Walking in a Winter Wonderland...

I know, I've been neglecting you, I'm very sorry. Let's see, since I saw you last I've had a couple of nights out for birthdays, got a new job at a nearby pub, and welcomed my friends back from uni with Christmas presents.

As you may have spotted (twinkly lights, family films and bloody hundreds of perfume ads being a clue) it was Christmas on Friday. the previous Saturday, me and my mum headed up to the racecourse to acquire a tree from the man who bought and resurrected our old car (known as Phil the bus, because we did).

This would be Phil, all loaded down with trees.


this is one the one we picked...

We manhandled it through the house


and got it standing up. Thus - Tree!

The best part of this trip though, was in between buying the tree and getting it home. To get back from the racecourse, we used the scenic route, over Battledown. on our side of the hill, we found an icicle grotto... I'm going to link to these pictures, because it seems like a better way to show them than to embed them here, where they'll only show up whole if I make them tiny, and then the impact is lost, so. Links:

Photo one

Photo two

Photo three

that big puddle in the first picture is the reason for this; each time the puddle was splashed through by a car, a thin film of water was splashed on the branches and promptly froze. We stopped so I could photograph it, it was that much of a surprise.

Cor!

We planned to look at some trees

A few Sundays ago, my friend Hanna and I set off for a local(ish) arboretum, the one at Westonbirt, just over an hour away. The plan was to look at the pretty foliage and take nice pictures of it. For the occasion, dad lent me his Nikon DSLR, telling me not to lose or break it (because people do that on purpose).
We began the journey, heading southwest. It started raining, hard, which gave Hanna the opportunity to discover just how quickly her windscreen wipers could go. When the rain stopped, we were coming into Tetbury, a typical Cotswold town, all local stone and antique shops. We drove through, me taking photos out of the car window, and as we got to the edge of town, the rain began again. Wipers go back on, but... nothing. No movement from them at all. Try again, still nothing. We pulled over and phoned Hanna's mum, whose car it was we'd taken. We let her know what had happened, then phoned the RAC. I ended up talking to them, told them what they needed to know and finally got the message that the man with the van would be there in about an hour and 15 minutes.
So, since we had a while, we set off into Tetbury in search of some coffee and somewhere to sit down. The first place we tried wasn't letting anyone in despite having spare tables, so we found another, where the spare tales were there to be used, not just looked at.
We had our coffee, and a toasted teacake and headed back to the car where we took some photos of the dashboard (we might as well). Our saviour arrived, looked at the wipers, got out an electronic thing, put it back, then he fixed the wiper. By hitting it. With a hammer.
I'm told that's called 'percussive maintenance'. It definitely worked. Unfortunately, the advice was to head back home, so no trees for us. The mechanic followed us back to Cheltenham just in case the wiper motor needed hitting again and so we could fill out a couple of forms.
So, our trip to see the trees was called off, but, instead, we sat in Hanna's living room, had another coffee, and Hanna gave me my belated birthday gift, a photo album put together of all the things that have gone on in the last couple of years - the picnics, birthdays, the snow days.
It wasn't what we planned, but it was a lovely day, and there are worse places to be stranded than Tetbury.

Leah's Stoke-on-Trent Adventure (The Second University Open Day)

This time, the university of Staffordshire's Stoke Campus.
We were soon aware that this was a better day than Falmouth's, although whether that was because of the better organisation or simply not having my dad grumping around remains to be seen.
We had come up on the train, a relaxing hour and a half direct journey - in stark contrast to the four and a half hour drive down to Cornwall last week - so we weren't already tired when we got there.
Our first views of the city were positive. A lovely Victorian station and, outside more Victorian buildings and (of course) a statue of Josiah Wedgwood. The campus was within walking distance and we were there in five minutes. I was pleased to note as we walked toward it, that I could see hills (something I have been used to my whole life here in Cheltenham).

Registration was fast. We were given leaflets about accommodation, writing the personal statement, safety procedures (in case of fire and so on) tickets for a campus tour and an 'Open day visitor' sticker, which entitled us to free hot drinks for the whole day (they didn't run out of beans). We had half an hour before we had to be over on the other half of the campus to hear about the journalism course, so we took advantage of the free drinks and got some coffee.

We headed from the Leek road site around to College road, where the journalism talk and tour was situated in the university's film theatre. We were early, so we wandered around the campus then waited in the foyer with everybody else, peering through into the newsroom and looking at the design students' 'Design loves and hates' which were posted on the wall. The London Underground map and Moulton bicycle got the thumbs up, while foil-lidded yoghurt pots and Phillipe Starck's 'Juicy Salif' lemon juicer were less well liked.

