- - If little by little you stop loving me - -

So - went to the NME award tour last night. Interesting experience to say the least.

Lesson Number One - The Edinburgh Corn Exchange is fucking miles away from anything in the world, ever. That's fine when you can pick up a taxi on Lothian Road to get there. Less fine when you can't get one home until you've walked halfway through the darkened streets of Southwest Edinburgh with no real confidence in where you might be going. I am still hugely grateful to that taxi for appearing when it eventually did, just as we were beginning to freeze and despair a little bit.

The gig itself was amazing though. Even if I did think at one point I was going to actually die in a manic crowd of hysterical Arctic Monkeys fans. And even if that girl in the green jumper (how was she wearing a jumper for fuck's sake? It was about forty thousand degrees in there!) did elbow me in the throat so she could get me out of the way during Maximo Park.

It was also weird being at my first Edinburgh gig without any of the people who have been at every gig I've ever been to. And it was REALLY weird to effectively be there on my own - I lost Helen in the sea of people pretty early on and didn't find her for absolutely ages.

But yes - fantastic night. Unfortunately now I have to...do some work. Stupid social policy and it's stupid assessed statistical interpretation thing.

Hello all, hope you're all still alive!

It's snowing here today, which we have all found rather pathetically exciting. It was gorgeous this morning but has now melted to horrible slush that is a pain in the arse to trek through.

Hilariously, I had to walk miles through the snow today. A glitch at the bank meant the direct debit of my rent didn't go out, and because I don't have a cheque book, I had to go to the bank, get out the cash and physically haul it up to Pollock Halls to pay at the accommodation offices. Could I get a taxi outside the bank? Could I hell. So at one point today I was wandering the streets of Edinburgh in the snow carrying nine hundred and forty pounds in cash. I was absolutely convinced that I was going to be robbed along the way.

When I arrived home, a letter lay on the doormat. From the bank. Containing a cheque book. I wasn't amused. The most stupid thing is, said cheque book was sent from the Royal Bank of Scotland on Nicolson Street which I walk past every day to my address at home so that my mum had to send it all the way back up to me. The bank is stupid.

In other odd news, last night I went to the Royal Norwegian Advent Concert to see Anna sing a solo. It was a weird occasion, and mostly in Norwegian.

OK, everyone HAS to get a copy of The Times today. Seriously, you HAVE to.

I was innocently reading the paper over lunch, when I turned to page thirty and nearly choked on my sandwich:

PRIVATE SCHOOL WANTS TO BE STATE ACADEMY

and it's Belvedere.

Seriously. Apparently our old school is planning to go state, end academic selection and let BOYS into the Sixth Form.

It's complete and utter madness. The Belvedere School as we knew it will no longer exist!

I cannot believe that we actually go to Spain tomorrow. It can't be that soon, the summer can't have gone that quickly. But...it has.

I think I've packed everything now, but I'm not 100% positive. I'll be doing something else when a voice in my head will suddenly scream "contact lens solution!" or "concealer!" or some other random item that I have to then fetch and cram into the case. Plus I've just had a text from Holly saying "bring Belv hoodie for plane" and then discovered that my mother (who clearly doesn't listen) has put it in the wash when expressly told not to do so. Therefore it may still be damp when I arrive at the airport. Oh well, tough.

I have now actually received the letter from the Student Finance people announcing that in fact I will get a student loan. So yay, I will have money to live off at uni. As of yet, I don't have a place to live, but at least I'll be a homeless person with money in the bank. I'm not too happy about having to go off to Spain with no confirmed accommodation but I don't have a lot of choice. I'm leaving my mother with the phone number of Accommodation Services and instructions to phone them if no word arrives in the next day or two. Aside from that, I'm just going to say a lot of prayers.

Now I'm going to watch a programme about recreating 60s holiday camps and bask in the knowledge that I'll be going somewhere tomorrow with sunshine and without Redcoats.

So that's it kids. Leeds 2005 is all over. I've been home for a couple of hours now and it's been lovely.

