Birmingham Shenanigans

Thank goodness for a day off work. It’s not just the work that’s tiring, but also the pain in my left ankle. Yes, it may be my own fault for leaving my black shoes at university, but wearing shoes that are a size too small is causing me no end of discomfort especially considering it takes me 40 minutes to walk to or from work every day and my job means I have to walk for hours on end. Naturally, my left ankle has gone stiff and has given me a limp. Bad times. Also I might be working for more time after the 9th of January. Anyway, moaning and whining over!

Today on my day off I went into Birmingham to meet up with my old friends Andy, Colin (and Sam, his girlfriend) and James. Mum very kindly paid for my train and cinema ticket since I’m short on cash until I get paid for my work. While I was on the train, I got a call from Marie who organises the rota for my section at work asking if I could do a couple of hours today. As lovely as Marie is…no. No way, I need my break!

Once I’d arrived and met up with everyone, we went to the Odeon to see Sherlock Holmes. There was a queue to buy tickets right out the door, but for some bizarre reason, no one was using the automated ticket machines, so we bought our tickets and went straight in while everyone else stood around like lemons. People are very strange indeed. The film was absolutely amazing especially considering I was expecting to find it very dull. I highly recommend it (and the actor who plays Sherlock himself isn’t too bad looking)!

Since I’d loaded up on sugar from a Tango Ice Blast in the cinema and was in the right frame of mind, I became very silly and giggly which was great (for me at least). We went into HMV and I found it hilarious that in the “Children’s Section” were films such as “Friday the 13th”. What a wonderful family film! I dared Andy to take a gay porn DVD called “The Lair” with the tagline “They’ll suck you dry” (made me laugh, that did!) and put it in the Children’s section and he did it!

To finish our time in Birmingham, we went to the gadget shop and giggled like immature children at all the rude gadgets, one of which Andy had given me as a belated Christmas present. I shan’t say what it is, but my university friend, Lewis, will LOVE it/find it hilarious!

Christmas Time!

Hello again! Yes, I am still alive and well, I merely became lazy which caused a lapse in my posting of blogs. It’s the end of what’s been an awesome day and I’m sat on the settee, sniffing a lot and rubbing my eyes thanks to the cats. Why oh why must I be allergic to my number one favourite animal in the whole world?!

Over the past week, I’ve been working 8 hours each day at Waitrose in the car park. It’s been…really fun. Yeah, ok maybe not. It was made much worse of course by snow. Everyone was walking around saying things like, “Oh, isn’t it beautiful?” about the snow. However, when you have to grit the entire car park and all of a sudden it becomes 10 times harder to push trolleys, snow quickly becomes something you despise. The one good thing about working in the car park though is the lack of customer interaction and the little giggle you can have to yourself when a customer arrives 5 minutes after the doors have been locked and walk up to the door with a confused face when it doesn’t open. I felt like shouting, “For goodness sake, it’s Christmas eve! Go home! Do you really not have anything better to do?! It’s your own stupid fault for not arriving early enough.”.

Christmas day was good indeed. I thought I’d be tired, but I woke up at 7 nevertheless and dragged myself upstairs. I got plenty of very nice FCUK wash and shave stuff, plus plenty of chocolate of course! The main gift was an electronic shaver so I don’t have to do wet shaves anymore! Rachel will NOT be pleased!! ;D

Christmas dinner courtesy of my mum was amazing and definitely the highlight of the day. Everything was cooked to perfection and, most importantly, I got my hands on 3 pigs in blankets! Yum! We all ate too much, so we’re saving the Christmas pudding for boxing day. Later in the evening, everyone except myself and my brother, Chris, went for a walk on the hills. Chris was asleep and I’d managed to wreck my left ankle through wearing shoes at work that are a size too small (I left my own black shoes at university). Once they’d returned, we decided to release the fire lanterns we’d bought. Basically, they’re big paper lanterns that you light, allow to fill with hot air and then release and watch as they float up into the sky like a hot air balloon. They were brilliant and worked really well! Except, of course, for one which floated, but not high enough, almost hit the roof (which is made entirely from cedar wood) and became snagged in a tree on the other side of the house. Luckily it quickly burnt out and the tree didn’t catch fire.