Again, there were differences from last week. Falmouth's representative for journalism was a single lecturer who had only been there for a few months and didn't have all the information we wanted. At Stoke, a third of the faculty (eleven of them) were there to talk to us (apparently the rest were working in the field). They sold it well. Suffice to say, by the time we set off for the tour (having been split up into groups who were thinking of sport, broadcast, print or just plain journalism) I was convinced, and I wanted to do the course there.

We saw the newsroom, its computers, the news desk and the sofa, bought from Pebble Mill, and covered in Midlands news presenters' hot chocolate stains. There were televisions in there, continually showing the BBC news and Sky news, and an open gallery. Students get to have a go at every job on newsdays, from presenting to producing and everything in between (and I think I know which I'll be happiest doing).
Their radio studio has all professional equipment and, we were told, gets phone calls from all sorts of interesting people - since it's common for someone to phone an agent and ask if their client would call back.
It seems from all that was said that this blogging lark is a good plan , and that the years of extracurricular drama have provided some of the confidence, the relaxation techniques and the speech skills which will be important for the course and the profession.
We headed back to Leek Road for our campus tour, and waited with everyone else for our guides to appear at 1:30. We had a chat with someone else who had been there on the journalism tour with us, who we'd discovered to be from Gloucester, just down the road from us.
Again, a contrast with Falmouth. There, we had one student ambassador, who we couldn't hear, and who barely gave us any actual information. At Stoke, we had three Student ambassadors who all knew what they were talking about, showed enthusiasm for the place and the facilities and spoke loudly enough that they were audible, despite the large size of our tour group and the unfavourable acoustics. My favourite part was that one of them was called Leah (my name) and she was a journalism student. She discovered this when mum was asking her about accommodation and was making a comment about me: 'Leah, my Leah...'. I think she was quite pleased since she told the drama student (clearly a friend) who then said; 'She's probably nicer than you'. I'm pretty sure she was joking.

We had more hot drinks and listened to some information about student finance and.. that was the end of the day. We'd seen all we had to see, and so we headed back to the train station.

The pictures don't really fit in to the narrative, so here they are separately:

The Station: nicer than Birmingham New Street (this is not hard)

Lovely and green, rather like home
Student lets with faaabulous period features

'Ember lounge' College road's student union bar (where I will likely be spending lots of time)

The Library (and two of our student ambassadors, who did a good job)

Leah's Big Cornish Adventure

Yesterday was the day that me, my mum and my dad made our way southwest to have a good look at University College Falmouth and its journalism course. We set off about eight o-clock in the car, armed with our information pack (a map and a timetable) and a bagful of water bottles, hoping to make the journey in about four and a half hours.
My first impression of the place was in sunshine, probably a good thing as far as they're concerned for selling the place. The buildings are quite new, as the campus was set up between 1999 and 2001, and therefore very much of their time, with the interesting rendering techniques and timber cladding that are also present on the buildings at my old school which were put up in the same time. We registered and were given vouchers for a coffee machine which, in its own words, was; 'Out of Beans!'.
We set off with one of the campus tours, led by student ambassadors in big yellow hoodies. We were showed around the design studios - mostly irrelevant to me, but interesting to see that actually their workshop equipment is not a million miles away from what we had for GCSE Product Design (we were a technology college so we had all industry standard equipment). Unfortunately, our guide was practically inaudible, and might not have even been visible a lot of the time, had it not been for the big yellow hoodie. We had to cut short our tour - not getting to see either the accommodation or the media building where I would be working - so that we could go to a welcome lecture where a one of the senior management team told us that, essentially, Falmouth is different. In some ways that might be a bad thing, but it was clear that in his opinion it worked better than what he'd seen at other universities where he'd worked.
We were then shown to the journalism seminar by a far more enthusiastic guide, and heard about the course.
It looks pretty good from where I'm sitting. The tutors all have experience of working in the field and have brought their connections with them. there are a variety of guest lecturers throughout the year, from the editors of the local newspapers to people who work at the Independent and the Guardian who make their way from London to talk to the students. The course itself includes modules on the history of journalism, media law, photojournalism, television journalism and so on and so forth - all interesting and useful for what I'd like to do in the future.

So yeah. Falmouth was nice. I'm not totally convinced, but it's Staffordshire University's Open Day next Saturday, so there will be a report on that and maybe I will have made some sort of decision (or maybe it will come down to who'll have me)

Halloween!

