tyrannosauruslexxx

I'm a thief

2011-04-25T10:14:00.000+01:00

I totally didn't notice that I stole the idea for the last post I put on here from Kayley's blog, but as it turns out I did, so shun me accordingly. The good thing about leaving five day gaps between blog posts is that it gives me five days of material to talk about; the bad things are that a) I forget any funny or interesting little details that I might have wanted to share with my two or three regular blog readers and b) my blog posts just become a list of SHIT THAT I'VE DONE, which I imagine isn't particularly interesting to read. I'll try to be at least slightly interesting, I swear.

Since I last wrote on here I saw Les Miserables, which was pretty gosh darn good and gave me full-body goosebumps during some of the big chorus numbers. Before we went to the theatre we went to this amazing vegetarian place called Maoz where I ate my body weight in falafel. I want to eat there very day for the rest of my life, but sadly good vegetarian food is hard to afford and hard to reach for those of us who live outside central London. On Thursday we went to Ed, Tom and Tom's flat to help Ed film a sketch for his channel. At some point we all decided that we were going to go to Paris that night, but sadly that plan fell through about an hour after it was formed. I still really want to go to Paris for a day or two soon, I just don't know when I'll get the chance. On Thursday night we saw Greg Holden, who kicked ass as per usual. When we got home the boyfriend and I listened to his new album for the first time, and about thirty seconds into the first song I got this massive stupid smile on my face because it was just as good as I'd been hyping it up to be in my mind. Maybe even BETTER.

I spent all of Friday trying really really hard not to vomit, so that was fun, and then on Saturday went to see Greg again except that this time I had to get there in time for soundcheck because I was singing with him. Singing with Greg has always been a dream of mine, so even though I was nervous and shaky and didn't put my face close enough to the microphone, I'm still so happy that it happened and that I managed to grow some ladyballs and get up there in the first place. We did merch for Greg on Saturday too, and after the gig he happily (he'd had a few drinks) pressed a lot of free stuff into our hands; I came home with a limited edition album release poster, a badge, his album and Jay Nash's album. I fully intend to buy his album when it comes out despite the fact that I already have it; it's JUST THAT GOOD. Yesterday was Easter, which I spent at my grandma's house eating way too much food and then watching Beverly Hills Ninja and the Karate Kid with my sister (traditional Easter kung fu films).

I have no idea what I'll do with my day today. I'm running very low on money, which sadly tends to happen when you don't have a job and decide to go out every day for three weeks in a row. Maybe I'll do something productive like songwriting or cleaning or uni work ... or maybe I'll lie in my pyjamas eating chocolate and watching old episodes of Buffy. ONLY TIME WILL TELL.

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cheerful thoughts

2011-04-20T11:33:00.001+01:00

I have some free time today so I'm doing a BLOG. One of THOSE things. I've only just woken up from some very strange nightmares in which I had to battle demons that were way more terrifying than anything I've ever seen on Buffy, so I'm in a bit of a strange mood, and I can only apologise. In fact, I've decided that actually I feel like making lists. Lists are my favourite.

10 Things I Hate About Life

Bullying. That one's pretty self-explanatory.
When I film a whole bunch of nice HD footage and then somehow by the time I go to export it, it's all grainy and yucky and disappointing.
Heat stroke. I was only out in the sun for a few hours yesterday, but apparently my body can't handle that, and as a special treat gave me an evening of headaches, nausea and dizziness.
People who are arrogant on Tumblr. I don't know why you see it so much on Tumblr, but the keyboard warriors of this world seem to flock there to make gifs of themselves, mock other people and think that being arrogant is funny (it's not).
Commuters who walk really slowly around the London Underground. I can never muster the rudeness to push past people, either, so I just end up sadly trailing along behind them.
When your Subway sandwich inexplicably doesn't taste as good at places that aren't your regular Subway. Surely they should all taste the same?! It's a mystery.
The Royal Wedding, but especially the amount of news coverage it gets compared to other stories, both here and in the US. Horrific violence and killings still going on in the Middle East? Who gives a shit, I want to know what Kate Middleton's mum is wearing to the wedding!!!
The way that dreams can thoroughly freak you out and leave you feeling really weird for the rest of the day. I'm not going to go into huge detail about last night's nightmares, but I will say that one involved me, Spike from Buffy and my little sister being attacked by a guy who cuts out people's tongues.
Risotto.
The fact that I just made a list of things that I dislike. It's a lovely sunny day AND it's my mum's birthday AND I'm seeing Les Miserables for the first time later and yet all I can do is complain! Gosh. Awful.

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failure

2011-04-14T11:45:00.000+01:00

Yep, I definitely failed at Blog Every Day for the Rest of April. The problem is that LIVING life doesn't actually leave a lot of time for DOCUMENTING life, and whenever you DO get that spare time that could be spent blogging you actually just want to spend it lying around in your underwear, moisturising your legs and watching Gilmore Girls. Probably. I mean, that might be what some people are into. Ooh, Luke and Lorelai are engaged!

I've had a nice couple of days since I last blogged. Did some ray-dee-oh with Ed and Tom Bacon on Tuesday morning, left their lovely residence in the evening and spent a few HOT, SWEATY hours on public transport with too much luggage (so gross). When I got home the boyfriend slept over and we did such productive things as watching Lord of the Rings and eating Subway, and then last night I went with Jenny, Chelsea and Polly to see Your Highness. I had to pay for an ADULT TICKET, which is almost TEN POUNDS (actually outrageous, fuck you Odeon) and it definitely wasn't worth that much. I mean, I knew it was going to be crude and purile, but I think I underestimated just how far they'd take it. I still laughed, because I have the mentality of a 14-year-old boy, but it wasn't a fabulous film. At one point the screen glitched for about thirty seconds and the colours went all wrong, and I used to this as an excuse to storm out and demand a refund once the film was over. Sadly I did not get my £10 back, but I DID get a ticket that gets me into another film for free. Score.

