In other news, is anyone around next week for a meet-up? I was thinking maybe we could have a re-match of the London game or somesuch, because that was fun. I don’t know when’s best for most people regarding week days or weekends, and who’s where and on holiday and when and whatnot, so…let’s organise.

Ooh and in OTHER news, my dad has just walked in and told me that my grandparents have sold their house, which is really good news because it means we have the last bit of money to finish the building work for them to move in with us. They’ve been trying to sell it for ages, so celebrations ahoy now. Yay!

A bientot (:

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

While I don’t have bags and bags of news, I thought I’d do a little update because I haven’t whasblogged in quite a while. After a lovely five weeks of mostly relaxation, I got back to Warwick on Friday. Term doesn’t start until tomorrow but as usual my musical activities are taking over a little. In wind orchestra we had a long rehearsal on Friday evening followed by another one the next morning, in preparation for the NCBF (National Concert Band Festival) finals that we played in yesterday.

We got to the venue (which this year was in Warwick, so not far to go for us!) ages before we were due to play, so we had a few hours to just wander around. Most people just went to listen to some of the other bands or look around the stalls, but me and Callie (a fellow french hornist) decided to go further afield. And why, you might ask? Because we had spotted a bouncy castle in a distant field. So off we trotted, and after a ten minute walk or so we came across a kid’s funfair! There was a park nearby and first of all we had a go on the swings and some of the other random modern pieces of kit they have at these places nowadays. After that we had a go on these really cool dodgems where you could shoot each other and it made you spin around. It was wacko!

So that was a fun bit of merriment, and after that we returned and did our stint in the competition, and got a silver award which we were all very pleased with considering we’re an unauditioned band. :happy:

And that’s my bit of news. =) I have three weeks of lectures to go and then my exams will be starting – eek! Hope you are all well.

Much love xxx

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

I thought I’d write a quick updatey-type blog since I don’t have much else to do at the moment except work, which I’m not quite in the mood for yet. :] Everything at Warwick is proceeding as normal – my flatmate is hopefully getting his cast off today (see my last blog if you didn’t know about the when-forearm-meets-glass situation), and I’m back into balancing-work-with-lots-of-music mode. So far it’s going pretty well – in fact, last week the six of us from the flat managed to all go out together on two occasions, which is quite rare. We went to the union on Monday, and on Thursday we went to the Arts Centre to see the musical version of Sweeny Todd, which was put on by the music theatre society. It was absolutely fantastic. :happy:

However, the most exciting thing that happened last week was … *drum roll* … We signed the contract for our house for next year! Yay! We’ve been house-hunting for absolutely ages and we really thought we were going to be living in boxes on the street because houses were being taken literally every minute. But we finally found one that’s in a great area, has six bedrooms, two bathrooms, nice sitting room and kitchen, little patio garden…all is well. It’s also really close to this big grassy hill that looks like it would be great for sledging. And picnics. :3

I don’t really have much other news. Doing a concert tonight with Consort, and we have another one next Thursday in which I’m doing a solo – extremely nervous about that. I have several other things coming up in the next few weeks which I’m looking forward to:

- John is coming to Warwick this weekend, yay!
- I’m going home next weekend, and John will also be there, yay!
- It’s my birthday the week after that, yay!
- It’s the music centre masquerade ball the weekend after that, yay!
- I’m going to Cardiff to see my brother compete in the Brass Finals of BBC Young Musician of the Year the week after that, yay!

And that’s about it. :happy: Yay!

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

Well today I have been working my little socks off trying to get one of my three essays done that needs to be in next week. I have just about finished – I’m quite a way over the word limit so I need to do a little bit more editing and proofreading, but apart from that I can relax on the French Literature front. Now I just have to write a 2,500 word essay on The Canterbury Tales and an unknown-word-limit essay on French and English poetry, by next Thursday. Whee.

What’s making me sliiiightly stressed out about all this is not simply the amount of other work I have to do on top of it (to give a few random examples, revising for the French translation test I have next Friday, translating 100 lines of Chaucer, various grammar exercises and scansion and versification practice), but also the crazily busy week I have ahead of me in terms of music society events. Here is a little timetable of my upcoming musicalnesses:

Sunday
11am – 2pm – Symphony Orchestra rehearsal
4pm – Symphony Orchestra concert

Monday
1pm – 2pm – Consort rehearsal
6pm – 8.30pm – Wind Orchestra rehearsal

Tuesday
7pm – 9.40pm – Symph Orch rehearsal

Wednesday
5.30pm – 6pm – Chamber Choir notices/pre-concert practice
6pm – 6.45pm – Consort carol singing
7pm – 9pm – Wind Orch and Chamber Choir concert

Thursday
1pm – Consort carol singing
5pm – 7pm – Chamber Choir rehearsal
7pm – 8.30pm – carol singing with flatmates
8.30pm – midnight – Chamber Choir cocktail bingo night

