Hysterectomies & Turnip Mash

20/9/12 Part Two

On the way home now in the quiet carriage. Not sure why they call it quiet though.

There’s a girl opposite whinging down her phone to her friends about her meeting in London with some failed love interest who doesn’t treat her right.

And behind me are a bunch of women having a good old gossip and natter all about ‘My friend Mary’, Oven cooked sausages, Hysterectomies and Turnip mash.

I've had a perfect day. 

I am now well on the way to becoming a whizz on the London underground and I'm already hopping on and off tubes as confidently as a one-legged tight rope walker.  Actually I’m so good that I hopped off and then back onto the same tube at one point when I became temporarily convinced that it was going the wrong way.

I spent the early afternoon at the Victoria & Albert museum.  I last visited it two years ago and it was inspiring to meander around again with a fresh eye and with Applied Arts at the forefront of my mind. I adore that place, it’s so vast that you could visit for a week and still not see everything. I do need to make a point of going more often now that I’ve realised I’m capable of independent travel.

I was booked in to see the Heatherwick Exibish at 2pm and all I can say is WOW. That guy is a dude. A Genius Dude.

I think I’ll follow up with a blog entry about him and the exhibition at a later date J

Later I took a tube over to Blackfriars and went to mooch about in the Tate Modern again. The first time I visited a couple of years ago I didn’t really enjoy it so I had decided to give it another go. I really should learn to trust my instincts as I didn’t really enjoy it much this time either!  It’s nice to have further confirmation to reassure me that my choice of avoiding a Fine Art degree was the right one for me.

I also found time to wander around a few London landmarks before meeting a wonderfully lovely friend for dinner at the end of my day. Amazingly the weather was warm and pleasant which was a shocker and meant I was lugging my coat around all day. I also found that the two pair of socks got a bit much at times.

To sum up: Two Trains, Five Tubes, A Museum, A Gallery, A Formerly Wobbly  Bridge, A Restaurant, Two Pubs and A Posh London law firm. Not a bad visiting count for a single day in Londinium….

A pretty successful trip all in all!!

Down at Fraggle Rock

20/09/12 Part One

I’m feeling quite whimsical today.   As I write this I’m sat on a train to London…

 (On my own!) (And it’s the right train!)

Staring out over the rolling green fields….

(Well I was, I’ve now looked up to discover I’m travelling through a battered housing estate)

And I’m writing this using that old fashioned medium of pen and paper.

(As I can’t work out how to enable Mobile blogging on my phone)

I feel like I’m channelling some Hollywood Heroine of old writing her journal or possibly a love letter as she travels to some far off place.  Whimsical is a great word.

I mentioned previously that I’d never really travelled far on a train on my own and now I’m going one step further and I’ll actually be spending most of the day in London on my own too. It was an example of the disorganization that I can expert on a course ran by artists when I discovered on Monday that today’s trip wasn’t going ahead after all. (Meh.) By the end of the day the trip had been rearranged for a week Friday which was unfortunately of no use to me as I am working all of that weekend and a trip to London would not be too clever before a busy weekend DJing four discos*!  (Double Meh.)

I left Uni that day feeling pretty bummed out that I was going to miss the exibish. But then in a blinding light bulb moment of extreme confidence and bravery (She-ra Stylee) I decided to go it alone.  Today’s induction programme was looking pretty dull anyway. There’s a lecture for fresh faced students (as opposed to the aging haggard ones like myself …) to advise them how to live, thrive and survive,  how to check for signs of meningitis and how to look after theselves if they drink too much. With the exception of the last point I have most of those things under control so I decided it would be safe to skip it.

Therefore here I am bunking off of my course on my fourth day of university, convincing myself that it is for the greater good as I can’t possibly continue in life without visiting the Heatherwick Studio exhibition.  I’m not a total rebel though as I did ask permission from my tutor first and offered to bring in a note from my mom….

I have my maps printed to navigate the underground,  I’m wearing two pairs of socks and I’ve stashed items in various locations so as to fool the theives. My husband called me Dora the Explorer today but I think I’d prefer to be like Uncle Travelling Matt from Fraggle Rock as I reckon he was a bit cooler.

Although I would quite like to shout ‘Swiper no Swiping’ if I spot a pickpocket…..

*Not sure if I’ve mentioned this yet but my little business is actually quite cool – I’m a Mobile DJ and Kids entertainer. Well I think it’s cool anyway and much better than a real job. It’s very cool because it’s responsible for me being able to work weekends and therefore completely to blame for my adversity towards growing up and my becoming a Student J

Inspiring

19/09/12

What an amazingly overwhelming few days I have had.  Induction week is now almost over, I have met all of the lovely artyites on my course and I think I’m just about getting to the point where I can find my way from A to B without too many wrong turnings.  The more I discover about my course the more excited I become.  I chose my university due to the convenience of studying close to home and as a result I hadn’t researched Applied Arts Courses at other Uni’s. This week I have discovered that I’m on one the best Applied courses in the country and that the level of equipment and experienced technicians available is pretty much as high as you can get.  Wow!

 I think I’m going to have an inspiring few years ahead…..

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Turn and face the Strange...

Well it's midnight and I should really head to bed as in the morning I begin my new life as a university student.

Wow. 

A whole host of unknown lies ahead;

New friends (hopefully), new experiences, new challenges,new skills and a new venue in which to get lost in on a daily basis. It takes me back to my first days in secondary school, clunking around in itchy grey socks with my oversized baggage, nose buried deep in the school map which was glued in the back of my beige homework diary, trying to navigate to the geography room yet winding up in the chemistry room every time.

Wish me luck.....

In at the deep end....

5 days 

Pardon me, boy, is that the Chattanooga choo choo?

Last week I was excited to receive my first email from my course tutors (all previous mails have been random University junk mails and most of these actually have nothing to do with me; The most recent congratulating me on passing my nonexistent A Levels, which was quite nice of them really).

Talk about throwing us in at the deep end.  Our first day is Monday 17th and only 3 days later they are planning a trip to London to see the Thomas Heatherwick exhibition showcasing the works of the amazing studios responsible for the 2012 Olympic Cauldron.  How fabulous I thought! 

Then I read on,

‘We will meet at Euston Station at 11:30am.’  

Oh right no coach then?

Welcome to University Life!

I recently took my first ever solo train trip - 20minutes from Wolverhampton to Birmingham. There’s a security to having someone else journeying with me, someone to tell me ‘No not that train, this train’.  Well if this trip is confirmed then it would appear that now it is finally time for me to join the grown up world of train travel.

So I've got my clipboard, but what I would like to know is,  is the anorak compulsory?

So Chattanooga choo choo, Won't you choo-choo me home?