This blog post is going to have to end now, because I've become incredibly distracted by TOTAL IDIOTS on tumblr and I need to go and rant about them because MY OPINIONS ARE IMPORTANT RAAAAAAAAAA. Or something. Ace.

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LATE 2.0

2011-04-12T02:07:00.000+01:00

Oops, it's 2am. I'm exhausted. I'm watching Hot Fuzz and ginger beer. I'm going to write about supermarkets because it's late and the last thing I said aloud was "supermarkets are probably one of my favourite places to be". You may think I'm CRAZY, but let me explain my reasoning to you.

I love food. Food is amazing. There are so many different kinds of food, and different combos of food, and I've probably only tried about 1% of the food that's out there in the world. Being a vegetarian limits me a bit, and also the fact that up until about two years ago I was an incredibly fussy eater, but now I'll basically try anything*. Sadly so far in life I've been far too lazy to cook, but hopefully that'll change at some point and I'll have EVEN MORE options. You can probably now see why I love supermarkets so much; they're so full of POSSIBILITY. I can discover food that I never knew existed. I can try new food. I can also make terrible life decisions and buy two tins of soup, a packet of grapes and a multipack of Chipsticks as my only sources of food for two days. I CAN DO WHATEVER THE HECK I WANT, SUPERMARKETS I LOVE YOU.

So today we went to ASDA, and that was pretty good. After ASDA we did a lot of procrastinating, because it's what we're best at. Then this evening I went to take part in a focus group for a website my friend works for, and that was excellent because a) there was free alcohol, b) there was a big bowl of rocky road things that NOBODY ELSE seemed to want, and c) I was with Jenny, who I haven't seen since FRIDAY, which is a long time for us. I'm now lying on my bed-sofa next to a guitar, because Ed and I did actually manage to get some productive things done this evening. I'm absolutely exhausted for no real reason and have to be up at 10am, so I'm going to bugger off and drink the rest of my ginger beer and hopefully get some lovely tasty sleeeep.

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2011-04-10T19:15:00.000+01:00

I promised you a better blog post today, all three of you who are reading this blog regularly, and as a general rule I NEVER break promises. Luckily I said 'better' rather than 'good', because today has possibly been the laziest day of my life and I don't have a lot to report. I fell asleep at around 1am last night, and apart from one interruption at about 3am when Ed and Fawn got in and kindly jumped on me, slept until 1pm. That's TWELVE HOURS SLEEP. Insanity. I was dragged out of sofa for breakfast, and I'm glad I went, because the weather was amazing and we ate crepes and ice cream and generally chilled in the sunshine. When we got back we realised that My Neighbour Totoro was on TV, so that immediately wrote off the next couple of hours. I think I managed to stay conscious through the entirety of the film, but once we switched over to Dave and started watching QI and Top Gear re-runs my strange need to sleep MORE took over and I spent most of the afternoon and early evening napping.

I honestly don't understand how I've spent so much of today asleep or on the verge of falling asleep. Of the past 24 hours, I've only spent two and a half off this sofa. I'm not at all unhappy about it, because it's been deliciously relaxing and I'm a very lazy person at heart, but I do feel very lethargic and heavy right now. The other day I calculated exactly how many calories I need per day to maintain my weight (it was about 1,700 if any of you care, which I'm sure you don't), and I listed my activity level as 'lightly active'; any more days like this and I might have to downgrade it to 'sedentary'. Everybody else in the flat, which currently has six occupants, has spent the day in a similar fashion to me; all except Tom Bacon. Tom Bacon, the absolute HERO and Superstar (on Foursquare), has been cooking us all a roast. Since 4pm. It's now 7pm and he's still at it. We never have Sunday roasts at home, so this is very exciting for me.

These posts that just explain what I've done with my day aren't my favourite things to write. I'm going to do more posts like my Sirius Black one soon, because I enjoy writing tiny mini-essays about things that genuinely interest me, but my brain is still asleep and I've RUN OUT OF THOUGHT. I'm also insanely hungry. I have Minstrels in my bag but I'm exercising super-special-awesome self-control, because I know this roast is going to be fab and I need to save maximum tummy space for it. Tom says it's ready, GOOD DAY TO YOU ALL.

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LATE

2011-04-10T00:49:00.000+01:00

It's half past midnight, so technically I have missed the big bloggy boat, but I don't count it as tomorrow until I've slept so THERE. I'm writing this from the living room of Edward Plantle and the Toms Milsom and Bacon. I have created a very comfy nest on their sofa bed, I've got my pyjamas on (PYJAMA PARTY FUCK YEAH) and we're watching Peep Show. I am VERY CONTENT and a LITTLE SLEEPY. It was another incredibly hot day today, which made travelling across London with two bags and a guitar a little problematic and sweaty, but on arriving at the flat I was presented with cake and taken out onto the roof which immediately made up for my crappy journey. Ed and I messed around with old songs and covers of songs from musicals, and then he made a lovely stir fry for Fawn and I, before they both headed off out and I settled down for an evening of watching E4 and dozing.

SUDDENLY in burst Tom Bacon, fresh from the Thorpe Park oven, who used his various charms to tempt me off the sofa and down to the pub to meet Other Tom. I spent the evening in a weird sleepy stupor, made AMAZING by the fact that Tom Milsom bought me mozzarella sticks from Dominos on the way home. And now HERE WE ARE. I really don't have much to say and I'm strangely exhausted; it's taken me most of Peep Show and half of Spaced to write this very short blog entry. I'll do better tomorrow, promise.

