Thursday 28 April 2011

Easter in Horsham

Last Wednesday, I managed to eventually return home for a bit. I packed as many clothes and revision notes as I could into my bag, then hopped on the train at Reading to return to Horsham.

I happened to be there at the same time as Piazza Italia, a three-day festival celebrating all things Italian. I'm not sure of the Italian population of Horsham, but I'm fairly sure it's below 1%. This didn't stop the organisers from turning the town centre into a strange version of Italy, which seemed to be focused a lot more on the food, drink, cars and glamour than the corruption, mafia and poor driving.

On each of the three days, Dad and I went to town to watch the cars arrive, in convoy, from a hotel on the outskirts of Horsham. The first day saw almost 100 Ferraris parked in the Carfax, the main square in the town. On the Saturday, it was the turn of the Minis, then Sunday saw the leftovers arrive, with Alfa Romeos, Fiats, Lamborghinis, a Pagani Zonda and a Porsche, which seemed to have sneaked in somehow.

Some Fiat 500s, in patriotic colours. If they were French.

Definitely a considerate driver.


Ferraris in the Carfax.
Minis. Not Italian, unless used for bank robberies.
It was nice to be back home, and between cars, I actually managed to get some revision done. It was still all-too easy to accidentally end up sitting outside under the apple blossom with a cool drink, listening to the birds and watching the guinea-pigs scampering around. If you attempted the same thing in Reading, it'd be under the dripping overflow from the toilet upstairs, listening to the sound of two A-roads within 100 yards of the garden, and watching the men demolishing the Indian takeaway a few doors down. Not quite the same, I think you'll agree!

The garden in Horsham. If you click on the photo, you can see all the weeds in the flowerbeds. So don't.

My first exam is on Tuesday, when I'll have to sit down and write three essays in three hours on electoral reform. Interesting and enjoyable as it is (and I mean that genuinely, in case it sounds otherwise), I'll be glad to get the exam out of the way!

Wednesday 20 April 2011

Tea, Travels and Terracotta.

I'm sure that anyone who's reading this already knows that revision is my main occupation at the moment. It's House of Lords reform today. Anyway, I'm not going to mention it again, but would like to reassure you that I'm still doing plenty of it (mainly aimed at Mum and Dad...!).

In between books and learning, I've found enough time to do a few interesting bits and pieces. One of them is making this house, which is loosely based upon M&D's house in France. It was originally a present for Dad for Father's Day 2010, but like any construction project, it went drastically over-budget and I was forced to completely abandon the inital schedule. It's now got half-a-roof of terracotta tiles, and is fully-glazed, but the kitchen is still very much a Budweiser box, and there's no front door. I'm expecting a delivery of more clay when my next installment of student loan arrives, and we're hoping to be in by Christmas.

It IS that yellow in real life.
Other nice distractions were goodbye-visits by a few friends who are off on travels to various places around the world. Dave and Chris are going on a grand tour of Europe, while Matt is going to brave The Americas with some friends from school. I'm sure they're going to have a good time - I think I'd much rather be trekking through the Andes and sampling the bars of Bruges than sitting in basement in Reading!

Chris looks like he's having second thoughts.

Looking for Cancun on the ticket machine.
A final note before I return to Lords reform is that I seem to have become competely dependent on tea, in silly quantities. Between reading each page of a book, I treat myself to a sip, resulting in worrying scenes such as this one:

Apparently there's no Earl of Grey in the House of Lords.

Monday 11 April 2011

Canvassing.

Another week of revision has begun. Today, it’s more electoral systems, and how different systems affect the election turnout. As you may have noticed there seems to be a theme developing: the more work I need to do, the higher the frequency of posts on here.

One thing I remembered today is that I like painting. I used to paint quite a bit, but then stopped, for some reason. The last thing I painted was this Parisian street, for my Dad’s Christmas present. I think it was Christmas, anyway. It was definitely a while ago.

I wrote 'café' on the window, as I thought it looked too much like a greenhouse.
I’ve also got a half-finished canvas of Place Royale, a square in Nantes. I started it in August of last year, but never actually got around to finishing it. I might finish that this week, to treat myself if I get enough politics revision done.

This post has just made me realise I only seem to be able to paint French street scenes. And not particularly well, at that. I should probably try painting the intricacies of electoral systems instead. That way I might actually remember them.

Friday 8 April 2011

Basil and Books

This afternoon I decided that I wanted to have some pesto pasta. But, seeing as I have a lot of procrastinating to be doing, a quick meal simply wouldn't do; In order to avoid reading about the electoral systems of Ireland, I needed to make it from scratch. All the pesto recipes that I could find involved a blender, which I don't have.

I was about to completely abandon the idea when I realised that pesto probably came a long time before the blender, and there's bound to be another way of making it. Hence the following:

Parmesan, pine nuts, olive oil, salt, garlic, and basil
I stripped half of the leaves from a conveniently-nearby basil plant, and gathered them together on a chopping board. I then started to chop them, which took a surprisingly long time, and I frequently almost lost the tips of my fingers. I think I must have cut some of the leaves so small that they were invisible to the naked eye; a lot of them seemed to disappear. Hmm.