I don’t go back to work until Sunday since Waitrose is closed on boxing day, but I’ve got a couple of 9 hour shifts in the coming week. NOT looking forward to those at all. As long as it doesn’t snow and I can avoid any customer interaction, I’m happy though.

Merry Christmas to everyone!

A Mixed Day

Today’s been mixed in terms of how good it’s been. I’ve had ups and downs and some VERY dangerous and downright stupid close calls. More on that later…

Typically, I woke up fairly late in the morning (it is a Sunday after all; what do you expect?), turned on my phone and immediately received a text from Ellie asking me if I was coming out to Asda with them. Of course, the text was sent hours ago and they’d already been. Good start. Once the massive downpour and sheets of rain had passed over and the sun had started to shine again, I headed out on my own to Asda to do a little weekly shop. I walked all the way there, approached the cash machine on the outside of the building and, like some kind of deranged goldfish I realised…

I’d left my wallet back at the flat. Well done me.

Obviously this soured my mood somewhat and I ended up going back to my flat to sulk about how rubbish this day was being to me so far. I grabbed my wallet and since I’m far too lazy to make the same journey twice in one day, decided to go round the corner to the little newsagents and buy some overpriced milk and bread to live off until I could next be bothered to go to Asda. Oh well; there’s always next week.

Apart from that, my day’s been pretty uneventful. Needless to say it sure is quiet with Lewis being in Amsterdam. Laura’s parents are round to wish her a happy birthday which obviously means the PS3 and such are out of bounds until later on. So that leaves…oh, what’s that word…? Waffles? No…work! That’s it! It’s, erm, that thing students are supposed to do whenever they have a minute or two right?

Now about that close call: I realised today just how fragile and weak-minded I can be with all this freedom and independence. I came very VERY close today to giving in to this overwhelming urge to purchase a limited edition black Wii bundled with New Super Mario Bros. Wii. I came so close, in fact, that I actually placed the order, then realised what a ridiculous thing that was to do and immediately cancelled it again. I’m quite shaken up at how close I came to blowing all that money. We do learn from our mistakes though and I shan’t ever come that close to doing something like that ever again. And no, readers, I don’t need any sage words of advice or any chastising! I can take care of myself you know.

Right now I’m waiting for my clothes to be washed over in the laundrette and waiting patiently (while cooking waffles…erm, I mean working) for Laura to return so we can sample some of the TEN PS3 games her parents have brought her from home. Let the good times roll!

Time to Catch Up!

Whoops! Looks like it’s been at least a week now since the previous blog post of mine. Time does go so quickly these days; it feels like only yesterday my parents dropped me off here at the start of fresher’s week. So, where to begin?

Well going back to last weekend, I visited my old home back in Malvern for 2 nights. While I was there, I got to see two of my friends still in Malvern, Austin and Natasha. I really enjoyed having them round since it had been so long since I last saw them! We chatted about many different things and, naturally, the conversation drifted onto sex as it always seems to do with ANY of my friends. It’s just so weird! The morning before getting the 4 hour train back, we went to the new sports centre at the Malvern College private school my mum works at and went for a swim. Didn’t stay for long though, as the pool heater was broken and we were gradually turning into blocks of ice. Somehow (and I’m really not sure how), I managed to drag my PS3 and my TV plus many other things back on the train with me including on a very packed underground train and still live to tell the tale. It was definitely worth it though; we all love the PS3 and it works online too!

Nothing much except the usual stresses of uni work happened during the week so I’ll skip straight to Thursday/Friday. It was Laura’s 19th birthday on Friday and since Lewis was heading off to Amsterdam for a long weekend, we gave out presents and cards on Thursday evening. After that, we all went to partake in a pub quiz which I think we did well in…ok we came last. After that, I met up with another friend, Rachael Corner and we headed out to the Odeon in Kingston to watch the 1 minute past midnight showing of New Moon! The cinema was literally packed to the brim. You could barely move and buying popcorn or tickets was out of the question. Luckily, we’d been smart and bought ours much earlier. It was being shown simultaneously on 3 different screens and all of them were packed full. Crazy! I’d like to point out though, that I wasn’t the only male there by any means!! The film was absolutely amazing and Robert Pattinson sans shirt…well you’ll have to watch it yourself! ;)

As for Friday, I woke up fairly late, attended seminars for the day and then went straight to Laura’s flat. Her boyfriend, Alex, had come to visit and had brought Modern Warfare 2 for the PS3 round with him. All of us being avid gamers, we played it on multiplayer for a few hours. Later in the day, Ellie and I decided that Laura absolutely had to be taken out somewhere, so we decided on going to the cinema and paying for her ticket. Before that, however, we snuck out together to Asda to buy Laura a birthday cake. We had to light the candles in the kitchen away from the heat sensor for obvious reasons. We hope Laura had a nice birthday indeed!