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bitchy bitchy bitchy

2011-04-08T23:59:00.002+01:00

This post was written at 3am and was just sort of the process of me vomiting my thoughts into the little blog-writing box, which is why a lot of it doesn't make sense, and why it looks like I'm forming my argument as I go along. And also that I don't even have an argument. NOBODY'S ARGUING, CALM DOWN. (This introduction was also written at 3am).

Through my extensive research (i.e. looking at the demographic charts of about twelve of my male YouTuber friends and my own) I have deduced that the people who watch vlogs and are involved in that sort of community are approximately 70% female. I love girls - I am, of course, one of them - but this sort-of-statistic sucks for me. This is because I've noticed a trend; girls tend to subscribe to and fangirl over boys, even boys who have little or no talent, just because they have a nice face or a fringe that covers most of it. It's just a thing that happens. I'm sure it works the other way around with boys subscribing to 'hot' girls, AND I'm making assumptions about sexuality because I suck, but it seems that a lot of boys on YouTube have fanbases made up almost entirely of young, straight girls. A lot of them may subscribe because they find a male YouTuber funny or think that they're talented, I'm not denying that at all, but there's also a lot of fangirling going on based on appearances only and there just seems to be a lot more HYPE about boys on YouTube.

Do I sound bitter? I suppose I am a bit. And it's for NO GOOD REASON. It's nobody's fault that girls seem to spend more time watching vloggers, and it's therefore nobody's fault if guys on YouTube get more attention. I'm also not trying to claim that I'm AMAZINGLY TALENTED and being IGNORED BECAUSE OF MY GENDER, because I just make average videos about my life and average music and I'm lucky to have every single one of my subscribers. I just think that if I was a boy with an average-to-nice face and an excellent fringe, I'd have a lot more subscribers than I do now. But I'm also not sure if I'd even want those subscribers; I might make more money and have a bigger ego, but in the end I'd rather have viewers who think I'm entertaining as a person and don't just see me as a penis and good haircut. The fact that 82% of my viewers are female is actually a massive compliment to me, I think, because although some of them may subscribe to me just because they find me attractive ( ;] ) I assume that most of them just enjoy my content. So. Yep. To sum up, I have no idea what I'm really saying. I'm just bitchy because boys tend to get ahead way more often that girls do on YouTube with minimum effort. I'm sure that if I made amazing videos or just got my boobs out more often, I'd have more viewers ... aaaand I'm too tired to be annoyed about this anymore, THE END.

----------------

Okay, so this part right here was NOT written at 3am this morning, but is being written now at five minutes to midnight because apparently I love to forget that I'm doing BEDA. Today was my dad's birthday, so I got to have an amazing lunch (there was cake and profiteroles) followed by lounging around in the sun with my family all afternoon. I then convinced my parents that we should order pizza for dinner (I did this by taking sentences they said in conversation and repeating them back to them, replacing at least one word with 'pizza', until they cracked) to fuel my crazy pizza lust. It feels like summer, and it makes me ridiculously happy and full of energy and EXCITED ABOUT LIFE. This paragraph may contrast weirdly with my bitter 3am ramblings up there, but whatever, I mood swing like a pregnant woman (disclaimer: not pregnant).

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IT'S THE FINAL COUNTDOOOOWN

2011-04-07T23:53:00.000+01:00

I really don't have time to write this. I mean, I had plenty of time earlier today, but instead I spent it either in the foetal position or playing the ukulele or listening to Katy Perry or soaking up the sunshine like a lizard. I have fifteen minutes left of today and I'd really rather spend it reading Harry Potter or watching crappy sit coms until I fall asleep, so I'm going to make this a very brief post. Today I was having a bad day until I got up off my ASS and went out with my friends, which involved sitting in a field and drinking until Jenny and I decided that we needed access to food and warmth and dragged everybody to a pub. I ate lots of sugar cubes for no good reason, and I am deeply regretting it now. I am far too tired to think of anything interesting to say, so I'm just going to give up and flop into bed and NOT EVEN FEEL AT ALL GUILTY ABOUT IT.

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Nail varnish: yep

bus tickets and dreams

2011-04-06T23:17:00.001+01:00

This morning when I woke up I felt really strange. This is because I had a dream last night that didn't just seem to last a few hours, or a day; it felt like I'd lived an entire lifetime. I remember being young and playing with some friends on an estate, being at a school that was nothing like the high school I actually went to, and having my own house and family. It was so odd; I was married and I had kids. I hated my job. I think I was blonde. I only remember bits and pieces, but it was so weird. I don't think that something supernatural happened and I had some kind of past-life regression, or that I dream-swapped with someone, or anything spooky like that. I just think I had an overly long and detailed dream, something that I've never experienced on that level before. Sometimes you wake up from dreams and your reality is a massive disappointment, but I was incredibly relieved to wake up this morning and find that I was still nineteen, still hopefully only a quarter of the way through my life, and still naive and irresponsible and thankfully childless. I asked the boyfriend earlier if he'd ever had a dream that felt like it lasted a whole lifetime, and he looked at me as if I was a bit weird and said no.

