I don't mean to brag, but I have a lot of friends. Unfortunately, I'm a near-adult human with trivialities, frivolities, a mess of principals and an organisation of whims, as are we all; thus, each friendship is heinously complex, relying on the personalities, commitments, geographical location, disposition and a plethora of other properties, including but not limited to gender, of all concerned parties. These complications are what make everyday so interesting; how bored would you be if every person really were a faceless brick-in-the-wall?
Despite the variety in detail, every friendship is principally the same: two people who mutually enjoy one another's company and care for one another, mutually. This lengthy prologue, then, is simply a declaration that many a person cares about me and me about each of them, which, again, is not a mere bragging exercise. It'd be a complicated and time-consuming endeavour to contact everybody I'd call a pal in turn; most would be busy at the time of calling, were I to make the necessary century of phone calls; my love of lengthy texts is likely not shared, nor is SMS really the medium for such an endeavour; letters are a little more direct, appropriate and a little less intrusive, but sending a forest in parts to mostly unknown addresses is just plain silly; email matches letters for the lack of intrusion and the availability of words with which to express myself, but its informality and the frequent disregard with which people receive emails strikes me that it would not be such a great medium for informing all caring buddies that I'm alive and well. In fact, some aforementioned complications are in such severity that direct contact is not strictly the best approach. What, then, should be the medium for my communication?
As you're no doubt aware, this is the chosen medium. It's personal, far-reaching, non-intrusive; its apparent formality depends upon my register. It's perfect. With this prologue thankfully complete, I'll begin my message.
Saturday gone, I arrived in the quaint and royal Royal Leamington Spa. What makes it royal? I don't know. There's a tourist information office a two-minute walk away, so I may ask them. Alternatively, I could ask Wikipedia, but Jimmy Wales' Guide to the Galaxy is not as friendly, human or even as sentient as a tourist information office person. It has been raining pretty much since I got here. I left my wallet on the train. I've moved my stuff into my room, including my bicycle Amanda and my unnamed record player, which is currently blasting Dark Side's beautiful finale Eclipse. Quel chanson! Lily the Japanese peace lily is over by the window. A whiteboard, a second monitor, a lamp, a bed, a bookshelf brimming with ingenious narrative: they're all here and keeping me happy. I even have a set of scales which sends an electrical signal through my body and uses this to calculate my percentage body fat and percentage body water. I'm all gadgeted-up.
We don't yet have internet. To answer your question, I'm using the mobile internet from my phone – named Prometheus – and its "WiFi Hotspot" capabilities. Like I said, I'm all gadgeted-up. Virgin Media are sending their dogsbodies round on Thursday, so hopefully Prometheus can rest then, and cease having his liver perpetually eaten by the vulture of my laptop. The boiler boils hot water, but neglects the radiators. I have a fierce collection of one whole jacket/jumper thingy, so I'm warm and snug. Actually, I'm currently sat in my boxers; even for a Geordie, I wear little in the winter. So, the heating is failing to bother me while its inexistence is saving me money on that first dreaded bill. We have water, a brand new bathroom, a gorgeous kitchen and a nice big yard. We've got everything a growing boy needs, so hopefully I'll be six foot tall when I return to Whitley Bay at Christmas.
This is perhaps the most structured thing I've ever written. I once wrote a paragraph which told the story about a witch who placed a curse on a sports hall, then decided I'd hit a dead end, put the entire paragraph in quotation marks and appended "Or so the legend goes." I then continued a fruitful description of invigilators and of my desire to use the toilet, frequently making references to that story to make it look deliberate. That was my English GCSE and I got an A for that paper. I would sincerely love to know exactly what the examiner thought; I especially wonder whether the non-gender-specific he thought my shark-jumping witch was deliberate. Anyway, that cacophony of imaginative drivel was accidentally structured, in the end; much like this. I've covered my stuff, the house's stuff, and now it's time to discuss the people who live here.
They're all smelly and I hate them. Ha, just kidding! There's Josh, Mike, Hugh, James and Roland. To put it another way, there's Roland, James, Hugh, Mike and Josh. Hopefully none is too offended by the order. In any case, they're all lovely people, and besides them, we seem to have already become the social centre of Warwick University, which is fantastic because it took best part of three terms to get more than one person to hike to the far-off land of Lakeside in which we – Josh, Hugh and I – resided last year.
It would hardly be a blogpost of mine if I didn't throw in some cynicism, and so I have to voice my frightful opinion that University will be shit this year. I can do mathematics fine. I hit 77 last year, so I'm fairly certain I can maintain a First for the length of my degree. However, the University is a massive trek, and though I had a lot of fun on campus last year, there's only lectures to be had on University land this year. The saving grace is, of course, living off-campus. Last year, the University was all-encompassing. We were stuck in a bubble, cut off from society. How the blazes anyone is supposed to think about a future in a society with which they have no connection is beyond me. I think I just explained recidivism in a sentence.
We're off-campus this year. It's fantastic. I live in a home, not an office-block. That's exactly the point. It's a bloody wonderful house, but it's so much more than that. This is home.
