End of Month Extravaganza 3#

Happy Halloween! I don’t really do anything for Halloween (apart from yesterday’s Apple Bobbing) and someone silly scheduled Halloween for the last day of the month this year so it’s time to look back on October.

Opinions on… Labelling Special Needs Children

Way back at the beginning of the month I wrote a post debating whether the current way children with special needs are labelled is write. An anonymous person had this to say:

I agree! When you know the child it makes no difference what 'condition' they have because they are just them...you even stop noticing the specific 'problems' because you get to know them for their personality and interests the same as any other child not for the fact that they need a specific routine because of being autistic etc- when you really, really know a child you stop noticing even the most severe disabilities because they are not what defines the child. In some ways I think the labels matter very little; the physical diagnosis makes no difference to how the child behaves, just to how others may perceive them. It is very frustrating how before any help can be given to a child and their family they have to be statemented and their 'condition' classified! If your child has severe ADHD and is constantly hyper-active you will need respite care for them whether the child has been formally diagnosed or not! Sorry to go on a lot- I work with children with special needs in a school south of London and know how frustrating statementing is for parents who need the help now, not 6 months later when their child has finally been classified as having a ADHD which they knew all along!

My Aunt and some of her friends, all with special needs children, shared their opinions on this. In theory, labelling children is probably not the best way to manage their needs. But it’s a much better system than those previous to it and actually coming up with a replacement system that is actually better is easier said than done. The general consensus about this topic is that the system works but the whole labelling thing has various issues which in an ideal world would be addressed.

Comments-Best of the Rest

I have had some lovely comments this month, here’s what they say:

Claire (on My Hectic Weekend): I loved reading about your night out, especially after your entry where you wanted to make more friends and socialise more. I really enjoy your posts, keep blogging x

I love lovely comments like this it always makes me smile (hint, hint, more please) Thanks so much for this Claire, glad you’re enjoying it.

Supergreensunbear (on Friday Review 5#): I haven't seen the Inbetweeners movie or read the Dr Who book and DC comic but I totally agree with your reviews of Torchwood and Dr Who. I'm of the opinion this series of Dr Who has been great and I'm really liking the way it's gone since Steven Moffat took over the top job. I really like the greater emphasis on the sci-fi throughout the series and the less long and drawn out character development. My dad and wife are the other way around though, they preferred simple stories that spoon fed the thoughts of the characters but you can't please everyone, I'm just glad we got some decent stories that will stick long in the memory, can't wait for for it to be back on our screens :)

Check me out with my popular opinions. Well someone agreed so that makes it popular. The last series of Doctor Who was so awesome, Saturdays just aren’t the same without it. It’s actually the only reason I am looking forward to Christmas.

Claire (yes again, on A Night to Remember…): Ahhhh blame the sausage meat! I feel like that today, but there was no sausage involved, just me, my bezzies and a cocktail with squished fruit in it! X

It seriously was the sausage meat, I was far more ill than alcohol would have made me. Though I do know that feeling you had rather too well!

Minion of the Month: If you’ve just read that last section, I think the answer kind of leaps out at you. Minion of the Month for October 2011 is the lovely Claire. Thank you for being so lovely!

The One Post You Should Go Back And Read: There’s a particularly good one entitled “Fish Toilets” which is quite entertaining, largely about my housemate saying and thinking stupid things. It’s pretty fun.

Blog of the Month: Nothing new has leapt out at me this month so I’m giving it so one of my fave blogs “Happenings From an Undisclosed Location” by Jay. Go and check it out, it’s awesomes.

And now all I have to do is decide my October was. I don’t exactly have to ponder this very much. It was rubbish. 2011 has been a pretty horrific year so far and I’m thinking October may well have been the worst month so far. Nothing that bad has happened, but lots of little things have built up to make a big dollop of rubbishness. That’s not to say it’s been all bad, I’ve had some terrific times in Bath, Southampton and of course Winchester. I have hopes that November will be better, though not very high hopes. Only time will tell.

Very soon all the posts from the last month will be on the appropriately titled “Last Month” page. Go and check them out if you want. Bring on November!

Thoughts From the Dungeon 2#

Hello! It’s Sunday so it’s time for my weekly video. Most of this week’s edition is me doing apple bobbing because it’s Halloween tomorrow. I have literally no life. Weirdly the sound has done the complete opposite of last week and is quite loud but echoey. It’s not too bad though, so enjoy the video!

I hope you liked that. Perhaps you would like to write a comment about it. Those that do might be able to snatch the title of Minion of the Month, which will be decided tomorrow. So get commenting!

Friday Review 7#

It’s that time again! I review and rate another selection of things I have read, watched or played in the last couple of weeks. There is a whole bunch of movies this week as various uni friends have forced me to watch things I wouldn’t normally watch-so expect some low scores! ★ is the number of stars each item got and a ☆ is an empty star, showing how many away the item was from getting top stars.

Movies

Carry On Behind

One of the classic British Carry On films, which essentially involved lots of innuendo in a different situation each time. This one is set mostly on a campsite and features the antics of a host of bizarre characters. I imagine that it would be hysterically funny to a teenager who laughs at anything related to sex. I chuckled occasionally but I just didn’t find it that funny. And when that’s the whole point of the film I feel let down. I can appreciate how well written it is though, with some of the jokes being rather witty. ★★★☆☆

Chalet Girl

A film about a girl going to work as a chalet girl and falling in love along the way as well as doing a bit of snowboarding. For girls the main attraction is Ed Westwick but I’m not really into that kind of thing. It was fairly dull and ridiculously predictable. It’s definitely one for the girls, I was just bored or annoyed for most of it. Honourable mentions must go to Bill Nighy and Bill Bailey for being awesome in their respective minor roles. ★★☆☆☆

Dirty Dancing

It’s a classic film but my opinion on it is probably pretty unpopular. I think it’s rubbish. There is almost no plot, it’s almost all dancing and making out. The girls seemed to like Swayze as the leading man but I wasn’t so taken by the woman who plays Baby. The only good thing I have to say about this film is the dancing is pretty good, but I don’t really enjoy watching dancing very much so it didn’t exactly entertain me. The worst classic film I have ever seen. ★☆☆☆☆

Anastasia

It’s essentially a Disney film made by someone else. The subject is a bit darker than most Disney films, with it being about the princess who survived the Russian Revolution when the Tsar and his family were killed. It is largely a love story but there are enough other things to keep me interested. Rasputin, now living in Limbo with bit of his body constantly falling off, is a mad and brilliant villain and his white bat friend provides lots of comedy. The songs in the film are also quite enjoyable, with a beautiful singing voice being given to the title character. The other voice actors also make this film with the likes of Christopher Lee, Angela Lansbury and Kelsey Grammar all doing voices. Surprisingly fantastic. ★★★★☆