On a lighter note, the weather was absolutely gorgeous today. I checked the temperature before I left to come home this afternoon thinking that it would be about fifteen degrees and it was TWENTY TWO. Insane. I was wearing a tank top, shorts and tights and I was baking. I felt incredibly happy and a bit smug sitting on the tube in weather-appropriate clothes, listening to Katy Perry and drinking a nice cold ginger beer, but the smugness soon evaporated when I got to Waterloo and realised that most of the trains were cancelled so mine was horrendously hot and packed. I usually love trains, but I'm really not looking forward to the heat and overcrowding in the summer. Tonight I went out for dinner and drinks with my friend Moley which was lovely. I've been obsessed with pizza recently for some unknown reason (I've now eaten it for dinner two nights in a row and I'll probably keep this up for a while) and the one I got tonight at Pizza Express was GORGEOUS. It was the Leggera Verdure, next time you're in Pizza Express I advise you to get ON that shit.

We got the bus home after the pub, and as I went to type this I realised that I still had the bus ticket crumpled up in my hand. I used to get the bus every day for school, and I remember that almost every day without fail I'd only realise that I was still holding my bus ticket when it got to about 5pm. It's completely unconscious, I don't know how I manage to carry on with life and not drop it, but I just do. My life is insanely interesting, you can tell why I choose to share these fab stories with the internet. And on that bombshell, I'm off to drunkenly play my Spongebob Squarepants ukulele.

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Nail varnish: horrendously chipped "Bruise" by Urban Decay

Sirius Black

2011-04-05T22:44:00.000+01:00

Today while I was bored on the train I asked my followers to discuss something that I'd noticed while re-reading Order of the Phoenix. Basically, Sirius Black seemed like a bit of a dick, which is something I'd never payed attention to before. I think I always saw him from Harry's perspective, and never looked at his behaviour from another person's point of view; for example, Molly's. Throughout Order of the Phoenix Molly and Sirius bitch at each other constantly, usually fighting over Harry, and before I'd always thought that they had a roughly even claim over him as a sort-of-son. Now I'm not so sure.

I still like Sirius. I totally understand that he had a shitty time in Azkaban, it that it must suck to be stuck inside the house all the time, and that regaining Harry as a godson must feel a little like getting a part of James back. I also think that he's brave, loyal and pretty funny most of the time. What's concerning is that Harry seems to look for a father figure in Sirius more than he does in say, Lupin or Mr. Weasley, and he's just not up to the job. With Lupin, I think it's because he was a teacher to Harry first before a friend, and with Mr. Weasley I think it's because Harry's conscious that he has plenty of his own children to worry about. My issue is that Sirius doesn't seem to see Harry as somebody young and influential; he sees him as a friend, someone to take risks with and join on adventures. Part of being a father (and therefore a father figure) is that you often have to put being a parent over being a person with selfish needs and emotions. Sirius rarely seems capable of doing this.

He mopes around Grimmauld Place like a scolded teenager when he's told not to go outside, snapping at people, whining and abusing his house elf, rather than being an adult about the situation. When he realises that Harry hasn't been expelled and therefore won't be staying with him, it's obvious to Harry that Sirius is pissed off. What really annoyed me is the way that Sirius reacts during an exchange in the fireplace in the Gryffindor common room. Sirius suggests visiting Hogsmeade disguised as a dog, and when Harry tells him it's too risky, he responds by openly sulking and saying "you're less like your father than I thought. The risk would've been what made it fun for James." What a grumpy sod! That's such a horrible thing to say to somebody who's feeling pretty emotionally vulnerable, and who looks up to him so much. Harry acts like so much more of an adult than Sirius during this exchange, and it really should be the other way around; his godfather should be looking out for him, not guilt tripping him and using his friendship with Harry's dead father as ammo.

I was going to talk about the line "nice one, James!" but I decided to restrict this bitchy post to book-Sirius, and I'm pretty sure that line isn't from the book. Anyway, feel free to dispute me in the comments, I'm probably wrong about a whole bunch of this stuff, it's just my gut reaction from this re-read. Becky mentioned that she might be talking about this in her BEDA post today, so check that shit out if she does. I think I've rambled on for long enough so I won't go into great detail talking about last night or today; basically I went to the pub last night with some friends and it was fun, and today I'm at the boyfriend's house playing COD and eating pizza. FUN TIMES.

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Nail varnish: still "Bruise" by Urban Decay.

late to the party

2011-04-04T12:29:00.000+01:00

I most definitely was not planning on blogging every day in April. I'm busy, and when I'm not busy I'm lazy, and anyway if I'm blogging anywhere it really should be on the blog group for my film class at university. The blog group is supposed to be sort of innovative and exciting, but to someone who's been blogging since about the age of eleven it seems completely pointless. It does, however, have the massive plus side of replacing all seminars for that module so I get to spend more time in bed. The stupid film class is compulsory, and for somebody who took A Level film it's just a mind-numbingly boring recap of something that hasn't been new and interesting for two years. I hate it. I may or may not currently be five blog posts behind.

ANYWAY, I've failed already at blogging every day because it's April 4th and this is my first post, but I'm not going to let that stop me. My April so far has been pretty fab; on Friday I went to Ed's gig and drank far too much and twatted around onstage. On Saturday I saw some college friends for the first time in months, and then went home to eat pizza and watch Easy A with Jenny and my sister. Yesterday I went to a fair for approximately half an hour before it started to rain and we executed a tactical retreat to my friend Dan's house, where I annoyed everybody by playing Radiohead songs (badly) on the ukulele, and we watched Evil Dead 2. At one point during the evening a few of us got hungry and went out for takeaway. We were gone for about half an hour longer than we should have been, because we found a very sickly looking young fox with a broken leg and Jenny decided that she HAD to do something about it, and so bought £4 of kebab meat and left it in a pile in the entrance to the car park that the fox had disappeared into. It was a strange night.

