Desiring a Giraffe

Why hello there! It has been some time since I last told you my latest adventures and that is largely because I’ve been busy having them. My third year at university is gradually drawing to a close and we are in the last few weeks I am spending living with my current housemates before they escape into the real world. (No real world for me yet, that’s the benefit of a four year course). It’s all a bit scary really but fortunately there is still time to have some fun…

Last Monday I relived my childhood as we went on a school (well university) trip to the zoo. The idea was that we would get some idea of how to run a school trip and not that we would just have a jolly good time at the zoo (which is what actually happened). I found it a little odd because being fairly local this was the zoo I went on school trips to fairly regularly. This time round I went on the coach and took a packed lunch and generally felt like I was 8 again.

Unfortunately we didn’t have a whole lot of time at the zoo but fortunately I took charge of our little group and dragged everyone round, ensuring we saw pretty much everything. I spent the day imagining I was the project manager on an episode of The Apprentice and was considering who I would take back to the boardroom should we lose the task, which was an endangered animals trail. In the end though I think we won the task as after finding five letters I realised the mysterious word we had to find was “biodiversity”. I think I would have been hired with that kind of problem solving! Anyway, here’s some photos I took of animals being awesome:

^{Meerkat/ Humboldt Penguin/ Pygmy Hippo}

^{Ring-Tailed Lemurs/ Giraffes}

One of the other things we had to do was to write a haiku. I wrote this one:

I want a giraffe,
Giant King of Africa.
So give me one please!

That came from me deciding I would like a giraffe to keep in the back garden (called Jeremy) and I spent quite a long time considering how I would get him home. I reckoned I could probably lie him down in the aisle of the coach and tell everyone my friend had bought a very realistic giraffe costume and after a long day needed a lie down. Not sure it would have worked.

Tuesday morning saw me prepare for what turned out to be a busy week out on the town by having a haircut. Due to not wanting to pay for one, I have not had a haircut since late 2012 so I was long overdue. When my hair gets long it ends up turning into a bit of a mop. Every time I caught my reflection in the mirror I realised I looked like some kind of mad scientist. So this time round I had a really short cut, grade 2, probably the shortest my hair has been since my birth. I always feel at a quandary over personal appearance- on the one hand I don’t want to live up to the expectations of modern society but on the other I don’t want to look like a complete slob. Fortunately my new haircut has gone down well and the hairdresser even managed to leave me with a decent fringe so that my massive forehead isn't revealed the whole world. Seriously, I have a massive forehead.

Tuesday night saw the beginning of my excellent but exhausting week as I joined my housemate Dannie and a huge group of her friends at the pub to celebrate her 21st birthday. It was an entertaining night which included one member of their group requiring medical attention from other members of the group when he managed to cut his hand on a broken bottle. Fortunately a bit of blood wouldn’t really effect the pub we were in as it is not exactly what you could call classy!

Hungover, I eventually made it to meet my friend so we could see Star Trek Into Darkness. Actually I arrived an hour earlier than I was supposed to because my hungover mind couldn’t work a clock. I’ve really got into going to the cinema to see films recently, it is fantastic. Because Orange is my mobile phone network I can get 2 tickets for the price of one so essentially going with a friend means you pay half the price of a ticket. Being a student means I can go during the day which usually means the annoying people aren’t there and you can sit pretty much anywhere you want because it is so quiet (which is good when you are hungover and need to sit under an air conditioner).

The party continued on Wednesday evening when we headed to a night at the student union, Bop. Bop consists of cheesy music which meant I was singing very loudly and doing attempting to do the dance moves. There was Gangnam Style, the Macarena and the Cha Cha Slide to name but a few. My fave of those is Cha Cha Slide- a dance is much easier to do when the song tells you what to do. The Macarena on the other hand just ends up with me moving my arms erratically and facing a different way to everyone else in the room. Suffice to say I was not born a dancer.