Books

Lifeless by Mark Billingham

Another book featuring detective Tom Thorne. When homeless people are getting murdered, Throne goes undercover on the streets to find out more. I really loved this one. The case was pretty engaging but I actually found the bits about life on the street more interesting. Fantastically written and something people that enjoy crime books will love. I hope the series continues to be as good. ★★★★☆

Albums

Coldplay- Mylo Xyloto

Most music fans either love Coldplay or hate them. If you are in the first category than you will enjoy this album as its at least as good as Viva La Vida, if not better. The two singles we’ve already heard are amazing and tracks like Charlie Brown are equally as good. They’ve gone for a slightly more commercial direction this time with a more R N B feel and Rihanna even pops up on a rather good collaboration. I do feel slightly let down by the length though. It seems quite lengthy when you look at the tracklisting but then you realise several of the tracks are less than a minute long. But even that fact can’t stop this getting the full five stars. ★★★★★

Example: Playing in the Shadows

This feels very much like Example’s last album Won’t Go Quietly. That was pretty good and this is pretty good too but I don’t feel like there has been much change between the two. I expect artists to grow and develop but that doesn’t really happen here. Almost all of the tracks are the same type of track we’ve grown used to Example making. The title track is a bit different though, being slow and mellow but this one different track doesn’t make much difference to the album’s overall feel. Same old stuff, it’s just good that the old stuff is pretty good. ★★★☆☆

Thanks for reading and as always let me know if you agree or indeed disagree about anything I’ve said. Everyone’s entitled to an opinion after all!

Clowning Around

Hello dear. And indeed deer if any are reading. It’s been a good couple of days though nowhere near as productive as I would have hoped. On Tuesday evening I headed to Southampton to meet with by two best mates Chris and Mike for an awesome night out. Mike surprised me by also inviting our other friend Paul who I haven't seen for the best part of a year. This was really good news and we all caught up over dinner, a lovely stir fry/curry thing Mike cooked (without giving me food poisoning I might add).We then played Mario Kart for some considerable time and I discovered I really wasn’t on form.

Due to our original drinking location being rather busy we went into a pub called The Hobbit, so named because of the Tolkein links that Southampton has. There I had a lovely cocktail called a Frodo and lost a game of pool to Paul. We then moved on to a club called Jesters which was…interesting. Actually the music was pretty decent and the drinks were reasonably cheap but the actual club is quite horrible. I was forced to have a “Jesticle” which consisted of double vodka shots, some rum and various juices including orange. I actually rather liked it though Chris was not as big a fan. We joined Mike and his friends playing a drinking game called Formula One which seemed to involve lots of making car noises and random singing. It was quite fun but I decided I didn’t fancy playing another game. At this point the dancing and singing started and it involved lots of nineties pop and several tracks from The Lion King, all of which I sang lots to. At that point in time I realised that there are no three people I would rather spend time with. OK, I was a bit drunk but the thought still stands.

After taking Paul home we didn’t get back to Mike’s much before 4AM and I then endured a very uncomfortable night on the sofa. Eventually we headed out into Southampton city centre where looked in lots of shops but managed not to buy anything. All in all it was a good day and a bit and it’s so good that I can still meet up and have a great time with friends I knew long before I started at uni.

Today was not as good a day unfortunately. I was supposed to spend most of it doing work on my English assignment but somehow that didn’t happen. Whilst some people have written the whole essay, I have not even done any reading towards it. This is not good but at least I have a quiet weekend in which to hopefully do some more. I did at least have a maths seminar today though it didn’t exactly make me feel good about myself. Apparently there is a golden ratio in nature that is proved to exist on the more attractive of people. I measured lots of different things (nothing dodgy you understand) and discovered I am in no way perfect. But it does turn out that I am a square person. This is where your arm span and height are the same. Both 172cm. Great.

I find it a bit odd about the person I’ve become. Before I was eighteen I had much in common with being strictly religious and the thought of drinking any alcohol was something I was very against. And I was so socially awkward that being in a club where are lots of other people was a horrendous thought. Now it’s a fairly regular occurrence. I don’t get wasted all the time but a bit drunk now and again. Though I was very drunk when I was in Bath visiting Chris a few weeks ago. He told me his female housemate doesn’t like me as she thinks I grinded her. I don’t even really know what that means and normally I would straight away honestly state that I did no so thing. Except I was incredibly drunk and it is actually a possibility. I don’t think I would have done such a thing because I know that I’m still really shy when drunk but I was so drunk I can’t remember so I can’t for definite say I didn’t do it. I now feel incredibly guilty for something I probably didn’t do and is considered normal behaviour my lots of less well-mannered guys of my age.

And on that slightly worrying note, I shall end the post. I shall be having a rather dull weekend doing uni work mostly but I shall have some fun posts none the less. See you tomorrow for the latest Friday review.

I Wanted To Live in Those Clouds

Hello. I am writing this from the library and probably should be doing some proper academic work but ssh, no one will know. My clothes are busily drying, though they had to go for an extra cycle. There’s only so long I can entertain myself on campus, I’d much rather do work at home.

The weekend was a pretty good one, mostly because it was extended by a day and I had cleverly arranged it so I had no work to do. This meant I spent the large majority of the weekend either asleep or watching something, whether it be on DVD or online. I did accompany everyone on a trip to the pub on Sunday where my friend Katie and I decided we would make good spies, as you do. So we left the pub and quickly found a man to follow. This poor random guy had us following right out of Winchester city centre and we only stopped because we lost him and were concerned he would jump out at us with a gun. This didn’t happen though and we made it back to the pub perfectly safely.

Yesterday I decided to for a bit of a walk and I of course took my camera to capture anything good I saw. My first visit was to the beautiful Winnall Moors nature reserve where I saw lots of birds and to my delight a water vole, which you can see in the pictures below.

After that I decided to climb a hill I’d heard about called St. Giles’ Hill. I’m not sure who Giles was but he must have done something pretty important to get a hill name after him. For a fairly small hill, I was surprised at how much hard work it took to actually climb up it. There were a lot of steps but the view at the top was worth it. The viewpoint is almost exactly in line with the High Street so you can get a view all the way across Winchester, which looks something like this:

I was relaxing in my room after this with my music playing when my heart was given an unnecessary strain. For no apparent reason there was a big bang and bright spark as my iPod speakers blew their fuse. Alice came running down thinking I’d blown myself up or something but fortunately the speakers were some distance from me. Annoyingly they no longer work so it looks like I will have to purchase some new ones. To make up for this the new ones will have to be pretty awesome.

