Glorious little things

If you know me at all, you'll be aware that I really dislike the winter. It's not the cold - I've always preferred the cold to the hot weather. It's not the approach of Christmas with its little stresses, or the fact that none of my shoes are appropriate for rain and snow.

It's all about the daylight. When it goes away, each day shorter than the last, it makes me very, very unhappy. My whole family does it.

So we have to look to the little things that make it all a little better. I'll admit, that is usually food for me. Often, it's also the little achievements or things I've been able to make for myself that help things along. Once in a while those categories overlap. For example; my potatoes!


Over the summer, I discovered a couple of potatoes in the back of the cupboard which had begun to grow. They had inch-long shoots coming out of every eye. Normally you'd just bin them, but I thought it could hardly do any harm, and tossed the into a pot full of compost. And then forgot about them.

This weekend, I headed home. On Sunday, my boyfriend and I popped out to the shop. When we returned, mum called me out to the kitchen and handed me my pot. Most of the compost had been scooped out, leaving this collection of lovely - if muddy potatoes!

I made these. And now, I'm going to make them dinner.

This time, honest!

So, ALL of Staffordshire Uni's second-year journalism students are doing a web-based journalism module. Most of them are doing it this semester, but us broadcasters won't start til after Christmas. At least part of it (I'm fuzzy on the details, maybe someone will tell me) is assessed on a blog, so we're dusting the cobwebs off this baby and I'm going to try and get in the habit of writing here regularly!

I'll probably stick with the general theme of ramblings, ranting, and sharing things I think are awesome but this may change after Christmas when they tell us exactly what they want. In the meantime, I hope you continue to read!

...

okay, I'll make sure there's more of a point to this.
I was in court today! As an observer only I'll be glad to report. As part of our law module this term we're learning about court reporting, so the morning was spent at Fenton Magistrates' Court hearing all about driving offences, shoplifting and assaulted policemen. It was genuinely fascinating!

We saw preliminary hearings for a man accused of burglary, and a couple on a charge of racially aggravated threatening behaviour, a slightly confused man who couldn't decide if he'd stolen a joint of gammon and two other hearings;

The first was the driving offence. Despite his solicitor's best efforts the defendant left the court with two prison officers for a five month sentence. To be fair, the man had been banned from driving three times already. Still, our law lecturer Dr Gubbins had started off pitying the guy, then - as soon as he clocked the prison officers, he started rubbing his hands in glee and saying - loudly enough for the poor bloke to hear - 'He's going down!'

Special bloke that Gubstep...

Custard, Banana, Mustard, Yellow

It seems there is a problem in and around Staffordshire University. The evidence is right there, in the car parks of its Leek Road campus.

We have an epidemic of yellow cars. Today, there were at least five yellow cars parked up, and in a 20 minute walk to and from the supermarket last night, I saw eight. one of them, was a mini.
now, you might not have noticed. As a student, and a childish one at that, myself and some of my friends have started playing the 'yellow car/ mini' game, last seen in about 2005, and gleefully hitting one another when one of these vehicles appears. the minis have been dropped mostly because there are so damn many of them.

so, the reasons for this rash of yellow? are more cars available in the colour? is it just the student population, trying very hard to be different?
Or is it more sinister, is society becoming more cynical to the point where drivers enjoy driving around their little custard-coloured Fiat and watching 14-year-olds punch each other?

either that or it's an ultimately doomed attempt to brighten up the rougher parts of a city with serious problems.