I love Halloween. Aside from the fact that it tends to be one of those great Autumn days where it's windy and fresh and the foliage has all gone a glorious colour, it gives me a brilliant excuse for dressing up. I really enjoy dressing up.

It's probably part of that 'you can take the student out of the theatre but you can't take the theatre out of the student' thing. I'm like the metaphorical stick of rock with 'luvvie' written all the way through it - pretending to be someone else for a while is damn good fun.
This year, Halloween will be without all those friends who are off at university, but, since there is still a party (one of the remaining friends has the house to herself that weekend) I still get to dress up.

Looking at the 'pictures of me' thing on facebook, it seems I'll don a costume at the slightest provocation, and I do like to think I make the effort with it. Previous halloweens have seen me as bat, witch, werewolf, devil and so on and so on, while other opportunities have produced one of the original Charlie's Angels (raided my mum's old clothes bag), Prince Charming, schoolgirls, princesses...

This year, I was considering going as roadkill - using the furry bits from last years wolf costume, makeup bruises and cuts and a tyretrack across my chest, but I think I'll save that one (because it is a great idea). Instead I'm thinking bad fairy - all fishnet, thorns and wilted petals, like a flower fairy gone wrong. I'll have to make it of course, but I'm pretty sure I can do that.
It should be good fun. I will post pictures as we go along I think.

p.s. a friend has just started a blog for his uni course, go say hi: http://martin-baxter.blogspot.com/

hello?

Pretty sure anyone who was reading has forgotten about me now, but what the heck, maybe we'll get some new ones.
What have I been up to since I last wrote?
Working (hooray for being paid!)

Blowing bubbles:

Picnicking:

Camping:


And generally making the most of my friends before they left for Uni. Now most of them have left - only two haven't gone who are going and then there's just four left (or five, depending who you count)

It's got quite lonely back here, though the people left are good ones. As it happens, they are among my very best friends, but so are all the ones who are going away. I can't choose a single best friend.

It's been a while

I am a lazy person and I can't even blame school. so, in pictures, this is what has happened in the last month...

I went to a party, and drank several bacardi breezers

and wore quite a short dress.


I went to the Forest of dean in a mini

and did a maze in the rain

We threw a surprise birthday party for Jess (one of my most favourite people in the whole world)

Then went and drank excitingly flavoured vodka shots (I had a bakewell tart flavour one, it was gorgeous!)

I've got the house to myself for two weeks.
I went to Martins and we played mousetrap


The following night the girls came round for movies and a Chinese takeaway. We watched Moulin Rouge (and sang along), Bridget Jones's Diary, which just made the single girls (most of us) a little bit mopey, so we then put Some Like it Hot on before realising at five that it was getting light already, and it was probably time for bed.






















Oh, and Hanna stood on a slug in her bare feet.




so yeah. A fun few weeks certainly, during which I also got a job and ate far, far too much junk food. I will post something again soon (if I don't just tell me I ought to)

reasons why I twitch a bit when...

...people complain, in the middle of winter, that they wish it was summer. Those of you in the UK will know what I'm on about - as per usual in the British summer, it's gone very hot all of a sudden.
I'm fully aware that 28 degree temperatures (Celsius, not Farenheit obviously) are not that hot by some standards, but this is the UK where the slightest sign of extremity in the weather is staggering. Those same people who complain about the winter are, in many cases, now complaining about the heat.
I'm complaining about the heat, but I'm allowed. I never wish that summer would hurry up in the dead of winter. I like the cold. At least when it's cold you can put more clothes on. I complain about the winter because it is dark - most of my immediate family suffers with varying levels of SAD, and living with four miserable buggers when you're miserable yourself isn't the most fun.

On that subject, I'll admit that the summer hardly seems to have improved some moods this year, but at least one person has seen the benefit since the spring equinox.

So, I complain about the heat, never the cold. I can warm up when it's cold but, as some side effect of my size and shape - I'm not exactly petite in scale - and my circulation - in contrast to apparently most women, whose extremities lose circulation at the slightest chill, my mum and I have warm hands almost all the time - I cannot cool down when it's warm. When it's like this and nighttime temperatures are 16-18 degrees, I freeze my hot water bottle to try and keep cool.

I always knew I was a Norman really. The Mountford name on Mum's side gives it away, along with the tendency towards being tall, leggy and broad shouldered that comes from her side of the family - I should be living in Scandinavia!

.

