Optimism

I know. I didn't think I was capable of it.

More than anything else, I'm looking forward to not living in this glorified Travelodge. I may have lost count, but I believe it's around 160 days until we can move into our house in Leamington. Here comes an exploration of all the things which will be much better in my new home.

First up, as it's on my mind, laundry. Currently, I have to walk about 50m to the building opposite if I want to wash my clothes. As such, I don't do that nearly often enough. Next year, the washing machine is 5m from my bedroom. Furthermore, my bedroom itself is a lot bigger, will have a sofa in it, a router, a server, some spare monitors, one hell of a printer, possibly a piano and much more wardrobe space and thus much more clothes. The only thing this bedroom has over my future one is its ensuite bathroom.

By some sort of anomalous geographical tragedy, The West Midlands are in the middle of nowhere, despite being in the middle of England. Meriden, Britain's furthest village from the sea, is closer to this University than anything which counts as civilisation. I feel sympathy for Coventry; whereas London is more than experienced in rising from the ashes, Coventry was completely forsaken after the Luftwaffe decided to tear it apart. Perhaps it was thriving and trendy in the '30s. So we have future house's next advantage: location.

Leamington Spa is a lovely little town. Rather deserted, unlike any similar settlement in Tyneside which all clump together to form a kind of sprawling metropolis, Warwickshire's towns are some distance from each other. Further, Leamington Spa has a McDonald's; Whitley Bay does not. Stupid protesting residents.

As a town, it really is quite something, and given that within a five-minute radius there is more than I can properly discuss, I'm going to forsake prose and venture into the hideous world of bullet points:

• Domino's Pizza
• McDonald's
• Every clothes shop imaginable.
• Pizza Hut
• Pizza Express
• Apollo Cinema — which is the nicest cinema I've ever known
• Yet more places that do pizza
• CEX
• Tesco Express
• Swimming Pool
• More quaint parks than anyone would ever need — picnics!
• A copious amount of pubs
• A more copious amount of clubs
• A TRAIN STATION! — I've never lived so close to a train station.
• Curry houses by the dozen

Really, as of August, the only time I have to leave Leamington is when I have lectures. Darned lectures: they take all the fun out of University.

And before I forget, the top five "best things" about my house next year are my housemates.

Home Alone

No man is an island, but I might just be a peninsula.

Having one's house to oneself is a thrill beyond even using the correct pronouns, ignoring the stylistic convention of a general "you" in order to avoid sounding like a character in a period drama. Note, I avoid such disasters by saying things of consequence from time to time, and not repeatedly commenting on how ridiculously proud Mr Darcy is. I've digressed.

Being home alone is brilliant as a child, especially with a house that is ordinarily filled with brothers and sisters. The novelty is not the only attraction. There's a post lingering around here from two years ago which tells of the numerous times I had bacon in one week that my family went on holiday without me. Needless to say, I wouldn't use 56 Otterburn as a den for gorging on pigs like a (cannibalistic) pig any more. 40 days meat-free, ladies and gentlemen.

This weekend, all but two of my fellow Flat 29ers are away. In a family home, I could roam around every room, pry toy-boxes, borrow any CD or DVD without permission and take as long as I want in the shower whilst the family is away. Here, this weekend, five rooms are locked, I'm stuck with my own meagre collection of media, and I can shower as long as I want whenever I want. En-suite bathroom, peeps; it even has a bath.

Furthermore, I'd ordinarily invite copious amounts of friends around to 56 whenever I had the place to myself, but I only have 29 to myself because my friends aren't here. It is a strange, paradoxical situation and I think the only way to combat it is to visit the Union's pub, The Dirty Duck, with the few remaining members of the clan who are currently dotted around campus.

Would you look at that? I actually blogged about something that happened.

Five Minute Fiction

Here's a challenge for myself, then. A short story - with some merit and hopefully not totally based on Batman comics - in five minutes or so. I hope you're all ready, already, because this rollercoaster ride is about to start.