A night of housemate Josh continually saying “bar?” meant for the second morning in a row I woke up hungover. I remember when I first started university and was full of alcohol for most of the first week and my body happily dealt with it. Three years later and my body has decided it can’t cope with alcohol. Mind you, a night out has become a rare occurrence and two is unheard of. On Thursday morning I was supposed to be helping to put together a group presentation, although I fear I was more of a hindrance than a help. Still, I had a Coke bottle with my name on to keep me happy. Six shops it took to find a “Dan”! That was a day well spent.

So how did the presentation go? Surely I didn’t make my body go through another night on the drink? And aren’t my housemates finishing their course and leaving forever? How will I cope? Well, find out all the answers to these questions and more in my next post. Got to love a good cliffhanger…

Eurovision 2013

I love the crazy and campness that is the Eurovision Song contest. I’ve written a blog post on it every year since 2009 (2009,2010,2011,2012) and this year is no different! This year I shall be talking you through what happened in my own witty way.

The contest began with a pretty forgettable song from France. In fact all I can remember about it is that it was forgettable and that the lyrics didn’t make any sense, although that may have been because they were in French. The Lithuanian entry was not much better as the lyrics to his song included mentioned that he named his shoes “Love” and “Pain”. Er, what? I have an image of the Lithuanian army marching and being given the instructions "Love,Pain,Love,Pain,Love,Pain” etc.

Finland came up with probably the cheesiest song of the night with Marry Me, and I couldn’t help but love it. For some reason there was a girl-on-girl kiss- if it was an attempt to get more votes it didn’t work because they came third last, although I felt that was a little unfair.

Spain popped up next with a traditional Spanish bagpipe, much to everyone’s confusion, including the Spanish singer by the look of it. Belgium then really got the party going with a track called Love Kills, which I actually quite liked, even if it was a bit depressing. This was followed by a few uninteresting songs, such as one by Belurus where the singer came out of a giant disco ball (which looked suspiciously like a Sontaran spaceship).

Germany popped up with Cascada, an act that are fairly well known from “hits” like Everytime We Touch and Evacuate the Dancefloor. Did they perform a new Cascada classic? Well no, they decided to do a song which was pretty much the same as last year’s winner, Loreen from Sweden. Europe wasn’t having any of it and didn’t vote Germany very highly.

Shortly after this one of my fave moments of the show happened: the Romaian entry. A man who looked a lot like a villain from a bad 80s fantasy film appeared and then proceeded to sing an incredibly high-pitched song. It was bonkers and could have only happened at Eurovision!

What could possibly follow that? Oh, we did. Bonnie Tyler was the UK’s entry for 2013, because using someone that used to be popular but got old worked really well last year (sarcasm). Bonnie Tyler was a decent singer back in the day but not so much any more. Our entry was awful.

Denmark were the favourites and the eventual winners with an OK song which involved a recorder for no apparent reason. Perhaps there is a big rat problem in Copenhagen and they wanted to move them all to Sweden. Thor turned up to perform for Iceland and Azerbaijan (I think it was them) trapped a man in the box for the performance and then suffocated him with petals.

Greece, being pretty poor these days, clearly just found some buskers from a street corner who performed an enjoyable but mental song called Alcohol is Free. Ha, if only.

After a few more songs and an interval which included a crazy song from the host about Sweden, it was time for the endless process of giving in the results. Weird people from all other Europe try and show off, thank the host and then give out some complicated points. Eventually it was revealed Denmark won, which everyone was very pleased about in the stadium because Copenhagen is only a 20 mile drive away. I was slightly concerned that the Romanian entry was going to kill everyone that came ahead of him with a magic staff but fortunately Thor stopped him.

Bonnie Tyler came somewhere in the middle (well the bottom of the middle), which is the best we have done for some years. It’s quite impressive really considering how awful her song was. I wonder who we will make suffer this embarrassment next year?

