In denial?

Monday was the strangest day. For some reason, everyone was being really nice to me. My mum woke me up with a cup of tea, and then she brought in all these presents. I got a new digital camera, and some notebooks and CDS, and lots of books, including original 1930s/40s editions of books written by my ancestor, Cecil Freeman Gregg. Then we went for a walk, and had tea and cake and soup, and then went food shopping so we could make homemade pizza and have a feast with even more cake. And my friends were sending me messages, inexplicably wishing me a pleasant day...

I have no idea why any of this happened. It's not like I'm older or anything. It's not like I'm twenty. I'm going to be a teenager forever, right?

On a serious note, though. I'm twenty now and I need to sort out my life and do something useful. Like write a good novel. Or actually go on a date, or something. I'm getting closer and closer to the point where I have to grow up and start planning what I'm going to do with myself after university, but I really don't want to. So far all I've got is: I want to live in a quaint little flat in a slightly dilapidated building somewhere near London, occupied by lots of eccentric artistic types, and write lots of novels and articles, and wander about the city having tea with all my high-flying lawyer/accountant friends. How I'm going to finance this lovely life, I have no idea.

I might do a Masters in Creative Writing. But I'd have to get accepted onto one first, and apparently they all just teach you to churn out books exactly in the style of Ian McEwan. Which I don't really want to do. I have my integrity! (I just mistyped that as "I have no integrity" - Freudian slip?)

I have done one useful thing though! I had a job interview last Thursday, and received my offer letter today... I am officially an employee of the Royal Household! I'm going to be working at Buckingham Palace over the summer. It's going to be pretty intense - five days a week all summer with no holidays - but I'm really excited. Apparently working there is great fun, and I bet you meet loads of interesting people too. So, if you happen to be visiting London this summer and go to the palace, you might just meet me in one of the gift shops! Though if you said, "Are you Emakoke?" to me, I would look at you like you were crazy and pretend not to know what you were talking about. So don't bother.

On Saturday I'm going to visit my friend on his farm to celebrate his birthday. He has lambs! I might get to hold one! This is an immensely exciting prospect.

That is all for now. I am still young... I am still young...

More mundane updates on my life.

I haven't been on here in a long time and thought I'd post a little update of my life.

Things are going really well for me at the moment. I've been getting good marks back from essays, which makes me feel confident that I am clever enough to be here. When I first got here last year, I thought I was an idiot compared to the people in my seminars, and that I wasn't cut out for university. It sounds arrogant but at school I was used to getting the top marks in everything - and then suddenly I was average. I've developed my style really quickly, though, and when I compare this year's essays with last year's I can see how much more sophisticated they are.

That might change with the essay I'm about to hand in though. I kind of wrote most of it in one day... Oops.

I've also been spending a lot more time with friends. Last year I often sat alone in lectures. I didn't have many course friends at all because after a lecture everyone would just go back to their halls of residence to procrastinate/have a nap. Now, because most second years live half an hour away from campus, we have to hang around between lectures, and that means we socialise more. I've formed a little "English Gang". It's so lovely. We went to see King Lear together, and on Fridays we meet up in this lovely authentic Italian cafe in town where they do amazing coffee and pastries. I spend far too much money on food here (I'd say I go out for dinner at least twice every week!) but since I spend almost no money on club entry/alcohol like most other students, I can afford to.

On Monday my housemates M and A are taking me to see Romeo and Juliet for my birthday! It was so sweet of them - they drew me a card on which I am on a balcony and Shakespeare is declaring his undying love to me, and inside it said that we were all going to the theatre together. It's such a thoughtful present. My other housemate O bought me loads of lovely stuff too. I'm so grateful to have such a nice house - I've heard stories of loads of people who hate their housemates and are miserable. We get along so well and are like a little family.