My Will Power Exists

I think, first of all, that it’s safe to say that celebrations are indeed in order for I have achieved the seemingly impossible task of waking up at 6 AM and going to the gym at 7. I never in a million years thought I’d actually manage it considering the current state of my sleeping patterns, but I did! Now I must grasp that sense of achievement and keep it up. All being well, I’ll lose the tummy and be buff by next year! (Ok, so that’s a little optimistic…)

As of late, there’s been an awful lot on my mind. Many stresses, many worries. You get the general idea. I’m looking out the window at the dull grey sky and heavy showers and that pretty much represents my average mood right now. I say average since my mood tends to jump up and down more than a very hyperactive rabbit on a pogo stick. First and foremost is the stress my friends in general seem to be going through. Now it’s worth saying here that I generally don’t get stressed over work even if things look bleak. I tend to sit back and watch as things fall into catastrophe and rescue things at the final moment (my mum and step-dad will know this better than anyone), but for my sensible friends, they tend to worry a lot more. This, naturally, leads to stressed out friends and I think I just feel sensitive to that at the moment and feel upset to see them stressed.

In particular, my friend Lewis has actually expressed thoughts of quitting university. If ANY of my friends quit university, I would require anti-depressants for the rest of the year. I don’t think I’d stop crying for a week. Our group fits together so well and it would be a shame to ruin all that.

Anyway, enough of the depressing stuff! I’ve now resorted to hiding my toilet roll and only taking it with me to the loo when I need to use it. Why, you ask? Well I can’t be sure, but I think that someone in our flat is eating it. We seem to somehow be getting through an entire roll a day which is ridiculous. Either someone enjoys toilet roll as a tasty snack, or someone has a severe number two related problems and has had them since arriving here.

I shall leave you all on that lighter note.

4 o’ clock and Dark

I’m sat in my room at about 20 to 5 in the afternoon and it’s already dark. How depressing is that? My curtains are shut, my desk lamp is giving off a nice warm glow which, on the plus side, does make my room feel nice and cosy.

I could probably say I’m in a good place at the moment. I’ve met my deadlines, my room’s spotless again, my folders of work are organised, all my washing up’s done and I’m feeling healthy and well fed. On an emotional level, I’m content, I’m happy and most importantly, I’ve stopped worrying about not being in a relationship with anyone (and my crushes on people have waned). Speaking of washing up though, you should see what it looks like in our kitchen. I needed to rent a JCB digger to remove all my other flat mates’ washing up from the sink and draining area. I then had to use industrial strength kitchen cleaner to clean the inside of the sink and the draining area. Only then could I actually proceed to wash up my own things. Ok, so maybe that’s not completely true, but I did have to move everyone’s stuff. Their washing up combined covers an entire wall of the kitchen along the worktops!!

Yesterday after going to Asda and replenishing my supplies of peanut butter and packets of microwaveable pasta, we helped out Rachel with her project by posing for a photo while holding several brightly coloured letters which spell out the word “Volatile”.

I’m not 100% sure on the details of the project, but I know that it’s something to do with art and the letters were supposed to form a volcano shape. Naturally, Lewis spoilt it with his tallness! I’m sure Rachel will get top marks.

Today nothing much has happened really. I set my alarm for 6 as I was planning on forcing myself to go to the gym again after my long (read: very long) hiatus. All I remember was sitting up, hitting the “alarm off” button and falling asleep again. Next thing I knew it was half 1 in the afternoon. Oh dear… Any tips apart from the obvious such as “go to bed earlier” would be very welcome. I did go to bed at midnight after all which is much earlier than usual.