Well that’s it for another year but come back in a year and I will laugh at another crazy set of contestants. It’s like Glee and the Olympics had a child. Thanks for reading and see you soon!

What did you think of this year’s Eurovision?

Time Vortex: The Name of the Doctor

Wow! I am still recovering from the dramatic finale to series 7 of Doctor Who and scratching my head trying to work out what is going to come next. Join me as I discuss the episode and try to work some things out. If you haven't seen the episode yet (er, why not) then do not read on…

The finale begins with a sort of montage of Clara meeting the classic Doctors. We see the First Doctor about to steal the TARDIS, the Third Doctor driving in Bessie and many more. Clara tells us she was born to save the Doctor, but how? Well we now know that she followed the Great Intelligence into the Doctor’s time stream and continually tried to save him. I found this a satisfactory explanation to the mystery of Clara and it was great to see classic Doctors properly appearing in the show- I particularly liked a version of Clara telling the First Doctor which TARDIS to steal.

This was another episode where the Doctor didn’t make an appearance until a good ten minutes into the episode. Instead we see the Paternoster Gang joined by Clara and River Song in a “conference call”. According to Vastra “time travel has always been possible in dreams”. I was once again convinced that the Paternoster Gang need their own spin-off show. One day perhaps? The highlight of this great scene was the chilling line from Jenny saying “I think I’ve been murdered”. Fortunately all three of the Paternoster Gang survived the episode so the spin-off series can still happen.

Once Clara told the Doctor what she had seen, he knew he had to go to his grave at Trenzalore. The TARDIS wasn’t too keen on this and the Doctor could only get there by using the planet’s gravity, cracking a TARDIS window in the process. I feel that the crack may well be an important clue because when we see the Doctor’s grave, the TADIS having grown to a huge size, the same window has a crack in! Does this mean the Doctor is going to die soon, before the window can be repaired?

The finale saw the return of River Song, after her death in Forest of the Dead. It’s the latest in her timeline we’ve seen and she is effectively a ghost, saved to the database of the library. Her appearance here is fairly understated, her role mostly being as an assistant to Clara, still connected through the conference call. There is a great scene though where the Doctor reveals he is connected to her and hasn’t contacted her since the library because he felt it would hurt him too much. Very emotional.

I feel that we have now come to the big talking point of the episode, the ending. The Doctor goes to get Clara from inside his timeline but before the two of them can leave they see a shadowy figure, who turns out to be legendary actor John Hurt and, as the caption said, “The Doctor”. But how can John Hurt be the Doctor? Well some rumours suggest he is a Doctor that fits between the Eighth and the Ninth Doctors. This seems most likely as we have very little idea of what happened between the TV Movie and Rose. Perhaps what this new Doctor said can give us a clue:

John Hurt’s Doctor: What I did, I did without choice in the name of peace and sanity.

Matt Smith’s Doctor: But not in the name of the Doctor!

Well all we can know is that this new Doctor did something bad and didn’t have a choice. Time war? Seems the most likely. If this is the case and John Hurt is technically the Ninth Doctor our naming system is going to be messed up. Fingers crossed that he’ll be given a new name so we don’t get too confused.

Other possibilities? Well maybe he is the First Doctor, coming before William Hartnell, although this doesn’t feel right to me. Or perhaps he is the next Doctor, coming after Matt Smith. Possible but the fact that the Eleventh Doctor knows what he has done and the fact that it seems Matt Smith will probably be around for at least another series, this too seems unlikely. So I’m going for my first theory.

Still, even if that is the case there are still so many questions. What exactly did JH Doctor do? What has he got to do with the 50th anniversary special? And what about the Tenth Doctor? And the Zygons? Well I guess we will have to wait until the 23rd November to find out! How are we going to cope? This feature will be back on the 24th November to analyse the special but stay tuned as there might be the odd other thing before then too! Thanks for reading!

What did you think of The Name of the Doctor?