So far today has been spent sprawled across my bed in my pyjamas, browsing Tumblr and having vague thoughts about unpacking my suitcases and tidying my room. Tonight I'm going to the pub, really just to catch up with everybody who's home from uni, but I've named it a late birthday celebration in the hope that people might therefore buy me drinks. I really am going to try to blog every day for the rest of this month, but I can't make any promises. What I CAN do is plagiarise Hayley G. Hoover again by stealing her totals ideas for the end of every post.

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Nail varnish: "Bruise" by Urban Decay

2010

2011-01-02T21:00:00.000Z

This was originally on my Tumblr a few days ago, but it's more appropriate for it to be here.

Things were pretty rough at the beginning of the year, I was trying to balance A Level stuff with a lot of stress and problems, but I saw Imogen Heap live for the first time, did presenting work for the BBC for a few weeks, turned 18, and saw Wicked for the first time for my sister’s birthday. From April onwards I became a lot closer with my friends from college which was lovely, I sort of regained the social life I’d been neglecting because of other things. In May I went on a short-lived health kick and went to the gym semi-regularly, convinced myself that I was in love with a boy I barely knew (I wasn’t), spent a lot of time in pubs and clubs, and unfortunately lost someone close to my family.

June was a month of revision, but according to my iCal I found a suspiciously large amount of free time to go to the beach and go clubbing. I also went to a gig with and started talking more to someone who is now my boyfriend, hooray! Then in July I sang onstage properly for the first time in years, went camping with my college friends, and went to Turkey with my family. In August I met Kayley for the first time, stayed with Alex and Charlie for a week, saw Greg Holden play two nights in a row, met and hung out with John Green, got my surprisingly good A Level results and got into university, went to the beach some more and went to Reading festival. In September I took part in StickAid, went to Disneyland with one of my best friends, went to a film shoot with Nokia and spent a couple of weeks saying goodbye to basically everyone in my life.

October was Fresher’s Week, finding out that I really liked my flatmates, seeing Canterbury and finding out that university was pretty freaking hard. To be honest November is quite a stressful blur in my mind, but I got to hang out with my friend Ian a lot, saw Imogen Heap at the Royal Albert Hall, saw Ted from Scrubs’ band, watched Deathly Hallows Part 1 and went to see Jonsi. Aaaand that brings us to December! Well done if you’ve managed to read this far. This month I found a house with my flatmates for next year, frolicked in the snow a lot, came home and got to spend time with all of my college friends again which has been lovely, got to hang out with Kayley for the second time in a year, and had a nice Christmas. I’ll be spending the last day of 2010 with my college friends, shopping and then driving down to Brighton to have a house party.

This year has been such an insane rollercoaster - such a cliche, but totally true - and I’m both excited and apprehensive about 2011. Anyway, happy new year, I hope you’ve all had excellent 2010s and that you’ll go on to have even better 2011s.

homesick

2010-10-28T22:02:00.000+01:00

In my videos and on Twitter (a little less so on Tumblr) I tend to shy away from talking about personal things anymore, because I don't want to whine to the public about how I feel, and it makes much more sense to speak to the people that I'm close to about my problems. This means that if you're reading this, it's pretty unlikely that you know that for the past couple of weeks I've been suffering from crippling homesickness. I'm having trouble sleeping, eating, and with just getting through the day without bursting into tears over the slightest thing. My family just called me to try to cheer me up, and I couldn't hear their voices without tearing up. I went home for a night on Monday because I was going to a premiere that night in London - my family were away on holiday - and walking back through my front door was such an overwhelmingly emotional experience that I had to sit with my cat and cry for half an hour before I could start getting ready.

The reason that I'm telling you this is because I know that I'm not alone. A lot of people that I've met at uni have mentioned homesickness, and a few people online who have recently started at university have told me that they feel so bad they want to drop out just so that they can go home (which sounds ridiculous but it's exactly how I've been feeling lately). I know that it's normal to feel out of place in your first term, and everyone says it's just a phase that you get over, but it's very hard to think logically about something that feels so awful. I love my flat, my flatmates and the city I've moved to but it's just not home.

So yep, that's all I wanted to say. I wanted to be honest about how I'm feeling, and I think just writing this down has helped me feel a bit better about things. If you're in a similar situation and you feel homesick too, you should tell me about it; it might make you feel better, and if not - as grossly cheesy as this sounds - at least we know we're in it together.

j0ames

2010-09-03T21:15:00.002+01:00

I didn't mention before that I saw James at Reading. I'm not sure which day, but I think it was Friday. I only didn't mention it before because I knew that once I started talking about him, I'd have so much to say that I'd need to dedicate an entire blog post to him, but I couldn't resist so here is that very blog post.

James is tall, like a really sexy tree. People have actually mistaken him for a tree before and chained themselves to him in protest of him being cut down; once they realised that they were actually chained to James and not a real tree, they threw away the keys to their padlocks and held on even tighter. His face looks like one of those statues of Greek gods or whatever. I don't mean that it's sort of off-white and made of shiny stone, I mean that he's like super-hot. His hair is all bouncy like a dark mattress of lust. His hands are like five slender spades (perhaps trowels) sewn together with angel hair.

I can't be bothered to do this anymore. Basically I luv Jamez.

BEDA #31

2010-09-01T12:54:00.000+01:00

I can't believe that I forgot to blog on the last day of August. It's September now, I'm a massive failure, but I'd be even more of a massive failure if I didn't write this last post, so HERE I AM.