There was a programme on Channel 4 recently called 'Revelations: How to Find God' which followed a group of agnostics on an Alpha course in Oxford.
The whole thing made me spectacularly uncomfortable and I feel like I have to write about it. The idea of the Alpha course is - of course - to convert people who have joined up hoping that Christianity might offer some kind of support. Conversion is achieved in a series of 10 weekly meetings, where people are fed and chat about Jesus, religion and the scripture, and a weekend retreat where they are invited to speak in tongues (which obviously mostly appears to be babbling random syllables with a beautific expression). This approach manages to recruit one in eight of the people starting the course.
one of the small groups of eight where the chats take place was the focus, with four of the group being followed to the end.
Evangelical Christianity makes my skin crawl. I can't quite express the discomfort I was feeling when the participant who should have been best protected from the concept of 'god' as a psychology student at Corpus Christie - statistics show that there is a negative correlation between level of education and belief in god - was pretty much converted by a note from one of the Christians running the course saying that she had been praying for him and that this is not the time to be passive. It was horrifying to see.

I really wish I could explain how uncomfortable this kind of thing makes me (and probably Richard Dawkins)... suffice to say that it is too hot a day for spending an hour tensed up in discomfort.

Anyway, I'd really like to hear from you on this one - any comments are appreciated

It's over? really? huh...

yup. At the end of fourteen long years of school, including run-ins with spectacularly unpleasant people, totally wonderful people, hundreds of homeworks, dozens of detentions (for not doing the homework usually), probably millions of words of coursework and many, many hours of exams... I'm done. No more school.

Now what?
I'm not sure. So far, it's been just doing very little at home and hoping the open sores on my heels (from walking the two miles into town on Friday in the wrong shoes) will heal up in time for Friday so I can wear the utterly fabby gladiator sandals I got for the ball when me and Tracey - my mum - went to Hereford in the hopes of finding some on Saturday.
Hereford is quite surprising. Considering it's a city, the population is small. My hometown has a population of 110,013 people (according to the 2001 Census) while Hereford, a city, the county town of Herefordshire, has a population less than half the size at 50,400 people. Nevertheless, the shopping is just as good and their New Look store is huge. It has three floors and carries six of the 'extra ranges' including, in the footwear section, wide-fitting shoes. When your width fitting is EE to EEE (normal width is C or D) this is very important, especially when it is a week until your leavers ball and you still have no shoes.

It was a successful trip from where I'm sitting. I got the last few things I needed for this Friday - shoes, a bra whose straps wont't show in my dress, a stole and a purse that will fit in the bag I got for my birthday (Thanks Ash!) because the one I usually use is mahousive - and two tops, a cardigan, and a pair of shorts. We even managed to spend some gift vouchers we'd had for ages - £15 at M&S and £7 at New Look (note for Dee, they were a good present, we just have a crappy New Look).

So yeah, shopping is good! At no point did I feel like a fatty which is unusual when doing clothes shopping and I got lots of nice things for a relatively small amount of money.

Xbox 360 is ruining my life (or, an attack on something many people hold dear)

The original title of this entry was going to be 'Xbox live is ruining my life' but it's got much, much worse. The original title was inspired by the fact that every time on of my dear, dear (um.. no, not really) brothers turned the damn thing on, it destroyed my network connection, preventing me from doing whatever is was I might have been doing on my computer up in my room (because I'm almost invariably using the internet) of course if I was downstairs in the same room, I had to suffer the gun noises, the inane and bloody stupid conversations going on between other players and of course, between my brothers, for instance - "heh, got you there n00b!" "boom! Headshot!" "Ali get off, I want to go on, god!" Kieran why are you using that! that couldn't hit a tank at point blank range" and so on and so on.
eurgh.
Now of course, this is not the only problem. The shouting at each other parts have been a problem with every games console, right back to the playstation, but the Xbox's appeal to the other boys who live on the street means the front room is frequently overtaken by slightly smelly boys aged between 10 and 17, most of whom seem to have no idea that watching somebody else play guitar hero is actually really fucking boring.
Guitar hero I know, is among the favourite games for most of the slightly (and very) geeky boys in my life, both the ones I've chosen to associate with (I know, I know) and the ones I'm forced to spend time with, but, it's shit. Really. Aside from the fact that it doesn't actually make you a rock star, the music is generally... well, horrifying eighties power ballads or totally pointless metal.
The controller as well, alright, guitar shaped, fair enough, appropriate to the game but... well, it makes even more noise than the stuff on the screen, squeaking, tapping...

and they think they're allowed to go on the damn thing whenever the hell they like, despite requests not to because I would rather watch the news, listen to something on the radio, get on with some schoolwork or do my chores without the noise pollution or having to watch them stabbing elves or shooting nazis.
Sometimes I dislike them... no, mostly I think I should be allowed to beat them over the head with a frying pan when they're pissing me off.