Despite the most strenuous activity of the weekend being that I walked up a hill, I still very nearly overslept for my lecture today. This was actually because of the whole iPod speaker thing as the fuse on the socket went and reset my alarm clock. I was only woken by my fellow housemates making a racket and this is probably the only time I will ever thank them for it. Still, waking up just ten minutes before you usually leave is not the best start today but I rushed around and somehow ended up arriving at my lecture slightly earlier than usual. Apart from the fact I didn’t have time for breakfast, it actually turned out rather well.

That’s pretty much it for today but before I go I shall tell you about what I’m up to this evening. My mate Chris has the week off for half term (which doesn’t seem very fair) and myself and Mike have Wednesdays off anyway so we decided to go on a night out in Southampton where Mike lives. Apparently he has a surprise for us. Goodness knows what that will be but I shall of course let you know in a future post. See you then!

Music Monday 1#

As the exciting week of new stuff on my blog continues, today I am pleased to introduce Music Monday. Every Monday, or at least most Monday’s, I shall be sharing with you what I consider to be the best tracks in the musical world right now. I will try and mix the genres a little so that hopefully there will be something for everyone.

First up this week are The Vaccines with Wetsuit. The Vaccines are an indie band who I love. They’re pretty different from everything else around at the moment and even if you don’t like the song, the video should appeal to any festival goers.

Next is Ed Sheeran with Lego House. The “cool” music people go on about how his old stuff was better, as “cool” music people tend to do. I rather like this song and the video stars Rupert Grint a.k.a Ron Weasley and is brilliant.

I sort of feel like I work for a record company doing this. I love pretty much everything on Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream album but my fave track on it is The One That Got Away which just so happens to be the latest single. There’s no video just yet but here’s the audio.

Something a little less current now. It’s Nirvana with Smells Like Teen Spirit. The reason I am picking this one is to point you in the direction of a Facebook campaign to get it to number one this Christmas rather than an awful track from The X Factor winner. Join the Facebook page here. Now enjoy the song.

And now it’s time for song of the week! I loved this song from the moment I heard it, which is rather unusual. It might not be your kind of thing, but I love it, so much! Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Rizzle Kicks with When I was a Youngster!

I hope you liked all or at least most of those. I would love to here your opinions on these tracks and if there are any songs you think I should listen to, let me know and I shall go and check them out! A more traditional type post is coming your way tomorrow with some awesome photos I have taken. See you then!

Thoughts From the Dungeon 1#

As promised yesterday, here is the first of my weekly Sunday videos which I have called “Thoughts From the Dungeon”. I’m afraid the microphone on my laptop is a bit rubbish so you’ll probably need to whack up your volume to watch it properly.

I hope that was entertaining in some way or other. As I said, I shall be doing videos like this every Sunday from now on. You can expect more exciting things to happen in future editions.

And on another note, I have now changed my Twitter name to @zotwot. This is for the boring reason that once I am a teacher my internet activities need to have no link to my actual name whatsoever. Profiles on most things are already private and I don’t use my real name publicly anywhere. It’s a bit like being a lame secret agent. Anyway, hope you enjoyed the video, see you soon.

The Interrupting Alien

Good day to you. I have loads of fun things to talk to you about today so without further delay let’s get on with it.

Yesterday was a good day, for a number of reasons. The first of these happened on my way to lectures. I have an early start on a Friday and no one else in my house does so the short walk to uni is done alone. During this journey I heard the noise of someone falling over and turned round to see, to my delight, a man flat on his bottom. He wasn’t old and and clearly wasn’t injured so it was very funny. Perhaps it shouldn’t have been funny but I really had to keep the laughs in. Especially when the guy on the floor made the most ridiculous noise, something along the lines of “Ooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhh”. Being the sort of guy I am, I did make sure I asked the man whether he was ok. Clearly embarrassed, the man didn’t really respond but got up and ran across the road, nearly getting run over in the process. Best journey to uni ever.

The day continued to get better. There we were having another English seminar when things got a bit weird. A member of uni staff knocked on the door and told us we had a visitor. It was at this point we realised it was going to be another of those weird moments that only people on our Primary Education course will ever experience. Something that looked like a robot, clearly made of boxes and covered in tin foil, was pushed into the classroom. An envelope was attached to its side and it turns out it was an alien called Arnold who wanted to find out more about the planet. Our group ended up making a 3D map of Winchester and its more significant features. The map was not exactly the best piece of artwork the world has seen and is unlikely to make it into an art gallery any time soon. I made a train, using a box and some gold and silver paper. Here is my “masterpiece”:

There was an English point to all this but it wasn’t really very exciting so I won’t bore you with it. The morning continued with a professional practice seminar which was abruptly finished thanks to a tutor from another course telling us to bugger off, almost in exact words, despite the fact that we were timetabled for another half hour. This meant I had an hour wait before my tutor meeting so there was no point in going home. So I ended up sat with a group of people I wouldn’t normally be sat with. We’ve been in the same group for over a year now but I’ve not really hung out with socially but it was a nice change. The tutor meeting as a lovely as always. The discussion of targets happened and the topic of my self-confidence came up, as was inevitable. I am quite a shy person and that’s sort of a big issue when you are going to be a teacher. Teachers are really out-going, its pretty much part of the job description. But my tutor did make me realise that I don’t have to change who I am. As long as I can manage a class and cope with a classroom of children, I can still be me. So that’s good news and one of the biggest worries about my career considerably less of an issue.

Last night I accompanied two of my housemates to our friends house for some watching of films. We watched “Chalet Girl”. It is not my sort of film. But even if it was my sort of film it would still be pretty rubbish. The only thing that it really has going for it is that the male lead is pretty attractive, so I’m told. You can expect a full slating of said film in a future Friday Review. After watching this, thanks to the wrong person having the TV remote we were forced to watch “Embarrassing Fat Bodies”. Now I have ended up watching some pretty horrendous things before, but this takes the biscuit. (Insert joke about fat people and biscuits here). I don’t want to look at fat people with few or even no clothes on. I think I will need therapy after this.

If you read yesterday’s post, you may have seen that I have an announcement to make about this blog. Drum roll please. OK, so it’s not really that exciting but I’ve decided to make a few changes because I’ve felt recently that I keep end up having huge blocks with no posts, not because I am busy but because I have nothing to talk about. To combat this I have created the following schedule:

• Monday: Music Monday- I shall share with you a few songs that I’m particularly into at the point in time, occasionally with a particular theme.
• Wednesday: I shall discuss the major stories of the last week, sharing thoughts and humour occasionally. I could do with a name for this feature so if you have any ideas, let me know.
• Friday: Friday Review- The now established feature will continue, though will appear more regularly than before.
• Sunday: I shall create a video where I talk about the past week or anything I particularly want to talk about at that point in time. This feature needs a name to so I’m looking at you minions. Preferably by tomorrow!

