BreatheTheirControl’s blog

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am pleased to present your ultimate guide to Tormenting Freshers.

The Fresher is an easily-spotted specimen. Dressed in the customary jeans-hoodie-and trainers combo (or variants thereof), they tend to go around for the first few weeks of term in packs of 3 or more, so that, should they get lost, at least they have Safety In Numbers. They are generally wide-eyed, slightly too excited about the prospect of Drinking Alcohol Sans Parental Supervision and have not yet learned that the LCR is not a good place to be on a Friday night. There are several simple ways in which to torment, belittle and generally confound your average Fresher:

#1. When asked for directions to the Congregation Hall/Sports Park/UEA Medical Centre, point them in the direction of the Elizabeth Fry building. Conversely, if asked for Elizabeth Fry, direct them to one of the above.

#2. When stuck behind a Fresher trying to figure out the swipe-card entry into the library, sigh audibly and remark that apparently it takes a rocket scientist to work a turnstile these days.

#3. At Socmart, it may prove highly entertaining to persuade at least one Fresher that GamesSoc is the coolest society on campus. If they join it, they will most definitely get a boy/girlfriend.

#4. Some Freshers have an in-built and rather bizarre desire to chase the campus rabbits when drunk. Clearly, they deserve to be taught a lesson. With a group of friends, dress in rabbit suits and chase said Freshers around campus. See how they like it.

#5. Drunk Freshers also like to make out with other drunk (and often ugly) Freshers. This is the perfect opportunity to film such disgraceful acts. There's a reason YouTube was invented and that Facebook has a video application.

#6. As we all know, the UEA Freshers living on campus need to wash their clothes (should they bother) in the Laundrette. This is not a pleasant experience at the best of times. If you are an on-campus Post-Grad, the ordeal is made even more arduous by the very presence of the Freshers. The problem can be solved, however, by putting the Freshers into the tumble dryers with their washing. This leaves you in peace to finish that presentation you have to have prepared by tomorrow.

Freshers, know your place.

My life has been THAT boring over the last couple of months that there hasn't really been anything to say. HOWEVER, today I had cause to be a bit over excited, cuz I rocked on up to Lords to film Alvin Kallicharan (W. Indies cricketer/LEGEND) coaching a bunch of middle-aged dudes at cricket. It was awesome. Well, filming wasn't, but being at Lords was :)

Usually I save gushing like this for my LJ, but since I haven't written here in a while, and it's also something vaguely serious and slightly interesting to talk about, I thought I'd do it here.

Over the last couple of days, I've had the privilege of hanging out with some of cricket's legends from all over the world. This has not made me hugely star-struck, since I don't follow cricket enough (and am a bit young in some cases) to know who a lot of the people were, but the Lashings World XI are fantastic and interesting guys. I learnt loads about them and got some awesome stories into the bargain.

LORDS!!!

And I got to go to Lords XD --->

So, being held hostage at home by one's mother until you are sufficiently better (for her liking) to resume life has its ups and downs. Today we went out for lunch, but not without a fuss, which quite honestly, in the state I'm in left me more or less too tired to go to the restaurant full stop. The outfit I brought with me for said meal was not adequate for the Maternal Unit's tastes, and so I was taken to Tesco (shame) to get an entirely different one. On the way, we got to a set of traffic lights that leads to Tesco, and found the traffic at a complete halt behind a Krispy Kreme lorry that was apparently reluctant to move. It was not long before we discovered the reason for the odd delay - a family of geese had decided that the best way to get the goslings from Part Of The Lake A to Part Of The Lake B was by taking a direct route - down the middle of the road. This, I feel, is Mother Nature at her best. A long, long line of traffic queued up (not a single driver unsmiling at the incident) to allow geese, who were in no great hurry, to get their young safely to a lake. We can build cars, and roads, and yet when it comes down to it, Nature takes priority. I love moments like that.

(Aside: The meal completely took it out of me. I had to sleep for 2 hours when I got home to recover. Hurrah for the ill!)

...I am officially the only person in the world to have got glandular fever, and not even had the enjoyment of kissing boys to contract it. I think the Universe is mocking me.

OK, so I have just spent several hours in front of my computer screen, with a mug of tea and a porn DVD in the disc drive, writing my essay (1113/5000, in case you were wondering). Having come to a sufficiently dead end that I can only bring myself to face tomorrow, I gave up and logged into Facebook where I have an ongoing game of chess.

This, in a word, is a disaster. Mainly because I was never taught to play chess as a child, and the attempt a friend made a few years ago to teach me never really manifested itself into anything useful. Thus, I have walked into two REALLY OBVIOUS moves that have enabled my opponent to take my pieces. I have also made the basic error of forgetting that a pawn can move 2 spaces on its first move, and embarrassingly, confused my king and queen.

Chess: My New Nemesis

Add to this the fact that I was most upset when my bishop was not allowed to hop over a pawn and take the queen instead, and you have some idea of the game so far. I have successfully taken one pawn, and expect to lose in the next ten moves, maximum. Chess, until such a time as I can learn to play with a reasonable level of intelligence, is thus declared my arch enemy. At least with Scrabble I can make educated moves.

Yes, essay time is coming swiftly around once more, and instead of studying diligently the theories of Julia Kristeva (useful, entertaining but not entirely logically sound) for an essay on desire in Japanese porn, I have spent my time doing the following (in no particular order):

Dozing fitfully as the screaming children / birds nesting in the gutter outside my window allow. (You'd be surprised how noisy it is in Earlham Grove in very-nearly-early-Spring).