Holy crap!

it's less than a week til my 18th birthday. It is actually five days until I, me, that is, Leah, will be an official adult.

Scary huh?
not so scary is the prospect of using the new 'official adult' status to go out clubbing and buy my own booze - which probably means there will be a lot more rum drinking going on around here, not to mention the vodka (na zdorovye people!).

That said, it seems my education in booze from my parents is really quite middle class. I know little of what people have in shots and I don't drink alco-pops unless they're put in front of me, but I could tell you about why I like Chilean wine more than Australian, and have opinions on ales based on personal experience.
All the drama classes and youth theatre stuff hasn't helped either. I absorbed the speech teacher's advice like a sponge, so I sound pretty middle class too (and am actually known as 'BBC voice' to some people).

But hey, at least I'm not common!

hey guys!

We've finished school. This means the exams are here. Crap.
On the last day of school we all dressed up - by all I mean only those of us who are comfy in skirts, obviously - including that group of lads who are incapable of taking anything seriously, but are apparently very secure in their sexuality and/or think they're god's gift to women.
unfortunately, considering the circumstances - the historic event that is the last day of class of '09 - my camera decided that after two years of good and faithful service, it was going to give up. 'The coroners report' (courtesy of my 'dear' father) was "it's dead".

Comforting. In all seriousness, I really did adore that little compact. It's macro function may have been a little dodgy, the pictures a little grainy... but I loved it. Hopefully a new one will materialise in time for my 18th birthday party this week - that's definitely something which cannot go unrecorded.

(dudes, let me know you're out there, drop me a comment xx)

I don't get road rage

At least in part because I don't (and can't) drive. If I have to get places and my parents can't drive me, I pretty much have to walk. This means I walked to and from school every day for the last seven years, whatever the weather, done the two-mile walk to and from the centre of town, walked to and from friends houses in four-inch heels. I've dealt with everything the English weather throws at us, roadworks, speeding... and the one thing that still gets me really, really angry - is other pedestrians.
So I don't get road rage, I get pavement rage. Other pedestrians are often spectacularly unaware of the people around them - I was stuck behind a couple of girls the whole way down the alley between the road my school is on and the road my house is on, because they wanted to talk about how they'd rather do something other than go and get stoned in the park because it was raining on Friday.
Who dawdles on the way home from school?! Admittedly these two were year nine or tens (13-15 years old) so they hadn't had the same sort of week I had (your A-levels are coming up! you're all woefully underprepared! You can't structure an essay to save your life!) but there is still no reason to force someone who just wants to get home to listen to your inane conversation.

There are other habits of my fellows in pavement use that piss me off. Stopping, in the middle of the street with no warning or, in fact, purpose. Walking veeerrrryyy ssslllllooooowwwllllyyyy, right in front of me and zig-zagging across the path so I can't overtake you. Also, that perennial non-favourite of mine, cutting me up and complaining when I trip over you because I can't bloody see you shortarse! - that one especially for the lower school who don't realise that you should get out of the way of the damn great sixth-formers because they're bigger and more important than you.
Ahem.

I really hate this exam thing.pressure's on! Two weeks til my first exam, and then it's drama, geography, geography, biology, geography, biology, dram

pressure's on! Two weeks til my first exam, and then it's drama, geography, geography, biology, geography, biology, drama.... urg

The stress is definitely beginning to show in the sixth form - more bitching than usual, more spots than usual (mostly on my chin by the looks of it), fewer smiles than usual. There's truth in those UNICEF surveys that say Britain's a godawful place to grow up, and I'm in one of the nicest parts! (in fairness, those surveys are only of a few countries - it's almost certainly worse to grow up in one of those central African countries where people are killing each other over a racial difference which was arbitrarily decided by white colonists)

On top of the exams and spots thing, there's extra irritations. My mum tells me that before her A-level exams she lost a stone in weight from the stress. I'm gaining weight. Seems I stress eat even as I tell myself not to.

The food itself isn't helping. I usually would have a perfectly normal cereal bowl, filled with cereal for breakfast. On the back of the box, it always says that 30g is the serving size. Figured I might as well find out how much that is.

I got a cereal bowl, and the kitchen scales. Set the scales to zero with the bowl and got the cereal out. 30g of bran flakes is... one small handful. the quantity I usually eat (one, normal bowlful) is more than 100g.

