the trouble of grouping Elvish armour not just into Lorien elves/Rivendell elves etc, but even into elves of the first age, of the second age...However you weren't allowed to take pictures in the exhibition which is rubbish. They did have two full size models on other floors though, one of an uruk-hi and one of a cave-troll. This is me, being a cave-troll.



And matt, likewise.




This illustrates the sombrero aspect. The young man is my brother Sim.

And then this, of Matt and my youngest brother Nathanael, which simply amused me, as Matt looks drunk and Nate is apparently rapping.



Went shopping with Rosie yesterday which was very fun and we went and got her hair cut- spontaneously. She now has short hair, as in chin-length which is ODD but looks amazing. Meeting her and Matt for cheap Wetherspoons food in a few hours so should probably leave the house. Was supposed to be writing but haven't done a thing all day...I suck.

Have read several cool books in the last couple of days after a library binge, namely Therese Raquin (Zola) Les Liaisons Dangerueses (Choderlos de Laclos) both in translation, Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge which was sad but not NEARLY as traumatising as Jude the Obscure which I also read recently. Have also been reading short stories of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and have just started The Portrait of a Lady which I am actually finding quite readable, instead of it making me want to cut my feet off like most Henry James does.

I haven't posted properly in ages. This is partly because I have been recovering from exams, which were horrible and went disappointingly but are OVER, and partly because I am never near internet these days. Me and Matt have just had a delicious curry at Grove Cafe. I had aloo gobi and mushroom pilau rice, mmmm.

Since I wrote that book post a couple of days ago I have finished Les Trois Mousqetaires and read The Virgin Suicides by Jeffery Eugenides- I want to read Middlesex now. Have lost BOTH my cashcards which makes buying books difficult, so am rereading Pride and Prejudice for the majillionth time. Need more books.

Another notable thing that has happened is that I went to Cabbage the other day with Matt, Tom, Rosie and Vics. It was very fun and the outside area is cool. It was particularly nice going out in Leeds and being home in ten minutes rather than the epic journey from Bradford at 6am.

Those who are going to Shamania; our tickets have arrived! Along with a very pretty visitor guide to the Pendle area.

Another cool thing; I went to Salts Mill with my eight-year-old sister Nina the other day to make up for not being able to go to her First Holy Communion (because of exams.)  Found the coolest book for her present- a big hardback of St Francis's Canticle of the Sun, with illustrations based on Byzantine art. This was appropriate because a)  she is a budding artist and b) our parish church -and hence her school- is the parish of Our Lady and St Frances of Assissi. So Salts Mill was a good place to go and we had an extremely intelligent conversation about art. I bought her a cheap sketchbook and graphite stick on the gallery floor and on the way home she just sat down and -drew Salts Mill station. Really well! She is clearly talented and this makes me happy.

Am now working on an old sci-fi project -the one about persecuted telepaths= that just won't let go. I will clearly never win the Booker.

I am alive and I have no more exams!
Apart from doing exams I have been

Grrr was kept up until half four this morning by idiot neighbours and their stupidly loud music, because of this and babysitting today have done nothing on Utilitarianism.
I HATE students who are SO STUPID or so SELFISH that they don't get that other people can hear their music too.
Who celebrates finishing their exams with a big, loud party right throughout the night when almost everybody else is still doing theirs? Who THINKS that way?
On the brighter side, bought new big Moleskin journals, pretty, yey. Need to think of short stories to write for the Bridport prize...

Ages since I made a post! But I am in the middle of exams right now and have left all the revision too late, so I forgive myself. Am also spending a lot time in Matt's basement where the net is not good. Had exam on Literature of the Romantic Period today, and it went...okay...am hopeful. Moral Philosophy on the 23rd for which I must read lots of Hume, Kant and Mill on ethics, and then Modern Philosophy on the 28th for which I will read more Hume and lots of the excessively bizarre Leibniz. Fun fun.
Had good birthday, is shame I missed le Kulu, but it was fun on Saturday sitting in this basement with Tom, Tom and Vics talking blether and watching stupid internet videos. Have not been back to my own house in days...all my stuff could have been taken by bailiffs and I wouldn't know.
Now on to some writing before sleep- writing about telepaths and religious sects in the University of the Future, and it is fun.