By using this schedule, I will probably have something to talk about most days. They might not all appear every week and the news/video features might appear on different days in different weeks. It all depends what I’m up to and want to talk about. The tagline on the banner has also now changed, or will be changing shortly, and I shall busily be promoting the blog more heavily again.

As usual, let me know your thoughts on any of the changes, any name ideas for the two new features or any thoughts on anything else I’ve talked about today or any other day. Phew! Tired from all that explaining now. See you tomorrow for the first weekly video!

Friday Review 6#

It’s that time again! I review and rate another selection of things I have read, watched or played in the last couple of weeks. ★ is the number of stars each item got and a ☆ is an empty star, showing how many away the item was from getting top stars.

TV

Outnumbered Series 4

Outnumbered is one of the best sitcoms of the modern age, largely because of the hilarious improvisation scenes performed by the three children. And that’s the main issue with this series. The children are all growing up and it feels a bit more forced. And after three series and a Christmas special, there isn’t much new stuff in this series. But don’t get me wrong, it’s still awesome. The parents might be a bigger focus now but Claire Skinner and Hugh Dennis play them brilliantly. The parents evening episode was believable and very funny as was the return of Aunt Angela. I think the end is nigh for Outnumbered though. A few specials or at a push a fifth and final series should see the show end. The upcoming Christmas special might be the end. I’ll be sad to see it go but it’s had its time now as this series began to show. ★★★★☆

The Sarah Jane Adventures Series 5

SJA is the children’s spin-off of Doctor Who featuring former companion Sarah Jane Smith. It was a bit silly to start with but once it found it’s feet it became almost as good as Doctor Who. Sadly this was the last ever series because of the devastating death of Elisabeth Sladen, who has played Sarah Jane for many years. And it was due to that sad fact that this series was only three stories long. But they were brilliant episodes. Sky saw a new alien child arrive, The Curse of Clyde Langer saw Clyde get cursed by a totem pole and forced to live on the street and The Man Who Never Was saw a man use aliens as slaves. All three stories were brilliant and the actors were all brilliant. Sladen will be greatly missed but her fantastic legacy is this final series. ★★★★★

Books

American Gods by Neil Gaimon

I love Gaimon’s work. I’ve read a fair bit of it now and it’s brilliant. Neverwhere is now my fave book ever. And this is Gaimon’s most popular and well-received book so I had extremely high hopes for it. I was hugely disappointed. The idea is that various different gods from different cultures still exist but live in America, weak because no one prays to them anymore. A former convict, Shadow, travels across America with one of them, the mysterious Mr. Wednesday. I found it all a bit dull really. Lots of travelling and meeting gods but considering how long this book is, not much actually happened. Maybe it’s just me because many people love this book, but I couldn’t help but feel underwhelmed. It’s OK but nothing more. ★★★☆☆

Comics

In an attempt to fill out this post, I shall quickly discuss three new comics series I am just getting into. Expect full reviews at a later date.

Kick Ass 2: You may have seen the movie but it was originally a comic. And this is it’s sequel. Kick Ass has joined a superhero team and Red Mist is back and is being particularly nasty. Some horrific things have happened so far. A distinct lack of Hit Girl so far but I get the impression that won’t last for too long. As brilliant as the original so far, if not better.

Zombies Christmas Carol: Yeah, you heard me. Charles Dickens classic with zombies in it. Scrooge ended up causing the zombie apocalypse and the ghosts are trying to convince him to prevent it. Or something like that. So far brilliant.

Brilliant: And speaking of brilliant, that’s the title of this creator-owned comic by the makers of Ultimate Spider Man. Only the first issue has been published so far but its pretty good and sees a group of college students managing to create super powers. Awesome premise, who it continues as well as it started.

That’s your lot for today. As usual, let me know if you agree or indeed disagree with any of the things I’ve talked about today. Tomorrow I shall tell you lots of exciting things about my day today as well as announcing something to do with this blog. Don’t get too excited though.

THE DEER!

Good afternoon and welcome to another post. It’s nice to have you here. In a similar fashion to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I have finally reverted back to Cheery Dan from Miserable Dan after far too long in the miserable state. All of a sudden life feels fun again and I am rather uplifted. Which is wonderful.

If you are a fan of zombie show The Walking Dead, you may well be able to relate to the title. The first episode of season two has now aired and was brilliant. I don’t really watch much American TV but this is one thing I love and it’s up there with Doctor Who in all time fave shows. The opener had a massive cliff-hanger (though it’s less surprising if you have read the comics) which I won’t spoil for you but if you are anything like me it’s the death of a deer that is upsetting, when it’s clear that there are other things you should be more worried about. No doubt the deer will be left for dead and probably munched on by zombies whilst the characters deal with things they consider more pressing. That poor deer didn’t deserve to die, it was horribly tricked. Poor thing.

 

In other news, last night I went out to “Detention”, a rock night. Yes, little me going to a rock night. Thanks to people pulling out I only knew two people there as well. But I decided I would still go, part of my goals for this year was going out more after all. Detention is not actually held at our student campus but a Southampton uni campus. The night was actually really good and though the music is described as being rock music, but most of it is more indie than heavy metal. The one downside was it took a ridiculously long time to get served at the bar and the queue was huge. I feel both taller and thinner after being squashed against the bar for a long time. But it was largely a good night with songs like I believe in a Thing Called Love by The Darkness being my faves. And they ended the night with the classic Bohemian Rhapsody, which was awesome!

Of course I had to have got over the whole poisoning incident by this point. I started being ill on Saturday and it wasn’t actually until mid-way through Monday that I actually felt normal. In fact I felt awful for most of my time in lectures yesterday but being the dedicated student I am I attended none the less. Fortunately the lectures didn’t seem that important as they were mostly repetition of things we’ve already covered. But I’m all fine now and my lectures today were much better. It was mostly spent looking at historical documents to find out what different parts of Winchester used to be like. Some people didn’t seem to enjoy that but it’s the sort of history I love. The personal stories, like the woman who ran a school for teenage girls and the 66 year old man who somehow had a 22 year old wife. It’s fascinating.

Anyway, that’s all for today. I shall be back soon with more nonsense and there’s a rather excellent edition of the Friday Review coming on Friday. See you soon and don’t forget to comment on any of my posts, there’s nothing as exciting as a comment!