Friday
4pmish – Consort going to Northamptonshire somewhere for a concert

So all in all…wish me luck. :happy:

Edit: Oh and I forgot to say, I rang my mum up this evening to get her to open my prize-giving invitation, and it turns out I got two prizes! My first two EVER, might I add, lol. In French and Psychology. Woop. :]

I haven’t posted in a while because not much has really been going on here, but I do have a few bits of news – as usual most of my news is to do with music societies! Last week I got invited to sing in Consort, which is a little ‘elite’ vocal ensemble in the music centre. Basically in the chamber choir auditions at the beginning of term you’re listened to by a panel of judges who are involved in different singing societies, and there are a couple of groups – Gaudeamus, which is a female voice choir, and Consort, which is a madrigal choir (primarily 16th and 17th century unaccompanied choral music, just like the choir I was in at home!) which you can’t audition for but the conductors of these ensembles listen to you and if they like your voice they invite you to sing in their group. So I got invited to join Consort, which is very exciting! The first rehearsal was last Monday and my second one is in a few hours, so that’s all very fun and dandy. We’re singing lots of Christmas stuff at the moment in preparation for three concerts in the last week of term.

Yesterday I went to Northampton with the Wind Orchestra to compete in the National Concert Band Festival, which was quite exciting. :happy: Basically you play a couple of pieces and you’re judged in terms of lots of different things like dynamics, tone, ensemble, etc. You can be awarded either bronze, silver or gold, and those who get the gold award go through to the finals next year. We played our set and then went to listen to the adjudication, where we gave an extremely loud cheer when it was announced that we got a gold award! Something that made the evening even more magical was the fact that while we had been playing our pieces it started snowing outside! And not pathetic wet snow either, big snowflakey snow. We didn’t think it would settle because it had been raining all day, but after I’d been back in the flat for a couple of hours and it was still snowing we noticed that it was actually settling reasonably thickly outside, so we abandoned our work and had a snowball fight. :happy:

Apart from that, not a huge amount has been going on here really. We had a heroes and villains night at the union on Saturday which was fun – our flat went as Captain Planet and the planetiers (we’re the planetiers! you can be one too! ’cause saving our planet is the thing to do! looting and polluting is not the way – here’s what captain planet has to say! ‘THE POWER IS YOOUUURRRS’). Next weekend I’m off to Cambridge to see Mister John, which will be lovely. :happy: Apart from that it’s all mainly work and concerts. Speaking of which, I better get back to work. Toodle pip, all!

Well I haven’t written a post in a little while so I thought I’d update you all on what’s going down in Warwick. Last week and the beginning of this week were pretty work-heavy; I had two essays to hand in at the beginning of this week as well as lots of reading to do for both English and French, translation work for my Middle English class, grammar and translation work for various French classes and discussion preparation for my seminars. However after a hectic weekend and a very late night of essay-writing on Monday the work is slacking off a bit in preparation for the glorious reading week which is happening next week! Basically we’re given work and reading to get on with and we don’t have any seminars or lectures to go to. Some people are going home but because I still have Orchestra and Choir rehearsals to go to and my two shifts in the library, I’ll be sticking around and just going home next Friday morning for a long weekend.

This weekend I’m heading off to Alveston, which is near Stratford-upon-Avon, with the Chamber Choir. We’re setting off on Saturday morning and rehearsing all day, then we may go to a fireworks display in the evening and on Sunday morning we have some free time to mill around in Stratford. On Sunday afternoon we have another rehearsal and then we’re performing in the evening. I’m really looking forward to it – my first proper concert at Warwick. In terms of other musical stuffs, I have a concert coming up on the 12th with the Wind Orchestra and on the 18th we’re competing in the National Concert Band Festival, which should be pretty exciting. :happy:

This blog seems to be going backwards, so let me tell you about last weekend! On Saturday I went into Leamington with my flatmates Jason, Daniel and Sophie, and we had a browse around some of the shops there. It’s about ten million times nicer than Coventry and there’s this massive park with a lake and fountains and a river with boats for hire – I shall certainly be taking John there as a sequel to our punting adventure in Cambridge. On Saturday evening we had our Halloween Ball in the Student’s Union, which was good fun. We were planning on going as the Addams Family but because of various reasons with the tickets selling out and those without tickets buying different costumes to have a party at home instead, and then more tickets being released on the website after all, we had three members of the Addams Family – me as Morticia, Mannie as Gomez and Yee Hung as Uncle Fester, and a caveman (Jason), a witch (Soph) and Zorro (Daniel). We all looked rather spiffing if I do say so myself!

Other than that I don’t think I have anything to say. Ooh, except going back to music again (sorry for boring you but it’s the only thing I do other than work ), I’m going on tour with the Symphony Orchestra in Easter, woot! We’re going to Salzburg, how awesome is that?

I really am finished now. If you are reading this, think to yourself: hmm that looks fun, I should write a whasblog too I want to hear from you all! Now! Toodle pip ^^ 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!