A Picture of My Day

Update of Doom!

noreply@blogger.com (Amanda McGrath) — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:42:00 +0000

Hello! Yes I’m useless, but, you know, life. Let’s not linger on the details – onward with the presentness!

So I’m off to Warwick in October for an MA. Not the year out I originally planned, but, all things considered, the best option. It’s still going to be a big shake up and change, which I’m happy about.

I’m currently looking for ways to decorate my new room in a way that reflects the person I am now, rather than the one I was 4 Septembers ago when I started up at Holloway. So far I’ve settled on this:

Yeah baby! How awesome is that? I think it is anyway. Definitely looking forward to having that up on my wall.

Aside from that I reckon it will be mostly books and so on. There will of course be my awesome little wooden camel, and maybe a picture of that Bill chappie if he’s very good.

Ok, technical issues just deleted most of my entry, which is somewhat frustrating. I’m going to try posting this now.

An Ode to Soup

noreply@blogger.com (Amanda McGrath) — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 15:15:00 +0000

In this country, most of the soup we eat comes out of tins. Why? Laziness is a fair answer. After all – what’s easier than popping some toast on while you open a tin?

Cream of Tomato is pretty special. One of those classic Sunday evenings after a long soak in the bath kind of suppers. Even with the cheese (naughty chuckle) it’s still pretty good for you, and no matter how anyone tries to persuade me to the contrary, granary toast is superior in all things.

Mobile phone camera has somewhat impeded the quality of the pic, which is, I think, not badly set up. And yeah the lighting’s pretty awful. I’m working on it okay?

Anyway, this post isn’t just about one soup. I’ve continued to be negligent of this whole blog thing, which I think will change once I sort out my lack of desk situation. So what with one thing and another you’re about to get your third picture of the day.

Yeah I didn’t promise it would be any good okay? And I probably should have taken the photo before I ate the soup but I was really hungry and stop being mean I can’t help it.

Tom Yum Goong is basically my favourite dish ever. Thai food really does excite on an irrational, instinctive level and this soup is by far and away the best thing that comes out of it. Hot, sour, salty and sweet. Packed with aromatics like lemongrass and cabbagey greens and coriander stems. This particular bowl had the added benefit of being massive and packed with a small mountain of gorgeous glassy rice noodles. The kind I found pretty much impossible to eat neatly. Needless to say I was quite a spectacle. Especially when I later found splattered chilli in my cleavage…That was not cool. This was also when I was trying on the SCARY WHITE DRESSES, so it was doubly not cool.

Great, now I’m sitting here, surrounded by packing chaos, avoiding the remaining cleaning and fantasizing about soup.

Seriously though, if I don’t learn to cook Thai food properly during my lifetime I will be disappointed. I’m very much like my Grandpa in that if the food isn’t making me sweat, it’s not spicy enough. No doubt I will have to regale you all with my chilli obsession at some point. I should also note that as a woman I don’t actually sweat…I glow.

Nommy soup makes Manda glow. I nearly typed: “makes Manda glow all over” but I reckon the innuendo crowd would have found that a bit much. Especially considering the fact that I’ve already mentioned my cleavage in this post.

Leaving spicy innuendo to one side, I doubt I’ll post tomorrow as I’ll be too busy weeping into my dusty hanky. And if anyone thinks there;s an innuendo in that sentence they will be shot.

Speaking of weeping I had to take David Tennant down today. It wasn’t that sad, but I managed to make a hole in my finger with the parcel tape dispenser, and then it was the saddest thing in the whole world.

Oh yeah, and George Osborne is a smug git with the voice of my brother when he was about 9. No joke.

The Despicable Art of Repetition

noreply@blogger.com (Amanda McGrath) — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 07:23:00 +0000

As soon as I read the title of this article: Sonic Branding: An earworm to your pocket I knew exactly what it would be about. Of course I actually went on to read it, mainly so I could seethe, and seethe I did. I’ve heard this article before on the BBC – it’s not new, and the information could have been found on wikipedia, and probably was. My angry summary: Jingles are annoying, Germans call them ‘ohrwurms’, and we can all blame Wagner. That’s nice dear, do you know what else is annoying? You.

Yeah I’m in a mood. A better mood than I was last night. I blame the packing and cleaning really, and the attempts at planning.

Yeah about that…You know I mentioned a change in my relationship status? You know that thing that generally goes with that change? The party thing? Yeah that. I hate them. White dresses and stupid rules and superstitions and all.