A Night to Remember, A Day to Forget

I am now back in Winchester after what I shall call an “interesting” weekend. As you may recall me mentioning, after my two unusually enjoyable lectures I hopped on a train to Bath to go and spend a few days with my mate Chris who now goes to uni there. The two-hour train journey was unexpectedly enjoyable because of a coincidence which saw me travelling on the same train as my friend Beth. Two hours of attempting to entertain myself on a train and failing miserably turned into two hours of enjoyable conversation which was a much better result.

Eventually I found myself in the lovely town of Bath and Chris was all ready to meet me. His flat is some way away from the town centre but being a student with no car I have got quite used to walking distances I wouldn’t have even contemplated before uni. His flat was pretty much like any other student accommodation, though the kitchen was messier than I have ever seen. There was literally no room on the expansive surfaces on which to prepare a meal. Rubbish and unwashed plates, some with half-eaten things on them, was piled up creating the effect of a poorly managed land-fill site. Suffice to say, it wasn’t very pleasant.

After being fed a sausage and bacon sandwich and lounging around for a few hours it was time for the inevitable drinking to begin. We went to a flat just down the corridor with Chris’ flatmate from Wigan and her friend. I have never met anyone from Wigan before but I quite like the accent. Better than a lot of others, like Leeds for example. Along with the girl who lived there, the five of us proceeded to play Ring of Fire. We had a great laugh and I consumed all four cans of cider I had bought as well as having the “dirty pint” i.e. the pint in the middle which is a mixture of everyone’s drinks. This one was a particularly hideous concoction.

As you can well imagine, I was rather drunk by the time we left the flat and caught a bus into the centre of town. If I’m honest, I didn’t really have much of a clue what was going on but I just went with it. We popped into The Slug and Lettuce for a cocktail (no idea what it was I drank) and then we went to a little club called Weir Lounge. It was an odd sort of place, from what I remember, which instead of having one large dancefloor it had lots of little dancefloors. The ceilings was mostly rounded so it felt a lot like being in a cave. The music was pretty good and it was good fun being there. On one trip to the toilet however I lost the group and it took me a hell of a long time to find anyone I recognised, but fortunately the person I did find was Chris. I’m not entirely sure what the conversation was that went happened but we went somehow ended up at Chris’s flat. I have literally no memory of the journey whatsoever.

The following morning (well the same morning I assume) I awoke in Chris’ flat. I had pyjamas on and everything so nothing too bad can have happened. After a while I realised I felt sick and then proceeded to spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon being sick. It was relentless and rather horrible. In the end I decided I needed the nursing duties of my mother and arranged to be picked up from the nearest train station possible. Unfortunately this meant an hour on an ancient train which was really busy. I had to stand for the entire journey, the train was really wobbly and it was quite hot. I had to lean my head out of the door at each station to try and get some air and not throw up everywhere.

Eventually I ended up home with my parents. After nearly being sick a few times and then a sleep, I felt a little better and sat down in the living room. It was at this point where the diagnosis took place. What was it that had caused me to be so sick? My mother’s first question, the sort of question only a paranoid mother would ask, was “have you taken something?”. Of course not, I have yet to ever be in such an opportunity where I was offered drugs and even if I was, the answer would always be no. Alcohol is the only thing I had consumed. Yes, I was pretty drunk but I didn’t really mix any more than usual and would expect to recover relatively quickly even if it did make me sick. My father enquired what it was I had to eat and then I remembered the sausage. The pork sausage that I distinctly remember wondering whether Chris had cooked it thoroughly but as I don’t usually cook or eat sausages kept quiet and assumed he knew best. I had food poisoning.

So it’s now Sunday and I am back in the uni house in Winchester. Even now I don’t feel too well but I have at least eaten some sandwiches and crisps, the first food since Friday. Rather than being angry, it actually kind of amuses be that by best friends accidentally poisoned me. He’s gotta owe me for that! :D

And there you go, that was my weekend. Friday was a really, really good night and it’s kind of a shame the rest of the weekend was full of nausea. Still, it could have been worse. Back to the normal routine of uni life and no travelling anywhere for a while. See you all soon!

One “R” in Voldemort

I am now back in my uni house, just for the night. After a couple of lectures tomorrow I am hopping on a train and heading to the lovely town of Bath to spend a few days with my mate Chris who goes to uni there. As he deferred a year he is still a fresher so that means lots of going out and getting drunk, which imagine is what I shall end up doing there. The only clues I have are from a couple of tweets Chris sent to me:

• I've got a really good night out planned for next week, you'll really enjoy it :)
• hey man, just need to check you like Bacon and curry? (Separate meals dw) lol and strongbow your drink of choice still?

Sounds promising…

I haven't a lot to tell you about my day today. Much of it was spent reading some dull books for my course. One managed to infuriate me by spelling Lord Voldemort as “Lord Voldermort”. If you are an English textbook trying to encourage teachers to use characters to help children with their writing, you could at least bother to spell the name right.

It was so lovely to be home for a couple of days though, even if it was a bit of a surprise to my Mum and Dad. My Dad answering the door to find me standing there was very funny. I did think that being at home would mean a few days of staying in and not drinking but I actually ended up in the pub both nights I was there. I’m almost becoming some sort of alcoholic. I have been to a pub on Friday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and yesterday and will no doubt be out drinking tomorrow and maybe Saturday as well. I’ve not drunk much of any of those occasions but usually had a pint or two. I’m not entirely sure what the weekly limit is supposed to be but I think I will probably end up going over it. My poor liver! The funny thing is that I came back to the uni house with two bottles of white wine and a bottle of champagne. It seems if anyone in my family as any alcohol they don’t want they pass it on to me! Not that I mind though…

It feels weird saying that. Wind back a few years ago to before I was eighteen and the whole idea of drinking alcohol at all was something I was very much against. That was when I was nerdy and anything fun seemed to be the devil’s work. Fortunately I have become a more normal person (though still not that normal) and things like drinking are ok.

And that’s all I’ve got to share with you tonight. I may or may not be blogging from Bath, it depends whether I can fit my laptop in the bag and have the time. The next post should arrive by Monday at latest. See you soon with tales of whatever crazy stuff I end up getting myself into…

Abominable

Hello. It’s getting late here so I ought to bash this entry out as quickly as possible. Apologies in advance for any mistakes I make.