My last day of August was lovely. I woke up late and feeling ill, but not ill enough that I needed to go straight back to bed. I listened to bands from Reading all morning, and watched the BBC highlights of a few bands' sets. I lazed around and ate junk food and watched Hairspray with my sister, and then lazed around and ate junk food and watched Harry Potter and Peep Show with my boyfriend. We had vegetarian shepherd's pie for dinner. It was a very normal, ordinary day. I had a lot of fun.

August has been pretty freaking eventful for me. I stayed at Alex and Charlie's, met Kayley for the first time, saw Rosianna a lot more I ever usually do, saw loads of old friends at Summer in the City, got a boyfriend, went to a party where I knew nobody and had a good time, sang onstage twice, met and hung out with one of the biggest inspirations in my life, got three As in my A Levels, got into uni and went to Reading festival. Thank you for sticking around and reading about my month. You may or may not have noticed that throughout it I've been doing new things, and pushing myself out of my comfort zone. I'm not exactly doing one thing every day that scares me, maybe it's only one thing a week, but I think it's a step in the right direction.

This summer coming to an end means that a lot of things are ending. Friends that I've seen regularly for the past two or four or eight years will soon be a lot further from me than they ever have been, and that won't be fun. I hate goodbyes, they always suck, but I do like change so that's what I'm looking forward to at the end of September. Hopefully I'll keep blogging, definitely not every single day but maybe once a week, because it's been fun and healthy to organise my brain like this. COOL, THE END.

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BEDA #26 - #30

2010-08-30T17:49:00.002+01:00

So .. I'm back from Reading festival. I'm not going to describe each day in detail, mainly because I can't remember what happened in what order, but I'll summarise them in tidy little paragraphs and we'll just have to soldier on and make do.

Thursday
Jenny stayed over and in the morning we packed up our stuff and headed to our friend Moley's, because we were getting picked up from there by her boyfriend Rob and our friend Kurt. We went to Sainsbury's to stock up on supplies, which included vital things like mini-muffins and Oust. The drive there was relatively quick, but when we got there it took us about an hour to get from the car park to our campsite because we had very heavy bags and there was a LOT of mud. I'm ashamed to say that I was very pathetic about the whole thing. I honestly can't remember much of the rest of the night; possibly it was then that Dan came to hang out with me and my friends, and found us all so tired that we were ready for bed by about 9.30pm. All of us except our other friend Dan, who was incredibly high and weird (don't do drugs, kids).

Friday
I'm pretty sure that on Friday we had our first exciting trip to Tesco, which was ridiculously busy and muddy already. They had this whole aisle near the entrance that was obviously normally dedicated to Back to School!! stuff, but for this weekend was the 'festival aisle'. There were discount bottles of vodka and Tesco's own cider, plastic cutlery, bottles of shampoo and endless mountains of wet wipes. I was feeling pretty apathetic about the whole festival experience after a terrible night's sleep but once I got to the arena and saw A Day To Remember I was suddenly extremely excited to be there. I saw Lostprophets - who were good, but as I had a panic attack in the crowd afterwards they bring back bad memories - Mumford and Sons and Guns N Roses. Guns N Roses was a very awkward experience due to the fact that there was such little applause. They played pretty damn well, but Axl Rose was comedy gold in the form of a massive douchebag.

Saturday
All the days have sort of blurred together, mainly because they always began with a trip to Tesco. I'm pretty sure that Saturday was the day that I first ate the crispy vegetable spring rolls from the Noodle Bar in the main arena, and after that I was addicted to them. I spent most of my day in the NME tent after seeing The Futureheads and Mystery Jets, watching 3OH!3 who were pretty good, Hadouken! who I thought were average, Kids in Glass Houses and then FRANK TURNER. I saw Frank two years ago at Reading but I wasn't a huge fan of him then, having not heard much of his stuff. I was supposed to see him last year but forgot the date and then accidentally agreed to go on a family holiday that weekend. I was so happy to finally get to see him, he was incredible, as soon as I find footage of the gig on YouTube I'll share it with you. I saw Tom, Ben, Tino and Ed briefly and then went off to dance to Dizzee Rascal and the Libertines who were both excellent. I watched some of Pendulum's set but then we got too cold and went back to the tents.

Sunday
This was probably the best day for me, music-wise. Frank Turner is one of my favourite artists of all time but I'm also really into my pop-punk-rock bands, and have been since I was about ten. It's a difficult habit to kick. I stood in the rain for All Time Low and then stayed at the main stage for the rest of the day, only taking a break during Cypress Hill to get more of that addictive Chinese food. I saw You Me At Six, Limp Bizkit (who were great), and then Weezer. Weezer were the best band I've ever seen live - their performance was really good, and Rivers was just amazing in every single way. He's the ultimate nerd. I want to marry him. Paramore were good but couldn't measure up to Weezer, and Blink-182 were incredible if only just because I've been waiting eight years to see them. I totally cried during I Miss You, and someone near us set off one of those flares that sort of pour fire into the air and the moment was just perfect. Tom DeLonge did seem completely wasted which sucked, but apart from that it was great. We left the campsite at about 2am instead of spending the night watching people set fire to things, and I got home at about 4.30am.

Monday
That's today, hooray! I slept until twelve and had a lovely long bath to soothe my aches and pains. Having freshly washed hair and feeling clean is incredible. I don't think I'm going to be able to wear normal shoes for quite a while though, my feet are still killing me from wearing badly fitting wellies the whole time. It feels weird to be home, I hate the fact that I can't just go and listen to some live music if I want to, and I haven't really got much planned for my life until I go to uni - except Disneyland, of course, which is going to be the best thing ever. I need to go write something for a press release now, which sounds cooler than it is, so I'll go do that.