We’re heading out clubbing somewhere later. Not sure where or when, but we’ve all agreed that we need a night out tonight. I’ll tell you more about all of that tomorrow. Thanks for reading!

Visiting Dad’s House and More

Firstly a brief apology for the delay between posts. I know how popular my blog is and how many people are desperate to read it. I understand how my blog is the single greatest highlight of many people’s days. So, purely for all of you, today’s post will be ever so slightly longer than normal!

Well, where to start? I guess the best place would be where I left off. I went to see my dad on Monday and stayed at his house until Tuesday. I had a very pleasant time too since it had been such a long time since I’d last been to visit. On Monday evening we went and got some KFC after a quick drive into Tamworth (the boneless stuff, obviously) and then spent a very chilled and relaxed evening watching American Pie: The Wedding. I actually don’t believe I’ve ever seen that film before, but it was certainly a good laugh! Also we watched a documentary called “Life” on BBC HD which was VERY good. I highly recommend it and you can find it on BBC iPlayer in both standard and HD versions.

Before the train arrived at Atherstone station the next day, another guy came onto the platform and struck up a little conversation which was nice! It turned out his name was Dave and he was heading into Nuneaton to meet some friends of his for a couple of drinks at the pub. I love it when people come and talk to you like that; I’m always far too shy to do it myself.

Since getting back to uni, it’s been the same old sort of lifestyle, except maybe a tad more lazy due to the lack of lectures or seminars occurring this week. My sleeping patters are about as far out of sync as they can possibly be. Last night for example…no, wait, I mean this morning? Ok I’ve utterly confused myself now. Let me put it this way, I went to sleep at 4:30 this morning and woke up at around 2:00 naturally without the aid of an alarm clock. I’m no longer actually sleeping on one day and waking up in the next. I blame our evening “hang-outs” at Laura’s flat where we usually play games.

Speaking of Laura’s flat and games we now have a grand total of 3 consoles in there: the Gamecube, the Wii and a second hand Xbox 360 recently purchased by Lewis from eBay. Of course, we’re not stopping there. We’re all still gagging for my PS3 and my TV. When I leave home again after Christmas, I’m also going to attempt to take the Sega Dreamcast as well purely for Nostalgia’s sake. Oh and if I’m not mistaken, Lewis will also be bringing his PS2. Come January, Laura’s room will literally be gamer’s heaven. I can’t wait!! On a side note, I also had a look at some Sega Saturn consoles on eBay myself…but then common sense quickly kicked in.

Well, I guess I’d better leave things there for now. I’ve still got to finish off at least one of my two 750 word creative writing pieces and also my short critical analysis drafts. One often forgets that besides the ridiculous number of hours spent playing video games, there’s still work to do as well.

Moving House

Whoa there! Let’s not jump to conclusions from that title now. No, I’m absolutely not planning to move to a new house, at least, not until the 2nd year of university! That’s what today’s post is all about. At the moment I live at the wonderful Middle Mill halls of residence.

Ok, so that’s not the best picture in the world, but it’s the best I could find on Google. You’ll just have to take my word for it when I tell you it’s very nice. If there’s one flaw, it would be the weekly testing of the fire alarms. They scare the hell out of me every single time…

Anyway, on my mind today has been the second year of university and the need to start looking for houses to rent. Luckily, I’ve got some very firm friends who I’m more than happy to move in with. In truth, I absolutely cannot wait. If we could, I’d move out of halls with them right now and straight into rented accommodation. Especially if we could have small caged pets there too! I was thinking 2 guinea pigs, or a guinea pig and a rabbit, or maybe a pet snake as well… Oh, er, ahem, yes let’s not get too ahead of myself here.

If we don’t start to make decisions soon, then houses will be snapped up and we’ll end up having to live outside of Kingston and commute, so it’s important we start to look for houses now. Here’s hoping our friend Lewis is in too!

In other news…

I spent the day today at the garden centre near where my grandparents live. It may be early November, but they’ve still got all the Christmas decorations out! As usual, I rushed over to see the baby guinea pigs and go all soppy in the way I speak. They are VERY cute though. Tomorrow I’m going to visit my dad and then get the “hassle-free” train back to university on Tuesday morning.