It was a chilly Saturday afternoon when Derek realised that he'd been a fool. He'd gone and put salt in his tea, instead of sugar. Not just once: he'd been doing it his whole life.

It probably would have been without consequence, had Derek been a builder or a civil servant, but he was unfortunately the President of the Moon, and perhaps the odd dose of glucose would have prevented some of his more catastrophic decisions.


Four years before that Saturday, whilst Mr Derek Stantz was still in office, there was a disaster on the moon. It wasn't a tidal wave of a hurricane. By definition, an earthquake makes no sense. I am making this up as I go along, and the only natural disaster I can consider occurring on the moon given my limited knowledge of its geology - or, perhaps, lunology - is an asteroid. There are no volcanoes given the lack of an interesting core. It lacks oceans, bar the few fictional ones which I will make up alongside the society I'm creating on the moon. They have a President. They also have a very large swimming pool, similar in size to the North Atlantic Ocean, and a forest of mostly pines, spread across the western hemisphere. They have an atmosphere of sorts, thanks to the oxygen- and carbon-based lifeforms that have taken refuge there, courtesy of a few colonialist missions to everyone's favourite satellite in late 2023.

It was 2041 when the disaster struck. Scientists had seen it coming seven years previously, but the then President Alan Gregson had completely ignored their warnings, burying the reports in the deepest, darkest caverns of the lunar surface, which, incidentally, are a damned sight darker than those found on Earth. Thus, when the disaster struck, President Stantz knew nothing of it. The forests were wiped out and I have no idea what this has to do with having salt in tea instead of sugar.


Right, that didn't go quite as planned. I'll try again in a few weeks, and I hope to make a slightly more coherent tale. I hope the eight of you who read this enjoyed coming along for the ride. I'm guessing you want a finale to the tale, so here you go:

With the forests gone, the oceans cried. The atmosphere broke down and the population were panic-stricken. Not a single soul on the satellite managed coherent thought. Save one man. The rest of the population had just the right amount of glucose in their system to be properly seized by panic. Salt inhibits such a reaction. Salt prevents empathy. With one fair swipe of cold, hard, logic, Derek Stantz hit the button. Within two seconds, the moon had imploded. The Earth, and Derek Stantz in asylum on it, were completely unaffected, save the lack of a tide and the bright light in the sky.

On that Saturday afternoon, Derek wished he'd panicked. He wished he'd been on the moon when it blew. He missed his home, his people, his post dearly. Drinking his tea, he wept a little.

Okay, that was far too grim. I don't think I'll try this again.

Imprisonment

I used to think my bedroom back home in Whitley Bay was cell-like, and I wanted to live elsewhere from the moment I realised that was a possibility, which, given my perceptiveness during early childhood, was probably at a very young age.

"Be careful what you wish for" is the phrase usually associated to such matters, and despite its disgusting syntax, its sentiment appeals currently. I may have a bigger room than I did – it even has an en-suite bathroom – and I have the run of the kitchen, but I still feel less free at times, living on this inaccessible campus, in the middle of nowhere, by which I mean too far from the sea.

Back home, the public transport system works. The buses may be slow, occasionally expensive, and inevitably each service is either infrequent or unreliable, but never both. The Metro surpasses every public transport system in Britain excepting those run by TfL, and though there's always a slight possibility of a stabbing, it is at least close to reliable, and more than enough healthy competition for buses, which most areas of the UK lack.

As such, in Newcastle, it's fairly easy to go anywhere you want to go – and a bunch of places you wouldn't – pretty quickly, and, besides, neither the sea nor the city centre is beyond cycling distance, no matter where you live in Tyne and Wear. There's always something to do and somewhere to go. That's not the case living on this campus. Perhaps Leamington Spa is better for it, though it still resides at least sixty miles from the coast, and certainly less architecturally interesting.

I'll hope that this craving for sea air and an end to the tedium of this landscape or lack thereof is a passing one, after all, if I can go 32 days without meat, I can surely make it to the end of the term without watching waves crash down on the shore. Oh, waves. Hmm, sand.