How am I supposed to cope til lunchtime on one handful of cereal? it's possible the portion sizes are mostly to blame for my tubbiness and the more significant tubbiness of my parents, although mum does suspect dad of trying to keep her fat.

Sexy times? not so much

Last week, the biology department had arranged for a local sexual health nurse to come and talk to us about contraception, sexually transmitted diseases, abortion and infertility. fascinating stuff, albeit somewhat revolting (that stuff about STDs? there were pictures).

people from all three classes were in the room for the talk, and we started with some examples of contraception - several brands of the combined pill, including the evil one that made both me and Hanna crazy (we did actually shout "it's the evil one!" when she handed it to us), a female condom (one of the most ridiculous things I have ever seen), an IUD, an implant etc, etc. Then of course, she moves on to the diseases. Start with a list, fine. Then those pictures. Oh dear . There was a point when I looked across the classroom and spotted several of the boys looking very uncomfortable.

We were all given leaflets at the end of the session, including one about safe oral sex. This leaflet had some diagrams of how to use a dental dam. It's not terribly... descriptive. Luckily for us, the sexual health nurse was sat with the sixth form's admin assistant next door, so Celia, Hanna and me went to ask about it. She was of course well prepared and just happened to have one to hand that she could show us.

When we went back to our friends and explained what it is, the boys were all giggly and silly (no change there then). The dividing wall has a big window in it, and through this, the ever helpful nurse was waving the thing around like a bullfighters cape, stretching and bending it and generally (I suspect) trying to embarrass the boys - she succeeded.

Other news: More Blog virus outbreaks! Lysha has joined in here

It's an epidemic!

no, not swine flu, blogging. I started reading the knitting blogs - stumbled across The Panopticon in the course of my internet surfing, read up on the Yarn Harlot, hopped over to Mossy Cottage and Now Norma Knits. Then I thought.. ooh, wouldn't it be nice to join this community of lovely people and have my own! so we have Choctopus, where I shall continue to find excuses not to do things I should do (like tidying my room or preparing for my exams).

Then, it starts to spread. My dear friend Apoorva, who I last saw in 2005 (I think) before her family uprooted and moved back to India (Hi!) has started a blog: Here and now, after having a look at what I've got here so far, Hanna has the desire to blog too. It must be viral or something.

Edit: there are links now!

'circle of gratitude'... better than the circle of lust and confusion!

I appear to have been caught in a circle of gratitude with our over-the-road neighbour, Heather.

She asked me to paint a mug for her gran’s 100^th birthday, being very polite and apologetic because it was very short notice. I couldn’t turn her down, not least because she is so very lovely and bought me alcohol last time I babysat for her son (after all, I’m not quite old enough to buy my own yet). So, did the mug, got it to her just before she and her family left for Ireland to celebrate the birthday.

Her husband, Dave (my dad’s best kiting buddy), paid twice what I usually charge for them and then spent the 25 minutes we were there “hinting” that he’d love one, and it was his birthday soon.

While they were away, I did him a mug – he did pay me for two!

They get back, dad takes over the mug and a birthday card, Dave is pleased (and christens his mug with some beer).

Yesterday, after getting back from a trip to Swindon with the Youth Theatre, Heather comes over to watch Mamma Mia with us - living with two guys she hasn’t been able to see it yet, and we’re all about spreading the musical love. She brought with her a card and a little gift bag which she handed to me, saying it was a thank you for doing her gran’s mug at such short notice, and for Dave’s.

In the bag was a jewellers’ gift box, containing a silver chain with the prettiest little ‘floating heart’ type pendant I have ever seen. I don’t know how to thank her for it, especially as this looks like turning into an eternal circle of gratitude, which could lead our descendants to still be saying thank you to one another four generations on. Hopefully babysitting again this week will make up for it.

This would be the blog then?

I keep trying to do things like this, and here I am hoping that I'll keep it up this time. If I'm honest I've started this at a pretty stupid time, as I'm about to take my last exams for my A-Levels. However, I am a total div from time to time so there we go.

So, who am I, and what's this all about? I'm Leah, an almost-18, creatively minded, bright, procrastinating Drama student. I live with my parents and my two younger brothers, I'm nearly finished with school and I have no idea what I'm doing next year.
This blog... it should be about showing off my creative pursuits, which come in quite a wide variety, and for just burbling on about whatever happens to have got into my head that day.

So, Welcome along! I hope we'll enjoy ourselves