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BEDA #25

2010-08-25T20:01:00.000+01:00

Today I mostly packed for Reading festival, which I'm leaving for tomorrow morning. I'm quite apprehensive about it due to the torrential rain that's currently occurring across the country, but we'll have fun, even if we are very muddy. I went shopping with my friends for Reading essentials, which turned out to be baby wipes, food from the 99p shop, plastic cups and a new hoodie. I still don't feel like I'm ready to go, my bag isn't anywhere near full so I'm sure that I must have forgotten some very important things. My friend Jenny is coming over in a couple of hours to sleep over so we can leave as soon as possible tomorrow morning.

To be honest I'm not feeling great, but I feel ridiculous about that because anything bad that's happening in my life pales in comparison with the fact that Esther Earl died this morning. I didn't know her personally, I knew of her through the nerdfighting community, so it sort of feels like cheating for me to mourn her. I am, though, and I know that hundreds or thousands of others are doing the same. There is a post on her family's website talking about their loss and the details of her wake and funeral.

BEDA #24

2010-08-24T18:34:00.000+01:00

I was going to talk about Reading festival in this blog post, but I think instead I'll talk about insensitive people on the internet. I know that by making parts of my personal life public on the internet I'm sort of putting it up for debate, but I don't understand why some people seem to genuinely believe that they can talk about my life and the people in it with total disregard for the feelings of those involved. I mean, it'd be bad enough if they were just bitching amongst themselves, but it's the fact that people make these opinions known in places where I'm obviously going to read them; for example, in the comments of my last blog post. I know this is a problem that a lot of YouTubers share with me.

I've had my fair share of bullying through anonymity, but what's amazing is that some people who don't hide their identities don't seem to see any problems with their behaviour. A few girls made a Twitter account a few weeks ago and publicly mocked the break-up of my last relationship, despite apparently being 'fans' of mine. I was completely disgusted, and I made sure that they knew it. I don't think of myself as a particularly angry person, and I never go out of my way to make people feel bad about themselves, but I can also never let people get away with nasty, shameless bullying if I can help it. People genuinely seem to believe that the things that they say online won't have consequences, and they're wrong.

Okay, I'm done. Sorry, I just had to get that out there before my brain exploded. I'm off to eat pizza with my family and forget about internet pricks and be merry.

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BEDA #23

2010-08-24T11:52:00.000+01:00

Guys, I messed up. I know that you don't particularly care whether or not I blog, and I only care a tiny percentage more, so in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter, but I forgot to blog last night. In my defense, I was busy. The boyfriend was here and we watched Goblet of Fire and Wall-E and ate lasagna and had the kind of evening that was fun for me but would be totally boring for you to hear about. I'm not going to write much now because I have a lot to talk about but I'm going to save it for my actual blog post for today, which I'll definitely remember to write tonight as all I've got planned is packing my bags for Reading festival and ordering in pizza to celebrate the fact that my sister got ridiculously good GCSE results this morning (10 A*s!).

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BEDA #22

2010-08-22T23:17:00.000+01:00

I've had a dull day. I enjoyed it a lot, but you won't really enjoy hearing about it. I heated myself up a very unhealthy lunch. I watched Up and Walk the Line. I stood barefoot in the pouring rain, because I love rain. Who doesn't? It makes everything smell fantastic. I cleaned my room. This doesn't seem like a huge deal but it hasn't been cleaned for a month and there was literally not a single inch of floor space, and the piles of clothes and books were almost reaching knee-height in places. I wish I'd taken before and after photos. It's such a luxury to have so much floor space, and a bed without stuff all over it, and to know exactly where all my shoes are (they're in a Giant Shoe Pile by my door).

Right now I'm watching Tino/Tom/Ed make beautiful music on BlogTV, to promote Tino for the competition he's in - voting ends in 50 minutes so things are pretty tense. I really hope he wins, I think Tino deserves this. Apart from that I really have nothing else to tell you about my day. I should be preparing for Reading festival, but I'm far too lazy, I'll probably end up doing it in a panic on Wednesday night. I won't be around to blog throughout Reading, I'm very sorry, but I'll do lots of catch-up when I get back to make up for it. Tomorrow le boyfriend is coming round, so my blog post will probably suck, but I'm sure you're used to that by this late stage in the crazy BEDA game.

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BEDA #21

2010-08-22T01:23:00.000+01:00

There's no nice way to say this, so I'm just going to dive right in. You know when you bend over and you get little fat rolls that sort of squidge together? Yeah, somehow I managed to burn the INSIDE of them when I was on holiday. This means that I now still have slightly pink lines across my stomach, so I have essentially tattooed fat rolls onto myself. Well done me. I'm telling you this story because at the beach yesterday everyone thought I had a six pack, and then laughed at me a LOT when they found out the truth.

The fact that I told you this almost certainly has nothing to do with the fact that it's 1am and I just got in and have drunk quite a bit this evening. It's not a nice feeling. I'm Alaska drunk. The bad kind. Anyway, today was insanely stressful because I needed to get the music video that I made with Tino finished and uploaded before I went out and I had a million setbacks which meant that at 8, when I was supposed to be at my friend Moley's for pre-drinks, I was still watching the video upload. It went up in the end, although I'm not sure if it reached everyone's sub boxes. Hahaha I just sneezed but I thought I was going to cough because I forgot what a sneeze feels like. Tonight I went to the pub and then to a little bar/venue to see my friends' band play but I felt crap and ill so we left halfway through their set and now I am on my bed craving yorkshire puddings but lacking the motivation and motor skills to cook them.