Yetis. According to a 96% of a scientists who have studied them, yetis exist. There is actually a massive yeti conference going on in Eastern Russia right now. It’s all a bit bizarre really. It seems unlikely that a creature as large or perhaps bigger than humans has not been properly photographed, even if it supposedly does live in remote areas. Rumour has it the whole conference is a publicity stunt to get people to holiday in Eastern Russia. But why would anyone bother doing that and getting scientists from all over the world in. It doesn’t quite work out. So perhaps the abominable snowman is out there somewhere, a species on our own planet we have yet to interact with. I hope they are like this one:

“Anyone want a snowcone?”. If there is a colony of yetis out there I think I should go and live with them. I’m quite hairy for a human so might well fit in and I’m sure there is a lot less stress there then in the human world. Yetis are where it is at!

Anyway, onto actual reality. I took the opportunity of being at home to go and visit my grandfather along with my father. It was lovely seeing him and I did rather well out of it due to my granddad being stupidly generous. He bought me a lovely cooked breakfast and then gave me £20 to spend as well as the free champagne he got with his new car. Champagne is my favourite of all the alcoholic drinks, which is saying something indeed. Due to it’s price I can never buy it myself so actually having any is restricted to posh parties. But now I have a whole bottle which is all mine! I think I will have to save it for a particularly special occasion. I am very much looking forward to drinking that.

This evening I ended up going with my dad to the local pub quiz he attends every week. As expected, I didn’t really know anything. The quizmaster always puts an “action” round in, where you have to dance to a song to get the points. I ended up dancing, doing some country thing with a load of women old enough to be my mother. It was very disturbing. And as if to make matters worse, a group of my former classmates happened to be in the pub and cannot failed to have seen me “dancing”. I only hope they don’t recognise me. The night ended on a bit of a low when two of the team members had a bit of an argument for no specific reason. I can blame people at uni doing that on a lack of immaturity but one of the guys is past retirement age and the other must be in his late forties or early fifties. You’d have thought they’d know better.

Still, it is mostly nice to be spending a few days at home and its clear that my parents are pretty happy I’m around. My brother is not so keen but he is too busy hobbling around the place after falling of his bike and needing some stiches in his leg. Silly boy. It sort of reminds me why I don’t do any kind of physical activity beyond walking. It’s dangerous. Well that’s my excuse anyway.

It’s bed time for me now. My next post will be fairly soon as I rush around the country over the next few days. Tonight, tomorrow and the day after for see me sleeping in three different locations. More about that soon…

Fish Toilets

Hello. It’s been far too long since the last post. Life has been challenging since then with one thing or another and it is for that reason that I find myself home again, despite having only been away for a month. My second year at uni, so far anyway, has been horrific. Its like all the issues I had during the whole of last year have been both repeated and amplified all at the same time, with the odd new issue thrown in just to make it a bit worse. As much as I would love to share this with you, I would no doubt end up offending or upsetting someone or other and that would only make things worse. So whilst I have a few days off I’m seeking comfort in being home with my parents.

Not that every second of uni life is horrible. I’m still having lots of fun at times. On Friday night for example, the girls all went to the student union for the night so Josh and I went to a few pubs. Here we had a moan about things we had to moan about and shared a few things that were on each others minds. As we did this we consumed alcohol until it got to the point where Josh decided he’d had enough and I carried on and got fairly drunk. Cocktails were on offer at the pub we were in and we ended up getting an entire pitcher of Woo Woo each. At that point in time we must have looked disturbingly like a gay couple. And it sounds even worse when I say we shared a bed that night. Nothing dodgy though you understand, just a chance to sit and chat ‘til the early hours.

And other entertainment from housemates comes from Jaz, who we are still amazed actually made it into university. He must actually be quite intelligent but his apparent stupidity never ceases to amaze us. When telling us, in the over-enthusiastic way only Jaz can manage, about a lovely meal at Nando’s he had, we discovered that he thought chickens had four legs. Shortly afterwards he said he wanted to get a pet fish and we successfully managed to convince him he needed to purchase a toilet for fish, something similar to a litter tray for cats or dogs. As far as I am aware he still believes this. You’ve got to love the guy.

My favourite module at the moment is the professional studies one about special educational needs. Having worked with children with special needs in the school holidays for many years now and having three cousins with special needs it is a particular interest of mine. I would even have chosen to specialise in special needs if the competition for places hadn’t been quite so high or if I had been more confident I would actually be accepted into university. A large focus of this module is including children with special needs in mainstream classrooms which is very challenging. As with most of my teaching career, it will take lots of practical learning before it become less of a challenge. Some children might be better placed in a special school but I have personally seen a special needs child being included in a mainstream school with few problems after an initial period of unrest so it can certainly be done. In the end it comes down to one of the key points of teaching a class: including and giving the best opportunity to everyone in the class, no matter what their ability or personality is like.

My specialism, history, has also proved to be pretty good so far. Today we had a session in the records office, which happens to be just two minutes from my house, about using resources for local history. I discovered that local shithole Eastleigh used to be the location of the Hampshire Cheese Market and my opinion of the town increased significantly. Whilst I am at home I shall be gathering some resources for our assignment, which is to create a resource pack about a place of local historical significance. I shall be doing this on Ringwood Workhouse.

On the journey home this afternoon I couldn’t help but overhear (alright, I was eavesdropping) an interesting conversation. A woman who was from Zimbabwe (or Zim as she called it) but now lived in South Africa briefly spoke about her family had to run from there house for fear of being killed. After this the conversation turned from interesting to funny. The woman said that a bishop from England was visiting and after some time and someone saying “the one with the beard”, it was finally revealed to be the Archbishop of Canterbury (who I quite literally bumped into a few years back). The Archbishop had apparently had a handshake refused by Bob. I could not help but wonder who Bob was and what the Archbishop had done to offend him but eventually discovered that the woman was talking about dictator Robert Mugabe. Bob was actually not a close friend but the tyrant of a nation. It was all very bizarre.

And that is it for this blog post. Tomorrow I will be talking about yetis and maybe some other stuff too. I’m hoping I will be a bit more cheery after another day at home too but only time will tell.

Friday Review 5#

It’s been a long while and I have lots of things to review as various TV and other series have ended so I can now talk about them. So away we go and don’t forget to share your views of any of the things I’ve reviewed here in the comments. ★ is the number of stars each item got and a ☆ is an empty star, showing how many away the item was from getting top stars.