Let me clarify that statement. I love other peoples White Dress Parties. (Yeah I’ll call them that…) I love how beautiful everyone looks, and how much it means to them. I love helping the Bearer of the White Dress have a great day. Never be afraid to ask me to help out. But the idea of me having all that attention, of being the Bearer of the White Dress, is terrifying. It’s probably why I’m finding the rest of it so terrifying too. I understand why people find the idea appealing, and all power to them, but it just isn’t going to work with someone like me.

Non-traditional is the way forward, but the problem with non-traditional is that it generally hasn’t been done so much, and is therefore harder to go about. It’s over a year away and I’m already panicking like a headless chicken.

Get over it right? Go with the flow? Never! I shall claw out their eyes with my bitten fingernails before I give in, and I don’t even know who they are. For your amusement I place here and image of me in a white dress, kinda.

So yeah I went and tried some on. Nothing proper, just a bit of the old high street magic. I’m really glad that only my beloved Mingle could see me. Anyone else would probably have gone all soppy on me, and I’d have had to punch them, or pretend to be a cat, or something.

I’m behaving like a stroppy teenager, and don’t I know it. My only excuse is that I’m moving out tomorrow and I’m probably really sad deep down inside. My brain isn’t functioning in it’s regular fashion.

Later on, as a procrastination from cleaning, there shall be a pleasant article on soup, combined with, hopefully, the last dodgy photos from my mobile phone camera.

Cameras? Done

noreply@blogger.com (Amanda McGrath) — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 20:52:00 +0000

I bought a shiny. Eeek.

Proper post tomorrow. Post-spending traumatic shock now.

Getting in Focus

noreply@blogger.com (Amanda McGrath) — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 20:53:00 +0000

So why am I taking so long between posts? It’s not the writing that is the issue, it’s the photography. Taking pics on my mobile, as I have been, means uploading them onto the internet via text, which is surprisingly fiddly. The poor image quality is also an issue, and the shot framing.

See with a proper camera I’d have the BBQ itself out of focus and the bag looking a lot crisper. So the picture’s a mess, and it makes me unhappy.

Yeah I am in a funk. I had to sell my desk, and this house is full of the bad habits I built up over the last year. I have neither the time or the energy to start making new habits. I have to pack. Ugh.

No more whinging. I’m working on it. I’m looking into cameras, in a serious way, and I hope to be getting one fairly soon.

For now, I’m spending one of my last weekend evenings here chilling out with my Bill. It’s good.

The Beginning of the End

noreply@blogger.com (Amanda McGrath) — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 09:27:00 +0000

So yesterday no post again. And I couldn’t even excuse myself by saying I was drinking! I wasn’t. Sadly.

The Sarah Bear reappeared unexpectedly last night, and we spent some time both reflecting on and preparing for the inevitable.

Now I don’t want to come back here in September. I could. No doubt in my mind that I could, easily. The benefits to doing my Masters here would be pretty huge, but I’m not going to. At this point in time it would feel like chickening out. I’m stubborn, and I’m going to do things my own way, as always.

But this means leaving. Leaving Uni isn’t even the hard thing. It’s leaving this house. I’ve said it to various folks, and I’ll say it again now: when I close the blue door behind me I am going to cry everywhere. I love this house, and I’ve truly loved living with Bill and Sarah. In a stressful final year, this house, specifically this seat on the sofa, and all that goes with it have been my refuge.

Now my motto is, and has been for a good few years now: Make every decision the right one. What I mean by that is that whatever I choose to do is made the right thing to do by the way I do it. I’m not just going back to Uni in September, and I have to make that the best decision I’ve ever made. It’s no small task, if anything it’s huge. I’m going to be pretty damn busy. That’s a good thing, I can’t do nothing, for when I do there is only guilt.

This house was definitely the right decision. I mean, honestly, it has David Tennant in it. What more could a girl want?

So yeah, I spent yesterday evening being morose. I promise to do better today. Also – it goes with the whole ‘appreciating everything’ thing I’ve got going on in this here blog. I really appreciate the times I’ve had living here, and therefore I am sad that they shall soon be over.

David Tennant’s face on the ludicrous cardboard cutout my brother got me for my birthday (Thanks Limmy…) seems to share my sadness. It’s funny how you project feelings onto inanimate objects. When I still had an exam to do, he was judging me for playing on the interwebs rather than working. Now he is just sad, even with the awesome hat.

He should appreciate that hat. The hat is love. The monkeys are pretty cool too.

Apparently he weirds out people who go by our house, which is epic. Maybe we should invite the real Tenth Doctor over to weird them out some more. In my dreams I guess…

Actually that is one thing I’m not going to miss: how easily randomers can see into our lounge. Sometimes it has been hilarious:

A: “They’ve got a monkey on their sofa.”

