Two blog posts today, one to bring you up to date on my life and another to gush about possibly the best night of my life.  On Friday the 22nd of Novemeber, I came face to face with one of my music  idols The Weeknd. I

The thing about the Weeknd that I feel with such passion is the poetry behind his lyrics. Some would say they're crude, explicit - disgusting even in some cases, but that is exactly what I love about them. The subjects revolve mainly around sex, drug culture, revenge, jealousy and what fame means.

There is something beautiful about the raw honesty behind  the words . A modern musical Bukowski echoes from my earphones and whispers catchy bridges in my ears.

I hate busy public spaces. Railway stations, airports, shopping centres, just get me out of there. With gigs and concerts, it's a whole new story. There's a sea of irritating people all clamouring to get to the front, standing on your feet, the air smells a bit pungent, a mixture of sweaty, cannabis and fake tan, but  I don't care. Amongst the flashing lights and heavy atmosphere, there's a sense of allegiance, brothership, a sisterhood of fans gathered to appreciate music together.

If magic exists, it can be found at a concert. Face to face with your idols is scary,  there's a heightened sensitivity to the expectations in your head. My experience was nothing short of  euphoria.

Legs are aching, lungs and throat are sore from screaming, arms feel heavy and your ears are ringing - but nothing can stop you from screaming the artists name a little louder, chanting the lyrics like an anthem and feeling the bass shake your feet.

under pressure

I have good and bad memories of being at school. From being a year seven sat on my brother's knee in the school cafeteria sobbing my heart out that I didn't fit in and didn't belong,  to sitting seven years later in the counseling office at the same school saying the exact same thing.

The parallels I faced in the first few years were mirrored almost exactly the same a few years later. I didn't learn my lesson. As soon as I began to feel comfortable, I let my guard down and became vulnerable to the grueling hierarchy that schools offer and often found myself alone or ostracized to some extent.

Throughout my entire life at school, primary and secondary, my family's health played a large part in how I behaved and the dynamics of my personality. My father has long term repercussion illness from engineering with asbestos buildings and consequently finds himself consuming over 10 tablets a day, two inhalers and stents in his heart just to keep him with us. When I was an infant, we left the South-East of Asia so he could be treated in his homeland of Sweden where we lived as a family together as my mother juggled lecturing English and two young infants, my brother and I.

In addition to this, when my father (seemingly) began to recover, my grandmother - and my only grandparent I ever had - was diagnosed with cancer. Growing up, I didn't realise just how much pressure my mother was under during this time, I spent a large chunk of my childhood in Sweden with my brother as my best friend and my father. I had, and still have, a very close relationship with my father and brother because of this. What I only just realised however, although I was very blessed to spend almost every holiday abroad with my family - I missed out on sleepovers with my friends, brownie camp, summer birthdays. Everyone else had a huge amount of time to bond and spend time with each other and I spent it in woods and lakes and the sea with my friends from Sweden.

When I underwent my third or fourth counselling session, the counselor asked if I had ever wondered whether it was due to my lack of "a secure base" that made me behave the way I do. My first reaction was anger, shamefully my manners flew out of the window and I reacted exactly how she probably wanted me to. I was angry. She didn't understand that my parents did the best they could under the circumstances, I was allowed to roam free, learn a new language, create a life for myself away from the confines of small town suburbia. She didn't understand that the reason why I didn't have a secure base was not because my parents liked the luxury of having two houses, the bleak and not so fancy reality of it all was - there was money for us in both houses should we need it.

The last time I remember being truly happy before I started secondary school was the summer of year six. I spent it with my best friend in Sweden endlessly acting out Grease, plaiting our hair and getting curly hair, baking kanelbullar and bronzing under the summer sun. I would wake up and run outside and not care about what the day had in store for me.

Although I have never confided in anybody the true extent of my unhappiness at some points during secondary school, I post them here as a possible warning to anybody reading this who may have encountered similar problems. When I was in year eight, a boy who I sat next to in French often poked fun at my weight, my hairstyle, my teeth, my appearance generally. I couldn't get the comments out of my head, they even haunt me to this day to some extent. This combined with misery at my friends all being placed in a different class from myself, I found it very hard to belong. I flitted from group to group, dragging my misery with me.

Most days after school I would walk in the front door and go straight to bed and to sleep. If I couldn't sleep I'd cry until I could. It was not uncommon for my mother to come home and knock on my bedroom door to find me beside myself with guilt and sadness because I just didn't feel enough. School never felt like a place I wanted to be. I wasn't attractive, I wasn't particularly clever, I wasn't like "normal" girls because I did things slightly differently. My identity was decided for me by people who didn't know me or what I'd come from, and to this day the majority of people I've known my whole life don't know how much my family and I struggled with.

Over the past three years, my Uncle and cousin both died. In less than a few years, a family of four went to a family of two. None of my friends knew, and those who did rarely asked. I don't blame them and I don't hate them for it, I just couldn't confide it in anybody and those who I did didn't see how much I was struggling. 

A person can only deal with so much going on in their lives, and it's worth taking a moment to appreciate that you don't know people well enough to say that they don't know what it's like to struggle.
Apologies for the slightly confessional tone to this blog, but past memories sparked this post and it's worth noting that the message I want to send from this piece is - everyone is struggling, try not to make it worse.