TV

Torchwood: Miracle Day

There are so many views about the ten-part fourth series of Torchwood on the internet it’s ridiculous. It was very different to the previous series and it may or may not be a difference you like. Personally, I quite enjoyed the series but felt it was dragged out a bit much. One story over ten episodes just felt a bit long, especially when the big reveal about the cause of everyone dying was a bit rubbish. It’s certainly not as good as the last series, Children of Earth, but perhaps could have been if shorter. The new characters fitted fairly well but the whole series felt a bit lost, like it didn’t really know what was happening. Could have been amazing, but is instead just “ok”. ★★★☆☆

Doctor Who Series 6

There is a lot of debate over this series too, people seemed to either love it or hate it. Personally, as a massive Doctor Who fan, I loved it. The ongoing story arc was a bit frustrating but wasn’t really confusing and the series contained some of my fave episodes ever such as The Doctor’s Wife and Closing Time. Matt Smith is a brilliant Doctor and in many a way I prefer his Doctor to David Tennant’s Doctor (sacrilege I know!). I just feel that if I played the Doctor, it would be more like Smith’s Doctor than Tennant's. Overall, a brilliant series and I am gutted it’s finished. Love, love, love it! ★★★★★

Comics

Flashpoint

DC Comics made a massive fuss saying this was one of the biggest comics events ever. They might have over-egged it a bit but it was still fun. The basic premise is that superhero The Flash suddenly realises the universe has changed from the one he knows. The five part series was good but drawn out a bit much. The fourth issue was pretty unnecessary but the finale was pretty good. The best part of it though was the various three-part mini series which came along with it, featuring other DC heroes in the alternate universe. Hal Jordan never got the ring to become green lantern, Aquaman and Wonder Woman had a massive war and Bruce Wayne’s Dad, Thomas Wayne, was Batman. All in all, this made it brilliant and backed up the main series excellently. It was this series that has got me into comics properly so I will always love it but it’s rather good. ★★★★☆

New Fifty-Two: The Flash and Justice League

Flashpoint was the excuse for DC to start all it's comics again at issue 1#. For the moment I am opting to follow Justice League and The Flash as I would spend loads of money on comics if I started following more. Die-hard comics fans are annoyed at the whole reboot thing but as a new fan its perfect for me. Justice League is a bit weird though because the superheroes have not yet met each other and so the Justice League doesn’t exist. I’m assuming all this will happen over the next few issues, I just hope they don’t drag the whole set-up thing too much. The Flash meanwhile takes us straight into the world we know with Barry Allen being a super-fast human thanks to a special ring. And one guy seems to have cloned himself lots of times or something. Sounds fun. They make a good start and excited to see where they will take me. I have loads of comics pre-ordered so I shall be reviewing them when they come in. ★★★★☆

Films

The Inbetweeners Movie

I wondered if the TV comedy would work on the big screen but once I heard the plot being that the boys go on a trip to Malia, I realised it would. The film re-introduces all the characters effectively before quickly sending our four “heroes” to Malia. Fairly early on they meet four girls so it’s pretty obvious how the film will end, but it does so hilariously with great comic capers, equally as funny and indeed as disgusting as the series. Very funny and very cringe worthy. ★★★★★

Books

Doctor Who: Touched by an Angel by Johnathan Morris

This is the first Doctor Who novel I’ve read featuring the Eleventh Doctor but it is done brilliantly. It features the weeping angel, one of the Doctors most terrifying foes as they send a man back in time and try to make him cause a paradox. It’s very emotional and sad in it’s own little way but very funny at the same time. One of the best Doctor Who novels I have read, everything is right about it. Must read for fans of Doctor Who books. ★★★★★

Fire and Fury

Welcome along to the latest instalment of happenings in my life, with explosions and everything. Sort of.

I was sat minding my own business in my dungeon on Wednesday afternoon when Josh shouted down “There’s a van on fire in the road”. I expected to see perhaps a bit of smoke coming out of a vehicle and was rather surprised to find a pick-up truck covered in flames with people all over the road being equally inquisitive. Apparently the truck had gone up when the engine was started because the people doing some roadworks had accidentally cut through a gas pipe. Oops. Fortunately no one was hurt and the fire brigade arrived fairly swiftly and put the fire out with some foam. It was all rather exciting though. I took pictures of course:

Shortly after this Josh and I went for what was supposed to be a short walk. We followed a footpath by the river which we assumed won come out somewhere we knew. The path actually kept on going, for rather a long way until we suddenly found ourselves in the lovely but rather out-the-way village of King’s Worthy. The footpath amazingly still carried on but we decided at this point it would be best to turn back. Although longer than intended, it turned out to be a rather nice long walk.

It’s actually been a fairly empty few days with the few lectures I had being rather dull. The maths department are torturing us with all sorts of horrible tests which is rather annoying. I thought once I started university the notion of tests would not really exist but alas, the maths team have given us one of fractions and one on decimals so far. The joy.

I now own a box set of the hilarious American sitcom Frasier. It has eleven seasons in it, each with 24 episodes. That’s a lot of episodes to watch (I’m not working them out though, I’ve done enough maths for one week). If you’ve not seen or heard of it, the show is about Frasier Crane a former psychiatrist who now does a mental health talk show on the radio. It’s difficult to describe beyond that but it’s very funny and I love it. And now I can watch every episode in order, which is awesome.

Being a teenage girl must be hard work. You seem to spend lots of time moaning and bitching about other teenage girls. For most of my teenage life I have been sheltered from such things, what with having a largely male-dominated social group at school. Here at university, where I would have imagined such events would have been grown out of, a moaning girl seems to be around every corner. I try my best to stay out of such things but but on occasion find myself sucked in as if by a vacuum cleaner. I guess that’s what happens when you are in a female majority uni. Fortunately my dungeon is something of a bomb shelter. When I’m in there it’s difficult to tell what’s happening in or out of the house, which is perhaps its best quality. Unlike at home I feel I can be truly out the way down there. I can’t even tell if it’s rainy or sunny most of the time.

Tomorrow I feel it is time for the long overdue new edition of The Friday Review, where I shall be discussing various TV shows, films,books and comics. I look forward to seeing you then.

Debate: Labelling Special Needs

This is an area which particularly interests me and having talked about it in lectures yesterday I decided to write this post. I feel I know a reasonable amount about it and I suspect that some people I know will have strong opinions on this.

The current system when it comes to children with special needs is to have their “condition” medically diagnosed and in many cases until this happens the child and their parents will receive little or no support. Many people might consider them a naughty child until they are diagnosed. But is this the way things should be done?

Diagnosing a child as having some kind of special need is useful to some extent. It will at least tell you about some of the characteristics that the child has and therefore how they should be treated and to some extent how to expect them to behave. But it’s with the some extent that things get tricky. One child with autism is completely different from another child with autism. Like all human beings, every child with special needs is unique. It’s clearly not right that they should be known as “the special child” but this is the trouble that labelling brings. They are always the child first.And many children will be given more than one label, which sort of end up cancelling each other out in some cases.

