First day back

Well I'm officially back in that schooltime extension that is university. I travelled in with my good friend Edd to enroll, and my what a waste of time that was! An hours worth of travelling, £2.60's worth of tolls, about the same in bus fares around the city, a walk up the biggest piece of hill in Liverpool all for something I could have done over the phone. I recieved my results....again! Then I got back a load of paperwork I'd already filled in myself which now bore an LJMU stamp, then I went up to enroll, which took all of a minute, since I don't have a student roll- if you don't have one of those glorified beer tabs the office people don't want to know you, and before I knew it I was back out the door, managing to compare results with a few of my compadres on the way.

But it wasn't too bad as I had Edd with me and we spent a fairly pleasant day in the city wandering around our usual haunts. Our first stop was Forbidden Planet a shop for all things Sci-Fi or comic book, I checked out a few items to compare in price with it's chief rival World's Apart on the way back up. Then we stopped off at Eddie Rockets, the city's authentic 50s diner- where I got probably the biggest hotdog I've ever eaten (and good too, considering the price!) and also discovered that I don't like Kraut, whatever it is! I also had one of their ultra big, ultra creamy vanilla milkshakes- it waswell worth going just for that!! Having filled ourselves we left to find that Save the Children were on lunchbreak and made a quick getaway down the street.

We wandered through the shops and I analysed the contents of each and mulled over what would be worth getting and where it would be best to get it from- HMV's student discounts usually put it in first place, but you never know where you might find half price CDs. We made our way through the shops- Edd purchased and has now joined me in Matrix Online . Through these we proceeded to the Liverpool docks to make another museum trip- this time to the Maritime Museum, a haunt of my childhood, still fresh in my memory- and checking which parcels have drugs in, and sitting on the firing ends of cannons never lose their charm. There were also very informative sections such as a recreation of the interior of a slave ship, being in such a cramped dank and uncomfortable space showed how warped you can get when you think of human beings as 'cargo'

But we returned into the sunlight and made our way back into the centre of commerce- I made my purchases- the chief of which is the new Scissor Sisters album Ta-Dah. An excellent piece of work in my opinion- I loved their debut album and was glad to see the return of this quirky, talented and unbelievably catchy band. I'd heard "I don't feel like dancing" on the radio, but wasn't too sure what the rest of the album would be like, but then I saw a live concert on TV the night before and was totally conviced that the band were as strong as ever. With the second albums of many groups being released this year, we will see who is destined to 'make it' - I sincerely hope the sisters are among those that do. My favourite songs are I don't feel like dancing, She's my Man, Kiss you off and Everybody wants the same thing- but in terms of lyrics, track 3 "I can't decide" takes the cake- imagine one of the chirpiest songs you've ever heard- then put these words to it

"I could throw you in the lake
Or feed you poisoned birthday cake
I won't deny I'm gonna miss you when you're gone
I could bury you alive,
but you might crawl out with a knife
And kill me when I'm sleeping that's why..

I can't decide whether you should live or die
Oh you'll probably go to heaven please don't hang your head and cry
..."

Right- Lost is on, so here's some quick C 'n P content for you all

"

Me me me

Hello everyone

I thought I'd stop moaning for a while (fat chance!) and tell you all a little bit about myself- this is what you're s'posed to with one of these things right? Don't worry i'm not going to give you my life story or go all serious on you- that's just not my style kids! For now at least I'm just going to skim over the little factoids I've given you over the past entries and expand on them a little.

I think I've mentioned my being a student and also being something of a writer a couple of times, and for those of you who don't know- the two go together. I'm nearly done with my second year at John Moores University in Liverpool (a very scary thought!) where i study Imaginative Writing- is it all making sense now? Now just to clear up what imaginative writing is, as some people get confused, especially when I use the shorter title 'creative writing'- thinking it's a course on caligraphy or something! No- IW is about using your imagination to create a short story poem, film script or something else like that!

Personally I'm in it for the prose or stories side of things, though I have enjoyed things such as Screenwriting and some of the more conventional academic modules. First year we got a taster of all different kinds of things, short story writing, poetry, writing for stage, studying the arts in general and observation and discovery which taught us to take inspiration from the world around us through some fun excersizes. There were also some optional choices such as Writing from Myth which was very enjoyable as we got a story time at the end of each lecture!

Now we've narrowed it down a bit (I've dropped poetry) and we tend to do more workshops, which I've already described, pretty much constantly. These are beneficial, especially if they're looking at your story, but can also get a bit tiresome and can leave you feeling like you haven't learnt anything. But the point of them is to prepare us for a potential career as pro writers, and workshop groups are a very helpful tool for any writer.

I may have also mentioned trains sometime recently- this is because i am what is known as a day student- that is to say I travel from home to Uni each day. When I say each day, that is each day I'm inUni, which isn't very often because the course requires you to do a lot of work by yourself, my total currently amounts to 2 days a week lecture time and it will probably be about the same next year when we run our own workshops and do portfolios.

This makes me reliant on trains, which of late has not been a good thing, but I've said enough on that I think! You may wonder why I chose to be a day student and miss out on all that fun, i will attempt to explain here. Firstly I couldn't care less about the staying up all night, avoiding eye contact with the girl in the next room, ordering pizza because my toast burnt again lifestyle. I've never really dug parties per se, I prefer a quiet one or doing something that is actually fun with mates, and somehow i survive.

The second major reason, and the one i use most, is the student debt issue, as a day student I will leave Uni with a debt totalling up to £0.00 or thereabouts! Not needing to pay for accomodation, electricity, food, copious amounts of alcohol etc. means I won't have the student debt that hangs over most graduates heads. I have a job with the Playschemes in Flintshire, providing safe, free places for children to play accross the county, and this funds my occasional CD purchases etc. I'm not loaded, but I'm not in the red either.So far it's working well and i hope it continues to next year. The only drawback is not being able to spend as much time with people in l'pool but I've still see them relatively often and I've still got mates at home.

Right, that'll do for now- Dr Who's back soon, woohoo!

Word- Rambunctious"

Goodbye