Hello there lovely person. My,my, what a crazy week the first week back at uni has been. That’s largely because studying to become a teacher leads to some lectures turning pretty odd without any warning whatsoever. But that makes it brilliant!
Amongst various typical lectures, there were several that stood out. One of these was English where we were looking at picture books as inspiration for children’s writing. The main book we looked at was Gorilla by Anthony Browne. In the illustrations there are lots of hidden gorillas and we ended up spending far longer than we probably should have. I think every book should have hidden gorillas in it, it makes it much more fun. We also looked at Not Now Bernard by David McKee in which a small boy is eaten by a monster but his parents don’t notice. This led us to doing some fun activities, one of which was called “Conscience Alley”. One of the group pretended to be Bernard’s mother and walked between two lines of people and we took it in turns to say things from her conscience. I was on the negative side and informed the mother that she was being a terrible parent. My conscience is as honest as they come.
Science was a fairly ordinary lecture about energy but in the middle of this we were suddenly given a load of toys to play with. You might not expect a group of young adults to be that bothered by this but actually we all got very excited and played with everything we could get our hands on. All of the toys needed energy to work and then we had to explain this. I had one of those toys which has a suction cup and a spring which eventually launches itself into the air. This happened lots of times during the lecture because I couldn’t leave it alone. I now want said toy to entertain myself with at home.
The university are throwing assignments at us from all angles at the moment. Though actually nearly all of them are pretty straight forward. A few presentations, a leaflet (it’s A3 size though which is really silly) and an essay based on some lesson plans are what lies ahead for me. None of those are really causing me much worry which is good and there’s a hope that I’ll get some good marks somewhere amongst that lot. It’s just a case of actually doing them all now!
On Thursday evening I gave blood for the fourth time. It’s all fairly routine now, though I can’t say the experience is in anyway pleasant. Still you get to save a life and get free biscuits for doing so. I was in the middle of giving blood, quite literally, when a voice says “Are you Richard’s son?” and a woman who I’d never seen before in my life appeared. I am indeed Richard’s son and although it’s not implausible that someone would know him thirty miles away, it seems fairly unlikely, especially given the circumstances. I was a little stunned and said “He knows everybody!”. The woman turned out to be the mother of my brother’s friend and proceed to have a conversation with me. As nice as this was, I’m not really in the conversation mood when the life is being sucked out of me, pretty much literally, so my responses were probably complete rubbish. It was all very weird.
Now cookery show Masterchef, where amateurs try and compete to be named the country’s best cook, returned to TV this week and I’ve been watching it avidly, along with new fave daytime show Come Dine with Me. All this cooking and the bid to lose some weight has inspired me and this week I’ve been cooking all sorts. It began on Wednesday with these lovely cheesy potato skins I made (with a few chicken nuggets):
On Thursday I cooked a huge jacket potato and the biggest achievement about this was putting it into the oven before I gave blood so it would be ready at about the time I got back. Fortunately it all went to plan and was perfect for my return.
Friday night saw the most ambitious cooking yet, with a Tuna Pasta Bake being made. Tuna, pasta, cream of mushroom source and cheese made this delight. The pictures a bit rubbish but I can tell you it tasted wonderful.
And today I spent several hours baking. First ready was chocolate brownies. This picture makes them look horrible but they looked better in reality and were really tasty. And to make things even better they’re low fat because the recipe uses mayonnaise of all things. It worked wonders though.
But the best looking item of the day and indeed the week is this wonderful chocolate cake. It was more challenging then everything else to but I’m really pleased about how it’s come out. I’ve yet to eat any yet but if it’s anywhere near as good as it looks it will be lovely.
Now you may be thinking none of this looks or sounds particularly impressive I never cook. Most meals are just something pre-made shoved into the oven. To produce all of these wonderful things, and all in the same week, really is quite an achievement for me. I think cooking could be a great new hobby and I have promised my Mum that I’ll make something for the family next time I’m home. That will be quite a challenge but I hope to continue cooking things over the next few weeks and hopefully I’ll be reasonably skilful in the not so far away future.
Maybe my comment will actually work this time. You're becoming quite the chef! And mayonnaise actually makes the best wonderfully moist chocolate cakes, and brownies too, I would expect. Okay, fingers crossed for the comment to go through.
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