university day two

Day One Proper of term.  Lectures have started (despite the fact that we are still in the middle of fresher’s week) and so has the fresher’s flu.  I’m fighting it off tonight with a dose of comedy, some herbal tea and a couple of sneaky midnight chocolates… hoping that chocolate helps a raging sore throat as well as a tickly cough it’s famed for.

Today we read a dada poem, made eggy-bread-with-a-twist and had highly embarressing giggle-explosions mid-lecture.

Bring on tomorrow.

Thanks to general business/ungeneral and rather incredible tiredness, I’m behind with blog-perusing.  I can see that the sart has been going a little crazy during the shows, so (lazily, yeah) here’s a couple of favourites…

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Ah the glamour.  Bring on the hoody-and-jeans uniform of uni, I will feel far less inferior.

university day one

So after all these weeks waiting, I’m finally AT university.  I was dreading yesterday but in fact the worst moments were in the car, as we got closer and closer, and pulling up on campus was pretty awful.  But once I’d unpacked in my (really rather lovely) room things were already looking up.  Met and partied with my new flatmates and some neighbours, who seem great.  I could get used to this.

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my desk and shelves:

my pinboard:

my view:

red

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

William Carlos Williams

brown

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Brown, the colour of fur and dark wood, steaming pies and mugs of spiced wine, slivers of dark chocolate.

{all images via we heart it, go heart them}

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orange

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Orange is the colour of warm and cozy or buzzy evenings after a crisp cold day, bowls of pumpkin soup with bacon, village ceilidhs, getting dressed up in silk and sequins, sipping on ginger wine…

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Today I’ve been packing my clothes up.  It’s a supremely difficult job.

green

Tuesday is green.

Autumn green is always a misty, tangled, very country-English kind of green in my imagination.

Got to love that piece of music.  It makes me feel the same way as when i’m walking up green hills on crisp autumn days, and when you reach the top and it’s all blowy and you want to run about with your arms out like a dorky kid playing aeroplanes…

Today I’m going to go shopping with my mum.  Then to tea.  Then to the cinema.  I’m desperate to see 500 days of summer.

Also, I have a very long overdue date with the Iliad!

yellow

This week i’m going to join with Jan and Abby and post autumn colour inspiration.

Today is monday, and monday is yellow.

These three things are very different, one of them isn’t visual at all, but they make me feel all… yellowy.

Sestina by Elizabeth Bishop

September rain falls on the house.

In the failing light, the old grandmother

sits in the kitchen with the child

beside the Little Marvel Stove,

reading the jokes from the almanac,

laughing and talking to hide her tears.

She thinks that her equinoctial tears

and the rain that beats on the roof of the house

were both foretold by the almanac,

but only known to a grandmother.

The iron kettle sings on the stove.

She cuts some bread and says to the child,

It’s time for tea now; but the child

is watching the teakettle’s small hard tears

dance like mad on the hot black stove,

the way the rain must dance on the house.

Tidying up, the old grandmother

hangs up the clever almanac

on its string. Birdlike, the almanac

hovers half open above the child,

hovers above the old grandmother

and her teacup full of dark brown tears.

She shivers and says she thinks the house

feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.

It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.

I know what I know, says the almanac.

With crayons the child draws a rigid house

and a winding pathway. Then the child

puts in a man with buttons like tears

and shows it proudly to the grandmother.

But secretly, while the grandmother

busies herself about the stove,

the little moons fall down like tears

from between the pages of the almanac

into the flower bed the child

has carefully placed in the front of the house.

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.

The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove

and the child draws another inscrutable house.

little messages

{all images from we heart it. sorry to be lazy. there’s just so much beautifullness over there that I want you to see!}

autumn

I’m not really feeling autumn yet, I want to cling on to summer.  But i’m just about beginning to be ready to come round to the idea.  Last Saturday I went with my family to Attingham Park food fayre (yet again, notice that exciting ‘y’) and there’s something about wandering round the grounds of an English country house with everything just beginning to turn orange, and the smell of woodsmoke and marmalade sausages… and then we went to the vineyard down the road and sampled all the sour little grapes and picked these perfect red apples.  Yesterday’s tea-party was fantastic too.  We had a sponge cake freshly baked by my friend, and earl grey tea, out in a pretty corner of the garden.  I was chilly and my friend gave me a blanket.  Yeah, autumn’s arrived.

These gorgeous photos by Alicia Bock are helping too.

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miscellaneous inspiration

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Today I’m going to take it easy.  I might sit down and write a long list of things I still need to get to take to uni, stuff like stationary for letters to my friends, a vegetable peeler, a pair of black straight-leg jeans.

Yesterday I found out that a boy to whom I was horribly rude in a club (it was on results night, in a club packed with drunk revellers, he was twenty, he asked me which uni I was going to, I said Warwick and he said ME TOO and I was like, yeah, right – not having met anyone in Shrewsbury so far who’s going there – and being extra cautious anyway) is not only truly going to Warwick – he wasn’t lying – but he’s my brother’s next-door neighbour, and they said he’s really nice.  SO ironic.

I’ve been invited to afternoon tea at my friend’s house.  He lives down the road, but unlike us (we live in a clumpy 20 year old house that has great views but not much else going for it) his house is a beautiful red brick cosy little place, with a real log fire and millions of books about philosophy, and a cute porch full of bits and pieces from the garden.  He said he might be able to root out a sponge cake or maybe some scones if we’re lucky.  Huzzah!

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{all photos from we heart it}

pretty in parisian

Loving the Manoush autumn/winter collection.  It as quirky and desirable (and unaffordable) as ever!  For now I will content myself with pink nails, a silver bow in my hair and some clumpy biker boots…

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boom boom POW

Last night, when I was curled up in bed already, I got a series of texts from my best friend who’s just moved to Birmingham for Uni.

The first one went: ‘boom boom boom x’

… a reference to ‘boom boom pow’ by the black eyed peas, which, since croatia, is pretty much the song of the summer for our whole group of friends…

The second one went: ‘mate you’re so coming out on broad st with me! XXX’

That was cool.

Then one highlighting how the birmingham clubs ‘beat the hell outta shrewsbury.’

And then this, obviously sent to me and our other two girls – the four as we refer to ourselves – ‘babes i’m missing your sexy asses here! on the Mason freshers bar crawl of the clubs are amazing. can’t wait till you come and visit me! “you say Mason, we say HALLS. Mason – HALLS, Mason – HALLS!” XXX’

I think I probably went to sleep grinning.

(nb. I realise that we wouldn’t look as sexy as kate and lily in our dresses. Unfortunately.  Also, Katherine’s halls are in no way a masonic organisation. It is just a name.)

polaroid adventures

I’ve been working on some photo collages using my polaroids and digital photos, mixing it up a bit, whooshing them around with a handful of lime and mint in a cocktail shaker…

hair

croatia two