I’ve broken up for the Easter holidays now which is a big yay, although despite having 5 weeks off I sadly have no time to rejoice in this newfangled sunshine business, but instead have to get down to writing lots and lots of assessed essays (four of the buggers…that’s 15,000 bloomin’ words in total!). Bad times. But it’s good to be home, and away from a certain nauseatingly smelly housemate who doesn’t wash or cut his icky hair or shave his stupid face or pay his rent or bills. But that’s a story for another day (and my other four housemates are lovely, so it’s all good). So I got back home last night, and this morning I went to the dentist, where I saw Robyn – yay! So we had a good old catch up, and then I went in for my check-up and the dentist said my teeth were very good, and then cleaned them, which was HORRID and felt like she was trying to grind them down with some sort of machine that made my head feel wobbly. But my teeth are now very clean so I’m sure you’re all pleased about that.

Quoi d’autre… I’ve just generally being doing lots of music as usual, had a few concerts in pretty good venues – London and Birmingham this term, oh and a very little one in Cambridge which John came to see, so that was loveleh. I had a little solo moment in it too, yay. I’m doing more solos generally this year and really enjoying it. ) My next one coming up is at the beginning of next term in a choir concert in Oxford, which will be another fun road trip. Oh and if anyone is interested, *boasting-about-my-brother-moment-approaching-nnnnnNOW* Henry’s musical pursuits are going fantastically as always, and he’s going to RAM with a scholarship next year, woo!

I’ve just been called for dinner so I better skip off, but I think that was all the news I had anyway…hope everyone is well and hope to see you all sometime soon!

xxx

There was a man meet! It was good fun and photos will be added to the Whasblog gallery. In other news there was also an elusive-mouse catching event to entertain and amuse. Should have got photos of that! Never mind. Thankee Adam for organising and no doubt another one will follow once people are back from holidays, Airsoft anyone? I’ll stick a photo or two in here too to show what we got up to…

Powerful demons were summoned. Powerfully.

Powerful screens powered powerful games. Which defeated us powerfully.

Well whilst I may not have been (cunning) stunt aero-planing or jumping from buildings with nothing but a loin cloth, this holiday I have actually managed to find myself a job in a certain branch of Jessops. Employment for the win. Although I still don’t know how much I’m getting paid to be there, it will be a surprise. The work is actually good fun, I get to look at and talk about cameras and photographs all day. Unfortunately I’m still annoying enthusiastic about it, which is probably really irritating all the other staff. Tough poops!

Whilst I don’t want to take away the suspense from Soph’s blog upon returning from France I shall just pass on a bit from her excursion. After a fairly… interesting and not-completely-to-plan journey, Soph arrived almost a fortnight ago and has been conducting plenty of hard labour in a French mountain work camp. Not to be confused with prisoner of war camps, or WWII style ‘work camps’ I am led to believe. Digging trenches, clearing shrubs and fixing doors have been some of the items on the agenda, although not without a weekend off to a pretty canyon. Anyway, no doubt you’ll hear more upon her triumphant return.

What’s everyone else up to? Did you make it to Wimbledon this year Robyn? Will you ever return from Australia, Tim? Will Adam buy more torches? Only you can tell. Looking forward to hearing from folks.

Bai2u.

I’m coming home for the summer next Thursday, and leaving again a few days later to go to France for a month. As part of my course we have to go to a French-speaking country for four weeks some time in the holiday to do voluntary work / paid work / a language course. I’m doing voluntary work in the Alps, which is a little scary, but also exciting. :happy: So I say we all meet up at some point between the 27th and the 30th. Picnic/BBQ/bowling/meal?

Loves! xxx

It looks like the best day for most people will be Tuesday (as in two day’s time Tuesday). We’re going to book bowling for 6pm and Nando’s for 7.30. I know some of you won’t be able to make bowling because of work, but we’re hoping that those people will be able to meet us afterwards for the meal.

Please come if you can! John’s off back to ARU next weekend and I know Tammy’s already back at Brookes (but returning for Tuesday’s meet up) so it would be great if as many people as poss could make it. I’m still around for another three weeks, so there’ll be a few more get togethers to come. :happy: How much longer does everyone else have before going back to uni?