B: “I wish we had a monkey on our sofa.”

A: “Eurgh. They should get a room…Shit I think he heard us!”

Pretty much any of the bizarre noises drunk people make.

It has also occurred to me that my title is almost as melodramatic as a Russ T. Davies Doctor Who episode title! Gotta love the melodrama. Maybe before I leave I’ll tie the cutout to the railway tracks and twiddle my luxurious moustache while laughing maniacally.

Maybe.

Attempts to Atone

noreply@blogger.com (Amanda McGrath) — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 09:48:00 +0000

Yeah, I’m terrible. Abandoning this for a week after only 4 posts. Well fear not, the insane week aside I still have every intention of continuing. I’m even hoping to atone for my sins by giving you some sort of speedy breakdown of my week. So here goes:

Sunday: Welly Beer Fest

I had a whole huge and lovely post planned about this – which I still intend to make at some point – about the amazing friends of Simon Wellington. Simon is Bill’s Dad, and his fight against Motor Neurone Disease has, as so many would agree, been truly inspiring, and will continue to be so. I wish I knew right now exactly how much money his friends have raised over the years for the Motor Neurone Disease Association, but it’s an extraordinary amount. One of the events they have created to do this has been the Beer Festival, and this year’s event was the second time they have run one.

Over the course of the afternoon, raffle tickets were sold, and pints were pulled to raise money for a fantastic charity. The beautiful Tashi provided much amusement: being generally cute and loveable, then sleeping in the midst of the chaos, then drinking Pimms, then being generally cute and loveable again. Just to reassure you that I am not the only person in love with this pup, there was a memorable part of the afternoon where Tashi disappeared into a huddle of about 12 kids who were all stroking her at once. She remained unbothered. Awesome puppy is awesome.

Bill’s cousin Tina also ran a half marathon to raise money for the charity, so all in all it was a fantastic day.

Monday: Long Road Home

No picture for Monday, as we spent way to much of it in the car…Again. It was, in a word, exhausting. And I wasn’t even driving! So, you know…not much to say…

Tuesday: Pizza

Yes, Pizza really can take all day. I really overslept in the morning (till almost nine o’clock! Stupid early birdness…) and then had a stack of inbox to deal with. Then awesome friends Stef and Anwen appeared, and there was the eating of biscuits and the much chatting.

Soon after the Sarah Bear and Nils appeared, and tormented me for shiggles. Gits.

Then we realised Bill was going to be late back because of a thing, and there was confusion.

In the confusion someone mentioned Pizza…and we procrastinated a bit.

Then we ordered some Pizza, and we waited.

Bill appeared! As did the Pizza, and there was nomming.

I drinked wine, and then there were sleeps.

Wednesday: Megan!

I love Meg. I love Meg so much it makes my face hurt. So, having not seen Meg for at least a month, I went over to the Quad to have drinks with her, now all the study is done, and stuff.

Founders is pretty,

The E-pit-o-me

Of funny red towers

And quiet…um… G and Ts?

See? A picture and a poem! This is why you love me.

Thursday: Moar Drinkings!

Ok, I think you’re getting the picture by now. I didn’t update this week because I was either hungover or drinking. Basically.

As I’m sure most people will tell you this is quite out of character because I am essentially a very dull human being. Although in possession of, according to someone (who I can affirm had also been drinking), a very vivid imagination. So maybe this whole blog is actually an elaborately constructed fantasy with photoshopped images and faked readers written by a crazy old man?

Who knows…I certainly don’t.

Friday: Escape

So on Friday the Summer Ball was about to kick off in all its noisy glory. We weren’t going, but we were probably going to be able to hear it/not be able to sleep. Then a certain piece of news went up on Facebook, and Bill and I decided it would be best if we ran away for a bit. So we did.

Strangely enough, I didn’t take any photos…

Saturday: Shops…

I am not much of a shopper. I think this much is fairly obvious from my lack of fashion. Anyway I needed a dress for graduation, and some other stuff, and we were in a nice pretty place with a stupid number of shops. So out we went.

Now before any of you start laughing, I must say 2 things:

1) I did not buy my graduation dress from the shop whose bags are in the picture.

2) Said bags are from Primarni. It’s a new high fashion boutique that you have not heard of. So there.

Luckily I haven’t done my budget for my year out yet, because I know for a fact that I can afford half the stuff I bought. Especially the graduation frock. I am trying to console myself by thinking about how useful it will be for, you know…other things?

No, its hopeless. It’s completely frivolous and was far too expensive. I love it!