Checking e-mails / Facebook / Vox / deviantART / LJ / any other website that could prove remotely interesting enough to provide a suitable distraction

Washing things - clothes, sheets, dishes, myself...

Going to the pub

Making lunch (This can take a surprising amount of time with practise)

I even did some tidying the other day, partly to waste time, and partly because the mess was beginning to irritate me. It's fine, until you realise that you don't have room to stand in front of the mirror and check you actually look half decent before venturing out in the morning. Believe me, I need the reassurance.

I'm not entirely sure why I just cannot seem to concentrate at the moment. Perhaps it is the change in the weather. Or maybe the irresistable call of domestic cleanliness. But I have a sneaking suspicion it could just be the age old favourite - lazy procrastination.

Just a small taster of the sort of conversation that goes on in my house:

Charli is minding her own business, writing on Bex's Facebook Wall

Enter Mother

Mother: Why can't you get a boyfriend who looks like Johnny Depp?

Me: (Incredulous at the arbitrariness of this intrusion) What?!

Mother: (As if this is a perfectly reasonable request) Oh come on, it can't be that difficult to find a man that looks like him. Or Orlando Bloom.

Me: ...

Mother: Yes, and then you could bring him round and he could sit across the table from me at dinner instead of your father.

Me: Daaaaad, guess what Mum's been saying about you!!

Does anyone else's mother complain about their inability to get a Johnny Depp lookalike for a boyfriend? No? Just mine then.

I am not, it has to be said, a fan of detective TV shows. Given the choice I'd rather watch something else, but every so often I am forced into it by parents who have an unhealthy obsession with them. I can, however, understand their appeal - for the most part. Sherlock Holmes is bright and strategic; Poirot is debonair and faintly amusing; even Chief Inspector Barnaby has a certain down to earth charm. But the one sleuth I cannot feel an affinity for in any way is Miss Marple. I'm sorry, but she's just rubbish. I have just sat through half an hour of a Miss Marple mystery and she has appeared on screen all of about four times, and only then to complain about her unwillingness to go to a hotel for a few days. She has wandered around a bit looking pensive and bought a newspaper, while the police have been doing all the real work. This, to my mind is not clever, it is lazy. I'm sorry, but how is letting the police gather all the evidence for you and then telling everyone whodunnit worthy of any credit? At least Holmes does his own investigations, as does Poirot much to the exasperation of Inspector Japp. But Miss Marple, no. No, she just saunters about letting everybody else do the dirty work and then expects us all to think she's bright because she's 'solved' the mystery.

"But that's the whole point!" My mum tells me in angry tones. If I didn't know better, I'd say she was insulted at my complaints. So we're supposed to think she's doing nothing? No wonder she's hardly ever on screen then, the show would only last about 10 minutes otherwise. Defend Miss Marple to the hilt if you want, but you can't tell me a nosey old bint like her is anything on the above mentioned detectives.

* Please note I am talking about TV sleuthing, it's a long time since I read Miss Marple, and it's quite possible I might be able to cope with her in print.

Nope, they just wish they were Toby's hips instead.

Things that happen when your teacher sees the comp video from the weekend - she rips your technique apart and then puts you through an hour and a half of Hell with the pretext of apparently making you dance better. This hurts. Within ten minutes I wanted to go home to Martin and Claire and the safety of my waltz routine.

LATtitude

The following is an account of what I am supposed to be doing as technique for my Cha:

I am to stand with my arse sticking backwards like a duck, and further, dance with said stance. I am not, at any point, to take the balls of my feet off the floor. My toes must always be turned outwards, even when I step to the side. But the thing is, when I step to the side, I have to move my hips. This means that on the foot that my weight is NOT placed on, my toes are turned outwards, my knee must be turned inwards, and my hip must be out to the side, over the foot the weight IS placed on. Sound complicated? Now try doing that to J-Lo's 'Let's Get Loud', and we have something of the spped at which cha is danced.

And that's just for starters. If ever you wish to feel like a duck with knee problems, I suggest you attempt the Cha.

In other news, Samuel Beckett has been committing verbal homocide on my brain such that I can no longer read or write. When Vic used the word 'excrutiating' to describe this book, he was not kidding. I have battled with strange syntax, an infuriating lack of basic punctuation (full stops, speech marks) and passages of constant repetition that are only worth reading if you are imbecilic enough not to have got the point that he has spent the last three pages hammering home.

Some delightful predecessor of mine in reading the book (yes, I got it out the library) had written most helpfully where I was expected to find the book 'hilarious' or, more specifically, 'halarious'. I confess that without this advice I would have been utterly lost to its humour. Frankly, I garnered more amusement from the notes at the bottom of each page that summed up, in a couple of words, an entire page. So much for Beckett being a minimalist.

My feet have officially been murdered. Currently I am sitting on my sofa after five, yes five, hours of dancing. Straight. I have waltzed, quickstepped, cha'd and jived my way through the Hive more today than I believe I have done in the last 6 weeks put together, My feet are quietly sobbing in a corner and are definitely not talking to me.

On the plus side however, we are getting to grips with our dances. This, I feel, is quite an achievement, since yours truly decided today that she didn't want to do the basic, and really rather boring versions of quickstep and jive. I therefore put Jen through the hassle of learning completely new routines a week before the competition, just so we'd look more interesting on the dance floor. The quickstep may have been a mistake. Yeah...

But we have new outfits, new shoes, and even if we screw up royally on the day, I'd like to think that at least we'll look good doing it! Rock on Stoke-on-Trent! ... (OK, that should NEVER be said in any other context EVER.)