Not only am I in Parkinson Court (entrance to Leeds Uni) with some of their delicious coffee (seriously some of the best in Leeds, hits the right note between smooth and harsh) I am typing this on my new Asus EEE 4 GB, my FIRST EVER LAPTOP! So exciting. It is perfect, tiny and inexpensive like laptops should be, sleek and does everything I need along with a few things I don't, like the webcam. I am going to write a great sci-fi/futuristic novel on it.

Kulu was awesome; I got rather drunk and some of the photos are concerning, but it was good. Went back to Lizzie's afterwards and watched TWO NEW EPISODES OF BATTLESTAR GALACTICA!!! Which was very cool. Also ate lots of food.

My two stalkers are here- my Irish tutor from first year, who seems to live here (no slur, I do too, there's coffee, books and internet) and the lass with the long strawberry blonde hair who seems to be here whenever I am, and who I also see a lot of other places too, which in a University of tens of thousands of people is quite random. I always notice her because of the hair, and because she is always wearing very cool clothes. I suppose the other possibility is that I am unconsciously stalking both of them.

Had a fun class on Shelley this morning, not a big Shelley fan but he is very fun to pick at in seminars. We were mostly reading Mont Blanc, which wins an Obscurity Prize, The Mask of Anarchy, which I hate, and Ode to The West wind, which I love if interpreted in my own slanty way, and I want the first and fifth stanzas of it read at my funeral; take note everybody. Have a lecture on Politics of the Romantic Period in a few hours; I don't know why, as that is what most of the lectures seem to have been about so far anyway. But should be fun.

In my Real Life I have been reading The Accidental by Ali Smith and Wilkie Collins's No Name, which is odd and enjoyable. Started Katherine Mansfield's Collected Short Stories but wasn't in a short story mood so have begun D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers instead, and already like it a billion times more then Lady Chatterley's Lover.

And now on to writing sci-fi of dubious quality, and maybe, at some point today,going to pay my ridiculously overdue rent.

Well well, it is 8am and I have already been up an hour! Scary, is it not. Matt gets up at the ungodly hour of 6:45 to go to his important work sticking stickers on Flake Cakes and mustard at Tudor Rose, and I decided to get up along with him. I am rewarded by the fact that the clouds are already clearing and there is some blue sky if no sun. Today I plan to do some writing, wander about Stroud, and make a bean stew, or possibly something else if I can find anything better in Leith's Vegetarian Bible. I may also have a nap. I could so be a rich housewife :-)

I have made myself a particularly delicious cup of tea and am sitting at the window again where I have a view of a pretty farmhouse, a little bit of Matt's parents' ridiculously large garden, and the valley. Stroud is in the valley and the rich people's houses sprawl up either side but there is an awful lot of countryside left, especially right opposite me. I can also see the church on the opposite hill that we walked to last time I was here, which is disused but attractive, and is the site of a nature reserve with a Danger! Adders! sign, which I find peculiarly thrilling.

Speaking of things that are thrilling, I finished Asta's Book last night and it put me in an extremely bizarre mood as Barbara Vine can do; I don't know why. (Ooooh there is sun coming out and lighting up the mist in the valley! and the trees and fields!) Anyway...although her books often end optimistically and there is nothing supernatural in them, there is this atmosphere of brooding, and secrets, and unwelcome knowledge looming closer and closer....that really freaks me out. I can wholeheartedly recommend Asta, also A Dark-Adapted Eye and The Chimney-Sweeper's Boy, which last is available in one of those attractive green-and-white penguin classics versions. Just don't ever read her whilst you're in a fever...or (I would guess) on hallucinogens :-) Am now reading Look To Windward by Iain.M.Banks, about whom I now take back all the mean things I said after reading The Wasp Factory.