What else? Oh yes. Term finishes next Saturday, but I have to leave on Wednesday, meaning I miss a lecture and seminar and of course all the end of term partying. But I have to, because I have a job interview to work at Buckingham Palace on Thursday. I'm so excited! I really hope I get the job, because I think the palace would be an amazing place to work in - I'd get to meet people from all over the world. I'd have to commute to London every day, which would be expensive and time-consuming, but I'd rather do that than work in a dreary office which is the only other alternative. After the interview my mum is taking me to see Legally Blonde the musical. So if I screw up and lose the ability to speak coherent English, which happened in my Oxford interview, I'll at least have that to cheer me up.

In terms of writing, I sadly haven't been doing much lately. I'm on Chapter Seven of the Storm Awakened sequel now. I have no idea where it's going but I'm sure the story will make itself up as I go along. Over Easter I plan to pound out loads more chapters, because I get five weeks off from uni! Though I do have 10,000 words of essay to write too. Nice.

I haven't been working much on The Novel either. However, the other day something weird happened. I had an idea for something I want to include in it, and decided to jot a few words down in my notebook - and then the floodgates opened. The Novel is going to be really autobiographical, and as I was writing non-stop for about an hour I forgot I was writing about a character and started writing about myself. Self-absorbed, I know, but I think the best writing comes from personal experience. When I read it back I realised it was one of the best things I've written for a long time, and I hadn't even tried. It just came completely from the heart.

It was basically about how I used to hate my face. I mean, hate. It sounds incredibly angsty-teenager but it was a really big thing for me. I had awful skin, and I used to put my face through all kinds of torture to try and clear it up, but of course it only made it worse. I thought I was hideous and spent hours just staring at myself in the mirror wanting to punch something. Every time someone looked at me I assumed they were thinking how disgusting my skin was and it left me with no self-confidence. Whether from the fact I'll be twenty in just over a week (ahhhhhhhhhhh) or the amazing face wash I found (Dermalogica - expensive but worth it) my skin is basically spot-free now and I no longer think I'm hideous. But it was quite cathartic for me to get out all that stuff about how I used to hate myself.

Now I get to torture my character by putting her through the same thing. Muahaha.

Well I'd better go. Today I'm going to see The Princess and the Frog - it's been out for ages but I haven't got round to seeing it despite loving Disney. Then we're having tea and cake and fajitas (not together), and then I might write some more.

Happy Easter to everyone if I don't update before then!

Addicted to Romcoms...

I'm terrible. I'd decided that once I finished Storm Awakened, I would stop messing about on FictionPress and focus all my attention on The Novel.

But I can't stop.

People liked The Healing Properties of Tea. They said it was sweet, that it brightened their days. It made me want to write more stupid fluffy romcoms. They're fun to write and I don't have to think about them. So now I am working on two more: another one about a crazy university society called Assassin's Guild, and one about a time travelling seventeenth century poet. I don't know where I get all these stupid ideas from, but once I'm in their grip I just can't escape.

On top of that, Storm Awakened was such a looming presence in my life for about two years that I can't let go of it. So I'm writing the spin-off about Anja. This means I'm currently writing four stories, and I'm probably never going to finish any of them, because I get bored about ten chapters in. You should see how many abandoned stories are gathering dust on my computer. One day I'd like to go on a writing spree and finish them all, no matter how bad they are, for completeness' sake. Maybe in the summer.

Anyway, that's my little update on my writing progress. It's reading week and I should be doing some work right now, which explains why I'm doing this.

Asda is a traumatic experience.

I literally think I'm on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

This afternoon my friend was driving to Asda and I asked to tag along. Asda on a Saturday is a scary, scary place. If you're not from the UK and don't know the stereotype of Asda, this satirizes it pretty well. I felt like I was about to break down in tears in the middle of the aisle because I couldn't find what I wanted and everyone kept bashing into me with their trolleys and there were some really scary people in there, parents literally screaming at their children and a woman talking very loudly about her husband's extra-marital escapades...

It was traumatising. I have never felt so pathetic and middle-class in my life. I felt like people were looking at my basket of asparagus tips and Jordan's Country Crisp and wensleydale with cranberries in absolute digust, thinking, why don't you just go back to Waitrose huh?