RSVP! xx

PS. Robyn I really hope this doesn’t clash with a meeting night? There is always Mima’s get together and other yet-to-be-arranged things if so. :happy:

The last few days have been fairly busy for me. I did a lunchtime concert with Consort (little choir) on Thursday in which we sang extracts from Handel’s ‘Messiah’. I sang one of the arias which was a little nerve-wracking but I felt like it went well, and Rowland (the conductor) sent me an email later in the day thanking me for it and asking if I’d like to do another solo piece sometime. So that was very nice. :happy:

It’s the beginning of reading week for me so I’m having a long weekend at home, going back to Warwick tomorrow afternoon. Yesterday morning I nipped on an early train down to London to buy a dress for the Music Centre masquerade ball I’m going to on Saturday. I still haven’t found any sort of mask to go with it, but hopefully I’ll stumble across something perfect within the course of the week. After I got back from London, John came over and we spent the day together, which was lovely as usual. :3

The oddest part of the weekend has most certainly been today. Some people from the BBC came to our house to do some filming for Young Musician of the Year. Since the next round is televised, they wanted to get some footage of Henry with us, so they filmed us having lunch, Henry practising in his room, Mum cooking (they actually did this after lunch so she had to pretend to cook while they asked her questions about Henry’s health problems), they also talked to Mum and Dad, and then me, Alice and Henry together, and then they filmed the tuba having a bath. It felt like an awful lot of filming considering they’ll only have time to show a couple of minutes of it all. Having lunch was the weirdest – they told us to act completely natural, which is quite a challenge when you have a camera less than a foot away from your face, and a microphone hovering above your head. It’s also really difficult to avoid looking straight into the camera, and generally embarrassing yourself. I don’t think it’ll be on telly until sometime in May, even though the competition is next Thursday – but I’ll let you know nearer the time if you’re interested in watching. :]

That’s it from me I think – does anyone else having reading week now? It is fun. Although I do have rather a lot of work. But at least it’s my birthday soon! Toodle pip all, take care xxx

What was that all about? I don’t even know. On to the important stuff! I hope you all celebrated the new year with style. Personally I sat in my bed watching The Sound Of Music, and I only realised it was midnight when I heard the fireworks starting outside. What did the rest of you get up to? Anyone go to Mima’s? Sorry I didn’t show, our internet was down over New Years (cursed Virgin Media!) so I only got the email about it yesterday evening.

Anywho, this blog is going to be reasonably short (which will be a first for me) because it’s mainly just to say yay we’re having a party on Friday! And to remind you all (or let you know if you hadn’t read the email/facebook message yet) that it would be helpful if you could bring your own drinks. :happy: Thanks!

Hope you’ve all been having a good holiday, or a good time at work as the case may be. :] See you soon!

Anywho, it is really nice to be back, especially after such a busy last week of term. I did eventually manage to get my various essays and other pieces of work done on top of the rehearsals and concerts, despite feeling like I was going to turn into a glob of pure oozing stress at any moment. The concerts all went very well and I’m still loving my music and not planning on cutting down on any of it, even if I do get stressed out when concerts collide with work. I will just have to be more organised next term. :happy:

I’ve managed to get myself some work for the holidays which should be a fairly decent booster for next term’s budget (and also Christmas present expenses). I’m registered with a job agency who get students lots of temporary work in different areas, so my first up-coming job is waitressing this Saturday from 12 noon to 12 midnight – long hours but good pay, which is fine by me. I also did a typing test thingy on the computer there and the lady seemed quite impressed with my skillz (apparently I’m ‘secretarial standard’ – cool huh?) so hopefully I’ll get some secretarial work too, which involves less tiring standing up and more lazy sitting around. :happy:

Ok, moving on to exciting things! I’m planning a dinner party at my house sometime in the holiday when everyone is available – so far Friday 4th January (evening, obviously) is looking like quite a likely candidate, but please let me know if you have a problem with this and the date can easily be changed. Also, please let me know if you ARE free on Friday 4th, because that would be useful to know as well. And in the case of people who have work, let me know when your shift finishes and how much time you’ll need to go home and slob for a bit before coming out again to pahtay! :3

I think that’s pretty much it. Hopefully see you all very soon, folks! Muchoes love xxx

On Sunday we went to visit my Grandpa who is back in hospital again. I don’t know if you remember from my previous post, but he had an operation a few weeks ago to replace his hip replacement. After a long recovery from that, the replacement bit managed to become dislocated, and they were unable to pop it back into place – if you can imagine it, the hip bone which is like a ball and socket joint (possibly not the correct term) at the top came out and the ‘ball’ part of it was then above the ‘socket’ part. So basically they had to operate again, and they’ve now just taken the hip bone out completely. So he’s recovering on the ward and will hopefully be out again by the end of this week, when he’s going to have to learn to walk on a leg that doesn’t have a hip bone. Despite all this he was quite perky on Sunday and very glad to see us all there.

