Does It Feel Like a Tuesday?,

My very simple answer to that one is no, it does not feel like a Tuesday. 

My university timetable this year means I have a three day weekend (Saturday to Monday) and so the start of my week (Tuesday) is where I get 'that Monday feeling' aka the first day of the new week where pajamas are banned as a wardrobe option and you have abandon your duvet and hope it will take you back later. Normally, it doesn't really bother me so much, but today, it's driving me nutty. 

Part of that is due to the fact that my Tuesdays are normally a reasonably easy day. Come in, sit through two hours of lecture and then go home, but today I have a meeting at lunch and am working this evening. And I spent the weekend in Budapest. Yeah, that makes 'that Monday feeling' even more sucky than a hangover.

For those of you who didn't already know this, I turned 21 just under a week ago, and after puzzling for a long time as to what I did actually want for my birthday, my parents and I agreed that a little weekend city break was the perfect option, and Budapest held some kind of appeal even though I had less than no idea what was there other than the River Danube. Even so, the trip was booked, we were packed and ready to f*off to another country for a few days - the only obstacles being getting up at 3am and driving to Stansted. Ugh. 

What I found amazing - other than the pilot not knowing that in order to land, we must first take off... - was that when we landed, the sun was bright and the temperature was creeping it's way up to 22◦ and then it stayed there for most of the day. I was as pink as one of the Care Bears that evening. 

It was a weekend of a lot of walking - a lot of the interesting architecture and the shopping district is all down by the river, which we were staying about 2miles from - but the chimney cake and the views definitely made up for it, and even the Terror Museum was well worth a look, even though there wasn't much of it actually translated into English (and where it was, the mistakes were kind of distracting!) 

Something that was more interesting (as in, well, that's odd) than interesting (as in, ooooh, that's catching my interest) was the set up of our room. I haven't quite figured out why the bathroom had a window that looked out into the bedroom, but perhaps I don't want to know the reason. Don't get me wrong it's frosted up to normal human shoulder height (so up to the level of my nose) and there is a blind over it, but the design flaw to that is that the pully for the blind is on the OUTSIDE! It's rather peculiar, but as long as you are sharing with someone you trust or don't mind seeing you in the shower, it's not too odd I guess.

I can't decide if the best part was that I got to spend so much time with Ben (sorry, I know that's cheesy :P) or the fact that he ordered breakfast in bed for us on our last morning there. Drinking Hungarian fizzy wine and having dippy eggs and pancakes was a pretty special way to start our last day out there, and shopping was obviously the best way to end it. 

Something to keep in mind is, if you go to the same shops we have over here, the pricing is going to be the same, but it doesn't require going off of the beaten track in order to find something local and a lot cheaper. I was really surprised by the relatively low cost of food, and even cheaper cost of alcohol, though I wouldn't have been quite so surprised if there were the same amount of stag parties on the plane out there as the plane coming home. The fact that you can get a shot of Jaeger, or Unicum for as little as 290Ft (about 80p) in bars on the main street makes it pretty attractive for such events. 

If you want to take a look at some of the photos, you'll have to check out my Instagram or Facebook. :) 

Sometimes, Heaven Can't Wait

Twenty minutes after I woke up today, I got a call from a friend. The last time she called me, she was telling me that she got into York University, which made me completely elated, since I had been worried about her since I moved, the time before that - we have Facebook, negating the need for actually phone conversation - it was to tell me that a friend had committed suicide. Today, it was that someone from our college, someone from our classes, has been murdered, and she only found out through Facebook. 

The reason I'm publishing this on the internet for anyone and everyone to read is because I have literally no idea how on Earth I feel about it, except that I'm angry with something. For the first time since I got it, I took my Taize necklace off and threw it across the room, wanting to leave it where it landed when I move on Sunday, but then I realised something... At times like this, you can choose to do two things: you can either cling to the things which are dear to you, or you can reject them completely, so I picked it back up and made a vow to myself that come hell, high water or a few inches of snow, I'm going to go to church this week, like I have been meaning to since the university year started back. (This year I don't live on site and don't have a lecture beforehand, so there is nothing to force me to be on the site, and therefore in the chapel. I'm not overly great at kicking my own ass to go). I've also decided that - even though I'm going to be travelling on the poverty wagon (aka the bus) for a grand total of nine hours, just to spend six hours in Manchester - I'm going home to see some of the people who took the time to make my life a lot easier for a couple of years. I've been meaning to go back since I left, but I just, haven't. I guess part of that is that I know that the college isn't the same place that I started at three and a half years ago. They expanded it, and ruined the most beautiful part. 

The travelling is going to - not only be a pain in the gonads - drive me to something close to a Charlie version of insanity, which is not pleasant and you ought to stay as far away from it as possible. On the plus side, I will either have a lot of time to veg out and think about all the nasty and horrible ways I want to mess with my characters (drama is what makes my novels vaguely interesting after all) or maybe even to get some writing done. Or editing, but don't get your hopes up, because that is unlikely. 


Although, seeing Yours, on Kindle for the first time will be exciting stuff, and I will be better off having something to focus on, instead of just stewing on whatever I'm thinking for the entire journey...