Yesterday was the best day I have had in AGES. We were going to go on a long walk but felt more in favour of a lazy day, which translated as Matt spending several hours sawing logs in what used to be an old aviary whilst I sat on the step and read after exploring their garden again. (It is big enough that it can actually be explored and quite strange; it's on three or four terraces up a hill but with a surprising amount of flat space. ) And yes, there was gin-and-tonic involved. :-) It was SUCH a beautiful day; the first springlike day, and very fortuitous that it came on a Sunday. In the evening we went for a walk and it was all golden and sunny, and I discovered that Stroud is a lot more out in the country than I thought, that it is surrounded by beautiful old houses, and that the West Country is actually the Shire. It was very wonderful and I may have discovered a new vocation; country lady housewife...

I certainly don't want to go back to Leeds. But I will comfort myself with the thought that  I graduate next year (God willing..) and then I will somehow become instantly rich and come and live somewhere tranquil and beautiful like this; though my house will probably not be as amusingly named as Windy Gables.

Must go and write now. Somebody tell me what my novel should be about.

Another post! News...I am staying with Matt in Stroud, have just finished Lorna Doone and am reading Asta's Book by Barbara Vine, have still not done any of the uni work I planned to slave away at this holiday, and spent today wandering around charity shops, walking by Tolkienesque rivers and an overgrown canal in very pretty woodland, and drinking coffee in the delicious Star Anise Cafe in the town. I also had a squidgy ball made out of chocolate and coconut, it was very exciting. 
I am very much enjoying being in the West Country. It's making me realise how much I dislike living in the middle of a big city, though Leeds is okay as cities go, but I wish I could move somewhere like this. Stroud would be ideal in fact, because although it's very little it is so full of hippies that it has quite a nice alternative feel to it and a bit of life. I think lots of people move here to have their babies, hence the crowds of disaffected teenagers standing on street corners wishing their parents had chosen to bring them up somewhere bigger. And the West Country is great, despite being in the South; it has amazing cloudscapes and Stroud is right on the Cotswolds Way. I am basically an old person at heart and I spend more time in teashops and on towpaths than I do in pubs or doing anything that students are supposed to do, so it would suit me. I was ridiculously happy yesterday when I got off the train. If I had just a little bit more money I would move to one of the quieter bits of Leeds, Meanwood or Little Woodhouse, and get a tiny flat of my own. But I cannot squish it into the budget.

Tonight is devoted to gin and tonic, wine, and having a delicious dinner of butternut squash, aubergine, courgette, potato, onion, tomato, broccoli, cashew nuts, garlic and mushrooms roasted with rosemary. And chocolate brownie ice cream. Mmmmmm. At some point I may also watch some TV which would be quite exciting as the last time I did that was Christmas, unless you count an evening regrettably spent watching Razor on dvd with Liz and Matt the other week.

According to Google it is Earth Hour, so Matt has made me turn all the lights out (just to be contrary) and he is now lighting a wood fire, using a meths lamp. I can confidentially inform anybody reading this that Earth Hour didn't work, anyhow. I know this, because I am sitting by the window of a house with a view over the whole of Stroud, the ecohippy environment-love centre of England, where everybody does Yoga and they have Ecstatic Dance sessions for the over-fifties. And no lights have gone off. If Stroud isn't doing it, nobody's doing it. (Except Matt.)

Aren't those horses pretty? I would have set up a new account just to have horses on it, but I do have two better reasons. a) Because I have paid for this one, and this will encourage me to write in it, which is good for the generation and development of thoughts, and also good because someone might want to read what I put in it, though I don't count on that. (All else failing, I can just read it myself, and look at the horses.) And b) because I intend to put some actual occasional intelligent content in here, not just my results from the "Which Pirate of the Carribean Are You" quiz, and lists of books I have bought. Not that I promise intelligence, but failing intelligence, there might be some autobiography, if you like that kind of thing. I don't intend to post in the other account anymore because it was so sadly neglected that it was rusting and falling down, and a fresh start seems nice. As soon as I get round to calling the Internet People I will have the net in my actual own house, and then I will have no excuse for not doing things like writing real sentences on livejournal, with full stops and everything.