So there you have it

My drink-addled week. Elaborate apologies avoided, I can only hope that now you are all up to speed you will forgive me. Business as usual will be resumed this evening with another update, and my second Book review type thing will follow tomorrow.

Oh yeah. And I’m engaged.

Flashing the Pup(s)

noreply@blogger.com (Amanda McGrath) — Sun, 30 May 2010 08:45:00 +0000

Sorry again! Being at home is very time consuming! Especially when you spend most of your day being entranced by this face:

Her name is Tashi and she belongs to the Bill's Mum. She is a Tibetan Terrier, which means that one day she will look like a miniaturised Old English Sheepdog. I can only assure you that everything she does is cute.

Bonus picture to make up for my late entry. This is Tashi on her first walk in a field, now that her vaccinations are almost fixed.

If you're catching a distinct note of double entendre in my title, there is a reason. Yesterday, in addition to playing with the puppy, I did a photoshoot for a charity calendar. Anyone seen Calendar Girls? Well, I'll tell you more about it later, but for now I'm going to start working on today. I promise to share everything....

My Brave New World

noreply@blogger.com (Amanda McGrath) — Fri, 28 May 2010 16:52:00 +0000

Today is more than a little bit hectic, as the Bill, the Sarah and I are driving back to our much loved hometown in Devon as soon as he gets back from work. I’m looking forward to it immensely, as it will be a good chance to hand out CVs and start making plans about how I am actually going to live when I move back home. There are several reasons why we’re specifically going home now, which will become more apparent as I continue to post over the weekend. What I can promise you is that there will definitely be some very interesting photos coming up!

So today is full of packing and busy-ness, and I won’t have time to set up a photo. Luckily I have a few reserves in hand, and this one was taken just the other day.

Ok, so this is obviously a bit of a cheat, as I clearly couldn’t have taken the photo myself. All credit due to Sarah, my beloved house/best mate. It was she and her lovely chap who encouraged me to go for a wander with them on Monday afternoon. It was a painfully hot day in many ways, and by the time we got to the water I knew I was going in.

It had been far, far too long since I’d been for a swim. I am a massive fan of just messing around in the water, preferably natural water like lakes, rivers and the sea. It’s one of the things I am looking forward to most about going home – loads of lovely clean bodies of water just begging me to jump in. I’m a jumper, by the way, going in softly softly is not only tedious but more painful. It’s like ripping of a plaster. Jump in. It’s just better.

My brother and I were always waterbabies whenever we got the chance. On holiday we’d live in the pool while our mother baked peacefully in the distance. In the summer down in Devon (before we moved there, and come to think of it after) we’d use body boards and rubber rings to float as far out along the rocks at Thurlestone (technically on South Milton Sands) as we could. Water has an endless power to fascinate me. Leave me by or in the water and go away. I’ll be amused for hours.

Having written that I have a tremendous longing to see some seaweed. Sea lettuces are extraordinarily pretty and tasty. I foresee future pictures. Sigh.

Anyway, before my swimming related deviation I was going to talk to you about what I was feeling in this picture. We’d had a crazy weekend – a party and seemingly endless cleaning (none of which seems to have done any good by the way) and in many ways this was my first day off after my exams ended.

I had been in education for 17 years. Now I was not, even if only temporarily. This was, and I cannot stress this enough, very strange. At that moment, thigh deep in Virginia Water, I suddenly felt very liberated.

This was a beginning. There aren’t many genuine beginnings in this life, but this was/is one of them. A real, honest to goodness chance to really do something new and exciting.

It’s an amazing feeling, and one I can’t wait to share.

Technorati Tags: Swimming,Lakes,Acting on impulse,Pondering,Freedom

Book Return Day

noreply@blogger.com (Amanda McGrath) — Fri, 28 May 2010 09:00:00 +0000

So the Sarah-Bear and I are heading off to London today to take our books back to the main University of London Library. The whole idea reminds me so much of school – Book Return Day was the day when everyone signed your shirt and you handed back everything you’d borrowed over the previous two years. I missed it, slept right through it. Twice.

You’d be mistaken to think me something of a rebel. Any of my friends, and in fact pretty much anyone who has ever met me, would probably be laughing right now. I’m not a rebel, in fact I am an unashamed Geek. I do, however, happen to be rather scatterbrained. I like to pretend that it goes with the whole “Arty Bohemian Geek Chic” thing I have going on. I have been better over the last few years, I even ran a Students’ Union society single-handed last year. However now I’m out of education I guess I’ll need a diary of some sort if I’m to stand any chance of being useful!

So my picture for today is, strangely enough, of a book. I love hardback books, and this is one of my favourites. It’s my copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses, generally known as one of the more difficult books to read in the English language. One of my great achievements over the last year has been reading it from cover to cover, and experience that has changed me as a reader, scholar and even as a writer.