At least modern-labelling is better than it used to be. There was a time where special needs children would either be classed as a naughty child or given a horrific title like “imebecile” and placed into an institution for life. At least it has been done for the right reasons and not for the purpose of “eugenics”, a disgusting idea that we should take the survival of the fittest theory and put it into practice by preventing “lesser” members of our species from breeding. Whilst that might bring images of Nazi Germany to your head, the idea came from the UK and was implemented here for some time.

And now we come to the question? Should children with special needs be labelled? It might seem like a good idea but perhaps it causes as many issues as it solves. Coming up with a better system would be complicated but possible. Maybe labels could still be used to some extent but become a less important factor in a child’s life.

Personally I think that there are many issues with labels. When I began working with children with special needs I always used to find out what their “condition” was, read the label as it were. But after a while I realised that it makes little difference. You get to know a child rather than a disability. Being autistic or ADHD or whatever term you have been given does not mean that is how you are. Every child is different and having special needs is part of that.

I hope you found this little discussion interesting, let me know your opinion with a comment.

My Hectic Weekend

Hello lovely person. Thank you for reading this. Why not comment once you’ve finished? I have yet more tales of my frankly out-of-control university life to share with you. I’ve never been so busy.

In something of an unusual move, for me anyway, I accompanied a few friends on a pub crawl through the town. And it wasn’t just my friends, it was most of the Film society, a group who I knew no-one in and have never been to. We began at the pub opposite the student village we lived in last year where we played some frankly pretty lame games involving naming films beginning with a relevant letter. We then moved around various pubs and I got steadily more drunk. Turns out the film society lot were pretty friendly which was nice and unexpected really. So I got to talk to a few of them and my friends that were there so all in all it was a pretty good night.

After all this pubbing, some of us stepped it up a gear and moved into clubbing. We paid the extortionate £7 entrance fee to Porthouse, which turned out to be much worse than the last time I was there. The music, if you can call it such, was rubbishy hardcore dance stuff with most of the tracks not having lyrics. Really not my thing. And as well as that a lot of the men there were not nice and kept breaking the “look but don’t touch” rule in regards to my female friends. This really aggravates me. What gives guys the right to do grope and touch women who have showed no sign that’s what they are after? It amazes me that any guy would stoop that low but it turns out actually quite a lot would. Alcohol is no excuse, I know full well that you can still control yourself up until you are very drunk and there’s no way most of those guys were that bad. It’s just pathetic really. If you are a guy like I have described, think about what you are doing with your life. You are a moron.

Anyways, rant over. Here’s a picture showing myself and some friends looking a bit drunk as we took Tequila shots (with salt and lime of course):

At least I look happy. And I was, it was the best night out I have had in many a month after my incredibly tedious summer.

There was various hi-jinks on Saturday when I was round our friends house, particularly when the outside tap broke and water was squirted all over the garden for quite some time. And then came the finale of Doctor Who. I have purposely mentioned the series as little as possible here because most people aren’t as interested (or you might say sad) as me. But I loved the finale and indeed the whole series, despite complaints from frankly stupid people who thought it was too complicated. With little Doctor Who until next Autumn, I think I am going to go a bit crazy. I shall just have to walk around with my sonic screwdriver.

Sunday saw the first meeting of the Rambling Society, which I am now in charge of. A disappointing number of people turned up but there was a reason why so it’s likely more will come next time. The people that did come though were all lovely and I’m really pleased by the nice atmosphere we had. The weather stayed good too, as it has been all week. 27 degrees Celsius in October! Who’d have thought?

All in all it was a brilliant weekend, followed by some interesting lectures about special needs this morning. I shall talk about that in some depth tomorrow in another of my debate posts so make sure you come back and share your views. And it’s always nice to read a comment on any post, no matter what the subject. See you tomorrow.

End of Month Extravaganza 2#

Posting regularly is becoming a bit of a challenge because I seem to have suddenly found a busy social life. Not really sure where it came from. And though it may be a couple of days late, it’s time to look back at the month of September. 

Opinions on…Roald Dahl

I wrote a post celebrating the life of children’s author Roald Dahl and it would seem that everyone has an opinion of which their favourite is:

Amelia Elliot: Wonderful review. "The Twits," is still one of my favourite books. I am not ashamed!!

My Aunt: BFG is my favourite!!

My friend Clare: BFG is one of the best, but then so is Fantastic Mr Fox! That has to be one my favourites too :)

Choosing a favourite Dahl book is difficult. There’s not a single one that isn’t as good as the rest. They are all fantastic.

Comments-Best of the Rest

Here are a couple of other comments I liked this month:

edeal365 (on my Year 2 Goals post): Yes ...Work hard for a better future.You are laying foundation for a successful life.a long life is ahead for entertainment.you have to work hard for this little span of life for life full of pleasures and joys.I will be waiting to hear your success stories.

I’m not sure that this person entirely read the post correctly because I did say I wanted to go out a lot more this year. In the past couple of weeks of being here I have been out several times including Friday night with a huge group of people, the majority of whom I didn’t know (more on that tomorrow). I haven't really got much work to be doing at the moment but I am super-organised and it makes everything much less stressful. Together these two things have made me much happier than I was for most of last year so I guess I am in the process of achieving those goals.

ishashime (on “I’m a Cheeky Monkey”): aww. this whole post was so cute! i like the cacti. i think it's a nice touch. and lol at what Josh left you. xD

The cacti do look good on their little shelf. Josh has now moved the gnome because he had expected me to move it from the windowsill but I hadn’t. I imagine Josh could run the RSPCG- the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Gnomes.

The One Post You Should Go Back and Read: This is I’m a Cheeky Monkey because it’s full of photos which show off my amazing new room in Winchester, Dan’s Dungeon as the sign declares it. Most of my recent posts are probably worth reading if you are really bored though as I suddenly seem to have got up to all sorts of antics.

Minion of the Month: This month the award goes to SJ who has said some very nice things about my blog on Twitter and on her own blog. I had to give it to her after seeing the lovely things she said.

Blog of the Month: With the sudden appearance of lots of good blogs, it’s really quite difficult to decide on a winner. But decide I must so the award goes to The Life of an Ordinary Girl by Rebecca. It’s really rather good and I think you’d like it.

And as this post draws to an end, it’s time to decide how September was for me. Whilst the first couple of weeks mostly continued my tedious summer holiday the time I’ve spent back in Winchester with both my uni friends and briefly my other friends has been fantastic. So I have to say that September has been a pretty good month, perhaps even the best month of the year (it’s been a pretty rubbish year though so that’s not really that special).

I quite like doing this end of month post, it’s good fun. As always, throw comments into the comment box, I’m sure you have lots to say. All the posts from September can now be found on the “Last Month” page. I shall be back tomorrow for tales of being social and responsible, though not necessarily at the same time.