SUMMERRRRR!!!!

SUMMERRRRRR!!!! – - – - Named after countless facebook photo albums filled with photos of people and their friends having an AWESOME time drinking out till late, staying up all night, smoking weed and being AWESOME and leading us to believe that they never sleep, never eat non-BBQ’d food, never drink tea and that the rain doesn’t ever stop them in their pursuit of absolute-AWESOME!.

 I’m sat in the kitchen of my parents house alone whilst they’ve gone on a day out, all my mates are at work and I am unemployed listening to Swedish House Mafia at half two in the afternoon, hanging on the the time when I too believed in a state of AWESOME.

 Aptly ”Lost My Way” – Plan B has just come on, summing up more accurately my stagnant state of existence   verging on madness. My days are spent filling the time between meals with minimally stimulating activity; reading, guitar, dog walking, online shopping, and watching documentaries on BBC iPlayer. A trip to the super-market is a potential high-light.

 At the beggining of summer I felt positive about activities including, zumba, yoga, vegetarianism, tanning, parties captured in faded Polaroid, (or succumbing to instergam……) all fitting in nicely around my morning runs and full-time work.

 Instead I have been drowning my lazy-arsed sorrows with occasional visits to SMACK (Leamington Spa) ending usually in a perhaps not-so-tactical  chunder. On one occasion in fact just lying in the gutter outside the back of tesco’s crying in my own vomit, in the rain. (and who said Britain has a problem with teen binge drinking?!)

 I have come to realise that a lot of my close buddies are having a very different time of it. They’re going out to take the edge of work, spending the morning in bed because they had an 11 hour shift the day before or escaping to the pub for a game of pool away from home or work. Whereas: I go out, firstly for laughs, but also with an underlying intention that the next day I will be obliterated and able to sleep it off, spend the   morning in bed because there’s nothing really for me to get up for, and going to the pub is an absolute highlight to bother friends trying to relax away from home or work.

One day last week I looked at the oven clock to see
-Ohh, good its 8pm,
-what happens at 8pm? Is what my mother asks
-Its just means today is almost over.

 PLEASE EMPLOY ME

 It’s not that I’m a layabout. I’ve applied to dozens of jobs and had several interviews, but have also received several dozen replies saying something along the lines of “Thank you for your interest, we apologise, but we are not going to take your application any further at this time. Good luck in your future job searching.”

 And it is always raining.

Trust me..

Having finished a gruelling first year at the prestigious University of Northampton and leaving my house with only a broken window, front door, two broken beds, one arrest, one night in hospital, dozens of hangovers, and one extreme straw, I found my self back at my parents house in the country being asked where I was going, what I was doing, when I would be back and if I was having tea. 


The first week of my 5 month summer break was spent in miserable rain, comfort eating and internet shopping my way through my student loan. Four days of drinking tea with my dad compared to the constant piss take of uni was about to kill me, until I was saved by a trip to the pub. 


I was delighted to remember that I had had friends before uni and they were gradually making their way home for summer too, and like me were heading straight to the Bear and Ragged. 


Then the impossible happened. After severe depression due to months of shite weather (the state of which pushed me to rant for entire car journeys in an Australian accent)-the sun! One Monday we woke up to the sun burning off the cloud and gloom like a massively clichéd film, I took the roof down on my car and donned my £4.99 H&M aviator shades. Perfection


However besides the sun making me feel a bit better I was still at a loss of how to fill my time. I did a spot of gardening and sunbathing and reading and CV handing out, but largely sat around listening to my brain cells individually rot. 


Then, as all bored students do I decided to get my nose pierced. 'THIS IS A BRILLIANT IDEA!' A friend, Emma and I decided to make a day of it and got the train to  Birmingham. Although other stores are available we decided to go to Blue Banana where Emma told me to act calm and not say much. After struggling with the consent form due to dyslexia, saying "woops" out-loud several times, asking Emma if we could hold hands and clapping occasionally with excitement I think the pale and pierced girls behind the counter had decided I wasn't exactly a regular badman. 


The ordeal was over pretty quickly and we thought we best have a sit down and a peppermint tea; not being as "horizontal" - as our mums would say - as the shop girls. 


Now, trust me to meddle. I love a good bit of self surgery, and only last week popped a spot on the inside of my nose with a sewing needle. So the casual cleaning and maintenance was a gift to me. That is until I accidentally pulled out the stud, panicked, shoved it back in and nearly fainted at 1am. After a sit-down with my head between my legs I decided the best thing to do would be to wake my parents and tell them about the situation so that my mum would tell me it would be okay. 


I'm fairly sure the shop girls never have to tell their parents their nose studs actually rather hurt, and have a bit of a cry.


Classic Jess... 

And Then I Took An Arrow To The Knee...

This weekend I decided boyfriend Jake and I would have some cultural fun visiting Kenilworth castle. It was the Sunday before the May bank holiday and the castle was packed with grandparents and under 11s. It happened to not be raining and sunny infact so we complained about being too hot.

Jake followed me round like a sulking child and kicked at the stones while I read out the fascinating facts on the information board. We got an ice-cream and curiously watched a woman give cider to a horse.

There is a little staircase up to the highest remaining point. I lead the way and waited for herds of Jack Wills clad nine-year-olds to finish climbing down. Jake doesn't like things which are exciting, or dangerous, or high, and made a pathetic excuse that there were too many people and there wasn't anything up there anyway so we went and walked round a medieval village. Jake wanted to hold the swords but then got embarrassed, as he isn't seven, and so we just had fun watching people more of  the target age having fun.