What else is new? Everything at uni is still fine and dandy – we had our fresher’s ball on Thursday, which was quite good although not that much more amazing than any of the other fresher’s events. There were so many people packed into the union it was hard to move, and at one point my flatmate Daniel got elbowed really hard in the back of the head. He said he was fine so we carried on dancing for about half an hour, but he was still looking really dizzy and clutching his head. Eventually me and Sophie convinced him that he needed to go home so we practically carried him back to the flat, shoved a lot of water down his throat and made sure he didn’t pass out. We were worried he was concussed because he was seeing double vision and feeling dizzy even an hour after he’d been elbowed. But apart from that bit of drama, it was a good night. :happy:

I apologise that this blog is becoming almost as epic as my last one…I thought if I leave a bit less time between posts I’ll have less news so it won’t be as long, but apparently I was wrong! We’ve been allocated our parts for the pieces we’re playing in Symphony Orchestra – they give different people different parts for each piece of music, so I’m playing fourth horn in ‘Petrushka’ and first horn in ‘Henry V’. I’m a bit nervous about being first, but also quite pleased that I get to be principle in my first term here. :happy:

John is coming up to visit me on Friday so of course I’m very excited about that. I’m also expecting to see Tim scratching at my window at any minute, as apparently he’s coming up to visit Rosie at some point, although he hasn’t told me when… He wants to surprise me by turning up at my door, although I’m not sure how he’s going to find it except by ringing every Whitefields doorbell there is. Good luck to him, I say!

I can’t resist mentioning something course-related though. I had an hour wait at Stanstead airport for a coach connection, but whilst I was there I realised how much I quite like airports! There’s a real buzz and atmosphere there. Just by sitting in the Costa outside departures I was starting to get excited about going on some kind of holiday. It’s so infectious! There’s a busyness and a rush all around; yet also people sat waiting everywhere.

Airports: A place where people hurry up and wait.

_{– From A Scientific Encyclopedia for the Enquiring Young Nome by Angalo de Haberdasheri (Terry Pratchett, Wings)}

Wise words indeed. Anyway, where was I going with this? Ah yes. For my Shooting For Story module I have opted to document (photographically, of course) a workplace. What better workplace than a bustling airport? Well I can think of a few places actually, but never mind. So wish me luck when I phone on Monday to try and get clearance to go and take photos. I doubt they’ll be jumping to help me and I’m not expecting a tour of the control tower or anything. But in these days of ridiculous legislation and terror threats around every corner (yes even the corner of your cupboard) I’ll be happy just for them to let me take photos. Hopefully actually inside the terminal rather than just the shops outside…

Just a quick note about the Whasblog, please entitle your posts something, even if it’s just “…”, as the database gets a bit complainy if there’s a blank field. I hope you’re all having fun in your various universities, jobs and other places of interest. Now I must go check my corners for terrorists taking photos of my room. Look forward to hearing from y’all about how things are going :happy: Night all.

Anyway, moving on to happier things! My friend Amy who I think you’ve all met now came over on Friday evening to stay until today, so we had a good catch up. Yesterday we went on a sponsored walk that my family take part in every year, which was quite good fun. It’s run by a colleague of my Mum’s who had a girls’ orphanage named after her in India after randomly meeting one of the men in charge and making a donation towards it (or something like that), and she holds this event to raise money for it each year. We made lots of money on our cake stall after finishing the walk, and all in all it was a very successful day.

Amy has gone home now and I’m not doing much for the rest of the day except spending time with my Mum. :happy: I still have a lot of stuff to buy for university – I feel like I’m not at all ready to be heading off on my own, and yet some of you are already gone! Keep in touch guys, I want to know how you all cope in your first couple of weeks so that I can be assured I’ll be ok too!