I no longer smell like cigarettes and alcohol - I was actually starting to think I might be sweating Carling so it's great to be free of it. I've even had some real food and a cup of coffee that didn't have to be made from water that took 20 minutes to boil on a camping stove.

It's impossible to really write about Leeds because it's like an alternate universe of weirdness. The most bizarre things start to seem totally normal after a while, and you can drink in the morning.

So, a snapshot of some of the moments I can remember:

Drunken Meenam - poor Meenam - her drunken antics were a definite highlight of the weekend. On Friday night she unwisely drank "three quarters of a bottle of peach schnapps straight". She kept telling people this even when she was so drunk she couldn't form the words properly. Then she fell flat on her face down a hill. About three minutes after that she fell backwards into someone's tent; luckily it bounced back up and no one was in it. She then went on to poke a bemused stranger in the face to " feel his beard." He didn't have a beard. In a corwning moment of glory, she then fell into a rubbish bag and couldn't get up for five minutes. Best summed up by her own words on Sunday when asked which drinking game she'd like to play: "I'm so hammered I'd vote for anything."

The Sunday Night/Monday Morning Sing-a-Long - everyone sitting round the campfire singing Don't Look Back in Anger when a random stranger appears with a guitar to accompany the last chorus. Completely weird film-like moment that you wouldn't expect to happen in real life and hence brilliant.

The made up words and horrendous jokes - Saul is responsible for these ones; I heard most of them through the wall of the tent on Saturday night. Ranging from "Ask me if I'm an orange" "Are you an orange?" "NO!!" to What's funnier than a dead baby? A dead baby in a clown suit! they weren't really for the easily offended. And of course Saul coined the word of the weekend: Parapaleptic.

The Toilet Funnels - Becca had to explain these to the rest of us. I've never seen her look so traumatised in all the years I've known her. "I thought it was an ice cream cone or something" she kept muttering.

The completely peculiar drinks mixed up out of sheer desperation - including but not limited to: Peach Schapps & Vimto; Stella, White Storm, white wine, vodka and Coca Cola; and Blue Charge, White Lightning and vodka. Becca concocted most of these horrors. Of particular note was the white wine, which came in an aluminium bag. Hayley declared that it was "like drinking out of a blood bag" and Becca shrieked "It's like an organ transplant in my mouth!!"

The Foo Fighters - they closed on Sunday night and they were just amazing. Nothing quite like hearing thousands of people singing a song like Everlong in unison.

I can't think of anything else right now because I'm so tired. But the weird transition between the Leeds Universe and the Real World was nicely summed up by Saul when he said that he was worried that he might temporarily forget where he was and greet his mother with the words:

"Dude, where the fuck is my morning red bull and vodka!?"

And you can't put it better than that.

Oh My God only a week left until Results Day!

Actually I wish it was just over now, I'm sick of waiting. I'd rather just know what was going on for definite so I could get on with things. And I'd really appreciate a decent night's sleep, although when Results Panic is over it will only be replace by Uni Panic anyway.

I've become a radio addict in my insomnia. This week it's been Nick Hornby's 31 Songs in nice manageable 15 minute chunks at 12.45am on BBC7. I must get the book, I've been meaning to for ages.

Happier countdowns than the Results Day one - Two weeks today we'll be in Leeds, and in three weeks we'll be in some Spanish bar. Excellent.

Today I made myself useful for the first time in, oh weeks and weeks. I went to work (in an MPs office, for anyone who doesn't know where I occasionally work. At last count, the number of people potentially reading this who don't know that comes in at nil, but just in case).

As always, I had to "do the filing" which is a nightmarish task. The "filing" this time was in a box that reaches my knees. I have barely dented it. It may be the most boring task ever, as it involves sitting on the floor with piles and piles of letters sorting them into alphabetical order according to constituent's surname. A good 25% of the time you have to skim read the whole thing to find out the name of the constituent to which it refers. So yeah, it's really boring.