Visiting Grandparents

It’s time for my first proper post. I can just picture you now shuffling in your seat with excitement, rushing off to tell all your friends and family. Well, don’t; it probably won’t be all that exciting. Trust me!

On Thursday this week I got a text from grandma reminding me that it’s mum’s birthday very soon. It’s not that I’d forgotten or anything like that. Honest. It was then that I made the snap decision to go and visit for the weekend. So the next afternoon, with very little thought and/or preparation, I shoved some bare essentials (LAPTOP and er, what’s that other thing…? Oh, right, clothes) into an overly large and awkward to carry bag and headed out towards Kingston station.

As expected, I needed to go to the ticket office to buy myself a ticket and not surprisingly, although the queue was small, whoever was being served was taking their sweet time. About 15 minutes later, I finally got my ticket and headed onto the train about 30 seconds before the doors closed. I then proceeded to Vauxhall and then onto Euston on the underground. I then ignored a perfectly good train because it wasn’t at the time it told me on the internet. As a result, I ended up waiting an hour and 15 for the right train. Well done me… The Virgin Pendolino to Tamworth was pretty darn nice though and I listened to Michael Bublé all the way there. Meanwhile, the old man wearing the posh suit sat next to me was listening to drum and bass very loudly on his iPod. What’s wrong with that picture?!

My grandparents are lovely! We went out to the Derby shops today and I bought an external hard drive to back up all my future university work on. It’s probably the most sensible thing I’ve ever bought. We also went to the regular café in the market, but only for a drink this time. Speaking of regular things, I’m heading along to the pub with my grandparents and their friends tonight. There’s a slight possibility I may look out of place sipping my Smirnoff Ice though!

Anyway, I’m distracted. I’m trying to type all this, make it slightly interesting to read AND watching New You’ve Been Framed as well. I’m a bloke; I can’t multitask like this! So, for that reason, this is where I leave you for today. Besides, Harry Hill’s TV Burp is on in 10 minutes and I can’t miss that! I miss my good old TV…

Welcome to my Blog

Hello. Welcome everyone! Please do take a seat. Yes yes, that one right there in front of your computer will do fine. What do you mean you’re already sitting…? Oh, never mind; let’s just begin with the blogging already.

Now it’s worth mentioning first that I’m certainly not new to this whole blogging experience. Not at all. I used to have a blog on Windows Live Spaces, but after becoming bored and also due to limited internet time available at home, it quickly began to rot and grow stale. A bit like a slice of bread you find between the radiator and the sofa. Certainly not the sort of thing you’d like to eat. The bread I mean, not the blog. Don’t be ridiculous!

I’m going to assume that the people who do read this blog know who I am, where I’m from, what I’m like and so on. But if you’ve just randomly stumbled across this blog purely by chance and are liking what you see even though this is only the first post and will likely get worse and worse further down the line, then this is the paragraph for you. My name is Matthew, I’m a student at Kingston University in London and I’m studying English Language and Communication with Creative Writing. Quite a mouthful, I know. I’m not going to lie to you and say it’s the best course in the world (it involves some kind of mental effort and work for a start), so I won’t, but as courses go, it’s fairly enjoyable as long as I stay awake in lectures. I’m a major nerd, so don’t be surprised or alarmed if I post the occasional nerdy post from time to time. You know the sort: video games, computers, technology in general. I love it all.

So you’re probably wondering, what’s with the title of this blog? Tumbling through life? What’s that supposed to mean? Well if you’d just shut up a second, I’ll go ahead and tell you. As a person I don’t for one minute consider myself to be proactive or hard working. I tend to just take things one day at a time and only ever think about the here and now. I take life as it comes and just randomly stumble my way through the many twists and turns and the many dark corridors of life and don’t think about it much in the process. Naturally this often leads to some kind of mess, whether it be in my love life, my school life, my social life. You get the picture. One could say I’m tumbling through life. The purpose of this blog is to bear my soul (ok maybe that’s a little strong) for your entertainment and amusement. Maybe I like the attention? Maybe I simply like writing things.

I’d love nothing more than to say I’ll write a new post every day and maybe in an ideal world that would be possible, but you see, I know myself far too well. Let’s just see if I manage. I’ll set myself a target of one a week minimum and see how things go from there.

Thank you for reading and I’ll begin with some proper posts soon.

Matthew