To those who’ve read it, I think you know what I mean when I say you come out the other side of it a different person, even if you only reread a chapter. To those who haven’t, I’ll admit that the novel isn’t for everyone, but I do think that everyone should give it a go. So here’s my attempt to give you a starting point. It’s the first of what I hope will be many book reviews in the blog.

Ulysses is a many layered text. Contemporary fiction is full of layers – whether in film, or the novel – so chances are you’ve watched or read something that was doing multiple things at once. Fight Club is a pretty straightforward example, or Ian McEwan’s Atonement. Now both of those are trying to trick you – to give you a shocking twist ending that makes perfect sense but you didn’t see coming. Ulysses isn’t like that. Ulysses never tries to trick you, but it does play with you. A lot.

The plot is, in some ways, pretty simple. A young guy who has just lost his Mum and whose Dad spends money on beer while his kids go hungry, meets an older guy whose son died 11 years ago, and whose marriage hasn’t been the same since. The story is narrated through the thoughts of the protagonists – a technique called “streams of consciousness” which was very popular among literary circles when Joyce was writing (Ulysses was published in 1922).

At least, this is what happens up until a point. At some point in the text, and its up to each reader to decide for themselves when that point is, someone else starts interfering. Someone starts changing everything – turning one chapter into a series of newspaper headlines, another into a playscript. At one point, this mysterious ‘Arranger’ writes an entire chapter in which every paragraph is in the style of a different historical writer.

I see a lot of people scratching their heads already. Obscurity much? Well yeah I guess so, but he’s doing it for a reason. Joyce is, in my opinion, asking questions with every word: why write this way and not that? Are we adhering to some set of rules? Who makes those rules and why? What right do they have to dictate how I write or how you read?

If you know anything bout Irish political history, you can probably begin to see why he would be asking those sorts of questions. If not, then try to get your head around the fact that Joyce, like so many great writers of the 20th century, lived in a colonized nation. Every word he writes is kicking British imperialism, be it of language, of literature, or of lifestyle and culture, soundly and squarely in the teeth. That as much as anything else, is why the novel was banned in England for so long.

Coming from someone who battled and suffered my way through it (and honestly in the best possible way) I couldn’t recommend it enough. Put it on your To-Do list. Pick up a copy from a second hand bookshop. Let it lie around your house for a while picking up some dust until one day you just start. Stop as often as you like. I read the opening 3 chapters 4 times before I managed to get any further. Don’t try and understand every last word. After all, unless you were alive in Dublin at the same time as Joyce was growing up, you’re probably not going to. That doesn’t matter. You don’t have to master every word.

Get a copy with notes in if you want. I’d recommend the Oxford World Classics Edition. I used it for the course I studied this year and it did really help.

I’m uploading this page the morning after I was meant to! The next page will be up this evening however, complete with another picture. At the moment, as you can probably tell, they’re all being taken on my phone, but I am working on a solution to the problem, I promise!

Technorati Tags: Libraries,Books,London,James Joyce,Ulysses

The Dilemma

noreply@blogger.com (Amanda McGrath) — Wed, 26 May 2010 17:35:00 +0000

So here we go: the new blog-a-day begins.

My degree is over, and I have at least a year until I return to education. This year is about writing, learning and doing all that stuff that I had no time to do over the last 4 years. As my last exam approached I found myself thinking: wouldn't it be great if I catalogued this crazy year I have ahead of me in photos. I want to remember something fantastic about every day I have, to take one photo that sums up my day. I want to share that photo with everyone, and explain why it, and what I was doing, was so awesome. This year is, in a little way, about making every day a work of art in itself, and knowing what it did for me as a person.

But with what camera? That is my dilemma. I originally came up with the idea for this blog because I wanted to start playing with my old Polaroid 600 camera again. I only ever had 2 films, and my lack of skill meant that I only ever got a handful of the peculiar looking photos, each of which is incredibly precious to me. I love instant photos because they look great and there’s no fussing with printers or expensive developers. I loved my camera because it was ugly but in a friendly way.

Of course the snag in this beautiful idea was that Polaroid shut down production last year, and the films for my camera (never cheap) have shot up to practically £3 per picture which, strangely enough, as recent student I cannot afford.

So I’m on a hunt for a new camera, and I’m taking all suggestions. In the meantime I hope you will accept this humble, edited, picture as a summary of my rather frustrating day.

In other news I’ve learnt a lot about blog construction.

Technorati Tags: Writing,Camera,Photography,Polaroid