The mysterious disappearing-basil.
I similarly chopped up the pine nuts and garlic (fingers still intact), and grated some parmesan into the same bowl, before adding some olive oil, salt and pepper then mixing it all up.

Before mixing.

After a lot of mixing and mashing the paste against the side of the bowl to make it look more pesto-y, I put the pasta on the hob while the pesto basilified itself a bit more.

It was meant to be an artistic angle. But no, just blurry.

To try and make it authentically Italian (and bear it in mind I've never been to Italy in my life), I added some fresh mozzarella to the top, cracked an egg yolk into the middle, then spent probably-too-long toying with the idea of putting an decorative basil leaf on the top. I didn't.

It looks like an incredibly mouldy fried egg.

It tasted surprisingly nice, considering there was no real recipe or plan. If anything, it might've even been a bit too basil-ly. The most important thing though, is that it took at least 30 minutes to do. Which meant 30 minutes less of revising electoral systems.

After dinner, I reluctantly returned to revision, and went back to poring over countless articles about electoral reform in Ireland. The author of the first book I read...?

Basil Chubb.


Tuesday 5 April 2011

Career Ideas

Now that I can see again, and haven't (yet) repeated the weekend's eye incident, I've been spending a lot of time trying to start a 3000-word essay on the French Revolution. It's not a particularly exciting essay, but it's either that or doing real revision, which is infinitely worse.

Robespierre. It's his fault I have to write an essay.

Occasionally, to put off doing the essay, I've been looking at possible job options. I graduate in two months' time; real-life is creeping steadily closer. My career ideas, however, have been getting increasingly far-fetched and ridiculous. In the past couple of months, I have considered the following:

  • Astronaut
  • Crocodile sanctuary-man
  • Café owner in South America
  • Farmer (ploughing looks fun)
  • Author
  • Postman (of a new, yet-to-be-made Royal Mail competitor)
  • Fighter pilot (but not a killing one. A friendly one)
  • Lock-keeper
A decent amount of variation, I think, although I'm not sure of the salary of some of them. I can't imagine being a lock-keeper pays particularly well, for instance. However, if I combined it with being an author, while farming a patch of watercress in the lock, for I could probably make a reasonable living.

On another, completely-unrelated note, there was a nice sunset over Reading a couple of days ago. One that deserved being photographed, I reckoned. Here it is:

Reading at sunset (massive amounts of crime not pictured).
Now, enough procrastination. Back to the essay. Otherwise I'll never be able to keep that lock.

.

Sunday 3 April 2011

Eye Issues

A normal Sunday for me usually involves standing at the till in a large department store, bleeping and bagging the various bits and pieces that people deem it necessary to buy.

This is the shop that I work in. That is not me. (photo from Ceeko's Flickr)

Today was meant to be a normal Sunday, until I climbed out of the shower, and started to get dressed. When it came to putting on deodorant, I picked it up, pressed the little button at the top. Nothing came out. Still bleary-eyed and half-asleep, I adjusted the nozzle. Again, nothing came out. I then tried to adjust it again, when it suddenly decided to blast a substantial amount of Sure For Men™ directly into my left eye. I yelped, and frantically splashed water into my eye to try to stop the stinging. It then dawned on me that it might be quite dangerous to have an eye full of deodorant, so I picked up the aerosol can, and tried to read the tiny print on the side. At that point, my right eye decided that stinging looked fun, and had a go too, forcing me to jam my eyes shut, and thus rendering me temporarily blind, and unsure of whether it would become a permanent thing.

Eventually, I began to be able to see again, and my eyes stopped stinging. I left for work, and walked there fairly uneventfully. However, when I arrived at the aforementioned large department store, it turned out the air conditioning was on. A few minutes after taking my perch behind the till, my eye started to cry. It didn't just start to water, or just begin to well up. Oh no, my tear duct decided that the perfect time to irrigate my eye was just when a customer was coming to the till. And while it was at it, the tear duct apprently decided that my entire face could do with a clean, and dutifully provided enough tears to do so.


The culprit.


After attempting to stem the flow with various things from the medical box, which should probably have been thrown out in 1987, I decided to attempt the trek to the 'eye casualty' at the local hospital. Normally a fairly simple walk, but with one eye out-of-action, a surprisingly difficult one. After meandering my way across Reading, and arriving at the hospital, I found a map that explained various departments and wards of the hospital. As some kind of joke, the label for the eye clinic seemed to be in the smallest font ever. After finding it, and  after a short wait, I saw a doctor, who knowingly nodded when I explained what I'd done, then proceeded to poke around in my eyes, testing them with litmus paper, weird lights and cleaning solution, before prescribing some eye drops and advising me that the dryness is going to last for last a few days. I'm now sitting on the sofa, applying eye drops every few minutes, and scowling at the deodorant can on the floor, where it can stay for a while, as far as I'm concerned.

Basically, I wouldn't recommend spraying deodorant in your own face. Although I imagine my eye now smells excellent. And it certainly won't sweat any time soon.