Today was a bit crazed, because Louise (the MP) is busy trying to sort out the Michael Shields case, since he is in her constituency. So she was in and out the office all day, and the phone was ringing off the hook with people from Sky News and Radio Four and all kinds looking for quotes. She's apparently been focusing really heavily on it, so all the other cases are piling up and up in the in-tray waiting to be dealt with. Plus Rob is on holiday so there's only really Julie running the show. The whole thing's a bit insane.

And in the middle of it all there is me, writing letters to the guy who runs the Post Office because a British passport has gone missing in the post between here and Brazil. I'm still not clear on why the owner of said passport was here whilst his passport was in South America with his Brazilian boyfriend. But sadly you don't get to call up the constituents and ask questions, so I'll never know.

And...well that's it really. Other non-news since my last entry is largely limited to:

The arrival of my Leeds ticket (yay!)
and
The fact that last week I baked some peanut and raisin cookies.

So, as I said, non-news.

Some completely dull but also extremely important news - important to me at least:

I finally got around to going down to the Post Office and sending away my passport application. So with a bit of luck I will in fact be going to Spain. The downside is that I now have no form of ID at all until the cancelled old passport returns, which will only be a couple of days before the new one shows up anyway. This is why I meant to send off for a provisional driving licence in...April. Of 2004.

It appears that when it comes to organising official documentation I move at glacial speed. I will almost certainly crash and burn when I get to uni and am presented with forms and letters and all kinds of things relating to real life. I will make lots of lists that say things like BUY A TELEVISION LICENCE and then ignore them, culminating in a huge fine and possible jail time or something. It's really inevitable.

So that's it. Nothing else to say. My God, my life is really, really, incredibly boring.

I absolutely cannot sleep.

I strongly suspect that this is related to (in fact, caused by) the fact that tonight (last night?) I went to the beach with Holly, Hayley and Becca and drank three cans of Red Bull whilst there. So I've gone all haywire because of too much caffeine and sugar.

The beach was a lot of fun, and it yielded some classic quotes which I have now mostly forgotten.

Strange and stupid conversation were had which involved:

The colour of a pair of golden retrievers ("Umm...what colour is the other one?")

A small child renamed "Little Stig of the Dump" ("Oh God! They're dragging Stig down that hill!")

Why you can't get mobile phone reception at Formby Beach ("Are we in another country or something?!")

Where precisely in the sky it is that the sun sets ("But...it's in the middle of the sky now!")

The exact locations of Wales and France relative to Formby ("Why do you people know all this complicated geography?")

Fires on oil rigs ("I did NOT call you a liar! I just...suspected you of lying." - "That's the SAME THING!")

The fact that Holly hates sand, the sea, and fish. In fact, she really just hates the beach ("I didn't know it was going to be a SANDY beach!")

and tons of other random and ridiculous things.

We also got totally covered in sand, Hayley fell over at least twice, and we hardly ate any of the ten tons of food we'd carted along ("No, nobody wants your bloody chicken!")

Most importantly, we found the chip shop with the world's worst name for a takeway food establishment:
Hippo's - suggested slogan: "Producing Fried Foods and Guilt Trips Since 1983!"

We should do that kind of thing more often.

So this week has definitely been strange.

I spent Tuesday and Wednesday up in Scotland visiting elderly grandparents. The rest of the week has mostly passed in a daze of "just lying around". It feels like I'm wasting my summer already, even though I'm only a week in to it. You know that feeling you get that everyone else is out somewhere at a party they forgot to invite you to? It's a bit like that.

Except of course, I have no money. I've spent it all on clothes and stuff for Marbella, and so now I'm not just extremely bored, I'm also extremely poor.

Going back to work next week though (hopefully), which will at least fill up my time, although won't do much for my financial situation because they take SO LONG to process my wages.

But I'm just moaning now, and that's horribly unpleasant. So on the up side - lovely lovely weather. And I don't have any more exams to do, or essays to write. And if I wanted to stay in bed all day reading then I could do that.

And I'm lucky to have all this extra time in the first place.