Why did I randomly change my mind and come to Uni?

It's almost four am. It's the first night I'm not spending at my boyfriend's house after a month of spending all our time together, I've got a cup of tea half cold in my hands. I start to think. Why am I so unhappy?

The time I spent in Falmouth and at home in Sweden over the summer are some of my happiest memories to date. Pure contentment and living life exactly how I want to. A pure summer of sunshine, lake water, happy people, wellington boots and laughter with people I value and love, all came to an end when I arrived back at home in Bradford-on-Avon. After opening my A level results, I shoved them back in their envelope. What did it matter? Yes they were good, but they weren't going to be used for anything. They lay dormant in the envelope on my kitchen table.

"I didn't realise how miserable you were until I saw how you actually look when you're happy" my boyfriend said to me. I couldn't help but cry. I'm a very emotional person, too much of anything will make me incredibly emotional and hysteric. But I couldn't tell him he was wrong. He knew he was right, and I knew it too.

I soon realised that there was nothing for me at home. I had drifted from a vast majority of people in my life I once considered my closest friends, a few of them who I hadn't were leaving for Uni and the few that remained wanted me to be happy, and I couldn't be.

University has been like being handed a fresh bottle of water after a hike in the dessert for 7 years. After 7 years of very painful, tough and exhausting years, coming to university was like finally seeing sense. I am free to express myself, behave the way I want to, associate with people who make me laugh and smile not cry and question what I think or say.

It gave me the opportunity to start again, realise what it is I want to do and for once in my life really try at something that mattered a lot to me. And that's what I've done, and hope to continue doing.

tea, mornings and some other ramblings

Good morning blog readers! It recently came to my attention just how much my life has changed since I went to University. Whether it's the place, the people or the course, things are very different.

When I was studying for my A levels, I'd wake up at 7.30, choke down my elixir of life - usually coffee - and I'd make my way (usually late) to school. Upon arriving at the harsh blue gates and often grey skies, I'd be greeted by a cloud of perfume clutching a clipboard ready to take my name to put me on the detention list for my slovenly attitude towards punctuality.
I easily spent about 6 hours in detention in year 13 for lateness - not something I'm particularly proud of - I hated a vast majority of my lessons and a few of my teachers for a multitude of reasons, and I felt like every day was a struggle. In the words of Tolstoy, "live in the needs of the day", and that is exactly what I did.

The only kind of morning person I'll be, is the kind who stays up to 6am on the internet and sleeps until early afternoon. I will probably never embrace waking up at any time before 9, whether it's because I go to bed really late or because I love my sleep, but being at University has certainly made waking up that bit more enjoyable.

I've ditched the coffee and replaced it with tea, I easily drink at least four or five cups of tea a day - and I have no shame or guilt in it anymore. I love to spend my time in between lectures tea in one hand and a book in the other whilst chatting with bantering in consequence.

I feel more comfortable here. At school I spent my time in the library alone or with one other person who made me feel comfortable because I felt judged, disliked and overwhelmed.

News Journalism?

When I started my degree, I knew what I wanted from it. I had expectations, hopes, the lot. My ambition has always been to be a fashion or travel journalist. My first two months of my degree have been based on news writing, the most traditional form of journalism (potentially) and a million miles from what I expected.

A city girl through and through, I feel at home in the hustle and bustle of crowds, pigeons, cigarette butts and tall buildings. I thrive in places bursting with life of all ages, backgrounds, and general West Country nonsense. The Georgian setting of Bath has long since been full of news - some genuine and others... not quite so genuine. From Chaucer to sightings of Johnny Depp and the like, there is always something going on, so, stepping out into the small town of Falmouth where I now reside was a big challenge for me. Before, I had news thrown at me from my family and friends and the other thousands of city dwellers who like myself love to talk and spread the news. In a completely new setting where I knew next to nobody, I felt as though I was stood at a precipice with little or no equipment to catch myself with should I fall.

But learning news writing has taught me a valuable lesson - that there is an element of importance in all walks of journalism. What is irrelevant and boring to one person is another person's mantra, a feeding ground for knowledge and gossip and of the highest importance. Though at first glance the fire demonstration of the building in which I live is not the most enthralling subject, when you dig deep enough it became infinitely clear that there was a reason why it was newsworthy. It was newsworthy because it was necessary. The follow up story based upon the connection between alcohol consumption and fires in student accommodation I covered was somewhat close to my heart, being a rare consumer of alcohol.


Being a journalist isn't just about writing fancy stories, nor is it about covering the biggest stories. All is relative when the world is narrowed down to the boundaries of one town. The difficulty isn't in finding the stories or finding the right people to ask, it lies within finding a fresh angle. People already know there are fire demonstrations for young people because they are connoted with reckless behaviour. They aren't, however, exposed to the true statistics that it is older people who cause more fires through alcohol consumption unless they are faced with it in an everyday article.

Although I'm not sure I have been swayed in my interests of journalism, I have learnt that the real stories come from people, and a range of people at that. The vibrancy of a story can never be on the same rainbow spectrum if not enhanced by the perspectives of the people who live through the story, experience the story and ultimately, become a part of the story.