A medieval village is the perfect opportunity to make "and then I took an arrow to the knee" jokes. A small boy of about 6 climbed up a hill and shouted to his mum, "Mum, look I'm an adventurer!" and Jake turned to me and mumbled, "I used to be an adventurer, and then I took an arrow to the knee. . ." A female stranger nearby then found this whole episode hilarious and let out a rather unusual laugh.

We went to watch a mock battle but we couldn't hear the man on the Tannoy so had to have a complete shift of perspective half way through when we found out the team we thought were the baddies were the goodies. A child next to us had to leave because of the loud guns and cannons and the general barbaric carnage of the skirmish. Rubber tipped arrows were taking to everyone's knees and the was some vigorous poking of spears, in a manner similar to how you poke someone's hand with your fork when they're stealing your chips! Suddenly, after a precise five minutes, all the baddies fell to the floor, apart  from on man who must have had a bad back because he just knelt down and kept still. A triumphant victory.

Lastly we went back to the highest point and, inspired by all the testosterone of the battle, Jake had no problem with climbing to the top. We tried to spot houses of people we knew, a classic game from any high vantage point, and then decided it was probably time to go home as we were getting hungry.

The next day in the pub I became aware of two upsetting nuggets of information; firstly, Jake could have got free entry to the castle for being a Kenilworth resident, and, secondly, that I am infact a member of English Heritage and could also have got free entry. I had paid the full £22.

Avengers Assemble!

Last night Boyfriend Jake and I went to see the new Avengers Assemble film. Jake has been preparing me for this monumental occasion for the last few weeks by having me watch a selection of the previous Marvel based films so I was pretty excited when pre-booking our premium seats.

Jake had decided that it would be best if we went to the Odeon in Coventry which means tackling several junctions of the ring-road.If you are unfamiliar with the Coventry ring road then I greatly recommend it. It involves cars getting on and off on the same slip-road rather than the more conventional on slip and exit slip. Jake had assured me that from where I picked him up at the university he knew the way. Jake does not drive and has a limited concept of one-way systems, roundabouts and ring-roads. We had a rather shouty drive for 10 minutes to make a rather easy 5 minute journey.

Once we arrived and efficiently collected our tickets we had to queue to validate the parking ticket, then queue again for popcorn. We purchased a large popcorn and Pepsi combo so that Jake could receive a free Thor keyring. This key ring was not worth that much popcorn.

The film itself was Awesome. But I'm not going to review it. . . you can go to rottentomatoes or IMDb for that. . . A double thumbs up though.

Rizzle Kicks

On Thursday boyfriend Jake and I went to see the Rizzle Kicks live in concert at the Leamington Assembly. Being usually swung more towards folk and acoustic music meant that the 'hardcore urban beets' of these Brighton born youths seemed slightly intimidating. This is not true. Jake summarised the target audience into one simple phrase: "rap music for the white middle class . . ."

It has been about a year since I was last surrounded by self-conscious adolescents and felt for the first time in my life: old. We squeezed our way through the army of maroon coloured skinny jeans and top-knots to a polite distance form the stage. We didn't want to get crushed in a mob of children, or crush any children ourselves but didn't want to stand at the back with the mums and dads. . . It was an interesting demographic to say the least. However we did seem to gravitate towards the rest of our own peers and there was a middle distance of 18-25 year-olds.

Highlights for me include a parental advisory warning before, to the delight of the under-age audience, chanting the word fuck, and the Rizzle Kicks pointing out how, despite what the government seem to be telling us, smoking is cool.

It was the perfect opportunity for me to whack out some of my bad-man gangster moves although I did have to tell Jake he was cramping my style. This was met by the reply: "Jessie. You have absolutely no style to cramp."

When I told my parents, on individual occasions, that we had been to see the Rizzle Kicks, both instantly opened youtube and, glancing at me, both asked, "and how are you spelling Rizzle?" 

All in all Rizzle Kicks was a brilliant night out, even if we were hanging out with year nines. The Leamington Assembly is a beautiful regency venue and the cider was cheep. Thumbs up.

Arrested? Oh lord . . .

So yesterday morning I woke up to notice a text on my Nokia monophonic brick (my Samsung galaxy S2 was dropped in the loo . . .) from housemate Jamie's mum. To paraphrase it read along the lines of, 'don't be alarmed Jamie has been arrested, thought you aught to know.' Typical Jamie. I replied a slightly franker than intended remark and set about investigating what had gone on. I informed housemate Stuart and tried to get hold of Jamie. Not until the early hours this morning did I get hold of him. Apparently it was all a drunken brawl outside MacDonald's. We shall see what happens. 

Meeting the Mysterious Housemate

Before I start I feel i should say that I have just written all of this and then accidentally deleted it. Twice.

So this is the adventures of Our Mysterious Housemate and her mysterious friends. She has the box room here at number 43 which is filled by a single bed. Yet yesterday I counted four people emerge from that room. I don't know how they're all fitting in. Me and the boyfriend stayed in my single bed and it was 'cosy' to say the least. (And he probably has a lesser circumference than the aforementioned Housemate.)

Along with that we're dealing with housemate, Jamie's breakage of the window frame. This occurred after drunkenly deciding that having him climb through an upstairs window was the best answer to being locked out. However the wood was rotten and he fell to his gory death. That was a joke. He fell about a foot.

The last time we nearly killed Jamie was right back at the beginning of the year when we didn't know each other that well and had just heard news of an attack and rape at the end of our road. We left him out in the cold until about 4am simply out of fear. That time he broke the glass of the window by throwing a shoe at it.

More heartbreakingly I have been told that it is going to be one of the coldest May's on record. This is pissing me off.