Oh gosh... I'm such a snob...

My jazzy weekend.

I'm really tired and can't be bothered to write this blog, but I'm making the effort to try and keep it up. For the past few days I've been having one of my low periods where I lose enthusiasm for everything I love: reading, writing, socialising, even watching TV... All I want to do is sleep. These times always pass though.

To cheer myself up I'll talk about my lovely weekend.

I went home for the weekend. I love my student house, and being around my housemates all the time, but every so often I need to go home and enjoy proper food and a shower curtain that's not mouldy. On Friday night my parents took me out for a lovely meal. On Saturday, I went shopping with my mum in London. We usually just look at clothes on Oxford Street, but we decided to explore the areas we don't usually go to.

I can't believe that, as a literary geek, I have never been to Foyles, the massive bookshop on Charing Cross Road. It is incredible - there are so many books! I found books there that I thought only existed in my university library. And they have this adorable cafe, Ray's Jazz Cafe, that is full of interesting bookish-type-people and serves the best cake and coffee I have eaten in a long, long time. The interior is a bit shabby and the seats uncomfortable, but that adds to the charm. My mum had to literally drag me out of the place. She offered to buy me a book but there were so many I wanted that I couldn't choose just one, and so left with none. Which is a bit silly really, but I hate making decisions! If you are an arty type like me and live near London, I insist you go there.

Then we looked at all the little second hand and antique booksellers in Cecil Court. They were all creaky floorboards and oddly-shaped nooks and crannies and shelves that reached up to the ceiling. They were full of beautiful old books, first editions and dusty tomes that you didn't want to touch in case they fell apart, and the people in there were so lovely and knowledgeable. We have been looking some books by an ancestor of ours, Cecil Freeman Gregg, whose books are out of print and quite rare, but no luck so far. We bought a couple of recent second-hand books though, which were often less than half the price they would be in a normal bookshop.

I really felt at home there. I can't wait until I have a job, and a flat in London, and I can spend my days off writing and browsing bookshops and drinking coffee.

Sunday was spent baking, so that I could bring back lots of biscuits for my housemates. Now I am back at university and, as I said earlier, feeling down for no reason. I hope I feel better soon so I can actually write something...

Huh...

Today has been a weird day. One of those days when you feel like you haven't achieved a thing, and might as well go into hibernation.

I woke up, and read a bit. Some guys came to fix our TV aerial. Then, I edited my Andrew Marvell essay again, but then got bored of that. Then... I can't remember what I did. I browsed the internet for a bit, refreshing Facebook over and over again as you do, and cut the music for a tap dance I'm teaching. I decided to read a bit more (Fruit of the Lemon by Andrea Levy if you care). Then I decided I was tired and felt sick (I've eaten nothing but peanut butter and jam sandwiches for several days and am starting to feel like my insides are dying - hello student life) so I went to sleep.

I woke up and it was dark. All my housemates were gone. I was sleepy and confused. I felt lonely and depressed, so ate a block of wensleydale cheese to make myself feel better. It didn't work.

So I watched a random old episode of Life on Mars. And... I am still depressed and lonely and confused. I think I'm going a bit crazy. I haven't been to a lecture since Tuesday... I really need to get out of the house. Tomorrow I think I'll go to the library. I don't know, I guess life doesn't feel that exciting at the moment, and there's nothing that inspires me to write. I'm just limping monotonously through my degree, as usual...

Huh. Depressing.

The apocalypse continues...

...and I don't use that word lightly. My friend managed to battle through the howling blizzard to the shop today, and apparently people were bulk-buying tinned food as if World War Three were about to break out, while the manager ran around shouting, "I HAVE NO STAFF! I HAVE NO STAFF!"

However, it's a very beautiful apocalypse. We went on another country walk today, and I took some more pictures I just have to share.

That last one is my favourite - breathtaking, no?

It's starting to drive me a bit crazy, though, being stuck in the house like this. As you've probably guessed from the fact I'm updating my blog so frequently...