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BEDA #20

2010-08-21T00:16:00.000+01:00

Maintaining BEDA is starting to become a little bit more of an effort. Then again this is my 20th entry, and the fact that it hasn't really been a huge chore up until now is pretty amazing, although I've copped out with a few entries.

Today I got up a lot earlier than my body wanted me to so that I could go to the beach with my friends from college. My friend Laurence was 30 minutes late to pick me up and I was 20 minutes early in the first place, so I paced up and down in front of the same few houses for the best part of an hour, looking and feeling completely insane. I should never be allowed to think uninterrupted for that long with no distractions, it's a little bit scary. Anyway, eventually I got into my friend Chelsea's car and we drove to the south coast listening to such classics as Bob the Builder's version of Mambo No. 5 and a recording that we stumbled upon of Chelsea reciting her revision notes, which was hilarious.

It was pretty freaking cold on the beach - technically the weather today was warmish and muggy, but there's a lot of wind on the coast - but that didn't stop us from going for a swim. You must understand that when I say 'swim', what I actually mean is, 'standing around complaining about the cold and splashing eachother', although Chelsea and Dan did swim to a nearby island. We had a little picnic and then escaped to our cars when we saw what was essentially a solid wall of rain coming towards us, although it never really seemed to reach us properly as we didn't get totally soaked. The journey home was similar to the journey there, except that we were a lot more tired and instead of Bob the Builder there was a lot of Miley Cyrus/Kelly Clarkson playing, with accompanying wailing from us.

When I got home I had letters from the exam boards with my results statements, a big letter from Student Finance telling me that I basically now owe them more money than I've ever had in my life, and a lovely congratulations card from our family friends. I'm not going to lie to you internet, I am terrified, but also very very excited.

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BEDA #19

2010-08-20T00:55:00.000+01:00

Man oh man. This blog post is an hour late but I've had a ridiculous day, guys, you can't blame me. I stayed up until 1am or something stupid last night waiting for my A Level results to go live, and then when they didn't went to sleep with an alarm set for 7am. My brain actually woke me up at 6.30, and I checked my college site and BAM, three As! As I only needed two As and a B for my university place, I'm seriously freaking happy. My place at Southampton is confirmed and ready to go, all the finance stuff is sorted, now I just need to deal with accommodation ... and eventually, packing. It's so weird, for the past couple of months I've felt sort of limbo with no idea what I'd be doing with my life for the next year, but now I know where I'll be until 2013 and it feels great.

I went on a celebratory trip to ASDA with my mum, and cajoled her into buying tons of junk food and other things I've wanted for ages like hair dye. I wonder how long I can use 'I got three As!' to get stuff out of my parents? Sadly it probably won't last very long. I attempted to dye my hair a light, natural ginger colour and it went a sort of dark reddish brown (I never learn) and then I put a black layer underneath it, so I look like a total emo/emu. I then spent most of the afternoon lounging around eating and reading this, and then squeezed myself into a very tight dress to go out clubbing with my college friends for a joint results night/birthday party for my friend Joe. I had a lot of fun, spent too much money on alcohol, and now I'm at home in bed with my ears ringing and my feet hurting like hell. Stupid gorgeous shoes of pain. Thanks to everyone who said good luck/congratulations about my results, and I hope you got the results you wanted if you found out today!

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BEDA #18

2010-08-19T01:01:00.000+01:00

This is going to be the worst BEDA post ever. Basically I had a really nice day today, relaxed in the morning and then I went and hung out with my college friends that I haven't seen for a MONTH or something ridiculous and we drank and talked, and then Jenny and I sloped off to the nearest pub to get food because we were cold and hungry. Then I went back to Jenny's for a bit, until my dad picked me up and drove me home. I sat there, terrified, waiting for my A Level results to go live at midnight (like they did last year) and NOTHING HAPPENED. They said they'd be up by '9am latest' which probably means something stupid like 7am, so I'm sorry but I'm going to have to go to bed before I pass out.

Thank you for all your lovely tweets, tumblr messages and comments yesterday when I was feeling bad, they really did help to cheer me up, you're all wonderful.

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BEDA #17

2010-08-17T22:32:00.000+01:00

Ladies and gentlemen, I made it through sixteen days of August without having a single bad day, but that streak ends here. I've had days when I was sick, and days when I was lazy, but this is the first day that I've been genuinely sad.

Sometimes when you wake up it's sunny and you feel like you have a sense of purpose, or you know that you've got a full day or night out with friends ahead of you, or it might be cold and wet outside but you're warm and cosy inside, or your cute boyfriend is coming over so you don't really need to make any plans. None of the above applied to me today. I woke up at 8am and immediately decided I didn't want to face life, eventually actually forcing myself to get up three hours later. It took me a ridiculous amount of time to shower and get dressed. It was grey outside but not raining (I like rain). I ate too much because I felt bad, which made me feel worse.

I did manage to record a cover that I'm quite happy with, and work on something for a musical collab that you'll find out about soon if it goes well, but I think I channeled all my energy into making music because it's 10pm and I'm exhausted from basically sitting down all day. I got a ton of hate in my inbox on Tumblr, with lots of anonymous "questions" that basically picked holes in everything about me, something I definitely did not need today. My plans for tonight fell through (I wanted to go to my friend Ian's gig, but I couldn't contact him to find out the details).

Sorry to be so depressing, lovely blog readers. I have plans for the rest of the week to be re-united with my college friends, so I know I'll be cheered up by tomorrow. I'm probably in such a weird, freaked-out emotional state right now because I get my A Level exam results on Thursday (for those of you who aren't familiar with the British system, these results determine whether or not I get to go to university this year). Good luck to anyone who's also feeling the impending doom, and I hope you all had better days than I did.

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